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Michael Bassett: JACINDA STRUGGLES IN DR STRANGELOVE’S WORLD

Have you noticed recently how many shops have signs wanting staff? How many tradesmen are hard to hire because they can’t find enough skilled workers? How many hospitals are bursting at the seams because they lack sufficient nurses and doctors? How many buses and trains aren’t running because there aren’t enough drivers? And how slow the government is to open up the borders to skilled migrants who could help?


Of course, we train our own skilled people. We train teachers, although not very well. We are better with apprentice plumbers, builders and electricians. Our nursing schools churn out quality graduates, our medical schools could deliver significantly greater numbers, while our law schools would do us a favour if they produced fewer. But open borders used to keep our work force up to strength and provided top-up skills from overseas.


Yes, since Covid an international shortage of most skills has developed around the world, but New Zealand seems reluctant to try to encourage people to come here even though air connections are picking up and welcome mats are ready to be laid out to back-packers and those who have traditionally been drawn towards us because when it’s our summer its’s their winter. Why then are our shortages currently so dramatic? I’m convinced that the borders are deliberately being kept closed because Jacinda Ardern’s so-called Labour government believes it can force employers to lift wages for workers by maintaining a super-tight labour market. Some of this is the belief of a few mad scientists like Immigration Minister Michael Wood who seems convinced that pushing wages up for low-skilled jobs will benefit our society in general, and not accelerate inflation. Others in Jacinda Ardern’s cabinet simply don’t understand that today we really have no option but to keep the borders open. When the Lange-Douglas Labour government floated the dollar in 1985, set about dismantling import controls and abolishing tariffs, then reforming immigration laws in 1986, New Zealand joined the world’s labour market, gradually internationalizing our country’s work force in the process. In my street the house builders are Pacific Islanders; the IT specialists in the city are often of Indian extraction; a significant number of nurses in our hospitals are from the Philippines, while South African emigres have moved into health-related services. These days, anything entrepreneurial has a significant Chinese component.


Keeping the immigration doors open is even more essential now that the Minister for Child Poverty Reduction, aka Jacinda herself, has decided to keep more than 100,000 able-bodied people on Job-Seeker benefits, hiding them from the official unemployment figures. Ostensibly, Job-Seekers are looking for jobs. Forget it. Jacinda and her minister, Carmel Sepuloni, have arbitrarily jettisoned the traditional Labour approach to welfare, that benefits should be a hand-up, not a hand-out. Former Labour leaders always ensured that jobs were more rewarding than benefits. Today, by the time someone on a Job-Seeker benefit contemplates paying to get to work, and acquires the necessary clothing, there is a distinct advantage in remaining on the benefit. Yet, work integrates people into society. It enhances self-respect. It should be rewarded. But Jacinda doesn’t care. 100,000 people can quietly rot away while the country needs unskilled people for all sorts of jobs.


The unavoidable cost of Jacinda’s dream society is high. It fails the group she claims she wants to help. And they cost us all a fortune not just in benefits paid but in the damage her policies do to society. The record numbers of truants from school; the kids who get beaten up and sometimes killed by Mum’s de-facto; the gang recruits; the ram-raiders, some as young as 7. Most of them come from the ignored 100,000.


Neither Jacinda, nor Carmel Sepuloni seems to care a fig about the consequences of the mad scientists in their ranks who keep the borders closed but then refuse to restore meaningful incentives to find jobs. The rest of us suffer because services that society needs - plumbers, electricians, builders and odd-job people - can’t be found for love nor money.


This is a misery guts government that has given us rapid inflation undoing thirty years of hard-won monetary stability because it spent so recklessly during Covid. Ministers don’t understand the economic essentials of a globalized world, and despite what they say, they don’t care about the poor who are trapped in poverty by their policies. They see no link between their policies and crime which is rampant. The question we all need to ask ourselves is why is Labour’s caucus so lacking in talent that none of them seems prepared to say publicly that there has to be a better way. On current polls there’s at least twenty-five of them on their way to the electoral knackers’ yard. If only a few of them possessed sufficient historical knowledge about what Labour is meant to stand for, and enough commonsense to wrestle with the paucity of talent leading their party! As it is, we look destined to limp along with shortages, a hospital system in complete disarray, an under-performing educational system, and a crippled hospitality industry for another eleven or twelve months.


Can’t they think of something better to do than emote aimlessly while we struggle with the steadily rising cost of living, and endure incompetently targeted welfare and the crime and personal misery that go with it? We all know there is a better way. Why can’t Jacinda work it out?


 
 
 

52 Comments


harveyandsara
harveyandsara
Nov 09, 2022

Why can't she work it out?Because she is the most brainless PM I have come across in my 67 yrs on this planet. Having said that I think she is a cunning little closet communist whose sole aim is to get a high ranking position in either the UN or the WEF. Or both . Queen of the world . There are enough stunningly stupid people out there (usually ones with their snout in the trough one way or another)to still think she is wonderful. What is she overseas? A rockstar politician. The damage she has done to this country is breathtaking . She should be arrested along with a few of her mongrel bred mates.

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Unknown member
Nov 10, 2022
Replying to

I've good friends with that live in the UK, and Australia. And believe me my friend, the gloss is wearing off her turd alright. She isn't the fairy princess anymore, especially In the UK. But unless you stop watching her version of the truth, promoted as the truth, by way of her mob of paid for shills, nobody would know.

There is an excellent interview, on the platform, between Sean Plunkett and Chris trotter. See what u think. It blew my mind . Chris trotter will not be getting the obligatory Christmas card this year from the labour party, that's for sure.


Cheers harveyandsara

Aaron

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ilex
Nov 09, 2022

Cant find a tradesman? I find plenty at my local golf course or boat ramp every fine day. As long as taxpayers pay people to stay at home and others that get paid for having babies they normally couldn't afford, the politicians will keep increasing immigration which favors their re election. Meanwhile the people who see other countries as being able to provide a better future for their families leave NZ, and that's why those that are left have to wait 4 weeks to see a doctor and 9+ months to have surgery. I'm voting ACT as the other lot are not up to the job.

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mark. wahlberg
mark. wahlberg
Nov 08, 2022

"Dr Strangelove or: How I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb 1964" and" Being There 1979" are two films starring the late Peter Sellers which parody American politics from two distinctly different perspectives which have coloured the world I live in. Black humour at its best.


Meanwhile here in the reality of Gods Own............


Neither my wife or myself have a community services card.


Looking to book an appointment I was informed by the receptionist at my local medical centre I can expect a 6-8 week wait to see my doctor. If I last that long, my visit will cost $45.


My wife on the other hand waits no longer than 5 days to see a doctor at…

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mark. wahlberg
mark. wahlberg
Nov 11, 2022
Replying to

gazotaki, does the disparity between the two organizations I mentioned with regards to management of medical staff and costs for the benefit of patients not strike you as odd?


As a layman, my observations of my wifes modern iwi health provider suggest the service prioritizes the patients medical needs over the glitz and glamour of image. .

Meanwhile the predominately Anglo-Saxon, middle class financially focused state of the art service offered by my health provider seems woefully inefficient and expensive by comparison.

Just saying................

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JEL
Nov 08, 2022

Why can't Stalinda work it out Michael? Because apart from being a Marxist authoritarian ideologue, she's as dumb as a bag of rocks, that's why.

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farmerbraun
Nov 08, 2022

It was never a secret that farm labourers were being allowed in to the country provided that they were paid above the going rate.

It was explicit.

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