Is Nick Smith race-baiting over Abel Tasman?
The Nelson mayor says he is defending a national park from a bill he calls the largest removal of protected land in New Zealand's history. His own post, and his own record, leave out the parts that complicate that claim.
Grant McLachlan
5 hours ago3 min read
Pegasus Brief — Poisoning the Well
Pegasus residents have built a moral position stronger than anything the fast-track process can withstand on the merits — a council opposed, a mayor opposed, the local MP opposed, more than 16,000 signatures, and Golf New Zealand on the record.
Grant McLachlan
1 day ago7 min read
Are the Greens dumbing down conservation?
From Vienna’s first menagerie to Fiordland’s stoat-plagued islands, conservation has always demanded hard, unsentimental choices. Green politics is increasingly unwilling to make them.
Grant McLachlan
1 day ago12 min read
How noise drowns democracy
How political noise is engineered to silence debate and freeze the vote.
Grant McLachlan
5 days ago9 min read
Why does New Zealand spend more than almost anyone, and build so badly?
The familiar excuses — too little money, too few people, an awkward geography — do not explain why New Zealand’s infrastructure is late, incremental and over budget. The real cause is a system built to be defensible rather than right, and nothing this government has planned will change it.
Grant McLachlan
5 days ago10 min read
The game of candidate chess in Hawke’s Bay that could decide this year’s election
This election, Hawke’s Bay won’t be the sideshow. It could even be the main event.
Grant McLachlan - Hawke's Bay Today - Column
7 days ago1 min read
Whose land is it — and why settle the question now?
The Conservation Amendment Bill reopens two centuries of argument about who owns the back country and what it is for — and it does so in an election year, by a government whose biggest donors deal in land.
Grant McLachlan
Jun 258 min read
Can the left govern on 64 seats — or has the poll missed the overhang again?
The latest 1News Verian poll shows a left bloc able to form a government without New Zealand First. Two things it does not model — the overhang building in National’s electorates, and a rising Opportunity Party — could each hand the balance of power straight back to Winston Peters.
Grant McLachlan
Jun 238 min read
Are we grown up enough to be a republic?
Jacinda Ardern says New Zealand will be a republic in her lifetime. She has not said what problem it solves — or whether we are mature enough to do it well.
Grant McLachlan
Jun 226 min read
Why does it take a foreign watchdog to catch a New Zealand official?
John Edwards is the latest senior New Zealander official who rose at home and was brought to account abroad. The pattern says more about our institutions than theirs.
Grant McLachlan
Jun 205 min read
Is the Greater Auckland campaign against the Northland motorway fighting waste — or causing it?
Greater Auckland calls Warkworth to Te Hana the most expensive road the country has ever built. But picking off the single hardest stage of a staged corridor, weeks before a contract is signed, is exactly how you manufacture the incrementalism the group says it opposes.
Grant McLachlan
Jun 198 min read
TSB-Heartland deal: Did the Toi Foundation meeting make the case?
Two hours of questions in New Plymouth, and the Toi Foundation’s trustees fronted up. But the answers raised sharper doubts than the deal began with — and the most forensic case against the sale came from the bank’s own former auditor.
Grant McLachlan
Jun 188 min read
The roads we can’t afford, and a plan that will stall them anyway?
The National Infrastructure Plan is right that the country cannot pay for the roads it keeps promising. But its remedy — defer, stage, build later — is the very stop-start it was written to end.
Grant McLachlan
Jun 173 min read
We’ve seen this muppet show before
Matthew Hooton’s move to the editor’s chair at The Post follows a script already written in Washington — and it lands at the moment New Zealand’s newsrooms have never been cheaper to capture.
Grant McLachlan
Jun 1611 min read
Silly buggers: what game is New Zealand First playing in the electorates?
New Zealand First is parachuting household names into seats it has little hope of winning outright. Work out why, and you start to see how Winston Peters could decide the next government one electorate at a time.
Grant McLachlan
Jun 1511 min read
Whose bank is it to sell?
Taranaki is being asked to bless a $620 million deal that hands its last locally owned bank to a listed company — at a discount, with the seller lending the buyer the money. New Zealand has watched this story before.
Grant McLachlan
Jun 1412 min read
An independent anti-corruption commission: who keeps blocking it?
Four parties have demanded one for three decades. Journalists and watchdogs back them. So why does an anti-corruption commission never survive a coalition negotiation?
Grant McLachlan
Jun 1311 min read
Pegasus Brief — Digging in
The petition passes 13,700 signatures. Golf New Zealand takes the field. The mayor confirms a buy-back consortium is at the table. And the developer’s $40,250 donation to the National Party reaches the mainstream record.
Grant McLachlan
Jun 127 min read
Pros versus cons: Why Australia will likely never host a FIFA World Cup
The stadiums are built, the fans would come, and the sums could be made to work — the obstacle is the bidding process itself.
Grant McLachlan
Jun 128 min read
Why does the press conference now come before the disaster?
Prediction is the riskiest science in public life — but the political rewards for fronting a forecast have never been higher.
Grant McLachlan
Jun 1011 min read
