Top Ten “NZ Politics Daily” stories today
Below are some of the more interesting and insightful New Zealand politics items from the weekend and today.
1) Is New Zealand getting sucked into a war in the Middle East, on the side of the US and Israel? In the Red Sea, the Houthis of Yemen have begun attacking ships using the route to Israel, actions which they say are in support of Palestinians in Gaza. Now the New Zealand Government has signed up to an international condemnation of Houthis’ attacks, and Fran O’Sullivan wrote over the weekend about whether “New Zealand will inevitably get drawn into any ensuing further military conflict that emerges in the Middle East” – see: Winston Peters’ Houthi Red Sea move brings NZ and the US closer (paywalled)
O’Sullivan thinks not. There’s good reason to stand up against terrorism impeding trade she says, and after all, it’s important to be “supporting the partnership with the US, where we can.”
But others disagree. On Twitter, retired senior diplomat Carl Worker responded to O’Sullivan’s article, saying “the Houthi actions in the Red Sea are widely seen as a new theatre of operations linked to and arising from the conflict between Israel/US and Hamas/Iran in Gaza. As a result, by associating itself so directly and publicly with the US threat against the actions of the Houthis aimed at pressuring Israel, NZ is liable to be seen by many in the global community as aligning with the Israel/US position on Gaza, to the extent of declaring willingness to involve itself militarily in Yemen if required.” And former Prime Minister Helen Clark has also called the NZ-endorsed statement “a slippery slope”, and she instead urges that the west seeks a political solution to the Gaza situation that is the underlying cause of the Houthi attacks.
2) Security analyst Paul Buchanan says that in siding with the US and Western security partners on the Red Sea issue, New Zealand appears to be getting involved in “larger balance-of-power jousting”, and therefore “once again NZ has put facilitation of trade ahead of upholding universal human rights in its foreign policy calculations”. Buchanan says it will be understandable if critics claim New Zealand “has placed more value on [shipping] containers than the lives of Gazan children” – see: About the Houthi Red Sea blockage
3) Immigration and infrastructure are the biggest problems facing the economy this year according to leading economists. They’re connected. Liam Dann has interviewed economists, who mostly agree that rapidly rising population, driven by record immigration, is straining infrastructure, exacerbating what is already a major problem – see: NZ’s top economists pick the three big issues for NZ in 2024 (paywalled)
Infometrics economists Gareth Kiernan and Brad Olsen are reported as believing that re-inflating housing prices will be the biggest side side-effect of rising immigration, and “Without an improvement in the housing demand/supply imbalance, we end up with inequality issues being exacerbated further.” And Cameron Bagrie talks about what we should be concerned with as a result: “Anything to do with division/the political periphery… We have a divided society and that is unhealthy for the economy. I suspect today is that start of many disruptions. Division is global.”
4) The coalition agreement between the National and NZ First parties to deal with the supermarket duopoly by “addressing the lack of a third entrant” is being seized upon by a new advocacy group that is fighting to help get a new supermarket off the ground. At the moment the group involves an “inner circle” including former Consumer NZ boss Sue Chetwin, the chair of the electricity-focused Consumer Advocacy Council Deborah Hart, and former Telecommunications Users Association chief executive Ernie Newman – see Tom Pullar-Strecker’s New lobby group ‘totally focused on grocery industry’ (paywalled)
5) The lobby group report that they have been working with Waikato-Tainui iwi, which is trying to import British supermarket chain Iceland. And today the NZ Herald gives its support to the new consumer action group, and outlines “several ways in which such an organisation, leveraging the media and political ties, can help to bring more competition to the grocery market” – see: Editorial – Lobby group targeting supermarket giants can play important role (paywalled)
The Herald says the group can 1) “keep watch over the watchdogs” – the Commerce Commission and the new Grocery Commissioner, and 2) “lobby the new coalition Government to extend the regulators’ powers”.
6) With Labour currently thinking about its future, party insider Shane te Pou has put forward his list of five “fresh faces” that Chris Hipkins needs to be talking to: Vanushi Walters (elected in 2020 and “has the potential to be one of Labour’s leading policy brains”), Craig Renney (well known to be positioning to become Labour’s future finance minister), Moko Tepania (“Far North District Council’s first ever Māori mayor” who could replace Kelvin Davis as Labour’s candidate in Te Tai Tokerau), Stacey Morrison (“such an important advocate for te reo Māori”), and unsuccessful Labour candidate for Napier, Mark Hutchinson (“As a business owner who has worked with major corporations across the country, he could give Hipkins insights into how Labour became so disconnected from the business community over the past two years”) – see: Five people Chris Hipkins should invite over for a summer BBQ (paywalled)
7) The two upcoming politicians to watch in 2024 are Labour’s Barbara Edmonds and National’s James Meager – according to Stuff’s Tyson Beckett, Sam Wilson and Frances Morton – see Tyson Beckett, Sam Wilson and Frances Morton’s 24 New Zealanders to watch in 2024 (paywalled)
In terms of Edmonds, they ask: “could it be that this quiet achieving mother of eight from Tītahi Bay is a possible successor for Grant Robertson?” Meager is highlighted for his “head-turning maiden speech” about being a “walking contradiction” in the National Party.
8) In a discussion in the Herald about economic privilege in New Zealand, Boris Sokratov says it’s all about land ownership because “property rights form the pillars of capitalist economies and legal systems”. And in terms of land in this country, Sokratov says the Crown owns about 40 per cent, and Māori land ownership is 6 per cent and foreigners own 3 per cent of the land – and “That leaves only 51 per cent of land in private New Zealand ownership” – see: Who are the real privileged in Aotearoa New Zealand – Māori or Pākehā?
9) Criminologist Jarrod Gilbert has been looking at the black market for tobacco in New Zealand, and says today: “the illicit tobacco market between 8.4 per cent and 12.1 per cent of domestic tobacco consumption. One study estimated this portion of the market at around 143 million cigarettes per year” – see: Why Christopher Luxon was right about New Zealand’s tobacco black market (paywalled)
Gilbert says that regardless of whether the new government was right to scrap the new Smokefree regulations, it’s true that when the government tightens up access to legal cigarettes this “creates a great opportunity for enterprising criminals who can get hold of a good source of cheap tobacco”.
10) In the British Guardian newspaper, George Monbiot has written about the impact of “dark-money junktanks” fostering neoliberal policies around the world – see: What links Rishi Sunak, Javier Milei and Donald Trump? The shadowy network behind their policies. Here in New Zealand, a Labour Party activist, Greg Presland, has loosely speculated on how such groups might be influencing politics here – see: Atlas smirked
Dr Bryce Edwards
Political Analyst in Residence, Democracy Project, School of Government, Victoria University of Wellington
NZ Politics Daily - 8 January 2024
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