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  1. #1021
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    Colin James's column for the Otago Daily Times for 5 March 2013
    Balancing GDP, environment, values and processes

    GDP growth is this government's dominant priority. If polls of consumer confidence, notably Colmar Brunton's for TV1, are a guide, rank and file voters have cottoned on.

    Credit growth is the strongest for nearly four years: 3.8 per cent in the 12 months to January, 0.4 per cent in January alone. That's the "spend" part of GDP growth.

    The Mighty River Power selldown is partly aimed at the "save" part, to get small savers into the equity market, which is important to balanced GDP growth. The government put out a pamphlet on capital markets last week, the last in its "growth agenda", again underlining the GDP growth priority.

    Amy Adams added her bit last week with "RMA2", the next big swag of amendments to the Resource Management Act. On Saturday she will unveil the cabinet's freshwater reform proposals. Toss in major changes to local government. The tentacles of change are proliferating and lengthening.

    Ministers are privately saying they are achieving substantial right-leaning economic reform bit by bit without, so far, scaring voters. National's polling has edged down a bit but an incumbent government four years into office in any other rich country right now would die for its ratings. Ministers have got bolder.

    The issue is whether their changes are durable. For policy change touching on natural resources that requires ministers to get the balance right: between environmental and economic requisites, between settled and emergent values and between traditional and modern processes.

    Take the last first. Look at what the Department of Conservation (DoC) has been doing under chief executive Al Morrison, a former journalist. Morrison has scandalised traditional conservationists by consorting with the enemy in order to achieve conservation objectives under Bill English's sinking fiscal lid.

    Morrison laid out his thinking in a speech last August. "Conservation," he said, "is about protecting the things that allow us to live in harmony with nature". The evidence was that "we are living out of balance with the natural environment".

    DoC's traditional work is to protect "bits of natural heritage so that future generations can see what New Zealand was like before we arrived" and for recreation and tourism.

    But DoC is "also a key player in protecting the integrity of ecosystems that deliver the natural capital that we rely on to survive and thrive". To do that, Morrison said, DoC has to "be prepared to partner with others, including business".

    So he got in as an adviser natural compost firm Living Earth founder Rob Fenwick (once a business partner with Murray McCully but don't hold that against him). DoC has since done deals with Air New Zealand and Genesis Energy, among others. On Thursday Morrison is to announce a big deal with a very big corporate.

    These are public-private partnerships, serving the objectives of both public policy and private profit, reducing the "airspace" between them (as Morrison puts it), hyphenating "green" with "growth". Reducing that airspace is becoming a more common process. In prisons, for example, the limited number of private operators is a comparator for the public providers and widens the potential for innovation.

    Adams' water statement will test another process innovation. She says it has been "informed by" the Land and Water Forum (LaWF) of 58 interest groups from farmers to iwi to environmental groups which sweated blood over three years to build consensus. If Adams has departed significantly from that consensus, that will undermine a valuable process for settling highly contentious issues.

    Next, the values balance: received wisdom is that under-35s are more environmentalist than Adams' generation. This may need testing. Under-35s' gadget enthusiasm suggests they are also materialist.


    They may be recasting the measure of what counts in the third calculation: how the economy and the environment mesh.

    Adams, annoyed, said "environmental groups" had got her RMA2 wrong. She said her changes will enhance protection for the environment.


    That is not obvious in her discussion document, which radically changes planning and approval processes to get faster and cheaper consents and explicitly puts economic objectives alongside environmental objectives in place of a single environmental outcomes objective.

    Her earlier bill requires councils to weigh economic benefits and costs. Courts will likely interpret those changes as an intention to increase the weight of GDP growth factors. That is the sober, blue-green Environmental Defence Society's judgment.

    Adams' plan for national edicts might be an environmental plus but might also undermine pro-environment local status quos.

    The question then is: will Adams' broom sweep clean? No, say Labour and the Greens, who will likely reverse much of the change and also say they will enact the LaWF consensus. The issue then will be who turns out to be in step with evolving values.


    We can't answer that yet. Meanwhile, we ride the seesaw.






    -- Colin James, Synapsis Ltd, P O Box 9494, Wellington 6141
    Ph (64)-4-384 7030, Mobile (64)-21-438 434, Fax (64)-4-384 9175
    Webpage http://www.ColinJames.co.nz
    Colin has been balanced in his comments here, but the theme is that National is getting emboldened. Now we'll see the true colour of their policies. So far, that looks like being a big helping to big businesses.

  2. #1022
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    "The testicles of change are proliferating and lengthening."

    Its the normal tendency for people to drift rightwards on the political spectrum as they age - Colin James is just maturing in the normal way :-)

    Unhappily for EZ and PtC a growing proportion of NZ voters are older people.....

  3. #1023
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    MVT, I think you've got it completely wrong there, Colin sounds like an erudite sort of a person on TV. Those words mean he's not happy about what is happening either. He's alerting those who want to have a deeper look at the changes.

    I'd have thought that as you get older, you get more set in your ways. That's not always on the right. Maybe we just start to cut through the noise, in this case National is making the noise, but doing the opposite thing quite often.

  4. #1024
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    Socialism is not "a damper to capitalism" as you suggest. It is a failed philosophy, all on its own. The governments attitude to funding is not some conspiracy against the poor, whoever they may be. It is a recognition that there are dozens of agencies and individuals who set out to do 'voluntary' work to correct some ill that they perceive in society. They gain some public support and then look for public funding and if they get a scrap of that they want more to pay for one-and-a-half staff, then new premises and before long they are calling in the shonky journalists to make an issue of their plight. When I was working, we had new groups and fervent individuals all the time looking for endorsement from us of some plan that woluld end crime and reform all criminals. And that was apart from managers from within who introduced initiatives that were worthless. One of my reasons for retirement over ten years ago was the tiring fact that new faces were regularly re-introducing schemes and methods that had failed in the past and the job got boring.

  5. #1025
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    MVT your post above shows how brainwashed you are. I am in my seventies & it is the brainwashed university educated that are pushing us to right wing policies. Have a listen to newstalk ZB this morning how poorly educated in practical things school leavers & university graduates are. I have one child with a practical education that is very wealthy & one with several degrees that cannot get satisfied with any job.
    Possum The Cat

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    Your'e talking about someone else being brainwashed and you are referring to newstalk ZB radio???? Had an original thought recently? How rich in irony that is!!
    Quote Originally Posted by POSSUM THE CAT View Post
    MVT your post above shows how brainwashed you are. I am in my seventies & it is the brainwashed university educated that are pushing us to right wing policies. Have a listen to newstalk ZB this morning how poorly educated in practical things school leavers & university graduates are. I have one child with a practical education that is very wealthy & one with several degrees that cannot get satisfied with any job.

  7. #1027
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    BIRMANBOY Just shows how brainwashed you are. You give the Impression that you do not listen to anything that does not come out of a university graduates mouth.
    Possum The Cat

  8. #1028
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    Unfortunately I cannot help you regards the impressions you form...however based on your previous posts would appear to be based on bugger all of any substance.
    Quote Originally Posted by POSSUM THE CAT View Post
    BIRMANBOY Just shows how brainwashed you are. You give the Impression that you do not listen to anything that does not come out of a university graduates mouth.

  9. #1029
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    Quote Originally Posted by POSSUM THE CAT View Post
    I have one child with a practical education that is very wealthy & one with several degrees that cannot get satisfied with any job.
    I had the situation with on son who was going nowhere in the education system. I let him have his head and he left from the fourth form and eventually completed a full electronics apprenticeship. He then went overseas and moved on and up with an honours degree to senior market data architects position with Bank of America. He is now fairly rich but he can still fix our television or computer.
    Last edited by craic; 05-03-2013 at 12:27 PM.

  10. #1030
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    All the indications are that National's controversial policy of partial sell downs will end up being wildly popular with a large section of the population, including many that have been and probably still are opposed to sell downs of SOEs and have not been directly involved with the sharemarket before. I will go out on a limb and predict this may indeed assist National in securing a 3rd term, helped by the Opposition continuing to harp on about this long after everyone else happily moves on and just looking like bitter old men/women.
    Last edited by iceman; 05-03-2013 at 03:26 PM.

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