Articles by Mykeljon Winckel

The OECD says New Zealand has “no future in gas.” · That may sound visionary inside policy circles and international climate forums. · But there is a major problem. · Modern New Zealand still runs on carbon fuels. · Not hypothetically. Not ideologically. Physically. · Every single day New Zealand consumes approximately 23 million litres of liquid fuels across transport, freight, aviation, shipping, agriculture, heavy machinery, construction…

Radio New Zealand recently published a piece expressing concern over coalition politicians increasingly criticising mainstream media institutions. The framing was predictable. · Politicians attacking the media, readers were told, risk undermining “independent journalism” and democratic accountability. · But buried inside that argument lies the contradiction now driving one of the biggest collapses in public trust across the Western world: ·…

A question worth asking as identity, policy, and performance collide · The question posed in the Norwegian piece is confronting, but it is not uniquely Norwegian. · That got me thinking... It is a question New Zealanders should be asking themselves. · Not emotionally. Not reactively. But honestly. · Have we seen something similar happen here? · A shifting definition of identity · New Zealand once had a clearly understood cultural identity. ·…

In early 2013, a young traveller arrived in Los Angeles with a camera, a blog, and a plan to see the West Coast. · Her name was Elisa Lam. · What followed would become one of the most dissected and unsettling cases of the modern internet era. · The hotel with a history · Lam checked into the Cecil Hotel, a building already known for its troubled past. Located in the city’s Skid Row district, the hotel had long been associated with crime,…

Last week, elocal published Kiwibank’s latest economic update. On paper, the outlook suggested a fragile but emerging recovery. But for many New Zealanders reading it, that assessment landed very differently. · The reaction was immediate and, in many cases, blunt. “Fragile? It’s fked… I don’t know where they get recovery underway with all the closures and job losses. It’s horrendous.” · That response, while raw, reflects something increasingly…

A Follow-Up to elocal’s Op-Ed: “New Zealand’s Supermarket Illusion: Why Prices Aren’t Falling and Why They’re About to Get Worse” · The response to today’s op-ed has been immediate and telling. · Across the country, readers are recognising the same pattern: Prices remain high, relief isn’t flowing through, and the system feels increasingly out of balance. · The frustration is real. · But so is something else. · A growing conversation around…

A political shockwave is building in the United States — and New Zealand should be paying very close attention. · In Washington this week, Senator Ron Johnson revealed that 11 million pages of internal U.S. health documents have now been handed over for review. These documents, tied to COVID vaccine safety monitoring, were withheld for years. · That alone is significant. · But it’s what Johnson claims is inside those documents that matters —…

Source: Social Well-Being Index · New Zealand is often held up as a model society. · High living standards. Political stability. Strong institutions. A country that consistently ranks near the top of global measures like GDP per capita and the Human Development Index. · But what if those measures are telling only part of the story? · A newly released Social Well-Being Index offers a different lens — one that asks a more fundamental question: ·…

There’s an uncomfortable question sitting just beneath the surface of New Zealand politics: · Is our democracy genuinely representative — or has it become a sophisticated form of vote buying? · Under MMP, political parties campaign on policies designed to win support. That’s expected. That’s politics. But what happens after the votes are counted is where the system begins to fracture. · Because under MMP, elections don’t decide policy. ·…

Every time a New Zealander fills up at the pump, around 10 cents per litre is being added through the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS). · At current consumption levels — roughly 8.76 billion litres per year — that equates to: · ~$860 million annually · Not in theory. Not in modelling. Real money. Collected every single day. · A Policy Nearly Two Decades Old · The New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme was introduced in 2008 under the Fifth…