Dr Bryce Wilkinson: Why New Zealanders earn less, and what can be done about it

Higher incomes in Australia draw New Zealanders across the Tasman. Many of those who remain here struggle with a high cost of living relative to their income.

The income gap with Australia is large. In 2024, Australians earned about 30 percent more income per person than New Zealanders, according to an OECD measure. That gap comes to $20,000 per person.

Bruce Cotterill: Netball NZ leaders are failing the sport off court

Netball New Zealand’s new administrative line-up needed, to borrow a basketball term, a “slam dunk” as they dealt with the first few months under the new regime. With a few wins under their belt, they would have created the opportunity to start rebuilding trust after the debacle of the last 18 months.

But they’ve missed the chance. They’re looking shambolic all over again. And they’ve made things worse, not better.

Bob Edlin: It’s a name known to the hundreds of people who attended her funeral.....

....but the police don’t want you to know it

Stuff reports some bemusing law-and-order thinking in an article headed –

She died violently in her home. Why police don’t want you to know her name

Police have moved to block Stuff from revealing the name of a highly respected mother and grandmother who was the victim of a homicide in the small Bay of Plenty community of Kawerau.

David Farrar: Would they do this to a Chinese DJ?

The Free Speech Union released:

Twisted Frequency, a New Year music festival in Golden Bay, has cancelled Israeli DJ Dekel because he has not spoken out against Israel.

The festival says it was told Dekel had been a commander in the Israeli Defence Force and had performed in Israel in recent years. When it heard this, it contacted his management to cancel the booking.

 Sunday November 8, 2026 

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Rodney Hide: Nine hundred thousand votes

That's how many National party votes there will be once the specials are counted. Every one of them went down the toilet.

On that projection National has 41 electorates. Those party votes entitle it to 34 seats. The extra seven come from the electorates, not from the party vote. Christopher Luxon could have stacked another hundred thousand party votes on the pile and he would not have gained a single MP.

Richard Prebble: The two Christophers

Regardless of the final result, this election has been a disastrous performance by both Christophers. On election night neither National nor Labour received 30 per cent of the party vote.

Labour has 15 list MPs only because it performed so poorly in the electorates.

Labour has paid the price for failing to replace Chris Hipkins.

National’s failure is even more extraordinary.

Matt Ridley: how seriously should we take AI doom warnings?

Imagine an artificial intelligence making copies of itself...the first replicator assembles a copy in one thousand seconds, the two replicators then build two more in the next thousand seconds, the four build another four, and the eight build another eight. At the end of ten hours, there are not thirty-six new replicators, but over 68 billion. In less than a day, they would weigh a ton; in less than two days, they would outweigh the Earth; in another four hours, they would exceed the mass of the Sun and all the planets combined.

Peter Robinson: The President Who Didn’t Love a Wall

What did the 1987 Berlin Wall Address mean to prisoners of communism—and what does it mean today?

In this essay, my esteemed colleague and President Reagan’s former speechwriter, Peter Robinson, tells the story behind the iconic Berlin Wall Address and its legacy thirty-nine years later. To read my reflections on twenty-first-century lessons derived from this speech, click here. –H.R. McMaster

David Farrar: A Labour led Government is incredibly improbable

The results so far have 67 seats for the Government parties and 64 seats for the others.

National has 42 electorate seats. Those with a small majority are:

Dame Elizabeth Rata: Episode 10 - Science 1877 - 1899

In the video below Episode 10 is about how science began in New Zealand schools and explains how the subject quickly produced so many first-class scientists. Much of the credit for its inclusion in the syllabus and its quality goes to the inspectors. Many were scientists themselves. They understood how modern science enabled young people to be taught about the workings of the universe. It was the latest understanding – "Science is a line of study which has for its object the imparting of the fundamental laws which regulate the phenomena of the world in which we live".

Guest Post: Who’s in charge of running the country if coalition negotiations drag on?

Guest Post - Neil Sands on Law News

As the government prepares to enter the official caretaker period on November 7, Professor Philip Joseph KC ponders what he calls the $64,000 question – what happens if a disgruntled leader goes rogue and ignores the caretaker convention setting out the orderly transition of power in New Zealand’s democracy?

“We just don’t know how the situation would unfold,” Joseph, a legal academic at the University of Canterbury specialising in constitutional law, told LawNews. “It’s never happened, that’s the first point to make.

Centrist: All nine boot camp youths reoffended....

....but violent crime fell 72%, new figures reveal

All nine surviving participants in the government's original military-style boot camp pilot reoffended within a year of leaving residential care, but violent offences fell by 72%, according to previously unpublished figures obtained by Centrist under the Official Information Act.

Colinxy: The Antifa Cult

One of the peculiar features of modern politics is that movements often become the very thing they claim to oppose. No contemporary group illustrates this paradox more clearly than Antifa.

The name itself is a form of political camouflage. “Antifa” is simply short for “anti-fascist”, and that label does much of the movement’s rhetorical heavy lifting. After all, who could possibly object to opposing fascism? By defining itself as anti-fascist, the movement attempts to claim the moral high ground before any argument has even begun.

Christopher Freiman: Can the Wealthy Buy Elections?

When Elon Musk became the world’s first trillionaire (albeit briefly), many people objected. They argued that no one should have that much money when others have so much less. As Musk leveraged that fortune in an attempt to shape electoral outcomes, some despaired. Tuesday’s results indicate that was a poor investment, but it’s his half a billion to waste.

Nathan Smith: You'll know when there's a real cost of living crisis

After consulting the Oracle, doing a Ctrl+F search in the Sibylline Books, and comparing last week’s Lotto numbers with the positions of the stars in the year 1856, I’ve decided that the main theme of the current election is the cost of living.

I know, big claim. Massive insight. That’s why they pay me the big bucks, etc. But it does seem like every party has picked fixing the so-called “cost of living crisis” as their central plank. Which is strange, because there is no crisis. Or, more precisely, some groups are struggling, and others simply aren’t, while the politicians pretend that there are no groups and we’re all struggling together. That’s simply not true.

Yvonne Van Dongen: A former cult member reflects on Jacindamania

How did she do it? And could it happen again?

Every time Jacinda Ardern makes the news, New Zealand goes a little bit mad.

For many, the former Prime Minister is the evil face of totalitarianism, the terrible woman who destroyed families and divided the nation. One podium of truth to rule them all. They hate that the “pretty Communist” not only walked away from the country she’d wrecked, but that she went on to receive honours and recompense from the global elite.

So when she was appointed as Professor of Practice at the University of Sydney this month, Voices for Freedom founder Alia Bee spoke for many when she wrote in an open letter that:

Saturday November 7, 2026 

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Mike's Minute: Move-on orders were a storm in a teacup

If you believed the heat in the debate, letting the police move people on was some sort of dystopian incursion by an overlord destined for revolt and rampage on our streets.

The Labour Party still argues the Government made homelessness illegal, which of course they did not.

At the very start of the scrap was the basic idea that too many people were having their day ruined by too many other people who seemed to think they could behave any way they wanted with no consequences.

Matt Ridley: We need more founders

“I don’t think employers are working people.”

When Emma Reynolds, a Labour MP and chief secretary to the Treasury (effectively Britain’s deputy finance minister), uttered those words last week in a television interview, she became an internet celebrity around the world.