Half a billion animals dead.
6 million hectares burnt.
Thousands of buildings destroyed.
Dozens dead.
Tens of thousands evacuated.
Smoke clogged cities.
And a right wing fundamentalist Christian climate denying coal loving dick head of a Prime Minister who was on holiday.
This is the future.
As the planet super heats because of human pollution, more and more extreme weather events will occur. This apocalyptic fire season in Australia will become the norm and there is a point where living in some parts of Australia will simply become untenable.
Where do we think those Australians are going to flee to?
NZ.
There are 24.5 million Australians.
There are barely 5 million of us.
How are we going to cope politically and culturally if swamped by our larger neighbour?
Currently Australia treats us with contempt. They have flooded our country with 501s and strip NZers living there of any rights. How do you think they will treat us if they flee here on mass?
Forget China and America having too much influence over us, it will be Australians fleeing climate change who will be the real problem.
Fortress Aotearoa will become a pressing demand from locals trying to protect the last life boat from becoming an Australian territory.
The current political spectrum does not have the capacity to force through the radical adaptation we will require to survive the next phase of the climate crisis.
Fortress Aotearoa is the only way forward. We can pretend the world will unite and join hands to combat what is rapidly unfolding or we can accept the doomed nature of the worst of human nature and rather than plan for a pretend world of co-operation that will never exist, prepare for one where the worst angels of our nature are unleashed.
The current political spectrum in New Zealand can not radically adapt fast enough to adopt the changes we must make if we are to survive the climate crisis. It will require a radical Political Movement that elects a Party to implement Fortress Aotearoa…
- Move away from intensive farming and look to become domestically self sustainable in terms of food.
- Immediately ban all water exports
- 5 year Parliamentary term.
- Upper and Lower House (Upper House 50-50 split between Māori & Pakeha that can hold up legislation if unhappy about Treaty issues)
- Massive investment into R&D from Government with the understanding research is to benefit NZ first before sold offshore.
- Large scale increase in Navy, Army & Airforce.
- Mass limiting of tourism numbers with increased tourist taxes.
- Only citizens can vote.
- Sustainable immigration and an end to exploitative migrant workers.
- Resettlement Programms for all pacific island neighbours.
- Increase refugee in take to 10 000 per year
- Fully funded public services.
- Mass Green housing rebuild.
- 100% renewable energy for entire country.
- Massive tree planting across previous farming land.
- Wholesale re-write of state services act to end commercial values.
- Investment into basic pharmaceutical production.
- Financial transaction tax
- Wealth tax
- Multinational tax
- Inheritance tax
On a rapidly warming planet, NZ will increasingly be the life boat for Earth and the tyranny of our distance will become our blessing.
As the climate crisis unfolds more and more people in fury will turn against the current political system too wedded to the economic profits margins of the polluters. It is just a matter of time before the NZ electorate rejects the limitations of the current political spectrum.
The only thing that makes the Carbon Zero Act ‘historic’ is the future generations who will look back in spite & anger that we thought this sophistry was a legitimate response to the climate crisis – if you think maybe acting in 31 years is a solution, you are the problem.
In 2023, for the first time in NZ history, Gen x + Gen Y + Millennials will be a larger voting block than the boomers.
2023 is our date for revolution comrades.
I cannot help but wonder, as happened to Kiwis in the Queensland floods in 2011, how Australian barefaced discrimatory attitudes will effect New Zealanders who have lost some or all of their homes in these fires.
There will be more than a few I suspect who find Aus, all too unwelcoming to their plights and will be left all alone whilst their Aussie neighbours are assisted!
The Australians are exporting New Zealanders back , brought up in their OZ finishing school with criminal records….how about we reciprocate?
After the Australian mass murderer’s terrorist racist attack on the Christchurch Mosque and NO apology from the Australian Government !….is there much appetite for Australian immigration here? I think NOT!
A lot of them do seem to be quite racist
yeah i agree but at the moment they can just arrive we will need to close the border like europe with also need the take back control of our banking we must back kiwi bank and start investing our kiwisaver money into the new economy what you have proposed is going to take money
add
Decentralisation into small hamlets. Human packs ideally should not exceed 30-40
Earth homes, everyone gardens and hunts wild game and fish, including top brass
20 hour weeks with everyone sweating at work at least 1 hour a day
That’s actually very sane.
Yep, been working on setting up an experimental, independent eco-city homeland for decades. No one gives a hoot; but establishing a free state within NZ would be a good first step towards shaping a dynamic, innovative & sustainable Aotearoan confederacy. I believe unilateral radical localisation is our destiny.
https://www.thebigidea.nz/profile/ayvangard
Looks like a policy manifesto mashup of TOP and NZ First.
The most important ones for me are, in order:
1. Only citizens can vote.
2. Sustainable immigration (or preferably adopt Michael Reddell’s immigration ideas)
3. Upper and Lower House (Upper House 50-50 split between Māori & Pakeha that can hold up legislation if unhappy about Treaty issues)
Doing so will enable the rest to be taken care of.
tops actually got some good ideas so has nz first i think we need to take the best ideas where ever they come from this right left wing divide has no place in the long emergency we will need a program that is implemented irrespective of who is the government we will need a leader like lord wolington the uk minister for food during ww2 in fact the economy my have to reset to a war economy.2020 will be the year where negative interest rates arrive the long emergency has started the global insurance companies and the pentagon take climate change very seriously
Reset to a war economy. I think that makes a lot of sense – it’s coming on all fronts.
Australians, next to us, have been becoming unfriendly for the last two decades. We aren’t in a good position for allies. Only dreamers and the politically unengaged consider the Oz government friendly. It’s time to put the gates back on the hinges.
“2020 will be the year… the pentagon take climate change very seriously”
The Climate Crisis and militarism are meshed and melded together. Here are five examples, compiled by Medea Benjamin. Five more are in her linked article.
1. The US military protects Big Oil and other extractive industries.
2. The Pentagon is the single largest institutional consumer of fossil fuels in the world.
3. The Pentagon monopolises the funding needed to seriously address the climate crisis.
4. Military operations leave a toxic legacy in their wake.
5. Wars ravage fragile ecosystems that are crucial to sustaining human health and climate resiliency.
FORTRESS NZ – been there, done that. Time for a reboot for sure;
https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO1701/S00055/johnny-overton-will-stand-in-this-years-general-election.htm
I have no idea why the left want 5 year parliamentary terms. That helps the right who seem to be a lot more popular and votable around the world for many.
In the era of dirty politics when bad people can influence the direction of the country do we need 5 years of a plutocracy before voters can get them out. Imagine if the Natz had been in 15 years not 9!
As for COL, they pretty much did nothing in 3 years and are only just working that they have been underwhelming to many, because they only care about voters and what they think, in election years these days. So a 3 year check on democracy is better than 5!
Again disagree with, Large scale increase in Navy, Army & Airforce… their charter has changed to protect foreign big business before domestic people and voters need to look at who they should be fighting for and are they equipt for modern life (aka more investment in climate change and local disaster recovery not political purchases of frigates), before any expansion….
As for increasing tourist taxes, anyone entering NZ should pay a tax – citizen or not. For a start they are contributing to climate change by flying. Then it turns out the paltry tourist tax does not apply to the majority of people coming and going from NZ like foreign students, temp workers and their families holidaying around NZ because it is based on visas not actually anyone entering the country for whatever reason. Last time I looked, the poor and beneficiaries were not flying around the world… so anyone who is privileged enough to do so, should pay a conservation tax to preserve the environment and flora and fauna (not just use the money for toilets for profits to the construction industry and more tourists).
If you want to end exploiting migrant workers, stop the migrant visas and scams in the first place and remember in the Burger King case, the worker who was exploited was a KIWI resident, Burger King were careful to ‘pay’ the migrants correctly on work visas, but once they got their permanent residency then they felt entitled to underpay them as Kiwi permenent residents!
Kiwi workers are much more exploited than the migrant workers, who pay for the privilege and enter into the arrangements willingly in most cases, to dupe the bovine immigration officers and IRD.
Numerous cases of criminals with ‘cleaning businesses’ and expanding low level businesses where people volunteer their labour for free in return for a ‘job’. After gaining residency the new thing is to go to the employment authority (further creating more waiting lists, at ERA) and dob the boss in and get their wages back. Win, win, for migrants, get permanent residency in NZ falsely without having a real job, while then making the ex employer pay back the money.
Sadly we know the unions are broken when they support more migrant temp workers coming into NZ without even a job, and NZ citizens being fired at will with no financial penalty and getting no redundancy payments are common… if you do get a redundancy payment then it is taxed highly…
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/in-depth/365540/why-being-made-redundant-in-nz-is-so-tough
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/331250/whistleblowers-tell-of-incredible-day-their-jobs-were-axed
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=12267350&ref=art_readmore
The easiest way to tax property is to put in a small stamp duty on every time somebody changed the title, that way there is no way to avoid it, as it passes on title and the tax collected by lawyers at point of sale. Those who are moneylendering through property pay the most, as they sell each property on within days or months or to create complex company chains but somehow have no ‘taxable income’ so don’t need bother to pay a capital gains tax as well as it’s been discovered drug rings get residency without even a IRD number…
Further more a stamp duty creates a disincentive to have mega luxury properties as they are taxed higher than cheap properties. Therefore one of the few ways to make a super rich lister or multinational pay their fair share of tax is to charge a stamp duty, instead of avoiding it though taxable income loopholes.
Laws around taxable income for capital gains and other taxes are a joke, because most billion dollar turnover companies seem to be able to get away with not paying any income tax in the first place. However it very very difficult to avoid paying a stamp duty tax no matter how rich you are. The rich pay more than the poor, it is the ultimate leveller.
The other tax should be a financial tax that taxes the profits of banks and money laundering flowing out of NZ.
The other taxes mentioned would unfairly effect the locals aka Maori. Aka inheritance tax, with wages so low they only way many of the next generations of New Zealanders will own their own house or land, is through inheritance. Do the left want to take that away too?
Likewise wealth tax, old people then have to leave their home because they can’t get anough income to afford to live in their own house, again Maori own land, another way to tax them!
Approx 67% of people in NZ still own their own house. One of the problems with the left is that they seem to want to lower that number by supporting multinational people who have contributed nothing to NZ, to come and buy the houses, with taxes designed to discriminate against the locals who pay taxable income and are tax resident!
“As for COL, they pretty much did nothing in 3 years”
They were voted in on 23rd September 2017.
By my reckoning that is just two years and three months.
And it is weighed against the effects of a gov that was in for nine years.
And it is a coalition.
And the media has been sabotaging their efforts.
This looks like a false equivalence.
“False equivalencies are developing on a grand scale as a result of relentlessly negative news. If everything and everyone is portrayed negatively, there’s a leveling effect that opens the door to charlatans. The press historically has helped citizens recognize the difference between the earnest politician and the pretender. Today’s news coverage blurs the distinction.” – Thomas Patterson
Correction to my earlier reply, – the present govt held its first sitting on 7th November 2017, so that is just a tad over two years ago.
… Yet all over the place they’re being evaluated as if they’ve had a full 3 yr term. And, there are other discrepancies/ imbalances, as noted earlier. Again, the Nats’ social influencing is taking hold, even among those who should know better! However many big $$s the Nats invested in their social influencing campaign, I guess they are getting what they paid for (sigh).
@Kheala, Two things that COL have done against what they campaigned on,
is to sign the TPPA (nobody is fooled by the few pages at the front and calling it CPTPP)
and decreasing immigration to NZ until the fabled affordable housing and public transport and new hospitals/schoosl etc are actually built..
Instead immigration has increased significantly in NZ, with 150,000+ people per year on temp permits https://croakingcassandra.com/2018/03/31/work-visa-numbers-soar/coming in with another circa 50,000+ per year getting permanent residency every year.
Once here on a temp permit, is seems very difficult to deport anybody and nobody seems to go willingly when they don’t meet the criteria to stay.
There is massive messy complex situations developing involving children and more social services in NZ when people split up and have children here while on temp permits.
Even if you are in jail and do crime in NZ it seems that you deserve to become a permanent resident here. If you lie on the paperwork and are not of good character aka exploiting people, fraud, drugs etc. nobody in NZ government seems to care and cancel the residency and citizenship.
While for years advocating bringing in a higher age for pensions because ‘we can’t afford it’ the government is more than happy to bring back the migrant parent entry recently….
So now under the Natz policy, and a bit from COL the next generation is expected to support more aged asian migrants than the amount of aged Maori and Pacific Islanders combined. And you don’t legally have to have made any financial contributions at all when you come to NZ to get free health care and pensions.
Sounds fair if you believe in Rogernomics or are an idiot!
Presumably all these new residents doing a degree here, or working as “essential” labouring skills or are income less as new marriages or relatives, don’t need a place to live, don’t use the roads, hospitals or schools. never have kids or get into trouble with the law, sarcasm. The health spend, per person is actually going down under this Ponzi model.
Most of the budget is eaten up, not by providing better services for our taxes, but increasing the construction industry profits and contracts and adding more stuff for all the new people coming here.
In the case of publc transport, the commuter rail seems to be getting further and further away, while the priority for public transport, is all centred around the airports and getting more people in and out of NZ not commuters.
Lazy immigration combined with ideology has created the worst state home waiting list in history and many people are now in emergency accomodation with huge shortages for affordable rental property.
In spite of this the government seems to have some sort of ideological war against landlords so instead of trying to get as many rentals into circulation as possible, they are putting in gold standards to ensure that the majority of ageing housing stock in NZ are going to be removed or renovated to a standard that requires thousands of dollars which when a good percentage of tenants fail to pay the rent in the first place, probably because their incomes in reals terms are going down.
Under government thinking tenants are better off homeless or living in a one room hotel for $1500 p/w, than the ‘expensive’ 3 bedroom houses with gardens that the boomers were bought up in that are not warm and dry enough for modern sensibilities. Funny enough, another win for the construction and finance industry profits and another loss for affordable housing!
Meanwhile the change of visas points means that now migrants chasing residency points are not working in Auckland any more for visa points as that place is not destroyed functionality wise, so the 200,000+ per year migrants are now in the provinces and making the Auckland model all over NZ with the same results…
Annual median house prices changes
Northland average house price $507,500 up 10.8%
Gisborne average house price $420,000 up 25.4%
Hawkes Bay average house price $500,000 up 12.4%
Wellington average house price $636,600 up 7.9%
Manawatu/Wanganui average house prices $390,000 up 25.6%
Southland average house prices $310,000 up 29.2%
Otago, average house prices $489,000 up 13.7%
Nelson average house prices $586,000 up 11.6%
So the question is, are wages in Gisborne and Manawatu/Wanguanui increasing up over 25%????
Are wages in Southland growing over 29% per annum?
While the COL is better than Natz, they have not kept their promises and in fact in 2 years have increased the problems that the Natz created not solved them.
If COL had stuck to their guns and fulfilled their 2 election differences from Natz on TPPA and immigration and they would be in better shape.
+100% saveNZ….Well said!…and well researched!
Government also need to start to fund more to protect our coast line from drug smugglers as well as over fishing and illegal fishing by trawlers in particular.
Drug smuggling: Customs urges public to keep eyes peeled
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/406614/drug-smuggling-customs-urges-public-to-keep-eyes-peeled
That’s really the only thing we need a navy for. Coastal protection and patrol. Not as part of the big boys’ club controlled by Trump and Bojo.
After reading something that CB posted on this, I’d like NZ to have our own banks – only. Apparently the foreign banks are siphoning off billions.
Similarly, an end to all sales of large tracts of land. Eg to forestry, mining, and O/S owned dairy companies. The land is the body of Aotearoa. It is not ours to sell! We need to reclaim it. O/S foreign companies, nations or individuals might lease tracts for a set time – only.
End all fracking in Aotearoa, and end the O/S sale of our water supplies. There are many reasons for this.
And, support those courageous individuals who are standing up to big oil et al. Such as Mike Smith in his stand against OMV
The other thing is that we need to control the expansion of pure profiteering and anticompetitive behaviour from supermarkets and banks in particular in NZ and more and more multinationals piling into NZ that reduces choice, innovation and quality.
India has just put in rules to prevent online retailers from selling products through vendors in which they hold an equity stake. However it should be across all comanies like Banks, supermarkets etc in NZ due to the above!
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-47083972
When you find out that supermarkets are making record profits here and cutting down on more and more products they sell towards their own ‘home brand’ and 70% of food sold in supermarkets is not nutritious and highly processed about time we look at levelling the monopolies in NZ!
We already have highly dysfunctional near monopoly industries in NZ, Banks, supermarkets, petrol, construction etc
NZ should do the same and make it across industry aka Banks can’t sell their own ‘brand’ insurance products etc.
Food should be the starting point!
NZ is very small and it is too easy for companies to start to control and wipe out competition here by increasing the presence of more and more of their own products or having mega profits while reducing service and quality, aka Australian banks.
Hear hear Martyn.
Will you set up the political party to ‘stand’ for this.
In principle I’ll vote for you. As neither the ‘neo fascist’ party (i.e. those PURELY for the rich, foreign &/or domestic, and sod the (we) 90%’ers) or the ‘soft TraitorKey’ party (masquerading as the Labour party) offer any solution.
Australians aren’t really that different from us — I (born and bred 4th gen NZ) lived and worked there for 15 years (and actually have joint citizenship — very easy to have got back in the 1990s, just wait 2 years and fill in a form, and receive a certificate and a eucalyptus seedling). If it does indeed come to climate-based migration, I reckon they would fit in over here more readily than any other group.
But in the meantime, yes, Fortress Aotearoa may become a necessary policy. “Sustainable” migration? — I prefer Chris Trotter’s “cut it to the bone”, as in his column today “Politicians ‘must’ heed working class needs”. Only those whom we need, not those who need us. And why on earth increase refugees?! — this sends a mixed message. More cutting to the bone here too, thank you.
2023 will be interesting. And as you say, our isolated position on the globe, vast oceans surrounding us, may become what saves us.
Talking ‘bout My Generation.
https://slate.com/technology/2018/04/the-evidence-behind-generations-is-lacking.html
A terminology using specific characteristics associated to people of certain age groups does not qualify as scientific political analyses (from my point of view) but rather refers to product engineering for social marketing.
Certainly, “the generation” is not a main antagonism in the sense of socioeconomic structure and status (class), and capitalist production. Similarly, gender, race, religion etc. can comprise antagonizing relationships but not serve as analytical substitute for the main antagonism. Otherwise, everything becomes a wishy-washy of everything. (At the end this actually would mean “nothing”, or as a more neoliberal reverse-message, “everything is possible”.)
Orientation lost. No scientific, moral or spiritual compass. Only marketing remains.
Besides….. let’s allow an unfiltered look back:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RRjF4iNzms
My Generation, Baby.
We will need to change our immigration policy that allows Australians free access to NZ. Tough I know, but Australia’s policy’s towards NZ when it suits them.
Whenever we have a debate of this type invariably there will be comments that we need the KiwiBank to take over the banking system.
I then point out that Kiwibank can only lend to the level of its reserves which are quite small so it cant replace the Big Four banks. That objection is then ignored untill the next time when the argument goes round again. It is possible to have a Kiwi owned Bank( but not Kiwibank) The only NZ Bank big enough to do the job is the Reserve Bank. That suggestion will also be ignored until next time round. Will someone actually talk some sense about the banks?
Pity the Natz sold BNZ for a pittance after pumping in $380 m after the Rogernoms bright idea to float on the share market.
Shock doctrines really work to get state bargains!
BNZ
1987: Bank floated on sharemarket with a 15% stock offering.
1989: Government reduces its share to 51% by selling 34%; with 30% sold to Capital Markets Ltd, and the remainder to the general public
1990: Government bail out of $380 million to avoid collapse. Bolger was told on the Sunday after the 1990 election that the bank has to report by Friday, and if its not given support by then, it will collapse (because of Australian loans). It held 40 percent of the commercial paper in New Zealand. So if it collapsed, half of New Zealand’s companies would have collapsed.[4]
The Bank of New Zealand logo used between 2008 and 2010
1992: National Australia Bank (NAB) purchased the BNZ and the BNZ becomes a subsidiary of the Australian bank.
Same with the global financial crisis when the US bailed out the banks, they never got their money back now that the banks are on their feet and in some cases were caught paying out bonuses to the banking executives that contributed to the GFC.
You believe the myth that banks lend from reserves? Haha nope. They create money out of thin air by fictitious accounting. The current money system is not a law of nature, it was created by society, and it can be reformed any way we choose. IMHO there should be no private banks at all, lending at usury should be a jailable offence, and money creation should be a public utility run by the state. https://www.positivemoney.org.nz/pm/
Despite these policy ideas for Fortress NZ, the effects of Climate Change will still upend the NZ ecosystem and the artificial practices we employ to sustain “civilisation”.
Our way of life may become much more intolerable than some imagine.
And even if the whole world went “carbon neutral”, how long would we have to scrape an existence before a state of “holocene heaven” returns??
Humans are greedy, rapacious & destructive. Wherever H. sapiens spread around the world, they wrought destruction.
Are we a species really worth saving? Will it be worth the thousand year(s) battle for survival on a planet undergoing the upheaval of the anthropocene??
Might just be time to “go gentle into that good night” 🙁
Aussies are just us but with an arguably more annoying accent.
Besides, after the drones start seeding the planet with some, as yet to be dentified, virus and/or bacterium? There’ll be plenty of room for everyone.
This on Boingboing and The Guardian.
Mystery drones flying at night. I know! A little bit of poo.
https://boingboing.net/2020/01/02/mystery-drone-squadrons-flying.html
Do you really think the peter theils, zuckerbergs and bezos types of this sick and dying planet are going to sit back and wait with the rest of us until our planet expires under us?
Or are they going to risk culling humans back to an agreed upon number of, say, twenty million?
Have a happy day now won’t y’awl.
Been advocating radical FORTRESS NZ ideas for yonks. Great to see some of these thoughts finally being picked up by the leaders & followers of TDB cult. I been banned by TDB anti-free speech fanatics so this will be deleted, but worth a crack anyway.
Evidence of a voice in the wilderness struggle. Wrong person, wrong country, wrong time. Only a delusional, idealistic idiot could do stuff like this;
https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO1301/S00016/public-announcement-from-the-salvation-party-of-aotearoa-nz.htm
Don’t put up a link that is[t current without giving a date. That Salvation Party item was from 2013. Bear that in mind while reading – some of it fits today. We need all the facts to think about our situation. Rants are something different, a passing storm, but for the rest let’s have full info.
Greywarbler; replied to your comment & provided more info but my reply has not been published.
‘Fortress New Zealand’, I think the Maori tribes tried that but failed.
Fortress Aoteaora? I thought the Maori tried that, it failed.
Only citizens can vote? I think that we must exclude those who have dual citizenship of other countries. Well what about insisting that immigrants and refugees give up other citizenships.
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