National promises to repeal reworked RMA after five years of development; MBIE reports 110,000 families can't afford warm homes; 700 reports of bad housing in Greens survey
Is it possible this is a different scenario to the 80's-90's adjustments that were elite driven institutional arrangements that culminated in the Mother Of All Budgets? The exemplary participative process of the Royal Commission on Social Policy had crashed, discarded by the political elites halfway through its work. Now we're dealing with 'physical' facts (e.g. energy, not money) and the response requires a genuine constituency that hasn't formed in NZ. I'm assuming that in the current scenario a (popular) constituency has to form before a representative government can act. I also assume that won't happen while the focus is on siloed 'policy' responses that aren't located in identifiable strategies that go beyond the policy packages of political parties. Hence the inertia and conflict avoidance. How misguided are these assumptions?
Thanks John. I think there were genuine crises in the 1980s and 1990s and most of the responses improved things. The currency needed to float. Foreign short term public debt was too high. Exports needed to be diversified. The problems really began with the very sharp welfare cuts, social housing cuts and asset sales. They weren't the real reason for deficits and debt. Cutting to the bone then is hurting us now in extra social costs and productivity losses. Some of the big public spending remains untouched and were worsened by the deals done in the mid to late 1990s. In particular NZ Super and failure to tax wealth.
Brian Easton regularly points out that the diversification of exports was successfully happening well before Mr Roger Douglas thought he knew better. We ares till suffering from this failed ideological neoliberal experiment.
From my point of view the 80s-90s strategy was coherent and executed effectively. I completely agree with your 'cutting to the bone . . .' point so 'improvement' raises some questions. The stratified impacts you mentioned also included high unemployment and under-employment in some cohorts, net emigration and a change in the household profiles for rent, debt and equity ('privatisation') with particular intensity on some farms. I'm suggesting that was conventional politics redistributing costs and benefits under pressure based on control not 'popular' support. I'm not sure the current 'crises' are at a point where control from parties in government will work and we don't have other approaches in our political repertoire, at least at present. I'm not sure that Peoples' Assemblies and similar avoid the problem of stratified impacts but the menu of somewhat constitutional processes for constructive public (as distinct from sectoral) discussion offers alternatives.
You must have been living in a totally different world to the one I was if you can use the word 'improvement', It was a nightmare! And yes, the results from it have rolled right along.
Books by Brian Easton about the period and the neoliberal changes of the 4th Lanbour and National Governments - eg The Commercialisation of New Zealand, In Stormy Seas. And read Muldoon's own 1985 book on the New Zealand Economy to get a better feel for his reasoning and values.
Thanks for the explainer Bernard. It's always good to be reminded of the context upon which policies are made (then realise how little our contemporary politicians seem to understand about that context!)
We truly are more and more or of a backwater country every year. Changing demographics is probably our only hope for breaking out of this neoliberal zombie ideology that infects Labour and National both.
Unfortunately the population is ageing with the older generations more supportive of NationalACT as you could see from the grey hair in evidence at the Nat conference. Plus my experience of Asian immigrants is that many are small business owners who also gravitate towards National, perhaps unaware the NACT only really answer to big business.
From the outside, Labour have fiddled with the RB Act through mandate changes, the PFA through deficit spending despite huge tax income increases and debt reporting changes, and proposed RMA legislation that reduce common ground.
That 5 years worth of drafting generated ideological gaps preventing bipartisanship, like Central Planning committees, structural co governance, and differences in weighting between Maori and Community viewpoints.
Parkers other legislative changes (e.g. the CCCFA shemozzle) have generated poor outcomes. The new RMA changes themselves are a beast, legislation with low clarity on how to weight the multiple factors that must be considered, and will create decades of new case law.
I suspect that Parkers proposals will eventually be utilised, but with very substantial modifications.
Thanks Kim. I don't think the RB has changed much in its actual running of monetary policy due to the changes. There haven't been huge tax income increases relative to GDP and the debt reporting changes haven't changed the forecast trajectory of net or gross debt -- it's always down.
I also don't think Parker was responsible for CCCFA. I believe that was David Clark. Other David.
Funding of Auckland Transport article. Density seams like the best mitigation to ever increasing renewals. Density means more people to fund less assets.
Thanks Anon. Very good link. This stood out for me: "Rosedale Busway Station, the urban cycleway network and improvements to the Northwest bus passage will all receive less funding under this budget." Grrrrr
Should the Reserve Bank continue to set monetary policy/interest rates? It greatly reduces democratic accountability, and the whole idea that monetary policy controls inflation has serious problems - e.g. a very lagged affect, raising interest rates transfers money from (low income) borrowers to l(high income) enders, workers are the sacrificial lamb in the quest for low inflation, there is a positive feedback loop between raising interest and inflation acting against the attempt to dampen demand, raising interest rates increases bank profits, there is very limited ability to co-ordinate the use of monetary and fiscal policy because of the undemocratic independence of the Reserve Bank. And more.
Is it possible this is a different scenario to the 80's-90's adjustments that were elite driven institutional arrangements that culminated in the Mother Of All Budgets? The exemplary participative process of the Royal Commission on Social Policy had crashed, discarded by the political elites halfway through its work. Now we're dealing with 'physical' facts (e.g. energy, not money) and the response requires a genuine constituency that hasn't formed in NZ. I'm assuming that in the current scenario a (popular) constituency has to form before a representative government can act. I also assume that won't happen while the focus is on siloed 'policy' responses that aren't located in identifiable strategies that go beyond the policy packages of political parties. Hence the inertia and conflict avoidance. How misguided are these assumptions?
Thanks John. I think there were genuine crises in the 1980s and 1990s and most of the responses improved things. The currency needed to float. Foreign short term public debt was too high. Exports needed to be diversified. The problems really began with the very sharp welfare cuts, social housing cuts and asset sales. They weren't the real reason for deficits and debt. Cutting to the bone then is hurting us now in extra social costs and productivity losses. Some of the big public spending remains untouched and were worsened by the deals done in the mid to late 1990s. In particular NZ Super and failure to tax wealth.
Brian Easton regularly points out that the diversification of exports was successfully happening well before Mr Roger Douglas thought he knew better. We ares till suffering from this failed ideological neoliberal experiment.
From my point of view the 80s-90s strategy was coherent and executed effectively. I completely agree with your 'cutting to the bone . . .' point so 'improvement' raises some questions. The stratified impacts you mentioned also included high unemployment and under-employment in some cohorts, net emigration and a change in the household profiles for rent, debt and equity ('privatisation') with particular intensity on some farms. I'm suggesting that was conventional politics redistributing costs and benefits under pressure based on control not 'popular' support. I'm not sure the current 'crises' are at a point where control from parties in government will work and we don't have other approaches in our political repertoire, at least at present. I'm not sure that Peoples' Assemblies and similar avoid the problem of stratified impacts but the menu of somewhat constitutional processes for constructive public (as distinct from sectoral) discussion offers alternatives.
You must have been living in a totally different world to the one I was if you can use the word 'improvement', It was a nightmare! And yes, the results from it have rolled right along.
Any recommendations on a book to summarize the late Muldoon political economy/history?
Books by Brian Easton about the period and the neoliberal changes of the 4th Lanbour and National Governments - eg The Commercialisation of New Zealand, In Stormy Seas. And read Muldoon's own 1985 book on the New Zealand Economy to get a better feel for his reasoning and values.
Thanks Andrew. Bruce Jesson wrote a few as well...
Thanks for the explainer Bernard. It's always good to be reminded of the context upon which policies are made (then realise how little our contemporary politicians seem to understand about that context!)
Did Hipkins touch on climate change?A Chinese run factory here in low employment zone assembling solar panels
Surely a win win
Not much that I saw. Will have a look around.
We truly are more and more or of a backwater country every year. Changing demographics is probably our only hope for breaking out of this neoliberal zombie ideology that infects Labour and National both.
Unfortunately the population is ageing with the older generations more supportive of NationalACT as you could see from the grey hair in evidence at the Nat conference. Plus my experience of Asian immigrants is that many are small business owners who also gravitate towards National, perhaps unaware the NACT only really answer to big business.
From the outside, Labour have fiddled with the RB Act through mandate changes, the PFA through deficit spending despite huge tax income increases and debt reporting changes, and proposed RMA legislation that reduce common ground.
That 5 years worth of drafting generated ideological gaps preventing bipartisanship, like Central Planning committees, structural co governance, and differences in weighting between Maori and Community viewpoints.
Parkers other legislative changes (e.g. the CCCFA shemozzle) have generated poor outcomes. The new RMA changes themselves are a beast, legislation with low clarity on how to weight the multiple factors that must be considered, and will create decades of new case law.
I suspect that Parkers proposals will eventually be utilised, but with very substantial modifications.
Thanks Kim. I don't think the RB has changed much in its actual running of monetary policy due to the changes. There haven't been huge tax income increases relative to GDP and the debt reporting changes haven't changed the forecast trajectory of net or gross debt -- it's always down.
I also don't think Parker was responsible for CCCFA. I believe that was David Clark. Other David.
Whoops! Parker's the tax man....... sorry about that chief. On the same team and after a while they all seem to meld into one.
Funding of Auckland Transport article. Density seams like the best mitigation to ever increasing renewals. Density means more people to fund less assets.
https://www.newsroom.co.nz/auckland-transport-ceo-you-cant-run-a-business-like-this
Thanks Anon. Very good link. This stood out for me: "Rosedale Busway Station, the urban cycleway network and improvements to the Northwest bus passage will all receive less funding under this budget." Grrrrr
Should the Reserve Bank continue to set monetary policy/interest rates? It greatly reduces democratic accountability, and the whole idea that monetary policy controls inflation has serious problems - e.g. a very lagged affect, raising interest rates transfers money from (low income) borrowers to l(high income) enders, workers are the sacrificial lamb in the quest for low inflation, there is a positive feedback loop between raising interest and inflation acting against the attempt to dampen demand, raising interest rates increases bank profits, there is very limited ability to co-ordinate the use of monetary and fiscal policy because of the undemocratic independence of the Reserve Bank. And more.
Two relevant recent articles:
- Adam Tooze's substack today which reports on an assessment by a senior ECB person on the (in)effectiveness of monetary policy https://open.substack.com/pub/adamtooze/p/chartbook-223-acting-out-of-ignorance?r=2vxgf&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=post%20viewer
- Bill Mitchell's comparison of 'conventional' monetary policy and the case of Japan https://billmitchell.org/blog/
Thank you both!