Shearer seems to be opening up to an asset buy-back at cost policy – that should be popular among quite a few Standardistas.
It’s more of a luke-warm, “negotiable with coalition partners” or “if we’ve enough space in the budget once we work out the numbers at election time” move at this stage, rather than full-blooded, but it’s a start of an angle and a buyer beware.
(in the link Bill English continues his characterisation of signees as children who were bailed up by paid parliamentary staff, as National continue to be dismissive of 400,000 Kiwis, plus more who support them)
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This article on Coal Action Network Aotearoa’s blog is worth a read:
[..] “experts warn it could spell the end for farming as we know it and may cost the country billions of dollars in drought relief each year before practices are adjusted.”
It’s taken quite some time for the words “climate change” to enter the national conversation about this drought. I spoke with NIWA’s Brett Mullan last week and he had some very interesting points to make on the massive and very unusual highs that have been sitting over the country since early February. He’d make a great interview, I thought, but he said no media had called him to even ask. [..]
Our agriculture-based economy is going to feel this pinch more than most in the decades to come. Indeed the Government is already signalling it may cause a return to recession. What worries me is that our agriculture is increasingly turning to intensive, water-hungry dairy farming, at a time when water scarcity is expected to rise.
In 1981 there were 2.92 million dairy cows wandering our land. By 2010 this had grown to nearly six million.
In the last few weeks we’ve seen farmer after dairy farmer on the news, having to dry off their herd early, buy in feed and sell cows off to the works as they can’t sustain them.
There are so many ironies in this story that it’s difficult to know where to start. [..]
[..]
We’re all in this climate change business together. From my own fast-emptying water tanks to the farmers (and associated industries) suffering across the country, we need to turn to a new way of thinking, a new way of operating in this climate-changing world.
If I were a farmer I’d be screaming at the government to take leadership on all counts. Maps like this aren’t pretty.
Our Government, for the sake of our farmers and all of our futures, needs to wake up, dump its short-term, fossil fuel-based thinking that holds up international action, and, indeed our economy. [..]
that’s only some of it – it’s worth reading the full thing.
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[Title note: National MPs / candidates always seem to have 2 Things to say to questions (with appropriate fingers) – presumably as a result of their candidate schooling – so “Two Things” is an in-joke in my household…]
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