Category: NZ Herald

No sooner will the government get its highly controversial changes to the Resource Management Act (RMA) through than it will back on the job — this time to add energy efficiency as a national priority. As we head towards our cold showers, this may prompt a wry comment or two.

This change, which Energy Minister Pete Hodgson foreshadowed in February, is linked to an other change designed to discourage local authority politicians from blocking windpower and other renewable energy schemes for aesthetic and other reasons. Hodgson wants windfarms and is doling out Kyoto “promissory notes” to get them. read more

Three canyons cut through the political landscape between National and Labour.

One is in the workplace. Labour sees wages and conditions (including safety) as the sustenance of workers and their families. National sees them as a cost to business.

The second is in foreign policy. For 65 years Labour has leaned more to multilateral processes and resorted to alliances as temporary second bests. National has always put more faith in alliances and has at times been deeply sceptical of the United Nations. Iraq sharply delineated that ideological ravine. read more

Electricity was the first need in Iraq after the bombing. Why? To get water to people. Water was the bigger and more basic need. As we are about to find out.

The National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) warned earlier this month [April] that the next 50 years will be drier than the past — just as competition for available water is heating up. NIWA predicts conflict over water in the future. read more

The Prime Minister is in Europe this week. What’s the point?

Sure, she’s chairing an OECD meeting in Paris which will discuss sharing economic gains with developing countries, she’s catching up with Tony Blair and she’s visiting her great-uncle’s war grave — all reasonable reasons to drop by. read more

The government’s gradual reorganisation of the state sector is back into action with four recent developments.

* Justice Secretary Belinda Clark was last month made chief executive of the Courts Department, foreshadowing the eventual merger or at least alignment of those two departments.

* Some small ministries, starting with women’s affairs and youth affairs, are to clustered with larger departments to reduce the cost to small ministries of some administrative functions. read more

If you are looking for humility, you wouldn’t go hunting in Parliament.

There are displays of humility. Seldom does an MP win a candidacy or an election or promotion without intoning how humbling it is to have won. Democracy requires ritual magnanimity in victory.

But magnanimity stretches only so far. Winston Peters as Deputy Prime Minister in 1997 used to crow across the Chamber at Labour and the Alliance: “We’re here and you’re there” (in opposition). The present Deputy Prime Minister, Michael Cullen, did it more cuttingly: “We won. You lost. Eat that.” read more

Here’s a quiz: which one of these is the National party’s policy on Iraq?

a. The United States should not attack Iraq without a United Nations resolution supporting or justifying it.

b. We should stand alongside our traditional allies even though there is not a United Nations resolution justifying what they are doing. read more

Some on the left take heart from the Iraq campaign because they think it means, as one wrote, “globalisation is over”.

“Militaristic states are protectionist states,” this luminary of the left wrote. Is that right?

Not according to George Bush’s rhetoric. Amidst the Wagnerian warrior choruses can be heard from time to time a faint civilising voice. Having got into Iraq to chase terrorists, Bush says his mission is to bring to Arab heathens the gift of free trade and prosperity. read more

This fighting in Iraq is not a finite event, though it is an iconic one. It is part of something much bigger.

In a strategic sense Iraq is a campaign, not a war. It is the second major campaign within George Bush’s “war on terror”. If Bush is serious about this war, there will be more campaigns. read more

Far from proving the United Nations’ irrelevance, the Iraq war is proving its relevance, Dr Ramesh Thakur, vice-rector of the United Nations University in Tokyo, said yesterday Wednesday.

“The more the United States protests that the United Nations is irrelevant, the more the world digs its heels in, saying the United Nations is relevant,” Dr Thakur, who has written a report on reform of the world body, said in a speech to the United Nations Association which will be music to the ears of Prime Minister Helen Clark. read more