John Key likes to sneer that a Labour-led government would be “far left”. Yes, from his perspective, driving rightwards with energetic deregulation. But is it a true perspective?
At the first Labour leadership candidate hui at Levin on Saturday Grant Robertson encapsulated a potential counterattack to Key by ascribing to 1972-74 Prime Minister Norman Kirk a well-worn jingle summing mainstreamers’ wishes from life: somewhere to work, somewhere to live, someone to love and something to hope for.
For a couple of months or so Labour’s leadership issue has been how to fix it and who should take over. Last Thursday David Shearer did one part of the “how” by pre-emptively saying he is resigning. Now for the second part of the “how” and for the “who”.
Labour’s need is to reduce disunity, so that the fight is against National, not within the party, and to energise Labour activists.
Amy Adams: “An effective and efficient resource management system is an important part of our business growth agenda.” So, change the law “to ensure that our planning and resource management law enables economic growth as well as providing good environmental outcomes”.
Those comments underline that GDP growth is the cabinet’s dominant priority. When the cabinet has completed its extensive legislative programme on resource planning and use, the balance between environmental protection and economic development will have shifted significantly towards the latter.
Too-big-to-fail turned up in New Zealand this month — in triplicate.
Too-big-to-fail was the reason governments in the United States and parts of Europe gave for hosing taxpayers’ money into banks which had gone bust after reckless, deceptive and in some cases criminal behaviour.
The reason given for the bailouts was that to do nothing would have piled severe economic damage on the serious economic damage the banks had already done.
You know the cabinet thinks it has a public relations problem when it puts the bovver boy in the ring. Steven Joyce has that rare gift of seeming to smile while heaving an interviewer (or toughing it out in Parliament), topdressing flannel with “facts” the way a marketer does.
When Key gets in a jam, as over the mismanaged Henry inquiry, his body language shifts. He tries to sidestep — thus we have boat people coming, weapons of mass destruction and now Al Qaeda. He gives assurances that get falsified. Grant Robertson can then say he is slipping and sliding.
National is the usual party of government. Since its first win in 1949 it has been in office 42 of 63 years — two-thirds of the time.
Moreover, there is reason to hope for four years more. The annual conference this month will be buoyed by polling averaging 45 per cent-plus. Ministers have been delivering business-friendly policy with vigour.
The celebrity royals delivered a celebrity baby last week to joyous celebration. Well, we do have our most royalist Prime Minister in 60 years — even if for a lot longer than that our governing modus operandi has been pragmatically republican in all but form.
The new heir might be a while taking up his inheritance. The Windsors’ long-living habit could hold George VII off till the 2080s. John Key will be long gone (off to republican United States?) and so, quite possibly, will the monarchy be gone from our constitution — though not from our celebrity media, if Britain keeps the Windsors on.
Governments normally try not to get offside with too many official bodies and lobby groups. It’s not good for electoral digestion.
So in June John Key flipped on Auckland transport (with some escape clauses). A senior minister explained it in one word: “voters”. If too many of Auckland’s many voters back the council against the government, that could be a problem.
A video of the Maui creation myth set off the Valuing Nature conference last week. That was hardly the way to get feet-on-the-ground business to value natural capital seriously.
Then at the tea break conference-goers were shooed out to coffee by a deafeningly thumping soundtrack of an American-accented song about “nature”: a subliminal injunction, it seemed, to hammer nature, not value it.
You’re 30 and want to know how much government superannuation you will get when you hit 65 and whether you will get a new hip at 75? Tune in on Thursday for some clues on how to start working it out.
One calculation you probably will make is that you won’t get any government pension at 65 — that is, the qualifying age will rise well before 2048.