Damien Grant: New Zealand First is important, but it is not, yet, serious

Dear reader. Last weekend I went to the New Zealand First conference and election launch at the Due Drop Events Centre in Manukau. You know the one. It is meant to resemble a Polynesian fale. Reminds me of two praying mantises engaged in a death match.

Moving on.

For three decades the Odysseus of New Zealand politics has navigated the turbulent seas of electoral fortune. He fell to Helen Clark’s sirens touting the baubles of office, only to wrench himself free. He was caught under Ardern’s spell to spend three years trapped by his own Calypso before being tossed into the lotus island of obscurity.

Penn Raine: UNexpected

Last week, much to my surprise, a senior UN official accused Hamas of interfering with humanitarian deliveries in Gaza. The report claimed that Hamas operatives forcibly entered World Food Program sites, assaulted aid workers and took supplies which were to have been distributed to Gazans who face serious shortages.

David Lillis: Employment in University Academic Roles by Gender and Ethnicity: 2016 - 2025

Preamble and Disclaimer 

I offer this report as a contribution to ongoing debates on the future of our universities. In fact I undertook the study that led to this report, both out of curiosity and from a desire to provide information to the general public and to officials and policy-makers. I confirm that I was not funded by any external organization and that the work described here is exclusively my own.

Breaking Views Update: Week of 26.7.26

Monday July 27, 2026 

News:
Māori education leaders seek assurances over NZQA restructure
Māori education leaders are seeking assurances that specialist expertise supporting Māori assessment and qualifications will be retained as the New Zealand Qualifications Authority (NZQA) consults staff on a proposed restructure of its Assessment Division.

Ani O'Brien: No to Blasphemy Laws - people have rights, religions do not

The long campaign to criminalise criticism of Islam continues to demand blasphemy laws

The Law Commission Hara ngākau kino | Review of hate crime law has surprised me. In an area crowded with panic, symbolism, and bad drafting, it has refused to solve the wrong problem. In Hara ngākau kino, it concluded that New Zealand should keep the current sentencing model, under which hostile motivation aggravates an existing offence, rather than create standalone hate-crime offences. It recommended practical reforms instead, including a hate-crime flag at charging stage, formal recording in court records, express judicial statements when hostility is proved, broader coverage for associated victims and bystanders, the addition of sex to the statutory list, better guidance and training, and annual publication of police and court data.

John McLean: Bayly's Bonza Bill

A laudable legislative project

A Members’ Bill initiated National Party Member of Parliament Andrew Bayly has been randomly drawn from Parliament’s (actual) biscuit tin and will now progress through Parliament’s legislative process. Members’ Bills are pieces of proposed legislation initiated by individual MPs, rather than political parties.

Bayly’s Bill is the Crimes (Offence of Failing to Report Child Harm) Amendment Bill. The Bill, if enacted, will make it a criminal offence to fail, without a “reasonable excuse”, to report an assault on a child to the Police. Reasonable excuses include where someone fears for their, or another person’s, safety, or believes the information has already been reported by someone else.

Dr Eric Crampton: The Americans are on the march! Will Wellington welcome them again?

Wellington has its share of urban legends, most of them false.

One of the more popular ones, and a recurring social media trope, claims that America’s Army Corps of Engineers was prepared to build a proper motorway between Wellington and Auckland after the Second World War. And that the New Zealand government turned them down.

A more restrained version claimed that the Americans would have built Transmission Gully to facilitate movement from their base at Paekākāriki through to the port at Wellington.

Dr Oliver Hartwich: Australia’s economic future is on display in NZ’s present

As an economics student in Germany in the 1990s, I kept encountering two countries at the other end of the world. Whenever a professor wanted to prove that reform was possible, the examples were Australia and New Zealand.

Germany, under Helmut Kohl, never attempted anything like it. Kohl had reunification to manage, a fair alibi for half his sixteen years in office. But labour and product markets stayed as fenced in as ever. Shops could not legally sell a litre of milk after half past six in the evening, and unemployment climbed past four million.

The German language even coined a word for the condition: Reformstau, reform gridlock.

Dr Eric Crampton: Better urban planning

Oliver asked me to make the case for the government’s resource management legislation. It should be read in conjunction with Nick Clark’s critique below. I share his concerns, and I expect he’d share some of my hopes.

Under a supportive Minister like Hon Bishop or Hon Twyford, the legislation would enable a more liberal approach to housing and development.

John Ogilvie: Protecting Children or Controlling the Narrative?

It’s been six months since the Albanese Government introduced the social media ban for people under the age of 16. This law was sold to the public as a necessary measure to keep children safe from the dangers of social media. They told us that it would usher in a golden age where kids would go no longer be stuck on their devices and would go outside and socialise just like they did in the pre-Internet days. And of course, we were assured that this had nothing to do with protecting the legacy media or controlling the narrative online.

Dr Oliver Hartwich: The revolving door at the end of the Pacific

No country moves people the way New Zealand does.

Nearly three in ten New Zealand residents were born overseas. In our 29-country comparison, only Singapore, Switzerland and Australia have larger shares of foreign-born residents.

David Farrar: Trump does a 12.5% tariff on NZ

Stuff reports:

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon says the US decision to impose new 12.5% tariffs on New Zealand products is “extremely disappointing” and will drive up costs for businesses.

US President Donald Trump earlier announced he was going ahead with new double-digit tariffs on dozens of US trading partners just as the clock runs out on stopgap levies he imposed after a stinging defeat at the US Supreme Court.

David Farrar: Hipkins hypocrisy

Stuff reports:

Labour leader Chris Hipkins wasn’t happy when new ACT Party candidate Paul Henry said he’d need to “shoot” Hipkins, during a game of “shoot, shag, marry”.

His other options were Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and NZ First leader Winston Peters, who, given the options, he’d “shag”.

Sunday July 26, 2026 

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Frank Newman: The Commissioner who still doesn't get it

The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment’s advice on the repeal of the RMA and its replacement legislation has been largely ignored by the select committee hearing submissions. And rightly so.

As the incoming National Minister for the Environment in 1990, Simon Upton inherited the foundational Resource Management Bill left behind by Geoffrey Palmer’s outgoing Labour government. Upton took charge of steering the legislation through Parliament. Upton had the opportunity to kill it then. He embraced it instead. While one can assume Upton had the best of intentions, his naivety seeded the legislation’s inherent flaw that inevitably led to its demise. Quite simply, the “enabling” legislation gave radical vested-interest groups a liberty that enabled them to seize control of the process to the detriment of the community as a whole.

Geoff Parker: From the Lands Case to Treaty Partnership

How a Judicial Observation Became a Constitutional Doctrine

Introduction: How a Legal Interpretation Became a Constitutional Debate

Few court decisions have had a greater impact on New Zealand’s constitutional debate than the 1987 Court of Appeal decision in New Zealand Māori Council v Attorney-General, commonly known as the Lands Case.

John Raine: Can universities recover their mojo in the AI age?

 

The Path of Cultural Re-Engineering 

The 2020s have been a period of cultural change in academia throughout the Western world. In countries such as the USA, Canada, the U.K. and Australia, where universities have been heavily captured by ideological agendas, we have yet to see a much loss of momentum in “progressive” left wing politics on campus.  

Ryan Bridge: Would we send our troops to fight the Houthis?

It's possible our defence force could send personnel to the Middle East to help stop the Houthis.

They're the group in Yemen, backed by Iran, currently firing drones and cruise missiles at Saudi tankers.

Clive Bibby: Separatism by Stealth

As a nation, are we sleep walking to self destruction?

At a time when, relative to most other First World countries, our prospects for future prosperity appear guaranteed, why is it that we seem unable to recognise the obvious roadblocks that could derail our plans for a utopian existence.

Ani O'Brien: A week is a long time: 25 July 2026

If this is the campaign we’re going to have, it’s going to be a very long few months

We’re barely into the election campaign and I’m already exhausted. New Zealand is facing enormous questions about economic growth, energy security, infrastructure, health, the Treaty, the cost of living, and our place in an unstable world. Parties are releasing substantive policy that deserves serious scrutiny. However, this week far too much of the political conversation has revolved around drinking games, innuendo, and outrage cycles that last 24 hours before being replaced by the next one.