National party leader Christopher Luxon kicked off his ‘Get NZ back on track’ tour with his first meeting at the Birkenhead Bowling Club on Auckland’s North Shore, surprising Spinoff writer Stewart Sowman-Lund with his emerging political skills. This also coincides with a new One News Kantar poll which shows
A May Reid Research poll found 70 per cent of people believed the Labour Government is not doing enough to address falling literacy and numeracy rates. Could it be they are too distracted with “smuggling left-wing nonsense into our schools”, as ACT’s Chris Baillie has opined? A hilarious moment
Graham Bell, former host of Police Ten 7, recently bemoaned the demise of the show and the wokeness that did it in and that got me thinking: New Zealand is one of the wokest places on earth. How do I know? The silence over the government’s damaging radical policies,
Mike Hosking, on the radio waves from London on Monday, single-handedly solved a massive dilemma for Chris Luxon preparing for the King’s coronation. He couldn’t find a double-breasted waistcoat to go with his morning suit. Zut Alors! Crisis averted. It turns out, there are plenty to choose from
Compare and contrast. Our government and media have brazenly condoned the abuse of UK women’s rights activist Posie Parker by transgender protesters. But UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has ramped up his support for women’s rights, speaking out against the trans extremism movement where words like ‘pregnant woman’
Stop and Go signs are now emerging in Maori – has New Zealand reached peak stupid? Labour would be better off improving child vaccination rates to keep our babies safe. With news out of Otago that there have been sightings of a new phenomenon, Stop and Go signs in Maori, we
Despite rebuke and threat of prosecution given for his less serious first offence, Crown Law has been silent on the second, more severe, offence by Nash. In 2020 Stuart Nash breached the cabinet manual in a radio interview when commenting on a case before the courts, intimating there should be
Former Covid minister Chris Hipkins’s prolonged public argument with, and humiliation of, pregnant journalist Charlotte Bellis, stranded in Afghanistan, the land of the Taliban, is one of my most ghastly memories of the debacle which was the Covid response. (Of course ‘trustworthy’ then Covid minister Hipkins had a laundry
If the media can drag themselves away from their favourite pastime of criticising Mayor Brown, they may see a similarity between the government’s big boo-boo on school closures to Mayor Brown’s tardiness in declaring an emergency for an unprecedented weather event… Or not. Both appeared ‘out of their
In her cloud cuckoo land, the PM has much to answer for. Ardern’s deception on He Puapua will haunt her in 2023. Like Prince Harry, Ardern refuses to take responsibility for her actions. Having gained office once through (Winston’s) selection, then through deception, Jacinda Ardern proceeded to put
Republican politician Matt Gaetz, leader of the renegades who got their demands by holding out on Kevin McCarthy’s election for House speaker, has been labelled far right. It is an insult designed to give him a negative image and it is one commonly used in New Zealand as well.
The media are flailing around searching for other missiles to chuck at Luxon over the Hamilton West byelection, as their ‘not another pale, stale, male’ line has become redundant with National’s selection of high calibre candidate Tama Potaka. I must admit I had my doubts when he was announced
Privatisation of water into elite Maori iwi hands is the reason behind all the furore over the government’s shambolic unpopular Three Five Waters bill. Yes, they may care about water quality and improvements to infrastructure; however, their crucial goal of Maori ownership meant changes could not be made locally
The Daily Express headline ‘Democrats’ postal vote victories have panicked Tories and Republicans’ caught my eye. How so? Could it be because the late crucial deciding results are from Democrat-run states, which all have the ‘mail in voting’ rule, plus a flexible approach to voter ID in a country that
Jacinda Ardern’s censorship plan has been stymied by Elon Musk’s U-turn on his Twitter purchase. His U-turn was timely, as one commentator has labelled Ardern “the acceptable face of tyranny” After slaying them all on her recent overseas trip, including sipping bubbles with Justin at altitude, Ardern is
I don’t often burst out laughing during the rather dry current affairs show The Nation, but today I did. A rather naive Wayne Brown during recent media time with Newshub made a highly inappropriate, but hilarious, comment while he was ‘miked up’. He called Simon Wilson, who has been
