Too much coffee with Andrew Little

Posted 10:55am Sunday 1st May 2016 by Joel MacManus

Andrew Little, current Leader of the Opposition stares at the gigantic mug of cappuccino in front of him, “Actually… Yeah, I think this is number five today”. I try to restrict it to two or three cups a day. Maybe four. In a recess week you’re meeting with a lot of Read more...

Alarm bells: What ever happened in Burundi?

Posted 10:53am Sunday 24th April 2016 by George Elliott

It is almost a year since the small landlocked nation of Burundi, in the African Great Lakes region, burst into the world headlines. Experts and commentators feared a repeat of the 1994 ethnic genocide next door in Rwanda when between half a million and a million people were slaughtered. The current Read more...

Latest Poll: National Rises, Labour Fails BSNS103

Posted 10:50am Sunday 24th April 2016 by Joel MacManus

In the new One News-Colmar Brunton poll, Labour fell by two points to 28% while National rose three to a new high of 50%, and leader Andrew Little took a painful slide in the preferred Prime Minister rankings to 7%, coming in third behind Winston Peters. In an attempt to explain this, I refer to Read more...

Green Party: A Tale Of Two Leaders With Two Directions

Posted 10:40am Sunday 17th April 2016 by Henry Napier

The Green Party’s co-leadership structure provides the most accurate metaphor for the party itself. The Party has two leaders, Metiria Turei and James Shaw, each representative of two directions the party is taking going forward: The petty, outdated, overly-stringent projection of a moral high Read more...

Clark Eyes Top Job

Posted 10:48am Sunday 17th April 2016 by Joel MacManus

When Helen Clark announced her historic campaign for the United Nations Secretary-General last Monday, it was met with near universal acclaim from New Zealand media and political figures, who simply could not praise her enough, even if some of it was a little backhanded – Former opponent Don Read more...

Following The Karadzic Verdict, It’s Time For A Tribunal On Syria

Posted 10:48am Sunday 10th April 2016 by George Elliott

More than two decades after the deadly siege of Sarajevo and the massacre of some 8,000 Muslims in Srebrenica, a United Nations tribunal in The Hague has convicted former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes committed during the 1992-1995 war in Read more...

What The Fuck Is Going On In America?

Posted 11:16am Sunday 3rd April 2016 by Joel MacManus

The US presidential election is the longest, most confusing, infuriating experiment in the history of democracy. But at the same time, it is also far and away the most entertaining. Over the course of almost 20 months, candidates go from shaking hands in the cornfields of Iowa, to packed arenas Read more...

Clark V. Woodhouse

Posted 11:30am Sunday 3rd April 2016 by David Clark

David Clark Right-wing Governments always scare-monger and say that raising the minimum wage causes job losses.  History tells us otherwise.   In fact, I hazard that there will be a Nobel Prize up for grabs for the economist that can demonstrate the real-world nature of the Read more...

Interview With Grant Robertson

Posted 11:35am Sunday 20th March 2016 by Joel MacManus

Labour Party Finance Spokesperson Grant Robertson bounds into the Critic office on a sunny O-Week Tuesday. While some of the staff may have been a bit dusty from the night before, Robertson is positively vibing. The source of that enthusiasm could be the natural rush of non-stop meetings Read more...

Critic’s Top 4

Posted 12:04pm Sunday 13th March 2016 by Joel MacManus

David Seymour After a strong 2015, David Seymour has almost certainly secured his personal future as MP for Epsom. 2016 posits a far greater challenge: Saving his party. After 7 years of relatively centrist government, there should be a market for a true Libertarian party among hard right-wing Read more...