Articles from ‘elocal magazine’ in ‘Opinion’

Something has to give with New Zealand’s electricity market. And this week, the numbers arrived to prove it. The Big Four gentailers (Contact, Genesis, Meridian and Mercury) have just reported combined operating earnings of $1.86 billion for the six months to December 2025. That’s a jump of roughly 45% on the same period last year. Their combined dividend payouts rose 10% to $551 million. Meanwhile, the amount they actually invested in new…

Are voters actually up for a political circuit-breaker this year, or are we stuck with the same stale options again? If a disruptive force is desired, 2026 might finally be the year for the Opportunity Party to break through. Rebranded from “TOP” to simply “Opportunity,” the centrist party is now led by Qiulae Wong, a 37-year-old sustainability consultant who appears to have a better shot at getting into Parliament than any previous iteration…

New Zealand’s first National Infrastructure Plan, released last week, has already produced a flurry of headlines about leaky hospitals, mouldy barracks, tolled bridges and unaffordable mega-roads. It deserves that attention. But for my money, the most important thing written about the plan so far is Danyl McLauchlan’s Listener column this week, “All pitch, no policy”, which slyly turns the report into a takedown of how our whole political…

New Zealand has not been invaded. Parliament still sits. Elections are held. The flag flies. And yet, as debt mounts, fuel is fully imported, banking profits flow offshore, and productivity falters, a harder question presses: Are we sovereign in name — but constrained in practice? To answer that, we must begin before decline. We must begin when sovereignty was structural. Part II Here... · The Post-War High-Sovereignty Era · In the decade…

Last week, New Zealand’s Parliament ceased using X. The Clerk of the House, David Wilson, unilaterally decided the institution would no longer have a presence on the platform formerly known as Twitter. His stated reason was that he “could no longer support” X because of its AI chatbot Grok and reports about deepfake imagery. “It didn’t feel right for my organisation to use a platform that allowed that to happen,” he told Stuff. This came…

There is a difference between eyesight and vision. · Eyesight sees what is directly in front of it. Vision sees what lies beyond the horizon. · Chris Hipkins’ latest State of the Nation speech demonstrated clear eyesight. It catalogued rising grocery prices, soaring power bills, stagnating productivity, brain drain, housing speculation, and fragile business confidence. · But it did not demonstrate vision. · And in 2026, eyesight is not enough.…

Chris Hipkins delivered his State of the Nation speech this afternoon in Auckland, and the verdict is clear enough: there wasn’t much in it. No new policy. No surprises. No real detail on how Labour would govern differently. It was, by design, a low-key affair. The question now is whether voters see this as strategic discipline or something less flattering. The speech, delivered to the Auckland Business Chamber and hosted by former National…

The Teaching Council of Aotearoa New Zealand is supposed to be the guardian of teaching standards. It registers and certifies teachers, vets who get to stand in front of a classroom, and enforces professional conduct. Right now it looks more like a case study in how public institutions go wrong. Over the past two weeks, two devastating reports have landed in public view, exposing an organisation riddled with conflicts of interest, procurement…

When the Health Practitioners Disciplinary Tribunal found Dr Caroline Wheeler guilty of professional misconduct for prescribing ivermectin during COVID, it did more than discipline one GP. It reignited a deeper question: · Who does medicine ultimately serve — the patient, or the protocol? · The Pandemic Power Shift · During COVID, emergency powers reshaped clinical decision-making worldwide. · Remdesivir — an antiviral developed by Gilead…

The Government’s Ministerial Advisory Group for Victims of Retail Crime is finally being put out of its misery. After less than two years of existence, $1.8 million in spending, the resignation of three of its five members, and an ongoing trail of embarrassing headlines, Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith announced last week that the group would be wound up months ahead of schedule. If you want a clear example of how patronage rots policy-making,…