Archive for April, 2010
Thursday, April 29th, 2010
Girl Talk. See: Gordon Campbell IV's Girl Talk, About Copyright
In what passes for a public debate here about the flow of young New Zealanders across the Tasman and beyond, the focus is always narrowly economic – on comparative wage levels, and on student debt levels. Far too little emphasis has ...
Posted in Articles | 20 Comments »
Tuesday, April 27th, 2010
RNZ this morning carried the news that “new research” now shows that the Rugby World Cup would add an estimated $535 million to the nation’s GDP. At this point in time, it is still unclear whether necromancy, dowsing or feng shui was the method used to detect the rise in ...
Posted in Articles | Comments Off on On RWC fever, and Obama’s Supreme Court choice
Thursday, April 22nd, 2010
Image: Selwyn Manning: ANZAC Day 2008 Dawns in NZ
At the post-Cabinet press conference last Monday, Prime Minister John Key had to field a range of official and personal questions from the press gallery about Anzac Day. Had he ever been to Gallipoli? As a young man on his OE, had ...
Posted in Articles | 15 Comments »
Tuesday, April 20th, 2010
Last week when Social Development Minister Paula Bennett named the working group on welfare reform, she also cited in a footnote two experts that the panel could draw on for support – Professor Bob Gregory, an economics professor at Australian National University in Canberra, and Peter Saunders a former Director ...
Posted in Articles | 22 Comments »
Friday, April 16th, 2010
As the deadline approaches for public submissions on the government’s plans to open up sensitive conservation areas to mining, the likely economic returns to New Zealand remain a complete mystery. We don’t know the economic worth of these deposits – Energy Minister Gerry Brownlee has suggested that we have ...
Posted in Articles | 6 Comments »
Wednesday, April 14th, 2010
The new working group on welfare reform to be headed by former Commerce Commission head Paula Rebstock will be looking at schemes of unemployment insurance that exist elsewhere in the world, and Canada is widely regarded as a leading source of policy initiatives in this field. Understandably, the focus ...
Posted in Articles | 2 Comments »
Tuesday, April 13th, 2010
Click for big version
New Zealand's national identity is very much based on our sense of virtuous purity – and the feeling that we can provide a shining example to an outside world riven by conflict and greedy self interest. If only people were more like us. If ...
Posted in Articles | 8 Comments »
Friday, April 9th, 2010
At the unveiling of Whanau Ora, the government scrapped a key feature that its expert Task Force had deemed to be ‘pivotal’ – namely, that this new system of social service delivery should be run by an independent trust. Instead, it will be run from within the current government system, ...
Posted in Articles | Comments Off on On the Whanau Ora scheme
Tuesday, April 6th, 2010
At the school I attended as a child, any and all queries by parents about the standard of teaching or the content of the syllabus would be met by the stock response: “Take your child elsewhere, then.” End of criticism, since to be Catholic meant an obligation to raise one’s ...
Posted in Articles | 6 Comments »
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