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Gordon Campbell - Latest News [Page 31]
On Labour Refusing To Lead A Progressive Drugs Policy
Tuesday, 13 April 2021, 10:20 am | Gordon Campbell
Once again, Labour has chosen not to use (a) its parliamentary majority and (b) the huge mandate it was given at the last election in order to (c) bring about progressive social change. Once again, Labour seems to regard its main purpose for being in power ... More >>
On Why Raising Corporate Taxes Has Become A Hot New Political Cause
Friday, 9 April 2021, 10:40 am | Gordon Campbell
Surprisingly, “raising taxes” has become a very fashionable political idea in 2021. That’s right. After decades of being seen (at best) as a necessary evil, higher corporate taxes are now being treated as the Great Good Thing that will revive ... More >>
On Bubble Economics, And The New Pro-gun, Pro-hunting Firearms Panel
Wednesday, 7 April 2021, 11:10 am | Gordon Campbell
The travel bubble with Australia will throw a lifeline to tourism operators, who have first-hand experience that thrifty domestic tourists are no real substitute for the free spending visitors from offshore. According to the Global Data research ... More >>
On How The Tourism Industry Pressured The Government To Create The Travel Bubble
Tuesday, 6 April 2021, 12:18 pm | Gordon Campbell
Today is when the fate (and date) of the trans-Tasman travel bubble will be announced by PM Jacinda Ardern and -already– Opposition leader Judith Colins has been demanding that the bubble needs to be put in place this week, or else. How come, Collins complained ... More >>
On The Battle To Bring Some Humanity Into Amazon’s Work Practices
Wednesday, 31 March 2021, 10:07 am | Gordon Campbell
Whenever we use Amazon for online shopping delivery, we should feel guilty. The company’s labour practices are notoriously unsafe. Shop floor employees in Amazon warehouses are required to work punishing ten to 12 hour shifts that routinely require ... More >>
On Why China’s Pact With Iran Is A Big Deal, And Why A Vaccination Target Isn’t
Monday, 29 March 2021, 12:12 pm | Gordon Campbell
One of the most significant developments in global politics in a generation has flown in almost entirely beneath the radar of the Western media. On Saturday, Iran and China officially signed a 25 year, $400 billion co-operation pact. As one expert ... More >>
On Labour’s Less Than Radical Housing Package
Friday, 26 March 2021, 10:27 am | Gordon Campbell
Houses are now like Bitcoin with a street address, a speculative currency priced beyond the reach of ordinary humans. The public is not impressed. Don’t tell Judith Collins, but the polls indicate that more Kiwis would support a meaningful capital ... More >>
On Why Emirates Team New Zealand Is A Really, Really Bad Look
Wednesday, 24 March 2021, 10:27 am | Gordon Campbell
Now that the patriotic frenzy has died down, maybe we should all look in the mirror and reconsider the implications of our America’s Cup victory being won by a team called “Emirates Team New Zealand”? It would not be xenophobic to do so. Arguably, ... More >>
On Why Re-defining “Terrorism” Won’t Make Us Any Safer
Monday, 22 March 2021, 11:59 am | Gordon Campbell
All very well to talk about “modernising” our terrorism legislation (hey, it was written back in 2002 in the wake of 9/11) in order to target violent white nationalist groups. True enough, our current list of designated terrorist organisations does ... More >>
On Abortion Safe Access Zones, And The Need For The Police And SIS To Go Open Source
Thursday, 18 March 2021, 11:33 am | Gordon Campbell
Yesterday, the abortion law reform organisation ALRANZ celebrated 50 years of existence since its founding AGM in 1971 – and in marking the anniversary , former president Dame Margaret Sparrow noted how much had changed “and how long it took to change ... More >>
On The Myanmar Coup And The Immense, Enduring Success Of BTS
Tuesday, 16 March 2021, 12:05 pm | Gordon Campbell
During yesterday’s protests in Myanmar over 50 demonstrators were shot dead, one police officer died, and several Chinese owned factories were set on fire. Among other things, this escalation marked a tactical shift by the democracy movement. ... More >>
Gordon Campbell On The Pope’s Visit To Iraq
Monday, 15 March 2021, 10:17 am | Gordon Campbell
As an exercise in global symbolic politics, it would be hard to top last week’s meeting in Iraq between Pope Francis and the most respected cleric in Shia Islam, the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. Both men have strong liberal credentials. Francis ... More >>
On Why We’ll Need Three Doses Of The Pfizer Vaccine – And On Rocket Lab’s Work For The Pentagon
Thursday, 11 March 2021, 10:07 am | Gordon Campbell
Yesterday, the government finally released a four part timetable setting out which groups will get vaccinated with the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine and in what sequence …And yes, it did look very much like the four part plan that Australia announced ... More >>
On Some Of The Moral Objections Being Levelled At Covid Vaccines
Tuesday, 9 March 2021, 10:46 am | Gordon Campbell
Quite the switch. Barely three months ago, the government was priding itself on cannily spreading its vaccine bets between Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Novovaxx and the Johnson and Johnson vaccine being produced by its subsidiary, Janssen. It had seemed ... More >>
On Australia's Superior Ways Of Communicating About Its Vaccine Rollout
Thursday, 4 March 2021, 12:05 pm | Gordon Campbell
It isn’t only on the cricket field that Australia performs better. The clarity and degree of detail in Australian’s published schedule of the priorities for its vaccine rollout has been very impressive. Here for instance, is their initial “1a” ... More >>
On Why The Public Doesn’t Always Do What Its Told, Even In 24 Different Languages
Wednesday, 3 March 2021, 4:06 pm | Gordon Campbell
Today we were told that the Covid vaccines available to New Zealand are both halal and kosher. Good to know. And good to officially recognise that we’re no longer living in a monoculture. Reportedly, the government is putting its Covid messages ... More >>
On Who Decides On The Priority List For Covid Vaccines
Tuesday, 2 March 2021, 11:26 am | Gordon Campbell
During the past week, the nation has gone through a range of mixed feelings about south Auckland. Understandably, there’s been a hankering in some quarters to punish a few of the rule breakers who plunged all of Auckland back into lockdown…Yet alongside ... More >>
On The Rivals For The Covid Saliva Testing Dollar
Friday, 26 February 2021, 1:59 pm | Gordon Campbell
As the cliché goes, every crisis is an opportunity. The pandemic seems no exception. To be clear though: at any time, it is quite OK to make money from working in, with or on behalf of the public health system. It is also OK to be making money after ... More >>
On Labour’s Fudging On Child Poverty, And America’s Diplomatic Dance With Iran
Wednesday, 24 February 2021, 10:21 am | Gordon Campbell
If you want a good insight into what the limits of tiny, barely discernible steps to reduce poverty actually look like, delve into the latest Statistics Department figures on poverty in New Zealand Most of the nine measures utilised reveal little ... More >>
On Australia’s Attempt To Demonise Facebook
Monday, 22 February 2021, 12:43 pm | Gordon Campbell
It is a free country. Feel free to treat the battle between Australia and Facebook as a case of Facebook using its immense power to bully a sovereign nation, and as prime evidence for why Mark Zuckerberg needs to be taken down a peg. That’s certainly ... More >>
