Over at NZMEs new race baiting talkback radio online offering, Haimona Gray argues…
“Journalists and pundits have been uncritically running this narrative that we are a nation facing a dangerous or revolutionary threat since the election – describing the relationship the new coalition Governmentseeks to have with Māori as tense and somehow already broken… Telling these narratives where we Māori are facing, in this government, an existential threat that requires an almost revolutionary response, only benefits the people who are promoting it.”
“The removal of the previous Government‘s policies, by a government elected on a campaign of promising to do just that, is not a shocking or violent experience. We are not facing a hollowing out of our institutions or erosion of our safety, just a different guy named Chris being in charge. What we have is a coalition government that united just enough of the nation behind its policies to create a government, and some people who benefitted from the largesse of the last government throwing their rather flash toys and using the language of the violently oppressed.”
…this misreading of the threat this hard right racist climate denying Government presents New Zealand is an attempt to anaesthetise the cattle before you slaughter them.
Māoridom (and all NZ) has everything to fear – of course the Right want to dump Treaty Principles!
There is a Congo line of Trans National Mining Interests eyeing up NZ…
Govt to free up foreign investment in ‘sensitive’ NZ land and assets
Ministerial scrutiny of whether overseas investments are in New Zealand’s national interest is to be significantly reduced in a move critics say risks eroding sovereignty but supporters believe will enrich New Zealand.
National and Act’s coalition agreement says the Government will amend the Overseas Investment Act 2005 to restrict ministerial decision-making to national security concerns only and make these decisions “much more timely”.
The act requires overseas investors to obtain consent from the Overseas Investment Office (OIO) before acquiring interests in significant business assets, sensitive land or fishing quota.
…and lo and behold, Dr Pork Shane Jones is being appointed unprecedented fast track powers…
Fast track consenting in the fast lane
The Government is progressing changes to resource management laws as part of its 100 Day Action Plan, with the first steps taken to establish a new fast-track consenting one-stop shop regime.
“This new regime, which forms part of National’s coalition agreement with New Zealand First, will improve the speed and process for resource approvals for major infrastructure projects, unlocking opportunities in industries such as aquaculture and mining in our regions,” Regional Development Minister Shane Jones says.
Abolishing the Treaty Principles would remove obligation to engage with Māori at a critical juncture when Trans National Mining Interests are lining up to exploit land that can get fast tracked and won’t have the obligation of working with Māori.
Luxon wanted to play down the race anger at Waitangi but this isn’t happening in an economic vacuum. This Government has attacked worker rights, renter rights and gutted inequality programs and climate change funds.
His Government minus the race baiting is still a deeply problematic policy agenda for working class, beneficiaries and environmentalists.
600 000 need food banks each month, 300 000 are power and housing poverty, 26000 on emergency housing wait lists, 200 000 kids in poverty, an entire generation locked out of housing amid deep inequality, poverty and infrastructure deficits.
There is an attempt to usurp democracy globally and hand power to corporations, and the Atlas Network is at the forefront of this agenda.
The ATLAS Network is the international Hard Right Think Tank that have links to ACT, Taxpayers’ Union and The NZ Initiative. They are providing the blueprint for free market far right tactics attacking the Left and are funded by the petroleum Industry. George Monbiot explains what ATLAS Network is…
A crash programme of massive cuts; demolishing public services; privatising public assets; centralising political power; sacking civil servants; sweeping away constraints on corporations and oligarchs; destroying regulations that protect workers, vulnerable people and the living world; supporting landlords against tenants; criminalising peaceful protest; restricting the right to strike. Anything ring a bell?
…demolishing public services, privatising public assets; centralising political power; sacking civil servants; sweeping away constraints on corporations and oligarchs; destroying regulations that protect workers, vulnerable people and the living world; supporting landlords against tenants; criminalising peaceful protest AND restricting the right to strike?
THIS IS ALL POLICY THE NEW HARD RIGHT RACIST CLIMATE DENYING GOVERNMENT HAVE ADOPTED!
The sooner we connect the Trans National Mining Interests, the Atlas Network and all the local franchise holders, the sooner we understand the enormity of what we collectively face here.
Of course the Right want to dump Treaty Principles, make it easier for Trans National Industry to exploit NZ resources AND hand someone like Shane Jones fast track powers!
These interests are all interconnected!
Misreading the threat this Government poses Māori and all NZers only benefits the people who are promoting the narrative that this Government is somehow moderate.
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All those numbers quoted need money to address. If Shane Jones fast tracks some mining operations that generate billions for NZ, how is that a bad thing? NZ sits atop trillions of USD worth of high quality coal. Vast swathes of the West Coast (once Labour’s heartland) have an abundance of minerals. Everything in Politics, as in Life has trade offs. I would rather we dig some stuff up and sell it and use that money to build a healthcare system that works, be able to pay teachers, nurses and policemen a wage that lets them raise a family here in NZ so that they don’t leave for Brisbane or Perth.
China and India are going to keep needing coal, nothing we do will stop that so why not sell them some and look after NZ rather than making us either stay here and get poorer whilst using deteriorating services or to leave for Australia.
china is the biggest up taker of green energy so will need less coal in 10 years time .We wont have any mines running before then and imagine the roads needed to transport to ports .The big companies will cream the profits off shore so I dont see hospitals being built .Remember the coal industry that closed down on the west coast because the Indians no longer wanted it because it was too expensive to ship it from here .
Except NZ isn’t poor. There isn’t a lack of funds in NZ. For the size of the population NZ has quite a large economy.
The problem in NZ is that we refuse to raise revenue appropriately, and that’s not going to be addressed by allowing strip mining of sensitive or conservation land.
Why do similar mining jobs pay far less in NZ than in Australia? Because we’ve allowed people like those in the current government to destroy unions, kill workers power, and a lot of the associated benefits to the wider population. We aren’t suddenly going to get improvements there with transnational mining conglomerates that will influence the government to reduce worker rights, meaning even the mineral wealth you speak of will simply be extracted, with low cost labour (and likely also migrants labour).
The actual solution is to adequately raise revenue from our sizable economy and invest that in the health, education, and other public sector institutions.
not to mention actually killing workers
Right. Even a socialist government would be mining every viable mineral resource (including Labour, via the old State Mines). Miners tend to be unionised, so an expansion of the base of the labour movement is possible here. Organised labour should also be demanding a policy of energy independence, a source of many high wage jobs.
Bomber points out that the Atlas Network (and the Mont Pèlerin Society) are sprawling transnational entities, as are the multinational lobbies and multilateral intergovernmental bodies. The labour movement needs to be similarly interlocked across borders — and given how weak, backward and racialistic the local labour organisations are, they need to be sending cadre to countries with the largest workers’ parties for training.
Unless we buy back the banks first any money we earned will just flow off-shore and out of the NZ economy – ready to be lent back to us to spend on housing; that’s even before we consider the environmental considerations of your suggestions.
High quality coal? Oh, thats right, NZ is world famous for the quality of its shitty brown coal.
will you adopt the ‘norwegian model’ for our theoretical coal mines or flog it cheap to the govts pals…
Well said Yeti.
All the mainstream media, The greens, TPM and Labour are doing is trying to head off at the pass the uncomfortable realization that most New Zealanders agree with Seymour’s principle bill.
Like it or not eventually public opinion will win.