The Ex Prime Minister of NZ - the Rt Hon Helen Clark - is now the number three at the United Nations.
I liked Helen Clark as Prime Minister - but I didn't like her government. For such an intelligent and politically savvy woman, she surrounded herself with politicians who completely polarised the NZ public. She was given the nickname of Nanny Helen for her socialist views and wanting to legislate the care of the NZ public - even when they didn't want it LOL.
We had a Finance Minister who did everything he could NOT to help the people out, and he made Helen look like a right dick some of the time because all of us sat around completely scratching our heads at what this guy had on her.
Now - everyone on both sides of the political spectrum believe she'll do an amazing job at the UN and she was supported by a 100% bi-partisan effort to get her elected to the post. She is someone who has a long record of getting done exactly what she sets her mind to and she runs a very tight ship according to all the pollie insiders at Parliament. She will also bring a strong sense of community development and social change ideologies to the post.
From Wiki - a little about Nanny Helen :)
Helen Elizabeth Clark (born 26 February 1950), a former Prime Minister of New Zealand, is the head of the United Nations Development Programme, being appointed unanimously by the 192-member General Assembly.[4] Clark was the 37th Prime Minister of New Zealand during three consecutive terms from 1999 to 2008. She led the Labour Party from 1993 until it lost the 2008 general election. Before resigning from Parliament in April 2009, Clark was Labour's foreign affairs spokeswoman and MP for the Mount Albert electorate which she has held since 1981.[5] Forbes magazine ranked her 20th most powerful woman in the world in 2006.[6]
Helen Clark first gained election to the New Zealand House of Representatives in the 1981 general election as one of four women who entered Parliament on that occasion. In winning the Mount Albert electorate in Auckland, she became the second woman elected to represent an Auckland electorate, and the seventeenth woman elected to the New Zealand Parliament. At the 2005 general election Clark won 66% of the electorate votes, or 20,918 votes with a 14,749 majority.[2] During her first term in the House (1981 - 1984), she became a member of the Statutes Revision Committee. In her second term (1984 - 1987), she chaired the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs and the Select Committee on Disarmament and Arms Control, both of which combined with the Defence Select Committee in 1985 to form a single committee.
Cabinet Minister
In 1987, Clark became a Cabinet Minister in the Fourth Labour Government, led by David Lange (1984-1989), Geoffrey Palmer (1989-1990) and Mike Moore (1990), first as Minister of Housing and as Minister of Conservation, then as Minister of Health and later as Deputy Prime Minister.
Clark served as Minister of Conservation from August 1987 until January 1989 and as Minister of Housing from August 1987 until August 1989. She became Minister of Health in January 1989 and Minister of Labour and Deputy Prime Minister in August 1989. She chaired the Cabinet Social Equity Committee and became a member of the Cabinet Policy Committee, of the Cabinet Committee on Chief Executives, of the Cabinet Economic Development and Employment Committee, of the Cabinet Expenditure Review Committee, of the Cabinet State Agencies Committee, of the Cabinet Honours Appointments and Travel Committee and of the Cabinet Domestic and External Security Committee.
Leader of the Opposition
From October 1990 until December 1993 Clark held the posts of Deputy Leader of the Opposition, Opposition spokesperson for Health and Labour and member of the Social Services Select Committee and of the Labour Select Committee. After the National Party won the 1993 general election with a majority of one seat, Clark challenged Mike Moore for the leadership of the parliamentary Labour Party and became Leader of the Opposition on 1 December 1993. She led the Opposition during the National-led Governments of Jim Bolger (1990-1997) and Jenny Shipley (1997-1999).
Prime Minister
As Prime Minister, Helen Clark was a member of the Council of Women World Leaders, an International network of current and former women presidents and prime ministers whose mission is to mobilize the highest-level women leaders globally for collective action on issues of critical importance to women and equitable development.
Social policy
Clark's government brought in significant changes to the New Zealand welfare system, such as introducing child tax credits in the Working for Families package. Her government also changed industrial-relations law and raised the minimum wage six times in as many years. Changes have also occurred in tertiary-education financing, with the abolition of interest on student-loans – firstly for those currently studying, then extended to all borrowers living in New Zealand and to education in general with the proposed implementation of the Schools Plus policy. Other changes introduced during Clark's term in office include legal provision for civil unions, the introduction of 14 weeks' paid parental leave, and the Property (Relationships) Act, which treats property division after the breakup of de facto relationships the same as after the breakup of legal marriages.[13] Some of these measures, though initiated by other members of parliament or political parties, nevertheless gained the government support.
Economic growth
Some commentators have praised Helen Clark (along with the Minister of Finance Michael Cullen) for overseeing a period of sustained and stable economic growth, with an increase in employment that saw a gradual lowering of the unemployment rate to 3.4% in late 2007 (the lowest in 22 years).[14] Although her critics acknowledge these factors, many such critics maintain that the growth has come about as the result of wider economic factors, and that increases in the sickness benefit have caused (at least in part) the decrease in unemployment. On the other hand, total beneficiary numbers (a measurement that includes both unemployment- and sickness- beneficiaries) shrunk during Helen Clark's time in office. Other economic concerns for Clark's government included a persistently high current-account deficit and an unofficial poverty-rate of about twenty percent.When the New Zealand Labour Party came into office as part of a coalition following the 1999 election, Clark became the second female Prime Minister of New Zealand and the first to have won office at an election. (The previous Prime Minister, Jenny Shipley took office as the result of a mid-term party-leadership challenge.) During her term in office women have held a number of prominent offices in New Zealand, such as the Queen, Governor-General, Speaker of the House of Representatives and Chief Justice.
Clark was Prime Minister and Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage from 1999 until 2008. She also had ministerial responsibility for the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service and for Ministerial Services. Her particular interests included social policy and international affairs.
As Leader of the Labour Party, Clark negotiated the formation of successive minority coalition governments. The first such coalition (1999-2002) linked the Labour Party with the Alliance Party (1999). The coalition with the Alliance Party collapsed in 2002. In consequence, Clark called an early election and then went into coalition with Jim Anderton's Progressive Party, a spin-off of the Alliance Party (2002, with parliamentary confidence and supply coming from United Future and a "good-faith" agreement with the Green Party). In 2005, following the election of that year, the Labour Party and the Progressive Party renewed their coalition, gaining supply-and-confidence support from both New Zealand First and United Future in exchange for giving the leaders of those parties ministerial positions outside Cabinet.
| “ | I think it's inevitable that New Zealand will become a republic and that would reflect the reality that New Zealand is a totally sovereign-independent 21st century nation 12,000 miles from the United Kingdom | ” |
| — Prime Minister Helen Clark, [9] | ||
Clark, like some other MPs and some New Zealanders (including some Labour Party members), supports New Zealand becoming a republic.
Clark's term in office saw a number of alleged moves towards a republic, under her government's policy of building national identity. Examples include the abolition of appeals to the Privy Council and the setting up of the Supreme Court of New Zealand, the abolition of titular Knighthood and Damehood honours, and the abolition of the title "Queen's Counsel" (replaced by "Senior Counsel").
On 24 July 2008 Clark passed Sir Robert Muldoon to become New Zealand's sixth-longest-serving Prime Minister, and on 27 October 2008 she passed Edward Stafford's combined terms to become the 5th longest-serving Prime Minister.
On 8 February 2008, Clark became the longest serving leader of the Labour Party in its history (although some dispute exists over when Harry Holland became leader), having served for 14 years, 69 days,[10][i], by 26 October 2008 she had passed Holland's longest possible term and her position as longest serving Labour Party leader was put beyond doubt. Clark conceded defeat following the 2008 general election to John Key and announced that she was standing down as Labour Party leader.[11] On 11 November 2008 Clark was replaced by Phil Goff as leader of the Labour Party.[12]
No comments:
Post a Comment