A year on from the election and we now see loud and clear what defines the John Key government - a willingness to bend to public opinion and give the people just enough of what they want
Read MoreParliament is a social media friendly space
Parliament's powerful Privileges Committee has had a hard look at how social media is being used to report on Parliament ... and decided that everything is working pretty much fine as it is. Hooray!
Read MoreIs Jeremy Corbyn the Donald Trump of the British left?
It's one thing to galvinise the base, quite another to win over the general electorate. And it's hard to see a strategy which Jeremy Corbyn can use to achieve that
Read MoreMy sole contribution to the great flag conspiracy
Will taking the Union Jack off New Zealand's flag "open the gates of hell" and give John Key absolute power? No. No it won't.
Read More"Into the River" should not have been banned
The reasons given for imposing an order stopping anyone from being able to access Into the River do not justify it. The order is wrong.
Read MoreWon't someone PLEASE think of the children?
Just how dangerous can a book be? And in order to combat that danger, how far should our expressive freedoms be restrained?
Read MoreAylan the life-saver... and what comes next
How long has it been since the death of a single child has saved so many other lives? And now that we are paying attention, how do we get the next step right?
Read MoreIt was a catastrophically wrong decision not to intervene to stop Assad
Today’s refugee crisis is one result of doing nothing to stop Bashar al-Assad after he used chemical weapons against Syrian civilians.
Everyone talks about the human consequences of intervention. But we also need to look at the human consequences of doing nothing.
Read MoreUnderlying Trade Deals
This was an introduction to a presentation by Stephen Jacobi: "TPP – Where to from Here (And How Did We Get Here Anyway)?" To a NZIIA lecture, 2 September 2015. (Some editing)
Read MoreWe can do something right now - refugee crisis
There are ninety towns in New Zealand with a population between 5,000 and 20,000. If each of those towns took ten refugees, and our larger cities took 100 each, we’d triple our quota to nearly 3000 without any going to Auckland, Christchurch or Wellington.
New Zealand would be a proud example of practical, no-nonsense compassion.
We all need to see Aylan Kurdi
The job of the media is to tell, and sometimes show, truth to power and also the public. Editors and journalists who made the conscious decision to publish the photos of the drowned Syrian refugee toddler did just that. The question is will this image be the catalyst to change history as others have in the past?
Read MoreGuts, guts, got no guts
New Zealand is a country that stands up for its values - unless it involves the inconvenience of bringing a few more desperate people into New Zealand for a new life.
Read MoreWhen 'throwing money at the problem' might just work
Talk to social workers and experts trying to get New Zealand's most troubled kids safely through to adulthood and the impression left is that the best thing to do may also be the thing that's most politically anathema to this government
Read MoreFlagging Design
The flag debate tells us something about the quality of design in New Zealand
Read MoreShamubeel is right - Get @X!@ real about immigration!
Blaming the Auckland housing bubble on immigrants is like saying 'cars are too expensive in New Zealand because the Chinese are buying all our cars.’
Read MoreRiot police, razor wire and refugees
Europe takes in only a small proportion of the world's refugees yet when you consider the dog whistle politics and lack of human decency towards the men, women and children desperately trying to reach its shores, you'd think it was being wiped out by an alien species.
Read MoreMy sole contribution to the great flag debate
Apparently, we have to vote twice to decide whether we prefer the current flag to something else. So why was one vote enough when we were voting on our electoral system?
Read MoreAre the banks fleecing us? Ask a Shearer
A bit of anger over credit cards could earn Labour a bit of credit with voters, but there's a risk for a party that is still trying to prove its economic bona fides
Read MoreThe State of the Economy: August 2015
Notes for Radio NZ Nights with Brian Crump: 11 August, 2014
Read MoreHow to avoid a ‘Sexit’
Solid Energy has a basically sound business that is being crushed by debt. If Greece’s debt sent it hurtling towards a ‘Grexit', Solid Energy can avoid a Sexit.
Here’s how.