Breaking Views Update: Week of 7.12.25

Saturday December 13, 2025 

News:
Ngāi Tahu set to take 33% stake in Milford Sound Tourism
Mana whenua are set to take a major role in running Milford Sound, with Ngāi Tahu joining Milford Sound Tourism as a shareholder.

From 31 March, Ngāi Tahu Holdings and several Papatipu Rūnaka are set to take a 33 percent stake in the company that owns and operates Milford Sound's key infrastructure and visitor services.

Heather du Plessis-Allan: Why are we resisting AI?

Time Magazine has just named its Person of the Year for 2025.

And it’s not a single person. It is "the architects" of AI.

The magazine says "no one" had as great an impact this year than the people “who imagined, designed, and built AI".

Perspective with Ryan Bridge: Win for truckies, loss for coastal shipping

On the face of it, this coastal shipping decision from James Meager seems like an odd one.

It's a win for truckies, like it or not, we're about to get 500 extra trucks filled with 15,000 tonnes of bulk cement on the road each month.

But it's bad for coastal shipping, even though the Minister says it's actually good for coastal shipping.

Ani O'Brien: New Zealand’s Planning Revolution - bye bye RMA

Inside the reform that will change how New Zealand is built

If you’ve ever tried to build a deck, subdivide a section, or watched a major infrastructure project slowly suffocate in a decade of “consenting hell,” you already know the RMA is New Zealand’s great productivity killer. For over 30 years, it has been the bedrock of New Zealand’s environmental and planning law. It is also, by almost universal agreement, broken.

Peter Williams: Australia’s Under-16 Social Media Ban

By coincidence, I find myself in Australia this week watching my 15-year-old grandson play cricket against boys his age—precisely the cohort targeted by the new national ban on social media use for under-16s.

The timing could not be better for observing how this “world-first” policy is landing among the teenagers it is meant to protect. And based on the conversations circulating through the junior cricket community, Australia’s lawmakers may have overestimated the willingness of adolescents to quietly accept the sudden disappearance of TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat and the rest of the digital ecosystem that forms such a large part of their social world.

Matua Kahurangi: Elon Musk is right - The world is waking up to trans ideology madness

Elon Musk has once again said the thing everyone else is too scared to say. On The Joe Rogan Experience, Musk laid out a story that is shocking, disturbing and sadly believable in today’s climate. His message was simple. The institutional push to transition children is not compassion. It is ideological madness that has captured schools, governments and entire cultural institutions. And Musk is absolutely right to call it out.

Kerre Woodham: Beyond the headlines of the cancer report

Whenever I hear or read news headlines these days, I know that the headlines will be just that for so many people. Headlines. People won't hear or they won't read beyond the headline, and then they'll form their own opinions based on nothing more than 20 words or fewer. I've got numerous examples of that. Even people that I would have thought would understand the media, like journalists, they'll look at a headline and think, "Oh, you know, subscriber only, I'm not going to pay. I'm just going to draw my own conclusions from the headline," which they know is flawed and ridiculous.

Bob Edlin: Lake will be drained to tackle the gold clam threat but (psst!....

Lake will be drained to tackle the gold clam threat but (psst! – we are thinking of Parliament) what else could be emptied of pests?

PoO’s monitors of who has been doing what to whom were fascinated to read that “an infestation of invasive clams has forced the draining of a lake in New Plymouth”.

Forced?

JC: No Bias in Two Recent Polls

Looking ahead to 2026 election year, my money is on the re-election of the coalition.

Nobody could honestly say the two polls released this week reeked of bias. The first, the normally left-leaning 1News-Verian poll was good news for the right. The other, the normally right-leaning Taxpayers Union-Curia poll had better news for the left. As we all know polls do bounce around, some more than others. There are many variables contributing to this, including the time the poll was conducted, the questions asked and how they were framed. To quote the late Jim Bolger: “Bugger the polls.”

David Farrar: Flag cowards

Radio NZ reports:

A controversial piece of artwork that prompted 101 complaints in a week has now been stolen from a Hastings art gallery.

The installation, Flagging the Future, at Te Whare Toi o Heretaunga Hastings Art Gallery asked gallery visitors to “please” walk on top of a quasi-NZ flag.

Friday December 12, 2025 

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Perspective with Ryan Bridge: What will Trump's border crackdown do to tourism?

Donald Trump has every right to crack down on the American border. There are problems there that we, down here in little old New Zealand, just don't understand.

Illegal migration sounds to us like a far away and non-threatening concept because, well, it is. Thank you, ocean.

Heather du Plessis-Allan: Nicola v Ruth - bring it on

So, to the Nicola Willis v Ruth Richardson debate.

Here’s a challenge to Nicola Willis: do it this year. Do it next week.

I’m hearing that having challenged Ruth Richardson to the debate, Willis’ office would prefer to do it next year.

John Raine: Drive Climate Change Policy with Evidence not Alarmism

The Challenge of Opening Closed Minds

The media and many politicians worldwide continue to push a narrative of impending climate catastrophe. Whether or not you are a climate change pessimist, we live on a gradually warming planet and will need to adapt to this. Ongoing wide-ranging, balanced critical analysis is needed of the long-term history of Earth's climate, scientific models, current evidence, and underlying political and economic motivations driving the climate debate. This article addresses only limited recent evidence and analysis which indicates that climate change is real but does not pose an existential threat.

Ani O'Brien: Rot - ACC has problems

Rot in the Accident Compensation Corporation

This saga begins with a cringeworthy cliche scandal which morphs into a bigger classic case of rotten nepotism and self-interest. Then a second scandal pops up, and then, in the process of mopping these scandals up, the whole thing becomes an almost comedic additional problem.

George Thomson: Government scraps hemp licences in major regulatory overhaul

The Government has announced a sweeping reform of industrial hemp regulations, with Regulation Minister David Seymour saying the sector will finally be freed from “outdated, heavy-handed rules” that have constrained growth for nearly two decades.

Cabinet has agreed to scrap the current licensing regime for industrial hemp and replace it with what Seymour describes as a more practical, proportionate system.

Dave Patterson: When Putin Visits India, the White House Pays Attention

Since the end of the Cold War, the United States has developed a fragile relationship with India as a counterweight to China and Russia. So the White House watched closely when Russian President Vladimir Putin joined Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi earlier this month for the 23rd India-Russia Annual Summit to assess what strategic agreements the two leaders had forged.

Peter Dunne: RMA reform

It was ironic that the very week former Prime Minister Sir Geoffrey Palmer lambasted Parliament and recent governments for too much rushed legislation and excessive use of Urgency, the government announced the repeal of his flagship Resource Management Act and then took Urgency to pass the first stage of its reforms through Parliament.

Dr Oliver Hartwich: The US ditching the rules-based order leaves NZ living on a prayer

Let us try a brief experiment.

Here is a statement of American strategic priorities: “The United States cannot survive as a free and independent nation if a hostile power dominates any region of the world from which it could threaten the US. That is why we have binding treaty commitments with our allies to help defend their territorial integrity.”

Simon O'Connor: Do as I say, not as I do

How did we reach a moment where a Prime Minister saying she wanted to punch another MP in the face is seen as acceptable by many?

I’m not sure about you, but it is hard reconcile the words of Jacinda Ardern who on one hand said she wanted to punch a political colleague in the face and yet on the other is discussing wanting a different type of politics, one based around kindness and decency. This contradiction has more recently come to light during an interview with UK talk show host, Graham Norton.