Chris Trotter

SIMON BRIDGES may be right. He’s clearly betting everything National has on the New Zealand electorate being neither outraged nor offended by his behaviour.

MEMO TO THE Prime Minister’s Office: Please tell Stephen Mills to stay off the radio. When the boss of Labour’s polling agency, UMR, comes across on RNZ’s Nine to Noon “Politics” slot (14/10/19) as considerably further to the right than both Kathryn Ryan and Matthew Hooton then, believe me, it’s time to tell your pollster, very politely, to stick to his stats.

A MURDEROUS, ANTISEMITIC, terrorist attack, live-streamed, in chilling imitation of the Christchurch Massacres, has shocked and dismayed the German nation. Proof, if any was needed, that strict legal prohibitions against the iconography and language of far-right extremism confers no special protection against the deadly designs of its adherents.

WHY ARE RETURNING OFFICERS coming out so strongly for on-line voting?

  THE MAORI NATIONALIST assault upon the historical meaning and reputation of Captain James Cook is entirely understandable. With his…

FEW SPECTACLES are more tragic than those in which a community destroys its core values in the misguided belief that it is upholding them.

TRY THIS on for size. The Aliens arrive.

AS THE “YEAR OF DELIVERY” draws to its end, what have Jacinda Ardern and her colleagues delivered us? Well, they have not delivered 100,000 affordable houses. Nor have they brought Climate Change to a shuddering halt. Child poverty has not been ended. Our rivers and streams remain unswimmable. New Zealand’s farmers have yet to assume a measure of responsibility commensurate with their contribution to anthropogenic global warming. The number of ticks on Jacinda’s “To Do List” is far from impressive.

New Zealand was once known as the social laboratory of the world; why should it not turn itself into the planet’s climate laboratory? Directing our energy outward is the only viable survival strategy available to New Zealanders. There are no walls that we could possibly hope to build, high enough to keep us safe.

THE SUPREME COURT of the United Kingdom has struck down Boris Johnson’s prorogation of Parliament and some people are cheering.