Georgia Straight
for February 1995, Article 4

As I write this, my wife and I are about to leave for vacation in New Zealand where I go to fish each year about this time. Being mid summer, it is not the best time for trout fishing but the good news is that because of that, the rivers are relatively free of fishermen.

What do rivers and New Zealand have to do with a column for the Georgia Straight?

Well, they got me thinking about the irrelevance of left/right designations. Here I am, supposedly a right winger, so worried about what Alcan wanted to do to the Nechako and Fraser Rivers that I did everything but lie down in front of a D-8 to stop it, and here is New Zealand, coming out of a terrible financial bind thanks to the hard decisions of a Labour Government.

So ... perhaps, as I dream of rainbows and browns on the Tongariro, it's not a bad time to leave a bit of philosophy on the table as I go.

The story of New Zealand has been told many times. A conservative government, (it's called the National Party there) seeing that New Zealand had lost it's main export market for its agricultural products when Britain joined the Common market, decided to subsidize farmers to grow what they couldn't sell. That is a gross oversimplification, to be true, but by 1984 the country, led by the so-called "right winger", the late Sir Robert Muldoon had bankrupted the country. Half the nation was on the pogey - businesses were subsidized and protected by a high wall of tariffs, the public service was bloated beyond belief, and as I said, farmers were paid to grow and raise what they could not sell. In short, it hit the fan.

And it did so just as the Labour government of David Lange took over with his new Finance Minister Roger Douglas, now Sir Roger.

The new government, having no options left, brought in the most draconian of measures. For one thing, farm supports were lifted right now - not phased in but enacted and enforced overnight. Layoffs from the public service and Crown Corporations were huge and immediate. Interest rates went to about 27% and you could get 25% on your money at the bank. To say it wasn't pretty is a masterpiece of understatement.

It got the job done. Not without fallout, of course. There was a price to pay and not all of it was economic. Suicides went up dramatically. Many people at the prime of their working usefulness were made redundant. There is now unemployment where once there was none.

But the boards have come off the fronts of buildings on Queen Street in Auckland. And the economy is back on its feet. And it was all done by the "left". Indeed, after their first term of tough medicine, they were handsomely reelected.

Somehow, saving the salmon runs of the Fraser is seen as a left wing undertaking and responsibility. I have had the good fortune to be in the midst of this fight for the last 18 months and while many supporters of the NDP have been in the fight, and longer by far than I, they don't see it as a left/right issue. Nor do I and many non NDP supporters like me. But, I can tell you that the upper echelon of the business community sure as hell does.

This I find strange. Isn't a conservative one who wishes to conserve things?

Especially if they are good things?

There is a strong element in the business community that really sees any development as a good thing. Ever since General A.G.L. Macnaughton wanted to erect the Moran Dam on the Fraser, there has been a loose knit cadre of industry captains who want to see what I call the "soul" of British Columbia dammed and hydro electric energy values replace salmon.

The worst of it is that they are dishonest about it. They want to pretend that we can have both, despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary from the Columbia River. Alcan would have deprived the Nechako River of 87% of its water and had you believe that the huge Sockeye runs which traverse that river to their spawning grounds would not have been affected.

They know - as any intelligent person knows - that this is rubbish. But, If they were permitted to finish Kemano II and were proved wrong in their calculations about the salmon, they simply would have just said "sorry - but there being no more salmon to worry about, why let's put a dam on the Fraser."

What I, as a so-called conservative, find so amazing is that approval to start this process was given Alcan by a "conservative" government.

I think the answer is really my theme. These people aren't conservatives at all - they just are greedy, uncaring men and women.

The Labour Party which did all those draconian things in New Zealand weren't leftwingers, they were practical men and women who knew that you can't have social benefits for the less well off unless you are making money.

I certainly haven't always agreed with Margaret Thatcher but she was right when she reminded us that the overriding factor in the Story of the Good Samaritan was that he had money.

As we go into the 21st century (which starts of January 1, 2001, incidentally, not a year earlier when everyone will celebrate it) the 17th century designations of "left" and "right" have no real meaning except as pejoratives when one runs out of sensible debating points.