The prime minister has responded to the allegations made in a Spinoff story this morning, saying she’s expressed ‘complete dissatisfaction’ with the Labour Party investigation. The prime minister and leader of the Labour Party, Jacinda Ardern, has this afternoon responded to questions relating to allegations of sexual assault by a Labour staffer, and the controversial … Read more
Opinion: in a feature published today on The Spinoff, a Young Labour volunteer detailed a traumatic sexual assault she alleges was committed by an influential Labour staffer. It marks the second time in two years that the party has badly let down its most vulnerable. Read The Spinoff’s reporting on the alleged sexual assault within … Read more
A woman who says she was subject of a sustained sexual assault by a Labour staffer has for the first time described the harrowing events and the botched internal investigation which followed. Alex Casey reports. Content warning: This feature contains distressing descriptions of sexual assault, along with its mental health implications, which may be triggering … Read more
Heavy-handed regulation of the vaping industry will only help Big Tobacco, argues economist Jenesa Jeram. E-cigarette regulations are on the horizon to deal with the vaping Wild West, an industry landscape with no legislation or enforcement. For a long time, the lack of regulation didn’t really matter. The vaping industry has managed to get along … Read more
The government has just published its plan to halt the degradation of waterways and restore the health of freshwater over a generation. But one group says it ‘throws farming under the tractor’. What’s this then? David Parker, the environment minister, has just announced government plans for waterways. “Our rivers, lakes and wetlands are under serious … Read more
OPINION: In the third part of a new series with our partners at Flick Electric Co. to help you make better energy choices, Flick’s Nikki Cockburn explains what goes into power bill. Power bills. Ugh. Like throwing a lump of cash money to the wind, right? But if you know a little about what you’re … Read more
Jacinda Ardern needs to make an urgent plea for UN monitors to go the West Papua immediately. Let us not again wait to speak out only to uncover the horrors later, writes Maire Leadbeater The uprising that is engulfing Indonesian ruled West Papua has lifted the lid on a deep strand of indigenous anger and … Read more
Almost two years on, the coalition government’s flagship KiwiBuild programme has been given a ‘reset’, with the big 100,000 target – and all the targets along the way – thrown in the bin. What just happened? Megan Woods has pressed a reset button, detonating a controlled explosion beneath the government’s big KiwiBuild housing programme. The … Read more
Tests on citizenship are very revealing about our ideas of ‘national identity’, writes NZ-British human mashup Elle Hunt. I’d come across a sample “Life in the UK” quiz online – 24 questions on the culture and heritage of the British isles, of the kind posed as part of the application process for citizenship – and idly … Read more
Last week saw the publication of the new Child and Youth Wellbeing Strategy, on which the future of New Zealand quite literally depends, writes Claire Achmad of Barnardos. Something that has never happened before for children and young people in this country happened last week. Behind the school lunches policy (which you probably heard a … Read more
The prime minister of Britain neatly fits the description of a ‘sneaky fucker’, writes Tony Burton Boris Johnson is a sneaky fucker. I mean that in the technical sense. The term is attributed to evolutionary biologist John Maynard Smith to describe the male deer who trick their way into the dominant male’s harem rather than … Read more
Some simple could bring radical impacts, write Peter McKenzie and Thomas Gregory authors of a new paper on civilian casualties in overseas conflict for the New Zealand Alternative On 30 May 2006, Nabiha Jassim was shot and killed as her brother drove her through the streets of the Iraqi city of Samarra. Nabiha had gone … Read more
A mystery donation to National has people asking how secure our electoral system is from corrupt foreign actors. Law expert Andrew Geddis explains what’s at stake. Following some damn fine newspapering by Matt Nippert, a $150,000 donation given in 2017 to National from the Chinese billionaire owned “Inner Mongolia Rider Horse Industry (NZ) Ltd” is … Read more
Absolute scenes are unfolding in UK right now, with PM Boris Johnson getting an agreement from the Queen to suspend parliament. As you might imagine, it’s all about getting Brexit over the line. Alex Braae has a cheat sheet explaining all. Wait, he can do that? Yes, PM Boris Johnson does have the right to … Read more
When is being unemployed not unemployed? A true measure would show more teens are without jobs than people who have supposedly ‘retired’, writes former Treasury senior staffer Tony Burton. Many New Zealanders feel government is not meeting the needs of the long-term unemployed. Who counts as unemployed remains an issue: A third of your taxes … Read more
The government’s plan to avoid another ‘fiscal hole’ fiasco has an unlikely fan: the chief economist of the corporate think tank New Zealand Initiative. Eric Crampton explains what else it could do. Have you ever driven past one of those stores that mostly sells blinds but calls itself ‘Not Just Blinds’ and wondered whether they … Read more
Over the course of the local elections period, The Spinoff will be publishing primers on some of the most interesting races around the country. Today, Alex Braae casts his eyes over the Otago Regional Council contest. The Spinoff local election coverage is made possible thanks to The Spinoff Members. For more about becoming a member and supporting The Spinoff’s … Read more
New Zealand is one of only two developed countries, along with the US, that permits direct-to-consumer advertising of prescription medicines, and it needs to stop, writes Dr David Menkes. It’s been a long time coming: a new Consumer report makes it clear that most New Zealanders want to see a ban on the direct-to-consumer advertising … Read more
The three governing parties are turning their attention to next year’s general election. RNZ‘s Jo Moir surveys the field. The night New Zealand First formed a government with Labour and the Greens, its leader Winston Peters quoted the song “You Can’t Always Get What You Want”. Almost two years later all three parties still have … Read more
Participating in some of New Zealand’s local government elections can be a challenge, thanks to their unusual voting methodologies and heavy use of ‘the postal system’. Thankfully your friends at The Spinoff are here to hold your hand every step of the way, from enrollment (do it now!) through to voting in an STV system. … Read more
The review of the 2018 census backs up his experience that Statistics New Zealand is a monster with a small but distant brain, argues Tony Burton, a former senior official at Treasury After the 2011 Canterbury earthquake Statistics New Zealand’s Christchurch office was red stickered, declared too dangerous to enter. This may not sound important … Read more
While awaiting trial for the murder of 51 Muslims in Christchurch, the man responsible for the March 15 terror attack has been permitted to send a hate-filled letter to far-right sympathisers. Does Corrections really not understand the potential for serious harm, internationally, if they fail to do their job to highest standards, asks Anjum Rahman. … Read more
The National leader says census data is so ropey we should halt the redrawing of electorate boundaries. Down that path lies a dangerous world of ‘alternative facts’, writes Andrew Geddis Let’s be clear – the 2018 census turned out to be a good, old-fashioned omnishambles. The just released report of an independent review into the … Read more
An independent review into the data shortfall in the first digital-driven census has seen the government statistician fall on her Y-axis, accepting the serious failures identified What just happened? Liz MacPherson, the chief executive of Stats NZ and official government statistician, announced that she would resign those roles at the end of the year, following … Read more
The Opportunities Party’s new leaders have firmed up control of the party after a weekend of sweeping organisational reforms. But are the chances of this TOP any better than the last one? Alex Braae heads to the party conference to find out. When the reborn Opportunities Party gathered for a conference on Saturday at the … Read more
There is a glimmer of positivity, bit I am saddened that to gain it we have had to enact ineffective ‘get tough’ measures instead of being truly transformative, writes Fiona Hutton The Misuse of Drugs Amendment Bill has passed its final reading and will come into law in the near future. More than anything, I … Read more
Yesterday the NZ parliament passed the Abortion Legislation Bill by 94 to 23 in a conscience vote. Below, a selection of abridged speeches from the first reading Andrew Little (Labour) Around 13,200 abortions are carried out in New Zealand each year under our current law. Under that law, when a woman seeks an abortion, she … Read more
John Sato, a 95-year-old World War Two veteran, made international headlines when he took four buses to join an anti-racism march in central Auckland after the March 2019 Christchurch mosque attacks. This is his story. My name is John Edward Henry Sato. I am 95 years old. What brought me here? Well, they tell me it … Read more
A ‘health based’ approach to drug enforcement is one step closer to being written into law after the third reading of the Misuse of Drugs Act Amendment Bill. Don Rowe reports. The Misuse of Drugs Act Amendment bill has passed its third reading tonight in what MPs and harm reduction advocates are calling the most … Read more