Our PM's Harvard speech

[C_T_Russell]

Some parts of Neo Liberalism was not all bad, its supposed to remove anti-competitive behaviour. My main concerns are more on the globalst ideas it introduced where cheap imports come over locally made goods.
This should never have been allowed and yes, Labour was largely responsible for allowing this in the 1980s (perhaps thats why Roger Douglas went to the right)

Act said in a speech that we need to be less dependent on China but is not an overnight fix, he commended companies such as Zespri that export to many countries and China is like only 20% of their profits or something, while Fonterra is largely 90%

Greens just want to save the planet at any cost, ironically hydro Dams damage ecosystems too and we are running out of capacity.
What upsets me the most is all this ridiculous carbon trading nonsense. Valuable farmland being sold to chinese or other foreign investors to simply plant permanent pine forest that never gets cut down is stupid. Why not plant in Native? Long term thats better than pines that grow fast and spread like weeds.
Any permanent re-forestation efforts should be native bush only, and only in areas not suitable or profitable for farming.
Why can overseas investors profit from carbon "farming" here in NZ, but we cant claim carbon credits from carbon "farming" overseas in places such as south america where there are re-forestation projects happening around the amazon? That should be more important, and thats what ACT promotes.
I also learned that much of the south islands native forest is not even counted towards our carbon capacity!
Farmers should be 100% exempt from methane regulations. Every single animal and person makes the stuff, and the farmers grass absorbs co2, methane is released from the cows, but turns into co2 and is carbon neutral.
These petty politics are garbage. Anything from nature should be 100% exempt from any greenhouse gas emissions.
Food scraps in your rubbish dump or compost bin also make methane, they even are extracting it from old rubbish tips!

None of these parties are perfect, but alot of the stuff ACT says is common sense, but your right, they are still globalist.
I think its time NZ changes into a better direction, its not going to happen overnight.

There's nothing good about any political ideas which puts profit before people; its foolish, short sighted & I believe, even unhealthy.

Imo, every country should be as self sufficient as possible & not rely too heavily on only one or two trading partners.
I do agree though, that we should be planting native trees wherever possible, & we should be selling no more land to overseas buyers; in fact no foreign buyers should be able to own more than 40 or so % of any Kiwi property or business.

Most farmers are aware now of the damage some practices do, & are working to change for the better, though there may be a few still causing problems.

Yup, agreed, every country should be as self reliant as possible and only import what we need, and export any surplus.
Injecting money back into our economy where kiwis get to spend it is the answer.
Anti-competitive measures is a start, any increase in competition (such as supermarkets) is a good thing, but ironically if we let a german company like Aldi into NZ, that means profits will go off shore, but the tradeoff is that it brings jobs and savings by introducing competition.
My friends in Australia said it made a huge difference to grocery prices over there when they got Aldi.
I was also impressed that most of their house brand products appeared to be made in Australia, so if thats their business model, I guess I cant complain too much.

Plant trees where its required, diversify our farming and keep our food sector self sufficient.
Another cause for concern is companies such as watties that are now owned by american food giant Heinz hold growers to ransom.
They will start importing more fruit thats cheaper for them to process than selling NZ grown fruit.

Trade tariffs on imports would fix this.
Trump introduced them in the US(not just against China either, I see Jacinda is trying to get them lifted so we can sell them our steel) while not popular with china or NZ for that matter, I can see he was trying to put their country first.
Basically, if NZ can produce the stuff here, we should not be importing cheaper stuff from overseas.

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Greens just want to save the planet at any cost, ironically hydro Dams damage ecosystems too and we are running out of capacity.
What upsets me the most is all this ridiculous carbon trading nonsense. Valuable farmland being sold to chinese or other foreign investors to simply plant permanent pine forest that never gets cut down is stupid. Why not plant in Native? Long term thats better than pines that grow fast and spread like weeds.
Any permanent re-forestation efforts should be native bush only, and only in areas not suitable or profitable for farming.
Why can overseas investors profit from carbon "farming" here in NZ, but we cant claim carbon credits from carbon "farming" overseas in places such as south america where there are re-forestation projects happening around the amazon? That should be more important, and thats what ACT promotes.
I also learned that much of the south islands native forest is not even counted towards our carbon capacity!

On the subject of native and exotics, it does appear that government are leaning more towards requiring native plantings.  those invested in the pine carbon farming are probably rightly upset about the policy reversal and now suggesting court action apparently...
https://www.stuff.co.nz/environment/clim...t-in-court

Yes ive been following this closely, my main concern is that the Maori party were kicking up a fuss, because it apparently will affect maori landowners. How it should affect them I have no idea, there should be no difference in carbon payment whether it be native or exotic. Why would it be in Maori interests to cultivate exotic forest anyway? I thought they would have been all for this and wanted exotic forests excluded.

They probably need to rewrite all the legislation if exotic forests pay you more because the trees grow faster. Thats my only assumption why its a big deal for them.
It looks like Jacinda really rushed this billion trees program or else they would have addressed this to begin with.
I know there have been complaints about this for some time and they are only just starting to look at it.