Articles in ‘Opinion’

The headline for this article is a double entendre, which I’m pointing out just in case anyone was thinking about getting offended. It’s Tick-The-Box time coming up again shortly in New Zealand, and where some folks may still not be completely au fait with the vagaries of the MMP voting system – whilst others, being more nerdy in a political sense, are better up with the play –…

If, as many predict, we will have to learn to live with Covid-19 for some years, we need to get our border issues sorted out. No, I’m not talking about our international border. I’m talking about the one down the road here on the edge of Auckland. I’m talking about the borders you get when you lockdown a region or a city; the border that divides people who live in one zone and…

Not 48 hours after I sent what I thought was the final version of this column to the editor, events proved just how true the headline was: Todd Muller resigned as Leader of the National Party just eight weeks after he assumed the role. Twelve hours later, the National Party caucus elected Judith Collins as Leader and Gerry Brownlee as Deputy Leader. The political landscape…

Is there a way that the NZ government could handle a second wave of COVID-19 in such a way as to protect people who are most vulnerable to experiencing complications or dying from a SARS CoV-2 infection yet still allow most people to work and enjoy a normal social life and keep our economy and society healthy? The answer to this question is yes. In the more than six months since…

Unless you were living under a stone, you will know that towards the end of May a black American by the name of George Floyd was killed when a white police officer knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes, while three other police officers looked on. And you will also know that this event has triggered huge protests against racism, not only in the US but throughout the world. So…

While we have been in lockdown to fight the spread of Covid-19, I have been amazed by people’s ingenuity to make this a positive experience. So many organisations and individuals in Papakura and all over Counties Manukau have grouped together to help others in the community. I want to acknowledge them. And also I congratulate all the families who have looked after each other…

For the first time this century, the numbers of people living in absolute poverty are rising. The World Food Programme estimates that another 130 million people could be brought to the brink of starvation, leading to a new combined total of 265 million people in that dire predicament. Rates of childhood vaccination and prenatal care are precipitously declining in a number of…

In the middle of May, the Government announced its Budget for the next financial year. New Zealand has never seen anything remotely like it. It made clear the Government’s intention to spend vast sums of money in an attempt to protect New Zealanders from the economic shock caused by the coronavirus and the Government’s draconian measures to deal with it. Last month, I suggested…

No one can say with confidence what our COVID-9 world is going to look like over the next 12 to 24 months. The rules and models of the old world no longer hold. It is this uncertainty itself that adds great stress, overlaying the fear of specific scenarios. Times like these can bring out true leaders but also false prophets. Trying to distinguish between them is much easier in…

Perhaps it is dangerous to write about such a fast-moving situation as the Covid-19 pandemic when what I write may not be published for 10 days or more, but at time of writing my strong impression is that the public believe that the Government has done a remarkably good job of suppressing, perhaps even eliminating, the spread of Covid-19 in New Zealand, and that they deserve warm…

I had a crappy day the other day, quite literally. The macerator pump for our toilet and greywater system chose Saturday morning to put itself into Coronavirus lockdown, so I spent the day lying on my belly in a two-and-a-half-footby-Very-Long tunnel under the building, headlight torch on, up to my elbows in the stuff that toilet macerator pumps deal with. I felt like one of my…

It’s safe to assume most New Zealanders understood this as meaning we have the potential for the virus to be gone, out of here, see you later, because elimination generally implies “the complete removal or destruction of something”. Also, the Covid-19 website says: “Our goal is to eliminate Covid-19 from New Zealand, so that we can live and work free from this disease.” However,…

Since January, I have been following international coverage and debate about Covid-19 closely. Looking back over almost three months now, what seems extraordinary is how flat footed the international response has been. An exception to that has been that of the much-maligned World Health Organisation (WHO), which from the outset has endeavoured to provide information and advice as…

The Government’s state of emergency has created a dangerous political vacuum. Decisions that profoundly affect everyone’s lives are being undertaken in an autocratic fashion without any attempt at democratic involvement. Even the typically reserved Law Society has raised concerns about the lack of transparency and consultation associated with the lockdown: “As far as possible,…

The Health Ministry must be more transparent with the information it's giving to the public. Like all journalists in New Zealand right now, I've been covering stories day after day, all of which relate to our current coronavirus crisis. It's the longest-running, bulletin dominating story I've ever known and is impacting every single Kiwi, young and old. Given the ongoing…

It’s hard to believe that when I signed off my article for the March edition of Elocal, on 11 February, I didn’t mention the words ‘pandemic’, ‘coronavirus’, or ‘Covid-19’. In the four or five weeks since, the media – and I mean all the media – have talked about almost nothing else. What I write now, for publication at the beginning of April, could also be totally blind-sided by…

There’s only one show in town right now, and it’s a chart-topper. I’m actually somewhat loath to launch into coronavirus, given that it’s such a rapidly-moving piece of theatre and I’m writing this a week ahead of publication; but regardless of how the spread of the world’s newest and most popular disease unfolds over the next fortnight, there are truths interwoven through the…

As this edition goes to press, New Zealand and the world are approaching the anniversary of the horrific events in Christchurch on March 15th 2019. Nearly a year on from that dreadful day, what has changed about New Zealand – both for the better, and more pertinently, for the worse? On March 15th, 2019 I was in a shop in Rangiora. As a Police patrol car went screaming past in the…

New Zealand has changed dramatically in a week in response to Covid-19. Fundamental rights and liberties have been curtailed to assist in suppressing the virus. From a legal history perspective, this is similar to what New Zealand experienced in World War I and II and during the 1951 Waterfront Dispute. It is unclear how long these measures will be necessary. At the present time…

It seems no time at all since we were celebrating (or lamenting) the election of the Labour–New Zealand First–Green Government in 2017. And now, in little more than six months’ time, we’re going to the polls again. As I write in the middle of February, the outcome of the election is still very uncertain. If the latest poll results were replicated in the election, we would have…