Brendan O'Neill: Islamists have been given a veto over public life

The banning of a UKIP march to appease Islamist hotheads is a scandal.

So now we know: if you want to prevent a public gathering in the UK, just threaten violence. Be menacing. Be intimidating. Let it be known, with a nod and a wink, that you will roundly kick off if those people you don’t like come anywhere near your neighbourhood.

Roger Partridge: The Judge-Made Problem the Government Is Trying to Fix

Just before Christmas, The Post asked for a column on Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk's building consent reforms. They slipped under the radar in December but deserve more attention. New Zealand's consenting system has become an ordeal – and the problem traces back to judicial decisions in the 1970s and 80s that made councils the insurers of last resort for building defects. Penk is trying to fix a problem that should never have existed.

David Thunder: Government-Controlled Digital ID is Not the Optional Convenience It Is Being Sold As

The UK government has pledged to introduce a digital ID system for all UK citizens and legal residents by the end of the current Parliament (so no later than 2029). The integration of digital ID into government services, though already under way, has hitherto been largely voluntary. However, it is becoming steadily less optional, as the government has said it will now be required as a precondition for work in the UK, and a version of it (GOV.UK One Login) is already being imposed unilaterally upon company directors throughout the UK.

Corey Smith: How American Values on Free Speech Became the Gold Standard

The legal giants who paved the way.

Thanks to the Constitution and dozens of Supreme Court cases, we live in a country where you can say almost anything you want – within reason. American free speech means you can tell a crowd of globalists that only stupid people buy windmills or protest peacefully against government actions while shouting four-letter words at federal agents. But, like many things in life, circumstances matter. “The question in every case,” said Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. when delivering the court’s opinion in Schenck v. United States (1919), “is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantiative evils that congress has a right to prevent.” Other cases would follow and challenge this theory.

Ryan Bridge: We're all flocking for gold

Have you seen how much gold is worth lately?

Yesterday it hit another new record - US$5000 an ounce.

It’s up 60% on last year.

Dr Jake Scott: India’s Outlook

South Asia’s powerhouse faces challenges.

India has entered 2026 facing more economic challenges than headline growth figures alone would suggest. While the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has upgraded India’s growth projections for the 2025–26 economic year to 7.3% (up from 6%), the composition and durability of that growth is increasingly hostage to external shocks, policy trade-offs, and structural constraints, especially as the global economy grows more volatile. The challenge for New Delhi is not whether the Indian economy can grow—that is clearly evident—but whether it can seize the opportunities to continue this growth in an era of global instability.

Matua Kahurangi: The last Tuesday of January and the speech New Zealand still refuses to confront

Today is the last Tuesday of January. It is a date that should matter more in New Zealand’s political memory than it does.

On the last Tuesday of January in 2004, Dr. Don Brash stood at the Orewa Rotary Club and delivered what remains one of the most important political speeches given in this country in modern times. It was calm, forensic, unapologetic and, most importantly, correct.

Bob Edlin: If Luxon wants to duck out of accepting his Board of Peace invitation.....

If Luxon wants to duck out of accepting his Board of Peace invitation, he should take his cue from Canada’s Carney…

Perhaps it will be announced some time soon, but at time of writing PoO could find no record of Prime Minister Christopher Luxon’s decision in response to the formal invitation to join US President Donald Trump’s “Board of Peace” for Gaza.

No doubt he was chuffed to get the invitation, although permanent membership comes with a price tag.

Tuesday January 27, 2026 

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Breaking Views Update: Week of 25.1.26

Tuesday January 27, 2026 

News:
The Minister for Children's slamming a new policy position released by Te Pati Maori - to abolish prisons by 2040, and replace them with community-led solutions
Te Pati Maori says it would also close youth justice residences and military-style bootcamps.

Act's Karen Chhour calls the policy insulting and dangerous.

Ian Wishart: Are climate activists ignoring the evidence at Mt Maunganui?

As the grief turns to anger over Thursday’s deadly landslide on Mt Maunganui (Mauao), the blame game has well and truly begun.

The landslide’s immediate cause was a 274mm deluge of rain in the 24 hours to 9 am Wednesday, which Met Service had claimed was the highest rainfall in Tauranga since records began in 1910.

Ani O'Brien: The American immigration narrative & the assassination of truth

How routine law enforcement was rebranded as terror and why facts no longer survive partisan conflict

“In war, truth is the first casualty.”
— commonly attributed to Aeschylus

The claim that the “first casualty of war is truth” is often treated as metaphor. Currently, we are seeing it as a literal description of process. When political conflict is framed and experienced as existential, like when one side is portrayed as no longer merely wrong but morally illegitimate, truth stops functioning as a virtue and becomes an obstacle. Facts that complicate the preferred narrative are too harmful to the goal of winning the info war and so they are erased. History is repeatedly rewritten.

Pee Kay: We are, truly, a nation divided!

In late October last year I posted an article about Northland iwi, Ngatiwai, landing on one of the strictly protected Poor Knights Islands, raising a flag and concreting in a carved pou in protest at the amendment to the Marine and Coastal Area Act.

Dr Oliver Harwich: A new ‘might is right’ era dawns for small nations

I do not get to Münster often these days, but whenever I am there, I feel drawn to its town hall. This is where, in 1648, diplomats signed the Peace of Westphalia. Thirty years of religious war had left parts of Germany devastated. Some regions lost an immense share of their people to war, famine, disease and flight.

Last summer, on a day when temperatures outside climbed into the high thirties, I stepped into the cool interior of that historic place once more.

Dr Benno Blaschke: English, Twyford, Bishop: Reform needs to outlast its champions

Last week's headlines suggested another wobble in housing reform. Signals from the Prime Minister about easing Auckland's intensification settings appeared to undercut Housing Minister Chris Bishop.

One policy adjustment will not break the economics of housing supply. But it will not help either. Density rules are a means, not an end.

Guest Post: The managed decline of the New Zealand economy

A guest post by Harro104 on Kiwiblog:

New Zealand likes to think of itself as a rich country that has simply lost its way for a while. The reality is more uncomfortable. We are managing our own economic decline, steadily, deliberately, and with broad political consent.Around the year 2000, New Zealand’s GDP per person was roughly 75% of the income level of the richest OECD countries. Today, it is closer to 50%. That is not a cyclical dip or a short-term policy failure. It reflects a long-running structural divergence, and nothing in our current policy settings suggests that trend is about to reverse.This is not about pessimism. It is about incentives, behaviour, and mindset.

Roger Partridge: When Intervention Is Justified … or Not

“If not military intervention, then what? And when is intervention justified?” Those were the challenges from readers of my recent essay arguing conservatives should not be too quick to praise President Trump’s removal of Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro.

My objection was not that Maduro did not deserve his fate – he did. It was that methods matter. The Venezuela operation was unilateral, without congressional authorisation or allied support. Its justification was openly transactional – oil, drugs, the Monroe Doctrine. There was no plan for what follows. The historian Niall Ferguson, writing in The Free Press, praised Trump as a “nineteenth-century figure” returning to the politics of 1900. But that is not a compliment. The politics of 1900 produced 1914, and then 1945. A rerun with nuclear weapons will be worse.

Mike's Minute: There's an anticipation around 2026

Well, week one of the year and I feel there is much to be anticipatory about – perhaps even excited.

As we look about the place the glass half empty operator could argue, "doesn’t this feel a bit like last year?" And indeed, in bits, it does.

But in others it doesn’t. This would appear to be a country at long, long last on the move.

Monday January 26, 2026 

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Ryan Bridge: We all deserve a pay rise

Question: Who wants a pay rise? Who deserves a pay rise? Simple question, easy answer.

Answer: Everybody and most kiwis. By and large we’re hard workers and deserve more.

Teacher, nurses and doctors. By and large, yes. Yes. Yes.

Geoff Parker: Risk, Not Race, Drives Justice Outcomes

Matthew Tukaki’s two-part Radio Waatea series (Part One, Part Two) presents Māori over-representation in the criminal justice system as proof of systemic bias operating “at every stage” — from policing to sentencing. It is a compelling story. It is also an incomplete one.

The core claim running through the series is that disparity equals discrimination. But disparity alone does not establish bias. Any serious analysis must ask a more uncomfortable question: are justice outcomes primarily driven by ethnicity, or by differences in offending patterns, prior convictions, and risk factors that the system is legally required to consider?

Colinxy: The Case for Colonisation

When Associate Professor Bruce Gilley published The Case for Colonialism in Third World Quarterly in 2017, the reaction was nothing short of volcanic. “Controversial” doesn’t begin to describe it. The editorial board resigned in protest, activists demanded the article’s retraction, and Gilley was pressured into issuing an apology. His crime? Violating the unwritten Romantic commandment:

“Thou shalt never say anything positive about colonialism.”

For those interested, Gilley’s original article can still be found here.

This essay is not a defence of every colonial act ever committed, nor is it an attempt to dismiss the harms that occurred in certain contexts.

Matthew D Mitchell: Three Lessons from Venezuela’s Economic Collapse

President Trump has accepted the Nobel Peace Prize that was awarded to Venezuela’s opposition leader, María Corina Machado. Unlike Machado, however, he does not accept the central lessons that can be gleaned from five decades of Venezuelan misrule. There are three.

Lesson 1: Past prosperity is no guarantee of future prosperity.

Tim Donner: Donald Trump, Master of America’s Destiny

The president has become the most dominant world leader in decades.

Apparently, there is no end to Donald Trump’s global ambitions nor his ability to turn his hopes and dreams into reality. Entering his second term locked and loaded, he removed the most dire threat to the civilized world by obliterating Iran’s nuclear program, coerced NATO countries to finally pay the piper for their own defense, and brokered agreements between numerous long-time enemies. Trump forced a deal to release every hostage held by Hamas, ended the war between Israel and Iran, established a globally inclusive Board of Peace to rebuild Gaza, took down the ringleader of the narco-terrorist regime in Venezuela, and has now established a framework for American sovereignty in Greenland.

Nick Clark: Boring's blessings

The paint was still drying on the Auckland convention centre when Christopher Luxon delivered his State of the Nation speech on Monday. Some of the furniture had not arrived. The venue does not officially open until February.

Six hundred business leaders offered polite applause. Someone clapped at the mention of the India free trade deal, which seemed to startle the Prime Minister.

Dr Oliver Hartwich: To stop megaphone populists triumphing, we need unlikely left-right alliance

To many on the political left, the Mont Pelerin Society represents something akin to a spectre. It is frequently portrayed as a secretive cabal of market fundamentalists operating in the shadows to dismantle the state and privatise the public sphere. The caricature suggests a group of ideologues plotting the erosion of social cohesion for the benefit of the few.

The reality of this international academy of classical liberal scholars is rather different. It was founded in 1947 by thinkers including Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman and Karl Popper.

Bruce Cotterill: How New Zealand can protect itself in a fracturing world

We’ve only just finished the third week of January, and already we are seeing a level of global change that feels unprecedented.

According to the timeline of my holiday reading, it started in Iran, where the people are attempting to overthrow the Islamic Republic’s leadership, which has been in place since 1979. Thousands are reported dead, but the regime appears to be hanging on to power, just.

Rod Kane: Tauranga’s avoidable disaster.

Before the trolls start I’m going to put my credentials up here. Apart from a lifetime interest in geology and landforms, and having an NZCE in civil engineering, neither of which counts for much, what does count in my opinion is the fact that I owned and operated a geotech contracting company specialising in slip remedial work for nearly 20 years. I have worked on and under more dangerous slips than I care to remember. More than once I had to make a run for it.

We have a human tragedy, that is horrific and the terrible drama will play out in the fullness of time. We all feel for the people involved. But something needs to be said right now to avoid all this in the future.

John McLean: Cozy Coffee With Coster

New Zealand’s Public Service Commissioner remains strangely loyal to a disgraced ex-Police Commissioner

On 15 January 2026, Public Service Commissioner Sir Brian Roche met with former Police Commissioner Andrew Coster. They met in public, at Mojo Café near Parliament, six weeks after Coster had resigned as CEO of the Social Investment Agency.

Allow me to refresh your memories. Andrew Coster tried to anoint child and bestiality porn criminal Jevon McSkimming as Coster’s successor as Police Commissioner. Coster did so in full knowledge that McSkimming was, as Deputy Police Commissioner, sexually predating upon a young woman.

Sunday January 25, 2026 

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Steven Gaskell: Greens Push to Lock in Māori Seats Because Some Votes Need Extra Protection

Just when you thought New Zealand’s electoral system couldn’t get any more “future-proofed,” along come the Greens with a helpful new idea: entrench Māori seats so they can’t be removed without a super-majority of MPs.

That’s right. In the name of democracy, the Green Party wants to make it harder for future Parliaments to change how representation works provided the seats in question are the right ones.

Reynold Macpherson: Te Arawa 2050: Who Decides, Who Pays, and Who Is Accountable?

The launch of the Te Arawa 2050 Committee a year ago was framed as a gesture of goodwill and partnership within Rotorua Lakes Council. Many welcomed its stated aim: to give Te Arawa fair and proportionate influence in council policymaking. That objective was legitimate and long overdue. A year on, however, it is clear that goodwill cannot substitute for clarity—especially when households face sustained rates pressure and councils are being urged to live within tighter fiscal limits.

Ian Bradford: These unusual weather events may be due to the Gulf Stream slowing down

Those who believe that humans are causing global warming sometimes agree, that warming has occurred in the past without the influence of humans but argue that it is the speed of the present warming that convinces them humans are responsible. They either don’t know about, or simply ignore the Younger Dryas. In fact, the Younger Dryas is one important example of an abrupt change. Throughout the Earth’s history there have been serious ice ages. About 14,500 years ago, Earth’s climate began to shift from one of those cold glacial worlds to a warmer interglacial state. However, part of the way through this transition, temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere SUDDENLY returned to near glacial conditions. This near glacial period is known as the Younger Dryas, named after the flower Dryas Octopetala, that grows in cold conditions and that became common in Europe during this time. The end of the Younger Dryas about 11,500 years ago was particularly abrupt. IN GREENLAND, TEMPERATURES ROSE 10 DEG C IN JUST 10 YEARS! (Alley, 2000). Proxy records including lake sediments in Europe, display these abrupt shifts. (Brauer et al, 2008).

Ani O'Brien: Organ donation reform was agreed but never delivered

Millions of taxpayer dollars have been spent with nothing to show for it

Michael Papesch does not fit the stereotype of an activist. He is methodical, careful, and appears not to be a man who enters easily into confrontation. He had a long career in the public service and has served on various boards related to renal health. His interest in organ donation is personal as he was first diagnosed with renal disease in 1996, was on dialysis in 2005-2006, and received a transplant in August 2006. Dr Paula Martin is equally more comfortable getting stuck in to policy work than tackling the world of politics. Her PhD thesis was on Increasing the rate of living donor kidney transplantation in New Zealand: developing an evidence base and it was she who donated her kidney to her husband Michael in 2006.

Barrie Davis: Copilot - Breaking the Spell of Political Frames

A practical guide to spotting distortions, tricks, and linguistic sleights of hand in New Zealand politics and media that is simple, easy and quick.

 Do you ever have the sense that a piece of text just isn’t right? Much of what passes for “news” is actually advocacy wrapped in journalistic packaging. We sense the spin, we feel the manipulation, but we often lack the language to say what’s happening.

John Robertson: Bullying A Nation

Walk through any New Zealand city now and you can feel it before you consciously register it. The signs. The buildings. The announcements. The slow, steady replacement of the familiar with something ideological, imposed, and untouchable. English shrinking, Māori rising, not through organic use or necessity, but through instruction. Through policy. Through pressure. Through an unspoken threat: accept this, or be branded.

This isn’t a celebration of language. It’s a declaration of power.

Melanie Phillips: A Caesar in the White House

The old world order is dead because Western universalists destroyed it

This was the week when much of the West woke up to the realisation that the old world order was dead. A new one was being born, and they didn’t like it at all. And it’s far from clear that Israel can rest easy either.

The Trump administration came to the World Economic Forum in Davos — the very belly of the liberal universalist beast — to tell the rest of the West that globalisation was dead. It had failed Europe and the United States, harmed their prosperity and growth, and made them dependent upon and even subservient to others, including their enemies.

Net Zero Watch Samizdat: Britain reaches “break glass” point for energy and industry

UK

John Bew: we are almost at “break glass moment” for energy and industrial policy

The respected historian, John Bew, has warned that Britain is nearing a “break glass moment” across domestic policy, including energy. A former adviser to four successive UK prime ministers, including Keir Starmer, Bew argues we must urgently rebuild the foundations of national hard power. He has said the world order is changing and Britain must abandon the Davos consensus. 

Dr Oliver Hartwich: The warmth of the herd

Across the democratic world, voters are losing patience with the machinery that stands between a vote and its result – the courts, parliamentary procedures and constitutional limits that do not care who won.

The usual explanations – economic anxiety, cultural backlash, social media – capture something real, but they miss a deeper problem. We are losing the mental wiring for abstract thought itself.

Roger Partridge: We need to be realistic about the cost of our ‘luxury beliefs’....

From protecting heritage homes to banning oil and gas exploration, we need to be realistic about the cost of our ‘luxury beliefs’

Some ideas cost nothing to believe but a great deal to implement. Political commentator Rob Henderson calls them “luxury beliefs” – convictions that signal virtue among the comfortable while imposing very real costs on those with much less room to manoeuvre.

New Zealand, for reasons cultural as much as political, has become fertile ground for them. We are a small, highly educated country that prizes good intentions. Yet too often, the people who congratulate themselves for their ideals are not the ones who bear their consequences.

David Farrar: The Manage my Health fiasco

As almost everyone knows, Manage my Health was hacked by someone seeking a $60,000 ransom in return for not releasing the hacked files, which appear to be uploaded health documents.

I don’t criticise MMH for being hacked. It is hard to be hack proof. There may be legitimate criticism for them not encrypting uploaded documents and/or not having multi-factor authentication.

Dr Oliver Hartwich: Paying for growth

The domestic political year has started with housing density back on the agenda. Is Christopher Luxon walking away from the bipartisan housing accord? Is he undermining his housing minister?

The speculation is a gift for newspaper columnists. But it misses the point.

Dr Benno Blaschke: Auckland housing intensification row - Why reform needs durable rules

Headlines this week suggest a retreat. Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has signalled a softening of Auckland's housing intensification. It looks like Housing Minister Chris Bishop has been undercut.

That perception matters. Housing markets run on expectations. But the deeper lesson is not about one Prime Minister. Jacinda Ardern championed housing reform in her first term, then retreated in her second. Now Luxon is pulling back too. Same pattern, different party. Housing reform cannot depend on political resolve alone, least of all on the rare ministers willing to push further than their leaders.

Bob Edlin: Greens set out to change the electoral laws....

Greens set out to change the electoral laws to improve the privileges (or “enhance” the voting choices) of Māori

Perhaps because she is not too flash at winning elections by attracting sufficient votes, the Green Party’s Hūhana Lyndon is aiming to stack the deck in favour of Māori politicians and voters.

The Green Party today announced a member’s bill, in her name, to entrench Māori seats in law.

 Saturday January 24, 2026 

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Ani O'Brien: A week is a long time: 24 January 2026

Tragedy at Mount Maunganui as campsite buried in landslide

This week, bad weather all over the country turned tragic when a large slip came down on a Mt Maunganui campsite, burying tents and vehicles. Six people are presumed dead, including young people, with search and recovery efforts continuing. Reports have named 15 year old Sharon Maccanico, originally from Italy, and Rotorua grandmother Sue Knowles as two of the six people unaccounted for.

Caleb Anderson: Mainstream Media - Have we closed the door behind us?

Notwithstanding some gains, the governing coalition has disappointed in a number of key regards, One of these dealing with the appalling and ever descending mainstream media.

In a well received, but typically testy, interview with Jack Tame prior to the last election, Mr Peters commented on the lamentable state of the mainstream media, its appalling bias, and how this would not be tolerated by a new government. If I recall, Mr Tame said something like "Is that a threat Mr Peters?" ... and Mr Peters responded with something like "Wait and see".

Clive Bibby: A Welfare State at the Crossroads

The best way to offer meaningful solutions to the country’s modern welfare needs is to first understand the client of the system.

And in association with that understanding needs to be a recognition of the original concept for that original ground breaking, life saving development in our society.

Perspective with Ryan Bridge: There's a time and a place to protest

Now, have a listen to this. This happened in Thames this morning as the Prime Minister arrived to go and check on the damage to the properties and check out the roads and to meet with the victims' families. 

It's a disgrace what you're doing with your climate positive, Prime Minister. It's an absolute disgrace and we're suffering now.

Breaking Views Update: Week of 18.1.26

Saturday January 24, 2026 

News:
Greens put forward member's bill to entrench Māori seats
The Green Party has put forward a member's bill to entrench Māori seats into law, arguing the electoral settings are undemocratic.

The party announced the bill, in the name of its Māori Development spokesperson Hūhana Lyndon, at Rātana celebrations this afternoon.

Mike's Minute: ACC is being scammed, but it can be fixed

ACC is in crisis.

I'm not sure if that’s news to you or not.

They are sinking in a sea of debt. They are forecast in four short years to be in the hole to the tune of $26 billion.

Matua Kahurangi: Mass immigration, double standards, and the Auckland Harbour Bridge excuse

I find it strange that NZ Transport Agency has rejected the anti mass immigration march organised by Brian Tamaki for 31 January, claiming that a march across the Auckland Harbour Bridge could cause serious structural damage. It is a flimsy excuse. More than 200,000 vehicles cross that bridge every day. We have also seen large numbers of people cross it during the Toitū Te Tiriti protests without the sky falling in.

JC: 2026 Through a Political Lens

This year, 2026, will be interesting, absorbing even, with an election at home and plenty of interest happening in the international sphere. While the election here will dominate a lot of the political discussion, events abroad will not be able to be ignored: Donald Trump will see to that. Iran, Greenland, a faint possibility of break up of Canada, increasing dissension within the EU, the continuing rise in right-wing parties’ popularity across Europe, the UK and Australia and the American mid-term elections will all demand our attention.

David Harvey: Power Shifts and the Rules Based Order

The Illusion of Certainty in International Affairs

In contemporary international affairs, the “rules‑based international order” usually refers to the post‑1945, largely Western‑led system of institutions, norms, and practices that seek to structure state behaviour through agreed rules rather than raw power or ad hoc deals. The term is politically contested and not synonymous with positive international law, even though it heavily draws on, and often claims the legitimacy of, the UN Charter system and wider treaty and customary frameworks.

John MacDonald: Hey Labour, don't tell us you've changed - show us you've changed

If you bump into Chris Hipkins today, can you tell him he’s dreaming?

Because, now that we know this year’s election is happening on 7 November, Chris Hipkins is saying that Labour can get more than 40 percent of the party vote and form the next government.

He also wants Labour to win back Auckland.