top of page

Subscribe Form

Thanks for submitting!

Search

Michael Bassett: LOTS OF INCOMPETENCE AND LABOUR’S NAIVE PLANS FOR CO-GOVERNANCE

Yesterday someone sent me a spoof of Dad’s Army with Jacinda holding a rifle and looking goofy, Andrew Little and Grant Robertson equally gormless at her elbows, and the sinister Nanaia Mahuta close by. Each was appropriately dressed in military fatigues and it was labelled “Dud’s Army”. It was a celebration, if that’s the word, of the most incompetent government New Zealand has endured for more than 70 years. The best example is Robertson’s spendthrift recent budget stoking inflation, while the Reserve Bank has to push interest rates higher to bring that universal thief called inflation under control. And all this on top of Labour’s failures with Kiwibuild, the missing $1.9 billion dedicated to mental health that miraculously vanished with no sign of any improvements, the dropped Auckland walking and cycling bridge over the Waitemata, and now the gold-plated, not-so-rapid-rail to Auckland’s airport. Projected to cost $29 billion all up, but poorly conceived, that money could underpin tax cuts until the middle of the 21st century.

What explains Labour’s seemingly never-ending incompetence? I put it down basically to a lack of knowledge and insufficient experience. Neither Jacinda nor Robertson has personally lived with inflation. Nor have most of their colleagues. Jacinda turned four years old on the day the Lange-Douglas government was first sworn into office in 1984 and began its arduous, but ultimately successful fight to rid us of more than two decades of rapidly rising costs that emptied ordinary folks’ pockets and reduced their living standards. Robertson only became a teenager in 1984 and seems never to have studied economics seriously. I doubt he’s ever heard the classical definition of inflation - that it is always, and everywhere, a monetary phenomenon, in the sense that it is, and can be produced only by a more rapid increase in the quantity of money than in output. Treasury officials know this, of course, and advised against the $27 per week Budget handout to selected low income people. They realise what Robertson doesn’t, that when the projected time is up to end the payment, there will be such a howl that the Minister of Finance will be obliged to keep paying it, thus continuing to oil his inflationary treadmill.

Many of Jacinda’s cabinet are stumblebums. Where is the Minister of Police as drive-by shootings escalate and ram-raids become fashionable amongst school truants? Six million dollars for unspecified police efforts to counter ram-raids? On the rare occasions she appears on TV, Poto Williams looks like a possum in the headlights. Who does she think she’s kidding? Has she, or any other minister, faced up to the fact that some really tough action is needed to deal with the gangs and the human detritus they seem to spread about the place? Does the grossly overworked Minister of Education who doubles as Covid minister spend any time on what, surely, is the most important portfolio for our country’s future? On any school day, we have it from the Maori Party, only 47% of their children are in classrooms. Yet, there is one thing we know about their parents: they understand incentives. Might they take more interest in their children’s whereabouts if their welfare payments were docked by a sum each day their children missed school?

This cabinet seems to feel that the world will automatically become a better place if they just spray money about. A billion here, $100 million there. Just hire some more bureaucrats. Fourteen thousand more of them, to be precise. Yet policy implementation seems to slow with every new recruit. The Ministry of Health was reasonably efficient when I was minister in the 1980s, but today, with many more staff, no one would make that claim. Ashley Bloomfield’s department’s failings will almost certainly be a factor in his decision to retire. For his minister to be embarking on a root and branch reconstruction of our health services in the middle of a pandemic must surely be the height of stupidity. Even in good times governments are wiser to follow the old dictum “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. Deal with worrying failures, but make use of the existing structure to help you achieve the changes.

Chris Faafoi is in a category of his own. His unwillingness to agree to media interviews isn’t surprising, given the hostility that has grown because of his slow processing of immigration applications. As Minister of Justice, he is hopelessly out of his depth, wrestling ineffectually with human rights concepts. He tried to retire before the 2020 election and should be eased towards the door as soon as possible.

But in the midst of cabinet’s ineptitude and confusion there are a couple of devious manipulators. Nanaia Mahuta and Willie Jackson whose political careers are nearing their end seem intent on creating as much mischief as possible with race relations. Armed with their demonstrable misinterpretations of the Treaty of Waitangi, they are intent on wringing as many privileges for the Maori aristocracy as possible before going down with Jacinda Ardern’s sinking ship. Mahuta is insisting on co-governance with her Three Waters and the health restructuring but has managed only to demonstrate its sinister side with her family nepotism. The old Maori way, before democracy was introduced by the settlers, involved chiefly corruption: promotion for his chosen mates. As can be seen from the way Nanaia has been engineering her family into lucrative positions of influence, her vision of co-governance will involve corruption on one side and democracy on the other. A tangled conflicting mess from which ordinary Labour voters will be the principal losers. Willie Jackson’s bizarre reinterpretation of democracy will never disguise the reality; the only beneficiaries from co-governance will be a collection of corrupt Maori aristocrats.

 
 
 

32 comentarios


barriergold
30 may 2022

Has anyone seen that advert on tv about co-owner ship re a house, is this not political advertising regarding co-governance, kind of brain washing us into consent, co this co that, is this advert breaching the advert standards, what are the readers thoughts.

Me gusta
Woodstack
31 may 2022
Contestando a

Yes very woke indeed & just up the New World Order alley.......and by Kiwi bank whats more - government driven......another opportunity at nudging the flock into submission and control by the state

Me gusta

lynreednz
29 may 2022

Making parents responsible for their minor children is important. That is part of their duties as a parent and if they are not controlling their children then their parents should be docked and they should be financially responsible for the damage they have caused.

Me gusta

Julian Batchelor
Julian Batchelor
27 may 2022

I treasure your writing Michael because you've actually lived and worked in the Beehive. Thus you bring a vitally important perspective. So thank you!


However, I think you understate the seriousness of the Maori push for co-governance.


Governments have always been blighted by corruption and always will be because they are run by fall human beings. Greed and ego have always been in evidence, and will always be in evidence. Incompetent politicians who lack knowledge and experience, will come and go, just like inflation, and so on.


But over all nothing hugely significant changes.


However, what's happening in NZ right now is different. What's different?


A coup is taking place, a hijack. This is a new thing. It's never happene…


Me gusta
gordonpotts4
gordonpotts4
01 jun 2022
Contestando a

Do you think that if the Maori lead the way of governing this nation,( Maori culture) that the people are going to survive very long- I don't think so,everyone know what was happening here before the settlers come.And this Maori culture is being pushed upon the citizens of NZ who have better things to do.


If the people realized the danger of what a co-governance with Maori culture would bring,it would take force to stop it.

Me gusta

barriergold
27 may 2022

Just thought the readers may be interested in this little article in our local Barrier Bulletin, funny I have seen nothing in the msm about this appointment. GB Islander Appointed to UN Panel. In an extraordinary achievement for New Zealand ( and Aotea ), local resident and board member Valmaine Toki has become the first ever New Zealander ( and first wahine Maori ) to be appointed to the United Nations Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (EMRIP), which advocates and champions the rights of indigenous peoples globally. …

Me gusta
MC
29 may 2022
Contestando a

Yep. de-Knight Key. The UN? Iran chairing the UN Womens Rights Committee? China on the Human Rights Council? What a joke.

Noting but platitudes, waffle and poking their nose into other Nations affairs.

Me gusta

janb
27 may 2022

Well written article. To sum up the situation in NZ: Never has so little been achieved by so few at such expense to so many! What a bunch of buffoons. Utterly clueless and blinded by ieadology.

Me gusta
MC
17 jun 2022
Contestando a

Hello and Yes Jan, you are right. I personally find it endlessly amusing watching virtue signalling sychophants lauding how wonderful and how hard done by Maori are. Hell they inspire me to renounce my guilt, learn Coonlish, etc ad nauseum.

All my life I've heard Maori murdering the English Language, but now I'm accused of not pronouncing Coonlish correctly, strewth!

I'm accused daily of stealing 'their' land. Really? Did some evil colonist drive up to their farm, chuck it on the back of his ute and drive off with it?

Everyday I'm treated to the depth of Coonlish. New adjectives that defy time and logic like Waka Kotahi, dreamt up by some woke fanatic in Windytown.

What other marvels of…


Me gusta

©2021 by Bassett, Brash & Hide. Proudly created with Wix.com

bottom of page