New Zealand Environment and MMP

New Zealand has a major flaw with its economy and that is it has an anaemic secondary manufacturing sector. NZ does make some things, but not enough of its national income derives from secondary industry. This has a major impact on the environment. To maintain its position as a fully developed OECD economy NZ finds itself having to do two things in the absence of manufacturing; it must flog the land to exhaustion and pollute the rivers.

The intensification of agriculture has got to the breaking point. You will find commentators saying the answer is the service sector and Kiwis doing things smarter. Yes, fine, but NZ is small and isolated, it's hard to get noticed. Its all very well trying to be the next Microsoft or Google but how realistic is that? Not very realistic is my reply, and NZ does not have really big global scale service sectors and I'm thinking banking and insurance. NZ relies on overseas funds from banking and overseas owned insurance companies.

For little NZ, the answer is to extract mineral ores and transform them into metals. Then take those metals and make products from them. Then sell those products worldwide. And if feasible, make those same products in other countries with the design aspect handled in Kiwiland. You may think of Toyota when I say this but I'm thinking Scania. Scania are Swedish heavy trucks and made in factories around the world. But Sweden only has a population of 9 and a bit million. Less than twice the size of NZ. And they have Volvo construction equipment to boot, and on and on. NZ should try to emulate their example.

Will this happen with the current political set-up? Never. The German style of Mixed-member Proportional (MMP) voting introduced in the mid 1990's ensures NZ is stuck with the way it is. The country has professional naysayers in the Greens, refusing to lead or take any responsibility, hogging positions that could be occupied by more able parliamentarians. And contrary to what NZ was promised, the country has rarely had majority governments, instead being led by minority governments hanging on by pleasing the myopic middle ground in order to survive in office. NZ has ended up with the worst of all worlds.

And it will get worse. The day could come where MMP delivers tyranny. One example is where a party receives, say, 60% of the vote but all others fail to get to the 5% threshold. This means all Parliamentary seats would go to the one party making the threshold (in theory but with some seats being won without many party votes, there would be one hell of an overhang in that Parliament). Or how about the ultimate minority party, say one with 35% but the rest unable to garner much more than 10% each, with a large number of votes wasted on parties not making the 5% threshold; meaning the government would rule a country where the overwhelming majority had not voted for it. Incredible, it could actually happen. Who were the fools that foisted this system on the NZ people.