Let’s be clear: constitutionally, the Executive decides where and how troops are deployed. John Key did not need Parliament’s approval to go to war.
And let’s be clear: Key is going to war. Iraq is at war. Training its troops is joining its war.
But Key’s denial of a parliamentary vote is a mite regal in the 2010s. We are a modern democracy. When the state goes to war now, it is not just a few thousand of barons’ men or mercenaries. It is the people who go to war.
Once we put up with whingeing Poms. Now it’s whingeing Aussies. They are far richer than us, so what’s the beef? And why should we bother?
The problem is China — or, rather, China plus Australians’ punchy self-importance. In security matters that self-belief took it into Iraq in 2003 and is taking it there now (with a John Key coda, about which more next week). In economic matters it led Australian firms to overbank on China.
On Thursday Bill English will give his annual pep-talk to the Institute of Public Administration. It comes as we are reminded that the then Ministry of Economic Development in 2011 bent tendering rules to obey John Key’s wish for a deal with Sky City.
Wily Sky City has now taught Key a lesson. But there is a deeper lesson for public servants listening to English this Thursday.
The cricket world cup starts this weekend: ducks, bouncers, googlies, silly mid-ons, slips, Australian sledging — and match-fixing?
There’s money to be made. Stacks.
Underneath the razz there is still a faint echo of “willow on leather” — endeavour, not business. But only a faint echo: as Roman emperors knew, Lions v Christians (Australia v New Zealand) keeps the plebs dosed.
Some historians test their analysis by asking what if some event hadn’t happened or an alternative course had been taken at a fork. So: what if there had been no Treaty of Waitangi?
One easy answer is that we wouldn’t be commemorating on Friday its signing 175 years ago and billing it as our national day.
On Sunday the Greens will mull adjustments to their political clothing. They may need more than a nip or a tuck or slight change of shade. Technology is changing the Greens’ environment.
Greens used confidently to claim the future. Only by going green would humans escape an apocalypse of disease and poison as resources run out, ecosystems are decimated and food sources despoiled and desiccated.
Andrew Little centred his first speech as Labour leader on “work”. He hit the mark. Work is changing fast and taking society with it.
There are two main drivers, globalisation and technology.
Globalisation intensified in the 2000s into what Harvard economist Dani Rodrik called hyperglobalisation.
From September the global oil price has halved. The milk solids price halved from February to December.
Those are two indicators that the international economy is unsettled. Our supposedly “rock star” economy faces an “interesting” 2015.
One marker: Bill English’s evaporating fiscal surplus. The Treasury in its half-yearly economic and fiscal update (HYEFU), which converted the upbeat May number to a downbeat December one, circumscribed its forecasts with a welter of “risks”, economists’ terminology for uncertainties.
Just 100 years and six months ago, Europe was an ordered place. By this time 100 years ago it was in brutal disorder.
Early in her time as Prime Minister, Helen Clark talked of an “incredibly benign (security) environment”. The September 11 2001 raids quickly falsified that, driving changes to security laws.
Here on Middle Earth what does 2015 hold? That we will still be hobbits at its end? Or that we will stand upright?
No wonder Australians sneer: Sir Peter Jackson, Air New Zealand (in its “safety” videos), Wellington airport (scrawled across its front), Wellington’s mayor, the Tourism Minister and many others sanctify the quaint Tolkien imagery of the stunted.