Peter Bassett: Understanding Te Tiriti — Or Just Selling an Anointed Version?

If the Treaty of Waitangi now governs schools, hospitals, councils and community life, there is one small problem: it doesn’t say so.

That gap — between what the Treaty actually says and what is now claimed in its name — is where Roimata Smail’s Understanding Te Tiriti operates, quietly turning modern policy choices into historical inevitabilities.

Breaking Views Update: Week of 4.1.26

Friday January 9, 2026 

News:
Local board members paddle Waikato River
Members of the Franklin Local Board experienced the culturally significant waka ama programme on the Waikato River as part of their Māori partnership programme.

The Franklin Local Board Māori Partnership Programme has been in place since 2024 and plays a key role in strengthening the board with Māori values. Some of the outcomes include:

David Farrar: A boost for gold and silver exports

Shane Jones announced:

The first major mining project, Waihi North, has gained consent today to expand operations until 2043 through the Fast-track process, Infrastructure Minister Chris Bishop and Resources Minister Shane Jones say.

Colinxy: Cucumbers versus Grapes - The Great Proof of Socialism?

The famous “cucumber versus grape” experiment, popularised in a TED Talk clip, has often been cited as evidence that beneath the surface, all creatures (including humans) harbour socialist instincts. The experiment involved capuchin monkeys performing a simple task: when rewarded with cucumber slices, they were content—until they saw another monkey receive grapes for the same effort. Suddenly, the cucumber was rejected, thrown back at the researcher in protest.

Dave Patterson: China Ends 2025 With Large Provocation

As the calendar year 2025 ended, China conducted one of its most provocative exercises, threatening Taiwan. In the final days of December, the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) and the China Coast Guard (CCG) conducted a joint training operation called Justice Mission 2025 in the Taiwan Strait and other waters surrounding Taiwan. This was the second such exercise that year, simulating a blockade of major Taiwanese ports to shut down transportation to the island as a prelude to an invasion. The first was called Strait Thunder-2025A, conducted April 1-2 of last year, and it had similar objectives.

China Is Stepping Up Its Taiwan Blockade Exercises

Leesa K. Donner: Is Cuba Ready to Fall?

The aftershocks following the astonishing capture of Venezuela strongman Nicolás Maduro by elite US forces are just beginning to settle in. Nowhere are the shocks felt more powerfully than in that itch of a country the US has not been able to scratch for decades – Cuba.

Flags in Havana were lowered on Monday in honor of the 32 Cuban security officers killed in the US operation in Caracas this weekend. Toppling the illegitimate Venezuelan government certainly puts Cuba on notice, but experts have differing opinions on the likelihood that Cuba’s long-running communist government will finally bite the dust. This question is followed by another: Will the land of Castro need a little nudge over the cliff, or will taking Maduro down be enough to do the job?

Ani O'Brien: Greenland explained - What Trump is up to now?

This is speculation and opinion heavy!

Donald Trump’s rhetoric about Greenland has, up until very, very recently, been widely treated as a joke, a provocation, or a revival of crude imperial fantasy. Depending on the news outlet, it is framed as evidence of his ignorance, recklessness, or supposed authoritarian instincts. But, as I have warned many times before, taking Trump literally, rather than strategically, is foolish. No matter what comes out of his mouth or what he types online, it is far more effective to assess his interests, and the interests of the United States, in order to predict what he is up to.

JD: Ngāi Tahu, Why So Many?

Guest post on The Good Oil by JD

So where, in just 22 years, did these extra 35,000 Ngāi Tahu come from?

Some interesting numbers covering NZ’s most litigious tribe, the South Islanders of Ngāi Tahu. In 1840, the tribe was estimated to have around 2,500 members. However, by 2001 this number had grown to 40,000, meaning that every Ngāi Tahu female across every generation between 1840 and 2001 had given birth to at least four surviving infants, at least 50 per cent of whom were themselves female. This is unlikely, given the prevalence in Māori society of roromi, but not impossible. (Infanticide among Maori was usually sex-selective, with female infants the primary victims.)

David Farrar: Reserve Bank sees sense

The Reserve Bank announced:

“Following the completion of the review commissioned by the Board in March, we are pleased to announce modernised capital rules that will support an efficient and resilient financial system,” said Rodger Finlay, Chair of the RBNZ Board.

David Farrar: A good bill from Melissa Lee to reform the HDCA

Melissa Lee has put a bill into the ballot to make some good reforms to the Harmful Digital Communications Act. The ACT has provided relief to many people who have suffered online harm, but has also been weaponised to stop legitimate criticism.

They key changes proposed are:

Thursday January 8, 2026 

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Peter Bassett: MPs’ Travel Bills - what The Post reported and what it didn’t

The Post’s report on MPs’ travel costs looks, at first glance, like accountability journalism. It is full of numbers, tables, quarterly breakdowns and party responses. What it lacks is judgement — and more importantly, curiosity.

The headline figure is that MPs spent $3.4 million on domestic travel in the nine months to September 2025, with ministers adding another $1.86 million.

Readers are told this works out at “more than $1 million every three months”, but the figures are scattered across so many paragraphs that no one ever sees the full cost in one place.

Geoff Parker: Why Control of New Zealand’s Freshwater Matters to Us All

Freshwater is arguably New Zealand’s most vital shared resource, sustaining public health, food production, energy generation, and the environment. That is why any proposal for tribal control - whether in the South Island or nationwide - should concern every New Zealander, Māori and non-Māori alike.

This debate is often mischaracterised as being about “ownership.” It is not. The real issue is control: who decides how water is allocated, who may use it, under what conditions, and with what power of veto. Those decisions determine outcomes in practice, even though water itself is not subject to legal ownership.

Ian Bradford: More Arguments Against the Climate Alarmists

Flawed IPCC assessment reports

The first IPCC Assessment Report in 1990 found that the climate record of the past century was “broadly consistent” with changes in the Earth’s surface temperature, as calculated by climate models that incorporated the observed increase in greenhouse gases. So what they were saying is that as the amount of greenhouse gases increased in the atmosphere the temperature of the Earth also increased. But the trouble with that was from about 1940 to 1975 the climate actually cooled. And to make matters worse for this IPCC claim, industrial activity grew rapidly after WW2. So how would one reconcile this cooling with the increase in greenhouse gases, notably of course, carbon dioxide.

Judy Gill: The Eden Myth in New Zealand Education

New Zealand’s education system now teaches children a moral mythology presented as history. This article exposes how modern values were repackaged, environmental destruction erased, and ancestry elevated into authority — without debate, evidence, or consent.

Ani O'Brien: Laundering WEIRD ideas - how cultural elites sell their ideology

A case study on drug law reform

Another piece about that class of people who seem to sit at the centre of far too many of our institutional and cultural failures. I still struggle to know exactly what to call them. Over the years I’ve tried on labels like the laptop class, the lanyard wearers, the chattering classes, and the woke elite. None of them quite capture the whole phenomenon, but everyone knows roughly who is being described. These are the people who dominate our cultural power centres: media, academia, politics, and the bureaucracy. Sometimes I also include HR departments in ‘big corporates’ as they tend to mimic the social behaviours. They are overwhelmingly educated, urban, comfortably middle class or wealthier, socially liberal to the point of dogma, and deeply wedded to a set of ideological commitments that usually travel under the banner of “wokeness”.

Paul Mueller: Venezuelan Tragedy - Socialism, Entitlement, and Tyranny Are Connected

Once prosperous and cultured, Venezuela has become destitute, crime-ridden, and hopeless. Young socialists should take heed.

The shocking capture and extradition of former Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife over the weekend is the culmination of months of US pressure on the regime. President Trump and other administration officials have labeled Maduro and his close associates “narco-terrorists,” accusing him of leading a huge criminal organization and profiting by violating US laws, selling large quantities of illegal narcotics which may have potentially killed Americans.

But while the future of the Venezuelan regime is uncertain, it is worth taking a few minutes to understand how Venezuela got to where it is today and what Americans can learn from its descent into a tyrannical/criminal regime.

Matua Kahurangi: Lefties at the trough - the left love burning your money

The latest figures from the Taxpayers’ Union show that over the last 21 months, MPs have racked up nearly $15 million in Parliamentary Service spending on travel, accommodation and transport - all on the taxpayer’s dime, with precious little transparency about what the money actually bought.

What leaps off the page, and should make every Kiwi gasp, is that the top five spenders are all from the left of the political spectrum, proving yet again that when it comes to splurging taxpayers’ cash, the lefties simply can’t help themselves.TR

Dr Will Jones: Britain Signs Deal to Deploy Troops to Ukraine

Britain has signed a deal to deploy boots on the ground in Ukraine as part of a proposed ceasefire deal backed for the first time by the United States. The Telegraph has more.

Thomas L. Hogan: Is Crypto Just a Meme Coin Casino?

Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are widely – but wrongly – panned as unregulated casinos or Ponzi schemes that create no real value. For example, US Senator Elizabeth Warren called crypto a “threat to financial stability,” while the UK’s Treasury Select Committee said that cryptocurrency ownership “more closely resembles gambling than a financial service.”

While some cryptocurrencies are mainly speculative, many serve specific business or functional purposes. We can identify some of the value created by cryptocurrencies by breaking them into four general categories: Bitcoin, stablecoins, meme coins, and utility tokens.