The Left needs to step up for First Time Home buyers, public climate insurance, Farmers and Growers
As Labour wait to create a reset for themselves and what Labour actually stands for, they need to reformat ways of being and state support for those ways of being.
The % of income spent on mortgages
60%- Tauranga
55% – Auckland
49%- NZ average
47%- Hamilton
47%- Christchurch
44%- Wellington
43%- Dunedin
With a staggering 55% of mortgages still waiting to roll over from the historic lows into a mortgage environment that is only going up.
We can’t allow first time home buyers to start falling over and see an entire generations wealth burnt off.
The State need stop step in here and offer owner occupiers of first time homes a Mortgage backstop via KiwiBank if the Australian Banks start mortgagee sales as the economy constricts.
We can’t let owner/occupier first time home buyers lose what they have worked for, it would generate a poverty loop that would mutilate an entire generation of home owners.
Equally we need to look at climate change insurance, maybe we need a new basic State backed insurance levy that provides for buy outs and managed retreat and pays for the damage when it happens because Cyclone Gabrielle is just a. glimpse of our future, not a rare one off event!
Equally we need to look at Farmers and Growers.
The Biggest Lie in NZ Politics is that NZ Dairy is the cleanest and greenest in the world when the reality is that it’s a cherry picked nonsense that leaves out pollution so NZ Dairy can get to the numbers to pretend to be clean and green.
Russel Norman’s take down of this Dairy propaganda on The AM Show recently was just ruthless…
“NZ is the biggest seller of a simple commodity called dried milk powder, the cheapest of the cheap, and if you look at what is happening in food production around the world they are looking for more environmentally sound food products.
They are looking for higher value products.
We’ve gone down the pathway of the lowest quality commodity you can produce in the world.
NZ is mid range in terms of its environmental cost per kilogram of milk solids, there is nothing special about it, and we do feed a small number of people compared to the billions on the planet and the economics is very clear that you can be just as profitable if you pull back on the stock rate, pull back on the amount of fertiliser and actually produce a higher product.
Organics is in fact doing incredibly well globally, so why don’t we become a producer of dairy rather than the producer of the cheapest commodity on the planet which results in us trashing our water ways and being big climate producers, that’s a better pathway isn’t it?
…he’s so right!
We always ignore that the 40million number is based on us selling milk powder as a base line ingredient filler for the manufactured food industry. The PR spin pretends it’s wholesome NZ cheese and milk and meat those 40million are eating when the truth is the vast majority of what we export is basic bitch milk powder used as a filler ingredient!
The Climate Crisis was some event we feared at the end of the century, what we are seeing is an unleashing of heat events well beyond what we feared.
There is just no plan to adapt to this new reality when it should be the driving force to begin immediate and radical adaptation for what is coming.
We have no comprehension of what is coming and we are simply not prepared for the age of consequences.
Watching National, ACT and Corporate Farmers use their economic and political muscle to avoid responsibility for what comes next can only be resolved by civil unrest and a campaign of civil disobedience against those interests.
Just consider how the Corporate Farming Lobby have managed to avoid any tax on their pollution since mid 2004!
They have pushed and pushed and pushed it off for 20 years!
National have already promised ANOTHER 5 year extension which will mean the agricultural industry have managed to stop any tax on their pollution for quarter of a century!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Claiming that NZs emissions mean nothing in comparison to China and India isn’t a justification to do nothing, it’s an acknowledgement that radical adaptation is the only move left because those Goliath economies have already doomed us to a dangerous climate change future!
The Left must force a bargain with Farmers and Growers for strategically essential reasons.
They are going to feed us when the famine comes.
A recent report on food security found NZ had incredibly low food security because it was so open market driven and refused to subsidise farmers.
Which is where we on the Left must drive the debate.
We should absolutely consider subsidising food grown by NZ farmers and horticulturalists and our seafood and meat and dairy that generates a 15% price reduction for all NZ produce consumed here.
For growers we need to protect our most productive growing land for food by giving those producers tax breaks to ensure they can continue to feed NZers first.
Rebuilding a direct link between the harvest grown here, the people who grow it and a grateful local market who enjoy the product WITH a 15% price reduction.
Climate change will kill global free market supply chains, we are locked into hyper-regionalism. We need to build new economic structures, subsidising NZ kai for the domestic market would lock in certainty for producers while strengthening food security for the population.
We have to find new ways of working together to ensure we can survive what’s coming.
The old greeds, the old hates and the old exploitations will no longer hold the system together if that system is melting in real time.
Super-rich warned of ‘pitchforks and torches’ unless they tackle inequality
Global elite told at London’s Savoy hotel of real risk of ‘civil disruption’ if more is not done to help struggling millions
This is the age of consequences.
They won’t be pleasant.
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The problems Bomber mentions were previously solved by organised labour:- a dominant role in the banking sector by member-owned mutual banks and the state bank; mass state housing construction; a diversified, advanced economy, of increasing sophistication due to ongoing industrialisation; protection of farmers and infant industries via trade policy; a state insurance corporation; conservation of resources written into a national industry plan.
The (Western) labour movement refuses to talk about any of this. The leadership and bureaucracy need to be purged, which will allow the workers’ organisations to break free from the corrupt political machine of the Third Way Liberal parties. Labour leaders such as Sahra Wagenknecht are already moving in this direction.
She taints herself with the schoolgirl crush she has on Putin.
Bring back 3% Housing Corp mortgages and family benefit capitalisation.
On this point I would agree with you it was a great start for many in my generation.
The Left had 6 years to show what they could do and it was a great big failure with all the bad figures up and no positive moves to off set them.
Labour increased benefits, and got rid of prescription charges, and built more state housing since the 1970’s. Unfortunately there were stirrers in every single community who wanted to smear all state housing tenants as criminals and didnt want to have to look at poor people, including those who should know better.
Correct Trevor but the current shambles are doing nothing to mitigate the problem so we will continue to live in fantasyland.
When you have the NZ dairy farmers fighting with the Canadian dairy farmers in court over access under the trade agreement that tells you that the industry is all about money with no loyalty to fellow farmers if there is a dollar to be made. While most of society has swallowed the lie that dairy products are healthy it is no coincidence that we are the only mammal species that voluntarily consumes dairy products from another species after weaning. There is an abundance of evidence to show that those dairy products are making us sick (not me I stopped using them decades ago) so we need to find a better use for the land.