Just Left

The Travails of Gordon Brown

When I was in Brussels last year, one of the trips I made was to visit the British Labour Party conference in Bournemouth. This was towards the end of September, and I was wearing two hats - helping my European PLP colleagues with their work, and representing the NZLP in a sister party capacity with some other Kiwis.

Gordon Brown had taken over as Prime Minister and Labour Leader earlier in the summer, and was then at the height of his popularity. He was "not-Blair", he was refreshingly up front, he was, indeed, as the advertisement said, "Not Flash - Just Gordon".

Labour was well ahead in the polls and the conference was buzzing with anticipation of an early general election. They needed, so the story went, a fresh mandate to go with their fresh leader. Given the position in the polls, they were likely to win. All the gossip, in gusts around the Conference, was whether it would be 1 or 8 November, 2007.

I left the Conference feeling quite confident that they would win an election, but not at all sure that it was a good idea to have one just on the basis that it could be won, two and a bit years into a five year Parliament.

Then the next week, the Tories had their conference, announced a populist policy on making rich people richer (through reducing inheritance taxes), their polling bounced, Labour's declined a bit, and the brooding Scot in Downing Street decided, eventually, not to have an election after all.

It turns out in retrospect that that crazy decision, allowing speculation to build so high then being frightened off the election, was the worst decision Gordon Brown has made in his long and quite stellar political career. I am with Andrew Rawnsley on this: it will remain the defining moment of his premiership. Where he was thought to be strong, he is now weak. Where he was thought to be decisive, he is now thought unable to make a call. Where he was the master tactician, now he is a bungler writ large. And the 10p tax issue (Brown's final budget as Chancellor bizarrely increased income taxes on the lowest earners from 10p to 20p, to finance a general rate reduction from 22p to 20p for middle income earners) means that where he was once the champion of the poor, he is now corrupted and cares nothing for them.

Hyperbolic? Perhaps. But Rawnsley's column is damning: "his reputation has collapsed on every front". Brown is not Blair. He could not hope to play-act his way across the New Labour tightrope of ignoring Labour's heartlands and appealing to the greedy upper middle classes. He could not pull it off, but he has tried to. And in that single act of "bottling" the election last year, he made it impossible for his good qualities to ever again be taken seriously.

For good qualities he has in spades. His seriousness of purpose and his track record of redistributive politics and economic success are enormous achievements. He is a clever, hard-nosed operator who has every chance of being an effective leader of a Labour government that could have shucked off the worst parts of the Blair legacy, kept and rebuilt the broad coalition, and continued to modernise Britain.

No more.

Thrashed in local body elections, tortured by the victory of Boris Johnston in London's mayoralty, and seemingly helpless in the face of the Tory advance, Brown has not managed to set out the vision he talked about last summer. He has not managed to keep unity in the Labour Party. He has continued to hit his base in the guts, be it the tax issue, the 42-days-detention issue, or others.

The best that Brown and UK Labour can hope for, from the perspective of today, is to regain a modicum of competence, and slowly take back the agenda through honest hard work and clear Labour policies. If they do that, they might have a chance in 2010. The alternative is that it is all too late, and that he has stuffed it, and that Labour in Britain is about to enter another long period of opposition.

It's too early to predict the final outcome, but the window to change the perception (and it is the "doom" perception which leads, from what I can make out) is very small and is already closing. If in a month he has made no progress, then I think he will have morphed into the late-2000s version of John Major.

That will be a travesty on many levels if it happens. But if it does, then Brown will have to look at himself as the man to blame. He has had every opportunity to get it right and he has not done so. Blair had to go, yes, but Brown had to get it right and he hasn't.

And so the outcome may be handing Britain on a plate to the most right-wing, vicious, up themselves bunch of political operators in Europe. Bad for Brown - but far worse for the millions of Britons who would suffer as a consequence.

"Drag" campaign ACT's nadir

Sometimes I think Rodney Hide has started to take politics seriously.

Then I get reminders that I am wrong, with soundbites like this:

Finance Minister Dr Michael Cullen needs to give Kiwis on the average wage $35 a week just to break even under his management, ACT Leader Rodney Hide said today.

Someone might be able to tell Mr Hide that household incomes are up 15% in real terms - over and above inflation - since 1999.

Tax revenue is up more, because of a progressive tax system.

No government in New Zealand's history has ever committed to indexing tax brackets to inflation, let alone wages.

There is a very good reason for that. People's demands of public services are always increasing. We expect better transport systems, new schools, cheaper medical care, better pensions, more national parks, doubled prison populations, more people in tertiary education.

At the same time they do not like their tax rates being increased, and they don't like user charges being increased anyway.

That's why Labour's focus is to invest the proceeds of growth back into public services as a priority, and why tax cuts come second for us. It is the right wing parties like ACT and National that want to prioritise individual income tax cuts, and slash and burn public services to fund it.

It is a fiction that is propagated long and loud by the right that the enormous increase in public investment  and spending in the past nine years have delivered no outcomes. The list of things the money has been spent on is so long and has been repeated so often that I can't be bothered doing so again.

Just think about it like this. If your income grows as a household, so does your spending. If you were a fairly weird sort of person, you would spend all your growing income on debt repayment or savings. Most Kiwis tho spend some and save some. That's precisely what Labour has been doing in government.

As in your household you could afford to upgrade your standard of living with higher incomes, so the public sector has been able to improve its services and infrastructure for Kiwis - and has paid off debt and paid for the pension bulge in the future - and is now in a position to offer personal tax cuts as well.

Sounds reasonable to me, and importantly, to most New Zealanders as well. If we took the implicit suggestion that ACT is making - to freeze government spending in real terms - then we would be choosing ever crappier infrastructure, poorer public services, and eventually a large and growing budget deficit despite the service cuts.

That's the US-based hard right conservative agenda that ACT are the agents for in this country. Fortunately, most Kiwis are able to see through it.

Dealing with Child Poverty

When you live in a prosperous country like ours, and when your political beliefs and values are grounded in the ideal of equality for all, the scar of child poverty has to catch your eye.

As a Labour activist I am proud of some of the work we've done to reduce the problem of poverty. Many of the things we did right at the start of our government, right on through to today, have made things a lot better. More affordable healthcare, cheaper housing for those in most need, a higher minimum wage and a massive decline in unemployment, and Working for Families (to mention just some key ones) together lifted literally hundreds of thousands of kids out of poverty, and boosted family incomes hugely.

Great progress, but more to do. Those values that have led Labour to work at reducing poverty to the extent that has been done do not stop applying when some reasonable sounding proportion of the problem has been solved. No child should be living in poverty. And some of Labour's policies have, in pursuing laudable goals (like getting people into work), subtly increased the gap between working and non-working poor, and not boosted the incomes particularly of those on benefits as much as is needed.

There are a number of factors here that work to do this. W4F had a lot of money for working parents and not non-working parents. Wages have been growing faster than benefits. There has been no political case made, and consequently no public support, for undoing the cuts to social security benefits that were made in 1991.

To coin a phrase, it's unfinished business. I don't want to live in a society where we punish children for their parents' failings, where the community does not take some interest in making sure every single person who is growing up here has the best possible start in life.

That is the reality of poverty. That is what it does. It has long term, negative effects on every aspect of people's lives, from the fundamentals of good health and educational opportunity to the more esoteric happiness indicators. Poverty especially dulls the lives of kids, who of course have no choice about who their parents are or how successful they are.

One of the challenges for social democrats and their fellow progressive challengers, then, in this election and beyond, is to change the public debate about poverty so it is about our responsibility as a society to look after all of us, and so that investing in people's futures through decent income support, decent minimum code provisions in the labour market, and great public services, are electoral winners not electorally ambivalent - or worse, negative.

It will be a hard debate. There is a skepticism in the public about people on benefits. While in most cases that skepticism is ill founded, wrong headed, and sometimes just plain mean, there are enough examples that come to light of people abusing social security for it to be an attitude that has legs.

Combined with the obsessive "IT'S ALL ABOUT ME" culture that has taken hold of much of public life in New Zealand since the 1980s, and the low levels of public spending and taxation in the country which mean the resources to fix the problem are very hard to find, and you do have a fight on your hand.

The CPAG report (intro here) is a very good contribution, but we need to see more of this. All that broad coalition which supported the Hikoi of Hope in 1998 ought to be out there singing this from the rooftops come this year's election.

Just as was the case in the 2005 election, 2008 is going to be a straight out fight between those who have a vision of a community that is for all of us, and those who think that what's best for them is all that counts.

ETS reprise

George Darroch has a fairly staunch post on his blog "Decades of Inaction" criticising my framing of the ETS changes (on transport) as not being a major issue.

His post is filled with the self-righteous tone of the true Green.

I don't disagree with any of the facts that he points out. I know as well as anyone that global warming is a major problem and that we all have a responsibility to do something about it. I know as well as anyone that it is happening faster, and beginning to have more significant impacts, than people had until recently thought.

What I also know is that while NZ's per cap emissions are high, in a global sense they are very low.

I also know that the radical change to people's lives that is going to be required to really address GHG emissions and begin to arrest climate change have to be built on public support.

Further, I know - as does anyone in NZ reading this blog - that the public have not yet been persuaded that these changes are worth making, have to me made, and further that they might actually leave us with better, more enjoyable lives - as well as saving the planet.

I make no apology, given that, for supporting a short term delay. I am not a Green. Nor am I stupid. I am a social democrat, we who always have to sit on the uncomfortable edge between practicality and idealism.

I hope that Labour working with the Greens can eventually convince the public of how far we need to change and how we can go about it. That task cannot be done overnight, and in the absence of such public buy-in, imposing rapid change will not work. It will simply be rolled back as the people exercise their democratic rights to choose a government that listens to their concerns.

That's Labour's job: listening to people and engaging with them to persuade them to a changed point of view.

Having some kind of purer-than-the-driven-snow approach to politics will not work. It will send us further backwards than we are now.

So I welcome criticism from those who have constructive suggestions to make, but I shake my head in frustration at criticism that blames Labour for the fact that our society is not yet ready to embark on the massive changes it needs to make to chip in towards saving the planet.

Emissions Trading a minor change

New Zealand's proposed ETS, which is going through select committee consideration at the moment, is world-leading in several respects.

It includes all six greenhouse gases, rather than fixating simply on carbon dioxide.

And, even more importantly, it includes the whole economy. Every single sector will be part of the scheme by 2013.

So it is with some astonishment that I am seeing political commentators pretend that yesterday's announcement of a deferral of the inclusion of the transport system by two years is somehow a fatal reveral of the scheme.

It is nothing of the sort. Given the revised Kyoto liability figures the PM discussed, there is space to do something that is very important for a Labour government:  to recognise and deal with the fact that household incomes are under serious pressure.

Sure, there's a political imperative in doing that, but there is a principled one too. Labour is the party that stands up for the interests of ordinary hardworking Kiwi families. It is why we exist as a party and a movement. There is extraordinay pressure on household budgets at the moment. We have the room to move on the ETS. There is no reason why we would even consider not doing so.

A reversal of the ETS would be to leave transport out, or somehow otherwise reduce the effectiveness of it.

We aren't going to do that, and nor should we. The future of the planet is of some casual interest to most human beings, and what we know is that human-induced climate change is a real and growing danger to our survival. Every country, every person, needs to make fundamental changes to how they live and work to help deal with it.

Capping emissions of CO2 equivalents and using the market to ensure the most efficient use is made of what emissions we are allowed to make is just common sense. We have to have a scheme that reduces our emissions over time, without just transferring them to non-included countries.

I might finish by noting how proud I am to be part of a political party that sees that this is vital to our future, and is prepared to lead on it and take the hits for changing things - unlike some other political parties I could name...

Rail back in the people's hands

I am delighted to see today's announcement that the government is buying back the railway.

The purchase continues the trend of ending failed experiments with private sector activity in major infrastructure areas. Rail is the archetypal case where a radical experiment failed.

It failed because the ownership interest in the railways was not connected with New Zealand's interest in having an effective rail system. The owners of the private network instead focused on drawing as high a return as possible, and not reinvesting - to increase that return.

If one could have found a local owner with NZ's interests at heart and the interest in running a railway, that would have been fine. But it's clear such a prospective owner does not exist. And so the crown taking an ownership interest in the service is exactly the right thing to do.

This joins Labour's repair of other failed privatisations - most obviously, Air New Zealand - in securing the national interest where it seems only the state can deploy the capital to keep important national assets in national ownership.

Now we will see how a modern Labour government can arrange proper public ownership: efficient and effective management, sensible investment in repairing and building the services and the network, for the benefit of the whole economy and society. Toll as an operator had begun to improve the use of the network, no question - volumes were up and government investment in the network was already beginning to improve things. But improvements can now go much further and faster, due to the ending of disputes between the crown and the company that have plagued the last five years.

Another tangible example of how far Labour has shifted the centre ground of Kiwi politics towards the left since 1999, too. I can't imagine us having done this a few years ago. Now, I can't imagine National reversing it next time they take office.

Social democracy marches on...

worth noting

I forgot to post on May Day - the wonderful Grant Robertson, Labour's next MP in Wellington Central, has a good one. It is too easy to forget in these relatively comfortable times, that every single workers right has been fought for by organised labour - and opposed by conservatives. I spent

Grant also has a good one noting another anniversary, that fell on 26 April: the third anniversary of the commencement of the Civil Union Act. I was reprising with a friend involved in that campaign the scale of the achievement in getting that legislation through, and in turning the tide of the public debate so that a majority support it.

The other thing I should have noted was how much I am enjoying Poneke's blog. It's worth reading. So are the team at the Hand Mirror.

Cost of Living

Besides the media concern, having moved home to Auckland in recent months has brought home to me just how much more expensive life is getting.

Petrol is one thing, pushing me to use public transit where I can, but the price of some foodstuffs is astronomical.

It's all very well to explain the situation rationally, but when people are hurting they aren't looking for rational explanations. They especially are not looking for "it's not our fault".

Aside from an income tax cut to boost disposable incomes, lots of other ideas are floating around. One of them is cutting GST, which would have the benefit of putting cash in people's pockets (effectively) and in cutting inflation, but the broad-based low-rate tax system we have makes it unlikely to go into that sort of thing.

I think we've had it so good in NZ for a long time that we are not used to having to tighten belts. It's certainly not a feeling I have been accustomed to, and so I am interested in readers' views about how the current situation is affecting them, and what they think ought to be done about it - indeed, in what "it" is!

Higher incomes need higher wages

Labour stands for higher wages.

National stands for lower taxes.

There's a big difference. One is driven by a need for higher productivity, and is good for all of us: it leads to more cash in the hand for workers, more tax to reinforce public services, and a higher standard of living for everyone.

The other is saying, actually we can't cut it in the world, and the only way to improve our incomes is to slice away at the public sector, to give a small, short term boost to people's pockets.

One of the most important debates this year is to work out how best to boost wages, so incomes can grow and New Zealand can be more successful. Tax cuts aren't really at the core of that debate.

Broadband

I am pleased that with John Key's policy proposal, launched yesterday at a Chamber of Commerce lunch in Wellington, the debate about New Zealand's broadband future has shifted from "whether" to do fibre to the home, to "how and how soon" to do it.

There's always been one simple problem with high speed broadband rollout: the commercial providers won't do it, because the rate of return on the investment or the risks involved are too high to justify the investment. A commercial provider can't get enough of the gains from the rollout to justify building it.

So what do you do? Well,  you change the risk/return mix. And that either involves establishing some kind of monopoly, or investing some public funds to change the returns required to get build happening.

Professionally speaking, I am pleased there is now a political commitment from one major party to putting money into this. I am looking forward to assessing the various plans that come forward, and I'm sure that InternetNZ will be looking to persuade all parties to invest in this critical infrastructure.

As a Labour person I am quite sure the Nats' proposal can be bettered, and that Labour will do so. David Cunliffe's comments have critiqued what the Nats have proposed - the specifics of it, such as they are - but he has not criticised the goal. That's good, because it is important for New Zealand to get on with it.

Final point, I ended up next to Williamson at the launch lunch. His zeal for this is impressive, given his record in government. It's nice to see a genuine change of view and broad, cross-party acknowledgement of the importance of this kind of technology.

Personal attacks?

I have been vaguely amused that John Key is saying he feels he's been personally attacked by Labour in the past few days, since the Congress.

To me a personal attack in politics has some or all of the following characteristics:

• it is based on something untrue - that is, it is dishonest
• it is an attack on something personal about the candidate that isn't relevant to their public office *
• it attacks aspects of the candidate's performance that aren't relevant to the job

Now I am fairly sure that none of these apply to Labour's attacks on Mr Key.

What we have been criticising is his inability to defend a position; his patent unwillingness to paint a picture of National's true agenda; his inability to communicate effectively what he thinks; his political values; and so on.

Those are all perfectly reasonable criticisms of someone who would like to lead the country. As Michael Cullen said yesterday, the election is about who will hold political power in New Zealand, and who that is matters because the alternative governing coalitions are motivated by different values and will do different things.

The * on my second bullet point relates to hypocrisy. If hypocrisy exists (look at that US congressman who was pushing law on child porn, but also behaving in a disgusting way with young interns) then that is a reasonable focus for political attacks.

Do others have more bullet points, or disagree with the point?

The Congress Protest

This photo shows how many people were on that protest for 90% of the Congress. Some of those are journalists. It is good to see people peacefully demonstrating and showing their views. Less good is setting off a fire alarm at an irritating time. Seriously bad was jostling Cullen as he was helping a member get away during the evacuation. Oh well, it was a nice break in the sun before a very good speech from Helen.

Finlay Macdonald piece

An interesting column from Finlay McDonald on the PublicAddress site:

The Audacity of Hype: John Key and the new National Socialism

A talk by Finlay Macdonald as part of the Distinguished Communicator Lecture Series for the Centre for Science Communication, Otago University, April 2, 2008

In case you hadn't picked up on this already, the title of my speech tonight is firmly tongue in cheek. The title of Barack Obama's first volume of memoirs is The Audacity of Hope. My facetious suggestion is that our own Great Pretender should call his memoirs The Audacity of...

The only point I really disagree with Macdonald about is his assertion that Labour can't win this year's election (right at the end of the column). There are other debatable points of course; linking to a post does not imply agreement with all, most or even any of it, necessarily.

He raises with good humour and wit the point that John Key really doesn't seem to stand for anything much. I think it is a dawning awareness of this - the 'slippery' tag is just one way of highlighting it - that is the fundamental reason behind the current shift in the political polls away from National and towards Labour. Labour's improved performance of course has been essential, but by itself wouldn't have been enough - it is a necessary but not sufficient condition.

In other words people are waking up to what Key is, or isn't, and that's a good thing. The more pieces like Finlay's, the better.

I completely agree with WhaleOil

See http://www.whaleoil.co.nz/?q=content/jump-right-mr-brown - a great cartoon and a good suggestion for the deputy leader of a party which consistently resorts to bashing some minority community to generate political support.

Auckland Governance royal commission

Many of you will be aware that there is a Royal Commission investigating Auckland governance issues at the moment. The Commission's website is at http://www.royalcommission.govt.nz/

I am interested in this and have been thinking about it quite a lot in recent times. There is a major misalignment between mandates, functions in Auckland local government that means that many of the region's biggest problems cannot be solved with the status quo. The reform needs to create a governance system that can do its job.

My question for readers is: what principles do you think should drive any reforms that the Commission may propose?

My own view is that three key ones are democratic legitimacy, effectiveness, and keeping decisionmaking at the lowest possible level.

What are yours?

Obama TV

http://www.barackobama.com/tv/

It's worth a look, and it says a lot about the candidate. I have been a Hillary supporter, but the more I see of Obama and read of his speeches, the more impressed I am. His promise of a truly transformative politics is one that is worth trying.

Why? Well if he delivers he can make America a different and better place. And if he fails (to deliver on his words, for if he is selected there is no question that he will win the general election), then we got some good speeches and some optimism for a while.

I know of few political campaigns that would be daring enough to post the video that is on the TV channel just now (Sat evening)... watch it to see what I mean.

Marching to Freedom

The long night of one-party rule in Zimbabwe looks to be ending at last, with parliamentary results apparently handing a narrow majority to the opposition Movement for Democratic Change for the first time since independence in 1980.

I now hope that the results show that Mugabe has lost the Presidency too. That man's government has lead Zimbabwe right to the very edge of destruction, driving millions of refugees away, huge unemployment, rampant HIV/AIDS spread, terrible impossible inflation, etc etc.

His replacement by a new government would be good for the people of the country and good for Africa too. The sooner it happens, the better.

Hipkins on the Boomers

My friend Chris Hipkins, Labour's next MP for Rimutaka, gave an interesting speech recently to constituents at a meeting of the Heretaunga Rotary Club. It's about the impact of the babyboom's retirement on people like us (that is, GenX/Y types).

The retirement of the boomers is of considerable interest to the people of my generation not just because of the implications it will have on the taxes we pay down the road, but also because of the impact it will have on the remaining workforce.

Look around school staff rooms and you’ll see a significant number of boomers. The same applies to many of the trades - a large chunk of our builders, electricians and plumbers are nearing retirement age too. Who will be there to educate our kids and build our houses when the boomers retire?

Policies like Modern Apprenticeships, interest free student loans and the considerable increase in tertiary education participation are going a long way to addressing some of these challenges, but alone they simply won’t be enough.

They need to fit within a comprehensive strategy to ensure that every New Zealander who can work does work. But not only that, we need to ensure that they are working in productive, highly skilled, highly paid jobs. Our future prosperity as a country, and your security in retirement, depends on it.

The demographic challenges that I’m talking about have the potential to have a far greater impact on the lives of all New Zealanders than any short-term gains or losses caused by tax cuts or high interest rates. They’re not challenges we can address as individuals acting alone. We need to come together through politics and our democratic process to work together.

A big part of that is going to be ensuring that all New Zealanders are engaged in the democratic process. It will come as no surprise to you to learn that I’m in a minority of people in my age group in that I choose to pay much attention to politics at all. Most my age feel disenfranchised by politics, and we desperately need to change that. To do that, we need to bridge the generational divide and make sure our political culture keeps up with popular culture.

The generational change taking place is going to impact on every aspect of our society. It’s going to have a huge impact because the generation coming through is very different in its ideals, values and approach to the one that’s retiring.

He has a lot of interesting stuff to say too on why he is involved in politics when it's such an unpopular profession, thoughts and feelings that I largely share.

Well worth a read.

Wage gaps

The Standard has two useful graphs, which follow, about the wage gap between New Zealand and Australia. The important point to note is that these are wages.

Some have pointed out that tax changes mean that the Aussie in-hand incomes have grown faster. That may be true in the headline numbers, but Working for Families has put a lot more in many families' hands than Australia's tax cuts. The critics never take that into account.

Broad tax cuts of that amount - sometimes hundreds of dollars a week - are not compatible with stronger public services, paying off debt - things that Kiwis want. Tax cuts on the broad scale should be used when the operating surplus is too big and when the economy needs a boost in the short run.

The only way to long run wage growth is higher productivity growth, and an industrial relations framework that means higher productivity translates into higher wages, not only higher profits. Labour's made progress on the latter and has got unemployment down, increasing the size of the economy. Now the focus has to be getting those newly employed people more productive, through better skills, better investment (say by cutting company tax rates and introducing R&D tax credits, more domestic savings to finance business expansion...). National has no answer to those things, being generally content to run a low wage, high-unemployment economy.

Update - Idiot/Savant has done a useful additional graph which shows the distributional effect of National Party policies.... always worth remembering what Nats really want to do.

Anyhow, the graphs:

Victim's Rights are worth more than $50

I laughed last night to read about National's new $50 tax on convicted offenders.

I just think the maths doesn't add up. Each offender has more than one victim, usually, or at least one. So that means each victim is getting less than $50. Isn't that just a slap in the face? Or am I missing something?

Update - The whole framework of victims' rights legislation has been improved since Labour came into office, and needs to be improved further. The idea that some pathetic amount of cash will help is a nonsense. What people want when they are victims of crime is some mix of retribution, compensation, and acknowledgment of wrongdoing - not a $20 note.

What the community wants is the mix that leads to the least reoffending. That is why the universal but wrong-headed desire for retribution in criminal justice is at odds with the public interest, and why Labour and National have such different focuses on this.

China FTA good for New Zealand

Back when I was a young'un in political terms, my branch of the Labour Party (the Princes St Branch at the University of Auckland) had a long and acrimonious debate about the Singapore Free Trade Agreement that Labour signed, back in 2000. Leading up to the signing, our branch debated and consulted with experts about whether it was a good idea or not, and resolved by a small majority that it was not.

I put out a media release (which I can't find at the mo) as Branch Chair to reflect the branch's position. I can't remember what my view was - I was probably opposed, having been for the first time around that time to the Philippines and seen what some free trade systems have done to countries on the periphery.

It didn't go down well. I felt that as the chair I was obliged to accept the democratic decision of my Branch and reflect it. Others felt I should have refused to do any such thing, to avoid embarrassing the government. As it happens the government wasn't particularly embarrassed, though Jim Sutton did somewhat mischievously suggest that us and the Greens had rocks in our heads for opposing the agreement.

Why do I mention that in the context of the China FTA to be signed next week? Well, because I was reflecting on how I feel about that agreement, with a far larger and more significant economy and partner of New Zealand.

Given the information that is public now, I support this one. New Zealand is a small trading nation and we are in a world where we are, to coin a phrase, swimming with the sharks. Governments have an obligation to do what they see as being in the national interest. Given the current international trading framework, the hyper-liberalism of global economic governance, and the strategic importance of China to New Zealand's future, I support this agreement. It will benefit us economically, and it is a good signal to send about our willingness to engage with the country that will be, in my lifetime, the most important in the world.

That support does not change my view that the way the international economy is organised is far from ideal. The latest financial earthquakes shaking the system are one example. The ongoing stacking of tariff barriers in favour of rich countries and against the interests of the poorest is another. The insidious efforts to extend the reach of intellectual property and commercial investment interests in the "trade" system are another. Labour and environmental protections are not entrenched in the system, they are seen as a cost (as is tax and public service) to be unwillingly borne.

The problem can be simply summed up: the development of global economic relations has lost touch with its purpose. Most people agree with the fairly low key assertion that the economy ought to serve the people, not the other way around. Our international economic order doesn't do that. It has that equation flat out in reverse.

New Zealand is a cork in a stormy sea in this arena. We will never be able to drive reform of the international economic order to a more just, more human alternative. So in these islands we have to do the best we can, and simply continue to speak out for a fairer system as and when we have the chance.

Any other approach is either easy sanctimony, or uncaring agreement with an order of things which is wrong. In that uncomfortable middle ground is where we social democrats stand, on this issue as on so many other issues.

So a trade agreement with China which lowers the barriers to our exporters, which improves the trading relationship, and which occurs in the context of a broader interchange where New Zealand advocates its interests and speaks its mind -- not least on the appalling situation in Tibet -- is one which I will support. And so will most of the Parliament.

Quickie

Had a good time away over Easter, tramping with friends after being at the commemorations of the 1908 Blackball cribtime strike. Blackball put on a series of events including a labour history seminar, a community concert and theatre production, commemoration at the mine site, dinner and market among them. It was a good celebration, under the Miners' banner: united we stand, divided we fall.

Then back up north for a work retreat and now back into it.

There remains a palpable sense of momentum for the government at the moment which is great. The start of the year has seen new policy rolled out and good management of a range of political issues. The result has been a change in the direction of most polls, a change I expect to see work through over the next couple of months in Labour's favour.

Will post later today or tomorrow on the China Free Trade Agreement, one of the historic achievements of this government.

One of those delicious weeks

I've been watching the headless chook action on the right this week with great interest.  After the speed wobbles of recent weeks, three interesting things happened in the past two days:

• Former ACT MP Stephen Franks was selected by National as their candidate in the prime seat of Wellington Central.
• Roger Douglas gave a press conference at Parliament, outlining his policy agenda which would be the negotiating point between ACT and National in a post election scenario. It's the Blue Agenda, back to 1988 all over again.
• Bill English and John Key ruled out the idea of Douglas in a senior position in a National-led government, betraying the startling assumption that they will be able to govern by themselves!

Anyone who knows National Party members knows that the majority of them have regarded Key's centrist positioning of the party over recent months as an encumbrance, a happy deceit to be held before voters until the day after the election.

You can tell this by the fact that moderates are not getting selections in this year's round: extremists are. And you can also tell it by the fact that the senior Nat moderates are either leaving (e.g. Katherine Rich), or not winning selections (e.g. Jackie Blue in Auckland Central).

Now if you assume as I do that "Slippery" John's biggest driver is to form a government come what may, then you realise that the small detail of Roger Douglas being the price paid will be just another one of those dead rats he swallows. It's not that he has an extremist agenda himself: it is that he would be the enabler of such an agenda. That just became more visible with the disinterment of Douglas.

This all fits in well with an agenda that swept around Wellington a couple weeks ago: that National's planning a "Shock and Awe" agenda of following on the 80s/90s agenda if it wins the election, and then spending two years trying to get everyone forgive and forget.

The events of the week suddenly make that rumour, which seemed frankly a bit nuts, a big step more credible.

Anyhow I'll enjoy the conversations this sparks at this weekend's centenary of the 1908 Blackball strike. Back on deck next week.

A change in the weather

There's been a discernable warming towards the government and the Labour Party in the community over the past few weeks, and a cooling of previously uncritical adoration of the National Party. I expect that to work its way into the polls over the next month or two.

Why the change? There are a number of points. Helen Clark has appeared more energetic and up-beat than for a while; the government has been rolling out a range of "big" policy announcements that have captured headlines and been in line with Kiwi values (Auckland Airport, the SchoolPlus stuff at the start of the year, floating Toll, the NZ Fast Forward Fund are some); Cunliffe has taken on a deeply dysfunctional DHB and won; and Labour has been slaying the National Party in the house which helps a bit.

On the other side it is a less happy story. John Key has been having a dismal few weeks. He has got one policy issue completely wrong (NZFF Fund), and has come across as poorly briefed and slippery on most of the other issues. His deputy has made ridiculous comments about the railways, and has blurbed on KiwiSaver, and both together have made some nonsensical comments about how to respond to the slowing economy and international situation.

What these sets of events have done is forced a reconsideration both by the public and by the media of what the National Party is presenting. The glossy package is no longer looking quite so glossy. People are beginning to wonder a bit. "Slippery" seems to be an apt metaphor, much more so than a month or six weeks ago.

After all, the conventional narrative about this year has been: Labour's tired, out of ideas, has done its dash, and needs replacement. Nine years is a long time and a fair go demands a change of government.

The current narrative is: Labour's got new ideas and is rolling them out, but is facing a huge uphill battle to get anywhere, and National's making the odd unsettling mistake, and we're not so sure about this guy.

That is, in my opinion, a more reasonable interpretation of reality. The thing about being a progressive government is that you are never done.  Labour's agenda is an agenda of change and growth, building a more equal society for everyone.

So of course at each election we'll roll out new things based on current issues and Labour values. Of course the opposition will try and say they're "panic" responses or "bribery". The test for intelligent observers is: are the government's proposals in line with its values and its existing way of working? If they are, then they're building on current progress to go further. If they are flailing around then obviously it's something else at work.

You can look at everything Labour's announced this year and notice that it is in line with past approaches but a bit bigger and better. That is what one can do after years of careful stewardship and building a solid foundation for growth. The whole point of Labour's agenda has been incremental improvement. I am gob-smacked that anyone would be surprised at more of that being rolled out, or that Labour would have the wit and will to roll it out in politically useful ways, on the issues that matter for today and the future.

It's also helping us that Sir Roger is back out of his box. Sir Roger stands for what half the National Party base really want to see done. Sir Roger, if he is in a high spot on ACT's list, is a definite sitter for a finance portfolio role in a future National Government. Back to the Future indeed. Slippery John can hardly talk with one side of his mouth about being a moderate centrist government, while on the other side relying on ACT and Roger Douglas to support them in government.

Interesting times indeed.

Blasts from the Past

I cannot imagine a better thing to do than running a campaign in Hunua against Roger Douglas. If he nominates there, the money and energy that will be unleashed will be very interesting to see.