Southern Say

Gangs and politicians have a symbiotic relationship: as long as we have had gangs, politicians have been pledging to crack down on them.

In a race of any kind a clean get-away is essential, and Invercargill National MP Sarah Dowie has managed just that.

What if you threw a party and nobody came?

This day two years ago, overseas postal voting for the 2017 election had just started.

Nisha Vijayan is a well-liked and highly-skilled theatre nurse at Dunedin Hospital.

Former National Prime Minister Keith Holyoake's famous advice that first-term backbench MPs should learn to "breathe through their nose" before trying to make their mark on Parliament has echoed...

You could forgive Waitaki MP Jacqui Dean for thinking the grass is greener on the other side of the fence ... or at least the other side of the Alps.

Politicians often say they want to know what voters are thinking. While the cynical may have their doubts, generally, that is actually the case.

Machiavelli wrote that politics have no relation to morals, but in recent days morality and politics have been at the forefront of southern MPs' minds.

Politics this week offered proof that if at first you do not succeed, you should try, try and try again.

There are many half-truths and untruths told in politics, the biggest of them all being "I don't pay attention to polls".

Computers and government have been a major issue this past fortnight with the fallout from National accessing Budget data still proving dangerously radioactive to a range of politicians and civil...

In Budget week it is really quite an achievement to get anything other than the country's finances on the national political agenda.

It is a common refrain that politicians never listen to the people.

As anyone who has ever overseen the letters to the editor column of a newspaper could tell you, few things get people more worked up than an issue involving water.

It is fair to say Lumsden seldom registers on the political Richter scale - a search of Hansard shows the northern Southland township has been mentioned a mere 22 times in the House since 2003.

One of the more charming aspects of New Zealand's Parliamentary system is how proposed member's Bills get chosen - a random ballot, conducted by drawing numbers out of an old biscuit tin.

Self-proclaimed chief of the provinces Shane Jones went just about as provincial as is possible last week, taking in the sights of Gore.

Dunedin, with its collection of rental properties snapped up annually by students, has long been favoured by investors.

One day there will be a sensible, substantive discussion about drug laws in the New Zealand Parliament.