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notices and features - Date published:
5:30 pm, August 17th, 2018 - 20 comments
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The current rise of populism challenges the way we think about people’s relationship to the economy.We seem to be entering an era of populism, in which leadership in a democracy is based on preferences of the population which do not seem entirely rational nor serving their longer interests. ...
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Clue a marsupial
Chris Bishop. Now wasn’t he one of Amy Adam’s principle supporters in the campaign for the National Party leadership? No, I’m not saying he was the messenger. I think he is probably too smart to do that. But there are ways and means of imparting a message that can never be tracked back to a single source and they can sometimes be unconventional.
“The unit, which was mooted by Jones earlier this year, will provide expert advice, planning and strategy and will support the delivery of major infrastructure projects across the country.”
https://www.interest.co.nz/news/95389/minister-infrastructure-says-new-independent-body-will-help-sort-out-some-nz%E2%80%99s-major
Halfway house?
Sticking a bunch of policy analysts on a different floor and changing their email signatures from the looks of it.
the devil is always in the detail but from what i’ve seen so far its a Claytons MOW
Perhaps neither of you are familiar with the old Ministry of Works which was abandoned 30 years ago. Worked successfully for decades and was instrumental in over-seeing the govt. initiated infrastructure programmes of the times.
If this new body is based on that former scheme but updated to handle modern day requirements including in the private sector then it should eventually be a huge success story.
am very well aware of the old MOW….and this aint it….from what Ive read/heard so far its not even a pale imitation.
As long as there’s a Max Smith among the “New cohort” … Things could be worse…
Ledgend has it he created many of the amenty areas in the upper Mackensie, despite “Think Big”
https://www.odt.co.nz/lifestyle/magazine/works-and-schemes
“When Mr Smith took over as project engineer in 1970, he had a vision for the Upper Waitaki and Mackenzie areas: he wanted to create a resource that could be used by New Zealanders with small pay-packets or older folk living on little more than their pension.”
And he succeeded. Despite the destruction of the MacKenzie, catchments and Downstream …
https://www.nzgeo.com/stories/waitaki-water-of-tears-river-of-power/
http://www.stuff.co.nz/timaru-herald/news/9357871/Lake-creator-man-before-his-time
I suspect a Mr Smith would be kneecapped today…but maybe I’m wrong…heres hoping
Eventually he was …. Have You Ever been there .. Done that .. ?
kneecapped?
I am picking up what you are putting down, Anne.
So many benefits to a rebooted MOW.
One of the cliche reactions from the Tories is inefficiencies.
The lens through which they argue (a balance sheet), can not take into account (pun intended) the benefit of a child seeing their father going to work every day. Even if he is leaning on a shovel a bit.
By father, I obviously meant parent. (He said top toeing out of the room)
🙂
Anne (3.1.1.1) … Bring back MOW.
It worked well in the past, keeping the nation’s infrastructure up to scratch and turning over. Handled efficiently (and honestly), it could do the same now.
Not that Natz would approve of course of its return. MOW would affect too many of their construction cronies’ back pockets, as well as party funds!
I think the major clue is in the target for setting it up: “late 2019”. It’s probably planned to package and roll out a whole raft of costed and attractive ideas to bring to the table for the election in 2020. That could be either a bad or a good thing, but I think it’s a key part of the calculation.
any dept. is going to need comparable or superior capability than the private sector and thats going to take time, years…not to mention that Treasury appear to have a substantial hand in its formation and they will be looking after their patch which means there is unlikely to be significant independent economic analysis.
The thing is Pat, a determined government should be able to overcome the inevitable resistance to it’s plans. Michael Joseph and co. had to fight all manner of obstacles when they set up the Welfare State, but they achieved their goals in the end. I see no reason why this govt. could not be as successful, but I concede we’re going to have to wait a couple of years before we can make any sort of judgement.
They can and could…my concern is they are half hearted…thats what this looks like to me…I will be pleased to be proved wrong
“Following an unprecedented 270,000 downloads of his study, Johan Rockström, executive director of the Stockholm Resilience Centre, said he had not seen such a surge of interest since 2007, the year the Nobel prize was awarded to Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/aug/17/world-waking-up-to-reality-climate-change-hothouse-earth-author
270.000……theres an estimated 3.2 billion people with internet access…so less than 0.009%, quite some ways to go i think.