The left demonises the 1984-90 Labour government for trashing Labour tradition by abolishing the guaranteed job. But it did spend much more on social services. And it socialised the motorcar.
Families who had not been able to own a car or kept a rustbucket on the road only with frontier ingenuity could buy a decent secondhand import, thanks to the abolition of quotas and cuts in tariffs.
It’s Anzac month, time to honour the war dead and bother about Australia.
So Winston Peters will drop in on the fourth Australia New Zealand Leadership Forum in Sydney on the Sunday and Monday of Anzac week and head off on the Tuesday to Gallipoli for Anzac Day.
Peters has yet to impress Australian hard-heads. After his annual talks with Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer on 26 February there was some rolling of eyes at his handling of one of the most important men in the government of this country’s most important foreign partner.
A country deals better with the world if its people and its political parties agree what counts. That goes even for big countries, as the United States found in the 1960s. It especially goes for minnows.
So what was John Key up to sniping at Helen Clark while she was in Washington? It read like petty domestic politics when the imperative was strategic foreign policy.
Do you like the idea of Labour MPs being “whipped” in to vote against whacking kids? This is not a joke question.
Beneath that superficial irony lies another: immediately after the election Helen Clark, ruing the loss of provincial seats, was swearing to abjure social engineering this term. She would not be exposed to jibes of political correctness next election.
With exquisite timing, Helen Clark will be in Washington next week exactly on the fourth anniversary of President George Bush’s invasion of Iraq. There could hardly be a more emphatic signal that the United States relationship has been renormalised.
That is not because Clark endorses Bush’s adventure any more now than she did four years ago when she refused to join it and when as a result relations cooled from the “very, very, very good friends” status her sending of troops to Afghanistan had earned her in 2001.
Colin James paper to Legal Research Foundation conference, Whose Law is it anyway? Harmonising Australian and New Zealand Business Laws Legal Research Foundation, Wellington 9 March 2007
Australia and New Zealand are family, heirs to British liberties and institutions. That enables us to do things together with little fuss. But we are also in important ways foreign. That gives us different perspectives and leads us to do things differently.
How big is John Key’s underclass? About one in 20 of the population, one social policy expert reckons.
About half the population manages fine all the time. The rest, who include many who are economically deprived, are mostly OK but “at risk” if something goes badly wrong.
On this reckoning, Key was never underclass. He was economically deprived but with a capable mother who got the family out. That is not uncommon but it is also not easy, especially for those not equipped with good education, strong aspirations and self-belief.
Seat-of-the-pants entrepreneurs and by-the-rules professionals run very different businesses. Entrepreneurs can get it spectacularly right. And horribly wrong. It’s the same in government.
In small business the entrepreneur gets rich or goes bust. In large businesses the entrepreneur adds shareholder value or erodes it. In government the entrepreneur can do great good or great harm to large numbers.
Mind the gap, they say on London tube station platforms. It is a good rule for watching politics, too.
There is always a gap between words and actions, in time and in substance. How big the gaps are can decide a government’s lifespan.
Some gaps are intentional, or at least convenient. Politicians can use a dislocation between rhetoric and reality to channel public opinion.
Friday is Australia Day. Why bother about that? Because Australia is part of us and what Australia does has great importance for us.
Australia is part of our history and culture. British interests were administered from New South Wales before the Treaty of Waitangi and New Zealand was at the federation talks. We share a great deal in language, institutions and British heritage. We share people. We down tools with Australians to watch the Melbourne Cup, as if it was ours (and it often is).