Now that he’s back as Foreign Minister, maybe Winston Peters should start reading the MFAT website which is currently celebrating the 25th anniversary of how Kiwis alerted the rest of the world to the genocide in Rwanda. How times have changed ...
In 2023, the government is clutching its pearls because senior Labour MP Damien O’Connor has dared suggest that Gaza’s civilian population are also victims of what amounts to genocide... More
Scoop Post Election Podcast: River Of Freedom Review
After reviewing River of Freedom, a documentary about the Wellington parliamentary protest of 2022, the Scoop Political Podcast went into hibernation. Watched by potentially tens of thousands of voters in the weeks prior to Election 23, it was unlikely to have won any votes for Labour. With a new coalition Government now formed, it’s time to look at the impact it had... More
New Zealand has joined the UK and other partners in condemning malicious cyber activity conducted by the Russian Government, Minister Judith Collins says... More
ACT: Call To Abolish Human Rights Commission
“The Human Rights Commission’s appointment of a second Chief Executive is just the latest example of a taxpayer-funded bureaucracy serving itself at the expense of delivery for New Zealanders,” says ACT MP Todd Stephenson... More
EDS examined the Government’s resource management, environment, climate change and oceans and fisheries policies in a recent Newsroom opinion piece. The BIMs take a deeper dive into each portfolio and set out EDS’s key asks of each Minister... More
Public Housing Futures: Christmas Comes Early For Landlords
New CTU analysis of the National & ACT coalition agreement has shown the cost of returning interest deductibility to landlords is an extra $900M on top of National’s original proposal. This is because it is going to be implemented earlier and faster, including retrospective rebates from April 2023... More
Following proceedings brought by the FMA, MAS has been ordered to pay a $2.1M penalty for making false and/or misleading representations to some customers. MAS admitted failing to correctly apply multi-policy discounts and no claims bonus discounts to some customers, failing to correctly apply inflation adjustments on some customer policies, and miscalculating benefit payments. More
The economic toll of our summer of storms continues to mount, with insurance payouts now topping $1B, second only to the Christchurch earthquakes. AMI, State, & NZI have released the latest Wild Weather Tracker, which reveals 51,000 claims for the North Island floods & Cyclone Gabrielle, of which 99% (motor), 97% (contents), and 93% (home) of claims have now been settled. More
ew National MP James Meagher broke the long-standing convention that Maiden Speeches should be non-controversial. His speech not only raised a few eyebrows but also would have struck some raw nerves.
Meagher described himself as a "walking contradiction" – “a part-Māori boy raised in a state house by a single parent on the benefit. Now a proud National Party MP... More
Binoy Kampmark: Rot In The Australian Civil Service
There is no better example of Australia’s politicised public service than its Home Affairs Secretary, Mike Pezzullo. In most other countries, he would have been the ideal conspirator in a coup, a tittletattler in the ranks, and bound to brief against those he did not like. Give him a dagger, and he was bound to use it... More
Cunning, subtle, understated. Israeli policy in the Pacific has seen United Nations votes cast in its favour, the foreign policies of certain countries adjusted, and favours switched. While China may be considered the big, threatening beast competing alongside that large, clumsy figure called the United States, the small state of Israel is directing its expertise, and charm, in very specific ways in the Indo-Pacific... More
Ramzy Baroud: The Palestinian Cause Belongs To The World
Once upon a time, the ‘Arab-Israeli Conflict’ was between Arabs & Israelis. Over the course of many years, however, it has been rebranded. The media is now telling us it is a ‘Hamas-Israeli Conflict.’ But what went wrong? Israel simply became too powerful... More
Among the key issues facing diplomats is securing the release of a reported 199 Israeli hostages, seized during the Hamas raid. “History is watching,” says Emergency Relief Coordinator Martin Griffiths. “This war was started by taking those hostages. Of course, there's a history between Palestinian people and the Israeli people, and I'm not denying any of that. But that act alone lit a fire, which can only be put out with the release of those hostages.” More
Families in western Afghanistan are reeling after a fourth earthquake hit Herat Province, crumbling buildings and forcing people to flee once again, with thousands now living in tents exposed to fierce winds and dust storms. The latest 6.3 magnitude earthquake hit 30 km outside of Herat on Sunday, shattering communities still reeling from strong and shallow aftershocks. More
When Evening Shadows Fall is one of four works by Goldie included in a sale of Important and Rare Art at the International Art Centre in Parnell on November 28. Goldie painted only a handful of landscapes, concentrating mainly on indigenous portraits, which earned him a global reputation as NZ’s finest painter of respected Māori elders (kaumātua). More
On the face of it, Everhardus Koster's exceptional genre painting The Arrival of Abel Tasman in New Zealand should have immense appeal. It cannot find a buyer, however, not because of any aesthetic defects, but because of its subject matter and the fate of the Māori it depicts. More