Lindsay Mitchell: What the Left constantly ignores

Here is the political argument from the Left:

Poverty causes hardship for children. Whether the parent is working or on a benefit makes no difference. It's the lack of income that matters.

My argument is that the source of income matters. A lot.

Children in households with the same low income suffer hardship disproportionately if their parent is on a benefit.

Mike's Minute: Some political operators want to undermine your future

Perhaps the Labour Party's small target election year strategy has started to unravel as one of their MPs, Helen White, told us all of her desire for house prices to fall.

She wants them to come down.

Dr Bryce Wilkinson: Thoughts for reducing child material hardship

Last month, the Ministry of Social Development released the latest of its excellent statistical reports documenting the extent of child poverty, hardship/deprivation in New Zealand.

The proportions are much below their peak rates around 15 years ago but are still too high.

Richard Shaw: Coalition leadership is hard. Luxon’s ‘nuclear option’ of electoral reform is not the answer

Much to everyone’s surprise – including, it seems, his National Party colleagues – Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has committed to offering voters the chance to revisit their electoral system. Again.

Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised – National has form when it comes to constitutional change.

Dr Oliver Hartwich: Embed, align, continue, refresh

The cover of MBIE’s new Workforce Diversity Action Plan shows nine staff holding signs reading “I belong” in several languages. Inside, it declares itself “People-centred | Performance-driven | Evidence-informed”.

Treasury’s plan appeared a few weeks after MBIE’s. Both are organised around the same three focus areas. Both culminate in the same heading “Apply the merit principle comprehensively”.

Gary Moller: New Zealand Has Abundant Energy, So Why Are Our Families Cold?

It's 5:30 in the morning as I write this, and the temperature is only 5°C. I'm dressed in a warm hat and a puffer jacket, with a small heater under my desk to keep my feet warm. Despite our efforts to save energy, last month's power bill was the highest our family has ever seen. Additionally, we've just received our first water services bill. I'm worried about the way things are heading and question if it will ever cease. The financial pressure on hard-working Kiwis appears to be relentless and worsening each month.

Several years ago, while visiting Norway, I stayed with a family in a fairly remote part of the country. Their underfloor electric heating ran around the clock, even during the warmer months while I was staying there. When I asked why, I was told that electricity was so cheap there that switching the heating off was hardly worth thinking about. Norway had invested its natural advantages, including abundant hydroelectricity, in infrastructure that served its people. This was despite their massive oil reserves and income that it generated for them. This was despite their massive oil reserves and the income it generates for them.

My friend Paul Mulvaney, a veteran Kiwi journalist, responded to this story by pointing out that New Zealand once had a similar philosophy. Our electricity system was developed as essential national infrastructure, intended to provide abundant and affordable power for homes, farms and industry. From the late 1980s onwards, however, we increasingly corporatised electricity and treated it as a commercial commodity. The purpose gradually shifted from serving the public towards earning returns for companies, governments and shareholders. We were promised lower prices and more reliable electricity. We received neither.

Paul also noted the peculiar way our wholesale electricity market operates. When expensive gas or coal generation is needed to meet demand, that higher marginal price can influence what all generators receive, including hydroelectric generators producing power from water stored behind dams built many decades ago. There may be sound economic arguments behind this arrangement, but New Zealand families are entitled to ask whether it consistently serves them. I think it fails to serve us as promised, and I think I am speaking for most Kiwis.

Norway has also made a very different choice about its wider natural wealth. Rather than simply consuming the proceeds of its oil and gas, it invested much of that income through its sovereign wealth fund. This fund is now one of the largest investors in the world, owning stakes in thousands of companies and helping protect the interests of future Norwegian generations. I understand that the Norwegian sovereign wealth fund owns the cutting rights to massive tracts of New Zealand exotic forest. While Norway’s domestic electricity is no longer virtually free, particularly since greater connection with European markets, but the founding principle remains instructive: national resources should leave the country and its people stronger. New Zealand is doing the opposite.

New Zealand is hardly short of natural advantages. We have hydroelectricity, geothermal energy, wind, rainfall and considerable engineering ability. Yet many families are reluctant to turn on a heater during winter. Children sleep in cold, damp bedrooms while electricity companies report substantial earnings. Whatever one thinks about public ownership, private ownership or the present market structure, that result should trouble us.

The Free Rangers vision is that New Zealand should be the best place in the world to live and raise a family. A warm, dry home is not an extravagant ambition. It is a foundation for healthier children, stronger families and productive communities. Paul’s message leaves us with a question worth asking: what is New Zealand’s natural wealth actually for, if ordinary New Zealanders cannot afford the essentials it ought to provide?Gary Moller is a Health Practitioner who is focused on addressing the root causes of ill health or poor performance. This article was first published HERE

Dr Eric Crampton: What New Zealand can learn from Andy Burnham’s UK plan

Election 2023 brought us a new government committed to localist approaches. National had campaigned on greater localism as an alternative to the prior Labour government’s more centralising tendencies across water services, polytechnics, housing and farming regulation.

In his Waitangi speech in 2024, the Prime Minister said that, “We, like you, believe in localism and devolution, not centralisation and control. No one understands your iwi like your iwi does.”

JC: Time to Call a Spade a Spade

A couple of weeks ago I headlined my article ‘Mouthing Off is a No No’. Since then more examples have arisen. What is becoming very clear, at least among politicians, is that this is very much a generational divide. I wonder if the younger generation of current politicians in parliament have heard of the phrase ‘call a spade a spade’? They should have as it has been around since 1542. If so, they seem very reluctant to apply it to their everyday lives. The two politicians most likely to apply the phrase are Winston Peters (81) and Shane Jones (66). They are two of four politicians over 65 years old: the other two being Gerry Brownlee and Damien O’Connor.

Sunday August 9, 2026 

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David Farrar: National’s 2026 party list

National has released their 2026 party list.

Breaking Views Update: Week of 9.8.26

Sunday August 9, 2026 

News:
National Party announces 2026 candidate list with no Māori in the top 10
Just two Māori candidates have made the top 20 of the National Party’s list for the 2026 election, despite changes that have propelled several sitting MPs and candidates up the rankings.

Hamilton West MP Tama Potaka is the highest-ranked Māori candidate at number 11, climbing 13 places from 24th on National’s 2023 party list.

Perspective with Heather du Plessis-Allan: Are the days of building big roads really over?

Yeah, I don't know what to make of Shane Jones's prediction last night that the days of building big roads are over. He was at this infrastructure debate in Wellington and he said, and I quote, I personally don't see ever another four-lane highway being built in New Zealand in my lifetime. The politicians are going to struggle to justify the cost.

Ani O'Brien: A week is a long time: 8 August 2026

Election 2026: polls in which nobody is winning

Neither Luxon nor Hipkins had a good week. The polls aren’t looking good for either and we are less than 100 days from the election. One Chris has taken to hating on MMP while the other is blaming a “rogue poll”.

The Taxpayers’ Union–Curia poll released yesterday put Labour on a grim 27.8%, down 3.7 points in a month and only fractionally higher than what it got on election night 2023. National is back in front on 31%, NZ First is on 9.1, ACT 7.3, and the Greens 10.1. Te Pāti Māori has fallen all the way to 1.5%. On these numbers, the current coalition would scrape back into office with 61 seats.

Geoff Parker: If Official Status Doesn't Matter, Why Does It Matter?

Over the past week RNZ has published two articles criticising the English Language Act.

In the first, the Māori Language Commissioner argued that English never needed official recognition because it already dominates New Zealand society.

In the second, University of Waikato linguist Dr Julie Barbour went even further, describing English as a "predator language" that spread through conquest and colonialism, suggesting the legislation is "bizarre", unnecessary and simply reinforces English dominance.

Both arguments miss the point.

Gary Moller: Wellington’s Water Bill - When the Money Tree Finally Runs Out

Introduction
From 1 July 2026, property owners throughout Wellington, Porirua and the Hutt Valley will receive a separate bill for drinking water, wastewater and stormwater from the new council-owned organisation, Tiaki Wai. Our's arrived today. These costs are presently collected through council rates, so the councils will remove the water component from their rates bills. However, this is not merely an accounting exercise in which the same amount of money moves from one invoice to another. The overall cost to households will rise, and for many homeowners the increase will be substantial.

Nathan Smith: Let’s Bring Back The ‘Move-On’ Laws From Henry VIII

The government’s revamped Move-On powers have already had a positive effect on my life, but there’s so much more that could – and should – be done to fix the problem of the “sturdy beggar.”

Just down from where I live is a giant unused carpark. It’s flat and sits next to a major arterial route. It also has no restrictions on types of cars or campervans that can stay overnight. So, naturally, this carpark has attracted plenty of vagrants. At its peak, about three dozen shabby vehicles with shabby owners were semi-permanently camped for more than 18 months, going nowhere, doing nothing.

Troy Bowker: The Opportunity Party - A Radical Left Policy Manifesto

The audacity of the party to describe itself as centrist and moderate is, in some ways, impressive. That positioning, however, relies heavily on what appears to be a willing mainstream media environment that has devoted significant attention to TOP’s political story and leadership while providing comparatively limited scrutiny of the consequences of its actual policy platform.

Why has so much focus been placed on TOP’s rise, its leader and its political narrative, while there has been limited examination of the practical impacts of its proposed reforms?

Vijay Raj Jayaraj: India to climate cartel: Count us out!

Sometimes a story gets buried, not because editors conspire against it, but because the news cycle has room for only one crisis at a time. This year, the big news has been the Iran war. But even accounting for competing headlines, the silence around a genuinely consequential development is telling.

And that is the story of India’s explicit rejection of the global net-zero movement. India has walked away from its bid to host the COP33 UN climate conference, and the world’s climate press has treated it as a footnote rather than the signal it is.

Peter Dunne: Wellington City Council - Public Relations Disasters

You can’t beat Wellington on a good day” the saying goes.

It also seems you cannot beat Wellington, or at least its City Council, when it comes to public relations disasters.

Earlier this year, following years of mismanagement of and underinvestment in the city’s water system, the Council in conjunction with other local Councils, established a new entity, Tiaki Wai, to better and more transparently manage the region’s water resources. Part of the plan was that there would be a separation between what ratepayers paid for water services and their rates to local authorities, so that they could see more clearly the true cost of water services.

Mike's Minute: The trouble with revisiting MMP

Is Luxon's MMP vote a stroke of genius to avoid an otherwise problematic week?

His apology for Rotorua was a cluster, the Māorification issues that haven't been resolved despite all the talk, the Corrections massages, MBIE, Treasury love-ins, the Justice Department cock-up on the Harrison bloke, and the unemployment rate to the upside – it's all looked like very bad news.