Breaking Views Update: Week of 13.9.26

Tuesday September 15, 2026 

News:
Government charts course for te reo Māori future
Minister for Māori Development, Tama Potaka says the Government is confirming its clear and ambitious course for the future of te reo Māori with the refresh of the Maihi Karauna strategy.

The Maihi Karauna is the Crown’s strategy for Māori language revitalisation across government and wider society, working alongside the Maihi Māori to support whānau and communities.

Duncan Garner: 92% vs 31%: The Medical School Numbers That Will Shock New Zealand

Duncan asks why high-achieving applicants are being turned away based on ethnicity, and why the government won't publish the report. Is this addressing past disadvantage, or has it become state-sponsored racial discrimination?

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Clive Bibby: Shutting the door after the horse has bolted

The East Coast of New Zealand’s North Island is one of the country’s more remote farming regions but it has survived economically for decades mainly because the majority of its livestock farming soils produce some of the best red meat grown anywhere in the world.

Geoff Parker: Te Reo Is Here To Stay - But That Doesn't Mean We Must Embrace It

The New Zealand Herald (Editorial 14/9/26) tells us that “te reo is here to stay” and urges New Zealanders to “embrace it.”

It sounds harmless enough. But behind that friendly appeal lies a much bigger assumption: that because te reo Māori is being promoted more extensively, New Zealanders should welcome its increasing presence throughout public life.

That assumption deserves to be challenged.

Perspective with Heather du Plessis-Allan: Here's why political parties shouldn't rush laws

Now, just for the avoidance of doubt, let me tell you what happened here with this mistake that led to 30,000 people missing out on Winter Energy Payments and benefits.

It happened because Louise Upston passed a piece of legislation so fast, under urgency, in just two days last year that no one had time to spot the fact the law contained a mistake.

Pee Kay: Where should the ambulance be placed?

And Why the Taxpayer is Left at the Bottom of the Cliff

A recent letter to the editor in the NZ Herald read – “…when are we going to wake up as a nation and realise that we need more tax income to pay for all the health, education and infrastructure that the country needs attending to?

Adding – “Future generations will be burdened with debt that will need to be repaid unless we are brave enough to change our tax structure to meet our growing needs”

So here we have another economic visionary gracing the letters to the editor page, imploring the state to extract even more cash from our already empty wallets. Because obviously to them, the only reason New Zealand’s hospitals are crumbling and our roads resemble the surface of the moon is that the government simply doesn’t have enough of our hard earned tax dollars to fritter away! The prevailing wisdom from these bleeding hearts is always the same; if we just tax our way to prosperity, future generations will magically inherit a debt-free utopia.

Dr Geoffrey Duffy: Why ‘Zero-Carbon’ Will Fail to Achieve Climate-Change Targets

Why the ‘zero-carbon dioxide’ intentions will fail to achieve weather and climate-change targets: over 30 additional ‘non-radiation greenhouse-gas’ mechanisms                              

Many countries worldwide are still pushing for ‘Net Zero’ carbon dioxide emissions where any increase in the amounts emitted annually are sequestered at enormous expense. Unfortunately, the single-cause of weather and climate variability has been assigned to the infrared radiation energy interaction with the greenhouse gas GHG carbon dioxide CO₂. Alas this fails to recognize that infrared radiation also impacts ALL the planet simultaneously; land, oceans, as well as a few atmospheric GHG’s.  

Colinxy: The Cargo Cult - When Ritual Replaces Reason

And why modern governments keep repeating a mistake once made with bamboo control towers

Every civilisation has its superstitions. Some carve them into stone. Some write them into legislation. And some, like the cargo cults of the Pacific, build them out of bamboo and hope the gods of logistics will deliver crates of American supplies.

The term “cargo cult” emerged after World War II. In the Pacific theatre, American forces built runways, depots, and radar stations. Aircraft arrived with food, tools, medicine, and equipment. To the islanders, this looked like magic: build the right structures, and the sky delivers abundance.

So, they copied what they saw.

Damien Grant: The worst economic policy since buying back BNZ was mooted

On occasion I will visit a supermarket. This is usually a task that I leave to my long-suffering travelling companion but when she has failed to purchase the right brand of peanut butter, I venture into the void to find, to my dismay, that Sanitarium discontinued this product in 2024.

However, once present in this cornucopia I wander around in a daze, with the same wonder that befell soviet leader Boris Yeltsin when he visited a Texas supermarket back in 1989. For research purposes, I dropped into my local Pak’nSave where I was shocked, shocked I declare, to discover 35 pre-cooked sausages on sale for $19. That’s 54c a sausage!

Peter Williams: The New Zealand myth in Kenya

A taxi driver’s strange tale and what farming in East Africa is really like.

One of life’s oldest adages used to be that you could believe everything a taxi driver told you.

To be fair this was from the days when taxi drivers were crusty old white men, often WW II veterans, who had their finger on the pulse of the community and country because they ferried politicians and business leaders and media types around town, gossiped with some and eavesdropped on others.

That scene no longer exists of course, but I was reminded of that adage when a taxi driver in Nairobi told me a story about New Zealand.

Guest Post: If Auckland is going to price congestion, make it work

A guest post by David Lupton on Kiwiblog.

Three years ago I argued in favour of pricing congested roads. At the time it was largely a debate about whether Auckland should introduce congestion charging at all. That debate has moved on. The Government has now provided the legislative framework and Auckland is actively developing a scheme.

So the important question is becoming not simply whether we should have congestion pricing, but what sort of congestion pricing we should have. If we are going to do it, we should make sure it actually fixes congestion, replaces rather than adds to existing taxes and rates, protects privacy, and does not lock us into an unnecessarily expensive or inflexible system.

Lindsay Mitchell: Did Paul Henry deserve to be called a liar?

Last Thursday Paul Henry was in Dunedin campaigning for ACT. There were planned protests at the speaking venue and one attendee was a left-wing podcaster who took issue with a claim Paul made about how much someone on welfare was receiving. The podcaster repeatedly called Henry a liar which resulted in him being ejected from the meeting.

The matter was discussed on NewstalkZB the following day framed as a free speech issue.

But I want to focus on the claim itself.

Monday September 14, 2026 

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Ryan Bridge: The numbers that tell us where we're heading

There's a reason we talk a lot on this programme about bond markets, growth, central bank decisions and wars in far-away places.

There was, and probably still is, a school of thought that people either don't want, or don't understand, financial markets, currencies and economics.

Duncan Garner: Why Does Māori Officer Earn More Than Mayor?....

....$280k Council Salary Exposed

Wellington ratepayers are shelling out $280,000 for a Chief Māori Officer, which is $78,000 more than the city’s mayor takes home. Over in the regional council, there is another executive doing the same work for over $200,000. We look at why ratepayers are funding duplicate bureaucracy in a cost-of-living crisis and ask where the actual outcomes are. Former minister Maurice Williamson and Ani O'Brien join the show to break down council spending.


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Geoff Parker: Paid To Speak Māori - Is This What Equal Treatment Looks Like?

There is a question the Government needs to answer about the practice of paying public servants an additional allowance for proficiency in te reo Māori:

If speaking te reo Māori is not required to perform the job, why does proficiency in it attract additional remuneration?

This is not an attack on the Māori language or on those who speak it. It is a question about equal treatment, remuneration policy and value for money for taxpayers.

And this is not some obscure or historical arrangement.

Dr Oliver Hartwich: An auction of stolen goods

“Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods,” H.L. Mencken wrote in 1936. Never has it been truer than in this campaign.

The parties are outdoing each other with ideas about what to take, from whom, and to whom to give it. Robbing Peter to pay Paul is another way of putting it.

Brendan O'Neill: We are still failing the moral test of 9/11

Twenty-five years on from 9/11, I am sick of the disease of self-hatred. It’s time the West asserted itself.

Imagine if you had told someone on 11 September 2001 that in 25 years’ time the streets of New York City would ring out with sympathy for Islamofascism. Imagine if you had said to one of the startled souls watching American lives be incinerated by Islamist filth that one day the West would swarm with youths cosplaying as Islamist filth. Imagine if you had said that in a mere quarter of a century even our leafiest campuses would be awash with jihad chic, with silver-spoon students gushing over an Islamo-army (Hamas) every bit as hateful and medieval as the one that burnt New Yorkers alive.

Dr Eric Crampton: Gazing into the abyss is a choice

The four months before an election aren’t great for those who care about good policy.

Politicians’ competence at other times is questionable. During election season, it gets worse. Ridiculous policy proposals get airtime, with politicians hoping voters like the vibe. Just look at the past couple of weeks.

Bob Edlin: Sovereignty and The Treaty.....

.....the Maori Party aims to nobble Parliament while ACT wants to rid NZ of the Waitangi Tribunal

The Māori Party intends undermining the sovereignty of Parliament – if it can muster the support to implement such a policy – by establishing a “Tiriti Commission” empowered to stall or challenge Government policies and bills presented to Parliament.

Furthermore, it would establish a $220 million fund for “Māori-led constitutional transformation” discussions and working groups.