Articles

Let’s hope Prime Minister John Key looks and listens during this week’s overseas trip to Mexico, Colombia, Chile and Brazil. There’s so much he could […]

Just over a week ago in the United Kingdom, the Guardian ran an article entitled “Welfare fraud is a drop in the ocean compared to […]

This is how we do political business in New Zealand. First, Prime Minister John Key told the relevant officials to stop their scoping process for […]

Isn’t it time we closed down Education Minister Hekia Parata, or at least merged her with Anne Tolley and cut our losses? The timing, speed […]

The very public physical deterioration of his predecessor John Paul II during his final years may well have been a factor in Benedict XVI‘s shock […]

In the past, successive Labour and National led governments have been happy to use the poisonous term “queue jumping” to describe people trying to exercise […]

Lewis Carroll would have had a fine old time with our job figures, and the anxious debate that has broken out about them. Unemployment is […]

The social evils of laissez-faire economics continue to mount, with the shortage of affordable housing kicking off the political cycle this year. The rise in […]

Australian leader Julia Gillard is one of those politicians who performs best when her back is against the wall – as she was in January […]

Like one of those inept British generals in World War One, Defence Minister Jonathan Coleman is more than willing to declare defeat as victory, ignore […]

As one would expect at the outset of the political year, the recent trio of ‘state of the nation’ addresses have been more about impression […]

At Christmas time, the thoughts of the Remuneration Authority are evidently not with the Child in the manger kind of stuff, but with the somewhat […]

One can only imagine the outcry if a centre left government could manage to meet its goals as economic managers – in this case, to […]

In essence, everyone in New Zealand falls into one of three camps on David Bain, and whether or not he should be paid compensation: (a) […]

Presumably, we are only days away (at most) from learning the contents of the report on the David Bain compensation case prepared by the distinguished […]

New Zealand has been hosting the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) talks in Auckland for the past week, but you’d have to say things haven’t worked […]

Remember how the Key government has justified being so very, very secretive about the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) because goodness me, you don’t negotiate these […]

The best way of appreciating Fran O’Sullivan’s attack on Auckland University law professor Jane Kelsey in the NZ Herald yesterday is to read it aloud […]

By now, we’ve come to recognize Prime Minister John Key’s typical response to bad news, which is to (a) claim the real figures aren’t in […]

According to one of RNZ’s Morning Report hosts this morning, David Shearer “needs to stamp his authority” on the Labour caucus over the David Cunliffe […]

The conference speech that David Shearer will deliver this weekend is shaping up as one of those Masterchef/New Zealand’s Got Talent events where the nation […]

A week is a long time but, thankfully for governments, the flow of news tends to get broken down into discrete items which can then […]

Was it only four years ago that Barack Obama was first elected? The visibly tired, visibly older man on stage in Chicago yesterday seemed to […]