Promises are cheap and easy to make. Actions speak louder than words. Let’s look at some facts. Ardern did a flip flop about a week ago on RMA reforms, promising on Friday to dump it altogether. Fine words, but when you have a Maori caucus and, probably, radical Greens to contend with, it will be an impossible task.
Why would Maori give up their lucrative industry ‘giving advice’ to people around land development at, wait for it, $7,000 a pop (according to a talk back caller this week). Don’t get Bob Jones started on this rort; he knows it too well.
And then there are all their spiritual considerations, which can be quite costly, like the Taniwha under the Waikato Expressway. They are not going to let go of these without a fight. It’s just not going to happen.
And the Greens who get precious over anything environmental will be pushing back on everything. Shaw said at the minor leaders’ debate that The RMA is a big big document — with many many words (my addition). So of course they got someone else to do all the hard work for them and present a report, and then forgot to read what the wise men had told them. That’s three years gone and nothing done.
Another fact: Judith Collins got rebuffed when she approached David Parker in 2017 to work with him on reforming it. Now, Ardern and her comrades have the effrontery to ask why National did not reform the RMA when in government for 9 years. She knows but lying comes so easy to the hypocritical one.
Like it did when Labour put it about for years that Bill English had named the ‘Rock star economy’. Wrong: It was an official from the Sydney Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank, whom I saw interviewed several times during visits here in recent years.
Repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth (Ardern’s mantra). Like ‘we went hard and early’ on covid, now global folklore, as the media know but don’t question, as does Dr Shane Reti, but no one’s listening.
For the record, The Maori Party, Greens, United Future and Labour blocked any attempts at reform of the RMA during National’s nine years in power.
It is pretty clear reform is needed and National and Act are in unison on this; in fact you can’t shut up David Seymour once he gets going on the subject. That is promising as we know that progress will be made if they get the opportunity.
Also Judith Collins has said that if in power as a short term measure she will pass legislation to bypass the current law in order to free up land and override regulations to get roading, housing and other projects underway asap.
The National party have worked hard during their 3 years in opposition and leading up to the election, with policy coming out of their ears. Labour, not so much. Lots of announcements but no detail. Their natural laziness prevents much more than a headline!
Fortunately for Ardern, with her thousands of adoring, unquestioning voters out there, she is, like Biden, riding on a voter base that demands no answers (unlike conservative voters who demand more).
If re-elected, dominated by the unions and scared of her own shadow, she will never attain the crucial ability to be agile and ‘pivot’ in a covid world and will be turfed out of office with a tanking economy and raging inflation.
You heard it here first.
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