David Cormack

The squeezed middle

The middle class is a lie.

Every election, we are told, is decided by "middle New Zealand". And depending on your outlet, this either means those who consider themself 'middle class', or the even worse, "centrists".

Today I want to talk about the middle class. What I'm about to say is not a new idea, in fact it's a significant tenet...

BBQ season a bit more charred than normal

So every summer, all the political nerds have nothing to nerd about, so they nudge each other and say that 'BBQ season is in full swing'. This is a suggestion that political parties will be off having their wee cliquey BBQs where leadership spills be plotted.

This is usually a fabrication and wishful thinking than anything else. We need th...

The identity post mortems

That US election was a shocker eh? All the vibes, all the mood, all the media, it all pointed to a Harris win. Some of the polling did too, but it really gave the Dems a Romney-2012 experience where he felt it in his bones that he was going to win.

I haven't really read any of the longer-form "why the Dems lost" pieces becaus...

The Rates increases will continue until morale improves

There's an article in the Herald today about an older woman living in Karori who is leading the "revolt" against the rate increases in Wellington. And look, I ge...

Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness

Bit of a different angle today. If you follow me on Twitter, you'll know that periodically, I like to dip my toes into hot-music takes.

Probably my most infamous one was my comment that "music in the 1990s was pretty shit except for Mellon Co...

The "they"

Whenever an event of political significance occurs, pundits spring forth. They are there, afterall, to help us make sense of what just happened. Or rather we are there to help you make sense. Because through my various media engagements I consider myself as having pun-did.

I can recall vividly doing Newshub Nation. And John Key had done a...

Can we start talking differently about climate change?

So. It's been a while, eh?

I've been involved in some super intense and heavy work for the last 5 1/2 months, which has pretty much eaten up all my time. I am genuinely sorry and should have been writing more - if not for anything else than my mental health, which has taken a battering.

I'll write in more detail about that an...

How we do politics

I find it really sad. Golriz is a friend of mine so this one is personal too. What she is accused of doing is definitely bad, and it is definitely not behaviour we expect from MPs.

I don't want to relitigate this specific incident, other than to say that I think the Greens, and Aotearoa's parliament is worse off for not having Golriz invo...

David's kosher salt

This has taken a while. I have wanted to say something on the Israel/Palestine situation since October 7, but I have been afraid, and unclear of my own feelings.

For context, I'm Jewish. Insofar as my mother is Jewish, and if that's the case then you're locked in the club for life. I don't observe anything to do with the Jewish faith. I a...

What is an election, really?

This piece has been written by my colleague and dear friend, Tasmin Prichard. It's pretty good. If you like it, I might invite them to write other pieces. If you don't, I still might  because fuck you it's my Patreon.

By Tasmin Prichard

An electio...

A quickie

TV3 hyping its poll as a game changer suggests it will show National is going to need NZF and ACT to govern, which will be a shit show. But also, is NZF really going to support repealing of the foreign buyers ban? Noted lover of pro immigrants, Winston Peters?

Without the repeal of that, National's tax plan is even more farcical and has e...

Where's the fiscal plan?

edit: I AM A DUMB DUMB. I READ TAX PLAN AS FISCAL PLAN.

That said, they haven't released the modeling behind the tax plan either. So it sorta stands.

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A while back, National said this:



Well PREFU has been and gone. Ev...

Unless it's a mass debate, what's the point?

Last night we all lost. It wasn't even a debate. It was two men who seem to think the same just answering questions. If you're going to have a debate then do what Lange and Muldoon did and have them sit at a table and actually argue points with one another. That would be worth something to the viewer.

Or, and hear me out here, we stop pret...

The toothlessness of Labour

Every time National says anything. Anything. A torrent of experts come rushing out of the woodwork to discredit it. It's not even Labour or the Greens that are doing the attacking. It's actual experts.

Today's example in a long list, is economists Michael Reddell (very right wing/conservative Christian) and Sam Warburton (says he's left an...

Bad day for the right; may not matter

By nearly any metric, National had a shocking Sunday. And given Luxo’s predilection for all things fundy, this was possibly especially upsetting. Day of faith indeed.

It started with Luxo on Q+A where he got kinda destroyed by Jack Tame (side note: when Jack was announced as the new host of Q+A I was skeptical, but he’s proven to be on...

National's cursed period

The last week was National's worst week in a very long time. And today brings more news that add insult to injury.

Apparently the party made the strategic decision to launch its tax policy earlier in the week to get ahead of whatever it was that Labour was announcing at its campaign launch. So then we got the tax policy of seemingly unceas...

The major parties continue to blunder

Yesterday National was cock-a-hoop. And you might think that was because of the succession of scandals and mistakes that Labour had been making over the last month or few. I mean everyone was talking about Labour's blunders. Nobody was talking about any...

The power is yours

My column last week in the Post (which I'll republish in full below) was bleak. I was recovering from Covid when I wrote it, an...

They're not sending their best

If you're someone who votes Labour or National, you must be a sad panda.

My political awakening happened at the 1993 election when I was 9 years old. I distinctly remember Richard Prebble losing Auckland Central and that was apparently a Very Big Deal.

The first election I got to vote in was 2002 when I was 18. I voted Labour as my p...

Just say no to NZ First

I was thinking about writing this as my column for The Post. But decided to keep it to Patreon since the audience here is much smaller, and I'm worried that anything I write about NZ First just gives them attention, making it more likely they'll get back in.

I've spoken to key folk in National and Labour recently who have ...

Back in print

With the launch of The Post, they got a bunch of new columnists.

I was invited to be one. So I'm writing once a month for them.

Glad to have made the front page while avoiding the words "disgrace" or "embattled".

You can read my first column here: 2023-04-28 23:44:16 +0000 UTC View Post

Indian mirage

In among all the weird news of the last few weeks was a wee announcement from National that didn't garner much coverage.

Christopher Luxon announced that he would make getting a Free Trade Deal with India a major priority of his Government.

In speech at the India - New Zealand summit, Luxon couldn't wait more than three sentences bef...

Too much water

Kieran McAnulty was given a hospital pass to end all hospital passes. After the Government had passed Three Waters, it still wanted it revamped because everyone hated it and National was successfully turning it into an election issue.

Kieran, as Minister for Local Government, had to go away and figure out a solution that would help. And by...

Who's afraid of the big green wolf?

Remember 2014? It was an eternity ago. But National had that ad with the rowers. It's lasting legacy would be that it used the Eminem-soundalike that saw National sued.

But the ad's message was that because National was a slick, streamlined unit, it would be a better Government than the shambolic coalition that was the alternative - as dep...

Bonfire of the inanities

Chippy coming out and continuing to butcher Labour's policy programme isn't a surprise, but gosh it's cynical politics.

Everyone knew that National was planning a small-target strategy when it thought it would be going up against Jacinda Ardern, but now that's changed and it's Labour taking the small target path. This has left National wit...

State of the bleugh

God I wish we stopped doing state of the nation speeches. They're no such thing and it's such a lame Americanism.

Anyway, Luxo had his moment in the sun (after postponing it twice due to shit weather). It was better than last year when he made up a communist family he'd never spoken with in Russia about the perils of communism, after the ...

Curia poll exposes big problem for National

I'm going to be smug. In the last 6 or so months, nearly every "pundit" has said that National was going to canter to victory at the election. I have been one of two hold-outs that I know of. Just me and Matthew Hooton have said all along we thought Labour would win.

I was basing my assessment off the fact that the world is going to shit,...

Double poll!

Well well well. Yesterday morning when both 1News and Newshub announced they were doing polls concurrently, I tweeted:

Given that both channels rushed out to poll immediately following the changeover to Chippy, I thought it would be too soon to h...

The Chips are no longer down

An earlier version of this said JA had handed the election to Labour. I'm a chump. I meant National.

So I've been saying that I thought Labour would stumble over the line this year. There weren't many commentators predicting a Labour win, I think me and Matthew Hooton were it.

I'd predicted it off the back of the world go...

Happy election year!

Ugh. I cannot believe we're back in an election year. Since Covid time has collapsed in on itself, so that everything is both flying past me, and moving incredibly slowly.

All the wise financial folk seem to think this year is going to be a shitter. Not just for Aotearoa, but for most of the world. The ways in which eonomists describe rece...