Funny how “blow-out” gets so readily applied to cost escalation in the provision of public services (hospital rebuilds, the Cook Strait ferries) but when politicians […]
Looking for consistency in all things is said to be the hallmark of a small mind. Duly noted, but the Luxon government’s stance on climate […]
When the politician pushing a controversial piece of legislation starts accusing his critics of “derangement syndrome” – as David Seymour has done this week – […]
Despite the myriad concerns being expressed about the Regulatory Standards Bill – including misgivings by his own Regulations Ministry and scorn from constitutional law expert […]
Who is this Christopher Luxon fellow, really? Over the past two years, we have had so many invitations to find the pearl in the oyster. […]
Supposedly, people get the governments they deserve, but what on earth did we do in our past lives to deserve an Opposition as shambolic as […]
Yesterday, the Treasury’s pre-election portrait was significantly out of whack with National’s repeated claims of rampant government mis-management of the economy. Instead, it seems that […]
Since tax cuts are never a free lunch, collecting the revenue to pay for them was always going to be the credibility test of National’s […]
Down the years, centre-right parties have always found male voters to be receptive to a mix of hard-line economic politics and harsh stances on welfare. […]
There’s a 19th century flavour to National’s “social investment” strategy, in that it aims to seek capital from philanthropists and charitable organisations – some of […]
It is an old point to make… But boomers did get a pretty good deal out of their free education and plentiful unionised vacation jobs. […]
According to National’s leader Christopher Luxon and the fawning media coverage of the caucus gathering in Queenstown, its “game on!” Not a great metaphor, folks. […]
During the last half of the 1990s, the first flickering signs of economic growth would cause then-Reserve Bank governor Don Brash to hike up interest […]
National released its economic and tax policy last Friday. Weirdly, the plan was announced right at the end of the news week, when whatever impact […]
If New Zealand has a pressing need to stimulate its flagging economy, it seems very weird to meet this need with a $12 billion package of infrastructure spending…
The same argument that Robertson has made for these projects apply equally to why the government should borrow the money to build them itself
In the 1990s, the awesome powers of central bankers would cause markets to tremble… Nowadays, central bankers can hack away at interest rates and nothing will happen.
When the Reserve Bank sought feedback on requiring the country’s major banks to raise their capital reserves then you might have expected the banks to whine and complain.
We seem to have won this production largely because of the mature film industry infrastructure that NZ has built on the back of those previously subsidized productions.
Farm debt in New Zealand has exploded by 270% in the last 20 years, to around $63 billion.
The belief that it is the moderate middle who will decide the outcome of Election 2020 is a deeply ideological stance.
To ordinary earners whose income is taxed via PAYE and who also pay GST, there’s something quite surreal about the centre-right’s anguish at the Tax Working Group’s final report.
We’ve always had a dominant form of identity politics in this country, and it is one that’s based almost entirely on the ingrained beliefs of white men of means.
On Monday, Act MP David Seymour’s depiction of PM Jacinda Ardern as a clueless lightweight was yet another example of the double bind faced by […]
For reasons that amount to little more than a prolonged political sulk over last year’s election result, the corporate world is talking itself into a tantrum.
The neo-liberal wing of the National Party has never really felt that Jim Bolger was one of them, and the feeling was entirely mutual.
On the Peters/Ardern triumph by Gordon Campbell There are a lot of good reasons to feel joyful about this outcome. It is what so many […]
A National Party Spin Doctor Writes
Three more years of business as usual is the real risk.
This myth of conservative competence is as widespread as it is unearned
Copyright © 2025 | WordPress Theme by MH Themes