Skip to Content »

Will Nick Smith be recalled

  • March 28th, 2012

The resignation of Dr Smith from his Ministerial portfolios last Wednesday leaves a void..

There may be more than meets the eye, or more to come that would explain why an apparently innocuous error jrequired his resignation. But more important is whether his projects can continue..

From the time I entered Parliament Dr Smith stood out. He was clearly intelligent, seemed harder working than his colleagues, and more driven..

As Minister for the Environment, Minister Responsible for Climate Change Issues, he shepherded through National's amelioration of the ETS. It must have been thankless, with no gratitude for those of the green faith, and no respect from those who consider our efforts to be pointless, even if we are in human induced climate change for the worse. He has made sure we retain our credibility as a country that observes the agreements it has has signed, even when they are regretted, without exposing us to the costs that could have been crippling.

As Minister for the Accident Compensation Corporation he appeared to handle many hot potatoes astutely.up to the last one.

After the last election he retained Environment and Climate Change Issues, dropped ACC, and took over Local Government. . The launch of Better Local Government on 19 March was inspiring.

But he'd earned the cred to try potentially radical stuff by relative consistency in other ways. ·         Launching Building a Bluegreen Future on 2 March  – a policy paper outlining work on climate change, energy, transport, biosecurity, freshwater, biodiversity, oceans, recycling, contaminated sites, air quality, and outdoor recreation

·      The appointment of the Crown Observer to assist Christchurch City Council was handled adroitly.on 27 January

It’s a shame he will not be there to steer the  local government reforms  I fully support the move to scrap the 2002 broadening of local government role to  “general competence”.

I admire his passion, even with reservations about some of his projects, like the establishment of the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority in 2000, and the Environment Protection Authority in 2011.

In 2010 after a stocktake of ACC. Nick Smith argued that private competition will force the ACC to be more efficient and confirmed the Government would, in the second term, go ahead with plans to allow competition from private insurers for the ACC Work Account. This was a controversial move. There is now more doubt about the fate of this reform

He’s won the Nelson and Tasman seat eight consecutive times since 1990 when he was only 25. Keeping the arts luvvies and the hippies and the practical workers there happy all at the same time would take stamina.

I hope he leaves his shoes near the Cabinet table. If they do not find someone to fill them, perhaps he'll be allowed to put them on again, after it is clear that all the mud has been exposed..

  

Comments

Gravatar
  • James Bremner
  • March 28th, 2012
  • 10:21 am

A tangential point to your blog post, but one must confront bs wherever one finds it.
"even if we are in human induced climate change for the worse".
Stephen, please.  Don't tell me a sensible chap like you still believes that crap?  Surely not.
More evidence disproving the agw theory pours in each day.  The latest installment…
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304636404577291352882984274.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
Here are the money graphs:
"We need high-quality climate science because of the importance of climate to mankind. But we should also remember the description of how science works by the late, great physicist, Richard Feynman:
"In general we look for a new law by the following process. First we guess it. Then we compute the consequences of the guess to see what would be implied if this law that we guessed is right. Then we compare the result of the computation to nature, with experiment or experience; compare it directly with observation, to see if it works. If it disagrees with experiment it is wrong."
The most important component of climate science is careful, long-term observations of climate-related phenomena, from space, from land, and in the oceans. If observations do not support code predictions—like more extreme weather, or rapidly rising global temperatures—Feynman has told us what conclusions to draw about the theory."
In other words, the observations of the last decade disagree with the predictions of the global climate models.  Therefore the global climate models are crap. Period.  It couldn't be more obvious. NZ can't afford to have public policy made based on fairy tales, the costs and consequences are too severe. AGW is rubbish and so is peak oil.  Councils are “future proofing” cities based on a double load of nonsense and the indirect costs of not letting cities expand is the dramatically increased price of housing, which places an awful and unnecessary burden on those that need housing the most.

Leave your comments:

* Required fields. Your e-mail address will not be published on this site

You can use the following HTML tags:
<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>