roger douglas

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Roger Douglas Has a Lesson for the Left

Written By: - Date published: 12:33 pm, August 25th, 2024 - 28 comments

Roger Douglas, the most revolutionary minister in the postwar history of Aotearoa, knew how to exert change in three years. Rogernomics transformed the economy with dizzying speed, from protectionist welfare state to a neoliberal free market. Elliot Crossan argues that the left needs to take the same approach to end the era of neoliberalism.

Roger Douglas thinks Act has lost its way

Written By: - Date published: 9:09 am, July 20th, 2023 - 33 comments

Roger Douglas, who as Finance Minister under the fourth Labour Government caused major harm and the founder of the Act Party, has publicly declared that he has lost faith in the Act party and is now a swing voter.

The time that Roger Douglas was right

Written By: - Date published: 10:30 am, May 21st, 2022 - 39 comments

Roger Douglas may have caused New Zealand a lot of harm through his policies and actions but there was one occasion where if a policy he had helped to introduce had been retained New Zealand would be a much better place.

Good Again

Written By: - Date published: 7:48 am, October 28th, 2021 - 23 comments

COVID has reminded us how good New Zealand is, and we should remember how we were reminded.

Roger Douglas attacks economic privilege and inequality

Written By: - Date published: 10:18 am, May 5th, 2020 - 261 comments

Roger Douglas has reverted to his socialist roots by going back on his pro market mantra and criticising the economic privilege and inequality that he helped create.

VSM – why it needs to go.

Written By: - Date published: 8:35 am, August 2nd, 2018 - 62 comments

In 2010 the ACT Party with the help of National managed to pass a piece of legislation that damaged student democracy, and blatantly ignored public opinion. Voluntary Student Membership or VSM sounds like a horrendous STI, and its impact has been to screw student democracy. Prior to 2010 students had a choice as to whether […]

Hide gone by lunchtime

Written By: - Date published: 12:15 pm, April 28th, 2011 - 174 comments

Rodney Hide has resigned as Leader of the ACT Party.

While not actually a member of the Party, Don Brash will now lead ACT.

Calvert switches support to Brash

Written By: - Date published: 8:00 am, April 28th, 2011 - 77 comments

ACT’s newest MP Hilary Calvert is reported to have changed her support from Hide to Brash. That means the leadership of New Zealand’s most rightwing party will transfer to someone who isn’t currently even a member of the ACT Party.

UPDATE: Hide expected to announce resignation at midday

What next for Rodney?

Written By: - Date published: 12:15 pm, April 27th, 2011 - 26 comments

ACT Leader Rodney Hide will soon be out of a job. I doubt he’ll be in the running for any prime SOE chairs like Jim Bolger, and all the best jobs at the UN are taken by competent people. Jenny Shipley went in to the HR business and Mike Moore became a WTO lapdog.

So what next for Rodney?

An Authoritarian Act

Written By: - Date published: 2:52 pm, August 18th, 2010 - 14 comments

So Rodney can’t keep 4 other people on side. The liberal and authoritarian split in Act has had its blood-letting and the authoritarians have won. Where will the neo-liberal idealogues go? And how will Epsom react to this change in philosophy in a year’s time?

Send a JAFA to Wellington….

Written By: - Date published: 9:52 pm, April 26th, 2010 - 12 comments

To paraphrase Muldoon – send a JAFA to Wellington, and we can only increase the average intelligence of both parts of the country. Needless to say, TV news chose to focus on a minor story in Goffs speech. If a future mayor of Auckland, Brown, can sit at the cabinet table on decisions related to […]

Humour of the week

Written By: - Date published: 9:01 pm, April 6th, 2010 - 10 comments

David Slack says..

“Qantas passenger threatened to bring down flight with the power of his mind. Ten bucks says he’s wearing an ACT T-shirt”

But it made me laugh after a hard weekend. as it perfectly reflects that way I feel about the breed.

Stand up against ACT attack on students’ associations

Written By: - Date published: 1:43 pm, March 24th, 2010 - 66 comments

Andrew Campbell reports that Roger Douglas and the ACT party want to change the law so that student associations will be unable to provide the important services and representation that they currently offer by making their membership voluntary. This will put the clubs and services that many universities offer at risk.

The lie behind the Right’s attack on wages

Written By: - Date published: 7:39 am, February 12th, 2010 - 35 comments

Paying a person doing the same work as another person less money because of their sex or religion or ethnicity or any other grounds prohibited under the Human Rights Act is illegal and abhorrent. Yet, the Right wants to do just that with a private member’s bill from Roger Douglas reintroducing a lower minimum wage for 16 and […]

Nats eyeing up youth minimum wage?

Written By: - Date published: 4:29 pm, February 11th, 2010 - 38 comments

Over the last month or so National’s pollster David Farrar has been running a series of posts desperately trying to pin the spike in youth unemployment under National to Labour’s decision to abolish youth rates. I’d been wondering why the obsession with youth rates until I saw this exchange between Roger Douglas and Kate Wilkinson […]

Gordon Campbell states the obvious

Written By: - Date published: 2:21 pm, March 8th, 2009 - 26 comments

Gordon Campbell has been having fun pointing the finger at Treasury in “How Treasury put us on the hook to finance companies“. Essentially the treasury and therefore Bill English appear to have been somewhat idiotic. If a firm stopped taking deposits last September, and was heavily exposed in the current economic climate to a major […]

Fossil watch

Written By: - Date published: 1:16 pm, February 12th, 2009 - 25 comments

The hilarity continues. According to a person who was there, Douglas didn’t use his speech because it had been accidently leaked, and subsequently delivered on Youtube by a sockpuppet. The Herald, however, quoted from the speech as if he had given it. Turns out they didn’t bother sending a reporter. If a tree doesn’t fall […]

First as tragedy, second as farce

Written By: - Date published: 4:54 pm, February 11th, 2009 - 11 comments

After Roger Douglas’ big comeback speech was accidentally released two days early on the Internet due to inept media handling, then parodied on youtube by a sockpuppet before it had even been delivered I didn’t see much point in bothering with the actual content. Funnily enough, not many others have either. But one person who […]

Sockpuppet of the right

Written By: - Date published: 1:10 pm, February 10th, 2009 - 13 comments

After yesterday’s early release of Roger Douglas’ Orewa speech set for 6pm this evening one of our (bafflingly tenacious) readers has sent us this: It seems this sockpuppet beat that sockpuppet to the punch.

What lies around the corner?

Written By: - Date published: 4:44 pm, January 22nd, 2009 - 9 comments

Under the full warmth of the summer sun those clouds that keep gathering on the horizon seem to have  been quickly dismissed by many, with the hope that the new National-led government will sort it out. What are the signs of action so far? Not a lot of concrete ideas are to be found (as suggested here) but we gain […]

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