Word: clark
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...work really hard - 70 or 80 hours a week - and they take a helluva lot of tax from me. But I never seem to see much for it." At this moment, the chill wind feels like a dark foreboding for the nine-year prime ministership of Helen Clark...
...With up to 2.9 million New Zealanders about to vote in the Nov. 8 national election, Clark's Labour government is in strife. Having trailed the John Key-led National Party by as much as 18 points during the campaign, it looks ripe for the kind of electoral execution to which all long-term governments are vulnerable - the kind where voters decide they're sick of the sight of you. Days out from polling, Clark's best hope rests in the vagaries of the country's Mixed Member Proportional voting system, which make it unlikely that either major party will...
...Prime Minister, they will do so largely without relish. Aiming to gauge the nation's mood by traveling the country to speak to men and women from all walks of life, TIME found that while many are fed up with her government, nearly all concede a grudging respect for Clark. "She hasn't dropped a pass," says Stuart Wright, a sheep and potato farmer in Sheffield, west of Christchurch. Like Wright, Ken Arthur, a winegrower in Blenheim at the top of the South Island, wants Labour ousted. But he respects the P.M. as a straight talker. In 2003, Clark declined...
...Sister Other right-leaning voters acknowledge what they see as Clark's Thatcheresque toughness and command of detail. But for many, these traits don't compensate for a government they see as increasingly paternalistic. Something like public outrage erupted in early October over a draft plan requiring that low-pressure shower heads be installed in new homes over a specified size, a trifle in itself but part of a wider narrative broadcast by anti-Clark forces that New Zealand has become a nanny state. It's a perception strongest in rural areas, where many farmers feel suffocated by bureaucracy. Sometimes...
...country's $NZ150 billion economy. Its slide predates the global financial meltdown, with Treasury announcing back on Aug. 5 that the country was in recession. It was around this time that inflation hit an 18-year high and petrol passed the $NZ2-a-litre barrier. Like all shrewd incumbents, Clark has tried to turn bad news to her advantage: "I have the experience, the judgment and the skill set which can carry our country through what is the worst international financial crisis for more than 70 years," she said in a televised debate with Key on Oct. 14. But many...