With and through Australia to a bigger game

Julia Gillard strewed apples before our Parliament in February: permission to sell them (sometime) to her sacred tribe. John Key took with him to the Australian Parliament last week a key to the medicines chest: permission (soonish) to regulate for his sacred tribe.

But there is a bigger question and it is bigger for New Zealand than for Australia: where does the “family” (as Gillard and Key call it) go now? Just keep to itself in its little suburban house or join with others in the neighbourhood in an extended family? Will big-sister Australia do that anyway and leave little-sister New Zealand home alone? read more

A by-election that might have something for Labour

The Te Tai Tokerau by-election this Saturday is the fourth this parliamentary term and for once it is not Labour that is under pressure. Instead, Labour has something to gain.

By contrast, Hone Harawira has something to prove — and much to risk.

Harawira was within his rights and also democratically right to call a by-election. An MP who scoots from, or is dumped by, the party under whose banner that MP come into Parliament has lost a large chunk of democratic legitimacy. A by-election restores that legitimacy. read more

Rethinking how to get richer

Colin James for The Australian, 20 June 2011

How does a tiny economy ride the turbulent 2010s? By playing to strengths and thinking its way to new strengths. New Zealand has yet to do that rethinking.
The 2010s global economy is more interdependent and interconnected than five years ago. Pathways, technology and platforms are changing rapidly and unpredictably. Rising (but potentially unstable) Asia and its destabilising scramble for resources are reshaping the global order. People are moving to cities in huge numbers and cities increasingly drive global economic growth. read more

John Key, modest constitutional innovator

Next Monday John Key is to address the Australian Parliament, a rare ceremony reserved usually for the likes of Presidents of China and the United States. Will he rise to the occasion or will the assembled Australian notables get John Key good bloke?

Will he do better than in his response to Julia Gillard’s address to Parliament here in February when he — and Phil Goff — meandered through matey footy jokes and platitudes? read more

The good society as economic infrastructure

Metiria Turei punctuated her co-leader speech at the Greens conference on Sunday with frequent references to a green economy. Nothing surprising about that except that Turei’s brief is social policy.

Since he took over as the other co-leader in 2006 Russel Norman has set out to develop the party’s economic policy to the point where it would be taken seriously by non-Green commentators. The update in his co-leader speech on Saturday was another step along that path. read more

Indigenous rights are serious business

There are now two Maori parties, both pushing indigenous rights challenging the “mainstream” but from different perspectives. Our bicultural politics is getting more complicated.

Hone Harawira forms common cause with “socialist” advocates for state action to lift living standards at the “bottom of the heap”. The Maori party often proclaims the same ambitions but also has to keep onside the Maori upper crust and power elite which, some say, often doesn’t form common cause with bottom-of-the-heap Maori. read more

The Treasury and big Green hopes

The Greens last week celebrated the Treasury’s venture into wider measures of wellbeing. Come November 26, will they be celebrating their own broader support?

“This is one of the best news stories in my living memory,” Green MP Kennedy Graham enthused about the Treasury’s “higher living standards” paper, which sets up a “framework” for a wider assessment of prosperity encompassing social and environmental factors in addition to economic measures. read more

Science or old politics: a test for John Key

On Wednesday two reports will go public. They will challenge John Key to go with science or stick to old politics.

The reports are on fixing wayward youth and on early childhood education and will both highlight the critical importance of a good very early start in life. Both are the output of good brains, one tested to international standards. But does that fit with good politicking? read more

Mediating the new media

Colin James at Ian Templeton’s honorary doctorate, Massey University, 26 May 2011

Ian Templeton is an institution. He was well on his way to becoming one when I first fluttered into the parliamentary press gallery 42 years ago. Ian had been there 12 years already. He knew everybody and was known by everybody and still does and is. No one has commanded the degree of respect he has: Helen Clark, with whom he had a weekly catchup while she was Prime Minister, said she often felt the “audience”, as she called it, was for her rather than him. read more

Anyone for a fair go? Labour looks for a line

The head count for Helen Kelly’s address at the Labour party conference was 150. Not a great show of solidarity with the party’s brothers and sisters in the union movement.

One explanation: Kelly, who is Council of Trade Unions secretary, was on at 9.15am on Sunday after the usual late-night politicking and drinking. An insult, yes, but not a snub. That was the rationale. read more