Amidst the free speech debate of recent weeks, there seemed to be some interesting flip-flops by those critical of Molyneux and Southern, but defensive of Brash. So what gives?
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Winning Winston
It’s time we stopped looking at Winston Peters through the spectacles the Rogernomes gave to us
Read More'Good' is a conversation... what NZ's weekend of division should teach us
Let's not remember the visit of Lauren Southern and Stefan Molyneux for the division and insults. That way, they win. Let's instead remember what we have in common and keep talking
Read More‘Business Opinion’ is falling. Does it matter?
What is the actual state of the economy?
Read MoreJacinda returns: Baby under one arm, political capital under the other. How will she spend it?
The coalition government has lost its way after the burst of policy in its first 100 days. So Jacinda Ardern's return this weekend signals a key moment in its life... and its path to 2020
Read MoreWhither Archives New Zealand and the National Library?
Proposals to change the unsatisfactory status of two vital heritage institutions are meeting strong resistance from their current host.
Read MoreMaking sense of the Winston (six week) era
Late on Thursday night Winston Peters will turn back into a minor party pumpkin... or, um, Foreign Minister. So how do we judge his rein as PM? The Winston weeks... the Peters period...How do we make sense of this political epoch?
Read MoreWhat Should the Government Be Doing?
I was asked to nominate ‘the three big things [the current government] should be tackling and is not’. Here is my answer.
Read MoreImbalanced Trade
Trump is going to war for the wrong reasons
Read MoreWho do we think we are? The free speech debate
Debating the rights and wrongs of rights starts with the acknowledgement there is no right and wrong... so where do you draw the line?
Read MoreWhat this Economist Has Learned From Brexit
The consequences of Britain leaving the EU have exposed the complexity of one country’s economic relations with its partners.
Read MoreFreedom of speech means what we want it to mean
In New Zealand, freedom of speech doesn't have to be, and currently isn't, exclusively concerned with preventing the state from punishing people for speech. Nevertheless, people sometimes claim that freedom of speech has to take on that narrow meaning.
Read MoreThe unnecessary martyrdom of Southern & Molyneux and the need to win the argument
The national debate over free speech is in many ways a sucker punch - "Squirrel!" - that has drawn our view away from the equally important job of winning the argument against the racist and ignorant views being expressed by the alt-right commentators
Read MoreSouthern and Molyneux: hard questions and no easy answers
As a society, must we let obnoxious provocateurs have a public stage? How do we decide when others must bear the burden of their speech?
Read MoreAre Loans Income?
The High Court recently decided that when the Ministry of Social Development calculates a social security beneficiary’s income any mortgage and credit cards loans she received were not income. Quite right, but it took a tortuous path to come to the right conclusion.
Read MoreTOP, we hardly knew ye
Want to understand why Gareth morgan's TOP didn't work? Take a look at the world of professional wrestling. AKA Too woke for talkback town, too talkback for woke town.
Read MoreIs Democracy in Retreat?
A Harvard academic explains why some kinds of democracy are becoming less popular.
Read MoreTo Wed or not to Wed.
Why are we not worried by an unmarried mother leading the country? Once we would have been.
Read MoreBad Statistics
Mike Hosking’s statistical ignorance is so extraordinary that one’s immediate reaction is that a description of it was satire; nobody could be as ill-informed as that – and certainly not a major public commentator.
Read MoreHow’s the Government Doing?
The term of the 52nd New Zealand Parliament is a quarter of the way through. We ought to be getting some impression of the government by now.
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