Walking Backwards into Our Future: Prudence, Principle and "Foresight, Insight and Oversight"

A piece of string. Fixing the long neglected unfixed things.

pn452 

Q. How long into the future do we need to look and why do we avoid looking?  A. How long is a piece of string?

I was reminded of this riddle when I read in our local Whitby Newsbrief what candidates had to say while courting votes for the forthcoming local election.

Most candidates could be divided into pragmatists or idealists.

The former, the pragmatists, mostly older males in business, emphasising prudence.  Current Council policies are extending state care, hindering investment that leads to job creation, and bringing about the separation of racial groups.  Don't  spend money we don't have. Don't pay our civic employees a living wage because it will put up rates, making Maori and Pasifika especially vulnerable due to their lower disposable incomes.(a curious argument when most do not own a house, and some are on less than a living wage.)

And the latter, the idealists, generally younger people and women who placed more emphasis on principle than prudence. Pay the living wage and look for other ways to cut costs. Face up to the local challenges of climate change. Show genuine recognition and support for multiculturalism, Build key partnerships with civic groups.

Who and what is the "disaster" here?

The NZTV1 online heading reads "Jacinda Ardern's excursion to Nauru a PR disaster."  It's an opinion piece written by John Armstrong who concludes that our PM's attendance at the PI Forum meeting was a "disaster" -- even before she left NZ. 

"shallow, sensational, knee-jerk rubbish" pn76

"The trip had already met all the requirements to be classified as a public relations disaster even before her Air Force Boeing 757 had cleared the runway in Auckland en route to arguably the South Pacific's prime economic basket-case." Huh!! How?

His reasons were the cost (which he largely discounted),  Ardern defending her failure to meet and talk to the refugee asylum-seekers,  and Winston  Peters' refusal to raise the refugee quota. That's three, or 2½, issues, with the third one probably better targeted at Peters and more related to coalition tensions here in NZ, 4,600 kilometres to the south.  

Hardly a disaster for Jacinda Adern -- unless John and the media wish to make it so.

The Pacific Island Forum meeting  got a further 13 mentions in our media since I last wrote (pn70), mostly on RNZ International that few NZ residents watch or read.  Of the 13, two were on climate change, two on security and one on trade, all on the agenda. A further two were are the China-Taiwan spat and - wait for it--  six, nearly one-half, were on refugees.  

 I agree with Roshika Deo, Amnesty International’s Pacific Researcher, writing on the refugee situation:

"The Forum was an opportunity for leaders in the region to say enough is enough and show that they would no longer stand by while the Australian Government’s abusive policies continue to risk more lives."  

I think also that it would have done the cause no harm (but probably made little difference because Australia is the key player here) for Jacinda Adern to have spoken with the refugees. 

These concerns apart,  I am more concerned with the dearth of substantial Forum news in our media and the negativity of the little that has been published.

If there was any "disaster," it was the making of Armstrong and his media colleagues. 

Sometimes I'm left asking why should we defend freedom of the NZ media when it fails to cover major news and continually publishes shallow, sensational,  knee-jerk rubbish like this.

This does not protect our freedoms. It abuses and threatens them.

--ACW