Political analysis and commentary shaping the progressive debate in Aotearoa New Zealand, focused on power, policy, and accountability.
New Zealand’s Representative at the Security Council said in his speech that Israel and the Palestinians should make compromises. That implies that the Palestinian people, under the duress of merciless military Occupation, should make even greater concessions to Israel to help it legitimise its violations of international humanitarian law.
The UN Declaration of Human Rights states in Article 25 that everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for their and their family’s health and well-being including housing. As a signatory to the Universal Declaration and a number of human rights treaties the New Zealand Government is bound to ensure every citizen has the human right to adequate housing
We could start building such communities in Auckland today. Auckland city has thirteen golf courses. Just one of those in Remuera is 41 hectares of land in a prime central city location. It is occupied by a private club for a token rental that amounts to a fee subsidy of around $11,000 a year for each of its 1400 members.
Last weekend, we had our first game of Monopoly with the kids in the Carolan household. It was Oisin’s birthday present, and pretty soon both him and his sister Aoibheann were buying up the streets of the old London version, from his cheap 100 pounds fixer upper of the Angel, Islington, to her well appointed exclusive 400 pounds loft in Mayfair.
In a brilliant essay, published on ‘Buzzfeed’, McKay Coppins offers his insights into what motivates a man like Donald Trump to ascend the greasy pole of politics to take on the Republican candidacy in the up-coming U.S. Presidential elections.
THE COINCIDENCE of the Republican National Convention being broadcast alongside the re-make of “Roots” is fortuitous. Alex Hayley’s famous novel laid bare the blood at the root of the American Republic.
There are still nearly 18,000 people in Auckland on the verge of homelessness.
On Sunday’s Q+A (17/7/16) Corin Dann interviewed Stephen Jennings, the former Treasury official and New Zealand investment banker who took advantage of the collapse of the Soviet Union to make himself a billionaire.
It was no surprise to see the New Zealand Initiative (the old Business Roundtable rebranded) provide a platform for a Rogernomics-era free-marketeer, Stephen Jennings, to tell us we needed more market-led reforms – especially in education.
Democracy continues to contain its own contradictions around the world. In spite of the ‘Democratic Peace Theory’, it’s questionable whether democracies fight less with each other, or others generally, or whether they just export their conflicts more elsewhere.