The political logic behind National’s proposed GCSB reforms.
This weekend there will be national protests against the National government bills amending the 2003 GCSB and 2004 TICS Acts. Although the protests have garnered broad support across the political...
View ArticleCrossing: the flaw
This evening the GCSB Amendment Bill passed its third reading in Parliament, 61-59, despite a desperate last-minute campaign to persuade selected government MPs to cross the floor and vote against the...
View ArticleBowed but not Beaten: A Reply to Chris Trotter’s rejoinder to “Nothing Left.”
The post on the death of the NZ political Left has elicited a fair bit of commentary. That is good, because my purpose in writing it as a polemic was to foster debate about the internal weakness of the...
View ArticleForeign Policy after the Election.
Lost amid the distractions of royal visits, Mananet Party circus side-shows and assorted other peripheral issues has been the subject of NZ foreign policy after the September 2014 election. The topic...
View ArticleThe housing problem isn’t a housing problem; it’s a regional development problem
I have noted with growing despair the xenophobia which is becoming a political commonplace this election cycle. On the left it’s about house prices.* But this post is not about racism; it’s about...
View ArticleOn Resistance to Climate Change Politics
Yesterday the Green Party released its Climate Tax Cut policy proposal comprising, mostly, a carbon tax offset by an income-tax-free threshold for individuals and a decrease in the company tax rate....
View ArticleThe hazards of MMP
David Cunliffe’s apparently-rash pledge to scrap the coat-tail rule that permits a party with less than 5% of the party vote to bring in additional MPs as long as it wins an electorate within 100 days...
View ArticleMongrel renegades, castaways, and cannibals
So Herman Melville described the crew of the Pequod. While it probably seems tendentious to equate them to the Internet MANA party, that seems to be how Kim Dotcom, at least, regards himself — as...
View ArticleDoubloons
Phil Sage in comments to my previous post about Internet MANA observes that “The question is whether Kim Dotcom’s money will translate into poll support and votes.” I have no knowledge of what’s going...
View ArticleWhat is success for Internet MANA?
In the previous two posts I’ve covered the strategic rationales behind the Internet MANA alliance, and how, even if they spend their money very inefficiently, they are still very likely to gain a...
View ArticleCulture, strategy and an end to the phony war
It is a truth universally acknowledged that, in business and elsewhere, culture eats strategy for lunch. Nicky Hager’s latest book Dirty Politics (which I haven’t read, but here’s Danyl’s summary)...
View ArticleReality-adjacent
John Key and David Cunliffe both spent much of the election campaign talking about the dreaded “things that New Zealanders really care about”. But Key, under direct attack, was much more disciplined...
View ArticleBig Vehicle
The matters I discussed in the previous post to do with reality-adjacent campaigning are about targeting voters with messages they can grok about issues they care about. But empiricism is not much good...
View ArticleSo much for intelligence community reform.
It turns out that nearly 5 months after getting re-elected, the government has decided on the composition of the Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC). Besides himself as Chair of the ISC, the...
View ArticleMedia Link: Political Risk and Sustainable Enterprise.
I was invited by the nice folk at sustainnews.co.nz to contribute a short essay related to sustainable economics from my perspective as a geopolitical and strategic analysis consultant. The essay wound...
View ArticleStill think it is all about postmodern identity?
Long term readers may recall something I wrote a few years ago about the issue of Left praxis and the need for a class line above all other strategic perspectives. That post was done in part because of...
View ArticleFrom watermelons to algae.
For the first time since 2002 I will not be giving my party vote to the Green Party. Nor will I give my electorate vote (in Helensville) to its candidate. The rush to privilege personality over...
View ArticleA walking Tui ad?
The election turned out OK as far as I am concerned. My decision to support Labour after years of supporting the Greens seems to have paid off as they are now leading the new government. The Greens...
View ArticleDo the Greens have a candidate vetting problem?
12 weeks after the election the Green Party’s 14th ranked candidate in 2017 opts out of politics and joins a morning television program. Shortly after the election it is discovered that one of their...
View ArticlePebbles under the mattress.
The structure of capitalism can be likened to that of a bed. The productive apparatus serves as the bed frame. Although there is plenty of variance to the exact configuration of the frame, its...
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