How do you tie bureaucrats’ and politicians’ hands so they won’t make mucky law? Rodney Hide thinks he has the answer.
New Zealand ranks high in some lists of “free” economies and ease of doing business. But that is not because it goes easy on making law. Parliament passes scores of acts a year, the cabinet raises a small mountain of regulations and ministers and officials issue rivers of edicts which amount to law.
John Key knows a thing or two about capital. Or does he? He seems to think political capital travels a one-way street — down. But didn’t his financial capital travel a one-way street — up — when he was in business?
Key is not alone in this one-way-street thinking in his cabinet. Many ministers, if they are to be bold, would like to do it by stealth, so political capital doesn’t erode too much too fast.
Colin James on John Key for Management magazine for February 2010
John Key, Prime Minister, is work in progress. Can the man who made his pile in the heat of currency trading be a game-changer for a nation that has been sliding down the global rich list? If so, he has to start in 2010.
Key declared himself “ambitious for New Zealand” in the 2008 election. He makes speeches that enthuse audiences — but which in the cold light of next day in executive suites leave doubts he will turn ambition into strategy.
How to start and how to stop: two problems with trying out new things in the government. Both are important for taxpayers.
By the time an idea materialises into a “pilot”, so much may have been invested in research, planning and persuading stakeholders, other officials and ministers that it is almost predestined to evolve into a full-blown operation.
Almost exactly 20 years ago Ruth Richardson won a narrow vote in the National party caucus in favour of the Reserve Bank Bill. That sealed a broad National-Labour pro-market consensus based on “neoliberal” precepts and embedded the new political language.
This year Rodney Hide, talking Richardson’s language, has been notching up de-regulatory wins in the National-led government which will intensify strains in the pro-market consensus.
Running the government is not for amateurs. Correction: running the government is for amateurs. They are called ministers. They need help.
A new cabinet arrives with ideas, some well-formed, some half-baked, all, they believe, “mandated” by their election. They suspect public servants are infected with the ousted government’s way of thinking.
There is a rule in politics: last long enough in government and initiatives that were originally controversial become orthodox.
So the National government’s deregulation of the labour market in 1991, radical at the time and fiercely opposed by Labour and the unions, was not wholly rolled back in 2000 when the unions’ party, Labour, won office with the Alliance in tow.
Red Alert is actually pinkish. But it has energy. And it has got the blue brigade’s attention.
Red Alert is the Labour MPs’ blog. New backbenchers started it. MPs pay for it out of their own pockets. The leadership doesn’t control it.
It’s not exactly outrageous. But it is read by a widening audience and by parliamentary press gallery journalists. It is a step into the Obama age of communication.
How local is local? How much governing should local government do? Rodney Hide has strong ideas on both. But will he carry the cabinet?
A fashionable 1990s theory was that decisions and actions should be taken, as far as practicable, at the level nearest those affected. The national government would deal with something affecting everyone in a country. Local or regional councils would deal with things primarily affecting people in a locality.
What gets National party people out of bed in the morning? Power. Other parties have a purpose for power. For National the purpose is power.
That focus is a reason why National is in power more often than Labour. Since the two first went head to head in 1936, National will have been in office 40 years by 2011 and Labour 35 years. If National wins a second term in 2011 it will in the half-century to 2014 have beaten Labour 32-18.