Budget 2017 – here we go again
All indications are National is about to outflank Labour on the left with its 2017 budget and leave the party that claims to represent working New Zealanders struggling to appear relevant.
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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Stake Holders for the TPPA
It’s like a scene from a Dracula movie where the zombie comes back from the dead. The TPPA is dead but the TPPA-11, without the US, has just opened one eye. The idea of reviving the TPPA without the US, but still including all of the dangerous aspects that the US introduced into negotiations, makes no sense.
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This Is Your [Former] Police Minister On Drugs
Earlier this week, somebody asked Judith Collins what she thought of Gareth Morgan. Ever the diplomat, her curt response was that if she wound up having to deal with him … she’d “probably take up drugs”. No word, as yet, on whether she’d also find this necessary working with Winston.
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A Radically Reasonable Proposal For Cigarettes And Dairy Owners
The ongoing travails of our nation’s convenience store and dairy operators have grown to such a scale that even those perennial champions of Ostrich Economics in our Government are unable to ignore them.
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Iran’s democracy is a sham but here is why I voted in the Presidential Election
My friend and I cast our votes for the Iranian Presidential Election in Christchurch last Friday knowing full well the election was effectively rigged in advance by unelected clerics who had decided who could and couldn’t run.
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Dave Macpherson – Being part of the Health Establishment means never having to say sorry
A leading suicide prevention campaigner published a social media post on the weekend asking why the Southern District Health Board had yet to apologise to her family over the poor care for her son, who was a victim of suicide 4 years ago.
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The TPPA is now a 2017 election issue
Ground control to Major Tom? Your circuit’s dead, there’s something wrong. Can you hear me, Major Tom? Can you hear me, Major Tom?
Apologies to the late lamented David Bowie. But the bullshit from the National government on the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) since the Trump administration formally pulled out in January is really off the planet (apologies, I don’t usually swear in blogs, but I couldn’t find a suitable acronym).
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MUST READ: The lies National need to spin over Housing Crisis
National is increasingly on the back-foot with New Zealand’s ever-worsening housing crisis. Ministers from the Prime minister down are desperately trying to spin a narrative that the National-led administration “is getting on top of the problem”. Despite ministerial ‘reassurances’, both Middle and Lower Working classes are feeling the dead-weight of a housing shortage; ballooning house prices, and rising rents.
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Open Letter to ASH from Dave Macpherson
My son Nicky, 21, died as a direct result of being sent off the Waikato Hospital campus, unescorted, while a known suicide risk, to smoke; when there was (and is) a perfectly good safe outside courtyard area that he could have been in.
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The Zionist Inquisition
The Spanish Inquisition, claiming to combat heresy, was a brutal political device for consolidating the power of the monarchy, leading up to and following the Christian reconquest of Andalucia. Previously, the region’s Jewish population had been among the largest in Europe, growing both in numbers and professional status.