Cam Slater: It’s Amazing What Distance Does to One’s Perspective

Henry Cooke was one of this Labour Government’s handmaidens, dutifully regurgitating lines from the ‘Pulpit of Truth’ in order to keep his bosses’ paymasters happy. He, like many in the press gallery, had become a real life experiment akin to Pavlov’s dog experiments. But then he decided he needed an OE and so decamped to London, escaping the malign influence of the Ardern regime in the process. Isn’t it amazing what a bit of distance from Ardern’s regime does for one’s perspective. His article in the Guardian shows just how much the scales have fallen from his eyes.

Barry Soper: Jacinda Ardern needs to learn how to deal with talent and potential trouble

Jacinda Ardern's unknowingly become an expert at doing the dance of the unveiled - the seven have long since been shed even though she clearly believes she hasn't missed a step and they're still in place covering her embarrassment.

So did she directly tell Louisa Wall - one of her most talented MPs - that she wouldn't have a place at her Cabinet table?

Wall makes no bones about it: "The Prime Minister told me I would never be in her Cabinet. It wasn't just that she didn't want me in her Cabinet, she was obviously very clear she didn't want me in her caucus."

Getting a direct answer from Ardern though and the music starts playing and the dance begins.

Bryce Edwards: Did Louisa Wall get a fair deal from Labour and Jacinda Ardern?

Scores are being settled at the moment, with Labour MP Louisa Wall going out in a blaze of media interviews to air the dirty laundry of her party. These surprising red-on-red attacks are going to be damaging for all sides.

Wall’s media blitz over the weekend paves the way for her valedictory speech on Thursday in Parliament. She’s been putting her side of the story about why she was de-selected from her safe seat of Manurewa, and why she was never given a Cabinet role when other less experienced and often inept politicians kept being promoted ahead of her.

Why did Labour and Wall fall out?

Wall has confirmed that her lack of political elevation to Cabinet was no oversight, but a deliberate policy of Ardern’s. She claims that Ardern told her that she would “never” be a cabinet minister while Ardern was prime minister. And Wall says that Ardern also wanted her out of Parliament, saying “She was obviously very clear that she didn’t want me in her caucus”.

Mike Butler: Hineuru’s sanitised history

We have a sanitised new history of New Zealand and we have the history full of facts and interviews with eyewitnesses. A $50-million treaty settlement with a small group of claimants from Hawke’s Bay called Ngati Hineuru that was passed into law on June 29, 2016, is an opportunity to compare the two histories.

The sanitised new history says that from the mid-1860s some Hineuru converted to Pai Mārire and Panapa, the Pai Marire leader amongst Hineuru, established a Pai Marire settlement.

Mike Butler: The gay-marriage self-parody

The phrase “gay rights for nuclear-free whales” quite accurately parodies the shallow, trendy, bumper-sticker campaigns of the New Zealand left. Shallow trendiness dominated parliament this week as Labour MP Louisa Wall’s Marriage (Definition of Marriage Bill) Amendment Bill passed its third reading 77 votes to 44.

Mike Butler: Same-sex marriage in Canada

Canada’s 10 years of same-sex civil marriage has brought restrictions on free speech, restrictions on parental rights in education, and restrictions on religious institutions, according to Bradley Miller, who is an associate professor of law at the University of Western Ontario.

When same-sex relationships became the equivalent of traditional marriage, he wrote, a new orthodoxy was adopted. Therefore, “anyone who rejects the new orthodoxy must be acting on the basis of bigotry and animus toward gays and lesbians.”