Brief statement from Waikato DHB Board member Dave Macpherson
Dave Macpherson became an Elected Waikato DHB Board member after the DHB killed his son, he is TDBs mental health blogger.
Setting the Agenda
Political analysis and commentary shaping the progressive debate in Aotearoa New Zealand, focused on power, policy, and accountability.
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Indonesia’s political system has ‘failed minorities’ – like West Papuans
“Violence on post-Suharto Indonesia, from Aceh to West Papua, from Kalimantan to the Moluccas, is evidence that Java-centric nationalism is unable to distribute power fairly in an imagined Indonesia. It has created unnecessary paranoia and racism among Indonesian migrants in West Papua.” – Andreas Harsono
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Recognising Hate Speech When You See It.
In that universe, Ghahraman would be calming down her more zealous followers: warning them that unreasoning zealotry is always the problem – never the solution. She would also be reassuring them that New Zealand’s statute books already contain plenty of legal remedies against dangerously hateful expression.
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Dr Liz Gordon – The speed of school reform
Under the third Labour government, Roger Douglas ran a reform process of the Blitzkrieg variety. Essentially the idea (which came from the Right in the US) was to carry out state sector reform (and destruction) so quickly and so seamlessly that it would take the public years to understand what had happened.
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Paying too much to keep us warm?
The Winter Energy Payment (WEP) provides older people extra income to keep warm during the winter. It sounds kind, but is it a glaring example of wasteful expenditure and poor allocation of scarce resources?
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“We’re All Behind You.”
THE 720,000 SUBSCRIBERS to the “Neighbourly” social media platform recently received a letter from the Chief Human Rights Commissioner, Paul Hunt. In it he offers advice on how to call out racist behaviour and who to call if you think it crosses the line.
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Closing the gap between the minimum wage and the living wage
As the minimum wage gets closer to the living wage the goal of cementing in a living wage rate (or preferably the two-thirds of the average wage goal) to be written into our collective employment agreements becomes more realistic.
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US-Saudi-Israeli State Sponsors Of Errorism Against Iran
I’m pretty sure that if *anybody’s* guilty of the whole aiding and abetting “terrorism as a tool of statecraft”, and generally being a “state sponsor of terror”, it’d be the Americans.
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The Multiple Faces Of Radicalisation
The readiness to withhold empathy from those whose values the radical extremist abhors has always been the first step on the staircase that leads to terrorist atrocity. The second is the radical’s hate and rage when those deemed to hold abhorrent values refuse to be silent.
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On Bolsonaro’s Ahistorical Naziism
Several days ago, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro made headlines for his visit to a Holocaust memorial in Israel. Not so much for the visit itself, of course – it’s the sort of thing that is almost de rigueur for newly minted world leaders heading to that particular country on political pilgrimages. But rather, for his ensuing statement upon exiting the remembrance center, about those archetypal villains of the narrative of the 20th Century, the Nazis. Namely, that they were of the “left”.