Celebrities, confrontation and crime are the three cyphers of media ratings. Politicians have been supplying plenty of the first two and even a flash of the third. Haven’t they done well!
It is a commonplace among the chattering classes and their “commentariat” that the carryings-on of the past two weeks were not a good thing. Fat lot they know about what real people think and want.
Last Wednesday night in Parliament the National party rowdily belaboured all and sundry for wimpishness in the face of a flood of child pornography. No surprises in that — except that it incidentally included the Society for Promotion of Community Standards.
Whatever else one might say of the SPCS, excoriator of nudity and lax morals, it cannot be accused of limp-wristed liberalism.
A rumour swept through the public service last week: the three parts of the old Social
Welfare Department were to be put back together. It’s the sort of far-out rumour that is treated as a joke.
It’s not a joke.
The public service could be in for its biggest reshaping since the late-1980s reforms — though ministers emphasise no “big bang” is proposed and cabinet thinking is at a very early stage.
Social democrats once prided themselves on being internationalists. Workers across national borders were presumed to share a common oppression by capitalists. Nationalism was a game played by the ruling classes.
Helen Clark is heir to this tradition. It was a principle that sent Peter Fraser to jail for sedition in World War I. Half a century later the tradition spurred a generation of idealists to champion small countries, from Vietnam to El Salvador, against the United States. Ms Clark was one.
The real point about kiwibank is not Richard Prebble’s grandstanding defence of a liberty that was never seriously threatened. National’s Tony Ryall had it right: the real point is the bank’s opportunity cost to taxpayers.
If $80 million is invested in a bank, that $80 million is not available for the government’s capital programme to build roads, schools, hospitals and suchlike.
Peter Beattie has shown that scandal need not be the death of a government. The trick is to cauterise it fast.
Who is Peter Beattie? The ebullient, media-savvy Labour Premier of Queensland who in Saturday’s state election survived an election enrolment rorting scandal in his ranks that makes small beer of Phillida Bunkle.
I reckon the Black Caps are misunderstood. The record, Sunday excepted, suggests they are on a chivalrous mission to relieve the 1955 team of the ignominy of the world record low international innings — 26.
We also owe them a more general debt: by losing to Zimbabwe-level minnows, the hapless cricketers have reminded us we are a “branch office” country.
What did you do on Waitangi Day? Did you reflect on our history and the nation we are becoming?
Of course not, if you were in the majority. You had a holiday. If you gave thought to the “Waitangi” in Waitangi Day, images of Maori protest and confrontation probably swam up.
My colleague John Roughan has argued in the Weekend Herald that those images have been misleading, that the predominant tone was of good cheer and goodwill.
Here are two examples of leadership from late last week.
First example: The Prime Minister, “eyes on stalks”, lashed public service bonuses. Sure, she also said pay scales, frozen for a decade, were antiquated but that was reported pianissimo and the lashing was reported fortissimo.
The bonus issue is very complex, which is why Helen Clark says it will take five years to regularise. But telling the Rogernomics generation it should emulate the (much better paid, on average) politicians’ sense of “vocation” (implying sacrifice) is not likely to motivate excellence and application if, when the more munificent private sector and Australia beckon, ministers leave the targets of their lofty exhortations feeling bruised and undervalued.
Alright, come clean. Who’s hidden the National party?
Actually, it will re-launch in the next few days with what Jenny Shipley calls a “strategic” reshuffle — neither major nor a fine-tune.
If Wyatt Creech is to leave Parliament in 2002, the deputy leadership needs sorting now. And there are some younger and newer MPs to be given more responsibility and latitude — as befits the 1999 crop’s quality as the best for a decade.