OPINION

Over the past fortnight, both Act and New Zealand First announced policies targeted at those who live in New Zealand as permanent residents rather than as citizens. In both cases, the announcements aimed to push permanent residents to take up citizenship, to accept a sharply degraded experience living here, or to leave. Read more

There was a line that made the rounds when Donald Trump first campaigned to be president: his promises should be taken seriously but not literally. Last week, New Zealand First promised that, from 2029, only citizens would be able to collect superannuation. Read more

Two speeches from the Crown’s most senior lawyers over the past month have answered a question that should never have been in doubt: Who makes the law? Attorney-General Chris Bishop spoke to the Law Association on 6 August. Read more

It does not happen often that I set my alarm to just before 4am to watch the results come in from a provincial election in Germany. But that is what I did yesterday for Saxony-Anhalt, in Germany’s east. Read more

In April 1901, a Bavarian immigrant baker named Joseph Lochner was arrested in Utica, New York. Unlike the larger bakeries, which worked two shifts, Lochner employed a single crew: his bakers arrived in the evening, prepared the dough, slept a few hours on the premises and baked before dawn. Read more

What is politics? According to Max Weber’s classic definition, politics is “a strong and slow boring of hard boards.” Having worked around politics for over two decades has given me a good idea of what Weber meant by that. Read more

For practical purposes, not emitting a tonne of carbon dioxide is equivalent to pulling a tonne of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and securely sequestering it, so long as the accounting is sound. The Zero Carbon Act consequently requires net zero for greenhouse gases other than biogenic methane. Read more

Most news clips from Parliament are from Question Time. It is at least as much performance theatre as a mechanism for holding government to account. Read more