Come on NZ, we need a new Ministry of Works and you know it!

The enormity of the political gravity climate change adaptation and infrastructure resilience has created alongside the solidarity of a shared universal experience is materialising politically in a State that has to do things itself.

The 30 year neoliberal experiment in NZ cut the State back to the bone and the political project of the Right ever since is to tax-cut starve off revenue for the State so it can’t redistribute it in the first place.

What we saw with Covid and this latest weather event disaster is that you desperately need a State with capacity. So many of the problems we encountered was the shear slowness of an underfunded, under capacity public service.

With the economic recession, the geopolitical shockwaves and catastrophic climate change upon us, we must have a debate about the capacity of the State!

That is how the Left have to re frame 2023 – vote for the Right and get an amputation of the State, vote for the Left and build new capacity for the challenges ahead.

We need more Drs, more nurses, more teachers, more Police, more State houses, more infrastructure NOT LESS!

We need to debate for a bigger capacity State using the example Covid just gave us.

We need more Scientists, Drs, nurses, teachers, Police, more State houses and more infrastructure alongside policy that directly subsidises the cost of living like removing gst off food, free dental, free public transport, free food in schools and we will fund that extra increase through targeted new taxes to rebuild the capacity of the State.

The obviousness of our need for a Ministry of Works that actually builds shit is painfully clear to everyone by now.

Take Police in NZ, we have a pathetic 203 police per 100 000 NZers!

Compare that with 212 in England, 264 in Australia, 318 in Scotland, 349 in Germany, 422 in France, hell even Fiji at 227 has more Police per 100 000 than we do!

We don’t have the capacity to create a functioning State that lives up to our expectations in a liberal progressive democracy because we won’t tax the rich to find that infrastructure!

We need to actually sell the 2023 election in those explicit terms – vote Right and amputate the State, vote Left and rebuild the capacity to actually face the challenges ahead.

These new taxes will be a sugar tax for free dental, a financial transaction tax to lower GST on everything, a bank windfall profit tax to build more State houses, a social media journalism tax.

Taxes aimed at speculators and the wealthy to fund services for the egalitarian country we want NZ to be.

Let’s have the courage to actually argue and win over our fellow citizens for solution based policy that actually builds the capacity to have the extra drs, nurses, firemen, police, and teachers.

Let’s champion policies that subsidise people’s cost of living by redistributing from the few to the many.

The voters of NZ are still waiting for the Transformative change we promised them in 2017.

We need a Ministry of Works that actually builds the infrastructure we desperately need.

We need the State to do this because the Free Market has failed.

There has already been amazing work on the creation of a new Ministry of Green Works…

Rising To The Challenge: A Ministry Of Green Works For Aotearoa

Two of the biggest crises of our times – housing and climate change – could be the target of a new Ministry of Green Works that would integrate important responsibilities related to safeguarding Aotearoa’s future, according to a report released today by FIRST Union.

A Ministry of Green Works for Aotearoa New Zealand: An Ambitious Approach to Housing, Infrastructure, and Climate Change is a policy report commissioned by FIRST Union from co-authors Max Harris and Jacqueline Paul that considers Aotearoa’s systemic infrastructural problems and how they could be addressed by a new governmental entity that builds on the former Ministry of Works and integrates several key departmental responsibilities to future-proof the country for significant challenges to come.

“From our experience in workplaces, we know that contracting is a broken model that has driven down wages and led to massive inefficiencies in construction and infrastructure,” said Jared Abbott, FIRST Union Secretary for Transport, Logistics and Manufacturing.

“As the report describes, the private sector doesn’t have the capacity to deliver on large-scale housing projects and inevitably there are now worker shortages due to poor conditions in the sector.”

“Finally there is insufficient coordination to tackle climate change under the current model – the public sector has limited powers to ensure green building standards in housing and infrastructure, and it’s not equipped to respond to other unexpected challenges, like quickly building managed isolation facilities, for example.”

The report argues that the right response to these problems will be consistent with seven values: honouring Te Tiriti o Waitangi; manaaki whenua, manaaki tangata; Indigenous innovation; collaboration and coordination; creativity; safety and accessibility; and transformation of our economic model. The authors note that any new Ministry of Green Works must learn from its historic namesake and considers twelve risks related to its establishment.

The report contains feedback and interviews with experts including Ganesh Nana, John Tookey, Rosslyn Noonan, Len Cook, Andre Brett, Matthew Scobie, Syd Keepa, Judith Aitken, Susan Krumdieck, Alexis Harris, Murray Parrish, Jen McArthur, Troy Brockbank, Brendon Harre, Joe Gallagher, Ben Schrader, James Muir, Patrick Cummuskey, Andre de Groot, Ben Ross, Huhana Hickey and Nick Collins.

The report is being launched as the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) begins in the United Kingdom over the upcoming weekend.

“Even with our best intentions to fix our housing, infrastructure and climate problems individually, we will miss the boat if we don’t consider their interrelatedness and set firm goals that integrate core functions of all agencies – this is where a Ministry of Green Works comes in,” said Mr Abbott.

“When the last Ministry of Works was cut up and sold off during the extreme ‘reforms’ of the 80s, we ended up a decade later with the leaky homes scandal and a lot of pressing questions – we can’t afford to wait for the consequences of climate change to set in before we act.”

…we have better solutions and we need a bigger State.

It is time to go beyond the neoliberal 30% GDP debt straitjacket and build a new State to build the infrastructure that a allows adaptation and resilience.

Bernard Hickey argues that even if we agree to the neoliberal Wellington Consensus of 30% GDP debt, we could still borrow $60Billion and remain within that absurd ideological economic straight jacket so where should that $60billion be spent on resilience and adaptation?

We need future proofing ideas, we need a Ministry of Works to do it, we need big ideas and we need big new taxes to fund those big ideas, we need to build in self sufficiency, we need mitigation and adaptation.

Unlike Covid, whose worst was avoided, this Cyclone damage is real world and physical. The magnitude of what is required from the State politically resets National and ACT’s small Government agenda.

No one wants to hear about amputating the State when they are running to the State for protection.

This was the exact same mistake the Right made last time with Covid.

The Rights usual slash and burn of the State simply isn’t sustainable in face of how invested the State is going to have to be in the rebuild.

 

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