Perspective with Heather du Plessis-Allan: No-one was asking for an MMP referendum

Yeah, well, if Chris Luxon's week wasn't already bad, it's not much better.

Not after he apparently announced off the cuff on ZB Mornings with Kerre that he's going to hold an MMP referendum if he wins the election.

Now, where do I start with the problems with him doing this?

Ryan Bridge: Luxon blindsiding his colleagues puts him in a tough position

Christopher Luxon's going rogue.

The risk when making constitutional policy pronouncements 92 days out from an election, blindsiding your colleagues and diverting attention from your key messaging, is that you look erratic.

Breaking Views Update: Week of 2.8.26

Friday August 7, 2026 

News:
Te Pati Maori will make the Waitangi Tribunal recommendations binding
Te Pāti Māori says the latest developments expose a deeper flaw in Aotearoa's constitutional arrangements.

"The Waitangi Tribunal can investigate, hear evidence and make findings. But governments can simply ignore them."

David Harvey: The Limits Una Jagose KC Cannot Name

Why Parliament, Not the Courts, Must Prevail

When former Solicitor-General Una Jagose KC told a Law Association breakfast on 2 July 2026 that New Zealand risks “sleepwalking” towards a collapse of the separation of powers, she framed herself as the constitution’s anxious guardian. The framing deserves scrutiny.

Colinxy: The Fertility Crisis - Why New Zealand’s Birthrate Won’t Recover

New Zealand has finally begun to notice what demographers have warned for decades: the country is now deep into a fertility crisis. Our birthrate sits well below the replacement level of 2.1, and nothing in the cultural or economic landscape suggests a rebound.

Jacinda Ardern’s Best Start payment was a timid gesture. Winston Peters’ recent proposal, a $45,000 incentive for families who have three children, is the first explicit attempt to reverse the decline.

Will it work?

Peter Williams: Removing the little sh*ts

Act's latest education move is worth a go

Paul Henry always had a knack for cutting to the chase. That’s why his succinct line about Act’s education discipline policy will hit the spot with so many teachers.

“Let’s be honest, there are a lot of little sh*ts in classrooms and we need to address that if we’re to lift education standards.”

So Act want to give teachers more power to throw the little sh*ts out of the class.

Olivia Pierson: RCR - Free Speech is not a Suicide Pact

As a New Zealand writer who has defended freedom of speech for many years, I have always treated it as an essential cornerstone of a free society. I have never regarded it as a context-less absolute that forces private broadcasters to give regular, unchallenged platforms to ideas that attack the very civilisation free speech depends on.

Dr Eric Crampton: Forcing banks to offer services in small towns was always a non-starter

Sometimes, a consultation process makes me wonder just how the consultation document got out the door in the first place.

Submissions closed last week on the Reserve Bank’s Keeping Cash Local consultation process. It was a strange proposal, with a stranger process.

Let’s start with the underlying problem before getting to the Bank’s strange consultation.

David 'Farrar: Law Commission sees sense

The Law Commission has now done a final report into hate crime law, and their recommendations are not to try and criminalise more New Zealanders. Their recommendations include:

Lindsay Mitchell: Why the vacuum around the new Children's Commissioner?

For those of us who take an interest in child welfare and listen to various media outlets, Jane Searle is a familiar voice. As head of the organisation Child Matters, she was often the go-to person when child abuse deaths occur. As an ex detective who worked in a child abuse team, Jane wasn't afraid to talk about contributing factors such as drug addiction. My first response to her appointment was that she would have to be better than the wet Claire Achmad.

So naturally I am keen to hear what she has to say in her new capacity as Children's Commissioner but can find very little. Here's why:

Mike's Minute: Calm down, the election enrolment changes aren't a problem

I think we can turn off the alarms and stand down the cavalry.

The changes to enrolment for this year's election have not turned out to be the cataclysmic disaster the misery merchants claimed it was going to be.

There are a number of rule changes passed late last year. The most significant one is when you enrol.

Thursday August 6, 2026 

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Perspective with Heather du Plessis-Allan: We've got to stop nitpicking legitimate uses of Defence Force flights

Well, I've come back from holiday to find Christopher Luxon having the week from hell, haven't I? The small business comments, the Winston Peters "go back to where you came from" comments and now Choppergate.

The latest with Choppergate, by the way, is that the event Chris Luxon was telling Mike Hosking about on Monday, where he finished up in Whanganui at 10:30 and then had to get back to Auckland, was in fact a National Party fundraiser.

Ryan Bridge: Unemployment isn't as bad as it seems

A couple of things on the unemployment number that came out yesterday.

It looks worse than actually it is because a bunch of people decided they would start looking for work in the second quarter than the one before it.

So, there are a bunch of reasons for this happening, but basically you don't really know.

Dr Eric Crampton: Can culture drive innovation? The answer lies in the books

Everyone knows that culture matters, at least in a vague sense. But showing how it matters has been like pinning jelly to a wall.

I don’t know how many opinion pieces I’ve read blaming New Zealand’s ‘tall poppy syndrome’ for weak innovation and productivity growth. But how could you test whether it is true?

Eliora: They Are All Terrible, but Pick One.

Kiwis are being asked to vote in the November 26 election and some don’t trust any party.

Never has there been such cynicism about politics and the country’s direction. It cuts across many age groups,but the 65+ group includes those who say they are so fed up they don’t even want to vote in the next election. They recall how badly the government treated them at crucial times. They say they are sick and tired of the arrogance and shenanigans surrounding our politicians. The electioneering palaver, ‘Trust us, yes, we’ve messed up, we’ve misled you with our promises but (implied) we’re slightly less corrupt than the other parties,’ isn’t cutting the mustard any longer. One big negative looms large. Voters are ‘still burdened by the failures of the Ardern years’ and indicate it was so bad for them it has affected whether they will vote or not. More on that later.

JD: Will We Be Pākehā Freeloaders?

Guest post on The Good Oil by JD

As a Kiwi would you pay a couple of dollars a week into an All Black Support Fund? Possibly. How about a couple of dollars a week to prop up The Wallabies, England or Les Bleus? Not bloody likely!

And so to the question of NZ pensions.

Kerre Woodham: It's getting harder to decide who to vote for

A friend of mine said to me the other day, “do you have the cliff notes of Labour's policies going into the election? I haven't heard much from Chris Hipkins.” I said, “well, you haven't heard much from Chris Hipkins because he doesn't need to say much.” The best tactic for Labour right now, and they've they copped onto that very early, was to stay shtum and let National and its coalition partners do their very best to lose the election. Christopher Luxon's suck it up cupcake to business owners in Rotorua and then the subsequent apology was yet another case of him having to explain himself. “I didn't mean it like that, you know what I'm saying.” He's done it so many times before. He did it with the bottom feeders comment, he did it with the sorted comment. He doesn't mean it, but it comes across badly, it's mischaracterised, it's misrepresented, he has to explain himself, and when you're explaining, you're losing.

David Farrar: CPI to move to monthly

Scott Simpson announced:

New Zealanders will have access to monthly inflation data from July 2027 as part of a major upgrade to the country’s economic statistics, Statistics Minister Scott Simpson says.

“Moving to monthly Consumers Price Index (CPI) reporting is one of the biggest improvements to New Zealand’s economic statistics in decades.

Perspective with Andrew Dickens: Will TOP ever be more than a sideshow?

Everybody's talking about the Opportunity Party and I'm not quite sure I believe they're anything more than a bit of a sideshow. They haven't cracked 5 percent yet but anyway, there we go.

Sir Ian Taylor wrote an opinion piece that was published by Stuff. In it, he said that throughout his life he's been a centre-left voter. That's been his political home. But during the whole Covid period, with the Labour Party's response to Covid and the way it wasted its supermajority when it had, you know, all the power in the House, he became disillusioned.