The great nineteenth British Prime Minister, William Gladstone, once observed that “the first essential for a Prime Minister is to be a good butcher.” When a later British Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, sacked a third of his Cabinet in July 1962, in what became known as the Night of the Long Knives, Liberal MP Jeremy Thorpe wryly commented – in a clever paraphrasing of St John’s Gospel – that “greater love hath no man than he lay down his friends for his life.” Both Gladstone’s maxim and Thorpe’s quip go to the heart of the challenge a Prime Minister faces in managing the Cabinet. The Prime ..read more

There has been a positive but restrained response to the deal announced between Stuff and Warner Brothers Discovery to “save” TV3’s six o’clock nightly news bulletin, currently screened under the Newshub label. According to Stuff, the deal will mean that around 40 of the jobs involved can also be saved. This is cold comfort for the majority of the approximately 300 staff who currently work for Newshub, and the 68 TVNZ news and current affairs staff who were told last week that their jobs would be going over the next three months. There will be many presenters, journalists and production staff ..read more

  April 10 is a dramatic day in New Zealand’s history. On April 10, 1919, the preliminary results of a referendum showed that New Zealanders had narrowly voted for prohibition by a majority of around 13,000 votes. However, when the votes of soldiers still overseas after World War I were later added in, the right to drink was retained by just over 10,000 votes. April 10, 1968, was one of the blackest days in New Zealand history when the inter-island ferry, Wahine, sank at the entry to Wellington Harbour with the initial loss of 51 lives, later to rise to 53. For rugby followers, April 10 ..read more

  Taiwan and New Zealand are two small island states with much in common. Both are vibrant, independent democracies, living in the shadow of an overbearing neighbour. (Admittedly, Taiwan’s overbearing neighbour has far more aggressive tendencies than our at-times overbearing neighbour!) There is a strong free trade agreement between the two countries and a growing cultural link based on DNA evidence that Taiwan’s indigenous people and Māori share a common ancestry. And both New and Zealand and Taiwan lie on the Pacific Ring of Fire – the horseshoe shaped zone around the Pacific Ocean whic ..read more

Nearly three decades after the introduction of MMP and multiparty governments there should be a greater level of understanding about their finer points than often appears to be the case. The reaction to the despicable outburst from the Deputy Prime Minister at the weekend highlights this. To be very clear, there is no justification for the remarks Peters made comparing the previous government – in which he was Deputy Prime Minister for three years – and its co-governance policies to Nazi Germany. His comments were no more than a very cheap attempt to gain a headline, and one more in a long lin ..read more

This week’s government bailout – the fifth in the last eighteen months – of the financially troubled Ruapehu Alpine Lifts company would have pleased many in the central North Island ski industry. The government’s stated rationale for the $7 million funding was that it would enable the coming ski season at Whakapapa to proceed. Given the ski field’s substantial annual contribution to the Ruapehu district’s economy, the relief in some quarters at the government’s was understandable. It is estimated that since 2020 the government has advanced $32 million to keep the ski field operation open, but ..read more

Earlier this week, Wellington’s newspaper, The Post, launched a “conversation” inviting public responses about how Wellington could move on from the problems currently besetting it. The responses published so far show a level of fondness for the city, but a deep frustration at its current problems and the way they have been dealt with by recent Councils. It all smacks of a desperate recognition that Wellington, the nation’s capital, is slowly dying. The current Wellington City Council borders on being dysfunctional; the city’s infrastructure is collapsing, or, in the case of the pipes, burstin ..read more

The rush to push legislation through Parliament under Urgency to abolish the Māori Health Authority, Te Aka Whai Ora, has been unseemly. No matter that the Authority’s abolition was an election commitment of all three government coalition partners, and was thus inevitable, the process by which it has been done was messy. The actual abolition of the Authority will not occur until the middle of the year, but the government moved now to prevent a hearing by the Waitangi Tribunal – due to get underway this week – on whether the move was a breach of the Treaty. That action of itself raises question ..read more

Here we go again. Another National-led government, and another round of cracking down on beneficiaries. That was the reaction of the parties of the left to the coalition government's announcement it was returning to applying sanctions to beneficiaries who fail to meet their job seeking obligations.    Both the government's announcement and the Opposition's reaction were entirely predictable. In different ways, beneficiaries and how they are treated define the divide between the left and the right. National's announcement this week and Labour's reaction are as much about playing ..read more

There was a hole in a quiet road near me recently. It was about three metres long. A repair crew came to fix it.  That crew consisted of six people - a digger operator, someone directing the digger's movements, two stop-go sign holders and their two supervisors. And at least 150 ubiquitous orange cones. The road was down to a single lane for most of its length.   This scene was not unusual. It is familiar to most of us and is being replicated frequently in cities and towns across the country. It is a further example of how the system of "traffic management" we now have has becom ..read more