Day: July 10, 2020

Little changes

Michael Reddell China, NZ politics, Uncategorized

The good news of the morning was that Jian Yang will be leaving Parliament at the election.  Perhaps the only disappointing aspect is that he didn’t stick around to be voted out, but at least he will be gone, and our Parliament will no longer have a CCP member, former part of the PRC military foreign intelligence system, champion of the evil Party/state in its ranks.   Oh, and someone who acknowledged that he had actively misrepresented his past –  on instructions from his PRC bosses –  to get residency and citizenship here in the first place.  In any decent country he’d not have been in Parliament in for long in the first place –  a decent party wouldn’t have selected him, decent opposition parties would have made his political position untenable, and once alerted to his acknowledged lies about his past the relevant authorities would have acted to prosecute him, perhaps even deport him.  But this is New Zealand.

A party with a modicum of decency, prioritising some values higher than soliciting donations and doing trade deals with a barbaric repressive regime, might even have insisted that Jian Yang step aside when he past become very public.  But this was the New Zealand National Party.

And although Jian Yang is finally going, it appears to have been his own doing.  Perhaps the unease about his past has become such that (a) he could not really hope to go any higher in politics, and (b) his presence was only going to be lightning rod for discontent.   And no serious person was likely to say anything much sensitive in his presence, given his known close ties to the PRC Embassy.  It can’t be that the grind of endless interviews with the critical media wore him out: he’s not given any.   Perhaps he can be more use to National now, bringing in the donations, away from the spotlight of Parliament?

Whatever his reasons, there is not a thing to suggest that it was National that had finally done the decent thing.  After all, recall that a few months ago he was promised one of the list places specially designated by the party’s Board  (recall that he announced that only to the Chinese language media).  Recall too that when Todd Muller took over Jian Yang was pushed a few more places up the caucus rankings, and left in place as chair of a select committee.   And perhaps more telling still, it was only a few days ago that Todd Muller was defending Jian Yang, with arguments so thin they can only have been the words of someone determined to follow in the unworthy tradition of Bill English and Simon Bridges, championing the presence of Jian Yang in Parliament.  There was no sign the party was about to turn him out –  and, of course, Jian Yang has had close ties to the party president Peter Goodfellow, himself as shamefully obsequious to the PRC/CCP as they come.

Here were some of Muller’s remarks reported by Newshub earlier this week.  Asked about Jian Yang’s refusal to answer questions from the English-language media, Muller apparently responded this way

Muller says it’s not true that Dr Yang is avoiding the media because he has fronted on issues to do with statistics.

“He’s done close to 10 in the last 18 months in his role as spokesperson for statistics across all the various media outlets,” Muller told Magic Talk on Monday. “This view that he’s somehow not fronting for media isn’t correct.”

The last time Dr Yang released an English media statement was almost a year ago when Stats NZ’s Chief Statistician Liz MacPherson resigned over the handling of the 2018 Census.

“He’s made very clear statements to the media in the past… He’s statistics spokesperson so I would think that’s fair that when he talks to the media it’s in that context,” Muller said.

Talk about deliberately obtuse.  As Muller knows very well, the legitimate media interest in Jian Yang has nothing to do with Statistics New Zealand (not that he had done that well in that minor role –  has anyone heard anything from him in recent months on the inadequacies of our official statistics?).

Then there was this

Muller said Dr Yang has been transparent about his past.

“He’s been very clear in the past in terms of his history and the length of time he’s been in New Zealand. Obviously one of the key points is when he left the Communist Party, he left 26 years ago. These things tend to want to be trawled over again.”

As Muller knows very well, you don’t just leave the CCP –  especially having worked in the military intelligence system –  by failing to pay the annual membership fee.  And as for the preposterous claim that he had been transparent about his past…….it was only after six years in Parliament and sustained journalistic investigative work that that past was finally revealed to the public.  Since then, Jian Yang has avoided any serious questioning, but simply refusing to engage.  Some transparency.

The article reminds us of Jian Yang’s close ties to Beijing

In October 2019 Dr Yang was one of 50 New Zealanders who were invited to attend the CCP’s 70th anniversary celebrations in the Chinese capital.

He also accompanied former National leader Simon Bridges on a trip to China where a meeting was set up with Guo Shengkun, described as head of China’s ‘secret police’.

Playing down that latter point somewhat; Jian Yang was apparently instrumental in arranging the meeting, such are his ties to the evil regime.

And then Muller’s values-free approach is put fully on display

Muller pushed back against criticism of Dr Yang’s ties to the CCP.

“It’s a massive country for us in terms of trade and relationships and my experience in the context of all the corporate export roles I’ve had is that as you build relationships with people in China, they are members of the Communist Party – that’s sort of how it works, right?

“You end up having conversations and building deep relationships with people who have roles in the Communist Party and China because that’s their system.”

Well, perhaps….but this isn’t Beijing, this isn’t where the writ of the CCP is supposed to run, this is the New Zealand Parliament.

In a way though it is almost a little unfortunate that Jian Yang will soon be gone.  He was the visible and particularly stark tip of the iceberg, but almost beside the point as this late stage.  The real issue is the wider National Party deeply deferential approach to Beijing, and its refusal to make a stand on any issue of the excesses of that regime.   This is the way I put it last week.

The real issue now isn’t about Jian Yang’s own choices, but about the rest of our political system (and much of our media for that matter).   It clearly suits Jian Yang to avoid any English-language media –  he is, after all, elected by all National Party voters, not just a few CCP-aligned ethnic Chinese one – but if the leadership of the National Party had even an ounce of decency on these issues it really wouldn’t be Jian Yang’s choice at all.  It would be as simple as “front up, honestly and fully, pretty whenever you are asked, and if not well forget about any caucus seniority, in fact forget about a list place at all at the next election”.   No one  doubts that if  any of that succession of leaders had wanted Jian Yang to be accountable to the public and to voters he’d do so, or he’d be gone.  So his silence is the silence of Bill English, Simon Bridges and now Todd Muller.   The same “leaders” who’ve been, for example, utterly unbothered by Todd McClay’s defence of the Uighur concentration camps, and who utter not a word about the activities of the PRC/CCP at home, abroad, or here.   Totally sold-out.

Jian Yang might soon be gone, but Todd Muller, Simon Bridges, Gerry Brownlee, Todd McClay and Peter Goodfellow are still very much in place.  There is no sign that the mindset has shifted even slightly.   Quite probably with Jian Yang having gone, National will wheel up another ethnic Chinese candidate whose acceptability will be based on his ties to the PRC embassy and his ability to work the rooms of the various United Front bodies here for party funding, but whose CV will presumably look a bit less obviously egregious than Jian Yang’s came to be.   This is, after all, the party that went soliciting donations for CCP affiliate Yikun Zhang and his mates, and had one of his CCP associates as part of their candidates college, preparing the ground for a bid for a place on National’s list.

It is one of those times when the excesses of the CCP/PRC are becoming ever more obvious to anyone not determined to keep their eyes wide shut.  But there is no sign of any shift in stance from National, no sign of any moral leadership –  in fact, over the last couple of years they’d be the first to complain if the current government, itself not great over the PRC, showed any slight hints of backbone.    This is the disgraceful party that has a senior MP on record suggesting the Uighur concentration camps are no one’s affair but China’s.   These people, and their business/university allies, seem to have no moral core.  Even around Hong Kong we’ve heard only the feeblest, most reluctant, of comments from Muller.

Is there some hope in the fact that Tamaki MP Simon O’Connor is now part of the interparliamentary alliance on China (together with Labour Louisa’s Wall)?  I guess it is better than nothing, but there is nothing anywhere to suggest that the National leadership group is at all happy about such modest independence of thought.   Then again, I’m not aware that any of the media have asked Muller or Foreign Affairs spokesman Bridges what they make of the IPAC and of O’Connor’s membership and calls.  Given that O’Connor is Bridges’ brother-in-law I guess that might be a little awkward.   But it would seem to be a fair question just a few weeks out from an election, as the PRC becomes more aggressive, more threatening (including in their attempts to criminalise anyone anywhere in the world criticising the regime).

It is good that Jian Yang will soon have gone. But the deeper issues around the corruption of New Zealand politics –  National and Labour particularly on this score –  haven’t changed a jot.  Neither party has done anything to fix the electoral donations from CCP affiliates scandal, and both seem more intent on donations flowing than on the sort of values most New Zealanders hold, including the many ethnic Chinese New Zealanders who deplore almost everything to do with the CCP.  And if they are dragged occasionally to utter a mild word of criticism for the latest PRC abuse, you always get the sense it is reluctant, not born of any conviction whatever.

(After 5-6 weeks of ill-health my troublesome bug is finally abating.  However, we’ll be on holiday next week so no more posts until Monday week.)

 

National’s five-point plan

Michael Reddell National Party, New Zealand economic performance, pandemic

At the end of my post yesterday morning I noted briefly

Of course, if Labour’s approach is bad, at least (being the government) it is on the table.  It is now less than two months until voting starts and we have no idea what National’s approach might be, but no reason to suppose it would be materially different or better.

Within a couple of hours we had a plan from National, or at least what Todd Muller describes as “the framework for the party’s Plan to create more jobs and a better economy”.   Just like the Prime Minister, he has a five-point plan, outlined in a speech given in Christchurch yesterday.   If you want the potted version there is even a one-page graphic.

graphic nat

I was no more impressed than with Muller’s previous speech, although at least he has dropped the (historically ill-grounded) paeans to Michael Joseph Savage.   There still seems to be a great deal of me-too-ism about it: we’ll be just like Labour only more competent.   If he has values and a political philosophy, they seem to bear little or no relationship to those the National Party was built on.    It is the sort of speech any (losing) centrist Labour Party leader could have given.

It is explicitly an economic speech, but there was no obvious economic framework, no sign that he or his advisers had thought hard about what has ailed the New Zealand economy for a long time, about how National might fix it, and how that might tie together with the immediate recovery needs (having been accused by one commenter yesterday of being an “armchair theorist”, here was my post-Covid note on such issues).

Anyway, to step through the speech.  First, there was the flawed framing.

According to the Reserve Bank, New Zealand faces its worst economic downturn for 160 years. I don’t think the magnitude of that has yet sunk in to the public or the media. That’s partly because, these past few weeks, everyone has quite rightly been more preoccupied with the shambles at the border and in our quarantine centres. But, if the Reserve Bank is to be believed, ahead of us lies the greatest economic and jobs crisis that anyone in this room has ever known.

Even though the fall in the GDP in the month of April was absolutely huge –  could we have measured it, perhaps 40 per cent –  no one supposes that what lies ahead is worse than New Zealand’s experience of the Great Depression.   Most likely, what we face is something more like, perhaps a bit worse than, the severity of the late 80s and early 90s.  That’s quite bad enough.

And a scale of loss and dislocation that National, at least in this framework speech, appears to have no answer for.

Thus, we learn that they are quite happy with macro policy as it stands and don’t appear to think the Reserve Bank needs to be doing anything more (than the little they have done so far).  And we get rather florid rhetoric on fiscal policy, supported by (it appears) nothing.

Since the Fiscal Responsibility Act, the economic and political debate in New Zealand has tended to be on the quantity of borrowing or debt repayment each year. These remain critically important. Getting back to fiscal surplus and then paying down debt to 20 per cent of GDP is necessary, not least because New Zealand will inevitably confront another natural, economic or health disaster in the next couple of decades or beyond. But just as important is to focus on the quality of spending.

Labour forecasts net core debt will reach 53.6 per cent of GDP in 2024 under their policies. That’s an eye-wateringly high level. We will work hard to try to keep it lower than that, which would put New Zealand in a better position to recover. But of far greater longer-term importance is that Labour projects that under its policies, but with a far stronger economic environment than we face today, net core debt will still be as high as 42 per cent by 2034. That means Labour intends a mere 11 per cent reduction in net core debt, over a decade. At that rate, we will not get back to the safe 20 per cent mark until perhaps the mid-2050s.

National does not regard Labour’s attitude as anything like prudent. It would leave an enormous debt, not so much to our children but to our grandchildren. And it would leave our children and grandchildren – and also ourselves – profoundly vulnerable were the global economic and strategic outlook anything other blissful for three successive decades. Covid-19, the trade war between the US and China and this city’s recent history all say that is not a safe bet.

There aren’t many specifics there but Muller is clear that National would be spending less (not necessarily a lot less, but less) than Labour, so that source of support for a faster demand recovery is apparently off the table.   He plays up the debt numbers but never mentions the large assets (NZSF) on the other side, which mean that even the peak debt numbers would last year have put us among the less indebted half of the OECD.  He never engages at all with the possibility that lower long-term interest rates might –  just might –  make a higher long-term debt ratio sensible.  And, of course, there is no hint of when he expects to get back to 20 per cent of GDP, or on what sort of path.

(To be clear, I am not a fan of high levels of public debt, but on a proper measure we’d peak at around 40 per cent of GDP even on this government’s numbers.  And like most rhetorical fiscal hawks in the current context, he offers no other path for a prompt return to full employment).

And then, of course, there is the question of how seriously to take the talk of future fiscal restraint. There was this, for example,

Let me tell you what that means in practice. In 2020/21 and 2021/22, my Government will not be scared of investing more in retraining, if we are confident it will genuinely improve productivity, lower unemployment, increase the tax take, reduce the cost of welfare and improve wellbeing over the following decade. My Government will not be scared of investing over the next decade more in the first 1000 days of life, if we are confident it will improve outcomes from the school system for a generation. Similarly, social housing and mental health. Nor will my Government be afraid of investing more in roads and public transport, if we are confident they will still be improving New Zealand’s productivity 50 or 100 years hence. And my Government will not be afraid to invest more in water storage or carbon-replacement technologies, if they will support higher living standards and greater wellbeing on an even longer timeframe.

It would be surprising if a public transport project now were boosting productivity 100 years hence, but you are left wondering what Muller wouldn’t be spending on.

Now, to be fair, he tells us there will be a series of major speeches outlining details of the five point plan.   But the gist –  what was in yesterday’s speech –  wasn’t encouraging,   Of their headings

Responsible Economic Management consisted of nothing but rhetoric.  We can probably all agree that quality of spending matters, but there is little in National’s track record suggesting they’ve done much better on that in the past (just different specific waste) and –  more importantly –  no clue as to why we’d think they’d better in future.  Labour has been spraying money at favoured entities in recent weeks, but which ones (specifically) is National opposing?

Delivering infrastructure had this promise

Before the end of this month, I will announce the biggest infrastructure package in this country’s history. It will include roads, rail, public transport, hospitals, schools and water.

My heart sank somewhat.  A new and different Think Big? But lets see the specifics.

Muller boasts of delivery, but wasn’t it the previous National government that put in place the contracting structure for Transmission Gully.  And I’m always a bit surprised at National using the Christchurch repair and rebuild process as a plus.

Reskilling and retraining our workers is flavour of the day (it was a big part of the PM’s speech the other day too), this time with rhetoric about capturing something called the “Creativity Wave” in the 2020s.    But from a party offering no more macro stimulus to demand (see above), uninterested in our high real exchange rate, and (previously) opposed to fees-free it all has the feel of rhetoric and displacing headline unemployment figures at present.   When there are jobs on offer, firms and individuals tend to invest in the skill development required.

A Greener, Smarter Future may be good political rhetoric, or the sort most Labour ministers could have delivered, but seems about as empty.   This section concludes thus

National’s vision is of a post-Covid economy that is greener, smarter and better than the one we had before.

Sounds fine, but what (specifically) is the government’s role in getting there, and what is National proposing to do to give us some hope of achieving all this environmental stuff while also reversing the decades-long decline in relative productivity?  Nothing was on offer in this speech.

And finally, there was

Building Stronger Communities.  I’m sure Muller is genuine about some of this, but what of this gratuitous line

Every community needs strong community institutions to maintain and enhance their social capital. Many of those institutions were damaged a generation ago, and I don’t believe they have been repaired.

Another opportunity for Muller to have a go at the reforms instituted by the 4th Labour government and by his own mentor and former boss Jim Bolger?  So the decline of churches, sport clubs, Scouts and Guides, marriage and so on is down the evil reforms of the 80s and 90s is it?  If so, which of those reforms does he think specifically contributed and which is he proposing to undo?    Of course, the answer to the latter question is “none of them”.  It is just shallow opportunistic political rhetoric.

I don’t really disagree with Muller that

our opponent doesn’t believe in having a plan, hasn’t delivered on her promises, and has a track record of failure across the board.

But when he claims

Ladies and Gentlemen, in the end, I have a very simple message for you and all New Zealanders this election campaign: National has a plan to rebuild our communities and our economy, to get Kiwis back to work and to deal with the economic and jobs crisis.

There was nothing at all in the speech to lead any reasonable observer to think it was so.   Perhaps those future “major speeches” will give us something concrete, as part of a serious well-thought-out strategy that links the immediate challenges with the longer-term deep-seated problems in the New Zealand economy.  But on what we’ve seen so far, I wouldn’t be optimistic about that.