Political analysis and commentary shaping the progressive debate in Aotearoa New Zealand, focused on power, policy, and accountability.
The organisation widely known as WINZ, but in reality Work and income, has been in the media again. There is widespread acknowledgement, even by the Minister, that Work and Income is not operating as it should, causing distress and lack of entitlements for thousands of people, many of whom are living below the poverty line.
WHAT HAPPENED this morning (9/5/18) has yet to be fully understood by the peoples of the world. Upon learning of President Trump’s decision to pull the United States out of the Iran Nuclear Deal, the temptation to simply roll one’s eyes and shake one’s head was hard to resist. Many would have recalled Trump’s decision to pull the US out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement and assumed his latest move was in a similar vein.
When the strange events of the World fashion label crashed into my radio yesterday I may have snickered. On the one hand I thought how cheeky, but on the other the House of G shopper in me had little sympathy for the people paying a hundy for a fifteen dollar T. However by the time I heard Dame Denise L’Estrange-Corbet talking to John Campbell I started to lose my shit.
Three months after taking office, the Labour/NZ First/Green Government announced an Inquiry into this country’s Mental Health services – after the previous National Government insisted for three years it was ‘on top of’ the issue, including New Zealand’s world record level of youth suicides, nationwide staffing crises in the sector, and fast-growing lack of confidence in the service from most communities.
EMMANUEL MACRON will be hoping that Mark Twain was wrong about history. In the French President’s ears, the celebrated American novelist’s famous observation that although history does not repeat itself, it sometimes rhymes, can hardly be reassuring.
It is stupid of the government to spend tens of millions on motel accommodation for homeless families when we have 33,000 empty homes in Auckland.
Last month in Gaza, a boy playing soccer near the al-Bureij refugee camp was shot by Israeli soldiers. The wound inflicted was so severe that he has since had to have his leg amputated. On 19 April, Doctors Without Borders, also known as Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) medical teams reported extraordinarily large wounds being inflicted among protesters by Israeli Army snipers, causing terrible destruction of bones and soft tissue, with huge exit wounds as large as a fist.
THE SPEED at which the Right is mutating is nowhere more evident than in Donald Trump’s America. One has only to examine the tensions within the American Republican Party to get some measure of its disarray. In spite of controlling all three branches of the federal government, the Republicans have never looked more fractious. Fewer and fewer on the right are convinced that politics-as-usual is any longer capable of delivering the changes they seek.
In Arizona, the rate of incarceration is six times what it is here, at 1200 per 100,000 of population. The main reasons for this are the ‘war on drugs’ and also the length of sentences given, often for quite minor crimes. Women are also jailed for prostitution, which increases the female numbers.
There are times when National’s opposition to the Coalition government’s new policies leaves one shaking their head in utter dismay. Jami-Lee Ross – a notorious union-basher and unrepentant enemy of workers – shedding crocodile tears for the poor of this country, is not a pretty sight…