Richard Prebble's Letter From Wellington
RICHARD PREBBLE’S
Letter from Wellington
Monday, 11
September 2000
Helen Clark’s statement that we should consider replacing the Kiwi with the Aussie makes no more sense than Michael Cullen’s calls for common citizenship. The Aussie is also a tiny currency. The only currency worth looking at is the US – but this by itself is not an answer. And if joining Australia is our answer – what’s the solution for Tasmania, a true economic basket case?
Aiming for 41
cents?
At the New Zealand-Taiwan business seminar in last
Thursday, Minister Pete Hodgson, was asked about the Kiwi’s
fall.
He gave the usual excuse of the US dollar’s rise.
He then went on to boast that the Government had fully
hedged its forward exposure at 41 cents to the dollar.
Knowledge of the Minister’s remarks reached the mar-ket and
the dollar fell dangerously close to 41 cents.
If the
pessimists are correct and the dollar reaches 39 cents - the
coalition will join ordinary New Zealanders in having to pay
more for it’s imports – drugs, defence equipment etc.
Not
Fully Covered
Despite Minister Hodgson’s claim that the
Government is fully hedged the Letter can reveal it is not.
Not all SOEs have taken out forward cover and some showed
more faith in the Government than it had in itself! While
Treasury instructed the SOEs to take forward cover they did
not pass on their view that the coalition policies would
result in a collapse in confidence.
What Helen Won’t Tell
You
The slide in the Kiwi’s value represents the biggest
drop in wealth since our nation was founded.
If you
translate average earnings to US dollars the average family
is be-low the official US poverty line of US$17,050
(NZ$40,500). This means 86% of New Zealand’s taxpayers would
be considered impoverished.
No Exit For East
Timor
Foreign Minister Phil Goff in Par-liament last week
appeared to commit New Zealand to East Timor forever. He
said new Zealand would stay as long as the security threat
re-mained.
East Timor is a country with a long history of
instability. New Zealand has committed troops without
setting an exit strategy. The brave helicopter rescue
mission was only possible be-cause the Indonesian army
guaran-teed security.
We need to inform the East Timorese
that one of the costs of independence is your own defence
(advice Labour could note). Train the local Fretilin, arm
them appropriately and exit. The Army’s serious resource
problems will become critical if there is a fur-ther
rotation after next May.
In Defence Of MMP
But for MMP
the public would not know of the $538,063 secret Gov-ernment
payout to prisoners. Na-tional did not want to raise the
issue because the incidents happened un-der their
administration.
ACT’s Rodney Hide asked the
par-liamentary question that forced the disclosure. Phil
Goff advised that he knew nothing of the payment. He was
telling the truth. The deal was closed by Margaret Wilson
and Matt Robson so Helen wouldn’t be embar-rassed at the UN.
The Ministers were so naïve they thought they could just
keep it a secret.
Background
Mangaroa Prison was a
liberal experiment. It was built in Napier so local convicts
could be near their families. The Justice Department had
this flaky idea to hire local people as wardens as part of a
‘culturally ap-propriate’ trial scheme.
Maori Labour MPs
have long called for a separate justice system where Maori
offenders are supervised by their hapu. The outcome: uncles
and aunties of patched gang members were hired as some of
the wardens. The experiment was a disaster.
When
Mangaroa prisoners were ran-domly drug tested around half
tested positive. There have been numerous scandals at the
prison. This is a case where the prison officers union’s
warnings have all come true.
The Alliances, Matt Robson,
last week announced his experiment in re-storative justice,
which he believes will prove that all criminals need is milk
and cuddles. Last week also saw the coalition vote down
ACT’s Truth in Sentencing – a law that has re-duced violent
crime in the US by 8%.
Labour Leadership Challenged
The
Maori caucus is openly defying the leadership. John
Tamihere’s notice of motion making a de-famatory accusation
against the dis-tinguished lawyer who represented the young
woman complainant against Dover Samuels, was not cleared by
the leadership.
It is outrageous for Mr Tamihere to make
the claims under parliamentary privilege and then seek to
chair the inquiry into his own allegations.
ACT believes
parliament should move on. However if Mr Tamihere insists on
an inquiry, ACT will agree to Parliament's powerful
privileges committee examining the claims. A number of
Labour MPs will not come out of the inquiry well. Richard
Preb-ble will be shown to have acted prop-erly and without
malice throughout.
Southern Tour – A Great
Success
ACT’s just completed its Southern ACTion tour –
visiting every town in the South Island. ACT has never had a
better reception to one of its tours and the views of
ordinary New Zealanders prove that this is definitely a one
term government.
Greening of ACT
Interest in ACT’s
web-based green network is growing exponentially. This
discussion group is open to any-one and is one of the few
places in NZ where there is rational environ-mental debate
based on science. The web site includes links to worldwide
green sites and discussion groups. With the GE Royal
Commission muzzling debate by excluding ACT yet giving the
Greens special stand-ing, the ACT Green Network fills an
important role. To join email neil.wilson@parliament.govt.nz
Feedback
Last week’s Letter featured an article on
proposed tax law changes to UK Investment Trusts. Rebecca
e-mailed a news article providing clarification on the
review’s timing.
http://www.goodreturns.co.nz/article.php?ArticleID=976485462