Go Shane Jones
December 20th, 2011 at 10:00 am by David FarrarI’m liking Shane Jones on the front bench of Labour.
First he says:
Labour MP Shane Jones says his party has to realise that National has the numbers to push through state asset sales, and he will not criticise iwi which wish to invest in them.
Yesterday Mr Jones said that although Labour opposed state asset sales they were now inevitable and iwi wanting to invest in them for commercial reasons should not be pilloried.
He indicated a more pragmatic stance on the issue was ahead as Labour sought to re-build its links with business and enterprises.
I suspect Labour may make the mistake of trying to refight the 2011 election in 2014. I doubt asset sales will be an issue in 2014. They will have occurred, and the sky will not have fallen in. Prices would not have gone up beyond normal, and the only difference is we’ll have less debt, lower dividends plus lower interest payments on the reduced debt and 100,000+ new shareholders in them. I doubt National will promise any further part-sales in 2014, and most people will wonder what the fuss was about.
Anyway today Shane has also said:
Labour’s Shane Jones is back on the front bench and signalling his intention to shake things up by championing mining for job-starved regions.
Jones was one of the winners in Labour’s refresh yesterday, returning to the front bench after a fall from grace over revelations he charged blue movies to his ministerial credit card while a minister in the Helen Clark government.
His return signals his rehabilitation is complete and he is being lined up by new leader David Shearer to take on NZ First leader Winston Peters, who will square off with Labour from the Opposition front benches.
Jones picked up the regional development, associate finance and Maori economic development portfolios and he said yesterday unemployment in provincial New Zealand, responsible for other social ills, would be his big focus.
That meant weighing up job opportunities in “the extractive industries”, including mining, against the party’s environmental message.
Excellent. This is looking to be a far less ideological front bench – and that is a good thing.
Related posts:
- Jones, Carter & Cunliffe
- Maori MPs on Shane Jones
- Where in the world is Shane Jones
- Shane Jones saying sensible stuff
December 20th, 2011 at 10:10 am
It’s good to see independent-minded Maori MPs not being sidelined by Labour.
Labour has taken the Maori vote for granted for decades and has been slow to realise that Maori voters were beginning to notice that National has done far more to settle historical injustices than Labour ever did.
Vote:December 20th, 2011 at 10:13 am
“by championing mining for job-starved regions”,
Yeah I can see that fitting well with an overall Labour mantra of “clean, green, and clever”-
Vote:Either the slogan is a joke, or mining is now clean and green, (cough, cough)
Something will have to give eventually…..
December 20th, 2011 at 10:14 am
So now to complete things we should see the arrival of the ginga whinga from Kapiti fresh from hiding out in New York.
Vote:December 20th, 2011 at 10:15 am
Labour have never been against mining. They were never even against mining on conservation land – they issued a heap of permits to mine the conservation estate. They just drew a line on mining in the most ecologically sensitive areas of the conservation estate which might be irreperably damaged (schedule 4). National were opposed to even that small limitation. It’s misleading to portray it as a debate between pro and anti-mining. Like most ideological differences between Labour and the nats it’s a difference between mining with some regulations and restrictions and a much more laissez faire unregulated (or ‘self-regulated’ which normally amounts to the same thing) approach under National.
Vote:December 20th, 2011 at 10:29 am
…”and signalling his intention to shake things up by championing mining for job-starved regions.”…..
Finally, someone with the guts to say what needs to be said. Kick the wanking Greens for touch & mine the country before some other nation does it for us, by military or economic conquest.
Give that man a DB!
Vote:December 20th, 2011 at 10:30 am
Haha, yes, when people advocate policies that you agree with, that’s “non-ideological”. All of your opinions are just common sense, after all.
Vote:December 20th, 2011 at 10:38 am
Is the Red Flag or whatever it”s called closed for renovations?
Vote:December 20th, 2011 at 10:42 am
So Labour’s “clean, green, clever” lasted, um, 6 days!
Vote:December 20th, 2011 at 10:48 am
Yes Toad….maybe your lot stuck the stickers on the wrong billboards!
Vote:December 20th, 2011 at 10:49 am
Good points you raise there Dickie, and I agree mining is fine as long as it has adequate regulations. National blew it with the shabby way they presented their mining case to the public, so it will be easy does it now on in. Look I wouldn’t worry to much what Shane spouts off about, I chosen to ignore him for the time being. Thank goodness Shearer had the sense to replace him with the very able Phil Tyford as Transport spokesperson. It has to be said Jones was abysmal with that lolly of a portfolio.
Vote:December 20th, 2011 at 10:55 am
toad
It’s always been debatable whether any socialist has come into contact with soap & being “green” is synonymous with being out of touch with reality.
But at least Shane has demonstrated that, despite being associated with Labour, he is clever.
Vote:December 20th, 2011 at 11:06 am
Yep so called self regulated mining works so well, just go and ask the families of the Pike river twenty nine.
Vote:Forgot, the majority of the dead were mere union members.
December 20th, 2011 at 11:21 am
@Richard29 & grumpyoldhori
Before you start to blame National and ‘self regulated mining’.
Vote:Please read:
http://www.whaleoil.co.nz/2010/11/green-politics-and-helen-clark-killed-29-miners/
December 20th, 2011 at 12:01 pm
Richard29
Almost right, but your blinkers got you at the end there. The discussion isn’t about regulated v’s unregulated, it’s about this set of regulations v’s that set. National never suggested unregulated. What they suggested was that schedule 4 land is a hell of a lot of the conservation estate, most of which shouldn’t really be schedule 4. They can live with that, unless there’s something really valuable under that land. They wanted to get a survey done to find out if that was the case (nothing valuable, no argument). If there was something valuable there, they wanted to look at whether the land in question really belonged in schedule 4.
Not that hard, not that scary. Labour (probably more the Greens) did a good job of scare mongering this, and National a very poor job of selling it. The media didn’t really help, but then you can’t really blame the media for doing what the media does – it’s like blaming a sheep dog for rolling in something smelly.
Vote:December 20th, 2011 at 12:57 pm
“I doubt asset sales will be an issue in 2014.”
Vote:Just like they were not a issue in 2008
Just because some thing is rammed through parliament does not mean it is forgotten afterwards
National does not have a mandate 47 % of 68% is not a majority more like a 1/3 even then not all of the voters wanted asset sales but the alternative ,the Labour Party is rather dysfunctional like the people they seem to represent these days. and is showing no signs of improving
December 20th, 2011 at 1:34 pm
Interesting minto57
“National does not have a mandate…”
So when does a government have a mandate?
Vote:Does this government have a mandate to do anything, considering this government doesn’t have a mandate to partly sell assets?
December 20th, 2011 at 1:51 pm
Minto57: not all Labour voters were opposed to partial privatisation of a small number of crown owned entities. Not all Winston First voters either, nor all Maori Party voters. If winning the election isn’t a mandate, then it’s hard to see what is. On balance, more people voted for a John Key led National govt. That government had a clear policy of partial privisation. If people didn’t really want the privitisation, but thought on balance that National’s other policies were more their thing and they could live with privitisation, then that’s still a mandate.
Vote:December 20th, 2011 at 2:20 pm
mandate 1. n. when my choice of party can do what it likes
mandate 2. n. when government I don’t like requires approval by everyone to do anything
Vote:December 20th, 2011 at 3:31 pm
PaulL – Some good points. Communication is so often the key and logic too often gets thrown out the door. Just take the ‘smacking bill’ (even the fact that the bills proponents allowed the opposition to brand it shows the problem). It was a fairly minor common sense law, backed by all the major child protection agencies, that passed with a 93% majority by our elected representatives (including John Key and the entire National party). Yet around 88% of people opposed it in referendum.
So either
A) Our elected representatives are contemptuous of the people they are supposed to serve and hate democracy
or
B) The MPs voting for the bill didn’t explain the it well and the people voting in the referendum didn’t understand the it well.
I tend to subscribe to version B cos I’m a ‘cup half full’ kind of guy. For what it’s worth I believe if they had chosen to proceed National had a democratic electoral mandate for mining. For the same reasons I disagree with Minto57 on assett sales mandate. The difference seems to be that on mining Key weighed up the political costs of mining and felt it was not worthwhile. It’s similar to the decision that Helen Clark made to scrap a low level carbon tax and research levy on farmers in 2002 because some clown decided to drive a tractor up the steps of parliament.
Vote:December 20th, 2011 at 3:55 pm
@Other_Andy
The nasty vindictive headline and comments is a good example of why I choose not to read Whale’s blog on a regular basis, he’s not a well individual. But the argument itself (which looks to be Matthew Hooten’s) is interesting if flawed.
Open cast mining is almost always safer – but is massively damaging to the environment. Not mining is completely safe and has no impact on the environment (but is not so profitable). The fact is that politicians need to balance these three priorities according to their values. National rates resource extraction higher and environmental protection a bit lower, the Greens are the reverse, Labour is somehwre in between. None of them are bad people and I think all of them consider safety to be important.
I don’t think the argument particularly absolves Key or National of exactly the same ‘blood on their hands’ allegations being made given that throughout the mining protests Key kept reassuring people that there would be no open cast mining and that precision, ‘surgical’ underground mining methods would be used – in fact he used examples of many mines set up under Labour as to how it would be done.
Vote:December 20th, 2011 at 4:27 pm
Richard29
The thing that bugs me is, if a party, any party had the guts to allow mining we could have it all. We wouldn’t have to sell state assets to fund education, we could make a fair dent in unemployment & we wouldn’t be running up debt for future generations so that the Warehouse can sell cheap toasters.
Instead it’s hug a tree, think of the snails while conveniently forgetting that a government that enables open cast mining can set the terms to reinstate the land when activity is finished. The land is still land. In a hundred years, which is nothing in geological terms, it is doubtful that anyone could see the difference.
Vote:December 20th, 2011 at 6:02 pm
“The thing that bugs me is, if a party, any party had the guts to allow mining we could have it all. We wouldn’t have to sell state assets to fund education, we could make a fair dent in unemployment & we wouldn’t be running up debt for future generations so that the Warehouse can sell cheap toasters.”
Ok – I’m not that much of an optimist.
For a while…. Except the thing about non renewable resources is that when they are gone they are gone. I would prefer to see the resource extraction sector pay much higher royalties and/or be entirely government owned and contracted out so that the profits remain in New Zealand and are ringfenced into a sovereign wealth fund which pays out annual dividends as education and research scholarships to build the weightless economy that the NZ Institure are promoting.
Operational revenue (fair taxation) should pay for operational expenditure (education, employment etc). One of capital assets, including resouces, shouldn’t be sold down.
Maui gasfield was a massive resource – we extracted and burned pretty much all of it in exchange for one or two decades of slightly cheaper power bills. It really didn’t change the face of NZ – don;t expect a handful of mines to do so.
Vote:December 20th, 2011 at 6:07 pm
nasska: one thing that always bugs me a bit is the tradeoff between mining now and mining later.
The Green (Malthusian) school of thought seems to be that we inevitably run into resource constraints, if you subscribe to that then it makes sense to leave this stuff in the ground until future generations, when it will be worth far more than today.
The countervailing argument is that the price of most commodities drops over time in real terms. In fact, there have been a number of high profile wagers on exactly this point, and so far as I can tell the Malthusians have never won one. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusian_catastrophe and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon%E2%80%93Ehrlich_wager
So my guess would be we’re better to mine this stuff now whilst people want it, bank the money, and use it to provide for our grandchildren’s prosperity. But that means some actual sense from our politicians to bank the money, and some mechanism to correctly charge mining companies for extracting what is currently owned by the entire country. Norway seem to have done well at this, many African dictatorships less well. Australia somewhere in the middle.
Certainly in the case of coal, my feel is that it has a lot of value right now, but in 30 years we’ll be carbon free (not because of global warming, but because it’ll be cheaper to be carbon free – probably nuclear despite NZ’s current objections).
Vote:December 20th, 2011 at 6:52 pm
Richard29
At least you are negotiable on the subject unlike many of the Luddites off & online. It wouldn’t bother me too much who managed the actual mining as long as overall control was tight & reinstatement of the land was guaranteed. As to how the cake gets sliced will I guess come down to the government of the day but I see no problem with ringfencing a sizeable percentage of the profits for worthwhile education & research.
The main thing is to put the brakes on our national debt & get our citizens into worthwhile employment.
PaulL
Agreed we could learn from Norway’s experience in resource management. Thing is there’s got to be a better way of doing things than leaving vast assets in the ground while piling up debt to pay for the groceries. What these assets are actually worth in the future as opposed to now is crystal ball territory.
I’ve opined before that ignoring our potential mineral wealth makes us vulnerable to a hostile military or economic takeover.
As to nuclear, maybe, but I reckon that as Japan’s recent disaster further unfolds selling the idea to the public will get even harder.
Vote:December 20th, 2011 at 8:21 pm
nasska: selling down assets to pay for the groceries doesn’t fit my definition of good management. Current costs come from current income – the costs of running our country must come from taxes. If we don’t want to pay the taxes, then we should reduce costs. If we want the costs, we must increase taxes.
Changing our asset portfolio, however, to reduce our current weighting towards very risky speculation on underground minerals…..well, that I could agree with. But whatever we spend that money on should produce a more balanced, and somehow better, asset portfolio. Measurement of better (as I just finished writing on another thread) is difficult, but at minimum it should have some reasonable certainty of future worth – so pie in the sky infrastructure projects aren’t such a good investment. In fact, almost anything managed by the government would be not such a good investment. Which leaves few options other than maybe an arms-length investment fund that returned only interest after inflation to the government for spending on programs of dubious value.
Vote:December 20th, 2011 at 8:43 pm
PaulL
Definitely correct…we should not be selling assets nor borrowing to pay for the groceries but this is what is effectively happening. Up until now it has been borrowing….now despite whatever spin is put on it assets are being put under the hammer. If we are going to sell anything we may as well sell our underground assets while increasing NZ’s income & hopefully offering employment at least as an interim measure.
Quite like the idea of an arms length investment fund giving a reasonable return.
Vote:December 20th, 2011 at 8:56 pm
Richard29
“National rates resource extraction higher and environmental protection a bit lower, the Greens are the reverse….”
You will find that the Greens are against mining full stop, especially when it comes to evil hydrocarbons. While they might not have stated this openly, the Greens have so far protested against EVERY attempt to mine ANYTHING (Oil, gold, iron sand etc.)
As for National, this will always make their focus on resource extraction higher and environmental protection a bit lower. You can’t have an policy that offers more environmental protection than ‘no mining, no oil exploration’.
“I don’t think the argument particularly absolves Key or National of exactly the same ‘blood on their hands’ allegations being made given that throughout the mining protests Key kept reassuring people that there would be no open cast mining and that precision, ‘surgical’ underground mining methods would be used – in fact he used examples of many mines set up under Labour as to how it would be done.”
What key said was:
Using techniques such as “surgical mining” made it possible to access valuable mineral deposits without desecrating landscapes. “Under modern mining techniques, it’s not these big opencast wounds on the landscape that results; it’s a surgical incision in the land.”
Mr Key said the Pike River underground coalmine near Greymouth was an example of modern mining practices that had a minimal impact on the landscape.
‘Surgical mining’ is used all over the world, that doesn’t mean that it was done correctly at Pike River. Key referred to Pike River as an example of “surgical mining”. He did not mention it because it was done correctly.
In the case of Pike River it wasn’t done properly. The mining company had been under pressure to change the design to satisfy the demands of the ’conservationists’. In hindsight, the mining company should have refused to comply.
However…..
Would that have stopped the mine?
Would Labour have found another company to sell the concession to?
Let’s wait for the Pike River Royal Commission.
Vote: