Sir John Key, the smiling assassin. Photo / Sarah Ivey
Sir John Key, the smiling assassin. Photo / Sarah Ivey
Opinion
As we say goodbye to 2021 and welcome in 2022, it's a good time to catch up on the very best of the Herald columnists we enjoyed reading over the last 12 months. From politics to sport, from business to entertainment and lifestyle, these are the voices and views ouraudience loved the most. Today it's the top five from Simon Wilson.
Sir John Key, the smiling assassin, is back - September 28
What's he up to, the old rogue? Sir John Key was all over the media on Sunday promoting his five-point plan for dealing with Covid. Except, that's not really what he was doing.
That plan, outlined in print, barely got a mention on TV and radio. That's because Key's big idea was to call the New Zealand Covid strategy "the North Korean option". He said we live in a "smug hermit kingdom" which is "ruled by fear".
North Korea is ruled by a brutal regime responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of its own citizens. The standard of living is shockingly low and dissent is punished with torture, execution and incarceration in mines. Leadership is exercised through paranoia and terror.
There are wingnuts on social media and among talkback callers who think that description fits this country, but it's hard to believe Sir John Key is among them.
The new measures focus on limiting demand, by signalling to investors they should no longer treat housing as a source of free money. The Budget is expected to focus on supply. That means a plan to build, build, build.
Here are five big things that plan will need. All of them should be happening, at scale, now.
Let's tithe private schools and double the funds for poor schools - September 24
Education is supposed to be about opportunity, but in more than almost any other area the gap between privilege and poverty in our schools is systematically baked in.
How do we know this? Because, as researcher Briar Lipson from the NZ Institute reports, this country has the strongest correlation between socio-economic background and educational achievement of any country in the OECD.
That suggests education is not about opportunity. To a far greater degree it's about reinforcing existing social hierarchies, not just in general but for most of the individuals in it.
It's true that many schools in poor areas are rich in so many ways. But poverty exacts a harsh toll, as does wealth, and they exact it on the same group of people: the students of our poorest schools.
Billboard in Ponsonby for Kings School, the prep school in Remuera for Kings College. Photo / Dean Purcell
Judith Collins' leadership is 1 year old and it's time her party grows up - July 13
Spare a thought for Judith Collins. Her leadership turns one year old tomorrow and she must sometimes wonder what she's done to deserve the party that got thrust on her.
But the answer's easy enough: she wanted it. What's not so easy is to work out what she wants to do with it.
National displays no greater ambition than to duke it out with Act and NZ First for a share of the disaffected. It's politics as a juvenile sport and the electorate knows it. We've moved on.
National leader Judith Collins during her caucus standup at Parliament. Photo / Mark Mitchell
The infuriating Tāmaki Drive cycleway botch-up - February 5
Please, Auckland Transport, do not fix the Tāmaki Drive cycleway.
At least, do not fix it now. Do not waste any more time and money on that bumpy section you have just built. You have to get on with the rest of the project.
Actually, you have to extend cycleways into a thousand other places, and remaining stuck on one small part of the whole will slow that down.
The city cries out for more cycleways and progress building them is painfully slow. Tāmaki Drive should not be allowed to slow up what little else is being done. Fix it when it comes up on the maintenance schedule.
