Category: Guest Posts

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Beyond TPP

TPP is big in its own right. But I suspect it will prove to be at least as significant for the powerful momentum shift it represents. The truth is that, since China (and Taiwan) joined the WTO way back in 2002, there have been no globally significant trade negotiating outcomes. There have been FTA’s. Plenty of them. But nothing really big.


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Treachery is a contemptible thing

There is absolutely no legal, moral or common sense justification for any Maori claim to fresh water. The legal situation is that no-one owns water, and no-one ever has. This was the situation at common law, and the Water and Soil Conservation Act 1967 and now the Resource Management Act 1991 start off from the same assumption.


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Should We Celebrate Carbon Dioxide?

There is no definitive scientific proof, through real-world observation, that carbon dioxide is responsible for any of the slight warming of the global climate that has occurred during the past 300 years, since the peak of the Little Ice Age.


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Trans-Pacific Partnership Deal Reached! Now What?

After six years of negotiations, a final Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement has been reached in Atlanta. Check your pacemakers, trade policy wonks. This is about as exciting as it gets in our world.


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Leadership

Leadership is held up as a virtuous concept. It most certainly is not. The existence of a leader implies by definition the existence of followers. We are constantly told we need good leaders. It is so very wrong.


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Trial by Jury in New Zealand

In recent times there have been a number of high profile criminal case in which the jury findings of guilt beyond reasonable doubt, or acquittal have given rise to public disquiet. The list is disturbingly long and includes: The Crew murders, the killing of Ben Smart and Olivia Hope...


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Re-inventing CYF is not the answer

Listening to Paul Henry interview Social Development Minister, Anne Tolley about the latest condemnatory report into Child, Youth and Family was very dissatisfying. There was no discussion about getting to the real core of the problem.


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A Dangerous Path

One of the objectives of the Freshwater Iwi Leaders Group (a group representing most of the major iwi in the country) is to ensure that all Crown-owned lake beds and river beds, together with the related “water column, the space through which the water flows” are vested in the relevant hapu or iwi.


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Meeting Auckland’s Urbanisation Challenge

Housing hogs the headlines, but Auckland’s issues are bigger than that: how to manage resurgent urbanisation in the 21st century. The answer is much the same as in the 20th century - get the land market working effectively.


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The Challenge of Climate Prediction

You may have heard in recent weeks that 2015 is shaping up to be the warmest ever based on the hottest recorded July. In fact we have the same positive El Nino weather pattern in the Eastern Pacific that we had in 1988, the hottest whole year on record to date.