So, what happens if the wheels come off NZ? A tale of two Governors

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dalek

Did you feel that chill creep up your spine?

That creepy feeling that something dark just slithered past. I felt it this morning reading the write up in the Herald of the Governor-General’s speech which doesn’t seem to appear online (I had to hunt down the speech on the trusty Scoop site), because when you actually read the full context of what the GG is saying, it should be front page news.

When a spook like Sir Jerry Mateparae who ran the GCSB and the Army and who could well be culpable for war crimes committed in Afghanistan starts talking about how the next Government gets formed, I sit the hell up, because military men should never talk about democracy. Ever. And when they do, a sword somewhere is being loosened in its sheath.

What the dear General had to say to Journalists made me a wee bit queasy.

Here is the paragraph…

It is worth remembering that a party or grouping of parties may be able to secure a majority even if it does not hold more than half of the seats in the House. This is because a confidence vote, like all questions put to the House, is decided by a simple majority of votes cast. To illustrate the point: a party may state publicly and unambiguously that it will not provide support on matters of confidence to any other party or grouping of parties, and that it will instead abstain on confidence votes and vote on legislation case by case. Whatever that party’s motives, its abstention is constitutionally significant, because it reduces the number of votes another party or grouping of parties will need to win confidence votes and command the confidence of the House.

…a stating that the majority win isn’t a win? A clever re-wording that an abstaining party lowers the threshold to win, how controversial for our ex-spook, Military Governor-General to re-iterate to an audience of Journalists at a dinner that wasn’t really planned to have happened…

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At least once in a Governor-General’s term, full and life members of the Gallery are invited along to dinner. In part the invitation is an opportunity to get to know you, and in part it recognises the fundamental role the media plays in our democracy.

As an aside, I was told that some members of the Gallery were a tad uncertain, earlier this year, whether an invitation would be extended from the House. Apparently, there was some notion that a job I held down for six months before this one might have coloured my thinking! The reality was simply that trying to find a free Friday night in our diaries, even six months out, was not easy.

…great timing to deliver this controversial chit-chat over how a majority might not win power.

As this announcement is being boringly made to the Journalists at the end of last week, another chill wind blows from a different Governor, this time the Reserve Bank governor Graeme Wheeler who startlingly warns today that Chinese downturn biggest risk to New Zealand

China has significant risks around its banking system and around its ability to continue growing at a faster pace than developed nations, Wheeler told Parliament’s finance and expenditure committee in Wellington today. If China struggles to deal with those issues, that would threaten New Zealand’s economy. The world’s second-biggest economy is New Zealand’s largest trading partner and has been ramping up purchases of dairy and other primary sector products.

“What could cause an adjustment here, what could do great damage to the economy and to the financial sector and to the housing sector? The biggest risk, my guess, would be around China,” Wheeler said. “China’s growth slowed from 10 percent on average, what it’s been for the last 30 years, and the issue is can it continue to grow at 7 percent or thereabouts.”

The Reserve Bank today released its six-monthly financial stability report, and cited a “disorderly slowing” in China as a potential risk to causing stress in the local financial system. That could cause a fall in commodity prices “significantly impacting the indebted parts of the agriculture sector.

…hmmm, so how well is China going? Not well…

In the first acknowledgement of a new banking crisis, the Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd. (which has been touted as the world’s most profitable lender) just announced its loan losses have tripled in the last six months to 22.1 billion yuan, or $3.65 billion, up from 7.65 billion yuan as reported a year earlier.

China is notorious for presenting pleasant financial reports. Consequently, admitting nonperforming loans means that business defaults in the world’s second-largest economy are booming following the unprecedented credit boom that began in 2009 “The banks and the regulators’ interests are aligned in speeding up write-offs,” said Ma Kunpeng, a Beijing-based analyst at Credit Suisse Founder Securities Ltd. “This prepares them for a rainy day.” This is code words for tsunami alarm bells going off.

…right, so if China’s Banks are as rotten as America’s Banks, the house of cards could come crashing down pretty spectacularly and the NZ economy could take a serious blow to the head.

What do you do if the economy punctures with massive job losses and a collapse in the property bubble and dairy bubble right before an election? Why you need to legitimize that which is not legitimate, you pass law allowing the intelligence apparatus to engage in mass surveillance and you need to use the military to seize control.

The GG is working on the first of those with his speech last week, John Key has already turned the GCSB into the eye of Mordor and thankfully, our armed forces are making sure they are ready this week

The exercise’s training scenario is set in a fictional South West Pacific country – Mainlandia – teetering on the brink of an ethnic-fuelled civil war. HMNZS CANTERBURY and military transport planes carrying some 450 combat-ready troops from the ten participating nations arrived simultaneously in Mainlandia early on Saturday to help quell the escalating ethnic violence and restore stability.

…this 10 nation military training scenario is set just after a contentious election. Hilarious.

Luckily for us, our laid back nature that borders between mind numbing apathy and a brain dead coma, ensures that a coup could never ever be contemplated in our sleepy neck of the Shire.

Just to make sure though, the sooner we lose the spook as our Governor-General, end mass spying on our citizens, stop cosying up to the American Military  and replace this Government, the better.

3 COMMENTS

  1. Also, going along with the GG’s assertion that a minority can form a government, was Key’s stating recently that the largest party has a ‘moral mandate’ to be the ruling party, even if two smaller parties can form a coalition that gives it more votes.
    Something sneaky is in the wind. & i dont like it.

    • Even if you’re not on board with a military coup theory, the stuff about finangling a minority government is… troubling. Can you imagine Winnie Pete offering to abstain on confidence and supply, thus allowing National to govern and Winston to appear ‘independant’?

  2. Everyone was shocked when the military first took over in Fiji. But of course it couldn’t happen here…could it?

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