An Open Letter To Winston Peters
Kia ora Mr Peters,
With the counting of Special Votes, a clearer picture has emerged as to what voters in this country have chosen. The majority have voted against National and it’s allies.
Setting the Agenda
Political analysis and commentary shaping the progressive debate in Aotearoa New Zealand, focused on power, policy, and accountability.
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Observations on the 2017 Election campaign… (tekau)
At 2PM today (7 October 2017), the Electoral Commission announced the final vote results, including some 446,287 special votes cast (17% of total votes cast).
As a result, National has lost two seats and the Greens and Labour each pick up one seat in Parliament. The Green’s Golriz Ghahraman and Labour’s Angie Warren-Clark enter Parliament on the Party List.
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Once Upon a Time in Mainstream Media Fairytale Land…
You can feel mainstream media’s frustration with the news-vacuum created by the two week period necessary to count the approximately 384,072 (15% of total votes) Special Votes that were cast this election.
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Adults In The Room?
WHAT’S GOING ON, JACINDA? Why has the former Labour Finance Minister, Sir Michael Cullen, and Helen Clark’s former Press Secretary, Mike Munro, been invited on to your team of negotiators with NZ First? And, while we’re on the subject of Labour’s Rogernomics Generation, why was Annette King sent to ride shotgun alongside you for the duration of the election campaign?
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Bryan Gould To Labour: This Is No Time For “Conventional Answers”
BIG UPS TO BRYAN GOULD. Perhaps anticipating a disappointing choice from NZ First on 12 October, the former Vice-Chancellor of Waikato University has put the rhetorical boot into Labour’s fiscal and monetary caution.
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Dave Macpherson: Strong bullying/suicide links?
Two current Radio NZ stories in quick succession have shown the strong link between some suicides and bullying. In one, an MSD investigator wrongly told a beneficiary she had been overpaid $22,000 and that she would be prosecuted to recover the money – less than a day later she was a suicide victim, yet the MSD shortly afterwards told the victim’s mother that the claimed debt was incorrect, and it was eventually waived.
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Evolving a Multi-Party Democracy
Mainstream journalists continue to struggle with multiparty governance. And the amplified rhetoric resulting from their struggle creates doubts amongst the captive consumers of mainstream media. While we wait for the votes to be counted in our 2017 election, now is a good time to review the evolution of party-based government in New Zealand, and to consider the impediments to progress towards mature multiparty democracy.
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The Difference Between Jeremy And Jacinda, Is The Difference Between Government And Governance
Even if Winston Peters deigns to make her our next Prime Minister, Jacinda has made it very clear that she hasn’t the slightest intention of frightening the Establishment’s horses; and that her own – and Labour’s – determination to provide good and responsible governance to all New Zealanders, from the top down, will not falter.
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Theo Spierings: An Icon of Inequality
Mahatma Ghandi said the true measure of any society is its treatment of its most vulnerable members. Others say inequality is the measure of fairness in society. The massive levels of inequality in modern capitalist societies reflect badly by any measure. Egalitarian New Zealand is a myth.
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The Last Thing Progressive New Zealand Needs Is A Coalition Of Contradictions
IT IS POSSIBLE to want something too much. The New Zealand progressive community’s hunger for power – so shamelessly on display since Election Night – has led it to treat Labour, the Greens and NZ First as unambiguously progressive entities capable of working together without fault or friction.