Opinions

This weekend’s Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Sri Lanka seems set to be dominated by the furore surrounding human rights abuses in that country.

That should hardly be a surprise.

Peter Dunne had his annual conference over the weekend. Technically it was the United Future conference, but about 30 people turned up. I’ve had more than that around to my place for drinks. Yet look at the clout they have.

Heard the one about the media outnumbering the delegates at a party conference? It was not quite the case, but United Future president Robin Gunston made light of the small turnout at his party's annual gathering on Saturday by saying the fact the media had rolled up in number showed just how important United Future was.

Karl Marx once said famously that the thing to learn from history is that people do not.

That certainly seems to be the case with the Police when it comes to dealing with sexual abuse matters. During 2006-07 we had the trials of former Police officers on historical rape charges, which led to the highly critical Bazley Report in 2007. As a consequence, we were led to believe that the Police had ‘turned the corner”, not just in terms of their own culture, but also in how they dealt with sexual abuse cases generally.

The debate about potential coalitions after the next election raises the more fundamental question of the role of political parties, especially in a multiparty environment. At its most basic level politics can be described as the mobilisation of bias.

The greatest football game in town kicked off again this week – and I am not referring to the epic All Blacks/Springboks test at Ellis Park last weekend.

Resource management issues are very prominent on the current political agenda, and reveal a great deal about the National Party’s attitude to the environment.