Articles by Dr Bryce Edwards

New Zealand’s slide down the global corruption rankings has become so predictable it barely causes a stir. Tonight, Transparency International released its annual Corruption Perceptions Index, and New Zealand has dropped again: from 83 to 81, losing another two points and sinking to equal fourth alongside Norway. We are now eight points behind Denmark, which continues to sit comfortably at the top. Over the past four years, New Zealand has lost…

The US Justice Department’s release of more than three million Epstein files (including 180,000 images and 2,000 videos) has blown the doors off the most protected social network of the late twentieth century. What these documents reveal is not just a catalogue of one man’s depravity. It is, as Helen Rumbelow wrote in The Times, like “taking the back off the world clock”, exposing how power actually works at the top of the Western world. And…

Many expected fireworks at Waitangi this year. In an election year, with the Government’s record on Treaty issues still fresh and raw, the annual commemorations looked set to be a battleground. Instead, the week turned out to be remarkably calm on the surface. And deeply fractured underneath. The real story of Waitangi 2026 wasn’t about Māori versus the Crown. It was about Māori versus Māori, and an opposition that seems incapable of getting…

New Zealanders are badly ripped off by profit-gouging companies in some of the country’s most important sectors. The Big Four banking oligopolies make super profits totalling about 3% of GDP. The supermarket duopoly makes excess profits of $1 million a day. The lack of competition in energy, building materials, and other sectors is also gouging consumers. These are all “broken markets” contributing to the “broken New Zealand” we are currently…

The bodies are being recovered. The memorial services are being held. The inquiries are being announced. But as New Zealand moves from the immediate horror of the Mount Maunganui tragedy into the familiar ritual of official review, a harder set of questions is emerging. Not just “what went wrong at 9.30am on January 22?” but “why does this keep happening?” and “what, exactly, is the plan?” · The answer to that last question, as far as anyone…

When Prime Minister Christopher Luxon announced today that Judith Collins would become the next President of the Law Commission, he reached for familiar talking points about her “astute legal knowledge” and her service to the country. What he didn’t mention was far more significant: this marks the first time in the Law Commission’s 40-year history that a current serving politician has been appointed to lead this supposedly independent…

The picture is firming up, and it’s devastating. Six people are dead at the foot of Mount Maunganui because, over four critical hours on the morning of 22 January, New Zealand’s emergency management system failed. Not just failed, but failed repeatedly, in ways that now look systemic. And what’s becoming clearer with each new revelation is that this wasn’t just bad luck or an unforeseeable tragedy. This was a disaster waiting to happen, built…

This week Chris Hipkins gave us the clearest picture yet of how Labour plans to fight the 2026 election. His speech at the party’s caucus retreat in West Auckland, and then a rally-style address to party activists, revealed a strategy that combines class-based attack lines, relentless positivity, and a narrowed focus on kitchen-table concerns. But can this rebranded Labour convince voters it’s genuinely different from the party they rejected so…

The starting gun has been fired on the 2026 general election. There are now 277 days until voting starts in the New Zealand general election. And it’s 290 days of campaigning to endure, until voting closes. Then there’s the weeks of waiting for official results after polling day, and probably weeks more of coalition negotiations. It’s going to be a long year of politics. Prime Minister Christopher Luxon confirmed yesterday that the election…

Christopher Luxon is back from holiday. And if his State of the Nation speech is anything to go by, it might actually be a very boring election year indeed. The Prime Minister delivered his first big set-piece address of 2026 on Monday to a 700-strong business audience at Auckland’s newly opened International Convention Centre. Hosted by the Auckland Business Chamber and former National leader Simon Bridges, the speech was long on slogans but…