Category: Pre-ODT Columns

Ian Templeton is the doyen of practising parliamentary journalists. He started in 1957, which far predates the 1966 arrival of the father of the House, Speaker Jonathan Hunt. But Templeton was not invited to the dinner last Monday evening to commemorate Parliament’s 150th anniversary.

Treating Templeton as inconsequential to its celebration — in fact, not inviting even the press gallery’s chair — speaks volumes for Parliament’s disconnection. Contrary to the pontifications of academics and public lawyers, the media here are not, at least in Parliament’s judgment, of constitutional value as links between people and rulers. read more

Will it work? Three years in the making, this is the government’s biggest throw of the policy and political dice, a massive redistribution in favour of some battlers.

Sounds like old Labour. The better-off and companies get no tax relief. The poor get a higher floor under their living standard and 300,000 families get help from the state. read more

If you didn’t yet know, the Budget should drive it home: give up on tax relief. Michael Cullen’s message is to tap into the burgeoning business assistance programme — and to lift productivity.

Cullen spent a whole page of his 15-page speech arguing that this country’s company tax was not out of line with OECD rates and less burdensome than Australia’s. read more

Colin James PREVIEWING the Budget for the NZ Herald for 27 May

Today’s Budget will be just prudent and no more. It is time for Labour to strut its social democratic stuff.

Hitherto Finance Minister Michael Cullen has been wary of too much spending because he has wanted to be confident the operating surpluses the Treasury has been projecting will materialise. read more

This is a taxing government. It is not rapacious but it has a bias towards more tax, not less. Thursday’s adjustment of tax on working families with children does not change that.

The long list of Michael Cullen’s rises in tax and government charges is now regularly recited by National and ACT MPs, with United Future chiming in in a minor key. At National’s southern regional conference in Queenstown on Saturday David Carter did just that, credibly also implying that more is to come. It went down a treat. read more

You think Australia is big? Think again. Australia is small.

Smallness was a refrain at the Australia-New Zealand leadership forum on Friday-Saturday — not just about this country but also from the Australian side about Australia.

Hence part of the impetus for the new Australian interest in the past two years in pushing CER, the trans-Tasman free trade agreement, to higher levels of regulatory integration and on to a “single market”. read more

It is better to let big sister think she thought of something first. That way little sister get her way.

Qantas chair Margaret Jackson arrived for the Australia-New Zealand leadership forum bent on a mission to soup up CER into a common market with a common currency. She was going to stir the laggards on this side of the Tasman into action. read more

Business New Zealand is about to campaign to “harness Kiwi values so growth is portrayed as an outcome of Kiwi values, not a threat to them”. So chief executive Simon Carlaw told a National party regional conference on Saturday.

This comes off the back of a Growth and Innovation Advisory Board’s survey of values and attitudes to business and growth which, Carlaw said, found that linking New Zealanders’ strong, distinctive values to “business” and “growth” causes their attitudes to business success and opportunities to “become very positive”. read more

After last week’s tumults, is MMP an unstable system? This week Parliament should be calmer. But last week’s high drama about the government’s majority has raised a question: Is MMP an unstable system? If it is, it will be changed.

Consider the record:

* In 1998 the National-New Zealand First coalition fell apart. National survived in office only on mavericks’ votes. read more

Colin James on a Treasury report on growth for the Business Herald

The “failed policies of the 1990s” didn’t fail. The economy speeded up and the country is richer as a result. But there were some gaps, most notably in skills development and capital accumulation. And some of the government’s changes since 1999 are working against future improvements. read more