Pee Kay: The Sovereignty Machine

How Corporate Iwi Outmanoeuvre the Fragmented Right

New Zealand is witnessing the formidable operations of a highly sophisticated, unified political force, the Maori sovereignty machine.

Or is it more a case of what too many in New Zealand are not witnessing? We are sleepwalking into a constitutional crisis.

Lindsay Mitchell: Hipkins' play for the Maori seats

Yesterday Labour promised to reinstate the Maori Trades and Training Fund (MTTF) at a cost of $21 million annually. The fund was initially set up as part of the post COVID recovery spend. National later cut it to economise.

It's part of the by Maori, for Maori kaupapa so is run by maraes and iwi for mostly Maori participants. Reinstated, it will be exclusively for Maori. An evaluation of the scheme was generally positive.

Melanie Phillips: Britain’s moral depravity

The campaign against the Israeli “settlers” amounts to racist ethnic cleansing

Astoundingly, the British government is not only demanding that Israel ethnically cleanse its own people from their ancestral homeland but is proposing to punish it for refusing to do so.

The new prime minister, Andy Burnham, is poised to announce “robust” sanctions targeting trade with Israeli “settlements” in the disputed territories of Judea and Samaria, as well as the sanctioning of Israelis linked to businesses there.

Vincent Cook: What Do “Capitalism” and “Socialism” Really Mean?

The old debate between socialism and capitalism is back. It wasn’t that long ago when socialist economics had been repudiated even by former Soviet insiders, businesses like Wendy’s and Miller ran clever television advertisements poking fun at the once-mighty but by then grossly dysfunctional Soviet Union, and the remaining leftist political parties in Western countries pivoted to focusing on promoting welfare statism while admitting that government controls over the means of production is a losing proposition. Back in the day, even people lacking the keen theoretical insights of a Ludwig von Mises could plainly see that actual attempts to realize socialism, however well-intentioned they were originally, only delivered totalitarian tyranny and mass impoverishment.

David Farrar: National does carrot and stick with student loans

Nicola Willis has announced some changes to the student loans scheme to reward those who stay in NZ and repay the loans, and targets those who go overseas and don’t. The changes are:

Mike's Minute: What a waste of time the social media bill was... this year

In the end, was this a “to do” about nothing?

The social media ban for under 16s is a global bandwagon that we were already late to.

And by the time it arrived on Monday, it turns out the party that wrote it didn't have the numbers.

Monday August 31, 2026 

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