Written By: - Date published: 10:47 am, May 21st, 2019 - 62 comments
Social media was responsible for the repeated broadcasting of the claim that Labor in Australia intended to bring in a death tax. What should happen when claims that are clearly wrong are made?
Written By: - Date published: 11:07 am, May 20th, 2019 - 78 comments
Simon Bridges has conceded that his claim that talk about Alfred Ngaro setting up a conservative party was “rumour and speculation” was not actually true. And Ngaro has gone on the offensive describing abortion as an unholy holocaust.
Written By: - Date published: 9:37 am, May 19th, 2019 - 122 comments
Overnight in Australia there was meant to be a change to a Labor Government. But something happened …
Written By: - Date published: 10:20 am, May 5th, 2019 - 9 comments
Tony Abbott is facing electoral defeat from Zali Steggall, an independent candidate who has put combating climate change at the centre of her campaign.
Written By: - Date published: 1:45 am, April 10th, 2019 - 73 comments
The government has been rightly lauded for swiftly acting to ban assault weapons after the Christchurch massacre, but is its failure to decisively call social media giants to order just as weak and unacceptable as the failure to act on Aramoana massacre back in 1990?
Written By: - Date published: 8:05 am, March 27th, 2019 - 23 comments
Pauline Hanson’s One Australia party is trying to defend claims that it should funding to oppose gun restrictions from the NRA and the Koch Brothers by stating that its chief of staff was drunk.
Written By: - Date published: 4:03 pm, March 17th, 2019 - 91 comments
A few musings on heroism.
Written By: - Date published: 7:43 am, March 15th, 2019 - 70 comments
Jacinda Ardern has publicly supported the School students strike about climate change and urged them not to underestimate the power of their voices.
Written By: - Date published: 2:55 pm, March 13th, 2019 - 6 comments
Cardinal Pell has been given six years in jail for his crimes against children. But the Catholic Church has a range of other allegations to resolve.
Written By: - Date published: 10:30 pm, March 11th, 2019 - 116 comments
I’m glad Anne-Marie Brady will get the chance to present her “Magic Weapons” paper to the select committee examining the last election. At long last it might get given some proper critical examination, of its content as well as it provenance. In my opinion it reads like a long list of the blindingly obvious, mixed with a large dose of conspiracy theory. It certainly doesn’t show much sign of the sort of critical thinking one might expect from an academic.
Written By: - Date published: 12:58 pm, February 18th, 2019 - 52 comments
Claims that New Zealand is at a crisis point in terms of its relationship with China appear to be somewhat overegged.
Written By: - Date published: 7:50 am, January 24th, 2019 - 110 comments
There’s an ad campaign that says “New Zealand is doing Australia better than Australia is”, and recommends federation of New Zealand with Australia and Jacinda being the first Prime Minister. Maybe it’s time.
Written By: - Date published: 8:19 am, December 26th, 2018 - 68 comments
It’s going to be a strong year for democratic politics.
Written By: - Date published: 7:30 am, December 22nd, 2018 - 114 comments
What will happen in 2019?
Written By: - Date published: 9:48 am, December 13th, 2018 - 34 comments
With the UK Tories self imploding, the US President contemplating jail time, Angela Merkel moving on and the conservative parties on both sides of the Tasman looking increasingly irrelevant, what should the left do to fill the gap?
Written By: - Date published: 10:22 pm, December 8th, 2018 - 62 comments
I like my Huawei phone. Apparently the US National Security Agency can’t break its encryption. That’s presumably the “security” issue why Spark is being blocked from using Huawei, and why Meng Wanzhou is held hostage in Canada at the behest of US neocons.
Written By: - Date published: 8:35 am, December 7th, 2018 - 137 comments
National and ACT have alleged that a United Nations Pact supported by New Zealand in 2016 will take away sovereign rights even though the pact itself says that it is not legally binding.
Written By: - Date published: 7:42 am, November 28th, 2018 - 32 comments
The Trump administration has produced an official report outlining the perils of climate change which the POTUS has rejected. And in Australia the dinosaur Liberal Party has suffered a huge loss in Victorian State elections, the loss of their Parliamentary majority and ScoMo has criticised school students taking direct action against the Government’s totally inadequate policies.
Written By: - Date published: 10:35 pm, November 20th, 2018 - 82 comments
China certainly has interfered in New Zealand politics, most notably by the offer of a free trade deal which delivered huge benefits to our economy. Party and government officials all stressed to us that they were grateful for New Zealand’s support for their accession to the World Trade Organisation, the rule-based trade body. The US and Australia in contrast want to build a military base on Manus Island north of Papua.
Written By: - Date published: 8:00 am, November 17th, 2018 - 164 comments
So what if Labour decides to go ahead with its capital gains tax? What happens to the equity of the remaining middle class? What happens to the equity of those who were brought in under KiwiBuild?
Written By: - Date published: 8:28 am, November 8th, 2018 - 20 comments
In an effort to revive sagging support levels Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison is on a bus tour of Australia involving him flying and being picked up by the bus, drinking lots of beer, wearing different hats and saying fair dinkum a lot.
Written By: - Date published: 7:45 am, October 24th, 2018 - 89 comments
The Liberal Party has potentially lost one of its safest seats to an independent who campaigned on doing something about climate change and the Nauru refugees.
Written By: - Date published: 7:21 am, October 9th, 2018 - 139 comments
Get ready, according to the AA, for petrol at $3 a liter for Christmas.
Written By: - Date published: 2:30 pm, September 30th, 2018 - 7 comments
In Australia this week the Liberal Government has become embroiled in a scandal relating to political pressure being brought to sack the head of the ABC and one of its most senior reporters. Failed estate has the details.
Written By: - Date published: 8:46 pm, September 8th, 2018 - 29 comments
In Politik’s 7 September issue we are told that Western diplomats in Wellington are surprised that Winston Peters has not accused Russia of the Skripal poisoning or joined some other countries in taking reprisals. Editor Richard Harman quotes a source to tell us that the British in particular were “pissed” at Peters’ response. Well dearie me. I’m with Winston, a wise old owl.
Written By: - Date published: 3:22 pm, September 3rd, 2018 - 3 comments
A genius has set the recent Liberal Party putsch to scenes from Toy Story.
Written By: - Date published: 3:11 pm, September 3rd, 2018 - 129 comments
White South African farm murders.
Written By: - Date published: 5:14 pm, August 30th, 2018 - 45 comments
Following recent news it appears that in Australia Au Pairs of the rich and connected are welcomed and helped. Seriously ill refugees are ignored. And click bait racists are fine but peace activists are shown the door.
Written By: - Date published: 7:26 am, August 28th, 2018 - 3 comments
Forward In 2016 I wrote the below dissertation as part of my History Honours degree at Victoria University. This dissertation explores the 1950s equal pay campaign, and specifically looks at the Jean Parker Case. Jean Parker was a PSA member employed at IRD, who like Kristine Bartlett 60 years later, won a landmark equal pay legal […]
Written By: - Date published: 8:00 am, August 25th, 2018 - 37 comments
What are the implications for New Zealand’s climate change policies of Australia’s change of Prime Minister?
Written By: - Date published: 2:49 pm, August 24th, 2018 - 25 comments
Malcolm Turnbull is gone, the Liberal Party is engaged in a leadership battle, and a Texan popcorn maker has appeared as a potential new Prime Minister.
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