Political analysis and commentary shaping the progressive debate in Aotearoa New Zealand, focused on power, policy, and accountability.
So many little occurrences and huge events have transpired over the last couple of months, to brand this as one of the most intriguing (and tumultuous) of election campaigns in my life. Only the 1984 and the 2014 General Elections rank as memorable. In all three, there were two threads weaving through the campaigns;
…if the Maori Party were to get two seats like now, which is certainly possible, then that would theoretically be enough to forms a Labour/Greens/Maori Party government. I believe the Maori Party would be desperate to form a government with Labour to prove they can go with either party – that they aren’t National’s poodle.
Tongan politics are so poorly reported in New Zealand that it is hard to judge the actions of the various players in the latest political crisis.
However, we should be concerned that the monarch, King Tupou VI, has sacked the elected government headed by Akilisi Pohiva, an advocate of greater democracy.
THE STORY APPEARED FIRST on an offshore blog. After that, not even the best legal brains at Crown Law could prevent the voters from learning about the “Mother of All Scandals”. The Internet, as always, prevailed over the frantic machinations of desperate politicians.
Look “behind the curtain”, if you will.
The timing of events is, in politics, almost never coincidental.
The attitude of Professor Annette Beautrais, of Canterbury University, and a suicide prevention co-ordinator for the South Canterbury DHB, is one of the primary reasons why it has been so hard to change the culture of silence about suicide, where news of it, and issues about it are swept under the carpet.
THIS LATEST POLITICAL “SCANDAL” involving Winston Peters reminds me of The Godfather. Not the famous scene in which Sonny Corleone is assassinated at the toll booth, but the earlier scene in which Michael Corleone realises that there are no staff on duty in the hospital where his wounded father is being treated. The empty nurses’ work station, the silent corridors, the overwhelming sense of something being “off” – all of it communicates a single, unmistakeable message to Michael. This is a hit.
It’s not important to like or dislike my work, but I think we can all agree that allowing the Police to conduct secret investigations into activists and political bloggers that then damage their reputation negatively based on spurious grounds isn’t acceptable in a liberal democracy.
Here is what we know about the Rawshark Investigation: The NZ Police have lied about the scope of their investigation…
It seems media corporates think politics is too boring for mass media broadcasting – just look at the Herald’s website – and so the job of political journalists is to sex it up to increase ratings. Baiting politicians provides the entertainment to squeeze into the small gaps between the advertisements.