The mine drama is over, a true tragedy for a town. Now for the nation’s grim weather forecast. Life and death goes on.
The great southern oscillation is at the extreme that in 2008 made a drought which sliced around 2 per cent off GDP and sent us into recession before other economies. On the numbers so far, this summer might be as bad or worse.
It’s a global week: climate change talks in Cancun, Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) talks in Auckland. Tim Groser and New Zealand loom large in both.
Climate change action is the right globalisation for the Greens and Labour but the wrong sort for ACT and large portions of the National party. Free trade in nine or 10 countries bordering the Pacific is the right globalisation for National, most of Labour and ACT but the wrong sort for the Greens and some in the Maori party.
Beware the enemy within. Business leaders might take a leaf from democrats’ phrasebook: the price of freedom is eternal vigilance. That is because the enemies of democracy and its freedoms are part of the democracy.
The same goes for business. Many enemies of capitalism lie within. When capitalism’s leaders don’t expose and denounce those enemies they risk the freedoms on which capitalism depends.
There are two drivers in the government’s quest to trim “welfare”: to help get the budget back into balance fast; and to ensure the long-term sustainability of the “welfare” system.
“Welfare” needs to be in quote marks because the word has been debased. In economic language it measures material wellbeing. In social policy language it has come to mean dependency and indigence, the opposite of wellbeing. In political language it divides the left from the right.
Every now and then nature reminds us of two things: it is driven by forces we humans cannot yet fully control and of which we have incomplete knowledge; and in this country nature is young and restless.
The Canterbury earthquake was a reminder — an unknown fault, still shaking. The Pike River mine’s big gas explosions are another.
A miscreant minister didn’t stop Mana voters giving National a 7 per cent higher share of the vote in the by-election on Saturday than in the 2000 general election. The same day John Key was at his empathetic best in responding to the Pike River mining disaster.
Two years into his prime ministership Key still looks bulletproof, unlike Barack Obama two years in. Unlike Kevin Rudd two years in, he is not accumulating resentment in the ranks to explode in his face next year. So far he has got seriously offside only with the unions, which are Labour-aligned anyway. His mana is high.
A month back Phil Goff said the Mana by-election result would “be a judgment on John Key and National’s failure to make the future better”. Two reports will soon confront Key and National with the future.
Saturday’s Mana judgment is positive on Key and National: in vote-share terms a 6.6% two-party Labour-to-National swing, which could be read as a green light for National’s policies. But the left-to-right swing was half that: Matt McCarten accounted for half Labour’s fall and ACT plunged.
Some people claim a moral high ground with homilies of apocalypse and look down on those who cannot see what they see so vividly. Some others claim superior rationality and chant incantations to redemptive efficiency.
Both puzzle that in the pubs and clubs they are ignored. Both puzzle how to awaken the pubs-and-clubs frequenters to messages they think critical to their wellbeing.
Drugs are back in focus in Parliament: tighter rules on tobacco, huge hauls of methamphetamine and its ingredients and a 1.5-centimetre-thick new bill on alcohol which drew a mix of emotion and rationality in the initial debate. Is liberal New Zealand turning wowser?
There are two ways to cut the use of damaging recreational drugs: limit supply and reduce demand. How either is done is a test for the liberal society, especially when the drug is alcohol.
Random thought November 13 2010
David Suzuki, to some a saint, told a Green-organised conference on 12 November that we humans are past the 29th day on the lily pond. That is, we are very near ecological catastrophe.
The 29th day is the name of a book by environmentalist Lester Brown, who posed an old French riddle: “If you place a lily pad in an empty pond and it divides to become two lily pads the second day, four lily pads the third day and eight lily pads the fourth day and you know that the lily pond will be completely filled with lily pads on the 30th day, on which day will the pond be half full?”