Ani O'Brien: A week is a long time: 22 August 2026

Election 2026: Everybody has discovered the MMP cheat codes

Te Pāti Māori has formally announced that it wants the electorate vote in the Māori seats, but supporters can give their party vote to Labour or the Greens. If Te Pāti Māori wins more electorate seats than its tiny party vote would entitle it to, those electorate MPs become overhang seats. Parliament gets bigger and, depending on the final numbers, the left bloc potentially gets a small mathematical advantage.

Geoff Parker: Equality Is Not Racism, and Disagreement Is Not an Attack on Democracy

Metiria Turei's paywalled column in the Otago Daily Times 21/8/26, Hypocrisy and racism abounds in Parliament, is a familiar exercise in political inversion.

According to Turei, opposition to Māori electorates, criticism of Māori-specific policies, and attempts to restore the same democratic rules for all New Zealanders are evidence of hypocrisy, racism and an assault on constitutional democracy.

Dr Oliver Hartwich: Nothing gets done in NZ’s coalitions of the unwilling

When New Zealanders go to the polls on 7 November, they will be spoilt for choice. In the main, there are two larger (Labour and National) and five smaller parties (ACT, Greens, NZ First, Opportunity, Te Pāti Māori). Each has its own ideas about a cure for the country’s finances, its hospitals, power supply, education system and so on.

Colinxy: The Oppressed vs Oppressor Mind Trick

A Companion Piece to “Fast and Slow Thinking: What Kahneman Actually Revealed”

This essay follows naturally from my earlier piece on Kahneman’s Thinking Fast and Slow. If Kahneman exposed the machinery of our cognitive shortcuts, then Joshua Greene’s Moral Tribes explains how those shortcuts become tribal weapons — especially when fused with Marx’s Oppressed vs Oppressor narrative.

Kerre Woodham: What's the hold up with giving police bodycams?

I cannot understand it. We have had eight years of discussion, debate, market research, investigation, draft reviews, proposed market trials, and still our police don't have bodycams. Our Corrections Officers have bodycams, they've had them since 2015. The security guard at your local mall has a bodycam. Every hoer with a mobile phone has a recording camera, and still our police officers don't have bodycams.

Bob Edlin: The Nats (like Labour) have ruled out a streaming tax....

....but they have put their message on repeat

Those of us who keep an ear to proceedings in Parliament should have been left in no doubt this week about National’s policy position on a streaming tax. They are agin it.

Fair to say, they comprehensively laboured the point: after three days of hearing the PM and Paul Goldsmith banging on at Question Time about ruling it out of the National agenda, those listening would have been yearning to hear what they will be doing to improve our well-being rather than what they will not be doing.

David Farrar: Te Pāti Māori tries to defeat the point of MMP

Radio NZ reports:

Te Pāti Māori have made their election strategy clear: give us your candidate vote to get more Māori in Parliament, and give your party vote to the left bloc.

This is the first time I can recall that a parliamentary party has not campaigned for the party vote. TPM are trying to use the Māori seats to deliberately create and overhang in Parliament, so that the four parties of the left can from Government even if they receive fewer party votes than the current Government.

Mike's Minute: Where is the action on electricity prices?

Simeon Brown has written a letter.

It's this sort of thing, I think, that frustrates a lot of potential and actual National Party voters.

There is an argument to be made, and power prices is one of them, where you can say that National talked a big game, but I don’t see any real results.

 Saturday August 22, 2026 

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NZCPR Newsletter: Election Concerns

Last week I received an email from a colleague expressing outrage over his experience with the Electoral Commission.

The Electoral Commission is, of course, the independent Crown Entity tasked with running New Zealand’s General Elections. Since most of us are aware of the agency through the quirky antics of the “orange man” and his “orange dog”, let’s take a deeper dive to examine how they operate.

Breaking Views Update: Week of 16.8.26

Saturday August 22, 2026 

News:
Tainui unleashes scathing attack on Govt after river protection rules halted
One of the country’s largest iwi is “deeply upset” the Government is pausing farming provisions that took 14 years to design and would have helped protect the already degrading Waikato River.

Tainui said the halting of several provisions under Plan Change 1 (PC1), a set of farming regulations designed to protect the Waikato River, was a “complete and total betrayal” that breached its Treaty settlement.

Gary Judd KC: Judicial Power, Democratic Accountability, and the Smith Case

The Climate Change Response (Tort Liability) Amendment Bill received its third reading on 18 August and has now passed into law. It amends the Climate Change Response Act 2002 to bar tort liability for emissions‑related climate change effects, including for cases already before the courts. This directly affects the Smith v Fonterra litigation, preventing the tort claims from proceeding. A Law Association submission when the Bill was before the Select Committee was critical of some aspects of the Bill. That submission was subjected to careful examination by Peter Watts KC in an article published in the Association’s LawNews.

Peter Wiilliams: When a system fails

Here’s a question. If an organisation experiences “systemic failure” isn’t it the responsibility of the person who oversees that system to take the blame for the failure?

Therefore when Tauranga City Council has systemic failure, isn’t it ultimately the fault of the Chief Executive?

David Farrar: The Attorney-General gets it in one

Attorney-General Chris Bishop had made a hugely important speech. He politely but firmly pushes back against the courts making law, rather than interpreting law. He notes:

Ryan Bridge: Kiwibank's result proves there is competition for banks

There's a lot of noise around banks in this country, but results speak for themselves.

If I had a dollar for every time a politician said there's no competition in the banking sector, that they're price-gouging tyrants, I'd be richer than Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos put together.

But let's take a closer look, shall we?

Geoff Parker: History Or Historical Interpretation?

Christopher Burns, a history teacher at Auckland University of Technology, has criticised the new Social Sciences curriculum, describing its presentation of New Zealand history as “sanitised” and calling for a more honest engagement with our past.

I agree that history should not be sanitised. But surely that principle must apply to all of our history.

Kerre Woodham: The damning report on the Mount Maunganui landslide

The report into this devastating landslide at Mount Maunganui is so desperately sad, because it was all so preventable. Six people died when the landslide from Mauao hit the council-owned campground at the foot of the mountain on January 22nd after record rainfalls, including one heroic woman who knew something was wrong. She and her husband were staying at the campground in a campervan, were woken at 4:30 when a landslide hit the back of their campervan, a minor landslip. She knew something was wrong. From that point, she and her husband partner tried to call someone, anyone, someone who was in charge who could make the call to say, "No, it's fine, it's safe," or "No, get out."

Hugo Bromley & Eyck Freymann: Why China’s Taking of Intellectual Property Matters—and What to Do Now

Beijing broke the bargain that built the WTO. The US and its allies must create new safeguards and agreements.

China’s appropriation of intellectual property is so familiar a complaint that we have almost stopped voicing it.[1] Chinese private firms and State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs) use many techniques to access IP. They range from nominally legal but coerced joint ventures to outright theft—ignored or neglected by Chinese courts—and industrial espionage by employees at Western firms.[2] The biggest beneficiaries have been technology firms, above all Huawei.[3] For years, Western governments and companies have tolerated China’s behavior as the “price of doing business.” Many firms now central to the AI supply chain, including Samsung and TSMC, have profited enormously from China despite its systematic IP theft. Accepting that anything on the mainland would eventually be stolen, they made copying as hard as possible and tried to use their Chinese revenues to stay a few years ahead of the copies.

Bob Edlin: What Carl Bates says about expertise in tax policy....

....and (good grief!) the Finance Minister lacks those credentials

As one measure of the politicians’ preoccupation with tax policy in the runup to the general election, Hansard recorded the word “tax” 371 times in its record of proceedings in the House of Representatives yesterday.

But if we listen to Carl Bates, National MP for Whanganui, only some were qualified to discuss it.

David Farrar: How much land tax will you pay?

TOP has proposed a 1.75% tax on the value of urban land (except Maori communal land) and 0.5% on rural land. It is worth noting that land values have been declining for the last five years, so TOP’s policy is to tax you on an asset that is declining in value!