Political analysis and commentary shaping the progressive debate in Aotearoa New Zealand, focused on power, policy, and accountability.
I’m not quite sure what was going through the head of the academic at the University of Auckland who sought to coerce a Muslim student into grasping hands with him, although for him to then go to the subsequent effort of attempting to run the poor girl through the University’s official complaints process for alleged sexual discrimination presumably suggests that it was quite some level of (faux) outrage.
The bill has been promoted as providing the option for a terminally ill person who is suffering intolerably to get assistance to end his or her life in a dignified manner at a time of their choosing. It isn’t. Seymour’s Bill is much broader with wording which opens a wide spectrum of people suffering from a wide variety of conditions to the scope of the proposed legislation.
In September 2010, before the death of Christie Marceau, 20% of people in prison were on remand, that is being held before their case was heard. As a result of changed legislation and pressure from the no bail lobby, that figure is now 30%.
As I absorbed Forbes’words, it hit home to me as it hadn’t quite before, that believing in the value of intersectionality and actually internalising it to the point where we regularly seek out—and follow through on—ways to put it into practice, are two distinct stages. And despite all of the goodwill in the world, getting from the first to the second and then staying there requires more conscious forethought, introspection and regular evaluation than would ever spring automatically from tacit agreement with the notion.
New Zealanders haven’t “moved away from representative democracy”, Mr Sutton, representative democracy has been moved away from them. A necessary precaution, lest ordinary people get it into their heads to take on the greatest “power-hungry despot” of them all: the totalitarian ideology we call Neoliberalism.
In the six years to 2017, there were 11,000 cases of migrant exploitation reported to the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE). Of these only 5700 were investigated and 15o prosecuted. The chances of getting caught and prosecuted for migrant exploitation are infinitesimally small. Exploitative and abusive employers just laugh all the way to the bank.
Anyone seized with the notion that the Nats new leadership team might actually make a serious effort to face up to the enormous challenges confronting New Zealand and the world should now un-seize themselves. Adams has made it very clear that National will be governing, as it has always done, for the only New Zealanders who have ever counted for anything in their political universe – farmers and businessmen.
To anyone not already sold on neoliberalism, the answers to those questions are blindingly obvious. Gouwland’s indignation is, however, a useful pointer to just how much reliance employers now place on the agencies of the state to defend the “reforms” of the 1980s and 90s from any attempt to roll them back.
Not to be put off by the years-long public debate about this country leading youth suicide statistics from the wrong end, Commissioner Kevin Allan has bravely gone where no-one employed by the previous Government had hitherto dared to tread – he has actually (wait for it…) recommended a 10% reduction in suicides target! That’s correct – not zero, not halving it, not even the mild 20% reduction that the current Health Minister suggested while in opposition – but a nice, fat, round 10%.
Avid readers of this blog (such as there are) should know that my three current topmost concerns are gender equality, education and justice. And, just for once, real political progress has begun (perhaps just a stake in the ground) on all three this week.