U-turns on tolls and troops

GOOD JOB KEEPING LIFE GUARDS

Last week’s P5 story brought welcome news for those involved that the council would continue to fund a life guard at Titahi Bay beach.

It also records the dropping of a subsidy for inorganic waste collection formerly paid to Trash Palace, which can only result in pressure on the already taxed landfill.

Meanwhile, a previous Kapi-Mana News detailed a council plan to teach children at Trash Palace the virtues of recycling.

Now a somewhat hypocritical gesture.

It should be known that customers formerly supplied with recycled whiteware components are now supplied by an Auckland charity modelled on the former Trash Palace operation.

It is an election year and a 3.3 per cent rate increase, well above inflation rate, indicates the need to look for a new council and for members of known experience, business acumen and fiscal integrity.

Last week, the Government signalled a screeching U-turn in not one, but two major areas of policy. New Zealand deployment in Iraq will now be extended for 18 months, at least, and perhaps even beyond that point.

Only days later, Prime Minister John Key also conceded that road tolls maybe weren’t such a bad solution to Auckland’s transport needs after all.

Anyone can change their mind.

Yet when governments do it dramatically, there’s always a level of risk involved.

Voters could take it as evidence that – maybe – you didn’t really know your own mind in the first place.

Only last year, Key had been crisply re-assuring the New Zealand public that New Zealand’s commitment in Iraq would be strictly limited: ‘‘Quite frankly, this is likely to be a troubled part of the world for a very long period of time – we could arguably stay here forever. But this isn’t New Zealand’s engagement,’’ he said last year.

‘‘I think New Zealand has a job to do here.

‘‘We’re doing it. I think there should be an exit point, and that exit point at about two years feels about right to me.’’

Last week though, ‘‘forever’’ seemed quite a distinct possibility. Reportedly, Key would not rule out a further extension beyond November 2018, while adding that he, personally, was not keen for our troops to be there ‘‘forever’’.

No reason was offered as to why the compelling logic for a temporary deployment had suddenly turned into a convincing case for an openended military commitment. Had those early assurances that this deployment would be only temporary been a soft sell to the public?

Across the political spectrum, all parties were agreed that our troops are doing their appointed task – of training Iraqi troops – extremely well. Yet genuine doubts remain over the value of the deployment itself. On the battlefield, as Labour leader Andrew Little pointed out, the recent successes against Islamic State have been won by Kurdish forces and Shia militias that New Zealand is forbidden to train, not by the hapless Iraqi Army units that we are training.

The news that our role would be expanding from training to a ‘handover’ phase at the Besmaya Combat Training Centre also suggested that a form of ‘mission creep’ could well be under way.

The reversal on road tolls was equally abrupt, and just as mystifying. For years, the Government has poured cold water on using toll roads to reduce

‘‘Voters could take it as evidence that – maybe – you didn’t really know your own mind in the first place.’’

traffic congestion in Auckland.

Yet not only has it suddenly embraced the concept, but is has also suggested lower petrol taxes to motorists as compensation. No word yet on whether alternative routes to toll routes would remain available.

Reportedly, motorists and firms using toll roads to shift their goods could be facing thousands of dollars of additional costs, annually.

Obviously, these abrupt changes can be seen as flexibility, and taken as evidence that the Key government is not driven by any fixed ideology.

Yet when yesterday’s certainties are so readily jettisoned, the public can also be forgiven for feeling a bit gun-shy in future about Beehive pronouncements. ‘‘Whatever will fly’’ is hardly a re-assuring substitute for a political sense of purpose.