Waitangi Day looms. National day or holiday? A day to validate our national story or a day at the beach or the mall? A day of substance or a day of symbol?
Some think Anzac Day is our real national day, marking, they say, our coming of age in World War I.
That war did make white New Zealanders aware Mother-Britain could get things wrong (Gallipoli and much else) and feel a bit different from home-grown Poms.
What’s in a legacy? For John Key it might turn out to be someone else’s.
Take some recent Prime Ministers.
Jim Bolger’s legacy is to have confronted the instincts of most in his party and to have continued Treaty of Waitangi settlements and the transition to a bicultural New Zealand.
This year the world became more disordered. That disorder will stretch into 2016. The good news is we have some strengths.
The loudest noise in the disorder comes from the disciples of death in the Middle East.
The arbitrary dismemberment of the Ottoman empire by imperious European victors in the war we are commemorating (1916 was a bad year) have proved to be illusory lines in the sand, blown away by the winds of sectional hate.
It’s Christmastime and two journalists have something to say to us. Journalists? Aren’t they cynical, despised more even than politicians?
One I know well: Brent Edwards, director of news gathering at Radio New Zealand (RNZ).
On RNZ’s website in June Edwards, then political editor, quoted from a funeral tribute in May to Peter Conway, former Council of Trade Unions secretary, that Conway, was “soft on people, hard on issues”.
After 2014’s election in a bubble, 2015 has been a year in political suspension.
Opinion polls shuffled: National only a couple of dips from high 40s, Labour just back over 30, Greens 11-12, New Zealand First around 7, the rest in tiddler territory.
There was a frisson in March when National bumbled the Northland by-election. Winston Peters’ win gave electoral voice to many provinces’ muttered assertions of government neglect.
On Thursday Reserve Bank governor Graeme Wheeler will again tell you that if you have money to invest, buy a house to rent out. Economic orthodoxy tells him to keep interest rates very low to get inflation up.
But is economic orthodoxy still right? Some uncertainties stalked conferences last week of government economists and on productivity.
The government has a “social investment” programme. But how active an investor is it overall?
The quotation marks around “social investment” reflect questionmarks over the “forward liability investment approach” at its core. That approach essentially aims to avoid future fiscal costs with action now.
On Friday a few score current and former MPs and partners will over dinner commemorate a signal political event: the election of the first Labour government.
This was at a time of unstable global politics, soon to generate a world war, and economic disequilibrium after a deep depression.
Friday’s celebration (coming soon before a shadow cabinet reshuffle) has been got up by Stuart Nash, great-grandson (by adoption) of Sir Walter Nash, 14 years Finance Minister and three years Prime Minister.
The short story last week was John Key’s teenlike lash-out under pressure over Malcolm Turnbull’s treatment of deportees. That reaction to pressure is becoming a pattern.
It is unbecoming to him and to the country, which, also teenlike, he calls Newzealn.
Rob Salmond, Labour’s resident political scientist and campaign numbers guy, mined the advice of Lynton Crosby (of Crosby/Textor) to London mayor Boris Johnson to suggest Key’s attack on Labour for “backing rapists” was to divert attention by throwing a “dead cat” on the table.
Ushers at Labour’s weekend conference wore fluorescent yellow jackets. The subliminal message: roadworks in progress.
The roadworks already done were evident in a much tidier, more stable and cheerier, even enthusiastic, atmosphere than for years. When the works are finished, will it be a road to power?