Cleaning Up After Gabrielle.

Yeah, Nah - let's have some tax cuts.

Looking at the headlines this morning it’s hard to feel anything other than pessimistic about the future of humanity.

Note that I’m not speaking about the future of mankind, but the survival of our humanity. The values that we believe in seem to be ebbing away, by the day.

Perhaps every generation feels like this? As if the time when they were younger was a golden age and things have all gone a bit banana shaped since?

Banana shaped, Nick? Don’t you mean pear shaped?

No, I think a pear is quite aesthetically pleasing, from it’s broady curvaceous hips to it’s slender neck. Whereas a banana is just… bent.

Are we still allowed to say “bent” these days? In case anyone wants to alert the woke police, I’m not implying anything of a sexual nature, although let’s be clear B1 and B2 weren’t fooling anyone. Ok they weren’t as overtly out as Burt and Ernie, but c’mon.

No, I’m referring to a banana’s lack of straightness. Stop sniggering, this is a serious newsletter - not a Benny Hill sketch.

Let’s change tack, nobody ever warned you to avoid stepping on pear skins, I assume. So pears are good shapewise, and in terms of a slipping hazard, bananas - not so much.

Anyway, things aren’t looking so good right now. The future is not bright. It’s not only getting better, and wearing shades is not going to help.

Gen X’ers probably laughed at that reference, while the rest of you might be wondering what the hell is going on? When are we going to get through this ambling pre and start the bloody newsletter?

That would be now. 🙂

So those news headlines:

UN 'horrified' by Gaza hospital mass grave reports - Palestinian officials say more than 300 bodies have been found at Nasser and al-Shifa hospitals.

Palestinian workers are exhuming bodies at Nasser hospital with shovels because they have no heavy machinery. Photo: Reuters.

Iraqi father in legal first against BP over son's death - A father has started legal action against UK oil giant BP over the death of his 21-year-old son.

EU green deal at ‘very high’ risk of being killed off, says Greens co-leader - Far-right gains in elections could destroy plan to protect nature and biodiversity.

Big Oil uncovered - Students at US universities file legal complaints over fossil fuel investments.

University of Virginia students call for climate action in Washington DC on 15 March 2019. Photograph: Jeff Malet/Newscom via Alamy.

‘Children won’t be able to survive’ - Inter-American court to hear from climate victims.

UK passes bill to send asylum seekers to Rwanda - Legal battles on behalf of individual asylum seekers challenging removal to east Africa.

5 migrants die while crossing the English Channel - Just hours after the UK approved a deportation bill.

It’s not looking too flash is it?

As we stand back and wait for the effects of climate change to wash over us. Growing more nationalistic and protective of what we have, unwilling to let the “other” in. Moving ever rightward in our politics, with people clinging to the safety of putting themselves first and being clear that there’s no room in the lifeboat for anyone else.

So what are we doing here in little old Aotearoa? How are we preparing for the inevitable floods of migrants and the extreme weather caused by climate change? Some of you are possibly already ahead of me here...

As I said on Facebook yesterday - Don't you just hate it when your secret plan to piss the $6b cyclone infrastructure recovery fund up against the wall in tax cuts gets released? Oops.

Nicola Willis has been looking at government spending, trying to work out how she’s going to squeeze her tax cuts out of what’s left. A thankless task, with hardly anyone glad to be doing their bit for the country, the ungrateful swine.

Still, they’ll have plenty of time to get used to the idea down at the welfare office now.

“As we said then, and as we say firmly now, reducing MSD’s workforce at a time of rising need as job losses are increasing and people are struggling with the cost of living and as our ageing population grows, is simply a reckless move,” said Kerry Davies, National Secretary for the PSA Te Pūkenga Here Tikanga Mahi.

Mind you if reducing staff at MSD, just as you’re making tens of thousands of people redundant, seems like poor planning it’s got nothing on canning that $6b fund intended to build back the infrastructure so badly damaged by Cyclone Gabrielle.

Back to the paywalled Herald article on that fund:

Finance Minister Nicola Willis received advice on disestablishing the National Resilience Plan, a $6 billion scheme set up after Cyclone Gabrielle and the Auckland floods to fund “strategic investments” in “building back better” from last year’s devastating storms.

It appears a proposal to wrap up the plan and reallocate its funding was under consideration in the forthcoming Budget. Whether the Government follows through on the idea will probably be known by May 30, Budget Day.

So we don’t know if the coalition will definitely do it, but they’re clearly considering it.

I might be being skeptical but sometimes less than good news has a way of finding its way out, it’s floated in the public domain, to test the temperature before committing.

John Key used to do it all the time. Release some appalling proposal and if the response was too negative he’d can it. The messed up thing is he’d then get credit for not doing the horrible thing which was his idea in the first place.

It’s kind of like announcing as you leave the supermarket that you were really tempted to steal a few things you couldn’t afford but you did the right thing, and then having the staff applaud you for not stealing.

But I’m not sure anyone will be applauding this. The fact that they’d even consider canning this initiative, at a time when we’re facing more extreme weather events that we should be preparing for, is grotesque.

Especially to the people of that region who suffered so much. Who need their lives and their infrastructure put back together. It must be bloody insulting. And we wonder, what happens with the next community? The next region? It could be any of us, and it probably will be sooner than we expect.

A vineyard in Esk Valley, part of Hawkes Bay, lies buried under tons of mud after Cyclone Gabrielle flooded the area, (Bruce Jenkins/Cephas).

In case you’re unfamiliar with what we’re talking about the National Resilience Plan (no relation) was created by our old mate Grant Robertson. Remember him? The bloke that made hard calls which put people into the economic equation. A practice since abandoned by Mrs Willis.

The intention of the plan was to “include future-proofing road, rail and local infrastructure wiped out by the extreme weather, as well as telecommunications and electricity transmission infrastructure”.

It would be pretty callous, even for this government, to turn their backs on that goal to fund tax cuts. The Herald asked Willis why she’d asked for advice on axing it.

She didn’t say “we’re not going to do it”, she said “the name of this report has been released in error”. Good to get that cleared up, but does that mean they’re doing it, or not?

Nicola said that, “any actions resulting from it would require Cabinet approval. We will make further announcements on this at the Budget and in the coming weeks”. Then she started talking about there being a “range of advice”, which translates as “I’m not intending to give you any answers, but fill your boots.”

Labour Finance spokesperson, Barbara Edmonds, said “this creates a huge amount of uncertainty. Where does that leave ratepayers, especially as councils are going through Long-Term Plans? It takes us backwards because we’re starting again from square one.”

I recalled one of the debates prior to the election, the one that Paddy Gower ran.

In the audience was a woman from the region who was furious with Labour over the lack of progress post cyclone. I don’t know if she voted for one of the coalition parties, but regardless of whether she did or not her bitter attack was not a good look for Labour. Even though there seemed little reason to think National would do more.

I wonder how she feels reading this news?

We all get frustrated by a lack of progress on things that matter to us. But voting for an alternative out of frustration, when it’s clear they’d do less to address climate change, or the impacts of it, is nuts. You’re shooting yourself in the foot.

It’s almost as bad as voting for tax cuts, then finding out that all the things being cut add up to a whole lot more than the few measly dollars you’ll be getting. Just like the media, and the now opposition, said they would.

How do you like them pears? Sorry, I couldn’t resist, it’s pretty much my favourite movie.

It’s a big scary world out there right now. With climate change, conflicts in Ukraine and Palestine, millions of refugees looking for a decent life, and there’s only so much we can do.

If nothing else though we can treat refugees with compassion, we have room to do more, and we can take a more active role in promoting climate change action. Not doing the minimum allowable under the unambitious agreements in place.

More than that we can accept the reality of the impacts of climate change and face that future by preparing so that we can “build back better” when people need help. That’s why Robertson created the fund. The fact that this coalition would consider ditching it is… sadly not even that big a surprise.

As if we’re being conditioned for even worse ahead, but that sounds like a topic for another day.

Anyone else looking forward to the budget?