Homepaddock

During the past decade, a handful of ordinary words – woman, man, female, male – have quietly become some of the least stable terms in New Zealand law. Where they once pointed unambiguously to sex, they are now pulled between two rival meanings: biological sex on the one hand,…

The Legislation (Definitions of Woman and Man) Amendment Bill, a member’s bill introduced by NZ First MP Jenny Marcroft, responds directly to that problem. – David Harvey

The bill is necessary because the current framework already assumes sex is real and legally knowable, yet never pins it down. The Human Rights Act 1993 prohibits sex discrimination, folds pregnancy and childbirth into that ground, and preserves sex-based exceptions for privacy, counselling, violence prevention, and single-sex accommodation. Those provisions function only if “sex” has a stable meaning.

Meanwhile, the Births, Deaths, Marriages and Relationships Registration Act 2021 allows a person to register a nominated sex by statutory declaration, after which later birth certificates present that sex as though it had always been so.

The result is a quiet contradiction: one part of the law treats sex as fixed and material, another treats it as amendable on paper. Courts and agencies are left to reconcile the irreconcilable, and that uncertainty breeds avoidable litigation. – David Harvey

Some say sex is too complex to define in a binary, pointing to intersex conditions. But complexity at the margins does not dissolve the organising rule: human sex is built on two reproductive roles and two gamete types, and atypical development – real and deserving of respect – does not create a third sex. The law can acknowledge rare cases without abandoning the category most law already relies on.

Others warn a sex-based definition would strip transgender people of protection. It need not. – David Harvey

Clarity is not cruelty. A law that says plainly what its words mean is easier to administer, fairer to those who rely on sex-based protections, and far less prone to dispute than one that leaves its foundational term open to argument. The bill simply gives legal effect to what most people already take for granted: that women are adult human females and men are adult human males. Done properly, it lets the law reflect reality rather than obscure it. – David Harvey

The National Party’s KiwiSaver announcement is one of the most significant shifts in New Zealand politics and economic policy in a generation. – Robert MacCulloch and Leonard Hong

For the past few years, we have been advocating for compulsory savings through our opinion pieces, public commentary, and Leonard’s postgraduate research from Singapore. We saw it as one of the most compelling macroeconomic policies that can help New Zealand become a rich, asset-owning country with deeper domestic capital markets and a stronger external position.

The lesson from Australia’s compulsory superannuation system and Singapore’s Central Provident Fund is clear: mandatory savings can deepen capital markets, reduce the long-term fiscal burden of public pensions, and create pools of capital that support investment in national development. – Robert MacCulloch and Leonard Hong

The National Party’s commitment to KiwiSaver development signals an important shift in economic thinking. It recognises that New Zealand cannot build long-term prosperity under the status quo of heavy reliance on foreign capital, house price inflation, and chronically low household savings.

For a centre-right government to accept compulsory KiwiSaver is a major philosophical shift. It recognises that personal responsibility sometimes requires strong institutions and pragmatic paternalism to incentivise higher capital accumulation.

This unorthodox economic approach provides a more seamless pathway out of a fiscal crisis, and in stark contrast to rapid increases in taxation, monetisation of public debt, or harsh fiscal austerity measures. – Robert MacCulloch and Leonard Hong

Labour’s biggest Achilles’ heel is taxes.

Telling people you’ll keep an unaffordable, expensive, universal programme forever will leave them wondering who’s going to pay for it. Who’ll be taxed next.

Once you add in the pay equity claims at up to $13 billion, the gaps start to look more like big black holes. -­ Ryan Bridge

Health Minister Simeon Brown chose not to reappoint – which, from the outset, is clearly different from “removing” – chairwoman Dr Rachelle Love and deputy chairman Simon Watt after accusing the Medical Council of pursuing an “ideological agenda” and becoming distracted from its core responsibilities.

Brown pointed to consultation documents related to new professional guidelines requiring doctors to examine their own “privilege”, challenge the “dominant culture” of the health system, study the difference between cultural appreciation and cultural appropriation, and help “dismantle” systems.

This is not the ordinary language of professional competence. It is not about whether a doctor can diagnose illness, treat patients safely, or practise medicine to a high standard. It is the language of political formation.  – Jonathon Ayling

The minister’s decision is ideological too, in the sense that it rests on a view of what professional regulation is for. It is based on a worldview where professional regulation champions individual responsibility, universal human dignity grounds equal treatment, freedom of conscience and thought are central liberties, and practical competence is the prerequisite for safe medical practice, not intellectual uniformity.

By contrast, the Medical Council draws from a worldview preoccupied with group identity, grievance and subjective experience. These are different ways of viewing the medical profession and, more broadly, as a lens through which to observe our society. –

To be clear, these bodies have legitimate roles, and their operational independence is important. No sensible person wants ministers deciding which professional should be disciplined or registered. Political control over individual professional decisions would be dangerous.

But the point is not that regulators should be politically obedient. Operational independence is not the same as saying ministers should stand back while public bodies rewrite the rules, redefine their missions, and treat oversight as an affront.

This is what defines the “Long March Through the Institutions”, as coined by socialist revolutionary, Rudi Dutschke. The central question is whether elected ministers (the representatives we each appoint or dismiss) are willing to push back when the seemingly ever-expanding apparatus of state regulation drifts from technical competence into ideological activism that undermines the very core assumptions of our Government and society. –

The dynamic captured by Yes Minister’s Sir Humphrey Appleby and Jim Hacker remains familiar because elected representatives too often inherit sprawling systems they are formally responsible for, only to discover that the people inside those systems consider ministerial direction an inconvenience, or even an intrusion. Apparently some go so far as to call it unacceptably “ideological”.

But ministers are not visitors to their own portfolios or regulatory bodies. They are accountable to voters for what happens inside them.

Of course, every individual is free to advocate for whatever view of the world they want. But they should do so as private individuals, not under the false pretence of state regulators, charging the cost of this activism to each one of us.Most Kiwis could not name the boards, councils, authorities and commissions that shape daily life. But they recognise the impression of unresponsiveness and lack of accountability that permeates the wider state sector. It amounts to decisions made somewhere else, by people they did not elect, in language designed to make disagreement sound ignorant or immoral; all on their behalf. –

No minister can personally master every technical question placed before them. But for technocracy to function properly, two things must remain true: elected representatives must stay in charge, and technocratic appointments must be made on merit.

Experts may advise, regulators may administer, and professional bodies may apply standards, but their authority is delegated rather than inherent. The justification for insulating certain roles from day-to-day politics is competence, independence and experience.

Over the past decade or so, however, a sleight of hand has become increasingly common: institutions have kept the language and prestige of technocratic appointment while quietly redefining “merit” according to a newly approved moral vocabulary.

The result is not genuine technocracy. It is politics smuggled in under a lanyard that refuses to be challenged.

If regulators want the protection of technocratic independence, they must accept the disciplines that justify it: competence, restraint, impartiality and a clear understanding that their power is delegated through democratic institutions by the people they serve. –

It’s really simple … based off that party vote, I get to choose ministers that actually get to run the government off the talent that the New Zealand people deliver us, and I don’t want to lose a Mark Mitchell or an Erica Stanford for some complete unknown from some other party that I have to be in coalition with down the road.

The only answer … to make sure I get the quality of ministers I need is that you need to party vote National. It’s a very simple thing. – Christopher Luxon

You may know the leader of some of the parties, but you don’t know who their number two, three, four or five is. I know who my numbers one to 49 are, and I can tell you we’ve got high-calibre talent … that actually we want to get through. – Christopher Luxon

 The Greens are proposing to reshape New Zealand’s economy around a suspicion of private wealth, profit, investment, inheritance, landlords, banks, large companies, and high earners. They are setting the population against the very people best equipped to grow our economy and improve our collective quality of life. They want us to fight over the dodgy petrol station pie that is falling apart instead of growing a massive gourmet one. – Ani O’Brien

This is being sold as a plan to make the rich “contribute fairly”. But what if we ask what wealth is, how it is created, and what happens when the state starts treating accumulated capital as a fiscal quarry to be mined every year. The Green Party speaks about wealth as though it is a pile of idle treasure sitting in a vault as billionaires slide down piles of coins like Scrooge McDuck. Wealth is often equity in companies, farms, private businesses, shares, commercial property, intellectual property, and productive assets. It represents claims on future activity and is the machinery through which investment becomes employment, innovation, productivity, and wages.

A bank might tell you your net worth is $30,000 because you own a car and have some KiwiSaver savings, but that does not mean you have $30,000 in cash available to spend tomorrow. A business owner may be “worth” tens of millions on paper because of the estimated value of the company they built, while drawing a modest salary and reinvesting profits back into growth. If the Government demands a significant annual tax bill based on the theoretical value of those assets rather than available cash, owners may be forced to sell shares, liquidate assets, reduce investment, lay off staff, or even sell the business altogether simply to meet their tax obligations. In extreme cases, a tax aimed at accumulated wealth can end up destroying the very enterprises that created that wealth in the first place. – Ani O’Brien

Capitalism is an imperfect system because all human systems are imperfect. It produces inequality, disruption, anxiety, and, yes, sometimes vulgar excess. But it has also done more than any other economic system in human history to lift people out of material poverty. Market economies, private property, trade, profit, innovation, and capital accumulation have transformed ordinary human life from subsistence and scarcity into abundance. What we now describe as hardship would, in many cases, have been unimaginable comfort to previous generations. The overwhelming majority of us have access to homes, refrigeration, supermarkets, antibiotics, phones, cars, public hospitals, global communications, and goods and services beyond the dreams of most of human history. This did not happen because committees redistributed wealth more fairly. It happened because people were free to build, invest, invent, trade, compete, fail, and profit.

Modern political debates often use the word “poverty” in a way that would have been almost unrecognisable to previous generations. Absolute poverty is the inability to meet basic human needs like adequate food, shelter, warmth, sanitation, healthcare, and security. Relative poverty, by contrast, measures people against others within their own society. Someone can be classified as poor because they have less than their neighbours, even while enjoying a standard of living that would have seemed luxurious for most of our history. The Greens are almost always talking in terms of relative poverty while using the language of absolute.

As I say, capitalism’s greatest achievement has not been eliminating inequality entirely. It has been dramatically reducing absolute poverty – Ani O’Brien

Please understand that I am not suggesting this means hardship has disappeared. There are still people struggling to pay bills, afford housing, and to get ahead. Those are real problems and relative poverty can still be an awful struggle. But when Green politicians point to inequality as evidence of systemic failure of capitalism, they blur the distinction between people lacking necessities and people having less than others.

Capitalism has succeeded in reducing absolute poverty on a scale unprecedented, now we should find ways to improve it to deliver less inequality, but why hate the system that has brought us thus far? The societies that have done the most to eliminate genuine deprivation have overwhelmingly been market economies that embraced private property, investment, entrepreneurship, and economic growth. The historical story of the last two centuries is not that redistribution conquered poverty. Wealth creation did. – Ani O’Brien

We are living through the greatest reduction in human suffering ever achieved and parts of the modern left talk about capitalism as though it has been an unbroken catastrophe. It’s a bit like looking at modern medicine, noticing some side effects, and concluding antibiotics were a mistake.

So before we let politicians decide how to divide the pie, it is worth remembering how the pie became so large in the first place. – Ani O’Brien

he Opportunity Party claims to be centrist, but its tax policy is decidedly left. For that reason, you can expect to hear a lot more from critics about its plan to charge an annual land tax at 1.75% to fund a universal benefit of up to $370 a week for most adults, and set income tax rates at 28%, 34% and 39%.

It’s not a small bill. If, for example, the value of a residential property’s land was $500,000, a 1.75% charge would amount to $8750 annually. – Audrey Young

Labour should be worried as it heads into its election year congress in Wellington this weekend. The most significant aspect of the Verian poll this week, besides the rise of Opportunity, was Labour’s five-point plunge. It’s not just the dive, but the fact that it took place after leader Chris Hipkins rolled out one of the party’s big cost-of-living policies – a cap of $20 a week on public transport costs in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch. Hipkins’ own popularity fell by three points.

It is possible that the publicity blitz by Finance Minister Nicola Willis on Labour’s so-called $18 billion unpaid policy bill has resonated, or that the leaked discussion of 100 duck-sized horses has caught up with the party. – Audrey Young

Few issues in our time have more thoroughly vindicated George Orwell’s suggestion that “if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought” than the so-called “culture war” over “trans rights”.

Corrupted language and corrupted thought helped usher in an era of corrupted policy too and while the struggle to insist upon things which are plainly true is not over, there are clear signs that one side is winning.

Why, even the Scottish government now accepts that men cannot wish themselves into womanhood and earn rights previously restricted to members of the female sex.  – Alex Massie

This is where politicians who despair that this issue has commanded so much attention make their blunder. For this is neither an esoteric nor a niche issue affecting only a tiny number of probably vulnerable people. On the contrary, it is a subject of keen concern to at least half the population. The attempt to redefine the meaning and reality of womanhood is no kind of trivial issue. 

That is why prisons matter. It is why Sandie Peggie and the Darlington nurses matter. It is why fairness in sport matters and why it is important to reject the Scottish government’s suggestion you could, in theory, have a “gender-balanced” board on a public body such as Scottish Water that was actually 100 per cent biologically male.

The desire to believe impossible things because doing so was deemed the kindly thing to do has corrupted politics and public life for long enough. This is not just a Scottish problem since the Labour party in the House of Commons is just as foolish as the SNP in Scotland, but the Scottish strain of this virus of anti-thinking was especially virulent.  – Alex Massie

 Nevertheless, for years now language and thought and policy have all been corrupted and although the war for realism is now being won, the damage done in the intervening period has been immense.

One day, perhaps, Scottish government ministers will recall their own inglorious role in this saga with something approaching red-faced shame. Not every battle has been settled, but the broad outcome of this struggle is now clear to see: sex-realism is prevailing. – Alex Massie

Taxpayers should be upset whenever government money is wasted. As noted above, it is unfortunate that we’ve become so accustomed to it, we tend to take it for granted.

But taxpayers need to push back. We are currently in the lead-up to an election where at least three political parties are campaigning on increasing taxes. If our money was wisely spent, they might have a point. But why should we pay more when the money we are already contributing is so poorly administered?

If you think I’m overreacting, just think about the following. This $30 million escapade is just the tip of the iceberg. We have become world-class at wasting money.

We spent $229m on Auckland’s light rail project without a metre of track being laid. Then there was the almost $160m in unused RAT tests and $51m on the unbuilt cycle bridge across Auckland Harbour. The merger of TVNZ and Radio NZ cost another $16m but didn’t happen, and we spent over $1 billion on Three Waters before it was scrapped. Then there was the tertiary merger, the health merger, the ferries, wallaby eradication and more. It doesn’t seem to stop.

To be fair, much of this wastage lies at the feet of politicians rather than public servants. But it is waste nevertheless.

So, to see a minister up in arms at the waste of taxpayer dollars is a sight to behold. A reaction to celebrate.  –  Bruce Cotterill

It might be just $30m. In the context of some of the wastage we see, it’s petty cash. But, that $30m has just put a big spotlight on the behaviour of public servants.

This Government was elected with a mandate to downsize the government bureaucracy, and to reduce central government costs, which had escalated to unaffordable proportions under its predecessors. They’ve been slower to get to the task than many of us would have liked.

And then recently, it announced a plan to reduce public service numbers by almost 9000 jobs. There’s been plenty of conjecture as to just how realistic that might have been.

But that $30m spotlight has just given them all the ammunition they need.

You see, there’s a reason they’re called public servants. They are there to serve the public. The agenda that the public want followed is typically regarded as the agenda of the elected Government. Right now, that elected Government has an agenda to eliminate bureaucracy, reduce spending relative to revenue, return our economy to surplus and eventually reduce our unaffordable debt and interest burden to something that is manageable within the constraints of our economic capacity.

It doesn’t matter who is in Government, you can’t achieve your objectives, if the people in the government departments, their managers, leaders and executives are either ignoring the agenda or worse, wasting taxpayers’ money. – Bruce Cotterill

And to every taxpayer, every Kiwi with a voting card, every single person who chose to stay in New Zealand when there was an option to go elsewhere, every one of us who has hung tough over the pst few years when bailing out might have been a better option, every small business person who has gone without wages to ensure that their staff get paid, all the while watching government employee numbers explode and their salaries grow, please utter these words until they become habit.

Wasting taxpayer money is not acceptable. Misleading government ministers is not acceptable. –Bruce Cotterill

Our entire public service should be on notice. –

This is exactly what I predicted would happen when the rules were changed to allow Maori to transfer at whim between the general and Maori rolls (rather than only after each census). It means they can swap rolls to the electorate where they can most disadvantage a centre-right candidate. I note this is a power no non-Maori has.

Then just before the period when the number of Maori seats are determined, they can all switch back to the Maori roll, to game the number of seats.

This sort of gaming just makes for a stronger case to abolish the Maori seats. The claim is that they are equal but different to general seats. But non-Maori do not have the power to swap between rolls to target a candidate they don’t like, or to increase the number of seats. – David Farrar

You were treated as villains, if I’m really honest about it, before and as I came through politics. – Christopher Luxon

We provide about 400 million people with 10 percent of their food. Our agriculture sector is driving in about 10 percent of our GDP, about 360,000 people employed in it.

I want it pumping and I want it on the front foot, out there in the world, smashing it. We have the best farmers in the world, we have the most carbon efficient farmers in the world and there’s a world of opportunity. – Christopher Luxon

When you think about places like the UK, I think we’re up over 42 percent in two years, EU pretty similar. We’ve now got India up 72 percent of growth in exports – before we’ve even done the FTA – just because we’re talking positively about it.

I don’t think we just sit back and admire the opportunity, we put the foot on the accelerator and we go for it now, because as good as it may be across our core sectors, there’s still a few like arable and agriculture I want to see better performing. – Christopher Luxon

Me, as government, I can create the conditions for growth, but you go and create that growth and create those opportunities and build kick-ass businesses. – Christopher Luxon

We were sitting together side by side, and I said ‘Narendra, what’s going on for you in India?’ He said, ‘Chris, I’ve got 1.5 billion people, I’ve just overtaken China as the most populous country on earth.’ He’s supposed to be a $12 trillion economy by 2030, but he’ll probably get there in 2028.

That’s the power of just one economy that’s actually moving from low income to middle income, and why you want to grow with growing economies and get New Zealand as a small country in on that ground floor. –

The prime minister’s a hard-working guy and he often only gets a 10-second soundbite on the radio or in the media and so to have 20 minutes of really sharing his vision, and particularly the vision for the primary sector, was fantastic.

The new Indian free trade deal was a big part of that for this government and so it was good to hear his thoughts and the opportunities that may come with it. – Wayne Langford

I don’t think the patient really cares.

If they’re having a knee operation, they’re not looking up at the ceiling, lying on the operating table, wondering who owns the ceiling.

They’re wanting to make sure they’re getting seen in a timely manner.

My focus is on strengthening access to our public health system. – Simeon Brown

 There are two ways a country can produce a trillionaire – and wealth generally.

One is by creating conditions in which extraordinary enterprise, risk, and productivity are rewarded. The other is by destroying the value of money.

It is far more likely that the Greens’ recent tax policy would produce a Kiwi trillionaire by the second route rather than the first. – Jonathon Ayling

Simply put, if redistributing money could alleviate poverty, poverty would have disappeared a long time ago. – Jonathon Ayling

My parents were humanitarian workers in Mozambique for 20 years. With my pet monkey Jessica and Cape Wolf snake Russell, I grew up among some of the very poorest people in the world.

It is not indifference, nor a failure of compassion, to recognise that what the poor need, whether in Mozambique or New Zealand, is not greater belief in the power of the state to equitably reallocate resources.

Welfare or foreign aid can relieve suffering, and sometimes urgently should. But redistribution is not the same as development.

A country does not become prosperous because the state gets better at dividing what already exists. It becomes prosperous when people are free and able to create more than existed before. – Jonathon Ayling

Chloe Swarbrick argued that collectivising our national resources was vital if New Zealand was to offer an “equitable” future for all citizens. By “national resources”, what she meant was wealth generated by private individuals risking their own money on uncertain investments.

This is not necessarily the same path as Zimbabwe or Venezuela, but it commits the same error: treating wealth as something to be seized and allocated rather than created.

Some may consider the comparison extreme or scaremongering.

But New Zealand’s previous economic success is no more guarantee of our future prosperity than it was for these countries, which were badly damaged by political choices, centralised mismanagement, the demonisation of those the economy relies on most, and governments that imagined prosperity could be commanded into existence. – Jonathon Ayling

Historically, socialist parties railing against capitalism have found it relatively easy to distribute the need, misery and desperation that come when we fixate on others’ wealth.

The hard part is not making wealth less concentrated; it is creating it in the first place. – Jonathon Ayling

Rejecting dependency-inducing aid, my parents looked around northern Mozambique, and decided more than anything, desperately poor Mozambicans needed regular employment.

So they planted 10,000 cashew trees, opened a not-for-profit cashew processing factory, and gave employment to hundreds.

To generate an equitable future for New Zealand, we must invest in the conditions that allow economies not only to share what they already possess, but actually to grow.

Some benefit from this growth more than others, as is unavoidable in a free society. But opportunity, institutional stability, secure property rights, and the belief that initiative will be rewarded are far more likely to produce an equitable economy, environment and society in the long term than the politics of envy.

The question is not really whether there can be an ethical trillionaire, but whether our politics still understands the conditions that allow ordinary people to become prosperous.

A country can create trillionaires by rewarding enterprise, or by ruining its currency.

The first is difficult, rare and usually beneficial to many more people than the person who becomes rich. The second is much easier. We should be very careful which road our politics celebrates. – Jonathon Ayling

All I ask is we try harder. Defend your corner, argue your case, point out the pitfalls, problems and failings.

But don’t make it up. Don’t put it out there in a way you know will be misinterpreted and run with.

Those behind this week’s campaign of bollocks know people are busy and know they have limited time to consume detail so prey on that for political advantage.

It’s our responsibility to be properly informed but it is those who run the place’s job to do it on a level playing field.

Hysteria and lies and deliberate manipulation should be crimes.

But given they are not, all we can hope for is a better version of adults.  – Mike Hosking

Why is this important? What am I here to tell you? If the state can force you to accept men as women, they can force you to accept anything. Freedom of speech, belief & association are the bedrock of a free society but they are in direct conflict with transgender ideology. –  Sall Grover 

Vic says he’s had depression and cancer and that meant that he just buried his head in the sand when it came to his debt. You think the people who helped pay for his medical degree don’t experience hardship as well? Do you think the people here who helped fund him into his high paying career don’t get depression and cancer as well? And maybe, just maybe, if those loan defaulters paid back what they owe the taxpayer, we would have more money to help people who suffer from depression and cancer in this country. I have no sympathy. The more they crack down, the better. – Kerre Woodham

Those who repeatedly ignore their obligations should expect consequences,” he says. “It’s not acceptable for individuals to avoid their student loan obligations. Student loans are funded by New Zealand taxpayers, and borrowers have a responsibility to repay what they owe. – Simon Watts

I take a perverse pleasure in hearing about people like this getting caught at the border and forced to pay up.

And yes, even though it’s “only” $180,000 — small beer in terms of what the country deals with — every one of those dollars feels like a win to me because of what it represents.

People like this doctor are the epitome of taking this country for a ride. He knew he should pay his student loan back. I knew I should have paid mine back. We all knew it.

Most of us did. But some went overseas and thought they could come and go from New Zealand whenever they liked, with no repercussions and never have to pay the money back. – Heather du Plessis-Allan 

It’s changed in New Zealand. We’re not gentle parenting anymore — we’re practising FAFO. You know what that is? F around and find out.

And it’s working.

There’s one lawyer in this country who reckons he’s doing so much work on student loan cases alone that he’s had to stop taking on other work. That’s how many people he’s helping clean up this kind of mess.

He says he’s dealt with more than 300 cases, accounting for around $25 million owed to New Zealand — and he’s already managed to recover $7 million of it.

Good. – Heather du Plessis-Allan 

Exactly how our obligations under the Treaty of Waitangi, signed 1840, should be understood in the context of today’s modern liberal democracy should be debated. It matters to everyone, and there are a wide variety of perspectives.

The previous Labour Government, for example, legislated to allow Ngāi Tahu to appoint two members to the Canterbury Regional Council. This offended two basic democratic principles: equal voting rights for all, as members of Ngāi Tahu living in the Canterbury region already had the same vote as everyone else living there and were now getting additional representation; and democratic accountability as being fundamental to our democracy.

The latter is because councils take money from people in the form of rates and choose how to spend that money, and they can add substantial costs to people and businesses through regulation. If the public have no way of kicking members off the council if they don’t like what they’re doing, our democracy is fundamentally weakened.

To criticise that policy is not “Māori bashing”, it’s not “playing the race card”, it is doing what we should be doing. In this instance, it’s asserting the principle that equal voting rights in a modern democracy should not be eroded in an attempt to honour Treaty commitments.

None of this is easy.  – Paul Goldsmith

I’m glad that we live in a rowdy and disputatious democracy. Our country has been filled by people whose ancestors have settled here centuries ago and by those who themselves have moved here recently. We will continue to debate and often disagree on the place of the Treaty in our modern society. That should be expected. If we can avoid the extreme language that we see too often around the world, that would be a good thing for everyone. – Paul Goldsmith

So let’s talk about that weird interview yesterday.

No not the one with Winston Peters, the one with Chris Hipkins.

He has planted Labour in an almost impossible-to-justify position on NZ Super.

On Ryan Bridge Today yesterday he said Labour will not change the age of entitlement. Will not means-test. Will not cut it. Will keep it in full indefinitely.

We currently have around four people working to support every pensioner. That will be two workers for every pensioner within the next 10-20 years.

Anyone with half a brain can see it’s not sustainable, in full, forever. – Ryan Bridge

 Labour’s biggest Achilles’ heel is taxes. 

Telling people you’ll keep an unaffordable, expensive, universal programme forever will leave them wondering who’s going to pay for it. Who’ll be taxed next. 

Once you add in the pay equity claims at up to $13 billion, the gaps start to look more like big black holes. – Ryan Bridge

In short, Opportunity is a bunch of acolyte students from the alchemy school of economics. Money and wealth magically materialize, with little truly productive effort. In reality, Opportunity is deeply devoted to the “deindustrialization” dogma of Western Leftism. Shrink the pie, with cultural elites eating the lion’s share, and radically redistribute wealth away from productive people to try and placate the general populace. Opportunity is a vibe party of unserious and potentially damaging individuals.

Opportunity itself hasn’t had to spend much on promotion because all of New Zealand’s mainstream media outlets, and Radio New Zealand in particular, are doing the job for them. Qiulae is a darling of MSM.  – John McLean

I’m a democracy devotee. If Opportunity gets over the 5% line and forms part of New Zealand’s next Government, then so be it. But New Zealanders have to know what they could be getting themselves into. Opportunity is a clever, elitist, Leftist construct that’s far from what it may seem. If Opportunity gets into Government, then Māori Marxist Dystopia here we come. – John McLean

Political momentum is one of the most powerful forces in politics. Voters are heavily influenced by ‘social proof’ which is the psychological phenomenon where people copy the actions of others to validate their own behaviour. People want to support parties that appear viable and relevant. Therefore, a party that is constantly discussed in the media acquires a kind of legitimacy simply through repetition. People hear its leader interviewed, see its policies analysed, watch journalists speculate about its prospects, and begin to regard it as a serious political force. This creates a self-fulfilling prophecy where media attention generates awareness, awareness generates support (or opposition), support (or opposition) generates further media attention, and the party gains momentum.

On the other hand, a party that is ignored will struggle to break out of obscurity regardless of the quality of its ideas. So if two parties begin in the same position, both polling below 1%, but one receives regular favourable coverage while the other is largely iced out by the news, it would be surprising if their trajectories remained identical. The former benefits from a continual stream of free publicity and legitimacy, while the latter remains invisible to most voters. – Ani O’Brien

Minor parties occasionally enjoy polling surges based on events like leadership changes or publicity stunts. Journalists would be negligent if they ignored smaller parties (as they do virtually all other the others), but the media have a peculiar enthusiasm for the possibility of an Opportunity Party breakthrough.

The extensive media coverage that has preceded Opportunity’s recent surge in the polls appeared to arrive out of nowhere given until recently, its numbers should have seen it dismissed as electorally irrelevant. And perhaps this would not be notable except that New Zealand has seen a number of minor parties spend years hovering in the same 1-3% range without attracting anything like the same level of sustained coverage.  – Ani O’Brien

Part of the reason for this selective coverage likely lies in the demographics and cultural positioning of the people working in the media. Opportunity’s support base is concentrated among urban, university-educated professionals which is a demographic that overlaps significantly with the social and educational background of many journalists, editors, and political commentators.  – Ani O’Brien

Bias need not be conscious or coordinated. People are naturally more interested in political movements they understand, encounter in their social circles, or regard as being within the bounds of respectable debate. However, journalists and editors do have a responsibility to monitor their own biases and actively pursue balance, and in this they fail miserably. In this case the result is that Opportunity is often discussed as an intriguing political option, while conservative minor parties are framed through the lens of culture wars, controversy, or protest politics.

Narrative is a huge part of this too. Political journalism and the way we engage with politics is driven as much by stories as by statistics and policy. More probably. For years, Opportunity has offered a compelling storyline as a policy-heavy, technocratic  party that many commentators believe deserves greater success than it has achieved. – Ani O’Brien

There is a saying that ‘all publicity is good publicity’ and there is a reason that is an enduring phrase. Negative publicity can indeed be better than no publicity especially if people who distrust the media perceive the coverage as unfair. However, there is definitely some negative reporting everyone wants to avoid, and luckily for Opportunity it doesn’t have to worry about that. The type of coverage it is receiving is stellar. Uncritical. Top notch. The kind of stuff you can’t even pay for.

Even when the party were barely polling above 1% journalists were discussing coalition scenarios, analysing its voter base, profiling its leadership, and debating whether it can cross the 5% threshold. Did we see this modelling for any other 1% party? Under MMP, ‘social proof’ and perceptions of viability are enormously important. Many voters are reluctant to support a minor party they believe has no chance of entering Parliament. But, once media coverage begins to signal that a party is a serious contender, that perception can change rapidly. – Ani O’Brien

Where are the reflective pieces about why its core proposition has failed to resonate with voters? Instead, with every minuscule increase in support another round of speculation that this is finally the moment when New Zealand voters will recognise the party’s latent genius seems to be triggered.

Reading some of the coverage this year, one gets the impression not merely that Opportunity might enter Parliament, but that its arrival is something we should all be thrilled about. Never mind that some of its most high profile policies could be more fairly classified far-left than many of the conservative-lite policies of the New Conservatives could be classified as far-right. – Ani O’Brien

Rather than examining the Opportunity Party’s policies in the same way political journalists should examine those of any party seeking parliamentary representation, the media has focused its attention on simply the prospect of the party’s success. Readers have been treated to stories asking whether Opportunity is the election’s “dark horse”, whether it could become a “kingmaker”, whether leader Qiulae Wong has “discovered the formula” previous leaders missed, and whether this might finally be the year the party “breaks through”. Is it not unsurprising that after so many articles explaining that Opportunity is on the verge of something significant, some readers may eventually conclude that Opportunity must indeed be on the verge of something significant?

The lack of critical analysis is particularly obvious when one looks at how the party’s ideological positioning is discussed. The Opportunity Party is routinely described as “centrist”, so much that the label has now acquired the status of an established fact. Journalists apparently haven’t felt any obligation to explain why the label applies or whether it accurately reflects the party’s policy platform. Opportunity says it is centrist. Therefore Opportunity is centrist.

Journalists have not grappled with the fact that this unlikely to be true while the party is calling for socialised public transport, proposing universal pocket money for all, sneering at women’s rights, and running a roster full of Green-esque candidates. Its General Manager is former Labour minister, and business parter of Toni Grace (Chris Hipkins’ fiance), Iain Lees-Galloway. And one of the authors of He Puapua is a key candidate for the party goodness sake. – Ani O’Brien

They want us to believe that the author of He Puapua can form a coalition with David Seymour and Winston Peters. The Opportunity Party, readers are told, could work with National. The Opportunity Party could work with Labour. The Opportunity Party could work with anyone. It is the Switzerland of New Zealand politics.

Well, I call bulldust (to borrow a Winstonism). Opportunity will not be in a centre-right coalition. The whole purpose of this “centrist” schtick is to trick any environmentally-minded National voters to switch their votes to Opportunity. When push comes to shove they can only work with the left and the media know it because this week’s poll 1News poll was reported as a win for the left bloc and, low and behold, Opportunity’s numbers were included that bloc creating the sufficient boost. – Ani O’Brien

National and ACT generally campaign on lower taxes, reducing regulation, constraining government spending and limiting the growth of the state. Opportunity’s flagship proposals involve new taxes, substantial redistribution, and a much more activist role for government in directing economic outcomes. These are major points of disagreement that reflect fundamentally different assumptions about how society should be organised. None of this means cooperation would be impossible. MMP regularly produces strange political marriages. But it does suggest the matter deserves more scrutiny than simply accepting Opportunity’s preferred self-description and moving on. I realise that Qiulae Wong suffers from the delusion that humans can change sex, but I hope she realises she cannot identify her way into Parliament.

New Zealanders would no doubt benefit from examining Opportunity’s major policy proposals as well. They might find them appealing or appalling, but they should have the information to make that choice. Take the land tax, for example. Whatever one’s view of the idea, a tax of that scale would represent one of the most significant changes to New Zealand’s tax system in decades. It would affect homeowners, investors, retirees, businesses and local property markets. It would create winners and losers, and provoke fierce arguments about wealth, incentives, fairness, and property rights. It is the kind of proposal that political journalists are normally expected to pull apart from every conceivable angle.

Instead we get another profile of Qiulae Wong with about as much useful information as a Woman’s Day puff piece. If we are exposed to any of her policies they are delivered more like an intriguing TED Talk rather than focused on the practical and political consequences of implementation.  – Ani O’Brien

When parties on the centre-right propose structural reforms, journalists tend to move rapidly from the advocates’ claims to the objections. Stakeholders who can be relied upon to smackdown anything National, Act, or New Zealand First propose are interviewed. Critics on speed dial are consulted. Economists are asked to get out the fine toothed comb, and every teeny tiny grammatical error gets the third degree. I personally have no problem with this level of scrutiny… so long as it is applied consistently across the political parties.

None of this is a conspiracy. Conspiracy is almost always the least persuasive explanation because it attributes to journalists a level of coordination they rarely display. As I said earlier, a much simpler explanation is that the Opportunity Party is, in many respects, exactly the kind of party that appeals to a large portion of the professional class from which modern journalism is drawn. It is urban, socially progressive, highly educated, technocratic, and fond of describing itself as “evidence-based”. For a lot of journalists, Opportunity feels like the party they’d invent if they were allowed to design one themselves. It offers reform without populism, idealism without revolution, and progressivism without some of the more eccentric features that have made the Greens difficult for many voters to embrace. Journalists do not need to consciously favour Opportunity for this affinity to shape the tone of their coverage. They may not notice at all.

This kind of unconscious familiarity bias means some political parties are primarily covered through the lens of controversy, conflict, and risk while others are covered through the lens of possibility, potential, and promise. These framings, narratives, and outlooks do not merely describe political reality, they construct it. – Ani O’Brien

Serious political parties are supposed to be capable of enduring hostile questioning. They are supposed to have their assumptions challenged and their policies tested. That is not a barrier to political legitimacy. In fact, it should be one of the things that creates legitimacy in the first place. That’s why it sometimes feels as though sections of the media have skipped directly to imagining Opportunity’s success before completing the more mundane task of interrogating whether its ideas deserve it.

After ten years of false starts, leadership changes, relaunches, and electoral disappointments, this may be the election that sees Opportunity finally make it into Parliament. If they do, I have zero doubt that they will align with Greens, Labour, and the fragments remaining of Te Pāti Māori. They are a more palatable and polished Green Party with better business acumen and an honest media would reflect that so that voters who are inclined toward that kind of politics are informed they have options. Instead I suspect we will be served more of the promotional slop that desperately tries to create an alternative kingmaker because the media loathe the influence of New Zealand First. – Ani O’Brien

Labour’s approach is more spending, more handouts, and more short-term fixes, without addressing the underlying causes of the cost-of-living pressures facing Kiwi families.

“National’s approach is to control spending, cut waste, and grow the economy so New Zealanders can earn more and get ahead.

“The good news is that National’s approach is working and the growing economy is set to create 220,000 more jobs and see wages growing faster than prices, which is the only way to address the cost-of-living long term.

“National has a long-term plan to build New Zealand’s future. Labour can’t even explain how they’ll pay for theirs. – Simeon Brown

A story that should have received far more attention this week was Chloe Swarbrick’s extraordinary decision to take her domestic political grievances offshore. The Green Party co-leader wrote (along with Belgian Green MEP Saskia Bricmont) to the European Commission, suggesting New Zealand’s methane target changes may breach our trade deal with the EU and calling for an independent investigation. In other words, she invited foreign trade officials to scrutinise New Zealand’s democratically chosen domestic policy settings because she disagrees with them in the hopes they would punish us economically.

New Zealand is a small trading nation. Our prosperity depends on exporters, market access, and the trust we maintain with trading partners. You do not have to support every government policy to understand that running overseas to ask larger powers to investigate your own country’s trade compliance is a serious act. It is not brave or principled or whatever version of “speaking truth to power” Swarbrick has convinced herself she was doing. It is asking foreign power to intervene because you lost the argument at home. The results could have meant hundreds of millions of dollars piled on Kiwi businesses due to tariff increases.

Trade Minister Todd McClay accused Swarbrick of acting against the interests of New Zealanders and exporters. The fact that the EU responded to her with disinterest does not make her attempt any better. It only makes it less successful. – Ani O’Brien

National’s KiwiSaver announcement is politically significant because it is so un-National. Christopher Luxon has announced that if elected National will make KiwiSaver compulsory for all workers from 2028, automatically enrol newborns with a $1500 “Baby Boost”, contribute to parents’ KiwiSaver while they are on paid parental leave, and require employers to keep contributing for workers over 65. By 2032, employees and employers would each contribute 6%.

It is a major philosophical shift for a party that once opposed compulsory retirement savings. National is now arguing that long-term financial security justifies requiring people to save. New Zealand’s ageing population means the cost of Super will continue to rise, and compulsory KiwiSaver builds a larger pool of private savings, giving future governments more options.

Politically, it is also a shrewd move. National has planted itself firmly on Labour’s traditional territory by embracing one of their signature reforms, leaving Chris Hipkins in the awkward position of having to criticise a policy direction his party has historically championed. – Ani O’Brien

National also announced a solar policy this week, promising a Home Energy Fund that would give homeowners access to low-interest, long-term loans for solar panels, batteries, insulation, heat pumps and other energy upgrades. The loans would be attached to the property and repaid through rates, rather than requiring households to wear the full cost upfront.

It has received an unusual amount of cross-party support.  – Ani O’Brien

Alongside the fund, National also wants to strip out some of the more deranged consent requirements for small-scale renewable energy. Rooftop solar would not need consent, small batteries would be allowed as of right, farm-based solar would be a permitted activity with safeguards, and small micro-hydro would be easier for on-site use. – Ani O’Brien

The New Zealand Post Primary Teachers’ Association (PPTA) has somehow managed to become even more brazen in its political overreach, which is quite an achievement given the starting point. This week it announced it is hiring an expert to produce guidance for teachers on dealing with “far-right extremism” in classrooms. Schools should have zero tolerance for genuine neo-Nazism, Holocaust denial, racial hatred, and intimidation.

The problem is that the PPTA has repeatedly demonstrated it struggles to distinguish between genuine extremism and political views it simply dislikes. In its own description of the problem, Holocaust denial sits alongside “trad wife” culture, the “manosphere”, transphobia, and other ideological labels. When everything to the right of the union’s hard left politics starts being folded into the category of “extremism”, it becomes difficult to avoid the conclusion that this is less about safeguarding classrooms and more about ideological gatekeeping. – Ani O’Brien

 Last year’s PPTA conference adopted a paper entitled Peace is Union Business, which argues that the union should campaign on international conflicts, build alliances with other unions and NGOs to influence New Zealand’s foreign policy, and explicitly frames the Israel-Gaza conflict through the language of oppression, citing Gaza repeatedly as a cause the union should champion. It also proposes establishing a dedicated “Peace Taskforce” to advance these objectives.

The difficulty is that much of the wider Palestine activist movement the PPTA has aligned itself with has, at various protests and demonstrations, been dogged by allegations of antisemitic rhetoric, conspiratorial claims about Jews, and slogans that many Jewish New Zealanders have experienced as threatening. That does not mean every Palestine supporter is antisemitic. But it does make the union’s sudden invocation of Holocaust denial as the defining threat to classrooms feel somewhat selective. It is hard not to wonder whether antisemitism is treated as an urgent moral issue only when it arrives wearing a swastika, but receives considerably less attention when it emerges from political movements the union otherwise supports wearing a keffiyeh. – Ani O’Brien

Four of the six coalition leaders and deputy leaders are now Māori.

— David Farrar (@dpfdpf) June 28, 2026