Homepaddock

Democracy is a fragile flower that requires active participation and regular nurturing. New Zealand has an enviable reputation for our high turnout and free and fair parliamentary elections. However, our grassroots democracy in local government is in real trouble. Reform of how we conduct council elections is overdue. – Nick Smith

Online voting is not the answer. There have been several commitments by governments and councils to trial e-voting over the past decade, but none have eventuated due to being unable to overcome security concerns. Hackers have become more sophisticated and the risks have increased. Voting system integrity is all important, particularly when trust in public institutions is low.

The first solution is in-person voting, replicating the parliamentary election system as closely as possible. This means a two-week timeframe in which to vote, with polling booths in venues where people visit frequently, such as supermarkets and malls. New Zealanders are creatures of habit. We know it works well and has high turnout. – Nick Smith

I would also advocate for local government and central government elections to move to a four-year term, subject to a referendum, with elections evenly spaced two years apart. None of the big issues facing central or local government can be resolved in three years, and the community would be better served by their representatives taking a longer-term view. – Nick Smith

Teachers’ unions have long used education reform as a bargaining chip in pay negotiations. Moreover, they insist that teachers be paid according to their length of service rather than how well they teach.

Teachers should have a four-tier career structure. Advancement should be based on evidence of quality teaching, judged by expert panels.

The top two tiers should attract considerably higher pay than any classroom teacher currently receives. Teachers at these levels should be curriculum leaders and train new teachers.

The Commissioner has disrupted the ritual. Now it is time to end it once and for all. – Michael Johnston

Part of the problem, I think, is that the line between reporting and opinion has become blurred. Journalists can – and should – write opinion. I’m doing it here. But when reporting on a contested issue, the basic rules still apply.

This isn’t just about individual journalists or articles, however. It raises serious questions about what is being taught on journalism courses – and what standards are being upheld in newsrooms.- Janet Murray

Because good journalism is not about reinforcing a narrative. It is about testing it – with accuracy, balance and a willingness to ask difficult questions.

Balance doesn’t mean giving both sides equal space. But it does mean acknowledging that another side exists. Otherwise, readers aren’t being informed – they’re being led.

And that’s activism, not journalism. – Janet Murray

Journalism does not just reflect reality – it helps shape how we understand it. If basic facts are blurred, or language is used in a way that obscures rather than clarifies, the consequences go far beyond a single article. They affect how we understand issues such as crime, safeguarding and public policy – and whether people trust what they are being told.

None of this is complicated. Journalists are not required to take a particular view on contested issues. But they are required to report them clearly, accurately and with enough balance, so that audiences can make up their own minds.

If journalism is to retain public trust, it needs to get back to basics: accuracy, clarity and a willingness to test claims rather than reinforce them. – Janet Murray

For a few days in that Auckland conference centre, decision-makers from every sector of New Zealand sat together and tried, collectively, to make the country better. There was a sense of energy and shared purpose – a genuine national mojo that I have not seen replicated since. John Hood won New Zealander of the Year. It mattered.

And yet, the honest verdict, 25 years on, is that the overall impact on New Zealand has been, at best, modest. Not because the ideas were wrong. But because turning ideas into structural economic transformation requires something we find genuinely difficult: sustained, grinding, whole-of-economy follow-through. We are good at conversation. We are less good at the hard work of implementation that must follow. New Zealand can be small and nimble. We are not always able to be. – Chris Liddell

The artificial intelligence (AI) revolution is not a knowledge wave. It is a tsunami, coming with exceptional opportunities and challenges.

My old boss, Bill Gates, has long observed that we overestimate the short-term impact of technology but underestimate its long-term impact. With AI, progress is not linear; it is exponential, and the long term is arriving far sooner than we expect. The future that many experts imagine arriving in 20 years may be five years away. – Chris Liddell

In Machines of Loving Grace, he [Dario Amodei] sketches the massive upside of powerful AI, the prospect of compressing a century of medical and scientific progress into a single decade, of eliminating diseases that have plagued humanity for millennia, of dramatically expanding access to education and economic opportunity across the globe.

In his second essay, The Adolescence of Technology, Amodei is more sobering. He argues that humanity is about to be handed almost unimaginable power and that it is unclear whether our social, political and technological institutions possess the maturity to wield it wisely. This is a passage, he writes, that will test who we are as a species. – Chris Liddell

What does this mean for New Zealand?

It means the opportunity is extraordinary. It also means that the cost of our often-characteristic inertia has never been higher.

The United States and China will dominate the global AI race. New Zealand cannot and should not try to compete on their terms. But scale is not the only path to significance. – Chris Liddell

New Zealand holds some baseline advantages for the AI age. A global reputation for integrity and trustworthy governance. A transparent regulatory environment. Abundant renewable energy, a critical and increasingly scarce resource for the data centres that power AI. A Government with the structural capacity to move fast. And a unique indigenous worldview, Te Ao Māori, that offers a genuinely different perspective on data sovereignty, collective benefit and the ethics of technology.

Evolutionary biology teaches us that change comes from the edge of the species. New Zealand has always been a place at the edge geographically, culturally and institutionally. That is not a disadvantage in a world being remade by AI. Being a laboratory for ideas, a place nimble enough to experiment and iterate at speed, is a genuine strategic asset. The countries that will lead are not necessarily just the biggest. They are the boldest. – Chris Liddell

This time the boldness must be backed by something the Knowledge Wave ultimately lacked: a genuine, sustained, whole-of-economy commitment.

On the Government side, what is needed is a substantive, ongoing set of enabling policies. – Chris Liddell

AI can also make the Government itself both more efficient in delivering existing services and more effective in adopting new delivery models. This will require a serious programme to drive AI adoption through every part of the Government. The Government can use it to significantly increase its policy cadence, speed up regulatory clearances and do a regulatory “clean-up” that eliminates conflicting or low-value regulations. AI will open major opportunities in personalised medicine and education, two of the country’s largest sectors in need of re-imagining. New Zealand could be at the forefront of their experimentation and application.

Last, but critically, we need a national AI literacy programme. – Chris Liddell

The Government cannot do this alone. The private sector must step up by investing in AI capabilities and building the new companies and platforms that a modern economy requires. This will require “top-down” driving from business leaders willing to invest in AI applications, and “bottom-up” ideas from all levels of the organisation, empowered by the general deployment of frontier models to every employee.

There are opportunities for significant advances in making existing companies more productive, an area New Zealand has consistently lagged in, but also new growth. There has never been a better moment in New Zealand history to start or scale a technology company or reimagine existing industries. – Chris Liddell

For Māori entrepreneurs and iwi, in particular, the AI moment offers something the Knowledge Wave only gestured toward: real structural opportunity to build wealth, own platforms and participate in the highest-value parts of the global economy on their own terms. –

In the philanthropic sector, AI also opens new worlds. – Chris Liddell

The opportunities are only limited by our imagination. However, none of them will come easily. There will be no silver bullet, just a broad adoption in every sector and the willingness to embrace new business models and approaches. There will be successes but also failures. It will require relentless commitment. – Chris Liddell

Working alongside some of the world’s most successful entrepreneurs, investors and leaders, I’ve come to admire what I would describe as relentless pragmatic optimism – the ability to hold multiple conflicting realities simultaneously, with a clear bias towards the positive. Not naive optimism. Not a denial of the challenges. But the understanding that in times of great dislocation, the bigger the disruption, the bigger the opportunity for those bold enough to compete.

I have seen and competed against the best in the world. I believe that New Zealand has the DNA, but we need the attitude. My enduring concern, seen from the distance I have gained, is our tendency towards complacency and incrementalism and more recently, a degree of fatalism. We must fight those attitudes. In the world we are now entering, every country and every citizen has agency. What’s coming will require a fundamentally different level of response and a higher level of aspiration across government, business and the wider public. – Chris Liddell

There is a Greek proverb I have carried with me for much of my life, “we should plant trees in whose shade we shall never sit”. Every serious act of nation-building is an act of intergenerational generosity, done not for the people in the room, but for the New Zealanders who will inherit what we choose to do or fail to do now.

We largely missed the Knowledge Wave. The conference and what came afterwards catalysed real outcomes and a brief but genuine sense of national shared purpose. However, measured against the scale of the generational challenge it set out to meet, the honest verdict is that we did not do anywhere enough, fast enough, or with enough sustained commitment. We planted some trees when we needed a forest.

The next wave will be dramatically more significant. The question for New Zealand is not whether the AI tsunami is coming. It is whether, this time, we choose to meet it with the full force of everything we have. – Chris Liddell

I’m not saying we don’t need a capable public sector. The public sector needs to be competent and powerful in the right places.

But like Canada and increasingly the UK, if the safest, most secure and best paying jobs in your country do not produce experts, useful goods and services or involve incentive for innovation then you get less and less productivity. – Liam Hehir

No religion deserves its own tsar. To assault a Muslim is a crime. To discriminate against a Muslim is unlawful. But to say Islam promotes the subordination of women is not a crime. To mock the proposition that a seventh-century Arabian merchant received the final revelation of the creator of the universe is not a crime. The capacity to give offence is not an unfortunate byproduct of free speech. It is its essential purpose. This is not about protecting Muslims from hatred. It is about protecting Islam from criticism. Those are two completely different things. – Owen Shapell

Parties that ride high in one election tend to shrink in the next. It’s not fun if you are in the middle of it but it’s political reality nevertheless. 

In an environment where the vote is so widely split, having 30%+ parties will get more and more rare. It’s not a bad thing, but the media having decided they hate Luxon can’t look past it. 

Maybe for them it’s more fun than the reality of the overall poll, which is of course their preferred option. 

The left is getting spanked.  – Mike Hosking

Appropriately, it was April Fool’s Day when I read that Queen Elizabeth I is to be portrayed as a cross-dressing man in a forthcoming television show. But we live in times when the more silly and outlandish a rumoured cultural or political plan, the more likely it is to be true. Majesty – an oddly ‘heritage’ title for a project that clearly considers itself ‘transgressive’ – is set to film this summer, and is seeking ‘trans actresses’ (what we used to call cross-dressers, before they got really cross) to play the monarch. – Julie Burchill

What would these questions be? That Elizabeth never married and had no children? Must be a bloke, then – what real woman would forego such unqualified pleasures? It’s a sign that trans thought is so woefully conventional, so gender straitjacketed, that it just doesn’t seem able to grasp, in this case, why a woman would refuse to hand over her hard-won power to a man by marrying a stranger who didn’t even speak her language. Or that she said on the eve of the Spanish Armada invasion: ‘I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king’? It’s called wordplay, I believe, and was extremely common until people with Tin Ear Syndrome – a disease affecting the ‘trans community’ and their inordinate number of ‘allies’ – became so prevalent among those in the arts and media. – Julie Burchill

We can easily mock the kind of mind that can tie itself into the most labyrinthine of sailor’s knots in order to posit the notion of invading ‘trans’ hordes raping their way across countries, presumably using papier-mâché penises, without the poor women of those nations noticing. Who cares about Vikings’ rights anyway? But it’s beyond a joke when real women who lived in (relatively) recent memory – who we know had to fight against monstrous insults and / or oppression – have their remains picked over by academic half-wits, apparently for no greater cause than making inadequate men (befrocked or not) feel better about themselves; Joan of Arc, Rosa Bonheur, Louisa May Alcott, Storme DeLarverie. Some women pretended to be men so they could be doctors, soldiers, pirates – not because they really considered themselves he / hims. The class privilege of those intent on ‘queering’ every female ‘presenting’ as female in history quite understandably prevents them from understanding how earning a living was the reason many women pretended to be men – including, of course, the Brontë sisters, or Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell, as they were known. Or even JK Rowling, whose publishers advised her that boys would not buy books written by someone called Joanne. – Julie Burchill

Famous women are rare in history. They are generally there because they dared to do what was not expected of them – sometimes on pain of death. Yet somehow, it’s now ‘progressive’ to cancel them out by posthumously changing their sex. – Julie Burchill

It’s telling that those who scream most loudly about having their feelings hurt when they’re called Martha instead of Arthur don’t mind trampling all over the graves of women killed by the savage misogyny of the age. – Julie Burchill

A less important but still significant side effect of ‘queering’ or ‘transing’ the past is that this will mean fewer roles for actresses, already at a disadvantage in a profession that throws them on the scrapheap far earlier than men. Shakespeare’s heroines were originally played by teenage boys, as it was considered improper for women to display themselves in such a way. The call for ‘actors who identify as transgender women’, as the casting call for Majesty puts it, means that women can be edged out once more. – Julie Burchill

When I was a youngster in the 1970s, and Margaret Thatcher first came to notice as a leader of the Tory Party, I remember the sneering from both right and left about her being ‘a man in drag’ and ‘a female impersonator’. I never thought I’d be hearing the same sort of trash talk about powerful women half a century later, as the Elizabeth project so creepily does. Tell you what, queer folx, let’s just explain away every driven, successful woman in history as a man and have done with it; from Don Ciccone and John Crawford in the showbiz world to everyone from Lionel Shriver to me in the writing world. Because women aren’t ambitious and forceful, ever. Talk about erasure! – Julie Burchill

Tova O’Brien’s interview with the Prime Minister is not an isolated moment. It is part of a broader pattern in which media actors, consciously or not, apply the logic of Critical Race Theory and its related disciplines to political coverage.

The result is predictable:

• Competence becomes secondary.
• Identity becomes primary.
• Dissenting identities are delegitimised.
• And the public conversation is dragged back into racial essentialism.

New Zealand deserves better than this. It deserves journalism that interrogates power, not journalism that polices identity – Colinxy

The West has been sleepwalking toward its own demise. China’s rapid economic dominance has gone unchallenged and the spread of Islamist ideology and terror has been largely accepted as some kind of tax on living in diverse societies. Authoritarians, dictators, and despots have been unafraid of the West and global bodies and so have acted confidently to expand their interests. Russia has invaded Ukraine, Iranian proxies have attacked Israel, and China has advanced its dominance in the South China Sea and Pacific.

Anti-interventionists might say “so what? They can do their anti-liberal, authoritarian thing over there and we will have liberal democracy over here.” But apart from domestic policy having allowed anti-liberal and anti-West ideologies to embed in the West itself, one only needs to listen to what our adversaries say openly to understand that staying in our own lanes is not an option. A simple search of speeches by the leaders of these regimes will turn up example after example of cries for the death of America and the West. They are explicit in their intentions for world dominance.

With all of our liberal tolerance and “can’t we all get along” attitude, we are headed toward civilisational suicide. We will be rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic when the ship goes down. We can’t all get along because the other side is willing to martyr themselves to take us out. – Ani O’Brien

War is at our door whether we like it or not. It is not necessarily a war over territory (although in some places it is) it is the ultimate culture war. A war over ideology and religion. For non-religious Westerners it might feel like they have no skin in the game, but living under Christianity with its claws removed is very different to Islamist rule. This is about our liberal, tolerant way of life being superseded with a belief system that subjugates women, slaughters homosexuals, and promotes sectarian violence.

If you pearl clutch about the abortion law changes in the US that are largely not happening anyway, it is inconceivable to be unworried about the much larger threat to women’s autonomy globally. Try protesting about women’s rights in Iran, Syria, or Afghanistan and see what happens.

A combination of naivety, distance from the wars against fascism of the 20th Century, and generations of anti-Western indoctrination have resulted in apathetic populations who are not only unwilling to defend our freedoms, but cannot even comprehend that they are worth fighting for. – Ani O’Brien

Yes, war is brutal, expensive, messy, and should be avoided. But not having the stomach for war will not prevent it coming. China, Russia, Iran… they have ignored the West’s words. Our global bodies have been so weak as to give them spots on peace councils and committees. Make no mistake the reason China has not swept through the south seas, Iran hasn’t dropped nukes on everyone, and Russia hasn’t captured all of Eastern Europe is not because we have negotiated nicely with them. It is because the threat of America’s military might has stood behind those conversations.

Westerners have tricked ourselves into thinking we live in times of dignified peace and diplomacy, but without violence none of it would have held. Throughout the entirety of our history as a species it has always been violence and the threat of violence that has been the ultimate currency. That is why anti-Americanism and derision of their military by the educated classes here and elsewhere in the West are such an insult. Like trustfund nepo babies who live off mummy and daddy and then play pretend communist for a while. Our freedoms have depended on American guns this whole time. – Ani O’Brien

This does not mean we cannot criticise America and Donald Trump, or Barack Obama, or whoever comes next. But American frustration with Europe has been building for years, and it is now being expressed with increasing bluntness. From Barack Obama warning of “free riders” within NATO, to Donald Trump openly castigating allies for failing to meet defence spending commitments, to Joe Biden urging burden-sharing, successive presidents have warned that European states are failing to meet their defence obligations, allowing their military capabilities to erode while relying on the United States to guarantee their security. They were ignored and now much of Europe is in the awkward situation of wanting to oppose what Trump is doing while being reluctantly aware of how reliant they are on his country. The lesson is (and we are learning this on multiple fronts at the moment) that nation states must ensure their own sovereignty as much as possible. – Ani O’Brien

New Zealand will always need to rely on bigger, wealthier, better militarily resourced countries to an extent. But (not-so-)Great Britain and much of Europe have learned a harsh lesson. They have allowed their militaries to be underfunded and dysfunctional. Had they not effectively disarmed they could actually engage in discussions with the US about strategy for dealing with common threats, but as lame ducks they don’t really have a leg to stand on. From Washington’s perspective, this is not simply a matter of fairness. It is a question of credibility. An alliance in which one member consistently carries the burden is inherently unstable. The current crisis has sharpened that perception, revealing a Europe that can call for de-escalation but lacks the capacity to enforce it.

Nowhere are these failures more visible than in Iran. – Ani O’Brien

The deeper logic of American strategy is clearer when viewed through a wider lens that captures competition with China. The Middle East is critical for global energy flows, and while the United States is less dependent on those flows than it once was, China is not. A significant share of its energy imports passes through the Strait of Hormuz. Disruption there has had immediate consequences for Beijing.

China has been steadily expanding its presence in the region, deepening ties with Gulf states while also extending its influence into Latin America. Venezuela’s vast oil reserves and economic dependence created an opening for Chinese investment and leverage while Cuba’s proximity to the US gave China intelligence and surveillance opportunities. In the Arctic, Trump’s interest in Greenland reflects a recognition of China and Russia’s interest in the region as melting ice opens new trade routes and exposes untapped resources. See the bigger picture forming? The media has preferred to report as if America’s moves are a matter of isolated, scattergun chaos. But they form part of a broader strategy for managing a network of economic and strategic relationships that challenge American influence across the world. – Ani O’Brien

America has unleashed an integrated framework that aims to contain Iran, secure energy routes, counter Chinese expansion, and reassert influence in areas that have drifted away from American orbit. This is a unified approach built on leverage not a series of disconnected policies. It prioritises leverage over stability and immediate outcomes over longterm certainty. It assumes that adversaries can be compelled into submission through sustained economic and military pressure, and that escalation can be carefully managed rather than spiralling beyond control. It assumes this.

The problem is that this strategy operates within a system that is increasingly unwilling or unable to absorb it. The institutions that once mediated conflict, the United Nations, multilateral trade frameworks, and broader diplomatic structures, have weakened significantly. Trust in these global institutions has been shot to bits. The United Nations rendered itself irrelevant by playing politics in a way that rewarded human rights abusers while punishing or sidelining Western powers. Without global mechanisms, the threat of conflict lacks the buffer it has had in the second half of the 20th century. Conflict is being managed directly through power, and power is being exercised more aggressively. – Ani O’Brien

The shift from deterrence to coercion, from alliances to conditional partnerships, and from containment to confrontation marks a fundamental transformation in how power is exercised.

This new approach can certainly generate pressure, but can it produce sustainable outcomes before that pressure triggers consequences that no one can fully control?

We will have to see if the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz and the announcement of a ceasefire will have any lasting impact on the conflict. Because escalation has its limits and sets a trajectory where the only direction left is further escalation. – Ani O’Brien

We cannot alleviate the pressure for everybody, but we do have a framework around timely, targeted, temporary support, which I think most New Zealanders would understand and appreciate. And they also appreciate and understand that we have a job to do to protect their long-term interests and that of the economy too. – Christopher Luxon

I have to protect the long-term future of New Zealanders as well, and actually making sure that we actually aren’t running up inflation and interest rates. – Christopher Luxon

It is understandable that diesel users want relief from rising prices, and we are acutely aware of the pressure that all Kiwis are feeling. But seeking to alleviate that pressure for everyone would be unaffordable and irresponsible. – Christopher Luxon

We recognise that there’s going to be elevated fuel prices for some time, and it just seems like stalling that or deferring that [raising fuel excise tax] will be probably the wisest course of action,” he said, while acknowledging a deferral would cause challenges to the National Land Transport Fund.

“If there is a fall-off in revenue that’s being raised, the reality is we have to be straight with New Zealanders and say we might have to make some choices and trade-offs, and I think that’s OK to do that. – Christopher Luxon

We don’t want to repeat the mistake where we happen to industry. We want to work with industry, because in many ways we see them being quite critical for actually solving some of the challenges we may incur should we get a fuel disruption in the future.

It’s just about making sure that we all have a common understanding of what’s required. We know it’s incredibly difficult, particularly for our diesel users, in particular. That means that many of them, frankly, are having to put fuel surcharges in place and pass those costs on to their customers. – Christopher Luxon

It has been positive to see early planning, strong consultation with relevant firms, clear phases, and a continued reliance on market settings and supply chain expertise before intervention. That discipline matters, particularly for business continuity and economic stability – Katherine Rich

If three separate courts could not agree on what constitutes criminal ‘hate speech’, it’s clear that the category is too broad and subjective to have any coherent meaning. This is before we get to the main point: Räsänen has been criminalised for peacefully expressing her sincerely held Christian views. This is an intolerable assault on free speech and freedom of religion. – Lorcán Price

Hate-speech laws give modern-day European states the power to criminalise dissent. As we have seen time and again, it is a power they wield mercilessly. Räsänen’s verdict underlines the necessity of repealing all such legislation in Finland, the UK and throughout Europe. The failure to do so will only see the continued erosion of the fundamental right to freedom of expression in our societies. – Lorcán Price

Well, I have reflected that never have I felt so dependent on the actions and feelings of one administration and its leaders as New Zealand is right now. And I see the pain that so many New Zealanders are experiencing as a result of this fuel shock, and I wish for it to end.

And the sad reality is that it’s not in New Zealand’s hands that lies in the hands of countries very far away. – Nicola Willis 

How do you teach the wellness generation, the influencer youths, the zoomers, that in order to enjoy the comforts of liberal democracy, sometimes you have to fight for them?

That you may have to make sacrifices.

We’ve not been to war. We’ve not experienced war. We don’t even want serious criminals going to boot camps, let alone us!

There’s a general feeling that wars are fought in faraway lands by somebody else, when evidence is mounting that one of these wars might one day soon be fought closer to home and the others might actually be us!  – Ryan Bridge

Thirty or 40 years ago, society had a far more limited view of who was considered disabled.

The explanation for this unexpected rise in the number of young disabled people does not lie in the field of epidemiology, but in the realm of a culture that invites people to classify themselves as infirm. It is important to stress that how people cope with negative experiences is strongly influenced by the cultural and historical factors that shape the way people make sense of them. Such cultural factors may increase or reduce the ability of the individual to cope with adverse circumstances.

In recent decades, the meaning of disability has undergone a dramatic semantic shift. This is part of a broader trend by which negative aspects of human experience and behaviour have become medicalised. In addition, an enormous disability lobby has emerged, which constantly demands that a variety of newly discovered disabilities be recognised with a formal diagnosis. The most important achievement of this lobby has been to alter public perceptions of the relationship between ability and disability. It has also succeeded in transforming what used to be characterised as children’s bad or problematic behaviour into medical issues. – Frank Furedi

Disobedience, aggression, disruptive and anti-social behaviour – now defined as ‘oppositional defiant disorder’ – have always posed a challenge to parents and schools. Yet these difficult patterns of behaviour are now often branded as psychological or medical issues. And so they become accepted, rather than something to be amended by adult guidance or firm discipline. – Frank Furedi

Unsurprisingly, over the past 30 or so years, children have internalised the disability narrative. Today’s young people readily communicate their problems in a psychological vocabulary. They describe their feelings in terms of stress, trauma and depression. – Frank Furedi

It is about time that society woke up to the fact that the current epidemic of childhood disability is not a medical problem. It is a cultural failure. Telling children that they are disabled, and unable to cope with the demands of life, is setting them up for a life of dependency and unfulfilled potential. Our children deserve better. – Frank Furedi

Right now, Christopher Luxon’s Government is scrambling to secure fuel inventories, working with industry on a four‑phase response plan for fuel and energy disruption and trying to limit the spillover from global energy volatility into domestic inflation and cost‑of‑living pressures.

In this environment, embracing a free trade deal with India makes sense. It’s one of the few levers New Zealand has to increase what the Prime Minister terms “optionality” – more markets, more partners, more diversified routes for our goods, services, and people. – Fran O’Sullivan 

There is a suspicion that with an election pending, Labour will be tempted to play politics to deny National a political win rather than reach across the aisles to secure the passage of the India FTA legislation.

Senior Labour MPs – particularly Hipkins, a former Prime Minister himself, and trade spokesman Damien O’Connor – know that in a world of conflict in the Middle East, the biggest oil shock in a generation, and an increasingly transactional global order, a deeper economic partnership with India is insurance. It is a hedge against precisely the kinds of shocks we are living through. – Fran O’Sullivan 

It would be refreshing for chief executives, chairs, and industry leaders to say – clearly and on the record – whether they support the India FTA and why. That includes fronting media, not delegating to anonymous “industry sources”.

Sectors should spell out, in plain language, what the deal will enable: investment decisions that will proceed, jobs that will be created or retained, risks that will be reduced.

If parties on either side of the aisle treat the FTA as a short-term political prop, the private sector should call that out. The same exporters who regularly criticise regulatory flip-flops should be equally vocal when hard-won trade agreements are put at risk for partisan gain.

Small economies do not get to dictate terms in this world.

What we do get is the chance to move quickly when doors open – and to back our own negotiators when they bring home a deal that materially improves our position. – Fran O’Sullivan 

Here is an irony for you. 

Could it be that the Prime Minister, the one so disliked by the media, is actually so good at his job that his numbers are a result of his excellence?  – Mike Hosking

Back here, what has Luxon got to do with it? Well, whether you support the Government or not, he has held together a very successful collab, with three parties for the first time ever in an official arrangement.

They work together and get along together and that has brought faith in the idea that you can have MMP and small parties can not only survive but prosper. All three parties will go to the election this year in good standing.

You have not been able to say that in the MMP era before. – Mike Hosking

The Luxon CEO approach, open to much media derision, has in fact paid dividends, so much so that his own party might have bled support. Such is the confidence he has been able to foster in a mature and adult arrangement, whereas the election draws closer, it isn’t every man for himself. 

Ironically, it’s the downside to success. But as I said earlier this week, the days of major parties being well into the 30s is going, if not gone. You can’t have 10-12% smaller players and hold 35%+. – Mike Hosking

If the left ever got a solid third player, Labour would face the same issue.

National won’t be enjoying this truth. But if you’re an MMP fan, the maturity of what we have seen this past two and a bit years cements the future for potentially stable and adult Government.

It’s the model as to how it should be done.  – Mike Hosking

Universities should promote diversity of opinion and encourage students to explore new ideas and perspectives. This includes enabling them to hear from invited speakers with a range of viewpoints. – Penny Simmonds

Unpopular views will be heard, and established wisdom will be challenged based on the merits of each argument, not suffocating conformity with the allowable view.

Of course the enemies of free expression will try to find loopholes and undermine the policy, we’d expect nothing more from them. However, the ground is shifting under their feet. The direction is free speech and Act is proud to have driven this change. – David Seymor

Military adventurism has returned to Europe and the Middle East. It seems probable that this contagion will spread to Southeast Asia.

Today it seems unimaginable that we could be compelled back into armed conflict, but the speed with which events have moved in the last week has proved how quickly old certainties can dissolve.

Hug your kids today. They may be drafted tomorrow. – Damien Grant

Despite three decades of climate mumbo jumbo warning us that we need to abandon fossil fuels for the sake of the planet, the events of the last few weeks have highlighted that we’ve made little such progress and we are still heavily reliant on the black stuff. – Bruce Cotterill

Our national balance sheet is overburdened by debt. When times were good we underinvested in infrastructure and the result is that our bridges, roads and hospitals are all less than we need. Our exchange rate will tell you that our purchasing power in the international marketplace is at least 20% less than it was just a few short years ago. It’s great for our exporters.

But it’s a double whammy when you’re buying increasingly expensive oil with a weak dollar. – Bruce Cotterill

Here’s the thing that no one is talking about. The oil crisis has brought a stark realisation into the sharpest of focus. It has highlighted just how ill-equipped New Zealand has become.

So we need to help ourselves. We need to build resilience in our economy where there is currently none. Helping ourselves means making some tough decisions. We’ve proven not to be good at that. – Bruce Cotterill

The debt is too high. The tax grab is already as high as people can afford. And right now, being in government isn’t easy anywhere.

Our problems start with the size of our Government. Simply put, it is costing us too much to run the country. Here’s a couple of facts. For the year ended June 30, 2024, New Zealand’s total government expenditure reached $180.1 billion, or 44% of GDP. On the other side of our nation’s profit and loss, the total tax collections hit $115.4b or 28%.

It’s not that we’re collecting too little tax. The problem is that we’re spending too much money. – Bruce Cotterill

To be fair, the current Government sees this and they’ve focused on growing the economy. As positive as it is to hear the Prime Ministerial passion for “growing the size of the pie” through better trade outcomes and increased productivity, that takes time and it’s likely not enough. Besides, it’s no good growing the income if all the additional revenues go down the drain labelled “wasted government spending”.

Simply put, if we are going to rebuild the resilience in the economy, in a reasonable timeframe, we have to get the national cost base down to a level that enables us to deliver surpluses, repay some debt, and start investing again. – Bruce Cotterill

We need a kamikaze Cabinet. A collection of highly capable Government ministers who care more about fixing the place than they do their re-election chances. Because we need optimal decisions, rather than decision-making on the back of the politics of compromise. – Bruce Cotterill

The last time I looked we had 41 government departments. Singapore has 16. We have 78 government portfolios. We have to take a knife to the bureaucracy. Why not aim to cut 20% of our total government servants? Given that the last Labour-led Government put 16,000 additional people on, that should be achievable. We should aim to do so without impacting frontline education, healthcare or police workers and instead look to the nation’s back offices for savings. Look for technology and AI solutions to assist with productivity of those who remain.

While we’re at it we should freeze government salaries for three years. This week’s release of the Taxpayers’ Union Bureaucrat Salary Leaderboard showed that public service salaries have increased by 21.4% over the last five years. Those salaries now run at $17,600 per year more than people in the private sector.

It might sound harsh, but you have to remember something: we’re broke! Our government debt is growing by almost $60 million per day. – Bruce Cotterill

When you drop people, you’ll also drop the costs they carry. Office rental is a massive cost. That goes down if you have fewer people. Flights is a big one. Meetings and associated catering is another. Meetings shouldn’t require more than eight people and they don’t always need coffee and morning tea. Meetings with 20 people or more are not meetings; they’re communication forums. They don’t need coffee or catering either.

While we’re at it, we can’t afford to spend money on kūmara patches, whale noises or singing lessons for government employees either.

Our kamikaze Cabinet should also do the stuff that countless governments have been afraid to do. – Bruce Cotterill

From Treasury to those international credit agencies we increasingly fear, most observers will tell us that we can’t afford to continue with a retirement age of 65. We need to progressively push it up by two years every decade for the next 40 years. We’ll get a few grizzles, but our kids will have better futures as a result. – Bruce Cotterill

But we need to sort out immigration. The key focus should be on bringing in people whom we need, rather than people who want to come here. It should be a simple fix. But it needs someone with the nerve to make the call.

And by the way, we need every Kiwi, including companies, trusts and tribes to pay their way. No more tax-free status or rates relief. We need all hands on deck.

In fact, there are only two groups of people who shouldn’t be asked to front up. There are those who genuinely can’t help themselves. We have an obligation to do the best we can for those people.

Secondly, retirees have paid their dues and many will rightly think that their lifetime of hard work should leave them better rewarded than they are. – Bruce Cotterill

Capacity. Productivity. Cost reduction. Efficiency. Resilience. These should be the words we hear from our politicians in the lead-up to the election. But we won’t.

Our current Government is slowly making progress. But I wish they were bolder.

Those in Opposition have already decided that, if elected, they will return to borrowing, increasing taxes and spending more. You can probably guess how that will turn out.

Sooner or later we have to stop digging the hole! – Bruce Cotterill

While headlines fixated on National’s 29.8%, the underlying movement in the poll tells a completely different story. Every single coalition party went up. Every single opposition party went down. National lifted 1.4 points, New Zealand First surged 3.9 points, and ACT added another 1.5. Taken together, the coalition bloc is now sitting on 65 seats, up six seats on last month, and comfortably able to govern.

And where were the journalists to eulogise the Greens? They dropped 2.7 points to 7.8% which is a loss of a quarter of their support in a single month. No “what’s gone wrong for the Greens?” think pieces. No hand-wringing over leadership and speculation that Julie Anne Genter and Teanau Tuiono might be “doing the numbers”. Nada.

This asymmetry shapes public perception. One side’s weakness is magnified; the other side’s decline is minimised. That doesn’t mean National is in a comfortable position because it clearly isn’t. But under MMP, governments are built by coalitions, and on that measure, this poll was not a disaster for the Government. – Ani O’Brien

Labour has seized on the fact that Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is in Singapore negotiating a fuel deal and Christopher Luxon is not. They say he should be. This makes for neat social media content, but it is fundamentally misleading because on this Australia is not leading, it is desperately trying to catch up.

New Zealand has already done much of the groundwork through our relationship with Singapore and the pending Agreement on Trade in Essential Supplies. Luxon has pointed out that Australia is only now moving toward arrangements that New Zealand initiated earlier. More importantly, Australia’s position is materially worse. Its fuel supply disruptions have been more acute than ours. – Ani O’Brien

Given this context, some of Labour’s criticism looks pretty performative. Especially when earlier in the week, Helen Clark, who now functions as a de facto Leader of the Opposition, took aim at Winston Peters’ trip to the United States, framing it as an unnecessary distraction. But that trip included meetings with senior figures like Secretary of State Marco Rubio and created opportunities to explore alternative fuel arrangements and broader strategic partnerships.

What this all shows is that we will not be seeing a war of policy this election. It will be a war of narrative. – Ani O’Brien

Same control, “nicer” words.

If you have to rename what you’re doing to make it sound virtuous, you’re probably doing something wrong. 🚩 pic.twitter.com/IIVSdfnsdc

— 🗣 Free Speech Union ✊ (@NZFreeSpeech) April 11, 2026