The original idea was floated by David Shearer in 2014. It was named Kiwibuild. The Labour Party imagined itself as the champion of young families; providing them all with homes, as they had done in the 1960s. This time, though, it would be even better, as these houses would be
So Labour was going to build 100,000 houses in 10 years. It was an ambitious but courageous plan… except it was never going to happen. The consenting process takes far too long, the construction industry is already stretched and if we bring in more immigrant tradespeople, well… where are
I am truly afraid of blind ideology. We all have ideas. In my time, I have had lots of them, but the realty is that ideology and reality often don’t collide. Try telling that to this government though. It seems that they simply have no idea. The problem with
There is no doubt that this government has been shamed into funding more cancer treatments by the opposition. They promised that they would fund cancer drugs during their election campaign, but we all know how hollow those election promises were. Now, as a result of National’s excellent proposals on
If you ever feel, like I do, that the world is going completely mad, then this article will tell you that it is not… not completely anyway. You may remember that a cafe opened in Melbourne a couple of years ago. Run by lesbians (which is not a problem in
The media has fallen out of love with Jacinda. It’s about time. John Armstrong has some harsh words about our princess and her government, and it is music to my ears. The glitter of Jacinda Ardern’s crown no longer sparkles or glistens quite so gloriously as it did
In the latest bit of abject stupidity in the pay parity debate, we have the suggestion that knowing what everyone in every organisation earns will solve the problem. In other words, there will be no privacy regarding earnings; everyone’s earnings will be known by everyone else. This will not
I adore Boris Johnston. He is my new hero, although ‘anti-hero’ might be a more appropriate title for him at the moment. After promising that Britain will leave the EU on October 31st, come hell or high water, he is making sure it is going to happen… by suspending parliament
You really do have to wonder with this government if the left hand knows what the right hand is doing. They axed our lucrative oil and gas industries, citing the fact that they want to concentrate entirely on renewable energy sources. New Zealand is already a great place for this,
All Labour governments are tax-and-spend, and this one is no different. Actually, that is not true – they are different. They have the same Labour characteristic of throwing money at a problem to fix it, but their biggest problem seems to be not finding the money (which has been a problem
It had to happen. She may have a nice smile and seem like a decent enough person, but Jacinda is simply not prime minister material, and it is finally beginning to show. Her inability to answer questions because she simply does not know the answers is becoming legendary. Her absences
The face of British politics has changed. Not only do they have a new prime minister, but he is unashamedly proud to be British and he doesn’t care who knows about it. Boris Johnson is bringing back the pride in being British and he couldn’t have picked a
Darling Clarke Gayford – first de facto husband, first fisherman, first stay-at-home Dad (who doesn’t stay at home much) – has come out on Twitter to defend his beloved, and once again shows that our feminist prime minister is seen by everyone around her to be so hopeless at her job
Jacinda was missing from several sessions in the house last week but was found at the weekend at the Islamic Women of New Zealand’s annual conference, wearing a hijab. Now, okay. There are those that defended her for donning a hijab after the terrible Christchurch mosque massacres, saying that
You really need to understand the anti-car attitude that this government has got. We really do need to be concerned about this. While I have nothing against electric cars in principle, acknowledging that they will work well for some people, clearly they will not work for everyone. They simply do
You know you are in trouble when you are facing criticism for something that you have done, and all you can do in your defence is to pull the race or gender card. That is what has happened recently when Simon Bridges criticised the prime minister. Instead of being able
