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Each monthly poll of 1,000 gives a good indication of the overall NZ sentiment, but the breakdowns by area are not robust as they can be as few as say 80 people in Wellington etc.

In this exclusive analysis, I have gone through the last 12 months of the monthly Taxpayers’ Union – Curia polls to analyse overall support for each party in each area. So this is not a snapshot of today, but the overall support over the last year.

The full analysis is behind the paywall.

Radio NZ reports:

Chris Hipkins’ State of the Nation speech read like a “lump of jelly” filled with sentiment, but no concrete plans, and that Chat GPT could have written it, says Nationals’ deputy leader.

Nicola Willis is calling for a contest of “actual ideas” with the Labour leader, because if the party does not come up with policy, “the Greens and Te Pāti Māori are ready to go”.

New Zealand First leader Winston Peters also criticised Hipkins for one of the “most boring State of the Nation speeches in recorded history”, and ACT leader David Seymour called it “featherweight”.

It really was a nothing burger. Hipkins basically just said that as they failed to deliver on most of their promises last time they were in Government, they won’t make any this time!

The Taxpayers Union released:

Remember last year when we blew the whistle on the $4 million of taxpayer money being spent on recording, remixing, and playing whale music to kauri trees to (apparently) ‘soothe and cure’ kauri dieback? …

The purpose of this project is to observe and record the deep cultural and spiritual significance that cultural practices connected with the natural world hold for tāngata Māori.  Specifically, the project involves recording the revitalisation of the Māra Tautāne in a hapū of Tūhoe, located in Ruātoki, in the northern Te Urewera. […] 

The project also elevates the importance of the role of wāhine [woman] in the preservation and maintenance of cultural practices associated with māra [the garden]. […] 

The Māra Tautāne acts as a symbolic icon to enable a connection between the spiritual world and the physical world.  It is a symbol of Māori connectedness and inseparability from the natural world. 

This project got $156k. This is science funding, not social studies or anthropology funding.

The outcomes we paid for were a story book, a 20 minute video and the below kumari patch.

Amazing.

I have deep reservations about military strikes on Iran. Over the past 30 years Western meddling in Middle Eastern politics has never led to democracy. Instead the destabilisation of Iraq led eventually to ISIS and a refugee crisis of epic proportions as millions of people surged into Europe. Ditto the bombing of Libya. The invasion of Afghanistan was likewise a catastrophe as the Taliban took over the country immediately upon the United States’ withdrawal from the country, except that billions of dollars worth of military equipment provided to the Afghan military fell into the hands of the Taliban as well.

Is that to say that I oppose strikes on Iran? No. The truth is that I do not know what the right course of action is. The difference between the American invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan and the present situation in Iran is that there was no homegrown, grassroots appetite for change in Iraq etc, whereas practically the entire population of Iran has apostasised from Islam and hates the IRGC and is actively protesting against the ayatollahs at present. (And the Iranian government has responded by murdering tens of thousands of innocent people.) But I have extreme reservations about whether military strikes are the right course, while at the same time sharing the longing of Iranians for the downfall of that despicable, murderous regime and wondering whether if military strikes had not been conducted it would have been a huge missed opportunity.

I will dance for joy with the local Iranian population in Auckland (with whom I have been protesting against the regime for the last few weeks) if the ayatollahs are overthrown and the country transitions into a stable, free democracy. But I think their celebrations about the impending downfall of the ayatollahs are premature. I am deeply concerned about the possibility of the destabilisation of Iran resulting in a colossal refugee crisis into Europe or East Asia.

But I have absolutely no respect for Joe Carolan and his bunch of commie goons, who are holding a meeting in Auckland this week to protest the attacks on the IRGC. Where was the postmodern left a few weeks ago when the IRGC was gunning down tens of thousands of protesters? In September/ October 2025 the media reported that 20,000 people marched against Israel’s killing of civilians in Gaza. But the total number of civilians killed by Israel in Gaza over the course of a two year war was about 35,000 civilians (and 35,000 combatants) in an extremely complex urban warfare environment, whereas Iran killed 30,000 civilians deliberately in the space of two days.

20,000 hippies didn’t show up to protest that. I have been at most of the Iranian pro-freedom protests (if you want to stay in the loop, NZ Against Hamas is advertising them each weekend at facebook.com/nzah.public) and there have been countless speeches asking where the anti-Israel protesters are. They simply didn’t show up. There were only ever a handful of Westerners at these protests. But now that Israel and the US are bombing military targets within Iran, Carolan and crew are protesting their actions.

Hypocrites. Absolute hypocrites. Their sympathies are with the butchers of Tehran, despite the fact that Israel and the US are democracies which respect freedom of speech. Personally, I think we should do a swap: if the postmodern left loves the IRGC so much, they should go and live there. We, in turn, can take in Iran’s pro-democracy protesters.

And where are their protests against Iran’s rocket attacks against Israel, if they’re going to protest Israel and the US’ rocket attacks on Iran?

But if the postmodern left’s hatred of Israel and the US has nothing to do with the death toll in Gaza, there must be another motivation. What is that?

Radio NZ reports:

Deputy Prime Minister David Seymour says his focus is on New Zealand and issues facing Kiwis – not on joining the chorus to remove Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor from the line of succession.

But Seymour wouldn’t be drawn into whether New Zealand would back the move, with more pressing priorities back home.

“I think we’ve got 99 problems most New Zealanders are facing right now,” he told First Up.

“This guy’s eighth in the line of succession, and these guys all seem to live to about 100.

No one who has been eighth in line has ever become monarch.

The closest has been Queen Victoria. She was 5th in line when born.

The only way Andrew would become heir to the throne would be if the entire Wales and Sussex families were wiped out. As Prince William and Prince Harry spend around ten minutes a year together, this is extremely unlikely.

Radio NZ reports:

The company said it would raise $400 million in a sale of new shares, with $100m to new investors and a $300m renounceable rights offer for existing shareholders.

The government confirmed it would invest up to $198m to maintain its 51 percent stake.

“Genesis’ proposed investments will directly contribute to enhancing energy security, including through enabling Genesis to bring more flexible capacity to the market which can be used to address dry-year risk,” Finance Minister Nicola Willis said.

Generator companies should be able to fund new projects through capital, rather than debt. I’m one of those planning to buy more shares in Genesis.

My preference would be that the Government does not spend $198 million on more Genesis shares. I’d rather Government spent money on capital projects that are not commercial, such as hospitals and schools.

However NZ First would not support having the Government share of Genesis go lower than 51%. This means that either Genesis is stopped from being able to fund new generation, or the Government allows them to do so by buying 51% of new shares issued.

It is important we get more generation in NZ. So out of two sub-optimal options, this is the best one. But the even better one would be to allow the shareholding to drop below 51%. I actually don’t think taxpayers need to own any shares in commercial companies. In fact we would probably get better competition if three of the four big energy companies were not majority owned by the Government, but all had different competing owners.

The Herald reports:

Health NZ has distributed over 7000 vaping devices and 67,000 refills in just two months as it ramps up its free vape programme for smokers.

It comes after health officials signed a contract with a New Zealand-owned vape company to provide the devices, which come in flavours including tobacco and peach mint.

Health NZ began a pilot to provide vaping devices to quit-smoking services across the country last year – with varying degrees of success.

Newstalk ZB revealed that between last January and July, 3000 people received a kit, with just over 1400 of those successfully quitting smoking.

That’s a 47% quit rate. That seems pretty good to me.

Asthma and Respiratory Foundation chief executive Letitia Harding said comparing the harms of smoking to vaping is like comparing one extremely harmful drug to a less harmful one.

“It’s still a drug. We know that vaping causes harm to the lungs, to the heart. We don’t know the long-term data – that’s the big unknown.”

She said other nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) options, like nicotine gum or patches, should be tried ahead of vapes.

I agree NRT is less harmful than vaping, but it seems to be far less effective. From what I can tell they have around a 15% quit rate – so less than a third of the 47% quit rate for vaping. So if your goal is to get people off the incredibly harmful tobacco smoking, then the quit rate for vaping speaks for itself.

She said it’s “crazy” that the health system will fund a product with no medical approval like vapes – but doesn’t fund new Medsafe-approved tools like QuickMist, which sprays a mist with a low level of nicotine to assist those wanting to quit.

Again a good product but only has a 15% quit rate, compared to 47% for vapes.

Thomas Coughlan writes:

Once a borrower’s income reaches $24,128, the Government takes 12 cents of every dollar earned above that threshold to pay off the student loan. Someone earning $25,128 ($1000 above the threshold) will pay $120 in repayments. …

Australia, for example, doesn’t require borrowers from its main student loan scheme to pay a cent in repayments until their incomes rise above A$67,000 (about $80,000).

Coughlan thinks that this is part of why many graduates move to Australia.

How much would it all cost? Well, there are 504,000 New Zealand-based borrowers with outstanding student loans. Even if all of them earned over $60,000 (which they don’t), it would result in about $2.1 billion a year less being paid off in student loan balances. 

That’s a very big number, but the main cost to the Government isn’t $2.1b. In fact, that $2.1b is an asset that would continue to sit on the Government’s books. The real cost is that of the Government borrowing the same amount, which, using the expected 10-year bond rate for the coming year, would work out to be about $85-$90 million. 

That’s less than a third of the cost of the old first-year-free scheme for students (which several reviews have found has been ineffective at getting marginalised groups into tertiary study). 

In fact, a way of funding the shift might be to axe fees-free entirely, or to put a small token interest rate back on the student loans (although this would be deeply unpopular), or perhaps to move to an Australian-style progressive system in which borrowers repay at higher rates as they earn more. 

The fees free scheme that Hipkins introduced has been a disaster. Incredible costly, and has gone overwhelmingly to wealthy families. It should go whether first year or final year.

I would support a higher repayment threshold for student loans, if it was funded by scrapping the free fees policy. The other thing that would be needed would be to have interest applied to student loans – but at the rate of inflation. This means that the real interest rate would be zero, but it would remove the existing incentive to borrow the maximum (even if not needed) and repay as slowly as possible.

A guest post by Chris Scott:

 We’re now well past the point where the coalition can blame everything on the mess they inherited. That line worked in 2024. It even worked — just — in 2025. But with an election looming in November, voters are no longer interested in origin stories. They want outcomes. 

This government came in promising discipline, delivery, and a return to the basics. And to be fair, the bar was low. After years of bureaucratic sprawl and policy drift, simply turning the ship around was going to take time. But two years is not a short runway in politics. It’s half a term. It’s long enough for the public to form a view about whether a government is competent or just busy. 

And right now, the mood feels… unsettled. 

People aren’t demanding miracles. They’re demanding visible progress. Safer streets. A health system that isn’t permanently in crisis mode. Schools that teach rather than experiment. Infrastructure that doesn’t crumble every time it rains sideways. These aren’t ideological demands — they’re basic expectations of a functioning state. 

The political danger for the coalition is that the narrative is slipping away from them. If voters decide the government is “trying hard but not delivering,” that’s fatal. Elections aren’t won on effort; they’re won on results people can see without needing a press release to explain them. 

Meanwhile, the opposition — written off after the 2023 drubbing — has rediscovered its energy. They smell opportunity. They don’t need to be brilliant; they just need to look like a plausible alternative. And if the government doesn’t sharpen its act soon, that bar might be low enough for them to clear. 

The coalition still has time. But not much. The window for “we’re fixing the mess” is closed. The window for “here’s what we’ve achieved” is open — but only if they can actually point to achievements. 

Voters are pragmatic. They’ll reward competence. They’ll punish drift. And unless the government can show momentum in the next few months, November could be a very long night. 

But even that may not be enough 

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: even if the government does tidy up the books and patch the potholes, it still won’t solve the deeper problem. The world is about to change faster than any tidy, incremental political programme can keep up with. 

The election won’t just be a referendum on competence. It will be a test of who actually understands the technological wave about to reshape everything from productivity to public services. While New Zealand debates procurement processes and ministry restructures, other countries are retooling their economies around automation, AI‑driven productivity, and digital infrastructure that scales human capability rather than merely reallocating it. 

New Zealand can’t afford to sleepwalk into that future. We’re a small, distant, low‑productivity economy. We don’t win by being bigger; we win by being smarter. And right now, we’re not even in the race. 

The next government — whichever colour it is — won’t be judged on how well it manages the status quo. It will be judged on whether it grasps that the status quo is already obsolete. AI‑enabled productivity, automated service delivery, and digital leverage aren’t optional extras. They’re the only realistic path to rising wages, better public services, and a state that can actually afford the things voters expect. 

New Zealand doesn’t need a miracle. It needs a government that understands the scale of the opportunity — and the cost of missing it. 

A country that can move fast — if it chooses to 

The irony is that New Zealand is perfectly positioned to benefit from this shift. A small country can move faster than a large one. We can adopt new tools, redesign public services, and build regulatory frameworks that reward innovation rather than smother it. But that requires political imagination, not just managerial competence. 

Imagine a government that treated AI not as a threat to be regulated into submission, but as a force multiplier for everything the state struggles to deliver. Faster consenting. Smarter health triage. Automated compliance. Real‑time data for infrastructure planning. Public services that scale without ballooning payrolls. Productivity gains that don’t require importing another 200,000 people. 

None of this is science fiction. Other countries are already doing it. The question is whether New Zealand wants to be a fast follower or a slow casualty. 

Conclusion: the future is arriving — politely, but firmly 

The 2026 election won’t be won by the party with the tidiest spreadsheet or the sharpest attack line. It will be won by the party that understands the world is about to accelerate — and has the courage to say so. 

New Zealand doesn’t need to panic. It just needs to look up from the potholes long enough to notice the rest of the world is building hovercraft. Figuratively, at least. For now. 

If the political class can’t see the wave coming, voters might decide it’s time to find someone who can surf.

Sky News reported several days ago:

Seamus, 38, was at a building supplies store in Boston when ICE (US Immigration and Customs Enforcement) agents detained him. …

Housed with 70 other detainees in one tent, he said he feared for his own life. It was striking to hear his Irish accent on the phoneline from there. …

Living in the US for nearly 18 years, he had, in his words, “lived a normal life”.

“Just working hard, staying out of trouble, I wasn’t a big party guy, just spending time with my wife and my dogs,” he said. …

A native of Kilkenny, he arrived in the US in 2009 and overstayed the 90 days of his visa waiver.

But he later married an American, giving him the right to seek a change of status. He had obtained a work permit and was one appointment away from securing a green card.

Sounds terrible. Sounds like he just overstayed his 90 days visa waiver by a few days, and had done everything else right, and was about to get his green card.

But here is what the media didn’t initially report.

• He was wanted in Ireland on drugs charges, and overstayed his 90 days rather than return to Ireland to face them
• He remained illegally in the US for around 16 years
• He only got married to his wife a few months ago
• He was offered a free flight to Ireland, but chose to decline it, leading to his immigration detention
• He has two abandoned children back in Ireland – and none in the US

A very different story to that originally presented.

His abandoned daughters aren’t too happy with him either, says the NY Post:

The estranged twin daughters of an Irishman who has been held in a Texas immigration detention facility for nearly five months blasted their father as an absentee parent — arguing he should be sent back to Ireland to face long-standing drug charges, according to a report.

Heather and Melissa Morrissey felt compelled to speak out after their father, Seamus Culleton, pleaded on RTÉ radio for Irish authorities to intervene in his US detention so he could return to his American wife and life in Boston, where he runs a construction company, according to the Daily Mail. 

The twins, who are about to turn 19, told the outlet that Culleton “abandoned” them when they were 18 months old, leaving their mother, Margaret “Maggie” Morrissey, to raise them alone.

What a champion.

The great Neil Postman wrote a remarkable book called Amusing Ourselves to Death. It is at least as predictive as Orwell’s 1984 or Huxley’s Brave New World.

Across every school qualification for leavers in NZ – girls do significantly better than boys – the gap at University Entrance is never less than 10%.

Having taught at two boys’ schools (Tauranga Boys College and Hamilton Boys High School) and at St Cuthbert’s Girls College I am confident at asserting that we have very low expectations for boys in English and bore them to academic death with what we provide.

The Guardian tells us that in Britain (considerably ahead of NZ in education at present):

“Fewer than one in 10 boys aged 14 to 16 in the UK read daily, according to research, which found reading for pleasure was being crowded out of teenage lives by schoolwork, screens and sports.

While reading declines for both boys and girls in early adolescence, there are “signs of recovery” among girls in later teenage years, but boys’ engagement remains persistently low, according to the National Literacy Trust (NLT).”

As opposed to thinking that boys and girls are basically the same – we need to get back to understanding that there are fundamental differences – even if on a sliding scale.

It is one thing to have a plan to have more children technically able to read … of far greater importance is that they actually read. It is the same with riding a bike; who cares if you can technically dribble down the road – if the machine sits in the garage 99% of the time.

What is the NZ plan to get boys reading?

As I have noted before – the book list proposed by English Curriculum lead Elizabeth Rata gives the deep impression that it is what she read as a child (MANY years ago) and fits with her specific worldview. I can assure you that what is detailed here would send any testosterone filled young man into deep despair.

There are a massive amount of great books that include adventure and challenge. I bought up three children who became outstanding academics and are thriving as adults. They could read well before they started school and “phonics” would have bemused them. One of the great occasions was when the oldest was reading The Battle of the River Plate. We worked out that there may well be sailors alive at the time from the Achillies and discovered that the gunnery officer lived in Devonport. My 11 year old son then sat entranced as he heard the full story of the battle first hand. This far exceeded the effect that Shakespeare’s sonnets could ever have had.

All of the current curriculum design continues to enforce the downward trends. Mutton dressed as ham.

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Today was a teacher only day at my boys’ school so I’ve been out all day visiting grandparents., indoor playgrounds and rugby. Having now got home, I’ve seen that the monthly Curia poll for the TU has gotten a wee bit of attention.

I normally don’t blog on my own polls, or even mention them on Kiwiblog. But as this one is being discussed so much elsewhere, I thought it would be useful to share some thoughts.

First of all, yes it is a tough poll for National. When I ran the report on the data and saw what the computer spat out, I actually used an expletive. As someone who has been a member of the National Party for 40 years, I really hate it when one of my polls is bad for the party I support. But this is not the first time that has happened. I recall one evening when one of my polls in 2002 had National on 15%, and I think I reached for the vodka. Mind you, that poll wasn’t a public poll.

Secondly the poll shows the election is absolutely competitive, as every Curia poll since July last year has shown. No poll has had the winning group of parties on more than 63 seats – well within the margin of error. This poll has 61-59 to the CL. Last month it was 60-60. That is not a huge change. Next month it might be 61-59 to the CR. What is going to matter is how the economy goes over the next few months, how public services perform, and how well the parties campaign.

The poll has had many stories speculating on the party leadership. I generally do not comment or blog on these issues as I am not a member of caucus, and it can be unhelpful to have people associated with the party adding their 2c in. But as it has been such a loud conversation today, I will add in my 2c. This isn’t my view as a pollster, but as a political commentator and party member.

For my 2c I think National changing leader barely six months before the election would be a good way to guarantee a change of government, and would make a Labour-Green-Te Pati Maori Government much much more likely. The public wants MPs focused on making things better for them, not on themselves.

I’m actually very conservative when it comes to leadership changes. I didn’t think Bolger should have rolled McLay. I didn’t think English should have rolled Shipley. I didn’t think Brash should have rolled English. I didn’t think Muller should have rolled Bridges.

In politics, you sometimes get helpful poll results, and you sometimes get unhelpful results. Sometimes a poll can be taken during a particularly tough spell for a party, and sometimes during a good spell. People shouldn’t obsess over one poll result. What all the polls show is a very very close and competitive race for government.

Over the past two or three years, Act Party MPs have been attending every pro-Jewish or pro-Iranian freedom protest that has occurred, and have also attended October 7 memorial events. No other party has supported either community as much. And this is bearing fruit. A prominent member of the Iranian community said this today:

There were about 4000 Iranians protesting for freedom at a recent event in Auckland. If there were another 4000 in Hamilton, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin respectively then that’s a tidy 20,000 votes for the Act Party, along with 5000 or so Jewish votes, without Act having to do anything other than show up and make speeches.

Mark Mitchell to his very great credit turned up to one of these events and spoke. But other than that, nobody in National has paid any attention to these demographics, and with nowhere near as much consistency. National have also dragged their heels on designating the IRGC a terrorist organisation. It is enormously irksome to me as a lefty to see National driving all of these potential votes into Act’s welcoming arms. And for a small party like Act, 25,000 party votes is no mean thing.

National needs to start doing what Simeon Brown was doing before Luxon idiotically shunted one of his most effective ministers into the health portfolio, i.e. playing on people’s resentment of “woke politics”. Raise unnecessarily low speed limits, tell health professionals to focus on immunisations rather than lecturing people about their diets, say stuff about free speech, etc etc. Making noise about the Iranian people’s struggle against the mullahs, or standing up against the anti-Israel cult when none of them are National voters anyway, falls squarely into the category of small things with a big impact with a particular base.

That is why I shall reluctantly persist with my present intention to vote for the Labour Party. I loathe the existing political parties nearly equally, but at least Labour cares more about working people than the Useless Tories, and the latter are no better than Labour on these kinds of issues.

Politico reports:

The administration’s use of the Justice Department to intimidate President Donald Trump’s political opponents and stifle dissent reached a remarkable new low last week, when federal prosecutors in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Washington, D.C. tried and failed to prosecute six Democratic lawmakers who made a video urging military personnel to refuse to carry out illegal orders.

The disturbing stakes and implications of the effort were partially obscured by the clumsy execution of U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro and her prosecutors. A grand total of zero — zero — grand jurors agreed to return the proposed indictment. As a former federal prosecutor, I have never heard of this actually happening before.

This is indeed unheard of. The saying or joke used to be that a prosecutor could get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich. As the threshold is basically just that there is probable cause for a case to answer, indictments are returned in 99.996% of cases. A grand jury doesn’t even hear from the defence. They just hear the case from the prosecutors.

For that reason I always thought having a grand jury involved in issuing charges was stupid, and a waste of time. Better to have it like NZ where juries decide guilt, but not whether charges get laid.

However the US founding fathers have a great belief in the common sense of their fellow citizens, and worried about one day a Government that would become authoritarian. So they were almost unique around the world in having such a system. And today we see how right they were.

Bryce Edwards has written an entire column on how there could be a Labour – NZ First Government after the election. Bizarrely he neglects to mention an incredibly salient fact – that Winston Peters has explicitly ruled out any deal with Labour while Chris Hipkins is leader.

Now this doesn’t mean a deal couldn’t happen. Labour could roll Hipkins, or Winston could renege on his word. A good column though would at a minimum mention the fact he has ruled out Hipkins and discuss it. To just omit it entirely as if it doesn’t exist just undermines the entire column.

A few days ago the Government announced an absolutely stunning drop in violent crime, with 49,000 fewer NZers saying they had been victims that two years previously. This was the largest fall ever in the history of the Victims survey.

The official government target was a 20,000 reduction in seven years, and they got a 49,000 reduction in two years.

They also announced a 22% drop in serious repeat youth offending in two years – again against a target of a 15% reduction over seven years.

Most media reported this. TVNZ though not only didn’t report this amazing news they instead ran a report on the fact that the number of people on the gang list had increased.

Now it would be fine to do an item on the huge drop in violent crime, and add in a small mention at the end about the increase in reported gang numbers (which might just be due to the fact it is easier to get added to the gang register than removed from it). But they ignored the substantive news entirely.

It is unknown who at TVNZ made that editorial decision, but it became very apparent they effed up big time. It was hard for anyone to justify what they did.

Now The Herald reports:

A contentious TVNZ news story on Thursday evening has led to political fallout today, with revelations the state broadcaster’s chairman raised it with the Broadcasting Minister in a phone call at the weekend.

Broadcasting Minister Paul Goldsmith says he shut down the conversation – but it has raised questions about editorial independence at TVNZ and how a second story, which focused on a more positive angle, came to be broadcast last night.

The 1News at Six story on rising gang members last Thursday incensed Goldsmith, who is also Justice Minister, and Police Minister Mark Mitchell because it came on the same day as the Government’s announcement of a dramatic drop in violent crime victims.

Mitchell described TVNZ’s editorial decision-making that evening as “absolutely unbelievable”.

Now I don’t think the Chairman should have mentioned it to the Minister, but I can understand why he did. I suspect every TVNZ board member was mortified that the organisation they govern displayed such terrible judgment. It played into the hands of everyone who thinks state media is biased against centre right parties.

But the story doesn’t end there. They did run a story the next night on the drop in violent crime, but once again they stuffed up.

Here you can see the graph TVNZ produced. They decided to have different spacing for Labour and National. Here is what it would have looked like if done properly.

This just shows the uphill battle the Government has at times. On one of those rare days where they have the most positive news you can imagine for a portfolio, the state television network runs a negative story on the issue, ignoring the positive news.

Samira Taghavi writes:

Former Labour Prime Minister Helen Clark has described our Government’s response to the recent targeted strikes on the Islamic Republic of Iran as a “disgrace”, arguing international law has been breached and diplomacy should have been allowed to run its course.

As someone who has lived in and suffered under that republic, I dissent from Clark’s view. In short, our Government should be commended on its principled position.

I attended Clark’s AUT talk last Thursday and left with the distinct impression that she is quite unaffected by realism. Having introduced myself there, I explained that I had practised law in Iran until the age of 24, that I had been imprisoned, tortured and lashed by Islamic Republic thugs and that I continue working in human rights advocacy now in New Zealand.

I asked what I consider to be the central question when every peaceful mechanism has failed – when UN resolutions, special rapporteurs, Human Rights Council sessions and diplomatic negotiations have not dismantled the regime’s coercive machinery: “What is left to save us?”

This is a very good question. If a country spends four decades itself breaching international law, and more recently slaughtering peaceful protesters – what should you do apart from send our press releases?

When I pressed on how international actors should weigh external legality against internal regime brutality, there was no substantive answer, but instead vague confidence expressed in the ballot box.

This is an interesting question. Let’s say Germany didn’t invade any other countries, but did embark on the Holocaust amongst German and Austrian Jews. Would the Clark position be that the US and UK could do nothing to intervene as Nazi Germany was only killing people within its own borders?

If international law is to mean anything, it must be capable of confronting the structures that violate it. Otherwise, we are not defending human rights; we are defending only the comfort of inaction – a true disgrace to the imprisoned nation of Iran.

Yep.

Radio NZ reports:

The second poll commissioned in February 2026 revealed that 66 percent agreed that New Zealand’s economic system was not set up to effectively to address issues like housing, healthcare and climate change.

Half of New Zealanders also agreed that billionaires shouldn’t exist while people still struggled with basic necessities like food.

Sixty-eight percent supported billionaires being taxed more to fund public goods like healthcare, housing and climate action.

And another 37 percent were in favour of introducing a billion-dollar wealth cap to minimise the amount of wealth any person could legally hold.

So do people think we should shoot billionaires, ban them or just confiscate their wealth?

Here’s what would happen if this left pipe dream became reality with a left wing Government.

The following people would leave New Zealand:

• Peter Jackson
• Rod Drury
• Mat & Nick Mowbray
• The Todd family
• The Talley family
• Sir Michael Friedlander
• Bruce Plested
• Mark Stewart

This would immediately see the NZ tax take drop by many hundreds of millions of dollars, and also probably see tens of thousands of jobs follow. Wellywood would be no more.

No one who is not a moron would stay in a country that confiscates every single asset they have over a certain level.

What this reflects is the politics of envy. They think that if Rod Drury did not invent Xero, then somehow a poor family in South Auckland would have a higher benefit from taxpayers. They think wealth is a finite sum, and every dollar someone has, has been taken off someone else.

The Herald reports:

Labour leader Chris Hipkins has doubled down on his criticism that the Treasury engaged in guesswork in calculating the savings produced as a result of the Government’s controversial pay equity changes. 

Last week, he said the pay equity figures appeared to be “made up” – a charge that led to an accusation by Act that he was in “fiscal denialism” – and today he told the Herald the Treasury was “putting a figure in the air and trying to find a number”. 

The Treasury is holding firm, telling the Herald it stood by the $12.8b savings figure (over four years) which first appeared in last year’s Budget. 

It added that it also stood by “the professional judgement from which it is derived”.

Who do you trust more? The professional neutral economists at Treasury or the guy whose party said they would build 100,000 homes and fell short by 98%?

Hipkins has a huge problem. He relentlessly vowed to reverse the changes to the pay equity regime that made it more affordable (and fairer), but now knows that he simply can’t produce a balanced alternative budget if he has to account for the $12.8 project cost of reversing the changes. So rather than accept fiscal reality, he is trying to simply bullshit it.