Ani O'Brien: A week is a long time - 26 July 2025

Winston’s Week: saving women’s sport

Despite all of his travel as Foreign Minister, Winston Peter’s manages to pack a political punch every week. This week, his coalition agreement policy of booting the boys out of women’s sport was finally seen through with Sports Minister Mark Mitchell instructing a very salty Raelene Castle to delete the transgender guidelines for community sport. Without Winston this would never have happened. National are too weak and ACT are too weird about trans stuff.

Mr Peters also had an excellent week of antagonising the media. He posted a tirade calling out Guyon Espiner and Radio NZ that was a captivating read. Then later in the week he gave TVNZ similarly flavoured advice about improving their trust and rating scores after they didn’t mention the trans in sport story at all on the 6pm news. However that has disappeared from X and I was not quick enough to screenshot it.

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Winston also made another ministerial statement about Gaza. He is striking a balance of condemning recent Israeli actions while placing responsibility for October 7th squarely in the lap of Hamas. He repeatedly mentioned the need for the terrorists to return the hostages. His stance is not quite what mine is, but I appreciate that he is principled and calls out the virtue signalling from the Opposition. He didn’t have to try very hard at all to make Rawiri Waititi look silly as the Te Pāti Māori co-leader managed that himself by mixing up Gaza and Israel and claiming the former was starving the latter.

Trickle down gossip at Reserve Bank

Drop by drop the tea about former Reserve Bank Governor Adrian Orr’s abrupt exit earlier this year is forming quite the puddle for RBNZ Chair Neil Quigley to mop up. It seemed everyone had heard tidbits of gossip that Orr was a shouty and sweary kind of guy and soon after his resignation a story about him shouting at Minister Nicola Willis began to circulate unverified. Thus far the minister, the Bank, the Treasury, and the Beehive have all been tight-lipped, but OIAs have started to drop and economist Michael Reddell has obtained a mole.

On Thursday, the latest was an email from February in which Chair Neil Quigley apologised to a Principal Advisor from Treasury for Adrian Orr’s behaviour in a meeting, saying he “lost his cool”. This seems to give more credence to other rumours about Orr’s temper. Who knows if there is more to come in this saga, but no one will be enjoying it as much as Nicola Willis who has been able to say ‘no comment’ in the interests of employment law and that she has “been conscious that my commentary could potentially give rise to legal or financial risk to the New Zealand taxpayer.”

Opposition on the right track at Question Time

All three Opposition parties spent a load of questions whacking hard balls into the soft underbelly of the Government this week. They identified a vulnerability and locked in. Despite the fact that long term trends and causes can be pointed to, homelessness has become an open wound for the Coalition. Tama Potaka can point to his excellent work reducing the social housing waitlist and getting families out of motels, but it doesn’t change the fact that there are a growing number of roughsleepers and as they say, explaining is losing.

Questions around the cost of living and material suffering are exactly where the Opposition should be focusing in Question Time, but until recently they had been easily distracted with identity politics, trying to cause drama between the three Government party leaders, and international conflicts. Chloe Swarbrick’s absence probably helped in that regard and her party were able to get some probing questions in.

The gall of Hipkins

I just about choked on my cup of tea when I read the Leader of the Opposition had taken a swipe at the annual inflation rate increasing by 0.2% to a “12-month high” of 2.7%. He must think we are morons or have the memories of a sieve. When he was Prime Minister inflation reached 7.2% for goodness sake. As Luxon is fond of saying, Chris Hipkins is like the arsonist who shows up later to lecture the firefighters on how they’re putting out his fire.

Suffering like we have never seen before as students rely on 2 Minute noodles

I was triggered by an article in Stuff. I will admit it. I went full Millennial old lady and ranted about how “in my day” we suffered in silence. Not quite, but I was gobsmacked that it was deemed newsworthy that students might not have enough money for central heating and might have to rely on a diet high in pot noodles. We didn’t call that poverty when I was a student, nor the generations before me. It was a rite of passage. I used to study in the Auckland University library primarily because of the heating.

Stuff reported that two lads in Ellerslie who were allegedly suffering through inhumane poverty while studying. My friend Liam Hehir was on hand to do the math on their budgets.

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On that kind of budget they could even afford to splash out on booze that isn’t Scrumpy or boxed wine.

I know it is cliched to bag the younger generation and regale them with tales of walking five miles through snow in bare feet to a 6am lecture, but we need to teach them a bit of resilience. Being a student is an exercise in frugality and suffering for everyone bar the very luckiest few.

RENTS HAVE FALLEN FOR THE FIRST TIME SINCE 2009. THAT’S IT. THAT’S THE TWEET.

Radio NZ reported:

Cotality chief economist Kelvin Davidson said it was a notable change after big rental increases between 2021 and 2023.

"I think it's quite significant. There aren't many periods in the past where rents have fallen. The latest numbers are only down slightly but you have to go back to 2009 to find a period where annual rental growth on these numbers has been negative and before that it was the late 1990s. So around the Asian financial crisis and the GFC."

 

The ironically named Integrity Institute

In what may be the most entitled wealthy person thing to do ever, a couple of millionaire lobbyists have decided to fund a mercenary media attack on other lobbyists. The ones they don’t like, obviously. Grant and Marilyn Nelson believe they are on the side of the great and good so when they push for law change and try to influence policy it is not to be questioned. They certainly wouldn’t describe it as lobbying! Only the unwashed masses with their (shudder) crowd-funded grassroots organisations can be tarred with that brush.

The Nelsons have hired Bryce Edwards (who I have found to be a thoroughly nice person as an aside) to head up their scheme. They have issued some very specific expectations that include “tracking” and “exposing” Transparency International New Zealand an organisation with which Dr Edwards was previously involved and of which the Nelsons apparently have a very low opinion. They also name the Federated Farmers, the Taxpayers’ Union, and the Maxim Institute as targets for similar “research”.

The Nelsons might be loaded with cash but they are apparently short on credibility so their ploy involves commissioning media pieces (ahem articles for pay). Newsroom has jumped at the opportunity to make money as a media mercenary platform and published its first hit piece this week targeting the farming sector. I’m not linking to it.

The whole thing stinks of self-interest, hypocrisy, and entitlement, but, funnily enough, not a whiff of integrity.

Justice denied to another family

Emma-Jane Kupa was killed earlier this year by Terina Pineaha. Emma-Jane was just 11 years old and Terina was drunk, on methamphetamine, and driving at nearly twice the speed limit on the wrong side of the road. She struck the little girl with her car and fled the scene.

Emma-Jane’s mother, Shannon Davis, said the four years and five months Terina Pineaha was sentenced to for the manslaughter is “pretty much just a slap in the face.”

Emma-Jane Kupa

Quite understandably, Shannon Davis feels that “pretty much my daughter’s life was worth nothing.” Her killer had 29 previous convictions and received a 25% sentence discount for her guilty plea and 15% for her “personal circumstances”, which refers to her childhood in which she was exposed to alcohol, drugs and violence.

At the time she killed Emma-Jane, Terina was enraged as she believed her partner was cheating on her. She had already deliberately driven into another woman’s car three times (I am not sure if this was an unsuspecting stranger or the woman she thought to be ‘the other woman’). She was impaired in every way possible and behaving like a maniac.

Emma-Jane’s whanau have started a petition calling for the sentence to be appealed. You can join me in signing it here.

Cook Island’s Prime Minister says whats good for the goose…

Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown has pointed out that both New Zealand and Australia have signed recent deals with China in the economic interests of their people. He seems to be suggesting it is a bit rich for New Zealand to then kick up a fuss about the deal he signed with the Chinese. He says he is looking out for his people.

"New Zealand can't afford to give us that amount of money…we have to develop our partnerships with other larger countries to get the support we need to meet our infrastructure needs," Brown said.

Changes to electoral law

Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith announced that the Coalition Government intends to pass amendments to electoral law including to end same‑day enrolment for general elections and create a new offence that prohibits the provision of free food, drink or entertainment within 100 metres of a voting place. The already-announced total ban on prisoner voting will be part of this also.

The Opposition aren’t happy about the changes.

“The National Party is changing the rules on same-day enrolment, which in the last election would have seen about 110,000 people miss out on voting,” Labour’s justice spokesperson Duncan Webb says.

This is really business as usual on the merry-go-round of elections law though. The Left make it easier for criminals and the disorganised to vote and the Right make it harder. It is easy to imagine why.

The Human Rights Commission turns its back on its own legislation and women (again)

After hearing the news that Sport NZ had be told to pull the transgender sport guidelines, the blethering lanyard-wearing bullies at the Human Rights Commission whacked another nail in the coffin of their once decent institution. Instead of recognising that the Human Rights Act (the law that brought them into existence) specifically and clearly provides for protections based on SEX and not gender identity, they continued their determined destruction of public trust and their own relevance. They put out a statement void of a single consideration of the rights of women, opting to complain that men are entitled to demand access to our sports and opportunities simply if they declare they feel like a lady.

What is most disappointing, is that Chief Human Rights Commissioner Dr Stephen Rainbow not only let this statement out the door, but added a mealy-mouthed comment in his own name intended to be as banal as possible because he doesn’t really believe that what the Commission is advocating for here is right.

“Te Kāhui Tika Tangata Human Rights Commission is committed to upholding the human rights of every New Zealander, including trans and non-binary people,” Rainbow said.

I guess women aren’t New Zealanders then. I can only imagine how disappointed his own mother is. She is a staunch feminist, a woman I greatly admire, and yesterday was her birthday. I hope the Commissioner reflects on why he chose not to emulate her courage. I understand he may as well be working in a pit of vipers, but if he is not in the job to return the organisation to sanity and to a focus on protecting fundamental human rights as laid out in legislation, he is he doing?

If there is no hope for the HRC then shut the thing down. If the Commissioner cannot find the strength to stand up to his own junior staff, shut the thing down. It is a circus. A misogynistic circus.

In short - other stuff that happened:

• SkyTV bought TV3 for $1 meaning it will now have the opportunity to compete directly with TVNZ in the free-to-air space

• The New Zealand passport will undergo a design update to reverse the language order on its cover: English will be printed above te reo Māori (the previous Government put te reo first in 2021). The updated design is part of a scheduled security upgrade for e‑passports and is not expected to incur extra cost.

• There are 900 women in Hawke’s Bay on a waiting list to see a gynaecological specialist and a Brazilian gynaecologist and obstetrician is working as a cleaner as it will cost her $20,000 to be able to practice here.

• Serial rapist Luca Fairgray has succeeded in getting 6 months taken off his 4.5 year sentence relating to his offending against a 13-year-old girl.

• The Trump administration has passed intelligence to the Department of Justice that implicates Barack Obama in the fabrication of intelligence regarding the Russia-hoax.

• France’s President Macron and his wife have launched legal action against American Candice Owens who has been reporting that the First Lady of France is in fact a man.

• The Post Primary Teachers’ Association (PPTA) has formally rejected a government pay offer of a 1% increase per year over three years.

• Parliament swiftly passed a Bill under urgency to regulate the use of ground-based space infrastructure. It happened with bipartisan support meaning it likely had significant national security implications.

• In Mairangi Bay, a cat named Teddy has been renamed “Leonardo da Pinchy” and become a minor celebrity after repeatedly stealing neighbours’ underwear, socks, and clothes.

Stuff I found interesting this week:

I am currently reading Cruel and Usual Punishment by Nonie Darwish (2009).

Nonie Darwish lived for thirty years in a majority Muslim nation. Everything about her life - family, sexuality, hygiene, business, banking, contracts, economics, politics, social issues, everything - was dictated by the Islamic law code known as Sharia.

But Sharia isn't staying in majority Muslim nations. Darwish now lives in the West and brings a warning; the goal of radical Islam is to bring Sharia law to your country.

When Muslim populations reach as little as 1 or 2 percent, says Darwish, they begin making demands of the larger community. These demands test how far Westerners will go in accommodating the Muslim minority.

Weaving personal experience together with extensive documentation and research, Darwish exposes the facts and reveals the global threat posed by Sharia law. Anyone concerned about Western rights and liberties ignores her warning and analysis at their peril.

And I found the below podcast/video super interesting. Betz is a proper academic, not a media star so he is a bit awkward at times but so knowledgeable.


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Ani O'Brien comes from a digital marketing background, she has been heavily involved in women's rights advocacy and is a founding council member of the Free Speech Union. This article was originally published on Ani's Substack Site and is published here with kind permission.