David Farrar: Callaghan failure

The Post reports:

Nearly a third of the Callaghan Innovation’s $149 million Covid-era research and development loan book is in arrears, including $21.5m linked to 63 failed or insolvent businesses, as the agency enters its final months before disestablishment.

Callaghan Innovation – a government entity set up to make businesses around the country more innovative and provide grants – is now being disestablished as part of wider science system reforms.

David Farrar: A tax/levy increase I approve of

The Post reports:

The Government is doubling the “offender levy” all convicted criminals pay to $100 – far higher than the rate of inflation.

The higher fee will generate about $2.6 million extra for the Government, all of it to be spent on victim services.

Monday June 15, 2026 

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NZCPR Newsletter: People Power

“People Power” has forced the Government to change the law to strengthen local government democracy.

This is a major win for everyone who raised the alarm about the tribal takeover of local government that’s now underway all around New Zealand. From individuals, to media, think tanks, lobby groups, councillors, and politicians – each person who spoke out strongly against the violation of democracy that’s been going on helped ensure the powers that be could no longer turn a blind eye.

Graeme Reeves: The Constitutional Revolution New Zealand Pretends Is Not Happening

There are moments in a nation’s history when power shifts so gradually, so quietly, and so bureaucratically that the public fails to recognise the transformation until the new order is already entrenched. New Zealand may now be living through precisely such a moment.

The Tiaki Wai agreement is not merely a water governance document. It is a warning flare. A glimpse into a constitutional future being constructed incrementally, contractually, and largely beyond the direct awareness or explicit consent of the wider electorate.

Perspective with Andrew Dickens: I think Luxon got the climate change balance right

The biggest story of the week hit on Wednesday. And no, the biggest story of the week wasn’t fare caps on public transport. I mean, that was - they say - a $65 million policy that I reckon is three times that, but it wasn’t the big one.

It wasn’t whether or not Labour had a tent at Fieldays either. I mean, hello - come on.

Net Zero Watch Samizdat: Coal Power 2030

UK

Net Zero Watch: we need a Coal Power 2030 mission

Britain faces an electricity capacity crunch, because we will soon lose much of our gas-fired fleet. Replacements - either nuclear or gas - will arrive too late. A new paper by Andrew Montford explains that the only option is coal. Politicians will need to come to terms with this painful fact.

Ani O'Brien: The BSA’s parting gift - Showing why NZ needs the Definitions Bill

Reflecting on how entirely mad the situation is

Animals often become most erratic in their final moments. Wounded, they lash out indiscriminately. Having lost the battle for survival, creatures frequently become more aggressive, more irrational, and more dangerous as the end draws near.

The Broadcasting Standards Authority appears to be experiencing a similar phenomenon. Although they are certainly less rabid dog and more deceptively friendly-looking otter.

Peter Williams: The Naidoo controversy

How the media is fighting back at Richard Chambers' and Mark Mitchell's questions

Here’s a classic case of how media can attract you with a patently misleading headline.

From the New Zealand Herald website, posted at 4.21 pm on June 11:

Former commissioners defend Labour police candidate Rakesh Naidoo’s integrity, question political motives and fear for ‘damaged’ police reputation

Underneath the headline was a photo of the Police Commissioner Richard Chambers.

John McLean: Half Measures

…which leave New Zealand’s public “servants” free to fill their DEI boots

On 2 June 2026, changes relating to Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI) were made to New Zealand’s Public Service Act 2020.

The changes, initiated by the New Zealand First political party:

Dr Eric Crampton: Kalshi’s billion-dollar rise shows what iPredict couldn’t achieve in NZ

When Victoria University of Wellington’s great little prediction market, iPredict, announced that it would be shutting down back in 2015, it had a couple hundred thousand dollars of traders’ deposited funds in the bank. It was a very small, very limited, academic enterprise.

Kalshi is a US-based prediction market. It is regulated by America’s Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the CFTC, which fully authorised it in 2023.

Dr Oliver Hartwich: On borrowed calm

Across the Tasman, anger has propelled Pauline Hanson’s One Nation from a fringe outfit to the most popular party, on 31 percent in a recent poll, ahead of both Labor and the Coalition. Yet Australia’s preferential voting, which redistributes losing candidates’ votes, could still return a Labor government.

The same anger is loose across the democratic world, the product of a decade of crises that squeezed household budgets and loosened party loyalties. What it does to each country’s politics depends partly on how votes are counted.

Nick Clark: The gumboot pilgrimage

Once a year, as the days shorten, a great migration begins. From the warm offices of Wellington and the cafes of central Auckland, the political class sets out for Mystery Creek, where the gates of Fieldays open and the country remembers that it has a countryside.

The suit is shed, the tie abandoned. In their place appears the sacred vestment of the season, the gumboot. Never mind that the wearer last touched mud at the previous election.

Dr Michael Johnston: A test case for universities

In May 2025, University of Otago Vice-Chancellor Grant Robertson eloquently explained why universities, as institutions, should be neutral on matters of public and political debate. If universities take stances on political issues, he said, they place members of their communities with different views in a difficult position.

Robertson made those comments when he presented his university’s statement on institutional neutrality, required under the Education and Training Amendment Act 2025. The Act states that “universities, as institutions, should not take public positions on matters that do not directly concern their role or functions.”

David Farrar: Longer than WWI

The Herald reports:

The war in Ukraine has often been compared to World War I for its brutal infantry assaults and heavy casualties. Yet the idea that it could, by any measure, surpass a conflict so long and bloody that French soldiers hoped it would be “the last of the last” once seemed unthinkable.

That is just what happened on Thursday. The war in Ukraine – which reached 1569 days, or more than four years and three months – has now outlasted World War I.

Sunday June 14, 2026 

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Professor James Woudhuysen: Net Zero is reversing the Industrial Revolution

Denby Pottery has survived more than its fair share of economic turmoil in its 217-year existence. But nothing it seems on the scale of the industry-destroying policies of the current Labour government. This week, the famed Derbyshire company closed its doors for the final time, citing soaring energy and labour costs. Around 600 workers have lost their jobs.

Ross Meurant: K.I.S.S.

Once Upon a Time I had command of 60 front line police officers.

I also managed 63 personnel in a private security company I jointly owned with a fellow police officer, sergeant Josh Liavaa – a NZ Kiwi League representative.

Addendum: Josh was shot dead in an incident in Hawaii 2014 – and NZ lost a really good bloke.

Clive Bibby: “The time has come, the Walrus said, to talk of many things…”

My ability to quote famous poetry usually amounts to only one line of a piece that has retained relevance for mankind over time. I wish it were better than that.

For this column l have chosen Lewis Carroll’s brilliant poem about “The Walrus and the Carpenter”.

Geoff Parker: Equality Before the Law - Why Equity Is Dividing New Zealand

RNZ's latest article on "equity versus equality" presents a familiar argument: because Māori experience poorer outcomes in some areas, New Zealand must embrace ethnicity-based policies rather than treating citizens equally.

At first glance this sounds compassionate. In reality, it raises a fundamental question:

Should government assistance be based on race, or on need?