It’s the idea that counts. Three valedictorians voiced that outrageous message in Parliament last week.
Simon Power’s going-away address was not just to a packed public gallery but also to well-stocked Labour benches, from which there was warm applause.
Power talked of the need for politicians to have plans: “We run for Parliament to lead agendas, improve the lot of our countrymen (sic), to push change and to execute ideas … to do something,” he said.
MPs shove off this week. They could have stuck around for another two weeks and got some important legislation done but the rugby is bigger politics right now.
Some important people have to be seen partying in the right places. The party is bucking up national morale and politicians must do their bit. Policy can wait.
When the Maori party won four seats in the 2005 election its president, Whata Winiata, said the Treaty partner had come to Parliament. In 2008, with five seats, it partnered with National in government. Its problem: those partnerships are unequal.
Its annual general meeting in late October will reflect that. Far from aspiring to seven seats on November 26, it will be defending the four it has left.
Relax. If it is going to hit, it won’t hit till after the election. Or, at least, it won’t hit hard before then.
The “it” is damage to our economy from the north Atlantic turmoil. There will be some damage. What no one knows is how much damage and in what form.
What isn’t happening in the so-called rich countries is a “normal” “recovery”. That is because what used to be normal is not normal now and the world hasn’t yet settled into a new normal. We have been in transition for a decade or more and we are not through.
A sense of humour has a place in politics.
So savour the government’s sense of humour: it said a provincial coastal town up north could run a nation-promoting event beamed round the world.
And savour Auckland mayor Len Brown’s sense of humour: he said Murray McCully might have been collegial, collaborative and thoughtful of others in his takeover of that event after some opening night miscues.
United States 50, China 8. No, not rugby. Officials at the Pacific Islands Forum last week.
The Pacific is stocked with fish, has lots of minerals in places and not many people — and the majority of those are Melanesian, with societies, economies and governments that are struggling out of tribalism and bare subsistence. Just the place for superpowers.
September 9 looms: the official launch of a Helen Clark socialist legacy John Key and Murray McCully have ramped into a national spectacle. Three days later (New Zealand time) is the tenth anniversary of Al Qaeda’s spectacular raid on the United States and the 30th of the end of a pivotally divisive rugby tour.
The world didn’t change in 2001 and won’t change on Friday. Contrast 1981.
Peter Hughes moves on after 10 years at the top of the Ministry of Social Development at the end of September. He takes with him — to the academic School of Government and some other appointments — his pre-eminent reputation as a chief executive. And he’s still pushing change.
The Maori party reckons whanau ora a revolutionary social policy initiative. But Hughes already had established the base from which whanau ora’s aim of a wraparound service could be developed: Community Link centres.
There are two elections going on, now we are into the official three-month runup. One is a National election. The other is a Labour election.
The National election is about whether the tailwind generated by John Key and Bill English’s in-command economic management holds through to November 26. (Any input from the rugby world cup is likely to be transitory, provided National holds its nerve if the All Blacks bomb.)
Conference on Political Rhetoric, Legislative Council Chamber, 18 August 2011