Former New Zealand Prime Minister Mike Moore died this morning, a few days after his 71st birthday. Moore, New Zealand’s 34th prime minister, suffered a stroke in 2015 when he was New Zealand’s ambassador in Washington DC and had been in declining health in recent years. Jacinda Ardern paid tribute, saying, “The world lost a … Read more
RNZ’s Guyon Espiner investigates New Zealand’s central drug buyer Pharmac – how it works and whether its model is costing lives. In part one, he reveals how lung cancer patients are buying cut-price drugs from India, as other New Zealanders fundraise, petition and apply for clinical trials to access medications Pharmac won’t fund. Baden Ngan Kee … Read more
Five years after he joined Morning Report, Guyon Espiner explains why he’s leaving the show, and responds to criticisms of his use of te reo, and those interruptions. Originally published on RNZ After five years and 1000 shows I’m switching off the 4am alarm. This is my final week on Morning Report and I’d like to tell you … Read more
The question is: could another National MP do better, writes Guyon Espiner for RNZ Simon Bridges isn’t running out of luck. He never had luck. It’s his caucus that is running out, running out of reasons to keep him on. The job description for Leader of the Opposition has only one KPI. Actually, it’s a … Read more
Christchurch seemed like a place where nothing happened, writes Guyon Espiner for RNZ. Now, an offshore horror has wormed its way in – or perhaps it was here all along. If you dug a hole from Paris and kept on digging right through to the other side of the world you would end up in Christchurch. … Read more
Shane Jones is under pressure over a Provincial Growth Fund conflict of interest. He’s attempted to turn defence into attack with typical immodesty, even comparing himself to one of NZ’s top sportsmen and launching a bizarre ‘bunny boiler’ slur on a journalist, writes Guyon Espiner Shane Jones likened himself to Sonny Bill Williams on Morning Report this … Read more
It’s our job to be fair, went the old ad campaign from the IRD. It’s my job to be kind, goes the on brand message from the Prime Minister. So we’re heading for a kinder and fairer tax system then? Guyon Espiner, writing for RNZ, is skeptical. But when it comes to making changes to … Read more
For a government promising “a year of delivery”, Ardern’s team has begun in something of a defensive crouch, writes Guyon Espiner for RNZ Labour will count itself lucky the Newshub-Reid Research poll was held for nine days and released the night before MPs returned to parliament on Tuesday. The poll, completed on 2 February but … Read more
The RNZ columnist reviews the year, and lays out the challenges for the parties in 2019 This assessment may surprise you coming from someone who spends his professional life criticising and critiquing politicians: Over the past 20 years we have been among the best governed countries in the world. No, it’s not just the festive … Read more
When it comes to tension between the US and China, National and Labour are on the same side – the fence. Guyon Espiner examines a foreign policy that tries to have it both ways. We have the Five Eyes alliance with the US but have no free trade agreement with them. We have the FTA … Read more
The opposition’s problem is not Simon Bridges’ performance, it’s not the party losing faith and it’s not even a fallen MP raising merry hell, writes RNZ’s Guyon Espiner The salacious saga of Jami-Lee Ross has severely tested Simon Bridges over recent weeks. The Ross story is the political equivalent of a page-turning novel, but the … Read more
Housing was in the news this week, and there was a striking indication of where the Ardern-led government’s focus lies, writes Guyon Espiner of RNZ There were two big housing stories this week, two quite different approaches to them and one clear signal where the government’s focus lies. The first was a government generated “media … Read more
To have a hope of surviving the fallout from Jami-Lee Ross’s extraordinary attacks, a lot of things have to go right for the National leader – and they have to go right at the right time, writes RNZ’s Guyon Espiner For Simon Bridges, emerging unscathed from the Jami-Lee Ross saga is the political equivalent of … Read more
The prime minister faces a cluster of challenges from her coalition partner and from within her own party. As she heads for Nauru, Ardern needs to figure out what’s gone missing, writes Guyon Espiner of RNZ. Momentum, clarity and cohesion are essential check-in items for a happy travelling government but right now they are three items … Read more
If Andrew Little had forgotten how hard it will be to liberalise the criminal justice system, two colleagues reminded him on the very night he began his task, writes Guyon Espiner for RNZ The Criminal Justice Summit, which is to lay the foundations for an advisory group to then flesh out the government’s goal of … Read more
Business is saying move over, you’re on the wrong side of the road. The government is refusing to budge. Who is going to capitulate first in the ultimate confidence game, asks Guyon Espiner in his fortnightly column for RNZ. This has been rumbling along for a few months but has only just got serious. Until now … Read more
The difference between the New Zealand First vote and the Green vote at the election? Less than one percentage point. The leverage value for New Zealand First in those 25,000 extra votes? Priceless, writes Guyon Espiner for RNZ As the one year milestone since the election nears, the New Zealand First leader is nearing the … Read more
Monday’s announcement that the government would be spending billions on surveillance planes was in stark contrast to the nurses’ placards, writes Guyon Espiner for RNZ. It will be a great day when our schools get all the money they need and the air force has to hold a bake sale to buy a bomber’ – so goes the … Read more
The government says new data suggesting foreign buyers have a much larger role in the housing market than previously thought is “a vindication” of its foreign buyer ban. But that doesn’t mean the ban makes any sense, writes Guyon Espiner for RNZ. It’s a great bumper sticker. Ban foreign buyers! It’s simple, it resonates and … Read more
In just one day the number two in the government has deployed three of the weapons that have sustained him in politics over four decades, writes Guyon Espiner for RNZ. They are three of the life-long loves for Winston Peters: legal action, exercising the balance of power and the execution of perfect timing. On the … Read more
Labour’s inexplicable timidity risks turning the much-vaunted KiwiBuild policy into a damp squib, argues Guyon Espiner for RNZ. The most ambitious interventionist economic plan pursued by a New Zealand government was named after a race. Think Big won the Melbourne Cup twice in the mid-1970s, making quite an impression on Allan Highet, a long forgotten … Read more
The new finance minister was eager to burnish his fiscal responsibility credentials on his first outing. He has done that. But in doing so he has conjured up something like a neoliberal triumph, writes Guyon Espiner for RNZ It turns out you can’t judge a book by its colour, either. Labour’s first budget in nearly a … Read more
Māori voters overwhelmingly put their trust in Labour at the 2017 general election, so why are they missing from their policies? RNZ‘s Guyon Espiner investigates. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern spent five days at Waitangi and was photographed tending the BBQ after the dawn service. Social media swooned when she wore a kahu huruhuru to meet the Monarch – … Read more
Journalist, broadcaster and former member of the press gallery Guyon Espiner analyses New Zealand’s foreign policy, and how it must look to outsiders, in the first of a new fortnightly column for RNZ. To outsiders New Zealand foreign policy must look like a riddle wrapped in a mystery, perhaps clear only to the enigmatic deputy prime … Read more
This Te Wiki o Te Reo we’re sharing the stories of New Zealanders who have challenged themselves to learn te reo Māori. Today: RNZ Morning Report host Guyon Espiner writes about fighting the ‘whitelash’. When I started learning te reo Māori in earnest this year I had one main fear: humiliation. I expected that Pākeha … Read more
In the fifth and final part of The 9th Floor, Guyon Espiner talks to Helen Clark about her three terms in power as she sought to draw a line under Rogernomics, unleash new social reforms and rethink New Zealand’s place in the world. In an hour-long conversation, Clark, Labour PM from 1999 to 2008: Discusses the “turning … Read more
In the fourth of Guyon Espiner’s extended interviews with former prime ministers for RNZ, Jenny Shipley mounts a robust defence of the welfare reforms she oversaw as minister under Jim Bolger, assesses the strengths and weaknesses of Winston Peters, and points to sexism in political commentary. In the hour-long conversation, Shipley, who was PM from 1997 … Read more
In the third of Guyon Espiner’s extended interviews with former prime ministers for RNZ, Jim Bolger, who led the National Party to power in 1990 pledging to return the ‘decent society’ to New Zealand, criticises the prevailing economic orthodoxy, saying it has led to a dangerous gap between rich and poor. Bolger defends the record of Ruth Richardson, who as finance … Read more
For the second of RNZ’s ‘9th Floor’ series of interviews with ex-PMs, Guyon Espiner talks to Mike Moore about his short spell in the top job, getting rolled by Helen Clark, and his hopes and fears for Labour today – including some advice on the party’s leadership rules. Moore also rejects the idea that Roger Douglas’s … Read more