New Zealand’s new prime minister, Chris Luxon, has repeatedly stated that his job is to ‘run New Zealand’s economy’. He apparently does not understand that money is a commodity designed to facilitate transactions for the good of the whole population and is not an end in itself.
As the leader of the conservative New Zealand National Party, Luxon like his fellow right wing coalition parties, ‘ACT’ and ‘New Zealand First’, believes that reallocating more wealth and power to those who are already wealthy will be good for the country (though obviously not so good for those already on low incomes). As has been often previously quoted- ‘they know the price of everything and the value of nothing’.
In addition, the third leg of the coalition triad, the ACT Party, with an Ayn Rand-ish ‘pathology, is attempting to remove one of the key bases of what New Zealand is, a multicultural society where the indigenous Maori population have guaranteed rights, as enshrined in the Treaty of Waitangi (Te Tiriti), signed between Maori and the British Queen in 1840. Thankfully, Maori are immediately rallying and demonstrating to make clear to this white government that a revision to the Treaty is unacceptable.
It is a sad indictment of NZ’s education system and society, that so many New Zealanders continue to believe that making more money is what matters. ‘Making money’ requires ‘development’, whose direct coefficient is further destruction of the environment. ‘Development’ and ‘environmental destruction’ are, and have always been, directly linkaged- but strangely few economists ever cost the environmental impacts of ‘development’ and ‘progress’ into their financial assessments.
But environmental issues are of little concern to our brave new coalition partners. What apparently matters is a strict ideological commitment to the ‘free market’ and the firm punishment of those who do not commit to “New Zealand values” (whatever those might be). Thus strategies such as ‘boot camps’ for young people who offend, stiffer prison sentences and more prisons for offenders (particularly our Maori population), removal of Maori as an official co-language of the state, more motorways rather than public transport or EV options, and a re-commitment to our long-term ally, the genocidal ‘international rule based order’ (not UN based order) United States… In other words, a return to a more predictable ‘safer’ and ‘whiter’ world of 30 years ago, so they apparently believe..
Evidence, facts and research are not part of the decision-making process of this coalition of the mindless, harking back to a non-existant past when everything was clear and certain.
Unsurprisingly, managing a country is not quite the same as a managing a budget,nor is managing a state budget the same as managing a company budget, whose only bottom line is profit, rather than the sustainable wellbeing of its population and environment.
While New Zealand’s coalition partners ‘ideals’ do not quite match up to the imbecilic status of the new neoliberal leader of Argentina, Javier Milei, who is most certainly poised to completely destroy what remains of Argentinian society and its economy, we can get a strong sense of New Zealand colaition leaders reflexively returning to old tried and true historic conservative policies which have been amply demonstrated to be ineffective and damaging to key sectors of the country -except for the wealthy
And, as the US and the West’s unqualified support for Israel’s latest war of indisputable evil on the Palestinian people has so clearly demonstrated – the West is not on the ‘right side’ of history, (nor has it ever been) . As a multicultural country with illusions of fair play and freedom, New Zealand needs to be seen to be standing solidly with the oppressed of this world; those in the South who have been abused, murdered and stolen from by the West for centuries. Instead we are cosying up once again to the global homicidal maniac- the United States!
New Zealand’s new Foreign Minister veteran politician Winston Peters has been quoted as saying Israel has a ‘right to self-defence’-obviously deliberately ignoring the UN’s declaration of rights that an occupying power (Israel) has a right an obligation to protect that population whose land it occupies ( Palestinians) Israel cannot therefore be legally be at war with its own people, the Palestinians, who it has corralled into concentration camps like Gaza and the West Bank for 75 years. While calling for a ‘cease-fire’, Mr Peters obviously places far more weight on being obsequious to the US, than eliminating long-term Israeli genocide and ethnic cleansing.
And finally, New Zealand’s coalition partners, while no longer publicly expressing their scepticism about climate change, their new policies of ‘growth, growth and more growth and damn the environment’ clearly demonstrate their contempt of the stark environmental issues facing us all, and their blindness to its realities. No more light rail or subsidies for EV cars, more motorways,more tourists from places halfway round the world; it is like the last 20 years of growing environmental catastrophes simply did not exist!
Full speed ahead to that environmental brick wall, chaps!
New Antarctica 