by frog
Agriculture Minister David Carter has admitted that he intentionally left environmentalists, the water rights trust and recreational users off the invite list of a major water users meeting in Canterbury. In the same breath he promised that their concerns would not be ignored.
George Orwell and his Ministry of Truth would be proud. Purposefully keeping key stakeholders from a meeting and then saying that you are listening to them is classic doublespeak.
Radio NZ broke the story this morning.
Agriculture Minister David Carter, who arranged the event, says they were deliberately left out – but their views won’t be ignored.
Some 120 farmers and industry and irrigation scheme representatives from Canterbury and Otago attended the water infrastructure forum on Saturday.
Infrastructure and Finance minister Bill English, and Economic Development minister Gerry Brownlee also attended.
Mr Carter says 28 water schemes from North Canterbury to South Otago are in various stages of development, and a more co-ordinated approach to water supply is needed.
He says the forum needed to see what was possible for water supply and environmental groups were not invited.
I think this quote sums it up best:
Fish & Game chief executive Bryce Johnson says the decision not to invite environmental groups was loaded with “agricultural arrogance”.
So what do you think? Is the agribusiness sector the only stakeholder that matters when it comes to Canterbury’s water resources?
Published in Environment & Resource Management by frog on Mon, December 22nd, 2008
Tags: agriculture, bryce johnson, canterbury, david carter, fish & game, rights, water
on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
“So what do you think? Is the agribusiness sector the only stakeholder that matters when it comes to Canterbury’s water resources?”
Not the only stakeholder but by far the most important if we are to export ourself out of this economic mess.
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On the upside, at least David Carter’s being honest about which opinions matter to him — and which ones he’ll ignore.
Hopefully it won’t be the template for the next 3 years.
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As we saw with Labour, governments don’t tend to get less arrogant as time goes by, so this is another bad sign of what we can continue to expect from the Nats.
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I’d say he got it about right myself.
When there’s a proposal on the table it will be time to hear from the lobby groups. Right now, Canterbury needs one integrated plan rather than dozens of individual ones. That way the environmental impact can be properly assessed and minimised.
If every possible lobby group was invited the meeting would take years not days.
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agribusiness ‘stakeholder’, environmental ‘lobby’. Hmmmm….
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This is a better example of an elected dictatorship than it is of a truly democratic process.
I can accept a process whereby .all. stakeholders are given a voice (that includes any New Zealand citizens with an opinion on the matter), which concludes, for example, that to make enough money to support ourselves we should favour the use of water for dairy farming over downstream water quality.
As long as they’re making an informed decision from all available information, then I’m basically comfortable. I may argue that water quality is a necessary precondition for a productive tourism sector and how does that compare with the money earned from dairy farming? But that’s a side issue, the real issue here is that a democratic process is being impaired. This is just willful ignorance and coercion.
The rest of the world is moving toward valuing ecological science more and more. Thanks to this governments ignorance, talking to foreigners now is becoming downright embarassing.
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Ignorant seems an appropriate epithet for this government, with it’s connotation that stuff is being ignored (science, the environment, convention, commonsense, lobby groups, etc..)
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Too bad we didn’t choose the arrogant lot over the ignorant lot, huh?
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This makes sense. They are not having a vote that will decide what happens in the end, they are creating a plan which will likley then be presented to the other stakeholders to say yay or nay. It is no different than a political party creating a policy and then presenting it to the house. If you allow everyone a say at every level you would never make any progress and the nimby’s will continually block it.
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I think Bro is wrong, not in what he says, but in his belief in what is possible, with the assumption that the agriculture sector is the answer.
I dont think that whatever we do agriculturally to exports will have much of an impact on the mess NZ finds itself in. We need a wider plan.
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This (government) term is really dragging.
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Carter’s actions are a direct continuation of Anderton’s aproach; Jim talked behind closed doors to the same corporate groups. This supports my contention that Labour and National are nothing more than the two dominant factions in the NZ Rich List Party.
The difference between them is that National has a farming rump now rapidly becoming corporatised while Labour has a unionist rump. Most dairy farmers are now nothing more than agricultural contractors to Fonterrra while the sheep and beef farmers are doing their best to become corporatised. Unions are now largely emasculated.
Saying that National is ACT in sheeps clothing and Labour is ACT in socialist drag is a fairly acurate description of the relationship.
Asking Carter (Anderton) to include the rest of us as stakeholders flies in the face of historical reality, According to Cromewll, Madison and Lipmann the body politic properly consists solely of property owners so why should the opinions of the general public be considered except insofar that we may become ungovernable?
Carter’s and Anderton’s meetings with “stakeholders” is another step towards the privatisation of our water supply. Expressed another way it’s an example of the enclosing of the commons. Even the language being used regarding Central Plains Water is eerily reminiscent of the arguments surounding the land enclosures in 16th century England; the protagonists are the same, wealthy peasants soon replaced by land owning magnates, today corporate magnates.
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It’s hardly surprising Carter only invited Canterbury farmers to the meeting. He currently farms a 2,500 stock unit farm on Banks Peninsula, leases a 10,000 stock unit farm at Waiau, and owns a 7,500 stock unit farm at Cheviot, North Canterbury.
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Someone needs to get a 12 BILLION DOLLAR export business up and running in a hurry, and somehow I doubt that we’ll do it without some tough decisions on land and water use. The alternative, not creating that business, is unthinkable, Bankruptcy, as we are spending that much more than we are earning every year.
Imagine if this was your family budget, after tax income from all sources $28,000; expenditure on all needs $38,000.
That is the situation NZ is in NOW!!!!
What do YOU suggest we do about it?
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What is sensible about shifting a highly water-dependent agricultural activity like dairy farming to a dry area like Canterbury? It’s a classic example of treating farming like industry – instead of farming for the conditions (husbandry) it is forcing the context to suit the enterprise.
The result is that the increasing draw-off of water from the rivers leaves other users, including the river ecology itself, without the water they need. It is a total misallocation of resource for selfish ends, not community or environmental good.
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How about National Good?
If we can find a way to get a few billion in exports from it, we can sustain the humanity on New Zealand.
Or aren’t we worth sustaining?
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Well said Janine!
In Canterbury the recent overuse of our precious aquifers to “convert” less expensive marginal land into “proiftable” dairy units is a case of short term profit for the few developers, at the expense of the future of the entire community.
This should never have happened and by the time it is stopped a few people will have made “PROFIT” at the long term “COST” to the many … especially with the effects of Climate Change so obviously underway.
Shame on our decision making systems and shame on all of us!
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eredwen
(sorry for getting it wrong yesterday by the way, it was not intentional)
Given we have to buy about $10 billion a year less from overseas than we do now (as it seems we have a problem with growing a substantial export business,) what do you think we should give up that is of equal value? I thought perhaps if we stop importing food, and live only on what we can produce with the fields and pastures we already have, we could just about manage!
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Dave S
Yes we are worth sustaining … and so are our descendants.
That is why we need to live sustainably.
One of the predicted effects of Climate Change in the area is less rain.
We need the pure artesian water aquifers in Canterbury to survive, and to refill naturally with pure water, rather than face the results of over extraction and resultant pollution with dairy effluent.
As the song said :
“Don’t it always seem to go …
That you don’t know what you’ve got till its gone … “
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Well done Janine! Thanks
BJ
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We should be hauling water up from aquifers with electricity when as the Romans knew it is more effective and efficient to store water behind dams and then use gravity to deliver the water along aqueducts and through pipes.
Canterbury is not running out of water – the water is running out of Canterbury.
85% of the rain and snow which falls on the Alps goes straight out to sea. It falls at the wrong time. All we need do is retain it a while here and there. That would keep the aquifers full too.
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Well said Owen McShane … as long as, in that process, “we” DO ensure the continued purity of the aquifers.
e
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Dave S.
Did everyone learn the wrong lessons from “think big”. The dams and electrical infrastructure built and supporting an Aluminium smelter that is quite likely one of the best AND most sustainable on the planet, and what do we make with the Aluminium?
.
.
.
Right… that IS what we do with it. Except for some Airbus wing sections we don’t appear to have done much of ANYTHING with it. We have renewable energy resources we can exploit and produce with and in a very real sense, export. Bicycle frames, light planes, LTA frames and LTA vehicles… all take substantial Aluminium as input and are not particularly difficult to export..
Moreover, what happens to the balance of trade when enough energy is generated locally that WE don’t have to import dead dinosaurs from some other part of the planet? We can do that. Most of the planet cannot even come close. Britain is in deep strife over its lack of resources, and most of Europe is at the mercy of the Russian Federation. They USA gave the rest of the world a 10 year head start and the “green revolution” in agriculture is largely based on dead dinosaurs as well. What will happen as that production becomes less efficient/more expensive? Will our balance of payments shift? Of course it will.
I think we can do better than we have done and I think we can do it sustainably and efficiently and without damaging the prospects of future generations. I don’t think that this is something that anyone in Labour or National is able to conceive of, and I don’t think it can be done without some growing up here either, but we CAN make a difference.
We could back OUR currency with kilowatt-hours of electricity and force the issue of honest money to the forefront of the world’s consciousness…
moreover a condition that it is backed by 240 v 50 hz delivered at a standard outlet in NZ would greatly alter the nature of currency speculation in the world. I can’t be sure of the outcome, but we need a revolution in the financial sector.
We are NOT necessarily totally and permanently dependent on sheep and dairy. That is what we have been, and it limits us. It is NOT a necessary outcome.
What we will do under National’s leadership? Just about nothing. Except cater to the desires of agribusiness.. to the exclusion of every other sector of the economy.
BJ
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Good on you Owen.
respectfully
BJ
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Has anyone ever considered piping water from the West Coast over into Canterbury?
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jarbury,
To pipe water requires storage facilities.
Need to build those plus the pipeline.
Might be a better bet to charter a super tanker to take water from the fiords to canterbury. No storage peoblems, no “green” issues regarding dams, pipelines, etc.
Just requires electricity to pump water from the tanker to the plains.
Possibly a lot cheaper than building dams and pipelines as there “should” be a glut of supertankers on the market shortly as “peak oil” lowers demand for these floating behemoths.
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Just requires electricity to pump water from the tanker to the plains.
Didn’t you forget the oil to power the supertanker?
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It’s an interesting issue really, that we desperately need something to improve our export earnings (just see Russell Norman’s post), and dairying seems like a prime candidate (although milk solids prices have plummeted recently, one would assume that’s just a temporary issue). The question is how to do it in a way that’s environmentally sustainable, and perhaps one needs to think outside the square when it comes to water supply.
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I actually like Owen’s solution of exporting aluminium-based goods, (instead of just raw aluminium) especially as it would build up our own manufacturing sector and make us that much more self-sufficient.
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It’s the same argument of why on earth do we export logs instead of furniture? Or at least export cut wood. Adding value is where it’s at.
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That’s true… we export logs instead of lumber/furniture/cut-wood. There’s something in the convenience of the logs. They are a lot less fragile in terms of transport. Other countries get to burn/use the sawdust and other by-products.
It is just another example of an area in which we COULD compete but do not. Could we license/produce for Ikea ? We can’t even get a store here. Why not?
The point I have been going after is that reliance on factory farming and dairy exports is a limitation we do not need to suffer forever.
BJ
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Well apparently it’s cheaper to export the logs to China, get them turned into furniture in China and then ship them back to New Zealand, as opposed to keeping them in NZ the whole time.
Pretty crazy huh?
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Dave S says: “Didn’t you forget the oil to power the supertanker?”
Kite power Dave, there’s your answer. Beluga have it all in hand. It takes a big jump in thinking, but free energy is where the enlightened are focussing their energies.
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For the love of God bj what ever you do keep NZ Ikea free.
Another bumber sticker.
“Keep NZ Ikea free”
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Also, its cheaper to turn the logs into finished products, labour costs along with compliance costs are very expensive in NZ compared to China.
NZ has a third world export based economy and a people who expect a first world life style. So don’t change the export model instead change the peoples life style from a first world into a third world, problem solved.
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Great solution turnip.
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Sorry Turnip… I’ve had all sorts of furniture. Ikea gives good value for money. I like it. Functional. My wife hates it.
BJ
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The problem with Owen’s suggestion is that the 85% of rainfall that goes straight out to sea is carrying 100% of the silt and gravel that replenishes the coastline. The CPW scheme originally proposed to only capture these peak flows but that was the first thing that was ruled out when the dreamer-schemers employed some engineers to turn the dream into a scheme.
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The sad thing is that the agribusiness sector might actually learn something from environmentalists, especially the ones who are scientists devoting their working lives to minimising water usage while maximising output for agriculture.
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Well at least we’ll know who to blame when the coastline starts eroding away Kevyn.
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So…
We need to use the flow of clean water of the rivers to transport dirt to the shorelines?
For this we are refusing to build dams and save the water?
Seems to me that if this is the “problem” the solution is to move the dirt differently, or move different dirt. The silt of the river is often pretty productive stuff. Not bad for farming at all. Letting it go out to sea is also called erosion and isn’t regarded all that highly. OTOH, the erosion problem is real.
Imagine a system of barges and tow-ropes that transports “dirt” downstream even with smaller and controlled river flows. That’d be pretty easy compared to removing salt from sea-water or shifting water over the mountains.
What is it about New Zealand. Given any plan of action the typical response seems to be to look for ANY objection to the plan and as soon as one is found the plan is abandoned… immediately… without any thought to modification. This is apparently related to the NZ tendency to start over from the beginning of the interminable consultative processes as soon as any change is made to a plan.
Yeah… I get pretty stroppy when the holiday season rolls around.
BJ
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Off topic
I would like to wish all those at frogblog and all those who contribute to this site a very Merry Christmas and a fantastic New Year.
Special thanks to Frog and Toad for the many hours you put into this place, even though we do not agree on much I can assure you your work is appreciated, stay safe and well over the break.
My kindest regards to you all.
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bj
RE
>What is it about New Zealand. Given any plan of action the typical response seems to be to look for ANY objection to the plan and as soon as one is found the plan is abandoned… immediately… without any thought to modification.
>
I see you’ve noticed it too! Seems like the education system has knocked the number 8 fence-wire capability out of society.
One of the great things about New Zealand used to be the ease with which things got done. Indeed, the philosophy of ‘yes we can’ was the envy of the world back in the 80s, and still had vast public appeal this year in the United States. Sadly, we have come 180 degrees to port on this and now have an ‘over my dead body’ approach to getting things done.
AH well. Another year, another set of education, migration, indoctrination and stagnation initiatives are about to be upon us.
To all of you, and all of yours, thanks for some new insights, interesting debates, occasional laughs and regular enjoyment. May 2009 bring all of us that which we most desire, and if there are conflicts inherent in those desires may we resolve them with courtesy and common good will.
Happy holidays all.
Dave.
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bj – here beside the Aparima River, we entertain thoughts like those you present here – silt recovery and use as fertilizer/growing medium on gardens and farms. We’ve experimented with muds and so on (with mixed results). Another river, no so far from here, carries significant amounts of limestone (dissolved) to the sea where no doubt it is employed by shellfish (tempted to say ‘by bi-valves’) to build their shells. My point is that care has to be taken when extracting and downstream effects taken carefully into account. Silt has a role to play in sea floor health too.
Strings – I don’t agree with your jaded view of education at all. There will always be, and its only natural that there are, barriers to creativity and innovation – it’s those impediments that foster c and i. Have you ever tried writing a sonnet – surely the most restrictive of writing forms – yet WS wasn’t held back by them
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I reckon the No.8 wire attitude was created by a society where it was a long way to the shop and the only things on the shelves was No.8 wire. When the cheapest solution to fixing something is to go to the shop and buy a new one there isn’t much incentive to get creative with the old No.8.
I recently used No.8 wire, electrical cable from a skip bin, old newspaper, flour and water paste and some LEDs to build an illuminated angler fish costume. Maybe this is an industry NZ could get into? You can’t buy a decent angler fish outfit anywhere.
“its cheaper to turn the logs into finished products, labour costs along with compliance costs are very expensive in NZ compared to China.”
Same goes for the aluminium, just because we make it here doesn’t mean we are going to get a better deal from Rio Tinto if we decide we want to turn it into finished products. I spoke to a furniture maker at a select committee hearing about the China-NZ free trade deal who said Chinese furniture imports made it certain that he’d never employ any staff – there was a tiny high-end market he supplied as a sole trader but that was it.
I’m sure sooner or later a Chinese company will decide that they can produce high-end, one-off pieces of furniture in the local Re-education Through Labour camp and that’ll be the end of his business. Subsistence farming is looking like a good career option.
Have a good Christmas everyone,
Sam
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Hey Sam – we used similarly found materials to make a 9 metre long whitebait for a parade a while back – I was looking at a photo of it this morning as we prepared for tonight’s parade! Our (rural town) Christmas parade is quite a spectacle – legions of buffed and grinding farm machines, big rigs from go to whoa and a rag-tag bunch of costumed walkers waving butterflies on sticks and handing out packets of vegetable seeds – kinda indicative I reckon …
Merry Christmas to everyone in, around and behind the frog pond.
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The reason we export logs is that it is so expensive in time, money and uncertainty to get a resource consent for any kind of timber processing plant in NZ.
I was in Whakatane and was driving along the coastal road and the driver complained about all the logging trucks heading to Tauranga carrying raw logs.
I said well if they were milled and processed here there would be a lot fewer logs to carry to the port.
He responded “Oh yes, a big company tried to set up a mill and processing plant here but we stopped that!” And then looked a bit sheepish.
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Nine-metre whitebait – Cool! I’d go for cloth glued to the frame, or cloth mache for something that big. Bamboo and pahang cane structures are good, but pop riveted aluminium is probably the ultimate armature.
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>>the typical response seems to be to look for ANY objection to the plan and as soon as one is found the plan is abandoned
Yep. New Zealand used to be about getting things done, but not any more. We even enshrined this do-nothing attitude in law. It’s called the RMA!
The inevitable result is our continued slide down the OECD ladder into third world obscurity.
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Here is NIWA’s short answer to the question How do dams affect coastal erosion?
http://www.naturalhazards.net.nz/__data/assets/pdf_file/0019/56602/nhu-2005-03.pdf
A somewhay more in-depth discussion of the morphological impacts of dams can be found here
http://www.biol.canterbury.ac.nz/people/harding/Young%20Smart%20&%20Harding%20Impacts%20of%20hydro%202004.pdf
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Sam – I love building things like those for parades etc. My most memorable was a giant organic carrot on a trailer with a full grown fennel as the ‘green’ end. On the way to the parade, the mooring at the front of the carrot broke, the carrot (papier mache) ‘became erect’ and had to be resecured. The fennel fell out so the driver replaced it with some roadside grasses. When the carrot finally arrived at the parade and began it’s slow drive past, it was deflated, battered and sporting less than convincing greenery! To make things worse, I’d proudly written ‘Organically Grown’ along it’s length! Imagine how I felt (I was waiting expectantly in the crowd).
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gee, fancy having to MANAGE our resorces …………….
Would you prefer a a Resorce Exploitation Act IB ???????????
Actually I know you would ………..
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There’s a difference between managing our resources and letting every man and his dog stop development.
That’s mismanagement…..
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BTW, anyone feeling brave?
tinyurl.com/79cz3f
Now, one of the reasons given by the Greens why a recent hydro project shouldn’t go ahead was that it damaged the rugged, natural beauty of the river.
Yet the Greens are quiet on the Mahinerangi Windfarm. The objection from locals is that the windfarm spoils the rugged natural beauty of the land.
The Green charter says: “For the implementation of ecological wisdom and social responsibility, decisions will be made directly at the
appropriate level by those affected.”
Well, “those affected…directly” are objecting. Where’s the support?
The “appropriate level” is debatable (i.e. national interest) but it renders this principle meaningless, as any level could be appropriate, depending on who gets to decide.
If you can use it to object to certain hydro projects, then surely others can use it to object to wind projects?
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Thanks Kevyn…
That confirms that the problem is the problem I expected. The solution however, is not NECESSARILY to “not build dams” but to work out alternative means of replenishing the dirt at the various places where its absence is a problem. Truth is, I don’t regard the absence as a problem in general. Clean water is a precious thing. The specific cases where it IS a problem can be managed IMHO, much more cheaply than a shortage of fresh water can be managed.
respectfully
BJ
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Anyone. Anyone at all…
My post: December 24th, 2008 at 2:14 pm
Is the sound of hypocrisy…silence?
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I think we now know two things.
1. there is no green/environment faction in the National Party (the total silence at the anti-green direction of this government sums them all up).
2. the decision to rule out National as a coalition partner has been vindicated, this party was, and is, no prospective coalition partner.
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What’s a blue green – someone supporting National who is red green colour blind and thinks green is something to do with those of the left.
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No SPC… I don’t think that point 2 is “vindicated” at all.
We get no say in any matter because we decided not to have anything if we could not have what we wanted.
Now you may call the resulting lack of any Green influence in the National led government a reason why we shouldn’t have tried to get any influence.
Reasoning that has an intimate relationship with PI…
It MAY be that we should indeed, not finally have had any relationship with them. It does not indicate that we shouldn’t have allowed ourselves to discuss things with them… FIRST.
BJ
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>>green is something to do with those of the left.
Yeah, you guys are just so right wing, it hurts.
>>rule out National as a coalition partner has been vindicated
You’ve made your party irrelevant. Even with a Labour government, you proved to be irrelevant. Peter Dunne’s hair welds more power than your party.
Got an answer to my question yet?
Because that’s the reason people do not trust you – no consistency.
Politicians. No better than the rest.
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Dave S said: “How about National Good?
If we can find a way to get a few billion in exports from it, we can sustain the humanity on New Zealand.
Or aren’t we worth sustaining?”
Yes – and it would be more efficient to do dairy farming where you already have plenty of water (comparatively). Some of that was to do with the price of land (Owen will know this stuff) – many dairy farmers transported their herds (by train incidentally) from places north of Auckland and elsewhere to Canterbury, Otago and Southland because they were lured by the prospect of relatively cheap land.
Not sure precisely what has happened to what they left behind, but here in Northland (and in Hawke’s Bay) there are far fewer dairy farms, more beef and forestry and in HB more vineyards.
It is all about money, not husbandry. Water is ultimately more vital than oil, so using it wisely is important. That seems to have been left out of the equation.
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Um, water remains water even after lots of use.
When you burn oil it is gone.
It is not going to stop raining over New Zealand because we drink the water and irrigate our pastures.
And why do we assume that artificial dams have a negative effect on the environment while natural dams (landslides) which created so many of our lakes are assumed to be benign. Of course water carries silt into the ocean. That is why the Ocean is made of salt water. If you slow the average speed of the river then less silt is lost to the ocean – which is why the Waikato now floods. We are all gardeners now and have to manage our resources rather than let “nature’ take its course – because there is no state of nature anywhere and it wasn’t that nice anyhow. People who romanticise nature are usually the most remote from it.
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Yes, but it rains less in some places than in others, so water-hungry industries have a noticeable effect on things like aquifers and river flows and ultimately the water table.
I’m not suggesting we revert to a state of nature everywhere – I agree that we are all gardeners now and do have to manage resources wisely. That was exactly what my first post in this thread was about – wise managment, which includes the activity itself as well as how you manage its needs. It was a question, not a statement of fact or belief.
Irrigation isn’t a neutral activity – ask the Australians who have lost many thousands (millions?) of hectares of previously farmed land to the rise of the salt pans.
Those dairy farms depend on access to water rights, not on rainfall, though the rivers ultimately depend on either snow or rain in the mountains. They don’t return water to the river directly, but with nutrients into the water table. Other river users do notice the effects.
It’s really the old story of the commons, isn’t it? At what point are there too many taking? How does the local body manage that? This is what the RMA is supposed to take into account – the effects of an activity.
Some years ago, the Manukau Harbour was horribly polluted – turned out there were over 600 separate permits to discharge into it. Each of them kept within their limits – but cumulatively, they were a disaster. Took years to wind back the problem.
So, it isn’t any individual farm or other user, but the accumulated effect on a river.
When do intrinsic values come into it?
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Owen says “water remains water even after lots of use.” As a qualified boiler attendant I can aeeure you that simply ain’t true. Even in a closed cycle system the condensate has to be ionised, de-oxegenated and be treated to correct it’s ph before it can be safely returned to the boiler from which it was originally expelled as steam. It’s water’s liberal bonding with a myriad of other molecules that makes water contamination such a major problem.
You can add to that the problems resulting from rivers dropping their silt and gravel upstream from dams instead of distributing it along the entire riverbed and through the river mouth.
Aquifiers have their own set of impacts when drawoff affects the way that water flows into and through the aquifier system. Drawing large amounts of water from Canterbury’s aquifiers under the plains increases the speed at which water percolates down through the soil directly above the well more than it increases the speed at which water is able to precolate all the way from the Alps. This is especially true if the Alpine headwaters experiance prolonged periods of low snowfall or rainfall, as they have for much of the last few decades. The result cab be a significant change in the water composition, ie less minerals eroded from alpine rocks and more nitrates leached from soils.
The facts is water remains water only after it is evoporated into the skies and once again precipitates over land. Or at least it does in NZ since we don’t have enough of the right sort of air pollution to create acid rain and therefore we have soft rain (neutral ph).
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Well I guess the guest list for the jobs summit might give it away – National sees the economy as being run by some arrangment
between government and capital.
The other thing is the preference for transferring control to larger and larger entities capitalist (state assets to private blocks of capital) or otherwise to minimise local control and democratic accountability (area health boards, the work of local councils being privatised) – the latest sign being one council to rule them all in Auckland. Applied at a national level – this is the direct election of a President to rule the country.
It speaks to the ultimate trend of capitalism to ally to a ruling oligarchy.
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