Category: NZ Herald

Late in the week the election was called National party planners pulled apart Bill English’s whistle stop tour of 54 towns in 35 days. There was no longer time to go helicoptering all over the countryside.

The regional blitz had come a bit late in any case. English himself is on his own cognisance a slow burner. Now he doesn’t have time to burn in slowly, as Helen Clark did during six years as Opposition leader, touring the provinces a day or two a week, laying down a midden of local publicity and connections. read more

Jim Anderton is right: our national anthem is a dirge and Pokare sounds heaps better. Air New Zealand understood its powerful nationalistic appeal when it made it its ad theme song.

Anderton sang Pokare when launching his third new party on Saturday, to make a point about the uniqueness of this country’s cultural mix. It is not a theme I have heard much of before from him. read more

If there is one thing that will bring Helen Clark down eventually it is hubris.

The Oxford Dictionary defines hubris as presumption, pride, excessive self-confidence. In simple parlance it means: too big for one’s boots.

Calling a snap election — and let’s be clear, that is what this election is — is an act of the Sovereign. Under our archaic constitution the monarch decides when to dissolve Parliament and so when you vote. read more

The teachers have a point: education is underfunded and good teachers are underpaid. But they are not supposed to be making this point before the government gets re-elected.

The government is frozen in the headlights while it shuffles towards election day. After the headlights, however, comes the big red bus. read more

The Greens want to genetically modify Parliament. That’s why there’s so much fuss about them.

They want to transplant an ecology gene into our two-legged wallet-and-welfare body politic.

The Greens acknowledge that traditional selective breeding of new generations of members of the old “grey” parties has had an effect. Labour is ratifying the Kyoto protocol and doing a raft of green things. read more

The Greens are now a single-issue party. That is how they painted themselves last week and how their opponents will paint them in the election.

Actually, they are not a single-issue party. Over the 30 years since they exploded on to the electoral scene as the Values party, forcing a hurried lurch into environmentalism by the then thoroughly smokestack Labour party, they have broadened their reach. read more

The politics of the Budget are easy: promises of more of the same to come will win general electoral accolades. The economics are not so easy.

The Labour party congress last weekend displayed a party at the height of its powers, with a deeper and broader membership and reach into the public.

Labour is in part reaping a windfall from luck — rain and high prices for farmers have strengthened household balance sheets. But it is also reaping rewards from middle New Zealand for softening the pro-market policies of the 1990s. The public likes the moderate leftwards repositioning. Labour is likely to have more seats — perhaps even a majority — in the next Parliament. read more

The government’s health and education services are underfunded. That is what the next three fiscal years are about.

They are underfunded because the economy hasn’t been growing fast enough. So the next three economic policy years are primarily about getting the growth rate up.

And that means, Michael Cullen said — firmly divorcing himself from Laila Harre’s Alliance — squeezing social spending generally. “We are determined to keep money back for economic transformation,” he told journalists in the pre-Budget “lockup”, even while notching up sound, “conservative” surpluses now and for the future. In the Budget speech he said: “Our capacity to lift the sustainable growth rate will not be assisted by excessive growth in expenditure which squeezes out opportunities for contributing to economic development.” read more

Has anyone in authority consulted you as to when the election should be? After all, elections belong to the people, don’t they?

Nope. Elections belong to the politicians. By royal prerogative, the election date is the Prime Minister’s to decide (subject to some constitutional niceties).

In the United States the President doesn’t decide election dates. They are fixed. The New South Wales Parliament has a fixed term, too. Here you are treated as fodder. It’s the politicians’ election and don’t you forget it. read more

You know something’s up when a National party conference, liberally grey-haired, starts proceedings with the Maori version of the national anthem and sings it with as much gusto as the English version.

It wasn’t long ago that half the country was aghast that the anthem was sung in Maori before an All Blacks game in Britain. What is going on? read more