Colin James’ remarks at Australia-New Zealand Leadership Forum, 14 May 2004
Since journalists are more about questions than answers, I will approach this with a series of questions.
I want first to say, however, that I think we under-rate the dissimilarities, divergences and disjunctions in the relationship, which in my view are growing.
Business New Zealand is about to campaign to “harness Kiwi values so growth is portrayed as an outcome of Kiwi values, not a threat to them”. So chief executive Simon Carlaw told a National party regional conference on Saturday.
This comes off the back of a Growth and Innovation Advisory Board’s survey of values and attitudes to business and growth which, Carlaw said, found that linking New Zealanders’ strong, distinctive values to “business” and “growth” causes their attitudes to business success and opportunities to “become very positive”.
After last week’s tumults, is MMP an unstable system? This week Parliament should be calmer. But last week’s high drama about the government’s majority has raised a question: Is MMP an unstable system? If it is, it will be changed.
Consider the record:
* In 1998 the National-New Zealand First coalition fell apart. National survived in office only on mavericks’ votes.
Colin James on a Treasury report on growth for the Business Herald
The “failed policies of the 1990s” didn’t fail. The economy speeded up and the country is richer as a result. But there were some gaps, most notably in skills development and capital accumulation. And some of the government’s changes since 1999 are working against future improvements.
Muddy shoes in the Koru lounge at Wellington airport. Tired and happy, thickly accented Maori. That was the end of the hikoi for some.
Those “marchers” didn’t sound or look like “haters and wreckers”, as the Prime Minister characterised the leaders. But they thought they had done a good thing, alongside the Harawiras and Sykes. They were buzzing.
Without Richard Prebble there would be no ACT. In March 1996 ACT was polling the same as now, around 2 per cent on average. Prebble got it to 6 per cent.
But this year it began to look as if with Prebble there would be no ACT. His curious attack on Don Brash at ACT’s conference in March indicated a man losing his grip.
Former Prime Minister David Lange did not tell the United States Secretary of State George Schultz he would bring about a change in the Labour party’s anti-nuclear policy, Merwyn Norrish, foreign affairs chief at the time said at the weekend.
This has been a bone of contention between New Zealand and the United States since the fateful meeting between the pair two days after the 1984 election which brought Lange to power. Some think the rift that then developed is a reason why New Zealand has lagged Australian in getting a free trade agreement with the United States.
The Greens are outliers in the parliamentary system. Their challenge for the next year is to become serious policy players.
Since 1999 the Greens have supported Labour-led governments. In return they have won some policy payoff, most notably in land transport, where the government adopted environmental sustainability as an objective and incorporated demand management and energy conservation.
Comments to the Asia Forum, 27 April 2004 by Colin James
Back in November when Farib Sos invited me to do this, I told him his invitation was misplaced. I know very little about Asia. I have been to Japan and Hong Kong four times briefly, most recently in each case late last year, spent a week in each of three South-east nations in 1982, a week in Indonesia and two days in Brunei in 1985 and 36 hours in New Delhi in 2001. I have never been to China the bureaucracy is too cumbersome for a journalist’s visa and so I rather doubt I shall ever go there. I have never written about foreign affairs except incidentally to my political commentary and have not worked the diplomatic circuit here. My connection with foreign affairs and with Asia is through my fossicking around in domestic affairs.
The ghost of Michelle Boag, the ill-fated former National party president, will stalk the party’s regional conferences which begin this weekend. Boag asked Don Brash to stand in 2002. And Brash has resuscitated the party.
Sure, polls are now showing National off its peak and logic suggests it will come off more over the next few months. But there has been a step-shift upwards of 10 per cent or more. Boag, who left under a cloud shortly after the 2002 election disaster, has been thereby in part vindicated.