Thursday, February 6, 2014

John Key tries to claim old Labour policy as his own student loan extension...

Aussie student loan extension old news

John Key has got nothing out of his bilateral meeting with Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott but a re-announcement of a previous Government’s decision on student loans, Labour Leader David Cunliffe says.

“John Key has tried to claim a win out of his meeting with Tony Abbott today in the form of agreement to extend student loans to children of New Zealanders who are long-term Australian residents.

“He is taking the New Zealand public and media for a ride. This decision was reached by the previous Labor Government in Australia and was announced in June. Murray McCully even welcomed it in a press release at the time.

“There has been no movement on the crucial areas of social welfare for New Zealanders in Australia, who are still treated as second class citizens.

“John Key has re-heated an old announcement in a desperate attempt to save face,” says David Cunliffe.

And both of us have nowhere else to go...

English: "The Treaty is a Fraud" poster from Maori Land Rights Movement in the 1980s (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

TO SAY that the Treaty of Waitangi was breached is, therefore, an accurate but ultimately trivial historical observation. Had it not been breached, New Zealand – as a colonial society inextricably enmeshed in the political, economic, social and cultural life of the British Empire – wouldn’t have existed. For the Settler State to become real, the Treaty had to become, in Chief Justice Prendergast’s brutal phrase: “a simple nullity”.

Was that wrong? Should the undertakings given by Captain Hobson on 6 February 1840 have been honoured? Removed from its historical context, the question is easily answered in the affirmative. Except that those who go in search of such unencumbered moral judgements, do so without understanding that such questions cannever be extracted from history.

To judge the dead may give some comfort to the living, but no matter how fervently the misdeeds of previous generations are condemned, they cannot be undone. Therefore, whatever justice we seek to do here and now, let it be to right the wrongs of the present – not the past.

We fair-skinned Polynesians are not – and can never be – “Europeans”. Just as contemporary Maori are not – and can never be again – the Maori who inhabited these islands before colonisation. Both of us are the victims of historical forces too vast for blame, to permanent for guilt.

And both of us have nowhere else to go.

This essay was originally published on the Bowalley Road blogsite on 12 May 2011.

TUESDAY, 4

Tuesday, February 4, 2014

Should we have an alternative New Zealand Day to Waitangi Day?

English: "The Treaty is a Fraud" poster from Maori Land Rights Movement in the 1980s (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Has the time come for Dominion Day, 26 September, to be made our New Zealand Day? Waitangi Day would continue to celebrate the only treaty to have survived, the Treaty of Waitangi.

A lot of people are of the opinion we should consider an alternative to Waitangi Day.

What do you think?

Monday, February 3, 2014

American business is about maximising shareholder - you don't want any more workers

New Zealand political commentator Chris Trotter. Taken during his address to the Alliance Party conference in October 2007. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

According to a 1983 study undertaken by the German economist, F. Vester, the investment of a billion Deutschemarks in the years 1955-60 produced 1 million jobs. The same amount invested between 1960-65 generated only 400,000 jobs. Between 1965-70, far from generating employment, a billion Deutschemark investment would have eliminated 100,000 jobs. Half-a-million jobs would have been lost if the capital sum was invested between 1970 and 1975.

In other words, the ineluctable trend in modern capitalism is towards job-free growth. Or, as the American economist, Allen Sinai, told the New York Times in 2010: “American business is about maximizing shareholder value. You basically don’t want workers. You hire less, and you try to find capital equipment to replace them.”

Chris Trotter