Ani O'Brien: The lunatics are taking the government to court

PATHA to take the government to court over puberty blockers

A handful of activists, with a tenuous grip on reality and a plethora of mental health issues between them, are dragging the government into the courts over the puberty blocker ban.

On 1 December 2025, the Professional Association for Transgender Health Aotearoa (PATHA) filed an urgent injunction seeking to block the upcoming ban on new prescriptions of puberty-blockers for “gender-dysphoric youth” set to take effect on 19 December.

Cam Slater: Big Tobacco, and a Push for Monopoly Profits.....

Exposed: The Hypocritical Nexus Between Otago University Academics and Big Tobacco, and a Push for Monopoly Profits in New Zealand’s Tobacco Wars

This leak exposes a rotten core in New Zealand’s tobacco control scene, where hypocrisy reigns and public health takes a back seat to agendas.

Ani O'Brien: Ministry of Health leaving X for a dying platform full of furries and CSAM

The New Zealand public service is a law unto itself. As someone remarked on X today, the Coalition might be in Government, but they are not in power.

One small, but significant way our ministries, departments, and agencies are registering their defiance and hatred of people outside of their echo chamber is by shutting down (or reducing) their X accounts in favour of alternatives like BlueSky.

David Farrar: A sensible move by Ministry of Health

The Ministry of Health announced:

The Ministry of Health is today releasing an evidence brief and position statement on the use of puberty blockers for gender identity issues and outlining a more cautious approach to their use.

 

 The evidence brief shows a lack of good quality evidence to back the effectiveness and safety of puberty blockers when used for this purpose.

Their finding was:

Daily Telegraph NZ: Erasing an orchestrated litany of lies

Many people, especially ignorant people, want to punish you for speaking the truth, for being correct, for being you. Never apologize for being correct, or for being years ahead of your time. If you’re right and you know it, speak your mind. Speak your mind. Even if you are a minority of one, the truth is still the truth. — Mahatma Gandhi

The phrase, An Orchestrated Litany of Lies, was originally penned by Justice Mahon. He wrote them in a summary of his findings on a Royal Commission of Inquiry into the tragic Air New Zealand plane crash on Mount Erebus, on 28 November 1978. There were no survivors. All 257 people onboard were killed instantly in the greatest air disaster that had ever occurred in the world at that time. It devastated New Zealand and still leaves a scar upon the Nation — etched deeply into our consciousness.

Suze: Anyone Told You About This C-19 Treatment?

Bucking the health system must be in my genes, as I have a strong regard for looking after myself using herbs and traditional practices to remedy health problems before expecting prescriptions from the medical industry to do the trick. Natural remedies, when correctly used under the supervision of trained practitioners, can be effective and crucially they are cheap and widely accessible in third world countries.

Big Pharma makes no money out of hydroxychloroquine or ivermectin or naturally derived products such as nattokinase, quercetin or NAC used to treat Covid-19, and the NZ embargo on the use of Artemisia annua (artemisinin, sweet wormwood) extract should come as no surprise.

Point of Order: How health officials kept quiet (it seems) about secrecy provisions injected into the Therapeutic Products Bill

Malcolm Harbrow has been described on a previous Point of Order post as an admirably dogged campaigner against governmental secrecy on his No Right Turn blog.

This week he has gone into battle again, this time railing against government officials who – when advising members of Parliament of issues raised in submissions to select committees – fail to draw attention to concerns the public have raised but which the officials might prefer were buried.

Kate Hawkesby: Health NZ acknowledging issues and mistakes doesn't actually fix them

 

It probably comes as no surprise to any of us who watched on from the confines of our homes as the Ministry of Health bungled its way through Covid, that they’ve just discovered a ’coding error’. 

It means the number of hospitalisations they recorded was not, in fact, accurate. 

Turns out when they said just over 14,000 people were hospitalised with Covid, they meant almost 19,500. 

Whoops. 

Bryce Wilkinson: Every life is worth the same - The case for equal treatment

Taxpayers commonly work hard to earn the money that governments take in taxes. Knowing the effort sacrificed they naturally want governments to spend that money wisely and well.

Value for money from pharmaceutical spending depends on the medicine’s efficacy for treating an accurately diagnosed condition.

The skills going into the discovery and production of medicines do not depend on the country of origin, creed, religion, or race of those involved. Neither do diagnostic skills.

Dr Guy Hatchard: Revised NZ Ministry of Health Covid Figures Reveal the Extent of Immune Deficiencies

Yesterday, the Ministry of Health completely revised its presentation of Covid-19 statistics in order to “better inform the New Zealand public.”

This initially caused a bit of consternation, but on close examination some laughter among statistically competent people. It seems that Ministry of Health is, by accident rather than intention, making the case for the unvaccinated. The statistics bear close examination.

Up until now we have had a long series of Covid-19 data for infections, hospitalisations, and deaths based on the consistent criteria provided by test results. This has enabled us to track the long term trends. These are very clear.

Dr Eric Crampton: A numeracy quiz for the Ministry of Health

Suppose your middle-schooler came home with a math assignment.

She was told to measure everyone in the house and report on heights. But checking over the assignment, something seemed odd. Your 190cm partner wasn’t included.

“Oh, our teacher explained that most people are between 150 cm and 180cm. If we got a measurement outside that range, there was no guarantee that they were really that tall, so we should just ignore it.”

You’d worry about the state of numeracy among teachers, right?

Guy Hatchard: Shining a Light in Dark Places—Ten Ways the Government Controls the Pandemic Narrative

Ten ways the government and its allies control the pandemic narrative to ensure most of us are none the wiser!

This week Dr. Ian Town, chief scientific advisor to the Ministry of Health, announced that the unvaccinated are six times more likely to be hospitalized with Covid than the vaccinated.

Dr. Town prefaced his remarks with the caveat “the data is reasonably preliminary”.

Two weeks ago epidemiologist Dr. Michael Baker told us that the unvaccinated are 9 times more likely to be hospitalized.

So who is right, or do you, like me, smell a rat?

Mike Hosking: Yet another Ministry of Health bungle, but we don't seem to care

I miss the occasion of the national disgrace.

The time when, normally, a report or a revelation exposed some hopelessly inept behaviour or some governmental dishonesty.

It was a day that focused almost solely on the singular story and it was concluded at the end of the day that whoever the recipient was, government, council, MP, the Prime Minister, or public figure, they had had a hell of a day that would not be forgotten for a very long time.

The Government should have had one of those days this week with the release of the report into the Ministry of Health's abject failure around testing capacity for Covid.

Sir Ian Taylor: Govt's 'we know best' approach strikes again

Sorry!

It's such a small word, but it appears that the Government has banned it from all the spin-doctoring that has now become the standard response to the ever-increasing array of information that is finally emerging from behind the locked doors of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet (DPMC) via the Official Information Act.

The latest examples include the emails they desperately tried to block that showed that, back in November last year, the Ministry of Health (MOH) advised the Government that it was time to start winding down managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ).

Damien Grant: The shaky claims and untested ideology underpinning Three Waters

I am not philosophically opposed to co-governance and I disagree with David Seymour’s campaign to have a referendum on the issue.

If Māori have a right to be treated as partners and are entitled under the Treaty to enjoy co-governance over an asset, then this right cannot be extinguished because the majority of non-Māori who make up the electorate declare it so.

Equally, if this right does not exist, then imposing it without obtaining the consent of those whose rights are being over-ridden is wrong.

When it comes to the Three Water reforms, it is subordinating the rights of ratepayers to the interests of local iwi, and doing so without consent or compensation.

Mike Hosking: Bloomfield and Health Ministry fail us yet again

 

How is that love affair with Ashley Bloomfield going for you? Did you get the t-shirt or the apron? 

For those who beatified him, idolised him, and told everyone how wonderful he was, just what were you specifically basing that on? 

I saw through him at the start of the campaign when he kept telling us how there was no issue with the distribution of PPE, despite doctors and nurses, who of course are well known liars, telling us there was none. 

HDPA: The Ministy of Health needs to give Whānau Ora the unvaccinated Māori details

 

The Whānau Ora commissioning agency has taken the Ministry of Health to court to force them to hand over contact details for unvaccinated Māori.

They want to know who hasn’t got the jab, so they can call them up and tell them the vaxi bus is on its way to give them the jab if they want it.

Good idea? 

Absolutely great idea.

The entire region of Auckland is in lockdown which means the rest of the country is in Level 2 because we’re waiting for unvaccinated people to get the jab and get us over 90 per cent.

Kate Hawkesby: Ministry of Health dropping the ball has led us to new lockdown

 

Here we go again. Groundhog Day.

I saw the headline that the PM was “frustrated”. Really? She's frustrated? How do you think the “team of 5 million” feel?

Because actually, despite her insistence on continuing to use this line, there is no team of 5 million. There’s a good chunk of New Zealanders taking Covid seriously, scanning, using the app, isolating when they’re supposed to, but there’s also sadly a selfish group of people - as evidenced by this latest case in South Auckland - who couldn’t give a stuff.

Don't isolate, won’t test, don't follow the rules, are happy to jeopardize everyone else’s health, wellbeing and now livelihoods.

Mike Butler: Scientist says P-risk over-hyped

The P-contamination test does not point to a health risk and property owners are spending megabucks on unnecessary testing and remediation, a toxicologist confirmed this week. The advice from toxicologist Nick Kim is that testing for P, a street name for methamphetamine, does not necessarily show any health risk. (1)

Dr Kim is a senior lecturer in environmental chemistry at Massey University.

Two years ago, a request under the Official Information Act showed no recorded illnesses, hospitalizations and deaths resulting from methamphetamine contamination or fires from P labs. (See http://breakingviewsnz.blogspot.co.nz/2014/05/mike-butler-p-lab-risk-vastly.html)