Each year leaves unfinished business. One for this democracy this New Year’s Eve is our elections. Who owns them?
In June the Prime Minister called a snap election four months before the parliamentary term was up.
She did that ostensibly because the Alliance had broken up, Opposition points of order on the Alliance’s legitimacy in the coalition were obstructing the government’s legislative programme and Parliament was being demeaned.
The political jibe of the year was surely Winston Peters’ “black widow spider” taunt to Helen Clark as she savaged her political mate, the Green party, in the election campaign.
The snap election had got mired in the bog of genetic modification, the Greens’ cause celebre. Labour’s support fell by a quarter. Clark blew her top. The Greens got eaten.
Stephen Franks is no forelock-tugger. Brought up a working class lad in Taihape, ACT’s brainiest MP is a verbal brawler.
So why is Franks battling alongside the cultural cringe brigade to keep the British Privy Council as our final court of appeal?
Come to think of it, why is young National rising star Simon Power also in Alf’s imperial platoon? Aren’t the young, even young fogies of the middle-right, supposed nowadays to want this nation standing tall on its own feet?
Today Helen Clark passes a milestone. She becomes the fourth longest-serving Labour Prime Minister, matching Sir Walter Nash’s exact three years in the job from 1957-60.
Clark has already lasted longer as Prime Minister than Mike Moore and Sir Geoffrey Palmer (1980s) and Sir Wallace Rowling and Norman Kirk (1970s). Another 16 months and she will go past the sainted Michael Joseph Savage (four years, three months and 22 days from 1935). This time two years hence she will be about to gazump David Lange (five years, nine days from 1984).
Regional and central networks are to be developed to improve coordination of government services, State Services Minister Trevor Mallard announced yesterday.
This is one of a range of initiatives, under a Review of the Centre programme, to get public and other state services working more effectively and responding better to the public. Mallard was reporting progress on the review’s recommendations from a year ago.
The reason the National party is not on the way to oblivion or even minor party status is that its roots go too deep and too wide. With water, fertiliser and judicious nurturing, it will recover. The real question is: what will it recover to?
Start with a simple proposition: that most voters are conservative with a small-c. They don’t want too much change and they don’t want danger.
At the heart of this government is a paradox: it has set a bold target and a strategy that calls for boldness but it makes a virtue of “incremental” policy, the very antithesis of boldness.
The target is 4 per cent a year growth in gross domestic product (GDP). That is better put as 2.5 per cent a year growth in GDP per capita, which takes out the impact of migration and workforce changes.
Where’s this global warming Pete Hodgson goes on about? Those of us shivering in points south want action.
Instead we get glum sermonising reminiscent of 1950s presbyterian preachers, whose joyless mien Pete’s long face and furrowed brow uncannily resemble.
Actually, Pete is not joyless. A twinkle of his ready smile and you know you are not in the company of one of those deeply sad people, the apocalyptic environmentalists.
Susan Baragwanath organises the education of teenage mothers seeking a second chance. Christine Fernyhough organises special education for gifted children from low-income homes.
Both are insiders, members of the wealth and power elite. When they arm-wrestle obdurate, rule-bound bureaucrats, they stand a fair chance of winning. Their networks can mobilise considerable human and financial resources. Beware such people. They do good.
Not enough babies. Maybe it’s time to emigrate? Nearly half of us want no more Asian immigrants, say Insight pollsters, and the trend of dislike is steeply up. Winston Peters is on to a winner.
Certainly, he and his senior MPs made a meal of it at the weekend at his party’s convention, swamping attempts by some to extend New Zealand First’s appeal beyond the immigration ghetto.