Rumblings Rising on Right

The Standard claims that a change in ACT leadership is likely following Don Brash's leadership bid announced today.  Unfortunately for ACT its problems may be deeper than a question of who holds the leadership position.

While ACT won some public support for its tough stance on law & order and its exposure of public sector extravagance (much of the credit for which goes to Hide) it also turned off many voters with its fundamentalist adherence to the purist free market - an ideology rejected by most centrist voters in successive elections.

Voters have concluded that selling off more of our economy to foreign ownership offers only a short term palliative at best and at worst is a betrayal of this country's long term economic interests. At a time of economic sluggishness and high unemployment opposition parties could normally be expected to be gaining ground. However Labour has identity problems of its own. 

Damien O'Connor voiced the thoughts of many traditional Labour voters (and some Labour MPs) who are centrist on economic policy but conservative on social issues.  Rightly or wrongly such voters feel Labour no longer represents them.

A genuine centrist party is a movement based on the aspirations of mainstream hardworking kiwis who are fed up with those politicians who seem to be increasingly out of touch with ordinary people. 

Wellington Ratepayers face the Cost of another Council budget blowout

Dominion Post today broke the story of another series of losses made by entities in which it has an interest.  How much longer will ratepayers tolerate these ongoing failures?

With ordinary Wellingtonians having to make cuts to make their spending match their income ratepayers are well within their rights to wonder why Council bureaucrats seem to operate to a different set of rules.  Hapless ratepayers should not be forced to cover for inefficient council decisions.

Innovative centrist solutions required to combat recession

The tired old policies of keynesian pump-priming of the Old left and severe retrenchment of the Old Right are no longer the solutions we need to combat today's economic woes. Borrow and hope policies cannot be a long term solution to today's crisis. But harsh cuts in social spending mean the most vulnerable are left to fend for themselves when they can least afford it. Perhaps the time has come to defer income tax cuts for the wealthy, for wage restraint for employees, and for significant State investment in infrastructure projects that will be of value to the nation long after the recession. Better roads, improved broadband, and large scale home insulation programmes would be welcome steps in the right direction.

Centrists support Obama

Good to see centrists in the US supporting President Obama's policy programme.
http://briefingroom.thehill.com/2009/03/25/centrist-dem-group-pledges-support-for-obama/

Progressive liberalism

The word "liberal" has been misused by many groups in recent years. Some see it as a badge for laissez-faire capitalism - despite liberalism's concern with equal opportunity and freedom from poverty, ignorance or superstition. Others, see liberals as soft on crime, supporters of Big Government and the welfare state.
However, a dictionary definition describes liberal as :
"relating to or having social and political views that favour progress and reform" - Collins Concise Dictionary p.853.
Intrinsic in the liberal attitude is a willingness to always look to improve things, to question established assumptions and to find better solutions to the challenges of the day. Freedom and responsibility are at the heart of the liberal philosophy.

Today the greatest threat to liberalism is not monarchist absolutism of the type facing liberals in revolutionary France. Rather it is the desire for freedom without the acceptance of responsibility and the selective blindness regarding the need to broaden freedoms for all sorts of forgotten groups in society. Rebuilding social capital and the linkages that unite local communities is one of the main tasks facing the country today. The party that can rediscover the roots of this type of balanced yet progressive liberalism will be the party that surprises at the election.

No Nukes Is Good Nukes

Over the past 12 months a number of print and radio news items have appeared extolling the virtues of nuclear power and urging a reconsideration of New Zealand's opposition to nuclear power.

There are at least five good reasons for continuing to oppose nuclear power in New Zealand. These are:
1. Even now there is still no way to safely dispose of highly radioactive waste produced by nuclear power plants. If we're going to be good stewards of the environment then we cannot just dump toxic radioactive waste in the Pacific or in the Southern Alps.
2. The risk of nuclear materials falling into the hands of terrorists and the large scale damage that could result. Globally the risk of terrorists getting their hands on nuclear material increases every time another country adopts nuclear power as an energy source. We do not need to be part of that problem.
3. The inability of the pro-nuclear lobby to guarantee the safety of nuclear power plants. Nuclear accidents in the USA (Three Mile Island) and Russia (Cheronobyl) continue to remind us that sometimes our faith in science and human engineering can be misplaced - no matter how many safety systems are in place. The engineers of the Titanic also believed they had a truly safe and unsinkable product. Supporters of nuclear power will argue that life itself can be seen as being one big risk management exercise but frankly when it comes to nuclear power it pays to err on the side of caution.
4 New Zealand has particular geographical challenges such as our terrain and earthquake risks. Even if the case for nuclear power can be made for the USA or France - the challenges for New Zealand and the reasons not to do it are stronger here than elsewhere.
5. The economics don't stack up. The cost of nuclear reactors in the UK is now budgeted at $9billion each. That could fund our entire education or health system for some years. In most countries nuclear power plants rely on taxpayer subsidies to cover the cost of construction. I can think of a lot of other things I'd prefer to use taxpayer subisides for ahead of helping the nuclear power industry.

The nuclear lobby argues that because we have tiny radioactive sources in things like smoke detectors it is not true for us to claim to be "nuclear-free" Therefore - so the argument runs_ we should adopt nuclear power. But there is a huge leap between smoke detectors and nuclear power plants churning out radioactive waste.

As of 2007, the United States had accumulated more than 50,000 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel from nuclear reactors. Underground storage at Yucca Mountain in U.S. has been proposed as permanent storage. After 10,000 years of radioactive decay, according to United States Environmental Protection Agency standards, the spent nuclear fuel will no longer pose a threat to public health and safety.

Alternative energy sources, such as wind, tidal, solar and geothermal, which do not have the pollutant waste involved with nuclear, remain far better options.