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by Dr Benno Blaschke Once upon a time, “Yes Minister” gave us Sir Humphrey Appleby, scheming, obstructive, magnificently verbose, but above all, competent. He could bury a reform in procedure without breaking a sweat. A master of his craft. If [...]

by Peter Williams When Australia was playing Wales in Pool D of the 2019 Rugby World Cup in Tokyo the man who should have been fullback for the Wallabies was at home in Brisbane. His wife was watching the game [...]

by Peter Dunne When relationships break up, it is frequently any children involved who suffer most. They often become pawns in a wider game – the struggle between parents over custody and access rights, or questions of responsibility for their [...]

by Mary Hobbs To ignore evil is to become an accomplice to it. — Martin Luther King At a public meeting in early August it was heartening to hear New Zealand First MP Shane Jones announce that NZF is not going to [...]

by Dr Muriel Newman The latest polls show the Coalition is failing to capture the hearts and minds of voters. Roy Morgan tells the story: support for National was down 2 percentage points from a month ago to 29 percent, ACT was [...]

by Simon O'Connor Charlie Kirk was a 31 year old, husband and father of two young children, and someone whose skills were to talk, debate, and discuss. For this, he was assassinated. In May last year, I wrote of those [...]

by Lindsay Perigo The last note of Aaron Copland's Fanfare for the Common Man had barely faded away at the end of my Perspective last week, starring Oliver Jull and his battle for free speech, when news came through that [...]

by Dave Patterson After World War II, the world wanted peace; the Department of Defense didn’t bring it. Following World War II, there was no appetite in the US for more fights overseas. Americans wanted to get back to their [...]

by Simon O'Connor Well, I was wrong. I thought Peeni Henare from Labour would win the Tamaki Makaurau by-election. Instead, the Māori Party’s Oriini Kaipara did and convincingly so. The reverberations of this are relatively significant - for the Labour [...]

by Garry Robertson So yet again you have been hit with the first round of massive rate rises and there are many, many more to come. So, brace yourself ratepayers, businesses and homeowners as the roads are about to get [...]

by Richard Meade Competition is seen as a panacea in electricity markets: if only we had more, prices would be lower, and investment and supply security would be higher. Politicians love this story because it offers respite when electricity prices [...]

by Peter Williams It’s the worst piece of political punditry in the history of this Substack. Maybe in the history of blogging. Your noble, but obviously ignorant, correspondent boldly predicted last Tuesday that Te Pati Maori had given up in [...]

by Simon O'Connor Yet another tragedy in the United States, when a lone gunman opened fire into a Catholic church in Minneapolis in the state of Minnesota, killing two young children and wounding 17 others. Such acts of senseless violence [...]

by Zoran Rakovic We medicate children rather than transforming homes. This essay explores how parenting, trauma, and emotional maturity are the roots of New Zealand’s education failures. You may give them your love but not your thoughts, For they have [...]

by Peter Williams If you’re a Dunedin City ratepayer standby to get angry about your rates – again. No matter who becomes Mayor next month, the cost of owning property in the city will rise beyond the rate of inflation. [...]

by Lindsay Perigo In last week's perspective, I celebrated the news that Woke New Plymouth Boys High had apologised to Unwoke pupil Oliver Jull for excluding him from a speech competition because his speech, on the decline of Western Civilisation  might trigger [...]

by Peter Williams If the voters of Tamaki Makarau send Oriini Kaipara to Parliament this Saturday they need a collective mental health assessment where the first question should be “are you barking mad?” In the history of New Zealand politics [...]

by Michael Bassett Have you noticed the growing irritation with our mainstream media? Last week Radio NZ was under scrutiny with suggestions it was biased, and statistics showed its listeners were departing in droves. TV3’s main news announcer has been [...]

by Mike Butler For those of you about to vote on whether or not to continue with the Maori ward your council has imposed, a bit of published bragging shows what “iwi Maori” think about seats on councils. The August [...]

by Peter Williams It’s almost twenty years since the indefatigable Bob McCoskrie began Family First, an organisation whose mere name explains simply what it’s about. Unashamedly founded on Christian values, Family First has established itself in the last two decades [...]

by Dr Muriel Newman Last week the Supreme Court delivered the second of its two-part judgement on the first Marine and Coastal Area Act case to progress its way through to our highest court. In their initial judgement, which was released last December, instead [...]

by Fiona Mackenzie …before 2025’s local body elections, Māori ward referenda, RMA reform, or the Coalition Government gets off its chuff! The Coalition Government talks about refocusing councils on their core responsibilities. Yet it—like governments before it—has actively encouraged “partnership” [...]

by Roger Partridge When a constitutional law professor warns of “dangerous foes” threatening New Zealand’s legal system, you might expect concern about genuinely destabilising forces – political interference with judicial independence, or threats to the rule of law itself. You [...]

by Lindsay Perigo Police officers are being offered English classes following concerns about the standards of younger recruits. Probationary officers in Scotland will receive extra reading and writing training, which includes guidance on taking down statements, writing reports, and clearer [...]

by Ani O'Brien You’d think from the way some people talk that the British Empire invented slavery, ran it single-handedly, and then quietly slunk away in shame. That’s the cartoon version of history pushed by activists who want every discussion [...]

by Keri Molloy New Zealand is the first country to propose road user charges (RUC) for all vehicles. The operation will see every Kiwi’s driving tracked to calculate fees, raising major concerns about privacy. And then there’s cost and control. [...]

by Eric Crampton When government makes it hard for a start-up company’s investors to sell up and move on, it simultaneously warns other investors to steer clear. Or, as economists sometimes put it, barriers to exit are barriers to entry. [...]

by John McLean New Zealand’s Supremo Judges have launched their latest salvo on the Foreshore & Seabed Front of New Zealand’s War for Constitution Supremacy. We’re talking here about the ongoing uncivil War pitting the Judiciary against successive elected Governments, [...]

by Roger Partridge It takes talent to lose listeners in a medium still drawing three and a half million Kiwis a week. But Radio New Zealand has managed it with aplomb. Its live audience has fallen every year since 2021, [...]

by Ani O'Brien Why we must stand up to anti-human activists. We need to stand up to the anti-human activists who treat ordinary people as collateral damage in their crusade. Their vision of “climate justice” is really just human misery dressed up [...]

by Simon O'Connor According to a report in the BBC and elsewhere, displaying the Union Jack or flag of St George means you are someone from the far-right; overly nationalistic; and conservative. You’ve read that correctly - British people flying British flags [...]

by Ele Ludemann When I was thinking about writing a post arguing that the Māori seats have passed their use-by date and asked Goggle Gemini to give me some ideas. This is the reply I got: I cannot fulfil this [...]

by Lindsay Perigo So this week's intended sitting of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Jacinda Jackboot regime's handling of the Chinese Communist Party's Wuhan warfare was cancelled because Jacinda et al were afraid to face the music publicly. [...]

by Roger Partridge Something has gone badly wrong in the public service. From energy policy to financial regulation to education, ministers are too often advised by officials lacking the deep technical background their roles demand. This chronic loss of subject-matter [...]

by Peter Williams In any discussion about name suppression law here’s an argument that’s hard to refute: if Rolf Harris, Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby had been New Zealanders we’d probably never know about them. That’s because there’s every chance [...]

by Corina Shields All my life Māori have had a healthy distrust of government and politicians right up until Covid when Jacinda started dishing out dollars. As time went on and we got deeper into the pandemic, more and more [...]

by Dr James Kierstead ‘Every five years or so, I crunch the numbers on college grades across the US and report what I’ve found,’ writes Stuart Rojstaczer modestly on his website. What Rojstaczer, a former professor, has found is that [...]

by Simon O'Connor I did not expect to be writing a Substack on Sydney Sweeney and denim jeans. In fact, I didn’t even know who she was until the latest brouhaha erupted over an American Eagle advertisement she headlined. I [...]

by Dr Muriel Newman In his 1985 book Shadows Over New Zealand, the former Communist Geoff McDonald revealed how the Maori Sovereignty movement was using Marxist strategies to gain power: “Marxists understand that the key to destabilising New Zealand is to [...]

by Peter Williams In Britain they call the Prime Minister “Two Tier Keir,” a reference to, perceived or otherwise, a two tier justice system in that country whereby a woman can go to jail for 31 months for posting a [...]

by John McLean How Woketearoa molds Minors into Marxists “Te Whāriki” early childhood curriculum guidelines were first published in 1996. The inaugural Te Whāriki was published under a National Party-led Government, with Jim “Spud” Bolger as Prime Minister. There’s a [...]

by Dr Eric Crampton Land transport funding is not in great shape. Minister Bishop’s announcement last week of a shift from petrol excise to road user charges should be the first step toward a much better funding system. First, the big-picture [...]

by Bonnie Flaws The Government’s Digital ID infrastructure is well advanced, including cross-border plans with Australia for an ‘ANZAC ID’ and a globally interoperable digital passport. Minister for Digitising Government Judith Collins wants us to “get on with it” and [...]

by Elliot Ikilei Our entire billboard campaign has been shut down - not by debate, not by democracy, but by intimidation. Last week, we had our first Māori Wards billboard up for only a short time before the activist machine [...]

by Peter Williams If RNZ wanted a warts and all report on its failings and reasons for the catastrophic audience decline in the last five years it certainly received one this week. The former Head of News for the organisation [...]

by Barry Davis The New Zealand Parliament is now receiving advice which is informed by maturanga Maori, New Zealand universities are offering courses on maturanga Maori, and New Zealand corporations are incorporating maturanga Maori in their business practices. What is [...]

by Lindsay Perigo Last week, I celebrated the end of NCEA, the biggest blow against the child-molesters of the mind since the restoration of phonics. Don't stop there, I urged the government, who, of course, are hanging on my every [...]

by  Peter Dunne Albert Einstein apparently once said "insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." Earlier this week it was reported that the Labour Party's Policy Council is recommending the Party include introducing a [...]

by Simon O'Connor Imagine being so assured that your views on anything and everything, that you expect everyone to agree with you without compromise. Imagine being so assured that your perspective is without error, that you need only emotion and [...]

by Dr Michael Johnston On Monday morning, Education Minister Erica Stanford announced that the NCEA assessment and qualification system will be replaced. In 2028, a foundational award in literacy and numeracy will replace NCEA Level 1. The New Zealand Certificate [...]

What It Means for New Zealand and the Royal Commission Phase 2 Mathematical Fiction Used to Justify Mandates, Misinform Policy, and Silence Critics by Katie Ashby-Koppens For years, Kiwis were told, repeatedly, that COVID-19 vaccines saved millions of lives. In fact, [...]

by John Raine The 23rd July 2025 USA Department of Energy (DoE) Report, “A Critical Review of Impacts of Greenhouse Gas Emissions on the U.S. Climate” [1], authored by five eminent scientists, at last brings some balance back into official statements [...]

by Don Brash The following is written by Don Brash in his capacity as Hobson's Pledge spokesman We have big plans for our Māori Ward campaign and had planned to ease into this with our billboards and then go full [...]

by Peter Williams It looked like a plea for help, a plea for someone, anyone, to do something about the content of Relationship and Sex Education (RSE) at Queenstown’s Wakatipu High School. The email arrived from Rodney Hide, one time [...]

by Rachel Stewart To say I abhor local government elections is an understatement. Every three years we are bombarded with billboards touting insufferable twits who genuinely think they have something more special than the other guy to offer their communities. [...]

by Dr Eric Crampton The government is worried about the harms some youths experience on social media. The Prime Minister has announced his support for age limits. Social media platforms would face penalties if those under 16 made it onto [...]

by Lindsay Perigo Well, whaddaya know? The morning after last week's Perspective dealing with the brouhaha in Parliament about the hijacking of the name of our country, Winston Peters posted on X; "New Zealand First has today introduced a Member’s [...]

by Peter Dunne That Oppositions do not win elections, but governments lose them is a well-established political maxim. Elections are essentially a judgement on the performance of the government of the day. Seldom does the capability of the Opposition to [...]

by Roger Partridge Finance Minister, Nicola Willis described last week’s meeting with Fonterra’s chief executive as “routine.” But routine meetings do not usually begin with public promises that a CEO will “front up” over pricing. Nor do they require clarification [...]

by Dr Muriel Newman Forty-two councils are set to hold pivotal referenda on the future of Maori seats in October, yet few New Zealanders appear to grasp just how high the stakes actually are. Proponents of Maori sovereignty understand the [...]

by Graham Adams After NZ First leapfrogged Act last month in a Taxpayers’ Union-Curia poll — which led to much media excitement about the party’s rising fortunes — it seemed odd for Winston Peters to be quite so tetchy with [...]

by Zoran Rakovic There is a particular kind of madness that comes not with rage, but with the quiet clarity of a staff report. It arrives in a pdf, decorated with the warm tones of cultural respect, laced with enough [...]

by Simon O'Connor The Stuff headline (below) can be best described as a lie. To date, Stuff has shown little interest in presenting a range of views on this complicated conflict, and this call made at the start of the week will [...]

by John Robertson New Zealand is being culturally hijacked — and we’re all meant to smile, nod, and pay for it. Let’s stop lying to ourselves. This forced bilingualism isn’t “inclusion.” It’s a political power game. A language spoken fluently [...]

by Rachel Stewart For many people when they hear the word ‘surrogacy’ they conjure up images of a long-standing relationship between a sweet female friend and a smiling well-groomed couple who have made an adult arrangement that she provide the [...]

by Lindsay Perigo Always so much to have a perspective on. Another insane moronnial goes on a shooting spree in New York. Bad news. OMBA strides Europe like a colossus. Great news, great results.  But I shall start this week [...]

by Michael Bassett On Monday 28 July there was a strange story in the New Zealand Herald about advice that had been given to the Attorney-General, Judith Collins, by her officers. They had told their minister that the Justice minister’s [...]