Written By: - Date published: 11:52 am, March 14th, 2026 - 43 comments
Jacinda Ardern led the country through some of the most taxing international crises imaginable. How would she deal with the potential oil shock caused by the Iranian war and how does this compare to Christopher Luxon’s response?
Written By: - Date published: 1:31 pm, March 12th, 2026 - 29 comments
Shane Jones has been making a song and dance about how the previous Labour Government was responsible for the closure of the Marsden Point Refinery. But a perusal of the cabinet paper he cites in support shows that this clearly is not the case.
Written By: - Date published: 11:31 am, March 11th, 2026 - 90 comments
In the short and medium term, what should this government do as a plan?
Written By: - Date published: 12:53 pm, March 9th, 2026 - 16 comments
Winston Peters has been in this scenario before. The brutal replacement of Jim Bolger as PM in 1997 eventually saw Peters walk away from the coalition. What will happen this time around?
Written By: - Date published: 8:55 pm, March 7th, 2026 - 39 comments
The US-Israeli killing of children must be stopped.
Written By: - Date published: 11:44 am, March 5th, 2026 - 39 comments
Trump’s attack on Iran, in cahoots with, or in support of, his regional proxy, Israel, is illegal, but also unconscionable in moral and political terms. It is a resurgence of the post-war experience, in which the development of the rules-based international order was qualified by the arbitrary actions of “big players” in Iran, Suez, Cuba […]
Written By: - Date published: 7:56 pm, March 4th, 2026 - 5 comments
TVNZ Board members reached out to Paul Goldsmith on media stories, and later added stories to satisfy National Party Ministers
Written By: - Date published: 11:56 am, March 3rd, 2026 - 22 comments
A prime minister who does not understand how vulnerable New Zealand’s economy is to a Middle Eastern war as we have now, is a Prime Minister who should be removed from office.
Written By: - Date published: 8:59 am, March 1st, 2026 - 29 comments
Trump’s attack on Iran is one hell of a way to divert away from the Epstein files.
Written By: - Date published: 8:27 am, March 1st, 2026 - 42 comments
Trump’s attack on Iran has a high risk of turning into another Afghanistan in which the United States was utterly humiliated.
Written By: - Date published: 12:56 pm, February 27th, 2026 - 7 comments
Gang profits have doubled, international organised crime strengthening their hooks, NZ has lost experienced cops, retail crime is up and often being ignored, drug use is at full blown crisis, domestic violence at 8 year highs, and the violent crime numbers are off base
Written By: - Date published: 2:28 pm, February 26th, 2026 - 7 comments
Senior National Party Cabinet Minister tried to have police arrest homelessness in Auckland 18 years ago. This year he succeeded
Written By: - Date published: 9:17 am, February 26th, 2026 - 12 comments
Chris Bishop was forced to eat humble pie this week on his plan to make Auckland a more compact city. And the Government’s backflip on the number of new dwellings makes a mockery of Auckland Council’s recent consultation on Plan Change 120. How councillors are supposed to weigh the new proposal with open minds under that kind of pressure is anyone’s guess.
Written By: - Date published: 10:00 am, February 23rd, 2026 - 20 comments
Fining beggers will only increase their problems and moving them on will not solve the problem only spread it around.
Written By: - Date published: 5:31 pm, February 22nd, 2026 - 22 comments
All the signs are pointing to a new Shock and Awe campaign by the United States, with the goal of a fast knock-out of Iran.. War seldom goes entirely to plan.
Written By: - Date published: 9:12 am, February 14th, 2026 - 79 comments
If you dismantle welfare, you push many New Zealanders into desperate poverty.
Written By: - Date published: 4:11 pm, January 30th, 2026 - 27 comments
There is no evidence of immediate improvement in our economy, or of this government improving it.
Written By: - Date published: 7:57 am, January 30th, 2026 - 14 comments
2026 school lunches are just as bad, but they are also emblematic of Seymour’s spin and facade
Written By: - Date published: 2:03 pm, January 29th, 2026 - 9 comments
A year after the Government slashed a third of Health IT jobs the Auckland hospital system has suffered a massive IT outage.
Written By: - Date published: 8:25 am, January 22nd, 2026 - 11 comments
Some NZ hospitals are going into critical status at least twice a day, turning away patients who are then as twice likely to die. Plus: National isn’t meeting its targets and election day announced.
Written By: - Date published: 6:09 am, January 22nd, 2026 - 44 comments
“The old order is not coming back. We should not mourn it. Nostalgia is not a strategy.
But from the fracture, we can build something better, stronger, and more just.
…
The powerful have their power. But we have something too – the capacity to stop pretending, to name reality, to build our strength at home, and to act together.”
Written By: - Date published: 11:11 am, January 17th, 2026 - 10 comments
Christopher Luxon is extracting utu on Chris Bishop for his pre Christmas attempted coup by making Bishop eat humble pie on his plans to allow intensification in Auckland’s inner suburbs.
Written By: - Date published: 9:27 pm, January 16th, 2026 - 26 comments
To understand what’s going on in Iran, abandon what the Persians invented centuries ago: Manichaeism, black-and-white, political framing.
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: 9:39 am, January 6th, 2026 - 12 comments
The company has been accused of using outdated encryption protocols, and has been slow to respond to community concerns. And importantly, has National put our other public health data at risk too?
Written By: - Date published: 9:44 am, January 1st, 2026 - 7 comments
Happy New Year to all the readers, commenters, and fellow authors/mods at The Standard
Written By: - Date published: 12:03 pm, December 23rd, 2025 - 11 comments
Advantage gets out the crystal ball and postilated what may happen next year.
Written By: - Date published: 11:36 am, December 21st, 2025 - 9 comments
National’s Ministerial Retail Advisory Group leader Sunny Kaushall has hit the headlines for huge catering costs inluding paying $9 for bottles of coke worth $5.50. But the deeper story should be why his activity, which is clearly political in nature, being funded by a fund set aside for victims.
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: 11:55 am, December 19th, 2025 - 6 comments
The Taxpayer’s Union campaign against Nicola Willis’s Socialist handling of the economy, complete with novelty fudge has crashed unceremoniously. The sponsors have clearly spoken.
Written By: - Date published: 7:31 am, December 19th, 2025 - 3 comments
Masterton hospital has been deemed structurally unsafe with money awarded for its remediation after a long court case.
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