Breaking Views Update: Week of 31.5.26

Sunday May 31, 2026 

News:
$10m funding boost for Te Māori Tū
A $10 million Government investment into Te Māori Tū is being positioned as the next chapter of one of Aotearoa’s most significant cultural movements, with plans to take Māori culture, taonga and creative industries further onto the international stage.

Māori Development Minister Tama Potaka visited the Te Māori Centre in Lower Hutt on Friday alongside trustees of Te Māori Manaaki Taonga Trust following the Budget 2026 announcement.

Geoff Parker: English Isn't Endangered—but Its Place In Public Life Is

According to critics of the English Language Bill, English doesn't need legal recognition because it isn't endangered. The argument goes that since almost every New Zealander speaks English, there is nothing to protect.

That completely misses the point.

Nobody is suggesting English is about to vanish. The question is whether the language that unites almost every New Zealander should remain the clear and undisputed language of government, public services, law, education and national communication.

Ani O'Brien: A week is a long time: 30 May 2026

BUDGET 2026: The Dead Rabbit Budget

While much of the political discussion has focused on who won and lost domestically, the Budget documents themselves are heavily framed around geopolitical instability, energy insecurity, ageing demographics, and economic shocks originating beyond New Zealand’s shores. Finance Minister Nicola Willis repeatedly referenced the fuel crisis, while Treasury’s forecasts assume a temporary but significant hit to growth and inflation over the coming year. Treasury now forecasts annual average GDP growth of 1.2% for the year to June 2026 before accelerating to 2.3% in 2027 and 3.2% in 2028. Employment is forecast to grow by 220,000 jobs over the next four years, while wages are expected to increase by an average of 3.1% annually.

William McGimpsey: Lessons from Fiji

I recently returned from a family holiday in Fiji, where I took the opportunity to learn a bit more about that county’s fraught history of mass migration, ethnic conflict, military coups, and demographic shifts.

Fiji’s experience serves as both a warning to countries like New Zealand about the consequences of mass migration and ethnic replacement, and a learning opportunity about the types of reforms that can reverse it.

Ashley Church: “They’re both as bad as each other”

Laundering the latest lie against Israel

Just when it seems that the moral inversion around Israel cannot get any worse, someone finds another shovel and starts digging.

In recent weeks, a major report documenting the sexual violence committed by Hamas on, and after, October 7, was released. The findings are grotesque, hideous and almost impossible to read without feeling physically sick. They describe sexual violence as terror, humiliation as strategy, and the destruction of bodies and families as part of the point.

Dr Eric Crampton: Send my regards to NZ’s regulators as they struggle to keep up

Last year, Cabinet papers promised that New Zealand’s agricultural-product regulator would be required to use assessments from trusted overseas regulators. The Bills now before Parliament instead say the regulator must merely “have regard to” them.

A duty to have regard to something is not a duty to use it. It can be satisfied by reading the overseas assessment, noting it, and then doing the local assessment much as before.

Bob Edlin: The name that shall not be spoken in Parliament....

The name that shall not be spoken in Parliament – you can find it in the third paragraph below

By the time MPs had taken their seats in the House of Representatives on Wednesday, The Post had named the official who (the newspaper contended) had received briefing notes from Z Energy and Fonterra which, curiously, have disappeared.

Guest Post: The media mess and how to fit it

A guest post on Kiwiblog by Fish Across Face:

My name is a pseudonym, as I’m identifiable with a high profile local television show. For what it’s worth, publishing the following is an acknowledgement from our host that I have decades of experience in most areas of TV, radio, commercial production and so on. My name wouldn’t be familiar, but to kiwis, my content is.

This post addresses today’s failing media ecosystem, its relationship with the Left of politics, and how to fix it – from someone inside the tent.

Rodney Hide: Christchurch City Council Has Lost Its Mind

The elected councillors and staff at Christchurch City Council have officially taken leave of their senses.

I was alerted to this particular madness by the wonderful Katrina Biggs on X, who posted the flyer for the council’s “Women’s Swimming Sessions.” I didn’t believe it at first. Surely this was satire. So I went to the official Christchurch City Council website to check. It gets worse.

Here is what they actually say:

Saturday May 30, 2026 

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Geoff Parker: The Culturalisation of Healthcare

"A new study on eating disorders raises a familiar question: why are universal health problems increasingly being repackaged as ethnicity-specific challenges?"

New Zealand's taxpayer-funded research industry has once again discovered the answer to a problem that nobody was asking.

This week's breakthrough revelation? Eating disorders apparently require a "Kaupapa Māori-led" response.

Perspective with Heather du Plessis-Allan: The Government was right to give billions to defence and forget arts

Geez, how sorry do you feel for Paul Goldsmith at the Music Awards, eh?

So, he's invited to the awards and he hasn't got his mate Chris Bishop with him this time. Bishop didn’t go after what happened with Don McGlashan last year.

Breaking Views Update: Week of 24.5.26

Saturday May 30, 2026 

News:
Iwi leaders furious about Budget 2026, call it ‘economic apartheid’
Representatives of the Iwi Leaders Forum arrived at Parliament furious about the Government’s Budget, accusing it of creating an “economic apartheid”.

On Thursday, Finance Minister Nicola Willis handed down her third Budget. It was delivered amid a backdrop of significant economic uncertainty, with clear issues at home and abroad.

Mike's Minute: My thoughts on the Budget

I asked for the surplus to arrive sooner than previously forecast and, as though she was listening this time yesterday, the first words out of Nicola Willis' mouth were it will be a year ahead of schedule.

You can't ask for more than that.

Ani O'Brien: The Dead Rabbits Budget

Perceptions, appearances, and feelings...

Note: my analysis is political and so relies much more on perception, sentiment, and what things appear to be. I include economic and fiscal commentary from those more qualified than myself, but if you are after the true nuts, bolts, forecasts, OBEGALs, and OBEGALxs you won’t find it here.

Nicola Willis spent months lowering expectations for Budget 2026. She made it abundantly clear that there would be no “lolly scramble” or “sugar hits”. She set the expectation that the usual election year ‘bribes’ would not be on the agenda. My personal favourite line of hers was from yesterday when she said:

Ani O'Brien: How the media have distorted the truth to target their current villain

Accomodation allowances should be scrutinised, but Louise Upston is far from the only one receiving one

The media have created a controversy over Louise Upston’s accommodation allowance. Naturally the story has triggered public anger because it appears, at first glance, to confirm every suspicion people already hold about politicians. A minister receives around $1,000 a week in taxpayer-funded accommodation support while also owning an apartment in Wellington. Politically, it ain’t a great look. A minister tightening accommodation support for ordinary people while receiving accommodation support herself was always vulnerable to being seized upon by opposition including media.

Peter Dunne: Budget strategies

With her latest Budget Finance Minister Nicola Willis has joined some very unlikely company.

In 1972 then Finance Minister Rob Muldoon crowed that “I’ve spent it all for them”, meaning that there was no room for rash spending promises from Labour before that year’s election. In a somewhat more genteel fashion, former Finance Minister Grant Robertson deliberately set constrained forward spending allowances and booked $4 billion in savings and reprioritisation in the 2023 Budget. His intention was to leave the National Party with extremely limited fiscal room to fund its election promises without having to either cut public services or rely on highly optimistic economic revenue forecasts.

Kerre Woodham: Was holding the OCR the right decision?

So what would you rather? A little bit of pain now or a whole lot more later? The Reserve Bank yesterday opted to keep the official cash rate at 2.25%, but the decision to hold was a close-run thing. And we know that now because of the transparency around the decisions being made and a jolly good thing it is too. Governor Dr. Anna Breman had to use her casting vote. The Monetary Policy Committee was evenly split on whether to raise the rate. The three Reserve Bank officials wanted to hold, the external committee members wanted to hike and therefore Governor Breman had to use her casting vote.

Bob Edlin: The point rightly raised by Peters is that the same Parliamentary question has been asked umpteen times before

Before Opposition leader Chris Hipkins had a chance to put Question Two to the Prime Minister on Tuesday, Winston Peters had intervened to raise a point of order.

It was a welcome point of order, at least for those familiar with the Parliamentary questioning procedure.

Peters said the question had been asked before.

Indeed, it had.

Chris McVeigh KC: What's in a name?

What's in a name? It is tempting to approach the current vogue aimed at replacing all the well established and familiar place names in New Zealand (including that name itself) with maori alternatives, as some kind of shallow exercise in preening vanity practised by a coterie of self righteous plonkers, but I don't propose doing that here.

So I'll do it here instead.

No, no but seriously and much and all as I'd gain a degree of personal satisfaction from a bit of undignified name calling, I must resist that temptation and accord those who indulge themselves in this way the respect their activities don't deserve and reluctantly resist any temptation to cater to my baser instincts.