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?

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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:

Mike's Minute: A deeper dive into the PISA numbers

As big of a fan as I am of good news, something wasn’t right in the latest PISA report.

Like all reports, you can look at stats in any number of ways.

For example, if you want to feel good about yourself have a look at the Australian results. They're not good.

Philip Crump: The AI Factory That Needs More Power Than New Zealand

From enriched uranium to artificial intelligence, one Ohio site captures the scale of the next industrial revolution.

In its most recent earnings report, Nvidia crushed Wall Street expectations powered by accelerating AI hardware demand. The company’s total revenue surged 106% year-on-year to US$96.22 billion, easily beating analyst estimates of US$92.37 billion.

Friday September 11, 2026 

                   ⇩ 

NZCPR Newsletter: A Fragile Recovery

A debate is raging over the state of New Zealand’s economy, as we head towards the election. Some say a recovery is well underway, while others claim it remains in crisis.

Both can’t be right, so let’s see what the data shows.

But first, some background. 

Mike Butler: Parihaka – back to basics

A new book titled The long road to Parihaka by Piers Seed goes back to the eye-witness 19th century written reports to cut through “a morass of emotion, ideology and myth-making” that now encase the story, according to author Piers Seed.

Seed, an electrical engineer who turned his analytical skills to writing history, says “history is not a soundbite but something with context and perspective”.

The long road is a continuation of his earlier book, The Spark, The Logs, and The Gasoline, in which he uses the same incisive, back-to-basics approach to New Zealand’s 19th century civil war that has variously called the “Maori wars”, “New Zealand wars”, “sovereignty wars”, and, most recently, “land wars”.

Perspective with Heather du Plessis-Allan: Will ACT's big plan actually scrap the Waitangi Tribunal?

You know what ACT's Waitangi Tribunal policy is? In my opinion, it's the kind of policy you release when you don't actually want to do the thing the policy gives the impression you're going to do.

ACT's headline policy is that it will scrap the Waitangi Tribunal, which many people, including me, may see as a good idea because the tribunal has gone completely off piste. It has started to resemble a branch of the Māori Party, finding in real time that one Government policy after another breaches the Treaty of Waitangi.

Ani O'Brien: Your KiwiSaver owns the companies they want to tax

The Greens and Te Pāti Māori want to tax capital harder. Unfortunately, ordinary New Zealanders own rather a lot of it.

It is easy to shrug off new tax proposals meant to target the “Super Rich” as not something that will affect those of us who don’t have investment portfolios and who have to actually look at the price on the tray of mince before deciding if we buy it. Most New Zealanders don’t think of themselves as the “Super Rich” and most don’t own massive corporations. And this is what political parties count on when they propose vast new tax changes and frame them up as hitting the rich end of town.

Pee Kay: KiwiMart

Chloe and Marama have placed our supermarket businesses firmly in the spotlight recently.

This video below is about US supermarket but the message is still relevant for NZ.

The compulsory purchasing of 120 NZ supermarkets has to be one of the Greens most nonsensical policy ever!

Paul Homewood: Greenland’s Icecap Grew This Year

Greenland’s icecap is melting away thanks to global warming, at least that is what we are told. According to the EU’s European State of the Climate 2025 Report, the ice sheet lost 139 Gt last year. They say that is equivalent to about 1.5 times the amount of ice stored in all the glaciers in the European Alps, and raised global mean sea level by 0.4 mm. (A gigatonne is one billion tonnes.) Since 1972, losses have amounted to 5,747 Gt. The rate of ice loss has increased by around five times since the 1980s and is expected to continue increasing beyond the end of the century.

Brendan O'Neill, The UK government has swallowed the Great Lie of Israelophobia

If it wasn’t for Israel, if it wasn’t for that monstrous, marauding state, there’d be peace in the Middle East. This is the Great Lie of Israelophobia. It’s the truthless, venomous current powering the global loathing for the Jewish State. You hear it on the street, on campuses, in mosques: that peace demands the muzzling, if not the outright destruction, of the bloodthirsty Jewish nation. Yesterday, staggeringly, we heard a version of this lie from the foreign secretary of the United Kingdom.

JC: Vote For What You Don’t Want.

Voting to keep the left out of power: there is one way, and one way only, that this can be achieved with certainty – tactical voting. Even within this framework you have to be careful how you cast your vote to create the maximum advantage for the right and maximum destruction on the left. I will attempt to explain the means by which this can be achieved.

David Farrar: Promising PISA results

The Herald reports:

The post-Covid collapse in education has halted amid signs of a narrowing equity gap, as disadvantaged students improved at higher rates than their richer peers.

That’s according to New Zealand’s 2025 Pisa (Programme for International Student Assessment) results, released this evening, which is a benchmark for 15-year-olds in the OECD in science, maths and reading.