Articles

In a week that will see nationwide protests against the GCSB, the politics of the passage of the agency’s governing legislation remain as polarized as […]

Remember the Trans Pacific Partnership trade deal, and those scary stories last year about how it would give foreign multinationals the right to sue the […]

At what point did the SIS lose the technological ability to fulfil its statutory duty, which is to detect and to counter threats to our […]

Gambling, for all the social evils that it can bring in its wake, is a legal activity enjoyed by many. And during night’s debate in […]

Hope you’ve got it straight now. Treasury said $100 million from the Mighty River Power sales proceeds had been earmarked to prop up Solid Energy’s […]

Clearly we – and that includes Kim Dotcom – have been giving Prime Minister John Key too much credit. Everyone assumed that a smart guy […]

While Kim Dotcom’s appearance was the highlight of yesterday’s hearings by the Intelligence and Security Committee, his commentary on the GCSB Bill was in sync […]

Since the Arab Spring began, the rebellion in Syria has been the only one to evolve into full scale civil war, and still is the […]

Whatever wiggle room exists under Standing Orders, yesterday’s ruling by Speaker David Carter on the Peter Dunne funding scandal will have done nothing for the […]

Poor lambs. They were led astray by shockingly poor advice from their officials. All of it was an operational failure within the Education Ministry and […]

Interesting how quickly the debate on Al Nisbet’s cartoons has shifted from the actual content – and the implications if, as claimed, Nisbet has said […]

The school closures in Christchurch really are a perfect storm – the most stressed community in New Zealand is being led by the most accident […]

On the weekend at one of those gatherings of the National party faithful that seem to occur every other week – as a party the […]

Hard to imagine a more disturbing insight into the treatment of the vulnerable than the Health Ministry report on Te Roopu Taurima o Manukau. The […]

Don’t want to be unduly alarmist about this, but we seem to have an outlaw government on our hands – if by that we mean […]

The Budget lockup retains a symbolic value these days, but little more than that. This is the government’s best annual opportunity to bury its usual […]

This week has seen two examples of turkeys refusing to vote for an early Christmas – while busily denying the evident self interest involved. First, […]

Unfortunately, the buying and selling of ghost-written university essays has been part of academic culture for decades. In the mid 1980s for instance, to cite […]

Comes the time, comes the man. Aaron Gilmore has become the poster child for everything that is loathsome about politicians and the political process. However, […]

Abuse directed at anyone opposed to what you’re wanting to do. Repeated mis-representations of what you said, and did. Not to mention the flat denials […]

Remember when the creeping power of Big Government was being manifested only in …the energy efficiency regulations for household appliances? Back in 2008, that seemed […]

Yesterday’s Anzac Day saw the usual strong turnout at dawn ceremonies, to mark an occasion that is already displacing Waitangi Day – if we can […]

Anyone looking for legacy traces of the late Margaret Thatcher in New Zealand politics will have found them in the government’s scare tactics – “a […]

As sure as night follows day, you could bet some financial analyst would see the death of the free market in the plans unveiled last […]

Since politics is so often about the perpetuation of privilege, we should all celebrate the times when Parliament gets something right. The passage of Louisa […]

It is hard to decide what is the most alarming aspect of Prime Minister John Key’s plans to expand the role of Big Brother. Or, […]

Just how Prime Minister John Key thought that invoking the “proud history” of our 1950s Korean War contribution would help to minimize the current tensions […]