Ryan Bridge: The terrifying news about Mythos AI

You heard the news about this AI hacking beast called Mythos?

It's a bit scary to be honest. And what's reported to have happened with it in the last seven hours is even scarier.

Perspective with Heather du Plessis-Allan: Labour had no other direction to go on the India FTA

What a surprise, Labour has agreed to support the India free trade agreement - although it wasn’t really a surprise when it was announced today.

I told you last week it would happen this week and Labour would give it the green light because there was really no other way for them to go.

Steven Gaskell: Iran Faces Mounting Economic Pressure as Hormuz Blockade Ripples Globally.

As of late April 2026, the naval blockade around the Strait of Hormuz is inflicting severe economic damage on Iran, with analysts estimating losses of between US$435 million and US$500 million per day. The disruption has effectively paralysed Iran’s most critical export sector and is now sending shockwaves through the global economy.

Breaking Views Update: Week of 19.4.26

Friday April 24, 2026 

News:
Standover tactics exposed by $180m pound of flesh for a gold mine
“An iwi group’s alleged demand for $180 million in order to approve the Bendigo Santana gold mine exposes how New Zealand’s resource management system has been warped by standover tactics and backroom dealing,” says ACT Resources spokesman Simon Court.

Kā Rūnaka say extracting $180 million from Santana has not been their ‘focus’, but they haven’t directly denied the report.

Geoff Parker: Constitutional Transformation or Constitutional Drift?

The push for constitutional change through Matike Mai Aotearoa is often framed as a reasonable evolution — a move toward “partnership” grounded in the Treaty of Waitangi. Many of its advocates present it as a balanced and inclusive vision for New Zealand’s future.

But the issue is not intent. It is direction — and how key concepts are being reinterpreted to justify structural change.

Lindsay Mitchell: Luxon isn't talking to me

Speaking after his cabinet meeting yesterday, affirming his continuing leadership of the National Party, Prime Minister Chris Luxon said:

"Everyday Kiwis will not be losing sleep over political sideshows in Wellington – they’ll be thinking about their mortgage, their kids’ education and the safety and security of their community."

It suddenly hit me.

He's not talking to me.

Dr Bryce Edwards: Democracy Briefing - Why the Luxon leadership speculation will return

Christopher Luxon survived. Yesterday he walked into a National caucus meeting and called an unexpected confidence vote on his own leadership. He won it. The doubters didn’t put up. So for now, they’ve been told to shut up.

It’s the framing Luxon wants us to take away. And it’s not entirely wrong. It was a bold move. He called his detractors’ bluff, and they blinked. Stuff’s political editor Jenna Lynch put it best: “His doubters were told to put up or shut up. They didn’t put up anything. So for now they have to shut up.”

But the interesting question isn’t about Luxon surviving yesterday. It’s how long he goes before he has to do something like this again.

David Harvey: Creeping Control

How the Department of Internal Affairs Is Building a Social Media Surveillance Regime Before Parliament Has Spoken

The Bill and the Bureaucracy

A Bill is currently before Parliament. The Social Media (Age Restricted Users) Bill proposes to require providers of designated social media platforms to take all reasonable steps to prevent users under 16 from holding accounts.

David Farrar: Which media the right don’t trust at all

The AUT Trust in Media survey had this graph [below]:

It shows many NZers who are on the right are allergic to Radio NZ, TVNZ, Stuff, The Spinoff and Three News. Those newsrooms could consider what they could do to change that.

JC: The Right Are Getting It Wrong

War always comes with a price but you have to weigh up if is it a price worth paying. Churchill thought so and so does Trump.

The right are right but are getting it wrong to prove themselves right. If you think that is a piece of gobbledygook, you are not wrong in coming to the right conclusion.

A good example is Leo McKinstry, who writes a weekly column published in the International Express, the sister paper of the UK’s Daily Express.

Simon O'Connor: Rinse and repeat

National's current woes are not unique to them as a political party, but instead indicative of cultural and structural problems within New Zealand's political landscape.

Another week, another round of speculation on the leadership of the National Party. As I write, the latest iteration has been put to bed with Christopher Luxon calling a vote on his leadership and winning.

Alwyn Poole: The World’s Most Educated Countries

Versions of below have been in media around the world in the last two weeks.

“In its 2026 assessment, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development highlighted the world’s most educated countries, pointing to strong higher education access and sustained investment in learning.

David Farrar: Tax everything

Tax Justice Aotearoa have published their wishlist for a Labour-Green-TPM Government, and it can be summed up as tax everything. They Wishlist includes:

 Thursday April 23, 2026 

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Ian Bradford: The Sixty Year Climate Cycle which Strongly Suggests Climate Change is a Natural Process

Jupiter is our largest and heaviest planet. Its gravitational attraction affects all the other planets in our solar system. Since 1900 the global surface temperature of the Earth has risen by about 0.8 Deg C., and since the 1970’s by about 0.5 Deg C. According to the Anthropogenic Global Warming Theory (AGWT), humans have caused more than 90% of global warming since 1900 and virtually 100% of the global warming since 1970. The AGWT is currently advocated by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, (IPCC), which is the leading body for the assessment of climate change. Many scientists believe that further emissions of greenhouse gases could endanger humanity. 

Perspective with Heather du Plessis-Allan: What took National's leadership team so long here?

The fightback has started, hasn’t it?

National’s leadership team have clearly come out of yesterday’s caucus meeting with very clear instructions: get the National Party vote back off New Zealand First. And they’ve come out hard.

Rodney Hide: The Herald’s Shameful Attempt to Overthrow a Democratically Elected Prime Minister

On Tuesday 21 April 2026, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon called for a formal confidence vote in his leadership and won it decisively. The issue, he stated, was now settled. Yet in the preceding weeks, the New Zealand Herald, under the direction of its political editor Thomas Coughlan, had conducted what amounted to a sustained, calculated campaign aimed at destabilising and ultimately removing a democratically elected Prime Minister.

Karl du Fresne: Pushing the views that suit them

It’s verging on dishonesty for RNZ to describe political commentator Janet Wilson as a former National Party press secretary, as it did yesterday in an item about the reported unrest in the National caucus, as if her former status endows her opinion with special force or credibility.
For the record, Wilson described National as a “slow-slip political earthquake” and “a miasma of nothingness”. These were damning words. The unmistakeable implication was that if Wilson is dissing Christopher Luxon then the party must be in a truly dire predicament – because after all, isn’t she supposed to be on National’s side?

Gary Judd KC: Dare to be a Daniel

Dare to be a Daniel

Dare to stand alone

Dare to have a purpose firm

Dare to make it known

So runs the refrain in a nineteenth century hymn inspired by the biblical story in the Book of Daniel, of a Jewish captive in Babylon (a region compromising parts of present-day Iraq and Syria, with the city of Babylon about 85 km south of today’s Baghdad). According to the account Daniel’s rivals tricked Babylonian King Darius into signing a decree that forbade praying to anyone but King Darius. Despite knowing the penalty was death, Daniel went home and prayed three times a day with his windows open toward Jerusalem, as was his custom. He was thrown into a den of lions, but God “shut the lions’ mouths,” and he was found unharmed the next morning. Furious, Darius had the conspirators “cast … into the den of lions, them, their children, and their wives; and the lions had the mastery of them, and brake all their bones in pieces or ever they came at the bottom of the den.”

Graham Adams: Media talks up Winston Peters’ rise

The path to election glory has traps.

NZ First’s prospects at the election after a run of good polling are being talked up by increasingly enthusiastic commentators. But if a week is a long time in politics, more than six months is an eternity. And there are traps aplenty for the party to navigate before November 7.

Listening to the media, however, you might think the continuing rise of Winston Peters and NZ First is unstoppable.