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Enhancing Democracy: The Case For A Second Chamber In New Zealand's Parliament
Tuesday, 11 July 2023, 2:31 pm | The Common Room
Thomas Cranmer writes for The Common Room New Zealand’s parliamentary system has long been admired for its democratic principles and progressive governance although it has increasingly come under strain and criticism over recent years. In particular, ... More >>
An Accident Waiting To Happen: NATO Looks To Asia
Monday, 10 July 2023, 1:59 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Since the end of the Cold War, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation has distinctly strayed from its original purpose. It has become, almost shamelessly, the vessel and handmaiden of US power, while its burgeoning expansion eastwards has done wonders ... More >>
On National’s Need For Winston Peters
Monday, 10 July 2023, 11:58 am | Gordon Campbell
As a spectacle, politics can be pretty boring. MMP politics isn’t a cage fight, or even (ultimately) a struggle between individual parties. Moreover… Under MMP, not even megatons of public exposure to an unattractive party leader can turn a pumpkin ... More >>
A Bankrupt Calculus: Sending Cluster Munitions To Ukraine
Monday, 10 July 2023, 6:04 am | Binoy Kampmark
There is a certain desperation in the logic of those who argue that a depraved solution has merit because it’s only slightly less depraved than that of the opponent. Torture is bad but should still be used because your adversary feels free to resort to it. ... More >>
Download Weekly: Commerce Commission One NZ clash over ads
Sunday, 9 July 2023, 12:39 pm | Digitl
Commerce Commission One NZ clash over 100% mobile coverage claim, 2degrees on acquisition trail, faster 5G, Meta launches Threads. More >>
Threads launches as Twitter chaos continues
Sunday, 9 July 2023, 12:15 pm | Digitl
Meta, the company we know best as Facebook, chose a smart moment to launch Threads, its Twitter rival. Last week, Twitter was offline to many users for hours. Twitter has been unstable for months. Remember, the owner Elon Musk sacked 80 per cent of ... More >>
The Robodebt Rogues Gallery
Saturday, 8 July 2023, 6:24 pm | Binoy Kampmark
If ever there was an instance of such a hideous failing in government policy and its cowardly implementation by the public service, Australia’s cruel, inept and vicious Robodebt program would have to be one of them. Robodebt was a scheme developed ... More >>
Burning Of The Quran And The Counter-offensive: Why The West Is Panicking
Saturday, 8 July 2023, 5:52 am | Ramzy Baroud
Desecrating, then burning the Holy Quran in Sweden has, once again, raised a political storm of condemnation, but also of justification, if not outright approval. Such acts are protected by law, top Swedish and EU officials have declared. But why are ... More >>
Graceless At Lord’s: The Class Goons Strike Back
Thursday, 6 July 2023, 7:01 pm | Binoy Kampmark
What are the English other than their excruciatingly worn class, kitted out with a code of manners revocable at an instant? A streak of traditional Englishness, as A. A. Gill wrote, stresses bullying. It made them great in the hope of making others ... More >>
The Fossil Fuel Proliferation Threat
Thursday, 6 July 2023, 2:27 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Climate change negotiations and debates are characterised by some curious features. For one, there are interminable stretches of discussion that never seem to feature the agents of cause. Chatter about horrendous fires, toxic smoke, and environmental ... More >>
On Relying On Israeli News Narratives About Palestine
Thursday, 6 July 2023, 12:09 pm | Gordon Campbell
So far, the coverage of the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) assault on the Jenin refugee camp has followed a familiar pattern. Images of explosions and rising plumes of smoke have been punctuated by footage of anguished/angry Palestinian civilians at funerals ... More >>
New Zealand PM Visits China Amid Growing War Tensions
Wednesday, 5 July 2023, 2:28 pm | Socialist Equality Group
By Tom Peters Last week, New Zealand Prime Minister Chris Hipkins carried out a six-day visit to China, aimed at strengthening trade and economic ties. He was accompanied by Trade Minister Damien O’Connor, Tourism Minister Peeni Henare and 29 business ... More >>
Costly Amalgamations: The University Merger Mania
Tuesday, 4 July 2023, 2:44 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Never trust the musings of university management, with their uplifting visions of sunlit glory, their honey-laced promises of healthy workplaces, staff and students. Being several steps removed from the trench, the field, the library, they are the ... More >>
The Ignorant Imperative: Hannah Gadsby On Pablo Picasso
Tuesday, 4 July 2023, 5:15 am | Binoy Kampmark
The humourless comedian Hannah Gadsby has much to thank one of the twentieth century’s titans of art. By placing him in the stockade of feminist disapproval, the Australian was picking the easiest target and avoiding the most profound questions of his oeuvre. ... More >>
On The Greens Plan To Help Renters
Monday, 3 July 2023, 11:09 am | Gordon Campbell
One of the best things about the Greens plan to cap rent increases at 3% annually is that it spreads around some of the pain of the Reserve Bank’s brutal response to inflation. To date, the Reserve Bank‘s actions in relentlessly jacking up interest ... More >>
Download Weekly: MBNZ report highlights rural-urban divide
Monday, 3 July 2023, 10:15 am | Digitl
MBNZ report highlights rural-urban divide, Tuanz presses for rural upgrade, Mateparae moves to Spark leadership squad More >>
Cruel Arrangements: The UK-Rwanda Refugee Deal Falters
Sunday, 2 July 2023, 2:35 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Since 2022, Rwanda has been very much on the mind of British policy makers, a dark option of retreat from the irritating intrusions of international refugee law. The English Channel has become something of a polemical resource, with those seeking ... More >>
Let’s Call Transphobia By Its Real Name – Sickening Bigotry
Sunday, 2 July 2023, 5:58 am | Ian Powell
If someone had said that I should write on transgender rights when I began my Political Bytes blog in January 2021, I would have said nonsense. Partly this was because I didn’t appreciate the level of intense bigotry and hatred of those opposed to their ... More >>
The Saudi Football Seizure
Friday, 30 June 2023, 2:50 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Sports stars are making a heated rush for it, cresting on the money wave, and finding sanctuary in Mammon’s big breasted glory. And that wave is coming, oddly enough, from a desert country, alien to such matters till recent decades, when oil came with ... More >>
On The Ripple Effects From The Titan Submersible Disaster
Friday, 30 June 2023, 11:58 am | Gordon Campbell
As clickbait, the saga of OceanGate’s Titan submersible belongs to the same genre of real time news countdowns as the boys trapped in the Thailand caves, the trapped miners in Peru and the 18 month old baby girl trapped down a well in Texas. Except ... More >>
New Zealand Factors Ethnicity In Prioritising Surgery Waiting Lists
Thursday, 29 June 2023, 3:05 pm | Socialist Equality Group
By John Braddock and Tom Peters A new algorithm used in New Zealand’s hospitals to manage waiting lists for non-urgent surgery includes ethnicity as one of five factors determining which patients take priority. Te Whatu Ora Health New Zealand ... More >>
Nauru’s Refugee Stain: Australia’s Continued Offshore Processing Regime
Wednesday, 28 June 2023, 1:40 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The last refugee, for now, has left the small, guano-producing state of Nauru. For a decade, the Pacific Island state served as one of Australia’s offshore prisons for refugees and asylum seekers, a cruel deterrent to those daring to exercise their ... More >>
On China, University Funding, Ukraine
Wednesday, 28 June 2023, 11:10 am | Gordon Campbell
Gosh. According to a tip leaked to a journalist from the Australian newspaper by an anonymous source whose identity cannot be disclosed for secret squirrel reasons, our Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta was reportedly subjected to an “epic haranguing ... More >>
More Medical Student Places Good But There’s A Mammoth In The Room!
Tuesday, 27 June 2023, 10:50 pm | Ian Powell
The announcement by Minister of Health Dr Ayesha Verrall of the Government’s decision to increase the number of medical student places in our two university based medical schools (Auckland and Otago) was overdue (the last increase was in 2015) but welcome. ... More >>
Babbling About Prigozhin
Tuesday, 27 June 2023, 2:18 pm | Binoy Kampmark
A lot of nonsense is being spouted by a bevy of spontaneous “Russian experts” in light of the Prigozhin spray, a mutiny (no one quite knows what to call it), stillborn in the Russian Federation. It all fell to the theatrical sponsor, promoter and rabble ... More >>
Police Locate More Bodies In New Zealand’s Pike River Mine
Monday, 26 June 2023, 3:41 pm | Socialist Equality Group
By Tom Peters, Socialist Equality Group Last Friday, New Zealand Police Superintendent Darryl Sweeney announced that investigators had located the remains of “two, maybe three” of the workers who died in the Pike River coal mine disaster nearly 13 years ... More >>
On National’s Law And Ordure Policy
Monday, 26 June 2023, 11:47 am | Gordon Campbell
So here we are... Barely 75 days out from election day, and National STILL hasn’t revealed how it is going to pay for its stupendously expensive bag of presents for everyone. National is simultaneously promising to reduce the tax revenue coming into ... More >>
Download Weekly: One New Zealand blocks child abuse material
Saturday, 24 June 2023, 12:12 pm | Digitl
One New Zealand moves to block child abuse material at network level, prioritising telecoms in a disaster, Connexa completes 2degrees deal. More >>
Deaths At Sea: From The Titan To The Mediterranean
Friday, 23 June 2023, 1:51 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Mortality at sea is becoming a theme of late. The nature of how that mortality has been represented, however, has varied. The death of a billionaire on a quest to see the sunken ruins of the Titanic is treated with saturating interest; the deaths of ... More >>
On ACT’s Anti-worker Crusade, And Israeli Settler Violence
Friday, 23 June 2023, 12:18 pm | Gordon Campbell
The ACT Party’s announcement yesterday that it aims to stop workers in the gig economy from being allowed to test in court whether they deserve to be treated as employees – and thus entitled to sick leave, holiday pay etc – has been the most ... More >>
Are We Living Through A De-Dollarization?
Friday, 23 June 2023, 12:07 pm | Globetrotter
By Justin Podur De-dollarization is apparently here , “like it or not,” as a May 2023 video by the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, a peace-oriented think tank based in Washington, D.C., states. Quincy is not alone in discussing de-dollarization: ... More >>
Second Term Government, Third Term Problems
Friday, 23 June 2023, 9:22 am | The Common Room
Thomas Cranmer writes for The Common Room They say a new broom sweeps clean, and that is certainly the case with the premiership of Prime Minister Chris Hipkins. However, even he couldn’t have anticipated the rapid exodus of ministers ... More >>
Daniel Ellsberg: The Establishment’s Whistleblower
Wednesday, 21 June 2023, 1:18 pm | Binoy Kampmark
In 1972 Stanley K. Sheinbaum, chairman of the Pentagon Papers Fund, wrote with a hot pertinence that remains striking (at this time Julian Assange is facing grave prospects of being extradited to the United States) that both Daniel Ellsberg and ... More >>
Gordon Campbell On TOP, And The Bank Inquiry
Wednesday, 21 June 2023, 11:50 am | Gordon Campbell
The 5% MMP threshold soaks up a disproportionate share of the attention paid to the struggle by small parties to get into Parliament. By now, it should be obvious that winning an electorate seat is the only reliable path to political sustainability ... More >>
Forget The University: Gift Cards, Professionalism And The Australian Academy
Tuesday, 20 June 2023, 3:46 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Dear future students wishing to come to Australia and study: don’t. The gurgling, decaying system is, on a regular basis, being exposed for what it is. If it is not students being exploited, its academics being manipulated to the point of ruinous ... More >>
On The Crackdown On Gangs
Monday, 19 June 2023, 3:15 pm | Gordon Campbell
For much of last week, Opotiki was like the setting of a Wes Anderson movie. Gruff, no nonsense cops. Bikers who looked just as tough, but who ended up being considerably more peaceful than a similar-sized rugby crowd. Stoic, sensible locals who couldn’t ... More >>
Rural telecom divide in Commerce Commission spotlight
Saturday, 17 June 2023, 2:06 pm | Digitl
Download Weekly: Commerce Commission sheds light on rural telecommunications, Apple and AWS launch Māori and Pasifika education programmes More >>
On The Recession Engineered By The Reserve Bank
Friday, 16 June 2023, 11:33 am | Gordon Campbell
This week, we got official confirmation that the Reserve Bank has finally achieved the recession it has worked so hard to engineer. The Bank has bludgeoned borrowers and households with interest rate hikes, and sought to ease wage pressure by creating ... More >>
New Zealand Signs Defence Pacts With Japan, Fiji
Thursday, 15 June 2023, 10:41 am | Socialist Equality Group
Amid a flurry of diplomatic activity last week, New Zealand’s Labour-led government escalated its involvement in the US-led confrontation and preparations for war against China. On the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue, held in Singapore ... More >>
Never More Relevant: Ted Kaczynski, Technology And Trauma
Wednesday, 14 June 2023, 1:07 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Henry A. Murray has much to answer for. Between 1959 and 1961, the Harvard psychology academic, as the leader of a team of equally unprincipled academics, was responsible for conducting an CIA-funded experiment most unethical on twenty-two undergraduates. ... More >>
On Losing The Ukraine War
Wednesday, 14 June 2023, 11:35 am | Gordon Campbell
Obviously, no-one defends the RNZ digital journalist who distorted the content and meaning of so many articles on the Ukraine war, some of them bylined by journalists who had no idea their work had been twisted to serve the needs of Kremlin propaganda. ... More >>
Novak Djokovic: Always More Than Tennis
Monday, 12 June 2023, 2:47 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The victory of Novak Djokovic in the latest French Open had the usual mixed reception in Australia. While Australians pretend to like radicals, larrikins and the occasional deviant, the contrary is true. Tight buttoned, properly behaved and conformist to ... More >>
On Changing The GE Rules, Plus A Music Playlist
Monday, 12 June 2023, 11:58 am | Gordon Campbell
So Christopher Luxon wants to relax the rules that govern the use of genetic modification outside a laboratory setting. Would this mean going only so far as to allow gene editing of an existing gene sequence, or does Luxon intend to give a green light ... More >>
Download Weekly: Apple Vision Pro: Fast fibre’s killer app
Sunday, 11 June 2023, 12:53 pm | Digitl
Apple's spatial computing push will drive data demand. Infratil to take control of One NZ, Spark joins satellite-to-mobile club, More >>
iA Presenter: A different way to build a slide deck
Sunday, 11 June 2023, 12:42 pm | Digitl
iA Presenter is a new tool for building presentations or slide decks. It launches today . For now it is Mac-only. More >>
A Matter of Interest: The RBA, Inflation and Corporate Profits
Saturday, 10 June 2023, 2:57 pm | Binoy Kampmark
He is one of the least empathetic of beings, a cold fish, bothered and irritated. Captured by the cradle of numbers (he is an economist); obsessed by the spreadsheet of projections that may never result, there is not much to recommend the chief of ... More >>
Convenient Villains: Kathleen Folbigg’s Miscarriage Of Justice
Thursday, 8 June 2023, 5:05 pm | Binoy Kampmark
They – being the howling press, the screeching vox populi, and anybody else wishing to weigh in – were very clear about it. Kathleen Folbigg was guilty as hell and deserved her special place in it. For two decades, she spent her time behind bars ... More >>
On Saudi Sports-washing
Thursday, 8 June 2023, 3:18 pm | Gordon Campbell
Since sport is our global religion, it isn’t surprising that the theocratic kingdom of Saudi Arabia has taken the redemptive power of sportswashing very seriously indeed. To the point where the massive Saudi investment in all kinds of professional sport ... More >>
Protests Against University Staff Cuts In New Zealand
Thursday, 8 June 2023, 11:24 am | Socialist Equality Group
By Tom Peters, Socialist Equality Group There is growing opposition to hundreds of job cuts that have been announced at universities across New Zealand. In response to declining enrolments and years of funding cuts by the Labour government, Otago ... More >>
Can China And The United States Establish Mutual Respect To Lessen Tensions?
Thursday, 8 June 2023, 11:05 am | Globetrotter
By Vijay Prashad On June 3, 2023, naval vessels from the United States and Canada conducted a joint military exercise in the South China Sea. A Chinese warship (LY 132) overtook the U.S. guided-missile destroyer (USS Chung-Hoon) and ... More >>
Deserving Each Other: The PGA Tour-LIV Golf Merger
Wednesday, 7 June 2023, 1:53 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Described as acrimonious, divisive and disruptive to golf, the LIV Golf Tournament, launched with the aid of former world number one Greg Norman and an enormous well of capital fronted by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF), will now unite ... More >>
Diluted Sovereignty: A Very Australian Example
Tuesday, 6 June 2023, 1:03 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Australian concepts of sovereignty have always been qualified. First came the British settlers and invaders in 1788. They are pregnant with the sovereignty of the British Crown, bringing convicts, the sadistic screws, and forced labour to a garrison of ... More >>
Government Tightens Work Rights For Partners Of Work Visa Holders
Tuesday, 6 June 2023, 11:54 am | Aaron Martin
Opinion piece Aaron Martin, Immigration Lawyer at NZIL With new restrictions in place for partners of work visa holders, the landscape of New Zealand’s labour market is set to change. Principal lawyer at NZIL, Aaron Martin, gives his opinion ... More >>
On Red Tape And Nicky Hager’s Regal Reward
Tuesday, 6 June 2023, 10:42 am | Gordon Campbell
Not for the first time, David Seymour looks like an answer to a non-existent problem. Reportedly, ACT is promising to establish a Ministry of Regulations to cut through all that bureaucracy and red tape. Yep. To cut down on bureaucracy. Seymour is promising ... More >>
“A New Media Regulator – A Safe Haven Or Big Brother”
Tuesday, 6 June 2023, 9:19 am | The Common Room
Janet Wilson writes for The Common Room In George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984, the citizens of Oceania are watched everywhere they go through telescreens by the ruling Party’s omniscient leader Big Brother. To further tighten its grip on its ... More >>
Ticketing Woes: The Patchy Record Of Myki
Sunday, 4 June 2023, 4:47 pm | Binoy Kampmark
What is it about government contracts that produces the worst results and poorest returns? Those clods behind such deals, notably in the poison chaliced field of public transport, seem so utterly incapable at even modest competence. In public transport, ... More >>
Download Weekly: 2degrees details satellite-to-mobile plan
Saturday, 3 June 2023, 1:15 pm | Digitl
2degrees details satellite-to-mobile plan. Rural connectivity under Commerce Commission microscope. Spark signs as Starlink business reseller More >>
Ben Roberts-Smith: The Breaking Of A Plaster Saint
Friday, 2 June 2023, 1:16 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It was an ugly case lasting five years with a host of ugly revelations. But what could be surprising about the murderous antics of a special arm of the military, in this case, the Australian Special Air Service Regiment, which was repeatedly deployed ... More >>
On How Private Profits Are Driving Defence Spending
Friday, 2 June 2023, 11:34 am | Gordon Campbell
Speak of the devil. The Australian website Crikey has just launched an investigative series about the notorious lobbying firm Crosby Textor, or C/T as it now prefers to be called. It transpires that two clients of C/T’s American subsidiary will ... More >>
Louisville: A Livable And Lovable City Full Of History
Thursday, 1 June 2023, 9:40 am | Hugh Grant
Cities today are defined by their excitement and their culture. When people think about moving out and pursuing a life of excitement they think of New York and L.A. These cities tend to be the most densely populated with some of the most interesting ... More >>
