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.
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.
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.
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.
Don Brash is now publicly standing together with Helen Clark to protest against the subservience of recent New Zealand governments to America’s anti-China policy.
When NATO leaders meet in Washington, what they should be doing, apart from figuring out how to comply with Article 33(1) of the UN Charter, is conducting a clear-eyed review of how this organization that claims to be a force for peace keeps escalating unwinnable wars and leaving countries in ruins.
Last week the Coalition Govt said they were doing away with the name “fast-track.” This is a Govt of professional lobbyists so I am not surprised by their attunement to marketing. “Fast-track” became bad for business. The name had to go. They have also weakened regarding fast-track because of opposition.
The destruction on 23 May of a key part of Russia’s nuclear defence means the Doomsday clock is ticking closer to midnight. A Ukrainian/NATO drone attack on the Armavir radar station north of Georgia attcked a Voronezh-DM radar which is designed to detect incoming intercontinental ballistic missiles.
Defence cost us more than $6.7 billion in 2023/24. Why does our small, remote country have such a costly defence force? Is it fit for purpose – and in 2024, what is that purpose?
Guest post by Nigel Haworth where he discusses Labour membership’s desire for taxation reform and why it is important that Labour decides on its position as soon as possible.
Western leaders like to talk about values, shared values, common values. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) says the US and Israel have a partnership based on shared values. I believe them.
Former New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark – the safest pair of hands this country has had in living memory – gave a masterclass on the importance of maintaining an independent foreign policy when she spoke at an AUKUS symposium held in Parliament’s old Legislative Chambers on April 18.
Nigel Haworth writes on some of the historic implications and strategy of the worker plans for companies in the context of the worker initiated initiatives for allowing Newshub to survive.
Guest post by Brian Tamaki where he shares his change of thinking about rainbows.
Respects to the falling of the Rt Hon Jonathan Hunt.
In a guest post Seddonville Miner explores links between the Atlas Network and the Taxpayer’s Union.
In March 2023, former Australian prime minister Paul Keating attracted significant media attention when he described AUKUS as a manifestation of the United States’s campaign to encircle China with hostile military allies and partners.
While the Treaty of Waitangi continues to be battered back and forth, the clear reality is that Maori, after signing the infuriating Treaty, were systematically dispossessed of their land. Any reading of the history of colonial treaties shows that treaties were the primary method of dispossession and were designed to be broken. And invariably they were.
The release from the Public Health Communication Centre Aotearoa around tobacco industry interference was a glimpse behind the curtain into a troubling reality.
A bright star in the firmament of justice has gone out. One of the greatest journalists of our era has passed away. John Pilger was always on the side of the oppressed.
“A Left government with any claim to progressive credentials will focus on three policy areas – first, high-quality, high value production; second, taxation measures to reduce significantly wealth differences; third, strengthened democracy, including industrial democracy beyond collective bargaining. These three are indispensable. A Left politics, which does not build on these three, will founder.”
“Labour should be as focused on production as it is on distribution. Labour’s job is not simply to distribute such resources as accrue to the state; it is to promote production and trade that underpin fairer distribution, but under particular conditions.”
“Jewish people exterminating men, women and children in a concentration camp is _______.”
How do you finish a sentence like that?
Former Labour Party President Nigel Haworth: “Any decisions about leadership should follow a careful and comprehensive review of, first, the recent campaign, and second, the broader settings in which Labour has chosen to work in recent years”
What has happened to the fine art of intelligent heckling?
National plans to renege on our Paris Agreement pledge
To the those voting ACT or NZF or National this year because you are worried about co-governance. I have a secret for you. You have been co-governed by the richest 1% for decades.
New security-state documents show Wellington aligning its military with the “rules-based international order” while preparing Kiwis for war with key trading partner China, writes Mick Hall.
Belief in capricious gods would explain the perplexing habit of governments with intelligent and informed people to embrace policies which are manifestly an example of self-destructive stupidity. Clever people doing stupid things.
Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; send him off to fish and you get a matrilineal society.
A guest post by Seddonville Miner outlining the history of voting rights in New Zealand and how Christopher Luxon’s recent claims about our voting system are hopelessly incorrect.
Dear journalists, please do not let Mayor Wayne Brown off the hook regarding his appalling dereliction of duty.
Guest Post by Laura López on the complex problems with the “What is your gender?” question in the New Zealand 2023 Census.
We have heard numerous claims from Auckland mayor Wayne Brown and his supporters that the proposed budget is about saving money and getting rid of a nearly $300 million hole. This is a huge disservice to Aucklanders and hugely misleading.
A Guest Post on the vexed questions posed by Kellie Jay Keen Minshall, her apparent preparedness to ally with religious fundies and right wing extremists, and the predictable calls from sections of the left for her to be banned from entering/speaking in Australia and NZ.
After nearly 20 years of frustrating ‘Free Trade’ talks between India and New Zealand, the chair of the India New Zealand Business Council (INZBC), Earl Rattray, has acknowledged that “a different approach to the traditional Free Trade Agreements which have served us well in many markets will be needed for India.” Whew. About time.
