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Politics

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

Categories under Politics

Deloitte’s Health NZ Review Falls Short

Written By: - Date published: 7:56 pm, March 10th, 2025 - 8 comments

Shane Reti and Simeon Brown

This week Simeon Brown used a Deloitte report to criticise Health NZ and accelerate his privatisation message. But, writes Mountain Tui, the Deloitte report appears to reveal a lot more from what it omitted, than what it covered.

Playing politics with peoples lives

Written By: - Date published: 2:23 pm, March 10th, 2025 - 25 comments

Simeon Brown’s gutting of funding for earlier bowel cancer screening of Maori and Pacifica will increase health disparity.

Climate change?

Written By: - Date published: 8:43 am, March 10th, 2025 - 101 comments

Chris Hipkins has released his priorities should he be Prime Minister. They do not include addressing climate change.

Labour to campaign on tax reform

Written By: - Date published: 6:15 am, March 10th, 2025 - 57 comments

1News: The party leader told Q+A that Labour would be announcing its tax policy later this year, ahead of the 2026 election. He said too much investment was going into property rather than “productive businesses that create jobs”. “We’ve got to rejig the tax system so that the burden of taxation is more evenly spread,” […]

Great America

Written By: - Date published: 12:23 pm, March 9th, 2025 - 17 comments

The United States of America is in full territorial expansion mode and there is little that anyone can do about it. 

Another blow against decency and truth: the flourishing of evil.

Written By: - Date published: 7:30 am, March 8th, 2025 - 83 comments

I am an ordinary citizen of Aotearoa. I am deeply angered at and ashamed of the actions of Winston Peters in dismissing Phil Goff as our High Commissioner in London. It is a deplorable decision.

Luxon’s Untenable Grasp

Written By: - Date published: 4:24 pm, March 7th, 2025 - 11 comments

Last year I predicted Luxon would be replaced within the term. But by linking his credibility to Seymour’s preservative laden, scalding, burning and burnt school lunch program this week, Luxon has accelerated his political demise.

Fox in a henhouse

Written By: - Date published: 10:33 am, March 6th, 2025 - 9 comments

Simeon Brown has appointed John Carnegie to the EECA even though Carnegie has some decidedly anti energy conservation ideas.

Blink twice if you are being held hostage

Written By: - Date published: 10:48 am, March 5th, 2025 - 27 comments

Vladimir Zelensky has apologised to Donald Trump for being the receipient of Trump’s appalling behaviour recently. And Trump has sparked a full on trade war with some of America’s closest allies.

Canadian billionaire linked to right wing websites buys a near 10% of NZME shares

Written By: - Date published: 1:45 pm, March 3rd, 2025 - 14 comments

James “Jim” Grenon spends almost $10 million to buy a ~10% stake in the publisher of NZ Herald and owner of Newstalk ZB.

Helen Clark’s nuanced take on world events

Written By: - Date published: 10:40 am, March 3rd, 2025 - 57 comments

In a recent interview Helen Clark managed to neatly summarise current world problems and express a desire for New Zealand to maintain its independent foreign policy.

The new world order

Written By: - Date published: 10:32 am, March 2nd, 2025 - 130 comments

Yesterday’s press conference involving Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky suggests that the United States is now solidly aligned with Russia against the Western World and Western values.

The Chinese Shadowboxing Show at Sea

Written By: - Date published: 4:42 pm, March 1st, 2025 - 21 comments

The World is at war and the level of mind-control is mind-blowing.

Looks like rail enabled ferries may be back

Written By: - Date published: 12:00 pm, March 1st, 2025 - 36 comments

You have to hand it to Winston and New Zealand First. On the issue of rail enabled ferries they have performed outstanding work. That good that what looked like a foregone conclusion, the dismantling of the Cook Strait Rail Link, may not happen after all.

Its the end of the Media as we know it …

Written By: - Date published: 10:42 am, February 28th, 2025 - 42 comments

Two recent media related stories made me wonder if there was now formal acknowledgement that the concept that media should fearlessly and impartially report the news is now dead.

Some more thoughts about National’s vigilante justice policy

Written By: - Date published: 8:44 am, February 28th, 2025 - 16 comments

National’s forary into supporting vigilante justice raises some thorny legal issues it appears National has not thught about.

The Greens plan for a Green Budget

Written By: - Date published: 12:45 pm, February 27th, 2025 - 2 comments

The Green Party co-leaders gave their annual State of the Planet speech yesterday.

USA – unreliable, undemocratic, and its citizens are not free compared to me

Written By: - Date published: 1:47 pm, February 26th, 2025 - 15 comments

Read an amusing quora reply that rather crystallised my thinking on the US compared to here. It started as a click-bait clearly written by the usual American fool blinded by propaganda glare from their border mirrors. A Canadian responded with with and accuracy. But on a more serious note, if US intentions have skewed towards supporting annexations, we need to improve our military capabilities.

Vigilante justice is apparently our birth right

Written By: - Date published: 9:26 am, February 26th, 2025 - 147 comments

Amongst the most dangerous, extreme and downright stupid policies the Government has come up with is the decision to be announced today to allow citizen’s arrests of shoplifters

Radio NZ’s bizarre handling of the Bayly fiasco

Written By: - Date published: 4:08 pm, February 25th, 2025 - 42 comments

This morning on Radio New Zealand there was sharp questioning of Christopher Luxon by Ingrid Hipkiss and sharp analysis by Jo Moir. But they allowed Brigette Morten air time to spin the issue in a National friendly way.

Repaired RSS feed highlights minister’s failing portfolios

Written By: - Date published: 4:03 pm, February 24th, 2025 - 1 comment

Last week, I pointed out that Internal Affairs under Act Minister Brooke van Velden, had managed to lose RSS communications from the Beehive to the world. It’d been offline for about three weeks at that point. That was just sloppy and incompetent for the DIA who amongst other things are responsible for overseeing government technology services.

Come Rich Foreigners – New Zealand Is For Sale

Written By: - Date published: 1:08 pm, February 24th, 2025 - 4 comments

Long signaled, all right wing parties are opening the doors for wealthy foreigners to easily acquire our significant assets and lands.

New school lunches waste appears to exceed 70% as David Seymour’s incompetence and PR reliance rises to the fore

Written By: - Date published: 12:31 pm, February 24th, 2025 - 13 comments

The Associate Education Minister has defended the new school lunch program even as the government says it is not collecting any official feedback. Meanwhile no word from National’s Education Minister Erica Stanford.

Bayly goneburger

Written By: - Date published: 12:01 pm, February 24th, 2025 - 23 comments

In breaking news Andrew Bayley has resigned as a minister after entering into an animated discussion with a staff member and “placing a hand on their upper arm”.

Seymour is wrecking the school lunch program

Written By: - Date published: 9:00 am, February 24th, 2025 - 26 comments

David Seymour’s handling of changes to free school lunches has been an unmitigated disaster. Is the plan to make the scheme that bad it can then be cancelled?

When will Luxon be rolled?

Written By: - Date published: 10:32 am, February 23rd, 2025 - 32 comments

Christopher Luxon’s time as Prime Minister appear to be numbered.

Good as gold

Written By: - Date published: 3:44 pm, February 22nd, 2025 - 19 comments

A fascinating expose from Michael Hudson on the causes and implications of the recent rise in the price of gold. When Nixon took the US dollar off the standard in 1971 you could get an ounce for $35. Not now; Hudson explains why.

A Commercial Peace Agreement? 

Written By: - Date published: 10:54 am, February 20th, 2025 - 68 comments

Trump’s opening bid for peace towards Ukraine was that the United States would gain access to Ukraine’s rare earth minerals.

About Karen Chhour’s youth offending claims

Written By: - Date published: 11:53 am, February 19th, 2025 - 11 comments

Karen Chhor has made two recent claims, that youth crime is at an all time high, and that serious and persistent offending has increased dramatically to justify her boot camps policy. Neither claim appears to be true.

Let me nitpick on the government RSS feeds

Written By: - Date published: 1:52 pm, February 18th, 2025 - 10 comments

Earlier today I sent a missive off to point out a little flaw in a new and updated Beehive page. Like all things from this current government, it was long on flashiness and extremely light on the functional details. It also doesn’t appear to have been picked up that for 3 weeks that the government’s messaging was self-limited. Pretty typical of this sloppy and incompetent government.

Everyone must go

Written By: - Date published: 11:47 am, February 17th, 2025 - 28 comments

Chris from Marketing’s latest gimic to lead us to economic nirvana is to use money that is meant to be used for environmental enhancement to run a campaign in Australia with a slogan that is awkward and negative.