How did “welfare” come to be a dirty word, signifying a sort of social and individual sickness instead of wellbeing? That sad decline drove the quest for reform through the welfare working group which reports tomorrow.
The group has been on a long journey. Will ministers tread the same route?
Julia Gillard drops in tomorrow for two days. It will be much more show than substance but there is substance in the show.
The show will centre on Prime Minister Gillard’s speech to Parliament, a first for a foreign notable, though Australia’s Parliament once hosted the United States and Chinese Presidents in close succession. MPs will experience first-hand Gillard’s grating heavy Oz-speak accent.
A day after John Key cast himself in his Parliament kick-off speech as a Prime Minister in charge the tone changed abruptly when National and Maori party MPs hustled the foreshore and seabed replacement bill back from Parliament’s Maori affairs select committee. That looks more like panic than poise.
The elite go to the Governor-General’s garden party on Waitangi Day. For a sense of New Zealand Porirua’s Festival of the Elements is more instructive.
The weather elements on Sunday were a buffeting wind and drizzle. The city’s elements were a wide range of events, in Te Rauparaha Park, the next door arena, a nearby stadium and the excellent Pataka museum.
Phil Goff elevates David Parker, Grant Robertson and others and demotes Ruth Dyson and Parekura Horomia. John Key discovers debt.
Both have an aura of strategy — just before Parliament’s opening tomorrow plunges MPs into back-biting, points-scoring and a torrent of well-meaning bills (43 to come from Simon Power alone).
s the Prime Minister John Key the trader or John Key the manager of traders? In that distinction lies a clue to his prime ministership.
Last year was to have delivered, in Key’s own words in a Management cover story, a “step-change”. “We were elected on making a step-change for New Zealand,” he said in an interview for that article. He emphasised the strategic nature of his intentions: “What we do in 2010 will have some impact on our electability in 2011 but a much greater impact on our electability in 2014.”
Is the cabinet going green? You might think so when Finance Minister Bill English drops into the National party’s Bluegreens ginger group conference to make the announcement that there is to be a green growth advisory group.
Does that mean Environment Minister Nick Smith, who first proposed this group a year ago, has slipped sandals on the dour Southlander? And look whose name was with English’s and Smith’s on the press release? Dig-it-all-up-quick Gerry Brownlee, Economic Development Minister.
It’s Waitangi Day on Sunday, a day to fly the Maori flag. Political parties have been flag-waving already.
Phil Goff is waving a pink flag: a “tax-free zone” for low incomes (which, by the way, is a gift to part-time second-earners in well-off households). John Key says we can’t afford it, though last year he, and we, afforded big tax cuts, out of which the well-off have done very well.
Phil Goff has two image problems. One is himself. The other is the party around him.
Goff’s personal disability this election year is his inescapable identification with the bygone Clark government, demoted to a 34 per cent vote in 2008. He was a senior minister: foreign affairs, defence, trade and justice.
The cabinet reconvenes tomorrow. There is a lot on its plate for now and for the year. You might add: for the decade. But this is election year and elections focus politicians’ minds.
There is an election date to fix but options are limited: holding it before the rugby world cup might suggest John Key lacks faith in the All Blacks and thereby is prefiguring failure. The logical date, Key has said and senior ministers say, is the once-traditional last Saturday in November.