Sir Roger Douglas says National knows exactly what it has to do. Photo / Dean Purcell

Sir Roger Douglas says National knows exactly what it has to do. Photo / Dean Purcell

For anyone old enough to remember footless tights the first time around, Maurice Williamson's recent explanation of the National Party's broadband policy was somewhat surreal.

After much internal debate, the MP told the Business Herald last month, National had decided the telecommunications market had failed New Zealand. The solution? Think Big and borrow $1.5 billion to help to subsidise a new high-speed broadband network.

"It is a change in the view of National," he conceded. "A lot of the debates of the 90s were about what can we sell. This is a debate about what we can actually invest in and I think that's a really refreshing change."

Refreshing? Having an ice-bucket tipped over your head is "refreshing" but this, after all, is an MP who was once touted as a potential defector to Act.

Speaking of Act, just what part of "no, thanks" does Roger Douglas not understand? Seemingly spurred by National's lurch to the left under former investment banker John Key, the man some see as the real Mad Dog is back on the hustings, providing palliative care for the ailing Association of Consumers and Taxpayers, in the hope that it might somehow make it beyond the next election in just a few months' time.

The Labour Party, meanwhile, seems to have rediscovered its roots. Apparently encouraged by its foray into the airline and banking industries, it has renationalised rail, and outraged private investors with its last-minute changes to the overseas investment rules to prevent the Canadians buying into Auckland Airport.


It has finally smashed our biggest corporate into smithereens (well, into three separate divisions, anyway), while at the same time agreeing to hand over $700 million to our booming food and farming sector so it can spend more on R&D.

Not that anyone, except Rodney Hide and perhaps Roger Kerr, seems to be complaining. Even the old bastions of the establishment aren't sticking up for "rich pricks" any more. In an editorial on May 7, the Dominion Post opined that Labour MP Shane Jones "reflected the views of many" when he told Parliament that Sir Michael Fay and David Richwhite were responsible for destroying our rail transport industry. "Neither man should have the gall to return to New Zealand," the paper squeaked.

Leaving aside the fact that Fay, at least, already returned some time ago, what on earth is what is left of the business sector - no pun intended - to make of all this?

"I think there is often a life cycle of particular approaches to particular problems," is how public law maven Mai Chen diplomatically puts it. "Look at the building sector - we had a pretty deregulated situation, then we had leaky homes, and now we've got an avalanche of regulation. It's regulatory diarrhoea."