David Shearer is a loss to our politics.

National Party politics - and, by extension, New Zealand politics - have suddenly become very uncertain.

John Key's bombshell announcement yesterday has thrown New Zealand politics into turmoil.

It is hard to understand why Finance Minister is wary about giving the Reserve Bank the power it wants to impose an income limit on house mortgage lending.

As the end of the year draws closer, we start to recall those who made a difference to New Zealand in 2016.

New Zealand pop pioneer Ray Columbus has been fondly remembered this week.

The police yesterday called off the search for Taulagi Afamasaga.

"Condemn me. It does not matter. History will absolve me." Those were the words of Fidel Castro in October 1953.

The British and Irish Lions team to tour NZ next year will potentially be the finest side representing the four Home Unions to travel to our shores.

Among his many duties, Foreign Minister Murray McCully gets to rub shoulders with some fairly noxious individuals.

Doctors at Waikato Hospital have raised disturbing allegations about the way the district health board makes its decisions.

In the world according to Donald Trump the Trans-Pacific Partnership is dead.

A survey which revealed access problems to the child disability allowance has raised more questions than answers.

The consensus view of the nation's economists is that New Zealand is well placed to take the rebuild costs from last week's quake in its stride.

The contours of Donald Trump's White House administration are emerging.

It has been more than 20 years since the first major effort in New Zealand to promote legalised euthanasia.

Statistics NZ boss Liz MacPherson was unusually blunt for a Wellington bureaucrat as she assessed the damage to her department's headquarters.

It is a year since terrorists launched co-ordinated attacks in Paris and slaughtered 130 innocent people.

New Zealand experienced something last weekend even more rare than an All Black defeat. It was a defeat accepted with good grace.

The proper response when someone is terminally ill is to offer support and comfort.

After 240 years since independence, and in light of the man who craves the job, Clinton would be deserving as the first woman in the White House.

The Labour Party is by no means alone in worrying what to do about 74,000 young people who are in neither employment, education or training.

It is unbelievable that a difficult child could be locked in a tiny cell at any New Zealand school nowadays.

How much better, for them and everyone who enjoys fireworks, if it marked an event with meaning in New Zealand.

Labour needs to show Auckland and the country it has the makings of a fresh, modern government.

Not many Kiwis may be satisfied by the Auditor General's report into the propriety of the Government's gift of a sheep-breeding establishment to a breeder in Saudi Arabia.

The email story has been the most conventional element of this most unconventional campaign.

Labour's pledge to invest $680 million in a light rail system has rightly been labelled "pork barrel" politics by Steven Joyce.

It will be a sad day if New Zealand decides to charge for access to tracks in its national parks.

The police tactic of gathering details of individuals by setting up a drink-drive checkpoint would seem to stray from the powers granted to police under the Land Transport Act.