Christmas is a message from the past, in the present and for the future. The future message is the big one.
The safe Christmas message is the one from the past: the life and retold words of a man of deep and long influence. That message is straightforward.
The easy Christmas message is the one in the present: the transitory comfort of presents and food and, mostly, the deeper comfort of company.
Peter Dunne got the boot for chatting too profusely with a woman journalist. John Banks got the boot for being judged into a trial the police had avoided. The National party’s rogue-right savaged Len Brown for too intimate a connection with an adviser.
Is that the year that was: trivia and side-issues?
Since 1991 the proportion of ethnic-Asians in our population has quadrupled to 11.8 per cent, the census found. That is not far behind the 14.9 per cent of Maori and the trajectory is much steeper.
Asia is coming to us. Those Asian New Zealanders make us culturally much more a part of Asia (though we remain distinctly Pacific in culture and geography). The more Asians here, the more Asian we will be.
One interesting number in the Christchurch East by-election is Conservative Leighton Baker’s 487. The better Conservatives do countrywide from here on, the more chance of a National-led third term — and thus that National’s regulatory changes will bed in.
Baker’s 487 was 3.7 per cent, twice his 1.8 per cent electorate vote in the 2011 election. A National optimist might extrapolate from that a supportive Conservative contingent next year of four or five seats, if compliant National voters give Colin Craig an electorate.
The Top 200 is an uplifting night out: all about high-performing companies and executives. How would the government go in such a contest?
These are not two separate questions. Companies can do better — especially offshore — if the government is high-performing. Governments don’t do well if companies aren’t high-performing.
[Filed 18 November and published in Boardroom Magazine December 2013]
Elections change politics but not necessarily policy direction. So there are two questions for 2014: will the politics change much; and will the policy direction change?
In 2011 the politics changed little. National stayed in office, supported by the same three parties as after 2008 but needing at least two for a majority instead of ACT alone as in 2008-11.
Australia is in trouble with Indonesia for stupidly spying on its president. Can New Zealand help?
Two events last week and one this week offer pointers.
Event one last week: Steven Joyce’s light-bulb flash that exporters wanting to sell well in China must know the language and understand the way of life.
No child deserves a bad start in life. That principle is edging into policy.
A child of one is the child of all. That principle probably held good on the savannah at the dawn of humanity when, in the daily challenge to survive, losing a child was a high cost.
Investing in children pays a dividend in good and productive citizens. That principle has been slow to work into policy. It needs a different economics from the small-state orthodoxy of the past three decades.
Think of Europe. Americans helping Angela Merkel with her phone calls. Greece, Spain, Portugal, Ireland, Italy in economic and social trouble. Month-to-month crises in the Eurozone. A region in a muddle, past its best.
Behind this veil of woes there is a Europe that is gradually, if haltingly, becoming more of a piece and less a haggle of disparate parts, more visible abroad as an entity and driving big trade deals.
Square these two facts from the Labour’s conference.
1. The conference voted on Sunday to construct its list to ensure at least 50 per cent of those elected in 2017 are women.
2. The landslide-winning new Christchurch mayor and former senior Labour cabinet minister Lianne Dalziel, officiating at the opening, was in the second row behind four men on the Labour side at the Ngai Tahu welcome on Friday evening.