What’s the business call in this election — short-term or long-term, tactical or strategic? Most would say short-term tactics require a policy shift. But long-term strategy needs durable policy. Do the two match in this election?
The simple business call goes something like this: lower tax, less regulation, a national interest override of local yokels on resource consents, more roads, guaranteed energy at reasonable prices.
Campaigning is a mix of luck, the economy, public mood, charisma, message, discipline, management — and pugilism.
Luck is by definition outside parties’ sphere of influence, except in what they make of it. So, to a large extent, is the economy in a nation dependent on trade, though regulatory, tax and fiscal settings contribute.
The wonder of this election is that National is in full contention after only 21 per cent last time. What does history say about its chances of going all the way?
Go back to 1928. That’s nearly 80 years ago but history doesn’t hang on decades.
In the 1910s and 1920s, despite running elections under first-past-the-post, this country had a multi-party system. In three elections after 1912, when Reform’s Bill Massey first won office by ousting the Liberals on a no-confidence motion after an inconclusive election in 1911, he only once won a decisive majority, in 1919.
Behind Trevor Mallard’s redistribution of tertiary education money from bad courses to good ones lies a disturbing story — not just of waste but of managerial breakdown. The state’s machinery didn’t work properly.
Indicted stand former Tertiary Education Minister Steve Maharey, Secretary of Education Howard Fancy, a truckload of full-time and part-time bureaucrats and umpteen people who allege they are “academics”.
It’s pot and kettle time: gunpowder-blackened politicians blackening other politicians. That side of politics helps earn politicians their low trust ratings.
Don Brash feigns anger (or maybe is actually angry) at being misrepresented when his Iraq and nuclear policy words are quoted out of context. With hand on presbyterian heart, he declares his billboards just point up differences with Labour.
No party ever wants to lose an election but if it has to lose one, this might be just the one, judging by the economic weather forecasts.
Thus, amidst the delight at the polls there is here and there in the National party a tiny discomfort that in government rough economic weather could sink its ship.
Paul Hutchison looks like a buttoned-down sort of chap. But actually he hates wearing ties. So is he the man to loosen up health policy?
Under Helen Clark and Annette King the health system has edged back closer to the old “public” model. That is an article of faith with them. The state-centred model is at the core of this government’s social policy approach.
In barbaric times gods did barbaric things and humans did barbaric things in fear or honour of them. In times supposedly less barbaric, multitudes were tortured and killed in the name of Papal Rome’s god.
We think our sorts of societies have long since left behind god-driven barbarism and vengefulness. Part of the discomfort many feel with traditional Maori spiritual beliefs is that they speak to them of a dark age of untamed gods. Reason and science were supposed to have banished such mythologies.
Tony Blair’s trumpet, Alistair Campbell, made two predictions to an invited audience on Thursday: the Lions would win and so would Helen Clark. Clark will now hope sport and politics don’t mix.
Except, of course, in southern Africa. Labour ministers are at an old game: condemning — stopping when they can — sport with countries whose regimes they abhor. Norman Kirk set the precedent in 1973 when he stopped the racist Springboks from visiting.
Which of these phrases makes more sense to you: “making meaning” or “learn to read and write”?
Both are to do with educating children. One, says National education spokesman Bill English, is a Ministry of Education concoction to guide reformulation of the school curriculum. The other is English’s version. No prizes for assigning authorship.