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.

Peter Dunne: Kingmakers

In the wake of the rise of the Opportunity Party in recent opinion polls there has been much commentary about the role of smaller parties as kingmakers when it comes to forming governments under MMP. Most of it has been overstated.

Lindsay Mitchell: Bigger benefits won't help children

Why are incompetents routinely called 'experts' these days? The election campaign brings them out in their droves. Today's Herald headline:

Child poverty experts urge politicians to adopt recommendations before election

Brendan O'Neill: How Cambridge became the epicentre of Western self-loathing

The uni that liberated the world now employs a woman who called on Muslims to make weapons for jihad. God help us.

Next time someone asks me what I mean by ‘suicide of the West’, I’m going to tell them that Cambridge University has a professor who once said Muslims should build ‘advanced weaponry’ for the coming ‘jihad’ to elevate Islam ‘over all other [religions]’. I’m going to let them know that at one of the highest seats of learning in Christendom, on the same dappled lawns walked by William Tyndale, Isaac Newton and Alan Turing, there now skulks an academic who once said ‘Allah’s reward’ will be ‘immeasurable’ for those who make ‘machinery for jihad’. For there it is, in all its snivelling idiocy and decadence: the West’s death wish.

Kerre Woodham: What will it take for public servants to be held accountable?

What will it take for public servants to be held accountable for their most egregious mistakes? Not even talking the little faffy silly ones. We're talking really, really big mistakes. Never was a group of people more misnamed than public servants. The current generation are not servants of the public, for the most part – many of them appear to have absolute contempt for the public they are supposed to serve.

Bob Edlin: Luxon keeps hooting (to the point of tedium) about no new taxes...

....but he dropped the ball when asked about Treaty policy

If you haven’t got the message, the Nats are counting on remaining in government by pledging not to introduce new taxes while portraying left-leaning parties as ravenous revenue grabbers.

The Nats might have other policies. But in the past week their campaign pitch has emphasised what they oppose – more taxes – rather than what they support.

David Farrar: Te Pati Maori’s bonkers tax plan

Te Pati Maori has announced the following as part of their tax policy:

• A top marginal tax rate of 48%
• GST of 15%
• A 2.5% tax on assets above a certain threshold
• An increase in the company tax rate by 5%

Friday August 28, 2026 

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Ryan Bridge: How low is too low for house prices?

How much do you really want the value of your property to fall?

Plenty of us say we want cheaper house prices, but do we really mean it?

Once you own a house, you usually have mortgage on it. The less your house is worth, the less equity you have.

Perspective with Heather du Plessis-Allan: This Meta outcome could be more efficient than a social media ban

Listen, if you somehow find yourself weirdly unconvinced that social media is bad for kids, just take a look at what Facebook and Instagram have done. It's huge.

Without actually admitting that kids get addicted to social media, they have effectively admitted it by promising to make changes to their platforms designed to break that addiction.

Breaking Views Update: Week of 23.8.26

Friday August 28, 2026 

News:
Far North District Council votes to remove Councillor Davina Smolders from Māori committee
Far North District councillors have voted to remove Councillor Davina Smolders from the council’s Te Kūaka committee, following her public criticism of its structure and unelected iwi and hapū representatives.

Before the vote, Smolders challenged Mayor Moko Tepania over whether the motion to remove her should proceed, arguing she had not been allowed to respond to allegations about her conduct.

Geoff Parker: Davina Smolders — When Dissent Becomes A Reason For Removal

The Far North District Council’s decision to remove Councillor Davina Smolders from its Te Kūaka Committee for Māori Strategic Relationships deserves considerably more scrutiny than it is likely to receive.

This is not simply a disagreement between councillors over Māori issues. It raises a much bigger question:

What happens to democracy when an elected councillor’s views become so inconvenient that the majority decides to remove her from a committee?

Mike's Minute: There are no punishments if you work in the public service

For those who don’t work in the public service, if you ever want a lesson into why it's completely different to the way the rest of us work, just look at yesterday's decision by the Privileges Committee when it came to Alison McDonald and Nic Blakeley and their misleading of ministers and an IT project at immigration.

They deliberately misled MPs. That's what the committee found.

JC: Debating the Need for Debates

The Media Insider in the Weekend Herald contained a list of the election debates, when they would be held and who of the left-wing media (Newstalk ZB being the exception) stars would be hosting them. I will reference them in the latter part of the article so those with a masochistic streak can diarise them. I question whether we even need them and how many will actually watch them. If you are after a dose of fiction there are plenty of good books on offer. That to me is a preferable and more relaxing pastime.

Pee Kay: A race to the bottom?

This is from Sky News Australia in April this year. The news is a bit old but the stupidity has not aged!

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Australia’s Labour government is shutting down the 2,210-megawatt Loy Yang coal-fired power station, which was recently refurbished at a cost of AU$92million and sits on a 500-year supply of fuel!

Nicole Foss: Modern warfare has left the US behind

Drones have been a major game-changer in modern warfare. There’s been an arms race in the Ukraine war, and drones have been at the centre of it, with electromic jamming, then fibre-optic drones, then netting over roads used for logistics, and vehicles with cages to protect them from drone attack. Tanks with no anti-drone protection, such as those used by the US, are now obsolete. Both Russia and Ukraine are now setting up separate branches of their militaries to focus on drone warfare. Russia aims to have 210,000 drone operators over 1000 units embedded with each other branch of the military in the not too distant future.

Dr Oliver Hartwich: New Zealand needs asset recycling to fund its infrastructure future

A fortnight ago, the government agreed a sale worth $702 million. Nicola Willis and Chris Bishop sold the loans the Crown made to Chorus to help build the ultrafast broadband network, for $60 million above book value.

The money, we were told, will go to the Cambridge to Piarere expressway, hospital upgrades and new classrooms.

Bob Edlin: Game theory, conspiracies and the puzzle....

....of the way the media got a whiff of Penk’s plot

Sacked from the Luxon Cabinet for his role in the National caucus leadership challenge, the hapless Chris Penk – we are supposed to believe – was the sole plotter.

New Zealand first learned of this one-man conspiracy on August 12, after an emergency National Party caucus meeting and a secret confidence vote called by Prime Minister Christophe Luxon to address the speculation.