Who lost us the rugby World Cup? The government, said the lead letter in last Tuesday’s Herald.
Bob Maria said the All Blacks lost the semi-final because the Australian government “promotes and applauds success, whereas [here] the government penalises success and promotes mediocrity”.
Speech to the Information Technology Association, 20 November 2003
This country held its own economically between 1992 and 2002. It matched Australia and the United States and the OECD average in per capita growth, despite a two-year drought. It doubled productivity growth between the 1970s/1980s and the 1990s. It lifted elaborately transformed manufactures’ share of exports by 10%.
In short, the 1990s were a good decade for the economy. Why? The answer to that question is at the heart of the short-term political game between Helen Clark and Don Brash.
The systems were in place. The failure was by a person. There will be more such failures. People are frail.
So more children will be killed, like the Masterton pair, or maimed or damaged. It is a (ghastly) fact of life in our and every society.
And at each such failure the media and politicians will line up to throw rocks at the public service, not thinking that they, too, make mistakes.
The search is on for a new generation of Maori economic leaders to drive the second hui taumata, or Maori economic development summit, to be held next year.
The intention to hold a summit has been confirmed by Prime Minister Helen Clark and Maori Affairs Minister Parekura Horomia in the wake of Clark’s comment to the Labour party conference on November 8 that it was time to “take stock” 20 years after the first summit in November 1984.
Secure behind the glass wall of the Christchurch convention centre today’s Labour leaders couldn’t wholly repress a sniff at the motley few behind police lines opposite. In their day, with the Vietnam war and nuclear ships, apartheid and free love on the go, they could get up a real protest.
Speech by Colin James to the Employers and Manufacturers (Northern), 5 November 2003
You saw the pictures last week of Helen Clark in army battledress. How can Don Brash compete against that? Television images of the Supreme Commander reviewing her troops in troubled parts of the Middle East are enough to make strong men quiver.
Within minutes of Nick Smith’s election as National’s deputy leader a parliamentary staffer sent me an email consisting solely of a questionmark. Bang on.
Smith swiftly delivered. Pathos followed apotheosis. Unifying management, the job of a real deputy, was swapped for impulse and division. Don Brash’s unorthodox — because novice — political style fell in its first hole.
Labour parties face a special challenge which conservative parties are usually spared: how to be in government and keep alive the reason for wanting to be in government.
British Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair put it this way in his recovery speech at his party’s conference in September:
“Up to now there has been a ritual to Labour governments, Euphoria on victory. Hard slog in government. Tough times. Party accuses leadership of betrayal. Leadership accuses party of ingratitude. Disillusion. Defeat. Long period of Tory government before next outbreak of euphoria.
Be warned: a boss who runs a company off the rails and then takes a big payout might get a tongue-lashing from the National party’s new leader. Don Brash wants the public to back business and rich rewards for failure don’t help.
Brash backs high salaries for those who create jobs. But “it is quite outrageous that people who destroy large quantities of shareholder wealth and thousands of jobs seem to end up with very, very large payments,” he said in an interview [Thursday]. He will say that “occasionally in speeches”.
Between his master’s economic thesis and his PhD Don Brash had a conversion from opposing foreign investment to extolling it. The “Christian socialist” turned believer in markets. He hasn’t looked back.
That sounds much like the born-again experience that took some Labour people to ACT. And, indeed, Brash comes from a religious family. His father was a Presbyterian minister of very high international status.