Breaking Views Update: Week of 15.6.25

Monday June 16, 2025 

News:
Bilingual road signs: Ministers dodge questions over abandoned plans
Virginia Fallon is a senior writer and columnist based in Wellington, covering features and investigations.

It caused months of debate, inflamed racial politics and cost the country more than $1 million: who remembers the plan for bilingual road signs?

Zoran Rakovic: Shared Environment, Shared Love: Ending the Myth That Only Some of Us Care for New Zealand

New Zealand’s environment belongs to all who cherish it. It’s time to challenge the myth that only one culture holds the key to true ecological care.

It has become a common refrain in official documents, consultation papers, and government-funded summits across New Zealand: Māori are presented as the natural stewards of New Zealand's environment, the only true guardians of the land and waters, the only people whose relationship to the environment is described as spiritual, noble, and ancient. One would almost believe that environmental care was invented in the rohe of iwi, rather than an instinct present among countless peoples who have lived in harmony with the natural world.

Dr David Lillis: On the Quality of Opinion Pieces in Our Media

State Your Case but Leave Out the Ad Hominem

Many of us read with interest a piece by Sir Ian Taylor, published in Stuff of 10 June (Taylor, 2025). This particular article is about Mr. David Seymour, leader of the Act Party and current Deputy Prime Minister of New Zealand. Clearly, Sir Ian disagrees with Mr. Seymour on various political and social issues and he is quite at liberty to do so. However, this piece generated a degree of negative reaction amongst many within my own circle of friends and associates, even among those who do not necessarily support the Act Party.

John Robertson: Make New Zealand Secular - The Fight Against State-Sanctioned Spiritual Bullsh*t

2025 edition: where your kid might get a morning prayer to Māori gods, your government job may come with a compulsory haka, and if you question any of it, you’re a racist. That’s the country we’re living in—where forced cultural rituals are the norm, not the exception, and where secularism is now just a dusty concept buried under a pile of race-based laws and bureaucratic guilt.

So here’s a little mission I’ve cooked up: Make New Zealand Secular. That’s right. No more institutionalised spiritual theatre, no more taxpayer-funded tribalism, and no more guilt-tripping the entire population into pretending we’re all spiritually connected to a goddamn tree because the Ministry of Ethnic Cosiness said so.

Insights From Social Media

Steven Mark Gaskell writes > Māori Unemployment? Let’s Stop Blaming Everyone Else

Here we go again. Another report telling us that Māori unemployment is 8.4% nearly double the national average. And of course, out roll the usual explanations: structural inequality, systemic racism, not enough government funding, not enough iwi investment, not enough jobs in the regions... not enough of something that isn’t personal responsibility.

Let’s just be honest for once: maybe it’s time to stop blaming everyone else and look in the mirror.

Brendan O'Neill: A surgical strike against Islamist tyranny

Israel’s daring raid on Iran has dealt a devastating blow to a barbarous, war-mongering regime.

The world has awoken to news of a decapitation. Early this morning, Israel time, the air force of the Jewish State struck with astonishing precision against the tyrants and infrastructure of the Iranian regime. The top dogs of the Islamic republic have been taken out. Its nuclear facilities have been reduced to ashen wreckage. None of us can afford the luxury of political aloofness in this moment, far less that moral cowardice that masquerades as pacifism. Too much is at stake. Events compel us to stir from our insouciance and take a side for once.

Dave Patterson: Tit-for-Tat Bombings as Israel Strives to Ensure Iran Never Goes Nuclear

Israel ran out of patience as nuclear talks with Iran seem to be going nowhere.

It was just a matter of time. Israel launched a major strike against Iran’s nuclear research and military sites early Friday morning, keeping the promise of making sure Iran doesn’t achieve nuclear weapons. The world’s top sponsor of terrorism didn’t take it sitting down, however, launching hundreds of missiles into Israel later in the day.

Point of Order: Weren’t we supposed to be better off?

It should send a shiver down an already-cold spine, when the regular media starts running an article headed “The path to cheap power will be very expensive”.

So warm up your neurones with the latest from Reuters, which explains why current net zero strategies are failing – on their own terms.

Nick Clark: Smart Support for Councillors – AI Tools for Local Government

What happens when elected officials cannot understand the issues well enough to make good decisions?

Local councillors often receive hundreds of pages of complex reports just days before critical votes, covering financial modelling, engineering specifications and legal implications. They get no independent advice or analytical resources beyond what they can assemble themselves.

Roger Partridge: “Trickle-down,” again

Few ideas haunt economic debate as relentlessly as “trickle-down.” Perhaps it’s the appeal of attacking something that no one has ever argued.

The theory supposedly claims that making the rich richer benefits everyone as wealth “trickles down.” It sounds plausible and feels unfair – making it the perfect villain.

Dr James Kierstead: How to put teeth in the bill

At midnight last night, submissions closed on the Education and Training Amendment Bill (No. 2). The bill would introduce new measures to protect academic freedom, which is defined in the Education and Training Act as ‘the freedom of academic staff and students, within the law, to question and test received wisdom, to put forward new ideas, and to state controversial or unpopular opinions.’

Sunday June 15, 2025 

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Ani O'Brien: A Week Is A Long Time - 14 June 2025

A NZ Politics weekly wrap-up

Total system failure resulted in teen’s death and no one wanted to talk about it

In January 2023, in New Zealand, a 17-year old girl died of starvation alone in emergency accommodation and wasn’t found for two days. When her distraught parents arrived to see her body a police officer scolded them for using her name and female pronouns because she “identified as a boy”. This was the final insult to injury for parents who had fought New Zealand social services (government and NGOs) over their child for years…

Perspective with Heather du Plessis-Allan: Speed is of the essence for the Air India crash investigators

Let me tell you about my colleague Kylie's reaction to that Air India plane crash last night. 

She was in bed. She was playing on her phone as you do, and the news came in at about 9 o'clock. 

Immediately, she looked, she suspected it, looked up what kind of plane it was, exactly as she thought: a Boeing. 

Mike's Minute: It's revealed Adrian Orr left with little dignity

It's hardly a surprise, is it? Adrian looks at what Nicola is offering to run the place, packs a sad, and is off.

It’s a pathetic end to a tumultuous period in which we, the people who paid him, deserved an awful lot better.

Tui Vaeau: Why the Regulatory Standards Bill Terrifies the Wellington Priesthood.......

The Bureaucrats Who Cried Wolf: Why the Regulatory Standards Bill Terrifies the Wellington Priesthood

There is a peculiar scent that lingers whenever the Wellington set begin howling in unison: the stench of self-preservation. One whiff of accountability and the entire public health-industrial complex recoils like a possum in torchlight. The latest outburst of institutional hysteria? The Regulatory Standards Bill (RSB) - a modest, methodical attempt to reintroduce sanity, transparency, and adult judgment into New Zealand's lawmaking process.

Insights From Social Media

"Your Rates at Work: Fixing Feelings, Not Footpaths" 

Stephen Mark Gaskell writes > If you thought your council rates just paid for roads, rubbish, and the odd library, think again. In modern New Zealand, rates are less about fixing potholes and more about fixing your mindset one Māori engagement strategy and rainbow pedestrian crossing at a time.

Amin Saikal: Why did Israel defy Trump.....

Why did Israel defy Trump – and risk a major war – by striking Iran now? And what happens next?

Alarmed by an intelligence assessment that Iran will be able to produce nuclear weapons within months if not weeks, Israel has launched a massive air campaign aiming to destroy the country’s nuclear program.

Bob Edlin: Teachers say Treaty must be included in our English curriculum......

Teachers say Treaty must be included in our English curriculum – but are we envied by overseas schools?

Time is running out, if you want to contribute to the consultation on a draft intermediate and secondary school English curriculum that reportedly prioritises Shakespeare, grammar and 19th century literature. A report from RNZ says the consultation “ closes on Friday”, which is today.

Ele Ludemann: More than carpets

Kāinga Ora’s decision to use wool carpets in new houses is good financially and environmentally.

Using wool shouldn’t stop there where there are a lot more uses for this wonderful fibre than in flooring.

There’s: