Heather du Plessis-Allan: This is why postal voting needs to go

Surely that judge throwing out the election result in Auckland has started the clock ticking on postal voting.

This case may not seem a big deal given that it involves just 79 votes, in just one subdivision, in just one relatively small local board election in Auckland.

Breaking Views Update: Week of 14.12.25

Friday December 19, 2025 

News:
Far-reaching forestry agreement for Ngāumu Forest
Sealed with feathers in tōtara, an agreement on the future of one of Wairarapa’s most significant productive forests was made this week.

With a contract that spans generations, Rangitāne Tū Mai Rā Trust and Japanese-owned Juken New Zealand (JNL) held a ceremony at Pūkaha on Thursday to lock in at least 60 years of commercial forestry right from Ngāumu Forest in eastern Wairarapa.

John McLean: Bondi Barbarians

Bad or bonkers? The role of bad ideas in abominable behaviour

I rarely comment on events outside of New Zealand, because I almost never have anything to say. Oodles of others, closer to the action and with deeper insights and inside sources, do to death big overseas happenings, including mass killings.

But in the wake of the Bondi Beach Barbarity*, I’ll offer a few thoughts from my New Zealand perspective.

Nick Clark: Finally, RMA replacement worth the name

For over three decades, the Resource Management Act has been a significant hindrance to New Zealand's economic growth. It promised sustainable management but delivered housing crises, infrastructure delays, stifled productivity and environmental decline. Successive governments tinkered while the fundamental problems festered.

This week, the Government introduced legislation to finally address the disease.

Dr Michael Johnston: The story that did not count

In many countries, an educational study claiming a radical improvement in mathematics learning would receive considerable media attention. But not, it seems, in New Zealand.

Two weeks ago, Education Minister Erica Stanford announced the results of a trial involving Year 7 and 8 students who were at least a year behind in maths. Nearly 1,400 such students received small-group tutoring four times a week for 12 weeks. In that time, they made an average of two years’ progress.

Roger Partridge: A plan that isn’t really a plan

A plan typically answers straightforward questions: what is needed, what should be done first, and why.

This month, Ministers will receive the Infrastructure Commission’s 30-year National Infrastructure Plan. It will not answer those questions – although not because the Commission has failed. It will have done exactly what it was tasked with doing.

Dr Michael John Schmidt: Why the Quiet on This?

Australia’s renewable energy sector has recently been jolted by the discovery of asbestos in the imported components of wind turbines. The material identified is ‘white asbestos’, banned in Australia since 2003. It is found in the brake and clutch pads used in the internal service lifts of turbine towers – the elevators that carry technicians up for maintenance. While the contamination is confined to a specific subsystem rather than blades or towers, the implications are serious. More seriously, ‘white asbestos’ was banned in New Zealand in 1984. It has long been recognised in this country that the substance is harmful.

Gary Moller: Digital ID and Its Impact on Free Speech and the Future of Our Children

Today, we are wrapping our children up in digital cotton wool! What are the implications?

Freedom and privacy are cornerstones of any democratic society. In New Zealand, recent discussions led by the Taxpayers Union and the Free Speech Union have brought urgent attention to two critical issues: the rise of digital ID systems and the increasing control over children's exposure to the digital world. Both developments raise serious questions about the direction our country is heading and the kind of future we want for our children.

Kerre Woodham: The Finance Minister is charting a tough course

We're going to start this morning with the Half Year Economic and Fiscal Update, which was actually the Three-quarter Year Economic and Fiscal Update. It delivered news we all expected, and that is that we're getting there as a country. It's just taking longer than we thought.

Treasury's half-year update, published on Tuesday, predicted a return to surplus in 2029/30, a year later than it forecasted in May. Finance Minister Nicola Willis said she'd continue to aim for 2028/29 and said we're on target to return the books to surplus faster than they will in Australia, the UK, Canada, and many other advanced economies, while maintaining a prudent debt position.

Bob Edlin: Treaty principles, unelected Māori with voting rights and a letter of resignation....

Treaty principles, unelected Māori with voting rights and a letter of resignation – what would Mandela make of this?

PoO was somewhat bemused to learn that Napier mayor Richard McGrath’s executive assistant had quit her job, saying she could no longer work for him due to his “disregard for Treaty principles”.

According to Stuff:

Thursday December 18, 2025 

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Heather du Plessis-Allan: Nicola Willis needs to be braver and cut more

It's no surprise that Nicola Willis has pushed out the surplus by another year.

That now makes it three years in two years, as in she has delayed surplus by three years in just the space of the two years she’s been at the Finance Minister’s desk.

Perspective with Ryan Bridge: Can we appreciate the good economic news coming out?

I know you shouldn't count your chickens before they hatch, but can we just take a minute to look at the good economic news coming out?

Government books aside, tomorrow's GDP read will show we bounced back with a spring in Q3 - close to 1 percent growth, they reckon.

Pee Kay: An Open Letter to Simeon Brown

They slap us in the face, call us racists, condemn “white privilege” and at the same time they have the effrontery to abuse taxpayer generosity with mismanagement of government funded Maori Health Providers!

This is my follow up to PDM’s posting last week of Peter Williams article, The Dysfunctional Maori Health Trusts, by way of an open letter sent to the Minister of Health, Simeon Brown.

Dr Will Jones: New Homes Must be Bird-Friendly Despite Reeves War on “Green Tape”

New homes will have to include special bricks for endangered birds such as swifts under Labour’s new planning rules, despite Rachel Reeves’s war on “green tape”. The Telegraph has the story.

In a shake-up of England’s planning rules, Labour will insist that new builds are fitted with nature-friendly features such as swift bricks, hollow nesting boxes for the bird species that fit into walls.

Centrist: Luxon brushes off coup talk, says he rebuilt National from “civil war”

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon is pushing back hard on leadership speculation, telling media he will “absolutely” lead National into the 2026 election and portraying the chatter as media habit formed during National’s unstable years.

Luxon framed himself as the fixer who dragged the party back from chaos, saying: “The National Party was in a state of civil war, we’d had five leaders in five years.”

Brendan O'Neill: The hatred for the Jewish State is endangering the Jewish people

After Bondi, we can deny it no longer – bourgeois Israelophobia has aided and abetted a lethal new violence.

Let me get this right – we’re expected to believe it is entirely coincidental that there has been a spike in anti-Jewish violence at the exact same time as hatred for the Jewish State has soared? We’re meant to think there is no connection whatsoever between today’s frothing bourgeois animus for the Jewish nation and the rise in disdain for the Jewish people? You’re telling us the targeting of Jews in the West is wholly unrelated to the Western elites’ ceaseless damning of the Jewish homeland as a uniquely barbarous entity?

Kerre Woodham: How do we heal our country's divisions?

I remember back when I first started talkback, a million years ago at nighttime, it must have been the semicentennial of the waterfront workers strike of '51, or the lockout, depending on which side you're on. It was the biggest industrial confrontation in New Zealand's history for those who don't know of it. It was 151 days from February to July, and at its peak, 22,000 waterside workers, or wharfies, and associated unions were off the job, out of a population of just under 2 million.

David Farrar: Yes there should be a by-election in Papatoetoe

Radio NZ reports:

A district court judge has reserved his decision on whether a by-election is needed in an Auckland local body election.

The hearing followed a petition by former Ōtara-Papatoetoe Local Board member Lehopoaome Vi Hausia, who claimed to have received reports of voting papers being stolen from residents and submitted without their consent.

David Farrar: TPM skip electorate offices, as well as Parliament!

The Herald reports:

Te Pāti Māori has broken with tradition and decided against running MP constituent offices in their electorates, despite getting additional funding for the large electorates it won at the 2023 election.

New Zealand First, as well, has decided not to run any offices in the community – but it has no electorate MPs.