No easy days in Government
That the Otakiri Springs decision was announced before the dust had barely settled on the election makes it look like the worst case of hypocrisy.
They say one bad day in government is worth more than a thousand good days in opposition. Tell that to the Greens.
They campaigned for a moratorium on new water bottling plants and, within months, Green minister Eugenie Sage has approved the sale of sensitive land to a Chinese-owned water bottling company to take up to 580 million litres of water a year from Otakiri Springs near Whakata¯ ne.
The land was classified as sensitive under the Oversees Investment Act but the Government gave it the green light because it was determined as providing ‘‘substantial and identifiable benefits to New Zealand’’ including more jobs and export revenue.
In total about 60 jobs will be created and the export revenues will presumably go back to the company’s Chinese owner.
No wonder Green Party members are in revolt and calling it a ‘‘beads and blanket’’ deal.
The Government’s fig leaf was that the deal still needed consent from the regional council. That came through the very next day.
There are few more ‘‘touchstone’’ issues for the Greens than the sale of pristine water to overseas exporters and it’s not only the Greens who are being hoist by their own petard over water.
The issue of water being bottled and flogged off overseas was a hot political potato at the last election and Labour also ran a high-profile campaign on the issue.
People don’t like that there seem to be few safeguards against the raid on some of our most pristine water sources by overseas companies. We also look like a nation of mugs for letting them get the water for almost nothing.
But the issue of charging for water quickly becomes a can of worms, as Labour discovered in Opposition when it conflated water bottling with wider issues such as irrigation.
That’s the deal with government, however. What’s easy to smack down in opposition becomes a headache when you actually have the power to change things – because with every decision there can be a chain reaction of unintended consequences.
The fact that the Otakiri Springs decision was announced before the dust had barely settled on the election makes it look like the worst case of hypocrisy. And it’s not just water. Labour is struggling to explain why charging businesspeople $600 a head for the ear of Finance Minister Grant Robertson is any different to National’s exclusive Cabinet club dinners with the finance minister and prime minister – which it also slammed in opposition.
Hidden in the detail of the decision to build a new 600-bed prison at Waikeria, meanwhile, was the news that as many as two-thirds of prisoners would be double bunked. It was so buried, in fact, that the Green Party’s Golriz Ghahraman issued a press release suggesting the new prison put an end to that practice.
It is the water decision that could tear the Greens apart, however. The sense of betrayal and belief in party’s MPs being sell-outs will run deep.
There has always been a deep fissure in the party between those who believe they need to be in power to get things done versus those who believe power for power’s sake is not worth the compromises required.
That pain will be magnified by the sight of Labour’s other minor party ally, NZ First, flexing its muscles over the three-strikes repeal and forcing a humiliating back down by Labour.
The two cases involved vastly different circumstances – in the water bottling case, the minister’s hands were largely tied by the law – but that won’t wash with the Greens’ activist base. If the point of being in power was about being able to change the law and reshape the country, Sage just lost the argument.
There is a potentially even more divisive decision over whether our troops remain in Afghanistan or Iraq. Our involvement in Afghanistan in the early 2000s was what tore the Alliance Party apart in coalition with Labour. That decision is a few months away yet. There is a minefield for the Greens to cross first.
It might be tempting to attribute the striking rise in road rage, of which there have been some appalling cases recently, to the stresses of a fast-paced life – in particular the worsening traffic congestion associated with rapid urban population growth. But ultimately there is no excuse or justification for what is essentially a range of crimes triggered by anger.
‘‘Road rage’’, a term coined in the late 1980s by American media after a series of shootings on Los Angeles freeways, is angry or aggressive behaviour by a driver. It often involves minor incidents escalating violently, sometimes fatally. There have been academic studies and parliamentary inquiries into criminal aggression on the roads. The most consistent message is simple: Do. Not. Take. It. Personally. Instead, at a practical level, experts suggest: keep calm, ignore the aggressor, pull over and never exit your car.
This form of criminal violence has increased, police figures show, by 60 per cent across Victoria in the past four years.
Violence on the roads is not random – and it’s not accurately encapsulated by the term ‘‘road rage’’. This is not a traffic issue. It’s about criminality. Being licensed to drive is a privilege, not a right, and it carries with it a massive duty to the community. It’s a duty easily honoured – just be courteous, and give a wink to the universality that we all make mistakes.