David Parker’s assignment is to persuade a nation that lives much of the time in a fridge that it is living in an oven.
Certainly in Wellington, where Parker delivered his latest high-level climate change musings on Friday, imagining global warming is an out-of-body experience. People arrived bundled in coats and fleece-lined gear — in October.
Conversions happen in politics as they do in religion. So we will see on Friday that Don Brash has converted — not to the Exclusive Brethren but to climate change.
Last year Brash declared the science in doubt. Now he accepts that the preponderance of scientific evidence is that there is global warming and that something must be done.
Colin James for The Australian on the Official Information Act, 4 October 2006
When the media find out that the New Zealand Treasury disagrees with the government, it is not front-page news any more. That’s one product of the New Zealand’s 24-year-old Official Information Act.
The act has made the government much more open which keeps it more on its toes. Moreover, “free and frank advice” from officials to ministers seems still largely to be alive and well even though some frank disagreement now reaches the media thanks to the act.
From last week you can carry 3-ounce (85-gram) flasks of liquids and gels on to planes in the United States. Isn’t that great? Isn’t it sad?
The mightiest nation on earth cowers. Jihadists score a victory with every shoe taken off at security points, every bag offloaded, every flight delayed. That is tens of thousands of victories a day.
The Labour party holds its 90th birthday conference this month. What a difference 90 years makes.
In 1916 Labour was a party of grand ambition to change the world. It stood outside and against the establishment. Its greatest leader-to-be, Peter Fraser, was about to be thrown in jail for opposing an imperialist war. It wanted radical change in the ownership and organisation of the economy and equality in society.
Colin James’s paper to the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s Global Forces conference 26-27 September 2006
My brief is to give a New Zealand perspective on Australia’s strategic role (1) so what I will say is my perspective not the New Zealand perspective, in the sense either of an interpretation of the official government perspective or of the country’s collective perspective — though, of course, my perspective is very much informed and coloured by both.
Winston Churchill said of the Nazis: “They’re afraid of words.” And they were. So are all bigots and tyrants and their followers.
Words are the elixir of democracy. Think freely, talk freely, meet freely in groups, contest ideas, argue cases in court: that is how peace is made and kept.
John Key National leader is becoming a fait accompli in the media and in many people’s minds. But is he in fact an accomplished leader in waiting?
No one quite knows yet.
And no one would need to know yet if Don Brash had been tracking onward and upward to Prime Minister.
But he hasn’t been and isn’t. So the question National MPs didn’t want to have to ask themselves is on the table: who shall replace Brash (in due course), when, how and with whom as deputy?
Here are two news stories from the past few days, one from this country and one from Australia, which deal with plugging labour force gaps.
The local story was the extension of the seasonal work permit pilot scheme for foreigners to work in horticulture. The Australian story credited John Howard’s baby bonus with lifting the birth rate.
Between March 1 and last Friday Judith Collins became a kinder, gentler person.
On March 1 in Parliament she called David Benson-Pope a “pervert”, a savage accusation for which there was no evidence — damaging to Benson-Pope and damaging to his family, which includes teenagers.
On Friday on Radio New Zealand Collins waxed emotional about the damage to Don Brash’s family from the outing of his run-of-the-mill affair. “I am not going personally to attack people’s families, no matter what the error,” she said.