06 April 2009

Helen Clark felt right

The NZ Herald reports on how Peter Davis on TVNZ said Helen Clark felt "rejected" by the New Zealand public in the last election.

"I think she felt rejected, because she felt she had done a good job - which I also believe - and had put her best foot forward and had been an almost incomparable Prime Minister and yet somehow the public had not seen that the same way" he said

Yes Peter, she was rejected. Almost incomparable? Well perhaps, by wasting away the fruits of a recovery on growing the bureaucracy and the state, flushing hundreds of millions of dollars away of (now this is what they don't understand) OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY in buying back a railway and an airline.

Fortunately New Zealand is a liberal democracy, and enough got tired of "the state is sovereign" Helen. She won 1999 following a growing send of tiredness of National's cobbled together and increasingly repulsive flotsam and jetsam minority government. 2002 she won because Bill English hadn't met a principle he could embrace and stand for anything at all, and the recovery was keeping enough people happy. 2005 she barely won helped ever so slightly by breaking the law by using parliamentary funds to do electoral campaigning.

Of course, the truth is she only got into power thanks to Jim Anderton, Peter Dunne and Winston Peters bringing their parties into coalition and confidence/supply agreements. All of their parties have paid a high price for such arrangements.

2 comments:

Sally said...

And a Nicky Hager campaign against Don Brash.

john-ston said...

"And a Nicky Hager campaign against Don Brash."

Probably the big bribe to students helped secure Labour's Third Term as well; if they hadn't done that, a large number of students could well have voted National and Brash would have won.

I must also add that National's 2002 defeat was probably down to Michelle Boag.