Fortress Aotearoa: The Plague Ark – 5 things Government could do right now to restart economy

ByMartyn Bradbury

We are now at 0 new cases.

Great.

Thanks to Labour’s ‘go hard, go early’ position,  we have dodged the public health nightmare we see engulfing so many other nations around the planet.

Now comes the second wave of this tsunami, the economic armageddon.

Most Governments hope to spend a billion each year in extra spending, this Government has had to spend over $23billion in the space of months.

That’s 23 years of normal Government spending in 8 weeks plus double digit unemployment.

I don’t think we appreciate just how enormous this economic crisis will be.

This pandemic has changed everything and on one level that’s great because the climate crisis was going to force those changes anyway, on the other hand we have no idea what to do next.

We are moving on from the immediate threat to life and now need vision to restart the economy with an eye to the ongoing reforms the climate crisis demands of us.

5 – Legalize cannabis market
For Gods sake! The entire Political spectrum should be promoting the cannabis referendum so that a legal and taxed market can be generated as soon as possible. We need the jobs, we need the taxation and we need a new industry NOW! The moral arguments against cannabis are bullshit, the health arguments against cannabis are ridiculous when compared to junk food or booze and the claims we must protect young people is a farce because a regulated market does that far more than a black market. We need the jobs folks, get over your denial and let’s start now.

4 – Reform toxic welfare & introduce a UBI
Labour have been too cowardly to reform the toxic culture inside WINZ and the danger of tens of thousands of working class people having to interact with a department that is built to be purposely spiteful for the first time is going to generate enormous shock waves. The application for the dole is over 60pages long, the process is purposely obtuse and abusive so as to turn the poor and desperate away, it is NOT built to be helpful or actually give two shits about the welfare of the people. This needs urgent reform now.

We also need to think about a UBI to help all those small business and sole traders to have some revenue stream during this down turn. Some have pointed out that beneficiaries could live on a UBI, my response would be to look at a universal UBI available to all NZers and there could be a welfare top up for those who need it.

Beneficiaries, the newly unemployed and small traders will be the most vulnerable in this downturn, they must be protected first.

3 – New Taxes
To pay for the enormous cost of restarting the economy we are going to have to look at new taxes, and they need to be taxes aimed at those who escape tax rather than hitting the same people tax always hits.

  • Financial transaction tax – make banks and speculators pay more.
  • Wealth tax – make the rich pay more
  • Multinational tax – make those like Google and Facebook who suck out huge revenue without paying anything start to pay.
  • Inheritance tax – redistribute some of the the wealth you’ve gained under a functioning society back to that society.

2 – Migrant Worker Amnesty
We can’t entice migrant workers here, have them exploited by unscrupulous bosses and then tell them to piss off back home. That is cruel and nasty. We should offer an immediate amnesty to all migrant workers in NZ to become permanent residents BUT right after that amnesty, we must close all immigration until a vaccine is widely available. Employers will need to use the existing work force here if they want to expand, this would end the bullshit games of companies claiming no NZer wants to be a burger king manager or booze seller so we need to import those workers. You either pay proper wages to attract someone to your job or you don’t get an employee.

1 – Reboot Tourism and high tech migration
We must be focused on an international tourism industry that includes a 14 day quarantine. That means locations where tourists can be safely quarantined while waiting to travel domestically. Seeing as most of the planet will shut down and stay shut down to international tourism until a vaccine is available, you will only be focused on high end tourism who can afford the 2 weeks, backpackers and freedom campers are gone. We must also be open to tech companies wanting to relocate their head offices here so that people can live openly in a plague free environment which will quickly become our international selling point.

NZ could become the Plague Ark, a country free of the virus. Every single time in this stupid country we price ourselves like basic bitches. We sell milk powder cheaply, we sell trees cheaply, we sell immigration cheaply, for once we have something everyone wants – we are plague free – so why not price that accordingly?

Remember, ‪if you think the pandemic is disruptively bad, wait until you hear about this thing called climate change.‬

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28 Comments

  1. Well said there Martyn; –

    But tourism must be encouraged only after- our infrastructure is restored.

    Like ‘rail passenger services’ which is now in a stop mode, caused wholly by extremely bad actors inside our public entities; such as Air NZ and Kiwi-Rail.

    In Kiwirail’s case severe damage is now occurring inside Kiwi Rail as the CEO Greg Miller and his side-kick David Gordon his “Operations Manager” has set about selling everything they can to totally wreck rail operations future in NZ.

    Read this note our ‘Rail consultant’ has sent us today and you see the problems I refer to.

    Dear rail supporter; 5/5/20.

    As we all know KiwiRail has sold 2 DC locomotives (4444 and 4571) plus 40 Ukk wagons to Martinus Rail in Australia to be used to build the branchline to Adani’s Central Queensland coal mine development.
    Well imagine my surprise when picking up my May edition of the Australian Railway Digest today from my P.O.Box and there on the cover was a headline and I quote “Martinus Rail takes KiwiRail locomotives to Queensland.”
    Inside is a two page article including pictures but the interesting bit is and I quote “It is understood that Martinus has the option to purchase four more DC Class units, with DC4041 and 4104 understood to be possible future selections.”
    Personally, I find this INCREDIBLE when KIwiRail continues, even in these difficult times to be chronically short of Loco power in the South Island, even with, as an example, only 5 trains (4 coal, 1 freight) of the timetabled 8 trains per 24 hours on the Midland Line/West Coast Timetable running and reduced trains also running north and south of Christchurch.
    What a way to run a railway…. End.

    Martyn; we are a public NGO, and in the last twenty years have advocated for community well being issues;
    We have experienced more communities are mentally depressed and worried about the agonisingly slow pace of restoration of our regional infrastructure since the new Government took control-in late 2017.
    Our region of Gisborne/HB are still waiting for our rail service to be restored after national in 2012 wrecked a one km of the Gisborne rail track by allowing the flood drains to become blocked by ‘forestry slash’ not handled correctly by any rules for control of the forestry activities.
    So eight years later our community sits here still waiting for rail service to be restored, as it had not been restored since Labour coalition promised to restore our rail when it got back into Government.
    These are the damaging situations that deeply affect the health and well being of communities.

    1. We had 4 million tourists last year in a population of 5 million. We need to stop the folly because the tourism industry is heavily subsidised by the rest of NZ who are actually paying the wage top ups, infrastructure and health care of that industries workers. NZ’s environment is suffering significantly. You can not pay to restore a planet, you manage it responsibly and NZ business and government has not done that, and only interested in quick short term private profits of that industry.

      1. Agreed 100% SaveNZ

        While we are told by our SOE’s that rail funding “does not stack up” we as taxpayers are all being fleshed out to fund tourism and we get no services given us as a result.

        ‘Fleece kiwis as if we are bloody sheep’ is what’s going on here.

        1. and our natural “play grounds” get exploited and ruined by the tourists coming.

    1. Well start with $100 million + and work your way down until enough taxes have been collected to fund ANY short fall (and Gareth Morgan’s work implies they’ll be NONE) for UBI and also building hospitals, schools and a rail infrastructure etc, that the last Death Cult Capitalist Govt headed by a traitor, sucked the ‘life out of’..
      Money is already created out of thin air and GIVEN to the uber wealthy. So the precedent is set for that cost, so use the same cost for ‘trickle up’, which clearly works, as opposed to trickle down, which is an insult to intelligence and CLEARLY doesn’t work.
      With trickle up, the wealthy already own the businesses where the UBI will be spent, so they can work for their money rather than have it GIVEN to them by the death cult capitalists.

      Do you have any ideas from you other than just cheap shots with no substance?

  3. Martin sounds like you and the unions have had an intervention by neoliberalism and big business for some of your points.

    Aka letting the 300,000 migrant workers per year (maybe up to 1 million people who knows) live in NZ permanently. It’s kinda like rewarding the slaverty trade and slavers of old.

    We didn’t have massive worker exploitation in NZ before neoliberalism worked out a way to get cheap labour here. And make the state pay to keep the cheap labour here. Aka the growing financial issues of the swelling population of NZ leads the government to conveniently sell off assets and go into debt to keep the modern slavery trade going. Of course in the 21 century the slaves are not slaves, they are the rich and middle class who have $30,000 – $100,000 to come to NZ and buy the residency for a few years of exploitation to the slavers, so hardly the poor demographic that the woke would have you believe. It’s a symbiotic relationship.

    300,000 new residents per year for years… soon leads to massive infrastructure and housing issues for everyone else…

    In addition most of the ideas to solve these problems, have already been attempted before Covid and failed – aka our glorious construction industry creating all the low cost housing and roads and public transport, (well sort of transport more upgrading the kerbs and bus depots while avoiding the actual public transport side.) They seem to be closing down the public transport to build the public transport and the end date could go on for an entire generation while they ask for more public money and more cheap workers to come in…

    As for housing the Natz tried for 9 years and failed, the COL has been going for 3 years and failed, using cheap migrant labour, removal of zoning in Auckland and now removal of democracy. Even with all that exploitation, it’s getting worse and worse with state housing waiting lists over $10,000….

    Even if we got the housing which seems highly unlikely after 10 years of neoliberal led housing construction which has failed, we are…

    now we are running out of water, the drain pipes are collapsing with the strain of all the growing McMasion housing estates for the migrant middle and billionaire classes, with reduced permeable surfaces and more surface area (the expensive detention tanks, eventually push all that water into council drains). Our harbours are polluted in the cities, we can’t blame the cows, as the councils quietly look to continuing to pump out sewage for the next 30 years while their CEO’s are being paid $600k+ to do it…

    So if we want to have a working planet and avoid our own children being homeless while their mothers work aka TA https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/305949/child-who-has-lived-in-van-has-message-for-pm or are being tortured to death while in care aka Dimetrius Pairama’s https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/398171/auckland-teen-was-kidnapped-and-tortured-court-hears , then tell the Migrant Worker Amnesty politely – no no no – I’m sure the migrant community themselves can put a hand in their own wallets for their own workers to go back home – they seem to be big benefiters off their labour they no longer need after all, and big beneficiaries of the NZ generous state system… https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/121359471/coronavirus-wealthy-liqour-store-barons-claim-550k-covid19-wage-subsidy

    Call me old fashioned but isn’t it time somebody’s future plan looks out (or even mentions) our own children who seem to be a lot worse off, than the powerful migrant lobby machine churning out their spin through the media turned neoliberal paid for communications propaganda model.

    1. As at 31 March, there were around 300,000 work and student visa holders in NZ. Maybe some visitors would qualify as well (e.g. dependent children), but I don’t think Martyn intended to include tourists in his residence plan. If it’s one and done, then that it wouldn’t be 300,000 per year.

  4. You are talking in riddles and contradictions now, Martyn.

    ‘need vision to restart the economy with an eye to the ongoing reforms the climate crisis demands of us.”

    ‘Reboot Tourism and high tech migration

    We must be focused on an international tourism industry that includes a 14 day quarantine.’

    You know full well that there are few activities with worse environmental profiles than international tourism; that one international return flight generates more emissions per person than are generated in a year by the average non-flying citizen, and that the emissions from aircraft are ejected where they do the most harm -directly into the stratosphere where they not only induce planetary overheating but also induce ozone depletion.

    Add to that huge carbon footprint the ‘planet-destroying’ emissions commensurate with the construction of aircraft and hotels and motor vehicles, and the localized pollution associated with the use of diesel-powered buses petrol-driven hire cars, and add to all that the emissions generated in getting food that is produced and distributed via industrial agriculture into the mouths of tourists. And to finish off, and add to all that the energy costs and emissions associated with what comes out of humans after they have eaten food, and you have a recipe for ongoing environmental disaster.

    And international tourism has no long term future because it is entirely depended on the overconsumption of rapidly-depleting fossil fuels, and is predicated on people elsewhere in the world having large amounts of discretionary spending, which they won’t have as the world progresses towards economic collapse and mere survival mode.

    Anyone who thinks peak oil has ‘gone away’ had better think again because it is gong to bite humanity very hard and very soon.

    So, if your narrative is simply about low-pay, low-skill jobs for people (wage slaves and debt slaves) then say so, Martyn.

  5. We need a nationwide “talk-a-thon” for the Kiwis ( birthright New Zealanders ) to decide and plan decide what our vision is for our country going forward. It has become very murky to me out there and it seems there are underlying forces at work derailing our country’s once solid and stable foundation and focus and once happy disposition.
    I was quite disappointed when The Herald decided to stop comments from most of the articles it printed. One could really hear the “voice of NZ ” through them because so many different people were freely expressing their views. eg: It was obvious early on from reading those comments that the changing of the NZ flag was never going to happen. I have not found an alternative to it.

  6. The worry I have going forward is that those in power now are the same group that could not organise to get houses built in the right place of the right type in the middle of a housing crisis. They promised light rail to Auckland airport which has never happened and the money allocated for it has gone . Child poverty is still at terrible levels dispite the PM herself taking under her wing . They have displayed little to help the environment those dealing with WINZ still face an uphill battle with uncaring staff.
    and immegrants are left hanging for far too long .
    The effects of the close down is starting to hit home and even a law firm is closing so the effect is being felt in all aspects of life not just those at the bottom of the pile .

    1. Yawn….and you think National and that idiot leader would do better. They the Nazi party caused most of the things you talk about above. Can’t wait until Sept when we send a v.clear message to people like you.

    2. Maybe the things they promised were just so much bigger than they first thought.Once in power the utter mess left behind could not be rectified in 3 years.

  7. Here’s the “pick of the week opinion” in our downtrodden but beautiful Gisborne region still without a rail service and Kiwi Rail now showing as being controlled by Neo-liberal crap again sings from the same old tired songbook who now ‘need an overhaul’ as they are stacked with Steven Jotces ilk again.

    http://www.gisborneherald.co.nz/opinion/column/20200505/kiwirail-the-need-for-change/

    Please review and publish this letter
    May 05, 2020
    gisborneherald.co.nz

    KiwiRail: the need for change
    by Peter Wooding
    Published May 05, 2020 1:40PM

    OPINION PIECE

    Peter Wooding
    Saturday’s pronouncement by KiwiRail’s CEO, that “the figures don’t stack up” for reinstating the Turanga ki Wairoa rail line, flies in the face of the fact that KiwiRail was party to the BERL report.
    Have KiwiRail staff been withholding information from their boss? I have been assured by other contributors to the report that the figures are sound. They have not been arrived at by guesswork or a “wet finger in the air” but represent potential costs estimated by professional experts in collaboration with companies in a position to do the work. If Greg Miller thinks KiwiRail would need to charge “five times as much” to do the work then it is obvious that KiwiRail is not the best choice of contractor.
    The BERL report considered that it would take several years to build up the southbound freight volume from Gisborne, but initially there would be enough freight for one 24-wagon train daily. Presumably, Mr Miller does not consider one train per day to be sufficient, but he also does not allow for a period of grace while more freight customers transition from road to rail freight. The need for this transition period is well understood by Government.
    Mr Miller’s remarks about the viability of the line focus solely on its profitability. Where was he last year at Budget time? Has he come across the term “Wellbeing”? Does he know that it is Government policy to expand the rail network for the good of the country as a whole? Even Gavin Murphy of Trust Tairawhiti recognises that this area could benefit from a range of alternatives to road transport.
    Of course, the paradox here is that KiwiRail (as a State-Owned Enterprise) “has to run a commercial business” and “there are no subsidies for the freight network”, and therefore cannot operate simply as a public service. The solution to this impasse is two-fold:
    Create distinct entities that separate the “below rail” (provision of infrastructure) and network control functions from “above rail” operations. Investment in infrastructure can then be provided by central government in accordance with declared policy, independently of the business of conducting profitable operations.
    Allow “open access” to the network. This would enable other operating companies to utilise the network in competition with KiwiRail operations, especially on routes where KiwiRail declines to offer a service. All operators would pay access fees to the government-funded “NZ Rail Network” company.
    The Minister for Transport, as sole shareholder of KiwiRail, is in an influential position to make these changes. I’m sure he would have the full support of the Minister for State Owned Enterprises and the Minister for Regional Development. Maybe the Prime Minister should get them seated at the same table and tell them to get on with it.
    The restoration plan is shovel-ready (obstacles perceived by the GDC CEO are probably incidental to the main task and can be addressed in due course). It is not necessary for GDC to “take the lead” — the project simply awaits the “green light” for implementation of the BERL recommendations. Get the line fixed and then sort the commercial implications. Tairawhiti businesses are waiting; when the resource is available, then is the time to enter into the contracts that Mr Miller wants to see.
    This long-awaited development, promised by the prospective government in 2017, would give us reason to remember 2020 for something else.

  8. Well, I have just witnessed the mayor of Grey District Council blatantly lie to the populace of NZ (or is it just that she is a fuckwit?), and not be challenged by the pro-melt-the-planet host.

    ‘sustainable’ mining’?
    sustainable’ steel production’?
    ‘sustainable’ looting and polluting of the environment?
    ‘sustainable’ conversion of the natural world into fossil-fuel-dependent urban landscapes?

    Undoubtedly the West Coast will come running for help when the next overheating-induced inundation catastrophe hits, and roads and bridges are washed away.

    We are doing quite well in our quest to make the Earth largely uninhabitable for humans (and most other vertebrate species), even without tourism.

    https://scripps.ucsd.edu/programs/keelingcurve/wp-content/plugins/sio-bluemoon/graphs/mlo_two_years.png

    But here’s a great idea for wasting resources and converting fossil fuels into life-threatening pollution!! Why don’t we allow people to come here from Australia for planet-fucking holidays so we can get enough dollars off them to go for planet-fucking holidays in Australia! (The sarcasm comes for free, at no significant cost, other than the carbon debt of my computer and the miniscule amount of energy required to operate it.)

    Jacinda Adern thinks trans-Tasman planet-fucking is a great idea, and is using her influence to make it happen. Gotta get the wage slaves back on their treadmills to preserve what remains of the global Ponzi financial system going just a little longer.

  9. Can’t believe what I’m about to say but…. I’m starting to agree with a lot of stuff you’re writing about and kind of sort of makes sense.
    Open up the border to high end tourism and high tech immigration could be an opportunity for Queenstown to become the Silicon Valley of the South Pacific.
    Also now that we don’t have hordes of tourists swamping our country it would be a good time to give gst the flick and give everyone an indirect 15% pay rise although this would be offset with a flat tax of 33%

  10. It won’t be the Ark for tourist unless everybody coming in is screened before entry

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