Category: Pre-ODT Columns

If you are looking for humility, you wouldn’t go hunting in Parliament.

There are displays of humility. Seldom does an MP win a candidacy or an election or promotion without intoning how humbling it is to have won. Democracy requires ritual magnanimity in victory.

But magnanimity stretches only so far. Winston Peters as Deputy Prime Minister in 1997 used to crow across the Chamber at Labour and the Alliance: “We’re here and you’re there” (in opposition). The present Deputy Prime Minister, Michael Cullen, did it more cuttingly: “We won. You lost. Eat that.” read more

Here’s a quiz: which one of these is the National party’s policy on Iraq?

a. The United States should not attack Iraq without a United Nations resolution supporting or justifying it.

b. We should stand alongside our traditional allies even though there is not a United Nations resolution justifying what they are doing. read more

Some on the left take heart from the Iraq campaign because they think it means, as one wrote, “globalisation is over”.

“Militaristic states are protectionist states,” this luminary of the left wrote. Is that right?

Not according to George Bush’s rhetoric. Amidst the Wagnerian warrior choruses can be heard from time to time a faint civilising voice. Having got into Iraq to chase terrorists, Bush says his mission is to bring to Arab heathens the gift of free trade and prosperity. read more

This fighting in Iraq is not a finite event, though it is an iconic one. It is part of something much bigger.

In a strategic sense Iraq is a campaign, not a war. It is the second major campaign within George Bush’s “war on terror”. If Bush is serious about this war, there will be more campaigns. read more

Far from proving the United Nations’ irrelevance, the Iraq war is proving its relevance, Dr Ramesh Thakur, vice-rector of the United Nations University in Tokyo, said yesterday Wednesday.

“The more the United States protests that the United Nations is irrelevant, the more the world digs its heels in, saying the United Nations is relevant,” Dr Thakur, who has written a report on reform of the world body, said in a speech to the United Nations Association which will be music to the ears of Prime Minister Helen Clark. read more

Ramesh Thakur will be in Wellington next week for a conference on international affairs. He brings with him a subversive notion.

Thakur is a former Otago University political scientist who is now vice-rector of the United Nations University in Tokyo. He was a member of a Canadian-sponsored international commission on intervention and state sovereignty in 2001 which proposed a “responsibility to protect”. read more

The next time Rodney Hide inveighs against “perks” — if there is a next time — there will be a cacophony of “Pipitea Street, Pipitea Street” from opponents.

ACT says what it has been doing is legal, pooling its “electorate office” money for list MPs in a house near Parliament. But “legal” isn’t a defence in politics. Lawyerly niceties don’t wash in the court of public opinion. read more

It’s the money. We haven’t quite got the message yet, which is reassuringly quaint but is not up with the play.

I’m talking of “sport”. Sport used to be exercise, pitching skill and determination in non-lethal competition, helping make mind and body healthy.

“Play up, play up and play the game.” “Taking part is what matters.” “May the best man [sic] win.” You know the good old British sayings. read more

“A benefit paid for this shirt.” That blunt fact of life from Whangarei Boys High head boy Dave Byrne prompted pause for thought at the “emerging leaders” forum at the Knowledge Wave conference.

The “emerging leaders” had been discussing cutting company tax and social welfare spending and had inclined towards both. Suddenly, the old notion of a “fair go” was on the table, a phrase given much air at the Knowledge Wave conference which followed the emerging leaders forum and incorporated them. read more

They talked for three days and went home. There were no remits or grand declarations. The government’s fears of dangerous recommendations went unmet. What was the point?

The Knowledge Wave’s second conference last week was a sort of national seminar.

It was a great place to network. Where else do you find in one room social entrepreneurs, bosses of big companies and small companies, government department grandees and workaday policy analysts, academics and scribblers, economists from left and right, lobbyists of all varieties? You could do business there, whatever your business was. read more