Here are two ways to make a speech to a party conference: by creating an inflexion-free zone; or as Pollyanna.
The first was Don Brash keynoting at the National party’s conference on Sunday. The second was Wellington mayor Kerry Prendergast opening it on Saturday.
Brash’s speech read strongly on paper: punchy lines; repetition to drive home telling points, sharp policy contrasts with Labour and Helen Clark.
Graham Kelly has done his bit to dent the credibility of Helen Clark’s government. So has Pete Hodgson, blaming officials. Who’s next in the batting order?
The National party could hardly have a better platform for its pre-election conference this weekend. It really is now in the power game — albeit in harness with Winston Peters.
Tomorrow farmers around the country will tie orange ribbons on their front gates — if they heed Federated Farmers’ call to action. This is in protest at proposed public access to waterways.
Fish and Game says the proposal, developed by John Acland, a South Island high-country grandee farmer, are moderate. The Fed says they trample property rights.
What do you do when the house price boom runs out of puff, you’re up to your eyeballs in debt and you want to keep up the pace of life you’ve got used to? Pray — or vote — for a tax cut.
That is the hole once-happy consumers have dug for Michael Cullen for the election. And he stumbled into it on Budget day.
Yesterday was the Queen’s official birthday. It comes at an apposite time as the Prime Minister ponders when to call the election — as if it were her election and not yours.
Her pondering presumes a regal power, a lingering vestige of an era when sovereignty resided not in the people but in the monarch. When Helen Clark announces the election day she will be acting as if the sovereign, exercising the royal prerogative. Is this right in 2005?
Yesterday was the Queen’s official birthday. It comes at an apposite time as the Prime Minister ponders when to call the election — as if it were her election and not yours.
Her pondering presumes a regal power, a lingering vestige of an era when sovereignty resided not in the people but in the monarch. When Helen Clark announces the election day she will be acting as if the sovereign, exercising the royal prerogative. Is this right in 2005?
You don’t have to go to an ACT or National party conference to get a contrary line to Labour’s economic management. United Future will do. Labour is now at risk of finding itself in a minority.
Five years ago, leading a fresh government, Labour, in harness with the Alliance and the Greens, clearly represented a majority of voters. That majority wanted deregulation and asset sales halted, the social services rebuilt and radical policy-making replaced with moderacy.
A different sort of green literature has developed in the past few years — and it is not the sort the Green party will happily hand out at its conference this weekend.
This new literature began in 1998 when Bjorn Lomborg, once a deep green, began questioning the assumptions, methodology and statistics of orthodox green positions. Lomborg still claims to be green (as the Business Roundtable found when it brought him here to speak) but a sceptical one.
Tax is a short word but a long argument. It is a political calculation, a fiscal management calculation and an economic calculation and none of those calculations is simple.
Take the politics first.
To Nationalists less tax is better than more. That is an instinct and a tradition, besides a belief. It is also self-interest: National (and ACT) supporters tend to pay more of their income in income tax than other parties’ supporters.
Michael Cullen went out of his way on Budget day to credit United Future with his decision to link tax bracket thresholds to inflation. That said two things about the so-called poodle party.
One: United Future is Labour’s No 1 preferred partner in government in the next term (after Jim Anderton, of course). Helen Clark’s dream is enough seats for Peter Dunne to assure her a majority, just like now, which Labour thinks has worked excellently.