Category: Foreign Affairs

The PM has taken New Zealand down the path to State control so far and so quickly, that there’s now a very real risk that the architecture of a socialist state will underpin the rebuild.

Instead of locking down the nation and trying to stamp out a virus that cannot effectively be contained, we should be quarantining and supporting those who are vulnerable to keep them safe, while enabling the rest of society to get back to normal. Within a month or so, it should be safe for those vulnerable groups to re-enter society, and to re-open our borders.

With all of the indecision, contradictions, and failure to follow the lead of countries that have controlled the virus without destroying their economies, one can’t help but feel our leaders are making this crisis deeper than was necessary.

The only strategy that makes sense is to screen massively, then confine the positive cases. Neither Hong Kong nor Taiwan nor Korea nor Singapore, territories with the lowest mortality rates for Covid-19, have imposed confinement on healthy people.

Looking at what Singapore does differently, the biggest one is Singapore doesn’t let positive patients back into the community.

This is not the first disease bats have given us. Rabies possibly originated in bats. So did, and does, Ebola, outbreaks of which usually trace back to people coming into contact with bat roosts in caves, trees or buildings.

Without a doubt Sian Elias’ Ngati Apa judgement was unprecedented judicial activism. And that’s the problem with judicial activism – the public are left to pick up the pieces. So here we are, almost 20 years later, facing multiple tribal claims for the country’s entire coastline. The first ones will be heard this year...

In Britain and much of the west, the risible pretence is maintained that the religion has nothing to do with Islamic extremism. From the moment this threat emerged in Britain more than three decades ago, the establishment has refused to acknowledge that what we are facing is Islamic holy war, rooted in religious doctrines which are as genuine as they are contestable.

When seventeen countries, the European Commission, and eight tech companies signed the “Christchurch Call” pledge in May, it was heralded as a triumph in the fight against the promulgation of violent extremist content online. The Call was led by New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and French President Emmanuel Macron.

Cannabis advocates have followed the same playbook. They press for medical legalization, then argue for recreational use. Linking legalization to medical use has proven the crucial step. It encourages voters to think of marijuana as something other than an intoxicant.