Political analysis and commentary shaping the progressive debate in Aotearoa New Zealand, focused on power, policy, and accountability.
THAT THE SECURITY INTELLIGENCE SERVICE (SIS) has failed to protect the privacy of the people it has “vetted” is no surprise. Information is power, and what is the SIS if not the official gatherer of the information by which the power of the state is protected?
Labour inspectors have found that every one of the 20 employers they have looked at so far were found to have breached the 2003 Holidays Act.
The fourth Palestine Marathon took place in Bethlehem last Friday and I was lucky enough to be among the 4,300 participants running a 10km, a full marathon or a half-marathon in my case. The event is organised by the Palestine Olympic Committee and a group called Right to Movement,
Hillary Clinton’s backers keep announcing that she has the Democratic presidential nomination in the bag. But Bernie Sanders keeps shrinking her lead.
I didn’t once hear the words ‘Keynes’ or ‘Keynesian’ at the Future of Work conference. The issues we face today were all apparent and widely discussed in the late 1920s. The debate in 1928 was equally off the mark. Then, as now, we responded to a crisis of inequality and environment by, as individuals, trying to be more ‘competitive’ and arguing about immigration.
Key’s “ … what? …” reaction to the colossal data leak which has already claimed the scalp of one prime minister and put the careers of many other world leaders at risk is rather perplexing. Is he not able to predict the impact the Panama Papers are bound to have on the privileged privacy of the global elites
In examples of childish foot-stomping, petulance, Audrey Young’s piece on 25 March in the NZ Herald was hard to beat;
Governments and capitalists are always banging on about how the private sector is more efficient than the public sector., so I’ve got a modest proposal for them.
Somehow, NZ’s PM has convinced himself that, constitutionally, his country remains a colonial appendage of the United Kingdom. That the granting of Self-Governing Dominion status in 1907 never happened. That the 1931 Statute of Westminster, which the First Labour Government adopted in 1947, thereby signalling this country’s emergence into full and independent nationhood, is but a figment of our historians’ imaginations.
Where institutional power is so comprehensively unresponsive to the citizens, the voices of opposition must be organised and that organisation sustained.