Monthly Archives: Aug 2017

Left wing versus Right wing is outmoded

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At high school one day in Year 9 my class was introduced to the concept of the continuum line. My teacher wanted us to answer a question where the options were something like “Strongly agree”, “Agree”, “Neutral”, “Disagree”, “Strongly Disagree”. I cannot remember the question, but he drew it on the white board and told us to go write our names above the choice we most identified with.

When I think about that today, though I am fairly sure this particular case was non-political, I think about the left-wing/right-wing political spectrum. How advanced it seemed then to my non-political mind and yet how overly simplistic it looks today when talking about political spectrums.

How quick we are to say “Oh, she’s a socialist – she wants to spend tax payer money on education”  or “Oh, he’s a conservative – he wants money to spend on the military” and all the while not really looking at why people adopt the positions they do. In conversation broad brush strokes that might tar an entire segment of the spectrum are used. This simplistic approach ignores many many shades of grey and they do not fit comfortably – if at all into the simplistic and out moded “left vs right” political discourse that typically defines politics.

I have tried, as have others to look at politics in something other than a simple continuum line. Some people like a two-dimensional model with a Y-axis as well as an X-axis. This enables criteria such as statism/anarchism, libertarian/authoritarian to be added. Suddenly the whole view may change. So, is one now a left wing anarchist railing against the I.M.F., the military industrial complex and corporations or they a right wing authoritarian like British Prime Minister Theresa May or her female predecessor Margaret Thatcher?

My thoughts are that the political spectrum is actually a sphere with an absolute boundary defined by extremism. It could exist as a two dimensional model with the rim o the sphere being characterized by people of extreme beliefs who believe that armed force, destruction of property, violence is necessary to achieve an end. These might be called radicals for their perceptions of society and their role in it would have been radicalized, but since society would tend to view this kind of action as extreme, extremist or extremism is perhaps a  better description.

The well known Political Compass website, which is used by people to determine where on the political spectrum they are located, shows some interesting results regarding the New Zealand General Election 2017. New Zealand First for example is shown as slighly socialist, but moderately authoritarian; National – despite being a party that promotes smaller Government also appears surprisingly authoritarian.

So, as we go forward in the campaign period, it is perhaps worthwhile everyone remembering that politics is not simply a one dimensional thing. It is multi-dimensional and the left-wing/right-wing obsession of the media is silly and simplistic. There is more to your politics – and mine – than just a simple continuum line like the one at high school.

 

Constitutional reform: my view

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Back in 2015, with concerns about the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement a pre-signing crescendo around New Zealand, and the then 11 other countries wishing to sign it, I looked at how New Zealand’s constitutional framework could be strengthened. I examined a couple of the key pieces of legislation to have passed in recent years that might impact our framework in the long term.

Now, considering that it is election time and I feel that New Zealand needs to begin the process of overhauling that framework, I revisit the issue. My concern that it is time to revisit the issue stems from an increasingly unstable international community, constant challenges to national security, but also some basic questions regarding a national constitution.

To be clear I am not advocating for unilateral overhaul. That would not work, probably get the Government of the day tossed out and be the cause of deep and rather justified public suspicion.

So, the first step to get the confidence of New Zealanders, is to ask citizens and permanent residents point blank, what they want. The appropriate method is send this to a binding referendum first that asks the question “Should New Zealand adopt a formal Constitution? YES/NO”. In doing so, I accept that this is where the issue might well stop completely for the foreseeable future as a simple majority vote (e.g. 51% to 49%)is not going to be sufficient. To this end I propose that a recommended majority of 66% be necessary to permit the next step to go ahead.

If the answer is yes (66% or more), that New Zealanders DO want a Constitution, a cross party panel chaired by a former Supreme Court judge would need to be established.

Elsewhere I have alluded to the process that I think New Zealand would need to go through to achieve this substantial undertaking, but what sort of topic areas would we want covered in a formal Constitution? I have some thoughts below:

  • Impeachment process for removing officials who are not fit to hold the office to which they have been elected or appointed to
  • Powers of the Governor General
  • Protection of the existing acts, such as the 1986 Constitution Act, Human Rights Act 1993, Bill of Rights Act 1990 among others
  • Do we have a bi-cameral Parliamentary arrangement with an upper and lower house
  • Checks and balances controlling the ability of the Government of the day to declare war, sign treaties or trade agreements without having sent them to Parliament first
  • Where will the Treaty of Waitangi fit in amongst all of this?

If the answer is no (65% or less), that New Zealanders DO NOT want Constitution, then legislation needs to be passed. That legislation provides for the issue being revisited at some point, and sets down the process that would be followed to enable a future revisitation.

This is not a minor exercise and its undertaking will take several years. But it cannot be rushed and the country must be on board in terms of support. How well that will happen will depend on how the Government and the Opposition engage “We the people…”.

 

The $1.5 billion loss on Christchurch red zone land

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When the earthquakes stopped ravaging eastern Christchurch, thousands of properties lay broken and abandoned. The owners had fled either because the quakes were too much to handle or their properties had suffered such severe damage as to be no longer inhabitable.

The Government came to the rescue, offering to buy them up at their 2007 rating value. Many people accepted and one by one the remaining occupants, upon reaching deals with their insurance companies, packed up and either left town or bought property elsewhere. By the end of 2016, only a few properties were still occupied.

Now, it has come out that since the Government snapped up what was N.Z.$1.5 billion worth of red zone land in eastern Christchurch, the value of that land has plummeted to a mere $21 million. If one works that out, 7,000 properties were worth an average value of $214,285. Now they are worth about $3,000 a piece. In addition to the money sunk into purchasing the red zone properties which take up all of Bexley, parts of Dallington, Avonside, Avondale, Aranui, $130 million was sunk into maintaining them.

To translate, the $3,000 I spent on courses for my Graduate Diploma would have been able to buy one of those properties.

So, what happened?

Effectively much of this is land that is not fit to be built on in terms of residential development. The properties either suffer lateral spreading that means during the shaking different layers of strata moved at different speed, and came to rest in different places from where they started. This has the effect of making the land unstable to build on.

Due to the high intensity of the ground shaking, in some places up to Modified Mercalli X, the dwellings would have also been subject to liquefaction, which would have caused subsidence. This would have damaged both the dwelling and the infrastructure such as the sewerage and water mains, and underground electricity cables.

Political parties as part of their campaign efforts in Christchurch are trying to figure out ways of capitalizing on the empty land and are proposing extra spending to fund projects that might make use of the land. No long term plan has yet been worked out. Locals are divided on what it might be used for. Some support letting it become light farming or horticultural land as this will not involve heavy dwellings such as houses. Others believe that it should become a sports mecca with rowing facilities and so forth.

Being a natural hazards graduate I tend to take a cautionary view of the land. It has suffered damage and there is nothing to suggest further earthquakes in the future will not cause similar problems. Seeing as the land is in what was the so called “Green Belt” around Christchurch, an appropriate use would perhaps be to let it become farmland. Large swathes of it are too low lying and too prone to flooding to be insured by insurance companies, which makes it difficult for anyone wishing to rebuild in the area.

 

Environmental policy: My view

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As I type this article, I am reminded how much environmental news and policy is playing a role in my life at the moment. Sitting on the same desk as the computer being used to write this article, is a folder with course material for an environmental media monitoring assignment. Next to it is another folder on another course regarding the Resource Management Act and Local Government Act. Both are part of my Graduate Diploma of Sustainable Management.

When I follow each election I think about all of the policy areas that I think are in the greatest need of change. The ideas I record are the result of my observations over the last three years since the previous election. They are also an attempt to record changes in my thinking to see if there are trends emerging, just as I am supposed to be doing in the current assignment for 72396: Environmental Perspectives and the Media, for the Open Polytechnic.

In the last three years, I have observed a growing intensity in the discourse about climate change. This has been amplified by a combination of both national and international events – the Paris Accord and the determination of nations to go ahead with it without the U.S., recognizing that the questions about how the climate is coping with man made emissions are too big to ignore; the realization that New Zealand emissions have continued to grow despite taking pledges like other nations to curb them.

The other major environmental concern that has bothered me is one that is much more obvious. The rate of resource consumption and the generation of waste has reached a tipping point where it is reasonable to believe that the economic and social well being of nations around the world, without regard to economic status will substantially – and possibly permanently – decline without substantial and sustained action. We see it in the huge amount of waste plastics and other materials being found in the oceans, the laissez faire approach to containing the radiation still leaking into the Pacific Ocean from Fukushima.

Some of my views have not changed in three years, whilst others have taken substantially greater importance. In no particular order, I believe the following should be priority areas to tackle:

  • Our ecological foot print
  • Carbon emissions
  • The marine ecosystem
  • Fresh water resource
  • Electronic waste

A surprisingly large amount can actually be done on the basis of just a couple of broad policy changes:

  • A comprehensive recycling programme for electronics, plastics, aluminium, wood and paper
  • A change in land use patterns

The first one needs to be supported by city/district/regional councils and central Government alike. Voluntary participation by councils should not be an option – when I was a kid there used to be a council supported aluminium collection facility in a shopping mall carpark at the weekend, which was very well supported. What is so hard about restarting that? What is so hard about requiring every supermarket to have a plastic bag drop off facility and charge $1 a bag? Or simply ban them – whilst department stores such as Farmers, Briscoes and so forth definitely contribute to the plastic bag problem, I doubt the average person takes 5-6 bags at a time as they would from doing their weekly grocery shopping.

The second one is something that the central Government can give direction on, but which local councils with amendments to the Resource Management Act 1991 and Local Government Act 2002 would need to take responsibility. Philosophical differences and concerns from private property owners are a certainty, but this does not need to be a draconian exercise.

If every large electricity user installed motion detectors in their buildings and set them to work between the hours of – say for arguments sake – 0700 and 1900, with an absence of motion turning the lights out, I believe the investments would pay for themselves with time. They would also serve a secondary purpose of reducing carbon emissions from coal/oil/gas fired power stations such as Huntly, Whiranaki and Otahuhu.

There are also significant alternative energy options available for New Zealand to explore. Many cities – Nelson, Christchurch, Blenheim, Tauranga – have good sunlight hours, and could therefore support or encourage solar energy, as the price of solar panels for this type of generation has fallen significantly. Tidal power is another if the problem of barnacles collecting on the turbine blades can be addressed – an estimated 8,800 megawatts of potential generating capacity, or roughly what we have now – is thought to exist in tidal energy.

The marine ecosystem is one where I believe New Zealand has an international obligation to introduce or – if such a treaty is already being drafted – support and assist an internationally binding agreement on steps taken to reduce waste in the oceans.

Talking about bold policy, here is mine

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Listening to Labour and National go at each other, both appear to be parties trying to land big hits against each other but only seemingly able to land superficial blows. Neither party seems to have a king hit policy or idea that the other one cannot respond to.

I have said before as have others that Labour need to release some bold policy in order to draw in voters. I find it hard to believe that politicians can be so bereft of ideas as to only think about ones that last to the next election. One might therefore ask, okay if you are so sure that politicians are bereft of ideas, what great ones do you have?

When a political party talks they have a short period of time to get the key points of their policy platform across to the media. Keep it clear and keep it snappy – bullet points are best in a print format. I will be focussing on the following over the next couple of weeks:

  • Constitution
  • Social Welfare
  • Jobs
  • Environment
  • Health

Reform does not always have to be economic. Constitutional and/or legal reform can have equally significant effects, and change anything from the structure of the legal system, to a nations constitutional arrangements and include such areas as type of Government, election frequency, a single House of Representatives or a bi-cameral arrangement.

At some point in the near future, possibly in the next couple of years and certainly in the next two decades, New Zealand will have to have this discussion. I would personally much prefer it to happen now on our own terms, so that if in case a need to defer for a bit longer arises, we can establish an appropriate temporary framework that can be dismantled or added to.

If it happens on terms that are not ours, that would suggest something major has happened, such as the reigning sovereign Queen Elizabeth II has died and the public are not happy with whomever became King. This could be problematic because politicians, whilst wanting to appear in tune with the voting public can often find themselves wanting to make changes when there is no public appetite, or the public want changes, but they insist it is just a vocal minority stirring up trouble.

What I suggest is not new, but I think it is visionary enough to be a departure from the discourse currently emanating from politicians and political commentators. Sir Geoffrey Palmer, former Labour Prime Minister, has likewise suggested that it is time to consider a formal constitution.

I agree with Sir Geoffrey. It is time to hold a binding referendum on the subject. It must be a binding referendum because ignoring it may spark a constitutional crisis of a magnitude not known to have existed in this country. It must also be binding because for all the transparency and relatively smooth functioning of the court system, there are some glaring loop holes, such as (but not limited to):

  • No clear cut legal mechanism for impeaching corrupted representatives who are not fit to serve another minute in office
  • Insufficient entrenching or other legal protection ensuring the key planks of our constitutional arrangement such as the Human Rights Act 1986, the Bill of Rights Act 1990 and the Constitution Act, 1986

I can see a time coming when support for a Republic will grow substantially. This is something I personally support as well, but for reasons ranging from love of the Monarchy, through to concerns about Treaty of Waitangi recognition must be addressed before this can happen and given the contentious nature of becoming a Republic is well known, only a binding referendum can give the result the due legitimacy.

It is probably too late to go back now, but New Zealand should have gone through a binding referendum phase to determine whether or not the country should have a Supreme Court.

So, this is one of my big policies. The extent to which it can play out will be determined by the outcome of the referendum. I envisage that if the answer is NO, then legislation be passed that sets in place the mechanism for revisiting something that believe will eventually have to happen one way or the other.