Category: Otago Daily Times

In November 2012 at a Fabian Society conference on Norman Kirk I called him a political pivot between two eras, old Labour and post-1980s new New Zealand. At the end I asked if Y-generation MPs would be such a pivot from the post-1980s paradigm to the 2020s or if that would need to await millennials’ coming-of-political-age. read more

This is “democracy week”, Victoria University has declared. So how are we doing?

According to young people, not well in parliamentary politics, so it seems. At June 30 only 64% of estimated eligible 18-24-year-olds had bothered to enrol to vote, the Electoral Commission says.

For 25-29-year-olds the figure was 73%. Even for 30-34-year-olds it was 83%. read more

The chief guardian of freedom in the “land of the free” will give a speech tomorrow evening. But it will not be free. Welcome to today’s wobbly “western” world.

Decent, upstanding, even erudite and pillar-of-society non-terrorists will be subjected to the indignity of a security bag check and X-ray on their way in to an address by the august John Roberts, Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court. read more

Tomorrow, with the weekend’s mid-ranked parties’ conferences over, Labour will have another go at getting traction.

Grant Robertson will unveil Labour’s “alternative budget”. Will he map a path to the 2020s?

This is potentially an existential question for Labour which has not done the root-and-branch rebuild three defeats suggest was needed. read more

The third- and fourth-ranked parties will hold their pre-election conferences this weekend in Auckland. One will be confidently contemplating a time in or around the government, with influence. And the other?

New Zealand First averaged 10.7% in the most recent four opinion polls in June — more than twice its June 2014 average. read more

Expect to be assailed day-in-day-out in the election campaign with “social investment”. It reverberated through the National party’s conference. Ministers can’t get enough of the sound of it.

Even Steven Joyce, as hard-nosed a capitalist as you will find in the cabinet, spread “investment” through his commentary on the budget’s “social” bits. read more

Here’s an imaginary bill Labour and National could usefully join forces to pass after the election: tighter gun laws to stop people shooting themselves in the foot.

Bill English’s metastasising response to new evidence of questionable behaviour by junior, soon-to-be-gone MP Todd Barclay gave his conference delegates at the weekend cause to get a bit “paranoid”, as he puts it, about the coming election. read more

Three months out from the election the numbers are going National’s way. But are they going the right way for the longer term? How numbers are used is critical to good government, new research says.

The big-number economy story is that gross domestic product (GDP) was still rolling along up to March and in this quarter, too, indicators say, even if not rollicking at last year’s pace. read more

Rex Tillerson was here last Tuesday, days after the New York Attorney-General filed an action against the firm he headed.

The court document alleged ExxonMobil, of which Tillerson was chief executive before becoming Donald Trump’s foreign minister, used two sets of “proxy” numbers in its greenhouse gas accounting, one for investors and one for internal use. read more

Queen’s Birthday Weekend is over and new knights and dames quiver with pleasure and honour. The quaint endures even in the digital age.

Opinion polls tell us the republic is some way off. William, Kate, George and Charlotte keep us swooning.

But constitutions evolve. We live in a republic in all but form. When here, the Queen exercises formal head-of-state functions by courtesy of New Zealand law. read more