Yet again a Kiwi summer has been marred by devastation and tragedy, a natural disaster made worse by decades of failed policies and morally bankrupt decisions by our political class.
National Prime Minister Chris Luxon said, “New Zealand has always had extreme weather. We have always had slips” and that nothing “can stop rain from falling and hills from moving.”
He says the tragedy at Mount Maunganui should not be “politicised” but instead the country should focus on “accountability, not ideology.”
In fact, far from this storm being like the weather we have always had, it was exceptional – off the back of several years now of severe storms.
Tauranga recorded their wettest day on record in the storm last week. In one statement to the press, Professor James Renwick related, “It seems that these days, every storm brings with it orange or red flood warnings and devastation and misery somewhere in the country. Sadly, this is exactly what we expect with a warmer climate that has more moisture in the air.”
In another statement, he was blunter: these frequent storms will “destroy the economy.”
The National-led coalition has slashed funding for initiatives to mitigate and adapt to climate change to pay for tax cuts for their rich mates.
Chris Luxon knows full well the record of his government, hence he is doing what he knows best: trying to put the accountability on someone else.
Meanwhile, in other parts of the East Coast, working people were yet again assaulted by the scourge of slash, forestry waste washed by torrential rain through the valleys amplifying the damage the flooding would otherwise have caused.
Many members of these communities work in forestry, the industry with the highest fatalities in New Zealand. Lax regulation, brought about by decades of free market economics and insider lobbying, has created this appalling legacy of barely-there health and safety and disaster-waiting-to-happen slash.
The problem here goes beyond this current government. Under the previous Labour-led administration, Forestry Minister Stuart Nash was widely criticized for being too cosy with the forestry industry, accepting donations from forestry companies and dragging his feet on an inquiry into the environmental damage caused by slash.
The problem is systemic – Labour and National are both complicit in kicking the can down the road on climate action and protecting the corporations who abuse their workers and damage those same workers’ communities through environmental negligence.
Far from being “non-ideological”, the actions of Labour and National politicians over decades to put the interests of the rich and corporations ahead of both working people and the environment has been driven by their right-wing ideology and politics.
Weather events are a result of natural processes, but in any natural disaster there is the social and political element.
There was nothing inevitable about the loss of life in this instance. The level of damage and devastation can either be guaranteed, or mitigated, through adequate infrastructure investment and planning. Those are human, political decisions made, not blind forces of nature.
The Alliance believes there is a better way. The government should intervene in worker-killing, environment-destroying industries to ensure they operate like the law-abiding citizens everyone else is expected to be.
The Alliance also believes New Zealand must transition the economy away from fossil fuels to create a sustainable, decarbonized society for future generations.
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