David Harvey writes:

The decision of the BSA regarding the Platform has once again raised the issue of the relevance of the BSA in the Digital Paradigm but if the BSA is to go there must be some form of replacement.

There are a number of models available. That proposed by the Safer Online Services and Web Platforms paper issued by the Department of Internal Affairs was a heavy-handed and invasive model. Similar models are present in the Australian Online Safety Act and the UK Online Safety Act, both of which are invasive.

What I propose in this article is a light handed and less invasive model that advocates voluntary compliance which attracts a number of advantages and legal protections.

I agree the BSA must go, and any replacement should be light handed and where possible voluntary.

The current regime is:

The Harmful Digital Communications Act 2015 (HDCA) — a reactive, complaints-based mechanism for individual harmful digital communications, administered by Netsafe as the approved agency and the District Court.

The Broadcasting Standards Authority (BSA) — a quasi-judicial body exercising jurisdiction over broadcasting standards under the Broadcasting Act 1989, limited to linear broadcast services and expressly excluding on-demand content.

The New Zealand Media Council (NZMC) — a voluntary self-regulatory body for news publishers, with a complaints adjudication function but no statutory powers.

The Office of Film and Literature Classification — administering the prior restraint classification regime under the Films, Videos and Publications Classification Act 1993.

A proposed definition of harm is:

For the purposes of platform regulation, “harm” means a demonstrable adverse effect — more than trivial and supported by empirical, clinical, or reasonably inferable evidence — on the physical safety, mental health, wellbeing, dignity, or fundamental rights of an individual or identifiable group. Mere offence, discomfort, disagreement, or exposure to controversial or unpopular ideas does not constitute harm. In the platform regulation context, harm extends to adverse effects arising from platform design, algorithmic amplification, and recommender system failures, not only from individual items of content.

That definition would be far far better than the current one.

In the first instance, a large degree of responsibility is vested in industry, which develops codes of practice or conduct that set standards for the prevention of online harms. The substantive content of codes is determined by industry participants or industry associations. …

No government department has any involvement in developing the content of codes other than the ability to make submissions as part of a public submission round. This ensures a strict separation between the State and the regulatory process. Any suggestion of state involvement, especially in any area that might involve an interference with or restriction of the freedom of expression, must be avoided, lest the integrity of the process be compromised and the regulatory authority be seen as a quasi-censorship arm of the State.

Industry self-regulation, rather than state regulation.

Unification is not amalgamation of the regulatory regimes. The three divisions operate under distinct statutory mandates, distinct codes, and distinct membership or participation frameworks. A news publisher that is a member of Division 1 is not subject to Division 2 codes. A social media platform subject to Division 3 platform duties does not become a ‘news media organisation’ by reason of operating within the same regulatory authority.

The MCA does not have a single complaints process applying to all regulated entities. Each division maintains its own complaints pathway, its own codes, and its own standards adjudication. What is shared is the governing board, the administrative infrastructure, the legal framework, the Communications Tribunal interface, and the foundational principles.

This is what I like about the proposal – one agency, but different codes and membership for different entities. I am currently a member of the Media Council so would just slot into the Division 1 code.

I can’t do justice to the proposal here, so recommended people read it fully. I think it should be embraced by Parliament as the way forward.

The Taxpayers’ Union released:

While Kiwi businesses are facing economic uncertainty, the Ministry supposedly responsible for helping businesses has been spending our money on Workplace Waiata – i.e. staff singing sessions in their Wellington offices.

And this isn’t just a one-off thing: At their swanky Wellington offices, MBIE were hosting 30 minute sessions every work day, every week!

MBIE employs 5,892 bureaucrats (it’s grown from 4,676 in 2020), literally being paid to sing, clap, poi, and recite Māori proverbs and hymns.

According to documents we’ve unearthed, last year, MBIE bosses attempted to reduce these sessions from daily 30-minute sing-alongs across various floors, to “just” 20 minutes, twice a week.

According to email correspondence (obtained under the Official Information Act) one of the reasons for the ‘cut back’ was concerns about the Workplace Waiata causing noise distraction for others in the office. 

No kidding!

But here’s where it gets even more ridiculous…

The precious MBIE staffers weren’t having a bar of it!

They revolted at management for daring to cut back the entitlement.

This reminds me of how MBIE staff went on strike a few years ago. A former Beehive senior staffer quipped that the impact on the Government of this strike would be the equivalent of the Dom Post running a second daily quiz!

The Herald reported:

An Auckland man who has spent his entire adult life in and out of jail – including for a 2021 incident in which he fired a gun during a police standoff – told a judge this week that he is finally ready to make a genuine effort at getting his life on track.

Of course he is. They always are at sentencing hearings.

“I really hope you can do that,” Judge Lummis said on Thursday of Cossill’s expressed desire to live a better life. “You need to keep this positive attitude …” 

But the judge also pointed to Cossill’s more than 200 prior convictions, and the many chances judges have afforded him in the past – some of which left other judges likely regretting their charity after Cossill reoffended within days.

Which is why we need a decent three strikes law. Why let him out time after time, so he can reoffend within days?

“I consider you have suffered enough and nobody has given you a chance to address your addictions,” Judge Mary-Beth Sharp said during his July 2022 sentencing for the charge, describing Cossill as “somebody that this country has failed dismally”.

Yeah, he is the real victim.

The four-year sentence she settled on reflected two 15% reductions – for his guilty plea and for his background – and an additional 5% reduction for his remorse and efforts to change.

He gets 5% for remorse for his 222nd conviction!

The Free Press reports:

In the weeks since the U.S. and Israel launched their joint assault on Iran, perhaps no American has more aggressively and publicly rallied behind the Islamic Republic than Calla Walsh. From her new base in Lebanon, the 21-year-old Cambridge-raised activist has taken to social media and left-wing podcasts to incite her fellow countrymen and women to sabotage U.S. and Israeli defense contractors wherever they can find them. On March 3, she mocked four American soldiers killed in an Iranian drone strike, posting: “They all died fighting for fascism, genocide, pedophilia, and cannibalism.” She attached pictures of the dead Americans. In recent days she reposted a list of missile-production sites inside the U.S.

“We have a duty to escalate,” Walsh told her host on the Psychic Militancypodcast last Saturday from Beirut, noting that “lockdowns” of weapons factories and vandalism alone are “not sufficient at this point.”

She added: “And as the genocide and these wars of aggression continue to escalate, much more is demanded of people in the West.”

Walsh looks every part the art-school hipster, with her thick-rimmed glasses and a mop of curly hair. But she’s a chameleon of terror. Five years earlier, as a 16-year-old, Walsh was fawned over by The New York Timesfor being a young, social media-savvy activist who was helping to shake up the Democratic Party in Massachusetts. But as a monthslong investigation by The Free Press shows, she’s thrown her allegiance squarely behind the Islamic Republic of Iran and its Axis of Resistance, which includes the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas and Lebanon’s Hezbollah.

So she was lauded by the NTY at 16, and now she’s a fully fledged activist on behalf of terrorist regimes.

In early February, Walsh traveled to Iran as part of a regime-backed media delegation aimed at galvanizing international support for the Islamic Republic in the face of the looming U.S. and Israel attacks on the country. She was also there to whitewash Tehran’s January massacre of thousands of protesters by framing the regime as a bulwark against imperial and Zionist aggression.

30,000 Iranians killed by their own Government, and she’s on the side of the Government that killed them!

A guest post by Ro Edge, New Zealand Spokesperson, Save Women’s Sport Australasia (SWSA):

The decision by the International Olympic Committee to restore the core purpose of women’s sport: providing biological females with a fair and safe arena to compete, is long-overdue. For years, many sporting bodies adopted the IOC’s earlier open-door policy, leading to predictable harm. Women and girls lost podiums, scholarships, team places and opportunities. In contact sports, their safety was put at risk. Science was sidelined in favour of ideology.

IOC President Kirsty Coventry put it plainly: “It would not be fair for biological males to compete in the female category. In addition, in some sports it would simply not be safe.”

We have consistently warned that male developmental advantages – which begin in utero and are powerfully reinforced at puberty – cannot be fully removed by testosterone suppression or surgery. Female athletes also face unique biological challenges, such as menstruation, that can affect performance. Women’s sport is not a consolation prize; it is a sex-based category designed to recognise and protect female biology.

For too long, the debate in sport has centred almost exclusively on how to include trans-identifying males in the female category, often at the direct expense of female athletes. The more important question – how to ensure fair and safe participation for everyone – was largely ignored. The conversation can now shift. Let us pursue genuine inclusion for all by welcoming all males, no matter how they identify, in the male category, where natural male diversity is already accommodated, and by protecting the female category as the sex-based space it was always meant to be.

The IOC’s announcement sends a clear message to every national sporting body in New Zealand. If fairness and safety matter at the Olympic level, they must matter at every level: from elite competition down to school sports, clubs and regional events. Loopholes or partial measures at grassroots level will only undermine the very principles the Olympics have now reaffirmed.

Any organisation that ignores the established science on male developmental advantage and chooses not to follow the IOC’s lead will be making a deliberate decision to undermine women’s sport.

Female athletes have already sacrificed too much. They have been pressured to accept unfairness in silence and told that their concerns about safety and opportunity are unkind or bigoted. It is time to stop gaslighting girls and women and to recognise that biology is not bigotry.

Women’s sport deserves defending because it celebrates what female bodies can achieve on a level playing field. After puberty, male bodies are, on average, stronger, faster and more powerful in nearly every athletic measure. Pretending otherwise does not create equality; it punishes the group biology has already disadvantaged.

The IOC’s decision is a victory for evidence over ideology. It shows that when the stakes are high – Olympic medals, global prestige and athlete safety – science can prevail. New Zealand’s sporting bodies now have both the permission and the responsibility to follow suit.

This op ed was offered to the NZ herald who declined it.

Stuff has an article about Rod Drury that as far as I can tell reveals around 10 years ago he asked a staff member who was going out to dinner with him, if he could kiss her. She said no, and he didn’t.

For this, they have asked him if he will relinquish his New Zealander of the Year Award!

NZ First announced:

New Zealand First Leader Winston Peters has today announced a campaign commitment to fund an extra $15 million for the Christ Church Cathedral to get the rebuild moving.

I was hoping Winston meant he would put in $15 million personally but instead he means he wants taxpayers from Hamilton, Te Kuiti, New Plymouth and Hastings to fund it.

The Church never wanted to rebuild it. They knew the cost wasn’t worth it. They could build a new cathedral for much less. But they got bullied into it.

The cost of the rebuild is now $248 million. The insurance replacement value was $39 million.

It’s been 15 years, and Christchurch is doing fine without it.

Which of these is more deserving of breathless play-by-play media coverage this week?

1. The morning media round of a political party leader who doesn’t memorise his colleagues by their ethnicity, or

2. The morning media round of a political party leader who is currently stalling a free trade agreement with the most populous country on earth, while businesses employing thousands of New Zealanders call on him to get behind it for the good of the country.

You won’t be surprised to know the second one got essentially no follow-up coverage at all, while the first one got numerous articles.

Radio NZ reported:

Labour has selected the former Auckland councillor and mayoral candidate Kerrin Leoni to contest the Tāmaki Makaurau seat.

The Auckland electorate is currently held by Te Pāti Māori’s Oriini Kaipara – who bested Labour’s Peeni Henare in last year’s by-election.

Ms Leoni was the first wahine Māori elected to the Auckland council – serving from 2022 to 2025.

She unsuccessfully ran against Wayne Brown for mayor last year.

She got just 23% of the vote against Brown. She was described by Labour MP Phil Twyford as not credible. Yet she is now their candidate in a seat they declare they want to win back.

I wonder if this is a cunning plot by Willie Jackson to help his old mate JT old, by ensuring Te Pati Maori retain their seats?

The Herald reports:

Some of New Zealand’s top exporters and business associations have signed an open letter calling on all political parties to back New Zealand’s free trade agreement with India. …

The open letter, organised by BusinessNZ, was signed by 28 exporters and industry associations, such as Federated Farmers, Zespri, Seafood New Zealand and Beef + Lamb New Zealand.

The letter said trade was critical to New Zealand’s prosperity and the FTA was the next significant step forward.

“In an increasingly uncertain global environment marked by rising protectionism, geopolitical tension and supply chain disruption, New Zealand cannot afford to stand still,” the letter said.

Having trade agreements with other countries protects us, especially in times like today.

Securing better access to India will help build resilience, spread risk and strengthen our economic position. 

“An FTA with India is not a luxury; it is a strategic necessity for our economic security.”

If you’re worried we are too reliant on China for our exports, you should support the India FTA.

New Zealand First leader Winston Peters said the letter was a “breathtaking” position for BusinessNZ to take.

“How they and the 28 other businesses and associations could have signed up to support the India FTA without knowing what is in it is an appalling commentary on them all,” Peters posted on social media.

“How on earth can there be any sort of proper analysis of the FTA if they haven’t even read the agreement?”

This is silly. The major details have been published and are well known. It is inane to say you can’t have a position on an FTA, unless you have read every clause. By this logic, Winston isn’t in a position to oppose it, because he hasn’t seen the full text either.

The summary of the FTA provides lots of detail. The final text gets wrangled by lawyers for months, and has to be consistent with the high level agreement.

Quantum computers are arriving sooner than we think. They pose a huge threat to Bitcoin, which relies on cryptographic codes to remain secure.

Fewer qubits may be required from quantum computers to breach the cryptographic codes of Bitcoin and Ethereum, Google has suggested. They believe it may take only 500,000 qubits, a figure that is 20 times lower than previous estimates. All of this has been derived from studies by Google Researchers, meaning Q-Day may arrive sooner than we think.

The Current State of Bitcoin

As of March 31st 2026, the BTC price NZD stands at $116,918. This is down from a short spike to $118,733 earlier in the day, brought on by potential alleviations of tension in the Middle East. Issues with oil in the Strait of Hormuz are severely impacting risk assets such as Bitcoin.

Binance noted how this is impacting possible economic data in the United States. It noted that CPI and PCE matter because oil’s pass-through hasn’t fully hit prints yet. They stated that an upside surprise delays cuts and reinforces a supply-shock pricing regime, with second-round food inflation risk building via fertiliser and input disruptions. All of this turns people away from risk assets, of which Bitcoin is one, to safe havens.

Alongside this, the risk posed by quantum computers is also weighing on its price. Testing by Google was done using two schemes. The first used 1,200 logical qubits along with 90 million Toffoli Gates. These essentially act as ‘and’ gates for quantum circuits, letting them reconstruct inputs from outputs due to their reversibility. A second used 1,450 logical qubits and 70 million gates. Both were sampled using a superconducting cryptographically relevant quantum computer. From this, the company has deduced that it would take between nine and 12 minutes to execute an on spend attack.

Discussing the revelation, Google added that “We aim to draw attention to this issue and provide the cryptocurrency community with recommendations to enhance security and stability while it is still possible.” All of this suggests that Quantum attacks may arrive much sooner than previously thought.

Google also added that it depends on which hardware scales first. A slower system may initially target stored funds, while faster ones may provide instant attacks as transactions are taking place.

The Threat to Bitcoin’s Sleeping Wallets

Wallets from the early days of Bitcoin utilise P2PK, a pay-to-public-key. This locks Bitcoin to a public key, meaning it can only be spent by the owner. Many of them are inaccessible due to their keys being lost. Some contain billions of dollars, including early Satoshi-era wallets. In fact, it is estimated that around 1.7 million Bitcoins are still dormant in them.

The issues arise from the fact that they can not be upgraded to quantum-level security. This means they can be unlocked by whoever gets first access to a quantum computer able to prise them open. In a system that is decentralised, this is becoming extremely hard to police, and policing it flies in the face of what a decentralised network should be. 
Attacks of this type could have the potential to seriously disrupt the economics of Bitcoin. With floods of coins on the market, price drops would be endemic.

The Threat to Ethereum

Ethereum could be at a greater risk than even Bitcoin. Smart contracts are particularly at risk, and Layer 2 networks have KZG commitments, which are quantum vulnerable. This had led the Ethereum Foundation to place quantum security as its top priority.

Binance noted that Ethereum has outlined its “Strawmap” quantum-resistance roadmap and 2026 upgrades: Ethereum introduced Strawmap as a four-year quantum-resistance framework targeting 2-second slots and 6 to 16 second finality. It also had two 2026 upgrades, Glamsterdam and Hegotá, focused on L1 performance, privacy, and cryptography.

Senior researcher Justin Drake has noted that a dedicated research and engineering team is working on this. Their strategy will involve governance processes and live post-quantum development networks.

The Future of Cryptocurrency

The double whammy of unstable global politics and the threat of Quantum computing seems to be cooling the desire for cryptocurrency. Inflows to spot ETFs cooled this week, suggesting more traditional investors and those with low risk appetites are turning away from it. Added to this has been a slowdown in the growth of stablecoins.

Real interest rates also continue to rise. When compared to something like Bitcoin, which produces no yield, investing in crypto starts to look even less appealing. Yields on 10-year inflation-protected securities have risen, and this really does pull people away from risk assets. Any anticipation once held for FED rate cuts is now well and truly dead in the water.

Bitcoin and cryptocurrency are thus facing a double hit. In the short term, global politics and, particularly, the price of oil per barrel are hitting it hard. Yet long-term, quantum computing is a real threat that could collapse the whole ecosystem. The right security measures need to be found, and fast. 

Do you remember Chris Hipkins complaining National hadn’t consulted Labour over NCEA changes, and then it transpired their spokesperson had turned down multiple offers from the Minister to brief her.

Well they’ve done it again. Chris Bishop writes:

Chris Hipkins tried (and failed) to get a story up this morning in advance of his weekly media interviews, with his office claiming to TVNZ that we had failed to respond to a Labour MP’s concerns about the Waioweka Gorge. You might remember last year when he claimed the Government had failed to engage with Labour about NCEA changes, only for the facts to show we had tried several times and Labour had failed to respond.

Now it’s happened again.

Yesterday, before Hipkins’ weekly interview, Labour sent a letter about Waioweka Gorge that Jo Luxton had written to me back in January to TVNZ’s Breakfast, telling the producer that I hadn’t bothered to reply.

Unfortunately for Hipkins, a long email trail shows that’s just totally untrue.

Jo Luxton did write to me in late January, seeking a briefing from NZTA on recovery works through SH2 Waioweka Gorge. I take all letters from MPs seriously, so I asked my office to arrange a briefing for her.

A staff member emailed Ms Luxton on 18 February to organise the briefing. She didn’t reply, so he followed up a week later.

Eventually 4 March was settled on for her briefing, which she then cancelled as she was unwell.

The briefing eventually took place on 18 March, covered all the issues Ms Luxton had asked to be briefed on, and a staff member followed up on a couple of issues afterwards with her. Ms Luxton’s staff member sent a nice thank you message to my office afterwards.

So why is Chris Hipkins out there telling TVNZ that I never responded?

You think they would have learnt.

The Herald reports:

Former National Party candidate James Christmas, who was tipped as a potential minister and Attorney-General, will contest this year’s election as a candidate for the Act Party. 

He is one of eight people vying to become Act’s candidate in Auckland’s Tāmaki electorate, which will be an intriguing contest after the departure from politics of MP Brooke van Velden, also Act’s deputy leader. 

Christmas, a barrister who worked under senior National figures including Sir John Key, Sir Bill English and Chris Finlayson, will be considered a significant loss for National given he was considered a possible option to take on the Attorney-General role and act as a Treaty Negotiations Minister. 

With a deep understanding of Treaty settlements and New Zealand’s constitutional arrangements, Christmas also presents as an ideal candidate to articulate the party’s next attempt at constitutional reform after the failed Treaty Principles Bill, which Christmas’ former mentor Finlayson condemned as divisive. 

Speaking exclusively to the Herald, Christmas acknowledged some in National might be “disappointed” by his decision but he insisted it was not prompted by any ill will towards his former party.

I suspect it is simple numbers. National only got five List MPs in 2023, and on current polling may get zero List MPs. ACT will get 10 or more. Plus he may get the nomination for Tamaki, which ACT currently hold.

There quite a large number of people who feel comfortable in both National and ACT. Their differences are more of degree, than basic direction.

Thomas Coughlan writes:

There’s a joke going around the UK at the moment about soon-to-be-former Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer’s 2024 election campaign.

“Britain is broken,” the slogan goes, “let’s do nothing about it”.

The soon to be former will be correct. Will happen soon after the May local elections.

You’ll know by now Labour is running a “small target” strategy of little policy and therefore giving the coalition as little space as possible on which to attack it. 

The thin policy slate has begun to get Labour into testy scraps during its regular sitting week media stand-ups, in which press gallery journalists from several outlets have decided the party has crossed the invisible threshold that marks the point at which it is no longer tenable to offer critique without proposing at least some solutions. 

The lack of ideas is becoming a liability. MPs with nothing to talk about risk saying things they don’t really mean.

It’s one thing to have no policy two years out from an election. It’s another to have nothing a few months out.

Labour MPs are an academic bunch (sometimes to a fault), and they have plenty of ideas. They’re just afraid to show them.

Not brain dead, but brain scared. Labour’s problem is that on the outside, brain scared looks an awful lot like brain death.

Brain scared – I like it.

It’s weighing reinstating a form of its interest deductions ban, but with the country, particularly Auckland, in the midst of a multi-year property crash, the electorate’s appetite for taxes to whack depressed prices even lower is limited – particularly if Labour decides to lift the council rates cap, a policy desired by Labour-friendly local government, but which will blow a double-digit sized hole in Labour’s affordability message no number of free GP visits can fix.

I’d love Labour to campaign on allowing more 20% rates increases.

A lot of what is sold to students and families in NZ education is highly mythical and primarily for the benefit of the perception of the school – as opposed to the genuine good of the students.

“Sports Academies” within school are often an example of this.

I love sport and sporting achievements. I see no negative at all with young people (and adults for that matter) being fit and active in any range of ways.

A part of my background growing up was 1^st XV rugby, age group and limited first class representation. I then went on to coach through school levels – including three years with the Tauranga Boys College 1^st XV – club with two years of University of Auckland Under 21s and three years of University of Auckland Premiers. I was privileged to make small to moderate coaching contributions to 18 players who represented a range of nations at Rugby World Cups.

Throughout the world the perception of the opportunities in professional sport are significantly overblown.

For instance; for American Football approximately 7% of high school players make college rosters and only 2.6% of those are Division 1. One 1.5% get drafted to the NFL for careers that last an average of 3.4 years. So; 0.023% of High School players make the NFL and the vast majority of those careers are over well before 30 years old.

While in New Zealand I could look at the full range of sports rugby is enough to give an indicator of how limited – and short-lived – the opportunities are.

Rugby Union became officially professional in 1995. Recent statistics have approximately 400 domestically based players and 460 NZ overseas players that could be regarded as professional. Clearly there would be a huge range of incomes covering those 860 players (prior to a Ranfurly Shield game I once got a free pair of boots that I was pretty chuffed with). There is then a range of roles from administrators, coaches, match officials, etc – who earn an income through the sport. New Zealand is not alone in this – for example – less than 1% of South African High School rugby players make it into the professional ranks.

In terms of another sport; for all of the New Zealand boys who have player 1^st XI Soccer over our history – only six have played in the English Premier League.

Many New Zealand schools now have “rugby academies” and high provision features for other sports. They often involve significant promises towards a professional future.

My best guess is that New Zealand has around 8,750 1^st XV rugby players each year, There are 29,153 teenage boys registered as playing the game.

When the 2023 All Black squad travelled to the Rugby World Cup only 23 out of 460 schools were represented. In the history of the game – by that point – only 28 schools had seen 10 or more players go on to All Black representation. Over its 153 years existence to that point Auckland Grammar School has the most with 51 players – i.e. 1 All Black every three years. Christchurch Boys High School was second (and catching up fast) with 47 All Blacks over 141 years.

The average number of games played by an All Black is less than 13. That is also a number skewed by a small number of players who play a high number of tests. That is similar to the NFL where high profile players, of the Tom Brady type, create the impression that it is a long-term career option. In a conversation I has with NRL legend Paul Whatuira his point was that NRL stands for “not real long”.

My point. I have a son who competed well for a number of years as a professional athlete in NZ, the USA and other international situations. Soon into that “career” he realised that academics is not “Plan B” but “Plan Also” … and the long-term foundation. He completed his sporting career with some achievements to be proud of and now, through his qualifications, has a superb professional career in developing medications in the USA. One of his greatest privileges was to spend a weekend with Sir Peter Snell. Sir Peter fully acknowledged the deep sense of achievement with his three Olympic Golds and world records. He retired from competitive athletics in 1965 at the age of 27. In 1971 he moved to the USA and had a remarkable academic career that he was equally proud of.

I have no issue with schools having high quality sporting provisions and encouraging students to be aspirational in that area. But they must never exploit those young people for their own reputation and MUST see that their academics/qualifications are of, at least, equal value.

[email protected]

A guest post by Mark Adams:

I was part of the Te Papa Treaty exhibit design team

 I’ve been waiting for the trial before assembling my reactions. Now that a court trial won’t happen here are my thoughts.

It’s disconcerting to see your work attacked with such vehemence, but admittedly Te Wehi Ratana’s stunt was carried out with some elan.

 I do feel sorry for the historians who briefed us on the design team.

All that effort bringing together the evidence, documents and records of the actual event at the time it happened. Plus the for-and-against arguments that took place at the time, the many various treaties signed elsewhere around the country, and stories and subsequent developments that grew from the signing.

They were aware of the potential for racist politics and specifically stated that the planned exhibit was not to be a “white/brown man bad, brown/white man good” display but an honest presentation of what happened at the time, and a commemoration of the pivotal event in the process of our becoming a nation.

The space we designed accommodated all this and provided for the contemplative and the dramatic, befitting its central place in the heart of Te Papa, the nation’s museum.

But our historians made a terrible mistake.

They neglected to adopt and elevate a particular opinion written nearly a century and a half after the events took place. 

Fortunately that was easily put right with spray paint and an angle grinder.

I oppose Ratana’s revisionist ethno-activism but he was effective. He knew his audience, played them perfectly and they responded just as those who think the correct thoughts should.

Te Papa’s managers witnessed living history taking place in their own museum. How exciting! Oh we’ll show it at an activist exhibition before we hide it out of sight, and now we can talk about the treaty the correct way!

The judge and the destruction of tens of thousands of tax payers’ property? Oh that. Dealing with that particular vandalism with a trial is not in the public interest. How could the public think otherwise. Charges dropped.

Why stop there. 

Obviously displaying what actually happened at the time it happened, in an exhibit about the Treaty was a mistake. So many complaints! 

Let’s pay Ratana to destroy the other text panel too – then give him the tools to properly attack the centrepiece of the whole thing – the large glass replica of the Treaty itself.

From Patreon:

The Canadian Government is riding with wave of popularity while re-election prospects for the New Zealand and US Governments take a tumble.

Ani O’Brien writes:

Every election cycle, like clockwork, Opportunity (TOP) reappears. It refreshes its branding, gets a new leader, rolls out a new slate of candidates, and the media, just as predictably, froths over them. Since Gareth Morgan founded the party in 2016, this has become a familiar ritual in New Zealand politics.

Their results have been:

• 2017: Gareth Morgan 2.4%
• 2020 Geoff Simmons 1.5%
• 2023: Raf Manji 2.2%

The language TOP uses, the issues it elevates, and the solutions it proposes sit squarely within the worldview of the contemporary Left. Climate transition, inequality, child poverty, biodiversity, housing equity, “regenerative” economic systems, co-governance, and a persistent critique of “short-term politics”. This is a standard issue framework of modern Leftist politics, but delivered in a tone designed to sound above it all. There is a moral narrative underpinning it that systems are failing, outcomes are unjust, the current model is unsustainable, and the answer lies in structural reform guided by experts to produce fairer and more equitable results.

None of this is inherently illegitimate. But it is not ideologically neutral. It is a more polished, less confrontational version of the same arguments that animate Labour and the Greens. TOP’s point of difference is not in what it believes, but in how it presents those beliefs. It strips out the activist rhetoric, softens the edges, and wraps the whole thing in the language of rationality and competence. It is Left-wing politics for people who do not like the current aesthetic of Left-wing politics.

In the unlikely event that TOP made 5% and got into Parliament, I would say there is a 99.9% chance they would support a Labour/Green/Te Pati Maori Government over the current Government.

Henry specialises in foreign elections, and has visited Hungary during the campaign. He thought Orban would lose, and the results are indicating the opposition may not just win, but even gain a two thirds majority allowing constitutional changes.

Note that Tisza is not a left wing party. It is a centre-right party that has opposed Orban’s corruption.

Orban’s Fidesz is a nationalist authoritarian party.

The third party that might gain seats is also on the right – Mi Hazánk (Our Homeland), which is close to neo-fascist.

Orban has conceded defeat a few minutes ago, which is good. If the result was close, he may have tried to stay on, but the result is so over whelming that he can’t.

Turnout was a record 78%.