Written By: - Date published: 7:10 pm, March 19th, 2026 - 7 comments
The Chinese Embassy is right. The recent joint statement by Australia and New Zealand condemning China’s actions in the South China Sea reads like a relic from a bygone colonial era.
Written By: - Date published: 8:00 pm, March 2nd, 2026 - 55 comments
Funny…when Russia invaded Ukraine, New Zealand didn’t wait for Putin to tell us whether his aggression was legal under international law. Different story when it comes to the Americans.
Written By: - Date published: 11:25 am, January 9th, 2026 - 10 comments
The real affordability crisis lies in the systematic extraction of income from households.
Written By: - Date published: 9:50 am, December 20th, 2025 - 13 comments
The plan ignores standard traffic planning practice, takes no account of predicted sea level rise and will be obsolete before the last stone is turned.
Written By: - Date published: 3:57 pm, November 14th, 2025 - 8 comments
There are clear signs Ireland’s new President Catherine Connolly’s landslide victory has intensified efforts to undermine the country’s neutrality and neuter its aim to punish genocidal Israel.
Written By: - Date published: 2:40 pm, October 31st, 2025 - 22 comments
Like the Americans, maybe we should re-name our Ministry of Defence as the Ministry of War. The frigates New Zealand wants to buy can carry long-range Tomahawk Cruise missiles, with lethality so beloved by Judith Collins.
Written By: - Date published: 8:57 pm, October 23rd, 2025 - 68 comments
New Zealand’s media landscape is falling apart. We need a publicly-funded media entity covering television, radio and a digital platform
Written By: - Date published: 9:02 pm, October 18th, 2025 - 23 comments
Our multi-billion billion spend-up on Defence has nothing to do with repelling a foreign invasion. It is all about being led by the US to join in attacking a target – China – located far from our shores.
Written By: - Date published: 10:02 pm, October 14th, 2025 - 88 comments
Brian Easton says we cannot attain a sustainable Scandinavian-type quality of life while keeping the existing tax system in place
Written By: - Date published: 7:04 pm, September 29th, 2025 - 4 comments
The last time New Zealand put itself on the wrong side of history was when a New Zealand rugby team toured apartheid South Africa just after schoolchildren were gunned down on the streets of Soweto.
Written By: - Date published: 2:03 pm, September 11th, 2025 - 11 comments
‘Shared values,’ ‘like-minded partners,’ the ‘rules-based order,’ and the ‘Indo-Pacific’ have become the Five Eyes nations’ favourite rhetorical weapons in their contest with declared adversaries.
Written By: - Date published: 4:26 pm, September 2nd, 2025 - 11 comments
The Planning by Firing Squad approach is characterised by being very rushed, lacking in detail, an almost total lack of public consultation, non-existent local knowledge and consistently paying little heed to environmental effects. It is a classic Wellington Ivory Tower approach.
Written By: - Date published: 11:48 am, August 7th, 2025 - 28 comments
NCEA wasn’t perfect, but it offered students a chance to grow and succeed in different ways. It recognised that learning isn’t linear or one-size-fits-all. It gave students a chance to find their place – not just in the job market, but in the world. Which brings me to the current Minister of Education, Erica Stanford… Are we confusing confidence with competence?
Written By: - Date published: 4:48 pm, July 24th, 2025 - 67 comments
Guest post from Louisa Wall. The government’s decision to scrap Sport New Zealand’s transgender inclusion guidelines for community sport is not leadership. It is exclusion by neglect.
Written By: - Date published: 10:03 am, July 15th, 2025 - 35 comments
The real threat to peace in our region does not stem from China, but from a “China threat” narrative—promoted by the United States to rally other nations behind its China containment agenda.
Written By: - Date published: 6:05 am, May 2nd, 2025 - 65 comments
How the Greens Are Setting Candidates Up to Fail
Written By: - Date published: 9:49 am, April 5th, 2025 - 36 comments
In an era of weaponised tariffs, crumbling institutions, and trade policy made on the campaign trail, New Zealand’s long game is trust, credibility, and coherence.
If we choose to play it.
Written By: - Date published: 1:18 pm, April 1st, 2025 - 33 comments
Putinversteher – one who “understands” Putin. It is meant as a slur but Professor Geoffrey Roberts, a British historian of Russia, embraces the term.
Written By: - Date published: 1:04 pm, March 24th, 2025 - 209 comments
Henry Kissinger nailed it back in 2014: “For the West, the demonization of Vladimir Putin is not a policy; it is an alibi for the absence of one.”
Written By: - Date published: 9:57 am, March 23rd, 2025 - 96 comments
Res Publica takes aim at modern day ‘tankies’. Pro-authoritarian leftist, who can apologise for any authoritarian regime provided that it is intellectually cloaked in the ‘correct’ rhetoric and a veneer of geo-politics. In their view, modern day tankies are only good at reducing the left’s credibility to rubble in real-time.
Written By: - Date published: 7:30 am, March 8th, 2025 - 83 comments
I am an ordinary citizen of Aotearoa. I am deeply angered at and ashamed of the actions of Winston Peters in dismissing Phil Goff as our High Commissioner in London. It is a deplorable decision.
Written By: - Date published: 2:43 pm, December 11th, 2024 - 4 comments
New Zealand is set to update sedition and espionage laws, making these as harsh as those of other Western states that are now gearing up for war with Russia and China.
Written By: - Date published: 2:22 pm, November 8th, 2024 - 31 comments
The West, “will stand by the Israeli regime until they exterminate the last Palestinian”, says Mohammad Seyed Marandi, an American-Iranian academic. Despite being appalled at my government, I winced as a New Zealander to hear my country described as part of the Axis of Genocide.
Written By: - Date published: 12:38 pm, October 25th, 2024 - 9 comments
Whoever owns the narrative owns the world – and things just got a lot tougher for those of us opposed to US influence campaigns. In a staggering increase in funding for propaganda and covert action the US House has passed the Countering the PRC (People’s Republic of China) Malign Influence Fund, kicking in an extra $1.6 billion.
Written By: - Date published: 12:21 pm, October 20th, 2024 - 24 comments
Elliot Crossan at System Change Aotearoa reviews the past year. Despite the tepid public support for this government’s problematic actions, he warns that ‘The Right Is United By Power — Don’t Underestimate Them’
Written By: - Date published: 1:17 pm, September 22nd, 2024 - 20 comments
Nigel Haworth argues that the 2012 reforms of the Labour Party created a perverse effect. Not to engender stronger member voice, but to empower a managerial model akin to a Piketty’s Brahmin caste. It weakened the Party’s ability to act strongly at arms length of Caucus and Parliamentary Leader.
Written By: - Date published: 10:58 am, August 31st, 2024 - 69 comments
Guest post by Nigel Haworth discussing recent publicity given to the Labour Party’s debate around tax reform.
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.
Written By: - Date published: 4:57 pm, August 17th, 2024 - 79 comments
It is a painful experience, to have fought long and hard for something you knew was inadequate and to have even that taken away. The Labour Party has long urged activists to be ‘realistic’. Elliot Crossan argues that it will not return to be a socialist party of the working class.
Written By: - Date published: 1:41 pm, August 12th, 2024 - 27 comments
New Zealand’s decision to stay away from the event in Nagasaki paying tribute to victims of the city’s 1945 nuclear bombing called outrageous.
Written By: - Date published: 7:15 am, August 2nd, 2024 - 5 comments
God Bless the ALP, Bill Shorten and all the Labour MP’s across the ditch for tackling the real issues facing people with disabilities in Australia. It takes courage, fortitude, a good heart to seek redress to wrongs done to the weakest amongst us. They are taking those steps.
NZ government are just good at dithering.
Recent Comments