Ryan Bridge: Beware the insatiable beast that is the state

It's like a hungry child screaming for more food, even though you've just fed them dinner and pudding.

Across the Tasman, Jim Chalmers, the Aussie Treasurer is facing high debt and deficit. They've managed to achieve the highest level of spending to GDP of any government in 40 years outside the pandemic. Sound familiar?

Breaking Views Update: Week of 15.2.26

Tuesday February 17, 2026 

News:
Iwi welcomes government's two year ban on harvesting rockpools north of Auckland
Local iwi Ngāti Manuhiri has welcomed the government's two-year ban on harvesting rockpools in the north of Auckland.

The ban is for all of the Whangaparāoa Peninsula, and further north at Kawau Bay and Ōmaha Bay and will take affect from 12 March.

Geoff Parker: Beware The Referendum Trap

Winston Peters has a gift. He knows exactly how to press the public’s emotional buttons without ever quite delivering what many think he’s promising. His 2026 pledge of a referendum on the Māori seats is a classic example. It sounds bold. It sounds democratic. It sounds decisive. But New Zealanders should pause — because this may be the most dangerous way imaginable to deal with a constitutional issue.

If Peters were genuinely serious about ending separatist parliamentary seats, he wouldn’t be floating a referendum at all. He would campaign openly on abolition of the Māori seats. The legal mechanism already exists. Repeal section 45 of the Electoral Act 1993 — along with the consequential provisions that support it — and the Māori seats disappear. Clean. Parliamentary. Accountable.

Instead, Peters offers a referendum.

Pee Kay: The United Nations New “Bogeyman”

Here it is, the United Nations new “Bogeyman”!

Be very, very afraid because it is on our door step!

As governments begin to sense the public’s growing disillusionment and disengagement with the threat inherent in climate change narratives, political focus, as it does when it senses a significant wind change, is shifting.

Fading climate hysteria is being replaced with a new urgent, unavoidable threat to human survival!

Richard Eldred: Marco Rubio Says Mass Migration is “a Crisis Destabilising the West”

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has warned Europe’s leaders that mass migration is “a crisis destabilising the West” and that America does not want its allies “shackled by shame”. The Mail has the details.

Chris Lynch: Nearly 40,000 more building products approved for use in New Zealand

Nearly 40,000 additional plumbing and drainage products already widely used in Australia have been approved for use in New Zealand, in a move the Government says will reduce costs, cut red tape, and improve building productivity.

Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk said the approval of the second tranche of overseas certified products would make it easier and more affordable to deliver new homes and public buildings.

Centrist: School lunches scheme cuts complaints 88% and tracks $130m annual savings

The school lunches programme is tracking $130 million in annual savings, complaints are down 88%, and more than 37 million meals are served each year.

This week’s political fight has focused instead on a name change.

Peter Williams: Why Maori seats won't be abolished

National's obfuscation means the status quo

Stop the presses!

A political party wants the Maori electorates back on the election agenda. New Zealand First says let’s have a referendum and let the people decide.

The Winston party thinks it knows what the people would decide – we’d vote for their abolition, although probably only by narrow margin.

David Farrar: Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me

Stuff reports:

New Zealand First is campaigning for a referendum to be held on the future of Māori electorates.

Let’s do the time warp again!

But this isn’t the first time Peters has called for a referendum on the Māori seats.

Mike's Minute: A mindset shift is needed to recapture our brightest

I am increasingly impressed by Iain Rennie, who is the Treasury boss.

He seems to say a bunch of interesting and insightful stuff.

Last year he warned about our growth rate, our debt and our inability to grow our way out of our troubles. He advocated for asset sales.

This past week he was at the Waikato University Economic Forum where he talked about our problem of exporting our best and brightest.

Monday February 16, 2026 

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Geoff Parker, When History Becomes Theology

New Zealand is told—again—that asking whether colonisation was good or bad is the wrong question. We are instead presented with a pre-packaged moral verdict: Māori are cast as permanent losers, settlers as permanent winners, and dissent is treated as heresy.

This framing, repeated endlessly by academic activists, is not history. It is theology.

Steven Gaskell: The Day the River Lawyered Up

Treaty settlement negotiations where iwi argue a place is an ancestor. The Legal Personhood Status Con Exposed.

New Zealand has always been a practical country. We built bridges across rivers, dams across valleys and farms across… well, everything else. Then one day the river hired a lawyer.

Judy Gill: When the Language of Governance Reaches The School Gate

How the -tanga register moved from the bureaucracy into everyday New Zealand life

Alternative headlines: From the Policy Desk to the School Gate; How a new public vocabulary entered everyday New Zealand life; The Words that Arrived Without a Lesson

Sean Rush: In defence of Tamatha Paul

Recent coverage of Wellington’s wastewater issues has revived debate about decisions made during the city’s 2021-2031 Long‑Term Plan (LTP). At the time I was the portfolio lead for water and worked constructively with all Councillors to secure a record $678 million capital investment in the network over the ten-year plan, with more for a new sewage plant at Moa Point to minimise sludge. Public discussion has recently focused on two elements of that process:

Matua Kahurangi: Free Speech, privacy and intimidation

Why this case should concern everyone

You may remember that a few months ago I wrote about one of my subscribers, a long-serving nurse who found herself facing professional consequences simply for expressing personal views online that did not align with her employer. I will not name her here and have deliberately redacted her identity. If she wishes to speak in the comments, that will be her decision. What has unfolded since should concern anyone working in the public sector.

Dr Bryce Wilkinson: Granny flat red tape changes shifts risk from councils onto homeowners

New Zealanders once took pride in being a resilient “do-it-yourself” (DIY) people.

Working city fathers, like mine, would spend much of their weekends working on their houses, gardens, fruit trees or sheds. Farmers would build cottages for shearers, farm managers and elderly relatives without much red tape. They needed to.

Dr Michael Johnston: Smart educational assessment

I have spent more than two decades involved in education research and policy, focusing on New Zealand’s school system. Yet even I struggle to understand my primary-aged daughters’ school reports.

Parents have a right to know how their children are faring at school. Yet lack of national consistency in assessing basics like literacy and numeracy hampers the clarity of school reports. Often, the reports themselves are simply unintelligible.

Dr Oliver Hartwich: New law, old mistakes

The Resource Management Act 1991 was an act of economic self-sabotage. Over three decades it inflated house prices by imposing what economists call a regulatory tax: the share of prices created by planning restrictions alone. In Auckland, that tax accounts for up to 56% of the average home price. Infrastructure consenting cost developers $1.29 billion a year.

Meanwhile, New Zealand’s product market regulation ranking has dropped to 20th in the OECD, down from 2nd in 1998.

Paul McDonnold: What Zimbabwe Can Learn From Chile - A Tale of Two Data Series

In 1988, when Robert Lawson was a first-year economics graduate student at Florida State University, he was surprised one day to look up and see Dr. James D. Gwartney standing in front of him. He had come down from a different floor of the Bellamy Building to find Lawson. That was unusual, because grad students were normally summoned by tenured professors, not sought out by them.