RNZ AND MEDIA
RNZ: RNZ chief executive Paul Thompson to leave organisation after 13 years
RNZ: Deputy PM says he did not know RNZ chief executive planned to resign
Stewart Sowman-Lund (Post): What does the exit of RNZ’s boss mean for the organisation? (paywalled)
Stewart Sowman-Lund (Post): David Seymour denies role in RNZ boss Paul Thompson’s exit after ‘unhelpful’ commentary (paywalled)
Toby Manhire (Spinoff): ‘This was his decision alone’: Paul Thompson resigns as RNZ boss
Leah McFall (Listener): Public radio is meant for older people. Why fight it? (paywalled)
Stuff: ‘I am a darn good journalist’: Maiki Sherman wins major media award after controversy
Shayne Currie (Herald): Former TVNZ political editor Maiki Sherman wins political journalist of the year at NZ Media Awards (paywalled)
Herald: NZME celebrates multiple top honours at 2026 NZ Media Awards
RNZ: RNZ’s national crime correspondent Sam Sherwood wins three top Media Awards
Stuff: Stuff wins top media award for third year running
1News: ‘World class’: TVNZ current affairs, news honoured at NZ Media Awards
Tim Murphy (Newsroom): Melanie Reid’s Diagnosis of a Crime named best NZ podcast
Steve Braunias (Newsroom): The secret memoir of .. Barry Soper
Philip Matthews (Post): As The Press turns 165 we consider: Do newspapers have a future? (paywalled)
Alexia Russell (RNZ): Facebook’s recurring premature death announcement

PARLIAMENT, ELECTION AND GOVERNMENT
Bryce Edwards (Democracy Project): The Landlord Parliament
Luke Malpass (Post): For the first time in months, the coalition looks in control (paywalled)
Thomas Coughlan (Herald): The road to good intentions is paved with hell (paywalled)
Lyric Waiwiri-Smith (Spinoff): Introducing Democrasee, the political board game tested by MPs
Sam Crawley: New Zealand’s immigration attitudes: an international outlier
James Nokise (Post): The cold and the cruel: A stocktake of a week in politics (paywalled)
Lyric Waiwiri-Smith (Spinoff): The week’s biggest losers were probably adult human biological public servants
Lloyd Burr (Stuff): Battle of the Lloyds: Budd v Burr
Brent Edwards (NBR): Buy back BNZ, Public Service, social housing cuts (paywalled)
Penny Smith (RNZ): Parliamentary Services to strengthen security after threats on MPs

GOVERNMENT AGENCIES
Andrea Vance (Post): Lollies, furniture and monthly car grooming: More spending questions raised over mega roading contracts (paywalled)
Andrea Vance (Post): NZTA launches review amid six roading contract investigations and SFO probe (paywalled)
Ben Thomas (Post): Will cuts finally spark the public sector’s tech revolution? (paywalled)
Post: Editorial – Cutting the public service (paywalled)
Michael Swanson: The Human cost of public service reforms

SOCIAL HOUSING
Andrew Dickens (Newstalk ZB): The social housing overhaul creates both winners and losers
Ryan Bridge (Newstalk ZB): What’s cruel versus fair in the social housing debate
1News: Social housing: Advocates say NZ needs more to fix ‘broken’ system
Hayden Donnell (Spinoff): Helping Nicola Willis: How to tell a social housing tenant apart from a Lotto winner
ODT: Editorial – Glib comment on housing revealing (paywalled)

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Each year Parliament publishes one of the most useful documents in New Zealand politics — and one of the most underused.

“The Register of Pecuniary and Other Specified Interests”, tabled yesterday, tells us what MPs own, who’s bought them dinner, and where their household money sits. It isn’t a full map of political power. But it’s about as close as the public ever gets.

This year’s register doesn’t deliver any spectacular scandals — and that’s the story. The bigger story is less dramatic but probably more important: Parliament is overwhelmingly made up of property owners governing a country where ownership is becoming harder and harder.

That matters because these MPs are voting on housing, rents, social housing, tax, planning, landlord regulation, and the future of state housing. These aren’t detached observers. They are participants in the very economy they regulate.

Therefore the register doesn’t prove corruption or any rule breaking. But it does show the social and economic world our MPs inhabit. And that world is overwhelmingly propertied, asset-rich and heavily insulated from the housing insecurity experienced by hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders.

Parliament’s property class

The headline numbers are stark. Across 121 MPs, there are 271 declared properties. That works out at about 2.24 properties per MP. Almost all MPs declare some form of property interest. Only a handful appear to have no property at all.

This is not representative of New Zealand. It is certainly not representative of renters, younger people, beneficiaries, low-wage workers, or those trying to get into a first home.

The partisan differences are also revealing. National MPs are again the most property-heavy caucus, averaging about 2.82 properties each. More than half of National MPs own three or more properties. Act and NZ First MPs are also well above the one-home norm. Labour MPs are hardly propertyless, but they sit lower than the governing parties. The Greens are the outlier, with less than one property per MP on average and several MPs declaring none.

This doesn’t mean every National MP is a landlord, or that every Green MP is a renter. But the aggregate picture matters. Parliament isn’t just a debating chamber. It is a class composition. And on housing, that composition leans heavily toward ownership.

The biggest property declarations this year include National’s Andrew Bayly and Gerry Brownlee, each with seven properties. Barbara Kuriger has six. Labour’s Adrian Rurawhe also has six. Todd Stephenson, the Act MP and Parliamentary Under-Secretary, declares a six properties in Queenstown, Wellington, Sydney, Geelong and Te Ānau. Louise Upston declares a family home in Cambridge and an apartment in Wellington.

None of this is automatically improper. MPs are allowed to own property. They are allowed to have mortgages, trusts, farms, apartments, holiday houses and investments. No one expects MPs to live like monks. The real question is whether a property-heavy Parliament can judge housing policy fairly when the status quo works so well for them personally.

The awkward timing

The register was published on the same day the Government announced major reforms to social housing and the Accommodation Supplement. That coincidence is almost too perfect.

On one side of the political ledger, the public was shown a Parliament full of property assets. On the other side, the Government announced that social housing tenants will be required to pay more of their income in rent, and that the state will more aggressively push some tenants toward the private rental market.

Housing Minister Chris Bishop argues the changes are about fairness. His case is that people in social housing can end up better off than comparable low-income households renting privately. The Government says social housing should be more tightly targeted to those with severe and persistent needs, while other households should receive support through private-market subsidies.

There is a real argument here. The housing support system is messy, expensive and often irrational. Arguably it’s a system that’s quite broken. Certainly private renters can be treated badly by the current settings. Social housing is scarce, and people in desperate need do sit on waiting lists for too long.

But the Government’s fairness argument has a revealing limitation – it only looks at unfairness between two groups at the bottom of the scale. It asks whether a state-house tenant is getting too much compared with a poor private renter. It is much less interested in whether the entire housing system is tilted toward landlords, property investors, homeowners, and asset holders.

The Government is focused on the bottom end of the system. It is far less curious about the top.

That is where the register becomes politically revealing. It reminds us that the people making these decisions are not, as a group, housing outsiders. They are overwhelmingly on the owning side of the divide.

The Louise Upston problem

The most politically damaging example is Louise Upston. Stuff journalists Emma Ricketts and Jenna Lynch reported today that Upston, the Social Development Minister, claims $1000 a week in parliamentary accommodation allowance while also seeking tougher criteria for ordinary people receiving the Accommodation Supplement.

MPs and ministers who live outside Wellington are entitled to accommodation support when they are in the capital. Upston’s claims reportedly amounted to $52,000 last year, on top of her ministerial salary. As Ricketts and Lynch report, the register shows she jointly owns a Wellington apartment, although no associated mortgage debt appears to be declared.

Again, this doesn’t mean Upston has broken any rule. That is exactly the point. Her case is revealing not because it appears to be illegal, but because it appears to be allowed. There is one housing-support system for MPs, based on entitlement. There is another for low-income New Zealanders, based increasingly on suspicion, conditions and tighter tests.

Upston’s policy change would raise the threshold for some homeowners receiving Accommodation Supplement support. Ordinary households will be expected to contribute more before help is available. But MPs receiving parliamentary accommodation support are not subject to the same sort of test. No one asks whether a politician on a $320,600/year ministerial salary is contributing enough of their own income before receiving taxpayer support for Wellington accommodation.

When Stuff asked whether she would meet the 40% threshold she is imposing on other New Zealanders, she declined to answer. Stuff reports she “suggested we direct our questions to her office”, and that her office “said the minister had nothing to add.”

What matters here is less the individual politician than the institutional culture. It shows how political institutions normalise generosity for insiders and discipline for everyone else.

The paywall now starts at halfway through all Democracy Project newsletters. Please take out a paid sub if you want to support this service and access the full content, including the following sections: “The private rental market is not neutral”, “Trusts and the half-visible Parliament”, “Gifts, hospitality and access”, “Business interests and investment politics”, “A register designed for another era”, “The conflict that hides in plain sight”, “What should change” and “The real story of the register”.

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SOCIAL HOUSING REFORMS
Lillian Hanly (RNZ): Major social housing shake-up announced
Anneke Smith (Post): Social housing reforms ‘a body blow’ for the poorest - Labour (paywalled)
Emma Ricketts and Jenna Lynch (Stuff): Minister seeking tougher accommodation supplement criteria claims $1000 a week housing allowance
Emma Ricketts (Stuff): Government announces plans to overhaul social housing system
Lauren Crimp & Giles Dexter (RNZ): Support services blindsided by government social housing shake up
Lillian Hanly & Russell Palmer (RNZ): Labour and Greens say social housing shake-up will see public housing tenants evicted
1News: Government announces social housing shakeup
Jamie Ensor (Herald): Chris Bishop announces social housing overhaul with potential duration limits, changes to how need is assessed
Anneke Smith (Post): Social housing overhaul will require tenants to pay more, do more (paywalled)
Richard Harman (Politik): Bishop partially privatises social housing (paywalled)
Karanama Ruru (Stuff): ‘There is nothing lucky about living in public housing’: Tenant says Willis is out of touch over Lotto comments
1News: Willis regrets saying those in social housing had ‘won the lotto’
No Right Turn: A vicious, corrupt and insane policy from a vicious, corrupt and insane regime
Brent Edwards (NBR): Government takes ‘hard choices’ on reforming social housing (paywalled)
Jamie Ensor (Herald): Nicola Willis issues statement expressing ‘regret’ about social housing comment
Sam Sachdeva (Newsroom): Social housing tenants face rent hike as part of Govt shakeup
Catherine McGregor (Spinoff): The government tightens another link in the housing safety net

PUBLIC SECTOR AND AI
Audrey Young (Herald): Union’s bias on display over public sector cuts; Nicola Willis walks into MFAT scrap with Winston Peters (paywalled)
Stuff: The government wants to use AI to improve the public service. We asked AI what it would do
Joel Kulasingham (Herald): Expert warns Government’s public sector cuts and AI plans could create ‘economic shock’, ‘biased’ policy
Alexandra Andhov (Newsroom): Before we let AI run the public service, we need to know the full impactIan Taylor (Stuff): An open letter to Nicola Willis: AI should create jobs, not cut them
Herald: Editorial – public service reform: AI push will be painful for battered sector (paywalled)
Chris Trotter (ODT): Cutting the state’s cloth to fit the state’s alleged means (paywalled)
Herald: Most under-stress public service agencies not exempt from Government cuts
Veronica Schmidt (Spinoff): Thanks to Nicola Willis and Brian Roche, I now get that I’m just human capital
Miriam Bell (Post): Minister on possible public sector tourism cuts: ‘They make dollars stretch’ (paywalled)
The Standard: National Is Destroying Wellington
Matthew Tukaki (Waatea News): Restructure Fears Grow Across Māori-Focused Government Agencies

PARLIAMENT, ELECTION AND GOVERNMENT
Julia Gabel & Chris Knox (Herald): Monster truck tickets, sport matches & a Mongolian horse: What did your MP declare? (paywalled)
Matthew Hooton (Herald): Labour flounders as Luxon and Willis set serious reform agenda (paywalled)
Peter Dunne: Labour’s policy vacuum
Mike Hosking (Newstalk ZB): So yes, Chris Hipkins does think you’re stupid
John MacDonald (Newstalk ZB): Politicians have no idea what’s important to us
Stephen Minto (Daily Blog): Can Labour centrism win the election? No. But why?
Russell Palmer (RNZ): No evidence to back Luxon’s claim Peters mischaracterised view of Iran, PM’s office says
Tini Molyneux (Te Ao Māori News): National targets Māori seats Tāmaki Makaurau, Te Tai Hauāuru
Emma Ricketts (Stuff): ‘I’ve never seen a more disgusting piece of legislation’: Paid family carers decry law change
Ani O’Brien: Open Letter to Minister for Women Nicola Grigg
David Farrar: Media missed the big story on donations
Sam Sachdeva (Newsroom): Willis and Peters’ foreign affairs feud the latest sign of coalition discord
Phil Smith (RNZ): Chamber blowback: The third law of political motion
Layla Bailey-McDowell (RNZ): Te reo Māori advocate Vincent Olsen-Reeder criticises govt branding changes
Russell Baillie (Listener): Crunching the numbers on the Robbie Williams shows in NZ (paywalled)
Michael Swanson: Citizens Juries, Assemblies, and the Case for a Citizens Parliament

BUDGET 2026
Jo Moir (RNZ): Minor parties steal spotlight from Nicola Willis’ Budget
Natalia Albert (Substack): Dear Nicola: Where’s my $5,000?
Henry Cooke (Post): David Seymour pushes for more cuts while Shane Jones has it out with the PM on industry support (paywalled)
Levi Gibbs (Post): With an economy in trouble, Nicola Willis needs to deliver a conviction Budget (paywalled)

MOVE-ON ORDERS
Giles Dexter (RNZ): Move-on orders bill passes first reading following heated debate
Glenn McConnell (Stuff): MPs clash over ‘move on orders’ targeting beggars as young as 14
Sophie Bradwell-Pollak (Listener): By pushing on with ‘move-on orders’ for the homeless, Govt continues to promote a false and harmful narrative (paywalled)
Martin van Beynen (Post): ‘Move-on’ orders good idea with right mitigation (paywalled)

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BUDGET 2026 AND PUBLIC SERVICE
Janet Wilson (Post): Nicola Willis has unveiled her audacious plan for the public service, but the real test is to come (paywalled)
Amanda Gillies (RNZ): Public sector cuts ignite election fight
Henry Cooke (Post): Budget 2026: Where might the public service cuts fall? The big and small ministries facing the knife (paywalled)
Jonathan Milne (Newsroom): Willis sharpens her once-dull scythe for job cuts
Giles Dexter (RNZ): How the government’s savings exercise will work
Henry Cooke (Post): Nicola Willis accuses ‘hysterical’ PSA of ‘misleading’ members over job cuts (paywalled)
Lochlan Lineham (Herald): Finance Minister says HR departments duplicated 39 times across ministries; fears cuts will hurt families
Emma Ricketts (Stuff): Willis open to idea of new ministry centralising HR, IT, and other admin work from across the public sector
Gordon Campbell (Scoop): On The Public Service Chainsaw Massacre
Andrew Gunn: Your Questions On Public Service Cuts Answered
Michael Swanson: Govt won’t be splashing the cash but it needs a story
Tom Pullar-Strecker (Post): Barbara Edmonds says Treasury ‘just doing its job’ building cuts into forecast (paywalled)
Sandra Grey (Herald): Public service cuts don’t help, they just hurt people (paywalled)
Cecilia Robinson (Herald): The real opportunity behind public sector reform (paywalled)
Rebecca Jayde (Spinoff): The human cost of governing by spreadsheet
Jonathan Milne (Newsroom): Minister tells Crown companies to ‘get on the bus’ with cost-cutting
Māni Dunlop (Te Ao News): Public sector overhaul sparks fears for remaining Māori and Treaty-focused roles
Corin Dann (RNZ): Tech companies hopeful about Wellington’s future as public sector cuts loom
Brent Edwards (NBR): A Budget aimed at not losing the election (paywalled)
Ellen O’Dwyer and Sammy Carter (RNZ): ‘Heartless’: Fears Wellington will be ‘ghost town’ after public service cuts
RNZ: Public Services Minister Paul Goldsmith says job cuts needed because previous government hired so many people
Russell Palmer (RNZ): Ministry uncovers 267 different regulators, Seymour urges consolidation
Stuff: NZ’s ‘twisted spaghetti’ of regulation exposed in huge mapping project, Seymour says
Herald: Peter Chrisp departs New Zealand Trade and Enterprise for Department of Conservation
Nick James (Post): NZTE head Peter Chrisp appointed to lead Department of Conservation (paywalled)
Andrew Dickens (Newstalk ZB): Is the Government counting its chickens before they hatch?
John MacDonald (Newstalk ZB): What you don’t hear about Singapore’s public service

AI AND THE PUBLIC SERVICE
Richard Prebble: AI Could Make Big Government Even Bigger
Phil Pennington (RNZ): Replacing public servants with AI could come with hidden costs, critics warn
Emily Broadmore (Post): The Government wants AI to cut 8700 jobs, but doesn’t know how to use AI (paywalled)
Gamaliel Ramos (Post): If the robots are coming for the public service, why not the cabinet? (paywalled)

FOREIGN AFFAIRS BUDGET CUTS AND DEFENCE
Jenna Lynch (Stuff): Winston Peters denies MFAT bid for more business class flights ever made it to the finance minister
1News: Winston Peters wins again – no cuts for MFAT in new Budget
Jo Moir (RNZ): Winston Peters wins again - no cuts for MFAT in new Budget
Anneke Smith (Post): Foreign Affairs not tightening its belt just yet - Finance Minister (paywalled)
Anneke Smith (Post): Peters slams ‘scrooge-like approach’ to foreign affairs, claims ‘highly active diplomacy’ is making up for budget shortfalls (paywalled)
Lillian Hanly (RNZ): ‘Our voice is not strong’ - Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters on NZ’s place on the global stage
Adam Pearse (Herald): Winston Peters on New Zealand’s response to the ‘Asian century’, declares foreign affairs funding an ‘absolute necessity’
RNZ: Government urged to prioritise retention of trained defence personnel
Thomas Manch (BusinessDesk): The Government’s billion-dollar frigate question (paywalled)
Eugene Doyle (Scoop): New Zealand And Palantir

PARLIAMENT, ELECTION AND GOVERNMENT
Jamie Ensor (Herald): Labour leader Chris Hipkins says New Zealanders don’t ‘really care’ about key detail of party’s NZ Future Fund policy
Caron Copek (Stuff): How much are our MPs paid and who decides how much they get?
Richard Prebble (Herald): Why buying BNZ would be a $24b gamble for taxpayers (paywalled)
Jonathan Ayling (Herald): New Zealand has a better immigration story to tell (paywalled)
Julia Gabel (Herald): Officials warn accommodation supplement changes threaten housing security, ability for families to pay for food, clothing
Mike Hosking (Newstalk ZB): Labour’s lack of detail show they’ve learned nothing
Louis Collins (RNZ): The House: Welfare debate shifts from policy to process
Andrew Dickson: The ACT Party’s Daddy Issues
Crux: OIA documents show Government and NZTA worked with MP Mooney to stage manage new bridge information
David Harvey: The Culture of Complaint – An Institutional Problem
Giles Dexter (RNZ): Deepfake bill passes first reading in Parliament
Cassandra Mudgway (The Conversation): NZ is criminalising sexualised deepfakes – banning apps that make them should be next
Joel MacManus (Spinoff): All the ways politicians want to mess with your KiwiSaver
Toby Manhire (Spinoff): Jane Wrightson on superannuation, KiwiSaver, and retiring as retirement commissioner
Sam Smith (Stuff): Parliament’s restaurant Bellamys to close to the public after eight years

GENDER BILL
Lauren Crimp (RNZ): Bill seeking to legally define the terms ‘man’ and ‘woman’ passes first reading
Lauren Crimp (RNZ): NZ First’s gender bill to be supported by National, ACT
Harriet Laughton (Post): National and ACT to vote through NZ First’s gender bill (paywalled)
Glenn McConnell (Stuff): Will a legal definition of gender change how people talk about breastfeeding? David Seymour hopes so

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PUBLIC SERVICE AND BUDGET 2026
Luke Malpass (Post): Budget 2026: Nicola Willis’ public service overhaul goes well beyond headcount (paywalled)
RNZ: Public sector job cuts: ‘Nobody is above scrutiny’
Jo Moir (RNZ): Christopher Luxon says public service cuts will be on ‘case-by-case basis’
RNZ: Slashing public sector jobs the right move, New Zealand Initiative says
Joel MacManus (Spinoff): Nicola Willis cuts jobs, loves AI, hates NZ First
Heather du Plessis-Allan (Newstalk ZB): Let’s make a start on unwinding years of public sector bloat
Luke Malpass (Post): Nicola Willis to plot leaner public service; union says up to 10,000 jobs could go (paywalled)
Ellen O’Dwyer (RNZ): ‘Heartless’: Fears Wellington will be ‘ghost town’ after public service cuts
Susan Edmunds (RNZ): ‘Like closing a timber mill’: Why Wellington’s economy needs to rely less on public sector
RNZ: More public service job cuts may be coming - how many have gone already?
Jo Moir (RNZ): Nearly 9000 public sector jobs to go, government agencies to merge, Nicola Willis announces
Glenn McConnell (Stuff): The Government wants to replace thousands of public servants with AI – here’s what ministers think the robots do
Glenn McConnell (Stuff): These are the Government departments on the chopping block
Anneke Smith (Post): Peters laughs off questions about job cuts for diplomats amid cull of public service jobs (paywalled)
Ani O’Brien: The Public Service isn’t a six-figure welfare scheme
David Farrar (Kiwiblog): Government to trim 8,700 public servants
Ian Llewellyn (BusinessDesk): Willis targets agency mergers, 8,700 fewer public service jobs (paywalled)
Hannah Filmer (Herald): Public Service Association calls Government plan to cut more public sector roles ‘reckless’
Luke Malpass (Post): 267 regulators and counting: New map to show sprawl of NZ’s regulatory state (paywalled)
Rachel Pannett (BusinessDesk): Seymour’s red tape ministry now four times bigger than agency it replaced (paywalled)
Ian Llewellyn (BusinessDesk): Public service Budget blues, rethinking the OIA and more (paywalled)
Lauren Crimp (RNZ): Public servant ‘terrified’ job on the line again after government announces more cuts
Richard Harman: Doubts about public sector job cuts (paywalled)
Angus James: You Can’t Modernise a Public Service You’ve Just Hollowed Out
Duane Leo (Post): The price New Zealanders will pay for the decimation of the public service (paywalled)
Michael Swanson (Newsroom): Govt won’t be splashing the cash but it needs a story
Ryan Bridge (Newstalk ZB): The public service cuts didn’t come out of nowhere
Sam Sherwood (RNZ): Senior public servant misses out on top job after anonymous tipster reveals prior cocaine use
Nick James (Post): Labour says women paid for last Budget, public servants will pay for this one (paywalled)
Justin Hu (1News): Election-year clash over job cuts: Union calls losses ‘cruel and deep’
Simon Shepherd (NBR): Govt to cut 8700 public service jobs (paywalled)
Nick James (Post): ‘Bad news on top of bad news’: Public service job cut plan hits home in capital (paywalled)
Steven Cowan: Austerity is a choice
Nick Mills (Newstalk ZB): Even if it hurts Wellington - public service cuts have to be done
Catherine McGregor (Spinoff): Wellington prepares for another public sector shock

PARLIAMENT, ELECTION AND GOVERNMENT
Thomas Coughlan (Herald): Labour admits it will not release ‘cornerstone’ policy costing and job modelling until after the election, citing Treaty of Waitangi concerns
Giles Dexter (RNZ): Labour holds off on Future Fund details until after election
Herald: Editorial – Money’s tight, keep the election promises focused on it (paywalled)
Lillian Hanly (RNZ): Climate law changes have ‘clearly struck a nerve’ - experts
Lauren Crimp (RNZ): David Seymour booted from the House after clash with Speaker
Harriet Laughton (Post): Fate of social media ban in Labour’s hands, ACT hints (paywalled)
Henry Cooke (Post): Opportunity should consider starting a bit smaller (paywalled)
Toby Manhire (Spinoff): Distasteful, unnecessary, offensive: RNZ board member on David Seymour attacks
Myra Williamson (The Conversation): Compulsory voting has boosted turnout in Australia – is it time NZ tried it?
Zane Small (Stuff): The looming ‘deal’ behind depiction of Luxon riding missile with Trump
Phil Smith (RNZ): Parliament’s week: Longer than usual, as usual
Māni Dunlop (Te Ao News): The Prime Minister rejects scathing Waitangi Tribunal Report, presses on with Treaty reforms
Lyric Waiwiri-Smith (Spinoff): Parmjeet Parmar on Cliff Richard and the joy of McDonald’s coffee
Mike Hosking (Newstalk ZB): Here’s what the 2026 Election is about
Amokura Panoho: The Architecture of Discrediting
Yvonne Van Dongen: This is your year – For those tired of the Uniparty

NZ FIRST BNZ BUYBACK
Hayden Donnell (Spinoff): I tried to buy the BNZ. It wasn’t as easy as Winston Peters made it sound
Tom Rose (Herald): Winston Peters doubles down on NZ First’s BNZ buyback proposal as coalition parties rule it out
Rod Bolivar (NZ Adviser): BNZ buyback proposal revives debate over New Zealand banking competition
Andy Macdonald (BusinessDesk): Winston Peters signals new way to bridge BNZ buyback $5b gap (paywalled)
Andy Higgs (BusinessDesk): Why buying back BNZ misses where real financial power lies (paywalled)
Catherine McGregor (Spinoff): ‘Preposterous. Crazy. Off the planet loopy’: Peters’ BNZ plan meets its critics

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PUBLIC SERVICE REFORM
Giles Dexter (RNZ): Finance minister hints at government department amalgamation plans
Jenna Lynch (Stuff): Thousands of public servants to lose jobs potentially saving government over a billion dollars
Thomas Coughlan (Herald): Nicola Willis to announce major public service reforms, further cuts to roles
Luke Malpass (Post): Willis to plot leaner public service in pre-Budget speech (paywalled)
Rob Stock (Post): ‘End of an era’ as vote to disestablish Ministry for the Environment nears, but is NZ making a novel mistake? (paywalled)
Claire Robinson: New Zealand’s public governance problem

EDUCATION
Chris Trotter (Interest): To identify educational winners requires creating educational losers. Can we afford them?
Bali Haque (AEC NZ): Back to the future with our national qualification: a disaster in the making
David Cooke (AEC NZ): School for Trades
Mike Hosking (Newstalk ZB): Mike’s Minute: Do the unions have anything positive to say about education?
Dave Armstrong (Post): One thing school certificate taught me: Exams don’t work for everyone (paywalled)
Amy Ridout (Post): The NCEA is going on the scrapheap. What’s replacing it, and what will it mean for learners? (paywalled)
John Gerritsen (RNZ): New English, maths primary curriculums had little effect on achievement, first results show
John Gerritsen (RNZ): After a full year of schooling, less than half of 5 year olds pass new phonics test
RNZ: Teachers raise concerns as NCEA replacement confirmed
Jamie Ensor (Herald): Christopher Luxon, Education Minister Erica Stanford announce $131m for maths and literacy in primary, intermediate schools
Lauren Crimp (RNZ): Erica Stanford announces $131m Budget spend on reading, writing and maths initiatives
Nick James and Henry Cooke (Post): Government sets aside $131m for literacy and numeracy programme (paywalled)
Lauren Crimp (RNZ): ‘Our best resource’: Teachers a better investment than workbooks, school leaders say
RNZ: Primary Principals’ Association backs government funding announcement

NZ FIRST AND BNZ BUYBACK
Susan Edmunds (RNZ): Would buying BNZ actually help New Zealanders?
Jenée Tibshraeny (Herald): NZ First’s BNZ buy-up plan dubbed an unrealistic headline-grabber; big bucks needed to get Aussie parent to sell (paywalled)
Herald: Prime Minister, David Seymour laugh off NZ First policy to nationalise BNZ
Emma Ricketts (Stuff): Luxon shuts down Winston Peters’ ‘Labour-style’ BNZ buyback proposal
Anna Whyte (Interest): Inside the Capital: Buying back the bank, babies, budgets and what you need to know
Caron Copek (Stuff): ‘He’s dreaming’ ... ‘Not serious’ ... ‘Extremely reckless’: This is some of the reaction to Winston Peters’ BNZ buyback idea
Heather du Plessis-Allan (Newstalk ZB): What problems will buying back BNZ solve?
ODT: Editorial: Back to the future with NZ First (paywalled)
RNZ: Bank nationalisation threat a ‘bad signal’ for investors - analyst
Greg Presland (Standard): Should we renationalise the BNZ?
David Farrar (Kiwiblog): Is this the proof Winston is planning to go with Labour
Jonathan Mitchell (NBR): Buying back BNZ a ‘complex, clickbait’ idea, experts say (paywalled)

PARLIAMENT, ELECTION AND GOVERNMENT
Glenn McConnell (Stuff): Big spenders reveal why they give tens of thousands to political parties
Glenn McConnell (Stuff): Poll shows NZ First voters want to keep National in government
Sam Smith and Rebecca Wright (Stuff): Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke’s supporters explored her joining Labour, Willie Jackson says
Graham Adams: Hipkins drags out Phoney War with Coalition
Richard Prebble: At last, a serious speech from the Prime Minister
Chelsea Daniels (Herald): From super to baby KiwiSaver: How NZ First is courting every age group
Fox Meyer (Newsroom): NZ First’s West Coast contender wants banks to pay for climate resilience
Catherine McGregor (Spinoff): Candidates jostle for position as electoral strategies take shape
Ryan Bridge (Newstalk ZB): A clean up of cabinet is overdue
Andrew Dickson: The Opportunity Party Isn’t Incoherent – the Left-Right Frame Is

LAW AND ORDER, JUSTICE
Thomas Coughlan (Herald): Move-on orders law breach Bill of Rights in part – Chris Bishop (paywalled)
AJ Hendry: Move-On orders: Cruel & Dangerous
Lauren Crimp (RNZ): Huge relief or ‘pretending there’s a problem’? National’s sexual offenders sentencing policy
Anna Leask (Herald): Cops told Christchurch Nazi ‘fanatic’ and mosque attack supporter was ‘planning a mass casualty’ - Coroner probing police response
Sam Sherwood (RNZ): Third Corrections deputy chief executive under scrutiny
Stuff: Royal Commission into abuse in care exceeded remit in criticism of Jehovah’s Witnesses
Angus James: The Broken Footpath: How an unpopular Government can turn fears into votes
Michael Andrew (Law News): Junior lawyers struggling as entry-level jobs dry up

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NZ FIRST
RNZ: NZ First plan to buy BNZ back ‘headline-grabbing’ rather than serious policy - economist
Paul McBeth: You can bank on Winston Peters to shake things up
Julia Gabel (Herald): NZ First will campaign on buying back the BNZ bank and making KiwiSaver enrolment compulsory at birth
Julia Gabel (Herald): NZ First leader Winston Peters takes aim at National, Act over immigration
RNZ: Winston Peters unveils KiwiSaver-from-birth NZ First policy, bank takeover plan
Nick James (Post): Winston Peters announces NZ First policy to buy back BNZ (paywalled)
Stewart Sowman-Lund (Post): Winston Peters targets banks, coalition allies and media at Auckland rally (paywalled)
Peter Allan Williams: A BoNkerZ idea

ELECTION 2026
Bryce Edwards (Democracy Project): Importing the immigration wars for election year
Amanda Gillies (Newsroom): The fight for the Māori vote
Dan Brunskill (Spinoff): Why National should try to lose some electorates this election
Karina Cooper (Northern Advocate): National Whangārei candidate Lloyd Budd outlines top priorities
1News: Hipkins on why Labour hasn’t made more major policy announcements
1News: ‘Both very happy’: ACT’s Brooke van Velden announces pregnancy
Phil Smith (RNZ): Judith Collins: The farewell as rebranding job interview

BUDGET 2026
Verity Johnson (Stuff): NZ does not have a maxed out credit card
Anneke Smith (Post): The who’s who of Budget 2026: The key decision makers behind the big day (paywalled)
Nick James (Post): Parliament sits as politicians gear up for the Budget (paywalled)
Jamie Ensor (Herald): Major investment coming for primary schools as new maths results show ‘encouraging’ signs

ECONOMY, BUSINESS AND COMPETITION
Rob Stock (Post): 10 takeaways on the state of competition in NZ (paywalled)
Keith Woodford (Interest): What is New Zealand’s ideal population?
Rebecca Howard (BusinessDesk): Inflation data may let the RBNZ off the hook in May, but rate hikes loom (paywalled)
Ralph Norris (Herald): Air New Zealand can’t be judged like any other airline (paywalled)
Angus McCullough (Post): Building the capacity to adapt and respond to an ever-disrupted world (paywalled)

POLICE, JUSTICE AND CRIME
Amy Ridout (Sunday Star Times): ‘He died holding my boots’: police tell tales of blood and trauma in push for better pay (paywalled)
Luke Malpass (Sunday Star Times): New Zealand’s growth problem wears a blue uniform (paywalled)
Lauren Crimp (RNZ): National’s sexual offenders sentencing policy: ‘It’s pretending that there’s a problem’
1News: National pledges to scrap ‘good character’ sentencing discounts for sex offenders
Michael Morrah (Herald): Jevon McSkimming scandal: Former Firearms Safety Authority boss Angela Brazier says exit from police ‘worst experience’ of her life (paywalled)
Deborah Chambers (Herald): Sticking their oar in: When anyone can drag a lawyer before a standards committee (paywalled)
RNZ: Author on NZ’s soaring prison population: ‘These guys aren’t falling through cracks, it’s absolute chasms’

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For most of the past thirty years, immigration has been a remarkably quiet topic at New Zealand elections. Winston Peters has periodically made noise about it. The main parties have treated migration as a technical lever for managing the economy. Turn the tap up when growth flags, ease it back when housing or wages get squeezed. It has not been a defining battleground.

Something has shifted. In the past two weeks all three coalition parties have decided immigration is the issue of the 2026 election. Act first. Then NZ First sharpening its rhetoric. And now, most strikingly, Christopher Luxon himself. The Prime Minister’s address to BusinessNZ on Wednesday was the moment National finally crossed the line into the new politics. Matthew Hooton, no fanboy, called it Luxon’s most substantive prime ministerial speech to date. The immigration section is why.

“My message to the business community,” Luxon told the assembled CEOs, “is that when it comes to immigration, when faced with a choice between social cohesion and stability or your bottom line, I will choose the former every single time.”

You will not find a sentence like that in any previous National PM’s address to BusinessNZ. Three decades of orthodoxy overturned in two lines.

Luxon went further. He warned that “at least some of the political fracturing evident in Europe in recent years is the result of politicians refusing to implement the preference of their voters on immigration.” He pointed to “failed immigration policies in Europe and North America” that had “stoked a politics of division online.” Immigration, he conceded, “now seems to be an emerging political issue in New Zealand, too.” Voters could “expect to see careful policy on immigration from National as we get closer to the election.”

Why now?

Immigration has rarely been a decisive election issue in New Zealand. Political scientist Sam Crawley has done some of the most useful analytical work here. His reading of New Zealand Election Study data shows that a large share of voters — often a majority — have wanted immigration reduced in most election years since the 1990s. But wanting something and voting on it are different things. “Salience” is what matters politically. And on that measure, immigration has almost never cracked the top tier of concerns.

The one exception was 2017, when New Zealand First made immigration central to its campaign and Andrew Little’s Labour briefly chased the same vote. Even then, Crawley notes, immigration sat well below housing, poverty, and the economy in the hierarchy of voter concerns.

Danyl McLauchlan, in a March piece for the Listener, found even starker evidence of the mismatch between political rhetoric and public attitudes. In the 2023 election study, just 0.4% of respondents named immigration as the most important problem facing the country. More striking still, the share of New Zealanders wanting more immigration nearly doubled between 2017 and 2023 — the precise years when New Zealand’s peer democracies were lurching in the opposite direction.

As McLauchlan put it, New Zealand was becoming more pro-immigration just as the Western world was becoming less so. The Covid border closure, he suggested, had made the costs of cutting migration painfully concrete.

None of this means the question is off the table. The latest Ipsos New Zealand Issues Monitor puts immigration as the 12th most pressing issue, named by 8% of respondents. That is still well outside the top ten. But it is climbing, up from 5% a year or two ago. Both Act and NZ First are now trying to push that higher.

Chasing the anti-immigration vote

The political dynamics within the coalition are worth considering, because they help explain why immigration is suddenly everywhere. This isn’t primarily a story about a public groundswell. It is a story about parties chasing votes and responding to each other.

Peters has been talking about social cohesion and migration for thirty years; it is the issue he built his career on. What is different in 2026 is the language. At the party conference in Palmerston North last September, Peters announced NZ First would campaign on requiring all new migrants to sign a “Kiwi values document” covering flag, freedom of religion, democracy and “traditional New Zealand values.” His framing has tilted sharply toward UK and US discourse. He told the Herald late last year that he found Nigel Farage’s Reform UK programme “compelling.” He pointed to Britain, where, in his telling, “careless immigration policies” had transformed cities and produced people who “don’t salute the flag, don’t salute the values of the country.”

More recently, Jones tried to turn the India free trade agreement into an immigration scare story, warning of a “butter-chicken tsunami” of migrants — a comment so crude that Luxon was left publicly disavowing it.

Act then followed early this month with a six-point immigration policy. Tougher enforcement, a dedicated unit to deal with overstayers, higher English-language requirements, a $6-a-day infrastructure surcharge on temporary visa holders, a new citizenship test, and a ban on new residents receiving welfare for five years. Immigration Minister Erica Stanford called it “dog whistling,” “kneejerk,” and “populist.” She conceded, that Act was simply trying to match NZ First.

And then Luxon stepped in with his BusinessNZ speech this week, attempting to occupy the middle ground before his coalition partners defined it for him. The political logic is transparent. If National is going to be dragged into this debate by its coalition partners — and it clearly is — Luxon wants to be the reasonable voice in the room rather than the one still talking about economic inputs and labour demand.

Whether that works is another matter.

The data problem

Liam Dann, writing in the Herald today, makes the point directly, and it’s worth taking seriously. The coalition government is currently presiding over one of the lowest net migration rates in more than a decade. In August 2025, annual net migration dropped to around 10,000 as young New Zealanders departed in large numbers. The current figure sits at about 24,000 — below the long-run average of 31,000 between 2002 and 2025. Migrant arrivals have fallen by 100,000 since November 2023. “If we exclude the bit where our borders were closed because of Covid,” Dann writes, “you have to go back to 2013 before you see net migration as low as we’ve seen in this political cycle.”

Immigration is not rising. If anything, New Zealand is losing the battle to attract the skilled workers it needs.

Paul Spoonley, the Koi Tū demographer who has spent decades studying these flows, was blunter on RNZ. He said: “We are one of the most super-diverse countries in the world… By and large, it works really well. So what is the problem, or what is the issue here that the prime minister thinks we need to address?” His diagnosis: the PM “is beginning to react to his two coalition partners both of whom seem to want to make immigration a central issue for the coming election.”

This is Dann’s central charge too. National and Act “have traditionally favoured a neoliberal approach to immigration, which, if not quite ‘the more the merrier’, did at least assume that more people equalled more growth and more wealth.” Now they have “decided to jump on the populist immigration debate.”

Dann’s diagnosis of the politicians’ motive is sharp: “Perhaps they’ve seen how well the issue is playing for populist politicians in Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom. Perhaps it is because they have noticed that the biggest dent in their own polling seems to be coming from the rise of their coalition partner.”

Yet his sharpest line concerns the “social cohesion” framing that Luxon reached for, and that Act has built into its citizenship test: “It involves projecting international issues that don’t really exist in New Zealand onto a political landscape that is unfortunately vulnerable to culture wars and tribalism.” The appeal to social cohesion, he says, “is a bit sinister.”

That is a strong claim. But it is not baseless. New Zealand is not the UK. There is no crisis of asylum seekers and no Nigel Farage equivalent commanding a third of the vote. Our immigration system is points-based, economically focused, strictly managed. Spoonley points out that 30% of New Zealanders were born overseas — 43% in Auckland — and by and large it works. The Helen Clark Foundation’s recent social cohesion report found that 36% of New Zealanders think immigration levels are too high, and 43% think they are about right. That is not a country convulsing with anti-immigrant sentiment.

The paywall now starts at halfway through all Democracy Project newsletters. Please take out a paid sub if you want to support this service and access the full content, including the following sections: “The old bargain”, “Up The democratic deficit”, “Labour’s silence”, and “What kind of debate?”.

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PARLIAMENT, ELECTION AND GOVERNMENT
Vernon Small (Sunday Star Times): Christopher Luxon delivered one of his best speeches yet - but contradictions remain (paywalled)
Heather du Plessis-Allan (Herald): If The Opportunity Party wants to be elected, it needs to be honest about what it is (paywalled)
Liam Dann (Herald): Immigration politics: Why National and Act’s populist turn misreads data (paywalled)
Thomas Coughlan (Herald): Brooke’s baby: Act deputy leader Brooke van Velden announces pregnancy (paywalled)
Damien Grant (Stuff): The Estonia trip, the ‘Mean Girls’ parody and the fall of an FMA chair
Louis Collins (RNZ): The constitutional shift you may have missed this week
Steven Cowan: Vote Labour for a Labour-National alliance

EDUCATION
RNZ: Government confirms NCEA replacement details
Nicholas Jones (Stuff): NCEA replacement ‘not going to suit our young people’ says teachers’ union
Ben Leahy (Herald): New NZCE qualification unveiled for Years 12-13 to include compulsory exams in every subject
1News: Government reveals structure for post-NCEA school qualifications
The Post: NCEA replacement: Senior high schoolers will need an A+ to C in at least three subjects to obtain qualification (paywalled)
Russell Palmer (RNZ): Education Minister Erica Stanford promises update on social media ban in June
Mike Hosking (Newstalk ZB): Fees Free was a mistake - let’s not repeat it
Hanna McCallum (Newsroom): What about the 7 in 10 students who don’t go to uni?
Luka Forman (RNZ): Global student network more vulnerable after successful system hack - experts

CLIMATE, WEATHER, INSURANCE
Kevin Norquay and Joanne Naish (Sunday Star Times): Can’t sell, can’t insure, can’t leave: That’s property purgatory (paywalled)
Kevin Norquay (Sunday Star Times): Location, location, liquidation: How insurers set your premiums (paywalled)
Miriam Bell (Post): Treading Water: Wild weather the new ‘meth crisis’ for home buyers (paywalled)
Nick James (Post): Treading Water: Flood maps, managed retreat and cost-sharing for storm-damaged homes (paywalled)

SUPERANNUATION AND RETIREMENT
Tom Pullar-Strecker (Sunday Star Times): Who might be the winners and losers from changing the way we pay for old age (paywalled)
Andrea Vance (Sunday Star Times): Luxon plants a stake on super — Peters pulls it up again (paywalled)
Vanessa Pratley (Consumer): It’s time to fix the retirement village problem that hasn’t gone away

HEALTH
Ben Tomsett (Herald): Missed Southland stomach cancer prompts call for Awanui Labs inquiry
Rafaella Melo (Herald): Hawke’s Bay nutritionist Gina Urlich pushes for New Zealand food reform after cancer battle (paywalled)
Julia Gabel (Herald): Health and Disability Commissioner apologises, reopens complaint after woman’s case receives public attention
Taiha Molyneux (RNZ): Māori-led meth recovery model in Gisborne drawing global attention
1News: Hospices turning away dying patients as funding shortfall bites
Ben Tomsett (Herald): Professor Michael Ardagh reflects on a career shaped by crises, reform and Christchurch’s darkest days (paywalled)
Ian Powell: Hidden waiting list exposed; unmet health need unreported
RNZ: Nurses union votes to accept Te Whatu Ora offer after nearly two years of bargaining

LOCAL GOVERNMENT
Peter Dunne (Newsroom): Council staff delusion at heart of capital’s problems
Wayne Brown (Sunday Star Times): Aucklanders were warned. So why the outrage now? (paywalled)
Mathew Nash (Herald): Rotorua spent $8.5m on storm-damaged roading over the past four years
Mary Afemata (RNZ): Auckland Council backs free arts event as debate grows over spending priorities
Matthew Rosenberg (RNZ): Council spends $12,000 sending mayor to Scandinavia
Sammy Carter (RNZ): Wellington council removes artists’ bus stop murals

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GOVERNMENT
Thomas Coughlan (Herald): Christopher Luxon parties as Budget nears (paywalled)
Luke Malpass (Post): Budget 2026: A speech from the prime minister National thought it elected (paywalled)
Amelia Wade (Post): Christopher Luxon asks, why risk it? Chris Hipkins asks, why trust it? (paywalled)
Henry Cooke (Post): A Budget beyond the fuel crisis starts to take shape (paywalled)
Andrea Vance (Post): NZTA probe reveals $5m in disputed costs and invoice concerns on roading project (paywalled)
Glenn McConnell (Stuff): Minister trying to halt National MP’s social media ban bill - but it’s not her call
Henry Cooke (Post): How David Seymour’s Regulatory Standards Act will change what public servants write and what public sees (paywalled)
NBR: Government issues advice to its agencies over good regulation (paywalled)
Dita De Boni (Post): ‘Where the bloody hell are you - come over’, Nicola Willis tells Aussies angry about CGT (paywalled)
Lyric Waiwiri-Smith (Spinoff): Haere rā to Crusher, hello to old scandals
Brent Edwards (NBR): Budget restraint, the immigration debate, climate change (paywalled)
Rachael Judge (BusinessDesk): Are information requests getting out of control? (paywalled)
André Chumko (Post): Twenty more jobs to go at Te Papa as restructuring continues (paywalled)
Kate Rickard (Herald): ‘Unaffordable’ network: DoC faces 2300 closures and $37m annual shortfall
Phil Pennington (RNZ): Briefing says defence chief executives doing more to educate public
Phil Pennington (RNZ): NZDF still drafting AI directive months after rolling out tech

DEMOCRACY AND ELECTIONS
Bryce Edwards (Democracy Project): The Regulator has confirmed the NZ economy is rigged
Anne Salmond (Newsroom): Democracy for sale
Max Rashbrooke (Post): A shift in voting power and how to give young voters hope (paywalled)
Steve Kilgallon (Stuff): Hone Harawira set to pursue return to Parliament
Ricardo Simich (Herald): Whangārei National candidate Lloyd Budd has the backing of Sir John Key and Paula Bennett (paywalled)
Josie Pagani (Post): What’s the big idea? Getting to the point in Māori politics (paywalled)
Steve Braunias (Newsroom): The secret diary of .. opinion polls
Kiah Radcliffe (Post): How AI ‘slop’ is threatening the integrity of the upcoming general election (paywalled)
IDEA: A trip that got decision-makers thinking about deeper democracy (paywalled)
Peter Williams: STV time is up
Nigel Haworth (The Standard): Reformism or bust?: Making the best of a bleak future
Mike Hosking (Newstalk ZB): Chris Hipkins is deluded
Ellen Curnow (Newsroom): The West Coast pub where politics is messy, argumentative and stubbornly alive

TREATY OF WAITANGI
Julia Gabel (Herald): Ngāi Tahu preparing to renegotiate parts of Treaty settlement amid major conservation law reforms
Adam Pearse (Herald): Govt agrees to change or scrap Treaty of Waitangi references in 19 laws
Stuff: Government confirms changes to Treaty clauses as Waitangi Tribunal finds ‘reckless’ breach
Hanna McCallum (Newsroom): Waitangi Tribunal urges halt on Treaty clause changes
Māni Dunlop (Te Ao News): ‘Major breach’: Tribunal says education Treaty overhaul ‘may be worse’ than Treaty Principles Bill
Tuwhenuaroa Natanahira and Pokere Paewai (RNZ): Government targets 19 pieces of legislation for Waitangi Treaty amendments
Tuwhenuaroa Natanahira and Pokere Paewai (RNZ): Waitangi Tribunal calls for immediate halt to changes to education legislation affecting Treaty

MĀORI POLITICS
Whatitiri Te Wake (Te Ao News): “Shocking display of arrogance by Minister Shane Jones” — Ngāti Ruanui lodge complaint with Speaker
Lauren Crimp (RNZ): Ngāti Ruanui demands apology for ‘shameful’ Shane Jones comments
Liam Rātana (Spinoff): ‘Kei hea te tika?’: Hūhana Lyndon accuses Waitangi Tribunal of silencing wāhine Māori

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The Commerce Commission’s “State of Competition in New Zealand” report landed on Tuesday. It is arguably the most important economic document of the political year. It names four sectors as the country’s least competitive: electricity, gas, water and waste services; financial and insurance services; information media and telecommunications; and mining.

The night before the report came out, the Minister of Commerce met with executives from five oligopolistic sectors — energy, banking, supermarkets, insurance and telecommunications — all but one of which feature in the regulator’s list. Cameron Brewer marked the moment by posting on LinkedIn a sunny photograph from a roundtable discussion about the broken markets that the executives presided over. The host of the discussion was Lillis Clark, one of Wellington’s most connected lobbying firms.

This is how Wellington works in 2026.

What the Commission actually found

“The State of Competition in New Zealand” is the Commission’s first economy-wide baseline study, drawing on 22 years of Stats NZ firm-level data. Commission Chair Dr John Small chose his words carefully at the launch. He called the picture “nuanced.” The press release used “mixed.” But you should read past the politeness.

“The report finds that while business concentration has reduced on average, competitive pressure has weakened in many parts of the economy,” Small said. “Market conditions are favouring larger incumbent businesses, and it is harder for smaller, newer businesses to displace them.”

That is, for a regulator, an extraordinary admission. The economy is being captured by its incumbents.

The least competitive industries over the full 22-year period are: electricity, gas, water and waste services; financial and insurance services; information media and telecommunications; and mining. Financial and insurance services show the strongest worsening trend across the entire period. The sectors sitting at the bottom of the competition table are the exact sectors sitting at the top of the cost-of-living debate.

Rob Stock, writing in The Post on Wednesday, put it cleanly: “Banks, insurers, power companies, and retailers demonstrate the greatest power to maintain their prices and margins.” He added the line most political coverage glided past: “competitive pressures appeared weakest in some essential industries that households could not avoid.” This is an important point, because these are sectors that the public has no choice but to do business with.

The OECD says the quiet part out loud

David Haugh, who runs the OECD’s New Zealand desk, spoke at the Commission’s “Competition Matters” conference in Auckland yesterday. The OECD is not some leftist pressure group. Its representative could not have been blunter: “In a small, remote economy, competition does not emerge organically. It must be designed.”

For thirty years successive governments have indulged the comforting story that our markets are small but functional and that the answer to high prices is patience. Haugh swept it away in one sentence.

He went further: “A key issue for making the New Zealand economy work better is to reduce the profitability of banks in the country, unfortunately for the banks.” Lending margins, he told the room, sit “at the upper end of the OECD range”. The profits being extracted from this country are not being recycled in it. They are being shipped to Sydney and Melbourne.

On electricity, Haugh was just as direct. New Zealand generates around 96% of its power from renewables, and runs wholesale prices among the highest in the OECD. “We think there’s a market failure here,” he said — drawing unfavourable comparisons to Norway, Sweden and Finland, other renewables-rich economies that have not allowed their energy sectors to capture the system this way.

Cameron Brewer stepped up to the same podium ten minutes later and told delegates to “watch this space” on capital markets reform. That was the Minister’s contribution to the most significant competition diagnostic the regulator has yet produced.

Brewer’s roundtable worth scrutinising

Cameron Brewer has been Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs since 2 April. Five weeks in, the most important document on the structure of New Zealand markets in living memory landed on his desk. He has said next to nothing about it in public.

What he did find time for was a LinkedIn post. His words, lightly punctuated: “A good roundtable discussion on The Terrace in Wellington this evening with leaders in the likes of energy, banking, supermarkets, insurance, and telecommunications. Thanks to host Lillis Clark. This Government is about improving competition so consumers have more choices at better cost.”

Lillis Clark is the boutique public-affairs lobbying firm of Anna Lillis and Kenny Clark, both former senior staffers to National ministers under Key and English. Mentioning them in The Post today, Henry Cooke called Lillis Clark “the go-to firm for this Government”.

Political journalist Richard Harman has reported that Lillis Clark is “said to write much of the Beehive policy” for the current government. Anna Lillis is engaged to the Trade Minister, Todd McClay. And today it was reported that Georgina Campbell, former senior NZ Herald journalist and then head of office for the Lower Hutt Mayor, has just joined the firm. The revolving door between the Beehive and the lobby is now wider than at any point in the post-MMP era.

The firm’s client list, to the limited extent it can be reconstructed in a country with no lobbying register, includes operators in exactly the sectors the new Minister of Commerce was sitting in a room with.

Maybe it’s all perfectly innocent. Wellington is a small place. But this is the point: nobody in the system thinks anything is wrong with it. Brewer isn’t hiding the meeting. He is broadcasting it with a cheerful social media post.

The paywall now starts at halfway through all Democracy Project newsletters. Please take out a paid sub if you want to support this service and access the full content, including the following sections: “Kent Duston puts a face on it”, “Upstream rot”, “What an honest response would look like”, “The politics of the rigging”, and “The democratic problem”.

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PARLIAMENT, ELECTION AND GOVERNMENT
Matthew Hooton (Herald): Christopher Luxon drops slogans for hard truths on security, debt and immigration (paywalled)
Tim Murphy (Newsroom): Hipkins dangles possibility of post-election outreach to National, Auckland
Adam Pearse (Herald): New poll keeps National in the 20s, Winston Peters closing in on Christopher Luxon in preferred PM
Jamie Ensor (Herald): Labour’s Chris Hipkins claims Aucklanders mostly moved on from Covid-19 lockdowns, ministers say he’s in ‘denial’
NBR: Labour’s plan to lift Auckland’s performance (paywalled)
Stewart Sowman-Lund (Post): All or nothing: Michael Wood pins comeback on winning Mount Roskill (paywalled)
Russell Palmer (RNZ): Bill banning under-16s from social media put on hold, Erica Stanford confirms
Natalia Albert: Can Qiulae Wong become the new Queenmaker?
Michael Swanson: Do the ‘major parties’ actually have long-term plans?
Nick James (Post): New poll shows National still under 30% support, with Labour leading the pack (paywalled)
Audrey Young (Herald): Why Christopher Luxon has a new spring in his step; the curious case of Chris Hipkins and the office toaster (paywalled)
Lyric Waiwiri-Smith (Spinoff): One MP, One Pint: Tom Rutherford on the coward punch that changed his life
Lochlan Lineham (Herald): Judith Collins calls 2020 ‘talofa’ comment backlash hysteria from ‘wet wipes’
Alicia McKay: Why citizens’ assemblies won’t fix political distrust
Ryan Bridge (Newstalk ZB): Wellington’s endless spending on pen-pushers and reviews
Mike Hosking (Newstalk ZB): Reality vs ideology re: asset sales
Liam Hehir: All the lines are fighting each other (paywalled)

BUDGET 2026
Rob Campbell (Post): The hollowness and the cruelty of the savings illusion (paywalled)
Rebecca Howard (BusinessDesk): Business groups back fiscal discipline as Budget 2026 takes shape (paywalled)
Herald: Editorial – Govt needs to do more to get young people into work (paywalled)
ODT: Editorial – Our place in the world (paywalled)
Harriet Laughton and Nikki Macdonald (Post): Budget 2026: $15.5m palliative care fund for children (paywalled)
Susan St John: We are not broke: it is time to talk about the bogeyman of government’s debt

ECONOMY AND BUSINESS
Damien Venuto (Stuff): Fewer than half of Kiwis under 45 usually feel life is worthwhile
Rob Stock (Post): ‘Reduce the profitability of banks’: OECD NZ desk head has blunt message on economy (paywalled)
Rob Stock (Post): Bank lobbyist Roger Beaumont to be nominated for Australian of the Year by banking reform activist (paywalled)
Brent Melville (NBR): ComCom says less competition can be necessary in a crisis (paywalled)
Aimee Shaw (Post): Price rises yet to flow through to the consumer, retailers say (paywalled)
Brent Edwards (NBR): Govt wants Super Fund to widen its NZ investment (paywalled)
Rebecca Stevenson (BusinessDesk): Xero to learn from past, CEO says, as Drury review unfolds (paywalled)
Chris Keall (Herald): Icehouse Ventures’ $150m Growth Fund III hits first close as KiwiSaver provider Generate invests (paywalled)

CLIMATE CHANGE AND LAW CHANGE
Bjørn-Oliver Magsig and Graeme Austin (The Conversation): Changing climate law to prevent civil cases removes a key protection for NZ citizens
Ihsan Badshah, Prasad Hegde and Sara Ali (The Conversation): Climate risk is changing where investors put their money – even as NZ relaxes disclosure rules
Roger Partridge (Herald): Parliament right to correct Supreme Court on climate change case
Ashley Parker (BusinessDesk): Govt climate tort move draws rule-of-law criticism (paywalled)
Joel MacManus (Spinoff): Why this AI data centre might be New Zealand’s most important climate project

IMMIGRATION
Sam Crawley: Immigration has rarely driven NZ elections. Could 2026 buck the trend?
Glenn McConnell (Stuff): ‘We’re not having enough babies’: Immigration minister triggers raucous response during question time
Jenna Lynch (Stuff): PM tests waters of immigration debate after coalition partners dive in headfirst
Liam Dann (Herald): Net migration: Small rise as Kiwi departures drop in March, arrivals steady (paywalled)
John Gerritsen (RNZ): Foreign masters degree enrolments soar as August rule change looms

MINING
Bryce Edwards (Democracy Project): Digging for influence
Fox Meyer (Newsroom): Americans in town to hear first critical minerals pitches
Matthew Littlewood (ODT): Land approval given (paywalled)

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Yesterday, Shane Jones hosted a meeting at the Beehive. The guest list tells you quite a bit about whose interests his government is serving.

The Resources Minister gathered mining company bosses, a senior US State Department official, and diplomats from Australia, Japan and South Korea in Wellington for what was billed as a “critical minerals roundtable.” The American delegation — led by Michael DeSombre, assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs — heard pitches from New Zealand mining companies hoping to tap into US-backed finance for their projects. Jones canvassed the idea of the government setting minimum prices for certain minerals, a kind of public price floor for private extractors.

According to Thomas Coughlan’s account in the Herald, Jones told the room he wanted to create a “narrative” that critical minerals were “a legitimate part of the New Zealand economy.”

What is already legitimate is the money the extraction sector has been putting into coalition party accounts. The Electoral Commission released the 2025 annual donation returns last week, and this column — the third in my current series on who is funding New Zealand politics — goes looking at what the mining, oil, and gas sector has been contributing.

The answer, in outline: roughly $295,000 in declared donations in 2025, spread mainly across NZ First and National. That is a smaller figure than the property and construction sector’s $497,000, which I covered in the previous column. The dollar figure understates the relationship. What the sector received from the coalition in 2025, and what it paid back in early 2026, is the cleanest legislation-to-donation sequence in the current cycle.

The wishlist that was delivered

The 2025 calendar year was a spectacular policy year for the extraction sector.

The Fast-Track Approvals Act 2024 listed eleven mining projects eligible for the government’s streamlined consenting pathway, bypassing the ordinary Environment Court and council process. Among those listed are OceanaGold’s Waihi North and Macraes Phase 4, Santana Minerals’ Bendigo-Ophir gold mine in Central Otago, and Bathurst Resources’ Buller Plateaux Continuation project to extend the Stockton and Escarpment coal mines. The government committed $80 million of its Regional Infrastructure Fund specifically to critical-minerals projects. It allocated $200 million in Budget 2025 to co-invest in new gas field developments. It set a target of doubling New Zealand’s mineral exports to $3 billion by 2035.

Energy Resources Aotearoa chief executive John Carnegie was appointed by Energy Minister Simeon Brown to the EECA board in March 2025 against official advice, as Eloise Gibson reported for RNZ.

And, most consequentially, the Government passed the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2025.

That legislation changed the very purpose of the Crown Minerals Act, from “manage” New Zealand’s petroleum and mineral resources to “promote” their development. Not a minor revision. The Act also weakened decommissioning liability for petroleum operators, replacing automatic trailing liability with ministerial discretion over who pays for clean-ups. It repealed the 2018 ban on new offshore oil and gas exploration permits. It broadened the operational latitude for new exploration activity.

Labour MP Deborah Russell, during the bill’s third reading debate, named the bill’s hidden constituency. Those consulted on the late-stage Supplementary Order Paper, she said, were “shadowy participants in the oil and gas industry… who we don’t know who they are”, who “much prefer to be able to lobby a minister” than work to a statutory rule.

A name that does some work

There is a postscript to the 2025 donations. On 19 and 20 February 2026, GMP Environmental Limited made three donations: $100,000 to the National Party, $100,000 to Act, and $100,000 to NZ First. Three parties, three identical deposits, the same week — $300,000 in all.

GMP Environmental Limited is a subsidiary of Greymouth Petroleum, one of New Zealand’s largest oil and gas operators. The company is controlled by Mark Dunphy, an NBR Rich Lister with an estimated net worth of over $200 million, who had a documented adversarial public history with the previous Labour government’s Crown Minerals policy — he sued Energy Minister Megan Woods in 2018 over the offshore exploration ban. Greymouth was, by multiple accounts, among the most vocal lobbyists for the decommissioning liability changes the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2025 delivered.

Donating through a subsidiary is legal and common. But the choice of “GMP Environmental” as the donor of record is worth considering. The name, on a quick scan of the Electoral Commission register without further research, suggests environmental consultancy or environmental services. The corporate website for GMP Environmental describes it as supplying trucks, trailers, mudtanks, generators and portaloos, mostly to oilfield clients. It is, functionally, a logistics subsidiary of a gas exploration company. The “Environmental” branding is doing real work in obscuring that connection.

The blogger No Right Turn, writing in March 2026, called the donations “payment for services rendered” and described the arrangement as “naked corruption. Bribery. Law for sale.” While that’s a fairly sharp way of putting it, the pattern makes it hard to read any other way. After all, when an industry helps lobby for a legislative change that shifts hundreds of millions of dollars of potential liability off its balance sheets and onto taxpayers, and then, seven months after that legislation passes, routes $300,000 to the three governing parties through a subsidiary whose name partly obscures the connection, the appearance of a quid pro quo is so overwhelming that the technical legality of the transaction stops looking like a defence and starts looking like part of the problem.

RNZ’s Kirsty Johnston established, through Official Information Act requests, that officials gave industry bodies — including Energy Resources Aotearoa, OMV, Todd and Methanex — confidential pre-consultation on the Crown Minerals Amendment Bill, sharing draft amendment text for feedback on “workability” and adjusting wording in response.

One company’s feedback led officials to clarify drafting in a direction that “confirm[ed] the guarantee was limited to ‘unmet costs’ or ‘a proportion of those unmet costs’, reducing the scope of potential liability” the company would face. Officials noted internally that the company “intend to convey their thanks” before the legislation was even public. The legislation was, in other words, not just lobbied for through normal submission channels: it was substantially co-authored by the regulated sector. GMP Environmental’s three-party donation arrived into that context.

The backdrop: $293 million of public money

In 2019, Tamarind Taranaki, a Malaysian-owned petroleum company, became insolvent and walked away from its obligations to decommission the Tui oil field off the Taranaki coast. New Zealand taxpayers ended up paying approximately $293 million — drawn from an initial appropriation of $443 million — to clean up a field a private company had profited from but refused to close. The Labour government passed the Crown Minerals (Decommissioning and Other Matters) Amendment Act 2021 specifically to prevent a repeat of that scenario, creating trailing liability provisions that made petroleum operators responsible for decommissioning costs even after selling or offloading assets.

The oil and gas industry opposed those provisions from the moment of their passage. Greymouth Petroleum was among the most persistent advocates for their repeal.

The Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2025 effectively reopened the liability gap the 2021 law had closed. It replaced automatic trailing liability with ministerial discretion, meaning that whether the next Tamarind leaves taxpayers with a $300 million bill now depends on a minister’s judgement call rather than a statutory rule. The minister who controls that discretion is the same minister whose party is the primary recipient of extractive-sector donations.

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BUDGET 2026
Jo Moir (RNZ): Finance Minister puts money where her mouth is by reducing Budget’s operating allowance
Jenna Lynch (Stuff): No room for sugar hits in the Budget - Government cuts its spending allowance
Henry Cooke (Post): Nicola Willis says ‘job-rich’ projects will feature in $2.2b boost to capital allowance (paywalled)
Henry Cooke (Post): PM Christopher Luxon says he will pick ‘social stability’ over high migration (paywalled)
Simon Shepherd (NBR): Govt cuts $300m from Budget operating allowance (paywalled)
Russell Palmer (RNZ): Willis blames fuel crisis for reduced Budget savings, Seymour takes credit for lower operational spending
Thomas Manch (BusinessDesk): Saavy or splurge? Ministers coy about where $2.2b extra Budget capital to be spent (paywalled)
Rebecca Howard (BusinessDesk): Prime Minister Luxon doubles down on 2029 surplus goal (paywalled)
RNZ: Christopher Luxon signals immigration policy, more capital spending in Budget 2026

IMMIGRATION
Jenna Lynch (Stuff): PM tests waters of immigration debate after coalition partners dive headfirst
Richard Prebble (Herald): Act’s proposed immigration crackdown misses root cause of NZ work and welfare woes (paywalled)
Ganesh Nana: Immigrants, foreigners, racism, and economics
RNZ: PM promising solution to immigration problem that doesn’t exist, demographer says
Craig McCulloch (RNZ): Winston Peters takes crack at Christopher Luxon over immigration comments
Justin Hu (1News): National eyes KiwiSaver changes as Luxon hardens on immigration
Gill Bonnett (RNZ): Immigration NZ could ‘demand identification papers from everyone’ says civil liberties group
Lauren Crimp (RNZ): Claims immigration changes will see US-style crackdown ‘completely wrong’ - Erica Stanford
Harriet Laughton (Post): Lawyer argues removing appeal rights in deportation cases fails migrants (paywalled)
Anneke Smith (Post): NZer held by ICE would have to be facing death penalty for ministerial intervention - Winston Peters (paywalled)
Mihingarangi Forbes (RNZ): Everlee Wihongi case: Government officials confirm contact with US immigration over Kiwi’s detention
Richard Shaw (The Conversation): Kiwi or not to be: can a citizenship test really measure what it means to be a New Zealander?

MĀORI POLITICS
Bryce Edwards (Democracy Project): The Māori political class is failing its people
Glenn McConnell (Stuff): Oriini Kaipara dodges questions about her future with Te Pāti Māori
Justin Hu (1News): Hone Harawira awaits wife’s approval to stand for Te Pāti Māori
Mike Hosking (Newstalk ZB): Has the Māori Party been a success?

PARLIAMENT, ELECTION AND GOVERNMENT
Derek Cheng (Herald): Revealed: How the Government pivoted its alcohol policies from reducing violent crime to boosting the economy (paywalled)
Thomas Coughlan (Herald): Shane Jones entertains critical minerals heavyweights at Parliament, ponders minimum prices (paywalled)
Tim Murphy (Newsroom): Luxon shines his little light through global storms and political gloom
Richard Harman: PM’s significant speech (paywalled)
Rachel Maher (Herald): Police spend $100k to block Brian Tamaki Auckland Harbour Bridge protest march
Stuff: Shane Jones given the haere rā from question time
Anneke Smith (Post): National MP Tim Costley questions why FENZ hired consultants to respond to his inquiry (paywalled)
Catherine McGregor (Spinoff): The Opportunity Party is having a moment

CONSERVATION REFORMS
Louis Collins (RNZ): ‘Practical change’ or ‘paradigm shift’? MPs debate conservation reform
Russell Palmer (RNZ): Opposition warns reforms open up conservation estate to sale as government pushes on
Māni Dunlop (Te Ao Māori News): Ngāi Tahu warns conservation reforms undermine Treaty settlements, Minister defends it
Marc Daalder (Newsroom): Govt takes one step forward, three steps back on environment policies
No Right Turn: The regime is out of time

CLIMATE
Martha Jeffries (Spinoff): Is the climate law change this government’s jump the shark moment?
Shay Schlaepfer (Post): The Government’s erosion of environmental justice is undermining our democracy (paywalled)
Rob Stock (Post): Greens/Labour Government could use ‘urgency’ to repeal climate bill (paywalled)

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On Monday, Mariameno Kapa-Kingi announced publicly she was leaving Te Pāti Māori to form the Te Tai Tokerau Party. The announcement was framed in the language of mana motuhake, regional self-determination, and wahine leadership. It was, she said, the approach she and her team decided was best for them.

Two months earlier, the High Court had ruled her expulsion from TPM unlawful. Justice Paul Radich found that the party had failed to follow its own constitution — her electorate committee excluded from the meeting that decided her fate, no proper opportunity given to respond, tikanga principles not applied in any meaningful way. She was reinstated. And then she left anyway. Because, as she put it, the party’s leadership had failed to meet a single one of her conditions, which included the resignation of party president John Tamihere.

Since then, co-leader Rawiri Waititi has had to publicly hose down speculation about whether Oriini Kaipara or Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke might also drift away. Oriini Kaipara’s office spent yesterday denying she’d told a Stuff reporter she was “considering options”. Glenn McConnell had reported the week before that Hana-Rāwhiti Maipi-Clarke was being lobbied to head a breakaway party in Tainui.

The split is not what it looks like

The conventional framing in most of the coverage this last year has been one of turmoil, chaos, a party tearing itself apart. But if you want to understand Te Pāti Māori’s split, you have to stop looking for a great ideological struggle and start looking at the machinery of power, money, family, and control.

There is no ideological dispute here — no policy clash, no principled disagreement about what TPM should stand for. As RNZ’s Craig McCulloch noted accurately during the November 2025 expulsions, “from what has dripped out over the past six weeks, it seems the feud is driven more by personality than principle.”

This seems even truer now. And once you see that, a lot of Te Pāti Māori’s recent behaviour makes more sense. The factional war is not an accidental outbreak of bad vibes. It is what happens when a party becomes too personalised, too centralised, and too fused with the ambitions and networks of a small elite circle.

The fight is over jobs, budgets, control of electoral machinery, and — above all — who controls the party president’s role. Kapa-Kingi’s demands were not ideological. They were structural: remove Tamihere, reinstate Ferris, issue an apology. She didn’t present a rival policy platform when she launched her new party on Monday. Not even close. Te Tai Tokerau Party has a name, a founding statement, and about 200 financial members. What it does not yet have is a published policy programme — because this breakaway is not about kaupapa. It’s about power.

As Liam Rātana noted in the Spinoff, the new party’s structure leaves Kapa-Kingi politically fluid, even, in theory, open to supporting a National-led government if it suited Te Tai Tokerau.

Tākuta Ferris has been sitting as an independent MP since his own unlawful expulsion in November 2025. He will announce his path for November in coming weeks. His entire former electorate committee resigned from TPM. The Te Tai Tokerau electorate committee also resigned this week. An organisation whose internal democracy has collapsed produces this kind of symptom. Policy disagreements don’t.

From six seats to here

At the start of 2025, Te Pāti Māori was on the crest of a wave. It held six of the seven Māori seats. The Tōitū Te Tiriti hikoi had generated the largest political protest in New Zealand’s history. Polls had the party above the five per cent threshold. Oriini Kaipara won a decisive by-election victory in Tāmaki Makaurau. A party reset was announced.

Within weeks, the reset was fiction. In October 2025, Kapa-Kingi’s son Eru publicly accused the party’s leadership of running “a dictatorship model” and announced Tōitū Te Tiriti’s independence from any political party. The party retaliated with an email to members alleging financial misconduct by Mariameno and an altercation involving Eru at a parliamentary protest. On 9 November, at a meeting from which Kapa-Kingi’s and Ferris’s electorate committees were excluded, both MPs were expelled. The Iwi Chairs Forum — representing 88 iwi — was in the middle of brokering a peace hui when the expulsion vote happened. Te Pāti Māori held it anyway.

Hone Harawira, watching from the sidelines, described it as “the party tearing itself apart and not an enemy in sight.” He was right. And now he may become TPM’s candidate in Te Tai Tokerau against the woman the party just expelled.

After the High Court’s March ruling, Kapa-Kingi described the silence from the party leadership as “deafening.” Rawiri Waititi sent her a brief text. John Tamihere said nothing at all. “The question remains,” she said, “whether Te Pāti Māori can be trusted by my rohe, while no changes have been made.”

No changes were made. She quit.

If this were really a grand debate over ideas, someone would be able to state the disagreement plainly. They can’t. Because the heart of it is far less noble: self-interest, hierarchy, grievance, and turf.

A family business, not a movement

The most useful analysis of the court documents came from David Farrar, who asked simply: “Is it a party or a family?” The question answered itself. President: John Tamihere. Co-leader: Rawiri Waititi — Tamihere’s son-in-law. General Manager: Kiri Tamihere-Waititi — Tamihere’s daughter. Party Secretary: Lance Norman — employed by Tamihere’s Whānau Ora Commissioning Agency. Waiariki electorate co-chair: Monica Waititi — Rawiri’s sister-in-law. Te Tai Hauāuru electorate chair: Hinemoana Durie-Shedlock — Tamihere’s sister-in-law. Ikaroa-Rāwhiti electorate chair: Te Rina Lemon — described in court documents as Tamihere’s niece.

Farrar put it bluntly: “This would be like the National Party that has Bill English as Leader, Maria English as General Manager, Maria’s husband as a deputy leader, Mary’s sister as a regional chair, Libby English as another regional chair and Jo Coughlan as a third regional chair. It would be unthinkable”

The people walking out are the ones who tried to challenge that axis and lost.

In sworn court documents released during the judicial review, one member of the party’s national council, Robert Whaitiri, stated that “all decisions in the party were being made by a small number of persons” and that the national executive and national council were “asked to simply rubber-stamp any decisions made.”

Tamihere himself once made an almost identical critique — but of others. In a 2018 RNZ interview he argued that “there are effectively two classes of Māori, the iwi elite and everyone else”, and that Māori without tribal connections were being shortchanged by leaders looking after their own. Tamihere is now an emblem of his own diagnosis: the Māori elite that he once said was looking after its own

The paywall now starts at halfway through all Democracy Project newsletters. Please take out a paid sub if you want to support this service and access the full content, including the following sections: “Follow the money and the whakapapa”, “Who was this party for?”, “Not heroes, not villains, just politicians”, “The Māori electoral landscape, fractured”, and “What democracy requires”.

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CLIMATE LAW CHANGE
Kate Newton (RNZ): Government changes climate law to prevent lawsuits
Science Media Centre: Govt changes law to halt climate lawsuits – Expert Reaction
Jonathan Milne (Newsroom): Torts and tautology: Govt to change law to override the courts … again
RNZ: Climate legislation changes an attack on the rule of law - Environmental Defence Society
Brent Edwards (NBR): Greens condemn climate law change while Act claims victory (paywalled)
Emma Ricketts (Stuff): Government moves to restrict climate change lawsuits before landmark trial
Mandy Te (Interest): Justice Minister says Parliament, not the courts, is the place to resolve claims of climate change harm
No Right Turn: Climate Change: Putting polluters above the law
Greg Presland (Standard): Constitutional outrage
Matthew Tukaki (Waatea News): Climate Laws ‘Being Rewritten To Protect Polluters’ – Mike Smith
Matthew Tukaki (Waatea News): Govt Accused Of Protecting Big Polluters From Climate Accountability
Ellen Rykers (Spinoff): New Zealand’s latest climate change risk assessment, explained
Brent Edwards (NBR): Climate law change will limit individual rights, academic warns (paywalled)

TE PĀTI MĀORI AND MĀORI POLITICS
Liam Rātana (Spinoff): Māori politics just got even more interesting
Adam Pearse (Herald): Labour senses chances as Kapa-Kingi’s new party deepens Māori seats turmoil (paywalled)
Lauren Crimp (RNZ): New Te Tai Tokerau Party may not be able to contest election under that name, Bishop says
Te Ao Māori News: Te Tai Tokerau race heats up as Hone Harawira emerges as a potential Te Pāti Māori candidate
Maxine Jacobs (Post): Te Tai Tonga MP Tākuta Ferris to announce pathway back to Parliament as election looms (paywalled)
Justin Hu (1News): Kapa-Kingi talks plan for new party after Te Pāti Māori split
Jenna Lynch (Stuff): Two statements from Oriini Kaipara give conflicting accounts about whether she’ll stay with Te Pāti Māori
Anneke Smith (Post): Labour’s Māori campaign chair slams Te Pāti Māori over candidate confusion: ‘We don’t need those sort of games’ (paywalled)
Catherine McGregor (Spinoff): The further unravelling of Te Pāti Māori
Lillian Hanly (RNZ): Oriini Kaipara confirms loyalty to Te Pāti Māori after conflicting reports
RNZ: Mariameno Kapa-Kingi putting aside Te Pāti Māori split to focus on new Te Tai Tokerau Party
Stuff: Māori Queen continues family tradition meeting Prince William at Windsor Castle
1News: ‘Delicate situation’: Plans for Ihumātao unresolved five years on

OPPORTUNITY PARTY
Bryce Edwards (Democracy Project): The Opportunity Party’s anti-Winston wager
Hanna McCallum (Newsroom): Major left-wing donor tops up Opportunity Party donation to $100k
Catherine McGregor (Spinoff): The Opportunity Party is having a moment

POLLS
Craig McCulloch (RNZ): New poll: Coalition partners tumble, but could still form government
Glenn McConnell and Emma Ricketts (Stuff): Latest poll shows neither side of Parliament has strong support
Roy Morgan: Support for National-led Government and Labour-led Opposition remains tied in April
Herald: New Poll of Polls predictions revealed – how have new results affected election chances?
Matthew Hooton (Patreon): Coalition hanging on despite Luxon favourability reaching new low (paywalled)
Matthew Hooton (Patreon): National crashes to 25.5% in Roy Morgan poll; just 16% among voters under 50 (paywalled)

PARLIAMENT, ELECTION AND GOVERNMENT
Matt Nippert (Herald): Inside John Tamihere’s six-figure Waipareira Trust bonus and his long war with Charities Services (paywalled)
Bryce Edwards (Democracy Project): A Property developers’ government?
Toby Manhire (Spinoff): Trevor Mallard on where Labour went wrong
David Burton (Post): The workplace standard politicians refuse to meet (paywalled)
Mike Hosking (Newstalk ZB): Is Chlöe Swarbrick a bit useless?
Simon Wilson (Listener): PM’s unpopularity makes headlines, but there’s a deeper battle between Bishop and Brown (paywalled)
Richard Harman: Can Willis keep the smile on the PM’s face? (paywalled)
Marc Daalder (Newsroom): All the kōrero about the English Language Bill
Luke Malpass (Post): Christopher Luxon to cast economic discipline as national security issue (paywalled)
Brent Edwards (NBR): Don’t confuse party politics with running a government, PM says (paywalled)
Simon O’Connor: Where has the far-left gone?
Craig McCulloch (RNZ): Media attacks: Seymour ‘explained his comments well’, says PM
Sam Smith (Stuff): Putting a spanner in the works: Six times breakaway parties emerged in NZ politics
Mike Grimshaw: It’s the (social adhesion) economy, Stupid!

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Every few days now, a senior commentator floats the idea of a grand coalition. National and Labour, the two old majors, governing together in a centrist marriage of convenience designed to keep the extremists at bay. The fantasy keeps recurring because the current arrangement has produced something resembling a hostage situation. National is bound to NZ First. Labour, on current numbers, will need the Greens and Te Pāti Māori. Both major parties spend much of their time managing partners they would rather not be in business with. The grand coalition idea is a way of imagining out from under that pressure.

There is, however, a quieter and more realistic version of the same instinct. It is called the Opportunity Party.

I talked about Opportunity yesterday on RNZ’s Jesse Mulligan show (What does The Opportunity Party stand for in 2026?), and the more I worked through the material, the more it struck me that this is the underlying story of the party in 2026. The grand coalition daydream and the Opportunity insurgency are two answers to the same problem: how do you break a political system in which Winston Peters has been kingmaker for thirty years?

Opportunity has the more plausible answer. It will still probably fall short. But it has a better chance this year than it has ever had, and the reasons are worth taking seriously.

Something has shifted

Under new leader Qiulae Wong, the party formerly known as The Opportunities Party (or TOP) has rebranded, dropped its old wonk-and-cats baggage, and assembled the strongest campaign apparatus it has put together in four election cycles.

The general manager is Iain Lees-Galloway, the former Labour minister who has actual experience of how parliamentary campaigns are won. The candidate list has grown to twenty-eight, with some recognisable names from the environmental sector. The party has built a war chest of around half a million dollars. Les Mills founder Phillip Mills has now donated $100,000 to Opportunity so far this year, after a second $50,000 contribution last week. Tech entrepreneur Brian Cartmell has put in another $100,000. These are big numbers by the party’s historical standards.

The leader is also the most likeable face the party has put forward. Ben Thomas, the National-aligned commentator, observes that Wong “certainly appears the most likeable of the Top leaders so far”, and notes that Act went from one seat to ten partly on the back of David Seymour learning to look more relatable.

The external conditions are unusually favourable too. National and Labour are together polling at around 64%, well below their typical combined share. And any idea of National being able to attract “blue green” voters has died. Related to this, conservation NGOs boycotted National’s recent Bluegreens forum and turned up to Wong’s state of the nation speech instead. There is a real pool of disaffected, environmentally minded voters looking for somewhere new to go.

Most importantly, the party is finally polling at levels it has rarely touched before. The Newsroom piece by Hanna McCallum today puts Opportunity’s average for the year so far at 2.3%, with the latest 1News Verian poll showing 3.3%. The new Curia-Taxpayers’ Union poll out this afternoon will be worth watching closely. A figure that holds at three per cent or above, across multiple firms, is the threshold of credibility the party needs to break out of the wasted-vote trap.

The conditions are real, and so is the improvement. The harder question is whether any of that converts into actual seats.

The five per cent moat

To win seats in Parliament, Opportunity needs to clear 5% of the party vote, or win an electorate. Wong is standing in Mt Albert but is realistic about her chances there. So the whole campaign rests on getting above 5%.

The threshold is brutal, and it is brutal in a particular way. Peter Dunne, the long-serving United Future leader, captured the dynamic on RNZ’s The Detail. People say they like the party, he explained, but they don’t believe it can win, “therefore can’t waste the vote on you.” He went on: “It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy in a way.”

This is the wasted-vote trap. To reach 5%, the party first has to look like it might reach 5%. Looking like it might requires media coverage. Media coverage follows relevance, and relevance depends on polling close to the threshold. The whole thing is circular. Danyl McLauchlan put it bluntly in a March Listener column: “Opportunity is appealing to an educated and informed demographic, and these people hate wasting their vote. They’d rather give their support to a major party that will make it than a minor party that may not. Opportunity is stuck in a trap: to reach 5% it needs to have already reached 5%.”

There is a further structural difficulty. No new party has entered Parliament in the modern era of MMP without a leader who already had a seat. Richard Prebble had been a Labour minister. Jim Anderton was a sitting MP. Tariana Turia walked out of Cabinet. Winston Peters had been an MP for two decades when he set up NZ First. Wong, by contrast, got the job of leading the party by responding to a recruitment advertisement.

Liam Hehir captures the appropriate response to recent polling movement with characteristic dryness. The February Roy Morgan poll at 4% was the highest the party had ever recorded, and its supporters “treat it as evidence of imminent breakthrough”. But, Hehir writes, “as Colin Craig could tell you, polling at four percent in an election year is about the same as polling at one percent”. Craig’s Conservatives polled nearly four per cent in 2014. Three years later they were on 0.2.

These are the gravitational forces pulling Opportunity back to earth. None of them is new. None of them is decisive. But all of them are present.

Who is the Opportunity Party actually for?

The deeper problem is older and harder, and I have been writing about it since 2017. The party has never managed to answer the most basic question that any new political formation must answer. Who is this party for?

When I first put this argument forward, in the wake of Gareth Morgan’s decision to step down after the 2017 election, I observed that the party had been exuding two very different (and mutually exclusive) messages about its political character. For some, it was a vehicle for Wellington cosmopolitan policy wonks, an urban-elite project for people who liked to read books about public policy and had a strong allegiance to Te Tiriti. For others, it was a more provincial, down-to-earth, straight-talking party of outsiders for those sick of the establishment.

It can’t be both of those things at once. Yet nine years on, the party is still trying.

Liam Hehir has been making the same point from the right of the political spectrum, and his framing remains the most accurate single description of the problem. Hehir’s description of TOP under Gareth Morgan was that it was an anti-establishment party “that was going to rise up against the entrenched way of doing things from its base in, er, bureaucratic Wellington” — one that “railed against personality-driven politics while earning free media on the basis of celebrity”. And, in his most quoted formulation: TOP was “too woke for talkback town, too talkback for woke town”.

The contradiction sits inside Opportunity’s self-presentation in 2026 too. The branding is anti-establishment. The website talks about people who are tired of waiting for change. Verity Johnson’s Stuff piece yesterday paints the launch as “an EDM rave crossed with a powerpoint presentation” — black merino sweaters, ironic knitted tank tops, a snack platter, and a whiteboard for the policy bits. The people in the room, she writes, were “smart, restless, urban, thoroughly pissed off with the status quo.”

The paywall now starts at halfway through all Democracy Project newsletters. Please take out a paid sub if you want to support this service and access the full content, including the following sections: “Blue, green, or just red?”, “The Greens problem and the unhoused progressives”, “A millionaire-funded party?”, “The anti-Winston wager”, and “Could 2026 finally be Opportunity’s year?”.

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TE PĀTI MĀORI SPLIT
Giles Dexter (RNZ): Te Pāti Māori splits as MP Mariameno Kapa-Kingi announces new Te Tai Tokerau Party
Māni Dunlop (Te Ao Māori News): Mariameno Kapa-Kingi leaves Te Pāti Māori, announces new political party
Anneke Smith (Post): Mariameno Kapa-Kingi launches her own party (paywalled)
Justin Hu (1News): Kapa-Kingi splits from Te Pāti Māori, launches new party
Glenn McConnell (Stuff): Another Te Pāti Māori MP confirms she’s considering leaving the party
Lillian Hanly (RNZ): Oriini Kaipara confirms loyalty to Te Pāti Māori after comms advisor issues incorrect statement
Dale Husband (Waatea News): Te Pāti Māori Pushes Ahead With Candidate Selections Amid Cost of Living Battle

PARLIAMENT, ELECTION AND GOVERNMENT
Chris Trotter (Interest): You can’t take the politics out of politics
Andrew Geddis (Spinoff): The ‘grand coalition’ idea is gaining traction. Here’s why it wouldn’t work
Jenna Lynch (Stuff): ‘That would be insanity’: Luxon rules out forming grand coalition with Labour
Chelsea Daniels (Herald): How Winston Peters could be recrowned kingmaker this election – The Front Page
Herald: Editorial – Main parties face a tricky dynamic holding their top spot amid fragmentation (paywalled)
Joel Maxwell (Stuff): Is the National-led coalition Government the laziest we’ve ever seen?
Ani O’Brien: The importance of a unifying story
David Farrar (Kiwiblog): Vale Judith
John MacDonald (Newstalk ZB): Poll of Polls no comfort for National
Henry Cooke (Post): ‘This will not change’: Winston Peters confirms no Government NZ First is part of will touch superannuation (paywalled)
Herald: Prime Minister Chris Luxon pans NZ First, Labour for ‘dishonest’ stance on raising age for NZ Super
Mike Hosking (Newstalk ZB): The superannuation debate has become boring
Karl du Fresne: Mallard in Fantasyland?
David Farrar (Kiwiblog): No no no
Dale Husband (Waatea News): Fast-Track Fears: Coalition Accused of Undermining NZ’s Clean Green Reputation
Roger Partridge (LawNews): From legal realism to legal radicalism: breaking faith with the constitutional order
Michael Swanson: Populism vs Pragmatism: Navigating Policy in New Zealand’s 2026 Election
Monique Steele (RNZ): Political parties negotiate controversial Gene Technology Bill, as progress stalls

MEDIA
Lillian Hanly (RNZ): Coalition parties ramp up criticism of media
Lillian Hanly (RNZ): Opposition MPs say former TVNZ political editor Maiki Sherman ‘hounded’ into resigning
Stewart Sowman-Lund (Spinoff): Maiki Sherman’s resignation sparks questions over Māori representation at TVNZ
Shayne Currie (Herald): Ex-TVNZ Sunday host Miriama Kamo questions broadcaster’s support of former political editor Maiki Sherman (paywalled)
Catrin Owen (Stuff): ‘Outrageous’: Hipkins calls out David Seymour’s comments about RNZ and Maiki Sherman
David Harvey: The Demise of the Broadcasting Standards Authority?
Nick Agar (Post): Big Tech isn’t slowing down: The time to act on social media harm is now (paywalled)
Yvonne Van Dongen: Human Remains

FEES-FREE SCHEME SCRAPPED
Henry Cooke (Post): Farewell fees-free: Labour won’t commit to reinstating policy yet (paywalled)
Derek Cheng (Herald): Fees-free is being scrapped: Here’s why the last Govt’s tertiary programme failed (paywalled)
RNZ: ‘It will be very disruptive’: Grant Robertson on scrapping of fees-free policy
Pretoria Gordon (RNZ): Students question university affordability after government scraps fees-free scheme
Madeleine Chapman (Spinoff): The troubled life and death of the fees-free tertiary scheme
Heather du Plessis-Allan (Newstalk ZB): I’d like to take some credit for the end of fees-free
Lauren Crimp (RNZ): PM Christopher Luxon ‘very relaxed’ about Winston Peters’ fees-free Budget ‘leak’
Ruby Shaw (ODT): Students face ‘uncertain’ future (paywalled)
ODT Editorial (ODT): If not fees free, then what? (paywalled)

FUEL CRISIS
Thomas Coughlan (Herald): Government announces who gets prioritised in event of major fuel crisis (paywalled)
Russell Palmer (RNZ): Retailers, truckers back government’s simplified fuel rationing, Labour unconvinced
RNZ: Significant fuel rationing only to be considered in severe crisis
Nick James (Post): Government would use ‘transaction limits’ at petrol pumps at level 4 of fuel plan (paywalled)
Henry Cooke (Post): US Energy Secretary welcomed Government’s commitment to fossil fuels, document reveals (paywalled)
RNZ: Fuel stocks for diesel, jet fuel down, petrol stocks show slight increase
Dileepa Fonseka (BusinessDesk): Government sticks with LNG despite Iran war price surge (paywalled)

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On 20 January 2026, Auckland construction and civil engineering businessman Michael Grant Sullivan donated $200,000 to New Zealand politics. Rather than backing a single party, he covered the entire coalition: $100,000 to National, $50,000 to Act, and $50,000 to NZ First. All three deposits were made the same day.

Sullivan declined to comment when Interest.co.nz asked why. He didn’t need to explain. The logic is self-evident to anyone who understands what a large property and construction company needs from the state: planning law, consenting decisions, and the speed at which councils process applications.

It captures the current state of New Zealand political finance. This column looks closer at that pattern, following on from Friday’s column introducing a series of pieces about the latest donation disclosures – see: Following the money in 2026.

The dominant bloc

The 2025 annual returns released last week confirm what my previous year’s Following the Money in 2025 audit report established: the property, construction and infrastructure sector is the single most powerful donor bloc in New Zealand politics. Donors with clearly identifiable interests in this sector gave at least $497,000 in declared donations across 2025. Almost all of it went to the Coalition Government. The Opposition parties received negligible contributions from this sector. This imbalance isn’t necessarily because developers are ideological conservatives, but because the parties in power hold the planning levers.

This isn’t new. RNZ’s data journalist Farah Hancock, whose investigative mapping of donor patterns has become the essential public record on this subject, has documented more than $2.5 million from property-sector donors to the coalition parties since 2021. Approximately 97% of all property-sector political money has flowed to National, Act, and NZ First across this period.

What the latest disclosures from the Electoral Commission show is that the developer sector’s political investment is growing in scale and sophistication, not retreating. Four property and construction donors gave $50,000 or more in 2025 alone. The cast list is long — Carter Group, Mansons TCLM, James Speedy, Atlas Concrete, Williams Corporation, Buildcorp, Cook Brothers, 3EYES Construction, dozens of smaller firms making deposits in the $5,000–$15,000 range. The long tail of sub-threshold construction companies donating to National in 2025 is striking in its own right: not a single large developer but an entire industry sector, systematically, year after year.

Why property is different

There’s an important distinction that often gets lost in coverage of political donations. Unlike tech firms or banks, property developers depend overwhelmingly on the state: on zoning, consenting speed, capital gains rules, and foreign-investment settings. In other words, property wealth is not merely shaped by politician decisions. It is created by them.

The economist George Stigler’s 1971 formulation of “regulatory capture” — that “as a rule, regulation is acquired by the industry and is designed and operated primarily for its benefit” — was written with American utilities in mind. The same dynamic applies in New Zealand. The planning system is being rewritten by the same parties whose campaigns are bankrolled by the industries the planning system was designed to constrain.

The cast list

The Carter Group is the most revealing case in the 2025 returns. Christchurch-based Carter Group is one of New Zealand’s most significant property companies. Its major projects include the Crossing retail precinct in the CBD, Avonhead Mall, the Crowne Plaza Queenstown, the IPort business park in Rolleston, plus shareholdings in Williams Corporation, Willis Bond, and construction company Southbase.

In 2025, Carter Group donated $81,608 to the National Party — the largest single declared donation to any party from an identifiable property company in that year’s returns. Philip Carter, who leads the group, also donated $59,500 personally to National in 2023. His brother, incidentally, is Sir David Carter, former National Cabinet Minister and Speaker of the House.

This family has three projects approved for consideration under the Fast-Track Approvals Act 2024: residential developments in Rolleston and Ōhoka (a combined 5,000+ residential units), and a 55-hectare industrial development near Christchurch airport. The Ōhoka project was rejected by Waimakariri District Council; the Carter Group appealed to the Environment Court in September 2025. The fast-track route, if successful, provides a ministerial override outside the standard process.

Mansons TCLM is New Zealand’s largest privately held commercial property and construction company. It has more than 40 buildings, and $5 billion in delivered projects across the Auckland skyline. The company gave $42,026 to National in 2025, nearly tripling its 2024 corporate contribution of $15,000.

When Prime Minister Christopher Luxon opened Mansons’ $650 million Fifty Albert development in October 2024, it was a striking display of how close the government sits to its donors. The company’s commercial model — building large commercial assets and selling them to overseas institutional investors, recently including a Singaporean vehicle backed by Asia-Pacific firm PAG — also means it has direct interest in the coalition’s liberalisation of foreign investment settings for property.

In the 2025 New Year Honours Ted Manson received a knighthood. His son Culum had donated $70,000 personally to National in a previous year. The family’s political relationship with the governing party spans well over a decade. The family also runs a foundation that receives state funding for social housing. Commercial interests and government policy sit very close together here.

James Speedy gave $106,331 to National in 2025. This was the third-largest single gift to the party that year, after a deceased donor’s estate and Brian Cartmell’s extraordinary three-party distributions. Speedy is listed at the Companies Office as a director or shareholder of more than seventy entities across hotel, marina, property and aged-care interests. And he has donated over $100,000 to National before.

The Greenlees brothers, Whakamarama-based kiwifruit and avocado industry figures with property interests through Buildcorp Management, escalated their combined declared giving from $20,000 in 2024 to nearly $258,000 in 2025 across Act and National.

The smaller donors arguably tell the bigger story. Breeze Construction, Cypress Construction, Counties Construction, 3EYES Construction, Atlas Concrete, Cook Brothers, Williams Corporation — the list of construction companies writing $5,000–$36,000 cheques to National and Act in 2025 runs to dozens of firms. None individually changes the fundraising picture. Cumulatively, they constitute an industry sector that has decided that putting money into the governing parties is a sensible business decision.

This pattern doesn’t stop at central government. Newsroom’s reporting last December on Auckland mayor Wayne Brown’s donor list found a near-identical cast of names: Williams Corporation, Southside Group, Van Den Brink, Oyster Capital, Bayleys, Precinct. The same firms that bankroll the parties writing the planning law also bankroll the council leadership delivering the consents.

The paywall now starts at halfway through all Democracy Project newsletters. Please take out a paid sub if you want to support this service and access the full content, including the following sections: “What the sector has received”, “The fast-track problem”, “Betting the stable”, and “Two New Zealands”.

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PARLIAMENT, ELECTION AND GOVERNMENT
Verity Johnson (Stuff): Has the Opportunity party gone from Zombie to Lazarus?
Danyl McLauchlan (Listener): The brutal political attack Winston Peters is unlikely to forgive (paywalled)
Thomas Coughlan & Chris Knox (Herald): Poll of Polls predicts who will win election and suggests margin of victory is growing (paywalled)
Harriet Laughton (Post): Parliament back for three-week Budget block (paywalled)
1News: Why Green candidate Tania Waikato believes she can beat Rawiri Waititi
Northern Advocate: Election 2026: What Northland voters need to know about new rules
Phil Smith (RNZ): The House: Learning on the (ministerial) job

PUBLIC SECTOR
Andrea Vance (Post): Transport Minister blindsided as SFO investigates Auckland motorway alliance (paywalled)
Penny Smith (RNZ): Committee recommends disestablishing Environment Ministry despite public opposition
Azaria Howell (Newstalk ZB): Mega-ministry MBIE told allowing more staff to work from home would not ease fuel supply, costs
Cécile Meier and Murray Jones (BusinessDesk): Public sector job cuts boost EAP spend by 41% (paywalled)
Paul McBeth: Craig Stobo and the silence of the lambs
Ian Dunn: Neutrality glitch and the hollowing of the citadel – FMA resignation of Craig Stobo

LOCAL GOVERNMENT
David Williams (Newsroom): How Akaroa’s wastewater battle was won
Peter Williams: A new look for local government
Lobby for Good and Erika Harvey: Local government reform: who wins, who loses, and who needs to be paying attention
Nick Leggett (Post): Local government reform could show us how to work smarter, not harder (paywalled)
Tom Hunt and Julie Jacobson (Post): Wellington council staff object to mayor’s ‘under control’ spending line (paywalled)
Russell Lund, Andrew Simms and Lee Vandervis (ODT): A unitary ‘Coastal Otago’ should replace city, Waitaki (paywalled)
Mike Thorpe (Herald): Rolleston growth: From ‘town of the future’ to city size (paywalled)
RNZ: Auditor-general decides not to prosecute Nelson councillor over financial interests
Stuff: Nelson councillor avoids prosecution over business conflict, mayor blasts ‘outdated’ law
Ruby Shaw and Grant Miller (ODT): Councils square off over port (paywalled)

JUSTICE AND POLICE
Harriet Laughton (Post): New powers for police to take photos of public widely criticised (paywalled)
Sam Sherwood (RNZ): Letter reveals ex-Police Commissioner’s concerns over investigation into McSkimming
Finn Blackwell (RNZ): Illegal tobacco crackdown group could make difference, criminology professor says
David Harvey (Herald): Sentencing Act 2002: Why ‘least restrictive’ law frustrates victims (paywalled)
Catherine Hutton (Herald): Wellington lawyer Stephen Franks wins review over puberty blockers letter

The paywall now starts at halfway through all Democracy Project newsletters. Please take out a paid sub if you want to support this service and access the full content, including the following sections: ECONOMY AND BUSINESS; MEDIA; ENVIRONMENT AND CLIMATE; HEALTH; ROD DRURY; HOUSING; CARTOONS

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