liberation: NZ Politics Daily: 23 May

The Labour Party is finally getting to the top of the political news reporting – mostly because of its weekend election year Congress. Audrey Young reports from the congress about the rising internal party profiles and mana of Trevor Mallard, Kelvin Davis and Grant Robertson especially – they’re all future powerbrokers of importance in Labour. Mallard has great mana, because ‘He is the shadow leader of the House, the procedures guru, the driving force behind the Red Alert website and now the campaign manager’; and Robertson was the MC for Labour’s weekend Congress, and is now ‘Labour's campaign spokesman’. Young says he’s ‘the fastest-emerging powerbroker in Labour’. See: Goff has gone the distance since glory days of ’81 tour. Vernon Small also has an interesting column, looking at how Labour is changing its orientation towards combating National and the economy. It is no longer attempting to rally anti-austerity movement against the Government, but instead wants to show that it can be more responsibly austere than National: ‘Now it is adopting a similar debt reduction track to National's and is promising every new spending promise is funded or matched by a saving elsewhere.’ In other reports, Goff says Labour may not be able to roll back National's KiwiSaver changes if elected. And, in terms of Labour, John Armstrong has a good column - Labour confined to a fiscal straitjacket in which he explains further Labour’s attempt to be fiscally conservative.

There’s still plenty of good commentary about last week’s Budget. The most accurate and insightful commentary on it was actually an Editorial, in the Sunday Star Times - Key’s reign of greyness tints budget. Because it is not currently online, it’s worth quoting at length:

The Budget was grey, like so much else about John Key’s government. It is neither slash-and-burn nor borrow-and-hope, but a weird sort of wasteland in between. It takes risks, but not huge ones. It shifts the responsibility for a lot of the cutting in government departments to the department heads themselves. For the civil service, the budget is jet-black, and it is impossible to believe that it won’t lead to cuts in services, as well as ‘‘back office’’ work. The politicians make the safe-ish gamble that bureaucratic suffering will not cause widespread anguish…. The Budget is an apt symbol for Key’s New Zealand: unexciting, middling, cautious, but leaning to the right, ‘‘boring but in a positive way’’, as Federated Farmers hilariously put it. In modern-day New Zealand, things do not fall apart, and the centre can hold for an awfully long time. In the great grey middle, there is a lack of conviction and only at the extremes a passionate intensity…. All the more radical or imaginative ideas for change have been shelved. The bold suggestions for tax reform, such as capital gains taxes, land taxes or assets taxes, went nowhere. Instead, Key cut income tax and put up GST, favouring the wealthier folks, but not by so much as to cause a revolt. At the same time, the Budget made no move to radical welfare reform either. That question seems to have been shelved, and it will be interesting to see whether National plans to make it an election issue. So we muddle along. It’s not an exciting time to live in Aotearoa, but perhaps, in uncertain times, most voters prefer caution and reassurance from their government.

Also in the Sunday Star-Times, Anthony Hubbard – possibly the author of the anonymous Editorial? – has a similar and useful analysis of the political astuteness of John Key and the 2011 Budget – see: Key still sees good times ahead. Also worth reading, is John Armstrong’s National will pay if voters feel fooled, Vernon Small’s Labour rolls up its sleeves on economy, and Tracy Watkins’s Goff’s challenge to unbalance Key. Or for a different view of the Budget, have a look here at Budget 2011 images and cartoons on my blog site, liberation. After all, sometimes to understand a political event or issue, the images and cartoons that are published about it can be very insightful. Obviously they present a very distorted and simplistic view of any event or issue, but nonetheless by looking at a wide selection of images and satirical views, you can at least obtain some sort of view of how the public is thinking - or are being told how to think. [Continue reading below for a full list of the highlights of NZ Politics Daily]

Below are the internet links to all the NZ politics material from the last 24 hours that are either informative, insightful, interesting or influential. This list and the links are taken from a fuller document, NZ Politics Daily, which is emailed out, Monday to Friday, to various researchers, academics, journalists, MPs and so forth. The document is purely for research purposes only, and if you would like to be on the subscription list, please email: bryce.edwards@otago.ac.nz

Labour Party

John Armstrong (NZH): Labour confined to a fiscal straitjacket

Vernon Small (Dom Post): Labour rolls up its sleeves on economy

Audrey Young (NZH): Goff has gone the distance since glory days of ’81 tour

Ally Mullord (TV3): Labour congress 'buoyant', says Gower

Imperator Fish: Blame Labour

Southland Times Editorial: What about the children?

John Tamihere (Sunday News): What the Budget's telling us: we need a robust opposition

NZPA: Labour's congress will chart campaign strategy

NZPA: Raising minimum wage won’t cost jobs – Goff

Patrick Gower (TV3): Phil Goff promises to raise minimum wage

Kate Chapman (Stuff): Goff plans to bring farmers back into ETS