Voodoo solutions to the current economic problems are not the preserve of Winston Peters and his Party. The Greens (well so called co-leader Russel Norman anyway) are putting the blame on oil, and their solution is to collectivise transportation.
“The Government needs to help the Reserve Bank deal to underlying inflation pressures by rapidly accelerating policies to reduce the oil dependency of the New Zealand economy.
“These policies include better and safer public transport, cycling and walking. They include investing in rail to move freight off roads and onto rail. The Government has increased spending on some of these but at the same time has increased spending on roads much more. We also need to seriously improve the fuel efficiency of the vehicle fleet.
“The reality is that finite resources in all areas are adding to inflationary pressures in a world reaching its limits. We are seeing this with food prices at the moment where increased demand from biofuels and rising populations is meeting finite supply of arable land. The result is rising food prices.
Sorry, Greens this won't help much. If transport is the problem, lets look at costs in the sector. We think that are too high, and Government policy, as well as poor quality infrastructure, are the reasons. We would love to see a comparison between NZ costs and Australian costs for example.
This also seems a bit of an attempt to distance the Greens from the Labour-led Government.
