RBNZ is proposing to let banks have up to 25 percent of new lending to owner-occupiers with less than a 20 percent deposit. For investors, the lending limit would be increased to 10 percent for those ...

Cockburn’s warning came to mind in the light of the recent announcement by Defence Minister Judith Collins that the government’s massive $9 billion outlay on new defence spending will offer our ...

As the economists conclude, the nation’s plumbing isn’t on track to be fixed any time soon. On the current settings, the government’s underlying revenue less expenses (aka OBEGAL) will be in deficit ...

Too bad its easier said than done, and the ingenuity with which some kids will circumvent such a ban – by say, accessing a VPN – may be the least of the problems. Surprisingly little comment has been ...

Sickness doesn’t work part-time, which is one of the design flaws in the government plans to amend the Holidays Act. Once the revamped Employment Leave Act has gone through select committee vetting ...

No bread, all circuses. Allegedly, the cupboard is bare when it comes to putting extra money on the table to offer nurses, teachers and junior doctors the wages (and staffing relief) that they deserve ...

As the old saying goes, “With your eyes, you enter the world. But with your ears, the world enters you.” This may explain why hearing the familiar cadences of certain politicians on the radio can ...

For people blessed with privilege, their head start becomes so normalised that the advantages of wealth, better education, good housing, better healthcare, white skin and maleness are invisible to ...

In the shadow of the Holocaust at the end of WWII, the world passed a raft of United Nations/Geneva conventions to ensure that states could “never again” inflict such horrors on a racially defined ...

It’s the politics making me ill. I hope that I don’t need to tell You the efforts we make to compel Some sensible folk to get into the tent Of that bastion of privilege – the government. For instance, ...

In the context of yesterday’s teachers strike, Judith Collins claimed that teachers with ten years of experience “can” (not “do”) earn $147,000 a year. In reality though, teachers have to pay their ...

These are the perennial political questions that every incumbent government has to face. Do people feel better/wealthier/more secure now than they were three years ago? Not much, it seems. In last ...