Three years ago, when the National party last gathered in conference at the Grand Chancellor Hotel in Christchurch as it will this weekend, leadership change was in the air. Jenny Shipley was stalking Jim Bolger.
He fell to her knife two months later, judged by his MPs as not enough a “nineties” man, which was an irony since it had been his wont to proclaim the nineties as the “golden decade”.
This government is big on “partnership”. It wants one with local government, with business, with Maori – with nearly everyone who will play.
Steve Maharey even has a very PC committee beavering away to develop a “framework” to govern its partnerships with non-government organisations and the voluntary sector.
Is free trade dead? Not yet. A new World Trade Organisation trade liberalisation round may be (temporarily?) stalled. But bilateral and regional initiatives abound – and that’s a bother for us.
New Zealand is small and distant. It scarcely registers on foreign capitals’ radars. Why should Korea, still less the United States, bother with us if they can talk turkey with Japan?
If it has escaped your notice so far, this Prime Minister is determined to get what she wants.
That includes the Minister of Maori Affairs she has set her mind on. Labour would be looking for a new leader if it bucked her choice, she said on Monday.
She made it sound matter-of-fact, so much so that I almost had to pinch myself to register she had issued an ultimatum – normally a sign of crisis politics.
Jim Soorley is a Marist priest turned businessman turned Labor Lord Mayor of Brisbane. He says in a globalised world nations are the past and cities are the future.
Mr Soorley was a star turn at the local government conference in Christchurch on Monday.
Now in his fourth term, Mr Soorley insists that it is the clean-green and socially cohesive cities (or localities) that will attract business in future. His administration has invested heavily in making Brisbane such a place.
Just which “gaps” is Helen Clark closing and why were they so important she had to dump Dover Samuels quickly?
The “gaps” she sealed with last week’s sacking were threatened breaches in the political dyke: she secured her authority, got herself off the moral skewer of supporting a minister with an inconvenient past and for good measure divided the opposition in Parliament.
What is it about a government that really affects the lives and livelihoods of ordinary folk? Its policy.
Will the Dover Samuels affair change government policy? No. Will it change the government’s ability to carry out its policy? No.
So what’s the fuss?
Superficially, it’s entertainment. The drama of charge and defence of a public figure puts politics up with sport and disaster.
Why is the government keeping the Skyhawks? That is the puzzle in Monday’s skeletal defence “framework”.
Any reading of ministers’ comments since the election requires aerobatics of logic to concoct a case for air strike capability. Moreover, the framework’s list of priorities has no place for it.
This is the Budget to win last year’s election. Last year’s undertakings overhang the next two years’ ambitions. In 2002, as the next election looms, Michael Cullen will be offering voters less than did Mr Micawber himself, Sir William Birch, last year.
Dr Cullen has turned on its head the age-old electoral Budget wisdom that a government takes the tough decisions in the first year, steadies in the second and dishes out lollies in the third, just in time to seduce voters.
The government says it wants and needs three terms, that is, nine years. Heavy evidence of its need will be supplied in tomorrow’s Budget.
The two themes ministers have been billing are “closing the gaps” and “kick-starting the knowledge economy”. Both are slow-return, long-range projects, with spare prospect of much to show by the 2002 election.