Publications

Main Point The NZ Intelligence and Security Bill unnecessarily allows for greater surveillance of New Zealanders by our intelligence services and intrudes further on our privacy. The definition of national security is so broad that it could enable even more...

Up until now most progressive Americans have been backing the “lesser evil” in the US presidential contest. They don’t particularly like Hillary Clinton’s establishment politics but they’ve been scared into her camp because Donald Trump is so terrible.

For anyone pessimistic about the possibility of progressive change, Jeremy Corbyn’s epic victory should be a confidence boost.

Key’s posture is that human rights don’t really matter, or at least are secondary to maintaining warm relations with repressive governments.

Corbyn’s opponents have tried every trick in the book to dent the Labour leader’s support.

Politicians lose respect when they know something needs to be done but won’t do it for fear of losing a few votes.

Being the son of Elsie Locke I was interested to see who won the Elsie Locke Award for Non-Fiction at this year’s NZ Book Awards for Children and Young Adults. The Elsie Locke Award recognises my late mother’s contribution to children’s literature.

After 30 years the United States has finally accommodated to our nuclear-free status. It is a victory we should celebrate. We, the New Zealand people, stood up to the world’s superpower and refused to let nuclear-armed or powered warships into our ports. The superpower has buckled first.

Labour and the Greens should not be scared to support economist Arthur Grimes’ call for policies to bring down Auckland house prices by 40%. We don’t need to support all his policy suggestions. But let’s recognise that a 40% drop would only bring the Auckland median house price (now around $820,000) down to what it was four years ago ($495,000). Why not aim for that?