ACT’s campaign slogan in 1996 was: “Values. Not politics.” It could have been made for Don Brash. Which spells trouble for ACT.
Had ACT loyally implemented its slogan, it might be going into its conference this weekend in Christchurch upbeat. Instead, having succumbed too often to populism, it comes off a month of plummeting polls, a write-in poll asking members if it should throw in the towel and merge with National and Rodney Hide coy about not challenging for leader.
The party of business, so it says, is ACT, which has its annual conference this month. But now there is competition: Don Brash’s version of the National party.
Moreover, there is an eery parallel.
Brash is a classical liberal ( which is ACT’s proclaimed ideology) but did not start out that way. If he had followed in his father’s ideological footsteps, as he did until his early twenties, Brash would logically have been alongside Michael Cullen instead of fighting him.
On March 23 an official study into the quality of university research is due to be published. It may well not make reassuring reading.
Research is at the core of the government’s growth policy (though its spending is still below the OECD average, let alone compensating for the miserly private effort).
One poll does not a government make. But it can make a contest. National is back in the frame.
That gives us back the German model of two countervailing major parties, which is the logic of MMP, given our political history. The Scandinavian model of a dominant government and a fragmented opposition is losing lustre.
Right, another messy Waitangi Day is behind us. The bunch of local yokels entrusted with organising events at the nation’s focal point couldn’t prevent disgrace.
Today Parliament reassembles. In Parliament the tangata whenua is all of us. It acts for the whole country. Tribes, being mini-nations, cannot.
When will we feel Waitangi Day is our national day? When everyone agrees we all fully belong here.
That is at the heart of the arguments over the Treaty of Waitangi, which Don Brash has now sharpened.
Brash says the Treaty now divides those whom in 1840 he says it united.
He views the Treaty through ideological eyes, those of a classical liberal (which is also ACT’s ideology). To a classical liberal all citizens are equal — but only in the formal sense of individual equality before the law. Group rights are anathema and so are laws or government actions directed at groups. Tribes are groups.
If you were listing the country risks for a foreign investor, what would you include? Small size and distance? Volcanoes and earthquakes? Major exports’ vulnerability to climate change and destructive pests and diseases? The Treaty of Waitangi?
Most could easily agree on the first four. The last is contentious because most don’t see it as an economic matter. But it is.
Paper for the Australian judges conference by Colin James, 27 January 2004
Twenty-five years ago the Treaty of Waitangi had no force. In most people’s minds, that is. In the minds of many influential Maori the Treaty was central to aspirations for more recognition and a better life, as it had always been. Now the Treaty is central to the life of this nation. Getting “the Treaty” right is the greatest political challenge.
President George Bush’s reach is long, right down to the Tasman and between this country and Australia while he, John Howard and Labour here stay in office.
Bush didn’t make the division. But he has widened it. What is to be done?
First, recognise the differences that owe nothing to Bush.
Yesterday was Australia Day. Friday next week is Waitangi Day. Two more different national days would be hard to imagine: one honouring the inauspicious landing of convicts at Sydney cove, a colony dedicated to savagery, contemptuous of the “savage” inhabitants; the other commemorating the auspicious signing of an deal enabling two peoples to live in the same land, initiated by an empire respectful of “noble savages” and promising peace.
The cabinet meets today for the first time this year. How much different will the cabinet be this time next year?
In four years Clark has made only two major changes: Parekura Horomia into Maori affairs and Paul Swain from commerce to transport. Both were forced: by Dover Samuels’ economy with facts about his past and by Mark Gosche’s family tragedy.