If National wins ...

[Logen Ninefingers]

Phil Goff helped out with the TPPA at the start, so he has a special dispensation to go against the decision of the Labour caucus, but David Shearer didn't so he doesn't. That's just f*cked up.
I don't think John Key is even trying anymore. He is running the country on autopilot. The middle class will never allow a change of government due to the housing bubble, too afraid of the unknowns under Labour. Labour leaders just continue with the 'shoot-own-feet-off' stuff....capital gains tax, now free tertiary education.
I personally occupy a post-politics head space. It's all tribes, flags and name calling. Both parties operate in a borrow and spend policy setting. We just follow what the other zombie economies are doing, everything's really run by central bankers.

[elZorro]

I'd say the flag things worked, it seems people are more wont to talk about that and expend huge amounts of angst over a paltry $26 million rather than talk about the real issues facing the country. We are on the verge of deflation, we are borrowing hand over fist, dairy prices keep tanking....I thought the economy was supposed to be going great, as evidenced by house prices in Auckland up 45% in 4 years......so we are we still borrowing billions to make up for spending being well in excess of revenue?
Why is Mr Little promising everyone 3 years of free tertiary education? Is he therefore planning to keep borrowing at the same levels (or greater)?

Logen, again I agree with what you're saying. Have a better look at Labour's policies, though. Remember that just a few years ago, Labour ran the country with govt surpluses every year. That's not a fluke. They were good at getting a fair rate of tax back from those who could afford it, and when it was redistributed, a lot of it came back as more taxes. Everyone was happy, if they weren't too greedy. Next time around Labour will have a Kiwibuild policy, no tax cuts because we can't afford it and don't need it, but R&D tax credits to boost manufacturing and SMEs, so they'll employ people. These I see as major affordable changes that will work, and they'll work quickly. The govt takes in over $60bill a year, so a few million here or there is not a big deal. You're right about the flag thing, it's just a distraction while National sit around and let the market do its nasty thing.

[Daytr]

Probably not actually. You don't have to be a lefty to know John Key is selling NZ down the river.

Doesn't stop people getting tribal about it. If you're calling John Key 'ShonKey', you're probably from the Left.

[elZorro]

I don't use the phrase Shonkey either. Too slick.

Colin James's Otago Daily Times column for 2 February 2016 (On the flag, John Key, Nationhood)

Can the Treaty stretch to reach other cultures?

Waitangi Day looms. National day or holiday? A day to validate our national story or a day at the beach or the mall? A day of substance or a day of symbol? Some think Anzac Day is our real national day, marking, they say, our coming of age in World War I.
That war did make white New Zealanders aware Mother-Britain could get things wrong (Gallipoli and much else) and feel a bit different from home-grown Poms.

But true independence came 70 years later when the post-1945 generation displayed an unselfconscious New Zealandness in art, craft, writing, dance and music and daily life and invented a globally-unique biculturalism. Anzac Day's commemoration of defeat does not capture that national affirmation.

Last year some pushed for a day of commemoration of our 1860s civil war -- empire against iwi -- which flattened the Treaty of Waitangi's article 2 bicultural idea. John Key, who once said we didn't have a civil war, ruled out a new public holiday but did say that in theory one could be transferred. A candidate: Queen's Birthday.

No go for super-royalist Key, who thinks medieval-hangover knights and dames are of the essence of this fragment of long-dead empire.
Dames and sirs are visual and audible symbols. Many hanker for one. Key hears hankerers. He disinterred that symbol.
But, ironically, he wants to inter another symbol, the Queen's Union Jack, by changing the flag. He set up a rushed, flawed process which crowd-picked a fern, a logo you might expect on a plane or delivery van. And that fern was sketched by an expatriate who so values this country that he has spent the past seven years in Melbourne. So much for indigenous -- home-grown -- national expression: a ubiquitous fern, not a distinct native. It's a bit slick. But symbols can be slick. Substance cannot be slick.

That is demonstrated in the meandering debate over swapping a borrowed monarch for a home-grown head of state, to grow us from a practical republic into a constitutional one. Right now, even a minimalist republic by way of a plebiscite to select the Governor-General is a step too far for most. And not just here. Australia's republican Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull last week ducked when all but one of his state and territory chiefs said they wanted an Australian head of state. The modern Waitangi Day does mark substantial change: the progressive incorporation of the Treaty's bicultural idea into the exercise of power and day-to-day custom and identity. So commemorating the civil war that trampled the Treaty's bicultural idea could no more be a national day than Anzac Day can.

In some places in the outside world that bicultural idea attracts attention. For example, Australian Marcus Woolombi Waters wrote last year of an impromptu New Zealand school haka involving whites, Pasifika, Indians and Chinese (and his son) alongside Maori. He added: "In Aotearoa, presenters, no matter what colour, continually introduce and close shows in the Maori language." And, he said, "with language comes history and place". Waters was arguing, in effect, that the bicultural frame was big enough to encompass the whole nation. It has stretched to reach out to other Polynesians, once despised by Maori -- Cook Islanders were "coconuts" -- as we have transited from a far-south bit of empire to a distinct nation-in-the-making that is now of the Pacific, not just in it. But, as the proportion of people of Asian and other ethnicities grows, will that frame stretch enough to encompass them? Or it will be exclusionary?

As Mai Chen has argued, Auckland is increasingly ethnically diverse -- she says "superdiverse". Much of the rest of the country is not but that will change over time if current trends continue. Part of the political instability in the United States and Europe is that nations with monocultural value-systems found in their midst growing numbers of migrants of other cultures, initially from their former empires but increasingly seeking economic advancement or displaced by war or other severe hardship. Accommodating that diversity has become fraught. Inward migration is one of the drivers of populist and secessionist movements ranging from the far right to the far left. Is it different for us?

We have incorporated our tiny Polynesian ex-empire into the bicultural frame. But can that frame accommodate cultures other migrants bring with them any more than American and European monocultures can? The great majority of those migrants want to fit in. But many of their descendants will want and need -- just as many home-grown ex-British New Zealanders want and need -- connection to their heritage. That will enrich us -- connect us into China and India and many other cultures and their economies. But it will also challenge us.

Is the Treaty up to that challenge? Article 3 insists, on a modern reading, on full citizenship for all. Reading the Treaty that way, and not just as an empire-iwi deal, the day commemorating the Treaty is our national day.

Colin James, mobile 64-21-438 434, landline 64-4-384 7030, PO Box 9494, Marion Square, Wellington 6141, New Zealand ColinJames@synapsis.co.nz, www.ColinJames.co.nz

[elZorro]

Come back Amanda Bailey! John Key was just on TV1. In his comments about Labour's new tertiary education policy, John was saying that 70% of the course fees are now paid by taxpayers (don't forget that A and B bursaries used to pay for accommodation). Then the usually clever PM mentioned that why should other workers subsidise tertiary students any more than that, and the example was a waitress, usually on minimum pay.. you could see a flash of fear go across his face as he realised he'd opened up a can of worms, but luckily for him Nadine moved onto another topic, the TPPA, which he equally as glibly dispensed with. All the while beads of sweat were appearing, as he had a think about that poor example.

As if our PM has any empathy for poor waitresses. His own children can happily sail through uni or pursue arty careers if they want to, fully paid/subsidised by their father. And in any case, when do taxpayers get to choose where their money is spent? Only at election time, and there's an important one coming up in 2017.

[blackcap]

Doesn't stop people getting tribal about it. If you're calling John Key 'ShonKey', you're probably from the Left.

I dont think so. I am from the right (well normally) but I am fed up with the flag debate/change and have called HIM ShonKey on many occasions in jest with my partner etc. Does not mean that I will not vote National, probably will in the absence of another viable alternative, and the way Labour is going there is NO way I could vote for this bunch of rabble rubbish. But many in National's camp, are fed up with the flag referendum and think it is a vanity project as well.....

[fungus pudding]

Come back Amanda Bailey! John Key was just on TV1. In his comments about Labour's new tertiary education policy, John was saying that 70% of the course fees are now paid by taxpayers (don't forget that A and B bursaries used to pay for accommodation). Then the usually clever PM mentioned that why should other workers subsidise tertiary students any more than that, and the example was a waitress, usually on minimum pay.. you could see a flash of fear go across his face as he realised he'd opened up a can of worms, but luckily for him Nadine moved onto another topic, the TPPA, which he equally as glibly dispensed with. All the while beads of sweat were appearing, as he had a think about that poor example.

As if our PM has any empathy for poor waitresses. His own children can happily sail through uni or pursue arty careers if they want to, fully paid/subsidised by their father. And in any case, when do taxpayers get to choose where their money is spent? Only at election time, and there's an important one coming up in 2017.

A sad bitter man named elZorro
was consumed by his grief and his sorrow
he hated John Key
and the National partee
he'll be miserable all day tomorrow.

[blackcap]

Come back Amanda Bailey! John Key was just on TV1. In his comments about Labour's new tertiary education policy, John was saying that 70% of the course fees are now paid by taxpayers (don't forget that A and B bursaries used to pay for accommodation). Then the usually clever PM mentioned that why should other workers subsidise tertiary students any more than that, and the example was a waitress, usually on minimum pay.. you could see a flash of fear go across his face as he realised he'd opened up a can of worms, but luckily for him Nadine moved onto another topic, the TPPA, which he equally as glibly dispensed with. All the while beads of sweat were appearing, as he had a think about that poor example.

As if our PM has any empathy for poor waitresses. His own children can happily sail through uni or pursue arty careers if they want to, fully paid/subsidised by their father. And in any case, when do taxpayers get to choose where their money is spent? Only at election time, and there's an important one coming up in 2017.

I say %$^& the students. Their fees are subsidised greatly anyway and they can borrow (at no cost) the rest if they so wish to study. If free study is offered to all and sundry with no strings, well that will just get too many students into study and a lot of wastage with a lot of marginal studies being actively pursued that does not add any benefit to NZ. Why should a just out of school worker (on lower wages than a studied student) effectively subsidise someone who is going to study and increase their earning capacity? Stupid policy by Labour and just shifts the burden onto tax payers to fund marginal students lifestyles.

[elZorro]

There is a land-lord in Dunedin hood
His name is Fungus Pud
This right-wing troll sees nothing wrong
With National's bullsh*t song

[elZorro]

I say %$^& the students. Their fees are subsidised greatly anyway and they can borrow (at no cost) the rest if they so wish to study. If free study is offered to all and sundry with no strings, well that will just get too many students into study and a lot of wastage with a lot of marginal studies being actively pursued that does not add any benefit to NZ. Why should a just out of school worker (on lower wages than a studied student) effectively subsidise someone who is going to study and increase their earning capacity? Stupid policy by Labour and just shifts the burden onto tax payers to fund marginal students lifestyles.

Blackcap, you have parroted a common argument about this new policy, but it's poorly thought out. The three years tertiary study guarantee is at least partly available to anyone who hasn't had a full three years of study or training previously. I have seen people go to uni or polytech after working somewhere, they know exactly what they want to do, where they are going, and they blitz the courses. They could be of any age. And then what will they do with this new training? Probably go on to be more productive for all NZ in some way. They'll pay taxes along the way, and the extra tertiary funding will also be taxed. The govt will get at least half of the funding back immediately, in taxes, for reinvestment.