71 Comments

Given the Infrastructure Commission interim review of Auckland’s City Rail Link, and the timely reminder of the significant challenges facing infrastructure projects in NZ, do we need to bring back the Ministry of Works?

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Excellent point Stuart. I need to have a good read of it. Have you had a look? I’d welcome everyone’s thoughts. https://tewaihanga.govt.nz/news-events/crl-review-offers-lessons

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How about a Ministry of Green Works. With a phased-in job guarantee for people to work on biodiversity projects, rapid road space reallocation projects, mass insulation and housing upgrades etc. #degrowth

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Do you think that New Zealand First making transphobia one of their policies might have any impact on parliament, or do you think they'll lack any influence? Or possibly it's not something they'll push?

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I hope not. I just don’t think that stuff resonates, but I’m not the target audience.

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Kos Samaras in Australia did some research on that. While it does resonate with some the trans issue is well down their priority list and even among strong social conservatives ranks immigration e.t.c. is a higher priority

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I rode through Aro Valley on my way to work today and noticed some stencilled "DON'T VOTE WOKE" graffiti around the place. You don't go to Te Aro looking for sympathy for that point of view, the idea is clearly to start a fight. As much as I want to see terfs rejected loudly and in public, I'm actually hoping Kiwi passive aggressive apathy teams up with some basic decency and wins this one by quietly ignoring it -- "we tried to start a culture war but no one showed up" would be a fine and fitting end to Peters' career.

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"As much as I want to see terfs rejected loudly and in public" - why do you say 'terfs'? why not say "As much as I want to see transphobes rejected loudly and in public" - is male transphobia somehow less bad than female transphobia?

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Your Kaka initiative is great. How do you make it politically effective?

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My aim is to bring ideas to the surface and then let whoever wants to pick and choose, but also see that real people want to have these debates and solve these problems.

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Good question. What we know is that a large number of current politicians subscribe to The Kaka and realise this sort of discussion is happening even though almost none acknowledge it in their campaign rhetoric. We should all be out at the political rallies in our electorates asking these questions of candidates

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That is an excellent idea.

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I wonder if Substack (and The Kaka) is on the radar of the social media analysts (??). They seem to have models for analysing facebook and other platforms, and then spitting out the reactions of the general population to various things (for different Ministries).

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Thanks. Most of the departments and ministries, along with all MPs and ministers, are subscribers and can see what comes up every day.

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Two questions: do you think Labour can win this election? The polls look pretty bad and the GST off fruit and vegies thing fooled few. Second do you think it would be good for the country if Labour does lose so it can speed up the arrival of the 7th Labour government which hopefully will deliver the things Jacinda campaigned on back in 2017 (hopefully with more competent ministers and will to impose a land tax and not do stupid things in political desperation like the petrol tax 25c/litre cut and breaking GST)?

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Thanks Nicholas. I think National/ACT are now favoured to win, but the balance could switch if Hipkins thrashes Luxon in a couple of debates. Labour is not out of the election, but are on track to lose. I don’t see a reaction and a return to a more reforming Labour as a sure thing.

If anything, Labour ‘learned’ in 2011 and 2014 that not rocking the boat is the way to win.

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Why do refer to Nat/Act, but not to Lab/Green?

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One thing that occurs to me is Labour did not not need the Greens to win last time and the Greens are not in Cabinet. So its not exactly a real coalition.

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That’s how I think of it. Without being in cabinet, greens aren’t really in government. May as well be on the cross benches. Not being in government and not being in opposition is the worst of both worlds.

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Ok, but distribution of votes could produce a different outcome this time. Have NACT declared their coalition intentions?

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If New Zealand First get back into parliament that could mean no block has sufficient seats without some sort of agreement with New Zealand First.

Which would be somewhat better than National-ACT having 61 or more seats between them.

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What do you think TOPs chances are of getting in this term?

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It all depends on Ilam. I haven’t seen any poll results there.

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There is a poll coming out from the taxpayers union on Tuesday evening. Get prepared. If it's close see if you can move to Ilam in the next 50 days

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A Curia poll on Ilam?

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They're polling now. They released a Napier poll this Tuesday and have Ilam next week. They also plan to do Northland, Tamaki and Auckland Central

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The construction industry seems to be stalling because of the interest rates. It will take sometime for it to start up again if needed to supply homes. Did Treasury plan this deliberately?

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I don’t think it is slowing as dramatically as it appeared a few months ago. Latest business confidence figures showed a big rebound in construction sector confidence.

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Do you think the bigger media companies are doing a poor job of asking NAct what will actually be cut and what this will look like? Also how is the 500m pot hole fund not being absolutely blasted. Thanks for your mahi as always

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Thanks Henry. They are asking, but not getting answers. You don’t often see those non-answers reported though. Time in bulletins and space on front pages is tight. A non-answer is hard to justify putting in a story, when there is a another actual piece of new information elsewhere.

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But the non-answer is really a crucial piece of information for voters.

When Labour points this out there are claims it is running a scare campaign.

Not so much on the deliberate and dishonest scare mongering on crime, health, economy, everything that has been the basic behaviour of National and ACT for months.

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One question for Robert Patman if your lucky enough to get him on this evening's hoon.

Given the manner of Prigozhinb messy demise is this more likely to be an assasination by the existing russian military rather than the Putin led KGB?

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Great question David. Two fairly murderous choices there. Three including Wagner.

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AP "Russian President Vladimir Putin broke his silence about Wednesday's plane crash in the Tver region, expressing condolences to the families of those who were aboard the jet, including Russian mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNtfK8uV2i0

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@Bernard, not sure whether you (& subscribers) have investigated or come across this before - Degrowth Aotearoa’s proposal for Tradable Energy Quotas as a means to reduce emissions / energy use / fossil fuel use, https://www.degrowth.nz/tradable-energy-quotas. There is a petition to Parliament to consider this, open until 30 September 2023 - https://petitions.parliament.nz/15c9b925-a23e-4a38-879e-8f514ac0c147

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Very interesting. Hadn’t seen that. I shall dig a bit deeper in there.

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Hi Bernard, I know you are probably in election policy mode for the next couple months, but I would love you to do some more digging into the insurance industry. Especially relating to your podcast comment the other day about moral hazard and if they are unloading risk onto a government backed buyout scheme. I asked several moths ago about the insurance companies passing on an increased EQC levy without discounting their own risk profiles (i.e. cheaper premiums) and it would seem that any form of buyout would be an extension of this.

I often think of moral hazard from a property owners point of view, but I wonder if insurance companies are going to try milk it too...?

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That is a great question. I need to do interviews with the big company CEOs.

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Do you think it is time to invest in the civil service and bring the skills and experience back in house to enable them to provide advice without the dubious help of consultants? This ties in with the earlier question on reviving a Ministry of Works

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while you are at it how about some culture change work.

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Absolutely keen to build up the ‘doing’ capacity, as opposed to the ‘policy advice’ and ‘comms, political risk reduction, OIA-blocking’ capacity.

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Guess that is because in many countries not just NZ the civil service has become politicised rather than being a provider of objective advice and a genuine facilitator.

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I think its not the civil service or public service that has become politicised rather its the politicians of the “small government brigade” have made them a political football

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Kia ora Bernard,

I noted with excitement your stated intent to genuinely trying to move the Overton window to solutions that provide our children with a liveable future. Wiill you be trying to get degrowth into political debates this election?

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That is a very topical and interesting question. The short answer is yes, but it’s a new thing for me. I’ve spent 40 years thinking hopeful glass-half-full thoughts about the fruits of growth being used to help avoid zero-sum-game fights within and between nations and peoples.

I’ve also seen how Malthus and the Group of Rome/Silent Spring warnings were either too early or just plain wrong. There’s a boy cried wolf problem for the de-growth view. But I’m also revisiting my assumptions, given what’s happening with the climate. I’m listening to the arguments and Cathrine coming on board has also opened my eyes on this. I’m learning as I go and am keen to involve everyone at The Kaka in that process.

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That's great to hear. Catherine was fantastic giving an introduction to the case for degrowth in your interview a few weeks back. You have a powerful platform to drive a change in conversation at a time we need it most. We need to question the assumptions that have got us here to enormous levels of inequality and degradation of our biosphere.

The most impactful systems change is to change the paradigm (or transcend paradigms as in Donella Meadows later work). On that note the Club of Rome was actually remarkably accurate (for a forecast model) as you'll see from the update by Gaya Herrington https://www.clubofrome.org/blog-post/herrington-world-model/

Or

https://www.triodos-im.com/articles/2023/podcast-gaya-herrington---how-to-avoid-global-collapse

Also, here's a good read by Grigoris Kallis on why degrowth is not Malthusian (he even wrote a book on it).

https://degrowth.info/en/blog/defending-degrowth-is-not-malthusian#:~:text=Self%2Dlimitation%20is%20not%20about,less'%2C%20writes%20Paul%20Robbins.

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Endorse the statement that the Club of Rome's Limits to Growth modelling is accurate. The modelling has been revisited and re-assessed in the 1990s, 2000s, 2010s and found to be accurate.

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Absolutely - I would argue both Rachel Carson and Donella Meadows were not only right, but bang on time. We could be on a better path right now!

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I am just curious about the financial state of NZ? Is it in dire straits? When you hear how Labour have sprayed money around with consultants etc. What is the situation ?

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Every government wastes money on consultants, because the public service is under-resourced, especially because it has to keep changing things every 3 years :-( I think the bigger challenge for Aotearoa is the impact of China's decline: lower exports = lower income = lower taxes, at the time when we need more public money.

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Thanks. I didn't realise that the impact of China's decline would have such a bearing on public money. There seems quite a lot of anxiety about inflation and mis spent money or is it just political point scoring?

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It’s not in dire straits. We have a AAA credit rating and much, much lower public debt than others with that credit rating. If anything, we don’t have enough debt because it shows we skimped on investment for decades.

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I keep wondering why the innovative farmers I watch on Country Calendar sound so different (less pessimistic, less angry, more forward-looking) than the people from Federated Farmers, Beef & Lamb NZ, etc. Seems like those organisations are representing a certain segment of the farming community. Do you know why there's no progressive or dynamic farming/agri organisation? Thanks.

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That is interesting. I have been involved in a wetland restoration project and attended a landcare conference. It was amazing to hear from initiatives from farmers with their sustainable practices. Also, I have found farmers that I have worked with on environmental projects have been amazing to work with - with their knowledge and practical skills. At the same time I agree that we need less cows and more native tree planting in unproductive areas. More wetland restoration projects especially with climate change and to mitigate flooding.

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I guess those industry bodies are responsible for representing ALL their members. From a public facing perspective, the only way to represent all your members is to represent your worst performing members.

Also, everyone is terrified of scope/policy (etc.) creep, which leads to resistance to any form of change, even if it is generally well accepted.

NB: I'm not an expert in this field, this is just some thoughts that jumped to mind.

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Listen to this for the truth about farmers. Its the industry suppliers not the farmers themselves that are the problem

https://youtu.be/L3dLkSVqVjc?si=xhTqygo-Dt2GVTYR

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Great video Jono,

In support of this, I would suggest this is not unique to farmers. It’s big pharma that tells everyone they are sick and should take more of their drugs, the plastics industry suggests we will be miserable if we try cut back on the convenience of plastic, the fossil fuel industry tells us we will all be living in caves if we decarbonise, etc. etc. etc. even gold miners back in the day were not the ones making the money, it was those who were mining the miners, selling them crap they probably didn’t need... which is very analogies to your farming the farmers. Perhaps it’s just called marketing, or capitalism, or something else...

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I see that I have the same initials but it's not me. I'd like to meet Jono though and see more from him

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Federated Farmers subscription numbers have declined a lot over the years. Media always goes straight to them for reactions on farming issues, but they represent far fewer than they used to. I think what you are saying here is exactly the reason - farmers definitely need more progressive and proactive representation, they are being sorely let-down by industry bodies that only represent big Ag....

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Thanks, Cathrine. So there's scope for setting up alternative agri organisations, like Groundswell, but with more progressive goals. That's something the Green Party could invest in to build up their votes outside the big urban areas.

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@Bernard, your thoughts on the NZ Initiative's BIM-lite 'Prescription for Prosperity'?

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Hi Bernard,

Len Pemberton writing from Rotorua. To get to the point Bernard. I wonder if you have personally dialed into the vitriol coming out of the Left? Social media sites in particular, Twitter is enliven with Labour pundits screaming from the tree tops about Chris Luxon and David Seymore as being devils in black sheep clothing ( and then some) most of it unsubstantiated and plain hate speech. To you point about the poor showing the polls for both C H and his party and his brushing off poll results as just a 'glitch' your thoughts? Really enjoy Ka Ka.

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