Andrew Dickens Afternoons

So, welcome back after the Matariki holiday weekend.

Yesterday our media was full of stories of New Zealanders celebrating Matariki in all sorts of ways. Whether it was kite flying, or welcoming the dawn and trying to spot 9 dim stars as they pop over the horizon, or music festivals, or —in the case of the visiting US Womens Football team here for the World Cup— wishing everyone a happy Matariki and reminding you to remember all those in your family who have passed on.

It was all a bit rah rah, but then again it's only the second time the holiday has been marked, so it's still new and we're figuring out what the holiday means

Which gets up a lot of people's nose. They accuse the media of being complicit in a Government scheme to force an unwanted and unneeded holiday on New Zealanders. Social media was full of people claiming that Matariki is a made up holiday.

Well, if you want a made up holiday, try King's Birthday Weekend which celebrates the birthday of a man who doesn't live in this country and even more bizarrely, it's not even his birthday.

Many claimed the real New Year always starts on January the first so what's this holiday all about?

Ignoring the fact that the financial New Year starts on April 1st, and New Years around the world have different dates like Diwali, the Jewish New Year starts in September, and the Chinese New Year in February.

Labour Weekend celebrates unionism and the 40 day working week, yet many capitalists opposed to unionism gladly take the day off and head to their bach for a kip.

The real argument against Matariki is that it pushes us into a territory of too many statutory holidays, which is bad for productivity. But then again, the beach I was staying at had all their stores open. They were doing a great trade, and were thankful for the holiday and some much needed cashflow.

But I didn't see that sentiment echoed by too many others. Most of the complainants about Matariki just don't like Maori stuff, but whatever you do don't call them racists because they hate that too. But they'll have to get over themselves because the holiday is not going away. That's what Christopher Luxon promised last year.

I liked Matariki. I liked the positive attitude of many. I liked the sentiment of remembering your ancestors that goes with it. It comes at the right time of the year because winter is a long slog of full weeks and bad weather.

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Well the culture wars and cancel culture just grows and grows and grows.

All Black captain Sam Cane was criticised by some, including himself, when he tripped a pitch invader after the All Black game in Agentina.

The invader was one of about 15 that took to the pitch, generally making a nuisance of themselves. The invader ran past Sam who swung a foot and tripped the invader, who then scampered off while security staff ambled along in his wake.

Promptly the All Black captain apologised in front of the media, All Black management sought the invader out and apologised and members of New Zealand media including Andrew Gourdie from Newshub castigated the captain for actions.

And yet a poll soon after showed that nearly 80% of New Zealanders had no problem with Sam's actions at all.

So why did Sam do his mea culpa?

Fear of a backlash from the minority who thought his actions were unworthy of an All Black captain. Fear of a media firestorm.

Because that's the way the world operates today.

There's always someone offended somewhere and these days if they announce their offence it gets publicity. Yes from the mainstream media, but then that's always happened. The difference these days is the citizen channels. The whole world is a media outlet with the invention of social media and these controversies can lose all sense of perspective rapidly.

Another culture war swept a small but vocal part of New Zealand this weekend.

A Spark social media editor supported a Threads post that hoped that anti-transgender comments would be banned from the social media network.

The social media editor is herself lesbian and married with a wife, and Spark supported her taking the stance through their official channels.

This got up the nose of some who believe that trans-activism is preventing free speech by women. Let Women Speak is the name of their campaign.

It's all a bit over the top to be fair

But they've started a campaign to get clients of Spark to leave the telecommunication company. Cancel culture.

Which used to be the weapon of choice of the left and liberals, remember Lauren Southern and Phil Goff. And conservatives and right wingers would moan about cancel culture and the death of free speech.

But now Conservatives and the right seem to have adopted the exact same tactic.  

The most extreme example has been the Budweiser go woke got broke boycott over a transgender marketing campaign which has seen the stock lose billions and Bud Light selling for less than water in many states. Which is killing the jobs of many innocent employees and investors who want nothing to do with this culture war.

It appears to me that too many on the more extreme sides of our political spectrum have lost the plot when it comes to expressing their ideology and the politics of division is rife in both the left and right.  Both sides are determined not just to argue with their opponents but to silence them and it feels like free speech is now under attack more than ever before.

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There's an old political wisdom that if you've got bad news to tell, drop the news last thing on Friday so it gets buried by the weekend.

So I was a bit confused to be watching One News on Friday with John Campbell oozing and gesticulating all over the screen, telling a story that on the surface seemed to be good news.

1News exclusively revealed that nearly 40,000 charges have been laid with over 8,300 people arrested to date as part of Operation Cobalt, their operation against gang activities.

The operation was originally set up after an intensive spate of Killer Beez and Tribesmen-linked shootings in Auckland last year.

Police said the arrests include patched gang members, gang prospects, and gang associates.

Over 400 firearms have been seized and more than 1,100 search warrants executed. By any metric this is a significant blow against organised crime.

Now the cynic in me immediately thought the Labour Party has leaked this before the National Party conference, which we could all tell was going to be hard on crime and law and order.

But closer inspection saw the release came from the Police and the tone was defiant.

Detective Superintendent Uraia Vakaruru, the officer in charge of the operation, told 1News that seizing prized possessions —for example, a gang member's motorbike— tends to really send a strong message. He said police are just focusing on the business at hand.

I get their pride in their work and I've been worried about police morale for a while.

With opposition parties and editorial writers bellowing away that the government is soft on crime, day in and day out for weeks, every sector of our justice system gets tarred with the brush.

After the gang funeral a week ago the police were also criticised for their inaction by people with no operational experience at all.

But these figures and the nine arrests made in the week after the tangi says to me that the police are fighting crime smart rather than stupid. The police have to play by the rules and they have to make arrests stick into corrections.

Letting the perception that the police are soft on crime run rampant in the media sends a bigger signal to criminals than anything else. The fact that National and ACT beat this drum to beat Labour in an electoral contest is regrettable.

I'd like to take this opportunity to praise the police and thank them for their work.

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The first thing I thought when I heard of the new surgical wait list criteria policy which includes ethnicity is that Labour wants to lose this election.

If their strategists didn't immediately see the risks in this policy then what are they doing in the job.

After an autumn full of racially tinged politics where it is obvious that that National and Labour are more than willing to hoe into any policy favouring Maori and Pacific Islanders, this should have been placed in the "not now, not ever" pile.

And I say not ever because this is fundamentally bad policy.

It asks doctors to award care based on race and not need which is against the fundamental tenet of providing care to everyone with no fear of favour.

From the Hippocratic Oath through to the Geneva Convention doctors are taught to treat people humanely, without any adverse distinction founded on race, colour, religion or faith, sex, birth or wealth, or any other similar criteria.

But not in New Zealand. If the doctors are moaning about it then you know it's not kosher.

It has whole layers of racism. In the waiting list acquired by Newstalk ZB the person at the end of the list had been waiting the longest. And he was a Middle Eastern migrant. So now we all know who's at the bottom of the race rankings.

But while some dimwit might have thought they were doing good they obviously don't understand healthcare and inequity.

The inequity does not occur in the hospital but in the home. The negative outcomes for certain races stem from poverty, bad housing, fear of doctors and the state, bad diet, bad exercise, and smoking and drinking.

Surgery is the end of the healthcare process. It literally is the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff and not the fence at the top. By the stage you're needing to be operated on your condition has gone beyond your income or the colour of your skin.

Any competent politician should have seen how mad the policy is and the fact that it was sliding towards nationwide policy throws doubt on the competency of this government which has already been called into question countless times.

I'm just so amazed that they have blundered into this giant bear trap.

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It must be election year because the signature polices are coming out to play.

The latest is the Greens wishlist policy of more taxes on more stuff and income owned by well off people.

Which, in my opinion, is barely worth the paper it's written on.

Three reasons: first of all, as James Shaw told Mike this morning it's not a bottom line policy for coalition formation. And Labour is not politically stupid, well. They might be, but they’re not that stupid, and they know this will not aid them forming a government.

I mean, this thing isn’t happening. This is virtue signalling; this is them saying “this is what we would do if we could, but we can’t, so we probably won’t.”

Secondly the policy is a radical and revolutionary change to the very foundations of New Zealand’s economy and people's economic planning. And New Zealand is no longer a place where revolutions happen. We're cautious and afraid of change and like turkeys we don't vote for Christmas. So why should any ambitious generation vote against a system that has benefited many generations before them.

Who’s going to take the hit? Newbies? No one.

And thirdly, the tax changes as proposed are not confined to the very rich. The impact will be felt for those earning $125,000+. And in case the Greens have not hung around normal people lately, $125,000 is not the rich. $125,000, well, it’s pretty good, but you are not the rich with that. You are part of the squeezed middle, already balancing our high cost of living with trying to build a future for your family.

They may approve of more taxes in principle there's no way they'd vote for them.

But like clockwork the rich have come out caterwauling about the policy like whimpering snowflakes. The politics of envy, the rich will pay for everything, government is the enemy of ambition, poor us.

Which I find distasteful and reeking of their privilege they don't seem to recognise they have.

It comes from a generation with free tertiary education who have never been burdened by educational debt, people who grew up with free healthcare. Unlike most countries in the world they've never had a capital gains tax, they've never paid death taxes, or stamp duty. Or significant numbers of tolls or levies.

Tell any investor overseas that our landlords could write their investment property loan interest rates off and they're gob smacked. No wonder the young can't get on the property market while the rich get richer. Our tax rates have always been low. We've never had the extraordinarily high top tax rates that caused rock stars to relocate to Monaco.

New Zealand is a good and cheap place to be rich and a tough place to be lower middle class and lower.

New Zealand's economic settings were made back in the day when we all paid near enough the same, and we all had ambitions for a bach and maybe an investment property to retire on. And there's no way we're turning our back on that no matter how many other New Zealanders it affects.

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So I come to you fresh from 12 days holiday in Japan.

For those of you who are keen but the language difficulties keep you from going, I've got 2 words for you.

Google Translate. The free app that translates anything written in most languages. It's the key to unlocking a different culture.

Japan is the home of high performing public transport. The government decided to put all its effort into trains and subways, letting private enterprise build the motorways.  As a result the roads are tolled and expensive.  While the trains are plentiful and cheap and so on time. No one is ever late for work.

Meanwhile bicycles and cycle lanes are everywhere because the costs associated with cars are prohibitive. Watching mums cycling around with 2 kids on their mama chariot bikes was eye-opening.

It was my first big trip overseas since 2015 and Japan had only just lifted Covid vaccination controls the week beforehand. I was bracing myself for all the people calling New Zealand a laughing stock because of our overreaction to Covid because that's what so many people had told me they were saying on my talkback sessions.

I met a lot of French and Americans.  We weren't a laughing stock. They called New Zealand mature and wise unlike their own childish and tribal politicians.

Which made me laugh as I read about Megan Woods advising New Zealanders to take shorter showers in wake of the cost of living crisis.

The return of nanny state politics which ran Helen Clark out of office back in the day. You would have thought that the first thing Labour politicians learn is not to talk about New Zealander’s showers.

Then little Simeon Brown who believes that New Zealanders are so dumb we can't handle 2 languages on a road sign. For your information Simeon, Japanese road signs are written in both English and Japanese. And no one is confused. Be proud of your casual racism if that's what you are.

Meanwhile people are saying that Labour has nothing new after their Labour Congress apprentice policy announcement. That's true. At the moment they're just extending existing policy or postponing unpopular policy, there sure ain't anything new.

And National just u-turned on their housing policy, the one Nicola Willis, Judith Collins, and Megan Woods spent months working on. That's got to be a slap on the face for Nicola.

But frankly it was a blunt and stupid law change. Auckland in particular had already thrashed the issue out with their Unitary plan.

If National really wants to speed up housing provision perhaps they should get stuck into Resource Management Act reform. Something they've been promising for decades now.

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So why are so many mainstream media outlets so poor at telling the news?

I say this after tuning into One News coverage of the coronation only to blunder into a 5 minute piece about Harry, followed by how to cook coronation quiche.

Maybe they thought they were being entertaining, but instead they came off as infantile.

So I tuned over to BBC World. There, they were talking about the King’s involvement in the arts and they followed it with more details about the ceremony.

The story was about the King and his country, not his errant son.

In fact, Harry arrived on a commercial flight, gave no interviews, joined the rest of the family, sat with other retired or non working royals (which is what he is), and afterwards he went to the airport to go home to see his own family. No fights, no showdowns, no dramas.

Yet the Mirror alone, over the week ran 100 articles about Harry, mostly derogatory. People have described the onslaught as 'hate for hire'.

Even when Mike Hosking wrote 1000 words about the Coronation for the Herald the paper chose to highlight one sentence in which he said Harry looked alone and a little lost as the headline.

I actually thought Harry seemed relaxed and chatty, but who cares.

It's only the media that was so obsessed with Harry.

Today they've moved on to another royal cliché. The breakfast show on TV1 was covering whether it was time for New Zealand to become a republic. Too soon and too stupid in my book. I don't believe it will happen in my lifetime. Particularly after the success of this weekend.

The reason the British monarchy the most successful monarchy on Earth is that they have spent hundreds of years slowly backing out of the day-to-day affairs of state so that today they are purely performative and symbolic. No one is feeling oppressed or ruled by this family.

This story was not about the King, or his son, or the institution of the constitutional monarchy. It was about the British nation.

It's about their capability and their spirit.

In the past year the Brits have seen three historic royal events - the Diamond Jubilee, the Queen’s funeral, and now the King’s coronation.

And they’ve all been faultless triumphs of organisation, story telling and co-ordination involving thousands.

This was not live coverage of an old toff sitting in a chair in a church and having someone put a fancy hat on his head, as some critics portrayed it.

This was a nation showing the world what it can do and that it's the best in the world in doing it. It was a show of strength and order and no-one is cancelling that any time soon.

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In less than a week, King Charles the Third will be crowned, sealed and delivered.

Officially invested as the new King of the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth and our official head of state.

What a thing. In 2023.

Which has led to a number of protests and general grumbling about the anachronism of the monarchy.

Then to make things worse Charles wants us all to stand up and say this in the middle of the ceremony.

 “I swear that I will pay true allegiance to Your Majesty, and to your heirs and successors according to law. So help me God”

That’s not going down well with some saying Swear At the King rather than Swear For the King.

But that’s not enough for me to go off the whole palava.

I think it’s a marvellous folly. A useful sideshow from the drudgery of everyday life. A bit of fun with a handy side serving of pragmatism and finance.

Firstly why should the UK persevere with the monarchy? Well, it’s a real money-spinner.

A recent study found the British people paid 100 million pounds in costs to keep royalty running.  In return, they got 1.7 billion pounds of benefit. That’s an incredible return.

The Royal Seals of Warrant keep firms in business and act as international calling cards. The King’s farms sell 60 million pounds of goods all self-financed and the proceeds go to the Princes Trust charity which then funds programmes for the underprivileged.

And then there’s tourism. London is currently an orgy of overseas visitors and their capital. Even this station has got 4 members of staff there consuming hotel rooms, food, airfares and the like.

The Royal Family is a goldmine for the UK and with Charles promising a slimmer and more modern set up they’re only going to become more profitable.

But then there’s his position as head of State. But really what does that mean?

In the UK he is irrelevant and he is kept out of the national conversation.  

If you worried about hereditary influence then the House of Lords is far more of a thing. For all the opponents of co-governance, how would you feel in the UK where the House of Lords has 777 members all given their place by appointment, who their daddy was or what their job is? Not a democratically elected member among them.

But the King is not one of them. The King does not have a vote.

Here he is represented by the Governor General. There is no interference and the powers exist as an unbiased external regulator just in case of an extreme breakdown in civil order. And in a country of just 5 million, that’s important.  I trust the Governor General and the Court of St James to adjudicate in the case of civil or democratic breakdown far more than I would trust a locally appointed President.

For those who say having the King as Head of State is a sign that we’re immature as a nation, I say stop virtue signalling. It ain’t broke don't try to fix it.

And finally, there’s King Charles himself. A man who had a terrible childhood and absent parents and extraordinary interference in his personal life. But still came out of it as a complex man but with wisdom born of complex issues. I think he’s going to be great.

Far better than his spoilt sons and far more interesting than his cautious mother.

Long live the King.

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It didn't take long, did it, for the headlines to change.

One moment the Prime Ministers of both New Zealand and Australia were trumpeting a new deal for Kiwis living in Oz. Nek minnit. New Zealand is petrified about a brain drain.

The new deal means a faster and cheaper path to residency more in line with the pat for Aussies here in New Zealand. And that means a faster line to the dole, and pensions and healthcare for Kiwis in Australia.

That makes it more attractive if you're wanting to plant some roots in a place.

But the real kicker that makes Australia so attractive for New Zealanders is the pay. You get paid more there. You pay more tax principally because there are 3 tax levels. Rates, State taxes, and federal taxes. But you get paid more and stuff is cheaper there. So on balance it's more attractive.

So my real question is why do you get paid more in OZ?

Many say that the population is bigger which means more demand and there's a mineral wealth that flows into the economy. And while that is true it masks the bigger truth that Australians are paid more because they chose to be.

And the opposite is true. New Zealanders are paid less because we also chose to be.

The Herald compared pay this morning. Nurses, Teachers, and Doctors are paid, on average, 20 to 30 thousand dollars less in New Zealand. But who decides their wages. We do. As taxpayers. As politicians. As a country. Principals are currently on strike while simultaneously looking at better pay across the Tasman.

So in a competitive international labour market we are not as attractive as we could be.

And yet we baulk at paying nurses and teachers more. There's conniptions at any raise of the minimum wage and then complaints that we don't pay well enough. There’s horror at Fairpay legislation but Australia has had Fairpay legislation for decades.

This is not some issue that's popped up because we've got socialists in charge. For 30 years we've been hearing that New Zealand's low wage and low productivity labour market was profitable in the short term but would eventually bite us in the bum. Welcome to bum biting season

But not all is lost. Many have argued workers are not coming because of our immigration settings. And yet as Liam Dann reported yesterday migration is smashing records.

The net migration gain of 11,700 in February this year was the second highest for any month ever.

We're on track for a net gain of 100,000 in a year. So people are still finding reasons to choose New Zealand.

In fact, according to the OECD, New Zealand is currently the most desirable destination for highly educated migrant workers.

The OECD has just launched its Indicators of Talent Attractiveness (ITA) index, and New Zealand tops the list for “high-educated workers”. We come in fifth for attracting entrepreneurs, and fare less well (15th) for attracting start-up founders.

So New Zealand is not a basket case. But we do have to figure out how to pay people more.

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There's an ad on ZB these days about reversible vasectomies.

It talks about how easy it is to make the wrong decision and then have regrets. The example it uses is the Auckland Harbour Bridge, which has become famous as the bridge that austerity failed to build sufficiently.

Back in the 50s the Bridge was proposed to be 6 lanes wide with a movable centre barrier. But to keep the cost down both economically and politically, only 4 lanes were built. Within 2 years the bridge was packed and 10 years later we had to add 4 more lanes at great expense.

It's a lesson we fail to learn.

We're currently in the middle of the same thing with Dunedin's new hospital. For the sake of a saving of 100 million on a 1.7 billion dollar project we were on the verge of cutting the construction of operating theatres and ward rooms. Facilities that will invariably need to be built in the future and ill inevitably be far more expensive to build.

It's the Bridge all over again.

The government is slowly crumbling on the issue but you have to wonder about the false economy and austerity that's on display, while at the same time 14 billion dollars is being earmarked for a light rail system that few seem to want.

The cost of projects and the politics of cost saving is all over water infrastructure decisions too.

Back in 1996 the Mangawhai District was agonising over an 11 million dollar wastewater scheme. Political arguments over cost saw the whole thing delayed by a decade, and when it was finally built it cost 60 million dollars. There was an outcry and a report that damned the whole decision making process and the Mangawhai wastewater project is held up as a poster boy for how not to do things amongst water engineers.

And now just 25 years later the project is nearly at full capacity and another 60 to 90 million dollars has to be spent and the District is once again arguing about cost.

And rightly so, as there are only 25,000 ratepayers in the District and they're facing a big bill. But for goodness sake, it's deja vu all over again.

So the Affordable Waters reform would spread that cost over a bigger population and save Mangawhai residents from the biggest bills.

But I'm not going to say that's the answer because there's plenty wrong about the 10 Waters concept.

What I do want to say is that New Zealand has a long and inglorious record in infrastructure planning and construction. And it's because politicians play political football based on 3 year terms.

It's costing us dearly.

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