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Many cities chose conservative candidates but the results were less about national trends than local conditionsEvery year between 2008 and 2016, political commentators would reliably announce that former prime minister John Key’s “honeymoon” was finall…
Read MoreOnce a beacon of possibility for Māori workers, the Essity paper mill at Kawerau is becoming a symbol of what has been lostIn 1948, when my Koro (grandfather) was born, the town of Kawerau was little more than a strip of old homesteads on the road betw…
Read MoreGangs flourish when the state fails its citizens. Banning colours and getting ‘tough on crime’ won’t fix anythingThe US has its mafia. Australia has its bikies. New Zealand, a country often understood as more innocent than its larger, more dangerous En…
Read MoreThe lessons of our pandemic success seem to have been all but forgotten as the government sticks at the orange traffic light settingLast week cabinet made a baffling decision. As winter illnesses spike and another wave of Covid-19 threatens to overwhel…
Read MoreIn previous years we saw a tantalising glimpse of Grant Robertson as ‘Red Robbo’ – but moderation may win back centristsOn Thursday finance minister Grant Robertson laid out the fifth budget of his career – and easily his most conservative. It was a re…
Read MoreCritics have cherrypicked aspects of court rulings on the Covid response – which saved thousands of lives – to wrongly paint it as illegal In a judgment delivered this week, New Zealand’s high court found that elements of the country’s Managed Isolatio…
Read MoreInstead of ripping apart the fabric of society, co-governance arrangements are already in place and largely pass without noticeOne of the ironies of David Seymour, the Act party leader who’s insisting on a referendum on “co-governance” between the crow…
Read MoreThe lawyer, teacher and activist was without equal. New Zealand is so much poorer for his passing, but so much richer for his lifeIt seems fitting that Wellingtonians woke to an eerie morning, mist clinging to the hills and harbour, as news broke that …
Read MoreMarae embody deep connections to the land and are a statement of indigeneity – but Māori aren’t indigenous in AustraliaWhen most New Zealanders hear the term “marae” they think of the typical Māori meeting house.The angular facade, decorated in red and…
Read MoreThe government couldn’t attempt to meet their demands because they were endless and, frankly, psychoticNew Zealand police clash with anti-vaccine protesters at parliament, over 120 arrestedAnd so it ends as it began – in farce. On Thursday morning hund…
Read MoreSuch gains as Māori have made are no accident, but the result of a willingness to fight for what is rightfully theirs – a struggle that continues to this dayHannah Arendt, the political philosopher, once wrote that “power always stands in need of numbe…
Read MoreThe inter-party agreement has left the Greens defending rising emissions – a stance that goes against all their principlesMetiria Turei, the former Green party co-leader, left parliament more than four years ago, resigning from the co-leadership and th…
Read MoreIn 2022 Jacinda Ardern must act on runaway house prices while the central bank should grab inflation by the neckMarch 2020 seems like an age ago. And also like it was yesterday. The month begun more or less like any other March in New Zealand. The weat…
Read MoreThe new National leader is a millionaire, anti-abortion, ex-CEO who owns seven homes and is against increases to the minimum wageIn the end, the party of business picked the businessman. Former National party leader Simon Bridges is out – again – and f…
Read MoreArdern is imperfect and her government often struggles to implement its agenda – but they excel at crisis management“If you want to know me, look at my surface”, Andy Warhol once said, or something along those lines. It’s an invitation to the obvious t…
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