A week is a long time: 19 July 2025

A NZ Politics weekly wrap-up

A week is a long time in politics. Welcome to my weekly wrap up of the week that was in New Zealand politics with a sprinkling of international news.

Spotlight on Chris Bishop

He’s consistently one of the highest performing ministers in the Government and there are a couple of things I want to highlight about Chris Bishop this week. First is his excellent speech at the LGNZ conference in Christchurch. It takes a steel spine to stand up in front of a room full of local government egos and tell them to pull their heads in. Standing ovation!

This week he also made a bold statement that has gained nods of agreement from economists across the political spectrum: “We've got to decouple the idea that the economy is linked to house price growth. It's not.”

Interest.co.nz reported that data released by the Real Estate Institute of NZ on Tuesday found house prices declined for the fourth consecutive month in June. The article by Dan Brunskill is worth a read as it is a helpful breakdown of why decoupling our assessment of the economy from housing prices is necessary with commentary from the minister and experts. Roger J Kerr is one such expert who told Brunskill that too many economic commentators were talking down the economy:

“The local doomsayers just appear to be overly impatient and not understanding the transmission/timing mechanisms in the NZ economy from when the RBNZ cut interest rates until domestic spending picks up as a result…

It does seem that if house prices are not rising, the majority of the local economic commentators do not think the economy is performing. These are jaundiced and ill-informed attitudes that do not serve the public well,” he said.

Millennials and Gen Zs hoping to get into the housing market should be cheerleading for Chris Bishop because he is the first of his kind; a housing minister focused on making housing more affordable rather than driving up prices for existing land and homeowners.

“It frustrates me that, every time you open up some of the media outlets, there's a huge interest in things like, housing market yet to take off, and everything's characterised as: we need house prices to rise,” he said, before suggesting affordability for first homebuyers is a good thing.

David Seymour sends a fire email, but Luxon and Peters have an extinguisher

We’ve all fired off an email in anger that we recognise in hindsight shouldn’t have been sent. Even if we still believe we made salient points and wrote a sizzling prose of poetic smackdown, we accept that we shouldn’t have hit send. This is the situation Deputy Prime Minister David Seymour found himself in this week. He penned an absolutely stellar letter in response to United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Albert Barume.

Barume had sent a letter to the Government that apparently attacked the Regulatory Standards Bill repeating all the usual talking points of activists here in New Zealand. My assessment is that he received correspondence from New Zealanders with a particular political agenda and regurgitated their talking points without researching or balancing other perspectives.

Although Luxon and Peters appear to agree with the points being made in the letter, they were not happy with Seymour for sending the letter when correspondence with the UN should always go through the Foreign Minister.

Better week for Erica Stanford

The Education Minister certainly delivers when she isn’t distracted by her activist ministry and the temptation to embed wokery in our schools. First she announced the long overdue end to open plan classrooms. They were a disastrous policy when an earlier National Government brought them in and teachers and parents are thrilled to see the back of them. Then just yesterday, Stanford announced $120million was to be spent on two new schools and 137 new classrooms, creating space for more than 3000 new students in Auckland. Construction on all projects is to begin within 12 months.

New legislation seeks to focus councils on core business

The Local Government (System Improvements)Amendment Bill has passed its first reading having only been introduced by Local Government Minister Simon Watts this week. Primarily, the minister says, the Bill is about reining in costs.

"Councils have lacked fiscal discipline and spent far too much on the things that most people do not consider core activities of local government," he told Parliament.

The Government appears to have read the room and realised that Kiwis are very unhappy about the huge rates rises in recent years as well as reckless council spending.

ACT MP Cameron Luxton said, "Councils are not mini-parliaments; they are service delivery agencies. Their job is to manage infrastructure and keep communities running, and doing it while delivering value for money. When they deviate from that, and waste ratepayers' money, they increase the cost of living on all of us."

This Bill continues the tug-o-war between Labour and National over the ‘four well-being provisions’ (social, economic, environmental and cultural). National removed them in 2012, Labour reintroduced them in 2019, and here we are in 2025 removing them again.

This is a handy explainer on the Bill.

Opposition MP of the week: Camilla Belich

Labour MP Camilla Belich’s member’s Bill has gained the support of the National Party and will likely pass into law. The Employment Relations (Employee Remuneration Disclosure) Amendment Bill that seeks to stop employers enforcing gag orders on workers talking about their salaries passed its second reading this week.

“Ending the chilling effect of pay secrecy will allow employees to discuss their pay more freely, and allow any unfairness or discrimination in pay to be remedied,” says Camilla Belich.

When in opposition, Member’s Bills are often an exercise in futility as the Government has the majority and is not often inclined to support them. However, when a Bill is simply too good to reject and/or when an MP puts in the hard work to achieve cross-party support it can be passed. Good for Camilla Belich.

Renewable energy isn’t going to happen if the NIMBYs have their way

A lot of people will nod along and make approving noises when renewables are talked about; solar, wind, and hydro are super fashionable to support. The problem is it seems whenever companies endeavour to build the infrastructure to deliver this kind of energy, the response from the local communities are less enthusiastic. In fact, the reaction is usually as frosty as a polar bear’s balls.

In North Canterbury a residents’ group is up in arms about a solar farm which at its peak would generate up to 144 megawatts, enough to power an estimated 30,000 homes. Read more here.

Just as those who bemoan the housing crisis are often among the first to cry “not in my backyard” when plans for housing development are announced, it seems no one wants renewables in their backyard either.

Property rights undermined in Hamilton

Property rights are the cornerstone of a free and prosperous society, and their protection is vital for all New Zealanders. These rights give people the confidence to invest in their futures, build wealth, and pass something on to the next generation. For Māori, property rights are deeply tied to identity, heritage, and tino rangatiratanga. The ability to own, manage, and protect land and taonga is fundamental to maintaining whānau and hapū connections. However, Māori interests are increasingly being pitted against the principles of private property rights.

An example of this is how in Hamilton “special” terms and conditions have been added to the sale and purchase agreements of Kāinga Ora listings.

One Roof reports:

These require the Crown, under the Waikato Raupatu Claims Settlement Act 1995, to give the landholding trustee, currently Waikato Raupatu Lands Trust, a right of refusal on any Crown land being sold.

This means the state housing agency can, at any point before a sale goes unconditional, cancel a deal with a private buyer.

Crown agencies including Kāinga Ora are required to offer their properties to relevant iwi before they hit the open market. Even if iwi refuse, in the Waikato they still get a second chance if another buyer’s offer is at a lower price or has better terms than those originally offered under the right of refusal (RFR) process.

If iwi decide to buy at that point, Kāinga Ora is required to pull out of the first sale and return the buyer’s deposit.

Now, the owner in this case is the Crown, but there is a knock-on effect on private ownership. In the South Island, for example, the Ngāi Tahu Claims Settlement Act 1998 also provided ‘First Right of Refusal’ to iwi and while it applies specifically to Crown land, issues have arisen when private landowners have attempted to sell land that was originally subject to RFR obligations. For example, the obligation can sometimes carry over, meaning that private landowners may find themselves legally required to offer the land back to the iwi before selling to anyone else even decades later.

Little Malachi’s inquest

The inquest into the high profile child abuse murder of 5-year-old Malachi Subecz began on Monday. Coroner Janet Anderson said she would have a focus on preventing future deaths in similar circumstances.

Malachi was killed by his godmother Michaela Barribal in 2021. She was his caregiver as his mother was in prison. Barribal plead guilty to murder and is serving a life sentence.

Malachi died 11 days after Barriball inflicted “multiple blunt force head injuries”. At the time of his death he was severely malnourished and had clearly been subjected to long-term physical abuse.

A detective suggested that Barribal was motivated to become Malachi’s guardian as it meant she was given a cabin, a benefit from the Government, and it looked good for her boyfriend’s residency application.

This week, the Ministry of Education also formally revoked the licence of the daycare that failed to report the obvious injuries on Malachi Subecz. Abbey's Place Childcare Centre closed on Friday.

Ardern’s carbon chickens come home to roost

On X, someone called @pungaohiko highlighted that “everything MBIE warned Jacinda Ardern would happen if she unilaterally banned oil and gas exploration has come to pass. Now she lives in America while we have to stay here and pay the cost.”

In this briefing paper from 10 April 2018, MBIE officials outlined the implications of banning future offshore petroleum exploration:

David versus the Media

Having worked in Parliament myself, I can assure you that staffers have been recording the AUDIO of media stand ups for ages. This is so the MPs can listen back to what they have said and get feedback on their answers, but also to ensure that there is a record that can be pointed to should the media lie. What ACT is now doing is filming stand ups and publishing them publicly. And good on them.

The YouTube Series is exposing some pretty poor behaviour by the media and the way they construct narratives. Seymour says that the press gallery actually went to Speaker Gerry Brownlee to try get the ACT cameraperson banned because the videos were attracting hostile comments about journalists online. The Deputy Prime Minister quite rightly points out that when the media creates awful narratives about him he gets abuse online too. Maybe the media could try doing their job without bias?

In short - other stuff that happened:

• Lauren Southern’s new book details allegations that Andrew Tate strangled and raped her in a hotel in Romania. She has made some chapters available for free here.

• Aucklanders aren’t forgetting Covid in a hurry. Polling shows Luxon well ahead as preferred Prime Minister in our biggest city.

  

• Keir Starmer announced that 16 and 17 year olds will be allowed to vote at the next UK general election.

• The median house price in Auckland has fallen 3.4% in a year, dropping to $990,000.

• Property owners on the West Coast will be thrilled with median houses prices jumping more than $100,000 year-on-year, a 35.5% increase to $420,000.

• At the Local Government NZ AGM, 82% of members (councils) voted to spend ratepayers money on a campaign to oppose rates caps.

• After calling the offending of pedophile pimp, Wiparera Paraire, “abhorrent, manipulative, and exploitive,” a judge has sentenced him to just four years and six months’ imprisonment, after 22% in discounts for guilty pleas and his traumatic background.

• Nationally, 79.3 percent of two-year-olds were fully vaccinated in the first three months of the year. Vaccine 'decline' rates are tracking up in vulnerable communities. Read more.

• Customs NZ is calling for legislation to allow them to seize child-like, anatomically correct sex dolls that are coming through our borders more often.

Stuff I found interesting this week:

I was sent this opinion piece published in Stuff in December 2019. If you recall, just a month or so later our world would be rocked by a certain virus. The author was at the time the deputy leader of the (hard left) Social Credit Party and was warning that Luxon, Peters, and Seymour were seeking to mandate vaccination. Her article reads as very prophetic. It comes to pass in less than a year… but with Jacinda Ardern and Labour enforcing covid-19 vaccinations.

I am not anti-vaccination, but I am very anti-mandating vaccinations. I agree entirely with Amanda Vickers when she says: “Mandatory vaccination would entail the state appointing itself authority over the most sacrosanct – our bodily sovereignty.”

She also says:

The premise of the "greater good" is being used to support arguments for forced medication of the population. In terms of protecting the very young, the very old and the very sick, it is important these groups are sufficiently well cared for, so as not to contract any illness, regardless of whether the rest of the population has been vaccinated or not.

The question that needs addressing is whether it is for our "greater good" to have the government make our "informed consent" decisions for us, and then force those decisions upon us.

Make no mistake, coercion is a mandate to those with little choice, just as a pig with lipstick is still a pig. Unavoidable coercion soon expands to affect everyone, and everything – the ability to go to school, or to travel and work.