A Full Tide for Socialism
When the International Socialists met for our national conference over Queen’s Birthday weekend, we had an opportunity to reflect on how exciting, but also how difficult, the past years have been. Exciting because, finally, after decades of low levels of class struggle, our side is on the move again: there have been strikes and struggles […]
Countering the Far Right in Aotearoa Today
This is a report and analysis of far right parties in New Zealand, with consideration given to the nature of those parties. Serah Allison’s report, published on 29 August 2022, contains much more detail on the far right rally and counter-rally in Te Whanganui-a-Tara on 23 August. The first part of this report complements Serah’s. […]
Protesting the Far-Right in Te Whanganui-a-Tara
July and August 2022 saw Destiny Church’s Freedom and Rights Coalition (FRC) organise several rallies around Aotearoa, most of which were counter-protested. The counter-protest in Ōtepoti was particularly successful. These FRC rallies formed a campaign culminating in a convoy from both ends of Aotearoa to converge with a march to Parliament on the 23rd August. […]
Stop the far-right ‘Freedom and Rights Coalition’
The Freedoms and Rights Coalition, a creation of Brian and Hannah Tamaki, is associated with the Christian-fundamentalist Destiny Church. It came to notice last October when, in contravention with the health emergency restrictions, it organised an anti-lockdown protest on Auckland Domain. The FRC continued to organise or participate in anti-lockdown, anti-vaxx and anti-mandate demonstrations. It […]
Confrontation in Dunedin: Anti-Fascists v Right-Wing Coalition
On July 2nd, at 10am on a crisp but clear Saturday morning, left-wing activists under the banner of Antifascist Ōtepoti begun setting up for a counter-protest of the “It Ain’t Over March” by the Freedom and Rights Coalition (henceforth FRC), a right-wing activist group largely dedicated to continuing the efforts of this year’s occupation on […]
Should we Support the Public Sector Pay Adjustment Proposal?
Let’s not beat about the bush; our “Labour” government is disgracefully holding down pay in the public sector below price inflation. According to Statistics New Zealand, while prices rose by 6.9 percent in the year to the end of March 2022, public sector pay only rose by 2.7 percent over the same period: a significant […]
The New Zealand Government’s Response to Covid
There is no doubt the Covid-19 disease has caused worldwide disruption to peoples’ lives, including ending the lives of millions around the world. One of the worst ever pandemics in human history by death toll, the disease has already been written about and reflected on in numerous news media, political sites, social media, and scientific […]
The cost of living crisis: workers must not pay for capitalism’s failures
A series of articles for this website since last August have tracked the developing cost of living crisis and how in Aotearoa some groups of workers have responded. A clutch of recent economic data demands an update. Inflation In the US the annual rate of increase in consumer prices rose to 8.5 percent as of […]
Dealing with Climate Catastrophe – The Metabolic Rift
On 16 March 2022 the Otago University Politics Programme hosted an online panel discussion on ‘Global Warming, Global Warning: The Politics of Climate Change’. The panelists were: James Shaw, Minister for Climate Change; Prof. Lisa Ellis; Assoc. Prof. Brian Roper; Sina Brown-Davis, Ngāti Whātua, Indigenous and climate activist; Adam Currie, Generation Zero; Jack Brazil, community […]
LGBT History: A Radical Movement
The below is a transcript of a talk given by the ISO as part of Dunedin Pride Month, sharing the radical history of queer liberation in Aotearoa. A couple of notes at the front: Firstly, we’ll be using the phrases queer and takatāpui as umbrellas for the rainbow community. We acknowledge that that the word […]
