Category: imported_weekly

As a highly taxed country with the highest interest rates in the western world, it is little wonder that the spectre of local authority rates escalating - seemingly out of control - has the nation up in arms.

Over the last week, three controversies have served to undermine confidence in the effectiveness of state education: the threat of strike action by secondary teachers, the decline in primary school children’s maths skills, and a religious instruction debacle that looks set to result in a massively unworkable bureaucratic nightmare!

Last week, the University of Otago published: “New Zealand in the 21st Century – A Consumer Lifestyles Study”, which provides a five-yearly insight into New Zealand society. The findings present a snapshot of how more than 3,500 New Zealanders view our country.

The 2006 Maori electoral option, which opened in April, closed last week with 15,000 more Maori having enrolled on the Maori roll. This was well down on the 24,000 additions in 2001 and the 18,000 in 1997.

New Zealand’s unsung heroes are small businesses. These enterprises, which largely begin their life as family-based operations, keep the wheels of commerce turning. They provide the goods and services that consumers need and in the process, create the jobs and wealth that are necessary for the healthy functioning of our economy.

As the country struggles to come to terms with the extent of New Zealand ’s child abuse problem and what can be done about it, the real culprits have remained hidden. This week Newman Weekly looks at who is to blame, while the guest comment - from the Otago Daily Times - investigates the growth of “hatred, envy, rage, self-loathing, poverty, ignorance, dehumanisation, nihilistic parenting, and the seeds of racial confrontation” in our youth.

This week, at the opening of the Local Government New Zealand conference, the President, Basil Morrison, raised concerns about local government funding: “One issue that continues to affect all councils, and one that I think we’re all united on is funding. How do we continue to fund the expectations of our communities, restore, maintain and develop our infrastructure and respond to the increasing costs of compliance created by central government, when our funding base is so narrow”.

It was Ronald Reagan who said, Government is not a solution to our problem, government is the problem. He could have been talking about New Zealand.

The murder of the two Kahui babies has rocked the nation. Everyone is trying to come to grips, not only with how on earth the family can get away with colluding to hide the killer, but why this and other such dreadful tragedies continue to happen.

The violent murder of three-month old babies Chris and Cru Kahui is a stark reminder of an ugly sickness that exists in New Zealand society. Once heralded as one of the safest places in the world to bring up a family, New Zealand has fallen to third worst in the OECD for child deaths, from sixth worst in 1994.