Once in 2002 I rang Rod Donald somewhat before 6 in the morning, anticipating he would be calling for the latest poll averages and determined for once to get in first. He didn’t answer but rang me back a bit later.
The phone had been on, he said, but he had been in the shower. Upon which I tried some humour: no doubt, he slept with it under his pillow. Well, actually, he did. Nicola was not very pleased, he added.
Back to Muldoonist meddling or some judicious jawboning? Which does the inquiry into direct intervention into house mortgages amount to?
Intervention would be a big step away from the principles governing the financial markets for the past 20 years and would carry attendant risks of a less flexible economy and slower growth.
Through today’s Speech from the Throne and in speeches over the next few weeks Helen Clark will promote her reading of the “New Zealand way”. She wants that to be your reading of the “New Zealand way” too.
And the longer she stays in office the more time and opportunity she gets to do just that, to make her government “normal”.
It’s a perennial story: the central government’s version of the local hole-in-the-road syndrome — where the “w” gets lost from “whole-of-government” action.
You know the local story: serial roadworks to fix the drains, water supply, phone cables, electricity cables and then drains again.
What does National need to do before the next election? Put the small “n” back in National.
That is, it must look, smell, feel, sound and act like a party representative of the nation — as it was in its halcyon days of the 1950s and 1960s.
At National party conferences these days you count the Maori there in single digits; so, too, for Pacific islanders and other ethnic minorities.
“La constitution, c’est moi.”* So it seems, to hear the Prime Minister. Sticklers for form are sand in the gears.
Last week’s constitutional marvel has scandalised purists. But this country’s tradition is to adjust the constitution to political need. Helen Clark, Winston Peters and Peter Dunne are firmly in that tradition with their invention of sometimes-ministers who are mostly in the opposition.
Which should scare us more — the bird flu or what it might do to our standard of living? Much news space has been given to people getting sick. Time to think about how sick the economy could get, too. It could be nasty.
The Treasury is scoping the potential economic fallout from a bird flu strike. Involved are the Reserve Bank, the Ministries of Economic and Social Development, the Customs Service and the Inland Revenue.
Winston Peters has been back centre-stage, exactly where he likes to be. What if history had dealt him — and us — different cards?
What if in the last week of the 1999 election campaign Labour’s Tauranga candidate, Margaret Wilson, had suggested voters cast their electorate vote for the candidate who could beat Peters?
Much less left legislation, much more opportunity to influence bills and maybe a 30 per cent company tax rate: that is the outlook for business if a Labour-led government is formed.
Of course, if National overtakes Labour on the home stretch, the issue will be how much National’s right-leaning initiatives, and especially its tax policies, are modified. But as of yesterday, the odds seemed still to lie with Labour.
Here’s how Helen Clark and Labour might get a fourth term. Yes, a fourth term. That is, another term after this one.
Labour last got a third term in 1943. Since then Labour and the country have got used to Labour governments being cameo parts between long periods of National party rule.
So a third term is a huge prize for Labour. Surely, a fourth term is just fanciful.