The dopey Greens have announced a rent-control policy. But they seem to have no inkling that rent-controls have never worked anywhere in the world, unless their idea of a successful rent-control policy is to, in the long run, decrease housing affordability, fuel gentrification and create negative spillovers on the surrounding
Graham Adams Graham Adams is a freelance editor, journalist and columnist. He lives on Auckland’s North Shore. To receive pieces like this in your inbox subscribe to our newsletter. commonroomnz.com How long can Labour continue to levitate? Centre-right voters are increasingly wondering how many more disasters it will
Stuart Smith National MP for Kaikoura http://stuartsmith.national.org.nz/ The MMP electoral system in New Zealand has its flaws, and many people are not familiar with how it works. In reality, only two major parties have a realistic chance of forming a government: National or Labour. Some people
PM Hipkins is flailing. He can’t define ‘woman’ or ‘dictator’ and no one has asked him to define truth. When did politics become divorced from reality, and people uninterested in truth? Give yourself 10/10 if you answered Covid. By Covid I don’t mean the viral infection, I
Listen to the beautiful ballad “Wind of Change”, which starts and ends with its haunting nostalgic whistling. According to the band’s lead singer, Klaus Meine, this classic is purely a peace anthem. In addition to that, Meine referred to the song with political sentiment, as one that “symbolizes the
The election looms and the polls seem to suggest that Labour and its groupie parties will be able to do the impossible in the face of the indefensible and somehow ride to glory on the coat-tails of the idiocy, dishonesty, lies, ignorance and incompetence of its ministers. Is there any
In the past week I have discussed how many small parties appear to offer little other than the very addictive but ultimately futile “hopium”. Hopium is that “metaphorical substance that causes people to believe in a false hope”. It is often paired with copium. As opposed to copium, which represents
Yesterday, the National Party held its annual conference. […] Luxon took aim at Labour’s handling of the economy, claiming the “taxing, borrowing, wasteful spending” had driven the current cost of living crisis. He warned of the “coalition of chaos” – a term dubbed by National for the potential Labour, Green and
he fundamental human right of freedom of speech is being threatened in New Zealand, and, if we fail to resist, we risk losing it entirely. The recent shutdown of Posie Parker’s Let Women Speak tour by protestors serves as a clear illustration of this danger. Another instance is Julian
If you want to see a change of government in October, be sure you don’t have the wool firmly pulled over your eyes and do not pin your hopes on ‘magical thinking’ (the belief that thinking about something, or wanting it to happen, can make it happen). The loss
If apartheid wasn’t here before it’s definitely here now. First, let’s elucidate on the real meaning of the word apartheid. According to the Oxford Dictionary of Languages it means historically (in South Africa) a policy or system of segregation or discrimination on grounds of race. Apartheid is
Michael Bassett Political historian Michael Bassett CNZM is the author of 15 books, was a regular columnist for the Fairfax newspapers and a former minister in the 1984–1990 governments. bassettbrashandhide.com How can it be that everything this Labour government touches crumbles? Chris Hipkins and his team score zero
DemocracyNZ arguably just lost its best people with the resignation of five candidates: Dr Matt Shelton, Kirsten Murfitt, Lee Smith and Bill Dyet, after the board fired Waikato farmer Steve Cranston, who was also the party’s spokesman on climate change. Cranston says terribly sensible things like this: The National
Most of us are pretty fed up with the status quo government that has given us: * Inflation and recession after Ardern’s draconian Covid policies; * Hipkins’s appalling record of having to stand down a minister every eight weeks for unethical behaviour; * Increasing ram raids and crime; * Judges soft on
Dr Guy David Hatchard hatchardreport.com Guy is an international advocate of food safety and natural medicine. He received his undergraduate degree in Logic and Theoretical Physics from the University of Sussex and his Ph.D. in Psychology from Maharishi University of Management, Fairfield Iowa. He was formerly a senior
