Breaking Views Update: Week of 30.8.26

Sunday August 30, 2026 

News:
Labour promises more than $20m a year to revive Māori trades training scheme
Labour is promising to invest more than $20 million a year in a dedicated trades training scheme for Māori if elected in November.

Perspective with Heather du Plessis-Allan: If you want to cut taxes, accept the bad roads

Now listen, if you're one of the people celebrating Chris Hipkins for promising to cancel fuel tax rises if he wins the election, can I just warn you about the implications of him doing that?

And to be fair, it's not just him, okay?

Ani O'Brien: A week is a long time: 29 August 2026

Election 2026: The Great New Zealand Tax-Off

Christopher Luxon has promised “no new taxes” if National is returned to government. This makes a hell of a lot of sense given the opposition parties appear to be trying to outdo each other with the amount of new taxes they are announcing. Except Labour who swear they will not adopt these “bottom lines” of their coalition partners.

Gary Judd KC: Mumbo-jumbo and all that

The Mullahs of Mumbo-jumbo advance the cause of racist superiority

The New Zealand Law Society (NZLS), in partnership with its provider of continuing education is advertising “Tikanga and the law”. Interestingly enough, in a Freudian slip, the advertisement betrays the reality, that tikanga is not law. It says, “hear firsthand perspectives from those working at the intersection of tikanga and the law.”

The advertisement treats tikanga as something distinct from law while promoting its use in lawyers’ professional and ethical decision-making. It forms part of a wider NZLS programme that risks turning ideological precepts into professional obligations.

Graham Adams: Māori gods rule the CRL underworld

Anyone reading the headlines last month announcing that Auckland’s underground City Rail Link had been “blessed” would not have needed to read the accompanying article to guess that it wasn’t Catholic or Anglican bishops conducting the ritual.

It was, of course, mana whenua, who performed a formal dawn mahi ōkawa (blessing) of the new CRL stations.

The purpose of the blessing — led by Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei and supported by seven other local clans — was allegedly to “provide important tikanga and cultural safety ahead of upcoming ‘First Look’ public open day events and the commencement of passenger services”.

Barry Strauss: Was the Trojan Horse a War Crime?

The modern heart of the filmed Odyssey is a transgression and its consequences. But how did the ancients see the epic ruse?

Christopher Nolan’s hit movie The Odyssey is entertaining, but it’s not Homer. It has as much to do with Homer Simpson or Homer Price as it does with the Greek bard. The film is neither a documentary nor a simple retelling. It is, rather, a riff on the work of the great epic poet, the way John Coltrane’s jazz version of “My Favorite Things” riffs on The Sound of Music’s Broadway original. Some of the story told in the film isn’t even in Homer but comes from other ancient writings, notably Virgil’s Aeneid, a Latin epic. That’s showbiz.

Roger Partridge: The Discovery of the Good Life

A Case for Liberalism from What We Cannot Know

Vera Rubin spent her career measuring the rotation of galaxies. When she began, the major observatories were closed to women. She pushed her way in anyway. In 1965, she became the first woman permitted to use the telescope at Palomar. By the 1970s, she had produced evidence that there is far more matter in the universe than we can see – the dark matter problem now central to physics. She lived a life no woman of her grandmother’s generation could have foreseen.

Dr Oliver Hartwich: Spurred by heat from Trump, Iceland votes on reopening frozen EU talks

I have always liked Iceland. My first visit was on a cruise ship in the mid-1990s. Reykjavík felt like a town that had grown from a fishing village, and the country behind was mostly empty.

A few years later, I returned for a proper holiday. It confirmed that earlier impression and added more peculiar observations like tiny but ridiculously priced hotel rooms or spotting puffin on the menu of a restaurant in the capital. In the end, I passed on that and had the most expensive pizza in my life instead.

Kerre Woodham: Politicians need to stop ruling out raising the fuel tax

Labour has jumped on the no new taxes bandwagon, promising that if they're elected, there'll be no increase on the fuel excise duty for their first term.

I don't know why Labour and National don't just join forces and be done with it and leave the left hand side to the Greens, Te Pāti Māori and the Opportunity Party.

Barrie Davis: Captain Cook by Tony Ballantyne

Captain Cook and the Unsettled Afterlives of Empire is the latest book by Tony Ballantyne, who is Distinguished Chair Poutoko Taiea in History at the University of Otago – Ōtākou Whakaihu Waka. Ballantyne writes (The Post, 8 August, here):

“Cook was not a great hero, but a flawed, uncomfortable and difficult cultural ancestor, who provokes and challenges, reminding us of the weight of history and the painful legacies of an imperial past.”

Bob Edlin: Media and the matter of Maori tribal links....

....why are they mentioned in some reports but omitted in others?

A PoO reader has drawn attention to two articles published in The Post earlier this week.

One was headed Former Māori fisheries chief executive sentenced over child exploitation material

The other was headed The Wellington teen charting a course to the stars.

David Farrar: Green MP says Govt MPs are worse than Adolf Eichmann!!

A speech in Parliament by Green MP Steve Abel which is so deranged, that it should make him inadmissible for ministerial office. In response to the bill which simply states climate change policy is to be formulated by Parliament, not the courts, Steve Abel said:

Saturday August 29, 2026 

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Robin Grieve: Policies based on need, not race are more equitable

Increasingly, we are told that equity is important and to achieve it the Maori people of New Zealand need special treatment.

The argument is that, because Maori as a population experience poorer outcomes in areas such as life expectancy, specific measures targeted at Maori are necessary to close the gap.

Clive Bibby: Another Shakespearian Gem

"There is a tide in the affairs of men which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune"

I make no apologies for repeatedly quoting the Bard in some of my humble offerings in the columns of this blog.

Davina Smolders states her case to the Far North District Council

Davina Smolders states her case, in this short video, before the Far North District councillors voted to remove her from the council’s Te Kūaka committee, following her public criticism of its structure, unelected iwi and hapū representatives and Te Tiriti partnerships.

Breaking Views Update: Week of 23.8.26

Saturday August 29, 2026 

News:
Invercargill council votes against Māori ward following 'slam dunk' feedback
Invercargill city councillors have voted against establishing a Māori ward, opting to stick with the status quo.

The decision was made at a meeting this week where council manager Michael Morris said there had been overwhelming feedback from Te Rūnaka o Awarua and Waihōpai Rūnaka to not progress with a ward.

Ryan Bridge: Are we about to witness the return of the pothole?

Are we about to witness the return of the pothole?

Both Labour and National want to freeze increases to the petrol tax.

Labour would stop 22c a litre over three years. The Nats probably won't, coalition willing, go ahead with the 12c hike pencilled in for January.

Nathan Smith: How To Properly Fix A Shringking Population

Much of the talk about collapsing birth rates assumes that every generation must be replaced. Don’t believe it. A falling birth rate is not, by itself, a crisis. The real crisis is in figuring out why your children aren’t having their own children.

The only people genuinely worried about low birth rates are the farmers of men who want GDP always to go up. After all, they can’t make much money on only a handful of peasants. Rather, a low birth rate is simply a sign that an ecological limit has been reached.

Dr Don Brash: Why The Reserve Bank Should Remain Focussed On Inflation

As we approach the 2026 election, both Labour and NZ First want to change the Reserve Bank’s monetary policy mandate from its current single focus on the control of inflation to a dual mandate - controlling inflation while also maximising employment.

And to a great many people that sounds like a sensible change.

But it's not.