The Government is reviewing the Official Information Act behind closed doors. Most readers will immediately grasp the irony.

This review of the OIA wasn’t announced. It wasn’t publicised. It came to light because transparency advocate Andrew Ecclestone happened to be told about it, then revealed it to attendees at a parliamentary forum on democracy last month.

Newsroom’s Sam Sachdeva followed up, getting confirmation from Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith that the Ministry of Justice had quietly commissioned consultancy firm TBL to research the cost drivers of OIA responses across 40 public service agencies.

There was no press release. No public consultation. No statement of intent. Instead it’s a review of the law that exists to open government up, conducted in the dark.

This is more than just ironic. It’s also typical of how New Zealand governments — every single one of them — have treated the OIA since it passed in 1982.

But this time the situation is sharper. For decades, the erosion of the OIA was largely a cultural problem: a slow drift toward secrecy driven by bureaucratic incentives and ministerial convenience. What’s changed is that the threat has become explicit and political.

The Government is now openly discussing changing not just how the OIA is administered, but what the legislation covers. Goldsmith’s comments to Newsroom were telling: he’s concerned that under current OIA procedures, “every different little element of communication has been included.” He’s not really talking about admin delays. He’s talking about cutting back what the public gets to see. It’s a signal that the Government may want to narrow what citizens are actually entitled to see.

This is the crossroads. The OIA could be weakened in ways it has never been weakened before, using a manufactured cost narrative as justification.

Or, and this is genuinely possible, the current moment of scrutiny could produce the reform push that the law has needed for years to be improved and updated. There are voices making that case, some of them from unexpected quarters.

Whether that happens now depends on pressure. That’s what this column is for.

The False narrative about costs

The government’s stated rationale for the review of the OIA is a claimed 394% increase in OIA requests since 2016. The number sounds alarming. It shouldn’t be taken at face value.

Ecclestone has gone through this claim in detail. It turns out that the spike is, in large part, a counting artefact. Agencies have been expanding what they classify as an OIA request. Some are now logging insurance company queries about traffic accidents. Others are counting finance companies’ requests to track down debtors. Police have been adding requests from people challenging speeding tickets by seeking speed camera images.

Also, government job cuts mean that departmental experts who once answered informal enquiries off the cuff are no longer employed — or are now required to log those conversations as formal requests.

So, this is not some great democratic wave. A lot of it is just agencies counting differently.

There’s also a more structural explanation. The No Right Turn blog, which has tracked the OIA closely for years, makes the point bluntly: much of the real increase in requests is coming from service delivery agencies — Corrections, ACC, MSD — because the government has become more adversarial. It’s denying benefits, tightening entitlements, cutting services, and so people are using the tools available to them to push back and enforce their rights. Which is exactly how the OIA is supposed to work. Using that as a justification to weaken it is a deeply cynical move.

The Culture problem

Before last week’s news, the sharpest piece on the OIA in recent months was David Harvey’s essay in the Herald in February: “How a transparency law was hollowed out.” Harvey is a former district court judge, and his analysis is damning without being hysterical. The OIA legislation, he argues, is fundamentally sound. The problem is the culture that has grown up around it: strategic delays, political interference, preferential treatment, and the quiet erosion of record-keeping. His closing question was sharp: “If transparency is the law’s default, what is it that they fear?”

The record-keeping point matters more than it first sounds. It’s not just that agencies delay or redact. It’s that officials have, in some cases, been actively discouraged from creating records in the first place.

Health New Zealand has been the most egregious recent offender. The Ombudsman found the agency had been operating practices “contrary to law.” In September, Andrea Vance reported that Health NZ had unlawfully withheld nurse staffing data for a year — data showing 37-40% of hospital shifts were understaffed — while publicly claiming to be over-recruiting nurses.

The PSA’s national secretary Fleur Fitzsimons was pointed about who bore responsibility: “He can’t keep demanding savings and then blame officials when the impacts of cuts are felt.” The minister sets the resourcing. The minister owns the failure. Courts have agreed — in December, the High Court ordered the Corrections chief executive personally to obey the law, raising the prospect of fines or imprisonment for continued non-compliance.

And still, the Government wants to narrow the OIA rather than fix its agencies.

Matthew Hooton observed in 2017, in what has become a kind of dark axiom for OIA watchers, that the trend across governments was clear: “The Muldoon regime administered the OIA well, the Lange government did so only adequately, the Bolger-Shipley government reluctantly, the Clark government disgracefully and the Key-English government abused it shamelessly.” Each new government, he said, was worse than the last. The trendline suggested the worst was always still to come. There’s no reason to think the current government is the exception.

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FUEL CRISIS AND ENERGY POLICY
Danyl McLauchlan (Listener): The grand and urgent political project that’s going begging (paywalled)
RNZ: ‘Very unlikely’ government will go ahead with 12-cent fuel tax rise - Willis
Pattrick Smellie (BusinessDesk): Energy security is the new climate change (paywalled)
Dave Armstrong (Post): The fuel shock isn’t an accident – it’s political (paywalled)
John Gerritsen (RNZ): Schools on diesel heating prepare for big bills as government considers support
Rob Stock (Post): Iran war: The businesses in demand thanks to Trump’s war on Iran (paywalled)
Herald: New Zealand’s fuel stocks ‘stable’, increases in petrol and jet fuel, diesel level drops
Fiona Rotherham and Jono Mitchell (NBR): Employers and the fuel crisis: don’t panic, plan (paywalled)
Cate Macintosh (Press): Schools told to stay open — but fuel crisis raises fears for buses and staff travel (paywalled)
Will Johnston (Post): Taranaki faces major job losses as energy sector shifts, report shows (paywalled)
Catherine Groenestein (Post): Demand for solar power surges in Taranaki as power, fuel prices keep rising (paywalled)
Jonathan Mitchell (NBR): Middle East war shocks fragile New Zealand economy (paywalled)
Greg Presland (The Standard): Missing in action

PARLIAMENT, ELECTION AND GOVERNMENT
Chris Trotter (Interest): The man who should be king
Richard Harman: Luxon may have planned to get even tougher with Bishop (paywalled)
Sean Whittaker (Newsroom): Plug the gaps in political donation rules or watch trust erode
RNZ: Foreign Minister Winston Peters off to meet US Secretary of State Marco Rubio
Azaria Howell (Herald): Public sector graduate jobs down 66% as Greens warn of exodus to Australia
Sam Sachdeva (Newsroom): Labour’s Vanushi Walters on Govt’s ‘selective’ diplomacy and the challenge of trusting Trump
Claire Robinson: The Demographic Tsunami is coming. Parliament removes the Māori seats at its peril
Sam Sherwood (RNZ): Police review into Tom Phillips documentary ‘entirely appropriate’ - minister
ODT: Editorial – The right to take the proverbial (paywalled)
Rob Stock (Post): NZ health and safety reform: How Brazilian dam disaster illustrates problem with ‘likely’ risk in new law (paywalled)
Liam Rātana (Spinoff): Why Kerrin Leoni thinks she can win back Tāmaki Makaurau for Labour
Alexia Russell (Newsroom): Big changes coming for statistics collection
Stuff: Poll: Coalition support at lowest since election, and most Kiwis think country is ‘heading in the wrong direction’

ECONOMY AND BUSINESS
Eric Frykberg (Listener): The shocks that shaped the nation: How these big economic events continue to affect our lives (paywalled)
Chris Liddell (Herald): Anthropic director Chris Liddell’s warning for New Zealand - don’t miss the AI tsunami (paywalled)
Liam Dann (Herald): OCR preview: Reserve Bank tipped to hold cash rate despite Iran war shock (paywalled)
Tom Pullar-Strecker (Post): OCR preview: Reserve Bank tipped to leave rate at 2.25%, reveal near-term forecasts (paywalled)
Rob Stock (Post): Smiles gone from capital’s commercial sector as 1578 businesses vanish in ‘tough’ two years (paywalled)
Frances Chin (Post): ‘Absolutely flipped it’: Bar owners praise law change for Easter (paywalled)
Stuff: Butchers were ‘hidden in car boots’ during Covid-19 lockdown, supermarket boss says
Fiona Rotherham (NBR): The second wave for NZ’s medicinal cannabis industry (paywalled)
Riley Kennedy and Jaime Lyth (BusinessDesk): How Allbirds went ‘extinct’ (paywalled)
Cécile Meier (BusinessDesk): Sydney billionaire Sam Arnaout eyes Christchurch Casino (paywalled)
Nona Pelletier (RNZ): Synlait Milk sells North Island operations to focus on back-to-basics approach

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FUEL CRISIS
Verity Johnson (Stuff): We don’t have anyone to believe in
Zane Small (Stuff): Seymour optimistic about ‘continuity of fuel supply without restrictions’
Tina Morrison (Newsroom): Sales of ‘gas guzzling’ campervans set to take a hit
Laine Priestley (ODT): Run on flour, sugar ‘panic buying’ (paywalled)
Daimon Stewart (Post): Why tax pooling could be just as important as car pooling to combat the fuel crisis (paywalled)

PARLIAMENT AND GOVERNMENT
Joel MacManus (Spinoff): Every political party is in opposition now
Louis Collins (RNZ): The House: Members of Parliament debate ability to take mickey
Dita De Boni (Post): High-flying public health exec and health services entrepreneur Dr Lee Mathias has died (paywalled)
Alecia Rousseau (Post): Inquiry launched into Fire and Emergency fleet failures amid long-running industrial action (paywalled)

CLIMATE, ENVIRONMENT, MINING
Linda Hall (Local Democracy Reporting): Insurer flags ‘sea surge’ risk for some Napier Parklands estate properties
John Drummond (ODT): NZ cannot keep offering a cold shoulder to climate change
David Williams (Newsroom): Oil shock blamed for stalling plan to clean up murky river
Matthew Littlewood (ODT): Santana rejects Doc accusations (paywalled)

HEALTH AND WELLBEING
Herald: Editorial – Can regulators keep up with vape sales as health risks become more apparent? (paywalled)
Rafaella Melo (Herald): Cocaine use doubles in Hawke’s Bay and Gisborne, meth use ranks second-highest in New Zealand (paywalled)
Amelia Wade (Sunday Star Times): Children are growing up on screens. Experts warn their bodies are paying the price (paywalled)
Kevin Norquay (Post): The doctor will see you now (and finish the notes by AI) (paywalled)
Fiona Ellis (Waikato Times): Waikato gains and losses in patient care revealed (paywalled)
Centrist: The kids are alright – but the system still isn’t

TRANSPORT
Tom Hunt (Post): Six to eight years of disruption but Wellington tunnels still need funding (paywalled)
Andrea Vance (Sunday Star Times): The country’s biggest pothole? (paywalled)
Jenny Ling (Herald): Northland SH1 toll road plan sparks backlash from businesses and drivers
Matthew Littlewood (ODT): Q’town cable car accepted into fast-track process (paywalled)

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NZ SOCIETY
Bryce Edwards (Democracy Project): Are we “bowling alone”?
Danyl McLauchlan (Listener): Waning trust, the rise of populism, AI: An economist on finding answers to the challenges of our time (paywalled)
Josie Pagani (Post): A lesson at Easter: The experts may be right, but sometimes faith wins over facts (paywalled)
Marc Daalder (Newsroom): NZers seek violent content 600 times a day
Matt Burrows (Herald): Easter miracle? NZ churches claim youth attendance boom in global ‘Quiet Revival’ (paywalled)
Stephen Rainbow (Post): Homosexual law reform 40 years on and a world away from today (paywalled)
Paul Foster-Bell (ODT): Divorced from reality — NZ’s outdated divorce law (paywalled)
Herald: Editorial – Daylight saving is over: Time to reconsider changing the clocks (paywalled)
Neil Reid (Herald): Cruise giants Royal Caribbean accused of ‘cruel, callous’ tactics to avoid multimillion-dollar Whakaari/White Island eruption payout
Amanda Gillies (Newsroom): The RSA has a fierce battle on its hands

FUEL CRISIS
Peter Dunne (Newsroom): PM risks letting a good crisis go to waste
Kate Green (RNZ): GPs worry about patients missing appointments, low medicine stocks as fuel prices soar
Denise Piper (Herald): Marsden Point oil refinery closure: What it means for NZ fuel security now
Vernon Small (Sunday Star Times): How the Iran conflict just blew up NZ’s economic recovery (paywalled)
Herald: Editorial – There are ominous economic and military lessons from the Iran war (paywalled)
Kevin Norquay (Sunday Star Times): As fuel prices soar, Kiwis keep driving at all costs (paywalled)
Liam Dann (Herald): Three things to help you feel calmer about the crisis this Easter (paywalled)
Steve Edwards (Herald): Dairy farmers face higher fuel and fertiliser costs despite strong payout

ECONOMY AND BUSINESS
Damien Grant (Stuff): The ‘Instagram filter’ of debt: Why I secretly love inflation (and why you shouldn’t)
David Hargreaves (Interest): The Reserve Bank’s almighty balancing act
Andrew Bevin (Newsroom): Foodstuffs brings in ecologically dubious Tasmania salmon in place of NZ fish
Sam Stubbs (Sunday Star Times): As geopolitics swirl, does ethical investing still make sense? (paywalled)
Jeff Ruscoe (Sunday Star Times): We’ve crunched the numbers - and KiwiSaver contributions should be closer to 14% (paywalled)
The Post: Auckland guest nights up 12% as momentum builds in events sector (paywalled)
Chris Ross and Tom Peters (World Socialist Website): Wave of job cuts in New Zealand
Damien Venuto (Stuff): Kiwis love complaining about banks but never switch. Here’s why most of us don’t bother
Mike Hosking (Newstalk ZB): I can help Steve Abel

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New Zealand has just been ranked one of the happiest countries in the world. This is obviously good news. But there is something badly wrong beneath that glossy headline, especially in terms of loneliness and youth.

The 2026 World Happiness Report, released last month, ranked New Zealand 11th out of 147 countries – up one spot from last year, and the highest-ranked English-speaking nation. On the surface, that sounds pretty good. Better than Australia, better than the United States. Finland, inevitably, came first.

But buried inside the report was the figure that actually matters. For changes in happiness among 15-to-24-year-olds, New Zealand ranked 126th out of 136 countries. Young people’s happiness over the last decade has been plunging. We sit alongside the United States, Australia, and Canada in what researchers have labelled the “NANZ” group: affluent nations where youth happiness is in freefall while older generations report world-leading life satisfaction. In contrast, according to the report, 85 of 136 countries saw youth happiness increase.

AUT wellbeing economist Stephanie Rossouw, a contributor to the report, was blunt about what this means. “This is not a short-term dip,” she told media, “but a sustained decline over more than a decade.” She pointed to social media, especially the algorithmic kind – the doom-scrolling platforms, not the communication tools – but also to something deeper. Nordic countries have social media too. Their young people are not collapsing in the same way.

What the Finns have that we don’t

The difference between Finland and New Zealand, Rossouw argued, is social trust, safety nets, and the strength of social connections. The Finns score far higher than us on all three.

Finns have a deep-seated belief that people will do the right thing, a cultural expectation that reduces the stress of daily life. For example, if you ask a Finn whether they’d get their wallet back if they lost it, they assume yes. And in fact, in Helsinki 11 out of 12 dropped wallets are returned. New Zealanders don’t trust like that anymore.

RNZ ran a piece the same week quoting Finnish philosopher Frank Martela, who offered a useful corrective to the usual happiness discourse. Finland’s secret, he said, is not that Finns are especially joyful. It is that they have fewer people who are deeply unhappy. Universal healthcare, free education, low corruption, and a culture of cooperation create a floor. Nobody falls too far. The result isn’t joy, it’s something more like security.

Rossouw made a similar point in her RNZ Nights interview. Asked why Latin American teenagers report higher life satisfaction than ours despite using social media just as heavily, she pointed to the other variables: worry, sadness, and social connection. New Zealand’s young people carry higher levels of anxiety and lower levels of positive emotion than their Latin American counterparts.

Writing in today’s Post newspaper, Josie Pagani has also dealt with the happiness results. She is right to sneer a bit at the happiness industry. These rankings can be goofy. But the useful part of the report isn’t the ranking itself, it is in the variables that predict the scores: social trust, corruption, safety nets, generosity, the sense that someone would return your lost wallet. New Zealand is slipping on nearly all of them.

Pagani explains also that part of the problem is that experts are no longer very trustworthy for the public. Increasingly, we simply don’t believe what academics, technocrats and officials tell us. This was even part of the pandemic experience, she says: “Experts told us to bump elbows and wash our fruit during Covid. Neither stopped the spread of the airborne virus.”

How cohesion actually works

Danyl McLauchlan’s Listener article this week (“Waning trust, the rise of populism”) is an interview with Sir Peter Gluckman and United Nations development economist Pedro Conceição, and it’s vital for understanding the anxious political state of New Zealand society at the moment.

Conceição’s central finding is stark. Six out of every seven people on the planet now report feeling insecure. People who feel insecure, his data shows, trust others less, drift toward political extremes, and shift their support from competent leaders to dominant ones. A quarter of all countries are now governed by populists – double the previous peak from the 1920s and 1930s – split roughly evenly between left and right.

Gluckman (the former Prime Minister’s Chief Science Advisor) told McLauchlan that social cohesion is probably the most valuable thing New Zealand has: “New Zealand trades on that cohesion. It’s what allows us to get needed skills coming in by way of migration, it’s why people come here for education, why we get foreign direct investment. We are seen as a stable, cohesive, internally compliant-with-law country.”

According to McLauchlan, “Gluckman recalls growing up in a New Zealand where sporting clubs, schools and church groups routinely brought together people of different ethnicities and economic standing.” This has all changed. We are witnessing a hollowing out of the institutions and social bonds that once made this place function. And the sense of cohesion, Gluckman says, is not “self-repairing”. Instead, the forces eroding it are now accelerating.

Gluckman also tells a story about an acquaintance who moved to a small village in Switzerland, wished to buy a house, and so learnt to play the euphonium. The choice of musical instrument might seem bizarre, but the friend explained to Gluckman the logic: “Because by joining the village band, I become part of the community. And the community will now support me to buy a house. Which they have to vote to give permission to do.”

The point is that cohesion is built through shared institutions and repeated contact across social boundaries. Robert Putnam made the argument two decades ago in his book, “Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community”. This is a landmark account of how “third spaces”, where strangers become neighbours, were collapsing across the Western world. Conceição cited Putnam directly in his conversation with McLauchlan.

The digital world has replaced many of these spaces, but what replaced them doesn’t work the same way. It polarises, McLauchlan says. Gluckman put it plainly: “The digital world pulls people apart.”

The Vanishing clubroom

This is not abstract in New Zealand. It is actually quite measurable.

Sport club volunteering has dropped 45% since 2019. Under the new Incorporated Societies Act, thousands of community organisations faced a deadline this month to re-register or be dissolved. As of January, fewer than half had done so. More than 200 have already been wound up. The amateur sport sector has called it a potential “extinction event.”

Church attendance has declined from roughly 20% of the population in the 1960s to about 10% now. By 2033, more New Zealanders will live alone than with another person. In towns like Waiouru, six rugby teams have become none. Golf clubs survive on a dozen members. The volunteering that remains is increasingly casual – a few hours here and there rather than the sustained commitments that once created community.

These are the places where people used to encounter each other. It wasn’t a big deal, yet it also had a big impact.

David Farrar, the National Party pollster, told McLauchlan in his earlier Listener piece on voter tribes that people used to describe themselves as “a National voter” or “a Labour voter” – husbands and wives voted the same way. None of that holds any more. The institutions that once gave voters a shared understanding of politics – newspapers, churches, unions – are weaker than they were, he said. The media market has not just moved elsewhere. It has contracted.

Without these shared spaces, the only common ground left is online. And online, as Gluckman says, people fragment. McLauchlan adds that: echo chambers work like civic associations turned inside out: they give you a tribe, but only by giving you an enemy.
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FUEL CRISIS
Luke Malpass (Post): So much for America First – everyone else pays (paywalled)
Luke Malpass (Post): From GFC to oil shock: Nearly two decades of fiscal challenge (paywalled)
Nik Dirga (RNZ): As the Iran war continues, what else might New Zealand face shortages of besides fuel?
Susan Edmunds (RNZ): Is fuel support going to the right places?
Joel Kulasingham (Herald): Fuel crisis: How New Zealand’s response compares with other countries – from free public transport to work from home days
Miriam Bell (Post): Iran war: Fuel crisis ‘like Covid 2.0’ for struggling builders (paywalled)
Dita De Boni (Post): Iran war: Live-streaming star and oat-growing arable farmer finds his diesel costs doubling (paywalled)

PARLIAMENT, ELECTION AND GOVERNMENT
Sam Crawley: NZ election issues: why the economy and cost of living aren’t the same thing
Brendon McMahon (ODT): Potential successor to Pugh
Michael Guerin (Herald): Greyhound bosses admit battle to keep dog racing alive is over
Melissa Nightingale (Herald): Karitane man’s pension slashed due to ‘nasty’ NZ Super policy
Peter Dunne: A Prime Minister, not a CEO
Steve Braunias (Newsroom): The secret diary of .. Christopher Luxon
ODT: Editorial – Shuffling a fresh deck (paywalled)
Mike Houlahan (ODT): Talk with English spurred MP (paywalled)
Katie Ham (Post): Ex defence chief unwittingly linked to bankrupt tech entrepreneur’s new venture (paywalled)

OFFICIAL INFORMATION ACT
Andrew Ecclestone (Newsroom): Forget false narrative about costs, the OIA needs strengthening
Nick James (Post): Ombudsman warns humans need to make final call on redactions made by an AI bot (paywalled)
No Right Turn: Using austerity to attack democracy

ORANGA TAMIRIKI AND SOCIAL PROVIDERS
Mary Williams (ODT): Youth services delivery at risk (paywalled)
Tureiti Moxon (Post): The urgent case for a Māori-led tamariki authority (paywalled)
Kelly Makiha (Herald): Visions of a Helping Hand Trust to close Rotorua homeless laundry and shower service as funding dries up

INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS AND DEFENCE
Fran O’Sullivan (Herald): Why business can’t stay quiet on the India trade deal (paywalled)
Anne-Marie Brady and Louisa Wall (Post): NZ and Cook Islands may have reset their relationship, but trust must be rebuilt through actions (paywalled)
David Fisher (Herald): NZSAS exclusive: Inside the secret missions where Special Air Service soldiers risked everything in Kabul (paywalled)
Anna Fifield: What is the international rules-based order anyway?
Herald: New Zealand-Cook Islands deal reignites diplomatic spat as Winston Peters responds to China’s comments
Thomas Mead (1News): Kiwi Christians appalled as Bible used to justify Iran war this Easter

MEDIA
Shayne Currie (Herald): TVNZ gang story - internal and external emails reveal how broadcaster handled political and journalistic fallout (paywalled)
Stewart Sowman-Lund (Post): Inside TVNZ’s gang story backlash: How the broadcaster responded (paywalled)
Shayne Currie (Herald): Journalist, NZ on Air board member wins payout over radio dismissal; AM shake-up – BBC World Service dropped; Sam Neill’s tears for Wilderpeople (paywalled)
David Harvey: Broadcasting Standards Authority’s Jurisdiction Grab: Why the Platform Decision Gets It Wrong

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Yesterday I wrote my own analysis of Christopher Luxon’s Cabinet reshuffle, arguing it was fundamentally about a Prime Minister punishing his rival and rewarding his loyalists. Today I want to go through what the political editors are actually saying about it, because on several points, the verdicts line up.

How the reshuffle was rushed into existence

Thomas Coughlan’s analysis in the Herald is the most revealing account of how the reshuffle actually came about. His key finding: it wasn’t supposed to happen this week.

As of Monday, there was no plan to reshuffle Cabinet on Thursday. Luxon had been teasing it since January, but it appears something changed between Monday and Tuesday. Coughlan reports that a mysterious Sunday night meeting of Luxon loyalists – Mark Mitchell, Paul Goldsmith and Simon Watts – may have been the catalyst. This was separate from an earlier, routine “kitchen Cabinet” meeting attended by Erica Stanford and, via Zoom, Nicola Willis.

The second meeting “got tongues wagging,” Coughlan writes, and the allegation doing the rounds is that Mitchell, Goldsmith and Watts confronted Luxon with news he was losing support in caucus and needed to act fast.

The contents of that meeting remain unconfirmed. But Luxon turned up to caucus on Tuesday and announced the reshuffle was happening. National Party president Sylvia Wood was spotted back in Wellington on Wednesday (unusual for a non-Tuesday). And on Wednesday night, as the caucus ate KFC in Parliament at 9pm, many MPs were still in the dark about their fates or even when the reshuffle would be announced.

This explains the chaotic feel of the whole thing. Jenna Lynch in Stuff confirmed this picture from her end. She reported that the Prime Minister’s own staff were scrambling and did not know what time the press conference would take place until about two hours before it happened. Staff on events-based contracts were left dangling over the Easter break, not knowing if they still had jobs.

The Cricket tickets line

Then there was the cricket line. When asked about stripping Chris Bishop of the Associate Sport portfolio, Luxon replied: “Yeah, didn’t think we needed it. Chris Bishop will be able to get cricket tickets, it’ll be alright.”

Lynch’s response was blunt: “Ouch. Pretty dismissive.” She noted it drove home the souring of the relationship between the two Chrises.

Luke Malpass at the Post opened his entire piece with the cricket tickets line, letting it hang there as the defining image of the press conference. The fact that Luxon didn’t just remove the portfolio from Bishop but abolished it altogether is, as Coughlan observed, a move “seems designed to take something off Bishop rather than anything else.” Coughlan also noted the irony: Bishop’s last cricket trip was to India on a sports diplomacy mission to shore up New Zealand’s reputation as Luxon pursues a free trade agreement. Not exactly troughing.

Hell hath no fury like a Luxon scorned

Lynch’s headline said it all: “It seems hell hath no fury like a Luxon scorned.” Luxon, she wrote, had chosen to “take a strike at Chris Bishop’s political heart.” Not by stripping away the big public-facing portfolios, but by removing the internal levers of influence: campaign chair and Leader of the House. Bishop still has the policy workload. What he’s lost is the power.

Nobody believes the workload excuse

Luxon’s stated rationale – that Bishop was too busy and needed to shed responsibilities – is technically true. Bishop carries housing, transport, infrastructure and RMA reform. He is genuinely one of the busiest ministers in Cabinet.

But the argument collapses the moment you look at who got the campaign chair job. Simeon Brown is already Health Minister. He has now also been handed the Energy portfolio, right in the middle of a fuel crisis. Lynch asked the obvious question: how can Brown plausibly be presented as the more available option? Sam Sachdeva at Newsroom reached the same conclusion. So did Tom Day at 1News. So did pretty much everyone in the gallery.

Coughlan captured Luxon’s stumbling defence perfectly. When pressed on why Brown was less busy than Bishop, Luxon replied: “Uh, no, they’re all busy … I get the questions guys, all I’ve done is given Attorney-General to Chris Bishop and I’ve taken away campaign chair and Leader of the House.”

That’s not a rationale. That’s a description of what he did, minus the reason.

Jo Moir at RNZ was equally direct. When RNZ asked Luxon who was busier – Bishop or Brown – the Prime Minister’s “workload rationale crumbled when he declared they were both busy.” Her verdict: “It’s a nonsense to say Brown has more time for campaign chair.”

Moir, to her credit, acknowledged the political reality Luxon can’t say out loud: “Luxon is hardly going to say he’s moving Bishop aside because he’s sceptical of how supportive the Hutt South MP is of his leadership.”

A Fidgety and grumpily exasperated Prime Minister

Malpass’s description of Luxon at the press conference is worth dwelling on. He described the Prime Minister as “fidgety and grumpily exasperated” as he repeatedly batted away questions about whether Bishop was being punished. “Guys, you’re overthinking it,” Luxon kept insisting, in what became a refrain. At one point, asked why the reshuffle was happening the day before Good Friday, he could be heard to say “Oh yeah, this is funny” before recovering.

The paywall now starts at halfway through all Democracy Project newsletters. Please take out a paid sub if you want to access the full content and support this service. The second half of the column deals with: “The Campaign chair debate”, “Bishop stripped of power but not policy”, “Butterick, rural politics and the battle for the regions”, “Diversity and representation”, and “Does any of this settle the leadership question?”

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CABINET RESHUFFLE
Bryce Edwards (Democracy Project): Luxon’s reshuffle reveals a PM punishing rivals and rewarding loyalists
Jenna Lynch (Stuff): Hell hath no fury like a Luxon scorned
Thomas Coughlan (Herald): National’s reshuffle: After week of instability, Christopher Luxon makes his move (paywalled)
Jo Moir (RNZ): Why was Chris Bishop unceremoniously dumped as campaign chair in Luxon’s Cabinet reshuffle?
Emma Ricketts (Stuff): Luxon’s reshuffle: New campaign chair coy on whether he asked for the job, Pacific Peoples Minister says Auckland roots qualify him for the role
Luke Malpass (Post): The reshuffle Christopher Luxon says the bubble is overthinking (paywalled)
Sam Sachdeva (Newsroom): Luxon’s reshuffle: Why Chris Bishop’s ‘demotion’ raises new leadership questions
Audrey Young (Herald): Why Christopher Luxon’s Cabinet reshuffle makes sense (and the one thing he can’t say) (paywalled)
Tom Day (1News): Chris Bishop hit hard in PM’s reshuffle
Nick James (Post): The winners and losers of Christopher Luxon’s Cabinet reshuffle (paywalled)
Tom Pullar-Strecker (Post): Watts loses energy portfolio amid clashing views on LNG and Lake Onslow (paywalled)
Māni Dunlop (Te Ao Māori News): Luxon refreshes Cabinet, representation gaps come into focus
Brent Edwards (NBR): PM suggests reporters are over-thinking Cabinet reshuffle (paywalled)
Lillian Hanly and Giles Dexter (RNZ): Prime Minister Christopher Luxon announces election-year Cabinet reshuffle

FUEL CRISIS
Natalia Albert: The Fuel Crisis: Who, What, And On Whose Advice
Giles Dexter (RNZ): Marsden Point to get diesel storage capacity boost
Tom Pullar-Strecker (Post): Iran war: Shane Jones strikes $21m deal for extra diesel storage, told tanks will be ready in two months (paywalled)
Thomas Manch (BusinessDesk): Government to contract Channel Infrastructure for $21m in additional diesel storage (paywalled)
Susan Edmunds (RNZ): New Zealanders’ 30% fuel bill increase laid bare
Blayne Slabbert (Post): Fuel shock tests New Zealand’s faith in hybrids as EV sales surge 174% (paywalled)
Miriam Bell (Post): Iran war: Rising shipping costs weigh on NZ agri-produce exporters (paywalled)
Thomas Manch (BusinessDesk): Government to ‘relook’ at LNG terminal says new energy minister (paywalled)
Anna Whyte (Interest): New Minister says world has changed, old Minister says Cabinet has made decision on LNG
Krystal Gibbens (RNZ): Life-saving services need priority in fuel plan, aviation sector says
Maxine Jacobs (Press): Christchurch electric vehicle seller does two years of business in ‘a couple of weeks’ as fuel crisis deepens (paywalled)
Mihingarangi Forbes (Te Ao Māori News): Debbie Ngarewa-Packer says the fuel crisis is causing anxiety among Māori communities
Stuff: Government increases mileage rates for community support workers during fuel crisis

POLICE-NETFLIX-PHILLIPS DOCUMENTARY
Sam Sherwood (RNZ): Tom Phillips doco crew received text as ‘heads up’ he had been shot and killed
Sam Sherwood (RNZ): Inside the messages between police’s media communications director and documentary boss
Katie Ham (Post): Commissioner Richard Chambers thanked as ‘facilitator’ of Netflix doco on Tom Phillips fugitive saga (paywalled)
Shayne Currie (Herald): Tom Phillips Netflix documentary - almost 300 pages of police, production company emails and texts revealed (paywalled)
Stewart Sowman-Lund (Post): Inside TVNZ’s gang story backlash: How the broadcaster responded (paywalled)

GREYHOUND RACING BAN
RNZ: Greyhound racing to end in August as bill passes
Lloyd Burr (Stuff): Should the greyhound industry get compensation following ban?
George Heagney (Post): $4m racing operation now worth ‘zero’: Greyhound trainer wants compensation (paywalled)

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Christopher Luxon has announced his election-year Cabinet reshuffle. Chris Penk and Penny Simmonds enter Cabinet. Cameron Brewer and Mike Butterick become ministers outside Cabinet. Simeon Brown picks up energy. Paul Goldsmith gets the public service. Louise Upston becomes Leader of the House. The details matter. But the real story is what happened to Chris Bishop.

Bishop has been stripped of three roles: Leader of the House, associate sport, and most significantly, his position as chair of National’s election campaign. In return, he picks up the Attorney-General portfolio. On paper, you might call that a lateral move. In practice, it is a demotion dressed up as a promotion.

The pre-reshuffle commentary from the press gallery had been remarkably united on one point: the reshuffle would tell us more about Luxon’s leadership than about his ministers. They were right. The reshuffle says less about renewal than about insecurity.

What the insiders were saying

Before we get to what happened, it is worth dwelling on what was being said in the days leading up to the announcement. Because the pre-reshuffle commentary functioned as an extraordinary insider audit of National’s caucus: who is up, who is down, who is trusted and who is feared. Political journalists and well-connected insiders laid out their assessments of each minister. The picture they painted was of a Government and a Prime Minister in deep trouble.

Thomas Coughlan, writing in the Herald today, captured the shambolic feel of it all. The reshuffle had been talked about since January, he wrote, but “appears hastily arranged. As of last night, no one knows what time Luxon will unveil it, or how.” MPs who were directly affected had still not been told their fates on last night. When National’s caucus gathered for dinner (at KFC, apparently), Coughlan reported, “most were completely unaware of what awaits them today.”

This is supposed to be the Prime Minister who prides himself on people management. The former CEO of Air New Zealand, the man who talks constantly about putting his “aces in their places.” And yet his own MPs were eating in the dark, hours before the biggest personnel decision of election year.

Coughlan framed the stakes clearly: “For Luxon, whose leadership is currently under pressure, the reshuffle has the added complication of needing to draw a line under caucus instability.” Whether the actual reshuffle achieves that is debatable.

What happened to Bishop

Much of the pre-reshuffle commentary centred on whether Luxon would use the reshuffle to clip Bishop’s wings. The answer is now clear: he has.

Bishop was already carrying half the Beehive on his back: housing, transport, infrastructure, RMA reform, Leader of the House, and National’s campaign machine. Most important of all was the campaign chair role. That is not decorative, it is where internal power sits.

The campaign chair controls the machinery of the election effort: strategy, messaging, candidate selection support, resource allocation. Bishop chaired the successful 2023 campaign. Removing him from that position seven months before the next election is a dramatic act. It’s also quite odd to have an partisan electioneering role dealt with in a ministerial reshuffle – but this just reflects that contemporary politicians regard governing and campaigning as indistinct.

Coughlan had warned this demotion was coming. “With Bishop said to be behind last year’s embryonic coup,” he wrote, “Luxon may choose to make an example of him. The question then isn’t so much whether Bishop will lose a portfolio, but which ones.” Henry Cooke, writing in The Post today, reported that last night “one source close to the party suggested that the reshuffle might have angered senior Minister Chris Bishop.” The Post asked Bishop about the claim “and did not receive a response.”

Now we know. Bishop has not just lost portfolios – he has been removed from the two roles that gave him the most internal party power. Leader of the House controls the Government’s legislative programme. Campaign chair controls the election machine. Both have gone to Luxon loyalists: Louise Upston gets Leader of the House, Simeon Brown gets campaign chair.

Cooke had speculated that it could be housing that Bishop lost, noting that he “has stood apart from his party in openly calling for house prices to fall and his desire to allow far greater density in Auckland has been repeatedly cut down by his Cabinet colleagues.” In the event, Luxon left Bishop’s policy portfolios intact and instead stripped him of his structural power within the party. That is arguably a much more pointed punishment.

In Audrey Young’s half-term Cabinet report card last year, Bishop scored 9 out of 10 – one of only three ministers at that level. She described him as “a superman in terms of workload and achievement” who was “working through his agenda with great efficiency.” The Herald’s Mood of the Boardroom survey rated him as one of the Government’s top performers. He remains, by any serious measure, National’s most effective minister. And he has just been publicly cut down to size by a Prime Minister who looks more interested in containing Bishop than empowering him.

The consolation prize is Attorney-General. Audrey Young had actually recommended this in her column, noting that Bishop has a law degree and “the intellect to win respect in the role quickly.” But she also recognised that he could not take it on without shedding workload. Luxon has made that trade for him, but not kindly.

Simeon Brown: the new enforcer

The elevation of Simeon Brown to campaign chair is striking. Brown already held Health and SOEs. Now he adds Energy, taken from Simon Watts, with Luxon justifying the move by saying “the past few weeks have underlined how important energy security is.” Brown also picks up the campaign machinery.

Luxon is plainly betting on Brown. Brown scored 8 out of 10 in Young’s report card. She wrote that he had “made such light work of challenges in previous portfolios” that he was “the obvious choice to take on the hardest job in the cabinet.” He is widely regarded as Luxon’s most loyal senior minister. Giving him the campaign chair puts the election effort in the hands of someone the Prime Minister controls, rather than someone who might use the role to build an independent power base.

Whether Brown can actually run a winning campaign while simultaneously managing Health and Energy during a fuel crisis is a big question. It’s a colossal workload.

The paywall now starts at halfway through all Democracy Project newsletters. Please take out a paid sub if you want to access the full content and support this service. The second half of the column deals with: The Winners and the survivors; Why Meager missed out; The Polls behind the panic; The Leadership question that will not go away; The Staffing cost and the political risk; The Report card context; What it all means, and links to Further Reading.

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GOVERNMENT
Thomas Coughlan (Herald): Christopher Luxon to reshuffle Cabinet – can he turn it around? (paywalled)
Audrey Young (Herald): What I would do in the Cabinet reshuffle (paywalled)
Henry Cooke (Post): Reshuffle: Who will be up and who will be down in Christopher Luxon’s new Cabinet? (paywalled)
Justin Hu (1News): What to watch as Luxon shakes up Cabinet ahead of election
Ryan Bridge (Newstalk ZB): My thoughts on Luxon’s reshuffle
Hayden Donnell (Spinoff): An organisational chart to help CEO Christopher Luxon understand the government

BSA VS THE PLATFORM
RNZ: BSA ‘bordering on fascist’ after The Platform decision - Peters
Duncan Greive (Spinoff): The BSA’s decision to take on The Platform is brave, principled – and indefensible
Liam Hehir (The Blue Review): Broad Overcast
Steven Price: Attempt to de-Platform the BSA fails
Jenni McManus (Law News): BCA investigates itself, decides it can rule on racism complaint against The Platform’s Sean Plunket
David Farrar: Abolish the BSA
Stewart Sowman-Lund (Post): BSA claims jurisdiction to cover complaint about Sean Plunket’s The Platform (paywalled)
Simon O’Connor: BSA: Ideologically compromised?

FUEL CRISIS
Toby Manhire (Spinoff): The New Zealand fuel crisis laid bare in nine simple charts
Tom Pullar-Strecker (Post): Iran war: Diesel price tops $3.50/litre, still outpacing 91 petrol and set to go higher (paywalled)
Gordon Campbell: On the folly of blaming everything on Trump
RNZ: Latest fuel stock update shows overall figures down
Anna Whyte (Interest): The Government’s planned 2027 fuel excise increase is ‘pretty unlikely to go ahead’ - Transport Minister Chris Bishop says
Maria Slade (BusinessDesk): Prices for key plastic piping products shoot up thanks to Middle East (paywalled)

PARLIAMENT AND ELECTION
Jenna Lynch (Stuff): National MPs threaten to withdraw support for fisheries bill
Louis Collins (RNZ): The House: Fishing while walking backwards
Reynold Macpherson (Herald): Populism and the election: Warning signs voters should watch for (paywalled)
Jonathan Ayling (Herald): Winston Peters is no social conservative, nor is NZ First (paywalled)
Adam Pearse & Jamie Ensor (Herald): Delegate defends National Party Papakura candidate selection amid claims of unfair process (paywalled)
Lyric Waiwiri-Smith (Spinoff): One MP, One Pint: Brooke van Velden on knowing when you’ve reached your peak
Giles Dexter (RNZ): Bill to ease holiday alcohol restrictions passes final reading in Parliament

ELECTRICITY AND ENERGY
Richard Prebble (Herald): Winston Peters’ vintage attack on Labour masks big gaps in power-cost plan (paywalled)
Jen Purdie (The Conversation): LNG vs pumped hydro: will NZ choose to import risk or build cleaner resilience?
Andrew Dickens (Newstalk ZB): Is it time to split electricity gentailers?
Greg Hurrell (BusinessDesk): Shane Jones claims support for coal energy is across political spectrum (paywalled)
Blayne Slabbert (Post): Cook Strait power cable gets $1.14b upgrade nod (paywalled)
Thomas Manch (BusinessDesk): Commerce Commission plans to approve Transpower’s $1.13b Cook Strait cable (paywalled)
Kate Newton (RNZ): EV ‘fomo’ drives sales to their highest level in years amid fuel crisis, dealer says
Aziz Al Sa’afin (1News): EV sales surge in NZ as global tensions and fuel prices drive demand
Miriam Bell (Post): Horizon Networks adopts AI tech to boost climate resilience (paywalled)

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: GAMBLING, HEALTH, INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS, EDUCATION, ECONOMY AND BUSINESS, PUBLIC SECTOR, LOCAL GOVERNMENT, TRANSPORT

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The bill to ban greyhound racing is entering the final stages of debate in Parliament this week. It should pass tomorrow with broad support once some of the contested details are ironed out.

The ban may be a good thing. But it is also a useful moment to look harder at the gambling and racing world behind it, because some very big questions about power, money and political influence have gone largely untouched in New Zealand.

I’m not a gambling specialist. But the more I’ve looked at this world over the last few weeks, and the more people I’ve spoken to, the less comfortable I’ve become. There is a lot going on here that has escaped serious political scrutiny. This is my first attempt to map some of it. And if readers know more, I’d genuinely like to hear from them.

The billion-dollar handover

The starting point is this: the Entain gambling company has promised about $1 billion to the New Zealand racing industry. Entain is a global gambling giant headquartered in the Isle of Man and listed on the London Stock Exchange. And in 2023 it was handed a 25-year monopoly over TAB NZ’s betting operations in exchange for the $1 billion.

The 2023 deal between the TAB and Entain was approved by Labour’s Racing Minister Kieran McAnulty (who had previously worked in the gambling industry before going into politics). It gave Entain day-to-day control of the entire TAB betting and broadcasting operation, with profits split 50-50.

There was also a sweetener: an extra $100 million, payable only if Parliament legislated to ban offshore competitors and hand Entain a true online monopoly on sports and racing betting. That legislation (“the Racing Industry Amendment Bill”) was duly passed in 2025, under the current government.

As Fox Meyer reported in Newsroom last week, Entain is now eyeing the next frontier. The company’s Australia and New Zealand chief executive, Andrew Vouris, has confirmed Entain intends to apply for three of the 15 new online casino licences being offered under Brooke van Velden’s Online Casino Gambling Bill. If successful, Entain would be the only operator in New Zealand able to offer bets on sports, racing, and casinos, and advertise across all three. Vouris called the opportunity “massive.”

So, a single foreign corporation could soon dominate virtually every legal form of online gambling in New Zealand. That is an astonishing amount of market power to hand over.

“Reinforcing loops of decay” in the racing industry

Today in the NBR, journalist Tim Hunter’s report on the racing industry adds an important new dimension. Hunter has obtained a TAB New Zealand Racing Advisory Committee report which reveals the racing industry is caught in what it calls “reinforcing loops of decay.”

The structural deficit is more than $50 million a year. Hunter reports that without reform, key racing codes face exhausting their reserves around the time Entain’s guaranteed funding ends.

That’s a remarkable admission. The very deal that was sold to the public as the industry’s salvation is, on the advisory committee’s own analysis, merely delaying the reckoning. Now Sir Peter Vela’s committee is back asking for tax breaks on horses, permission for TAB NZ to offer online casinos and in-race betting, and shifting the cost of the Racing Integrity Board to the government.

Having been given a monopoly, and having received more than a billion dollars in guaranteed support, the racing industry is back asking for more. The committee’s proposed solutions read like the usual corporate welfare script: tax breaks, and a plea for the public to pick up even more of the tab. A spokesperson for Racing Minister Winston Peters told NBR the minister had not requested the report. Meanwhile, TAB NZ reported net losses of $38.6 million in 2025 and $42.4 million in 2024.

Who actually benefits from this arrangement?

Racing’s special treatment

The academic case is pretty damning too. In February, Lisa Marriott and Max Rashbrooke laid it out bluntly in The Conversation, with an article titled “Racing enjoys special treatment under NZ gambling laws. Why?” Their findings are stark.

The racing industry is the only sector with a specific provision in the Gambling Act allowing it to return gambling proceeds to its own industry. Lotto must redistribute all profits to the community. Casinos and pokie trusts face their own levies and distribution requirements. But racing? Racing gets to keep the money.

The numbers bear this out. In 2024, total distributions of racing and sports betting profits were approximately $199 million, of which $195 million (98%) went to racing. Community sports organisations received $3.5 million – only 2%.

And the tax privileges are extraordinary. A 4% totalisator duty on betting was progressively removed, reaching zero in 2021. This saved the racing sector $11.5 million a year. That’s foregone government revenue, handed directly to an industry that causes measurable social harm. As Marriott and Rashbrooke argue, state support for racing tends to mean more gambling on racing, and more gambling means more harm.

None of this has received anything like the political attention it warrants.

The Entain problem

Then there is the matter of Entain’s own track record. Fox Meyer’s Newsroom piece last week spells it out clearly: the Australian financial crimes regulator AUSTRAC has commenced civil penalty proceedings against Entain. AUSTRAC, as Meyer reports, alleges “serious and systemic non-compliance” with anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing laws over six years.

AUSTRAC alleges Entain accepted over A$150 million worth of wagers from 17 individuals with “suspected criminal profiles and associations” whose identities were deliberately obscured. Entain has set aside A$100 million in preparation for penalties. A court date is tentatively set for November 2026.

That timing matters. As Meyer notes, the hearing would come just weeks after the NZ Government makes final decisions on whether Entain will receive online casino licences.

There are other examples of Entain’s integrity failures. In 2022 the UK Gambling Commission fined Entain £17 million for failures in safer gambling and anti-money laundering within its Ladbrokes brand. In 2023 an Australian state regulator fined the company after it solicited a heavy gambler who then opened an account under a false name.

And yet it was handed the monopoly. The Department of Internal Affairs flagged the risk in a memo to Peters. As reported by RNZ, officials warned that the arrangement could create a perception that a foreign corporation was being handed a monopoly at the expense of domestic returns.

The contract itself remains secret. TAB NZ has refused to release the full details under the Official Information Act. The Post has been trying to prise it out through the OIA since July 2023. Nearly three years later, the public still cannot see the deal that handed a foreign company control of New Zealand’s betting system for 25 years.

Winston Peters and the racing industry conflict question

You can’t write about racing industry politics without writing about Winston Peters. He has been Minister of Racing across three separate governments: 2005–2008, 2017–2020, and now the current term. The pattern is hard to miss. Racing figures back NZ First. Peters backs racing.

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GOVERNMENT
Jo Moir (RNZ): Who the winners and losers of Christopher Luxon’s election-year Cabinet reshuffle might be
Thomas Coughlan, Adam Pearse, Julia Gabel, Jamie Ensor (Herald): National reshuffle coming Thursday as grumpy selection and Sunday night meeting trigger leadership speculation (paywalled)
Henry Cooke and Luke Malpass (Post): Christopher Luxon’s long-awaited Cabinet reshuffle coming on Thursday (paywalled)
Jenna Lynch (Stuff): Reshuffle this week as rumours about Luxon’s leadership are downplayed
Henry Cooke (Post): National ministers tight-lipped on Sunday evening meeting with Christopher Luxon (paywalled)
Justin Hu (1News): PM Christopher Luxon set to reshuffle Cabinet later this week
Giles Dexter (RNZ): Tourism minister unhappy with MP’s shot at taxpayer spending on football
Russell Palmer (RNZ): ‘Shouldn’t come as a surprise’: No extensions to incorporated societies deadline, minister says

FUEL CRISIS
Henry Cooke (Post): Iran War: As air bubble of disruption approaches us in April, it’s starting to feel a lot like early 2020 (paywalled)
Luke Malpass (Post): While Australia cuts fuel tax, NZ holds the fiscal line in oil shock (paywalled)
Tom Pullar-Strecker (Post): Iran war: Marsden Point owner can’t commit to Shane Jones’ ‘late May’ goal for extra fuel storage (paywalled)
Tom Pullar-Strecker (Post): Iran war: A week’s worth of fuel stock includes dregs at bottom of tanks (paywalled)
Jo Moir (RNZ): Nicola Willis rules out reduction in road user charges for diesel users
Craig McCulloch (RNZ): Ministers seek ‘urgent advice’ to ease fuel price pain for support workers
Julie Jacobson (Post): Iran war: Billing Donald Trump and the US for staff’s increased costs just what the doctor ordered (paywalled)
Tom Pullar-Strecker (Post): Spurs’ next manager could learn from Luxon when it comes to pep talk (paywalled)
Sinead Gill (Press): ‘Difficult conversations’ with ratepayers around fuel costs likely after Easter (paywalled)
RNZ: Rising diesel prices begin to lift construction costs, QV says
RNZ: ‘I guess’: Chris Hipkins places trust in government to secure fuel supplies
Lillian Hanly (RNZ): Deputy PM David Seymour outlines 5 lessons learned from Covid in addressing NZ’s fuel response
Sam Smith (Stuff): Australia has cut their fuel tax - should New Zealand follow suit?
Carrick Graham (Herald): Northland can help solve New Zealand’s fuel security problem (paywalled)
Stewart Sowman-Lund (Post): Iran war: St John absorbing fuel cost hikes, no change for patients (paywalled)
Chelsea Daniels (Herald): Fuel shock: Which big companies are easing staff travel costs
Mike Hosking (Newstalk ZB): NZ look like the adults in the room re our fuel response
Roeland van den Bergh (Post): Iran war: Eight fuel ships are on their way - how many more will follow? (paywalled)
Nick James (Post): Iran war: Chris Bishop gets advice on expanding public transport as fuel crisis worsens (paywalled)
Anneke Smith (Post): Construction sector starting to feel economic headwinds of Iran war (paywalled)
Craig McCulloch (RNZ): Fuel crisis the priority, not style guides, Judith Collins tells ACT
Dileepa Fonseka (BusinessDesk): ‘You can put your prices up or you can have me as a customer’: Businesses confront fuel price rises (paywalled)
Tom Peters (World Socialist Website): War on Iran deepens social crisis in New Zealand

FUEL CRISIS: LNG TERMINAL
Tom Pullar-Strecker (Post): Minister sticks to guns on LNG, saying price outlook for imported gas remains favourable (paywalled)
Giles Dexter (RNZ): War on Iran a ‘bazooka’ through government’s LNG plan - gentailer CEO
Mandy Te (Interest): Energy Minister Simon Watts reiterates that an LNG import terminal procurement process is on track

ENERGY AND ELECTRICITY POLICY
Simon Wilson (Listener): A 10-point plan for cutting fossil-fuel dependency (paywalled)
RNZ: Terrible timing but pending power price increase justified - Commerce Commission
Pete Hodgson (ODT): Selecting wise and unwise energy priorities (paywalled)
Greg Hurrell (BusinessDesk): Market-led energy transition failing on the demand side (paywalled)
Jonathan Milne (Newsroom): Businesses warn lines companies: Put power supply before profits
Tracey Kai (Newsroom): Yes, power bills are rising – but keeping them low will cost us more in the long run

FISHING
Bryce Edwards (Democracy Project): Who Really wins from the Fisheries Bill?
RNZ: Shane Jones reminds National, ACT of fisheries bill commitment
Rob Stock (Post): Global hoki heroes take The Post shopping for fish in a New Zealand supermarket (paywalled)

GREENS
Russell Palmer (RNZ): Greens deny former sex worker’s background was a factor in candidate decision
Justin Hu (1News): Row erupts after Greens decline former sex worker’s candidacy
Steven Cowan: The Green Party has a Labour problem

PARLIAMENT AND ELECTION
Roy Morgan: New Zealand Poll: Support for National-led Government and Labour-led Opposition now tied
Ellen Curnow (Spinoff): Why the minor political parties are suddenly very interested in West Coast-Tasman
Lloyd Burr (Stuff): A top tax rate of 87.3% by 2065?! You’ve got to be kidding!
Phil Smith (RNZ): The House: Auckland, alcohol and animals up for debate at Parliament
Emma Ricketts (Stuff): Century-old Easter alcohol ban could be gone by Good Friday

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The Fisheries Amendment Bill has its first reading in Parliament this afternoon. It arrives after an embarrassing backdown over undersized fish, with Winston Peters and Christopher Luxon both scrambling to claim credit for forcing Shane Jones to retreat. But the real story is not the clause that was dumped. It is the rest of the legislation.

This is not just a messy fisheries bill. It is a bill that would hide camera footage from the public, make court challenges harder, normalise dumping fish at sea, and let catch settings run for years with less public scrutiny. And it is being fronted by a minister whose relationship with the fishing industry has long raised obvious questions.

The Government sells the bill as being about streamlining and “common sense”. But it’s deregulation dressed up as tweaks, fitting the Government’s pattern in other sectors, from mining to fast-track consents. Many of the changes sound technocratic and boring. But technical changes are where the biggest shifts in power hide, giving the fishing industry more power.

If any of that strikes you as concerning, read on. This is one of those policy fights that tells you a lot about how power works in New Zealand: quietly, technically, and usually in favour of those already at the table.

The U-turn that wasn’t enough

Last week’s drama centred on a clause buried deep in the bill that would have scrapped minimum size limits for commercial fishers, effectively allowing them to catch and sell baby snapper, tarakihi, and trevally. The clause was only discovered when volunteers from the recreational fishing advocacy group LegaSea read the draft legislation line by line after it was released with almost no notice.

The backlash was immediate. Matt Watson went hard, accusing Jones of writing rules for his mates in the commercial industry. Recreational fishers swarmed MPs online. Environmental groups joined in. Within days, what had looked like a technical amendment had become politically radioactive.

Jones was defiant, until he wasn’t. As recently as the Monday before the backdown, he was entirely unapologetic, dismissing critics as just “noisy voices.” He called Watson a small-tailed fish – “reflective of the biology of the person you’re referring to” – before walking off stage.

Within days, however he was talking about democracy in action, and on Wednesday he folded. Just like that. But the scramble for credit for his U-turn was something to behold. Winston Peters posted to social media claiming he had spoken to Jones and “decided to review this part of the legislation.” Nine minutes later, Christopher Luxon posted his own statement claiming he had spoken to Jones that morning and secured the removal. Act’s Cameron Luxton weighed in too: “Fishers spoke up, Act listened.”

Jones insisted only one person could instruct “the matua” and that was “the rangatira Winston.” Peters told Stuff that Luxon had “absolutely nothing” to do with it. Luxon said the important thing was the Government had “got rid of the most egregious” part of the bill. He then let slip something revealing: the size-limit changes were “not made clear as part of the cabinet process.”

That is quite something: the Prime Minister appearing to suggest he did not fully grasp what was in legislation that had gone through his own Cabinet. Either that process was remarkably sloppy, or Luxon is now trying to distance himself from a political embarrassment.

The Herald published an editorial correctly pointing out that it was public pressure, not internal politics, that forced the U-turn. The newspaper credited LegaSea’s Sam Woolford and Matt Watson, and acknowledged its own front-page splash had helped detonate the controversy. The Spinoff’s Hayden Donnell captured the absurdity, noting that the only ones not claiming credit were “Jones himself, the fishing industry and large fishes.” RNZ’s Jo Moir added that “Santa Claus seemed to be the only person not claiming to have put a stop to this controversial change.”

What makes this episode politically revealing is not just the policy itself. It is the way the Government handled it: the lack of scrutiny up front, the public squabbling afterwards, and the obvious attempt to treat one retreat as proof that the wider bill is fine.

What’s still in the bill

The size-limit clause was clickbait last week. That’s how LegaSea’s Sam Woolford put it. The real danger is everything elsewhere in the bill.

Start with the cameras. Since onboard cameras were installed on fishing vessels, reported fish discards increased by 46% and albatross bycatch incidents rose 3.5-fold compared to what crews had been self-reporting. Cameras proved the industry had been massively underreporting waste and wildlife kills.

The industry’s response? Not to clean up its act, but to lobby for less transparency. And Jones delivered. The bill would exempt fishing boat camera footage from the Official Information Act, meaning the public and journalists can no longer obtain videos of what happens at sea. It would even impose a $50,000 fine on anyone who publishes such footage.

As Greenpeace’s Elijah Hooper put it: “A transparent industry that boasts their world-leading fisheries management wouldn’t need these cover ups. It just looks like they’re trying to hide the plain facts of their activities, from hauling up coral to killing fur seals and dolphins as bycatch.”

Then there’s the restriction on judicial review. Environmental groups like Forest & Bird and the Environmental Law Initiative have won important court cases in recent years forcing ministers to rebuild overfished stocks and comply with sustainability requirements. In the tarakihi case, the Supreme Court confirmed that when a stock is overfished, the law requires rebuilding it based on biology, not economics. Jones’ response to being found wrong in court isn’t to correct course, it’s to limit the courts’ ability to say so.

He’s proposing strict time limits on challenges and narrowing the grounds on which decisions can be contested. The window for appealing fisheries decisions would shrink from several months to just 20 days. Matt Watson has pointed out that OIA responses routinely take longer than that, meaning opponents couldn’t even gather evidence before their time ran out.

Jones frames this as stopping “vexatious, protracted litigation that glugs the system up.” He wants to ensure that “an ecosystem-based approach doesn’t become an ideological weapon to wipe out commerce.” Watson’s response: “That’s not democracy.”

The bill would also legalise the discarding of unwanted fish at sea and give quota owners the right to carry forward increased amounts of uncaught catch into another fishing year. Fisheries scientists warn legalising discards will mask the true scale of fish mortality and incentivise high-grading – keeping only the best fish, tossing the rest. Forest & Bird was blunt: “It’s as if the Minister has looked through all the good things in the Act and wiped them out entirely.”

All of the above raises the obvious question: Why is Jones so determined to push through changes that overwhelmingly advantage the commercial sector?

Follow the money

All of the above raises the obvious question: Why is Jones so determined to push through changes that overwhelmingly advantage the commercial sector? To answer this, the money trail is worth examining.

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FUEL CRISIS
Bryce Edwards (Democracy Project): The Energy insurance that NZ never bought
Jamie Ensor (Herald): Fuel disruption: Government attempts to shore up alternative supply to avoid ‘mad, frenzied rush’
1News: Short weeks and free transport – the fuel crisis responses NZ could copy
Henry Cooke (Post): Iran war: The key debate that will shape New Zealand’s fuel response (paywalled)
Adam Pearse (Herald): Fuel crisis: Why hasn’t the Govt moved to phase two of its fuel plan? (paywalled)
Charlotte Cook (RNZ): Where does New Zealand’s fuel come from and how does it get here?
Russell Palmer (RNZ): Fuel industry welcomes government’s moves to increase capacity, says it won’t help overnight
Richard Harman: The Beehive mood has changed (paywalled)
1News: No NZ fuel phase meeting amid Australia tax move, jet fuel dip
Justin Hu (1News): Scheduled 12c per litre petrol tax hike ‘unlikely’ to go ahead - PM
John MacDonald (Newstalk ZB): Is the PM missing his moment?
James Ball (1News): Why diesel now costs more than petrol
Tom Pullar-Strecker (Post): You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometime, you’ll get what you need (paywalled)
Dileepa Fonseka (BusinessDesk): Government signals new fuel stock push as April risk looms (paywalled)
Gordon Campbell: On The Government’s leadership failure on the fuel crisis
Herald: Christopher Luxon provides update as jet fuel drop may prompt alert level assessment, Australia cuts excise tax (paywalled)
RNZ: Latest figures show increase in national fuel stocks
Glenn McConnell (Stuff): NZ fuel update: More diesel arrives
RNZ: Advocacy group calls for prioritisation of food security amid fuel crisis
RNZ: Fuel crisis: Rural distributors forced to prioritse as certain ports introduce allocation rules
RNZ: Aviation sector urgently calls for specific crisis plan for jet fuel
Tom Pullar-Strecker (Post): Iran war: No relief on the horizon as diesel hits $3.44, overtakes petrol price (paywalled)
Herald: Fuel stocks rise with more than 50 days currently in stock, including diesel
Jessica Hopkins (RNZ): Fuel crisis: Auckland mayor says government should promote public transport over driving
Brent Edwards (NBR): Government’s tone gets more serious as Iran conflict drags on (paywalled)
1News: No NZ fuel phase meeting amid Australia tax move, jet fuel dip

FUEL CRISIS: GOVT SUPPORT
Max Rashbrooke (Spinoff): The government’s fuel crisis package looks weaker with each passing day
Glenn McConnell (Stuff): These workers keep people alive, but the Government won’t pay them back for petrol
Kate Green (RNZ): Care workers’ unions take Health NZ to court over travel costs as petrol prices soar

FUEL CRISIS: LNG TERMINAL
Heather du Plessis-Allan (Newstalk ZB): Consider the LNG terminal idea killed
Emma Ricketts (Stuff): Iran could spell the end of the gas levy: Government changes messaging on LNG plan
Tom Pullar-Strecker (Post): PM says he’ll make final call on LNG terminal, Energy Minister suggests not much has changed (paywalled)
Mandy Te (Interest): Question mark hangs over Government’s plans to build LNG import terminal
No Right Turn: Good riddance?

FUEL CRISIS: IMPACT ON INDUSTRY
Greg Ninness (Interest): Higher diesel prices pushing costs of construction work involving heavy machinery up
Wei Shao, Nick James and Tom Pullar-Strecker (Post): Diesel surge hits farmers and truckers hard (paywalled)
Rob Stock (Post): Running on empty: Diesel price spikes and other costs set to make funerals more expensive (paywalled)

PARLIAMENT, ELECTION AND GOVERNMENT
Sam Sachdeva (Newsroom): Govt reviews Official Information Act costs as requests spike
Herald: Editorial – Can voters trust Chris Hipkins? His credibility has taken another blow (paywalled)
Herald: Labour warns Govt not to sign FTA with India yet as deal text allegedly contradicts public statements (paywalled)
Azaria Howell (Herald): Todd Stephenson writes to Judith Collins on ‘slow’ English-first rebrand rollout; Minister asks for cost advice
Harriet Laughton (Post): Green Party says sex work not reason candidate was rejected (paywalled)
Amber Allott (Press): Former Buller mayor announced as NZ First’s new West Coast-Tasman candidate (paywalled)
Carmel Sepuloni (Herald): Auckland jobs, housing and transport need long-term government plan (paywalled)

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Arguments about the current energy crisis have shifted. It is no longer just about what ministers are doing now. It is also about what they chose not to do when they had the chance.

This morning brought the clearest accountability journalism to this debate. Kate MacNamara in the Herald and Edward Miller in The Post both zero in on the same issue: New Zealand was left more exposed than it needed to be, and ministers were warned about the country’s lack of fuel reserves.

The Diesel reserve we scrapped

Kate MacNamara’s Herald investigation published in the Herald today lays out the timeline with forensic insight. After Marsden Point’s refinery closed in 2022, the Labour Cabinet agreed that a 21-day minimum diesel stockholding was not enough. They committed to a government-contracted public reserve of an additional seven days. That’s 70 million litres of diesel to be stored in the old crude tanks at Marsden Point. MBIE issued a request for proposals in late 2023. The plan was to have fuel in the tanks by early 2025.

It never happened. First, Labour left the capital costs (in the region of $100 million) unfunded. And while the incoming coalition made plenty of noise about fuel security, Associate Energy Minister Shane Jones then killed off the plan in a July 2024 Cabinet Paper.

His reasoning was laid bare in the document: “Procuring reserve diesel is expensive. At current prices, 70 million litres would cost $84 million. As the current fiscal environment constrains our ability for new capital investment, I seek your agreement to stop work on securing tank storage and purchasing diesel through this arrangement.”

The paper acknowledged the consequences plainly: “This will prolong our vulnerability to a diesel supply disruption until potentially 2028 but this is unavoidable without committed funding.”

That $84 million figure — roughly $1.20 a litre stripped of taxes and levies — has been, as MacNamara puts it, “thoroughly flattered” by a Middle East war that has doubled the price. The price tag that ministers balked at last year now looks cheap. And now the country is scrambling without the reserve it rejected.

After axing the plan, MacNamara explains that Jones commissioned fresh consultants (Castalia and Enerlytica) who duly reached the same conclusion their predecessors had: diesel would likely run short in a 90-day disruption. The Government’s response was to push the obligation onto fuel companies, requiring them to build reserves to 28 days. The deadline? July 2028. That pushed the problem onto industry but gave them a major extension of time.

MacNamara’s summary is withering: “For years, New Zealand’s diesel dilemma has been whether to pay for extra stockholdings for use in the case of emergencies or risk it. So far, we’ve been risking it.”

Edward Miller’s companion piece in The Post today is the insider’s version of the same story. Miller fought from the union movement side to keep Marsden Point’s refining capacity operational, and his account of the decisions that followed its closure carries particular weight.

He notes that MBIE itself verified that the refinery could have been retained as emergency resilience capacity: producing fuel inefficiently but indefinitely in a worst case, enough to keep ambulances and food trucks running. The owner of Marsden Point is Channel Infrastructure, and its CEO Rob Buchanan told Newstalk ZB last week that two recommissioned crude tanks at Marsden Point — holding some 90 million litres — could be ready in two to three months. Jones had this option available. Miller points out that he did not take it.

Miller’s verdict is blunter still: “You can’t call the insurance company after you’ve crashed your car and request a policy. Your best bet might then be to blame the other driver, which may help explain why Jones has been particularly vocal of late on the question of who is responsible for our precarious fuel security position.”

Miller’s retrospective account of the diesel reserve decision is damning in the same way MacNamara’s is, but sharper: “Having been told that increased diesel storage was the cheapest option to safeguard resilience, Jones’ failure to pursue that option in the last year has left us dangerously exposed.”

Labour bears plenty of blame. It let the refinery close and didn’t properly fund the reserve plan. But the decision to actually kill the reserve, in writing, sits with this Government.. Jones is now hinting at using regional development funds to buy the very diesel storage he scrapped eighteen months ago.

What if the forecasts are wrong?

Richard Harman’s Politik column today explains that the Government is quietly preparing to access 40 days’ worth of emergency fuel stocks held in the UK, the US and Japan under International Energy Agency agreements. Jones confirmed it at Friday’s briefing: “The Minister of Finance and I are taking advice from the officials as to the most efficient and effective way to use those options to bolster a buffer for New Zealand.”

Harman points out that the fact that this is being discussed tells you something the public messaging doesn’t: the Government believes this crisis will last months, not weeks. And there is a logistical problem nobody has solved: Marsden Point has storage capacity for only about a week’s use of any procured IEA reserves. One option being floated is chartering a tanker and mooring it at the port as floating storage. The fact ministers may need to park a tanker off Marsden Point because there isn’t enough onshore storage tells you how badly basic resilience planning has failed.

Harman’s sharpest insight concerns the data. The entire crisis management apparatus rests on forecast data supplied by the fuel companies themselves. At Friday’s briefing, Jones was careful to note: “The fuel companies have not once confirmed with us that they believe that they’re going to suffer any supply problems.” But the Government is simultaneously preparing for the possibility that those forecasts prove wrong. You can’t simultaneously assure the public nothing will go wrong while chartering floating storage tankers for when it does. That contradiction is getting bigger.

Nathan Surendran, an energy systems engineer writing on Substack, makes the most pointed version of this argument. The Government published six triggers for moving from Phase 1 to Phase 2 of its fuel plan. The first is export restrictions imposed by countries whose refineries supply New Zealand. South Korea imposed mandatory export caps on 13 March, and China banned fuel exports entirely. Thailand followed by banning most refined product exports. By the Government’s own published criteria, the trigger for Phase 2 was crossed weeks ago. Surendran’s contrast is sharp: New Zealand launched an EECA advertising campaign urging people to carpool, while every country in our supply chain declared some form of emergency.

Meanwhile, the Government’s billion-dollar LNG terminal is its signature answer to the electricity dry-year problem is starting to look dead on arrival. Energy Minister Simon Watts said in February that Cabinet had made “a definitive decision to build.”

Beehive sources now say the economics have “fundamentally changed” with LNG prices more than doubling since the war began, and ministers are privately considering walking away. The terminal was designed on the assumption of cheap Qatari gas. Qatar’s Ras Laffan facility, which is the source of a fifth of the world’s LNG, has been hit in strikes and may be partly offline for three to five years. In other words, ministers backed an electricity-security fix that depended on a global gas market now in chaos.

Who’s actually leading?

Luxon’s absence has become part of the story now. That is not just media froth. It matters. A Prime Minister doesn’t get to vanish into the background while his Finance Minister becomes the public face of a national fuel emergency.

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NOTE TO SUBSCRIBERS:

From today I am starting to make some changes to the Democracy Project Substack newsletters. Mostly, this is about seeking a sustainable revenue stream in order to keep the project going. I’m now working full-time on the Democracy Project, and my only source of income is from Substack paid subscribers. So, I’m hoping to convince more of my free subscribers to switch to a paid monthly subscription. To help with this, I’m going to try putting the paywall about halfway through all of my newsletters. Free subscribers will still get the first half of the News Briefings and Democracy Briefings, but if you want the complete versions then you will have to take out a paid sub. I’ll update you with some further changes over the next week.

ELECTRICITY AND ENERGY POLICY
Bryce Edwards (Democracy Project): The Establishment joins the electricity insurgency
Danyl McLauchlan (Listener): NZ First reads the room over gentailers (paywalled)
1News: Fuel price blowouts push NZ towards electrification – advocate
Thomas Coughlan & Troy Matich (Herald): LNG binned? New terminal looks doubtful, ministers consider options amid skyrocketing gas costs (paywalled)
Sam Stubbs (Sunday Star Times): Who should we blame for high power prices? (paywalled)
Tom Pullar-Strecker (Post): Cheaper, greener energy: Biogas could far outshine imported LNG by 2050, report suggests (paywalled)
RNZ: Lake Onslow pumped hydro scheme considered for fast-track by government
Tom Pullar-Strecker (Post): Jubilant Lake Onslow backers forecast it can be built by 2034 and slash power bills (paywalled)
Steve Hepburn (ODT): $1b power savings from Onslow? (paywalled)
Nadine Higgins (Herald): Are electric vehicles cheaper than petrol cars? Costs, savings and battery concerns explained (paywalled)

FUEL CRISIS
Nathan Surendran: Every country in our supply chain has declared an emergency. NZ just launched an ad campaign
Edward Miller (Post): We’ve been left dangerously exposed by the failure to build public diesel reserve (paywalled)
Kate MacNamara (Herald): Government mulls buying extra diesel storage, despite axing a similar plan in 2024 (paywalled)
Liam Hehir (The Blue Review): Three weeks later...
Verity Johnson (Stuff): Let’s not waste this crisis
Richard Harman: What if MBIE and the fuel companies are wrong? (paywalled)
Ian Llewellyn (BusinessDesk): Oil shock may slow energy project decisions (paywalled)
Miriam Bell (Post): Iran war: Forestry giant wants industry to be ‘critical’ in national fuel plan (paywalled)
Jonathan Milne (Newsroom): Perverse pricing model means Air NZ has stopped buying biofuel
RNZ: Latest gauge of the country’s fuel supplies to be released today
RNZ: Ministry seeks regulatory feedback on fuel plan to avoid red tape ‘getting in the way’
Delphine Herbert (RNZ): Fears transport service procurers may hit back as costs rise
Alecia Rousseau (Post): Care workers giving up food to cover cost of rising fuel (paywalled)

PARLIAMENT, ELECTION AND GOVERNMENT
Julia Gabel (Herald): Poll shows energy prices, global instability now greatest worries for New Zealanders
Grant Duncan: Can New Zealand First come third – at Labour’s expense?
Chris Trotter (Interest): Neither Labour nor National have survived the revolution that New Zealand had to have
Francesca Rudkin (Newstalk ZB): Here’s the Labour Party’s biggest problem
Amanda Gillies (RNZ): Fisheries Bill enters murky waters
Russell Palmer (RNZ): NZ First announces former mayor as West Coast candidate
Ben Walker (Post): Who’d be a politician? The case for making Parliament a better, safer workplace (paywalled)
ODT: Editorial – Poor process on policing Bill (paywalled)
Erin Smith (Herald): Labour selects former MP Angela Roberts to challenge Whanganui seat
Ani O’Brien: He knew: The paper trail Chris Hipkins can’t explain
Kiwiblog: Guest Post: The damning timeline for Hipkins
Harriet Laughton (Post): Agenda: Fuel in focus as ministers consider next steps (paywalled)
Cameron Bagrie (BusinessDesk): Why targeted government support beats universal cuts (paywalled)

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A year ago, breaking up the electricity gentailers was protest-chant politics. Consumer advocates pushed it. So did some unions and the odd contrarian academic. It sounded too “radical”, too “anti-market”, too likely to be swatted away with the ritual phrase “investor confidence”.

Over the past week, the proposal to break up New Zealand’s gentailers — splitting the big four power companies into separate generators and retailers — has gone from fringe idea to something approaching a national conversation. And the people driving it aren’t leftwing agitators or fringe populists. They include the founder of Xero, the former leader of the National Party, the managing director of New Zealand’s largest KiwiSaver provider, and the chief operating officer of an independent power company.

That’s the story this week. Not the policy itself — I wrote about that when Peters announced it last Sunday — but the strange new coalition forming around it. And what it tells us about the growing chasm between the political establishment and everyone else.

The Telecom moment, again

The comparison everyone reaches for is Telecom. In 2006, the Government forced the separation of Telecom’s network infrastructure (Chorus) from its retail business (Spark). The same objections were made then: too disruptive, would chill investment, uncertain outcomes. It happened anyway. Broadband improved.

Peters and Shane Jones have both been invoking this comparison since February. Peters told RNZ that the current electricity system was set up 28 years ago, there was always a proviso that prices would be regulated if they failed to plateau, and that proviso was never used. “New Zealanders are being screwed,” he said.

NZ First has also quietly published an actual policy paper. Titled “Fixing a Rigged Game: A New Electricity Era for New Zealanders and New Zealand Businesses,” it runs to 18 pages. No media outlet has reported on it, but the paper is worth reading. It goes well beyond stump-speech rhetoric. See the file here:

Fixing A Rigged Game - NZ First policy paper

4.52MB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

One figure stands out: in the decade to 2023, the gentailers paid total dividends of $10.7 billion — including excess dividends of $4.2 billion — while investment on plant, property and equipment came to only $4.5 billion. For every dollar invested in actual infrastructure, $2.41 went to shareholders. The paper calls this the predictable result of a system that rewards scarcity and punishes supply. It also deploys a phrase that deserves wider use: the electricity sector, it claims, has relied on “weaponised complexity” to stagnate any reform process. If the jargon is thick enough, the theory goes, the public gives up.

It also raises the solar buyback issue, which hasn’t attracted nearly enough attention. Peters noted that households wanting to feed excess solar power back into the grid are “just being ripped off” on buy-back rates. The paper backs mandated net metering in which households pay the same rate for exported power as they pay when they buy. This single change, the document argues, could mobilise mortgage capital into rooftop solar at scale.

Whether the detail survives scrutiny is another question. But the document exists, and that counts for something. When I wrote last week that the energy policy came without a credible implementation plan, NZ First has at least tried to fill the gap. The other parties should be held to the same standard.

Danyl McLauchlan’s diagnosis

The sharpest analysis of what’s happening here comes from Danyl McLauchlan in this weekend’s Listener, in a piece called “Fuel for a Crisis.” It deserves reading.

McLauchlan sets the scene: Fitch has revised New Zealand’s credit outlook to negative. GDP per capita continues to slump. The country has borrowed its way through four once-in-a-generation shocks in 18 years and the room to do it again is running out. Against that backdrop, Peters picks up what McLauchlan describes as “the most dumbfoundingly obvious cost-of-living policy during an energy crisis because none of the other parties seem to notice it lying there.”

His framing for why it happened, and why none of the other parties got there first, is cutting. Napoleon, McLauchlan writes, apocryphally said he simply found the crown of France in the gutter and picked it up. Peters has done something similar. There was even, McLauchlan notes, “a hint of bafflement to his announcement. Why don’t his political rivals do any politics?” It’s actually a devastating question.

McLauchlan’s explanatory framework in the Listener is the concept of the “Stakeholder State,” which he borrows from Paul Ovenden, Keir Starmer’s former head of political strategy. Ovenden described it as “the gradual but decisive shift of politics and power away from voters and towards groups with the time, money and institutional access to make themselves too important to ignore.” Ovenden described Westminster as captured by “a complex coalition of campaign groups, regulators, litigators, trade bodies and well-networked organisations.”

McLauchlan’s observation is simple: “This is a perfect description of Wellington.”

He then lands a detail that deserves far more attention than it has received. Christopher Luxon’s chief of staff is the former chief executive of the Electricity Retailers and Generators Association, which is the industry’s own lobbying group. That is not a conflict of interest you can hand-wave away.

McLauchlan’s verdict on the two major parties is bleak. National and Labour have spent a decade “flailing about for energy policies — any energy policies! — that could protect the electricity cartel.” He lists them: pumped hydro at Lake Onslow, an LNG terminal in Taranaki, a polite letter from Nicola Willis to the gentailers suggesting they might like to build more supply. McLauchlan imagines the gentailer executives in their boardroom, shaking with laughter, commanding an underling to read the letter aloud one more time.

His conclusion is devastating. The implicit pitch from both Labour and National is managed decline. Hipkins might accelerate it with more borrowing. Luxon offers a slower, more cautious collapse.

When the Business Establishment breaks ranks

Here’s what makes this political moment genuinely strange.

Rod Drury — Xero founder, recently crowned New Zealander of the Year — published a detailed LinkedIn paper on structural separation this week. Drury has been pushing this for some time, but the NZ First move prompted him to lay it out formally.

Drury’s argument isn’t mostly about bills. It’s bigger. Strategic opportunity. He thinks New Zealand’s electricity market is failing to deliver affordable, competitive, renewable energy, and that structural separation would unlock something: real competition, lower costs, innovation, faster decarbonisation.

He envisions a National Electricity Infrastructure Company, which would be something like Chorus but for generation, attracting capital from global super funds, mandated to overbuild toward 100% renewable electricity. The goal, in his framing, is “the lowest cost renewable energy in the world.” He even suggests New Zealand could become an exporter of clean energy to offshore AI data centres. “There hasn’t been much excitement for New Zealand voters for a decade,” Drury wrote. “Perhaps the vision of Lowest Cost Renewable Energy in the World becomes our next nation-building project.”

His post was liked by the Reserve Bank’s chief economist Paul Conway, David Cunliffe, Paddy Gower, and Sam Stubbs.

Simon Bridges went further. The former National Party leader and current CEO of the Auckland Business Chamber said NZ First’s policy was right. On LinkedIn he was explicit this week: “It’s really good to see NZ First Leader Rt Hon Winston Peters confirm his Party’s campaign to split New Zealand’s gentailers going into this election. This has been the position of Auckland Business Chamber and the Northern Infrastructure Forum for well over a year now.”

Notably, his post was liked by Rod Drury, Sam Stubbs, Fran O’Sullivan, Paul Conway (the Reserve Bank’s Chief Economist), and Tex Edwards, among others.

These are not radicals. Simon Bridges ran the country’s largest political party. Drury is the most celebrated tech entrepreneur New Zealand has produced. When figures like these start calling for structural separation, and doing so publicly, the Overton window doesn’t just shift a little, it cracks right open.

Stubbs, Cooney, and the other voices

Sam Stubbs, managing director of Simplicity KiwiSaver, has a sharp column in today’s Sunday Star-Times that takes a slightly different angle. His target is politicians, not gentailers. Governments have maintained 51% ownership and 100% control while refusing to fund new generation. The result is textbook rent-seeking. Build less, raise prices, pay dividends. Treasury estimates cumulative gentailer dividends since listing at $5.4 billion.

Stubbs nails the ugly irony: politicians who oversaw this dividend addiction now publicly blame the companies’ management for high prices. “It’s like your manager making a mistake, but publicly shaming you.” His solution is to allow New Zealanders to own more of the government’s stake, diluting Crown control while keeping a blocking stake. His solution differs from NZ First’s, as it’s more cautious, less radical. But he’s pointing the finger at exactly the same place: successive governments that created this mess.

Margaret Cooney, chief operating officer of Octopus Energy, wrote in the Post this week that politicians should “go bold and fast on electricity.” Her argument: you cannot rely on the incumbent gentailers to lead the transformation. They are rational businesses built for steady-state growth, managed risk and reliable dividends. Dry year risk went unmanaged. The decline of domestic gas went unplanned. The Huntly firming deal only happened under political pressure. As Cooney puts it: “Waiting for incumbents to voluntarily disrupt their own profitable status quo is not a strategy. It is wishful thinking.”

She also flags a structural absurdity: gentailers can cross-subsidise their retail arms at prices that independent retailers cannot replicate. The two companies that won Consumer NZ’s People’s Choice award in 2025 — Flick Electric and Frank Energy — have since closed or been absorbed by the very gentailers they were competing with. That’s not a competitive market.

Three parties, and a squiggly piece of paper

As Mandy Te reported for Interest.co.nz, NZ First, the Greens and Labour are now all now eyeing changes to the gentailer model. But most importantly, Green MP Scott Willis has had a Members’ Bill in the ballot since early 2024 that would enforce corporate separation. When Peters announced the NZ First policy this week, Willis promptly wrote to him suggesting NZ First could simply support the existing bill and get it done now.

Peters responded by holding up a piece of paper with crayon squiggles on it, claiming his team was trying to figure out what it said. It was humourous, but also revealed something real: Peters wants to own this policy, not share it. If Willis’s bill is sitting there, ready to go, why not just say yes? Because NZ First needs this as an election platform, not a legislative achievement. Fair enough politically. Less fair to the households paying the bills in the meantime.

Chris Hipkins told reporters he was “absolutely leaving the door open to fundamental changes to our electricity market.” That is the political version of a holding statement. But it is further than Labour has gone before.

Luxon shut it down: splitting the gentailers would “drive a lot of uncertainty in the energy sector when we need a lot of certainty right now.” His chief of staff used to run the gentailer lobby. Connect those dots yourself.

The Numbers the politicians are ignoring

One of the underreported aspects of this debate is how much support the breakup already has in the business community. The Auckland Business Chamber poll found 49% of voters wanted the split, with only 20% opposed. The 2024 Mood of the Boardroom survey asked business leaders whether the government should “do a Telecom” and separate retailers from generators: 39% said yes, 23% said no, 38% were unsure.

So, support for the split runs almost two-to-one over opposition among business leaders. The policy establishment has been well behind public and business opinion on this for years.

Who this is really about

There is a contradiction sitting at the centre of all this that deserves naming. The people calling loudest for reform are establishment figures. Simon Bridges ran National. Rod Drury built Xero. Sam Stubbs runs Simplicity. Margaret Cooney runs Octopus Energy NZ. Yet it’s the establishment parties — National and Labour — refusing to move.

McLauchlan’s stakeholder state concept explains the gap. The major parties are not paralysed by ideology. They are captured by institutional relationships. Both have become addicted to the dividend flows. The legal and regulatory framework around the electricity market was designed by, and for, the incumbents. Changing it would mean a fight with some of the most powerful corporate interests in the country. Neither party seems willing to pick it.

Peters, for all his track record of campaign promises that evaporate between election day and coalition negotiations, at least has. McLauchlan is honest about the risk. NZ First has its own stakeholders: forestry, fishing, racing, mining, tobacco. The policy may vanish, he writes, “like cigarette smoke on a windy street.” But it is a specific alternative that cuts against stakeholder interests in favour of the public. And right now, that is more than anyone else is offering.

The deeper story here is not really about electricity. It is about whether New Zealand’s political system is capable of taking on entrenched interests when those interests are transparently working against the public. The gentailer breakup has become a kind of litmus test — not just about energy policy, but about whether politicians are willing to confront concentrated corporate power when it matters. The evidence so far is not encouraging. But the conversation has moved further in a week than it had in a decade. The pressure is building. And the politicians who think they can ride this one out may find the ground has shifted underneath them.

Dr Bryce Edwards
Director of the Democracy Project

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FUEL CRISIS
Marc Daalder (Newsroom): Fuel crisis a narrow political strait for Govt to cross
Jenna Lynch (Stuff): New Zealand has the ability to call in emergency fuel supply – here’s how that would work
Tracy Watkins (Sunday Star Times): Iran war: Why Christopher Luxon is missing his ‘Ardern moment’ (paywalled)
Vernon Small (Sunday Star Times): Iran war: Conflict fallout hits NZ economy - and exposes cracks in Government’s response (paywalled)
Andrea Vance (Sunday Star Times): Iran War: Working poor face the limits of political fixes (paywalled)
Virginia Fallon (Sunday Star Times): Five days of food: The products, and people, under the pump (paywalled)
Heather du Plessis-Allan (Herald): Fuel crisis money and the complainers (paywalled)
Simon Terry (Newsroom): Iran’s move to toll Hormuz raises the stakes for NZ
Jonathan Milne (Newsroom): ‘I heard it described as the biggest energy shock in the history of the world; it certainly feels like it’

PARLIAMENT, ELECTION AND GOVERNMENT
Damien Grant (Stuff): Is this moment that PM forces me to eat my words? I hope so
Stewart Sowman-Lund (Sunday Star Times): The battle for Tāmaki: how a ‘safe’ seat became a live contest (paywalled)
Adam Pearse (Herald): Wellington MP Tamatha Paul standing by letter of support for graffiti tagger who defaced her city (paywalled)
John MacDonald (Newstalk ZB): Is this the end of Hipkins’ election chances?
Alistair Reese (Spinoff): The Treaty isn’t broken – we just can’t agree what it is
Mina Martin (NZ Adviser): New Commerce Commission CEO signals steady hand on competition
Aaron Smale (Listener): When does a nation’s actions become a breach of international law? (paywalled)
Tiana Haxton (RNZ): NZ government-backed initiative aims to power Pasifika youth in gaming and tech industry
Nicky Snoyink (Post): National parks for the people, or just the privileged few? (paywalled)
Liam Dann (Herald): Stupid Rules: The new book tackling New Zealand’s problem with red-tape (paywalled)
Chris Pugsley (Newsroom): Culture ministry axes Gallipoli site
Susan Edmunds (RNZ): Law change could let IRD change its interest rates more quickly

SOCIETY
Bryce Edwards (Democracy Project): A Country losing faith
RNZ: Advice from the world’s happiest country, as NZ misses top 10
1News: Kiwis aged 15-24 lag in world happiness rankings
Varsha Anjali (Herald): Puberty blocker ban: What it could mean for transgender teens and their families in New Zealand (paywalled)
David Harvey (Listener): The debate over gender identity and legal obligation (paywalled)
Lianne Dalziel (Newsroom): We must all listen out for the sound of hatred
Janhavi Gosavi (Herald): New Zealand’s longest-running Pride festival turns 40, marks anniversary of Homosexual Law Reform Bill
Rob Campbell (Newsroom): Racism must be fought against, not reconciled with
Chris Trotter (ODT): The feeling of freedom and condemning freedom of expression (paywalled)

ECONOMY AND BUSINESS
Susan Edmunds (RNZ): Why economists are ‘very worried’ about what lies ahead
Liam Dann (Herald): Recovery set to stall for third time in three years ... here’s how we should deal with it (paywalled)
Mike Hosking (Newstalk ZB): Here’s the problem with the Reserve Bank economists
Rob Stock (Sunday Star Times): Fraser Whineray: Masses are missing the KiwiSaver bus (paywalled)
Fran O’Sullivan (Herald): Why a global trade shake-up may be the World Trade Organisation’s only lifeline (paywalled)
Kurt Bayer (Herald): NZME business panel: Christchurch is booming – and Aucklanders are increasingly moving south
Press: Ngāi Tahu among bidders for Molesworth Station lease (paywalled)
NBR: Childcare ‘titan’ Wayne Wright Sr dies (paywalled)

HEALTH
Pretoria Gordon (RNZ): 60,000 children admitted to hospital with preventable diseases each year, Cure Kids warns
Joanne Naish (Post): The children caught in New Zealand’s meth crisis (paywalled)
Rebecca Wright (Stuff): Police minister says drug enforcement is working, despite cocaine use up 98%
Eva de Jong (Herald): The number of NZ women on oral contraceptives is falling. What is the truth about the pill? (paywalled)

INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
Kevin Norquay (Sunday Star Times): Spectator State: is watching as the world burns our best policy? (paywalled)
ODT: If only the world was a benign place (paywalled)
ODT: Editorial – Swords and ploughshares (paywalled)
Alexia Russell (RNZ): Why Israel and the US are in lockstep - and why that might be changing

MEDIA AND SOCIAL MEDIA
Shayne Currie (Herald): TVNZ cuts - Good Sorts 6pm news segment, Re: News youth brand in firing line (paywalled)
Charlotte McLauchlan (Newsroom): A small country with a big chance to hit social media platforms where it hurts
Herald: Editorial – Meta, Google and the game-changing verdict (paywalled)

RMA
Mandy Te (Interest): RMA Reform Minister says ‘there are things in the Bills that need to be fixed’
Mandy Te (Interest): RMA reforms: ‘Natural hazard losses are not just insurance losses’
Mike Houlahan (ODT): Critters, fresh water and the endless growth agenda (paywalled)

HALTER
Dita De Boni (Post): NZ-born, US firm Halter hits US$2b valuation on Peter Thiel-led funding round (paywalled)
Chris Keall (Herald): Halter raises $377 million at $3.3 billion valuation, reveals what’s next (paywalled)
Riley Kennedy (BusinessDesk): Halter hits $3.4b valuation as Peter Thiel-backed fund leads $377m Series E raise (paywalled)

TRANSPORT
Andy Brew (Post): Axed rescue tug leaves ‘irresponsible’ risk ahead of rough winter for ferries: union (paywalled)
Matthew Martin (Waikato Times): Government backs $10m Hamilton Airport runway extension (paywalled)

IMMIGRATION
Phil Smith (RNZ): The House: Immigration changes to protect migrants but expand deportation
Alice Peacock (Newsroom): High-value migrants quitting NZ after 4-year tax honeymoon – industry

CARTOONS

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New Zealand’s annual trust survey is out. The trust figures are not good. But this year, the most alarming finding in the 2026 Acumen Edelman Trust Barometer isn’t really about trust at all. It’s about hope.

Only 17% of New Zealanders believe the next generation will be better off than today. That’s a nine-point drop from last year, a sharp collapse in optimism, and it puts us among the most pessimistic countries in the developed world. Lower than Australia, lower than the US, lower even than the United Kingdom.

The survey asked respondents directly: compared to how things are today, will the state of things be better for the next generation? More than four in five said no, or weren’t sure. That’s a country that has effectively given up on the idea that the future will be better than the present. And in an election year, it’s political dynamite.

From Grievance to insularity

The Acumen Edelman Trust Barometer is an annual global survey, now in its 26th year, produced internationally by the Edelman PR firm and run locally by Wellington-based consultancy Acumen. This year’s theme is “Trust Amid Insularity,” which follows last year’s “Crisis of Grievance.”

The progression is revealing. In 2025, the data showed a country seething with resentment toward a system it believed was rigged. In 2026, it shows something arguably worse: a population that has stopped engaging with people who think differently. People aren’t just angry, they’re retreating into their shells.

The headline insularity figure is striking. Three in four New Zealanders (76%) are now hesitant or outright unwilling to trust someone whose values, beliefs, approach to problem-solving, or cultural background differs from their own. Only 23% remain “open.” New Zealand’s 76% sits well above the global average of 70%.

Edelman’s story about the last few years is simple enough: first division, then grievance, now withdrawal. People think the country is split, think the system is rigged, and end up trusting only their own kind.

Acumen chief executive Adelle Keely puts it diplomatically. New Zealand is seeing “a clear shift away from ‘we’ to ‘me’,” she says – “towards caution and selectivity in who and what we trust.” What Acumen politely calls caution looks more like atomisation.

A Society fragmenting

This fits a wider pattern. New Zealand is becoming more disconnected, and younger people seem to be feeling it most sharply. Outward Bound’s recent “Crisis of Confidence” survey report found that 57% of young New Zealanders think the world is declining, and more than a quarter of them (26%) believe they have no power to change themselves for the better. And one in four young men reported having no close friends at all. These are young people who feel, as RNZ reported, “isolated, disempowered and divided from their peers.”

Outward Bound CEO Malindi MacLean described the finding as confronting. Young people increasingly feel “the system is rigged against them,” she said, and a quarter of them have translated that into a sense that they can’t change anything. So why try?

Call it atomisation – individual withdrawal, not collective political anger. Not protest but resignation.

And, yes, political class tends to talk about young people as if the problem is just their “engagement”: get them voting, get them reading news, get them civics education. That’s all fine. But the more basic problem is that many of them don’t feel they belong to anything stable, and they don’t believe they have agency.

Distrust remains the baseline

New Zealand’s overall Trust Index score is 49 out of 100, up from 47 last year. On Edelman’s scale, anything below 50 is “distrust” territory. So we’ve improved, technically, but we’re still distrustful. We sit 25th out of 28 countries surveyed, level with Colombia, below every other English-speaking developed nation except the US. The global average is 57.

Looking at the results institution by institution, we can see that trust in government remains stuck at 45%, deep in distrust territory. Media has edged up from 35% to 39% – still the least trusted institution in the country. Business sits at 57%, NGOs at 55%.

Break it down by income and the picture sharpens. Among high-income New Zealanders (top 25%), trust is 56%. Among low-income earners (bottom 25%), it’s 43%. That gap matters. Better-off New Zealanders still have some residual faith in the system. Poorer New Zealanders much less so.

Government trust peaked at 57% during the pandemic years. It has been sliding ever since.

The Gap between expectation and delivery

The most politically devastating finding might be one that gets less attention than the headline figures. The survey asks whether institutions are doing a good job of bridging divides and facilitating trust-building between groups who distrust each other. It also asks whether those institutions have an obligation to do so.

In terms of government: 81% of New Zealanders say it has that obligation to bridge divides. Only 21% say it is doing the job well. That is a 60-point chasm between what people expect and what they see. For media, the gap is 45 points. For business, 32 points.

The public still seems to want institutions to hold the country together. What’s collapsing is confidence that the people running those institutions are capable of doing that. And 80% want politicians to stop using rhetoric that blames or vilifies particular groups. Seventy-nine per cent say politicians should be required to engage in civil discourse. These are not radical demands. The fact that overwhelming majorities feel the need to state them tells you how far the standard has fallen.

What it means for the election

In an election year, data like this should concentrate minds. It won’t, probably, but it should.

Once trust gets this low, the usual campaign talk stops working. Slogans like “Back on track”, “A brighter future”, “steady leadership”: it all starts sounding like wallpaper. The ground is there for anti-establishment disruption.

Danyl McLauchlan’s recent analysis of New Zealand’s five voter “tribes” – based on data from the 2023 New Zealand Election Study – is useful context here. Two of his tribes, the “Precarious Left” and “Alienated Conservatives”, together make up roughly 35% of the electorate. They score well below average on institutional trust. They are the most disaffected voters in the country, and they are the least well-served by the party system. Labour and the Greens have oriented themselves toward “Educated Progressives”. National and Act serve the “Establishment Right”. Both sides chase Middle New Zealand. The “Precarious Left” and the “Alienated Conservatives” get very little.

This is where anti-establishment politics can grow. And 68% of New Zealanders in the Edelman survey say that people with different views distrust each other so much they actively work against one another; 26% would support reducing the number of foreign companies even if it meant higher prices. These are significant sections of New Zealand embracing the kind of economic nationalism and anti-system sentiment that has already reshaped politics overseas.

New Zealand has so far avoided the sort of political blow-ups seen with Brexit, Trump, or the European hard right. MMP has helped, functioning as a pressure-release valve. But the underlying conditions are present and deepening. Matthew Hooton has argued that after a decade or two of economic drift under successive governments, New Zealand is falling steadily down international living-standards tables while both major parties paper over the decline with focus-grouped slogans. Josie Pagani writes that the country needs a cultural reset, and that voters in this election will back risk-takers who “tell it like it is.” The trust data supports both diagnoses.

Handle the framing with care

A caveat. The Edelman Trust Barometer is produced by the world’s largest PR firm, and Acumen is a communications consultancy. The report’s prescription – that businesses should lead on trust-building, that employers are the institution best placed to bridge divides – is not innocent of commercial interest. Recommending that corporates invest more in trust-building is the kind of advice that generates consulting revenue.

The numbers are useful. The framing is another matter. The survey shows people believe the system is rigged, that government serves the few, that the wealthy benefit unfairly. And then, predictably enough, the answer becomes workplace trust and better leadership. Maybe. But that lets the system off the hook. If inequality, insecurity and political failure are driving the distrust, no amount of managerial language will fix it.

The report is good at describing the symptoms. It is much less interested in the causes.

Dr Bryce Edwards
Director of the Democracy Project

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FUEL CRISIS
Bryce Edwards (Democracy Project): Sleepwalking into the worst crisis since Covid
Jenna Lynch (Stuff): A crisis can be an opportunity, and Christopher Luxon is missing his moment (paywalled)
Marc Daalder (Newsroom): Why the fuel crisis isn’t Covid and shouldn’t be treated the same
Thomas Coughlan (Herald): Christopher Luxon grapples with ghost of Covid response as new crisis looms (paywalled)
Luke Malpass (Post): The oil crisis isn’t just anything, it’s the only thing (paywalled)
Glenn McConnell (Stuff): You might have noticed the absence of a certain podium from the fuel crisis announcements
Harriet Laughton and Nick James (Post): Iran war: Diesel, petrol and jet fuel to be given own alert levels in fleshed out fuel plan (paywalled)
Giles Dexter (RNZ): Government may pause fuel taxes increases
Post: Editorial – A light touch in a crisis (paywalled)
Charlie Mitchell (Post): ‘Oil for lamb’ and panicking pensioners: How New Zealand weathered the last oil shock (paywalled)
Russell Palmer (RNZ): Government reveals details of fuel crisis rationing plan - and who will be prioritised
Nick James (Post): Iran war: What will trigger restrictions on fuel (paywalled)
Brian Easton: Responding to the economic shocks from the Iran War
ODT: Editorial – Assurances NZ unlikely to run short (paywalled)
Murat Ungor (The Conversation): Distant conflict, local crisis: is this oil shock the wake‑up call NZ needed?
Henry Cooke (Post): Iran War: Simon Bridges warns the Government off any encouragement of working from home (paywalled)
Anneke Smith (Post): Fuel crisis: The old friendship that could keep New Zealand’s fuel flowing (paywalled)
Aimee Shaw (Post): Retailers caught in double whammy of increased costs and decreasing confidence (paywalled)
Thomas Manch (BusinessDesk): Government deciding which businesses face fuel rationing for new response plan (paywalled)
Andrew Dickson: The Strait We’re In
Henry Cooke (Post): Can Christopher Luxon be more than Nicola Willis’ press sec? (paywalled)
Julie Jacobson (Post): Businesses fear advice to work from home could be last straw (paywalled)
Blayne Slabbert (Press): Christchurch firms dust off Covid playbook for fuel crisis (paywalled)
Gary Hamilton-Irvine (Herald): As diesel prices surpass 91 petrol, truckies say goods and groceries will start going up too (paywalled)
Glenn McConnell (Stuff): People have been hoarding fuel - They don’t need to, ministers say
Jamie Ensor (Herald): Fuel response: Nicola Willis criticised Labour for cost-saving campaign, but now she’s launching her own
Steve Braunias (ODT): The secret diary of... pump attendants (paywalled)

PARLIAMENT, ELECTION AND GOVERNMENT
Claire Robinson: Is it time for the Greens to ditch the Dad-vote for good?
Ben Thomas (Post): A party ahead in the polls, but absent in the moment (paywalled)
Audrey Young (Herald): Vanushi Walters – the MP who wants to be our next Foreign Minister (paywalled)
Bijou Johnson (Herald): ‘Most powerful voting bloc’: Winston Peters courts retirees at Tauranga retirement village
RNZ: NZ First commits to $15 million towards Christ Church Cathedral rebuild if elected
Russell Palmer (RNZ): Focus on boosting enrolment after government’s new voter restrictions - Electoral Commission
Māni Dunlop (Te Ao Māori News): Push to boost Māori enrolment as roll campaign gets underway
RNZ: MPs lament greyhound ban but still vote for it
Layla Bailey-McDowell (RNZ): Communities push back against proposed alcohol reforms
Anne Salmond (Newsroom): Kiwi entrepreneurs, heroes show up Govt
Natalia Albert: Anthropic and politics in New Zealand

COVID
RNZ: Labour leader Chris Hipkins denies misleading public over Covid vaccine risk to under 18s
Glenn McConnell (Stuff): Chris Hipkins says advice about Covid vaccine risk for teens arrived too late
Harriet Laughton (Post): Chris Hipkins denies seeing advice about Covid-19 vaccine doses for teens despite cabinet paper in his name (paywalled)
Kerre Woodham (Newstalk ZB): Chris Hipkins has got to go

MEDIA AND SOCIAL MEDIA
Karl du Fresne: The Last Post
Stuff: Billionaire Jim Grenon closes in on threshold to acquire all of NZME
Te Aniwa Hurihanganui (1News): What I learned from Julian Batchelor’s defamation case against TVNZ
Paddy Gower (Stuff: Netflix Secret: Dame Julie Christie’s company asked police for secrecy on Tom Phillips documentary
Emily Simpson (1News): ‘I love an adrenaline rush’: Tova O’Brien on work, love and her new Breakfast role
Shayne Currie (Herald): TVNZ executive editor - news and current affairs Phil O’Sullivan resigns (paywalled)
Matthew Tukaki (Waatea News): A Line has been crossed — Māori radio cannot be silenced
David Harvey: Justice should be seen by all – Why New Zealand’s courts were wrong to abandon X
Lloyd Burr (Stuff): Erica Stanford to social media giants: ‘Clean up your act’. But are they empty words?

CLIMATE AND WEATHER
Sam Crawley: Climate polarisation in New Zealand: a growing left-right divide
Dita De Boni (Post): Green Fund 2.0: Can philanthropy lead where the Government fell short? (paywalled)
Te Aniwaniwa Paterson (Te Ao Māori): Pine plantations scrutinised in High Court case against Govt climate plan
Jim Salinger (The Conversation): What the coming El Niño climate pattern means for NZ in a warming world

ECONOMY AND BUSINESS
Tom Pullar-Strecker (Post): Economists end week with plethora of warnings over Middle East turmoil (paywalled)
Duncan Garner (Listener): Feeling poor? Why it might not be a temporary blip (paywalled)
Herald: Payments firm Airwallex names Sir Bill English as chairman of New Zealand board
Simon Robertson (BusinessDesk): The Reserve Bank of New Zealand needs a wider remit (paywalled)

INEQUALITY AND WEALTH
Jenni Mortimer (Herald): New Zealand charity waitlists grow and donations cut up to 50% amid cost-of-living crisis
NBR: 40 years of the Rich List: 2006 Trade Me sale’s 17 millionaires (paywalled)
Simon Wilson (Listener): Meeting the Brit economist baffled by NZ’s lack of a wealth tax (paywalled)

BANKING
Gareth Vaughan (Interest): ASB’s long running transaction monitoring woes
Mahvash Ikram (Law News): ANZ and aggrieved customers square off in long-awaited multi-million-dollar class action
Jaime Lyth (BusinessDesk): ANZ argues class action lawsuit over loan error is ‘disproportionate’ (paywalled)
Rob Stock (Post): ANZ class action: Bank urges High Court to reject ‘nuclear option’ in home loan class action lawsuit (paywalled)
Hamish McNicol and Calida Stuart-Menteath (NBR): Believe the hype: NZ class actions are booming (paywalled)

WATER INFRASTRUCTURE
Joel Kulasingham (Herald): Most Auckland beaches unsafe for swimming due to wastewater overflow after stormy weather
Andrew Ashton (Waikato Times): ‘Brutal reality’: Hamilton’s water authority can’t fund growth alone (paywalled)
1News: Toxic algae red alerts for Wellington region rivers

WELLINGTON
Justin Wong (Local Democracy Reporting): Airport and business groups unite behind new Wellington tunnels plan
Ethan Manera (Herald): Wellington businesses demand clear timeline on second Mt Victoria Tunnel after Chris Bishop hints at delay (paywalled)
Nick James (Post): Local Government Minister Simon responds to blistering letter from Wellington mayor Andrew Little (paywalled)

LOCAL GOVERNMENT
Grant Miller (ODT): Council staff — on or off the agenda? (paywalled)
Mary Williams (ODT): Unravelling the city’s elected enigma (paywalled)
Tatiana Gibbs (Press): Cleaners face job cuts as Venues Ōtautahi accused of living wage ‘loophole’ (paywalled)
Mathew Nash (Local Democracy Reporting): Rotorua Museum: Bay of Plenty resident free entry condition axed from $4.1m grant

AUCKLAND
Richard Harman (Herald): Wayne Brown vs National: How Auckland politics now drives the Beehive (paywalled)
Wayne Brown (Herald): What Auckland needs: A five-point plan to fix unlock the city’s potential (paywalled)
Tim McCready (Herald): Eden Park boss Nick Sautner urges Auckland to think bigger on global stage (paywalled)
Desley Simpson (Herald): Auckland council savings plan targets $106m to hold rates at 7.9% (paywalled)
Simeon Brown (Herald): Auckland’s next decade: CRL, convention centre and a city back on track (paywalled)
Grant Bradley (Herald): Watercare $13.8b Auckland water upgrade: How new funding will be spent
Rupert Hodson (Herald): Auckland City & Regional Deal: Committee unveils new city narrative (paywalled)
Bill Bennett (Herald): Auckland growth plan: EMA says city must ‘connect the assets’
Chris Bishop (Herald): On Auckland’s future: Transit development key to growth (paywalled)
Penny Tucker (Herald): Auckland needs long-term national plan with city at centre of growth (paywalled)
Carrie Hurihanganui (Herald): Auckland’s next chapter: City Rail Link, Eden Park and airport investment
Gary Blick (Herald): Auckland Council and the economy: Five key ways its decisions shape growth
Marco Assorati (Herald): New Zealand infrastructure: Why the next decade is a once-only chance

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