Next Monday John Key is to address the Australian Parliament, a rare ceremony reserved usually for the likes of Presidents of China and the United States. Will he rise to the occasion or will the assembled Australian notables get John Key good bloke?
Will he do better than in his response to Julia Gillard’s address to Parliament here in February when he — and Phil Goff — meandered through matey footy jokes and platitudes?
Metiria Turei punctuated her co-leader speech at the Greens conference on Sunday with frequent references to a green economy. Nothing surprising about that except that Turei’s brief is social policy.
Since he took over as the other co-leader in 2006 Russel Norman has set out to develop the party’s economic policy to the point where it would be taken seriously by non-Green commentators. The update in his co-leader speech on Saturday was another step along that path.
The Greens last week celebrated the Treasury’s venture into wider measures of wellbeing. Come November 26, will they be celebrating their own broader support?
“This is one of the best news stories in my living memory,” Green MP Kennedy Graham enthused about the Treasury’s “higher living standards” paper, which sets up a “framework” for a wider assessment of prosperity encompassing social and environmental factors in addition to economic measures.
The head count for Helen Kelly’s address at the Labour party conference was 150. Not a great show of solidarity with the party’s brothers and sisters in the union movement.
One explanation: Kelly, who is Council of Trade Unions secretary, was on at 9.15am on Sunday after the usual late-night politicking and drinking. An insult, yes, but not a snub. That was the rationale.
Here’s what the leader of one of National’s support parties wrote to John Key last Thursday: “a heavy heart”, “mounting dismay”, “totally irresponsible”. With such a friend, Key has no need of enemies.
Don Brash’s letter enumerated six policy areas where he said Key had not carried through the promise of 2008: “wasteful” spending; the youth minimum wage; the emissions trading scheme; “reality” on superannuation, the wage gap with Australia and special arrangements for Maori.
The launch of the “real New Zealand showcase” to visitors for the rugby world cup last Thursday was an uplifting buzz of energy and excellence. Then a niggle: where are Maori in this showcase?
Serving the drinks.
Of course, Maori (and Pasifika) will be indispensable on the rugby field. But what about the economic New Zealand the organisers hope to go on selling after the fans have gone home? That is the aim of the spinoff events featured in the “real showcase”.
Purity is what counts out on the fringes. Don Brash wants to bring purity to John Key’s government. Hone Harawira wants to bring purity to representation of Maori.
Political purists feel morally superior but, unless the society they operate in goes badly mad, which is not about to happen here, they have to settle for part-measures or irrelevance.
Our leading royalist is in London for a signal pageant: the marriage on Friday of our future King William V of New Zealand (and of Mother Britain).
And, if his good grace here so far, most recently to commemorate the dead in Christchurch and at Pike River, is a guide, William and Queen Kate will be a popular regal pair.
Easter Monday and Anzac Day coincide next week: the remembrance of two dark times that turned to light. Paula Bennett on Sunday echoed the Easter theme in what may be the government’s most important statement this year.
Gallipoli, the job for the first Anzacs, was ill-conceived, wrong-footed, a bloody defeat, curtain-raiser to a slogging war in Europe that cut a swathe of death through the ranks of our young men, laid a pall on every small settlement and a blight on survivors’ lives and piled debt high on the young economy. Victory, when it came, was more relief than joy.
Compete or collaborate: that is the Australian question. Our government’s goal of catching up by 2025 says “compete”. Much talk among the trans-Tasman elites says “collaborate”.
History might turn out to be on the side of collaboration. That was the message to two forums last week.