Ani O'Brien: A week is a long time: 15 August 2026

Yes, I was in the news. Nope, wasn’t fun.

Read about it from my perspective here:


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I took Martyn Bradbury to court & still think the HDCA needs reform

Ani O’Brien 14 Aug Read full story

How not to overthrow a Prime Minister

If you had told me at the beginning of the week that Chris Penk would end it having attempted to bring down Christopher Luxon, been stripped of every ministerial portfolio, and announced his retirement from politics, I would have assumed you were on crack. And yet. AND YET. Here we are, folks.

There are varying reports of what exactly went down and this is what I pieced together from discussions the night of the coup [Click]. It is alleged that the former Defence Minister believed there was sufficient discontent inside National’s caucus to force a confidence vote on Luxon’s leadership and sufficient support for Erica Stanford and/or Chris Bishop to take over. I maintain that Penk did not seriously intend that he would ultimately become leader himself; rather, he seems to have been operating on the assumption that he could help tip Luxon out and leave Stanford and Bishop to fight over the next round.

Whatever the plan was, it went very badly. By the time Penk arrived in Wellington he seemed to realise the numbers were not there and pledged support for Luxon. But it was too late. One of Parliament’s good guys learnt the hard way that it isn’t possible to recover from organising a firing squad, discovering nobody else has brought ammunition, and then announcing your confidence in the intended victim. Penk was sacked from Cabinet and subsequently announced that, after nine years in Parliament, he would not contest the election.

It is a genuinely sad ending for Penk, who I rate highly. But Luxon had almost no choice. A Prime Minister who survives a challenge and then leaves the person who initiated it sitting around the Cabinet table simply invites another one.

Warriors fan Chris Penk. Source: Facebook

ACT’s Andrew Hoggard perhaps offered the most succinct analysis of the entire affair. After spending Wednesday out of reception visiting farmers on the West Coast, he finally caught up with events and texted David Seymour: “What a shit show!” Seymour, naturally, read it aloud to journalists.

Ironically, there is a slim chance that National’s plotters may have inadvertently given Luxon exactly what he needed. For months he has looked vulnerable, surrounded by leadership speculation and accused of being Winston’s lapdog. Now an actual challenge has happened, failed, and he has been able to demonstrate strength by punishing his pretender.

And the award for influencing the coup goes to…

In a piece assessing the winners and losers from the failed leadership challenge, NZ Herald’s Audrey Young awarded a “special commendation” to Herald political editor Thomas Coughlan. Coughlan, she wrote, had been reporting “disquiet in the ranks of National over many months” and broke the coup story on Monday night.

Fair enough. Coughlan got a genuine scoop. Nobody sensible disputes that journalists should report a leadership challenge when they learn one is happening.

But then came this:

“His disclosure on Monday may well have had an impact on its success or failure, although that, of course, was not the motivation.”

And there, rather magnificently, is the entire problem.

The complaint has never been that journalists should not report coups. Of course they should. It is that the political media are not behaving as merely passive observers. Their reporting becomes part of the mechanism through which instability develops, gathers momentum, and ultimately succeeds or fails. Endless stories about anonymous MPs do not simply document a political atmosphere, they also contribute to creating one.

Young appears to understand this perfectly well, but not because she acknowledges it is a problem. No, she is celebrating it.

We are now explicitly being told by the Herald that the Herald’s reporting may have influenced whether a challenge to the sitting Prime Minister succeeded. Yet anyone who points out that political journalists can affect the events they cover risks being dismissed as one of Young’s “keyboard warriors” who “confuse the messenger with messages”.

You cannot have it both ways. Either the media are simply messengers, standing outside the political process and neutrally conveying information to the public, or their reporting can materially alter the outcome of an attempted coup. Young has just given Coughlan a special commendation in recognition of the latter.

None of this means Coughlan should have sat on the story. If you discover that a Cabinet minister is attempting to roll the Prime Minister, you publish it. But some self-reflection about how this reads to ordinary New Zealanders wouldn’t go amiss.

Election 2026: 6 MPs walk into a coalition negotiation…

Unfortunately for National, surviving your own caucus is one thing. Surviving the election is another. The latest Talbot Mills corporate poll has Labour on 34%, National on 29%, New Zealand First on 13%, the Greens on 8%, ACT on 7%, Opportunity on 5.2% and Te Pāti Māori on 3%. That translates to 59 seats for the coalition bloc and 55 for the left bloc. And Opportunity gets 6. With 61 seats required for a majority Qiulae Wong could well be sitting there after election night with 6 MPs and the 2 blocs staring at her like hungry Labradors watching someone open a packet of Tim Tams.

It is important to note that the poll was conducted before the Penk challenge, so we do not yet know what National’s latest round of self-harm has done to its support. It also serves as a slight warning about over-interpreting individual polls because just a week ago, Curia had Labour down at 27.8%, National on 31%, Opportunity on 6.1%, NZ First on 9.1%, and ACT on 7.3%. Polls are snapshots, not stone tablets carried down from Mount Sinai and this election is on a knife’s edge.

Meanwhile, Chris “Teflon” Hipkins is 1 point ahead of Luxon as preferred Prime Minister in Talbot Mills, 23% to 22%. In the Curia Poll he was at just 15% to Luxon’s 17%. His small target strategy continues to prop up a leadership that should be on life support and probably would be in the morgue if National didn’t keep throwing Hipkins lifelines with their antics. When are we going to hear grumblings from McAnulty or Edmonds?

National and Labour are both sitting far too low in the polls and MMP is doing what MMP does… distributing leverage to people the big parties would really rather not have to deal with. Luxon spent last week complaining about “yahoos and numpties” from other parties, but at this rate he may soon miss having the luxury of choosing which ones.

Oh and don’t give your dog Tim Tams.

Sylvia Park: police shoot gun thief before he enters mall

Hapai Ropata Clyde Otene, a 33 year old father of 5, grabbed a long-barrelled air rifle from Gun City in Penrose and fled. Gun City says the weapon was unloaded and that he did not take pellets. Police pursued the vehicle through Auckland, used road spikes, and the car eventually became stranded near Sylvia Park. Otene got out carrying the rifle and ran towards the shopping centre. Police followed him and shot him dead beneath an overpass. Police are conducting a critical-incident investigation and the Independent Police Conduct Authority will investigate separately. That much appears clear, but a lot else is not.

It has not yet been established publicly whether Otene pointed the rifle at police nor what information the officers confronting him had about whether it was loaded. His partner has questioned why police did not shoot him in the leg and stressed that the weapon was only an air rifle. She is grieving and deserves compassion, but “shoot him in the leg” is unfortunately one of those things that sounds obvious in films and much less so when an armed person is running towards a crowded shopping centre and officers have seconds to determine whether members of the public are about to be shot.

Otene also had previous convictions including aggravated robbery and firearms offending and was out on bail, although police say he was not breaching his bail conditions at the time… well, apart from robbing a gun store and getting into a police chase.

His dumb choices and criminality don’t make his death less tragic for his family. Nor does being a father erase the danger created by running toward a shopping mall carrying a firearm. Two things can be true at once, a concept the internet continues to reject on religious grounds.

The SIS says New Zealand’s security environment is getting worse

Almost at the same time as the armed incident sent shoppers running for cover in Auckland, the NZSIS released its 2026 Security Threat Environment assessment.

Though there is no suggestion of terrorism in Otene’s case, the juxtaposition is sobering because one of the SIS’s six key assessments is that another terrorist attack in New Zealand is considered possible, with the most likely scenario being a lone actor attacking people in a crowded place using easily accessible weapons and with “little to no intelligence forewarning”.

Director General Andrew Hampton says New Zealand’s national security challenges have intensified over the past year, driven by geopolitical instability, conflict overseas, technological change, foreign interference, espionage, and violent extremism. The SIS says our private and public sectors are being targeted for intellectual property, technology, and non-public information. Likewise diaspora communities are being targeted by foreign states trying to suppress democratic rights and insider threats are becoming more significant.

The SIS highlights concerns about antisemitism and Islamophobia, the radicalisation of vulnerable young people online, increasingly mainstream extremist rhetoric, and the ability of artificial intelligence to make propaganda easier to create and distribute. It also describes overseas conflicts including Gaza, Iran, and Ukraine as feeding domestic hostility and an increasingly poisonous us versus them political culture.

The SIS says several states conduct espionage here but the People’s Republic of China is “the only country we have detected doing it at scale”. It also says the PRC remains the most active foreign-interference actor in New Zealand.

One example involved China’s Purple Mountain Observatory allegedly attempting to install ground-based space infrastructure in New Zealand through a local company that was probably unaware the equipment could collect intelligence of military value. The SIS says it disrupted the activity.

China’s Embassy responded with the diplomatic equivalent of “NO U!”. It called the allegations fabricated, accused the SIS of smearing legitimate cooperation, suggested the report itself “may well” be a product of foreign interference, warned New Zealanders against becoming pawns of “anti-China forces”, and deployed the magnificent phrase “do not lift a rock only to drop it on their own feet.”

China is our biggest trading partner, which means we have to manage this relationship like grown ups. Pretending Beijing poses no security threat is stupid. Treating every Chinese New Zealander or Chinese business as a potential spy is just as stupid.

Soon it'll just be press releases all the way down

RNZ announced on Friday that it expects to lose around 10% of its workforce over the next financial year because of reduced Government funding. That means roughly 25-30 roles. This follows earlier cost cutting and comes alongside changes to Saturday Morning, which is moving from 2 hosts to 1 with a smaller production team.

Across town, Stuff Digital is already consulting on its own restructure. Stuff says its proposal could produce a maximum net reduction of 8 jobs from a Stuff Group editorial workforce of more than 300. E tū Union says the impact inside Stuff Digital is more substantial than that headline number suggests as its editorial workforce would fall from 75 roles to 65, 19 journalist and reporter positions would be consolidated into 11, six editor positions into 3, while several platform and production positions would disappear.

I criticise the media a lot. Sometimes deservedly, occasionally with excessive enthusiasm. But while I would love some diversity of thought in the sector, fewer journalists means fewer people sitting through council meetings, reading court documents, filing Official Information Act requests, checking politicians’ claims, covering provincial stories, and doing the hard work that still matters.

It also means more stories rewritten from press releases, more cheap outrage content, more aggregation, and less time for verification.

Labour candidate Rakesh Naidoo cleared of keeping Police bosses in the dark

Back in June, I wrote about the strange circumstances surrounding senior police officer Rakesh Naidoo becoming Labour’s number 13 list candidate. At the time, Police Commissioner Richard Chambers was publicly unimpressed, saying Naidoo should have informed him earlier of his political intentions and that remaining in his role as a Superintendent was “untenable”. Police Minister Mark Mitchell was also unhappy, pointing out that Naidoo had continued attending sensitive briefings and events with him while Labour had been courting him.

While those concerns were understandable based on the information available at the time, documents subsequently released to RNZ under the Official Information Act show Naidoo told his manager, Assistant Commissioner Tim Anderson, that he was considering standing for Labour about 2 weeks before his candidacy was announced. He told him he had not yet made a decision, but kept AC Anderson in the loop as he went through his decision making and selection process.

Anderson did not pass the initial conversation on to Commissioner Chambers because he regarded it as a confidential discussion about something Naidoo had not yet decided to do. When, on 4 June, Naidoo told Anderson he was putting his name forward for Labour’s list-ranking process. Anderson informed Chambers that afternoon.

Anderson has now apologised to both Naidoo and Chambers, saying that “in hindsight, it would have been helpful” to tell the Commissioner about that first conversation and acknowledging that his decision resulted in incorrect information being given to the media.

Naidoo took a fair amount of public criticism based on the impression that he had quietly pursued a Labour candidacy while keeping his Police bosses in the dark. In fact, he appears to have been diligent about the political-neutrality issue.

There are still legitimate questions about how senior public servants and Police officers should manage the transition from politically neutral positions into partisan politics. Labour had been talking to Naidoo for a couple of months, and someone in such a senior and sensitive Police position has to be extraordinarily careful. But that is a very different argument from accusing Naidoo of failing to disclose his intentions.

Polkinghorne finally takes the stand

The coronial inquest into Pauline Hanna’s death was always going to be extraordinary because Philip Polkinghorne did something during it that he never did at his murder trial. He gave evidence.

Polkinghorne was acquitted in 2024 of murdering his wife and he is not being tried again. Coroner Tania Tetitaha has repeatedly emphasised that an inquest is not a criminal trial. The task now is to determine on the balance of probabilities how Hanna died and the circumstances surrounding her death.

But listening to Polkinghorne being cross-examined under oath has been remarkable. Police counsel Alysha McClintock put the homicide theory to him directly on Friday:

“You laid her out and you go about making it look like she killed herself.”

“No,” Polkinghorne replied.

She alleged an argument, an attack, Hanna being incapacitated, killed, and the scene then staged. He rejected every allegation.

Earlier in the week he admitted deleting photographs and messages involving sex worker Madison Ashton after realising police likely considered him a suspect. He said the material was embarrassing and he wanted to keep it private. He was also confronted with inconsistencies between his evidence and earlier accounts.

Then footage filmed for the Polk documentary in 2022 caused a bother as it revealed more inconsistencies. In unused interview footage Polkinghorne said he did not recall using electronic devices after going to bed on the night Hanna died, but at the inquest he acknowledged evidence showing he had been using his phone until around 2am. In the documentary he also denied deleting WhatsApp messages with Ashton and this week he acknowledged deleting them.

Asked whether he had previously been in trouble with the Medical Council for self-prescribing medication, Polkinghorne initially said “no”. In response, McClintock produced a 2018 Medical Council letter warning him about exactly that, including the sleep drug zopiclone. He apologised and said he had forgotten. But things got more awkward when a message he sent to Ashton discussing the letter read: “No biggie, I’ll use a false name in the future.”

None of these inconsistencies proves murder. But it is clear the Police still believe that to be plausible. McClintock’s central challenge is if Hanna took her own life and all Polkinghorne had to do was truthfully explain what occurred afterwards, why have so many versions of important details emerged?

🇬🇧 Bin there, done that. Nigel wins his by-election.

Nigel Farage resigned his Clacton seat last month to trigger a by-election, presenting it as an opportunity for voters to judge him directly after questions over his finances. Labour and the Conservatives more or less declined to participate in his theatre, but Count Binface did not.

Farage won comfortably with 22,239 votes while Binface, a satirical candidate wearing an industrial rubbish bin on his head, received a not-so-shabby 9,455. Magnificent.

But aside from the chuckles, it must be said that Farage got what he wanted. He sought a direct personal mandate and received one. His opponents can call it a stunt, and it absolutely was one, but given Labour just pulled a remarkably similar one to catapult TikTok PM Andy Burnham into Downing Street, glass houses and all that.

Still, Binface getting more than 9,000 votes… Sometimes democracy speaks. Sometimes it makes fart noises.

Count Binface (Source: Joe Giddens)

🇺🇸 AOC begins the great unwokening

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has had an unusually personal week. The 36 year old congresswoman revealed that she is freezing her eggs, sharing parts of the process online, and explaining that the decision makes her feel “more in control” of her life. The announcement prompted questions about her longtime fiancé Riley Roberts and it has since been reported that the pair quietly ended their engagement some time ago. They had been together for more than a decade and engaged since 2022.

None of that is especially politically interesting except that AOC is plainly positioning herself for a much bigger future. She has not ruled out running for President or challenging Chuck Schumer for the Senate in 2028.

And what is even more revealing about her political ambitions, is that she is trying to leave some of her “wokeness” behind. Defund the memory!

Asked this week about positions embraced by democratic socialists during the George Floyd era, including defunding police, AOC argued that those positions were products of the period and candidates should be judged on what they advocate now. Dismissing the havoc wrecked by the lunacy of the politics, she remarked “Woke 1 was crazy.”

The progressive left spent several years insisting that anyone warning these ideas were politically disastrous was racist, reactionary, or insufficiently enlightened. Now, with a possible presidential campaign looming, one of its brightest stars would prefer everyone regard the whole period like an embarrassing fringe haircut we once had.

People are allowed to change their minds. In fact, politicians admitting mistakes would be refreshing. But “that was just the vibe in 2020” is not quite the same as saying “we were wrong”. There is going to be a lot of this over the next few years.

🇬🇧 No, rape is not a “spectrum”

Scottish Green Q Manivannan has caused outrage after comments emerged from a podcast discussion he had in which he discussed rape. Note: I will not call him “they” just because he has long hair and a desire for attention.

The charitable interpretation of Manivannan’s argument is that society should not imagine rapists solely as obvious monsters lurking in dark alleys, because sexual offending is often committed by otherwise ordinary people and acquaintances. That point is not controversial and in fact, is something to bear in mind. But that is a very charitable reading of what he said.

What Manivannan actually talked about was the “demonisation of rape”. He also said rape “is a spectrum”, and argued that any individual can be capable of committing it.

No. He should be sacked.

This is the logical end game of a particularly irritating intellectual habit in parts of progressive politics to attempt to make every moral category more nuanced until eventually nobody can say what anything is and nothing means anything.

🇺🇸 The WNBA discovers the problem with refusing to define your terms

Former NBA players Enes Kanter Freedom and Royce White have both announced that they intend to make themselves eligible for the 2027 WNBA draft by declaring themselves women or transgender. This is obviously a political stunt, but who are we to gatekeep womanhood from these stunning and brave men of colour?

Freedom said that if simply declaring who you are is sufficient, then he meets the requirements to compete. White similarly said he identifies as transgender for the purposes of professional basketball.

The WNBA’s collective bargaining agreement says only players who are “women” may play in the league but apparently does not elaborate further on gender identity or biological sex. Given the amount of virtue signalling from some coaches and players about “trans women are women” the definition is up in the air.

The league responded by saying there are no immediate eligibility matters affecting the WNBA and denouncing “bad-faith efforts” to use transgender issues to demean or marginalise others. But “they’re acting in bad faith” is not actually an eligibility rule.

We have been told for years now that all is required for a man to be a woman is a declaration. We have been told assuming transition involves surgery and drugs is transphobic. We have been told to respect the identity of bearded men fetishising womanhood. But now that two men are doing it to expose this insanity we are allowed to reject their gender identity?

A women’s basketball league that cannot straightforwardly explain what makes somebody eligible to be a woman basketball player has rather brought this problem upon itself.

In short - other stuff that happened

• Anna Mowbray and Ali Williams have proposed fast-tracking a privately owned domestic netball league for 2027, as Netball NZ faces losses of up to $6 million and has no broadcast deal guaranteeing the ANZ Premiership’s survival next season. Their proposal would begin with a scaled-back competition next year before a more ambitious relaunch in 2028.

• Chief Victims Advisor Ruth Money is pushing for youth sexual offences to be heard in the District Court rather than the Youth Court, saying the current system is not “fit for purpose” and that she has already advised ministers on legislative change. Her comments follow a Dunedin case in which youths aged 15, 16, and 17, admitted raping and repeatedly sexually assaulting an autistic woman, with Money saying her office is overwhelmed by complaints from victims about the youth justice system.

• Parliament has passed changes expanding citizens’ arrest powers so people can intervene to stop any Crimes Act offence at any time of day, use reasonable restraints or force, and must contact police and follow their instructions. The wider Crimes Amendment Bill also creates new offences for assaulting first responders and “coward punches”, introduces a shoplifting infringement regime and strengthens trafficking and people-smuggling laws.

• Victim Support has appointed two independent reviewers to investigate its own workplace culture, staff confidence in leadership and complaints processes following allegations of a “toxic” and “bullying” environment.

• A woman attacked during the Epsom rampage has been hospitalised again after suffering three seizures linked to her head injury, while an Auckland Grammar student struck by the stolen car remains critically ill. Police allege a 49 year old man assaulted the jogger, stole a Good Samaritan’s car, deliberately drove at five schoolboy cyclists and later killed a dog before being tasered and arrested.

• Greater Manchester Police trainee officer Mohammad Hassan (23) has appeared in court charged with rape and kidnapping, along with strangulation, sexual assault, theft of a mobile phone, and dangerous driving. Hassan, who was off duty, was arrested following a police pursuit, is remanded in custody, and has since been suspended.

• 500 schools have been selected for the Government’s $30 million solar programme, with panels to be installed over 3 years at schools facing high energy costs, fuel insecurity, or resilience issues. Up to 150 will also receive energy-management systems and some will get batteries, with large schools expected to save about $8,000 a year on electricity.

• Former Breakfast host Kamahl Santamaria and TVNZ will finally face off in a 2 week Employment Court hearing next week, more than 4 years after he resigned just 32 days into the job following a complaint about allegedly inappropriate touching of a colleague. Santamaria alleges TVNZ breached its good faith and safe workplace obligations and their 2022 settlement agreement, including through its own newsroom coverage, while TVNZ denies the claims and is counterclaiming that Santamaria himself breached the settlement.

• New Zealand and Viet Nam have agreed new agricultural market access, opening Viet Nam to New Zealand honey, deer velvet, and venison while allowing Vietnamese flowers and foliage including carnations, daisies, orchids, and lilies into New Zealand. They also signed a new cooperation agreement covering agriculture, fisheries and forestry, including research, technology, sustainability, and capability development.

• According to the NZ Herald, The Post editor-in-chief Matthew Hooton reportedly had a loud newsroom flare-up with a Stuff videographer after being unhappy with how a post-Luxon leadership coup video with Andrea Vance was produced. Multiple staff reportedly witnessed the exchange, with one calling it a “public tantrum” and another “unprofessional”.

• Eight of 16 replacement emergency helicopters are now operating across New Zealand, with Hawke’s Bay the latest region to receive a new Airbus H145 D3 following a $27.3 million government investment in 2024 and 2025. The remaining eight are expected to enter service by June next year.

• A government-commissioned review of the Waitangi Tribunal has been completed but remains unreleased while ministers consider its recommendations, more than a year after the coalition promised to refocus the Tribunal on the “original intent” of its legislation. NZ First’s Shane Jones says the Tribunal has suffered “mission creep” through broad kaupapa inquiries into government policy, while Māori Development Minister Tama Potaka says he does not support removing its ability to conduct the current inquiries.

• From September, up to 1,000 additional places will be available at any one time for young children with high and complex developmental needs through an expansion of the Early Intervention Specialist Service. New alternative providers will deliver the extra capacity alongside the Ministry of Education, with the Government saying the change is intended to cut waiting times, provide earlier specialist support and give families more choice.

• Chief Ombudsman John Allen has ruled MBIE wrongly withheld a key report underpinning the Government’s proposed $1 billion plus LNG import terminal, finding the document was “fairly advanced” and there was a “very high” public interest in its release. The report concluded LNG was unlikely to materially reduce average electricity prices, would mainly help in extreme dry years under particular conditions, and that alternatives including coal, gas storage and additional renewable generation could provide similar energy security.

• Genesis Energy’s 220MW Foxton Solar Farm has become the 32nd project, and eighth renewable energy project, approved through the Government’s Fast-track process. The project is expected to generate 345GWh a year, enough for around 47,000 homes......Ani's full article is published HERE

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.