In his article in last weekend’s Herald Simon Wilson willfully and happily confessed to being a Pollyanna. His article certainly backs up his claim. Having devoted the first part of his two page spread to his fear of that megalomaniac Donald Trump, Simon turned his attention to domestic matters. Simon, as he has often documented, is very concerned about the future of the planet.
Not so long ago Simon went to a breakfast launch of some new electric ferries. He says many influential people were there: councillors and officials, executives from Auckland Transport, business leaders and engineers. People with their hands on the money, people who know about boats, people who know about public transport. If Simon thinks executives from Auckland Transport know about public transport then I have a question for him. Why is Auckland full of empty cycleways and buses, a few mainline routes excepted?
I agree with Simon that ferries are a good idea, electric or otherwise. The breakfast he attended was the launch of a proposal to build them. Simon bemoans the fact that it didn’t happen and asks why not? His answer is that although council agency ATEED and ferry operator Fullers 360 support the proposal, nobody who could have made it happen cared enough. He bemoans that the outgoing Government’s plans for e-vehicles didn’t happen either. This would have placed a levy on gas guzzlers in order to subsidise low carbon vehicles.
Simon says the fact that this didn’t happen is “absurd”. Yes and no Simon. As I pointed out to you at the end of my previous article politicians, particularly of the left, do the talk but not the walk. Just look at Kiwibuild, light rail, child poverty, homelessness or any of the other failures of the last term of Government. I don’t anticipate the incoming government will be any different. We can look forward to being governed by a group of high deceivers and low achievers. Simon says with cars it’s very simple. Set a deadline for ending imports and roll out charging stations. Easy peasy. How does that work in large apartment blocks when fifty or more cars return at night all wanting to charge up I wonder?
Simon then turns his anxiety to trees. There are some in Avondale a developer wants to cut down so he can build much-needed houses. Simon would rather the Council bought the land as a reserve. The Council says it can’t or won’t or both. Evidently, the problem is the Mayor’s urban forestation strategy which focuses on planting saplings but does nothing to preserve mature trees. Then there is the Council itself, whose planning processes can’t cope with an emergency like this. In my view, the emergency is to build the houses rather than to preserve the trees.
Simon then gets to the real problem: the last National Government, who passed a law prohibiting groups of trees for preservation precisely to allow developers to build those much-needed houses that failed to materialise under the Labour Coalition Government. Despite the Council declaring a climate emergency and forming Te Taruke-a-Tawhiri, also known as Auckland’s Climate Action Framework, to make these issues easier to resolve it has had limited impact on policy or public life.
Why Simon? I’ll tell you. That outfit will be nothing more than another left-wing talk fest. It’s another example of the modus operandi of the lot you have wedded yourself to. All talk, no walk. The framework, says Simon, sets some ambitious targets: a 50 per cent reduction in carbon emissions by 2030 for example. That is for Auckland as a whole. Simon asks how are we going to do it? That’s a pointless question because the answer is we’re obviously not. Simon could relieve a lot of his worry if he accepted the fact that the science on all of these issues is not settled.
The real problem Simon is this: most left-wing politicians are totally useless when it comes to getting anything done. They haven’t a clue how to go about it. Here’s why Simon. Most have never lived in the real world. This is the problem at both central and local government level. Lawyers, teachers, career politicians, unionists and the like have not worked in the real world. The real world is the small, medium and large business owners who have all the associated responsibilities and have to balance the books at the end of the day.
If you want things done Simon, those are the people you need to elect, people who know how to get them done. They won’t be done with the unrealistic targets of your mob but they can be done in a realistic and fiscally responsible way. You might not like it Simon but it’s not the Arderns and Goffs of this world that are the movers and shakers, it’s people like that man you so despise – one Donald J Trump. Think about it.
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