Breaking Views Update: Week of 12.7.26

Monday July 13, 2026 

News:
Green Cross Health shareholders vote this week on the $270 million sale of The Doctors to Tend Health
Green Cross Health shareholders vote on Tuesday on whether to sell The Doctors, the country’s largest network of general practices, to Tend Health for $270 million. The result will decide who owns the family doctor for more than 400,000 New Zealanders.

Ani O'Brien: Hear me out - Ban the hardware not the software

We need to save childhood without destroying adult freedom

Across the developed world, governments have concluded they can no longer ignore the mounting evidence that social media is harming children. Australia has legislated an under 16 social media ban that is proving to be pretty flawed to say the least. Britain has announced one and is now floating the idea of a VPN ban. The European Union is actively considering continent-wide restrictions on children's access to social media, while member states including France, Greece and Spain are pushing for stronger action. In the United States, lawmakers continue searching for ways to limit children’s access while holding technology companies to account.

Dr Oliver Hartwich: Memory is a terrible statistician

Nostalgia is a wonderful state of mind but, almost by definition, it glorifies the past while ignoring things that were not so good.

Many older New Zealanders are nostalgic for the 1970s. But 1973 saw 843 people die on the roads, the worst road toll on record. Of every 1,000 babies born in 1970, almost 17 died before their first birthday. More than a third of adults smoked. The top income tax rate was 60%, and inflation was about to slip its leash.

Dr Bryce Wilkinson: The political malaise over New Zealand’s low wage problem

Among prosperous nations, New Zealand is relatively a low-income country. That hurts.

In 2024, net national income per capita was 30% higher in Australia, according to the Paris-based OECD. It was only 19% higher on average over the four years to 2019.

That 2024 gap represents a missing NZ$20,000 per person a year. That is $100 billion a year spread over 5 million people.

Henry Olsen: Home of the Rave

The United States celebrated its 250th birthday this weekend. Like all those who are told that their glory years are behind them, my country showcased its youth and inexperience with much rejoicing.

The festivities were organised by Freedom 250, a Republican-dominated group that President Trump chairs. To acquire the necessary and proper funds, the group ran donate-for-access advertisements and diverted congressional appropriations from the bipartisan America250 group.

Brendan O'Neill: Andy Burnham’s shameful pandering to anti-Israel bigots

His pompous, fact-lite sermon on Gaza is a transparent effort to win back Muslim voters and the keffiyeh classes.

Here he comes, pandering Andy Burnham. The King of the North throwing out the red meat of Israelophobia to keep certain voters sweet. The incoming PM yapping piously about Israel’s possible ‘war crimes’ in a bid to win back restive Muslim voters and the keffiyeh classes who’ve abandoned Labour for the crackpot Greens. That’s what I saw in Burnham’s staggeringly pompous digital sermon on Gaza – not an act of geopolitical conviction but a masterclass in demographic toadying.

Alwyn Poole: On School Lunches – A Response to Jonathan Ayling

(My response to his words in point-form).

“More than lunches, children need parents – Jonathan Ayling”

– Clearly a truism.

“While there has been much talk about the quality and cost of school lunches, the debate misses a larger point, argues Jonathan Ayling – why is the Government in the business of feeding our children at all?”

David Farrar: The TSB sale

A reader writes in:

Toi Foundation’s proposal to sell TSB Bank to Heartland Group for $620 million has generated fierce community opposition in Taranaki — public meetings, widespread ‘don’t sell the family silver’ sentiment, and an informal survey finding 90% of those with a firm view opposed.

Mike's Minute: Labour don't prep for power

You may remember that Morgan McSweeney was one of Keir Starmer's fall guys in the Mandelson scandal.

He ran the Labour Party's 2024 campaign that saw Labour land a comparatively small amount of the vote (37%) in exactly the right places to give them a stonking great majority and end 14 years of Tory rule.

Sunday July 12, 2026 

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Dr Oliver Hartwich: Chalmers’ guru Mazzucato is selling an old mistake

Fourteen New Zealand restaurants picked up a Michelin star last week, the first time Michelin had rated New Zealand at all. One reached two stars. None got three, the rating Michelin reserves for restaurants worth a special journey. New Zealand is, of course, always worth a visit, apparently just not for its restaurants.

The government paid Guide Michelin NZ$6.3 million out of its tourism budget to include New Zealand in its ratings.

David Harvey: The VPN Ban

One of the problems faced by lawmakers is that the laws they make can only be enforced within the jurisdiction. That is what is referred to as the principle of territoriality. Laws do not have an extraterritorial effect. A person who steals something from a supermarket in Sydney cannot be prosecuted for theft in the New Zealand Courts. Why? Because the offence did not take place within the territorial jurisdiction of New Zealand.

Ani O'Brien: A week is a long time: 11 July 2026

Election 2026: Policy, candidates, and gambling websites

Here we are in an election year and the pledges continue to arrive, often with only the vaguest account of what will be cut, taxed, or borrowed to pay for them.

Spaniard: This is kaitiakitanga

There’s a place for everything. Customary matters should receive stewardship, empirical science should lead in technical arenas, and standover behaviour has no place in a modern democracy’s processes.

Ngai Tahu failed, catastrophically, as guardian/kaitiaki of Central Otago’s environment before other settlers arrived. It’s rich that, in response to the Santana Minerals Bendigo-Ophir Gold Project proposal for Central Otago, Ka Runaka, a local tribal sub-grouping, is now claiming a kaitiaki role.

Pee Kay: Government job vacancies

“We are one country, we deliver our public services to people on the basis of need, not ethnicity.”

So said our future Prime Minister on May 5, 2022, during a visit to Greymouth.

So, why do we still see government job vacancies like this?

Net Zero Watch Samizdat: NESO summertime madness

UK

NESO accused of cover-up over blackout threat

Britain’s grid operator has been accused of covering up system failures that threaten to trigger blackouts. Bosses at the National Energy Systems Operator allegedly ordered control-room staff to hide information that showed the grid was not being run securely, and to not to keep permanent records of operational decisions, to ensure there was no paper trail. Shadow Energy Sec Claire Coutinho has written to the ICO demanding it open an investigation into the alleged incidents.

Colinxy: Man’s Oldest Story

If humanity has a single shared story — a myth so ancient it predates nations, languages, and even our migration out of Africa — it is the story of the Pleiades. No other tale appears so consistently across cultures, continents, and epochs. While the details vary, the core narrative is astonishingly stable: a cluster of seven stars, often described as seven sisters, seven maidens, or seven beings, with the persistent puzzle that only six are visible to the naked eye.

Melanie Phillips: Amoral Andy sticks it to the Jews

Who cares that no-one knows how he'll govern Britain? He's passionate about Gaza

Well that didn’t take long, did it?

On the day that 322 politically bankrupt and panicky Labour MPs made it all but certain through their backing that Andy Burnham’s coup against Sir Keir Starmer had succeeded and he would replace him as prime minister, Burnham — whose only claim to fame is the common touch he brought to his role as mayor of Manchester — chose to celebrate by sticking it to the Jews.

Roger Partridge: A Guide to a Muscular Liberalism

Liberals can articulate their values without trampling on rights.

Every political tradition faces the question of what constitutes a good life. But only liberalism struggles so visibly to offer a straightforward answer. Authoritarians promise order and national greatness. Socialists promise equality. Post-liberal writers promise meaning and belonging through restored religious and civilizational authority—a life ordered to faith, family, and place.

Liberalism alone points nowhere in particular. Its answer—freedom—tells you what to protect, not what to do with it. Yet that silence is not emptiness. It reflects a wise limit: no one can know in advance the forms a flourishing life will take.

JC: Impey Looks the Goods at RNZ

There is an app where one can rate a headline for, among other things, readability. Negative headlines do not score well. Positive headlines do. Finding a positive headline for an article with negative connotations requires some thought. The headline for this article reads, at first glance, as though the new chair of Radio New Zealand will do well in navigating the future of the organisation. Far from it. What I mean by my headline is that Brent Impey is ‘one of them’. He seems to think that RNZ, in its present form, is perfectly positioned to carry all before it. I don’t think so.