Guest Blogs & Sponsored Posts

Women holding out for gender equality in Parliament after this election are likely to be disappointed.  The main mechanism for achieving gender equity within parties is the party list, and most of the parties that will do well in 2017 are far from gender equal. There are currently 38 women in parliament, and the outlook for doing much better is poor.

Jacinda’s speech on Sunday was one of the most significant speeches in my political life and dare I say it, the life of this country.

Some ad-hoc adventures I’ve had over the last few weeks.

CIA torture whistleblower John Kiriakou was recruited from the high school he taught Jared Leto at. In the decades to follow, he travelled the world, recruited other spies in turn, and oversaw operations that captured Al Qaeda militants and sent them to Guantanamo Bay. Trained to keep secrets, there was one he couldn’t live with – his government was torturing people. Eventually, he shared what he knew with his fellow countrymen. Tonight, he will share it with New Zealand.

“British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson says he’s comfortable with the UK selling billions of dollars’ worth of arms to Saudi Arabia, which have been used to kill thousands of civilians in Yemen.” The quotation is from a The Nation Press Release , about a Lisa Owens  interview with Boris Johnson held on 29 July this year.  

Now that the dust is settling on the Turei resignation, it might be time to have a dispassionate look at why she had quit as leader of the Greens.

Every settlement with Iwi includes a clause stating that fresh water remains unresolved, yet Chris Finlayson is out blowing racist dog whistles pretending that this reopens Treaty litigation. We wouldn’t be in this position in the first place if National hadn’t forced the issue by selling off half our hydropower generating energy companies. Labour will clean up their mess by showing real leadership with all stakeholders in water.

Let’s cut to the chase. I’m getting a little bit tired of commentators asking where Labour Party policy is. We’ve been putting out policies consistently for the past couple of months and I’m proud of the policies that Labour have been coming out with.