Centrist: Growing rivalry - Is NZ helping India become a kiwifruit competitor?

Helping India grow

New Zealand is providing plants, scientific expertise and improved nursery, orchard and post-harvest methods that the government-owned Bioeconomy Science Institute says could help increase Indian kiwifruit production by as much as tenfold.

Centrist: InternetNZ moves to limit who can vote after Free Speech Union recruited 2,400 members

InternetNZ is considering new restrictions on who may become a member after the Free Speech Union recruited about 2,400 supporters to join the organisation and vote in its board elections.

Members elect InternetNZ directors, giving them influence over the organisation responsible for managing New Zealand’s .nz domain system.

Centrist: No charges laid – 1000 days since Baby Ru’s death

Ruthless-Empire Ahipene-Wall, known publicly as Baby Ru, died on 22 October 2023, just days before his second birthday.

Police said post-mortem results confirmed his cause of death was blunt-force trauma and that they believed the injuries were not accidental.

1000 days since, three adults remain persons of interest, but no one has been charged.

Centrist: Will National rule out Labour?

• NZ First has ruled out Labour, but the bigger question may be whether National would do the same.

• A National-Labour deal sounds unlikely, but cross-party arrangements have happened before in wartime.

• Both major parties may see their own minor-party partners as harder to manage.

• Centre-right voters may need to pressure MPs now: will you rule out Labour?

The bigger question

Centrist: Co-governance comes roaring back to life

Speaking to Duncan Garner, Steve Gibson, the Hastings councillor described the region’s new water structure as “Three Waters in drag” and said the core problem is not Māori, but unelected influence.

“Nothing to do with Māori, it’s to do with the unelected officials running the show,” he said. His warning is that power is being shifted away from elected councillors and towards people the public cannot remove.

Centrist: The kids are alright – but the system still isn’t

First, the good news

Despite showing a sharp drop in serious youth offending and improvements across several frontline indicators, the report appears to have attracted little, if any, attention from RNZ or the wider New Zealand mainstream media.

Read straight, the latest annual report on the Child and Youth Strategy shows that, across several frontline indicators, New Zealand children and young people are doing better.

Centrist: If ministers can’t interfere, who fixes state-media bias?

Who is accountable at TVNZ?

Editorial independence protects TVNZ from political interference. But when balance fails, who is actually accountable?

Centrist: Three more gang members than police — but 49,000 fewer victims

1News recently reported that there are “10,475 police officers and 10,478 gang members.”

Since the 2023 election, gang numbers have risen 13%, or 1208 more members, while police numbers have increased by 264. Labour’s Ginny Andersen called the new figures “a broken promise from the Prime Minister” and “an absolute failure”.

Yet on the same day, the New Zealand Crime and Victims Survey showed there were 49,000 fewer victims of violent crime in the year to October 2025 compared with the previous two years.

Centrist: Medical Council draft tells doctors to advance Māori equity, dismantle ‘power imbalances’

Documents circulated to doctors this week show the Medical Council is consulting on a new statement requiring practitioners to actively advance “hauora Māori” and address “unfair systems and power imbalances” within the health sector.

Does pursuing race-linked outcome equity cross from professional standards into political doctrine?

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.

Centrist: ‘Better for Māori than Labour’ - Duncan Garner praises coalition government record

In a wide-ranging podcast discussing Waitangi week, Duncan Garner argues for the coalition government’s record on Māori-related issues.

“The record says they are better for Māori than Labour,” he remarks, “but nobody wants to talk about it.”

Ian Wishart: Are climate activists ignoring the evidence at Mt Maunganui?

As the grief turns to anger over Thursday’s deadly landslide on Mt Maunganui (Mauao), the blame game has well and truly begun.

The landslide’s immediate cause was a 274mm deluge of rain in the 24 hours to 9 am Wednesday, which Met Service had claimed was the highest rainfall in Tauranga since records began in 1910.

Centrist: Households now paying the real price of bread

New Zealanders are paying a lot more for basic food not because inflation has suddenly spiked, but because years of artificially low pricing have quietly ended.

New data from Stats NZ shows food prices rose 4 percent over 2025, while the price of a standard loaf of white bread jumped almost 60 per cent.

Centrist: Luxon brushes off coup talk, says he rebuilt National from “civil war”

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon is pushing back hard on leadership speculation, telling media he will “absolutely” lead National into the 2026 election and portraying the chatter as media habit formed during National’s unstable years.

Luxon framed himself as the fixer who dragged the party back from chaos, saying: “The National Party was in a state of civil war, we’d had five leaders in five years.”

Centrist: Government unveils app, but next year it becomes New Zealand’s digital ID platform

The government has launched its new Govt.nz app, marketed as a convenient place to find information, bookmark services, and receive emergency alerts.

However, the real transformation arrives next year. Minister for Digitising Government Judith Collins told RNZ’s Morning Report that digital driver’s licences and other identity credentials will be added once legislation passes early in 2026.

Centrist: A well-paid ecosystem takes its grievance to Geneva

Lady Tureiti Moxon travelled to Geneva to ask the United Nations to intervene in what she calls the “political discrimination” of Māori by the coalition.

However, the pattern running through Moxon’s combative narrative, which outlines more than a dozen grievances, is that she starts in the middle of the story.

Centrist: After years attacking ACT as ‘colonisers.....

After years attacking ACT as ‘colonisers,’ ex-TPM MPs’ chaotic vote flip triggers allegations Parliament misled

After years of denouncing ACT and its bills as racist and colonial, newly independent MPs Takuta Ferris and Mariameno Kapa Kingi have suddenly reversed their votes to back ACT’s Medicines Amendment Bill in the House.

Centrist: Michael Laws slams ‘Māori issue industry,’ says iwi using ‘cultural veto’ to shake down businesses

Broadcaster Michael Laws says he is “sick of Māori issues” but can’t ignore them because they reveal a “fundamental clash of values” holding the country back.

On The Platform, Laws said a leaked 84-page Ngāi Tahu cultural impact report on Oceana Gold’s McCrae mine near Dunedin shows how iwi are using cultural objections as a cash grab dressed up as spirituality.

Centrist: New Zealand passport ranked strongest in the Five Eyes, ahead of Australia and the US

New Zealand’s passport has been ranked among the most powerful in the world, giving Kiwis visa-free or visa-on-arrival access to 186 destinations.

The NZ passport comes out ahead of Australia and Canada, and well above the United States and United Kingdom.

Centrist: How much is framing versus misinformation fuelling media distrust?

Is it really about trust, or is it about framing?

Each year, surveys show media trust falling. Commentators blame social media or disinformation. But perhaps the public isn’t rejecting facts. Maybe they’re rejecting how those facts are framed.

“Framing” is the editorial layer added to facts. Which details are spotlighted, which are buried, and what tone guides interpretation? Readers know who the prime minister is. What drives disengagement is the slant: whether stories are cast as triumphs, failures, or excuses.