Author Archive

Time to wake up from the neolib nightmare

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 9:20 am, October 8th, 2009 - 18 comments

Back in the 1980s, some people who had read too much Milton Friedman and had drunk too much whiskey at Backbone Club meetings, thought adopting the neoliberal economic model, that had never been proven to work outside textbooks, was the way forward for New Zealand. Slash government, slash taxes (for the rich), slash wages, slash […]

Beyond GDP

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 7:45 am, October 7th, 2009 - 31 comments

Back in 1934, when Gross Domestic Product was first being developed in the States, the economist in charge, Simon Kuznets, wrote “…the welfare of a nation [can] scarcely be inferred from a measure of national income…”. Right from the start, the economists were saying GDP was merely a measure of economic activity, not of the wealth […]

Up in smoke

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 6:01 am, October 6th, 2009 - 19 comments

When the Tui oil-field was opened last year, the operators (AWE New Zealand, 87.5% foreign-owned, ironically) were given permission to burn off 10 billion cubic feet of natural gas retrieved incidentally to the oil over the life of the oil-field. That’s actually a hell of a lot of gas, about 6% of what New Zealand […]

Put away the champagne, Paula

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 3:42 pm, October 5th, 2009 - 40 comments

Paula Bennett: “The number of people needing an Unemployment Benefit has slowed significantly over the last month, says the Minister for Social Development and Employment.” Here, let me correct that for you: “The growth in the number of people needing an Unemployment Benefit has slowed over the last month but still increased by 1,500 or […]

Bill vs Greens

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 10:09 am, October 5th, 2009 - 55 comments

I love that, after studiously ignoring Bill English’s housing rort, Farrar’s now got unending questions for the Greens. Pretty desperate stuff too – ‘sure, you paid the money back of your own accord after you yourselves discovered you had over-claimed but why did it take so long? huh?! huh?!’. Hilariously, he claims that the superannuation fund […]

English could learn from the Greens

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 5:18 pm, October 4th, 2009 - 116 comments

The Greens have a superannuation fund. That’s fine. It has investments in a couple of houses. That’s fine. The Green MPs have to rent somewhere to live when they’re in Wellington. They claim the out of town allowance to cover those costs, which is what the allowance is for. So, that’s fine. Three of the […]

The walking dead

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 2:45 pm, October 3rd, 2009 - 23 comments

Fran O’Sullivan has laid out the business elite’s preferred successors to Bill English: At this stage English is not mortally wounded. But his reputation as one of the Mr Cleans of New Zealand politics has been damaged. And – more importantly for the Deputy Prime Minister’s political future – some of the more ambitious among […]

Corruption must never be tolerated

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 3:20 pm, October 1st, 2009 - 95 comments

I have to disagree with my comrade Zetetic’s post arguing that it’s best if Bill English stays in office. Yes, this scandal has permanently destroyed English’s credibility and I can see how having a lame duck Deputy PM and Finance Minister plays into the Left’s hands. But I do think our touchstone should always be […]

Crime leaps along with unemployment

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 1:35 pm, October 1st, 2009 - 29 comments

The Police statistics out today show the crime rate continues to follow the unemployment rate. With unemployment on the rise, so is crime. Recorded crimes per person leapt 2.8% in the June year, as unemployment climbed from 4% to 6%. It’s obviously not a coincidence. Crime is a symptom of a society in distress, the […]

Carter, do your job

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 12:12 pm, September 30th, 2009 - 46 comments

One area where I agree with Fran O’Sullivan is the dairy industry. Today she covers the Crafars: CraFarms’ bankers should do the decent thing and put the so-called dairy farming “giant” into receivership before its practices further decrease the value of its assets and bring New Zealand’s prime agriculture export industry into international disrepute. The […]

McGovernment

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 5:06 am, September 30th, 2009 - 12 comments

This increasingly ramshackle government continues to astound. They’ve basically done nothing in a year when the country has been dealing with the worst economic crisis in decades. When they have tried to tackle big issues, the result has been incompetent policy produced entirely for political reasons – framed as moderate while paying off big business. Take Treasury’s view of […]

Who would replace Bill?

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 11:49 am, September 29th, 2009 - 35 comments

There’s a grim irony to Bill English’s career. Despite being regarded as competent and having a Cullen-like role as the heavy-lifter in this government, he has also been at the centre of the worst National screw-ups of the last decade. As Minister of Revenue, he was heavily involved in the sale of Wellington Airport, which […]

Power’s electoral finance reform proposals out

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 2:39 pm, September 28th, 2009 - 32 comments

Justice Minister Simon Power has released the Government’s proposals for reform of electoral finance law. Remember, Labour’s reforms of electoral finance law were branded an assault on democracy and free speech by National and its affiliates like the Herald. There were protests in the streets (oddly, at the Wellington one, most of the several dozen […]

Four day week, way of the future?

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 10:18 am, September 28th, 2009 - 18 comments

How would you like to work a four-day, ten-hour per day week, rather than a five-day week? A number of organisations in the US have adopted the 4-day week to save energy costs during the recession, and it’s working so well for employers and workers that it may become permanent. A survey I saw mentioned […]

Informative journalism

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 10:20 am, September 25th, 2009 - 4 comments

Colin Espiner: “For some reason that I don’t quite understand, unemployment usually continues to rise at the end of recessions, and there’s normally a lag time of something like a year before it falls.” I can help with that one. When a down-turn starts, employers generally don’t know how bad or how long it will […]

Chauvel on the ETS

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 4:54 pm, September 24th, 2009 - 35 comments

In his speech as Labour climate change spokesperson, Charles Chauvel confirmed the new information on the ETS that Jeanette Fitzsimons revealed today. It was a pretty good speech, especially the conclusion: “Labour will have no option but to repeal these changes when next in power. We could have had a broad-based, bipartisan, sustainable ETS but National […]

Nats to subsidise big polluters by $2 billion a year

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 3:29 pm, September 24th, 2009 - 19 comments

Last night, non-government parties finally got a peak at the new emissions trading bill. Nick Smith still didn’t have it finished, it was in draft form, and by all accounts it’s a mess. As Jeanette Fitzsimons reports, however, the draft ETS did reveal something important. See, on Tuesday Smith tabled in Parliament a bizarre table […]

John and Bill cost us $7 million in two months

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 12:00 pm, September 23rd, 2009 - 47 comments

You’ll remember that in the Budget National decided to suspend payments to the Cullen Fund, which is designed to help fund the future cost of superannuation. At the time, John Key and Bill English said we were losing money on the Fund and we couldn’t afford to borrow to put money into it. They compared […]

Back into growth

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 11:27 am, September 23rd, 2009 - 5 comments

The newly released figures show 0.1% growth in the June quarter. The March figure was also revised up to -0.8% (from -1.0%). Here comes the sun? Not quite. 0.1% is pretty damn weak. It’s below population growth (0.25% per quarter) so, we’re still worse off per person. And we’re a long way below the economic […]

Billy and the Baroness

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 10:16 am, September 23rd, 2009 - 10 comments

In an extraordinary coincidence, the Attorney-General in the UK is about to lose her job for pretty much the same rort as Bill English has been pulling here: [Baroness Scotland] receives a £38,280-a-year “night subsistence allowance” widely understood to be for ministers whose primary home is outside London even though she owns a large house […]

Talking union

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 11:45 am, September 21st, 2009 - Comments Off on Talking union

Eddie’s piece on the importance of joining your union if you want to avoid a pay cut reminded me of another Peter Seeger classic:

Nats’ ETS a polluters’ charter

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 9:26 am, September 21st, 2009 - 6 comments

Rod Oram, as usual, has set the standard in commentary with his piece on the National-Maori Party ETS. The full article is here but I’ll lift the core points: Oram argues a climate change policy package needs three things: Put a price on emissions to incentivise change. We chose an ETS as the most effective […]

Politics more than politicking

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 11:32 am, September 20th, 2009 - 8 comments

I get sick of hearing our illustrious fourth estate refer to some piece of politicking as ‘good politics’. Who decides what’s ‘good politics’? The commentators, of course. And they define good politics as maneuvering to ones advantage, rather than getting good policies in place. Take the ETS issue. If they wanted, the commentators could say ‘National has […]

Nick Smith’s dirty dealing

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 9:33 am, September 18th, 2009 - 8 comments

Labour’s Charles Chauvel has released the paper records of Labour’s attempts to agree a bi-partisan ETS with National. In total, Labour presented three draft MOUs detailing possible agreements, each moving towards what they believed to be National’s position. Additionally, there was a letter from Phil Goff to John Key a month ago that clearly laid […]

Corporate bully-boys step it up a level

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 6:14 am, September 18th, 2009 - 16 comments

The Open Country Cheese dispute is underway. Workers are striking against the bosses’ attempts to casualise their hours and reduce their conditions. They are not striking for huge pay increases, despite the lies of Open Country. Open Country Cheese, part-owned by the notorious Talleys and tied to various National MPs via the Dairy Investment Fund […]

The bigots beneath

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 9:38 am, September 17th, 2009 - 39 comments

Last night, Sandra Goudie, the big-mouth of the National Party caucus, said the words out loud that the Nats usually keep in their heads. During the debate on the Supercity, one of the Labour MPs was talking about the success of Maori seats in the Bay of Plenty and how other councillors didn’t object. Goudie […]

Sell state houses? Not like this

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 9:42 am, September 16th, 2009 - 25 comments

National has announced that it will begin offering to sell 3,800 state houses to tenants living in them on market rents. I don’t automatically oppose selling state houses but there needs to be four conditions: Housing NZ must use all revenue from sales to buy new houses – we don’t want the amount of housing […]

What next, Soylent Green?

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 5:31 am, September 16th, 2009 - 29 comments

The Wall Street financiers crapped out on their sub-prime gambles, inflicting economic devastation on the taxpayers who generously bailed-them out in return. Now, they need a new gamble, a new game in which they bet using other people’s money while skimming off the cream for themselves until it all collapses. The new game? Betting on […]

No deal

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 11:16 am, September 15th, 2009 - 22 comments

Hot Topic has obtained a copy of a draft memorandum of understanding for a meeting on the ETS that was meant to take place today. It shows that Labour was prepared to do more to help compensate polluters for the costs they would have faced while still paying a price for polluting, thereby still incentivising reductions […]

It’s the economy, stupid

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 5:48 am, September 15th, 2009 - 36 comments

What a lot of people don’t seem to understand is that an emissions trading scheme has two points: 1) encourage reductions in emissions 2) allocate the cost of emitting. The ETS does not, ultimately, create the price on carbon for New Zealand. That is created by our international committment, along with other countries, to limit our […]