New Zealand

Kiwi Life

10 October 2020 9:00 am

Once upon a time here in New Zealand, when political dinosaurs still roamed the earth, Prime Minister Keith Holyoake startled…

Kiwi Life

3 October 2020 9:00 am

It’s true what they say about ill winds. The coronavirus pandemic was a perverse blessing for New Zealand Prime Minister…

Kiwi Life

26 September 2020 9:00 am

What has happened to the West, ignoring the lessons of history? Sweden, for example, long regarded as one of the…

Kiwi Life

22 August 2020 9:00 am

‘Trustworthy, accurate and reliable news stories are more important now than ever. Support our newsrooms by making a contribution.’How wonderfully…

Popper, the outsider

6 June 2020 9:00 am

New Zealand’s role in great philosophical thinking

Covid-19 and the creeping state

16 May 2020 9:00 am

Did the New Zealand government act illegally on lockdown laws?

The best New Zealand wine I’ve come across

16 May 2020 9:00 am

I was once invited to the Cheltenham races and found the experience underwhelming. Everything was too respectable: not nearly Hibernian…

Maori roadblocks

9 May 2020 9:00 am

Covid-19 unmasks the true separatist agenda

Disaster’s long march through the institutions

11 January 2020 9:00 am

Derelict thinking throughout central and local body government and indeed all our management (including academic) areas, is now recognised as…

Made-up Maori

19 October 2019 9:00 am

In what may seem a strange request, I recently replied to a government department asking to be addressed in English,…

Deserter dads

21 September 2019 9:00 am

Nearly everyone in New Zealand has been made to feel they could play a part in the forthcoming Royal Commission…

Jaded by Jacinda

24 August 2019 9:00 am

On a Pacific cruise ship recently, passengers were subjected to a rant by an Australian ‘comedian’ – a word now…

Privilege points to prejudice

6 July 2019 9:00 am

The other day I checked my points balance. I felt ashamed by how high it was, and wondered what I…

Black and white clouds over New Zealand

6 April 2019 9:00 am

The Christchurch mosque massacres of March 15 brought out the best and the worst in New Zealanders. The best was…

Christchurch – and saying goodbye to so much

30 March 2019 9:00 am

Our saddest times are when those we love leave us. When there is not even time to say goodbye, the…

Fake New Zealand

2 February 2019 9:00 am

That sleeping giant, the public, is waking up this side of the Tasman, but late to redress the reality that…

Wimmin’s notes

5 January 2019 9:00 am

Men aren’t doing it by themselves, either The recent triumphalist article by Speccie writer Declan Mansfield, ‘Sisters aren’t doing it…

The ‘soul canoe’ from New Guinea is a sculpture as powerful as any by Brancusi

Full of fabulous, but baffling, things: Oceania reviewed

13 October 2018 9:00 am

At six in the morning of 20 July 1888, Robert Louis Stevenson first set eyes on a Pacific Island. As…

Brash free speech

29 September 2018 9:00 am

It’s taken a while, but the speech wars have reached New Zealand – and an Australian is in the thick…

The bully boys and girls have gone too far

21 July 2018 9:00 am

On both sides of the Tasman, too many of our MPs haven’t listened to the brilliant black American academic, Thomas…

Kiwi notes

21 October 2017 9:00 am

Piggy’s prevaricating protégé Australians who like to poke fun at quaint, idiosyncratic New Zealand have, for once, got all the…

Split NZ

30 September 2017 9:00 am

The only thing that can be said with any certainty about the next New Zealand government is that it will…

Off the radar

14 May 2016 9:00 am

The gap between Australia’s and New Zealand’s defence capabilities is an embarrassment

Rebuilding phase: shipping-container shopping in Christchurch

Aftershocks and polo ponies in Christchurch, New Zealand

12 March 2016 9:00 am

On my first night in Christchurch, I woke at 3.32 a.m. to what felt like an explosion. My bed was…

Mavericks and ratbags threaten the NZ Nationals

30 August 2014 9:00 am

A coalition of cartoon-like characters and events could spell the end of John Key’s conservative government