The Prime Minister has confirmed a general Treaty of Waitangi clause will be included in new legislation paving the way for the partial sale of four state-owned energy companies. Mr Key says words will be added to make it absolutely clear the Treaty obligations do not apply to private shareholders in the partially privatized companies.
—news item
There is immense relief throughout the private shareholders community today that Treaty obligations will definitely not apply to them.
Expressions of relief have ranged from 'Phew!' to 'And a bloody good job too.'
One experienced shareholder who prefers not to be named says he and other shareholders would have found it embarrassing to even acknowledge the existence of the Treaty, let alone have any obligations under it.
'We just wouldn't have felt comfortable getting our heads around all that historical stuff,' he says. 'It's not really appropriate having a sense of history when you're looking for a decent return on your investment.'
This veteran investor says if Treaty ideas had been allowed to infiltrate and infect the financial markets, there's no telling where it would end. They'd probably start teaching it in schools, he says, and exposing vulnerable young people to unsettling ideas.
Another investor who is looking forward to getting a piece of Mighty River Power or Meridian Energy says he saw a Maori on the other side of the street once and felt a bit funny about it.
He points out that investment is a global business these days and it would have been totally cringe-making having to explain to overseas brokers and fund managers that in New Zealand you couldn't just go ahead and do what you like but had to keep looking over your shoulder wondering who was going to pop out of the bushes next and start talking about principles and clauses.
'I think New Zealand needs to keep in line with robust global standards,' he says, 'and this Treaty stuff frankly is, well, not to put too fine a point on it, a bit nancy-boy if you know what I mean.'
Hamilton father of three Donald Trumpet, who heads the investors' group Cashed-Up Mums and Deleveraged Dads, says it's all very well having fancy ideas about rights and ownership but when it comes to investment opportunities a level head and a firm handshake are the best fit with the profit motive.
'I think the Bible had it pretty right,' reasons Mr Trumpet. 'Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's and let the Tauranga Horowhenua look after themselves.'
Mr Trumpet says shareholders are a proud people who have had to fight for everything they've got and didn't get where they are today by kowtowing to others, especially those who have no idea of the courage it takes to stand in the market and risk everything on a moment's trade.
He adds, however, that he is no racist—far from it; in fact, he personally regards Perry Weepu as a better halfback than Jimmy Cowan.
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
Sunday, February 19, 2012
Honkies, listen up
Duncan Garner (a political journalist I have a lot of time for) may not realize it, but every time he says 'The Government sold the Crafar farms to the Chinese,' as he did twice tonight on 3 News, he is being vaguely if not specifically racist. The point being that I doubt very much whether he would say 'The Government sold the Crafar farms to the British,' or the Americans, or the Australians, or anyone else English-speaking. He would almost certainly say they sold them to the specifically named company or corporation that bought them. To keep saying 'the Chinese' is to lump everyone Chinese (all one-billion-plus of them) into the same basket. 'The Chinese,' whether intended or not, carries connotations of an entire nation with designs on New Zealand.
There is a similar tendency among some media (not Garner), commentators and politicians to talk about 'Maori' as if they are an amorphous blob of a race, all with the same intentions (usually interpreted as trying to take stuff off Pakeha). Honkies, listen up: it is possible to tell them apart. Make the effort.
There is a similar tendency among some media (not Garner), commentators and politicians to talk about 'Maori' as if they are an amorphous blob of a race, all with the same intentions (usually interpreted as trying to take stuff off Pakeha). Honkies, listen up: it is possible to tell them apart. Make the effort.
Friday, February 10, 2012
Already begun
Oh no, I said too much; I haven't said enough. These lines, from REM's 'Losing My Religion,' always take me, by a direct route, to the incandescent last lines of Delmore Schwartz's short story 'In Dreams Begins Responsibilities,' when the usher in the movie theatre drags him away from his mother and father (his mother and father when they were courting, before he was born), saying, 'Don't you know that you can't do whatever you want to do?...You will be sorry if you do not do what you should do, you can't carry on like this, it is not right, you will find out soon enough, everything you do matters too much.' And he said that dragging me through the lobby of the theatre into the cold light, and I woke up into the bleak winter morning of my twenty-first birthday, the windowsill shining with its lip of snow, and the morning already begun.
Such connexions.
Such connexions.
Thursday, February 9, 2012
Put another log on the fire
The lawyer for the former chief executive of Pike River Coal, Peter Whittall, says the methane explosion that killed 29 men in the mine could have been ignited by contraband such as cigarette lighters, carried into the mine by the workers.—news item
Ten other possible reasons for the disaster that also absolve management from blame:
Mine worker with Scouting experience rubbing two sticks together to strike a spark.
Candles lit for cake to celebrate somebody's birthday.
Too much accelerant poured on barbecue to get it going.
Sausage sizzle that went tragically wrong.
Miner setting himself alight in protest at persecution of Tibetan monks.
One-bar heater accidentally knocked over by miner at coalface.
Heated towel rail malfunction.
Mine workers having fun during teabreak by waving sparklers.
Major fireworks display.
Kids playing with matches.
Ten other possible reasons for the disaster that also absolve management from blame:
Mine worker with Scouting experience rubbing two sticks together to strike a spark.
Candles lit for cake to celebrate somebody's birthday.
Too much accelerant poured on barbecue to get it going.
Sausage sizzle that went tragically wrong.
Miner setting himself alight in protest at persecution of Tibetan monks.
One-bar heater accidentally knocked over by miner at coalface.
Heated towel rail malfunction.
Mine workers having fun during teabreak by waving sparklers.
Major fireworks display.
Kids playing with matches.
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
Monday, January 23, 2012
Nail scissors
'So what can we do to prevent child abuse in New Zealand—or at least minimize its incidence?' Thus Graeme McCormick, a retired Family Court judge, in a long thinkpiece in the December North & South. He goes on: 'I strongly advocate early identification of children at significant risk… Resources could then be targeted at the parents and caregivers… I envisage existing domestic violence coordinators would make a referral to the organization most able to assist in the particular circumstances…'
And so on. There is a great deal more in that vein. All incredibly worthy and well-intentioned, and if that sounds like sneering, it's not, because Graeme McCormick, like countless other unsung people, will have done much in his career to combat or ameliorate child abuse, and will know what he's talking about.
But I find this kind of contribution to the debate terribly saddening, because as I said yesterday, child abuse will never be truly prevented or minimized unless fundamental economic changes are made—changes of a kind neither major political party is willing to address. (Mike Williams put it simply on Nine to Noon this morning when he said we just need to help poor people get wealthier.) So anything short of that may make a little bit of a difference here, and a little bit of a difference there, but will not stem the horrific incidence of child torture, abuse and murder. It would be like trying to empty a river with a teaspoon, or hack back old man's beard with nail scissors.
Am I being naively idealistic in believing it's possible to completely put a stop to child abuse and murder? Before a chorus of 'Yes, you are, you mug' rises to a crescendo, I will just cite two examples of what a society can do if it really puts its collective mind to it: the extraordinary reduction in smoking in the course of just one generation, and the dramatic drop in the road toll by means of a sustained and determined campaign. The fact that we can't apply the same determination to tackling child abuse tells me that, at bottom, we have somehow resigned ourselves to it as a 'fact of life'—a belief made all the more palatable if we allow ourselves to see the abuse as a symptom of moral failure. Maybe it is in some cases; but the pattern of abuse coincides remarkably with the patterns of disadvantage, unemployment and low income. And when you see the problem in those terms, nail scissors just don't cut it.
And so on. There is a great deal more in that vein. All incredibly worthy and well-intentioned, and if that sounds like sneering, it's not, because Graeme McCormick, like countless other unsung people, will have done much in his career to combat or ameliorate child abuse, and will know what he's talking about.
But I find this kind of contribution to the debate terribly saddening, because as I said yesterday, child abuse will never be truly prevented or minimized unless fundamental economic changes are made—changes of a kind neither major political party is willing to address. (Mike Williams put it simply on Nine to Noon this morning when he said we just need to help poor people get wealthier.) So anything short of that may make a little bit of a difference here, and a little bit of a difference there, but will not stem the horrific incidence of child torture, abuse and murder. It would be like trying to empty a river with a teaspoon, or hack back old man's beard with nail scissors.
Am I being naively idealistic in believing it's possible to completely put a stop to child abuse and murder? Before a chorus of 'Yes, you are, you mug' rises to a crescendo, I will just cite two examples of what a society can do if it really puts its collective mind to it: the extraordinary reduction in smoking in the course of just one generation, and the dramatic drop in the road toll by means of a sustained and determined campaign. The fact that we can't apply the same determination to tackling child abuse tells me that, at bottom, we have somehow resigned ourselves to it as a 'fact of life'—a belief made all the more palatable if we allow ourselves to see the abuse as a symptom of moral failure. Maybe it is in some cases; but the pattern of abuse coincides remarkably with the patterns of disadvantage, unemployment and low income. And when you see the problem in those terms, nail scissors just don't cut it.
Sunday, January 22, 2012
No hand unflapped
News item: Deputy prime minister Bill English and Maori Party co-leader Tariana Turia are setting up a ministerial committee on poverty under the Maori Party's post-election agreement with the National Party.
News item: Labour's social development spokesperson Jacinda Ardern says with poverty and child abuse so interlinked, the committee could be an opportunity for parties to work together.
News item: Children's commissioner Russell Wills says attacking child poverty should be the first of seven goals in an action plan arising out of the government's green paper on vulnerable children.
News item: Spurred into action by Bryan Bruce's television documentary on child poverty, Whangarei schoolgirl Jazmine Heka plans to spend the summer collecting signatures for a children's rights petition that she hopes to see translated into law.
What do all these plans and statements have in common? Good intentions, yes; familiarity too—how many times have we heard them promoted? That they are being promoted, again, tells us how little progress has been made on tackling 'poverty' and/or 'child poverty' (to borrow the usual definitions for the moment).
But what they most have in common, I'm sorry to say, is their futility and, in the case of the politicians, their hypocrisy. The only honest-to-goodness approach is Jazmine Heka's, because it comes out of idealism, compassion and hope. Good luck with that. Sometimes, just sometimes, public pressure pays off. In this case, however, I don't think a law change is going to cut it.
The politicians' plans are futile and hypocritical because they know perfectly well that child poverty, or any kind of poverty, will never be 'solved' or 'eliminated' or even dramatically improved without fundamental economic changes of a kind neither major party is willing to contemplate, let alone embrace. The very fact that 'poverty' and its close relation 'child poverty' are defined the way they are gives the game away. They're like 'unemployment.' (Sorry about all the inverted commas, but we're dealing with the toy bricks of economists' and politicians' playpens here.) Unemployment, as a mass phenomenon, is not something that happens in spite of the economic system we have: it happens because of it. It's built in; it's no accident. Similarly with poverty, the main driver of crimes like child abuse.
Already a small child has died this year from non-accidental injuries and nothing is surer than that, by the end of the year, the roll of severely abused and murdered children will have risen to at least a dozen. The direct connection between such cases and the social and economic circumstances of the perpetrators is often acknowledged, but when it comes to tackling the root causes of those circumstances, all we get, if we get anything at all, is resource reallocation, greater frontline funding, committees, reports, anguished declarations etc. Hand-flapping, in short. Meanwhile the rich get rich, the poor get poorer and the killings go on.
Solution (or should I say 'solution'): change the system, really change it; don't just fiddle with a few knobs and levers. That doesn't require revolution; it doesn't even, in my view, require the wholesale rejection of capitalism. An example of genuine and far-reaching economic change would be the abandonment of growth as the be-all and end-all of national achievement and the adoption of a genuine progress indicator (GPI) that measures all the factors involved in economic activity. This is hardly a new idea; it has gained a little traction in recent years—even the Treasury has canvassed it; but National and Labour appear to regard it as the political equivalent of Ken Ring's moon meteorology.
Switching from GDP to GPI won't bring people out of poverty overnight, but I'm willing to bet it would be a big step towards practising economics as if people mattered (as E F Schumacher subtitled Small Is Beautiful) and therefore away from the aggressive growth-at-all-costs materialism that inexorably widens the gap between rich and poor. Like a capital gains tax, or amending the Reserve Bank Act to make full employment the main goal, it would start the reorientation of the economy away from its current principal purpose, which—let's be frank—is to serve the interests of shareholders and investors, not working people.
There are many things we could do; but given the persistence of child abuse, child murder and child poverty in our society, you'd have to be very obtuse to believe that simply repeating what's already been tried is going to succeed this time. As Einstein famously said, 'Insanity is doing the same thing, over and over again, but expecting different results.'
Yet in his foreword to the government's green paper, the best the prime minister can come up with is: 'We will all need to work hard across a number of fronts and develop new, integrated solutions to improve outcomes for young people.'
That sounds like business as usual to me.
News item: Labour's social development spokesperson Jacinda Ardern says with poverty and child abuse so interlinked, the committee could be an opportunity for parties to work together.
News item: Children's commissioner Russell Wills says attacking child poverty should be the first of seven goals in an action plan arising out of the government's green paper on vulnerable children.
News item: Spurred into action by Bryan Bruce's television documentary on child poverty, Whangarei schoolgirl Jazmine Heka plans to spend the summer collecting signatures for a children's rights petition that she hopes to see translated into law.
What do all these plans and statements have in common? Good intentions, yes; familiarity too—how many times have we heard them promoted? That they are being promoted, again, tells us how little progress has been made on tackling 'poverty' and/or 'child poverty' (to borrow the usual definitions for the moment).
But what they most have in common, I'm sorry to say, is their futility and, in the case of the politicians, their hypocrisy. The only honest-to-goodness approach is Jazmine Heka's, because it comes out of idealism, compassion and hope. Good luck with that. Sometimes, just sometimes, public pressure pays off. In this case, however, I don't think a law change is going to cut it.
The politicians' plans are futile and hypocritical because they know perfectly well that child poverty, or any kind of poverty, will never be 'solved' or 'eliminated' or even dramatically improved without fundamental economic changes of a kind neither major party is willing to contemplate, let alone embrace. The very fact that 'poverty' and its close relation 'child poverty' are defined the way they are gives the game away. They're like 'unemployment.' (Sorry about all the inverted commas, but we're dealing with the toy bricks of economists' and politicians' playpens here.) Unemployment, as a mass phenomenon, is not something that happens in spite of the economic system we have: it happens because of it. It's built in; it's no accident. Similarly with poverty, the main driver of crimes like child abuse.
Already a small child has died this year from non-accidental injuries and nothing is surer than that, by the end of the year, the roll of severely abused and murdered children will have risen to at least a dozen. The direct connection between such cases and the social and economic circumstances of the perpetrators is often acknowledged, but when it comes to tackling the root causes of those circumstances, all we get, if we get anything at all, is resource reallocation, greater frontline funding, committees, reports, anguished declarations etc. Hand-flapping, in short. Meanwhile the rich get rich, the poor get poorer and the killings go on.
Solution (or should I say 'solution'): change the system, really change it; don't just fiddle with a few knobs and levers. That doesn't require revolution; it doesn't even, in my view, require the wholesale rejection of capitalism. An example of genuine and far-reaching economic change would be the abandonment of growth as the be-all and end-all of national achievement and the adoption of a genuine progress indicator (GPI) that measures all the factors involved in economic activity. This is hardly a new idea; it has gained a little traction in recent years—even the Treasury has canvassed it; but National and Labour appear to regard it as the political equivalent of Ken Ring's moon meteorology.
Switching from GDP to GPI won't bring people out of poverty overnight, but I'm willing to bet it would be a big step towards practising economics as if people mattered (as E F Schumacher subtitled Small Is Beautiful) and therefore away from the aggressive growth-at-all-costs materialism that inexorably widens the gap between rich and poor. Like a capital gains tax, or amending the Reserve Bank Act to make full employment the main goal, it would start the reorientation of the economy away from its current principal purpose, which—let's be frank—is to serve the interests of shareholders and investors, not working people.
There are many things we could do; but given the persistence of child abuse, child murder and child poverty in our society, you'd have to be very obtuse to believe that simply repeating what's already been tried is going to succeed this time. As Einstein famously said, 'Insanity is doing the same thing, over and over again, but expecting different results.'
Yet in his foreword to the government's green paper, the best the prime minister can come up with is: 'We will all need to work hard across a number of fronts and develop new, integrated solutions to improve outcomes for young people.'
That sounds like business as usual to me.
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