New Zealand often reminds itself it is a small place. These past few months and particularly these past couple of weeks our politicians have demonstrated we can’t even do a real corruption scandal.
No MP has dug a moat or done up a residence on parliamentary expenses as British MPs did. And as for United States Senators…
Which would you rather have: prices going up or prices going down? Be careful how you answer. Bill English and Alan Bollard are listening.
There is much talk in Europe and the United States of deflation if governments act too soon to reduce or reverse their fiscal stimuluses by cutting spending and/or raising taxes, even though many are on a road to seriously high debt.
Markets don’t run themselves. Well, actually, they do but if left to themselves some results can be perverse or damaging. So societies make rules for markets. Heather Roy, ACT’s deputy leader, agrees. She is making big changes to consumer law.
This is the first big outcome of the ACT-initiated re-examination of existing laws to check they meet modern principles of lawmaking. Bill English has been redefining those principles with Rodney Hide, who is Minister for Regulatory Reform.
The problem with lines in the sand is wind. The lines blow away. But politicians famously bend in the breeze. They can just redraw new lines.
John Key has been drawing lines in the sand on concessions to the Maori party and to iwi. He will not vest Urewera National Park in Tuhoe, no matter how the long the transition. He will not open up the foreshore to a full Treaty of Waitangi re-examination and privatised bits will not be part of the public domain. He put (initially) disabling qualifications on Pita Sharples’ signature on the indigenous rights declaration. Whanau ora gets limited funding for now.
The issue for the Greens is sustainability — of the human race and of ecosystems, of course, but also of themselves.
Co-leader Russel Norman’s answer is to get bigger. His “realistic target” is to get over 10 per cent in the next election. To make the point he wore a bland suit, with pale green tie, to deliver his formal speech at the conference on Sunday. That was so what he wore would not obscure his message.
It’s the Queen’s official birthday today — a quaint tradition, like much of the monarchy. Her actual birthday is on April 21.
John Key is in sync. He quaintly revived the tradition of knights and dames. A fresh crop is just out.
But don’t let this medievalism distract you. Key is a constitutional reformer. It just happens that the Queen, while a target for republicans, is irrelevant to his brand of reform.
Which major party is harder-nosed on bicultural issues: the supposedly soft-centred left-of-centre Labour party or the supposedly hard-nosed right-of-centre National party?
The answer will be obvious from the mere posing of the question.
The Maori party hates the Labour party for its foreshore and seabed law. It basks in the National party’s indulgence on whanau ora, the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, repeal of the foreshore law and, still to come as this was written, a constitutional review.
In the United States some are blaming President Barack Obama for not fixing the BP oil spill. Few of those, it seems from the commentary, stop to ask whether they would have welcomed higher petrol prices if he had imposed tough, expensive regulatory checks on drilling. Few ask if he can do what the engineers cannot.
The Greens go to their midterm conference this weekend still on the fringe of the parliamentary system and never having had the influence on a government Rodney Hide has had with far fewer votes.
Three years ago climate change was running their way, Jeanette Fitzsimons was government “spokesperson” on energy efficiency, which yielded some dedicated spending, and Sue Bradford and Sue Kedgley got bills through the House.
Bill English changed the rules for many people’s tax games in his 2010 budget. But did it change the big game — in economic potential or political advantage?
Business Roundtable chief Roger Kerr said it would not step-change the economy. He wants much smaller government and much less regulation.