Go see River Queen. It conflates too many stories into one fragile vehicle with too many consequential historical and cultural inaccuracies. But it is an historical allegory of what and who we are this Waitangi week.
The future indicated in Vincent Ward’s 1860s film was one of British domination and a shattered Maori way of life.
It’s Waitangi Day on Monday. What does it mark?
It marks the utmost end of the holiday season, the last holiday before Easter. Schools are back.
When workers won two weeks holiday (then three, then four) in awards, it was tacked on to Christmas. Thus did unreliable January become our holiday month.
The dollar is still too high. Exports and tourism are suffering. Jobs are being lost. Profits are being squeezed. The longer it stays up, the worse the eventual adjustment. What is to be done?
Treasury Secretary John Whitehead and Reserve Bank governor Alan Bollard are due to report to Michael Cullen early next month on possible supplements to monetary policy, which failed to quell the housing boom.
Helen Clark casts her third term as doing the right things to earn a fourth term. She might usefully add: thinking and saying the right things.
Thinking is commonly supposed to be a Labour specialty. In political folklore the “left” doesn’t get round to doing — and so doesn’t connect with voters.
Dame Silvia Cartwright has been an exemplary Governor-General — gracious yet down-to-earth and thoughtful about what makes and unmakes this nation. Her occasional low-key missions abroad have pointed the way to a bigger role.
Dame Silvia retires in August and another is to be appointed.
Dwell on that word “appointed”. You have no say on who shall be your country’s ceremonial figurehead, your representative at dignified occasions and the ultimate guardian of your constitution should the politicians lose their heads or war with the courts.
What should happen to prices when productivity jumps? Logically, they should fall.
So, shouldn’t prices generally have fallen during the great computerisation-driven productivity boom led by the United States in the 1990s? And, given the rapid increase in productivity of the enormous Chinese workforce, shouldn’t prices generally still be falling?
The Treaty partner has come to Parliament. That is how Maori party president Whata Winiata sees his party — as a symbol of a parallel politics.
How well the four Maori MPs navigate the opportunity and challenge their success last year delivered them could have profound implications not just for the party but for politics and the nation. And this will be the year that is essentially decided.
Here are five ways we might usefully think about 2006 before we settle back from the holidays and lose perspective.
First, the economy. This year the party ends and household balance sheets have to be put in order.
The Treasury and the Reserve Bank both say house prices may fall a bit. That’s OK if you have stayed put. It’s not OK if you have recently bought a home or an investment property on a big mortgage.
When the Prime Minister gets back from her mountaintop there’s a job waiting: clean out the fridge.
Just look at the jumble in there: some vegetable has squished out of its plastic bag all over the tray, the pumpkin has fur and potatoes have sprouted; up above are half-eaten cheeses, curling salamis, old cold chicken and lamb, curdled yoghurt and cat’s meat the cat won’t go near any more.
Here’s a post-Christmas thought: think big. We’ve largely lost the habit.
You can see that in the way we do most things as a nation.
Roads are a good example. Transit New Zealand is cheese-paring costs from the death road, state highway 2. In Wellington its new feeder road into that think-small oddity, the three-lane Terrace tunnel, will grind across the surface through multiple traffic lights instead of in a trench out of sight and largely out of hearing — and still leave its off-road slicing Cuba street inhumanly in half.