Murray McCully nuzzled up to the “sisterhood” last week. Not in all ways but in one significant way.
The “sisterhood” is McCully’s undergraduate term of abuse for strong women in and around the government. McCully doesn’t do new-age man well.
Most everything the “sisterhood” thinks or does is on McCully’s hit list.
Michael Cullen is softening us up for the abolition of the income tax rate threshold adjustment in 2008. He is thereby jettisoning an important principle — or is he?
The adjustment was never more than half-pie. The so-called “inflation” adjustment was to be fixed at an annual 2 per cent, the midpoint in the Reserve Bank’s target inflation range.
Winston Peters will today give his first major speech on foreign policy. Murray McCully will follow him. It is a big test for both.
The interest in Peters’ contribution to today’s “major foreign policy issues” seminar organised by the Institute of International Affairs will lie in how much of his own spin he puts on the notes the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (Emfat) has prepared.
So one party can’t count its election spending and the other thinks it’s OK to use your money to tell you what a fine lot it is, even at election time. Those are great character references for our two main parties.
National and Labour need to clean up their electoral acts and Parliament needs to clean up the Electoral Act. A day in court for both big old parties might be helpful in that and cleansing for our democracy.
Helen Clark is in Canberra for her annual meeting with John Howard today. What can she tell him?
There is much safe ground: mutual purring over election wins, a scan of December’s East Asia Summit, the China question, CER-ASEAN trade talks, Iran’s bomb, the Pacific.
Australia’s resigned realism about her defence policy is now partially offset by recognition of the high per-capita contribution to peacemaking and peacekeeping, especially in Afghanistan and East Timor, and her army expansion programme.
Go see River Queen. It conflates too many stories into one fragile vehicle with too many consequential historical and cultural inaccuracies. But it is an historical allegory of what and who we are this Waitangi week.
The future indicated in Vincent Ward’s 1860s film was one of British domination and a shattered Maori way of life.
It’s Waitangi Day on Monday. What does it mark?
It marks the utmost end of the holiday season, the last holiday before Easter. Schools are back.
When workers won two weeks holiday (then three, then four) in awards, it was tacked on to Christmas. Thus did unreliable January become our holiday month.
The dollar is still too high. Exports and tourism are suffering. Jobs are being lost. Profits are being squeezed. The longer it stays up, the worse the eventual adjustment. What is to be done?
Treasury Secretary John Whitehead and Reserve Bank governor Alan Bollard are due to report to Michael Cullen early next month on possible supplements to monetary policy, which failed to quell the housing boom.
Helen Clark casts her third term as doing the right things to earn a fourth term. She might usefully add: thinking and saying the right things.
Thinking is commonly supposed to be a Labour specialty. In political folklore the “left” doesn’t get round to doing — and so doesn’t connect with voters.
Dame Silvia Cartwright has been an exemplary Governor-General — gracious yet down-to-earth and thoughtful about what makes and unmakes this nation. Her occasional low-key missions abroad have pointed the way to a bigger role.
Dame Silvia retires in August and another is to be appointed.
Dwell on that word “appointed”. You have no say on who shall be your country’s ceremonial figurehead, your representative at dignified occasions and the ultimate guardian of your constitution should the politicians lose their heads or war with the courts.