Chart of the day, ‘Rock star status’ edition

Via Stuff:

While parts of the rest of the world are still wallowing in recession, New Zealand in recent months has had a significant number of economic bright spots that could see the country reach “rock star status” within the next four years.

That was the view of ANZ bank chief economist Cameron Bagrie speaking at a post Budget luncheon briefing in Christchurch yesterday.

Here’s a graph sourced with historical figures from statistics (in blue) alongside Treasury’s budget projections (in red), showing our net international investment position, ie our assets as a nation minus our liabilities. (That temporary reduction in borrowing over the last two years is the influx of payments after the Christchurch earthquake.)

Where are New Zealanders borrowing that additional $10 billion a year in perpetuity from? Why, we’re borrowing it from foreign banks just like the one Cameron Bagrie works for, which is, presumably, why he thinks we’re a rock star. If you convert our net international position into a % of our GDP we look even worse. Spain is less indebted than us by this metric and Portugal, Ireland and Greece only slightly more doomed.

Whenever opposition finance spokesmen talk about ‘re-balancing the economy’ they’re really talking about reversing that grim, downwards march into eventual fiscal oblivion and an IMF bail-out. They never get to do that when they’re in power though, because re-balancing towards real wealth creation and the tradables and export sector involves re-balancing away from the finance sector, real estate speculators and other rent-seeking agents, who are too politically powerful to allow such a thing to happen. So we get to stay a ‘rock star’ like Greece and Ireland, ie the kind of rock star that drowns in a bathtub.

Economic sabotage redux

Ten days ago National’s Housing Minister announced an inquiry into the cost of building materials:

Nick Smith, speaking on “The Nation” said there was significant concern that items “the likes Batts, likes of Gib and concrete” were more expensive than what they were in Australia.

Batts and Gib are Fletcher’s brands and the company is a major concrete supplier.

Here’s what’s happened to Fletcher’s share price over the past thirty days:

According to the Steven Joyce/Fran O’Sullivan theory of political sharemarket vandalism, Nick Smith has ‘destroyed’ about $260 million dollars worth of wealth in the last ten days. I look forward to their columns/press releases warning of capital flight, skies raining blood etc.

Johnyongyang?

The Labour government under Helen Clark was nicknamed ‘Helengrad’ on the grounds that it was an authoritarian power-mad tyranny, typified by the times Clark signed a painting that she didn’t paint, and drove really fast in a car somewhere, crimes that might sound trivial now but consumed the National Party for years and still get mentioned dozens of times a week in the Kiwiblog comments.

There’s no amusing name to describe National’s authoritarian streak, but it seems a lot more pronounced than Labour’s under Clark. Andrew Geddis details the latest incident: legislation passed under urgency discriminating against the family caregivers of severely disabled people, containing an ‘ouster clause’ which prevents those discriminated against from challenging the law in court.

Throw that on top of recent developments: legislation banning protest against deep-sea drilling, the 35 year compensation clause for Sky City Casino, scrapping the undertaking to reform MMP and a bill granting massive expansion of powers to the GCSB to spy on New Zealanders, along with all the previous outrages: retrospective legalisation of the police’s illegal spying, the unconstitutional powers granted to Gerry Brownlee after the Christchurch earthquake, the constant abuse of urgency, the suspension of democracy in Christchurch (feel free to add more examples in the comments) and this might be the most authoritarian anti-democratic government in modern New Zealand history.

But, like I said, there’s no funny name to describe this pattern of behavior so in political messaging terms it doesn’t exist. If anyone has any pithy suggestions, throw them in the comments section.

Voight-kampff test of the day

The Minister clarified in a subsequent tweet that she would, in fact, help the turtle.

The Collins-Joyce National Government

Technically it’s still the Key-led National government and he’s still out there ‘bouncing around from cloud to cloud’ as his own Finance Minister once put it, but to me this now feels like we’re living under a government dominated by the personalities of Economic Development Minister Steven Joyce and Justice Minister Judith Collins, exemplified by Joyce’s sweetheart deal with a multi-national casino company and Collins’ decision to dump the recommendations of the MMP review (making the entire exercise a gigantic waste of tens of millions of taxpayer dollars and years of effort) because it handicaps her party’s (universally despised) rorting of the current system.

Or your money back

Via Adam Bennett at the Herald:

Prime Minister John Key yesterday claimed public support for his pokies-for-national convention centre deal as the Opposition reacted angrily to a 35-year compensation clause which protects the casino against future law changes.

The Government yesterday signed an initial agreement under which SkyCity will build and entirely fund a $402 million 3500-place international convention centre. In return, the casino company is allowed 230 new pokie machines and other concessions that are worth up to $527 million over the life of the deal.

Crucially, SkyCity gets its licence extended to 2048 and until then, if any future Government changes gambling laws and affects the profits the company gets from its new concessions, the taxpayer will have to pay compensation.

Again, National introduces an exciting new tactic into New Zealand politics that left-wing parties could have a field day with. How about stringent pro-worker labour laws where trade unions get paid massive compensations if a subsequent government changes them? Or environmental policies with multi-billion dollar pay-outs to Greenpeace if a future National government wants to open new coal mines or offshore oil platforms?

This part of the Sky arrangement seems pretty daft to me. National really needed to look like they negotiated hard and hammered out a tough deal with Sky, and this blows that perception out of the water. A thirty five year compensation clause? It makes them look like they rolled over for yet another multi-national, while a future government can just legislate the clause away at no political cost.

Burn after reading

Tracy Watkins has the odd story of Craig Lebamoff, a US border security expert who won a Fulbright and decided to write his thesis on New Zealand’s border security:

But the New Zealand sabbatical quickly turned sour after seven months and his thesis was never published after the New Zealand Government refused to clear its release.

In an extraordinary series of allegations, he says he was threatened with an investigation by the Security Intelligence Service, locked out of his office at NZ Customs, had his computer hard drive and research materials seized while colleagues reported his rubbish bins being searched – he believes by the SIS.

It all adds up to what seems like an extraordinary over-reaction to a report that largely concluded the major threat to New Zealand’s borders was not terrorism but a biosecurity breach.

It all adds up to what seems like an extraordinary over-reaction to a report that largely concluded the major threat to New Zealand’s borders was not terrorism but a biosecurity breach.

The government is cutting funding for biosecurity while expanding the funding and powers of our intelligence agencies, so it’s not too surprising someone saw red over such a finding.

New Zealand is a very remote, very small country, but we have a sizable intelligence apparatus with extraordinary powers and virtually no oversight. We keep getting told that these agencies are engaged in incredibly important work protecting us from terrorists and other evil-doers, and that the critical nature of this work justifies the utter secrecy.

But every time – EVERY TIME – we get a glimpse into what our spies actually do, it’s nothing to do with keeping us safe or fighting terrorism, or anything that even justifies the cost of their existence. If there is a case to be made that biosecurity breaches are a grave risk to New Zealand and the SIS – or whoever – suppress that finding then they’re actually endangering the state.

What this scandal needs is a good conspiracy theory

Aaron Gilmore looks set to remain in Parliament, at least until his party can dig up more dirt on him and compel him to resign. This has always seemed like a pretty stupid story to me: total nobody is mildly offensive. What’s more interesting is how comprehensively the lawyer who dined with Gilmore – Andrew Riches – has destroyed this idiot’s career.

Riches left a note for staff at the restaurant apologising for Gilmore’s behavior  He also seems to have been the person who took the story to the media. Then, when Gilmore made a public apology Riches came forwards, contradicted the apology and expanded the story, adding that Gilmore invoked the name of the Prime Minister’s Office. 

Then several days of media feeding frenzy later, Gilmore makes another public apology via a press conference. The next day Riches leaks the text messages between Gilmore and himself which contradict the version of events that Gilmore gave at the press conference.

It’s that final bit that interests me. It wasn’t unreasonable for Riches to go public contradicting Gilmore’s first version of events. Like he said, he was just defending his own name, standing up for the truth, or whatever.

But making an accusation, waiting for the denial and then leaking proof of your accusation isn’t standard ‘standing up for the truth’ behavior. It’s a political communications strategy. It’s what you do when you want to destroy someone’s credibility and career.

Which is not to express sympathy for Gilmore who could have avoided all this with a simple and heartfelt apology. I think he should resign – for his own good, as much as anything else: he doesn’t look like he’s coping very well. But the guy has been played.

(I don’t think this is all a National Party trick to distract the public from the GCSB or Mighty River Power: if Gilmore splits from his party and stays in Parliament as an independent and John Banks is convicted in court, the Nats could lose their majority.)

The algebra of joy

Holding the first copy of your first novel in your hands isn’t quite as wonderful as first holding your first child, but the novel didn’t spray me with horrible green shit the second I picked it up. So.

Two comparisons

Back in 2007 the Labour Party introduced the Electoral Finance Act, the main effect of which prevented organisations that weren’t registered political parties from spending more than $60,000 $120, 000 during an election year (it was a response to the Exclusive Bretheren’s multi-million dollar stealth campaign in 2005).

The New Zealand Herald went ballistic and ran a months-long campaign against the legislation, printing the banner ‘Democracy under attack’ across their front page and publishing literally hundreds of stories and columns and editorials attacking the legislation.

Flash forward six years: a National government has introduced legislation that radically reforms the state’s intelligence apparatus, allowing the GCSB to monitor anything in New Zealand that goes by the name of an ‘information infrastructure’. The bill is in response to revelations that the GCSB has been illegally spying on New Zealanders; it gives them sweeping powers to intercept domestic communications with virtually no oversight, rushed through Parliament under urgency, naturally.

It’s early days, but so far the Herald coverage is three stories and this editorial, which concludes:

New Zealand First, as a condition for supporting the legislation, wants every warrant to be reviewed within three weeks by an independent authority selected from the judiciary, the Defence Force and the police. This, it says, would give the public confidence they are not being unfairly spied upon. It is right. A little tinkering along these lines would help smooth the passage of what should be largely uncontroversial changes.

It’s also interesting to compare this mild response to the reaction against the Labour-Green power policy announced a couple of weeks ago. The Herald’s editorial went nuts, as did business editor Liam Dann, as did Fran O’Sullivan, attacking the policy as ‘the ghost of Hugo Chavez’. Fairfax journalist Colin Espiner insisted Labour had ‘literally gone insane‘. A impressively huge propaganda machine swung into action: Business New Zealand, energy company CEOs, fund managers, merchant bankers all came out fighting in a nicely staggered sequence of denunciations.

And that’s okay – it’s a controversial policy. It’s just a shame there isn’t any comparable propaganda machine that can stand up for the civil rights of New Zealanders not to be spied on by their politicians. It seems odd (to me) that establishment journalists aren’t very exercised by any of this. The National Party aren’t going to be in power for ever, and sooner or later the ‘literally insane’ Labour and Green Parties, haunted by the ghosts of Communism and Totalitarianism are going to be in government and imbued with the power to spy on them with impunity.

People might comfort themselves with the thought that they ‘haven’t done anything wrong, so they don’t have anything to worry about’. I keep thinking of the beneficiaries who protested against Paula Bennett’s welfare policy who were punished by having their confidential data leaked to the press. Bennett argued that by speaking out against her those beneficiaries were fair game. (The leaked information was published in the Herald).

So merely disagreeing with a politician’s policies can constitute ‘doing something wrong.’ And thanks to this law change, future governments are going to have a vast amount of power to gather embarrassing information about their adversaries and critics. It would be nice if we could debate that as vigorously as we’ve debated the rights of infrastructure companies to enjoy windfall profits.

(Header image courtesy of Joe Wylie)