Matt Judd
In business management, finance and accounting there are many papers written, terminologies, and techniques for dealing with big decisions: sometimes called risk management, cost-benefit analysis, future-proofing, project management or forecasting. Take, for example, last week’s Stuff article on housing shortages in Queenstown.
Now of course, Stuff being Stuff, the article focuses on the social cost of inadequate accommodation, looking at a backyard studio, without many amenities, being offered for over $200 a week. The unscrupulous aspiring landlord was shamed off the market pretty quickly. But Stuff accidentally exposed the real issue – of course, legislation passed over the last five years that make being a landlord a negative proposition.
Many of our MPs, like most people schooled in the education system in this century, seem unable to envision the unintended consequences of their actions. It’s a real skill that takes development and critical thought. What are the downstreams? Look at the Marsden Point decision. While being 90% ideologically driven it didn’t take into account self-reliance, quality control of fuel refining offshore or where we would get our cheap on-spec bitumen in future. The government simply allowed the shareholders to close it down. Perhaps the government and then Prime Minister were stupid and incompetent to not preserve our fuel independence.
At my large corporation, the inspired middle managers decided that, in the interests of health and safety, our cargo equipment would be stored off the ground and went ahead and implemented this policy immediately without doing trials or brainstorming on potential issues. On the first day, the handling issues increased the time for cargo loading which ended up causing massive delays and customer disruption. Par for the course in 2023. Shoot first, ask questions later, or it’s better to do then apologise than ask and be refused etc etc.
I was a landlord. I didn’t want to sell my rental property but the Labour Government turned it into a financial disaster. I was fine running it at a small loss as long as there was a capital gain in the future, but I can’t be subsiding a home for someone else and putting $30,000 of my own money in every year. No capital gain can cover that! Now there’s no rental stock in this area and the government is pouring money into state housing. So in the end we pay high taxes and subsidise tenants anyway. (At way below market rates).
What’s the solution? I don’t know but there’s no doubt that less regulation and empowering people to make their own decisions is part of it.
The recent passage of the Therapeutic Products Bill shows the ne’er-do-wells in the Beehive are still at the beck and call of big pharma and still, incredibly (after the last three and a half years of continuous incompetence) believe that something that was previously unregulated and operating without any issues, they can run better. What hubris!
I have listened to a greater and greater number of podcasts and interviews with intellectuals and thinkers who are lamenting the loss of trust in the expert class. We really are in an age of incompetence or perhaps we are finally beginning to see what was always there. The members in the House are not the best of the best, far from it. The educators are not turning out good product. The academics failed us woefully during the pandemic and the media are untrustworthy, corrupted and staffed by experts only in communications or media studies. They cannot unpack the complex issues of the day.
Is it hopeless? I really can’t pick a candidate or party in the upcoming election. The rental issues above would be dealt with by the policy of a National/Act government if they are as good as their policy promises. Luxon is talking a good game in education on TikTok. But the issues in schools and universities didn’t improve under the previous popular National Government. The minor parties are promising clouds made of candy floss and rain showers full of lemon drops and sparkles if elected, knowing they will never have to deliver.
It feels like a vital election in the future of our country with no great choices. Perhaps we are going to have to do some serious cost-benefit, risk analysis of our own.
