Southern Sojourns of a ‘mostly rational’ MP
I have spent much of this recess week in (sometimes) sunny Otago and Southland, and despite being about as far from my own rohe as it is possible to be without leaving the country, I found plenty to...
View ArticleImproving productivity – one research paper at a time?
The latest report from the Productivity Commission, ‘Productivity by the Numbers : The New Zealand Experience” offers a snapshot of the productivity performance of New Zealand’s economy. Sadly, it...
View ArticleGoverning Northland
The Local Government Commission yesterday released its proposal for restructuring local government in Northland, a big step in a process that was set in motion by the former mayor of Far North...
View ArticleSmall (business) is beautiful
Not too many years ago the thing NZers were most likely to know about Finland is that some people from there were really good at driving fast. Then came Nokia, the remarkable company that went from...
View Article‘Monitoring Places of Detention’– a Wake-up call for NZers.
A report released this month has provided evidence supporting the view that we still have a lot of work to do to make our prisons decent, humane, and likely to release people back into society in...
View ArticleThe Greens are the Bogeymen!
Yesterday’s editorial in the Northern Advocate offers some intriguing observations about the launch of the political (i.e. election) year. Noting that the PM seems to have spent more time ‘belittling’...
View ArticleAspiring Northland
Finance Minister Bill English got it half right when he said recently that models of government intervention that had been applied in the Far North over the last thirty years had “disempowered them...
View ArticleAcademic Freedom or Free Market?
The Minister for Tertiary Education seems determined to see our universities and wananga reduced to organisations whose purpose it is to sell a commodity called education to ‘consumers’ whose primary...
View ArticlePunishment and compassion
A line in my speech to the candidate conference last Sunday seems to have generated some interest. I spoke “…of restoring to health the offender and those offended against, of an obligation to respect...
View ArticleA vision for Maori in tertiary education
Last Friday I was privileged to join with Maori members of the Tertiary Education Union (TEU) at NorthTec’s Te Puna o Te Matauranga Marae in Whangarei. The purpose of the hui was to launch and...
View ArticleDevaluing Science
A recent article by Jacqueline Rowarth, Professor of Agribusiness at Massey University, gives a very good summary of this government’s muddled thinking (my words, not hers!) about the value of science...
View ArticlePolytechnics under attack
Teachers and other people who choose to work in education are generally quite positive, upbeat people – I think a sense of humour is a prerequisite to surviving and thriving in that environment!...
View ArticleSerious fun
Last Friday I was in the main street of Kaikohe bright and early aboard my Triumph along with a group of other riders intending to ride several hundred kilometres south. So far, so fun – there are...
View ArticleMana whenua head North to oppose oil drilling
It was good to hear the news that a mana whenua delegation is heading north, a long way north, to make their views known about the proposed oil drilling off the Northland coast. The roopu will be...
View ArticleSignpost North – telling Northland’s stories
This Wednesday just past, I was privileged to attend the Kerikeri launch of Signpost North, a new online magazine covering the Bay of Islands and the Far North. Spearheaded by Sandy Myhre, a journalist...
View ArticleA morning with the sandwich gang.
Last Monday morning bright and early (well, early at least) I knocked on the door of a house in Hamilton East, a house that looks quite ordinary from the outside, but where every week day morning...
View Article20,000 New Zealand children are ‘different’ from the rest…
On any given day, there are about 20,000 New Zealand children who have a parent in prison. These kids often have a very tough time – while they have done no crime, they are nevertheless serving a...
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A year in review – David Clendon – 2015
A quick year-end pop-quiz – which government department has had a 220% increase in its budget over the last decade, but has still managed to end this year mired in mismanagement, under-performance,...
View ArticleFirearms Inquiry calling for submissions.
Parliament’s Law and Order select committee (of which I am a member) has today called for public submissions to its firearms inquiry. This conversation should have been live since last year, when the...
View ArticleMore changes needed to ensure fewer cases like Teina Pora’s
Teina Pora spent 21 years behind bars for a crime he didn’t commit, shafted by a Police investigation that prioritised an investigator’s hunch over the pursuit of credible evidence. Yesterday’s...
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