Trust us, we’re politicians

Coalition working hard to make NZ great, for others

The new Coalition Government is working at speed, passing bills hither and yon in order to Get Things Done. Now.

And things are moving apace. No more apacer than a bill currently being fast-tracked through Parliament, the Fast Track Approvals Bill. It’s designed to speed up projects that would otherwise be held up in a lengthy approvals process, the kind of bureaucratic nightmare that sees box-tickers ticking all kinds of unnecessary boxes and taking far too long to do it.

The problem with approvals processes is not that they take too long, but sometimes the outcome is not what you want. Somewhere along the track – a very slow track indeed – some shiny-arsed pen pusher might have found a hillside that they think could collapse if you dig your mine underneath it and they’ve unticked the box. Or they might have done some dodgy science and reckon those perfectly safe chemicals, the ones used all over the world but mainly in the third world where life is cheap and birth deformities go unreported, that you want to use to make even better – and safer – agricultural chemicals… the pen-pusher says they’re going to poison the few remaining waterways that the dairy industry hasn’t got to yet.

Or possibly they’ve gone all woke and PC and think your new state-of-the-art industrial complex is going to threaten an already endangered species, this time the residents of the North Island. More fool them.

Which is why we need to fast track things. It’s not enough to be able to cut through red tape quicker, we have to do away with red tape completely. And green tape, especially thick green tape. In order to make NZ great again, we need to attract investors and business people to set up businesses and projects here, pouring any money that’s left over after syphoning its way through other investors and business people and their overseas trust funds back into the community .

There’s a real danger if we don’t allow overseas companies to invest in NZ, and not just the lack of directorships waiting for retiring politicians. There will be no growth. Maybe some trees but no jobs. The economy might be imperilled. It’s a risk we can’t afford to take. Unless we already have trust funds and directorships lined up.

Of course there are risks involved if you allow foreign corporations to come in and drill for oil and mine for gold in the main streets of some small towns. We should be prepared to take those risks – for without pain somewhere there is no gain somewhere else. Mitigation is the key, as well as having balances in place. A trio of Government Ministers will make the ultimate decisions, because they have our best interests at heart. Or some interests at heart. Just trust them.

Who are they? Well, there’s National’s Chris Bishop, a good old Hutt boy best known for a fake mullet . There’s another Nat, Simeon Brown, who’s best known for looking 12 years old. And there’s Shane Jones, a NZFirst List MP who was given the role of resources minister as part of the coalition agreement.

Regular readers will recall we discussed previously how NZFirst is the party that 93.8% of voters didn’t want anywhere a near government, but managed to get in thanks to MMP and a coalition deal. Mr Jones has a similarly robust mandate – 83% of voters in Northland, the electorate he stood in, were adamant they didn’t want him representing them either. It’s probably slightly worse than that when you think not all eligible voters actually voted. (In Northland it was an 82% turnout so around 15% of eligible voters were sufficiently impressed by Shane-o to put a coat over their onesie and pop down to the booth.)

Yet here he is. And here they all are. Three hardworking politicians making the tough decisions. Trust them, they’re from the government.