Posted on 11/09/2008 6:15:07 PM PST by bruinbirdman
America has no monopoly on fast-rising political leaders. Six years ago, John Key quit a career in foreign exchange trading that had made him a millionaire to enter the New Zealand parliament.
Today, the 47-year-old is his country's prime minister-elect, following the victory of his center-right National Party over Prime Minister Helen Clark's Labour Party in New Zealand's general election on Nov. 8.
Key assumed leadership of the party following its narrow loss in the 2005 general election. He sufficiently moved it toward the center and broadened its appeal to blue-collar workers so that critics dubbed it Labour-lite. A pragmatic rather than doctrinaire conservative, Key worked for Merrill Lynch (nyse: MER) from 1995, first as its head of Asian foreign exchange in Singapore, then as head of global foreign exchange in London.
He returned to New Zealand in 2001. He campaigned on the strength of his financial background in an election dominated by economic issues. New Zealand's economy has entered a mild recession as growth slows across the Asia-Pacific region in the wake of the global financial crisis. That ended a boom that had started in 2000 and kept Clark's Labour party in office for nine years.
The economy faces a difficult year ahead, but Key's election is unlikely to see any dramatic policy shifts in either domestic or foreign policy--even though he told his supporters that the country had--what else these days?--"voted for change."
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
anyone check the help wanted ads in NZ ?
If they would just overturn all their gun laws in NZ I would be game to move there.
Good on you, Kiwis! Canada and NZ went Right, Australia and the US lurched Left.
I was waiting for somebody to post this.
Wondering what our Kiwi Freepers think about it.
> Wondering what our Kiwi Freepers think about it.
This Kiwi is delighted!
> anyone check the help wanted ads in NZ ?
http://www.seek.co.nz has all the info you need in this regard. Good luck!
> If they would just overturn all their gun laws in NZ I would be game to move there.
Actually, we have amongst the highest per-capita ownership of firearms in the world. Might even be higher than the US (difficult as that might be to believe).
Our gun laws aren’t too different to Canada’s.
interesting listings
Looks like the Maori Party is getting onboard too at least on confidence and supply votes. I’m also impressed by what I’ve read of Nikki Kaye who won what was apparently a fairly reliable Labour seat. NZ’s Sarah Palin? ;)
The Maori Party are very hard-working, focused Members of Parliament. I know Hone Harawira and his extended family quite well. John Key is being very long-sighted by including the Maori Party in his Government: Maori have a legitimate and constitutionally-guaranteed place in our corridors of power, and although Key did not need the Maori Party’s votes to form his coalition government, by co-opting them he keeps the Maori Party out of the Loyal Opposition, making it all the more lonely for Labor and the Green Party (tee-hee-hee!)
Never fear, Key will need the Maori Party’s votes sometime, and he’ll be glad he was far-sighted. In my view, what is good for Maori is almost always what is good for New Zealand: a view not shared by many Pakeha, I suspect. But being objective (as a foreign-born NZer) I’d have to be fair and allow that Maori tend to have the long-term good of the Nation in mind, and they’re not easily distracted by short-term profiteering.
National have a few talented MPs like Nikki Kaye: one of them is Paula Bennett, who was elected in the Waitakere Electorate (the one I’m in) over Lynne Pillay of Labor. It had been a “safe” Labor seat forever, and yet Paula won it with a comfortable 1,000+ vote margin.
This was certainly an exciting election!
It seems a smart move to reduce the size of the opposition. But I have a question: can you explain the difference between the Nationals and Act? They seem very similar.
National is center-right, and has been traditionally pro-free-market. These days there is not very much difference between National and Labor: both have tried to capture the center and have moved away from the edges.
ACT is slightly to the right of National, which is odd because ACT originated as an off-shoot of Labor, under Roger Douglas. They are self-described as “The Liberal Party” — but not in the “liberal” sense that you and I would understand the term. Their main planks tend to be defense, law & order, electoral reform, and welfare reform — essentially dismantling the welfare state. They have also focused on “perk-busting”: removing some of the outrageous perquisites that MPs have arrogated to themselves.
ACT is very much smaller than National. Last government they were down to two seats. This time I believe they have five.
Thanks for the info! It appears that Winston Peters (your version of our CNN broadcaster Lou Dobbs in terms of being populist & nativist?) is out.
Winston Peters is certainly out for the next three years: I don’t count him out permanently, and won’t for as long as he draws breath.
He’s been an interesting animal on our political scene: as you say populist and nativist but also opportunist. He didn’t mind who he had to deal with, so long as the nett result was Winston in a position of power. The rest of his party sort of tagged along and watched, never did much.
He got it really right in the 1990’s with the “Winebox Affair” that he championed. It was an investigation into institutionalized tax fraud and murder that encompassed a who’s who of New Zealand business and government. You can read about it in Ian Wishart’s “The Paradise Conspiracy” and “Lawyers, Guns and Money”.
The stuff that went on would make the Clinton’s blush.
The Winebox Affair was Winston’s one and only real contribution that I can think of. It will be good for him to sit in the Sin Bin for three years.
Wow, just read some stuff online about the “winebox affair” - you’re right, makes Clinton look like a piker.
It would be fair to say that The Winebox Affair is by no means an isolated event. Things like that happen all the time here: they just don’t get to see the light of day.
For added Googling fun, check out “Mr Asia”.
It’s things like this that make me laugh at Americans who claim that we don’t have any “real” crime in NZ, like they have in (insert-your-favorite-US-crime-city). They can be forgiven for being naive because they haven’t got the first clue.
You are probably right; we Yanks assume people are squeaky clean elsewhere in the Angloshpere because we know so little about them.
I see that Murray McCully has got the Foreign Affairs portfolio - what’s he like?
> I understand that immigration is extremely difficult in Australia and new Zealand!
NZ is careful with its immigration, so is Oz. I immigrated in 1994 and had no difficulty at all: I was married to a Kiwi so we followed that pathway thru the process. I arrived on a Visitor’s Permit, applied for and received a Work Permit (good for 1 year, renewable once), renewed it, applied for and received Permanent residency, and ultimately applied for and received Citizenship. NZ Immigration were very friendly and very helpful: they have a process to follow and they do it very carefully, but they aren’t unpleasant while doing so.
In fact, I’d rate NZ Immigration along with NZ Customs and NZ Inland Revenue Department as being our country’s three best “customer service” organizations. Better than anything in the private sector. They go out of their way to make the process enjoyable.
(Make no mistake, tho’ — if you try *really hard* and provoke them to throw the book at you, they will do that too, and they’re very good at it!)
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