Pundit

When my book The Hollow Men was published over three years ago, the National Party-aligned PR man Matthew Hooton wrote a furious newspaper column saying that the source material for the book had obviously been illegally hacked and that he and others were going to investigate and bring me to justice. Time has proved him wrong on both points.

After we released the UMR poll results on Q+A this past Sunday, New Zealand's been having a ding-dong go over the question of whether we should become the seventh state of Australia.

Looks like some oik at Crown Law has been at it again.

A few weeks ago an article by the Prime Minister's Chief Science Adviser, Sir Peter Gluckman appeared on his website. No fanfare accompanied its unveiling and it was little noted, but it was another robust public statement as science seeks to recover its poise on climate change after the expose of the IPCC's errors.

The Greens have broken out into a little rash of conspiracy theory. Frog was in yogic contortions last week on her blog, trying to scratch all the itches.

Debate over new legislation normally drops under the radar once it moves into a select committee for a quiet makeover. The government’s grand plan to unite the warring suburbs, cities and districts of Auckland into a united super city is turning into a grand exception.

It would be nice if more people read the Pundit website. I suspect one of the major reasons why they don't is that not a huge number of people have heard of us. (Another problem concievably could be that those who have heard of us just don't like what we write here, but I'm going to hastily turn my face away from that possibility and hum a happy tune.)

On the back of a UMR poll indicating that only a minority of respondents believe it is even worth debating a union between New Zealand and Australia, let alone actually support such a step occurring, Sir Don McKinnon went on TVNZ's Q+A programme and declared this development to be

The howls of outrage are starting to be heard around Auckland as its citizens start sensing that they're being stitched up by some old-fashioned right wing ideology.

The lid lifted briefly on SAS operations in Afghanistan last January. Then it slammed straight down again.

Never has the right-wing sobriquet “The Stranded” seemed more appropriate.

I've had some unkind things to say about Mayor Michael Laws. Last week I fulminated about what appears to be his attempt to extract vengance against the local newspaper for an editorial stance he disapproves of.

Dr Michael Bassett occasionally ventures into cyberspace to vent his spleen on the decline of civilization and the

I’ve found the missing Key to democracy. It seemed to get lost, for a while there; it’s good to have it back.

It's an endlessly hideous and stupid suggestion, one that recalls the worst abuses of state power, yet it somehow seems to be acceptable as part of our public debate. That's right, I'm talking about paying "bad parents" to be sterilised.

I don't think anyone would disagree that Michael Laws has a rather healthy ego, or that he takes his job as mayor of Whanganui exceptionally seriously.

The old Toyota ute was close to indestructible.

So, where do you stand on Phil Heatley? Such are the range of positions being staked out around the country regarding his resignation as minister, you could call this "The Heatley Question".

“Wheeeeee! We’re balancing the environment and the economy!” shrieked the little girl dressed in green. Then she saw Gerry Brownlee, lumbering towards the see-saw, smiling his small wry smile.

Let's assume that, contra some fevered speculation on the part of Labour's online cheer squad, the whole story about Phil Heatley has come out, and there isn't any nasty skeleton lurking in a d

The TVNZ Colmar Brunton poll tells us that public confidence in New Zealand’s economic recovery is slipping. Last November, 68% of respondents were optimistic about our economic prospects.

I am aware that three posts in a week on electoral law matters may be bordering on overkill. But this last topic probably is the most important of the lot, so I want to say something about it.

Well, National has done it again.

For anyone who doesn't know, my specialist area of academic research is electoral law, with a particular interest in the law that regulates how electoral contests are financed.

It’s like an episode straight from Jane Eyre: New Zealand’s grubby secret, the gibbering creature in the attic.

To date, caution has been the mark of the John Key government. At mid-term, he now seems ready to take some risks and spend some political capital.

The Prime Minister’s tax skeleton outlined last Tuesday is surely a bit stunted, maybe a bit deformed. But so was the Green response to it.

As Fran O'Sullivan has written in today's New Zealand Herald, it's remarkable that Prime Minister John Key had a bunch of mining shares in his own name, rather than in his blind Aldgate trust.

Last week, for my sins, I attended a couple of conferences in Wellington. One involved a comparative look at Canada and New Zealand, seventy years after the first diplomatic connections between those countries was established. The second, "We the People(s)", centred on the vexed question of how popular participation in government occurs, and how it should occur.

Our little house in the hood is on the market. It smells like orange zest and window cleaner, and I don't see how it could look any cuter—it is a plastic red Monopoly house brought to life, squatting on a prominent corner, palm trees and agaves gathered round it like disciples.

All we can do now is wait for those cashed-up buyers we were promised to come rushing through the doors.

Readers won't be surprised by the very blunt assessment of our drug law given by the Law Commission.

Every politician and commentator in the country is doing the political obituary; so the memes are multiplying.

You could see it in Phil Goff's face... "at last", it seemed to say. At last the Opposition has something to kick against. At last the government is spending some political capital, venturing into political realms that will upset some of those who voted for National in 2008.

The idea of setting and measuring standards in schools is seductively simple, so why is it proving so difficult?

Today, anyone strolling around Wellington or driving across Auckland will notice a new flag flying from prominent landmarks. Despite it being our national day, it will not be our national flag. Should that vex us?

A quick, and I trust unnecessary, upfront disclaimer. I think torturing kittens and deliberately starving puppies to death is wrong and worthy of criminal punishment.

This is not widely understood, and was only belatedly understood: all of the publicity around cubicle dairy farming proposals stems from only one aspect of the proposals.

The Prime Minister’s announcement last week came with an important caveat.

There's a lot to recommend the Tax Working Group's 70-odd page report released last week, but for poor New Zealanders it represents another kick in the nethers at a time of rising unemployment.

The report kicked off what will be one of the biggest political debates of the year – what to do about our taxes.

The healthiest development of this month has been the sudden emergence of some real public debate about our military involvement in Afghanistan.

A couple of years ago my teenage niece asked,"why do we call it a life sentence when people aren't in prison for the rest of their lives?" She was struggling to get her head around our criminal justice system. Sadly, many New Zealanders are in the same boat, and so there's limited understanding of the substantial changes contained in the government's three strikes bill.

The end of this week will see yet another international conference that has about as much chance of achieving peace in Afghanistan as Copenhagen had with delivering consensus on cl

Freedom of speech is not absolute, and there are rare times when the media should refrain from publishing news and photos, and one of the most important times is when publication could put lives at risk. Having said that, I tend to sympathise with media which have chosen to publish Willie Apiata's photo over the past 24 hours.

It is a fair bet that Prince William’s memories of his first official Royal visit will endure almost as long as the plaque he unveiled at the new Supreme Court building in our capital.

When we think of Helen Clark in her former Prime Ministerial capacity, we might recall her on her holidays, hiking and skiing somewhere, with or without sundry members of the Labour caucus.

When the Tax Working Group – aka the Buckle Brigade – release their final report this morning the government will be handed the final piece of the toolkit with which they're to rebuild the New Zealand economy this year.

I've already posted on the curious case of Justice Bill Wilson and his failure to step aside from deciding a case in which he had a fairly substantial conflict of interest, looking at the Supreme Court's ultimate response to that failure.

As the government looks to increase New Zealand's relevance on the world stage, it has focused largely on business relationships, re-connecting with America and, as I wrote yesterday, its Global Research Alliance.

People like to talk about Jeanette Fitzsimons’ “steely” political character. Former co-leader Rod Donald called her “the steel magnolia”. On Next magazine’s February cover, Fitzsimons owns the page.

Relevance. It's at the heart of foreign affairs in a small country such as New Zealand. Much of our daily diplomacy revolves around making a small Pacific nation – what it sells and what it believes in – matter to the rest of the world.

It's a sign of the importance of the western hemisphere to America, and makes the point that Hillary Clinton's visit to Papua New Guinea, New Zealand and Australia, whilst important, was not urgent... Yes, the horror of the Haiti earthquake has compelled Clinton to postpone her trip to the Pacific.

This has just been released by Foreign Minister Murray McCully's office:

US Secretaries for State do not travel for fun.

Environment Canterbury (ECan), the regional council tasked with deciding whether cubicle dairy farming resource consent applications should be granted in the McKenzie Basin, is itself mired in effluent.

New Zealanders are drifting back to work this week, dozy and with feet-dragging. Many will return to work in the public sector, once regarded as the backbone of a decent, democratic state, now more often slagged off as a bungling bureaucracy.

Back before the 2008 election (I can't write 'last year's election' anymore!), I wrote that it was a 'change of shoes' election. The metaphor made the point that Labour wasn't hated by most and hadn't failed as such, it had simply gone out of fashion.

In a previous post on the pornographer Steve Crow, I had occasion to remark that "those who push the boundaries and advocate strongest for the freedoms we all enjoy often are not the sort of folks we'd like to pop by our house for a beer and a BBQ." As exhibit number two in support of this general claim, please step forward ...

It was a curious sort of detachment, watching history unfold at Copenhagen. In hindsight, will people say: that’s when our fate was decided? How ordinary and inevitable it felt; the sun rose and sank, and people went about their business just the same.

The largely abortive United Nations climate change conference in Copenhagen produced one step forward in the battle to counter global warming: an agreement by 20 member nations to form a Global Research Alliance on Agricultural Greenhouse Emissions.

The government's economic platform for 2010 has been laid over the past year by the work of three taskforces – tax, productivity and capital markets. Politically, they are the government's finger in the wind, testing public response to the ideas mooted, and its softening up crews. So what to make of them?

After a bit of noncommittal burbling, Prime Minister John Key has fin

Until The Wire came along, I thought The Simpsons was about as good as TV could get.

Following on from the "success" of the anti-anti-smacking law petition and resultant Citizens' Initiated Referendum asking us "Should a smack as part of good parental correction be a criminal offence in New Zealand?", Larry Baldock is gunning for bigger game. This time he's out to change our system of representative democracy.

When the English flag – the cross of St George - flies next to the Union Jack on Windsor Castle, does that shake the foundations of Westminster democracy?

I've got a bottle of wine riding on what Reserve Bank governor Alan Bollard does with the OCR next year; for a lot of New Zealanders it's their homes hanging on his decisions.

This is one story from Afghanistan that seems made for New Zealand's bigger media organisations, but once more they seem to be missing

Transport Minister Steven Joyce announced on August 28 that vehicle fuel economy standards (VFES) work would not proceed.

Examples of light electric vehicles available, or soon to be available, are the Hyundai electric Getz, and the Mitsubishi iMiEV.

Richard Lakich took a police officer’s life; now he will pay with his own.

It's damned hot and the computer connection's on the blink... Pundit HQ has decamped from the comforts of the big city and is now stationed out the back of Gisborne, which is why Pundit service has been a little tardy over the past day or two.

I was in email conversation with former Pundit Jon Johansson a week or two ago, who's currently blissing out in Washington DC (you can read about his US adventures here). He asked about John Key's plans to go to Copenhagen.

A quick civics lesson to start with. Under our constitutional arrangements, there nominally are three branches of government -- the legislative, executive and judicial. In reality, the intertwining of the legislative and executive branches means it often makes more sense to talk of the "political branches" and the "judicial branch".

All Maori politics is tribal politics, and so the Maori Party's forgiveness of Hone Harawira today, if a little reluctant, is an olive branch to Nga Puhi and others in the north as much as it is to the man himself.

Since the 2025 Taskforce was announced on July 21, it's been on a journey that, sadly, could have been scripted on July 20. Its predictable membership produced a predictable report that has prompted a predictable small government vs. big government debate.

The year 2009 must be shaping up as one of the worst in Rodney Hide’s life. The most overworked word in his current vocabulary is “sorry”. Sorry about charging people $45 a head to hear me speak as Minister for Local Government.

For the Labour Party, the past year has been something like a grieving process. They've gone through various stages of political letting go. At first they copped flak for being in denial and acting as if they still had a right to rule. Then, wisely, they went into themselves and have spent some months re-imaging themselves.

Dr Sharples is a patient man; nonetheless, this must exasperate him. Every time he tries to do something to give a hand up to his people, white folks start yammering about wanting a piece of it.

A very quick post today, as I'm about to take off for a week long holiday in Northland. In fact, it's a question for you to answer.

Labour, National, local government, and the building industry share the blame for the country’s shameful leaky homes saga. It is time they shared the cost.

If you give someone the wrong information, they’re bound to get the wrong answer, and so it was in Parliament on Wednesday night.

I want to sincerely wish all the best to those behind the March for Democracy at the weekend. It requires courage to take a stand in the political arena and to confront government, so I hope they shout loud and make their point heard.

As far as the public's concerned, Hone Harawira is the Maori Party's biggest political management problem at the moment. But the party's facing a bigger, more important decision at the moment than whether the MP for Te Tai Tokerau should stay or go.

Yesterday the finance and expenditure select committee reported back to Parliament on the Climate Change Response (Moderated Emissions Trading) Amendment Bill, and there seems no

There's been quite a flurry of excitement at the start of this week with reports that US has re-opened the door to a Pacific free trade deal and New Zealand stands to, in the Prime Minister's words, make "billions and billions" out of it.

The New Zealand government has been raising critical human rights issues during the United Nations Human Rights Commission’s periodic review of Afghanistan this year. Until now, they have escaped media attention in this country.

Don’t you hate that? When you try to write a balanced story, and can’t, because the government won’t talk to a blogger. Perhaps others will pick up the slack: journalists, who are paid and qualified to ask politicians hard questions until they get some answers. But they don’t seem all that interested either.

Dr Lockwood Smith must be torn apart by all the fuss over MPs' perks. He believes passionately that the MP's life is a fraught one, burdened with a rare amount of stresses, strains and separations. Yet it was he who had the courage to open MPs' expenses and allowances to public scrutiny, which he now says is adding to the stress of MPs' families.

If we have a price on carbon, do we need any other measures to reduce greenhouse emissions and ensure energy is used efficiently?

Last month, here on Pundit, I speculated that all was not well between the Greens and the government. Former co-leader Jeanette Fitzsimons did not wish to comment then, but now she’s speaking out.

What Rodney Hide said yesterday was right and proper in every way. It touched on the points that mattered. It was personal. And it was way, way too late.

So, I think I've got this right.

Hone Harawira, finding himself on parliamentary business in Brussels with his wife in tow, thinks to himself "why not skip tomorrow's pointless meeting and pop off to Paris for a bit of sight-seeing?" Which he does.

Otago University political studies lecturer Bryce Edwards writes a learned blog. I like looking at its pictures. But, unsure how well his views on the Greens stacked up against what Russel Norman and Metiria Turei have actually said, I decided to ask them what they thought.

Former cabinet colleagues John Banks and Murray McCully join Mike Lee today to have a chin-wag today about the future of Queen's Wharf. My fervent hope, just this once, is that the meeting is all talk and that nothing comes out it. Zero. Nada.

National's promise not to sell any state assets in its first term was always a two-edged sword for John Key's leadership of the National party.

My question is to the Minister for Climate Change Issues, and asks: Does he stand by all of his statements?

'Repeal and replace', is the phrase most people are using to describe what will happen to the Foreshore and Seabed Act this week. And while the parties involved are staying mum on exactly what  the Act will be replaced with, several Maori leaders I've spoken to seem to have a pretty good idea.

For my sins, I spent last Friday at the New Zealand Legal Research Foundation's conference on "Modern Challenges to the Rule of Law".

On 12 September 2001, Air NZ put its Australian arm, Ansett Australia, into voluntary liquidation. The next morning, Helen Clark happened to be sitting in Air NZ’s Melbourne Airport lounge, checking messages and chatting wearily to her accom

A funny thing happened to me in the candy store yesterday. I ran into a guy who knows a thing or two about the New Zealand Superannuation Fund and he mentioned it rapid rise in recent months.

I'm guessing that when the MMP referendum rolls around in 2011, Nick Smith will be voting for anything but the current system. It's made him look a fool this week as National took the crisis he manufactured for it and went to ACT to help them "fix" it.

I've said it before, but the upcoming referendum on MMP is something we really don't need to have. If we're going to go around kicking every tyre on every car on the block, can we vote on having to drive on the left-hand side of the road, too?

It seems like the old tactics still work. If your leadership looks to be sagging, head overseas to mix with the good and the great(ly famous). This year, it was John Key travelling to New York and Pundit's poll of polls shows a definite Letterman bump.

This Climate Change Science Compendium is a wake-up call. The time for hesitation is over. We need the world to realize, once and for all, that the time to act is now--Ban Ki Moon (Secretary General of the United Nations, September 2009)

It had to happen sooner or later – and rugby is just the issue to get New Zealanders exercised about the $230 million worth of taxpayers’ funds being spent annually to provide us with public broadcasting services.

It's been bugging me all week, so I thought I'd share it with you. You see, we know more than we realise, but no-one's spelling it out.

Q+A's interview with Greens co-leader Metiria Turei two weekends ago has stirred quite a bit of fuss online and in print, so it only seems right that I should chip in with a viewpoint.

The interview came the week after Sue Bradford had announced her resignation from parliament and the Greens had dipped below 5% in the TVNZ/Colmar Brunton poll.

It's pretty easy to get caught up in the hype over how the "new media" are changing everything. Twitter, You-Tube, Facebook, MySpace, blogging—these "social media" are the way of the future (or so we are told).

I posted a teeny-tiny nugget of news, here on a Pundit comments thread last week. It sank like a stone.

Perhaps John Key had a point when he compared himself to Barack Obama last year. This weekend has made one thing perfectly clear – they're both making significant political gains by simply not being the previous guy, or gal.

To the average Kiwi in the street, the fact that America is actively reviewing its relationship with New Zealand and has confirmed it will begin training with our troops after a 25 year hiatus may not seem an especially big deal.

The release of National's latest step in its multi-stage public consultation on electoral finance reform takes me back to the topic of my very first Pundit p

The politics of climate change is enough to make your head explode. We seem to have come to a consensus in New Zealand that carbon should have a price, but we're still re-arranging who pays that price. The previous government had one plan, the new government and the Maori Party, however, have fiddled with that, asking the taxpayer to subsidise polluters in the early years.

Hasn’t the news been comforting over the last couple of months: a welcome flicker of growth, an upward movement in prices for our commodities, a recovery in the value of the superannuation fund investments, some confidence returning in the share market, and – oh, dear – signs of li

If news emerged

In the world of road safety there are people who want to change the way people behave on the roads and those who want to change the roads themselves. Sometimes it seems a bit like the Sharks going up against the Jets.

As John Key enjoys a break in Florida, commentators are widely describing his trip to America is deemed a success. But by what standards? What strategy has he advanced?

It wasn’t that long ago that the Finance Minister was on the opposition benches taunting the Labour Party with the cry of ‘pay it back’ .

Winning U.S.

Two roads diverged in a wood and I —
I took the one less travelled by,

I happened to be in Brisbane, safely ensconced in air-conditioned comfort, when the NZ Geographic Board/Nga Pou Taunaha o Aotearoa issued its decision that the official name for the town-

For news of our involvement in the war against terror, we now revert to the normal channels: the accidental revelations by allied nations, announcement of awards for brave conduct from the White House or Buckingham Palace, internet blogs from other troops and friends in

You may not be aware that I also blog on a weekly basis for TVNZ, so I thought it was worth posting a link to those pieces for those of you who are interested.

To try to grab your interest and let you know what I'm writing about, each week I'll run the headline and and first paragraph here on Pundit and the provide the link over to tvnz.co.nz.

Is it just me, or does the government's handling of the SAS deployment to Afghanistan seem somewhat, well, loose?

In its reluctance to give Phil Goff a platform from which to launch his 2011 campaign, the government may inadvertently have opened a window for him.

It was cheek by jowl at the Northern Steamship pub last night for the Back Benches 'Super City' special in Auckland, and two moments in particular leapt out and deserve some coverage.

Just last month an observant container repairer and biosecurity officers Jeff O'Neil and Owen Aspden rescued New Zealand from potential disaster. You won't know their names; theirs is a workaday heroism. But they did more for our economy that August day than many self-proclaimed business titans do in a year.

New Zealand’s eight year engagement in Afghanistan has lacked a national objective to guide decision-making, according to the Afghanistan

Some times New Zealand journalists just don't get the news. Oh, they gather it, but then they – or someone up the editorial chain – don't 'get' what they've got and good stories are wasted.

John Key seems committed to sticking with National’s pre-election promise to hold a referendum on MMP at the 2011 election, even though he also

Recent Supreme Court decisions that deportation orders against two Chinese families had not been made on a correct legal basis by the New Zealand immigration service are kicking the contentious over

So Michael Laws thinks 11 and 12 year-olds are only interested in Harry Potter? How, he asks, could children that age possibly care about the way their country is run and their history? How dare they express their anger to a mayor of a city, let alone a city that they don't live in?

There once was a Kiwi who lived in a park.
He slept through each day, and he sang in the dark
All night long of the simple things that he knew:
Lore ancient and true.

The old Middle Eastern political adage is that the enemy of your enemy is your friend. Extend that line of thinking into New Zealand politics and the return of Winston Peters offers a twinkle of hope for Labour.

Everyone knew John Key would face a challenge keeping his National-led coalition flying with Act as its right wing and the Maori Party as its left.

I’m trying hard to suppress my natural tendency to hysteria, while giving free rein to the cynicism born of experience.

Do we dare to hope that the smacking debate is fading? I doubt it, but before the week is out I wanted to comment on the vast amount of political capital spent on this curious piece of legislation.

If you’ve never seen US comedian Lewis Black’s riff about greed you should have a look. So too should Paul Reynolds, and a few other chief executives employed by our major companies.

John Key has come home from an uplifting weekend in Sydney to a hornet’s nest.

I took special interest in the recent speech by the Acting Principal Family Court Judge Paul von Dadelszen, in which he called for a fundamental overhaul of New Zealand's adoption laws.

Pundit readers will remember the row earlier this year when President Hamid Karzai promoted the Shiite Personal Status Law requiri

New Zealanders love to get in a tizz about the supposed Tall Popppy Syndrome. Y'know, we resent other people's talent and success, especially they're wealth. It's all bollocks, of course.

You’ll have heard of JJ Wood – Mt Albert aspirant, Salient editor, culprit of the “Lundy 500” and, of course, a Pundit reader.

Health Minister Tony Ryall’s rhetoric has been extremely seductive: let’s shrink the back-office to put more resources on the frontline, where the patients meet the doctors.

Will the SAS conduct more “snatch and grab” raids among civilians? What will happen to their prisoners? And who are they authorised to “ capture or kill”?

For everything there is a season, the author of Ecclesiastes writes, a time for every activity under heaven. And in that thought I find some solace, because in reason weeks I have found myself coming to the conclusion that there is wisdom in sending New Zealand's SAS back to Afghanistan.

Every time I see David Cunliffe making a dick of himself in the House, again, and Miss Clark dialling in from New York (three times this week), I remember why it’s important to keep the romance alive with this new governmen

It goes without saying that the guilty verdicts in the Taito Phillip Field case are a cause for real disappointment and anger. He’s the guy who means that henceforth our Parliament as an institution can no longer claim proudly to be free from corruption.

Bill English has many things going for him. He is a smart, determined, dominating figure in the National government. He has an astute political brain. He has an inquiring mind. And he

It's been fascinating to find out that I'm paying off Bill English's mortgage as well as my own. So much for the party of individual responsibility. But while everyone is fussing about where the finance minister lives, they're ignoring his words.

Some time this month, New Zealanders may see the outcome of an officials’ review of New Zealand’s military commitment in Afghanistan.

Sitting down to write this post, I found I had three topics to choose between. I couldn't do it. So I've kept all three.

The Guardians of the New Zealand Superannnuation Fund are worried about getting too big for the local market, according to information released under the Official Information Act.

Phil Goff knows what Graham Henry is feeling. Labour is playing politics the way the All Blacks played the Springboks in Bloemfontein. They are trailing by some margin and getting desperate, forcing the

So Don Brash is our new Productivity Tsar, huh? Political ironies don't come much richer. It's almost as funny as this government going on about productivity being its number one priority while at the same time cutting contributions to the Super Fund and axing R&D tax incentives.

How much can you take from a single poll in a year after an election?

Not a lot, you might say. And you'd be right. But the smaller parties must be just a little intrigued by the latest Roy Morgan poll results released over the weekend. (The other polls have been silent this winter).

A fortnight ago, the folic acid furore splattered all over the radar like fresh Ministerial road kill.

In case you’ve missed the main message: the tradable sector of our economy – the real driver of sustainable growth in New Zealand – has been

There should be tension and debate between our judges and politicians. Let us have far more of it. Forget the conventions. Those who administer the law have as much right to voice their concerns as those who make the law.

As the death toll mounts, America's allies in Afghanistan – Britain and Canada in particular – a

New Zealand's constitution contains a number of rules that seem simple enough on their face, but are quite tricky to apply in practice. One of these is the principle of "comity" between the various branches of government.

How is it that Waikato University, that famous bastion of political correctness, finds itself repeatedly embroiled in controversies involving members of the unpalatable far right?

The simple and obvious answer to this question? Because Waikato University's management keeps mucking up.

The debate over whether to introduce folic acid into the nation's bread is a classic example of how government's lose their shine. It's one of those blindside issues that come from nowhere to muddy the political mood.

Nick Smith’s tie is ethereally pale green. He’s chosen it carefully; it’s no accident, he tells us, that his powerpoint is green and blue. This detail seems to please him. The tie pleases me more.

It took a while to work out why John Key took the Prestige Dance Group on his 'four nations in four days' Pacific tour. But eventually it became clear.

From September, all New Zealand's bread (other than "organic" loaves, thanks to the Greens) must be "fortified" with 135 micrograms of folic acid for every 100 grams of bread.

Sarah Palin truly is the gift that keeps on giving, and while many would really like to put that gift on Trade Me or E-Bay, I deeply suspect most want to keep her right in the spotlight…and watch…like a car crash, or as some wit described, a moose on roller skates—not at all graceful, bu

It was a court case that started the foreshore and seabed debate and it could yet be a court case that ends it. The Ngati Apa group of tribes found themselves in the Court of Appeal in 2003 as they tried to figure out whether they could get into the marine farm business.

The most fascinating thing about the release of the Foreshore and Seabed Act review is all that has not been said, rather than the words so far used this week.

There is no doubt about what is the greatest casualty of the just released Ministerial Review of the Foreshore and Seabed Act 2004.

The temperature is rising in war-torn Afghanistan. The country is less than two months away from presidential and provincial government elections.

Business commentator Bernad Hickey and I share the same low opinion of the impact the baby boomer generation is having on the politics of our great country.

The flashing banner on the waterfront NZX headquarters says it, so it must be true: You can't beat Wellington on a good day.

And on those incredibly special few days when the sun's shining and the wind drops, the waterfront is indisputably the best place to be in the capital.

The review of privacy law is the first forum topic open for discussion and asks questions concerning the growing spread of surveillance technologies (eg. CCTV and computer tracking) and the ways in which the media are exempt from some privacy laws. The closing date for comments on this topic is 11 September 2009.

Mike Moore put is succinctly and colourfully, in distinctly Mooresque terms: Australians are becoming the Texans of the South Pacific and New Zealand are the Canadians.

Without unwrapping screeds of wonky foreign policy, everyone watching Q+A on Sunday morning would have known exactly what Moore meant. Australia is getting the big guns and we're not.

Now the smacking referendum is nearly upon us, the nation's political class seems to have reached the consensus that (1) this vote is a pointless waste of money; and (2) th

There might be some National supporters who thought their party could win Mount Albert, but they would have to be real dreamers.

Is this what revolution looks like?

It was this very cool graphic in the Atlantic – still my favourite magazine – that got me wondering.

So John Key had a long-standing holiday commitment that prevented him from attending Melissa Lee’s defeat party. When he personally selected the by-election date back in April (when he harboured sweaty dreams of glorious victory, giving those miserable feckless Labourites anoth

Columnists turn to Lists of Questions for several reasons. Such as laziness. They might have thought of questions which – if they were more energetic – they could actually go and get the answers to themselves. Or they might have one bright idea, but no idea how to make a whole column out of it. Or they may have in-jokes they want to make.

It is difficult to imagine a preference for the Iranian judicial system over others, but being subjected to ‘justice’ à la North Korea makes Iran’s leaders, the

Rodney Hide romped into the tiny studio at Stratos-Triangle Television fresh from  another meeting with the fractious mayors of Auckland. He was cackling over the fact that North Shore mayor Andrew Williams had just called him a liar. He chalked it up as a victory. Williams had lost the sympathy of the audience by going over the top.

Matthew Hooton on National Radio yesterday was singing the praises of John Key as the best instinct politician for a "very long time". But since he's been in government, those famed instincts have been causing a few problems.

* Please see radio transcript and table at the end of this post

I have just been through an 11-month defamation case, finally settled this week. I am happy with the result – I won on all points of substance – but am also concerned that my and my lawyer's time could be wasted month after month on a case that from the start had so little merit.

When I was born the World War II generation was running the country, looking to create a secure, egalitarian state worthy of the sacrifices made in the 1940s. Their vision realised was a state in which everybody had a stake, with a burgeoning middle class and shared prosperity.

So, Russel Norman spends about $250 a week of taxpayer cash on taxis.

You got to wonder what the Department of Conservation did to the National Party in a prior life. By the law of karma, it must have been a rather unpleasant act.

Bill English has tried to buy some time with his budget today, but he's also bought himself a fight over superannuation and stimulus.

It all seems so simple – but it isn’t.

A country that depends heavily on hydro power generation can expect electricity prices to rise in periods when demand is high and the lakes are low.

I was once introduced to a police officer involved with the Don Brash stolen emails inquiry. We were both at the play, The Hollow Men.

His presence reminded me - hopefully unfairly - of the moustached detectives in Tintin chronicles, Thomson and Thompson, who show up in the most absurd locations in their hunt for criminal masterminds.

I had thought that the ongoing fuss over the Brash emails was now largely of interest only because it was a wonderful political whodunnit.

I recommend being at the centre of a news issue for getting a close up view of how the news media operates. It is not always a pleasing or uplifting experience, but it is informative.

We all know the debt (in both the positive and negative sense) that our society owes to British colonisation. Sure, the development of an independent sense of "being a Kiwi", helped along by the Maori renaissance and a healthy dose of overt nation building by the last Labour-led Government, means that we are no longer just a country of South-Seas Britons.

The appointment of controversialist Christine Rankin to the very politically correct Families Commission is causing far too much collateral damage to be tolerated at a time when our most fragile families are facing the stark reality of the worst recession since World War II.

Knights in shining armour are unwanted. That was the message from Green MP Catherine Delahunty this week, as she took issue with two government decisions.

Everyone likes to think we should take a well-considered view of individual criminal acts that stir our blood. Events of the last week suggest there are times when careful consideration simply takes too long – and others when it is too short.

I wonder what TV presenter Kevin Milne would have made of Simon Power's words to the United Nations last week.

Our Justice Minister appeared before the UN's Human RIghts Council late last week offering a report on New Zealand's human rights record to the council's first annual review of member states. It was a down-page story at best in this country, but it's worth some attention.

If there was ever such a thing, the Labour Party’s police wing would not be very large. And when you think of policemen-turned-MPs (Chester Borrows, Ross Meurant, Rana Waitai, Peter Hilt, Clem Simich, Judith Collins [in her dreams], et al), there’s not been many joining Labour’

One of the more positive features of the much derided, now defunct Electoral Finance Act 2007 was that it attempted to tighten the rules around public disclosure of large donations to political parties.

Amazing what you read in the paper. My neighbourhood is officially a hole, so bad that the government has stepped in to clean it up, or at least the worst pockets of it.

By-elections bring out the worst in New Zealand politics, a fact that’s probably dawned on the residents of Mount Albert

Once upon a time, a long time ago, the relationship between elected Ministers and the public service was relatively simple – in theory at least. Each Minister was "responsible" for those public servants within his or her portfolio, having to account to Parliament – and ultimately to the electorate – for their actions or inactions.

The political polls in the past few weeks have told a consistent story. That is, the story of National's smooth consistency during their first five months in power.

Bill English, and the entire National Cabinet, face some decisions in the next few weeks that just five months into their term of government will go some way to determining the legacy of the Key administration. The recession will make some decisions for them, but others will require the wisdom of Solomon.

If only animals could talk: they’d have plenty to criticise.

The local government role in delivering economic development and social services is being redefined. Commander Hide has his sights set on shrinking your council’s role back to basics.

The Guardians of the New Zealand Superannuation Fund have told the government it will struggle to reach its goal of having 40 percent of the fund invested in this country, Pundit can reveal.

New Zealand troops have not been assigned to combat duty in Afghanistan since Special Air Service deployments were terminated in 2005.

Auckland city mayor John Banks nursed dreams of being the diplomatic ambassador who would quietly negotiate the reefs created by the Royal Commission on Auckland

Brian Edwards is right. New Zealand's press is having a prolonged love-in with the prime minister.

Recently I've been debating with a colleague Dean Knight, of Victoria Law School, the issue of collective cabinet responsibility.

Declining economic conditions provide the fodder for some pretty ugly sentiments. Hundreds of British workers went on a nationwide strike in February claiming that Britons were losing out to labourers from Italy and Portugal on a construction project.

Love it or lump it, Auckland is too big for New Zealand to ignore.

A quick, upfront disclaimer. In 2008, the Labour government appointed me to chair an "expert panel" on electoral law reform, which in turn would help a 70-person  "Citizens' Forum" deliberate on what rules New Zealand should have to govern the use of money at election time.

I’m not the right person to assess Helen Clark’s status in the pantheon of New Zealand politicians. My view is that her ranking will be stellar but the professional political historians will make more judicious and detached considerations in the decades to come.

The good news is that the new American president has a sharp new strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan and the not-so-news is that New Zealand

This week the country will gather round the much-anticipated tax cuts like a family around a fire, taking what comfort they can from its heat in these cold financial times. But the wise will be looking beyond the circle of light created by this fiscal spark to the coming winter and its bleak forecasts.

The decision by two Justices of the Peace to throw out charges against South Auckland liquor store owner Virender Singh has been widely applauded.

Over the past week, New Zealand’s Registrar of Companies and our Securities Commission have suddenly started playing the blame game.

So John Key's still playing it coy on 2010 and 2011's tax cuts and yet is promising to borrow a whopping $40 billion over the next three years. Amidst the Prime Minister's tentative appearance on Q+A yesterday morning were some interesting nuggets of information.

Paremoremo is the place we put the prisoners that most New Zealanders simply want to forget. Behind its razor wire fences and concrete walls, it is supposed to be security-to-the-max—but recent events have shattered that illusion.

Labour party MPs head down to the West Coast to find themselves this week. That tells us where the Labour party is, but doesn't answer the more pertinent political question: where on earth is the Opposition?

Premier John Key today announced the reversal of a previous government’s decision to break up the great estates.

When governments make major changes to social and economic policy such as, say, reducing contributions to a fund to pay for superannuation, they are warned to be alive to the signals such changes send and any unintended consequences.

Anyone who has seen the movie The People vs. Larry Flynt will know that society doesn't always get the heroes it might want. Specifically, those who push the boundaries and advocate strongest for the freedoms we all enjoy often are not the sort of folks we'd like to pop by our house for a beer and a BBQ.

Forgive me if I feel a little vindication reading the Wall St Journal's piece on National's approach to the recession.

I had planned to write today about the political skill John Key has exhibited during his first few months in power, carefully avoiding definitive positions on anything vaguely off-message. But yesterday's events signal a new stage in this government's evolution.

It’s scarcely subtle. Since taking office, National ministers have led a string of announcements hinting at ACC’s dire prospects. Unforeseen fiscal blowouts are imminent. The scheme’s unsustainabili

The Prime Minister’s Summit on Employment in Auckland looked a distinctly Urban Affair for a country with an economy firmly founded on agriculture.

Nine years ago, I occupied Waikato University with the man who must be New Zealand’s most genuine socialist revolutionary, Joe Carolan. Most of us have (ahem) moved on to other things; Joe keeps the cause alive.

There’s a serious disconnect going on in Canada over the use of tasers. You know, those handy little stunners that kind of kill you without killing you. The kind that

With the end of the National government’s 100 day action plan, we can pause and take stock. I don’t just mean stock of what National has achieved as a substantive matter. There’s been enough (largely positive) comment on this issue for me to pass over it in silence. Instead, I want to look at how National has gone about turning its policy promises into reality.

It was Franklin D. Roosevelt's promise of radical reform during the dark days of the Great Depression that began the political obsession with a government's first hundred days. Such a contrived measure tells us little and, frankly, given that no government since has come close to achieving the far-reaching change FDR managed in 1933, it's hardly a flattering comparison.

Prime Minister John Key and his Corrections Minister Judith Collins have given the State Services Commission 10 days.

I've finally gotten round to looking at Treasury's Budget Policy Statement from December. It's this document that prompted the government to claim – and keep claiming – that New Zealand has one of the world's largest fiscal stimulus packages.

It's an idea I've tossed at friends for years, a notion that has seemed to me to play into the best of who we are as a country and protect a fading part of our culture that we all hold dear. So imagine my surprise when I turned on the news last night and saw the government was actually considering what would amount to a radical policy initiative.

Bill English will deliver this year's budget on May 28. Rather him than me.

As a general rule, it’s best to believe in cock-ups and coincidence over conspiracy. The reality of many issues is far more mundane than many like to think (note to Ian Wishart – the world isn’t being taken over by socialist-gay-femin

There is nothing unusual about a Prime Minister calling the chief executive of a major company that runs into a sudden, life-threatening problem, but John Key’s now well publicized call to John Bongard at Fisher & Paykel Appliances has sparked a reaction that says much about the recession-hyste

If you've been reading Pundit over the past week, you'll know that I've been trying to pin down the government as to exactly what is in the $9 billion stimulus package that it has been trumpeting as one of the five largest in the developed world.

Helen Clark’s candidacy for the role has been universally welcomed. Most New Zealanders respect her abilities, knowing how suited she is to a demanding international role. And those weird right-w

News sites and radio bulletins today are full of the government's $500 million infrastructure spending plans, as part of its $9 billion stimulus plan for the economy. What they're not telling you how the government is cutting and pasting old numbers under new headlines to make itself look more pro-active than it really is.

So, the people we entrust to protect us from subversion and sabotage spend their time keeping a watchful eye not only on protest groups, but on elected MPs.

The news from the war zone is not good.

At the start of the week I was criticising the government for its apathy in its first three months as government.

Walt Whitman once described American politicians as, amongst other things, "pimps, malignants, murderers, jobbers, mail-riflers, spies, bribers, compromisers, lobbyers, sponges, expell’d gamblers, monte-dealers, pimpled men, gaudy outside with gold chains made from people’s money and harlots’ money twisted together".

At the core of any successful business – indeed any successful project – is a coherent strategy. Decisions are made early and clearly so that everyone knows their role and the end goal. Tactics support a long-term outcome. So can anyone tell me what the strategy is for the 'carry New Zealand through recession' project?

Newly-installed US president Barack Obama may be winning the headlines for imposing a pay freeze on senior White House staff, but if you want to see a really muscular approach to pay freezing as a re

At first glance, the government's proposed Victims' Compensation Scheme, now widely being called a crime tax, is like a mother's love. How could you be against it? It's a policy idea that seems to satisfy the much-cherished New Zealand instincts of commonsense and compassion for the most disadvantaged. But the more I think about it, the more thorny questions occur.

President Obama (what a beautiful phrase) has confirmed that a speedy return to decency, tolderance, respect for humanity and justice will be central to US policy during his administration. On his second day in office, he has given effect to his campaign commitment to shut down the prison facility at Guantánamo Bay.

For the loser, the aftermath to an election year is never pleasant. Wellington rugby fans know the feeling every time their team loses another final. What did we do wrong? Why don’t they like us? How could we have lost... to them?  

“Our workers are no less productive than they were when this crisis began. Our minds are no less inventive, our goods and services no less needed than they were last week or last month or last year. Our capacity remains undiminished.

As the sun rose in New Zealand, Barack Obama put his hand on Abraham Lincoln's bible and ushered in a new day in American politics. So what do we make of his beginning?

In the lead up to tomorrow's inauguration, I've been re-reading some of my Barack Obama file, especially two stories in Time and the New Yorker that ran before he announced he would run for the presidency.

It seemed like John Key was hardly off the tarmac upon his return from Hawaii before he was announcing a Summit on Employment, bringing together business leaders, unions and bankers to figure out “how to retain and grow jobs”.

One night in 2007 I found myself at an official dinner in Brussels seated next to a man who advised the German government on climate change. We chatted about the role countries could play in the shift to sustainability.

John Key wished us all a Merry Christmas on Radio New Zealand. He urged us to get out and enjoy New Zealand, our great outdoors, great wine, great food.

Politics can be a rancourous business. During Helen Clark’s tenure, her opponents made it especially so.

Over the weekend (NZT) Barack Obama finalised his cabinet, and amongst the last appointments made was a man who could have a significant, lasting,  impact on New Zealand's economic future.

This is my last column for the time being as I have a book to finish. I have enjoyed the opportunity of writing for Pundit and believe Tim and Eleanor’s site has proven a quality addition to on-line punditry.

Meridian Energy will be celebrating, having finally secured water rights to construct a new generation system in the Waimate. Yet as the corks are popping in its uber-susta

“The world is experiencing what is now being described as the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Global credit flows have dried up, financial institutions have fallen over, share markets have plunged and economies worldwide are falling into recession.”

Advent is the season of expectant waiting and reflection, the word derived from the Latin word for "coming". Yet since it began at the end of November, world governments have been busier than Santa's elves acting to staunch the economic wounds opened by the world financial crisis. Waiting hasn't been an option and the words "stimulus package" have become part of the daily news lexicon.

The first week of our new government has been highly instructive. Given nine years to think about its approach to governing, and given the same period to learn from Labour’s mistakes, National has begun its term in precisely the fashion Labour ended up being reviled for, the brute exercise of power.

When National MPs gather for Friday drinks this evening they will reflect on what's been at best a mixed first week for them on the Treasury benches. New Zealanders however will have no doubt how the week's gone – it's been a stinker.

The late and much-admired Texan columnist Molly Ivins published a book about ten years ago called, You got to dance with them what brung you. A long title and very Texan, but it's a political truism that the National-led government has already started to honour.

At first, it seemed like Phil Goff was suffering a short-term memory lapse.

When I try to explain politics to my kids, I talk about looking after the little guys. Centre-left parties, I say, like to look after the little guys, the vulnerable and needy, believing that the big guys are strong enough to look after themselves.

At 86% of GDP, New Zealand’s national debt is the highest among all developed nations – except Iceland. And Iceland’s banking system has collapsed.

It may be because Scottish blood swirls within my veins but I am not at all comfortable knowing that New Zealanders are so close to not being able to pay their way.

The only way to start this column is by admitting I’m part of the problem, with the problem being defined as the sheer noise of democratic discourse in contemporary society complicating attempts at either moderation or leadership.

I suppose the H-bomb story did for him in the end. But Mike Williams' departure from Genesis Energy, GNS Science, and perhaps most crucially, the New Zealand Transport Agency, raises some serious questions about appointments to Crown agencies.

And that, my friends, is why we don't let economists or economic ideologues of one persuasion or another run the country. At least not usually.

John Key is running the ACC’s billion dollar time-bomb story as hard as he can.

I’ve had the dreaded lurgy for a week. Rugged up at home my companion has been Hunter S.

The blinkered attitudes of the New Zealand business community towards climate change – with some notable exceptions – is fundamentally depressing.

There’s a great sucking sound coming from south of the Canadian border. It is the result of the frightening power vacuum that now exists within the United States government.

New Zealanders have been conditioned to think that we enjoy a respected position as peace-builders in Afghanistan.

There is plenty about our new government to analyse, not least the fragility of its two wings. We have a Maori Party claiming a mandate that far exceeds the fractiously stark reality of just how few Maori bothered to vote at the election and the party’s own inability to win all seven Maori seats.

The weather is warming and summer’s started early.

They called him the Prime Minister-in-waiting. What a misnomer. Key produced a 27 point action plan for his first 100 days before the election. He scrambled his coalition government and his new cabinet together in just eight days – record time for the era of MMP.

On a day that Taliban forces in Afghanistan have promised to pursue their jihad against all foreign forces in their country, including the 140-odd New Zealand troops there, Pundit David Beatson and I are heading into the Classic in Auckland to discuss the media's coverage of Afghanistan with Russell Brown on his Media7 show.

It seems the American elections were held an age ago, so frantic is the post-vote agenda: From guessing who will be key in Obama’s Cabinet, through a convicted felon still in the recount for his Alaska Senate seat, to that state’s governor sucking all the oxygen out of the Republican Gov

It was pretty tough being a political junkie and not actually in New Zealand for the election, especially as it produced the end of another Kiwi era.

A few months ago, Australian diplomat and Secretary-General of the Pacific Island Forum Greg Urwin passed away. His untimely death robbed the region of a very able administrator. He was hand-picked for the role by that tough little Aussie

Last Tuesday’s election (ed: was it only last week?) witnessed a realignment of the American electorate, which, if it endures, could produce substantial changes in the country’s politics and policies over coming decades.

As National presents a forward-looking face to the electorate, with a fresh leader reaching out to Maori and planning to enter the world stage with urgency, Labour is today taking the dispiriting step of electing Phil Goff and Annette King as leader and deputy, respectively.

The final polls, after weeks of volatility, have finally found some common ground. Coming from quite different positions two weeks ago, they now all agree that National, ACT and United Future will be able to govern without the Maori Party

There is so much to say, and no time to say it, so I wanted to at least offer readers a poem from Langston Hughes, penned during 1924 in a different America to the one we woke to this morning:

I thought the best thing we could do today is let you read president-elect Barack Obama's acceptance speech in full. It's simply phenomenal that so unlikely a candidate should have been able to make such a speech.

1.55pm: Thanks for joining us as we follow the final act in the longest, most expensive US presidential race in history. The first African-American president or a the oldest first-term president and the first woman vice-president. We were in the US when this race began, and the point to stress is that there are many Americas that have swung and changed as the months have gone by.

When people ask me why it is such a huge deal that tomorrow the United States will elect its first non-white president, I tell them about my grandparents.

You will shocked, I'm sure, to learn that North America is obsessed with the United States election, and not New Zealand's battle of the 8th.

In five days Barack Obama hopes that after two years on the campaign trail Americans will vote to support his oft-articulated vision of change and hope. His remarkable infomercial that ran on US television last night ended with this live speech.

Things got a little political at book club the other night. Perhaps it’s another sign of how important this election is, how it is bleeding into our private lives, tainting our family dinner parties and our workplace coffee breaks, and pushing us to drop our polite in-company faces when we overhear something we don’t like at the supermarket.

Afghanistan has never rated real political attention in New Zealand.

Thought I'd take you for a Friday afternoon tour of the US poll sites, because it's hard to believe what we're seeing in the presidential race. Even a month ago it looked tight. Today, it's merely a question of how much McCain will lose by.

No matter how dirty the campaign may get in New Zealand in the final days, it is inconceivable to imagine the depths it would have to plumb to even scratch the scab of what America<

The 800lb gorilla in the room finally got some attention, as US Presidential hopefuls John McCain and Barack Obama sat down for their final debate in a campaign that seems to have gone on since Obama was in school shorts.

The presidential debate season finally comes to an end tonight after 35 debates (and Helen and John complain about four or five!).

There’s something very, very ugly happening in the United States at the moment. Yes,

Greens foreign affairs spokesman Keith Locke is calling for an inquiry into how New Zealand troops in Afghanistan handle prisoners of war, after revelations on Pundit that the country may have failed to meet its obligations under the Geneva Conventions.

In August, Defence Minister Phil Goff told Radio New Zealand News that the Government was considering a paper that proposed an increase in New Zealand’s military commitment to Afghanistan. [Radio New Zealand News, 14 August 2008].

In half an hour Barack Obama and John McCain meet in the second presidential debate. The pair square off in Nashville this time, in a debate moderated by veteran broadcaster Tom Brokaw.

That thudding? The sound of jaws hitting the floor. Gordon Brown’s reappointment of Peter Mandelson to his cabinet on Friday caught almost all of Britain’s political observers by surprise. Actually, scratch the almost: as far as I know no one picked it.

Governor Sarah Palin lives. She turned up to the Vice Presidential debate and did not spontaneously combust; nor was she forced to call for a life-line. Her best asset was the unbelievably low expectations that preceded her performance.  She carried out the stop-loss that was required to stem the bleeding of her half of the McCain-Palin ticket.

I'm more than happy that the US Senate finally passed a bill to steady the ship of the US economy, but I've got to share this chestnut from Reuters with you.

I've only seen a few highlights of the Vice Presidential debate at this stage, but it's interesting to note that most seem to be calling it for Joe Biden over Sarah Palin.

Matthew Hooton has blogged today about his efforts to get answers from Police National HQ on how investigating officers handled complaints that the emails at the heart of Nicky Hager's book Hollow Men were stolen.

It's almost impossible to believe that while Washington has over the last week resembled a group of large and suited Chicken Littles desperate to avoid the economic sky falling in, it may well be about to allow just that.

John McCain turned up to the first presidential debate in Mississippi - surprise, surprise. After all the histrionics and drama (is he the new Drama Queen, to match his running mate Beauty Queen?) of putting his campaign on ice to parachute in to Washington and save capitalism, McCain fronted.

The great British political circus heads for Birmingham—the Venice of the UK, don't you know—for the final of the major parties' conferences this weekend. And there's a late addition to the schedule for Day One of the Conservative gathering on Sunday: a major, special session on the economy.

It’s interesting to compare the political and media reactions to the story of John Key’s Tranz Rail shares. As we noted earlier this week, the stories boil down to a remarkably similar point—MPs who failed to declare financial interests, putting them at risk of corruption allegations.

If I heard correctly President George W. Bush appealed tonight to “my fellow citizens”. Surely I was mistaken…would “my fellow comrades” not be more appropriate? This is what Stalin was waiting for pre-Cold War. While 63 years late, capitalism is in the very meltdown that Stalin was banking on to deliver him the power to communize the world.

Trade Minister Phil Goff must have been the only politician in Washington with a smile on his face this week as he turned up to signal the beginning of negotiations on a trade deal with the United States. He did so on the very day that the American Government began considering a $US 700 billion dollar bailout of its prized capitalist economy.

The initial ra-ra over America’s decision to join the P4 trade negotiations, and its hope that it could lead to a free trade deal with the US, has started to die down. And quite right too.

I love Obama unreservedly, much as I used to love San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom (aka Mayor Hunky), which was before he schtupped his good friend's wife

Consider this order of events:

An MP fails to declare his financial interests and, when asked about them, denies strongly and publicly accusations of any impropriety.
Despite fears that this MP could have been swayed by these financial interests, the MP says he has done nothing wrong and everything is above board. 

While Barack Obama charmed his way across the Middle East and Europe last week trying to look presidential, every carefully chosen word soaked up by the world media sponge travelling in his entourage, US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice took a near-anonymous trip down-under.