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Politics

Posts on government and governence at national and local level, political parties,politicians, and political participation

Categories under Politics

Trump’s not so bad: the nuclear holocaust edition

Written By: - Date published: 11:32 am, September 15th, 2021 - 52 comments

An occasional series

What should we call the Vaccination bus?

Written By: - Date published: 8:29 am, September 15th, 2021 - 82 comments

The Prime Minister has sparked another national debate.  What should we call the new mobile vaccination vehicles that will be rolled out over the next week or so.

COVID, We Need To Talk About Class

Written By: - Date published: 9:51 am, September 14th, 2021 - 27 comments

We’ve never seen a nationwide disease illustrate class and deprivation like the future of the country depended on it. Not like this. This should change us.

Delta Covid – the battle so far

Written By: - Date published: 9:33 am, September 14th, 2021 - 65 comments

As Tamaki Makaurau enters week four of lockdown things are at an interesting stage.

The problems for women with sex self-ID in law and society

Written By: - Date published: 10:57 am, September 13th, 2021 - 105 comments

What should have been be a straight forward attending to the documentation needs of trans and non-binary people has become a political mess of conflicts with women’s rights. There is still time to make a submission to the BDMRR Bill in order to protect women’s rights (last day for submissions is Tuesday).

Dirty Politics does not work any more

Written By: - Date published: 9:53 am, September 11th, 2021 - 83 comments

Egged on by a shock horror smear campaign on Cameron Slater’s latest post Judith Collins has attacked Dr Siouxsie Wiles by fat shaming her.

Until all of us are safe none of us are safe

Written By: - Date published: 10:39 am, September 9th, 2021 - 78 comments

On Monday of this week David Seymour received a roasting after posting a confidential Health code that was to be used by Waitakere Whanau to receive priority vaccination slots.  He has now doubled down on his effort and claimed that prioritisation is wrong.

Seymour undermines vaccine roll out for Maori

Written By: - Date published: 1:53 pm, September 6th, 2021 - 81 comments

David Seymour has publicised a code designed for West Auckland whanau to try and improve poor vaccination rates amongst Maori.

Can The Terror-Injured Citizens Hold the New Zealand Government To Account?

Written By: - Date published: 9:04 am, September 5th, 2021 - 57 comments

While Prime Minister Ardern is an empathic Prime Minister, good for the country in a crisis, and is genuinely caring, there’s also a time for citizens to say that the state must pay to right wrongs.

The politics of the New Lynn attack

Written By: - Date published: 10:14 am, September 4th, 2021 - 111 comments

Early days so far but the New Lynn attack will spark a debate about the adequacy of the country’s terrorism suppression laws and about citizenship rights.

Terrorist attack in New Lynn

Written By: - Date published: 5:44 pm, September 3rd, 2021 - 132 comments

News broke this afternoon of an attack at Countdown Lynnmall where the assailant was shot and six people injured, three critically.  Jacinda Ardern and Police Commissioner have just given a stand up conference and have advised that the assailant was ISIS inspired.

National’s next leader?

Written By: - Date published: 8:28 am, September 3rd, 2021 - 60 comments

As the damage caused by Judith Collins’ leadership of the National Party intensifies it is inevitable that there will be internal discussions about who should replace her, and soon.  And I think the best candidate is clear.

Judith’s very bad two days

Written By: - Date published: 8:12 am, September 2nd, 2021 - 50 comments

Judith Collins’ insistence that Parliament be reconvened even at a time that the country was in lockdown level 4 has backfired spectacularly.

MPs should not only follow the rules but follow them with stars

Written By: - Date published: 9:16 am, August 31st, 2021 - 68 comments

Judith Collins has insisted on travelling from Auckland to Wellington so she can stand and shout in an empty Parliament Chamber.

Covid and the media

Written By: - Date published: 10:42 am, August 29th, 2021 - 54 comments

This week there has been some argy bargy between the Twitterati including the Waitakerati and the media on coverage of Covid in Aotearoa with elements of the media complaining that the criticisms are unjustified.  A brief review of some of the offerings this week would suggest otherwise.

Gumming up the works

Written By: - Date published: 9:05 am, August 28th, 2021 - 53 comments

Last night it was revealed that National and Act had refused to agree to a proposed virtual Parliament sitting where questions could be asked, and instead wanted face to face meetings, even though this would mean a third of the country’s MPs travelling regularly to Wellington from a Covid delta hotspot.

Ardern Needs to do More Than Manage Crisis

Written By: - Date published: 2:23 pm, August 25th, 2021 - 24 comments

For a country that has sought to form advantage for itself with strong and hard COVID-19 lockdowns, we’re not gaining any more advantage than yet another binge-purge cycle of supply tension and shortages, rapid economic downturn softened by tens of billions of subsidy, followed by unsustainable booms, over and over again.

The mysterious socialist hermit kingdom

Written By: - Date published: 9:55 am, August 25th, 2021 - 111 comments

Various commentators including Nigel Farage have claimed that New Zealand’s Covid elimination strategy is a failure.  Our death rate and the possibility that we can again return to a normality that other nations can only aspire to suggests they are wrong.

Matt King caught blowing anti vaccination dog whistle

Written By: - Date published: 11:15 am, August 23rd, 2021 - 22 comments

Former National MP Matt King has been publicly posting anti vaccination propaganda under the ruse of only wanting a conversation.

The importance of Jacinda’s 1 pm press conferences

Written By: - Date published: 11:50 am, August 22nd, 2021 - 130 comments

Jacinda Ardern has resumed the 1 pm briefings where she communicates effectively the country’s current situation and what the plan is.  But National and some elements of the media are complaining, presumably that she is doing too good a job.

The Covid vaccine may not be the nirvana

Written By: - Date published: 12:47 pm, August 21st, 2021 - 151 comments

Claims that a comprehensive vaccination scheme will allow life to get back to normal ignores the experience of Israel, which despite having a large proportion of its population vaccinated is having a surge of new infections of Covid that is stretching its health system.

Farewell Dr Michael Cullen

Written By: - Date published: 1:52 pm, August 20th, 2021 - 21 comments

Dr Michael Cullen has died, and with him goes a real standard-bearer for Labour for three decades.

RIP Michael Cullen

Written By: - Date published: 10:41 am, August 20th, 2021 - 15 comments

Former Labour Deputy Prime Minister Michael Cullen has died.

The antidote page for all those chickens

Written By: - Date published: 3:15 pm, August 19th, 2021 - 32 comments

This is the page that I read at least once a week. With a clean brevity it gives me almost all of the strategic summary information about the progress of the vaccinations in NZ. Even it’s title is clean and clear. COVID-19: Vaccine data. But I’m trained in operations and rather more interested in reality rather than the average untrained pundit or politician who run around like a Chicken Little saying the equivalent of “the sky is falling” every other week. Thankfully they were ignored.

The importance of political leadership in dealing with Covid

Written By: - Date published: 8:55 am, August 18th, 2021 - 66 comments

Political leadership in the time of Covid is important.  As the Government urgently swung into action and imposed a level 4 lockdown after news of a community case of Delta Covid who lived in Auckland and had spent time in Coromandel while infectious, Thames-Coromandel District Mayor and former National MP Sandra Goudie admitted to not scanning regularly.

The strange story about the fake news poll results

Written By: - Date published: 8:21 am, August 17th, 2021 - 52 comments

The Politik website’s inadvertant publishing of fake news of a drop in Labour’s support shows how fragile the system of relying on two sources for a story is.

Women, the Taliban and sex based rights

Written By: - Date published: 10:38 am, August 16th, 2021 - 66 comments

What is being done to women in Afghanistan by the Taliban is sex-based oppression.

The United States Retreat from Afghanistan

Written By: - Date published: 6:30 am, August 16th, 2021 - 140 comments

President Biden is about to get a Jimmy Carter-scale shellacking with tv footage coming of Afghani Taleban going through Kabul and in short days rifling through the U.S. Embassy as they finally take over the entire country. You don’t win re-election with defeats and withdrawals, and you won’t be thanked for it in the mid-term Senatorial races either.

The latest battle in the culture wars

Written By: - Date published: 8:49 am, August 15th, 2021 - 79 comments

This week National agreed to the bill allowing gender self identification to proceed to select committee which was a stark contrast to their position on the bill banning gay conversion therapy.  I wonder what happened?

The Churchill picture

Written By: - Date published: 8:13 am, August 12th, 2021 - 165 comments

National, the party that claims to be focussed on the issues that matter decided to get upset when the Greens requested the replacement of a picture of a former UK leader who had a reputation for engaging in crimes against humanity.

We are stuck

Written By: - Date published: 7:13 am, August 12th, 2021 - 45 comments

New Zealand has one of the most concentrated and oligopolistic economies in the world, and also one of the least commercially protected societies. Will we ever be able to break out of it? If you look across our society, it is the relationships of less than 20 main companies with our government that form a […]