New Zealand Housing Summit
The government assault on state housing, state house tenants and Housing New Zealand is one of the most shameful episodes in the history of this country.
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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Capitalism’s Comforter: The myth that the free-market has liberated humanity
The steady advancement of humanity has proceeded apace. Not because the big-hearted capitalists have been demanding that their workers be given the best of everything, but because workers and peasants around the world have insisted on translating advances in science and technology into measurable social progress for themselves and their children.
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Setting it straight on user-pays in tertiary education – one letter at a time
Labour’s promise of a return to (limited) free tertiary education appears to be unsettling some, for whom the last thirty years has been dominated by the implementation and bedding-in of user-pays (often gradually, so as not to spook the punters) ; reduced-tax; and minimalist-government ideology;
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Defending Free Tertiary Education: Chris Trotter responds to Dr Oliver Hartwich’s defence to the user-pays university
let me respond in kind by declaring that my own experience of free tertiary education threw up not one case of a recipient who did not value their opportunity to explore the life of the mind in their late teens and early twenties. Quite the reverse, actually.
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AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL – My love/hate relationship with Australia
For too long I’ve excused your boorish behaviour because of how your golden shores were so brutally colonised. My Aboriginal brothers and sisters shot down as vermin; the torturous treatment meted out within those convict settlements – irrespective of guilt or innocence, irrespective of youth, age or gender.
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Government boasts of benefit theft
While 2015 did see an increase in the size of the working age population this was driven principally by immigration. The number of jobs in the economy grew, but at a slower pace than the population. The unemployment rate fell, but principally driven by people giving up looking for work. That is not progress.
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The merits of internal discipline
The fractured opposition to the TPP from within Labour has caused a lot of grief within and laughter without. Little has missed an opportunity to present himself as the fearless leader who has no difficulty understanding right from wrong and sorting out dissent within the ranks.
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Debating the Prime Minister’s Statement
Prime Minister, I’ve sat and listened to all your speeches opening Parliament and I’d like to congratulate you on delivering your 8th speech.
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Why the attacks on Bernie aren’t working
Confusion reigns in the Clinton camp after Bernie Sanders trounced Hillary in New Hampshire, 60% to 38%.
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Too Little, too late?
I have avoided having a crack at Andrew Little and the Labour Party’s campaign strategy until now as I thought he deserved the right to have a bit of time to establish himself and chart his own course.