The Greens are now a single-issue party. That is how they painted themselves last week and how their opponents will paint them in the election.
Actually, they are not a single-issue party. Over the 30 years since they exploded on to the electoral scene as the Values party, forcing a hurried lurch into environmentalism by the then thoroughly smokestack Labour party, they have broadened their reach.
The politics of the Budget are easy: promises of more of the same to come will win general electoral accolades. The economics are not so easy.
The Labour party congress last weekend displayed a party at the height of its powers, with a deeper and broader membership and reach into the public.
Labour is in part reaping a windfall from luck — rain and high prices for farmers have strengthened household balance sheets. But it is also reaping rewards from middle New Zealand for softening the pro-market policies of the 1990s. The public likes the moderate leftwards repositioning. Labour is likely to have more seats — perhaps even a majority — in the next Parliament.
The government’s health and education services are underfunded. That is what the next three fiscal years are about.
They are underfunded because the economy hasn’t been growing fast enough. So the next three economic policy years are primarily about getting the growth rate up.
And that means, Michael Cullen said — firmly divorcing himself from Laila Harre’s Alliance — squeezing social spending generally. “We are determined to keep money back for economic transformation,” he told journalists in the pre-Budget “lockup”, even while notching up sound, “conservative” surpluses now and for the future. In the Budget speech he said: “Our capacity to lift the sustainable growth rate will not be assisted by excessive growth in expenditure which squeezes out opportunities for contributing to economic development.”
Has anyone in authority consulted you as to when the election should be? After all, elections belong to the people, don’t they?
Nope. Elections belong to the politicians. By royal prerogative, the election date is the Prime Minister’s to decide (subject to some constitutional niceties).
In the United States the President doesn’t decide election dates. They are fixed. The New South Wales Parliament has a fixed term, too. Here you are treated as fodder. It’s the politicians’ election and don’t you forget it.
You know something’s up when a National party conference, liberally grey-haired, starts proceedings with the Maori version of the national anthem and sings it with as much gusto as the English version.
It wasn’t long ago that half the country was aghast that the anthem was sung in Maori before an All Blacks game in Britain. What is going on?
Exhuming long-gone statesmen for political DNA tests has become a sport of academics in recent years. Last weekend it was Sir Robert Muldoon’s turn. He would have hated it.
Muldoon, Prime Minister from 1975-84, had a fetish for the “ordinary bloke” and practical commonsense. It suffused his entire policy range, including foreign affairs (which he equated with “trade”, though actually he was also driven by a dated sentimental attachment to Britain) and the economy, to the wreckage of which in the early 1980s he contributed considerably.
Michelle Boag is promising a third heavy hitter to add to her haul for National’s list of Don Brash and market-friendly green guru Guy Salmon.
For this election these icons will principally lift the morale of the faithful. Brash’s announcement certainly did that for regional conference delegates at New Plymouth at the weekend.
There is a point at which a government turns bad, like an apple. This one is still miles from that point but this past week it gave us a glimpse of what it will be like.
* Arts Minister Helen Clark’s signature on creations she didn’t create spawned much raucus and scathing mirth and made her an international laughing stock. The mirth was therapeutic for a nation mourning for its national sport.
Winston Peters is the most important candidate in this coming election. His fate in Tauranga might well decide whether Helen Clark gets a majority. And unless you live in Tauranga, you don’t get a say.
Let’s say New Zealand First gets around 4 per cent of the vote, a generous estimate, judging by recent poll ratings. Let’s say all parties (leaving aside New Zealand First) which don’t get seats in this election total 5 per cent (their total was 7 per cent in 1999).
Is it the first step to a republic or an overdue overhaul of the courts? Where is Attorney-General Margaret Wilson taking us with yesterday’s announcement that legal appeals to the Privy Council are to end?
She will bring a bill to Parliament this year to set up a new Supreme Court as a final court of appeal with five permanent judges headed by Chief Justice Dame Sian Elias. The bill will likely pass next year if Labour continues to lead the government.