NZ Foreign Policy: Washington Visit Puts Key In Big League
April 14th, 2010
John Key’s Govt is marching into the Easter break confident it is back on top of the political agenda. The budget is practically locked down, planned tax changes got the big tick from visiting IMF scrutineers, and where in 2008 it looked as if it would be ten years before the Govt’s accounts moved from deficit into surplus, it’s back now to 6 years and improving with each successive forecast. The Govt has been slapped around by some commentators, Ministers accused of “sloppiness,” the PM as “Smile-and-Wave.” Collectively, they have no “narrative” and they are about to “rape-and-pillage” NZ’s pristine beauty. More seriously, its coalition partners are not in great shape: ACT is bedevilled by speculation about its leadership, the Maori Party with fundamental philosophic differences with National’s policies.
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What’s clear in all this is Key has reinforced his position as the fulcrum of the Govt. He’s got a party united behind him, not because (as with Muldoon) his Caucus fears him, but because they like him (as the country does). He’s sticking to his party’s election pledges, earning the trust essential for a second term. Behind the smile-and-wave and the so-called poll-driven flip-flops is a real political brain, as well as a clear-eyed view he’ll be judged on how competent his Govt proves to be in lifting living standards. And what’s important, too, in the long run, as NZers see themselves, he wants NZ to play in the big league, and play well, a task he is setting himself at the Nuclear Security Summit in Washington on April 12 & 13 and other international forums.
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Duncan Cotterill