Gordon Campbell On Playing Performative Politics While The Economy (And The Public Health System) Burns
As the old saying goes, “With your eyes, you enter the world. But with your ears, the world enters you.” This may explain why hearing […]
Columns
Gordon Campbell On The Decline Of Winston Peters, And The Attacks On Helen Clark
As usual, last weekend’s New Zealand First conference in Palmerston North was very much about the Dear Leader. Alas, and like many other gentlemen of […]
Gordon Campbell On Why Data Centres Are Not Your (Or The Planet’s) Friend
It sounds too good to be true. A giant multinational mothership – Amazon Web Services aka AWS – it supposedly intent on spending $7.5 billion […]
Gordon Campbell On Why The Government Isn’t Fixing The Cost Of Living Crisis
These are the perennial political questions that every incumbent government has to face. Do people feel better/wealthier/more secure now than they were three years ago? […]
Gordon Campbell On ACT’s Fake Defence Of Equality
For people blessed with privilege, their head start becomes so normalised that the advantages of wealth, better education, good housing, better healthcare, white skin and […]
Gordon Campbell On A Troubling Innovation In Healthcare, And Moral Inertia Over Gaza
In China during the Cultural Revolution, “barefoot doctors” would be trained in the basics of healthcare, and then sent off to work in rural areas […]
Gordon Campbell On Teachers, Ferries And The Really Wasteful Spending
In the context of yesterday’s teachers strike, Judith Collins claimed that teachers with ten years of experience “can” (not “do”) earn $147,000 a year. In […]
Gordon Campbell On The Lack Of Spine In New Zealand’s Foreign Policy On Gaza
The word “Gaza” is taking on similar connotations to what the word “ Auschwitz” meant to a previous generation. It signifies a deliberate and systematic […]
Gordon Campbell On Labour’s Soft Support In The Polls
Currently, Labour is a receptacle for the widespread public dis-illusionment with the Luxon administration. However, this week’s poll results– which would deliver a hung Parliament […]
Gordon Campbell On A Clueless Government Running A Jobless Economy
One of the whoppers told regularly by Nicola Willis and Christopher Luxon is that National inherited a terrible, no good economy from Labour, with rampant […]
Gordon Campbell On New Zealand’s Role In The New ANZUS Remake
Want Donald Trump to lower the tariffs on your exports to US markets? Easy. Offer him money. Lots of it. As the New York Times […]
Gordon Campbell On The Perils Of Trading With Trump
Luxon did protest too much on the weekend. Sure, the credulous party faithful were willing to believe him as he continued to lay the blame […]
Gordon Campbell On The Dubious Rationales For The Waikato Medical School
Reportedly, a large amount of the cost of creating and running the new $235 million medical school at Waikato University will be financed by philanthropic […]
Gordon Campbell On National’s Bid To Steal Future Elections
Other countries are expanding the ability of their citizens to vote. In Britain (from which New Zealand has long taken its constitutional cues) the franchise […]
Gordon Campbell On Why The Free Market Is A Scam, Plus The Epstein Saga
In the shadow of the Holocaust at the end of WWII, the world passed a raft of United Nations/Geneva conventions to ensure that states could […]
Gordon Campbell On New Zealand’s Peter Thiel Problem
Reportedly, the moral revulsion being felt around the world at Israel’s actions in Gaza has induced 24 countries to sign a joint letter calling on […]
Gordon Campbell On Ducking The Costs Of Climate Change
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 […]
Gordon Campbell On Why The Regulatory Standards Bill Is A Hot Mess
When the politician pushing a controversial piece of legislation starts accusing his critics of “derangement syndrome” – as David Seymour has done this week – […]
Gordon Campbell On Using The Tax System To Boost Funding For The Arts
Despite the myriad concerns being expressed about the Regulatory Standards Bill – including misgivings by his own Regulations Ministry and scorn from constitutional law expert […]
Gordon Campbell on National’s crackdown on shoplifters
Politicians do like being tough on crime. Flexing law and order muscle is a feature of the patriarchal Daddy State, and is beloved by the […]
Gordon Campbell on what our Labour Party could learn from Zohran Mamdani
Heaven forbid that an abrasive punk duo that calls itself Bob Vylan should lead a hostile chant at the Glastonbury music festival against a military […]
Gordon Campbell On Exonerating Israel, And Demonising Iran
Now that the US and Israel have stopped bombing Iran, Israel can re-focus on its core business of starving children in Gaza, and killing their […]
Gordon Campbell On Trump’s Anti-Bomb Bombing Campaign
If the US really wanted to stop nuclear weapons proliferation in the Middle East, it would have long ago supported the moves to declare the […]
Gordon Campbell On Sacrificing Worker Rights On The Altar Of Commerce
In the interests of efficiency, maybe Brooke van Velden should just outsource her Workplace Relations and Safety Ministry to Business NZ and be done with […]
Gordon Campbell On The West’s War Against Iran
Clearly, the world needs to stop talking about Israel’s right to defend itself, and start talking about the world’s need to defend itself against Israel. […]
Gordon Campbell On The Making Of King Donald
After decades of watching the US prop up dictatorships in Central America, South America and the Middle East, there’s a certain irony in seeing authoritarian […]
Gordon Campbell on free speech and anti-Semitism
According to Workplace Health and Safety Minister Brooke Van Velden, employers are having to endure a “culture of fear” created by Worksafe, which has the […]
Gordon Campbell On Why The Regulatory Standards Bill Should Be Dumped
If you blinked on a recent Friday afternoon, you might have missed the passing under urgency of the first reading of the Regulatory Standards Bill. […]
Gordon Campbell On Why Leakers Are Essential To The Public Good
For obvious reasons, people in positions of power tend to treat the leaking of unauthorised information as a very, very bad thing, and – to […]
Gordon Campbell On Wealth Taxes And Capital Flight
In the wake of the Greens’ alternative Budget – and the criticism levelled at it – it seems pretty obvious that when it comes to […]