What did you do on Waitangi Day? Did you reflect on our history and the nation we are becoming?
Of course not, if you were in the majority. You had a holiday. If you gave thought to the “Waitangi” in Waitangi Day, images of Maori protest and confrontation probably swam up.
My colleague John Roughan has argued in the Weekend Herald that those images have been misleading, that the predominant tone was of good cheer and goodwill.
Te Papa Tongarewa forum, 6 February 2001
Between the 1840s and the 1870s the Treaty of Waitangi went from a solemn pact to a “simple nullity” in the public life of the colony, at most thereafter occasionally invoked simply for ceremonial purposes. In the 1980s the Treaty was revived as an instrument for settling wrongs and reshaping some decision-making. There is nothing surer than that in this new century the Treaty’s role will change again, probably substantially.
Michael Cullen is pathologically clever. He is a wonderfully sarcastic wisecracker. He can perform cartwheels of logic while others are still rubbing the sleep out of their eyes. He scarcely needs fifth gear to speed alongside the best brains in the Treasury.
This makes him a formidably important member of the Clark cabinet. Nowhere has that been better demonstrated than in his superannuation scheme. But has he been too clever? That question will be at the centre of a fierce battle this month [February] and next.
Here are two examples of leadership from late last week.
First example: The Prime Minister, “eyes on stalks”, lashed public service bonuses. Sure, she also said pay scales, frozen for a decade, were antiquated but that was reported pianissimo and the lashing was reported fortissimo.
The bonus issue is very complex, which is why Helen Clark says it will take five years to regularise. But telling the Rogernomics generation it should emulate the (much better paid, on average) politicians’ sense of “vocation” (implying sacrifice) is not likely to motivate excellence and application if, when the more munificent private sector and Australia beckon, ministers leave the targets of their lofty exhortations feeling bruised and undervalued.
Alright, come clean. Who’s hidden the National party?
Actually, it will re-launch in the next few days with what Jenny Shipley calls a “strategic” reshuffle — neither major nor a fine-tune.
If Wyatt Creech is to leave Parliament in 2002, the deputy leadership needs sorting now. And there are some younger and newer MPs to be given more responsibility and latitude — as befits the 1999 crop’s quality as the best for a decade.
The cabinet starts meeting again next week, with lots on its plate. One large item, which will not be specifically on the agenda but hovers over all the government does, is mandate.
Helen Clark has made a great virtue of doing what she promised at the election. There are good reasons in political theory and practice for that.
From a mountain top the detail on the lowlands is insignificant and you can see to the horizon on all sides. It is a place for grand thoughts, contemplation of the big picture.
The transcendent political question for 2001, as Helen Clark descends from the rarified atmosphere of Mount Aconcagua, is whether, amidst the lilliputian lowlands distractions, she can elevate the country’s policy focus to the horizon.
The first duties of a government, most would agree, are to keep the peace, keep the nation safe, keep its citizens safe and keep out pests and nasty new diseases.
So at least argued Simon Upton, now off to lusher intellectual pastures in Paris. As Minister of State Services in 1998, Mr Upton worried that years of squeezing the bureaucracy had put at risk those “core” capabilities.
As her anniversary in power approached, to my surprise several people volunteered to me that Helen Clark could become our greatest Prime Minister. They have been of the right and the left, of super-high and modest incomes.
They are wildly premature. But are they right? The marker of a long and successful reign, as top politicians of all sorts know, is that it is built on fusion between the ruler and the ruled.
The Health Strategy released at 3.30pm 11 December is a slender document, unburdened by hard-edged thinking but burdened with some politically soggy tendencies that may well lead to some telling attacks from ACT and National.
Nowhere is there any suggestion people might take some individual responsibility for seeing to their own good health and for the consequences of good and bad decision-making. The burden for seeing individuals’ health is squarely on the state’s shoulders. Prevention is very much the junior arm of this government’s health policy though it does make interpersonal, family, school and community violence one of its 13 “priority population health objectives”.