The Bank of our Tamariki and Mokopuna.

Stealing from our children, and wrapping the week.

Monday left me broken
Tuesday, I was through with hoping
Wednesday, my empty arms were open
Thursday, waiting for love, waiting for love

The end of another week that left many of us asking WTF? What on earth has NZ gotten itself into and how on earth could people have voluntarily signed up for it?

It’s easy to be overwhelmed by the sheer avalanche of awfulness from this government in the here and now. I’ll touch on some of that in this wrap of the week, but I’d also like to cast an eye down the road. You know that place where we kick the can, the legacy we’ll leave for future generations.

Right now it seems this government is not only prepared to kick environmental and financial problems down that road, to be fixed by others, but they want to make some more.

Ministers like Chris Bishop and Shane Jones have a pile of six packs, the old style ones with the plastic holder that caused birds and sea life slow, agonizing deaths. They’re bloody thirsty and when they empty those cans you know what they’ll be doing with them? Yep tossing them on the pile and kicking them towards the horizon.

Eat drink, and fast track developments, for tomorrow… our children will clean up the mess.

Today, April 20th, has a mixed day in history. It has seen the birth of Adolf Hitler, the school massacre at Columbine (funny how that works), and the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe exploded onto our news.

In better news it’s Pizza Delivery Driver Appreciation Day, which is possibly related to the fact that it is also ‘420’ or ‘Weed Day’. A celebration of Cannabis culture that started in the US in 1971 and is now known globally by many.

Joe Amon/Denver Post/Getty Images.

So to mark the day instead of the usual Brickbats I will be allocating a weed brownie to take the edge off of not only the personality but also the political views of the recipient.

It’s pretty hard to keep laying people off when you love everyone. Hmm, might need to make them quite strong for this lot. The already enlightened can have a pepperoni pizza to munch upon, they’ve earned it.

Another departure is that usually I cover Mike Hosking’s views of the wrong, as opposed to left, but this government have produced quite enough wrongheaded thinking this week without the need to mock the mighty Hosk.

In case you were wondering he scored the government a 7/10 for “a very solid week”. Perhaps some laxatives Mike? Although it’d be a shame to be going at both ends.

The thing that concerned him was Trump’s jury selection and whether his reputation might proceed him. Bemoaning something much of the world has been celebrating with a 3/10.

I was joking above about ‘wrong’ being the opposite of ‘left’. Most of these issues are simply wrong for all of us, regardless of such labels, as you’ll see in our first award...

Nicola Willis: a brownie, for planning unfunded tax cuts.

Yesterday I wrote about the similarities between Nicola’s unfunded tax cuts and the debacle that saw Liz Truss crash the UK economy. In a paywalled Herald article, Matthew Hooton, former advisor to National Party leaders and Mayor Wayne Brown, also expressed concerns.

Hooton points out that despite the number of cuts to jobs and services being made there’s simply no money for tax cuts and Willis will have to borrow the lot.

So we’re not only suffering the pain of these cuts now but by borrowing we’re essentially using the money that will have to come from future spending cuts to give people tax cuts.

We’re kicking a great big multi billion dollar can of debt down the road to our kids and our grandchildren who will have to pay it back so people can have a tax cut now.

Borrowing for tax cuts is cashing in tomorrow's spending cuts today.

Where my view, and I’m sure plenty of yours, is that if we don’t have the money for a tax cut then we simply shouldn’t have one, Hooton thinks we should be making much larger job cuts in our public services.

“But the only real tax cut is a spending cut, so the truth is none of us are getting one. We’ll all just have to pay higher taxes in the very near future to service the massive debt and then to try to pay it back.”

It’s brutal logic, but a lot more economically sound that borrowing for tax cuts.

That’s like going on a fabulous overseas trip and saying don’t worry your grandkids, who aren’t yet born, will pay for it. You wouldn’t do that, would you?

But that’s exactly what we’re doing.

Not only with the enormous dumpster of debt that is Nicola’s tax “plan”, but we’re legislating to do the same with the environment. Trash it now to increase short term profits, and leave the mess for the grandkids to clean up.

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In recognition of April the 20th this weekend I’m offering a 20 percent discount off a monthly or annual subscription to Nick’s Kōrero, for the first year. Obviously you can cancel it at any time. Simply click here to access that special.

Using this special a paid subscription costs $68 for a year or $6.39 per month. Your support is humbling and I feel privileged to be able to bring this writing to you.

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Chris Bishop: a brownie, for disservices to democracy.

As you might be aware submissions on the new Fast Track legislation closed last night. This will grant Bishop, Brown, and Jones super powers to approve developments, leaping over environmental and human concerns without giving a single, um, care.

A great big shout out to all those who took the time to make a submission, I reckon they’ll get a fair few. 😀

“Come on in, the water’s fine.”

The issue many submitters had is they’d no idea what sort of projects would be included and which organisations would be involved. With mere hours to go before the deadline closed last night Bishop released the latter information, but there’s still no information available on potential projects.

Many have been appalled at Bishop’s flagrant disregard for this democratic process, hampering the right of people to raise their concerns. Although considering the nature of the legislation, which seeks to do just that, it kind of seems appropriate.

Besides which, rather than deliberately delaying the release of information to stymie resistance maybe he was just busy with more important things?