Voting for local government should be simple. If you think that council has generally done a good job, support most incumbent candidates. Make sure to rank incumbents who generally supported the outcomes you prefer ahead of new challengers. Rank promising new challengers ahead of the few incumbents who supported things you oppose. Continue reading

The death of Queen Elizabeth and the ascension to the throne of King Charles has reignited the debate on whether New Zealand should become a republic. But despite strong arguments in favour of shifting to a republic, such a move is unlikely to occur anytime soon. What will stop the republican movement from gaining ground and winning over a majority of New Zealanders to ditch the monarchy? The answer is Treaty politics. Continue reading

New Zealand is faced with a determined push for a momentous political change called co-governance, but really a devolution of power to an unelected tribal elite who have been described in Cabinet papers as ‘iwi/Māori’. Giving powers of veto and more, co-governance will enable iwi/Māori to impose their will on the ordinary people of New Zealand. Chris Trotter’s Co-governance: New Zealand’s own Catch-22 in LawNews (Issue 10) argues that we should surrender to coercion and avoid violent revolution. I say co-governance is wrong and surrender to coercion is wrong, but we should thank Chris Trotter and LawNews for unveiling the agenda. Continue reading

2022 WILL BE a revolutionary year. The deliberative processes begun in 2021 on how best to reconfigure the New Zealand state in conformity with the principles of te Tiriti o Waitangi and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples will expand and intensify throughout 2022. New Zealanders will not be able to escape the consequences of their government’s decision to set these processes in motion. Nor will that Government be able to stop what it has begun. Over the course of the next twelve months we will discover how well the people of Aotearoa-New Zealand can ride the revolutionary tiger. Continue reading

The question everyone’s asking about Christopher Luxon – or to be more precise, the question everyone who’s interested in politics and New Zealand’s future is asking about Christopher Luxon – is this: what sort of leader (and potentially prime minister) will he be? Judging by what we’ve seen and heard over the past few days, the answer is that he’ll probably be like most previous National leaders. Continue reading

This week, Local Government Minister Nanaia Mahuta recorded a lengthy podcast with the Taxpayers’ Union. If you missed it, or do not want to spend 32 minutes unpicking platitudes, here is a summary: Continue reading

I’ve learned a number of lessons from the pandemic. The most important are about the features of life that we once took for granted. As I’ve reflected on those things, there is one that stands out. It’s something we’ve always had in this country. Something our forefathers fought for. It’s something we’ve now lost. In Auckland we are struggling without it. It’s called freedom. I’m missing our freedom. Continue reading

It’s a great line, that: “The team of 5 million”. It may have been written by a public relations person, but it has been delivered eloquently and repeatedly by our Prime Minister. So much so that she has made it her own. It’s a very clever line. Brilliant in fact. When we first heard it, it was uplifting, and over the past 18 months it has served a purpose of encouraging co-operation with our Covid response across the country. Continue reading

Even Labour’s most one-eyed supporters must be aware by now that the Three Waters reform being pushed by Nanaia Mahuta is fast becoming a make-or-break issue for the government. The eight-week “engagement” period that ended on September 30 saw a swathe of councils across the nation objecting — sometimes angrily — to the proposed changes to the management of drinking water, storm water and wastewater. Continue reading

In the past couple of weeks I’ve noticed a bit more commentary starting to appear about the behaviour of the media. One of the often repeated charges is that the media is demonstrating bias in favour of the Government and against the various Opposition parties. This may not be a popular view, but I think there has historically been a natural bias in the media, one that favours the left side of politics. I suspect it’s a hangover from the old Fleet Street days in the UK when members of the press traditionally came from and thus took the side of the working class Continue reading