Minto for Mayor in Christchurch
Today I’m announcing plans to stand as the KOA (Keep our Assets Canterbury) candidate for the Christchurch City Mayoralty.
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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Left parties should support a big drop in house prices
Labour and the Greens should not be scared to support economist Arthur Grimes’ call for policies to bring down Auckland house prices by 40%. We don’t need to support all his policy suggestions. But let’s recognise that a 40% drop would only bring the Auckland median house price (now around $820,000) down to what it was four years ago ($495,000). Why not aim for that?
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Rebuilding the Country we grew up in – Little’s Big Task ahead
On 20 August 2007, National’s new leader, John Key, made a stirring speech to the Auckland branch of the New Zealand Contractors Federation. In it, he lambasted the then-Clark-led Labour government;
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Why Corbyn will win
The working class simply said we have had enough, we want our party back, it has been hijacked by middle-class poseurs who have no right to claim to represent working people.
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National and the Reserve Bank – at War!
Open warfare has broken out between the National regime and the Reserve Bank. Recent media statements indicate that we are seeing an increasingly bitter war-of-words; a battle of wills, taking place over the growing housing crisis.
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Four More Limericks
Malcolm Turnbull, the Aussie patrician
Considered himself a magician
But the up-himself prick
Hadn’t mastered his trick
Now Australia needs a physician. -
Hiding war crimes
The arrogant militarism of Western leaders has been revealed anew with the publishing of the long-awaited Chilcot Report.
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De-marginalising progressive politics
In my own area of the Otara subdivision, only 29 per cent of eligible voters returned ballot papers – well below the greater Auckland average. And the data speaks for itself: older, wealthier, housed and white voters had a much higher rate of ballot return. That’s what the data tells us so our challenge is to encourage a better ballot return from younger, poorer, transient and brown voters
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EXCLUSIVE: The NZ Labour Party can no longer avoid the elephant in the room
The era of neoliberal globalisation is ending. People – who are also voters – have had enough of governments that work for the rich. Precarious jobs, stagnant incomes, unaffordable housing, massive household debt, stripped out safety nets, elected governments that are arrogant and unaccountable, opposition parties who are captives of their past or too cowed by fears of a collapse in business confidence to embrace demands for real change.
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If you come after this Boomer’s Vote, Matt, you’d better be armed
MATT HEATH’S SATIRICAL THRUST at the over-65s in Monday’s NZ Herald has caused considerable angst. Depriving the elderly of the right to vote is one of those suggestions that stops people in their tracks. Not so much because it’s a good idea (which it obviously isn’t) but because somebody’s had the bare-faced cheek to put such a subversive thought into words.