Political analysis and commentary shaping the progressive debate in Aotearoa New Zealand, focused on power, policy, and accountability.
THE PRINCIPAL OF Hamilton’s Fraser High School, Virginia Crawford, has been roundly criticised for warning her students about the strong correlation between truancy and failure in the world beyond high school. The push-back against Crawford’s address culminated in a walkout by around 100 of Fraser’s senior students on Monday 24 September 2018. But, what if she was telling the truth?
Bridges colleague Mike Sabin, former policeman and former National MP, was at the heart of the moral panic over meth.
I’ve had the chance to read the interim report of the tax working group over the weekend and it’s a sorry, sad document.
The alcohol industry is a large and wealthy one. There is plenty of money to be made. But it is important to understand that it is also a harmful one, as recognised by those women 125 years ago. In principle the law now recognises the right of communities to stand as equals and oppose harmful applications. In practice, wealth, power and lawyer’s writs seek constantly to quash the practice of an equal say.
A member of the Israeli anti-Zionist Breaking the Silence movement, who had served with Israeli Occupation forces in the Palestinian…
The “pocket money” offer to state house tenants wrongly evicted from their homes based on bogus meth testing is deeply cynical and insulting.
Hundreds of millions of dollars are owed to hundreds of thousands of workers and only the top 100 employers are being asked to fix the problem and pay it back.
So now the dust (or, perhaps, some measure of the ‘fog of war’) is starting to clear over Monday’s events in Syria, it’s probably prudent to reflect on what Putin can and should do in response to what has occurred.
New Zealand is by no means exempt from the effects of this unravelling neoliberal hegemony. In this country, also, there is a large colonised population presided over by a distant and hated elite. We, too, have constructed an underclass whose full citizenship and personhood is routinely denied in overcrowded prisons; at the counter of the local WINZ office; and by “unconsciously biased” teachers, medics and cops.
So this suffrage day, celebrate 125 years, mourn those no longer with us as a result of domestic violence, whisper in the ear of men friends who seem to be overly possessive and let’s work towards a violence free future.