Colin James on Helen Clark for Management Magazine August 2003
Remember Helengrad? A micromanaging Prime Minister scolding ministers, bureaucrats, journalists and anyone else who got a toe out of line, ruling with an iron hand.
“Were” is the operative word. You don’t hear “Helengrad” much nowadays. A newcomer to Wellington politics-watching I came across a few weeks back hadn’t heard it at all.
National goes to its conference this month a troubled party but with glimmers of hope flickering.
Will it be a serious contender in the battle for power in 2005, as it was not in 2002? If so, is it rebuilding in a way that might win the war for dominance through the next 20 to 25 years?
This need was well grasped by Bill English as far back as 1997. As a sub-40-year-old who came into Parliament only in 1990, he was looking for a post-Rogernomics language of slightly right-of-centre conservatism.
Every now and then someone calls for a “bipartisan” foreign policy, as there allegedly was in some past golden age. Why do such calls fall on deaf political ears?
First, many of the calls were by academics or other commentators who talk about foreign policy but don’t do it. Those who do foreign policy can safely ignore such people in a country which does not much value expert and academic analysis.
There is a large fiscal surplus. Or is there? That question hangs over this month’s budget. Or rather, next year’s.
The lid stays on for now, more or less. Helen Clark has been spooked by the British Labour government’s plight: spending programmes committed on forecasts of economic growth and revenue which have not materialised.
There is a problem with the growth argument. Different people mean different things. The result is a dialogue of the deaf.
ACT, the National party, the Business Roundtable and Business New Zealand want company and personal tax cuts, deregulation and privatisation and less state spending.
National’s Don Brash fixates on the Treasury’s technical projections in last year’s Budget of 2 per cent growth at the end of this decade. That would take us back down the OECD ladder.
Within a week of each other in late January Bill English and Don Brash made speeches moving National sharply rightwards in Maori policy and economic and social policy. Is this the way to rebuild the right?
The logic was compelling: first, reconnect with the core vote; only then turn to contesting the centre.
This month poses to the government two challenges it must meet to make a memorable second term. On February 6 the Treaty of Waitangi is commemorated. On February 19 Helen Clark will open a followup conference to the mid-2001 Knowledge Wave talkfest.
Indigenous rights and a richer society: for 15 years these have been gnawing questions. Unless Clark and Co can make real progress on both, the equitable society, which is the point of classical social democracy, will elude them.
In mid-February Helen Clark will make the opening speech at a “leadership” conference, the Knowledge Wave’s second shindig. This will be around the same time as her annual Prime Minister’s statement to Parliament. Will they mesh?
The watchword of this government is “incrementalism”. If “leadership” implies boldness, this so far is not the government for that.
How does a party go about assembling a solid voting base when the old “social cleavage” no longer decides loyalties? By values.
Elections used to be fought on the pocket book, a galaxy of economic issues to do with incomes, taxes and benefits. And those issues still are important. But now, as Australian Labor party frontbencher Mark Latham points out, “political culture” plays a large part.
Tariana Turia is a person to watch as Helen Clark gets down to managing her second term. Turia is the living embodiment of whanaungatanga, which comes fraught with complications for a society mostly still British in its ways and for a Labour party still hung up on solidarity.
Clark was raised in the old Labour party. The unions’ card votes decided crucial matters at the conference. In the caucus the leader’s majority ruled.