Category: Economic Issues
The Middle East crisis has not only disrupted global shipping routes and fuel flows; it has revealed just how dangerously exposed New Zealand has become. Unlike many countries, we entered this crisis having deliberately dismantled our refining capacity, constrained our gas supply, and imposed ideologically driven climate policies that deliberately increased energy costs throughout the economy. The end result is a country acutely vulnerable to global shocks.
The focus of climate and disaster policy should shift from futile attempts to control natural variability to adaptive strategies that enhance resilience. Recognising the limitations of human influence over climate, resources should be directed toward strengthening infrastructure and community preparedness. It’s time to lift the burden from the minds of New Zealanders: there is no Climate Emergency and - along with Net Zero - it can be put to bed with Rip Van Winkle.
As we begin the final year of the Coalition’s first term of Government, it is instructive to look at the commitments they made when first elected. At that time the country faced significant challenges as a result of six years of mismanagement by Labour.
Being politically neutral and respecting the authority of the government of the day should mean that fundamental Coalition goals like public services being prioritised “on the basis of need, not race”, that “co-governance” should be removed from public services, and that all work on “He Puapua” must stop, should be top priorities and well advanced.
Why are our countries in such a dire mess? The left has been working on a 50-year campaign pushing neo-Marxist ideology - whether it is wokeism, transgenderism, Islamism, mass migration, net zero zealotry, Keynesian economics. And they have been utterly relentless in their pursuit of ideological dominance.
Having seen the disastrous influence of UNDRIP in Canada, the continued existence of the He Puapua framework that Labour put in place to implement the Declaration in New Zealand represents an existential threat to our future. It's time that threat was removed.
The key decisions that set the food price crisis in motion were made by Labour. Framed as bold climate leadership by Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, her 2018 Captain’s Call banning offshore oil and gas exploration, and the 2019 Zero Carbon Act introducing the harshest emissions restrictions in the world, came with predictable consequences: energy shortages and rising fuel prices, as the cost of carbon soared from $17 in 2017 to $88.50 in 2022.
As a former dairy farmer I was shocked to learn that Fonterra is selling its brands’ business. Call it emotional attachment rather than hard-headed commercial reality. For all my dairy farming years I heard that we needed to be closer to our consumers, that branding was an integral part of extracting profit from product sales and that we needed to better understand what our customers wanted. We needed to own the food chain – ‘plough to plate’.
Paying able-bodied people to stay at home and not earn their living is probably the biggest social miscalculation of the last sixty years. Unwinding it won’t be easy. There will be howls of outrage led by those who farm poverty.
Local government in New Zealand is facing significant challenges. After many years of entrenched policy positions councils now need to rapidly adapt and realign to the significant re-sets emanating from central government. All local councils are creatures of statutes and like it or not, central government and local councils must be inextricably intertwined.
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