At first glance, NZFirst and ACT have little in common: one is a disparate mob of far-right free-marketers and rapidly fading former celebrities while the other is … wait, we’ll get back to you. But it’s nonetheless surprising that both parties have a similar stance when it comes to protecting Aotearoa’s green and pleasant land, even if they refuse to call it that.
“That this country is a land of abundance is abundantly clear, to even the most petty public bureaucrat,” NZFirst deputy leader, Minister for Resources and Auriferous Matua Shane Jones might have told WWNews. “We must celebrate it, revel in it, protect it and – only if the time is right – flog it off to multinationals to plunder, strip bare, pulverise, pollute and then cover over with a thin layer of bark chips. That is the way to bring true prosperity to the people, although perhaps not all.”
NZFirst has secured a provision in the Conservation Amendment Bill requiring the Department of Conservation to enable commercial activity on public land “to the highest extent practicable”, otherwise known as the Matua Mandate.
“It’s all very well for those green politburo banshees to sit on their inordinately large DOC estatesides and bask in the glory of Gaia,” the Matua probably continued. “Meanwhile, the children of mining company executives are starving, and I’m not prepared to see them suffer as our pristine resources continue to be overrun with weasels and rats and stoats and noxious weeds, when they could be turned to better use.”
That better use would see up to 95 percent, for starters, of the conservation estate put up for sale to overseas interests. “We’re aware that New Zealanders love the outdoors and it would break their hearts to see it ploughed up or dug into,” Mr Jones could have said. “So we will ensure they are kept well away from any activities they might find upsetting, those snivelling snowflakes.”
As one might expect, ACT is moving along similar lines to advance a more corporate style of stewardship to the environment, spending much of this current parliamentary term exposing egregious local government overreach – too many rules, too much red tape, too little deference to ordinary people trying to get on and do business.
Earlier this year, surprised by Gisborne District Council’s insistence on requesting logging companies to tidy up after themselves, Regulation Minister David Seymour wrote to the council, on behalf of a beleaguered international tree felling cooperative
In 20-point Comic Sans bold (and with the liberal use of capitalisation) he urged the council to reconsider, and to “keep the country’s future prosperity in mind” rather than deploying “blunt force enforcement tools against companies doing business here”, especially companies doing business with large blunt tools themselves. “After all,” he might have added, “you can’t slash and burn without the slash.”
The council’s refusal to back down has led to the actual government, National, sending in the big guns and Todd McClay to encourage a more reasonable response. “And if that doesn’t work,” Mr McClay theoretically told WWNews, “we’ll send in the Matua.”
