Category: Otago Daily Times

This Thursday John Whitehead will do another of his big public speeches. It will be reported as another attack on the public sector, a follow-up to that of Bill English last Thursday. That misreads what both are on about.

Whitehead’s speech a year ago on this theme attracted criticism on two grounds: that it demanded changes in the public service that amounted to cuts; and that it was stepping outside the proper role of a public sector chief executive as the executor of policy into the role of progenitor. read more

State houses are a legacy from the heroic age of social security, which became the welfare state. Workers and their families were to be housed better than the market did it. That was thought right and just, as were good education and health care and decent wages.

Then came the 1980s and targeting to need and the 1990s assumptions that the market, partially subsidised, was best. There were co-payments for health care, higher student fees and only the minimum wage floor under incomes. read more

Putting China and Australia in the same sentence gets some people’s juices running. This Friday the annual Australia New Zealand Leadership Forum was to have provided such an occasion — but then Julia Gillard intervened.

Gillard’s calling an election on August 21 was the second time in three years an Australian Prime Minister squashed the forum. Kevin Rudd landed his 2020 summit on the scheduled April date in 2008, since when it has been set for August. read more

When is a backdown not a backdown? When you do it going backward. That way you are facing forward.

John Key is by nature forward-facing. If the focus groups, or poll numbers or, in the case of minerals under schedule 4 land, a march and a torrent of submissions are facing the wrong way, he can go backward with the flow. read more

You may not be aware of it but an election is imminent. That at least is the impression you would have got if you had been in the serried ranks at the National party conference.

Speech after speech — notably from Peter Goodfellow, the presidency’s most wooden speaker since Ned Holt 40 years back — urged delegates to get prepared and not to be complacent about the next election. John Key managed to indicate an election in both 12 months and 16 months — that is, before and after the rugby world cup. read more

How long will John Key stick around? Even before Kevin Rudd was suddenly rolled last month, this question was doing the rounds in the Wellington political hothouse.

The speculation goes like this: Key has not come to the top job with a burning ambition to change the world in a particular way, as distinct from a desire to do some good; he is not a career politician despite a teenage desire to be Prime Minister; he is not a loser and won’t want to go out on a loss; he has the sort of personality that could enjoy time at the top and then move on. read more

Dunedin is important to John Key and his chief science adviser, Sir Peter Gluckman. Half of Sir Peter’s 10-strong working group aiming to inject scientific evidence into a crucial aspect of social policy are Otago University professors, three based in Dunedin.

This group, if taken seriously by ministers, could turn out to be much more valuable to social cohesion and economic health than the benefit-trimming Welfare Working Group. read more

Kevin Rudd speaks mandarin. But while he was (briefly) Prime Minister he could not secure a free trade agreement with China. New Zealand is still not just the first but the only “advanced” economy in free trade with the celestial empire.

There was much talk of New Zealand’s numerous “firsts” with China at Otago University’s annual foreign policy “school” at the weekend as explaining much of our “special relationship”. read more

New Zealand often reminds itself it is a small place. These past few months and particularly these past couple of weeks our politicians have demonstrated we can’t even do a real corruption scandal.

No MP has dug a moat or done up a residence on parliamentary expenses as British MPs did. And as for United States Senators… read more

Markets don’t run themselves. Well, actually, they do but if left to themselves some results can be perverse or damaging. So societies make rules for markets. Heather Roy, ACT’s deputy leader, agrees. She is making big changes to consumer law.

This is the first big outcome of the ACT-initiated re-examination of existing laws to check they meet modern principles of lawmaking. Bill English has been redefining those principles with Rodney Hide, who is Minister for Regulatory Reform. read more