Political analysis and commentary shaping the progressive debate in Aotearoa New Zealand, focused on power, policy, and accountability.
Members of the Christchurch Progressive Network will attend todays Christchurch City Council Meeting from 8.30am to protest the proposal to spend an extra $220 million on a rugby stadium ahead of rebuilding council rental housing destroyed in the earthquakes.
NEW ZEALAND GOT POPULISM early. If you count Rob Muldoon as this country’s first no-holds-barred populist, then the start-date is 1974. If, as most people do, you date the rise of populism in New Zealand from the advent of the NZ First Party in 1993, then our populist-in-chief is Winston Peters – and he’s been kicking around for a quarter-century.
What should have been big news here, had the culprit been any state other than Israel, whose brutal acts of…
There has been a spate of commentary by male media people recently going on and on about how Jacinda needs to become a “tougher” Prime Minister. The two New Zealand role models often cited as ‘tough’ are Robert Muldoon and Helen Clark.
The rights of working people will thus be traded back and forth like chips on the political poker table. Neither National nor Labour are really interested in hearing how workers themselves would prefer the modern workplace to be organised, or in ways that the twenty-first century economy, with all its technological miracles, might be so regulated as to ensure that the benefits of robotics and artificial intelligence accrue to the whole population – and not just the shareholders of the transnational corporations who own the patents.
The headline tells the end of the story following an attempt by myself and others to take a Norwegian fishing boat loaded with medical supplies to the Palestinian territory of Gaza.
A seasoned professional like Jane Patterson, working for the most respected media outlet in this country, should know better. Dumping on a person when they are down and out, at their most vulnerable, has no other name: bullying.
Taking a view on 1080 is almost guaranteed to cause disagreement with at least half your friends. Indeed, it seems nothing causes strange cleavages across the political spectrum, like talking about 1080. But the subject is like a spectre – and if we don’t talk about it fundamental disagreements will never get reconciled; and we let untruths continue, misunderstandings prevail, malintentions inform.
In an age of tracking by online corporations like Google and Facebook; by the apps in our smartphones; by CCTVs in buildings, streets, offices, etc – we have reached a surveillance state far surpassing anything envisioned by George Orwell.
GEORGE LIFTED HIS HAND in greeting as Martyn entered the bar. At two o’clock on a rainy afternoon in early September the place was virtually empty.
