Category: imported_guest
No one pretends that if the mixed-member proportional voting system (MMP) is thrown out by public referendum New Zealand’s constitutional woes will be over.
There was a poem which my mother had learnt off by heart as a girl and portions of which she could long remember and recite to us. It was, I later discovered, Whittier’s Barbara Frietchie, and it tells of a true episode in the American Civil War when Confederate forces, occupying a town in the north, decreed on pain of death that all Union flags in the town should be taken down.
Most of today's benefits were created at the point of passing the Social Security Act 1938. During the post-war years benefit levels were reasonably stable despite population growth. For instance between 1940 and 1975 the population grew by 92 percent but receipt of Unemployment, Sickness and Invalid benefits grew by only 9 percent. As a percentage of working-age people, reliance on these benefits actually dropped.
Of all the arguments for adopting a nationwide carbon emission reduction policy such as the Emissions Trading Scheme, one of the most peculiar runs something like this: New Zealand should adopt emission reduction legislation even if it wouldn’t make the slightest difference to the climate because other countries will punish us with trade barriers if we don’t.
For more than 80% of time, Earth has been an iceless, warm, wet, greenhouse planet. Past temperate changes have been far greater and far more rapid than anything measured in modern times. We humans have adapted to live on ice, mountains, in the tropics, in deserts and at sea level.
‘White motherf*****s have been raping our lands and ripping us off for centuries….’ This is, it seems, the sincere personal view of Hone Harawira, a member of the New Zealand Parliament, and one, indeed, whose party forms part of our coalition government. He expressed it in a private e-mail to Buddy Mikaere, a former director of the Waitangi Tribunal who had ventured to inquire about who ~ Harawira himself or the taxpayer ~ was paying for a side-trip to Paris for sightseeing which Harawira and his wife had taken when in Europe on parliamentary business.
A political system that allows the select few of the ruling elite to dominate the life of the ordinary person has come to be known as …..“Plato’s conceit”.
I am writing this article in response to Muriel's question "why is electricity so expensive"? There is a simple answer to this question. "The electricity 'market'". But explaining how and why it drives up prices and will continue to do so, is rather more complicated. I will try to do just that.
The National government is now considering areas where they can reduce government expenditure. I would like to draw attention to a class of government departments that have been created with the intention of maximizing welfare for certain groups of New Zealanders. These departments have admirable goals which they aim for by providing information and policy advice. They have now been in existence long enough to give us an idea if they have been successful in achieving their goals, or have they just become tax-payer funded lobby groups.
Speech at AUT University delivered soon after Don’s appointment to chair the 2025 Taskforce.
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