It’s rough out there and it might get a lot rougher. Hunker down for 2012. Or stand up, count blessings and make the best of things. There is a lot to make the best of.
Christchurch knows what it is like to be roughed up. There was a nasty revisitation just before Christmas. For the rest of us, the rough may be round the corner.
It can at times take an atheist to remind us of some of the true messages in Christmas. Thus with Russel Norman in Parliament last Wednesday.
Christmas is “an enduring part of our culture,” he said, commemorating “the start of some unlikely trouble” — a revolutionary new sect — “and the start of new hope.”
Carmel Sepuloni would be in Parliament and Paula Bennett relegated to the list if Sue Bradford hadn’t stood in Waitakere. That says something about the tactics of the left-of-the-left.
Bradford could argue that if Labour was strong 322-odd votes to a micro-party candidate to its left would not matter — 611 mini-party Conservative votes to Bennett’s right didn’t stop her.
Which C word sums up National’s deal with ACT: concession or convenience? Now ask if the same applies to the Maori party deal.
Run through the ACT list.
Charter schools are one way to give effect to National’s stated policy of “choice” of school for parents. John Key favours it. The issue is how it will be done, by whom, in what numbers and under what accreditation and accountability regime. A senior minister points to an initiative by the Waananga o Aotearoa and Massey University. Stand by for a stoush if teachers obstruct.
Norman Kirk lost weight, got a decent suit and better hair and won in 1972. David Lange had his stomach stapled to statesman size and won in 1984. Helen Clark got swept-up hair, designer clothes and makeup and won in 1999. Grant Robertson has been measured for a new suit.
Robertson is the fulcrum in Labour’s transition from the post-1980s era to the pre-2020s one. That involves Labour looking and being fresh in face and policy and a generational transition.
John Key laid down the challenge for his second term the day after the All Blacks ground out their rugby world cup win. That, he said, was “an achievement built on courage, determination, grit and great teamwork … all values New Zealanders hold highly.”
Did we see those four qualities in National’s and Key’s campaign?
Colin James’s post-election extra for the Otago Daily Times for 28 November 2011
John Key has impressively won a second term, with a version of his first-term supermajority and a lift in his party’s vote — the fifth time in 75 years a first-term government has done that.
The supermajority allows him to turn to John Banks and Peter Dunne on issues the Maori party opposes and vice-versa. That mirrors what he had in 2008-11 but both ACT and the Maori party are smaller, one seat and three, down from five each in 2008.
Having given Winston Peters air with what he is said to have said at his tea party, John Key has declared he will milk Peters’ inconstancy hard in this last week of campaign. That is either marvellously machiavellian or making the best of a mistake.
New Zealand First’s poll average has lifted 1 per cent to about 3.5 per cent this month. Then last week Peters claimed to know Key and John Banks had disparaged old people and “strange” Don Brash.
Of the alternatives to MMP on the ballot on November 26, John Key will back the supplementary member (SM) voting system. It favours the big parties while still giving small ones a look in.
Jenny Shipley and Helen Clark opposed MMP. But Shipley got a kick out of successfully running a minority government for two years — and getting some significant policy initiatives through. Clark managed three innovative governing arrangements with skill. Key, too, has got the MMP partner-party spirit.
Colin James for the Otago Daily Times on the “other election” 14 November 2011
In behind the campaign slogans and headlines is another election. National and Labour in different ways want to change the way we think about some important issues of our time.
This is not the deep, dark skulduggery the two big parties accuse each other of to scarify voters: a secret National plan to sell all the trading enterprises and leave us skint or a Labour plot to kidnap and dump us, bankrupt, back in the 1970s.