Breaking Views Update: Week of 13.9.26

Sunday September 13, 2026 

News:
Rangitahi and Molesworth: tracing a station’s name
The recent announcement that the operation of Molesworth Station, the iconic high-country farm spanning 180,000 hectares across Marlborough and North Canterbury, is to be transferred to Ngāi Tahu Farming has drawn new attention to the station’s history.

For Ngāi Tahu and Ngāti Kuri, the area has long been known as Rangitahi, an ancestral landscape woven into their whakapapa. The name is likely to become the primary reference for the station under its new Māori operators.

Duncan Garner: Auckland Transport Hires Māori Outcomes Executive

Aucklanders are getting hammered by rates, congestion, and failing infrastructure, yet Auckland Transport is advertising for a Head of Māori Outcomes reporting straight to the CEO. A passenger is a passenger, and standard public transport should deliver one service for everyone. We look at how bloated public sector bureaucracy keeps expanding while the basics remain broken.

Click to view

Perspective with Andrew Dickens: Will the CRL be worth the wait?

It's a massive weekend for Auckland as the much-awaited CRL, the City Rail Link, finally opens to the public. And there is excitement. Five and a half billion dollars and 10 years of chaos have come to this. The question will be asked: was it all worth it?

Ani O'Brien: A week is a long time: 12 September 2026

Election 2026: Nobody told Willie Jackson there’d be a test

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.

DTNZ: Saudi oil output crashes to 35-year low

Saudi Arabia’s crude oil production has fallen to its lowest level since 1990 as escalating conflict across the Middle East disrupts the kingdom’s major export corridors, according to Bloomberg.

Riyadh informed OPEC that crude production dropped by approximately 1.9 million barrels per day (bpd) in August, bringing total output down to 6.238 million bpd, Bloomberg reported, citing OPEC’s latest monthly figures.

Roger Partridge: The Engine of Discontent....

....Why democracy’s defenders should pay more attention to the price of a house

There is a story that countries in the English-speaking world like to tell themselves about houses. Rising house prices made them rich. Not the speculators and not the banks – the ordinary families who bought a home, paid it off through recessions and redundancies, and woke one morning to find themselves wealthy. The equity in the family home funded the business, the renovation and the retirement.

Richard Prebble: Abolish the Tribunal, Preserve the Treaty

ACT will complete the historical Treaty claims filed before 1 September 2008, end the Waitangi Tribunal’s contemporary jurisdiction, and wind it up once its historical work is finished, announced ACT Leader David Seymour.

I was a member of the Lange Government that extended the Tribunal’s jurisdiction back to 1840. Despite the difficulties that decision created, on balance I think it was the right decision.

We should be proud that New Zealand was founded not by conquest, but by treaty.

Graham Adams: Decolonisation agenda drives race-based MAPAS

The elephant in the room when Guyon Espiner interviewed David Seymour last week about race-based entry to medical schools was the fact his former wife Emma began her career as a doctor via Auckland University’s Māori and Pacific Admission Scheme. And, according to Emma Espiner (as she was then), he had encouraged her to apply.

Act has pledged to abolish MAPAS and it would have been fascinating if Guyon had explained why he fully supported someone gaining a place through a pathway that offers preferential treatment based on ancestry.

Bob Edlin: Grudges, a soft crime stance and racism...

....it’s what Rakesh Naidoo wouldn’t say that featured in RNZ interview

RNZ this week highlighted the phlegmatism of a Labour candidate under the headline –

No hard feelings: Rakesh Naidoo refuses to hit back after police row

Some readers might have sensed an element of disappointment at RNZ that Naidoo did not react as they had hoped to their questions about the way he had been treated when he resigned from the force.

David Farrar: Just say no

The Herald reports:

The Eiffel Tower closed to the public on Monday after staff went on strike over the removal of female employees during a private visit by a Hindu religious group.

Members of the Bochasanwasi Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha (Baps) – an ultra-conservative Hindu denomination from India – visited the tower on Saturday as part of wider celebrations to inaugurate a temple built by the group near Paris.

Mike's Minute: It hasn't been a good week for Labour

Is this the week the tide turned for the Labour Party and their chances of Government slipped away?

It's indisputably true to say it hasn’t been their week, or even a good week.

Some of the stuff that’s been bubbling for a while came to a, sort-of, head.

Saturday September 12, 2026 

                   ⇩ 

Anglo Saxon: New Zealand superannuation - Proposed reform of entitlement to benefits.

In this episode superannuation and welfare entitlements are on the table but not a leading election issue. But what has been proposed and what effect will it have?

Click to view

Breaking Views Update: Week of 6.9.26

Saturday September 12, 2026 

News:
New Māori leadership roles to shape the future of education and research
Two new senior academic appointments are set to shape the future of Māori education and research at Waipapa Taumata Rau, University of Auckland.

Mel Wall has been appointed Associate Pro Vice-Chancellor Māori (Education), while Professor Sarah-Jane Paine takes up the role of Associate Pro Vice-Chancellor Māori (Research).

Alwyn Poole: I Know the post is long but PISA is a big deal.

Hello KBers … if it is too long don’t read it … but the outcomes of our education system are important.

What NZ’s 2025 PISA Results Tell Us

Alwyn Poole — with analytical/formatting support from AI

General Analysis

My take on implications

Bob Edlin: ACT’s pledge to lop road-tax spending on highway pou....

.....raises questions about the payoff – and the total expense

A report for The Detail yesterday raised questions about ACT’s pledge to remove motorway art from road project budgets.

It noted that advocates of the artworks say the effort to save us money will make us poorer.

The report tells us:

Peter Dunne: The Polls Trendline

This week’s Taxpayers Union/Curia poll attracted far more attention than a single poll should. This was principally because it recorded support for Labour now being below what it was at the time of its defeat at the last election. However, at their best, polls are but a snapshot in time, with the long-term trends they disclose being far more significant than the individual result. So, it would be unwise to treat this Taxpayers Union/Curia poll, or any other single poll for that matter, in isolation from the wider context.

Roger Partridge: Why making the law is Parliament’s job

Two speeches from the Crown’s most senior lawyers over the past month have answered a question that should never have been in doubt: Who makes the law?

Attorney-General Chris Bishop spoke to the Law Association on 6 August. Solicitor-General Anna Adams KC spoke to the Legal Research Foundation last Thursday. Both answered emphatically: making the law is Parliament’s job.

JC: The Writing Is on the Wall

‘The coalition has been returned to power.’ Two polls out this month, the Taxpayers Union/Curia and Roy Morgan, paint a pretty gloomy picture for the left. The Herald Poll of Polls paints a similar dismal portrayal of the road to oblivion or, perhaps more aptly, Damascus. The Labour Party is bad enough in itself but add in the Greens and the Māori Party and on top, unlikely, the Opportunity party. This is a recipe for disaster. If you look at the various policies coming from the parties on the left, they are a potpourri of either being unworkable or totally racist. Neither outcomes have much electoral appeal.

David Farrar: They’re anti-immigration, not Nazis

A lot of media reporting on the election result in Saxony-Arnholt. It has two million people and is in former East Germany.

Their Parliament is called a Landtag and they just went to the polls. The results so far are: