EYES RIGHT
Richard Prosser Riding the wave
THE 2025 TASKFORCE ON CLOSING THE GAP, AND catching
up economically with Australia, released its first report before Christmas. Being somewhat preoccupied with a new baby meant that I hadn’t read it until last week, and other than third-hand accounts from the media and various other commentators, had very little idea of what was actually in it. Now that I have, I’m not sure whether to laugh, cry, check the date to make sure it isn’t April 1st, or simply shake my head and wonder. In essence, the Taskforce’s report says little other than “Well, Rogernomics didn’t work last time, and in fact it near terminally stuffed the country – let’s try it again!” Seriously. The best brains the Government could recruit, supposedly, have come up with a list of initial recommendations which they apparently genuinely believe will bring this country closer to income parity with our trans-Tasman neighbours. They include lowering taxes for the rich, slashing health spending, cutting welfare, abolishing the Super Fund, privatizing everything which hasn’t been already – including local Government assets; charging everyone for water (also privatised), stinging road users even harder for the privilege of driving on the Queen’s Highway, corporatising education, getting rid of the last remnants of worker’s rights, and giving away our mineral resources to foreign owned mining companies. No, really. That’s what the report says. And that’s just for starters – it goes on to emphasize the absolute necessity for more time, more studies, more recommendations, more reports, and presumably more fees for the Taskforce’s appointees, before any further progress can be made. Nowhere does the Taskforce offer anything practical. Nowhere does it even suggest, let alone state, that it has examined the better-performing economies around the world and attempted to discover the secrets 20 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM April 2010
of their success. Nowhere does it give any indication that it has the first clue about how wealth is actually created. Now I can’t say I’m any great fan of unions, especially when, as they have done in the past, they step outside their brief, and start meddling in politics and other things which don’t concern them, like Springbok tours and the enviro-fascist movement. But the average working New Zealander certainly needs some protection against the more rapacious and unprincipled of employers, especially those whose philosophy is and has been represented by some of the Taskforce’s
buy back its services, and the private buyer intends to profit from this exercise, then the only way in which the private buyer can make a profit is by buying the business for less than it is worth, or selling the services for more than they should cost, or both. Either way, the previous owner, that’s you the taxpayer, can only lose out. Anyone who claims otherwise is either thick or a liar, and since the esteemed members of the Taskforce, on the basis of their records, are almost certainly not the former, it could very well be argued that they may instead be the latter. As for turning water into a chargeable,
The Taskforce presume that Australia’s success rests solely on her mining sector, and that we can become likewise rich by digging up our National Parks and giving our minerals to the lowest bidder in return for a peppercorn Royalty own members. And I have long been an advocate of turning welfare back into a safety net, instead of the increasingly feathered multi-generational hammock which it has become in recent years. But privatization doesn’t work, as we have already long since learned in the most painful of ways, and it cannot possibly work, as anyone who isn’t a complete moron can easily understand. This is really, really simple. If you own a freehold business or asset, paid for by and inherited from generations of taxpayers past, and you sell that asset to a private buyer from whom you will then lease or
tradeable commodity, I have to say the idea turns my stomach. There are some limits. Water is a necessity of life and a basic human right, not some discretionary product to be usurped for profit by the grubby little Shylocks of the self-styled “New Right”, or any of the other worthless parasites who prey on decent society. These people are not Right-Wingers, whatever they may claim; they’re soulless thieves, bereft of decency, morals, or a work ethic, globalists and internationalists by nature, and an internationalist by any other name is still a communist. Before I digress too far, I should say that