Ramesh Thakur will be in Wellington next week for a conference on international affairs. He brings with him a subversive notion.
Thakur is a former Otago University political scientist who is now vice-rector of the United Nations University in Tokyo. He was a member of a Canadian-sponsored international commission on intervention and state sovereignty in 2001 which proposed a “responsibility to protect”.
The next time Rodney Hide inveighs against “perks” — if there is a next time — there will be a cacophony of “Pipitea Street, Pipitea Street” from opponents.
ACT says what it has been doing is legal, pooling its “electorate office” money for list MPs in a house near Parliament. But “legal” isn’t a defence in politics. Lawyerly niceties don’t wash in the court of public opinion.
It’s the money. We haven’t quite got the message yet, which is reassuringly quaint but is not up with the play.
I’m talking of “sport”. Sport used to be exercise, pitching skill and determination in non-lethal competition, helping make mind and body healthy.
“Play up, play up and play the game.” “Taking part is what matters.” “May the best man [sic] win.” You know the good old British sayings.
“A benefit paid for this shirt.” That blunt fact of life from Whangarei Boys High head boy Dave Byrne prompted pause for thought at the “emerging leaders” forum at the Knowledge Wave conference.
The “emerging leaders” had been discussing cutting company tax and social welfare spending and had inclined towards both. Suddenly, the old notion of a “fair go” was on the table, a phrase given much air at the Knowledge Wave conference which followed the emerging leaders forum and incorporated them.
They talked for three days and went home. There were no remits or grand declarations. The government’s fears of dangerous recommendations went unmet. What was the point?
The Knowledge Wave’s second conference last week was a sort of national seminar.
It was a great place to network. Where else do you find in one room social entrepreneurs, bosses of big companies and small companies, government department grandees and workaday policy analysts, academics and scribblers, economists from left and right, lobbyists of all varieties? You could do business there, whatever your business was.
Into the shower of new books on globalisation stumps Mike Moore with his high-pressure garden hose and a tankful of nostrums, perceptions, anecdotes, life-experiences, quips, metaphors, sound-bites and serious proposals.
His new book, A World Without Walls: Freedom, Development, Free Trade and Global Governance*, wants to convert us to free trade, accept the globalised world and fix up the myriad imperfections in its governing institutions.
This evening 50 “emerging leaders” of the coming generation will assemble to muse on this nation’s shape in 2020. Tomorrow afternoon they will join 400 local and foreign notables in the second Knowledge Wave talkfest.
Their designation as “leaders” suggests qualities which destine them to lead us to that 2020 nation. Indeed, nation-building is the theme of the conference, which itself is called a “leadership forum”. A formidable amount of international and local brainpower will be on display.
Imagine you are 24 and Labour. What do you most want of your party and government? Not lower student fees; you are past that. Not revolution or radicalism; that’s for the failed Alliance. A creed, a “project”.
Now imagine you are a 50-something cabinet minister. You will listen respectfully to Helen Clark’s dull annual Prime Minister’s statement to Parliament today, pleased she has settled the country down, is making your sorts of changes at the margin and runs a popular and commanding government. But is that what fired you up in the 1970s?
The Treaty of Waitangi signifies for some the establishment of a nation of “one people”, under one set of laws. It signifies for others the entrenchment of anterior Maori indigenous rights.
Bill English has put National unequivocally in the first camp. That was the purpose of his forthright — and to Maori offensive — speech two weeks ago. It will destroy the fragile Maori renaissance in his party but will please his core conservative vote.
Stop thinking about Maori in the economy, which can be depressing. Start thinking about the Maori economy, which has been doing well and has lots of potential.
That is the essential message in a report by the Institute of Economic Research (NZIER) released today, [Tuesday 4 February] which radically rethinks the stereotypes.