Now the economic recession is upon us – who should Labour save?

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This Government was founded in 2017 under the shadow of an expected market correction so the Government does have a blueprint as to what to do if the opportunity of a crisis presents, so who should Labour save now the recession is here?

Dairy Farmers: They are up to their eyeballs in debt from dairy intensification. To get them to agree to helping everyone else, you need to help them and this could be a once in a  generation move to get them to change their allegiance to National. Guarantee Dairy farm debt on the agreement that they revert from Dairy to planting mixed forests.

First home buyers: You can’t leave them for the wolves of the Market, guarantee their mortgages through Kiwibank.

Mum and Dad’s investment property: You can’t wipe out an entire generations wealth base, again guarantee one property over the family house through KiwiBank.

KiwiSaver contributions: The Government must look at tripling Kiwisaver contributions to rebuild peoples mutilated KiwiSaver accounts.

Corporations: They will turn up with their golden begging bowls and beg for bail outs. Screw them, let them burn.

Banks: Only save Kiwibank (who will require a huge investment to scale it up) and TSB, the others can burn.

Property Investors: Anyone with more than a family house plus one property investment can burn.

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Tax amnesty for small and medium business: They are the ones who will suffer the most, allow a tax amnesty with the usual penalties cancelled.

Welfare: Everyone will be scrambling for some type of welfare, it will need to be increased, and the draconian punitive crap dumped.

Immigration Freeze: We will need to freeze immigration at a time of economic crisis because everyone will be fleeing.

Rent Freeze: Don’t allow greedy Landlords to benefit from a crisis.

Minimum Wage Freeze: We can’t seriously be asking small business to pay people more as the economy collapses.

This pandemic crisis will be with us until a vaccine is available and that is 12-18months away so the economic wreckage as well as the public health emergency is going to cost us and status quo thinking will only doom us.

Now is not the time to be cautious. A vast rethink of how we become self-sufficient from manufacturing to electronics to pharmaceuticals is now required.

NZ needs to consider joint infrastructure ventures with Australia built on their East coast that could be a domestic pharmaceutical and manufacturing industry.

Remember, with the climate crisis producing cheek to jowl overcrowding and biosphere degradation, the ease with which viruses can jump between species is increasing. This pandemic is the future under catastrophic climate change WHILE we are simultaneously seeing other symptoms of that climate crisis erupt in real time.

Labour either gets transformative or we plunge into disarray and entropy.

One thing is clear, globalisation is dead politically, culturally and economically.

This threat of pandemic is a reminder of what a climate crisis will do and I would argue that 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.
  • Empower local communities to make local decisions and set up resilience programs.
  • 5 year Parliamentary term so Governments can actually plan for change.
  • 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 huge 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 focused on real welfare of people.
  • 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
  • Capitalist monopolies in energy, transport and finance have to be brought into public ownership and control. They should be subject to democratic plans drawn up by the whole community. Workers should have much stronger decision making powers within them.
  • All economic sectors to be made take steps needed to decarbonise the economy as much as is needed to reach zero net emissions by 2030.
  • Free and frequent public transport on electric buses and/or trains in all main cities.
  • Health care and education for life should be free and universally accessible.
  • Welfare, pensions, child allowances, should be universal wherever possible.
  • Public housing at fixed and affordable rents should be a right of all not just the desperately poor.
  • All workers should have a right to a job and the workweek reduced with no loss of pay to make that possible.
  • Local communes should be supported for control and delivery of as many functions of the centralised state as possible – including housing, education, health care.
  • Local communes to support cooperative forms of production of food, solar and wind energy,  electric transport, and media.

On a rapidly warming planet, NZ will increasingly be the life boat for Earth and the tyranny of our distance will become our blessing.

38 COMMENTS

  1. “NZ needs to consider a joint”
    Very sensible suggestion. We all need to chill out. Thanks Martyn.

  2. In addition to banning all water sales, also ban the sale of any essential resources and close the loopholes whereby foreigners are still buying up land, property, housing, forestry etc etc.

  3. Save our commuty health and wellbeing must be our first consideration says Suzy Wild our chief virologist.

    Restore our rail system and offer free public travel on rail.

    Also we need to remove half the monster trucks off our roads, and freight back on rail as used to be we say,’ as this alone will save our planet by reducing climate change greenhouse emissions;

    This will directly save us as well as our neibours so you must read this;

    CEAC – “Gov’t increase rail freight & lower climate emissions”

    Monday, 16th March 2020,
    Press Release: Citizens Environmental Advocacy Centre
    There is a significant opportunity to reduce transport emissions shifting freight from road to rail claim this UK report. http://www.freightonrail.org.uk/FactsFigures-environmental.htm Quote; “it will be very difficult to meet the 2050 goals without major reductions in GHG emissions from Heavy Goods Vehicles (HGVs). 1 While electric technology means car emissions can be reduced significantly, current electric technology is not feasible for large HGVs as the batteries would weigh more than the payload of the lorry. – Unquote.

    CEAC message to Government; – “URGENT; Climate change emissions are now increasing causing an emergency”

    Subject; Freight is big CO2 emitter CEAC are calling for more rail freight.

    The recommendations for using rail to reduce the climate emissions’ by 2050 must now be adopted by Government.

    • So we need to move freight back to rail now, to be safely ‘ahead of the curve of adverse weather events’ now ASAP.
    • Each agency and industry now must play our part for our communities health and wellbeing.

    The AECOM technical (Back to Facts and Figures) is very convincing evidence for the NZ Government to consider why we need the active move to ‘balance’ at least half the current massive ‘lion’s share of all freight’ (92%) road freight back to rail.

    History of the demise of NZ’s once proud public rail company service.

    This massive loss of half the land transport of rail freight was lost to roading during the Prebble/Douglas ‘Rogernomics era’ of ‘wild rationalisation of rail during the 1980’s’.

    The public owned ‘crown rail asset’ was sold to overseas companies and local investors in 1991 to these “opportunists”.
    • whom sold on most rail infrastructure assets gradually to cover their cost of buying the rail, (called “asset stripping”)
    • and left only the shell of a once full operating intergraded road and rail freight and passenger service that served the whole country’s communities wellbeing for generations.

    Now its time to make our public rail company Kiwi Rail function again for the communities health and wellbeing for their and our future.

    Why we need to make rail function again;

    http://www.freightonrail.org.uk/FactsFigures-environmental.htm

    Quote;
    • The lack of alignment between Government policies for heavy goods vehicles (HGVs) and rail freight locomotives disadvantages the latter and will make it harder for the Government to meet its emissions reduction targets.

    • Because, despite the fact that rail freight produces 76% less CO2 emissions than HGVs, diesel-only freight locomotives will be banned from 2040 and yet diesel HGVs will not be banned. Additionally, the Government halted the large scale rail electrification projects despite the fact that electric traction is the proven sustainable alternative to diesel, which is cheaper to maintain and increases capacity.

    • HGVs contribute 17 per cent of surface access CO2 emissions, despite making up only 5 per cent of road vehicles. Source CCC 2018

    • By contrast, the total greenhouse gas emissions from rail (including both freight and passengers combined) are an order of magnitude lower at less than 2% of total UK transport emissions.

    • Energy efficiency is directly related to carbon dioxide emissions, rail is significantly more energy efficient than other modes with the exception of shipping. a tonne of goods can travel 246 miles by rail as opposed to 88 miles by road on a gallon of fuel
    Source Network Rail Value of Freight July 2010.

    1. AECOM report ECO driving for HGVs (December 2016)

    Air Pollution
    • Rail freight can be part of the solution to reduce air pollution. Currently, 40,000 people die prematurely in the UK from diesel fumes wide-spread air quality violations, especially in cities like London and Manchester which are already exceeding their NOX emissions limits.

    • Rail produces 90 per cent less PM10 particulates and up to 15 times less nitrogen dioxide emissions than HGVs for the equivalent journey.
    • HGVs account for around 21% of road transport NOx emissions while making up just 5% of vehicle miles, according to the DfT Freight Carbon Review February 2017. However, due to the increasing uptake of Euro VI truck engines, the Road Haulage Industry estimate that HGVs will account for around 13% of road transport NOx emissions for 2018.

    VOC volatile organic compounds. Source RSSB 2007
    • A shift to rail freight will play an important long-term role in reducing non-exhaust particulates (PMs). While the latest EuroVI engine technology reduces exhaust particulates, non-exhaust particulate pollution from HGV tyres and brakes, which are hard to reduce for trucks which have large ones, will remain a serious problem for which there is no current solution.
    • Non-exhaust particulate emissions will also continue to be a considerable health risk for electric cars and vans, a point which has not been widely acknowledged to date.

    • Noise Pollution
    Far fewer people negatively impacted by rail noise than road noise.
    DfT stats: only around 40,000 people are impacted by rail noise, but around 700,000 people are impacted by road noise. Unquote.

    CEAC message to Government; – “URGENT; Climate change emissions are now increasing causing an emergency”
    • So we need to move freight back to rail now, to be safely ‘ahead of the curve of adverse weather events’ now ASAP.

    END.

    • FFS Cleangreen, no matter the topic no matter the theme you will always insert your ‘trucks bad, trains good’ dribbling. is there no blog thread you won’t insert your personal crusade into?

      I’m not saying your crusade is wrong, but FFS pick your battles/topics!

  4. “– who should Labour save?”
    Why, the banks of course. Who needs farmers farming to grow foods to feed us and generating foreign revenue when you can have banks. Banks are great. Banks, like greed, are good. Go banks. Banking is an essential infrastructure. They can ‘lend’ money to you and me which we can ‘spend’ on essential items like big black shiny street bound 4×4’rs and spa pools and Mc Mansion make-overs an’ that. Is awesome! They’re awesome!
    Then labour should save lawyers, accountants, real estate agents, investment brokers, marketing consultants, advertisers and all the wonderful media ‘personalities’ who, with pre-gleamed teeth sell us banks and their sundry hangers on to an exhausted you and me.
    Never mind the children ? Save the money ! What a horror ! ? A life without banks? Think about it ! ? OMG ! No mortgage ! No insurance debts ! No bloated housing ‘market’ to borrow your false economy against ! OMG! ? What would we do with all that spare cash and no debt ! ? We’d have to spend time with the whanau and friends down at the beach?
    Fuck ! That !

  5. Martyn you are getting there.
    Now for the steps along the way.
    Democratising the work place will need unions to assume a modified role where they assist under govt guidelines and legislated support.
    Farmer cooperatives can be local or regional with advice and management taken away from the banks and worked from Govt through local farmer cooperatives. Corporate farms and multinational or offshore forestry groups be given time to reduce their foot print and sell off at cost to NZ groups of citizens forming forestry cooperatives. The size of each these will need to be limited.

  6. BTW?
    Dairy Farmers? Give your cows a nice wee holiday from being permanently pregnant while tits deep in cold mud and grow acres of Pot instead. Your cows can just hang, chewing on da cud Bra.
    Yep.
    You read me correct. Actually sucks up Co2 as opposed to farting it out. You got the irrigators and you got the fertiliser so you’re good to go!
    Pot. Cannabis. Mary Jane. Marijuana. Electric lettuce. Colombian dreaming smoke. Grandpa’s humping weed. My Mid Morning Drifting Gas. Fuck work! Lets stay home and kiss, grass. Spark up a Blunt for Jesus. AKA weed, mull, chronic, dak, hash, smoke, buds, skunk and cabbage.
    What? You can’t because the big bad widdle law makers say no…?
    Well fuck them then. Get together and strike with your city cousins until the absurd and frankly damaging and dangerous Pot laws are repealed. Now’s your chance to redeem yourselves.
    Do it ? Go on !
    Oh? You can’t strike?
    Why not?
    ” ‘Cause of The Banks and th’ mortgage” you say?
    I see? Best get rid of them too then, aye?
    The scariest thing for the modern bankster is that one day we might realise that we don’t actually, literally need them. Gone are the days of having to carry a cow around to swap for a bag of groceries and a bucket of mead and if banks are lending more than they have in cash in a vault to back up those loans then they’re swindlers and did you know? That if a bankster gets in the shit and you have savings, they can keep your savings. They can close their doors and legally give you the finger and laugh in your face through the glass at you as you beg and cry. Might pay to remember that one.
    These, after all, are heady times.

  7. Cheeky comment coming up.
    Who do you influence? Be good to open up some closed minds. For example, does your old friend (who babysat for you) read your blog?

  8. If employees or employers find their business goes tits up they should go on the dole rather than receive a government wage subsidy, top up or handout. This would be bludging. It would be corporate welfare, anti capitalist, weak. You know, like those welfare bludgers in a Nisbet cartoon (sanctioned by the Human Rights and Race Relation Commissions who seem more intent on painting Shane Jones as a racist), those lazy dark skinned cartoon characters who buy takeaways, booze and cigarettes for themselves instead of feeding their kids, with their wicked bulbous lips and bloated stomachs full of undeserved food. There is no shame going on jobseeker my poor friends, come join those of us on the bottom of the heap living on next to nothing, it is character building. On jobseeker benefit you don’t need a variety of fresh fruit and vegetables and protein to eat, or essentials such as toiletries and cleaning products to exist, or a permanent place to live, or a sense purpose or hope when the politics of kindness and platitudes are more than food for the soul. A raise in benefit levels will take years to implement says Sepuloni, but giving $2 billion to the South Canterbury Finance gamblers took days. But do not think that social development is not important to this government. If you are having doubts though, just sell your flash house worth millions to make ends meet, if you want to avoid being interviewed by Carol at your local WINZ office. That gum chewing public servant with your life in her half-trained hands, who will openly verbally abuse you knowing they have the cover of bureaucratic inhouse accomplices, who will covertly play around with your income balance and entitlements knowing that they just can (the very definition of a bully sociopath, the same terrorist mindset who think they should inherit their rightful place in the world). Come to the dole dear citizen, we are your friends here and we don’t discriminate.

    • Any business that is about to go under should be offered to the employees to own and jointly manage as a cooperative. A cooperative structure doesn’t have to make a dividend for a voracious shareholder group.

      All businesses would serve the public better if they had worker input to planning and management, and eventually cooperative ownership.
      A beginning in Labour policy UK
      https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/sep/24/how-would-labour-plan-to-give-workers-10-stake-in-big-firms-work

      https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/05/worker-ownership-julian-richer-sounds

    • Exactly don’t subsidise low wage business, we already have too many that are fake and poor quality. Better bump up welfare for those that qualify for unemployment etc, and let the better businesses survive who don’t need government hand outs. Spend on R&D high paid jobs that can be set to help recovery in NZ going forward. Send all the temp workers and students back home and concentrate on employing and upskilling domestic people who actually need and should get more help! Also will free up the houses, hospitals and medicines and stop the Ponzi profiteers. Win, win.

  9. ‘Banks: Only save Kiwibank, the others can burn.’

    Martyn, what have you got against TSB? It is a local bank that doesn’t send profits overseas and supports communities instead.

  10. Working down your estimable list;
    Dairying to forest is an idea but can be smarter. There must be a tree planting regime that is ‘best practice’.
    One with mixes of trees, perhaps the resinous, fire-friendly ones on the slightly rolling hills, with inflammable ones for the tops, and they would be marked for permanence and the farmers paid in carbon credits. If native trees would be suitable at any point, a subsidy for putting in a group of these. The paddocks could be mixed woodlots, coppicing, and rows of spaced trees with grazing under and around. These trees would also bring carbon credits, so encouraging and supporting farmers to adopt better practices. There could be willows planted in low areas, which are fodder, also tree lucerne. What would be good is assistance to farmers to change from grass to mixed plantings, good for the soil health and the animals’.
    And also subsidies to introduce leaky weirs for deep water retention after cloudbursts, lessening the affect of
    droughts.
    Banks
    By all means save Kiwibank, but it is not as good a Kiwi bank as some of those that have come from building societies. Dropping cheques for instance, a limiting feature for a service that is more personal and bypasses machines and on-line and would be useful in times of crisis. A bank with a mandate by and for the public shouldn’t go lean and mean. Note SBS continue cheques saying that’s by customer wish.) For instance, the TSB (T for Taranaki) is I think the only stnad-alone bank in NZ, and provides a good service. I know the SBS (S for Southland) has an agreement with Westpac for handling money flow, but apart from that is its own entity, and I have observed them to be well-run and careful managers with support to community. (They expanded and amalgamated with I think the Hawkes Bay B.S. now which gives them more heft.)

    100% agreemntWelfare: Everyone will be scrambling for some type of welfare, it will need to be increased, and the draconian punitive crap dumped. I’m not in favour of 100% purity on anything, and certainly keeping to some supergold standard of hands-off, business knows best, and total rote learning from the neo-lib economic bible, which surely somebody has combined and published on-line, for instance ‘All unemployed people are lazy. Education is a private gain and there should be a charge for it, because it is a personal investment leading to higher pay. There is no such thing as altruism, or society, or anything naturally good, generous or compassionate in people.’ (So Randian.) etc.

    There is a long list to go through yet. I notice that only citizens can vote is one item. I would amend that, so that everyone has to have an NCEA certificate in NZ Civil society and local and world economy 101 before they can vote. And it would be free, and made enjoyable to do at night schools (which should be encouraged again at schools, widely) or at two or three morning and afternoon workshops, having a double-bill so people have a choice of times, and with a small written component and a lot of audio and immediate review so that people show they understand what they have learned. It will result in a certificate with the person’s name on it and be regarded as a valuable document available for identification as bills or drivers licences are.)

    Then people should be encouraged to participate in weekly discussions about their local conditions, and problems and planning, on a regular basis, working through costs, and means and so on so there is a wider base of awake and aware citizens, not just consumers of government services with, often, unreasonable expectations.

    Not believing in 100% purity, I also think that good management includes scrutiny, and seeing that devious practices do not start and become embedded in public or private enterprises or society. Someone will always try to get away with something, but today’s scrutiny and suspicion is draconian, and when applied to people and their attempts to make a life for themselves when there are harsh economic strictures on the public, and business money is courted first and foremost, and finance is fiddled with unnecessary low inflation yet talk of a free market, it hurts the people.

    NZ needs to consider joint infrastructure ventures with Australia built on their East coast that could be a domestic pharmaceutical and manufacturing industry. You’re dreaming. Australia is a flighty partner, which might coexist as long as even a decade, and then do the dirty on us in some way. We cannot afford to become more integrated with them than absolutely necessary, having them own our banks was the sort of ludicrous move that only those dazzled by overseas financials would fall for. Australian financials are totally self-interested and at base, asset strippers. It is notable that most of ours have gone to live the good life over there with their peers.

    • Building up a pharmaceutical industry in NZ is unrealistic so Australia is probably our next best bet.

      I think we have to assume that the rule of law will apply and that if we negotiate a legal contract its terms will be upheld. Perhaps naive but I don’t think we have a choice.

  11. Or….
    We see Labour show its true colours of actually being a right wing party pretending to be a left wing party.

  12. Much of your basket of suggestions hits at those that make the money employ staff and control finance many of the other suggestions are meant to be financed by government which is all well and good but there will be less tax income due to downturn in the economy. You cannot have your cake and eat it one has to suffer

    • Alter the tax structure so it is more progressive as it used to be before the neolibs took control.
      I used to pay the equivalent of 67 cents in the dollar when sneaking into the top bracket.

      Business and the country functioned well.
      We give away too much wealth to offshore corporates.

  13. Trevor Sennitt
    You are so into business that you don’t realise that its form is made by convention and rules that are made and can be unmade, or changed. ‘Meant to be financed by government’ is one rule and convention. The need to review rules and conventions to make sure they are fit for purpose is more important in these fast-changing days with fast-changing autocratic systems and technological devices becoming arbiters of the government instead of the other way round. Better, clearer, incisive thinking is needed from all who wish to conserve what is good about society, so that the right changes can be made in a timely fashion. Events and forecasts demand this to avoid huge crises. We must acknowledge there will be crises, and bear up to think through them ahead, and make the changes that will limit their effect.

  14. You imply in your first sentence that the COL or at least Labour had a blueprint to cope with this. I don’t think they have had a blueprint on how to even draw breath – ever.

    • Pharmaceutical grade manufacturing isn’t difficult to pull back into the economy. The issue was China could produce boxes of medicine for $3 a pop where we could do it for $6. Now that there is a crises it’s incentivizing innovation.

      Pulling pharmaceutical manufacturing on shore will be costly. America spends about $200b on medical research in an average year. That’s why Americans will always pay insurance premiums for there costly health system. New Zealand doesn’t have that 30% administrative cost added on to standard medical care, we have a free-at-the-door service but we pay slightly higher taxes than Americans.

      So if we a just for population and turn 200 billion into 2 billion to fit into a kiwi population of 5 million people, minus the 30% admin cost and rounding to the nearest billion (2 billion) then we come to a conservitve estimate of $2 billion dollars each year the government will have to pour into pulling pharmaceutical grade manufacturing into the New Zealand economy.

      In 1999 we was told by the then Prime Minister the New Zealand existed in a benign strategic environment so she could sell defence assets. Now we will pay dearly for that hubris, 2 billion more. We are not just having to make up for lost time we will also have to prepare for the next wave of novel virus.

      More and more people are invading the last of the wild habitats and that just brings us closer to novel diseases that humans haven’t come into contact with yet. So the more health resources New Zealand can accumulate for ourselves the more resources will be available for poorer nations like in the pacific and the more resilient our herd will be to communicable disease.

  15. You need to rethink with a clear head your action plan Martyn and reduce it to things that are pragmatic and have a real impact on our short term survival with a longer term plan in mind.
    Here are the facts (first) and the necessary response.
    Covid-19 will infect a large proprtion of the world’s population and many will die. Most will survive.
    The banks and whole financial system will collapse. Residential property prices, farm prices and commercial property will plummet by around 90%.
    Global supply chains and (this is important) domestic supply chains will halt. Without credit people do not supply goods, and this will include all supermarket chains and industrial goods, not just your iPhone or other latest electronic device. There will be no food or “essential” items in supermarkets.
    Virtually all SMEs will fail.
    There will be massive social disorder and bloodshed in the streets as people fight to survive. The monkeys in Thailand gave a hint of things to come.
    So the response should be:
    Let Covid-19 run its course and protect the vulnerable with our scarce medical resources.
    Let the banks fail and property prices plunge. This will enable a swift recovery.
    Shut off the gates to all immigration and foreign investment.
    Pour resources into lifes essentials, providing a domestic supply chain for water, food, health essentials and housing. This will ensure valuable businesses survive, the rest can fail.
    Boost local law and order by engaging communities to work with the police and army to remove undesirable elements who already are taking advantage. Remove all weapons from police unless there is a direct threat. Police cannot be seen as a law unto themselves and protecting the rich but need to join the community in ensuring public safety.
    It is all very well talking about increasing our defence capability and introducing new taxes on wealth.
    Now is not the time for this we need leadership that can break things down into reality and pragmatic solutions and see we are now at a level of emergency the same as any world war.

  16. Do not save the fossil fuel based industries, such as for instance tourism that depends on tourists coming here by plane, loaded with people with a huge carbon footprint.

    Time for radical change, to also address climate change and the looming catastrophe, which has almost been forgotten, with the single minded focus on Coronavirus now.

    • I suggest that would include these selfish Kiwis and other who “holiday” overseas and tour the world by aircraft. Selfish traitors is about the nicest description I could muster.

  17. Mwhahahahaa… some good things there, Mr Bradbury !

    🙂

    Agree with just about all of ’em. Marvelous list. Echoes of Mickey Joseph Savage, in fact. I like it. Sounds almost Keynesian , yes?

    Especially appreciate some of the first list in who we should let burn. We can supply the gasoline then , huh? Remember that closing scene in the Orwell film , War of the Worlds and how a small microorganism brought down the aliens ? Who woulda’ thought…

    Mind you , we have our own form of aliens in this world we struggle with…. they wear suits and sit around large tables and discuss how to carve up the world. And pretty soon , they all gonna’ come down with a virus, and it wont be just in their laptops, either.

  18. It would be nice to see these things, but this is post-Douglas Labour. Brace yourself for a fresh round of TINA and disaster capitalism.

  19. This should be what they concentrate on fixing, the environment, not propping up sunset and polluting industries like mass tourism, poor construction and restaurants! As Coronavirus showed in Italy, it can all go so horribly wrong!

    Stop the rot of big polluters who the government prop up with lazy legislation, allowing their pollution of air, land and water, and corporate hands outs.

    Rio Tinto
    https://www.odt.co.nz/regions/southland/mataura-asks-govt-act

    Dairy firm wants ocean wastewater outfall
    https://www.odt.co.nz/rural-life/dairy/dairy-firm-wants-ocean-wastewater-outfall

    Harbour of doubt: The tiny creek that drains Auckland of its waste
    “St Lukes mall, one of the single biggest contributors of sewage into Meola, and likely among the biggest overflow points in the country.”

    https://www.stuff.co.nz/environment/117958444/harbour-of-doubt-the-tiny-creek-that-drains-auckland-of-its-waste

    No plan to tackle environmental degradation by increased tourism – Commissioner

    https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/405767/no-plan-to-tackle-environmental-degradation-by-increased-tourism-commissioner

    NZ Government Secretly Funded Water Bottling Companies

    https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO1904/S00055/nz-government-secretly-funded-water-bottling-companies.htm

    Way to be cleared for big electricity players to prey on low-income households
    https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/opinion/102708888/way-to-be-cleared-for-big-electricity-players-to-prey-on-lowincome-households

    NZ Power Companies are not even Compliant under EU and US Laws!

    https://ecotricity.co.nz/nz-powercos-noncompliant-under-eu-us-rules/?utm_source=facebook&utm_campaign=Non+Compliant+Blog+Release&utm_medium=paid&hsa_cam=6116002037136&hsa_src=%5BSITE_SOURCE_NAME%5D&hsa_acc=10152756314334928&hsa_ver=3&hsa_net=facebook&hsa_grp=6116002037536&hsa_ad=6116002037936&fbclid=IwAR0PwZmsmg8Q1b-aevcUijRowgavgNNT36_46yPRedul03imfWS6dSHLapc

    “A dam illegally constructed in an Auckland Council reserve is set to be lowered before Christmas, but not removed

    The impact of an illegally-constructed dam has been described by the Environment Court as “critical” for New Zealand’s most endangered bird but its removal will be a slow process, with the company which built it unlawfully setting most of the terms.”
    https://www.newsroom.co.nz/2019/12/19/953508/dam-delays-half-soon-half-later-maybe

    Protesters are vowing direct action in southern waters after oil giant OMV was yesterday cleared to drill up to 10 exploration wells off the Otago coast beginning this summer.

    https://www.odt.co.nz/news/dunedin/mayor-slams-drilling-approval-farce?fbclid=IwAR0pg_haSht_L8zIPWhj2D-ph2d6CJb5yMAqp6BMozpjpjlofFpZuYFfylc

    Waihi runs out of water, council distributing water bottles

    https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2020/02/waihi-runs-out-of-water-council-distributing-water-bottles.html

    Appeals against Chinese water bottling plant dismissed

    https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/118255435/appeals-against-chinese-water-bottling-plant-dismissed

    EPA grants drilling and discharge consent for Otago coast to oil and gas company OMV

    https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/118277477/epa-grants-drilling-and-discharge-consent-for-otago-coast-to-oil-and-gas-company-omv

    “Directors of Tamarind Taranaki, the New Zealand business of a Malaysian oil and gas producer say the company “may be insolvent”.

    Tamarind operates three oil fields according to its website, Tui, Amokura, and Pateke in the Tui Area oil field. It is the 100 per cent owner and operator of the fields.

    The company’s business model is to buy oil fields late in their production life.

    When buying fields off other companies, Tamarind assumes responsibility for any remediation costs when the field is closed.”

    https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=12284777

    Dairy firm wants ocean wastewater outfall
    https://www.odt.co.nz/rural-life/dairy/dairy-firm-wants-ocean-wastewater-outfall

    EPA’s ‘inappropriate’ reaction to student’s speech
    https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/117378375/epas-inappropriate-reaction-to-students-speech

    Do the above snapshot of NZ in action feel, clean, green and 100% pure, anymore?

  20. Weird how corporates are keen to cut staff even with record profits in the good times, but somehow it’s the government and the same tax payers who are expected to bail them out, when they fail to have cash reserves, insurance in place etc for downturns and loss of business in emergencies.

    Lets face it, when flights are for as little as $50 and contributing to major carbon input in the world of climate change, your business is a sunset business.

    Time to reset how the world should be operating, because somehow none of it was making sense with polluting business expanding up a storm!

    If airlines like Air NZ, go bankrupt, what a good time for the government to pick up the other 49% for a bargain of $1 (just like business did with our banks in the 1980’s).

    Will government show any sense, get a bargain and use the crisis to pick up once sold off business for nothing and nationalise it?

    • Yeah let the fuckers go bust and concentrate on building communities that are the only ones that can make sure people have the necessities to survive.
      Show the Tories exactly what resilience is, not their BS story of creating low paid jobs and unaffordable housing and other outrageous costs for kiwis.
      That is surprisingly cheap to implement and will set the platform for a new insight into living.
      Never forget that the number one pre condition for any disease apart from old age and existing health concerns is stress. Mycoplasma bovis proved this already.
      The left should welcome this as an opportunity to reset the global order. But to do so you need to think rationally and empathetically (yes you can do both) and start looking at the bigger picture and remove politcal agenda and stress from your lives.
      There is nothing to fear in a once in a millenium opportunity.

  21. Good ideas Martyn.
    The only problem is that our ‘leaders’ run an operating system called neo-liberalism. And none of them have the will to challenge Friedman’s orthodoxy.

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