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by Karl du Fresne I attended two sessions at the Featherston Booktown Festival on Saturday. One, on the state of the news media, was almost totally useless. I walked out before it had finished. The other, however, was not only [...]

Feedback on the New Zealand–India Free Trade Agreement The deadline for providing feedback on the India FTA is 11.59pm tonight (Sunday 17 May). We understand many people wish to provide feedback, but with limited time and a lot of conflicting [...]

by Richard Prebble I have a confession to make. The Broadcasting Standards Authority was my idea. What is worse, I still think the original idea was right. To my surprise, after the 1987 election, David Lange made me Minister of [...]

by Dr Muriel Newman The recent appointment of ten unelected iwi representatives with full voting rights onto a Council Committee of just six elected Councillors is a stark illustration that the tribal takeover of Local Government in New Zealand is now well underway. But [...]

by Maree Buscke Having owned and run more than a few businesses over the years, one of the first fundamentals you learn is identifying who your customers are, what they want, and why they should choose you over everyone else. [...]

by Nathan Smith The conspiracy theorists have won the conversation beyond their wildest dreams, but they have no idea what to do with their victory. Consider this story: “Kathleen Kelly got two doses of the [Covid-19] vaccine to keep her [...]

by Lindsay Perigo Oh, week of rapture! It began before the ink was even dry on my script for last week's Perspective. News came through that the Broadcasting Anti-Standards Authority is to be abolished. That motley little group of Woke [...]

by Alex Stewart For an increasing share of rural New Zealand, one foreign company now carries the broadband, the cellular backhaul, the school connection, the emergency hub, and the mobile service. The New Zealand Defence Force examined what depending on [...]

by Simon O'Connor Do you believe in law and order? Believe that being proud of your country is a good thing, and that managing who migrates here is prudent? Think children having a mum and dad is preferable? Can you [...]

by CIG Harold Mackinder wrote in 1904 that the era of European maritime predominance established 400 years earlier was coming to an end. Western naval and colonial powers had previously been able to outflank and dominate the Asian landmass through [...]

by Alex Stewart The Commerce Commission paid an international expert to assess New Zealand’s telecommunications regime. He warned that the rural market was heading toward a monopoly that the Government would soon find itself unable to regulate. It published his assessment, [...]

by Rodney Hide New Zealand’s fertility rate sits at 1.55 births per woman. Official Stats NZ figures for the year ended December 2025 confirm it. Replacement level is 2.1. We have been below it since 2013 and the numbers keep [...]

by Peter Williams In 1875 New Zealand had 10 provinces, each with their own government. We now have 26 provincial rugby unions. Currently there are 78 local authorities – 12 city councils, 53 district councils, Auckland Council, Chatham Islands council [...]

by Alex Stewart New Zealand has the highest rate of satellite broadband adoption in the OECD. I filed 28 Official Information Act requests across 18 agencies to find out what the government knew about the consolidation that produced it. Most [...]

by Zac Brandon Extraordinary things are happening in Melbourne. A mysterious crime syndicate, which appears to be a Middle Eastern gang linked to the city’s tobacco wars, is firebombing bars and nightclubs, and the police seem powerless to stop it. Venues [...]

by Ryan Henderson WHAT NEW ZEALAND OPENED: • Every category of goods. Food, machinery, chemicals, vehicles, textiles, every line. Tariff goes to zero on day one. No exclusions, no phasing in, no quotas. • Every service sector. NZ is open [...]

by Roger Partridge Treasury projects public health spending will rise from 7.1 to 10 per cent of GDP by 2065. Over the same period, the ratio of working-age taxpayers to superannuitants will halve. Something has to give. The question at [...]

by Rachel Stewart I’ve got a bit a thing for strong leaders. By “strong’ I mean that they are prepared to say the unsayable, they generally see the way of things earlier than most, and they take risks for speaking [...]

by Ryan Henderson NZ has just signed an FTA that makes us train and bankroll India’s apple and kiwifruit industries, so they can crush out our own growers. Zespri, our fruit growers, scientists and MPI all forced to help their [...]

by Peter Williams In April 2024 the Financial Markets Authority (FMA) launched its Matangirua strategy – its formal Maori engagement and capability framework. The strategy was designed to help Maori “participate as Maori” in financial markets. That apparently means “not just as [...]

by Nathan Smith It’s a pity that US President Donald Trump is seen as a 6ft 3in buffoon, because he has an uncanny knack for accidentally revealing the nature of the permanent bureaucracy and the insidious mechanisms of the American [...]

by Peter Williams The abolition of the Broadcasting Standards Authority was inevitable. Dithery Communications Minister Paul Goldsmith finally made a decision, or more likely his cabinet colleagues and some Act MPs gave him a boot in the behind and told [...]

by Lindsay Perigo I want to begin this week with an off-cut from last week, which I dropped at the last minute for reasons of time. I was talking about the hypocrisy of the Dirty Dems in America in supporting [...]

by Ian Bradford Jupiter is our largest and heaviest planet. Its gravitational attraction affects all the other planets in our solar system. Since 1900 the global surface temperature of the Earth has risen by about 0.8 Deg C., and since [...]

by Ryan Henderson Read the original article here: Damien Grant: Reading the NZ-India free trade agreement made my stress levels rise | Stuff Damien, I read your column on Sunday morning. I'm deep into the same agreement and I have [...]

by Simon O'Connor To badly quote Marcellus from Shakespeare’s Hamlet (Act 1, Scene 4) - there is something rotten with the state of our mainstream media and its wider ecosystem. Whether it is the behaviour of some reporters; the increasing use of [...]

by Peter Williams Earlier this decade it was decided that the old Cromwell Memorial Hall, about 20 kilometres from where I live, had to be demolished because it was an earthquake risk. It was another example of bureaucrats convincing politicians [...]

by Dr Muriel Newman New Zealand heads toward the 2026 election facing three interconnected difficulties that are shaping voter sentiment: a deepening cost‑of‑living crisis, a perception of political instability within the governing coalition, and unresolved attacks on our constitutional integrity [...]

by Rachel Stewart Sometimes there are just no words. But I’ll give it go. Stay with me. This is all leading somewhere. I’m of an era where men crossdressing as a woman used to be funny. By that I mean, [...]

by Maree Buscke Abigail Shrier’s Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren’t Growing Up takes a swipe at how therapy culture has become part of everyday life for children, parents, and schools - especially in the United States. Shrier is a [...]

by Nathan Smith For a supposedly “Christian” culture, we sure do celebrate a lot of Satanic rituals out in the open, with state funding. In my opinion, the worst of these Satanic rituals is ANZAC Day. The commemoration is an [...]

by Lindsay Perigo Well, the Trump Deranged have again done what they do best - unleashed their murderous violence. A teacher - of course! - conditioned no doubt by his own teachers, warped by them and the Marxist Media Maggotry [...]

by Rodney Hide The Maori electorates are a 19th-century anachronism that should have been abolished twice—first when universal suffrage arrived in 1893, and again when MMP was adopted in 1996. They are racist by design, divisive by operation, and the [...]

by Peter Williams The most significant aspect of the Maiki Sherman affair is that it became public because a Substack writer made it so. David Seymour made his distaste for the year-long media silence on the matter very obvious by [...]

by Peter Williams Any politician who refuses to front on a particular media outlet essentially because he or she is afraid of being made to look foolish is, frankly, a coward and not competent to be in a position of [...]

by Nicole Foss Chris Martenson is an excellent analyst. I strongly suggest following his work, starting with watching the video posted above. The graphs in this post come from the video. Subscribing to his channel, and his online community if [...]

by Bruce Thompson Anzac Day is not about “service”, “mateship”, or “sacrifice,”. It is not about some abstract set of values. It is about the people who served and the people who sacrificed. Ben Roberts-Smith is not a hero because [...]

by Peter Williams Thank you for the invitation to be here this morning. As a recently arrived Central Otago resident – albeit with a long personal and family history in Otago and Southland – it’s a privilege to deliver the [...]

by Peter Dunne Labour's decision to support the free trade agreement with India should have surprised nobody. It was always going to be the outcome, with the outstanding question being just when Labour would announce its support for the deal. [...]

by Celina 101 They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old: Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. At the going down of the sun and in the morning We will remember them. The [...]

by Roger Partridge New Zealand’s housing crisis has causes everyone recognises – RMA restrictions, building consent delays, infrastructure that cannot keep pace with growth and building costs. All are real. But there is a deeper problem almost nobody mentions: for [...]

by Ian Brighthope This article is a disgraceful, toothless, complicit whitewash that arrived four years too late to matter, written by a careerist hack who helped bury the truth while children were being coerced, injured, and in some cases killed. Derek [...]

by Rachel Stewart I think I'll pull out a long dead grandfather I never met and use him to make a point of some sort. Everybody else seems to do around it this time of year. It's usually done to [...]

by Oliver Hartwich With energy prices spiking, an old idea has gathered fresh momentum: break up the big electricity companies. New Zealand First put the proposal on its agenda at the party’s State of the Nation address, calling for the [...]

by Nathan Smith If it’s true that what’s happening in Iran is about the US creating a final way to step back from the Middle East and turn its full attention to the real strategic challenge of China, what does [...]

by Simon O'Connor Another week, another round of speculation on the leadership of the National Party. As I write, the latest iteration has been put to bed with Christopher Luxon calling a vote on his leadership and winning. As the [...]

by Lindsay Perigo 35 years ago, a black nominee for the United States Supreme Court faced opposition in the Senate  probably because he was black - and definitely because, even worse, he was a conservative black. The party of the [...]

Well… this is one of those updates we have been hoping to share for a very long time. On 17 March 2026, the New Zealand Government confirmed it had formally rejected the proposed 2024 amendments to the World Health Organization [...]

by Endeavour Note: The premise of the speech is what I would say if I were given the opportunity to give an elevator pitch for my ideas to a billionaire. I chose to imagine Jeff Bezos as the recipient because [...]

by Maree Buske Killed to Order: China’s Organ Harvesting Industry and the True Nature of America’s Biggest Adversary by Jan Jekielek  This book is a deeply unsettling and gut wrenching work that seeks to expose one of the most disturbing [...]

by Zac Brandon Two major polls released yesterday show a poll dip for One Nation, a week after another survey had the party tied with Labor. A Newspoll conducted between April 13 and 16 had Labor on 31% of the primary [...]

by Peter Williams Democracy, as Sir Winston Churchill once said in the House of Commons (quoting an unknown parliamentary predecessor) is the worst form of government, apart from all those other forms which have been tried from time to time. [...]

by Gladio The Rise of Remigration Remigration as a term in nationalist circles started to gain currency in the 2010s when European identitarians including Austrian activist Martin Sellner and French writer Renaud Camus starting using the word to describe a [...]

by Nathan Surendran “Collapse is living in the same conditions as the people who grow your coffee.” Vinay Gupta When I talk to people who visit supposedly ‘under-developed’ countries, they come back saying two things - “They’re the poorest people I’ve [...]

by Muriel Newman Political polls provide a snapshot of voters’ views at a particular moment in time. While polls conducted months before an election cannot reliably predict the outcome – given the potential for unforeseen events – they nonetheless offer [...]

by Rachel Stewart So much is going on in Ireland that you’re probably not hearing about. You’ll be hearing the sanitised version if you’re still bothering with the msm. I’ve covered the problems in Ireland before – notably rampant illegal [...]

Recently, our Head of Legal, Katie Ashby-Koppens, had the pleasure of sitting down with Efrat Fenigson on her podcast You’re The Voice. Efrat is an Israeli independent journalist, podcaster, and former high-tech CMO who made the deliberate shift into independent [...]

by Lindsay Perigo If you thought Woke couldn't get any sillier, especially in its pursuit of victimology, you must have missed this. Too quick for you? This is really important. If you're unable to rattle this new Woke acronym off [...]

by Peter Dunne Christopher Luxon's mentor Sir John Key quickly and successfully transitioned from international businessman to national political leader when he became Prime Minister. Luxon, on the other hand, is still struggling to do so. And nor is it [...]

by Steve Gibson Across New Zealand, councils are drifting away from a simple principle that every household understands. You cannot spend more than you earn and expect it to end well. In Hastings, where I serve as a councillor, we [...]

by Oliver Hartwich New Zealand’s ministers answer to Parliament for departments they cannot control. They cannot choose, direct or remove the chief executives who run those departments. The Public Service Commissioner makes those appointments. The New Zealand Initiative argues this [...]

by Rachel Stewart I’m not gonna lie. I’ve got a bit of a thing about hair. As in, I like it residing in all the usual places. Firstly, the hair on your head serves a purpose. It has a cooling [...]

by Nathan Smith The problem with trying to explain the world without understanding how it works is that everyone gets angry in the wrong direction. They start blaming things that aren’t and missing things that are. Not good. My favourite [...]

by Simon O'Connor Please note, events are moving very fast in the Middle East and changing almost as fast as I can write a paragraph. The ceasefire, for example, has already been breached as Iran continues to fire ordinance at [...]

by Lindsay Perigo Well, what a commotion from the apologists for the Ayatollahs, especially the Marxist Media Maggotry and the Islamo-Marxists, about OMBA's F-bomb. How effed-off they must have been that in the midst of an almost-flawless, civilisation-saving military operation, [...]

by William McGimpsey Happy Easter. A key tension within contemporary debate on the Right is the apparent opposition between meritocracy and identity, and more broadly between Nietzschean conceptions of vital strength and Traditionalist appeals to inherited order. These are often [...]

by Roger Partridge This essay forms part of a longer series on Donald Trump’s second presidency – examining the erosion of constitutional constraints at home and the consequences for American power abroad. Peter Smith asks a fair question. In Trump [...]

by Don Brash While the hard-working people of Otago go about their lives, the Otago Regional Council (ORC) is moving pieces across the board that fundamentally change who makes key decisions in that region. A few days ago, ORC held a [...]

by Gladio Remigration as a term in nationalist circles started to gain currency in the 2010s when European identitarians including Austrian activist Martin Sellner and French writer Renaud Camus starting using the word to describe a deliberate, policy-driven reversal of [...]

by Dr Muriel Newman New Zealanders are now confronting the most serious energy and fuel pressures in a generation. Diesel prices have surged to record levels, truck stops in several regions have already run dry, and questions are increasingly being [...]

by Nathan Smith Would you rather your leader be an atheist who acted as if god existed, or a believer who acted as if god didn’t exist? The way I see it, they are the same thing. You might think [...]

by Lindsay Perigo Well! Talk about "you heard it here first"! In my Perspective from a fortnight ago I said this: I noted at the beginning of the liberation of Iran ... that we would quickly discover that Soros and Singham's [...]

Ruptures in global energy markets are exposing, in real time, the vulnerabilities of being at the bottom of the world. Since tensions escalated into open conflict in the Middle East, RCR has made the emerging energy crises a central focus [...]

by Simon O'Connor One of the striking aspects around modern media is not so much the bias that various outlets pursue, but deliberate ignoring of stories and perspectives of importance. In recent days, it became known that the Ministry for [...]

by Simon O'Connor So the Broadcasting Standards Authority (BSA) has just granted itself more powers, notably to empower the complaining class an opportunity to harass those online sharing their views. The BSA’s media release; click the image to read it in [...]

by James Kierstead Academic freedom has become a major concern at universities across the English-speaking world in recent years. Speakers have been disinvited, papers retracted, and academics disciplined or even dismissed for things they have said or positions they have [...]

by Sietze Bosman Modern democracy forces fundamentally incompatible populations — dense urban centers and dispersed rural regions — into a single decision-making system, despite their opposed material interests, incentives, and environments. Because cities are numerically dominant, rural interests are systematically overridden. [...]

by Roger Partridge On 9 March 1776, a Scottish moral philosopher published the most powerful attack on trade protectionism ever written. Two hundred and fifty years later, the world’s largest economy has returned to the policy his great book was [...]

by Alwyn Poole Until a Government has the courage/determination to shrink the size of ITSELF – New Zealand has NO CHANCE of sustained economic growth – or excellence in any sector. The size of the NZ Public Service workforce, as [...]

by Rachel Stewart I’m not going to sit here and tell you I’m an expert on Ozzie politics because I’m not. But watching the surge of popularity for Pauline Hanson’s One Nation Party is deffo worth a squiz. It’s been [...]

by Dr Eric Crampton Too many of the world’s urban planners grew up playing the city-planning game SimCity. You may have played it too. It’s fun, but it’s a terrible guide both to urban planning and to how cities work. [...]

by Lindsay Perigo I must say I am enjoying the current SuperRugby Pacific series on Sky. Normally I deride Sky as Woke Sky Your Home of Beer-Bellied Billiards and Darts, and Whatever You Do Don't Mention the Tennis - after [...]

by Nathan Smith Why is it that the US has started every war it has fought in since 1700? To answer that, we must dig in to the TV show Mad Men, a drama about the Madison Avenue advertising scene [...]

by Bonnie Flaws The Government is not taking the fuel crisis seriously enough, as disruptions linked to the Iran war begin to affect global supply chains, says a petrochemical industry veteran. While countries like India, Thailand and Bangladesh were already [...]

by Alia Bland Alia Bland is a co-founder of Voices For Freedom and Reality Check Radio. The following message was shared this week with the Voices For Freedom community, reflecting on the importance of local connection, resilience, and staying grounded [...]

by M. J. Brown An address to the men of the Victorian branch of the Australian Natives’ Association Strong nations rely on strong founding myths. By myth, I do not necessarily mean a story that is untrue; I mean a story [...]

by Roger Partridge Can a superpower bully its way to greatness? This essay – the second of two assessments of Trump’s second term published in Australia’s Quadrant magazine – examines whether America First is delivering American strength or quietly consuming [...]

by M. K. Grant, national director of Australian Natives' Association In our latest Natives’ Rouseabout podcast there was some discussion on the subject of entryism. Many know the ANA has generally stood against entryism as a course of action at this point [...]

by Simon O'Connor When people are hurt or feel an injustice has been done to them, one of the ways to assist the healing process is to ensure they have been heard and listened to. Importantly, they need to see [...]

by Bruce Cotterill There’s a lot going on. The Middle East. The oil price. The Royal Commission. The polls. The Senate hearings. Epstein. If you’re interested in current affairs, it’s a long list. It’s difficult to stay on top of [...]

by Rachel Stewart The Academy Awards. Remember when it was unmissable? I do. But then, I’ve been around awhile, and during an era that had a touch more class. The Academy, Hollywood itself, and their mouthpieces in the progressive media, [...]

by William McGimpsey The idea of not criticising those to your right has gained traction in online circles recently. The idea has arisen in response to a real problem: for decades mainstream conservatives have disavowed those to their right in [...]

by Peter Williams The following was written in Peter's capacity as Taxpayers' Union board member In 2022, I joined the Board of the Taxpayers’ Union to fight Nanaia Mahuta’s plan to confiscate community-owned water assets and put them into ‘co-governed’ [...]

by Nathan Smith “We’ve been focused on fixing the basics of the economy and laying the foundations to build the future,” Luxon wrote in a recent op-ed. To explain all this boisterous new “confidence” in the economy, Luxon cites his government’s [...]

by Lindsay Perigo I noted at the beginning of the beginning of the liberation of Iran two weeks ago that we would quickly discover that Soros and Singham's rent-a-mob trash in Western countries who had hitherto been brandishing Palestinian flags [...]

by Peter Williams There were numerous warning signs Phase 2 of the Royal Commission into the Covid Response would produce a disappointing outcome. The initial terms of reference specifically excluded an adversarial approach where evidence and submissions could and would [...]

by Dr Muriel Newman At the Wellington District Court on 10 March 2026, charges of intentional damage and obstructing police against the protester who defaced Te Papa’s Treaty of Waitangi exhibit in 2023 were dismissed. The Crown Solicitor decided that, in spite of there [...]

by Zac Brandon Australians woke up this morning to hear that immigration minister Tony Burke had granted asylum to five Iranian female soccer players, and offered refugee visas to the rest of their team, because apparently they faced persecution on return for [...]

by Alwyn Poole The great Neil Postman wrote a remarkable book called Amusing Ourselves to Death. It is at least as predictive as Orwell’s 1984 or Huxley’s Brave New World. Across every school qualification for leavers in NZ - girls do significantly better than [...]

by Colin Robertson So, it has happened. Rupert Lowe has announced that his organisation Restore Britain is now a political party and will stand in general elections around the country. In a very well-judged publicity video, Lowe presents himself (truthfully) as a farmer: [...]