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.
Category: NZ Herald
A Budget as good as he could do
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.
Now that the party's over what's left for the Budget?
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.
Swiss cheese or cheddar: what is emissions trading now?
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.
Just where are Cullen's Treaty deals taking us?
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.
The next big scare: the world impact of a poor life start
Take your pick of frights: climate change, water wrangles, the scramble for fuel and metals, high food prices starving the poor. Here’s another: bad food.
Climate change has inspired apocalyptic predictions of sudden tipping points, sea level rises, famines, extinction of species, including us, and worse. Industries have grown up to study, warn about, respond to and challenge it.
Promoting John Key as a future man of action
It’s all about who is the future. John Key reckons he is and that fast broadband to every living room is a powerful symbol — and, moreover, that he knows about these things better than Helen Clark because he is younger.
The electoral strategy behind the broadband big bang is to draw a picture of Key in window-shopping voters’ minds as an action Prime Minister of the future and contrast that with older Helen Clark, a 1980s minister and boss for nine years.
The NZ in Anzac and Rudd's challenge to this country
Friday is Anzac day: time to think about past war and the Australian connection, which for growing numbers of New Zealanders these days is very much about mates, sons, daughters and other relatives who have gone there to live and bring their kids up as Aussies.
The Australian vacuum’s impact on families and workforces here is a central talking point in the gathering election campaign. Don Brash made much of it in 2005 when the flow was a stream. Now it is a flood.
Investing — or not — to get us through the rough patch
Reserve Bank governor Alan Bollard wants businesses to invest and banks to fund that investment as the squeeze goes on households and the economy turns down.
Bollard’s plea suggests he is getting edgy at the prospect of a sharp downturn even as he has to keep interest rates up to bring inflation back under 3 per cent. If businesses invest, that would both work against that downturn in the economic cycle in a relatively non-inflationary way and build economic capacity for the future.
Changing political generations
Spare a thought for John McCain, trying to hold the United States presidency for the Republicans: 81 per cent of Americans think their country is on the wrong track. Here fewer than half do.
But Helen Clark, preparing for her pre-election party “congress” this coming weekend, can take little comfort. Business and consumer sentiment has plummeted. While sentiment has been bad before in her time at the top and in 2005 spiked up to give her a narrow win, the mood is heavier right now.