Damien Grant: ACT is in a death match with NZ First, and the stakes couldn’t be higher

“Let’s be straight up with each other. Any party that wants to ramp up spending is being economically irresponsible. Because the only way to spend more money is to borrow it or to raise taxes.”

Fighting words from the Prime Minister Christopher Luxon in his State of the Nation at the soft opening of the SkyCity convention centre.

And since we begin this week’s column at this beautiful stadium let’s take a moment to remind ourselves how it was paid for.

Breaking Views Update: Week of 1.3.26

Monday March 2, 2026 

News:
Ngāti Ruapani, Crown sign $24m Treaty settlement at Waikaremoana
Ngāti Ruapani mai Waikaremoana and the Crown have signed a Deed of Settlement for historical Treaty claims dating back to 1866, at Waikaremoana in Te Urewera.

Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations Minister Paul Goldsmith was in attendance.

Dr James Allan: Israel’s Judiciary is Out of Control

I confess to being one of Australia’s most pro-Israel law professors. Actually, change that to I proudly confess to being one of Australia’s most pro-Israel law professors. I admire how this tiny country is the only democracy in the entire Middle East. Surrounded by countries that want to wipe it from the face of the earth this minute Jewish homeland has defended itself from invasions and attacks that comfortably coddled Western countries haven’t experienced in 80 years. And be clear that Israel has restrained itself in doing this by orders of magnitude more than the Allies did when fighting Germany and Japan in WWII.

Lindsay Mitchell: How the Sallies have evolved to become part of the problem

The 2026 Salvation Army State of the Nation Report revealed their official conversion to wokeism by repeatedly finding excuses for Maori over-representation in poor social stats because of victimisation through colonisation. This caused a number of readers to ponder future contributions to the organisation.

But it isn't just this development that should concern donors.

David Wojick: AI may bring a cognitive renaissance to human thinking

By “AI” I mean the amazing chatbots that emulate reading and reasoning. There is a lot more to AI but that is how the term is being used these days.

There are a couple of reasons why these powerful AI tools may greatly improve human thinking. Simply put they can save a lot of search time and they find better stuff. This gives people more time to think and better information to think with.

Alain Bertaud: Let cities find their own order

Cities are shaped by millions of individual decisions. When people choose where to live, work and build, an order emerges from their combined choices – what urbanists call "spontaneous order." It arises from markets and human interactions, not from master plans.

When planners impose rigid design visions without understanding these forces, they produce unintended consequences: housing shortages, long commutes and inefficient land use.

Nick Clark: Wellington knows best?

The central Government has a local government problem. Rates have been rising too fast, regional councils are seen as inefficient and unaccountable, and the public wants action. Fair enough. But the solutions on offer share a troubling assumption: that the best way to fix local government is to give Wellington more control.

Two recent consultations illustrate this starkly.

Net Zero Watch Samizdat: Green Peril

UK

Green party wins Gorton and Denton by-election

The Green Party has won the Gorton and Denton by-election, with Hannah Spencer taking the seat from Labour in the Greens' first ever Westminster by-election victory. Green leader Zack Polanski told BBC Breakfast Gorton and Denton was only his party's 127th target seat and the victory showed "there's no no-go areas for the Green Party".

Dr Eric Crampton: Gambling on futures

Many pre-modern people believed gambling was bad and suppressed it.

If you think about it, your life insurer is a bookie betting that you’re not going to die this year. If he wins, you pay him. If you win, he pays your estate. (I play that game to lose.)

Because it was like gambling, insurance was illegal in Western countries until just a few centuries ago.

David Farrar: UK has pro free speech lefties

Nice to see some on the left in the UK getting behind the need for better free speech laws. Stella Tsantedidou writes:

Sunday March 1, 2026 

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DTNZ: Has WWIII just started?

The US-Israel strikes against Iran could provoke a global economic crisis as well as a war in the Middle East.

The US and Israel have launched a major attack in order to lay waste to much of Iran’s military as well as deny it the ability to build a nuclear weapon, according to US President Donald Trump.

Ani O'Brien: A week is a long time: 28 February 2026

49,000 fewer victims of violent crime and the media pretends not to notice

This week the Government announced that there were 49,000 fewer victims of violent crime in the year to October 2025 compared to the two years prior. Forty-nine thousand. That is tens of thousands of New Zealanders who were not assaulted, murdered, violated, or terrorised. Pair that with the near-total collapse in ram raids, once a nightly ritual on the 6pm news, and it is very hard to argue that nothing has changed. On law and order, this Government has, objectively, had its strongest performance. They’ve brought in a raft of legislative changes, tougher sentencing settings, youth justice reforms, gang crackdowns, and measurable outcomes.

Clive Bibby: Do policies determine elections?

Why is it that transformative policies have rarely determined the outcome of New Zealand elections? This time could be different!

I have voted in over 20 general elections during my adult life and am surprised to see, during that time, few if any party was elected based on policies that had the ability to radically change people’s lives for the better.

Dr Bryce Edwards: Democracy Briefing - The Electricity rip-off that politicians won’t fix

Something has to give with New Zealand’s electricity market. And this week, the numbers arrived to prove it.

The Big Four gentailers (Contact, Genesis, Meridian and Mercury) have just reported combined operating earnings of $1.86 billion for the six months to December 2025. That’s a jump of roughly 45% on the same period last year. Their combined dividend payouts rose 10% to $551 million. Meanwhile, the amount they actually invested in new generation was flat.

Barrie Saunders: Engineers – your country needs you

The essence of the 226 page Infrastructure Commission report is that NZ spends enough on infrastructure, but the value we get is poor compared with like countries. No doubt the terrain and small population thinly spread, will partly explain our underperformance, but I think there is a critical extra element.

This is the paucity of qualified engineers in key decision making roles. Cabinet and Councils are constantly making big decisions having to rely on consultants etc rather than by using their practical real world experience. Excessive reliance on consultants is foolish and expensive.

Pee Kay: We’ve Been Shunned!

Oh, the unbearable betrayal! We’ve been officially ghosted, discarded like a lukewarm flat white!

Apparently, we’ve been given the Ardern elbow for Albo!

Colinxy: Medical Council of New Zealand Pushing for Neo-Marxist Praxis.........

Medical Council of New Zealand Pushing for Neo-Marxist Praxis: A Lysenkoist Drift in Professional Regulation

The Medical Council of New Zealand (MCNZ) has released draft statements on cultural competence, cultural safety, and Hauora Māori. These documents are presented as neutral professional guidance, but their structure, language, and underlying assumptions reveal a clear ideological lineage. They embed Critical Theory, Critical Race Theory, Critical Indigeneity, and decolonisation ideology into the regulatory framework governing medical practice.

Robert Bradley Jnr: Nuclear Power Needs Realism, Freedom

What US industry is the most subsidized and regulated by the federal government? If you answered nuclear power, you are correct.

As a result, the 70-year “Atoms for Peace” program represents the most expensive failure (malinvestment) in US business with a history of uncompleted projects and massive cost overruns, as well as future decommissioning liabilities.

Corey Smith: When Indoctrination Masquerades as Education

New Hampshire Republicans recently pushed a bill through the state House to prohibit public schools from teaching curricula such as critical race theory, LGBTQ, and gender ideology. The bill, titled the CHARLIE Act (Countering Hate and Revolutionary Leftist Indoctrination in Education), is named after the late conservative podcaster Charlie Kirk. It was partly inspired by the discovery of race-based training materials in handouts and in recommended reading found in three NH cities, including Manchester, the largest city north of Boston. The measure has predictably caused arguments between both parties in the Granite State.