Monthly Archives: Apr 2018

National announce environmental reset

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At the weekend, the Leader of the National Party, Simon Bridges made an announcement. National is going to hit the reset button on environmental policy. Whilst this will please the party’s left-leaning Members of Parliament and their supporters, are the grass roots on board?

For a while National has had the Bluegreens. This is a wing of the party that has had an environmental focus in an attempt to shore up the party’s credentials with the Green movement.

For much of the time Prime Minister John Key and his successor former Prime Minister Bill English were in office, the Bluegreens were at best, paid lip service. Little was mentioned about them in the media, and little – unless the media ignored it, which is possible – appears to have been said by the Bluegreens. For the vast majority of National voters the environment was only something to be paid attention to if it meant depriving the Greens, Labour and New Zealand First of votes. That is probably still the case today. It therefore remains to be seen just how on board the party grass roots will get.

National, like Labour has philosophical supporters. Just as Labours are traditionally unions, lower income workers, and those with concerns about social justice, National is typically supported by industry, farming and people who are philosophically conservative. This is where much of National’s funding for its day to day core operations as a party come from alongside member donations and fundraising efforts.

It will be interesting to see what sort of environmental reset National leader Simon Bridges was thinking of when he made the announcement. Will it be a comprehensive one across all environmental concerns – waste, freshwater, marine environment, air pollution, climate change, soil quality?. Or will it be concentrated into a few areas with significant policy announcements intended to be made in these areas?

If National stick to a few key environmental issues that they are prepared to invest in, then climate change, waste and fresh water issues are the most obvious top three. In addressing waste and fresh water, National would be indirectly tackling climate change.

The waste New Zealanders generate is substantial. The potential for burning waste in order to drive a power station generator unit would allow a clean source of electricity whilst reducing the risk of toxics leaching into the groundwater supply – the technology and know how is there. This provides the opportunity for scientific research and significant job creation, whilst at the same time providing New Zealand with electricity.

Just because climate change involves cutting back on carbon emissions does not mean it is an economy killer. It is important for National to recognize this because a significant part of New Zealand’s environmental reputation, which is essential for keeping tourists coming here rides on reducing climate change. Other nations are starting to take significant steps to address this with policy announcements. New Zealand can become a hotbed of research into carbon neutral technology if it wants to, which like waste to energy plants, could lead to job creation.

Finally I have mentioned in prior articles the important contribution of fresh water based recreation. But also there are many obvious medical benefits to be had from clean drinking water and a secure supply. These benefits are too many and too diverse to adequately capture in an article of this length, but New Zealand will be a healthier, wealthier nation for it.

So, I look forward to seeing what Mr Bridges has to say in terms of policy. It is a chance for National to claw back some of the ground it lost at the last election. But if he is genuine, the grass roots will need to be on board. Right now, I do not think they are.

 

Can North Korea be trusted? Would the U.S. respect the peace?

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On Friday evening, whilst in a bar scrolling through my Facebook, I saw breaking news that North Korea and South Korea’s leaders had met on the border and shaken hands. After polite greetings and a show of smiles for the camera, Kim Jong Un briefly invited his South Korean counterpart Moon Jae In, to cross into North Korea leaving the world stunned.

I am not a hawk. I would love to see lasting peace on the Korean Peninsula. I would love to see a Korean Peninsula where there is no longer a Cold War-era hotspot waiting to flare up at a moments notice

But when I say North Korea should not be trusted, it is not built on anti-North Korean sentiment. It is not built on a want of war or a desire to keep up the division and the anger. Far from it.

The reasons why I do not advocate trusting North Korea are entirely to do with the regime. They are in large part to do with the scheming Kim’s who have a track record of pulling the wool down over the eyes of the West in order to gain more leverage. It happened in the 1990’s when North Korea wanted significant aid, and the West said it could have the aid if it stopped its then clandestine nuclear weapons and missile programmes.

Kim Jong Un is like any other dictator. Staying in power is everything. When a dictator is in power they have the police and military forces under their direction pretty much in lockstep on national security. Transparency suffers as does the human rights record of the dictatorship. Surveillance of potential dissidents; restrictions on the type of activities civilians can indulge in all come to the fore.

North Korea’s record on human rights is the worst of any planet. It has the only concentration camp in the world at Yodok. Its many prisoners are treated appallingly – sexual violence, torture of all sorts, execution and starvation are rampant. The gates happily open to let people in, but are rarely seen opening to let people out. The transparency in North Korea is about as good as a windowless room with no other light source. The corruption is as bad as anywhere else.

North Korea’s involvement in terrorist activities and helping prop up other regimes also comes into question. It has been linked to the training of police forces in Zimbabwe who have used terror as an instrument. It’s execution style murders of people outside of North Korea as well as its kidnappings cannot go unchallenged.

However the United States has questions to answer as well. In the 1990’s when North Korea asked for assistance, the U.S. made a set of concessions that were supposed to have been carried out within a couple of years if North Korea kept its end of the deal. Fast forward to 2003 and almost none of the American concessions had been actioned. This was despite North Korea having apparently complied with the American demands. If America could not keep its end of the bargain struck under former President Bill Clinton, could it keep any bargain that might be struck between U.S. President Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un?

Another question that needs an answer, although I am a bit afraid of what it might be, is whether or not National Security Advisor John Bolton, a hawkish figure who advocates war would tolerate peace? According to past N.S.A.’s there is apparently not a war that Mr Bolton disagreed with and yet to be a peace agreement that he agrees with.

If peace really does break out on the Korean Peninsula, South Korea must take a lot of credit. They have put up with North Korea’s antics for nearly 70 years. They have seen families broken up by some of the most cruel geopolitics in the world. They have been through who knows how many periods wondering if war is imminent.

Let us see how this goes, but now is not the time to be saying “oh, what a great man Kim Jong Un is”. Nor is it the time to be nominating anyone for the Nobel Peace Prize.

A.N.Z.A.C. Day not a glorification of war

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On Wednesday morning, thousands of people all over New Zealand gathered in the pre-dawn darkness to attend the Dawn Service, acknowledging the sacrifices made by the New Zealand Defence Force. They gathered to remember those that had gone to war and never came home, those that fought and came home bearing both physical and mental scars. They came to say thanks.

But they did not come to glorify war.

Across all of the ceremonies I have been to in Christchurch, not one struck me as vaguely promoting war or militarism. Not one failed to mention the horrendous loss of life and the effects on society that are felt from having lost so many people.

So, whilst we see plenty of coverage about our soldiers going away in the two world wars and fighting on foreign battlefields, I do not believe that there has been any effort to downplay the losses. This is irrespective of whether they happened on the sun baked slopes of Gallipoli, in the muddy hell of Passchendaele, the Somme, Verdun, Cambrai. It is irrespective of whether they died in the skies above Britain, at sea fighting the Germans or Japanese or in the Mediterranean theatre.

All of the ceremonies set an appropriate tone, sombre and respectful. The high losses suffered are shown in the number of war memorials all over New Zealand from little towns through to Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and so forth.

One concern I had was upon finding out decades ago that World War 1 was also the “Great War”. It did not bother me so much until I started to question what I was taught about the war and whether those teachings were honest. On the whole I think my education has been relatively honest about New Zealand’s involvement in the wars. When I saw the phrase “Great War” several years ago, I asked and it was explained to me that the name is not from any descriptor seeking to make the war look good or grand in any way, but a simple acknowledgement that the scale of the destruction in the countries affected had – until World War 2 – no parallel.

I am further assured by the words of General TIm Keating, Chief of the New Zealand Defence Force, who said that the ongoing and increasing popularity of A.N.Z.A.C. Day is not related to any glorification. Rather those that were children 30-40 years ago and now have children themselves who lost grandfathers and uncles, great grandfathers and great uncles in the wars. They are now wanting to show their children what it means to go to an A.N.Z.A.C. Day Dawn Service, to listen to the stories shared and appreciate what past generations have done for the country.

Like a lot of boys when I was younger, I was fascinated by war stories and the battles fought. I played computer games and read magazines from the bookshop. I participated in mock infantry charges and watched documentaries on television, such as “The World at War”. Whilst it made me interested in the how and why of battles being fought, listening to the stories of the service personnel who were there, one realizes that sometimes the real war was about surviving the elements in whatever form one found them.

Then I saw Saving Private Ryan. Any jingoistic ideas I had about war and the reasons for war were splattered on the floor when I dropped a half litre bottle of coke that I had just opened. Aside from the sheer savagery portrayed in the movie it rammed home the futility, seeing how it had marked Ryan all these years later as a war veteran. The realism was so strong many veterans who had been in France on D-Day in 1944 could not watch because it brought back too many bad memories.

And when service personnel come home from war, a lot leave the services. They go into farming, or train as teachers, or lawyers, or doctors – something more constructive than killing people. But they never forget where they went and what the saw. And whilst bullet wounds generally heal, the mental scars are often more impervious.

Whilst I will be pro-military, it is not because of a revision of my thoughts on war. It is horrible, senseless and usually started for reasons that are questionable at best. It is because no sane country leaves itself unprotected in a day and age where future wars are going to be about geopolitics and resources. I will be pro-military because the New Zealand Defence Force is an honourable and professional outfit to be a part of, and – despite the investigation into the fight in Afghanistan – does not believe in nor participate in the use of torture.

One day the Defence Force may have to fight. Like all I hope it never comes and that future generations of soldiers will not find their names etched into the cold hard gravestones like their forebears. But I don’t think anyone of them will be going to war any more enthusiastically than any of their many predecessors.

 

Another stock market crash coming?

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One day in October 1929 the stock market suddenly went into a catastrophic
plunge. The resulting economic depression saw millions of people across the west struggling to feed and clothe themselves and their children. Farmers walked off farms in places like Oklahoma, that then proceeded to be ravaged by dust storms of particular ferocity. It also enabled the rise of dictators like Adolf Hitler who seized on Germany’s ill fortune to push extremist agenda’s that would ultimately prove horrendous.

89 years after the 1929 crash, with notable crises or severe corrections in 1987 and 2008 is it possible that another is looming?

Possibly. When the 2007-09 crisis ended, legislation.was being pushed through Parliaments and national Houses of Representatives world wide. It was an attempt to ensure that the appropriate legislation would have time to be passed by Parliament seeking to address those concerns knowing a contentious debate about anything that may entail restrictions or negative attitudes is likely to follow.

New Zealand should not fool itself. A large scale collapse would affect all economic sectors. Tens of thousands of jobs in New Zealand could be potentially wiped out by the collapse.

As was the case in the 1930’s a new collapse with prolonged depression could give rise to a new generation of hardline politicians and/or dictators. The key players however are already firmly entrenched.

The conditions are favourable. The key conditions in the United States that contributed to the Global Financial Crisis of 2007-09 include:

  • Reserve Bank failing to check toxic mortgages
  • Massive corporate governance breakdown
  • Powerful mix of debt and risk by a large number of households and Wall Street
  • Policy makers inability to.understand what was happening and how to fix it
  • Massive failure of public and private accountability

Attempts to rein in the banks were introduced under President Barak Obama. The reforms that were enacted by Chris Dodd and Barney Frank were meant to check the conditions that led to the 2007-09 Global Financial Crisis. They have been systematically under cut by President Donald Trump. On 24 March 2018 much of the gains that were made by the passage of the legislation that Mr Dodd and Mr Frank put their name to were undone by the Financial CHOICE Act.

New Zealanders need to spread their savings across multiple sources, so that their exposure to undue risk is mitigated. Although New Zealand banks are more transparent than American banks, they are lacking in corporate oversight. Between 01 January 2006 and 01 January 2013, 67 financial institutions failed in New Zealand between 2006-2010 costing New Zealanders more than N.Z.$9 billion in savings that they thought were secure.

What have New Zealand institutions done to reduce the likelihood of further collapses in the future and improve the chances of recovering the losses? Not very much. I cannot recall any regulatory checks and balances being put in place that ensure savings are not being squirreled away.

What new tools and ideas does the Reserve Bank have for dealing with the challenges a stock market crash, post Global Financial Crisis? Shamubeel Eaqub, an economist, painted a grim picture in 2017 of how well prepared New Zealand banks are.

It honestly seems like a really radical idea, and possibly one that would not work in New Zealand. When Iceland suffered the Great Financial Crisis like other western countries it decided that enough was enough, and that the banking sector was going to get a lesson. The bad players were arrested, tried and jailed. Whilst the rest of Europe wallowed in recession or very little growth, Iceland began to recover in a way that surprised many.

How could New Zealand learn from these experiences?

Technology regulation in New Zealand needs overhaul

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Many of you might have watched Terminator movies when you were kid. For those deprived of what was essential viewing for my generation, they were about the remnants of humanity versus intelligent machines created by Skynet which posed a threat to the human race. These movies were science-fiction at its finest. But 30 years after the first one, killer robots are not so far fetched now as we thought.

It is not just killer robots – more on that later – but also the misuse of drones, which have many practical military and civilian uses, around airports and the rise of the sexual robot that have raised concerns. A mixture of security, ethical and safety issues have arisen at a speed that New Zealand politicians seem to have been caught flat footed.

New Zealand politicians have been slow to catch on to the growing threat for example posed by the use of drones and lasers around airports. Not a month goes by without drones and/or lasers being implicated in a potentially dangerous act that could have brought down an aircraft. A few weeks ago drones held up or forced the diversion of aircraft at Auckland Airport for over an hour. Other instances have included interference around Christchurch Airport by people with lasers.

Whilst progress is being made in tackling the interference of aircraft by people wielding lasers, this is not the case with drones. In the case of lasers, criminal prosecutions have been brought against several people, which has sent a message that this is criminal activity that can be traced.

Drones pose a bigger risk. They can be made to hover for long periods of time, move randomly with the pilot having no chance to react in time and their physical mass is large enough that it would cause substantial damage to a plane. Coupled with the restrictions placed on aircraft flight paths around airports, the potential to cause a major civil aviation incident is very real.

It is time to ask questions of how appropriate sexual robots are. These are predominantly female gendered robots that imitate sexual favours being performed. As robots have no concept of ethics, given the just alarm over sexual violence, how appropriate is it for a person to act out their fantasies on a robotic being that cannot say no or physically reject inappropriate conduct. Without appropriate checks on what sort of functions a robot can and cannot perform, is technology lending itself inadvertently to some of the darkest and most dangerous of control over a human being?

But the most dangerous robotic menace are potential murder drones or killer robots that might open fire or otherwise use lethal force against a human being. The artificial intelligence race means that robots with a degree of humanoid intelligence already exist. This is not just a concern of mine, but a concern of human rights organizations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. Numerous countries are already calling for a ban of such technology and point to the certainty that rogue states such as – but not limited to – North Korea might get hold of it and would be most certain to use it against rivals.

Overhauling regulation does not necessarily mean bringing in a raft of new laws, although that will definitely be necessary in dealing with some types of technology. It might well be that existing laws are fine, but just need updating. In the case of drones for example new regulations will be necessary, including licensing, fines and operating compliance with the Civil Aviation Authority rules.