Sudden Changes Hint at Panic and Can Be Equally Unpopular

Summary

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IF LAST YEAR was the Government's Samurai Summer, this one is surely the Summer of Mordor. This season's weather has been appalling at ground level, but up in the meteorological heights that the Government occupies it has been even bleaker. And while the back- to-back storms that have battered and flooded the lower half of the North Island have eased, with sunshine on the horizon, Helen Clark's Government is similarly looking more than a little bedraggled but braced for worse political weather to come. Labour's week-opening whirlwind burst of activity to try to regain control of the headlines has been breathtaking. After a week when it was accused of doing too little too late for the Taranaki-Wanganui-Manawatu rural flood victims, when the Prime Minister was widely criticised for acting too slowly to sack a minister caught lying to the media (and the people), and, most significantly, after another poll confirming the National Party's leap-frog over Labour's previously unassailable popularity, Miss Clark has seemingly hit all the panic buttons.

Its controversial programme to close 100 schools in areas of shrinking populations has suddenly been halted with the task half done -- and shelved for five years. It has pledged taxpayer-funded flood aid running to tens of millions of dollars -- although there is sure to be grief about who will qualify and whether insurance- holders will be penalised. It has significantly lifted the minimum wage, and has dropped the eligibility age to widen a state-funded breast-screening programme. It has publicly acknowledged that the Labour Party has fallen badly out of step with the rest of the country on preferential, affirmative action for Maori and in its determination to write reference to the Treaty of Waitangi into all legislation. And it has announced a Cabinet reshuffle.

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Sudden Changes Hint at Panic and Can Be Equally Unpopular

The major change in the Government's senior line-...

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