Leading up to the 2002 election a small voice inside the Prime Minister’s circle argued in vain for an aspirational pitch. It was deemed unnecessary, inappropriate and out of step with voters’ mood.
The economy was up. Voters approved Helen Clark’s “correction” of 1990s policies. The National party was adrift. Steady-as-she-goes was a serviceable message for a reform-weary electorate. Daring or bold policy was out of fashion.
Michael Cullen’s self-proclaimed “bold” Budget last Thursday struck out an important principle. The question now is whether he will be bold enough to reinstate it next year. His junior partner, United Future, will push him to.
The principle was the one tepidly established in his 2005 Budget: indexation of personal tax thresholds to inflation — the so-called chewing gum tax cut. When — and some ministers insist it is a when not an if — he cuts personal tax next year, will he reinstate the 2005 initiative?
Michael Cullen’s Budgets have big print and small print. You can win on one and lose on the other. So with business in this Budget.
A 30 per cent tax rate is a big plus and matches Australia — better than matches if Australian add-ons are taken into account. Tax credits for research and development are a plus. There are handouts for some exporting and industry training.
Early in his parliamentary career Shane Jones, as newly minted chair of Parliament’s finance and expenditure committee, was manoeuvred by the National party into an inquiry into Television New Zealand.
The inquiry will be remembered not for a revitalised and bouncy TVNZ but for giving rise to a landmark “privilege” case in which Parliament, to its disgrace, fined the TVNZ board for disciplining outgoing chief executive Ian Fraser for bagging it at Jones’s committee.
The National party has dropped its opposition to the Kyoto protocol on climate change and is “looking at” a 50 per cent cut in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. Quite a change of climate in a party which a year ago still herded with the sceptics.
John Key will spell out his thinking this coming weekend. But the new breeze is already blowing through the party.
Commerce Minister Lianne Dalziel is miffed. New Zealand is only the fourth easiest country to set up a business in. She vows it will soon be the easiest, by way of a sort of one-click shop that does all the registrations. It will be a small gain for the country but a big gain in a new small business’s scheme of things.
The fridge breaks down. Taps leak. The lawnmower is stolen. The roof leaks because the repaint is five years overdue. You can’t get on top of the to-do list.
Welcome to the fifth Labour government midway through its third term. Can this month’s Budget rescue it from its downslide?
Labour shows no sign of getting off the four-and-a-half-year downward trend in its poll averages since late 2002. And that’s also the tone of public discussion.
Is Anzac Day about war or about independent nationhood? We don’t seem these days to be able to make up our minds.
Every year a minister goes to Gallipoli to commemorate our defeat there at the hands of British political and military genius. This year it is Winston Peters’ turn. Helen Clark went and she set up a prize for kids writing about our military history.
Top of the John Howard’s agenda for his meeting with his state premiers on Friday was climate change. Worms turn when the weather turns bad.
And the weather has turned bad.
First, a drought so dire that parched Australians are attributing it at least partly to climate change. Howard has a grand water plan.
Jesus Christ was a criminal — at least, he was branded as such and excruciatingly executed for it in accordance with the law. That is Easter. That was justice then.
Well, they were rough times. Christ was a rebel and a nuisance to the authorities in a region that was troublesome to the world’s greatest empire (as it is now). So he was strung up.