Category: Democracy

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PM Speech at Ratana

The Government will honour the Treaty. But unlike the Labour government, we will honour it without moving away from equal voting rights, without creating complex co-governance bodies and bureaucracies in Wellington to decide how central services should be delivered in the regions, and we will honour it while upholding the equality of all New Zealanders before the law.


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2024 – a Year of Reckoning

The Coalition needs to remember that they have been delivered a strong mandate to reset the country and get us back on track. That means ignoring the pleadings of noisy vested interests and standing firm to deliver on the promises they made at the 2023 election.


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A Time and Tide

There is now reason to be optimistic that our political institutions can return to implementing the policies upon which they were voted to office, and it will be our first truly MMP government which will make that possible.


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Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

On behalf of the New Zealand Centre for Political Research I would like to wish you and your family a very Merry Christmas and a happy and healthy New Year!


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Regime Change

This plan for tribal control, which was to dominate the agenda of the new government, had been deliberately kept hidden from voters during the election. Labour feared a backlash that would have cost them votes if the public found out.


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Time to Act!

We have now had a glimpse of where we have been heading, we know what co-governance looks like and we know where it will take us if the agenda that under-pins it is not brought to an end.


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Coalition Deals

We are witnessing a remarkable turnaround in New Zealand politics. The Coalition agreement entered into by National, ACT and New Zealand First reflects the first three-party coalition deal in our country’s history. Democracy can be seen to have prevailed, with MMP delivering what a majority of New Zealanders want.


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1.5°C - An Unethical Aspiration

80,000 delegates and 5,000 journalists are winging their way to Dubai from all corners of the world (including thousands in their personal jets) for COP28 of the UN’s FCCC. Their earnestly stated objective is to stop the world from warming by as much as 1.5° C above the levels of 1850. Yet they know this is a lie. They know it is unethical.


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Aspirational Reform

The problem we face is that few political leaders have the vision or courage to introduce transformational reforms that will genuinely empower New Zealanders to build a brighter future for themselves and their families.


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Why a Lack of Imagination and Courage Threatens Our Future

The Ardern government, like the Key and Clark governments before them, tried to tax the nation to prosperity. The principal outcome being to cut productivity growth in the same way it has in the past.