Beaches – for Cars or People?
The following article appeared in the New Zealand Herald on 11 January.
“The Kiwi beach holiday used to be about picnics, sunburn, surf and games on the sand. Today, it is increasingly about the internal combustion engine.
In 2008, cars, motor bikes, quad bikes and all sorts of motorised vehicles are a dominant presence on our beaches. And if land-based motorisation is not enough, there are always the motor boats and jet skis to add to the jollity.
The traditional beachgoers now need to have their wits about them. The danger to swimmers and sunbathers, picnickers and walkers, is constantly there, and can easily become real, as recent well-publicised events have shown. Small children and dogs are particularly at risk.
Our beaches offer in many cases the kind of flat open space that can be hard to find elsewhere. Little wonder that the eyes of drivers, who have chafed under the constraints of the Road Code and a growing volume of traffic on our roads, light up when they see the chance of opening the throttle.
But it is not just the threat to life and limb from speeding vehicles that has grown. As our beaches have been transformed into race tracks and test beds, the beach environment suffers as well. The motorised holidaymakers will return to their everyday lives oblivious of the damage done to the habitats of rare nesting birds or of vulnerable native plants.
And then there are the various forms of pollution that come inevitably in the wake of the internal combustion engine. The peaceful enjoyment of a beautiful beach can be ruined for hundreds by the noisy exhaust of a single motor bike doing wheelies on the wet sand all afternoon.
Hearing is not the only sense to be assaulted. I recall snoozing under a pohutukawa tree one afternoon, listening to the rustle and rumble of the sea, when I suddenly realised what it was in my nostrils. It was the smell of diesel, the first indication that a large four-wheel-drive vehicle was approaching and the last thing one expected to smell on a pristine beach.
And then there is the visual pollution – the rutted tyre marks disfiguring the sand and making walking difficult, the rows of parked vehicles at the water’s edge looking more like an urban car park than a beautiful part of our once-beautiful country.
I should make it clear that it is not the fisherman looking for the best surfcasting spot who is in my sights. I regret that it seems necessary to use vehicles for such a purpose, but I recognise that fishing is a legitimate, pleasurable and traditional leisure activity on our beaches, and that the careful use of a vehicle should be accepted as a reasonable balance between the interests of fishers and of other beach users.
The people I object to are those who seem to have lost the use of their legs. I know of a beach where a car park has been thoughtfully provided just metres from the sand and less than a hundred metres from the water’s edge. Drivers regularly by-pass the car park, drive their vehicles on to the sand and up to the water’s edge, before getting out to swim or picnic or play games on the beach.
It is almost as though they have become so enamoured of their vehicle, so dependent on it, that it has become such an integral part of their lives, that they cannot bear to be more than a few metres from it. So much for the outdoor life!
I have even less sympathy for those who have no regard for other beach-users but are determined to inflict their vehicle noise, danger, smell, environmental damage and all on everyone else. Or for those who ignore an easily available road route for getting from A to B in favour of a short-cut along a populated beach.
In vain do local authorities put up notices proclaiming that vehicles are forbidden on the beach. The proclamation, we are told, is unenforceable. The police solemnly intone the mantra that the beach is regarded for legal purposes as a highway; but, if this is the case, how is that so many unlicensed vehicles and drivers are being allowed to destroy our beaches? A change in the law is long overdue.
There can be no bright side to the tragic accident in Northland this summer. But, while it will be of no comfort to the bereaved family, it may awaken us to the damage we are doing to ourselves through carelessly allowing what Mrs Thatcher once described as “our great motor car culture” to harm the beautiful and vulnerable environment in which we are privileged to live.
My Vision for New Zealand
The following article is a commissioned contribution to be published in a book edited by Dave Breuer of Anew New Zealand.
As most New Zealanders are quick to acknowledge, New Zealand has established – in its relatively short history – one of the most effective democracies in the world. The record is indeed a proud one. Universal suffrage, votes for women, equality before the law, the welfare state, human rights, race relations, are all areas where New Zealand has been amongst the pioneers of reforms which the rest of the world has been keen to emulate.
Yet even this proud history is not sufficient to guarantee to us a fully functioning democracy, one capable of equipping us to face and overcome the increasingly evident and serious challenges to our well-being and even survival, both here in New Zealand and across the globe. My fear is that without that robust and effective democracy, we – and others – will fail those challenges. My vision, on the other hand, is that New Zealand – true to our distinguished traditions – will find the means to restore a democracy effective enough to ensure that the challenges are met, both for ourselves and for others to follow.
The essential value of a democratic system of government is that it counteracts the natural tendency of all societies to allow and indeed promote the concentration of power in just a few hands. Left to themselves, most societies will operate so as to advantage the strong, the wealthy, the intelligent, the well-born, or even the plain lucky, who will then use that advantage to entrench and increase their power still further, to the detriment of others. The crucial decisions that are then taken will be made in an increasingly narrow sectional interest – that of the rich and powerful – rather than in the wider interest of the whole of society.
The great virtue of democracy is that it provides a counterweight to this natural tendency, by ensuring that political power at least is more fairly and evenly distributed, and that there are therefore certain limits as to how far the powerful can pursue their own limited interests without regard to the interests of society as a whole.
But what should we make of an apparently democratic system of government where power has indeed concentrated in just a few hands and where that concentration has occurred in places that are beyond the reach of our elected government? Should we say that we are content that we have the forms of democratic government, even though the substance has been hollowed out so that our elected government cannot ensure that they take important decisions in the general interest and are accountable for those decisions to the whole of society?
My contention is that this is exactly the dilemma we face, and that neither in New Zealand nor elsewhere do we have a functioning democracy such as to protect the wider public interest – now and into the future – against the accumulation of power into fewer and fewer unrepresentative hands. This is a situation fraught with danger. How has it come about?
It has happened because the wealthy and powerful have discovered a means of circumventing elected governments. Whereas once, an international investor (and in a global economy, it is the international investor who holds the most important purse strings) would have to comply with the requirements of the government of a country in which it wished to operate, now – by virtue of the unlimited movement of capital across national boundaries – the boot is on the other foot. A government which does not toe the line, in terms of what is wanted by a potential investor, will simply be told that the investment will go elsewhere.
Few governments have the power or will to defy this blackmail. Most will meekly comply, to the point that a measure that is regarded as likely to deter overseas investment will never see the light of day, let alone be put in place. The result is that the ability of governments to protect and advance the interests of their citizens has now been significantly diminished. And, as people sense that their governments have lost power, they in turn lose faith in democracy.
So, economic policies are framed to satisfy current orthodoxy, so that central economic decisions are taken out of the hands of elected governments and handed over to unaccountable bankers and officials. Policies are shaped to meet the needs of big business, tax rates for the wealthy are progressively reduced, spending on social and environmental issues is pared back, rules restricting the repatriation of profits are relaxed, the protections provided to workers are weakened, the fruits of prosperity accrue largely to the already wealthy, rules to protect the environment are bent, restrictions on cross-media and foreign ownership of the media are abandoned.
None of this happens openly – as an acknowledged consequence of the preponderance of one interest over all others – but is done piecemeal, each step part of an inexorable reduction in democratic protections against the overweening power of international capital.
Without our realising it, the political landscape has changed. A political revolution has taken place without a single vote ever being cast for it. The choices offered to voters have been narrowed. It is now the undemocratic global market, not political democracy, that makes the important decisions. A single global economy and market is, by definition, one in which there is no role for government, democratic or otherwise, since government intervention would mean that the market operated differently in one country as opposed to another, and there would no longer therefore be a single market. The danger is that – left unregulated – that single market does not recognise the public interest. It rewards instead the greedy and short-sighted minority.
It is not only the domestic political agenda that has been transformed. The dominance of increasingly unrepresentative and powerful international investors – narrowly focused and short-sighted enough to believe that their wealth and power allows them to ignore the threats that assail the rest of us – means that the undemocratic distortion of the political process now has wider and wider consequences and increasingly affects global issues. In matters like global warming, or religious tolerance, or third world debt – all arguably central to our very survival as a species – it is not humanity’s, but international capital’s interest that prevails.
This barely remarked yet profoundly threatening development presents all of us with a huge challenge. New Zealand, which has so often led the way to democratic reform, has the chance to fight back, not just in the interests of our own democracy, but as a beacon light for others to follow. Never has the need for democracy, for the broadest possible basis for critical decisions, been so pressing.
So, what can we do? Our main task is to restore a fully functioning democracy. We can begin by raising the level of awareness, so that people understand what is happening, and how high the stakes are. We can then demand from our politicians that they reclaim for us all the power that they currently pretend they have – the power to make the important decisions in our interests – and that they meet the obligation to be held accountable for those decisions. We should assure them that they will have our support if they have the courage to take on these challenges.
We should consciously rebuild a sense of the value of our democracy, not in the abstract but as a practical guarantor that decisions will not be taken over our heads by distant, unrepresentative and irresponsible forces. That means, among other measures, having the courage to insist that our governments restrict the freedom of overseas investors to buy up whatever they choose, so that we cease to have any say over what is done in our own country. It means reclaiming the freedom to set our own requirements as to how and in whose interests our economy should be run, and what laws should protect our citizens, so that those wishing to operate here comply with our wishes rather than the reverse.
It means placing economic policy under the control of our elected governments rather than bankers. It means acknowledging that governments have a vital role in identifying important issues and acting to deal with them, rather than leaving them to the global market to decide.
As we begin the fight-back at home, we should also work with other like-minded countries and governments to change the way in which international financial institutions work, to establish rules to govern international investment, and to control the flows of capital so that the power of international capital to defy and override elected governments in their quest for profit at any cost is limited.. We must ensure a fairer distribution of capital around the world and promote international cooperation in the interests of humanity rather than of maximising profits for a few.
My vision for New Zealand is not a pipe dream. It is rooted in our history and in our attachment to democracy. What is needed is the political will – and a sense of urgency.
Rates Reform
Recent and prospective rate increases have prompted a renewed debate in New Zealand about the financing of local government. The following article by Bryan Gould was published in the New Zealand Herald on 30 August 2006.
In the London of 1990, the poll tax protesters were on the streets and created a political and public order crisis that eventually forced Mrs Thatcher from office. I was at the time the Shadow Secretary for the Environment, responsible not only for Labour’s assault on the poll tax, but also for devising the Labour alternative.
Mrs Thatcher was just the most high-profile casualty of what has always been one of the most sensitive of political issues – the role of local government and by whom and how it should be paid for. Rates have always been one of the most resented taxes but attempts to replace them have usually – as in the case of the poll tax – been disastrous.
Very few would dispute the case for local government. Bringing decision-making closer to the communities affected by policy decisions has always been seen as worthwhile. Most people want to have the power to influence decisions in their locality rather than have them taken by some remote bureaucracy in central government.
New Zealand has a rather more centralised system of government than is commonly found in most Western democracies. We have a unitary (as opposed to a federal) state and the powers of local authorities are less extensive here than in countries like the United Kingdom. One of Mrs Thatcher’s weapons in her battle against a recalcitrant local government that stubbornly resisted her so-called reforms was to transfer power from the local to the central tier of government, but there would not be much support for a further limitation of already limited local government powers in New Zealand.
If the role and value of local government are not widely disputed, and if the price paid for failing adequately to carry out its functions is painfully evident in our major cities, the remaining question is – how is it to be paid for? There will always, of course, be room for critics to say that money is wasted and that local government should be reined back. But we also know, or should do, that one person’s wastefulness is another person’s essential service. No one likes paying for public services, but a stance that produces continuing demands for better local services while refusing to pay for them is hardly realistic.
So, are we stuck with the rates? Mrs Thatcher’s disastrous experiment with a poll tax is unlikely to be repeated. Local income taxes are generally resisted as an unwelcome addition to an already heavy income tax burden. Local sales taxes create unnecessarily cumbersome and unhelpful differentials between regions which would be seen as ludicrous in a small country like New Zealand.
There are of course many potentially thorny issues about how rates are calculated and levied – what should be the basis of valuation, who should carry it out and how often, what rebate schemes should be put in place – but a property-based local tax as an alternative or complement to income and sales taxes has long been recognised as a valuable widening of the tax base and has proved over centuries to be pretty resistant to challenge. Rates are fraught with difficulties but have so far been seen as preferable to any alternative.
One of the aspects of rates most commonly resented is the impact they have on those – often the elderly and retired – who are property-rich but income-poor. The plight of the elderly widow forced by an excessive rates bill to leave her family home was one of the most powerful images used in Britain to make the case for replacing the rates with the poll tax.
When I faced up to these issues in 1990 and proposed Labour’s alternative to the poll tax, I came up with a solution that solved some of these fundamental problems. I wanted to stick to the tried and true property tax as the basis of financing local government, but I proposed that its impact should be moderated by taking account of people’s income. Modern computerisation, even 15 or 16 years ago, made this eminently possible. The income tax code based on the income tax return that people made in any case could easily be applied to the rates bill so as to reduce that bill where income was low in relation to the rateable value of the relevant property.
Unfortunately, my colleagues misunderstood my proposal and were spooked by what they saw as an income tax element to be added to the rates. They feared the reaction to what they thought might be seen as the introduction of a second tax or a local income tax. As a result, we missed the chance to reform the rates. Some say that the episode cost me the Labour leadership when I came to contest it a year or two later. It is interesting that a renewed British dissatisfaction with the Council tax (as the rates are now called) has led to a revival of interest in my proposals.
It may be that in New Zealand in 2006 a serious and considered reappraisal of local government financing will come up with still more far-reaching reforms. But no one should bet against the survival of the rates in one form or another.