Here is a holiday quiz for when the patience runs out, the scrabble is scrambled and the crosswords are crabbed.
1. Where have the British gone?
We’re all tangata whenua now, Trevor Mallard said (sort of). Which eliminates the British. But where did all those colonisers go? What will keep the Treaty alive if there are no British here any more? And who will defend the Union Jack and God Save the Queen?
It’s the time of the year for political plaudits. My first goes to John Armstrong.
Armstrong does not do politics. He watches and analyses politics for this paper. He does that with honesty and clarity and every now and then with punch. One of his punches in 2003 knocked out Bill English.
For that honesty and clarity and punch he is much respected by peers and politicians. He is without superior in our trade.
Alan Bollard is really bothered about our savings habits — actually, our habit of not saving. Finance Minister Michael Cullen is bothered, too.
The Reserve Bank calculates that households’ dissaving rate is 12 per cent of their disposable income. The country’s dissaving rate is impressive, too: the current account deficit is 8 per cent of GDP and climbing.
I idly bounced a tennis ball Thomas’s way the other day. Thomas caught and held it in his mouth. Interesting. Thomas is a cat.
So it can be done.
Whether it was done 23 years ago is not a matter of great political moment. That was teaching then, as other teachers on both sides of the House could attest. Had David Benson-Pope said in May what he now says — that he can’t recall any such incident — it would have blown over with the police report.
When Jim Sutton was first Minister of Agriculture in 1990 his Australian counterpart assured him New Zealand apples would be in Australia by Christmas. Fifteen years on, we still don’t know which Christmas.
Australian apple growers are the sorts of primary producers who farm politicians in preference to battling the elements and the market. We may yet need the World Trade Organisation to sort them out.
Colin James’s paper at the Victoria University post-election conference, 2 December 2005
The 2005 election could be said to have begun on 19 June 2003 when the Appeal Court [Endnote1] decided the foreshore and seabed were “land” and, under common law, iwi and hapu could take a claim to the Maori Land Court for title. That enlivened the National party and shook the Labour party with far-reaching effects in due course on the 2005 election. UMR’s reading of whether the country is on the right or wrong track plunged from 40% net positive to 5% in six weeks, National leader Don Brash demanded “one law for all” in a speech in January 2004 [Endnote2] and Labour’s comfortable poll whiplashed temporarily in a large lead for National. At the same time, National’s competitors on the right, ACT and New Zealand First, lost half their poll ratings.
What does a government do when Parliament is slow or difficult? It thinks up other ways to do what it wants.
This term the government does not have a near-automatic “left” majority with the Greens nor a willing backer of “urgency” to fast-track government business and/or extend sitting hours, as United Future did in the 2002-05 Parliament.
Colin James’s Australasian Study of Parliament Group, 30 November 2005
The touchstone is a majority in Parliament. The practice has been to obtain a committed majority. And the experience has been that what starts out as the governing support arrangement in a parliamentary term is not what ends up. Government re-formation is therefore a relevant side-issue.
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Politicians will shortly engage in bloodsport with Television New Zealand’s board, executives and stars. All good fun but what will it tell us?
It will tell us at least one board member is too nosey-parker, stars are paid too much for the Prime Minister’s liking and much shareholder value has been destroyed. But we know all that.
Things in threes have a pleasing alliteration. So, for example, it is convenient to mark the modern media by three Cs: celebrity, confrontation and crime.
That explains why Christine Rankin (a fourth C) was a headline hit a few years back: celebrity status; confrontation in court with ministers; and, if not crime, allegations of impropriety.