Articles in ‘Opinion’

We understand that the security services are charged with protecting a nation from internal conflict and foreign interference. You have to be fully alert to analyse information in order to detect and neutralise threats before they are launched. Any failure on the part of analysts can expose the nation to danger. Potential dangers come from many directions. In the modern context, biotechnologies pose unique threats. The global Covid pandemic…

The New Zealand Government has quietly initiated a surprise review into the Reserve Bank’s controversial decision to underwrite approximately $55 billion in pandemic-era money-creation programmes during COVID-19. Caption: Finance Minister Nicola Willis has announced an inquiry into RBNZ actions. Photo / Mark Mitchell · The inquiry is aimed at assessing the impact of the central bank’s Large-Scale Asset Purchasing (LSAP) and other measures on…

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…

Every society claims its emergencies are exceptional. History shows the opposite: emergencies are the preferred pathway for expanding power, because fear collapses resistance faster than force ever could. New Zealand’s COVID response must be understood not only as a public-health event, but as a political precedent — one that future governments will study carefully. · The Old Rule: Emergency First, Accountability Later · Emergency powers…

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…

History teaches us that wars are not always fought with bombs, troops, or formal declarations. Some are waged quietly — through systems, policies, and narratives that reshape societies from within. So let us pose a hypothetical, not an accusation · If an adversary wanted to weaken Western democracies without firing a shot, what outcomes would signal success? · They might aim to: · normalise emergency rule, centralise decision-making beyond…

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 Zealand likes to see itself as a principled nation — small, independent, and willing to stand up for public safety even when powerful interests object. We banned nuclear weapons when others told us it would be economically reckless. We rejected certain trade pressures when they conflicted with national values. We pride ourselves on sovereignty. Yet when it comes to COVID-19 and the unprecedented deployment of mRNA technology, New Zealand…

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 Millbank Quarterly (a multidisciplinary journal of health and health policy) published an article on 2 February 2026 entitled “From Tobacco to Ultraprocessed Food: How Industry Engineering Fuels the Epidemic of Preventable Disease”. The authors explain how ultra processed foods (UPFs) and beverages are specifically designed to heighten chemical rewards in order to develop addictive eating behaviours among consumers that bypass the…