Blog Archives

At a crossroads, Max Harris

Unquiet Time: Aotearoa/New Zealand in a Fast-changing World Colin James Fraser Books, $39.50, ISBN 9780994136015 Last year, Colin James published his final weekly column with the Otago Daily Times, after over 50 years of work as a journalist. In a…
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Posted in Non-fiction, Review, Sociology

Bovver boys

What they wrote A taste of contributor comments over our first 20 years   On New Zealand Books My hope is that New Zealand Books will provide a forum for frank discussion that dares to rise above the suffocating confines…
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Posted in Comment

Yes, Minister, Bob Gregory

The Tie That Binds: The Relationship Between Ministers and Chief Executives Colin James Institute of Policy Studies and the New Zealand Centre for Public Law, Victoria University of Wellington, $25.00, ISBN 0908935676 Public service reform was not a major election…
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Posted in Non-fiction, Politics & Law, Review

The House that we built, Colin James

The House: New Zealand’s House of Representatives 1854-2004 John E Martin Dunmore Press, $59.95, ISBN 0864694636 Parliament is a brutal place. Only the idealistic, the ideological, the hard-nosed and the ruthless gather there. No person is inviolate, no secret safe,…
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Posted in History, Non-fiction, Politics & Law, Review

Steady as she goes, Colin James

Holyoake’s Lieutenants ed Margaret Clark Dunmore Press, $29.95, ISBN 8864694369 I came across Norm Shelton a day or two after Jack Marshall sacked him in February 1972 at the end of the Holyoake era. He had a pile of complimentary…
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Posted in History, Non-fiction, Politics & Law, Review

Independence and after, Colin James

“Nothing is more important to a country,” one-time Australian Treasurer and Prime Minister Paul Keating told the Knowledge Wave conference in August, “than the way it thinks about itself.” Right now, this country, barely a nation, thinks it is small,…
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Posted in Comment

The federation game, Colin James

Waltzing with Matilda: Should New Zealand join Australia? Bob Catley Dark Horse Publishing, $29.95, ISBN 0958214611 A chilling graph presented to Auckland business leaders on 14 May undermines Bob Catley’s thesis. Auckland, the graph showed, lost 3.4% in GDP per…
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Posted in Non-fiction, Politics & Law, Review

Roads to nowhere? Ruth Butterworth

Building the Constitution ed Colin James Institute of Policy Studies, $45, ISBN 090893548X Some time in 1997, with the prolonged aftermath of the first MMP election still agitating the establishment and mightily diverting the rest of us, the idea gained…
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Posted in Non-fiction, Politics & Law, Review

From visionaries to pygmies, Colin James

Politics and economics Coming into the 20th century, the battle for the future was between socialists and triumphalist trumpeters of a “bigger and better Britain” here at the end of the world. The route out is likely to be along…
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Posted in Comment, Economics, Essays

Huck Finn in the Beehive, Colin James

The Demon Profession Michael Laws HarperCollins, $29.95 ISBN 1 869502 57 4 Winston Peters emerged from obscurity in the 1980s on the strength of attacks on Maori social services organisations like Maccess. His surge in 1996 was on the backs…
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Posted in Non-fiction, Politics & Law
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