Peter Costello has opened a window on to the bigger landscape in which economic policy will in future have to be set. He has put two businessmen to report on whether Australia is overtaxed — and tossed Asia and flat tax into their pot.
Sir Roger Douglas had a go at flat tax in 1988 but lost. In 1999 Helen Clark embedded the progressivity principle.
Sir Keith Holyoake used to say in the 1960s: “Tell the people, trust the people.” But tell the people what? Statecraft and security set limits.
In fact, the people don’t expect the whole truth — or even necessarily the truth.
Australia is a guide. During the 2004 election campaign John Howard was exposed as having blatantly misled voters in the 2001 campaign. His poll ratings did not flicker.
Big ideas are dangerous, especially in politics. Those who promote them are almost always demoted by the voters.
The exception is in revolutionary times, such as the 1980s. But even then the voters eventually took revenge. They crashed revolutionary Labour from 48 to 28 per cent between 1987 and 1996 and National, which continued the revolution, from 48 to 21 per cent between 1990 and 2002.
Murray McCully nuzzled up to the “sisterhood” last week. Not in all ways but in one significant way.
The “sisterhood” is McCully’s undergraduate term of abuse for strong women in and around the government. McCully doesn’t do new-age man well.
Most everything the “sisterhood” thinks or does is on McCully’s hit list.
Michael Cullen is softening us up for the abolition of the income tax rate threshold adjustment in 2008. He is thereby jettisoning an important principle — or is he?
The adjustment was never more than half-pie. The so-called “inflation” adjustment was to be fixed at an annual 2 per cent, the midpoint in the Reserve Bank’s target inflation range.
Winston Peters will today give his first major speech on foreign policy. Murray McCully will follow him. It is a big test for both.
The interest in Peters’ contribution to today’s “major foreign policy issues” seminar organised by the Institute of International Affairs will lie in how much of his own spin he puts on the notes the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (Emfat) has prepared.
Sensible Sovereignty or Niggling Nationalism?
Colin James’s paper to the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs Major Foreign Policy Issues Seminar, Wellington, 21 February 2006
New Zealanders of a certain age need no reminding of Australian cricket captain Greg Chappell’s infamous order on 1 February 1981 to brother Trevor to bowl underarm to ensure New Zealand batsman Brian McKechnie could not hit a 6 off the last ball to draw a one-day cricket match.
So one party can’t count its election spending and the other thinks it’s OK to use your money to tell you what a fine lot it is, even at election time. Those are great character references for our two main parties.
National and Labour need to clean up their electoral acts and Parliament needs to clean up the Electoral Act. A day in court for both big old parties might be helpful in that and cleansing for our democracy.
Helen Clark is in Canberra for her annual meeting with John Howard today. What can she tell him?
There is much safe ground: mutual purring over election wins, a scan of December’s East Asia Summit, the China question, CER-ASEAN trade talks, Iran’s bomb, the Pacific.
Australia’s resigned realism about her defence policy is now partially offset by recognition of the high per-capita contribution to peacemaking and peacekeeping, especially in Afghanistan and East Timor, and her army expansion programme.
Go see River Queen. It conflates too many stories into one fragile vehicle with too many consequential historical and cultural inaccuracies. But it is an historical allegory of what and who we are this Waitangi week.
The future indicated in Vincent Ward’s 1860s film was one of British domination and a shattered Maori way of life.