Breaking Views Update: Week of 25.1.26

Monday January 26, 2026 

News:
Decision-making power slipping away from councils, Rangitīkei Mayor Andy Watson tells Rātana
Rangitīkei Mayor Andy Watson says local government is entering a period of unprecedented upheaval.

He pointed to the pace and scale of reform across local government, including changes to water services, regional council structures and the Resource Management Act.

Ryan Bridge: We all deserve a pay rise

Question: Who wants a pay rise? Who deserves a pay rise? Simple question, easy answer.

Answer: Everybody and most kiwis. By and large we’re hard workers and deserve more.

Teacher, nurses and doctors. By and large, yes. Yes. Yes.

Geoff Parker: Risk, Not Race, Drives Justice Outcomes

Matthew Tukaki’s two-part Radio Waatea series (Part One, Part Two) presents Māori over-representation in the criminal justice system as proof of systemic bias operating “at every stage” — from policing to sentencing. It is a compelling story. It is also an incomplete one.

The core claim running through the series is that disparity equals discrimination. But disparity alone does not establish bias. Any serious analysis must ask a more uncomfortable question: are justice outcomes primarily driven by ethnicity, or by differences in offending patterns, prior convictions, and risk factors that the system is legally required to consider?

Colinxy: The Case for Colonisation

When Associate Professor Bruce Gilley published The Case for Colonialism in Third World Quarterly in 2017, the reaction was nothing short of volcanic. “Controversial” doesn’t begin to describe it. The editorial board resigned in protest, activists demanded the article’s retraction, and Gilley was pressured into issuing an apology. His crime? Violating the unwritten Romantic commandment:

“Thou shalt never say anything positive about colonialism.”

For those interested, Gilley’s original article can still be found here.

This essay is not a defence of every colonial act ever committed, nor is it an attempt to dismiss the harms that occurred in certain contexts.

Matthew D Mitchell: Three Lessons from Venezuela’s Economic Collapse

President Trump has accepted the Nobel Peace Prize that was awarded to Venezuela’s opposition leader, María Corina Machado. Unlike Machado, however, he does not accept the central lessons that can be gleaned from five decades of Venezuelan misrule. There are three.

Lesson 1: Past prosperity is no guarantee of future prosperity.

Tim Donner: Donald Trump, Master of America’s Destiny

The president has become the most dominant world leader in decades.

Apparently, there is no end to Donald Trump’s global ambitions nor his ability to turn his hopes and dreams into reality. Entering his second term locked and loaded, he removed the most dire threat to the civilized world by obliterating Iran’s nuclear program, coerced NATO countries to finally pay the piper for their own defense, and brokered agreements between numerous long-time enemies. Trump forced a deal to release every hostage held by Hamas, ended the war between Israel and Iran, established a globally inclusive Board of Peace to rebuild Gaza, took down the ringleader of the narco-terrorist regime in Venezuela, and has now established a framework for American sovereignty in Greenland.

Nick Clark: Boring's blessings

The paint was still drying on the Auckland convention centre when Christopher Luxon delivered his State of the Nation speech on Monday. Some of the furniture had not arrived. The venue does not officially open until February.

Six hundred business leaders offered polite applause. Someone clapped at the mention of the India free trade deal, which seemed to startle the Prime Minister.

Dr Oliver Hartwich: To stop megaphone populists triumphing, we need unlikely left-right alliance

To many on the political left, the Mont Pelerin Society represents something akin to a spectre. It is frequently portrayed as a secretive cabal of market fundamentalists operating in the shadows to dismantle the state and privatise the public sphere. The caricature suggests a group of ideologues plotting the erosion of social cohesion for the benefit of the few.

The reality of this international academy of classical liberal scholars is rather different. It was founded in 1947 by thinkers including Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman and Karl Popper.

Bruce Cotterill: How New Zealand can protect itself in a fracturing world

We’ve only just finished the third week of January, and already we are seeing a level of global change that feels unprecedented.

According to the timeline of my holiday reading, it started in Iran, where the people are attempting to overthrow the Islamic Republic’s leadership, which has been in place since 1979. Thousands are reported dead, but the regime appears to be hanging on to power, just.

Rod Kane: Tauranga’s avoidable disaster.

Before the trolls start I’m going to put my credentials up here. Apart from a lifetime interest in geology and landforms, and having an NZCE in civil engineering, neither of which counts for much, what does count in my opinion is the fact that I owned and operated a geotech contracting company specialising in slip remedial work for nearly 20 years. I have worked on and under more dangerous slips than I care to remember. More than once I had to make a run for it.

We have a human tragedy, that is horrific and the terrible drama will play out in the fullness of time. We all feel for the people involved. But something needs to be said right now to avoid all this in the future.

John McLean: Cozy Coffee With Coster

New Zealand’s Public Service Commissioner remains strangely loyal to a disgraced ex-Police Commissioner

On 15 January 2026, Public Service Commissioner Sir Brian Roche met with former Police Commissioner Andrew Coster. They met in public, at Mojo Café near Parliament, six weeks after Coster had resigned as CEO of the Social Investment Agency.

Allow me to refresh your memories. Andrew Coster tried to anoint child and bestiality porn criminal Jevon McSkimming as Coster’s successor as Police Commissioner. Coster did so in full knowledge that McSkimming was, as Deputy Police Commissioner, sexually predating upon a young woman.

Sunday January 25, 2026 

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Steven Gaskell: Greens Push to Lock in Māori Seats Because Some Votes Need Extra Protection

Just when you thought New Zealand’s electoral system couldn’t get any more “future-proofed,” along come the Greens with a helpful new idea: entrench Māori seats so they can’t be removed without a super-majority of MPs.

That’s right. In the name of democracy, the Green Party wants to make it harder for future Parliaments to change how representation works provided the seats in question are the right ones.

Reynold Macpherson: Te Arawa 2050: Who Decides, Who Pays, and Who Is Accountable?

The launch of the Te Arawa 2050 Committee a year ago was framed as a gesture of goodwill and partnership within Rotorua Lakes Council. Many welcomed its stated aim: to give Te Arawa fair and proportionate influence in council policymaking. That objective was legitimate and long overdue. A year on, however, it is clear that goodwill cannot substitute for clarity—especially when households face sustained rates pressure and councils are being urged to live within tighter fiscal limits.

Ian Bradford: These unusual weather events may be due to the Gulf Stream slowing down

Those who believe that humans are causing global warming sometimes agree, that warming has occurred in the past without the influence of humans but argue that it is the speed of the present warming that convinces them humans are responsible. They either don’t know about, or simply ignore the Younger Dryas. In fact, the Younger Dryas is one important example of an abrupt change. Throughout the Earth’s history there have been serious ice ages. About 14,500 years ago, Earth’s climate began to shift from one of those cold glacial worlds to a warmer interglacial state. However, part of the way through this transition, temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere SUDDENLY returned to near glacial conditions. This near glacial period is known as the Younger Dryas, named after the flower Dryas Octopetala, that grows in cold conditions and that became common in Europe during this time. The end of the Younger Dryas about 11,500 years ago was particularly abrupt. IN GREENLAND, TEMPERATURES ROSE 10 DEG C IN JUST 10 YEARS! (Alley, 2000). Proxy records including lake sediments in Europe, display these abrupt shifts. (Brauer et al, 2008).

Ani O'Brien: Organ donation reform was agreed but never delivered

Millions of taxpayer dollars have been spent with nothing to show for it

Michael Papesch does not fit the stereotype of an activist. He is methodical, careful, and appears not to be a man who enters easily into confrontation. He had a long career in the public service and has served on various boards related to renal health. His interest in organ donation is personal as he was first diagnosed with renal disease in 1996, was on dialysis in 2005-2006, and received a transplant in August 2006. Dr Paula Martin is equally more comfortable getting stuck in to policy work than tackling the world of politics. Her PhD thesis was on Increasing the rate of living donor kidney transplantation in New Zealand: developing an evidence base and it was she who donated her kidney to her husband Michael in 2006.

Barrie Davis: Copilot - Breaking the Spell of Political Frames

A practical guide to spotting distortions, tricks, and linguistic sleights of hand in New Zealand politics and media that is simple, easy and quick.

 Do you ever have the sense that a piece of text just isn’t right? Much of what passes for “news” is actually advocacy wrapped in journalistic packaging. We sense the spin, we feel the manipulation, but we often lack the language to say what’s happening.

John Robertson: Bullying A Nation

Walk through any New Zealand city now and you can feel it before you consciously register it. The signs. The buildings. The announcements. The slow, steady replacement of the familiar with something ideological, imposed, and untouchable. English shrinking, Māori rising, not through organic use or necessity, but through instruction. Through policy. Through pressure. Through an unspoken threat: accept this, or be branded.

This isn’t a celebration of language. It’s a declaration of power.

Melanie Phillips: A Caesar in the White House

The old world order is dead because Western universalists destroyed it

This was the week when much of the West woke up to the realisation that the old world order was dead. A new one was being born, and they didn’t like it at all. And it’s far from clear that Israel can rest easy either.

The Trump administration came to the World Economic Forum in Davos — the very belly of the liberal universalist beast — to tell the rest of the West that globalisation was dead. It had failed Europe and the United States, harmed their prosperity and growth, and made them dependent upon and even subservient to others, including their enemies.

Net Zero Watch Samizdat: Britain reaches “break glass” point for energy and industry

UK

John Bew: we are almost at “break glass moment” for energy and industrial policy

The respected historian, John Bew, has warned that Britain is nearing a “break glass moment” across domestic policy, including energy. A former adviser to four successive UK prime ministers, including Keir Starmer, Bew argues we must urgently rebuild the foundations of national hard power. He has said the world order is changing and Britain must abandon the Davos consensus.