Dr Benno Blaschke: When a line on a map makes housing dearer

Imagine two paddocks at the edge of a city. They have the same soil and access to the same roads and pipes.

Then town planners allow homes on one side, but not the other. The first can be worth many times more. Nothing physical has changed. The rule has.

Families pay through dearer sections, mortgages and rents.

Dr Oliver Hartwich: Hobbiton or space nation? NZ can’t seem to decide

New Zealand is barely a military power. It has had no combat aircraft for 25 years, and its ageing frigates need replacing. Lifting defence spending to 2 per cent of GDP passes for ambition. The country comes across as a real-world Hobbiton: peaceful, friendly and not very capable.

Yet one capability puts New Zealand in the club of superpowers, and it is the last one anyone would expect. Last year, only the United States and China saw more rockets leave their soil. New Zealand, with 17 launches, matched Russia.

Craig Rucker: Nepal’s tragic flood was nature, not climate

When natural disaster strikes, climate charlatans pounce.

Over 1,200 people are dead, and over 4,000 are missing after a glacier collapsed, sending flash floods into Nepal and Tibet.

Climate scientist Dr. Michael Mann (of Climategate fame) wrote in the UK Guardian that Nepal’s flood reveals “the apocalyptic future that lies in store if we fail to take dramatic climate action.”

Dr Michael Johnston: Tahatu

For young people, contemplating career options can be bewildering. It can be hard even to know what opportunities are available.

Many school leavers enrol at university by default. It is a well-trodden path. In the past, university degrees reliably led to reasonably well-paid work.

There is no guarantee that this will continue to be so. Many occupations for which university has prepared young people in the past may be largely taken over by AI.

Dr Oliver Hartwich: Town planners will finally have to answer for land prices

What is politics? According to Max Weber’s classic definition, politics is “a strong and slow boring of hard boards.”

Having worked around politics for over two decades has given me a good idea of what Weber meant by that. Achieving proper policy change is a tough business indeed.

Dr Eric Crampton: Fix ETS instead of banning carbon forestry

For practical purposes, not emitting a tonne of carbon dioxide is equivalent to pulling a tonne of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and securely sequestering it, so long as the accounting is sound.

The Zero Carbon Act consequently requires net zero for greenhouse gases other than biogenic methane. And the Emissions Trading Scheme is meant to find the least-cost mix of emission reductions and removals for the sectors it covers.

Net Zero Watch Samizdat: Will the lights go out?

UK

NESO engineer: blackouts are only a matter of time

A National Energy System Operator grid engineer claims problems with the electricity network means power cuts are only “a matter of time”. The engineer described demand, solar and wind forecasting available to control-room staff as “atrocious” and said operators lacked the information needed to anticipate movements on the network. It is less easy for NESO to monitor the output of wind farms, solar panels and batteries, compared with big fossil fuel plants.

Dr Oliver Hartwich: Birds of a feather

Voting opens today in the most important election of 2026. And no, this is not the General Election.

I am talking about Forest & Bird’s ‘Bird of the Year’. Run annually since 2005, it has become a fixture in New Zealand’s calendar.

David Farrar: Audrey on Te Pati Maori’s bottom line

Audrey Young writes:

Te Pāti Māori not only released a radical Treaty of Waitangi policy this week that would upend New Zealand’s democracy as we know it, co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer said the whole policy was a bottom line, meaning it was non-negotiable.

That means Te Pāti Māori would not sign up to a centre-left Government unless it agreed to its policy, and that is the crucial factor. That’s not only a coalition killer, it will make it less likely the parties of the left are elected.

Sunday September 6, 2026 

                   ⇩

Anglo Saxon: MMP voting 101 in just 10 minutes

Let me change your mind about the New Zealand Election 2026 

 Anglo Saxon explains election overhangs and tactical voting (electorate vote / party vote)

 

Click to view

Ele Ludemann: Land tax will fuel higher food prices & inflation

Federated Farmers has worked out the costs of the Opportunity Party’s land tax:

Owen Jennings: The Stark Choice – Country before Party

There has never been such a stark choice. Yeah, I know we said that last election and the one before that, but the country has never had the very real prospect of a left-wing coalition that has a recent record of doing huge economic damage and that is now, even more dependent on the sheer insanity represented by Labour’s likely partners.

Breaking Views Update: Week of 6.9.26

Sunday September 6, 2026 

News:
Real estate agent Janet Dickson is unrepentant, saying she would refuse course if given another chance
A real estate agent on the verge of losing her licence after being denied an exemption from a compulsory Māori tikanga course says if she had her time again, she would still refuse to do it.

“It’s totally irrelevant to the everyday work of real estate.

Ani O'Brien: A week is a long time - 5 September 2026

Election 2026: Promises, petrol, and public servants

There was a lot of policy and promises this week. Labour kicked things off by saying they will freeze planned fuel tax increases and National promptly decided it also rather liked the idea of not putting petrol tax up immediately too, but stopped short of a complete freeze. The 12 cent increase due next January is now gone. Instead, the Government intends to begin raising the tax by 5 cents in January 2028, followed by another 3x 5 cent increases every 6 months. This will reduce expected transport fund revenue by $1.476 billion over the forecast period. About $450 million can be found in an existing fuel crisis contingency fund, but that still leaves a bit over $1 billion to find and David Seymour and Chris Bishop have both acknowledged that unless equivalent spending is cut elsewhere, the money will be borrowed. Labour has an even bigger unanswered question as freezing the increases for the whole next term will cost around $4.6 billion.

Geoff Parker: Kotahitanga — Unity, Or Division By Another Name?

Metiria Turei's argument (Otago Daily Times, 4/9/26) for kotahitanga (unity) begins with a proposition few New Zealanders would disagree with: that people should work together, respect one another and build a better country for everyone.

So far, so good.

But then comes the sleight of hand.

Perspective with Heather du Plessis-Allan: 'Putting up a wall of shame is an act of desperation'

Okay, do you want to hear something straight out of the "you would have been better off just saying absolutely nothing" file? This one's from the Privacy Commissioner.

Michael Webster has warned small retailers, such as dairies, about putting up "walls of shame" featuring people they say have shoplifted from them. You know the ones. You go into the dairy and there's a mood board of dodgy-looking people in trackies, snapped by CCTV, usually stuck up on a wall or window close to the counter.

Dr Eric Crampton: A bright spot in Parliament’s quest to drive housing affordability

Most news clips from Parliament are from Question Time. It is at least as much performance theatre as a mechanism for holding government to account. Late-night committee stages attract far fewer viewers and enable more important work.

Last Tuesday and Wednesday, Housing Minister Hon Chris Bishop and former Housing Minister Hon Phil Twyford tried to work out how to make one of the planning system’s most important housing reforms survive long after either of them has left Parliament.

Kerre Woodham: Will move-on orders actually solve the root of the problem?

A cross-party committee of MPs has recommended the Government water down its move-on orders, concerned that the penalties and punishments would be disproportionate to the offences of rough sleeping and begging. Under the proposed legislation, police had the ability to move people engaging in specific behaviours, including rough sleeping and begging, away from the area for 24 hours. Breaching the rules risked a $2,000 fine or up to three months' imprisonment.

Bob Edlin: Professor to become a Tumuaki at NZ’s major science society....

....where the Treaty galvanises governance

The Royal Society of New Zealand seems to have been conflicted, when announcing its new president.

The headline on its press statement says: Next President of the Royal Society Te Apārangi.

The first paragraph of the statement described her as the next “Tumuaki”.