Chris Trotter

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Losing the Working Class

Almost accidentally, Labour discovered what it would take to make the working-class stop voting for it. Making those citizens feel as though they had, somehow, to justify their right to participate in shaping their nation’s future: that was the crucial catalyst for electoral defection.


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An Ugly Demonstration

Keen-Minshull’s rally was over before it had even begun – victim of the Thug’s Veto. Her right to free expression had been illegally and violently curtailed. Why, in the face of credible threats to her person, was police protection denied to Keen-Minshull and her followers?


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Parting Shots

What emerges over the next few days promises to be a master-class in the art of dismissing, diminishing and disparaging an individual who has had the temerity to breach the iron law of omerta which governs the practice of party politics.


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Can The State Pull The Lone Wolf Terrorist’s Teeth?

Punished, But Not Prevented: Though bitterly contested by those firmly convinced that the Christchurch Mosque Shootings represent something more than the crime of a Lone Wolf terrorist, the Royal Commission’s finding that no state agency could have prevented Brenton Tarrant from carrying out his deadly intent – except by chance – is correct.


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Taking Control Of The Nation's Story

What Maori nationalism seeks is a reversal of political fortunes: the creation of an Aotearoa-New Zealand in which Pakeha will no longer call the shots. A radical revision of New Zealand and, indeed, of global history, is crucial to achieving this political reversal.


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No Ordinary Bill

THE GOVERNMENT’S DECISION to rush through the remaining stages of the Marine Coastal Area Bill is as ill-considered as it is dangerous. For this is no ordinary piece of legislation, easily repealed by a newly-elected House of Representatives. It is a bill which confers upon Maori, by virtue of their indigeneity, a new kind of property right (Customary Title), along with a powerful new set of legal powers to enforce that right – powers which the legislation’s many critics believe will undermine the generally accepted principles of liberal democracy.