I think Australia is this way...
The Greens dished up a dollop of drivel about migration yesterday.
But you didn’t have to read too far before recognising it was drivel. The credibility of the Greenie musings was thoroughly undermined by the heading: National needs to stop driving people to Australia
This, of course, is bollocks.
National drives nobody to Australia.
First, anyone wanting to get there must go by air or sea.
And second, they must pay their own way (or find somebody to stump up the fare for them).
But then the Greens’ nonsense is explained – sort of – by a reference to visions.
Alf is seriously wary of people who claim to have had visions.
His wariness turns to a deep aversion when these people want others to share their visions.
But that’s bloody Green Party thinking for you.
“National has failed to promote a vision for New Zealand that inspires New Zealanders to stay despite challenging times,” said Green Party co-leader Dr Russel Norman in response to immigration data out today that shows record numbers of New Zealanders leaving for Australia in the January 2012 year.
“A nation needs a vision.”
Ah, but then this Norman tosser starts banging on about strategies.
“People need to be confident that their Government has an economic strategy for creating good jobs and a vision for a clean green New Zealand.
“National has failed to provide that strategy or vision.”
So we’ve got to have a vision.
And we’ve got to have a strategy.
Without these things, people will bugger off to Australia.
But who there.
In the next breath, Norman has people going to Australia for something else again.
Instead of having visions and strategies, he says, we Nats
…are flogging off assets and land to pay the bills and proposing to risk our environment for short-term mining gain.
So what’s that got to do with the rush to Australia?
Forget about visions. Forget about strategies.
“Flogging off land and assets to overseas owners and mining our treasured places doesn’t inspire people to stay.”
And what will the Kiwis who go to Australia be doing?
Why, buying a bit of land, if not a lot of it, of course.
And trying to buy other Aussie assets, too, no doubt.
Some will try to get a slice of the mining action, because there are big bucks in mining.
Oh dear.
If the Greens are to be believed (and you may well be tempted to believe Norman’s bollocks if you are prone to having visions) then the Aussie Government will have a problem.
As its land and other assets are bought up by Kiwis, the Australian people will not be inspired to stay.
Not according to the Greens.
So where will they go to buy up land and assets and thus deprive the natives of another country of any inspiration to stay?
And where will it all end?
But Norman had not finished his diatribe at that juncture.
He went on to spell out the Green Party’s vision for New Zealand’s economy: it’s one that “is clean and smart, offering good-paying jobs that are also good for the environment”.
“National needs to focus less on punishing those unable to find work, and focus more on creating good green jobs,” Dr Norman said.
But when did we Nats start focusing on punishing those unable to find work?
Perhaps at the same time we started driving people to Australia with a cavalier disregard for the ocean in between us and them.
Alf has been told of hippies and their ilk having visions if they eat certain mushrooms.
Russel Norman does not seem to be the sort of bloke who would deliberately eat mushrooms of that variety, but we can’t rule out that someone in the Greens might have slipped a few on to his dinner plate without him knowing.
Alf Grumble 