Breaking Views Update: Week of 7.6.26

Saturday June 13, 2026 

News:
United for Kauri: Major Funding Boost Backs Iwi-Led Protection in Te Tai Tokerau
A significant investment in the future of Northland’s iconic kauri forests has been announced, with Foundation North committing more than $1.2 million to support iwi-led protection efforts across Te Tai Tokerau.

Ani O'Brien: Public transport fallacies and middle class welfare

Good intentions are no substitute for good policy, yet questioning expensive subsidies is increasingly treated as a moral failing rather than a legitimate debate about priorities.

Labour’s proposal to cap public transport fares at $20 per week (in Auckland, Wellington, and Christchurch; $10 everywhere else) has been touted as a “cost of living” measure, but the policy is politically strategic rather than a solution to a burning problem. It sounds good. Everyone understands that household budgets are under pressure and everyone likes the idea of cheaper transport. Additionally, public transport occupies a privileged position in modern political discourse. It is a left-coded snack they cannot help going back to. Zohran Mamdani in New York made it a cornerstone of his recent campaign to promise “free buses”. But already he has “acknowledged that his plan for fast and free buses isn’t going to happen so fast”.

Pee Kay: It seems that once the public funding tap is turned on, it simply never turns off.

Yesterday I posted an article about Ngati Rangi’s Star Compass in Ohakune.

I did some further digging and found when it came to actually funding this glorified, open-air stone circle in Ohakune, the creators of Te Tatau o Rongonui seem to have hit the local bureaucratic jackpot.

Peter Dunne: Labour's party list

Labour’s recently released party list is a job half-done.

A positive aspect is that it has introduced a small pool of new talent that would be beneficial to Labour’s ranks. However, it has also not only retained, but in some cases, promoted too many of the old guard that contributed so much to Labour’s failure when last in office. While the list ranking process has culled out some of Labour’s deadwood, it has not gone nearly far enough to suggest a future Labour-led government would look significantly different from the one that was so decisively defeated at the last election.

Ashley Church: Who really defends Israel?

Analysing Trump's claim to be 'calling the shots'

Those of us of a certain age will remember Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf, even if we don’t remember him by that name. During the 2003 Iraq War, al-Sahhaf was Saddam Hussein’s Information Minister and became a familiar media figure – frequently appearing on TV to insist that Iraq was winning the war and that the invaders were being crushed, even as American forces closed in on Baghdad.

Because of this, Western media dubbed him “Comical Ali” and “Baghdad Bob” because the gap between what he was saying and what everyone could see had become absurd.

Dr Oliver Hartwich: Why New Zealand’s 'flexible' labour market fails on youth wages

When The New Zealand Initiative set out 235 recommendations for the next government last month, the one this paper chose for its headline was the proposal to pay younger workers less. The news sense was sound, because it is the recommendation that sounds least fair.

Paying a seventeen-year-old below the adult rate for what looks like the same work offends a plain sense of equal treatment. The Council of Trade Unions objected strongly, presenting it as a return to an older, harsher labour market, and on the face of it you can see why.

Peter Williams: Please don't take the Opportunity

The rising star of New Zealand politics are Marxist re-distributors

Any day now the June Curia-Taxpayers Union political poll will be released. It’s less than five months to the 2026 election, the time that polling numbers start to matter.

Last month a party which rebranded as Opportunity (formerly The Opportunities Party or TOP) scored 2.8 percent in the Curia-TU poll. In April Opportunity cracked through to 3.3 percent in the 1 News Verian survey.

Kerre Woodham: This is not bold and visionary policy from Labour

They say hope is the last thing to die. And thus it was yesterday when I heard Labour's first policy announcement in months. Give me a reason to vote for Labour – and they didn't. Chris Hipkins and Tangi Utikere announced a cap of some public transport fares —mostly for the cities, mostly for Auckland, where there's already a cap— that cuts off at a lower spending base. Not really the sort of bold and visionary policy you'd hope would come from a party that's been sitting around for years in Opposition, promising policy once the Budget's been released like it's going to be something quite seismic, revolutionary, changing the way we do things. A bit like the bold and visionary Labour of yore.

Bob Edlin: Health NZ wants hospital staff to be savvy about the Treaty......

Surgical equipment should be well sterilised, but Health NZ wants hospital staff to be savvy about the Treaty, too

A post on Breaking Views steered PoO to this further exposure of the Luxon Government’s failure to root out racism in the deliverance of health services.

Headlined Hospital Says Maori Patients The Most Important In New Job Description, it highlighted a broadcast on The Platform by Michael Laws:

Friday June 12, 2026 

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Taxpayers' Union-Curia Poll: June 2026

Here are the headline results for June's Taxpayers’ Union – Curia Poll:

Robert MacCulloch: Press Release - Costing Labour's Transport Plans

PRESS RELEASE

Robert MacCulloch

Matthew S. Abel Chair of Macroeconomics

University of Auckland

 

11 June 2026

Heather du Plessis-Allan: Is that it Labour?

So that was what we waited months for, eh?

Labour’s cheaper public transport policy.

A policy so predictable that we actually did predict it four hours before it was released.

Perspective with Andrew Dickens: Anyone else feeling sorry for Chris Hipkins?

Is anyone else feeling for Chris Hipkins right now?

He's having a terrible week, and it just looks bad. A large part of the blame has to rest with the people below him just not doing their job.

David Farrar: All you need to know re Labour’s fare cap

The Taxpayers’ Union released:

Labour’s plan to cap public transport fares would pour another $65 million into a system which is already 87 percent subsidised, up from 61 percent in 2015/16.

Taxpayers’ Union spokesperson Tory Relf said:

JC: A Budget for the Times

I started to write about the budget a week after its reading in parliament but scrapped it, deciding it was too late. Then, in the Weekend Herald, an article appeared on the topic from Bruce Cotterill. A lot of what he said reflected the points I was making. Bruce described it as a boring budget, but boring in the right way. I agree with his reasons: this boring budget is reflective of the current economic climate.

Guest Post: What is destroying New Zealand - yes, we were warned

A Guest Post by Alfred Johns on Brash & Mitchell.

Former U.S. President Barack Obama was speaking to Americans—not New Zealanders—when he issued this warning in 2006. Yet his words seem uncannily relevant to New Zealand today.

Dr Oliver Hartwich: NZ’s nuclear superstition makes no sense

At last month’s Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, New Zealand’s Defence Minister Chris Penk told Bloomberg Television that the country might usefully consider nuclear propulsion, the reactors that drive warships, as something distinct from nuclear weapons. Within two days, his Prime Minister had killed the idea on talkback radio.

On Newstalk ZB, Christopher Luxon said New Zealand’s 1987 nuclear-free policy is agreed “across the political spectrum” and “ain’t changing” while he holds office.

Kerre Woodham: What alternatives do we have to capitalism and MMP?

The fact that life is a bit of a grind for many people, and has been for some time, means we start to question the natural order of things. When you can pay your bills, have time to spend doing what you enjoy with the people you love, when there aren't glaring inequities, when the failure of the present system and the people who run it aren't up in your face, when you don't see homeless people and beggars and violence, then everything's good. You accept the status quo; things are chugging along nicely. Democracy, capitalism, everybody's getting their fair share, everything's fine.

Bob Edlin: Throw away your telescopes and mobile phones....

Throw away your telescopes and mobile phones – Ngāti Rangi’s star compass will teach the next generation of astronomers

PoO is puzzled that the building of a traditional Māori star compass has not been given much wider publicity. The potential seems to be enormous.