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Our wonderful NZ public health system
We were at our local Kura Reo this January, and I stayed onsite at Wairākewa with my three oldest children. I was woken at midnight in the hot, stuffy tupuna whare by a cough. Initially it intruded...
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Loving our enemies is how we can love Waitangi Day
With the approaching National Day of Flagellation, aka Waitangi Day, our media and politicians have gone into overdrive to ensure we are all well-prepared for the actual day with a dousing of cynicism,...
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Fighting ISIS & the troublingly “high price” of being family with the USA and...
On 24 May 1965, Keith Holyoake and his Cabinet formally committed to provide combat troops to the growing conflict in Vietnam. Though they had provided modest support up until this date, this was the...
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“Love… always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.” 15...
I was in Pak’n’Save this afternoon, saving money apparently whilst buying a range of essential household items. At the checkout a woman perhaps in her 50s was admiring the wedding and engagement rings...
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Replacing the cross with the dollar in youth work: the rise of capitalism in...
Youth workers are important. With rising inequality in our country exacerbating dysfunctionality in our communities and families, youth workers alongside social workers, therapists, community workers...
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The Copenhagen shootings & building the case for the inhumanity of Muslims
On Morning Report, the public service radio station here in Aotearoa New Zealand, sandwiched between faux outrage that Andrew Little, the leader of the Labour party, paid a bill late and real outrage...
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The lessons of Cyclone Pam: empathy and colonialism
“It came so fast and so unexpectedly, the ferocity of what happened … and the fact that it continued for quite a number of days and there was no respite from the floods.” “You’ve got to admire them,...
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Where the bloody hell are ya!? Evictions of aboriginal communities and the...
In September 2011, the 10 remaining residents of Oombulgurri were forcibly evicted. They had just two days notice and were allowed only one box of belongings each. They had to leave behind cars,...
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Burning down the house: how social housing could break NZ communities
Merivale in Tauranga, New Zealand has 22 streets. There are just under 900 houses in those streets. We have comparatively low levels of home ownership and high levels of absentee landlords. Over 200 of...
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Bede would turn in his grave: raising boys to worship money & power –...
When I was 12 or 13 years old, on occasion I used to ride the long way home from Casebrook Intermediate to Pāpānui via St Bede’s College. I would stop and gaze through the fences at the pristine school...
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Executing John Campbell & the dying art of being Pākehā #SaveCampbellLive
John Drinnan in the New Zealand Herald revealed Campbell Live is under threat of being scrapped by Mediaworks. The options paper presented to Campbell Live staff apparently included replacing the...
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Lest we remember: the jarring jingoism of the Iraq deployment on this Anzac Day
Like many of you, I imagine, the centenary of the invasion of Turkey at Gallipoli by the Anzacs including the New Zealand Expeditionary Force has piqued my interest in my own personal ancestral...
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Not in our name: remembering our World War I peacemakers this Anzac Day
Often the two World Wars are given as the final winning argument as to why non-violent resistance and pacifism is not a practical solution to conflict and stopping aggressors. The argument is simply...
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Would we take a softly, softly approach if Gloriavale was a Māori community?
Campbell Live’s activist journalism has thrown a spotlight on the West Coast Christian community of Gloriavale. Anchored by the courage of Julia to tell a tragic and painful story and followed by the...
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Council community development bureaucrats behead Tauranga Moana Safe City
[Disclosure Statement: These are my views, not those of Tauranga Moana Safe City. I have never worked for Tauranga Moana Safe City; however I worked on joint projects with Mike Mills when I was the...
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A home is not an asset: the flawed belief of the property investor in selling...
If the admiring New Zealand Herald coverage given to Brandon Lipman’s ascension to his own property investment portfolio is anything to go by, the New Zealand mythology of the right to home ownership,...
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The Politics of Love – Max Harris and Philip McKibbin
grahamcameron:Max Harris and Philip McKibbin’s rather wonderful ‘The Politics of Love’, in which they argue for a values-based politics informed by love. Given the failure of politics here and...
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Revenge of the Miffed: why Māori leaders are conspiring to end Native Affairs
About sixteen years ago in Wellington my wife and I were breakfasting with my parents and their friends. They had come to visit us and shouted us breakfast at their hotel. We had an inadvisable...
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Te Mātāwai: the most important change in te reo Māori in 25 years that you...
Consultation hui for the Māori Language (Te Reo Māori) Bill begins tomorrow in Kaitāia. Over the next 12 days they will be coming to a town near you. These consultation hui will be part of the thinking...
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We need to impose sanctions on Australia
Currently New Zealand abides by the UN Security Council sanctions imposed on Al Qaida and the Taliban, the Central African Republic, Cote d’Ivoire, North Korea, the Democratic Republic of the Congo,...
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