Breaking Views Update: Week of 18.1.26

Friday January 23, 2026 

News:
PM pulls out of Rātana to visit weather-hit communities
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has withdrawn from attending the annual Rātana celebrations tomorrow – opting instead to visit communities hit by severe weather.

1News understands the PM has pulled out of attending the celebrations at Rātana Pa and called Tumuaki Manuao Tamou to advise him of the decision this afternoon.

Peter Bassett: When the world is declared ‘water bankrupt’, reach for your wallet — and your scepticism

The phrase lands with a thud. Water bankruptcy. Not scarcity. Not stress. Bankruptcy — a word borrowed from finance, freighted with guilt, failure and finality. It suggests recklessness, mismanagement, and the need for an external administrator to step in and take control.

That is the language used in a new United Nations–backed report warning that parts of the world are approaching irreversible water collapse.

Perspective with Ryan Bridge: Does JP Morgan's Jamie Dimon have a point about AI?

If you don't know him, Jamie Dimon is the boss of JP Morgan and quite a smart guy, obviously.

I've mentioned him a few times on this show because he's a good thinker - and says some pretty reasonable and practical things about big issues.

Point of Order: NEW POLL - New Zealand First’s record high result; country direction takes a hit

The Taxpayers’ Union reports –

New Zealand First rise to their highest ever result in a Taxpayers’ Union-Curia Poll (polling since January 2021). The Coalition also strengthen their lead.

The poll shows Labour gain 2.8 points to 34.4 percent, while National gains 1.5 points to 31.5 percent.

Peter Dunne: 2026 Election Day

The announcement this year’s general election will be held on November 7th should come as no surprise. It is the date least encumbered by other events, and the last realistic date which gives post-election government formation talks the best chance of being completed before the Christmas break. Parliament is required to meet no later than two months after an election – in this case by January 7, 2027 – so an early November election makes it possible for the new Parliament to be convened in probably the week before Christmas.

Ani O'Brien: Hipkins launches Labour's gaslighting election campaign

An election-year address that only works if New Zealanders have collective amnesia

ANNOUNCED TODAY : GENERAL ELECTION 2026 IS ON SATURDAY 7 NOVEMBER

Chris Hipkins’ caucus-retreat speech was intended to signal renewal, momentum, and hope. Instead it revealed a Labour Party still unwilling to take responsibility for the impact of its time in government and one willing to engage in historical revisionism. Hipkins’ speech was not a forward-looking address about what Labour would do differently. It was an exercise in proportioning blame, deflection, and narrative laundering.

Pee Kay: Who would vote for that shower of incompetents again?

Post election Hipkins will have zero option but to further promote Labour's divisive agenda of identity politics and division by race because of Labour's all too powerful Maori Caucus!

Willie Jackson is on record as saying “Democracy in 2022 is broader and more expansive than just one person, one vote.”

And “The push to have co-governance and co-management arrangements beyond those already introduced through Treaty settlements, were a response to the need to meet Māori ambitions, and address Māori inequality.”

Anton Chamberlin: When Production Isn’t Production and Prices Aren’t Prices

Many debates on economic topics hinge on a set of familiar words: production, prices, costs, value. These terms appear constantly in political speeches, news articles, and policy discussions. Yet they are rarely used with much precision (at least where academic economists are concerned). As a result, people often talk past one another while believing they are in agreement — or disagreement — about the same thing.

John MacDonald: Rate caps won't make a difference

Hats off to the Christchurch City Council.

Which is telling the Government today that its idea of forcing a cap on council rates increases is “unrealistic and unworkable”.

Which is a polite way of saying “rates caps are a daft idea, so just drop it right now”.

David Farrar: Yes Islamist terrorism is religiously inspired

A crazy article by Halim Rane at the ABC:

In the aftermath of violent attacks, public commentary quickly reaches for a familiar label like “religiously motivated terrorism”. The term sounds intuitive but it is analytically flawed, socially harmful and counter-productive to both national security and social cohesion.

Matua Kahurangi: Bluesky and the revolting push to normalise paedophilia

I don’t care how many syllables you add or how clinical you try to sound. If you are an adult who is sexually attracted to children, you are not a misunderstood victim of stigma. You are a threat that society has every right to reject. You’re a paedophile.

On Bluesky, there are users who openly put “MAP” in their bios. Minor Attracted Person. Typed out proudly. Sometimes paired with long explanations about language, compassion, and how “labels hurt people”.

Thursday January 22, 2026 

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Anglo Saxon: New Zealand's proposed new planning laws won't support detribalisation.

Chris Bishop's new planning and environment laws sadly miss the mark and won't fix the single biggest problem facing resource management in New Zealand. What's really needed is full detribalisation.

Click to view

Judy Gill: Just Another Failed Trip to Auckland CBD

18 January 2025.

So we came by ferry to Auckland CBD from lovely Waiheke Island — lovely socialist, neo-Marxist Waiheke Island — I and my young son, intending to catch a train to visit his sister in Onehunga.

The trains weren’t running. Not in January. Not through the CBD. Not in peak tourist summer season. Not in cruise ship season. So the plan changed.

Perspective with Ryan Bridge: Is this National's election to lose?

So we've got an election date, and it's the date pundits have been picking since late last year - November 7th.

This election is National's to lose. The only question really is how much influence ACT and or New Zealand First will have in any future Government.

Karl du Fresne: Will a new RNZ board stop the rot?

The Treasury has publicly advertised vacancies on the RNZ board for a new chair and two “governors” (I presume that means directors). The appointees will replace current chair Jim Mather and board members Jane Wrightson and Irene Gardiner, all of whom were installed during the term of the Ardern government. All three are well-connected Wellington insiders who were never going to upset the status quo by insisting RNZ fulfil its obligation to cater to a wider audience than the privileged “progressive” class – I use the inverted commas deliberately – from which the state broadcaster draws its core support. The question now is whether the government will appoint people willing and able to do the job the current board clearly had no interest in tackling.

Mike's Minute: Election issues are already popping up

We are standing by for the election date today.

It’s not what it was, kind of like budgets. The suspense, the scuttlebutt, the guessing game – it’s all gone.

Graham Adams: Hipkins Revives Failed 2023 Election Tactics

When Chris Hipkins succeeded Jacinda Ardern as Prime Minister in January 2023, he adopted what was essentially a “smaller target” strategy.

He announced a policy bonfire to sideline some of the Labour government’s most contentious proposals — including the RNZ-TVNZ merger, hate-speech laws and the biofuels mandate. Instead, he claimed he would concentrate on “bread-and-butter” issues.

Ani O'Brien: Labour’s BlackRock climate fund collapsed without investing a dollar

A case study in how announcement-driven climate policy collapses under scrutiny

The New Zealand Climate Infrastructure Fund was born at a moment of visible political scrambling rather than strategic confidence. By mid-2023, the Labour government was under pressure on multiple fronts including rising energy costs, slowing growth, public fatigue with climate rhetoric unaccompanied by delivery, and an approaching election with an air of change about it. Against that backdrop, the BlackRock partnership functioned less as the culmination of a coherent energy strategy and more as a high-impact signalling exercise; a way to demonstrate urgency, scale, and international validation without committing public capital or confronting domestic delivery failures.

Pee Kay: Don’t Mess With Us Bro!

“Ngāi Tahu will not host any Waitangi events next month – and will head to the Treaty Grounds instead.”

Strength in numbers! Luxon is being told, quite clearly, who is in control, who is holding all the cards! Don’t mess with us Bro!