Liberty Scott

Who needs a Kiwimart, now here's the tricky part...

noreply@blogger.com (Libertyscott) — Mon, 07 Sep 2026 01:16:14 +0000

It's always quite something to see two politicians who have never risked any significant capital on a business in their lives, in this case Chloe Swarbrick and Marama Davidson, deciding that it's a great idea to borrow from the next generation (and tax the current one more) so they can set up a business, bankrolled by the wealth and income of others, to compete with businesses that pay those taxes now.

They obviously think the rhetoric that existing supermarkets are making "obscene" profits is true.

Of course if it is true then there are profits to be made in entering the sector. Those profits would come by offering cheaper prices, but also being more efficient, with fewer staff, more productivity and a lower cost base overall.

What is really remarkable is that the world is awash with competing supermarket chains in many countries. Aldi is the obvious one, as the main third player in Australia, although there are smaller ones as well like IGA and Supabarn. None of them have decided to enter the New Zealand market, which indicates one (or both) of two things:

There aren't obscene profits being made;
Barriers to entry are too high to make it worthwhile to enter.

If these aren't true, you'd think Swarbrick and Davidson and part of the around 10% of the population supportive of their socialist principles, might club together and risk their own capital (something Swarbrick and Davidson are never too keen to do), to set up a rival and expect to get a lot of support from their supporters, if it were that easy.

Of course it's not.

What we DO know is that the RMA, working alongside territorial authorities, embracing the dominant philosophy of urban planners, gets in the way of new supermarkets by making it remarkably difficult to find land and sites to build them. It seems a lot of local councillors don't like stuff being built, and on top of that, they listen to encumbent supermarkets whenever a new one is proposed somewhere. They also listen to arguments about how a new supermarket would "undermine" existing ones, or other shops.

On top of that many councillors, espousing the policies of the Green Party, aren't keen on cars and carparks, so don't really want supermarkets built which encourage so-called "car dependence" (a term used by planners to describe when too many people make choices they disapprove of, by making it akin to a chemical-biological addiction).

Supermarkets can take up a lot of land, to succeed in most parts of NZ they need carparking, and space for trucks to unload goods. They need big signs to let people know where they are. Cue the NIMBYs and the legions of local councillors only too keen to say "no not here", to those who might open a new supermarket near them.

Of course you never hear Swarbrick and Davidson talk about that, because the RMA is, at its core, legislation they philosophically support. The nationalisation of land use at a local level, where anything built new is subject to "grassroots democratic control" - code for whoever shouts the loudest stops getting things done.

So instead, they want to "buy" a bunch of supermarkets. Nothing said about what happens if the owners just say no - either they will offer more of your money to buy them, generating a genuine obscene profit, or they will use state violence to coerce a sale - that's the party of kindness and peace.

Once buying them, magically they will offer cheaper food, they will thrive and the government owned supermarkets will always be full of cheap, high quality goods, with such variety and great prices, hitherto unknown absolutely everywhere that has government owned supermarkets.

And like their ideological brethren in NYC, to hell with any of those petty capitalists that get in the way

Peter Drennan has written a good piece on LinkedIn about the effects on investment, noting that the claimed $1m a day in "excess profits" amounts to $68 per person across the country. The question being whether $2.8b is worth it to save $68 per person per year, and the effects of compulsory acquisition on investment more generally.

UPDATE: This did make me laugh, because it's so deranged. The chief socialist blogger (i.e. not the most hate filled one) wants his cake cheap and more expensive too... Imagine having a brain that can reconcile...

"(Nationalisation)... gives us control, allowing us to set policy direction (not just on competing on price, but also on employment standards)."

So goods are going to be cheaper, but it is going to cost more to run the supermarket...

"Meanwhile the government buying an asset doesn't cost anything in a budget sense - it simply moves money from one column (cash) to another (assets), with no change in the overall balance"

Forgetting that it is YOUR cash, to an asset you have zero effective control over, but that "doesn't cost anything" because, of course, when you own an asset, its value can't fall at all. It holds onto its value, not at all influenced by who is willing to buy it when there is a confiscatory state.

So the magic Marxist wand is going to make stuff cheaper, raise the cost of providing it, not cost you anything because.... taxes are nothing... and will not at all affect the state's capacity to borrow.

MMT is quite the drug.

Fuel tax increases delayed.... but the central planning isn't going away

noreply@blogger.com (Libertyscott) — Tue, 01 Sep 2026 02:26:45 +0000

As many of you will know, I could write a lot about this, but I want to make two related points....

The land transport funding system as it stands is largely dependent on motorised road users being charged a mix of taxes and fees, for using the roads and owning vehicles. From that state highways are funded, local roads are around half funded (rates contributes the rest) and public transport is subsidies (with around half of the subsidies coming from rates). Because the fees charged for road use and vehicle ownership are collected nationally, everyone pays the same per litre of fuel, kilometres driven regardless of where they are. What varies is how much based on vehicle fuel consumption or vehicle class/weight (for road user charges).

What this means is that although money is collected from all over, the money is distributed on the basis of need and on the basis of government priorities. This means cross-subsidies all over the place. Regions that are poor with high costs (think Tairawhiti) get their roads subsidised by motorists in regions with lower costs (think Canterbury). Some regions get very little new capital spending (think Southland) but have high costs of maintenance because a lot of roads have to be paid for by a low population. Some get a lot of new capital spending (think Auckland), but pay a lot as well.

What this means is as costs go up, and political demands to spend more (driven by people voting for politicians who promise new roads, new railway lines, new busways), the main way this is paid for is taxing motorists more. ALL motorists more.

So the first point is simple, any government has three choices, without reforming the system:

Don't raise taxes/fees to respond to those demands including inflation, and cut capital spending. It would be entirely possible to fund maintenance and existing commitments without increasing fees, but spending on capital improvements for any modes would start to dry up and over time maintenance ;
Raise taxes/fees, and face backlash from people in regions who arguably get nothing more for their money, and see those who benefit the most from new spending contributing little towards it;
Pour in money from general taxation (money that otherwise might be spent on health, education, law and order, defence, welfare, or returned to taxpayers in tax cuts), creating the obvious opportunity cost of increasing land transport subsidies.

Bear in mind that the debate around this isn't so much about what it is spent on. Labour and the Greens rarely talk about how almost all land transport spending is dependent on people driving and freight going by road, because if that dropped significantly, then so would available funding. Despite some ludicrous claims, especially from the anti-car Green left, if people drove 20% fewer kilometres by car, it would make virtually no difference to road maintenance costs. Cars create very little road wear per kilometre driven. The two big impacts are the weather (roads deteriorate due to exposure to sun, rain, snow, temperature changes) and heavy vehicle axle loads. Fewer heavy truck movements slows down road maintenance, but it also reduces road user charges revenue, so it's not much of a net saving (although few trucks on local roads will save ratepayers). Furthermore, unless fewer movements are due to more productivity, less road freight is generally a result of economic recession.

So when anyone is debating this point, if they don't want the system reformed, then either they want ever decreasing spending on road and public transport improvements, higher fuel tax and road user charges, or (on average) higher general taxes.

The second point is more fundamental, there is a choice of deeper reform. Such a reform would stop treating roads as a political football, or indeed public transport. It would see people paying more directly for the roads they use, based on the costs of providing them in the region they are in. It would see direct feedback loop between what is paid and what is spent. It might see road providers responsible for footpaths as well, but treated as regulated utilities rather than political footballs. Big new roads would be justified only as long-term investments in corridors, but with better pricing the demand for these may ease. Likewise, better pricing of road use would see public transport needing fewer subsidies until it could stand on its own, as it does in multiple jurisdictions such as Hong Kong and Japan, with specific subsidies only to support those who can't afford it.

No longer should the ute driver in Gore pay for the public servant in Wellington to walk from his $1.5m house in Khandallah to a train for a $200k p.a. job, because the public servant would pay more driving on a heavily constrained road. Likewise, no longer should the ratepayer in suburban Gisborne pay for the forestry company to get its road sealed, because road user charges only pay part of the costs of local road renewal.

The politician promising a four-lane highway from Piarere to Taupo would have to assert that it was going to be funded from general taxes to support the Highway 1 road provider, because the Highway provider wont get enough money from motorists to pay for such extravagance. However, so would the politician promising a tram line to Auckland's North Shore through a tunnel, having to justify to small business people in Henderson why their taxes should pay to give Takapuna homeowners a massive uplift in their property values - although an entrepreneur might decide it is worthwhile to do so, if her company invested in properties along the route on the basis of that uplift.

Whether or not speed limits went up or down, or cycle lanes were installed, or parking remains, or a lane, or space for outdoor dining, would depend on the road provider deciding on tradeoffs between land owners, transport users and property owners along the corridor who contribute towards the infrastructure outside their businesses or homes. It wouldn't be driven by an ideology of banning cars, vs. an ideology of hating cyclists, but rather one of value, determined more or less, by market conditions - the choices of millions.

It wouldn't please those who want to build lots of big new roads at anyone's expense, but it also wouldn't please those who call motorists "car fascists" (like the MP for Rongotai, soon to be Wellington Bays), those who think railways have been cheated out of their prime position as the mover of millions of people and more freight, in other words central planners of all stripes.

It ought to be time to stop paying obeisance to the fraternity of transport planners, town planners, environmental activists, public health experts and other busybodies who think how people choose to move about is something that needs "correcting". This trend has only been fuelled by universities who nurture central planning.

Consider this. There are few transport planners who work for airlines nowadays, since that entire sector has effectively become a largely open market in most developed countries. There are even fewer who work for shipping firms. Virtually no transport planners anticipated what would happen with the rise of the internet, the smartphone and the effects on logistics including disruptors like Uber. Uber destroyed central planning of taxis in those jurisdictions who have it. No transport planners would have advocated for it.

That's not to say there isn't a role for planning, designing and engineering in land transport infrastructure, but it should be led by market disciplines - what users want, and what they are prepared to pay for, compared to the cost of providing it. Consider that virtually nobody involved in transport planning knows a thing about how modern freight logistics companies work, and indeed most never even think about freight. Virtually nobody involved in transport planning thinks about aviation or shipping, and how those businesses price, supply, inform the suppliers of their VERY expensive vehicles, and how airport planning is focused on what airlines want and how to make that infrastructure profitable and attractive.

So maybe it's time to take a pause and think long and hard about whether the traditional thinking around land transport should move on. I'm not sure the political incentives are quite there for it though.

The real tragedy of the Jason Arday story

noreply@blogger.com (Libertyscott) — Sun, 16 Aug 2026 13:05:51 +0000

It's a well worn cliche that the road to hell is paved with good intentions, and the tragic death of Jason Arday has highlighted the signposts to that hell.

Barry Wall, who writes the Substack "The Court of the EDIJester" writes:

If cases like this are not one-offs, and I suspect strongly they are not, then the real Tragedy is larger than one individual, or institution.

Indeed not. There is evidence a-plenty of dubious academia.

Wall makes a far more critical point about the value of universities and the pursuit of excellence:

Meritocracy, intelligence, talent and excellence, the application of rigorous principles that identify, create and fund those who are the best of us; in whatever field, has given us an extraordinary life, luxurious in fact by any historical standard.

Cognitive ability is one of the strongest predictors of who reaches that level of achievement, and the only one that matters in the long run.

This is the engine that drives the machine in the creation of our wonderful civilisation.

It is through this that sees women, men, of all backgrounds discover, invent and create in ways that uplift themselves and others, thousands, millions. Whether it be in medicine, engineering, chemistry, computing, design or creativity, the nurturing of minds applying reason, thought, research, enquiry and philosophy to humanity, the world and the universe.

Wall says what's far worse than the Arday tragedy is the philosophical state of higher education that erodes all of this.

Diversity statements at recruitment stage become ideological screens that filter out wrong think, and competence then barely gets a look in.

This is the tragedy, there are after all only a few who could be brain surgeons or engineering geniuses and those high-ability people who notice that identity and political conformity outweigh results leave or never enter precisely because they excel cognitively...

The result is a thinner pipeline of the people most likely to generate the breakthroughs that later become miraculous treatments, ideas or inventions that enrich the world for us all.

Not only is competence devalued as being not of primary importance, but the ideological compliance that critical theory demands (because the term is essentially Orwellian - you cannot be critical of critical theory or you will be accused of being "x"ist (bigoted against an oppressed class, because critical theory is for "liberation" of the "oppressed")).

China is not growing its technical capacity and capability by embracing a philosophy that degrades and diminishes individual achievement, decries science as "Western" or an oppressive tool that might be called "yellowness". It's absurd to imagine that the strategic rivals of liberal democracies would kneecap their cleverest people, unless it was to protect their own power.

Yet the UK, the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand are all subordinate to this malign philosophy that resembles the intellectual sclerosis of education in north Korea, which has spent decades being subordinate to a manufactured pseudo philosophy called "Juche".

Juche is used to be manifestly reductive of all history, economics, politics and public policy to the utterances attributed to the Kim family, with blame for everything lying at the United States, followed by Japan and allies of the United States. Note, of course, that Pyongyang abandons this nonsense altogether for its research into military technology including nuclear weaponry, including cyberwarfare and its extensive involvement in transnational crime and smuggling. Reason is important when your objective is to achieve.

Wall points out that at worst, making science less attractive and denying the advancement of some because of identity could be costly by taking talent away from its potential:

In the worst case scenario tens of millions still die each year from diseases that are, in principle, a matter of better science.

Perverting the rate at which high-ability talent reaches the positions where that science is done has a body count.

The same EDI machinery that elevated an unstable personal narrative at Cambridge is the machinery that makes the next generation of geniuses and innovators harder to find.

The wider cost is paid by society atrophied in identity creation, virtue signalling, therapeutic twaddle and the desire of a fetid lanyard class hell bent on enforcing equity through the application of power.

Consider for a moment how someone who is clever, talented and motivated, and who either doesn't belong to one of the declared "oppressed" identities, or who doesn't want others thinking their recognition comes from being one of the "oppressed" identities. Who, with any esteem, really wants to be thought of as a DEI hire, someone advanced not because of their abilities, but to tick a box?

Furthermore, if you don't embrace the stifling binary world of critical theory, you'll be cancelled and hounded out of being heard and out of careers, forever blighted by the cardinal sin of being deemed Xist or Xphobic. You may be accused of simply being in the pay of the claimed conspiracy of global capitalism through the Atlas Network, or even worse just being a white supremacist/fascist/hate monger/Zionist or one of the many other monikers thrown about rabidly.

You might even find your career stifled because you haven't paid appropriate fealty to critical theory concepts - whether it be not taking into account the views of enough people of an oppressed identity, not reflecting an oppressed culture in your research about - say - Ancient Greece

On the Arday story ended sadly by his own hand, I thought Barry Wall's comment is a good place to end:

The story of Jason Arday is tragic, hubristic and sad, but it is also a metaphor for our society as a whole, living a constructed delusion, predicated on identity, shored up by approved emotional responses and maintained by a state apparatus so steeped in its love of all things EDI that what was once insane is now becoming sane.

The real tragedy is that the machine that creates, maintains, elevates and lauds the processes and ideas that allows an Arday to thrive and succeed is profoundly anti-civilisation and we must eradicate it in all its forms.

The Cambridge debacle is more than a case of academic misbehaviour, it is a portent, an omen if you will, and we would do well to heed it.

Perhaps the very worst element of all of this is how impotent, incompetent and ignorant so many politicians are of this philosophical cancer. Of course maybe half embrace it and are subordinate to it, because it fits within their own philosophy, of those who maybe would not embrace it, perhaps another half are too frightened to do anything but leave it alone, whereas most who confront it do so in a blundering blunt and counterproductive way.

The answer to this is not a counter-identitarianism, switching oppressed and oppressive roles, the answer is to return to enlightenment values, modernism and reason.

Vale Tony Randle

noreply@blogger.com (Libertyscott) — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 03:35:24 +0000

I'm not someone known for having much time for local government and especially councillors, but I did have time for Tony Randle. Tony was a Wellington City Councillor for the Takapu/Northern Ward. He came second in his ward in the 2025 Council elections (and was one of the three elected to Takapu/Northern Ward) as he did when first elected in 2022. He passed away rather suddenly in the weekend, which was a shock for me, but not least for his family, closest friends and all those who worked with him. Some fine words have been said by Councillors with a wide range of views, and the Mayor, and Tony deserves them all.

Tony Randle - Wellington City Councillor

I met Tony and and we had exchanged multiple emails over the years, mainly because he was passionate about transport policy, particularly making public transport better.

He was an increasingly rare individual in politics in that he wasn't really in politics. He didn't care much for labels or ideologies over outcomes, although I am sure plenty saw him on the "right", he just believed in policy that delivered results, in a Council that was fiscally prudent and didn't take more than it needed to deliver core infrastructure.

What he was passionate about was evidence and results, and he didn't go along with the views of others just to look good. He needed convincing. He was a quiet, polite and thoughtful man. For him Council was actually about service, to do better, and not a stepping stone to a national political career or to give favours to any supporters.

He came to my attention from articles he wrote some years ago, and then when he used to write to the Minister of Transport. He was the bête noire of light rail enthusiasts or rail enthusiasts generally, being highly sceptical of whether the cost (and the lack of flexibility) of such modes were worth it, especially for Wellington. He was a fan of buses and busways, and making public transport better so more people wanted to use it. He was not a fan of making driving harder, more difficult, slower or less convenient to push people onto public transport. Perhaps he would be well described as believing in abundance, but it's far better for him to describe himself (as I have included at the bottom of this post).

Although he loved robust debate, he never played the person rather than the ball. I never knew him to be rude, or use pejoratives of people he disagreed with. It was only a difference of opinion after all.

He was a fan of spreadsheets and digging into detailed analysis, and didn't accept on face value what others said were "benefits" or "results". His greatest achievement in my book was in stopping Wellington City Council's attempt to introduce a blanket, city-wide, speed limit of 30km/h based on shoddy analysis.

Randle went through Council officials' analysis and found an error in the spreadsheet, which meant the alleged benefits of lowering speed limits were overstated by a NPV of over $250k. It was the double counting of a factor used to assess under-reporting of road crashes (crashes without injury or worse aren't legally required to be reported), which meant the alleged benefits of slowing virtually all of Wellington streets down were exaggerated. It was so significant, the consultation being carried out by WCC for the proposal was suspended and the policy hasn't seen the light of day since.

One only has to wonder what other policies get pushed through following substandard analysis by local bureaucrats (let alone national ones) without the scrutiny of the likes of Tony. It seems unlikely anyone else on Council can come close to either the interest or willingness to replicate his passion for such detail.

He was rare and will be missed. I only wish he had stood in my ward, as unlike almost all other candidates for local government (anywhere I have lived), I would have voted for him positively.

I'll finish with his statement for the previous Council election from Policy.nz:

Why I'm standing

I believe council investment priorities should be core infrastructure and essential services to our community. But due to party-aligned agendas, I believe our council has lost focus on ratepayer affordability, cost-effectiveness and doing the basics well. To fix this, the council must become more democratic and take the community with it when it plans for better housing, transport and environment. I'll champion a council focused on the key needs of our city and suburbs.

About me

I am an independent sitting city councillor and have been actively engaged in community service for the last 25 years. I was a senior business analyst and bring extensive experience in projects and finance. As your councillor, I have brought some sense to council such as stopping the speed management plan that was going to make most of our roads 30 km/h. I am a full-time, active and accessible councillor to everyone from Tawa to Johnsonville.

My priorities

Prioritise council funding towards core infrastructure and essential services, meaning lower rates.
Ensure that the northern ward, as a growth area, gets improved transport and infrastructure.
Advocate for evidence-based, transparent use of rates to make Wellington a better place to live.

Beyond being a City Councillor, he was the highly valued Wellington City Council representative on the Greater Wellington Regional Transport Committee, Deputy Chair of two WCC Committees and member of five other Council Committees.

He was interviewed by Michael Laws about the speed limit scandal on The Platform in 2025. He was a regular on The Platform.

What to do about Roads of National Significance?

noreply@blogger.com (Libertyscott) — Wed, 29 Jul 2026 12:26:32 +0000

The most significant recent development in transport policy is the Government’s decision to reschedule the Roads of National Significance (RoNS) programme. The sheer scale of the proposed projects makes them neither affordable nor practical to build within the next three to five years.

The funding gap was already clear from the Infrastructure Commission’s analysis. Delivering the full package of proposed land transport spending would require fuel tax and road user charges to rise by around 70% (and then continue rising with inflation). A petrol tax increase of nearly 57 cents per litre (including GST) is politically toxic — no government could expect to survive it. Something had to give.

Even if road users nationwide could somehow be forced to pay more, there is simply not enough construction capacity to simultaneously deliver multiple large highway projects across several regions.

Deficit between user fees and planned land transport spending

From the late 1970s through to the 1990s, New Zealand typically had one — or at most two — major road projects underway in its most populous regions at any one time. In the late 1990s, for example, Auckland’s biggest project was the Northern Motorway extension from Albany (Greville Road) through to Silverdale/Orewa. This steady, measured approach kept skilled people and equipment reasonably utilised and helped control costs.

Spending increases at the time were carefully managed so they did not overwhelm the sector’s ability to recruit staff and secure plant. That disciplined approach stands in stark contrast to today’s stop-start political cycles.

Construction capacity is not just a national numbers game. It is highly regional and specialised. Every region needs a baseline level of capacity for routine maintenance, renewals, and emergency response (clearing slips, rebuilding after storms, etc.). For large projects, it makes sense to sequence them so that one flows into the next, preserving expertise and minimising mobilisation/demobilisation costs. Certain skills and equipment — particularly tunnelling — are especially scarce in New Zealand. Running multiple major tunnelling projects concurrently would be inefficient, but so would long gaps between them. The current major tunnel project, Auckland’s City Rail Link, is now largely complete. The next significant one is likely to be the 850-metre Dome Valley tunnel on the Warkworth to Te Hana motorway — the largest road tunnel since Waterview. It is prudent to avoid starting another large tunnelling project in the upper North Island until this one is well advanced.

So what has the Government done?

It has rescheduled the RoNS programme, which was really the only realistic option politically. Raising national fuel tax and Road User Charges so that drivers in Southland subsidise roads in Auckland and Wellington is neither fair nor efficient. Tolling can help at the margins, but it typically recovers only 10–15% of construction costs. While useful, tolling is nowhere near enough to fund these projects — and it can divert some traffic back onto older routes, diluting the intended benefits.

The infographic below summarises the outcome of that rescheduling. The first page shows projects now under construction, including Roads of Regional Significance and other priority works.

There is a solid spread of projects across Northland, Auckland, Waikato, Bay of Plenty, Hawke’s Bay, Manawatū, Wellington, Canterbury, and Otago. These are the schemes we know will proceed. By far the largest is the Warkworth to Te Hana section of SH1, which alone accounts for 26% of the distance from Warkworth to Whangarei.

The remainder of the RoNS programme remains unfunded for now. This includes the extension north of the Christchurch Northern Motorway, the Hope Bypass near Nelson, upgrades to SH1 in Wellington, and the balance of the Northland expressway — including the long-awaited bypass of the Brynderwyn Hills (which is already in pre-implementation and likely to follow Warkworth to Te Hana).

This situation is the predictable result of excessive political ambition, ongoing budgetary indiscipline in other areas of government spending, and a funding system that lacks rigorous discipline on costs and project scope.

It would be optimistic to expect the politics around these projects to disappear with a change of government. The other side of politics has shown little concern about cost blowouts on the City Rail Link, and appears relaxed about the $1 billion earmarked for a new rail branch line to the Port of Marsden Point.

That Marsden Point branch line stands out as a genuine boondoggle — right up there with the worst of any RoNS project. Its Benefit-Cost Ratio was massaged from a dire 0.32 to a more politically acceptable 1.19 under the Ardern Government through heroic assumptions about massive freight transfers to rail. Making the project even remotely credible would require another $1.3 billion to upgrade the North Auckland Line. Some might call this economic alchemy; most would simply call it a government-commissioned business case. Notably, it was Winston Peters who helped create these circumstances — one of the more expensive “costs” of that coalition agreement to the taxpayer.

It would be refreshing to see a consistent willingness across the political spectrum to reject boondoggles, regardless of mode. However, that currently seems unlikely.

Background

I understand why the Key Government launched the Roads of National Significance (RoNS) programme. For the previous two decades, the land transport funding system had struggled to deliver large, transformative road projects.

New Zealand has long funded roads on a fundamentally different basis from energy, telecommunications, aviation, and port infrastructure. While those sectors moved toward commercial models in the 1990s, land transport has continued to rely almost entirely on the cashflow from motoring taxes. With few exceptions (mainly legacy toll roads such as the Auckland Harbour Bridge and Lyttelton Tunnel), the system operates on a pure Pay-As-You-Go (PAYGO) basis.

Under PAYGO, new capital projects are funded from existing road users — whether or not those users will ever benefit from the new infrastructure. Future users pay the same charges, but their contributions are spread across further new projects and ongoing maintenance of the existing network. PAYGO works reasonably well for maintenance, renewals, and smaller-to-medium projects, but it is poorly suited to large capital investments. Funding capacity is limited by annual cashflow, making it difficult to finance major projects that take many years to build.

While there has been some increase in borrowing (via PPPs or Crown loans) against future revenue, it remains the exception rather than the rule. Roads are still managed as a government function rather than a commercial business.

The RoNS programme was a pragmatic workaround. It directed a significant portion of available cashflow toward a small number of big projects, bypassing a system that was otherwise well-tuned for maintenance, renewals, and high-value projects under $100 million. Large projects only proceeded if they offered exceptional benefits. Many of the successful ones — such as much of Auckland’s SH20 and SH18, the Albany to Puhoi extension of SH1, and large sections of the Waikato Expressway — clearly met that test.

By explicitly listing specific mega-projects, the National Land Transport Programme was reoriented to prioritise them. However, this approach came with real risks.

The two big issues with the RoNS are:

Displacement of higher-value projects: Lower-profile but collectively more beneficial initiatives were deferred or cancelled. The Melling Interchange, for example, should have been built 10–15 years earlier.
Weaker cost control: Politically prominent projects often faced greater cost escalation. Officials and contractors, wary of cancellation, tended to apply less rigour to commercial risk management and scope control.

That said, few people today would argue against key RoNS projects such as Transmission Gully. Even the Puhoi to Warkworth section — once derided as the “Holiday Highway” — is now widely seen as worthwhile.

Completing the Waikato Expressway has saved lives and dramatically improved connectivity from the Waikato and Bay of Plenty to Auckland. Importantly, the RoNS programme would never have been necessary had the Clark Government not dismantled two critical elements of the more independent, professional funding system established by the previous National and Labour governments.

Why did it go wrong?

From 1996, Transfund operated as an independent Crown entity responsible for land transport funding. It was financed entirely from what is now the National Land Transport Fund — revenue raised directly from motoring taxes. Its job was to spend that money in ways that maximised value for the road users who had paid it. In effect, it functioned as a proxy user-pays system.

The Transfund Board was required to deliver a safe and efficient roading network. This naturally led it to prioritise maintenance, renewals, and resilience first, then fund only the highest-value improvements. It was never intended as the final destination of transport funding reform, but rather as a stepping stone toward a more complete user-pays model.

Transfund’s main constraint was the level of motoring taxes set by Parliament (in practice, the Government of the day). It advised Ministers on what could realistically be delivered at different tax rates. When first established, the revenue from those taxes was sufficient to cover maintenance and renewals while still allowing new capital projects with a minimum benefit-cost ratio (BCR) of 4:1.

That was a deliberately high threshold, yet at the time there was no shortage of projects that comfortably cleared it.

Merge funder and provider

This arm’s-length funding model was dismantled in two stages. First, Transfund was merged with the Land Transport Safety Authority, which had responsibility for the motor vehicle and driver licensing registers, commercial vehicle operator licensing, and land transport safety programmes.

Second, the resulting entity — Land Transport New Zealand — was merged with Transit New Zealand, the state highway manager. The New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) was born: an organisation that was simultaneously the primary funder of land transport, its largest single recipient (as state highway owner and operator), a safety regulator, and the administrator of key licensing systems. “Chinese walls” were established in an attempt to preserve the independence of funding decisions. In practice, it was always going to be difficult for an agency whose board and chief executive were also responsible for building and managing the state highway network to avoid favouring its own projects over those of local authorities.

I remember Transport Minister Maurice Williamson in the mid-to-late 1990s openly welcoming the separation. He was “glad” when people lobbied him to build a particular road, because he could reply: “It’s not up to me — it’s up to Transfund to decide how best to spend the money on the roads.” The principle was simple and sound: professional, evidence-based funding decisions would deliver better outcomes for road users than politicians picking high-profile winners.

Enabling political direction of funding

One of the more damaging changes in New Zealand’s transport funding framework was the introduction of the Government Policy Statement (GPS). Setting aside the clumsy decision to appropriate a widely understood acronym, the Clark Government effectively dismantled Transfund’s operational independence. In its place, Ministers gained the power to direct spending: defining funding categories, setting allocation levels, and leaving NZTA to manage delivery. This structure inherently allows Ministers to prioritise politically favoured projects, including Roads of National Significance.

The results have been underwhelming. Successive governments of both major parties have channelled funds into large, high-profile projects while maintenance and smaller, high-value capital works have been squeezed. Under National, this meant big motorway projects. Under Labour, it meant heavy emphasis on rail, public transport, and cycleways — often accompanied by years of expensive planning and design work on schemes such as Auckland Light Rail and Let’s Get Wellington Moving, with little to show for the expenditure.

Politicians are rarely effective at picking infrastructure winners. We saw this clearly in the 1990s when decisions on airport terminal developments were taken out of political hands, finally delivering Wellington an airport terminal fit for purpose rather than a leaky 1920s relic. No one would suggest politicians should dictate the location of mobile phone towers, yet the trend toward greater political interference in infrastructure has re-emerged strongly in recent years.

The long-running saga over replacement of the Cook Strait rail ferries is a textbook example. A commercial operator has been prevented from making a straightforward business decision (i.e. not having rail enabled ferries) because politicians insist on vessels that users are unwilling to pay for at the price required — hence the need for taxpayer subsidies. That's a different argument though.

So what should happen?

While a more fundamental reform of New Zealand’s land transport funding is ultimately needed, a practical interim step would be to restore genuine transparency around the merits of individual projects. This would allow genuinely high-value initiatives to be advanced on their own terms. Once the National Land Transport Fund (NLTF) is exhausted on its core priorities, any additional Crown funding from general taxation could then be directed transparently to whatever other projects Ministers deem worthwhile.

The next Government Policy Statement (GPS 2027–2030) should be the last. It should focus squarely on delivering an efficient, productive, and safer land transport system. Clear targets and funding criteria should be set for improving network productivity, reducing congestion, enhancing trip reliability (including resilience to disruptions), and cutting serious deaths and injuries on our roads.Any Roads of National Significance (RoNS) or other major projects that sit above this baseline should be funded separately through Crown grants or loans raised specifically for those purposes. Some, such as the Hawke’s Bay Expressway upgrade, already stack up as relatively strong value-for-money investments on their own merits.

To support this approach, NZTA (and its successor state highway manager) should develop corridor plans for all State Highways. Similarly, local road controlling authorities should prepare plans for their major arterial corridors. These plans would identify the key challenges on each corridor — whether safety black spots, capacity constraints, or resilience gaps — and set out a prioritised pipeline of interventions across short, medium, and long-term horizons.Longer-term projects would provide the justification for early land acquisition, consenting, and design work. Shorter-term fixes could be advanced quickly to deliver immediate user benefits. The result would be greater certainty for the construction sector, better cost control through a steady pipeline of work, and more disciplined prioritisation overall. Some corridors would require little beyond routine maintenance and renewals; others would need substantial, staged upgrades.

For example, a corridor plan for SH1 from Auckland through Northland would sequence improvements to the Whangarei area based on actual user demand, safety data, and network performance. The solution might not be a full expressway the entire way, but a series of targeted, high-return interventions. Investment decisions would flow from evidence rather than political whim. If a future government wanted to accelerate large-scale upgrades, it could do so — but it would need to top up funding transparently from general taxation, without cannibalising the core NLTF programme. This model would also create a much clearer picture of future spending needs, borrowing requirements, and the balance between road user revenue and expenditure on the network.

Wouldn’t this be more honest, more transparent, and ultimately more effective? It would deliver a steadier flow of work for the sector, ensure road users receive the benefits of continuous renewal and improvement, and create a far closer link between the people who pay for roads and the roads they actually receive.

Next up: What about the choices made for rescheduling projects?

Has Brexit been a disaster?

noreply@blogger.com (Libertyscott) — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 08:57:34 +0000

It's not surprising that a decade since the UK's vote on leaving the European Union that the pro-EU media is crowing. RNZ has republished a CNN piece called "Ten years on, Britain counts the cost of Brexit" as if there is some grand consensus in the UK that it was a mistake. Given that the leading party in opinion polls is Reform (which is essentially a reconstituted Brexit Party/UKIP) that would seem like the same foolish arrogance that saw the bureaucratic/media/academic establishment, and most politicians (although some Conservatives and a handful of Labour politicians promoted Leave) be gobsmacked when the UK voted "Leave".

They couldn't believe that a majority of voters disagreed with them, and now of course they think most people regret it. No doubt leaving has imposed costs on businesses that trade with the EU, and no doubt both major parties in Government have barely touched the sides in setting Britain free but Michael Gove, whose career highlight, as far as I am concerned, was as Secretary of State for Education under David Cameron (when he pioneered free schools and enabled high rating state schools to become independent Academy schools), has written persuasively in the Spectator that it HAS been worth it:

The reality has been different: Britain is growing at least as fast as our major European partners (the countries growing fastest in recent years have been those which imposed the most savage austerity in the early 2010s). We took the lead among European nations in the fight against Russia when it invaded Ukraine. The City is flourishing: Britain remains the world’s largest net exporter of financial services, according to TheCityUK, an industry-led body representing UK-based financial and related professional services. Net exports were £84 billion last year, 12 per cent higher (in real terms) than in 2015. And however many masters there are in the universe, they still seem to be flocking to London. There were 162,000 people working in finance and insurance in the City of London in 2015, pre-Brexit, and 223,000 in 2024.

Could that growth have been more impressive? Of course. Is there still a long regulatory tail of EU legislation holding us back? Absolutely. But the choice to go further, faster is there – and can be exercised in a manner impossible while still in the EU.

Gove has identified policies both good and not so good, that leaving the EU has enabled.

• Cut tariffs on over 100 foodstuffs to counter inflation (EU Membership put the UK's entire trade policy in the hands of Brussels)

• Preferential trade agreements with the US and India (and Australia and New Zealand)

• Being outside the EU Digital Markets Act enabling the UK to outstrip investment in AI and technology compared to EU Member States

• Enabling gene-editing of crops (the EU effectively prohibits genetic engineering outside the lab)

• Turing student exchange scheme (globally focused) replacing the EU’s Erasmus (focused only on the EU)

• Liberalisation of agricultural subsidies and reduction of production restrictions (compared to the sclerotic Common Agricultural Policy)

• Increasing the UK share of the fisheries sector and reforming the sector (which was previously fully open to EU fishing fleets, many of which were subsidised).

• Potential of withdrawing from the European Convention on Human Rights (which has been used to insist on illegal migrants being granted refugee status in the UK, even if they have committed violent offences because of fear they would be mistreated if deported).

• Measures to protect the remaining British steel industry including tariffs (up to 50%), subsidies and state ownership.

• VAT imposed on private school fees.

He noted on immigration, Brexit didn’t deliver what people assumed:

Taking back control of our borders was accompanied with the implementation of a points-based immigration system which enabled the inflow of many more workers, students and, crucially, dependents than the country ever envisaged or wanted. The higher-education, health and care sectors were already addicted to importing foreigners before Brexit – boosting vice-chancellors’ balance sheets and keeping labour costs low.

What Gove doesn’t say is that the UK political appetite to shut-down access to its welfare state including the NHS and social housing has been low. For that is a big part of the issue people have with immigration – people turning up to get something for nothing. If that tap were turned off, as is the case in plenty of EU Member States (some of which have language and national insurance contribution requirements to access healthcare, education and welfare), it would likely have a significant impact on demand.

For Gove the most important success is that it is now UK politicians fully accountable for UK laws. No more can they blame Brussels for requiring this or banning that, or taxing this or subsidising that. Sovereignty in law making is no longer subservient to a higher level of government. As always that's a mixed bag, in some cases it was good for the EU to stop British protectionist politicians, but more often than not the EU was an expression of the stultifying "dirigisme" political economics embodied by France, which prefers protecting sunset industries and jobs, over allowing new ones. I recall when France fined Google Maps for the audacity of offering a free map service, undermining the business of French map makers. The idea that the public benefited from Google Maps more than it lost is alien to the political culture of France, and that is also central to too much EU thinking on economics.

Gove concludes:

Brexit was a vote for a faster feedback loop between politicians and the people, the ability to yank the chain harder when ministers do not live up to their promises. That chain was yanked with great, cleansing, propulsive force in 2024 and I felt the spray. But that vote was not a repudiation of Brexit, it was its vindication. The failure I charted above to control migration, and indeed to go further, faster in re-building and re-balancing our economy, saw the Tories punished. Now it is proving Labour’s turn. The message from ten years ago – the demand that politicians change our society – has not diminished in force or fervour. That there is unfinished business is clear. But it is clearer still that Brexit alone makes that change possible.

Those who voted Leave knew it. They braved condescension and endured years of frustration to have it delivered. They must not be let down.

I’d conclude that this is the problem. The opportunity to set the UK free from hoards of regulatory instruments imposed from Brussels has barely been touched. The fundamental problems around immigration haven’t been confronted – such as the attractions of the welfare state and the inability to deport violent criminals because it would deprive them “of a family life”. Of course prospects for any useful reform under the current Labour Government are remote, but the chances of another referendum on EU membership soon are as well.

Either a future UK Government tries to take advantage of this opportunity fully, or it may as well rejoin and decline in concert with the rest of the western European EU Member States.

Burnham will be another hopeless UK Prime Minister

noreply@blogger.com (Libertyscott) — Sun, 21 Jun 2026 11:31:39 +0000

From Ian Leslie in the Spectator:

For the most part, failed prime ministers do not fail because they’re socialists or neo-liberals or conservatives, but because they are situationists. I don’t mean in the sexy French sense, but in the sense that they are captives of whatever situation they find themselves in. Bad prime ministers don’t make things happen; things happen to them. They stand outside No. 10, say some fine words, then go inside and kneel down before the real boss: events. (By which I mean not just unforeseen events, but all the economic, political and institutional forces that constrain and batter you from day one).

Why do these leaders submit so meekly to this master? Because they cannot execute on the fundamentals of the job. The first of these fundamentals is a strong sense of purpose or mission. What everyone in this bad run has had in common is that they didn’t know what they wanted to do with power (and I mean across the board, from the economy to foreign policy to immigration and welfare). Either that, or they ‘knew’ but only in the vaguest sense, Liz Truss being the obvious example. Having a clear direction without having a sensible plan can be nearly as bad as having no direction at all, and maybe worse, especially when you are short on necessary leadership abilities. Johnson knew what he wanted to do at first – get Brexit done – but after it got done, he was clueless. Yes, he had to deal with the pandemic, but he dealt with it in his hapless, myopic style, which would have revealed itself under any circumstance.

So yes, bad Prime Ministers are often bad because they are clueless about where they are heading and how to get there... but Burnham is particularly vapid says Leslie...

We all know the remark about not wanting to be ‘in hock’ to the bond markets, without seeming to understand what bond markets are or why we are in hock to them, but it was hardly an anomaly. He mouths the phrase ‘fiscal rules’ without ever giving the impression that he knows what they are or why they matter. Here’s how he answered a question about the EU, during Labour’s conference last September:

Journalist: ‘Rejoin the EU or stay out?’

Andy Burnham: ‘I want to rejoin. I hope in my lifetime, I want to rejoin the European Union. I believe in the unions of all kinds. The union of the UK. The EU benefitted this country. Trade unions. People prosper more when they’re part of unions.’

I’m sorry to break the flow of my Flaubertian prose, but – fuck me. I believe in the unions of all kinds. It’s like something from an essay by a primary school pupil. That’s the extent of his thinking, on one of the most important geopolitical questions of the age? I’m just not sure how you get from there to prime minister-level within a year, or ever. (I need hardly add that as soon as the by-election campaign started, he said he didn’t actually want to rejoin at all.)

You see Burnham's main achievement is .... advancement in the Labour Party...

I am sceptical that Burnham has the intellectual capacity to ‘learn on the job’ and certainly not at the speed he would need to do so if the job is not to overwhelm him. It’s not the hardware that’s the problem – as a young man, Burnham was clever and diligent enough to scale the British establishment from the outside. It’s the software he’s been running for the last 30 years, narrowly designed for advancement within the Labour party. His instinct has always been to please the party, and you don’t do that by challenging its worldview or assumptions. But unless you do, your intellect and curiosity will atrophy.

Leslie says he has a deficit of capability, although he cares what others think of them.... but..

I find it unbelievable that Andy Burnham is the person that Britain, a great country, is installing as prime minister, amidst war in Europe, major technological disruption, violent unrest across the country, and a public sector coming apart at the seams. Is this really the best we can do? Apparently it is.

It's time to reform land transport funding and management

noreply@blogger.com (Libertyscott) — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 09:29:01 +0000

I'm not usually a supporter of new bureaucracies, but I'll give the Infrastructure Commission its due, it's done quite a good job at summarising the main strategic problem in land transport funding. That being that political ambitions, which match a lot of public ambitions, for spending on roads, railways and public transport, exceed the political willingness to tax the public to pay for them.

More precisely, it seems to exceed the willingness of the public to pay more fuel tax and road user charges, or rates, or for public transport, fares. I say this because I think it is a fair bet that Luxon and Ministers Willis and Bishop don't think the public would swallow double digit increases in fuel tax or percentage increases in road user charges largely to pay for big highway projects, mostly in the North Island and mostly near Auckland, Hamilton and Wellington.

The Infrastructure Commission notes that:

Since the late 2010s, spending on roads and rail has far exceeded user revenues, requiring large top-ups from general taxes. In the 2024–2027 funding period, Crown grants and loans totalled $12.8 billion, or nearly 40% of the $32.9 billion in planned expenditure.

Source: Infrastructure Commission

The Commission continues:

New Zealand spends more on land transport than any other type of infrastructure. Mature road and rail networks connect most parts of the country, supporting the smooth movement of people and freight that underpins a well-functioning economy. While these networks perform reasonably well against peer countries, some important gaps remain. Land transport infrastructure providers face limited external oversight and no economic regulation to protect consumers – which is unusual compared with network sectors where consumers can’t choose between multiple providers. Transport faces several challenges, such as rising congestion on urban road networks, rising carbon emissions, and high health impacts from air pollution and road crashes

What's new

So this gives the impression that there are problems, today in 2026, with congestion, emissions and safety. You might think that this isn't exactly new, and you'd be right. Let's turn the clock back over 27 years...

Maurice Williamson, Minister of Transport, 18 November 1998

For years we have seen steady growth in traffic volumes. Currently, the traffic on our roads is increasing by about 4 percent each year. Also, the way we use our roads has changed. Expanding industries like forestry, dairying and tourism have increased road use in many rural areas beyond their capacity. Population growth in areas such as Auckland, the Bay of Plenty and parts of Waikato has meant that road use in these places is growing more quickly than in other parts of the country.

Some roads are less safe than they could be because they were not designed to carry either the volume of traffic or the amount of heavy vehicles they do. We can improve the safety of our roads, and reduce the human and financial costs that crashes create. The increasing use of our roads also puts greater emphasis on the environment - the environmental impacts of road use can be reduced.

Traffic growth is causing increasing congestion problems in many, particularly urban, areas. It is also increasing maintenance costs and the demand for new roads. We are struggling to meet these new financial demands.

Simply spending more money on the problems would add costs to our total economy, which we would all have to bear. What we need is a system that is smarter at informing road users of the costs they are creating, and smarter at deciding where new investments should go.

A system that results in our road resources being used very wisely. If we wait the problems will get worse and the costs of changing will be greater. If we act now, the changes can be managed in a gradual process with minimal upheaval.

That press release was in the context of announcing a major reform of the land transport funding system, that didn't proceed.

What did happen was three things. One of them is the most obvious, politicians threw money at the problem, and as happens so often when government spending increases exponentially, it doesn't deliver the value for money that it used to.

Spending spree

If we compare 1998 in real terms (using CPI inflation to bring 1998 prices to 2025 dollars), spending on road infrastructure and public transport alone (there was little government spending on rail infrastructure in 1998), has increased by around 350%. That's 3.5x increase over and above inflation in spending on roads and public transport.

As you see above, 40% of current land transport spending isn't coming from motoring taxes (let alone charging rail users even a quarter of the costs of maintaining their infrastructure), it's coming from general taxes.

Taxpayers are literally subsidising the movement of goods and people by rail and by road, or to be more precise, subsidising those engaging in the construction and maintenance of the network. In 2025, $4.211b was collected from motoring taxes (fuel tax, road user charges and motor vehicle registration/licensing fees). User fees are sufficient to cover road maintenance and a little more, but not to cover road maintenance and all spending on public transport, or road maintenance and all spending on road improvements.

This table below outlines that increase, using the budgeted spending in 1998 (it being harder to access reported spending online) compared to reported spending in 2025.

Comparison of 1998 and 2025 land transport spending: New Zealand

Where has the money gone?

Public Transport

Despite what you might think if you pay attention to the likes of Julie Anne Genter, or some environmental lobbyists, by far the biggest increase in spending over this period has been on public transport subsidies and infrastructure. That's money to subsidise the operation of trains and buses, and money to subsidise renewing or improving infrastructure, such as railway stations, busways, the City Rail Link in Auckland and the National Ticketing Solution.

This has been over a twelve-fold increase in spending on public transport. 159 million trips were taken on public transport in the 2025 financial year. It was around 60 million trips in 1998. With a 40% increase in population during that period, that's an 89% increase in patronage, but I'll leave it to others to judge whether that increase in land transport spending by central government has been good value for money.

Then roads

Also notable has been a big increase in maintenance for local roads and state highways. While some of that may be attributable to increased heavy vehicle traffic, it also shows a remarkable drop in productivity and inflation in costs. The system has not incentivised or encouraged much in the way of efficiency in managing existing assets.

While much is rightly made of the increase in spending on state highway construction (and much more is planned), but what hasn't happened is that local road construction has not grown anywhere near as much. The demands for local road improvements are, on average, likely to be lower than the state highway network, as most local roads are either suburban streets or lightly used rural access roads, but there is little real indicator as to whether this split in spending is appropriate or not.

What does seem clear is that highway construction and maintenance costs have grown exponentially, especially in maintenance which, in real terms, should not have increased that much above inflation.

Warnings about risking poor quality spending.

However, this was exactly what was forecast in the late 1990s if there had been no substantial reform. When spending on land transport infrastructure was increased then, there was concern about the capacity of the contracting sector to efficiently accommodate growth without inflating the cost of capital works. After 1996, the Government increased spending gradually. Lowering the threshold for funding from a BCR of 5:1 to 4.5:1 in one year, then down to 4:1 in the following year, and at that point there were ample projects to advance. It was, at the time, thought that spending might be increased further, alongside increases in motoring taxes and reducing the diversion of part of fuel tax to the Consolidated Fund (this diversion ended completely in 2008). However, the view from Treasury at the time was that the threshold of spending should be a BCR threshold of 2.5:1.

(Footnote: Be cautious about comparing BCRs of projects in the 1990s and 2000s to today, because today's BCRs include a lot of additional benefits, the evaluation period is longer and the discount rate is much lower than it used to be, but that's another story).

The main conclusion in the late 1990s was that just pouring more money into the system was far from optimal. Big reasons why the system was not ideal were identified:

The PAYGO method of funding capital from cashflow could not support large scale capital spending that has transformative impacts
The artificial distinction between new capital and renewing capital/maintenance, with short term funding cycles for the latter generates poor incentives to optimise spending on maintenance across the asset life of roads
Without better pricing of road use, some roads would be overused at certain times, with some road users not paying enough, and some paying too much to the use the roads. Far better to enable pricing to reflect demand, capacity and the costs of supply on a more refined scale than the national average across all roads across the country.
Little relationship between road users and road providers, with very limited feedback from road users to road managers and poor incentives on road managers to respond to the needs of the former.

Quite simply the incentives for innovation, especially for efficiencies was not good enough. This is particularly an issue for territorial authorities, which are more reluctant to engage in long-term contracting for road maintenance, or to consolidate contracting across multiple councils. While it is possible to have political direction around some of these matters, none of this matches having financial and institutional incentives to optimise maintenance and performance,

On new projects there are five big factors that have influenced inflation in project costs:

Contractors do not think there is sufficient risk that large projects, once committed, will be cancelled or scaled down, so price accordingly. This is because the projects are explicitly politically identified, and contractors know that the risk of a politician cancelling a project because of cost, especially after a project has started, are low. Look at City Rail Link and Transmission Gully. Nobody was going to pull the plug on projects already underway because costs went up, and the New Zealand contracting market is too small to fear someone else being brought in to finish it. That's what happens when it is a politically-driven, not commercially-driven model of managing assets. By contrast, look at the M6 project in Sydney, which may be abandoned because the contractor is unwilling to complete the project under the current budget, following an unexpected collapse of part of the tunnel.
Gold-plating of projects to meet either institutional or political aspirations. The Northern Gateway toll road north of Auckland had its design speed increased and a tunnel included in its scope specifically because the agency involved wanted to "show off" what a great toll road the first new generation toll road would look like in New Zealand (the original design had a gully instead of a tunnel, and 80 km/h design speeds). Whether that was justified or not, the reasoning for doing it was nothing to do with economics, it was driven by a belief that the money would be spent anyway and for a Crown Agency to "show off" to the public. Likewise, insisting that the Northland Expressway is four lanes throughout with grade-separated interchanges its full length, amplifies costs with insufficient economic benefit to justify the cost. There are very sound reasons to rescope (and indeed this used to happen in New Zealand from time to time).
The start-stop-start cycle of project development. The infrastructure sector advances this as the main reason, which is false, but it is an important factor. Long term strategies for corridors would help plan both the resourcing, sequencing and encourage competition in project delivery, so that equipment and skilled professionals could be guaranteed being occupied for a decade or longer. Starting and stopping projects is wasteful, unless of course, the projects were poor value in the first place (like Auckland Light Rail). The presence of a long-term pipeline of economically viable project would be a good thing to help build a competitive industry and build capability. A sector which sees commitments to projects appear and disappear depending on who is in power will charge more to manage that business risk.
Incremental growth in the costs of doing business. Part of it can be blamed on local government through the RMA, but it can be seen in the significantly higher amounts of planning, consultation and investigation work needed today compared to the 1990s. The process has become more complex, time consuming and seen a vast increase in the numbers of people involved in these projects. Some of this reflects increases in the cost of doing business, contracting and employment in the sector, due to incremental measures implemented by successive governments. However, the effects of this have been insufficiently appreciated (though this is also seen in construction more generally)
Rent-seeking behaviour by professional organisations in the sector. Competition has simply been insufficient. While there have been increased in construction costs, part of this has been opportunism for extracting greater profits from a sector that has been flush with money for some years. It has also been outrageous that the professionals involved in investigation and design work have increased their scope and fees at the same level, even though they don't face the increased input costs for construction. On average it was always assumed that the pre-construction phases for major road projects were around 15% of the construction costs. Quite why these costs should increase at the same rate is unclear.
Higher labour costs for a shortage in professionals. There aren't enough technical experts to go around, and they are working in a global market for their experience. This is expensive for a country with a relatively low exchange rate, low GDP per capita, that is far away and has relatively high housing costs compared with say the United States. However, having a steady stream of work for projects should help that over time.

The Infrastructure Commission notes:

The RoNS projects are expected to cost significantly more per kilometre than earlier New Zealand motorway and expressway projects, and significantly more than the OECD average. Indicative target cost ranges published by NZTA suggest costs should ideally be much lower. The Northwestern Busway is expected to cost much more than previous New Zealand busways, potentially exceeding the per-kilometre cost of many underground rail projects overseas. These cost increases constrain what can be delivered without displacing other needs.

The thing is, NZTA seems unable to fully understand why this is the case, let alone be able to contain these costs.

Politicians have made the system worse

The entire system is not particularly well set up to challenge these, and since 1998 two major reforms have made it much worse:

Creation of the New Zealand Transport Agency
Almost complete politicisation of the National Land Transport Programme

In 1998, funding was decided by an arms-length independent funding agency called Transfund. It was small, nimble and focused on essentially buying the best value for money for maintenance and improvements to roads and public transport for motorists, who fully funded it through road user charges, fuel tax and motor vehicle registration and licensing fees. There was no Crown money from general taxation. The 1998 National Roading Programme was fully funded by road users, and money was allocated first to road maintenance, public transport subsidies and then whatever was left was available for capital improvements.

The Clark Government merged it with the Land Transport Safety Authority in 2004 (then responsible for regulating drivers, vehicles and commercial vehicle operators, and managing the motor vehicle register and collecting road user charges). Making the new agency - Land Transport New Zealand - a regulatory and funding agency. However it was in 2008 that it was merged with Transit New Zealand - the state highway manager - to make a land transport agency monolith - the NZTA. The National Land Transport Fund was now being allocated by the same agency which also is the largest spender of those funds. No longer would the state highway manager have to be worried about convincing Transfund about what funding it needed, or on its performance, to justify funding it wanted. NZTA funds itself.

That mistake would not have been quite so bad had the Clark Government not also all but destroyed the independence of NZTA through the Government Policy Statement (GPS) process of directing land transport funding. The GPS essentially politicised land transport funding, with the Minister of Transport able to simply direct how much money would go into whatever funding categories the Minister wanted.

That meant that three-yearly National Land Transport Programmes were politically directed. From a system that rationed maintenance and focused on optimising maintenance so that capital spending could be maximised without degrading the road network, to a system whereby the whims of Ministers could redirect money where they saw fit. Roads of National Significance, public transport subsidies, rail projects, cycleways, whatever was wanted, could be funded. Furthermore, when Ministers or Governments changed, the whole programme was up for grabs. Projects might be cancelled and new ones started, with Ministers demanding to know "how soon" a project could be "shovel ready" to show progress, because once it started, it was hard to stop.

Imagine the incentives that puts on the contracting sector, both to please NZTA by getting work started, and to not be concerned about cost inflation once a project has commenced. It also sent a signal about investment in capital and professional staff through a political cycle.

The Infrastructure Commission puts it politely:

NZTA acts as both funder and deliverer of projects – combining functions previously kept separate. Between 1997 and 2008, one Crown entity (Transfund, renamed Land Transport NZ in 2004) was charged with administering transport funding and making investment decisions. Transit New Zealand was responsible for state highways and had to bid for funding alongside local road controlling authorities. Maintenance took precedence over new capital works, and only the highest-value projects were funded.

The Government Policy Statement on Land Transport (GPS-LT) directs spending in the sector. Unlike other network providers that invest to meet demand, land transport investment is heavily influenced by the Government of the day’s objectives. The Minister of Transport determines funding ranges for expenditure categories through the GPS-LT, based on advice from the Ministry of Transport but without independent oversight. In recent years, Governments have also directed specific projects for delivery, leading providers to spend more than user revenues allow.

That was destroyed by the Clark Government, and the Key/English and Ardern/Hipkins Government did nothing to change this, but rather all doubled-down on growing the NZTA's role and functions, and demanding ever more money be spent on their "objectives".

So what next?

The 1998 warning was part of an announcement to radically reform how roads would be funded and managed. They would become businesses, like state owned enterprises. They would be paid by users, directly. They could borrow against that money for new projects. They would be subject to regulatory oversight, and it would have removed ratepayer funding for roads. There would have been maybe eight local road companies, and they would have been expected to make a profit and pay company tax.

Obviously that didn't happen, and there is little sign of it being revived, but there does need to be a change... more on that to come...

UPDATE: Corrected earlier PT figure estimate which was too high.

Is racism worse than murder?

noreply@blogger.com (Libertyscott) — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 12:24:17 +0000

Ayn Rand described racism as “the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism”. However, she wouldn’t and neither would most people with any measure of morality would describe a verbal expression of racism as being worse than murdering another.

A radical comedy today might parody modern “anti-racism” to a ridiculous absurdity, defending people from claims of racism over defending people from murder.

Reality is not funny though.

British journalist Ed West wrote a few weeks ago on his Substack an article called “Moloch must be Fed”.

He recalls the following instances…

Salman Abedi

“One evening in May 2017 a security guard in Manchester was alerted to something that didn’t look right: a man of Middle Eastern appearance with a rucksack was seen by a member of the public approaching a pop concert filled with teenage girls. The man looked ‘dodgy’, in the words of the 18-year-old guard, who later recalled his moment of agonising: ‘I felt unsure about what to do. It’s very difficult to define a terrorist. For all I knew he might well be an innocent Asian male. I did not want people to think I am stereotyping him because of his race. Concerned that he would be accused of racism, the young man went with his doubts and let the British-born Libyan Salman Abedi walk on. The rucksack was packed with homemade explosives, mixed with nuts and bolts to maximise the suffering they would inflict on human flesh, and fifteen minutes later Abedi pressed the detonator, killing 22 people, ten of them under 20 and the youngest aged just eight.”

Valdo Calocane

“had attacked his flatmate on one occasion, and assaulted strangers on others. He was clearly very dangerous, and while mental health professionals had been ‘leaning towards’ sectioning him, he was released after they ‘considered the research evidence that shows over-representation of young black males in detention’. Calocane went on to butcher three people in broad daylight, including two 19-year-old students from the same university”

Axel Rudakubana

“At the Acorns School in Ormskirk, headteacher Joanne Hodson said she felt a ‘visceral sense of dread.”.. about him, as he “had been caught bringing a knife into class in his previous school, and when Hodson asked him why, had replied coldly: ‘to use it’. When she raised the risk posed by the dread-inducing young male, mental health workers accused her of ‘racially stereotyping’ him as ‘a black boy with a knife’.”

Rudakubana went on to murder three girls, aged nine, seven and six at a dance workshop for girls aged six to eleven in Southport.

The story about Henry Nowak is giving cause for concern among many in the UK about the priorities of policing. The criminal justice system’s first priority should be to protect the public from violence. The Daily Telegraph has published the sentencing notes for Nowak's murderer and the background to the case.

Nowak called out to Vikrum Digwa, and asked if he was a “bad man”, and filmed Digwa on his phone. Digwa, a Sikh, alleges his turban was knocked off by Nowak. Digwa stabbed Nowak four times and his face was slashed. One of the stabbings proved fatal. Digwa and his brother filmed Nowak escaping, scaling a fence before landing on a car and falling to the ground, where he bled to death. By then the Hampshire and Isle of Wight Constabulary had arrived. Digwa’s father was helping keep Nowak upright, but Digwa had told the police that Nowak had racially abused him.

The teenager is then heard shouting in a hoarse voice “I’ve been stabbed, I can’t breathe, call an ambulance”.

Officers can then be heard asking Digwa for his version of events, before dragging Henry across the gravel while saying: “Let’s get you out of there, shall we?”

When the university student again told them he had been stabbed, the officer responded: “I don’t think you have, mate.”

Henry is then placed in handcuffs while repeatedly telling officers: “I can’t breathe.”

With the teenager in handcuffs, a female officer asks Henry, “where do you think you’ve been stabbed?” before saying to her colleague, “we have to check, don’t we”.

The near-three-minute footage ends with the arresting officer asking for Henry’s name, before reading him his rights.

At this point, the female officer seems to realise his deteriorating condition and calls an ambulance, noting that “his pupils aren’t even reacting”.

Nowak bled to death in handcuffs, because police were more concerned about Digwa’s claim of racism, than Nowak actually having been stabbed.

Nowak calling “I can’t breathe” has shades of another event we all know, although there are multiple differences in the contexts, the primary point remained – the Hampshire and Isle of Wight Constabulary prioritised “anti-racism” over a murder.

Of course, the police were, in fact racist. It prioritised the feelings of one man who was hardly scratched over another bleeding to death, because of racism.

Many on the left in particular wonder why politicians they deem “far right” are getting popular appeal. I can’t imagine how blind they might be when these instances are happening, time and time again. The people who want to protect others, like the security guard, the teacher and most police, mean to do well. They are undermined by a philosophy, which is advanced by academia, accepted by much of the media, absorbed by gateway professional associations and implemented by “professionals” and it is all facilitated by politicians.

It’s a repeat story that could be a parody of a lunatic political philosophy if put into practice, if it weren’t a parody and hadn’t been put into practice. It is the application of today’s melding of various post-modernist philosophical movements into politics and into law and social/cultural practice. It combines Constructivism (which posits that there is no such thing as “objective truth” but rather reality is constructed by people as part of social processes, interests and beliefs), Structuralism (which posits that human behaviour can be understood through structures and systems within which they operate, rather than the specific behaviour itself and Critical Theory (which posits that injustice exists in current power structures which exist primarily to benefit and sustain those with power, who are deemed to be members of groups that created or succeed the most in those structures).

As with most philosophical movements, there is some truth in all of them in different contexts. However, the culmination of all of this applied consistently is that identical behaviour by two separate people is interpreted differently according to each person’s background and deemed level of privilege or disadvantage within the “system” they are living. Critical theory has little time for Common Law justice systems which treat individuals as free agents (unless proven otherwise) who, if they act to infringe upon the basic rights of other free agents, should be subject to judgment and punishment according to what they did and the harm they caused. For example, while there may be mitigating circumstances in specific situations (e.g. self-defence), murder is murder.

Objectivists, rationalists, classical liberals and other modernists regard racism as a pre-modernist view of humanity. The idea that human beings should be judged based on their inherited characteristics rather than their behaviour, is a legacy of pre-modernity. Race or ethnicity is not determinative of unjust behaviour, and especially not determinative of justifying injustice against that person. Awareness of this grew enormously in the aftermath of World War Two, the Holocaust, the legacy of Japanese militarism and subsequently decolonisation of much of the world, and the Civil Rights movement in the USA have made people aware of the need to treat people as they are, not for what they are.

In almost all societies deliberately killing another person, especially a child, is seen as the most morally depraved and injust act that can be committed. Yet in the UK today, there is a growing number of incidents whereby people, when judging whether to act to protect others from murder, have chosen to act based on another concern – is my action going to be seen as racist?

I'm reluctant to grant any politicians in the UK a shade of belief in their ability to confront this philosophical cancer. Keir Starmer or those willing to replace him in the Labour Party have no remote interest in confronting this - for they are the ones who have facilitated this ideology. The Liberal Democrats and the Islamist adjacent Greens are even worse. Nigel Farage is an opportunist, and in calling for a "cold rage" he is showing his irresponsibility, and the emptiness of his thinking. However, it is unsurprising he has popularity when for so long the Conservatives held no principle other than to retain power (when they were in power for a wasted 14 years).

There is a chance, just a chance, that Conservative leader and Leader of the Opposition Kemi Badenoch, could, if only because she is the only party leader who can confront the issue of racism with a background that befuddles the "anti-racist" racists. She has said:

What Nigel Farage is doing is reinforcing the difference. I have said that we need to find what we have in common, not what separates us. I don’t want to hear about Black Lives Matter. I don’t want to hear about White Lives Matter. We all matter.

“Enough of this nonsense, where we keep separating everybody and splitting people into different groups. We are descending into tribalism. I do not want that. It is why I say that we should be a multiracial country, not a multicultural country. Let’s have one shared culture, British culture. How the police treat everyone should not matter, depending on the colour of their skin, and we shouldn’t pretend that racism is something that only happens to ethnic minorities, it happens to everybody, black or white"

I hope it is not too little, too late, to avoid the anger and violence which comes from people who think, not only is there a fundamental problem with the philosophy behind how so much of the state and the institutions of power function, but who think it is all fundamentally antagonistic to them, their family and their community - and are willing to burn the whole lot down, by handing power to those who literally have no coherent answers.

UPDATE: Spiked's Brendon O'Neill puts it perfectly following the publication of the bodycam footage of Nowak's death:

For me, the most chilling thing in the bodycam footage of Henry Nowak’s last moments of life is the cops’ cruel presumption that he is lying. As he writhes in terror and agony and cries out ‘I’ve been stabbed!’, a voice in the background – presumably that of the lowlife who murdered him, Vickrum Digwa – says: ‘He hasn’t been stabbed.’

A female officer responds. ‘I know’, she says. ‘But we have to check, don’t we?’

I know. It is delivered with dry, bureaucratic indifference. Henry is heard moaning, begging, ‘I can’t breathe’, yet here is a representative of the state seeming to agree with his knife-wielding tormentor that he is making it up. That cold, cavalier utterance – I know – will have cemented dying Henry’s great dread: that the police were taking the side of his killer rather than him....

... Try to take in the Kafkaesque moral madness on display here. They learn the lessons of a black man killed while saying ‘I can’t breathe’, only to see their own cops horribly mistreat a white boy who said ‘I can’t breathe’. The very ‘anti-racism’ they imbibed in response to an African-American man dying with a cop’s knee on his neck leads to a situation where their officers drag and cuff a dying white kid. It is undeniable now: the state’s overcompensation for past acts of racism has unleashed new horrors. It is now official ‘anti-racism’ that nurtures injustice, unequal treatment and barbaric state behaviour. It is now ‘anti-racism’ that dehumanises the citizenry, dividing us into ‘the oppressed’ and ‘the oppressors’, and gifting or denying us moral worth accordingly. The horror on that driveway was more than a police screw-up – it was the metaphorical boot of wokeness on the neck of a young man, and a whole nation.

Our political class is in for the mother of all awakenings if it fails to recognise the anger this case has caused. Keir Starmer’s belated statement on the Nowak horror was horrendously perfunctory, yapping on about the ‘cycle of tragedy’ caused by ‘knife crime’. All the knee-bending passion he felt after George Floyd’s death seems to have evaporated into the cursory, fleeting angst of the impassive lawyer. Millions are clocking this. That he doesn’t know that is a tragedy – for him.

The next Mega-Ministry is coming and it is going to disappoint

noreply@blogger.com (Libertyscott) — Thu, 28 May 2026 12:29:34 +0000

Notwithstanding the histrionics from the Greens and other hard-left activists, the Ministry for the Environment isn't being shut-down, it's being merged with two other Ministries and part of a Department to create the Ministry for Cities, Environment, Regions and Transport (MCERT).

I opposed this when it was floated nearly a year ago, and I still oppose it. Not because of the claims that it will risk MfE's work programme (if only!), but because bigger bureaucracies are NOT more cost efficient, and they are certainly not more dynamic, nor do they result in integrated and co-ordinated thinking.

I've worked in both large and small government agencies, but it's not just that experience that informs my opinion, it's the experience seen elsewhere. The views on savings are largely from the perspective of accountants, who typically measure "X-efficiency" which is about minimising wasted resources. In the context of government it is really around the number of managers vs. output, which given the outputs are highly subjective, is hard to assess without a close understanding of the detail of those outputs. It's not goods sold or customers satisfied. It might consider productive efficiency based on numbers of people relative to outputs, although the "productivity" of policy agencies ought to reflect the quality of output, which I'd be astonished if the Public Service Commission could identify at more than a rudimentary level.

What definitely isn't measured is dynamic efficiency (how responsive organisations are to innovations and technology), nor do they measure allocative efficiency (allocating resources to meet most specifically what is desired - in this case by Ministers).

From experience, large Ministries can be awfully inefficient and slow to be responsive. For example, I half wonder if I still have a live "on demand" employment contract with MBIE, even though I left its predecessor permanently 26 years ago, although I did work casually for it for a subsequent 2 years. I never received any communications terminating it. However I digress.

One of my favourite administrative failures of MBIE's predecessor - MED - was how it spent three years developing an all of Ministry centralised Document Management System, which was designed primarily for "security". There were full time staff dedicated to this project, who were bewildered when one senior advisor pointed out that every single document created in this system was copied onto individual PC hard drives, which were accessible to anyone who logged onto the PCs. It took another year for the system to be implemented, by which time it was already obsolete.

As much as there are efforts to try to bring together people in a single Ministry to be co-ordinated across sectors, the record of doing so successfully, without bringing other activities to a snail's pace is not particularly inspiring. By and large, MED and its predecessor the Ministry of Commerce, largely operated in silos. The idea there was some commonality between how energy, telecommunications, land planning (RMA) and industrial/trade policy was fanciful. Electricity was heavily regulated and resulted in structural separation, telecommunications was very lightly regulated, land use planning was largely about tinkering with the RMA (and monitoring the impacts of its implementation), industrial/trade policy focused on tariff removal and supporting MFAT on trade negotiations. Throughout the five years I had there, the proportion of effort of the Secretary/Chief Executive in telecommunications, broadcasting, postal and IT policy as a share of activity was <5%. In other words, mega-Ministries struggle to get their senior management across everything they do. Small ones don't have that problem. Of course that can be an advantage for divisions/directorates/units led by managers who want to get on with their jobs without micro-management at a more senior level, but it is hardly amenable to accountability. Of course what it does mean is that there are multiple Ministers for the Ministry to report to, over the head of the Secretary/Chief Executive (otherwise the Secretary would spent all of her/his time at every Minister's office).

What mega-Ministries DO implement is a rather significant in-house administrative function, which inevitably justifies more staff to perform functions across IT, HR, finance and information management.

I've pointed out that MBIE and DIA, both large Ministries have not displayed much capability in delivering innovative reforms over recent years. MfE of course delivered an abject disaster with Labour's proposed RMA replacement with two pieces of legislation imposing greater costs on property owners and more complication through centralisation of power. This is primarily because MfE's culture is antithetical to economic growth, development and private property rights (you can still see in the new Planning Bill which is far more diluted and modest than what is needed to address the sclerosis in development). This was so apparent when in 2023, Vicky Robertson departed as MfE Chief Executive and stated:

In her presentation she pointed to the programmes that will have a profound and lasting positive impact on our environment.

She spoke about how reforming the resource management system has been the Ministry’s key priority and remains our single biggest deliverable for a system that is future-focused, adaptable, and encourages decisions that are good for our long-term wellbeing.

I'm not sure whose wellbeing she meant, certainly not taxpayers...

“People still say what they love about the Ministry is how people care about each other. They still say that now, as they did when I started. It’s pretty incredible how we’ve gone from 320 people to 1200 and held onto our culture. I’m proud we’ve been able to do that,” she says"

Being proud of more than trebling staff numbers says all you need to know about bureaucratic culture. Now that is being merged with the local government arm of DIA (which spent decades responsible for the statis of water policy), the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development (which was established in 2018 and presided over the country's most rapid increase in housing prices) and Transport (which itself has seen a more than doubling of staff numbers over 25 years).

Another example.

In 2004, Transfund New Zealand was merged with the Land Transport Safety Authority to become Land Transport New Zealand. That entity was merged with Transit New Zealand in 2008 to form the NZ Transport Agency. The end result has been to create a bureaucratic monster. In 2004, the three separate agencices had a combined total of around 700 staff. In the 2023/24 financial year, NZTA had 2,769 permanent employees.

In 2007 announcing the merger, then Transport Minister Annette King said:

“Combining the functions of Land Transport New Zealand and Transit New Zealand will create one organisation accountable to one board, ensuring improved focus on value for money for land transport activities and an appropriate balance of land transport activities".

Value for money?

In Australia, a mega-Department I've previously done work for had a total of six project leads for a single project I was involved in as a contractor, over five years. Each time the new lead had to be brought up to speed and learn again. The reason why was because the mega-Department kept poaching anyone talented to work on other projects in other areas. One comment I heard from a different agency was "this is the Department you send projects to so they die". That's a bit unfair, but isn't entirely untrue. Quite simply there are five layers of management on top of each project or activity, so it is easy for them to get lost.

So I'm not optimistic. I'm not sure a single entity co-ordinates better than separate entities, because the bigger the organisation the more sluggish it is to work as an integrated whole. Moreover, so much of what these agencies do is not across other portfolios. I doubt aviation policy has ever paid much regard to housing policy, local government or the environment, but I am sure there are people in a couple of those who would keen to get involved - which would slow it down. A mega-Ministry has great potential for sclerosis.

I hope I'm wrong, but I've seen multiple mega-agencies in several countries over 30 years. I'd love to see the example that, by an objective external measure, has delivered serious innovative reforms that have released productivity, growth and dare I say "wellbeing" for taxpayers and the public.

Is New Zealand a capitalist command economy?

noreply@blogger.com (Libertyscott) — Sun, 10 May 2026 06:06:15 +0000

Head of Lifestyle Economics at the UK's Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), a free-market thinktank, has written an excellent piece at The Critic called "On Britain as a capitalist command economy".

The central hypothesis is that the UK is both far removed from being a free-market economy with a small state and light-handed regulation, and from being a state-owned economy run by bureaucratic, politically driven trading departments. It is worth reading in whole!

He describes the conundrum of how to describe the UK economy...

The left call it neoliberal but neoliberals have had no meaningful influence on British governments for thirty years. The right call it socialist but neither the Tories nor Labour have shown much interest in seizing the means of production. Keir Starmer’s government is more left-wing than he wants you to believe, but even if he renationalises the rail and water companies, it will be a nostalgic gesture rather than a heartfelt effort to control the heights of industry. Only on the fringes of the left is there any desire to return to the days when British Airways, Jaguar and Thomas Cook were under “democratic control”.

Arguably New Zealand isn't much different. Of course the Greens, TPM and parts of Labour will say the country is under the oppressive yoke of neo-liberalism, their latest scapegoat "billionaires" and "foreign capital", and of course people like me will rail against the "commie kids" on the left in Parliament, and in local government, but there's little real evidence of NZ embarking on Douglas/Richardson Mk. 2 or becoming the DDR under the last government.

Jim Bolger put the brakes on free-market liberalisation and shrinking of government after the 1993 election, although the direction of travel largely remained the same until 1999 when the Clark Government starting turning things back - notably by passing legislation to cancel the contracts of private ACC employer account providers to return ACC to a state monopoly insurer. Clark followed by renationalising Air NZ and the Railways, setting up a state retail bank (Kiwibank) raising income taxes and vastly expanding the welfare state with "Working for Families". The Key Government did little to change this trajectory, and the Ardern/Hipkins Government doubled down, with significant spending increases (even leaving aside the Covid response), and increasing both the size of the public sector and scale of regulatory intervention in the private sector.

On the face of it, the post-Thatcher settlement has held, but there is nothing Thatcherite about this government, nor the ones that preceded it.

Likewise in NZ. It's not to say the Douglas/Richardson (note it isn't the PMs noted for these reforms) reforms have been unwound. New Zealand isn't returning to rampant protectionism, nor has Labour embarked on vast renationalisation (the Government isn't going to get a national bus company, shipping company, hotel network or life insurance company), but what has happened is an accretion of central command and control. The UK of course has long had it with the Town and Country Planning Act, the single biggest act constraining housing supply and enabling local government to be the greatest NIMBYs in the UK's history. It was passed in 1947! New Zealand has only had the Resource Management Act since 1991 (passed during the height of Ruth Richardson's reforms, but inherited from Labour led by Geoffrey Palmer - which speaks volumes), but it too had kneecapped housing supply, inflated the cost of infrastructure and is only now with a chance of being replaced with something a bit less worse.

Snowdon writes about price caps introduced in the UK on energy, the Starmer Government's ban on "no-fault evictions" of tenants and enabling legal challenges on rent increases.

He highlights the nonsense of the Equality Act in the UK, which is being used to impose "pay equity" claims of the sort Brooke Van Velden has put a stop to, much to the chagrin of retired former politicians.

the Equality Act ... stipulates that men and women should be paid the same salary if they do work of “equal value”. Grotesquely over-interpreted by activist judges, this led to the bankruptcy of Birmingham City Council and 16 months of strikes after it was ruled illegal for (mostly male) dustmen and gravediggers to be awarded bonuses when (mostly female) cleaners and carers were not. ..

In the Next case, it was revealed that the company offered its 25,000 retail staff a chance to work in the warehouse but only seven took up the offer (three of whom walked out within a year). Despite one of the claimants admitting that she didn’t find the prospect of working in a noisy warehouse appealing but would have considered it if she was offered a lot more money, the company still lost.

The process used to determine what was "equal value" is what Snowdon describes as "that looks like something from a Marxist professor’s fever dream to decide the value of an employee’s labour." This diagram is the basis for a bureaucratic central planner's view of how people's pay should be set, which bears zero reference at all to how many people want to do the job for the pay offered. Have you seen a single politician or journalist in New Zealand outline how ridiculous this is? This is exactly the outcome of the philosophy of the capitalist command economy.

Snowdon describes it as essentially the application of activist state seeking to remould capitalism to meet centrally determined goals:

An activist state is systematically coercing the private sector in the pursuit of a range of social engineering goals, all of which are implicitly assumed to be more important than the economy. It is a form of central planning, albeit with a patchwork of different plans rather than one overarching goal.

Following on from my previous post, this is exactly what you can see from the Opportunity Party, whose leader "stepped into the world of... purpose-driven business". The purpose you can be sure is not why people and other businesses risked capital in the business, it's a purpose that is mostly about signalling virtue, and just chips away at its competitiveness, its resources to respond to consumers and competitors (especially in economies that don't have this sort of regulatory impost).

It's commonplace for people to refer to the People's Republic of China as a "communist" country. While it is led by the Communist Party, and has a great deal of central command and control, in many aspects it lets private enterprise run rip and be competitive, especially when exporting and seeking to win against foreign rivals. While it has plenty of state owned enterprises it directs and controls, it is less interventionist in the private sector. You see China actually cares about economic growth and development, because it works.

In the UK and across much of the developed world, governments are far more concerned about social engineering goals. Snowdon notes Net Zero (regardless of cost) which in the UK sees car retailers fined for selling too many cars that people want (petrol or diesel powered) relative to cars fewer people want (EVs). The market doesn't price goods the politicians want people to buy cheaply enough, and the public don't want to pay more for them, so the politicians penalise companies selling people what they want. The Ardern Government did this more softly by taxing the cars people wanted to subsidise the ones the government wanted people to buy. It did it by implementing US style government procurement rules to preference responses to tenders that included Maori enterprises, just because of their ownership, regardless of the value the enterprises offered to taxpayers relative to others.

Snowdon notes how far the public health lobby has gone in the UK (and it's obvious the same lobby in NZ wants similar steps):

Supermarkets have already been banned from offering multi-buy price discounts on “less healthy” food and are prohibited from displaying these products in certain parts of their shops. Wes Streeting plans to go even further and start fining supermarkets for selling too many calories.

I don't think New Zealand is quite so bad. A cursory look at economic statistics indicates:

- State spending as a proportion of GDP is 41% in NZ, 44% in the UK

- Tax as a proportion of GDP is 27% in NZ, 35% in the UK

- Public debt as a proportion of GDP is 41% in NZ, 98% in the UK.

It's notable that many of the command and control steps in the UK haven't been followed in NZ, although some of these were stopped with the removal of the Hipkins Government.

However, the approach of regulatory control of the private sector remains at the heart of what the Wellington bureaucracy advances to meet social goals, and it has widespread support in academia. Some elements of the capitalist command economy remain very much in place.

Even with its replacement, the Resource Management Act will still not put private property rights first, and will still mean local government very much is in command.

The electricity industry remains a weird blend of a market economy, with significant state investment, constrained by the planning system, which neither resembles a free market (given how difficult it is to build new generating capacity, and the state majority owning three quarters of the sector), nor a socialist system (as there is not a monopoly state provider). The previous ban on new oil and gas production (which in the current environment seems absurd) was purely an exercise in social engineering and virtue signalling, to show off a commitment to "Net Zero" even though it made virtually no impact on such targets (and no impact on climate change). However it certainly scared off new investment in the sector, fearing a change in government could ban its industry once again.

While supermarket competition is not what some would wish, this is largely due to the planning system, although there remain calls to split up the industry in ways unheard of in other countries, with even the Finance Minister having floated it, and it still being a "live" policy with some political parties. The fact this was even considered by a purportedly centre-right government indicates how far from the 1980s and 1990s NZ has gone.

New Zealand lacks the compulsory centralised pay bargaining seen in Australia, which bears the cost of it because the wealth generated from mining is so significant, the loss in productivity is diluted. However, it was only a change in government in 2023 that stopped it being implemented in NZ.

So I'd say New Zealand isn't quite as far down the path of regulatory sclerosis as the UK, but that is not because of a lack of will to continue down that path. You can see it in Labour, the Greens and the Opportunity Party, as well as within the glance of part of the National Party and NZ First to seek to add "just another" regulation to make business have "purpose" to meet the politicians' goals.

The fascists of the 1930s (actual fascists, not David Seymour) didn't advance communist style nationalisation of the economy because they preferred to use regulation and state control over business and industry to meet their goals. The word is vastly overused by the far-left, but its approach philosophically is not a million miles away from the bureaucratic command and control state regulating capitalism to meet the lofty ambitions of politicians.

One thing is for sure, it sure isn't a free-market capitalist economy.

The Opportunity Party is clearly on the left

noreply@blogger.com (Libertyscott) — Fri, 08 May 2026 07:06:23 +0000

What was TOP and founded by the eclectic Gareth Morgan has been through a few leaders, and is into its latest one, and instead of using the acronym, has gone from the “Opportunities” party to just Opportunity. Just one opportunity, presumably for its candidates to get a handle on power.

I last wrote about it in 2020 when I said:

The centre-left policy wonks' party. For clever people that would usually vote Labour, and think they can solve many solutions if only the tax system were tinkered with. There are a couple of clever people here, but it just the intellectual wing of the Labour-Green parties, and takes its support from there. Long may it do that.

This remains largely the case. While it avoids the Hamas-adjacent one-eyed view of Israel of the Greens, and the self-interested grifting of unions seen in Labour, it is essentially a party of left-wing activists combining those who have made careers in corporate virtue signalling and productivity sapping, or in the public sector. You need only look at the profiles of the leader, deputy-leader and some candidates to get a clear picture that this isn’t a party of free-wheeling entrepreneurs, advocates for freedom of expression and competition and choice in public services.

Leader Qiulae Wong profile states “After studying law and politics, she stepped into the world of human rights, disability inclusion, ethical fashion, climate and purpose-driven business”

Now that fits right into the standard box-ticking of left-wing virtue supporting. Human rights, inclusion, ethical and then the weirdest... "purpose-driven business"

If you think “purpose-driven business” is different from other businesses, then you don’t understand business. The purpose of business is to make a return on capital. However, she presumably thinks that isn’t enough, and business should seek to show off some noble intent beyond providing goods and services at a quality and price that customers are willing to pay for.

She led the “B Corp” movement in NZ which is a corporate grift that seeks to extract money from businesses to get a virtue signal stamp to:

“Be part of a growing global movement working to create an economy that benefits people and the planet”

This is largely vacuous nonsense. The economy exists because people produce goods and services that benefit people.

However, if you want to be part of a movement that is about putting productivity and wealth creation secondary to sacrificing shareholder value to identitarian and zero net impact climate change goals, then good for you, but let’s not pretend this is “centrist”. I am sure they will think I am some awful mean nasty capitalist individualist who thinks it's ok to run people over and kill pandas and whales to make a buck, but this sort of language and empty concepts are largely conceived by small groups of people who are very much the same as each other. They are all trying to prove to one another that despite their considerable wealth, education and relative luxury level of living, they are actually altruistic and generous people who care about something beyond themselves and their family, and this is proven by showing off credentials that are popular amongst themselves.

You can be sure probably none of them donate to Iranian's fighting the Islamic Republic, North Koreans trying to defect to the free world, Mauritanians fleeing slavery or Ukrainians repelling Russia. It's far more glorious to save a few tonnes of emissions from installing a solar panel or getting equal numbers of highly paid women on the local board of a major accounting multinational.

It could be right from the Green Party. You see these movements are great for big companies that can afford to waste money hiring people or consultants to do zero-value research, publicity and branding to look good to airhead consumers, finger-wagging politicians and activist NGOs. However, they are deadly for small entrepreneurs just trying to break even, minimise costs and maximise consumers in taking on competitors like this.

Deputy Leader Daniel Eb is cut from the same cloth. “Dan works to transition Aotearoa New Zealand to a just, regenerative food system”. Wait, what? How is it unjust now? How is not regenerative? Well he might tell you because…

“Dan founded a communications agency to help tell stories about rural innovation, community building and nature-positive farming”

Again, this could be right from the Green Party. Marketing and spin oriented.

Dr Kayla Kingdon-Beb (Wellington Bays candidate - where she is up against Julie Anne Genter) is “a well-known environmental policy leader and advocate. She believes Aotearoa’s most crucial (and undervalued) asset is nature”. She is Chief Executive of WWF-NZ and before that was Director of Policy at the Department of Conservation. Again, could be right from the Green Party, and probably a good candidate to win votes from the far too frequently angry Julie Anne Genter.

I wont go through all the candidates, although this image of them tells a story that shows how it isn’t like the Green Party. The Green Party isn’t keen on white males as candidates anymore, whereas the Opportunity Party is. Indeed a majority of candidates are male. Maybe it's centrist to not just select people on identitarian grounds nowadays?

Yet it is policies that tell you how leftwing the Opportunity Party is:

Universal Basic Income: Welfare for all. Paying people to be idle (of course it’s not characterised as that), by taxing some people more is a distinctively leftwing policy. It is directly redistributive, taking from some to give to all, and it is distinctively uninterested in productivity or wealth creation. $370 a week to everyone isn’t enough for some to live on but is a nice handout to the daughters and sons of lawyers, doctors and policy wonks at university. Note it doesn’t replace all benefits. The proposal is that solo parents get extra money, there are extra payments for people with children, housing support. So “admin” savings on this aren’t going to be total. With labour shortages in some sectors, the idea that people should receive other people’s money unhindered by any obligation to do anything is fundamentally socialist.

Fully subsidised Public Transport: This is another transfer from taxpayers to a small number of people, which has been proven elsewhere to achieve little. It is a blunt tool to help the poor (many of whom don’t live in places with much or any public transport, or certainly not public transport that goes to where they need) but is a big hand out to middle income taxpayers who work downtown in major cities like Auckland and Wellington. Overseas experience indicates it does little to relieve traffic congestion but does a lot to attract people from walking and cycling. Making the supply of a service free at the point of use is a fundamentally socialist concept. Imagining it is “just” for a six-figure sum public servant in Wellington to get a free trip into work, but for the shift-worker in Naenae who starts at the airport at 4am to not do so (because she drives) is quite something. Of course the party also wants to pour more money into public transport, regardless of net benefits (because well… socialism).

Land Value Tax: New Zealand already has this in rates, but this extends it to central government. The premise being that it could replace some income tax, but the proposal is that there would be three income tax brackets – 28%, 34% and 39%. Lower income tax rates are abolished because of the welfare to everyone payments. The point of the Land Value Tax is to encourage more intensive use of land, except in rural areas (the party is keen on zoning of course). There would be lots of exceptions as well including Māori land, conservation land, land owned by NGOs, government and social housing. Woe betide government be taxed the same as the great unwashed “speculating land bankers”. Now I don’t think Land Value Tax is necessarily left wing, if done simply and lowers income tax equally, but this isn’t it.

Citizens’ Assemblies: Heaven help us all if this comes in so that the curtain twitching finger-wagging brigade of semi-retired activists get to dictate public policy. This sort of direct-democracy will inherently exclude business-owners and people with multiple jobs (who won’t have the time to participate), but be perfect for lobbyists, activists and retirees who are just aching to get involved in running other people’s lives. It’s exactly this sort of approach to planning that has caused NIMBYism, and which ultimately gets hijacked by people who want to interfere, who want to tax and spend other people’s money and run any policy area like a village. It’s the atmosphere that has no place for radical individuals, doing something different in business, community, society, art or even just in their own lives that doesn’t harm anyone else. The Greens would love it.

There’s other stuff like creating a “circular plastics economy” presumably regardless of cost or impact. Implementing Labour’s previous ban on smoking for adults as they age (helping grow the black-market in tobacco for organised crime). Raising youth court jurisdiction to 25 (soft-pedalling on repeat offenders who cause untold harm to victims).

It’s interesting it has dropped capital gains tax because it wouldn’t have the same impact as a land value tax, but let’s not pretend the Opportunity Party cares much about economic growth and productivity as much as it cares about redistribution and being virtuous.

It talks about bringing left and right together. Well it brings left for sure, I’m not sure what it brings on the right.

For example, what does it say about fiscal prudence? There is little about saving on government spending, the main emphasis appears to be to let the economy “grow” to surplus (although that seems a bit like Nicola Willis to be fair).

What does it say about foreign affairs? Nothing

What does it say about greater choice in health and education provision? Nothing

What does it say about improving New Zealand’s competitiveness internationally? Nothing. Just keep sliding down below the per capita GDP of Italy (and well below Australia)

I’m very happy for the Opportunity Party to attract some voters from the Greens or Labour, but let’s not pretend this is some haven for disaffected National voters who think there is a chance for any principles of smaller government, personal responsibility and individual freedom to be respected. This is still a party of policy wonks, now led by a grifter of “corporate social responsibility”.

It's a victory!

noreply@blogger.com (Libertyscott) — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 11:45:00 +0000

In July 1953, then Premier of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Kim Il Sung, declared victory in the Great Fatherland Liberation War (the "Korean War" to the rest of us). This was a war he started in 1950 (although he claimed the US started it), and had a clear purpose, which was to obliterate the Republic of Korea (south Korea) and unify the country under his communist rule.

This was after over 200,000 military deaths and the death of over 1 million north Korean civilians (and likely over 200,000 Chinese deaths, as Mao intervened to deter the US attacking China), and the net loss of 3,900 square km territory. However, Kim Il Sung treated it as a victory and the Kim dynasty has done ever since.

Sure it lied about why the war started, and it is logically impossible to think that the war was any sort of victory for the north, but at least the Kims have an excuse - they are part of a psychopathic totalitarian dynasty clinging to power.

Trump doesn't have that.

Sure, 90% of the Iranian Navy has been destroyed, but it is clearly fully capable of attacking ships in the Strait of Hormuz, using small boats, coastal based cruise missiles and drones. The US and Israel have obviously not destroyed that capability.

Sure, most of the Iranian airforce has been destroyed, and its ballistic missile capability has been badly damaged, but it isn't over. Perhaps its nuclear programme is completely, or mostly destroyed, but its motivation to have a nuclear programme will not have abated, indeed quite the opposite.

After all, Kim Il Sung himself also knew that once the Soviet Union collapsed, the only security guarantee the regime in Pyongyang could rely upon is having its own nuclear weapons. That has been proven, as there is little real chance of the US engaging in a first strike against north Korea, because the risk of nuclear retaliation, whether to the south or to Japan or beyond, is very real.

The Iranian regime has been weakened, it has lost leaders, but it has not loss control of the borders, the mass media or the instruments of domestic repression. It has not been destroyed, but it has been battle hardened and has - rightfully - claimed victory. Victory against the United States is defined as survival. It is not a victory Saddam Hussein could claim, as the Iraqi Government fell completely. It is not a victory Muammar Gaddafi could claim either (although the regime of Nicholas Maduro is - largely - intact without him).

Trump's claim of victory isn't quite as hollow as Kim Il Sung's, but at best he has diminished and deferred the ability of the Islamist regime to project its terror abroad, and only moderately diminished its capability to project terror domestically.

If the regime remains, it will be more hardline, more focused on advancing terror abroad, including targeting the US, Israel and liberal democracies globally.

I bet the Cuban regime isn't that worried anymore.

TACO indeed.

What's the role of government in an energy crisis?

noreply@blogger.com (Libertyscott) — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 07:35:00 +0000

For all of the fatuous claims of those who think fossil fuel use should be ended "as soon as possible", we can all see that the world values them, not just to power transport, and provide base-load energy generation in many countries, but to provide the essential materials for a vast range of industrial and consumer goods. Notwithstanding the nonsensical claims by the likes of Greta Thunberg and de-growth multinationals like Greenpeace, oil use continues to grow worldwide according to the International Energy Agency. Half of that growth comes from aviation and chemical feedstocks - in other words the use of oil as an input into the manufacturing of everything from pharmaceuticals to pipes to electrical insulation to asphalt and paint.

Yes there is some substitutability around energy in some sectors. Most obviously in electricity generation, although no single alternative to oil or coal is "ideal". Hydro-electricity is geographically dependent, nuclear is difficult primarily due to extremely high capital costs and public opposition, and solar/wind power is intermittent (and storage remains expensive).

In transport there have been huge leaps ahead in technology for light road vehicle, and medium weight trucks and buses doing short to medium haul trips are increasingly electric as well. However, it is going to be some years before long haul heavy trucks (and coaches) will go electric.

Aviation isn't moving from petroleum for some time, although hope it being seen in biofuels, that has its own issues. Shipping likewise, which mostly uses heavy fuel oil, is also not moving away from petroleum. What many activists ignore is that most transport, certainly commercially provided transport, is only too aware of the importance of minimising fuel costs. Conventional engines have never been more fuel efficient, and that is driven by market factors more than anything. Airlines, shipping companies, trucking companies all want to save on costs, because most of what they do is motivated by profit.

Private individuals less so because they trade off high capital expenditure vs. lower operating costs, and many don't have much capital to spend on cars, but the incentives are there. As someone once said, the stone age didn't end because of a lack of stones. Similarly railways did not move from steam locomotives because coal (and fuel oil) were scarce, but because technology made diesel and electric traction more cost effective.

Outside transport, and outside the wishes of planners hoping people will trade off time and comfort to use public transport and active modes more (which will happen anyway due to cost), the big consumers of fossil fuels are in agriculture, industry and manufacturing, and much of that isn't changing soon.

So what SHOULD government do when petroleum gets more scarce and more expensive?

1. Not meddle with prices. Higher prices ensure more supply and encourage more supply. When people face the real price of energy they will take steps to conserve or change energy sources, and trade off whether they think it is a short or a long term saving they get from switching. The idea that politicians or bureaucrats have any clue as to what best meets the needs of everyone using petroleum products now is simply absurd. High prices are already encouraging people to shift modes of transport, to drive less and consider what their next vehicle's fuel consumption is. Let that work, and don't listen to the excitable planners who think more needs to be done. A majority of the costs of urban public transport are already predominantly paid for through motoring taxes and rates, as it is already "being encouraged" with fares well below cost. It doesn't need to be more.

2. Don't get in the way of exploring for more energy. The Ardern Government's ban on new oil and gas exploration was always an act of virtue signalling to fly a vacuous flag around climate change to the world, even though the impact of no more exploration on climate change is nil. The even more preposterous argument that "there isn't any more to discover" makes it more ridiculous, because there is no need to ban something that wouldn't happen anyway. Norway has the world's highest takeup of electric vehicles (96% of new light vehicle sales are EVs) and it is the world's seventh largest exporter of petroleum and gas (and there is bipartisan consensus about expanding it).

3. That means all energy. Whether it be wind power, solar power, nuclear power, tidal or coal, government should get out of the way. There are negative externalities with some options, but these should be treated as property rights issues. Pollution is an escape over property boundaries and permission should be obtained from owners of such property if pollution represents anything from nuisance level onwards. There should be minimal restrictions on installing solar panels, wind turbines or damning waterways if you own them, and the replacement of the RMA should enable this. It also means that electricity generators should also be able to plan for future supply.

4. Maintain constructive foreign and defence relations with allies: Freedom of navigation is critical to survival for New Zealand. That means defence matters, including the alliance with Australia in particular, but also other like-minded liberal democracies. Yes that includes the United States, Japan, south Korea and Singapore. It means that there should be a blue water navy and an air force that is a credible contribution to collective defence of sea lanes. It doesn't mean having to go along with every military action by allies, but it does mean contributing to the defence of allies, and having clear lines about what matters in the national interest.

5. Maintain a minimum critical reserve of supply: The International Energy Agency recommends member states keep reserves worth 90 days of supply. This isn't "free" to do, but should be considered a core part of national defence. Without such supply, significant parts of the economy and the public would be in danger.

6. Sell off your ownership in gentailers: As clever as it seemed for the Key Government to sell 49% of three electricity gentailers, it doesn't go far enough. For these generators to build more supply they need more capital, and it shouldn't be constrained by governments having to put their own capital into the three SOEs. Government should state that, at the very least, it is relaxed about becoming a minority shareholder, or better yet just hand over the shares to the general public for it to do with as it pleases. They can sell them or hold onto them. Before that happens, it should break them up. Generation and wholesaling electricity should be separated from retail, so the retail market can thrive. I don't mean the private gentailers like Contact, just the majority state owned ones. That will stir up the market and encourage investment in capacity, which is just what is needed as more choose electricity over gas and petrol.

I'm old enough to remember how the National Party's greatest conservative socialist, Muldoon, tried to centrally plan New Zealand away from the volatility of oil prices, and lumbered the country with billions in debt for inefficient pet projects. From the Motunui gas to gasoline plant, to the North Island Main Trunk electrification, many Think Big projects were an economic disaster because officials assumed oil prices would remain high perpetually, which was not to be the case.

The Muldoon government subsidised CNG and LPG conversions for vehicles, and subsidised the roll out of CNG and LPG refuelling at service stations across the country, and by the mid 1980s the growth in demand in CNG and LPG had collapsed. It also indirectly subsidised road use by such vehicles, as fuel duty on CNG and LPG was (and still is!) significantly lower than that for petrol.

In a few months, the US-Iran war will be over and the crisis in fuel prices will have ameliorated, and despite the eager calls by central planners, the best government can do is to

The climaxes of those who absolutely love expensive and scarce oil

noreply@blogger.com (Libertyscott) — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 11:43:00 +0000

There are people absolutely loving the price of fuel going up and eager for there to be fossil fuel shortages. It’s getting them terribly agitated, in a quasi-sadistic scolding way. “Told them so” said one, “those car fascists are going to pay” said one politician, “if only there were cycleways, the teachers and nurses would use them to get to work” said an earnest unionist. “It’s ironic that the white supremacist genocidal Zionists are helping up” said keffiyeh wearing angry woman.

It started online of course, chatting together getting all excited. “Shortages will show them we were right all along, public transport is better, that’s why we need to tax people more to make it free” said the urban planner. “The people, well I mean they aren’t really human are they, that own Ford Rangers or RAM are going to feel it bad, and they’ll realise how uncool and hate filled such vehicles are” shouted the Greenpeace staffer. “Child murderers!” cried out the neurodiverse kindness campaigners. “They’re not all ACT or Winston supporting straight white men who don’t have degrees though right?” said the elder gentleman who once marched against apartheid”. “No, but 90% of them are” said the suspicious purple haired non-binary student. The university lecturer noted “Look this will expose the far-right white supremacist Zionist Trumpist terror supporters to the mass of good people who support a powerful exemplar of decolonising resistance”, before the photographer yawned and said “steady on now, we need to be practical if we are to free people from the car addiction they don’t want.

A failed list candidate said “Great, even though the climate destroying far-right scum are in power, it’s election year and can get The People on our side. We can finally show people how wonderful it is to share journeys with others on public transport, or enjoy being with nature in a cycleway”. A sick, sniffing one said “and it doesn’t matter about the Nazi Ranger drivers, all we need is for the Greens to give Labour enough of a boost to kick out Peters and Seymour”.

I might jest, but they really are almost tumescent in their excitement.

This is the chance, the central planners can take more taxes, they can impose new rules, they can spend more of your money and direct the poor “addicted” car users to the more enlightened future of more public transport use, more cycling, more walking and of course freight should go by rail. Not having convinced enough people that abandoning driving was necessary to save the planet, they think they can convince people that it is for their own good to abandon their transport choices.

What do they want? You don’t even need to ask it’s all pretty clear:

• Make driving less attractive. Slower speed limits, remove general traffic lanes, remove parking, tax cars more.

• Tax you more (now or later) to subsidise public transport even more with cheaper fares, despite demand being up and the cost of providing services going up as well.

• Tax you more to subsidise rail freight, because businesses that use it already need a helping hand from… you.

• Tax you more to subsidise people who can afford to buy new cars to buy EVs, and for other people to buy e-bikes.

Lunatic fringe academic Timothy Welch is one of these people . He’s a senior lecturer in urban planning, which of course is something we need much less of. He gets republished by leftwing media because he plays to its unconscious bias, as he really knows little about the commercial side of the transport sector and is keen to selectively quote data as facts to support his own point of view. His claims are mostly value judgment nonsense.

His latest piece of polemic sees him supporting taxing buyers of petrol vehicles to subsidise buyers of EVs (it wasn't long ago he was bemoaning EVs saying "EVs require the same amount of road space and, due to their increased weight, potentially cause more road damage. But EV owners don’t buy petrol, which means they don’t pay excise tax – the same tax that pays for expanding roads". EV's don't cause more road damage, but then after the Government put EVs onto road user charges he bemoans it making EVs "less competitive". More generally he supports making new vehicles more expensive (through the “Clean Car Standard”) which helps ensure the vehicle fleet stays older for longer, but Welch doesn’t like cars at all. He loved that fewer utes and SUVs sold under the Clean Car Standard. He bemoans the car ownership rate of 815 cars per 1000 people “one of the highest in the world”. This should be celebrated that so many can afford a car and have the freedom it provides (urban planners aren't big on this), but he ignores that NZ is larger than the UK with 8% of the population. He claims that every decade there is an oil shock, which isn't really true, but even when it happens that all dies down (remember people like him warned us of Peak Oil? That was until fracking discovered more). The 1979 oil shock one provoked Rob Muldoon to advance Think Big, and every single one of those projects turned out to be a net drain on the economy, because in a few years oil prices dropped right back. Welch doesn’t let that stop his excitement for reducing car ownership. He finishes with this absurdity:

Every bus electrified, every cycleway built, every train funded is a direct reduction in exposure to the next crisis. The question now is whether New Zealanders begin to treat their car dependence not as a lifestyle choice but as a strategic liability.

What utter rot. Unless the bus is taking people out of cars, and unless a cycleway takes enough people out of driving cars to offset its cost of construction, it does nothing to reduce exposure. He advocates fully taxpayer funded public transport, which has been shown in multiple examples (e.g. Tallinn, Estonia) to largely replace walking instead of driving (in Tallinn car use dropped 5%, but walking dropped 40%, and car mode share climbed back up because public transport was overcrowded with people riding it for short trips).

There’s photographer Patrick Reynolds made a name for himself as an urbanist, and has for some years been an activist for the Green-left’s war on private motoring. This is why he was appointed to be board of NZTA in the first term of the Ardern Government, as the Greens strongly advocated for him. He’s positively excited about the crisis on the ~~Green Party~~ Greater Auckland blog. He says we should think strategically (i.e. don’t just react to the crisis, but think of the “long term”). His next step is to “rapidly reduce demand” and to “ensure an equitable path”. He said we are “structurally addicted” to driving. Curiously he floats the idea of lower speed limits for everyone but EV drivers, which is nonsense of course. Of course he doesn’t talk about aviation or shipping because These are blind spots because, by and large, governments don’t tax you to pay for their infrastructure, vehicles or services, because you’re willing to pay for them yourself (directly or indirectly through freight).

Of course it is now rounded off by the Greens. Chloe Swarbrick has, finally, taken time out shouting for the destruction of Israel and touting Hamas propaganda to demand "free" public transport and a new tax.

This wont excite the car hating mob though. Nothing gets them over the top quite as much as penalising car driving. Cars, the epitome of individual freedom, expensive capital assets that exist purely to sit idle for the owner to use when wanted, to go when and where they want to go. So unlike public transport which is planned (!) and scheduled and directed to be a sharing experience, not so fast, not so direct and not so "selfish".

And No. Unlike the control freaks, I really don't care how you get around, or how goods get around, as long as people pay for it themselves. No modes of transport are "bad" or "good", they just are well suited for different purposes. For as long as this fuel crisis continues, people will respond to the price signals in the ways they want. Some will drive a bit less, some may buy vehicles that use less or no fuel, some will ride public transport, some will bike and some will walk. Most people are quite happy buying their own cars, fares, bikes and shoes, and the way it SHOULD work, is the more people buy of one mode, the more that can be provided.

Funny how the planners don't really think that should be the way isn't it?

UPDATE: Oh look another one, this time from Professor Alistair Woodward, from the University of Auckland's Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences, who RNZ conveniently cited without counter-argument that there should be regulations on people buying vehicles he thinks are bad. The public health lobby's appetite for micro-managing what everyone does, because a small handful engage in bad behaviour has no end.

Whether your agree with it or not, the US has to win in Iran

noreply@blogger.com (Libertyscott) — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 04:48:00 +0000

Morally it was entirely justifiable to attack the Islamic Republic of Iran. Many will disagree honourably because of concern that the international order, represented by sovereign states with recognised borders respecting each others territorial integrity, is fundamental to international peace and security. They believe that this order protects peace and supports negotiation and diplomacy as the path to dispute resolution. However, it is a defensible position that the Islamic Republic of Iran (distinct from Iran the nation) is not deserving of that protection or recognition, because it does not afford that to some other sovereign states.

It is a regime that has spent its entire history calling for death to the USA and Israel, and used terrorist proxies in Lebanon, Israel and Yemen to spread its evil poisonous misanthropic ideology of ultra-conservative Islamist theocracy. Besides calling for "death to Israel" it has actively spread anti-semitism globally, including hosting conferences questioning the Holocaust. It has the world's highest per capita rate of executions, killing over 972 in 2024 alone, and most recently reportedly slaughtering tens of thousands of protestors across the country. Its theocracy includes a morality police dedicated to policing what women wear and how people interact in public, and it uses rape as a punishment of dissident women.

Given its long standing global sponsorship of terrorism (which included the IRA back in the Troubles), its pursuit of uranium enrichment and lack of transparency, it is easy to justify military action to stop it obtaining nuclear weapons.

Whether or not it was tactically correct for the US and Israel to take on Iran only history will tell. As much as those against the war will be wanting Trump to lose, to embarrass him, this is a very narrow and suicidal position. The very last thing anyone who supports liberal democracy, rule of law, individual freedom, human rights and civilisation should want is for the Islamic Republic of Iran to defeat the US, Israel and by proxy, the Gulf states as well.

Overthrowing the regime would be a success, weakening it so it fails due to domestic pressure (including from the Kurdish north) would be a partial success, but emboldening it even if its ability to project abroad is significantly weakened, would be seen as a victory for the regime, and a victory for its proxies.

For it would embolden Iran and its proxies to attack not just in the Middle East, but beyond, endangering Americans, Jews (don't even think Iran separates Zionists from Jews). This would make us all less safe, it would embolden Islamists across the world to promote their ideology, and for a few to be willing to use force to terrify us all.

If the Islamic Republic survives, it will embolden Putin and Xi to give it succour, money, arms and to push on. Putin already knows Trump wont stop him in Ukraine, Xi already knows the US will do little in the South China Sea, and wonders if he can attack Taiwan with little more than sanctions.

At this stage the biggest risk is that Trump chickens out, and wants a "deal". There is no "deal" with those who want you dead, who want your country dead and another dead. As much as the international law purists want pontification from the Western world about the legality of the war on Iran (they think it isn't legal), that horse has bolted.

While it's entirely possible (and probable) the Iranian regime could be replaced by one that is far from ideal (see Iraq, Libya and Syria), it is also likely it could be better. Better is not wanting to destroy other countries, better is not wanting to fund, train and arm multiple terrorist proxies across the Middle East, and across the world to "globalise the intifada" against the infidels.

Better is not expounding an ideology that is a fundamentalist misanthropic dark-ages view of humanity, as serving a supreme religious leader who sends people to their deaths for the sake of Allah, who restricts music, literature, art, apparel, human relationships and human expression, for the sake of blasphemy. Humanity, and in particular Europe and the Western world have been spending centuries unshackling themselves from the tyranny of theology.

The end of the Islamic Republic of Iran wont remove this, as there are plenty of others expounding such a view, including some it is attacking, but it will remove the most toxic, virulent and violent example embodied in a outwardly aggressive state. For it to "win", survive and double down on militarising itself and securing weapons of mass destruction would be dangerous to us all.

Allister Heath in the Daily Telegraph:

Either Donald Trump holds his nerve, crushes the Iranian regime, rides out the oil shock and reopens the Strait of Hormuz, or he and America are finished, exposed as unserious, fickle and incapable of forward planning, a superpower manquée felled by drone-wielding barbarians.

The challenge is Trump’s character, his willingness to accept short-term economic and electoral pain, not America or Israel’s exceptional military capacities. Does the US president, a hawk on Iran for 47 years, have it in him to finish the job, going down in history as the saviour of civilisation from nuclear Islamism, or is he merely the unidimensional man child his critics believe him to be?..

The great danger is that Trump snatches defeat from the jaws of victory. A loss would involve the Iranians shutting the Strait for an extended period, the Americans panicking at elevated oil prices and the US president walking away with a premature declaration of victory. Iran would be bloodied, but unbowed.

This would be a calamity from which neither Trump nor the West would recover. It would be interpreted by our enemies, chiefly China, North Korea and Islamists, as proof that their stereotype of the average Westerner is correct, that we are coddled, narcissistic consumers who cannot handle even the smallest discomfort.

It would also embolden the West’s defeatist class. Their “analysis” relentlessly asserts that the US cannot possibly win, and dismisses any contrary evidence. Everything to them is a miscalculation; killing Ali Khamenei will backfire, we are told, but not killing him would have been criticised just as harshly.

There is nothing wrong with caution, but some of these people sound as if they want Iran to win. These same experts rightly loathe Putin, correctly seeing him as a fascist monster, who is willing to kidnap children and ethnically cleanse civilians. They rightly support Ukraine, emphasise its victories and urge it not to give up when Russia strikes a blow.

Yet they are not as passionately opposed to the Iranian regime, even though it is just as fascistic as Putin’s. They loathe Trump and Israel. They were willing to suffer high energy prices to help defeat Putin, but cannot tolerate dearer petrol to take out the Iranian regime. Their double standards and hypocrisy are vile.

This is a civilisational struggle, a battle between good and evil. The West must win, or all bets are off...

Luxon or not

noreply@blogger.com (Libertyscott) — Sun, 08 Mar 2026 11:55:00 +0000

It's hardly news to most people, other than some members of the National Party caucus, that Christopher Luxon is not doing well as Prime Minister in convincing even a plurality of voters that he is the right person for the job. He defeated Chris Hipkins in 2023, and now more people think Hipkins would be a better Prime Minister than him, although I suspect a significant plurality think neither of them are any good (and a smaller number dream of minor party leaders, especially Winston Peters).

Luxon was clearly a competent CEO, and his best characteristic is that he is a good delegator. He has largely left most portfolios to their Ministers, and it shows. The Ministers that are most highly rated are those that have shown results, or at the very least, show competence in dealing with difficult issues. Regardless of what I think of any of them personally or even some of their policies, it is fairly clear that Erica Stanford, Chris Bishop, Simeon Brown and Mark Mitchell (of the National Ministers, as there is competence in NZ First and ACT as well), have all shown themselves to be able to "get things done".

I would be one of the first to criticise Stanford in many ways, in particular I think she is just another wet who is almost wholly submissive to the teaching unions, but she has shown both a willingness to effect change and a passion for what she does. Her efforts for curriculum reform, pushing structured literacy and passion for lifting standards is clear. She projects confidence and communicates clearly and competently, even if I think the government is incredibly weak in opening up the education sector to more choice, this isn't about libertarians, it's about the general public believing in competence and leadership.

Chris Bishop on infrastructure has also demonstrated a commitment to results. You can criticise the replacement of the RMA on multiple grounds (as Nick Clark from the NZ Initiative competently did), but you can't criticise his passionate commitment to a long-term fix of the housing crisis, and his efforts to hold Kainga Ora to account, and take interim steps making it easier to build some homes and infrastructure. Furthermore, I've never encountered a Transport Minister in New Zealand or anywhere in the world who both believes in road pricing and sees it as a tool to improve conditions for drivers, and to make better investments in road improvements. Whether it is housing, transport or social infrastructure, he doesn't just talk in carefully curated soundbites, he speaks off the cuff and shows a passion for change and results. It helps that he has twice won the usually safe Labour seat of Hutt South (Luxon, Stanford, Brown and Mitchell all have safe seats), which takes considerable effort and shows a cut-through to much more than the party base.

Simeon Brown, despite childish and cheap jibes directed at him on social media, has demonstrated calm, capable competence in delivery. In health, traditionally an albatross around the neck of politicians almost anywhere, he quickly got across the issue of Dunedin Hospital, and made a decision about its future. This matched developing a five-year health infrastructure plan and setting five key health targets. As Transport Minister his great achievements were in turning around the spending plans of NZTA to meet those of the government, and to reverse the widespread speed limit reductions. He has a financial and economic competence as a "dry" member of Cabinet, which reflects his education and previous career in banking.

Finally Mark Mitchell has been the face of National's commitment to law and order, cracking down on criminal gangs and delivering a demonstrated reduction in violent crime, following increases in Police numbers and corrections staff. Although this was undoubtedly supported by policies from both ACT and NZ First, Mitchell is convincing as a Minister against crime.

All of this contrasts with Luxon. He is unconvincing, he seems unable to show a serious passionate spirit that chimes with much of the population. As much as delegating is good, people want a Prime Minister to be across it all. Not necessarily like Helen Clark was (as she was a control freak Prime Minister, micromanaging most policies and not trusting most Ministers on major issues), but at least as well as John Key and Bill English could. PMs need to be able to ad-lib, to respond spontaneously without briefing notes, based on a philosophical and policy grounding about the direction of government and principles. Some might say it is a bit too much to ask a Prime Minister, especially a National Party one to base thinking and what he says on principles, but principles and passion are where authenticity comes from, and authenticity helps win elections.

People want political leaders to believe in something and to express it, showing their passionate commitment to not just results that people want, but the basis for getting there. Luxon hasn't got it, he didn't have it before the last election, but the public were so fed up with the failed performance of the Ardern/Hipkins years, post-Covid, that they were willing to give him a go. That willingness has been eroded considerably. There is a chance he can pull together enough support at the election to defeat Chris Hipkins, in part because Winston Peters has clearly positioned himself on the conservative right, and David Seymour continues to have a decent base of support for those who think the National Party is too wet, but that chance is far from a safe bet.

Much more importantly, New Zealanders deserve a Prime Minister who they have confidence in, who can take a clear, principled stand on issues, without fluffing his lines. I'm not fussed really if Luxon wants to support the US and Israel over Iran, or oppose it because he thinks it may be against international law, or claim that NZ is watching, not involved and does not want to take a stance out of respect of our allies. Just believe in something.

So he needs to go. Stanford or Bishop look like the leading contenders to replace him. Mitchell hasn't the breadth and depth for the role, and Brown is too young and too conservative to attract the non-politically engaged middle voters National needs. However, Brown would be an excellent Finance Minister.

Stanford is Auckland based, and socially liberal, with the undoubted advantage of being a woman, with a clear, pleasant voice. She would need a deputy who is more conservative and able to moderate concerns she is too wet and centrist. Some may think she could look a little like a National Jacinda, but that is under rating Stanford. It seems unlikely she would characterise herself by emotions and over-ambitious targets. To address concerns about being wet, Brown would be an ideal deputy to Stanford, although two Auckland leaders is not ideal, it is not as problematic as two Wellington ones.

Bishop, notwithstanding the alleged failed plot late last year, is equally as compelling. Being Wellington based is no asset, but the Hutt is a bit different, and he is much more of an "everyman" able to reach across to a broader group of voters. He would need a deputy who is not Wellington based, and although he isn't a "wet" at all, he is socially liberal, so a more conservative deputy who is either Auckland or regionally/rural based would be ideal. Brown again would deliver this, although the push for a woman would suggest Stanford could be a choice, two social liberals might grate against part of the caucus.

I've not mentioned Willis although some would suggest she is the automatic choice, as the current Deputy. There is a clear couple of reasons for that. Firstly, she has anchored herself as a Luxon loyalist, it's difficult to see his weaknesses as not reflecting on her. Secondly, and far more importantly, she has not delivered on substance, particularly on the cost of living, but also notably in turning around the economy. Rather she has pushed relatively insignificant policy measures and issues with little real result. You can predict exactly what the Opposition is going to say, because so much of what she has pushed has delivered little.

I doubt more than 10% of voters could name Family Boost as one of her signature policies, because it's achieved little despite her efforts to publicise the handout. The Opposition has portrayed her as a harsh austerity Finance Minister, which if it were true, would have demonstrated results, with a path to surplus being sooner (and commensurate impacts on inflation and interest rates). She would have upset public sector unions, recipients of government largesse and leftwing academics, but at least would have some respect from the public for taking difficult decisions that were unpopular with some, for the sake of better long term outcomes. She didn't need to be Ruth Richardson to just take spending down to the levels (as a proportion of GDP) when Labour got elected in 2017. In reality she has stemmed the growth in government spending, but wears the banner of "cuts" and hasn't been able to repudiate it. What's much worse than her weakness on spending is the populist hobby horses she has chased to no avail. The utterly fake dressing down of the head of Fonterra for the high price of butter, when no one credible thought anything could be done about it (bear in mind she used to work for Fonterra as a lobbyist), was cringeworthy. Furthermore, she cried wolf so much about supermarkets so when it was clear that the main solution - RMA reform - was actually out of her hands, and given the price of groceries in New Zealand (when GST is taken into account) is not disproportionate to Australia, she couldn't communicate reality and back down after fuelling hype that delivered nothing. Finally, while she has claimed credit over lowered interest rates, that all about to reverse, thanks to a lowering dollar and now the war in the Middle East. She couldn't even get the Reserve Bank's profligacy under control. The public want action on the cost of living, but few believe she can do anything.

She might think she is entitled to be the next Prime Minister, but it's not clear what she has to offer. Most recently, her speech in Parliament about Iran demonstrated a patronising tone that focused not on the events in the Middle East, but what it means for New Zealanders. In foreign affairs, the public wants someone to talk convincingly about what is happening in defence and humanitarian terms, balancing the death and destruction of war, with the optimism of potentially ending a brutal tyranny, and concern about the end-game and what it means for the people involved. New Zealanders know they are far away, and they are not just concerned about inflation and trade, they do not just think of foreign relations as transactional, but as a matter of what is right and its global impacts.

So no, Willis is not the answer. She should not be the next Prime Minister and if Luxon is replaced, she should go too and be replaced, with a Finance Minister who understands what it takes to raise productivity and make New Zealand more attractive for starting and sustaining businesses. It isn't tax breaks for movies.

Of course nothing might happen. Maybe some National MPs want to retire early (!), maybe some think Luxon is misunderstood and the media is to blame, or the polls are missing those who are undecided and will be drawn to him for stability on voting day. They are all wrong. Luxon has been a disaster.

Labour has twice had one-term governments, and twice had two-term governments. National has never had a one-term government, or even a two-term government, but it nearly had a one-term government in 1993. It was saved not just by the voting system, but because voters rejected Mike Moore's second attempt to be Prime Minister as Bolger, just, convinced voters that tough decisions were made for later gain, which proved to be true.

There is a risk in rolling Luxon (and Willis) that it makes the government look like a mistake from the start, that it draws into question the whole period since the last election. However that risk is smaller than just fumbling along and hoping Labour will look less credible, and people will be frightened by the Greens and Te Pati Maori.

With a passionate principled Prime Minister, and a competent, economically literate and sharp minded Finance Minister, a blend of time and courage can convince voters than the National Party has listened and wants to give the public confidence in a new Prime Minister and refreshed impetus to focus on what matters the most to them. It needs to purge the mediocrity, the man who forever says "you know" (when you know he is trying to convince himself as much as you) and give New Zealanders passionate, competent and principled leadership. The time for change is now.

Mourning the Ayatollah

noreply@blogger.com (Libertyscott) — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 11:31:00 +0000

I understand those who think initiating military action against Iran is wrong because it risks lives and money with uncertain results. I also understand those who think intervention either to maintain international peace and security, or to relieve a humanitarian catastrophe (such as an oppressive murderous regime), should have multilateral endorsement.

However, if you are in a secular liberal democracy, and you mourn the death of Ayatollah Khamenei, then you're contemptible.

Of course you should be free to do it. As much as you are free to memorialise the death of Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Pol Pot, Idi Amin, Mao etc.

Don't expect not to be ridiculed or despised for it though.

ABC (Australia) reports:

Ali Alsamail and Julie Karaki, directors at the Shia Muslim Council of Australia, a peak body, said Khamenei's death was a "religious and communal loss".

"Reducing his death to celebration alone erases the reality that millions are grieving," they said.

"At a time when the Muslim community is already carrying profound anguish over the humanitarian catastrophe and documented human rights violations in Gaza and elsewhere in the region, this moment compounds an already heavy burden."

Oh please.

If your beliefs, regardless of whether they are religious or secular, embrace anguish over someone who presided over a state that ran an oppressive theocracy, which would imprison, torture and execute opponents, including abusing women who didn't follow a misogynistic stone-age view of their rights, then you should bear the burden of others celebrating his death, and disdain from those who are concerned that you endorse such a political and philosophical perspective being applied more universally.

It's one thing to be concerned and upset about Gaza. I get that.

To be mourning and moreover to be demanding there be respect for that mourning is utterly anti-human.

Indeed the ABC continues:

Deakin University chair in global Islamic politics Greg Barton emphasised it was only five out of some 80 Shia mosques and centres in Australia that held commemorative events.

And he suggested the Iranian embassy could be pressuring Iranian religious groups in Australia to do the vigils.

"The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps runs not just a police state in Iran but to the best of their abilities, operates out of embassies and consulates to surveil the diaspora population," Professor Barton said.

Strength be to Iranians. They deserve freedom from the tyranny and oppression of a dark ages regime that treats them all as subservient subjects to a death cult version of Shia Islam.

If you're sad at the Ayatollah's death. Sure, you are free to be, and you are free to mourn, but don't expect any public displays of sadness to not be subject to judgment or criticism.

In particular, consider if you want anyone who is an acolyte of the Ayatollah to be working for you, serving you, working in a hospital, teaching children or, in particular, working in defence or law enforcement. Replace the word Ayatollah with "the Fuehrer" and all that goes with that, and you may be clearer on this.

Regime change in Iran should be celebrated.... if it happens

noreply@blogger.com (Libertyscott) — Sun, 01 Mar 2026 11:23:00 +0000

Unless you're an Islamist, a tankie or a Jew hater, all of whom loathe individual freedom, secular liberal democracy and capitalism, you'll be elated at the sight of thousands of Iranians worldwide cheering on the attacks by the US and Israel on the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Of course international relations lecturers, the UN and international law advocates will all claim that the attacks are "illegal", which may be true. They cite the inviolability of state sovereignty - the concept that all states are entitled to have inviolable borders and to be free from aggression.

The point of this is that people should be free from war, but the single biggest philosophical question in the context of the attack on Iran, is how legitimate is that principle when it protects a regime that wages war on its own people.

The Islamic Republic of Iran is a tyranny, a misogynistic theocratic autocracy that does not hesitate to imprison, torture and execute dissidents. From its oppressive ultra-conservative treatment of women, to its global sponsorship of terror and promotion of its bigoted intolerant brand of theocratic totalitarianism, it is wilful blindness for anyone to claim that this regime was in any way peaceful, or had any remote sense of moral authority.

The celebration of Iranians in the US, UK, Australia and elsewhere for the killing of the Supreme Leader is a message of the illegitimacy of a regime that does not tolerate challenge, does not allow for peaceful transitions of power, and suppresses freedom of speech and the media egregiously.

The Iranian Islamist regime has funded, trained and armed terror groups in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen and Israel, and has provided arms for Russia's aggressive revanchist war against Ukraine.

There are fair and reasonable questions to be asked about the attacks on Iran:

Will the Islamic Regime actually be overthrown? Or could it remain in power through sheer brutal force against Iranians who seek to overthrow it?
What sort of government will replace it, and could it be worse (more radical)?
How will its proxies, such as the Houthis, Hezbollah and Hamas respond, spreading conflict further?

After all the overthrow of the Saddam Hussein regime saw the power gap replaced by an Iranian backed regime following the disaster of ISIS. The regime of Muammar Gaddafi was followed by civil war and bifurcation of the country. The US couldn't sustain the overthrow of the Taliban. So there is good reason to be sceptical about the US being willing to do what is necessary.

However, it is not a reason to cite the belief that the Islamic Republic of Iran is entitled to protection under "state sovereignty" because it doesn't respect the sovereignty of multiple sovereign states, nor does it respect the autonomy of its people.

Those granting the Iranian regime moral equivalency to Israel, the United States, to any liberal democracy, are either completely banal, or morally bankrupt.

When the Iranian revolution happened in 1979, there was much domestic opposition in Iran to the regime of the Shah, which was itself autocratic and intolerant. Some liberals and many Marxist activists backed the Islamic Revolution, and were promptly arrested and had their political movements suppressed.

Anyone who supports individual freedom and peace will want the end of this regime, let's just hope it happens, and Iranians, the Middle East and the world will be freer and more peaceful after this action against one of modern history's most brutal, terror promoting and fascist regimes.

The abomination of Britain's Gorton and Denton by-election

noreply@blogger.com (Libertyscott) — Thu, 26 Feb 2026 11:01:00 +0000

The UK is having one of its regular by-elections, this time in Gorton and Denton, a constituency in Manchester. The constituency was new at the 2024 election, and at the time was won by Labour's Andrew Gwynne with 50.8% of the vote, with Reform a distant second on 14.1%. Gwynne had been an MP for a previous constituency since 2005. He was suspended from the Labour Party for a series of Whatsapp messages ranging from joking about hoping a constituent dies, retweeting "sexualised comments" about deputy Angela Rayner, and claiming an American psychologist's name was "too militaristic and too Jewish", he subsequently resigned from Parliament due to ill health.

Gorton and Denton has a relatively low income nationally, with a significant (27%) Asian ethnic minority population, mostly Pakistani, but 57% are white Europeans. A slight majority voted for leaving the European Union in the 2016 referendum.

The campaign has been dominated by the Greens and Reform. The Greens claiming to be the party of the poor and for the Pakistani and Bengali population. Its campaign video depicts Keir Starmer and Narendra Modi, explicitly designed to stir up anti-Indian bigotry, as well as depicting Foreign Secretary David Lammy alongside Benjamin Netanyahu, designed to stir up anti-Israel bigotry. Reform's reaction to this is to call for a hardline against illegal immigration. Labour looks well behind, and the Conservatives are nearly irrelevant. The Greens say they are fighting the hate of Reform and racism, but Allister Heath, editor of the Sunday Telegraph sees the Greens as pandering to racist hate even moreso and calls for this all to stop.

From Allister Heath in the Daily Telegraph:

We should start by calling out the Greens for what they have become: a hateful, despicable, extremist party that has identified an entrepreneurial opportunity in weaponising tribalism, division, stagnant living standards, misinformation and envy. Their behaviour in Gorton and Denton has been abominable.

Following a playbook pioneered by far-Left parties worldwide, the Greens, now led by Zack Polanski, are targeting a red-green coalition of white, woke “progressives” and the reactionary subset of the Muslim electorate. These two groups may appear culturally incompatible, but they can be united not just by their support for socialism but also their often virulent Israelophobia, an atavistic prejudice that the Greens unashamedly pander to....

The Green candidate in Gorton and Denton was photographed wearing a keffiyeh, symbol of Palestinianism, has accused Reform of Islamophobia and racism, and has fronted a video in Urdu featuring Benjamin Netanyahu and Narendra Modi meeting Labour politicians, as if these were self-evident provocations and proof of a grand betrayal....

It’s a scandal. Extreme tribalism of the sort promoted by the Greens is incompatible with a democratic culture that requires a strong sense of commonality, a belief in a peoplehood that transcends differences of ideology, race, religion or class. It requires a neutral, single-tier rule of law, where citizens are treated as individuals, not as members of a group. Democracy isn’t just about tallying votes, and handing power to the winner. It is about debate, trying to change people’s minds, feedback mechanisms and punishing or rewarding politicians who fail or succeed.

None of this is possible in a world in which voters vote along religious or ethnic lines, and where the best that can be hoped for is peaceful coexistence and Northern Ireland-style or Lebanese confessionalist power-sharing. Under that scenario, democracy becomes a mere game of arithmetic, of demographic superiority. Outcomes are pre-determined, governed by community leaders.

This may not trouble the Greens: they have reinvented themselves as a vehicle for a new Left that combines Marxism-Leninism, Third Worldism, critical theory, and other radical anti-Western and anti-bourgeois philosophies. They detest private property and family values.

They support quasi-open borders and are soft on crime. They are infected by every Left-wing pathology of the past 200 years, every intellectual error. They have imbued the poison of “anti-colonial” Soviet propaganda, of woke writers such as Derrida, of fanatics such as Edward Said.

Britain used to be a beacon among nations, a country uniquely hostile to extremist parties. The British Union of Fascists never won a single council seat. The Communist Party of Great Britain only seized a couple of parliamentary seats in the 1930s and 1940s. The National Front never made it to Westminster. Militant grabbed Liverpool City Council but was kicked out of Labour by Neil Kinnock. The British National Party won councillors and MEPs, but just 1.9pc of the vote in 2010.

Our record mixes world-class success with catastrophic failure. Some groups have integrated extraordinarily well, and children of immigrants often do better at school and in the labour and housing market than the white British. There has been a surge in mixed-marriages.

At the same time, we have suffered the rise of Islamism, separatism and intra-minority tensions, fuelled by race-obsessed woke policies that denigrate Britishness. We use incorrect metrics: materialistic markers of achievement, rather than ideology. Numerous Islamists are well educated; doctors have been stuck off for anti-Semitism. Many British Jews, whose synagogues offer prayers to the Royal Family weekly, are having to reconsider their future in Britain.

The Panglossians, who believe that tensions will diminish spontaneously; that sectarian voting will wane as it did in England and Scotland by the 1970s; that secularism will dissolve all differences; that Islamism is overblown; that today’s minorities will rapidly become latter-day Huguenots or Irish immigrants, indistinguishable from the rest of the population in all but surname, are delusional.

In addition to slashing immigration, we will need to be more muscular. We will need to crack down pitilessly on extremism, including in some mosques or in local areas where prejudice is rife. We will need to learn from Singapore and other well-managed multicultural states. We cannot allow our country to fragment. Regardless of race or religion, we must all be British.

Ukraine : A fight for civilisation

noreply@blogger.com (Libertyscott) — Wed, 25 Feb 2026 09:51:00 +0000

From the Daily Telegraph (UK):

And understandably: this is not just a struggle for Ukraine, but for the West itself. Aside from Beijing, which is not yet engaged in open warfare against us, the Kremlin has become a focal point for every authoritarian and sadist who would have us subjugated or dead.

The deformed child of 20th-century communism loves Putin. Neo-Nazis love Putin. The Chinese love Putin. The Venezuelan regime, or what’s left of it, loves Putin.

The North Koreans fight in his orc army. Even sponsors of jihadists are his bedfellows; on our first night in Ukraine, of the 297 drones and loitering munitions that were launched into the country, about 200 were Shahed drones made by Iran.

In his book The Fourth Political Theory, the nationalist Russian philosopher Alexander Dugin, nicknamed “Putin’s Rasputin”, lavished praise upon the “conservative revolutionist” Osama Bin Laden. The terror mastermind offered hope that “those values that were gathered into a heap and taken to the junkyard can still arise”, Dugin enthused.

Clearly, the overlap between Moscow and jihadism runs more than skin deep. Just as the Western far-Right conjures Putin as an anti-woke strongman rather than the murderous tyrant he is, Dugin absurdly projects onto jihadism a kind of orthodox cultural conservatism.

But what these repulsive groups really have in common is that they all loathe the free West. In recent years, three peoples have found themselves facing this omni-enemy on the civilisational frontlines: the Iranians, the Israelis and the Ukrainians. They know they stand together and they know they stand for us.

Herzog deserves to be welcomed

noreply@blogger.com (Libertyscott) — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 11:43:00 +0000

If Isaac Herzog were not Jewish and certainly were not Israeli, an objective assessment of him would see him ticking most mainstream liberal boxes on political views. He was a member of the Israeli Labor Party before it merged with Meretz to be the new secular centre-left party of Israel. Herzog believes in a two-state solution and “land for peace”, which is the mainstream view of virtually all liberal democracies across the world on the Israel-Palestine conflict. He is socially liberal. He was a strident critic of Netanyahu and was Leader of the Opposition for four and half years.

President of Israel is not the same as President of the United States. It is not an executive function, but a constitutional head of state. It is elected by the Knesset for a single seven-year term, and is largely a ceremonial and administrative function, not political. The President doesn’t declare war or decide on the budget or pass laws.

He’s currently visiting Australia in response to the worst terrorist attack in Australia’s history, which targeted Jews for being Jews, on the holiest of days, in Bondi on 14 December 2025. This is understandable, as Israel exists as the national homeland of Jews. He has travelled to Australia to offer condolences, sympathy and comfort to the families and friends of the 15 who were murdered, and the entire Australian Jewish community who feel vulnerable, threatened and frightened.

None of this matters to the psychopathic hate mobs who have been protesting in Australian cities about his visit, calling him a “war criminal” (even though he has literally no role whatsoever in declaring, waging or ending war) and choosing to disrupt solemn occasions created by the Jewish community to support themselves, and to mourn the dead.

Plenty of them are well meaning but ignorant people, who are riled up by anger about what happened in Gaza, which is nothing to do with Australian Jews and little to do with President Herzog, and of course which they don’t give any agency to Hamas which started the war by a sadistic massacre of Jews at a music festival, and abduction of hostages, many of which it killed. A mix of understandable distress and anger about the suffering of some, blends with hyperbolic propaganda, and the deep buckets of Jew hatred spread by Hamas and its backers in Tehran and elsewhere, to a venal expression of hate. Hate not just for Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, but a hatred of Israel itself, demands that it be eradicated (and who imagines what happens to Jews and Arabs who are happily Israeli citizens during and after this process), and of course anyone who opposes them is a fair target. Given most Jews support the existence of the State of Israel (even if many oppose the Netanyahu Government), it’s a very short jump to want to wipe Israel off the map and want to wipe Jews off the map or rather eject them from their homeland. You know the land that, if it were in Australia would “always is and always will be” their land?

Some are not well-meaning people of course. Those are the ones flying the flags of the Islamic Republic of Iran, providing solidarity of the ones who claim that there is a Zionist conspiracy running the media, governments and the world. Those are the ones who think the Bondi massacre was a false flag, or Israel’s fault. Those are the ones who want Jews to be scared, because they are probably pro-Israel. Those are the neo-Nazis, Hamas supporters and utterly evil.

Yet they all march, protest and shout together. They say nothing about the 30,000 murdered for protesting the brutal authoritarian Iranian Islamist regime. Like they say nothing about mass murders in Sudan, Syria, Ukraine or Burma. For they aren’t human rights activists, they don’t care about peace, let alone freedom of individuals. Nor do they care about the deaths of Muslims (for the ones in Iran don’t count, because they are rejecting an Islamist theocracy), or Arabs (see Syria’s civil war which saw no protests of Russia backing barrel bombing/chemical weapon dropping Assad).

It matters not to them that Herzog wants a Palestinian state, opposes settlements in the West Bank, wants peaceful co-existence and is simply in Sydney to give support, sympathy and courage to a Jewish community as shattered by its terror attack as Muslims in Christchurch were by the attack on them. They couldn’t just spend some days being quiet, letting Jews have space and time to be themselves, with a head of state that is there for them. No, they couldn’t.

The moronic can change, because almost everyone was once young, naïve and stupid. It doesn’t take much to learn something about the topic you protest about, to stop following your readily packaged social group going on protests you think are righteous because people you like think that way (and how could they be wrong). The malignant are another story. They deserve all of the contempt and disgust that polite company treats Nazis.

For they can't just let Jews live in peace.

Loony leftwing teachers

noreply@blogger.com (Libertyscott) — Thu, 22 Jan 2026 10:08:00 +0000

In the UK...

"A Labour MP was prevented from visiting a school in his constituency because the teaching unions and the Palestine Solidarity Campaign do not like the fact that he believes Israel should have a right to exist. The MP in question is Damien Egan, who represents Bristol North East" ...

We know of this story only because Steve Reed, the Communities Secretary, who describes himself as a Zionist, mentioned it during an address to the Jewish Labour Movement, without naming Egan. Reed said of the people who had scuppered Egan’s visit: ‘They will be called in, and they will be held to account for doing that, because you cannot have people with those kinds of attitudes teaching our children.

Well, Steve, there’s people with those kinds of attitudes teaching our children in pretty much every school in the country, save for a few free schools and some of those in the private sector

"In fact I cannot think of a single occupation more likely to be stocked with these pig-ignorant dunderheads than teaching, a calling which they gravitate towards because they are useless at everything else and also to acquire a soupçon of power which is otherwise wholly absent from their wretched, impotent lives"

Rod Liddle, The Spectator

Happy New Year

noreply@blogger.com (Libertyscott) — Tue, 20 Jan 2026 20:22:00 +0000

It's a bit late. I thought of writing about the fact it is election year in New Zealand, but that seems almost inconsequential when the entire international order is being turned upside down, primarily because the President of the United States does not value individual freedom, liberal democracy, free market capitalism or alliances at all.

It's easy to cheer the overthrow of Nicholas Maduro, but perplexing to see the anointment of his Vice-President as someone Trump can "do business with" while snubbing the actual Opposition leader, who actually won the last election and has broad based support, because presumably she hasn't shown enough obeisance to him. Venezuela is better off, but not by as much as it could be.

It's also easy to be hopeful that Iranians will shrug off the evil, totalitarian Islamic Republic, and starve the likes of Hamas and Hezbollah from waging terror on the people they govern and hate, but note that for all of the bluster, it's far from clear what anyone else is doing to help Iranians remove their racist, misogynistic masters.

It's not so easy to be optimistic about Ukraine, even though it has largely held off the Russian military from total victory, because on the one hand Europe has been pathetic in providing support it needs, and President Trump has decided that Russia taking over its immediate neighbours is none of his business. On the other hand it is hard not to see Russia flailing about as a failing empire, with an economy largely fuelled by moral relativist allies buying its oil and gas, while producing 1980s era military hardware, as its population tumbles and it looks to Beijing to give it some assurance.

It's also not so easy to be optimistic about Taiwan, again although most of its citizens are willing to fight for their free, liberal democratic "Republic of China", because nobody really knows if Trump will help it, or not. Japan looks like it might help it, which would be a significant step. However, we know the leadership in both Canberra and Wellington are far more interested in selling goods to the aggressive PRC than in showing any moral leadership. Meanwhile, the PRC itself faces multiple challenges, ranging from a spiralling property investment debt bubble, declining population (especially among working age adults), 30 million more men than women and a population increasingly fed up with the distractions of the CCP.

It's difficult to not be pessimistic about the divide between the US and Denmark, Greenland and the rest of Europe. The US has almost unfettered access to Greenland for military purposes under NATO. The mineral resources of Greenland are far too costly to extract given the thickness of the Arctic tundra. The idea that the US, rather than Denmark or the people of Greenland themselves should govern the world's largest island because of an "imminent threat" is just absurd. There is no threat from the PRC through Greenland, and the threat from Russia seems specious when there us little effort to kneecap Russia's revanchism over Ukraine (and elsewhere). Turning all of Europe against the US is not something many would have forecast, but it makes Moscow and Beijing grin.

On the other hand, there is mild optimism that Israel remains capable of inflicting a bloody nose against Hamas when it seeks to wipe out Jews, although there is less optimism that an enduring peace settlement can come from Israel and the Palestinian Authority. Maybe the overthrow of Iran could help that, but so would US pressure on Israel.

There is some optimism that the self-sabotaging policies of many Western countries, in regulating and taxing industries for the sake of mitigating climate change, only to see those industries shift to China, India and elsewhere that do not care one bit about mitigating climate change, is coming to an end. However, there is little optimism that it will be matched by liberalising economies and freeing them from the constraints that mean Europe, in particular, generates little new business innovation on a global scale.

There is also optimism that the trend towards the post-modernist critical constructivism that ranks people like Marxist-Leninists, according to fictional hierarchies of oppression and domination, is losing traction. More and more people are resisting the confected idea that merely because of your race, sex, gender and sexuality you're either an enlightened downtrodden oppressed victim who needs to be "listened to" and "empowered" (even if you're already a high-profile politician or celebrity with a large personal fortune) or an obsolete oppressive white supremacist (you don't even have to be white) misogynist who should be "shut down" and "know your place" (even if you're an unknown nobody who owns little). This whilst those claiming it are living in the economic and social system that has allowed the greatest level of prosperity, freedom of self-expression and diversity of viewpoints and lifestyles in human history.

However, the pessimism is that part of the reaction to this is to embrace post-modernist conspiratorialism that is xenophobic, ultra-nationalist and anti-capitalist, that doesn't just want to leave peaceful people alone, treats outsiders as the enemy rather than people who can embrace free-market capitalist high-trust liberal democratic society, and sees criticism of itself as being as binary as the far-left critical constructivists.

Nevermind, I have something else on my mind this year.

What the Gaza protestors could have done to not stir up Jew Hatred

noreply@blogger.com (Libertyscott) — Wed, 17 Dec 2025 06:03:00 +0000

I’m not going to pretend that I would protest for any movement that has the support of Hamas or Fatah, but of course anyone in a liberal democracy has the right to express their views on what happens in Gaza. The consequences of some of those views are to stir up not just hatred of Israel, but hatred of Israelis and of course of Jews, despite the claims of best efforts of many protesting that they oppose all forms of “anti-semitism” (and curiously then say also “Islamophobia” et al, because you can’t just criticise Jew hatred without relativising it with hatred of the people of the religion that seems to have a disproportionate number of promoters of Jew hatred).

People can protest for an independent Palestinian state (the idea it would be “free” is fanciful, but the far-left, which dominates these protests, regarded leaders from Robert Mugabe to Macias Nguema to be “liberating” their people), but perhaps some of the following might be less likely to encourage and promote Jew hatred:

• Exclude anyone calling to “globalise the intifada”: Don’t kid yourself. If you read about what the Palestinians intifadas involved, it was targeting Israeli civilians in terror attacks. Intifada is violent resistance. If you want to undertake it globally, who do you want to target? Who will get targeted? It’s Jews (nobody undertaking such attacks.

• Exclude anyone supportive of Hamas or the 7th October attack or justifying them: Justifying most murderous pogrom of Jews since the Holocaust, at a music festival is justifying violence against civilians. It wasn’t an attack on a military target, but much worse than that, it took men, women and children as hostages. It saw the gleeful slaughter of young people because they were Jews. If you want to justify the sadistic slaughter and taking of civilian hostages because of who they are, then you’ll justify it happening anywhere.

• Exclude anyone using symbols that place the Star of David into a rubbish bin or depict it with a swastika: Equating any regime with Nazi Germany is a tall order. Russia’s actions in Ukraine could justify it, given the use of the Z slogan, the abduction of children, the direct targeting of civilians and the desire to destroy Ukrainian culture, but the Gaza protestors are uninterested in that. North Korea has many shades of Nazism, given its totalitarian system that tolerates zero dissent and promotes racial superiority. However, to link Jews to the regime that sought to eliminate them is promoting Jew hatred. That’s not a call for a Palestinian state it’s a call to wipe them out wherever they may be.

• Promote peace talks and a two-state solution, not the extinction of Israel: Most governments agree that this is the only solution for a lasting peace, but so many protestors call for Israel to be destroyed. If you are chanting for the destruction of the Jewish homeland (where Jews have lived for thousands of years), then you’ll justify destruction of those who want to retain it and to keep Jews as a global diaspora always at the mercy of others.

• Call for the overthrow of Hamas and for Gaza (and the West Bank) to be a secular liberal democracy: If you just think Gazans should live under the jackboot of Hamas, with its explicit Jew hatred and support for eliminating Jews, then you’re hardly damning attacks on Jews are you?

• Demand an end to foreign support for Hamas: Iran and Qatar both fund and support Hamas, and Iran in particular constantly expounds Jew hatred, including Holocaust denial and tropes about Jews running the world. Maybe, just once, protest against the Islamic Republic of Iran?

Of course you can criticise Netanyahu, any Israeli political party, you can call for the occupation to end, you can call for a Palestinian state, but if you are silent on Hamas, silent on the Jew hatred that drips from Palestinian political movements and welcome explicitly anti-semitic individuals and their rhetoric into your protests, you’re part of the problem.

Some activists say that if you have one Nazi at your protest, you’re at a Nazi protest. Well, there is no lack of people that are part of the pro-Palestine movement who expound Jew hatred. Whether it is the trope that the Jews run the world, or that Mossad was responsible for 9/11, the Holocaust was exaggerated (or there was a good reason for it), there is plenty of evidence that that movement attracts Jew hatred.

Maybe, just maybe, treat these like you claim to treat people who are racist…

Oh and calling "despicable" the act of lighting a museum in the colours of the Israeli flag days after it had suffered an explicitly anti-semitic attack of Jew murder, isn't caring about Jews, is it MP for Auckland Central?

Sadly I wont be holding my breath while you pretend all your colleagues, friends and fellow travellers are all good people who are “anti-violence”.

It's all empty words.