Last night I watched Christopher Luxon in a interview with Jack Tame on Q&A from youtube. My takeaway from it was that I don’t want this fool anywhere near actual policy. Even worse was that was in the question of genetically modified organisms (GMOs), A topic that I agree with the position he was (possibly) trying to articulate. Chris Luxon looked he’d never even looked at the various debate about GMOs in NZ or any of the objections that have been raised. That same blissful ignorance covered every other topic raised about his parties policies and the downstream effects.
My impression was that he’d run head-long into a poorly controlled experiment seeking possible profits without even looking at the policy boundaries or the costs of downstream consequences. He appeared to be owned by his talking points and had no knowledge of the implications apart from the bright $$$ signs that someone had sold him. He looked like a complete ignorant sucker.
He wasn’t aware of the documented issues with GMO cross-contamination. Apparently wasn’t aware of the current techniques being used for GMOs in the field like the issues with Monsanto and roundup. Seemed to think that restricting NZ to a organic section of 5% of the world market was limiting which indicated that he he was unable to deal with very large numbers.
Hie performance over the whole interview was that of avoiding answering direct questions about the implications of Nationals’s announced policies on genetic engineering, climate change emissions, and the effect of not having capital gains taxes on productivity in NZ. I think that he spent at least half of the time in evasive behaviour and repetition of slogans.
Floundering on the questions about timing of climate change actions in agriculture showed a clear mis-understanding of the effect on the taxation by levies by the rest of NZ by the farmer intransigence.
It was the performance of a ignorant rather than of someone who knew even basic details on what he was talking about. Could I trust this limited fool in charge of my government – clearly not. He’d screw up because he didn’t know enough to know what he didn’t know. Watch this pathetic performance and you will see what I mean.
My positions of genetic engineering have been pretty clear from the 1990s. My first degree was in Earth Sciences and I understand this country well both from its geomorpology through to its biologicals and its farming sector. Genetic Engineering (GE) is something that we should be working with in this country and finding where we could productively use it. But we need to do it safely
We are a nation overrun with pests and living with the consequences of geomorphing our landscape from forests into grasslands. The techniques like CRISPR and the genetic mapping of genes have gotten cleaner and more precise. Most of that research has shown just how complex the interactions between environment, genes, transcriptions and proteins are – and how little we know. But also how productive even minor tweaks can be.
However it is a process that should be done very carefully and with consideration of unintended consequences. Our short history shows the downstream consequences of unfettered alien introductions from the scars on my youthful hands from pulling out acres of wild roses on a farm to the ravages of flooding in the Esk Valley this year after widespread clear felling in the past and recently.
Luxon gives me no feeling of confidence that he has even thought about basics like this. Instead he gives me the impression that anyone he’d appoint to oversight would be as gormlessly ignorant as he is about being careful about what we do as a nation. According to Luxons answers they would be tasked largely with the short-term economic benefits to the participants a single low profit, largely stagnant , large economic sector. How exactly this would profit all of the citizens of NZ was unstated, as was who would carry the costs of any screwups.
The same applies to Luxon’s attitudes on getting the farming industry to pick up their much delayed share of the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) burden. Why should every other industry and person carry the ETS levy burden that we currently carry and increasingly would carry for farming? What other industry or citizen was allowed to set their own rules for how they’d like to be involved?
As far as I can see Luxon’s policy is to just dither yet again, and allow the farming community to avoid dealing with the problem because there are a few loudmouth idiots in their electorate committees.
It isn’t like farming is that profitable for NZ. It has very low employment and profit margins compared to something like tourism. Employs less people and is probably way less profitable than the ever burgeoning export tech industry that I work in.
Economically most of the added value in farming appears to get siphoned offshore by interest payments of capital. Most of the reason for that appears to be driven by speculative pricing on farming land – the same reason that I didn’t go into farming as a career 45 years ago.
Wasting capital into property speculation is a nett non-productive use of resources. Yet Luxon was evading about capital gains tax on his own property portfolio and his personal interests in not having capital gains tests, even those as easy as the brightline test. He seems to confuse his own personal interests with those of our nation.
That is if he even understood the point of the questions. Something that I am unconvinced that he did.
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