Colin James’s comments on panel at IPANZ young professionals conference, 5 June 2008
I shall start with…
1. The i-world
This is the world of i-Pods and i-Phones and all sorts of i-linkages, the internet world. It is an instant world, inhabited by avatars and holographs, a way of being without being, doing without doing.
What do Facebook and yesterday’s official Queen’s Birthday have in common? They are windows into our constitution.
Start with the Queen, dignified cornerstone of the constitution, anchor for tradition and symbol of the limits of politicians’ proper exercise of power.
Australia will likely remove that cornerstone if the Rudd government lasts a while. That will trigger debate here. Mike Moore, who sat in on Australia’s 1998 constitutional convention (as I did), wants that debate under way now.
Small is not necessarily beautiful. Maybe E F Schumacher was wrong back in 1973.
Sure, New Zealand looks beautiful. Tourists come in millions to stare at the beauty, especially in the South Island. But the beauty they come for is in the landscape, not the smallness.
In fact, tune in to the agonising of politicians, economists and social commentators and smallness sounds like a handicap. Moreover, distance from the big places makes New Zealand look and feel even smaller — as if it is viewed through the wrong end of a telescope.
It’s 40 years on from the grandiose student “revolutions” of 1968, most boisterously in Paris and at the United States Democratic presidential nominating convention. The real revolution was quieter. The Greens, who meet in conference this weekend, are heirs to part of that quieter revolution.
Domestic inflation isn’t the problem any more. So Michael Cullen feels free to dollop out tax cuts and to run a Budget that stimulates the economy to the tune of a bit over 2 per cent.
He is banking on the Reserve Bank agreeing with him on domestic inflation and looking through imported oil, food, transport and consumer goods inflation, magnified by the now-falling New Zealand dollar.
For most of their time Helen Clark’s Labour-led governments have had good luck in the economy. Now the luck has turned. Tough on Michael Cullen in his ninth (and last?) Budget.
Clark and Cullen benefited from the higher productivity growth delivered by the pre-1999 economic reforms and from a buoyant international economy.
Colin James’s graduation address, Victoria University of Wellington,16 May 2008
First, I register my parents’ gift: the privilege of valuing learning, which gave me a rich start in life from modest circumstances. Next, I thank the many who have opened unimagined learning opportunities in my working life, particularly Sir Frank Holmes and Professor Gary Hawke here today. Third, I note my lucky stumble into journalism, a trade of constant learning. I am blessed beyond any of my distant student dreams.
One of the hazards of MMP is Swiss cheese policy: big holes where cheese should be. Is this what is happening to the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions trading legislation?
The carbon tax ended up with more holes than cheese as the government accommodated big industries’ and farmers’ objections. The tax had been the core of the government’s climate change policy. It vanished in 2005.
Colin James’s speech at Unisys Technology Forum, Queenstown, 6 May 2008
I start with a quotation on trust from the American political philosopher Francis Fukuyama in his 1995 book on the topic. “Economic activity represents a crucial part of social life and is knit together by a wide variety of norms, rules, moral obligations and other habits that together shape the society. A nation’s wellbeing, as well as its ability to compete [economically], is conditioned by a single, pervasive cultural characteristic: the level of trust inherent in the society.” (1) In short, trust is critical to commerce.
Treaty of Waitangi settlements are now at a gallop. Will they be cheap at the price?
In the mid-1990s Ruth Richardson put a $1 billion cap on settlements (the Air New Zealand bailout cost nearly that). Under Michael Cullen settlements may be heading to twice that or more.
Afer the Ngai Tahu, Tainui and fisheries settlements in the 1990s settlements came slowly and sporadically in the 2000s.