Political analysis and commentary shaping the progressive debate in Aotearoa New Zealand, focused on power, policy, and accountability.
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.
Thank you for your invitation to join you in Chile on 8th March, at my own expense, for the signing of the resurrected Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement that your own party in Opposition said was seriously flawed.
As the ‘left’ moves to the centre, I find myself on the further margins of the spectrum. Here I am, left of Labour and greener than the Greens, looking for everyday solutions as well as system level change to solve the problems of our era. I can’t see how incremental and conservative capitalist prescriptions can ever be the remedy for environmental collapse, economic inequality or social exclusion at their present scale.
On Wednesday, 21 February this year, Israeli Army bulldozers arrived to destroy the the home of Atta Jaber and lay waste to what was left of the land that had been in his family for 800 years.
I think having a Maori political leader is a very positive and hopeful step only if that leader uses his position and influence to dispel destructive stereotypes about Māori – not perpetuate them.
Despite stopping further sales, housing remains one area where the government remains committed to almost a completely market-based solution. For various reasons in this country, housing has become a speculative nightmare with prices beyond what working people can afford.
SOMETIMES the mask of politics-as-it-is-officially-presented slips and the true face of the political class is revealed. A particularly serious slippage occurred quite recently in a Spinoff feature about “partisan lobbyists”.
