Top “NZ Politics Daily” stories today
Below are some of the more interesting and insightful New Zealand politics items from the last 24 hours.
1) The two fought each other furiously to be prime minister at the 2005 general election, but the former leaders of the Labour and National parties, Helen Clark and Don Brash, have joined forces today to condemn the loss of New Zealand’s independent foreign policy by the new government’s moves to join up with the US-led defence alliance against China – see their joint Herald opinion piece: Aukus – NZ must not abandon our independent foreign policy (paywalled)
Brash and Clark say that the US is fast heading towards a war with China, and New Zealand shouldn’t be part of this, or even be encouraging this by signing up to the new Aukus alliance which is “designed to make an enemy of our largest trading partner”. And they are particularly critical that last week New Zealand’s Defence and Foreign Affairs ministers “after just a few hours’ conversation with their Australian counterparts and absolutely no advance warning to the New Zealand public, appeared to abandon our independent foreign policy in favour of unqualified support for America’s ‘China containment policy’.”
2) The negative reviews of Chloe Swarbrick’s performance on TVNZ’s Q+A programme on Sunday continue to roll in. Writing for Newstalk, Haimona Gray is scathing about the “cringe-inducing” interview in which the candidate for the Green Party co-leader talked in “corporate-speak” and couldn’t adequately justify or explain her continued use of a slogan about the Gazan conflict that many view as “hate speech” or advocacy that “Israel should be wiped off the map”. Looking at her once great promise, in which Swarbrick “seemed like a political talent on a limitless ascendency”, Gray asks: Has Chloe Swarbrick Peaked? (paywalled)
Here’s a snippet from the review: “Swarbrick’s overuse of non-sequiturs and lines that felt cribbed from either an entry-level Politics paper or an over-fluffed document from a multinational consulting firm that charged by the amount of corporate jargon used in an hour. She rambled about her ‘theory of change’, a term popular among the aforementioned consulting class but not one you hear often from someone seeking to be relatable or understood. She talked about ‘culture, from a design thinking perspective’, and went on to call for a national debate – removed from politicians – to agree on a shared set of cultural values. If this sounds like tyranny of the majority or a borderline monoculture, she did nothing to dissuade this impression.”
3) Some on the political left are getting exercised by conspiracy theories about the reach of the global Atlas network of rightwing think tanks controlling the current government. The focus on Atlas was started by a couple of RNZ documentaries by Mihi Forbes and her researcher Joshua Drummond, suggesting that the Act Party is illegitimately connected to such think tanks, but the theory has been taken up by other activists online. The latest is Martyn Bradbury, who explains that “Influencers on the Right are numerous and are crawling all over this new head right racist climate denying Government” and he draws attention to a list of connected organisations: the Taxpayers’ Union; the Free Speech Union; the NZ Initiative; Groundswell; “Antivaxx Conspiracy Swamp”; corporate consultants; “Alt-Right media”, and “big data social investment” – see: Atlas Network Shrugged – what is intellectually driving & influencing the NZ Right?
4) Writing for the Democracy Project, leftwing commentator Chris Trotter delves into the history of the Atlas Network, including its links to David Seymour, and concludes that there’s nothing democratically wrong with the political right having such think tanks, and the bigger problem is that the left isn’t willing to establish its own – see: Shrugging-Off The Atlas Network
5) The influence of corporate lobbyists on the political system is a much more concerning area for democracy. The National Party campaigned on much stronger rules for lobbyists, and now in government is being pressured to deliver – and today the Finance Minister and National deputy leader Nicola Willis is being reported as “standing by her view that there should be a mandatory code of conduct for lobbyists in Parliament” – see RNZ’s 'There's more that should be done' – Willis keen for mandatory lobbyist code of conduct
6) Parliament’s Speaker Gerry Brownlee has been forced to clarify his stance on giving swipe-card access to those who could be involved in lobbying. He told Newsroom that “There are no changes to the rules and I’ve only approved two [people] who come in as visitors”. He says that the RNZ story yesterday misinterpreted his remarks in saying that he had given swipe-card access to party staff (who work outside of Parliament for the Green Party and Te Pāti Māori): “I made the comment that they could be considered lobbyists because they take a political position” – see Marc Daalder’s Lobbying rules haven’t changed, Speaker Gerry Brownlee says
7) New Zealand has a corruption problem according to Natalia Albert, but we need a more nuanced discussion about it, and we need to distinguish between all the different sorts of integrity violations that occur in our political system, especially acknowledging that some of the scandals that occur in public life are down to incompetence or non-systemic individual corruption, and even just because there is “increased reporting of corruption as a political strategy to undermine opponents” – see her thoughtful column, Let's talk about corruption in New Zealand. See also, Matevz Raskovic’s article yesterday, A slide in global corruption rankings is bad for ‘Brand NZ’ – what can the government do?
8) Auditor General John Ryan is becoming increasingly critical of the accountability of government agencies in their annual reporting on their activities. He appeared before parliament’s finance and expenditure select committee yesterday and suggested that government departments were more concerned about ticking off project milestones than showing that they have actually delivered results for the taxpayer. What’s more, he complained that officials aren’t very open to doing it better, saying “Agencies are quite dismissive of what they could do now. A lot of resources are going into poor quality reporting” – see Pattrick Smellie’s 'A lot of rubbish' in govt agency reporting: auditor general (paywalled)
9) For an example today of the Ministry of Education delivering little for a lot of money, see the Otago Daily Times report by Mark John: $750K spent; nothing to show: principal (paywalled)
The school principal complains that there’s been a lack of transparency from the Ministry of Education about the big spending and lack of delivery. Here’s the introduction to the article: “A frustrated Dunedin principal says there is nothing to show for the $750,000 spent planning new classrooms over the past five years by the Ministry of Education. Andersons Bay School principal Pauline Simpson said her school was promised a four-classroom teaching block and hall and that was cut back to two classrooms and a hall with a design change at the 11th hour. The change would mean the build was back to square one, she said. A ministry spokesman said it had already spent $750,000 on the project on costs for planning, design, consents and investigation works.”
10) Also in the ODT today, Otago Regional Councillor Michael Laws raises questions about public officials in the Regional Council who are also highly involved in partisan political activity. This comes after a senior staffer, Alex Foulkes announced he was standing for the Greens co-leadership position. This follows on from the Council’s climate policy adviser Francisco Hernandez standing for the Greens at the last election. For Laws this raised questions of whether “the Green Party has installed an activist cadre within the ORC staff” and whether their advice could be trusted or was neutral – see Matthew Littlewood’s Councillor hits out at perceived lack of staff neutrality (paywalled)
11) With the new Government intent on bringing in new powers for ministers to fast-track new infrastructure projects, there’s increasing alarm about the lack of democracy, proper process, and the chances of environmental degradation that might result – see RNZ’s item by Tom Kitchin: Thinking too big over infrastructure
12) According to Chris Trotter, Luxon and National campaigned in last year’s election, like the Act Party and NZ First, on a populist agenda “to roll back what was perceived to be Labour’s extreme, ideologically-driven, cultural agenda.” But now the PM is pulling back from that roll-back, as evidenced by his “slap-down” last week of David Seymour’s Treaty Principles Bill. Trotter says that Luxon is misreading the anger that helped him get into power: “that is not how populism works. You can’t just switch it on and off like a lightbulb. Nor can you boast about ignoring the wishes of the ‘overwhelming majority’ of the New Zealand people. Not if you want to remain the dominant right-wing party” – see: Luxon rejects the 'Rejection Election' at his peril
13) The Government has announced the details of how it will roll back Labour’s Three Waters programme and replace it with its own Local Water Done Well reforms. For today’s best analysis of this, see Tova O'Brien’s Both Labour and National to blame for $1.2bn Three Waters blow out
14) The Government’s reform programme involves another “working group”, this time called the “Technical Advisory Group”. And heading that group is Andreas Heuser, the Managing Director of the Castalia economics consulting firm that has previously been involved in producing National’s axed foreign buyers tax policy, as well as working for the lobby group “Communities for Local Democracy” that opposed Labour’s Three Waters. This is all explained today by Richard Harman in his analysis, National calls in its preferred consultants (again) (paywalled)
According to Harman, Heuser and his Castalia have already essentially designed National’s Local Water Done Well policy. He draws attention to the fact that the Department of Internal Affairs has previously sharply criticised Castalia’s work on water reforms, with the aid of Australian economist Geoff Swier who “contested the validity of many of the assumptions” that they had made in their last water reform model.
Harman also suggests that the Government’s new water model could provoke “a Māori backlash that will head to the courts”, as it’s likely to involve a price being put on water units, and “iwi leaders have repeatedly declared that if a price is put on water, then they will go to the Courts seeking allocation rights that the Waitangi Tribunal has already recommended they have.”
Harman reports on Castalia’s previous work on this issue: “Castalia’s own Three Waters proposal indicates there could be significant issues with Maori not being involved in the process. It suggested Maori involvement could be satisfied by having Maori ward councillors involved in appointing the boards of the new Council Controlled Organisations.” Also, in advocating for “Mana Whakahono a Rohe” (or “binding statutory arrangements formed under the Resource Management Act between Iwi or hapu and local authorities. In effect, they were the antecedents of co-governance”) Harman says that Castalia might provide some unwelcome advice for the Beehive.
15) The big case study in water management gone wrong is the current water crisis at the Wellington City Council. TVNZ’s Q+A looked at this in a good six-minute item on Sunday: Wellington losing astonishing volume of water to leaks
16) Since then, things have got worse, with more restrictions and angst coming – see William Terite’s Wellington threatened with Level 3 water restrictions despite offer to fix leaks
17) The whole central and local government debacle is very well examined in the latest Listener political column by Danyl McLauchlan, who says the local Wellington problems can be blamed on the local councillors: “The true villain in Wellington’s water saga is the city council. Every year, going back decades, it has carefully estimated how much money it needs to maintain its water infrastructure and factored this into its rates bills. And every year, it has then diverted much of that revenue into other projects. The most infamous of these is the earthquake-proofing of the town hall, the estimated cost of which has soared from $43 million to $329m – almost half the council’s entire revenue for last year. It has built a $180m convention centre and allocated another $180m to rebuild the library, $226m for bike lanes and $140m to revamp the Golden Mile retail area on Lambton Quay. Mayor Tory Whanau – who responded to the water crisis by launching a PR campaign celebrating all the time she was spending at the gym – would like to spend $32m buying a derelict cinema complex” – see: Three Waters demise leaves national and local government to fill void (paywalled)
But will the Local Government Minister Simeon Brown step in to sack the council? Unlikely according to McLauchlan, as the current left-dominated council now appear to be carrying out the austerity measures, and rather rightwing policies, that the National Government would like: “The most likely mechanism for this is one of the new council-controlled organisations that will be set up under Local Water Done Well. Although this will allow the council to get the water infrastructure bill off its balance sheet, it will almost certainly require the installation of water meters and a user-pays regime like Auckland’s. This gets you awfully close to the privatisation of water – a solution that will be anathema to the Labour and Green constituencies that dominate the capital’s politics. But the mayor has indicated support for water meters, explaining that ‘times have changed’. There have been rumours that the government would sack the council and install a commissioner, and this may still come to pass. But for now, it’s more than happy to step back while left-wing politicians impose right-wing policies – without any mandate from their voters – because they have no other choice. What could be sweeter and more refreshing?”
Dr Bryce Edwards
Political Analyst in Residence, Democracy Project, School of Government, Victoria University of Wellington
NZ Politics Daily – 13 February 2024
THREE WATERS, WELLINGTON WATER
Danyl McLauchlan (Listener): Three Waters demise leaves national and local government to fill void (paywalled)
Richard Harman (Politik): National calls in its preferred consultants (again)
Mark Quinlivan (Newshub): Christopher Luxon says councils responsible for rate rise decisions under Government's alternative Three Waters plan
Tova O’Brien (Stuff): Both Labour and National to blame for $1.2bn Three Waters blow out
Giles Dexter (RNZ): Three Waters repeal: 'It's going to be councils and mayors that cop it'
Adam Pearse (Herald): Labour’s warning to ratepayers as Govt lays out Three Waters replacement
RNZ: Mixed reaction to Three Waters repeal by end of next week
1News: Three Waters repeal to go ahead, replacement due by mid-2025
Jamie Ensor (Newshub): Government releases plans to repeal, replace Three Waters - including new advisory group
Russell Palmer (RNZ): Government sets up advisory group ahead of Three Waters repeal
Anna Whyte and Thomas Manch (Post): Government to scrap Three Waters next week (paywalled)
Stuff: Three Waters repeal inches closer, Govt to implement new structure by 2025
Deborah LaHatte (Whakaata Māori): Three Waters washed away in next two weeks
Tom Hunt (Post): Water meters are coming - like it or not (paywalled)
William Terite (Newsroom): Wellington threatened with Level 3 water restrictions despite offer to fix leaks
Diane Calvert (Post): Wellington’s water crisis should not have been allowed to get to this (paywalled)
Nicholas Boyack (Post): Master Plumbers meet with Wellington Water but little progress on fixing leaky tobies (paywalled)
Hanna McCallum (Post): Crews return to fix same central city sinkhole from day before (paywalled)
Tom Hunt (Post): No mention of $50m cost hike on Wellington reservoir (paywalled)
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