Blog

by Nathan Smith The government’s revamped Move-On powers have already had a positive effect on my life, but there’s so much more that could – and should – be done to fix the problem of the “sturdy beggar.” Just down [...]

by Peter Williams In my not entirely successful career as a radio talk show host, a few encounters remain fresh in the memory. One was with former Te Tai Tokerau MP Hone Harawira during the time of the Ihumatao land [...]

by J. R. Bruning With a general election scheduled for November 2026, I thought I would review the health policies to identify which parties understand that many of our chronic illnesses, many of the chronic diseases now common in New [...]

by Peter Williams Paul Henry always had a knack for cutting to the chase. That’s why his succinct line about Act’s education discipline policy will hit the spot with so many teachers. “Let’s be honest, there are a lot of [...]

by Diego Fusaro “The presently existing society is the only possible one, as it always has been and always will be” — this refrain, ceaselessly repeated by the society of the spectacle across all media and presented in various figures [...]

by Peter Williams I did something on Saturday I’ve never done before. I went to a Warriors game. It wasn’t a home game but it might as well have been because it was on Australia’s Gold Coast. The poor old [...]

by Rodney Hide Is it too soon to declare the brouhaha over Stuart Nash’s text theatre? And a political hit job? I don’t know. Let’s test the water. The text was private to former National Attorney General Chris Finlayson. Finlayson [...]

by Dr Muriel Newman The Coalition’s proposed shakeup of local government is well underway. Time is now running out for councils to decide on the shape of their mergers. This is not the first time local councils have undergone major [...]

by Dr Oliver Hartwich A fortnight ago, I wrote about the fall in New Zealand’s road toll, from 843 deaths in 1973 to a provisional 271 last year. I thought it was an achievement worth celebrating. But then my colleague [...]

by Peter Williams From the wilds of Central Otago I am cheering loudly, clapping enthusiastically and hooping and hollering “go you good thing” to the councils in Taupo, Tararua and Rangitikei who are basically saying to the government “get stuffed.” [...]

by Rachel Stewart Yes, yes, absolutely they do good – even great – work. Yes, we need them more than ever. Totally and utterly. Free speech is the hill I’m willing to die on. That said, why am I no [...]

by Jen Bainbridge Labour's Clean Slate bill has passed its first reading. Let's call it what it is: creating voters out of thin air. The bill would wipe the criminal records of offenders who have stayed out of trouble for [...]

by Nathan Smith I like Paul Henry. He was always a bit of an unserious joker, but I think all his joking around has caused him to be confused about the reality of New Zealand politics. Part of his stated [...]

by Simon O'Connor Spoilers. If you haven’t seen The Odyssey in theatres yet and don’t want any surprises, then step away now. Like the Sirens on the coast, block your ears (and in this case, close your eyes) and move on. Commenting [...]

by Peter Williams The great irony of Christopher Luxon ruling out a coalition with those redistributive Marxists of Opportunity is that the longer Luxon leads National it’s becoming the kind of left leaning social democratic party I’ve spent my life [...]

by Salima Padamsey Climate change planning has become one of the most important and contentious public policy issues of our time. Communities are being asked to make decisions that affect homes, infrastructure, insurance, property values and future development. Those decisions [...]

by Simon O'Connor Multiculturalism has failed. In fact, multiculturalism will – by definition – always fail. A society cannot indefinitely sustain competing cultural norms on fundamental questions of law, rights, and social order. This is not a new observation. Leaders and commentators [...]

by Kelvin Kemm The Sun has mystified mankind for centuries. In days long gone, primitive people worshiped the Sun or a Sun God. But much more recently, in the later 1800s, people were still mystified because by then science had [...]

by Dr Muriel Newman One of the things we’ve learnt about climate change politics over the years is that their predictions are always wrong. Remember Al Gore’s 2006 film “An Inconvenient Truth” which frightened audiences worldwide with apocalyptic predictions that [...]

by Oliver Hartwich The Opportunity Party wants to be known as the party of ideas. Now polling near five percent, I decided to test one. The party’s website offers a calculator. You enter your income and land value, and it [...]

by Rachel Stewart If one more politician, activist, media wallah, or dinner party guest uses the term “community” again, my very individualistic brain’s going to explode. To label say, 5 or even millions of unique people as simply the “gay [...]

by Peter Williams Chloe Swarbrick makes ridiculous and outrageous statements, most of which go unchallenged by a sympathetic media. Here’s the latest nonsense. “Luxon’s Government has made active, consistent decisions to make climate change worse for the past three years.” [...]

by Nathan Smith Good news everybody! Another piece of the tired 20th century may finally be on its deathbed. The university system is in terminal decline, and I couldn’t be happier. The news comes from a family member who teaches about [...]

by Peter Williams In the immortal words of tennis legend John McEnroe: “You cannot be serious.” Whatever slight remaining credibility 1 News might have had as a genuine, unbiased, commercially neutral news organisation disappeared completely tonight (July20) because they did not lead [...]

by Peter Williams At our golf club a few of us play a side bet that if you hit a shot backwards, unintentionally or on purpose, you have to buy the rest of your playing group a drink. It sometimes [...]

by Kelvin Kemm At a shopping mall or amusement park one can see vendors selling balloons filled with Helium. Kids love them and dance around trailing their balloons, which float above them. From time to time some kid accidentally lets [...]

by Andy Oakley Well, today we have a real humdinger to discuss. In a July 6 article in Kapiti News by Ashleigh Collis, Kapiti Mayor Janet Holborow made what amounts to a public confession that she is a Marxist, or [...]

by Rachel Stewart British politicians have a problem. Understatement. It’s not just that their nation is financially, socially, morally, and spiritually re-entering a modern-day version of The Dark Ages and generally brought about by their own actions - or more [...]

by Bryce Wilkinson Among prosperous nations, New Zealand is relatively a low-income country. That hurts. In 2024, net national income per capita was 30% higher in Australia, according to the Paris-based OECD. It was only 19% higher on average over [...]

Feedback on the New Zealand–India Free Trade Agreement Legislation When we made our submission on the India–New Zealand Free Trade Agreement, we warned that the deal reached well beyond tariffs into investment, immigration, labour mobility, digital payments and New Zealand’s [...]

by Nathan Smith Glad I caught you. There’s not much time, I can already hear the helicopters. You told us about wanting to become a player rather than a volunteer, right? The note was something about being sick of doing [...]

by Peter Williams One of the rapidly emerging features of the 2026 election is the announcement of candidates carrying a profile from another sphere of activity. New Zealand First started the trend in April with former All Black captain Taine [...]

by Peter Williams Like any (sort of) sophisticated nation we’ve always played host to visits from foreign leaders. The APEC meeting of 1999 even had the presidents of the USA, Russia and China all here at the same time. But [...]

by Simon O'Connor Having recently left London, I found that much of the press coverage was consumed by the murder of former politician Ann Widdecombe. I don’t know how much coverage this has received in New Zealand, but the story [...]

by Peter Williams One of the rapidly emerging features of the 2026 election is the announcement of candidates carrying a profile from another sphere of activity. New Zealand First started the trend in April with former All Black captain Taine [...]

by Peter Williams One of the more unexpected consequences of the Covid era and its restrictions has been a boom in the number of people playing golf. According to Golf New Zealand, in 2019 there were 105,967 paid up members [...]

by Joshua Riley Spin recovery training was removed from the private pilot curriculum because the manoeuvre was killing more students than the lack of it ever would. Read that again. The cure was deadlier than the disease. (The maths was [...]

by Dr Muriel Newman After decades of rampant migration across Europe, governments are finally confronting a problem they have ignored for far too long: the rise of “parallel societies”. These are enclaves of immigrant communities living under alternative cultural and [...]

by Rachel Stewart Following on from last week’s ‘Riding Shotgun’ where I talked about depression and Big Pharma and SSRIs I got to thinking about my mate Tony Soprano. Now, if you haven’t watched the best show in the history [...]

by Nathan Smith Pop quiz: are the people who make movies your friends or enemies? Most of you would answer this correctly if it were asked in a neutral environment, like a conference room. You understand that Hollywood is run [...]

by Nick Clark Local government reform has turned into a numbers game. The government’s ‘Head Start’ asks how many councils we should have, and where the lines between their jurisdictions should be drawn. But a more important question is, what [...]

by Dr Maryanne Demasi Behind closed doors at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January 2016, senior figures from the Gates Foundation and the World Bank proposed a new approach to pandemic preparedness: large-scale simulations modelled on military war [...]

by Elisabeth Bennink Across the world, the response to Covid looked strangely alike: the same lockdowns, the same shuttered schools and businesses, the same insistence that there was only one responsible course and that to question it was to put [...]

by Rachel Stewart First, a disclaimer. I’ve been a functioning depressive for a large part of my adult life. I sought help for that in my forties, and like everybody else I was sold a lie by GP’s who didn’t [...]

by Dr Muriel Newman For decades, New Zealand has been undergoing a quiet constitutional revolution. What was once largely unnoticed is now becoming increasingly visible – so much so that the Coalition Government can no longer ignore it if it [...]

by Nathan Smith It was about this time, 11 years ago, when I was in London, news emerged about foreign men and rape gangs across the UK. The horror story of Rotherham was on all the front pages, and I [...]

by Peter Williams Sometimes you just cringe at the content of the television news. Saturday night was a classic. The New Zealand football team lost, predictably, to Belgium by 5 goals to 1 so ending their World Cup campaign. They [...]

by Andy Oakley In today’s opinion piece, the question is a big one: Should New Zealand ban the words Māori and Pākehā? Not just discourage them — I mean remove them from legislation, from government documents, from schools, and from [...]

by Benno Blaschke Before anyone builds a house in New Zealand, someone must pay upfront for the pipes and the roads that connect a development to the city. Almost always, that someone is the council. But a council can only [...]

by Ray Pistol One Nation has political momentum right now like we’ve perhaps never seen in recent Australian political history. For the past year there’s been a trend where every time there’s a new poll, its numbers go up. There [...]

The Definitions of Woman and Man Amendment Bill is currently before Parliament. The Bill seeks to provide legal definitions for the terms "woman" and "man" based on biological sex. We support this Bill because we believe New Zealand law should [...]

by Ro Edge, Save Women’s Sport Australasia New Zealand stands at a crossroads. The Legislation (Definitions of Woman and Man) Amendment Bill, introduced by New Zealand First, offers a straightforward, common-sense solution: define “woman” as an adult human biological female [...]

by Nathan Smith One burned bus. One measly, burned-out bus… That was the extent of the outrage in Ireland last week after an African invader almost beheaded an Irish man in Belfast. Look, I’ll be the first to say that burning public [...]

by Joshua Riley A well-connected lobby group with direct access to the Prime Minister privately proposed an internet regulator, age verification, and platform accountability - seven weeks before the select committee inquiry began. The committee delivered all of it, plus [...]

by John Grant What is the reason for the rise of One Nation, and the decline in Australian politics and society? Well, according to the Prime Minister, “it’s the economy, stupid”. Indeed, PM Anthony Albanese invoked the Clinton-era maxim last week as a [...]

by William McGimpsey This submission focuses primarily on the immigration aspects of the India Free Trade Agreement. The immigration provisions have arguably been the major bone of public contention surrounding the FTA, and the agreement comes in an international context [...]

by Thomas David Brough The Liberals built the machinery they now complain about, vacated the ground they once held, and watched One Nation walk onto it. In 2001, John Howard told the Liberal Party’s federal campaign launch that we would [...]

by Grant McLachlan Two hours of questions in New Plymouth, and the Toi Foundation’s trustees fronted up. But the answers raised sharper doubts than the deal began with — and the most forensic case against the sale came from the [...]

by Rachel Stewart Have you heard of the Gell-Man Amnesia effect? You’ll recognise it when it’s described, I’m sure, because many of us willingly partake in it. The term was coined by writer and filmmaker Michael Crichton, inspired by his [...]

by Andy Oakley While New Zealand households are struggling with skyrocketing living costs, crumbling roads, and rates bills that keep climbing, councils across the country have found something far more important to spend your money on: cutting CO₂ emissions that [...]

by Nathan Smith It’s always fun to uncover the hidden fences or gates used by the farmers of men to keep us all safe, productive and not rioting. For example, you’ve no doubt heard that only three things in life [...]

by Nicole Foss Farmers are in trouble worldwide, as the cost of both fuel and fertiliser are soaring, and in some places neither are available at any price. Even in Russia – a major energy producer – deliberate destruction of [...]

by Caldron Pool In any serious system of accountability, the importance of a promise increases the obligation to keep it. In modern politics, however, the more consequential the promise, the less accountability seems to follow when it is broken. Why [...]

by Peter Williams Has New Zealand just appointed its first “celebrity” editor? The quite remarkable announcement today of columnist, speech writer, PR agent and strategist Matthew Hooton to be the editor of Wellington’s Post newspaper has some overtures of former British cabinet [...]

by  Grant McLachlan Taranaki is being asked to bless a $620 million deal that hands its last locally owned bank to a listed company — at a discount, with the seller lending the buyer the money. New Zealand has watched [...]

by Senator Malcolm Roberts The United Nations is in a state of ‘imminent financial collapse’. Apparently. Their decline is moving at a glacial pace. Nations are drip-feeding them cash while the UN negotiates for structural change to how they handle [...]

by Joshua Riley Five days after the parliamentary majority for ratification was already locked in, New Zealand released the full text of its Free Trade Agreement with India. Read it. Because what it says is not what you were told. [...]

by Simon O'Connor I’ve not seen the full text of the agreement between the Islamic Regime and the United States, but I’m prepared already to call it a failure. At best, this is just the start of a temporary ceasefire. [...]

by Dr Muriel Newman “People Power” has forced the Government to change the law to strengthen local government democracy. This is a major win for everyone who raised the alarm about the tribal takeover of local government that’s now underway [...]

by William McGimpsey This essay discusses the issues raised in Pope Leo XIV’s recent encyclical - Magnifica Humanitas. In it the Pope warns of the threats posed to mankind by technology and the centralisation of power. I am a former policy analyst: [...]

by Nicole Foss The US, Iran, and the mediator -Pakistan – have all said that some kind of agreement is close. This is the first time all have agreed. Usually such statements come only from Trump and are merely for [...]

by John Grant One of the results of the rise of One Nation has been a renewed focus on electoral arithmetic on the Australian right. By how much will One Nation erase the Liberal vote? What will happen with preferences? [...]

by Peter Williams Any day now the June Curia-Taxpayers Union political poll will be released. It’s less than five months to the 2026 election, the time that polling numbers start to matter. Last month a party which rebranded as Opportunity [...]

by Peter Williams Here’s a classic case of how media can attract you with a patently misleading headline. From the New Zealand Herald website, posted at 4.21 pm on June 11: Former commissioners defend Labour police candidate Rakesh Naidoo’s integrity, question [...]

by Rachel Stewart If you haven’t watched our new show called ‘Both Barrels’ with me and Maree Buscke, where we both shoot the breeze about the things sticking in our craw every week, please do avail yourself. While recording this [...]

by Louise Vicente If you've been hearing a lot about new legislation lately and wondering what it all means for organic and non-GMO farmers and food producers in Aotearoa New Zealand, you're not alone. Over the past few weeks, there [...]

Have your say on RUCs (Road User Charges), privacy and freedom of movement The Government is consulting on proposed regulations for New Zealand’s modernised Road User Charges system. These changes are being presented as a fairer and more convenient way [...]

by Nathan Smith It seems darkly ironic that a person like Donald Trump will be the President of the United States just as the country marks its 250th year of independence. Trump is the quintessential American. He’s not corrupt – not [...]

by Roger Partridge Andy Burnham has one prescription, and he means to fill it, whatever the patient walks in with. The man with the broken arm, the woman with chest pains, the child with a fever: each leaves the surgery [...]

by Peter Williams There’s an intriguing campaign underway to try and manipulate the existence of the Maori electorates at the next two elections – this year and 2029 - and possibly for 2032 as well. That’s because the existence of [...]

by Ryan Henderson 136,200 migrants arrived in New Zealand in the year to February 2026 (Stats NZ). ACT's response, announced on Sunday: a six-point immigration policy. Five of those points describe things the New Zealand government already does in some [...]

by Rodney Hide I have been impressed by just how disgusted parents are by what our Minister of Education Erica Stanford has the schools teaching our kids about sex. It’s easy to see why the radicals pushing this material don’t [...]

by Simon O'Connor and Louisa Wall This is a joint opinion piece written by myself and Louisa Wall. She and I are both former Members of Parliament, and the founding co-chairs in New Zealand for the Interparliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC). [...]

by Nathan Smith Bishop Brian Tamaki is one of the only people in politics who clearly feels he has a right to rule. His main issue is that society has rejected the Christian god and fallen into nihilism. Tamaki wants [...]

by Michael Johnston The worst-kept secret of this afternoon’s budget is that the entitlement to a fees-free year of tertiary study will be scrapped. On 8 May, New Zealand First leader Winston Peters ‘leaked’ the policy change on Newstalk ZB. [...]

by Simon O'Connor I’m a big fan of the late Sir Roger Scruton. He was a powerful conservative voice, and among many writings, he warned of the censorship happening to conservative voices. In 2019 he said: “I am a conservative [...]

by Dr Muriel Newman “This is a budget that should have been delivered in year one of the Coalition’s term”, according to Economist Cameron Bagrie. He says the if the fiscal discipline shown in Budget 2026 had been applied back [...]

by Andy Oakley What do the modern idea of “Maori” as a single race with special rights and the sudden explosion of transgender identity in our schools actually have in common? They’re both social constructs that didn’t exist in their [...]

by Sean Rush New Zealand is planning for a climate future scientists now reject. And fixing it will require more than a policy tweak New Zealand’s coastal climate change planning system is built on a simple legal standard: councils must [...]

by Chris Hunter As Kiwis, we’ve always punched above our weight. We’re the innovators, the builders, the "number 8 wire" thinkers. But there’s a quiet crisis unfolding in our suburbs and rural towns that no amount of backyard ingenuity can [...]

by Roger Partridge In 1987 Telecom New Zealand employed about 25,000 people. By 1997 it employed under 8,000. A single corporation shed 17,000 jobs in a decade, in a country of 3.3 million. The cost of Telecom’s long-distance calls fell by 60 [...]

by Nathan Smith What first comes to mind when you see the government signalling that its proposed under-16 social media ban doesn’t go far enough? Education Minister Erica Stanford said papers for her wider programme of work on countering the harms [...]

The Government has backed down on sweeping new homeschool regulations just hours before they were set to become law, following fierce backlash from the public, the homeschooling community and last-minute pressure from NZ First and ACT. Education Minister Erica Stanford [...]

by William McGimpsey I recently returned from a family holiday in Fiji, where I took the opportunity to learn a bit more about that county’s fraught history of mass migration, ethnic conflict, military coups, and demographic shifts. Fiji’s experience serves [...]

by Nicole Foss There are many factors critical for the functioning of the global system, and the world has been approaching non-negotiable limits in several of them – energy, finance, fresh water, fertile soil etc – but what is happening [...]

by Alexandros Dolgov One of the main political developments of the past decade has been the rise of populism, even if its roots can be traced further back, perhaps to the 1990s and the rise of the Freedom Party of [...]

by Dr Muriel Newman Breaking News: The extreme climate scenario, used by the expert United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to forecast catastrophic climate change has been withdrawn. The international body responsible for IPCC modelling has now officially declared the [...]

by Mark Bexgrave Once upon a time, men and women lived and worked together to survive the brutal realities of nature, hunger, violence, and hardship. Then one day, as life became safer and more comfortable thanks to that partnership, someone [...]

by Richard Prebble On a flight to Wellington the passenger beside me introduced himself. “I’m from IBM. We are developing for Railways a world-leading wages management system.” All my alarm bells went off. “World-leading”, “computer system”, and “government department” are [...]

by Rachel Stewart If you’re going to be enrolled at the highest-ranked college in America things just got a bit harder for you. Why? Well, this week hundreds of faculty voted to curb what’s described as ‘grade inflation’ or the [...]