I can remember many times over the past when I have heard people advise that contracting to the government is guaranteed money cause governments don’t go broke and as long as you do the job and get the paperwork right they always pay.
Well I’m afraid to say that, that is not actually true. Governments can and do go broke when they make bad decisions. A classic example of this is the latest news from Sri Lanka.
Sri Lanka’s Prime Minister has declared the nation is officially “bankrupt” as it reels from a devastating financial crisis that has seen inflation soar to record highs.
The nation of 22 million has been battling an economic crisis for months, and defaulted on its debts for the first time in May.
Not too long ago, Sri Lanka was relatively stable with a growing economy and a thriving middle class.
It had also emerged as a tourist mecca in recent years, attracting holiday-makers from across the globe and adding billions to the GDP.
The government has since run out of foreign currency to import critical items, with dire shortages of essentials and devastating power cuts fast becoming the norm, with schools closed and employees ordered to work from home.
Energy Minister Kanchana Wijesekera announcing over the weekend that petrol reserves had dwindled to just 4000 tonnes, less than a day’s supply.
“The next petrol shipment is expected between the 22nd and 23rd [of July],” Wijesekera said this week.
“We have contacted other suppliers, but we can’t confirm any new supplies before the 22nd.” Last week, Sri Lanka enacted a two-week pause on all fuel sales except for essential services, in order to preserve the limited supplies that remain.
When I read that story I immediately thought of the similarities in that story, to New Zealand at present.
We have inflation climbing fast, our cost of living is increasing rapidly, house purchasing costs are beyond the average workers ability to pay, we were for many years relying on Tourism to be the new base of our income and now Covid has put paid to that, government debt levels have risen to approximately 58% of GDP as a result of decisions made around the Covid pandemic and we have closed the Marsden Point Oil refinery and are now totally reliant on imported fuel which will be controlled by availability of shipping.
So you may ask how does this affect NZ and say that we are far away from the Sri Lanka situation and you would be right. But this just shows that bad decision making coupled with unexpected occurrences can bring a country to its knees in a very short time and then it is a long way back.
We have a government that is currently making bad decisions at a furious rate, attacking the basic democracy we have had for many years by implementing divisive race based co-governance regulations which have the potential to ultimately bring us rapidly to the same situation as Sri Lanka.
Bankruptcy!!!
You may say “Oh” He is just a scaremongering anti-government commentator and you have the right to do so but before you do that let me just put some facts out there for you to peruse before you call me out:
Overseas debt has risen from approximately 17% to 58% in the past couple of years.
Our Health System is failing. We are short of at least 4000 qualified nurses; nearly half of all General Practitioners will reach retirement age in the next ten years; we have approximately 50,000 women on waiting lists for breast or cervical screening (and some will die waiting); we have a shortage of ICU beds in our hospitals around the country; we have a serious shortage of midwives; and even with all of these problems this current government thinks it is a good idea to spend close to $500 million dollars setting up a race based Maori Health Authority that will have power of veto over the total health budget.
We have over 27,000 people of waiting lists for social housing and we are now accommodating them in motels.
We have growing waiting lists for elective surgery and Mr John McKie, President of the New Zealand Orthopaedic Association says the numbers of people waiting for elective surgery is much worse than the numbers released by the government. “In Canterbury DHB, less than 30% patients referred by their GP actually get an appointment to see a surgeon. The unmet need in our population is huge. Just looking at waiting lists won’t tell you the whole story.”
We have government taking water assets owned and paid for by the taxpayers of NZ and then giving control to a race based tribal elite under so called co-governance arrangements.
We have the mainstream media being corrupted by government funding to become a propaganda tool for the government.
We have separate race based appointments being made to local bodies (even though in one case the government auditor general stopped them due to concerns that it was against the NZ Bill of Rights).
We have a desperate need for workers in many industries yet we have over 187,000 people on jobseeker benefits.
Total beneficiaries have risen by 9.5% over the last ten years. (348,339 total)
The public sector employed around 436,700 people in 2021, 18.9% of New Zealand’s total workforce (2,313,400), as measured by Stats NZ’s Business Demography data. The majority (88%) work central government* (384,400) and 12% in local government (52,200).7/12/2021
In total we have less than half of the total population in NZ working to support the rest.
Prime Minister Ardern in her first formal speech to Parliament pledged: “This government will foster a more open and democratic society. It will strengthen transparency around official information.”
Under Jacinda Ardern’s Labour Government, the number of communications specialists has risen significantly. Each minister has at least two press secretaries. (Ardern has four).
When Labour was first elected, the Ministry for the Environment had 10 Public Relations staff. It now has 18. The Ministry for Foreign Affairs and Trade has more than doubled its Public Relations staff – up to 25. MBIE blew out from 48 Public Relations staff to 64.
But it is the New Zealand Transport Agency that beats the rest: employing a staggering 72 Public Relations staff, up from 26 over five years.
So, Yes you can call me anti-government, but my reason for this stance is the list of bad decisions above, and all of the others that I have not listed, which cumulatively are leading New Zealand into the same direction that Sri Lanka was going before they declared bankruptcy!!!
We should all be afraid, be very, very, afraid of where the current government is leading us.