New Zealand Conservative

Jinty McTavish An interesting post on the blog "Your NZ" on ethical investment . Dunedin City Councillor Jinty MacTavish does not like the idea of Dunedin City Council investing in oil companies. Working to attract unethical industry to our city (and expending ratepayers’ resource to do so) feels to me a highly dubious activity for Council to be engaged in. I would very much hope we wouldn’t do it for cigarettes or munitions – what’s the difference with oil and gas, when science tells us the fruits of that industry will also erode the livelihoods of, and cause misery for, millions of people? Presumably, when choosing NOT to invest in cigarettes or munitions, you'd also choose not to USE cigarettes or weapons, or support the use of them. So will this councilor be ceasing her use of oil and gas, and recommending the Council cease using the very substances destroying the world? Every time she fills her tank, is she not helping that unethical industry profit? I'm ...

You make bad business decisions, you pay the price. Carbon credits were always going to be dodgy, not matter what the spin. Landowners encouraged into a Government scheme that awards carbon credits for keeping land permanently in trees could be forced off their farms. Forestry sources say forced sales of thousands of hectares in the Permanent Forest Sink Initiative are on the cards if the carbon price does not recover soon. Under the initiative, a covenant preventing the clearing of trees for a minimum of 50 years is placed on land in exchange for annual payments of carbon credits from the Government to the landowner. One farmer spoken to by Radio New Zealand says he signed over half his farm to the scheme two years ago, when the price of carbon was $23 a tonne, which meant the Government gave him carbon credits he could sell for $200,000. Now, with the carbon price under $3 dollars a tonne, his credits for this year are worth just $30,000. The farmer, who spoke under con...

So we are going to have an inquiry into the price of milk? An inquiry driven by the Greens and Labour, now supported by National . Of course this inquiry will not touch upon things like the ETS component in the price, something which both Labour and the Greens want to increase by bringing dairy farms into this wacko regime. And intensification of dairy farms, which of course produces more milk, more cheaply, is also something both Labour and the Greens oppose with all their might. What a crock!

Some Friday morning questions. Does anybody in Wellington Wellywood actually know what New Zealand's biggest export is in terms of dollars? And should we be finding ways to improve productivity in the sector that produces the commodities that produce these dollars? Or should we be slamming the people who produce these commodities ? And placing obstacles to high to be overcome in the way of new methods of production that potentially lower production costs and reduce the perceived environmental problems we are currently slamming that sector for? Can we ever catch up with Australia?