#Tag
About a week ago, #GordonCampbell threw cold water on the prospect of regime change in 2026;
"National can win with Luxon regardless. This country hasn’t had a genuine one term government since the Labour government of 1957-1960. (If Norman Kirk hadn’t died, his government would probably have been re-elected in 1975.)"
I'm not so sure. In 2019 there was equally good reason to think a one-party majority would never happen under MMP.
(1/?)
"To recap: tens of thousands of people working in construction and in the public service have lost their jobs. The retail economy has tanked - in Wellington in particular. GDP has shrunk. Although the services sector constitutes about 60% of the New Zealand economy, it has been in ongoing contraction for 19 months in a row. Consumer spending has dried up etc etc."
#GordonCampbell, 2025
As usual, Gordon hits the nail right on the head;
"... talk of creating a viable under 16 barrier to social media looks more like an abject version of performative politics. It seems to be all about the gesture, in that it offers a way for politicians to claim they care about the kids, even though their economic and welfare policies are often saying the exact opposite."
#GordonCampbell, 2025
https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL2510/S00011/on-the-social-media-ban-for-young-kids.htm
(1/2)
"If we truly do care about the mental health and wellbeing of vulnerable young people, the decision to means test every 18 and 19 year old young receiving state assistance (in every household earning $65,000 or over) is a bizarre way of showing it."
#GordonCampbell, 2025
https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL2510/S00011/on-the-social-media-ban-for-young-kids.htm
(2/2)
About the only sensible comments I heard were about harmonising NZ digital regulation with what's happening in larger jurisdictions, like the EU. But no acknowledgement of the need to learn from the missteps and failures, particularly in Oz.
For example, I partially agree with Paddy Gower's call for an independent commissioner, but not like the Online Safety Commissioner in Oz. What we need is one tasked with researching and proposing policy and best practice for digital tech in general.
(5/5)
As usual, Gordon hits the nail right on the head;
"... talk of creating a viable under 16 barrier to social media looks more like an abject version of performative politics. It seems to be all about the gesture, in that it offers a way for politicians to claim they care about the kids, even though their economic and welfare policies are often saying the exact opposite."
#GordonCampbell, 2025
https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL2510/S00011/on-the-social-media-ban-for-young-kids.htm
(1/2)
"14,000 babies are about to die of starvation in Gaza, with food sent by the world sitting on the other side of a wall, and once again the British establishment is focused on us. We deny this ‘offence’ and will vehemently defend ourselves.
This is political policing. This is a carnival of distraction. We are not the story. Genocide is..."
Irish rap group Kneecap, quoted by #GordonCampbell 2025
https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL2505/S00054/on-wealth-taxes-and-capital-flight.htm
Another excellent column by Gordon Campbell, from a couple of weeks ago, on the crusade against social media use by under-16s.
Campbell looks beyond the obvious privacy risks created by enforcing age limits, to the corporate conservative roots of the policy's Australian variant (particularly Rupert Murdoch's role in it). He mentions the way it violates teens' human rights, and limits their access to peer support;
https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL2505/S00025/on-the-parental-panic-over-young-kids-online.htm
"Basically, since the US is no longer a reliable defence partner, India has been presented with an opportunity to serve as a significant counterweight to China in the future defence alignments now taking shape in the Indo-Pacific."
#GordonCampbell,2025
https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL2504/S00048/papal-picks-and-india-as-a-defence-ally.htm
Oh Gordon really? You're leaning in to the Asia-Pacific equivalent of the "Gulf of America"? Why?
"... sacrificed environment wellbeing on the altar of economic growth, offloaded costs from central government onto local ratepayers and so on and on.
Subsequently, when the people displaced and the communities ravaged by these policies turned to drugs and crime, successive governments have spent money on locking them up so that the public can then 'feel safe'.”
#GordonCampbell, 2025
(2/3)
"There is so much chatter about how divided we now are, as a nation. Yet for the past 30-40 years, our two major parties have been remarkably unified in their indifference to the social repercussions of the economic settings."
#GordonCampbell, 2025
(3/3)
"But hold on. If the new normal is chaos, the old normal wasn’t that great, either. We have had over 30 years of economic policies that have – deliberately, as a point of policy principle – sacrificed secure well-paying jobs and replaced them with low paying insecure ones, relentlessly prioritised shareholder profits over the social good, deferred investment in people, technology and infrastructure ..."
#GordonCampbell, 2025
(1/3)
"... sacrificed environment wellbeing on the altar of economic growth, offloaded costs from central government onto local ratepayers and so on and on.
Subsequently, when the people displaced and the communities ravaged by these policies turned to drugs and crime, successive governments have spent money on locking them up so that the public can then 'feel safe'.”
#GordonCampbell, 2025
(2/3)
"But hold on. If the new normal is chaos, the old normal wasn’t that great, either. We have had over 30 years of economic policies that have – deliberately, as a point of policy principle – sacrificed secure well-paying jobs and replaced them with low paying insecure ones, relentlessly prioritised shareholder profits over the social good, deferred investment in people, technology and infrastructure ..."
#GordonCampbell, 2025
(1/3)
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