11 minute read
Opinion
22 FARMERS WEEKLY – farmersweekly.co.nz – April 18, 2022
Opinion
Global tensions raise the stakes
Alternative View
Alan Emerson
IT WAS good to read Nigel Stirling’s article on international diplomacy and trade in last week’s Farmers Weekly.
I appreciated being able to see a sane, factual and informative article that outlined some of the decisions we’re going to have to make.
Life isn’t boring on the international stage, with the Ukrainian conflict and China’s treaty with the Solomons keeping us entertained.
Offering an alternative view, I strongly believe that New Zealand’s approach to international diplomacy is currently more resembling a circus than a well thought out, long-term strategy.
Our reaction to the Ukrainian crisis is a case in point.
We are bombarded about the atrocities committed by Russians against Ukrainian civilians and they are atrocities.
The problem I have is that we’re going back to the rhetoric of the Cold War that Russia is always bad and the United States is always good.
I accept that Russia has behaved appallingly in Ukraine, but I would have absolutely no doubt that the US would have committed atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan.
We can read how Australian special forces killed civilians in Afghanistan and they certainly had significant issues in Timor.
NZ didn’t come out of Afghanistan blameless either, but there is no balance and there needs to be.
As the saying goes, the first casualty of war is truth.
Coming closer to home, we have the current contretemps with the Solomon Islands and its relationship with our biggest trading partner, China.
The Solomons are a sovereign country.
They can choose who they do business with and, again simply stated, it is no other country’s business.
Australia and the US claim China is wanting to put a military base on the Solomons.
China emphatically denies the accusation.
The bodice ripping by Australia, US and, to a lesser extent, NZ has been frenetic and reeks of the old British Gunboat diplomacy of an earlier era.
Colonialism is the politics of the past.
I can remember back to the 1970s when our then Prime Minister Norman Kirk invited the Chinese to establish an embassy in Wellington.
Then leader of the opposition Rob Muldoon told the country that it was the beginning of the end.
We’d soon have Chinese troops on Lambton Quay.
That obviously didn’t occur in the last 50 years and is unlikely to in the next 50.
Also, I don’t see a whole lot of difference from China having a base in the Solomons to the US having one there.
Going forward, my issues are:
Yes, Russia has invaded Ukraine and committed atrocities.
I would have no doubt that China would have known that Russia was going to invade.
The US and Europe are greatly annoyed that China hasn’t condemned the invasion, but it was never going to.
We now have NZ concerned about China in the Solomons and critical of China over its lack of criticism concerning Ukraine.
Surely we have illusions of grandeur.
China is currently our largest market and, yes, we must diversify more but that won’t happen overnight.
On a more practical basis, China’s Belt and Road initiative involves a lot more sovereign countries than just the Solomons.
The US is now threatening a trade war with China, which will be interesting as it will hurt them more than it will China.
The most fascinating development in my view is the SWIFT money system and what’s likely to happen as regards world trade.
For the uninitiated, SWIFT is an international money and security transfer system with 11,000 member institutions and an average of 42 million messages a day.
It uses US dollars and the vast majority of world trade comes under the SWIFT banner.
Banning a country from SWIFT means a country’s ability to conduct international financial transactions has been disrupted.
It’s been political in the past. In 2012 it shut out Iran and in February this year it shut out Russia.
While the sanctions were devastating to Iran they need not be for Russia, as it has an alternative.
Russia has its own platform known as SPFS.
It has now combined with the Chinese system and expanded to include Turkey, Iran and Switzerland, among others.
According to the South China Morning Post, both Russia and China want the deals in their own currencies as against US dollars.
I hadn’t been aware of the magnitude of the transactions or the close economic ties and massive trade and tourism ventures between China and Russia.
If a chunk of world trade comes under the Russian-Chinese financial system it will involve us making some hard choices.
It will also put considerable downward pressure on the US dollar.
We have major decisions to make as a country that requires sane, knowledgeable and unemotive decision-making.
Sadly, all we are getting from the Government and the opposition is shrill bodice ripping and pointless sabre rattling.
RISKY BUSINESS: Alan Emerson believes that New Zealand’s approach to international diplomacy is currently more resembling a circus than a well thought out, long-term strategy.
Your View
Alan Emerson is a semi-retired Wairarapa farmer and businessman: dath.emerson@gmail.com
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Best asset is a clear conscience
From the Ridge
Steve Wyn-Harris
“WAR is so unjust and ugly, that all who wage it must try to stifle the voice of conscience within themselves.”
That is a quote from Leo Tolstoy and given current affairs, as apt now as when it was written in 1853.
Tolstoy was a Russian writer regarded as one of the greatest novelists of all time and who wrote such classics as War and Peace and Anna Karenina. I read War and Peace as a young man and was pleased with myself at the time, but remember little so I would like to give it another go when I have time.
I’ve been thinking about conscience lately, although what weighs heavy on mine is but a minor matter.
I’m no saint and have regrets from the past, but no great sins of real consequence.
But recently I did something I regret which hasn’t affected anyone but myself and yet it has pricked my conscience and made me think more on what a conscience is and how it affects us humans.
I cheated at Wordle.
I assume many of you know what Wordle is and like myself and lots of others are playing it on a daily basis.
But for those who don’t have any idea of what I’m talking about, here’s the story.
Everyone on the planet who plays gets to try and work out the same five letter word each day. You can only do the one word daily and it usually takes only a few minutes, so it’s not an addictive waste of time.
It’s hard enough to be a challenge but easy enough it makes you feel cleverer than you actually are.
Jane and I usually do it on our own phones first thing in the morning, while not giving any hints to the other.
You have six tries to get the word and start by googling up Wordle on your phone and go to the site that hosts this daily quiz.
The site also keeps a track of your successes and failures with a statistics page.
At the time of writing, my statistics tells me that I’ve played 64 straight days since I was introduced to the game by a niece. A little like a pyramid game, I’ve introduced and hooked about a dozen others to the concept since.
What’s pleasing is that my win percentage is 98 and I’m on a current streak of 53 straight games.
Except that I know that about 20 days ago, I got to my sixth try and realised there were at least half a dozen possible words.
I couldn’t let my streak break so easily, so went to my PC and logged in as a new identity.
I used all six goes and still didn’t get the word, but it told me what the word was, so I entered it into my cellphone identity and my winning streak continued.
But to paraphrase President Kennedy, the fruits of my victory were like ashes in my mouth.
I regretted my dishonesty straight away and fessed up to Jane.
She was disappointed in me, but I have since noticed, not above getting hints from her sister on their phone calls when stuck herself.
It’s not like you are playing everyone else in the world.
The only person I’ve cheated is myself.
I’ve since become cavalier with my guessing, hoping to end my fake winning streak and start again with a streak that has more integrity.
But the cavalier attitude has improved my game if anything and the streak continues. I thought cheats didn’t prosper.
However, the matter has given me the opportunity to think upon conscience and how it shapes our actions.
I certainly won’t cheat at Wordle again given the unease I now feel.
It makes me think of that other Russian, Putin and whether he has trouble sleeping at night with a troubled conscience.
It would seem not.
Last week he even called his invasion of Ukraine a noble cause, when it is anything but.
His ambitions have cost tens of thousands of lives, caused unimaginable suffering and distress and seen a country, where many of the people speak the same language as him, being destroyed.
It defies belief that anyone could commit this sort of carnage upon other human beings, but history is full of people who have done exactly that.
Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Mussolini, Pol Pot, Amin and Assad, to name only a few recent tyrants.
And now Putin has willingly joined their ranks and must surely now be the most despised living person on earth.
Conscience seemingly keeps most of us on the straight and narrow, but unfortunately not everyone.
WIN-LOSE: After successfully ‘cheating the system’, Steve Wyn-Harris realised that his win was not as rewarding as he’d thought it would be.
I regretted my dishonesty straight away and fessed up to Jane. She was disappointed in me, but I have since noticed, not above getting hints from her sister on their phone calls when stuck herself.
Your View
Steve Wyn-Harris is a Central Hawke’s Bay sheep and beef farmer. swyn@xtra.co.nz
NZ’s balancing on a knife’s edge
Barbara Kuriger
AT A time when farmers should be celebrating higher red meat and dairy prices, they, like other New Zealanders, are feeling the pinch.
Already facing seasonal challenges, with either too much or no rain, the cost of doing business grows daily under Labour’s watch.
Results from the latest Federated Farmers survey show farmer confidence is the lowest it’s been since the twice-yearly surveys began in 2009.
More than half of the 1000 surveyed in January – before the Omicron surge and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – expected economic conditions to worsen in the next 12 months.
They also believed their spending would increase because of it and their profitability decline.
So far, they’re not wrong.
Even with stronger returns, revenue is quickly going back out the door to cover rocketing fuel costs, up 44%; fertiliser, up 28%; stock feed and grazing, up more than 6%; and seeds, up 6%, as well as labour costs due to the nationwide overseas worker shortage.
The last one, a problem which could have been relieved by relaxing immigration rules, two years ago.
Meanwhile, New Zealand’s 30year high inflation rate of 5.9% is set to keep climbing.
Our current cost of living crisis will mean a $150 a week per household increase this year and that is having a colossal impact on both rural and urban families.
Life is hard for many people making tough decisions about where and how far every dollar they earn will go.
And as the Government’s coffers swell with the ill-gotten gains of inflation, Labour is failing to provide any tax relief.
Agriculture is NZ’s biggest income earner.
If it is under strain, the ripple effects will be felt by all New Zealanders.
The massive rise in fuel costs, especially diesel, is just one example.
All supplier costs, deliveries and services coming on to farms have risen rapidly.
As has the cost of transportation from rural regions. From export goods to end food products in retail outlets, the cost of fuel is reflected in their price.
In recent weeks I’ve already said the Government’s ignorance is making everything so expensive and difficult.
In the four and half years they have been in power they have learnt nothing about the country they run.
That shows in Labour’s Clean Car package, the Ute Tax, which has just become operative.
Buying a new Toyota Hilux will now cost an extra $5175.
Once again Kiwis, especially big users like farmers, growers, tradies, construction and forestry, will be paying for an ideological policy that ‘robs Peter to pay Paul’ in an attempt to have us all in electric vehicles.
Yet electric utes in numbers to meet this country’s demands do not exist and won’t for some years.
As one farmer puts it: “We’re on a knife edge really. While we have increased returns, there is huge apprehension at what will be coming at us next, in the way of increased costs and compliance.”
As a member of the Opposition, I can relate.
