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.

Melanie Phillips: The deepening madness against the Jews

The tsunami of global antisemitism in the wake of the massacre of Israelis on October 7, 2023 and during the Gaza war that followed has caused as much bafflement as horror at the sheer perversity of this malevolence.

It’s now become clear, however, that what we’re looking at is an even more sinister pattern of behaviour. Appallingly, the slaughter of Jews excites a large number of people so much that it galvanises them to howl for the blood of more.

Kerre Woodham: Are you willing to see a rise in rates to clean up our waterways?

I've been saying every morning to Helen, God, would you look at what's happening in Wellington? Look at what has oh! Like one of those people, usually men, watching the television going, look what she's wearing, come here and have a look at this. Have a look at that. God. Oh, but I'm like that about the waste going into the ocean off Wellington. That's far more important than what a reporter may or may not be wearing.

Sunday February 15, 2026 

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Breaking Views Update: Week of 15.2.26

Sunday February 15, 2026 

News:
Hamilton City Council Confirms Continuation of Maangai Maaori Representation
Hamilton City Council has formally confirmed that it will continue its innovative Maangai Maaori representation model for the upcoming 2025–2028 triennium, reinforcing dedicated Māori participation in local government decision-making.

Duggan Flannakin: Forging and vaulting ahead for critical minerals

While the nation was focused on an ongoing personal tragedy and the Super Bowl, representatives of 54 nations met last Wednesday in Washington, DC, at the request of Secretary of State Marco Rubio to plot out a pathway to mutual independence from the Chinese stranglehold on access to critical minerals and rare earths.

Net Zero Watch Samizdat: The Way Up

WATCH OUR NEW FILM: THE WAY UP

Net Zero Watch has produced this short documentary on Britain’s energy story and the real-world harms of Net Zero. CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE FILM.

John McLean: Waste, Waste Everywhere.....

Defund Da Sewerage. The Albatross around New Zealand’s neck

Untreated human waste continues to gush from the failed Moa Point treatment plant into the sea off the South Coast of Wellington. Pat Dougherty, the chief executive of Wellington Water, initially blamed the catastrophic failure on “under‑investment over a long period”. Wellington Water has now claimed that it cannot comment on the disaster because there’s an inquiry. Which is a lie. No inquiry, governmental or otherwise, has been initiated.

Dr Eric Crampton: The great equalizer

Samuel Colt invented the revolver and a slogan to go with it. “God created men, Col. Colt made them equal”. The revolver was ‘the great equalizer’. Anyone could learn to shoot. That levelled the playing field for those otherwise preyed upon.

You might think Colt’s slogan a relic. But there’s a modern analogue. Think about a different kind of power asymmetry. One that’s bureaucratic rather than ballistic, persistent rather than point-blank, and seemingly impossible to break.

Colinxy: When “Respect” Means “Obey the Ideology” - A Case Study in Public‑Sector Confusion

The ACT Party has released its proposed rule book for public servants. It is not complicated, nor is it radical. It is, in fact, the kind of thing most New Zealanders assume already exists:

Pee Kay: You couldn’t make this sh-t up!

You couldn’t make this sh-t up but here is a legitimate(?) New Zealand political party wanting to legislate for “personhood for whales”!!! These clowns that call themselves the Green Party are paid near $300,000 PA by you and me and this is what they give us in return!

This the same political party that one of its MP’s, when a Wellington City councillor, was the instigator of scrapping a $391 million wastewater renewal plan in favour of a $226 million cycleway network!

Dr Oliver Hartwich: Voters Hungary for change - It’s the economy, stupid

Hungary is a landlocked nation of ten million people with an economy smaller than New Zealand’s. It has no significant military, no permanent seat on the Security Council and no history of shaping international affairs.

Yet this modest Central European country has somehow become the American right’s template for reshaping the United States.