The full spiked 60 Minutes CECOT package, clean & subtitled. 1/5

The ‘polarisation narrative’ simplifies complex issues by constructing a spectrum where good should be found in the middle of diametrically opposed political positions New preprint article by @juanroch.bsky.social, @daniel-balinhas.bsky.social and I 1/ www.researchgate.net/publication/...

It is astonishing that universities have to pay academic publishers for access to the content that universities create. And everyone just accepts it. And the current crisis is not the universities saying "we're not going to pay you anything", but "we don't want to pay so much that it bankrupts us".

Honestly, the IPCA report into the police (mis)handling of the McSkimming case makes for jaw-dropping reading. But it’s 135 pages long so I’ve read it for you. Here’s my report on one of the most serious failures of integrity in modern policing history⬇️⬇️

When I wrote this just two-ish months ago, the premise was that the architecture of the CCRA (zero carbon act) remained, but the policies that sustained it had been hollowed out. With the CCRA changes today, I feel like that no longer holds www.rnz.co.nz/news/in-dept...

#nzpol Unemployment reached a 9 year of 5.3%. The labour market took another turn for the worse - unemployment growing, underemployment growing, fewer hours being worked, and wages are not keeping up with inflation. This data is another sign the economy is not working. A thread

I'm reading the new Social Sciences curriculum content and I wasn't prepared for how sad I would feel. We spent thousands of hours working with the previous iteration and the NZ history content and all that enthusiasm and excitement was just killed for something so bad.

#nzpol Labour is proposing to create a Capital Gains Tax on property - excluding farms and the family home. That income will help make GP visits free for the majority of people. Is that a better policy than continuing tax-free profits on, say, someone's seventh property? Absolutely. A🧵

IN NEW ISSUE: Selecting Diversity: @fionacbarker.bsky.social & @samcrawley.bsky.social examine ethnicity, party strategies & candidate selection in New Zealand Elections (1996–2020) - buff.ly/ZQWufTG (OPEN ACCESS) @polstudiesassoc.bsky.social @uoypolitics.bsky.social @sagepub.com #polsky #polsci

I thought I’d have a go at answering the question: what’s the flow on effect on emissions budgets from the methane cuts? The answer was worse than I had anticipated www.rnz.co.nz/news/nationa...

I frequently hear claims that "AI will solve climate change". We've already largely "solved" climate change, the barrier is not lack of knowledge or intelligence. It's entrenched power, and people's unwillingness to change lifestyle and cope with less convenience. AI can't help us with that.

Fascism is an ideology. The government is fascist. But it's an unconsolidated competitive authoritarian regime, not a totalitarian one.

This is why open source and open platforms are important.

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon declines to criticise Israel for potentially detaining Kiwis in international waters, repeats that MFAT advice is to not to try and travel to Gaza.

The Govt's stated reason for restricting voter enrolment in the last two weeks of the election has been speeding up the final count. But the Electoral Commission just told the Justice Select Committee that wouldn't happen - with or without the law change it would take 20 days. t.co/N0vRXHMbMt

more than a decade of public scholarship has taught me that the moments when it's most tempting to react strongly and quickly are the ones when it's most useful to step back, seek context, and force yourself to think slowly. i don't always follow it, but those are my guidelines for myself.

One thing that feels different right now is the difference between structural power and rhetorical power. Usually in the aftermath of major political events (including, especially, shootings), we see contestation over framing — how each party coalition tries to make sense of the event. (…)

If I have any credibility with you from 20 years of reporting on rightwing & fascist movements, please listen when I beg you not to celebrate Charlie Kirk getting shot. Leave aside morality: this isn’t a match in dry grass, it’s a torch. We do not want what this could ignite & we would not win.

The New Zealand Election Study has been running for 35 years, polling voters (and non-voters) about their views and votes after each election since 1990. The latest edition, released recently, covers the 2023 election. I spent the past two weeks delving through the data. A 🧵 – with lots of 📊!

Former Labour voters made up more than half of all of those who voted for NZ First in 2023. Without them, the party would have failed to reach the 5 percent threshold and would not have returned to Parliament. newsroom.co.nz/2025/09/03/n...

This is about the UK, but sounds eerily familiar in the NZ context.

New: The latest data from the long-running New Zealand Election Study shows the vast majority of those who voted for the National Party in 2023 didn’t want to see New Zealand First play a role in the Government after the election. newsroom.co.nz/2025/09/01/j...

When UK Labour won last year, I had expected that they would probably run a very centrist government, which would be frustrating to many of their supporters. I can honestly say I never expect this.

Great to see some analysis of 2023 NZES data.

IMO anyone involved in vaccine uptake research, particularly in NZ (ping @janinepaynter.bsky.social ) should know of the 2023 New Zealand Election Study, dataverse.ada.edu.au/dataset.xhtm... because of the "how many covid doses have you had" as at the 2023 election + values and demographic context

That Putin will “enshrine in law” non-aggression is priceless.

Here's the Speaker's Ruling Brownlee is now relying on in order to justify requiring Swarbrick to withdraw and apologise today for what she said yesterday. It is a flat out wrong, completely unjustifiable, untenable application of the precedent. He acted from pique and now is backfilling the reasons

#nzpol alert! Janine Hayward and I are hosting a public panel this week to highlight some of the findings from our recently published special issue on Jacinda #Ardern and the Sixth Labour Government, published in @politicalsciencenz.bsky.social. Register here: www.wgtn.ac.nz/events/2025/...

NZ’s gas supply is collapsing — and the govt’s big fix? More drilling. But experts (including Shane Jones’ advisors) say it likely won’t work, and there’s no backup plan if it fails. My story here www.rnz.co.nz/news/nationa...

As predicted ... here is the NZBORA s7 report on the Government's Electoral Amendment Bill, in which the removal of same-day enrolment and voting for the entire advance voting period is declared to be an unjustifiable limit on the right to vote.

One of the fun parts of policy work is that you have a handful of extremely important, esoteric, but load-bearing legal concepts (like fair use) that only ever make it into public consciousness when they're being targeted for destruction, and public opinion about them is entirely outcome-dependent.

Observation. Been writing all week with Parliament in the background. The volume and diversity of anger at/in Select Committees right now, not just RSB, is wild. Sure, it's an unpopular government, but it's also a sign the policy advisory system isn't working.

Studied VFF's planning for upcoming local government elections posted online recently. It's a *significant* step-up in scale, strategy, & sophistication from '22's templates, in a transnational context which sees big far-right gains in electoral outcomes, esp. at LG levels. Entryism is entrenched.

Thanks for our subscribers at The Kākā for their encouragement and permission to make this fully public for listening, reading and sharing. So many extreme weather events, but no mention of climate change thekaka.substack.com/p/so-many-ex...

I get annoyed at the narrative that all the awareness and work on climate change hasn't done anything. Yes, global CO₂ emissions indeed continue to climb, but we don't know the counterfactual. When I was in grad school, we were on track for 5°C of warming. Now it's below 3°C. That's progress.

As Luxon heads to China, his government’s pivot toward the US is a stumbling block theconversation.com/as-luxon-hea...

We’ve leapt over a lot of red lines in the last week. But one I find most worrying is Trump/MAGA/ICE have ceased even pretending to claim some criminal pretext for cracking down on protected speech. It’s just straight up “if you criticize us, you’re getting throttled/arrested/disappeared.”

We are through the looking glass now. Do read this

The quiet suburban pool is a microcosm of everything wrong with New Zealand’s broken rates system. thespinoff.co.nz/politics/27-...

This is a very interesting observational paper for those working on gendered dynamics of far-right, descriptive rep & femonationalism Does women's descriptive rep. lower anti-gender discourse among far-right? No, it *increases* it (according to parl speech data 2009-2023) doi.org/10.1177/1465...

We're about 5 minutes away from authoritarian leaders imprisoning opponents based on their (alleged) conversations with LLMs.

There's a fascinating discussion up this thread (with some actual experts in the subject) on why NZ is tracking so much better than Australia (or anywhere else) with COVID-19. The excess death comparisons I dropped on this post (Australa vs NZ) will probably surprise most people in both countries.

I’m reading a bunch of work on autocracy and democratic backsliding. I’m struck that scholars in this tradition don’t get called “political” or “biased” despite their clear normative stance. Yet, race and gender scholars—who were the canaries in the coal mine for backsliding—do.

Yesterday, I immersed myself in the Standing Orders. Today, I emerge to share the knowledge that next week the Opposition, if sufficiently motivated and coordinated, has the opportunity to do the funniest thing. newsroom.co.nz/2025/05/16/h...

Not sure where Te Pāti Māori is getting this, but it doesn't appear to be true. TTR only applied a month ago. An expert panel hasn't even been convened to review their application yet.

Brownlee calls white privilege commitee recommendations "very severe and unprecedented in this parliament"; says using a narrow majority to deprive members of a minority party of their votes and speaking rights is unfair! #nzqt

OK, this is wild. In September 2023, geophysicists across the world started monitoring a very odd signal coming from the ground under them. It was picked up in the Arctic. And Antarctica. It was detected everywhere, every 90 seconds, as regular as a metronome, for *nine days*. What the HELL? 1/