Unions and NGOs announce Two-day hui on “What an Alternative & Progressive Trade Strategy Should Look Like”, Auckland, 19-20 October

1. No protest marches Jane?, no calling for mass demonstrations?

   Why…Is it because there is now a Labour led Government?, and you know you are tilting at windmills and this ‘new’ treaty WILL progress and be voted into law as, unlike before, when Labour and the left were in opposition and against it!? Labour are now for it and National will vote for it also and thus a lost cause?

   • Well done Jane;

     We support an ‘alternative trade policy’ that puts the workers first and profits last.

     For to long the elilists have robbed from the taxpayerr assets by stripping them and taking all profits for themselves.

     Workers families have been decimated during the last forty years of this rorting by elitists and must now stop.

     • I don’t think any one needs to respond to those sorts of questions except to display the juvenile qualities of the questioner. Maybe if the opposition weren’t so low altitude flyers there wouldn’t be as many former Prime Ministers and deputies with in The National Party. Nationals selection of former Prime Ministers is a collection of low quality bankrupt merchants looking for a quick payday. I mean what a lightweight question. Fears of a protest…, it’s not a Trump protest.

       Electing a female Prime Minister has created high hopes and expectations that things would progress quicker than normal but speeches made by The Prime Minister has annoyed Washington, Beijing and Australia even if they wouldn’t admit it. Climate Change isn’t something that’s high on little Scott Morison’s or little Trumps agenda and neither is humans rights on Beijing agenda. Relations hit new lows with successive Defence White Papers implying China is a threat while ignoring the United States and changes of Prime Minsters hasn’t made things any less complicated. Jacinda Arderns decisions to increase refugee quota and rotate troops in Iraq won’t go unnoticed and won’t be viewed well in Australia, USA or Beijing and HUAWEI’s inclusion into building New Zealand’s Internet fibre network made the deepstate tickle and move. But the trade at the core of our relationships remain rock solid.

       The challenge in recent Defence White Papers is to create more cultural engagement. Only small numbers of New Zealand’s school children learn Māori but more importantly learn basic geography like how to pronounce Whangarei instead to “wung wung wei.” It would just brake your heart sending these guys from local council and other organs of the state and the can’t even pronounce with clarity the place that they are from. And as a consequence even less children learn how to speak Chinese. The Governments hope is concentrating on our closest friends and ally’s can open the door to Climate mitigation and engagement on the global stage.

       Any rise in living standards has come on the back of technological change and the free flow of capital and labour across boarders while Defence White Papers are less Coe about the desire for technological change. If New Zealand decided that trade with a rogue nation was just untenable that loss of market access would have immediate effects on the economy and there fore political fortunes of any one cancelling trade. And there’s certainly nothing we could do about it militarily.

       Going into APEC it would be most advisable to have one hand around every ones neck and another around their fruits and just ring em out like a wet bus ticket. Not to be so chauvinist our trade strategy going into APEC in nobember should be to keep telling our story and let people know where we are and understand what the issue are and any ringing out that is done is done in the debate.

     • Cleangreen, you tell us all you have worked many years in Canada and the USA, came back to NZ unfit to work because of illness. You really can’t be speaking of NZ companies when you say ‘puts the workers first and profits last’, how many years were you an actual taxpayer in NZ V’s working overseas where you made no tax contribution to NZ?

   • Your wrong there, im right,

     Many forms of protests come on the digital media just as well as they do by marching Im right.

     Get real we are in the digital world now so grow up.

     Go back to your National mates for comfort.

     • Hmmmm Cleangreen, you were all for the protest marches when National was the Govt. in fact you posted many articles saying you ‘wished’ you were closer to whatever city was holding the marches, which was basically all of them, and wishing you could march in solidarity with them all.
       Question: Are you telling us all that marching as a protest is no longer necessary as social/digital media will suffice?

       Now, how is that Gisborne/Napier railway upgrade coming along?, after a NZ1st MP promised you it was a priority, started yet…maybe after the 2020 election…2023 perchance! 🙂

2. I hope the participants recognise that present living arrangements are predicated on the continuous burning of fossil fuels and are predicated on the continuous degradation of the environment.

   I hope the participants recognise that present living arrangements are a very short-term aberration in the grand scheme of things (less than 100 years in the 200,000-year-history of our species).

   I hope the participants recognise that every day that present living arrangements continue makes the our overall predicament worse.

   I hope the participants recognise that present living arrangements are already in terminal decline and that they will collapse in the not-too-distant future.

   • I hope so too, but I’m not holding my breath.

     History shows that people can be amazingly block headed when confronted by facts they don’t like; even as those facts are occurring in front of their faces…

     • 100% AFEWKNOWTHETRUTH

       True as all you say there, because the Oil compamies lobbyists have the ‘ear of the Government’ but they dont listen to all our reasoned arguements that the climate change is now heavily impacting on our lives as we speak.

       East coast regions now have reached record levels of continuos rain and moisture that are already impacing on the main roads and worse still on our highway base levels, under our roads.

       contant rail and moisture and is now weakening the roads.

       We drive from Napier to Tauranga every month and now we see the roads are pysically sinking under the continious weight of many increasing very heavy truck freight vehicles.

       Now we wintness that the main orad north called ‘highway two’ will now soon be a ‘goat track’ unless billions are spent placing reinforced concrete bases under them as the EU and Canada and the US has done.

       Due to “climate change” everything now going forward with our transport will cost many more billions, becase of the mindless oil compnies deliberate lobbying of getting rid of rail freight in our regions.

       So then oil companies can sell more fuel for trucks as trucks can use five times more oil based enegy to move every tonne every km.

       Mindless ‘global world destoyers’ oil companies are.

   • There goes Mr Negative again. It may be a talk fest; but at least having a crack at coming up with some alternative ideas & solutions to the current business as usual model is worth a go. Why don’t you get involved?

     About 6 years ago I had a go at trying to get something similar off the ground but nobody was interested so it came to nothing. Below is the main text of a document I circulated at this time in the hope of generating interest in this idea. Let’s hope this new attempt at something similar may bear fruit.

     A CAMPAIGN FOR THE ESTABLISHMENT OF A PEOPLES “VISION AOTEAROA-NZ COUNCIL”

     Over the next decade safeguarding NZ from the detrimental effects of the downfall of our unsustainable civilization & way of life will not only become a high priority, but an absolute necessity.

     This means that in order to survive a looming global meltdown & ensure the long term wellbeing of our people, we will have no choice but to become an innovative, self reliant & sustainable nation.

     To do so though will only be possible when the fundamentals & systems that underpin our nation have been transformed & renewed in a comprehensive manner.

     As many will find the prospect of such change & renewal daunting, it may be helpful to see it as an exciting opportunity to come of age as a nation while transforming our way of life for the better.

     I hold the view that this renewal process should begin as soon as possible, which has led me to launch a campaign to establish a people’s Council/Assembly to further this objective.

     Members of this council, representing all walks of life & sectors of our
     society, would contribute to; shaping a long term vision for NZ; coming up with ideas for socio-economic transformation; developing a road map for the constitutional, political & systemic renewal of our nation.

     A good name for this national assembly could be the “Vision Aotearoa New Zealand Council”.

3. As long as we keep that Free Slave Agreement with the Chinese dictatorship, it’ll all be sweet, eh? 😉

4. 100% AFEWKNOWTHETRUTH

   True as all you say there, because the Oil compamies lobbyists have the ‘ear of the Government’ but they dont listen to all our reasoned arguements that the climate change is now heavily impacting on our lives as we speak.

   East coast regions now have reached record levels of continuos rain and moisture that are already impacing on the main roads and worse still on our highway base levels, under our roads.

   contant rail and moisture and is now weakening the roads.

   We drive from Napier to Tauranga every month and now we see the roads are pysically sinking under the continious weight of many increasing very heavy truck freight vehicles.

   Now we wintness that the main orad north called ‘highway two’ will now soon be a ‘goat track’ unless billions are spent placing reinforced concrete bases under them as the EU and Canada and the US has done.

   Due to “climate change” everything now going forward with our transport will cost many more billions, becase of the mindless oil compnies deliberate lobbying of getting rid of rail freight in our regions.

   So then oil companies can sell more fuel for trucks as trucks can use five times more oil based enegy to move every tonne every km.

   Mindless ‘global world destoyers’ oil companies are.

5. Someone should pop up a few wind turbines at the door to get a little electricity from all that hot air that’ll be blowing around. And that’d be sustainable too.
   We’re a well established export oriented agrarian primary industry country with a huge land area and a small population and we need a room full of windbags pondering the how’s and why’s?
   I see.
   No word of banishing the foreign Banksters, of conducting a royal commission of inquiry into the relationships between the big NBR outed kiwi money cultists and the politicians who sold our stuff and things to them which made them rich at our expense. No mention of re nationalising what were once OUR stuff and things, like electricity then?
   Sounds like a room full of toothless poodles sucking on an uncooked sausage to me.
   Be a plesant day out though, right? Cup of tea. A little paper shuffling…. Nice.

   • 1000% Counrty boy,

     “VISION AOTEAROA-NZ COUNCIL” ha ha, this must be from Steven Joyce’s stable again from his project MBIE project centre, that will be just a “talking heads” forum fest.

     We need serious issues addressed now otherwise you need to grow some gills and brains too Johny BG.

     Are you amate of George Soros call him he deals in hollow log projects, and may just finance your holllow log progect too!!!!!!

     You may be able to use that hollow log then to float on, when you are flooded out to sea one day.

     • Totally missed the point. My post was aimed at another negative whinge by AFEWKNOWTHETRUTH. Never mind, this gnarly old prophet can take a juvenile knee jerk reaction from a dented ego with a closed one track mind. Ever thought of trying to make a radical difference in the real world? Na thought not, the sacrifice would be too taxing & inconvenient.

       • It would be good if you could distinguish between ‘another negative whinge’ and a statement of irrefutable facts.

         Or do you refute that current living arrangements are predicated on continuous burning of fossil fuels that are in the process of destroying young people’s future via planetary overheating that is the natural consequence of excessive emissions?

         • Do you drive a car & use products made form plastic? I suspect most thinking NZ’rs are aware of the challenges we face, what’s the point of continually banging on about this stuff. Innovative, transitional solutions please.

           • ‘transitional solutions please’

             I spent well over a decade promoting the solutions -permaculture and powerdown (accompanied by stabilisation of population). I wrote books, gave interviews, was politically active etc. and established a permaculture garden.

             I spent a small fortune promoting sustainability and paid a huge price (of the order of $100,000, plus physical injury)

             I gave up because I not only did I impoverish myself but I also realised I was wasting my time and energy. Almost no one was listening.

             At some stage you will discover that you too are wasting your time and energy because the trajectory of society is not determined by the vision of a few but by the ignorance and cultural conditioning of the majority.

             Unless there is change at the top (and I see no indication of that yet because all attempts to generate such change are thwarted by the system) the cultural conditioning of the majority will change AFTER collapse occurs.

   • I take it you won’t be attending Country boy. It does seem like a hell of a lot of ground to cover by multitudes of speakers in 2 days. Certainly will be a huge wind production if everyone talks at once which they might have to get to speak at all. But I’m sure they would listen to you too CB for a few minutes. It would be some light relief for everyone.
     I’ve always thought that international trade is grossly over rated. If it were not for currency imbalances and distortions, and a tiny global elete intent on controlling the world’s scarce resources, 90% of it would stop. To the mercy of the planet.
     D J S

6. Professor Kelsey is always a voice of academic reason in this type of debate. I wish the hui success.

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