Sowell says

Crises have long been seen as great opportunities to expand the federal government’s power while the people are too scared to object and before any opposition can get organized.

— Thomas Sowell Quotes (@ThomasSowell) February 14, 2023

Rural round-up

Cyclone aftermath: Keeping tabs on mental wellbeing a top priority – Country Life :

As a Cessna arrives at the aerodrome near Bridge Pa in Hastings, Bel Gunson is there to welcome the load of aid. 

Gunson, of the Rural Support Trust, is in awe of the survival mode people are in.

She explains how those in the back country were ready with barbeques, gas bottles, and water.

But of course, now those water and gas supplies are low. And being virtually cut off by communications and by road, those farmers are relying on help from the skies. . . 

Forestry waste: Slashed – Government announces inquiry, how East Coast forestry lost its social licence – Andrea Fox :

The powerful forestry lobby was marshalling its forces well ahead of the Government’s announcement there would be a ministerial inquiry into destructive forestry debris – but for storm-battered East Coasters, the Beehive is very late to something they’ve known for years.

For them, plantation forestry has not just lost its social licence – its waste has become a lethal weapon that regularly blitzes their homes, land, livelihoods and infrastructure, then drains their pockets to pay for clean-ups.

The fact that forestry is a cornerstone of the Tairāwhiti-Gisborne economy becomes a tired old song when a child dies playing in logs on your beach, your community is cut off by a broken bridge, your property looks like a war zone and you have no power or phone for days.

While local forestry companies – several of them foreign-owned – argue the debris issue is “complex”, that they’re victims of poor decisions about planting on fragile soils, made and incentivised by governments decades ago, and climate change is the real culprit, recent photos and videos of carnage-by-wood are impossible to misinterpret. . . 

One of my favourite jobs,post harvest drilling of multi species cover crops. Feeding the soil,feeding the livestock,100% soil cover 100% of the time. This is what farming in New Zealand should look like! pic.twitter.com/STMqvy0axw

— Mike Porter (@mikeonthehills) February 26, 2023

Tough infrastructure calls for rural NZ as it rebuilds – Annette Scott:

Rural communities will face some tough decisions on infrastructure in the wake of Cyclone Gabrielle, says Infrastructure New Zealand policy director Michelle McCormick.

And infrastructure that is fit for the future will not be affordable by the government alone.

“The big question being can we build back more resilience,” she said.

“We need to, and there will be hard decisions for communities.   . .

Farmer resilience will be tested – Hayden Dillon :

Perhaps Captain Bligh’s infamous line, “the beatings will continue until morale improves”, best summed up the mood of New Zealand’s weary agribusiness sector at Fieldays last year.

While there are good things happening for farmers, there are significant headwinds to navigate for New Zealand’s most critical sector heading into 2023. This includes well-publicised rising costs, market and regulatory uncertainties and the familiar ever more acute problem of labour shortages.

While I’d love to be more upbeat, the uncomfortable reality is that we face headwinds – some of which are self-inflicted and some external. But wherever they are coming from, there are strengthening undercurrents holding the sector back.

While there is an inordinate international focus on the Ukraine situation, the big story for New Zealand lies elsewhere. China is our story because China pays our bills. If we look at that country, it is still struggling with its own internal issues, from still strictly enforcing Covid restrictions through to confidence in its own economy. . .

Sheep meat recovery not easy – Hunter McGregor :

There was relief all round when China lifted its Covid restrictions and Hunter McGregor says as the economy slowly recovers, so should demand for New Zealand sheep and lamb.

After nearly three years of ever-increasing restrictive Covid zero rules and mounting costs throughout China, something had to give. And it did. It started in Guangzhou on December 5, 2022 and five days later had spread to Shanghai. These events have significantly impacted New Zealand lamb- and sheep-meat pricing.

I had never before seen the Shanghai locals so angry and frustrated over ever-changing Covid rules and the complexity of how these rules were applied. After the Shanghai two-month lockdown in April and May 2022, you could feel the frustration growing through the rest of the year.

By late November, several large Covid outbreaks occurred in many large cities. On December 5, Guangzhou was the first city to announce, to everyone’s surprise (and relief), they were removing all of the Covid restrictions. The rest of the country quickly followed, with Shanghai on December 10. Whatever the reasons behind the change in policy, it was a massive relief to many others, and me. . . 

Cuteness alert for the weekend!
So many different faces and colours….. 😍🐏

📸 & 🐏 IG emily_ruckert pic.twitter.com/3gUawLeHme

— Campaign for Wool (@Campaignforwool) February 25, 2023

Seeka announces results for the year ended 31 December 2022 :

New Zealand produce company Seeka has announced a net profit after tax of $6.5 million, following a difficult year due to Covid-19 and lower yields across the industry.

Michael Franks, Seeka’s Chief Executive explained, “Seeka and its supplying growers experienced a very difficult year last year, with extreme labour shortages, shipping disruptions, lower kiwifruit yields and poor fruit quality all impacting returns.”

The 2022 season saw an industry-wide reduction in Kiwifruit yields, combined with storage performance issues, both onshore and offshore, as a direct result of the pandemic. Franks said, “Despite the challenging season, Seeka achieved an increase in revenues to $348 million reflecting newly acquired business. However, packing operations peaked during the COVID wave resulting in significant labour shortages, higher labour costs and production pressure. This combined with lower yields from the orchards impacted margins contributing to a drop in EBITDA to $46 million and a net profit after tax of $6.5 million.”

Since the 2022 harvest, Seeka has reviewed its supply chain operations from orchard to loadout and is focussed on achieving excellence in fruit handling in 2023.  . . 

Can NZ avoid culture wars?

Camryn Brown asks: can New Zealand avoid culture laws?

History could not be more clear: when politics become pointless, violence often follows.

So, let’s talk about culture wars, how they turn politics into an ineffective sideshow, and the danger we face in New Zealand.

Ok. Culture wars are a conflict between social groups and a struggle for dominance of values, beliefs, and practices.

In the US, politics has become the main battlefield of a massive culture war, and that war has become the defining feature of their politics. Culture wars issues such as gender identity, marriage equality, and bodily autonomy are called “wedge issues” because they’re the major political dividing lines.

As a result – and despite social issues being important – US politics have become increasingly ridiculous and, actually, pointless.

I say pointless because political systems are how we solve economic issues, but they aren’t how we solve social issues.

First, we have to recognise that social and economic issues are from different spheres of human interaction.

Social issues relate to intangible things (like morals and values) and emotional exchange. Economic issues relate to tangible resources and financial exchange.

In political terms, social policy is the organisation, regulation, and control of beliefs, behaviours, and relationships, whereas economic policy is the organisation, regulation, and control of ownership, consumption, production, and trade.

Secondly, we have to recognise that, while these spheres of human interaction are interrelated, politics works very differently on them.

To be clear, I’m not saying that social issues and economic issues are unrelated. Social well-being is a determinant of economic participation and economic well-being. Similarly, economic insecurity often leads to social intolerance.

I am saying that the role of politics is different in each sphere. Politics, through economic regulation, solves issues. But politics, through social regulation, only codifies solutions from elsewhere.

Let me explain how.

Humans are consciously social.

We spend our lives pondering morality and fairness and applying our values in our interactions with others. We are confident in what we think is right and wrong, and we love talking about it. As new ideas are debated, civil society changes its views. In New Zealand, homosexual sex was illegal until 1987, and now we have marriage equality. These changes are codified by the laws that politicians pass, but they are not often created by them. Laws are mostly a reaction to a society that has already changed. In short, social change happens through social interaction much more than political action.

In contrast, humans are not consciously economic creatures. Most of us don’t tend to think or talk about economics very much. Note, for example, that most reality television is about social interaction and very little is about economic interaction. We do tend to respond strongly to economic incentives, but mostly subconsciously. Thus, the laws that politicians set on economic matters have a strong effect, but we tend to not consciously notice or revisit them.

Ok, so now let’s look at where New Zealand stands on all this.

For now, not too bad. No more than one of our current top 20 political issues could be called a culture wars issue. Politics is mostly focused where politics can be effective.

But I cannot say that the future looks bright. We seem primed to go down that pointless American path as voters give increasing weight to where politicians stand on social issues. Consider the ongoing murmurs of concern regarding the religious beliefs of politicians. Consider also the imported symbols and slogans of the parliamentary lawn protests of early 2022.

And while it’s concerning that Kiwi voters could turn our politics into a culture war, it’s even more concerning that the Labour party seems determined to deliberately do so.

Many commentators in the US have observed that their culture wars did not arise as an unavoidable result of widespread cultural differences, but rather as a deliberate tool to create in-groups and out-groups for political purposes.

And that’s what Labour has been doing here. The five million Kiwis at home in New Zealand versus the one million stuck overseas. Renters versus landlords. Employers versus workers. Farmers versus city dwellers. Always division and always pitting Kiwis against Kiwis.

And into these divisions, they pour the triggers, signs, and symbols of culture war. We are kindness, you are not. We are inclusive and diverse, you are stale and pale. Your religious beliefs are concerning, ours speak to our caring values. Language debates. Accusations of racism. Scapegoating. And so on.

OK, so what should we do?

First, if you have to choose between voting according to your social policy preferences or your economic ones, always choose the economy. Whether or not you agree with them socially, it simply makes more sense to vote for the politicians you agree with economically because politicians can be leaders on economic matters but are only followers on social ones.

Secondly, don’t let politicians distract you from what matters. Ignore the attempts at division and distraction. As a voter, stay focused on the big issues: Who has the best solutions for regaining control of inflation and addressing the cost of living crisis? Who’ll finally solve New Zealand’s infrastructure deficit and low productivity quagmire? If voters stay focused on the right things, politicians have to as well.

So, vote with your wallet, not your heart. And on social matters, use your voice not your vote.

For the good of the country, let’s keep the culture wars out of Kiwi politics!

I’m Camryn Brown, for The Common Room.

Quotes of the day

If free speech does not include the right to make deeply offensive claims that are perhaps antiquated and even abhorrent to the average Kiwi, but that does not incite violence, then we no longer have free speech. And without free speech, we would never have had the Springbok tour protests, the Maori Land Marches, the Nuclear Free New Zealand movement, or many other examples of speech that stood up to prejudice, bigotry and hatred.

Free speech is not free. It certainly runs the risk of allowing incorrect, stupid, hateful, or wrong views to be expressed. But censorship is not free either and the cost is much higher. – Jonathan Ayling

THE NATIONAL PARTY stands at the beginning of an unsealed road which, if followed, might just carry it to victory. The question, now, is whether the party possesses the guts to set off down it. Sometimes politicians hit upon a winning strategy by accident, unaware that they have done so. National’s answer to the Government’s controversial Three Waters project may be a case in point. Wittingly, or unwittingly, National’s policy reflects the principle of subsidiarity – i.e. the idea that the best decisions are those made by the communities required to live most closely with their consequences. Set against Labour’s preference for large, centralised (and almost always unresponsive) bureaucracies, National’s preference for the local and the accountable has much to recommend it.

Labour, meanwhile, may find that its road to October has been closed. Rather than proceed with all speed down the path of repudiation and reprioritisation promised by Chris Hipkins when he became Prime Minister, the exigencies of dealing with the Auckland Anniversary Weekend Floods and Cyclone Gabrielle appear to have provided Hipkins’ caucus opponents with a chance to regroup and push back.

This was especially true of Three Waters. The period within which the unequivocal repudiation of the project remained politically feasible was always dangerously short. Indeed, the slightest delay threatened to make its abandonment impossible. Nor was the threat exclusively internal. The longer Hipkins put off Three Waters’ demise, the greater the risk that National would produce a viable and popular alternative. Which is exactly what it has done. – Chris Trotter

National’s decision to restore of local authorities’ property could hardly have come at a more opportune moment, given the very recent judicial observation that the asset base of the Three Waters’ “entities” had, indeed, been “expropriated”, from their local authority owners without the payment of fair and adequate compensation. It is a measure of the reckless radicalism of the Three Waters project that a New Zealand court could endorse such a claim. In no other context is it possible to imagine a Labour Cabinet signing-off on expropriation without compensation – a policy worthy of Lenin’s Bolsheviks. – Chris Trotter

If this is, indeed, what National is planning – and by what other means could citizens escape crippling rate increases and/or water charges? – then it is reasonable to predict a decisive shift in the relationship between New Zealand’s central and local government institutions. If the drift towards ever larger and more remote central bureaucracies is to be halted, then a radically new way of funding local infrastructure and the provision of local services will have to be devised. It is simply untenable for the present practice of central government offloading more and more responsibilities onto local authorities, while simultaneously withholding the funding needed to pay for them, to continue. There is a limit to how much can be borrowed affordably from private lenders, just as there is a democratic limit to the size and frequency of local government rate-hikes.

If National has, at long last, recognised this, then it can present itself as offering something new and progressive to the electorate. Subsidiarity is, after all, entirely congruent with the conservative (but not the neoliberal) view of politics. Conservatives are deeply suspicious of strong, centralised states which have no need to fear the displeasure of their citizens. Democracy, as a means of ensuring political accountability, similarly decreases in efficacy the further away the decisions affecting citizens’ daily lives are made. When the Americans say, “all politics is local”, they’re speaking the truth. – Chris Trotter

Making everything worse, are the public misgivings about the way Labour is handling the aftermath of Cyclone Gabrielle. Intended or not, accurate or not, Hipkins’ downplaying of claims of lawlessness in the stricken communities of Tairawhiti and Hawkes Bay reminded too many people of the Covid emergency’s infallible “Podium of Truth”. Compounding Labour’s difficulties is Forestry Minister Stuart Nash’s inability to fully articulate the locals’ white-hot rage at the forestry companies. The latter’s failure to do anything about the hugely destructive volumes of “slash” that repeated storms have sent crashing into bridges, fences, orchards and people’s homes, has outraged the whole country. If ever there was a moment for righteous ministerial wrath, then, surely, this is it. Action, not yet another expert inquiry, is what the situation demands. Action, and the colourful condemnatory language of a Bob Semple or a Jack Lee. Labour men who really did “move with speed” in a crisis.

For Chris Hipkins and Labour, the state highway to October has been rendered impassable by inaction and political slash. Christopher Luxon and National, meanwhile, have discovered an unsealed road without slips and fallen trees. It’s not their usual way of reaching the Treasury Benches, but, with a bit of luck, it just might get them where they want to go. – Chris Trotter

The London School of Economics has decided that it will not use dreadful words such as Christmas, Easter, Lent, and Michaelmas to designate its term times and holidays. Presumably, its management now congratulates itself that it has made a step toward true diversity, equity, and inclusion, the modern equivalent—irony of ironies—of faith, hope, and charity.

An article in The Daily Telegraph was headed “The LSE’s decision is not just drearily woke. It’s completely pointless.” Alas, if only this were true, if only the decision were merely pointless; but on the contrary, the decision was extremely pointed. It was part of a tendency—I won’t go so far as to say part of a conspiracy—to destroy all links of the present with tradition, particularly (but not only) with religious tradition.

Tradition and pride in institutions are obstacles to a managerial class who prefer people whom they manage to be birds of passage, or particles in Brownian motion in the ocean of time, who are completely fixated on the present moment. The managerial revolution, when it takes place, is very thorough, and nothing is too small to escape its destructive notice. – Theodore Dalrymple

That is why those who want to manage the whole of society love the kind of history that sees no grandeur, beauty, or achievement in it, but only a record of injustice and misery (which, of course, really existed, and all of which they, and only they, will put right). The real reason for the enthusiasm for pulling down statues is to destroy any idea of the past as having been anything other than a vast chamber of horrors, and since everyone has feet of clay, and the heroes of the past always had skeletons in their cupboard (to change the metaphor), reasons for destroying statues, even of the greatest men, can always be found. – Theodore Dalrymple

The Daily Telegraph said that it was insulting to Christians, but actually it was far more insulting to non-Christians, such as I, for it assumed that they are so sensitive and intolerant that they are offended by the slightest reference to the Christian religion or to any vestiges of the Christian past of the country in which they live, either permanently or temporarily. In other words, non-Christians are made of psychological eggshells and are so delicate constitutionally that they need the protection of the LSE apparatchik and nomenklatura class—which after all has to occupy itself with something (it held meetings to make this decision, no doubt under the mistaken impression that it was working, even working very hard).

No one wants to live under a theocracy, other, that is, than theocrats (and even they only want to live under a theocracy so long as they are the rulers), but the danger of that is vanishingly remote, at least until Islam becomes the majority religion. It is said that only a minority in Britain now claim to be Christian—about 44 percent—but the Christian past of the country can hardly be denied.  – Theodore Dalrymple

Perhaps one day, when decolonization is complete and Newton discovered to have been originally from Burkina Faso, attention will be turned to the triggering effects of so many Christian churches in countries such as Britain, edifices that so powerfully remind descendants of victims of Christian persecution of their ancestors’ traumatic experiences, which they are thereby forced to relive.

To this, of course, there is only one solution: pull them down, raze them to the ground. Likewise, cemeteries should be cleansed, crosses removed, religious inscriptions expunged.

Language, mon dieu, how it needs reforming! The place to start, of course, is schools, where the future of the nation is being developed. Any child who is heard exclaiming “God!” or anything like it should be told that he must in future use the good, solidly secular expletive “Fuck!” (this, of course, is happening spontaneously as well), under pain of punishment. The Bible should be made as illegal to bring into school as it is to bring it into Saudi Arabia, and expressions derived from that triggering work should be removed from common usage. Sufficient unto the day are the unjust social circumstances thereof. –

I am hesitant to write in a satirical vein because, as I and others have remarked, satire is prophecy. A number of current policies would have been regarded as satirical exaggeration only a few years ago. Who would have thought, say a decade ago, that a serious, or at any rate a prominent and powerful female politician (I refer here to the First Minister of Scotland), would argue that a man convicted of rape was actually, that is to say in reality, in fact, in every sense, a woman? Such propositions now elicit only irritation, not laughter; and irritation declines before long to resignation. Absurdity is first discussed, then adopted by a vanguard of intellectuals in search of a cause, and finally becomes an orthodoxy that it is socially unacceptable to question. Intelligent people give up opposition because it is boring to argue against what is not worth entertaining in the first place. – Theodore Dalrymple

Hipkins has tried to rebrand Three Waters by calling it an ‘investment in pipes and infrastructure’ and many other descriptions that are far better than the weird bureaucratic branding it received.

For most voters, it isn’t a vote-changing issue. But “Three Waters” as it has evolved over the past few years, does have a potent mix in it that’s potentially negative for Labour: Wellington-knows-best centralisation, thieving assets off councils and a bit of general secret Government agenda about it. – Luke Malpass 

Earlier this month, the White House announced a five-year plan for redressing racial inequality. It is essentially the Biden administration’s version of a diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) plan, like those issued by nearly every major university, only at a vastly larger scale. The policy aims to “advance an ambitious, whole-of-government approach to racial equity and support for underserved communities” by embedding equity goals in every aspect of the government.

From the highest offices of the state down to the smallest local bureaucracies, DEI now pervades almost all levels of American society. And while it was once thought that the fringe racial theories that animate the DEI agenda could be confined to small liberal arts campuses, it is clear that is no longer the case. – John Sailer

To many in the universities and perhaps in the country at large, these values sound benign—merely an invitation to treat everyone fairly. In practice, however, DEI policies often promote a narrow set of ideological views that elevate race and gender to matters of supreme importance.

That ideology is exemplified by a research methodology called “public health critical race praxis” (PHCRP)—designed, as the name suggests, to apply critical race theory to the field of public health—which asserts that “the ubiquity of racism, not its absence, characterizes society’s normal state.” In practice, PHCRP involves embracing sweeping claims about the primacy of racialization, guided by statements like “socially constructed racial categories are the bases for ordering society.” – John Sailer

Shorn of any context, the principles of diversity and inclusion strike many people as unobjectionable, and even laudable. But in practice they are used as a shorthand for a set of divisive ideological dogmas and bureaucratic power grabs. Under the banner of DEI, medical institutions that are supposed to focus on protecting human life are being sacrificed on the altar of the racialist ideology.

Because of the ideological project associated with DEI initiatives, critics often highlight their effect on curriculum and teaching. But the more potent effect, in the long run, could end up being on scientific research and scholarship. – John Sailer

In other words, under the new ideological regime that has taken power both inside the federal bureaucracy and in institutions like UCSF, even medical research has become yet another front in a larger ideological battle. Tomorrow’s doctors and medical experts are being selected and trained on the basis of their willingness to “disrupt power imbalances between racialized and non-racialized people.” – John Sailer

Choose your Zelensky. He can be either saint or sinner. Either valiant repairer of the liberal international order or compliant puppet of the WEF. Either a one-man defender of liberal democracy or a stooge of nefarious globalists. These are the only two Zelenskys. There’s no in-between. He’s either a Guardian editorial made dashing flesh or the willing jester of Davos Man. Take your pick. – Brendan O’Neill

There’s a very important debate to be had about Russia, Ukraine, the West and war in the modern era. But what we’ve mostly had over the past year is the cheap exploitation of a serious global conflict to score points in petty wars at home. Chaise-lounge Churchills on one side, armchair Chamberlains on the other. And they’re all really talking about themselves, not Ukraine. Let’s change the record. Maybe Zelensky is neither saint nor sinner. Neither the world’s saviour nor its destroyer. Maybe he’s just a man doing what he thinks is best in the most horrifying and existential of circumstances. Call me a brainless dupe of Davos propaganda, but that’s what I’m going with. – Brendan O’Neill

My mum and dad have always taught us to have goals, and I realised quite early on that it didn’t matter what car you drive or what material things you have if you don’t have a safe, warm house to put them. – Steph George

Democratic accountability is why we now have elected Government, not Kings. – David Farrar