Ani O'Brien: How National lost the Conservation Bill argument

Lawyers read statutes. Voters read headlines.

Disclosure: Prior to working in Parliament I worked at the Department of Conservation for about two years in the digital team.

The Conservation Amendment Bill has become one of the Coalition Government’s biggest political headaches of the year. Over the past fortnight New Zealanders have been told the Coalition is planning to sell off conservation land, open national parks to commercial development, and fundamentally rewrite the purpose of the Department of Conservation. These messages exploded onto social media and spread like wildfire. The Coalition, meanwhile, has accused its critics of scaremongering, insisting it only ever intended to tidy up a handful of low value properties and modernise a conservation system that has become bogged down in bureaucracy.

John McLean: Opportunity......

But for what? Analysis of an ascendant political party

New Zealand’s latest political poll, a 1 News-Verian poll conducted from 13 to 17 June, has The Opportunity Party at 4.6% of the popular vote. Opportunity is trending upwards. If the trend continues, Opportunity will get over the 5% threshold for representation in Parliament and would probably form part of NZ’s next Government.

David Harvey: A Good Bill and a Bad Detour

Why InternetNZ's call for a digital regulator should be resisted

The Deepfake Digital Harm and Exploitation Bill is one of the more sensible pieces of legislation to come before Parliament in some time. It does one thing, and it does it well. It should pass. What should not pass — and what should not be smuggled in on its back — is the far larger regulatory apparatus that InternetNZ has used its submission to promote.

The Bill gets it right

Colinxy: A Tax Suggestion for the Coalition

Marama Davidson recently told Ryan Bridge she’d be perfectly happy to pay more tax. Chloe Swarbrick claims people approach her all the time, saying the same thing. And every election cycle, a parade of self‑anointed “rich people” step forward to publicly announce their eagerness to hand more of their money to the State.

Fine. If they’re that desperate to give the government more of their income, let’s make it easy for them.

Net Zero Watch Samizdat: Campaign against Red Ed gathers pace

UK

Banks and unions unite to keep Miliband away from the Treasury

Ed Miliband has done the unthinkable by bringing trade union bosses and bankers together in an unlikely alliance - to stop him becoming Chancellor. They say he would put a ‘noose’ around job creation with a senior government figure saying “It takes something to unite Goldman Sachs bankers and the unions.”

Damien Grant: Why default is inevitable under our current fiscal trajectory

I’d ignored the Budget. I am good at ignoring things. Dental appointments. Column deadlines. Parking fines. Eventually they catch up with me. Like death, taxes and tooth decay.

It was the American polymath Benjamin Franklin who is credited with the quip that only death and taxes can be certain and a few wags have pondered that perhaps he meant debt and taxes. It’s a good joke but what Franklin actually wrote was “... excepté la mort et les impôts.”

That’s French. Franklin was writing in French. Dette and mort don’t rhyme. And given everyone his age had false teeth I think tooth decay should have been included. I am off-track.

Dr Michael Johnston: Second-class confidentiality

New Zealanders who visit psychologists would expect their clinical conversations to be private and confidential. But a draft Code of Ethics from the New Zealand Psychologists Board (NZPB), the professional body that registers practising psychologists, would weaken the privacy rights of Māori clients.

The NZPB claims that “…concepts of privacy and confidentiality may be somewhat altered [for Māori] when the sharing of information leads to additional support and culturally appropriate processes…”

In other words, psychologists may be required to water down the privacy rights of Māori clients based on the NZPB’s characterisation of Māori as a “collectivist culture” in its draft code.

Dr Oliver Hartwich: Better on the books

The Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC) pays for the care and recovery of people hurt in accidents. It covers your treatment and some of your lost wages. The aim is to get you back to work and on with your life.

Between 2015 and 2025, ACC had lost its way. Injured people waited too long for help, many became stuck on long-term support, and the future cost of open claims roughly doubled.

Dr Eric Crampton: A better way to step off the Govt’s deceptive capital charge merry-go-round

From 1 July, the start of the new fiscal year, Health New Zealand will stop paying charges to the Crown for the capital that it uses. The Ministry calls it a technical change, with no effect on patient care, infrastructure, or the money available for services. On the Crown’s books, nothing apparently happens at all, on net.

The charge had been running at around $576 million per year, in the 2024/25 estimates. Drop it and nothing much changes, because Health New Zealand was funded by the Crown to pay it to the Crown in the first place.

David Farrar: The secret code of conduct complaint

A guest post by Dr Corinna Proehl:

“Never again is now”. This comment of a GP on the official Instagram account of Hastings’s Mayor Wendy Schollum was enough to trigger a bullying, patronizing pack attack by two councillors, aimed to publicly shame one of their constituents.

The councillors involved are Heather Te Au-Skipworth, senior Hastings District Councillor and close ally of the Mayor. A current Green Party Candidate and former Te Pati Māori candidate, most famous for her racist views: “it is a known fact that Māori genetic makeup is stronger than others…”. And Nick Ratcliffe, former Green Party candidate for Tukituki, newly elected (and lowest polling) Hastings District Councillor and political friend of the mayor.

Sunday June 28, 2026 

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Breaking Views Update: Week of 28.6.26

Sunday June 28, 2026 

News:
Government Commits $8.6m To Build New Plymouth’s First City Marae In More Than 150 Years
The Government will invest up to $8.6 million to help build a new marae in central New Plymouth, ending more than 150 years without a marae for Ngāti Te Whiti in its own rohe.

Ani O'Brien: A week is a long time: 27 June 2026

Greens co-leader attempted actual economic treachery

A story that should have received far more attention this week was Chloe Swarbrick’s extraordinary decision to take her domestic political grievances offshore. The Green Party co-leader wrote (along with Belgian Green MEP Saskia Bricmont) to the European Commission, suggesting New Zealand’s methane target changes may breach our trade deal with the EU and calling for an independent investigation. In other words, she invited foreign trade officials to scrutinise New Zealand’s democratically chosen domestic policy settings because she disagrees with them in the hopes they would punish us economically.

Craig Rucker: The coming nuclear renaissance is small — and mighty

Small modular reactors are a key component for keeping our power grid bright.

Dr. Kelvin Kemm is a brilliant South African nuclear physicist and longtime dear friend of CFACT’s.

As Kelvin writes at CFACT.org:

Guest Post: Luxon’s silence on Te Tiriti o’ Waitangi is undemocratic and deafening in 2026

Guest Post by William Ludbrook on Brash & Mitchell

Why is te Tiriti o’ Waitangi such a divisive issue?

In April 2025 Prime Minister Christopher Luxon promulgated: “I have been talking to iwi leaders for the past 12 months”

And?– so?– no reasonable New Zealander would object to that. The problem is not that Luxon “had been talking to iwi leaders” The problem is that iwi leaders increasingly infer they are in a privileged position in shaping Government Policy. The National Iwi Chairs Forum requested a meeting after objecting to the government’s review of Treaty clauses throughout legislation. Their complaint was that they had not been sufficiently consulted before Cabinet considered reforms?

Richard Prebble: Why We Cannot Talk About Climate Change

I recently posted an article about New Zealand's carbon market.

It asked whether the Government should fix the carbon price or continue auctioning carbon credits.

That was the debate I hoped to have.

Lushington Brady: This Is Your Future, New Zealand

Do you think minorities will ease up on the demands when they become the majority?

Imagine if 81 million New Zealanders upped stakes and moved to Mumbai and Delhi, and then started issuing ultimatums to the Indian government. Imagine if 78 million Kiwis landed in Beijing and Shanghai and started demanding special laws from the Chinese government – or else. How do you think the Indians or Chinese would react? There’d be a non-stop string of flights to Auckland International, repatriating those uppity Kiwis right back where they came from. That’s if they were lucky enough to not end up in a concentration camp in Xinjiang.

Ignore the fact that, of course, there aren’t 78 or 81 million New Zealanders: the point of this hypothetical is to put into relative terms the sheer, overwhelming scale of the twin butter-chicken-and-fried-rice tsunamis which have swamped New Zealand in recent years.

JC: How Can the Left Improve?

The answer is – they can’t.

In many ways that’s a nonsensical question, because the answer to bringing about the changes needed are not policies the left believe in. I will give you examples. The first is the fact that they have removed themselves from political reality. Their playbook restricts them from making the changes to once again become relevant. They don’t even run themselves – their outside paymasters, like the trade unions, do. “He who pays the piper calls the tune”.

Peter Dunne: The Opportunity Party

Since 1996 no new party has entered Parliament without either a sitting or former MP leading it. The Conservative Party in 2014 came close to doing so, scoring about 4% of the party vote, but ultimately failed and never attained that level of support again.

With some opinion polls currently suggesting the Opportunity Party is inching closer to the cusp of the 5% threshold that sobering reality remains a daunting challenge. As with the Conservative Party and other small parties before them, potential voters will have to be persuaded that the Opportunity Party can make a difference, and that therefore a vote for it would not be wasted.

Kerre Woodham: The more they crack down, the better

I read the Stuff story this morning and thought, "Oh, cry me a river!" Do the student loan evaders who finally get nabbed really expect sympathy when they bleat to the media?

Stuff this morning has the story of Vic, not his real name. He was at Wellington Airport last month heading home to Australia where he's lived and worked as a medical specialist for three, how many Kerry? Three decades, 30 years, when three police officers approached. He was arrested, spent three nights in custody, and at a court hearing had his passport confiscated. He's still here, Stuff writes, a month later, unable to work.