The Leighton Smith Podcast: Dr Muriel Newman on this year's hugely consequential general election

Leighton Smith and Dr Muriel Newman discuss the ongoing constitutional shift toward iwi influence, co-governance and race-based policies. In this election year, New Zealand is arguably facing its biggest challenge to date.

Click to listen - Audio

Ani O'Brien: First day back in Parliament - an incomplete summary

We are underway for 2026 and I have thoughts...

The first day of a new parliamentary year is about mood, posture, and jostling for political points. It is when parties show us who they think they are, who they think they are up against, and how they intend to spend the political capital they have left. This is particularly true in an election year.

Bob Edlin: Oh dear: look what the Government has done to the wananga..........

Oh dear: look what the Government has done to the wananga – but what about the cutbacks in humanities at Vic?

A tertiary education organisation with around 1,500 staff is about to cut its work force by 4 per cent.

We learned this from the Tertiary Education Union which identified the reason: it is citing “the National-led government’s assault on Māori as the underlying cause of a proposed net loss of 60 jobs at Te Wānanga o Aotearoa”.

An assault on Māori has triggered the wananga’s staff cuts?

Really?

Point of Order: A bad day for America’s enemies

The American strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities may end up being a bad day for a lot of people – but with luck, mainly for the autocrats, appeasers and anti-democrats.

There is a smidgen of sympathy for the Iranian regime. Every child with a stick eventually learns it’s not a good idea to keep provoking. But who would have thought that Donald Trump – the great peace president – would be the one to accept the informal declaration of war issued by the Iranian regime’s precursors on 4 November 1979.

Point of Order: The empire that endured

It was once said the British empire was so vast that the sun never set on it. But as time marched on, the red faded from the maps, the Union Jacks came down and independence rang across continents.

Point of Order: Much more than a minerals deal

Full credit to European politicians: they know how to brief.

Latest in London’s Daily Telegraph is that “Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron have together pulled off a remarkable feat of high statecraft” in shaping the US – Ukraine minerals deal signed a few days ago. There are even some nice words for Boris Johnson’s contribution.

Who knows, it could even be true. But it’s perhaps more important that they’re thinking that way.

Dr James Allan: Australia’s Conservatives Are Paying the Price of Kowtowing to the Left

When the so-called ‘moderate’ MPs in a Westminster conservative political party remove a sitting Prime Minister from their own party, one who has delivered a majority government but is to the right of these moderates, the long-term effects are not good. Back in 1990, and after delivering 11 years of majority governments, Maggie Thatcher was knifed by the wets or moderates in the British Tory party. It is arguable that the party has never recovered.

Karl du Fresne: Featherston Booktown - the book festival where books are optional

My attention was captured yesterday by a Facebook post promoting next month's Featherston Booktown Festival. It advertised a panel discussion entitled “Fixing the Bear Pit: How to Make Parliament a More Humane and Positive Place”.

How this was relevant to a book festival wasn’t clear, especially since the advertised discussion doesn’t appear to be connected with any book. But what particularly struck me was the accompanying photo of brawling parliamentarians (below), which was clearly taken in a foreign country. I guessed somewhere like Serbia, though someone who knows how to trace these things subsequently identified it as being from Ukraine.

Dr James Allan: Mandates matter

I’ve asked this question before, and I’ll ask it again: why do right-of-centre politicians want to go into politics? If the answer is nothing more than ‘to win elections’, then notice what follows from that value-free vacuum. You can get an Angela Merkel, who won election after election, all while opening up the country’s borders to young, single men from Afghanistan and the Middle East, who overall lacked any obvious sympathy or liking for the whole array of Western values. How has that worked out for Germany?

Sallust: Smug Lefties Most Likely To Think They’re Right And Everyone Else Is Wrong

A polling group called More In Common has found that the “young, highly educated and socially Left-wing”, which the group euphemistically calls Progressive Activists, constitute just 8% of the UK population, but are found in far higher proportions in public-sector bodies and charities. They could have added in the BBC.

Dan Brunskill: The Coalition Government promises an economic growth plan within weeks.....

The Coalition Government promises an economic growth plan within weeks, but can it deliver results?

It is awkward for a Government, elected to get the economy back on track, to have spent its first full year in office watching output shrink almost $2 billion in inflation adjusted prices.

2024 was a year of recession by any definition of the word, although a more useful definition would show the New Zealand economy has been in a recession since September 2022.

Clive Bibby: It won’t be pretty but it will be what the world needs

Political pundits throughout the world are using the time they have left before Trump’s inauguration to write scathing attacks on the President Elect’s fitness for office.

In a free society, that is one of the things we expect of journalists who hate even the possibility that the 47th POTUS will actually do what he promised the electorate in 2024. But is not in itself a justifiable reason to oppose every step he takes towards making it happen.

Mark Angelides: Culture Struggling with Shifting Political Sands

A question of truth over perception.

The late Andrew Breitbart once noted that “politics is downstream from culture,” arguing that to change the political direction of the time, a cultural catalyst was required. But does this remain true today in a political ecosystem that often seems alien – or, at best, somewhat detached from the wishes and wills of the people it is supposed to serve?

Wanjiru Njoya: The Folly of Criminalizing “Hate”

Many people were shocked when over 1,000 protesters were arrested in the UK and jailed for various offenses including “violent disorder” and stirring up racial hatred. Most shocking were the cases of those arrested for posting social media comments on the riots, despite not being present at the scene and there being no evidence that anybody who joined in the riots had read any of their comments.

Barrie Davis: Trick or Tribunal

Annually humiliating politicians at Waitangi has become a cathartic rite of Maori resentment, but other than that what is the point of it? Making threats of violence in the media, doing war dances in Parliament and pulling grotesque faces do not constitute an argument. And flashing, using expletives and calling people names only serve to diminish one’s credibility.

What now is the purpose of Waitangi Day and the relevance of the Treaty of Waitangi?

Karl du Fresne: A massive gesture of contempt for the voters

It’s said that great minds think alike. Unfortunately the same is true, by definition, of conformist minds.

As an example, take the political news headlines of November 29. They were strikingly similar. Almost without exception, the mainstream media pounced on the new government’s decision to axe Labour’s ambitious (but possibly unworkable) plan to make New Zealand smokefree.

Karl du Fresne: There's no reason why this government shouldn't go the distance

Notwithstanding everything pessimistic that I’ve said over the past few weeks, I rather like the look of this new government.

At first glance, there are some extremely encouraging policy commitments (enough for my wife and me to punch the air several times while watching the news last night) and some promising ministerial appointments.

Karl du Fresne: Memo to RNZ: the country has moved on

I wonder, does RNZ realise that the government changed five weeks ago? Its editorial judgment suggests not.

The story that led its bulletins this morning – in other words, the news item that RNZ’s editors considered the most significant of the day – revealed that new National Party MP Cameron Brewer had made an election night speech in which he celebrated the return of the “stale, pale male”. Someone had recorded the speech and leaked it.

Karl du Fresne: Those coalition talks: so far, so bad

The coalition talks are playing out just as might have been predicted. Or to put it another way: so far, so bad.

At the outset, the omens didn’t look good when it was revealed that Winston Peters hadn’t responded to David Seymour’s attempts to make contact. Did anyone really believe that Peters refused to answer a text from the ACT leader because he thought it might be a scam?

Karl du Fresne: Suddenly, the media are unimportant - and it hurts

I sometimes wonder whether political reporters ever pause to think how precious and entitled their behaviour looks to outsiders.
I doubt it. They are too self-absorbed.

Right now, members of the parliamentary press gallery are feeling peevish. After feasting for years on a rich banquet of political news and sensation, they suddenly find themselves on starvation rations. And they’re not taking it well.