Christine Rose

There’s a feeble joke on the internet where someone is arguing for world peace. They want no division between class, ethnicity, religion or other factions. They want unity – so that everyone can hate cyclists together.

This week the wheels came off the ‘Jacinda Ardern express’ with backlash against a perceived pay freeze for public sector…

We were told to ‘stand at dawn’, and ‘to remember them’. We are told they died for our freedom. They…

Writing ironically, Anatole France said there’s a ‘majestic equality’ in the law that prohibits both the rich and the poor…

From 1983-85 more than 1.2 million Ethiopians starved to death. Millions more were displaced, and 200,000 children were orphaned. It…

With all the spectacle, barbarism and unfolding drama it feels like ringside seat at the Colosseum. It’s all stompings, smashings, gunshots, bodies discarded in the bush, hidden in car boots, abandoned, while loved ones despair. Behind the headlines these are real people, perpetrators, victims, families. This is real individual and social harm.

Climate change bites, we’re in a mass extinction event, the pandemic changes the way the world works but the maxim of capitalism to socialise costs and privatise profits continues to hold true. We’re in the stage of the macroeconomic cycle where state intervention follows, sustains and mitigates the effects of neoliberalism.

New Zealand’s 53rd Parliament has been sworn in, and forty maiden speeches are being heard. Personal stories of struggle, exile, intergenerational hardship, journeys to power through education and inspiration.

What’s the optimum Parliamentary term to achieve substantive change? How many Labour-led Governments does it take? What are the right economic conditions? What are the right policy settings? Do we rely on the trickle down from business support to improve worker’s status and pay, or do we support people themselves?

The US election didn’t deliver the resounding rejection of Trumpism we might have hoped for.