Water In The Ballot Box

The Government knew this was going to happen. Remember Chris Luxon chiding local government about ‘doing the basics’ and David Seymour’s announcement that ACT are standing candidates in the local elections this year. They knew this was going to happen because they made it happen. 

It’s to do with water, and water reforms - both the binned Three Waters/Affordable Water Act and the current Government’s Local Water Done Well reforms.

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Kyle Church
The true test of New Zealand’s humanity, does it include us all, or is it only for some?

“Wherever Palestinians have control is barbaric.” These were the words from New Zealand’s Human Rights Commissioner Stephen Rainbow.

During a meeting with Philippa Yasbek from ‘Jewish Voices for Peace’, Rainbow allegedly told her that information from the New Zealand Security Intelligence Services (NZSIS) threat assessment asserted that Muslims were the biggest threat to the Jewish community. More so than white supremacists.

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Kyle ChurchPalestine
Teachers don’t have to be amazing people to be paid properly

In the wake of pay equity blockages, a thousand or so people went to Parliament Lawn to protest the new Budget, where women and gender minorities have once again taken the fall for commerce and the army. To make the crowd show appreciation for the suffering workforces, the emcee asked us if we’d ever had an incredible teacher who changed our lives.

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Kyle Church
New Zealand still feels the loss of our full employment economy

With “the big squeeze” put on working people, we can see how it is not such a reach that to reduce security in the nation—as represented by the rate of unemployment rising—is to guarantee rising social and personal ills. This will naturally extend to the most extreme social problems, such as suicide. What New Zealanders must confront is how tolerant are we of the degree of precarity that exists in our nation, and if so, are we comfortable with the dark consequences?

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Kyle Church
Before ‘28

As long as Israel continues to insist on being a majority Jewish state controlling the majority of the former Mandatory Palestine they will be inimical to Palestinians. This has nothing to do with conflict, nor any action of resistance by Palestinian groups. Palestinians are enemies of the state of Israel merely by existing.

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Kyle ChurchPalestine
Racism and the Betrayal of Palestinians

While there are many concerns that need to be addressed with PSNA’s campaign, why has the conversation stopped there? Why has the core issue of this campaign been ignored? Namely, that IDF soldiers who have committed war crimes in Gaza have been allowed into New Zealand?

Why has any discussion about Israel, its violations of international law, and the international legal expectations for third party states to hold IDF soldiers accountable not been addressed?

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Kyle ChurchPalestine
The Monster Making Machine

The people of Germany during World War II were not a different species than us and we are not immune from the same descent into inhumanity. Monsters are not born, they are made. They are made by a machine. Germany had a monster making machine, and we have our own.

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Kyle ChurchPalestine
Domination and Submissions

We gathered, we roared our approval to a series of speakers who denounced the racist Treaty Principles Bill, and then we left. I have done this dozens of times. I want us to hold this beautiful moment of rupture in our minds, that egalitarian discharge of the mighty crowd, as we think about what is to be done. I was moved to write this article because last week, the deadline for public submissions on the Treaty Principles Bill was scheduled to close. So many of us chose to submit that Parliament’s website went down, and the deadline had to be extended.

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Kyle Church