by Metiria Turei
As the Greens had to do last week, we are making the bills that National is putting through the urgency motion, but keeping secret from the public, on our blog.
Keeping legislation secret like this in the first week might have been excused by some serious slackness. But two weeks in a row demonstrates an absolute disregard for the public’s right to know what laws the politicians are passing.
So here is the first and the second is on its way. Electricity (Renewable Preference) Repeal bill
Published in Environment & Resource Management by Metiria Turei on Wed, December 17th, 2008
More posts by Metiria Turei | more about Metiria Turei
on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
What’s the big deal Meyt?, the Nat’s campaigned on these issues and promised that they would not waste any time implementing them.
And its not as if the Greens have a big issue with disregarding the publics feelings.
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So the complaint from the left is not that National aren’t honoring their election promises, it’s that they’re honoring them too fast?
I can see why that would be a problem for the do-nothing Greens. Makes them look bad for spending nine years doing sfa…..
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Thanks again.
So, do you have the BORA vets too? Interesting that the advice on the bail and setencing bills has not yet appeared…
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Not that the right wing NZ Herald is generally a reliable source of even handed publication, but even it seems to think that the lack of publication of the bills and the untoward rush to legislate is questionable.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10547924
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big bro, when will it stop being okay for the National govt to keep legislation from the public, how vague do thier election promises have to be before the obligation for public scrutiny kicks in and for how long – 3 months, 6 months? Ever? Their MPs are on the record as saying that they didnt need to take legislation out to the public cos they already know what the NGO’s and the public will say. Prescient? Telepathic? Arrogant?
Idiot/savant – I dont have the BORA vets and there is some uncertainty about when they are necessary and/or made public. I will try to clarify that though.
meyt
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Some of you may have missed the post Greens make bills available if Nats won’t . It’s easy to say ‘we’ll do this!’, but actually writing legislation is always a little different. The nats at the very best just plain lazy for not making the content of their Bills available to the public.
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BB said: What’s the big deal Meyt?, the Nat’s campaigned on these issues and promised that they would not waste any time implementing them.
The big deal, BB, is that the Nats campaigned on the basis of a few sentences in a policy statement. They didn’t campaign on the basis of the detail of a fully drafted Bill being in the public domain and opend to public scrutiny.
This is an appalling way to legislate, because the scrutiny of Opposition parties, and of the public through the Select Committee submission process, is an important check to ensure the legislation actually does what is intended (whether you agree with its intent or not) and that it doesn’t contain mistakes.
For example, in the Fire at Will Bill, Kate Wilkinson gave repeated assurances that people who lost there jobs under it would not face a 13 week stand-down from the dole. But Sue Bradford couldn’t find anything in the Bill that would preclude this, and now I’ve looked at that Bill I can’t either.
Rushed legislation like this is how mistakes and unintended consequences occur. What’s the bet that within a year we see amending legislation going through parliament to fix up some of the mistake in the batch of Bills that have been rushed through.
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Meyt
The government is under scrutiny everyday, anyway apart from political wonks like you and me the public really could not care less.
On November the 8th the country sent a message Meyt, the resoundingly told you and the rest of the politicians that they wanted LESS government.
To answer your question about “how long”..well they have a mandate for 100 days, after that I think you will find things return to normal.
It is also worth remembering that the Greens could have been part of this revolution had you not been so naive as to nail your colours to the mast of the sinking ship that was Labour, you guys made your bed and as unconformable as it may be you have to lay in it for the next three years.
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Toad
When you use phrases like “the Fire at Will Bill” it really does not help your argument.
It is not and never has been a fire at will bill but hey, don’t bother letting the truth get in the way of your story.
BTW…are you in Wellington at all this week?
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big bro, are you suggesting that the national govt has a mandate to pass any legislation it likes on any vague comment made during the election campaign, without any select committee scrutiny and without the public even seeing the legislation? Thats not less government, its an oligarchy.
meyt
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And btw, the Maori Party is voting against the bill. Which is fantastic news.
Unsustainable biofuels, that the national govt will spend taxpayers money subsidising, will cause indigenous peoples across the world enormous hardship, impoverishment and in many instances starvation. The original sustainability clauses that national is repealing set at least some standard to protect those communities. They are soon to go so NZ will be riddled with biofuels grown on food growing land from the African continent, the Pacific and South America.
On this basis alone indigenouse communities are standing together.
meyt
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Meyt
Yes.
Big Bro.
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Meyt
BTW, how do you feel about being spied on by the Labour party?
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“BTW, how do you feel about being spied on by the Labour party?
It wouldn’t be a surprise, that’s for sure. Labour and National are both sh!ts. Preferring one over the other doesn’t mean thinking one is perfect, it means one will get you more policy gains than the other. With the Nats unraveling the few environmental policy gains we achived with Labour, this becomes abundantly clear.
“It is also worth remembering that the Greens could have been part of this revolution had you not been so naive as to nail your colours to the mast of the sinking ship that was Labour, you guys made your bed and as unconformable as it may be you have to lay in it for the next three years.”
Could have been part of it – WFT? This is exactly the sort of stuff, both content and tactics, that we ran against. For what reason would we possibly want to be involved in this fiasco? So far it seems obvious we did the right thing.
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Being pedantic the people said they wanted a National government in preference to a Labour government, and by about 5%.
Beyond that there is very little you can say.
There is much more to democracy than elections.
peace
W
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Meyt: legally, they don’t have to be made public. We get them by grace and favour. The only obligation – under both the BORA and Standing Orders – is that the A-G inform Parliament of any inconsistency, and table a paper explaining it if there is one. if they can get a lawyer to say there are no problems – and lawyers say whatever you pay them to say – then they can keep the advice secret, and its not even OIAable (as its legal advice).
This is something which needs to change. The government should be required to publish an assessment (whether posiive or negative) on introduction, and the assessments (even those for pre-2002 bills) should be available as of right, not by grace and favour.
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big bro Says:
December 17th, 2008 at 12:26 pm
Toad
When you use phrases like “the Fire at Will Bill” it really does not help your argument.
Agreed on this Point quite strongly. This is just as bad as the phrase “Anti smacking bill”.
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>>a National government in preference to a Labour government, and by about 5%
National 44.93%
Labour 33.99%
Big difference.
Greens 6.72% , which includes a fair percentage of Labour protest vote.
Resounding victory to National.
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if NZF got another .7%, they’d have had 5% + Green + Maori (doesn’t look so cut and dried now though) + Labour + Jim…
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For a major party to win so resoundingly under MMP is remarkable.
Shows clear direction from the electorate that they don’t want a pack of poodles engaging in a non-stop talk-fest, but clear, decisive leadership.
And that’s what they’re getting.
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“# IceBaby Says:
December 17th, 2008 at 3:01 pm
And that’s what they’re getting.”
Yup, a hide-ous government!
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IceBaby said: For a major party to win so resoundingly under MMP is remarkable.
And given the Nats’ undemocratic and arrogant behaviour in their first two weeks in office it may be a long time before it ever happens again.
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Toad
“And given the Nats’ undemocratic and arrogant behaviour in their first two weeks in office it may be a long time before it ever happens again.”
Coming from a Green the hypocrisy of this statement is unbelievable.
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Hypocrisy is that you complain loudly when Labour used similar tactics, but the Nats do at least as bad in their very first week and that’s ok.
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>>it may be a long time before it ever happens again.
On the contrary, it’s what we voted for and got. We are pleased that National is acting quickly and decisively in these troubled times, and delivering on their promises. They have a mandate for all these changes, decided last month.
Remind us what you achieved, again? Smacking and the EFA? Oh yes, not arrogant and undemocratic at all!
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>>but the Nats do at least as bad in their very first week
It last 100 days. They said what they would do, and they’re doing it. We voted for it.
Beyond that, I’ll agree with you.
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It;’s very hard to get upset about what is just an amendment bill removing sections from an existing act. There is nothing new here to debate. If you want to know what it is removing and the impact, look at the act in statutes book.
Same for the biofuels bill. AS for the sustainable standard, it was a set of principles yet to be substantiated by policy and has not been repealed.
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IceBaby – the Fire at Will Bill, for one, was not within the “first 100 days” announcement, and as recently as 4 December Kate Wilkinson was saying it would not be progressed in that timeframe, let alone under urgency with no Select Committee hearing and with Opposition parties getting to see the Bill only a few hours before tehy had to speak and vote on it.
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They don’t have “a fire at will” bill. I can certainly see the urgency of making it easier for small firms to employ people early next year, which is what the bill does.
It’s the most urgent of the lot. I see no point throwing it to the left, who appear to have a reflex action to anything that sounds like their union bosses wouldn’t like.
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IceBaby – put away your fluffy yellow pom poms and your little blue cheerleader skirt – you’re too old for that twisting and bending!
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The neighbors seem to like it
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They probably prefer that to the other outfits you parade around in
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Well, you know what it’s like in suburbia these days
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Surrounded by Tories, huh!
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IceBaby said: They don’t have “a fire at will” bill.
If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck then…
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I don’t think it has much to do with politics, more likely boredom.
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… it’s a drake! (Just pre-empting IceBaby’s evasive response
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>>If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck then
Shoot it!
>>employment agreement containing a trial provision
T-r-i-a-l
At the moment, they’re called contracts.
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“AS for the sustainable standard, it was a set of principles yet to be substantiated by policy and has not been repealed.”
No, it is part of the section that has been repealed. Plus certain aspects of sustainability were in the law itself, not the standards previously being developed, for instance that biofuels used in NZ had to reduce emissions by at least 35% over fossil fuels. All repealed.
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For example, in the Fire at Will Bill, Kate Wilkinson gave repeated assurances that people who lost there jobs under it would not face a 13 week stand-down from the dole.But Sue Bradford couldn’t find anything in the Bill that would preclude this, and now I’ve looked at that Bill I can’t either.
Try having a look at the Social Security Act.
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So National are removing one of the few measures Labour put in place to address AGW gases/Kyoto without a plan of their own to address these issues.
I wonder which SOE is driving this – Solid Energy or Genesis?
It isn’t as if this was needed to address security of supply – that was already allowed for.
Trevor.
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M8
Cool
You are doing the government’s work for them.
>
. . . the Greens . . . . . .are making the bills that National is putting through the urgency motion . . . on our blog .
>
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toad
re:
>
the scrutiny of Opposition parties, and of the public through the Select Committee submission process, is an important check to ensure the legislation actually does what is intended (whether you agree with its intent or not) and that it doesn’t contain mistakes.
>
Shall we discuss the EFA? Shall we discuss bills that went through this process in the last 9 years and came to the House for final reading IN EXACTLY THE SAME STATE THEY LEFT IT IN, despite Select Committees recommending dozens of changes and were passed with Green Party votes?
Let not the pot call the kettle black!
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But the left are “good guys”. They were doing it for the best of reasons. They are really nice and caring.
When National or ACT does it – it’s evil.
It’s quite a simple formula, really.
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to paraphrase
>
Hypocrisy is that you DON’T complain loudly when Labour used similar tactics, but DO when the Nats do at least as bad in their very first week .
>
I guess that makes everyone here a hypocrite – Yeah team!
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Everyone know’s the natianals are at their core a pack of assholes …………..
hypocritical assholes …………………. sure
arrogant assholes ……………………….. definatly
one term govt assholes ……………………… without a doubt.
They dont have the talent to make laws up on the fly and all the mistakes will come back to bite them …………………. hard .
The last natianal govt under shipley was a circus which resulted in them spending 9 years out in the cold.
Brownlee and the keyster are the latest clowns in the same circus .
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daddyO,
I did not know that, therefore NOT everybody thinks they are a pack of *****.
Maybe you need to look at yourself and view your opinion as that of one person, and that many others dont hold that view.
Guess that comes wth maturity?
Now what part of the National party policy dont you like and how will you present arguments that will support your opinion?
Incredibly suprising (but not suprised) how many commentators refer to past National party government as evil incarnate when that opinion is not presented with facts.
As a person of green persuasion, i’m more interested in what the Greens aswers are to the problems rather than a tirade against the government as we have seen lately here on frog blog.
I guess this is the first time the Greens are in opposition and like this present government, they are still finding their feet.
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……… well you should know now gerrit .
Not being a ‘green’ I cant talk for them .
But the main problem for the greens ( and the people of new zealand ) is a newly elected govt abusing the rules of parliment to rush though a swag of new laws which will be full of mistakes and errors ( because of the rush ) and acting like arrogant emperors.
show what a pack of shits they are would be my answer to it all.
And they’ll be gone in three years and we can have the other arrogant pack of assholes in power again.
Remember ………………. labor are bad and rotten
Natianals are just plain evil
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>>in what the Greens aswers are to the problems
You’ll be waiting a long time. After all, their answer to problems was to enable Labour for nine years. Renewable power generation went backwards in that time.
This is funny stuff:
http://blog.greens.org.nz/2008/05/07/oil-touches-us122-per-barrel/
“While my long term projections, updated to last night’s closing still show $100/bbl oil arriving permanently in July, that date has stopped swinging between July and August with price fluctuations.”
Dead wrong.
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Gerrit – you do now, so daddyO just might be right!
‘Tirade’ against the Government on the Frogblog? Really Gerrit? Is that what you see?
For myself, I’m not too disturbed by National/Acts indecent haste or their petty overturning of legislation, it’s the stupidity they are exhibiting as they go along. The damage they have done, at the ’stroke of a pen’ to the New Zealand Biofuel/Biodiesel industry is an example of this stupidity from the Nacts. Check out the reaction from the managing director of Biodiesel Oils New Zealand to hear how they regard the Energy (Fuels, Levies and References) Biofuel Obligation Repeal Bill. Happy, happy New Zealand industry!
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More Frog bad calls:
http://blog.greens.org.nz/2008/05/26/robert-hirsch-forecasts-us12-15-p er-gallon/
And you’ll see from the comments, I (Blue Peter) got it right. The cause of the price rise was speculation.
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To clarify – by ’stupidity’ when refering to the National Party and their MPs, I mean ‘lack of knowledge’. Gerry Brownlee is a very good example of a Nat MP who lacks knowledge of important details of important issues. He’s far from alone in this.
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Anne Tolley
Tony Ryall
What were they doing while they were in Opposition? It wasn’t background reading, that’s for sure!
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Icebaby – “And you’ll see from the comments, I (Blue Peter)”
When first challenged about your identity, your weasley avoidance of the obvious and the sneaky wording of your response, made me wonder if you were Winston Peters
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Where Greenfly?
I’ve never tried to hide it, and explained why I switched id. All my posts were going into quarantine. What does it matter what posting name I use anyway? Isn’t it the words that are important?
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BTW – care to address the point? I was dismissed as a fool for pointing out the oil price was being driven by speculation. The Peak-ists were assuring themselves the price was about supply scarcity, and quoting Peak experts worldwide.
They were wrong.
I was right.
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To tell the truth, politics is a bit like ping pong, we chose national this year, they’ll be out soon replaced by labour, and then they’ll be out too and so on and so forth, I’m not saying democracy is bad but under our democracy once the new party gets in they get rid of the legislation imposed by the previous government. Unless in dire circumstances you should not be able to repeal a bill passsed by the previous office without a 75% majority.
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Icebaby
Oil price is governed by supply and demand. We were talking about supply not being able to meet increases in demand.
Currently we are seeing a massive reduction in economic growth. This is feeding through into commodity prices. Dairy is down, oil is down. This is no surprise. In fact more recent peak oil theory even predicts this in a way. At the peak oil prices fluctuate rapidly. I have seen claims that the reason that the dodgy mortgages went so in the USA was that petrol prices and related increases in price of food were pushing people to the wall.
When oil consumption continues its exponential increase we will see the same thing happen again.
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Found it
http://www.peakoil.nl/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/2008_december_oilwatc h_monthly.pdf
You want page five.
Chart 16 shows the decline in OECD demand for 2008. The last figures even show a drop in Chinese and Indian demand (Chart 21). Interestingly this is mirrored in Chart 22 which shows a recent jump in the amount of oil stocks in OECD countries.
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IceBaby
I’d expected that the price above $100 was speculative, but to call what has happened since entirely speculator’s fleeing the market is to ignore the very real demand-destruction component.
Peak oil is however, about the inability to pump faster.
I recall cautioning that the price would pull back as far as $70-80 when the recession hit, and I reckon I did well as it was $140+ at the time. Demand will return to meet an inability to pump more and the price will rise. The speculators will return as that happens.
As they say in the oil patch. The chief reason for the price of oil dropping is the price of oil rising… and vice-versa.
respectfully
BJ
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Demand has been dropping all year, but the price held up largely because of speculation. We’re seeing just how much of that price was speculation. It was significant. Supply signals remain as murky as ever.
The certainty of the peak oil position, as usual, proves much *too* certain…..
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More hilarity:
http://blog.greens.org.nz/2008/03/06/peak-oil-the-reserve-bank-vs-deut sche-bank/
http://blog.greens.org.nz/2008/06/27/oil-breaks-new-records-again-is-i t-a-demand-bubble/
http://blog.greens.org.nz/2008/02/05/shell-ceo-predicts-peak-oil-befor e-2015/
Be sure to read the comments just to see how wrong some people got it. Just how wrong the consensus of experts got it.
Doesn’t inspire much confidence when projecting global temperature, either.
Beware of certainty when talking about the future. Admit that you don’t know jack. It is the honest position.
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A true classic:
“# roger nome Says:
June 27th, 2008 at 1:45 pm
3 years ago dad sold his house for a cool $300,000. I told him to buy up oil futures for 2010. At the moment it looks like he would have increased his pot by a multiple five. But dad never listens to me. Silly bugger.
”
“BluePeter Says:
June 27th, 2008 at 2:09 pm
>>But dad never listens to me. Silly bugger.
>>Wish I had.
So do it now. Go on…..”
“# roger nome Says:
June 27th, 2008 at 2:18 pm
BP- That would entail having money.
Also, futures markets have oil at over $100 for the next 10 or so years, where as 3 years ago it was more like $30 for the next ten years. As I said, the market has woken up to peak oil. My formerly specialised knowledge is now mainstream opinion.
”
Roger, you muppet
Just as well your Dad is smarter….
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“Jeanette then turned her attention to the Reserve Bank’s forecasts. Same story. Eight consecutive Monetary Policy Statements with ridiculously persistent predictions of falling oil prices:….Isn’t it time the government forecasters actually made an effort to understand the underlying reasons why their forecasts are so wrong? This frog thinks so.”
http://blog.greens.org.nz/index.php/2007/11/13/what-have-treasury-and- the-reserve-bank-been-up-to/
Priceless! Lucky no one is betting taxpayer money on Frogs & Jeanettes future “visions”.
No, wait….
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A classic IceHawk moment:
“But the one thing this is NOT being caused by is “speculation” and what this is NOT is a “bubble”.”
Tuis, anyone?
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BP
I reckon got that one pretty much right. I got the housing debacle in the US right. I got the WMD in Iraq right. I got the start of the recession right… (a little early) I do pretty well on average and on none of those things am I at all familiar with the science… hell there isn’t any science to any of those. I listen, I use my cr@p detector. I run it through my internal model of the way the world works… I get answers sometimes and I know what is likely to happen, to be true, to investigate.
You’re projecting. YOU don’t know jack.
You won’t ever see more oil pumped out of the ground than you saw in 2005. That is peak oil. That’s what I said it was back then.
I didn’t talk about price then, and I know you’re looking for that because of all the cr@p you are dredging up. I didn’t. That doesn’t change that peak oil has already happened… just reduces the financial impact… which is a good thing under the circumstances.
Oil prices got overtaken by a phenomena I might characterize as “peak ponzi”. Madoff lost about 50 Billion US somewhere, his books are so bad that he isn’t sure how many billions exactly got wasted.
Don’t talk to me about economists and the economy and how nobody has the money. The flaming businessmen and banks have the money… bailed out to the tune of Trillions with a capital ‘T’ and that stands for Taxpayers.
I wouldn’t trust them with my kid’s lunch money, much less their future or the future of the planet, but that’s what YOUR answer looks like to me, and believe me it sncks swamp water. The “Master’s of the Universe” are in fact, incompetent thieves… strike that, they are superbly competent… as thieves. We can’t even stop them from stealing by withholding our money. They just go to the government and take it out of our withholding.
Contrast with the IPCC which has not set a foot wrong yet except for being too conservative.
You are barking up the wrong tree BP.
BJ
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>>YOU don’t know jack.
I picked the future better than the wave of “experts” in those posts. They were 100% wrong.
Which just goes to show – having a group of experts agree on something just means you’ve got a group of experts agree on something. Take any predictions of the future with a grain of salt.
>>>You won’t ever see more oil pumped out of the ground than you saw in 2005. That is peak oil.
You don’t know that. You pretend you do. There are too many people being too certain, when the truth is they’re guessing.
>>Contrast with the IPCC which has not set a foot wrong yet
Faith again….
>>You are barking up the wrong tree BP
I’ve being picking it right more consistently that most.
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I assume you guys have seen the interview by George Monbiot with Fatih Birol of the IEA?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/dec/15/oil-peak-energy-iea
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BJ Chip is using his ‘cr@p detector’ on IceBaby/Blue Peter and getting a very strong reading!
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This site worth checking out if you believe this is the right move by the Nats:
http://www.thisisreality.org/#/?p=facility
And some information from a recent letter by Bill McKibben who is organising a demonstration against the use of Coal fired power in US:
* Coal-fired power is driving climate change. Our foremost climatologist, NASA’s James Hansen, has demonstrated that our only hope of getting our atmosphere back to a safe level—below 350 parts per million co2—lies in stopping the use of coal to generate electricity.
* Even if climate change were not the urgent crisis that it is, we would still be burning our fossil fuels too fast, wasting too much energy and releasing too much poison into the air and water. We would still need to slow down, and to restore thrift to its old place as an economic virtue.
* Coal is filthy at its source. Much of the coal used in this country comes from West Virginia and Kentucky, where companies engage in “mountaintop removal” to get at the stuff; they leave behind a leveled wasteland, and impoverished human communities. No technology better exemplifies the out-of-control relationship between humans and the rest of creation.
* Coal smoke makes children sick. Asthma rates in urban areas near coal-fired power plants are high. Air pollution from burning coal is harmful to the health of grown-ups too, and to the health of everything that breathes, including forests.
The industry claim that there is something called “clean coal” is, put simply, a lie……
The US is calling on China, India and other developed nations to limit their use of coal-fired power stations and what is New Zealand doing; building more! Oh well, I guess it doesn’t really matter ‘cos we’re too small to make a difference!!
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This is absolutely appalling. What can we do, as members of the public? It seems writing letters to MPs can’t do anything because there’s no time — and certainly no time to arrange to talk to our local MPs in person.
Is there anything we can do to stop this? Is it even legal to repeal so much legislation without giving the NZ public any time to comment? Help!
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Thanks sleepyday – you just stole my next post idea! (I’d been sitting on the video. I may use it yet.) But it is a great site and topic…
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Annabel – There is little that we can do. No, what the Nats are up to is not illegal. Parliament is supreme and they control it. Most of what they have been doing “wrong” in the last two weeks has been breaking procedural conventions, but not the law as such.
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>>BJ Chip is using his ‘cr@p detector’ on IceBaby/Blue Peter and getting a very strong reading!
Yet I was the one who was right.
People were predicting a straight line of increasing oil prices because they believed – wanted to believe – that what they were seeing was supply not meeting demand.
Yet, a lot of the oil price was due to speculation.
It’s true to say that demand has also dropped, but it hasn’t dropped by so much as to cut the price by margin we’re seeing now. And oil is still going down, and will do so until OPEC create artificial scarcity by turning off the taps.
If the Peak-ers really backed their position, they’d be buying oil futures now. Wonder how many of them are actually doing so?
My point is that being certain about the future is fraught. There are many possible scenarios, but it requires religious conviction to arrive at certainty.
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BP,
“But the one thing this is NOT being caused by is “speculation” and what this is NOT is a “bubble”.”
I’ll surprise you by saying I still have strong doubts about it being a speculative bubble.
I spent the very long comment you’ve pulled that quote from from arguing that the increase in oil price wasn’t a speculative bubble. I also pointed out that it could have been caused by supply-side manipulation, or rapid increase in demand that outstrips supply, but that there were good reasons to think it wasn’t speculation.
I still don’t see how a speculative bubble could have been the cause of the price increases of oil (not oil derivatives, but oil) and its subsequent decline. To suggest so is to suggest that supply and demand are not the true drivers of spot oil prices, which is an extremely disturbing idea indeed – speculation doesn’t normally repeal the laws of supply and demand it normally is a function of artificial demand created by speculators.
I’m frankly astonished by the current low price of oil, and I was astonished six months ago too by the high price. If anyone wants to claim points for predicting the current low oil price better than I would have then they can, likewise the high oil prices of May. But I still don’t think we can blame evil “speculators” for being what’s driving the price up and down.
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>>Is there anything we can do to stop this?
We voted for National, and we’re getting the National policy we voted for.
That’s democracy.
So, no, you can’t.
>>Is it even legal to repeal so much legislation without giving the NZ public any time to comment?
Yes, quite legal.
You might like to ask yourself why the LabGreensFirst never changed the rules in nine years, but are only howling about it now.
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IceBaby: “People were predicting a straight line of increasing oil prices because they believed – wanted to believe – that what they were seeing was supply not meeting demand.”
Where they? I thought they were mostly predicting volatility around an overall trend of increase. Frog certainly predicted that. And here’s my comment about this from back in 2005:
“Expect oil prices to go both up AND DOWN over the next 5 years.
The fact that they’ll go down as well as up is part of the problem because it will make the overall upward drift of oil prices harder to see. Prices will bounce up and down – but up to higher highs, and never down as far as they were before.
But when oil drops to ‘only’ $50/barrel there will be pundits who say “look, peak oil is a myth, oil prices are dropping!” And then when they peak up to $90 or $100 a barrel a few years later the same pundits will say “the greens are crying wolf again, like in 2005, but prices went down in 2006″!
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icehawk
There is too much certainty.
The reality is that we do not know reserve levels. People are pretending they know. They do not have sufficient data to make the call.
http://cleantech.com/news/3464/peak-oil-wrong-says-schwartz
As for the role of speculators, the increase in demand wasn’t significant, yet the price went through the roof. And now we’ve got such a glut, that OPEC are not even sure that turning off the taps will stop the prices falling. Demand and supply didn’t double the price of oil in a year, speculation did. Institutional investors, who hold most of the futures contracts, can no longer finance their 5% margin down payments, let alone anything else.
The signal remains noisy.
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IceBaby
An interesting link that you provided, although the source you refer to (Schwartz) has the following to say:
“We are not going to run out of oil before the issue of climate change drives change. It’ll be costly oil. But it’ll be climate change catastrophes [such as sudden, unexpected displacement of large numbers of people, and massive property damage], and more expensive oil, not the fact that we’re running out of oil, that will drive change,” according to Schwartz.
I gather from the article that he is saying that peak oil is difficult to predict because of a lack of info, but that the impetus for the development of clean technology is the more easily predicable climate change – not a position that you subscribe to if I remember earlier comments by you?
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Johan
I believe in climate change.
I’m on the fence about the AGW-leading-to-disaster scenario.
This is my point – these are POSSIBLE SCENARIOS.
Some people leap in, boots n all, declare that their future scenario is fact, and label all those who question them “deniers”.
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Sorry Frog….!!
Like others commenting on this post, I am becoming increasingly concerned at what is currently happening in parliament in what seems to be a ’spiteful’ attempt to destroy some of the structures which were put in place by the previous government – because they were put in place by that government.
There seems to be little cohesion in the process and, in many cases blatant contradiction between words and deeds.
I just hope that, in the New Year, we see some rebuilding which evidences what the Nats are saying that they stand for…….
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“Increasingly concerned…”
So, now you know what we had to put up with during the EFA, retrospective law-making, toothless inquiries, buying useless trains, and more.
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Poor Baby! So you empathise with those who are concerned now? Or are you gloating, hmmmm?
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It’s always about the “other team”, eh
People would have some credibility if they raised these concerns when their own party did the same thing.
Personally, I’m against passing things under urgency and not having appropriate levels of consultation and input. However, National are following through with their 100 day plan, which they have a mandate to do. If National does this beyond the 100 days, without *very* good reason, I’ll object to it. I also think the procedures of parliament should be changed so information is made public in a timely manner, but wonder why the LabGreens never saw to this matter in the last nine years?
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“People would have some credibility if they raised these concerns when their own party did the same thing”
Icebaby. Totally agree with your sentiment. However, I think your comment about credibility refers to labour voters – not Greens!!
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>>credibility refers to labour voters – not Greens!!
Oh really? I guess you weren’t following the EFA very closely, then….
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IBaby – National has a mandate for “passing things under urgency and not having appropriate levels of consultation and input”
- really? How curious and how naive of you accept that because it was alluded to before the election, it can now be passed with, as you describe, innapropriate levels of consultation and input. It’s been well explained on this blog how bereft of credibility the Nats are for taking that line.
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IB – you seem to be confusing issues here…
The greens voted for the EFA NOT the process by which it was passed….
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>>NOT the process by which it was passed….
The Greens voted for the EFA and against many amendments that would have made it better. The process was partisan, and they were neck deep in it. They should have said at first reading that they would not support it unless all parties were consulted.
They didn’t.
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Greenfly,
You can’t get all this passed in 100 days if you refer it all to committee. You know that.
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IBaby – I know that many, many commentators (including your blue self) are concerned that it is ‘innapropriate’ to say the least. Do you think it is appropriate to act this way, simply because they had a tag ‘!00 days’ as part of their electioneering? Please don’t bore us with the ‘mandate’ line – it’s redundant.
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Yes. They honoring their election promises, which I voted for. I’m glad they aren’t mucking around in delivering it.
Some matters, like the 90 day employment bill, are very urgent. Most of the changes are amendments.
>>it’s redundant.
To you, perhaps. You’ll just have to suck it up.
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And yet you say,
“Personally, I’m against passing things under urgency and not having appropriate levels of consultation and input.”
You’re very forgiving of them, Blue.
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Greenfly, don’t take me out of context. I have said that they, or any party, is justified using urgency if they have a mandate to do so.
I’ll happily call National out if I disagree with them. For example, I disagree with English blocking the Taharoa iron sands deal. I think that is unacceptable.
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>>BJ Chip is using his ‘cr@p detector’ on IceBaby/Blue Peter and getting a very strong reading!
Yet I was the one who was right.
That IceBaby, contains the implication that I did not predict NOT ONLY the collapse of the oil prices but ALSO the causative recession.
Unfortunately for your claim that you were the ONE (when comparing the two of us) that was right, I was also right and I was quite a bit more specific about what was to happen AND when.
Moreover, I warned Frog and others that this was likely. So count up part of the price drop as demand destruction from the recession like every other sane analyst on the planet does. Part was speculation because anything as volatile and essential as oil will attract them and they amplify all the signals BOTH ways.
You don’t know that. You pretend you do.
I know what I know IceBaby… and when I make a statement like that (damned seldom) you can take it to the bank.
The logic is inexorable. You consider the situation with the big fields already in decline. Not a few, EVERY DAMNED ONE WE HAVE DATA ON. So the ones we don’t have data on are within a year or two of declining capability as well. Consider the size of the finds coming in. There aren’t any more elephants… unless there’s one under Antarctica or in the deep ocean.
Peak was in May 2005 at 82.5 M bbl/day
http://www.theoildrum.com/files/PU200712_Fig3b.png
Schwartz is guessing. I am not. That graph is a fact. The recession didn’t come in to knock down demand. The price of oil went up. Then the speculators piled in…
We won’t come out of the recession enough to even start to raise demand for at least another year and a half. The price is gamed heavily, and the speculators won’t let it alone… and after what is going to happen to the global economy over the next year it is my opinion that the demand will NEVER recover because the resulting prices will act even faster to flatten that demand.
At the same time we are going to be working harder at more efficient and more alternative transportation modes, more efficient heating, more education and reducing population.
Some Greens were indeed over-exuberant about the price going ballistic, but they didn’t mistake the process. Peak oil is about how much is pumped. It doesn’t matter if it is due to demand destruction as a result of prices and the economy, or the inability to suck on the wellhead fast enough.
…and remember that if you pull too hard on a field you REDUCE its ultimate recoverable reserve numbers.
Thanks for the Fertilizer. I think we’ve got enough for a few years now.
BJ
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