Muddy shoes in the Koru lounge at Wellington airport. Tired and happy, thickly accented Maori. That was the end of the hikoi for some.
Those “marchers” didn’t sound or look like “haters and wreckers”, as the Prime Minister characterised the leaders. But they thought they had done a good thing, alongside the Harawiras and Sykes. They were buzzing.
Without Richard Prebble there would be no ACT. In March 1996 ACT was polling the same as now, around 2 per cent on average. Prebble got it to 6 per cent.
But this year it began to look as if with Prebble there would be no ACT. His curious attack on Don Brash at ACT’s conference in March indicated a man losing his grip.
Former Prime Minister David Lange did not tell the United States Secretary of State George Schultz he would bring about a change in the Labour party’s anti-nuclear policy, Merwyn Norrish, foreign affairs chief at the time said at the weekend.
This has been a bone of contention between New Zealand and the United States since the fateful meeting between the pair two days after the 1984 election which brought Lange to power. Some think the rift that then developed is a reason why New Zealand has lagged Australian in getting a free trade agreement with the United States.
The ghost of Michelle Boag, the ill-fated former National party president, will stalk the party’s regional conferences which begin this weekend. Boag asked Don Brash to stand in 2002. And Brash has resuscitated the party.
Sure, polls are now showing National off its peak and logic suggests it will come off more over the next few months. But there has been a step-shift upwards of 10 per cent or more. Boag, who left under a cloud shortly after the 2002 election disaster, has been thereby in part vindicated.
A fantasy of farm leaders for 30 years or more has been that the Chinese will all buy one wool sock, eat one rack of lamb and drink a pint of milk: instant export bonanza.
Of course, it doesn’t work like that. But China is an enormous market, enriching fast, with 100 million middle class consumers who want high-end protein which is this country’s specialty.
This is how MMP works: the government seeks out supporters for legislation and, if necessary, adjusts the legislation to secure support. The Foreshore and Seabed Bill is a prime example.
If the Labour party had a majority, as in the old days, it could ram through whatever it decided, subject to its desire to keep the Maori seats and its need to hold the non-Maori middle ground.
There is a skill governments attract: pitching a case just the right way to download some taxpayer money.
Governments don’t set out to foster the skill but it happens under all of them. Fill a bucket with money and schemers suss the criteria and build a case to fit — all by the book.
We’ve seen examples of that in the past couple of weeks: a hip-hip study, a personal degree, Maori and Pacific island lesbians’ and gays’ access to sport and culture — all in the name of social entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurial, all right, but not very social.
A couple of weeks ago Bruce Hawker dropped in for a chat with the Prime Minister’s advisers.
Hawker is an Australian political and public affairs consultant. He devised a strategy for the Bob Carr government in New South Wales to counter the inroads One Nation was making on race grounds into the Labour vote in the suburbs: tell those voters Labour was aware they had concerns, wanted to hear them and would address them. Carr got the suburban “wedge” back.
This last weekend was an anniversary of an event of high drama. Another looms, of a minor, but still important, event. Both have overtones not expected at the time.
The first was of the invasion of Iraq by United States President George Bush�s and British Prime Minister Tony Blair�s “coalition of the willing”. The coalition had overwhelming firepower so of course it won.
Let’s dispose of a red herring. A Maori party would not have won the foreshore/seabed battle for iwi and hapu.
Why not? It would have much more loudly represented tribal Maori views than Labour’s Maori MPs. Wouldn’t that have been a good thing?
Yes, as a vent. But a Labour-led government freed of the need to balance Maori interests against majority interests and deprived of the Maori vote would probably have bulldozed through much less friendly legislation.