Perspective with Heather du Plessis-Allan: Let's not get weird about helicopters and rich-listers

This debate about Anna Mowbray and Ali Williams' helicopter has just got really, really silly in the last day.

There is now a push for Auckland Council to ban private choppers in residential areas altogether when they next review the unitary plan for Auckland city, and at least 2 councillors now back that. And one of the councillors backing it is the councillor whose ward covers the Mowbray property.

Anglo Saxon: Erica Stanford gaslighting and blame gaming - Where have we heard this before?

Erica Stanford, New Zealand's Minister of Education has tried to downplay her new amendment that defines a successful learning outcome as indoctrination into maori ideology.

Anglo Saxon dissects Erica Stanford's defence of the Education and Training Amendment Bill No 2.

Click to view

Breaking Views Update: Week of 29.6.25

Thursday July 3, 2025 

News:
Māori landowners take Crown to High court over freshwater rights
Māori groups are calling on the Crown to urgently honour Te Tiriti o Waitangi and take action to restore the health of freshwater across Aotearoa.

On 26 June, 32 Māori Land Trusts representing more than 150,000 landowners, hapū and iwi filed proceedings in the High Court. The number of claimant groups have since grown to around 60 Māori Land Trusts, along with several iwi and hapū from across the North Island.

Professor Jerry Coyne: Why Mātauranga Māori Isn’t Science

A interview with a “heterodox” New Zealand scientist - “Why Mātauranga Māori Isn’t Science:”

I’ve written a lot about the controversy in New Zealand involving whether the indigenous “way of knowing,” Mātauranga Māori (MM), is equivalent to modern science (often called “Western science”) and, as many maintain, should be taught alongside modern in science classes (see all my posts here).

As I’ve noted, because MM does have elements of empirical truth in it, like information (established by trial and error) about how to catch eels, when berries are ripe, and so on, it is characterized as a “way of knowing”.

Graham Adams: Stanford’s sly Treaty move backfires

National on back foot over Education bill.

Among the welter of commentary surrounding the recent publication of Jacinda Ardern’s memoir, it was very noticeable that journalists avoided mentioning co-governance and race-based policy as a significant factor in her political demise. It’s a topic they mostly prefer to skirt if they can.

This is perhaps not surprising given she paid legacy media companies $55 million to promote co-governance by insisting the Treaty be treated as a “partnership” as a condition for receiving taxpayer money.

Matua Kahurangi: Youth Parliament or Green Party dress rehearsal?

Lowering the voting age would kill the right

This week, the annual Youth Parliament returned to Wellington, and with it came a renewed push to lower the voting age to 16. It’s no surprise this idea is being floated again, and it's almost guaranteed that Labour and the Greens will back it. Why wouldn’t they? Sixteen-year-olds are still firmly under the influence of New Zealand’s highly politicised schooling system, where left-wing ideology is not only common but embedded into everyday teaching and forced down our kids throats.

Dr Eric Crampton: Intelligence built on a library’s ashes

It is legal to buy books. Obviously.

If you buy a book, it is legal to read it. If you have read it, it is legal to answer questions about it, whether for free or for payment.

Copyright does not prevent you from doing any of this. If it did, academics would have a tough time. Imagine having to get pre-clearance from any author whose works you mentioned in seminar. It would not be workable.

Roger Partridge: Rule of law – but for whom? A rejoinder to the NZLS report

The New Zealand Law Society’s new report, Strengthening the Rule of Law in Aotearoa New Zealand, runs to more than eighty pages, includes seventy-eight recommendations, and reflects a considerable investment of time and goodwill. Its aims are noble: to bolster constitutional integrity, improve access to justice, and promote respect for the rule of law. But for all its breadth, the report suffers from a staggering omission. It fails to acknowledge the one institution increasingly responsible for eroding legal certainty and upending constitutional norms: the courts themselves.

Mike's Minute: Why are we only now thinking of new energy ideas?

It's only the start of Wednesday so let's be honest we've only had two days of news, and we already have two stories around power.

The first was Transpower saying we need to find more avenues of power generation and we need to do that quickly, because until all the promised transition stuff comes online, we are going to be short of capacity.

Bob Edlin: Sure, he was known as Tricky Dicky.............

Sure, he was known as Tricky Dicky – but there are only two statues of him in the world, and one of them is in NZ

What does Edward Gibbon Wakefield, an Englishman, have in common with Richard Milhaus Nixon, an American?

Wakefield, a key figure in the establishment of the colonies of South Australia and New Zealand, is particularly associated with the English settlement of Wellington in the 19th century.

Simon O'Connor: Funding silence

As a university cancelled a talk I was about to give (due to being too sensitive a topic supposedly), I ponder whether taxpayers should keep funding such censorious institutions.

I was recently asked to give a talk at a New Zealand university, sharing my impressions of my recent trip to Israel and the Gaza envelope. It would have had a political and legal perspective to it (along with the ethical), so I would assume much discussion with those attending on the nature of the conflict; whether international law is being broken; what possible solutions are possible and feasible; and more.

David Farrar: 777 international flights for climate emergency councils!

Andrea Vance reports:

Councils declaring a climate emergency have collectively spent more than $1.26 million on international flights — racking up 777 trips, many to Europe and Asia.

Auckland Council leads the pack, spending $354,928.78 on 128 flights.

  Wednesday July 2, 2025 

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Heather du Plessis-Allan: Education and Training Amendment Bill No 2

Heather du Plessis-Allan chats on NewstalkZB about the Treaty of Waitangi and Maori preference clauses in the Education and Training Amendment Bill No2 that Erica Stanford of the National Party has tried to sneak through.

Click to view

NZCPR Newsletter: The State of Local Government

Local Government is in crisis. The numbers tell the story: local authority rates increased 12.2 percent in the 12 months to the March 2025 quarter – a 14 percent contribution to the 2.5 percent annual increase in inflation. As a result of the reckless spending of local authorities, interest rates are staying higher for longer, with all New Zealanders paying the price.

So why have local authorities gone off the rails?

Ian Bradford: CO2 – the gas of life

Carbon dioxide is our second most important gas. Yet some want to eliminate emissions of it almost entirely.

Carbon dioxide occurs naturally in the atmosphere and plays a crucial role in the life processes of the planet. This gas is fundamental to the life cycles of plants and it is absorbed during photosynthesis, and converted into carbon in the plant’s growth structures through a photochemical process. This process releases oxygen into the atmosphere, the gas essential for the respiration of living organisms.

David Lillis and Peter Schwerdtfeger - Free Speech and Academic Freedom on Campus: a Manufactured Crisis?

Are Claims of Suppression of Free Speech Not Real?

In the Post of 26 June, Dr. Sereana Naepi and Emeritus Professor Peter Davis inform us that concerns about constraints on free speech on university campuses constitute a manufactured crisis (Naepi and Davis, 2025). The authors claim that the crisis is designed to erode academic freedom while appearing to protect it. This is a very bold claim but how do they evaluate the intent of others in creating a manufactured crisis unless they can see into the minds of those other people?

Matua Kahurangi: Whānau Ora funnels millions to iwi

It’s 6.30pm. The state-funded propaganda machine, otherwise known as 1News is droning on in the background while I’m half-listening, half-scrolling, slowly eating my dinner and getting sidetracked like usual. Then I stumbled across this little gem on RNZ that stopped me right in my tracks…

Ngāti Toa has just launched a new Whānau Ora commissioning agency to funnel “health and wellbeing” funding to Māori and Pasifika only. Not the poor. Not the vulnerable. Not the struggling. Just Māori and PI. If you don’t tick the right ancestry box, you can get stuffed.

Barrie Davis: Divisive Racism Propaganda

There are a couple of articles in the Sunday Star Times of 29 June: “In Aotearoa ‘racism never went away – people just got better at hiding it’,” by Sereana Naepi (here) and “How the word ‘racism’ shuts down the dialogue about racism,” as told to Sapeer Mayron (here). They are promoting a book edited by Naepi, an associate professor in sociology at the University of Auckland, of a new collection of essays on racism against Pacific people in New Zealand, which is due out 10 July.

Perspective with Heather du Plessis-Allan: Do we need the Government to help fund Wegovy?

From today, Wegovy is available on our shelves so you can get skinny like Oprah, if you want.

But it'll cost you - $500 per month. Which is unaffordable for most people, prompting a debate over whether the Government should fund it to reduce obesity and safe money on obesity-related illnesses and injuries.

Now on principle, this is the kind of thing I'm a fan of - a bit of money upfront to save lots of money later. But unfortunately, as it stands, this wouldn't be an example of saving money.