In popular culture, Australia is often portrayed as Western civilisation’s last unspoiled frontier, or as its final refuge from planetary disaster. In Nevil Shute’s best-selling […]
Nothing to see with this SAS raid bizzo, move on. Or so PM Bill English would have us believe.
According to former PM and UNDP leader current Helen Clark, the allegations leveled at her this week in a Foreign Policy magazine article by the […]
Thanks to Sacha Baron Cohen, Kazakhstan will always seem like a bit of a jokey, ramshackle kind of place. To that end, the Stuff story […]
One of the interesting line items in this month’s Budget will be the one that sets out the increase – if any – in Pharmac’s […]
Reportedly, an extradition treaty with China is now on the table, although – thankfully – Prime Minister John Key has also indicated that a lot […]
For the past fortnight, New Zealand has been obsessing on the reputational risk to this country of being seen as a tax haven – despite […]
Image by Grant Buist Prime Minister John Key could have dealt with the clamour for an independent inquiry into the Panama Papers scandal in a […]
Belatedly, US complicity in the global tax avoidance systems is now trickling out into daylight. To some, one of the suspicious aspects of the scandal […]
Anyone with misgivings about Hillary Clinton’s presidential ambitions had them confirmed in spades by Clinton’s appalling speech this week on the Israel/Palestine conflict. In one […]
To no-one’s real surprise, the Cullen/Reddy review of the security services has recommended an extension of the powers of the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB), […]
Once again, our little show pony Prime Minister is prancing around the world offering to take in refugees – from Syria, from Nauru – while […]
The good thing about the Syrian peace deal announced on Friday is that it might create a small space for humanitarian relief, but… the ceasefire […]
Tomorrow, Defence Minister Gerry Brownlee and Chief of Defence Force Lieutenant General Tim Keating will be in Brussels for a ministerial meeting of the so-called […]
Click for big version. The people who point out that we already have investor-state dispute settlement provisions in other trade deals and ‘so far so […]
Does this sound familiar? In the mid 2000s, New Zealand wanted to pursue a humanitarian policy, on live sheep exports. This happened to offend a […]
With an ally like Saudi Arabia, who needs enemies? In the past 15 years, the West can thank the House of Saud for • Providing […]
Too bad that the New Zealand Immigration and Protection (hah!) Tribunal don’t know how to use Google. If they did, their bizarre decision to send […]
Normally, it is governments that drop their unpalatable measures in the shadow of Christmas, but this time the Labour Opposition is doing so. Apparently, if […]
In case you were still holding your breath about the Trans Pacific Partnership trade deal, you can relax. For months, it has seemed increasingly unlikely […]
Somehow, the ‘need” for belt tightening – or of stemming the rise in income inequality – just goes right out the window at this time […]
According to polls, a third of Republican voters in Iowa want Islam to be criminalized. Unfortunately, the cornfields of middle America aren’t the only place […]
Since Prime Minister John Key plainly has trouble with the leadership thing, maybe we should keep it simple for him. So, here’s a list of […]
The rationale behind Prime Minister John Key’s smear attack against Labour yesterday (and the subsequent walkout from Parliament) was obvious enough. When you’re in a […]
Unlike the US and (allies like New Zealand) Russia and Iran have a very clear goal for their intervention in Syria. Russia and Iran want […]
A few days ago, Google finally and comprehensively won a very long-running case brought against it by the Authors Guild which had claimed that Google’s […]
Nice bloke, but you wouldn’t want him to run the country. Once again, the failings of John Key on the world stage have been cruelly […]
If you fight your bullies, the TV series Freaks and Geeks suggested, it can be painful at the time… but you earn respect and they […]
New Zealand Prime Minister John Key has just returned from a quick visit to our troops in Iraq, where he reportedly discovered that (a) Iraq […]
There’s no success like failure, as Bob Dylan once said, and Serco’s failures mean nothing but trouble on the horizon for ordinary New Zealanders. Unfortunately, […]
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