Pundit

As I wrote this in the second week of February, share prices throughout the world were falling. I do not know what will be happening when you read this. I don’t forecast share prices. This sets out how to think about such events.

A (probably apocryphal) story recounts how former Texas Governor Miriam Amanda "Ma" Ferguson objected to the teaching of Spanish in Texas schools as follows: "If the King's English was good enoug

 Arguing about the prayer that open parliament each day is as old as parliament itself; it was the first order of business in the first session (after the election of the speaker) when New Zealand's new parliament opened in Auckland, May 1854.

In a December blog, David Farrar of Kiwiblog claimed that new incoming governments usually enjoy a huge honeymoon surge of post-election support. For instance he wrote

I blame it all on FDR. Political commentators hark back to his first 100 days of office. They were a bit of a policy whirlwind, but the 100-day notion was an afterthought for he did not mention it until 43 days after the period ended on 11 June 1933.

Many consider Michael Reddell, the writer of the Croaking Cassandra blog, as an eccentric provocateur. Maybe. But he is also a good economist and his judgements should be reflected upon, especially in his area of expertise in macroeconomic and monetary policy, and financial regulatory matters.

For “a small, publicly-funded, Auckland-based millennial website specialising in television listicles, ‘pop-culture’, and fake news”,  The Spinoff sure does seem to stir up a lot of trouble.

The first poll of the year confirms the over-arching narrative of New Zealand politics since the election and follows some pretty typical trends. But it raises a few curly questions too, mostly about new generations.

Social democrats like to do good. That is why they seek to be in government. They can use the resources of the state to improve lives. 

I told my econometrics students I would not penalise them for a minor calculation error in any of the statistical problems I gave them, but would halve the marks if their conclusion was obviously absurd. I had already explained to them Moser’s Law: that if a statistic looked interesting it was probably wrong (i.e. the result of an entry or computational mistake).

It seems – perhaps, maybe – that Donald Trump has done us a favour. A new, stream-lined, more widely palatable and, well, more trade-focused pacific trade deal is about to be signed by the 11 remaining countries. 

We cannot tell yet whether the Labour-led Government will significantly change economic policy from the one that the previous National Government bequeathed. We can be reasonably certain that any changes will not be as radical as the 1984 Rogernomics policy changes.

The Dutch company LegalThings is developing an app called LegalFling. The basic idea is that it allows two people to record their consent to sexual contact, including details like whether or not condoms are required, whether explicit language (vaguely defined as “language that may be considered offensive”) can be used, and whether BDSM and photo and video recording is OK.

Imagine a world that is organised so that we took it for granted that mothers could be in paid employment. It is easy - but you do have to try. 

Jim Anderton was appalled by Rogernomics to the foundations of his soul and his political upbringing, at first in the Catholic Youth Movement and, from the age of 25, in the Labour Party, becoming its president in 1979 and an MP in 1984.

            ‘Britain’s Prime Minister, Theresa May, has said that capitalism is ‘the greatest agent of collective human progress ever created’. But more and more people, especially younger generations, believe that economies based only on free markets are not necessarily the best means to deliver fairer or healthier societies.

Today's Dominion Post carries a couple of opinion pieces by Nick Smith and Winston Peters, respectively arguing

Jim Anderton's final victory comes in the words of tribute from the leaders of the party that once famously "left" him and the sincerity with which they have claimed him as one of their own; a face once more on the Labour totem pole. Through much of the 1990s while he was bitterly attacked by Labour leaders - Helen Clark included - such tributes were impossible to imagine.

I have friends who live in the ‘Independent Republic of Houghton Bay’. Those outside Wellington may need to know that they live in a cove between Island Bay and Lyall Bay, with magnificent views of Cook Strait, its sea life and its shipping. Its total population is probably around a hundred and perhaps not all the locals are as devoted to the republic as my friends are.

Bill Gallagher (he’s a knight), chief executive of the Gallagher Group, claimed that the ‘Treaty [of Waitangi] papers on display at Te Papa were fraudulent documents’ as well as making other extravagant statements. (The papers are actually held in the National Library.) Later he apologised,

Each December, six months after the budget, the Treasury reports on the state of the economy and the government accounts. Since the August Pre-election Economic and Fiscal Update nothing much has happened in the macro-economy, so the HYEFU reports little new. If it had been presented on its own, journalists would have been scratching around to find something of interest.

I saw a human snake crawling its way across a stage in this past week and it could have been anywhere in the world. It was the glimpse of New Zealand's future and raised questions about how New Zealand might looked in 20 years. And you know what? It filled me with hope.

Suck it up, buttercup. Take your medicine. Don't whinge and claim to be misunderstood, just take responsibility. That's the sort of advice often offered on talkback radio, yet Mike Hosking seems to have missed that memo with his ill-advised Herald column this morning on a Broadcasting Standards Authority ruling against him.

Every five weeks. Every 35 days. That's how often, on average, a child is killed in New Zealand. Usually the chid is under five and usually the killer is someone they knew. Knew. Past tense.

Once upon a time, say 80 years ago back in the days of the First Labour government, ‘social investment’ referred to the government spending, including on education, health and children, which in the long run would add to the wellbeing of the nation.

It's such a quiet and prosaic tranformation. An undistinguished revolution.  

Niall Ferguson is known for his provocative, contrarian views and a number of books, including The Ascent of Money. I am not in a position to judge him as a historian – although a chair at Harvard is no mean achievement – but when he got into a blazing economic row with Paul Krugman, in my jud

When I was at secondary school – at experience I now measure in decades past rather than mere years and months – we had a school motto. In Latin it read Confortare esto vir , which translated means 'take courage, be a man'.

During Graeme Wheeler’s five-year term as the Governor of the Reserve Bank (RBNZ), consumer prices rose 1.05 per cent annually.

Economics students have ‘comparative advantage’ drummed into them. The intuition seems commonsense; specialise in what you (or the country) do well and exchange the surplus for what you are not as good at.

Last week Stevie Nicks and Chrissy Hynde tore up stages around New Zealand, the latest in a stream of aging rock acts to pack out local stadiums.

Don Brash has been here before. In his (in)famous Orewa Rotary speech he argued that there was too much Maori "privilege" and everyone should be treated equally. As part of the Hobson's Pledge organisation he promoted the view that we are all "one people". Now he is telling us, via his Facebook page, that only one language - English - should be used by the mainstream media.

The issue of Green MP Golriz Ghahraman's past actions on international criminal tribunals is a pretty weird one. There doesn't appear to be any dispute about what she did. The argument is all about what those actions mean and how we should judge them.

There’s a popular narrative around human rights. In this story, there is the good side and the bad side. The good side are those who stand up and fight for the rights of the oppressed. The bad side are those who do the oppressing.

It is the Rebel Alliance against the Empire. William Wallace facing down the English invaders. Smith in the bush, resisting Volkner’s neo-fascist enforcers.

It's a load of old tosh, of course. Tēnā rūkahu tēnā. At least in my opinion.

The fourth Saturday in each November is Holodomor Remembrance Day which recalls the great Ukrainian famine of 1932-3 in which 2.4m to 7m died in a population of about 30m. The intensity of the distress and suffering was such that more than 2,500 people were convicted of cannibalism.

Pity the fate of the older man, whose once certain world gets turned upside down. Such a one is Dave Witherow, who described in a column in the Otago Daily Times the anguish he feels every time he listens to Radio New Zealand and hears as much as an entire sentence being spoken in te reo Māori.

The early days of a new government are always a bit unreal. A new Prime Minister has a good advice stream from day one, with the support of a well organised department.

Ben Mack’s ‘How the far right is poisoning New Zealand’ was such a distorted account of New Zealand politics that it was initially considered satire.

Over forty years ago, researchers identified that children and their families were bulk of the poor It was not possible to do this earlier because there was not the data. The Muldoon Government began addressing the problem with income tax reductions for some families although the total effort was small.

One of the successes of the fourth Labour (Lange-Douglas) Government was the restructuring of the scattered environmental responsibilities of the bureaucracy into three agencies: the Ministry for the Environment, which provides policy advice (and without which there would have been no Resource Management Act which consolidated scattered law), the Department of Conservation which brought togethe

In amongst its busy and ambitious First 100 Days agenda, Labour seems to be determined to find time to sulk.

In case you've been wondering, yes, I've been away for a bit. Taking Winston Peters at his word, I felt comfortable planning a holiday in the US from October 13. Well, that'll learn me! I got to watch him announce New Zealand First's choice of coalition partner sitting up in bed in Los Angeles.

Prime Minister Jacinda Arden is younger than any member of the outgoing National cabinet and is the youngest in the new one, even if you include the Greens. In contrast, Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters is older than any other member of the two cabinets.

In today's NZ Herald, National's shadow leader of the House was frantically sounding out a tocsin to warn of the danger of looming dictatorship: 

Capitalism is a "blatant failure" when it comes to housing the poor - Jacinda Ardern.

"Far too many New Zealanders have come to view today's capitalism not as their friend but as their foe" Winston Peters.

"...free market capitalism is dead" James Shaw. 

The public understanding of election outcomes remains dominated by a misunderstood account of the old electoral system which was not based on proportional representation. One commentator said confidently that the party with the most votes should form the government. That certainly did not happen in 1911, 1928, 1978 or 1981 when the party with most votes ended up in opposition.

One of the more surprising matters included in the Labour-NZ First coalition agreement is their joint commitment to “Introduce and pass a ‘Waka Jumping’ Bill”.

Good science is essentially a subversive activity. Most scientists work within the existing paradigm – the framework of the basic assumptions, ways of thinking, and methodology commonly accepted by the discipline. The better ones keep an eye out for anomalies which require some adaptation of the paradigm.

So, very late yesterday afternoon (let's be charitable) Winston Peters lifted the box's lid and out wandered a cat with a black head, red body and green tail.

This is the week we will be told what parties will make up the governing coalition and who will sit on the opposition benches of Parliament. Of this I am sure. 

My first memory of Sue Bradford is of the feisty speech she gave to the 1984 Economic Summit Conference pleading that a greater commitment be given to the people she worked with – those on the margins of society: the unemployed, the poor, the mentally and physically disabled. It was so impressive that some businessmen offered Sue a job.

Well, I hate to say 'I told you so'. But, this. As frustration builds over the way our new government is being built - amidst casual abuse, secrecy and over-reach - we really only have ourselves to blame, for the way this administration is being born in darkness, at least.

It is an unfortunate feature of the 2017 coalition negotiations that the country seems to be a mad rush to form a government. "Here we are", lament commentators, "days after the election and we still don't know who is going to run the country!!' (Actually, it is the job of the public service to "mind the store" in the absence of a government in all democratic countries). 

It is a time of rune-reading, navel-scrutinizing and Winstonology. A time when little is said and those few words that escape are picked over with elaborate pontification and freighted with meaning they are too slender to bear. A time when we are often better to listen and wait than to guesstimate. And then, a speck appears.

Have a look at this picture of Rubin’s vase and see what you see: is it two faces looking at each other; is it a wine goblet? The true answer is that it is both; yet because of how our brains are wired to perceive the world, whichever image you choose to see, you then cannot see the other.

The announcement of the official election count, including special votes, is both unsurprising and at least potentially game-changing (to use a much-abused cliché).

This paper tries to evaluate various coalitions on the basis of their political ideologies. It uses the scores given to parties by the TVNZ website Vote-Compass, which identifies two dimensions: Right-Left and Social Conservative-Social Progressive.

Steven Joyce, National’s campaign manager, must have thought he had Labour out cold when he claimed that its spending plans announced during the election were enormous and unsustainable. He proved to be very wrong, as economists – of a variety of political persuasions – have said.

Bah and humbug. It could be just that I'm a producer by profession, and as such have been trained to trouble-shoot constantly and prepare for the worst. It's an occupational hazard driven by the fear of missing guests, unprepared hosts and dead air. But when I look at this year's election results I tend to see the downside for each party. So I thought, hey, why not write a post about that?

... And now we cross live, to the internal monologue playing out in Winston Peter's brain...

On the one hand, go with the biggest party and the two-party coalition provide strong, stable government. It's simplest to negotiate and manage because you're dealing with two agendas, not three.

I was going to write something today setting out how the post-election government formation process works.

I've just reviewed my Pundit post from August 28. It then seemed obvious to me that neither National nor Labour would be able to command a single party majority and New Zealand First and Winston Peters would end up being the king- or queen-maker.

Many factors seemed to be pointing in that direction. 

Summary (which is less numerically challenging)

The day after the night before, some things have become clear while some things remain uncertain.

Perhaps clearest is just how wrong were all those who solely attributed the National Party’s previous electoral success to “the John Key effect”. Under a new leader, ending their third term in power, National has attracted a greater share of the vote than when first elected in 2008.

It's the nature of MMP that as we try to make sense of the public will expressed in last night's results, that we dive into the entrails. We ponder paths to power and what might be in Winston Peter's mind. But in doing so we risk missing the headline number: 46.

So it all comes down to this: It's close. While the the lack of polls this election means it's hard to pick trends, it looks clear that Labour's Adern-tastic August has hit a September slump. Momentum has stalled. It may have even swung behind National, but on the available data it's impossible to say. Thus, all we can say is that it's close.

As is customary in the run-up to an election, there is some hand-wringing going on about what turnout is going to be like.

I was walking out of a meeting with two fine people the other day, one a National Party supporter and one a Labour Party supporter. The centre-right man reckons his team has lost it, but he sighed, "the economy's going so well, we should do as little as possible. Just keep it the same".

Now we’ve entered the last week of the election campaign, Saturday’s finishing post is in sight. Once the polls close at 7pm on that day, no further ballots may be cast.

Are we at a turning point in our politics? I don’t mean whether we have a new government. That is a matter for the voters; the polls say that either they are very volatile or that the polls are very unreliable – probably both. What I am interested in is whether we will have a new approach to the economy.

One of the problems for an incumbent Government seeking re-election is that, no matter your best intentions and efforts over the previous term, there will be skeletons hiding in the closet.

Tax, tax and more tax. Jacinda Ardern has been fending off questions about tax nearly every day since she became Labour leader. Depsite all the questions, her position is anything but transparent. But she's not alone. New Zealanders are heading into a knife-edge election blindfolded by almost all the parties.

The campaign is getting down to the business end. Of all the previous general elections I recall, 2017 will go down as the biggest lolly scramble election. Every day brings a new multi-million dollar promise from one side or another.

When I looked at James Buchanan’s theory of public choice, I was struck by how it reflected an American institutional setting; Our political system is different. Even so, our colonial mentality meant his economics and social philosophy was influential on ‘Rogernomics/Ruthanasia’ in the 1980s and 1990s generating patterns of thinking which persist to this day.

Warning - second half of this post contains discussion of suicide in the context of medical aid in dying.

The pressure of the election campaign seems to be getting to some people, as we've seen a couple of pretty silly comments made in the last couple of days.

In what is becoming a somewhat predictable election campaign gambit, Gareth Morgan yesterday unsuccessfully went to the High Court to try and force his way into tonight’s minor party leader’s debate on TVNZ, as well as its young voters’ debate next Thursday

Well, this brings back memories. A colleague tonight tentatively asked, "now I don't want to trigger anything, but what happened with you and Colin Craig?". I assured her nothing but frustration was triggered, but it did take me back to 2014 and The Nation's day in court against the Conservative Party.

Bill English has taken to calling this election a drag race between the two big parties, but that doesn't do justice to the twists and turns it's already taken. Today, those two main parties added significant risk to the campaign - they're taking those corners at high speed now, as we enter the final 18 days.

The work of economist and social philosopher James Buchanan (1919-2013) came to prominence in the mid-1980s when he was awarded the Economics Prize in honour of Alfred Nobel and when his thinking was impacting on Rogernomics (more of that next week).

Yesterday, National announced a gang and drugs policy that promised both progressive and regressive change. Promises of extra money to fund drug treatment and community harm prevention sat alongside such war-on-drugs staples as heavier prison sentences and new offences for drug users.

Timid, vague and exposed on tax, she still did enough. The morning after the first prime time TV leaders debate, Jacinda Ardern will be the happiest of the two party bosses, not because she won the debate in any signifcant sense, but simply because she didn't lose. And because of more important things that happened earlier in the evening.

When the government announced in June of 2016 that it would be giving Teina Pora some $2.5 million as compensation for wrongfully convicting him and so keeping an innocent man in jail for some 20 years, his supporters’ joy was tempered with some anger.

It was amusing how the Minister of Finance, Stephen Joyce, had to present the PREFU (Pre-election Economic and Fiscal Update) as both an optimistic account of how well the economy was doing, and yet caution that it was not doing so well that the opposition parties could spend or cut taxes big.

While it has been easy to see the headline goings-on in the lead-up to the election campaign proper - you can barely blink before something else happens - beneath the leadership froth more fundamental things are underway. 

The first TV leaders debate of the year on Three's The Nation this morning was full of zingers and a reminder of the diverse and vital political views our minor parties offer, at a time when their relevance has suddenly dwindled. It allowed Marama Fox to shine, but more importantly provided a reset platform for the Greens.

It was an odd thing to say. During an interview with Labour leader Jacinda Ardern, Newstalk ZB host Mike Hosking labelled her a "tax and spend" politician. It wasn't a compliment. But doesn't that label apply to all politicians? They raise tax and spend it. 

So is this it?

Last Saturday, the Minister for Social Housing, Amy Adams, admitted her government had a poor record on social housing but promised to do better. On the same day, the Prime Minister said the government would (might?) spend $1.2billion on the Dunedin Hospital which was a similar admission of poor past performance on capital funding for DHBs.

Timing is just so important in politics, as in so much of life. Plenty of able people don't have the luck – or planning – to be in the right place at the right time. But right now, timing may be Jacinda Ardern's greatest gift.

Among the sinners the drunk porter in Macbeth welcomes into hell is the ‘equivocator, that could swear in both the scales against either scale’. Equivocation is a theme of the play; Shakespeare is thought to have been influenced by the recently written A Treatise of Equivocation by Jesuit priest Henry Garnet.

James Carville, President Bill Clinton's campaign manager back in 1992, famously coined the phrase "it's the economy, stupid" to explain their election strategy. Fair enough, but not that profound. Almost all elections are about the economy. People vote with their hip pocket in mind.

Metiria Turei always acknowledged her decision to put a human face on the issue of poverty by revealing that she lied about her welfare entitlements some twenty-four years ago was a high-risk strategy.

The Christchurch Cathedral saga is had so much written about it one hesitates to add to the interminable debate. My purpose is to explain a dimension to the controversy that perhaps has been neglected.

Strategy vs integrity. The long game vs the short. Individual conscience vs the collective good. These are tensions at the heart of politics, tensions that create drama, and which can engulf a party, as they have the Greens right now.

• As some day it may happen that an MP must be found
• They’re put upon the list - I've got a little list
• Of political offenders who are always safe and sound
• And who never would be missed - so I put them on the list.
• There's opinionated graduates who always are around
• Who’ve done absolutely nothing but are legislature bound
• Who know absolutely n

While I can’t go so far as to claim Metiria Turei as a full friend, she certainly is someone that I’m friendly with. I’ve been to a party at her home, through my wife’s work with a local sustainable energy trust. I’m certainly on happy-smiles-and-stop-to-chat-on-the-street terms.

So a friendly acquaintance, if you will.

Beware cries of a Labour miracle. While Jacinda Ardern is "a young proposition", she's not just been pulled from the bullrushes, and while the past 36 hours have seen a remarkable 'Jacinda Effect', she's not the saviour. But she has changed this election campaign utterly.

There are, I think, legitimate reasons to sound some notes of caution about Jacinda Ardern's rise to the leadership of Labour. She undeniably has much promise in that role and her performance in the first 24 hours has been stellar. But still ... I am not yet fully converted (because I've been hurt so many times before).

I'm aware that all anyone probably cares about today is Andrew Little's decision (helped, no doubt, by some pointed advice from colleagues) to step down as Labour Party leader, to be replaced by Jacinda Ardern.

I first came across William Baumol when, as a student, I valued greatly his two text books: Economic Dynamics and Economic Theory and Operations Analysis, both lucid, intellectually challenging and with a gentle humour.

There was a time two or three generations back when many New Zealanders referred to the United Kingdom as "home". We were a European-focused nation. No more. We are now a Pacific nation and at the core of our foreign policy we take an interest in developments in the Pacific region and its issues.

Yet we have a way to go to make this world view meaningful.

In 1990, Mike Moore took on the Labour leadership from Geoffrey Palmer to "save the furniture", as polls suggested they faced a brutal loss that could see them lose a bunch of what were considered safe Labour seats. Tonight, the Labour Party is again agonising over such a decision and what might be rescued just seven weeks from election day.

As the Lonely Planet guide says - thank goodness for New Zealand. In a world characterised by instability and insecurity, New Zealand is a source of hope.

Of course, those of us who live here might have different views. While New Zealand does appear to be doing well in comparison to other nations, we know we have problems, some urgent, some far-reaching, that need attention.

This time there's no cup of new and sod all intrigue. Bill English has simply and directly told National Party supporters to vote for someone else. Or rather, to give their electorate vote to United Future in Ohariu and ACT in Epsom. Even though he seemed to almost forget the name of Peter Dunne's party, the message was clear. More of the same, please.

In a recent Metro article, Matthew Hooton wrote ‘globalisation combined with free markets has been the most successful economic and social system of the world’. I do not propose to discuss whether we can describe as successful a social system which is riven with mental health and addiction problems or whether we can attribute them to globalisation and free markets.

"Money is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons" Woody Allen.

Many years ago, I took part in a public forum where the keynote speaker advanced the radical idea that a Basic Income (BI) be paid unconditionally to all residents.

The response to Greens co-leader Metiria Turei's admission that she lied to Work & Income (WINZ) while she was a solo mum in the 1990s seems to have split, rather predictably, along ideological lines. Saint or sinner, criminal or victim. But it's just not that simple.

I've already penned something for RNZ's website (which I then fleshed out a bit more over on The Spinoff) as

Land for farming ran out in the 1950s. Farm production intensified. We shifted from more dollars of farm output by using more land to getting more dollars per unit of land. Among the challenges we had was to replace the nutrients we were depleting from the soil – notably phosphates. Fortunately the world’s reserves of cheap phosphates have not yet all gone.

Well, you can't say the Greens haven't had plenty of time to mull it over. And it looks like they've decided they're not going to die wondering. Metiria Turei's crack at New Zealand First's "racist, divisise politics" looked like a calculated attack at a time the cameras would be on her, and it sent a message to more than just Winston Peters.

Economists have a predilection for the open economy  because, I think, openness to trade tends to be associated with openness to ideas, to technologies, to people, to opportunity, to the future. So the import controls on carpets in the 1960s meant New Zealand was unprepared for the rise of synthetics which decimated the market for coarse wools, crashing their prices in 1966.

Regular readers of my Pundit columns (all eight of you) will be aware that I am on occasion partial to uttering the odd cry of "won't someone please think of the Constitution!" Exhibit A.

In her interview with Guyon Espiner, Jenny Shipley regretted that the ‘middle class’ were still beneficiaries of the welfare state. Now the term ‘class’ is a summary of a lot of complex ideas useful in social discussions, but I cannot recall it being used by such a senior politician – at least not since Harry Holland.

The case for moderation is getting stronger by the day. We're hearing now that it's less than 100 days until the election, and until last week and the Todd Barclay story it had been a quiet build-up so far, with hardly any hype, let alone genuine interest in politics.

During the Vogel boom, say between 1871 and 1881, the population of New Zealand doubled, as did real GDP (as best as we can measure). That means per capita GDP was much the same at the end of the boom as it was at the beginning. Was it a boom then?

Earlier this year I bought the book Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton's Doomed Campaign for my Dad. Here's how one reviewer opens his account of that account:

Whether you visit Pundit frequently or just stop by now and then, you might have noticed recently a new banner across the top of the site and a bright red button on the right hand panel. They're there because the world is changing.

Short term: It's been a terrible day for Todd Barclay. A day that started out with the Prime Minister fudging for you, but which is ending with the same PM keeping his distance and his career hanging by a thread. But longer term: It's been an even worse day for the 'Honest bill' brand.

Newsroom's truly exceptional piece of investigative journalism into the saga of National's Clutha-Southland MP Todd Barclay, his ex-electorate agent Glenys Dickson, allegations of illegal secret recordings and revelations of a secret taxpayer-funded payout is well worth

Newspapers have been a commercial miracle. For a very small outlay one got access to a surprisingly wide range of news, opinion and information. Part of the explanation was economies of scale, but the trick was that much of the industry’s revenue came from advertising.

New Zealand is not Britain, or any other country for that matter, but we do like to look to the "old country" when it comes to clues for where our politics might be heading. These ties even extend to running campaigns.

Allow me to be irritated by the trivial discussion which surrounds the government’s annual budget. The budget is simply the government setting out its spending, revenue and borrowing plans for the year, as required by legislation and as has been a fundamental part of the constitution for three centuries.

I commence with a quick civics lesson, for anyone who needs it.

Last week the Reserve Bank reported stress tests to assess the ability of borrowers to cope with higher mortgage interest rates. Assuming 7 percent p.a.

A month ago Bill English gave his Foreign Minister Gerry Brownlee what some saw as a gentle rebuke for his comments about New Zealand co-sponsoring a UN resolution condemning Israel's settlement in Palestinian territory.

It seems Brownlee is still looking for that language.

Lisa Owen doesn't look much like Steven Joyce. Or Simon Bridges. Or Bill English for that matter. But Phil Goff didn't seem to notice or care when he sat down to be interviewed by her on The Nation this morning. While Lisa sat across the table from him, it was those men he was talking to.

Some Labour supporters are disturbed that the government seems to be stealing their policies.

Housing is shaping up to be a key issue in this year's election. So says the commentariat at the moment. But in the end, housing concerns will drive the voting patterns of those directly affected by it – not the will of the public at large.

I've been writing on the issue of prisoner voting generally, and jailhouse lawyer Arthur Taylor's various challenges to the 2010 law preventing it in particular, for quite some time now.

I'll write more on this later today, but seeing as I don't do social media and there may also be some of you out there in internet land who don't either ...

This was a budget almost three terms in the making. Budget 2017 is the culmination of Bill English's determined commitment to surpluses and his ethos that the public sector should do "more with less". This is the year he finally gets to say, 'hey, now you can do more with a bit more'.

My, how politics has changed. As with so much of the New Zealand lifestyle it has been streamlined, professionalised and become a much more risk-averse environment in recent years.

An economic Austerian is someone who advocates cutting government spending, particularly social expenditures, in order to eliminate a government’s fiscal deficits. (The name is a portmanteau of ‘austerity' and ‘Austrian' from the neoliberal ‘Austrian School of Economics'.)

As everybody should very well know, the primary rule for surviving a horror movie is: "When it appears you have killed the monster, NEVER check to see if it's really dead." Because if you do so ...

In February 2017, New Zealand’s prison population hit 10,100 - an all-time high - and an increase of 364% in the last 30 years.  A month later, the NZ Herald reported that 56.3% of that total are Maori - also an all-time high - even though Maori make up only 15% of the population.

The recent historic pay equity deal for aged and residential care workers raises a tricky clash between quite different accounts of how the economy should work. Many people think that workers should be paid at a rate that reflects their social worth; others – mostly economists – think they are paid at their marginal product,  which I explain below.

Emmanuel Macron may turn out to be a success. Then again, he may not. But for now, it is enough to compare his inaugural speech with that of Donald J. Trump's.

Given the speeches at the National Party's Auckland regional conference, New Zealand's housing situation/challenge/imbroglio/anything-but-a-crisis appea

Donald Trump's firing of the head of the FBI, James Comey, is remarkable for at least two reasons.

Hot on the heels of Ireland's criminal investigation into Stephen Fry's comments about "a capricious, mean-minded, stupid God", it

The report observes that in the decade from 2001 to 2011, the ratio of non-academic and academic staff in the public tertiary educational system rose from about equal to six non-academics to five academics. In fact the number of academic staff has fallen slightly between 2005 and 2011 while non-academic numbers have risen.

I saw my first 2017 election pamphlet this past week.

There's a certain vicarious thrill at seeing your ultimate boss' name on a Supreme Court decision - it's like being in court yourself, but without any of the hassle or expense.

Back in February, a Twitter debate took place over the possibility that Rule 8.47 of the Labour Party Constitution might result in the Party being hauled into court to defend its list candidate selections. Rule 8.47, for those of you who don’t know the minutiae of New Zealand political party governance structures, reads:

I quite understand Jim Bolger’s rejection of neo-liberalism. Bolger is an active Catholic (as is Bill English); neoliberal ideology is a long way from Catholic social teaching.

What is the current North Korea dispute about? Is it really about North Korea testing missiles and perhaps a nuclear weapon? Or is it actually about the relationship between China and the United States?

Under the Obama administration there was a general acceptance that North Korean missile tests would not result in military action against North Korea.

It's still the economy, stupid. So what economic offerings are in the tea leaves heading towards this year's election?

The news cycle sure is quick these days – and getting quicker. We've long known that today's news is tomorrow's fish n' chips wrapping, but these days articles last mere hours, even minutes, on websites before analytics tell the editors what's being read and what needs to disappear. This hardly encourages deep consideration of public policy options as we head into the general election.

Section 8 of the 1964 Reserve Bank of New Zealand Act stated that ‘monetary policy of the Government ... shall be directed to the maintenance and promotion of economic and social welfare in New Zealand having regard to the desirability of promoting the highest degree of production, trade, and employment and of maintaining a stable internal price level.’

The response by some regional leaders to Julian Wood’s Growing Beyond Growth: Rethinking the Goals of Regional Development while not unexpected was so typical of much public policy disc

This week is shaping up as a banner one for those few unusual individuals who consider defamation law an area

New Zealand's nuclear-free policy is one of the most nation-defining and profound policy decisions this country has made in the past generation; it striped to the bone our traditional alliances for nearly two decades, took us down a path to a more independent foreign policy and reinforced our sense of self as a mouse that can roar. Yet is so easily may not have happened.

Despite a degree of ambiguity over the outcome, Andrew Little appears to have come out ahead in the defamation action brought against him by Earl and Lani Hagaman. 

1. The US is No Longer The International Hegemon

There’s so much to digest in the confusion surrounding the book Hit & Run.

But there is a key shift in the position of the New Zealand Defence Force that has become lost in the chaos swirling around the accusations made.

For six years, the NZ Defence Force maintained that claims of civilians casualties were “unfounded”.

I don't want to be disrespectful to a fellow pundit, but to my mind Bill English has got it right by deciding not to hold an inquiry into allegations that New Zealand soldiers may have committed war crimes in Afghanistan. The evidential threshold just hasn't been met.

The parliamentary left seems cowed by the neoliberals if the fiscal pact between Labour and the Greens is anything to go by.

The Chief of Defence Force Lieutenant General Tim Keating presented the NZDF response to the book Hit and Run at a press conference on Monday 27 March 2017. For 45 minutes he and his colleagues suggested that everything in the book was incorrect.

War is different from any other organised human activity. Decades, even centuries, after military conflict, the reasons for it are examined and consequences are measured. A nation's conduct is weighed in the balance.

My dad, Frank, was a journalist. So were his two brothers, Brian and George. They're dead now. None of them were university educated. All three left school in Hastings, Sussex and wound up in Fleet St.

For more than a year the Productivity Commission has been working on its report, New Models of Tertiary Education (released last week), with the aim of showing us how we can have a more innovative tertiary sector. The report will not make the best seller list – but it is worth a read.

Once a year the QS World University Rankings on individual subject areas are published. This reports on the 2017 rankings for 46 subjects. 

Here’s some that have been rattling around in my brain this week:

I can't help wondering if Bill English is going to church on Sunday. While reports today say the Prime Minister is meeting with Defence Minister Gerry Brownlee and New Zealand Defence Force heads about the claims in the Nicky Hager and Jon Stephenson book Hit & Run, the more crucial meeting that day may be between English and his God.

Think of a three-year-old girl. Maybe she’s your daughter. Maybe she’s your niece. Maybe she’s your friend’s child. But think of her.

I know as little as most of you about Nicky Hager's new book. It investigates an SAS raid in Afghanistan in 2010, after the death of Lieutenant Tim O'Donnell whilst on patrol that August.

In an opinion piece published on Monday, former Act Party leader Jamie Whyte decries what he sees as Parliament’s recent “legislative lunacy” in

I was a bit startled by a report recently released by the Ministry of Business Industry and Employment which forecast an extra 480,000 jobs o

"I don't know what you mean by 'glory,' " Alice said.
    Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. "Of course you don't—till I tell you. I meant 'there's a nice knock-down argument for you!' "
    "But 'glory' doesn't mean 'a nice knock-down argument'," Alice objected.

I suspect the High Court decision that prison officials acted wrongly in taking Phillip John Smith's hairpiece from him is going to turn the talkback outrage meter right up to 11. Prisoners have a right to wear a toupee? That piece of shit can keep his rug on?

Good on you, Bill. I respect political courage. Too often in New Zealand, superannuation promises have been used to buy elections, beginning with Rob Muldoon back in 1975. He made the age of entitlement to universal super 60; it took years of pain and a raft of broken promises to get the age lifted to 65 (back where the old age pension began).

Dear loyal readers (and any fickle folk floating by),

The observant amongst you may have noticed that yesterday our list of contributors on the left hand side of the page changed. Some of the folk who have written for Pundit in the past have moved onto other things and, happily, a bunch of new folk have agreed to share their expertise with you.

I largely agree with Steve’s comments, in particular his desire to see a personalisation of learning, and a coming together by our educators.

"I am from the government and I am here to help you – even though you did not know you needed help". 

In the wonderfully prescient film Minority Report, the central idea is that the police have found a way to identify who is going to commit a crime before they do it. 

“Their priorities are creating jobs, making sure our health system is effective and affordable, creating high quality education for all students, making sure our community is safe and dealing with important issues in transport and regions.”

This is a classic progressive Labour set of priorities. He’s in a position to implement them because of the rest of his agenda.

The past week in New Zealand politics has been the argument I have every Christmas writ large; and has been just as unedifying.

I'm in my early 30s, which puts me firmly in the millennial camp. And as a millenial, I wasn't all that outraged I'd have to wait two more years to get my super, as Bill English confirmed on Monday.

The Government’s announced proposal to raise the age of eligibility for New Zealand Superannuation (NZS) is a real botch job. I’ll leave others to write about the political botch; here the focus is on the policy.

This quick post is a question, more than analysis of an issue. But it's something I stumbled upon today regarding New Zealand's superannuation history... and I'm wondering if it offers us a way forward.

I was talking with a colleague today about Bill English's plan to raise the age of eligibilty for super from 65 to 67 – in 20 years. "What are you," he asked, and I knew immediately what he meant. "Gen X," I replied. "But just old enough to sneak out at 65". He said he'd get caught, I said my wife would too. Then it struck me: This conversation was meaningless.

The interesting thing about Bill English's out of the blue superannuation announcement is not the substance of the policy -- it seems mild enough -- but why he made it six months before an election. After all, the key part of the policy, the shift in the eligibility age from 65 to 67 does not even start for another 20 years.

The strategic view that Britain needs to be in the EU remains universal among New Zealand strategists. However the Leaves did not vote geopolitically but on domestic considerations including, apparently, resentment of immigration and of the unequal gains from trade. New Zealand has little alternative but to accept the direction the Brits are taking, albeit with regret.

It started with a song and a Facebook post and has ended with a baffling court decision, one that seems to have little connection to where we began. Frankly, the whole Planet Key episode has been a very expensive exercise for everyone involved – both the taxpayers and plaintiffs – just to establish a definition of free speech and our right to exercise it.

Barely 48 hours ago Jacinda Ardern told RNZ that talk of her becoming Labour's deputy leader was a "distaction". That job, she said, as just "not an issue".

The New Zealand education system is in trouble. Not for the reason usually advanced by the critics of our public schools, but because for far too long we have ben arguing about how to equip young New Zealanders for the rapidly changing times in which we live.

Old mates Bill English and Nick Smith dragged media to a muddy – but "good enough" – stream in west Auckland last week to announce plans to clean up rivers by 2040. But what the event really signified was National starting to clean up its political house before this September's election.

In October last year I wrote a somewhat lengthy post about the Court of Appeal's decision in The Electoral Commission v Watson & Jones.

New Zealand has an unusual situation in the world economy. Despite being among the affluent economies, its success is vitally dependent upon the export of some primary products (especially dairy and meat products) whose domestic production is brutally protected in many jurisdictions.

The word “lie” keeps appearing in news stories and columns about President Donald Trump. It makes me extremely uncomfortable.

Usually restrained media outlets are using the word casually in a way which doesn’t do justice to the implication of calling someone a “liar”.

Any which way you look at it, it seems impossible. History leans hard on both major parties at the moment, suggesting they are heading into an election year battling against the odds. There are good reasons why both red and blue teams should see this election as unwinnable – and good reasons why they may not want to win – but, thing is, one of them will. But which?

A month ago I wrote that I would be looking at the possible perumtations of likely coalitions that may appear after this year's election. Although the right direction/wrong direction poll clearly favours the incumbent government, I thought it best to wait for the first opinion polls to see how the Bill English premiership has taken with the New Zealand public.

Now that Willie Jackson has obtained the waiver needed to allow him to stand as a candidate for Labour despite not having been a party member for the required 12 months, he's setting out to prove he's worth the "winnable list placing" th

Less than a year before he died, Tony Judt, paralysed from the neck down by motor neuron disease, gave a much-acclaimed two-hour public lecture. Shortly after he extended it to a book, Ill Fares the Land: A Treatise on Our Present Discontents, setting out his commitment to social democracy.

In April last year, Radio New Zealand reported that the Corrections Department was paying for non-existent alcohol and drug counsellors.

The spies will be feeling a chill after a month of Donald Trump as President of the United States.

That includes New Zealand’s spies, now in surprisingly familiar territory as concern about Trump’s behaviour spreads across the intelligence community.

As a personality I find nothing attractive about Donald Trump - he is, frankly, a pig of a man. But we need to avoid being overtaken by emotion when unpicking the state of the world, which is why in my previous column I tried to make the case for balance and moderation as we react to events.

The mumblings and frettings about how Donald Trump's victory in the US may twist and define our own elections this year have been many and full of dread. And not unreasonably. You only have to look at recent votes and polls in our cultural neighbours – the US, UK and Australia – to see the rise of some ugly politics. But I fear the worriers may be wailing at the wrong wall.

Shortly after the collapse ot the Berlin Wall in 1989, one of our greatest contemporary historians Tony Judt resolved to write a book to sort his thinking out. It took fifteen years, but the resulting Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 is an (almost 900-page) extraordinary achievement.

In the wake of Andrew Little's shoulder tapping Willie Jackson for a "winnable" position on Labour's list, along with the selection of Paul Eagle and Greg O'Connor as candidates in eminently winnable electorates, Labour is (once again) facing some strife over the role that gender plays in its candi

Since US president Bill Clinton and Prime Minister Tony Blair departed government, the Third Way political agenda has fallen on hard times.

When Edward Snowden’s NSA haul finally turned out a few New Zealand documents, it created an awesome and instant workload for Cheryl Gwyn.

The new Inspector General of Intelligence and Security suddenly had her hands filled. That was almost two years ago.

It is not generally realised that Statistics New Zealand has a large research database – the Integrated Data Infrastructure (IDI) – containing microdata about people and households from a range of government agencies, SNZ surveys including the 2013 Census, and non-governme

On September 23rd politicians must give us something to hope for. 

“To be truly radical make hope possible rather than despair convincing” Raymond Williams

Love Actually isn't real life. As appalled as we all are my the strongman behaviour of Donald Trump in his first week in office, when he calls Bill English in the coming days, this isn't the time for the new Prime Minister to indulge his inner Hugh Grant.

In order to get to this column’s conclusion I am going to recall a little of my scholarly journey.

Whether we like it or not, Donald Trump is now president of the United States. We have no choice but to deal with that fact, and with him. But it's hard to find any New Zealanders who have much good to say about him.

The UK Supreme Court surprised no-one on Tuesday when it decided, by 8-3, that Parliament must pass specific authorising legislation before the UK Government can trigger article 50 and so begin the formal process of withdrawing from the European Union (or, "Brexiting").

This column is a grump about the poor quality of public discourse. It is illustrated by the recent outburst over the distribution of wealth in New Zealand and some rather inept public responses to the recent re-publication of some data, where people with little expertise used the opportunity to pursue their political and ideological goals while displaying, to the expert, their incompetence.

The bully victorious. That's what today's inauguration of Donald Trump means to me.

And why should it mean anything else? That is the very essence of the man we have come to know over the past two years – the man who mocks, grabs pussy, calls opponents childish names, incites violence at rallies and is mollified by no-one. The man is not for turning.

Donald Trump is not particularly interested in policy. When he promised to replace Obamacare – the current US health system – with something which would be better, he was responding to the conflicting demands of his supporters and certainly did not have a plan. It will be the Republican-dominated Congress which will lead the way with a bill for him to sign.

For eight years now, the right/wrong direction polls have consistently shown that the majority of New Zealanders believe their country is on the right track. The November 2016 Roy Morgan indicator has the right direction at 65 percent.

In contrast, during the latter years of the Clark-led government only 40 to 45% of the public believed the country was going in the right direction.

The 2015 results for the  triennial OECD PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) evaluation were reported just before Christmas so they did not get much coverage. We need to think about them. Many will jump to a conclusion that the current government’s education policy is failing. Certainly the international evidence does not suggest it is succeeding.  

The Corrections Department puts out a monthly magazine called, guess what – Corrections Works.

This columnist is greatly perplexed by how in today’s post-truth world people hold views or which are not true, which may be contradictory but which are held with a tenacity which belies their falsehood. This is sometimes called ‘truthiness’; the views are believed to be true because they confirm beliefs. But that is a label, what is going on?

The announcement by New Zealand on Air that it was changing its mode of funding is a reminder of the current turmoil in the media from the convergence of platforms (delivery systems).

I've got half written Key/English blogs to finish and post, but before Christmas I desperately want to share my hero and anti-hero of the year; our better and worse angels.

For many people, Michael Lewis is best known for his 2010 book The Big Short and the follow-up film, which describes the carryings-on of the financial sector in the American housing market which underlay the Global Financial Crisis.

Champs: Who would you rank as the best performing individuals in politics for 2016?

1. John Key, for perfectly executing the coup against himself, and Bill English, the little engine who finally did.

2. Winston Peters, who starts an election year with stronger polls than ever

3. Michael Wood, for reminding everyone that all politics is local

Back in September I wrote this post about a Supreme Court decision that found quite a number of prisoners have been unlawfully detained because The Department of Corrections incorrectly had calculated their release dates.

Dear Bill,

I recall when you first entered Parliament 26 years ago, it was widely thought you were prime-ministerial material. You’ve made it. Congratulations.

Even with a 20 point poll lead over the main Opposition party, history is against Prime Minister designate Bill English. While he will take over the Prime Ministership with plenty of hoop-la on Monday, he will be trying to defeat history as well as Andrew Little (and Winston Peters?) to take the top job again after next year's election.

I remember talking at a do with a Labour apparatchik in December 2011. The party had a new leader and there was a sense of excitement. "We can get him on the cover of NZ Surfer. When's the last time Labour could say something like that?", this person enthused.

Back in June I wrote a post about the Ombudsman's pretty damning report on the State Services Commission (SSC) Inquiry into leaked MFAT documents, and in particular the way that this Inquiry treated a MFAT employee, Mr Derek Leask.

John Key's resignation is an immense shock in a year of immense shocks, but it also lays down a gauntlet to those who would be in government next year.

Unfortunately most analysis on the American elections focuses on who voted but, as Bob Chapman pointed out, the Non-Vote Party plays an important role. This is yet another example of Gilling’s law of how you score shaping the game; in this case pollsters tend to score voters and pay little attention to those who do not vote.

Technology is an ambiguous notion. Its most common use in economics arises in the following way.

The laws of thermodynamics mean that there exist production functions which relate inputs to outputs. The most familiar ones have a single output generated by inputs of labour and capital, although there can be other inputs such as land, energy, intermediate goods and imports.

As has been noted previously on this blog, Sir Geoffrey Palmer and Dr Andrew Butler  have published a book advocating that New Zealand enact a “written” constitution.

[Make sure you see the update at the end!]

New Zealand has had a "three strikes" sentencing regime in place for some six years now. It was controversial when introduced.

New Zealand is such a small country that it is very easy to be internationally bullied. Much of our diplomatic effort aims to minimise such bullying, but fear of it lurks behind concerns about what a Trump administration might do, not only to us but the rest of the world. Could the US, big enough to be hard to bully, disrupt the world trading system?

Donald Trump's election as President of the USA was interpreted widely as the death knell for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). That, anyway, was John Key's immediate response following the result.  

Alan Blinder, an American economist, described as ‘one of the great economic minds of his generation,’ was an economic adviser to President Clinton and was a Vice Chair of the American Federal Reserve (central bank). He is known to many as the co-author of an extremely successful textbook.

          If any question why we died,  

          Tell them, because our fathers lied.

To get some idea of just how great the now-departed Leonard Cohen's musical legacy is, you can't just listen to his recordings. You have to look at how his works were standards for so many other artists. His songs were genius, and everyone wanted to make them their own.

The world feels a very different place to me this morning. It is a place that leaves me disillusioned and more than a little scared. The America that voted for Donald Trump to be its president has either embraced or looked past so many values that I thought that country held dear.

In my other blogging endeavours, I often criticize judges, either for specific decisions or for their broader views of the law and of their own role, on which many of them are fond of expounding extra-judicially

This column honours Bob Chapman (1922-2004), professor of Political Studies at the University of Auckland, remembered for his mentoring of many students including Helen Clark. He was an early New Zealand social scientist who did not just study elections but used the results to explore the social development of New Zealand.

So, according to this Act Party press release:

After a decade close to the action – and longer on the peripheries – there's not much in politics that makes my blood boil any more. At its best it is a contest of ideas and visions, but more often these days it is a poll-driven, often cynical, risk averse, strategic battle for swing voters. C'est la vie. But then, we have events like the Saudi sheep deal.

The Auditor-General's report on Murray McCully's "sheep-to-sand" deal (or, rather, her "Inquiry into the Saudi Arabia Food Security Partnership") is hot off the press.

I puzzle at how politicians and advisers can make giant mistakes but are never held accountable. The notion of accountability became fashionable in the neoliberal changes of the 1980s and many people further down in the system now work under tighter surveillance than they did then.

In 2011, Bill English said that prisons were “a moral and fiscal failure” and New Zealand should never build another one. Well said – and achievable – but only if Governments stop pandering to the Sensible Sentencing Trust and the moral panic manufactured by the media whenever a violent crime occurs.

I'm presently out of New Zealand, enjoying a family break at Joshua Tree National Park in the US of A before immersing myself in the joy and wonder that is end of year exam marking. I guess that means I should be writing you an insightful and searing critique of the US Presidential race, but really ... what's there to say?

The very joining of monetary policy and fiscal policy into a single phrase is a criticism of the neoliberal macroeconomics. The reconfiguration under Rogernomics assumed that the two could be administered independently of one another, and gave an authority and power to monetary policy beyond what any reasonable analysis would conclude.

Yesterday, the Court of Appeal handed down its decision on the Electoral Commission's appeal in the "Planet Key" case, The Electoral Commission v Watson & Jones. You may remember the song and video at the heart of that case.

Alfred Nobel did not endow a prize in economics. In 1968 the Swedish National (i.e. central) Bank founded a ‘Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel’. The award’s announcement is coordinated with the annual Nobel Prize awards.

Sir Geoffrey Palmer and Andrew Butler, both of them former legal academics and current barristers, Sir Geoffrey having also served as Attorney-General and Prime Minister in between, have published a book

Despite being frequently ignored, Gilling’s Law is one of the most powerful social laws I know. Formulated by Don Gilling, a retired professor of accounting and finance, it states that the way you score the game shapes the way the game is played. A simple illustration is that when they increased the points for a try, rugby games became more attacking in order to score more tries.

What can you really take in a political sense from a series of low-turnout elections in which the winners were mostly incumbents and mostly, still, male, pale and stale?

Well, a little bit, but maybe not as much as some claim.

Desmond Tutu is something of a living legend (there's a fuller account of his life here).

On Sunday night Auckland mayoral candidate Chloe Swarbrick was feeling fed up with media coverage of the city's election and took to Twitter to express herself. In reply to a tweet saying turnout was tracking only marginally ahead 2013's poor effort, she said:

"I'm optimistic, but again doesn't help that media sold this as a boring one horse race that everyone should just give up on".

To be frank, this column on criminology is not in an area of my expertise. But in the course of my reading to place economics in a social context – I do that a lot – I came across an old report which I suspect most people who care have not come across earlier either. So this column is really from a journalist telling about a report.

It's a rare delight in these heavily managed times to see conviction politics and heartfelt arguments. It's just sad the Don Brash-led re-hashed Hobson's Pledge lobby group is so ill-judged and ill-informed.

It's a rare delight in these heavily managed times to see conviction politics and heartfelt arguments. It's just sad the Don Brash-led Hobson's Pledge lobby group is so ill-judged and ill-informed.

The Government is ‘refreshing’ its international trade strategy. Refresh is a euphemism. It ought to overhaul it. Here are some guidelines; I begin with the overarching framework.

On Wednesday evening I had the pleasure of attending the launch of Sir Geoffrey Palmer and Andrew Butler's book proposing a written constitution for New Zealand. It was held at Parliament, and may I say that a fine time was had by all.

On occasion, I've had cause to issue some stern words to Police Minister Judith Collins about her apparent meddling in Police issues that are none of her business.

A couple of days ago, I was asked for comment* by RNZ News on a story about Gisborne mayor Meng Foon laying $20 on a pub table at a a Father's Day function.

Sadly, the latest MSD report The Material Wellbeing of NZ Households, by Bryan Perry, released last week, passed by quickly. It said, broadly, that there is no obviously significant shift in the level of inequality in recent years.

In my various comments on the frankly abysmal Airport Authorities (Publicisi

At the risk of breaking my undertaking to Gerry Brownlee, I find myself having to once again turn my attention to Tutehounuku (Nuk) Korako's frankly abysmal members bill - the 

Here's the thing: What exactly did happen during that Mad Monday Chiefs event at Ōkoroire Hot Pools, near Matamata, on August 1? Despite the Rugby Union's "investigation" into events we are none the wiser and yet, amidst a flurry of clichés about "key learnings" and "unwise" and "inappropriate" behaviour, we are supposed to drop our unanswered questions and move on.

On today's RNZ's Morning Report, John Key poured cold water over Wintson Peters' confident assertion that NZ would have an election early in 2017 because the National Government was struggling to hold things together.

Last June there was a kerfuffle in the online magazine Spinoff over attitudes to intellectual activity in New Zealand.

Two eminent but retired Reserve Bankers, Don Brash and Arthur Grimes, have argued that house prices should halve. I am not sure whether they actually mean it or are just vividly pointing out that house prices are about double the sustainable level. I probably use a different method of calculation but have come to a similar assessment.

Back in March I wrote this post in which I expressed scepticism about Auckland Transport's rationale for having a by-law that prohibits the display of election advertising anywhere that is visible from a road, except for the 9 weeks before an election. My argument was: 

In 1920, someone wrote in the Maoriland Worker, ‘The politician is like the person who would build an ambulance at the bottom of the cliff, instead of constructing a good fence at the top.’ The image seems to have been coined in a late-nineteenth-century poem by the English temperance activist Joseph Malins.

So it's Friday afternoon, deep into intellectual garbage time, and it's been a wee while since I've taken a gratuitous pot-shot at one of my fellow denizens of the blogosphere. What better reasons do I then need for writing the following?

ACT leader David Seymour backed congestion charging in Auckland and called Transport Minister Simon Bridges "weak" for his inaction on Auckland's traffic congestion, at a local government panel discussion tonight.

At the risk of appearing to be a slightly unhinged obsessive who is fixated upon the trivial, I cannot help but respond to Tutehounuku (Nuk) Korako's attempted defence in Parliament this afternoon of his frankly abysmal members bill, the Airport Authoriti

As some of you may have noticed, I put up a couple of blog posts last week in which I said some less than charitable things about Tutehounuku (Nuk) Korako's members bill, the 

What are universities really for? was the topic of a recent lecture by Hugh Lauder, professor of Education and Political Economy at the University of Bath (previously on the Canterbury and VUW faculties).

As I noted in yesterday's post, Tutehounuku (Nuk) Korako's frankly abysmal members bill - the Airport Authorities (Publicising Lost Property Sales) Amendment 

So the very professional Rosanna Price rang me up about Tutehounuku (Nuk) Korako's frankly abysmal members bill, the Airport Authorities (Publicising Lost Property Sales) Amendment Bill, and accurately

To make the intentions of this column clear, I am generally in favour of migration. I am a descendant of immigrants and live in a country in which virtually everyone admits to a migration heritage and which has one of the highest proportions of foreign-born in the world. I am also very aware that future migration will dramatically change the country I love, especially by the Asian inflow.

What with Northern Districts cricket player Scott Kuggeleijn running a "it wasn't rape because any man would do the same" defence (and thanks for spattering that shit all over me and my 5 year old son, Scott), Chief's lock Michael Allardice thinking it's OK t

Well, this is a cat amongst Helen Clark's United Nation's pigeons. In the midst of a parliamentary recess when political news is thin on the ground, the Maori Party has told the world – and it's the world that matters in this case – that it doesn't support Clark's bid for the Secretary-General's job.

New Zealand shares a continent with the European Union. Admittedly 93 percent of Zealandia is submerged beneath the Pacific Ocean but at its most north-western are the islands of New Caledonia with a total area about half the size of Canterbury. Technically the country is a department of France and so is the closest part of the EU to us.

In an opinion piece published in Monday's NZ Herald, Professor Chris Gallavin made a number of suggestions as to how the Court

One per cent please.                                           

One of the great things about my local paper, the Otago Daily Times, is that it still prints daily reports of all the trials that take place in each of the region's various local courts. For an insight into the manifold frailties and foibles of humanity, as well as a lot of sadness and the occasional spot of humour, it is hard to beat. I read it every day.

Just nine years ago, John Key, then leader of the opposition, spoke to the Auckland branch of the New Zealand Contractors Federation about housing affordability which he described then as a ‘crisis [which had] reached dangerous levels in recent years and looks set to get worse.’

This is an historic day for New Zealand. The day the world's superpower blinked after a generation-long staring contest. The day America, in any meaningful sense, abandoned its 'neither confirm nor deny' policy. The day the mouse's roar was truly heard.

“I have been involved in this strange, fascinating and tragic world of incarceration for over 25 years. I have had many ideas about penal reform in that time, many of the subsequently proved quite wrong. I now think there are two basic things for which one should aim.

As can (finally) now be reported, Tawera Wichman has been jailed for 3 years, 10 months for shaking his 11 month old son, Teegan Tairoa-Wichman, to death some seven years ago.

Turkey’s fifth military coup d’etat was crushed only hours after it began, but the ramifications of those hours of miscalculated actions are immense for Turkey, the region and the wider world.

The rule of strongman Recep Tayyip Erdogan has consistently, worryingly, been more akin to that of an autocrat than a democratically elected President.

The tensions between the Reserve Bank and the Government over housing policy go back to the mistaken economic thinking in the 1989 Reserve Bank Act. Monetarism ruled and it is that underlying monetarist approach which is creating the tensions.

Black power member, Ngapari Nui, has been working as a prison volunteer for the past five years trying to steer young gang members away from crime. By all accounts he’s been doing a great job.

On CNN at the end of last week one of the commentators, sad face on, remarked that “this (the Dallas shootings of police and the latest two police executions of black men) is not America”.

News flash: gun violence is exactly what America is, and its victims are overwhelmingly black..

Journalists and other populisers get away with an economics which does not quite lie, but is often very misleading. This applies to Brexit, but let’s start off with the TPPA (Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement).

Tony Blair just does not get it.

After the savaging he was dealt by the long awaited, 2.6 million word Chilcot inquiry, Blair spoke to the press for nearly two hours in order to make sure the world knew he did not lie and was in fact a victim himself, deeply sorry while standing by his actions to take Britain to an avoidable.

Underneath Auckland's housing crisis, both literally and metaphorically, lies infrastructure. One of the reasons for the lack of houses in Auckland is that the city doesn't have enough of it, and you can't build a house if you don't have the roads, pipes and power. So today's announcement from government addresses a fundamental problem.

It is one of the most puzzling... and troubling... sagas in New Zealand's recent political history. And that's saying something. The Saudi sheep deal's always felt like the sword of Damocles hanging over Foreign Minister Murray McCully, and today that sword may finally have fallen.

My last column described how the punitive measures we had for dealing with debtors were only abolished in 1989. Yet others continue to suffer from oppressive legislation – if they are low enough in social ranking.

An article published a month ago in the Daily Mail prompted GE Free New Zealand to

The Government (and State Services Commission, which really appears to be joined at the hip with Ministers on this matter) seems to have decided on its strategy to deal with the damning Ombudsman's Report into Paula Rebstock's Report on MFAT leaks.

Wilkens Micawber was incarcerated in a debtors' prison. It is said that he is modelled on Charles Dickens’ father, who suffered a similar fate. Meanwhile, his twelve-year-old son had to work in a factory. He hated the experience. A debtors’ prison appears in The Pickwick Papers, as well as David Copperfield, and most extensively in Little Dorrit.

Having tired of perusing the interweb's voluminous reckons on Brexit, I chanced upon a gem of a story regarding an interchange between a defendant and a judge in Georgia (the U.S. variant) that did ... not go well.

After a long, long gestation - caused in large part by the State Services Commission's (hugely ironic, as we will see) demand for various rights of reply - the Office of the Ombudsman has finally released its report into the State Services Commission Inquir

So what's changed? That's the over-arching and as yet unanswered question that follows National's decision to abandon its commitment to a two year deployment in Iraq.

It appears that the Health Select Committee's inquiry into Maryan Street's petition, which itself called for Parliament to "investigat

Solutions. At least the immediate and practical ones. They've been pretty thin on the ground in the Auckland housing debate, especially when it comes to the social housing crisis. But today another couple of suggestions caught my eye.

[As promised here, these are some further thoughts on the announcement that Teina Pora has been given a full apology for his wrongful imprisonment and an offer of $2.5 million in compensation.

Some brief initial thoughts on the (assumed true) claim that it will be announced today that Teina Pora will be offered around $2 million in compensation for his 21-22 (I've seen both figures used) years in prison.

An important notion in economic analysis is of a ‘public good’ (which may be a service). Not THE public good (a.k.a. the ‘common good’), which is shared and beneficial for all or most members of a given community. A public good in this narrow sense has two key features: it is ‘non-excludable’ and it is ‘non-rivalrous’.

I am not supporting Helen Clark or Steven Adams.

Before you choke on your coffee, here’s why. I do not support New Zealanders just because they are New Zealanders. That’s near blind loyalty of the “my country, right or wrong” variety. Neither Helen Clark nor Steven Adams really thrill me and I decline to jump on the bandwagon.

Via RNZ comes a story about Police Minister Judith Collins taking issue in the House with the Police issuing speeding tickets to people who are breaking the speed limit.

Just a quick follow-up to a post from back in June of last year, in which I noted how the "Taxpayer's Union" mounted a successful campaign to get the Government to reintroduce 10-year passports.

The family of Blessie Gotingco, who was murdered by Tony Robertson shortly after his release from prison, are crowdfunding the costs of undertaking their own review/investigation of the Department of Corrections’ management of Roberts

In an effort to make sense of the fact that their theories don't really make sense of the Universe, some theoretical physicists posit that we inhabit but one of an infinite number of multiverses, in which anything that could possibly happen does happen.

National has finally published it's National Policy Statement (NPS) to try to slow down Auckland's charge-ahead property market. But NPS may as well stand for No Plan Sorry, because it's an admission of failure; proof it's living in the past.

I addressed a large gathering this week at a beautiful church complex in the Auckland seaside suburb of St Heliers. This was a meeting of the Tamaki branch of the University of the Third Age, usually known by the acronym U3A.

They've been 'just good friends' for so long. We all knew they liked each other, but neither of them wanted to ask the other out first, in case they looked to needy or weak. Yet today, Labour and the Greens finally came out with their first PDA.

RNZ's Morning Report led off today with a story about a "coding error" that has meant some recipients of accommodation supplement payments have been wrongly paid since 1993.

My previous post about the lines company Unison's intention to charge extra to households generating their own power prompted several people to contact me, one of whom directed me to a particular quote:

I can't give you a precise day or hour, but some time in the past fortnight, National has admitted defeat over Auckland's housing crisis. You can see it in the calculated attacks on Auckland Council and the lack of action in the Budget; the government's moved into 'managing failure' territory.

Perhaps the most defining feature of Budget 2016 is quite how political, rather than financial, it is. There are numerous aspects of it that only make sense if you place the fact that there's an election in 18 months front and centre in your thinking.

Tony Robertson was sentenced to eight years in prison for indecently assaulting a five year old girl in 2005. He was considered a high risk prisoner and the parole board declined to release him on four separate occasions.  He was eventually released in December 2013 at the end of his sentence.

Tony Robertson is a one percenter. Not the rich kind, but the destructive and callous kind. "Evil"? Maybe. But surely one of this country's highest risk offenders. And we don't seem to have the system to handle these people.

Michael Bennett’s book, In Dark Places: The confessions of Teina Pora and an ex-cop’s fight for justice, tells a terrible story in a beautiful way. The story’s terribleness lies not in a lack of coherence or plot.

I was astounded to learnt the Hawke's Bay power lines company, a monopoly called Unison, has announced increased line charges for households generating their own electricity. This "solar tax" runs counter to New Zealand's attempts to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions and is one of the most stupid business decisions I've heard of in a very long time.

If it had come from a less reliable source, I'd find it hard to believe. Sure, it's anecdotal and it's an estimate, but it also leaves you asking what we've come to in this country. One in ten garages in South Auckland, says the Salvation Army's Alan Johnson, is being used as a home. And he knows his stuff. 1 in 10.

By now we all know (or, rather, those of us at all interested in the often schoolyard antics of the NZ blogosphere know) that some blogger who used to be semi-famous has admitted the crime of paying an alleged fraudster to hack into the blog of some lefty enemies in orde

As part of my extensive reading on the wars of the twentieth century, both from personal interest and as a member of the World War One Commemoration Panel, I have recently read “Unnecessary Wars” by Australian historian Henry Reynolds.

Revelations that the PM's personal lawyer was active in lobbying the Government not to tighten the rules on the sort of foreign trusts fingered in the "Panama Papers" present, as they say, poor political optics. Here's some quick thoughts.

'Peak Antibiotics' is a catchy headline. Prime TV ran a documentary with that title just this month. Whether that turns out to be a true depiction of this era will depend on changes to policies around their use and regulations surrounding their development.

In the aftermath of every general election, Parliament's Justice and Electoral Committee holds an inquiry to review how the process went and identify matters that could be improved.

On Tuesday, Jeff McClintock and the group of people around him will begin their appeal against a decision to throw out their challenge to the Bible in Schools programme. The legal battle is technical; the underlying debate must more pressing. And it's an issue I see from both sides.

On Tuesday, Jeff McClintock and the group of people around him will begin their appeal against a decision to throw out their challenge to the Bible in Schools programme. The legal battle is technical; the underlying debate must more pressing. And it's an issue I see from both sides.

I've just got off the phone to someone responsible for what can only loosely be called "customer service". This is not the first, second or even third time my wife or I made such a call, all in an effort to get a Haier dishwasher fixed by Fisher & Paykel.

Calling them 'customer service' people is laughable. So let's label them as what they are: Time thieves.

Let's assume, purely for the sake of argument, that it turns out Mike Sabin actually didn't need to resign from Parliament. Which means that there didn't need to be a by-election in Northland back in 2015. Which in turn means that Winston Peters shouldn't really be the electorate MP for Northland.

This is what everyone agrees on: Child, Youth and Family needs to change. No-one can look at how we deal with the troubled kids that need help from government agencies and say it's going swimmingly. So the question is not what we do, but how we do it.

From South Africa to South Carolina, and from

Last month I wrote a pair of posts arguing that, under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1975, s 8(2)(l), a person is entitled to bring on their person into NZ up to a month's supply of

It's laughable, even a bit pathetic really. But then that's Whale Oil for you. And I've always been of the belief that if you put a story out there to stimulate some discussion, you should be willing to be part of that discussion.

It's times like this you appreciate why people giving testimony in court, in all those old movies, are asked to tell "the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth". Because "the truth", alone won't do. That's at the heart of Metiria Turei's revelation about just when John Key knew about the jihadi brides.

Via RNZ comes this odd story:

What's affordable? Usually that's entirely dependent on your circumstances. My six year-old's concept of what's "a lot" – the lego he wants or how much we just spent on groceries – is very different from mine. Yet I had a very wealthy friend who used to say that in his pomp he could hardly go through an international airport without spending thousands on a new watch.

During the Great War, farm land prices boomed. When farm product prices collapsed in 1920, farmers walked off their land. It was not that the land prices were too high. Farmers had borrowed to purchase their farms and with lower revenue they could no longer service the debt.

Yesterday's Herald on Sunday carried a big splash story from David Fisher about three National Party cabinet Ministers - Paula Bennett, Maggie Barry and Louise Upton - ganging up to try and force Wicked Campers to stop putting puerile, misogynistic slogans on their camper vans.

A month ago Fairfax political journalist Tracey Watkins listed the following ten areas to watch out for in the political year:

Spies (especially the review and resulting legislation)

This morning I watched Donald Trump rhapsodising about the wall he plans to build on the border with Mexico ("It's going to be so tall ... it's going to be beautiful ... as beautiful as a wall can be") and then glorying in the expulsion of protesters from his rally.

Last Friday afternoon the High Court released its most recent judgment in jailhouse lawyer Arthur Taylor's ongoing legal crusade against the law that bans prisoners from voting (PDF copy of Taylor v Attorney General available here).

The High Court has just handed down a pretty interesting decision that is possibly important for how political commentary can take place in New Zealand, and for the blogging community in particular. It involves Winston Peters and the Electoral Commission, so naturally it's called Peters v The Electoral Commission.

How high is "quite high"?

That's a life and death question having heard both the Pharmac CEO Steffan Crausaz and Prime Minister talk about funding a melanoma drug over the past 48 hours.

Yesterday I wrote this post, leveraging off a RNZ story about a judge discharging a woman without conviction for mailing herself medical marijuana from the

There are two competing descriptions of what's going on in the Republican Party right now. One, (which appeals to Donald Trump's modus operandi in business) is a "hostile takeover" of the Grand Old Party.

The whole issue of medical marijuana's (non)-availability in New Zealand has been highlighted by the case of first Helen Kelly and now claims in The Guar

A common assumption is that public spending on healthcare rises faster than GDP. There are three reasons behind this assumption.

First, an aging population requires more healthcare. The over-65s consume more healthcare resources than the under65s (and the over-85s even more so).

So, finally, Marco Rubio has reached that point. Ted Cruz got their earlier and John Kasich is still trying to hold back (and who cares about Ben Carson any more?). You may call it taking the gloves off, jumping the shark, sending in the artillery or getting down in the mud. Or too little, too late.

It isn't too late for university students to change their courses for this year; new students are still likely to be able to change their degrees. At most universities, changes are allowed for the first two, even three, weeks of the semester. While it's a nightmare for university staff, it's a chance for students to rethink and adjust given new information from the government.

On the cusp of Super Tuesday - when 14 states and American Samoa vote for their Democrat or Republican Presidential candidate, the stench of panic within the Republican party over the rise of its own bastard child is all pervasive.

There is much chat about how Donald Trump has rewritten all the rules in US politics, but he hasn’t really.

Internal tension. It's not something National has had to worry about much during the Key years. But that makes the Auckland Council's u-turn on its plans for housing intensification all the more fascinating; because it pits the National Party against some of its core voters.

It's a dangerous strategy for a government to denigrate those who don't agree with them as misguided or ignorant, especially if they are in the majority. A TV3/Reid Research poll last November revealed that a clear majority of the public oppose the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA).

The Herald on Sunday is running a "shock! horror!" series of stories about a District Court Judge who happens to be a member of a naturist ("nudist") club in Canterbury and had some naked photos of himself posted on the club website.

 According to the NZ Herald, by way of a fortuitous leak to Jared Savage, the report into David Bain's compensation claim by retired Australian Judge Ian Callinan, QC is in the hands of Minister of Justice Amy Adams. (Remember that a previous report on this matter by Canad

Allow that we had to give away something, such as increased copyright extensions, for better access for our exports; the real issue for us in the TPPA is that it reduces ‘sovereignty’. To report my conclusion at the beginning: all trade and all trade deals reduce sovereignty to some extent. This has been going on in New Zealand since its first European economic engagement.

So ACT has decided to reheat it's disastrous policy from 2014, promoting a three strikes regime for burglars.

In the biggest night of their political careers outsiders Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders swept aside the ‘insiders’ and nailed the New Hampshire primary.

What a limp start to the parliamentary year. John Key went for the jocular shopping list approach, seemingly in the belief that a few one liners implied confidence and rapidly listing a policies already in train suggested good governance.

Among all the controversy and welter of opinions on the Trans-Pacific Partnership, I have been increasingly wondering, why has the TPP become the litmus test of progressivism in New Zealand?

It is not such a defining issue in other TPP nations; the debate seems particularly fevered in New Zealand.

Today, at last, we will finally start to see past the blarney and balderdash, the polls and projections, to see the outline of the US presidential race. The Iowa caucuses are being held and the voice of actual voters will get to drown out the voices of the candidates and commentators. For a while at least.

Donald Trump’s decision to boycott the Republican Presidential candidates‘ debate on Fox ‘News’ is a master stroke - for Donald Trump, and in his world, that is all that matters.

So, sometimes it's useful being a lame duck.

Unless you have been living on Planet 9 (Mars is too close), you will be aware that ‘we’ are in the home stretch for the Iowa Caucus....the first of the generators of momentum, consolidation, winnowing and friction within the candidates vying to be America’s new Commander in Chief.

Is it a perfect storm or are we merely being buffeted by the winds of change? Is this some kind of tipping point? It's an extraordinary moment in time for New Zealand agriculture, with its future economic development at stake. Yet the discussion is more around what shouldn't happen rather than finding a strategy to achieve the prosperity most New Zealanders want.

I am in the camp that believes Iraq’s current situation is not intractable. With sufficient clarity, political will and coordination, its ethnosectarian strife can be put to an end. Here are some thoughts:

Redrawing borders: a functioning federalism

So who wants assisted suicide? 

In Oregon, the poster child for New Zealand advocates of euthanasia and assisted suicide, the statistics after 17 years of the Death With Dignity Act are emphatic[1]:

Rhona and I were married for 54 years and about 45 of those were good, until vascular dementia began to affect our relationship.  She died in April 2014.

Despite a summer of opportunity to read every clause of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, opponents of the TPP have failed to produce a clause showing the agreement requires each of us to surrender our first born to the corporate masters of neo-liberalism, and nor have they discovered any other nugget that sustains their vilification of the trade pact.

Reluctant as I am to start my 2016 Punditing by laying a guilt trip on you, that's what I'm going to end this post with. Some context, first.

Former ACT party leader Jamie Whyte recently wrote that:

There is no poverty in New Zealand. Misery, depravity, hopelessness, yes; but no poverty.

It's the time of year many start thinking about their diet, about turning over a new leaf. An the Paris climate talks may have given that new impetus for those keen to 'save the planet'. But it's abstinence – meaning eating and travelling less – that they should be considering, rather than a new diet or production system.

It's the time of year for lists. The best and worst of the year lists. Summer DIY lists. Lists to write to Santa. But here's a not so nice list created by National in these warming weeks leading into Christmas – the cynical dumping list.

The various adventures of Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass appear to have a particular resonance for lawyers.

As expected, a deal was finally done in Paris. This in itself is vital as we tackle the most serious strategic threat to our planet and its people. But it'd be easy to get carried away with hyperbole -- so what does the Paris Agreement actually deliver?

If you’re going to stand for political office the minimum requirements must surely include some rationale for your candidacy. You want to do the job because you see a job needing doing. You need to have something sensible to say about topical issues and some guide to what you expect to do in office. 

So it transpires* that we'll be voting in March next year on whether to retain a colonial relic or to adopt something that looks like a cheap souvenir beach-towel. Democracy, hell yeah! My kids will have fun making that choice!!

On the vote itself, what can we say?

Well, will you look at the time? The House has risen, weather's improving and Christmas is nigh. And heaps of newspapers, websites and journalists of all shapes and sizes have debated their best, worst, winners, losers and more as they try to make sense of what's been a year of recovery, reinvention and rebound after the crazy events of 2014.

I have had past occasion to poke the borax a bit at Internal Affairs Minister Peter Dunne. But I have to say that this week he's been a refreshing breath of sensibility on the shock-horror issue of New Zealanders setting out to become "Jihadi brides".

Last week Britain voted for airstrikes in Syria against Islamic State. The parliamentary debate that preceded the vote was illuminating in the way it mirrored the divide in Britain about its place in the world.

Britain us a united kingdom of four nations. But that is likely to shrink by at least one. 

As ministers arrive in Paris from around the world, they have a historic opportunity – and responsibility. While it's now clear most countries want a global agreement, the current draft simply isn't good enough. It will lead us into an era of dangerous climate change.

The first deadline for climate change negotiators in Paris is upon us. The government officials who have been negotiating for eight long years since talks started in Bali in 2007 have to finish their work today.

During late night sessions, they have been trying to come up with a draft agreement that is ready for Ministers to take the final political decisions.

For those not caught up on the background story, Jarrod Gilbert is an academic sociologist working at Canterbury University.

The overwhelming number of victims of Daesh are Muslims.

Most, but not all, Syrians feeing their own government and jihadi groups such as Daesh are Muslim.

That one probable fake Syrian passport has threatened the futures of thousands of Syrian refugees is grotesque and so sadly predictable.

As we come towards the end of 2015, it's worth reflecting on what the commemorations of World War One, and in particular the Gallipoli campaign, have been all about. Why do the commemoration resonate so much with the New Zealand public?

Via NewsTalk ZB (and sorry for the full cut-and-paste), it would appear that Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations Minister Chris Finlayson is starting to get a little bit fed up with the Waitangi Tribunal:

According to Phil Lyth on Twitter (hey - it's how you know News is new!), Andrew Little and Chris Hipkins have been referred to Parliament's Privilege's Committee (or, as I've had cause to call it before

Ending world hunger is now considered a realistic goal.

It's one of life's little ironies that a country in part founded by individuals deported for their criminal actions is now so obsessed with ridding itself of those individuals who display the same characteristics. I refer, of course, to Australia's recent enthusiasm for deporting those whose offending demonstrates a lack of "good character".

At least it's a proper battle of different world views. There's no Labour-lite or National stealing Labour's policies here. While the fires burn on Christmas Island, we have to two very different stances on the fate of those detainees.

After many months of silence or evasion brought on by the need to regroup, lick wounds and do some policy work, Labour's had a busy old policy day today. It's been out with the old and in with some new.

Sometimes it's funny to see how news unfolds. Just about every news organisation has run headlines today that, as Paddy Gower revealed this morning, Phil Goff has booked a venue at Westhaven for November 22 to announce his run for the mayoralty. But much of the rest of today's buzz is nothing new.

It was a spectacle, as expected.

Canada’s 23rd Prime Minister was sworn in today, and he means to get down to business immediately.

Forty-three year old Justin Trudeau announced his new Cabinet and presented them to the public.

National can't believe it's luck. The government announced an historic, controversial decision this week -- the first ever general release of a genetically modified organism in New Zealand. In other words, the first bit of GM stuff to be allowed outside the lab or test paddock. And hardly anyone noticed.

On a recent Sunday I was at dinner in the restaurant in the old Seafarers' building on Quay St, Auckland. Through big picture windows we looked out over the Waitemata harbour on a beautiful spring day. We could see the boats on the water, the houses sprinkled around the North Shore...

Since 2008, “middle-class wealth has grown at a slower pace than wealth at the top end. This has reversed the pre-crisis trend, which saw the share of middle-class wealth remaining fairly stable over time.”

“Justin’s just not ready...nice hair though”.

So went one of the many attempts by Stephen Harper’s Conservative Party to diss the “kid” politician in Canada’s election.

The story of Jonathan Dixon doesn't raise much sympathy. He was a bouncer at a Queenstown bar back in 2011. While working there, he observed the English rugby player Mike Tindall - who had just married the Queen's granddaughter Zara Phillips - "cavorting" with a woman on the dance floor.

The Palestinian response to the Zionist occupation is a manifestation of the French philosopher Michel Foucault’s maxim that where there is power, there is resistance. 

Israel exercises power in a repressive occupation.

Palestinians exercise power in resisting repression.

When Malcolm Turnbull touches down in New Zealand tomorrow night for his first visit as Australian Prime Minister, there will be much back-slapping and bonhomie between two very similar politicians. But far from what the men would have expected just a few weeks ago, the mutual appreciation society will be over-shadowed by the detention centre issue.

In the eyes of this upper-middle class, not-quite-very-old, liberal legal academic, the Film and Literature Board of Review has brought a bit of sanity back to the world by deciding that a book openly showing young men (and soon-to-be young men) how bad choices can create bad outcomes ought to be freely available for them to read.

As mentioned in the media yesterday, Jane Kelsey and a rag tag fugitive fleet of civil society groups were (mostly) successful in their court challenge to MFAT/Tim Groser's refusal to

In any court case, there are (at least) two big questions. The first is, what does the law say about the matter? Then there is the second; given what the law says, what will the court do as a consequence?

Helen Clark had the most succinct and best explanation of why New Zealand had to be part of the TPP. I know for a fact that her late intervention caused some people who were sceptical about the TPP to revise their opinion about the necessity for New Zealand being in TPP.

The TPP was never going to be the miracle that shot New Zealand to the top of the global supply chain. Neither was it ever going to be the Darth Vadar of deals where American corporations got to destroy the planet. 

I write this not knowing whether the Trans-Pacific Partnership will become an Agreement or merely a very long, stressful yet ultimately fruitless set of negotiations. I also write this with an admitted lack of expertise in the issue of international trade and economics.

Of the week’s signpost activities – the kinds of things that give order and sequence to a world that is sometimes devoid of both, Radio New Zealand Mediawatch is high on my list. The voices are familiar but cut through that Sunday morning somnolence with intelligent critique and commentary. It is a nice way to engage with Sunday.

So, listening or politicking? When it comes to Red Peak's inclusion in the flag referendum, I'm thinking the latter. While the Greens and National are trying to reflect public opinion by adding Red Peak, it seems more like point scoring that got out of control and weak governance by twitter.

Time finally ran out for the majority Republican led push to scuttle the Iran nuclear deal...but you wouldn’t know it.

Still they shout from the debate and election rally pulpits about all the things they will do to what is apparently the most vile of deals.

How deliciously fitting that National should celebrate the first birthday of its third term with the decision to turn down Shanghai Pengxin's bid to buy Lochinver Station from the Stevenson Group, even though the Overseas Investmen

Parliament's powerful Privileges Committee – it is, apparently, mandatory to refer to it as such in print, so I shall shorten the term to PPPC or P3C – has just put out a report on "the use of social media to report on parliamentary proceedings".

As a favour for a mate, I penned (keyboarded?) a few lines for The SpinOff on Jeremy Corbyn's election to the Labour leadership in Britain. And a bunch of other commentators did the same. Here are my views:

So last night I had a bit of fun on TV3's Story, commenting on the conspiracy doing the rounds in cyberspace about the real reason behind the push to change New Zealand's flag.

Yesterday I wrote this post on the decision by the President of the Film and Literature Board of Review, Dr Don Mathieson, to issue an "interim restriction order" in respect of the young adult novel, Into the River.

The young adult's novel, Into the River, certainly seems to divide folks. I should note at the outset that while some unkind souls may say that I behave as if I'm smack in the middle of the book's target demographic market, I haven't read it.

When has a single death and a single image saved so many lives? That picture of Aylan Kurdi lying on a Turkish beach has changed everything around the five year refugee crisis started by the Syrian war.

It was a catastrophically wrong decision to fail to intervene two years ago.

The opposite of intervention was never going to be peace. It was always going to be this; children like Aylan Kurdi, dead on a Turkish beach fleeing certain death back home. 8 million Syrian refugees forced to flee their homes.

This week, 11,000 people in Iceland offered to house a refugee in response to a Facebook campaign. The country is only obliged to accept 50. A couple spent millions buying a boat to rescue families drowning in the Mediterrean.

Should the little lifeless body of a three-year-old Syrian refugee lying face down in the sands of a Turkish beach be published?

It is a question editors and journalists have been grappling with around the world since the image of Aylan Kurdi was despatched.

When politicians start talking about "radical overhauls" and headlines speak of "sweeping changes", I confess a little scepticism, even nervousness.

It fails to correctly define the real problem - which is affordability, not immigration. The average wage can no longer buy the average house.