Government right to scrap plans to base Singaporean F-15s at Ohakea
There are several reasons to be pleased the government has scrapped plans to base a squadron of Singaporean F-15 jets at Ohakea.
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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MUST READ: Working Towards The Führer
AN “AFFRONT TO DEMOCRACY”, was the State Services Commissioner’s characterisation of the state bureaucracy’s decision to spy on political activists. Few would disagree. That multiple state agencies felt entitled to contract-out the gathering of political intelligence to the privately owned and operated Thompson & Clark Investigations Ltd reveals a widespread antidemocratic disdain for citizens’ rights within the New Zealand public service. The alarming revelations of the State Services’ inquiry raise two very important questions: How did this disdain for democratic norms become so entrenched? And what, if anything, can Jacinda Ardern’s government do to eradicate it?
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Facts refute critics of minimum wage increases – make the minimum wage a living wage
Many Employers and their paid servants in the so-called economics “profession” are already screaming about the proposed minimum wage hike in New Zealand to $20 an hour by April 2021.
Most of their objections amount to the repetition of dogma which they want us to believe is some sort of science. Usually, very few facts are ever advanced to support their views.
I want to look at what actually happened in New Zealand when we had a similar percentage minimum wage rise over a similar period, from 2004 to 2008.
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An Absent Mirror: Why Can’t This Country Produce Its Own Political Television Series?
THE BEST MEASURE of a nation’s maturity is its willingness to submit its biggest challenges to the audit of art. For all their political boorishness, the Aussies can boast a much more favourable auditor’s report than we can. I can’t remember the last time this country committed significant resources to a dramatic examination of its domestic and international political relationships.
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Labour & Green Budget Responsibility Rules are strangling us
The 2019 BPS faithfully follows the Government’s self-imposed Budget Responsibility Rules. Mr Robertson’s fiscal conservatism is apparent both in his fixation on these rules and in the surpluses which are expected over the next five years. These surpluses rise from $1.7 billion in the current financial year to $8.3 billion by 2023.
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Dr Liz Gordon – Making life a little better
This weekend and next I am giving presents out to children at the gate house of, respectively, Christchurch Women’s and Christchurch Men’s prisons. I do this work at the men’s prison every year, on behalf of Pillars, the charity for the children of prisoners. For us, gift giving at the women’s prison is a first.
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Stand for justice and equality from the river to the sea
Subservience to Zionism’s fanatical desire to suppress freedom of speech lies behind CNN’s decision to sack one of its most popular commentators. On 28 November, Marc Lamont Hill addressed the United Nations in support of justice for the Palestinian people. On the following day, the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, CNN announced “Marc Lamont Hill is no longer under contract with CNN”.
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Merry Christmas for Palestine
I’m off today walking Te Araroa – from Cape Reinga to Bluff – carrying this important message on my T-shirt.
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The Salvation Army’s Latest Report: Identifying the Sins – but not the Solutions
THE LATEST “State of Our Communities” report from the Salvation Army exposes a worrying fragility in New Zealand’s social relationships. Behind the happy multicultural façade so beloved of politicians and bureaucrats, racial animosities fester and tensions between competing ethnic communities multiply.
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On Human Rights – Declared, Upheld, And Otherwise
The 10th of December marks the 70th Anniversary of the adoption of the UN Declaration of Human Rights. It’s a pretty interesting document – not least because, if you peruse its contents, it contains an array of “rights” that have largely fallen by the wayside here in modern, neoliberal society.