Written By:
- Date published:
7:47 pm, July 20th, 2025 - 25 comments
Categories: budget 2024, Christopher Luxon, Economy, national, national/act government, nature, nicola willis, same old national -
Tags: floods, state of emergency, Tasman
Yesterday, after a week’s holiday in Hawaii and another week swanning around, Luxon finally made it to the Top of the South Island, where floods1 have wreaked havoc – farming families literally swept away, homes lost, telecommunications cut off, businesses and livelihood destroyed.
Mill Creek Orchard owner Donald Heckler showing Prime Minister Christopher Luxon the damage to his blueberry farm after two floods in Tasman. Photo: Samantha Gee / RNZ
There, he announced a “decision on funding had not yet been made”, apart from $600,000 to some farmers.
In Parliament last week, Brownlee also rejected a motion by Labour.
Hipkins had asked the government to follow standard practice to issue a Ministerial statement and allow the House to discuss the state of emergency.
What has this government got to fear?
Perhaps it’s this –
In 2023, Grant Robertson allocated $6000 million to the task:
“This investment will initially focus on building back better from the recent weather events. It will also include future proofing road, rail, and local infrastructure wiped out by the extreme weather, as well as telecommunications and electricity transmission infrastructure.
“Addressing vulnerabilities in our infrastructure systems to function during adverse conditions and quickly recover after an event is fundamental to the wellbeing of communities.”
It included $1,000,000,000 for flood victims.
But Nicola Willis and National, in their infinite war against wisdom, common people, and strategic sense, raided that money in 2024.
It short-sightedly disestablished the National Resilience Plan, with the National Finance Minister saying at the time:
“I consider that, one year on from these events, we are now in a position to restore conventional Budget processes…
This approach will still allow resilience-related projects to be funded in this and subsequent Budgets”
The only catch is National and the Coalition government did nothing of the sort – nor did they allow a contingency fund for natural disasters.
Now the people of Tasman are waiting, and relying on each other while central government dithers.
Corporate priorities and stupidity – this is what we chose, New Zealand.
Note: The right wing Coalition didn’t hesitate on sending back ~$3000 million to landlords as soon as they got into power, nor giving hundreds of millions to smoke companies and private charter schools to help French kids learn French.
This is a repost from Mountain Tui substack
Short-sightedness…..that would have to be particularly intrinsic to National (and also of course their tied cronies ACT/NZFirst).
Strangely it even fits with their Climate Denial……as in something will come up..surely.
All we have to do..is wait it out.
Meanwhile the floods, and slips, get bigger.
CoC have consistently undermined whole government initiatives, any collaborative efforts and collective action to improve lives or under pin resilience. Why?
The answer is in Seymour's R.S. Bill. A trojan horse to give….
Individual property rights, business property rights over riding any community collective Public good or service.
This weakens the country's position in regards to billionaires and oligarchs. They could sue for compensation when prevented from harmful but money making activities.
This current government has raided every prepaid plan for capital, while tanking the economy which is down 1% in each of the last two quarters.
Far from fixing the cost of living, their "water done well" has forced huge rate rises, and now belatedly they are trying to cap Council costs.
Their misuse of the resilience fund has weakened and made hugely expensive the insurance industry.
Their biggest failure is homelessness, the loss of youth and talent to overseas, and their blatant disregard for damaging welfare penalties and sanctions.
When they have deliberately practised austerity, which always increases unemployment and lowers employment chances.
Their employment of cronies, connections and questionable firms is rife.
Why? To move public money into private pockets. That $6000000000, is the tip of the iceberg. Add $13000000000 of equity pay, $15000000000 for tax cuts to landlords and the sorted including Seymour's schemes, while ordinary folk got the equivalent of a pack of butter and you see how those with capital have benefited.
Thank heaven for people like Mountain Tui and Ad today, getting us to really grasp the enormity of the con job. They are behaving like scammers imo.
I once watched a TV show in which Liberace performed. He came on stage wearing a fancy pink jacket; obviously expensive.
"Do you like my jacket?" he asked the audience. "You paid for it."
Same with the government's big spendup.
And they're still pushing that tired old mantra about jobs and growth. We've heard it all before.
This is a nothing burger as long as National returns to work and puts emergency funding in in place of drawing down of the infrastructure fund.
Good on Labour for putting these temptations to raid pre-allocated funds in their budgets and watching National get in and create the negative sounding stories, they get political points within the media narrative as a result, it's well deserved.
On the other hand, the country should be more than willing to set repairs going because that is still in the interests of the country.
So its really a something burger? And somehow its Labours fault? While on the other hand….Are you having a laugh?
All that's essentially happened is National took out a budget line item from Labours earlier budget which said, expecting to spend 6 billion on flood recovery in the next few years. This didn't change if there was going to be flood damage to spend that on at all and as long as National funds the recovery now the outcome is the same.
You are 100% hallucinating that I am blaming Labour for National's unrealistic budgeting.
Fuck off with the hallucinating……You started your comment with
Maybe check your framing before you post such hallucinatory comments next time?
You're loyalty to "The People's Front of Judea" remains secure.
Lol. Idiot
PLA – I think Nic is making a technical point about the nature of budgets, and even about the nature of money itself.
A budget line merely signals an intention to spend. It is not money that is alteady set aside in any way, because when the time comes to spend it, then it must be funded in the usual way of taxation or borrowing or new money creation.
It therefore cannot in any real sense be considered as an existing pot of money that can be 'raided'. A government can decide to raise the same amount of money and spend it on frivolous or antisocial things like giveaways to landlords. That is shameful enough, but it is just a change in policy priorities.
National could still do the dumb sh*t like freebies for landlords and fund disaster relief as well. The money exists for both, because government spending creates new money. However that would increase government debt, and Willis and friends have a debilitating and illiterate fetish about Government accounts always having to be in surplus.
Nic the NZer may well be doing that. Or not. As I said..they obviously need to frame comments differently.
Thanks, that's really well put. I also think PLA wants a factional dispute where none exists.
Comment framing. Interesting that someone else framed it for you. I'll bear that in mind for future reference
Also…with reference to your "The People's Front of Judea" and my wanting "a factional dispute" ?!
My main area of interest is Climate Change, the damage it is causing to NZ and our Planet. This includes Sustainability. A major part of this Post..and NZ's future.
I will make no more replies to you…
"My main area of interest is Climate Change"
And how dare I frame my comment in a way which can be (even in complete bad faith be) interpreted to reflect less than angelically on Labour anyway.
"as long as they put emergency funding in place", when Luxon has interpreted reports as, "You may well be on your own after disasters, as the country can't keep giving hand outs". So that makes a mockery of your statement, back to the drawing board, as relying on Luxon Willis et al good luck not good management.
What has been learned about Climate Change its consequences, and how and what (if anything) has changed .
Seems North Island experience and expertise is being utilized.
My thought : why, knowing our new Climate Situation, wasnt this already implemented. Instead of (for example) major tax breaks ..for landlords
Maybe both National and Labour need to come to a common position on accepting China's Belt and Road programme funding – before that programme $$$ really runs out.
Xi will start running out of power soon, and there’s chaos to come after that.
There's no money coming from the US for infrastructure projects, and we sure as hell can't afford to do it ourselves.
The most effective climate mitigation New Zealanders can do by the hundred thousand is what they are already doing:
Moving to Australia.
? And on that note….
And costs the taxpayer so little.
27,000 moved there in 2023
Over 30,000 moved there in 2024
Will be more from this year.
Towards a prosperous, wealthy, well-planned, lower-risk country.
Makes you wonder why our government would propose to withdraw direct property owner support for climate change, when so many citizens are just choosing to cut and run rather than face it.
…. whose population may well already be at (or even over) the maximum which can be supported by its water cycle.
(NB: this is just a personal view; I don't have any links, or the time to search for them.)
Don't know specifically about the carrying capacity of Australia's water cycle, but Aussie’s overall biocapacity overshoot is even more problematic than NZ's.
http://www.overshootday.org – http://www.footprintnetwork.org
Watch the flooding videos of Toowoomba and surrounds Ad. Going to Aus? The world is affected by climate change.
Indeed!
But some more then others and some with the resources to change whole massive infrastructure around … and others like ourselves increasingly not.
Moving to Oz may seem attractive at present, but there is an increased risk of fires and floods according to climate forecasts: https://www.acs.gov.au/pages/climate-future
However, the effects may well be the same for NZ in the long run.