MANY CONSERVATIVE New Zealanders look back with gratitude on Bill Birch’s Employment Contracts Act. Ever since the advent of compulsory union membership in 1936, the National Party had pledged itself to a fundamental shake-up of the laws regulating industrial relations. That it took the party 55 years to make good on its promise is still […]

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Known principally for his political commentaries in The Dominion Post, The ODT, The Press and the late, lamented Independent, and for "No Left Turn", his 2007 history of the Left/Right struggle in New...