It is an assertion of nationhood or a quixotic discard of top brains. Or, if you are conspiracy junkie, scare yourself with a socialist plot. The Supreme Court Bill has got all this and more.
At least equally important, it is a defining moment as to where sovereignty lies, in the people or in Parliament.
What is the point of tertiary education? Point one: to develop individuals to their greatest potential. Point two: to fuel the “knowledge society” so we all get richer. So the government says.
To fulfil the first the government would just stump up whatever money it is prepared to commit and leave students to do what they want. To fulfil the second the government, as a funder, needs to take an active interest in what is taught and to whom — and channel its money accordingly.
This time last year a rift opened between Labour and the Greens. It dogged them through the election campaign and docked votes from both.
For the Greens, it also wiped hopes of cabinet seats. It meant less influence, since Labour can get a majority without them.
The rift was over genetic modification (GM) and was triggered by the Greens’ well-foreshadowed (but nevertheless surprising to Labour) walkout on the bill which legislated an end this coming October to the moratorium an applications for release of GM organisms.
“Practical men…are usually the slaves of some defunct economist.” So said John Maynard Keynes, the hugely influential twentieth century economic theorist. Well, meet slave Michael Cullen.
A few weeks back Cullen declared: “The fundamental philosophy underlying my approach to fiscal management has been a simple but strict form of keynesianism.”
Times change. In 1953 the state could readily afford to finance 1940s Labour Prime Minister Peter Fraser’s noble aim that each person should have “free” education to the “fullest extent of his [sic] powers”.
Then only a very few wanted or needed to go to university. Most occupational training was on the job, not at polytechnics. Now tens of thousands go to universities and likewise to polytechnics. The state could afford to make this “free” only by raising taxes or cutting other activities. So there are fees. National is toying with rationing university places with higher academic entry hurdles.
This week another Resource Management bill is due to reach the House, promoting renewable energy and energy efficiency. But yet another is in the mill — aimed at taking a tinge off business’s sourness about the act.
This third bill will underline the growing concern in the cabinet that some of its policy settings may be discouraging business investment, particularly by large foreign companies which can, and do, put their money elsewhere.
Traditional Labour, within the constraints of prudent budgeting and with genuflections to a high-skill economy: that’s Michael Cullen’s fourth Budget.
And, in case you haven’t got the message by now he made two strong points at his press conference:
* On present projections he will have an additional $500 million or so to spend next year and that is earmarked for tax credits for low-income families and assisting beneficiaries into work.
The government sails into its Budget on Thursday with a near-sublime confidence.
That is about to fade. The astonishing congruence of rain, prices and a low dollar has reversed and SARS, an electricity shortage and persistent sogginess in the world economy have darkened the future.
So Michael Cullen has told ministers to hold tight for another year. He and the Prime Minister (both fiscal dries) want to be sure the surpluses are sustainable before spending them.
Incrementalism rules, OK. That is Thursday’s Budget. Health gobbles up its large annual dollop but otherwise it is a little bit here and a little bit there, with an accent on “innovation” and research. Very Michael Cullen. Very Helen Clark.
A “stable and certain fiscal policy”, as Cullen put it to Labour party faithful early this month, is one of his “three key principles” and central to this government’s pitch for credibility with investors.
The once potent National party has fallen to this: cowering behind a curtain to talk policy. This month it has banned the media from such discussions at its regional conferences.
Such tremulousness in a party which pretends to run the country after September 2005! Even during the awful Muldoon years a quarter-century ago, when much of the party was in rebellion, it did not close its debates — and righteously scorned Labour’s periodic proclivity for privacy.