Aaron Spencer: The Complacent Country

New Zealanders, in general, have had very little interest in the apparently baffling complexities of geopolitics, economics, and the way history doesn’t repeat…but does often rhyme.

Our main preoccupations have been work, rugby, BBQ’s, holidays, and the inter-personal relationships and dramas of family and friends. And if the Jones’ are climbing the property ladder, buying a boat, and upgrading the car “that’s good enough for us as well”. Herd behaviour around what we should aspire to has well and truly been the order of the day and, in case there was any doubt, there was always an older sage on hand to dispense the comforting adage that “you can’t go wrong with property”.

Aaron Spencer: The problem with Principles

“All this turmoil, because of a single word?” This may be the bemused reaction of some future scholar engaged in reviewing the course of New Zealand history as it occurred in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. The word in question being, of course, ‘principles’.

Or, to be specific; ‘Principles’ - with a capital P.

Aaron Spencer: Narratives about 'colonisation' should not stand up to scrutiny

We seem to be beset by narratives about ‘colonisation’ and its purported ongoing evils in this day and age. On close inspection, the confected outrage regarding colonisation in our contemporary world should not stand up to scrutiny.

Most of the attacks on ‘colonisation’ in present day New Zealand are really attacks on the inescapable reality of modernity, the modernised world all peoples are navigating.