Posted on 27-3-2003
MADENZ
Responds To ACT's Coddington
by Stephen Tindall, the woman
I recently read a profile of Deborah
Coddington and my observation from that article was that she
appears extremely eager to worship wealthy and/or powerful men,
so her endorsement of Stephen Tindall - the man, comes as no
surprise. It is unfortunate that Ms Coddington appears to have
confused proximity with influence.
The Act party claim to loathe welfare,
but Ms Coddington appears to be enamoured with stores such as
The Warehouse whose fortunes have been made on the back of welfare
dollars that purchase their imported goods. Once upon a time
instead of welfare dollars being used to purchase imported goods,
the money being used to purchase NZ Made goods was generated
from wages earned from local productive jobs. This fact
seems to escape members of the Act party.
The cold hard reality is that
due to the very men Ms Coddington worships at her alter, we
now have 350,000 people on welfare and a mere 30,000 jobs available
at the present point in time. The
television set example is a tired old argument. I urge Ms Coddington
to turn it off.
I find it interesting, though, that
Ms Coddington thinks it is not the job of politicians to order
people into another job. One would have to ask what she thought
of her heroes, Douglas and Prebble, when they forced tens of
thousands of New Zealand manufacturers to reskill, become shop
assistants or become jobless when Acts free market policies
forced these manufacturers to close shop in the face of subsidised
imported products flooding our shores. I would ask Ms
Coddington how this fits with her assertion that it is not up
to politicians to order people into another job. Ms
Coddington states that the money saved by shoppers buying imported
goods from The Warehouse, "creates jobs in other areas
of the market". Please refer to paragraph three whereby
I state that 350,000 people are receiving welfare while a mere
30,000 jobs are advertised at present.
Also Ms Coddingtons reference
to the window of opportunity that cheap imports open, in regard
to saving, to me looks more like a black hole of debt - now
that we have the highest level of household and credit card
debt ever recorded.
And soliciting economic advice from
such people who champion Roger Douglas and his cohorts and for
that matter, from people like Stephen Tindall - the man, also
brings to mind a well known quote.
"Problems cannot be solved
with the same consciousness that created them in the first place".
Regards,
Stephen Tindall - the woman.
Founder of MADENZ
Original from Deborah
Coddington
She's a hard job weaning people
off producerism.
Take transport. There's much debate at the moment over the
Government's Land Transport Management Bill. Now, I think the
Bill's a dog and Im not alone. The majority of the submitters
appearing before the select committee make one common point:
in its present form, this legislation will be the last nail
in the coffin for economic growth and prosperity for all New
Zealanders. We will have paralysis by consultation and parish-pump
politics.
However, the Greens and they drafted the Bill fret about
environmental efficiency. There are just too many cars, they
say, and we must get back to central planning to get them
off the roads.
Get off a plane at Auckland airport,said one Green member,
and look at all the taxis sitting around doing nothing. That's
not efficient for them, surely?
Well perhaps not, but isn't that their problem? If theyre
not making any money, then theyll exit the industry. Its not
the job of politicians to order them into some other job (unless
the rumours Ive been told by drivers are true, and many of
them are claiming welfare benefits whilst 'simultaneously
employed as drivers).
Recently I had a discussion with a woman who disliked The
Warehouse (no, it was not that Mad-enz woman) because, she
said, its stores sold all this stuff people didn't need. I
was arguing that Stephen Tindall had done a good thing when
he took advantage of the deregulation and removal of import
licensing Roger Douglas championed. Why shouldn't people on
low incomes have access to inexpensive goods? Why shouldn't
a family be able to buy each other Christmas presents for
less than $5 each? The money that shoppers save at the Warehouse
doesn't get used to light the fire, it gets spent elsewhere,
or saved, thus creating jobs in other areas of the market.
(As an aside, when we lived in Russell in the early 1980s,
and were strapped for cash, our Christmas shopping was done
at the Keri Keri Bargain Centre where my kids indulged themselves
in all sorts of $2 junk.)
But this woman didn't object on the grounds that The Warehouse
was costing jobs, she just objected to consumerism. She was
a minimalist, and believed others should be forced to go without
too, through strict regulations passed by central government.
Linda Clarke on National Radio echoed similar sentiments
last year when she complained about shopping becoming too
popular a weekend activity. Her particular gripe was homeware
- couches, fridges, tables, and bedroom suites. Once, she
said, people bought just one, which lasted a lifetime. Nowadays
were bombarded in the newspapers and the mailbox by leaflets
advertising even more varieties of sofabeds, flash fridges
and so on.
How much stuff do people need? - she wailed.
As much as they damn well want,
I replied to the car radio. The alternative is returning to
the pre-1984 days when television sets were ridiculously expensive
and only a few thousand a year were sold. This was because the
local assembly industry was protected by high tariffs and a
few local manufacturers who gin-slurped in cabinet ministersoffices
- were granted licences to import Japanese parts for assembling
sets in New Zealand.
Because our market was so tiny, it was expensive buying
such small orders of specially packed parts with English instructions
from the Japanese who were making tens of thousands of sets
a day. As one New Zealand assembler commented: We opened a
factory, imported much machinery, paid the highest wages in
the neighbourhood, employed the most intelligent engineers
to decipher the instructions, used a great deal of electricity,
and finally produced a TV set with negative New Zealand content
at twice the imported price.
Producers ruled.
Yours in liberty, Deborah
Coddington
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