Q+A Panel Discussions

The panel discussions between Paul Holmes, Dr Jon Johansson, Ron Mark & Charles Finny have been transcribed below. The full length video interviews and panel discussions from this morning’s Q+A can also be seen on tvnz.co.nz at, http://tvnz.co.nz/q-and-a-news

Q+A is repeated on TVNZ 7 at 9.10pm on Sunday nights and 10.10am and 2.10pm on Mondays

PANEL DISCUSSIONS led by PAUL HOLMES

In Response to RICHARD HALL and WAYNE MAPP interviews

PAUL Well are we convinced that we should be there from all of that?

CHARLES FINNY – SAUNDERS UNWORTH Well I personally think that we had to be there after 9/11 and we had a failed state which was acting as an incubator for terrorism, let's do something about it, and we'd taken our eyes off as the West under the Clinton administration and early Bush administration. Personally I'm comfortable with the fact that New Zealand is still there, and I think we're doing a good job and we can't withdraw overnight. I'm personally very comfortable with the government's withdrawal timetable.

PAUL Okay but that was then, and there might have been reasons then, but then are we forgetting some very simple things like the fact that no foreign power has ever won a war in Afghanistan. You look at the place too, it's a cartload of snakes isn't it really? This Bamiyan Province hates the Taliban, Taliban hates Bamiyan, but you’ve got the Hazari people, then you’ve got the Tajeks the whole, the whole place is Greko Buddhist. Who are these people? What is the objective? How do we work this place out?

RON MARK – CEO Federation of Maori Authorities Look Paul I think it's very easy to focus unfortunately with the casualties we've suffered just this week, on the negatives, but I visited Bamiyan and I actually met with the Governor on two occasions, and I've visited some of those schools and I visited some of the projects along with the Minister of Defence and the troops. The troops feel that they are making a positive difference in Afghanistan. Any of the troops that have been there, any of the troops, people about to go there, they are all very positive about what it is they're achieving, and I think we need to remind ourselves of that. We also need to remember that whilst there was debate and argument about the invasion of Iraq, there was never any discussion – there was a strong amount of support of the need to go into Afghanistan and do something.

PAUL But if you read Richard Hall's book, and it's written as a diary form, so it's very easy to read and it's very interesting. Every page is uncertainty, no matter how much good you do, every page you don’t know whether this crowd coming towards you is going to kill you or praise you.

JON JOHANSSON – Political Analyst I've got no doubt that our troops are doing a good Kiwi job over there, but the whole reason you have civilian control of the military is so that you are actually not guided by what the military feel on the ground. I mean I was struck by the Prime Minister's comment this week is well we don’t want to cut and run because you know the troops were not finished the mission. What is the mission? I mean rationale nine years ago no longer holds. The President of the United States acknowledged that last year, that circumstances have changed and a strategic reappraisal was done. Now every which way you cut this I just don’t share the Minister's optimism frankly. You have a government that technically may not be corrupt but is pervaded by corruption all around it. A country who has no tradition or cultural or interest in democracy having ever coveted it. A country that for all intents and purposes is back in the 12th century. With the real problem in Pakistan and the kicker being you don’t need a specific piece of dirt to plan a terror attack on US ...

PAUL Exactly so, with a change in objective, with the object gone, as Guyon was quoting the CIA director, was suggesting that only 50 to a 100 Al Qaeda now, the rest have gone to the hills.

RON The question was always going to be one of extraction, and exit, and how does the West exit with dignity from Afghanistan? And that was always the question from the start. I think the best that you will hear from people is about withdrawing or end of mission at a time when they feel that there are the civil structures on the ground, when the judiciary, the Police and the government, are in a position to ...

JON We've got the treasure, and the US has the treasure to support a 30 year commitment which is how long ...

RON No they do not.

PAUL Okay Charles you say it's good that we're there, we're doing good things, we can't just pull out like this, but in the end do you actually feel nine years on that the place is any more sensible, any more rational, any calmer than it ever was?

CHARLES Oh look it's a lot more rational than it was when we went in. It was a pretty dreadful regime, there were things that they were doing to their own people, and fermenting the problems that we've seen globally were absolutely inexcusable. I think there's still a lot of work to be done though. I agree, and we just can't leave overnight, we can't leave the same sort of vacuum that the Soviet Union left when they departed.

*********

In response to DON BRAID, WAYNE BROWN & SHAMUBEEL EAQUB

PAUL Let us not beat about the bush, let us not mince words, let's not paint things pink. How bad is the economy? Charles Finny.

CHARLES Look I don’t think it's a crisis yet, but there are some real warning signals there. You mentioned seven weeks as a turning point. What happened? Well we had a interest rate rise and we had another one most recently. I actually think the Reserve Bank has made a mistake.

PAUL Hang on Charles people don’t wake up one morning before they go to this particular household appliance store and say oh the Reserve Bank Governor put the interest rates up I'm not going in this week.,

CHARLES Yes they do, and they're still going in but they're not spending as much, they're still going to a restaurant, but they're not having as many courses, they're not spending as much on the bottle of wine as they did before. So it's a very cautious recovery.

PAUL What do you think about that Reserve Bank hike?

CHARLES Look I don’t see any inflationary pressure in the economy beyond government charges. ETS, GST's about to go up, and rates are going up. We need to remember that, I think that we should have waited till about October to look at the state of the recovery. They’ve moved too fast they're admitting it.

PAUL I was talking to a person who has held very responsible employment over the years in Wellington. He says that people are telling him that they're having trouble paying their bills. People can't pay.

JON That’s why I actually think it's been more of a creeping process than one discreet event, just you know something that broke the camel's back. So we see a sort of bit of a jobless recovery as well which is you know a real concern, because that’s – and I looked at some of the numbers in Auckland particularly and then in the Hawkes Bay and up the Far North as Wayne Brown says, and you know this bad for our social cohesion and for people and their sense of hope and aspiration. But politically Paul, what's being spoken about more and more now is what is the plan, what is the response. The Prime Minister did say that we would be charging – this would be a recovery which would see us charge ...

PAUL Aggressive recovery, that’s what he said, and when we look at what 30% plus Maori unemployment, 30% plus Pasifika unemployment, when you look at – oh when you look at layoffs right round the provinces, is this going to start telling on the government?

JON I think it's inevitable isn't it?

RON I think what people have missed is something that the household...

PAUL There's people who always tell us we've missed something.

RON Mums and Dads who do the shopping at the supermarkets, did not miss this, they did not miss that they were going to get a GST hike to 15%, they did not miss that all of the costs of food the costs of living, are going to go up on the back of the ETS once it's implemented. They have not missed their paycut, not so much paycuts but very very small wage increases, and they have started paring back. They did not miss that interest rates were going to go up and now the Reserve Bank Governor's done exactly what he should not have done.

JON And the timing of those taxcuts are wrong. You know I think by the time the taxcut rolls round in October people will be saying well ...

RON They know they mean nothing. They know they mean nothing now. And so they have tightened their belts, they have closed their purses, and when they find themselves paying their grocery bills on a credit card, that tells them they should seriously worry about their mortgages and there goes the interest rate.

PAUL Yes I know and if they're having to pay on the credit card they're not gonna pay on the EFTPOS because the EFTPOS is cash out and it's nice and quick for the economy, but you know you think 30 years ago we had these reforms, I can remember Roger Douglas saying no we're not going to – and David Lange – we're not going to be the food basket for Britain, we're not gonna send logs with bark on them to the ports, and that is still all you see, and Shamubeel says that’s our exports increasing, logs and dairy, and dairy's going down.

JON And the milk solid prices at that last auction – down. So you know.

CHARLES But thank goodness actually we are still in that game because without it we'd be in real trouble. It's really China and India that have kept this economy going.

RON And there's the point, look the backbone of the economy has always been based in the rural sector, and we've had people talking about the knowledge wave, well the only knowledge wave, well the only knowledge wave we saw was from our young folk getting on aircraft as they disappeared out, and we have totally ignored the needs of the rural community for decades.

PAUL Oh we've done alright for the dairy, in fact every bit of land now is dairy.

RON And it's land that’s holding the economy up and that’s where government should be focusing, the export industry, exporters, those are the people right now.

PAUL Okay two things there, okay rural is great and dairy, you know dairy's been the mainstay. I read in the newspaper the other day we're facing, I think it was the Hawkes Bay newspaper or Dominion, we're facing the extinction of the wool and lamb industry. So much for rural. So where's the mix? Is it time the government's really gotta put some attention into export to a variety of products and so forth, and variety of endeavour.

CHARLES And government is and I think that they’ve been doing that?

PAUL Where are they doing that Charles?

CHARLES` Look I'm on the board of NZT&E, I know exactly what's happening and there is real work going on on building capacity and ...

PAUL What have the people on NZT&E actually done to earn a living?

CHARLES They have created huge opportunities. You just talk to the people ...

PAUL What have they done before they’ve come into T&E what have they done to earn a living?

CHARLES Oh increasingly they actually are from the private sector, they're not public servants as they used to be, and they're really making a meaningful difference. You talk to the people who have been on all these trade missions to China in the last year, they are putting deals together and making a fantastic difference.

RON There is a bright light and it is in the rural sector, and it's totally ignored by everybody and it's the ... membership, it's the Maori Incorporations in trust who are building and have been building. You will see soon the opening of the Muraka Milk Powder Processing Plant, and that is happening because the confidence is there amongst our membership in the agri sector and the export markets.

PAUL Thank God Mr Mark for Carterton. Now what are we looking ahead to next week.

CHARLES I think the week ahead more of the same, we've got to really focus on getting the message into government and the Reserve Bank about interest rates.

JON I think pressure will come on the government to explain itself better about the road ahead on economy and on Afghanistan and Bill Wilson will tick away.

PAUL Justice Bill Wilson, and yes Mr Mark.

RON My hope Afghanistan doesn’t lead the debate because there are three families right now that I'm mindful of, that I think the focus needs to rightfully hit the economy, unemployment stats, because when you start to see figures like this appearing and more of the brown populace becoming unemployed, unfortunately that’s when you start to see the social chaos rise, and that’s when we find we have to deal with all those other issues, and I think jobs, jobs, jobs, has got to be the focus of this government.

PAUL And of course our discussion this morning about Afghanistan is in no way meant to be disrespectful of Tim O'Donnell and his loved ones.

ENDS

© Scoop Media