John Key’s government will be one next weekend. What will it be like at four or nine?
Will it get to four? Most likely. Key is popular, his opposition will take time to regroup fully, the economy looks likely to muddle through and, barring egregious errors, the cabinet is not likely to have made too many enemies.
John Key thinks MMP is working well. So why is he going to put you to the expense of two referendums to decide whether to have a different voting system?
Once a Prime Minister had only his party’s caucus to whip into line. Patronage and party discipline usually sufficed, though there were occasional rebellions. One over proposed potato regulations in 1979 was the first shot in what exploded into the 1980s economic deregulation revolution.
Tariana Turia is fixing a personal health matter and will continue as Maori party co-leader after the 2011 election. The party needs that.
The party was born in anger and has been sustained in aspiration. Now it needs to drill foundations into the substrate of politics. That means members, money and organisation — and a message embedded in a long-term strategy.
Judith Collins will officiate at another police “event” today — but not one with the flashing lights, sirens and fast cars that have become synonymous with police. She is to launch a new policing venture — to be done by the public.
This is not cost-cutting. The aim is to catch, charge and incarcerate more criminals and make the country more peaceable. The public is, or was, the point of having a police force. Which is the point Commissioner Howard Broad wants to re-emphasise.
British Tory MP Gregory Barker brought two lessons for John Key on Saturday: a conservative party can promote world “leadership” in climate change; and it is the sort of long-term policy that demands big-party bipartisan backing.
Key has explicitly rejected the first and last month stepped away from the second.
Sue Bradford is leaving the Greens’ caucus next month. She lost a majority vote. That is not very Green.
Bradford is a battler. She has added a dimension of tough social activism to the Greens which they will not readily replicate. Not many MPs could have done her section 59 bill.
But Metiria Turei beat her in a majority vote to be co-leader. The Greens went for a change of generation. Bradford is baby-boomer 57. Turei is generation-x 39. Post-Bradford, the Greens will be less social-activist and more small-g green.
Bill English is about to get another reminder from the Treasury of the challenges ahead if the country is to stay fiscally prudent. And with it will come a prod to start thinking long-term about big decisions some government will have to make sometime.
The reminder will come in the Treasury’s second 40-year fiscal projection. This first was in 2006.
While the Labour party in Rotorua was plotting a republic in a decade or so, back at the shop Rodney Hide has been getting on with constitutional change in the here and now.
Most obviously that change is coming in the new super-Auckland, with enhanced powers for its mayor. Auckland will be a bit like a state government. When the mayor of a third of the population speaks, a Prime Minister will have to listen.
Don’t look for despondency at the Labour party’s conference this coming weekend. This is not a party in mourning. It is a party sensing opportunity.
In part that is due to the influx of 14 able, mostly younger, MPs, in part due to the clean leadership changeover straight after the election, matched by a quick transition at the top of the party outside Parliament, and in part due to the Mt Albert by-election success.
John Key was going to be science minister but diverted down a cycleway to tourism. He is now retracing his steps.
Innovation is a central driver of productivity growth. But it was not one of Bill English’s four “areas” of “initiatives to lift productivity” in his budget in May. Overall spending on science went down.