Political analysis and commentary shaping the progressive debate in Aotearoa New Zealand, focused on power, policy, and accountability.
Avid readers will have picked up last week that I am currently assisting Robyn Hewland, early woman psychiatrist, to write her memoirs. Last week I wrote about equality for women and the #MeToo movement. This week I want to look at sexual abuse and sexual violence.
Gaza-based New Zealand journalist, Julie-Webb-Pullman, who is visiting New Zealand before returning to Gaza next month, has condemned the hypocrisy of New Zealand government policy towards Palestine/Israel.
Unite Union has announced that agreement has been reached with fast food giant McDonald’s that will see tens of thousands of current and former staff receiving payment for miscalculated holiday pay.
Throughout October, Israeli forces carried out a total of 107 Gaza ceasefire violations before finally provoking the firing of a single missile from Gaza, on the last day of that month.
The decision by the Green Party to seek a broad consensus on the so-called Zero-Carbon Act has meant that we have a toothless creation that cannot achieve its goal to radically reduce carbon emissions by 2050.
THE COALITION GOVERNMENT’S new “Culturally Arranged Marriage Visitors Visa” offers a powerful demonstration of multiculturalism at work. It signals to all those persons intending to settle in New Zealand that their traditional cultural practices will not be forbidden or discouraged by the authorities of their prospective new home. Regardless of how jarring those practices might be to the native-born population, official tolerance is guaranteed.
In any civilised society this tweet from the New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs would be an outrage.
In a letter today to the New Zealand Foreign Minister, Winston Peters, the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa is calling on the government to condemn the political assassination of two leaders of Islamic Jihad.
It is often said that when a politician or other public figure says something disparaging about a particular group, that the weight and impact of their words is not only in what they’ve said … but also what further statements, what further actions it tacitly allows, invites, and encourages.
If the members of Generation X and the Millennial Generation really want to improve their lifestyles, then they should force up the price of complicity in class oppression by threatening to embrace or, even better, adopt for a generation or two, the precepts of Marx’s class struggle.