Perspective with Heather du Plessis-Allan: The Government was right to give billions to defence and forget arts

Geez, how sorry do you feel for Paul Goldsmith at the Music Awards, eh?

So, he's invited to the awards and he hasn't got his mate Chris Bishop with him this time. Bishop didn’t go after what happened with Don McGlashan last year.

Breaking Views Update: Week of 24.5.26

Saturday May 30, 2026 

News:
Iwi leaders furious about Budget 2026, call it ‘economic apartheid’
Representatives of the Iwi Leaders Forum arrived at Parliament furious about the Government’s Budget, accusing it of creating an “economic apartheid”.

On Thursday, Finance Minister Nicola Willis handed down her third Budget. It was delivered amid a backdrop of significant economic uncertainty, with clear issues at home and abroad.

Mike's Minute: My thoughts on the Budget

I asked for the surplus to arrive sooner than previously forecast and, as though she was listening this time yesterday, the first words out of Nicola Willis' mouth were it will be a year ahead of schedule.

You can't ask for more than that.

Ani O'Brien: The Dead Rabbits Budget

Perceptions, appearances, and feelings...

Note: my analysis is political and so relies much more on perception, sentiment, and what things appear to be. I include economic and fiscal commentary from those more qualified than myself, but if you are after the true nuts, bolts, forecasts, OBEGALs, and OBEGALxs you won’t find it here.

Nicola Willis spent months lowering expectations for Budget 2026. She made it abundantly clear that there would be no “lolly scramble” or “sugar hits”. She set the expectation that the usual election year ‘bribes’ would not be on the agenda. My personal favourite line of hers was from yesterday when she said:

Ani O'Brien: How the media have distorted the truth to target their current villain

Accomodation allowances should be scrutinised, but Louise Upston is far from the only one receiving one

The media have created a controversy over Louise Upston’s accommodation allowance. Naturally the story has triggered public anger because it appears, at first glance, to confirm every suspicion people already hold about politicians. A minister receives around $1,000 a week in taxpayer-funded accommodation support while also owning an apartment in Wellington. Politically, it ain’t a great look. A minister tightening accommodation support for ordinary people while receiving accommodation support herself was always vulnerable to being seized upon by opposition including media.

Peter Dunne: Budget strategies

With her latest Budget Finance Minister Nicola Willis has joined some very unlikely company.

In 1972 then Finance Minister Rob Muldoon crowed that “I’ve spent it all for them”, meaning that there was no room for rash spending promises from Labour before that year’s election. In a somewhat more genteel fashion, former Finance Minister Grant Robertson deliberately set constrained forward spending allowances and booked $4 billion in savings and reprioritisation in the 2023 Budget. His intention was to leave the National Party with extremely limited fiscal room to fund its election promises without having to either cut public services or rely on highly optimistic economic revenue forecasts.

Kerre Woodham: Was holding the OCR the right decision?

So what would you rather? A little bit of pain now or a whole lot more later? The Reserve Bank yesterday opted to keep the official cash rate at 2.25%, but the decision to hold was a close-run thing. And we know that now because of the transparency around the decisions being made and a jolly good thing it is too. Governor Dr. Anna Breman had to use her casting vote. The Monetary Policy Committee was evenly split on whether to raise the rate. The three Reserve Bank officials wanted to hold, the external committee members wanted to hike and therefore Governor Breman had to use her casting vote.

Bob Edlin: The point rightly raised by Peters is that the same Parliamentary question has been asked umpteen times before

Before Opposition leader Chris Hipkins had a chance to put Question Two to the Prime Minister on Tuesday, Winston Peters had intervened to raise a point of order.

It was a welcome point of order, at least for those familiar with the Parliamentary questioning procedure.

Peters said the question had been asked before.

Indeed, it had.

Chris McVeigh KC: What's in a name?

What's in a name? It is tempting to approach the current vogue aimed at replacing all the well established and familiar place names in New Zealand (including that name itself) with maori alternatives, as some kind of shallow exercise in preening vanity practised by a coterie of self righteous plonkers, but I don't propose doing that here.

So I'll do it here instead.

No, no but seriously and much and all as I'd gain a degree of personal satisfaction from a bit of undignified name calling, I must resist that temptation and accord those who indulge themselves in this way the respect their activities don't deserve and reluctantly resist any temptation to cater to my baser instincts.

Mike's Minute: We are finally utilising the whole country

I'm immeasurably uplifted by some Trade Me data.

Could it be we are finally getting the message on rural or provincial New Zealand?

Job data increasingly shows we're looking to the regions for work.

Friday May 29, 2026 

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Elliot Ikilei: Forget co-governance, this is straight up treason

There is a major shift happening under our noses, as power moves from elected representatives to unelected and unaccountable iwi and hapū appointees.

Mana Whakahono ā Rohe agreements (MWRs) are undermining local democracy and will be sped up by captured councils and local iwi before the government passes its Resource Management Act (RMA) reforms.

As I write, the Far North District Council is rushing through more MWRs with multiple iwi (and even hapū). They are giving this work priority and seeking to avoid public consultation. They are negotiating with five iwi and one hapū. The RMA specifically talks about iwi authorities; it doesn’t mention hapū.

Perspective with Heather du Plessis-Allan: I would argue Budget 2026 wasn't tight enough

Well, you would have done well to heed Nicola Willis’s warnings ahead of this Budget that there would be no spend-up, because there is no spend-up.

There is no money for - well, there is money for the important stuff. You’ve got the schools and the classrooms, and the hospitals, and the Waikato Expressway, and Winston Peters’ pet projects.

Graeme Spencer: The CCO That Put Culture Before Consumers

Timaru District Council after a suspect consultation process have finally formed a CCO (Council Controlled Organisation) with MacKenzie District Council.

The result - a subscale entity, too small to deliver real efficiencies but big enough to add cost and distance from accountability. The worst of both worlds.

Colinxy: Why Is Labour Delaying Its Policy Announcements?

The politics of silence, vagueness, and strategic fog

Labour’s refusal to release its full policy platform is no mystery. It is a strategy, and not a particularly subtle one. When a party is confident, it releases policy early. When a party is terrified of how voters will react, it releases policy late, in fragments, or not at all.

Chris Hipkins’ Labour is firmly in the second category.

Gary Judd KC: India FTA - The Sting Beneath the Sting

Cabinet Said Stop. The India FTA Says Go

In The Sting in the India Trade Deal A Constitutional Trojan Horse: advancing change through political stealth, I examined the inclusion of clause 13.2.2a in the India FTA. That clause states:

David Farrar: 260 regulators!

David Seymour announced:

For the first time, the full scale and structure of New Zealand’s regulatory landscape has been mapped, exposing decades of overlap and complexity, Regulation Minister David Seymour says.

“In New Zealand there are over 260 regulators. This includes 95 in central government, 79 in local government, and 57 statutory bodies, committees, or tribunals,” Mr Seymour says.

The total number is bad enough, but look at how many one entity may have rot deal with.

Dr James Allan: Just Repeal and Undo

How many readers have noticed this huge failing in so many longstanding, establishment conservative political parties around the democratic world? To start, the Left side of politics when in power will seed or remake some institution. Or it will enact some big-ticket legislative reform. Maybe it’s bringing into being a beefed-up, more potent and renamed Australian Human Rights Commission. Maybe it’s enacting a statutory bill of rights in Victoria, in Queensland, in New Zealand, in Britain.

John McLean: Sherman Tanks......

But still snares lamestream media’s Political Journalist of the Year award

Maiki Sherman has left Television New Zealand. And not before time. Her last day as TVNZ’s Chief Political Editor was 8 May. She claims she resigned, but it’s not clear that’s true. Almost certainly, she’s been paid a handsomely dollop of cash out of TVNZ’s trough in connection with her exit.

Kerre Woodham: Have you crunched the numbers with your new rates bill?

Have you done the sums yet to work out how much more you're going to have to pay, how much more you're going to have to find to pay the rates bill? We were talking before the show, for some of my colleagues it's an extra $45 per fortnight, they're in an apartment out of the main city. I can't even imagine how much the increase will be for people living in the leafy suburbs.

Auckland Council has locked in a 7.9% rates rise, according to Wayne Brown it's to fund the City Rail Link. They've managed to keep everything else, they've managed to cut costs and reduce spending and keep everything level, this is purely to fund the City Rail Link. He's unapologetic. He said we've got this railway, if we don't pay for it this year, then we're just going to have to pay for it next year. And that's quite true, you can't just keep deferring essential spending.