We cannot repair the wrongs of yesterday by creating fresh grievances. That is not a path towards reconciliation nor towards partnership.
New Zealand has made many mistakes, but we have an exceptional record in confronting the failures and sins of past administrations and have instituted a regime of addressing these wrongs.
The Waitangi Tribunal is imperfect but given the complexities of our past, the mixed genealogy of our population and the willingness of people of good-will on all sides to find a resolution for the past and to forge a common future; it has been a powerful instrument for progress. – Damien Grant
Te Pati Māori’s policy and agenda deserve more sunlight; and when they tell us what they believe in, and what they stand for, we should believe them. – Damien Grant
Have you heard about the latest injustice in women’s sport? No, I don’t mean the disparity in pay or prize monies in comparison to men’s professional teams, or the relative lack of access to high-quality facilities. There’s something even worse going on. Women are being banned from competition — banned, I tell you — simply because of the way their bodies look. Specifically — and I don’t know how to break this to you — some sporting authorities are trying to exclude all the women with penises. I know. I can’t believe it either.
Such is the tear-jerking tale presented to us by the cyclist and trans woman — that is, biologically male — Emily Bridges in this month’s edition of Vogue, objecting to British Cycling’s recent move to make the elite female category actually do what it says on the tin. – Kathleen Stock
Had Peters not ignored the voters’ clearly expressed preference in 2017, we would have been spared the most harmful government in living memory.
To put it another way, Peters, by going with Labour, is ultimately responsible for everything that has happened in the past three disastrous, chaotic years. Voters have notoriously short memories, so need to be constantly reminded of that.
He now has the effrontery to present himself as Mr Fixit. But putting Peters back in government, in any capacity, would be like calling back the same builder whose dodgy workmanship caused your house to collapse the last time you employed him. – Karl du Fresne
By way of contrast, the defining feature of the Maori Party is that all its candidates are (and presumably are required to be) Maori. But can you really exclude 84 percent of the population and present yourself as a unifying force? I suspect that when Ngarewa-Packer affirms the value of unity, she means unity on her terms. If there was an award for cant of the day, she would be runner-up to Peters. – Karl du Fresne
My impression is that most RNZ reporters do a conscientious job, but as an institution it leans sharply to the left, like all public broadcasters, and ideology inevitably seeps into its news bulletins. This is more likely to happen when there’s a skeleton staff on (I’m told RNZ newsrooms are scarily empty at weekends) and editorial checks and balances are probably not applied as rigorously as they might be during the week.
As a publicly funded news outlet, RNZ has a unique obligation to ensure fairness, accuracy and balance. This becomes even more important at a time when public trust in the media is dangerously frayed.
It’s also worth noting that RNZ recently went through an expensive, high-profile inquiry that resulted in an embarrassing mea culpa for illicit editorial tampering by a rogue journalist who has since been dismissed. Has the organisation learned nothing, or do different standards apply when the influence exerted by biased journalists is deemed to be ideologically acceptable? – Karl du Fresne
If there is anything to learn from 2017, it is that voters seeking to vote ‘strategically’ rarely engineer the outcome they want. They are much better off just voting for the party they support. Then the press gallery’s obsession with ruling parties in and out doesn’t actually matter. – Brigitte Morten
And that is the danger of polls – who do you believe? How much do they affect the narrative and are they actually accurate, or just a vehicle for spin?– Mike Hosking
The popular narrative about climate change reflects a dangerous corruption of science that threatens the world’s economy and the well-being of billions of people.
Misguided climate science has metastasized into massive shock-journalistic pseudoscience. In turn, the pseudoscience has become a scapegoat for a wide variety of other unrelated ills. It has been promoted and extended by similarly misguided business marketing agents, politicians, journalists, government agencies, and environmentalists. In my opinion, there is no real climate crisis. There is, however, a very real problem with providing a decent standard of living to the world’s large population and an associated energy crisis. The latter is being unnecessarily exacerbated by what, in my opinion, is incorrect climate science. – Dr. John F. Clauser
Asking people if they support an idea in principle is quite different to asking if they support the trade-offs necessary to make that idea work in practice. – Josh Van Veen
That’s been our view and our position [that we would repeal Māori wards],” Luxon said.
“Our position is that we are one country, we have a democracy where it’s one person, one vote, so we’ve opposed that through the course of the last Parliament. We don’t believe that that’s fair or democratic. – Christopher Luxon
There’ll be no change to any of our abortion laws, funding or access – I’ve been really clear about that. That is not our focus.
In Government, we need to be focused on rebuilding this economy, we need to make sure we restore law and order, deliver better health and education. – Christopher Luxon
This is why I am so vocal about the gender identity issues that we have. Because I know that these are issues that need addressing with mental health care and not puberty blockers. – Corina Shields
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