Perspective with Ryan Bridge: These RMA changes hit the nail on the head

These RMA changes hit the nail on the head by putting private property rights front and centre.

These rights are basically what keeps rich countries rich and their absence keeps poor countries poor.

Steven Gaskell: Waikato-Tainui’s Homeownership Scheme - Fair Deal for All or Insider Windfall?

Nothing says “equality” quite like a government-backed property giveaway — as long as you belong to the right iwi, of course. Waikato-Tainui is planning to sell 17 houses and one section to tribal members at cost, citing the noble goal of boosting homeownership among iwi. To make this possible, legislation had to be bent and twisted: Kāinga Ora laws were adjusted, and the Waikato Raupatu Claims Settlement Act dusted off, suddenly allowing a perfectly legal handout of a slice of the property market to a select group based purely on tribal membership. But one has to ask: does this pass the litmus test of fairness for all New Zealanders, or just the politically connected?

Breaking Views Update: Week of 7.12.25

Wednesday December 10, 2025 

News:
Takapuna beach sacred pōhutukawa tree faces removal after consent win
Takapuna community members are calling for a reversal of a decision to remove a 400-year-old pōhutukawa, considered a “living cemetery” by local iwi.

The ancient tree is one of the few remaining in Te Uru Tapu, Sacred Grove, near Takapuna Beach. It has been the centre of a long-running dispute since it fell onto the private lawn of The Sands apartment complex in 2022, yet it continued to grow. The Resource Consent lodged by Takapuna Sands Body Corporate and apartment owners was approved in September.

Chris Bishop, Simon Watts: A better planning system for a better New Zealand

New Zealand’s new planning system will make it easier to build the homes and infrastructure our country needs, give farmers and growers the freedom to get on with producing world-class food and fibre, and strengthen our primary sector while protecting the environment, RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop and Under-Secretary Simon Court say.

“This Government’s central ambition is to lift growth, productivity and living standards,” Mr Bishop says.

Cam Slater: Explosive Leaked Documents Prove Jackson’s Wife’s Bullying Review Did Happen.....

Explosive Leaked Documents Prove Willie Jackson’s Wife’s Bullying Review Did Happen and Expose a Weapons-Grade Cover-Up

If you thought the stench around Willie Jackson and his missus Tania Rangiheuea at the Manukau Urban Maori Authority (MUMA) could not get any worse, think again. Over the past week, I have hammered Jackson with two exclusives exposing his alleged bullying, union-busting and cronyism to shield his wife from credible accusations of running a toxic workplace.

Dr James Allan: The Outgoing Tide of Freedom

John Mortimer’s memorable fictional creation Rumpole of the Bailey loved to quote the great lines of English poetry. One of Rumpole’s favourite recited retellings was Wordsworth’s poem that begins “It is not to be thought of that the flood of British freedom, which, to the open sea of the world’s praise, from dark antiquity hath flowed ‘with pomp of waters, unwithstood’… should perish.” And that claim was still true when Mortimer was writing about Rumpole in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Alas, it is not true today.

Chris Lynch: Haeata school named in audit concerns over $18,500 leadership team trip to Queenstown

A Christchurch school has been named in a national audit that has uncovered concerns about how public money was spent in schools, including cases where principals used funding tagged for coaching and wellbeing on overseas trips, family travel, tourist activities, and premium flights.

Peter Williams: The Dysfunctional Maori Health Trusts

First there was the Waipareira Trust, then the Manukau Urban Maori Authority (MUMA) and now there’s Te Kaika.

They have much in common.

They’re all Maori owned and controlled health and social service providers.

Matua Kahurangi: Seven tribes, one furniture store – The absurd racism of NZ’s consent regime

ACT MP Simon Court recently posted IKEA’s 2023 Resource Consent Requirements, and the document is a masterclass in how far New Zealand has drifted into full-blown, bureaucratised separatism. The whole thing reads like a cultural compliance manual rather than a straightforward building approval. If this is what a global company must wade through just to put up a furniture store, no wonder this country is falling apart.

JC: We Are Done With Ardern

The left media either don’t realise how far behind public opinion they are or they’re deliberately trying to annoy us. These lefty journalists who inhabit newsrooms for the sole purpose of inflicting their less than wholesome opinions upon us need to get a grip. They need to stop bombarding us with puff pieces about their poster child, Jacinda Ardern. Where, why and what is the need to keep focusing on this despised individual, now popularly regarded as the country’s worst prime minister EVER!

David Farrar: The silence of the media

Cameron Slater exclusively reported on allegations by long-time union leader Matt McCarten against Willie Jackson and his wife around bullying at the Manukau Urban Maori Authority. I blogged about this four days ago.

With the exception of The Platform, no media outlet has reported on the allegations. This is highly unusual. Even if you don’t think the allegations stack up, the fact a union leader is accusing a Labour MP of workplace bullying and locking a union out is newsworthy. You would expect the media would at least do a “He says, she says”.

David Farrar: A good poll for the Government

The latest 1 News – Verian poll is very good for the Government. The party vote is:

Tuesday December 9, 2025 

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Heather du Plessis-Allan: Will Australia's social media ban actually work?

So tomorrow's the big day, isn't it? And it is, I think, not an overstatement to say that the eyes of the world, well, at least politicians around the world, are going to be on Australia and whether the social media ban will actually work.

And that is still a live question, isn't it? We're less than 24 hours from the thing taking effect and none of us can totally say for sure that we know it's going to work.

Geoff Parker: Courtesy Becomes Control

New Zealanders have a fatal flaw: we’re too polite for our own good. We don’t like conflict. We don’t like awkwardness. And we certainly don’t like being the one person in the room who says, “No thanks, I’m not doing that.” That national instinct - to keep the peace at all costs - is now being used against the public in a way few fully appreciate.

Polite New Zealanders quietly sit through public gatherings while an opportunistic orator addresses the audience in a language few understand. This isn’t about culture — it’s about control.

Perspective with Ryan Bridge: We're not solving the big problems, and we don't want to

I’ve had it with people running around pretending we’re going to solve big global problems.

Australia’s banning kids from social media on Wednesday. They’re going to lead the world.

Sounds very appealing. Stop the brain rot, etc.

David Lillis: Fighting Online Harassment

Online Harassment in New Zealand

While most social media is relatively benign or even positive in intent, we do encounter not only bad language and slights of public figures, but online attacks on private people (Lillis, 2025).

Recently, in New Zealand, various people have attempted to call out online abuse and possible defamation on Facebook, including attacks on a person’s character, integrity and even physical appearance.

Pee Kay: A Curates Egg?

On the 1st of December, Prime Minister Chris Luxon, and Local Government Minister Simon Watts, announced Cabinet’s decision on how they will cap council rates.

The rates cap will be a variable target band, starting with minimum increases of two percent and a maximum of four percent. All good, so far.

Professor Kendall Clements, Dr Michael Johnston: The Irony Of Relativism

When new evidence emerges, scientists update their theories, sometimes radically. Good scientists actively seek evidence that could disconfirm their theories.

Scientific uncertainty owes a lot to cross-cultural encounters. For example, when Jesuit missionaries visited China in the 16th and 17th centuries, they were fascinated by Chinese astronomical records.

Matua Kahurangi: One rule for hikoi, another for Brian Tamaki

You know what I find genuinely strange in this country? When the hikoi stormed across the Harbour Bridge to protest David Seymour’s Treaty Principles Bill, there didn’t seem to be any consultation, any endless list of hoops to jump through, any talk of “strict criteria”. The organisers basically said, we’re marching across the bridge, the rest of you can get whūkd if you don’t like it. Just like magic, it happened. No bond demanded at the eleventh hour. No threats. No “very high threshold” rhetoric. No police spokesperson clutching their balls about public safety and risk to infrastructure. Just straight on, off you go, kia kaha, block SH1 if you must!

Matua Kahurangi: Coster exposes Hipkins - The Minister who knew everything and said nothing

Former Police Commissioner Andrew Coster’s interview with Jack Tame on Q&A is a bomb that has blown apart what little remained of Chris Hipkins’ political credibility. The timeline is clean, simple and devastating. It shows that Hipkins was fully briefed about Deputy Commissioner Jevon McSkimming’s affair with a younger woman long before the matter erupted publicly. When the scandal finally broke, Hipkins reverted to his favourite political defence. He knew nothing. He remembered nothing. He was never told.

Coster’s account makes that position impossible to swallow.

Roger Partridge: Fake breath tests are bad - The police response is worse

This week, Commissioner Richard Chambers announced new targets for trust and confidence in police. They will mean little if the organisation continues to treat deliberate dishonesty as a minor employment matter.

That proposition may sound harsh. But what else should we make of a police force that discovers its officers have falsified thousands of breath test records and responds with little more than a warning?

David Farrar: Harvey vs Wilson on western culture

Simon Wilson, like many on the hard left, sees the West as basically malignant, and that its achievements were based on oppression. This is not an uncommon view from the left.

David Harvey does an excellent lengthy response to Wilson’s assertions.

Read it all, but here are some key aspects:

David Farrar: We need productivity gains, not minimum wage rises

Radio NZ reports:

New Zealand’s minimum wage might have increased substantially over the past five years, but it hasn’t helped lift the wages of the population overall.

As a result, the median wage has drawn significantly closer to the minimum, and commentators say it will take a big productivity boost to boost incomes more generally.

Dr Oliver Hartwich: Directors who dodge their tax debts

Last year, Inland Revenue wrote off $694.5 million in company tax debt. Much will never be recovered because the companies that owed it no longer exist – at least not in their original form.

Here is how the scam works. A company accumulates GST and PAYE debts. The directors continue to trade, knowing they cannot pay. When the debt becomes unmanageable, they walk away from the company, leaving nothing for creditors. Then they start a new company doing the same thing. The old company dies; a new one rises from its ashes: same directors, same business, no tax debt.

It is called phoenix activity. And our enforcement system cannot stop it.

Monday December 8, 2025 

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Insights From Social Media: No chance in hell?

Gravedodger writes > Some of the more moronic are talking about New Zealand having a Rock Star Economy again.

The last time this Nation was being suggested as involved with such nonsense it was as good as a stadium of the naive thinking they are being entertained by some aging guitar plucking has been.

Barrie Davis: Children of the Miffed

First published in 1925, Tuhoe: The Children of the Mist by Elsdon Best on Maori lore has just been republished.

The jacket cover tells us that Best was born at Porirua in 1856, worked on a sheep station in Poverty Bay and lived with the Tuhoe people in the Ureweras. “Nine years before his death in 1931, Sir Apirana Ngata said of him, ‘There is not a member of the Maori race who is fit to wipe the boots of Elsdon Best in the matter of knowledge of the lore of the race to which we belong’.”

Clive Bibby: Life is all about setting priorities

I have just watched US Republican Senator John Kennedy being interviewed by his counterpart in the academic world Professor Victor Davis Hanson.

It has been one of the week's most enjoyable personal experiences and has reinforced my own thinking about how the modern world is reacting to a long overdue exposure of some of the world's false doctrines.

Matua Kahurangi: The pounamu laws reveal a racist system hiding in plain sight

I was casually browsing the Otago Daily Times when a headline stopped me in my tracks. A 26-year-old Dunedin man had allegedly been found with 820 kilograms of stolen pounamu [Greenstone]. Nearly a tonne. Whākn’ wild. However, the more I read, the more something else stood out. It was not the alleged theft itself, it was the rules surrounding pounamu that revealed just how racially stacked the whole system really is.

According to the article, pounamu is the legal property of Ngāi Tahu under the Pounamu Vesting Act 1997. Then comes the part that should make any New Zealander raise an eyebrow.

Chris McVeigh: Media bias in New Zealand yet again

If you took a double at the TAB, with the Pope getting married as one leg and Radio New Zealand admitting to a smidgen of left wing partiality as the other, you could be forgiven for thinking that the smart money would be on the Vatican gig bringing home the bacon first.

RNZ is in a permanent state of denial on this. Just recently their flagship Sunday morning show Mediawatch (itself often patronisingly smug about its ethical purity) ran a lengthy item purporting to analyse a recent BSA report which found that public trust in the media was dwindling. The item was notable for a number of reasons: they prefaced their discussion by telling us all that, while public trust in the media might be on the wane, RNZ was the most trusted of all. Secondly the presenter, the redoubtable Colin Peacock (the thinking man's Joseph Parker), adopted a tone of almost stunned disbelief when dealing with these allegations. But most importantly of all, the entire discussion completely missed the point.

Dr Eric Crampton: A Christmas wish

When everything had gone wrong and Homer Simpson couldn’t afford Christmas presents for the family, he took a punt. He went to the dog track and bet on a promisingly named greyhound: Santa’s Little Helper.

The dog lost, but the Simpsons won. Santa’s Little Helper went home with Homer, saving Christmas. It was the very first episode of The Simpsons, which aired at Christmastime 1989.

New Zealand’s greyhound clubs will not be having a festive holiday season.

Dr Benno Blaschke: What Bill English and Phil Twyford agree on

Last week, Sir Bill English told RNZ that New Zealand has reached “amazing, almost bipartisan” agreement on housing. Coincidentally, we recorded Part 2 of our Competitive Urban Land Markets podcast around the same time with former Housing Minister Phil Twyford.

The underpinning consensus is specific: competitive land markets are the durable path to housing affordability because they maintain threat of entry, enabling land to be brought to market easily and abundantly. This creates downward pressure on urban land prices.

Hearing both Sir Bill English and Hon Phil Twyford in the same week brought into focus how unusual this moment is.

Dr Eric Crampton: The taxing problem of zombie and phoenix companies

Damien Grant isn’t normally the one making the case that the government needs to take more in tax. The liquidator and libertarian-minded columnist over at the Sunday Star Times more typically wants what libertarians generally want – a government that spends less and that can let each of us keep more of our own money.

On 23 November, Grant’s column made a different case.

Companies collect GST on their sales and remit the money to the government. They also pay income taxes on behalf of their employees – PAYE.

Dr Oliver Hartwich: NZ’s zombie rock star economy

Walk through Wellington, and you will see plenty of empty shopfronts and shuttered cafes. Switch on the radio, and you will hear experts say this is the best time to buy a house in years.

Talk to shoppers, and they will tell you about cost-of-living pressures. Listen to the Reserve Bank, and they will tell you inflation is back within its target band.

These are contradictory messages. Yet they all make sense, because the New Zealand economy in late 2025 is a complicated mix.

Mike's Minute: The madness of the carbon auction needs to end

It's the definition of madness. And stupidity.

How many times do you have to do the same dumb thing with no result, thus proving your system doesn’t work, before you admit your system doesn’t work and give up?

Kerre Woodham: Productivity and the great Christmas shutdown

This morning, I'm going to pretty much let Toss Grumley do the opener for me.

Who's Toss Grumley? Well, Toss is a New Zealand business advisor and investor. The Post has run an editorial he wrote, bemoaning the Christmas shutdown. In it he said New Zealand's Christmas break has started to become way too extreme, and it's impacting our productivity on an individual business level and at the level of the economy.

Sunday December 7, 2025 

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Geoff Parker: Rebuttal to Ella Henry and Andrew Judd - The Treaty Wasn’t a Favour - It Was a Lifeline

In the video What Does It Mean to Be Pākehā in 2025?, Ella Henry and Andrew Judd present the familiar modern narrative: that colonisation was an unprovoked assault on a flourishing Māori world, that Pākehā are “only here because of the Treaty,” and that Māori could have negotiated their own international relationships — even with the French. But this version of history collapses the moment you compare it to the actual record of the 18th and early 19th centuries.

The truth is sharper, less romantic, and far more inconvenient: British colonisation ended the deadliest period in Māori history, protected Māori from other imperial powers, and introduced the first stable national authority New Zealand had ever known.

David R. Henderson: Giving Thanks for Freedom and Growth

Economic liberty is the foundation of our better lives.

"Why did men die of hunger, for six thousand years? Why did they walk, and carry goods and other men on their backs, for six thousand years, and suddenly, in one century, only on a sixth of this earth’s surface, they make steamships, railroads, motors, and are now flying around the earth in its utmost heights of air? Why did families live thousands of years in floorless hovels, without windows or chimneys, then, in eighty years and only in these United States, they are taking floors, chimneys, glass windows for granted, and regarding electric lights, porcelain toilets, and window screens as minimum necessities?"—Rose Wilder Lane, The Discovery of Freedom: Man’s Struggle against Authority, 1943

Net Zero Watch Samizdat: Energy as a common good

UK

Lord Glasman’s GWPF annual lecture: energy as a common good

The Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) has released its 2025 Annual Lecture, delivered this year by Lord Glasman, founder of the Blue Labour movement. Glasman set out a wide-ranging argument for treating energy as a fundamental common good that is required for national security, industrial strategy and AI.

Ani O'Brien: A week is a long time: 6 December 2025

Two stories the NZ media decided not to touch this week

The first came from an NZ Herald article originally (credit where its due) but then the real story that should have been investigated from it has been ignored entirely. That is that, as far as I can see, the Labour Party has breached Advertising Standards Authority regulations, the Electoral Act, and social media platform rules. They are paying influencer Jordan Rivers a salary to work in Chris Hipkins’ office and he is posting hundreds upon hundreds of undeclared aggressively political and often attack-ad-style posts and videos on social media. He has 200,000 followers on TikTok alone. It is Dirty Politics 2.0 and I wrote about it earlier this week.

Roger Partridge: The Open Mind and the Closed University

Last month, Dame Anne Salmond issued a public challenge to the very idea of reason – the commitment to shared standards of inquiry that has delivered unprecedented human flourishing over the past three centuries.

Salmond is one of New Zealand’s most celebrated public intellectuals. She was writing in Newsroom on 18 November – the same day legislation requiring universities to protect open debate and remain “institutionally neutral” received royal assent. Salmond opposes the reform. For her, neutrality is a fiction: there is no common ground – only competing worldviews.

Elliot Ikilei: When 87% say 'no' and the media calls them the problem

Every now and then, the media produces something so out-of-touch that I have to stop, take a breath, and ask: Do they actually hear themselves? Yesterday was one of those days.

The NZ Herald released polling showing that only 13% of NZ Europeans want to be called “Pākehā.” An overwhelming example of consensus. And how does the Herald frame this story up? That the 87% (the vast, ordinary majority) are scared, racist, or uncomfortable with their identity. Not “Maybe we should respect people’s preferences.” Nope. They choose to view the majority in the worst light. Apparently, the only acceptable answer was the one most people didn’t give.

Mike's Minute: The NZ retail experience, a first hand view

The New Zealand retail experience, as summed up by a frustrated Katherine Hawkesby as of yesterday.

She visited half a dozen shops - one was decent and the rest were useless.

They were useless for a variety of reasons, but the common theme was service, or lack of it.

Peter Dunne: Andrew Coster resignation

In the wake of the Jevon McSkimming scandal, the resignation of former Police Commissioner Andrew Coster as chief executive of the Social Investment Agency was not unexpected. Both the criticisms of Coster's judgement on the McSkimming case when Police Commissioner that were highlighted in the Independent Police Complaints Authority report and the sensitivity of his new role at the Social Investment Agency made his continued employment in a senior public service role untenable.

Bob Edlin: Socialist Equality Group can’t see a split in the Maori Party....

Socialist Equality Group can’t see a split in the Maori Party – at least, not a class split, nor a call for workers to unite against the wealthy elite

In The Post, you can read how Davey Salmon, KC, explained the political process that resulted in the Māori Party dumping two of its MPs – “to make a big omelette you have to crack a lot of eggs”.

Salmon was in the High Court yesterday acting for party president John Tamihere and the party’s “National Council”.

JC: Should We Trust Labour

Definitely not. There have been a few clangers recently. Some are hypocritical, some are laced with irony, some have both and some are straight out misleading.

Labour’s spokesperson on local government, Tangi Utikere, said Labour will not be supporting the Government’s legislation on a rates cap. At the same time he said the current increases are “unaffordable in the long term”. The logical conclusion to draw from that is the party should be supporting the legislation, especially as no alternative was offered.

Saturday December 6, 2025 

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Steven Gaskell: Another “Final” Settlement - Until the Next One

When it comes to Treaty settlements, the script never changes: solemn speeches, sweeping apologies, and of course the part everyone quietly flips to first the price tag. This time it’s north of $50 million, wrapped in the familiar language of “healing,” “rebuilding,” and “a new relationship grounded in tikanga.” Translation: taxpayers are once again invited to the ceremony as the ATM, dutifully dispensing another round of reconciliation cash.

Wendy Geus: Mike Waltz 'cleans house' at UN – hopefully nixes Ardern's Secretary General aspirations

Mike Waltz, recently appointed US Ambassador to the United Nations has been doing a bit of housework at the UN lately and as of now has swept up $1 billion dollars of savings, and 'we're only getting started', he says. (see link below)

Ryan Bridge: That's a wrap for the year

This is my last day on Early Edition for 2025.

I’ll be on Drive for a few weeks from Monday and while I won’t lie, I’m looking forward to few sleep-ins before Christmas, I will miss our wee 5am club.

It’s a huge privilege to be here with you every morning as you wake up, head off to work, off to school sport or home from a night shift yourself.

Breaking Views Update: Week of 30.11.25

Saturday December 6, 2025 

News:
High Court reinstates Kapa-Kingi to Te Pāti Māori ahead of AGM
The High Court has ordered Te Pāti Māori to reinstate expelled Te Tai Tokerau MP Mariameno Kapa-Kingi as a party member, finding there are serious questions about the legality and fairness of the process used to remove her.

Dr Oliver Hartwich: The tax problem New Zealand cannot seem to solve

Every year, Inland Revenue writes off hundreds of millions in tax debt – $694.5 million last year alone. The money vanishes through the same predictable loopholes, exploited by the same cast of characters: directors who accumulate GST and PAYE debts, then walk away scot-free by abandoning their companies.

This is not a new problem. It is a perennial feature of New Zealand’s tax collection system, one that successive governments have tried and failed to fix.

Dr Eric Crampton: Regional councils shake-up an opportunity for reinvention

When plans to abolish regional councils were first rumoured, I was more than mildly sceptical.

It isn’t that I’m a giant fan of regional councils; I couldn’t name more than a couple of my own regional councillors, and I bet most of you can’t either. It’s rather that if regional councils didn’t exist, local councils would have to at least partially re-create them.

Matua Kahurangi: Pharmacists cashed in - The COVID gold rush they don’t want you talking about

When the Government rolled out its COVID vaccination programme, most Kiwis assumed pharmacies were simply doing their bit for public health. What we were not told was that behind the scenes the jab programme turned into a lucrative cash cow for a select group of pharmacy owners who saw the pandemic not as a crisis, but as an opportunity to fill their coffers.