Setting the Agenda

The alternative to state funding of infrastructure is, of course, to fund it by taking on massive amounts of private debt. On this issue, at least, Tamihere has some solid points to make. In his own colourful turn of phrase, Goff and the Auckland Council have “maxed-out the credit card”. If the City is to preserve its international credit rating of AA, then it simply cannot afford to take on any more debt. What’s more, the rest of the country cannot afford for Auckland to take on any more debt.

The dangers of giving the angry and ignorant their own media outlet was demonstrated most powerfully in the early 1790s, just as the French Revolution was entering the phase known to history as “The Reign of Terror”.

JACINDA ARDERN HAILS her government as the most committed to delivering progressive change since the mid-1970s. In other words, since the Third Labour Government of Norman Kirk and Bill Rowling (1972-1975). Before assessing whether or not the Prime Minister’s claim is true, it is worth considering what on earth possessed her to make it.

HOW VERY DIFFERENT the university campuses of 2019 are from the campuses of 1981. Thirty-eight years is a long time. There will be lecturers and tutors on campus today who weren’t even born in the year the Springboks came to tour. To those whose job it is to look back into the darker episodes of our past, New Zealand must seem like another country. Just how much that other country differed from the New Zealand of today was driven home to me while listening to RNZ journalist Katie Scotcher’s story on this morning’s (24/6/19) edition of Morning Report.