Perspective with Heather du Plessis-Allan: Michael Laws won't be a good get for NZ First

Let me hit you with absolutely the weirdest political news of the day. Michael Laws, it's being reported, is going to announce he's running for New Zealand First.

The '90s called and want their man back.

Ryan Bridge: Only hungry children should be feed by the state

The government's looking to 'move on' from free school lunches for every kid in a poor school.

David Seymour told me this week they're looking at making changes, potentially tightening things up.

Breaking Views Update: Week of 28.6.26

Friday July 3, 2026 

News:
Google Maps integrates New Zealand voice to improve te reo Māori pronunciation
Google has announced a partnership with Te Taura Whiri i te Reo Māori (the Māori Language Commission) to implement better pronunciation on its Maps software.

From today, Google Maps users will be able to select the New Zealand voice to hear Aotearoa place names the way they should sound.

The Leighton Smith Podcast: Dr Muriel Newman on this year's hugely consequential general election

Leighton Smith and Dr Muriel Newman discuss the ongoing constitutional shift toward iwi influence, co-governance and race-based policies. In this election year, New Zealand is arguably facing its biggest challenge to date.

Click to listen - Audio

Peter Williams: Selling food and tyres on the news

Is the cheerleading of expensive eating an appropriate use of TV news time?

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.

Roger Partridge: Britain's Labour government can be a party of growth – but not like this

This column was first published by CapX, the online newspaper of London’s Centre for Policy Studies. It was written for a British audience, but its central argument comes from this side of the world. New Zealand's Fourth Labour Government and Australia's Hawke-Keating Labor government showed that centre-left parties can use market reform to achieve progressive ends. This piece suggests Britain's Labour Party should borrow that tradition.

“It is time for Whitehall to accept that growth cannot be ordered from the top down,” Andy Burnham said in his first major speech since returning to Parliament. “Instead, it can only be nurtured from the bottom up.”

He is right. The man about to enter Downing Street has seen what much of his party denies: prosperity is grown, not decreed, and the hand that tries to direct it from the centre usually throttles it instead. But the premise has a second half Burnham flinches from.

Richard Prebble: Should We Be Forced to Invest in SpaceX?

Christopher Luxon has announced that National will campaign this election to require New Zealanders to invest perhaps $12 billion a year overseas, with around $8 billion ending up on Wall Street.

That is not how he put it.

He announced that employee and employer KiwiSaver contributions will rise to 4 percent each and that KiwiSaver will be compulsory.

Yet that is the practical effect.

David Harvey: Skynet on the Brain

How an Old Literary Fear and a 1984 Blockbuster Are Quietly Writing Our AI Policy

When a senator warns that artificial intelligence could “end humanity,” when a tech executive testifies that we are “building a god we can’t control,” or when a newspaper runs a stock image of a chrome skull with glowing red eyes above a sober article about model evaluation standards, something curious is happening.

Bob Edlin: Maipi-Clarke - "Wording Error"......

Oops – Maipi-Clarke corrects what she boasted about her interest in corrections and blames a “wording error”

Māori Party firebrand Hana-Rāwhiti Maipi-Clarke, responsible for “The Haka Heard Around The World”, perhaps finds it challenging to communicate when she is not shouting her displeasure at the Government in the House of Representatives.

Centrist reports she has deleted a social media post “after appearing to claim that ‘65%’ of her work involved visiting rangatahi in ‘juvenile centres, correction centres or OT’.”

JD: Let Us First Establish the Basic Facts

Guest post on The Good Oil by JD

Time to stop fawning over TOP as the bright young things of New Zealand politics and take a look at how much of a threat they pose to the peace of mind, financial wellbeing and, by extension, the health of every Kiwi pensioner.

TOP makes several claims including:

David Farrar: Damien now anti mining

When Damien O’Connor was standing on the West Coast, he was pro mining. He was even accused of being out of step with his party.

But now he has left the West Coast, he is now passionately anti-mining. The Post reports:

David Farrar: Finally they admit there is a problem

Otago Public Health academics write:

Estimates of illicit tobacco use in Aotearoa New Zealand differ sharply. Although tobacco industry-funded studies suggest the illicit tobacco market is large and growing rapidly, independent research has consistently found much lower levels.

However, evidence that border seizures have increased, alongside rapid growth in Australia’s illicit tobacco market, suggests Aotearoa must act now to prevent illicit tobacco from becoming established and undermining efforts to reduce smoking.

Thursday July 2, 2026 

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Ryan Bridge: Should we care what the IMF thinks?

Don't you find it annoying when some economist or think tank or some 'group' comes to our country and tells us what they think we need to do to make it better?

There's the odd case where you'd want to listen. Former world leaders, current world leaders, banks who lend you money, rating agencies who dictate your cost of borrowing.

Perspective with Heather du Plessis-Allan: Here's why I'm so stoked about the NZ Michelin launch

I totally run the risk of being way too much of a fangirl about the Michelin stars handed out, but I am so excited about this.

Mainly, I'm excited for the people who run those restaurants because I realise what this means for them. It means full bookings. It means international recognition. It means the ability to walk into a kitchen anywhere in the world and say, "I worked in a Michelin-starred restaurant," and have people know exactly what that means - and know that you're good.

Roy Morgan: National-led Government holds narrow majority (51%) of support in June

Roy Morgan’s New Zealand Poll for June 2026 shows the National-led Government (National, ACT & NZ First) virtually unchanged at 51%, a clear lead over the Labour-Greens-Te Pāti Māori Parliamentary Opposition, little changed on 42%.

Mike's Minute: This is why Labour will lose the election

Labour will not have move on orders and Labour will undo the social housing changes, which don’t actually start anyway until next year.

These are their latest policies and it's these ideas and policies that will lead to their election loss.

Colinxy: Qiulae Wong - Technocratic Marxist

Qiulae Wong, current leader of The Opportunities Party (TOP), presents herself as a modern, data‑driven reformer. But when you examine her intellectual influences, policy preferences, and institutional affiliations, a very different picture emerges: a synthesis of technocracy, ESG managerialism, and soft‑Marxist redistribution — what I have elsewhere called Technocratic Marxism.

Nick Clark: Head Start Done Right - A better way to reorganise local government

The Government wants to merge New Zealand’s councils into a smaller number of big councils. A new report from The New Zealand Initiative says this is the wrong fix.

In Head Start Done Right, Senior Fellow Nick Clark says the real problem is not that we have too many councils. It is that too much power has been taken away from local communities and moved to central government.

Lindsay Mitchell 'Too sick to work' needs addressing

ACT announced welfare policy at the weekend.

Their concern is about the growth in people who are on a benefit because they are too sick to work.

Readers here will remember the distinct Sickness and Invalid's benefits that were abolished in 2013.