Wendy Geus: Biased media deflects to US whilst ignoring NZ's divisive race issue

Misogynistic fixation on Trump Aide highlights NZ's biased media's agenda - deflection to US domestic politics whilst ignoring NZ's divisive race issue

CNN's decision to go after Trump's executive assistant, Natalie Harp, who travelled with him in a decoy plane to avoid an assassination attempt, with sleazy overtones, was quickly picked up by their little cousins in NZ who will loyally print anything to tarnish Trump. They don't do investigative journalism when Trump, or New Zealand's political right, is involved.

Perspective with Heather du Plessis-Allan: The Mount Maunganui landslide report couldn't be more damning

I'm astonished, can I say, that Marty Grenfell, the boss of Tauranga City Council, thinks no one has to quit over the landslide and the damning report. And frankly, that there are not outright calls for him to quit from the mayor and the local MP.

That report, I don't know if it could have been more damning, because it told us Tauranga City Council was warned multiple times that a landslide might happen in exactly the spot where a landslide happened, as early as 1999 and as most recently as only six or seven months before the landslide.

Breaking Views Update: Week of 23.8.26

Monday August 24, 2026 

News:
Raetihi Marae to close for four months for upgrade
The marae will be closed from 31 August to 31 December to allow construction work to proceed safely and efficiently, Raetihi Marae Trust says.

Chair Brendan Morgan said the existing ablution block, which includes toilets and showers, would be demolished and rebuilt.

Dr Bryce Wilkinson: When is equal unfair and when is it fair?

For many today, inequality is a dragon that public policy must slay. The accusing fingers usually point at unequal outcomes for selected things, such as income and diversity representation. But unequal outcomes in other dimensions may be celebrated; women dominate as primary school teachers, for instance.

So, when is equal unfair, and when is it fair?

Geoff Parker: Alternative Facts And New Zealand's Selective History

There is something deeply ironic about accusations that the Coalition Government wants to teach New Zealand children “alternative facts” while some of those making the accusation present an extraordinarily selective version of our history.

The latest example in a letter to the Editor of the Waikato Times 22/8/26  is the claim that Māori had already established a sovereign nation before the Treaty of Waitangi and that British involvement simply destroyed an existing system of independent government.

The historical record is considerably more complicated.

Reynold Macpherson: Rotorua's Head Start Process Has Failed - The Minister Must Take Control

Rotorua Lakes Council’s handling of the Government’s Head Start reform process has a legitimacy problem that cannot be dismissed as the unavoidable consequence of a compressed timetable.

The deeper problem is that there was enough time for some people to be involved upstream.

Judy Gill: Sacred, Tapu, Tūpuna and Floating Ghosts - When Constant Demands for Respect Produce the Opposite

INTRODUCTION

New Zealanders are repeatedly told that Māori spiritual beliefs, practices and traditions must be respected.

But when religion and superstition are presented as “knowledge”, and criticism of spiritual claims is treated as disrespect, constant demands for respect can eventually produce the opposite.

Dr Eric Crampton: The sticker sticklers that can drive me to drink

The back of the bottle of Johnnie Walker Black Label that I keep at the office has two labels.

The first company-branded label appears to be designed for international markets that use the metric system.

Roger Partridge: The two-thirds we never built

The Financial Markets Authority is having a bad year. Its chair resigned in May. Its chief executive has been suspended. And the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment is investigating its culture.

Some will see this as a failure of the FMA’s board model. It is better seen as a reminder that New Zealand only ever built one part of the system needed to govern regulators well.

Dr Oliver Hartwich: Tactical voting could sink MMP

At its campaign launch in Gisborne on Sunday, Te Pāti Māori asked its supporters for something no party had requested so openly before: candidate votes for the party, party votes for its allies on the left.

The request rests on MMP’s overhang rule. A party that wins more electorates than its party vote covers keeps them all, and Parliament grows.

Nick Clark: Teasing of textile material for any purpose

Imagine you run a business as a “dag crusher”. For those unfamiliar with the term, a “dag” is a dirty bit of wool attached to a sheep’s rear end.

Every year you must fill out a form and pay your local council for the privilege of being allowed to continue to crush dags.

The Health Act 1956 lists nineteen jobs it calls “offensive trades”. Offensive in this case does not mean rude or obscene – it means highly unpleasant or, more colloquially, “gross”.

Bob Edlin: How Simeon Brown stonewalled Parliamentary questions about nurse numbers....

....and triumphed in not saying “54

The “Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything” in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams was “42”. It was calculated by a supercomputer named Deep Thought over 7.5 million years.

The answer to a question in Parliament this week was “54”. But it looked like we might have to wait 7.5 million years before Health Minister Simeon Brown would let that number trip from his tongue.

The question was raised by Labour’s Ayesha Verrall, who asked Brown:

David Farrar: Welcome to the dark side, Kiri

Radio NZ reports:

Former Labour cabinet minister Kiri Allan has come out swinging against the public service saying it is bloated, slow, and overpaid. …

Allan said there were “exceptional people” throughout the public service and her comments weren’t an attack on individuals, but on the system.

Sunday August 23, 2026 

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Spaniard: Schrödinger’s Citizen

Enabling some New Zealanders to be citizens of both a democracy under the Crown and a pre-feudal grouping alongside the Crown is as ludicrous and dangerous as it sounds.

In a famous 1935 thought experiment, Austrian-Irish theoretical physicist Erwin Schrödinger hypothesised a cat simultaneously dead and alive. Schrödinger’s Cat exposed fancifulness of a then-idea in quantum mechanics: that things can exist in more than one state.

That imaginary scenario showing a scientific caprice’s absurdity was well and good; it made a point, cost little, and no felines were harmed.

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.