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Gordon Campbell - Latest News [Page 98]
Gordon Campbell: nation gives plastic waka to Ngati Whatua
Wednesday, 6 April 2011, 9:28 am | Gordon Campbell
There’s a something wrong with putting the words ‘giant plastic’ and ‘authentic Maori culture’ in the same sentence, but almost everything about the plastic waka deal signed off by government sounds bizarrely wrong. To start with the obvious – ... More >>
Gordon Campbell: The new rules for Christchurch’s Recovery
Friday, 1 April 2011, 10:20 am | Gordon Campbell
Last year, Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Minister Gerry Brownlee was endowed with god-like powers to over-ride existing law by the legislation passed in response to the September quake. At the time, there was widespread concern about the unilateral ... More >>
Gordon Campbell on Earthquake Welfare and Libya
Tuesday, 29 March 2011, 10:09 am | Gordon Campbell
The decision to phase out the government’s support package for Christchurch business seems to have been plucked from the air within ministerial offices in Wellington, and not reached by any process of consultation with the businesses affected. The ... More >>
Gordon Campbell on the intervention in Libya
Friday, 25 March 2011, 11:24 am | Gordon Campbell
Was the intervention in Libya justified – and if so, does that mean the invasion of Iraq in 2003 was justified? The conditions laid down by the French for their participation in enforcing a no-fly zone over Libyan air space go some way to answering those questions. ... More >>
Gordon Campbell: Japan’s nuclear crisis, more welfare rumbli
Wednesday, 16 March 2011, 9:48 am | Gordon Campbell
The nuclear crisis in Japan is a textbook example of why government regulation is essential for public safety. According to this New York Times story, the design risks associated with the type of General Electric designed Mark 1 boiling water reactors ... More >>
Gordon Campbell on Pike River, shifting RWC games, Libya
Friday, 11 March 2011, 11:51 am | Gordon Campbell
Nearly four months after the Pike River disaster,> the mine’s unpaid contractors are still waiting for the promised government support package to be unveiled. The bills owed to local contractors when the mine exploded amounted to $7 million – ... More >>
Gordon Campbell on the Simon Power resignation
Friday, 4 March 2011, 10:19 am | Gordon Campbell
Reportedly, the decision by Justice Minister Simon Power to quit politics at the next election has stunned his party, and “flabbergasted” the Prime Minister. The event it most closely resembles is the decision by his friend and former colleague ... More >>
On Bill English’s politicizing earthquake response & the RWC
Wednesday, 2 March 2011, 10:28 am | Gordon Campbell
Much of the inspirational rhetoric surrounding the Christchurch earthquake has had a genuine “We’re all in this together” quality. Certainly, most of the political benefits the quake has delivered to the government have sprung from that same unity ... More >>
On New Zealand’s links with Muammar Ghaddafi
Friday, 25 February 2011, 11:04 am | Gordon Campbell
As Libya’s dictator Muammar Ghadaffi continues to murder and terrorise his people in an attempt to cling onto power, surely Education Minister Anne Tolley will sometime soon – but don’t hold your breath – move to annul the deal she signed with ... More >>
Gordon Campbell on the Welfare Working Group final report
Thursday, 24 February 2011, 10:39 am | Gordon Campbell
Bureaucrats and academics tend to enjoy playing God with the lives of the vulnerable – but evidently, even the Welfare Working Group members couldn’t agree on some of the loonier recommendations contained in their final report this week. Only ‘a ... More >>
Gordon Campbell on taxing purchases from Amazon, and Egypt
Friday, 18 February 2011, 10:03 am | Gordon Campbell
The current problems facing the retail book trade – and music stores – in New Zealand will increase the pressure on Revenue Minister Peter Dunne to impose a tougher tax collecting system on purchases made online. Currently only items worth $400 (or ... More >>
Gordon Campbell on the martyrdom of Hone Harawira
Tuesday, 8 February 2011, 12:37 pm | Gordon Campbell
The notion of a Maori Party suffering patiently for five years with an untrustworthy and disruptive Hone Harawira requires a rewrite of history that isn’t credible. Let's get it straight. The Maori Party wanted a genuine radical on the team. It recruited ... More >>
Gordon Campbell: ongoing saga of prisoners' right to vote
Monday, 7 February 2011, 9:55 am | Gordon Campbell
Last year, and despite the objections of its own Attorney-General, the Key government removed the right of all prisoners to vote. That puts us outside normal practice in most of the developed world. This week, Thomas Hammerberg, the European commissioner ... More >>
Gordon Campbell on the Winston Peters veto
Thursday, 3 February 2011, 10:04 am | Gordon Campbell
So if voters return Winston Peters in government, the National Party will not work with him in any governing coalition. Fair enough. It is up to any party to decide when co-operation with a rival would entail an intolerable compromise of its core ... More >>
Gordon Campbell on Mubarak’s divide and rule tactics
Wednesday, 2 February 2011, 9:46 am | Gordon Campbell
If regime change does eventually occur in Egypt, a truly representative government in Cairo would be less pro-American, and less likely to collude with Israel’s plans for the region. To take the most obvious example, a truly democratic Egypt would ... More >>
Gordon Campbell on John Key’s feeble response to Egypt
Tuesday, 1 February 2011, 10:26 am | Gordon Campbell
On Monday’s TVNZ’s Breakfast programme Key seemed to be regarding a nation’s stance towards Israel as being the basis of our foreign policy attitude towards them. That is the only conclusion that can be drawn from this bizarre exchange More >>
Gordon Campbell on the Govt’s lame response to Jafar Panahi
Monday, 31 January 2011, 10:57 am | Gordon Campbell
Down at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, there’s a reason why they use terms like “the cocktail circuit’ and “in diplomatic circles.” It is because so much of the art and process of diplomacy is circular in form. It involves moving around ... More >>
Gordon Campbell: Hone Harawira, & Jafar Panahi at the Oscars
Friday, 28 January 2011, 11:01 am | Gordon Campbell
None of the recommendations from yesterday’s hui in the Te Tai Tokerau electorate are likely to delight the Maori Party leadership, but the one that will irritate them the most is the call for Hone Harawira to be allowed to go on a nationwide tour ... More >>
Gordon Campbell on the plans for privatization
Thursday, 27 January 2011, 9:37 am | Gordon Campbell
Hard to see how opening the door to greater demands for higher profits from state energy companies will result in reduced power prices – or that “Mum and Dad” investors will be the real beneficiaries of the plans for partial privatization announced ... More >>
Gordon Campbell on the options facing Hone Harawira
Tuesday, 25 January 2011, 9:41 am | Gordon Campbell
Image Gordon Campbell interviews Hone Harawira In the immediate aftermath of the Cuban missile crisis in the 1960s, US Secretary of State Dean Rusk issued the famous (and famously scary) verdict : “We’re eyeball to eyeball, and I think the other ... More >>
