Occasional article on the budget for the Otago Daily Times 17 May 2018
A government’s first budget sets its tone and path. The title is “Foundations for the Future” and Jacinda Ardern has billed it as “transformative”. Grand words. Does the budget live up to them?
Union and Labour party critics, some highly placed, say it is “too orthodox” to generate the “transformation of our society and economy” Grant Robertson trumpeted to the media in the pre-release budget lockup.
Talk to U3A Christchurch 8 May 2018
What is it about our Prime Minister that excites unusual reactions? And will this star fix in the heavens or be a shooting star back to earth?
Occasional article for the Otago Daily Times 24 April 2018
Jacinda Ardern’s Speech from the Throne in November promised a “government of transformation”. After six months in power, it looks more like a government of transition — to the post-baby-boom generations. But is that all?
Colin James to Age Concern conference, 16 April 2018
The word “concern” in your name is a concern for this conference. Many people read “concern” as a “worry”. If so, there is going to be a lot more worry because there are going to be many more people “of an age” and they will be a larger proportion of the population with a smaller proportion of people of “working age” to provide for them.
But I read your “concern” as an expression of “care” or “value” in the “wellbeing” of this expanding cohort of ageing people, generating “opportunity”, not just for those people but for the whole of society.
Where will Aotearoan/New Zealanders choose to fix our focus through the 2020s? Fixing a problem? Or realising opportunity? ……
The Treasury will today [Tuesday 20 March] take another step down its “wellbeing economics” track. On that road Grant Robertson is signposting a “wellbeing budget” in 2019.
The event is the Treasury’s four-yearly investment statement. Up to now it has essentially been a balance sheet of the government’s financial and physical assets and liabilities. Today’s will flag an extension.
This appeared in the February issue of Policy Quarterly, published by the Institute for Governance and Policy Studies this week. It is a very brief scan of what State Services Minister and Leader of the House Chris Hipkins proposes for what is now known as the state sector (but for which there is growing pressure to rethink it as a public service) and for Parliament.
Around the time I returned from London in 1978 a businessman punched a young journalist called Colin James. People in politics sympathised with me, some barely suppressing schadenfreude.
That other, punched, Colin James went offshore soon after. No one punched this Colin James (me), at least not physically. The incident reinforced for me the merit for a journalist of humility.
It’s time to anoint the politician of 2017. It has to be Jacinda Ardern.
With accomplished assurance, she took Labour from a 24% poll average and falling in July to 36.9% in the election, 12 points up on 2014.
Don Brash’s 2002-05 18-point rescue of National beats that. But Ardern did it in under eight weeks, combining substance and connectedness. She is not “stardust”, Bill English’s shabby scoff. She is of a rising generation, he of a passing one.
Colin James for Arts Wellington, 23 November 2017
The arts are icing on the cake, not the cake? Not for the new Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage. “A strong cultural and creative sector is vital to our national identity and economic development,” she laid down in Labour’s election manifesto.
Background notes for Victoria University post-election conference
Colin James, 6 December 2017
This was the election the “losers won”, the National party and its devotees, apologists and puppets grumped when Winston Peters and his New Zealand First party decided to coalesce with Labour. National got 44.4% of the vote to Labour’s 36.9%.