Editor’s Note: Here below is a list of the main issues currently under discussion in New Zealand and links to media coverage.  Click here to subscribe to Bryce Edwards’ Political Roundup and New Zealand Politics Daily.

Today’s content

Covid: India travel ban
Sandeep Singh (RNZ): Indian travel ban leaves Kiwis stateless
Audrey Young (Herald): Was Jacinda Ardern’s decision on India racist? (paywalled)
Tess McClure (The Guardian): New Zealand suspension of travel from India questioned amid fears of racist backlash
Siouxsie Wiles (Spinoff): The data behind the decision to suspend arrivals from India in NZ
Golriz Ghahraman (Spinoff): Why NZ’s south Asian communities are so nervous about the halt on arrivals from India
1News: Temporary India travel ban is not racist, Jacinda Ardern tells Q+A
Stuff: Editorial – An inconvenient truth: Undermining rights key to securing our freedoms
1News: Human Rights Commission probes Government’s India ban
Heather du Plessis-Allan (Newstalk ZB): Government right to suspend flights from India
Martyn Bradbury (Daily Blog): Golriz Ghahraman insinuates Jacinda is racist – cue eye-rolling now
Brent Edwards (NBR): Fact or Fiction: Australia: yes. India: no. Coal: no. Christopher Luxon? (paywalled)

Covid: Vaccinations programme and border
Marc Daalder (Newsroom): Vaccine rollout: We’re making it up on the fly
Alison Mau (Stuff): Vaccinations are the new frontier — has one DHB already shot itself in the foot?
RNZ: National calls for all unvaccinated border workers to be removed
Audrey Young (Herald): Covid 19 coronavirus: Jacinda Ardern says border workers must get jab by end of April
Nikki Turner (The Conversation): Vaccination alone will not provide full protection. When borders open, NZ will still be managing Covid-19
Mike Hosking (Newstalk ZB): Is Ashley Bloomfield up to the job?
Heather du Plessis-Allan (Herald): Jacinda Ardern’s treatment of the Cook Islands is paternalism (paywalled)
Herald: Editorial: Vaccine rollout at a snail’s pace (paywalled)
Chris Keall (Herald): Government’s vaccination register ‘just putting money into a Silicon Valley billionaire’s pocket’ (paywalled)

Government and wellbeing
Tess McClure (The Guardian): New Zealand’s ‘wellbeing budget’ made headlines, but what really changed?
Girol Karacaoglu (Interest): Why Budget 2021 is a historic opportunity for wellbeing, leaving no one behind
Ryan Boswell (1News): Government putting more beneficiaries into greater debt, with loans totalling almost $2 billion
Ryan Boswell (1News): Economist believes more beneficiaries will end up in debt after Government loans total revealed
Bernie Smith (Herald): Budget a chance to address insufficient income support (paywalled)
Bruce Cotterill (Herald): List of Government policy flops grows longer by the day (paywalled)
Martyn Bradbury (Daily Blog): Why Jacinda will win 2023 despite housing, poverty, inequality & mental health crisis
David Farrar: Why so few Labour Members’ Bills?
Dan Satherley (Newshub): More funding needed for schemes ‘by Māori, for Māori’ – Willie Jackson
Scott Palmer (Newshub): ACT MP Karen Chhour takes patu to Labour MP Willie Jackson for accusing New Zealand of ‘institutional racism’

Housing crisis
Joel Maxwell (Stuff): Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern says house sale ‘across the road’ in her neighbourhood showed market unsustainable
Siobhan Wilson (1News): Jacinda Ardern hopeful Government’s moves will curb NZ’s ‘unsustainable’ housing market
Dileepa Fonseka (Stuff): Yes in my back yard: The millennial movement rebelling against Nimby baby boomers
Rob Stock (Stuff): No rent rise threat from Government housing policy, Westpac says
Rob Mitchell (Stuff): Wellington’s developing drama: City taking the low road when high rise is answer to housing crisis
Michael Andrew (Spinoff): The laughable quest of saving a first home deposit in 2021
Newstalk ZB: Government spending $1 billion every three months on housing support
RNZ: ‘We need a building ministry’: doco reveals high-rise horrors
Geraden Cann (Stuff): Descendant of Māori chiefs says housing crisis has cost her whānau their identity
Rob Stock (Stuff): Parents are ‘silent co-borrowers’ on their children’s mega-mortgages
Tom Kitchin (RNZ): Housing pressure surging in Gisborne with many still on street
Nadine McDonnell (Daily Blog): The new gold rush…. housing in the 21st Century?
Don Brash: More on housing
Catherine Masters (One Roof): ‘If you’ve got $2m, there’s no housing crisis’
One Roof: Why buy in a Kāinga Ora-led development?

National Party leadership
Bryce Edwards (Democracy Project): Political Roundup – Rumours of Collins being rolled by Luxon and Bridges
Monique Poirier (Kiwiblog): National must prove it is ready to govern again
Mark Quinlivan (Newshub): ‘I don’t see the point’: Political pundits dismiss National Party leadership change talk
Newstalk ZB: Former ACT leader says National at risk of losing status as main opposition party
Newstalk ZB: Sunday Panel: ‘Covered in the stench of failure’ – is Collins’ time as leader up?

Local Government
Tom O’Connor (Stuff): Māori Wards must be decided by ratepayers, not councils alone
David Farrar: WCC refuses to give the public any say on voting rights
Joel MacManus (Stuff): Councillors to decide Let’s Get Wellington Moving’s priorities, two years after programme was launched
Bernard Orsman (Herald): The Super Rich and the Super City: The companies pocketing $10b of ratepayers’ money (paywalled)
Stuart Crosby (Stuff): Blurred boundaries risk leaving people feeling cut off from issues directly affecting them
Joel MacManus (Stuff): Wellington City Council failing on cyclist safety, audit finds
Tom Hunt (Stuff): Wellington council poised to start ditching ‘dirty money’ pokie machines

Drug reform
Audrey Young (Herald): Coalition calls for health-based approach to drug use in open letter to Govt
Hamish Cardwell (RNZ): Dozens of social service and health organisations call for drug laws to be overhauled
Joel Maxwell (Stuff): Dozens of organisations pen open letter calling for drug laws to be dumped and replaced

Mental health crisis
Henry Cooke (Stuff): Government set to spend far less on mental health than promised in 2019
Jenny Nicholls (Stuff): My family’s learned the painful truth about mental health services
Dan Satherley (Newshub): Mental health: Labour MP David Parker accuses Mental Health Foundation of not telling the truth about state of services

Health
Andrea Vance (Stuff): Why do women put up with the gender health gap?
Michelle Duff (Stuff): A woman was asked to change her own pad hours after surgery. Where’s the $35m maternity plan?
Ian Powell: Ministry of Health: feudal fiefdoms and a culture of obliviousness
Louisa Steyl (Stuff): Cancer treatment costs ‘crippling,’ Southland advocate says
Siouxsie Wiles (Stuff): MP’s cervical cancer diagnosis a wake-up call

Economy and work
Tom Pullar-Strecker (Stuff): OCR review: Year on hold is over, what comes now?
Hamish Rutherford (Herald): Power struggle: industry warns thousands of jobs at risk due to electricity prices (paywalled)
Sasha Borissenko (Herald): Legal loophole leaving contractors and shift workers out in the cold (paywalled)
Fran O’Sullivan (Herald): Grant Robertson tightens Government’s grip on Air New Zealand (paywalled)
Jamie Gray (Herald): NZ Reserve Bank in no hurry to shift rates yet, say economists (paywalled)
Tamsyn Parker (Herald): Business Insider: Ron Brierley’s parting gift, fund manager’s 61% return, Don Brash-chaired bank in breach (paywalled)

Defence and international relations
Robert Ayson (Newsroom): Defence Minister goes absent without leave
Thomas Gregory and Larry Lewis (Herald): Defence order unlikely to prevent another Operation Burnham (paywalled)
John Minto (Daily Blog): Foreign affairs officials sell us out on human rights
Aaron Leaman (Stuff): Kiwi firm Gallagher gets Five Eyes’ spy alliance favour by avoiding China
Paul Buchanan: Principled, pragmatic or expedient

Climate change
Jamie Morton (Herald): Covering Climate Now: How do we decarbonise New Zealand’s energy sector?
Jamie Morton (Herald): Covering climate now: How can we play our own part? (paywalled)
Guy Salmon and Jim Sinner (Herald): Fairly sharing the burden is necessary for climate success (paywalled)
Debra Blackett (Stuff): Companies, not households, have the power to go fast on reducing emissions

Media
Steve Braunias (Herald): The secret diary of Mike Hosking and Jacinda Ardern (paywalled)
Victor Billot (Newsroom): An ode to Mike Hosking
Martyn Bradbury (Daily Blog): The Sunday Night Grill with Bomber Bradbury – wrapping the weeks politics, culture, current affairs & UFOs

Public service
Steve Stannard (Stuff): Public servants’ ‘rock star’ workplace a utopian dream for most of us
Andre Chumko (Stuff): Record-keeping in public sector still worrying — Archives New Zealand report

Other
Jessie Chiang (RNZ): Anti-Asian sentiment in NZ – it’s real, it’s everywhere
Peter de Graaf (Herald): Former Deputy PM Winston Peters keeping mum on political future
Holly Walker (Stuff): We’re at risk of leaving some marginalised and excluded in a post-Covid world
Jared Savage (Herald): Gangs and guns: New police Firearms Investigation Team to crack down on illegal weapons (paywalled)
Martin Van Beynen (Stuff): We don’t need another survey to tell us the obvious
Joris de Bres (E-Tagata): The Dawn Raids of 1974
Dan Satherley (Newshub): Can racism be expelled from the police force?
RNZ: Taxpayers’ Union OIAs to Hamilton council cost $60k in staff time
Dahlia Malaeulu (E-Tagata): Rejecting the System
Sam Hurley (Herald): Artist Mika X and linked entities were awarded $100,000 by Creative NZ when facing police investigation, charges for aiding rich-lister (paywalled)
Herald: Beehive Diaries: PM Jacinda Ardern’s newfound love for Australians (paywalled)