Pegasus Brief — The end of the beginning
The government has declined Wolfbrook Developments Limited’s application to fast-track its 1,000-home Pegasus West project — but the fight over the former Pegasus Golf Course is far from over.
Grant McLachlan
2 hours ago5 min read
Next Auckland harbour crossing needs a rethink
Chris Bishop's new business case looks like more delay. It is actually the government admitting the data behind the last one was never good enough.
Grant McLachlan
1 day ago3 min read
Does Te Paati Maori’s ‘Overhang Strategy’ make sense?
Splitting the vote worked once by accident. Trying it on purpose is a very different, riskier game.
Grant McLachlan
3 days ago3 min read
What would it take for National to lose Rodney?
Paul Goldsmith is weighing a switch from Epsom to Kaipara ki Mahurangi. History suggests the seat will not much care whether he fits.
Grant McLachlan
4 days ago3 min read
Is fast-track backfiring on National?
Hawke’s Bay, Canterbury, Queenstown, and Auckland ratepayers are being asked to carry the infrastructure bill for growth their own councils tried to stop.
Grant McLachlan
5 days ago3 min read
Why did Chris Penk knock himself out?
A building industry and defence minister called a confidence vote he could not win, lost every portfolio he held within hours, and left behind more questions about who benefits than about himself.
Grant McLachlan
Aug 128 min read
Why fixing New Zealand's electricity market would wipe billions off the sharemarket
Contact Energy's record profit is being reported as a winter windfall. It is closer to the going rate for a market built to protect scarcity.
Grant McLachlan
Aug 113 min read
Luxon panics and resorts to old MMP tricks
Fifty years after a fringe party decided Auckland Central, the Prime Minister is reaching for the same panic Richard Prebble once rode into Parliament.
Grant McLachlan
Aug 93 min read
Have engineers caused the ballooning of big projects?
Blaming the profession lets the real cost driver — a broken delivery model — off the hook.
Grant McLachlan
Aug 73 min read
The problem with MMP is Luxon, not MMP
A Prime Minister who can't manage his own coalition wants voters to fix his problem for him.
Grant McLachlan
Aug 64 min read
Police shouldn't get to decide who never sees a judge
The Solicitor-General's Prosecution Guidelines were meant to keep politics out of criminal justice. In practice, they let police quietly bury the cases that embarrass them.
Grant McLachlan
Aug 56 min read
Pegasus Brief — Treated like mushrooms
Days after 16,000 signatures were carried onto the steps of Parliament, the Government fast-tracked a motorway it says will “unlock housing” at Pegasus — then this week finally confirmed what it had spent weeks declining to confirm or deny.
Grant McLachlan
Aug 59 min read
What did Sam Neill see that New Zealand still hasn’t fixed?
Thirty-one years after Cinema of Unease, the industry Sam Neill helped build still hasn’t decided whether it wants to tell its own story or rent out its scenery.
Grant McLachlan
Aug 47 min read
Why is Queenstown asking the public to fix a mess it approved?
A resort town let ribbon development swallow its only roads, blacklisted the journalist who exposed its wastewater failures, and is now asking the public for ideas on how to fix what its own decisions caused.
Grant McLachlan
Aug 213 min read
Who really wins when councils scrap minimum parking rules?
Central and local government stripped car parking requirements from new developments to fix the housing crisis. It has made land more valuable, planning weaker, and streets unliveable — for residents and for the businesses whose customers can no longer find a park.
Grant McLachlan
Jul 316 min read
Why doesn't humility make good cinema?
A hundred veteran interviews across nine countries suggest New Zealand and Britain's self-effacing war traditions haven't earned Hollywood's respect — they've earned its silence, and that isn't only about modesty.
Grant McLachlan
Jul 307 min read
The tentacles of ACT: the lobbyists who never really left
A grocery lobbyist’s career move has drawn attention to one insider. Follow the money and the bylines and the network is much bigger, and it runs both ways through the Beehive.
Grant McLachlan
Jul 295 min read
Two Crown companies just spent $3 billion crossing Cook Strait separately. Why not one tunnel?
Transpower and KiwiRail are both 100% owned by the same shareholder. They didn't even talk.
Grant McLachlan
Jul 234 min read
Was Paul Henry ACT's dead cat?
The same Tuesday ACT unveiled its newest star candidate, the Herald confirmed the party’s own former president had pleaded guilty to further sex offending. Coincidence, or convenient timing?
Grant McLachlan
Jul 164 min read
Will backlash against donors decide this election?
Imagine gloating about donating tens of thousands of dollars to National, ACT and the Taxpayers' Union. Imagine paying thousands more for a selfie at the Prime Minister's table. Then imagine becoming the reason voters can't stand the government you paid for.
Grant McLachlan
Jul 1211 min read
