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!

Mike's Minute: Our housing market is smashing Australia's

Cotality's Housing Affordability numbers paint what even a sceptic would have to agree is a pretty good picture of our housing market.

Especially for first timers and when you compare us to Australia.

Australia's market is a mess, and one of the biggest messes within the mess is the result of their Labor Government changing tax deductibility around landlords and expenses.

 Friday August 21, 2026 

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Ngai Tahu Want To Co-Govern The South Island - This Is Their Plan

Michael Laws talks about Ngai Tahu’s booming business operations and South Island council boundary plans which he thinks could morph into co-governance.

Click to view

Caleb Anderson: New Zealand's True tipping point may be closer than we think

It certainly appears that New Zealand, and the West generally, is facing a number of utterly persistent, concurrent, and often interconnected crises.

Worrying signs are evident in many Western economies. Health sectors are under strain, racial tensions simmer, immigration tensions persist, and crime, media, governance, adherence to (and respect for) due process, freedom of speech, parenting, and so on, seem to be breaking down. The speed at which this is happening has taken most by surprise.

David R. Henderson: The Deadly Focus on Income and Wealth Inequality

Myths that make for stirring political slogans hold back—and even harm—actual people.

Readers under age fifty-five might not realize this, but economic inequality was not a large issue in American political discussions until 1992. After that year, discussions of the issue ebbed and flowed. So much of what has been said by opponents of inequality is simple assertion. What has been missing in the statements of those who want government to reduce inequality is much information about why it exists and any sense of why some kinds of inequality are good.

Ashley Church: “He doesn’t believe in climate change”

Back in June, I published an article titled The Prophecy of Catastrophic Climate Change: 50 Years of Failed Predictions.

It wasn’t an argument that the climate never changes, but rather an expose’ of the more than half a century of warnings of climate catastrophe that failed to come true.

Dominic O'Sullivan: The Opportunity Party’s Treaty policy is closer to Labour than National. But is it a bottom line?

During the current parliamentary term, the debate over te Tiriti o Waitangi’s place in public life is arguably more polarised than at any time in the past 50 years.

But the parliamentary split on the issue could shift if the Opportunity Party becomes a player in forming the next government.

Roger Partridge: Hiding in Plain Sight - Chief Justice Winkelmann’s revolutionary vision

This column was first published in LawNews on 1 August 2026. It continues a series examining the Supreme Court’s departure from the constitutional limits of judicial power.

Suppose a public official holds an office with limited powers. The limits are not in doubt. They are written down, and the official has never denied them. Yet the office acts, case by case, in ways that are hard to square with the limits. Then, in a series of measured public addresses, the official sets out an account of the office under which its powers exceed those limits. The account is careful and scholarly, delivered to expert audiences. No one objects, because it is offered as observation, a reflection on how things have come to work.

Dr Oliver Hartwich: Unravelling MMP - How the 2026 election could break the voting system from two sides

At its campaign launch in Gisborne on Sunday, Te Pāti Māori told its supporters to split their votes: candidate votes for the party, party votes for its allies on the left. A new research note by The New Zealand Initiative warns this call could set off a chain of tactical voting that kills MMP.

Kevin: She Must Be Taking Lessons From Chlöe

Opportunity leader Qiulae 7ong has defended accepting more than $400,000 in political donations this year while campaigning to ban them, saying the party has to “play the game with everyone else” to get into parliament.

[…] But the party’s leader was grilled as she appeared on Q+A this morning.