Breaking Views Update: Week of 24.5.26

Monday May 25, 2026 

News:
‘Gruelling’ treaty settlement ends with $6 million for local Hauraki iwi
The final reading of a treaty settlement bill has marked a victory decades in the making for a Hauraki iwi.

Ngāti Tara Tokanui is set to receive $6 million in financial and commercial redress from the Crown, along with nine total cultural redress sites and a two-year right to purchase the land Paeroa College sits on if it becomes surplus.

Sean Rush: New Zealand is planning for a climate future scientists now reject

New Zealand is planning for a climate future scientists now reject. And fixing it will require more than a policy tweak

New Zealand’s coastal climate change planning system is built on a simple legal standard: councils must plan for the likely effects of climate change, using the best available evidence.

But across the country, planning is being anchored to a future that scientists now say is implausible—and, legally, should never have been treated as “likely” in the first place.

Colinxy: The Evolving Māori Language — and Who Controls It

Every so often, I encounter the claim that “most of the Māori language is made up.” Is that fair?

Only partly. All living languages evolve. They absorb new words, shift meanings, and quietly abandon older vocabulary. Māori has survived into the 21st century, so of course it undergoes the same pressures as English, French, or Japanese.

But the real issue is not whether Māori changes. It is how it changes — organically or by decree.

Dr Benno Blaschke: Stop counting houses. Start watching prices.

Housing targets have long been a political football – and an emotional subject. Would it not be better to take some of the heat out of the housing debate and ask more systematically how we could better plan for future housing supply?

The housing target for Auckland shrank twice in mere weeks as central government searched for a politically acceptable number. But planning-by-numbers is part of the problem.

Net Zero Watch Samizdat: Britain loosens sanctions on Russian fuels

UK

UK loosens sanctions on Russian fuel

The UK government has watered-down sanctions on Russian diesel and jet fuel amid the ongoing energy crisis. Miliband is closing down our refineries and banning new North Sea licences so we can fund Putin’s war machine. RUSI estimates the policy will gift Putin £1bn in additional revenues. 

Dr Eric Crampton: Amending alcohol

An alcohol licensing regime should have one big job: to ensure that licensed outlets operate responsibly, first by vetting applications and then by monitoring compliance.

Its measures should be proportionate to the risks being addressed, and cost-effective. Licensing should not be the primary tool for reducing every kind of harmful alcohol-related behaviour. It needs other policies targeted at specific harms. Without those, too much of the burden of harm reduction falls on local alcohol policies and licensing conditions.

Henry Olsen: Pride and Prejudice and Zealanders

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single politician in possession of good polling must be in want of an election.

Similarly, politicians lacking public support are wary of the electoral meatgrinder that awaits them. Unfortunately, when politicians try to course correct and avoid misfortune, they risk exposing both their pride and their prejudice.

Bruce Cotterill: AI must simplify, not complicate, our way of life

I watched a video the other day. It was sent to me by a friend. It was quickly obvious that the video was created by artificial intelligence, or AI as the moniker now reads. My friend thought it was real. It looked real. And my subsequent research revealed that the story it told was real.

The video featured a textile factory, with people going about their day jobs of manufacturing, colouring and even sewing fabric. The product output was apparel, canvas bags and shelter cloths.

Roger Childs: A well-paid Chief Maori Officer at Wellington City Council

Well compensated bureaucrats in Wellington—33 employees on the Wellington City Council Rich List earn $200,000.or more

The Wellington Ratepayers’ Alliance put a full-page advertisement in The Post on Wednesday May 20 listing the rich list. All 33 bureaucrats earn more than Mayor Andrew Little starting with Town Clerk Matt Prosser on $531,616. Most are called “Chiefs” or “Managers”. At number 34, the Mayor gets 201,947.

Roger Partridge: Commission still confusing competition with counting

Imagine that a public health authority publishes a report on the nation’s diet. After 22 years of data and a 100-page methodology, it announces the four least nutritious food groups. They are: beverages, snacks, prepared meals and condiments.

The categories tell you nothing, because beverages include both water and vodka, and snacks include both carrot sticks and deep-fried Mars bars. The four least nutritious food groups are not food groups at all. They are categories with contents differing so much that any encompassing judgement about them is meaningless.

Sunday May 24, 2026 

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Hugh Perrett: Tikanga is NOT law , is not a legal system and has no role to play or place in our legal system

Final Consolidated Legal Submission

TO:  Hon. Chris Bishop, Prime Minister Luxon, and Ministers,

Further to my earlier submission , I wish to restate the constitutional position with clarity and precision.

When Māori chiefs willingly, voluntarily, and without coercion signed the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840, they “ceded FOREVER the ENTIRE SOVEREIGNTY of their country” to the British Crown. In return, they were granted “the rights and privileges of British subjects”, which necessarily placed all inhabitants of New Zealand under British law, which became the law of New Zealand.

Mike's Minute: The public service cut is to be admired

Is the Nicola Willis public service announcement to be admired or condemned?

I think the former, on balance.

They should have done it properly two years ago and they didn’t, hence they probably should not be back here now, unless this was their Machiavellian plan all along.

Ani O'Brien: A week is a long time: 23 May 2026

Public service bloat meets fiscal reality

The biggest political story this week was the Government’s announcement of a public sector overhaul aimed at reducing the number of public servants. There were about 47,250 full-time equivalents in 2017 when Labour took office and that had shot up to 65,700 by 2023 when they left. It is now at 63,657 and the plan is to get it down to 55,000 by 2029. The Government says the reforms will save approximately $2.4 billion over four years and involve agency mergers, spending cuts, and increased use of digitisation and AI across the public service. Departments have been instructed to find 2% savings this year, rising to 5% over the next two years, while ministries are being encouraged to propose merger options and shared-service models.

Geoff Parker: Te Ao Māori Values – Now Apparently A Farming Superpower

According to the latest levy-and-government-funded burst of agricultural mysticism, New Zealand dairy farming has finally discovered the secret ingredient to producing milk: whakapapa workshops, cultural storytelling, and endless references to “relationships with the land.”

Apparently grass, water, fertiliser, hard work, genetics, and modern science were only part of the equation all along. The real breakthrough, we are told, is “Te Ao Māori values.”

Ryan Bridge: What's cruel versus fair in the social housing debate

Nicola Willis' Lotto comment yesterday was clumsy, but in the end, much ado about nothing.

The politics of this housing thing are pretty simple. You've got 80,000 social housing tenants who probably weren't going to vote National, who now definitely won't vote National.

John McLean: Pity The Young

The category conspicuously absent from Woke’s hierarchy of victimhood

Youth doesn’t feature in Woke’s whacky matrix of discrimination and privilege, victimhood and oppression. Which says it all about the analytic uselessness of Woke Intersectionality. Because in the Western Word, and in New Zealand in particular, young people are as hard done by as any other group.

David Harvey: Drawing a Line

Personal Beliefs Should be of no Interest to Professional Regulators

Professional regulatory bodies have very wide powers. Some argue that those powers, including mandatory training in areas not directly related to the profession in question, are too wide.

A Regulated Professions Neutrality Bill, which will shortly be released for discussion, addresses those issues.

This article discusses aspects of the proposed Bill. The proposed Bill may be found here.

Dr Oliver Hartwich: A warning from NZ on housing tax changes

When Jim Chalmers stood up on budget night and announced the end of negative gearing on established properties, he assured Australians it was worth breaking a promise for “right and justifiable reasons.”

Grant Robertson, New Zealand’s finance minister, said something remarkably similar in March 2021 when he broke his own promise not to extend the bright-line test on property. Robertson called his earlier commitment “too definitive.” A New Zealand Herald columnist observed that this sounded a lot like “too honest.”

New Zealanders know how this story ends.

Bob Edlin: Disciplinary tribunal shies from delivering knockout blow to teacher who assaulted a woman

What mischief must you do to be deregistered as a teacher?

PoO asks after reading an RNZ report about a teacher, Kahukura Bentson, who has kept his deregistration in spite of convictions which included the assault of a woman.

A teacher who grabbed a woman’s head and slammed it into the floor has been allowed to retain his registration.