Breaking Views Update: Week of 11.1.26

Wednesday January 14, 2026 

News:
Tribunal commences national pānui process for Inquiry into Remaining Historical Claims
The Waitangi Tribunal’s Inquiry into Remaining Historical Claims (Wai 2800) will inquire into any remaining historical Treaty of Waitangi claims with outstanding historical issues that have not yet been heard or resolved to date, and that claimants still wish to bring before the Tribunal.

Clive Bibby: Our future in the Hands of Amateurs

This column is not meant to be an attack on the integrity of those in charge of regional business - simply an attempt at drawing attention to the inadequate responses by Council to our real needs.

Here on the East Coast, we lurch from one damaging climate event to the next yet the response from Council appears to be one of an ambulance parked up at the bottom of the cliff.

Pee Kay: He Puapua is alive and well!

If you want to influence and change thoughts or actions, where do you start? In education of course! In particular, the most impressionable, the younger generation.

Have a look at the NZ Secondary Education Curriculum Renovation.

The Ministry of Education states –

Roger Bate: Trump’s Withdrawal from 66 Organizations

When the Trump administration announced its withdrawal from, and defunding of, 66 international organizations and treaty bodies on January 7th, much of the media coverage framed the move as reckless isolationism or short-term budget cutting. That framing misunderstands what is actually happening.

Best of 2025: Heather du Plessis-Allan - Don't touch my pension

Let's talk about this business with the pension age.

Chris Luxon has said twice today that he wants the pension age to go up to 67.

He said it once on Kerre’s show this morning, and then at a post-Budget lunch speaking to business leaders, he repeated it and he told them that this is basically going to be election policy for National next year.

DTNZ: French farmers shut off ports in EU trade deal protest

Farmers across France have stepped up protests by blocking major ports and transport routes, warning that a proposed EU trade deal with the South American Mercosur bloc could devastate domestic agriculture.

Demonstrators argue the agreement would allow cheaper Latin American beef and other products into Europe, undercutting French producers who must comply with far stricter environmental and welfare standards.

Brendan O'Neill: 7 October was the biggest mistake Iran ever made

The Iranian regime thought it signed Israel’s death warrant on 7 October 2023 – in fact, it may have signed its own.

‘The Zionist regime is melting before the eyes of the world’, gloated Ayatollah Khamenei in the aftermath of Hamas’s pogrom of 7 October 2023. His giddy foretelling of the death of the Jewish nation was echoed across the realm of Israelophobia. Israel’s downfall ‘is a matter of when, not if’, said the Islamo-loons of 5 Pillars. Leftist hotheads agreed that the invasion of Israel by Iran’s proxies sounded the death knell for ‘the Zionist project’.

Melanie Phillips: A seismic uprising in Iran

Western liberals purse their lips over this blow to their own warped mindset

As the Iranian uprising continues to escalate, it’s been reported that hundreds of protesters have been killed by the regime’s security forces.

The internet, phone signals and lighting have been cut, and it’s feared the killings are intensifying behind the blackout.

Bob Edlin: This time a year ago, “Sleepy Joe” Biden was President of the USA....

This time a year ago, “Sleepy Joe” Biden was President of the USA – and Venezuela was governed by a Venezuelan tyrant

Anyone who might have over-imbibed while welcoming in the New Year should soon be sobered by learning of what President Donald Trump – a life-long teetotaler – has been up to since January 1. He has snatched the despotic leader of Venezuela and brought him back to the USA to face criminal charges, re-expressed his designs on Greenland, expressed his readiness to support protesters in Iran, and supported masked ICE officers after the shooting of a protester in Minnesota.

Perhaps more sobering is the thought that this time a year ago, a bloke called Joe Biden was President of the USA.

Matua Kahurangi: The rape of our rockpools - How Chinese are decimating our coastal treasures

In the sun-drenched shores of Auckland’s Whangaparaoa Peninsula, a silent atrocity unfolds daily, one that reeks of greed, entitlement, and utter disregard for New Zealand’s fragile marine ecosystems. Our rockpools, once teeming with life, are being systematically raped by hordes of Chinese families and groups, known as the Bucket People, who descend like locusts on our coastlines, stripping them bare with tools more suited to a construction site than a beach. This isn’t foraging; it’s pillage on a grand scale, and it’s high time we called it what it is: environmental rape, perpetrated with impunity while authorities twiddle their thumbs.

Tuesday January 13, 2026 

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Graham Adams - Election 2026: Swarbrick’s plan for Green supremacy falters

When Chlöe Swarbrick became the Greens’ co-leader in March 2024, she announced that she wanted the party to go “mainstream”.

Her professed aim was to supplant the Labour Party to ultimately form “the nation’s first Green-led government”, all without compromising the movement’s core values.

Peter Bassett: Effecting Treaty principles into immigration: When Footnotes Decide the Verdict

Modern activist legal writing has a sound of its own: the rustle of footnotes doing work they were never meant to do. Elizabeth Rabiyan’s essay claiming that New Zealand immigration law has “failed to give effect to Te Tiriti o Waitangi” is a near-perfect specimen.

Graeme Spencer: Kawanatanga, Rangatiratanga and the Treaty

Maori radicals pin much of their argument on Hugh Kawharu’s modern reinterpretation of “tino rangatiratanga”, claiming it means self-determination or retained sovereignty — and that Māori in 1840 did not understand what they were agreeing to.

Over the past few days, with the help of AI, I [Graeme Spencer] have been examining contemporary Māori-language articles written (by Māori?) for Māori in the 1840s–1870s.

Corey Smith: China and Qatar Give Billions to US Universities – What Do They Get?

When authoritarian governments have access to American campuses.

Five hundred and twenty-seven colleges and universities have accepted foreign gifts and contracts for a total of $62.4 billion – that we know about. China has given more than $4 billion to US universities, and it’s only the fourth highest on a list displayed on the Department of Education’s new online portal. It shows how much money American universities have received from foreign gifts and contracts, part of President Donald Trump’s effort to ensure these institutions are transparent about funds from outside the country. Getting universities to disclose information, however, is the easy part.

Insights From Social Media: Trump withdraws U.S. from 66 international organizations including UN climate

Fact Sheet: President Donald J. Trump Withdraws the United States from International Organizations that Are Contrary to the Interests of the United States

WITHDRAWING FROM INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS: Today, President Donald J. Trump signed a Presidential Memorandum directing the withdrawal of the United States from 66 international organizations that no longer serve American interests.

DTNZ: ‘Open Electricity reforms’ aim to cut power costs for consumers

The Government has confirmed the retail electricity sector will be brought under the Customer and Product Data Act, a move it says will make it easier for households and small businesses to compare power plans and reduce electricity costs.

Energy Minister Simon Watts and Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Scott Simpson said the initiative, known as Open Electricity, follows the rollout of ‘Open Banking’, with regulations for that system having come into force in December last year.

John McLean: Bullsh*t State Sponsored Arrogance

The Broadcasting Standards Authority’s war on media channel The Platform is heating up and could well explode in 2026. I’ve covered the BSA’s ideologically driven attempt to assert jurisdiction over The Platform in a previous Substack:

Professor Rod NcNaughton: NZ’s low productivity is often blamed on businesses staying small. That could be a strength in 2026

For decades, we have heard a familiar story about why New Zealand’s firms choose to stay small. Business owners prefer comfort, control and lifestyle over ambition, summed up in the old notion of the “bach, boat and BMW” being the height of aspiration.

The statistics show this pattern clearly. New Zealand’s productivity has lagged other advanced economies for years, with output per hour worked sitting below the OECD average.

Pee Kay: The Politics of Language

Rita Mae Brown, an American feminist writer is remembered as saying, “He unzipped his pants and his brains fell out.”

A more sagacious pearl of wisdom from Rita Mae was, “Language is the road map of a culture. It tells you where its people come from and where they are going.”

Worryingly, those last 4 words may be portentous as far as New Zealand is concerned!