I remember meeting Helen Clark for the first time when I was an undergraduate student at Otago. She was just six years older than me, but I could tell, even back then, in the early 1980s, that this junior political studies lecturer from Auckland was going to play a major role in New Zealand’s political history. I defy anyone to watch Swarbrick’s performance on last Sunday’s Q+A and not reach exactly the same conclusion.
Calculating the harm done by the American sugar industry is difficult. But the number of people who, since the 1960s, have had their lives cut short by heart attacks, strokes, and the deadly consequences of undiagnosed and untreated Type 2 Diabetes, must run into the tens-of-millions.
JOHN KEY’S DECISION to suspend the passage of the Kermadec Ocean Sanctuary legislation marks an important turning point in the life of his government.
Aucklanders elected representatives turned out to be equally mischaracterised. Far from being the people’s democratic tribunes, Auckland’s elected councillors proved to be little more than powerless pawns. The real game was controlled by legally cocooned CCO boards of directors – over whom the so-called “Governing Body” (including the Mayor) exercised no effective control whatsoever.
Why are we surprised and offended when the NZ Rugby Union produces a report which utterly fails to deliver even the most rudimentary justice to the young woman whose experiences called it forth?
THE DEEP ANXIETY of the “Free Trade” lobby was on full display in this morning’s NZ Herald (7/9/16). Fran O’Sullivan, that most indefatigable of the Herald’s free trade advocates, was so moved by the uncertainty currently surrounding the ratification of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) that she devoted a good chunk of her business column to the global fight against protectionism.
Something in me hopes that the boys and girls of the Parliamentary Press Gallery never make the journey to Avondale, or its equivalents in the towns and cities of New Zealand. I don’t want them to send camera crews to Geraldine and Dannevirke to record the packed-out halls for Winston Peters, or the numbers signing-up to NZ First after every meeting. Why?
IS IT TOO SOON to pronounce judgement upon ESRA? Economic & Social Research Aotearoa has only just been launched. So, surely, we should give it a little time to show us what it can do? Except that we already know what ESRA will do, because we already know what ESRA is.
Desperate times have called forth desperate measures. If the politicians won’t respond to the pleas of their immigrant communities, then perhaps they’ll react to some good old-fashioned competition.
The key question of Robertson’s FoW inquiry has been: What must Labour do to guarantee employers a steady supply of productive workers as New Zealand and the rest of the world enters the so-called “Fourth Industrial Revolution”?