Leighton Smith Podcast #242 - June 5th 2024 - Oliver Hartwitch

twenty forty for the economy to be righted? And then from seemingly out of nowhere, we found ourselves talking about what is known as the delectable lives multiculturalism, and that's a very interesting little segment. Then at the back end of two forty two, we look at the lost generation,

lost in the underbelly of a dysfunctional, fatherless society. A psychologist reports from two thousand and nine, when things were bad and with considerable foresight, predicts what will take place if nothing's done about it, and today we live with the consequences of inaction. Don't miss it. But first a quick word on something that I know that you're curious about, the next US president. The jury verdict in the Trump

case came out the day after last week's podcast. That was frustrating, But there has been and there will be so much written and said on the case. It requires what you might call a record setting length podcast on my part in order to address it. But here is my brief take. The case will be studied in law classes forever. It will in the end go down as the most corrupt court room in American history, with the judge and the prosecutor setting new lows, and I mean

really new lows in legal ethics. But I want to quote you a little bit of a little bit of detail there was. As we've heard since that decision was announced, we've heard how much money the Trump campaign has raised. But it doesn't stop there. Trump campaign says it raised fifty three million within a day of his New York verdict. The ultra wealthy Republican donors are rallying behind the former US President Donald Trump following his historical trial and criminal conviction.

But there is much more. There was an announcement made on my phone as I as I was working this morning, and I'll get to that in a second, because it follows on from this. Among the billionaires who have been turning and supporting Trump are Silicon Valley investor David Sachs, who posted on X that there is now only one issue in this election, whether the American people will stand for the USA becoming a banana republic. And he's right on target, over and above what matters about Trump, That's

the most important thing. On June sixth, mister Sachs and fellow investor Cheamus I don't know how to pronounce his second name, are planning to host a fundraiser for Trump in San Francisco. Attendees are reportedly being asked to contribute

as much as three hundred thousand dollars each. Now, while I was while I was working, my phone came up with an X release that fundraiser had sold out not just for three hundred thousand an individual, but for five hundred thousand four a couple, and they expect during the course of the function to raise many many more millions.

Now the list of billionaires who are racing to his support is shocking a lot of people because, especially when it comes to Silicon Valley, because they're turning in their droves because they realize finally that they were backing the wrong horse all along. Now there's another article I want to make a quick reference to, and and it's sort of personal, and it's a bit lighting and in its tone for this simple reason. From a site by James

Howard Kunstler. It's almost as if the principles, the prosecutors, and the judge were performing for their political audience with a wink and a nod and a stage whisper. Watch this as they ignore yet another fundamental element of American due process. The ninnies of Biden world seem to not understand that by subjecting mister Trump to a kangaroo court, they've made him the kind of outdoor that Americans revere

above every other archetypal hero. I just got to say here at this point, the first hero in my life was Robin Hood. He is the new Robin Hood, the people's outlaw, with Joe Biden relegated as the wicked sir guy, of Gisbon, master of foul play, and servant of the

evil Regent Prince John in Braggan's Barack Obama. The galvanizing moment of this melodrama was not the verdict of the judge one Merchant's Kangaroo Corral of a Court, but the next day in the White House, when Joe Biden was asked to comment on it, as he shuffled away from the podium, halted, turned and smirked silently at the cameras, a gesture that is sure to live in infamy. If you didn't see that, you need to if you ever get a chance, because it's just picture has a million words.

The fund should really kick in when the judge gets to sentenced Trump the outlaw on July eleven, a few days before the Republican Convention, et cetera, et cetera. Now, in a sane world, of course, the US Supreme Court would be entreated to adjudicate this gross insult to due process, as spelled out in Section one of the fourteenth Amendment. And this is where I'm going to terminate it in a second, because this is just one example, but it's a prime example of the corruption of the court here

is Section one of the Fourteenth Amendment. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States. Nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property with our due process of law, nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. Which you might have noticed that this is not a sane world, at least not these days. Now. The point being is the prosecution and the judge work together to

smash Section one of the fourteenth Amendment. And that's only one example corruption beyond belief. Now in a moment, Oliver Hartwitch, now some words from a very happy customer of wet and forget on window which I purchased some window Witch recently, and I'm thrilled with the product. I cleaned the ground level of our home, the big conservatory and the glass balustrades in about forty five minutes, nothing short of brilliant results.

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in a nutshell. It is I would say, not very ambitious, which is also perhaps a bit disappointing if you consider that this is, of course the new government's first budget, and usually first budgets are the most ambitious of them all, because that's when they still think they have a mandate to be a bit more radical, to try a few more things, and then usually governments actually lose that ambition

gradually over the years. So for a first budget, I would have liked to see a bit more ambition to bring spending levels back underc because right now they aren't.

wish to slash government spending. We now have a government budget delivered by a National led government that promises to spend thirty three percent of GDP, and yet people are going crazy over how austerity driven this budget is, when in fact they're spending four percent of GDP more than the Adern government did in their first Well Being budget.

And that's what I find astonishing. Actually, So when Adurn spends twenty nine percent, people think this is really generous, and when Nicola Willis spends thirty three percent, people say this is actually quite austere. And what I would have liked to see in this budget now is actually a pathway back to where we were before overd and ideally where we were in twenty seventeen before Adurn took over. But the pathway to that physical normality is exceedingly long.

So if you have to wait fourteen years just to go back to where we were in twenty nineteen, I don't think that is very ambitious. The other thing I would just mention is actually we have seen enormous spending

increases over the last few years. We just looked into them the other day and found that in twenty nineteen we of course projected where we would be today, and so we could actually compare these figures now and realize that, for example, in health, we are currently spending eight billion dollars more then we would have anticipated just five years ago.

And then you ask yourself, okay, so we're spending eight billion dollars more in health even compared to what we thought we would, And yet where is all of that money and what has it achieved? Because I haven't actually seen any great improvements in health delivery. What we have seen is of course a massive reorganization of the health sector, where we got ready for DHBs, where we created a new our Health authority, where we instituted a lot new

kind of organizational structures without actually seeing any results. So if you're asking where I would have liked to see an emphasis in this budget is actually trying to curb all of these structures, all of this spending that doesn't yield any results, and in doing so then point a clearer pathway back to physical normality.

They created an almighty mess in fiscal policy. The left a lot of pistol cliffs in the budget, meaning they basically said we're going to fund stuff, but only really funded them for the next year or two, and so they left fiscal holes everywhere across government policy for the new government to clean up. So, coming into that situation now and with just a year actually in government, it is difficult for any government to turn this around. And I understand that a lot of the changes required will

also take years to think welfare spending. The previous government did not actually enforce welfare rules, eligibility rules, and we filled the welfare roles with people who shouldn't have been there. That is enormously costly, and to turn that around will take a long time. You probably can't do that overnight. I mean, for all the things done over six years, you can't expect them to fix it in a couple

of months. But I would have still liked to see a clearer pathway out of this mess and a clearer ambition to saying, look, we really want to go back to where we once were as a country.

twenty seventeen. We are now at a level of about sixty five thousand. They cut about two or maybe three thousand, but there's a long way to go on until we go back to the levels we previously had.

to about four and a half thousand. So we have more bureaucrats in that ministry that we have schools in the country. And I think you would probably find it easy to cut back a little bit there.

at any at any strength or level. Of strength twenty forty. Well, you mentioned fourteen years, So fourteen or fifteen years from now, that's what we're aiming at. And I couldn't agree with you more that if we're looking that far ahead before we can expect any real improvements. Then I repeat something that somebody said to me just recently in answer to a question. I said, how bad is it? And the answer was very very, very bad or words that meant

the same. I don't remember exactly the quote, but extremely bad was the state of the.

by low attendance rates. So only forty six percent of our school students are now attending school regularly, meaning at least ninety percent of the time. We have seen our results in international studies go back over decades. So think

of PISA and Timson Pearls that's going backwards. And we now also have a new generation of teachers recently revealed in a study by the ends at IR in New Zealand Institute of Economic Research, where a huge proportion of our young teachers have actually failed maths in English in their own school time. So if you want to rebuild a system with that kind of personnel, it's going to be hard because we have plenty of teachers now in our schools who have probably never seen what a good

school looks like, not even in their own experience. So all of these reforms that we're doing now that my colleague Michael Johnson is working on now as chair of Erica Stanford's Ministerial Advisory Group, they are the right things to do, except you can't expect results overnight. They will take years to work their way through the system. I'm not saying it will take until twenty forty, but you

can't expect an overnight improvement in our education results. That will take a long time because the system is fundamentally broken.

front of a classroom. You look at the way we're teaching literacy and numeracy, and we know again from our own research that for decades we've been going in the wrong direction on both and we now have about forty to fifty percent of school leavers leaving school functionally illiterate and enumerate. What else of the system is not working? Well, we could talk about what students do after leaving school.

Our vocational education system is broken after the forced amalgamation of the politics into poking on and what it is ours that has been We could then talk about a university system, and again we hosted a symposium just a few weeks ago at the Initiative we talked about the state of university education New Zealand, and it is broken on practically every level. You talk about free speech, academic freedom, and universities. You talk about the financial financial situation of universities.

It is not a pretty picture. So no matter what aspect of the education system you're looking at. It is under enormous pressure and it will take a long time to fix it.

to learn our school. And the flip side of the curriculum, of course, is the assessment system that also needs to be reformed, because at the moment, the assessment system is geared towards ensuring that every students enough points to get a certificate at the end, whether they learned anything before or not. I mean, all of these areas are areas of reform right now. So Erica Stanford is doing exactly the right things across the whole board of education problems.

But even with the best efforts, we shouldn't expect miracles from America Stanford. I'm a huge fan of Erica Stanford's work. Don't get me wrong, and I think she's doing exactly the right things. But I think it would be unfair to measure her by successes that she would have had in a year or two, because from where we are coming from, this is going to be a very, very long process.

of common sense. Common sense is not common anymore, and for so many of those students who become teachers, they have no idea about basics and common sense lit alone getting a decent enough of education be able to teach the curriculum whatever it might.

enormously positive results. So it's probably now the best school anywhere you can find in England, and it's based on common sense, on actually teaching the basics and teaching them well, i'll give you another exam. But we visited Ireland last year with a delegation of the New Zealand Initiative and we had a session with the Irish Education Ministry in Dublin and they talked us through their basic strategies and

what they're trying to achieve. They taught us how they measure success and how they're tracking their interventions, and you know, we all sat there and thought, well, wouldn't it be nice to hear something like that from our own education ministry because there was none of this kind of modernist nonsense that you often get, and none of the languages that you wouldn't even understand because they sounds so sociological.

It was just good old common sense and trying to make sure that their students get a decent education that they learn how to read and write and do maths and get a basic science education, and then tracking the progress of their schools. It was just so refreshing to hear that from a ministry because we haven't had that kind of conversation with a ministry for years.

a moment longer. There are teachers who have no idea about the way that she approaches things as a principal of a school, but she outlines the way that she trained some of those teachers that came to her school, And the best part of it all, as far as I was concerned, was right at the very end of the discussion where she said the first thing she says to a new teacher that arrives, sits them down and talks to them and says, everything you learned at university,

forget it, and then retrains them. Famili, Do we not just need a handful even of principles who are capable of taking that approach.

once had it. I mean today, when you look at teacher education that happens predominantly at our universities, these teachers are getting sociology lessons basically, but they're never really taught practically what it means to stand in front of a classroom. So we produced a report at the initiative last year that was by my colleague Michael Johnston with his or

researcher Stephanie Martin. And Stephanie is a teacher herself, and she writes up in that introductory chapter of the report, which you can find on our website, her experience of studying to become a teacher at the University of Auckland and then realizing how useless that all education was once she actually stood in front of first students for the first time. So we've got a problem. It shouldn't be

actually left to the principles to undo the damage. Ideally we would actually provide our teachers a decent education in the first place.

where the teacher's actually in practical experience. And from what I've heard, a number of Auckland schools are now thinking about pulling out of university teacher education by organizing their own training courses.

about and now they're happening. So for the first time, really in twelve years of doing education, working at the initiative, I'm really optimistic.

make your pistal consolidation job harder for yourselves. And the answer I always got from the government was, look, promises when we campaigned, we now have to deliver because otherwise we'll lose all our credibility or political credibility just half a year into the job. And I understand that political calculus to a degree. I would say though that I think most people would be understanding if you told them, Look,

we just took over. We found all the physical cliffs and physical rules, and yes we promised you tax belief, but we found a situation that is much much worse and even we anticipated, and therefore we can't deliver it just yet. This will have to wait maybe until next year or the year after. I think people would have understood that. So that's the political side of things. On

the economic side of things, I think it's clearer. We are running the second largest structural deficit in the developed world. There's only one country that has a higher structural deficit than us in that's the United States. There's a small difference between New Zealand and the United States because the United States can print US dollars and somehow the world things that US dollars are still useful. Therefore they get

away with this fiscal perflicacy. When Easiland, the situation is different. We can't get away with structural deficits. And I should probably explain what structural deficits are. So basically, a structural deficit is a deficit. Yet you would have in a normal year, So when the economy is not particularly booming, when it's not in particular in a particular recession, but just in a normal year, whether your taxes and your

spending actually end up. And on that measure, we are currently running a massive structural deficit, and that is just not sustainable because it would mean that if you do this long enough, the country will go broke. Therefore, I would have prioritized consolidating the budget, consolidating our finances and basically closing this fiscal deficit and the structural deficit before even contemplating any text cuts. So that's one thing to

look out. There is another way of looking at it economically, which again perhaps makes the government's case a bit more and that is the text inaxation issue, because actually, let's face it, what we got now wasn't even a real tax cut in that sense. It was basically just restoring the tax brackets to a state where they would have

been had they been adjusted to normal inflation. And that I think makes good sense in principle, and I think we should probably make this a general rule that every year the tax brackets automatically get adjusted by say, the consumer price index. And that would also make this less political because everybody would know this is happening on an annual basis, and every year we get them adjusted just

in line with inflation. So I think that would make sense to actually move to such a system in the long run, well in the medium term hopefully, But right now I would have on balance come down to keeping the tax brackets just for this year as they are because of his Scoo. Situation is so dire and we probably can't afford as if tax adjustments, even they are not even amounting to much of a tax cut.

How do we how do we? I mean, how can how can you as a Prime minister, mister of finance, as part of the government, how could you say this is what we're going to do, This is how we're going to achieve it, and by twenty forty we should be back on track. When you have no idea what's going to come between now and then, and maybe you should be taking precautionary measures to cover for that makes.

occur quite regularly in New Zealand. So I think there are lots of risks on the downside. On the upside, I mean, what could happen that really surprised us? I mean, I think suddenly getting a splurge of productivity, probably not. Are we suddenly seeing all the conflicts in the global economy disappear between the West and China, Russia and the others. Probably not. So I think there are way more risks actually on the downside and or modeling doesn't take that

into account properly. And by the way, I also think we should always leave a bit more room for maneuver for these external shocks when they occur, because they are of course from memory. I think we spend about twenty thirty percent of GDP on the cleanup of the Canterbury earthquakes. So just imagine the Wellington Ford line goes off or the Alpine fault, and then you would look at an event of similar magnitude, if not larger. So I would

ideally like to leave some buffer for such events. And that's another reason why we should actually try to keep government debt as a percentage of GDP much lower than it is in countries like the US or Europe, because they don't have these extra risks added to their economies. And that's why we I think, have to be even more cautious here.

If we had continued on the path that they put us on, or they were intending to put us on back in the previous administration, I fear the country would have been lost forever. But at the moment I'm questioning whether or not there need needs to be far more done to overcome this son, far more done on a if necessary, confrontational level, to overcome the issues.

at the time, especially VIISA of the Australia. Were there many more unsolved problems, I would say, And it seemed to me, at least in contrast with Australia much more harmonious as it was in twenty twelve, where everybody got on and where the basic issues were resolved, they were of course some still lingering injustices, because you could actually look at, for example, education rates and compare them across different ethnic lines and find that Mari and Pacific Our

students were on average far less successful at school than Parking Are students, and especially Asian students. But I think in order to fix these discrepancies, you would have focused on the issues at hand, namely the education system. Instead, what the government did from twenty seven onwards was to turn every such socioeconomic problem into a race issue, and I think in doing so it actually divided the country enormously,

and that is really difficult to mend together again. Know that we've had a change of government, but in principle I agree with you, this country is divided. I'm just not sure whether a direct confrontational approach would help us, or whether this would actually drive the country even further apart. I wish we could just work on issues where there are discrepancies, like education, fix these issues, and I hope that by doing that we would make the overlying race issues slowly disappear.

so that's great. And when I look at Switzerland, what I particular like is the way the country runs from the bottom up. There's hardly anyone in the Swiss federal government. Do you know how many ministers they have in burn.

have the final word. And I think that's a wonderful model. But the other thing that works well about Switzerland is the decentralization. The decentralization. We're in a country the size

of Canterbury with just over nine million people. They have twenty six cantons and two thousand councils, and each and each council has its own income tax system, so in effact, you have more than two thousand different income tax systems and Switzerland and our sounds crazy, of course when you talk about it here in New Zealanders typically say, oh, this must be a recipe, recipe for disaster. Actually it is not, because it works. It has actually kept taxes

quite low in Switzerland. It has made sure that Swiss local government is responsive to the population and that people are actually treated like customers by their councils, which you couldn't say of council's relationships with New Zealanders. And so I think structurally Switzerland works so much better. So I think we should study this system a lot more and try to figure out what we could copy from them.

I would just say one word of caution, you cannot copy Switzerland because Switzerland has grown like this over centuries literally, and there are some structural elements of the Swiss experience that you can't replicate here either. So, for example, in Switzerland, you have a society that is maybe not polarized, but definitely fragmented. So you have German speakers, you have French speakers, Italian speakers, and Romance speakers, so you've got four languages

in the country. You have different religious affiliations, so you've got strong Catholic parties still in strong Protestant parts, and then you've got other who are not even Christian at all. And then of course you've got the typical political divisions left wing, right wing, centrist, green, whatever, and so you put all of these different identities together and what you have is a country that is fragmented in so many

different lines. Again, sounds like a recipe for disaster, but actually, in a Swiss case, what it has done is it is ensured that things are decided locally because you could never find agreement among all of them at a central level. And that has actually created a system of political governance that has worked extremely well for Switzerland. But it's really

based on these factors. When you look at New Zealand, yes we have different ethnic clients, but probably not quite to the degree that the Swiss habits as a totally fragmented society. And nevertheless, as I said, it is a system worth learning from, and.

What contribution to the country can they possibly make? Because I'm a believer in the fact that a country is and should have control of who comes into it, and they should be people that are worthy of it, who can contribute to the country and the rest of the population. And I'm certainly aware that there are a lot of people here who can't you say.

by the way, these are net figures. I mean, there are way more people arriving, but there are also people leaving. But the net intake is one hundred and forty and I wanted to know, actually, how does this work. You occasionally read stories in the newspapers where they say this

is a massive net brain drain. So we're losing our best qualified people and they are taking over across the tessment to have a new career in Australia, and at the same time we're getting relatively poorly qualified migrants in. And so what we actually have as a net movement

as a net brain drain. And Bryce is looking into this right now, but I haven't got the final figures from him yet, but from everything that he has told me so far, it does look, indeed like the loss of skills is there and we are not getting the

same qualifications back into the country. Bryce is also looking into the source of our new migrants and memory I think in the last year the number of migrants from European countries was I think only twelve percent of the total, and the majority, the vast majority of our migrants now are originating from Asian countries, and I mean, that seems to be the experience anyway when you're looking around, especially Auckland Auguland is slowly turning into a more ethnically Asian

sy team. It's not the same, of course in other parts of the country, and especially the South Island is still a bit of a different story. But there seems to be definitely a changing ethnic composition of parts of the country and as also from our early research, a change in the skill set of the population that is linked to our migration patterns.

So I did write a short paper for the Australian Productivity Commission when I worked there arguing that actually, when you're looking at Australia, lots of Australians are claiming that Australia is a multicultural society, and I actually, no, it isn't it is a multi ethnic society because there is one, or at least at the time, there was one Australian culture where people are told, no matter where you're from, you leave all that baggage behind. You become Australian, you

become one of us. You live in the suburbs, your kids will be intermarry with each other, and after two or three generations you will be basically indistinguishable from anyone else in this country because you have all kind of lived together, and you've had your kids had children together, and therefore you become Australian. And by the way, on arrival will make you sign an Australian value statement where

you sign up to our basic roots. And so I thought this whole idea of Australian multiculturalism was a misnomal Becauseustralian culture, at least at the time I wrote this paper, I think around twenty nine or ten, it was defined that there was such a thing as an Australian culture, and then it doesn't matter was ethnic community you belong to. You can have your ethnic community and your ethnic identity, but the culture was clearly defined as that of a

Western liberal democracy and I liked that concept. And by the way, this was how Australia at least always worked. So think back even to the times Australian settlement. I mean, Australia got migrants mainly from the United Kingdom, but people who in the United Kingdom wouldn't have got on. So

you got Catholics and Protestants and Irishmen and Englishmen. And basically the only way that Australia could work at the time was to tell all of them, look, we know about your conflicts you had back home, but they belonged to where you came from, and you are not allowed to parade them around here. Your idea is to become Australian. And it's worked again. And after the war, think of

the Greek migration wave into Australia. I saw statistics at the time about the prevalence of Greek orthodox as a denomination in Australia, and that basically lasted about two generations of Greek migration into Australia and then the integration, they became indistinguishable from the rest of society. So I think we should really be careful how we are calling these things.

Is it multiculturalism. I think if it's really multiculturalism and you've got different cultures living side by side, it's a recipe for disaster. There is something that all people in the country should agree on, and these are the foundations of society. That we've got equal rights for men and women, that we have no problem no matter what sexual orientation you have. You can have any religion or none. This is all part of living in a free Western society.

And if you can sign up to that, you're welcome. But you are not allowed to bring any other culture that is incompatible with these basic values, because that would be a recipe for disaster and for driving societies apart.

are the basic pillars on which our society rests. And then it doesn't matter the color of your skin or what you believe. And when you come into the country, you basically sign up to that. And the Australians actually literally make you sign up to these values by putting

this Australian value statement to every migrant. You have to sign this to get a visa, and that I think sends a very clear signal to newcomers that yes you have come and yes you're welcome here, but there are some basic rules that we would expect you to live by.

just leads to the segregation of society. And by the way, if you want to see an example of where that's gone wrong, just look at Europe, look at what's happening in France, look at Germany, look at parts of Britain. The segregation of society that we see in parts of Europe is something that I wouldn't want to see replicated here.

then over the years I extended to especially Turkey. So these people came in. They were called guest workers, and the idea was, as the name suggests, that there are guests in the country and after a few years they would leave and disappear and go back home to their countries where they had come from. And they didn't, and in fact they had children and their children had children.

So suddenly, by the nineteen eighties nineties there was serious talk in German of guest workers of the third generation. And I think it is ludicrous. If your family has been in a country for fifty or sixty years, and if you're now the third generation of those so called guest workers, you're no longer a guess at that stage

you should belong to society. But mainstream society had never signaled to them that they were supposed to be there for the long term, and therefore they were always told, well, actually, you're not really one of us, and we don't expect you to become one of us, because in the end

you're guests and we expect you to leave again. And I think that was again the wrong policy to take, because you would have ideally practiced, for example, what the Australians do, where they say, okay, you have arrived now, and now we're making sure that you become Australian. In the same way, the Germans could have said, actually, you have arrived now and we're trying to make sure that you actually learned German and become part of mainstream society here.

But they didn't. They always pretended and kept up this fiction that at some stage she would just disappear. And while they kept up the fiction, they allowed them to form parallel societies. So you've got whole suburbs now of German cities where they basically have their parallel infrastructure, where everything is Turkish and where you wouldn't find it a

word of German spoken. What I find interesting, by the way, is when you look at this experience, you can find that the first generation was perfectly integrated, because that was a generation that worked. They find found jobs in the factories, they had German colleagues, They learned the language because they

wanted to interact with their colleagues. And so the first generation of Turkish Mirgrants was by some measures better integrated than their children and grandchildren are today because mainstream society allowed them to segregate and form parallel social structures. And again it just shows you what you have to do to integrate newcomers. The best form of integration for newcomers is through the labor market because it forces people to

learn the language of their colleagues. It forces them to actually pay for their own households, so they're not aligned on benefits and in that way they become part of mainstream society. Once you give up on that, and once you actually push them away out of mainstream society, you are asking for trouble down the liner. That's where many European countries are.

I think they finished with just two MPs. It might not be that bad, but I wouldn't be surprised if in the end we just have maybe thirty or forty Conservative MPs left. Now he can't really run a proper opposition all of that, and they will be crushed by perhaps more than five minute Labor MPs. So this will be an extraordinary situation that we haven't really hadn't Britain for a long time.

I mean Margaret Thatcher was once asked after leaving office what was her biggest achievement, and her response was Tony Blair, because she argued that she had actually forced the British Labor Party so much to the right to accept most of her basic settings of the British economy that it didn't really matter that there was a change of government in nineteen ninety seven from John Major to Tony Blair

and Ny Margaret Thatcher was right. But what has happened since is, of course that the Labor Party has had a massive shift to the left, especially of course previously under Jeremy Corbyn as later, but even now with Kiir Starmer. It is a far cry from where it used to

be under Tony Blair and even under Gordon Brown. So I think we are now looking at the prospect of a seriously left leaning government governing Britain over the next five years, and that will be quite a turning point for the country.

three years. The country is very unsafe. Look. I watched a video, short video that somebody took on their camera of a guy in San Francisco the middle of the day walking down what looked like a main street. There weren't a lot of people, about plenty of traffic walking down on main street. Who got jumped on by four It could have even been five I couldn't quite make

it out. Gangsters who were dressed in hoodies and the whole thing who kicked the proverbial out of him and took everything he had, jumped in, jumped in their car and drove off the middle of the day.

Daily Telegraph, which is one of my favorite papers. I read comments now under practically every article saying things like I'm a lifelong Tory voter and I've had it with that party and I've been voting for the Tories for forty or fifty years, but in this coming election they will not have my vote. The Tory parties fourteen years in office have been disastrous, with few exceptions. I think the one exception being Michael Gove's education reforms is probably

the only positive legacy that they're leaving behind. But the rest of those fourteen years, starting with David Cameron and then continuing with Teresa May, then Boris Johnson, List Trusts Bishi Sonak, it's been a disaster for the country. Actually they did nothing. Actually their spending went up. They are spending more than Tony Blair ever did. They didn't do any of the things that they promised. They are still going on with high speed railway links to Birmingham and

other places. What is the legacy of the Tory government? Yes, and what was the promise when they started? So they started with all sorts of wonderful marketing slogans under David Cameron. And I mean I worked there until two thousand and eight when Cameron was opposition leader and we were in a thing than quite closely linked to him, and even at the time I thought, well this is all a lot of marketing talk, but not much substance because they

were not actually talking much policy anymore these days. They were focused on just rebuilding the image of the party. They gave it a new logo. Gone was market such as torture Freedom, and it was replaced by a left leaning tree that children could have painted. It was all it was all appearance, it was all pr it was all marketing, and I think basically that's what gutted the Tory Party and led to them spending fourteen years in

government not really knowing who they are anymore. And I see that as a problem not just for the Tory Party but for many center right parties around the world, where they have actually put the slogans ahead of decent policy development. And that worries me.

It's interesting to keep books that make predictions to see just how the authors have, how successful they've been, how good they are, and whether they're worth willing and you learn you actually learn something from the approach that authors take when you when you see a history of correct predictions or even one major one. We don't teach history in schools, and here we are back on education while

I am so, let's give it a miss. RBNZ governor says eventually monetary policy will win the day end quote, beating ordinary kiwi's and blames overseas factors. On the very same day, inflation fell in the UK to two point three percent. Now that's Robert McCulloch from the University of Auckland, but there are others making similar comments. There's been a bit of a bit of a sour taste in the mouth lately from the governor of the Reserve Bank, and you are well familiar with it.

New Zealand are homemade. They are still the result of the extraordinary amount of money that the Reserve Bank created during the OVID years fifty five billion dollars that flooded our markets, that drove up domestic prices, and I think that is the main story behind. On the other thing, where the Reserve Bank should probably just acknowledge some responsibilities and the enormous losses to the taxpayer that they have

caused in pursuing these policies. So we are currently looking at about eleven billion dollars that the taxpayer has to spend on recapitalizing the Reserve Bank of New Zealand because for all the money printing activities, the Reserve Bank was indemnified from by the Minister of Finance at the beginning, meaning that any losses that they incurred could be passed on to the taxpayer. And that's what's happening right now.

So the Reserve Bank's performance actually in these COVID years, I think deserves much closer stroordiny and I think maya kulpa from the Reserve Bank governor would be appropriate.

Roger wrote a column and once again asked whether the Reserve Bank's policies on prudential regulations the regulations for the banks were properly argued. And I would have thought, under normal circumstances, it was such a mild column. There was nothing polemical about it. Nothing should have followed from it. Instead, what happened, and it was revealed by Jeanne Tripsheney in

the Herald. The Reserve Banks governor then brought Nima to the CEOs and chairs of our largest banks and complained about that column and basically told the banks you are members of the New Zealand Initiative and why are you supporting an organization that writes columns for the Herald like that?

And he wrote a letter to the editor which was some then printed in the New Zealand Herald last Saturday, and he made the same points publicly as well, referring back to the membership of the banks of the Initiative. And when I saw all of that and read this in a herald, I was alarmed because I thought, first of all, you're the Reserve Bank governor. You should be able to live with criticism, and especially if it's not polemical.

It was not personal, it was just a disagreement on a policy matter, So why are you not able to live with that level of public debate? And secondly, and perhaps was disturbing. The banks that he sent the letter to are the same banks, of course, that are being regulated by the Reserve Bank, So to send them a letter and tell them, look, we've just been criticized by

the initiative. You are members of that initiative. And then between the lines, do you think it's a wise idea to be members of the initiative when they're writing articles that are so critical of us? I thought that at a sour aftertaste, a Reserve Bank governor shouldn't behave like But I mean, you have to be careful when you're regulating an industry, when you're then telling the industry what they have to do things that you are actually not

responsible for. I mean, he's not regulating them for the articles that we write. And therefore I was concerned. And then on Friday last week, the Minister of Finance revealed in a press conference that I had sent her and the chair of the Reserve Bank a letter to just make these points and now we will see what happens and what follows after that. But I was not impressed by the approach taken by the Reserve Bank on that matter.

that's what the Court of conducts as well. Then I would like to see the Reserve Bank behave like that, and by actually putting pressure on members of the Initiative to effectively withdraw their membership from an organization that criticizes the Reserve Bank. I don't think it complies with their own court of conduct and actually should be unacceptable in a rule of law based democracy to have a regulator behave like.

Zealand to international capital. We are one of the most restrictive countries when it comes to capital imports to foreign liked investment, and we are shooting our in the foot because we need that capital and we need that investment not just because we need the money, but we need

to be linked into international value chains. We need to have access to these value chains in order to lift on productivity and by the way, once we've got the capital here, that will create growth, opportunities, jobs, And if you want to see an example of a country that works along those lines, look at Ireland. They became rich out of foreign direct investment, and I think we should

be trying to do the same. And that means basically getting rid of Overseas Investment Office and our Overseas Investment Act. If you want to keep any of this just limited to national security concerns, but otherwise open the floodgates to capital, that's what New Zealand needs. The second thing I would do, and that links us back to the discussion we had earlier on Switzerland. I would love to abolish or counsel rights system and replace it with a local income tax.

The way that would work for growth and productivity is input because currently councils will always get the same amount of tax revenue council rates revenue, because it doesn't matter whether the council performs, whether the council's economy performs, whether the businesses in the council's area are successful, you will always get the same revenue regardless. There are no incentives for the council to be good for its local economy under that system. Once you replace this with a local

income tax, you get a completely definit incentive structure. Then a council would get more tax revenue if people have higher incomes, if they generate more growth, if they generate more wealth. And therefore, I think once you change the system towards a Swiss tile local income tax, you will see councils bending over backwards to make it possible for companies to grow and invest. I have some very practical

examples in mind. I recently spoke to a CEO of a small company that tried to build a small factory, and they've been trying that since twenty eighteen. Cost the Council's been an absolute nightmare. So practically every step along the way, the council asks for twenty more clarifications than each time they ask for twenty clarifications, you spend an average of ten thousand dollars on each bullet point answering

it with consultants. Now, imagine the council at an incentive an interest in getting this company this new factory off the ground. I think the council would ask fewer questions, they would streamline the whole process because they would have an interest in getting the factory up and running so that they could generate text revenue for the council. And I think in that way we would create a lot more growth, would probably create a lot more housing as well. And if I had this magic wand I would do

these two things at once. So abolish any rules on FDI or a direct investment and changing the way that we find as councils so that they have a reason to go for growth.

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is only available from pharmacies and health stores. Always read the label and users directed, and if symptoms persist, see your healthcare professional. Farmer Broker Auckland. Welcome to the mail room for podcast two hundred and forty two, missus producer, I would like you to lead. If you don't mind.

and dispersed amongst the insightful questions you ask. I'm usually in a state of anticipation as you poke holes in the fabric of current reality and tease out and expose the pieces of information each guest may have to further unpick the powers that Bee's masterful plan to continually enslave mankind in a beehive mentality. For this and the information imparted by your refusal to embrace a woke or meronic dumbed down, politically correct narrative.

But the shock of realizing Australia just now legislated for its implementation galvanized me into sharing that letter with as many people as possible for being that watchman for encroachments on our freedom. Again, I thank you from Kevin.

I've decided what the problem is the problem is that there are too many people who have no idea what really is going on because they restrict themselves to their own particular format without and I've had this discussion with so many people over over a long period of time. If you're reading material that comes via media that shuts down any objection to the narrative of the day or the moment, or the year or the lifetime, then you're going to be ignorant of what might really be going

on because you can't make a judgment call. All you're doing is group thinking and being spoon fed, which is really done. And I've had a couple of those in interviews in the not too distant past. If I may say from Chester Laateon just wanted to say I listened to Uriel Newman last week and thought that she was truly brilliant. It just saddens me that she is ignored by mainstream media in this country as she delivers her message intelligently and thoughtfully. She covered the issues read the

treaty and general topics around it with great clarity. When the Herald were running their radio ads about how they quote told both sides of the story those quote, I put in a complaint to the Broadcasting Standards Authority suggesting that no, they didn't it attached several of Muriel's newsletters as proof, only to be told that my complaint did not reach the threshold where they would or could take action. Spare me. You're up against it, aren't.

is a lesson from when the child is five. They don't see it as a discipline by the time they are twelve years old, because it is something that is ingrained in them right from the time they enter the school. The article detailed four pillars of the Marsden Way. The first pillar is the standardized core syllabus which all teachers follow. The second pillar is the systematic way in which all

teachers are to teach. The third pillar is the structured system by which all students are assessed and the fourth pillar is the consistent drumming of good civics and citizenship into all students. These four pillars show that Manisha Grizzuola's success is due to the clarity and uniformity of expectations she has set for all teachers, students and parents. I loved it when she said in your podcast that we need to train and discipline kids while they are young

because quote that little defiance becomes swearing tomorrow. How true. Just recall those disrespectful New Zealand students brazenly swearing at David Seymour in public. We need more Miniesia Grizzolas, not just in Australia, but in New Zealand too.

We don't have to do this, It's not in our best interest. Look how we copied the deregulated power market and now we have expensive power and limited generation. When the Ministry of Electricity was closed, it was planning on building a nuclear reactor. We need to work smarter, not harder. We could be one of the countries offering the electronic id haven for poor souls stuck in socialist hellholes around the platter. We could be the New Switzerland of the

South Pacific and the lifeboat of personal freedom. If only cheers from Paul Paul, very good suggestions, good comments the New Switzerland. While we've bandied that one around for some time, going all the way back to the eighties and the changes wrought by Roger Douglas Attel. But the commentary we just enjoyed with Oliver Hartwich, I think has made a contribution to the discussion. There just isn't enough of it.

Tunga to steer a better path. Otherwise we are going backwards. People should realize the monetary and social damage needs some time to be corrected. In the last podcast, Minisha Grizzuola optimized the way of thinking we need to get back to where people have a sense of decency and want to contribute to society.

only makes the answer wrong. The reason for teachers failing subjects based on truth and reason is candidates who are strong in these areas will self select out of teacher training. The problem is not the teaching of math and science, but the type of system that favors candidates with flexible

ideas on how the world works. If in a teacher training and school system that tells you what to think and prohibits reason discussion, the situation will not imp until candidates who value a fact based approach to life are welcome to bag in. For the record, I'm married to a school teacher who understands the system and the politics of keeping your job, and then there's a ps at the bottom. I homeschool our kids and the biggest champion of this continuing is my school teacher's.

misunderstanding around the protocols of both parties. At the end of proceedings, Predictably, Mari members of the opposition seized upon the opportunity to make political capital of the oversight. As a result, the positive mood became tainted by unseemly political posture. The budget was presented the following day. The Marie Party was present only for the time required for their speech.

In reply, their co leader's address was full of acrimony and vitriol, with demands for separate governance and large portions of taxpayer funds. The contrast with the previous day could not have been more stark. From a day of respect and forgiveness to one of rancor and threats of revolt. Questions arise on whether some of the Marie political leadership is serving the best interests of their constituents or simply preferring self serving histrionics. That's from George.

I found her approach to be forthright, clear, honest and no nonsense, all qualities which I think any leader must possess. While she didn't come out and use the it's my way of the highway cliche, that is what her actions amounted to, and I can only presume that her teachers must at least have appreciated her direct communication, regardless of whether they liked it or not. I only wish that the last Labour led government had behaved more like this.

It is all very well being inclusive, but when you're running a country, I think that clear, direct and unambiguous language is needed, and lord knows there was precious little of that during the adern Hipkins years. Was it only years, not like centuries? From the actions of the current coalition, it seems that they are at least being far more directed an upfront with their language, and long may it continue.

I was going to suggest that we your podcast listeners, passed the hat around and raise money to send Erica Stanford to Minesia Gazoula's school for some lessons of her own Stanford's that is, but then it occurred to me that I am already a taxpayer of which Erica Stanford is a recipient. Therefore, as I am directly paying her wages as her employer, I direct her to I direct her to make this trip. She could learn a lot. Well.

I wonder if you changed your mind or modified your thoughts a little bit after the discussion with Oliver because he was singing her praises some highly in whiting, was he not, missus producer? Your mother was a wonderful person, an even greater woman actually, and she was somebody that everybody I know, she was somebody that they all loved, or if they didn't know well enough, they thought admirably of her. Very intelligent woman. And you've been telling me that for years.

London and then to the Sorbonne, Paris. Apparently she just narrowly managed to not get into Oxford or Cambridge, and in the would have been fifties, No forties, wouldn't it forties and fifties, That would have been quite the achievement. She was by far the most intelligent one in my family, and right up until the day she died, she was doing crosswords.

it hasn't been addressed appropriately. So the proof is in the interim period from two thousand and nine to now as to what should have been done and what could have been done but wasn't. And this is what she wrote, the last generation lost in the underbelly of a dysfunctional fatherless society. The saddest aspect of recent events, particularly amongst young men, is that it's unlikely to stop in the

near future. Why because no one or no organization or social agency or government department is doing anything to address the deepening chaos. It is a multi layered problem, not just the domain of responsibility of one group of people, but that of a collective of people, organizations, and yes, especially government departments. The problem pheps Almost half of the Y generation, that is, those born after nineteen eighty were

raised in a single parent family, mainly mothers. The absent father syndrome is now epidemic, and the result more destructive than could ever have been imagined. Keep in mind this is two thousand and nine. Now it's worse. A generation full of extremely angry young men has been the result. Then in bracket she puts, there are also many very angry adolescent girls, with few of these adolescents having a

positive male role model. The outcome will soon border on anarchy by this displaced group, and they don't know how to behave or what acceptable behavior is because it's never been role modeled or taught to them in their formative years. Mothers can only do so much and nothing at all if they suffer from any addictions or dependence on alcohol or drugs. Who has any teeth to stop them doing exactly what they like? Not parents, not the police, not teachers.

They despise and defy authority, why because they can. Years of PC crap has brought about a breed of uncivilized little monsters, some of whom terrorize their parents on a regular basis. Kids from age ten and up are inflicting untold pain and agony on their parents, from diabolical behavior to physical assault. Some parents feel helpless and fearful. Does this necessarily point to bad parenting? In some cases? It does, In others, it simply points to excessive indulgence and no boundaries.

The despair that afflicts these kids and the perceived futility of their lives, coupled with anger and low self esteem, is what drives some of them to drugs and suicide. Some never had a chance. Some have had plenty of chances and not had the common sense to grab them. So possible solutions. All primary schools must have at least fifty percent male teachers who are paid a decent professional salary.

Scrap NCEEA and bring back sc A and O levels as in the UK reintroduce a realistic minimum entrance level to any tertiary institution and not a free for all. I'm biding my tongue because I want to add to all this, but I don't need to. Competition and genuine achievement made a goal and not something to be modest about, but recognized and praised. Police and teachers to be given

more power, reasonable force included in controlling defiant adolescence. This is the only way to restore any respect for authority. Political correctness must be dispatched immediately to the scrap heap where it belongs with all the other garbage in the world. A bostal system for the encouragible young men under at where they're supported, educated and rehabilitated back into society and

not in training for a life of crime. Much tougher penalties for the eighteen plus group, particularly for crimes of violence and drug dealing. The minimum age for driving raised to eighteen and only for four cylinder cars, and directing age raise back to twenty. No doll or benefits other than sickness or invalids for anyone under twenty. They then become their parents' responsibility. All of these changes require cooperation from many government departments and social agencies, more so in

the areas of education and justice. Revising legislation should clearly be no hardship for the current government two thousand and nine. Who is going to be first to put their hands up badger your MP relentlessly if nothing is done to address the worsening problem of suicide street violence, and nothing will change, and dozens more young people will die needlessly and tragically. No one is safe. You too, or a

family member can become a statistic or victim. So again, I say this was written in two thousand and nine. I read it on radio, but it didn't go any further than that. It's a damn fine piece. It's short, it's sharp, it's honest, and it's truthful. And here we are, fifteen years down the track. And as the author says, if nothing's done, it'll only get worse, much worse, and so it has. Back in two thousand and nine, they didn't have ram raiders, they didn't have a lot of

other things. Now they do and there's more coming. Now. You tell me who is responsible, My suggestion is it's the authorities, the people who should have been leading, should have been introducing all of the above and didn't. Why because we have been putting up with a range of politicians who in some areas in particular, are gutless or haven't got a clue, take your choice, and the last six years is only promoted it much further, of course, because when you are a sop to this age group,

you'll pay the price. And we all are still have I overstated that the psychologist overstate in neither cases the answer yes. So that will take us out for podcasts two forty two. If you would like to write to us, love getting email latent at news Talks AV dot co dot nz or Carolyn Newstalks AV dot co dot nz. We'll return with two forty three very shortly. Until then, as always, thank you for listening and we'll talk soon.