Mary Hobbs: ANZAC Day 2025 – A salute to some NZDF heroes

Non-cooperation with tyrants is a duty. — Gandhi

ANZAC Day is a traditional public holiday revered in New Zealand and Australia. It is a time when we remember, with the greatest respect, those who fought for what we all believed to be the freedom and democracy of our people and our countries.

Richard Prebble: It is going to be a landslide defeat for Labour

Labour is heading for a landslide defeat. The seeds of its coming defeat were sown in its record victory.

Jacinda made it the “Covid Election”. We were promised we were at the front of the vaccine queue. MIQ was going to keep us safe.

Some 400,000 mainly female National voters crossed over to vote Labour.

Not one crossed over for the party’s manifesto. It was for Labour’s handling of covid.

Support has held up. In the Ipsos Issues Monitor in February 75 per cent of respondents thought the restrictions were about right, or could have been tighter. 47 per cent wanted the border kept closed.

In just one month 75 per cent of the electorate in the Kantar poll say it is time for tourists to return. This is an extraordinary turn around.

Why the change? Voters learn from experience. Even those who have not caught Omicron know people who have caught it. We are all close contacts.

Rodney Hide: The protestors have won

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has told protesters at Parliament that they’ve “made their point”, and it’s now “time to go home”.

The Prime Minister is clearly rattled. She doesn’t understand that it is not for her to decide when the protesters go home (other than by her repealing the mandate orders).

She also fails to appreciate that the protesters aren’t outside her window to make a point: they are there to end the mandates.

In that one distinction we see the difference between the protesters and the Prime Minister. Everything the Prime Minister does is to make a point -- and only to make a point. She promises to build 100,000 houses or to plant a billion trees or to end child poverty. The promise serves only to make a point: that she cares. That’s it. It is never her intention actually to build the houses or to plant the trees or to feed the kids.

She clearly doesn’t know how to. She doesn’t know how to swing a hammer or to wield the massive machinery of government to make houses. If she did know, she would have done so.

But for her it doesn’t matter. She shows she cares by making her promise. She makes her point. And that for her is enough.

It’s the same with modern day protests. They make their point. And then go home.

The protesters that I know outside Parliament aren’t like that. They have gone to Wellington to end the mandates. They have a purpose. They have a job to do. And they will stay until it’s done.