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Gordon Campbell - Latest News [Page 36]
On Judith Collins’ Apparent Inability To Read The Public Mood
Thursday, 13 August 2020, 11:51 am | Gordon Campbell
The basic skill that a successful politician needs is the ability to “read the room” and gauge the public mood. If National Party leader Judith Collins ever possessed that ability, it seems to have deserted her of late. Surely, very, very few of the ... More >>
On The New Lockdowns, Leadership And Lebanon
Wednesday, 12 August 2020, 11:52 am | Gordon Campbell
As Melbourne has shown, the webs of urban life overlap so extensively that community transmission can be very hard to trace, let alone control. Each of the family members in the South Auckland family at the centre of the current outbreak will have had ... More >>
On Why The Supreme Court Is A Bigger Threat Than Trump To US Democracy
Monday, 10 August 2020, 12:08 pm | Gordon Campbell
If you need a chilling reminder of how weirdly different the United States is to New Zealand…then abortion rights is the place to start. Last Friday, in a case called Hopkins vs Jegley , the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the right of the ... More >>
On Political Twins, And On Labour Extending Its Wage Subsidy Scheme
Friday, 7 August 2020, 11:45 am | Gordon Campbell
A quick quiz for the weekend. Which political party currently represented in Parliament issued a press release yesterday that contained these stirring passages: “[We have] long supported a free trade and free movement area between Canada, Australia, New ... More >>
On The Problems The Pandemic Is Causing For Big Oil
Wednesday, 5 August 2020, 9:44 am | Gordon Campbell
Chances are, climate change won’t kill you overnight, and that’s got to be significant. Yet while we were all in lockdown listening to the birdsong, it was hard to avoid the conclusion that if governments can up-end the economy for an unexpected reason ... More >>
On The Virtues (and Fluffed Opportunities) Of The Operation Burnham Report
Monday, 3 August 2020, 1:27 pm | Gordon Campbell
One unspoken rule of thumb in any official public inquiry is : whatever you do, don’t conclude you were made to listen to “a litany of lies” even if the evidence of a deliberate cover-up is right there under your nose. In that respect, the report ... More >>
On Showing The Aussies How To Reach A Consensus On Quarantine Fees
Thursday, 30 July 2020, 11:19 am | Gordon Campbell
Back at the dawn of time, MMP was created (a) to impose a discipline on government and (b) to prevent any one party from riding roughshod over everyone else, the public included. In essence, this is exactly what has happened in the dispute over quarantine ... More >>
On The Greens' Attempts To Look Like Underdogs
Tuesday, 28 July 2020, 11:02 am | Gordon Campbell
The Green's opposition to homecoming New Zealanders being required to pay about $3,000 towards the cost of their two week Covid-19 quarantine, needs to be seen in the context of the wider battle being waged on the centre-left for the overseas vote. ... More >>
On Using The Army To Soak Up The Covid Unemployed
Monday, 27 July 2020, 10:18 am | Gordon Campbell
Once the government’s wage subsidies run out and the Covid job losses really kick in, there could – conceivably – be a role for the armed forces in soaking up some of the unemployed, especially among Māori. Here, and in other countries, the ... More >>
On Who Really Deserves Sympathy When Stress Makes People Behave Badly
Thursday, 23 July 2020, 10:37 am | Gordon Campbell
Sex always makes people sit up and pay attention to what‘s on the news bulletins. The political circus aside…. Power (not sex) has really been the central element in the scandals that have ended the political careers of Iain Lees- Galloway and ... More >>
On Why High Taxes And Austerity Shouldn’t Ruin The Covid Recovery
Tuesday, 21 July 2020, 9:37 am | Gordon Campbell
Even before you factor in the tendency of National’s caucus to self-implode , Judith Collins should have her work cut out. Somehow, she has to convince the voting public that the world’s most effectively managed response to the Covid-19 crisis ... More >>
On The Mainstream Media’s Romance With Judith Collins
Friday, 17 July 2020, 9:31 am | Gordon Campbell
Crikey. It feels like the media and Judith Collins should just get a room and be done with it. Such has been the commentariat’s love affair with National’s new leader – she’s a “warrior queen” according to one take - that Collins would ... More >>
On National’s Great Leap Backwards
Wednesday, 15 July 2020, 12:10 pm | Gordon Campbell
It isn’t surprising that at the height of its disarray, National should have looked for certainty and picked the least introspective candidate on offer. With Judith Collins, there is absolutely no risk that the leader will suddenly have an angst More >>
On The Todd Muller Resignation
Tuesday, 14 July 2020, 11:24 am | Gordon Campbell
Given the factions within National’s own caucus, anyone picked as the new leader of the National Party will struggle to unify their own troops, let alone to convince the electorate that National is a coherent government-in-waiting. Even all of that ... More >>
On Why Todd Muller Needs To Own The Privacy Leak Scandal
Thursday, 9 July 2020, 11:29 am | Gordon Campbell
Whenever a political scandal breaks, party leaders have two basic options. They can confess to being in boots and all, and try to brazen it out : nothing to see here, move on. This tended to be the John Key approach. Very hard to pull that off ... More >>
On Why We Shouldn’t Be Pushed Into Re-opening Our Borders
Tuesday, 7 July 2020, 2:06 pm | Gordon Campbell
I believe in yesterday as much as Paul McCartney, but it was bemusing to see the amount of media attention lavished last week on the pandemic-related musings by former government science adviser Sir Peter Gluckman, former Prime Minister Helen Clark ... More >>
On The Clark Exit, Convention Centres, And The Killing Of Hachalu Hundessa
Friday, 3 July 2020, 11:30 am | Gordon Campbell
Goodbye, David Clark. In the end, the outgoing Health Minister decided that in the midst of a pandemic the best thing he could do for New Zealand would be to no longer be there – given that being there had involved hiving off on his mountain bike ... More >>
On Why Attack Isn’t Our Best Means Of Cyber-Defence
Wednesday, 1 July 2020, 10:15 am | Gordon Campbell
This morning’s news that the SIS engaged in attacks on the Indian High Commission and Embassy of Iran during the late 1980s/early 1990s should come as no surprise. Down the years, there’s been an Orwellian tendency to depict the role of our spy ... More >>
On The Opaque Workings Of The Royal Commission Into The Mosque Shootings
Monday, 29 June 2020, 11:34 am | Gordon Campbell
As we heard on RNZ this morning, the Moslem community is looking to the Royal Commission of Inquiry Into The Attacks on Christchurch Mosques for answers about the motives of the shooter. And also about and the adequacy of the security services and Police ... More >>
On The Media Collusion With National’s Attack Lines
Friday, 26 June 2020, 10:59 am | Gordon Campbell
For most of the past week, any consumer of this country’s management of Covid-19 would think New Zealand was actually Brazil, or Texas. The media language has been full of claims of “botches” at the border, and laxness and inexcusable errors ... More >>
