Colin James

The issue for the next government is unification. There is a lot of healing to do. This is a divided nation.

The provinces went a different way from the main cities in the election, piling up huge rises in National’s share of the vote and stripping a swag of electorates from Labour. The cities were much more sedate in their swing from the government — in many electorates Labour’s vote share went up. read more

Did Helen Clark “win”? Yes and no. Even assuming she forms a government, she has some serious rethinking ahead.

She “won” by coming first in the vote on election night by a big enough margin to be sure (failing some new astonishment in the numbers) to have more votes than National in the final count. read more

After the binge election comes the economic slowdown. That will test the government’s mettle — and its fiscal solidity.

Whether it is eventually Helen Clark or Don Brash who forms a government — and the odds are it will be Clark — the easy life of high consumer spending, high profits and high tax revenue is over for now. It is time for discpline. read more

The star of the campaign has been John Key. The flop has been Winston Peters. The winner has been the election itself — interest high as it has not been in a long time.

And it has been the battle of the big fellas, evenly matched and both strong as we haven’t seen since 1981. The small parties are there and relevant to coalition-building but not the force of previous MMP elections. read more

The Economist magazine, shrine of deregulation and low, preferably flat, taxes is not usually Michael Cullen’s bible. But last week he grasped at its endorsement of his KiwiSaver to score a point off John Key.

Key, usually on the Economist’s side of the argument, promises to scrap KiwiSaver, Cullen’s tax-based toe-in-the-water attempt to lift individual saving in this grasshopper society. He has not yet offered an alternative. read more

The choice is simple: tax cuts or not; Treaty of Waitangi rollback or not; a fresh but unprepared face or not.

The “not” is a third term for Helen Clark. The alternatives are the Don Brash experience.

There are other dimensions. If you are especially bothered about energy over-use, bottom trawling, the biosphere, clean rivers, climate change, international capitalism, fat and sugar in food and the poor, your choice is automatic. So, too, if you are Maori and proud of it and angry about the foreshore — though every party vote you give that party is a vote denied to Labour in its battle with Brash. read more

Final in a series of five

No sooner has a party got on top than it has to work out how to stay on top. That requires constant replenishment. A durable government needs a strategic cabinetmaker.

Contrast two episodes from history.

By 1949 the first Labour government was in the last of its 14 years in office. It’s top six ministers had all been there since 1935. Prime Minister Peter Fraser could not bring himself to fire old comrades. It was a visibly tired and hidebound government. read more

Don Brash is 25 years behind the times and 25 years ahead of the times on “race”. How can he be both? Because these are revolutionary times.

Twenty-five years ago we were still securely British and the Treaty of Waitangi was a worm-eaten relic. Maori were honorary whites and those who refused that status and battled the Crown for return or retention of land were “radicals”. read more

Fourth in a series A farm girl leads the left party. A socialist preacher’s son leads the right party. We are truly the Antipodes.

There was a rule: farmers vote National. Helen Clark’s parents were National, her father a minor office-holder.

Clark went off to boarding school in Auckland, as brainy rural offspring did, even girls, then to university, where she got social democracy — bad enough to join the Labour party, stand for Parliament on the home patch in 1975 and become an MP in 1981. read more