by David Clendon
Like someone watching a bad zombie movie, we have now been subjected to the unnerving sight of Don the Undead emerging from the darkness, rattling the chains of thoroughly discredited twenty-five year-old Treasury advice, and offering a prescription for putting the Government on a diet that would make a supermodel blush. I’m talking about the first report of the 2025 Taskforce.
We are told that, “The last decade was, for the most part, a pretty good time in the world economy – but…[in New Zealand] the time has been lost and the improvement in the budgetary position has been frittered away on a succession of initiatives for which little robust economic case was made. We distracted ourselves with increased focus on fashionable causes and issues such ‘sustainability’[sic]”
Newsflash for Don – the business case for sustainability has been made, and it is robust. Sustainable businesses are those that minimize their resource use and, through a combination of good product and service design, smart management and careful operational practices, maximize the efficiency and effectiveness of that usage. That saves money, enhances profitability, and is good for the environment too.
Sustainable businesses also invest in research and innovation and, above all, invest in their people, both to reduce the costs associated with high staff turnover, and to earn the loyalty that encourages staff to engage and make a positive contribution to the business in good times and bad.
Predictably, Don takes a swipe at the RMA. Apparently “…an increased focus on environmental ’sustainability’ … and ’smart growth’ strategies favoured by local planners, is seen by many as having inappropriately increased the hurdles that restrict development.” So ‘many’ would rather remove the hurdles to unsustainable development and dumb growth strategies? I hope nobody puts ‘many’ in charge any time soon.
The simple question we need to ask is whether our economic future will be best served by a return to the destructive, short sighted policies that didn’t work in the 1990s? Or do we support a design based, responsive, and innovative business sector that is framing their practice around sustainability. Seems a no brainer really.
Published in Environment & Resource Management by David Clendon on Wed, December 2nd, 2009
Tags: 2025 Taskforce, Act, Don Brash
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on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
One encouraging thing is that this has gone down like a cup of cold sick with the public, it will be causing a few policy dilemmas for the 2011 election for Joyce, English, Power, Ryall, Key and Brownlee, i.e. If we announce a privatisation agenda will we lose..?
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One encouraging thing is that this has gone down like a cup of cold sick with the public
Well, with lefties who post on blogs anyway. Hard to tell what the ‘general public’ think without professional polling IMHO. What would you think of giving everyone shares in SOEs as opposed to selling them?
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Well that is based on conversations with my work colleagues, many of whom voted for National…
Releasing shares in SOEs for sale to the public is what Aussie did in the 80s and 90s under Keating rather than flogging them off to Fay and Richwhite to be asset stripped, seemed to work well to me, I’d personally have no problem with it as long as the government still controlled 51% of strategic assets…
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Well that is based on conversations with my work colleagues, many of whom voted for National…
Actually now that i think (yes it hurt) swing/’centre right’ voters wouldn’t like it much either. So yeah maybe 3.8% of the population is probably about right.
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It’s fine to slag Don et al.
However he is totally correct in saying that we are living beyond our means and that is unsustainable.
Those are his ideas on how to address the issue. Discredit them as you may.
But what are your viable alternatives?
You state some aspirations, but how about some nut-and-bolts….
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In every economic cycle we live beyond our means at some point, but after earlier enjoying surpluses and paying off debt and investing in infrastructure out of savings … much of this is beat up panic, partly generated by the non achievable goal of wage parity with Oz.
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@samiam, surely:
- Introduce a land tax
- Introduce a capital gains tax
- Remove working for families and introduce in it’s place a tax free threshold
- Streamline all current tax rates at 10%, 20%, 30% at a higher level
- Introduce compulsary superannuation at 5% matched by employer
- Introduce a government system of health insurance funds at 12% of income and operate all hospitals as if they were privately run (a la Aussie, France)
- Introduce PIR tax rate of 20% for money invested in businesses exporting over 80% of it’s products or secondary production
- Tax rate of 15% for sustainable businesses that meet the “triple bottom line”
- Google Green New Deal for some more ideas
That’s a start and the kinds of things that are actually likely to close the gap with Aussie not use this as an excuse to re-introduce a failed strategy that sacrificed a large number of the last generation of NZers…
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Clearly imperfect, but at least a better effort than that offered by the group Brash led.
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The problem with Brash’s report is that it does not address in a sensible way increasing productivity.
To do that there needs to be a plan for increasing capital and technology inputs.
Instead the plan is to reduce them.
Stunning stuff for such a high powered group.
peace
W
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