I was in Seddon once and asked who lived in the place - beneficiaries? "Oh,
no," was the immediate response, "They have all moved out!" Then the couple
I was speaking with explained that once the vine yards arrived all the
beneficiaries moved out - BECAUSE there was work available....
Beneficiaries on unemployment cannot do the seasonal fruit picking work for
the following reasons:
1: They have to continue to pay rent or mortgages on the properties they
normally reside in - yet pay rent for the accommodation they have to use
while fruit picking.
2: The work is not only itinerant but casual. When the weather is bad or
there's been a particularly good harvest day then there is no work to be
done - and no income for a few days. But rents and mortgages still have to
be paid back home.
3: They miss out on their friends and social life "back home" - whatever
that life may be.... and yeah, maybe it is just days in a smoke-filled room
of pokey machines (minus the smoke now, I guess...)
4: Unless prepared to make a bit of a career out of it, the skills required
to make a decent income can only be developed over time - and they end up on
well under the minimum wage while acquiring the skills.
The ones in Seddon were, well.... they're not the sort you'd want to have
picking your horticultural produce!
So, in the end, it is better to shift the work to migrants who can save a
few dollars by living in utter misery but who have family back home paying
the rent or mortgages and tending the back garden or whatever. A threepenny
Dollar (such as our NZ Dollar) is still quite a fortune to migrant workers
from some countries - though this is rapidly changing within the Asian
countries. (Which is another reason why we have to start recruiting the
Chattering Classes!)
As for your observations about using student and intellectual labour, maybe
we could add the students and intellectuals to the chattering classes - Oh!
Maybe they are!
As for oil..... the oil being pumped out up in Taranaki is now one of our
largest exports! We don't make a lot from it - and it is too high grade for
processing at Marsden Point - so it goes straight to Australia, I think. It
comes down to the marginal rate of return. As oil becomes more "dificult" to
extract the extraction cost goes up. However, as the development of new
extraction technology improves the cost of that new development goes down -
and for sane countries such as New Zealand - the marginal difference between
extraction costs and selling price may be low - but we'd use that little
income wisely... or one would hope.....
I think the UK is among the leaders in lignite coal scrubbing technology. I
am sure the same technology could be applied to oil. Others on this panel
may have better information on this. But yeah, clean-burning oil would be a
useful technology - whether rock oil or used fish'n'chip oil. Greenies of
course will bemoan the release of carbon stored in the rock oil.....(or
coal).
I wasn't aware the Chinese were burning our high grade West Coast coal
inefficiently! Hell, they pay a high price for it! If so, then I am sure we
should be developing technology to assist more efficient consumption. Of
course, it is not only the Chinese using the stuff - I believe it is sold to
Korea and India. If we developed technology to assist efficient and clean
usage no doubt it could be exported to other steel-producing countries as
well.
On your final comments Michael, I am surprisedby your rhetorical question
that Greens aspire to riding bikes, smoking pot and espousing Communism.
I've met some pot-heads on bikes - even ridden a bike while utterly potted
(it was an interesting experience but I doubt the motorists really noticed
that I was trying to drag them off at the lights....) but I have never met a
bike rider - that is a person who actually RIDES a bike espouse Communism.
All the real Communists I have met wear brown cardigans spend their days in
armchairs espousing the rights of the workers - and of course support for
woman's rights....I suppose they have added "Green" to their manifesto too
to attract more hoi polloi to boost numbers to their fading cause...
It would be interesting to hear from Communists on this panel whether this
observation of mine is correct...
Cheers,
Tim Kerr