Political analysis and commentary shaping the progressive debate in Aotearoa New Zealand, focused on power, policy, and accountability.
All of our prisons in New Zealand are high security in the sense of razor wire, single entry, lots of staff, strong security focus, stab-proof vests and so on. There is an inescapable dehumanisation about our prisons, whether intended or not. They are really expensive to run but not so good at development or rehabilitation, or family contact and job-finding.
Former Police, Corrections, and Justice Minister in the previous John Key government, Judith Collins, has been ridiculed on social media after posting a comment on Twitter that was patently untrue;
It is great that the Government intends paying attention at last to the broken welfare system. But has it left its run too late?
It’s a sad truth that in our daily political discourse the struggle of people on low incomes doesn’t rate much.
A new surge in the price of gold in US dollars would force the Federal Reserve to reverse course and start hiking interest rates and reversing easing once more. Trump would then have the choice of firing the Federal Reserve and forcing his changes, as he hinted at doing in late 2018, or having an election-year recession. This would provoke a political and economic crisis of historic proportions.
THE SHOCK/HORROR expressed at the Christchurch Shooter’s letter from prison is unworthy of a grown-up nation. A bold assertion, to which the cynical will undoubtedly reply: “True – but this is New Zealand we’re talking about!” Beleaguered liberals will chuckle ruefully – and move on. Because who now believes that the shock/horror “deplorables” are in any way redeemable? And, who really cares?
AND SO IT BEGINS, the National Party’s simultaneous descent and ascent. Downwards, into the dark territory of “whatever it takes”. Upwards, into the glare of electoral victory. It’s happening because the party’s present leader has convinced himself that it is only the first movement which makes possible the second.
Does humanity grasp this: the brutal, but inescapable, reality that lies at the heart of the problem within the problem of Climate Change? That to come through the next 100 years, the human species will, somehow, be required to reduce its present population by nine-tenths?
Thomas Hobbes said in the 17th century that if the rule of law breaks down, then the life that it left is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short”. Instead of being a fate we have escaped by democracy, this famous phrase, in the UK at least, is increasingly sounding like political prediction.
On the one hand, attempting to blame every little thing on “The Clintons” and/or some other, further elite conspiracy efforts … as hilarious as it can be, is often overtly ridiculous. On the *other* hand … Jeffrey Epstein somehow managing to kill himself *while on suicide watch* following his previous attempt, allegedly via hanging, suggests that *at minimum* there’s been some almost unbelievable incompetence by his jailers.