Net Zero Watch Samizdat: Coal Power 2030

UK

Net Zero Watch: we need a Coal Power 2030 mission

Britain faces an electricity capacity crunch, because we will soon lose much of our gas-fired fleet. Replacements - either nuclear or gas - will arrive too late. A new paper by Andrew Montford explains that the only option is coal. Politicians will need to come to terms with this painful fact.

Ani O'Brien: The BSA’s parting gift - Showing why NZ needs the Definitions Bill

Reflecting on how entirely mad the situation is

Animals often become most erratic in their final moments. Wounded, they lash out indiscriminately. Having lost the battle for survival, creatures frequently become more aggressive, more irrational, and more dangerous as the end draws near.

The Broadcasting Standards Authority appears to be experiencing a similar phenomenon. Although they are certainly less rabid dog and more deceptively friendly-looking otter.

Peter Williams: The Naidoo controversy

How the media is fighting back at Richard Chambers' and Mark Mitchell's questions

Here’s a classic case of how media can attract you with a patently misleading headline.

From the New Zealand Herald website, posted at 4.21 pm on June 11:

Former commissioners defend Labour police candidate Rakesh Naidoo’s integrity, question political motives and fear for ‘damaged’ police reputation

Underneath the headline was a photo of the Police Commissioner Richard Chambers.

John McLean: Half Measures

…which leave New Zealand’s public “servants” free to fill their DEI boots

On 2 June 2026, changes relating to Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI) were made to New Zealand’s Public Service Act 2020.

The changes, initiated by the New Zealand First political party:

Dr Eric Crampton: Kalshi’s billion-dollar rise shows what iPredict couldn’t achieve in NZ

When Victoria University of Wellington’s great little prediction market, iPredict, announced that it would be shutting down back in 2015, it had a couple hundred thousand dollars of traders’ deposited funds in the bank. It was a very small, very limited, academic enterprise.

Kalshi is a US-based prediction market. It is regulated by America’s Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the CFTC, which fully authorised it in 2023.

Dr Oliver Hartwich: On borrowed calm

Across the Tasman, anger has propelled Pauline Hanson’s One Nation from a fringe outfit to the most popular party, on 31 percent in a recent poll, ahead of both Labor and the Coalition. Yet Australia’s preferential voting, which redistributes losing candidates’ votes, could still return a Labor government.

The same anger is loose across the democratic world, the product of a decade of crises that squeezed household budgets and loosened party loyalties. What it does to each country’s politics depends partly on how votes are counted.

Nick Clark: The gumboot pilgrimage

Once a year, as the days shorten, a great migration begins. From the warm offices of Wellington and the cafes of central Auckland, the political class sets out for Mystery Creek, where the gates of Fieldays open and the country remembers that it has a countryside.

The suit is shed, the tie abandoned. In their place appears the sacred vestment of the season, the gumboot. Never mind that the wearer last touched mud at the previous election.

Dr Michael Johnston: A test case for universities

In May 2025, University of Otago Vice-Chancellor Grant Robertson eloquently explained why universities, as institutions, should be neutral on matters of public and political debate. If universities take stances on political issues, he said, they place members of their communities with different views in a difficult position.

Robertson made those comments when he presented his university’s statement on institutional neutrality, required under the Education and Training Amendment Act 2025. The Act states that “universities, as institutions, should not take public positions on matters that do not directly concern their role or functions.”

David Farrar: Longer than WWI

The Herald reports:

The war in Ukraine has often been compared to World War I for its brutal infantry assaults and heavy casualties. Yet the idea that it could, by any measure, surpass a conflict so long and bloody that French soldiers hoped it would be “the last of the last” once seemed unthinkable.

That is just what happened on Thursday. The war in Ukraine – which reached 1569 days, or more than four years and three months – has now outlasted World War I.

Sunday June 14, 2026 

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Professor James Woudhuysen: Net Zero is reversing the Industrial Revolution

Denby Pottery has survived more than its fair share of economic turmoil in its 217-year existence. But nothing it seems on the scale of the industry-destroying policies of the current Labour government. This week, the famed Derbyshire company closed its doors for the final time, citing soaring energy and labour costs. Around 600 workers have lost their jobs.

Ross Meurant: K.I.S.S.

Once Upon a Time I had command of 60 front line police officers.

I also managed 63 personnel in a private security company I jointly owned with a fellow police officer, sergeant Josh Liavaa – a NZ Kiwi League representative.

Addendum: Josh was shot dead in an incident in Hawaii 2014 – and NZ lost a really good bloke.

Clive Bibby: “The time has come, the Walrus said, to talk of many things…”

My ability to quote famous poetry usually amounts to only one line of a piece that has retained relevance for mankind over time. I wish it were better than that.

For this column l have chosen Lewis Carroll’s brilliant poem about “The Walrus and the Carpenter”.

Geoff Parker: Equality Before the Law - Why Equity Is Dividing New Zealand

RNZ's latest article on "equity versus equality" presents a familiar argument: because Māori experience poorer outcomes in some areas, New Zealand must embrace ethnicity-based policies rather than treating citizens equally.

At first glance this sounds compassionate. In reality, it raises a fundamental question:

Should government assistance be based on race, or on need?

John Robertson: The Tyranny of the Unmeasurable - Why Legislation Must Be Secular

We have completely lost our minds. We really have.

We’ve allowed the language of our law—the very framework that prevents chaos and ensures a predictable, fair society—to be infected by the unmeasurable. We are replacing hard, empirical, scientific reality with metaphysical abstractions. And it is a catastrophe in the making. It truly is.

Ani O'Brien: A week is a long time: 13 June 2026

Labour’s List shows a party looking backwards

Labour released its party list this week and the overwhelming impression is one of continuity rather than change. The top of the list is dominated by the same figures who led Labour through its last term in government. Chris Hipkins, Carmel Sepuloni, Barbara Edmonds, Willie Jackson, Megan Woods, Ayesha Verrall and Willow-Jean Prime all remain firmly entrenched. There are a few notable promotions in Vanushi Walters and Cushla Tangaere-Manuel, but voters looking for a dramatic changing of the guard will struggle to find one.

Roger Partridge: The Market for Doom - Why We Keep Predicting the End of Work

Last month’s Schumpeter Comes to Wellington argued that the outcry over public service cuts in New Zealand sits in a long tradition of failed catastrophism. This month’s Long Read widens the lens and asks why generation after generation makes the same mistake – and why warnings about AI destroying work are no more convincing than the warnings that preceded them.

Thirty years ago, Jeremy Rifkin predicted the end of work. Within a generation, he wrote in 1995, automation would leave most of the world’s workforce without work. The book was a bestseller, was translated into multiple languages and made its author a celebrity. The generation is now up. Global unemployment stands at about five per cent, employment-to-population ratios are at or near record highs across the OECD, and Rifkin has moved on to his twenty-third book.

Dr Eric Crampton: Is Govt really putting the online harm funding before the policy? There’s a hint

It’s a pretty minor budget item all things considered.

Thirty million dollars over four years, when the government plans on core government expenditure of over one hundred and fifty billion dollars in the 2026/2027 fiscal year, isn’t a huge sum.

But I still wonder just how they’re going to manage to spend that much on policy and regulatory work in an area where Parliament has not yet even passed enabling legislation.

JC: In Truth Nothing Is Free

This is one of the most basic facts you should learn in life. But, amazingly, some people honestly believe that if they are told something is free then it is. They seem to lack the power of comprehension to understand otherwise. Everything has to be paid for by someone, either through direct purchase or through a subsidy. Unless you’re bartering an exchange of goods then money must come from somewhere to complete a financial transaction. It’s a fact of life.

Kerre Woodham: Why are people still using meth?

Our meth use continues to break records. According to the latest wastewater drug test, methamphetamine use is up 15% since the last quarter. And wastewater testing is pretty accurate. Consumption of methamphetamine and MDMA both increased. MDMA use does have a seasonal component though, they said, with increases during the summer music festival period from January to March. People pop a pill while they're at the festivals and then pretty much get on with their lives.