Notes on the life of my brother: Andrew Robb, 1955-2022
When we were very young, my mother was in the habit of dressing my brother and me in identical clothes, which often led people to ask us if we were […]
When we were very young, my mother was in the habit of dressing my brother and me in identical clothes, which often led people to ask us if we were […]
A long-running and tetchy argument over science education in New Zealand has polarised academics at Auckland University and shattered one of the central institutions of science, the Royal Society. International […]
The first brass head has toppled in New Zealand. On 12 June the Hamilton City Council removed a statue of… Hamilton! British naval Captain John Fane Charles Hamilton, veteran of […]
Echoes of the June 1 march in Auckland in solidarity with the protests against the police murder of George Floyd continue to reverberate across New Zealand. The march was an […]
The most important shift in New Zealand politics in almost three decades was registered last month, when a long-simmering Māori land occupation at Ihumātao erupted into a mass struggle. In […]
[Note: this post was updated on 24 June with comments on the obfuscatory character of the term ‘domestic violence,’ and on the source of Oranga Tamariki’s tendency to act on […]
Second of two parts. The first part, “Half-caste Maori” strikebreakers at Waihi and Huntly, is here. After the mine re-opened on October 2, the number of police, strikebreakers and thugs brought […]
(Note: In quoting historic documents, I have not attempted to modernise their Anglicised spelling and usage of Māori words, offensive as some of these things may seem today. The English […]
Standing beside the Great South Road in Otahuhu, about 13 km south of central Auckland, is a memorial obelisk, beneath which are buried the mortal remains of Marmaduke Nixon. The […]
US novelist Lionel Shriver ruffled a few feathers – to put it mildly – when she spoke at the Brisbane Writers Festival in September. Shriver took aim at ‘identity politics’ […]