Breaking Views Update: Week of 11.5.25

Friday May 16, 2025 

News:
Collins says ‘lack of civility’ to blame for Te Pati Māori haka
Privileges Committee chairperson Judith Collins says a “lack of civility“ is to blame for Te Pāti Māori performing a haka in parliament.

This comes as three MPs, Te Pāti Māori co-leaders Rawiri Waititi and Debbie Ngarewa-Packer, as well as the party’s MP for Hauraki-Waikato Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke, were suspended from parliament following a decision from the committee on Wednesday.

John Raine: Closing the Stable Door?

Do we want our children educated or indoctrinated? There has been widespread capture of universities in the Western world, not least in New Zealand, by identity politics and undermining of academic excellence by authoritarian diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) agendas. There is now increasing public distrust in the culture of universities and the quality of the graduates that emerge from what were once highly respected institutions.

Peter Hemmingson: Pay Equity Racket

It is disappointing to see ACT’s Brooke van Velden going into bat for tweaking pay equity legislation rather than for blowing it out of the water altogether.

In the annals of modern political fiction, few narratives are more intellectually bankrupt—and more persistently weaponised—than the myth of the gender pay gap. 

Dr Oliver Hartwich: Capital Markets - The missing piece in New Zealand’s growth puzzle

Prime Minister Luxon has declared 2025 ‘the year of growth’, making economic expansion his government’s top priority.

This ambition is laudable, and the government has initiated many important reforms that will help. Changes to education, liberalising foreign investment rules and reforming resource management legislation all aim to enhance our economic performance. These reforms deserve support and, in time, should yield benefits.

Kerre Woodham: Slipping Parliamentary standards are a reflection of us

Well, what a to-do. The image of Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters slumped in the House, head in his hands, summed it up really. Brooke van Velden dropped the C-bomb in the house, quoting a Stuff article whose author used the word in criticising the government's decision to amend the pay equity legislation. The coalition's female MPs are angry that Labour MPs, particularly the female MPs, have not condemned the journalist’s use of the word, which was used as a derogatory in the article.

Bruce Cotterill: Why the so-called Super City hasn’t delivered for Aucklanders

Do you remember the Super City? That gigantic failure of local government policy that saw Auckland’s suburbs surrender their decision-making and their character to the bureaucrats downtown?

By the time our local body elections roll around later this year, it will be 15 years since our seven regional councils were restructured into the so-called Super City under the Auckland Council. There was no referendum on the topic. Just a royal commission on Auckland governance and an enthusiastic Local Government Minister who championed its creation.

Point of Order: The 14-Year Temp Worker - IRD’s $21 Million Long-Term Consultant Spend Exposed

• The Taxpayers’ Union reports –

The New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union can reveal, through an Official Information Act response 12 contractors have been continuously engaged by IRD for more than five years, costing taxpayers a total of $20.8 million over just the past five years.

As Nicola Willis prepares to unveil Budget 2025, the Taxpayers’ Union is calling out the millions still being frittered away on long-term consultants, highlighting one Inland Revenue contractor who has been on the books for a staggering 13 years and 11 months.Taxpayers’ Union Investigations Coordinator, Rhys Hurley, said:

JC: Why Do the Left Not Learn

The question is something of a conundrum. I am referring specifically to their behaviour and strategy. From their perspective politics is littered with examples of how these two things hurt them in all sorts of ways. They seem to have become obsessed with the nasty side of politics. They have a propensity to go after the person and not the policy. This fanaticism extends, unsurprisingly, to their comrades in the media who seem to think, irrationally, this is a good idea.

JD: We Want More

Guest post on The Good Oil by JD

Let’s start from this general premise: humanity is genetically programmed to want more.

To our ancient ancestors, the difference between no food in the cave and enough for one or several days’ supply was profound. Effectively a matter of life and death. More stuff to hand meant less need to venture out and less chance of succumbing to the many dangers lurking all around.

Ele Ludemann: What will Labour do?

Parliament’s Privileges Committee has recommended a 21-day suspensions for co-leaders Debbie Ngarewa-Packer and Rawiri Waititi and a seven-day suspension for MP Hana-Rāwhiti Maipi-Clarke.

The suspension doesn’t just mean the MPs can’t go to parliament, it also suspends their pay.

That recommendation will go to the House and be voted on by all MPs.

David Farrar: Objectional material is very serious stuff

Radio NZ reports:

The Police Commissioner says he takes “very seriously” anything that undermines the public’s trust and confidence in police.

It comes after RNZ revealed pornography found on the work computer of former deputy commissioner Jevon McSkimming is being investigated as alleged objectionable material, RNZ understands.

David Farrar: MPs suspended

The Privileges Committee has recommended the following consequences for the MPs who disrupted the House, being

* Rawiri Waititi 21 days suspension

* Debbie Ngarewa-Packer 21 days suspension

* Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke 7 days suspension

* Peeni Henare apology (previously decided)

These are all sensible recommendations, fitting the circumstances for each MP.

Mike's Minute: My take on the c-word debate

First, a small update on what I said yesterday on pay equity.

My gut says it won't damage the Government.

Don’t get me wrong – if I was the opposition I would be prosecuting this as hard as I could, the way they are, because they have a genuine issue and ongoing issue, at least until the Budget, that they quite rightly believe is there for the taking in terms of points, headlines, and moral high ground.

Thursday May 15, 2025 

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Richard Prebble On Why The Waitangi Tribunal Should Be Scrapped

Sean Plunket talks to Richard Prebble on The Platform about why the Waitangi Tribunal should be scrapped.

Click to view

Clive Bibby: Running on empty

Highly paid research sociologists in this country are quick to lambast rightwing governments for low investment on issues that are often the result of poor individual decision making - housing, education and healthcare to name a few.

They seem to think that we should all be allowed to make bad decisions about our health and welfare while the State is left to pay with money that could be better spent helping folk who are in serious trouble through no fault of their own. 

Zoran Rakovic - A Bureaucratic Blueprint: Woke Architecture Meets Soft Totalitarianism

The NZRAB’s latest Schedule NZ Consultation Briefing Paper arrives not with the dignity of an architectural manifesto but with the hesitant shuffle of a government department having just discovered adjectives. Drenched in the warm bathwater of consultation rhetoric and spiritual deference, it proposes the introduction of new “performance criteria” that would see architecture in New Zealand surrender its compass to a cultural worldview—Te Ao Māori—not as a complementary influence, but as a central moral axis. The tone is more missionary than managerial. The intent? Ostensibly noble. The implications? Chilling, if we still take the Bill of Rights Act even half-seriously.

Perspective with Heather du Plessis-Allan: What does Labour really think of the Greens' alternative Budget?

I'd love to know what Labour are saying behind closed doors about the Green Party's alternative Budget released today.

I mean, they're playing nice in public - but behind closed doors, they must be tearing their hair out because this is next level crazy.

Chris Lynch: ACT accuses Greens of economic ‘madness’ over $40 billion spending plan

ACT Party leader David Seymour has accused the Green Party of proposing an economically reckless budget that would burden future generations with unsustainable debt and aggressive tax hikes.

Slamming the Greens’ newly released “Green Budget,” Seymour said it was “fiscal fantasyland that made a strong case for teaching financial literacy in schools.”

Dane Giraud: John Minto - The man who knew too little…

Pat Brittenden’s BHN channel last night played like a cheap Southern-Hemisphere remake of the Tucker Carlson-Darryl Cooper interview in which the not-a-historian laid blame for World War 2 at the feet of Winston Churchill. Sans the professional lighting and radiant skin, of course. The historic illiteracy and thinly veiled defense of the most reactionary elements this time came from John Minto, public (and recently pepper-sprayed) face of the anti-Israel movement and concocter of Jew-Hunts, whose obsession for the conflict strangely never demanded of him a rigorous reading schedule.