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The trouble with schoolyard bullies is; sooner or later the smaller kids catch up. And as Great Britain and France found out: EMPIRES DIE. 

The latest offer of 2200 square kilometres of land around Taranaki for the controversial process of hydraulic fracturing for oil and gas, or ‘fracking’ deserves attention. Green MP Chloe Swarbrick explained to her followers that this under the current law this was an administrative decision, while Energy Minister Megan Woods was quick to note that among the offer’s benefits was that it didn’t include offshore oil and gas. But why frack now?

Is our government serious about Climate Change or not?

As a former teacher let me be clear I’m 100% behind our educators in their efforts to get better pay and conditions.

So even at the time of announcing the death of neoliberalism the Prime Minister knew her Party was going to keep the economic philosophy it had introduced in 1984 on life support

The fact that over several years New Zealand Trade and Enterprise (NZTE) – the government agency responsible for economic development- encouraged China’s largest Water Bottling company to come to our country and plunder one of our most vital resources is testimony to how entrenched neoliberalism is in government departments.

OK.. so far we have had the Tax Working Group review and the government rejected it’s key recommendation that there should be a capital gains tax in some form in order to address our growing problem of inequality.

What in particular I find disturbing, is the penchant of police (and other government agencies) to use private investigators to conduct enquiries which are by statue, attributed to different government departments.   This is tantamount to some (invariably) poorly educated self-styled James Bond, given the right to look in your nickers draw.

Pharmac , our drug buying agency, is taking longer than other countries such as Australia and the UK to approve drugs that can help save people’s lives.

The more I watch the Labour coalition government ignore the recommendations of the working groups it has set up (at considerable cost ) the more it’s clear to me that the Ardern/Roberston government is going to make the inmates of our neoliberal prison a little more comfortable with warmer cells to rent (for example) , but they are not going to open the prison gates.