One of Australia’s latte set’s favourite parlour games this year has been to speculate on John Howard losing his seat in the upcoming election: his electorate seat, that is, not just his Prime Minister’s seat in Parliament.
Psephologists say the demographics of his Bennelong seat on Sydney’s North Shore have been changing in Labor’s favour, thanks to immigration and boundary changes, making it marginal.
Colin James’s paper at the Dominion Day centenary symposium, 26 September 2007
The year 7 is a year for anniversaries and centenaries. Since we are talking of colonies and independence today, I note that 2007 is the quatercentenary of the founding of Jamestown in what is now Virginia, the first thrust by the English to steal North America from the Indians. It is the 60th anniversary of the retreat by the English from India and coincidentally of New Zealand’s adoption of the Statute of Westminster which certified this country as an independent state. It is also the centenary of the founding of professional rugby league in this country and the twentieth anniversary of the stockmarket crash when New Zealanders learnt (though have since forgotten) that risky finance is indeed risky — just as Americans have failed to learn the lessons of the banking Panic of 1907.
Tomorrow is Dominion Day. What’s that? The centenary of the day New Zealand was declared a dominion. Ummm.
Dominion Day is one of the dates lighted on by people hunting for a national day which doesn’t remind as much of division as of unity, as does Waitangi Day, and doesn’t commemorate military defeat, as does Anzac Day.
Colin James speech to the Water and Wastes Association Conference, Rotorua, 18 September 2007
We are a people of few words. How do I know that? Because we are about to have our second monosyllabic election in succession: Brash v Clark in 2005; Key v Clark in 2008. All you have to remember is not to put an e on Clark and an s on Key.
This week, two months late and nearly eight years after a self-proclaimed climate-friendly government came to power, comes the greenhouse gas trading scheme announcement: some firm decisions, some preferred options and some choices yet to be made.
The government’s explanation for taking eight years is that there was not a parliamentary majority. But that mistakes the true nature of majorities.
Mike Moore was Prime Minister for eight and a-half weeks. Helen Clark next June will have been Prime Minister for eight and a-half years.
Moore, of course, went on to an international job far bigger than Prime Minister of a mini-country, so a comparison of his and Clark’s time in office is odious. The same goes for the fact that in Moore’s two elections as leader Labour’s share of the vote dropped both times, the first time by 13 per cent, while in Clark’s four elections there have been two rises and two falls for a net gain of 6 per cent.
Who owns New Zealand and does it matter? Purists say it doesn’t matter. But it seems enough people think it does matter to stop Arabs buying Auckland airport. Who’s right?
For nearly half a century from the late 1930s governments responded to our distance from markets and vulnerability to international economic shocks by trying to ringfence the economy.
Back in the 1980s political theorists talked up “subsidiarity” — a clumsy French word depicting a future of government decision-making and action moved from central governments closer to where people lived and worked.
A Canadian coined an even worse word: glocalisation. The world was becoming more globally connected and interdependent but at the same time also more local: Kelloggs side by side with farmers markets tell the story.
Colin James on local government for Management Magazine September 2007
Most of what a local council does is out of sight or out of mind: up in the hills, down in the dumps or under the roads which are under the wheels. So when councils raise charges their unseeing captive consumers get upset.
As a result, over the next month a lot of grumpy people, especially grumpy business managers and owners, will vote for candidates they hope will rein back council spending and, with that, rates. These same people will also moan loudly if the out-of-sight bits — the infrastructure — are not up to scratch.
Paper by Colin James at Political Studies Association conference, 30 August 2007
Independence is a state of mind. By definition, it is a positive state of mind. And in a small, outlier society such as this one, it is also by necessity an outward-looking state of mind.
So formal independence is not independence. New Zealand dawdled to formal independence through Dominion Day to adoption of the Statute of Westminster 60 years ago but even then remained British at heart. Actual independence is only about 30 years old.