Send a JAFA to Wellington….

Written By: - Date published: 9:52 pm, April 26th, 2010 - 12 comments
Categories: act, auckland supercity, democracy under attack, Media, phil goff, privatisation, public services, rodney hide, roger douglas, tv, vote smart - Tags: ,

To paraphrase Muldoon – send a JAFA to Wellington, and we can only increase the average intelligence of both parts of the country.

Needless to say, TV news chose to focus on a minor story in Goffs speech. If a future mayor of Auckland, Brown, can sit at the cabinet table on decisions related to Auckland, it is pretty damn irrelevant. Historically as every Aucklander knows, government would prefer to avoid doing much for Auckland. Having the mayor there won’t change that.

Just think of some of the total dickheads we have had as mayors and councillors of Auckland. Mostly short-sighted C&R establishment feathering their own interests. With the far-sighted exception of Dove Myer Robinson, who wouldn’t we have wanted to dispatch to Wellington. We sent that export to and unfortunately immigrant from Whangarei (John Banks) there, but the prick came back and seated himself in Robinsons seat, and then did f*ckall.

Why have we historically managed to elect some total cretins into the seats of power in Auckland? Because none of us can really be bothered to do the job! If we’re lucky, they go the other way, and we get rid of them into parliament. If we really have to, we inflict them on Invercargill.

Hopefully this year, this time Aucklanders will actually elect some useful people into the super-shitty council. Preferably by ignoring the C&R pillocks from Remers and Parnell who locked us into the motorway system that is steadily stifling the city. With the help of their national allies in Wellington in the 50’s and 60’s, they destroyed every opportunity to have a viable public transport system in Auckland. This time we should remove these troughers, their pet construction companies,  their property developer biases, and elect some people that can actually represent this city and the interests of all its citizens.

This time the local body election is actually important and can make a difference. That dipshit from Epsom, Rodney Hide, may have accidentally done us a favour. After this years election, our representatives can largely do what they want without the constraints that Wellington has previously imposed – including spreading the representation downwards.

But what else do you expect from those idiots that try to be political editors in NZ TV. They will go with the simplest story even if it is minor because it is all that their little heads can carry. NatRad on the other hand concentrated on the important part of the speech.

If the dipshit from Epsom sells our assets, then Labour will reverse it.

Now that is important because there is a really dangerous part of the super-shitty botch-up is in the misnamed council-controlled-organisations (CCO’s). They are misnamed because the council doesn’t control them. It can’t control them because the managing staff are appointed by the dipshit from Epsom. You can just bet that he is just interested in either selling the public service assets we’ve accumulated over the years or running them down. After all we’ve seen what has happened to the Douglas inspired selloffs over the years. Their value to their customers has simply disappeared down the toilet and leached off to the sellers mates. Act is the current incantation of that political tendency.

Phil – you did pretty good today. But we all knew you’d do pretty good when we dispatched you to become a JAFA in Wellington…

12 comments on “Send a JAFA to Wellington…. ”

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  1. Armchair Critic 1
    26 April 2010 at 10:31 pm

    So we have Whangarei to thank for John Banks and Phil Heatley. WTF.
    I’d be interested to know whether one mayor representing 1 million people would have more influence than, say, five mayors representing 200,000 people each. Water under the bridge, I know, but I’m still not convinced that the one city model works. My instinct is that the one mayor will be too far removed from their constituency to be effective. I’d love it if Labour would commit to letting Aucklanders completely revisit the structure of local government in the region. Pity it would take more than one electoral cycle.

    • lprent 1.1
      26 April 2010 at 11:53 pm

      Yep, that is a problem. However the super-shitty council has the power to delegate authority downwards. With a C&R dominated council I have no doubt that will not happen, regardless of what they say during the election campaign.

      So Auckland has to elect a council that isn’t dominated by National and Act proxies.

  2. Jum 2
    26 April 2010 at 11:56 pm

    So they replace 8 councils with 1 council and 7 unelected, unaccountable ccos. What a joke. That’s supposed to be progress?!

    The earlier councils were scrapped because we were told they couldn’t work together. WTF. They have to conflict. That’s how you get best outcome, providing all are on a level playing field, unlike Banks and his railroading C&R crony council blockers. We should have sacked the Auckland Council and kept the other councils. The Mayors’ forum would have continued. That would have been fairer to all the outlying areas.

  3. Clipbox 3
    26 April 2010 at 11:57 pm

    I agree its good that we retain assets, but is it really viable to say that we can just buy them back soon after they would have been sold off?

    • lprent 3.1
      27 April 2010 at 12:06 am

      Parliament can do almost anything. Including legislation and regulation making those assets unable to make a profit of Aucklanders using their monopolies. In this case the assets are all natural monopolies which parliament already has powers to regulate.

      The people of Auckland were not consulted about putting those assets into a ‘saleable’ form. I can’t see any particular reason to consult or even consider with the new owners if Rodney and National sell them. The new owners will know the risks of parliament acting on Aucklands behalf making it impossible for them to get the returns off them.

      Quite simply, sales of natural monopolies to private interests is unacceptable.

      • Bored 3.1.1
        27 April 2010 at 7:25 am

        Iprent, theres something a little ingenuous about the idea of Goff or Labour buying back privatised assets. Heres a man who was part of the Douglas regime, and a party who blithely for years signed international trade agreements that were all about gauranteeing the right of private property, and the loss of our sovereignty. Then perhaps we could that mention the original commission on Auckland was the brain child of Labour.

        What really gets me about this whole Nact drive to feather the nests of their buddies is that for 9 years in government Labour failed to distance NZs parliamentary processes from the legislative confines of the Douglas revolution. It sticks in my craw that labour left the door so wide open that these burglars just walked on in and started the plunder.

        • lprent 3.1.1.1
          27 April 2010 at 8:52 am

          I dislike intensely the privatization of natural monopolies. It just offers opportunities for price-gouging while running down assets by the rapacious buyers. That has been the experience not only here, but also in virtually every other place that has done it over the last 30 years. Over the long-term privatization of natural monopolies offers no significant advantages to the consumers of their services and usually costs more and offers less service.

          But I also recognize the advantages of freer markets including for exports and imports. After all that is where I’ve been working in over the last 30 years, mostly in exports. It is like everything else in economics, there are balances.

          I suspect that Phil Goff looks at it in much the same way.

          • Bored 3.1.1.1.1
            27 April 2010 at 9:07 am

            Agreed to some degree, what still rankles is that all that the rules GATT,the IMF , plus agreements at Davos etc do is impose a system that trades “free” market access in return for open slather to a countries infrastructure and service sectors. Labour have been complicit in this compromise position. Trade needs to be fair trade, our “free” market international scenario is far from this. I dont know how much traction opposing this system has electorally nor if Labour actually sees it as an issue.

          • Draco T Bastard 3.1.1.1.2
            27 April 2010 at 2:29 pm

            Free trade (ie, trade in finished products) I can agree with as it actually makes sense. It actually does what the economists say it will – things made in relation to advantage. Although, with the oncoming shortages due to Peak Oil, we will probably find that more local manufacture will be beneficial.

            Free movement of capital and free-ownership (foreign owners) is a load of BS. That must, and does, result in a stifled economy as more and more of the worlds wealth is tied up in fewer and fewer mega-corporations and individuals hands. This, of course, results in a massive misallocation of resources as the wealth goes to only advancing the affairs of the few rather than that of the community.

  4. peter 4
    27 April 2010 at 7:51 am

    Lprent , well said. I was gobsmaked when I saw that the citrats had shown almost total contempt for the aspirations of Aucklanders by recycling useless time wasters such as Christine Fletcher et al..

  5. bahandhumbug 5
    27 April 2010 at 8:53 am

    Dove Myer Robinson was definitiely before his time and from memory was potically independent ?

    All of the current mob;Banks, Brown, Harvey, Lee, Williams are inept morons to varying degrees. I have very little hope of things improving under a supercity when we’ll have the usual approach of the majority being not bothered to vote and other idiots voting along party lines rather than choosing the best person regardless of what politica persuasion you choose to attach to them.

    Not that there’ll be any “best persons” just the least odious as per usual.

  6. Dav 6
    27 April 2010 at 11:06 am

    I believe your opening paraphrase is meant to involve New Zealand and Australia rather than Auckland and Wellington. And, seriously, who with half a brain would consider Auckland to have a higher average IQ level than the country’s cultural and political capital?

    But that’s far from your only misconception. Shadbolt wasn’t “inflicted” on Invercargill, Labour’s leader suggesting the Auckland Mayor sit at the cabinet table isn’t a minor story and Goff didn’t do “pretty good”. His speech was verbose, disorganised and lacked narative. Perhaps he did a great job of preaching to the indoctrinated but no one else could be bothered listening.