Thank you, this is very helpful.

Yes, I see what you're saying. I think, in practice, that it's hard to separate the two things because of the emotive rhetoric involved in the hardline asylum policy.

I think the hard-heartedness of the current government in relation to our _refugee_ policy is influenced by their _asylum_ policy.

I think we have two paths ahead of us. Either we (by which I mean the government) shake ourselves out of the odd hypnotic apathy of recent years and remember that we are global citizens who like to feel like we are doing our bit (remember all the warm glowy feelings we got from international peace-keeping in the 1990s?) or we follow Australia.

And end up producing government ads like this.

I agree it really has to be Dirty Politics.

But 'rape culture' might be second.

After a decade of lurking, I have signed up in order to say thank you for this. Keep em coming!

The conversations I was part of about yesterday's news showed kiwi teachers - and I know some *excellent* ones - are feeling acutely demoralised by the trail of breadcrumbs you describe.

My mother, a teacher for her whole adult life, called it 'an act of abandonment'.

So schoolkids will suffer not just because their day is dominated by teaching to the test but because many of their best teachers, particularly those who have clear alternative career opportunities, will leave.

I'm currently obsessed with the idea of unschooling, but simultaneously proud to hear from friends around the world how very good our education system is, in relative terms.

I guess MPs' kids mostly go to schools that will get more money in the brave new world. I don't mean that they want to change policy to benefit their kids (if they thought hard they'd realise their kids would be worse off) but that they perhaps don't have a lot of personal stake in thinking hard about the damage it would do to poor schools.