Go to a National party hui these days and you’re in John Tamihere’s constant company. He’s a star of the show. Ooh-la-la.
JT is the man who told it like it is inside the supposedly unified and competent Labour-led government. Vote National.
JT is the man who forced Helen Clark to give him yet another chance (after yet another and yet another and yet another). Vote National for a firm leader. Take a bow, Georgina te Heuheu and Katherine Rich.
John Tamihere had promise — bucketloads of it. Don Brash has loads of promise, too. Tamihere trashed his promise. Will Brash live up to his?
A year ago Tamihere had the political world at his feet, with his macho patter, charisma and ambition. A fortnight ago he was certain to return to the cabinet post-election. But it takes a big boy to live up to his sort of self-image.
Tucked away in the Reserve Bank’s March monetary policy statement was a graph which should worry our grasshopper society. The future it paints might be the trigger that turns us back from borrowers to savers.
The graph showed average household wealth rising from 3.5 times household income in 2000 to 4.5 times in 2004.
The big screen behind Helen Clark on Saturday at Labour’s pre-election “congress” proclaimed: “Taking New Zealand ahead”. But where to?
For an answer, we might turn to Clark’s “vision”. In both her speeches she intoned this golden word. But what is her “vision”? Does she really have one?
The end of a transition — and another just beginning? There will be a large absence and a brooding presence at Labour’s pre-election congress this coming weekend.
The absence will be Jonathan Hunt. For 40 years he has been a feature and a fixture, jovial and kindly to all, the very soul of loyalty to the social democratic cause under the strain of tough economics and tougher politics. He has been one of Helen Clark’s innermost confidants.
How do you get economic growth down? Have a drought. How do you get it up? Get yourself a cornucopia of metals, gas and oil.
A drought in this country cuts deep into GDP. A drought in Australia does not have much affect because agriculture is a relatively small part of the economy.
Australia has vast mineral and petroleum riches. New Zealand’s supply is not in that league.
Much of politics and government is about managing and minimising risk. Failure invites a media roasting.
Take politics: a big risk for National is that on election day voters will not see a government-in-waiting.
To get Peter Dunne alongside, National needs, he says, more votes than Labour. Right now National is trailing Labour by 10 per cent in the polls.
What the state gives, the state can take away. That is a message we usually learn too late.
Take farmers. In the late 1970s Sir Robert Muldoon, National party Prime Minister, dreamt up a supplementary minimum price scheme (SMPs) to support farmers under pressure.
Inflation was rampant, costs were high and prices were low. The terms of trade had dropped by a third between the mid-1960s and the mid-1970s.
What does a third-world nation want most? To be as rich as a first-world nation.
There is an exception. Bhutan’s official measure of performance is gross national happiness. Bhutan is very poor. Four-fifths of its population are subsistence farmers and it ranks 134th out of 177 on the United Nations Development Programme’s index.
Nine years ago at this time ACT met in conference as a 2 per cent party. Richard Prebble was made leader and made ACT a 6 per cent party in the election in October.
That’s Rodney Hide’s task as he goes into his first conference as ACT leader this weekend.
ACT’s poll average in the four major polls published in February was 2.1 per cent. That is microscopically better than the February 1996 four-poll average of 1.7 per cent (the precise election vote was 6.2 per cent).