Written By: - Date published: 11:54 am, April 30th, 2018 - 13 comments
Claims that “Russian bots” helped Labour during the 2017 UK General Election…
Written By: - Date published: 6:16 pm, April 19th, 2018 - 49 comments
Catriona MacLennan is being sent to a disciplinary committee for criticising a judge, in a case where he made an appalling judgement. Where are the freedom-of-speech advocates?
Written By: - Date published: 10:46 am, April 6th, 2018 - 69 comments
Is it the new by-word for silence?
Written By: - Date published: 1:46 pm, March 27th, 2018 - 257 comments
The Minister for Open Government has been caught organizing a secret meeting, and it has led to the resignation of an RNZ manager who covered for her. Is it time to kick Curran out?
Written By: - Date published: 11:03 am, March 19th, 2018 - 49 comments
“As Greens, we’ve always stood for modernising our democracy, making MPs more accountable and giving the public better access to the levers of power.”
Written By: - Date published: 8:30 am, March 15th, 2018 - 13 comments
It’s been awesome to see feminist activists in New Zealand enable a new and fast liberation occur. It’s worth reflecting on the success of #MeToo and all its new forms.
Written By: - Date published: 6:15 am, March 4th, 2018 - 8 comments
Alongside announcing the Greens’ new transparency measures, James Shaw talks about being in government and having the ability to influence, as well as staying true to the Green Party’s values.
Written By: - Date published: 6:10 am, March 4th, 2018 - 28 comments
Green Party Co-leader James Shaw has today announced two important new transparency measures, which will apply to Green Party Ministers, MPs and staff, to help counter the influence of money in politics.
Written By: - Date published: 6:23 am, February 16th, 2018 - 70 comments
The TPPA-11 is set to be signed on March 8. There are still huge problems with the agreement for NZ. Jane Kelsey provides an update.
Written By: - Date published: 12:27 pm, January 24th, 2018 - 17 comments
Ursula K Le Guin has died.
Written By: - Date published: 11:03 am, January 22nd, 2018 - 13 comments
The National candidate for the Maungakiekie Tamaki Auckland Council by election is complaining that if the Labour candidate wins it will trigger a costly by election. But he is ignoring the fact that the three current by elections have all been caused by National endorsed local government representatives resigning.
Written By: - Date published: 1:45 pm, January 19th, 2018 - 22 comments
Rather than apologise, it’s time the Left and the new government embraced “nanny state” as a positive, just as the gay community claimed the previously pejorative term “queer”. A nanny state is clearly economically and socially more efficient. We should celebrate our nanny state and not apologise for it.
Written By: - Date published: 10:04 am, January 18th, 2018 - 74 comments
National’s cheerleaders are pushing an international report which suggests that New Zealand’s democratic system is only slightly better than average in world terms. But the organisation behind the report and the methodology used need some checking.
Written By: - Date published: 11:46 am, January 17th, 2018 - 82 comments
The sixth Labour led Government has made a good start to its term. But what policy results will New Zealand have to vote for and campaign on in 2020?
Written By: - Date published: 2:38 pm, January 5th, 2018 - 23 comments
US reverses Federal marijuana stance.
Written By: - Date published: 11:35 am, December 11th, 2017 - 69 comments
When an apple tree is shaken, pips can fall to the ground and germinate. And then things grow back more or less as before.
Written By: - Date published: 8:13 am, December 7th, 2017 - 30 comments
The latest Progress in International Reading Literacy Study results suggests that National Standards has been a failure.
Written By: - Date published: 2:08 pm, December 4th, 2017 - 31 comments
“Ministers realised they had a device through which they could reduce the surprises they suffered. And, as it went on, the surprises ministers no longer wanted to experience became greater in number and smaller in significance.Increasingly, it placed on the public service a political imperative which it had never had to shoulder. “
Written By: - Date published: 6:50 am, November 11th, 2017 - 60 comments
How is Trevor Mallard doing as speaker? Early signs are good.
Written By: - Date published: 10:09 am, November 8th, 2017 - 88 comments
When they said they wanted to eradicate poverty, I didn’t suspect they simply meant to expunge the word.
Written By: - Date published: 10:02 am, November 8th, 2017 - 13 comments
Andrew Little has announced that the Government will increase the payout to Teina Pora by adjusting for inflation and by paying costs on Pora’s successful judicial review of the previous Government’s decision.
Written By: - Date published: 8:22 am, November 8th, 2017 - 113 comments
Winston Peters has launched a legal fishing expedition to identify who exactly breached privacy on his superannuation over payments. A problem that he shares with about 50 thousand other pensioners. Unlike them, his problem wasn’t trying to find money to repay it. It was that the breach was deliberately timed to be a classic dirty politics ploy, almost certainly by National, in the leadup to the recent election. I wish him good fishing.
Written By: - Date published: 8:06 am, November 7th, 2017 - 28 comments
The spin that National are running is that they are unhappy with the move to reduce the MPs in select committees. That their dick size opposition party is the largest make me see teenage boys being idiots. Because there is no substantive difference to parliament from when this was recommended and now.
Written By: - Date published: 10:35 am, November 5th, 2017 - 68 comments
Just before the election news broke that National MP Jian Yang had previously taught in a Chinese University training spies. A recent OIA release of his immigration application raises further issues.
Written By: - Date published: 7:47 am, November 3rd, 2017 - 225 comments
Bill English has claimed that it is not the role of National to make Parliament run properly.
Written By: - Date published: 6:45 am, October 28th, 2017 - 150 comments
An update from Professor Jane Kelsey on the TPPA-11, a look at the issues for the new Labour-led government, and reasons why we still need to be concerned.
Written By: - Date published: 11:47 am, October 23rd, 2017 - 51 comments
This post is too long to read. Its purpose is to serve as reference material, a “one stop” snapshot of where we are as a country. The mess that the new government inherits. The consequences of the nine long wasted years of National. The magnitude of the challenge ahead of us.
Written By: - Date published: 1:31 pm, October 22nd, 2017 - 145 comments
Right wing online forums are going to reach new levels of toxicity over the next 3 years. Someone really needs to monitor them.
Written By: - Date published: 8:48 am, October 19th, 2017 - 103 comments
It appears that Winston is about to announce the decision of the NZ First party about their coalition partner today. For those who seem to think that coalitions should be formed with rapidity, they simply shouldn’t. That is the path to making stupid decisions, and I am yet to hear a single good reason to do it.
Written By: - Date published: 9:57 am, October 15th, 2017 - 102 comments
Peters has the opportunity to put an end to this useless government (and turn National into “the opposition from hell”). I think he’s going to ’96 us, but I’d be happy to be proved wrong
Written By: - Date published: 7:01 am, October 13th, 2017 - 64 comments
It’s starting to feel a lot like 1996 all over again. Another term of the Nats would be bad news for the institutions of democracy. We’ve had recent warnings on the state of the justice system, press freedom, and the public service.
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