Christine Rose

In 2016, Stuart Nash proposed a ten-year moratorium on commercial fishing within waters 50m deep. He said the video monitoring programme needed to be rolled out more quickly, that the (National) government wasn’t doing enough. By 2017 after the formation of the Labour – New Zealand First coalition government, he has suggested doing away with electronic monitoring altogether and has proposed nothing credible or timely in its place.

As the ‘left’ moves to the centre, I find myself on the further margins of the spectrum. Here I am, left of Labour and greener than the Greens, looking for everyday solutions as well as system level change to solve the problems of our era. I can’t see how incremental and conservative capitalist prescriptions can ever be the remedy for environmental collapse, economic inequality or social exclusion at their present scale.

The ANZ is our biggest bank, with around one million Kiwi customers and 31.3% of the market. The ANZ lending business is worth about $72.35 billion, with net loans worth $117.24 billion. That reflects staggering wealth to have in the hands and at the mercy of overseas banks.

It’s true that capitalism has failed low income earners who live in poverty at one of the highest rates in the developed world, and indeed, all over the world. It’s failed the children who live in those low-income homes. It’s failed the homeless. But capitalism has also failed our rivers, our oceans, biodiversity, future generations and our atmosphere.

War is great for business. About $1.68 trillion worth of business globally as of 2015. Defence market reports say global…

Mahatma Ghandi said the true measure of any society is its treatment of its most vulnerable members. Others say inequality is the measure of fairness in society. The massive levels of inequality in modern capitalist societies reflect badly by any measure. Egalitarian New Zealand is a myth.