I never particularly liked Amy Adams. I never particularly disliked her either. I certainly never saw her as a future prime minister, although a few people clearly did, including Amy herself. Her resignation recently was a surprise, and was generally seen as her expectation that National, under Simon Bridges, will
No one expected the OCR to drop to 1% on Wednesday. Adrian Orr seems to be determined to kickstart the economy by dropping the rate to – almost – as low as it can go. But if he thinks that this will cause the economy to suddenly rebound and everything will be
The allegations of sexual abuse, harassment and assault within the Labour Party are very serious. There are accusations of rape. There are accusations of workplace bullying. There are accusations of sex for promotions. The Labour Party is the largest party in the government, and the government is supposed to uphold
It is widely expected that the Reserve Bank will cut the OCR again this week, probably by another 25 percentage points. The problem here is that the OCR is now so low that further cuts are mostly pointless. We are rapidly heading towards an OCR of 0%, or possibly even
Remember the sex scandal last year at the Young Labour summer camp? You do? I’m surprised you do, because no one knows what happened, who was responsible and what the outcome was. Labour is a master at ‘reviewing policies around the issue’ – it is all they ever seem to
Overseas, Jacinda is still seen as some kind of Madonna… one who bore a child, donned a hijab and hugged a few people… but no one seems to understand that this is all pretty basic stuff. Anyone can do that. Jacinda is naturally empathetic, but that does not make her
Simon Bridges has been the subject of a lot of attention from the government, and most of it has been particularly disrespectful. While I am of the opinion that any publicity is good for Simon’s profile, there is definitely a real nastiness to it. From the Greens’ nasty attack
Oh boy. The term #ParttimePM really has struck a nerve. You know that when Jacinda’s henchmen come out in her defence almost immediately. Grant Robertson called Simon Bridges sexist for suggesting that she doesn’t exactly work hard, which is absolutely true. And now, along with Robertson, Trevor Mallard
The Greens conference at the weekend may have been mostly done behind closed doors, but snippets came out, including James Shaw calling Simon Bridges a “climate change denier”. We all know Bridges is no denier, but his attitude towards climate change is somewhat more benign than that of the Green
Prince Harry cut a sad and lonely figure walking behind his mother’s coffin in 1997. Since then, he has served in Afghanistan, partied long and hard, worn a Nazi shirt, fallen in love a few times, and finally, married an American mixed-race actress and been congratulated for his diversity
We can understand, to a certain extent anyway, that people on low incomes in Auckland might have trouble finding housing. Housing in Auckland is expensive, there are simply not enough houses, landlords are selling up and the majority of immigrants flock to our largest city. That is why the main
I thought Julie-Anne Genter was Associate Transport Minister, but it seems she is Associate Health Minister as well. When you think about the Department of Health, you tend to think about overworked doctors, overworked nurses, waiting lists, sewage in the walls (that turned out to be non-existent), cancer drugs, diabetes…
It is a big question. At what age should people receive government superannuation? Currently, in New Zealand, the age is 65, the qualification is automatic and it is not means-tested. Most of us, observing overseas trends, accept that this situation will change in time… although, surprisingly, there is an increasing
Jacinda is nothing more than a virtue signalling prime minister who has won international acclaim for donning a hijab and hugging people, but telling Australia how to manage its own immigration policy is going to cost us dearly. We have already speculated that her finger-wagging at Australia will result in
Yesterday, I wrote about how Simon Bridges cannot get any hits on the prime minister because she is surrounded by henchmen who immediately leap to her defence, and will pull out the gender card if necessary, as Grant Robertson did on Tuesday. Calling Jacinda Ardern a “part-time Prime Minister” is
Simon Bridges is constantly criticised for his accent, for being boring, for failing to have any public appeal, and for failing to hold a poorly performing government to account. Many of those criticisms are justified. But there is a reason why he can’t get any hits on the prime
