Welcome to Planet Key

I've never been a fan of John Key.  Sure, I lean pretty far towards the left so I find his politics pretty objectionable, I can't stand his constant butchering of the English language and I still cringe with embarrassment when I think of his appearance on Letterman, but those are not the only reasons.  I've always found it disconcerting how Mr Key invariably phrases sentences so to avoid any responsibility for their content.  Just count the number of sentences beginning with "On the advice I’ve had..." or similar.  It's a lot.  The Banks/Dotcom/GCSB saga has taken things to a new level.

In the Banks-Dotcom spat, Key seems to be adopting a "see-no-evil" approach with his refusal to read documentation that may require him to think about sanctioning Banks.  This is pretty cynical given his "holier-than-thou" approach as an opposition MP and during National's first term.  I suppose it's understandable though given Key's primary objective: to preserve his coalition and hang onto power at any cost.

The latest Dotcom scandal involving the GCSB really takes the cake though.  Despite providing the only democratically elected oversight to the GCSB, Key seems to think that he didn't know the agency was illegally spying on Dotcom absolves him of all responsibility.  Something is badly wrong here - either Key DID know and is lying, or Key has been woefully negligent and incompetent in his duties as prime-minister.  You can't have it neither way.

I think part of Key's charm is his casual attitude to the pretty serious business of running a country, at least as far as Joe Public is concerned.  The contrast with Helen Clarke's iron fist approach couldn't be sharper, and Key has rode the resultant popularity wave for a number of years.  Unfortunately for NZ, having someone tell us everything is going to be OK and not to worry about things isn't going to stop NZ's decline towards becoming an economic basket case.  Nor will his casual approach or total reluctance to accept any sort of responsibility for the decisions he makes or the actions of his ministers. Key has always tried to take the line of least resistance when setting policy to ensure his all-important personal popularity will stay intact.  I can only hope that NZ voters are smart enough to see through the ruse, but given the idiotic response of most NZers once Maori got involved over the proposed asset sales, I don't hold out much hope.

Also discouraging is Labour's almost complete inability to articulate a response to the situation.  I thought they might catch onto something when Key so flippantly described "Planet Key", showing just where he seems to think NZers priorities lie and how out of touch with the country's problems he really is, but they utterly failed to capitalise.  What we are left with is a government, led by a man who has just demonstrated he is devoid of integrity, which is selling out NZ's future to stay in power today and an opposition who are unable to come up with ideas which are compellingly different.

Everyone's Fault But Mine

One of my favourite Homer Simpson quotes of all times is, after having done something foolish, he whines "this is everyone's fault but mine".  The bad news is that it's also most NZers favourite phrase.  Everything is someone else's fault, someone else is to blame, my woes are the result of someone else's actions.

Who is getting most of the blame at the moment?  Yep, it's Maori again.

Recently, and foolishly, I got involved in a "debate" on facebook concerning the "treaty gravy train".  Apparently "in years to come our crippled country will look back scratching our heads wondering why we didn't stop such an obvious and ongoing blight on our economy".   Eh?!

The view that Maori treaty claims are a crippling and overwhelming burden on the poor old taxpayer is a common one, but how does is stand up to some facts?  I decided to point some out: so far TOTAL treaty claims have cost the taxpayer around about $NZ1 billion.  Sound like a lot?  Well it's about 4 weeks worth of the health budget.  So far a total of 5.5 DAYS of your tax revenue has been paid out in treaty claims.  Hell, you want to talk about obvious and ongoing blights which will cripple the NZ economy?  Well, NZ Super Costs about $9 billion per year ("I paid tax my whole life.  I'm ENTITLED to it".  Grrrr....).  You can bet a fair proportion of those rattling their sabres about the "treaty gravy train" are pocketing NZ Super to pay for this years trip to the Gold Coast.  And how about the bail out of South Canterbury Finance investors by the foolish Retail Deposit Guarantee Scheme which enables investors to make ridiculous investments at almost no risk?  You can bet there weren't too many maori on that particular gravy train.

Let's look at the biggest treaty settlement to Ngai Tahu.  The tribe settled on $170 million which was chump change compared to the $20 billion in assets which were independently assessed to have been ILLEGALLY  taken from them (and, let's be clear: an agreement doesn't cease to be binding just because it becomes inconvenient for one of the signatories).  Ngai Tahu Holdings now, as best as I can tell, contributes about $100 million in tax each year.  Crickey, did we give them enough?!  Even if Ngai Tahu had received all of the $1 billion in settlements so far, a 10% annual return on investment would be stunning not to mention the near 60% return the "poor, overburdened" NZ taxpayer is getting.

No one in the facebook debate took too kindly to being presented with such inconvenient facts.  I was told "you've made your point, now back off", another of other "points" which totally ignore facts were made and shortly later I received an abusive and threatening (and anonymous) e-mail for my troubles.  I should have known better: another key attribute of your average NZer is that he/she is at least somewhat anti-science, anti-fact and prefers to make arguments based on emotion and feeling.

If this country does indeed become a "crippled" cot case, and I'm not confident that it won't, then it won't be the fault of maori.  It won't be the fault of beneficiaries.  It won't be the fault of immigrants.  It'll be the fault of you and me, white NZ.  It'll be the fault of a group of people who have developed a whiny entitlement culture  (after all, you hear the call for "compensation" for something or other as frequently from pakeha as from maori).  It'll be the fault of a generation who did nothing to develop NZ's economy or industry, instead preferring to rob the subsequent generations of their wealth via property investment.  It'll be the fault of a people who elected "leaders" based on a popularity contest rather than a vision.  It'll be the fault of our deeply ingrained environmental hypocrisy (how often have you seen "No fracking" or "No deep sea drilling" bumper stickers of SUVs lately?).  

Rant complete.