A British Lord Chancellor, Lord Hailsham, described parliamentary democracy as an ‘elected dictatorship’. Recent events illustrate how right he was.
Read MoreTwo cheers for capitalism – Fiji redux
Reflections on small kindnesses, resort life and capitalism’s pros and cons after a week in Fiji
Read MorePlaying the question, not the ball
If the public are to decide whether to permit aid in dying in New Zealand, they should be asked a proper question. And that question is, do they want the only law that is on offer?
Read MoreJohn Tamihere's 'sieg heil' lets Phil Goff off the hook on his claimed ban
Phil Goff has been in court and on the ropes over his false claims to have banned two alt right speakers from Council venues last year, but now John Tamihere has gone and shot himself in the foot. Again
Read MoreWhat Happened to Egalitarian New Zealand?
New Zealand is a less egalitarian society today than it was when I was growing up in the 1950s.
Read MoreIf only the Czar knew…
Jacinda Ardern is getting the benefit of the doubt over claims of sexual assault by a Labour Party staffer, just as the Czars did in olden-days Russia. But facts will out and so far her actions have hardly screamed leadership
Read MorePrivate Affluence and Public Squalor?
What does National’s just-released economic manifesto tell us about the state of economic discussion in New Zealand and where the economy might go?
Read MoreThe “Moderniser”. Tony Blair on the Third Way. The Giddens Project Blog #5
British Prime Minister Tony Blair saw himself as a ‘moderniser’. New Labour was his answer to the challenges of modernity. But, despite his best efforts, he remained stuck in the past.
Read MoreDetainees in Afghanistan: Why are our soldiers allowed more secrets than our spies?
In honour of David Beatson and after the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security’s report into our spies’ work in Afghanistan, I’m re-surfacing some of Beatson’s posts from 2008 and 2009 asking questions about how our soldiers handled detainees
Read MoreShould we protect the voters from themselves?
Should a councillor kicked out of office for criminal offending be able to ask the voters to re-elect him? Well, what sort of criminal offence are we talking about?
Read MoreThe Limits of Power: What Johnson, Trump, Ardern and Fonterra have in common
Over-reach is a common crime in politics and business. But a day of reckoning always comes, as leaders in this country and some of the world’s biggest powers are discovering to their cost
Read MoreYou can’t live in a reset
Today Labour admitted it had failed to implement the policy that, more than any other, defined and popularised the party over the past seven years. Even then, there’s little in the reset to suggest it can fix the housing crisis
Read MoreReviewing Truth and the Treachery of Truthiness
Is it a coincidence that the Spring 2019 issue of The New Zealand Review of Books reviewed five books concerned about truth in its many guises?
Read MoreWhat to do about the much ado over overseas donations?
Should we care if companies owned by foreign nationals can donate to political parties when foreign nationals can’t do it themselves? And if we do, what can we do about it?
Read MoreSimon Bridges' Treaty settlement tweet may foresee the future – for better or worse
Is the Ihumatao protest a turning point in our race relations, where our understanding of the Treaty of Waitangi – and the promise of ‘full and final’ settlements – gets re-evaluated and overhauled?
Read MorePopulist Versus Liberal Democracy; The Choice Before Us?
Donald Trump is not the end of an era but the beginning of a new long one, argues the celebrated New Zealand economist Robert Wade, who is a professor at the London School of Economics.
Read MoreThe Amazon burns; is New Zealand fiddling?
Brazil’s president Jair Bolsonaro has a list of excuses for the Amazon fires that threaten ‘the lungs of the world’… and they won’t be unfamiliar to those debating the environment here in New Zealand
Read MoreWhat Can We Learn from the 2018 Census Debacle?
The publication of the report reviewing the 2018 Population Census and the resignation of the Government Statistician who presided over the disaster is the beginning, not the end, of a discussion on the role of statistics and the state sector in New Zealand.
Read MoreDo We Need a Fiscal Stimulus?
As the Reserve Bank monetary policy statement might indicate, the answer to the headline question is that as economic growth weakens, we increasingly need some more government spending. The bigger problem is how to manage it.
Read MoreLet's not turn an omnishambles into a clusterf*ck
The 2018 census did not do its job properly. But we shouldn’t use that fact to undermine other important institutions and processes.
Read More