Political analysis and commentary shaping the progressive debate in Aotearoa New Zealand, focused on power, policy, and accountability.
The TPPA ‘comes into force’ (ie. starts) when countries accounting for 85% of the combined GNP of TPPA countries ratify it. That is extremely unlikely to happen before the next New Zealand election in 2017. So a future coalition government could withdraw our ratification of the TPPA before it starts.
The Aung family have beaten the odds.
As a refugee family from Myanmar, they have worked hard over the last four years to build a settled future for their three daughters in Hamilton.
Every Mayor wants to do something they will be remembered for. Could Auckland’s new one become famous for ending chronic homelessness?
Last night Kevin Hague in his final speech to Parliament talked about all the worthy issues avoided by National and the frustrations experienced from their partisan political approach. I agree with the sentiment and I think it’s clear after 8 years we can say they’ve been a government that makes only a token response to the tough questions. We have a bare minimum government more focused on the spin than substance.
I’m John Minto and I’m standing as the Keep Our Assets Canterbury candidate for the Christchurch mayoralty.
A prediction. On the basis of the sluggish Auckland rental market, the end of the Auckland property bubble could be sooner rather than later. (I’m picking October 2017, a month or two after the 2017 general election.) The ‘correction’ will come when enough people who have bought in Auckland for capital gain realise that they will have to sell soon, or risk the consequences.
Unions can expose the hypocrisy of employers demanding the right to import labour while paying a pittance to their staff. But ultimately, the only effective way to turn the situation around is to reunionise the sectors of the workforce that have lost union protection and force the bosses to pay.
“Our job was to kill criminals like drug pushers, rapists, snatchers. That’s what we did. We killed people almost every day.” Allegations of a former hit man in Senate testimony about life with the new Philippines president.
The decision to deploy an additional 4,000 troops to Russia’s eastern borders has been undertaken in an attempt to both intimidate and deter Putin from contemplating a lightning-fast repossession of the former Soviet republics of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
There’s a hand on my arm. Gripping my arm, pulling me back. I sway slightly in my heels. Both adrenal glands, perched above my kidneys, deep in my viscera, squirt their load of adrenaline into my bloodstream. My pupils dilate, my heart rate and breathing increase sharply. All of a sudden I’m not sleepy, I’m not thinking about my day. I’m right here, right now. Deadly calm.