We are properly in the campaign now. Someone should tell Chris Hipkins who appears to have all the energy of a bloke who is only there because he has been promised there will be sausage rolls afterwards. Ready or not we have reached the point where candidates (or senior MPs) are misspeaking, protesters are turning public meetings into circuses, and everyone is starting to look more and more unhinged.
Labour has spent much of the week trying to defend the credibility of its promise of only the Capital Gains Tax. Meanwhile National had one of its advertisements pinged by the Advertising Standards Authority after claiming Labour’s CGT would “hit” KiwiSaver. National wasn’t entirely wrong. KiwiSaver funds invest in New Zealand companies, some of those companies own commercial property, and Labour’s tax would apply when qualifying commercial property was sold. But the ASA concluded that the ad created the impression that people’s KiwiSaver accounts would be directly subject to the CGT. So National was told not to use the advertisement again in its existing form.
National definitely has Labour on the ropes when it comes to tax which is a nice change from having themselves on the ropes. Labour is having to spend its time arguing about the details, correcting its own MPs, and accusing National of misinformation. Whereas National’s message, that a Labour Government = more taxes, is way easier to communicate. As they say, explaining is losing, particularly when your own senior MP requires the explanation too.
National did have its own minor tax-induced brain-fart this week courtesy of Tāmaki candidate Mahesh Muralidhar. In a video on social media Muralidhar said he was comfortable without a CGT “for now” but thought there might be a broader tax-reform discussion in 5, 10, or 15 years. This naturally caused the Taxpayers’ Union to hyperventilate and demand a clarification which Muralidhar obliged…kinda.
Labour also released its AI policy this week saying they would establish an Office of AI inside the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, give a senior minister responsibility for coordinating AI policy. Most alarmingly, Labour also wants an online safety regulator with an even wider remit than the Government’s proposed under 16 social media law. Uh oh, here we go.
The policy also covers data centres. The Greens want a freeze on them but Labour would require new facilities to secure new renewable generation sufficient for their electricity demand, pay their connection costs, and reduce consumption during periods of peak pressure. Sounds good in principle, but the risk is that it causes billion dollar infrastructure investments to go elsewhere.
Labour also made a climate policy shift that arguably is a tax increase. They say the current Emissions Trading Scheme price is too low to drive meaningful emissions reductions and would urgently review the ETS. But if you deliberately make carbon more expensive, you make things that emit carbon more expensive too. Ministry for the Environment modelling estimates a $10 rise in the carbon price adds about $1.67 a week to average household costs.
National announced they would widen access to Kāinga Ora’s First Home Loan scheme by lifting the income cap to $300,000 (combined couple or individual), allowing more first home buyers to purchase with a 5% deposit rather than having to find 20%. They also announced they would redirect the existing International Visitor Levy rather than introduce a bed tax. $100 million a year would go to DOC, $50 million to a tourism fund, and the remainder which is an estimated $385 million over 4 years would be distributed to councils according to their share.
Election 2026: Democracy meets Main Character Syndrome
The atmosphere around campaign events is getting uglier. Labour volunteers formed a protective barrier around Ayesha Verrall at a Wellington event this week. Depending on who you ask, audience members were either simply trying to get her to answer questions she had dodged during the event about the Covid vaccine or they were menacingly advancing on her. John Ansell was involved and this prompted media and left wing social media to call him “ACT and National’s former ad man”. Problem is he did two elections with Labour first. Video of the incident shows Green MP Tamatha Paul reacting aggressively towards members of the public pushing one man and police being heckled when they got involved.
ACT then had its turn in Dunedin. Big Hairy News podcaster Mike “Chewie” Bennett attended a Paul Henry event, challenged Henry during the Q&A over an anecdote about welfare, accused him of lying, and continued interjecting and disrupting the event after Paul Henry had politely responded. Security removed the big hairy podcaster and outside, police asked for his details so he could be trespassed until 9pm. When Bennett refused he was arrested giving him the exact photos he wanted for future martyring of himself.
We have 8 weeks to go. Perhaps everybody could try being normal for at least 3 of them.
KiwiMart: Seize the means of grocery production
The Greens’ Affordable Kai policy would force Foodstuffs and Woolworths to divest 120 supermarkets plus distribution centres to create a state-owned chain called KiwiMart. They have costed the acquisition at about $1.3 billion, with another $1.5 billion to capitalise the operation, while the broader food package would cost more than $6 billion over 4 years.
There is a genuine problem with the supermarket sector’s concentrated ownership. You do not have to be a communist to believe the duopoly needs more competition. But history tells us, quite emphatically, that this policy will not only not solve the problem, it will lead to empty shelves and rationing.
The $1.3 billion acquisition estimate has been questioned, including by the Taxpayers’ Union who point out that spread across 120 supermarkets it works out at roughly $10.8 million per store before assigning much value at all to the 2 distribution centres. For comparison, the operating business of Pak’nSave Albany was estimated at $50–60 million several years ago, while a newly consented Pak’nSave at Takapuna is a $100 million development. The comparisons are not perfectly like-for-like, but they demonstrate that the Greens would likely need to do more than coerce the owners of the supermarkets to part with them at that price.
Furthermore, Chloe Swarbrick struggled to answer basic questions from Ryan Bridge on how much cheaper groceries would actually become under KiwiMart. She repeated that it would not be “credible” for her to speculate about individual product pricing. One might suggest that her supermarket idea is already fresh out of credibility.
Apparently nobody is responsible for anything
Speaking of “fresh out” it seems the New Zealand Government is completely out of accountability. I for one am sick to death of very well paid senior public servants announcing that they “take full responsibility” for something, immediately followed by an explanation of why taking responsibility does not require any consequence whatsoever.
MBIE chief executive Nic Blakeley is still in his job after Parliament’s Privileges Committee concluded that he and former Immigration New Zealand head Alison McDonald deliberately misled Parliament. And although Blakeley offered to resign, Public Service Commissioner Sir Brian Roche rejected his resignation.
Then there is the mess at the Ministry of Social Development. A review released this week found 16,270 pensioners missed Winter Energy Payments and 14,450 beneficiaries had main or supplementary benefits incorrectly cut following implementation of legislation passed under urgency. The error was first noticed by MSD staff in April, but it took the ministry until August to realise the scale of it and notify the minister. Chief executive Debbie Power said MSD had not done a good enough job, apologised, and “took responsibility”. She says she has no intention of resigning.
Not to be outdone, local government is also dodging accountability like its Covid and we’re in 2020. In Tauranga it is extra egregious because 6 people are dead. Paul Davison KC’s review of the Mount Maunganui landslide found a hazard that was neither hidden nor unforeseeable. Consultants had warned of landslide and rockfall danger for more than 2 decades. A report from 1999 explicitly warned that injury or fatality risks to people sleeping in tents or caravans were “quite high”. More reports followed, including one in June 2025.
Davison concluded that had appropriate systems been in place, the 6 deaths could in all likelihood have been prevented. Yet nobody has resigned or been sacked. Chief executive Marty Grenfell, who has led Tauranga City Council for 8 years, says his knowledge of the organisation means he is the person best placed to fix it.
Wellington provides another contribution. Chief Infrastructure Officer Jenny Chetwynd is paid around $440,000 a year and has responsibility covering assets, transport, water, waste, emergency management, and major infrastructure. After roughly 14 billion litres of untreated sewage were discharged as a result of the Moa Point failure, the Crown reviewer wanted to interview her. She refused to sit for an interview and instead supplied information in writing. Reviewer Raveen Jaduram said this made his investigation more difficult and Nicola Willis has bluntly said that Chetwynd “should be made to front up”. Well, yeah. Nearly half million dollars a year and she thinks she can go MIA when the shit hits the…beach?
Newstalk ZB’s Nick Mills has also reported that Chetwynd commutes from Auckland rather than living permanently in Wellington. Mills explicitly says he has not independently verified the arrangement and asked the council how many days she works in Wellington and who pays for travel. The council’s response was to describe the line of questioning as “highly unacceptable” and say it would not dignify it with an answer. We can probably take that as a “ratepayers pay for her to commute from Auckland”.
“Systemic failure” cannot be magic words which cause responsibility to vanish. Systems are run by people and senior executives are paid enormous salaries because they are meant to be accountable for the good, the bad, and the ugly.
What exactly is a $350,000 Māori outcome?
Auckland Transport is advertising for a Head of Māori Outcomes who will report directly to the chief executive. No salary was listed on the advertisement so I toggled with the salary bands on Seek and found that it sits in the $250,000 to $350,000 range. The role, AT says, will integrate “Māori outcomes” across organisational strategies, policies, programmes and decision making, advise senior leaders on Te Tiriti obligations, and lead relationships with mana whenua and mataawaka (Māori people living in an area outside their traditional tribal homelands).
AT already runs an extensive Māori outcomes apparatus. Its latest report records 30 mana whenua engagement forums and engagement across 70 projects in FY24/25 alone. I have no objection to consulting iwi about infrastructure projects where they own land and will be impacted. The question is why a transport agency requires another executive level job, costing up to $350,000, to influence the organisation according to outcomes defined by ethnicity.
The eternally tone-deaf Public Service Association strikes again
Nearly 10,000 public servants walked off the job this week seeking better pay and conditions, including workers at MSD, MBIE, Internal Affairs, NEMA, and the Ministry for Ethnic Communities. The Taxpayers’ Union, doing overtime this week to represent the humble New Zealand taxpayer, was on the ground to ask protestors if they are aware that the average public service pay is around $103,300, roughly $17,600 above average private sector earnings.
Of course, workers have a right to strike, public servants included. But taxpayers also have a right to notice the surreal gulf between the public sector’s internal view of itself and the experience of the people paying for it.
The Ombudsman should not have a political kaupapa
Chief Ombudsman John Allen gave a speech at Koroneihana that has legitimately raised some eyebrows. Having experienced his verbose and fawning speech delivery at a family member’s graduate a few years ago when he was Chancellor of Victoria University I was not at all surprised.
Now there is nothing improper about the Chief Ombudsman attending a significant Māori gathering. Nor in acknowledging the Treaty, speaking about Māori experiences of the state, or investigating disproportionate outcomes.
The issue arises with his apparent disregard for constitutional boundaries. Allen argued for “systemic change” and indeed he said he would like to “challenge, or excite, or invite the politicians of our country to share that kaupapa”. He was referring to his version of kotahitanga (unity, togetherness, and solidarity), te ao Māori, and a practically Te Pāti Māori-esque vision.
None of it was the language of a neutral referee. The Ombudsman is an independent Officer of Parliament whose statutory authority relies on the public believing he will scrutinise agencies without fear, favour or politicisation. Section 10 of the Ombudsmen Act requires the Ombudsman to swear to perform the role “faithfully and impartially”.
What really stuck out to me was the inappropriateness of the Chief Ombudsman claiming to speak with the “mana of Parliament”. He is not an elected representative and does not speak for Parliament. He has a prescribed and important role that he seems keen to widen the scope of.
Treaty politics: 50 years later, is the Waitangi Tribunal still doing the same job?
After Te Pāti Māori’s constitutional transformation policies of last week, the Treaty debate moved in a different direction this week, with ACT announcing that it wants to finish the remaining historical settlements and then wind up the Waitangi Tribunal.
David Seymour acknowledged the Tribunal’s important role in investigating historic Crown breaches, including confiscation of land and other violations of property rights. However, his party argues that the historic function has been consumed by the increasing number of urgent and kaupapa inquiries it spends its time on now. ACT says they have strayed for too much into areas that belong to elected governments and Parliament.
Seymour was pressed by 1News on how ACT could justify abolishing the Tribunal when it continues to find Treaty breaches by the current Government. His response was characteristically subtle as a brick and he said he does not accept that the Government has breached the Treaty at all, and believes the Tribunal has become “incredibly inventive” in finding breaches.
The Army has provided an example of how deeply Treaty machinery has become embedded in our state. Chief of Army Major General Rose King has admitted it was an error for the Army’s controversial bicultural framework to contain compulsory language around cultural competencies, including expectations involving karakia and waiata. The framework was paused earlier this year after it blindsided then-Defence Minister Judith Collins.
But, in yet another feat of public service ploughing on as they please, the underlying policy has not died. King has continued developing it, arguing that biculturalism strengthens combat capability, and she intends to provide the revised material to the Waitangi Tribunal as part of its inquiry into Māori military veterans.
ACT MP Todd Stephenson suggested that, given the rapid transformation of modern warfare, perhaps the Army could spend its time developing the skills required to fight one. While Winston Peters said “the only culture that matters is the New Zealand culture.”
And, before the young activist lawyers start making TikToks and accusing the Government of being anti-Māori, the Government announced this week another $8 million for the Waitangi Treaty Grounds. The money will come from the Regional Investment Fund to maintain the grounds, museums, infrastructure, and public access. Shane Jones described Waitangi as “where the story of modern New Zealand began” and “a place of nationhood”.
The great immigration vibe shift
ACT and New Zealand First are ending up in similar territory on immigration, although they arrive there by slightly different routes. NZ First wants citizenship and permanent-residence qualifying periods doubled from 5 to 10 years, a 10 year welfare stand down for visa holders, tighter rules around asylum seekers and work rights, stronger action against overstayers, restrictions on automatic post-study work rights, and changes to birthright citizenship. They have been generous to our Pacific neighbours giving Pacific overstayers a 2 year window to sort out their paperwork before facing deportation. They also want to be in charge of the Immigration portfolio.
ACT want the parent-resident ballot replaced with a queue, a physical presence test before people can retain indefinite residence rights, and a dedicated overstayer enforcement unit. MP Parmjeet Parmar says the current system can be gamed by people obtaining residence and then spending long periods offshore before returning when they want taxpayer-supported services.
Current Immigration Minister Erica Stanford has questioned which migrants they will turn away given they are promising significantly lower immigration. She points out that nearly half of primary applications relate to partners and a very large share of the rest is driven by skills shortages.
Hilariously, Phil Twyford hauled himself up onto the moral high ground to warn that immigration debate has become a “dumpster fire” of right wing populists, division, and scapegoating. It still astounds me that he has the Immigration spokesperson role given he is notorious for once using a list of Auckland house buyers with “Chinese-sounding names” as evidence of foreign speculation.
🌏 PISA: Congratulations, we’re declining comparatively well
The latest global Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) results have landed and New Zealand can be pleased that we are falling down the stairs more slowly than others. Our 15 year olds are above the OECD average in reading, science, and mathematics. In science, 81% reached at least Level 2 compared with an OECD average of 74%, in maths the figures were 71% versus 65%, and in reading 77% versus 69%. That is the good news.
The less comforting news is the trend. Our 2025 scores were essentially unchanged from 2022, but reading and mathematics remain below 2018 and 2015 and are part of a decline that began much earlier. Science has been broadly stable for about a decade, but below the highs achieved when New Zealand first participated. The graph ain’t pretty. Mathematics fell from 523 in 2003 to 480 in 2025. Reading went from 529 in 2000 to 497. Science, after reaching 532 in 2009, is now 509.
Globally, the picture is even more dreadful though. Across the long-running OECD participants, performance peaked around 2012 and has been sliding since. The Economist notes that in mathematics and reading today’s 15 year olds are performing at roughly the level 14 year olds achieved a decade ago. Around 20% of OECD 15 year olds are now low performers in all 3 subjects, compared with 16% 4 years earlier.
But, England and Estonia are the proof that the global decline is not inevitable. England is now in the top 10 for reading, maths, and science, and is the second highest performing country outside East Asia, behind Estonia. Take a bow Michael Gove. Estonia continues to be the European standout.
🇬🇧 What happens when governments refuse to hear “enough”?
Something is shifting in Britain. Public anger about illegal Channel crossings and mass migration has been building for years, but things are moving beyond voting intention, grumbling online, and flags on lampposts into more physical protests and organised rebellion.
This week 2 RNLI lifeboats carrying 120 Channel migrants were denied entry to Southampton and Portsmouth, with harbour authorities reportedly warning of legal consequences if the crews approached. The migrants were instead taken to Eastney, where around 200 protesters and residents gathered, some blocking roads while police formed lines with riot shields.
The Home Office condemned “intimidating and thuggish behaviour”. But the British establishment is making a dangerous mistake if it treats every person angry about migration as a thug with insufficiently progressive feelings. Polls show solid majorities support much tougher treatment of illegal Channel arrivals. Communities have watched governments of both parties promise control while crossings continue, hotels are commandeered, communities become less safe for women and children, and anyone who notices is called a racist.
🌏 The sex wars have gone completely insane
After nearly 6 weeks of trial and 7 days of deliberation, the Lindsay Clancy jury could not agree on a verdict and a mistrial was declared. Her lawyer says 11 jurors were prepared to acquit on insanity grounds and one man held out. Prosecutors have not yet decided whether to try her again.
Meanwhile the internet completely lost its mind. Hundreds of women dressed in pink gathered outside court in support of Clancy. Some online supporters have gone well beyond arguing that postpartum psychosis is a legitimate medical condition and that the mental health system failed her. They have turned Clancy into a martyr, invented conspiracy theories implicating her husband Patrick, and at times seemed to forget that the 3 people who unquestionably deserve sympathy are the children she killed. It is natural to find this spectacle grotesque.
But more than one thing can be true at once and all women are not responsible for the lunacy of some deranged, white, liberal “TikTok moms”. Postpartum mental illness is real, but that does not make killing 3 children less horrifying. The point of an insanity defence is to ask whether someone was sufficiently detached from reality that ordinary criminal responsibility cannot fairly be applied. This is necessarily a high bar and while I personally think she is very mentally ill, I have my doubts that she was truly psychotic at the time. But the courts exist to determine these things and trial by TikTok and X is a terrible.
The counter reaction from the extreme male cohort has somehow managed to be just as stupid but in different ways. Matt Walsh dismissed postpartum suffering as the consequence of selfish mothers failing to cope with the demands of a baby and called female jurors “boomer feminist hags”. He then moved rapidly from criticising women who support Clancy to arguing that women, as a sex, are hormonally irrational and therefore should not be allowed to vote.
A flood of likeminded men joined the chorus. MMA fighter Sean Strickland wrote that the women in pink being allowed to vote was “insanity”. Conservative pastor Doug Wilson openly advocated for replacing women’s individual suffrage with household voting. The Federalist published the line that if a woman is “too hormonal” to know she should not kill her children, she is “probably too hormonal to vote”.
Reasonable, not hysterical people understand that if some idiotic women on TikTok behave appallingly, it says something about those idiotic women. It does not mean that women should lose the vote. I cannot believe this needs to be said.
Collective guilt by sex class is moronic whichever sex is being collectivised. Men commit the overwhelming majority of serious violence. When a man massacres his family, nobody seriously proposes removing the vote from all men on the grounds that testosterone has rendered men constitutionally incapable of rational judgment.
Unfortunately there has been plenty more to nourish the idea that the sexes should perhaps spend a fortnight apart taking some deep breaths.
The United Kingdom has formally sought the extradition of Andrew and Tristan Tate. According to State Department documents, Andrew Tate faces 42 charges, including 10 counts of rape, 7 counts of assault occasioning actual bodily harm, charges involving arranging travel for exploitation and sexual exploitation, controlling prostitution for gain, indecent images of children, and extreme pornography. Tristan Tate faces 17 charges, including 5 counts of rape, 6 assaults, and several exploitation-related offences. These are charges and both men are entitled to contest them, however, it is interesting that groups of male nutbars have congregated outside their prison to do push ups in solidarity with them…
In Austria, meanwhile, police are investigating a case that has been compared with Gisèle Pelicot’s famous one although in this case she sadly did not survive the abuse. A 39 year old woman was found dead at her home and it is alleged that her 51 year old husband repeatedly drugged her and allowed other men to rape her for up to €500 a session. In messages he described her as “dead meat”, acknowledged that she was not consenting, and discussed facilitating what the men themselves called rape. The husband and a neighbour have been arrested and other suspects remain under investigation.
In Paris, the Eiffel Tower was shut when staff went on strike after female workers were ordered to hide from sight during a visit by a Hindu religious delegation. The tower’s operator acknowledged the delegation had asked for them to limit “interactions with women” and conceded those conditions should never have been accepted. Female employees said they had been told to leave posts, avoid particular areas, and, in some positions, were replaced by men.
Which brings us to another case of religious demands being allowed to oppress women in Western countries. British Labour MP and “proud feminist” Stella Creasy, attended a Milad Al Nabi march in Walthamstow and was asked why footage appeared to contain no women. Were the women segregated? Creasy eventually conceded “they were”, before defending the arrangement on the basis that many religions have separate events and structures. This is the same Stella Creasy who attacked the Garrick Club’s male-only membership as an “old boys’ club” which held women back.
🇪🇸 Pedro Sánchez releases the receipts. Unfortunately, they implicate him.
Spain’s extraordinary Ceuta crisis has gone from border emergency to political crisis for Pedro Sánchez. More than 70,000 migrants surged into the Spanish territory from Morocco on July 30. Six weeks later, thousands remained in makeshift accommodation and Madrid was struggling to process or remove them. Then Sánchez authorised the declassification of intelligence documents intended, apparently, to show his Government could not have predicted what happened. But that has gone rather badly.
The released papers show Spain’s intelligence services and security forces issued repeated warnings in advance. The CNI detected social media calls for a mass attempt to enter Ceuta by fence and sea on July 29 and warned officials in the city. The files also include 18 earlier reports noting increasing unauthorised entries and a July 8 Civil Guard request for reinforced border security.
Sánchez says none of this predicted the extraordinary scale of the July 30 surge. This has gone down approximately as well as you would expect. Even one of Sánchez’s parliamentary allies, Republican Left MP Francesc-Marc Álvaro, called the disclosure an “own goal” and said that in another advanced democracy somebody would resign.
To pour salt on the wound King Felipe VI met with senior military figures, including Defence Minister Margarita Robles and military leadership connected to Ceuta, without Sánchez present. There is wild speculation that it proves the King and military are turning against Sánchez, that Sánchez has been secretly accused of treason, or that Spain is sliding towards some constitutional intervention. Sánchez himself has described the meeting as normal and appropriate. But none of this is ideal for a prime minister whose Government was hardly famous for stability before 72,000 people stormed the border.
🇺🇸 9/11: Remembering without euphemism
Yesterday marked 25 years since September 11, 2001. I was ten years old and I watched the second plane fly into the tower live on TV with my Dad. We were in little ol’ New Zealand and we could feel something had changed. There are adults alive now who were born after it happened and remembering accurately matters more now than ever before.
NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch called for “moral clarity” this week as she unveiled a new memorial wall. “The men who attacked this city were terrorists. The men and women who ran into the towers to save innocent lives were heroes,” she said as New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani sat stoney faced behind her. Her leadership in that short speech was much needed when the day before an Al Qaeda associate was handed the ceremonial pen by the Mayor.
More than 100,000 people signed a petition asking Mamdani not to attend the Ground Zero commemoration, and a group of victims’ families delivered it to City Hall. Those families stressed that their objections were to his politics and associations rather than his Muslim faith.
In short - other stuff that happened
You will notice a theme here! I am reading a lot about fertility and the societal impacts of our failure to replace ourselves. It is something I hope to write something substantial about at some point. But these were all super interesting reads so I thought I would share them.
Madeleine Kearns on abortion pills being weaponised by abusers. This is an unsettling Free Press investigation into women whose partners obtained abortion medication online and used it to poison or force them into ending wanted pregnancies. It is not an argument against intentional abortion, but Kearns raises the question of whether making abortion pills easier to obtain has also made reproductive coercion easier for abusive men. Very much worth reading. READ HERE.
Vox on why people aren’t having the children they say they want. Rachel Cohen Booth interviews Anna Louie Sussman about her new book Inconceivable, which looks beyond the usual housing and childcare cost explanations for falling fertility and into expectations, relationships, uncertainty, and the growing fertility industry. In one study, 82% of women who froze their eggs said the main reason was not career ambition but simply not having found a partner. READ HERE.
Lionel Shriver on Lindsay Clancy. Shriver is characteristically unsentimental about the sympathy that has gathered around Clancy, and the spectacle of women publicly identifying with a mother who killed her children. Her wider argument is about agency which appealed to me as I have argued the same. She says mental illness matters, but if every horrific act can ultimately be relocated outside the offender, there is not much left of moral responsibility. READ HERE.
Susan Pickard on the daughters who never became mothers. This is a sad read. Pickard writes about women who were promised freedom, education, and self-realisation, achieved those things, and then discovered too late that freedom has tradeoffs. It is very thoughtful and her reflections on being the final person in her family line are haunting. READ HERE.
Robert King reviews Debra Soh’s Sextinction. The subject is the collapse in sex, relationships, and ultimately babies. Dating apps and social media create an apparently endless field of alternatives, particularly for women, while making commitment harder and encouraging everyone to keep looking for something better. The Denmark example is particularly stark as it is rich, safe, happy, well-housed, family-friendly and still sitting at a fertility rate of about 1.47. READ 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.
Unfortunately for Labour, National’s exaggeration does not make Labour’s own messaging accurate though. The ASA rejected the other part of the complaint about National saying the CGT could affect small businesses, because businesses which own commercial premises can indeed be caught by it.
You might think this shouldn’t be difficult for Labour to explain. But Willie Jackson has struck again in an appearance on Herald Now on Friday in which he managed not to know key details of his own party’s flagship tax policy. He umm’d and ahh’d and then said he needed to check with Barbara Edmonds before repeatedly calling National liars. Chris Hipkins has subsequently said Jackson “should have been a lot clearer”.
You might think this shouldn’t be difficult for Labour to explain. But Willie Jackson has struck again in an appearance on Herald Now on Friday in which he managed not to know key details of his own party’s flagship tax policy. He umm’d and ahh’d and then said he needed to check with Barbara Edmonds before repeatedly calling National liars. Chris Hipkins has subsequently said Jackson “should have been a lot clearer”.
National definitely has Labour on the ropes when it comes to tax which is a nice change from having themselves on the ropes. Labour is having to spend its time arguing about the details, correcting its own MPs, and accusing National of misinformation. Whereas National’s message, that a Labour Government = more taxes, is way easier to communicate. As they say, explaining is losing, particularly when your own senior MP requires the explanation too.
National did have its own minor tax-induced brain-fart this week courtesy of Tāmaki candidate Mahesh Muralidhar. In a video on social media Muralidhar said he was comfortable without a CGT “for now” but thought there might be a broader tax-reform discussion in 5, 10, or 15 years. This naturally caused the Taxpayers’ Union to hyperventilate and demand a clarification which Muralidhar obliged…kinda.
Labour also released its AI policy this week saying they would establish an Office of AI inside the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, give a senior minister responsibility for coordinating AI policy. Most alarmingly, Labour also wants an online safety regulator with an even wider remit than the Government’s proposed under 16 social media law. Uh oh, here we go.
The policy also covers data centres. The Greens want a freeze on them but Labour would require new facilities to secure new renewable generation sufficient for their electricity demand, pay their connection costs, and reduce consumption during periods of peak pressure. Sounds good in principle, but the risk is that it causes billion dollar infrastructure investments to go elsewhere.
Labour also made a climate policy shift that arguably is a tax increase. They say the current Emissions Trading Scheme price is too low to drive meaningful emissions reductions and would urgently review the ETS. But if you deliberately make carbon more expensive, you make things that emit carbon more expensive too. Ministry for the Environment modelling estimates a $10 rise in the carbon price adds about $1.67 a week to average household costs.
National announced they would widen access to Kāinga Ora’s First Home Loan scheme by lifting the income cap to $300,000 (combined couple or individual), allowing more first home buyers to purchase with a 5% deposit rather than having to find 20%. They also announced they would redirect the existing International Visitor Levy rather than introduce a bed tax. $100 million a year would go to DOC, $50 million to a tourism fund, and the remainder which is an estimated $385 million over 4 years would be distributed to councils according to their share.
Election 2026: Democracy meets Main Character Syndrome
The atmosphere around campaign events is getting uglier. Labour volunteers formed a protective barrier around Ayesha Verrall at a Wellington event this week. Depending on who you ask, audience members were either simply trying to get her to answer questions she had dodged during the event about the Covid vaccine or they were menacingly advancing on her. John Ansell was involved and this prompted media and left wing social media to call him “ACT and National’s former ad man”. Problem is he did two elections with Labour first. Video of the incident shows Green MP Tamatha Paul reacting aggressively towards members of the public pushing one man and police being heckled when they got involved.
ACT then had its turn in Dunedin. Big Hairy News podcaster Mike “Chewie” Bennett attended a Paul Henry event, challenged Henry during the Q&A over an anecdote about welfare, accused him of lying, and continued interjecting and disrupting the event after Paul Henry had politely responded. Security removed the big hairy podcaster and outside, police asked for his details so he could be trespassed until 9pm. When Bennett refused he was arrested giving him the exact photos he wanted for future martyring of himself.
We have 8 weeks to go. Perhaps everybody could try being normal for at least 3 of them.
KiwiMart: Seize the means of grocery production
The Greens’ Affordable Kai policy would force Foodstuffs and Woolworths to divest 120 supermarkets plus distribution centres to create a state-owned chain called KiwiMart. They have costed the acquisition at about $1.3 billion, with another $1.5 billion to capitalise the operation, while the broader food package would cost more than $6 billion over 4 years.
There is a genuine problem with the supermarket sector’s concentrated ownership. You do not have to be a communist to believe the duopoly needs more competition. But history tells us, quite emphatically, that this policy will not only not solve the problem, it will lead to empty shelves and rationing.
The $1.3 billion acquisition estimate has been questioned, including by the Taxpayers’ Union who point out that spread across 120 supermarkets it works out at roughly $10.8 million per store before assigning much value at all to the 2 distribution centres. For comparison, the operating business of Pak’nSave Albany was estimated at $50–60 million several years ago, while a newly consented Pak’nSave at Takapuna is a $100 million development. The comparisons are not perfectly like-for-like, but they demonstrate that the Greens would likely need to do more than coerce the owners of the supermarkets to part with them at that price.
Furthermore, Chloe Swarbrick struggled to answer basic questions from Ryan Bridge on how much cheaper groceries would actually become under KiwiMart. She repeated that it would not be “credible” for her to speculate about individual product pricing. One might suggest that her supermarket idea is already fresh out of credibility.
Apparently nobody is responsible for anything
Speaking of “fresh out” it seems the New Zealand Government is completely out of accountability. I for one am sick to death of very well paid senior public servants announcing that they “take full responsibility” for something, immediately followed by an explanation of why taking responsibility does not require any consequence whatsoever.
MBIE chief executive Nic Blakeley is still in his job after Parliament’s Privileges Committee concluded that he and former Immigration New Zealand head Alison McDonald deliberately misled Parliament. And although Blakeley offered to resign, Public Service Commissioner Sir Brian Roche rejected his resignation.
Then there is the mess at the Ministry of Social Development. A review released this week found 16,270 pensioners missed Winter Energy Payments and 14,450 beneficiaries had main or supplementary benefits incorrectly cut following implementation of legislation passed under urgency. The error was first noticed by MSD staff in April, but it took the ministry until August to realise the scale of it and notify the minister. Chief executive Debbie Power said MSD had not done a good enough job, apologised, and “took responsibility”. She says she has no intention of resigning.
Not to be outdone, local government is also dodging accountability like its Covid and we’re in 2020. In Tauranga it is extra egregious because 6 people are dead. Paul Davison KC’s review of the Mount Maunganui landslide found a hazard that was neither hidden nor unforeseeable. Consultants had warned of landslide and rockfall danger for more than 2 decades. A report from 1999 explicitly warned that injury or fatality risks to people sleeping in tents or caravans were “quite high”. More reports followed, including one in June 2025.
Davison concluded that had appropriate systems been in place, the 6 deaths could in all likelihood have been prevented. Yet nobody has resigned or been sacked. Chief executive Marty Grenfell, who has led Tauranga City Council for 8 years, says his knowledge of the organisation means he is the person best placed to fix it.
Wellington provides another contribution. Chief Infrastructure Officer Jenny Chetwynd is paid around $440,000 a year and has responsibility covering assets, transport, water, waste, emergency management, and major infrastructure. After roughly 14 billion litres of untreated sewage were discharged as a result of the Moa Point failure, the Crown reviewer wanted to interview her. She refused to sit for an interview and instead supplied information in writing. Reviewer Raveen Jaduram said this made his investigation more difficult and Nicola Willis has bluntly said that Chetwynd “should be made to front up”. Well, yeah. Nearly half million dollars a year and she thinks she can go MIA when the shit hits the…beach?
Newstalk ZB’s Nick Mills has also reported that Chetwynd commutes from Auckland rather than living permanently in Wellington. Mills explicitly says he has not independently verified the arrangement and asked the council how many days she works in Wellington and who pays for travel. The council’s response was to describe the line of questioning as “highly unacceptable” and say it would not dignify it with an answer. We can probably take that as a “ratepayers pay for her to commute from Auckland”.
“Systemic failure” cannot be magic words which cause responsibility to vanish. Systems are run by people and senior executives are paid enormous salaries because they are meant to be accountable for the good, the bad, and the ugly.
What exactly is a $350,000 Māori outcome?
Auckland Transport is advertising for a Head of Māori Outcomes who will report directly to the chief executive. No salary was listed on the advertisement so I toggled with the salary bands on Seek and found that it sits in the $250,000 to $350,000 range. The role, AT says, will integrate “Māori outcomes” across organisational strategies, policies, programmes and decision making, advise senior leaders on Te Tiriti obligations, and lead relationships with mana whenua and mataawaka (Māori people living in an area outside their traditional tribal homelands).
AT already runs an extensive Māori outcomes apparatus. Its latest report records 30 mana whenua engagement forums and engagement across 70 projects in FY24/25 alone. I have no objection to consulting iwi about infrastructure projects where they own land and will be impacted. The question is why a transport agency requires another executive level job, costing up to $350,000, to influence the organisation according to outcomes defined by ethnicity.
The eternally tone-deaf Public Service Association strikes again
Nearly 10,000 public servants walked off the job this week seeking better pay and conditions, including workers at MSD, MBIE, Internal Affairs, NEMA, and the Ministry for Ethnic Communities. The Taxpayers’ Union, doing overtime this week to represent the humble New Zealand taxpayer, was on the ground to ask protestors if they are aware that the average public service pay is around $103,300, roughly $17,600 above average private sector earnings.
Of course, workers have a right to strike, public servants included. But taxpayers also have a right to notice the surreal gulf between the public sector’s internal view of itself and the experience of the people paying for it.
The Ombudsman should not have a political kaupapa
Chief Ombudsman John Allen gave a speech at Koroneihana that has legitimately raised some eyebrows. Having experienced his verbose and fawning speech delivery at a family member’s graduate a few years ago when he was Chancellor of Victoria University I was not at all surprised.
Now there is nothing improper about the Chief Ombudsman attending a significant Māori gathering. Nor in acknowledging the Treaty, speaking about Māori experiences of the state, or investigating disproportionate outcomes.
The issue arises with his apparent disregard for constitutional boundaries. Allen argued for “systemic change” and indeed he said he would like to “challenge, or excite, or invite the politicians of our country to share that kaupapa”. He was referring to his version of kotahitanga (unity, togetherness, and solidarity), te ao Māori, and a practically Te Pāti Māori-esque vision.
None of it was the language of a neutral referee. The Ombudsman is an independent Officer of Parliament whose statutory authority relies on the public believing he will scrutinise agencies without fear, favour or politicisation. Section 10 of the Ombudsmen Act requires the Ombudsman to swear to perform the role “faithfully and impartially”.
What really stuck out to me was the inappropriateness of the Chief Ombudsman claiming to speak with the “mana of Parliament”. He is not an elected representative and does not speak for Parliament. He has a prescribed and important role that he seems keen to widen the scope of.
Treaty politics: 50 years later, is the Waitangi Tribunal still doing the same job?
After Te Pāti Māori’s constitutional transformation policies of last week, the Treaty debate moved in a different direction this week, with ACT announcing that it wants to finish the remaining historical settlements and then wind up the Waitangi Tribunal.
David Seymour acknowledged the Tribunal’s important role in investigating historic Crown breaches, including confiscation of land and other violations of property rights. However, his party argues that the historic function has been consumed by the increasing number of urgent and kaupapa inquiries it spends its time on now. ACT says they have strayed for too much into areas that belong to elected governments and Parliament.
Seymour was pressed by 1News on how ACT could justify abolishing the Tribunal when it continues to find Treaty breaches by the current Government. His response was characteristically subtle as a brick and he said he does not accept that the Government has breached the Treaty at all, and believes the Tribunal has become “incredibly inventive” in finding breaches.
The Army has provided an example of how deeply Treaty machinery has become embedded in our state. Chief of Army Major General Rose King has admitted it was an error for the Army’s controversial bicultural framework to contain compulsory language around cultural competencies, including expectations involving karakia and waiata. The framework was paused earlier this year after it blindsided then-Defence Minister Judith Collins.
But, in yet another feat of public service ploughing on as they please, the underlying policy has not died. King has continued developing it, arguing that biculturalism strengthens combat capability, and she intends to provide the revised material to the Waitangi Tribunal as part of its inquiry into Māori military veterans.
ACT MP Todd Stephenson suggested that, given the rapid transformation of modern warfare, perhaps the Army could spend its time developing the skills required to fight one. While Winston Peters said “the only culture that matters is the New Zealand culture.”
And, before the young activist lawyers start making TikToks and accusing the Government of being anti-Māori, the Government announced this week another $8 million for the Waitangi Treaty Grounds. The money will come from the Regional Investment Fund to maintain the grounds, museums, infrastructure, and public access. Shane Jones described Waitangi as “where the story of modern New Zealand began” and “a place of nationhood”.
The great immigration vibe shift
ACT and New Zealand First are ending up in similar territory on immigration, although they arrive there by slightly different routes. NZ First wants citizenship and permanent-residence qualifying periods doubled from 5 to 10 years, a 10 year welfare stand down for visa holders, tighter rules around asylum seekers and work rights, stronger action against overstayers, restrictions on automatic post-study work rights, and changes to birthright citizenship. They have been generous to our Pacific neighbours giving Pacific overstayers a 2 year window to sort out their paperwork before facing deportation. They also want to be in charge of the Immigration portfolio.
ACT want the parent-resident ballot replaced with a queue, a physical presence test before people can retain indefinite residence rights, and a dedicated overstayer enforcement unit. MP Parmjeet Parmar says the current system can be gamed by people obtaining residence and then spending long periods offshore before returning when they want taxpayer-supported services.
Current Immigration Minister Erica Stanford has questioned which migrants they will turn away given they are promising significantly lower immigration. She points out that nearly half of primary applications relate to partners and a very large share of the rest is driven by skills shortages.
Hilariously, Phil Twyford hauled himself up onto the moral high ground to warn that immigration debate has become a “dumpster fire” of right wing populists, division, and scapegoating. It still astounds me that he has the Immigration spokesperson role given he is notorious for once using a list of Auckland house buyers with “Chinese-sounding names” as evidence of foreign speculation.
🌏 PISA: Congratulations, we’re declining comparatively well
The latest global Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) results have landed and New Zealand can be pleased that we are falling down the stairs more slowly than others. Our 15 year olds are above the OECD average in reading, science, and mathematics. In science, 81% reached at least Level 2 compared with an OECD average of 74%, in maths the figures were 71% versus 65%, and in reading 77% versus 69%. That is the good news.
The less comforting news is the trend. Our 2025 scores were essentially unchanged from 2022, but reading and mathematics remain below 2018 and 2015 and are part of a decline that began much earlier. Science has been broadly stable for about a decade, but below the highs achieved when New Zealand first participated. The graph ain’t pretty. Mathematics fell from 523 in 2003 to 480 in 2025. Reading went from 529 in 2000 to 497. Science, after reaching 532 in 2009, is now 509.
Globally, the picture is even more dreadful though. Across the long-running OECD participants, performance peaked around 2012 and has been sliding since. The Economist notes that in mathematics and reading today’s 15 year olds are performing at roughly the level 14 year olds achieved a decade ago. Around 20% of OECD 15 year olds are now low performers in all 3 subjects, compared with 16% 4 years earlier.
But, England and Estonia are the proof that the global decline is not inevitable. England is now in the top 10 for reading, maths, and science, and is the second highest performing country outside East Asia, behind Estonia. Take a bow Michael Gove. Estonia continues to be the European standout.
🇬🇧 What happens when governments refuse to hear “enough”?
Something is shifting in Britain. Public anger about illegal Channel crossings and mass migration has been building for years, but things are moving beyond voting intention, grumbling online, and flags on lampposts into more physical protests and organised rebellion.
This week 2 RNLI lifeboats carrying 120 Channel migrants were denied entry to Southampton and Portsmouth, with harbour authorities reportedly warning of legal consequences if the crews approached. The migrants were instead taken to Eastney, where around 200 protesters and residents gathered, some blocking roads while police formed lines with riot shields.
The Home Office condemned “intimidating and thuggish behaviour”. But the British establishment is making a dangerous mistake if it treats every person angry about migration as a thug with insufficiently progressive feelings. Polls show solid majorities support much tougher treatment of illegal Channel arrivals. Communities have watched governments of both parties promise control while crossings continue, hotels are commandeered, communities become less safe for women and children, and anyone who notices is called a racist.
🌏 The sex wars have gone completely insane
After nearly 6 weeks of trial and 7 days of deliberation, the Lindsay Clancy jury could not agree on a verdict and a mistrial was declared. Her lawyer says 11 jurors were prepared to acquit on insanity grounds and one man held out. Prosecutors have not yet decided whether to try her again.
Meanwhile the internet completely lost its mind. Hundreds of women dressed in pink gathered outside court in support of Clancy. Some online supporters have gone well beyond arguing that postpartum psychosis is a legitimate medical condition and that the mental health system failed her. They have turned Clancy into a martyr, invented conspiracy theories implicating her husband Patrick, and at times seemed to forget that the 3 people who unquestionably deserve sympathy are the children she killed. It is natural to find this spectacle grotesque.
But more than one thing can be true at once and all women are not responsible for the lunacy of some deranged, white, liberal “TikTok moms”. Postpartum mental illness is real, but that does not make killing 3 children less horrifying. The point of an insanity defence is to ask whether someone was sufficiently detached from reality that ordinary criminal responsibility cannot fairly be applied. This is necessarily a high bar and while I personally think she is very mentally ill, I have my doubts that she was truly psychotic at the time. But the courts exist to determine these things and trial by TikTok and X is a terrible.
The counter reaction from the extreme male cohort has somehow managed to be just as stupid but in different ways. Matt Walsh dismissed postpartum suffering as the consequence of selfish mothers failing to cope with the demands of a baby and called female jurors “boomer feminist hags”. He then moved rapidly from criticising women who support Clancy to arguing that women, as a sex, are hormonally irrational and therefore should not be allowed to vote.
A flood of likeminded men joined the chorus. MMA fighter Sean Strickland wrote that the women in pink being allowed to vote was “insanity”. Conservative pastor Doug Wilson openly advocated for replacing women’s individual suffrage with household voting. The Federalist published the line that if a woman is “too hormonal” to know she should not kill her children, she is “probably too hormonal to vote”.
Reasonable, not hysterical people understand that if some idiotic women on TikTok behave appallingly, it says something about those idiotic women. It does not mean that women should lose the vote. I cannot believe this needs to be said.
Collective guilt by sex class is moronic whichever sex is being collectivised. Men commit the overwhelming majority of serious violence. When a man massacres his family, nobody seriously proposes removing the vote from all men on the grounds that testosterone has rendered men constitutionally incapable of rational judgment.
Unfortunately there has been plenty more to nourish the idea that the sexes should perhaps spend a fortnight apart taking some deep breaths.
The United Kingdom has formally sought the extradition of Andrew and Tristan Tate. According to State Department documents, Andrew Tate faces 42 charges, including 10 counts of rape, 7 counts of assault occasioning actual bodily harm, charges involving arranging travel for exploitation and sexual exploitation, controlling prostitution for gain, indecent images of children, and extreme pornography. Tristan Tate faces 17 charges, including 5 counts of rape, 6 assaults, and several exploitation-related offences. These are charges and both men are entitled to contest them, however, it is interesting that groups of male nutbars have congregated outside their prison to do push ups in solidarity with them…
In Austria, meanwhile, police are investigating a case that has been compared with Gisèle Pelicot’s famous one although in this case she sadly did not survive the abuse. A 39 year old woman was found dead at her home and it is alleged that her 51 year old husband repeatedly drugged her and allowed other men to rape her for up to €500 a session. In messages he described her as “dead meat”, acknowledged that she was not consenting, and discussed facilitating what the men themselves called rape. The husband and a neighbour have been arrested and other suspects remain under investigation.
In Paris, the Eiffel Tower was shut when staff went on strike after female workers were ordered to hide from sight during a visit by a Hindu religious delegation. The tower’s operator acknowledged the delegation had asked for them to limit “interactions with women” and conceded those conditions should never have been accepted. Female employees said they had been told to leave posts, avoid particular areas, and, in some positions, were replaced by men.
Which brings us to another case of religious demands being allowed to oppress women in Western countries. British Labour MP and “proud feminist” Stella Creasy, attended a Milad Al Nabi march in Walthamstow and was asked why footage appeared to contain no women. Were the women segregated? Creasy eventually conceded “they were”, before defending the arrangement on the basis that many religions have separate events and structures. This is the same Stella Creasy who attacked the Garrick Club’s male-only membership as an “old boys’ club” which held women back.
🇪🇸 Pedro Sánchez releases the receipts. Unfortunately, they implicate him.
Spain’s extraordinary Ceuta crisis has gone from border emergency to political crisis for Pedro Sánchez. More than 70,000 migrants surged into the Spanish territory from Morocco on July 30. Six weeks later, thousands remained in makeshift accommodation and Madrid was struggling to process or remove them. Then Sánchez authorised the declassification of intelligence documents intended, apparently, to show his Government could not have predicted what happened. But that has gone rather badly.
The released papers show Spain’s intelligence services and security forces issued repeated warnings in advance. The CNI detected social media calls for a mass attempt to enter Ceuta by fence and sea on July 29 and warned officials in the city. The files also include 18 earlier reports noting increasing unauthorised entries and a July 8 Civil Guard request for reinforced border security.
Sánchez says none of this predicted the extraordinary scale of the July 30 surge. This has gone down approximately as well as you would expect. Even one of Sánchez’s parliamentary allies, Republican Left MP Francesc-Marc Álvaro, called the disclosure an “own goal” and said that in another advanced democracy somebody would resign.
To pour salt on the wound King Felipe VI met with senior military figures, including Defence Minister Margarita Robles and military leadership connected to Ceuta, without Sánchez present. There is wild speculation that it proves the King and military are turning against Sánchez, that Sánchez has been secretly accused of treason, or that Spain is sliding towards some constitutional intervention. Sánchez himself has described the meeting as normal and appropriate. But none of this is ideal for a prime minister whose Government was hardly famous for stability before 72,000 people stormed the border.
🇺🇸 9/11: Remembering without euphemism
Yesterday marked 25 years since September 11, 2001. I was ten years old and I watched the second plane fly into the tower live on TV with my Dad. We were in little ol’ New Zealand and we could feel something had changed. There are adults alive now who were born after it happened and remembering accurately matters more now than ever before.
NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch called for “moral clarity” this week as she unveiled a new memorial wall. “The men who attacked this city were terrorists. The men and women who ran into the towers to save innocent lives were heroes,” she said as New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani sat stoney faced behind her. Her leadership in that short speech was much needed when the day before an Al Qaeda associate was handed the ceremonial pen by the Mayor.
More than 100,000 people signed a petition asking Mamdani not to attend the Ground Zero commemoration, and a group of victims’ families delivered it to City Hall. Those families stressed that their objections were to his politics and associations rather than his Muslim faith.
I will go one step further than Commissioner Tisch, however. I say, these men were Islamist terrorists. They sought to wreck terror and destruction on America and the West because they hate us and our way of life. Their political-religious ideology tells them that they must conquer and slaughter infidels (non-believers) and in the 25 years since they struck at the heart of Western culture many who share their views have launched their own violent attacks across many countries.
And yes, I know “not all Muslims”. I realise that there are peaceful, decent people who simply adhere to a misogynistic, regressive, and brutal faith. That is their choice, but I will advocate for the liberation of the women they oppress and I will fight any attempt to impose on our culture their beliefs and restrictions. Doing so honours the memory of those who were killed that day more than empty words.
On September 11, 2001, 2,977 victims were murdered. People from all walks of life ran towards danger to save people they did not know. Thousands more first responders and survivors have since become ill or died because of what they breathed and endured at Ground Zero.
All because 19 hateful men hijacked 4 aircraft in the name of Islamist extremism and deliberately murdered thousands of innocent people. 25 years is not nearly long enough to forget.
And yes, I know “not all Muslims”. I realise that there are peaceful, decent people who simply adhere to a misogynistic, regressive, and brutal faith. That is their choice, but I will advocate for the liberation of the women they oppress and I will fight any attempt to impose on our culture their beliefs and restrictions. Doing so honours the memory of those who were killed that day more than empty words.
On September 11, 2001, 2,977 victims were murdered. People from all walks of life ran towards danger to save people they did not know. Thousands more first responders and survivors have since become ill or died because of what they breathed and endured at Ground Zero.
All because 19 hateful men hijacked 4 aircraft in the name of Islamist extremism and deliberately murdered thousands of innocent people. 25 years is not nearly long enough to forget.
In short - other stuff that happened
- The Government has accepted 8/9 recommendations from the Ministry for Regulation’s alcohol licensing review, including moving toward a simpler risk-based system.
- The public inquiry into the handling of the Tom Phillips matter is nearing release. Louise Upston will lead the Government response, with the report expected this month. Separately, the IPCA has found the fatal police shooting justified, but a review into Police’s controversial cooperation with a Netflix doco crew is also nearly complete.
- Chris Meehan has resigned as a director of Winton effective September 14 after already stepping down from the chief executive and chair roles amid the company’s extraordinary run of harassment allegations and executive departures. Michael Stiassny is now independent chair and attempting to stabilise things.
- The Government still intends to abolish the Broadcasting Standards Authority. Paul Goldsmith’s office says legislation is coming before the election, although Parliament rises on September 24 so he is cutting it fine.
- Māni Dunlop is leaving Whakaata Māori as a senior political journalist for another, still-unannounced journalism role. She will continue contributing to its 2026 election coverage, including its election podcast.
- 🇯🇵 AUT Māori Media programme leader Tangaroa Paul has apologised for filming a poi dance for social media at Kyoto’s Fushimi Inari Taisha after it drew widespread criticism online in Japan. Critics pointed out that the 1300 year old Shinto shrine is a sacred place of worship rather than a performance backdrop.
- Rotorua has been rocked by a triple homicide. Police found two young children dead and a critically injured woman who died at the scene. A man in his early twenties has appeared in court charged with assaulting a person in a family relationship and has been remanded in custody while the investigation continues.
- A racist comment by Rawiri Waititi’s Facebook account was apparently not written by Rawiri Waititi. Te Pāti Māori says a young volunteer posted it. When Winston Peters told Green MP Lawrence Xu-Nan to “go back to your own country”, Waititi demanded Peters be sacked. The comment on his page was pretty similar in tone; “Hmmmm looking at your name maybe you shouldn’t make any comments and just be thankful you are here.”
- Auckland’s City Rail Link opens tomorrow, September 13.
- Borrowing from UK Labour’s playbook, Labour says it would formally recognise Palestine and impose sanctions on Israel.
- Jessica Rowe has won National’s nomination for Kaipara ki Mahurangi, replacing Chris Penk. Rowe is a former journalist and MFAT official who has most recently been advising Louise Upston. She is also engaged to DPMC chief executive Ben King.
- National wants to give student loan borrowers who stay in New Zealand a little more money in their pay packets while making life harder for those who leave. The domestic repayment rate would fall from 12% to 10% from April 2027, while overseas borrowers face higher interest, tighter enforcement, and limits on KiwiSaver withdrawals until debts are cleared.
- Wellington councillor Ray Chung met Russia’s ambassador Stanislav Krans at the Central Library café after recently receiving security briefings about foreign-interference risks to local politicians. Chung said the ambassador wanted help organising an exhibition, but Mayor Andrew Little said he personally would not facilitate events for representatives of Vladimir Putin’s regime.
- A senior Whanganui police officer has been charged with allegedly using restricted police information to tip off drug suppliers about enforcement activity. Senior Constable Peter Gray faces charges including dishonest computer access and attempting to pervert the course of justice and has been suspended on full pay while the case proceeds.
- Labour will not campaign on pricing agricultural methane at this election, a policy it has pursued in various forms for around 18 years.
- 🇬🇧 British trans-identifying man Khloe Simmonds has been jailed after a years-long series of false sexual assault allegations against men. The court heard of numerous fabricated claims and the devastating effect on the accused men, including one man who attempted suicide. The judge gave him 7.5 years.
- 🇫🇷 A father in France has been jailed after threatening a female teacher following a dispute involving his son. The threat reportedly included saying that had the teacher been a man he would have cut off her head, an especially chilling choice of words in a country which still lives with the murder of Samuel Paty.
- 🇺🇸 Former Colorado Bureau of Investigation forensic analyst Yvonne “Missy” Woods has been sentenced to 10 years in prison for misconduct affecting DNA work across roughly 1,100 cases. The scandal includes hundreds of sexual assault cases and will leave courts and victims untangling the consequences for years.
- 🇺🇸 In Texas, Benedict Ogbodiegwu Jr (26) has been charged with the murder of Andrew James Wimsatt (62). Police say the two men did not know each other and preliminary evidence suggests the attack was completely random. Wimsatt was sitting on a park bench when Ogbodiegwu Jr approached him from behind and repeatedly stabbed him in the neck with a knife.
You will notice a theme here! I am reading a lot about fertility and the societal impacts of our failure to replace ourselves. It is something I hope to write something substantial about at some point. But these were all super interesting reads so I thought I would share them.
Madeleine Kearns on abortion pills being weaponised by abusers. This is an unsettling Free Press investigation into women whose partners obtained abortion medication online and used it to poison or force them into ending wanted pregnancies. It is not an argument against intentional abortion, but Kearns raises the question of whether making abortion pills easier to obtain has also made reproductive coercion easier for abusive men. Very much worth reading. READ HERE.
Vox on why people aren’t having the children they say they want. Rachel Cohen Booth interviews Anna Louie Sussman about her new book Inconceivable, which looks beyond the usual housing and childcare cost explanations for falling fertility and into expectations, relationships, uncertainty, and the growing fertility industry. In one study, 82% of women who froze their eggs said the main reason was not career ambition but simply not having found a partner. READ HERE.
Lionel Shriver on Lindsay Clancy. Shriver is characteristically unsentimental about the sympathy that has gathered around Clancy, and the spectacle of women publicly identifying with a mother who killed her children. Her wider argument is about agency which appealed to me as I have argued the same. She says mental illness matters, but if every horrific act can ultimately be relocated outside the offender, there is not much left of moral responsibility. READ HERE.
Susan Pickard on the daughters who never became mothers. This is a sad read. Pickard writes about women who were promised freedom, education, and self-realisation, achieved those things, and then discovered too late that freedom has tradeoffs. It is very thoughtful and her reflections on being the final person in her family line are haunting. READ HERE.
Robert King reviews Debra Soh’s Sextinction. The subject is the collapse in sex, relationships, and ultimately babies. Dating apps and social media create an apparently endless field of alternatives, particularly for women, while making commitment harder and encouraging everyone to keep looking for something better. The Denmark example is particularly stark as it is rich, safe, happy, well-housed, family-friendly and still sitting at a fertility rate of about 1.47. READ 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.
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