Closing the Gaps

Does anybody remember Closing the Gaps? You know the Labour Government plan to eliminate the differences between Maori and Pakeha in health, wealth and other things. Well in spite of the government changing the name and distancing themselves from it, the program was remarkably successful and spread involuntarily across nearly all areas of state action.
Maori unemployment is at record lows and the life expectancy gap between Maori and Pakeha males is now less than between all males and all females, suggesting a coming new theme of positive discrimination in favour of men in health expenditure. That’ll be interesting to watch out for. Have the girls in power got the appetite for such a policy and could Brash bring himself to go ahead of a lady even if in a queue to see a urologist?
Somehow they managed to close the gaps between the two main parties at the same time, although it is not widely believed that this was an intentional policy move. That gap was almost gone by lunchtime as the saying goes.
The gap between the left testicle and the new right one has also narrowed catching Winston in a pincer move the likes of which Tauranga has not seen before.
The gap between Maori and Pakeha at Orewa seems to be about 8 months from Brash to Harawira speeches. Brethren closed their own gap on the rest of us then used that to close the gap to Labour while opening one with the Destiny Church with whom they share a gap to reality, a bit like the Greens.
The Greens closed the gap with the 5% threshold in a daring move to emulate the disappearing Act of Rodney Hide who got found by so many people in Epsom that he has come out to defy the pollsters, whose gaps went either way on alternative days, creating something of a credibility gap for them.
Voters now face a gap before we find out who actually won the election. The PM faces the task of closing the gap between the minor party’s expectations and what the main party can swallow. This could need some change in the gap between what the two main parties offered in tax relief, which in itself closed a long way from what was on offer on budget night. There are a few unexplained gaps in the student loans policy that will need more light on them at some stage too.
A worrying gap that has been exposed and which I have written about before, is the gap between town and country, which has certainly showed up this time. Not just the red/blue lines separating urban from rural but really odd things like where the Greens get their votes from, urban areas? It just doesn’t make sense that the Greens are not popular in the countryside where there still is an environment, but have good support in the cities where the environment has been paved over. I don’t get it!
The emerging coalition will actually have to address the town and country gap and hopefully we can look forward to seeing less lawyers and more farmers on government advisory boards and other central parts of keeping the nation going forward.
One of the hardest things to find is anyone who admits to voting in favour of MMP. Had my dad known it was based on the way Germans do things, he would have re-declared war. To find that this system has tied up two countries at once is bizarre.
Brash is possibly wishing he hadn’t highlighted his gap between his understanding of things Maori and coming to turns with the Maori party. The Greens are determined to close the gap between themselves and the cabinet table but not only United Future find this a problem.
Meanwhile the rest of us are worried about the closing gap between our incomes and the price of fuel. Given that the fuel price shot up after the New Orleans flood, has anyone heard about whether the billion dollar gap had something to do with Kyoto and hasn’t the weather been rotten since that blasted election.
When will it end?
WAYNE BROWN