Michael Cullen has just spent $1.5 billion of taxpayers money on a real white elephant called “Kiwirail”. The Greens are getting nervous that are going to be spending a fair while in opposition: though given Labour snubbed them it may not feel much different.
But rail isn’t a white elephant, Mainfreight has applauded the buyback and rail gives us the chance to build a low carbon transport network… it’s great big motorways that will be the white elephant as peak oil continues, rail is a partial solution to the problem.
What a tory like you doesn’t understand, Bryan, is that it’s not about being in charge for the Greens (and a to a lesser extent for Labour)… it’s about seeing the policies they stand for in put place.. of course being in power is the best way to see that happen, but the Greens have managed to do a great deal both in substantive policy and by dragging the political debate towards their ideals without being in power… it’s those successes on what matters, not the title on a CV that the Greens are after.
The Greens are getting nervous that are going to be spending a fair while in opposition:
Well I am a fairly active member of the Green Party and not surprisingly, talk to a huge number of Green Party members from up and down the country. From my perspective Bryan, that statement was sourced from your bottom
BTW Good on you Russel that was a brilliant press release
In Nelson in spite of the public transport system being shit, there is a noticeable drop in traffic flows.
3 years ago a major link road was proposed through a thriving local community and now its a dead in the water proposal
The local Council Transit and other interested parties have moved on and are actively investigating the best ways to implement sustainable transport initiatives. Don’t think new roads, think Transition Towns
Jeez Bryan, if you’re going to have a big cry and a whinge at the dimpost about The Standard and the level of the comments, I’d have thought you’d want to lift your game a bit. I guess not.
Steve: The Australians are laughing all the way to the bank:
“Matt O’Sullivan, Brisbane Times, May 6
Ticket to profit You only get one Helen Clark in your life.
But Little’s deal across the ditch shows he hasn’t lost his dealmaking nous. After all, Toll valued New Zealand’s rail and ferry assets at about $NZ231 million back in 2003 when it launched a takeover for TranzRail.
Five years on, he’s sold most of the assets back for almost three times their value (and a considerable premium to their latest book value of $NZ430 million). Little even took some credit for delivering the assets back to Clark after “improving the efficiency of rail freight movements within NZ”.
Though this isn’t quite how Clark and her minions see the rail system after a decade in private hands. “The selling-off of our public rail system in the early 1990s and the running-down of the asset afterward has been a painful lesson,” the Finance Minister, Michael Cullen, said.
Little’s former trucking pal, Mark Rowsthorn, continues to ponder how he can engineer his own “Helen moment”. ”
Of course Mainfreight approve: they know that their operations will now be subsidised by the New Zealand taxpayer. A subtle distinction you might appreciate when you have to look for a job in the real world next year.
Peak oil is a point in time – it cannot, by definition “continue”
[peak oil is an economic crisis, we are starting to feel the effects of the approach of the point in time when the supply of oil starts to fall.. we will continue feeling those effects as the time approachs and then feel it even worse once the drop-off occurs. I was perfectly aware of the semantics I used and they are correct - peak oil is happening to us and will continue happening to us for some time to come. Phil, when did you give up on substantive debate? SP]
“The study finds that welfare has increased from the privatisation of rail. This reflects the remarkable improvement in productivity that took place. It finds that government and taxpayers gained the most from privatisation because of the elimination of their commitment to funding rail losses under public ownership. For instance, it cost taxpayers over $1.1 billion to support NZ Rail between 1983 and 1993, and since the 1880s rail was corporatised five times under state ownership and each time the reorganisation failed to deliver a sustainable improvement.”
Oil prices are going to go through the roof, yes, but what about alternate fuels? If you think everyone’s just going to stop driving you’re very naive SP.
The rail network is crap. It’s not going to be any good without billions of dollars invested in it, and it still suffers from fuel prices. Electrify you say? Good luck. Don’t we have a power crisis on our hands?
neither: an extra few points on the intelligence quotient might make a difference especially when it comes down to reigning in conspicuous consumption by self referencing self infatuated idiots.
Peak oil is a point in time – it cannot, by definition “continue’
Yes, but it will plateau at the peak for a few years before oil production goes into decline.
Oil prices are going to go through the roof, yes, but what about alternate fuels? If you think everyone’s just going to stop driving you’re very naive SP.
There’s a serious question about alternative fuels being able to cover the loss of energy that falling oil production will entail.
I wasn’t aware that the taxpayer was going to subsidise anything about the railways (apart from buying it of course) – we left that crap in the 80s. Now we have the State Owned Enterprises Act and all that jazz…we don’t subsidise Kiwibank, but it’s run like a business. Would have thought the same applies to rail, am I wrong?
Are you guys talking about the motorway being tunnelled under Clark’s electorate announced by Clark some short time ago? Or do those roading infrastructure jobs of Labour’s not count as the same sort of ‘white elephants’?
more double standards
[lprent: Don't be a thickhead - I grew up there and it is still pretty much my home patch.
No-one in Mt Albert or Mt Roskill wants or needs the damn thing. All it does for the local people is to have a bloody great big mess on their doorstep for many years screwing up traffic and spreading noise and dust.
It is mainly being built for the benefit of the North Shore and Manakau, but has to go across the west isthmus.
The opposition has been incredibly strong (because there is bugger all benefit) which is why Transit eventually worked through to a solution that could be tolerated (maybe).
Unfortunately it is about the only real solution to join the exporters in Albany to the airport. It is unlikely to be a white elephant because we get almost all of the benefits immediately]
The implication always seems to be that having a massive construction project in your electorate is ‘going to be great’!
[lprent: It isn't. The people in Mt Roskill can give you chapter and verse about why they hope their bit of the SH20 project will be over soon. People living even moderately close to the rest are in a sort of terrible resignation. ]
Your options are incorrect because Labour is putting $500 million into broadband, with a plan the industry has welcomed. not just a pot of money for restoring telecom’s monopoly.
I would say b) $1.5bil for rail (I’ve yet to see here you people are getting that figure from, btw) and $500 mil on broadband is the better option.
The economy is still mostly about making stuff and moving it to factories, to ports, to shops, we need a transport network, and with peak oil upon us, that needs to be a low-oi/low-carbon network. Only rail and coastal shipping can provide those to us.
So one dinosaur party drives unemployment towards five percent while the other dinosaur party figures it’ll mop up some of those affected by resurrecting “Think Big”.
It’s true that the Greens have seen their policies put in place. It’s just a pity that their policies are about embracing our return to a hunter-gatherer lifestyle and not actually innovating to address the problem.
(And since you’re around on this thread, “Steve”, perhaps you could provide an answer to the question I posed on this thread rather than letting Lynn cop the flak for you?)
infused. “Don’t we have a power crisis on our hands?” No we don’t , in case you missed it, it’s been raining for the last month solid… the lakes are full, we are not and never were short of power.
As for alternative fuels. I know alternatives fuels are not going to come and save us in the next few years as peak oil esculates because I’ve looked into the issue extensively.
infused. Do you know about storage and distribution issues of hydrogen for fuel cells? Do you know that the supply of rare earth minerals used in electric car batteries has already peaked(as hs the suplpy of uranium ,incidentally)? Do you know when the first mass-production electric cars are expected to be on the market and the projections for market peneration by non-oil driven vehicles? do you know how long it would take for 90% the fleet of vehicles on the road to be non-oil driven even once all new sales are? Do you know how much of the energy consumed by humans is supplied by hydro-carbons and the potential replacement sources and the limitations of each and their abiltiy to upscale?
No, you don’t. If you haven’t done your research, don’t go calling me naive.
Draco TB “Yes, but it will plateau at the peak for a few years before oil production goes into decline.”
Well, I can’t see the plateau lasting very long, it might do if we were looking at a steady rate of demand, but because of places like China, demand is constantly increasing. I think it’ll be a much sharper curve than a few years. At the end of the day noone can know for sure seeing as we don’t know whats happening at the moment. OPEC countries are not coming clean about the level of their reserves.
There is no known productivity gain from running fibre-optic to households. The only current use is doing video and uncompressed graphics, playing movies and video conferencing outside of some esoteric science and engineering apps.
There will be a few people who may be able to use it from home, but they usually do it now from places already equipped with high bandwidth.
So where do you expect it to increase productivity or increase growth?
This is the type of stuff I do for a living – writing code for squirting data around.
“There is no known productivity gain from running fibre-optic to households. ” Iprent
“640K of memory should be enough for anybody”. Bill Gates.
I guess your great gran pappy wasn’t too impressed with the new fangled steam trains when they were invented either. And, who would want to fly!?!!?! If God had intended us to fly he would have given us wings!!!!!
You surprise me considering what you do for a living.
Pierson, it may surprise you, but Iprent isn’t the only one in the country that works in IT.
I thought you (labour [I'm not Labour, I'm a Green voter. SP]) would be jumping over this one, the benefits of teleworking (oil/petrol saved, less road damage, less emmisions into the atmosphere, more productivity) just for starters.
Rex surely the link you gave is wrong because this is what it is a about
“The Sustainable Living Programme which grew out of an initiative by Marlborough District Council, but has since spread across the whole country.”
Sweety: I teleworked for over 7 years up until the start of last year.
My team of up to 7 programmers, testers, and graphics bods used VPN to access a central version control system with about 10k development files in it.
We communicated using phone, e-mail and various instant messaging systems. That included the Boston office people. This was all done on ADSL right around Auckland, and in the US. High speed bandwidth isn’t required for teleworking at home.
I didn’t even bother having a car. I took taxi’s to the monthly meetings.
The only reason I stopped was because of some moronic National party decisions in the 1990′s that caused my apartment building to have leak issues. I had to go to work on a 9-5 because the builders were too damn noisy during the day.
I’d say I know about teleworking. In fact in NZ I doubt there are too many people with as much experience. Have you done anything similar? Or is it just theory?
I’d also point out that the only reason we did the teleworking was because I was willing to make sure it happened. Most managers would have a considerable problem coping with it.
SweeetD: Just at present I can’t see the applications that would make the fibre worthwhile. That includes in the places that already have the fibre in place like some US cities.
The main use would probably be to do things like movie edits here and that has already been done. Besides the limiting factor is our shortage of bandwidth off-shore not in-shore.
“I’d say I know about teleworking. Have you done anything similar? Or is it just theory?”
Audio, video and net conferencing in the UK for 6 years, both in a technical and operational capacity. Global technical meetigs via video and audio, team members seperated by time, location and language. Yes, I know something about it. We achieved much more than the sum of the individual parts.
My point stands, and I still think you are wrong on the benefits of high speed fibre.
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Michael Cullen has just spent $1.5 billion of taxpayers money on a real white elephant called “Kiwirail”. The Greens are getting nervous that are going to be spending a fair while in opposition: though given Labour snubbed them it may not feel much different.
But rail isn’t a white elephant, Mainfreight has applauded the buyback and rail gives us the chance to build a low carbon transport network… it’s great big motorways that will be the white elephant as peak oil continues, rail is a partial solution to the problem.
What a tory like you doesn’t understand, Bryan, is that it’s not about being in charge for the Greens (and a to a lesser extent for Labour)… it’s about seeing the policies they stand for in put place.. of course being in power is the best way to see that happen, but the Greens have managed to do a great deal both in substantive policy and by dragging the political debate towards their ideals without being in power… it’s those successes on what matters, not the title on a CV that the Greens are after.
Bryan
Well I am a fairly active member of the Green Party and not surprisingly, talk to a huge number of Green Party members from up and down the country. From my perspective Bryan, that statement was sourced from your bottom
BTW Good on you Russel that was a brilliant press release
In Nelson in spite of the public transport system being shit, there is a noticeable drop in traffic flows.
3 years ago a major link road was proposed through a thriving local community and now its a dead in the water proposal
The local Council Transit and other interested parties have moved on and are actively investigating the best ways to implement sustainable transport initiatives. Don’t think new roads, think Transition Towns
outofbed:so are you saying that the Greens have decided to go into coalition with National ?
No Bryan:
I am saying that you do not understand MMP
Jeez Bryan, if you’re going to have a big cry and a whinge at the dimpost about The Standard and the level of the comments, I’d have thought you’d want to lift your game a bit. I guess not.
Pathetic.
Steve: The Australians are laughing all the way to the bank:
“Matt O’Sullivan, Brisbane Times, May 6
Ticket to profit You only get one Helen Clark in your life.
But Little’s deal across the ditch shows he hasn’t lost his dealmaking nous. After all, Toll valued New Zealand’s rail and ferry assets at about $NZ231 million back in 2003 when it launched a takeover for TranzRail.
Five years on, he’s sold most of the assets back for almost three times their value (and a considerable premium to their latest book value of $NZ430 million). Little even took some credit for delivering the assets back to Clark after “improving the efficiency of rail freight movements within NZ”.
Though this isn’t quite how Clark and her minions see the rail system after a decade in private hands. “The selling-off of our public rail system in the early 1990s and the running-down of the asset afterward has been a painful lesson,” the Finance Minister, Michael Cullen, said.
Little’s former trucking pal, Mark Rowsthorn, continues to ponder how he can engineer his own “Helen moment”. ”
Of course Mainfreight approve: they know that their operations will now be subsidised by the New Zealand taxpayer. A subtle distinction you might appreciate when you have to look for a job in the real world next year.
Bryan. a) you don’t know where I work
b)all road users are subsidised by the taxpayer.
c) you can’t ignore that oil prices are going through the roof – we need to invest in facing that..
“The Australians are laughing all the way to the bank”…
they don’t have to go far as they own them all… well not quite
Semantics, Steve; “as peak oil continues”
Peak oil is a point in time – it cannot, by definition “continue”
[peak oil is an economic crisis, we are starting to feel the effects of the approach of the point in time when the supply of oil starts to fall.. we will continue feeling those effects as the time approachs and then feel it even worse once the drop-off occurs. I was perfectly aware of the semantics I used and they are correct - peak oil is happening to us and will continue happening to us for some time to come. Phil, when did you give up on substantive debate? SP]
Steve: Quoting the NZ Treasury:
“The study finds that welfare has increased from the privatisation of rail. This reflects the remarkable improvement in productivity that took place. It finds that government and taxpayers gained the most from privatisation because of the elimination of their commitment to funding rail losses under public ownership. For instance, it cost taxpayers over $1.1 billion to support NZ Rail between 1983 and 1993, and since the 1880s rail was corporatised five times under state ownership and each time the reorganisation failed to deliver a sustainable improvement.”
Oil prices are going to go through the roof, yes, but what about alternate fuels? If you think everyone’s just going to stop driving you’re very naive SP.
The rail network is crap. It’s not going to be any good without billions of dollars invested in it, and it still suffers from fuel prices. Electrify you say? Good luck. Don’t we have a power crisis on our hands?
Answer this question. Which is going to improve the productivity of New Zealand.
1) The 1.5+b on the railway
2) 1.5b on broadband
neither: an extra few points on the intelligence quotient might make a difference especially when it comes down to reigning in conspicuous consumption by self referencing self infatuated idiots.
“all road users are subsidised by the taxpayer.” really ? Then charge the true cost of using roads with tolls.
Yes, but it will plateau at the peak for a few years before oil production goes into decline.
There’s a serious question about alternative fuels being able to cover the loss of energy that falling oil production will entail.
Calm down randal, not the end of the world.
I wasn’t aware that the taxpayer was going to subsidise anything about the railways (apart from buying it of course) – we left that crap in the 80s. Now we have the State Owned Enterprises Act and all that jazz…we don’t subsidise Kiwibank, but it’s run like a business. Would have thought the same applies to rail, am I wrong?
Are you guys talking about the motorway being tunnelled under Clark’s electorate announced by Clark some short time ago? Or do those roading infrastructure jobs of Labour’s not count as the same sort of ‘white elephants’?
more double standards
[lprent: Don't be a thickhead - I grew up there and it is still pretty much my home patch.
No-one in Mt Albert or Mt Roskill wants or needs the damn thing. All it does for the local people is to have a bloody great big mess on their doorstep for many years screwing up traffic and spreading noise and dust.
It is mainly being built for the benefit of the North Shore and Manakau, but has to go across the west isthmus.
The opposition has been incredibly strong (because there is bugger all benefit) which is why Transit eventually worked through to a solution that could be tolerated (maybe).
Unfortunately it is about the only real solution to join the exporters in Albany to the airport. It is unlikely to be a white elephant because we get almost all of the benefits immediately]
vto – take a look through our archives. I think the posters here have pretty consistently criticised Labour’s big roading projects.
Again, some research before you start smearing us would be good.
oh ok, fair enough. Research archives? there no way I have time to do that.
[Fine but if you're going to be ignorant don't assume things. SP]
The implication always seems to be that having a massive construction project in your electorate is ‘going to be great’!
[lprent: It isn't. The people in Mt Roskill can give you chapter and verse about why they hope their bit of the SH20 project will be over soon. People living even moderately close to the rest are in a sort of terrible resignation. ]
vto – in that case it’s probably best to hold off on the accusations of hypocrisy then.
infused.
Your options are incorrect because Labour is putting $500 million into broadband, with a plan the industry has welcomed. not just a pot of money for restoring telecom’s monopoly.
I would say b) $1.5bil for rail (I’ve yet to see here you people are getting that figure from, btw) and $500 mil on broadband is the better option.
The economy is still mostly about making stuff and moving it to factories, to ports, to shops, we need a transport network, and with peak oil upon us, that needs to be a low-oi/low-carbon network. Only rail and coastal shipping can provide those to us.
So one dinosaur party drives unemployment towards five percent while the other dinosaur party figures it’ll mop up some of those affected by resurrecting “Think Big”.
It’s true that the Greens have seen their policies put in place. It’s just a pity that their policies are about embracing our return to a hunter-gatherer lifestyle and not actually innovating to address the problem.
Does anyone in politics have a plan that doesn’t involve sending our living standards back to the days of the dinosaurs in one way or another?
(And since you’re around on this thread, “Steve”, perhaps you could provide an answer to the question I posed on this thread rather than letting Lynn cop the flak for you?)
infused. “Don’t we have a power crisis on our hands?” No we don’t , in case you missed it, it’s been raining for the last month solid… the lakes are full, we are not and never were short of power.
As for alternative fuels. I know alternatives fuels are not going to come and save us in the next few years as peak oil esculates because I’ve looked into the issue extensively.
infused. Do you know about storage and distribution issues of hydrogen for fuel cells? Do you know that the supply of rare earth minerals used in electric car batteries has already peaked(as hs the suplpy of uranium ,incidentally)? Do you know when the first mass-production electric cars are expected to be on the market and the projections for market peneration by non-oil driven vehicles? do you know how long it would take for 90% the fleet of vehicles on the road to be non-oil driven even once all new sales are? Do you know how much of the energy consumed by humans is supplied by hydro-carbons and the potential replacement sources and the limitations of each and their abiltiy to upscale?
No, you don’t. If you haven’t done your research, don’t go calling me naive.
Draco TB “Yes, but it will plateau at the peak for a few years before oil production goes into decline.”
Well, I can’t see the plateau lasting very long, it might do if we were looking at a steady rate of demand, but because of places like China, demand is constantly increasing. I think it’ll be a much sharper curve than a few years. At the end of the day noone can know for sure seeing as we don’t know whats happening at the moment. OPEC countries are not coming clean about the level of their reserves.
infused: The rail.
There is no known productivity gain from running fibre-optic to households. The only current use is doing video and uncompressed graphics, playing movies and video conferencing outside of some esoteric science and engineering apps.
There will be a few people who may be able to use it from home, but they usually do it now from places already equipped with high bandwidth.
So where do you expect it to increase productivity or increase growth?
This is the type of stuff I do for a living – writing code for squirting data around.
“There is no known productivity gain from running fibre-optic to households. ” Iprent
“640K of memory should be enough for anybody”. Bill Gates.
I guess your great gran pappy wasn’t too impressed with the new fangled steam trains when they were invented either. And, who would want to fly!?!!?! If God had intended us to fly he would have given us wings!!!!!
You surprise me considering what you do for a living.
SweeetD. It surprises me that you wold consdier yourself better informed than Lynn, given what he does for a living.
And, remember, he’s not saying ultra-fast broadband could never have any use, he’s saying there’s no case for it now.
Pierson, it may surprise you, but Iprent isn’t the only one in the country that works in IT.
I thought you (labour [I'm not Labour, I'm a Green voter. SP]) would be jumping over this one, the benefits of teleworking (oil/petrol saved, less road damage, less emmisions into the atmosphere, more productivity) just for starters.
He is very wrong on this one.
Rex surely the link you gave is wrong because this is what it is a about
“The Sustainable Living Programme which grew out of an initiative by Marlborough District Council, but has since spread across the whole country.”
can you furnish the correct one ?
Sweety: I teleworked for over 7 years up until the start of last year.
My team of up to 7 programmers, testers, and graphics bods used VPN to access a central version control system with about 10k development files in it.
We communicated using phone, e-mail and various instant messaging systems. That included the Boston office people. This was all done on ADSL right around Auckland, and in the US. High speed bandwidth isn’t required for teleworking at home.
I didn’t even bother having a car. I took taxi’s to the monthly meetings.
The only reason I stopped was because of some moronic National party decisions in the 1990′s that caused my apartment building to have leak issues. I had to go to work on a 9-5 because the builders were too damn noisy during the day.
I’d say I know about teleworking. In fact in NZ I doubt there are too many people with as much experience. Have you done anything similar? Or is it just theory?
I’d also point out that the only reason we did the teleworking was because I was willing to make sure it happened. Most managers would have a considerable problem coping with it.
SweeetD: Just at present I can’t see the applications that would make the fibre worthwhile. That includes in the places that already have the fibre in place like some US cities.
The main use would probably be to do things like movie edits here and that has already been done. Besides the limiting factor is our shortage of bandwidth off-shore not in-shore.
“I’d say I know about teleworking. Have you done anything similar? Or is it just theory?”
Audio, video and net conferencing in the UK for 6 years, both in a technical and operational capacity. Global technical meetigs via video and audio, team members seperated by time, location and language. Yes, I know something about it. We achieved much more than the sum of the individual parts.
My point stands, and I still think you are wrong on the benefits of high speed fibre.