Breaking Views Update: Week of 7.12.25

Friday December 12, 2025 

News:
Coalition strains over stewardship land shake-up
The Conservation Minister has re-classified swathes of stewardship land on the West Coast of the South Island.

Tama Potaka is making some of the changes through an 'order in council' process that legitimately circumvents Cabinet sign off.

Perspective with Ryan Bridge: What will Trump's border crackdown do to tourism?

Donald Trump has every right to crack down on the American border. There are problems there that we, down here in little old New Zealand, just don't understand.

Illegal migration sounds to us like a far away and non-threatening concept because, well, it is. Thank you, ocean.

Heather du Plessis-Allan: Nicola v Ruth - bring it on

So, to the Nicola Willis v Ruth Richardson debate.

Here’s a challenge to Nicola Willis: do it this year. Do it next week.

I’m hearing that having challenged Ruth Richardson to the debate, Willis’ office would prefer to do it next year.

John Raine: Drive Climate Change Policy with Evidence not Alarmism

The Challenge of Opening Closed Minds

The media and many politicians worldwide continue to push a narrative of impending climate catastrophe. Whether or not you are a climate change pessimist, we live on a gradually warming planet and will need to adapt to this. Ongoing wide-ranging, balanced critical analysis is needed of the long-term history of Earth's climate, scientific models, current evidence, and underlying political and economic motivations driving the climate debate. This article addresses only limited recent evidence and analysis which indicates that climate change is real but does not pose an existential threat. 

Ani O'Brien: Rot - ACC has problems

Rot in the Accident Compensation Corporation

This saga begins with a cringeworthy cliche scandal which morphs into a bigger classic case of rotten nepotism and self-interest. Then a second scandal pops up, and then, in the process of mopping these scandals up, the whole thing becomes an almost comedic additional problem.

George Thomson: Government scraps hemp licences in major regulatory overhaul

The Government has announced a sweeping reform of industrial hemp regulations, with Regulation Minister David Seymour saying the sector will finally be freed from “outdated, heavy-handed rules” that have constrained growth for nearly two decades.

Cabinet has agreed to scrap the current licensing regime for industrial hemp and replace it with what Seymour describes as a more practical, proportionate system.

Dave Patterson: When Putin Visits India, the White House Pays Attention

Since the end of the Cold War, the United States has developed a fragile relationship with India as a counterweight to China and Russia. So the White House watched closely when Russian President Vladimir Putin joined Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi earlier this month for the 23rd India-Russia Annual Summit to assess what strategic agreements the two leaders had forged.

Peter Dunne: RMA reform

It was ironic that the very week former Prime Minister Sir Geoffrey Palmer lambasted Parliament and recent governments for too much rushed legislation and excessive use of Urgency, the government announced the repeal of his flagship Resource Management Act and then took Urgency to pass the first stage of its reforms through Parliament.

Dr Oliver Hartwich: The US ditching the rules-based order leaves NZ living on a prayer

Let us try a brief experiment.

Here is a statement of American strategic priorities: “The United States cannot survive as a free and independent nation if a hostile power dominates any region of the world from which it could threaten the US. That is why we have binding treaty commitments with our allies to help defend their territorial integrity.”

Simon O'Connor: Do as I say, not as I do

How did we reach a moment where a Prime Minister saying she wanted to punch another MP in the face is seen as acceptable by many?

I’m not sure about you, but it is hard reconcile the words of Jacinda Ardern who on one hand said she wanted to punch a political colleague in the face and yet on the other is discussing wanting a different type of politics, one based around kindness and decency. This contradiction has more recently come to light during an interview with UK talk show host, Graham Norton.

Kerre Woodham: The Supreme Court ruling on disabled carers makes sense

Two parents who care for their severely disabled adult children have been recognised as homeworkers and are now entitled to receive the minimum wage, along with other associated employment conditions, after a landmark ruling yesterday from the country's highest court. They're now deemed to be employees of disability support services. And the families who battled to be recognised for the work that they do are hopeful the Supreme Court decision paves the way for other carers who are in a similar situation.

David Farrar: Defending Nicola, and critiquing her

Media have reported that there may be a debate between Nicola Willis and Ruth Richardson over fiscal policy. I thought it would be useful to lay out what I see as the key fiscal problem, and put context around it.

Now I’m not unbiased here. Nicola I regard as a long standing friend. We were opposition staffer colleagues together over 20 years ago. She is one of the most awesome and competent people I know. I also admire how she has managed to be an amazing mother to four young kids, while also having a successful career at senior levels in business and politics.

 Thursday December 11, 2025 

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Geoff Parker: The Mythologising of the “Māori Economy”

The assertion that the “Māori economy” sits at the centre of New Zealand’s future prosperity is not just exaggerated — it rests on a category error. There is no separate Māori economy. There is only the New Zealand economy, within which Māori individuals and entities participate like everyone else. Rebranding a portion of ordinary commercial activity according to the owners’ ancestry doesn’t create a new economic engine — it creates a political narrative. And like most political narratives, it thrives on selective numbers, romanticism, and the avoidance of basic economic reality.

Heather du Plessis-Allan: The RMA change is good, but prepare for issues

Cast your mind back a couple of weeks to what the boss of Auckland Port Roger Gray said.

He told us New Zealand is a country that says 'no' so often, Miami cruise bosses he spoke to had taken to calling us 'No Zealand'.

Yesterday the Government unveiled its plan for how we stop that, which is a rewrite of the RMA because the RMA is part of the problem.

Perspective with Ryan Bridge: What will the Willis-Richardson debate do for Nicola's credibility?

This Nicola Willis-Ruth Richardson showdown looks like it'll go ahead next week after the HYEFU release.

As you'll know from listening to this show on Monday night, Nicola's not happy with Ruth. And Ruth isn't too happy with Nicola.

Bob Edlin: Luxon and the art of saying plenty without answering questions

The PM had a simple question to answer: is the Government aiming for house prices to appreciate – or to decline?

But to answer it at Question Time in Parliament yesterday, Christopher Luxon would have to say that either he had got his Government’s policy intentions wrong – or his Housing Minister had.

Labour Leader Chris Hipkins put him on the spot by asking:

Lindsay Mitchell: Hollow Gesture Replaces Real Action

Do you ever wonder what the Office of the Children's Commissioner - with an annual budget of $11.5 million and 36 full time staff (83 percent female with three quarters earning in excess of $100,000) - does?

Well, wonder no more.

Chris Lynch: Christchurch mouldy lunches investigation traced to meals left at school says investigation

A New Zealand Food Safety full investigation into the mouldy lunch scandal at Haeata Community Campus has found the problem has come from meals left onsite rather than any wider failure in the School Lunch Collective.

Brendan O'Neill: Elon Musk is right about the EU

The Brussels oligarchy really is a menace to liberty and sovereignty.

Europhiles – the most maddening tribe on the internet – are coming for Elon Musk. After Musk dared to blaspheme against the Brussels bureaucracy that they so fervently simp for, they called him a stooge of Vladimir Putin. ‘Putin wants a weaker EU’, said the EU-loving centrists of Renew Europe, and now Musk is doing his bidding by calling for a ‘break-up [of] the EU’. It’s the same low trick every time – utter one word of dissent against their beloved EU oligarchy and they’ll have you down as a running dog of Russia.