It Is Not Enough Only to Change the Government
Everyone on the left can agree that we must change the government. Elliot Crossan argues that if Labour wins in 2026 and refuses […]
chris hipkins
Understanding the New Zealand General Election 2023: Historical trends and perspectives.
From the outside, the New Zealand 2023 General Election seems both lacklustre and slightly strange. The Labour Government, having won a huge majority in 2020 is now fighting for its political life. Yet National, the main centre-right opposition party is still on average polling significantly worse now than they were when it lost power in 2017.
Natural disasters test new leaders in New Zealand – some did better than others.
After the Auckland flood, Wayne Brown’s election will now be viewed as a cautionary tale. What can happen when someone who is inexperienced and unsuited to political office is elected to important political leadership roles. The blowback of this on the New Zealand right should not be understated, it is bad news for them.
Jacinda Ardern – How will her five years in power be remembered?
It is too soon to say what Jacinda’s legacy will be. She will certainly be remembered for becoming a mother whilst being a world leader. For her presence on the world stage as a voice for feminism and progressive politics. She ushered in a generational and attitudinal change in New Zealand politics. While internationally she offered an alternative to the politics of Trump, Bolsonaro, Scott Morrison, and Viktor Orban.
Guest post – let the outrage continue!
Outrage at suggestions that nurses, teachers, social workers, and doctors were not worthy of a pay rise this year has been swift.
@Melulater on Teachers’ Strike
Reprinted with permission from the blogsite How Melulater sees it, an important backgrounder to the impending teachers’ strike.
David is delayed
David Seymour has done something even more embarrassing than twerking on Dancing with the Stars.
Young people and climate change
School students are planning national protests against climate change on March 15, 2019. The response of some politicians to this news is less than optimal.
Public Service Reform
For a country the size of Melbourne, we have a ridiculously complex state, and this layer of accountablility is largely a complete waste of our taxpayer money and degrades our agency as citizens. Can we do better?
The problem with Charter Schools
The Government is moving to stop the creation of new charter schools and require existing charter schools to integrate with the public system.
National’s Standards
It’s great to see Chris Hipkins abolishing ‘National Standards’ as a matter of priority. This policy was nothing but an unfortunate bit of populism […]
Teachers will be dancing in the streets at the latest Education announcement
Chris Hipkins has announced that significant changes will be made to testing regimes for Primary and Secondary schools.
Strewth Cobbah
Over the ditch the Australian Government has accused New Zealand Labour of using Parliament to undermine Barnaby Joyce. But an analysis of the claim suggests that anyone claiming this should be regarded as being a whacka because the media was onto the claim two days before the questions were asked.
Parliamentary Services is snooping on MPs’ emails
It appears that Parliamentary Services is monitoring MPs emails. And not just for things such as spam and viruses.
Tertiary fee drop – excellent proposal from Labour
Education is a public good, but tertiary education in NZ has been undermined by high student fees and debt. So it’s very encouraging to see a proposal from Labour for reducing fees (and not ruling out free education!).
Bomber: sensitive and inexperienced
My comment at The Daily Blog responding to a section of one of Martyn ‘Bomber’ Bradbury’s post got moderated out. That does rather reinforce what my comment said. So I will simply repeat it here. The political scene is a very bad place to have as sensitive ego in as Bomber has. Most people involved around the political scene will have different opinions and they usually aren’t hesitant in expressing them. It appears that young Bomber lacks the backbone to withstand that diversity without having a fit of pique.
Imperator Fish: How to win an election
Scott Yorke at Imperator Fish opines on electorate seats and inter-party relations. On the way through he identifies some strikingly bad net behaviour. Labour MPs past and present who badly need to learn to control themselves on the net just as much as Bomber does.
Oravida: Collins, Goodfellow, Key.
John Key claims Judith Collins was not guilty of conflict of interest re-her visit to Oravida in China. Grant Robertson and Chris Hipkins, in the General Debate today claimed that Peter Goodfellow met with an Oravida sponsored group of businessmen to discuss “bi-lateral collaboration.” They claim Key also played golf with an Oravida bigwig.
NRT: Ticket clipping
National’s charter schools are predicated on the idea that the public education system is doing a bad job. They’re (over-)funded to do things differently. So its more than a little odd that He Puna Marama Trust’s charter school is simply getting local state schools to do all their teaching for them. They just clip the ticket converting taxpayers money to private profit. Ridiculous corrupt NAct policy.
Caption contest
Good for the goose…?
Treasury has repeatedly proven itself incapable of forecasting its way out of a paper bag but, for some reason, that doesn’t stop it trying to tell everyone else how to do their jobs. Currently, they’re pushing for larger class sizes in the reduced education budget. Someone should ask why the education budget is under pressure but Treasury’s isn’t. Wait, someone did.
Smith to announce ACC privatisation
Labour’s Chris Hipkins has the inside word: On Wednesday this week, Nick Smith is going to announce what amounts to the effective privatisation of a large part of ACC. You won’t hear the word privatisation uttered from his lips, he’ll use all sorts of other words like ‘competition’ and ‘market discipline’, but privatisation it will be.
Buzzy Key
Over at Red Alert, Chris Hipkins asks what other photo-ops John Key has been flying to using Air Force helicopters. As well as the V8/Golf club dinner photo ops, Key has used the choppers three times in the past three weeks. Maybe he buzzed into his important photo-op at a Timaru skateboard park or the ‘cameo’ at the NZ Shearing Champs.
Keep it up, Chippie and co
Good on Chris Hipkins. The other day, he wrote: “National won the last election quite comfortably. Kiwis are fair minded people and will […]
Labour lolz
I reckon Red Alert, the Labour MPs’ blog, has been a huge success. It’s great to see MPs unscripted and it’s good for […]
Jacinda Ardern to lead IUSY
Jacinda Ardern, former Young Labour president and political advisor, has just been elected president of the International Union of Socialist Youth – a […]