Island Life by David Slack

If the least expectation you have of a politician is that he or she not speak about him or herself in the third person, then look away for a moment as I relate the words of John Key delivering his inaugural speech today as leader of the National Party.

On many occasions I have read in the media that John Key did a good job against Michael Cullen at the last election, that John Key knows his stuff on finance, but that no one knows what John Key really stands for.

David Slack found this a little unnerving, but David Slack kept reading, and a few minutes later, he found himself at the end of the oration thinking to himself: how would this sound if I ran it through the DuckSpeak machine?

Loyal readers may recall that I once set up a little program that would parse a piece of writing for its DuckSpeak, substituting QUACKS for portions of the sentences that were mostly or entirely meaningless. This was in homage to the genius of Mr Orwell.

My first disappointment was to discover that this was a good example of one of these projects David Slack begins but does not complete. It works, but imperfectly: it won't process the whole speech. I see a use for this machine, so I will return to it.

Nonetheless, I hold to my thesis: this was a script shot through with good intention and generality and, well, just so much Duck Speak.

My mission is to raise people's sights, to be fearless and imaginative in policies that encourage people to set their aspirations higher."

Well, you know, motherhood, apple pie, quack, quack, quack. Where are you going to find a politician to rail at the preposterous suggestion that people's sights should be raised higher? Even Prince Charles tried to cover his tracks on that on.

A little of this flannel is stylistically understandable, but very little of the speech was any less general and uncontroversial, although perhaps he was drawing on his acute trader's instinct to outflank Labour with the remarkable proposition that

The tyranny of distance is reducing, with a billion people now having access to the Internet. The growing economic powerhouses of the world - China and India - are located, if not in our backyard, then in our street. New Zealand businesses have access to the world.

The vice chairman of the party's obsequious talking points division, holidaying in the British Isles, was quickly on the laptop declaring it to be "a very good speech," but I must regretfully disagree.

Here's a little test. The following phrases are drawn from Key's speech today, and Helen Clark's conference speech last month.

See if you can identify which comes from which:

1. A government I lead will have fair policies that encourage enterprise and hard work, and trusts people to get on with their lives and make the best choices for themselves.

2. To meet the aspirations of our peoples: aspirations for a fair deal and opportunity, aspirations for security.

3. The goalposts keep shifting, and we have to keep scoring.

4. I do not intend to blindly follow an ideological path without ever challenging the concept or considering its appropriateness in our unique New Zealand setting.

5. We have to be ambitious for our country and our people in a world which is challenging, but also full of opportunity for the fast and nimble. That must be New Zealand.

6. Building our nation's confidence, instilling a real pride and a sense of what it is that binds us together as New Zealanders, striving for excellence, and ensuring we use our past successes as a bridge to even greater achievements.

7. I am ambitious for New Zealand and I want New Zealanders to be ambitious for themselves.

8. Developing a qualitatively different economy, which is producing high value goods and services the world will pay a premium for.

9. You can measure a society by how it looks after its most vulnerable.

10. It is in the interests of no one, and to the shame of us all, that an under-class has been allowed to develop in New Zealand.

11. Pushing for more effective commercialisation of the innovations coming out of our science and research sectors.

12. New Zealand has high rates of imprisonment and high rates of recidivism. I draw only one conclusion from that : the system isn't working.

13. When people think of New Zealand, I want them to think of a nation whose peoples are all respected and valued, and where we live in peace with each other.

Quack. You'll find the answers at the foot of this post.

It's all very well to say something like this:

The government, of course, has an important role to play in the modern economy. But the appropriate role for the government is in the background, not in the foreground. We need to improve the regulatory and institutional conditions under which firms operate, and then step back and let them establish, grow, export and hire staff.

But next time Liane Dalziel turns up to speak at your Rotary lunch, ask yourself if the speech sounds different in any meaningful way.

Of course, John Key's mileage may vary. Perhaps he envisions a government that spends closer to 25% of GDP than 40.

It doesn't sound as though he wants to get government so small you could drown it in a bathtub (which was always the suspicion about Don acting as the CEO of ACT's reverse takeover) so a number like 15 or 20 seems unlikely, but really: pick a number, John, any number and get specific. Then we'll know what we're talking about beyond the broad motherhood and apple pie declarations of good intentions.

As it happens, you will find considerable specificity to amplify the broad propositions in the Clark speech from which the foregoing quotes were drawn. You can't duck it. Some specificity, even just the slightest amount, is still necessary in one of these "30,000-feet" speeches as they call them in the world of PowerPoint presentations.

Significantly there is one note of this kind near the end of Key's speech, and at that point one gets the sense both of the dealing room ankle-tapper and also the political novice.

It is a mystery to me why the political Left acts as if it has a monopoly on environmental policies, when it is obvious to anyone who cares to look that all of us, across the political spectrum, with the exception perhaps of the Greens, have taken too long to put the protection of our environment at the forefront of our thinking.

Oh really? I have a box of speeches I churned out for the Minister of the Environment at the end of the 1980s that would suggest otherwise. He chose to keep that portfolio when he became Prime Minister because, he told the media, environmental policy was "so crucial". They were talking about climate change a long,long time before Key and his colleagues were bagging the Kyoto Protocol.

For the most part, though, specifics are not to be found, and this is unfortunate for an aspiring Prime Minister, because it tends to dull the lustre of his vision. In the absence of something to latch on to, you have the appearance of floundering, or, possibly, courting the job for its own sake.

If you don't have a dream of the kind that paints some clear kind of picture, that imagines for example, that little black boys and little black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls, you don't really have a "dream" of any great appeal.

All you have are aspirations going forward.

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Phrase Owners

1 Key
2 Clark
3 Clark
4 Clark
5 Clark
6 Key
7 Key
8 Clark
9 Key
10 Key
11 Clark
12 Clark
13 Clark

Mr Key and Dr Brash have both put a clean square bat to a tricky ball:

It went to my party email address, not my private one.

I received it, but I didn’t open it.

Well done, those men.

But wait a minute: aren’t we missing something? Look at what the email actually says. It refers to a meeting the Exclusive Brethren had with Steven Joyce the previous week.

… as backers of the recent "Wake Up NZ" campaign ($350,000) and as responsible for a very extensive election campaign ($1,000,000) with the sole goal of "Getting Party Votes for National" a meeting following on from our one last week with Steven Joyce is important.

Let’s think about this for a minute.

No-one in the National party camp seems to dispute that the Brethren had all this dough and wanted to spend it. Steven Joyce has not, as far as I can ascertain, denied that he was at the meeting the email refers to.

The only dot you have to join up, then, is this: in subsequent meetings that year in which Joyce was in the same room as Brash and/or Key, how much are you willing to bet that Joyce would not have referred to the friendly million-dollar campaign running in parallel with theirs?

If you’re about to say: “I’ll bet you anything you like it didn’t come up”, consider these factors:

-It’s an election year.
-Elections cost money.
-In an election, you try to maintain as good a picture of the field of engagement as possible: you want to know who else is on the field, what armies they’re wheeling out, and what their tactics will be.

Whether Brash, Key and Joyce saw them as friend or embarrassing acquaintance, the Exclusive Brethren and their election activity were undeniably an element of the campaign you would need to be watching.

I think we could do with hearing a little more from Steven Joyce, and if Brash and Key want to stick to their story that they had scarcely any idea what the Exclusive Brethren were up to, they really need to tell us how often last year they watched Joyce’s campaign briefings with their ears plugged and Neil Diamond at full tilt on the iPod.

QUIZ UPDATE

People have been telling me they enjoyed taking the short John Key quiz, but have been a little abashed at getting only five or six answers right. I have been reassuring them that they are firmly in the majority, as the statistics show.

You can click here to do the quiz and here to see the statistics.

BUG UPDATE
Ahem. I owe an apology to the people at Sir Humphrey's. I posted earlier that two of their number had claimed a score of 11 when that was not possible. The error was mine. I left a piece of four by two leaning against a switch on the database, so to speak, which I have now removed. Correct numbers are now on display.

Meanwhile, a further Update. A reader notes:

There is also the matter of the famous email from the Brethren being forwarded from Brash's address to Joyce. And the fact that on the same day, Brash emailed Diane Foreman and mentioned the Brethren campaign being an example of third party funding that he was describing to her ... so all of that also has to have an innocent explanation, along with what you point out as being simply implausible.

I was watching the TV news tonight as they took a camera to the streets and asked the good people of New Zealand what they thought of the putative 11th leader of the National Party.

One citizen was disarmingly candid: "I hardly know a thing about him, but I like the look of him."

Talk about your blind date. Talk about a heartbeat away from the Prime Minister's desk.

Look, he may well be a splendid chap and just the leader we're looking for, and no, I'm not being sarcastic.

I've written before that someone who once worked with Key described him as possessing superb antennae but no compass. So what drives him? Perhaps we should find out.

By way of an opening initiative, I've made a little quiz, because they seem to be quite a nice way to shine a little light on the subject.

It will let us test how well acquainted we feel with some of John Key's policy positions. Quoting now from the quiz: Conscience votes can give an interesting insight into the personal philosophy of an MP, so the quiz reviews his voting in that area. We then move into questions of tax policy, to help compare his perspective in that area with that of Don Brash.

It's just an opener, I'll freely concede, and there's scope for much more. Contributions and suggestions happily received.

Meanwhile click on over to the quiz and make your acquaintance.

UPDATE

This morning's Stuff carries the expression "Christchurch state house boy made good" in a story about Key.

They're not the only ones running this line, and I can't say I care for what it seems to imply; namely that those who grow up in such homes might be expected to be of diminished worth and capability, and also that those who lead a successful life after such a beginning are some sort of aberration.

I'm well aware of the dismal stories about multiple generations of state dependancy,but that's not the whole picture. I'm not often given to quoting George W Bush with approval, but this does smack of the "soft bigotry of low expectations."

Just off the top of my head I can think of a few of our readers who grew up in a Christchurch state house and who are leading lives of impressive accomplishment. Anyone who fits this description would be very welcome to offer their thoughts by hitting the Discuss button.

If you thought the news about Nicky Hager was disturbing, that's just the tip of the iceberg.

Dozens of titles were being readied for the Christmas market, but thanks to Don's injunction, you can whistle for them now.

Look at everything you're missing.

A few interesting items, with more to come tomorrow, from a public meeting tonight in Devonport about everyone’s favourite stadium.

According to Joel Cayford of the ARC, they were told at their briefing last week that Warren and Mahoney hadn’t been given design specifications for the stadium. What they were asked to produce was a concept for a “Stadium Aoteaora.” They thought the name suggested a cloud, so they came up with a shape that connoted such a thing. Mallard’s people liked the shape but not the name, so it became Stadium New Zealand, but the cloud remained. I repeat: No Design Specification.

Another interesting item from local resident and long-time developer, Laurie Spindley:

He maintains there’s a builder’s rule of thumb that if you build something over water it will have roughly seven times the maintenance cost of the same building on land. He also claims the Hilton on Princes wharf is experiencing costly maintenance bills already.

Wynn Hoadley of the ARC says she pressed Mallard on the funding overrun. She says he proposed it would be split three ways: 50% by Government, 25% by ARC and 25% by ACC.

Architect Julian Mitchell not only painted a bleak winter tableau of the empty husk you might walk by in the rain, but also pointed out that the stadium would be fully three quarters the height of the unlovely new apartment buildings on the far side of the street. That’s very, very, tall.

More tomorrow, but I’ll leave you with a prediction: the ACC vote will only establish whether they will be willingly giving up their ratepayers' wallets. The whole thing will turn on how the ARC decide to lay their bets, looking at the Ports on one side and the Government on the other. I predict they will try to push the Government into making the IRB or NZRFU dig deep to come up with an 80 million dollar resolution of the 12,000-odd seat shortage for the final. They’ll propose that we do something splendid on the Tank Farm in due course, without suspending the RMA and democratic process and call it a National Stadium. This stadium would be funded by the government rather then the people of Auckland. That's the way they do it with ‘National’ buildings in Wellington.

UPDATE

A few more interesting items from last night's meeting:

The Al Qaeda card.
Councillor Ivan Dunn asked the not-unreasonable question: what happens in an emergency, and they all have to spill out one side? Say there is a bomb scare of the kind they had in Manchester? Less controversially, say you have a kitchen fire. In either case, could the need to empty in a hurry see people being caught underfoot?

Loyalty troth.
A remarkable number of speakers began their remarks with the declaration "I'm a dedicated rugby fan, but…." In a truly reasoned debate, should that be a consideration?

The origin of the specious.
Joel Cayford also offered his understanding of the origin of the problem: Going into the pitch, the NZRFU thought they were being expected to provide 55,000 seats. When they discovered the number was in fact 60,000, they did a back of the envelope calculation, costing the extra 5000 seats at the same per seat rate as the extra ones they were already expecting to be providing. Only later did they discover that this could not be done, and the costs began to blow out, at which point the government got leery and started asking what else they could get for their money.

When the slow clapping starts, you've cooked your goose.
Maryan Street had the unenviable task of talking up the Government position. She made a solid enough start, but the moment she came to the weasel words of the glossy brochure, she was done for. "Elevate our vision", 'Open up our beautiful waterfront" and "Democratisation of this piece of land" drew jeers, hooting and slow clapping.

That's not a vision, this is a vision.
Councillor Andrew Eaglen drew enthusiastic applause for his observation that some people seem to take the view that spending a billion dollars automatically makes something a "big vision."

One of the people at the meeting felt a little coy about sharing his own concept, but if you like the Waka Stadium then you'll love this. How about a Volcadium? You build a stadium right now, on a platform in the water to meet the 2011 deadline. Then you go on afterwards and wrap around an actual, honest-to-God simulation of a volcanic cone, properly grassed and planted with native trees and bird life. The whole thing becomes a hub for a massive network of underground trains and so forth. It's absolutely bigger than Ben Hur, but if iconic is your thing, then this guy's your man.

He's given me a mock news report that gives you a flavour of the thing, which I've posted here.