Many of us express concern about the country’s soaring house prices - but we also vote for policies that let them stay that way

It was the anthropologist Michael Taussig who coined the term “public secret” – a collective social understanding, a truth generally accepted but not articulated.

Public secrets, he argued, can be important to the functioning of institutions and societies: they allow the existence of seemingly contradictory positions, help maintain current power relations, and assist in reconciling the inevitable tensions of policy or complexities of politics.

Despite political screw-ups and scandal, New Zealand is in a relatively good place right now

Remember January 2020? We were young, carefree and full of hope. The political year in New Zealand started like any other but then the wheels came off spectacularly, and in a way none of us could have predicted.

Covid, coups, conspiracies, scandal, leaks, lies, leadership, lockdowns, misinformation, ministerial screw-ups, a sexting MP. It was immense – and that was before we hit the campaign trail.

Last week it was revealed that more than $300,000 from the public purse was spent in defamation proceedings after the speaker of the New Zealand parliament, Trevor Mallard, wrongly accused a former parliamentary staffer of being a rapist. On Wednesday Mallard fronted up to parliament’s governance and administration committee and apologised to the house and all New Zealanders for his “mistake”, a word he used three times in the first 90 seconds of the hearing.

Reading from a prepared statement, Mallard acknowledged his mistake was in saying that the allegations against the individual, in the context of the 2019 Francis review into bullying and harassment of staff at parliament, amounted to rape, that his understanding of the definition of rape at that time was incorrect and that the alleged conduct did not amount to rape.