Political analysis and commentary shaping the progressive debate in Aotearoa New Zealand, focused on power, policy, and accountability.
As you drive in from Heathrow Airport to London, it is not long until you see, not far away, a tall, dark building. As you come nearer, you see it is the burned-out husk of a multi-storey tower block – Grenfell Tower, which burned almost exactly one year ago, causing the deaths of 72 people.
There is an ample supply of housing overall, but it is poorly distributed in terms of size and price. Increasingly large gains in house values are accruing for the already wealthy while the poorest households suffer excessive rents or lose housing access to housing altogether.
On the morning of 30 March this year, referring to the Great March of Return protest in Gaza and the West Bank, Israel’s Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman tweeted: “Anyone who approaches the border puts his life in jeopardy”.
Wendy’s workers will be gathering outside the Te Atatu Wendy’s store at 7.30pm tonight to explain why they are striking to media and supporters.
“Housing New Zealand’s chief executive Andrew McKenzie refused to be interviewed again today.
He has never given RNZ an interview on his agency’s meth testing policy and his communications manager said he never will.”
CAN A “MOMENTUM” be built in New Zealand? This, in essence, was the question posed by millennial political scholar extraordinaire, Max Harris, to the sixty-or-so leftists who showed up at the Kai Pasifika restaurant on Wednesday night (30/5/18) for the welcome return of Laila Harré’s political “salon”.
In a week when the government has announced hundreds of millions to compensate farmers, many of whom are exceptionally wealthy, for something which appears to be no fault of the government, Housing Minister Phil Twyford is refusing to compensate state house tenants for what amounted to state-sanctioned abuse of vulnerable families by Housing New Zealand.
RECENT EVENTS IN ITALY raise some disturbing questions about the possibility of executing radical policy reversals in this country. While New Zealand’s constitution is a considerably looser affair than Italy’s, it is still worth pondering what might happen here if a newly-elected, about-to-be-sworn-in government was promising to roll back the gains of neoliberalism. Before attempting an answer, however, it is worth re-capping what has happened in Italy.
It’s going to cost the government at least $600 million to clean up this mess over the next decade
WINSTON PETERS had better have something up his sleeve – preferably an ace – or things are going to get messy. Reviewing the latest poll from Newshub/Reid Research, the thought must surely have crossed the NZ First leader’s mind: “Did Jacinda play me?” Because, it is almost impossible to imagine a politician as experienced as Peters agreeing to install such a potentially unstable combination as the Labour-NZF-Green government without first being convinced that Jacinda was genuinely committed to New Zealand’s economic and social transformation.
