Buzz goes flat at the Beehive 

Source: NZPA / Ross SetfordParliament house buildings, Beehive, Wellington

Parliament is in session but the Press Gallery is unusually quiet.

In the white concrete annex to the Beehive, where the nation's political scribes reside, you'll find them, slunk down in their seats bemoaning the lack of real political news or skulking about the corridors perplexed at the paucity of policy being generated by the Beehive.

Normally the hacks would be saved at about 4pm on a Monday when John Key holds his post-Cabinet press conference, allowing journalists the opportunity to tackle the Prime Minister on the government's latest policy and pronouncements.

But Cabinet, I'm told, had a light agenda on Monday. And that's my point. Cabinet, it seems, has had a pretty light agenda for the last month.

In fact the last announcement of any real substance, unless you count spending $20 million to secure Queen's Wharf as 'party central' for the 2011 Rugby World Cup, was the Budget on May 28.

I blogged at the time that the Budget was a pretty good first effort from Bill English ; but that it was largely a book balancing exercise and I eagerly awaited some new ideas from the government about how to make New Zealand a more prosperous and successful country.

Sadly we've seen virtually nothing since. There are a number of implications for the government, none of them good.

Like nature, politics abhors a vacuum. Stephen Hawking isn't a political scientist but I'm sure he could confirm that voids do not exist in the political universe. Dark matter of some description always moves in to fill the space.

So what has dominated the agenda in the post-Budget period? Sleaze and half-baked ideas. Richard Worth dominated the sleaze stakes and ruined his entire political career in a few short, brutal weeks. Now we have David Garrett, the Act MP who seems to have made a lewd and lascivious remark to a party staff member. I don't know exactly what he said but presumably it was as facile as his defence of it.

He told us on TVNZ's Q + A programme on Sunday that it had been a steep learning curve from oil rig worker to lawyer and then from lawyer to MP and that what was acceptable in a law firm in Tonga wasn't acceptable in the New Zealand Parliament? Charming, so sleaze is ok in Tonga? Are we dealing with racism, sexism or both?

There have been some ideas floated by ministers recently, but they appear to have been poorly thought through. Pita Sharples wants Maori to get into university without the qualifications required by people from other ethnicities. Well, all that will do is lower the bar for Maori academic achievement and send the signal that the expectations on Maori are lower.

It was hardly smart policy or politics, and Sharples seemed to acknowledge as much by quickly softening his stance in response to the awkward questions which followed.

Over the weekend we learned that the government was considering putting prisoners in shipping containers to solve the muster crisis. Oh, and they can build their own too because it'll save money and give them something to do. Mmmmm. Some questions arise. Little things like: will the containers be fit for human habitation? Where will the prisoners stay while they build their cells? What proportion of thugs, rapists and P addicts have the technical skills to fit their own cells out? Where do we put the containers? The shipping container solution sounds very much like populist nonsense which will never get off the ground, or the deck of the ship, as the case may be.

The fact is these ideas wouldn't warrant serious attention if the government actually had something substantial to talk about and was eager to set the agenda.

The post-Cabinet press conference is an ideal platform to do that. But on Monday the Prime Minister could only tell us that the King and Queen of Spain were visiting; that the House resumed this week and that a few more visitors were arriving from Australia.

That's nice that the Aussies (and Spanish royalty) are coming but we are facing some serious issues in this country - principally the fact we're losing more than a 1000 jobs a week.

What are we doing about this? The job summit ideas have largely fallen over aside from the cycleway and the nine day fortnight.

I asked Key about this at his post-Cabinet press conference and he said didn't know how many companies had signed up to the nine day fortnight, nor how many jobs had been rescued, although the Ministry of Social Development puts the number of jobs saved at 345.

The Prime Minister also mentioned the Queens Wharf purchase and the extra money for tourism marketing as recent ideas to keep the economy moving.

Perhaps his strongest argument was that the government has been vindicated in not taking a 'big bang' approach to the recession. I agree that spending our way out of recession - as Australia and the US are trying to do - never made sense for New Zealand. That's why I largely backed the cautious approach of the Budget.

I know too that this is a conservative government and that as the name suggests they tend to be about maintaining the status quo.

But surely I'm wrong? Surely the government isn't out of ideas? Surely, not after half a year in office?

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harwi394 ; 2009-09-01 @ 16:50 NZDT  

The rhetoric about scientific consensus on human-induced climate change must stop. Compelling research suggests an increase in atmospheric CO2 is a result of temperature increase, not vice versa. This is due to vast, naturally-occuring reserves of CO2 in our oceans, which evaporate as temperature rises. Don't get me wrong, I am a fierce environmentalist. But a reduction in carbon emissions should have an ethical premise - not a phony scientific premise, perpetuated by the government.

byronical ; 2009-09-01 @ 22:08 NZDT  

harwi: Oceans act as a giant carbon sink taking CO2 from the atmosphere but release water vapor(a greenhouse gas) into the atmosphere, not CO2. However, the Oceans ability to store CO2 is greatly reduced as gas solubility decreases as the temperature of the water increases. Atmospheric levels of CO2 have increased dramatically since the 1750 and human activities are without a doubt responsible for that increase.

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Geoff Keey ; 2009-08-14 @ 01:47 NZDT  

Guyon, I was surprised to see you citing the Government's climate change cost estimates so uncritically given the extent to which they have been discredited.

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stephen6565 ; 2009-08-13 @ 22:15 NZDT  

Another very poor article. You are part of the fourth estate and should be asking the hard questions of the govt. Making the govt accountable is not just the oppositions job. This whole article is just rubbish 'feelings' centred around your personal political views. Stick to policy and 'news' items.

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geekypolitics ; 2009-08-11 @ 19:34 NZDT  

Mr. Espiner has some good advice for Labour especially on the environment, but the idea that Goff should "cuddle" up to Key is appalling. It is always difficult for the opposition to take a stance on matters that are of an international nature, as the reputation of the country as a united entity is at stake. Democrats in the U.S. had the same problem with regards to the Iraq War. I'd hate to see Labour make the same mistake in the name of "solidarity behind the troops."

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Andrew Nichols ; 2009-08-11 @ 14:17 NZDT  

"Polls in Britain showed, counter-intuitively, that support for their troop deployment increased even as casualties mounted. " You're flat wrong! Current polling in the UKs major dailies actually shows majority and growing option to Britains involvement in Obams purposeless war. Not that that's ever bothered the govt there, who in time honoured fashion enjoy perpetuating "Britains post WW2 role as the Greeks to the US Empire" (Harold McMillan 1943)

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