Stuff reports:

Foreign Minister Winston Peters told a UN leaders’ breakfast in New York that the world needs to face the “elephant in the room” on global emissions.

Addressing the room this morning, Peters said, “We have to be honest and realistic here. Four countries comprise 60% of the world’s emissions, and the rest of the 191 countries… are wrestling with this problem.”

“We have to face the fact, deal with it – we’re in a battle we can’t possibly win.”

Reporters were asked to leave the meeting after Peters’ remarks, RNZ reported, but a staffer later relayed that the World Bank’s Global Director for Climate Change, Valerie Hickey, went on to say the Foreign Affairs Minister had “dropped a truth bomb” and reinforced how critical it was for major emitters to take meaningful action.

The top 4 emitters are:

• China 30%
• US 11%
• India 8%
• Russia 5%

What is interesting is the change in emissions since 1990 for the big 4. They are:

1. China +311%
2. India +199%
3. US -4%
4. Russia -13%

Also of note is that EU emissions are 37% lower than in 1990.

The only way global greenhouse gas emissions will stabilise or reduce is if China and India change track.

I have blogged previously on the disgraceful retrospective law change the Government is trying to put through Parliament, to protect the ANZ and ASB banks from a four year old class action lawsuit about their failures to comply with the Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Act.

It has just been announced that ASB has just reached a settlement with the plaintiffs for $135.6m.

This means that the only beneficiary of the retrospective law change will be a single bank – ANZ. The already weak rationale for the law change is now even weaker.

The Government must drop this unprincipled and repugnant retrospective law change.

The purpose of the so called aid flotilla to Gaza isn’t to deliver aid (they could deliver it via the normal route). It is to get arrested.

It is worth noting Israel has failed at times to get enough aid into Gaza, which they have a responsibility to do. However it is worth noting that the worse appears to be over. The JP reports:

A kilogram of flour, which cost between NIS 80-100 about three weeks ago, is now priced at NIS 18. A kilogram of sugar, which costs NIS 300, now costs NIS 50. A kilogram of pasta dropped from NIS 100 to NIS 10. A kilogram of rice, which was NIS 120 three weeks ago, now sells for NIS 30. Oil, lentils, and hummus, which previously went for NIS 90 per kilogram/liter, have now dropped to NIS 30, NIS 20, and NIS 10, respectively.

One can demand Israel does a better job of getting aid into Gaza, without thinking these flotillas have anything to do with actually helping get aid in.

The activists claim the naval blockade is illegal. The media repeat their claims without question. They ignore the fact that the naval blockade has been found by a UN panel to be legal, chaired by no less than NZ’s Sir Geoffrey Palmer. The report is here. Key conclusions are:

• Israel faces a real threat to its security from militant groups in Gaza. The naval blockade was imposed as a legitimate security measure in order to prevent weapons from entering Gaza by sea and its implementation complied with the requirements of international law.
• All humanitarian missions wishing to assist the Gaza population should do so through established procedures and the designated land crossings in consultation with the Government of Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

Any media story on the blockade that doesn’t mention these conclusions is not giving readers the full story.

The activists on board know they will get arrested. They’ll be disappointed if they don’t. Their aim is publicity, not aid. They also know Israel will deport them as soon as possible. The Green Party hosted press conferences in NZ are pure performance.

The Herald reports:

Outgoing Wellington Mayor Tory Whanau has U-turned on plans for a future mayoral bid, and is instead looking to Parliament for a potential 2029 run with the Green Party.

Wellington’s loss will be New Zealand’s gain!

This is appalling. As I have said on many occasions, no MPs should be targeted at their homes. They have offices and Parliament where you can protest their decisions.

This is part of a trend of increasing violent rhetoric from the left, as detailed in this tweet:

Ani O’Brien covers here how the media just ignore stuff rom the left, which would be a major story if it was someone from the right:

Every single one of those events should have been a news story. They certainly would have been if it were Cam Slater calling for people to spit in the food of Labour/Green/Te Pāti Māori or Shane Jones who shared a video of a prospective candidate saying she would struggle not to punch Chris Hipkins and Chloe Swarbrick in the face. The incidents involve racial discrimination, political intimidation, incitement to violence, and claims of unsafe internal culture. In a functioning democracy with a watchdog media who reported equally as critically about both sides, those would be leading bulletins.

The Greens decry any random person on social media being nasty to their MPs, yet show their hypocrisy:

Chloe backs the protesters targeting Winston’s home, and her whip wrote letters of support to someone who vandalised other MPs offices. Yet they cry crocodile tears about threats to MPs.

Roger Partridge writes:

Local journalism faces genuine crisis. Towns across New Zealand risk becoming “news deserts” where civic life unfolds without professional scrutiny. Dr Gavin Ellis’s comprehensive report for Koi Tū documents this decline with sobering thoroughness.

Ellis deserves credit for mapping an urgent problem. His 48-page analysis reveals how newspaper closures correlate with reduced civic engagement, higher corruption rates, and weakened democratic participation. The data is extensive, the international scope impressive. …

His analysis faces several challenges: dismissive treatment of legitimate concerns raised by New Zealand’s experience with the $55 million Public Interest Journalism Fund, questionable assumptions about market failure, and weak international evidence for subsidy effectiveness.

Ellis describes criticism of the PIJF as a “disinformation campaign.” This mischaracterises legitimate concerns about the fund’s design and consequences. The problem wasn’t imaginary bribery but the structural risk created when government funding comes with political conditions.

The fund required recipients to commit to specific political interpretations and policy positions as eligibility criteria. Whatever the merit of those positions, requiring journalists to affirm particular viewpoints to access taxpayer money creates obvious independence concerns. The problem isn’t the content of the conditions but the principle of conditioning media funding on political alignment.

I generally rate what Eliis says, but his characterising PIJF as a disinformation campaign is outrageous. The definition of disinformation is people saying something that is objectively false, and knowing it is false.

The criticism of PIJF is that it required all media applicants to sign up to a left-wing view of what the Treaty of Waitangi means. This is not disinformation. It is legitimate criticism.

The fact Ellis himself is unable to distinguish between legitimate criticism and disinformation, shows why the media is in such trouble.

The Local Government Commission has published a draft code of conduct for local authority members. The idea is to have a standard one as best practice, but what truely have come up with is so terrible it should be scrapped.

Rather than focus on non-controversial stuff such as work in good faith and don’t defame people, they start with five paragraphs of highly contentious views on the role of the Treaty. This means that any Councillor who disagrees with these views could be hounded by code of conduct complaints.

They also have lots of other clauses that all restrict Crs being able to actually hold the Council to account.

In my view this draft is so terrible, the Minister should remove from the LGC this works programme.

At Patreon, exclusive poll results on how much sea level rise NZers think has occurred in the last 30 years. 1 in 10 thought it was 75 cms or more!

There are large differences by age, and by party vote.

Radio NZ report:

A popular Wellington café said it will be forced to close next year after the property’s high-profile owner, Oscar-winning filmmaker Sir Peter Jackson, ended its lease as part of a wider redevelopment plan.

Jackson, best known for directing The Lord of the Rings films, purchased the historic Submarine Barracks property at Shelly Bay with partner Dame Fran Walsh in 2023.

At the time, the couple said they wanted to restore the area’s “natural beauty”.

This doesn’t add up. After the land was purchased by Jackson in 2023, The Post reported:

There are no plans to build a film museum on the site, long known to be an aspiration of Jackson’s. But they hope John and Penny Pennington, owners of the much-loved Chocolate Fish café, will return after the fire forced them out.

So Jackson explicitly said he wanted the cafe to reopen and remain.

Just a few months ago it was reported:

The celebrity, blockbuster-making couple are also bankrolling the renovation and extension of old submariners’ barracks which house the Chocolate Fish Cafe at Shelly Bay, north of the planned museum.

Considered by some to be the most important historic building within Shelly Bay, it was built in 1887 as part of an anti-submarine mining base following fears that New Zealand, then a British colony, might be attacked by the Russian navy.

Plans include a new lead-light windowed conservatory, a verandah, an expanded indoor seating area and a new sewerage system.

So the extensions were funded, it seems,. by Jackson and Walsh. The conservatory is almost finished and looks great. So what happened?

WingNut PM, the property arm of Jackson and Walsh’s WingNut Group, said there had been “occupancy discussions” with the cafe’s owners since 2024.

The redevelopment plan was intended to “reinvigorate the city and provide a public amenity for all Wellingtonians to enjoy”, the company said in a statement to the Herald.

“To deliver on the vision a complete refurbishment of the historic Submarine Barracks building that the Chocolate Fish Café presently occupies is necessary.”

The renovations would make it impossible for the café to continue operations beyond January and its owners had been offered support so it could remain open into the summer period, the statement added.

I’m sorry, but there is something we are not being told. You don’t close a business down for renovations. There are options such as a temporary kitchen. Or they could operate in Berhampore (as they did after the fire) for a few months and then reopen at Shelly Bay after the refurbishment.

Jackson and Walsh have the right of course to do what they want with their land. But the reasons for closing down Chocolate Fish just don’t add up. There is obviously more to this, than is being revealed. Maybe they have their own plans for the site?

Roger Partridge writes:

In New Zealand economics, numbers have personalities. Two supermarkets are a duopoly. Three would be perfection – except four banks are still an oligopoly. One airline is intolerable, even though two always seem to collapse. 

The equation is precise: current number (N) plus one equals salvation. This is the Rule of N – count the competitors, declare the number insufficient, and pronounce the market broken. It is beautifully simple, and completely backwards. 

No one ever asks why three supermarkets would be perfect when four banks remain inadequate. Or if four gentailers are too few, why are three telcos enough? The Rule of N never explains why the magic number varies by industry, or why it always happens to be exactly one more than we currently have. Perhaps the mathematics of competition is more mysterious than advertised. 

Roger has a good point here. We do tend to always think one more competitor is the magic solution.

There is an interesting rule or observation from BCG that “A stable competitive market never has more than three significant competitors, the largest of which has no more than four times the market share of the smallest.”

Recent signals from the government suggest this mystical thinking may be fading. Politicians are slowly learning to get out of their own way. Ministers are discovering that if they want to attract a supermarket chain, removing the barriers they created – zoning mazes and planning consents that drag on for decades – is more useful than bashing incumbents. 

A Parliamentary inquiry has gently suggested banking regulators might be guilty of keeping competitors at bay with requirements that would intimidate the bravest new bank. The revelation is dawning: competition comes from opening gates, not counting players. 

In my mind there are different challenges for industries where a physical presence is needed. When choosing a telco or broadband provider, you don’t care much about where it is located. I have Sky as my broadband provider and I have no idea if they even have an office in Wellington.

But with supermarkets and petrol stations, location is huge. Few people will drive to another suburb just because a supermarket there is a bit cheaper this week. Likewise you don’t drive around a suburb looking for the cheapest petrol – you often go to the closest one. So the key to better competition in these industries is not more companies, but making it easier for them to establish new stores or stations.

The Herald reports:

An Auckland high school teacher says it’s distressing so many of her pupils unintentionally watched graphic video of Charlie Kirk’s assassination, with one 13-year-old telling her during class “Miss, I can’t get the picture out of my head”.

I’d say a huge number of NZ students have viewed the assassination. Kirk was huge on social media and known to many NZ students, and when he was shot, the footage was shared virally.

Within minutes of the shooting, and even before Kirk was confirmed dead, video of the murder – which included high resolution footage of Kirk’s neck wound – spread across multiple platforms racking up millions of views.

That’s despite social media companies long claiming they don’t allow violent content on their platforms.

Blaming social media companies for this is silly. They can remove content after it is reported, but if 100,000 people all decide to share something in real time, you can’t stop it.

Stuff reports:

Police have become embroiled in a free speech row after officers told a cancer patient to apologise for a social media post.

Deborah Anderson, an American citizen living in Slough, was confronted by an officer from Thames Valley Police after someone complained about an offensive Facebook post. …

Anderson was visited at home by a single officer in June and informed that Thames Valley Police had received a complaint about her.

In a video shared by the FSU, the officer said: “Something we believe you have written on Facebook has upset someone.”

Anderson then asked: “You’re here because someone got upset? Is it against the law? Am I being arrested?”

The officer confirmed that she was not being arrested and explained: “My plan was that if it was you who wrote the comment, you could just make an apology to the person.”

Anderson replied: “I am not apologising to anybody, I can tell you that.”

The officer told her: “The alternative would be that I would have to call you in for interview.”

Anderson then asked the officer: “Are there no houses that have been burgled recently, no rapes, no murders? … Then why aren’t you out there investigating those?”

This is why we have to stop any laws that try to criminalise so called hate speech. Inevitably it leads to the Police intervening just because someone gets offended about something.

In the latest monthly YouGov, Keir Starmer hits a record -50% favourability rating. It is looking increasingly likely he could be rolled after the May elections.

Even with 2024 Labour voters, he is at -5%. So the majority of those who voted for him, disapprove of him now.

Here’s the net favourability for the main leaders, and with those who voted for their party in 2024″

• Keir Starmer: -50%, -5%
• Kemi Badenoch -35%, +26%
• Ed Davey, -6%, +43%
• Nigel Farage -31%, +78%

Farage is also at +10% with 2024 Conservative voters.

Radio NZ reports:

An overwhelming majority of New Zealanders support the government putting a cap on the amount councils can increase rates each year, according to the RNZ-Reid Research poll.

In August it was announced a model to cap council rates would be put before Cabinet before Christmas.

As part of the latest RNZ-Reid Research poll voters were asked “do you support or oppose the government putting a cap on the amount councils can increase rates each year?”

The research found 75 percent of people supported a rates cap, 14 percent opposed it, and 11 percent did not know.

Hard to think of a more popular policy. The Government should pass a rates cap law as soon as possible, so Labour and Greens have to go into the next election promising to repeal it and allow more 20% rates increases.

The Radio NZ poll found even greater support for rates capping than an earlier poll Curia did for the TU. Both polls founds this policy has support from all voters, regardless of party. The net support from Radio NZ poll is:

• ACT +87%
• NZ First +79%
• National +73%
• Labour +52%
• Greens +32%
• TPM +27%

Lloyd Burr writes at Stuff:

If you’re caught breaking into someone’s house and stealing their stuff, police will charge you, you’ll go to court, and you’ll be punished.

Same thing applies if you’re speeding, dealing drugs, or committing the vast array of crimes we have in New Zealand.

But write a social media post which breaches suppressions issued by the High Court, you’ll most probably get away with it.

No. You won’t get away with it if you knowingly breach a suppression order, but the vast majority of those posting don’t know what is suppressed, and don’t know they are breaching an order.

But what’s becoming increasingly apparent is both a lack of urgency in clamping down on the rule-breakers, and a lack of knowing exactly which agency is responsible for enforcing it.

The Justice Minister says it’s the courts. The courts say it’s the agencies like police and Crown Law to enforce it but for parties (lawyers or Joe Public) to report them.

It isn’t that complicated. The courts don’t investigate people for other crimes. The Police and Crown Law do. Same for suppression orders. And as with other crimes, they generally rely on someone complaining – often the lawyer who got the suppression order. Sometimes the Police do take action proactively.

Over the last 20 years I have been approached over a dozen times regarding posts or comments on Kiwiblog that could breach suppression orders. Sometimes a post was made that wasn’t in breach at the time, but then an order was made. Sometimes it isn’t in breach, but Police want to make sure the defendant can’t argue any info out there could be used to argue on appeal the jury pool was prejudiced. Sometimes lawyers or Crown Law approach me.

But here is the key thing. Up until someone in authority tells me about the suppression order, I don’t know that anything on my blog is in breach. So often I find out what information is suppressed, by being told something on Kiwiblog breaches it. Ir ironically means I learn exactly what the suppressed information is.

And this is the problem with complaining people on social media are breaching suppression orders. I doubt 99% of them know what is suppressed in the Tom Phillips case. I certainly don’t. I have heard many rumours. And what they re doing is repeating rumours. The only way you can get them to remove their posts is to tell them the details of the suppression order, which will then mean they will go from someone who is guessing what happened, to someone who knows. It probably makes the problem worse.

Suppression orders worked when the only publishers were a few dozen media outlets. They would have reporters in court and hence know what is suppressed.

If you really want suppression orders to work in a digital age, you need to do the following:

1. Establish a highly secure database of suppression orders. Currently not even Crown Law or the Police know them all. Each court is its own empire, and there is no central list.
2. Allow access to key agencies on a very restricted basis – Crown Law, Police, Justice Ministry
3. Allow accredited media organisations to either access the database directly or have a very quick query service. Have big penalties for any breaches of the database.
4. Allow non-media publishers to query with the organisation running the database if a particular statement breaches any suppression orders. Not get details of them, just a yes/no.

But even all that won’t at the end of the day stop people gossiping. The moment there is huge public interest in something, suppression orders don’t work. In fact they can make things worse because the gossip can be far worse than the reality.

Radio NZ reports:

Two men were killed when a man drove a car into pedestrians and stabbed a security guard in an attack at a synagogue where worshippers were marking Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar, British police say.

Greater Manchester Police said the man was believed to be Jihad Al-Shamie, a 35-year-old British citizen of Syrian descent.

I’m staggered. Who would have ever thought that a man named Jihad would turn around and start murdering Jews.

Bryce Wilkinson writes:

Imagine that your family spent twice as much as it earned last month. Around the kitchen table, the mood would be grim and the bank’s patience likely wearing thin.

In August 2025, the United States federal Government spent over twice its income, US$689 billion ($1.152 trillion) versus receipts of US$344b. Even doubling every American’s tax bill would not have closed that gap.

This can’t carry on. At some stage it will crash, and the fallout will be massive.

We need to have much lower debt and be in surplus when the next economic crash occurs.

The Herald reports:

A survey by The Spinoff in 2024 estimated New Zealand had about 1400 journalists left.

“This is fewer than the number of journalists employed by the New York Times,” writes Ellis, citing the Times’ website stating the company has 1700 journalists.

This sounds terrible, but the NY Times services a population of 20 million in NY state – as opposed to a NZ population of five million. They are also a de factor national newspaper for the US population of 340 million. It has 11.3 million paid subscribers – twice the NZ population. So of course they employ more journalists.

Chris Hipkins has a dilemma. He can’t form a Government without Te Pāti Māori, but he may lose the election because he won’t rule out Te Pāti Māori. What can he do? What should he do?

I answer this in my Patreon.