Dr Don Brash: The Total Annihilation of Te Tiriti in the Health System

"The Total Annihilation of Te Tiriti in the Health System..."

This is the heading on a press statement issued by Lady Tureiti Moxon referring to the Government’s decision to change the wording in the Pae Ora (Healthy Futures) Act from “give effect to” Te Tiriti principles to merely “take into account” those principles.

She claims this “weakens Treaty obligations in health legislation” and represents “the total annihilation of te Tiriti in the health system”.

What on Earth is she talking about?

Net Zero Watch Samizdat: Tony Blair brings centrism back to energy reality

UK

Blair: we cannot afford Net Zero

Tony Blair has warned Britain cannot afford Net Zero and urged the government to change course and prioritise cheaper energy. “We must prioritise cheaper energy and electrification over net zero and use what is left of our North Sea oil and gas resources,” he says.

Geoff Parker: English Isn't Endangered—but Its Place In Public Life Is

According to critics of the English Language Bill, English doesn't need legal recognition because it isn't endangered. The argument goes that since almost every New Zealander speaks English, there is nothing to protect.

That completely misses the point.

Nobody is suggesting English is about to vanish. The question is whether the language that unites almost every New Zealander should remain the clear and undisputed language of government, public services, law, education and national communication.

Ani O'Brien: A week is a long time: 30 May 2026

BUDGET 2026: The Dead Rabbit Budget

While much of the political discussion has focused on who won and lost domestically, the Budget documents themselves are heavily framed around geopolitical instability, energy insecurity, ageing demographics, and economic shocks originating beyond New Zealand’s shores. Finance Minister Nicola Willis repeatedly referenced the fuel crisis, while Treasury’s forecasts assume a temporary but significant hit to growth and inflation over the coming year. Treasury now forecasts annual average GDP growth of 1.2% for the year to June 2026 before accelerating to 2.3% in 2027 and 3.2% in 2028. Employment is forecast to grow by 220,000 jobs over the next four years, while wages are expected to increase by an average of 3.1% annually.

William McGimpsey: Lessons from Fiji

I recently returned from a family holiday in Fiji, where I took the opportunity to learn a bit more about that county’s fraught history of mass migration, ethnic conflict, military coups, and demographic shifts.

Fiji’s experience serves as both a warning to countries like New Zealand about the consequences of mass migration and ethnic replacement, and a learning opportunity about the types of reforms that can reverse it.

Ashley Church: “They’re both as bad as each other”

Laundering the latest lie against Israel

Just when it seems that the moral inversion around Israel cannot get any worse, someone finds another shovel and starts digging.

In recent weeks, a major report documenting the sexual violence committed by Hamas on, and after, October 7, was released. The findings are grotesque, hideous and almost impossible to read without feeling physically sick. They describe sexual violence as terror, humiliation as strategy, and the destruction of bodies and families as part of the point.

Dr Eric Crampton: Send my regards to NZ’s regulators as they struggle to keep up

Last year, Cabinet papers promised that New Zealand’s agricultural-product regulator would be required to use assessments from trusted overseas regulators. The Bills now before Parliament instead say the regulator must merely “have regard to” them.

A duty to have regard to something is not a duty to use it. It can be satisfied by reading the overseas assessment, noting it, and then doing the local assessment much as before.

Bob Edlin: The name that shall not be spoken in Parliament....

The name that shall not be spoken in Parliament – you can find it in the third paragraph below

By the time MPs had taken their seats in the House of Representatives on Wednesday, The Post had named the official who (the newspaper contended) had received briefing notes from Z Energy and Fonterra which, curiously, have disappeared.

Guest Post: The media mess and how to fit it

A guest post on Kiwiblog by Fish Across Face:

My name is a pseudonym, as I’m identifiable with a high profile local television show. For what it’s worth, publishing the following is an acknowledgement from our host that I have decades of experience in most areas of TV, radio, commercial production and so on. My name wouldn’t be familiar, but to kiwis, my content is.

This post addresses today’s failing media ecosystem, its relationship with the Left of politics, and how to fix it – from someone inside the tent.

Rodney Hide: Christchurch City Council Has Lost Its Mind

The elected councillors and staff at Christchurch City Council have officially taken leave of their senses.

I was alerted to this particular madness by the wonderful Katrina Biggs on X, who posted the flyer for the council’s “Women’s Swimming Sessions.” I didn’t believe it at first. Surely this was satire. So I went to the official Christchurch City Council website to check. It gets worse.

Here is what they actually say:

Saturday May 30, 2026 

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Geoff Parker: The Culturalisation of Healthcare

"A new study on eating disorders raises a familiar question: why are universal health problems increasingly being repackaged as ethnicity-specific challenges?"

New Zealand's taxpayer-funded research industry has once again discovered the answer to a problem that nobody was asking.

This week's breakthrough revelation? Eating disorders apparently require a "Kaupapa Māori-led" response.

Perspective with Heather du Plessis-Allan: The Government was right to give billions to defence and forget arts

Geez, how sorry do you feel for Paul Goldsmith at the Music Awards, eh?

So, he's invited to the awards and he hasn't got his mate Chris Bishop with him this time. Bishop didn’t go after what happened with Don McGlashan last year.

Breaking Views Update: Week of 24.5.26

Saturday May 30, 2026 

News:
Iwi leaders furious about Budget 2026, call it ‘economic apartheid’
Representatives of the Iwi Leaders Forum arrived at Parliament furious about the Government’s Budget, accusing it of creating an “economic apartheid”.

On Thursday, Finance Minister Nicola Willis handed down her third Budget. It was delivered amid a backdrop of significant economic uncertainty, with clear issues at home and abroad.

Mike's Minute: My thoughts on the Budget

I asked for the surplus to arrive sooner than previously forecast and, as though she was listening this time yesterday, the first words out of Nicola Willis' mouth were it will be a year ahead of schedule.

You can't ask for more than that.

Ani O'Brien: The Dead Rabbits Budget

Perceptions, appearances, and feelings...

Note: my analysis is political and so relies much more on perception, sentiment, and what things appear to be. I include economic and fiscal commentary from those more qualified than myself, but if you are after the true nuts, bolts, forecasts, OBEGALs, and OBEGALxs you won’t find it here.

Nicola Willis spent months lowering expectations for Budget 2026. She made it abundantly clear that there would be no “lolly scramble” or “sugar hits”. She set the expectation that the usual election year ‘bribes’ would not be on the agenda. My personal favourite line of hers was from yesterday when she said:

Ani O'Brien: How the media have distorted the truth to target their current villain

Accomodation allowances should be scrutinised, but Louise Upston is far from the only one receiving one

The media have created a controversy over Louise Upston’s accommodation allowance. Naturally the story has triggered public anger because it appears, at first glance, to confirm every suspicion people already hold about politicians. A minister receives around $1,000 a week in taxpayer-funded accommodation support while also owning an apartment in Wellington. Politically, it ain’t a great look. A minister tightening accommodation support for ordinary people while receiving accommodation support herself was always vulnerable to being seized upon by opposition including media.

Peter Dunne: Budget strategies

With her latest Budget Finance Minister Nicola Willis has joined some very unlikely company.

In 1972 then Finance Minister Rob Muldoon crowed that “I’ve spent it all for them”, meaning that there was no room for rash spending promises from Labour before that year’s election. In a somewhat more genteel fashion, former Finance Minister Grant Robertson deliberately set constrained forward spending allowances and booked $4 billion in savings and reprioritisation in the 2023 Budget. His intention was to leave the National Party with extremely limited fiscal room to fund its election promises without having to either cut public services or rely on highly optimistic economic revenue forecasts.

Kerre Woodham: Was holding the OCR the right decision?

So what would you rather? A little bit of pain now or a whole lot more later? The Reserve Bank yesterday opted to keep the official cash rate at 2.25%, but the decision to hold was a close-run thing. And we know that now because of the transparency around the decisions being made and a jolly good thing it is too. Governor Dr. Anna Breman had to use her casting vote. The Monetary Policy Committee was evenly split on whether to raise the rate. The three Reserve Bank officials wanted to hold, the external committee members wanted to hike and therefore Governor Breman had to use her casting vote.

Bob Edlin: The point rightly raised by Peters is that the same Parliamentary question has been asked umpteen times before

Before Opposition leader Chris Hipkins had a chance to put Question Two to the Prime Minister on Tuesday, Winston Peters had intervened to raise a point of order.

It was a welcome point of order, at least for those familiar with the Parliamentary questioning procedure.

Peters said the question had been asked before.

Indeed, it had.

Chris McVeigh KC: What's in a name?

What's in a name? It is tempting to approach the current vogue aimed at replacing all the well established and familiar place names in New Zealand (including that name itself) with maori alternatives, as some kind of shallow exercise in preening vanity practised by a coterie of self righteous plonkers, but I don't propose doing that here.

So I'll do it here instead.

No, no but seriously and much and all as I'd gain a degree of personal satisfaction from a bit of undignified name calling, I must resist that temptation and accord those who indulge themselves in this way the respect their activities don't deserve and reluctantly resist any temptation to cater to my baser instincts.

Mike's Minute: We are finally utilising the whole country

I'm immeasurably uplifted by some Trade Me data.

Could it be we are finally getting the message on rural or provincial New Zealand?

Job data increasingly shows we're looking to the regions for work.

Friday May 29, 2026 

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Elliot Ikilei: Forget co-governance, this is straight up treason

There is a major shift happening under our noses, as power moves from elected representatives to unelected and unaccountable iwi and hapū appointees.

Mana Whakahono ā Rohe agreements (MWRs) are undermining local democracy and will be sped up by captured councils and local iwi before the government passes its Resource Management Act (RMA) reforms.

As I write, the Far North District Council is rushing through more MWRs with multiple iwi (and even hapū). They are giving this work priority and seeking to avoid public consultation. They are negotiating with five iwi and one hapū. The RMA specifically talks about iwi authorities; it doesn’t mention hapū.

Perspective with Heather du Plessis-Allan: I would argue Budget 2026 wasn't tight enough

Well, you would have done well to heed Nicola Willis’s warnings ahead of this Budget that there would be no spend-up, because there is no spend-up.

There is no money for - well, there is money for the important stuff. You’ve got the schools and the classrooms, and the hospitals, and the Waikato Expressway, and Winston Peters’ pet projects.

Graeme Spencer: The CCO That Put Culture Before Consumers

Timaru District Council after a suspect consultation process have finally formed a CCO (Council Controlled Organisation) with MacKenzie District Council.

The result - a subscale entity, too small to deliver real efficiencies but big enough to add cost and distance from accountability. The worst of both worlds.

Colinxy: Why Is Labour Delaying Its Policy Announcements?

The politics of silence, vagueness, and strategic fog

Labour’s refusal to release its full policy platform is no mystery. It is a strategy, and not a particularly subtle one. When a party is confident, it releases policy early. When a party is terrified of how voters will react, it releases policy late, in fragments, or not at all.

Chris Hipkins’ Labour is firmly in the second category.

Gary Judd KC: India FTA - The Sting Beneath the Sting

Cabinet Said Stop. The India FTA Says Go

In The Sting in the India Trade Deal A Constitutional Trojan Horse: advancing change through political stealth, I examined the inclusion of clause 13.2.2a in the India FTA. That clause states:

David Farrar: 260 regulators!

David Seymour announced:

For the first time, the full scale and structure of New Zealand’s regulatory landscape has been mapped, exposing decades of overlap and complexity, Regulation Minister David Seymour says.

“In New Zealand there are over 260 regulators. This includes 95 in central government, 79 in local government, and 57 statutory bodies, committees, or tribunals,” Mr Seymour says.

The total number is bad enough, but look at how many one entity may have rot deal with.

Dr James Allan: Just Repeal and Undo

How many readers have noticed this huge failing in so many longstanding, establishment conservative political parties around the democratic world? To start, the Left side of politics when in power will seed or remake some institution. Or it will enact some big-ticket legislative reform. Maybe it’s bringing into being a beefed-up, more potent and renamed Australian Human Rights Commission. Maybe it’s enacting a statutory bill of rights in Victoria, in Queensland, in New Zealand, in Britain.

John McLean: Sherman Tanks......

But still snares lamestream media’s Political Journalist of the Year award

Maiki Sherman has left Television New Zealand. And not before time. Her last day as TVNZ’s Chief Political Editor was 8 May. She claims she resigned, but it’s not clear that’s true. Almost certainly, she’s been paid a handsomely dollop of cash out of TVNZ’s trough in connection with her exit.

Kerre Woodham: Have you crunched the numbers with your new rates bill?

Have you done the sums yet to work out how much more you're going to have to pay, how much more you're going to have to find to pay the rates bill? We were talking before the show, for some of my colleagues it's an extra $45 per fortnight, they're in an apartment out of the main city. I can't even imagine how much the increase will be for people living in the leafy suburbs.

Auckland Council has locked in a 7.9% rates rise, according to Wayne Brown it's to fund the City Rail Link. They've managed to keep everything else, they've managed to cut costs and reduce spending and keep everything level, this is purely to fund the City Rail Link. He's unapologetic. He said we've got this railway, if we don't pay for it this year, then we're just going to have to pay for it next year. And that's quite true, you can't just keep deferring essential spending.

Bob Edlin: The PM (after initial stalling) declares his confidence that FTA obligations are being met

Lawyers for Climate Action were among those who kicked up a fuss when the Government announced it would pass a law preventing companies from being sued over climate change damage.

Now they have come up with another niggle. Newsroom reported yesterday that – according to a new legal opinion – two of the Government’s key energy policies are fossil fuel subsidies which breach New Zealand’s international trade obligations.

Thursday May 28, 2026 

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Ryan Bridge: Budget spending must be careful and calculated

The Budget is always a fizzer in the sense that most of it is announced days in advance.

There are a few sweeteners on the day, but this time, unless there's a rabbit about to be yanked from a hat, even they might be more Werther's Original than chocolate cake.

Steven Gaskell: Colonialism Apparently Invented Mortgages

According to the latest fashionable academic theory coming out of the University of Auckland, Māori housing struggles today can largely be traced back to colonialism introducing private property, debt and home ownership systems that supposedly “reshaped Māori life”. In other words, the modern housing market is now apparently responsible not only for interest rates and rent increases, but also for rewriting centuries of history into a permanent grievance narrative where every social problem somehow traces back to Captain Cook personally inventing mortgages.

Caleb Anderson: The psychopathology of the left and the slow death of decency

Recent controversy around disparaging comments about Nicola Willis made by a prominent member of the labour caucus at a closed-door workshop give pause for thought. The response by the Labour leader, when asked to explain, was simply that he had reminded his caucus to be cautious with their words as they could become public.

Perspective with Heather du Plessis-Allan: When will the screws on the economy start turning?

Well, that Official Cash Rate decision is probably one of those moments where you find out whether you're a glass half-full or glass half-empty person.

Because on the bright side, the Official Cash Rate didn’t go up. On the downside, it looks like it’s definitely going up next time. So yes, it’s a reprieve - but it’s only a reprieve for six weeks, excuse me, before the screws on the economy start turning again.

Clive Bibby: We allow this madness at our peril!

A recent decision by the Australian Federal Court sets a precedent in Law that will become difficult to overturn but, for the sake of humanity, overcoming it we must.

The ruling by three activist judges is in many ways a battle between “good and evil” or in the modern vernacular, it is a fight between identity ideology and biological science - a situation which, in spite of all the noise, there should be only one argument.

Colinxy: What Are Erica Stanford’s Education Reforms Really About?

And are NZ teachers correct about where the system is headed?

I’ll start with a confession: I am pleasantly surprised by Erica Stanford. Not because she is perfect, no minister is, but because she is the first Education Minister in decades willing to say the quiet part out loud:

Critical Pedagogy, the Neo‑Marxist backbone of our curriculum, has to go[i].

David Harvey: The Courts and Climate Change

The Smith v Fonterra case was brought by climate change spokesperson for the Iwi Chairs Forum Michael Smith (Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Kahu) against several major emitters. Smith was attempting to use tort law to address the diffuse, cumulative harms of climate change to his property, culture, and iwi.

JC: Which Way Will Winston Jump?

Winston will stay where he is and not jump to the left. You might think its gone off track to concentrate on the Labour Party but my purpose is to highlight the policy differences between NZ First and Labour which will contribute to the decision Winston makes.

I note on Backchat and elsewhere there are some still not trusting Winston not to veer left post election and put the left block of chaos and mayhem into power. Despite his categorical statements that he will not do so, a level of distrust persists. This is perfectly understandable given the man’s history but I do not subscribe to it. I agree it is hard to forgive him for his horrendous betrayal of the right in 2017 by giving power to the Morrinsville fish and chips wrapper. The country paid a heavy price for that but so did he.

Mike's Minute: Moana Pasifika showed the market was right

Let this be a lesson to all those who argue against the simple truism that the market, most of the time, tends to be right.

Moana Pasifika are in liquidation, the vote was held and the story ends here.

The trouble is the taxpayer footed a lot of the bill and the money is gone, flushed down an ideological toilet.

Gary Judd KC: Stuart Nash, Cabinet Confidentiality, and Winston Peters’ Standards

Has Misconduct Stopped Mattering: or is it another case of amnesia?

Lord Peter Mandelson, former UK Cabinet Minister and dismissed UK Ambassador to Washington DC, and Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, the former Prince Andrew and sometime UK trade envoy, were both arrested earlier this year on suspicion of committing the offence of misconduct in public office. Both have been released on bail. Neither has yet been charged. Neither may be charged. The common feature of the charges is the alleged sharing of sensitive government information they received in official capacities.

The UK Law Commission in making recommendations for law reform in this area, described the offence:

Andrew Dickens: Gas rationing and transition schemes

Thirty years ago, I was the station manager and breakfast announcer at a very small experimental talk station in Auckland called ‘The Point’ on 1476 AM. It lasted for about three years. It was a lot of fun. Now I mention this because I clearly remember 30 years ago a morning when we discussed what happens to New Zealand when the Maui and Kapuni gas runs out, because even then scientists were warning that supplies were limited and they were dwindling. That was 30 years ago, and the alarm bells were already ringing.

Bob Edlin: Big bucks are paid for council’s Chief Maori Officer (and his staff).....

Big bucks are paid for council’s Chief Maori Officer (and his staff) – and more are paid for advice on library blessings

The Wellington City Council’s veneration of the Treaty of Waitangi comes at a cost for ratepayers.

It has resulted in the council:

David Farrar: $800k per student!

Two AUT academics write:

Our research used Stats NZ’s Integrated Data Infrastructure to follow more than 250,000 school leavers from the 2015 to 2019 cohorts.

We examined whether the first-year fees-free scheme affected participation, programme choice, retention and completion.

Wednesday May 27, 2026 

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Ryan Bridge: Something's not adding up with business investment in this country

If the Post is to believed this morning, the Government is considering a business growth fund whereby some crown agency would pick winners and probably a few losers with financial backing.

Chalmers did this in Australia.

Perspective with Heather du Plessis-Allan: The MPs need to take one for the team on cuts

Here’s a PR tip for the coalition Government: if they want to win support for their ongoing budget cuts - which affect some of the poorest people in this country - they should consider giving up something themselves.

Now, I don’t know if you saw this last week, but Stuff ran a damning story on Louise Upston, the Social Development Minister, who is a lovely woman and a very capable minister - but the optics were terrible.

Graham Adams: Why was UNDRIP ‘affirmed’ in the India FTA?

Exactly how a clause “affirming” the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples found its way into the India-New Zealand Free Trade Agreement is still unclear but the question is not going to go away any time soon.

In fact, it is turning into a whodunnit as political sleuths try to figure out when the clause was introduced, who put it there, and who wanted it included. They have been forced to try to join the dots and speculate due to the government’s inability — or unwillingness — to offer a convincing explanation.

Ashley Church: Be careful what you wish for

The frightening underside of digital reforms

New Zealand is in the early stages of a major debate about children, social media, digital identity and the future of online access.

Following the earlier introduction of a private member’s bill which would have required social media platforms to stop under-16s from creating accounts (now on hold), the Government is now moving toward the introduction of a much more comprehensive suite of digital ID measures to ‘address online harm’ and ‘introduce social media regulation’ – two phrases that should never appear in the policy platform of any centre right government, ever.

Roger Partridge: Schumpeter comes to Wellington

(And what we can learn from the Luddites)

In 1987 Telecom New Zealand employed about 25,000 people. By 1997 it employed under 8,000. A single corporation shed 17,000 jobs in a decade, in a country of 3.3 million. The cost of Telecom’s long-distance calls fell by 60 per cent between 1987 and 1992. The decade that followed was, on the New Zealand Productivity Commission’s assessment, a period of historically high labour productivity growth.

David Farrar: Parliament makes the law, not the courts

Radio NZ reports:

The government will pass a law preventing companies from being sued over climate change damage in many cases.

The law, which applies to current and future cases, will stop a High Court case against Fonterra and six other major emitters in its tracks.

Mike's Minute: Not everything is a conspiracy

Some are working pretty hard currently to buy into the Mike Smith storyline that the big end of town has the Government's ear over climate change.

Mike Smith is the activist, the agitator, the chainsaw man, the "smack the America's Cup" bloke.

So, you know, a life of angst and upset.