Archive for July, 2010
Friday, July 30th, 2010
Click for big version
If Chris Carter’s recent trip to Tibet was in search of spiritual enlightenment, he will have come back with a ready explanation for his current problems: bad karma. There can hardly have been a more blatant case of self-inflicted damage to a political career. The state of ...
Posted in Articles | 4 Comments »
Tuesday, July 27th, 2010
Yesterday’s non-decision on the alcohol limit has underlined once again that the Key government is not interested in governing for the benefit of New Zealand – that process seems to scare it silly. Alcohol seems to bring out the worst in this tendency. A few months ago it ruled out ...
Posted in Articles | 13 Comments »
Thursday, July 22nd, 2010
Six months after the Haiti earthquake, only a trickle of the $10 billion in aid that had been pledged by dozens of countries and multilateral agencies has actually been delivered to Haiti. Reportedly, only a handful of countries – namely, Brazil, Australia, Estonia and Norway – have actually walked the ...
Posted in Articles | 3 Comments »
Tuesday, July 20th, 2010
The government’s formal capitulation ( due later today) on the mining of Schedule Four conservation land is a smashing victory for the public – one that has been made possible in part by the Key government’s skittish tendency to back off from policies that significantly threaten its mainstream popularity. Something ...
Posted in Articles | 4 Comments »
Friday, July 16th, 2010
Given that successive governments have identified the film industry as a prime catalyst of the knowledge economy, you might have expected more local media attention would be being paid to the sale of MGM, which will directly determine whether and when The Hobbit gets made here, and by whom. Taking ...
Posted in Articles | 1 Comment »
Thursday, July 15th, 2010
Jump to 'Reduce Violence : Arm the Police. Yeah, right.'
Usually when the public feels outraged by an acquittal in a high profile trial, the response by the Justice Minister of the day is to defend the jury system. You know the drill - the jury were in the courtroom, they ...
Posted in Articles | 2 Comments »
Tuesday, July 13th, 2010
Clearly, the cuts to government spending are being driven by ideology and not by the state of the economy. Yesterday’s figures revealed a government deficit of only $4.7 billion for the 11 months to May, which is an improvement of $1.1 billion on the position forecast in the May ...
Posted in Articles | 7 Comments »
Wednesday, July 7th, 2010
Click for big version
Asylum seekers? We’ve been here before under a National-led government. In 1999, the then-Immigration Minister Tuariki Delamere used the spectre of 120 Chinese boat people coming over the horizon to rush through Immigration Act changes that allowed for mass, indefinite detention of asylum seekers. According to ...
Posted in Articles | 11 Comments »
Tuesday, July 6th, 2010
(Also: On Vincent Ward)
Given the poor economic data from the United States in June, the Reserve Bank obviously needs to halt the upward march of interest rates. While it has been politically expedient for the Key government to talk up the signs of recovery, the recent economic data on soft ...
Posted in Articles | No Comments »
Friday, July 2nd, 2010
So the long awaited, year-in-the-making blockbuster review of the Film Commission has finally been delivered by Sir Peter Jackson and David Court, and is now available at a website near you.
The developmental arc of the review falls into three main parts: complaints, a short burst of diagnosis, and a shortlist ...
Posted in Articles | 8 Comments »
Parliament Headlines
Headlines
Headlines
Headlines
Headlines
