Author: Colin James

Time for some markers in the Treaty road ahead

Three canyons cut through the political landscape between National and Labour.

One is in the workplace. Labour sees wages and conditions (including safety) as the sustenance of workers and their families. National sees them as a cost to business.

The second is in foreign policy. For 65 years Labour has leaned more to multilateral processes and resorted to alliances as temporary second bests. National has always put more faith in alliances and has at times been deeply sceptical of the United Nations. Iraq sharply delineated that ideological ravine. read more

Water: the next big infrastructure issue

Electricity was the first need in Iraq after the bombing. Why? To get water to people. Water was the bigger and more basic need. As we are about to find out.

The National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) warned earlier this month [April] that the next 50 years will be drier than the past — just as competition for available water is heating up. NIWA predicts conflict over water in the future. read more

Is the PM's European journey really necessary?

The Prime Minister is in Europe this week. What’s the point?

Sure, she’s chairing an OECD meeting in Paris which will discuss sharing economic gains with developing countries, she’s catching up with Tony Blair and she’s visiting her great-uncle’s war grave — all reasonable reasons to drop by. read more

Reorganising the state sector

The government’s gradual reorganisation of the state sector is back into action with four recent developments.

* Justice Secretary Belinda Clark was last month made chief executive of the Courts Department, foreshadowing the eventual merger or at least alignment of those two departments.

* Some small ministries, starting with women’s affairs and youth affairs, are to clustered with larger departments to reduce the cost to small ministries of some administrative functions. read more

The power of humility in the democratic process

If you are looking for humility, you wouldn’t go hunting in Parliament.

There are displays of humility. Seldom does an MP win a candidacy or an election or promotion without intoning how humbling it is to have won. Democracy requires ritual magnanimity in victory.

But magnanimity stretches only so far. Winston Peters as Deputy Prime Minister in 1997 used to crow across the Chamber at Labour and the Alliance: “We’re here and you’re there” (in opposition). The present Deputy Prime Minister, Michael Cullen, did it more cuttingly: “We won. You lost. Eat that.” read more

Shuffling the deckchairs as an iceberg looms

Here’s a quiz: which one of these is the National party’s policy on Iraq?

a. The United States should not attack Iraq without a United Nations resolution supporting or justifying it.

b. We should stand alongside our traditional allies even though there is not a United Nations resolution justifying what they are doing. read more

Four ways of looking at the Iraq adventure

Thoughts delivered at a Retreat, 6 April 2003

Iraq is a complicated issue. You can view it from many dimensions. I am going to pick four.

The first is strategic. This has three divergent parts.

One is an extension of the Huntington thesis posited a decade ago that the world is headed for a clash of civilisations: between the post-christian west and militant islam. This pits the ideal of liberal-democratic capitalism against fundamentalist islam. It is a false contest, in that few muslims are fundamentalist (just as few christians are) and few islamic fundamentalists are terrorists. Nevertheless some who back the American presence in Iraq do argue that at least part of its mission is to bring liberal democracy to Iraq and perhaps the whole Middle East — to civilise islam. This is a chimera in that it would take generations to achieve such a conversion — if indeed it proved possible. (Our own brush with indigenous rights and the reassertion of the validity of animist spirituality, as Whaimutu Dewes touched on yesterday, is surely enough to cause thinking New Zealanders to pause). Nevertheless, it is an arguable reason for the invasion of Iraq, if the combatants and those who follow and help in the reconstruction are prepared to apply money, patience and effort. read more

Economic growth: a dialogue of the deaf

There is a problem with the growth argument. Different people mean different things. The result is a dialogue of the deaf.

ACT, the National party, the Business Roundtable and Business New Zealand want company and personal tax cuts, deregulation and privatisation and less state spending.

National’s Don Brash fixates on the Treasury’s technical projections in last year’s Budget of 2 per cent growth at the end of this decade. That would take us back down the OECD ladder. read more

Is the Iraq campaign the end of globalisation?

Some on the left take heart from the Iraq campaign because they think it means, as one wrote, “globalisation is over”.

“Militaristic states are protectionist states,” this luminary of the left wrote. Is that right?

Not according to George Bush’s rhetoric. Amidst the Wagnerian warrior choruses can be heard from time to time a faint civilising voice. Having got into Iraq to chase terrorists, Bush says his mission is to bring to Arab heathens the gift of free trade and prosperity. read more

Looking through Iraq

Speech by Colin James to Microsoft partners function, 27 March 2003

Iraq is the excitement of the moment. It is part of something rather big that is likely over time to change the economic and geopolitical environment.

President George Bush calls that “rather big something” a “war on terror”, which began with the invasion of Afghanistan and, if he is serious about eliminating terror of the Al Qaeda sort, will have to involve many more campaigns than the Iraq one. Iran, Palestine and North Korea have been cited; in a less combative, but nonetheless important, sense, Saudia Arabia, Syria, Egypt and on and on. Terror won’t stop until the funds and weapons supplies and supplies of recruits dry up — and that won’t happen until the societies which supply the recruits and funds and arms are enriched and liberalised to the degree that fighting and fundamentalism are unattractive. read more