Graeme Spencer: New Zealand Once Produced World Class Achievers......

New Zealand Once Produced World Class Achievers - Now We Can’t Keep Kids In Class 

It’s remarkable, isn’t it?

New Zealand, somehow produced world-leading scientists, engineers, explorers, aviators, and athletes - all before schools were required to open every lesson with ceremonial chanting and a Treaty compliance checklist.

Perspective with Heather du Plessis-Allan: Why is Air New Zealand chasing their customers away?

Let's talk about Air New Zealand.

Look, if I was Air New Zealand, I would feel pretty beaten up after the weekend's opinion pieces. Bruce Cotterill wrote a piece in one newspaper complaining that if Air New Zealand want to charge as much as they do, then they have to do the job better and be on time more often.

Ryan Bridge: Political wannabe's come from unions

Unions charge like wounded bulls for their services.

And they claim they're in it for the workers.

They care about workers' pay and conditions so much, they're worked their way up the union ranks to help those at the bottom.

Breaking Views Update: Week of 23.11.25

Tuesday November 25, 2025 

News:
Northland schools defy Government move to drop Te Tiriti obligations
Northland schools have publicly committed to upholding Te Tiriti o Waitangi in their classrooms despite a Government directive canning the obligation.

Pee Kay: To Educate or To Indoctrinate?

Surely that must be the question headmasters, teachers, education unions and school boards of trustees must have asked themselves upon being notified by the Minister of Education of the government’s decision to remove the requirement for school boards to give effect to the Treaty of Waitangi.

By reading the responses by the New Zealand Principals’ Federation, the NZ Educational Institute (teachers and principals union) and the New Zealand School Boards Association, it is obvious to everyone that, yes, they did ask themselves that question but the answer they arrived at did not fall on the side of “to educate”, no, no!

They very clearly see their role is to INDOCTRINATE!

Damien Grant: The Ponsonby icon that dined out on unpaid tax

Do you remember SPQR? Not the Senate and People of Rome. The flashy restaurant that was the flamboyant heart of Ponsonby Road for three decades.

I’m more Columbus Coffee or Burger Fuel, depending on the time of day. Still, I’d wasted a few afternoons al-fresco dining at SPQR when someone else was picking up the tab, which in theory contained a 15% allocation for GST. Yet it seems the Commissioner didn’t always get his cut.

Lindsay Mitchell: Officials warn: "...some young people may be incentivised to have children to keep access to income support."

This morning NewstalkZB reported officials warning, in a Regulatory Impact Statement about the government's policy to block teenagers accessing Jobseeker benefits from next November, "...some young people may be incentivised to have children to keep access to income support."

This is a distinct possibility given the existing habit of treating children as meal tickets.

Bruce Cotterill: Air New Zealand must fix reliability before loyalty runs out

I’ve been putting off writing this column for a couple of years. I don’t like the idea of knocking a national icon. You don’t mess around with national icons. But at the same time, it’s getting hard to remain silent.

It all started a couple of years ago, in Rotorua. It was 4pm. I had been stuck in a boardroom in our former tourism capital for most of the day. I was then planning to travel to Christchurch for a business meeting over dinner. I had an all-day meeting there the following day. My travel plans required that I fly from Rotorua to Auckland before connecting with a flight to Christchurch.

Kerre Woodham: Do the Kiwisaver tweaks go far enough?

Christopher Luxon has made his party's first election promise at a Christmas gathering for the party faithful of the Lower North Island. He said that they would lift the default KiwiSaver contribution rate, and eventually the changes would mean employees would see 12% of their earnings going into KiwiSaver, 6% from them, 6% from employers - a level that would match Australia's superannuation contribution rate, although of course in Australia, the whole contribution comes from the employer because they can afford it. The figure would come from hiking the default contribution rate from 3%, where it is today, to four, then 6% by 2032. The employer contribution would also rise to 6%, achieving that combined rate of 12% by 2032.

Eliora: Blockers Are Banned for Our Kids

Casey Costello says they stared down the mob to get there.

Prescribing powerful pharmaceuticals to a child to move them towards gender-affirming elective castration or sterilisation is seriously questionable. Castration of animals, adults (eunuchs) and of some children has been happening for centuries. In practice, true elective castration of healthy minors for non-medical, non-transgender reasons has been effectively non-existent in western countries since World War II.

Mike's Minute: Britain's COVID enquiry highlights Labour's mistakes

The overarching view of the British Covid inquiry is that lockdown did not need to happen.

Their inquiry is different to our two For a start, the key players turned up. Boris Johnson and co got grilled.

Ardern and Hipkins and co never did because they refused.

Peter Williams: Aotearoadcone

Why do we always have roads under repair?

Aah .. Australia. The Lucky Country, the Big Brown Land with its seemingly limitless supply of valuable minerals waiting to be extracted from that vast interior. It’s hard not to be envious of a nation with its agreeable coastal climate and all those perceived economic and employment opportunities waiting to be exploited.

It cannot be any surprise that with New Zealand in an economic funk, much of it of the Labour government’s making between 2021 and 2023, over 47,000 New Zealanders decided to up sticks and move to Australia in the twelve months.

Bob Edlin: Maori Party is warned against committing political suicide.....

Maori Party is warned against committing political suicide – but look at NZ First before declaring it dead

Māori Party MPs have been absent from New Zealand Parliament sittings on several occasions due to a mix of disciplinary measures, protests, and internal party matters.

 Monday November 24, 2025 

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Graeme Spencer: Who is running this country?

In June 2002 I wrote a comment about the Labour party - "They have to go and never be allowed into power again, you simply could not trust them. Labour has tentacles like an insidious octopus and they have infiltrated every facet of lives - democracy, health, education, media, freedom of speech and local government. Procedures , perhaps via a new constitution, have to be put in place so that no party can ever do this again"

Well - despite all their failures, they did a magnificent hit job on us, they managed to embed their ideology deep into our public sector.

Geoff Parker: Ngāi Tahu History Isn’t What 'The Press' Claims

The Press’s latest Ngāi Tahu puff piece — complete with misty-eyed claims about “Crumbs from the white man’s table” — is yet another exercise in historical distortion masquerading as journalism. It parrots the modern Treaty-industry script while ignoring the most basic historical facts, many of which sit openly in Crown archives. Either the reporter didn’t look, or didn’t want to.

John Robertson: The Curriculum Revolt Nobody Voted For

New Zealand’s public schools are staging a quiet revolt, and hardly anyone is admitting it out loud. More than a thousand schools — yes, a thousand — have decided they no longer care what Parliament has legislated. The Government removed the requirement for school boards to “give effect to the Treaty of Waitangi,” but schools are pressing ahead as if the law never changed.

Sean Rush: Letter to the Roseneath School Board

Response to Your Letter Regarding Upholding Te Tiriti

Dear Members of the Board,

I am writing in response to your recent letter to the Government stating your intention to uphold Te Tiriti. I have been a proud resident of Roseneath since 2013, my two children were pupils at the school, I have supported the school in fundraising activities and I chaired the Roseneath Resident’s Association. I also did a term as a Wellington City Councillor. I will continue to champion the school.

Insights From Social Media: When the Story Doesn’t Match the Truth

Roger Strong writes > This is the headline in today’s weekend POST newspaper ‘Crumbs From The White Man’s Table : The story of the Ngai Tahu deeds' – a full page article coming from Ngai Tahu Itself and the then there is this paragraph - ‘The relationship between the Crown and the iwi was established by the Treaty of Waitangi. It did not take long to be breached. The first step in the slow process that was Te Kerēme was taken in 1849, a mere nine years after the Treaty signing. A solution took nearly 150 more years, before the iwi signed the deed of settlement with the Crown in 1997'.

So we have an article that mixes up half-truths with outright lies and contains countless lies by omission-the things not mentioned (deliberately surely) that perpetuate even more lies.

Dr Oliver Hartwich: Failing the politics of feels - why NZ’s Luxon is tanking

Something peculiar is happening in New Zealand politics. Labour, routed just two years ago with their worst result since proportional representation began in 1996, has surged to 38 per cent in the latest political poll. What might have helped Labour was its capital gains tax proposal that would fund free GP visits for everyone.

Meanwhile, Christopher Luxon has watched his approval rating sink to minus 14. Two years into their first term, Prime Ministers should still be enjoying their honeymoon with voters. Instead, Luxon is struggling.