Two losses in a week for a man who made a fortune winning: to Bradley Ambrose, the photographer he trashed in the 2014 election campaign; and no new flag.
John Key’s concession that Ambrose did not “behave improperly” in recording (by accident, Ambrose insisted) Key’s stagey chat with John Banks and that he (Key) had harmed Ambrose “personally and professionally” was a humiliating climbdown.
Andrew Little could do some work on his dance steps. He has been tripping.
He parlayed himself into outright opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership when he could have stuck to asserting a right, regardless, to tighten land sales.
He may thereby have won Labour some notice among those fearful of TPP. But that was offset by disunity when Phil Goff, Trade Minister when TPP was mooted, broke ranks (with former leader David Shearer).
Is dairy John Key’s “Think Big”? Is it “too big to fail”? Is it a security risk?
Take the last first. The New Zealand Herald’s Claire Trevett quoted Sir Michael Cullen saying (at the media briefing on his spying report) that he had told Canberra spies Australians were New Zealand’s biggest security risk.
Is Bill English drifting out of date? Is Graeme Wheeler? Do the 1980s just not work in the 2010s? Ask around.
Wheeler will pronounce again on Thursday on the official (interest) cash rate (OCR). His problem: prices are rising too slowly.
Inflation targeting was brought into monetary policy to stop prices rising too fast. Now the global worry in the monkish chambers of central bankers and economic oracles is that prices are not rising fast enough.
Revisiting a 2015 working paper
Colin James, Treasury seminar, 7 March 2016
This is not an ex-cathedra pronouncement from high academia. It is my exploration as a journalist. It updates my June 2015 Institute for Governance and Policy Studies working paper [James 2015] in the light of subsequent policy and commentary. Constructive comments are welcome.
1. The big context is the globalisation of information and connection, finance, production, consumption and people, accelerate by the coming of age of digital technology. This is pulling down borders of many sorts; but also putting borders up of many sorts as people get more fearful because of the globalisation of war, which now takes new forms, cf ISIS.
This week John Key’s flag write-in referendum starts. Polls are two-to-one against. But Super-Richie is in favour, which might count for something. He is officially a national treasure, an ONZ, one of 28, including quintessential New Zealander Prince Philip.
The flag is a national emblem. That Key wears his minority alternative on his lapel says he is not a stickler for protocol — which is a plus in his lengthening marriage (the honeymoon is long over) with a majority of Kiwis.
Bill English waxed eloquent last Thursday on “social investment”, saying speeches on the topic “are universally the most popular ideas I have presented in 25 years in politics”. But he reminded his large public servant audience: “The government’s top priority remains the economy.”
It has long been customary to talk of “public” and “private” as separate and distinct. But are they really?
The argument often centres on “public sector” versus “private sector”.
So it went at a Fabian Society seminar on Friday. The Public Service Association and frontline workers questioned the wisdom and effectiveness of contracting out delivery of public services to non-state entities.
Arrogance bred intransigence last Thursday. The contest spilled into Waitangi weekend. What’s going on? Where is Labour in this?
The government’s secretive conduct of the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations, coupled with John Key’s dismissal of opponents as hater-and-wrecker ideologues or know-nothings who don’t know what is good for them, elicited exactly the response you would expect in a modern participatory democracy.