2001

This article was first published in the Spinoff on 18 August 2021. I argued 20 years ago that sending troops would only help the Taliban. And so it has proved,...

This article was published by Spinoff on 22 December 2020 By Keith Locke The weakness of the royal commission report is that it treats Islamist extremist terrorism and extreme right white...

How can New Zealand claim to have an independent foreign policy when it won’t even criticise America’s assassination of Qassem Soleimani, a top Iranian leader? The furthest foreign minister Winston...

The purchase of four surveillance planes signals an even closer military alignment with the United States, and the reflects badly on our non-aligned status, writes former Green Party defence...

Summary I am strongly opposed to this Bill, and I urge the Select Committee to reject it. The Bill violates the right of Members of Parliament to free speech and...

Defence Chief Tim Keating and the Prime Minister exhibit the “colonial” reflex in completely ignoring the villagers as a source of information. Bill English looked at a few American videos of the battle and considered that to be enough to reject any inquiry. Keating didn’t consider evidence from the locals as relevant enough to mention.

The first rule of journalism is that you can’t accept the word of a public official unless there is evidence to back it up. However, this principle goes out the window when there are allegations of a terrorist threat, as we’ve seen this past week.

Two years ago I welcomed John Key’s promise to hold a flag referendum. At last we could get rid of the Union Jack from our flag and have one that didn’t look like Australia’s. Many on the left had long argued for a flag change and now we had some significant support from the right.

Traditionally, spy agencies have had two big downsides. Firstly, they have breached our privacy and secondly they have targeted, in a discriminatory manner, people with dissenting views.