From BreakingViews archives: Fiona MacKenzie - The “Land Back” Pogrom — Most Kiwis Don’t See It Coming

(Note: To reduce word count and aid understanding, Māori words have been omitted where possible.)

New Zealanders who pay attention to the slow creep of our political and legal institutions have every reason to feel uneasy. Many believed the 2023 election would halt the advance of racial division and restore a government committed to equal citizenship. Instead, the Coalition—particularly the National Party —seems schizophrenically determined to avoid offending those who demand ever-expanding tribal privilege. Far from dismantling race-based policy, it is still normalising it in much legislation and policy.

Fiona MacKenzie: The “Land Back” Pogrom — Most Kiwis Don’t See It Coming

(Note: To reduce word count and aid understanding, Māori words have been omitted where possible.)

New Zealanders who pay attention to the slow creep of our political and legal institutions have every reason to feel uneasy. Many believed the 2023 election would halt the advance of racial division and restore a government committed to equal citizenship. Instead, the Coalition—particularly the National Party —seems schizophrenically determined to avoid offending those who demand ever-expanding tribal privilege. Far from dismantling race-based policy, it is still normalising it in much legislation and policy.

Steven Gaskell: Back to Basics: When Education Finally Means Education Again

For the first time in a long time, it feels like the Government has finally stood up, cleared its throat, and reminded everyone that the purpose of a school is to teach children not drag them through constitutional re-education camps or daily ideological rituals masquerading as “civics.” The long-running experiment of forcing every school board in New Zealand to “give effect to the Treaty” a phrase so elastic it might as well have been drafted on a bungee cord has finally reached the end of its political shelf life. And thank goodness. Expecting part time volunteers juggling budgets, property maintenance, staffing pressures, and attendance crises to also act as legal historians and cultural negotiators was absurd from the start. A school board is not the Waitangi Tribunal, and classrooms are not political marae.

Wendy Geus: Van Velden's action showed much needed frugality - why is the PM not listening?

A desperate PM's latest ideas to improve the economy involve increasing tourism and house prices rising (sensible Bishop wants them to keep decreasing).

Like King Canute who failed to stop the tide, Luxon cannot magically change market forces which dictate the housing market. And his 'reckons' on lowering interest rates which he desperately tried to walk back, sounded more like Trump's demands.

Judy Gill: Blasphemy 2.0

From Waiheke to the Nation — a microcosm of New Zealand’s new Blasphemy Codes in a faux-indigenous eco-religious state

INTRODUCTION

Blasphemy laws were supposedly abolished in 2019, when Section 123 of the Crimes Act 1961 (“blasphemous libel”) was repealed.