With election year just around the corner, it is only right and proper that the government should be being held to account on what it has failed to deliver. If the Luxon administration’s handling of ...

Labour is not of course, proposing to do any such thing. Its version of a CGT is not a property tax. Belatedly, long after the property boom has collapsed, Labour is proposing to tax the profits made ...

Finally, Labour has released its capital gains tax policy. Labour’s CGT would levy a 28% tax on sales of commercial properties and investment housing, and the $850 million it is expected to raise will ...

At what point does a Cabinet minister distorting the statistics on issues in their portfolio amount to a sackable offence? Earlier this week, Children’s Minister Karen Chhour was publicly celebrating ...

If something isn’t really broken, no wonder people feel suspicious when government promises to “fix” it to the potential benefit of corporate interests. In 2011, Parliament passed legislation that ...

When you wheel out Judith Collins as your weapon of last resort, you’ve already lost the battle for public opinion, and are pitching your messages solely to the party faithful. This week, unions are ...

The spectacular improvements in reading achievement announced by Education Minister Erica Stanford on Monday were almost too good to be true – so it isn’t surprising that the figures justifying those ...

Decades ago, Alexander Cockburn wrote a column pointing out that the true believers in the power and precision of the defence industry’s latest weaponry tend to be (a) their gullible government ...

Imagine your house has a plumbing problem. A plumbing firm tendering for the job assures you that hey, no problem they can fix it, so you hire them. Two years down the track they’ve actually made ...

If anyone under 35 still had mixed feelings about leaving New Zealand to build a future elsewhere, PM Christopher Luxon probably sealed the deal this week with his comments about the youth job market.

Young people have been going to the dogs ever since oh, 1912. The proposed social media ban for under 16 year olds (14 years is another age restriction being mooted) is but the latest attempt to ...