Breaking Views Update: Week of 3.5.26

Saturday May 9, 2026 

News:
Whangārei District Council has taken a step closer to strengthening how it embeds the principles of Te Tiriti
Whangārei District Council has taken a step closer to strengthening how it embeds the principles of Te Tiriti o Waitangi across its organisation, after a proposed implementation plan was presented to a key standing committee.

The council’s Te Kārearea Strategic Partnership Standing Committee on Tuesday heard about the proposed plan, which responds to improvement recommendations from a council‑wide Te Tiriti o Waitangi health check commissioned by Whangārei District Council (WDC).

Geoff Parker: A Storm Is Not An Act Of Colonisation.

The report makes a legitimate point that some Māori communities are vulnerable to severe weather events, especially isolated rural or coastal settlements. But it weakens its own credibility by turning climate resilience into a broad ideological argument about colonisation and governance.

Climate risk is primarily driven by geography, infrastructure quality, income, and preparedness — not ancestry.

Ani O'Brien: Who really wants a Grand Coalition between Labour and National?

The whole idea is borne of establishment panic

The sudden enthusiasm for a “Grand Coalition” between the New Zealand Labour Party and New Zealand National Party is being presented by proponents as a sober, pragmatic response to the complexities of modern governance. Its advocates speak the language of stability, maturity, and responsibility. They gesture toward international examples, invoke economic necessity, and lament the supposed distortions of coalition politics under MMP. But under the paternalistic managerial tone and the carefully chosen euphemisms, is an admission of political failure and more troublingly, a repudiation of the democratic choices voters have been making and the subtle-as-a-gun signals they have been sending to the political class.

Rodney Hide: City Rail Link: 19th-Century Trains Under a 21st-Century City

The City Rail Link is a $5.5 billion monument to backward thinking.

Auckland is digging a 3.5 km twin tunnel under its CBD to run 19th-century steel-on-steel trains. The project, originally budgeted far lower, has ballooned to $5.5 billion. Auckland ratepayers and taxpayers are on the hook for billions upfront with rate payers coughing up $220–$265 million every year in operating, interest and depreciation costs. That is real money sucked out of productive parts of the economy.

Brendan O'Neill: The ugly truth about the cult of Palestinianism

The conviction of the Palestine Action activists confirms it: Israelophobia is a vile menace to civilised values.

So this is the movement that the queen of smug, Sally Rooney, promised to share her fat royalty cheques with. This is the movement that plummy vicars fawned over in Westminster Square with their placards saying ‘I Support Palestine Action’. A movement that counts within its ranks men content to use a 7lb sledgehammer to fracture the back of a woman. A movement so far up the fundament of its own self-righteousness that its members think nothing of raining steel blows on a woman’s spine. I would engage in some serious self-reflection if an organisation I gushed over was found to contain blokes who use weapons to crack women’s bones.

Roger Partridge: From legal realism to legal radicalism.....

From legal realism to legal radicalism: breaking faith with the constitutional order

Something happened in law schools in the closing decades of the twentieth century. It did not make the headlines. But it shaped the thinking of a generation of lawyers and judges more profoundly than almost any statute or judgment.

Legal realism – the view that judges make choices rather than merely apply rules – merged with a broader current of post-modern thought flowing through the humanities and social sciences. The conclusion that seemed to follow was arresting: legal categories are not neutral; the distinction between legitimate and activist judging is itself a value judgment; and those who invoke legal orthodoxy are defending, whether they know it or not, the interests of the powerful.

Dr Oliver Hartwich: The Martian Audit

The Martian Audit is a satirical novella. Two Martian auditors land in the Wairarapa expecting to assess humanity at its best. They are promptly fined for parking without consent.

The novella is the work of Dr Oliver Hartwich, Executive Director of the Initiative. In twenty years of writing on public policy, first in London, then in Sydney, and since 2012 in New Zealand, Dr Hartwich has produced reports, submissions, columns and books. The occasional short satirical piece has found its way into the Initiative’s weekly Insights newsletter. The Martian Audit is his first longer-form work of fiction.

Peter Williams: RIP BSA

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 him to get on with it.

But exactly when this relic of the analogue age, brought into existence before TV3 was even on air, will actually be disestablished is unclear.

David Farrar: Reminder - Winston campaigned against the China free trade agreement

Winston Peters voted against and campaigned against the China free trade agreement, that came into force in 2008. Look at what happened to our exports to China since then:

Mike's Minute: Good riddance to the BSA

I do worry about Paul Goldsmith's ability to make a decision.

The BSA and its abolition is a “done by morning tea, let's move onto the important stuff” sort of thing.

And yet he seems to have been waxing and waning and pontificating for the past two years of Government.

Friday May 8, 2026 

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Ryan Bridge: The Nats stand a chance this election

The Coalition is failing on two numbers that matter most to us voters.

Inflation is up over 3% - not as bad as the Aussies but not helped by Trump.

But wage growth is 2%.

Perspective with Heather du Plessis-Allan: Wellington Council's been caught keeping secrets from ratepayers again

Now, you would have thought that after all the publicity Wellington City Council has been getting - and the paid staff have been getting - for being caught doing things behind the backs of elected councillors, they probably wouldn’t do it again.

And yet, here we are. They’ve been caught doing it again.

David Harvey: A Framework For Media Regulation In The Digital Age

A standalone proposal for the reform of media and communications regulation in New Zealand

Preliminary Note

The Minister for Broadcasting, Paul Goldsmith, announced earlier today that the BSA is going to be disestablished. He favours an industry based model for ongoing media regulation and believes that the task can be taken up by the NZ Media Council. That is all very well but the Council requires additional funding. Perhaps the funds allocated to the BSA can be redirected to the Media Council.

Professor Brian Boyd: Place—or Race?—in Education

Waipapa Taumata Rau University of Auckland has enshrined “place” in education in a top-down and almost entirely unargued-for way. “Place” appears to be a cover for race: an attempt at social justice and possibly an attempt to lift Māori performance in the university and society. The roots of this shift go back to 2022, when a broad curriculum “transformation” was proposed. The elements dealing with “place” were initially given great prominence. They promoted idealized, romanticized, and essentialized Māori ways of thinking and attempted to instil a narrow and fixed interpretation of te Tiriti o Waitangi.

Dr Oliver Hartwich: Trump’s Iran war is paying for Putin’s

Russian power has always sat on a contradiction. The country can put satellites into orbit and tanks across borders, but it cannot build a normal economy.

Helmut Schmidt caught the contradiction in the 1970s when he called the Soviet Union “Obervolta mit Raketen,” Upper Volta with rockets. The line was brutal then, and it has aged well (even though Upper Volta is now called Burkina Faso).

Bob Edlin: Science teachers (really?) troubled that our kiddies might struggle with learning about “The Father of Botany”

Centrist today has headlined a report –

Teachers push back as curriculum reset strips back Treaty framing and returns to clearer basics

The report kicks off:

David Farrar: A good further transparency move

The Herald reports:

Members of the public are due to get greater insight into the thinking of those on the powerful Reserve Bank committee that sets interest rates.

The Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) and Finance Minister Nicola Willis have agreed to a new charter that will see members’ individual views on how to set monetary policy publicised.

Simon O'Connor: Hamlet and the NZ media

Some journalists recent behaviour; legal threats; hidden stories; and an ideologically captured regulator. The state of New Zealand's media is akin to a Shakespearean tragedy.


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 lawyers by the media; or the actions of the Broadcasting Standards Authority (BSA) – the Fourth Estate is like the proverbial leviathan, eating itself.

Mike's Minute: How do you not have confidence in an event already sorted?

In a year of wacky polls and debate, we have this morning probably the maddest result of all.

Horizon research has either asked a leading or confusing question, or they have a misrepresentative group of people. Or the people who answered have other things in mind when they answered because the poll is about the fuel crisis.

Now the fuel "crisis", such as it is, has not actually been a crisis. You might argue in price it has, but it's peaked and the fears of $200 a barrel never happened and never came close.