Sweet Jesus, no wonder the Greens held their Party Conference in bloody Palmerston North, they would want this omnishambles that is erupting to be as far away from the media as humanly possible.
This is starting to make Marama Davidson’s desire to reclaim the ‘C’ word look like a master stroke of political genius.
Hooton breathlessly claimed in his most recent column for the NZ Herald that the Left radical fringe of the Greens were mounting a stealth take over of the levers of power within the party.
Really?
These Green strategists and tacticians are so politically incompetent, managing to get through the end of the week without accidentally setting themselves on fire is considered a major achievement that they get a participation certificate for.
Let’s just go over the two events that have managed to over shadow this Conference.
Jeanette Fitzsimons grotesque naivety over the Waka Jumping legislation and Eugenie Sage’s bizarre incompetence as Minister to allow 1.1 billion litres of water to be stolen annually by China.
Let’s break down each point of madness here.
1: Jeanette Fitzsimons grotesque naivety over waka jumping legislation
Let’s be clear about the bloody Waka Jumping legislation shall we? Beyond the argument this is necessary to keep MMP proportional and the counter argument that it erodes democracy by not allowing the individual to have a conscience is the truth behind the need for the law.
Winston knows there is an economic crash coming. Winston knows that when that crash comes he needs to be able to able to hold his MPs tight to ensure National doesn’t try and seduce his MPs across the floor. Winston knows National will work to take his MPs and that would collapse the Government…
Winston Peters says Simon Bridges tried to poach his MP Ron Mark
NZ First leader Winston Peters says National leader Simon Bridges tried to convince Ron Mark into joining National.
However Bridges completely rejected the claim.
Peters made the claim on Newstalk ZB on Friday morning while talking about the need for a clause in his party’s constitution which threatens MPs with a $300,000 penalty if they resign from the party but not Parliament itself.
…Winston needs this law so he can guarantee the numbers to keep the bloody Government in power, denying him this legislation as Jeanette Fitzsimons is now threatening would immediately begin a move by National to work away at any NZ First MP they could pull across.
When Jeanette Fitzsimons says this…
Fitzsimons doesn’t believe the Government would fall apart if the Greens pulled their support for the bill.
“I simply don’t buy the line that Jacinda [Ardern] and [Winston] Peters would say ‘oh we don’t want to be Government any more so let’s let it all collapse because we didn’t get this bill through.’ I mean really?”
…it shows grotesque naivety and a total misunderstanding of why Winston wants the legislation and how not giving it to him could lead to the collapse of the Government by National poaching MPs – like they have done in the past and like they are being accused of now.
2: Minister Sage’s Incompetence
The Greens have announced some meaningless ‘water test’ to stop foreigners buying land for water exploitation. This is just back peddling to try and gloss over Minister Sage’s bizarre decision to allow a Chinese company to steal 1.1billion litres of fresh water EVERY SINGLE YEAR.
The truth is that Minister Sage is either deeply confused over the power she has as a Minister OR she has been utterly owned by the Ministry and is now a puppet for their interests and not the Greens.
Minister Sage declares that she had no choice but to allow a Chinese company steal 1.1Billion litres of fresh water each year because the law only asks for economic benefits to be considered when allowing this theft to occur.
Here is the truly depressing part of Minister Sage’s confusion. Yes the Overseas Invest Act asks for a Minister to only consider economic benefits when stealing fresh water, (BUT and here is the but) the pitiful economic benefits for allowing this Chinese company to steal 1.1billion litres of water each year is a mere 15 jobs a year for 4 years.
You heard me right folks, this entire fiasco is creating a mere 60 jobs over 4 years. Minister Sage could have looked at that pitiful amount of employment and decide quite rightfully atet 60 jobs for 4.4billion litres of fresh water is not an economic benefit at all.
That Minister Sage had no idea that the above calculation was a legitimate response is depressing and that’s why the Greens are wheeling out this new water test to gloss over that.
The Greens have gone backwards in the last 3 elections, that’s the grim reality. Why they’ve collapsed in popular support is not being discussed and is not being identified, and without that insight they are doomed to failure.
Giving National their Parliamentary questions, Minister Sage’s confusion over what her actual powers as a Minister were, the disconnect between allowing mining in the Maui Dolphin sanctuary and National Parks and the reclaiming of the C word are all examples of a Party that seems to have no idea who they are or what they are doing.
I caught up with some Labour MPs recently and the horror they collectively felt about the flailing Green Party was the only point of discussion.
I know this won’t be a popular prediction, but I now believe that the Green Party can’t learn from their mistakes and that the shallow talent pool left within their staff structure suggests they can only continue as they have started this year, which means they will continue to alienate and trip over their own feet.
I think the chance of the Greens dipping below 5% at the 2020 election must be seriously considered.
Its so distressing this idiotic decline. How about they hire you as policy advisor.
Comrade – at this stage I would happily offer advice for free to them
I also nominate Bomber for Green Party sounding board!
Sadly the Greens most publicised moments this year are as they topple off the edge of any sort of positive public opinion and then use some sort of weasel post modern 1% ambiguous technicality to vigorously point out how right they actually are or they couldn’t do anything different (against the obvious), and then make it worse.
I also feel that Eugene was more worried about identity politics such as being the left woke, “racist” against an overseas company than actually doing what she is paid to do, protect NZ interests under the OIA.
Also bad that instead of boldly changing RMA the Greens are just mucking around with OIA technicalities. It’s not just the water that needs saving it’s our entire natural resources, and it’s not just from overseas companies, it’s from private ownership that’s the issue with the public who take on the risks when the springs dry up or just allowing the polluting use of bottled water!
As for the Waka jumping debate, it is clear the Natz were about to make a move to destable the government. Greens are idiots not to understand that. Nobody votes for the left, to find them for example propping up Jenny Shipley types, like in the past!!
At least Shaw is so seasoned at making apologies on behalf of all his ministers he has kept them above 5% so far.
I’m also not as pessimistic as you on their chances of change. Hopefully they can dig deep and actually get some practical policy going, that does good in the mainstream and keep Labour honest.
It might just be hope at this point, but seriously look on the half full side, we could still have the Natz in and even a dysfunctional Green Party and Rogernomics leaning Labour is still better than hard right neoliberalism, privatisation and globalism from the Natz that have been pillaging our country over a decade.
The new government is not making much of a dent by continuing with Natz love of dysfunctional business but at least they are not going further like the Natz would have.
So hopefully the Greens can get in some help with people like yourself with a practical edge (in particular in Auckland) and right themselves to get where they should be, on about 15+% next election and Labour and NZ First understand that companies don’t vote, people who live here, do.
It’s only the first year, they have next year and the one after to redeem themselves.
+100 SAVENZ
I agree concerning Fitzsimon. If the bill is passed dissent will still be possible, provididing the dissenter is prepared to resign from parliament (as Peters himself did many years ago). With Sage though things are less simple. The reason given is likely to have been a pretext for what the government wanted to do anyway. They probably don’t want to get offside with China given that the latter takes so much of our dairy product.
While I agree your reasoning over China makes sense, that in of itself suggests the Greens lied about why they were agreeing to this and it still doesn’t justify handing over 4.4billion litres of fresh water for 15 bloody jobs each year for 4 years
A pretext isn’t necessarily a lie (albeit that it may be considered “being economical with the truth”). And 15 jobs for 4 years isn’t peanuts either. 15 jobs at, say, $50,000 each is $750,000. How much is 4.4 litres of water worth at, say, a few cents per litre. No doubt the Chinese will be meeting the extraction overheads and the transport costs. How much would we make if we extracted the water ourselves and sold it to China.
Do we know the replacement rate of that water per annum?
4.4billion litres for 60 jobs isn’t an economic equation that works
MIKESH – they are importing in 35,000 workers into Auckland just for fake construction shortages, and 100 people into South land for the fake freezing works shortages. For Fucks Sake, 60 jobs that don’t even have to go to Kiwis, or even be highly paid, is nothing, nor should public water be exchanged for it!
They fucking lost around that many jobs for closing down Auckland Universities libraries and nobody from government was there worrying about it, even though Chloe S from the Greens apparently did art history at university as well as law (which of course was saved from he chop, (lawyer privilege).
Presumably the arts jobs are for people who are in music and the arts who might struggle to find jobs in our current neoliberal, concrete is King, low wage, anti arts climate?
But mining water and putting it into polluting plastic bottles is a winner for jobs for the Greens??????????
“MIKESH – they are importing in 35,000 workers into Auckland just for fake construction shortages, and 100 people into South land for the fake freezing works shortages.”
I don’t see how this is relevant.
“For Fucks Sake, 60 jobs that don’t even have to go to Kiwis, or even be highly paid, is nothing, nor should public water be exchanged for it!”
The underlying assumption in all this is that the 15 jobs are going to Kiwis. I don’t know off hand if the Chinese are paying royalties or not for the water.
I don’t see the relevance of the rest of your comments.
The context of massive job shortages in NZ is that apparently we have to import so many people into NZ for industry braying they can’t get anybody they deem good enough for their low wages and low security job, so does not really make sense the apparent vital importance of a paltry 60 unspecified jobs to a Chinese company in return for billions of litres of free water over 4 years and ONLY it seems if they reach full capacity anyway… The whole thing is a croc.
Is it not widely accepted that those job shortages are due to increased demand for certain jobs in construction, in horticulture, in agriculture, in viticulture and also hospitality and so, due to increased economic activity in those areas.
Government and employers have failed to prepare for that demand to be trained up and be available as readily skilled and educated workers, so we are back where we have been for decades, running behind, as usual, and always suddenly realising, oh, we are short of workers now.
The other reason is that those industries are often competing with other relatively low wage countries in similar climatic regions, e.g. South Africa, South America, so employers do not want to pay more for the work, which makes it less palatable for born and bred Kiwis, and hence leading to demand for imported workers.
Let’s face it, besides of some cottage industries, and some high tech isles here and there, NZ Inc is still largely a primary industry country, producing food and so forth for the world out there, not exporting computers, cars, much in medical equipment and high value goods like even industrial plants and so.
That leaves NZ having to compete with other middle economies, also not paying that well, and importing workers fills the gap, as local ones dislike working for the minimum wage.
As that is so, we have created an economy that always needs immigrants, and that leads to another ‘growth factor’ being that one of boosting the populations and thus boosting GDP.
Even this government is clue less to get out of this trap. A DUMB ASS Economic Management has dominated NZ Inc for decades, if not longer.
4.4 billion liters of water at 2c per liter is $88 million.
$88 million that is going to to a Chinese company (IF the government even start charging for it) instead of a NZ company whose taxes go back to NZ citizens to run our hospitals and schools????
Is just giving money away now considered a win?
Or do they think Kiwis are too incompetent to export water ourselves?
“$88 million that is going to to a Chinese company (IF the government even start charging for it) instead of a NZ company whose taxes go back to NZ citizens to run our hospitals and schools????
Is just giving money away now considered a win?
Or do they think Kiwis are too incompetent to export water ourselves?”
Has anyone estimated whether this option would be economically viable; and would the chinese be willing to purchase it at a price that would make it so.
Can you name another developed nation that gives its water away for free?
A funny commentary – Raybon Kan: Let’s drink to the wealth we’ve ignored
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11818830
“Can you name another developed nation that gives its water away for free?”
No. So what?
Anyway. Are we giving water away free, or are the government, local authority or iwi collecting royalties?
Sooooo no other developed country just hands free water over? Why do you think that is?
NZ water for NZers.
Also back to the fake jobs for free water angle, that is somehow going to increase NZ economy… hasn’t anybody asked why if we have the biggest unemployment rate in a decade, why so many people in NZ are paid so poorly and can’t afford to pay their bills, need food parcels to survive and we are declining in most OECD tables?
Perhaps more a focus on quality of jobs just like a focus on housing off hotels and luxury ones to the amount actually being built that someone on $20p/h the average wage apparently can afford to buy?
Apartments were apparently the answer, but low and behold foreign investors are allowed to buy them up too as well as new housing??? Then we need more housing so the investors can buy them and more low cost workers to build the housing that the locals have to pay for the infrastructure for, while not being able to afford a house themselves? Makes so much sense….NOT!
Unless you are the master of Ponzi!
Mean’t to say lowest unemployment in a decade! Sorry for the typo.
Yes NZ water should stay in NZ not just for New Zealanders but because NZ is as it is because of all its water. This water formed NZ and this water is needed to hold NZ ecologically stable.
It doesn’t stay in NZ. Most of it flows out to sea.
It’s not that water flows out to sea. It’s that Tasman contaminated the aquifers with tanning chemicals.
Michigan gives away water to Nestle…but not Flint, which needs it..
https://www.popsci.com/flint-michigan-nestle-bottled-water
But then I’m not sure America passes the litmus test for Developed nation.
But either way, to my mind this just reinforces the argument to not give away water to exploiters.
Thanks for that great link SIOBHAN! I will share it as sobering reading.
What is our country government and councils thinking when they are so prepared to give away natural resources while fighting tooth and nail, to tax people who live here in every way they can and expect the poorest to miss out from uncollected revenue, the purity of the water itself to drink from and from the pollution such as oceanic caused by plastic from bottled water. Don’t forget apparently there is a new tax for waste to residents for land fill!
Bizarre the corporates who are creating plastic waste, gets away scot free for the plastic waste disposal as well as the free water!
The Greens want to rock the boat, and at the same time they do not wan to rock the boat.
Cognitive dissonance.
‘the mental discomfort (psychological stress) experienced by a person who simultaneously holds two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values.’
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance
Top 5 things the Greens stand for:
– Targeted pest genocides
– Carbon Credit scams
– Monorail scams
– Landbanking Qangos
– generally being a placebo
excuse me folks I meant the light rail airport project re cup village 2021. which isn’t proposed to be monorail actually
In my view, james shaw deliberately tanked the Green Party out of deep state fear that our primary industry caught on to the fact that The Green Party would have been the best thing to have happened to NZ farming/agriculture.
The Green Party could have united farmers/agrarians and their down-stream service industry to purge and banish the foreign banksters and their traitor minions here forever. None of this latest Green Party fiasco surprises me.
Meanwhile, cancer causing herbicides, suicides, over-stocking pollutants and desperate debt burdens will continue to haunt our world class primary industry when the northern hemisphere world will come to increasingly need our farmers the most.
Yes, we have bad law. So bad that the Minister couldn’t do what she obviously wanted to do.
It probably wasn’t in law.
We need better law and that’s where the new test comes in. It means that our politicians can write that better law.
+1 Draco. Rewrite all our laws to protect the public and our environment starting with RMA and council policy because at present, the public interest and our environment has been written out of law, or the laws interpreted in a VERY neoliberal way so much so, even the Greenies can’t seem to think they can do anything to stop polluters.
What is the point of having laws, if they have become meaningless and just a process to an outcome to pillage NZ natural resources?
+100 DTB and SAVENZ
Is James Shaw really this incompetent? I realise the idiocy does not stop with him but he is the ex-corporate achiever and it is hard to believe a guy like him could so incompetently oversee such a cluster as the Green Party 2018. Unless it was done on purpose that is!
One would swear he is a Trojan Horse, ensuring the Greens vanish forever in NZ and to be fair they are on course to do just that!
“Jeanette Fitzsimons grotesque naivety over waka jumping legislation”
Really?
When a host of names from the left, the centre and the right plus a long list of academics with credentials in constitutional law attack the waka pumping legislation, then you have to wonder.
I think you need to review your stance Martyn, because you only have that would-be dictator Winston Peters in your corner.
You may have forgotten the utter disgrace that was Alamein Kopu but the rest of us haven’t. Now kindly sod off back to your mates at Kiwibog.
SimonM: “You may have forgotten the utter disgrace that was Alamein Kopu but the rest of us haven’t.”
Indeed. And we haven’t forgotten Mauri Pacific and Peter Dunne either.
I support the passage of the waka-jumping bill. I cannot understand Fitzsimons’ stance on this.
The aberration of Alamein Kopu does not justify a fundamental change to a democratic constitution that has been evolved over centuries.
I agree with Andrew. The Green party did not have to support this bill, it was never part of their agreement. Anderton left Labour and for a while he kept to the principals that Labour had campaigned on which is why any MP should be able to pull out of a party without this draconian undemocratic bill undermining them.
Yes please look at the many people who have made comments against this bill.
Having been a member of the party for 17 years and knowing and agreeing with the comments made about similar bills by principled people like Rod Donald and Jeanette Fitzsimons I have absolutely no understanding at all why the Greens are going along with it.
Oh but now WE ARE MINISTERS!
people vote for parties and principles and ideologies and policies ….rarely do they vote for personalities
…so to Waka Jump is to BETRAY the people who voted you in ( people dont vote for Waka Jumpers)
….I agree with Winston Peters and Labour on this
….if an MP does not like their political party’s direction once they are elected in they should resign from parliament and stand again in the next election on their principles
Let Fitzsimons have her way, destroying the Green party and taking down National with them, it would be one of the best elections ever!
Yes NZ water should stay in NZ not just for New Zealanders but because NZ is as it is because of all its water. This water formed NZ and this water is needed to hold NZ ecologically stable.
+100 JANET
One can criticise the Greens for lots of things but they remain the only party for people wanting to protect the environment to vote for – as this story illustrates:
https://www.stuff.co.nz/nelson-mail/news/106354243/greens-to-oppose-labour-to-back-waimea-dam-local-bill
Personally, I’d never vote for Labour or National and I’m sure there are a lot of other people who feel the same way
Who needs enemies when you have friends like Martyn Bradbury?
I would be better if we benefited as a people from water exports, make them pay for a water pipe line to areas that see a lot of drought, china is desperate for more fresh water, they could pay with the money they make off of farming their political dissidents for organ transplants
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ_harvesting_from_Falun_Gong_practitioners_in_China
Shhh!!! We’re not supposed to talk about that as long as they keep buying our milk powder!
There’s nothing like biking to hospital to give birth to make global news on conference day…except of course admitting to welfare fraud…and that one won the election. So tell me again they don’t know how to take good advice Bomber…and I won’t believe you. Now whether they always know where it is coming from is another matter…
Hah, elections, elections, slogans, promises, bla, bla, bla, there will be NO revolution, there will be hands tied to existing trade agreements also:
https://www.newsroom.co.nz/2017/11/30/64455/free-trade-rules-could-block-bottled-water-tax
“The Government’s plans to introduce a royalty on bottled water exports has hit a major stumbling block, with New Zealand’s chief trade negotiator for the TPP suggesting such a move would violate existing free trade deals.”
Past governments have sold out NZ Inc all over, so any new government has its hands tied to existing agreements.
And economic benefits are not only counted in jobs, the export revenue, no matter who generates it, a NZ company, a joint venture with an overseas company, or a fully owned overseas company, their revenue will still first of all flow here, whether it stays here or not.
The bean counters in Wellington have decided that exporting is a great thing, and as water is just another commodity, here so cheap, they allowed it to be included as exportable like any other thing from NZ.
So Eugenie’s hands are tied also, making her look weak and bad.
As for Winston’s bill, it is not good, and once the great crisis comes, that new law would not make all that much of a difference, as disgruntled party members sitting in Parliament will have other means to cause much damage, even if they cannot waka jump.
A dumb law, a bad law, and not even needed for a good, healthy and democratic party.
Trouble is, Winston will actually make the government collapse, if he does not get his way, and then sit and talk with Nats, and make a deal where they will pass single issue or law one by one through Parliament, until the Nats had enough and call an early election.
There are no principles left in politics these days, listen to the Political Commentators on RNZ every Monday morning, a joke now.
Is the water exported in plastic bottles or in tanks?
If it is exported in plastic bottles, this would be an even greater insult and embarrassment for the Greens, as we do by now know what happens to much plastic, especially in certain countries in Asia, to which we may be exporting that valued water.
It ends up as particles in the water of the sea, thus polluting it, and ending up in fish and other seafood, which we may eat, and which we will done day die off.
The Greens are nothing but a JOKE anyway now, not voteable anymore, a really sad JOKE.
It is a big jump between standing for Parliament as say a Labour Candidate and then ditching your voters and joining up with say National or Act.
It is exceedingly deceitful. The stench will inevitably hang around that parliamentarian for his/her entire career.
The voting public may not want some bastard who stole the identity of a dead child as a person who can crisscross the Chamber of Parliament like a cockroach at will.
Following the Machinations and the dirt of Sir John Key, Slater and Sir Billy English, the NZ Voter wants decency to return to Parliament. Fairness as well. It also wants National Party Tax Bribery to be a capital offence.
Comments are closed.