Articles in ‘Opinion’

Our township was carved out of dense bush in the 1860’s when immigrants moved onto the land and created a community from scratch with just hand tools, their own labour and a desire to make a better life for themselves and their families. At first there were scattered houses - not tidy weatherboard cottages, but slab huts and ponga whares – it took a while before proper wooden houses with floors and windows became the norm. The settlement was…

Whatever reservations one might have regarding the wisdom of holding an election on the day of a full moon, Britain has just done just that, and the result has been a stunning but completely predictable victory for Boris Johnson and the Conservatives. I say completely predictable because many mainstream media polls failed to predict it; and much accompanying commentary in the Press was equally vague, evasive, and downright contrary, where…

New Zealand is in danger of losing many of its precious heritage buildings as councils and owners struggle to cope with earthquake (seismic) issues and New Building Standards (NBS). Earthquake strengthening is now a huge concern for planners, builders and owners – and, because it’s a public safety issue, rightly so. · Unfortunately, the extent of its impact is only now being realised. · As an example, in Wellington about 600 buildings are…

There is a well circulated expression of opinions including demands, rejections and mostly avoidance from the political parties who are inclined to view this subject as related to votes and this appears to nullify their ability to provide sound and meaningful policy and meaningful policy with hesitancy of involvement. The New Zealand population have been active in the last decade of claiming their rights to hereditary considerations, but there…

Regular readers of “elocal” will think I have a fixation about house prices. I’ve written on the subject twice already this year, most recently just two months ago. But several things have prompted me to write on the subject again. First, despite all the hand-wringing about the unaffordability of housing, and the political commitments to make housing more affordable, house prices continue to go up at a much faster rate than incomes. Just…

Right now, in New Zealand, a quiet revolution is taking place. It isn’t technological, or a change to the education system, or a new and widespread understanding of an holistic approach to health and wellbeing. Rather, it involves the steady, systematic, and stealthy overturning of more than eight centuries of established rights and freedoms that New Zealanders have inherited from their forebears, by way of the Mana Carta and the English Bill…

Seven hundred-odd kilometres south of Papakura, as the crow flies, the Department of Conservation is waging war on introduced pests. Great stuff, many people might think, giving the matter a quick nod of approval before carrying on with their busy lives. This is what DOC does, after all. It conserves. That’s what conservation means, doesn’t it? They work tirelessly to preserve and protect, to resurrect and regenerate, to keep everything that’s…

A few weeks ago, the Government announced that as from 2022 teaching New Zealand history would be a mandatory part of the school curriculum, at both primary and secondary level. As somebody who was an historian before he was an economist, I was delighted. It is important that all New Zealanders, whether born here or born overseas, have an understanding of where we have come from as a nation – including the things we can be proud of and the…

Politicians around the world have been calling for faster and faster action to reduce emissions. Our own Prime Minister has joined the political hype-train by announcing climate change is "my"/her generation’s nuclear free moment (who made everyone under 40 "her" generation? and why are we now pitting different generations against each other?) Politicians around the world have clamoured over each other to announce they will do more than the…

The heated exchanges that occurred at a recent Ministry for the Environment meeting in Pukekohe are symptomatic of the pressures building on our growers and farmers. They are becoming increasingly worried about the future and Government policies are the key reason. They turned out in force to meet Ministry for the Environment officials and Freshwater Leaders Advisory Committee chair John Penno when they hosted a “roadshow” to get feedback on…