Bill Dalton

I have always said that my generation is the lucky generation.  Lucky because we haven’t known war or depression – both very strong influences in our parents’ lives.

But I’m beginning to re-think this “lucky” tag.  The communities our parents lived in, from my observation, seemed to be much nicer communities.  Murders were so infrequent they made headline news for days.  Certainly they didn’t have to cope with communities that contained the insidious gangs we now have to put up with.

We used to think that these appalling gangs, financed and fuelled by P, were confined to the big cities – largely South Auckland.  Now right here in Hawkes Bay we have them gate crashing parties and chopping and bashing people up with machetes and iron bars.  What is our society becoming and where to from here?

I’m sure our parents didn’t have to cope with the topsy turvy situation we find our financial sector in today.

Over the last couple of years we have seen a number of pretty rumpty financial companies fall over and I’m sure that poorly run companies have always collapsed.

But now with the so-called benefit of instant communications, we are starting to see sound, well run companies striking difficulties.  The problem is confidence or more specifically the lack of it.

Under the new continuous disclosure rules – finance companies have to report regularly the state of their finances.  Now you might think that’s a good idea but it can cause problems.

Most companies, at some stage, go through difficulties and in most cases trade through them and regain their strength.  When they have to tell the world they are having difficulties, even small problems seem huge in the eyes of an already nervous investing public.

So often small problems, become big problems because investors know information that in the past they would not have, and naturally take a conservative view.

The problem we have in New Zealand at the moment is a crisis of confidence.

The one thing my parents didn’t have in their day was a Governor of the Reserve Bank who could give some leadership.

In my view that is one thing that hasn’t changed.

The word crisis is so over-used these days that it has almost lost its meaning, but frankly the law and order situation in this country is a crisis in the true sense of the word.

In fact in some areas of the country – South Auckland for example – it appears that law and order as we know it has completely broken down.

And the question is why.  My view is that we are pumping huge resources into the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff, where we should be stopping those that are likely to fall over that cliff.

We – the humble taxpayers – spend a fortune on legal aid – why don’t we spend that money on preventing crime.

Why don’t we have a fair and reasonable review of the New Zealand Police.  The New Zealand Police force is seriously under resourced.  We hear all this garbage about increasing police numbers by 1000 but lets look at the facts.

For years, when the police have asked for better pay they have been fobbed off with extra perks.  Now when a police officer leaves the college in Porirua, he or she starts with 7 weeks holiday per year.  They then get toil – time off in lieu – which can add up to several more weeks leave per year.  Many officers struggle to take the time off they are owed.

The truth is that most police officers don’t necessarily want that much time off.  They would prefer to have more standard leave provisions and to be paid a decent wage.

The government has lost the plot.  Take the wider public service for instance.  The government, concerned that they are failing to retain valuable civil servants, have announced they are going to give them an extra weeks leave.

How does that help?

How does a civil servant, including the police officer, pay for the inflated price of petrol or cheese with an extra weeks leave.  What they want is a wage that allows them to continue to serve their country.

And this propensity to grant extra leave rather then extra money, compounds the problem of the lack of service from civil servants – particularly the police.

It sounds wonderful to hear that we have an extra 1000 police to protect us. The truth is that inexperience is replacing experience and a substantial proportion of them are on leave anyway.

Until we sort out the resourcing of our police force the situation in South Auckland will get worse and spread throughout the country.

Fuel prices are continuing to rise and we have to ask ourselves – “Why has the price of oil more than doubled and now looks like trebling?”

One thing is for certain – the cost of extracting oil from the ground hasn’t doubled or trebled so somewhere along the way the market is being manipulated.

The Opec nations claim they are not ramping up the prices and yet daily we read stories of the amazing standard of living of the heads of those oil rich states. Personal 747 jets with solid gold bathroom fittings – diamond encrusted Mercedes cars – palaces and houses of indecent proportions – these are certainly not the trappings of those who work on narrow margins.

We know that countries such as the United States released oil from their strategic reserves when prices started to rise – hoping to stem the flow of price increases.

We also know that when they realised that prices were going to continue to rise, they then started to rebuild and expand their reserves therefore exacerbating the problem.

Fuel reserves are essential for the United States Security Plan and as high oil prices tend to undermine international security – they simply need to bolster reserves.

India and China are rapidly increasing their usage of oil as the standard of living improves in these countries. China in particular seems to be oblivious to the situation in the rest of the world and tends to work on the “I’m all right Jack” principle.

Clearly there are speculators somewhere in the middle who are seizing their main chance.

The international oil companies are announcing record profits. As usual they are quick to raise prices on the news of dearer crude and totally ignore the fact that the opposite should happen when crude prices fall.

And all the time sitting on the sidelines is the government. Their tax take is set as a percentage of the pump prices so – the higher the petrol price the greater their take. Michael Cullen must be rubbing his hands with glee. All this extra money pouring into the Government Coffers and he and all his colleagues have cars and petrol supplied by you and I the humble taxpayers.

Now there’s a thought - cars and petrol for City Councillors.

Yeah right.

For me, the best part of any trip is seeing Hawkes Bay unfold as the plane descends towards Hawkes Bay Airport.

The worst part is the two boxes of mail and over three hundred emails that require attention on our return. Mind you the junk mail and the correspondence from nutters is easily identified and able to be deleted or sent for recycling without the hassle of having to open it or read it.

It’s interesting traveling now that I am a City Councillor. I find myself taking great interest in refuse transfer stations and landfills. I find myself quizzing people about what rates (the yanks call it land tax) they pay and what they get for their money. I find myself looking at parks and sporting facilities in a completely new light.

The east coast of the United States is certainly a vastly different place than the west. We loved Washington DC with its memorials and monuments – its huge sturdy buildings that don’t block out the sky and the very real impression we got that we were visiting the centre of power.

Historic Boston was a great place to visit and the state of Maine was simply beautiful. We enjoyed being big kids in Orlando although I have to admit the new space ride in the Epcot Centre made me a little green around the gills.

Miami was just as expected. Warm, racy, brash and a great place to visit. In fact we could easily live in Miami if we won lotto – perhaps a couple of times!

There were two overriding impressions we gained from this trip to the eastern seaboard of the USA.

The first is that Americans are still the most hospitable people in the world. We had people we had never met inviting us into their homes for meals, taking us on outings and showing us around. One lovely fellow took a day off work to show us around Boston and then took us home to have dinner with his wife. Such was the generosity we were shown.

The second impression was that the Americans will never learn. They still serve everything in polystyrene and plastic despite the oil crisis – no thought of using crockery that can be washed and reused. And despite the fact that excess borrowing has precipitated their current economic crisis, they have airline stewards and stewardesses, up and down the aisles trying to convince passengers to sign up for yet another credit card.

Clearly the message about borrowing has yet to get through.

Anyway it is good to be home.