Where did the money to fight the honey bee mite come from? From something else the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry (MAF) was going to do but now has put off till next budget year. Is this the way to protect our national livelihood?
There is no contingency fund for dangerous pests. A procedure which I have been assured does exist for fast release of new funds appears not to have been triggered. If the honey bee mite did not trigger it, one wonders what will.
The first “new economy” was the Dutch “tulip mania” in 1637. There was joint stock company madness in London a century later, investor obsession with rickety railway ventures in the mid-nineteenth and an assembly line revolution in the 1920s. Crash, crash, crash, crash.
It is too early to say whether the 1990s “new economy” bubble is bursting or just subsiding and thus what economic effect will follow. But the weekend’s turmoil is a reminder of our vulnerability to overseas events.
Next week Steve Maharey will launch another scheme in the Clark-Anderton ministry’s reshaping of government: a new arrangement with the voluntary sector.
Yawn. That sounds almost as boring as debating the constitution – earnest people saying earnest things to each other. What can a “compact” with the voluntary sector say to a pocketbook public?
Is there a justification for Richard Prebble’s assault on the Waipareira Trust? Yes, regardless of the final outcome.
His characteristic rough-house, blood-sport style must be distinguished from the deeper issue in this matter.
Waipareira’s money is not a capital sum as Tainui’s is. Tainui’s money came by way of compensation for land taken illegally off the tribe and it is the tribe’s business what it does with the money, whether it uses it wisely or stupidly and which individuals benefit.
Jim Anderton was the first senior MP to take seriously the balance of payments problem. Most economists at the time – this was four or five years ago – dismissed his concern as cranky but now they and most other MPs have joined him.
Mr Anderton’s early concern was sharpened by his opposition to opening up the economy.
At milking time early one morning last week I came across two figures quaffing coffee in an airport lounge, exuding good cheer despite the hour. Wyatt Creech and Nick Smith were hugely pleased with the government.
Why? Because the new tax, ACC and labour laws had reconnected some of National’s core support. Business, they beamed, is shocked. National’s troops have been miraculously energised.
What is the most important thing a government must do in its first 100 days? Change the tone.
Helen Clark and Jim Anderton beamed self-congratulations at journalists and colleagues yesterday over coffee and biscuits. That in itself is a change of tone. Can you imagine Jim Bolger and Winston Peters doing an arm-in-arm act three years ago?
Greg Sheridan, the Australian newspaper’s foreign editor was wrong on at least one count in his miasma of accusations about the new defence policy. The Prime Minister is decidedly not flakey.
Flinty would be nearer the mark. In her first three years as Labour leader Helen Clark weathered a hail of personal abuse and white-anting that would have filleted many a supposedly stronger male politician.
Fresh from her venture to Sydney this week, Helen Clark will journey into the interior next Tuesday. She is on the hunt for local partners to build the economy and rebuild social services.
Keeping yet another pre-election promise, Ms Clark will co-chair the first partnership-seeking central/local government forum with Local Government New Zealand president Louise Rosson.
Very soon after they were elected Prime Ministers within a week of each other in 1972, Norman Kirk and Gough Whitlam made contact. That marked a new era in trans-Tasman relations after decades of distance.
Malcolm Fraser and Sir Robert Muldoon, who followed those Labour giants, disliked each other but practised mutual toleration in the interests of a by-then necessary neighbourliness. The same went for David Lange and Bob Hawke.