The NZ Budget is out, and the greens are livid. Their favourite means of spending and controlling is the environment. It is their useful myth: when the data indicates their models for global warming are wrong it becomes climate change.
I am not a great fan of the current NZ Government. They are globalists: the next big political division is between the globalists and the nationalists (who the left either mislabeled as fascists or populists). Every nation will have its Le Pen if lucky… or they will find themselves living under a strongman such as Orban or Putin.
This government pitches its policies at the wallet of mid range Kiwis. Their main pollster in the last election, David Farrar, comments at his blog.
- Family Incomes Package to “cost” $2 billion a year
- Income between $14,000 and $22,000 drops from 17.5% to 10.5% tax rate
- Income between $48,000 and $52,000 drops from 30% to 17.5% tax rate
- An extra $20 a week for those earning $52,000 or more
- Family tax credits increase by $9 a week for first child and for each subsequent child by between $18 and $27 a week
- Accommodation Supplement maximum rate increases by between $25 and $75 a week for two person households and $40 to $80 a week for larger households
- Extra health spending of $3.9 billion over four years including $900 million next year. Total health spending up $5 billion since 2008
- $1.5 billion more for education over four years including $386 million for ECE, $460 million for school funding
- $434 million for vulnerable children
- $2 billion for law and order including 1,125 more police staff
- $205 million for social housing
- 3.5% GDP growth forecast for next year
- Core crown expenses as % of GDP to go from 29.2% to 27.5% in 2021
- Net debt to fall to 19.3% of GDP in 2021
- Surplus forecast of $1.6b for this year, $2.9b next year and rising to $7.2b in 2021
Looks a pretty sensible mixture of tax cuts and increased spending. Spending as a percentage of GDP still forecast to decline (as economic growth is projected to be high) so the surpluses will grow and allow more debt reduction.
The hard left in NZ are the Greens. They have completely converged. Labour is saying it is a lite budget from them, and the poor should to better, but the greens want the Department of Conservation to have more money to save species.
DOC will have $26 million less this year to invest in protecting nature than it did in 2008. This amounts to a cumulative budget cut of $422 million to Vote Conservation since National took office. These numbers have been provided by the Parliamentary Library and adjusted to account for inflation.
“National have short-changed nature again in Budget 2017,” said Green Party conservation spokesperson Mojo Mathers.
“Over the last eight years of National budgets, DOC has missed out on $422 million of funding that could have been used to protect our native species, build new tracks, and keep our huts up to scratch.
“Conservation Minister Maggie Barry has sadly failed to secure the level of significant new funding needed for the job of protecting our birds and restoring our most precious wild spaces.
“One-off funds during beech mast years do not replace the need for a sustained increase in core DOC funding. Both are needed for effective protection of our native species.
“This is the same Minister who is also failing to stop coal mining in the conservation estate and deep sea oil drilling in the Maui dolphin sanctuary.
“Protecting nature should be properly funded like any other core government service like health, education, and the police.
The Department of Conservation does run about a third of the land in New Zealand. As such, they are important. However, the coordinated nature of this tweet campaign indicates to this cynic that part of this is about finding jobs for the activists.
The division is between those who would see New Zealand acceding to treaties that limit our ability to determine who is in our country, and how we want to live, for the sake of having points with the global elite, and those who care for the locals.
The greens are aligned with WWF and greenpeace: converged, impotent, corrupt NGOs.
And I’m on the side of the locals. There are some truths in Maori culture, and the first is that people matter most. This is reflected in the English saying there are no pockets in your shroud. Your ideologies and your monies do not follow you into the grave.
He aha te mea nui o te ao
What is the most important thing in the world?
He tangata, he tangata, he tangata
It is the people, it is the people, it is the people
Maori proverb
National and Labour are trying to help the people. Perhaps, like the greens, they have forgotten that the first role of the ruler is to defend the realm so the most core part of the state is the armed services and the judiciary, so the stranger is kept our and justice is there for the populace, but they care about people.
The Greens do not. They have imported people — at least one Dual American Citizen. They care not a whit for the nation: they would, like Brecht, elect a new people.
Growing up in Los Angeles made Julie Anne recognise early in life that transport and urban design have a profound impact on the way we live.
She graduated from UC Berkeley with a BA and studied Politics at the prestigious Sciences Po Paris, before moving to New Zealand as a scholar at the University of Auckland, where she gained a Masters of Planning Practice with First Class Honours. She went on to work as a transport consultant at some of New Zealand’s leading firms, undertaking ground-breaking research in transport economics and urban design.
Julie Anne became involved with the Green Party soon after arriving in New Zealand – it was obvious that the Greens shared her vision for creating sustainable communities designed to serve everyone. She worked as a political and media advisor at Parliament before becoming an MP in 2011.
Since then Julie Anne has been leading the calls in Parliament for policy that gives people transport choices and embraces the principles of efficient and resilient towns and cities.
Her pragmatic outlook is a breath of fresh air for the transport conversation in New Zealand. She knows that the answers lie in local and central government policies that give people better options.
They are globalists. They are aligned with the narrative. They are part of the cathedral. They are electoral poison.
And they forget that the kiwis and Hector’s dolphins do not vote. They rage on twitter, for they know their time is nasty, powerless and short: the real fight this election will be between NZ first’s populism, Labour’s move towards populism and against immigration, and the global faux conservatism of National.
They are on the sidelines. For Kiwis know that it is about the people, about the people, and for the people.