What do The Act Party, Federated Farmers, the Tax Payers Union, The NZ Initiative, The National Party and NZME NZ Herald and NewsTalk ZB all have in common?
They all run the same influence campaigns often in service to agriculture and fossil fuel interests in New Zealand.
Once you tie all of these groups together and their common themes ( Petrol forever, Climate Change can all be handled by the ETS, privatisation is good, big government is bad, no planning but free market will fix it …) it’s possible to see the visible hand rather than the invisible one – speaking through the mouths of people like David Seymour, Simeon Brown, Nicola Willis, Christopher Luxon and of course Chris Bishop.
Bishop has been spouting like a crooked tea pot words about how “We campaigned on that” when it comes to funding more roads but the shapers of National Party policy came largely from the NZ Initiative when it came to funding infrastructure.
Just look through the papers submitted by the NZ Initiative that Bishop and his mates copied their ideas from.
All the user pays stuff – congestion charging, tolls, plus GST sharing, and big offshore investment – comes from on high at the Atlas Network.
Who else would think that the rich should use the busy roads cos they can afford the peak rates of a congestion charge at rush hour – while the poor who cannot afford the charge – can find an alternative longer route in our biggest cities?
Let them burn petrol forever, laughed the rich.
Indeed Eric Crampton from the NZ Initiative suggested in his 21 May 2021 submission into Congestion Charging that a congestion dividend – a rebate on the net remaining after costs could be distributed back to the users to deal with the equity problem. How noble – but we won’t see it.
Instead we hear bunk from Bishop about the infrastructure deficit needing to be paid for by offshore pension funds and how “we have not maintained our roads”.
As you no doubt recall David Parker told us on 16 July 2023 that Labour inherited a road maintenance crisis. National chose to freeze road maintenance funding during its time in office in order fund high-profile new highways.
“As a result, roads were resurfaced at less than half the rate they should have been. The state of our roads deteriorated, making them more vulnerable to damage from the extreme weather events that have hit the North Island in particular this year.” – David Parker.
Yet today Simeon Syltherin Brown is strutting up and down like Squirrel Nutkin about his pot hole fund in Budget 2024 and the way National created the problem in the first place is utterly obscured.
Let us not forget that Syltherin Brown is being guided by Ben Craven from the Taxpayers Union and NZ Initiative who also worked for the fossil fuel sector before scoring the job supervising Brown along the Atlas Network pathway.
Ben’s a big fan of localism too ( author of 2014 paper on Localism in Local Government – sources Hayek, Paul Goldsmith and others ) and it’s no wonder Christopher Luxon memorised how he believes in “localism and devolution” as part of his mindless election spin – except when it comes to forcing councils to do central Wellingtons’ bidding on Maori Wards. ( That’s the racist vote dominating )
Bishop reckons you’ve only heard about bad PPPs and not the good PPPs so now you will get more privatisation cos it’s always the answer…to neoliberals at the Atlas Network anyway.
Government granted funding will be the last resort says Bishop.
Bishop also boasts about a new bureaucracy in Wellington – an Infrastructure Agency that Steven Joyce is getting paid $4,000 crony dollars per day to consult on. Brilliant – especially when cutting the “bureaucracy” was all these people carped on about for months.
Suffice to say I am not going to get too deeply into the details this morning over coffee but the point is the same group of influencers are shepherding New Zealand into a dark divided future beholden to others – unable to drive on their own bloody streets without paying through the nose – thanks to the neoliberal Beagle Boys surfing off voter ignorance and resentment about pandemic aftereffects.
“Mike Hosking and Heather are always right about everything”, said DumbTown – “it’s common sense, petrol forever”.
Yes you already knew all that – but it’s good to just spell it out again as we sit back powerless to do much until 2026. Watching the destruction as polishers in the press polish it hard.
Which brings me to Thomas the Turd Polisher and his opinion published this morning in the NZ Herald about how boring recess breaks are and how Willis will face the scrutiny of The Finance and Expenditure Committee on Wednesday.
Thomas betrayed his deep partisan bias towards Nicola Willis by reporting that she came from a position of absolute dominance as Finance Minister and how she carried the mantle of Finance Minister with composite ease as Thomas grovelled on the ground licking where she had walked.
Worse Thomas reckoned Willis and Chloe had brought a forensic investigation to the Reserve Bank in the Finance and Expenditure Committee hearings previously – which told me that Thomas was now just making things up.
He talked about a pincer move from left and right – squeezing Labour in the middle – and the Reserve Bank. Whatever.
I had watched all of those exchanges, and commented upon them when they occurred and Willis had no idea what she was talking about with regard to the various types of inflation measured and had to be corrected and schooled by Adrian Orr and Paul Conway. I mean I was embarrassed for Willis at the time.
Chlöe had persisted with a line of questions around – what exactly was “maximum sustainable employment” – but I would not have called this forensic as Thomas branded it – the answer was always – not what we have now – it was always a bit lower but there was no given number for it.
So here was NZME the NZ Herald polishing up Willis a former director of the Atlas Network NZ initiative – before the event on Wednesday – but wait there’s more – Thomas put the boot into Barbara Edmonds and said she needs to find her feet and sometimes subject matter experts can’t pull off a good political attack.
Okay so polish Willis and rubbish Barbara using the NZ Herald audience ( DumbTown ) and I sit here witnessing the influence campaign first noted above at the beginning of this coffee chat.
What do The Act Party, Federated Farmers, the Tax Payers Union, The NZ Initiative, The National Party and NZME NZ Herald and NewsTalk ZB all have in common?
Exactly.
At least our eyes are open and we can all see the same things now through the lens of Atlas and it’s component parts wielding influence campaigns on New Zealand for their vested interests.
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