One symptom of a government in trouble is a propensity to whack public servants.
Symptom: Trevor Mallard, under pressure over the Clare Curran affair, grossly abused Erin Leigh. Mallard lost: he now looks in need of deep, rehabilitative rest. The government lost: bullying is bad and looks bad.
Symptom: David Cunliffe, under pressure from “crisis” stories about Wellington hospital, condemned the hospital’s board, which is in part government-appointed.
Michael Cullen is at last “sustainable” — eight years into the Finance Minister’s job, come next Monday. “Green” is now “progressive” in his value-system instead of wacky or unworldly.
That is, “green” can now mean “more” instead of “less”, which he thinks the Greens often imply. He says “sustainability” is the third stage of post-1984 economic development.
The Greens put their finger on the deepest flaw in the Electoral Finance Bill: that the poachers are playing gamekeepers. The MPs think they own your elections.
Next year the Prime Minister, assuming the Queen’s prerogative, will play cat and mouse with the date of your election.
She did once express interest in a fixed term for Parliament, as in, for example, Germany and New South Wales, two systems ours resembles. New Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd also favours a fixed term. But she tied it to extending the present three-year maximum to four years, which New South Wales has (and Rudd wants) but which voters here have decisively rejected twice in the past 40 years.
One thing won’t change: the stampede of New Zealanders across the Tasman to make a living. A wage in Australia under Kevin Rudd will stay around a third higher than one in New Zealand for a while yet at least.
That is one iron rule of the relationship with Australia for now. The resources boom, the larger critical mass of its major cities and the riches of its federal and state treasuries have showered wealth on Australians — and on New Zealanders who join them, as they are free to do in our common labour market.
New Zealand voters, like Australian voters, tend to go for in-command leaders. Kevin Rudd is that. Helen Clark is. Is John Key yet?
Key comes up to his anniversary as leader next Tuesday. He has less than a year now to acquire prime ministerial authority.
Being fresh, youngish, a charmer and a centrist has been the easy part. And he has help from the financial squeeze on households and slippage in Clark’s political management: smacking, tax cuts, David Benson-Pope and the bizarre drafting of the Electoral Finance Bill.
Eighteen months ago John Howard was much eulogised on his tenth anniversary as Australian Prime Minister. Now many of those eulogisers are polishing his political epitaph.
There is, quite apart from opinion polls, a discernible shift in public attitudes and an alternative, Labor’s Kevin Rudd, who seems to measure up.
Little noticed in Helen Clark’s reshuffle was her promotion of Pete Hodgson — to the post of minister of innovation in all but in name.
Mind you, she didn’t actually draw attention to it until her keynote speech on Saturday at the Labour party’s conference when she said he was “in effect” minister of innovation.
Left columnist Chris Trotter was invited to lead a “new thinking” workshop on “the media” at the Labour party conference starting on Friday. Had he not pulled out, this would have complemented his paper in January at the party’s summer school for new thinking, where he led a chorus of the socialist marching hymn, the “Red Flag”.
The National party’s interest in New Zealand First’s conference this weekend will be in the prospect for rubbing along in Parliament after 2008. But a much bigger support challenge looms for National elsewhere.
It has long been taken as read in senior National circles that if National needs the numbers after the next election and New Zealand First survives the election, Winston Peters will stay on as Foreign Minister.
Last week two energy strategies, next week a White Paper titled “Our future with Asia”. What do these have in common? And is there a place for Europe?
One clue comes from Australia, now heading into a crunch election.
A new study by the Australian Strategic Studies Institute (ASPI) states that we are in “the third energy shock of the post-war [post-1945] era”. This differs from those of 1973 and 1979 in being driven by rapidly rising demand, not constraints by suppliers.