NZ doesn’t have a functional civil society. Unlike Europe where power is devolved through European law to the states and within many of its states to these “mediating institutions” of civil society, New Zealand devolved power and responsibility directly to individuals, bypassing civil society altogether.
You can’t have a situation where the commercial players are immune from scrutiny while recreational fisher folk are getting punished and allowing the industry to police itself in this manner is a joke.
This is how Bill English generates surpluses to justify John Key’s election year bribes of tax cuts to the rich.
A delegation of New Zealand business leaders is leaving this week on an “innovation expedition” to Israel to build business links with the Middle East’s apartheid state.
The reason we can’t talk about suicide is because we can’t stand to talk about the dark treacle of self hate and loneliness at the core of consumer culture. We don’t dare confront the hollowness of our existence on these far flung crags of rock for fear of what we will reveal about ourselves.
It is unacceptable that the power of the state be malformed into feudalism. It is unacceptable that public services be so underfunded that privatisation is seen as a solution. It is unacceptable to build surpluses on the backs of the poor and then borrow for billions in tax cuts.
The issue to be addressed in respect of water is the extent of customary interests or native title that Māori have in the rivers and lakes.
In New Zealand we have a broken attitude to renting and an unhealthy obsession with property ownership. According to IMF statistics, NZ has the fastest increasing house-price-to-income ratio in the world.
On 4 May, the eve of this year’s Holocaust Remembrance Day, Israeli Deputy Chief of Staff, Maj. Gen. Yair Golan, delivered a public address at the Massuah Institute for Holocaust Studies, comparing the political situation in Israel and the events that led to the ending of the Weimar Republic and the Nazi takeover of power.
This budget and this government were never going to provide the structural tools and address the structural challenges of a deregulated, speculative, unequal society. Addressing the chasm of income disparity would require the removal of privileges, the redistribution of advantage.