The Australian left will need to do a far better job of connecting with voters – and what they really care about – if they’re ever going to regain power, writes Australian political historian Geoffrey Robinson. The Australian election result was a triumph for the Coalition and a defeat for pundits. The result is even … Read more
Good morning, and welcome to The Bulletin. In today’s edition: Scott Morrison wins re-election in Australia, major boost in funding for sexual violence services, and stories around Alfred Ngaro party continue to swirl. Few saw it coming, but Australian PM Scott Morrison is set to win re-election against the odds. With some votes still to count, the … Read more
The Coalition win in Australia has dealt a blow to the hopes of more than 800 refugees stuck on Pacific Islands, writes RNZ Pacific’s Johnny Blades. Refugees in Australia’s offshore processing centres on Nauru and Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island had their hopes pinned on a Labor victory yesterday. Labor’s leader Bill Shorten had promised … Read more
All the polls pointed to a Labor win in Australia yesterday. That’s not what happened at all, writes Michelle Grattan. The Coalition has been re-elected in a shock result in which Labor lost seats in Queensland, Tasmania and NSW and failed to make more than minimal gains nationally. But former prime minister Tony Abbott has … Read more
It’s Scomo versus Shorten as Australians go the polls today, ending an all-pervading campaign. New Zealander Paul Davies has been watching it from his sofa Billboards have been defaced, eggs thrown and vile old Facebook posts dug up. It’s difficult to ignore the plethora of election coverage that has bombarded us over recent weeks – … Read more
Our old mates the Australians are going to the polls on Saturday. What should we watch out for over here? Alex Braae has a cheat sheet for all the Trans-Tasman political nerds out there. What’s all this then? New Zealanders, all let us rejoice, because one of the weirdest democracies in the world is about … Read more
Cricketer James Faulkner ‘came out’ on social media this week, except it all turned out to be a joke. Jack Cottrel responds. It must have been a surreal experience. One dumb in-joke and the next morning, you’ve come out as gay. Or not. Australian cricketer James Faulkner yesterday trotted out what, in context, is some … Read more
A month ago the ABC published an open letter to Jacinda Ardern from Summer Joyan, a 13-year-old Australian Muslim. Ardern replied personally. Here, Summer Joyan writes on the impact of the Christchurch attack, and the NZ prime minister’s response, in her country. I recently wrote an open letter to Jacinda Ardern. I wrote to her … Read more
Following a terrorist attack targeting NZ’s Muslim community, Scott Morrison has been keen to hug his NZ counterpart, and talked of a ‘bright stream of light to come from the darkness’. Until he overhauls Australia’s immigration and deportation policy, it’s nothing but platitude, writes Janet McAllister Ostensibly, the Aussies were there to support the Kiwis, … Read more
The Hague Convention on child abduction was drafted to deal with fathers abducting their children across borders after losing custody, but it’s applied mainly to mothers fleeing domestic violence, writes Gina Masterton. Fiona (not her real name) came to Australia from New Zealand as a 19-year-old backpacker. Here, she met a man, got married and had … Read more
In an attempt to unwind the country’s gun regulations, Australia’s version of the NRA knows that state governments are as good a place as any to start. One of the more noticeable ad campaigns in the upcoming Victoria state election comes from a seemingly unlikely source. The Shooting Industry Foundation of Australia (SIFA) seeks to … Read more
As the number of New Zealand citizens deported from Australia grows, so too does the death toll. Don Rowe reports on the rising human costs of Australia’s immigration reforms. This feature was made possible thanks to reader contributions via Spinoff Members. See here for more. In June 2017, at the Anchor Baptist Church in Lower … Read more
Jacinda Ardern flies to Nauru this week for the 49th Pacific Islands Forum, and the host nation is already making headlines way beyond the official agenda. Don Rowe explains Fifty years after it became the world’s smallest republic, Nauru plays host this week to the 49th Pacific Islands Forum amid international outrage over the treatment of … Read more
Why is Australian politics so poisonous? A lot of the blame can be laid at the feet of the right-wing media, which has given a megaphone to reactionary forces within the Liberal Party, writes the University of Melbourne’s Denis Muller. Note: This article was originally published on Thursday 23 August, before the second spill that … Read more
Good morning, and welcome to The Bulletin. In today’s edition: Something major is going down in Australia today, two stories of troubling inaction on sexual assault, and m. bovis fears at massive feedlot. In Australian politics today, something will happen. Sorry, I can’t really be any more specific than that, because the events of yesterday were so … Read more
Green MP Gareth Hughes reports from Australia, where the seemingly neverending political upheaval is getting in the way of big decisions – like what to do about climate change. Political spills are as quintessentially Australian as that image of the dingo eating the washed-up shark on the beach while two snakes mate in the foreground. … Read more
Good morning, and welcome to The Bulletin. In today’s edition: NZ MPs have ringside seats to Australian chaos, Catholic Bishop of Dunedin apologises to city, and red zone ‘quake outcasts’ to be paid out. It’s all going off in Australian politics right now, and in a weird coincidence, some New Zealand MPs have had ringside seats. Deputy … Read more
Australian prime ministers are like a well functioning train system. If you miss one, there’s always another one just around the corner. In today’s cheat sheet, could the lucky country be about to see a another PM booted? Hang on, what is a spill? A spill (pronounced speeeeel) is when a parliamentary caucus all gets … Read more
Australia’s polarising immigration minister, Peter Dutton, last week responded to Andrew Little’s criticisms of its deportation policy by asking him to “reflect a little more on the relationship between Australia and New Zealand”. Here the NZ justice minister, having reflected, writes that every country has the sovereign right to make their own laws. But when those … Read more
We were all horrified to see children ripped from their parents’ arms at the US-Mexico border last month. Sadly, this kind of thing happens in Australia, too, under their mandatory detention policies. Thalia Kehoe Rowden talked to a human rights lawyer about one family that has been separated for the last three years. Content note: … Read more
New Zealanders have been rightly horrified by Trump’s camps separating children from their parents. Are we similarly outraged by the illegal detention by the Australian government of babies and mothers? Thalia Kehoe Rowden spoke to some mums living in Nauru, waiting for years to be welcomed to a new country. Content note: this article contains … Read more
A 17-year-old New Zealander is being detained in an Australian immigration detention centre for adults, in direct contravention of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. New Zealander Rebekah Holt, the only journalist to have spoken to him, tells how she uncovered his story. Watch last night’s Newshub story about this case here. … Read more
Teenage New Zealanders without a home in Australia are left in limbo, ineligible for a living allowance. Governments on both sides of the Tasman need to make the plight of these blameless people a priority, writes Joseph Nunweek. Late last week, the Melbourne community legal centre I work for (WEstjustice) joined 40 other Australian NGOs … Read more
Good morning, and welcome to The Bulletin. In today’s edition: Australian banking scandal described as a wake up call for NZ, Commonwealth wide free trade deal being talked up, and nurses union voting on strike opens. Scandalous banking misconduct in Australia is being described as a wake up call for New Zealand, reports Radio NZ. A … Read more
With the announcement that the Government will end offshore oil and gas exploration in New Zealand, and at the end of our four-yearly schooling by Australia in how to win medals, Vector’s Karl Check says parts of Australia are also making pretty good progress when it comes to shifting away from coal and gas fired … Read more
Good morning, and welcome to The Bulletin. In today’s edition: Australia plays politics with NZ’s refugee offer, National vows to reverse govt’s stance on oil exploration, and dentists warn against getting teeth done overseas. Behind closed doors, Australia asked New Zealand to keep a rejected offer to take refugees interred on Manus Island on the table, … Read more
Ōtaki’s Māoriland Film Festival, which kicks off this week, features a documentary about Australia’s apology for the Stolen Generations – and what’s happened since. Aaron Smale spoke to director Larissa Behrendt. Larissa Behrendt’s father didn’t talk about it much. But one day he suddenly made an explicit reference to his time in a boys home. … Read more
Sam Rutledge is a die hard McLeod’s Daughters fan. Here she posits her (entirely canon and correct) theory that all the characters in the show are, in fact, gay. If you somehow managed to miss every single episode of McLeod’s Daughters when it aired, because you didn’t have a television or you had better taste than me, … Read more
Every year indigenous peoples in Australia and New Zealand go under the spotlight on Invasion Day and Waitangi Day – and every year the media finds problematic ways to report them. This won’t change while our media is still controlled by the coloniser, writes Miriama Aoake. January is a dry marathon. Days fold into themselves and time … Read more