Peter Williams: The Teaching Council Disgrace

Teacher registration has been fraught since it was introduced nearly 40 years ago

Among the understandable outrage over the Timothy Fisher scandal and the Teaching Council there was one incident which doesn’t inspire much confidence for the future of this organization which is responsible for the registration and regulation of the country’s 124,000 teachers.

Fisher was the sexual deviant who was finally sent to prison last year for crimes committed while he was a teacher, crimes the Teaching Council knew about as far back as 2015 but it never intervened or cancelled his registration, thus allowing him to continue working as a teacher.

Guest Post: It’s Time for Direct Citizen Led Democracy for Our Country

A guest post on Kiwiblog by Tony Argyle:

In 1440 Johannes Gutenberg invented the movable type printing press and heralded in a silent revolution that would change the world. It is unlikely he realized the full significance of his creation nor would he have seen it’s impact before his death in 1468.

Rodney Hide: Raw data that isn't raw - Australia catches up with what we were told to ignore

Australians woke last week to a story I knew well. The Australian's Graham Lloyd reported that a forensic audit had found chunks of the Bureau of Meteorology's "raw" temperature data copied and pasted from one period into another.

The standout example is Sydney Observatory. The minimum temperatures shown for August 1867 are the same as those for August 1907. The paper checked the handwritten logbooks at the National Archives. The 1867 numbers online are simply wrong.

Eric Ness: The 4% Rates Cap — Now We Find Out What Councils Really Think Is Essential

For years the council rates debate has followed a familiar pattern. Council announces another increase, ratepayers choke on their coffee, and council explains that everything costs more. Insurance is up, interest is up, construction is up, infrastructure is ageing, roads need repairing and pipes need replacing. Much of that is true.

But there is another part of the story that gets less attention. Councils are also doing far more than they used to.

Lindsay Mitchell: If welfarism matters, the choice is clear

Benefit numbers are out for September. The last before the election. Up again. There are now 417,000 working age people on a main benefit.

Christchurch, New Zealand's second largest city, has a population of 411,000. Think about that.

Up till the mid seventies the percentage of 18-64 year-olds on a benefit never exceeded two. One person in fifty. Right now it's 12.9 percent or one in eight people.

Richard Prebble: Gangs and politics

Commentators cannot understand the Greens and Te Pāti Māori’s courting of gang support.

The association between organised crime and political parties is hardly new. Politicians and organised crime have done deals from New York to Sicily, from Chicago to Mexico.

Politicians have done deals with gangs because they saw an advantage.

Peter Dunne: Politically Homeless

With just over three weeks till election day I am feeling increasingly politically homeless. None of the parties currently in Parliament, or aspiring to be, entice me to vote for them. Their policies are either too much of a muchness, too dislocated and small focused, or in some cases too downright crazy to attract my support.

Having previously been a member of the Labour Party for 22 years, and a Labour MP for over 10 years, I still have some residual interest in its activities. But any passing thought that I could vote for them again vanished during the first leaders' debate when Chris Hipkins made it clear that the teachers' unions, not parents, would be calling the shots on education policy if he were to lead the next government. It reminded me of one of the reasons why I quit the party all those years ago. The constant fixations of imposing higher taxes and always doing what the unions wanted had become just too much for me.

 Monday October 19, 2026 

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Breaking Views Update: Week of 18.10.26

Monday October 19, 2026 

News:
Māori legal expertise recognised with two King’s Counsel appointments
Māori legal expertise is being recognised with two Māori lawyers among 12 new King’s Counsel appointed by Attorney-General Chris Bishop.

Graeme Spencer: Election 2026 - What Sort Of Country Do We Want?

Remember the Treaty Principles Bill?

More than 300,000 submissions were made. Whatever your opinion of the bill, the campaign demonstrated something that every New Zealander should recognise: organised political movements can mobilise significant numbers of people - it was defeated by the volume of submissions, not the content and the quality.

Labour, the Greens and Te Pāti Māori have supporters who are highly committed to their political causes. They organise, campaign, protest and make their voices heard.

Colinxy: The Left and Their Lust for Power

One of the great myths of modern politics is that the Left opposes power. They oppose your power. There is a difference.

For more than two centuries, Left-wing movements have presented themselves as enemies of hierarchy, privilege, wealth, authority, and oppression. Their rhetoric is full of liberation, equality, justice, democracy, and empowerment.

Yet whenever one examines their history, a strange pattern emerges: the problem is never power itself. The problem is who currently possesses it.

Dr Oliver Hartwich: The false economy of aged care

Last week, we co-hosted a dinner with the Selwyn Foundation. Its chair, former Labour health minister David Cunliffe, led the Government's aged care advisory group and presented their report, A place to grow old.

The report describes an underfunded, fragmented system facing more than twice as many over-85s by 2047. It recommends paying providers enough to build beds, more home care, an independent pricing authority and higher contributions from people with assets.

Roger Partridge: The bank of the children

We hear a great deal about the Bank of Mum and Dad. The Bank of the children gets rather less attention, although we have been drawing on it for years.

The Bank's terms are simple. Voters choose what they want, politicians arrange delivery and Treasury does the paperwork. Anything the adults would rather not pay for goes on the kids' account.

Nick Clark: Deals without the devolution

Greater Manchester's 2014 devolution agreement included powers over transport, housing and skills, with matching funding.

That was my model for New Zealand two years ago, in a research note for The New Zealand Initiative. I urged the Government to strike City and Regional Deals that live up to the name.

New Zealand's centralisation leaves councils with weak incentives for growth. Wellington takes much of the tax revenue, while councils and ratepayers bear infrastructure costs. Devolving powers and sharing revenue would help.

Dr Oliver Hartwich: NZ’s mixed-up electoral system threatens to blow results out of proportion

Here is a paradox that ought to trouble ministers more than any single threat named in the NZSIS’s 2026 Security Threat Environment report, released in August.

The New Zealand Government has never had more useful intelligence available to it than it does today. Yet it is not digesting that intelligence quickly enough to matter.

The problem is not what we know. It is how we decide.

Dr Eric Crampton: Importing youth to offset an ageing population

Virtuous and vicious cycles in policy are both entirely possible. Sometimes at the same time.

Voting has long been heavily age-skewed, with greater proportions of older people voting. Combine that with an ageing population across the developed world and a very bad vicious cycle can easily take hold.

As the median voter gets older, politics shifts to provide more of the kinds of things that older people like and fewer of the kinds of things that younger people like.

Net Zero Watch Samizdat - Labour’s energy price ‘doom loop’: the Net Zero legacy

Household energy debts are heading towards £7bn, with paying customers facing a £100 annual charge to cover unpaid bills. Ministers, meanwhile, are weighing Rosebank and Jackdaw as researchers warn that blocking them could forgo almost £11bn in tax revenue. Overseas, the IEA is accelerating emergency diesel releases as supplies tighten.

Kerre Woodham: Government gang rehab programmes need to show us their value

The Greens are under fire with Marama Davidson doubling down on her desire to work with the mob to get positive health outcomes. First there was the photo in the mob headquarters, cha ching, look at us, woo hoo! That was the Greens and Te Pāti Māori MPs popping along to a health hui.

And when asked about that in faintly judgy tones by the media, Greens co leader Marama Davidson said, "We are open to funding the Mongrel Mob to deliver drug prevention programs. We're open to funding what works. We're an evidence-based party." And that instead of pushing problems under the carpet, they want to bring problems out into the light, get to the people who are hard to reach, and if that means working with the mob, well, all well and good.

Richard Prebble: Those about to be defeated

“The average length of time served in Parliament has dropped since MMP was introduced”, says the Association of Former Members of Parliament. For list MPs it is “about four years”.

The Association ran at a loss this year of $2,806, but the treasurer “expects the situation to improve next year as more MPs leave Parliament following the 2026 General Election.”

The Association reports that many former MPs struggle to find employment.

Rodney Hide: Henry Cooke wants a do-over if you vote wrong

The Post's political editor, Henry Cooke, has a plan if the MSM’s relentless campaign for the Opportunity Party fails. It’s a simple plan: if you vote the wrong way, you vote again.

https://www.thepost.co.nz/politics/361099333/dirty-deal-chris-hipkins-and-christopher-luxon-should-actually-strike

He says so plainly. He wants Christopher Luxon and Chris Hipkins to promise that "if an overhang is the only path to government, then we'll ask the Governor-General to call another election instead." He says it "would be called a 'dirty deal' between the big two almost immediately."