Just which “gaps” is Helen Clark closing and why were they so important she had to dump Dover Samuels quickly?
The “gaps” she sealed with last week’s sacking were threatened breaches in the political dyke: she secured her authority, got herself off the moral skewer of supporting a minister with an inconvenient past and for good measure divided the opposition in Parliament.
What is it about a government that really affects the lives and livelihoods of ordinary folk? Its policy.
Will the Dover Samuels affair change government policy? No. Will it change the government’s ability to carry out its policy? No.
So what’s the fuss?
Superficially, it’s entertainment. The drama of charge and defence of a public figure puts politics up with sport and disaster.
Why is the government keeping the Skyhawks? That is the puzzle in Monday’s skeletal defence “framework”.
Any reading of ministers’ comments since the election requires aerobatics of logic to concoct a case for air strike capability. Moreover, the framework’s list of priorities has no place for it.
This is the Budget to win last year’s election. Last year’s undertakings overhang the next two years’ ambitions. In 2002, as the next election looms, Michael Cullen will be offering voters less than did Mr Micawber himself, Sir William Birch, last year.
Dr Cullen has turned on its head the age-old electoral Budget wisdom that a government takes the tough decisions in the first year, steadies in the second and dishes out lollies in the third, just in time to seduce voters.
The government says it wants and needs three terms, that is, nine years. Heavy evidence of its need will be supplied in tomorrow’s Budget.
The two themes ministers have been billing are “closing the gaps” and “kick-starting the knowledge economy”. Both are slow-return, long-range projects, with spare prospect of much to show by the 2002 election.
Six months into the government’s term and things could hardly be more different from the rosy glow of the three-month mark. What has changed?
In March as the 100 days peg was passed the country was in a bubble. The summer had been kind, with jobs from Y2K and money in farmers’ pockets, and “we” held the America’s Cup. A new, confident, vigorous cabinet promised a fresh face after 15 years of economic reformation.
Helen Clark and Phil Goff are harmony in action on foreign policy: the brainy daughter of conservative small farmers and the brainy working-class kid who left home young both learnt their political analysis at Auckland University in the 1970s.
In the 1980s they were factionally separated, he as the protege of the Douglas-Prebble-Bassett team, she in a rearguard action against it. That, plus a modish conservatism on law and order after 1993, have given Mr Goff a right-wing reputation.
Michael Cullen’s often wounding sarcasm is legendary. The man who linked the Greens to Mugabe has one of Parliament’s most cutting tongues and he uses it freely on those who annoy him or whom he thinks fools.
Business has not been spared. Consequently, many think he doesn’t like business. If this attitude is left to harden, it will get in the way of the government’s social policy ambitions. So yesterday at Auckland’s chamber of commerce Dr Cullen was in bridge-building mode.
The government was in a helpful phase last week: the Greens were given a free publicity hit over rimu logging; National’s morale was lifted by a swarm of jolting errors and mismanagements.
No earthquake has yet followed the tremor-swarm. Pronouncements of the end of the government’s honeymoon with the public are premature until the polls speak.
“We’re drinking their beer here”. Sic transit Steinlager. Along with other icons of our boozy past and present. We can’t even hold on to our liquor these days.
Lion Nathan’s move to Sydney is in impressive company. Fletcher Challenge is being broken up and sold to foreigners, Carter Holt Harvey is contemplating moving west and Telecom may follow in time.