The Greens are outliers in the parliamentary system. Their challenge for the next year is to become serious policy players.
Since 1999 the Greens have supported Labour-led governments. In return they have won some policy payoff, most notably in land transport, where the government adopted environmental sustainability as an objective and incorporated demand management and energy conservation.
Just as there are leads and lags in the economy, so there are in politics. They can decide elections.
Economic forecasters pore over leading indicators that might harbour prophecies of turning points. One is business confidence. There is a useful correlation between rises and falls in confidence and subsequent rises and falls in output.
The party of business, so it says, is ACT, which has its annual conference this month. But now there is competition: Don Brash’s version of the National party.
Moreover, there is an eery parallel.
Brash is a classical liberal ( which is ACT’s proclaimed ideology) but did not start out that way. If he had followed in his father’s ideological footsteps, as he did until his early twenties, Brash would logically have been alongside Michael Cullen instead of fighting him.
If you were listing the country risks for a foreign investor, what would you include? Small size and distance? Volcanoes and earthquakes? Major exports’ vulnerability to climate change and destructive pests and diseases? The Treaty of Waitangi?
Most could easily agree on the first four. The last is contentious because most don’t see it as an economic matter. But it is.
There is a point in every government’s life when it gets too big for its boots. That is a prelude for a trip-up.
The point is easy to spot in hindsight, though not often obvious at the time. Governments themselves seldom pick it, to their cost.
One early symptom is a certain restlessness when a supporter or a constituent or a lobby group tries to make a point that runs counter to government policy.
Labour parties face a special challenge which conservative parties are usually spared: how to be in government and keep alive the reason for wanting to be in government.
British Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair put it this way in his recovery speech at his party’s conference in September:
“Up to now there has been a ritual to Labour governments, Euphoria on victory. Hard slog in government. Tough times. Party accuses leadership of betrayal. Leadership accuses party of ingratitude. Disillusion. Defeat. Long period of Tory government before next outbreak of euphoria.
As political management issues stack up, they don’t come much more challenging than genetic modification (GM). This is the crunch month because the moratorium on applications for release ends on October 27.
The government says it has to keep the GM door open because if this country has any comparative advantage in research it is in the biosciences and GM is an integral part.
Colin James on CER for Management for October 2003
No 2 has to try harder. That sums up CER on its 20th birthday. No 1 has better things to do — though now maybe, just maybe, it might cast a glance or two No 2’s way.
The first 10 years was vintage stuff. New Zealand went from dipping a quivering toe in the water of competition with Big Brother manufacturers to jumping in the deep end — and found it could swim. Trade boomed both ways. CER became the world’s star free trade agreement.
The Supreme Court Bill returns to the House this month from committee. Bill English says this bill is part of a government plot to alter the constitution by stealth. Is he right?
The constitution is the way we order our public affairs. There is no single written document, though there is a Constitution Act, last revised in 1986. Bits of the constitution are also to be found in a range of other acts and documents, including the Cabinet Manual, and in some “conventions” — agreed ways of doing things that have evolved over time.
United Future wants a very different tax system from Labour. It opposes most of Labour’s workplace law and the Air New Zealand-Qantas alliance. All its MPs voted against the Prostitution Bill while almost all Labour MPs voted for it. It is suspicious of abolition of the Privy Council.
So what on earth has it been doing this past year in bed with Labour?