# THE GOOD OIL > Independent New Zealand political news and commentary from a conservative, centre-right point of view. Formerly The BFD, founded by Cam Slater. Public Ghost content for AI and LLM tooling. This file includes a bounded export of public pages first, then recent public posts. Append `.md` to any post or page URL to get the content in Markdown (for example, `/example-post.md`). ## Pages ### About The Good Oil URL: https://goodoil.news/about/ Last updated: 2026-10-11T02:06:18.000Z The Good Oil was founded by Cam Slater, a multi-award-winning blogger and journalist. It used to be called The BFD. The name changed in 2024 but the publication itself carried on: the same business (BFD Publishing Limited) still publishes it, and the old thebfd.co.nz address now brings readers straight here. Cam's political writing goes back further than that, to his Whale Oil blog, and 2025 marked twenty years of it. Most of what we publish is New Zealand political news, analysis and commentary, with a regular eye on Australia, Britain and the rest of the world. The Good Oil breaks its own stories and keeps a close watch on the rest of the media. It also runs plenty that's there purely for entertainment. We wear our opinions on our sleeve. You don't have to share them to be informed by them, and many of our readers don't. ## **Stories We Broke** We don't hide our opinions, but plenty of what we publish starts with our own digging: a leaked email, a video, a tip-off, a stack of documents. These are some of the stories we put out first, under The BFD name and since, along with where the rest of the media picked them up. - [EXCLUSIVE: Government and Police Lockdown Actions NOT Legally Supported](https://goodoil.news/exclusive-government-and-police-lockdown-actions-not-legally-supported/), 4 May 2020 (as The BFD). An email from Deputy Commissioner Mike Clement, sent three days into the first Level 4 lockdown, set out how little power police actually had to enforce it. The NZ Herald [ran its own story on the same emails](https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/exclusive-legality-of-police-action-during-covid-19-coronavirus-lockdown-questioned-in-legal-quarters/XEPIR3V5O4PTRU24BZZDI55INI/?ref=goodoil.news) about an hour later. - [New Zealander of the Year Siouxsie Wiles – Unmasked](https://goodoil.news/new-zealander-of-the-year-siouxsie-wiles-unmasked/), 9 September 2021 (as The BFD). Video of Dr Siouxsie Wiles and a friend, unmasked at Judges Bay during Auckland's Level 4 lockdown, with the friend going for a swim. Wiles said she hadn't broken the rules herself but accepted her friend had. Followed by the [NZ Herald](https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/covid-19-coronavirus-delta-outbreak-dr-siouxsie-wiles-hits-back-at-accusations-she-broke-lockdown-rules/2T7OGKYA3X3IPTRZX45DVJTWQU/?ref=goodoil.news), [Stuff](https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/coronavirus/126351648/covid19-dr-siouxsie-wiles-warns-of-disinformation-after-claims-she-was-caught-breaking-lockdown-rules?ref=goodoil.news) and [Newstalk ZB](https://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/news/national/covid-19-delta-outbreak-national-leader-judith-collins-calls-dr-siouxsie-wiles-a-big-fat-hypocrite/?ref=goodoil.news). - [Exclusive: Willie Jackson Accused of Bullying, Union-Busting and Cronyism to Protect His Missus](https://goodoil.news/exclusive-willie-jackson-accused-of-bullying-union-busting-and-cronyism-to-protect-his-missus/), 3 December 2025\. Matt McCarten's complaint to the Speaker, alleging that Labour MP Willie Jackson intervened at the Manukau Urban Māori Authority, where his wife is chief executive. Followed by [Centrist](https://centrist.nz/willie-jackson-accused-of-bullying-union-busting-and-cronyism?ref=goodoil.news) and, a fortnight later, the [NZ Herald](https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/politics/loyalty-and-betrayal-inside-the-struggle-between-matt-mccarten-and-willie-jackson/premium/WPBJGXXWCZHMFJADCSM7PNT7IU/?ref=goodoil.news). - [Exclusive: Documents Expose Willie Jackson's Trespass Shenanigans to Bust Union and Shield His Manky Missus](https://goodoil.news/exclusive-documents-expose-willie-jacksons-trespass-shenanigans-to-bust-union-and-shield-his-manky-missus/), 8 December 2025\. The trespass notices and emails behind the MUMA dispute, published while the rest of the media still hadn't touched it. Followed by [Centrist](https://centrist.nz/indy-journalist-leaks-emails-backing-up-allegations-against-willie-jackson?ref=goodoil.news), which noted we were the first to publish the documents. ## Who writes for The Good Oil It isn't a one-man show. Writers whose work appears here include Cam Slater, Chris Trotter, Lushington Brady, Nathan Smith, Graham Adams, David Farrar, Lindsay Mitchell, Frank Newman, Muriel Newman, Olivia Pierson, Dr Oliver Hartwich, Dr Eric Crampton, Dr Bryce Wilkinson, Briar Lipson, Lindsay Perigo and Peter Gibbons. Daily cartoons come from BoomSlang and SonovaMin. You'll find everyone else on our [authors page](https://goodoil.news/authors/). ## What you'll find here Alongside the news and opinion there are cartoons and photoshops, daily puzzles (a crossword, sudoku, codecracker and trivia) and *The Good Oil Podcast*, where Cam sits down with guests from Winston Peters to Barry Soper and Marewa Glover. Every morning there's a General Debate thread and every evening there's Backchat, where readers can talk about whatever's on their mind. The comments are a big part of the place. Readers are quick to pick up our mistakes and rein in any excesses, and over the years that's turned The Good Oil into a community, with people from right across the political spectrum pitching in. Comments are moderated under our [commenting rules](https://goodoil.news/commenting-and-moderation/). If you know something we should hear about, use the [tipline](https://goodoil.news/tipline/). It's confidential and we never reveal sources. Email tipoff@goodoil.news, use our Telegram tipline, or ring the anonymous line on 09 889 8355. ## Memberships Most of what we publish is free to read. If you sign up for a free account you can join the conversation in the comments. A free account also gets new posts sent straight to your inbox, so you won't miss anything because of a pesky algorithm or news feed. Paid memberships keep The Good Oil independent, and they come in three tiers: - **Basic**, NZ$5 a month or NZ$50 a year: no ads, plus Daily Trivia. - **Basic+**, NZ$15 a month or NZ$150 a year: everything in Basic plus the daily crossword, sudoku and codecracker, and the SonovaMin and BoomSlang cartoons. - **VIP**, NZ$25 a month or NZ$250 a year: everything in Basic+ plus the Ten@10 curated articles newsletter, Real Good Oil and Political Intelligence: Quick Hits. Each paid tier comes with a seven-day free trial. Paid members can also read our subscriber-only articles, and that includes most episodes of *The Good Oil Podcast*. [Choose a membership](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup). 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You are welcome to comment on *The Good Oil* posts if you abide by our ‘Ten Commandments’*.* If you don’t abide by the commandments, a moderator will delete your comments. If your comments need to be deleted regularly, you intentionally break the commandments, or your break is considered serious, then your commenting access may be denied altogether. **The golden rules of commenting:** Each comment should: - be on topic; - add information, a point of view or a contribution of some substance; and - be respectful and do no harm to others. ### **The Ten Commandments** 1. **Comment on the topic** - Comment only on the topic raised in a particular post. The only exceptions are “General debate” in the morning, “Backchat” in the evening and any other post that specifically invites general comments. 1. **Be truthful and keep it legal** - Don’t tell lies or create or spread gossip. - Don’t break or risk breaking court suppression orders. 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By all means, guide new commenters to this [“Commenting and moderation” policy page](https://goodoil.news/commenting-and-moderation/) but never act as though you have any authority. - If you see someone appearing to break the commandments, alert the moderators by clicking on the “Flag as inappropriate” option, found to the far right of the line on which the poster’s username appears, and select “Targeted harassment”. - DON’T REPLY to the commenter. If you reply, you risk being considered part of the problem. - Don’t comment on moderation or on using the Disqus block feature. - Don’t argue with the moderators. 1. **Act like a guest** - Consider the site the same way you would consider someone else’s home. 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If you want to promote something or someone via *The Good Oil* click on “Contact” and find the appropriate email address to discuss your options. 1. **Use the correct channel for making contact** - There is ONLY one place to go if you have an issue with commenting or moderation, after first reading all of the Ten Commandments and the moderation material below, and that is *The Good Oil’s* volunteer HELP DESK. - Put your Disqus username in the subject line of an email to **helpdesk** at **goodoil.news** and include a link to one of your comments. - Please do not contact *The Good Oil* personnel directly about comments, commenting-related issues or moderation as those matters are not their responsibility. 1. **Edit your comments correctly** - If you edit a comment for spelling, punctuation or grammar, please don’t say so. - If you edit for more than this, i.e., adding, removing or changing the content, you must indicate this as part of your edit. Not doing so may cause your access to commenting to be withdrawn. ### **Moderation** *The Good Oil* is a private enterprise. Our goal is to make sure that the comment section is interesting to read and respectful to everyone. Your opinion will not be moderated, but how you express it can be. The moderators at *The Good Oil* are editors of the comments on posts. They do this by enforcing the Ten Commandments. While they aim to be fair and consistent, and do discuss some flagged comments before making a decision, the moderators are human and there will be variations in response. Comments come to the moderators’ attention in two ways. The first is via an auto-sideline feature that responds to certain words, phrases, letter combinations etc. The second is by other commenters reporting comments of concern via the down vote or by flagging the comment as inappropriate. Moderators look at each flagged comment and consider: - whether the commenter is a *The Good Oil* regular; - the quality of their commenting history; - whether they have broken the commandments previously and how seriously; - the seriousness of the current infringement; and - anything else they deem relevant. They then decide if: - the comment will be deleted, with or without a warning to the commenter, or - a temporary ban (for a specified or unspecified time period) or permanent ban will be imposed on the commenter. Please be aware that not all commenting blocks are caused by *The Good Oil*. We estimate that about 10 per cent of blocks are caused by a Disqus bug. ### **Moderation FAQs** **My comment got deleted. Does that mean I’ll be banned?** If the moderators delete a comment here and there, then there’s nothing to worry about. If you find your comments are deleted on a regular basis then it’s probably time to re-read the Ten Commandments. 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If you really value what we do then we know that you will support us even if you lose the ability to comment for a short period. ## Posts ### Night Cap URL: https://goodoil.news/night-cap-764/ Last updated: 2026-10-22T08:00:00.000Z If you have a great Youtube, Rumble or Vimeo video to share send it to videos@goodoil.news [![CTA Image](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/01/cam-shirt2-1.png)](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) If you're loving this trusty, straight-up news on Kiwi politics and beyond, why not become a paid member, eh? Unlock exclusive yarns, podcasts, vids, and in-depth analysis—your support keeps independent journalism chugging along. Join today for just $5.00 per month and get the full good oil! [Learn more ](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) ### Tiny Home Thursday URL: https://goodoil.news/tiny-home-thursday-325/ Last updated: 2026-10-22T07:29:59.000Z If you have a great Youtube, Rumble or Vimeo video to share send it to videos@goodoil.news [![CTA Image](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/01/cam-shirt2-1.png)](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) If you're loving this trusty, straight-up news on Kiwi politics and beyond, why not become a paid member, eh? Unlock exclusive yarns, podcasts, vids, and in-depth analysis—your support keeps independent journalism chugging along. Join today for just $5.00 per month and get the full good oil! [Learn more ](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) ### Free Palestine Leader Paul Hopkinson Tries to Justify His Hateful Rhetoric URL: https://goodoil.news/free-palestine-leader-paul-hopkinson-tries-to-justify-his-hateful-rhetoric/ Last updated: 2026-10-22T06:59:59.000Z If you have a great Youtube, Rumble or Vimeo video to share send it to videos@goodoil.news ### John Banks On Latest Polls & Debates Only 17 Days Out From Election Day URL: https://goodoil.news/john-banks-on-latest-polls-debates-only-17-days-out-from-election-day/ Last updated: 2026-10-22T06:29:59.000Z If you have a great Youtube, Rumble or Vimeo video to share send it to videos@goodoil.news [![CTA Image](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/01/cam-shirt2-1.png)](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) If you're loving this trusty, straight-up news on Kiwi politics and beyond, why not become a paid member, eh? Unlock exclusive yarns, podcasts, vids, and in-depth analysis—your support keeps independent journalism chugging along. Join today for just $5.00 per month and get the full good oil! [Learn more ](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) ### Last night’s weird TVNZ/Verian poll - what It Really Said URL: https://goodoil.news/last-nights-weird-tvnz-verian-poll-what-it-really-said/ Last updated: 2026-10-22T05:59:59.000Z If you have a great Youtube, Rumble or Vimeo video to share send it to videos@goodoil.news [![CTA Image](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/01/cam-shirt2-1.png)](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) If you're loving this trusty, straight-up news on Kiwi politics and beyond, why not become a paid member, eh? Unlock exclusive yarns, podcasts, vids, and in-depth analysis—your support keeps independent journalism chugging along. Join today for just $5.00 per month and get the full good oil! [Learn more ](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) ### The Good Oil Daily Roundup URL: https://goodoil.news/the-good-oil-daily-roundup-780/ Last updated: 2026-10-22T05:29:59.000Z [](https://photos.google.com/u/1/photo/AF1QipN7Zp7NKe4smdZA9nAYud8CjsgjsQ-Bn7QyMo53?ref=goodoil.news) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/AA57EB13-4175-4244-846A-B0A573ED1B8A.jpeg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/6DE2DA42-B6B1-45D0-B694-CFC5AACA97B6_1_201_a.jpeg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/F40E60F8-4ECD-4A59-A25F-4D87ECCCC1B7_1_105_c.jpeg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/718867FC-F244-4255-A7C8-0828986FCFF7_1_105_c.jpeg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/16AE0AD2-6CC1-4713-B069-677D6D63A55C_1_105_c.jpeg) ### Good Oil Backchat URL: https://goodoil.news/good-oil-backchat-858/ Last updated: 2026-10-22T05:00:00.000Z Good evening, welcome to **Backchat**. 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Please be respectful and do not make demands. ### Reigning Cats and Dogs URL: https://goodoil.news/reigning-cats-and-dogs/ Last updated: 2026-10-22T03:29:59.000Z [**Steve Jamnik**](https://www.freespeechbacklash.com/article/reigning-cats-and-dogs?ref=goodoil.news) *Steve Jamnik grew up on farms in Hertfordshire and Essex, studied psychology, then worked as a psychologist in the 1970s before ditching it to work in television.* I have always been surrounded by animals. When I was growing up on farms there were variously cows, bulls, calves, poultry, pigs, rats, mice, stoats, weasels, wood pigeons, pheasants, one hoopoe, deer, squirrels, rabbits, hares, moles, hedgehogs – although rather surprisingly I never saw a fox until I moved to London, when a vixen bedded down in a derelict patch of ground nearby, and I awoke one morning to see three cubs haring round my garden destroying every perennial there was. They were unafraid, and it was possible to pick them up, although I wouldn’t recommend it. Their fur had the consistency of a scrubbing brush, and the vixen didn’t like it one bit, because I could hear her pacing back and forth on the other side of the fence going: ‘Unk-unk-unk’ which I assume is Foxinese for: ‘Put that filthy human being down and come back here.’ We always had a dog. My father liked having one, because it gave him someone to talk to while he was up at the top end of the farm ploughing. And my mother liked having one, because it gave her someone to talk to while my father was up at the top end of the farm ploughing. There is a distinct difference between the type of person who likes dogs, and the type of person who prefers cats. This is just my opinion, but in my estimation dogs are preferred by extraverts, because the companionship, loyalty and attention you get from a dog appeals to the extravert personality. A dog will look you directly in the eye. So will a cat, but not out of devotion, but rather in order to size you up. A dog expresses joy in its eyes and its mouth. I swear I’ve seen a dog laugh. I’ve never seen a cat laugh. I’ve seen a cat glower at me with a hostile glare which told me unmistakably: ‘*Who the hell do you think you are?*’ Contrariwise, introverts prefer cats. They like a cat’s independence and aloofness. A cat is never clinging or needy, and doesn’t insist on being taken for a walk every 20 minutes. But if you win the love of a cat, and I have known someone who knew how to do that, the bond forged is quite remarkable. Cats are also very beautiful. They were worshipped as Gods by the Ancient Egyptians, and I know exactly why. Once the grain harvest had been gathered and stored, the cats would make sure that the rodent population was kept to an absolute minimum. That’s why I need a cat. I live in a run down part of town in a creaking, Victorian wreck with suspended wooden floors. The minute I have no cat, I get minute mice. Of course the price we pay for the love of a cat or a dog is grief. My father was a bad-tempered man, who never showed a vulnerable or sensitive side, but I will never forget the day he had to have his beloved Mandy put down. He seemed crumpled, like an old brown paper bag, and uttered not a word for days. He dug Mandy a special grave beneath a huge horse chestnut tree at the back of our house. He laid her tenderly inside wrapped in her favourite blanket, and placed one of his home grown roses on her, before gently backfilling the grave, leaving the earth slightly proud so that he would always know where she was. Mandy had a rare intelligence. She was a three-quarters-bred springer spaniel. I don’t know what the other quarter was; the farmer who gave her to my father never said, but he assured my father that Mandy’s mother had been of very good lineage, and that dad ‘wouldn’t be disappointed’, which indeed my father never was. Mandy seemed able to sense his unspoken moods, especially if he was worried about something. She would come and sit on his feet, lean against his shins and gaze up at him with compassion in her brown eyes, as if to say: ‘If I sit on your feet it should help.’ Of course, Mandy couldn’t talk. Dogs don’t have any speech centres in their little canine cortexes, but Mandy understood that human beings make noises at each other and at her, and that the noises meant something, such as: ‘Are you ready for a walk?’ or ‘Mandy! Don’t do that!’ or ‘Where’s mum?’ Mandy would try to reply as best she could. She had no syntax, but she made certain vocalisations in accordance with the intent she wished to convey. ‘Eeeuuurrrooooo-euroooh’ meant: ‘You bet your life I do.’ ‘Yeeawwwwghghgh’ meant: ‘For goodness sake hurry up’ and ‘Yowp yowp yowp’ meant: ‘We’ve got company. I can hear their car driving up.’ She also had the most amazing sense of humour. I was sitting in the garden once tinkering with my bike, and Mandy bounded over and knocked the spanner out of my hand. I ignored her and carried on with my work, and when I had put the mudguard back on and was giving it a polish, Mandy snatched the rag that I was using, and raced around the garden with it in her mouth at about 90 miles an hour, round and round like a mad dervish, and I laughed so much I couldn’t breathe. I had always assumed that a cat could not make me laugh, but some years ago I was proved wrong. I was out on a country walk which passed through Ayot St Lawrence, and I was inspecting the ruined church, when trotting along the stone wall came a beautiful, long haired, ginger-orange cat, eager to find out what was so interesting. I was wearing my expensive Silhouette spectacles at the time: special spectacles, ultra-light, plastic varifocal lenses, frameless, with springy arms. The cat thrust its face full into mine and began bunting furiously. The cat pushed so hard against my cheek that my spectacles sprang off my face, did a little somersault in the air, and landed on the cat’s head, the arms clipping neatly behind its ears, and the bridge resting on its nose. The astonished cat looked at me in utter disbelief, then calmly accepted the situation, and studied me carefully through the lenses trying to focus – which must have been difficult, because there is no way that my prescription would have matched his. Then I started laughing. I laughed so hard that people came out of the pub to see what all the fuss was about. After I got my breath back, I apologised to the cat, retrieved my spectacles and gave him a tickle. He gave me the evil-eye – that look which only a cat can give: ‘I’ll let you off for now, but this must not happen again,’ and off he marched. I suppose I could be accused of anthropomorphism, but what I like about having a pet is it won’t criticise me or be sarcastic. No matter how grotesque or smelly I am first thing in the morning, my pet accepts me as I am, and I don’t have to put on airs and graces, or clean pants. I think pets are important, especially for children, because animals connect us to the natural world. They make us live in the moment, and make the most of that moment. Life is short for a pet, which is the most painful thing they teach us. They appreciate being respected, and treated with dignity and kindness. They also require us to be caring and responsible. We have to feed them, and take them to the vet if they get sick or injured. It can cost a fortune in vets fees, and on occasion I’ve had to sit down on a chair when my vet has presented me with the bill – but it’s just money. I’d only fritter it away on food and rent otherwise. This article was originally published by the [Free Speech Backlash](https://www.freespeechbacklash.com/article/reigning-cats-and-dogs?ref=goodoil.news). ### If That’s Not ‘Conversion Practices’, What Is? URL: https://goodoil.news/if-thats-not-conversion-practices-what-is/ Last updated: 2026-10-22T03:00:00.000Z As the ‘trans’ madness shows more and more signs of mercifully fading away, only one thing is certain: the groomers will cling on like grim death until the last juvenile genitals are mutilated and the last predatory cross-dresser is chased out of the girls’ change rooms. A problem solved is an existential crisis for an activist, after all. Once the medical industry goes back to what any sensible person has known all along, namely that surgically mutilating and chemically castrating temporarily deranged children is the very opposite of ‘care’, the activists will be faced with the choice of either giving up and getting real jobs (and not to mention out of the little girls’ dressing rooms) or simply doubling down. One guess which it will be. Always the last on the uptake, the Tasmanian Greens are doubling down, with their so-called “Conversion Practices Prohibition Bill”. Now, to you and I, it seems pretty obvious that converting a boy to a girl is a particularly hideous conversion practice. At least an adult troubled by their sexuality can exercise informed consent and settle down to a life of whatever-gets-them-off. A child cannot consent, nor, when subjected to the medicalised mutilation oxymoronically dubbed ‘gender-affirming care’ (of which it is neither), reverse the incalculable damage done to their developing bodies. Lest you be inclined to object that gender conversion doesn’t count as a ‘conversion practice’, don’t take my word for it: *Conversion practices are attempts to change, suppress or eliminate an individual’s sexual orientation or gender identity.* This is directly quoting from a press release by Equality Tasmania: a pro-trans lobby group who are vociferously supporting the Greens’ dangerous bill. If it sounds self-contradictory to you, well, remember that we’re dealing with people who fervently avow that ‘some women have penises’ and ‘men can get pregnant’. And we’re letting these loons write our laws? Down here in the Apple Isle, the taxpayer-subsidised apparatus of virtue-signalling is working overtime to ensure that common sense remains an outlawed commodity. The chief cheerleader in this theatre of the absurd is a taxpayer-funded outfit known as Working It Out. In a frantic circular dispatched to jittery parents, their chief executive has taken to sounding the alarm that sinister, clandestine conversion rituals are presently running rampant through the serene valleys of Tasmania. Never mind that even the Tasmanian Law Reform Institute, an august body hardly noted for its rampant reactionary prejudices, examined the matter and admitted that there is simply no evidence of contemporary conversion practices taking place within the state. When the bogeyman does not exist, an enterprising activist simply invents him, sticks a clerical collar or a stethoscope on him and demands emergency legislation. As Dr **Elizabeth Caballero**, a retired general practitioner and president of Women Speak Tasmania, recently observed: > [“The WIO message](https://x.com/WomenSpeakTas/status/2111937935666995681?ref=goodoil.news) is blatant fearmongering. WIO treats exploratory or non-affirming psychological support for gender distress as equivalent to conversion practice.” There lies the true sting in the legislative scorpion’s tail. Under the guise of shielding the vulnerable from archaic spiritual torture, the Greens’ draft statute concocts a sweeping net. It defines conversion practices so expansively that any clinician, counsellor or conscientious parent who fails to immediately nod along with an adolescent’s internet-induced delusion risks falling foul of the law. As Dr Caballero pointed out: > “A clinician or parent who does not immediately affirm a cross-sex identity, or who explores underlying issues such as trauma, autism, same-sex attraction or social contagion, risks complaints from any person and investigation by the proposed Conversion Practices Commissioner.” Consider the monstrous implications of this legislative lunacy. A mother who gently suggests to her distressed, autistic daughter that cutting off healthy breast tissue might not resolve her adolescent agony is rendered a criminal suspect. A psychologist who dares to explore whether a young boy’s Sudden-Onset Gender Euphoria is merely the byproduct of excessive TikTok consumption and peer pressure faces a tribunal. Worse still, the bill makes personal consent entirely irrelevant. A confused adolescent can walk into a clinic begging for help to come to terms with their God-given biological reality, and a therapist would be legally barred from assisting them to accept the immutable truth of their sex. To do so would be deemed ‘suppressing’ an asserted gender identity. The only permitted path under this draconian regime is an unquestioning conveyor-belt to the mini-Mengeles in drag: puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and the butcher’s knife. The tragic irony is that this legislation actively harms the very people it purports to protect. By conflating sexual orientation with the ever-shifting sands of ‘gender identity’, the Greens are establishing a legal framework that effectively medicalises awkward, tomboyish girls and effeminate boys out of existence. It is conversion therapy in its most literal, permanent and destructive guise, repackaged as civil rights. Across the Bass Strait, Victoria’s totalitarian experiment with identical legislation has already produced a devastating chilling effect, cowing decent doctors into silence and leaving damaged youths at the mercy of predatory quacks. Now, Tasmanian parliamentarians are being asked to rubber-stamp the same madness without so much as a rigorous parliamentary inquiry into the devastation it will wreak upon families and medicine. If our politicians retain a shred of moral courage, they will consign this grotesque Greens bill directly to the incinerator, pull the funding from the activist groups peddling these falsehoods and let parents and proper doctors get back to the vital business of protecting children from the modern cult of bodily mutilation. --- 💡 ****If you enjoyed this article please share it using the share buttons at the top or bottom of the article.** ### Remember the Suffering and the Dead URL: https://goodoil.news/remember-the-suffering-and-the-dead/ Last updated: 2026-10-22T00:59:59.000Z [**Rev John F Naugle**](https://brownstone.org/articles/remember-the-suffering-remember-the-dead/?ref=goodoil.news) *Reverend John F Naugle is the parochial vicar at St Augustine Parish in Beaver County. BS, economics and mathematics, St Vincent College; MA, philosophy, Duquesne University; STB, Catholic University of America.* On October 14, the Catholic Church observes the anniversary of the martyrdom of Pope Callistus I in AD 223\. The Collect for the Mass in his honor prays the following: > O God, who raised up Pope Saint Callistus the First to serve the church and attend devoutly to Christ’s faithful departed, strengthen us, we pray, by his witness to the faith, so that, rescued from the slavery of corruption, we may merit an incorruptible inheritance. This prayer is an allusion to the fact that, while deacon, Callistus was put in charge of the first cemetery owned by the Church by Pope Zephyrinus. You can still visit the Catacombs of Callistus today, a massive place that holds the bodies of many popes and martyrs in addition to thousands of ordinary Christians. Two distinct thoughts occurred to me while offering mass for his feast this year. First, I thought of how November is rapidly approaching. As I wrote [in one of my early pieces for Brownstone](https://brownstone.org/articles/focused-protection-embedded-in-calendar/?ref=goodoil.news): > The month of November begins starkly with a remembrance of those who have gone ahead of us in death. On November 1st we celebrate all of those who are in Heaven by celebrating All Saints. On November 2nd, we pray for those who are being purified in Purgatory as we commemorate All Souls. Every mass on All Souls Day is a Requiem (i.e., a funeral mass). Visiting a cemetery is urged, even with the grant of an indulgence for making such a visit from November 1–8\. An older priest once recalled that the funeral pall (used to cover a casket or, in the absence of a casket, the catafalque) at his parish growing had the words “Hodie mihi, cras tibi” (“Me today, you tomorrow”) embossed on it. The beginning of November then was a powerful reminder of the arrival of a season of “illness and death.” We begin November by remembering the martyrs and confessors who departed this life victorious, and then our thoughts immediately turn to making reparation for Christians who left this world in faith, hope, and charity, but with an imperfect sanctity. This dual act of remembrance is central to Catholic piety. We remember our heroes and our non-heroes alike, albeit differently. I note with sadness the rapid erosion of the *habitus* of remembering from our culture completely. We dismiss the idea of heroes in the past at all. Funerals go unattended and cemeteries go unvisited, if there is even proper burial at all. Lockdowns, effectively making the natural process of grieving illegal, hastened this erosion. Requiem masses that should have a full church now have maybe a few dozen, others have only immediate family and a few pious friends in attendance. This change in practice should be seen as a grave symptom of the loss of civilization itself. My second thought on the feast of St Callistus is related to the first. As part of our civilizational collapse and our rejection of acts of remembrance and reparation *in toto*, we have enabled our malefactors in government and media to completely move on from the damage they inflicted on countless people in the name of ‘public health’ beginning in 2020. This is why I find Jeffrey Tucker’s hours of time spent [reading entries](https://x.com/brownstoneinst/status/2108940579803398483?ref=goodoil.news) from the CDC’s V-Safe files on the Covid shots so incredibly poignant and moving. These were people who believed in the system that provided these shots. They thought that they were doing the right thing, first by getting them and second by reporting the horrifying outcomes of that decision. They imagined that the people in charge cared and that they would follow up. Instead, like the prophets of Baal who opposed Elijah, they learned that there was “no one answering, no one listening” (1 Kings 18:29). The heartbreak of listening to even a few of these entries inflicts psychological and spiritual pain. Jeffrey’s reading of these for hours resembles a harsh act of spiritual reparation for the evil that was done. Importantly, it represents a defiance against the enforced forgetfulness sought by those who viewed these reports as merely expected collateral damage. Those who were supposed to care most may have averted their eyes, but even now we can scream these stories publicly. We can make sure these victims are remembered. We all remember when the *New York Times* cynically served their masters on May 24, 2020 by replacing their front page with a list of deaths attributed to Covid in order to keep the hysteria going until the shots were available. (As the holder of a degree in Math, I feel the need to observe that the mean age of these decedents was 76.62, while the median age was 80 and the mode was 92.) Imagine if they were to do the same for the tragic stories contained in V-safe. We know that they will not, however. This is why it is up to us to make sure that these people are remembered and that proper reparation is done for what happened to them. For those who are still suffering, may they experience healing. And for those who have died, *Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them.* ![](https://media.brownstone.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/image-17.png) This article was originally published by [Brownstone Institute](https://brownstone.org/articles/remember-the-suffering-remember-the-dead/?ref=goodoil.news). ### Coming to a Town Near You URL: https://goodoil.news/coming-to-a-town-near-you/ Last updated: 2026-10-22T00:29:59.000Z [**Laura Dodsworth**](https://www.thefreemind.co.uk/p/the-intifada-comes-home?ref=goodoil.news) *Writer, photographer, commentator.* The same streets that permitted pro-Palestinian marches within days of 7 October are now burning, with shops looted, public buildings torched and people terrorised by far-left thugs and criminals. This was predictable. Hundreds of thousands have taken to the streets in France, Belgium, Portugal and Italy. Amusingly, Al Jazeera calls these ‘cost of living protests’. The Musée du Louvre posted that it has closed due to the ‘student social movement’. Dear me, whatever are the students learning these days, which requires world class museums to close their doors? The *Guardian* invokes ‘school conditions, housing costs and the cost of living’. Pull the other one. These are the respectable explanations, the ones that allow the establishment to file the violence under economic woes rather than confront the political forces that have helped to legitimise it. Economic pressure certainly causes social dissatisfaction. Hunger can ignite riots. But that’s not what is igniting these riots. Safety is fragile. It was shattered on 7 October in Israel. The Israeli military was unprepared for the atrocious assault, and the massacre exposed what can happen when people are left without adequate protection. More Jews were murdered in a single day than on any other since the Holocaust. The French state, too, appears to have been unprepared for the latest incarnation of French political revolt. These days, some protesters wave the flag of a state that does not yet exist: Palestine. This article was originally published by [the Free Mind](https://www.thefreemind.co.uk/p/the-intifada-comes-home?ref=goodoil.news). ### ‘I Do Not Cry for Enemies’ URL: https://goodoil.news/i-do-not-cry-for-enemies/ Last updated: 2026-10-21T23:30:00.000Z [**Tom Hunter**](https://nominister.wordpress.com/2026/10/21/i-do-not-cry-for-enemies/?ref=goodoil.news) *No Minister* [A tough piece](https://urikurlianchik.substack.com/p/her-life-was-a-waste-her-death-was) by one Uri Kurlianchik about a fellow Jew: > Few people were greater enemies to peace and greater friends to terror than this arrogant betrayer. > > Like Joseph Heller wrote, “the enemy is anybody who’s going to get you killed, no matter which side he is on.” > > Vivian Silver was my enemy. > > I do not cry for enemies. For those who don’t know, Vivian Silver was a socialist Jew who lived on one of the classic kibbutzim in Southern Israel. These were places established a hundred years ago or more by Jews who’d read Marx [and were convinced that they knew where his theory ended:](https://grokipedia.com/page/Kibbutz?ref=goodoil.news) > A kibbutz is a voluntary [collective](https://grokipedia.com/page/Collective?ref=goodoil.news) settlement in Israel, structured around **communal ownership of** [**means of production**](https://grokipedia.com/page/Means%5Fof%5Fproduction?ref=goodoil.news)**, egalitarian distribution of goods and services, and cooperative labor among members**, originally conceived as an agricultural enterprise to foster Jewish self-reliance within the Zionist pioneer movement. The movement originated in the early 20th century, with the first kibbutz, Degania, founded in 1910 as an experiment in practical [socialism](https://grokipedia.com/page/Socialism?ref=goodoil.news) adapted to frontier conditions in Ottoman Palestine. [Vivian Silver](https://grokipedia.com/page/Vivian%5FSilver?ref=goodoil.news) believed in this vision so strongly that, after being born and raised in Canada as a secular Jew (which is to say, no God of any Testament), she didn’t just move to Israel but to one of these kibbutzim. As it happens it was Kibbutz Be’eri where she settled, just a few kilometres from the border with Gaza. > Silver co-founded organizations such as Women Wage Peace, an interfaith movement advocating diplomatic resolutions to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the Arab-Jewish Center for Empowerment, Cooperation, and Negev Development (AJEEC-NISPED), which promoted shared society projects between Jewish and Arab communities. Earlier in her career, she served as CEO of the Negev Institute for Peace and Development Strategies and established initiatives for gender equality in kibbutz movements, including a department for promoting women’s roles in United Kibbutz. Which all sounds warm and cuddly, but which apparently meant nothing to one group of people that these efforts were directed at, the Gazans themselves. > Vivian Silver was a Canadian-Israeli who dedicated her life to help Gaza and vilify Israel. She organized programs to help Gazan workers in Israel, drove them to Israeli hospitals, joined the anti-Israeli organization B’tselem and founded “Women Wage Peace.” As part of her work, she lead tours of the Israeli-Gaza border to raise awareness about the struggle of Gaza’s residents. > > Finally, with her kind aid, their struggle was successful! > > On October 7, those residents broke through the border and came to her home. They didn’t kidnap her. They just murdered her. It took a month to identify what remained of her. This article was originally published by [No Minister](https://nominister.wordpress.com/2026/10/21/i-do-not-cry-for-enemies/?ref=goodoil.news). ### NZ Cop Steals Police-Issued Firearm URL: https://goodoil.news/nz-cop-steals-police-issued-firearm/ Last updated: 2026-10-21T22:59:59.000Z [**The Noticer**](https://www.noticer.news/maori-new-zealand-police-office-steals-gun/?ref=goodoil.news) A face-tattooed [M](https://www.noticer.news/maori-charged-brisbane-brookfield-attack/?ref=goodoil.news)[āori](https://www.noticer.news/maori-charged-brisbane-brookfield-attack/?ref=goodoil.news) cop who was once promoted as a recruitment success story has admitted stealing a [New Zealand Police](https://www.noticer.news/new-zealand-police-bow-sikh-temple/?ref=goodoil.news) handgun and selling it to a criminal associate for $5,000. Steven John Karehana, 42, starred in a YouTube series called *Ride Along*, where he revealed he had been repeated rejected from the force due to a criminal charge from his youth, and talked about wanting to be a “role model” for young Māori and inspire them to join the police. Karehana appeared in Whanganui District Court on Tuesday, where he pleaded guilty to stealing a police-issued firearm and being in unlawful possession of a police-issued firearm, and a suppression order preventing his name from being published was lifted, [*the* New Zealand Herald](https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/ex-cop-steven-karehana-admits-stealing-a-police-issued-glock-in-whanganui/VQBZMEJJNJCZ7BDZLY3HKS2ONQ/?ref=goodoil.news) reported. The court heard a March audit of police firearms in the Central District policing area in Whanganui confirmed that a Glock worth NZ$1,204 had been stolen on February 11 this year. Karehana, who had asked an associate if they could “get rid of a gun” if he could obtain one, took two Glocks and two M4 rifles from the gun safe at Whanganui Police Station and put them in lockboxes in a police car, and travelled with a colleague to a site where his team was based. That afternoon he returned to the station alone, took a Glock from the gun safe, and put it in his backpack. He then gave the firearm to his associate, who sold it to another person for $10,000 in cash. Karehana was given $5,000 that evening, and the court heard that he claimed he “did not know that his associate was going to on-sell the weapon”. When the Glock was recovered in June, Karehana was spoken to by police but denied stealing the gun. During an episode of the *Ride Along* series, which has since been removed from the internet, Karehana spoke about joining the police in 2023 as an older recruit. “So I first applied in 2003, and I was denied because of what had happened in my youth, and I applied probably every five years after that until I got a job as a painter, and I stayed in that job for 16 years,” he said. “It wasn’t until I went and worked for my iwi, and through that journey, it reignited the love and passion for my community and my people.” He said in a different recruitment campaign that the rejection was for a criminal charge for which he was given a diversion. Karehana was granted bail with conditions, including that he surrender his passport, and will be sentenced on December 4. This article was originally published by [the Noticer](https://www.noticer.news/maori-new-zealand-police-office-steals-gun/?ref=goodoil.news). ### Better Late than Never URL: https://goodoil.news/better-late-than-never-2/ Last updated: 2026-10-21T22:29:59.000Z Well, it’s better late than never, I suppose: **Tony Abbott** is calling for an audit of the Bureau of Meteorology, following an investigation which [exposed massive apparent data fraud](https://goodoil.news/a-climate-bom-drops-but-will-there-be-any-reckoning/) in the BOM’s treatment of historical climate records. Of course, Abbott had his chance to do exactly that, over a decade ago. As PM, Abbott discussed setting up an investigation of the BOM with the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, back in 2015\. Even then, investigations were reporting that the BOM was “wilfully ignoring evidence that contradicts its own propaganda”. Abbott, as he did so often as PM, ultimately squibbed the chance. Now, with no political career at risk from the feral legacy media, he’s banging that drum again. Good luck getting the utterly climate-deranged Albanese government to listen. Nevertheless, it’s the forensic audit Australians deserve more than ever before. For years, anyone daring to question the sacred pronouncements of the bureau was unceremoniously branded a heretic, a tin-foil hat enthusiast or, worse, a ‘climate denier’. The official line was always that the raw figures were as pure as the driven snow, untainted by human malice or ideological fervour. Yet the recent forensic audit conducted by data deception specialist **Tom Berger** and veteran scientist **Geoff Sherrington** has detonated that pious fiction with the force of an unseasonal cyclone. What the investigators uncovered was not a handful of harmless rounding discrepancies, but an unmitigated shambles of database tampering. Supposedly pristine ‘raw’ historical figures had large swathes of temperature readings shamelessly copied and pasted across entirely different decades and seasons. In one particularly farcical instance, digitised records for August 1867 were found to be a carbon copy of the readings from August 1907: a miraculous four-decade time-warp that somehow escaped generations of in-house quality control. This devastating exposure prompted the former member for Warringah to finally rediscover his voice: > [“A thorough audit](https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/too-much-evidence-to-ignore-tony-abbott-demands-independent-inquiry-into-bureau-of-meteorology/news-story/0615d642af2332d69e42b1d7ba6e9945?ref=goodoil.news) of the BOM’s temperature records was something I wanted to do as PM but faced a lot of internal pushback. The BOM should itself commission such an audit if it wishes to maintain its credibility in the face of mounting evidence of ­unreliability.” Ah, the familiar refrain of the modern conservative statesman: full of fighting words once the ministerial car has been returned to the garage. We now know from freedom of information releases that Abbott’s own department wanted to unleash a taskforce on the bureau back in 2014, only for then-environment minister **Greg Hunt**, the very model of modern spineless ‘moderate’, to throw himself across the tracks. Hunt whimpered that auditing our weather watchers might undermine ‘public trust’, as if discovering that your house has termites is far worse than pretending the timber is rock-solid until the roof collapses on your head. **Maurice Newman**, who chaired Abbott’s business advisory council and spent years attempting to pierce the meteorological priesthood’s veil, was rather more forthright regarding the sheer magnitude of the scandal: > “You need a royal commission, it’s that serious. This is just beyond the pale. This is not some sort of hypothetical discussion. There are consequences, and the consequences are extremely important and they go to the economy (and) people’s livelihoods.” When billions of dollars of national infrastructure, agriculture, energy policy and private investment decisions are dictated by long-term temperature trends, treating baseline observations like an errant schoolchild’s cut-and-paste homework assignment is intolerable. As carbon accountant Dr **David Evans** noted, the bureau’s smug ‘trust us’ approach would see any publicly listed corporation on the ASX hauled before the corporate regulator. Instead, the high priests of the weather demand an exemption from basic accounting standards. Scientist **Jennifer Marohasy** has rightly pointed out that in an era where forecasting relies on sophisticated computing and machine learning, feeding compromised, synthesised history into algorithms is a recipe for blind chaos. Naturally, the response from the Albanese ministry has been the customary bureaucratic shoulder-shrug. Environment Minister **Murray Watt**’s office practically yawned, hiding behind the bureau’s boilerplate excuse that these were merely isolated transcription hiccups across millions of data points that will be quietly swept under the carpet. This is the very same administrative juggernaut that recently burned through $96 million of public money to produce a website redesign so utterly shambolic it had regional emergency services howling with rage. The reality is that the climate industry cannot afford an independent forensic audit of its holy books, because the entire Net Zero circus relies upon the infallibility of the historical trend. If the raw records are thoroughly compromised by human meddling and institutional incompetence, the grand narrative unravels. The Australian public deserves nothing less than a full, unsparing royal commission into the BOM – though under our current political masters, we are far more likely to see snow falling in the Simpson Desert. --- 💡 ****If you enjoyed this article please share it using the share buttons at the top or bottom of the article.** ### Delusional URL: https://goodoil.news/delusional-2/ Last updated: 2026-10-21T21:59:59.000Z Cartoon of the day by SonovaMin _This post is for paying subscribers only._ ### What Can We Read Into the TVNZ Poll? URL: https://goodoil.news/what-can-we-read-into-the-tvnz-poll/ Last updated: 2026-10-21T21:29:59.000Z [**Richard Prebble**](https://richardprebble.substack.com/p/what-can-we-read-into-the-tvnz-poll) Columnist, former Cabinet Minister and ACT Party leader I have a reputation for being able to read polls. Pollsters used to ask me for my analysis. My immediate reaction is to wait and see if it is a trend. Having got the product warning out of the way, the TVNZ-Verian poll has a good record of predicting election results, with one proviso. The polls have repeatedly misjudged minor-party support. My pick for the party most at risk of missing the five per cent threshold is TOP, whose strongest support comes from young men – notoriously unreliable voters. Labour’s 27 per cent is disastrous. Chris Hipkins’ personal polling is no better. I think Labour is collateral damage from the Greens’ association with gangs. Labour supporters are shocked. National’s four-point rise to 32 per cent is significant. More significant is the possibility that voters are switching from Labour to National. Voters crossing the political divide change elections. But the most remarkable finding concerns ACT and NZ First. For 30 years under MMP, being a junior partner in a formal coalition has been electorally disastrous. Yet ACT is polling 11 per cent, compared with 8.6 per cent in 2023\. NZ First, despite dropping two points, is polling eight per cent, compared with 6.1 per cent at the last election. Both coalition partners are ahead of their last election results. That is extraordinary. National remains six points below its 2023 result. But another finding offers encouragement. A major study of 84 European elections found that increasing consumer confidence was associated with stronger electoral performance by governing parties. There seems to be an association in New Zealand too. Back in April, 52 per cent of New Zealanders expected the economy to worsen. Just 26 per cent expected improvement. On Tuesday night, 43 per cent expected improvement and just 21 per cent expected the economy to worsen over the next 12 months. A remarkable turnaround. Economic optimism does not decide elections. But it matters. Has National timed its run just right? This article was originally published by [I’ve Been Thinking](https://richardprebble.substack.com/p/what-can-we-read-into-the-tvnz-poll). ### Just Who Is Bolsonaro the Younger? URL: https://goodoil.news/just-who-is-bolsonaro-the-younger/ Last updated: 2026-10-21T20:59:59.000Z As [I’ve been reporting](https://goodoil.news/bolsonaro-the-younger-is-on-the-cusp/) for *Good Oil*, Brazil is on a fast-track to be the latest Latin American country to sweep the remnants of the so-called ‘Orange Revolution’ into the dustbin of history where all socialist disaster stories belong. Brazilians were in fact one of the first South American countries to give it the ol’ college try, with the election of **Jair Bolsonaro** in 2019\. But the socialists are not so easily out-wiled. Taking a leaf from the playbook of their socialist cousins in *el Norte*, they duly weaponised their pet judges and jailed the former president for 27 years. But the Bolsonaro clan are clearly not so easily cowed. Not only have his wife and two of his sons been elected to Brazil’s parliament, his eldest is on track to win the current presidential elections. What will a **Flávio Bolsonaro** presidency mean for Brazil? To begin with, it means the globalist gravy train in South America has run headlong into the buffers. Much of the political collapse of the old socialist apparatus stems from a singularly overdue development: the shuttering of the USAID spigot. For decades, American taxpayers unwittingly subsidised Brazil’s left-wing cultural hegemony, underwriting woke universities, activist judges and compliant media organs. Turn off the tap, and suddenly the natural, conservative instincts of the Brazilian populace reassert themselves. The first-round electoral triumph of the younger Bolsonaro has sent seismic shivers through the internationalist salon. As Alexander Munguía noted in the *Spectator*: > [For Washington,](https://spectator.com/article/the-meaning-of-flavio-bolsonaro?ref=goodoil.news) a Flávio Bolsonaro presidency would be the biggest prize yet in its campaign to remake the hemisphere, a campaign in which the past seven South American elections have seen a right-wing, Trump-aligned candidate win. Indeed, the geopolitical landscape south of the Rio Grande is undergoing a tectonic realignment. The proposed partnership under the Shield of the Americas and its military enforcement arm, the Americas Counter Cartel Coalition (A3C), signals an end to the kid-gloves treatment enjoyed by regional narco-terrorists. While the decrepit incumbent **Lula da Silva** spent his tenure stubbornly refusing to designate ruthless criminal syndicates like the PCC and Comando Vermelho as terrorists, hiding behind hollow platitudes of national sovereignty, Flávio proposes to treat armed cartels as the civilisational scourge they are. Yet running Brazil is rather more complicated than merely clearing out the favelas. The diplomatic dance facing the young president will test even his famously unflappable temperament: > The real tension is China. Beijing accounts for nearly one in three Brazilian export dollars, and Flávio’s 76-page government plan still promises pragmatic negotiations with Beijing. He is pro-Trump in rhetoric and pro-soybean in practice. A statesman must balance ideals with the cold reality of trade balances, and Brazil’s agribusiness lobby will hardly tolerate an ideological crusade that robs them of their biggest buyer. Nor will the dissolution of the BRICS gabfest be entirely seamless, though walking away from its Beijing-dominated development bank would provide capital amusement for conservatives everywhere. Regionally, however, the prospects are intoxicating. A Brasília-Buenos Aires axis alongside Argentina’s libertarian warrior **Javier Milei** promises to transform the moribund, protectionist Mercosur bloc into a genuine engine of commerce. It marks the first time in centuries that the two continental titans share an ideological compass, turning their backs on Parisian climate lectures and socialist redistribution alike. Naturally, the institutional swamp will not surrender without a brawl. The same activist Supreme Court that locked away the patriarch sits waiting, ready to frustrate the son at every turn, particularly should he grant his father the presidential pardon his supporters crave. Flávio must also navigate the murky waters of local banking scandals and coordinate with ambitious establishment allies like São Paulo’s Governor **Tarcísio de Freitas**. Yet Flávio is cut from a distinctly different cloth than his pugnacious sire. Where Jair led cavalry charges against the capital’s institutions, the son is calculating, poised and surrounded by hard-headed technocrats. The Latin American left thought they had buried the Bolsonaro name beneath 27 years of politically weaponised jurisprudence. Instead, they merely laid the groundwork for an enduring political dynasty that looks set to finish what the patriarch started. --- 💡 ****If you enjoyed this article please share it using the share buttons at the top or bottom of the article.** ### Ten@10 Lite - 2026/196 URL: https://goodoil.news/ten-10-lite-2026-196/ Last updated: 2026-10-21T20:59:59.000Z 3 of today's 10 stories. The full Ten@10 is a VIP benefit. _This post is for subscribers on the Basic, Basic+ and The DBF tiers only._ ### Your Daily Ten@10 - 2026/196 URL: https://goodoil.news/your-daily-ten-10-2026-196/ Last updated: 2026-10-21T20:59:59.000Z **This is edition 2026/196 of the *Ten@10* newsletter.** Hi all, This is the Ten@10, where I collate and summarise ten news items you generally won't see in the mainstream media. Enjoy! --- ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/01-ten196.png) ## 1\. Democracy Briefing: Te Pāti Māori’s dysfunction is a gift to the right *Bryce Edwards - The Democracy Project* - 🗳️ Edwards says Te Pāti Māori’s chaotic campaign keeps handing National free ammunition against a Labour-led government. - 📊 National is up four to 32 in the 1News-Verian poll. Te Pāti Māori is under 1% there. - 🐕 It started with Oriini Kaipara’s line: “you see Mongrel Mob, I see whānau.” Luxon has made the most of it. - 😂 Kiri Tamihere-Waititi mocked Hipkins: “It puts old Chippy under pressure and he’s fallen for it”. Hipkins then had to rule the Greens and Te Pāti Māori out of police and corrections. - 📜 Their Tiriti Commission bottom line would let it stop Cabinet decisions. Audrey Young: “That’s not only a coalition killer, it will make it less likely the parties of the left are elected.” - 🌿 A Whakaata Māori-Curia poll has the Greens’ Hūhana Lyndon leading in Te Tai Tokerau. The candidate-vote-only plan may be backfiring. - 💸 Māori voters rank cost of living way ahead of Te Tiriti. The party is campaigning on the wrong thing. - 🔚 Edwards: “Te Pāti Māori’s problems become problems for the whole left.” If the right scrapes back on 7 November, this will be part of why. [Read More](https://www.democracyproject.org.nz/p/democracy-briefing-te-pati-maoris?ref=goodoil.news) --- ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/02-ten196.jpg) ## 2\. Chippy Don’t Lose That Number. *Chris Trotter - Bowalley Road* - 🧩 Trotter asks why nobody can call this election. His answer: National and Labour are both defending a status quo that doesn’t work for most people. - 🙄 “Better starts now.” is Labour’s slogan. Trotter says it would have been a good one fifty years ago. - 🍯 He says Labour’s habit of lowering expectations is “Jam yesterday and jam tomorrow, but never jam today”. - 🧮 The left’s maths: “17% + 28% = 45% which is not enough to claim victory.” - 🟢 So the left needs Opportunity, on 8% in the latest 1News-Verian poll. Trotter says that’s no natural fit. - 🔧 His read on Qiulae Wong’s lot: “Opportunity does not want to demolish the status quo, Opportunity wants to renovate it.” - 📋 And Wong wasn’t elected by members. “She answered an ad and sailed through the job interview.” - 📞 Trotter reckons Hipkins has her number and Bishop probably gave her his. Luxon hasn’t rung. That may cost him. [Read More](https://goodoil.news/chippy-dont-lose-that-number/) --- ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/03-ten196.png) ## 3\. RODNEY HIDE: Two votes, one brain *Rodney Hide - Brash and Mitchell* - 🗳️ Hide’s pitch is simple: “You have two votes. Make them count.” - 🏆 He knows. In 2005 Epsom voters gave him the seat and kept Richard Worth on National’s list. ACT survived. - 📉 On his own poll average, National wins about 35 electorates but earns only 34 seats. No list MPs at all. - 🙈 Roughly 800,000 National party votes would add not one National MP. - 🤝 So he wants ACT to tell Epsom to back Paul Goldsmith and Tamaki to back Mahesh Muralidhar. ACT loses nothing. National gains two. - ➕ He says if two voters in every hundred shift their party vote from National to ACT and NZ First, the centre right gets 64 seats in a Parliament of 127. - 🧠 His line: “That is strategic voting. It is not a trick. It is reading the rules.” - 🎯 The bottom line: “Electorate vote National. In every electorate. And Party Vote ACT or New Zealand First depending on your preference.” [Read More](https://www.brashandmitchell.com/post/rodney-hide-two-votes-one-brain?ref=goodoil.news) --- ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/04-ten196.jpg) ## 4\. RICHARD PREBBLE: What can we read into the TVNZ poll? *Richard Prebble - Brash and Mitchell* - 📊 Prebble says the TVNZ-Verian poll has a good record, with one catch. It keeps misjudging the minor parties. - 🎲 His pick to miss the 5% line is TOP. Its base is young men, “notoriously unreliable voters.” - 💀 On Labour: “Labour’s 27% is disastrous.” Hipkins’ own numbers are no better. - 🔗 He thinks Labour is collateral damage from the Greens’ association with gangs. - 🔄 National up four to 32 matters. Voters switching from Labour to National matters more. - 🤯 ACT on 11 and NZ First on 8 are both above their 2023 results. For junior coalition partners under MMP, he calls that “extraordinary.” - 📈 In April, 52% expected the economy to worsen. Now 43% expect it to improve. - ⏱️ He finishes: “Has National timed its run just right?” [Read More](https://www.brashandmitchell.com/post/richard-prebble-what-can-we-read-into-the-tvnz-poll?ref=goodoil.news) --- ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/05-ten196.png) ## 5\. Labour’s Online Policy *David Harvey - A Halfling’s View* - 📢 Retired judge David Harvey predicted Labour would come up with an interventionist online policy. Now it has. - 🐴 Media spokesman Reuben Davidson’s plan wraps it all in child safety. Harvey calls it a Trojan Horse. - 👮 Labour would set up an independent digital regulator with powers to enforce safety standards and act against platforms that break the rules. - ⚖️ Harvey points out the Harmful Digital Communications Act already deals with harm, after it happens. - 🚫 Labour’s own words: “The aim is to prevent harm in the first place, rather than leaving people to deal with the consequences.” Harvey says that’s prior restraint. - 📺 Labour would keep the Broadcasting Standards Authority and possibly stretch it over online content. That puts The Platform and Reality Check Radio in the gun. - 💰 It would also revive the Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill. Harvey bets Stuff bends the knee first. - 🏰 He says control of the internet is the Holy Grail for governments. Labour is knocking at the castle gate. [Read More](https://djhdcj.substack.com/p/labours-online-policy) --- ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/06-ten196.jpg) ## 6\. Voter suppression? Give me a break. *Liam Hehir - The Blue Review* - 🇺🇸 Hehir says our media love importing American rows, whether they fit here or not. - 🗓️ The latest is calling the 13-day enrolment deadline, 25 October this election, “voter suppression”. - 🧾 Election-day enrolment only arrived in 2020, on a 63 to 57 party-line vote. - 🐢 In 2023 the Auditor-General found 454,000 people enrolled in the final fortnight, and the count nearly buckled. - ⏳ The review said “A final quality assurance check that would usually be completed over two days had to be completed within hours.” - 🇬🇧 The UK closes registration twelve working days out. Nobody calls that a rigged election. - 🎯 Hehir: “If an enrolment deadline applying uniformly across the whole country is voter suppression, then there are very few free elections going on in the world.” - 🔥 He calls the label “irresponsible and corrosive”. Fair call. [Read More](https://thebluereview.substack.com/p/voter-suppression-give-me-a-break) --- ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/07-ten196.png) ## 7\. RODNEY HIDE: I asked AI to find Rawiri Waititi's worldview *Rodney Hide - Brash and Mitchell* - 🤖 Hide set his AI research assistant on Rawiri Waititi’s speeches, bills and votes, with every quote sourced. - 🪢 The maiden speech set the frame. He pulled off his tie to “remove the colonial noose around my neck so that I may sing my song.” - 🏛️ The report finds colonisation is his answer to almost everything. Even Māori who disagree: “colonisation has done its job on our people, a bloody damn good job.” - 👢 Thrown out for no tie, for hakas, suspended for 21 days in June 2025\. He called the Privileges Committee a “kangaroo court”. - 🍒 At a party conference he joked about slipping karaka berries into Seymour’s water: “re-indigenise yourself with some native seeds.” - 💰 On money he’s a redistributor. His bill to take GST off food got only his own party’s votes. - ⛪ He is a Ringatū minister. That faith was founded by Te Kooti, whose men killed dozens of civilians, Māori and Pākehā, at Matawhero in 1868. - 😳 Hide used to see Waititi as performative theatre. “That is no longer the case for me.” [Read More](https://www.brashandmitchell.com/post/rodney-hide-i-asked-ai-to-find-rawiri-waititi-s-worldview?ref=goodoil.news) --- ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/08-ten196.png) ## 8\. Innovators and Fakers *Jeffrey A. Tucker - The Epoch Times* - 🚀 Tucker watched Tesla’s new Roadster lift off and land at its Waco launch. He calls it “utterly astounding”. - 🎬 The next day he saw “You Can See Everything,” the new documentary on Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes. - 🩸 Holmes promised hundreds of tests from one drop of blood. There was no peer review behind any of it. - 💵 Theranos hit a $9 billion valuation on vibes and PR. Tucker says “It all happened based on vibes, public relations, and nothing more.” - 🤷 He has little sympathy for the investors: “Their losses are their losses.” - 💉 Then the knife. He argues the drug giants behind the mRNA shots face no consequences while Holmes sits in prison. - ⚖️ His line: “The wrong people are going to prison for medical fraud.” [Read More](https://lists.theepochtimes.com/archive/3Y3Cu0eXTq/5kdG8QBtO/0L9T5fG50Ho?ref=goodoil.news) --- ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/09-ten196.jpg) ## 9\. You can now be treated as a terrorist just for visiting Israel *Jake Wallis Simons - spiked* - 🚪 Holly Passmore, a County Durham mum of two, opened the door to two plain-clothes police. - ✈️ They wanted to know why she had been to Israel. She’d been referred to Prevent, Britain’s counter-extremism scheme. - 📝 The anonymous referral said she was “supportive of Israel to the point that she has travelled to Israel”. - 🕍 Police asked whether she’d ever been to Auschwitz. She’s not Jewish. She’s studying the Holocaust. - 🏥 Her NHS records quietly tagged her a “vulnerable adult” for almost a year. She cares alone for her severely autistic son. - 🔪 Same Prevent that closed Axel Rudakubana’s case three times before he murdered three little girls in Southport. - 🎯 Passmore: “Nobody would describe me as vulnerable”. Wallis Simons says the people to worry about are the ones who knocked on her door. [Read More](https://www.spiked-online.com/2026/10/19/you-can-now-be-treated-as-a-terrorist-just-for-visiting-israel/?ref=goodoil.news) --- ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/10-ten196.jpg) ## 10\. No wonder JK Rowling wants nothing to do with the BBC *Malcolm Clark - spiked* - 📺 The BBC is making a two-part documentary on JK Rowling. Trans activists lost their minds anyway. - 🏷️ The press release calls her “one of Britain’s most polarising public figures”. - 📚 She’s sold more than 600 million Harry Potter books. Polarising, apparently. - 🙅 Missing from the release: any sign Rowling is taking part. - 🌟 Clark says celebrity access is everything now. Netflix’s Beckham, made with Posh and Becks, was its biggest UK show in 2023. - 🎙️ Rowling did talk to the Free Press for The Witch Trials of JK Rowling. A start-up got her. The BBC couldn’t. - 🪦 Clark’s verdict: the day the BBC lost Britain’s most successful living writer should loom large in the story of its “long, slow death”. [Read More](https://www.spiked-online.com/2026/10/20/no-wonder-jk-rowling-wants-nothing-to-do-with-the-bbc/?ref=goodoil.news) --- ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/goai-ad.png) ### **11\. Your election desk is already paid for.** Your VIP membership includes Good Oil AI: the poll of polls with seat ranges, a dossier on every MP, and Ask, which answers questions from Hansard, the votes, the donations and the registers with sources. Sign in with this email address: [app.goodoil.ai/login](https://app.goodoil.ai/login?utm%5Fsource=tenat10&utm%5Fcampaign=blitz26). Got a mate who should see it? Non-members can get the full desk free until 15 November with the Election Pass (card needed to start, nothing charged until 15 November, cancel any time in the app): [app.goodoil.ai/insight](https://app.goodoil.ai/insight?utm%5Fsource=tenat10&utm%5Fcampaign=blitz26) ## What our members are saying about Ten@10 **Elizabeth** These articles are compulsory reading for me and the perfect addition to the usual list of Goodoil items! **Lynne** Absolutely brilliant to receive these current and thought provoking articles. **Jonathan** Just wanted to let you know that I’m loving this new 10@10\. Much appreciated from someone who chooses to read/watch almost NO mainstream media. **Murray** Cam, relish your output as the newspaper in Christchurch is so intent on non news. Thankyou **Fred** Thanks for Ten @ Ten, really enjoy reading it.Keep it up. All the best, keep healthy. **Jocko** Wonderful info not otherwise available in NZ. More power to your elbow! Thanks. ### Told You So URL: https://goodoil.news/told-you-so-3/ Last updated: 2026-10-21T20:29:59.000Z [**David Harvey**](https://djhdcj.substack.com/p/labours-online-policy) *Retired district court judge* The great thing about the left is that they never fail to disappoint. Rather like Cassandra, I have been predicting that Labour and the left would develop an interventionist online policy. In fact [in September I suggested that when Hipkins announced Labour’s AI policy it was something of a Trojan horse](https://djhdcj.substack.com/p/the-trojan-horse-of-labour-party). One of the elements there was the presence of an online regulator. The desire for an online regulator is not new. It was proposed as part of a sweeping plan back in 2021–2022 known as Safer Online Services and Web Platforms advanced by the Department of Internal Affairs – the censorship and web-blocking people. That proposal was deep-sixed by Brooke van Velden. But now Labour through its Media Spokesperson Reuben Davidson has released the social media and online content policy. And what is proposed is pretty much what I have suggested the left would advance. I hate to say, “I told you so….” The Trojan horse is there. This time it comes in the form of “safety” and “protecting children”. And in addition there is a ‘Nanny State’ element. As the flier document states, “When all their friends are online, saying ‘not yet’ to your kids can be hard.” The essential message is ‘We are from the Labour-led government and we are here to help you parent your kids.’ There is nothing new about Labour’s proposals to carry on the National under-16 social media restrictions, although the effectiveness of such a proposal is debatable, as the Australian experience has shown. Another proposal is to require social media companies to enable users to choose their feeds so that they can personalise their recommendations or see only posts from known people and accounts. The rationale is that unwanted or unwelcome material will be stopped. The plan provides the ability to switch back to the algorithm-controlled feed if you want. That is not too objectionable, because it is a user-based decision to opt-in or opt-out and not a state-based means of control. But the main thrust of the policy is directed towards “safety”, but, in fact, the Trojan horse of safety contains inside it control by the state. Building on the AI action plan – which I warned about in September – Labour will establish an independent digital regulator to oversee online platforms and make sure they meet their responsibilities. The watchdog will have powers to enforce safety standards, investigate harmful practices and take action against companies that break the rules. But the plan completely ignores the Harmful Digital Communications Act and the role of Netsafe as the approved agency under that legislation. The HDCA is a reactive model – it provides for a response to harm. The Labour model is a prior restraint model. It proposes the presence of a regulator together with a Digital Duty of Care – something that is proposed in Australia and that has gone live in the UK. The Digital Duty of Care will put basic responsibilities on platforms that provide online services. Safer Online Services suggested the development of codes of standards for different types of provider – based on the Broadcasting Standards Authority Codes for broadcasters. Labour takes a giant leap forward with the Digital Duty of Care Proposal. The objective ostensibly is to provide stronger protections for under-18s against harmful content, bullying and design features that encourage excessive use or damage self-esteem. Remedies are already available under the HDCA which provide for that. Stronger protections against deepfake abuse, including non-consensual sexual images, and powers to take down harmful ‘nudify’ apps and sites. Once again the HDCA covers these issues. Finally, platforms will have to identify risks, show what they are doing to keep people safe and take action when things go wrong. And then, finally, the kicker. The policy states clearly: > **The aim is to prevent harm in the first place, rather than leaving people to deal with the consequences.** That is prior restraint. That is the basis for censorship. That clearly sends a message that the Labour policy is not about safety at all but about the control of content and control of the messaging that takes place through the most diverse and distributed network of communications ever devised. But wait – there’s more. The Labour media spokesperson announced that Labour would not follow through with the disestablishment of the Broadcasting Standards Authority. Rather they would review the matter and take steps to expand its powers. This would be in accordance with option two of the regulatory impact statement accompanying the disestablishment bill and [about which I wrote on 12 October](https://djhdcj.substack.com/p/disestablishing-the-broadcasting). But the Labour proposal goes a little further. Mr Davidson would retain and modernise the Broadcasting Standards Authority rather than abolish it, with reforms potentially extending its oversight to online streaming and digital content. This means that online content distributors, like the Platform and Reality Check Radio, would come under the jurisdiction of the BSA and be subject to their standards and codes and their complaints processes. This would be a significant erosion of the liberty that those providers have enjoyed, although the Platform has not appealed against the decision of the BSA whereby it arrogated to itself jurisdiction over online content. But if the BSA powers are to be extended to digital content, does this extend to platforms such as Substack? For myself I try to maintain a level of *dignitas* in the language that I use in my posts but nevertheless some of the reactions are – well shall we say interesting. But on the other hand, Saurons have not fared well at the hands of Halflings. Labour also promises to revive the *Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill* to require major technology companies to compensate New Zealand news publishers. I am sure that readers will remember the Public Interest Journalism Fund (PIJF). The Fair Digital New Bargaining Bill may not be a state handout to news media but it is certainly a state-enabled process by which money will move from the platforms to news media – assuming that the platforms want to play ball. And have no doubt about it. Mainstream media will be grateful. I am willing to bet that Stuff will be first to bend the knee. Finally and before I close, let us not forget that the Department of Internal Affairs is lurking in the background. I doubt that they would not be front and centre as a regulator. That would be too obvious an example of state control. But they are there, in the background with $30 million in funding over the next few years to engage in online regulation processes. I have described the control of the internet as the Holy Grail of Governments. Once they control the messaging they can control everything else. Remember the 1:00 pm TV announcements from the Podium of Truth and the suggestion that contrary messaging be taken with a grain of salt? Hipkins was complicit in that little farce. And if the Labour proposal is not quite the Holy Grail, certainly they are approaching the gates of the Grail Castle. And the implications for control of expression and for the fate of freedom of speech are most concerning. This article was originally published by [A Halfling’s View](https://djhdcj.substack.com/p/labours-online-policy). ### You Don’t Need To Defend Frivolous Speech URL: https://goodoil.news/you-dont-need-to-defend-frivolous-speech/ Last updated: 2026-10-21T20:14:59.000Z Now, think about what you could accomplish if you were a good writer. _This post is for paying subscribers only._ ### She Isn’t Above the Law, Either URL: https://goodoil.news/she-isnt-above-the-law-either/ Last updated: 2026-10-21T19:59:59.000Z Remember when the watchword was, “no one is above the law”? Ah, but that was in the dim, dark ages of between 2020 and 2024\. Before then, **Bill Clinton** could lie under oath to Congress and Democrats would vote en masse to let it slide. **Hillary Clinton** could illegally use a clandestine private email server to her heart’s content and **Joe Biden** could stash as many boxes of classified documents in his garage as he could forget (and he could forget a *lot*). But between 2020 and 2024, **Donald Trump** was determinedly seeking another tenure in the White House. Suddenly, Democrats and their media lackeys were adamant that no one was above the law. Not even the laws they created and retroactively applied solely to get the Bad Orange Man. Even an act as simple as a lawyer drafting a letter could see them imprisoned. Now, the pendulum has swung back all the way. The American left’s beloved socialist genocide nepo-baby is finally facing accountability for the dark clouds which have long lingered over her. From (allegedly) lying about her age to fraudulently obtain US citizenship, to (allegedly) marrying her brother to grease his skids into the Land of the Free, all of **Ilhan Omar**’s (alleged) dirty laundry is being raked over by the machinery of the law. And Democrats are apoplectic. Largely, it might seem to us cynics, on account that they may well be about to loosen entire ossuaries of skeletons from the Omar family closet. The progressive vanguard shrieked to the heavens upon learning that Homeland Security Investigations had executed a search warrant upon the Washington residence of Minnesota’s favourite imported Muslim socialist. **Hakeem Jeffries** and his cohorts immediately reached for the fainting couches, braying about authoritarian weaponisation and the sanctity of political opposition. You almost have to admire the sheer, breathtaking chutzpah of the left playing the victim card after a half-decade spent weaponising the entire apparatus of the federal government against their chief political rival. As former federal prosecutor **Jim Trusty** aptly observed: > [“It’s difficult to](https://www.foxnews.com/politics/democrats-dirty-hands-complaints-omar-raid-weeks-before-election-ex-prosecutor-says?ref=goodoil.news) not point out the dirty hands of the people that might complain about election interference.” The very architects of endless lawfare during the Trump era, who cheerfully cheered on every indictment, subpoena and dawn raid designed to thwart a conservative resurgence, suddenly discovered a deep, constitutional reverence for unwritten departmental timelines. Mostly because the spotlight had swung toward one of their own. Legal experts were quick to puncture the myth of the supposedly sacred ‘60-day rule’, pointing out that it is merely an internal consultation guideline rather than a statutory immunity shield. Moreover, as Republican firebrand **Nancy Mace** reminded the gallery, the precedent for federal searches of politicians’ homes was established long before Immigration and Customs Enforcement ever darkened Ms Omar’s doorstep: > [“All those who](https://www.foxnews.com/politics/ilhan-omar-home-raid-sparks-online-firestorm-this-what-authoritarians-do?ref=goodoil.news) celebrated the raid of Mar-a-Lago don’t get to cry over the raid at Ilhan Omar’s home. Trump’s political enemy raided his home. Democrats set the precedent.” Indeed they did. But beneath the theatrical wailing over electoral timing lies a rather more visceral terror among the progressive faithful: the nagging suspicion that investigators are no longer simply looking at ancient history. Federal probes are reportedly examining discrepancies in arrival paperwork, age declarations and the delightful genealogical mysteries surrounding past marital arrangements. **Mike Howell**, president of the Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project, noted that securing a judicial sign-off for a raid in heavily progressive Washington, DC, implies that investigators have built a formidable dossier. As Howell bluntly assessed: > [“They probably got](https://www.foxnews.com/politics/they-probably-got-goods-ilhan-omar-raid-sparks-ominous-prediction-watchdog?ref=goodoil.news) the goods on her. You don’t get a federal judge to sign off on something like this in Washington, DC, of all places, unless there is something that is rather convincing.” Whether the trail leads to potential denaturalization for citizenship acquired under false pretences, or simply exposes the broader institutional rot within Capitol Hill’s generous earmark culture, one thing is abundantly clear. The progressive establishment is not panicking because the rule of law is being traduced: they are panicking because they suspect the rule of law is finally catching up with them. And for a political class accustomed to operating with absolute impunity, that is the most terrifying prospect of all. --- 💡 ****If you enjoyed this article please share it using the share buttons at the top or bottom of the article.** ### Quick Hit: An Overhang Is Not Cheating URL: https://goodoil.news/quick-hit-an-overhang-is-not-cheating/ Last updated: 2026-10-21T19:29:59.000Z Luxon and Hipkins both said engineering an overhang is cheating. The Electoral Commission says it is how MMP works, and parliament has had one in five of the last seven terms. _This post is for subscribers on the VIP tier only._ ### Two Votes, One Brain URL: https://goodoil.news/two-votes-one-brain/ Last updated: 2026-10-21T19:29:59.000Z [**Rodney Hide**](https://www.brashandmitchell.com/post/rodney-hide-two-votes-one-brain?ref=goodoil.news) *Rodney Hide is a former minister and ACT Party leader.* You have two votes. Make them count. That is the secret of MMP. The party vote decides how many seats each party gets. The electorate vote decides who represents your electorate. Treat them as one vote cast twice and you likely waste half your say. Split them smartly and you can change the government. I know. I have been the beneficiary. In 2005 ACT was in deep trouble. We were polling nowhere near five per cent. Without an electorate we were finished. So I begged the voters of Epsom to do something clever: give me their electorate vote. They worked it out. Richard Worth, their National MP, was safe on National’s list, so voting for me cost them nothing. They kept Richard. They got me. And because I won Epsom, ACT’s 1.5 per cent counted, which brought Heather Roy in with me. Three MPs where they’d have had one and ACT survived. In 2008 they did it again. ACT won 3.65 per cent and five seats. Richard came back on the list and became a minister. Epsom voters delivered six MPs. And the centre right had the numbers to govern. Absent that strategic vote, there would be no ACT and no Prime Minister John Key. That is strategic voting. It is not a trick. It is reading the rules. This election the rules are screaming at us. The polls are on a razor’s edge. My average of every published poll, weighted for recency and sample size, puts National on 28 per cent, Labour 28, the Greens 14, NZ First 11, ACT nine and TOP six. Run those numbers through the Electoral Commission’s formula, with the seats each party is likely to win, and parliament has 123 MPs. National, ACT and NZ First have 59\. The left has 57\. The government needs 62\. Nobody gets there. Not without the Opportunity Party. And here is the bit that should make every National strategist sit up. On these polls National wins about 35 electorates but its party vote earns it only 34 seats. It gets no list MPs at all. That has never happened to Labour or National under MMP. Think what that means. Roughly 800,000 people will tick National on the party vote, and not one of those votes adds a single National MP. They are doing nothing. So what should ACT do? What it has always done. Be smart and lead. ACT should tell its supporters in Epsom to give their electorate vote to National’s Paul Goldsmith, and in Tāmaki to National’s Mahesh Muralidhar. And give their party votes to ACT. That would be big news. And that is the point. ACT loses nothing. Its seats come from its party vote, and at nine per cent it clears the threshold without needing an electorate. It gets 11 MPs either way. National gains two MPs it otherwise wouldn’t have. But the real effect is what National voters would hear. ACT asking voters to give the seats it now has to National? Why? Because under MMP that is how you get the most out of your two votes. And a National voter hearing that would think: so that’s how it works. National already has all the seats its electorates will give it. A party vote does nothing more for National. It would do plenty for ACT or NZ First. ACT’s gesture is the lesson. The shift in party votes follows. How big a shift? It does not need much. If just two in every 100 voters, about 58,000 people, move their party vote from National to ACT and NZ First, the centre right has 64 seats in a parliament of 127\. A majority. If six in every 100 do it, about 170,000 people, ACT goes from 11 MPs to 15 and NZ First from 13 to 17\. National still has every one of its 37 electorate MPs. That is eight extra centre-right MPs, conjured from votes that were otherwise wasted. Parliament grows to 132\. The centre right has 69, two more than it needs. And that is not all. In Northland, East Cape, Wairarapa and Mt Roskill, National is narrowly behind on the national swing, and in each one the ACT candidate’s vote last time was bigger than the gap. If ACT voters there gave their electorate vote to National, National would win four seats it otherwise loses. Because National has no list MPs, each one is an extra centre-right MP. Add those four to Epsom and Tāmaki and the centre right gets to 65 in a parliament of 129, a majority, without a single party vote changing hands. The same logic runs the other way in Maungakiekie, Hamilton East, Whanganui and Ōtaki, where National is only just ahead. An ACT candidate splitting the vote there could hand the left a seat. It is up to the voters. It always is. ACT would simply be providing the leadership. I should add, such a strategy is only possible because David Seymour has done way better than I ever did. National will hate it. It doesn’t want to be an electorate-only party. But frankly, until it rediscovers its principles, that is what it deserves. And electorate MPs sit in parliament just the same and vote just the same. A National caucus made up entirely of electorate MPs is still a National caucus. ACT and NZ First become the party vote parties, competing hard for ideas and votes. ACT stops being the small mate and becomes a big player. The centre of New Zealand politics shifts right. Some will say a 132-seat parliament is absurd. Maybe. But parliament has chosen to keep the overhang. I am simply suggesting we read the manual. Would Labour work out how to do the same with the Greens? Of course. They are not stupid. But I doubt the Greens could ever soak up that many Labour party votes. Too many voters look at the Greens and see what I see: too nutty by half. And there is another upside: the media party will hate it. They have been campaigning hard to have the Opportunity Party over five per cent to ensure a left-wing government. Voters using their votes to best effect would defeat their skulduggery. Their wailing and gnashing of teeth would just add to the enjoyment. It’s simple really. Electorate vote National. In every electorate. And party vote ACT or New Zealand First depending on your preference. In every electorate. This article was originally published by [Brash and Mitchell](https://www.brashandmitchell.com/post/rodney-hide-two-votes-one-brain?ref=goodoil.news). ### The Right Is One Seat Short. Party Vote NZ First or ACT. URL: https://goodoil.news/the-right-is-one-seat-short-party-vote-nz-first-or-act/ Last updated: 2026-10-21T19:11:50.000Z **KEY FINDINGS** - 1News-Verian, 15 to 19 October: National 32 (up 4), Labour 27 (down 1, its lowest since the 2023 election), Greens 16, ACT 11, NZ First 8 (down 2), Opportunity 7, Te Pāti Māori 0.7 ([1News](https://www.1news.co.nz/2026/10/20/poll-national-jumps-leaving-labours-position-perilous/?ref=goodoil.news)). - National, ACT and NZ First reach 60 seats in both of Verian’s scenarios. That is one short in a 120-seat House and three short if overhangs push it to 124 ([1News](https://www.1news.co.nz/2026/10/20/poll-national-jumps-leaving-labours-position-perilous/?ref=goodoil.news)). - The left only gets to a majority with Opportunity’s eight seats plus enough Māori electorates to create an overhang ([1News](https://www.1news.co.nz/2026/10/20/poll-national-jumps-leaving-labours-position-perilous/?ref=goodoil.news)). - Luxon is steady on 20 per cent as preferred prime minister, 12 points behind his own party ([1News](https://www.1news.co.nz/2026/10/20/poll-national-jumps-leaving-labours-position-perilous/?ref=goodoil.news)). - Verian’s final 2023 poll missed by an average 0.9 points, overstating the Greens (+2.4) and Labour (+1.1) and understating National (-1.1). That is one election only ([Good Oil AI pollster ratings](https://app.goodoil.ai/polling?ref=goodoil.news#pollster/70)). 0:00 /1:08 1× National has surged four points to 32 per cent in last night’s 1News-Verian poll, its best result since February, and Labour has slid to 27 per cent, its lowest since the last election ([1News](https://www.1news.co.nz/2026/10/20/poll-national-jumps-leaving-labours-position-perilous/?ref=goodoil.news)). It is a five-point lead with 18 days to go. Even so, on Verian’s own seat maths the government still cannot count to 61. National would win 38 seats, ACT 13 and NZ First nine. That makes 60 ([1News](https://www.1news.co.nz/2026/10/20/poll-national-jumps-leaving-labours-position-perilous/?ref=goodoil.news)). If Te Pāti Māori holds a single electorate and parliament stays at 120, the coalition is one seat short. If Te Pāti Māori holds four and Te Tai Tokerau Party holds one, the House grows to 124 and the coalition is three short ([1News](https://www.1news.co.nz/2026/10/20/poll-national-jumps-leaving-labours-position-perilous/?ref=goodoil.news)). Now look at the other side. Labour 32, Greens 19 and one Te Pāti Māori seat make 52\. Add Opportunity’s eight and you get 60, a dead heat. The left only crosses the line in the bigger parliament, where Opportunity takes it to 64 ([1News](https://www.1news.co.nz/2026/10/20/poll-national-jumps-leaving-labours-position-perilous/?ref=goodoil.news)). In other words Hipkins needs a party that has never been in parliament, a party polling under one per cent and an overhang manufactured in the Māori seats. That last part is deliberate. Te Pāti Māori is asking its people to give the electorate vote to its candidates and the party vote to Labour or the Greens, precisely to build an overhang ([Waatea News](https://waateanews.com/2026/10/12/all-eyes-on-the-maori-seats-john-tamihere-defends-te-pati-maoris-high-stakes-election-strategy/?ref=goodoil.news), [the Spinoff](https://thespinoff.co.nz/atea/06-10-2026/why-are-so-many-maori-voters-turning-to-the-greens?ref=goodoil.news)). It is legal, and clever, and it means 0.7 per cent of the party vote could hand a coalition of the left an extra handful of seats. So the result is hanging on a party on eight per cent and a party on 0.7 per cent. Labour’s position is perilous, and those are 1News’ words, not mine ([1News](https://www.1news.co.nz/2026/10/20/poll-national-jumps-leaving-labours-position-perilous/?ref=goodoil.news)). Hipkins dropped three points to 17 per cent as preferred prime minister and told reporters “one poll is not an election result” ([1News](https://www.1news.co.nz/2026/10/20/poll-national-jumps-leaving-labours-position-perilous/?ref=goodoil.news)). He’s right. The Post’s Freshwater poll on Monday had Labour ahead on 28.7 to National’s 27.6 ([the Post](https://www.thepost.co.nz/politics/361101225/postfreshwater-strategy-poll-fraction-point-could-decide-who-governs?ref=goodoil.news)). But a leader whose best defence is the other poll is a leader who has run out of message. National’s jump is real and I’ll take it. Look under the bonnet, though. National is on 32 per cent and its leader is on 20 per cent as preferred prime minister, unchanged ([1News](https://www.1news.co.nz/2026/10/20/poll-national-jumps-leaving-labours-position-perilous/?ref=goodoil.news)). The party is dragging Luxon, not the other way round. In my view he remains the boat anchor on the blue team, and 12 points of daylight between brand and leader is a lot of drag in a race this tight. Luxon’s other problem is that he has ruled out Opportunity, again, while Verian shows the right could govern in either scenario with Opportunity’s eight seats ([1News](https://www.1news.co.nz/2026/10/20/poll-national-jumps-leaving-labours-position-perilous/?ref=goodoil.news)). Qiulae Wong says Luxon would be her first call anyway ([1News](https://www.1news.co.nz/2026/10/20/poll-national-jumps-leaving-labours-position-perilous/?ref=goodoil.news)). Don’t count on that phone being answered. That brings us to NZ First. Verian has it down two points to eight per cent and Winston Peters called the poll “crap” ([1News](https://www.1news.co.nz/2026/10/20/poll-national-jumps-leaving-labours-position-perilous/?ref=goodoil.news)). Freshwater had NZ First on 11.8 per cent a day earlier ([the Post](https://www.thepost.co.nz/politics/361101225/postfreshwater-strategy-poll-fraction-point-could-decide-who-governs?ref=goodoil.news)). Verian’s margin of error is about 3.1 points ([1News](https://www.1news.co.nz/2026/10/20/poll-national-jumps-leaving-labours-position-perilous/?ref=goodoil.news)), so the truth probably sits somewhere in between. Either way, NZ First’s share is the swing seat. A couple of points there, or at ACT on 11 per cent, turns 60 into 62 and the arithmetic stops being a coin toss. How much should we trust Verian? Its final poll before the 2023 election, four days out, was off by an average of 0.9 points across seven parties ([Good Oil AI pollster ratings](https://app.goodoil.ai/polling?ref=goodoil.news#pollster/70)). The lean is the interesting part. It overstated the Greens by 2.4 points and Labour by 1.1, and understated National by 1.1 ([Good Oil AI pollster ratings](https://app.goodoil.ai/polling?ref=goodoil.news#pollster/70)). One election is a thin record, so I won’t adjust anything. But if Verian repeats its 2023 lean, the left is a little softer than this poll shows and National a little firmer. So here is my advice to anyone on the right who is sick of parliament being decided by overhangs and kingmakers. Give your electorate vote to your National candidate, because that holds the seats. Give your party vote to NZ First or ACT, because that is where the missing seat lives. National at 32 per cent does not need your party vote as much as the coalition needs its partners above water. **The right is one seat short and only its own voters can find it.** ### Good Oil General Debate URL: https://goodoil.news/good-oil-general-debate-856/ Last updated: 2026-10-21T18:00:02.000Z Good morning, welcome to our daily General Debate. 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Please be respectful and do not make demands. ### Face of the Day URL: https://goodoil.news/face-of-the-day-1609/ Last updated: 2026-10-21T17:29:59.000Z > A 95-year-old Southland cyclist who survived a heart attack and triple bypass surgery has celebrated his birthday by breaking an age-group cycling world record in Invercargill. > > Peter Grandiek rode an extraordinary 22.948 kilometres in one hour at the ILT Stadium Southland velodrome on Tuesday evening, setting a new mark for the men’s 95-plus-age category, subject to official confirmation. > > Chris Lynch Media [Read More](https://www.chrislynchmedia.com/news-items/95-year-old-heart-attack-survivor-breaks-cycling-world-record-on-his-birthday/?ref=goodoil.news) ### The Good Oil Word of the Day URL: https://goodoil.news/the-good-oil-word-of-the-day-795/ Last updated: 2026-10-21T17:15:27.000Z The word for today is… famish (verb) - *transitive verb* 1a: to cause to suffer severely from hunger —usually used in passive constructions b: to make very hungry —usually used in passive constructions 2 *archaic* : to cause to starve to death *intransitive verb* 1 *archaic* : starve 2: to suffer for lack of something necessary Source : [Merriam-Webster](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/famish?ref=goodoil.news) Etymology : Famish likely developed as an alteration of Middle English famen, meaning "to starve." The Middle English word was borrowed from the Anglo-French verb afamer, which etymologists believe came from Vulgar Latin affamare. We say "believe" because, while no written evidence has yet been found for the Vulgar Latin word affamare, it would be the expected source for the Anglo-French verb based on the combination of the Latin prefix ad- ("to" or "toward") and the root noun fames ("hunger"). In contemporary English, the verb famish is still used on occasion, but it is considerably less common than the related adjective famished, which usually means "hungry" or "starving" but can also mean "needy" or "being in want." ***If you enjoyed this Good Oil word of the day please consider sharing it with your friends and, especially, your children.*** ### The Good Oil Daily Bible Verse URL: https://goodoil.news/the-good-oil-daily-bible-verse-505/ Last updated: 2026-10-21T16:59:59.000Z [Joshua 22](https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Joshua%2022&version=KJV&ref=goodoil.news) **3** Ye have not left your brethren these many days unto this day, but have kept the charge of the commandment of the Lord your God. ### Night Cap URL: https://goodoil.news/night-cap-763/ Last updated: 2026-10-21T08:00:00.000Z If you have a great Youtube, Rumble or Vimeo video to share send it to videos@goodoil.news [![CTA Image](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/01/cam-shirt2-1.png)](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) If you're loving this trusty, straight-up news on Kiwi politics and beyond, why not become a paid member, eh? Unlock exclusive yarns, podcasts, vids, and in-depth analysis—your support keeps independent journalism chugging along. Join today for just $5.00 per month and get the full good oil! [Learn more ](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) ### Wednesday Weapons URL: https://goodoil.news/wednesday-weapons-334/ Last updated: 2026-10-21T07:29:59.000Z If you have a great Youtube, Rumble or Vimeo video to share send it to videos@goodoil.news [![CTA Image](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/01/cam-shirt2-1.png)](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) If you're loving this trusty, straight-up news on Kiwi politics and beyond, why not become a paid member, eh? Unlock exclusive yarns, podcasts, vids, and in-depth analysis—your support keeps independent journalism chugging along. Join today for just $5.00 per month and get the full good oil! [Learn more ](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) ### Orina Kaipara And The Greens’ Defence Of The Mongrel Mob As “Victims” URL: https://goodoil.news/orina-kaipara-and-the-greens-defence-of-the-mongrel-mob-as-victims/ Last updated: 2026-10-21T06:59:59.000Z If you have a great Youtube, Rumble or Vimeo video to share send it to videos@goodoil.news ### FSU Is worried About Labour’s Proposed Regulation Of The Internet. URL: https://goodoil.news/fsu-is-worried-about-labours-proposed-regulation-of-the-internet/ Last updated: 2026-10-21T06:29:59.000Z If you have a great Youtube, Rumble or Vimeo video to share send it to videos@goodoil.news [![CTA Image](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/01/cam-shirt2-1.png)](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) If you're loving this trusty, straight-up news on Kiwi politics and beyond, why not become a paid member, eh? Unlock exclusive yarns, podcasts, vids, and in-depth analysis—your support keeps independent journalism chugging along. Join today for just $5.00 per month and get the full good oil! [Learn more ](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) ### NZ Election Rule Change: Will Tens of Thousands Be Shut Out From Voting? URL: https://goodoil.news/nz-election-rule-change-will-tens-of-thousands-be-shut-out-from-voting/ Last updated: 2026-10-21T05:59:59.000Z If you have a great Youtube, Rumble or Vimeo video to share send it to videos@goodoil.news [![CTA Image](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/01/cam-shirt2-1.png)](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) If you're loving this trusty, straight-up news on Kiwi politics and beyond, why not become a paid member, eh? Unlock exclusive yarns, podcasts, vids, and in-depth analysis—your support keeps independent journalism chugging along. Join today for just $5.00 per month and get the full good oil! [Learn more ](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) ### The Good Oil Daily Roundup URL: https://goodoil.news/the-good-oil-daily-roundup-779/ Last updated: 2026-10-21T05:29:59.000Z [](https://photos.google.com/u/1/photo/AF1QipN7Zp7NKe4smdZA9nAYud8CjsgjsQ-Bn7QyMo53?ref=goodoil.news) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/0C201A16-38C3-49C6-B578-A831962945F5.jpeg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/66D39BC5-3D23-44F9-90E8-9CCD8CFCCA84.jpeg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/D1C95F71-CD32-469B-8515-6DD4A8FA90D3.jpeg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/473A4F0A-A08B-4159-8424-F12575A2C21F_1_105_c.jpeg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/26FF5571-A158-4E16-88C1-E790B7A5958B_1_105_c.jpeg) ### Good Oil Backchat URL: https://goodoil.news/good-oil-backchat-857/ Last updated: 2026-10-21T04:59:59.000Z Good evening, welcome to **Backchat**. On Backchat, you are free to share your own stories, discuss other news or catch up with friends. To participate you’ll need to sign up for a [Disqus account ](https://disqus.com/profile/signup/intent/?ref=goodoil.news)which is free, quick, and easy. On posts that are not articles like this one, you do not have to stay ‘on topic’ but you do still need to follow our [commenting rules.](https://goodoil.news/commenting-and-moderation/) Please [read our rules ](https://www.goodoil.news/commenting-and-moderation/?ref=goodoil.news)before you start commenting on *The Good Oil* to avoid a temporary or permanent ban. NOTE: Moderation queries MUST be expressed VIA EMAIL and not by posting a comment. To check if your ban might have been caused by Disqus, or to ask for a banning decision to be reviewed, email the voluntary **helpdesk** @ [**goodoil.news**](https://goodoil.news/) with your Disqus username in the subject line. Please be respectful and do not make demands. ### The Civil War Has Already Begun URL: https://goodoil.news/the-civil-war-has-already-begun/ Last updated: 2026-10-21T03:29:59.000Z [**P K O’Sullivan**](https://dailysceptic.org/2026/10/19/the-civil-war-has-already-begun/?ref=goodoil.news) *P K O’Sullivan is a pseudonym.* Professor David Betz of King’s College London has done something few academics ever manage: he has got a good part of the country talking seriously about civil war in Britain. His case is about the body politic, a fragmenting society, collapsing trust in the state, and the point at which organised groups start using violence to settle what politics no longer can. I think he’s right about the direction of travel. Where I part company with him is on the scale. Betz is thinking about organised groups and attacks on the infrastructure that keeps our cities running. I think the war has already started at the level of the individual: between brothers and sisters, between old friends, between the man in the van and the protester glued to the road in front of him. People no longer simply disagree. They regard each other as illegitimate, and in more and more everyday situations that contempt is spilling over into something physical. That, to me, is what civil war looks like before anyone hands out the guns. **The birthday party** I realised how far things had gone at a birthday party. It was for someone I’ve known since childhood, held in the basement of a bar, and the room was full of childhood friends and the people they’d collected along the way. Even at 11 o’clock there were people wearing French berets and sunglasses. Indoors. In a basement. Perhaps that’s fashionable now, I’m prepared to accept my grasp of these things has its limits, but it set the tone for an evening among people who were very comfortable with the way they saw the world. There were really two crowds in that room. One was the rich north London set: people who had done very well indeed and could afford their politics several times over. The other was made up of people with ordinary jobs and ordinary money worries: musicians, people who worked for Transport for London, some who’d had to move out of London to afford anything half decent. I’d be surprised if many in that second group had much in savings. What united them was the politics. It was Ken Livingstone’s Labour, Billy Bragg’s Labour: a world where everyone knew which opinions marked you out as decent, and everyone seemed to know who the right sort of people were. I recognised it straight away, because I grew up in a version of it. One woman summed up the mood. She worked for a green company and lobbied on environmental issues, and she had chosen to have two children without a father around – the second conceived at a fertility clinic. I asked whether the younger one ever got jealous when the older child’s father turned up, which he did now and again. She told me, more or less, that her daughter knew she didn’t need a man. It came out like a slogan. My body, my choice, I can have whatever I want, and the children will adjust. ‘Luxury beliefs’ usually describes wealthy people backing policies whose costs land on everyone else, and the rich half of that room fitted the description perfectly. What struck me was the other half. You don’t need to be wealthy to borrow the beliefs of people who are, and you can hold them while paying the price yourself. You can be priced out of your own city without ever questioning the policies that drive up demand for housing. You can watch your wages buy less without asking what happens when government promises outrun what the country can deliver. And you can be extremely generous with money somebody else has to earn. Nobody in that room was a monster. They were people at a party, and that’s what bothered me. The gulf between us didn’t need anyone to behave badly. It was simply there. **Growing up with the *Morning Star*** I should say where I’m coming from, because it probably isn’t where you’d assume. My father came here from Ireland, studied, worked hard and did well as an accountant. In the ’70s we had the [*Morning Star*](https://morningstaronline.co.uk/?ref=goodoil.news) delivered to the house, and my mother was a teachers’ union rep. I was taught to dislike Margaret Thatcher before I was old enough to have an opinion of my own. My disagreements with the left didn’t come from a Tory upbringing. They grew up inside it. As I got older, my father and I argued about money endlessly. He thought the wealthy should pay more, and billionaires in particular represented something that had gone badly wrong. My question was always the same: why are we so sure the government will spend their money better than they would? Some wealth comes from being close to power, from protected markets or from sitting on something scarce, and I’ve no interest in defending that. But the businessman who has put his house on the line, borrowed against everything and spent years trying to make something work has done rather more than wait for the state to provide. James Dyson, [by his own account](https://www.dyson.com/james-dyson?ref=goodoil.news), built 5,127 prototypes before he had a vacuum cleaner ready for production, and then the established manufacturers turned him down. When someone like that finally succeeds, I don’t think the first question should be why he’s allowed to keep so much. The case for enterprise was never that a billionaire spends enough to make the rest of us rich. He can only buy so many cars, and there’s a limit to what even a very determined man can spend at Tesco. What matters is investment: deciding where capital goes, employing people, developing products, losing your own money on mistakes and, every so often, producing something that makes other people’s lives better. My father had improved his own circumstances through effort and education, and I admired him for it. I just never understood why the same process, carried far enough by somebody else, became grounds for suspicion. **A sister and the state** Politics is easy to argue about when the people involved are strangers. It’s much harder when they’re your sisters. My younger sister has spent most of her adult life living off the state. Her answer to any need is that the state should meet it and, when it falls short, the answer is more. [Upton Sinclair](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Candidate-Governor-How-Got-Licked/dp/0520081986?ref=goodoil.news) put it best: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” Benefits aren’t a salary, but the principle is exactly the same. So I’ll say plainly what I believe, because I watched it happen. My sister had her second child to keep her benefits. Support tied to children tapers away as they grow up: child-related payments stop once a child leaves education, the pressure to find work grows as the youngest gets older, and a household with fewer children is judged to need fewer bedrooms. As her eldest approached that age, the money was going to shrink and there was talk of moving her somewhere smaller. Then, after a long gap, came another baby, by the same father – a man she wasn’t really with. She’ll tell you it was her own free choice. I don’t believe it for a second. When the state becomes the centre of your security, its rules make your choices for you. Then the school got to work on her eldest. For years, schools up and down the country took children going through the ordinary confusion of puberty, the girl who’d rather play with the boys’ toys, the teenager uncomfortable in a changing body – and told them they might be trans or non-binary. Non-binary was in some ways the worst of it: at least a child who works out they’re gay knows what they are. It wasn’t only here – the same ideology ran through American classrooms. And it’s now accepted that it was wrong. The Cass Review found the evidence behind the way these children were treated remarkably weak and warned that social transition is not a neutral act. From September 2026, schools in England are bound by statutory guidance which says they are not responsible for starting a social transition, that parents’ views must carry great weight, and that full social transition in a primary school should be agreed upon only very rarely. That is exactly what happened in my sister’s house. Her eldest was an ordinary, confused adolescent, and the teachers supplied the label (which made her feel special). My sister, who will fight her corner with anyone else, swallowed it whole, because the people telling her were an institution and she doesn’t question institutions that are on her side. I’m not going to pretend this is a private matter with no bearing on my argument. It is my argument. A child was steered into an identity by adults with an ideology, and the parent who should have been asking questions treated every question as an attack. The two of us don’t talk properly any more. Trying to explain anything to her is a complete waste of time. As far as I’m concerned she believes in fairies and unicorns – it’s like talking to someone from another planet. In her world money simply falls from the sky, and somebody else – always somebody else – should pay for whatever is needed. Economics doesn’t come into it. Point out that every pound the state hands out had to be earned by someone first, and she reacts as though you’ve said something cruel. **Who paid for my father’s care?** Then my father needed a care home. If you want somewhere that isn’t a modern version of a Victorian Bedlam, you pay, and we paid roughly £2,500 a week. The money he’d built up over a lifetime of work – the savings of exactly the kind of hard-working immigrant the left claims to champion – disappeared at a frightening rate. In England, if you have more than £23,250 in assets, you pay the full cost of your care until you’re down to that figure. If you’ve saved nothing, the state picks up the bill. Work, save and do the right thing, and you fund it yourself. Don’t, and somebody else funds it for you. That’s when I started looking at where the money goes instead, and once you start looking you can’t stop. The National Audit Office estimates that the Home Office and Ministry of Justice spent around £4.9 billion on the asylum system in 2024–25, about £4 billion of it on Home Office asylum support, and says the system’s own delays and failures are driving up the cost. The latest DWP figures show 4.1 million people entitled to PIP in England and Wales in July 2026\. Combined PIP and DLA entitlement stood at 5.4 million in March 2026, against 3.5 million in February 2020 – a rise of more than half in six years. I’m not saying nobody needs help. I’m saying I don’t believe the nation’s health collapsed that fast. Raise any of this and you’re told you’re a racist or that you lack compassion. But where is the compassion for the families watching a parent’s life savings drain away week by week? If we weren’t pouring billions into asylum hotels, into a disability bill that keeps climbing, into everything else that has become untouchable, there would be plenty for the people who’ve paid in all their lives. There isn’t, because ideology comes before people. And so people fall through the cracks and end up in places you wouldn’t leave a dog. **Who lives with the consequences?** My father was an immigrant, so I’ve no interest in pretending migration has contributed nothing to this country. What I want to know is why questioning its scale, its management or its cost so quickly becomes a discussion about whether you’re a bad person for asking. The consequences don’t fall on the people who preach about them. Someone with a big house and private provision feels the pressure on housing, schools and healthcare very differently from someone renting a room and waiting for an appointment. A policy can look good on a spreadsheet and still wreck particular towns, and the people who live there should be allowed to say what has changed without first getting permission from people who don’t. There’s no need to embellish. Baroness Casey’s national audit of group-based child sexual exploitation described persistent failures to examine the ethnicity of perpetrators, found local evidence that warranted further investigation, noted that the national data were still inadequate, and identified failures of accountability and of child protection. Those in authority let worries about how things would look get in the way of protecting children. Once people have seen that, asking them to trust the next reassurance is hopeless. **One law for them** ‘Two-tier justice’ is a phrase the left loves to mock. So try giving them examples. After the Southport murders, Lucy Connolly, a childminder, put up an ugly, angry post on X that she deleted within hours. She pleaded guilty to inciting racial hatred and was [jailed for 31 months.](https://www.channel4.com/news/tory-councillors-wife-jailed-for-31-months-for-inciting-racial-hatred?ref=goodoil.news) Compare that with the nine Extinction Rebellion women who admitted taking hammers and chisels to the windows of HSBC’s London headquarters, causing a reported £500,000 of damage: [a jury acquitted](https://www.lep.co.uk/news/people/preston-grandmother-acquitted-over-ps500000-extinction-rebellion-damage-to-hsbc-windows-and-was-dressed-by-stella-mccartney-4414218?ref=goodoil.news) them in November 2023\. Seven more did nearly £100,000 of damage to [Barclays’ headquarters](https://www.bigissue.com/news/activism/extinction-rebellion-barclays-trial/?ref=goodoil.news) and walked away with suspended sentences. The four who pulled down Edward Colston’s statue in Bristol were [cleared too.](https://www.lbc.co.uk/news/colston-statue-bristol-not-guilty/?ref=goodoil.news) Lay those cases side by side for a left-winger and they simply don’t compute. Connolly was ‘far right’, so she deserved whatever she got. The women with the hammers were saving the planet. In their minds you’re allowed an opinion in theory, but anyone who doesn’t share their moral high ground is, in practice, a Nazi, and Nazis don’t get the benefit of the doubt. It isn’t just me who has noticed. In the British Social Attitudes findings published in 2025, just 12 per cent said they trusted governments to put the country first always or most of the time, while 46 per cent said they almost never did. Both were records. Once people stop seeing the system as theirs and start seeing it as a weapon belonging to the other side, a court ruling isn’t something to argue about any more. It’s proof the other lot have taken over. Now think about who is on the receiving end of all this. The man in the van, trying to get to a job so he can look after his family, stuck on a motorway because a group of protesters has glued itself to the tarmac to shout about climate change. He’s been told for years that he’s the problem. He’s watched people like him go to prison for words while people like them walk free after smashing things up. And he’s tired. We’ve already seen what happens next. Drivers have dragged protesters off the road with their bare hands, and plenty of people cheered when they saw the footage. Nobody organised that. It isn’t Betz’s kind of violence at all. It’s what happens when ordinary people, mostly working class, mostly just wanting to be left alone to earn a living, reach the end of their tether. My fear is that it’s spreading, from the roadside to the street and to any situation where someone from that comfortable, lecturing class comes face to face with someone who has to live with the consequences of their politics. That is the civil war I’m talking about. Not two armies, but millions of individual confrontations, each one a little closer to a punch being thrown. **The Radio 4 sister** My older sister lives in a different world from my younger one. Her dependence, as I see it, is on the institutions and social habits that make life feel orderly. The BBC belongs in that world, and so does Radio 4, with its reassuring tone in which sensible people discuss serious matters. She trusts it. I don’t, and I’ve good reasons. In 2025 it emerged that *Panorama* had edited Donald Trump’s speech of January 6th 2021 in a way that, in the BBC’s own words, gave “the mistaken impression that President Trump had made a direct call for violent action”. The director-general and the head of BBC News both resigned, and Trump is now suing for up to $10 billion. This is the same organisation that employed Jimmy Savile for decades, and Dame Janet Smith’s review found it had missed chance after chance to stop him. It had Rolf Harris on our screens for years. It carried on paying Huw Edwards for months after it knew he had been arrested. And it’s the organisation whose reporter used fake bank statements to land the Diana interview. Yet whenever I challenge an institution she trusts, the conversation becomes too uncomfortable to continue. She dislikes conflict, and her instinct is to keep things pleasant. Around her is the sort of Cotswold social world where people are lovely, charitable and well-mannered, and where a difficult opinion is more unwelcome than the problem it describes. There’s nothing wrong with baking a cake for charity. What I object to is the comfortable performance of goodness becoming a reason never to examine where your politics lead. So I have one sister defending a system her material life depends on, and another defending a consensus that spares her any uncomfortable disagreement. Neither would accept that description, which is rather the point. We can’t even agree on what we’re arguing about. **Where I part company with Betz** In fairness to Professor Betz, he has gone further than his critics give him credit for. In an [article co-written with Michael Rainsborough](https://dailysceptic.org/2025/11/01/these-fractured-isles-britains-drift-towards-civil-war/?ref=goodoil.news), he openly considered whether conflict might already have begun “in slow motion”. But his eye is on the body politic: organised groups, infrastructure, the moment the state loses control. Mine is on what happens between individuals long before any of that. The individual civil war starts when you stop thinking the other person has reached the wrong conclusion and start thinking they have no right to a view at all. I’ve felt that coming at me, and I’ve felt it in myself. After enough arguments in which you’re deliberately misunderstood, contempt becomes very tempting. You stop explaining. And once enough people stop explaining, what comes next isn’t a debate. **It starts at home** I can’t talk to my younger sister the way I once could. With my older sister, there are subjects we can’t go near without one of us retreating or getting upset. And it isn’t only family. I’ve lost friends, people I’ve known for years who no longer speak to me because they’re in the ‘just be kind’ camp and I’m not. Their kindness is remarkably selective. They have endless empathy for refugees from the other side of the world and none at all for the people they grew up with, living in towns dealing with grooming gangs, sexual violence and streets carved up into HMOs. They’re certain they hold the moral high ground. They want to help everybody. And all the while their luxury beliefs are condemning the very people they went to school with to a worse life. Plenty of families have kept politics off the dinner table for generations, and I know the objection: a row over dinner isn’t the English Civil War. But it’s no longer one subject we can’t discuss. It’s tax, benefits, migration, schooling, the BBC, and disagreeing on any of them is now a verdict on whether you’re a decent human being. Civil wars have always divided families as well as territory. What worries me most is the anger. The people living with the consequences of these luxury beliefs are furious and it’s personal now. I can hear it in conversations and I can see it at the roadside. It isn’t organised and it isn’t ideological in Betz’s sense. It’s one person coming face to face with another person who has lectured them for years, and something snapping. I don’t want anyone on a barricade and I don’t want anyone hurt. But I’m not going to pretend I can’t see it coming, or that the people who’ve spent a decade calling everyone who disagrees with them a Nazi will bear no responsibility when it arrives. That’s why I think the civil war has already begun. This article was originally published by [the Daily Sceptic](https://dailysceptic.org/2026/10/19/the-civil-war-has-already-begun/?ref=goodoil.news). ### PM Shipped Dirt Sheet on Haines URL: https://goodoil.news/pm-shipped-dirt-sheet-on-haines/ Last updated: 2026-10-21T02:59:59.000Z It’s one thing to know that so many politicians are nasty grubs. It’s quite another to see them openly doing it, without a blush of shame. Case in point, our loathsome prime minister. When the news of the attempted murder of independent MP **Helen Haines** broke, the PM was straight out the gate with the crocodile tears (as compared to the 24-hour silence he observed before saying anything at all about October 7). An unconvincingly sniffling **Anthony Albanese** praised Haines as “a beacon of light” and “deeply respected”. Yet, he was singing from a very different hymn sheet, just a few weeks ago. Not even a hymn sheet: a dirt sheet. Recently, the Centre for Public Integrity cast a rather harsh, unblinking illumination upon the government’s $560 million Major and Local Community Infrastructure Program. A staggering three-quarters of these supposedly nationwide grants were directed with surgical, partisan precision exclusively into Labor electorates and marginal seats targeted for acquisition. Among the prime beneficiaries of this institutionalised largesse was none other than the Marrickville Golf Club, nestled comfortably within Mr Albanese’s own backyard of Grayndler (in fact, right across the road from one of his many rental properties), which trousered a neat six million dollars for its troubles. The PM duly lied through his teeth about being a member, or indeed ever going there (as you can guess, we have all the receipts proving otherwise). When independent parliamentarians had the sheer effrontery to demand transparency and point out that merit-based allocations had been discarded in favour of barefaced electoral bribery, the political establishment grew rather testy. Haines did not mince her words regarding the affair, offering an assessment that struck uncomfortably close to the bone: > [“Sports rorts](https://region.com.au/crosbbench-accuses-labor-of-pork-barrelling-by-design-not-deception/998098/?ref=goodoil.news) was pork barrelling by deception; this is pork barrelling by design. Australians are increasingly fed up with a self-serving political establishment, and pork barrelling only further undermines trust in government and our democracy.” But our own Dear Leader is only slightly less thin-skinned than a North Korean despot. Legend has it that a budding young Korean pianist who politely demurred with **Kim Jong-Un**’s praise was promptly sent to the gulag for contradicting the Dear Leader. Ah, how Albanese must pine for a gulag of his own. So, how does our dear leader respond to being publicly unmasked as the grand architect of designed rorts? Does he engage in sober policy debate? Does he defend the honour of the Marrickville fairways with dignified prose? Of course not. Instead, the prime ministerial machinery swung into its customary petty, vindictive gear. As subsequent revelations laid bare: > [Anthony Albanese’s office](https://www.dailymail.com/news/article-16222097/helen-haines-dirt-file-anthony-albanese-office.html?ref=goodoil.news) circulated a dirt sheet to journalists baselessly raising questions about Helen Haines’ integrity after she criticised a $6million government grant allocated to the prime minister’s local golf course. One must marvel at the exquisite pettiness of the operation. About a month prior to the tragic assault on Ms Haines outside her Wangaratta office, the prime minister’s loyal courtiers were quietly slipping dossiers to compliant members of the press gallery. The document contained no actual proof of wrongdoing: that minor technicality rarely troubles a determined political hit-job, but gamely invited journalists to dig into whether the independent member had ever accepted a stray bottle of local wine, whether she had personal connections to a regional art gallery board, or whether she and her spouse had dared to utilise ski lift passes at Mount Buller while advocating for regional tourism infrastructure (presuming, of course, they could squeeze in between Albanese’s own minister, **Anika Wells**’, endless parade of family members whooping it up at ski resorts on the taxpayer dime). It was the sort of desperate, scraping-at-the-bottom-of-the-barrel tactic usually reserved for student union factional warfare, designed entirely to intimidate a critic into silence. Yet the overarching hypocrisy of the affair is breathtaking. For five solid weeks, Mr Albanese and his minions orchestrated a targeted whispering campaign against Ms Haines simply because she had the spine to expose their pork-barrel calculus. Then, the moment a horrific act of violence thrust her into the headlines, the prime minister seamlessly transitioned from shadowy political operative to grief-stricken statesman, shedding theatrical tears before the cameras while hoping the electorate would conveniently forget the grubby dossier he had authored. It’s a masterclass in political duplicity. They plot against you in the shadows, compile unverified smears for the press and then weep over your hospital bed for the six o’clock news. (Notably, too, the PM’s narrative around the would-be killer is already shifting gears faster than a learner driver grinding a manual transmission to splinters. Now that it’s emerged that the perpetrator is a rabidly anti-Israel environmentalist, the new orthodoxy is ‘mental health’. As if being a leftist and a loony are mutually exclusive, rather than co-morbidities.) --- 💡 ****If you enjoyed this article please share it using the share buttons at the top or bottom of the article.** ### ‘Basic Economics’ Is a Closed Book to Our Dear Leader URL: https://goodoil.news/basic-economics-is-a-closed-book-to-our-dear-leader/ Last updated: 2026-10-21T01:29:59.000Z As Good Oil readers are only too aware, their unlamented Dear Leader Jacinda was a student socialist. Oops, not *was*: she never stopped being one. There’s the thing: I doubt few of us didn’t flirt with socialism in our callow youth. Then we grew up. Unfortunately for people like **Jacinda Ardern**, they may grow older, but they never grow up. Case in point: Australia’s semi-masculine mirror of Ardern, **Anthony Albanese**. To spend one’s formative years embroiled in the tempestuous theatre of student union politics is no doubt exciting and flattering to the ego as the years roll on and the waistline expands while the hairline recedes. It’s also no doubt a demanding vocation in its own way. All those placards to paint, all those talking-points and slogans to commit to memory and recite with parrot-like monotony. And those windows aren’t gonna smash themselves. All that exciting stuff leaves precious little time for the dry, unglamorous pursuits of an undergraduate curriculum, such as attending an introductory economics lecture and grappling with the rather inconvenient concept of *opportunity cost*. For the uninitiated, which apparently includes the entire Albanese cabinet, opportunity cost is the elementary notion that choosing path A means forfeiting the value of path B; resources are finite, trade-offs are absolute, and one cannot simply have everything by sheer force of righteous intention. Yet our dear prime minister appears to have entirely bypassed this foundational truth during his so-called political economy studies. Instead, he imbibed the intoxicating nectar of the magic pudding economics peddled by the likes of **Thomas Piketty**: the comforting leftist fairy-tale wherein the state treasury magically reconstitutes itself, no matter how many times ravenous bureaucrats carve off another slice. Or, to put it another way: there’s always plenty of other peoples’ money for feckless socialist politicians to flush. Mr Albanese recently treated the electorate to a veritable buffet of economic illiteracy, breathlessly insisting that sundry government schemes, variously labelled as ‘free’ TAFE, ‘free’ healthcare and heavily subsidised childminding, are masterstrokes of fiscal prudence. To describe any of these ventures as ‘free’ requires a heroic detachment from reality. They are merely gratis for the immediate consumer, while the bill is either unceremoniously dumped onto the taxpayer or added to a national tab destined to crush our children and grandchildren. As any genuine economist will attest, there is no such thing as a free lunch. When taxes must be inflated to feed these boundless government appetites, the economy suffers under crushing compliance costs. These frictions distort incentives to work, save and invest, quietly siphoning off up to 20 per cent of the total revenue collected before a single public servant has even sharpened a pencil. As Productivity Commission deputy chair **Alex Robson** recently observed regarding the proliferation of marginal government programs: > [“Unproductive spending](https://www.theaustralian.com.au/commentary/anthony-albaneses-political-benefits-come-at-cost-to-australia/news-story/8f336663897b945a4cd55ed656c81cf5?ref=goodoil.news) … may deliver real value – perhaps more than a dollar for every dollar spent – but not enough to clear the bar once the cost of raising the revenue is counted. That bar is not fixed. It rises as spending and taxes rise: every additional program has to clear an ever-higher bar, delivering more than a dollar of value for each dollar it spends.” With that in mind, let us examine the prime minister’s pet projects through this very lens, beginning with his beloved ‘free’ TAFE initiative. Completion rates hover around a dismal one-third. As my father always said, if you get it for nothing, it means nothing to you. When participants invest nothing save for their own idle time, accountability evaporates, drop-out rates skyrocket and cash-strapped state governments deliver substandard training devoid of meaningful employer engagement. It is the textbook definition of unproductive expenditure. Then we have the multi-billion-dollar crusade to resurrect bulk billing and construct urgent care clinics. Pumping a billion dollars into bulk billing has proven to be an extraordinarily inefficient mechanism of middle-class welfare. High- and middle-income earners waltz into GP surgeries for gratis consultations they are perfectly capable of funding themselves, while doctors pocket the windfall. The resulting service is frequently reduced to a hurried, six-minute transaction utterly unsuited to managing chronic health conditions. As for the ubiquitous urgent care clinics, they swallow hundreds of dollars per consultation while doing precious little to alleviate the crushing queues in public hospital emergency departments. And finally, we arrive at the holy grail of progressive interventionism: subsidised childcare. The childcare-industrial complex assures us this is an indispensable engine of long-term productivity, rather than as giving up the incalculable reward of experiencing your children’s fleeting formative years in exchange for a few more years’ grind in the soulless cubicles of the modern corporate state. Yet rigorous empirical data, particularly from Canada, suggests no real long-term scholastic dividends for the children palmed off to the state nanny, pointing instead to the sustained psychological toll that prolonged institutional custody can inflict upon young children. Worse still, while targeted intervention for genuinely disadvantaged families might have merit, this universal subsidy showers taxpayer funds upon households pulling in upwards of half a million dollars annually, bypassing the very children who might actually benefit. Mr Albanese’s economic philosophy remains trapped in the naive enthusiasm of a campus union meeting. He continues to mistake expenditure for achievement, ignoring trade-offs, compliance burdens and the basic arithmetic of reality. Until our political class relearns the lessons of Economics 101, the rest of us will simply be left footing the bill for their eternal student union excursion. --- 💡 ****If you enjoyed this article please share it using the share buttons at the top or bottom of the article.** ### AI and the Knowledge Problem URL: https://goodoil.news/ai-and-the-knowledge-problem/ Last updated: 2026-10-21T01:00:00.000Z [**Stephen C Miller**](https://thedailyeconomy.org/article/ai-and-the-knowledge-problem-in-higher-ed/?ref=goodoil.news) *Stephen C Miller is the Adams Bibby Chair of Free Enterprise and an Associate Professor of Economics in the Manuel H Johnson Center for Political Economy at Troy University.* A familiar bit of bureaucratic reasoning, described as “[politician’s logic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politician%27s%5Fsyllogism?ref=goodoil.news#:~:text=In%20Yes%2C%20Prime,categorical%20syllogism%3A)” in the British comedy *Yes, Prime Minister*, goes something like this: Something must be done. This is something. Therefore, we must do it. I suspect some of the [rush to create](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/08/us/ai-college-degrees.html?ref=goodoil.news) AI courses at [colleges](https://pll.harvard.edu/subject/artificial-intelligence?ref=goodoil.news) and universities [reflects](https://www.npr.org/2026/10/09/nx-s1-5991808/new-career-paths-colleges-now-offer-degrees-in-influencing-and-ai?ref=goodoil.news) this sort of thinking. Universities [recognize](https://www.aacsb.edu/media-center/news/2026/07/inspire-higher-ed-july-2026-ai-report-pr?ref=goodoil.news) that artificial intelligence is [changing](https://www.aacsb.edu/accredited/u/university-of-richmond?ref=goodoil.news) the workplace. They want graduates to be prepared for those changes. Creating a [course](https://www.forbes.com/sites/lisachambers/2026/10/10/12-top-colleges-reinventing-education-for-the-ai-era/?ref=goodoil.news), or perhaps a [sequence](https://pe.gatech.edu/subjects/artificial-intelligence?ref=goodoil.news) of courses, seems like an obvious response. But it isn’t clear that creating an AI course will actually address the problem. AI is already changing [accounting](https://www.aicpa-cima.com/resources/article/explore-new-aicpa-guidance-on-artificial-intelligence-ai-and-the-financial-statement-audit?ref=goodoil.news), [marketing](https://www.ama.org/marketing-news/generative-ai-takes-off-with-marketers/?ref=goodoil.news), [finance](https://rpc.cfainstitute.org/research/reports/2025/creating-value-from-big-data-in-the-investment-management-process?ref=goodoil.news), [nursing](https://ojin.nursingworld.org/topics/artificial-intelligence-in-nursing-and-healthcare/?ref=goodoil.news), [engineering](https://magazine.asme.org/issues/april-2025/career-focus-embracing-ai-as-engineering-evolves?ref=goodoil.news), [economics](https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jel.20231736&ref=goodoil.news), and dozens of other fields. Universities are understandably concerned about preparing students to use these tools. But what does it mean to promise graduates a working knowledge of AI? And who is qualified to teach it? The problem is that understanding how AI is used in a particular profession requires considerable knowledge of that profession. Even people with the same job title will vary in their specific expertise, and much of their knowledge comes from doing particular things in particular settings. No one professor can know all of that. This is the [knowledge problem](https://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/hykKnw.html?ref=goodoil.news) Friedrich Hayek described. Knowledge is dispersed among many people in different places and circumstances. Much of that knowledge is local, contextual, and difficult to communicate to others. Leonard Read illustrated a related point in his essay, “[I, Pencil](https://fee.org/ebooks/i-pencil/?ref=goodoil.news).” A pencil looks like a simple thing. But if you go through everything needed to make one – the materials, the tools, the machinery, and all the different processes – you find that no one person knows how to make a pencil. Different people in different places know how to do different parts. No worker possesses all that knowledge, and no manager or mastermind does either. And it is just a pencil. Marketing is a pencil. Nursing is a pencil. Accounting is a pencil. And each of these disciplines contains specialties that are pencils of their own. This doesn’t mean we can’t teach the basic principles of accounting: we can and we should. Those principles allow accountants to understand and make use of the tools available to them. But the tools change, and the details of their use vary across different specialties. AI is a [rapidly changing tool](https://www.aacsb.edu/insights/reports/2026/a-framework-for-artificial-intelligence-in-business-education?ref=goodoil.news). Knowing the principles of accounting is not the same thing as knowing how AI is [being used](https://www.ey.com/en%5Fus/assurance/assuring-ai?ref=goodoil.news) in [auditing](https://www.deloitte.com/us/en/services/consulting/content/advancing-human-ai-collaboration.html?ref=goodoil.news). Consider my own limitations. I’m an economist and I’ve never taken an accounting course. I know very little about basic bookkeeping, much less auditing. I can ask an LLM how AI is used in auditing and it will give an impressive answer. I can learn about document review, anomaly detection, fraud detection, and internal controls. But I still wouldn’t know enough about auditing to judge how useful those applications are, whether the descriptions were accurate, or what important details might be missing. I certainly wouldn’t be qualified to teach students how to use AI in an auditing practice. AI [compounds](https://www.theatlantic.com/science/2026/10/why-illusions-understanding-explanation-question/688826/?ref=goodoil.news) this problem because we tend to confuse information with knowledge. Having information is not the same as possessing knowledge. We know some things because we’ve studied them, some because we’ve practiced them, and some because experience has taught us lessons we would rather not have learned. The expression “ask me how I know” usually refers to that last category. This distinction matters for higher education. AI lets people [appear to have](https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/ai/NIST.AI.600-1.pdf?ref=goodoil.news) knowledge they don’t. Indeed, that is at the heart of much of the concern about students using AI for academic work. Students can use AI to give others the wrong impression. They might present ideas that aren’t their own, use language they didn’t write, or make it appear that they understand something they haven’t really thought through. But the bigger problem is presenting work as evidence of knowledge or understanding one doesn’t actually have. Universities should be careful not to do something very similar. When a university promises to prepare students to use AI in accounting, marketing, finance, nursing, and other professions, it is making claims about what its faculty are qualified to teach. But how much do they really know about how AI is used in these different fields? Even within their own disciplines, faculty members are [still learning](https://insights.som.yale.edu/insights/ai-is-getting-smarter-and-less-reliable?ref=goodoil.news) how AI is being used. And so are the people working in those professions. A better approach would be to identify faculty members who can [develop expertise in how AI](https://executive.mit.edu/blog/ai-literacy-a-key-piece-of-an-executives-skill-set.html?ref=goodoil.news) is used in particular areas of their disciplines, then incorporate that knowledge into upper-level courses. But faculty can’t be expected to develop all of that expertise on their own. Much of the relevant knowledge is held by people doing the work. Universities need to find ways to [draw on](https://www.aacsb.edu/insights/reports/2026/a-framework-for-artificial-intelligence-in-business-education?ref=goodoil.news) that knowledge, whether through adjunct faculty, guest speakers, or professional advisory boards. AI in auditing belongs in an auditing course, but practicing auditors may know more about using AI than accounting professors do. The same is true of marketing research, econometrics, and countless other specialties. The point isn’t to expect faculty to know everything. It’s to find ways to make use of knowledge that is dispersed among many different people. Humility is required. Hayek’s lesson is that knowledge simply cannot be gathered and packaged into tidy course modules. This is certainly harder than creating a course on AI and asking a handful of faculty members to teach it. It means that many faculty members will have to develop new expertise and continue learning as the technology changes. But that’s precisely the problem we’re trying to address. The relevant knowledge is spread across many different people and disciplines. Proposing to gather all of this into a single course doesn’t somehow bring that knowledge together. A university-wide course on AI may have a place if the focus is on the ethics of using AI in academic work. Students and faculty alike need to think carefully about [how to use these tools](https://www.unesco.org/en/articles/ai-competency-framework-teachers?hub=365&ref=goodoil.news) without misrepresenting [what they know](https://www.businessinsider.com/ai-may-be-weakening-ability-judge-whats-true-professor-says-2026-6?ref=goodoil.news), understand, or have produced themselves. That problem is genuinely shared across disciplines, but the specialized uses of AI in hundreds of different occupations are not. Universities should be particularly cautious about overpromising and underdelivering. The opposite is much better for an institution’s reputation, particularly over the long run. There is something to be said for a little epistemic humility. AI has made information much easier to obtain and computation vastly more powerful. It has not solved the knowledge problem. This article was originally published by the [American Institute for Economic Research](https://thedailyeconomy.org/article/ai-and-the-knowledge-problem-in-higher-ed/?ref=goodoil.news). ### Keeping GOG Bedford Happy URL: https://goodoil.news/keeping-gog-bedford-happy/ Last updated: 2026-10-21T00:29:59.000Z [**Tom Armstrong**](https://www.freespeechbacklash.com/article/keeping-gog-bedford-happy?ref=goodoil.news) *Just an old fashioned romantic libertarian conservative at heart. Or maybe a romantic conservative libertarian, depending on the stages of the moon.* GOG Bedford has complained that Free Speech Backlash is “too heavy” and could do with a little light relief. Fair point. We have been serving up liberty, democracy, national sovereignty, history, politics and the occasional looming civilisational catastrophe with the sort of regularity usually associated with the morning post (as used to be). A person can only contemplate the fate of the nation for so many hours before needing a biscuit. So, GOG, this one’s for you. Put down the weighty tome you are reading. Step away from the urgent heavyweight essay you are writing for us and let the alarm bells have a little rest. They’ve been ringing so long they’re probably entitled to a tea break anyhow. For anyone new to FSB, we stand for free speech and personal liberty for all, the nation state and secure borders, equality before the law and the sovereignty of the British people. It is quite a list. We also like to have a laugh, although sometimes the laughter gets squeezed between a warning about the state of democracy and a story about a mediaeval king having a very bad afternoon. But isn’t there is a particular pleasure in being British. It is not that everything is perfect. Far from it. We can produce a queue that extends beyond the horizon, apologise to a chair after bumping into it, and turn a straightforward conversation about the weather into a five-part miniseries. We can lose an argument, win it back, and then apologise for making a fuss. We have a national gift for muddling through, often with a cup of tea in one hand and a strong opinion in the other. And yet: what a place. Green fields, changing seasons, stubborn villages, busy cities, old pubs, new ideas, ancient stones and a language that lets you call a person ‘a bit of a pillock’ without needing to throw anything. The United Kingdom is full of people who get on with things, help a neighbour, make a joke at their own expense and somehow keep the whole show running even when the instructions have gone missing and the boss is an incompetent fool – on a good day. We may grumble about the country, but that’s partly how we show affection. If Britain were a relative, we’d complain about it over lunch, defend it fiercely to strangers, then send it home with leftovers. FSB, meanwhile, has been going for two years. Two years! This is a remarkable achievement for a group of people (well, one and a computer genius) who had never done anything like it before. We did not begin with a grand media empire, a book full of industry contacts, a fleet of accountants, a warehouse full of spare editors or a mysterious benefactor in a velvet jacket. We began with enthusiasm, opinions, a keyboard and the sort of confidence that comes from not knowing what the hell you are doing and how many things can go wrong. Then we learned. A website needs work. Articles need editing, often badly I’ll grant you, but edited they must be. Technical gremlins appear at the precise moment when you are trying to look as if you know what you are doing. The internet has a remarkable ability to turn one small task into 12 smaller tasks, each of which comes with its own password. And every so often someone asks a sensible question, such as ‘Have you thought about how this works?’ The answer is generally, ‘Yes. We are thinking about it now.’ We’ve done it on a shoestring. Sometimes, if we’re honest, the shoestring has been fraying and the shoes have gone missing. At other times we have operated on fumes: the last bit of energy, the last few minutes of the evening, the last crumb of a snack that was supposed to be for later. But hey ho. We’re still here. The site is still publishing. Readers are still finding us. People still write, comment, argue, disagree and occasionally tell us we’ve got something wrong. And more than a few contribute a bob or two when they can. That, in the opinion of your grand editor, is a healthy sign. A place where everyone agrees all the time is either a monastery or a very suspicious meeting. We should also acknowledge that running a small site is not quite as glamorous as it sounds. There are no champagne fountains in the editorial office. There isn’t even be an editorial office. The phrase *newsroom* suggests a room, and perhaps a newsroom. In reality, it’s one person at a computer trying to remember where they saved an article sent in by a reader and wondering whether ‘publish’ means publish now or after one last look at the headline. Still, there is something satisfying about building a thing from scratch and keeping it going. You start with an idea, make many mistakes, learn a few lessons, then discover there are several more mistakes you haven’t made yet. We have had plenty of chances to give up. We have not. We have had days when the whole enterprise has felt like pushing a shopping trolley with one wonky wheel uphill in a headwind. We pushed anyway. Possibly in the wrong direction at first, but we turned around eventually. And it has been fun. Not every minute, obviously. Some minutes have been spent staring at a screen and wondering whether it is the website that is broken or just our understanding of the website. But the good bits are real: the articles, the conversations and, most especially, the people who take the time to contribute and the feeling that a small group can still make something useful without waiting for permission from a committee of people whose job titles require two lines. So, yes, GOG, we hear you. FSB can be heavy. Politics is heavy. The world can be heavy. If you read enough headlines in one sitting, you may begin to suspect that the national mood is being managed by a committee of doom-mongers. Sometimes a little absurdity is not an escape from serious things: it is how we keep our balance while looking at them. A joke can let the air into a room that has become stuffy with solemnity. Let’s laugh at ourselves, too. We are not a polished machine. We are an outfit that has made it through two years without prior experience, a lavish budget or a magic button labelled ‘Make Everything Easy’. We are learning as we go. We may occasionally sound as though we have just discovered a new problem and are excited to explain it to everyone. We may have an article about a civilisation in crisis sitting beside one about a comic from childhood, a privy renovation or the peculiar joys of growing microgreens. This is not a flaw, we tell ourselves, it’s range. It is also what happens when people are allowed to write about what interests them. Life, for all its troubles, is good. There are people to meet, things to read, places to visit, meals to share, jokes to make and cups of tea to drink – an activity that remains one of the great British ceremonies. We can worry and care about the country and still enjoy it. We can argue about politics and still laugh at the absurdity of politics. We can take our principles seriously without taking ourselves quite so seriously that we become impossible company. So here’s to the next year of FSB: more writing, more readers, more spirited debate, fewer technical surprises, and perhaps the occasional article that doesn’t leave everyone feeling they need to lie down in a darkened room. We’ll keep doing our best, with whatever funds, time and energy we can scrape together. If the shoestring snaps, we’ll tie it in a knot. If the fumes run out, we’ll find a petrol station. If the website misbehaves, we’ll glare at it until one of us gives in. And if any reader wants more light-hearted content, well, write it yourself. This article was originally published by the [Free Speech Backlash](https://www.freespeechbacklash.com/article/keeping-gog-bedford-happy?ref=goodoil.news). ### Poll calls Opportunity kingmaker, but National overhang could change everything URL: https://goodoil.news/poll-calls-opportunity-kingmaker-but-national-overhang-could-change-everything/ Last updated: 2026-10-21T03:23:17.000Z *Summarised by* [*Centrist*](https://centrist.nz/?ref=goodoil.news) **National has surged to 32% in the latest 1News-Verian poll, opening a five-point lead over Labour, but the possibility of a National overhang could dramatically alter the parliamentary arithmetic and potentially eliminate the need for the Opportunity Party to form a government.** **While published seat projections position Qiulae Wong's Opportunity Party as kingmaker, they do not account for National retaining more electorate seats than its party vote would ordinarily entitle it to.** The [latest 1News-Verian poll](https://www.1news.co.nz/2026/10/20/poll-national-jumps-leaving-labours-position-perilous/?ref=goodoil.news) puts National up four points to 32%, Labour down one to 27%, the Greens at 16%, ACT at 11%, NZ First at 8% and Opportunity at 7%. On those figures, National would receive 38 seats, ACT 13 and NZ First nine, giving the current coalition 60 seats. Verian's projection assumes Te Pāti Māori retains four electorates and the Te Tai Tokerau Party wins one, producing a 124-seat Parliament requiring 63 seats for a majority. Labour, the Greens and the two Māori parties would collectively hold 56 seats, rising to 64 with Opportunity's eight MPs. However, the calculations could change substantially if National creates its own overhang. According to the [Electoral Commission's official results](https://www.electionresults.govt.nz/electionresults%5F2023/?ref=goodoil.news), National won 43 electorate seats in the 2023 general election, later adding Port Waikato in a by-election. If National were to win 43 electorates again, while its party vote entitled it to only 38 seats, it would generate a five-seat overhang. Assuming all other projected results remained unchanged, Parliament would expand to 129 seats, with National, ACT and NZ First collectively holding 65\. This is exactly the number required for a majority without Opportunity. The possibility is important because National leader Christopher Luxon and NZ First leader Winston Peters have ruled out working with Opportunity, while ACT leader David Seymour has expressed willingness to negotiate. Opportunity leader Qiulae Wong has indicated she would approach National first if it emerged as the largest party. The poll surveyed 1003 eligible voters between 15 and 19 October, with a maximum margin of error of 3.1 percentage points. [**Read more at 1News**](https://www.1news.co.nz/2026/10/20/poll-national-jumps-leaving-labours-position-perilous/?ref=goodoil.news) *Re-published from the Centrist with permission* [Original article at The Centrist](https://centrist.nz/poll-calls-opportunity-kingmaker-but-national-overhang-could-change-everything-1792541223049?ref=goodoil.news) ### Australian MP attack prompts warning over threats to politicians URL: https://goodoil.news/australian-mp-attack-prompts-warning-over-threats-to-politicians/ Last updated: 2026-10-21T03:23:31.000Z *Summarised by* [*Centrist*](https://centrist.nz/?ref=goodoil.news) **Australian independent MP Helen Haines remains critically injured after an alleged deliberate vehicle attack outside her electorate office in Victoria on 19 October.** **Witnesses described a vehicle making a U-turn before striking Haines and reversing into her a second time. The 65-year-old has lost one leg, with doctors working to save the other.** Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese described the incident as deliberate. A joint counterterrorism team has been activated, although authorities have not established a motive. The driver, identified as Brendan Nugent, 43, was taken into custody. Police are investigating the circumstances surrounding the incident. In a further twist, Nugent’s father, Rod Nugent, and his partner, Christine Cunningham, [revealed](https://www.1news.co.nz/2026/10/21/accused-attackers-family-reveal-20-year-friendship-with-helen-haines/?ref=goodoil.news) they have been friends with Haines for more than 20 years. They described the alleged attack as “devastating and unfathomable”. In New Zealand, Speaker Gerry Brownlee[ told RNZ](https://www.odt.co.nz/news/national/threats-against-nz-mps-have-risen-astronomically-says-speaker-j8m6g6e3?ref=goodoil.news) that threats against MPs had risen "astronomically". Parliament's Security Information, Risk and Advisory Service handled 216 requests for advice or assistance between 28 September and 18 October, including 81 deployments. These figures cover a range of security-related activities and do not represent 216 confirmed threats. Brownlee cited financial pressures, public frustration and global instability as possible contributors to rising hostility. He also criticised media coverage that reduces complex political debates to brief soundbites. He warned that intimidation could discourage politicians from remaining accessible to the communities they represent. **Editor's note:** Much of the early coverage of Haines lacks a meaningful examination of her politics. Haines is an independent whose [parliamentary voting record](https://www.helenhaines.org/about/how-i-vote/?ref=goodoil.news) shows support for positions taken by both major parties, alongside independent positions. She has championed environmental protection, climate action, regional healthcare and political integrity. On Israel and Gaza, she has [condemned Hamas's October 2023 attacks](https://www.helenhaines.org/issues/where-i-stand-on/?ref=goodoil.news) and called for the release of hostages, while also advocating a lasting ceasefire, humanitarian assistance and[ further sanctions against Israel](https://www.helenhaines.org/media/what-will-it-take-pressing-the-government-on-israel-sanctions/?ref=goodoil.news). Meanwhile, [ABC News Verify](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-10-20/what-we-know-brendan-nugent-arrested-alleged-attack-helen-haines/107286654?ref=goodoil.news) reports that Nugent had a history of environmental activism and social media posts supporting Gaza and criticising Israel. Yet in 2019, he publicly praised Haines as a politician who took climate change seriously. What, if anything, changed between Nugent's public praise for Haines in 2019 and the alleged attack remains unknown. Investigators have not established a motive, and there is no evidence that his political beliefs played a role. [**Read more at RNZ**](https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/world/2032143/what-we-know-about-the-attack-on-australian-independent-mp-helen-haines?ref=goodoil.news) *Re-published from the Centrist with permission* [Original article at The Centrist](https://centrist.nz/australian-mp-attack-prompts-warning-over-threats-to-politicians-1792541219344?ref=goodoil.news) ### Is NCEA disguising how many students are failing to learn? URL: https://goodoil.news/is-ncea-disguising-how-many-students-are-failing-to-learn/ Last updated: 2026-10-21T03:23:49.000Z *Summarised by* [*Centrist*](https://centrist.nz/?ref=goodoil.news) **Government modelling suggests thousands of students currently gaining NCEA qualifications might not meet the proposed requirement to pass just three subjects, raising questions about whether the existing system accurately reflects what students have learned.** **While attention has focused on predictions of higher failure rates under the replacement qualification, the figures also raise questions about the standards students are currently required to meet.** According to[ RNZ reporting](https://www.odt.co.nz/news/national/thousands-more-could-fail-new-school-qualification-bgs389eu?ref=goodoil.news), Ministry of Education modelling obtained by the Post Primary Teachers' Association (PPTA) suggests between 30% and 45% of Year 12 students could fail the proposed qualification, compared with just over 15% of those attempting NCEA Level 2 today. The PPTA estimates this could mean between 10,000 and 19,000 additional students failing to gain a Year 12 qualification. But the modelling also exposes a fundamental difference between the two systems. Under NCEA, students accumulate credits across subjects to achieve a qualification. The proposed replacement would require students to pass at least three of their five subjects. The ministry's estimates assumed that students currently earning 14 credits in a subject would pass that subject under the new qualification. Even on that basis, substantially fewer students would qualify. Education Minister Erica Stanford argues that the current system has allowed students to collect credits without adequately demonstrating their knowledge. "For too long, NCEA has allowed students to accumulate credits without necessarily demonstrating the knowledge and skills their qualification should represent," she said. The most concerning figures involve schools serving the poorest third of communities. Their Year 12 qualification attainment rates could fall from approximately 75% to just over 50% under the optimistic scenario, or as low as 25% under the pessimistic scenario. PPTA president Chris Abercrombie warns the reforms could worsen educational inequality, particularly if schools do not receive sufficient resources and teacher training. The ministry cautions that its modelling is preliminary, excludes some vocational pathways and does not predict actual future results. It says additional support and a phased introduction between 2028 and 2030 are intended to reduce the risks. Stanford says raising standards is necessary, but acknowledges students need support to meet them. Would higher failure rates mean the new qualification is failing students, or that NCEA has been masking shortcomings in their achievement? [**Read more at RNZ**](https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/education/2030541/thousands-more-could-fail-new-school-qualification?cid=newsletter&ref=goodoil.news) *Re-published from the Centrist with permission* [Original article at The Centrist](https://centrist.nz/is-ncea-disguising-how-many-students-are-failing-to-learn-1792541215219?ref=goodoil.news) ### Michael Laws accuses mainstream media of hypocrisy over MMP overhang strategy URL: https://goodoil.news/michael-laws-accuses-mainstream-media-of-hypocrisy-over-mmp-overhang-strategy/ Last updated: 2026-10-21T03:24:03.000Z *Summarised by* [*Centrist*](https://centrist.nz/?ref=goodoil.news) **Broadcaster and NZ First candidate Michael Laws has accused mainstream political commentators of hypocrisy for condemning centre-right efforts to exploit MMP's overhang provisions, after Te Pāti Māori had already promoted a similar strategy to benefit the left.** **Laws argues that voters are being criticised for using legal electoral rules, while commentators who previously showed less concern are now calling for political intervention.** Speaking on The Platform, Laws singled out The Post's Henry Cooke, Democracy Project commentator Bryce Edwards, and 1News political producer Tom Day. "I didn't hear it from Mr Cook, Henry Cook of the Post. I didn't hear it from Bryce Edwards of the Democracy Project. I didn't hear it from Tom Day of One News," Laws said, referring to criticism of Te Pāti Māori's earlier strategy. He accused the commentators of condemning centre-right efforts to respond to the same tactic. "How incredibly typical, how incredibly hypocritical." Te Pāti Māori has encouraged supporters to vote for its electorate candidates while giving their party votes to Labour or the Greens, potentially creating additional parliamentary seats through MMP's overhang provisions. Centre-right campaigners, including Don Brash and Harry Mowbray, have since advocated voting for National in electorates and for ACT or NZ First on the party vote, potentially producing a substantially larger overhang. Under MMP rules, voters can legally support different parties with their electorate and party votes. An overhang occurs when a party wins more electorates than its party vote would ordinarily entitle it to. **Editor’s note:** Edwards has called on both major party leaders to condemn deliberate overhang engineering, arguing that organised campaigns undermine proportional representation. Cooke has proposed that Labour and National agree to seek another election rather than form a government dependent on an overhang. Te Pāti Māori's approach has also drawn criticism, including from Edwards in August and a Post editorial that described its strategy as within the rules but effectively cheating. Tom Day has criticised both sides as well. However, Laws questions the intensity of the reaction to the centre-right campaign, arguing that the same degree of condemnation was not evident when Te Pāti Māori first promoted the approach. [**Hear more on YouTube**](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTZ6l9Tl4lQ&ref=goodoil.news) *Re-published from the Centrist with permission* [Original article at The Centrist](https://centrist.nz/michael-laws-accuses-mainstream-media-of-hypocrisy-over-mmp-overhang-strategy-1792541211753?ref=goodoil.news) ### Former Opportunity insiders allege factional takeover and toxic party culture URL: https://goodoil.news/former-opportunity-insiders-allege-factional-takeover-and-toxic-party-culture/ Last updated: 2026-10-21T03:24:17.000Z *Summarised by* [*Centrist*](https://centrist.nz/?ref=goodoil.news) **Former Opportunity Party board members allege internal factions, behind-the-scenes power struggles and the sidelining of dissenting voices shaped the party's direction before Qiulae Wong became leader in November 2025.** **The allegations raise questions about who was exercising influence over a party campaigning to end political tribalism.** An[ NZ Herald investigation](https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/politics/former-opportunity-party-board-members-allege-toxic-culture-and-bitter-internal-power-struggles/premium/QH6EGXAZQBEC5NODAOOPNUONJ4/?ref=goodoil.news) reveals bitter disputes within the party following its unsuccessful 2023 election campaign, including two abrupt board resignations. Former board member Henare Parata alleges an informal Wellington faction, known as TWGG or the Wellington ginger group, effectively took control of the party's strategic direction. Parata, who served four years on the board, says he encountered resistance when proposing a "strong centrist, non-ideological, non-tribal identity" for the party. He claims members of the faction walked out of a meeting rather than consider his strategy paper, an allegation the party disputes. Parata also questioned the influence of former Labour minister Iain Lees-Galloway, who joined Opportunity in 2024\. He alleges decisions about paying Lees-Galloway were made without proper board discussion. The party denies this, saying Lees-Galloway volunteered until late 2025, when the full board approved paid work. He became its full-time general manager in January 2026. Parata described the internal atmosphere as dominated by the "managerial, woke Pākehā class", claiming its behaviour was worse than political infighting he had experienced elsewhere. Another former board member, Nikki-Leigh Wilson-Beazley, says her marketing and communications responsibilities were removed without explanation or consultation. She also criticised what she considered the party's reluctance to take clear positions on Treaty issues, despite promoting itself as an evidence-based, centrist organisation. Both resigned, with Parata accusing party figures of hypocrisy and tribalism. The party acknowledges a difficult period following its 2023 defeat but rejects suggestions that TWGG held formal decision-making authority. Board chair Penny Fairbrother says Parata's removal from internal communication channels followed breaches of the party's code of conduct, while disputed decisions were handled through established governance processes. Opportunity leader Qiulae Wong [told the NZ Herald](https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/politics/election-2026-qiulae-wong-responds-to-opportunity-party-toxic-culture-allegations/CAYEAISWUJABZLB4SMDDWF6SFY/?ref=goodoil.news) the allegations largely concerned events before she became leader, saying the party now has "a really positive culture". She rejected claims of a clique around her and defended Opportunity's Te Tiriti policy as "very comprehensive". Asked whether she would examine the party's earlier problems, Wong said: "I expect any review of this campaign will consider party culture and structure." The allegations emerge as polling suggests Opportunity could play a critical role in determining the next government. [**Read more at the NZ Herald**](https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/politics/former-opportunity-party-board-members-allege-toxic-culture-and-bitter-internal-power-struggles/premium/QH6EGXAZQBEC5NODAOOPNUONJ4/?ref=goodoil.news) **(paywalled)** *Re-published from the Centrist with permission* [Original article at The Centrist](https://centrist.nz/former-opportunity-insiders-allege-factional-takeover-and-toxic-party-culture-1792541207106?ref=goodoil.news) ### Labour and National different cheeks of the same arse, argues Chris Trotter URL: https://goodoil.news/labour-and-national-different-cheeks-of-the-same-arse-argues-chris-trotter/ Last updated: 2026-10-21T03:24:28.000Z *Summarised by* [*Centrist*](https://centrist.nz/?ref=goodoil.news) **Political commentator Chris Trotter argues that Labour and National have become so similar in their economic and cultural outlooks that voters are struggling to distinguish between them.** **Both parties, he says, continue to present themselves as traditional representatives of the left and right, despite having largely abandoned the political traditions on which they were founded.** Writing for[ ](https://www.interest.co.nz/public-policy/140732/though-both-parties-would-reject-charge-labour-and-national-remain-staunch?ref=goodoil.news)[interest.co.nz](http://interest.co.nz/?ref=goodoil.news), Trotter traces the shift to the economic reforms of the 1980s and 1990s, when free-market liberalism replaced the social-democratic consensus that had shaped New Zealand politics for decades. Labour, once rooted in working-class communities and trade unions, embraced market reforms under Roger Douglas while increasingly adopting the socially progressive values of university-educated professionals. Trotter argues this combination alienated traditional Labour supporters, whose economic interests and socially conservative values were no longer reflected in the party's direction. National underwent a similar transformation, he says, embracing economic liberalism while gradually abandoning much of its traditional cultural conservatism. Trotter offers a particularly colourful description of the resulting political landscape: "That National and Labour might actually be the right and left cheeks of the same economically- and culturally-liberal arse, is a proposition that cannot, under any circumstances, be put to the voters." He cites ACT leader David Seymour's description of his political mission as keeping Labour "out of power, and out of the National Party", suggesting National's socially conservative voters have relied on ACT and NZ First to push back against progressive policies. Trotter draws a particularly striking comparison between NZ First and the Labour Party of former prime minister Norman Kirk. He argues Winston Peters and Shane Jones are closer to Kirk's economic nationalism and traditional social values than today's Labour leadership, particularly in their opposition to economic globalisation. For Trotter, the familiar left-right divide obscures a more fundamental political realignment, leaving voters uncertain about which parties represent their values. [**Read more at** ](https://www.interest.co.nz/public-policy/140732/though-both-parties-would-reject-charge-labour-and-national-remain-staunch?ref=goodoil.news)[**interest.co.nz**](http://interest.co.nz/?ref=goodoil.news) *Re-published from the Centrist with permission* [Original article at The Centrist](https://centrist.nz/labour-and-national-different-cheeks-of-the-same-arse-argues-chris-trotter-1792541203238?ref=goodoil.news) ### Labour promises urgent hospital bed audit and investigation into ED deaths URL: https://goodoil.news/labour-promises-urgent-hospital-bed-audit-and-investigation-into-ed-deaths/ Last updated: 2026-10-21T03:24:55.000Z *Summarised by* [*Centrist*](https://centrist.nz/?ref=goodoil.news) **Labour has announced an Emergency Department Recovery Plan promising an independent investigation into deaths linked to lengthy emergency department waits, a nationwide audit of unused hospital beds and changes to vaccine funding decisions.** **Leader Chris Hipkins and health spokesperson Dr Ayesha Verrall unveiled the policy amid growing concerns about hospital overcrowding, including the death of Brent Horsburgh in a toilet at Waikato Hospital's emergency department.** Under the proposal, Labour would commission a rapid, independent report examining deaths, patient safety and healthcare quality associated with prolonged ED waiting times. Verrall said she would instruct the director-general of health at their first meeting to begin an audit identifying unopened hospital beds, why they remain unused and how many additional staff would be required to make them available. "Serious delays in ED often happen because there is a lack of beds in hospital wards, creating a backlog in the emergency room," Verrall said. Labour also proposes transferring responsibility for determining the national vaccination schedule and eligibility from Pharmac to the Public Health Agency. "Labour will put the Public Health Agency in charge of deciding the national vaccine schedule and who is eligible," the policy states. Pharmac would retain responsibility for negotiating vaccine prices, supply arrangements and contracts, consistent with recommendations from the 2022 Pharmac Review. The plan would also strengthen winter preparedness, improve the movement of patients from emergency departments into hospital wards and expand preventive healthcare. Labour says its existing commitment to three free GP visits annually, alongside additional support for general practices, would help reduce avoidable emergency department admissions. Hipkins said the health system required urgent attention. "Our health system is in crisis. People are waiting too long for care, doctors and nurses are under enormous pressure, and families are worried about what happens when someone they love gets sick." Labour's wider election health policy also includes additional nursing recruitment and greater access to community healthcare. [**Read more at Labour's homepage**](https://www.labour.org.nz/ed-recovery-plan?ref=goodoil.news) *Re-published from the Centrist with permission* [Original article at The Centrist](https://centrist.nz/labour-promises-urgent-hospital-bed-audit-and-investigation-into-ed-deaths-1792541194497?ref=goodoil.news) ### Why your allergies might get worse the more you're exposed URL: https://goodoil.news/why-your-allergies-might-get-worse-the-more-youre-exposed/ Last updated: 2026-10-21T03:24:42.000Z *Summarised by* [*Centrist*](https://centrist.nz/?ref=goodoil.news) **Scientists have discovered that nerve cells may develop a kind of memory of allergens, helping explain why repeated exposure to pollen, dust mites and other everyday substances can make allergic reactions worse over time.** **Researchers at the Ragon Institute of Mass General Brigham, MIT and Harvard University found that sensory neurons, the nerve cells responsible for sensations such as touch and itching, play an unexpected role in developing allergies.** "The hypothesis was just: What if the neurons are developing a 'memory' of this allergen?" said immunologist Caroline Sokol. In experiments involving mice, researchers exposed the animals to substances including dust mite allergens and papain, a compound derived from papaya. They discovered that repeated exposure left the energy-producing structures inside nerve cells in a heightened state of alert, triggering increasingly strong immune responses and more severe itching. Surprisingly, the effect was not limited to the original allergen. Mice exposed to papain subsequently reacted more strongly to dust mites and mould, suggesting the mechanism might help explain why people develop multiple allergies. The findings, published in the journal Cell, could eventually lead to treatments that target the underlying process rather than simply relieving symptoms. Researchers have already identified a protein involved in this nerve-cell response, although the findings are currently limited to animal experiments involving skin inflammation and itching. Sokol hopes further research will establish whether the process can be reversed. "Can we reverse it?" she asked. For allergy sufferers, that could eventually mean something more than avoiding pollen or reaching for another antihistamine. [**Read more at The Washington Post**](https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2026/10/19/why-seasonal-allergies-may-be-linked-with-sensitive-nerves/?ref=goodoil.news) *Re-published from the Centrist with permission* [Original article at The Centrist](https://centrist.nz/why-your-allergies-might-get-worse-the-more-youre-exposed-1792541198801?ref=goodoil.news) ### Hypocrisy, Thy Name Is Left URL: https://goodoil.news/hypocrisy-thy-name-is-left/ Last updated: 2026-10-20T23:59:59.000Z As I’ve already written about the attempted murder of independent MP **Helen Haines**, it’s a universal truth of politics that no foul deed goes unexploited. And few are as quick to exploit foul deeds than the left. No sooner had the news broken than the left political establishment (which, of course, includes the coalition these days), than the legacy media and left-wing social media went into full-throated meltdown mode. The immediate bellowing was that this was all **Pauline Hanson**’s fault, all social media’s fault, blah blah blah. That many of these same people had openly cheered **Charlie Kirk**’s murder did not go unnoticed: a number of X users replied to thundering lefties with screenshots of their own gleeful celebration’s of Kirk’s assassination. It’s not just social media nobodies, though: some of the biggest names in the leftosphere were straight out of the gates, screeching that violence is intolerable (which it is), while ignoring their own past support for violence. People like wannabe politician, **Hannah Ferguson**. You have to hand it to the modern progressive influencer: consistency is merely a bourgeois construct designed to shackle the revolutionary spirit. When Ms Ferguson, the darling of digital didacticism, recently graced our morning television screens to lament the dark arts of political discord following the deplorable assault on independent member Helen Haines, one could almost hear the collective groaning of synapses nationwide. Here was the quintessential progressive oracle, fresh from her triumphant pilgrimage to the National Press Club, where boomer hacks genuflected before her altar with all the religious fervour of medieval peasants before a weeping Madonna, lecturing the populace on the sacred virtues of civility. > [Yes, there is](https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/media/hannah-fergusons-calls-for-cool-heads-reveal-contradiction-on-political-violence/news-story/9361997cd22665fe243b86503abe761d?ref=goodoil.news) unhealthy discourse on social media, but when we see a woman like Helen Haines targeted, I think it speaks to a broader issue of male violence against women in Australia as well. How utterly predictable. No crisis is complete until neatly filed away under the grand intersectional heading of systemic misogyny, preferably before the breakfast toast has cooled. Yet one doesn’t have to delve terribly far into the digital archives to unearth a rather striking dissonance. It was only yesteryear, following the fatal dispatch of American conservative commentator Charlie Kirk, that our budding stateswoman took to her Substack and Instagram to ponder the finer ethical points of lethal retribution. > Am I glad Charlie Kirk will no longer spread his extremist messaging? Yes. Am I happy that someone shot him in the neck in broad daylight? No. Do I believe he empowered the violence that ended his life? Yes. Do I believe he caused more harm than good? Yes. Is violence sometimes necessary? Yes. There you have it: murder is deeply regrettable, you see, provided the victim’s ideological alignment isn’t sufficiently distasteful to warrant a philosophical shrug. Ms Ferguson’s enthusiastic endorsement of conditional bloodshed applies strictly conditionally. “Necessary” violence is strictly reserved for those whose newsletters fail to pass the inner-city purity test. Naturally, this supreme self-regard translates seamlessly into electoral ambition. Ms Ferguson is currently girding her loins to challenge the prime minister himself in the seat of Grayndler, campaigning on her self-described “three Gs”: gas, gambling and Gaza. You almost have to feel sorry for the bewildered constituents of Marrickville, being buttonholed between flat whites by a Forbes 30-Under-30 alumnus explaining why traditional journalism is a “stale, pale and male” conspiracy orchestrated entirely by **Rupert Murdoch**, while completely ignoring thriving alternative mastheads run by formidable women who dare to deviate from the hive-mind. Appearing at the National Press Club to her adoring audience of ageing Boomer insiders, Ferguson lamented the suffocating grip of institutional consensus while simultaneously demanding absolute ideological conformity from anyone daring to draw breath to her right. In her utopian vision, dissent is treated as a form of spiritual pollution, and anyone insufficiently outraged by the current year’s mandated *cause célèbre* is cast outer-darknessward into the bin of bigotry. Yet beneath the polished Instagram reels and the carefully curated ‘girlboss’ aesthetic lies a fragile edifice. This is, after all, a woman who confessed that she and her coterie wept bitter tears upon discovering that **Donald Trump** had successfully reclaimed the American presidency. One shudders to think how the fragile psyche of our self-appointed media disruptor would cope with a stiff breeze of genuine, unfiltered adversity that couldn’t be blocked, muted, or monetised. Probably with the very violence she conditionally approves or disapproves of. Lest anyone think she *isn’t* just parroting whatever she thinks the left-wing peanut gallery will approve of, take her own words for it: > [At one point](https://www.theaustralian.com.au/commentary/progressive-girlboss-preaches-diversity-but-champions-conformity/news-story/e702ac11dbb63ab7f0f81eb97bf258c8?ref=goodoil.news), she let slip an interesting anecdote: that when she started out in her career she was desperate to be accepted by progressive circles, terrified of being cast out for not using the correct lingua franca. Nothing is quite so satisfying as when the left openly admit that they’re nothing but cowardly group-thinkers. --- 💡 ****If you enjoyed this article please share it using the share buttons at the top or bottom of the article.** ### Steps to Avoid New Banking and Financial Industry Oppression URL: https://goodoil.news/steps-to-avoid-new-banking-and-financial-industry-oppression/ Last updated: 2026-10-20T23:29:59.000Z [**Jessica Colby**](https://www.libertyitch.com/p/steps-to-avoid-new-banking-and-financial?ref=goodoil.news) *Liberty Itch* In recent years, governments and special interest groups have exerted increasing pressure on financial institutions to restrict individual freedom, reduce privacy and exercise control over how people manage and spend their money. This trend includes not just banks but also the wider financial industry. An example is the KYC or Know Your Customer requirements in which banks and other institutions are required to subject their customers to constant surveillance and mandatory reporting to government under the guise of fighting terrorism, fraud and organised crime. This includes recently implemented requirements that require banks to ‘protect’ their customers from scams, in practice resulting in those who wish to withdraw or transfer money from their own bank accounts being interrogated and denied access to their money. Many banks have also implemented AI programs that seek to monitor your every move and could at any moment accuse you of wrongdoing based on an algorithm. Individuals and groups are increasingly being debanked for ideological reasons, with those deemed to have controversial or problematic views having their bank accounts closed and even blacklisted from banking with little to no recourse. In the US, many gun businesses have been debanked or faced the prospect of debanking in recent years. Politically motivated financial exclusion is not only restricted to banks. For example, over the past decade PayPal has frozen and closed online accounts for political reasons with the company admitting to working with politically driven special interest groups to identify politically ‘problematic’ accounts. Some activist groups have turned to lobbying payment processors. Last year, Collective Shout, an authoritarian feminist organisation known for its puritan and pro censorship stance, lobbied major payment processors such as Visa and Mastercard to force various websites, developers and sellers to remove a range of online games it did not approve of. > Governments and special interest groups have exerted increasing pressure on financial institutions to restrict individual freedom, reduce privacy and exercise control over how people manage and spend their money. How do individuals and society overcome this new control being exerted over our freedom and financial choices? First, oppose invasive KYC policies. When doing this, it is important to point out not just the mass surveillance and intrusive questioning aspects of these policies, but also the disproportionate impact on those from disadvantaged backgrounds. Object to AI mandates or overburdensome requirements that can only be complied with using AI. Oppose government policies that mandate or coerce the exclusion of certain individuals and groups from the financial system. Even if the individual or group is unlikeable or imperfect, it becomes a slippery slope that eventually affects you. In a healthy free market capitalist society, financial service providers have an incentive to serve all people. Second, support infrastructure that is more resistant to censorship and control. For example, an artist who draws spicy artwork should have the option of accepting crypto currencies such as Bitcoin and allow people to send cash through the mail rather than internet payments that require the cooperation of credit card processors who may demand censorship. Using systems similar to BPAY is another option that can allow people to bypass credit card processors. It is important to ensure people have options and to oppose legislation that restricts competition in the financial industry. Third, make yourself resistant to debanking. Split your money between multiple banks. This makes it more difficult to debank you and reduces the risk of you having all your money frozen at the same time. Keep some money in cash. To determine how much, consider how much money would need to maintain your lifestyle or survive for a certain period of time. Collect items that retain value such as gold and silver. Crypto currency is also an option, but be mindful that this requires access to technology and the internet which could be restricted by the government. Moreover, the value of crypto can sometimes fluctuate wildly. Fourth, be informed about your rights regarding financial institutions, such as whether they prohibit certain types of transactions like buying porn and can legally deny you access to and seize your money, especially in the case of a financial crisis or bank collapse. Lastly, oppose policies that make financial exclusion easier and more damaging. Preventing the implementation of a cashless society is vital – it doesn’t just empower the government to financially repress certain groups but also creates a state of involuntary bondage between citizens and financial institutions with citizens having less control over what is meant to be their own money. By implementing these strategies and solutions, we can help protect individual freedom and privacy and make it more difficult for repression and control to occur via the financial system. The financial system must not be allowed to become a weapon of oppression. This article was originally published by [Liberty Itch](https://www.libertyitch.com/p/steps-to-avoid-new-banking-and-financial?ref=goodoil.news). ### More on the Bias of Newspaper Editors URL: https://goodoil.news/more-on-the-bias-of-newspaper-editors/ Last updated: 2026-10-20T22:59:59.000Z [**Kerry Butler**](https://nominister.wordpress.com/2026/10/20/more-on-biased-newspaper-editors/?ref=goodoil.news) *No Minister* In my previous article about biased (one-eyed) editors, I focused on how a letter discussing things regarding Māori that might in any way be considered even slightly ‘controversial’ will likely be rejected. As a follow-up to that, I will now discuss the matter of how, if a letter to an editor refers to unfavourable facts regarding **non**\-Māori, that’s generally somehow deemed acceptable. But firstly, I must point out that what I hadn’t mentioned about letters regarding Māori issues being declined, is that this is invariably due to the possibility of a back-lash, with the inevitable cry of ‘racism’ which is now so often used as a **‘**control**’** mechanism. Meaning, by utilising the tactical **threat** of accusing someone of being ‘racist’ as a weapon to prevent the truth from being revealed, is what **really** is racist. Because, if **preventing** non-Māori from speaking up for themselves, due to being restricted by the media’s fear of the accusation of racism, that is a racist tactic which only Māori are allowed to get away with. So it’s a one-way street, because, as I say, if a letter to an editor (whether written by Māori or liberal Māori sympathisers) that is of a reverse scenario, i.e., relates to matters showing non-Māori in a bad light, that letter will likely be acceptable. Whereas, any letter discussing Māori issues will only ever be considered for publication if the matter has already been openly aired as a news item. Otherwise, it is strictly taboo. In one case, a well known and respected political commentator sent a letter to the editor of a regional newspaper, raising concerns about the frequent label of ‘racism’ being applied to people like him who were calling for equality of citizenship. The editor replied promptly that he **would** publish it. But a day later he phoned to say that the letter would **not** be published, as he had been instructed to refer any such material (on race issues) higher up the organisation’s chain of control for vetting. This establishes a censorship system that removes the choice from an editor to the upper hierarchy and/or owners of the media group, thus **destroying any semblance of editorial independence and freedom of the press**. So, it would seem that this dictatorial ‘control’ (censorship) is enforced simply because things involving Māori are sacrosanct, especially facts that happen to be at all unfavourable regarding them, which absolutely must be suppressed. Even despite outrageous statements such as Rawiri Waititi’s claim, quote: **“When we say Māori are genetically superior that is acceptable, because after years of colonial violence on our people, why can’t we be proud of our genetics.”** If a non-Māori, for any reason, claimed genetic superiority of **any sort**, then all hell would break loose. Then there was the Māori woman who, when being interviewed on National Radio, was asked whether she would be happy for her children to marry Pākehā. This self-opinionated woman replied, quote: **“It would certainly not be acceptable, because Māori bloodlines must be kept pure.”** So, people such as her have free reign to say such disgraceful things. Although, it must be a struggle for these bigots having to despise themselves for the fact that the majority of their genetic makeup is non-Māori. An example of racial xenophobia was seen in 1993, when Ranginui Walker denounced immigration as, quote, **“An Asian invasion that would increase crime.”** And in 2017, Hone Harawira called for the death penalty to be reinstated for “Chinese drug dealers”. (I wonder if he sees an irony in that solution being aimed at only one lot of drug dealers.) Then in 2023, Marama Davidson said, quote: **“It is white cis men who cause violence”**. Aside from the irony involved, that is a racist statement. And yet, if non-Māori wish to object to what they consider racism directed at them, by enacting their right of free speech via a letter to the editor, it is automatically rejected. Whilst media outlets do have that right, it could nevertheless be described as ‘**selective social monitoring**’ by them, because by being **discriminatory** there is a glaringly obvious tendency to encourage **favouritism** towards one race (Māori), to the disadvantage of all others. Such **hypocrites** need to have a good think about their **selective prejudice**, because they leave themselves open to being judged as **racist by default**. This article was originally published by [No Minister](https://nominister.wordpress.com/2026/10/20/more-on-biased-newspaper-editors/?ref=goodoil.news). ### Haines Attack: What We Know So Far URL: https://goodoil.news/haines-attack-what-we-know-so-far/ Last updated: 2026-10-20T22:30:00.000Z It’s a universal truth of politics that no foul deed goes unexploited. So it is going with the horrific attempted murder of independent federal MP **Helen Haines**, on Monday. Haines, 65, represents the federal seat of Indi, in north-east Victoria, stretching from the foot of Victoria’s high country, to the border with NSW at the Murray River. It’s both old cattle country and the former stamping-ground of the Kelly gang and a target for tree-changers. Haines has represented the area since 2019, succeeding another independent, **Cathy McGowan**. Before that, the seat had been held by the coalition parties since 1931. Late Monday, Haines was returning to her electorate office when she was rammed by a white Toyota LandCruiser. Witnesses say the car did a u-turn as Haines was retrieving items from the boot of her car. The attacker then allegedly reversed and hit her a second time. Bystanders intervened, including one who sat in front of the car and another, local barber **Ricky Jefferies**, who hauled the attacker from his car, also wresting a knife from his pocket. Haines remains in a critical condition after undergoing surgery at Melbourne’s Alfred Hospital. It has been reported that she has lost a leg. The attacker has been arrested and named as **Brendan Nugent**, 43, from nearby Tarrawingee. However, Nugent is yet to be formally interviewed by police, as he was said to be too ‘substance-impaired’: under the influence of drugs and/or alcohol. Australian Federal Police Commissioner **Krissy Barrett**, who famously denied a religious motive in the Bondi Islamic terror attack, said the attack is “is an isolated incident and there are no known threats connected to this matter”. Nugent, who describes himself on social media as a “plant person” and vegan, is virulently anti-Israel and climate activist and environmentalist who protested logging in the local forest. The Save Our Strathbogie Forest group published at least one blog entry credited to “SOSF member Brendan Nugent”, in 2019\. A longer fact sheet from the same group credits “Brendan Nugent” as “a Master of Forest Ecosystem Science, The University of Melbourne, Creswick Campus (Victorian School of Forestry); he is also a Committee Member of the Save Our Strathbogie Forest group.” Save our Strathbogie Forest group chair **Bertram Lobert** has confirmed that Nugent was an active member. Lobert describes the attacker as “an intensely intelligent man... who cared about the environment”. An unnamed source claimed the anti-logging activism lured him into “darker things”. What those “darker things” might be was unspecified, but even as the October 7 attacks were still underway, a social media account bearing Nugent’s name was praising the “Gaza Resistance” for “breaking apart the Israeli-created mass prison in the Strip”. From then on, the account endlessly attacked Israel, and repeated anti-Israel propaganda, such as accusations of rape by the IDF and the ‘genocide’ lie. An hour later, it reposted British journalist **Matt Kennard**’s praise for “armed struggle by the Palestinian resistance against the occupier”. It also quoted directly from Hamas propaganda, celebrating October 7 as “the finest displays of bravery and heroism in confronting the Israeli murder machine”. The account also posted memes supporting the Houthi attacks on shipping in the Persian Gulf and supported bringing Iraqis to Australia as ‘refugees’. Despite immediate efforts by many leftists to link the attack to One Nation, the account makes no mention of One Nation at all. Its sole mention of **Pauline Hanson** was a mocking reference in 2015\. In 2017, the account attacked then-Liberal Senator **Cory Bernardi**, now One Nation leader in South Australia, for “importing radical alt-right, anti-worker Americanism”. It also attacked now One Nation MP **Barnaby Joyce**. The account linked to his name is followed directly by MP **Helen Haines** herself, as well as Greens Senator **David Shoebridge**, and the Animal Justice Party. Shoebridge unfollowed the account immediately after the attack. The account seemed to broadly support Haines, replying directly to her own account multiple times. During the 2019 federal election campaign, it attacked “LNP funded anti-independent propaganda” tailored to Indi voters. Later that year, it praised her as “a politician who takes climate change seriously”. In 2020, the account replied to Haines’s announcement of federal financial support for the seat’s softwood timber industry, asking what support was given. Current polling indicates that Haines is under direct threat from One Nation in her seat. Haines’s own official car is orange: the colour of One Nation’s branding. Yet, immediately following the attack, almost the entire left political establishment piled on to exploit it for their own agendas. PM **Anthony Albanese** strutted to the podium, claiming it validated his supposed efforts to ‘tone things down’. This, from the PM who urged his MPs to “smash” Pauline Hanson, and who said nothing when ‘school protests’ led by violent far-leftists Socialist Alternative, chanted to “kill” Hanson. Victorian Premier **Ben Carroll** and Canberra green-left independent **David Pocock**, formerly part of billionaire **Simon Holmes à Court**’s ‘Climate 200’ group, both immediately blamed social media. Pocock particularly questioned whether social media “is actually compatible with a thriving democracy”. Another Climate 200-backed ‘Teal independent’, **Zali Steggall**, blamed “radio shock jocks”. Count down to the Albanese government using the attack to justify its internet censorship bill – if not to try and expand its censorship regime. In the meantime, all sensible people can do is wish Helen Haines a speedy recover and emphatically reject political violence – no matter who it’s directed at or from where. --- 💡 ****If you enjoyed this article please share it using the share buttons at the top or bottom of the article.** ### Advice From an Campaigner on the Frontline URL: https://goodoil.news/advice-from-an-campaigner-on-the-frontline/ Last updated: 2026-10-20T21:29:59.000Z [**Yvonne van Dongen**](https://yvonnevandongen.substack.com/p/dig-in-terfies) *Veteran NZ journo incredulous gender ideology escaped the lab. Won’t rest until reality makes a comeback.* Irish psychotherapist Stella O’Malley’s outspoken condemnation of gender ideology has not cost her clients. Quite the opposite. She says her client list is almost always full. That’s despite the Irish Council for Psychotherapy stating that efforts to change, manipulate or reverse a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity through psychological therapy are unethical. But then she doesn’t have the Conversion Practices Prohibition Legislation Act that practitioners in New Zealand have to contend with that prohibits certain practices intended to change or suppress a person’s gender identity or expression. Nor does she operate under far more explicit statements supporting gender-affirming care by the local professional body, the Association of Psychotherapists Aotearoa New Zealand (APANZ). O’Malley was in Auckland prior to her appearance at the Genspect conference in Wellington recently. I spent an afternoon with her, husband Henry Thompson and Genspect NZ director Simon Tegg on a trip to Waiheke Island and I can report she is just as you would expect from her podcast – open, warm, charming and fun. Also brimming with frustrated energy. > I’m not saying speaking out is costless. I’ve had two complaints against me. But there’s a myth amongst our own that we can’t do anything. That and an awful lot of cowardice. Since speaking out and forming Genspect, the international organisation advancing a psychological and psychiatric understanding of transgender ideation, in 2021, O’Malley says she had learned a lot about her profession. > Therapists want to be liked. Most are afraid of conflict. But actually there are quite a few of us working outside the policy. The changing face of her profession has also had an impact on outcomes. O’Malley says 25 years ago 80 per cent of psychotherapists were male. Today 70 per cent are female. She is sympathetic to the analysis by American conservative critic, Helen Andrews, that the growing presence of women in a profession helps produce a more risk-averse, conformity-driven culture. All the same from a distance it appears to gender criticals here that the debate in the United Kingdom has tipped in their favour They have, after all, enjoyed a series of major wins such as: - In 2021 lawyer Maya Forstater won a landmark employment case establishing that her belief that sex is biological and cannot be changed was capable of protection as a philosophical belief under the Equality Act. Subsequent proceedings confirmed that protection. - The 2024 Cass Review on NHS gender identity care of children leading to the cessation of routine puberty blocker prescription for gender distress and the closure of NHS’s former centralised Gender Identity Development Service, the Tavistock Clinic. - In 2025 UK Supreme Court unanimously ruled that the terms *woman*, *man* and *sex* in the Equality Act 2010 refer to biological sex. - That ruling led to new guidance requiring accommodation in single-sex hospital wards, toilets and changing rooms to be based on biological sex. Also a judicial review concerning mixed-sex toilets at a Scottish primary school resulted in the local council conceding that it had a legal obligation to provide separate male and female facilities. So I’m taken aback when O’Malley wails “**We’re failing!**” She quickly qualifies this by adding: > Legally we’re winning, sure, sure. But, medically and culturally, gender ideology is still in play. We have completely *failed* to give clinical leadership. > > We’ve opted to be the moderate ones. You know ‘t*ake your wins’* they say. Or ‘it’s only *a tiny numbe*r now.’ But no, it’s been a crashing failure. The United Kingdom is a glimpse of the future for all other areas. She tells me that some of the wins are shot through with holes. The Tavistock gender identify clinic closed but three new regional youth gender clinics have officially opened across England, with more scheduled to launch under a phased rollout. As well, while the Cass Review did identify serious weakness in the evidence for medical interventions, it did not conclusively establish the causes of rising referrals, the likelihood of desistance among today’s adolescents, or the long-term outcomes of alternative treatment approaches. Worse, Dame Hilary Cass has endorsed the creation of a puberty blocker trial, which entails giving the experimental drugs to vulnerable children. Legal challenges failed to halt what is known as the Pathways clinical trial. The planned recruitment date was August 1, 2026. Cass has continued to disappoint. In June she revealed in the House of Lords the case of an 11-year-old boy who was transitioned to be a girl by his parents at the age of two. He now refuses to leave his room and will not go to secondary school for fear of being ‘outed’ as a boy. As a result of his inactivity he has weak bones. The question Cass was asking to the House of Lords was about the eligibility of 11-year-olds for the puberty blockers trial and whether it should be politicians or doctors making the decision. It’s worth reading the full transcript to grasp the implications of her request. > I ask noble lords to consider the case of a child who I will call Jo who was a biological male, socially transitioned at two and a half by his parents. At 11, she – which I say advisedly because the chances of her reverting to her biological gender is vanishingly remote – she has been in stealth and will not go to secondary school because she is so afraid of being outed in that environment. She’s now refusing to come out of her room except very rarely and she now has weak bones, not as a result of puberty blockers but through inactivity. I ask the noble lady the minister **should her subsequent treatment be decided by politicians or by the clinicians who are looking after her**? By highlighting this tragic boy, she inadvertently made the case against the low age limit for the puberty blockers trial but also the premise of the trial itself. The case exposed the act of ‘social transition’ as the child abuse it really is. Dr Cass subsequently clarified that “Jo” was a composite case rather than a single identifiable child but[ O’Malley writes t](https://genspect.substack.com/p/should-an-11-year-olds-chances-of?utm%5Fsource=chatgpt.com)hat does not alter the purpose of this formulation. Also Cass is [on record](https://www.theguardian.com/society/2026/feb/15/social-media-misleading-young-people-gender-transitioning-hilary-cass?ref=goodoil.news) as saying: > There are *a tiny number* of people who will never be comfortable with their biological sex, with the gender associated with their biological sex. For them, a medical pathway is the only way they’re going to live their life comfortably. O’Malley rejects this utterly. She is adamant that gender dysphoria, until 2013 labelled gender identity disorder, was always a mental illness and should be treated as such. She champions a counter-movement called **Repath** or re-psychopathologisation. In effect, she wishes to return to a time when gender distress was treated as a psychological disorder. O’Malley argues that experiencing gender nonconformity or holding a transgender identity is not inherently pathological but that the pathology begins with the intent to medicalize or modify a healthy body. She calls the pathological fixation with wanting to become the opposite sex an **“extreme overvalued belief”**, akin to anorexia. She’s also highly critical of the psychiatric profession, which has, over the years, embraced outlandish and faulty ideas such as the use of malaria to treat schizophrenia (malariotherapy), repressed memory syndrome, gender transitioning and the now debunked notion of chemical imbalances in the brain. O’Malley believes all psychiatrists should be doing is medicating dangerous people to safety. Nothing more. In her own profession, a culture of affirmation had become embedded in parts of the service and discouraged proper scrutiny. O’Malley explained her approach to gender distressed young people [in that article:](https://genspect.substack.com/p/should-an-11-year-olds-chances-of?utm%5Fsource=chatgpt.com) > I believe it is worth returning to the question that should always come first: **how should we understand this child?** ### The Good Oil Daily Opinion Poll URL: https://goodoil.news/the-good-oil-daily-opinion-poll-398/ Last updated: 2026-10-20T21:14:59.000Z Take our Daily Opinion Poll and see how your views compare to other readers and then share the poll on social media. By sharing the poll you will help even more readers to discover *The Good Oil.* --- ### The Hell Rider URL: https://goodoil.news/the-hell-rider/ Last updated: 2026-10-20T21:00:00.000Z As anyone who has used public transport knows, it’s a bit of a horror show. Hence it’s refreshing to see a journalist, a senior writer for the *New Zealand Herald*, no less, in agreement. > *Did you hear? Auckland has invented train travel.* > > *Last month, the* [*new City Rail Link*](https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/auckland/auckland-city-rail-link-opens-first-trains-carry-passengers-through-new-tunnels/2NXOQNAJFVF3TNZEW5MRSCFPZM/?ref=goodoil.news) *officially displaced Ikea flat pack furniture as the infrastructure most likely to be discussed at a Ponsonby dinner party.* > > *The trip between the new midtown and Karangahape Road stations takes three minutes in real time and about five weeks and counting in social media videos, live news blogs and talkback radio reckons.* > > *Auckland is a kid at Christmas in love with its shiny new City Rail Link. Sadly, like the three AAA batteries required to power a modern Barbie Dreamhouse or a KPop Demon Hunters lightstick, that love will fade and die – because the only people genuinely enamoured with public transport are the people who don’t have to use it every day.”* No doubt these same people believe in earnest that they are doing us plebs a major favour. When challenged on why they don’t use public transport themselves, the reply is always something on the lines of ‘I’m special.’ > *\[…\] That one time you rode the bus? That single sparkling day you had to leave your car at the garage for an oil change and flagged down the 27H and finished the new Ann Patchett somewhere between the village shops and The French Cafe and it was so stress-free and convenient and why doesn’t everybody do this?* > > *Yeah, nah.* > > *Recently, I spent 35 minutes avoiding eye contact with a man zooming up and down the aisle with outstretched arms yelling “I can fly... we can ALL fly…”* Which, to be fair, makes him a better comedian than any New Zealand comedian. > *Some days, the worst thing you see on the bus is a grown man’s Garfield bag taking up an entire seat. Other days, you wish you could unsee the messages being typed by a pimply young man in a wrinkled suit who is maxing his afternoon commute with a Sugar Daddy side hustle.* This, by the way, is known as a ‘good bus trip’. > *Some mornings the bus smells like last night’s dinner clinging to a coat or a cheap perfume that hasn’t had time to mellow. Other times it smells like the solvents in the bag someone is huffing on the back seat. Once, I sat behind two passengers who ate potato chips and argued over who had shoplifted the best flavour.* Particularly bad is the smell of dead mutton bird. And don’t get me started on KFC. > *\[…\] There are definitive rules about how to behave on public transport. There are also absolute givens that are not written down but possibly should be.* > > *In Japan, for example, it is considered rude to speak loudly or use your cellphone in this moving shared space. In Auckland, at least seven passengers will be scrolling YouTube, conducting a WhatsApp video call, or watching an international football match. None will be wearing headphones.”* Japan takes politeness to the extremes. > *Auckland Transport’s conditions of carriage “encourage” passengers to offer their seats to older people, pregnant women and anyone with a disability or mobility difficulties. Obviously, if you are under 30, this does not apply to you because… actually, I don’t know why. Is it because you are a self-entitled brat?* > > *Passengers are not allowed to board the bus with radioactive materials or poison. Fair enough. How about two buckets of KFC, a hacking cough and unspeakable racism?* Like supermarkets, public transport has its own share of ‘personalities’. We have for example the ‘shower phobic’. In my 20s, there was a guy with greasy hair who smelt like he hadn’t showered since Hitler invaded Poland. What’s worse is that no matter how empty the bus was he would also make a beeline for the nearest girl sitting by herself. This brings me to the next personality. The ‘It’s always better to sit next to someone’. Imagine being in a bus when there’s literally only a few people on it. You have the whole seat to yourself and then someone gets on it. There are empty seats everywhere and they, for some unknown reason, choose to sit next to you. Worse, is when they spread their legs, and this brings me to… The ‘Manspreader’. These of course are guys with testicles the size of small grapes who try and compensate by acting as if their balls are the size of grapefruits, making it impossible from them to have their thighs together. Having tiny testicles often means having a tiny penis, meaning they love to exert their dominance, making it impossible to regain territory without starting World War III. Then there’s the ‘bag buddy’. These are passengers who believe that their bags are their best friends and deserve space on the seat of their own, no matter how full the bus is. You could be on two crutches in you 90s and they will not move their bag, no matter what. Lastly, we have the ‘Asian student’. These are students who spent the previous night studying for a five-hour exam and as a result are constantly falling asleep next to you, landing their head on your shoulder. One final thing. In my own experience, trains are much better to use than buses, but only if they are actually working. Source: [https://www.nzherald.co.nz/lifestyle/auckland-public-transport-etiquette-the-unwritten-rules-of-your-daily-commute/premium/GQ7CKQL4J5GKTE5NV64OLA7DII/](https://www.nzherald.co.nz/lifestyle/auckland-public-transport-etiquette-the-unwritten-rules-of-your-daily-commute/premium/GQ7CKQL4J5GKTE5NV64OLA7DII/?ref=goodoil.news) ### Your Daily Ten@10 - 2026/195 URL: https://goodoil.news/your-daily-ten-10-2026-195/ Last updated: 2026-10-20T21:00:00.000Z **This is edition 2026/195 of the *Ten@10* newsletter.** Hi all, This is the Ten@10, where I collate and summarise ten news items you generally won't see in the mainstream media. Enjoy! --- ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/01-ten195.png) ## 1\. Democracy Briefing: Politicians must act on the overhang campaign *Bryce Edwards - The Democracy Project* - 🗳️ Edwards says the campaign by politicians on left and right to game MMP is escalating, and Luxon and Hipkins need to say what they’d do about it before overseas voting starts on 21 October. - 🏏 The Post’s editorial said Te Pāti Māori’s version was “within the rules” but “best described as cheating”. Matthew Hooton says the right’s version at full stretch would be “a bit like bowling the whole innings underarm, not just the last ball.” - 🧮 On Nine to Noon, Liam Hehir predicted “a record overhang”, including a National overhang of about four or five seats. - 🎭 John Tamihere told Waatea News: “But we want to make it very clear if you get our candidates in it can create the overhang.” Te Pāti Māori’s party list has one name on it, Lance Norman. - 📺 ACT’s new ad has Paul Henry telling viewers how to “keep these guys out”, with the electorate vote shown in blue. ACT says it isn’t trying to create an overhang and blue is one of its own colours. - 🔥 NZ First’s Michael Laws told Platform listeners they “may as well burn” a party vote for National, and Peters said Luxon was “making statements which are just suicidal for the National Party vote”. - 🎲 Edwards’ catch: the advice assumes National wins no list seats, and nobody can know that in advance. “Advice presented as an obvious mathematical truth is a gamble on both.” - 📋 His three asks: condemn engineered overhangs even when they help your own side, say before polling day whether you’d govern on one, and commit to closing the loophole the Electoral Commission flagged in 2012. - 💡 Takeaway: Andrew Geddis says the 2023 review panel thought “we should try to get rid of them, but no one did anything.” Edwards concedes none of this is illegal. The rule only seems to become an emergency once the right learns to use it too. [Read More](https://www.democracyproject.org.nz/p/democracy-briefing-politicians-must?ref=goodoil.news) --- ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/02-ten195.png) ## 2\. Dying To Be Born. *Chris Trotter - Chris Trotter’s Substack* - 🗳️ Trotter starts with 1938, when Labour’s social security and compulsory unionism went to the voters. Sid Holland called it “Applied lunacy!” Savage answered: “Applied Christianity”. Labour won 55.8% and the changes stuck for decades. - ❓ So why can’t anyone build a majority that changes the country that thoroughly now? His answer: today’s parties can’t roll back the changes of the 1980s and 90s, any more than National could reverse the First Labour Government’s. - 🍽️ He doesn’t blame MMP. ACT and the Greens both want sweeping reform, but National and Labour only let their partners “order an entrée”. - 💥 Breaking a consensus like that takes a catastrophe, plus an establishment that has run out of answers. - 🕯️ He reaches for Gramsci: “the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.” Trotter’s morbid symptom is that nearly every viable party has to lie to voters. - 🧭 Since the global financial crisis, he says, neoliberalism no longer guides policy, but nothing has replaced it. Copying MAGA loses votes, and Hipkins is too worried about business and media scorn to ditch the orthodoxy. - 🌿 The Greens and Opportunity are hamstrung because voters doubt they really believe their own radical policies. “As the 1News-Verian poll released earlier this week (13/10/26) confirmed, New Zealand politics is stuck.” - 🪶 He thinks Te Pāti Māori may have more room to move, because its policies come from communities outside the free market. - 💡 Takeaway: if the old order is dying, let it go. “Perhaps it is time for the future to be born.” The left’s best historian hopes Te Pāti Māori brings it. That should worry anyone who has read their policies. [Read More](https://christrotter418256.substack.com/p/dying-to-be-born) --- ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/03-ten195.png) ## 3\. Paul Henry, private worlds, and the social good of creating offense. *Dane Giraud - The Many Ways I Let You Down* - 🎙️ Dane Giraud sits down with Paul Henry on Free to Speak. He says they share a weakness, “or strength”, for saying the thing that might spoil a respectable gathering. - 🏠 After his parents split, Henry swapped a comfortable Howick childhood for industrial Bristol, where his mother worked treble shifts in a plastic bag factory. - 😈 Giraud reckons a bit of offence now and then, tearing a hole in reality, is “A social good if ever there was one.” - 🎥 They talk interviewing, the curiosity journalism needs, and their mate Shubz, a Māori podcaster whose studio runs “on the smell of an oily rag”. - 🤝 Since Giraud helped set up a regular Free Speech Union slot on Shubz’s show, he says hostility has softened, especially towards ACT, with some mostly Māori viewers saying they might vote for old enemies. “Comments aren’t votes, but something is happening.” - 📡 Then the BSA. Giraud says a regulator with a mandate to attack new media would “disproportionately attack Māori and other minority influencers online.” - 💡 Takeaway: is Henry ready to let regulation go? Giraud leaves that for the video. Worth a watch alongside Labour’s promise to keep and modernise the BSA. [Read More](https://danegiraud.substack.com/p/paul-henry-private-worlds-and-the) --- ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/04-ten195.jpg) ## 4\. RICHARD PREBBLE: Does Luxon know something we don’t? *Richard Prebble - Brash & Mitchell* - 🤔 Commentators can’t work out why Luxon keeps ruling out a deal with TOP. Prebble: “Perhaps Luxon knows something they don’t.” - 📊 Parties buy far better polling than the public sees. When he led ACT the local firms were all taken, so ACT hired an American company, “far better than any New Zealand pollster.” - 🇬🇧 National uses Britain’s Sancrox Political Advisory, and Luxon says he only looks at internal polls analysed overseas. - 🔢 A July Talbot Mills poll found 23% of TOP supporters voted National in 2023 and 18% Labour. Roy Morgan has TOP strongest among younger men, who are “hard to enrol and even harder to get to vote.” - 🧪 His theory: the focus groups ask “Would you still vote TOP if Luxon ruled out a deal?” If former National voters say no and former Labour voters say yes, ruling TOP out wins National its voters back. - 🗑️ And if TOP misses 5% and wins no seat, every one of its party votes is wasted. - 💡 Takeaway: Luxon’s “inexplicable political blunder could be a calculated election-winning strategy.” Then the Prebble sting: “perhaps Luxon just doesn’t understand MMP.” [Read More](https://www.brashandmitchell.com/post/richard-prebble-does-luxon-know-something-we-don-t?ref=goodoil.news) --- ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/05-ten195.jpg) ## 5\. Decades Of The Left Demonizing Police Behind Macron’s Failure To Prevent The Riots *Michael Shellenberger - Public* - 🔥 Shellenberger opens with the video of a young French shopkeeper who begged rioters to spare her store, was pushed aside, and watched them loot it. - 🛡️ Macron’s defenders say nobody saw the numbers coming. Macron promised “those who destroyed must pay” and turned down Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez’s offer to resign. - 📅 But the government had known for weeks that the CGT union confederation and the student unions had planned a massive protest for 17 October. - 📊 The Interior Ministry expected 40,000 to 60,000 in Paris and about 100,000 in the rest of the country. Roughly 550,000 turned out, 110,000 of them in Paris. - 👮 Just 60,000 police and security forces were deployed, with few armoured vehicles or tactical units in place beforehand. - 🕵️ French intelligence told a crisis meeting on 1 October that the school movement was “an operation organised by LFI (France Unbowed) and its proxies on the far left.” - 💡 Takeaway: the rest, behind the paywall, pins it on decades of the left demonising police, the same story he told about BLM. A government that won’t back its cops gets the riot it was warned about. [Read More](https://www.public.news/p/decades-of-the-left-demonizing-police?ref=goodoil.news) --- ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/06-ten195.png) ## 6\. Voter Suppression? *Grant Duncan - Politics Happens* - 🗳️ Labour and Green leaders are ringing alarm bells over low enrolment among 18 to 24 year olds, and talking about voter suppression. - 📊 The Electoral Commission says 65.5% of 18 to 24s were enrolled at 15 October. The deadline is 25 October, and this time you can’t enrol and vote on the same day. - 🕰️ Duncan argued back in August 2025 that moving the deadline from polling day “could amount to intentional voter suppression.” - 📉 He accepts the figure is low against recent elections, and “it doesn’t look good for enrolment rates of young people.” - ⚖️ But he says nobody can draw definitive conclusions until the final turnout and enrolment figures by age group are in. - 💡 Takeaway: even a critic of the change says the numbers can’t prove suppression yet. That hasn’t stopped Labour and the Greens crying it three weeks out. [Read More](https://grantduncanphd.substack.com/p/voter-suppression) --- ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/07-ten195.jpg) ## 7\. Not A Right to Silence Issue *David Harvey - A Halfling’s View* - 🤐 National wants adults who know how a child under 12 died to be made to tell the police, with a penalty if they don’t. - ⚖️ Harvey says the label is wrong. The right not to give evidence at trial, and the section 23(4) Bill of Rights right on arrest, belong to suspects and the accused. This is a new duty to give police information. - ✅ He’s fine with the idea: “As a concept that is unobjectionable.” - 🚩 Problem one: one of the adults at the scene may be the killer, who could then lose the right to silence as a suspect. That would be “a significant erosion of the rights of an accused.” - ❓ Problem two: how do police prove beyond reasonable doubt that someone who stays silent actually knew anything? “potentially an unenforceable law.” - 👥 Problem three: six adults, five who genuinely know nothing, and the killer points the finger at someone else. “It has happened.” - 💡 Takeaway: Harvey says “Conceptually the objective is laudable” but calls it a “dog-whistle” election policy. Fair points on drafting, but the families who close ranks around a dead child know exactly what they’re doing. [Read More](https://djhdcj.substack.com/p/not-a-right-to-silence-issue) --- ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/08-ten195.jpg) ## 8\. I asked AI to find Debbie Ngarewa-Packer's worldview *Rodney Hide - Brash & Mitchell* - 🤖 After Rawiri Waititi, Hide turns his AI assistant on Te Pāti Māori’s other co-leader, with the usual rules: exact quotes, checked, and kept apart from what it thinks she meant. - 🏭 She grew up in Pātea in a “freezing-worker family”, shaped by the 1869 Pakakohi prisoners shipped to Dunedin and the 1982 closure of the freezing works. - 🗝️ Her creed, in her own words, is for government to “get out of the way and resource them.” - 🧾 In her maiden speech she called Fox, Grey and Bryce “those monsters on these walls.” The Crown’s 2003 settlement apologised, with redress worth $41 million. - 🌊 Her 2022 bill to ban seabed mining said, three times, “No compensation is payable by the Crown for any loss or damage.” It went down 106 to 13. - 🔥 Walkouts, haka, boycotts and a bill burnt on the forecourt. In her own words: “Nothing that we ever do as Te Pāti Māori is accidental.” - 🏠 She told the House a capital gains tax would raise $200 billion, which Nicola Willis called “the height of innumeracy”. The Herald later reported she owned three properties but had declared one since 2020, though it found four other MPs with similar gaps. - ⚖️ The sharpest tension: her people lost land to a Wellington law without compensation, and her bill would have revoked lawful property rights “and denied compensation by name.” - 💡 Takeaway: Hide’s verdict: “Her solution is tribalism.” And for tribes “to be paid for by everyone else.” That’s Te Pāti Māori in two lines: hands off, wallet open. [Read More](https://www.brashandmitchell.com/post/i-asked-ai-to-find-debbie-ngarewa-packer-s-worldview?ref=goodoil.news) --- ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/09-ten195.jpg) ## 9\. ZORAN RAKOVIC: Voluntary, or Else *Zoran Rakovic - Brash & Mitchell* - 🏛️ Local Government Minister Simon Watts invited councils into his Head Start reform programme. They had three months to prepare proposals, and any council that declined could have an arrangement prepared for it by the Government. - 🔐 Rakovic: “It's rather like a burglar inviting you to open your safe voluntarily, explaining that otherwise he'll open it himself.” - 💸 Councils spent an estimated $9 million on consultants, meetings and reports, and five major Canterbury councils alone spent $428,000. - ⏸️ Then the Government paused the programme, and when mayors asked about the bill, Watts said taking part had been voluntary. One delegate reportedly shot back: “You made us do it.” - 📖 In Wellington, Rakovic says, “voluntary means compulsory, provided the compulsion is sufficiently politely expressed.” - 💡 Takeaway: “Nine million dollars spent, nothing delivered, nobody responsible.” This one is on a coalition minister, and ratepayers are still left holding the bill. [Read More](https://www.brashandmitchell.com/post/zoran-rakovic-voluntary-or-else?ref=goodoil.news) --- ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/10-ten195.jpg) ## 10\. Douglas Murray: France Stares Down the Abyss of History *Douglas Murray - The Free Press* - 🔥 Whenever France burns, Murray says, people reach for precedents: 1968, 2005, 1848 or 1789. - 🏫 He calls the line that these riots are “school protests” an “asinine claim”. - 💶 French government spending hit 57 percent of GDP last year, education spending is above the OECD average, and debt is 115 percent of GDP. - 🎓 “France is, if anything, spending too much on the education of its youth.” - 👀 Working out what is fuelling the riots, he says, “requires nothing more than having eyes.” - 💡 Takeaway: the rest is behind the paywall, but the subtitle warns there’s no guarantee French culture survives its discontents. Coming from the author of The Strange Death of Europe, expect no happy ending. [Read More](https://www.thefp.com/p/douglas-murray-france-stares-down-riots?ref=goodoil.news) --- ## What our members are saying about Ten@10 **Elizabeth** These articles are compulsory reading for me and the perfect addition to the usual list of Goodoil items! **Lynne** Absolutely brilliant to receive these current and thought provoking articles. **Jonathan** Just wanted to let you know that I’m loving this new 10@10\. Much appreciated from someone who chooses to read/watch almost NO mainstream media. **Murray** Cam, relish your output as the newspaper in Christchurch is so intent on non news. Thankyou **Fred** Thanks for Ten @ Ten, really enjoy reading it.Keep it up. All the best, keep healthy. **Jocko** Wonderful info not otherwise available in NZ. More power to your elbow! Thanks. ### A Bad Case of Amnesia URL: https://goodoil.news/a-bad-case-of-amnesia/ Last updated: 2026-10-20T20:29:59.000Z [**Ani O’Brien**](https://aniobrien.substack.com/p/scaremongering-unions-have-a-bad-case-of-amnesia) *Like good faith disagreements and principled people. Dislike disingenuousness and Foucault. Care especially about women’s rights, justice, and democracy.* I am not here to dispute the reality that New Zealand’s hospitals and wider health system is struggling. Nurses are burnt out, patients have to wait too long, and our resources are never enough. Nothing in this essay is intended to pretend this is not the case. However, I am going to challenge the particular political narrative that our health system has fallen apart all of a sudden under this government due to unprecedented underfunding and understaffing – because that just isn’t true. New Zealand’s health system has been teetering around crisis point for decades and under successive governments, and every three years we seem doomed to play a game of *whose fault is it*. However, this term, the usual script has been turbo boosted by a seriously effective campaign to embed a particular narrative from the start that could be cashed in on at the end. In this first essay, I am going to outline the current story of the state of our health system and then, in a follow up, I will step you through the masterclass in misinformation achieved by the Public Service Association and New Zealand Nurses Organisation, and other unions. Over the past few months New Zealanders have been treated to article after article of medical disasters and health system failings. Many of them relate to things that happened several years ago and that the coroner is only now reporting on, but that bit never makes the headline. Others are real failings, but they are unfortunately so ordinary that we have experienced them regularly for years. Patients being treated in corridors? Google it and you’ll find an almost annual renewed interest in the phenomena going back years. Emergency Department wait times? Same. Wards understaffed? Tale as old as time. This past week we have seen particularly upsetting reporting relating to the haematology and oncology ward at Starship Children’s Hospital where cancer treatments have had to be rescheduled. Accompanying the stories have been descriptions of nurses who are frightened by staffing pressures and feel like they cannot provide a high enough standard of care for their patients. This is a highly emotive subject that very few people would be unmoved by. Kids. Cancer. Systemic failings. Unfortunately though, our natural empathy for the children battling cancer and their parents makes us ripe for manipulation. Or at least presents an opportunity for political leverage. Labour’s health spokesperson Dr Ayesha Verrall has accused the government of putting *children’s lives at risk* because in her view they are *choosing* not hire more nurses. She does this knowing that when she was health minister she encountered similar situations. The nurses’ union, New Zealand Nurses Organisation (NZNO), likewise describes the staffing situation as evidence of *deliberate* short-staffing by Health New Zealand. And the news media dutifully follows with salacious headlines and articles that have lifted entire sections directly from an NZNO press release. It is totally reasonable that anyone reading the headlines about overcrowding, exhaustion, delays, deterioration, and a health system in crisis might conclude that our hospitals have been neglected (or worse) by Christopher Luxon and the coalition government. However, there are some rather inconvenient facts that disprove this and some of them can be sourced from NZNO’s own records. The same Starship oncology ward now at the centre of the staffing controversy was operating below its staffing target for approximately three quarters of shifts in 2023, when Labour was in government. That year, Ward 27B recorded 791 shifts below target, according to figures publicised by NZNO in May 2024.[1](https://aniobrien.substack.com/p/scaremongering-unions-have-a-bad-case-of-amnesia#footnote-1) By 2025, under the coalition government, the number of understaffed shifts had fallen to less than a third. This year, the ward had an exceptionally bad August and hit 85 per cent, but has since dropped back down again to 73 per cent in September and for the first two weeks of October it was at just 33 per cent. August was an anomaly. In fact, four additional staff have recently started and another seven are expected to start over the next three months. Despite having access to this same complete data, when the NZNO put out a press release last week, they chose to leave out the rapid recovery after August.[2](https://aniobrien.substack.com/p/scaremongering-unions-have-a-bad-case-of-amnesia#footnote-2) RNZ reproduced the same data, but after the rather convenient framing was pointed out, updated their graph to include September and October.[3](https://aniobrien.substack.com/p/scaremongering-unions-have-a-bad-case-of-amnesia#footnote-3) ![Image](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!oMfo!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F08b7883f-3f88-4a48-bb57-6385923824fa_650x535.jpeg "Image") RNZ article before the graph was updated. Not only did the NZNO present the staffing levels in a way to obscure that they had already rapidly improved, but they made it about *this* government despite staffing levels being worse under the last according to their own data! It was this that prompted me to think more deeply about how the unions have framed up a narrative around our health system these past few years. Of course, I know like everyone does that the unions are inextricably tied to Labour and they will always approach things with their interests in mind, but this becomes problematic when the media treats them as if they are apolitical and agenda-less beyond higher wages for their workers. In cases like this one where the news media reproduces data and a fully formed story uncritically, we can see the enormous power the unions have to paint a picture for New Zealanders of what our public service looks like. Suspicious that the unions have constructed a much more embedded and effective crisis narrative around one of our longest standing governance issues, I decided to dig into the data and the press releases and try to establish the truth from the spin. What I found was, as I have already said, a system that has entrenched long-term problems. But, I also found that the measurable national picture based on data and records is far less uniformly bleak than the unions, Labour, and the media would have us believe. In fact, some health indicators have improved substantially in the past few years. Others remain stubbornly problematic, and in a few areas there has been continued deterioration. I could take you back decades for a meander through the bigger picture of our beleaguered health system, but we all know this is already going to be far too long, so I have decided to focus mostly on the coalition government and the 2017–2023 Labour governments. There is certainly enough in the last almost decade for us to look at. To begin with, let’s travel back to 2022 when Jacinda Ardern was prime minister and Andrew Little was minister of health. In May that year, NZNO launched *Maranga Mai!* which was a nationwide campaign to secure political commitments, increased funding, better pay, and safer staffing. NZNO chief executive Paul Goulter may be very quick to blame the woes of the health system on the coalition now, but at the time he blamed decades of poor planning, inadequate funding, and neglect for a nursing workforce suffering serious shortages and poor morale. By July 2022, things had got scratchy between the union and Labour and NZNO were demanding that Andrew Little acknowledge a national health crisis.[4](https://aniobrien.substack.com/p/scaremongering-unions-have-a-bad-case-of-amnesia#footnote-4) They even accused him of making inaccurate and disparaging comments about organisations raising concerns. A week later, the union followed up by publishing the results of an appeal to their members that had attracted more than 2,700 responses in just two days. Of those responses, 70 per cent described the system being in crisis, while 29 per cent said things were past crisis point.[5](https://aniobrien.substack.com/p/scaremongering-unions-have-a-bad-case-of-amnesia#footnote-5) This moment of fractiousness between usual allies illustrates that the language of impending system collapse, frontline exhaustion, and patients at risk is not something that has appeared as a result of a uniquely awful coalition government starving the system of resources. It is to the union’s credit that the same arguments being directed at Simeon Brown were being directed at Andrew Little four years earlier. The only difference is that they *never* call for Labour to be voted out whereas that is their call to action when National is in charge. A little later in 2023, when Dr Ayesha Verrall was health minister, nurses working in Ward 5 of Gisborne Hospital took industrial action against the Labour government due to staffing and patient safety concerns. Health New Zealand went to the Employment Court in an unsuccessful attempt to prevent the action and the nurses proceeded to strike on 24 May 2023.[6](https://aniobrien.substack.com/p/scaremongering-unions-have-a-bad-case-of-amnesia#footnote-6) Dr Verrall is now Labour’s health spokesperson and she has spent the past term attempting to prosecute Dr Shane Reti and then Simeon Brown for the same circumstances she herself was in charge of before the change of government. She has been unrelenting in her attacks on staffing levels, patients being treated in corridors, and overcapacity emergency departments. It is like politicians think the slate gets wiped clean at each election and their own records no longer matter. The change of government might have removed the responsibilities from her and plopped them in the lap of Reti and Brown, but the problems are essentially the same. The Gisborne example is particularly interesting because it was about the same issues that are being reported on in relation to Starship today. Further exploration led me to the report commissioned by NZNO in August 2025 called *‘How many more nurses does New Zealand need?’*.[7](https://aniobrien.substack.com/p/scaremongering-unions-have-a-bad-case-of-amnesia#footnote-7) Infometrics researchers analysed approximately 1.69 million nursing shifts across 59 hospitals between January 2022 and November 2024 using Health New Zealand data. This timeframe straddles the end of the Labour government and the beginning of the coalition government. The report findings show that hospitals experienced an average daily aggregate shortfall equivalent to 631 nursing FTEs per shift in 2022, rising to 684 in 2023, and falling to 587 in the first 11 months of 2024\. To refresh your memory, the election was on October 14th 2023 and coalition government was sworn in on November 27th. So again, the NZNO’s own data and behaviour demonstrates not a worsening of conditions under the coalition, but rather in this case an improvement. Yet, in the past term, the union has consistently presented the issue as one relating directly to what they characterise as spending constraints and frontline cuts.[8](https://aniobrien.substack.com/p/scaremongering-unions-have-a-bad-case-of-amnesia#footnote-8) *“We have an impoverished health system that continues to be eroded by the coalition government’s spending restraints and frontline service cuts,”* NZNO chief executive Paul Goulter said, in May 2024\. His press release went on on to say, *“Mr Goulter said this is what failure to properly fund health looks like on the front line and that the data shows we simply cannot afford any further service or funding cuts.”* Conversely, the coalition government has made a song and a dance of the five national health targets. Simeon Brown goes on about them at question time with admirable (if monotonous) persistence. And, after a proper look through them I can understand why. The figures are published by Health New Zealand and are credible and measurable. They also show clear as day that there has been a lot of improvement in our health system. Comparing the April to June quarter of 2026 to that of 2025, Health New Zealand reported improvements in all five national targets.[9](https://aniobrien.substack.com/p/scaremongering-unions-have-a-bad-case-of-amnesia#footnote-9) The proportion of patients on the elective treatment waitlist who waited less than four months increased from 63.9 per cent to 72.6 per cent. To clarify, *“elective treatment”* doesn’t mean *optional* or suggest it is somehow cosmetic. It means planned treatment that doesn’t require emergency intervention, e.g., hip or knee replacements, cataract surgery, or getting tonsils removed. Patients receiving a first specialist assessment within four months also increased from 62 per cent to 66.1 per cent. Likewise, the proportion of emergency department patients admitted, discharged, or transferred within six hours increased from 73.9 per cent to 76.3 per cent and in relation to cancer treatment it bumped up from 86.3 per cent to 87 per cent. Across Health New Zealand’s quarterly performance framework, 19 of 25 measures showed year on year improvement. So, not total success and the crisis certainly hasn’t been solved, but the results certainly don’t back up the idea that the health system is experiencing total decimation under this government. If we zoom out and look back across the entire 2017–2026 period regarding emergency department performance, the data similarly does not fit with the unions’ narrative. In April to June 2018 (the Ardern Labour government took office at the end of October 2017), 89.5 per cent of patients were admitted, discharged, or transferred within six hours. By the end of Labour’s six years this was at 71.1 per cent (April-June 2022/23).[10](https://aniobrien.substack.com/p/scaremongering-unions-have-a-bad-case-of-amnesia#footnote-10) Labour can point to Covid-19 to explain some of the deterioration, but remember that we were locked in our homes and much more reluctant to go to hospital for other things during that time too. It was not all pandemic-related. Regardless of the causes, the coalition government had that number back up to 76.3 per cent in April to June 2025/26.[11](https://aniobrien.substack.com/p/scaremongering-unions-have-a-bad-case-of-amnesia#footnote-11) Now let’s look at diagnostic waitlists. According to a Health New Zealand’s September 2026 report, the number of patients waiting for CT scans fell by 48 per cent in the year to June 2026 and the MRI waiting lists fell by 33 per cent.[12](https://aniobrien.substack.com/p/scaremongering-unions-have-a-bad-case-of-amnesia#footnote-12) Coronary angiography waiting lists fell by about 29 per cent and the combined reported diagnostic waitlist dropped by 21 per cent. Additionally, the Diagnostic Boost Programme delivered 89,039 additional procedures during 2025/26, smashing its target by more than 14,000. I have given you some of the highlights, but the whole system clearly isn’t where it needs to be. The government’s own targets show just how far there is to go. At 72.6 per cent, although much better, the elective treatment stat remains well below the 95 per cent target for 2030\. The issue I am looking at here is not that there is something wrong with the unions criticising government performance. My observation is that inadequate performance and *improving* performance are not mutually exclusive. Things can be getting better and in fact be much better than they were under the last government, and still not be good enough. The same can be said to be true of funding. More funding is great, but that doesn’t mean it will ever be enough. If you listen to Labour and the unions you might think that the coalition government has stripped funding out of the health system and is starving it of resources. I mean, they say basically that regularly. But, again the actual evidence, the data, does not support those claims. According to Ministry of Health figures, health funding for 2026/27 totals $33.031 billion up from $30.476 billion in 2025/26.[13](https://aniobrien.substack.com/p/scaremongering-unions-have-a-bad-case-of-amnesia#footnote-13) That’s an extra $2.6 billion or an 8.4 per cent increase. However, not all of that money goes directly into things like treating patients because it includes spending on hospital buildings and equipment etc. The funding available for day to day operations including paying staff increased by 5.7 per cent and funding for services delivered by Health New Zealand increased by six per cent though. For some historical perspective, Labour’s first budget in 2018 allocated $18.2 billion to health. They increased this each year and in 2023 their final budget had $26.5 billion for health. The coalition has continued this trend and increased funding with each budget. There has been no ‘*slashing’* or ‘*cutting’*. We can argue about whether the size of increases was substantial enough and bring things like inflation into the equation, but it is completely false to say that any budget over the past three terms has taken health funding backwards. The coalition also inherited Labour’s new split health system. Considerable amounts of money had been spent on health reforms and recruitment and the system was under immense financial pressure. Even though the coalition quickly disestablished the Māori Health Authority, a lot of the staff were absorbed back into the wider system and they could not unspend what had already been spent. Consequently, in June 2024, Health New Zealand introduced recruitment restrictions and regional approvals processes that were meant to bring staffing expenditure under control. Some non-patient-facing role recruitment was paused, but there was never a halt on frontline hiring.[14](https://aniobrien.substack.com/p/scaremongering-unions-have-a-bad-case-of-amnesia#footnote-14) The unions have frequently described this as a *“hiring freeze”*. *Ad nauseam*. They turned getting extra sign off before hiring into a conspiracy not to hire any nurses. Health New Zealand are unfortunately operating in the same world as the rest of us and when things are tight you make sure your spending is strictly necessary. This technicality, however, has formed the basis of a great deal of the scaremongering narrative being propagated by the NZNO and the Public Service Association. And my goodness, the unions love to weaponise a technicality. Everyone in the country has probably heard Labour and the unions’ outrage that *“only 54 new nurses”* have been hired in the past two years. In order to get that number they are comparing the workforce of approximately 29,404 nursing FTEs in March 2024 to 29,458 in March 2026\. Technically 54, right? Yes, if you choose that specific sliver of time in order to exclude the recruitment surge that occurred just before March 2024 that saw thousands enter the workforce. It also doesn’t take into account that recruitment was continuing but retirements and resignations were offsetting it. The true picture of health this term is not what either side would prefer. Labour and the unions want to be able to portray the government as being responsible for the crisis due to austerity and mismanagement, while Christopher Luxon probably wishes he could have waved a magic wand and fixed everything. The reality is the coalition inherited significant workforce shortages, saw a substantial increase in nursing employment in the first six months of its term, then presided over a period of limited net growth. It continued to increase the health budget and improved several important health measures, while some individual departments have struggled to recruit staff. There are still significant issues. Both sides have access to the same data, but they are shaping and presenting it to New Zealanders in vastly different ways. One side has an interest in highlighting improvements and increased spending, the other in highlighting failures. If we return to Ward 27B at Starship we see this in action. Health New Zealand Auckland Group Operations Director Dr Mike Shepherd has characterised the issue as a time of *“high demand”* and *“very high staff sickness”*.[15](https://aniobrien.substack.com/p/scaremongering-unions-have-a-bad-case-of-amnesia#footnote-15) He says that while nursing shortages have forced some cancer treatment delays, it is a matter of about 20 chemotherapy cycles out of 600 being delayed a few days. A spokesperson for the minister further explained that two bone marrow transplants had been moved *“slightly”*, but were going ahead. The picture painted by Health New Zealand and Simeon Brown is one of (unfortunately) routine juggling of resources and staff due to flu season and existing pressures. On the other hand, NZNO Kaiwhakahaere Kerri Nuku said *“Health Minister Simeon Brown can argue oncology services are being postponed not suspended but such semantics are unlikely to be important to whānau with children with cancer.”* What’s more Nuku made the extraordinary accusation that the short staffing was *“deliberate”.*[16](https://aniobrien.substack.com/p/scaremongering-unions-have-a-bad-case-of-amnesia#footnote-16)If the NZNO has proof that Health New Zealand and the minister are deliberately putting children with cancer at risk they should present it because otherwise it is a pretty revolting claim. Nuku has worked for more than a decade and a half at NZNO and is hardly a dispassionate observer of the coalition government. Her penchant for hyperbole extends far beyond the usual complaints about nursing shortages. In her regular commentary posted to the NZNO website she makes clear that her view is not that the government is simply making policy decisions she does not agree with. No, no, no. She says the coalition is engaged in an assault on women’s rights, undermining the independence of the nursing profession, and pursuing an agenda to erase Māori from legislation. She has accused the government of using a *“dog whistle designed to whip up racism”*, alleged that health workforce data is being *“fudged”* and facts *“massaged”* and even declared that ministers are *“selling multi-million dollar citizenship to the billionaires who are burning the world to the ground”*.[17](https://aniobrien.substack.com/p/scaremongering-unions-have-a-bad-case-of-amnesia#footnote-17) Nuku’s criticism on the NZNO site covers colonialism, climate policy, landlords, parliamentary democracy, and international conflicts. She even claimed *“This coalition government punched women in the face”*.[18](https://aniobrien.substack.com/p/scaremongering-unions-have-a-bad-case-of-amnesia#footnote-18) These perspectives are delivered to thousands and thousands of nurses every week. They work hard in challenging conditions and then are fed a steady diet of blame centred on austerity, cuts, and deliberate under-resourcing. Most nurses will take an ordinary amount of interest in politics, that is not much interest at all. Consequently, their union is able to be their primary source of political information and what they are being served is highly highly politicised and partisan. After examining the historical record and current performance data, I am convinced that the New Zealand’s healthcare debate is suffering from serious lack of proportion. The problems exist and some are distressing for patients and their families, but on the whole they represent the daily challenge of running an under pressure health system. However, the unions, Labour, and the media are being extremely selective in what they focus on and how microscopic and hyperbolic they get with certain stories. The government of the day has a responsibility to explain how its decisions are addressing the problems, whether they inherited them or not. They certainly cannot hide behind the previous government’s failings forever. But the opposition and the unions should act ethically and morally in their criticism. Scaremongering about cancer treatment is not, in my view, ethical. They should highlight problems but proportionally and in context. Neither under nor overplaying the state of our health system helps New Zealanders. After decades of struggle we need political will and consensus to effect change. Taking turns to be defensive and critical every few years is politics, but it is not what is best for this country. What the unions are currently doing is putting their own political interests above the people of New Zealand. They are powerful organisations and their own documents make it clear that they regard influencing public opinion as an important part of their work.[19](https://aniobrien.substack.com/p/scaremongering-unions-have-a-bad-case-of-amnesia#footnote-19) The PSA has explicitly committed itself to campaigning for a change of government and NZNO has been less explicit though its intents are obvious.[20](https://aniobrien.substack.com/p/scaremongering-unions-have-a-bad-case-of-amnesia#footnote-20) Journalists have a responsibility to do better than reproduce the claims of unions by publishing their press releases *verbatim*. They should be verifying their claims and examining context. The same scrutiny should obviously apply to ministerial press releases. Everyone is acting in their own interests, particularly in this election period. New Zealanders deserve better than being spoonfed the hyperbolic assertions of Labour-aligned unions without disclosure or challenge. *In my next essay, I will examine more deeply how the NZNO, PSA, and Labour have communicated our healthcare problems, the political objectives documented in their own publications, and the extent to which news coverage has tested their claims.* [1](https://aniobrien.substack.com/p/scaremongering-unions-have-a-bad-case-of-amnesia#footnote-anchor-1) https://www.nzno.org.nz/about\_us/media\_releases/artmid/4731/articleid/6776/official-nurse-unsafe-staffing-figures-genuinely-alarming [2](https://aniobrien.substack.com/p/scaremongering-unions-have-a-bad-case-of-amnesia#footnote-anchor-2) https://nzno.org.nz/about\_us/media\_releases/artmid/4731/articleid/7293/starship-oncology-ward-short-staffed-85-of-all-shifts-in-august? [3](https://aniobrien.substack.com/p/scaremongering-unions-have-a-bad-case-of-amnesia#footnote-anchor-3) https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/health/1927376/starship-hospital-s-cancer-ward-three-months-away-from-full-staff-after-chemotherapy-delays [4](https://aniobrien.substack.com/p/scaremongering-unions-have-a-bad-case-of-amnesia#footnote-anchor-4) https://nzno.org.nz/about\_us/media\_releases/artmid/4731/articleid/6491/nzno-calls-for-urgent-health-sector-conference-on-crisis [5](https://aniobrien.substack.com/p/scaremongering-unions-have-a-bad-case-of-amnesia#footnote-anchor-5) https://www.nzno.org.nz/about\_us/media\_releases/artmid/4731/articleid/6492/2700-heartfelt-pleas-to-health-minister-by-members-of-nzno [6](https://aniobrien.substack.com/p/scaremongering-unions-have-a-bad-case-of-amnesia#footnote-anchor-6) https://maranga-mai.nzno.org.nz/gisborne\_safety\_strike [7](https://aniobrien.substack.com/p/scaremongering-unions-have-a-bad-case-of-amnesia#footnote-anchor-7) https://www.nzno.org.nz/Portals/0/publications/Report%20-%20Infometrics%20report%20how%20many%20more%20nurses%20does%20New%20Zealand%20need%20August%202025%20FINAL.pdf [8](https://aniobrien.substack.com/p/scaremongering-unions-have-a-bad-case-of-amnesia#footnote-anchor-8) https://www.nzno.org.nz/about\_us/media\_releases/artmid/4731/articleid/6776/official-nurse-unsafe-staffing-figures-genuinely-alarming [9](https://aniobrien.substack.com/p/scaremongering-unions-have-a-bad-case-of-amnesia#footnote-anchor-9) https://www.healthnz.govt.nz/news-and-updates/more-new-zealanders-receiving-the-right-care-when-they-need-it [10](https://aniobrien.substack.com/p/scaremongering-unions-have-a-bad-case-of-amnesia#footnote-anchor-10) https://www.beehive.govt.nz/sites/default/files/2025-09/Report%20Card%20-%20Shorter%20Stays%20in%20Emergency%20Department%20%281%29.pdf? [11](https://aniobrien.substack.com/p/scaremongering-unions-have-a-bad-case-of-amnesia#footnote-anchor-11) https://www.healthnz.govt.nz/news-and-updates/more-new-zealanders-benefiting-from-a-stronger-health-system? [12](https://aniobrien.substack.com/p/scaremongering-unions-have-a-bad-case-of-amnesia#footnote-anchor-12) https://www.healthnz.govt.nz/news-and-updates/radiology-boost-helps-more-patients-access-diagnostic-tests-sooner [13](https://aniobrien.substack.com/p/scaremongering-unions-have-a-bad-case-of-amnesia#footnote-anchor-13) https://www.health.govt.nz/about-us/new-zealands-health-system/vote-health/budget-2026/health-funding-trends [14](https://aniobrien.substack.com/p/scaremongering-unions-have-a-bad-case-of-amnesia#footnote-anchor-14) https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/health/1055811/documents-reveal-health-nz-hiring-crackdown [15](https://aniobrien.substack.com/p/scaremongering-unions-have-a-bad-case-of-amnesia#footnote-anchor-15) https://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/audio/dr-mike-shepherd-health-new-zealand-auckland-group-operations-director-on-starship-delaying-cancer-treatments-amid-nurse-shortage/ [16](https://aniobrien.substack.com/p/scaremongering-unions-have-a-bad-case-of-amnesia#footnote-anchor-16) https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/health/1918105/auckland-s-starship-hospital-delays-some-cancer-treatments-due-to-nurse-shortage [17](https://aniobrien.substack.com/p/scaremongering-unions-have-a-bad-case-of-amnesia#footnote-anchor-17) https://nzno.org.nz/about\_us/our\_leaders\_speak/kaiwhakahaere/artmid/8390/articleid/6978/kaiwhakahaere-kerri-nuku-our-government-doesn%E2%80%99t-want-us-to-be-involved-in-the-world-but-it%E2%80%99s-coming-for-us? [18](https://aniobrien.substack.com/p/scaremongering-unions-have-a-bad-case-of-amnesia#footnote-anchor-18) https://www.nzno.org.nz/about\_us/our\_leaders\_speak/kaiwhakahaere/artmid/8390/articleid/6887/kaiwhakahaere-kerri-nuku-a-bit-of-w%C4%81hine-m%C4%81ori-inspiration-as-we-fight-for-all-women? [19](https://aniobrien.substack.com/p/scaremongering-unions-have-a-bad-case-of-amnesia#footnote-anchor-19) https://www.nzno.org.nz/Portals/0/Files/2026/NZNO%20Maranga%20Mai%21%202026-2027%20Approved.pdf? [20](https://aniobrien.substack.com/p/scaremongering-unions-have-a-bad-case-of-amnesia#footnote-anchor-20) https://www.psa.org.nz/te-mahinga-ora/te-mahinga-ora-july-2026? This article was originally published by [Thought Crimes](https://aniobrien.substack.com/p/scaremongering-unions-have-a-bad-case-of-amnesia). ### ACT and NZ First: The Other Grand Alliance URL: https://goodoil.news/act-and-nz-first-the-other-grand-alliance/ Last updated: 2026-10-20T20:14:59.000Z Unite these parties, convince some of the Nat holdouts to get with the winning team and we’ve got a fighting chance of a genuine conservative government. _This post is for paying subscribers only._ ### Good Luck Chippie – You’ll Need It URL: https://goodoil.news/good-luck-chippie-youll-need-it/ Last updated: 2026-10-20T19:59:59.000Z Hipkins’ bedfellows are bordering on the bizarre. If only we could have a leaders debate featuring Hipkins, Swarbrick, Waititi and Wong. Hipkins would find himself spending 90 minutes between three rocks and a hard place. The differences between Labour and the rest would be of such magnitude that split voting on the right, now vital to determining the outcome of the election, would become completely unnecessary. The policy rubbish coming from the Greens, Māori Party and Opportunity Party can only mean they are not taking ‘thinking’ voters seriously – it’s more like they are taking us for fools. On election night they might just find out who the fools really are – themselves. They are certainly giving the impression they have absolutely no clue about the economy. If we take a look at the cost of promises by each party to October 12th, the Taxpayers Union Bribe-O-Meter gives the following statistics: ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/image-6.png) You can see the night and day difference between the left and right. The left’s combined costings are burdening households with nearly a quarter of a million annually and that is before the unknown amounts from the Māori Party. The irony is those who can least afford to pay these punitive sums will vote for these parties, tricked into believing everything is free. Nothing is free. This is the equivalent of the blind leading the blind. And these figures are five weeks old. Goodness knows what the numbers are like now. The number of Kiwis paying tax is 4,750,300 million. The majority of those are in the top three tax brackets, 30 per cent, 33 per cent and 39 per cent in the top bracket. This shows indisputably who pays the bulk of the tax in this country and gives a lie to the propaganda the left continue to peddle on this matter. The Bribe-O-Meter figures are an absolute nightmare for Hipkins. He will be continually hounded by the Greens, Opportunity and Māori, not to mention Willie Jackson and his mates in the Labour caucus, to spend, spend, spend. Willie said it out loud on *Q+A* “We need to spend more.” Hipkins will be permanently in the eye of a storm. If he has the fortitude to say ‘no’ (which I doubt), then expect a degree of anarchy to follow. The cabinet will be in chaos, as will the country. It’s not beyond the bounds of possibility that Hipkins will have to call an early election. The little fellow will be having his ears boxed from all sides. I very much doubt he has the stamina or the strength to see it through. His three so-called coalition partners have more in common with each other than they do with him. Gangs are currently in the news, in a bad way for Hipkins and the left. Wait till these three gang up on him and Labour. That scenario is a truly scary thought for those of us on the right. It must be prevented at all costs. I think the split vote will give a much higher result for NZ First than the polls are showing and probably ACT will also go higher. This is what will avoid the unmitigated disaster of a left-wing catastrophe. The polls, with the exception of a couple, are highly misleading. The same scenario is playing out right now in America in the mid-terms. The polls are predicting disaster for Trump and the Republicans and have them losing both the House and the Senate while early voting has the GOP well ahead. Hipkins is on a hiding to nothing, even if he wins. He will not be able to control those in the other parties who will coerce, demand and threaten. He will be manipulated to high heaven. We could witness possibly the shortest premiership in our history, certainly in our lifetime. God help us if it should come to pass. Split your vote. ### Quick Hit: He Was Chairing It URL: https://goodoil.news/quick-hit-he-was-chairing-it/ Last updated: 2026-10-20T19:29:59.000Z Hipkins says he isn’t sure the Mob’s $2.75m ever went to cabinet. The Taxpayers’ Union says his own cabinet turned down a plan to stop gang contracts in July 2023, while he was prime minister. _This post is for subscribers on the VIP tier only._ ### Teacher Registration Has Been Fraught Since It Was Introduced URL: https://goodoil.news/teacher-registration-has-been-fraught-since-it-was-introduced/ Last updated: 2026-10-20T19:29:59.000Z [**Peter Williams**](https://peterallanwilliams.substack.com/p/the-teaching-council-disgrace) *Writer and broadcaster for half a century. Now watching from the sidelines although verbalising thoughts on www.reality* [*check.radio*](http://check.radio/?ref=goodoil.news) *three days a week.* Among the understandable outrage over the Timothy Fisher scandal and the Teaching Council, there was one incident which doesn’t inspire much confidence for the future of this organization which is responsible for the registration and regulation of the country’s 124,000 teachers. Fisher was the sexual deviant who was finally sent to prison last year for crimes committed while he was a teacher, crimes the Teaching Council knew about as far back as 2015 but it never intervened or cancelled his registration, thus allowing him to continue working as a teacher. Education Minister Erica Stanford has now completely restructured the Teaching Council and all members of the governing council are appointed by her. The new chair is Patrick Walsh. For the best part of two decades he was principal at Rotorua’s John Paul College before moving back to Auckland and landing the plum job as headmaster of Sacred Heart College in 2022. As the newish Teaching Council chair, he fronted the fallout from Katherine Anderson KC’s report into how useless the council was during the Fisher case. Appearing on Newstalk ZB the morning after the report came out, Mike Hosking excused Walsh from any culpability into not dealing with Fisher by stating at the outset: “…important to point out that you only arrived in July this year, so you inherited this. Were you shocked?” Walsh must have thought that this was his lucky day. His feet would not be held to the fire. It doesn’t take much research to find that Walsh, a long-time teacher union man after being president of the Secondary Principals Association (SPANZ) for nine years, was an elected member of the Teaching Council from 2019, years when the council knew of Timothy Fisher but did nothing about him. That Hosking and his production team didn’t use this easily found fact to push Walsh on what the hell was going on is a poor reflection on an influential media outlet. Walsh could have corrected the record on-air to Hosking, but he didn’t. Make of that what you will. He then spent a couple of minutes issuing the predictable platitudes – we dropped the ball, we should have been safeguarding children, etc, etc …. Then to finish, a disturbing reaction from him to Hosking’s question: “Can you say in front of the nation, this could never, would never, happen again?” There was a significant pause, a sure sign the interviewee is uncomfortable. But then this. “I couldn’t, hand on heart, say that. But the processes we’re putting in place will make that rare indeed.” So it could happen again! There is quite the back story to the Teaching Council. Up till 1989, there was no formal teacher registration system and teachers were hired by education boards which covered a provincial area or a group of high schools. They had to have a trained teacher certificate obtainable after graduating from a state-run teachers college or university, and once in the classroom their expertise or otherwise was monitored bi-annually by Department of Education inspectors. The system worked pretty well for 102 years. My parents, sister and late first wife were all part of it. Many still ask if it wasn’t broke, why was it fixed? But David Lange introduced his Tomorrow’s Schools scheme in 1989, scrapping the area boards, giving every school its own board and introducing teacher registration through the Teacher Registration Board (TRB). It was hardly a raging success. For a time registration was even voluntary! But the key issue was that the TRB had limited direct accountability to the teaching profession itself. Then Labour Education Minister Trevor Mallard tightened the system in 2002, establishing the Teachers Council with 11 members, seven of whom would be elected. It was the start of the teacher unions beginning to flex their muscles in the teacher registration space. The name changed in 2015 to the Education Council of Aotearoa New Zealand (EDUCANZ), where all nine members would be appointed by the minister, at that time in a National-led government. But Chris Hipkins became the education minister three years later and, in 2018, changed the name to the Teaching Council and reintroduced elected members, meaning the unions could install a majority – seven to six – over appointed members. The system allowed Nicola Ngarewa, sister of Debbie and now principal of Spotswood College in New Plymouth, to become chair of the Teaching Council from 2019 to 2022\. She was appointed by Hipkins. An online biography of her states she’s “committed to disrupting traditional education models.” (Among her initiatives at Spotswood College, according to Stuff, “is a new curriculum, based on international research, where students can create their own timetables around their own interests, and an optional wellness centre.” In the last three years Spotswood College has had NCEA level three pass rates under 45 per cent of the cohort and University Entrance attained by under 20 per cent of the school leavers.) Also prominent on the Teaching Council in recent years has been Ripeka Lessels, now the president of the primary teachers’ union, the NZEI. She was appointed to the council in 2019, at the same time as Patrick Walsh, and became deputy chair in 2022\. Her role as NZEI president began in 2024. Erica Stanford has said she’s “not sure” if Mrs Lessels’ role as the NZEI leader “is tenable anymore”. Since Nicola Ngarewa finished as Teaching Council chair in 2022, a woman named Robyn Baker was in charge for nearly three years. She’s a former CEO of the New Zealand Council for Educational Research, the organisation dedicated to, among other priorities, “improving equity in education” and “centring indigenous knowledge in education.” Chris Hipkins’ mother Rose retired as the chief researcher there last year. The Teaching Council also had another scandal to deal with in recent times. Its CEO Lesley Hoskin finally resigned earlier this year after it was revealed her husband’s company Clemenger was awarded $1.7 million in contracts for consultancy work. So Erica Stanford is absolutely right in dealing to the council. The Hoskin affair, then a scathing report on the culture, effectiveness and priorities of the council by consultant Debbie Francis and now the Anderson KC report on Timothy Fisher add up to a sorry story. The council was dysfunctional, but Stanford hasn’t helped matters, either, by the people she’s appointed. Former Westlake Boys High principal David Ferguson was the chair for barely a year, during which time it was revealed he’d received $750,000 in government funding to set up a private teacher training facility, the Teachers Institute. How could Stanford have a founder and chief executive of a private teacher training institution in a role as chair of the body which registers graduate and other teachers? Has she never heard of a concept called conflict of interest? So Ferguson moved on and in July this year Stanford made Walsh the chair, part of the furniture which was there supervising the shambles of the last seven years! That’s something the country’s largest radio audience should have known last week. What all this suggests is that teacher registration, now fully paid for by the government, has been fraught with political and ideological issues since the introduction of the concept during Tomorrow’s Schools nearly 40 years ago. A return to the time of school inspectors is probably too much to ask but we should remember that was an era when New Zealand educational achievement was world leading, and teachers went in front of a classroom with advanced numeracy and literacy skills! For now Stanford has put herself in charge of the Teaching Council member appointment process. However we all know what will happen if Chris Hipkins becomes prime minister again after November 7\. The PPTA and NZEI will push the case for their leaders to be back in charge there. Something as seemingly straightforward as deciding who is and who is not fit to be a teacher should not be this hard. For the sake of our education outcomes and our children’s future, we should consider the Timothy Fisher case and the Teaching Council response when we vote. This article was originally published on the [author’s Substack](https://peterallanwilliams.substack.com/p/the-teaching-council-disgrace). ### The Left’s Only Road to 61 Runs Through a 5.4 Per Cent Party. Party Vote NZ First or ACT. URL: https://goodoil.news/the-lefts-only-road-to-61-runs-through-a-5-4-party-party-vote-nz-first-or-act/ Last updated: 2026-10-20T19:00:00.000Z The Post/Freshwater poll has Labour 28.7, National 27.6 and the left reaching 61 only with Opportunity on 5.4 per cent. Electorate vote National, party vote NZ First or ACT. _This post is for paying subscribers only._ ### Good Oil General Debate URL: https://goodoil.news/good-oil-general-debate-855/ Last updated: 2026-10-20T18:00:01.000Z Good morning, welcome to our daily General Debate. Our evening General debate is called Backchat and will start at 6 pm. On General debate, you are encouraged as a commenter to share your own stories, discuss other news, bring NEW news, catch up with friends or make new friends with other commenters. To participate you’ll need to sign up for a [Disqus account](https://disqus.com/profile/signup/intent/?ref=goodoil.news) which is free, quick, and easy. All you need is an email address to register a username that suits you. On posts that are not articles such as this one, you do not have to stay ‘on topic’ but you do still need to follow our [commenting rules.](https://www.goodoil.news/commenting-and-moderation/?ref=goodoil.news) Please [read our rules ](https://goodoil.news/commenting-and-moderation/)before you start commenting on *The Good Oil* to avoid a temporary or permanent ban. To check if your ban might have been caused by Disqus, or to ask for a banning decision to be reviewed, email the voluntary **helpdesk** @ [**goodoil.news**](https://goodoil.news/) with your Disqus username in the subject line. Please be respectful and do not make demands. ### Face of the Day URL: https://goodoil.news/face-of-the-day-1608/ Last updated: 2026-10-20T17:29:59.000Z > A barber who confiscated a knife and detained the driver who allegedly struck independent MP Helen Haines says he is no hero and is just one of many who rushed to the scene. > > The ABC has confirmed the member for Indi has lost one leg and doctors are fighting to save the other after she was pinned between two cars outside her electorate office in Wangaratta, in Victoria’s north-east. > > Ricky Jefferies, whose business neighbours the MP’s office, heard a loud bang just after 3:30pm yesterday when Ms Haines was critically injured. > > The 65-year-old was rushed to a local hospital then flown to The Alfred in Melbourne, where she underwent surgery overnight. > > ABC [Read More](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-10-20/wangaratta-barber-bystanders-driver-helen-haines-attack/107286296?ref=goodoil.news) ### The Good Oil Word of the Day URL: https://goodoil.news/the-good-oil-word-of-the-day-794/ Last updated: 2026-10-20T17:15:06.000Z The word for today is… aggrandise (verb) - 1: to make great or greater : increase, enlarge 2: to make appear great or greater : praise highly 3: to enhance the power, wealth, position, or reputation of Source : [Merriam-Webster](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/aggrandize?ref=goodoil.news) Etymology : Aggrandise is a grand word, and we don’t just mean that in praise. The word literally traces back to the Latin adjective grandis, meaning "grand," and it has enhanced the English language for over three centuries. Nowadays, aggrandise is often paired with self (either the word or the prefix: to "aggrandise oneself" or to "be self-aggrandising" is to glorify oneself, or to intently pursue power, wealth, and the like. It's of course great to take pride in a job well done, but we prefer those who keep it real—after all, not every hit can be a grand slam. ***If you enjoyed this Good Oil word of the day please consider sharing it with your friends and, especially, your children.*** ### The Good Oil Daily Bible Verse URL: https://goodoil.news/the-good-oil-daily-bible-verse-504/ Last updated: 2026-10-20T16:59:59.000Z [Revelation 21](https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Revelation%2021&version=KJV&ref=goodoil.news) 1And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea. ### Night Cap URL: https://goodoil.news/night-cap-762/ Last updated: 2026-10-20T08:00:00.000Z If you have a great Youtube, Rumble or Vimeo video to share send it to videos@goodoil.news [![CTA Image](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/01/cam-shirt2-1.png)](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) If you're loving this trusty, straight-up news on Kiwi politics and beyond, why not become a paid member, eh? Unlock exclusive yarns, podcasts, vids, and in-depth analysis—your support keeps independent journalism chugging along. Join today for just $5.00 per month and get the full good oil! [Learn more ](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) ### Taste Tuesday URL: https://goodoil.news/taste-tuesday-312/ Last updated: 2026-10-20T07:29:59.000Z If you have a great Youtube, Rumble or Vimeo video to share send it to videos@goodoil.news [![CTA Image](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/01/cam-shirt2-1.png)](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) If you're loving this trusty, straight-up news on Kiwi politics and beyond, why not become a paid member, eh? Unlock exclusive yarns, podcasts, vids, and in-depth analysis—your support keeps independent journalism chugging along. Join today for just $5.00 per month and get the full good oil! [Learn more ](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) ### Outrage Over Certain Political Parties Campaigning At Gang Pads URL: https://goodoil.news/outrage-over-certain-political-parties-campaigning-at-gang-pads/ Last updated: 2026-10-20T06:59:59.000Z If you have a great Youtube, Rumble or Vimeo video to share send it to videos@goodoil.news ### Michael Laws Explains: Why A Party Vote For National, Is A Wasted Vote URL: https://goodoil.news/michael-laws-explains-why-a-party-vote-for-national-is-a-wasted-vote/ Last updated: 2026-10-20T05:59:59.000Z If you have a great Youtube, Rumble or Vimeo video to share send it to videos@goodoil.news [![CTA Image](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/01/cam-shirt2-1.png)](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) If you're loving this trusty, straight-up news on Kiwi politics and beyond, why not become a paid member, eh? Unlock exclusive yarns, podcasts, vids, and in-depth analysis—your support keeps independent journalism chugging along. Join today for just $5.00 per month and get the full good oil! [Learn more ](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) ### The Good Oil Daily Roundup URL: https://goodoil.news/the-good-oil-daily-roundup-778/ Last updated: 2026-10-20T05:29:59.000Z [](https://photos.google.com/u/1/photo/AF1QipN7Zp7NKe4smdZA9nAYud8CjsgjsQ-Bn7QyMo53?ref=goodoil.news) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/B3321B30-2AAA-4B74-8204-DDE192D13ECC.jpeg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/20E07679-0D59-45A2-837C-6B3313C5282E_1_105_c.jpeg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/A32EC300-4FBC-4021-AFFB-8166E187E8CB.jpeg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/8DD1F5D0-4BA0-458D-AFF1-85AB8303E9FF.jpeg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/563B5092-E239-4F46-A7A2-C9C75C97990F.jpeg) ### Good Oil Backchat URL: https://goodoil.news/good-oil-backchat-856/ Last updated: 2026-10-20T05:00:00.000Z Good evening, welcome to **Backchat**. On Backchat, you are free to share your own stories, discuss other news or catch up with friends. To participate you’ll need to sign up for a [Disqus account ](https://disqus.com/profile/signup/intent/?ref=goodoil.news)which is free, quick, and easy. On posts that are not articles like this one, you do not have to stay ‘on topic’ but you do still need to follow our [commenting rules.](https://goodoil.news/commenting-and-moderation/) Please [read our rules ](https://www.goodoil.news/commenting-and-moderation/?ref=goodoil.news)before you start commenting on *The Good Oil* to avoid a temporary or permanent ban. NOTE: Moderation queries MUST be expressed VIA EMAIL and not by posting a comment. To check if your ban might have been caused by Disqus, or to ask for a banning decision to be reviewed, email the voluntary **helpdesk** @ [**goodoil.news**](https://goodoil.news/) with your Disqus username in the subject line. Please be respectful and do not make demands. ### Thinking About Race and IQ URL: https://goodoil.news/thinking-about-race-and-iq/ Last updated: 2026-10-20T03:29:59.000Z [**J Peder Zane**](https://realclearwire.com/articles/2026/10/16/thinking%5Fabout%5Frace%5Fand%5Fiq%5F154585.html?ref=goodoil.news) *J Peder Zane is a RealClearInvestigations editor and columnist.* For all of our technological marvels, a No 2 pencil and sheets of paper filled with oval boxes remain a key determinant of success. Sure, plenty of high achievers didn’t ace the SAT, ACT, MCAT, LSAT, and GMAT. But the vast majority of wealthy and influential Americans notched high scores in the alphabet soup of standardized tests, which are key gateways to the American dream. And yet, even as we invest these measures with tremendous power, we feel uneasy about them. Sifting and sorting, *differentiating* people by their abilities, may be crucial to a well-run society, but it also runs counter to our bedrock commitment to equality. Hence the common narrative that these tests simply reflect privilege: scores are not earned so much as bought by people who game a rigged system for unfair advantages. As the Black Lives Matter riots arose in 2020, this thinking led top universities to stop requiring test scores for admission – a policy many have now reversed after finding it difficult to assess applicants without them. While the intelligentsia seeks to have it both ways on standardized testing, depending on and demonizing them at once, they remain committed to casting another effective measure of ability as beyond the pale: Intelligence Quotient tests. IQ may be scientifically sound and powerfully predictive of outcomes, but it is political dynamite because of the profound challenge it poses to the equality thesis. This concept holds that, by and large, we are all born to the same. Differences emerge almost immediately as the environment, especially family life and access to quality education, starts writing on the blank slates of our minds. IQ challenges this narrative because it measures innate capacity. You can’t study for the test or hire tutors to boost your score, which remains stable throughout your lifetime. The prince and the pauper can swap their positions of wealth and status, but not their ability to solve problems. A person’s IQ, of course, does not reflect one’s human worth, dignity, or goodness – lots of rotten people have high IQs. But those with high IQs are better able to master complex ideas and processes, to perform the tasks that often lead to material success. A successful society identifies and empowers these people so their gifts can benefit the rest of us. We may bow to the importance of IQ by acknowledging the genetic advantages of those at the tippy-top of their fields – hard as we try, you and I were never going to be another Albert Einstein or Marilyn Vos Savant. But we also pretend that the rest of us are pretty much the same. This is nonsense – and everybody knows it. Intelligence isn’t distributed along a sideways hockey stick but along a bell curve. Human beings evince a range of intellect. But our commitment to equality is so strong that in society – though not in private conversation – we deny it. Unlike the similar critiques of standardized tests, this equality argument is more often implied than voiced when it comes to IQ, because the science leads to the opposite conclusion. Basically, we try to wish and censor it away. IQ is doubly taboo because on the rare occasions when it is discussed, it is usually in the context of race. Charles Murray, for example, was pilloried two decades ago for exploring these connections with co-author Richard J Herrnstein in *The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life*. Today, another American academic, Nathan Cofnas, is [facing criminal charges for violating Belgium’s antiracism laws](https://www.brusselstimes.com/2341250/unia-to-take-race-realist-researcher-nathan-cofnas-to-court?ref=goodoil.news) regarding his work exploring the persistent IQ gap between African Americans and other groups. While our free speech laws protect Cofnas – who discussed his research in a recent episode of the [RealClearInvestigations Podcast](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtiqGmtvP6s&ref=goodoil.news) – from prosecution in America, his work remains verboten. Two black scholars, [Glenn Loury and John McWhorter](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5o0JDqJIfQ&t=26s&ref=goodoil.news), expressed a prevailing view about this issue in their recent interview with Cofnas when they acknowledged that the data about race and IQ – which has found African Americans, as a group, score about 15 points lower than whites and Asians – was accurate but questioned the point of discussing it. “Why do we need to talk about that?” McWhorter asked. “What is the point in how we are organizing society … \[in\] show\[ing\] us that black people have the lowest IQs?” It is hard to argue with Cofnas’ response that, given the predictive value of IQ, intellectual honesty demands that we consider it when interpreting outcomes and devising public policy. The code of silence McWhorter advocates would only remove a key data point from our understanding of the obstacles people face. Cofnas’ focus on race, however, also clouds the issue. If anything, the IQ gap provides a strong argument for a colorblind society. It is absurd to categorize people according to race and ethnicity. No group has a pure lineage. Asian, black, and white Americans came from far-flung corners of the globe, with different cultural and genetic histories. Dumping these disparate peoples into concocted entities erases these significant differences. It engenders racist thinking by prompting us to see people as members of groups rather than unique individuals. By assigning them to artificially created entities – and then expecting those constructs to have equal outcomes – we falsely advance a form of biological determinism sharply at odds with the equality thesis by casting race and ethnicity as overriding determinants of success rather than ability. *Your race is your destiny*. This makes it hard for us to identify the consequential factors shared by many individuals across these groups that may make it hard for them to reach their potential. Now a reality check: A truly colorblind society is not going to emerge any time soon because race and ethnicity serve as sources of identity and belonging. They may be arbitrary social constructs, but they also serve a powerful purpose. In addition, the equality thesis is so attractive from a moral and a political perspective that we are unlikely to abandon it. Believing that anyone can rise to the top is, after all, the essence of the American dream. Since we seem destined to continue embracing the equality thesis, the persistent gaps in IQ and other test scores behoove us to acknowledge that our efforts – robust anti-discrimination laws and massive social spending – have not worked. In some sense, DEI efforts are an admission of that failure, as they seek to reapportion society’s spoils based on race rather than merit. This brute-force approach, however, also leads to division and discrimination while doing nothing to help people become more qualified. Greater minds than mine will have to figure out the path forward. But expecting a different result from the same action is stupid. This article was originally published by RealClearPolitics and made available via [RealClearWire](https://realclearwire.com/articles/2026/10/16/thinking%5Fabout%5Frace%5Fand%5Fiq%5F154585.html?ref=goodoil.news). ### You Need Government to Stuff up Like This URL: https://goodoil.news/you-need-government-to-stuff-up-like-this/ Last updated: 2026-10-20T03:00:00.000Z To err is human, but to really, colossally, eff things up, at truly eye-watering cost to someone else – that takes government. Governments like the successive, deckchair-swapping, incompetent clowns of the uniparty who’ve ruled Australia for far too long. When **Donald Horne** called Australia ‘the Lucky Country’, it was a backhanded compliment: he meant that the country was lucky enough to be so endowed with natural riches that it prospered despite the best efforts of the idiots trying to run it. Our luck ran out long ago. For proof of just how colossally Australian governments can and will screw up, the list is endless. Even the last couple of decades have provided more than enough evidence of the stupendously costly incompetence of the ruling elite: the NBN, the NDIS, the Covid madness... the entire state of Victoria. And, of course, the latest titanic monument to governmental stupidity at tremendous cost: Snowy 2.0. The whole idea was mad enough when the Sun King, **Malcolm Turnbull**, first farted it out. Then **Chris ‘Boofhead’ Bowen** got his turn at the wheel. Bowen, a man whose grasp of economic reality is somewhat less than a mediaeval peasant’s understanding of quantum mechanics, is sitting on a report that will make the national ledger look like a Greek insolvency hearing. The figures are, quite literally, designed to induce cardiac arrest in any taxpayer foolish enough to still check their bank statements. > [Industry estimates](https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/chris-bowen-prepares-to-reveal-multibillion-dollar-snowy-20-cost-blowout-after-review/news-story/01ee8cbaa8a7b4622ac3e042ad66c658?ref=goodoil.news) on the likely total cost of the Snowy 2.0 expansion range between $20bn and $26bn – or more than $40bn including transmission lines. Forty billion dollars. And that’s likely a conservative estimate. All to pump water up a hill and let it slide back down again whenever the breeze happens to drop across our taxpayer-subsidised wind farms – which on their own won’t leave the national purse much change from a trillion dollars. It’s a financial haemorrhage of such epic proportions that you almost have to admire the sheer, unadulterated audacity of it. Naturally, the relationship between Snowy Hydro and their primary contractor, Webuild, has deteriorated into a standard-issue bureaucratic bunfight, with both sides pointing fingers like infant schoolchildren caught nicking apples from a neighbour’s orchard. The state of the machinery itself serves as a rather exquisite metaphor for the entire enterprise. Consider Florence and Monica, those glorious, multi-million-dollar tunnel-boring behemoths sent into the bowels of the earth to conquer the Great Dividing Range. Florence has spent considerably more time broken down and cracked than an Italian automobile. Meanwhile, Monica is trundling ominously toward an 800-metre geological fault line: a delightful little obstacle created by nature itself, which the project’s chief executive cheerfully concedes might stop them dead in their tracks. > “You’re going through the geological fault that created the Snowy Mountains. And until we really get into it, we won’t know. So, yeah, there are nerves associated with that.” Nerves! You’d bloody well think so. When you’re careening headlong toward a multi-billion-dollar cliff of your own making, a touch of nervous perspiration is the least one might expect from the captains of this sinking ship. Yet our ruling elite remain wondrously insulated from the tangible consequences of their subterranean follies. While the rest of the populace grapples with an unrelenting cost-of-living crisis directly born of their fiscal incontinence, the uniparty continues to bicker endlessly over who gets to hold the ceremonial shovel when the whole edifice finally caves in. The coalition, led by the very same bright sparks who originally birthed this subterranean white elephant into the world, remains awkwardly wedded to the disaster. Only the likes of **Pauline Hanson**’s One Nation have had the political gumption to state the bleeding obvious: that when a bottomless hole in the ground starts swallowing 40 billion quid of public treasure, the only sensible course of action is to cease and desist immediately. As the Senate issues stern orders and upcoming Estimates hearings loom like a dread tribunal, Mr Bowen prepares to drop his ledger of fiscal shame upon a long-suffering public. It will no doubt be spun as a triumph of green engineering, a glorious leap forward into the promised land of net-zero nirvana. But no amount of bureaucratic whitewashing can obscure the fundamental reality. Snowy 2.0 is not an infrastructure project: it is an expensive, subterranean monument to the unyielding hubris of a political class that wouldn’t know a sound economic proposition if it bit them firmly on the posterior. Perhaps some day it will find its rightful purpose: as a monument to the wasteful stupidity of governments. Busloads of future schoolchildren can take the grand tour, ending with a fun round of throwing tomatoes (greenhouse-grown, of course) at effigies of politicians. Actually, forget the effigies: just use the real thing. --- 💡 ****If you enjoyed this article please share it using the share buttons at the top or bottom of the article.** ### [The Good Oil] Stuff Up of the Day URL: https://goodoil.news/the-good-oil-stuff-up-of-the-day-193/ Last updated: 2026-10-20T01:59:59.000Z They got it right once. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/Stuff-up-20-Oct--2-.png) ### Was Bertie Ahern right? URL: https://goodoil.news/was-bertie-ahern-right/ Last updated: 2026-10-20T00:59:59.000Z [**Sinne na Daoine Media**](https://x.com/SnDMediaNews/status/2111842308966527089?ref=goodoil.news) *The people’s media network. \*Breaking\* local, national and international news.* In a recorded conversation while canvassing, the former Taoiseach warned that Ireland was taking in too many people from places like the Congo and that the real problem would come with the next generation of Muslims, the children growing up here, not the first arrivals. Mr Ahern pointed to the disorder and radicalisation already visible in France and Britain. He also said there were too many coming from places like the Congo and the likes. Party figures and the Taoiseach quickly pushed him back into line. The evidence in France shows he was describing a pattern that is already playing out. The 2023 riots after the death of Nahel Merzouk saw more than 5,000 vehicles burned, nearly 1,000 buildings and shops damaged or looted, and police stations attacked, largely by young men of second- and third-generation Maghrebi background who hold French citizenship. In mid-October 2026, during unrest near Place de la République, an elderly couple in their 80s was reportedly robbed of their valuables and clothing and left nearly naked on the street. Shopkeepers and natives watch cars, businesses, and basic security destroyed while the same generational pattern repeats. Nobody in Ireland ever said people were not welcome. But the country is changing demographically at a rapid pace through inflows of Sub-Saharan Africans, Pakistanis, Indians and others, via both illegal routes and legal channels. A new Temporary Protection Transition Scheme, opened at the end of September, now lets eligible Ukrainians move from temporary protection to a renewable Stamp 4 permission that counts toward naturalisation and citizenship. Around 100,000 have arrived under the broader temporary protection route. Other European countries have already shown that certain origin groups and their descendants produce persistently higher rates of crime, parallel societies and integration failure, especially into the second and third generations. France is the clearest nearby example. Selective policy is required: welcome those who integrate and contribute, but apply stricter controls on demographics that have repeatedly failed to do so elsewhere. Money continues to go abroad while the domestic budget left ordinary people with little relief. The government cut carbon tax on home heating oil by only about €40 a fill, against prices that have reached €1,600–1,700 for larger volumes, while elderly people who paid tax all their lives risk going cold. At the same time, large numbers of asylum applicants, many of them economic opportunists, up to 80 per cent by Micheál Martin’s own admission, are housed in hotels with heat and three meals a day, paid for by the same taxpayers. Stronger borders and faster removal of those with no right to be here are required now. Without them, Ireland risks importing the same second- and third-generation disorder already on display in France. Bertie pointed to the warning. The burned cars, looted shops and exposed elderly on a Paris street confirm it. Do something about the numbers, the pathways and the selection criteria before it is too late. 0:00 /1:14 1× Video credit: SnDMedia. This article was originally published by [SnDMedia](https://x.com/SnDMediaNews/status/2111842308966527089?ref=goodoil.news). ### The Left Set France on Fire URL: https://goodoil.news/the-left-set-france-on-fire/ Last updated: 2026-10-20T00:29:59.000Z [**CFACT ed**](https://www.cfact.org/2026/10/18/the-left-set-france-on-fire-watch-limoges-city-hall-collapse/?ref=goodoil.news) Until last week, the city of Limoges was known as the porcelain capitol of France. Today Limoges is the place that proved what results when woke-leftist policies fester over time. [](http://www.cfact.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/Lifestyle%5Fshot%5Fof%5FHaviland%5FLimoges%5FChina%5F21299971812.jpg?ref=goodoil.news) On October 17, 2026, the 143-year-old Limoges city hall collapsed in flames as a masked mob, all clad in black, cheered. [The tourist office in Lyon](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2b2yIrrDxY&ref=goodoil.news) burned down as well. The same global-leftists, from the [UN General Secretary](https://unfccc.int/news/un-secretary-general-s-remarks-on-climate-change-and-extreme-heat?ref=goodoil.news) on down, who routinely take a fraction of a degree of global temperature and exaggerate it into a “planet on fire,” created the social and political conditions that actually set France alight. Education policy has separated French children from their history, let alone an understanding of the scientific method. Young people do not appreciate their culture, or traditions. They do not understand the value of the freedoms their forefathers fought to obtain for them. [](http://www.cfact.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/Lyon-tourst-office-fire.png?ref=goodoil.news) The riots in France briefly started as a protest over education policy, but quickly escalated into a [well-funded and orchestrated](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zrcg9n91OHo&t=10s&ref=goodoil.news) leftist free for all. Police arrested over 1,200 people across France, yet time and again law enforcement was overwhelmed and helpless. The police, who cannot depend on the support of their government, are demoralized and ineffective. Arsonists, looters and vandals roam the streets confident and undeterred. The rioters include unassimilated immigrants, leftists and nihilists – none of whom can actually articulate what they want, or what they would do with power if they achieved it. File this assault on Western civilization under “don’t let this happen to you.” This article was originally published by [CFACT](https://www.cfact.org/2026/10/18/the-left-set-france-on-fire-watch-limoges-city-hall-collapse/?ref=goodoil.news). ### France Is a Glimpse of Our Future URL: https://goodoil.news/france-is-a-glimpse-of-our-future/ Last updated: 2026-10-19T23:59:59.000Z Isn’t it funny that, the more we yatter endlessly about mental health, the worse our collective mental health gets? The more politicians assure us everything is fine, the worse things too obviously are. And the more the Multicult bleat about ‘social cohesion’ and ‘harmony’, the more fractured, hostile and violently tribal our once cohesive society becomes. As **Pauline Hanson** has pointed out, the end game of mass immigration and Multiculturalism is on display for all with eyes to see in France, not to mention wider Europe and Britain. > [Countries like France](https://x.com/PaulineHansonOz/status/2111684240433971661?ref=goodoil.news), Germany, Belgium and the UK are all suffering because of mass migration. > > Unless Australia stops importing people who reject our democracy, our way of life and the values of Western civilisation, these riots will eventually be coming to Australian cities. Meanwhile, Globalist par excellence French President **Emmanuel Macron** is bewildered that, having imported the whirlwind of African and Muslim hate, his country is now reaping it. “How can French people do this to France?” Macron splutters with wide-eyed innocence. The obvious answer, which nobody is allowed to say, is that it’s *not* French people: it’s violent invaders who just happen to occupy France. But then, even when the Nazis invaded and occupied France, they left it mostly intact. The new invaders want to burn down the whole lot. Meanwhile, despite Hanson’s Cassandra-like warning, our lot are falling over themselves to fan the fires at home. And, just as unconvincingly as Macron’s professed bewilderment, they are braying at the top of their lungs about ‘harmony’ and ‘inclusion’, even as they’re pouring millions of taxpayers’ money into promoting violent tribalism. It’s a curious feature of our modern managerial class that they view the very concept of a nation as a tiresome administrative nuisance to be dismantled, rather than a community to be protected. Where once we possessed a sturdy, unspoken social compact born of shared history and common decency, we are now subjected to the suffocating embrace of the state. > [Today, a not-insignificant](https://www.theaustralian.com.au/commentary/why-our-money-now-talks-in-foreign-languages/news-story/9e30dc438779fe19c4382a9918f7ccb8?ref=goodoil.news) portion of the government’s budget goes to manufacturing social cohesion, creating a vast multicultural industry heavily dependent on handouts. Indeed, the bureaucrats have decided that harmony is not the natural byproduct of a shared culture, but a project requiring relentless intervention. Minister **Anne Aly**, apparently convinced that the Australian people are incapable of speaking to one another without state-funded interpreters, has been busy ensuring our taxes go toward keeping our various tribes in their own linguistic silos. It is quite a spectacle to watch ministers wax lyrical about ‘connection’ while effectively financing the Balkanisation of the suburbs. We might better judge Aly, of course, by her own results: she made her career posing as a ‘de-radicalisation expert’, while providing character references for the Muslim terrorist whom she’d conspicuously not de-radicalised. Then again, Aly herself apparently considers it a badge of pride that her father took part in the interminable Islamic attempts to wipe out the Jewish state. The prime minister, a man who treats the nation as if it were a poorly managed community centre where the only KPI is how much it benefits himself, seems genuinely puzzled that his constant talk of ‘cohesion’ has resulted in precisely the opposite. His solution, naturally, is to throw more money at the problem – specifically, money that taxpayers have toiled for – directed toward groups that have no particular interest in integrating into the historic Australian way of life. > The federal government has quietly committed $171.3m to a multicultural program that builds ethnic enclaves rather than social cohesion. You don’t need to be a forensic accountant to grasp the stench of this particular arrangement. These grants, often dispensed with the quiet stealth of a cat burglar, are not designed to foster a grand, unified Australian spirit. They are intended to provide the infrastructure for ethnic compounds. We’re not talking about local festivals or communal cook-offs: we are talking about the literal construction of walls and segregated facilities, all paid for by a working population that is increasingly being treated as a redundant ATM. Consider the United Muslim Association, currently blessed with 11 million of our dollars for an ‘infrastructure’ project in Padstow. While the government plays dumb about the specifics, the association itself makes no secret of its mission to act as an insular, totalising system. A state-funded, single-faith gymnasium is, by any sane estimation, the antithesis of inclusion. Yet, to the ruling class, this is progress. They prefer a fragmented society of government-dependent interest groups over a cohesive nation of citizens, because a fractured population is so much easier to bribe with its own money. At the same time the money flows to various ethnic lobbies, there is the conspicuous absence of any attempt to prioritise the actual interests of the historic Australian population. If one were to suggest that such funds might be better spent on, say, infrastructure for the descendants of those who built this country, the outcry would be deafening. The hypocrisy is so thick you could carve it with a machete. We are witnessing the systematic liquidation of our national character, and our leaders are billing us for the privilege of watching it happen. --- 💡 ****If you enjoyed this article please share it using the share buttons at the top or bottom of the article.** ### Australia Catches up With What We Were Told to Ignore URL: https://goodoil.news/australia-catches-up-with-what-we-were-told-to-ignore/ Last updated: 2026-10-19T23:59:59.000Z [**Rodney Hide**](https://www.brashandmitchell.com/post/rodney-hide-raw-data-that-isn-t-raw-australia-catches-up-with-what-we-were-told-to-ignore?ref=goodoil.news) *Rodney Hide is a former minister and ACT Party leader.* Australians woke last week to a story I knew well. The Australian’s Graham Lloyd reported that a forensic audit had found chunks of the Bureau of Meteorology’s “raw” temperature data copied and pasted from one period into another. The standout example is Sydney Observatory. The minimum temperatures shown for August 1867 are the same as those for August 1907\. The paper checked the handwritten logbooks at the National Archives. The 1867 numbers online are simply wrong. The auditors, Tom Berger and Geoffrey Sherrington, say they found hundreds of red flags. Mr Berger likens the odds to winning the lottery every week for a year. The bureau admits errors and will fix them, but won’t commit to a full review. The auditors claim far more. Keep the two apart. What struck me is that the story ran on the front of a national newspaper. Fifteen years ago in New Zealand, asking much milder questions got you labelled a denier. In November 2009 Richard Treadgold of the Climate Conversation Group collated a short paper with the NZ Climate Science Coalition called “Are We Feeling Warmer Yet?”. It took NIWA’s graph of New Zealand temperatures, the seven-station series, which showed warming of 0.92C a century, and plotted NIWA’s own unadjusted data for the same seven stations. The coalition’s calculation gave a trend of just 0.06C a century. Near enough flat. The difference was the adjustments. That can be perfectly proper: sites change. But you have to say what you adjusted, by how much, and why. That was all anyone asked. Show your working. I asked in person. On the evening of 9 December 2009, Nick Smith called MPs to a briefing at parliament from NIWA’s chief climate scientist, Dr David Wratt. I brought Dr Vincent Gray as my adviser. Nick ordered him out. It was a private meeting of MPs, he said, no outsiders. The outsiders from NIWA stayed. No recording, no notes. After 25 minutes on the IPCC, I asked about the seven-station graph. When I put it to them that the unadjusted trend was basically flat, they agreed. They explained Hokitika. I said that was what I wanted for every site. Dr Wratt, visibly rattled, told me I should write a paper and get it published in a reputable journal. I didn’t need to write a paper. They needed to show their working. They said they would post it all on their website. I walked out. I was so upset. It was a horrible experience. I loved science and thought scientists did too. The next day I wrote to Dr Wratt asking when all the adjustments and their rationale would be made public. NIWA published Hokitika. The adjustments traced back to Dr Jim Salinger’s 1981 PhD thesis. Science Minister Wayne Mapp told parliament the computer records behind it were no longer available. As reported at the time, the calculations were lost when Victoria University changed computers in 1983. I was ACT leader then and a minister. On 25 March 2010 I pointed out in the House that the series had been built at NIWA in the 1990s, not in 1981, and asked how we could conclude anything other than that NIWA had something to hide. I make no claim about motives. But what scientist loses the records for the most important graph in his country’s climate debate? Salinger worked at the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit from January 1980 to February 1982 and submitted his thesis while there. That unit was at the centre of Climategate, which broke in November 2009, the month before my NIWA meeting. In one leaked email from April 2003, Salinger told Phil Jones, Michael Mann and others he applauded their moves against the journal *Climate Research* over its editor, Chris de Freitas, adding: “I will ensure that the appropriate sources get to know!” The bureau’s Neville Nicholls was copied in. De Freitas later co-wrote the 2014 reanalysis. And CRU’s global record draws on 98 homogenised Bureau series and 13 from NIWA, the New Zealand ones received “through personal communication”. To my mind that is a narrow, closed shop, and it has had a devastating effect on public policy. The graph mattered. As I told Waikato farmers in 2010, it arrived just as the government was weighing carbon taxes and an ETS: “The NIWA graph was most helpful.” In the House I said it had been used “for everything from sworn expert evidence to advisory booklets for local government”. To its credit NIWA published a rebuilt series in December 2010\. It came out at 0.91C a century, as before. It was peer-reviewed by none other than Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology. The sceptics weren’t satisfied. A 2011 statistical audit argued NIWA hadn’t applied its own published method properly, and that done correctly the trend was 0.34C. A 2014 peer-reviewed reanalysis by de Freitas, Dedekind and Brill found 0.28C. NIWA scientists replied in the same journal in 2018 saying that figure was “substantially too low”. That is how science should work, in the open, and only because people refused to be shouted down. Credit where it’s due. Richard kept the record online, post after post. Barry Brill, a former National MP and under-secretary for energy and science, chaired the coalition, acted for its trust in court and co-wrote the 2014 reanalysis. Behind them were retired scientists and engineers working unpaid on the numbers. They did the work our science agencies should have done. The coalition’s trust went to court and lost. In 2012 Justice Venning found NIWA’s method credible and internationally recognised, and ordered $89,238.90 in costs. But note what he said: whether there is global warming “is a scientific issue, not suitable for determination by a court”. It declined to referee the science. David Evans wrote in the *Australian* that the “trust me” approach must end. *Nullius in verba*, as the Royal Society puts it: take nobody’s word for it. That is all we ever asked of NIWA. It is all Australians are now asking of their bureau. The difference is that this time nobody is pretending the question is illegitimate. I remember back then asking Dr Wratt what their testable hypothesis was. He said climate science didn’t work like that. It was thousands of papers and lots of testable hypotheses. It was simple confirmation that none of it is science. This article was originally published by [Brash and Mitchell](https://www.brashandmitchell.com/post/rodney-hide-raw-data-that-isn-t-raw-australia-catches-up-with-what-we-were-told-to-ignore?ref=goodoil.news). ### Tesla Unveils the Flying Roadster URL: https://goodoil.news/tesla-unveils-the-flying-roadster/ Last updated: 2026-10-19T23:29:59.000Z [**Nigel**](https://pavlovapost.co.nz/tesla-flying-roadster-kiwi-wof?ref=goodoil.news) *Nigel is the founder, editor-in-chief, and lead writer at Pavlova Post, a New Zealand satire publication covering national news, local chaos, weather drama, politics, transport mishaps, and everyday Kiwi life – usually with a generous layer of exaggeration.* Murray has inspected cars for 30 years. He’s dealt with bald tyres, rusty sills, missing seatbelts and one bloke who tried to explain that his brake lights only worked when he wasn’t looking. Now Tesla has unveiled a car that can launch itself into the air, and Murray has discovered something missing from his WOF manual. There isn’t a single bloody instruction for what to do when the customer arrives through the roof. ### **The car can fly. The paperwork hasn’t caught up.** Tesla demonstrated its second-generation Roadster on Thursday at a SpaceX facility in Texas, using cold-gas thrusters and a suction system to perform short jumps and manoeuvres in mid-air. According to an Associated Press report published by 1News on Saturday, the company plans to begin consumer production in 2028. There is no final price yet, and Tesla’s reservation terms don’t guarantee when buyers will receive their cars, or even whether they’ll receive one at all. That’s the sort of detail that would normally make a South Canterbury mechanic suspicious, but Murray’s fictional workshop has a bigger problem. At 9.10 on Saturday morning, a customer named Colin rang to ask whether Murray would be able to issue a warrant of fitness for a flying Tesla. “Depends,” Murray said. “Can you bring it in?” “Not until 2028.” “Right. What’s wrong with it?” “Nothing. They haven’t built mine yet.” Murray put down his screwdriver. He’d had customers arrive six months late for a WOF, but this was the first bloke who’d tried to book one two years before taking delivery. “Look, Colin, I need the actual car here to inspect it.” “Could you do a preliminary check from the website?” “No. Otherwise half the cars on Trade Me would have a fresh warrant.” Colin explained that the new Roadster could use rocket-inspired thrusters to lift itself off the ground. Murray had seen the video. He’d also seen enough motorists struggle with a parallel park to feel deeply uncomfortable about giving them another direction to travel. ### **Murray discovers a serious gap in the inspection manual** After the call, Murray looked through the ordinary WOF requirements. Tyres, brakes, lights, seatbelts, steering, suspension and windscreen wipers were all covered. Nothing about landing. He pulled a blank sheet out of the printer and began writing an entirely unofficial supplementary checklist. **FLYING VEHICLE INSPECTION – DRAFT** Under brakes, he added a note asking whether the driver could stop the car while it was in the air. Under indicators, he considered whether there would need to be an extra one for going up. And under suspension, he wrote a question he’d never expected to ask in a professional capacity: *Does the vehicle come down again under its own control, or is that the owner’s problem?* He rang Colin back. “These thrusters. What happens if you activate them inside a garage?” “No idea.” “Well, don’t find out in mine. I’ve only just replaced the roof.” Murray walked outside and looked up at the roller door. It had comfortably accommodated everything from Suzuki Swifts to large four-wheel drives, but he’d never measured how much clearance was needed above a vehicle that might suddenly decide the floor was optional. He got the tape measure out anyway. A customer waiting for a tyre repair watched him measure the door twice before asking what he was doing. “Preparing for flying cars.” The customer looked at Murray, then at the garage roof. “Wouldn’t you be better off leaving the door open?” Murray gave him a long look. “You’re not helping.” ### **The first flight test involves a Holden Colorado** Colin arrived just after lunch, not in a futuristic electric sports car, but in his Holden Colorado. He’d been thinking about the Tesla demonstration all morning. “If they can make that thing jump over traffic, reckon we could do something similar with the Colorado?” Murray folded his arms. “What’s wrong with driving it?” “Nothing. Just thinking it’d be handy getting around the potholes.” “You’re going to need a hell of a jump for some of them.” Colin had already worked out the advantages. No more waiting at roadworks, no more crawling over rough farm tracks and no need to worry about that awful stretch of road that made everything in the glovebox rattle like a cutlery drawer. Murray pointed out that flying over a pothole was one thing. Finding somewhere safe to land afterwards was quite another. “How would you get it down?” “Same way the Tesla does, I suppose.” “You’re putting a lot of faith in something you’ve watched for 30 seconds on the internet.” Colin insisted the idea was worth considering. He’d seen the Roadster perform its airborne manoeuvres and couldn’t understand why the technology couldn’t eventually make its way into an ordinary ute. Murray agreed that it was impressive engineering. He also pointed out that Tesla had spent years developing its car, while Colin had spent the previous weekend trying to fix his ride-on mower with a cable tie. That hadn’t gone particularly well. Eventually, Murray agreed to get the Colorado off the ground for a look. Five minutes later, it was sitting on the workshop hoist. “There you go,” he said. “Airborne.” Colin wasn’t impressed. “It’s not flying.” “Well, neither are you, and that’s probably for the best.” Murray inspected the underside while Colin stood beside the hoist imagining the possibilities. The conversation continued for several minutes before Murray interrupted him. “Before you start worrying about rocket thrusters, you’ve got a rear tyre that’s getting pretty close to needing replacement.” Colin looked offended. “You’re telling me Tesla can make a car fly and you’re worried about my tyre?” “Yes, Colin. Your tyre is currently doing most of the work.” ### **An appointment for a vehicle that might never arrive** By mid-afternoon, Murray had gone from inspecting ordinary cars to worrying about a machine he might never see. A conventional WOF checks roadworthiness. It isn’t an aviation certification, and Murray wasn’t about to pretend that measuring tyre tread suddenly qualified him to approve rocket-assisted flight. The American demonstration didn’t establish whether such a vehicle would be approved for ordinary public-road use in New Zealand, either. For Murray, that raised several practical questions. If the flying version wasn’t approved for the road, what exactly would the customer be bringing in for inspection? If it could perform short airborne manoeuvres, where could anyone legally demonstrate them? And if the car didn’t arrive until 2028, why was he wasting his Saturday afternoon worrying about any of it? He had actual vehicles outside waiting for attention. Colin, unfortunately, wasn’t finished. “Can you put me down for a booking when the Roadster finally comes out?” “When you’ve got one, give me a ring.” “What if it’s delayed?” “Then you’ll have to wait.” “What if it never turns up?” Murray looked at him. “Then you’ll have an exceptionally easy time keeping the windscreen clean.” Colin thought about that for a moment. “So you’re saying I could own a flying car and never have to pay for a WOF?” “No. I’m saying you might end up owning a reservation and nothing else.” “Right. But I could still have the Colorado converted?” Murray slowly removed his glasses. “Colin, we started this conversation because you wanted to get over potholes. You’ve now spent the afternoon trying to turn your ute into a bloody aircraft.” “Just exploring the options.” “Your first option is buying a new tyre.” ### **One final instruction** At closing time, Murray threw his unofficial flying-car checklist into the recycling bin. He had enough trouble keeping up with ordinary vehicle technology without having to learn how to inspect something that could jump over the workshop. He went back to the normal WOF manual, where at least everything was expected to remain on the ground long enough for somebody to examine it. Colin was preparing to leave when he remembered one last thing. “When I finally get the Tesla, should I book ahead?” “Yes.” “And do I drive it in or fly it in?” Murray looked up at the roof he’d only recently finished paying for. “Drive it in, Colin.” “But if I fly it?” “Then you’ll be paying for a new bloody roof before we even start checking the brakes.” ### **Grown-Up Links** - [1News / Associated Press – Watch: Tesla’s new Roadster launches into the air, spins mid-flight (17 October 2026)](https://www.1news.co.nz/2026/10/17/watch-teslas-new-roadster-launches-into-the-air-spins-mid-flight/?ref=goodoil.news) - [TechCrunch – Tesla reveals SpaceX-powered Roadster that flies and falls with style (15 October 2026)](https://techcrunch.com/2026/10/15/tesla-reveals-spacex-powered-roadster-that-flies-and-falls-with-style/?ref=goodoil.news) - [NZ Transport Agency – Warrant of fitness requirements](https://www.nzta.govt.nz/vehicles/warrants-and-certificates/warrant-of-fitness?ref=goodoil.news) This article was originally published by [Pavlova Post](https://pavlovapost.co.nz/tesla-flying-roadster-kiwi-wof?ref=goodoil.news). ### You Don’t Even Have to Like Them URL: https://goodoil.news/you-dont-even-have-to-like-them/ Last updated: 2026-10-19T22:59:59.000Z [**Claire Deeks**](https://rcr.media/blog/you-dont-even-have-to-like-them/?ref=goodoil.news) *Co-founder of VFF and RCR* With the election just a few weeks away, there’s something I want to talk about. **I’ve heard from people who have decided they won’t be voting this year. Others are still trying to work out who, if anyone, deserves their vote.** And I understand why. After everything we’ve experienced over the past six years, it’s hardly surprising that so many New Zealanders have lost faith in politicians and the political system. When Alia, Libby and I started Voices for Freedom back in 2020, we were three mums who were deeply concerned about what was happening to our country and what it meant for our families. We had no idea what lay ahead. We certainly didn’t expect to find ourselves doing what we’re doing today! But we knew that staying quiet wasn’t an option. And so did the thousands of New Zealanders who joined us. Together, we’ve challenged government decisions, asked difficult questions, supported one another, built communities and created our own independent media platform. We’ve had our fair share of disappointments along the way. But we’ve also seen what can happen when enough ordinary people refuse to give up. **In fact, we’ve just had another reminder of that.** Last week, New Zealand was one of only two countries to abstain from a United Nations vote on a declaration concerning pandemic preparedness. Foreign Minister Winston Peters made the decision, citing concerns about protecting New Zealand's sovereignty and our ability to make our own decisions about public health. [**And the reaction has been quite something!**](https://vr4zjyx4.r.us-east-1.awstrack.me/L0/https:%2F%2Frcr.media%2Fnews%2F1306%2F13950%2F%3Fshare=ZMk3bO/1/010001a13ed51c5c-5b3d559d-35d3-4c0d-a927-e9ac1c19df1c-000000/gZb8FMyJW1Mt%5FVWAU9R815Sz%5FB8=473?ref=goodoil.news) Former Prime Minister Helen Clark called it “humiliating”. Chris Hipkins described it as an embarrassment. Well, I see something rather different. For years, people like us have been raising concerns about the WHO, international health agreements and the importance of keeping decisions about New Zealand in New Zealand. And here we have a political party taking a position on the international stage that reflects some of those concerns, despite considerable pressure to fall into line. **That matters. And I think we should recognise it.** You don’t have to agree with everything Winston Peters says or does to appreciate this particular decision. You don’t even have to like the man! We should still question him, challenge him and hold him accountable, just as we should every other politician. But this is a timely reminder that political pressure, public scrutiny and persistent voices can make a difference. And that brings me back to the election. **I know many of you feel there is no party that truly represents your views.** I share plenty of those frustrations. But I worry about good people becoming so disillusioned that they decide there’s simply no point in participating. Because the decisions made in parliament will affect us whether we vote or not. They will affect our families, our businesses, our freedoms and the opportunities our children have in the years ahead. And as we’ve learned the hard way, the people making those decisions matter. **We don’t have to find a perfect political party to recognise that some outcomes may be better than others.** Nor does voting mean giving anyone a free pass. Whoever forms the next government, our job remains the same. We keep asking questions. We keep speaking up. We keep holding them to account. That’s what Voices for Freedom has always been about. So, **if you’re thinking about sitting this election out, I’d encourage you to give it some more thought.** Look carefully at the options. Consider what matters most to you, what each party has actually done, and what the possible election outcomes might mean for New Zealand. And please, take the time to understand how MMP works. Your party vote and electorate vote do different jobs, and the way our electoral system operates can produce some surprising results.[**We’ve put together some resources to help explain all of this, and I hope you’ll find them useful.** ](https://vr4zjyx4.r.us-east-1.awstrack.me/L0/https:%2F%2Frealitycheck.radio%2Fc%2Felection-2026%2F/1/010001a13ed51c5c-5b3d559d-35d3-4c0d-a927-e9ac1c19df1c-000000/XBNgqZL5%5F1MESVWYi8jsFUBfajc=473?ref=goodoil.news) Whatever you decide on election day, I hope you make that decision from a position of knowledge and conviction, rather than frustration or resignation. Six years ago, we decided that our voices mattered enough to stand up and use them. **I still believe that today. And I hope you do too.** This article was originally published by [RCR Media](https://rcr.media/blog/you-dont-even-have-to-like-them/?ref=goodoil.news). ### France-Style Riots Could Be Coming to Australia URL: https://goodoil.news/france-style-riots-could-be-coming-to-australia/ Last updated: 2026-10-19T22:29:59.000Z [**The Noticer**](https://www.noticer.news/pauline-hanson-mass-migration-france-riots/?ref=goodoil.news) *We notice what other news sites don’t.* Pauline Hanson has spoken out about [horrific riots taking place in France](https://www.noticer.news/france-riots-town-hall-destroyed/?ref=goodoil.news), and warned that Australia will be next if mass immigration is not stopped. The One Nation leader shared videos of the violence which unfolded in Paris and other French cities on the weekend, which saw a historic town hall torched and stores looted by hordes of rioters who are mainly of third-world immigrant descent. “Australia cannot afford to repeat the mistake of mass migration which is tearing apart Europe,” Ms Hanson said on Sunday. “Countries like France, Germany, Belgium and the UK are all suffering because of mass migration. “Unless Australia stops importing people who reject our democracy, our way of life and the values of Western civilisation, these riots will eventually be coming to Australian cities.” Thousands of One Nation supporters replied to the social media posts, with many calling for Ms Hanson to go even further. “One Nation should follow Restore Britain and start talking about deporting and remigrating millions of non-European immigrants,” wrote James Anthony on X. “It’s already well underway Pauline. We need remigration,” wrote another X user. “Stop importing the incompatible cultures but also deport at least one million that are here already,” said a third. US Vice President JD Vance also spoke out about the violence, that followed weeks of similar rioting by non-white youths, which has been orchestrated by the far-left and framed by the corporate media as “student protests”. “Western liberals imported the third world into France and other countries in the name of diversity and compassion. They ignored fundamental questions of assimilation and compatibility. They were told it would lead to this and they didn’t listen,” he wrote. “I pray that France, a beautiful country of amazing people, will stop this madness before more of its landmarks burn. “And I hope Americans are paying attention. This is the future congressional Democrats seek for your country.” This article was originally published by [the Noticer](https://www.noticer.news/pauline-hanson-mass-migration-france-riots/?ref=goodoil.news). ### Too Much Liberté? URL: https://goodoil.news/too-much-liberte/ Last updated: 2026-10-19T21:59:59.000Z Cartoon of the Day by BoomSlang _This post is for paying subscribers only._ ### If Welfarism Matters, the Choice Is Clear URL: https://goodoil.news/if-welfarism-matters-the-choice-is-clear/ Last updated: 2026-10-19T21:29:59.000Z Benefit numbers are out for [September](https://www.msd.govt.nz/about-msd-and-our-work/publications-resources/statistics/monthly-reporting/?ref=goodoil.news). The last before the election. Up again. There are now 417,000 working-age people on a main benefit. Christchurch, New Zealand’s second largest city, has a population of 411,000\. Think about that. Up till the mid-’70s, the percentage of 18–64-year-olds on a benefit never exceeded two. One person in 50\. Right now it’s 12.9 per cent or one in eight people. Every type of main benefit is up – Jobseeker, Sole Parent and Supported Living. Yes, the unemployment rate has grown over National’s three years from 3.9 per cent in December 2023 to 5.6 per cent most recently. But it is also abundantly obvious from the consistent inflow of migrants who find, or create, jobs for themselves – where there’s a will, there’s a way. New Zealand though has a welfare system that pays people a liveable income which competes with earned income. Choosing welfare is rational, even if taxpayers find that choice repugnant (notwithstanding, they will happily support genuine cases of need.) There is a fundamental difference between the right and left view of working-age welfare. That was never more apparent than when the National government commissioned the Welfare Working Group in 2010 headed by Paula Rebstock compared to Labour’s similar exercise in 2018 headed by Cindy Kiro. The reports they issued were chalk and cheese. The former recommended ways to reduce welfare dependency; the latter, ways to improve the system to make it fairer and ‘kinder’ for beneficiaries. Team Rebstock [recommended](https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO1102/S00212/fundamental-change-signalled-in-welfare-recommendations.htm?ref=goodoil.news): • A stronger work focus for more people – Sending early, strong signals about the importance of paid work and assuming most people of working age can work. • Improving outcomes for children – The social and intergenerational consequences of having 222,000 children growing up in benefit dependent households are deeply concerning. Welfare reform options must explicitly consider the potential impacts on the well-being of children. Reducing the unacceptably high incidence of child poverty in New Zealand through a particular focus on at-risk jobless households and whānau must be a high priority of reform. • Committing to targets – The working group proposes a target of reducing welfare recipients by 100,000 by 2021\. Setting an achievable numerical target for reducing the number of people dependent on welfare will assist in directing attention to the scale of the problem, ensures a sharper focus across government and the community on outcomes from reform, and to provide a clear yardstick for measuring progress. Team Kiro team [proposed](https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/politics/388392/recommendations-on-welfare-system-reform-released?ref=goodoil.news): - Increase main benefits by between 12 per cent and 47 per cent - Remove some benefit obligations and sanctions - Fully index all income support payments and thresholds annually to movements in average wages or prices, whichever is the greater In so much as employment is desirable, the left sees a major role for the state in provision and guarantee of work; the right largely sees provision of work as a role for the private sector. The first hampers the second. These fundamental differences persist. It is physically and psychologically crucial that people support themselves and experience the satisfaction, mateship and self-discipline of doing so. Chronic welfarism damages people. In turn, it hurts children by creating a far riskier home environment than an employed household with two parents, or even an employed single parent. Role models, routines and reliability cannot be overstated for children. If the issue of intergenerational, destructive benefit dependency matters to you, the choice between left and right in the upcoming election is clear. This article was originally published on the [author’s blog](https://lindsaymitchell.blogspot.com/2026/10/if-welfarism-matters-choice-is-clear.html?ref=goodoil.news). ### ‘Right to Silence’ Call Heard URL: https://goodoil.news/right-to-silence-call-heard/ Last updated: 2026-10-19T20:59:59.000Z [**Family First**](https://familyfirst.org.nz/2026/10/18/family-firsts-2009-right-to-silence-call-heard/?ref=goodoil.news) Family First is welcoming National’s [policy](https://www.stuff.co.nz/politics/361047908/national-proposes-scrapping-right-silence-child-murder-cases?ref=goodoil.news) of scrapping the right to silence in child murder cases, but is calling for the law to be applied retrospectively in unsolved child abuse cases. Family First first made this call [back in 2009](https://m.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO0912/S00255/dumping-right-to-silence-will-protect-children.htm?ref=goodoil.news) as a result of the coroner’s report into the death of seven-month-old Staranise Waru from Christchurch in 2006, the deaths of the Kahui twins also in 2006, a four-month-old baby girl in Auckland in 2018, the Flaxmere four-year-old child [who was seriously injured in a beating](https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/409323/police-say-family-of-severely-beaten-child-in-flaxmere-must-front-up?ref=goodoil.news) in January 2020, [Manurewa boy Poseidyn Hemopo Pickering](https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/122834856/auckland-baby-homicide-oranga-tamariki-tipped-off-shortly-before-poseidyns-death?ref=goodoil.news) in September 2020, the ongoing unsolved homicide of Clover Park baby [Sofia Taueki-Jackson](https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/exclusive-unsolved-auckland-baby-homicide-charge-dropped-two-years-after-brutal-killing/XTXBW5ZMTFPTWW3HHUWEW2FUCU/?ref=goodoil.news) who died in May 2020, and, more recently, Lower Hutt toddler [Baby Ru’s death](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFdufzYZcCA&ref=goodoil.news), which remains unsolved. “The right of the parents and caregivers to refuse to answer questions during a police investigation means that the truth surrounding the deaths of our most vulnerable children and babies can be effectively withheld,” says Bob McCoskrie, National Director of Family First NZ. “Child abusers are able to hide behind their right to silence – and children are the ultimate victims. The rights of the child to justice is the big loser.” “The solution seems simple. Parents, caregivers, relatives and those in contact with a victim of serious child abuse should be held accountable until they fully disclose their involvement and demonstrate their innocence to the police investigation.” “We now have victims of child abuse screaming for justice and nobody held to account.” In 2011, the country’s leading authority on child protection questioned the right to silence for defendants in some child-abuse cases. Starship hospital’s director of child protection, Dr Patrick Kelly, told the inquest into the death of the Kahui twins that he was disappointed proposed legislation from the then-National government did not include some limitations on the right to silence. “The rights of victims to justice and the urgent need for offenders to be held accountable far outweighs the right to silence and other privileges that families may seek to use to mask their guilt or involvement.” “The laws should be changed to reflect this priority.” ### Your Daily Ten@10 - 2026/194 URL: https://goodoil.news/your-daily-ten-10-2026-194/ Last updated: 2026-10-19T21:00:09.000Z **This is edition 2026/194 of the *Ten@10* newsletter.** Hi all, This is the Ten@10, where I collate and summarise ten news items you generally won't see in the mainstream media. Enjoy! --- ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/01-ten194.jpg) ## 1\. JOHN RAINE: The Left is Up for Co-Governance. Could this Mean a Future Ethnocracy? *John Raine - Brash & Mitchell* - 🧭 Raine says most New Zealanders want one country with equal rights under the law, while respecting the cultures of the more than 200 ethnicities counted in the 2023 census. - ⚖️ He has the left backing co-governance down the track, and ACT, and perhaps NZ First, wanting one law for all. ACT gets called racist when it is “simply against discriminatory race-based rights under the law.” - 🔬 His example from science funding: to score a 7/7 “excellent” in MBIE’s Transitional Research Fund, researchers need “outstanding recognition” of Māori contributions, including Mātauranga Māori, or a good explanation of why it isn’t relevant. - 📜 Te Pāti Māori’s proposed Te Tiriti Commission could investigate Crown decisions, issue orders halting executive decisions, and make the Crown go to the High Court if it disagrees. - 🏛️ Raine says that would hand de facto ultimate governing authority “to Māori alone”, and in practice to “a group of powerful iwi”, not Māori at large. - 🌏 Go down that road, he warns, and we start to look like Malaysia and Sri Lanka, where the privileged group gets the university places, the public service jobs and the economic advantage. - 🗳️ He says the whole issue has been “buried by the mainstream media”, and National has been unwilling to grapple with it openly. - 💡 Takeaway: Raine is no fan of National’s “unkept 2023 election promises”, but he still reckons our democracy has a better chance of surviving intact if the coalition goes back in. [Read More](https://www.brashandmitchell.com/post/john-raine-the-left-is-up-for-co-governance-could-this-mean-a-future-ethnocracy?ref=goodoil.news) --- ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/02-ten194.png) ## 2\. RODNEY HIDE: Raw data that isn't raw. Australia catches up with what we were told to ignore *Rodney Hide - Brash & Mitchell* - 🌡️ The Australian’s Graham Lloyd reported a forensic audit that found chunks of the Bureau of Meteorology’s “raw” temperature data copied from one period into another. Sydney Observatory’s August 1867 minimums match August 1907. - 🔎 The auditors, Tom Berger and Geoffrey Sherrington, claim hundreds of red flags. The Bureau admits errors and will fix them, but won’t commit to a full review. Hide is careful: “Keep the two apart.” - 🇳🇿 In 2009 the Climate Conversation Group and the NZ Climate Science Coalition plotted NIWA’s own unadjusted data for its seven-station series. NIWA’s graph showed 0.92C of warming a century. The unadjusted trend came out at 0.06C. - 🚪 At a closed MP briefing that December, Nick Smith ordered Hide’s adviser, Dr Vincent Gray, out of the room. NIWA’s people stayed, and agreed the unadjusted trend was basically flat. - 💾 The adjustments traced back to Jim Salinger’s 1981 PhD thesis, and Wayne Mapp told Parliament the computer records behind it were no longer available. Hide: “what scientist loses the records for the most important graph in his country’s climate debate?” - 📈 NIWA’s rebuilt 2010 series came out at 0.91C, peer reviewed by Australia’s Bureau. A 2011 audit put it at 0.34C and a 2014 reanalysis at 0.28C, which NIWA scientists called “substantially too low”. - ⚖️ The Coalition’s trust lost in court in 2012 and was ordered to pay $89,238.90 in costs, though Justice Venning said the science was “not suitable for determination by a Court”. - 💡 Takeaway: “Show your working.” That was all anyone asked of NIWA, and for it they got called deniers. Now it is on the front page in Australia and “nobody is pretending the question is illegitimate.” [Read More](https://www.brashandmitchell.com/post/rodney-hide-raw-data-that-isn-t-raw-australia-catches-up-with-what-we-were-told-to-ignore?ref=goodoil.news) --- ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/03-ten194.jpg) ## 3\. Coalitions of Chaos: do they represent the new New Zealand? *Grant Duncan - Politics Happens* - 🗳️ Duncan expects a good election for the smaller parties. Under Clark and Key the big party won 49 to 60 seats. This time it could be as low as 34, “or 37 on a good day”. - 📊 In 2023 a Reid poll had 59.1% calling a National, ACT and NZ First government “chaotic” and 26.4% “stable”. Duncan says both were right: it lasted the term, but Peters and Seymour often looked like they were calling the shots. - 🐕 “Tail wags dog” became the go-to line, and nobody is using the coalition of chaos jibe this time because both big parties have their own agents of chaos. - 🏍️ Hipkins’ likely partners in Te Pāti Māori and the Greens posed for photos with a gang, “making themselves look unfit for office.” Hipkins has kept them out of law and order portfolios, which Duncan says only raises the question of which ones they are fit for. - 🛒 The Greens want to buy 120 supermarkets and want Chlöe Swarbrick as finance minister. “A green tail is already trying to wag the red dog.” - 🤝 Kieran McAnulty wants a deal with just the Greens and Opportunity, without TPM, but Duncan says Hipkins couldn’t say no to everything the Greens ask for, and Labour might barely hold a majority around its own cabinet table. - 🧩 He says fractious coalitions are what a more polarised country votes for, and no partner wants the blame for a messy collapse and a snap election. - 💡 Takeaway: “Coalitions of chaos represent the new New Zealand. We may as well get used to it.” Fair enough, but voters still pick which chaos. One lot lasted a full term. The other has spent the campaign explaining photos at a gang pad. [Read More](https://grantduncanphd.substack.com/p/coalitions-of-chaos-do-they-represent) --- ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/04-ten194.png) ## 4\. Scaremongering unions have a bad case of amnesia *Ani O’Brien - Thought Crimes* - 🏥 O’Brien accepts the health system is struggling. What she rejects is the story that it suddenly fell apart under this government through underfunding and understaffing, “because that just isn’t true.” - 👶 Starship’s Ward 27B ran below its staffing target on 791 shifts in 2023, under Labour, on figures NZNO itself publicised. This year it hit 85% in a bad August, then fell to 73% in September and 33% in early October. - 📉 NZNO’s press release left out the recovery after August. RNZ ran the same data, then updated its graph once the framing was pointed out. - 🩺 An Infometrics report commissioned by NZNO put the average daily nursing shortfall at 631 FTEs per shift in 2022, 684 in 2023 and 587 in the first 11 months of 2024. - 🎯 From April to June 2026, all five health targets improved on a year earlier. Electives inside four months rose from 63.9% to 72.6%, and the six-hour ED target from 73.9% to 76.3%, after falling from 89.5% to 71.1% under Labour. - 💰 Health funding for 2026/27 is $33.031 billion, up 8.4% on $30.476 billion. Labour’s first budget had $18.2 billion and its last $26.5 billion, and every budget since has gone up again. - 🔢 The “only 54 new nurses” line compares 29,404 FTEs in March 2024 with 29,458 in March 2026, a window picked to leave out the hiring surge just before March 2024. - 🗂️ She also reminds us NZNO demanded Andrew Little admit a health crisis in 2022, and Gisborne nurses went on strike under Ayesha Verrall in 2023. - 💡 Takeaway: “inadequate performance and improving performance are not mutually exclusive.” The unions just never call for Labour to be voted out. A part two on their “masterclass in misinformation” is coming. [Read More](https://aniobrien.substack.com/p/scaremongering-unions-have-a-bad-case-of-amnesia) --- ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/05-ten194.jpg) ## 5\. Two Solicitors-General, Two Constitutional Visions. *David Harvey - A Halfling’s View* - ⚖️ Retired Solicitor-General Una Jagose KC spoke at a Law Association breakfast in July. Her successor, Anna Adams KC, gave a formal paper on 3 September called “Black Letter Law: The Orthodox Methodology of the Crown”. - 🤝 Both back parliamentary supremacy, the separation of powers and judicial independence. Neither argues for judges ruling over Parliament. - 📏 They part ways on the rule of law. Jagose takes the “thick” view that folds in rights and substantive justice. Adams sticks to the “thin” view: clear, stable, predictable law, applied equally. - 🏛️ Jagose cites Sir Michael Cullen’s view that Parliament’s authority is “maintained” and “moderated” by constitutional norms, and asked whether Parliament could legitimately define the Treaty without Māori taking part. - 🗣️ She sees the courts and Parliament in a healthy dialogue. Harvey points out it was Parliament that gave the courts the power to make declarations of inconsistency in the first place. - 🌿 Tikanga is the sharpest split. Jagose treats the Ellis case as the law evolving. Adams prefers the older Loasby approach and rejects tikanga as a general source of law for every question of interpretation. - 😴 Jagose’s breakfast talk was full of warnings about “sleepwalking” and fragile constitutional fabric. Adams’ paper was formal, systematic and heavily footnoted. - 💡 Takeaway: two people, one job, two very different roads for public law. Harvey asks whether we take the one “more attractive to judges, lawyers and politicians” or the one that serves the public. Adams’ road leaves the big calls with people we can vote out. [Read More](https://djhdcj.substack.com/p/two-solicitors-general-two-constitutional) --- ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/Whakamana_ekvzc9.webp) ## 6\. The Teaching Council Disgrace *Peter Williams - Peter’s Substack* - 🏫 After Katherine Anderson KC’s report on the Timothy Fisher case, new Teaching Council chair Patrick Walsh went on Newstalk ZB, and Mike Hosking opened by noting Walsh “only arrived in July this year”. - 🔍 Williams says it takes little digging to find Walsh, a former Secondary Principals Association president, was an elected Council member from 2019, in the years the Council knew about Fisher and did nothing. - 🎙️ Asked if it could never happen again, Walsh paused, then said: “I couldn’t, hand on heart, say that.” - 📜 The back story: registration arrived with Tomorrow’s Schools in 1989\. Mallard’s 2002 Teachers Council had 7 of 11 members elected, National made all 9 appointed in 2015, and Hipkins brought elections back in 2018, giving the unions a 7 to 6 majority. - 👥 Ripeka Lessels, now NZEI president, was deputy chair from 2022, and Erica Stanford says she’s “not sure” Lessels’ union role is tenable any more. - 💸 CEO Lesley Hoskin resigned this year after her husband’s company, Clemenger, was found to have won $1.7 million in consultancy contracts. - 🙈 Williams doesn’t spare Stanford either. Her earlier chair, David Ferguson, had $750,000 in government funding to set up a private teacher training outfit. “Has she never heard of a concept called conflict of interest?” - 💡 Takeaway: Williams says “the country’s largest radio audience should have known” Walsh’s history. Stanford now picks the members herself, and if Hipkins wins, the PPTA and NZEI will want the keys back. [Read More](https://peterallanwilliams.substack.com/p/the-teaching-council-disgrace) --- ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/07-ten194.jpg) ## 7\. RODNEY HIDE: I asked AI to find David Seymour's worldview *Rodney Hide - Brash & Mitchell* - 🤖 The latest in Hide’s series. He told AI to read Seymour’s maiden speech, speeches, bills and votes, quote him exactly, and keep what he said apart from what it thinks it means. - 💰 The 2014 maiden speech opens with a test: “Is it possible for anybody to create new wealth?” Seymour says yes, and calls his opponents “the zero-sum game brigade”. - 📚 The AI finds Hayek all through it, plus Popper, Bastiat and Mencken, and notes Seymour entered a Hayek essay contest in 2008. - 🏛️ He isn’t anti-state. He gave government three jobs: “protector, regulator, and insurer.” - ⚖️ Equal citizenship is the second pillar, from the maiden speech to the Treaty Principles Bill, which lost its second reading 11 to 112 on 10 April 2025. - ✅ On choice he carried the End of Life Choice Act, backed by 65.1% at the 2020 referendum, and was the only MP to vote against the 2019 semi-automatic gun ban. - 💉 The AI’s hardest tension is Covid. In October 2021 ACT proposed letting businesses require vaccine certificates, protected from claims of “privacy or discrimination”, though Seymour opposed government mandates as “blunt” and called the final law a “constitutional outrage”. - 🧾 The AI’s verdict: “a Hayekian classical liberal who governs as a pragmatist.” - 💡 Takeaway: Hide thinks the AI is too hard on the deal-making and not hard enough on the jab. Fear is “a well used tactic of tyrants”, and he’d hoped Seymour had Benjamin Franklin on liberty and safety “ringing in his head”. [Read More](https://www.brashandmitchell.com/post/rodney-hide-i-asked-ai-to-find-david-seymour-s-worldview?ref=goodoil.news) --- ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/08-ten194.jpg) ## 8\. RICHARD PREBBLE: Those about to be defeated *Richard Prebble - Brash & Mitchell* - 🏛️ The Association of Former Members of Parliament says time served has dropped under MMP, and for list MPs it is “about four years”. - 📉 The Association lost $2,806 this year, but its treasurer expects things to pick up “as more MPs leave Parliament following the 2026 General Election.” - 💼 Many former MPs struggle to find work. Prebble notes there are few other jobs that need no qualifications or experience and pay $181,200 plus perks. - 🚕 Plenty never go home and settle in Wellington instead. One used to drive Prebble to the airport in his taxi. - 🇺🇸 Robert Caro tells how Lyndon Johnson was horrified to find a former congressman running a lift in the Capitol. - 🚆 His advice to those “about to be unemployed in 22 days”: “Take a job. Any job.” Sacked on a Saturday, he took a pitch to Vietnam Rail on the Sunday and was in Hanoi by Thursday. - 💡 Takeaway: his sympathy is for the electorate agents and staffers, because “Having worked for a defeated MP is not the best CV.” List MPs on the cusp might want to dust theirs off now. [Read More](https://www.brashandmitchell.com/post/richard-prebble-those-about-to-be-defeated?ref=goodoil.news) --- ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/09-ten194.png) ## 9\. How I’d Build Elon’s Amazon *EKO - EKO LOVES YOU* - 🤖 Amazon turned away an AI bot shopping for its owner, telling it access by an “unauthorized AI agent” breaks its Conditions of Use. - 🛒 EKO says Amazon really sells the shelf. Sellers pay for eye level, a bot walks straight past it, and Amazon made $68.6 billion from advertising in 2025. - 📦 UPS said its average domestic package in 2025 earned $13.21 and cost $12.14 to deliver, about $8 of it people and around 60 cents fuel. “Physics charges cents. People charge dollars.” - ⚖️ In August the Ninth Circuit ruled in Amazon’s case against Perplexity that the user, not the bot, was accessing Amazon. EKO compares it to the 1968 Carterfone ruling against AT&T. - ✈️ Don’t buy FedEx for $69 billion, he says. It buys 700 planes for a problem that’s mostly on the ground, and FedEx and UPS are already walking away from Amazon’s volume. - 🚀 His home for a real Amazon rival is SpaceX, which now holds xAI and X, plus Tesla’s fleet: the customers, the shopping bots, the wallets and “the cars at the door”. - 🌙 The plan: own the customer, rent the trucks, sell proof of origin, and put idle Robotaxis on a night shift, for under $5 a box against UPS’s $12.14. - 💡 Takeaway: Amazon chose to protect the shelf, and “Kodak and Blockbuster made the same choice”. Worth a read for anyone who still thinks the shop of the future has aisles. [Read More](https://ekolovesyou.com/p/how-id-build-elons-amazon?ref=goodoil.news) --- ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/10-ten194.png) ## 10\. Every Bad Idea Australia Ever Had About the Internet, Now in One Bill *Dan Frieth - Reclaim The Net* - 📜 Australia’s Online Safety Amendment (Digital Duty of Care) Bill 2026 went into Parliament last Thursday. Minister Anika Wells says “It moves the safety net upstream” to the people who design the product. - 💸 It runs to 90 pages, with civil penalties of up to $109.2 million for failing the duty. - 🔇 Reclaim The Net says the words “encryption”, “freedom of expression” and “free speech” appear nowhere in it, and section 26A(3) says the cost of safety measures “must not be taken into account.” - 🇬🇧 Even the UK’s Online Safety Act makes platforms weigh freedom of expression. Australia’s has no such duty, so a platform gets fined for removing too little but never for removing too much. - 🚪 Wells says the minister’s power to define new harms is gone, but section 25E(1)(f) still catches “any other material or conduct” that may cause serious harm to children. - 🕵️ eSafety and approved researchers get to run fake “sock puppet” accounts, even where that breaks a platform’s own terms of service. - 🤐 Anyone summoned by eSafety is examined in private, can’t rely on the right against self-incrimination, and faces 12 months in jail for refusing to answer. - 🗣️ Nationals leader Matt Canavan: “No politician should get to decide for themselves what lawful speech is harmful”. - 💡 Takeaway: Wells says “We are not controlling free speech.” The bill sets up a regulator that writes its own rules, in secret, with the police. Keep an eye on it, because Wellington has a habit of copying Canberra. [Read More](https://reclaimthenet.org/australia-digital-duty-care-bill-introduced?ref=goodoil.news) --- ## What our members are saying about Ten@10 **Elizabeth** These articles are compulsory reading for me and the perfect addition to the usual list of Goodoil items! **Lynne** Absolutely brilliant to receive these current and thought provoking articles. **Jonathan** Just wanted to let you know that I’m loving this new 10@10\. Much appreciated from someone who chooses to read/watch almost NO mainstream media. **Murray** Cam, relish your output as the newspaper in Christchurch is so intent on non news. Thankyou **Fred** Thanks for Ten @ Ten, really enjoy reading it.Keep it up. All the best, keep healthy. **Jocko** Wonderful info not otherwise available in NZ. More power to your elbow! Thanks. ### It Is Bizarre, or Is It? URL: https://goodoil.news/it-is-bizarre-or-is-it/ Last updated: 2026-10-19T20:30:00.000Z [**Richard Prebble**](https://richardprebble.substack.com/p/it-is-bizarre) *Columnist, former cabinet minister and ACT Party leader.* Every election one sees the bizarre, but Christopher Luxon’s actions are inexplicable. I saw on TV Luxon campaigning in Epsom with Paul Goldsmith. Goldsmith was claiming he would be a good electorate MP. I laughed. A friend of Goldsmith’s told me that Paul has often said how lucky he is not to be an electorate MP. Being National’s flag bearer in Epsom he gets a high list place, no one expects him to win, campaign seriously or do constituency work. I have been both an electorate MP and a list MP. There is no comparison. As an electorate MP, I once examined my diary and realised that between mid-January and when parliament rose for Christmas, I had just one day off without an official or constituency engagement. I recall a taxi driver knocking on my door during Christmas dinner. “I have a passenger with a real emergency,” said the driver. “I told him that you are the only MP I know who is available 24/7.” It was a passport issue. I knew the emergency telephone number to fix it. Goldsmith is campaigning for the electorate because, on current polling, National is winning no list MPs, and he is out of parliament. But why is Luxon campaigning with him? And why has Luxon also campaigned to win back Tāmaki from ACT’s James Christmas? Under MMP, electorate seats are filled first. If National wins two extra electorates, then that is two list places gone. Who are two list candidates ahead of Goldsmith? Nicola Willis and Chris Bishop. Both possible challengers for the leadership. Maybe Christopher Luxon’s campaigning for Epsom and Tāmaki is not bizarre. This article was originally published by [I’ve Been Thinking](https://richardprebble.substack.com/p/it-is-bizarre). ### A Climate BOM Drops, but Will There Be Any Reckoning? URL: https://goodoil.news/a-climate-bom-drops-but-will-there-be-any-reckoning/ Last updated: 2026-10-19T20:14:59.000Z A private forensic audit has exposed massive climate data fraud. _This post is for paying subscribers only._ ### Shared Benefits and Personal Risk URL: https://goodoil.news/shared-benefits-and-personal-risk/ Last updated: 2026-10-19T19:59:59.000Z **LilBaP** The Greens’ business policy reads like it was written by people who have never signed a weekly wage bill, never had to scrape to pay GST because a client paid late and never risked their own house. Their policy opens with “Honour Te Tiriti o Waitangi.” The policy states that “Te Tiriti and He Whakaputanga should actively shape the practices of all businesses operating in Aotearoa New Zealand, including their products, their practices, and their use of resources.” Let’s hope this only applies in Aotearoa. New Zealand already has laws. Businesses that break them should be prosecuted. The problem is not the absence of rules. The problem is that the rules that exist are not enforced evenly or quickly enough. Honest operators pay their PAYE, GST and income tax on time, while some don’t, or undercut them for years, while the IRD adds penalties and interest and then finally liquidates the company once the debt has ballooned into the hundreds of thousands. Creditors lose. Banks, staff and the IRD take their preferential slices. The competitors who stayed current are left with the damage. This is a massive, well-documented problem. Inland Revenue’s own reports show unpaid PAYE and GST run into the billions, with a large share already tied to companies in liquidation or bankruptcy. Penalties and interest have driven much of the growth in the debt book. IRD is one of the most frequent applicants for liquidation and has the power to move faster. It chooses not to. Missing one or two payment schedules is one thing. Missing three or more while still trading and undercutting compliant competitors is another. At that point the operation should stop until the directors can show they can catch up. Leaving them running for two years is not compassion; it is a subsidy for the dishonest at the expense of the honest. Judging by the rest of the Greens’ website, paying the tax is not enough anyway. Under Shared Benefits the policy declares: “The benefits derived from resource use should not be concentrated, but shared across society.” In plain English that means the gains from using your land, capital, equipment or any other input should not mainly stay with the people who organised them, paid for them, took the risk and did the extra work. They should be spread around to everyone else. It seems history and economics are not the Greens’ strong point. So you put your house up as the guarantee, work the extra hours on the GST returns and the PAYE, or getting that last order out, keep the doors open when custom is slow, and then you are told the ‘upside’ has to be shared with people who contributed none of the capital and none of the extra hours. What an incentive to start or stay in a business, especially for an SME. The corporates will love these policies. They have just been handed a way to thin out the competition in a few sentences. Who would have guessed – not people who have operated a real business in the real world. Once again the seminar class is making decisions without understanding the consequence. Shared benefits, but private risk. The business model only a committee of bureaucrats could invent. The rest of the document stays in the same classroom. “Appropriate Decision-Making” is defined as staff and business owners flourishing in a “collaborative, safe, accessible and respectful environment”. Fine words. Appropriate for whom, and judged by whom? The owner or the board of directors decides what is appropriate inside the laws of the country. Not a Green MP sitting on a park bench smelling the weed who suddenly feels they know what is good for every workplace. Health and safety, employment standards and anti-discrimination rules already exist. They are enforced, imperfectly, by the same IRD system that is slow on PAYE and GST non-compliance. Adding a vague requirement that every decision must satisfy an external definition of ‘collaborative’ and ‘respectful’ simply hands more power to people who have never had to make the call between paying the wages and paying the tax. Collaborative, safe and respectful, provided someone else is still signing the wage cheques. They do not address the actual decision that matters. Ecological wisdom, social responsibility, shared benefits, regulating the entire supply chain for environmental and social harm – all of it assumes the business is still standing after the IRD, the bank and the suppliers have been paid. The policy wants to reform market structures, penalise greenwashing, co-invest in skills and support the Māori economy. None of it starts with the basic requirement that a company that collects PAYE and GST actually remits them. The strategic goals make the direction clear. “Aotearoa will be in transition, creating green work and broad prosperity while moving Aotearoa away from carbon-dependent, extractive, and resource-intensive industries.” New Zealand translation: move away from the agriculture and horticulture we are actually good at, the sectors that pay the bills and feed people, and replace them with green work whose value is defined by the people writing the policy rather than by anyone willing to pay for it. “All people will be empowered to shape the systems that affect them through community engagement enabled by good evidence, co-design, and adequate resourcing.” In other words, more process, more committees, more people who do not own the business getting a say in how it runs, funded by the same taxpayers and customers who already keep the lights on. The actions listed are the usual seminar-room toolkit: reform market structures in industries dominated by a few large firms making “excessive” profits, regulate every business across its entire lifecycle for social and environmental responsibility and support relationships between Māori and non-Māori businesses. The agriculture policy makes the same bet more explicit. It aims for a sector that “upholds the mana of the land, people, and animals”, treats farm animals as sentient beings and drives a shift to regenerative practices through an Agricultural Standards Framework, a ban on palm kernel expeller, phase-downs of intensive practices and governance that implements Waitangi Tribunal recommendations. Put your hand up if you think many business owners will want to prepare their growth strategy based on Waitangi Tribunal recommendations – it’s hard enough dealing with local council. Farmers get low-interest loans and grants to transition. What they do not get is any recognition that the current system already feeds the country and generates the export revenue that helps pay for the hospitals and schools. The policy treats the sector that is actually good at what it does as a problem to be managed into something smaller and greener, rather than as the thing that keeps the rest of the economy solvent. The people writing these rules have almost no experience of the thing they want to redesign. Public profiles of the top 20 candidates show activism, public-sector roles, academia and planning. None list owning a commercial business that employs staff, or hands-on work in farming, horticulture or industry. Most NZ businesses are SMEs with 20 employees or less, including the boss. The people who write these policies have never had to choose between paying the IRD and paying the wages. Until they have, the document remains what it is: a seminar-room wish list that ignores the first rule of any business that lasts – you provide a product or service the people need or want, you do it well, the bills get paid or the business closes. ### Reading for free? You're getting half the story. URL: https://goodoil.news/reading-for-free-youre-getting-half-the-story/ Last updated: 2026-10-19T19:39:34.000Z Hi, Reading The Good Oil for free gets you plenty: the news, the debates, the front page and the start of most pieces. I'm glad you're here. But you're getting half the story, and it's usually the better half you're missing. Take yesterday. The press gallery has been pushing Labour and National to cut a deal on overhangs, and I wrote the full case for why that's exactly the stitch-up MMP was built to stop. Paying readers got the whole argument. Free readers didn't. Same with Real Good Oil. “Chippy Don’t Lose That Number” ran yesterday morning, and free readers got the start and not much else. Ten@10 lands every morning with ten stories. Free readers get the first one and then it stops. Quick Hits are for VIP members; the short political briefs and the cartoons are for paying readers. [Get the other half ($25)](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/upgrade) The half you miss is the detail, the sources and the reasoning. It's the part that lets you argue the point at work or over the fence, instead of just knowing there was a row. Twenty-five dollars a month, GST included, gets you all of it. With the campaign heating up every week, this is when it counts. If you're going to read me anyway, read the whole thing. [Upgrade to VIP](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/upgrade) Cam ### Quick Hit: Silence Is Not a Right URL: https://goodoil.news/quick-hit-silence-is-not-a-right/ Last updated: 2026-10-19T19:29:59.000Z National would make staying silent about a child’s killing a crime, with up to 10 years in prison. The Greens are open to it, ACT has doubts and Labour has yet to say on the record which silence it wants to protect. _This post is for subscribers on the VIP tier only._ ### The Cultural Capture of New Zealand URL: https://goodoil.news/the-cultural-capture-of-new-zealand/ Last updated: 2026-10-19T19:29:59.000Z Earlier this year, at a time of rising geopolitical tension and increasing regional insecurity – with China flexing its muscles and our allies expanding combat readiness – the New Zealand Army hit the headlines for forcing soldiers to sing waiata! The army had gone down the vortex of cultural indoctrination. On 26 January 2026 “Army General Orders Personnel, Part 1 – Ngāti Tūmatauenga” had been [issued](https://forms.justice.govt.nz/search/Documents/WT/wt%5FDOC%5F257378955/Wai%202500%2C%20G031%28b%29.pdf?ref=goodoil.news) to introduce the “Ngāti Tūtanga Policy”, which imposed a new Cultural Skill Framework across all ranks of the army, ostensibly to strengthen biculturalism, but in effect paving the way for the separatist capture of the institution. Under this new framework, cultural compliance was elevated above operational competence, embedding ideological requirements into promotion pathways and diverting attention from core activities. Instead of focussing on fieldcraft, weapons training, tactical planning, and the extensive skillset required for operational excellence, soldiers were required to memorise and sing up to *six* waiata, to perform karakia, recite Māori spiritualism and cosmology, and learn te reo – not just in-house, but by enrolling in night classes and residential immersion programmes. They were also forced to accept the nonsense that Treaty is a “partnership” between Māori and the Crown, that “colonisation” has had a negative impact on Māori, and that all Māori political activism is inherently beneficial. Senior personnel were required to “unlearn” ‘Western’ approaches in order to actively integrate Māori cultural values and a Māori world view into every aspect of their work. To better understand how this came about, this week’s NZCPR guest commentator Retired Colonel Bernard Isherwood explains what’s been going on: “The New Zealand Defence Force conducts ‘Satisfaction Surveys’ – recently re-named more benignly as ‘Pulse Surveys’. The surveys have consistently shown a significant loss of confidence in the NZDF’s senior leadership, and a view, shared across all ranks, that training for war has been replaced by a preoccupation with gender and cultural inclusivity and a creeping ‘corporatisation’. > The current chief of army has doubled down on cultural priorities, notably championing Wai 2500, a Waitangi Tribunal claims hearing concerning Māori veterans. Her husband, previously a serving lieutenant colonel, and for a time the NZDF’s senior Māori advisor, has been instrumental in helping develop the new NZDF policy – a policy that has been embraced by the current chief. > > The policy embeds indigenous culture throughout initial and ongoing training and in all formal and informal meetings and ceremonial activities. It has resulted in the army now having a proliferation of ‘cultural advisers’ whose place in the command chain is unclear. > > Addressing the place of Māori culture in the NZDF is legitimate – Māori make up about 18 per cent of the army – but treating it as a response to historic racism within the NZDF is not. With Bernard pointing out that the current army attrition figures for 2026 are expected to be almost 15 per cent, with over 600 personnel having submitted release requests, many of whom have served for 10 to 20 years, one can’t but help wonder whether the army’s surrender to Māori activism, and the absurd requirements being forced on personnel by senior leadership, has been driving good people away. Full marks go to ACT MP Todd Stephenson for [drawing](https://assets.nationbuilder.com/actnz/mailings/43784/attachments/original/260210%5FLetter%5FMinister%5FCollins.pdf?ref=goodoil.news) all of this to the attention of former Minister of Defence Judith Collins as soon as he became aware of what was going on: > I am writing regarding the New Zealand Army’s new internally circulated Ngāti Tūmatauenga bicultural policy and its associated Cultural Skills Framework. This policy appears to embed ideological and cultural requirements that go well beyond the government’s expectations for a professional, politically neutral public service. > > Rather than focusing on operational effectiveness and merit, the framework imposes a set of cultural competencies that would not normally be expected of public servants… > > In addition, the policy advances a particular interpretation of the Treaty of Waitangi that is far from settled and should not be treated as authoritative within a state institution such as the Defence Force. > > Taken together, this framework risks prioritising cultural conformity over competence, neutrality, and operational focus. That is not what New Zealanders expect from their armed forces, nor is it consistent with the government’s direction for the public service. > > I ask that this policy and framework be reviewed as a matter of priority to ensure they align with the government’s expectations and the principle of equal treatment regardless of background or belief. The minister’s [reply](https://assets.nationbuilder.com/actnz/mailings/43784/attachments/original/Letter%5FCollins%5Fto%5FStephenson.pdf?ref=goodoil.news) indicated she had not been briefed on the development, but had immediately put a halt to the policy pending further investigation: > Thank you for your correspondence of 10 February 2026 raising concerns over the New Zealand Army’s Bicultural Policy and Cultural Skills Framework. > > This framework was not previously brought to my attention, and I have today sought further information from army leadership. I am advised that the implementation of this framework has been paused to enable broader consultation. The army leadership agrees that this policy needs further consideration. The minister should not have stopped there. Biculturalism has been [entrenched](https://www.nzdf.mil.nz/assets/Uploads/DocumentLibrary/NZDF-Kia-Eke-Maori-Strategic-Framework.pdf?ref=goodoil.news) throughout the entire defence force by their 2023 Māori Strategic Framework, *Kia Eke*. In comparison to the army, the navy is focused on maritime protocol and international diplomacy, anchoring ceremonial training at their Te Taua Moana Marae in Devonport, while the air force has taken an education-first approach via its Turangawaewae facilities at Ohakea, prioritising voluntary rather than mandated involvement. Historically, the New Zealand Defence Force – like the police – sat outside the core public service, to protect it from political influence. All of that changed when Jacinda Ardern’s Labour government brought both institutions under the Public Service Act 2020 as non‑public‑service departments. This enabled defence to be subjected to the same race‑based ideological programming that was being imposed across the public sector by Te Arawhiti, the Office for Māori Crown Relations. While the ‘official’ purpose of this 200-strong agency, which had been established by Labour in conjunction with iwi leaders, was to strengthen the Māori-Crown relationship, in reality, its objective was to embed the notion that the state must operate as a partnership of equals with Māori. Through the [application](https://whakatau.govt.nz/assets/Tools-and-Resources/Maori-Crown-Relations-Capability-Framework-Organisational-Capability-Component.pdf?ref=goodoil.news) of Te Arawhiti’s *Public Service Māori Crown Relations Capability Framework*, almost the entire machinery of government was captured – including the Office of the Auditor General, the Reserve Bank, Crown Law, and many professional regulators such as the Real Estate Authority that licenses real estate agents. All of these bodies were required to embed cultural‑competency regimes mirroring those seen in the army. Other core members of New Zealand’s national security network – the Government Communications Security Bureau and the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service – were also caught in the tribal net, required by legislation to treat Māori as equal partners to the Crown, and to submit to their cultural indoctrination programmes. In fact, in their 2025 annual report, the NZSIS [details](https://www.nzsis.govt.nz/about-us/our-annual-reports/annual-report-2025/view/3648?ref=goodoil.news) their close relationship with tribal leaders: “We continued to engage with iwi chairs and strengthen relationships with mana whenua this year. Work remains underway to enhance our service delivery to improve *national security outcomes for Māori*.” Such developments raise serious concerns. Through the systematic implementation of a cultural skills framework developed by an agency pushing the radical Māori sovereignty agenda of tribal leaders, New Zealand’s entire National Security Sector has embedded parallel accountability structures under the guise of culture. Driving all of this is the Public Service Act 2020\. While parts of the act were amended by the coalition earlier this year, those sections responsible for the ‘Māorification’ of public agencies have remained intact – despite the expectation of voters that racist agendas were going to be eliminated. To return the public service being strictly colourblind – as it used to be – parliament would need to pass a law to strip all race and Treaty obligations from the Public Service Act 2020\. That would involve repealing Sections 14 and 15 to eliminate mandatory Māori-Crown capability requirements for chief executives, and rewriting Section 73 to strip out race-based hiring targets. By also amending Section 19 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights to prevent positive discrimination based on race – and to instead re-focus the government on socio-economic disadvantage – New Zealand’s state sector, like those in many other countries around the world, could begin to transition into one that is structurally neutral and identity-blind. So, with the 2026 election only a few weeks away, are any of our main political parties promising such changes? [![](https://www.nzcpr.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/Treaty-Policy-Image-300x183.jpg)](https://www.nzcpr.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/NZCPR-Political-Party-Treaty-Policy-2026.pdf?ref=goodoil.news) To see where the parties stand on Māori and Treaty matters, we examined the policies of each of the main political parties contesting the 2026 Election and compiled a summary for NZCPR readers [HERE](https://www.nzcpr.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/NZCPR-Political-Party-Treaty-Policy-2026.pdf?ref=goodoil.news). What we found is deeply concerning. If there is a change of government, an influential faction of the left bloc will not be satisfied with simply further entrenching the tribal takeover of our public institutions – they have categorically stated they intend to reshape the country itself. While Labour hasn’t publicly revealed much policy in this area, it is important not to forget that nor did they in 2020\. The first we knew about their radical plan to replace New Zealand’s Westminster democracy with tribal rule, was when they began imposing *He Puapua* onto the country after they’d won the election. And since the Opportunity Party’s fourth ranked candidate, Dr Kayla Kingdon-Bebb, was a co-author of *He Puapua*, voters should be under no illusion about the constitutional upheaval that could lie behind TOP’s seemingly moderate political image. The Greens and the Māori Party on other hand have not tried to disguise their ambition to replace parliamentary sovereignty with tribal supremacy. With the country’s highest court already captured by activist judges who consistently find in favour of Māori rights, the step to achieve tribal rule is chillingly simple: all it would take is to replace New Zealand’s unwritten constitution with a new written version based on the Treaty. If that occurs, the consequences would be permanent. Any decision made by parliament could be struck down by the Supreme Court if it was deemed to be insufficiently favourable to Māori. Worse still, any attempt by MPs to restore parliamentary sovereignty would itself be ruled unconstitutional. So, with the left bloc of Labour, the Greens, the Māori Party and TOP strongly aligned towards Māori supremacy, where does the right bloc of National, ACT and New Zealand First stand? While all three parties support parliamentary sovereignty, equal rights, and the rule of law, only ACT is promising to amend the Public Service Act 2020 to remove race-based requirements. While what they’ve identified wouldn’t go far enough, it is nevertheless a step in the right direction. To their credit, ACT has also pledged measures to rein in activist judges. While both ACT and New Zealand First are promoting a referendum on the Māori seats, and the abolition of the Waitangi Tribunal, given the widespread and deeply embedded cultural capture of our institutions, that will not be enough to stop the tribal takeover of our country. In 2023 New Zealanders voted to end the ‘Māorification’ of New Zealand. They wanted race and culture eliminated from the operation of government. While various attempts were made by the coalition, they did not go far enough – nor quickly enough – and National is now bleeding support as a result. Maybe they underestimated the size of the problem and the strength of the resistance they’d encounter from within the public service – but maybe National did not have the backbone to do what voters were demanding. What is now very clear, is that with the left driving an agenda that could destroy democracy as we know it, the country needs ACT and New Zealand First in particular, to step up and pledge, that if they win the 2026 election, they will use their combined influence to remove race and culture completely from our statutes in order to restore a state sector that serves every New Zealander as equals. This article was originally published by the [New Zealand Centre for Political Research](https://www.nzcpr.com/cultural-capture/?ref=goodoil.news). ### The Voter Suppression Cry Is an Excuse for Losing, Written Three Weeks Early URL: https://goodoil.news/the-voter-suppression-cry-is-an-excuse-for-losing/ Last updated: 2026-10-19T18:59:59.000Z Hipkins calls the 13-day enrolment deadline the most draconian ever and Swarbrick says the government is actively suppressing votes. Election-day enrolment is two elections old and the date was named in January. Enrol by Sunday 25 October. _This post is for paying subscribers only._ ### Winston Peters On Trains, Public Meeting And The Right To Silence. URL: https://goodoil.news/winston-peters-on-trains-public-meeting-and-the-right-to-silence/ Last updated: 2026-10-19T18:29:59.000Z If you have a great Youtube, Rumble or Vimeo video to share send it to videos@goodoil.news [![CTA Image](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/01/cam-shirt2-1.png)](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) If you're loving this trusty, straight-up news on Kiwi politics and beyond, why not become a paid member, eh? Unlock exclusive yarns, podcasts, vids, and in-depth analysis—your support keeps independent journalism chugging along. Join today for just $5.00 per month and get the full good oil! [Learn more ](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) ### Good Oil General Debate URL: https://goodoil.news/good-oil-general-debate-854/ Last updated: 2026-10-19T18:00:02.000Z Good morning, welcome to our daily General Debate. Our evening General debate is called Backchat and will start at 6 pm. On General debate, you are encouraged as a commenter to share your own stories, discuss other news, bring NEW news, catch up with friends or make new friends with other commenters. To participate you’ll need to sign up for a [Disqus account](https://disqus.com/profile/signup/intent/?ref=goodoil.news) which is free, quick, and easy. All you need is an email address to register a username that suits you. On posts that are not articles such as this one, you do not have to stay ‘on topic’ but you do still need to follow our [commenting rules.](https://www.goodoil.news/commenting-and-moderation/?ref=goodoil.news) Please [read our rules ](https://goodoil.news/commenting-and-moderation/)before you start commenting on *The Good Oil* to avoid a temporary or permanent ban. To check if your ban might have been caused by Disqus, or to ask for a banning decision to be reviewed, email the voluntary **helpdesk** @ [**goodoil.news**](https://goodoil.news/) with your Disqus username in the subject line. Please be respectful and do not make demands. ### Face of the Day URL: https://goodoil.news/face-of-the-day-1607/ Last updated: 2026-10-19T17:29:59.000Z > Radio star Jay-Jay Feeney has sold her Auckland apartment to one of her neighbours. > > The broadcaster told OneRoof that she had her offer within two weeks of listing her two-bedroom property at the end of September for just under $1.2 million. > > She said the buyer was another apartment owner in the block at 59 France Street South, Eden Terrace. > > “She really wanted the carparks. They are valuable real estate,” she said. > > “In the block, everyone is always asking to buy or rent carparks. I could have probably sold the carparks by themselves.” > > Feeney did not disclose the sale price, but said it was less than she had hoped for, so she may have to pause the renovation of her next home. > > One Roof [Read More](https://www.oneroof.co.nz/news/jay-jay-feeneys-1-2m-apartment-sells-fast-but-radio-star-takes-a-hit-50386?utm%5Fsource=nzh&utm%5Fmedium=referral&utm%5Fcampaign=nzh-home) ### The Good Oil Word of the Day URL: https://goodoil.news/the-good-oil-word-of-the-day-793/ Last updated: 2026-10-19T17:15:31.000Z The word for today is… watershed (noun) - 1a: a dividing ridge between drainage areas b: a region or area bounded peripherally by a divide and draining ultimately to a particular watercourse or body of water 2: a crucial dividing point, line, or factor : turning point 3 *British* : the time of day after which television programs not appropriate for children may be broadcast, the nine o'clock watershed 4 *medical* : an area of tissue (as of the brain or colon) that is located at the periphery of two separate arterial systems, is dependent on both for blood supply, and may be poorly perfused and vulnerable to ischemia —usually used before another noun Source : [Merriam-Webster](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/watershed?ref=goodoil.news) Etymology : Opinion on the literal geographic meaning of watershed is divided. On one side of the debate are those who think the word can only refer to a ridge of land separating rivers and streams flowing in one direction from those flowing in the opposite direction. That’s the term’s original meaning, one probably borrowed in the translation of the German Wasserscheide. On the other side of the argument are those who think watershed can also apply to the area through which such divided water flows. The latter sense is now far more common in America, but most speakers have apparently decided to leave the quarrel to hydrologists and geographers, choosing to limit their use of watershed to its figurative “turning point” sense. ***If you enjoyed this Good Oil word of the day please consider sharing it with your friends and, especially, your children.*** ### The Good Oil Daily Bible Verse URL: https://goodoil.news/the-good-oil-daily-bible-verse-503/ Last updated: 2026-10-19T16:59:59.000Z [Judges 20](https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Judges%2020&version=KJV&ref=goodoil.news) **8** And all the people arose as one man, saying, We will not any of us go to his tent, neither will we any of us turn into his house. ### Night Cap URL: https://goodoil.news/night-cap-761/ Last updated: 2026-10-19T07:59:59.000Z If you have a great Youtube, Rumble or Vimeo video to share send it to videos@goodoil.news [![CTA Image](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/01/cam-shirt2-1.png)](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) If you're loving this trusty, straight-up news on Kiwi politics and beyond, why not become a paid member, eh? Unlock exclusive yarns, podcasts, vids, and in-depth analysis—your support keeps independent journalism chugging along. Join today for just $5.00 per month and get the full good oil! [Learn more ](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) ### Manly Monday URL: https://goodoil.news/manly-monday-353/ Last updated: 2026-10-19T07:29:59.000Z If you have a great Youtube, Rumble or Vimeo video to share send it to videos@goodoil.news [![CTA Image](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/01/cam-shirt2-1.png)](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) If you're loving this trusty, straight-up news on Kiwi politics and beyond, why not become a paid member, eh? Unlock exclusive yarns, podcasts, vids, and in-depth analysis—your support keeps independent journalism chugging along. Join today for just $5.00 per month and get the full good oil! [Learn more ](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) ### Economist Craig Stobo On The PREFU, Inflation, Interest Rates And More URL: https://goodoil.news/economist-craig-stobo-on-the-prefu-inflation-interest-rates-and-more/ Last updated: 2026-10-19T06:59:59.000Z If you have a great Youtube, Rumble or Vimeo video to share send it to videos@goodoil.news ### Mike King Speaks Out: Gumboot Friday, Vulnerability, and His Untold Story URL: https://goodoil.news/mike-king-speaks-out-gumboot-friday-vulnerability-and-his-untold-story/ Last updated: 2026-10-19T06:29:59.000Z If you have a great Youtube, Rumble or Vimeo video to share send it to videos@goodoil.news [![CTA Image](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/01/cam-shirt2-1.png)](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) If you're loving this trusty, straight-up news on Kiwi politics and beyond, why not become a paid member, eh? Unlock exclusive yarns, podcasts, vids, and in-depth analysis—your support keeps independent journalism chugging along. Join today for just $5.00 per month and get the full good oil! [Learn more ](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) ### New Taxpayers Union Attack Ad SLAMS Labour and Chris Hipkins Capital Gains Tax Plan URL: https://goodoil.news/new-taxpayers-union-attack-ad-slams-labour-and-chris-hipkins-capital-gains-tax-plan-2/ Last updated: 2026-10-19T05:59:59.000Z If you have a great Youtube, Rumble or Vimeo video to share send it to videos@goodoil.news [![CTA Image](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/01/cam-shirt2-1.png)](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) If you're loving this trusty, straight-up news on Kiwi politics and beyond, why not become a paid member, eh? Unlock exclusive yarns, podcasts, vids, and in-depth analysis—your support keeps independent journalism chugging along. Join today for just $5.00 per month and get the full good oil! [Learn more ](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) ### The Good Oil Daily Roundup URL: https://goodoil.news/the-good-oil-daily-roundup-777/ Last updated: 2026-10-19T05:29:59.000Z [](https://photos.google.com/u/1/photo/AF1QipN7Zp7NKe4smdZA9nAYud8CjsgjsQ-Bn7QyMo53?ref=goodoil.news) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/6684385A-40AE-43A2-9932-6CC8BADD42A6_1_105_c.jpeg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/391E74FD-2435-4BDC-9DF9-E71F5A33EC04.jpeg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/4CB5251E-F477-44E4-AF6B-47888AC3E1C4.jpeg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/68A893E8-A798-4BC5-B85D-4E68BE2F81BA.jpeg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/0E7AB0AE-CC31-4C65-9671-301FBF57BF52.jpeg) ### Good Oil Backchat URL: https://goodoil.news/good-oil-backchat-855/ Last updated: 2026-10-19T04:59:59.000Z Good evening, welcome to **Backchat**. On Backchat, you are free to share your own stories, discuss other news or catch up with friends. To participate you’ll need to sign up for a [Disqus account ](https://disqus.com/profile/signup/intent/?ref=goodoil.news)which is free, quick, and easy. On posts that are not articles like this one, you do not have to stay ‘on topic’ but you do still need to follow our [commenting rules.](https://goodoil.news/commenting-and-moderation/) Please [read our rules ](https://www.goodoil.news/commenting-and-moderation/?ref=goodoil.news)before you start commenting on *The Good Oil* to avoid a temporary or permanent ban. NOTE: Moderation queries MUST be expressed VIA EMAIL and not by posting a comment. To check if your ban might have been caused by Disqus, or to ask for a banning decision to be reviewed, email the voluntary **helpdesk** @ [**goodoil.news**](https://goodoil.news/) with your Disqus username in the subject line. Please be respectful and do not make demands. ### Comedy Corner URL: https://goodoil.news/comedy-corner-108/ Last updated: 2026-10-19T04:00:08.000Z Welcome to Politically Incorrect Comedy corner: the one place on The Good Oil where you are allowed to read and share naughty and offensive jokes that make us all laugh even though we are not supposed to. If you are offended by these kinds of jokes then please do not read this post. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/08/C8A3E41B-6C57-4660-B753-D3558F07EEAE.jpeg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/08/16D99FAC-FECC-40F4-88BF-7C5C27CB305A.jpeg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/08/63419CF2-BE4C-4E46-BC96-07676235B31C.jpeg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/08/F1A0E0C3-7459-4C17-9B74-78D6D1F88A51.jpeg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/08/BF05EB5C-9603-4A63-AF7A-BC1EB461C947.jpeg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/08/BCF62DCA-944B-4B7B-B649-D7F67547ABC7.png) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/08/BCFD351F-58F1-46D0-A2A5-14C6E44A136C_4_5005_c.jpeg) ### This Shouldn’t Be Normal URL: https://goodoil.news/this-shouldnt-be-normal/ Last updated: 2026-10-19T03:29:59.000Z [**Nick Rendell**](https://dailysceptic.org/2026/10/15/this-shouldnt-be-normal/?ref=goodoil.news) *The Daily Sceptic* During the 2010–15 Euro crisis, pensions reduced by up to 40 per cent in Greece. Property prices collapsed by around 37 per cent in Ireland. Unemployment rocketed to 17 per cent in Portugal. Fiscal crashes exact a heavy toll. For the middle class there’s a painful cost in terms of collapsing asset prices, while for the poor their wages and state benefits shrink as inflation rips. However, we now seem to be normalising the prospect of a fiscal crash while rarely mentioning the inevitable downsides. My friends nearly all seem to think that there’s a fiscal crash looming. And they’re by no means all doomster Boomers. Rather they’re a mixed bag of one-nation Tories, Reformers, Lib Dems, a few Labour supporters and the odd (very odd) Green. What’s more they seem surprisingly sanguine about it. Some think that the only way to persuade the nation to live within its means is for the IMF to take the reins. Others think that if we’re forced to stop funding endless welfare benefits, those whose benefits get stopped may either find a job or migrate. My climate sceptic mates think that a fiscal crash would force us to stop subsidising Net Zero with the result that we could then reindustrialise as our energy prices halve. They all tend to be focused on the dubious benefits rather than the very certain calamities that would inevitably flow from a fiscal crash. But, it’s not only my social circle who seem resigned to a crash, the political parties and commentators seem to be resigned to it as well. And if they don’t say it publicly, their refusal to do anything to stave off such an event speaks volumes for our leaders’ apparent lack of concern. I’m the most optimistic person I know: I think a fiscal crash won’t happen in the next five years. But expecting ‘normalcy’ is now abnormal! It’s the same with power cuts. I don’t know anyone who’s not expecting a power cut this winter. Rather than be outraged at the prospect, they’re preparing for it. It’s become ‘normal’. Illegal migration is another scourge that’s been normalised. You may think that all illegal migrants should be immediately deported but, according to the latest polling I could find ([YouGov](https://yougov.com/en-gb/articles/48399-mrp-attitudes-to-small-boats-migrants-in-england-wales-constituencies?ref=goodoil.news) 2024) that asked nuanced questions, this is a minority view, with just 42 per cent in support. The idea that over 100,000 migrants should seek asylum every year has become normalised. ![](https://dailysceptic.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/image-33.png) And, while the focus is on ‘small boat’ crossings, it remains the case that most asylum seekers didn’t arrive on a small boat: they were already here. They were students, or visas overstayers. Stop the boats and we’ve only addressed part of the problem. ![](https://dailysceptic.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/image-34.png) Data breaches at Marks and Spencer, the Co-op and JLR appear to have conditioned us to expect our personal data to be stolen, or our biggest companies to grind to a halt for months on end. What’s more, invariably it’s a spotty teenager and his mates from Warrington or Wokingham rather than the Russian or Iranian state who’s behind the hack. Cases like Graham Linehan, the 15 year-old boy in his Walsall bedroom and the dozens arrested daily for posts on X normalise the end of freedom of speech. Increasingly we constrain our own speech out of habit – we expect to be arrested if we step out of line. The sexual assault of women by blokes who arrived a week last Thursday has been normalised. The idea that thousands of fighting age men might be dumped in an old army camp, making surrounding properties unsaleable and causing endless anxiety for locals, would, only a few years ago have seemed dystopian, whereas today its accepted with little more than a shrug by most, and positively welcomed by some. Objectors are vilified or imprisoned. We’ve also just ‘normalised’ antisemitism. The Green’s ‘Zionism is racism’ motion is plainly antisemitic and racist, yet the Greens are still treated as a perfectly legitimate party by the mainstream media. Imagine if a right-of-centre party had come up with that, or a similar policy targeting Islam, the party would have been banned, not have senior members invited onto every political panel on TV and radio. But let’s get back to the normalisation of the looming fiscal crash. Measure it how you like, GDP, GDP per capita or by disposable income, we’ve never been so well off. So, how come everyone feels hard up and, as a country, we appear to be going bankrupt? Of course, the answer is, because we’re not in charge of our own finances. We keep electing governments that, not content with taxing us at record levels, borrow an additional £100 billion a year only to waste it. ![](https://dailysceptic.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/image-35.png) Since Gordon Brown, successive chancellors have renamed ‘government spending’ as ‘government investment’. A new road, bridge or airport might be a genuine ‘investment’. Investments should produce a positive return. Paying welfare to millions who’ve just decided they’ve got ADHD just encourages more claimants. Arch-Conservative Margaret Thatcher famously said: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.” Post 2015, the Conservatives aped the most profligate of socialists, increasing the national debt from £1 trillion to £3 trillion, all of it “other people’s money”. Now it’s Labour’s turn to take responsibility for fixing the mess the Tories left, but the party shows no sign of doing anything other than accelerating us towards a showdown with the bond market. Though even if the government wanted to act, it’d be stymied by its backbenchers. Burnham and Healey have neither the plans nor any desire to create the conditions for economic growth. In the absence of growth, the debt bubble will keep expanding until they have to admit that they’ve run out of road and call in the IMF. Personally, I suspect that other events will intervene to force the government to rein in spending and increase taxation. But whether ‘austerity’ measures are forced on them by the IMF or adopted voluntarily, it will still bring the Burnham government down. The Tories definitely don’t want to be in power if a crash arrives. Understandably, they’d prefer to be taking office on the upswing after a crash. This would allow them to blame Labour for the necessity of IMF imposed belt-tightening, conveniently forgetting that it was their disastrous policies of Net Zero, Covid mania and uncontrolled immigration that got us here in the first place. But bailouts or austerity measures, however they come about, aren’t consequence-free. It’s perhaps worth reminding ourselves of some of the fallout from Iceland’s bailout that ran from 2008 to 2011, and the variety of bailouts and austerity measures adopted by Greece, Ireland, Italy and Portugal following the 2010 to 2015 Euro Crisis. Iceland, being outside the Euro and the EU, did not have recourse to the EU bailout fund. But it did have the advantage of controlling its own currency, which meant it had the additional tools of devaluation and restrictions on capital flight that it could call on. It instituted severe public spending cuts combined with sharp tax increases. The result was initially a dramatic recession followed by a faster recovery than the Euro countries, which lacked the option of devaluation. Instead, contraction had to be achieved by means of higher taxation and lower spending. Despite its small size (Iceland has a population of about 400,000) and social cohesion, the crash still caused political as well as economic upheaval. Political support tended to go to new, hardline parties including the ‘Pirates’ party. However, Iceland took its medicine and has been able to sustain its recovery. Ireland was an interesting case. Between 2008 and 2012, property prices fell by over 35 per cent. Public sector wages were cut by around 10 per cent, emigration surged as unemployment reached 15 per cent, while social programmes were cut back dramatically. In Greece, pensions were cut and pension age increased sharply. Similarly, in Italy and Portugal, taxes were increased and services cut. Whether it was the IMF, as in Iceland, or Euro technocrats, in the case of the Euro nations, democratically elected politicians lost control. Politics became, and remains, far more volatile. The wealth and livelihoods of the population were severely damaged. But none of this needed to happen. There’s nothing inevitable about excessive government spending. Interestingly, when the UK Government was bailed out in 1976, the IMF loan facility was never called upon. The threat of imminent financial collapse was sufficient for the country to take its medicine. In each of these crises, the fiscal disciplines insisted on by the IMF and the European Central Bank were measures that the national governments could and should have adopted themselves. All too often we hear politicians complain that if they adopted fiscally restrictive measures then electorates wouldn’t vote for them, but the success of Thatcher, Cameron in 2015, Meloni in Italy and Milei in Argentina all give the lie to this. The other sobering thought is that both the UK and France are now exceeding the debt levels that triggered the last currency crises. ![](https://dailysceptic.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/image-36.png) The 2010–11 Euro crisis was blamed on profligate governments; however, it’s arguable that bankers were as much to blame. Bankers loan money: their principal skill is to know the value of the loans they make. The value of a loan depends on the risk attached to it. When the Euro first started, banks wrongly believed that the risk of getting repaid was equal across all Euro participants. This led to profligate Club Med countries obtaining loans at rates previously only available to the puritanical northern European nations. As Warren Buffett famously quipped, “Only when the tide goes out do you discover who’s been swimming naked.” Well, the tide went out in 2008 and the bankers and Club Med countries were caught in the buff. This time, the bond markets are innocent; they’ve taken on board that different Euro countries represent different risks. Rather, it’s the national governments who’ve continued to borrow, despite usurious rates that reflect national risk. The governments have no one to blame but themselves as the rates get ever steeper. Before we ‘normalise’ the idea of a fiscal crash we need to remind ourselves of the damage it will do. The personal insolvencies, the destruction of jobs and livelihoods. The inevitability of broken families. Collapsed social programmes and the likelihood of violent disorder amongst our newly sectarian society. Fiscal crashes aren’t consequence-free. It’s about time governments across Europe started acting in a fiscally responsible way and adopted the very measures now that will otherwise be imposed by external institutions. There’s nothing ‘normal’ about a fiscal crash, an antisemitic mainstream political party, energy blackouts or the cancelling of our tradition of free speech and our national culture. This article was originally published by [the Daily Sceptic](https://dailysceptic.org/2026/10/15/this-shouldnt-be-normal/?ref=goodoil.news). ### Evolution Is Far from Done with Us URL: https://goodoil.news/evolution-is-far-from-down-with-us-2/ Last updated: 2026-10-19T04:05:13.000Z As [I wrote recently](https://goodoil.news/the-shape-of-humans-to-come/), the evolutionary race is never over. So, the oft-touted claim that natural selection is over for humans, shoved aside by medicine and a lack of predators, is tempting but mistaken. That doesn’t mean in the least that natural selection is out of style: only that the selective pressures have changed. Another common but mistaken idea is that evolution has a plan, a goal: it doesn’t. All it does is retool the materials it has to hand, to meet the demands of the environment. If you’ve ever seen a photo of a Third World bathroom where hot water is supplied with a garden hose, a kettle, a plastic jug and an extension cord: that’s kind of analogous to how evolution works. A designed system is a shiny new hot water service; evolution kludges together whatever is lying around into something that works. Sort of. Walking upright, for instance: it has massive benefits, such as free hands and efficient travel, but some big drawbacks. Blocked sinuses, for starters: creatures who spent hundreds of millions of years evolving horizontal body shapes also evolved sinuses that drain fairly easily from that position. Standing upright buggered that up: suddenly the snot that ran off with little problem now pools in our sinuses and can make our lives a walking misery. But that’s nothing compared to the really big problem walking upright created, in tandem with the most biggest evolutionary winner humans ever made, our big brains. Before you ever encounter the indignities of infant mortality or the dubious charms of modern courtship on the long and winding road to passing on your genes, you must successfully navigate the microscopic roulette wheel of the prenatal chamber. It’s an abattoir of molecular ambition that claims from a third to half of all conceptions before birth. Having miraculously survived this primordial lottery, the intrepid neonate arrives at the second great tollbooth of human existence: the birth canal. Here, the grand architectural compromise of our anatomy reveals itself in all its farcical geometry. For two million years, this structural impasse claimed no small number of maternal and infant lives. Nature, ever the slapdash renovator rather than the meticulous architect, solved this logistical nightmare by simply evicting the tenant prematurely, producing an infant that resembles an unfinished potato compared to the self-sufficient progeny of our primate cousins. Infants of other species can run away from predators within minutes of being born. Monkeys are a little slower, taking at least a few weeks. But human babies are helplessly dependent for years (sometimes as many as 30, these days). Yet, true to form, modern humanity looked upon this biological bottleneck and decided to intervene with surgical steel. > [If you’re born](https://youtu.be/q-3ZRGXdlUg?si=DcBeKDFqvMNWmTck&ref=goodoil.news) with a C-section, you basically cheated nature. And if you carry genes for a huge head and narrow pelvis, well, you can pass those genes down to your kids. Naturally, medical technological wizardry has spent the past century joyfully disabling nature’s survival filters. But to imagine that the great machinery of evolution has ground to a halt is to misunderstand the subtle cruelty of the ledger of natural selection. While survival filters recede, or simply change, the mechanisms of sexual selection merely shift their theatre of operations to the new evolutionary topography. In the animal kingdom, the division of labour regarding reproduction is stark. Males sprout antlers, tusks, and aggressive dispositions, battering one another into oblivion for the privilege of feminine favour. Yet human males present a rather less formidable armoury. Our dimorphism has flattened remarkably over the millennia and for a very distinct reason: human fathers actually stick around (or they did, until the welfare state lifted the selection pressure from deadbeat dads). > And the moment a male invests years in one family, he can’t afford to gamble on just anyone. So he gets picky too. In modern times, both sexes choose, which means both sexes get filtered. This mutual fastidiousness has played out across the centuries in fascinating ways, shifting from the brutal, despotic polygyny of the agrarian era, where powerful patriarchs monopolized entire demographic landscapes, to the strictly enforced monogamy of Christendom, and finally to the dizzying supermarket of modern romance. This brings us neatly to the digital epoch’s supreme contribution to the evolutionary saga: the pocket-sized luminescent oracle. > Today, more couples meet online than in any other way. And when the table is endless, being picky is free. And when being picky is free, everyone is. The smartphone has not rewritten the fundamental biological rules; it has merely expanded the dinner party from a modest village hall to a global amphitheater of eight billion souls. When option anxiety becomes our default state of being, the filtering process grows ruthlessly efficient. In places blessed with sensible demographic record-keeping, such as the Nordic nations, the data paints a stark picture: a rising tide of unpartnered men standing entirely outside the generational ledger. And if selection now favours wastrels who sow their seeds far and wide, and the females who accommodate them, well, that’s the way the loaded genetic dice roll. Evolution possesses neither malice nor benevolence – it merely keeps score. > Evolution isn’t a force with opinions. It’s just a renovator who does bookkeeping on the side. Which gene variant becomes more common in the next generation and which gene variant becomes rarer. Thus, we deceive ourselves if we fancy that mankind has somehow stepped off the evolutionary treadmill. The ledger is open, the ink is wet and whether we’re navigating the ancient hazards of the pelvis or the modern purgatory of the dating app, the ruthless audit of tomorrow continues apace. --- 💡 ****If you enjoyed this article please share it using the share buttons at the top or bottom of the article.** ### National proposes 10-year prison terms for silence in child killings URL: https://goodoil.news/national-proposes-10-year-prison-terms-for-silence-in-child-killings/ Last updated: 2026-10-19T03:30:58.000Z *Summarised by* [*Centrist*](https://centrist.nz/?ref=goodoil.news) **Adults who refuse to provide information to police about the killing of a child under 12 could face up to 10 years in prison under a new law proposed by National.** **Justice spokesperson Paul Goldsmith says the exception to the right to silence would apply where adults were clearly present at the time of a child's death or in the period leading up to it.** National says the change is needed because witnesses and potential offenders have withheld crucial information in child murder investigations, preventing police from identifying those responsible. "The right to remain silent is a fundamental principle, however, it should not be absolute when a child has lost their life and, for example, there are only three people in the house, but no one is talking," Goldsmith said. He argues the threat of prosecution would encourage perpetrators and accomplices to identify those responsible rather than risk imprisonment themselves. National would work with legal experts to draft the proposed Crimes Act offence if re-elected, limiting it to exceptional circumstances involving the death of a child. **Editor's note:** Goldsmith's example of three people in a house who will not reveal what happened closely mirrors the unsolved killing of [Baby Ru](https://centrist.nz/no-charges-laid-1000-days-since-baby-rus-death?ref=goodoil.news) in Lower Hutt in October 2023\. Police confirmed three adults were present when the toddler suffered fatal injuries. All three provided accounts, but detectives said their explanations were incomplete and inconsistent with evidence, and none had accepted responsibility. Goldsmith did not explicitly identify the case. [**Read more at Stuff**](https://www.stuff.co.nz/politics/361047908/national-proposes-scrapping-right-silence-child-murder-cases?utm%5Fsource=chatgpt.com) *Re-published from the Centrist with permission* [Original article at The Centrist](https://centrist.nz/national-proposes-10-year-prison-terms-for-silence-in-child-killings-1792375240565?ref=goodoil.news) ### Te Pāti Māori’s Kiri Tamihere, who spoke of overthrowing government, defends gang-pad hui URL: https://goodoil.news/te-pati-maoris-kiri-tamihere-who-spoke-of-overthrowing-government-defends-gang-pad-hui/ Last updated: 2026-10-19T03:31:11.000Z *Summarised by* [*Centrist*](https://centrist.nz/?ref=goodoil.news) **Te Pāti Māori general manager Kiri Tamihere-Waititi, who previously spoke of overthrowing the government in a video examined by Police, has dismissed criticism of MPs attending a Mongrel Mob election hui as manufactured outrage from the political right.** **Yet even Labour has condemned the visit.** Tamihere-Waititi, daughter of party president John Tamihere and wife of co-leader Rawiri Waititi, accused political opponents of orchestrating a scandal over MPs posing for photographs with Mongrel Mob members at a South Auckland gang pad. "This is normal for us, eh? It's normal for Māori to go and sit with our gang whānau," she said, adding: "We don't discriminate in that way." She stated that gang members were part of their families, attending birthdays, Christmases and other gatherings together. But Tamihere-Waititi did not explain why maintaining family relationships with gang members justified holding an election event at a gang headquarters, posing with patched members and publicly promoting the occasion. Te Pāti Māori MP Oriini Kaipara described the gathering as a "health and wellbeing election hui". Why the meeting needed to take place at a gang pad, rather than a community organisation or neutral venue, or how the gathering served families beyond the gang itself, remain unanswered. In a subsequent [RNZ interview](https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/politics%5Felection-2026/2018789/te-pati-maori-s-oriini-kaipara-on-gangs-i-see-whanau?ref=goodoil.news), Kaipara doubled down, saying: “You see Mongrel Mob, I see whānau.” She acknowledged the gangs’ history of violence but defended engaging with members. Labour leader Chris Hipkins ruled out restoring the Mongrel Mob’s “mana” or reversing the gang patch ban, while Green co-leader Marama Davidson said Kaipara’s remarks were for Te Pāti Māori to answer. Tamihere-Waititi's claimed that the controversy was manufactured by the right, despite criticism from Labour leader Chris Hipkins, who condemned the visit as an error of judgment. However, he limited ruling out giving the Greens or Te Pāti Māori portfolios in a future coalition government to only the police or corrections. "Any engagement that validates the legitimacy of gangs is stuff that politicians need to be careful to avoid," he said. Meanwhile, Green co-leader Marama Davidson said she was “proud” to advocate for “marginalised communities”. Her party has expressed openness to funding Mongrel Mob drug rehabilitation programmes. **Editor's note:** Tamihere-Waititi's own political rhetoric has previously drawn Police attention. In May 2024,[ journalist Chris Lynch reported](https://www.chrislynchmedia.com/news-items/rawiri-waititis-wife-under-scrutiny-for-expletive-laden-social-media-video/?ref=goodoil.news) that Police were assessing a video in which she declared: "We could overthrow any government. We could do whatever the f\*\*\* we wanted.” Lifelong Black Power member[ Denis O'Reilly](https://centrist.nz/gangs-given-the-soft-glove-by-media-and-government?ref=goodoil.news) questioned the Greens' approach during an[ interview with Newstalk ZB](https://www.iheart.com/podcast/211-heather-du-plessis-allan-d-24837940/episode/denis-oreilly-lifetime-black-power-member-347672390/?ref=goodoil.news). O'Reilly criticised the timing and optics of the visit and questioned whether gangs were appropriate organisations to deliver publicly funded drug rehabilitation. He suggested community organisations involving gang whānau, but operating independently of gangs, would be a better option. Voters may consider that, if the objective was to support families affected by drug addiction and gang violence, why not meet those families independently of the gang? [**Read more at The NZ Herald**](https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/politics/election-2026-kiri-tamihere-waititi-calls-backlash-to-mongrel-mob-hui-manufactured-outrage/3OQJVNY325HWBLJLMHSPXXMHRU/?ref=goodoil.news) Image: Rongo Keene *Re-published from the Centrist with permission* [Original article at The Centrist](https://centrist.nz/te-pti-moris-kiri-tamihere-who-spoke-of-overthrowing-government-defends-gang-pad-hui-1792375233346?ref=goodoil.news) ### Labour and National urged to strike deal to stop overhangs distorting elections URL: https://goodoil.news/labour-and-national-urged-to-strike-deal-to-stop-overhangs-distorting-elections/ Last updated: 2026-10-19T03:31:27.000Z *Summarised by* [*Centrist*](https://centrist.nz/?ref=goodoil.news) **Labour and National are being urged to strike a bipartisan deal to prevent overhangs from determining election outcomes, but former ACT leader Rodney Hide says the proposal risks overturning the will of voters.** In an[ NZ Herald opinion piece](https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/politics/why-labour-and-national-should-do-a-deal-and-kill-the-overhang-thomas-coughlan/premium/FGEJIENWTVGOXBK4I43F5F6KK4/?ref=goodoil.news), political editor Thomas Coughlan argues that both major parties have an interest in changing MMP rules to prevent strategic voting from producing disproportionate parliamentary representation. He suggests two possible reforms including expanding Parliament to 170 MPs. This will be either through additional list seats, to make overhangs less likely, or introducing compensatory seats for other parties whenever an overhang occurs, preserving proportionality. Both would increase the number of MPs. Coughlan argues that whichever party wins, even with help from an overhang, should support reform rather than preserve an advantage its opponents could exploit at future elections. In[ his October 17 opinion piece](https://www.thepost.co.nz/politics/361099333/dirty-deal-chris-hipkins-and-christopher-luxon-should-actually-strike?ref=goodoil.news), The Post's Henry Cooke suggests Christopher Luxon and Chris Hipkins could agree before polling day that neither would form a government dependent on an overhang. Cooke raises the possibility of a temporary [grand coalition](https://centrist.nz/will-national-rule-out-labour?ref=goodoil.news) to change the electoral law before holding another election. He argues this could be accomplished without a referendum or parliamentary supermajority. Former ACT leader Rodney Hide characterises Cooke's argument as: "if you vote the wrong way, you vote again." He argues that split voting and overhangs are lawful features of MMP, established by Parliament, and that voters are entitled to use their electorate and party votes strategically. "That's not cheating. That's MMP working exactly as Parliament wrote the law," Hide writes. He accuses Cooke of encouraging Labour and National to rewrite electoral rules to suit themselves, without first seeking a public mandate. Hide also rejects the suggestion that organised strategic voting undermines democracy, arguing that persuading voters to use their votes effectively is part of ordinary election campaigning. **Editorial note:** The near-simultaneous calls come as voters are being encouraged to [split their electorate and party votes](https://centrist.nz/explainer-how-tactical-voting-could-produce-a-191-seat-parliament-1791186546127?ref=goodoil.news) to take advantage of provisions already written into MMP law. For critics such as Hide, the proposals raise an uncomfortable question: why are influential political commentators urging Labour and National to change the system just as voters are learning how to use it? Coughlan and Cooke see a threat to proportional representation. Hide sees a threat to voters' right to determine the outcome under existing rules. **Read more at** [**The NZ Herald**](https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/politics/why-labour-and-national-should-do-a-deal-and-kill-the-overhang-thomas-coughlan/premium/FGEJIENWTVGOXBK4I43F5F6KK4/?ref=goodoil.news) **|** [**The Post**](https://www.thepost.co.nz/politics/361099333/dirty-deal-chris-hipkins-and-christopher-luxon-should-actually-strike?ref=goodoil.news) **|** [**Brash & Mitchell**](https://www.brashandmitchell.com/post/rodney-hide-henry-cooke-wants-a-do-over-if-you-vote-wrong?utm%5Fcampaign=bae52d35-0dbd-4511-a0b6-6265e3cad6fa&utm%5Fsource=so&utm%5Fmedium=mail&utm%5Fcontent=0bd4d1a7-af0f-4c71-bfba-d8af38ca8dbb&configurationId=1e868109-7e9f-4852-82bf-5cd5dcb47468&actionId=923601ea-11e6-975b-c01e-42db2a0af372&cid=52b68fd5-ea43-4f1a-b97a-2ec1ae96d754&ref=goodoil.news) *Re-published from the Centrist with permission* [Original article at The Centrist](https://centrist.nz/labour-and-national-urged-to-strike-deal-to-stop-overhangs-distorting-elections-1792375229392?ref=goodoil.news) ### NZ house prices fall back to 2017 levels after inflation URL: https://goodoil.news/nz-house-prices-fall-back-to-2017-levels-after-inflation/ Last updated: 2026-10-19T03:31:41.000Z *Summarised by* [*Centrist*](https://centrist.nz/?ref=goodoil.news) **New Zealand house prices have fallen back to mid-2017 levels after adjusting for inflation, with the housing market still struggling to recover from its November 2021 peak.** **Owners have experienced both falling nominal property values and an erosion of purchasing power.** According to Australian economist Leith van Onselen of MacroBusiness, the latest Real Estate Institute of New Zealand (REINZ) house price index shows nominal prices falling 1.5% over the past year. Most of the decline occurred in the 18 months following the 2021 peak, with prices largely moving sideways since then. However, inflation has continued to erode their real value. The Reserve Bank increased the official cash rate to 2.75% in September, its second consecutive rise, adding pressure to an already weak housing market. Meanwhile, properties available for sale are at their highest level in more than a decade, according to van Onselen. REINZ figures show sales volumes down 11.6% annually, with properties taking three days longer to sell than a year earlier. Van Onselen argues that buyer attitudes have shifted from fear of missing out (FOMO) to fear of overpaying (FOOP). He expects further weakness in house prices as higher interest rates, increased listings and reduced buyer confidence weigh on the market. [**Read more at MacroBusiness**](https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2026/10/new-zealand-house-prices-crash-back-to-2017/?ref=goodoil.news) *Re-published from the Centrist with permission* [Original article at The Centrist](https://centrist.nz/nz-house-prices-fall-back-to-2017-levels-after-inflation-1792375225340?ref=goodoil.news) ### Even households earning $220,000 struggling to get ahead as living costs bite URL: https://goodoil.news/even-households-earning-220-000-struggling-to-get-ahead-as-living-costs-bite/ Last updated: 2026-10-19T03:31:56.000Z *Summarised by* [*Centrist*](https://centrist.nz/?ref=goodoil.news) **New Zealand families earning more than $200,000 a year say mortgage payments, groceries and other household costs are leaving little room for savings.** A Sunday Star-Times investigation found even high-income households cutting back on travel, shopping and family visits to make ends meet. A Hutt Valley couple earning up to $240,000 shop second-hand and avoid unnecessary travel, while a Hawke's Bay father earning $220,000 says his family struggles to save. "I thought when I was growing up, if I was earning the amount of money that I'm earning now, that I wouldn't have any complaints and that life would be comfortable," he said. The experiences reflect broader findings from the University of Otago's latest New Zealand Consumer Lifestyles report. The survey classified 27% of respondents as financially struggling, up from 16.5% in 2020\. Those in this group were commonly middle-income earners, with relatively high rates of university education, full-time employment and homeownership with a mortgage. Across all respondents, 40% reported difficulty paying for essentials, while 52% had gone without something they would normally purchase to cover necessary expenses. Economist Shamubeel Eaqub cautioned that income alone gives an incomplete picture of financial security. Household size, housing costs and location make a substantial difference. A family of five earning $150,000, for example, has roughly the same income-adjusted living standard as a single person earning $60,000. Renters generally remain more financially vulnerable than homeowners, with Eaqub noting that 53% of renters fall within the bottom two income quintiles. Salvation Army foodbank team leader Joel Williams said increasing numbers of working people, including homeowners and those juggling multiple jobs, were seeking food assistance. "We're essentially subsidising a broken system that's no longer serving the people," he said. The Otago survey also found 48% of respondents believed New Zealanders needed to leave the country to get ahead financially, compared with 28% in 2020. [**Read more at The Post**](https://www.thepost.co.nz/nz-news/361098831/220000-struggling-get-ahead?ref=goodoil.news) **(paywalled)** *Re-published from the Centrist with permission* [Original article at The Centrist](https://centrist.nz/even-households-earning-220000-struggling-to-get-ahead-as-living-costs-bite-1792375221510?ref=goodoil.news) ### Long COVID insurance claims rejected under mental health exclusions URL: https://goodoil.news/long-covid-insurance-claims-rejected-under-mental-health-exclusions/ Last updated: 2026-10-19T03:32:12.000Z *Summarised by* [*Centrist*](https://centrist.nz/?ref=goodoil.news) **Insurance company Partners Life is facing questions over its decision to reject Long COVID insurance claims using mental health exclusions attached to policyholders' existing policies.** **Christchurch software engineer Tales Azevedo Alves was diagnosed with ADHD while attending university in Brazil about 15 years ago.** After contracting COVID in 2022, he developed severe fatigue, heart problems, headaches, dizziness and cognitive difficulties that eventually left him unable to work. When he claimed on his income protection policy in August 2026, Partners Life declined the claim, relying on a mental health exclusion that included fatigue-related disorders. Azevedo Alves disputes the decision, arguing that Long COVID is a physical post-viral illness rather than a mental health disorder. A similar case involved Auckland woman Nicola Coombe, whose total and permanent disability claim was declined under an exclusion introduced because of her earlier experience with anxiety and depression. Lawyer Tim Gunn, who represents several claimants, argues that applying these exclusions to Long COVID may constitute unlawful discrimination under the Human Rights Act 1993. The Human Rights Commission said that insurers must be able to justify exclusions using reliable actuarial or statistical evidence. Its 2007 guidance also states that exclusions for pre-existing conditions should be as specific as possible, and that insurers must establish a reasonable basis for extending them to other conditions. However, the Commission stressed that whether a particular exclusion is lawful would ultimately be determined by the courts. Gunn says his clients have not been provided with data justifying Partners Life's decisions. The Financial Markets Authority, which oversees insurers' obligations to treat customers fairly, has invited affected consumers to raise concerns. [**Read more at The Waikato Times**](https://www.waikatotimes.co.nz/business/361097763/long-covid-claims-rejected-insurers-using-mental-health-policy-exclusions?ref=goodoil.news) **(paywalled)** *Re-published from the Centrist with permission* [Original article at The Centrist](https://centrist.nz/long-covid-insurance-claims-rejected-under-mental-health-exclusions-1792375216781?ref=goodoil.news) ### Auckland dog walkers face $80,000 consent bills and potential $10 million fines URL: https://goodoil.news/auckland-dog-walkers-face-80-000-consent-bills-and-potential-10-million-fines/ Last updated: 2026-10-19T03:32:27.000Z *Summarised by* [*Centrist*](https://centrist.nz/?ref=goodoil.news) Auckland Council is requiring professional dog walkers operating on private rural land to obtain resource consents, with one business facing costs of up to $80,000 and operators warned of prosecution carrying potential fines of up to $10 million. According to Stuff, six businesses have received abatement notices, with another three under investigation following council complaints about operations without consent. Vince Nancarrow, who runs Becky’s Dog Walking on a 4.5-hectare Taupaki property, said obtaining consent would cost between $75,000 and $80,000. "We've applied for consent and by the time we've finished doing everything they need it will cost us $75,000 to $80,000," he said. Janelle Broadhurst, who has operated Doggone Attitude on six hectares in Massey for six years, expects to pay $30,000. "I've never had any complaints of any kind. I don't think making us get a resource consent is really necessary," she said. Another operator reported paying more than $15,000, including over $4,000 simply to lodge the application and the cost of an acoustic report. "I think it's utter bullshit. I think it's absolutely ridiculous," she said. Operators who fail to comply face fines of up to $4,000 or prosecution under the Resource Management Act, which carries a maximum fine of $10 million on conviction. The crackdown follows Auckland Council's decision earlier this year to limit certified dog walkers to 12 dogs in public places, prompting some businesses to use private land instead. Council compliance team leader Grant Schmidt said nine complaints about businesses operating without consent had prompted enforcement action. One operator, who said she had never received a complaint, described being reduced to tears by the prospect of consent costs. "We're a small business and getting a consent would be a massive cost for us," she said. [**Read more at Stuff**](https://www.stuff.co.nz/nz-news/361045372/utter-bullshit-professional-dog-walkers-slam-council-crackdown?ref=goodoil.news) *Re-published from the Centrist with permission* [Original article at The Centrist](https://centrist.nz/auckland-dog-walkers-face-80000-consent-bills-and-potential-10-million-fines-1792375212100?ref=goodoil.news) ### CRL passenger numbers surge, but businesses still waiting for payoff URL: https://goodoil.news/crl-passenger-numbers-surge-but-businesses-still-waiting-for-payoff/ Last updated: 2026-10-19T03:32:40.000Z *Summarised by* [*Centrist*](https://centrist.nz/?ref=goodoil.news) **A month after Auckland's City Rail Link opened, passenger numbers have surged, but businesses that endured years of construction disruption report mixed results, with some seeing little improvement in sales.** **While Karangahape Road businesses report encouraging increases in customers, several central-city operators say the benefits have been modest, raising questions about how long it will take for affected businesses to recover from years of disruption.** Karangahape Road businesses Coco's Cantina and PieFee bakery report stronger trade, with PieFee now opening Sundays. But around Te Waihorotiu Station, results are less encouraging. Amelia Cafe owner Neil Seck, whose neighbouring salon suffered during construction, said: "I haven't seen the big kick regarding the business." Nearby Scrunchy Millers reports only a modest increase, while Fresh Market CBD says sales are largely unchanged. In Eden Terrace, Delissimo Deli Cafe reports a 15% increase, although the improvement began four months before the railway opened. Meanwhile, University of Auckland transport researcher Timothy Welch reported a 73% increase in boardings on the western route into the city and a tripling on the west-to-east route. But Welch cautioned that major transport projects typically experience a six-to-12-month honeymoon period, with the CRL's full impact potentially taking a decade to emerge. The increase in passengers has therefore yet to establish a sustained commercial benefit for businesses that endured years of construction. [**Read more at 1News**](https://www.1news.co.nz/2026/10/18/has-aucklands-new-city-rail-link-helped-to-boost-businesses/?ref=goodoil.news) *Re-published from the Centrist with permission* [Original article at The Centrist](https://centrist.nz/crl-passenger-numbers-surge-but-businesses-still-waiting-for-payoff-1792375208087?ref=goodoil.news) ### [The Good Oil] Stuff Up of the Day URL: https://goodoil.news/the-good-oil-stuff-up-of-the-day-192/ Last updated: 2026-10-19T01:59:59.000Z Hmm... A newspaper deciding that the Warbirds’ Harvards are jets. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/Stuff-Up-19-Oct.png) ### How Government Works URL: https://goodoil.news/how-government-works/ Last updated: 2026-10-19T01:00:03.000Z [**Anton Lang**](https://papundits.wordpress.com/2026/10/16/how-government-works/?ref=goodoil.news) *TonyfromOz* Recently, I was reading an article at an informational blog site I visit first thing every morning, and then a few more more times throughout each and every day. [Here’s the link to that article at the JoNova site in Australia](https://joannenova.com.au/2026/10/carbon-credits-to-turn-into-general-communist-fiat-currency-to-stop-storms-help-indigenous-people-jobs-frogs-picnic-spots-whatever/?ref=goodoil.news). The article was along the lines of what Joanne writes about every day at her site, how climate change is most definitely NOT what what the hype tells us it is all about (and, um, that’s my attempt to put it politely) and she also writes extensively on the subject I’ve also been writing about since March of 2008 (more than 16 years now) and that’s how renewable power will never replace the traditional sources of constant and reliable electrical power generation we have had for so long now, and that those two preferred forms of renewable power generation, wind power and solar power (both industrial solar power plants and rooftop solar power) are enormously expensive sources of power generation that also don’t live up to the hype we are so constantly told about. That article at her site I was reading was about how climate credits have now *‘morphed’* into something else, now that all that hype about climate change has suddenly become something that is not mentioned as often as it once was. Even though governments are not talking about it anywhere near as much as they used to, they still need a way to *‘keep the money flowing’*, so they are artfully finding new ways and means to *‘rebrand’* that climate money. In her article, there was a shortish analogy of how the government goes about doing something like this, and the way it was explained sort of simplified the whole process really... and, when you really think about it, isn’t this exactly how government works? Joanne used a sandwich as an example. ![](https://papundits.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/hamsaladsandwich.jpg) > The simplicity of a real free market makes us so much more productive. > > Imagine buying a sandwich. You walk into a shop, hand over $12, and leave with lunch. Nobody needs to know whether your sandwich contributes to regional employment, supports biodiversity, advances cultural reconciliation or aligns with Australia’s 2050 emissions targets. You just wanted a sandwich. > > But imagine if the government bought your sandwich for you. Suddenly there’s a departmental working group, a consultation period, an indigenous engagement strategy, a biodiversity impact assessment, and a $400,000 consultancy to determine whether the mayonnaise delivers value for money. > > Six months later, the sandwich costs $87, nobody can remember who ordered it, and the department announces a successful outcome because the lettuce was culturally inclusive. > > Meanwhile, the competing sandwich shop has spent $60,000 on a tender application and hired a lawyer to find out why it lost. Sort of says it all really! This article was originally published by [PA Pundits – International](https://papundits.wordpress.com/2026/10/16/how-government-works/?ref=goodoil.news). ### Learned Helplessness: How Many Shocks Can We Take? URL: https://goodoil.news/learned-helplessness-how-many-shocks-can-we-take/ Last updated: 2026-10-19T00:30:00.000Z [**Laura Dodsworth**](https://www.thefreemind.co.uk/p/learned-helplessness-how-many-shocks?ref=goodoil.news) *Writer, photographer, commentator.* In 1967, two American psychologists, Martin Seligman and Steven F Maier, published the paper ‘Failure to Escape Traumatic Shock’. It described a discovery that would become one of the most influential and dispiriting concepts in psychology: learned helplessness. The experiment involved electric shocks. Some dogs could stop the shocks by pressing their noses against a panel. Others had no such control. They received shocks they could neither prevent nor stop, whatever they did. Their actions made no difference to what happened to them. Later, the dogs were placed in a different enclosure, divided into two compartments by a low barrier. This time, escaping the shocks was easy. All they had to do was jump over the barrier. The dogs that had previously been able to control their circumstances soon escaped. But some of those that had experienced uncontrollable shocks simply lay down and endured them. They did not attempt to escape, even when escape was possible. They had learnt, through experience, that nothing they did made any difference. The researchers called this learned helplessness. Sometimes I feel like one of those dogs receiving shocks, unable to prevent or stop them, unable to see the way forward. The shock that greeted me on social media today was footage of youths fighting with weapons on a bus in Birmingham. One young man had a large zombie knife. The passengers on the bus were clearly terrified. I was terrified just watching it. ![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!EXZf!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fb6b3ea3c-2da3-4ff1-8b0b-f8a3692674e3_1052x530.png) This should be a huge news story. It should preoccupy the police, politicians, commentators and sociologists for weeks. It will be a biggish news item for a day. Barely anyone will talk about it. Perhaps a Labour Party frontbencher will take online retailers to task for selling Swiss Army knives. I’m annoyed I even know the term ‘zombie knife’. I don’t think we had regular knife attacks on buses, let alone with zombie knives, when I was growing up in the ’70s. I don’t think Zombie knives even existed then. Attacks on buses seem to crop up in the news so often that they can’t take up the headlines for as long as they should. You might say they are coming along at once, like buses. Last month in Shropshire, a bus was stolen after the driver was attacked, and the bus was driven into cars. Also last month, a man attacked three Jewish teenagers on a bus in London. But really, take your pick. There are so many. Type ‘machete attack London’ (or insert your city) into Google, choose any time frame you like and gaze in horror at the sheer number and variety of stories. It’s not just buses or machetes. It’s all kinds of bad news stories, everywhere. I wondered… is it me? Are my algorithms particularly morbid? Is it the nature of social media that we are all bombarded with bad news, brought more vividly and unpleasantly to life in colour and film? But even if I separate myself as much as I can from the tweets, reels and photos of bad news, I can rationally collect enough evidence to know things are bad. Very bad. This article was originally published by [The Free Mind](https://www.thefreemind.co.uk/p/learned-helplessness-how-many-shocks?ref=goodoil.news). ### School Takes the ‘Christmas’ Out of Holidays URL: https://goodoil.news/school-takes-the-christmas-out-of-holidays/ Last updated: 2026-10-19T01:21:58.000Z As I’ve reminded *Good Oil* readers many times, ‘fake news’ doesn’t just mean outright lies. In fact, the most common kind of fake news is misleading content: false connection (‘when headlines, visuals or captions don’t support the content’) and false context (‘when genuine content is shared with false contextual information’). Australia’s ~~taxpayer-funded Marxist propaganda outlet~~ ‘national broadcaster’ is the apex legacy media predator of such fake news. Take, for instance, how it framed a furore over a woke Tasmanian primary school scrubbing Christmas from its ‘Christmas’ event. > [Tasmanian Premier](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-10-15/tas-premier-calls-on-school-to-reinstate-christmas-naming/107268614?ref=goodoil.news) **Jeremy Rockliff** criticised after social post on ‘Christmas’ event causes school pile-on > > Tasmanian Premier Jeremy Rockliff is being urged to apologise after one of his social media posts about a public school renaming a Christmas event caused an online stir. “Criticised” by *whom*, exactly? “Urged to apologise” by whom? As it happens, deep in the article, the ABC admits that: > Many of the comments on the Facebook post were supportive of the premier’s statement. It’s only buried deep near the end of the article that the ABC comes clean: > Australian Education Union Tasmanian state manager **Brian Wightman** told 936 ABC Hobart he was appalled by the premier’s actions. It might also have behoved the ABC to mention that Wightman is a senior Labor Party politician and ex-MP and minister, as well. So, what really happened? Over at Trevallyn Primary School in Launceston, the local education apparatus decided that the traditional celebration known as ‘Christmas on the Hill’ had simply become too dreadfully traditional for its own good. It was duly rebadged as ‘Holiday on the Hill’: or, in the school newsletter’s breathless marketing prose, an ‘End of Year Extravaganza!’ All in a sanctimonious effort to serve a supposedly burgeoning tapestry of multicultural needs. Traditional carols were promptly chucked into the paedagogical skip in favour of disposable radio pap, while the humble Secret Santa was subjected to an ideological scrub and rechristened ‘Holiday Gifting’. Naturally, the bureaucratic machine had an excuse ready to go: > [Trevallyn Primary School](https://pulsetasmania.com.au/news/launceston-school-ditches-christmas-celebration-for-a-more-culturally-appropriate-event/?ref=goodoil.news) has renamed its annual end of year Christmas event to ‘Holiday on the Hill’ in an effort to showcase the “strong sense of community” among students “from a range of cultural and religious backgrounds”. This brings any sensible person to an obvious question: just what exotic multitude are these paedagogical evangelists actually representing? Let us consult reality. Trevallyn is a picturesque, leafy, affluent enclave of Launceston that is blindingly, overwhelmingly white. Census figures show that nearly 90 per cent of its population is Australian-born or Anglo-British migrants. A mere two per cent hail from India or Nepal and just 1.5 per cent trace their heritage to China. Leaving aside the fashionably God-less majority, the largest recorded religious group remains Christian. So who, pray tell, is this delicate minority clamouring to have “Silent Night” suppressed? The answer is obvious. What we are really seeing is a clique of affluent, university-educated, white-collar professionals – whose closest encounter with a “range of cultural and religious backgrounds” involves a sub-continental Uber Eats driver dropping off a butter chicken from the Morty’s food court – publicly circle-jerking their self-appointed ‘virtue’ at the expense of our own civilisational heritage. When normal, decent parents dared to politely suggest that inclusion ought not mean the wholesale liquidation of Australian customs, the acting principal dismissed them with the usual therapeutic cant. Fortunately, Premier Jeremy Rockliff stepped in and for once applied a firm dose of common sense, writing to the department head to lay down the law: > We recognise some students and families have other traditions, however that is not a reason to abandon our own traditions. We expect our schools to acknowledge and celebrate Christmas, as they have always done. The sheer, staggering unilateralism of modern progressivism is laid bare by such squabbles. Ask yourself this: would the enlightened administrators of Trevallyn ever dare walk into a Western Sydney primary school and rebrand Ramadan as ‘Annual Dieting Month’? Would they strip Diwali of its heritage to turn it into an inclusive, sanitised ‘Autumn Glow Fiesta’? Of course they wouldn’t. The woke establishment treats every foreign tradition with trembling, barefoot reverence, whilst treating the foundational faith and traditions of Western civilization as an embarrassing stain that must be scrubbed out of sight. Ordinary Aussies are thoroughly sick to death of watching educational bureaucrats trample heritage to satisfy their own neurotic posturing. Christmas is not an offence to be managed by middle management. It is our tradition and it is here to stay. --- 💡 ****If you enjoyed this article please share it using the share buttons at the top or bottom of the article.** ### Friends Remember Broadcaster Danny Watson URL: https://goodoil.news/reproduced-with-permission-template-make-a-copy-copy-2/ Last updated: 2026-10-18T23:29:59.000Z [**Kineta Knight**](https://www.chrislynchmedia.com/news-items/from-childrens-television-to-antarctica-friends-remember-broadcaster-danny-watson/?ref=goodoil.news) *Kineta Knight is a highly experienced senior journalist, content creator and producer. She has worked as a reporter for radio, TV, digital and print, as well as editor of lifestyle magazines in NZ and the UK.* Veteran New Zealand broadcaster Danny Watson, who brought laughter to generations of children and later took talkback radio all the way to Antarctica, has died aged 73. Watson died peacefully on Thursday, October 15, surrounded by his family, leaving behind a broadcasting career spanning decades and a collection of stories that reveal a man whose energy, humour and curiosity rarely seemed to run out. For those who knew him, the memories range from an unfortunate swear word accidentally broadcast on children’s television to performing karate on an Antarctic ice shelf, and a quiet moment of kindness towards a young deaf fan. Former children’s television colleague Alasdair Kincaid, better known to audiences as Frank Flash, remembered Watson as the cool older brother of New Zealand television. He said Watson had a natural ability to connect with young audiences, making them feel as though they were part of the fun. Kincaid worked alongside Watson during the much-loved *What Now?* years, when the pair, together with Michelle Bracey, created comedy sketches influenced by programmes such as *The Goodies*, *Benny Hill* and *The Young Ones*. Their on-screen relationship was built on genuine chemistry and plenty of good-natured teasing. “I’ve been known to state that he was the older brother I never wanted,” Kincaid told chrislynchmedia.com. Watson would invariably fire back with a cheeky response. “It’s mind over matter. I don’t mind and you don’t matter.” Kincaid said the friendship and humour audiences witnessed were every bit as genuine behind the cameras. “The chemistry we had was true and genuine. You can’t learn it, buy it... it just happened.” He said working alongside Watson never felt like a job. “I was so fortunate to work with this fabulous fellow. Work is actually the wrong word. It never was work. It was fun.” Kincaid recalled feeling disappointed when the working day ended, knowing they would have to wait until the following week to do it all over again. One particular incident almost became an unforgettable moment in New Zealand children’s television history for entirely the wrong reasons. Kincaid was driving a Morris Minor during the closing moments of a programme, manoeuvring the vehicle backwards and forwards as part of a comedy routine. After Watson waved goodbye to viewers, he climbed into the car. Kincaid then drove over a speed bump near the gate a little too enthusiastically, sending Watson’s head into the roof. Watson responded with an expletive, unaware his microphone was still live. The programme’s closing music had been brought up too late, meaning his colourful reaction went straight to air. Kincaid remembered the horrified expression on the floor manager’s face when they returned. Remarkably, the incident generated just one complaint. “Nobody would believe that Danny Watson could behave like that on air,” Kincaid recalled. ![](https://www.chrislynchmedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/Website-image-31-880x660.png) Watson died peacefully on Thursday, October 15, surrounded by his family, leaving behind a broadcasting career spanning decades and a collection of stories that reveal a man whose energy, humour and curiosity rarely seemed to run out / File But alongside the mischief was a man whose awareness of other people left a lasting impression. Kincaid remembered being at a café with Watson when a young fan approached them, making gestures he initially struggled to understand. Watson immediately recognised that the boy was deaf and took the time to communicate with him, even using some basic sign language. There was no condescension, Kincaid said, just a genuine effort to connect. “This kid left glowing.” The interaction stayed with Kincaid, who said it taught him something about being more aware of the people around him. He also remembered another occasion when he visited Watson at home to prepare for their television sketches. Accustomed to seeing Watson constantly moving, entertaining and bursting with energy, Kincaid was surprised to discover him sitting quietly with one of his children, apparently reading a book. “It was just so odd to see him resting because he was so active and busy and running about.” The memory revealed another side of the larger-than-life entertainer. “He certainly was a family man. He was a good man.” Watson’s career began almost by chance after a flatmate spotted a newspaper advertisement for the children’s programme *Spot On*. According to NZ On Screen, he went on to work on *What Now?*, junior sports programme *World of Sport*, variety series *Danny’s Cafe* and TV3’s version of *Candid Camera*. He later made radio his home, spending 15 years hosting afternoon talkback on Newstalk ZB before joining Today FM in 2022. But one of the most remarkable chapters of his broadcasting career unfolded thousands of kilometres from home in November 2014. Fellow broadcaster Tim Dyer spent four years working to make a live radio broadcast from Antarctica possible. When the opportunity finally arrived, Watson embraced it with the enthusiasm of a child waiting for Christmas. “It was a classic *Boys’ Own* adventure except to the extreme, with no preconceptions, and he was like a kid on Christmas Eve,” Dyer told chrislynchmedia.com. That excitement, he recalled, continued throughout their extraordinary week at Scott Base. The pair completed six live talkback programmes from Antarctica, bringing stories of life on the ice directly to listeners across New Zealand. Behind the scenes, months of technical preparation had gone into making the broadcasts possible. Equipment was tested in Christchurch and sent south six weeks before their arrival, while scientists at Scott Base were asked to avoid sending large files back to New Zealand during the broadcasts to preserve bandwidth. There were also some unusual hazards. “We had to keep earthing ourselves so the built-up electricity we carried personally didn’t zap the laptops,” Dyer recalled. But Watson was in his element. “As far as unpredictability goes, I was lucky to be with a guy who thrived on those situations.” When he was not broadcasting, Watson threw himself into everything Antarctica had to offer. He travelled across the Ross Ice Shelf by Hägglund to visit Shackleton’s historic hut, explored ice caves at the Erebus Glacier and climbed Observation Hill in temperatures Dyer remembered reaching minus 40 degrees. He also performed his Seido karate kata on the ice shelf, although his hosts drew the line at allowing him to do it barefoot. Evenings brought another side of Watson, socialising at Scott Base and the Tatty Flag bar, sharing stories and enjoying recreated Shackleton whisky with ancient Antarctic ice. He also gave a talk on Māori astrology. Dyer said Watson’s appetite for experience appeared limitless. “He embraced every day with gusto and passion and brought that back so eloquently to the people on Newstalk ZB.” There was little sleep during the adventure, although Dyer admitted the other occupants of their shared bunkroom probably had an even tougher time. “Danny and I could both snore for New Zealand.” Their intense working schedule also produced some memorable moments. Exhausted by the pace of the trip and the warmth inside Scott Base, Dyer once fell asleep sitting beside Watson while he was broadcasting live. Rather than becoming annoyed, Watson found the incident hilarious and teased him about it for the remainder of the week. Another memorable excursion took them to an enormous penguin colony near Shackleton’s hut. Watson was captivated by the wildlife, although the extraordinary amount of penguin droppings proved considerably less appealing. Dyer said Watson found the experience both awful and hilarious. After a week of broadcasting, exploration and adventure, the pair found themselves standing on the Pegasus Ice Runway, preparing to return to Christchurch. They had expected to hitch a ride aboard a freight flight. Instead, a massive C-17 military transport aircraft landed, its door opening to take them home as the only civilian passengers aboard an otherwise empty aircraft. It was about 4am when they finally arrived back in Christchurch. Dyer said the exhaustion and emotion of the experience were difficult to put into words. He remembered the two men standing on the runway, overwhelmed by what they had achieved together. “One look, a smile and a nod to each other was all we needed to do to appreciate what we had just experienced.” Although the pair never saw each other again after returning to Christchurch, Dyer believed that shared experience would have been enough to reconnect them instantly. “If we did, it would be a simple reunion of a nod, a smile and that look that we experienced something most people will never do.” He remembered Watson as “giving, quirky, intense, excitable, challenging, enthusiastic, genuinely curious and a loving devoted family man”. “All of these made Danny just Danny.” ![](https://www.chrislynchmedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/Website-image-36-880x660.png) Broadcasters Danny Watson and Tim Dyer: ‘It was a classic **Boys’ Own* adventure except to the extreme, with no preconceptions, and he was like a kid on Christmas Eve’ / Image: Jeanine Begg In a statement announcing his death, Watson’s family described him as a cherished husband, devoted father and adored koro. He is survived by his wife, four children and six grandchildren, whom the family said were the centre of his world. “To many across Aotearoa, Danny was a familiar voice and face, who brought warmth, humor, and genuine human connection to television screens and radio airwaves for decades. But to us, he was the heart of our whānau.” They described a man of extraordinary depth, strength and knowledge, whose passions included Te Ao Māori o Waitaha, Ngā Puhi kaumātua, Seido karate and beekeeping. “Danny lived life with boundless energy, generous spirit, and an extraordinary capacity for loving people. Danny made everyone feel seen and valued.” The family thanked medical staff, North Harbour Hospice, friends and the wider community for their care and support. They said they would grieve and celebrate his life privately. In lieu of flowers, donations to hospice have been encouraged. For Kincaid, the loss is deeply personal. “Danny boy, sad to hear of this news. You were such an influential part of my formative professional years. You will be sadly missed by me and many, but never forgotten. See you.” And for Dyer, the memory of a remarkable week at the bottom of the world remains as vivid as ever. “Vale Danny.” Watson’s family offered a final request to those who had watched, listened to and loved him over the years. “In Danny’s honour, we encourage you to do what he did best: share a good story, check in on a neighbour, and hold your loved ones close.” This article was originally published by [Chris Lynch Media](https://www.chrislynchmedia.com/news-items/from-childrens-television-to-antarctica-friends-remember-broadcaster-danny-watson/?ref=goodoil.news). ### On Gangs and Politics URL: https://goodoil.news/on-gangs-and-politics/ Last updated: 2026-10-18T23:00:00.000Z [**Richard Prebble**](https://richardprebble.substack.com/p/gangs-and-politics) *Columnist, former cabinet minister and ACT Party leader.* Commentators cannot understand the Greens and Te Pāti Māori’s courting of gang support. The association between organised crime and political parties is hardly new. Politicians and organised crime have done deals from New York to Sicily, from Chicago to Mexico. Politicians have done deals with gangs because they saw an advantage. New Zealand has over 10,000 patched gang members and prospects. In 2022, Police recorded 36,461 people with some form of gang association. Then there are their families. The 2023/24 New Zealand Health Survey estimated that 56,000 New Zealanders had used amphetamines, including P, in the previous year. Research suggests about a third buy directly from gangs. Since these numbers, wastewater testing reveals that P consumption has more than doubled. Then there is the money. Wastewater testing suggests annual retail sales of P exceeding $600 million. Politics is money, people and votes. Gangs have access to all three. Commentators who cannot understand why the Greens have not distanced themselves from gangs do not understand MMP. The Waiariki electorate has one of the highest rates of P use. Te Pāti Māori is seeking the electorate vote and the Greens the party vote. A recent Whakaata Māori–Curia poll showed Rawiri Waititi leading the electorate contest. The Greens polled 21 per cent of the party vote, up from just six per cent at the last election. The politicians’ calculation is not simply how many voters are repelled by an association with gangs, but how many votes might be gained. Under MMP, a party can outrage most of the country but win an electorate or secure five per cent of the party vote. The gangs can make Te Pāti Māori and the Greens the kingmakers. Do the maths. This article was originally published by [I’ve Been Thinking](https://richardprebble.substack.com/p/gangs-and-politics). ### What Did Her Dad Do in the Genocide? URL: https://goodoil.news/what-did-her-dad-do-in-the-genocide/ Last updated: 2026-10-18T22:29:59.000Z Life comes at you fast: the same leftists and legacy media shills who, just a couple of years ago were piously intoning that ‘No one is above the law’, when Mar-a-Lago was raided, are now screeching like banshees because **Ilhan Omar**’s house in Washington has been raided. Yet, both raids were for the same purpose: to find evidence of illegal activity. The big difference, of course, is that Omar isn’t accused of just keeping some paperwork she shouldn’t have. In fact, the Somalian socialist is accused of grave immigration fraud: everything from lying about her own age to claim citizenship, to marrying her allegedly pillow-biting brother in order to sneak him into the US before he got lynched back ’ome for being a flaming whoopsie. Not to mention being the beneficiary of a ‘rat-line’ style operation to smuggle an alleged genocidal war-criminal beyond the reach of local justice. It appears that the honourable congresswoman’s genealogical tree is rather more tangled than a bowl of cheap spaghetti. For years, the left-wing commentariat has treated the Minnesota firebrand with the sort of hushed, reverent awe usually reserved for medieval saints. But as investigators poke about her domestic quarters, carting off cardboard boxes with the brisk efficiency one normally associates with a bailiff visiting a bankrupt bookmaker, the scaffolding of her immaculate refugee narrative is beginning to wobble. At the heart of this bureaucratic tangle is the elusive citizenship status of her dear old dad, **Nur Omar Mohamed**. One might imagine that establishing whether a parent became a naturalised American citizen would be a rather straightforward clerical matter. Not so in the wonderful world of progressive idols. According to investigative disclosures: > [The documents show](https://nypost.com/2026/10/13/us-news/the-missing-immigration-records-on-rep-ilhan-omars-dad-that-may-have-prompted-raid-on-dc-home/?ref=goodoil.news) that a US Citizenship and Immigration Services information officer conducted a “diligent search” but found “no record” relating to Nur Omar Mohamed or other variants of his name such as **Nur Said Elmi Mohamed**. This is not just a minor bureaucratic hiccup. If the patriarchal pillar of the household never bothered to acquire his papers legally, it casts a rather dark, dramatic shadow over the congresswoman’s own derivative claims to citizenship. Whispers abound that youthful ages were massaged with the dexterity of a seasoned poker player, all to squeeze through a legal loophole before the calendar struck 18. Yet, petty paperwork fraud is merely the *hors d’oeuvre*. The true main course of this familial saga takes us far from the leafy suburbs of Washington, back to the sun-scorched plains of Somalia during its most sanguinary decades. The progressive PR machine would have us believe that daddy dearest was nothing more than a mild-mannered, chalk-wielding instructor of youth. History, however, possesses a rather irritating habit of keeping receipts. Instead, much like the progenitor of [another African leech](https://goodoil.news/what-did-you-do-in-the-war-baba/), this time on the Australian taxpayer, it turns out that dear old baba was up to some pretty nasty tricks, back in the old country. > [Between 1981 and 1991](https://www.somalilandchronicle.com/2025/07/25/ilhan-omars-father-and-the-isaaq-genocide-the-truth-revealed/?ref=goodoil.news), the Somali military in which Colonel Nur Omar Mohamed, Ilhan Omar’s father, served as a senior officer executed a brutal and systematic campaign of genocide targeting the Isaaq people of the modern day Republic of Somaliland. Let us pause and digest that morsel of geopolitical irony. We are speaking here of a systematic slaughter that claimed upwards of 200,000 civilian lives. We are talking about scorched-earth campaigns, aerial bombardments of fleeing families, and concentration camps operating under the charming direction of the **Siad Barre** dictatorship. And right there, climbing the ranks with the enthusiastic obedience of a loyal apparatchik, was Colonel Nur Omar Mohamed. Omar expects us to swallow the absurd notion that a senior military colonel in a brutal totalitarian regime spent his decade quietly getting chalk rather than the blood of innocents on his hands, while his comrades were busy razing entire cities to dust. The notion that he was merely a harmless “teacher trainer” is the sort of brazen historical revisionism that would make Soviet Russia’s ministry of propaganda look like a paragon of transparent truth. > It is extremely likely that Colonel Nur Omar Mohamed, Ilhan Omar’s father, played a direct or enabling role in the genocide. This conclusion aligns with command responsibility in law and meets the legal standard of being demonstrably proven, both on the balance of probability under civil law, and beyond reasonable doubt under criminal law. The idea that a colonel in Somalia’s military in a brutal dictatorship did not participate in the pervasive and ubiquitous genocidal activities his military was carry out in every city, town and village in the decade in which he was serving in and leading the military, is implausible, illogical and does not stand up to scrutiny. He was clearly doggedly loyal to his genocidal overlord, too. Like a loyal Nazi hunkering down in the Berlin bunker until the Soviets were about to knock on the door, the Omar family hung on in Mogadishu until the regime was finally toppled in January 1991. Naturally, the congresswoman herself remains as mute as a stone pillar when it comes to her father’s extensive CV of state-sponsored butchery. She shrieks to the heavens about supposed injustices across the globe, weeping crocodile tears for every fashionable progressive cause under the sun, yet she maintains a deafening, conspiratorial silence regarding the industrial-scale atrocities committed by her own flesh and blood. It’s as if the Mengele *kinder* got themselves elected to Argentina’s parliament on a human rights ticket, while claiming their Papa was just a rural veterinarian. > Ilhan Omar presents herself as a champion of justice, minority rights, accountability, and anti-imperialism. Her refusal to recognise or condemn the genocide her father’s military executed is irreconcilable with this public brand. If the recent federal raid on her homestead achieves nothing else, perhaps it will finally compel the congresswoman to step out from behind her cloud of sanctimony and answer for the rather gruesome skeletons rattling around in her family closet. That should happen sometime after **Nyadol Nyuon** makes good on her oft-repeated promise to bugger off from Australia, once and for all. --- 💡 ****If you enjoyed this article please share it using the share buttons at the top or bottom of the article.** ### The Public Service URL: https://goodoil.news/the-public-service/ Last updated: 2026-10-18T21:59:59.000Z Cartoon of the day by SonovaMin _This post is for paying subscribers only._ ### Make Your Vote Count URL: https://goodoil.news/make-your-vote-count/ Last updated: 2026-10-18T21:29:59.000Z [**Penny Marie**](https://pennymarie.substack.com/p/make-your-vote-count-maurice-williamson) *I am a New Zealand-based independent journalist and podcaster.* This week, on People in Politics, I sat down with Maurice Williamson: National MP for 30 years from 1987, holder of 18 ministerial portfolios, front-bench cabinet minister, and later New Zealand’s Consul General in the United States. In his own words, he is still “at heart a right-wing free market Tory”, and he is “frightened as hell” about what happens if the other side forms the next government. That is why he is urging National supporters to think hard about their party vote on 7 November. He is not telling you to abandon National. He wants you to use both your votes so they actually **do** something. ### **This has never happened before** The central point of our chat is simple. Under MMP, the 2026 election puts National voters in a position **no one has been in before**. “There has never been an MMP election before where any of the major parties’ number of electorates they’re going to win is higher than what their party vote entitles them to.” ### **The sign in MMP is minus** Most voters assume MMP works like this: you win your electorates, then list seats are added on top. Maurice says – like it or not, that’s not how it works. Your party vote sets the total number of seats a party gets. Every electorate the party wins is then subtracted from that total, and whatever is left comes from the list. If two parties each earn 30 seats on the party vote, and one of them also wins 20 electorates, that party doesn’t end up with 50\. It still has 30: the 20 electorate MPs plus 10 from the list. ### **Why a National *party* vote may be wasted this time** The numbers tell the story. National is polling about 28–30 per cent. Thirty per cent of 120 seats is 36\. National currently holds 44 electorates\* (43 won at the 2023 general election, plus Port Waikato at the by-election a few weeks later). Maurice expects it to win at least 38 electorates this time, “possibly 40 and on a good day maybe more”. In MMP terms, National is ‘underwater’. **It is likely to win more electorates than its party vote entitles it to**. Those extra electorate seats become **overhang** seats. National keeps them whatever happens, so extra party votes for National don’t add any seats. “Your party vote for the National Party doesn’t add to anything.” He compares it to National’s worst-ever result in 2002, when it polled just 20.9 per cent. Even then, its party vote still brought six list MPs into parliament, including Don Brash and Katherine Rich. Every party vote counted that year, as it has at every MMP election so far – **2026 is the first exception.** To change that, Maurice says National would either have to lift its party vote by 20–25 per cent from where it sits now, or give up about 12 electorates. He doesn’t expect either. The budget and the pre-election fiscal update (PREFU) were both meant to give National a bump in the polls, and neither did. ### **Same voters, different government** During the episode we tested this on [makeyourvotecount.nz](https://makeyourvotecount.nz/?ref=goodoil.news), the free MMP simulator we built from the *NZ Herald* poll of polls. When you drag the slider, the votes National gives up are split evenly between ACT and NZ First, so the centre-right’s total share stays the same in every scenario. The results surprised even us: - **National at 30.2%** – a centre-left government. - **National at 28.2%** – a hung Parliament. - **National at 26.2%** – a centre-right government with a four-seat majority, and 128 MPs in the House. The same voters on the same side produce a different government. As Maurice puts it, a higher National party vote *“is not adding anything, but it’s subtracting from the other two.”* ### **The rugby analogy** Maurice’s favourite way to explain it: “If you were watching the All Blacks playing South Africa, you don’t care if the props in the front row of the scrum score the tries or the wingers out on the side with their speedsters score the tries... What you care about is that your total points are more than South Africa’s.” Give your candidate vote to your local National candidate and your party vote to ACT or NZ First, and the whole team ends up with more points at full time. ### **‘Isn’t this disloyal?’** Many of the people Maurice talks to feel that splitting their vote would betray the party. His answer: “You would have been disloyal and you would have been evil if you’d thought these thoughts on any of the previous MMP elections, because your party vote mattered. And this time, party voting for the National Party makes no turn of the dial.” He also pushes back on commentators who call vote-splitting corrupt or a “Tory plot”: - **MMP was designed for it.** If we were meant to vote the same way twice, he says, the ballot would have one column. - **The left already does it.** Green voters split about 60 per cent of their party vote in 2023 and 80 per cent in 2020\. NZ First voters split 72 per cent and ACT voters 71 per cent. National voters split just 18.2 percent, which he calls “the old guard”. - **National has done it before.** In 1996 Jim Bolger asked National supporters in Wellington Central to give their candidate vote to ACT’s Richard Prebble, and Prebble won the seat. - **The Labour/Greens have done it before:** In 1999 Helen Clark asked Labour voters in Coromandel to give their candidate vote to Jeanette Fitzsimons, which got the Greens into parliament. On John Key’s line that splitting your vote is “the opposite of clever”, Maurice says Key was right at every one of the previous 10 MMP elections, but “he’s not right for the coming election”. ### **Your electorate vote still matters** Maurice is clear that National voters should keep their candidate vote for their local National candidate, identifying in particular the six to eight electorates he thinks are close. His one to watch is Wigram. Labour’s Megan Woods isn’t standing there again, boundary changes have brought in more National-leaning voters from Selwyn, and Tracy Summerfield came within 1,179 votes in 2023\. (Read story on [*Otago Daily Times*](https://www.odt.co.nz/canterbury/christchurch/big-battle-looms-in-left-wing-seat-after-electorate-map-changes-xav6y4kk?ref=goodoil.news)). “The narrative keeps talking about splitting your vote. I prefer the narrative to be make both your votes count.” ### **Watch, share** There is plenty more in the full interview, including what caused the switch to MMP, why Maurice thinks the government should have kept its 2023 promises from day one, and his warning about how busy Auckland Airport might be on 8 November. *WATCH THE FULL EPISODE HERE…* ### **Actions to take** 1. Share with a two-tick National voter. As Maurice says, most voters are smart once they understand what’s on offer. The problem is that too many have relied on “I’ve always done this.” 2. Show them our [MMP simulator](https://makeyourvotecount.nz/?ref=goodoil.news) on your phone, screenshot the QR code, and let them move the slider themselves. It takes about thirty seconds to see what’s happening. ![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!tTYM!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Faf51478c-3a9c-4811-80ff-51e4533911e9_1920x1080.png) We’re not telling anyone who to vote for. We’re making sure that when you put your two ticks on the ballot, **both of them count**. ![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!lwqD!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F01dc87cd-63b1-481c-b63f-436ceffba027_1200x628.png) [People In Politics: Analysis & Podcast with Penny Marie](https://pennymarie.nz/people-in-politics?ref=goodoil.news) “For the first time ever, what you’ve always done doesn’t work this time.” Voting opens on 26 October and election day is Saturday 7 November. If you’re not enrolled yet, you need to be by midnight on Sunday 25 October. [Enrol to Vote](https://vote.nz/assets/Accessible-formats/2026/Voting/Easy-Read-guide-to-enrolling-and-voting-in-the-2026-GE-August-2026.pdf?ref=goodoil.news) ##### \*There have been a number of electorate boundary changes since the last election. --- This article was originally published by [Penny Marie NZ](https://pennymarie.substack.com/p/make-your-vote-count-maurice-williamson). ### The Good Oil Daily Opinion Poll URL: https://goodoil.news/the-good-oil-daily-opinion-poll-397/ Last updated: 2026-10-18T21:14:59.000Z Take our Daily Opinion Poll and see how your views compare to other readers and then share the poll on social media. By sharing the poll you will help even more readers to discover *The Good Oil.* --- ### We’re Being Had URL: https://goodoil.news/were-being-had/ Last updated: 2026-10-18T21:00:00.000Z As **Carl Benjamin** [furiously noted, last week](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImmThbUwnG4&ref=goodoil.news), Britain now spends £12 billion per month on welfare. That’s just over one-third of all government spending flushed into the grasping hands of the leaning class. New Zealand spends the same percentage, or nearly 1/10th of the nation’s GDP. Australia is little better, with 30 per cent of the government budget getting sunk into welfare. The vast bulk of Australia’s welfare spending is flushed into the bottomless pit of the NDIS, a system ripe for the scamming. As it happens, the highest concentrations of ‘NDIS providers’ are in Labor seats, with the most intense clusters all in Western Sydney. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, court photos of the few NDIS scammers who’ve been actually caught and charged are a rogues’ gallery of beards and hijabs (sometimes on the same person). But that’s far from the only way in which low-trust-culture migrants are leeching off the Australian taxpayer. As former PM **Tony Abbott** noted, Centrelink management more-or-less openly instructed their staff to turn a blind eye when multiple Muslim women claimed family benefits while their husbands all had the same name. Nor were they to call police when the ‘wives’ were clearly underage. Country of mugs that we’ve become, we’re also paying a motza to supply free medical treatment to the grasping grannies and gaffers of the Third World. Enter the lucrative, slow-motion racket of the Aged Parent visa, a bureaucratic masterstroke revealed by a healthcare industry whistleblower who didn’t mince words about the arrangement: > [The industry insider](https://www.noticer.news/immigrant-aged-parent-visa-scam-healthcare/?ref=goodoil.news) described the scam as “underground economic extraction”, and told Noticer News it was “systematically bleeding our public hospital system dry” while everyday Australians are hit with rising prices and massive tax burdens. The mechanics are so simple even a low-IQ Third Worlder can figure out how to work around them, requiring only an utter lack of shame and an intimate understanding of the Department of Home Affairs’ sheer, gelatinous incompetence. Freshly minted citizens and permanent residents from countries lacking reciprocal healthcare treaties simply pack elderly mum and dad onto a tourist flight. Once the senior arrivals step off the tarmac, the family immediately lodges an application for an Aged Parent (subclass 804) visa. The official processing queue for this particular bureaucratic prize sits at an astonishing 33 years – and here’s where the scam really hits its stride. Given that human biology tends not to grant centenarians an extra third of a century on the clock, the state obligingly hands them an onshore Bridging visa. Just like that, residency for life is achieved without having to satisfy the inconvenient, expensive requirements of legitimate contributory visas. > When the parents inevitably develop health conditions, their families take them to public hospital emergency departments and claim “financial hardship”. In some cases the families refuse to take them home again, and hospitals cannot legally or ethically turn them away, the whistleblower said. Under the Hippocratic oath and prevailing hospital liability rules, staff cannot simply dump an ailing octogenarian on the pavement, where, back home, their medical conditions would at least earn them a beggar’s ticket. To keep the immigration department from sniffing out unpaid bills, which might jeopardise future visa claims, the sponsoring relatives, frequently working as subcontractors, massage their taxable income with write-offs or enter into token debt-management schemes that pay back pennies on the dollar. When nature eventually takes its course, the enormous accumulated hospital invoices are quietly scrubbed from the ledgers as bad debt, leaving the long-suffering, tax-paying mugs of Middle Australia to absorb the loss. While they might be chump change in comparison to the industrial-scale fraud of the NDIS, the figures are still eye-watering. In New South Wales alone, the auditor-general reported that health authorities wiped out nearly $20 million in unrecoverable bills in a single year, having invoiced over $114 million to patients who weren’t entitled to Medicare. Queensland Health disclosed being left high and dry to the tune of $44 million in unpaid patient debts. Across the board, industry groups like the Healthcare Financial Management Association wring their hands, politely noting that public hospitals face rising fiscal pain while grappling with murky legal boundaries and patients who cannot, or will not, pay. As the whistleblower aptly summed up the fiasco: > This is a structural collapse of our border and public infrastructure integrity run by unelected technocrats who simply write off the losses. With Australia’s bridging-visa population ballooning past 440,000, our public institutions are treated like open-access global charities. While local families struggle to see a bulk-billing GP and watch emergency waiting rooms descend into third-world chaos, grifting foreigners are taking us to the cleaners. Makes you long for the good old days of the “Greek Back”. --- 💡 ****If you enjoyed this article please share it using the share buttons at the top or bottom of the article.** ### Your Daily Ten@10 - 2026/193 URL: https://goodoil.news/your-daily-ten-10-2026-193/ Last updated: 2026-10-18T21:00:08.000Z **This is edition 2026/193 of the *Ten@10* newsletter.** Hi all, This is the Ten@10, where I collate and summarise ten news items you generally won't see in the mainstream media. Enjoy! --- ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/01-ten193.png) ## 1\. Democracy Briefing: The Greens are back in the culture wars *Bryce Edwards - The Democracy Project* - 🟢 The Greens hit record polling by talking supermarkets and power bills and keeping their social and cultural positions quiet. Edwards says the Mongrel Mob photos have put one of those, gangs, back on the front page. - 📸 Mob life member Harry Tam posted photos of Green MP Hūhana Lyndon, Green candidate Michel Mulipola and Te Pāti Māori MPs Oriini Kaipara and Hana-Rāwhiti Maipi-Clarke at a gang pad south of Auckland. - ❓ He splits the row into three questions: should politicians talk to gangs at all, do the grinning photos and funding talk legitimise the gang, and was it a blunder. Most people agree on the first and third, and the second is the real fight. - 💊 Marama Davidson says the party is “open to funding what works” on Mob-run drug rehab, adding: “We don’t change who we are as a political party just for the campaign, you know.” - 🤐 Chlöe Swarbrick wouldn’t say whether the visit was wise, and the co-leaders look split. - 🚔 Hipkins: “The gangs are perpetrators of misery.” He has ruled the Greens and Te Pāti Māori out of the police and corrections portfolios, and Luxon quipped that Hipkins has a new coalition partner, the Mongrel Mob. - 📊 A Curia poll from October 2023 had 7% of Green voters viewing the Mob positively and 82% negatively. David Farrar: “Green voters are smart and get it. Green MPs do not.” - 📉 Law and order ranked only eighth in September’s Ipsos Issues Monitor, which is why this is a gift for a National Party keen to change the subject. - 💡 Takeaway: “The Greens’ economic message has wide appeal, but their stance on gangs is a much harder sell”, and the MPs who went to the pad have just made that sell a lot harder. [Read More](https://www.democracyproject.org.nz/p/democracy-briefing-the-greens-are-822?ref=goodoil.news) --- ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/02-ten193.png) ## 2\. Democracy Briefing: The discontent election *Bryce Edwards - The Democracy Project* - 😠 Edwards argues voter anger is “a rational anger”, an accurate read of wages, taxes and services, and it is scattering to smaller parties instead of swinging between Labour and National. - 🧾 Otago University’s Consumer Lifestyles Study surveyed 1,096 adults from November 2025 to January 2026\. Economic satisfaction scored 4.3 out of 10, and on the cost of living 22% were angry and 28% anxious. - 💸 27% are now “Financial Strugglers”, up from 16.5% in 2020, and many are graduates, mortgage holders and full-time workers. 40% struggle to pay for essentials. - ✈️ 48% say getting ahead means going overseas, up from 28% in 2020, and the share calling this a good country to live in has fallen from 80% to 68%. - 🗳️ 1News-Verian has National and Labour on 28% each. Jenna Lynch notes the big two took roughly 75 to 80% of the vote from 2005 to 2020, 65% in 2023 and about 55% now: “The discontent is scattering.” - 🏥 60% say they pay too much tax, yet 52% would pay more if it went to frontline health and education, and 71% say health spending is too low. - 🛒 66% say businesses put profit ahead of customers, and 57% now buy the cheapest product, up from 45% in 2020. - 📈 Reynold Macpherson: “A government can truthfully say that inflation has fallen while voters can truthfully say that life remains expensive.” - 💡 Takeaway: the government can keep waving its inflation charts, but voters are reading their bank statements, and plenty of them are taking their party vote somewhere new. [Read More](https://www.democracyproject.org.nz/p/democracy-briefing-the-discontent?ref=goodoil.news) --- ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/03-ten193.jpg) ## 3\. MURIEL NEWMAN: Cultural Capture *Muriel Newman - Brash & Mitchell* - 🪖 In January the Army issued a bicultural policy with a Cultural Skill Framework for all ranks, under which soldiers had to memorise up to six waiata, perform karakia and learn te reo, with it tied to promotion. - 📉 Retired Colonel Bernard Isherwood says NZDF surveys show lost confidence in senior leadership, and Army attrition for 2026 is expected to be almost 15%, with over 600 release requests. - ✉️ ACT MP Todd Stephenson wrote to then Defence Minister Judith Collins, who replied that she hadn’t been briefed and that the framework had been paused. - 🏛️ Newman says the problem is far wider. Labour brought Defence and Police under the Public Service Act 2020, and Te Arawhiti’s capability framework spread the same regime from the Reserve Bank to the GCSB and NZSIS. - ⚖️ Her fix: repeal sections 14 and 15 of that Act, rewrite section 73 to strip out race-based hiring targets, and amend section 19 of the Bill of Rights to stop positive discrimination by race. - 🗳️ She warns that Opportunity’s fourth-ranked candidate, Dr Kayla Kingdon-Bebb, was a co-author of He Puapua. - ✅ Only ACT is promising to amend the Public Service Act, while ACT and NZ First both back a referendum on the Māori seats and abolishing the Waitangi Tribunal. - 💡 Takeaway: Collins paused one Army policy and left the machine that produced it running. Newman wants ACT and NZ First to pledge to take race out of the statutes altogether. [Read More](https://www.brashandmitchell.com/post/muriel-newman-cultural-capture?ref=goodoil.news) --- ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/04-ten193.png) ## 4\. Speaking as a former National voter... *Liam Hehir - The Blue Review* - ☕ The Press opened its “Mood of the Mainland” vox pops in a Balclutha café with Bryan Cadogan, 67, a long-time National voter now disillusioned with the government. - 🔎 Hehir found an April post by Labour MP Ingrid Leary thanking “Bryan Cadogan, former five-term Clutha Mayor” as her campaign lead for the Clutha end of her electorate. The Press didn’t mention it. - 🪧 Cadogan’s complaint about Labour hoardings being knocked over reads rather differently once you know that. - 📰 Hehir goes easy on the reporter, who was on a road trip against deadlines, but says “the search of a former mayor’s name really shouldn’t be too much to ask.” - 📱 Meanwhile the Instagram version was racking up thousands of shares, which he calls “functionally free, unlabeled advertising for the opposition”. - ✏️ Correction since publication: Cadogan and Leary have both told The Press he had no official campaign role. Leary says he only puts up her hoardings, and Cadogan says he sat on a Labour policy committee as a rural representative. - 💡 Takeaway: “These vox-pop election items come with the implied promise that these are ordinary voters telling you what they think.” This one turned out to be a Labour volunteer. [Read More](https://thebluereview.substack.com/p/speaking-as-a-former-national-voter) --- ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/05-ten193.png) ## 5\. Thumbs Up for the Mongrel Mob. Middle Finger to its Victims. *Ani O’Brien - Thought Crimes* - 🗳️ O’Brien is a voting-rights purist who even opposes the prisoner voting ban, but says that doesn’t mean criminals should be “pandered to and legitimised” by politicians chasing their votes. - 📸 Green and Te Pāti Māori MPs were photographed grinning with patched members under gang insignia, and Oriini Kaipara called the gang the “Whero Whānau” in social media posts. - 🎣 She rejects the outreach excuse flat out: “They all visited the gang pad to fish for votes.” - 🙋 She asks how many women’s refuges, families hit by meth, sexual assault services or intimidated business owners those MPs visited in the same weeks. - 🎙️ Victims’ advocate Claire Buckley told Newstalk ZB: “No wonder gang recruitment is up when you get this kind of legitimisation from politicians.” - ⚖️ She lists recent Mob cases, including Lou Harmer’s sentence this January of 12 years and 6 months for 14 counts of serious sexual offending against young girls. - 🕰️ She notes Harry Tam, who posted the photos, was convicted in 1994 of assaulting his wife and was stood down from the Abuse in Care inquiry in 2019 after safety concerns were raised. - 📣 In 2020 Tam toured gang pads urging members to vote Labour, telling one: “We can turn in to twenty or thirty thousand votes”. - 💡 Takeaway: her subtitle asks the question the MPs keep dodging: “How many rapes does it take before politicians stop smiling?” [Read More](https://aniobrien.substack.com/p/thumbs-up-for-the-mongrel-mob) --- ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/06-ten193.png) ## 6\. RODNEY HIDE: One law for Tamaki, another for the party of October 7 *Rodney Hide - Brash & Mitchell* - 📹 Hide starts with a 2014 Auckland protest where a man shouted “Bash the Jews. Cut their heads off.” David Cumin and Paul Moon reported the Human Rights Commission didn’t think it worth investigating. - ⚖️ Police have now served Brian Tamaki with three charges of inciting racial disharmony over his June video about Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims. - 🙏 Hide takes Tamaki at his word that he has “never advocated violence against anyone”, while saying the words weren’t the best choice. - 🇵🇸 The Free Palestine Party got $82,011 of taxpayer broadcasting money, then on 8 October put out a release saying it “celebrates the Victory” of October 7. - 🤐 Hide can find no response from a minister, the Electoral Commission, the Human Rights Commission or the Race Relations Commissioner. “Silence. Paid for.” - 📜 Section 131 of the Human Rights Act covers race, colour and ethnic or national origin, not religion, and the Ministry of Justice counted 10 prosecutions between July 2018 and May 2022. - 🔪 He backs Cumin: if Tamaki incited violence, charge him under the Crimes Act. Using a race law for words about faith brings blasphemy back by the back door. - 💡 Takeaway: “Our government treats Jews as second class citizens. Prove me wrong.” [Read More](https://www.brashandmitchell.com/post/rodney-hide-one-law-for-tamaki-another-for-the-party-of-october-7?ref=goodoil.news) --- ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/04-ten193-1.png) ## 7\. Not the campaign lead, just the hoardings guy? *Liam Hehir - The Blue Review* - 🔁 Hehir’s follow-up to his Mood of the Mainland piece, item 4 above. - 🗞️ The Press’s follow-up story has Bryan Cadogan and Ingrid Leary both saying he had no official role in Labour’s campaign. - 🪧 Leary says that despite her April post he only “leads on putting up” her hoardings, as he has for “a number of campaigns”. Cadogan says he doesn’t know why she described him that way. - 🏛️ Cadogan confirms he has served as a rural representative on a Labour policy committee. - ✅ Hehir: “We can only accept these accounts. The central point stands, however.” - 🗳️ A Labour volunteer and policy committee member was still presented as a disillusioned former National voter, and if he has put up hoardings over several campaigns, his Labour support predates the government he was criticising. - 📝 And “as of the time of writing, the original article still carries no note disclosing any of this.” - 💡 Takeaway: Hehir asks whether we would accept that sort of follow-up from a politician. The answer is obvious, and The Press should apply it to itself. [Read More](https://thebluereview.substack.com/p/not-the-campaign-lead-just-the-hoardings) --- ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/08-ten193.png) ## 8\. RODNEY HIDE: Henry Cooke wants a do-over if you vote wrong *Rodney Hide - Brash & Mitchell* - 🔁 Hide says The Post’s political editor Henry Cooke has a plan if Opportunity falls short: “if you vote the wrong way, you vote again.” - 📝 Cooke wants Luxon and Hipkins to promise that “if an overhang is the only path to government, then we’ll ask the Governor-General to call another election instead.” - 🗳️ Hide says split voting that produces an overhang is “MMP working exactly as Parliament wrote the law”, and with National already polling in overhang, its party votes would do more good with ACT or NZ First. - 🤝 Cooke’s fallback is a grand coalition to rewrite the electoral law with no supermajority and no referendum, and then another election. - 🎯 Cooke worries about “well-organised minorities” governing. Hide’s reply: “Henry, that’s called campaigning.” - 📰 He says a journalist’s job is to hold power to account, “not to act as a broker for Labour and National”. - 💡 Takeaway: voters “don’t need a second go because the political editor of The Post didn’t like the first one.” [Read More](https://www.brashandmitchell.com/post/rodney-hide-henry-cooke-wants-a-do-over-if-you-vote-wrong?ref=goodoil.news) --- ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/09-ten193.jpg) ## 9\. Who might be a National MP? *David Farrar - Polling & Politics (Patreon)* - 📊 Farrar’s weighted average of recent public polls has National on 28.1%, which is 34 seats, with a range of 31 to 38 seats within the margin of error. - 🕰️ He notes those polls predate the Greens campaigning with the Mongrel Mob. - 🗺️ “Only 28 seats I classify as safe for National. A further five I classify as likely and a further six as leaning National’s way.” That is 39 he thinks National is more likely than not to win. - 🎯 The ratings come from public data, not private polling, and he expects “to be wrong over 25% of the time on lean seats and wrong over 10% of the time on likely seats.” - 1️⃣ If National wins only its 28 safe seats, it gets about six list MPs. Nancy Lu gets in, with Mike Butterick, Dale Stephens and Mahesh Muralidhar on the cusp. - 2️⃣ Win the 33 safe and likely seats and it is down to one list MP, Nicola Willis, with Chris Bishop, Paul Goldsmith and Gerry Brownlee only coming in within the margin of error. - 3️⃣ Win all 39 and National has an overhang of five seats on the polling average, or as few as two within the margin of error. - 📉 If Opportunity falls below 5%, National picks up about 2% of the effective vote and a couple more MPs. - 💡 Takeaway: “it is definitely possible National could have an overhang, but it is also possible National will have List MPs.” On these numbers the overhang the gallery is fretting about only turns up if National wins every leaning seat. [Read More](https://www.patreon.com/pollingpolitics/posts/who-might-be-mp-172663622?ref=goodoil.news) --- ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/10-ten193.jpg) ## 10\. You Need A Lot Of Censorship To Get People To Destroy Their Civilization *Michael Shellenberger - Public* - 🎙️ Heading home from CPAC in Australia and two days of meetings in Canberra, Shellenberger sat down with Sam Bamford on his podcast “Two Worlds Collide”. - 📜 The subject is Australia’s Digital Duty of Care Bill, which Bamford calls the “Mass Censorship Bill”. - 🏛️ Shellenberger says Labor staffers he met in Canberra didn’t know what was in the bill, and got angry when he asked whether a future government might use it against them. - 🪞 His wider point: “The people who really want to censor their fellow citizens never think they would be the ones censored.” - 👧 The pair accuse Minister Anika Wells of using child safety, including girls with eating disorders, to sell the bill. - ❔ Bamford also makes claims about One Nation’s polling and government money for journalists that we haven’t been able to verify. - 💡 Takeaway: Shellenberger calls the censors’ picture of themselves “a profoundly childlike view of themselves and of morality”, and it travels well across the Tasman. [Read More](https://www.public.news/p/you-need-a-lot-of-censorship-to-get?ref=goodoil.news) --- ## What our members are saying about Ten@10 **Elizabeth** These articles are compulsory reading for me and the perfect addition to the usual list of Goodoil items! **Lynne** Absolutely brilliant to receive these current and thought provoking articles. **Jonathan** Just wanted to let you know that I’m loving this new 10@10\. Much appreciated from someone who chooses to read/watch almost NO mainstream media. **Murray** Cam, relish your output as the newspaper in Christchurch is so intent on non news. Thankyou **Fred** Thanks for Ten @ Ten, really enjoy reading it.Keep it up. All the best, keep healthy. **Jocko** Wonderful info not otherwise available in NZ. More power to your elbow! Thanks. ### Thumbs up for the Mob URL: https://goodoil.news/thumbs-up-for-the-mob/ Last updated: 2026-10-18T20:29:59.000Z [**Ani O’Brien**](https://aniobrien.substack.com/p/thumbs-up-for-the-mongrel-mob) *Like good faith disagreements and principled people. Dislike disingenuousness and Foucault. Care especially about women’s rights, justice, and democracy.* I am somewhat of a purist when it comes to voting rights. It is my firm belief that the right to vote is fundamental and should not be taken away for any reason. It is controversial among my friends that I oppose the coalition’s legislation to prevent prison inmates from voting. I do realise that this population overwhelmingly vote for left-wing parties, but it is their right to do so. Even if we sequester criminals and take away their physical freedom, they are still part of society at large and I don’t think disenfranchisement should be part of their punishment. This may seem strange given I am outspoken about the need for tougher sentences and I know many readers will disagree with me, but I view *‘the vote’* as an almost sacred right and rite. I just want to provide that context before I launch into what will likely be a very outraged and frustrated piece. Because even if I think the very worst New Zealanders should be able to vote, it does not mean that I think they should be pandered to and legitimised by politicians cynically pursuing their collective support. I am quite frankly disgusted by the images that emerged last week of Green Party and Te Pāti Māori MPs at a Mongrel Mob gang pad grinning with patched members in photos underneath gang insignia. Te Pāti Māori MP Oriini Kaipara even referred to the gang as the *“Whero Whānau”* (Red Family) in multiple social media posts. The familiarity, legitimising, and disrespect for victims gang crime is sickening. Utterly despicable. ![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!O5AB!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F65e485d9-319a-461b-b5d8-74cc2a05d7f2_1920x1197.webp) Te Pāti Māori MP Oriini Kaipara, Green MP Hūhana Lyndon, and Green candidate Michel Mulipola with Mongrel Mob members including Harry Tam Present at the Mongrel Mob pad south of Auckland, were Green MP Hūhana Lyndon, Green candidate Michel Mulipola, and Te Pāti Māori MPs Oriini Kaipara and Hana-Rāwhiti Maipi-Clarke Greens co-leader Marama Davidson has been defiant and said the party would not apologise for meeting with the gang. She asserted *“We don’t change who we are as a political party just for the campaign, you know.”* The MPs present have framed the excursion as an opportunity to engage with marginalised communities and suggested that they are doing some kind of outreach that will have a positive impact on gang statistics. Let’s be honest here. **That is complete bullshit.** They all visited the gang pad to fish for votes. They were campaigning and cozying up to some of New Zealand’s most violent men because it was politically beneficial for them to do so. They weren’t staging an intervention, demanding they cease their lives of crime, or announcing a policy to dismantle organised crime in New Zealand. They had their arms around patched members and were giving the thumbs up or doing pūkana. ![Image](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!puvm!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F502eaa8e-5a36-4569-9bd9-1e592cbb1f04_1200x618.jpeg "Image") Oriini Kaipara with Harry Tam (left) Political attention is finite and where parties, and candidates, direct their attention in the weeks before an election is pretty revealing of their priorities. For so many MPs to show up to a mob pad as if it were a local bowling club is a terrible insight into who they think is worthy of their time. How many organisations have these MPs visited that support women fleeing violent relationships, families affected by methamphetamine addiction, people seeking help after sexual assault, business owners who endure intimidation from gangs, and communities that deal with the impact of organised crime everyday? Heather Du Plessis-Allan interviewed independent victim’s advocate Claire Buckley on Newstalk ZB after the photographs were published online and her visceral anger was plain to hear. She said she does not oppose engagement with gang communities when the objective is clearly to end the harm they cause, but she argues that it seems these MPs would rather engage with the Mob than their victims. She said, “*No wonder gang recruitment is up when you get this kind of legitimisation from politicians.”* The excuses from the MPs have been difficult to take seriously. Oriini Kaipara argues that *whānau* relationships don’t disappear when there is a patch, Green MP Hūhana Lyndon invoked an argument about access to healthcare, and there is a lot of chat about *“marginalisation”*. But anyone with a bit of sense can see this is about courting votes for an election that is less than a month away. This is a matter of what these politicians are willing to stomach and turn the blind eye to, in exchange for bringing in votes from criminals. And it is *a lot* to swallow. A massive dead rat. An indictment on their moral compasses that it appears to bother them so little. It is also pretty ironic that the Greens recently made a song and a dance about pulling out of a series of bipartisan debates because the host, the Taxpayers’ Union, was featured in a quickly discredited defamatory book by hard-left activist Nicky Hager, but they are willing to stand next to patched gang members with rap sheets that run into pages long. ![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!HFOM!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fae50b2ea-f792-4505-8528-dda5f38de9b5_1185x933.jpeg) Green MP Hūhana Lyndon, Green candidate Michel Mulipola with Harry Tam The Mongrel Mob is not a benign cultural organisation nor a club for poor ol’ disadvantaged men seeking companionship. Rather than operating as a nationwide organisation, it is made up of several chapters that have considerable independence. It has historically been one of New Zealand’s largest gang organisations and its scale is what appeals to the politicians sucking up to them for votes. The gang that is so awful and despicable that it once had its own episode on a television series called *The World’s Deadliest Gangs* as well as on another TV series called *Ross Kemp on Gangs*. They are pedlars of misery and suffering. They destroy communities with drugs and commit violent crimes at alarming rates. And it should be remembered that even though this is horrible for the wider community to endure, it is actually disproportionately their own families, particularly the women and children, who suffer the worst of their violence. The Mongrel Mob has been part of New Zealand’s criminal landscape for more than 60 years. They actually emerged in the 1960s from groups of predominantly white men moving between Wellington and the Hawke’s Bay, but as Māori urbanisation and Pacific migration transformed New Zealand’s cities, the gang’s membership makeup changed too. By the 1970s the Mongrel Mob had become largely Māori. Violence has been part of the Mongrel Mob’s culture from the early days and they have had a bloody rivalry with Black Power, which was formed around 1970\. They developed a culture of intentional offensiveness, adopting a bulldog wearing a German military helmet as their mascot. They used (and still do) a lot of Nazi symbology, including swastikas and their *Sieg Heil* salute. Criminologist Jarrod Gilbert says that this was all due to wishing to cause as much offence as possible rather than a coherent connection to Nazi ideology. ![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!Qun6!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fea3951d4-95d6-4b39-814c-58fc43cffa66_1240x700.jpeg) Hana-Rāwhiti Maipi-Clarke with Mongrel Mob members including Harry Tam This is who left-wing politicians attach themselves to without shame. Who they call *“whānau”* and embrace for photos. The history represented by the banners they stood in front of, however, is ugly, brutal, and has created victims of many thousands and thousands of New Zealanders. There have been concerted efforts in recent years by the gang to rehabilitate their image and present themselves as *community groups*. Waikato Mongrel Mob Kingdom even had a strange PR woman called Louise Hutchinson for awhile, though I cannot find reports of her recently. The leader of the chapter, Sonny Fatupaito (also known as Sonny Fatu), went to great lengths to attempt to convince the public that his members were abandoning the violence, drug dealing, and criminality. Fatu even went as far as to invite journalists, politicians, and prominent Māori leaders to his headquarters to see the supposed transformation. Unfortunately, it was all for nought though. The credibility of the Waikato Kingdom’s rehabilitation was severely undermined in spectacular fashion by the arrest of senior member Mark Griffiths (Griff). Griff had been front and centre promoting the gang’s new direction in 2019, speaking to the media about breaking cycles of dysfunction. He was, in fact, Fatu’s second-in-command and even delivered a guest lecture at the University of Canterbury. However, police investigations uncovered his leadership of a substantial commercial drug enterprise. He was found to have been obtaining and distributing large quantities of methamphetamine and GBL across the North Island. And, in 2023, after pleading guilty he was sentenced to 10 years in prison. Others from the chapter were implicated in the crimes; however, Fatu kept his hands clean and plead ignorance. Fatu also claimed to be fostering a *“new kaupapa”* in which practices like *“blocking”* are banned. Blocking is slang used most notably by Mongrel Mob and Black Power to refer to *“putting women on the block”* that is bending them over something and gang raping them. This has been used for initiations into the gangs. The practice came into public awareness most prominently after the 1987 murder of teenager Colleen Burrows who resisted being put on the block by Mongrel Mob members and a case in 1986 (criminal proceedings in 1987) when a young woman was kidnapped and taken to a Mongrel Mob convention in Ambury Park where she was raped by 15 Mongrel Mob members. There was also a high profile case in 1993 which saw nine Mongrel Mob members convicted of sexual offences, and sentenced to a combined 80 years in prison, relating to three young women who were subjected to sexual violence at the Rotorua Mongrel Mob headquarters. The convictions related to multiple sexual assaults, including rapes involving a bottle and a hammer. The case also made headlines because the Mongrel Mob members attempted to intimidate the women into withdrawing their testimony. Gang member Gillies Jacobs beat one of them with a baseball bat and forced her to sign an affidavit withdrawing her allegations. The Mongrel Mob claims this is a thing of the past as if (even if it were true) that excuses the horrific history of sexual violence and the long trail of victims they have left behind. In any case, the evidence does not support that the gang has left its rape culture behind. ![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!mNRD!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F75a9c09a-dc51-4868-b14c-22835ecdadce_523x586.jpeg) Oriini Kaipara Here are just a few recent cases. In January this year, Mongrel Mob member Lou Harmer was sentenced to 12 years and six months imprisonment for 14 counts of serious sexual offending against multiple young girls. In 2025, a news headline read *‘“Both men helped themselves”: Mongrel Mob members raped 14-year-old in motel room.* Ruaumoko Taiapa and Raniera Daniels-Rongonui both admitted to rape and sexual violation of the girl in an emergency accommodation motel and were sentenced to nine years and nine months imprisonment each. The judge in the case remarked to them that in order to intimidate the victim *“you were obviously flaunting your Mongrel Mob association”.* In 2024, Tūrangi Mongrel Mob member Richard Paru was sentenced to 10 years in prison for nine serious charges relating to an incident in which he entered a woman’s home and subjected her to about four hours of violence and sexual abuse. His convictions include sexual violation by unlawful sexual connection, kidnapping, threatening to kill, and assault. Oh and he had 42 previous convictions. In 2023, Mongrel Mob member Brendon Warwood was sentenced to 13 years and four months in prison for abuse of his ex-partner that extended for nearly a year and included repeated sexual and physical violence. He strangled her and Justice Rob Osborne said his violence *“amounted to torture”*. ![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!Ibqc!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F13fbc04e-774e-4f60-926a-2c0e2635b38f_554x554.jpeg) Hana-Rāwhiti Maipi-Clarke Also in 2023, a *New Zealand Herald* headline read *‘Mongrel Mob member jailed for entering stranger’s Taranaki home, forcing oral sex’*. This related to Manis Taueki-Watson and *“a teenage associate”*. An incident in October 2022 did not include sexual violence but it was horrific nonetheless. Teacher Darcy Strickland was murdered by Mongrel Mob prospect Alizaye Todd and gang-affiliate Keontay Chadwick. The men jumped Strickland, beating him and stomping on him. His friend threw her body over him to protect him and Todd turned his violence on her, repeatedly punching her and stomping on her face five times until she lost consciousness. She survived, but Strickland did not. Witnesses said that Todd shouted a Mongrel Mob slogan at the scene. In 2021, Mongrel Mob member Nathaniel Ejay Pikitea Webster was convicted on 28 charges of sexual and physical violence against three different women. His offending included repeated rapes and even the imprisonment of one victim inside a makeshift cell. There are many other examples. Operation Pakari in 2022\. Canterbury drug and firearms raids in 2026\. Operation Notus, 2018, 2026\. Operation Texas 2026\. I think you get the appalling picture. We are constantly told by the Greens, Te Pāti Māori, and some in Labour that gang members are vulnerable and in need of coddling not punishment. It is true that many gang members are raised in violent households and subjected to much of the horror that they in turn grow up to inflict on others. But expressing this as some kind of inevitability does nothing but treat the cycle of abuse as something that cannot be disrupted. Vulnerability does not excuse violence. Suffering in childhood does not provide a license for sexually and physically abusing others. Additionally, there is something extra grotesque about invoking Māori wellbeing as a defence for lending legitimacy to organisations whose offending also harms Māori. Māori women and children are not some inconvenient side show in the story of troubled Māori men. There are also men, particularly at the top of the gang and in positions of influence, who it is difficult to argue are vulnerable at all. They actually wield considerable power and have histories of terrorising those who don’t. Men like this were present in the photographs with the Green and Te Pāti Māori MPs. Smiling and making gang signs with their fingers. One such man is, of course, Harry Tam who has become a kind of infamous figure in New Zealand due to his status in the Mongrel Mob and the incredible respect and money given to him under the last Labour government. He is a lifelong member who traces his initiation back to around 1975. ![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!-L3H!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F3aea7977-af67-4e08-9175-d191d1cdb10b_1200x1600.jpeg) Harry Tam and Marama Davidson It is important to reflect that even if *“blocking”* is banned now (which I am deeply suspicious of), it was in regular use for decades of Tam’s involvement with the gang. I have no proof that he took part in such things, but it is true to say he was a member of the gang, attending meetings and conventions where such things were taking place. In 1994, Harry Tam was convicted of assaulting his wife in front of their children and, in 2017, a Police Safety Order was issued that required him to stay away from his then-partner Charlotte Mildon following a *“domestic incident”*. A couple of years later Tam was appointed as director of policy and research for the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care and had responsibilities involving the Survivors Advisory Group. Two women came forward raising safety concerns about this, including Charlotte Mildon, who accused Tam of Mongrel Mob stand-over tactics and abuse. An independent inquiry was announced and Tam was stood down from the role in June 2019. ![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!nQhA!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fb0d3d6df-4c53-4e58-aad4-5e38c0339608_1290x1448.jpeg) Harry Tam and Oriini Kaipara During the 2020 election campaign, Tam went on a roadshow of sorts to gang pads up and down the country to call on gang members to vote for Labour. A video eventually made its way online of one of his speeches at a pad. Here are some key quotes from it: > *“In our day we did the f\*\*\* what we liked and we got away with it”* > > *“Come September this year there is going to be this thing called a general election and we all know the leader of the National Party is ganging up on us”* > > *“We can turn in to twenty or thirty thousand votes”* > > *“We don’t need to take this shit from these c\*\*\*s”* > > *“Register to vote otherwise that motherf\*\*\*er will get in and your lives will be hell”* > > *“We’re the mighty f\*\*\*ing Mongrel Mob and we don’t take shit from any c\*\*\*, and why should we take it from them”* > > *“Sieg Heil to the Mongrel Mob for another 1,000 years”* And it turns out, Tam did have very good reason to encourage the Mongrel Mob to support Labour. In the years that followed Harry Tam was able to earn a significant amount of taxpayer money through his company *Hard2Reach*. Jacinda Ardern and Chris Hipkins both publicly defended the Labour government’s engagement with Tam and the Mongrel Mob. Especially in regards to a rehabilitation programme run by *Hard2Reach* and *Kahukura* that the government funded to the tune of $2.75 million in 2021\. This came out of the Proceeds of Crime Fund. When there was a public outcry against the spending and what amounted to state support for gangs Harry Tam famously told Jack Tame on *Q+A* *“Jacinda seems to trust me. Why wouldn’t you?"* Later, in 2023, then-Prime Minister Chris Hipkins justified MP Ingrid Leary attending a Dunedin Mongrel Mob meeting organised by Harry Tam which she claimed was a *“voter-enrolment meeting”*. Tam was again campaigning hard within the gang communities for a Labour-led government although he was also pushing votes toward the Greens this time. And here we are in 2026, another election nearing, and Harry Tam is out doing the hard yards getting votes for the left-wing parties. It is very cynical for Labour and their potential coalition partners to pretend there isn’t a political affiliation, even if informal. The gangs don’t just hate National and their coalition partners. They spend considerable time and resources every three years campaigning to keep them out of government. And while Labour has tried to distance themselves from the Mongrel Mob after the Harry Tam scandals of the Ardern/Hipkins governments, the stench remains. As does the question of why the Mongrel Mob is so desperate to have a Labour-led government. What I have outlined here are not lurid rumours from the internet or stories made up by the National Party. This is verified history and crimes discussed in New Zealand courtrooms, and affecting real victims. The patch represents violence, drugs, rape, intimidation, and murder. The proximity the men in the photographs have to this kind of crime is not distant. They wear the bulldog on their backs and inked in their skin. It is no surprise that Chris Hipkins came out strongly against the recent visit to the Mongrel Mob pad. He knows that while gang votes are handy to collect, the rest of the population does not look kindly upon pandering to gangs. In the leaders’ debate he condemned the actions of the Green and Te Pāti Māori MPs, and, when prodded by moderator Ryan Bridge, he promised that no Greens or Te Pāti Māori MP would be appointed minister of justice, police, or corrections. Given he has already ruled out Chlöe Swarbrick as finance minister, he is rapidly running out of satisfactory roles he will be able to give to his relatively large coalition partner if they form a government. However, there is also a fair argument to be made that if the political judgement made by these MPs and their parties makes them unsuitable to oversee police or the prison system, why should New Zealanders be reassured by the prospect of them sitting around the cabinet table at all? This article was originally published by [Thought Crimes](https://aniobrien.substack.com/p/thumbs-up-for-the-mongrel-mob). ### Chippy Don’t Lose That Number URL: https://goodoil.news/chippy-dont-lose-that-number/ Last updated: 2026-10-18T20:14:59.000Z It is certain that Qiulae Wong has Labour’s number. One suspects that Chris Bishop has already given her his. _This post is for paying subscribers only._ ### The Capitalist and the Lecture URL: https://goodoil.news/the-capitalist-and-the-lecture/ Last updated: 2026-10-18T19:59:59.000Z **LilBaP** In a recent *Stuff* article, Sir Ian Taylor has a point worth hearing. Technologies that turn waste into something useful are worth pursuing. Circular approaches that recover materials, reduce landfill and design products for reuse can lower the volume of new extraction required over time. They are not, however, a free lunch. Sorting, processing and recovering waste at scale requires energy, water and, increasingly, the computing power of AI and data centres. Those inputs do not appear by magic. They are produced, refined or powered by the same class of minerals and fossil fuels that Taylor treats as the problem to be minimised. New Zealand’s electricity system is already operating near capacity. If the country seriously wants to expand in the technology sector – more AI, more data centres, more advanced manufacturing – firm, reliable large-scale power is essential. Small modular nuclear reactors are one of the few options that can deliver that without depending on weather or large volumes of imported fuel. How this sits with the power demand of the technologies he prefers is a question the lecturer has not answered. It is a gap. Taylor can explain why a regulated mine carries residual risk. He has not explained why the alternative he prefers is materially cleaner once its own energy, water and material requirements are counted. Modern economies run on mined minerals. Batteries, turbines, transmission lines, data centres, fertiliser, concrete and the devices that design and run waste-recycling technologies all depend on them. Fossil fuels are still required for thousands of components, most of the freight and most of the firm power. Pretending one can be expanded while the other is constrained, without a clear account of the trade-offs, is not a technology argument. No serious person claims mining is risk-free or that every project should proceed. Bonds, monitoring and rehabilitation rules exist because companies do not simply leave. Those rules can be tightened where the evidence shows they are inadequate. They are not zero. Treating them as zero turns a policy question into a moral one. The same scrutiny is rarely applied to the long-term liabilities of other industries whose owners already enjoy the proceeds. That is the bias. It is easier to lecture about residual risk in a sector that still has visible holes in the ground than one whose downside has already been externalised or is sitting in a server farm. The economic numbers on the other side of the ledger are not trivial. OceanaGold’s Macraes operation, New Zealand’s largest gold mine, has supported hundreds of direct jobs and thousands more through suppliers and spending. Recent assessments put its GDP contribution in the hundreds of millions in a single year, with average mining wages well above the national figure. The proposed Bendigo-Ophir project from Santana Minerals is projected, on the company’s figures and independent economic work, to add an average of around $360 million a year to GDP, support roughly 350 direct jobs at average salaries above $140,000, and generate in the order of $1.8 billion in government revenue over its life through royalties, company tax, PAYE and ACC. Those are life-of-mine projections, not guaranteed annual returns. The site itself sits on high-country pastoral land in Central Otago that was previously used for extensive grazing and was not highly productive for intensive agriculture or horticulture before the permit was issued. It is not high-value dairy or orchard country being taken out of production. Waihi North’s expansion has been assessed as delivering hundreds of millions in Crown revenue over its life and supporting hundreds of jobs, with the majority of expenditure staying in New Zealand. Mining remains one of the highest-paid and most productive sectors in the country. This is the scale of the activity that is being weighed against residual risk. New Zealand already earns a large share of its export revenue from natural resources – dairy, meat, horticulture, timber and the rest of the primary sector. Gold and other minerals sit in the same category. The country has a long heritage of gold and silver mining – it is not a novel activity. It is also unlikely that New Zealand will easily out-compete the rest of the world as a major exporter of technology. That does not mean the attempt should be abandoned. It does mean covering the bases and doing well the things the country already does well. A serious technology push would also require firm power at a scale the current system does not have. Treating mineral extraction as uniquely illegitimate, while the rest of the primary sector continues, is a selective standard. The hypocrisy sits in the timing. Taylor built a successful company under the existing system, has accumulated capital and status and now applies a high precautionary standard to further extraction. Environmental concerns belong in the discussion. but not as a veto exercised after one’s own wealth is secured. Shane Jones notes that working-age New Zealanders are leaving for higher wages elsewhere which is a measurable response to opportunity. The response from the already-secure is that New Zealand should forgo projects that clear existing hurdles because the residual risk is too high. The people taking the risk of leaving do not set that standard. If the concern is planetary, the location of the next mine is secondary. The minerals will be extracted somewhere. The atmospheric and ecological effects do not respect New Zealand’s border. Preaching that this country should accept lower income and fewer options so that people who have already extracted their wealth can feel the process was sufficiently careful is a familiar pattern. The rest of the world continues to develop the resources it needs. New Zealand is invited to set an example that costs its own citizens, while the example is applauded from a distance. There is room for mining under clear rules on bonds, monitoring and closure. There is also room for technologies that use waste more productively. Both will consume energy, water and minerals. Significant public spending already goes into climate architecture and related processes. The adult discussion is about the relative costs and the rules that apply to each, not about which already-comfortable voice gets to declare one path morally superior. The lecture and hypocrisy will no doubt continue from the champagne class. It would be more useful if it included the inputs its preferred solution still requires, the firm power a technology sector would actually need and the jobs and revenue the alternative forgoes. The rest of the country still needs to earn wages and revenue while these people lecture from the *Stuff* pulpit. We know the term chardonnay class. These days some people remind me of the closet capitalist: they made their money then hide behind a different agenda. ### Why Māori Stand to Gain the Controlling Role URL: https://goodoil.news/why-maori-stand-to-gain-the-controlling-role/ Last updated: 2026-10-18T19:29:59.000Z [**Kerry Butler**](https://nominister.wordpress.com/2026/10/16/why-maori-stand-to-gain-a-controlling-role-in-the-leadership-of-nz/?ref=goodoil.news) *No Minister* Remember the **Public Interest Journalist Fund,** introduced by Labour during Jacinda Ardern’s reign of tyranny, when media organisations and newspapers were given millions of taxpayer dollars? The first tranche of payments was $18 million (out of a total of $55 million), which all media accepted except for the Platform and the *Westport News*. The latter is privately owned and the owner said: **“We prefer to paddle our own canoe”,** but all other papers and media grabbed the money, in the manner of street prostitutes. Of course, it was all a bribe, with ‘conditions’. One of which was that the recipient of the money (i.e. every media organisation except the two mentioned) had to report any Māori and especially Treaty issues in accordance with the Labour government policy. (As their lap dogs). Nothing about reporting the news honestly and objectively. Those media organisations should have had the strength of character to make an ethical stand against such propagandist indoctrination, which is **at variance with editorial independence**. Because, in taking the money, this created a lot of self-censorship that must, very often, have gone against their own principles. (If they had any). I know of a long-standing editor who resigned his position when put under such **dictatorship**. When news media were **paid** to toe the Labour Party line, they were very obligingly **selling their soul and allowing themselves to be held to ransom**. And in doing so, they effectively became an integral (useful) part of the ‘activist’s’ arsenal, simply because**,** due to the gagged media being responsible for preventing the truth from being revealed**,** the ‘activists’ of all hues have been able to get away with blatantly instigating agendas that involve Māori gaining positions of ‘control’. Here is just one example of a revolutionist **‘attitude’** that drives them: Rawiri Waititi, the racist co-leader of Te Pāti Māori, is so sure of his ‘takeover’ crusade he stated, quote: **“Caucasian (white people) as a species are doomed to extinction as a new Aotearoa is on the rise.”** As a back-up to show how this **takeover** ‘attitude’ is becoming entrenched in our country, here is a quote from the Māori king, who said: **“Māori can lead for all, and we are prepared to do that.”** And media appear to believe this prospect is perfectly acceptable. So much so, it was enthusiastically printed in the *NZ Herald* in January 2024. **And yet,** a letter submitted to the editor was **rejected**, simply because the writer pointed out that Māori having **‘control’** over all citizens, in what is meant to be a **democratic** country, would be an injustice. Especially considering that Article **3** of the Treaty guarantees “equal” rights to all. And besides which, the **NZ Human Rights Act** prohibits **preference** **based on race or ethnicity**. Talking about Māori asserting the role of leadership, the He Puapua agenda instigated by the Labour Party was all about co-governance by 2040\. But, here’s the seriously frightening bit, it included Māori having power of **‘veto’**, which, unbelievably, means that Māori will have the final say in everything, thus, effectively giving them **dictatorial** **‘control’** over our prospects in life. A point to note about Māori gaining the upper hand, is that the co-governance agenda has not gone away. It is still simmering on the back burner and very definitely projected to come into force by 2040. It is on record that the Māori Party are insisting that: **“He Puapua must still be enacted line-by-line, as a baseline text for Māori rights.”** If you are complacent enough to think this is only pie in the sky, then just remember that by 2040 Te Pāti Māori (or at least their philosophy) will hold major sway over politics in NZ. So, brace yourself. And the Green Party’s 2026 manifesto states that they: **“Strongly champion the objectives of Māori self-determination and constitutional transformation by 2040.”** So, they would appear to be committed to the recommendations of the He Puapua agenda. And we can take a pretty good guess at what the Opportunity Party will be pushing for at some future date, considering that Dr Kayla Kingdom-Bebb, a high-ranking candidate for Top, co-authored the He Puapua report in 2019. In the meantime, we are being drilled into getting used to the idea, with more and more specific instances where co-governance is being entrenched, one step at a time. In regard to the **‘takeover’** agenda being allowed to **creep in**, an example occurred recently at the Far North Council where 10 **non-elected** iwi representatives were given **voting** powers alongside the six democratically elected councillors, thus outnumbering them, so in effect, having **‘control’** of that council. When one lone brave soul, Davina Smoulders dared to complain about the inequity, and requested an independent review by the local government minister, she was promptly removed from her committee position. There are people aware of the incremental ‘takeover’ that is occurring**,** but due to media being so vigilant in their **‘gatekeeper’** role, the truth is being restricted in regard to what’s really going on. For one, Professor Elizabeth Rata, from Auckland University has warned, quote: **“The final step for Māori in the defeat of democracy will be tribal sovereignty. A coup d’état.”** *The term d’état means gaining ‘control’ of government by a small group without the use of force.* Anthony Willy, a law lecturer and former judge said, quote: **“We are witnessing a coup designed to dismantle our democracy and replace it with the worst form of tribalism.”** These seriously concerned people are speaking from highly respected positions, so should be allowed their democratic right of free speech. So why aren’t they? Well, as pointed out earlier, Ardern took ‘control’ of the media, so democratic ‘rights’ of non-Māori were severely restricted under her **dictatorial** crusade. The pertinent point being that the worst thing to come out of media having allowed themselves to be ‘under’ Ardern’s stand-over tactics**,** is that a ‘censorship’ mentality has become **ingrained**, to the point of encouraging a **Woke** **‘culture’** of now not being able to face any issue, that is in any way, considered to be of an ideological nature. Media should be ashamed that back when under the ‘control’ of a committed socialist, they allowed themselves to be bribed into not fairly representing the rights of all citizens of our country. But they’ll undoubtedly blank that, or resort to the old trick of passing the buck. Like, oh, but it wasn’t me. Well, it **is** you now. This article was originally published by [No Minister](https://nominister.wordpress.com/2026/10/16/why-maori-stand-to-gain-a-controlling-role-in-the-leadership-of-nz/?ref=goodoil.news). ### Quick Hit: The Only Hand Not Raised URL: https://goodoil.news/quick-hit-the-only-hand-not-raised/ Last updated: 2026-10-18T19:29:59.000Z Four leaders raised their hands for diversity at TVNZ’s debate. Winston Peters didn’t. RNZ’s expert rebuttal ends by conceding his “disunity” warning “could indeed fit”. _This post is for subscribers on the VIP tier only._ ### The Gallery’s Overhang Fix Is the Stitch-Up MMP Was Built to Stop URL: https://goodoil.news/the-gallerys-overhang-fix-is-the-stitch-up-mmp-was-built-to-stop/ Last updated: 2026-10-18T19:00:00.000Z The Herald and the Post political editors both want Labour and National to kill the overhang, by simple majority and with no referendum. The overhang is MMP working. A big-two stitch-up is what MMP was built to stop. _This post is for paying subscribers only._ ### Good Oil General Debate URL: https://goodoil.news/good-oil-general-debate-853/ Last updated: 2026-10-18T18:00:09.000Z Good morning, welcome to our daily General Debate. Our evening General debate is called Backchat and will start at 6 pm. 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Please be respectful and do not make demands. ### Faces of the Day URL: https://goodoil.news/faces-of-the-day-158/ Last updated: 2026-10-18T17:29:59.000Z > Labour wants to make sports and community activities more affordable to help cut down screen time for kids in its latest election policy. > > It would also set clearer national expectations of when children can use screens and make existing online-safety tools more accessible. > > The policy would see $3 million a year invested into Active Me – Kia Tū, an organisation which offers up to $300 grants to cover costs such as registration, uniforms and equipment for sport. > > Tū Manawa Active Aotearoa, which helps clubs and organisations deliver after school activities, would receive an additional $4m a year. > > [Stuff](https://www.stuff.co.nz/politics/361047946/labour-invest-activities-kids-bid-cut-down-screen-use?ref=goodoil.news) [Read More](https://www.stuff.co.nz/politics/361047946/labour-invest-activities-kids-bid-cut-down-screen-use?ref=goodoil.news) ### The Good Oil Word of the Day URL: https://goodoil.news/the-good-oil-word-of-the-day-792/ Last updated: 2026-10-18T17:15:42.000Z The word for today is… fabulous (adjective) - 1a: resembling or suggesting a fable : of an incredible, astonishing, or exaggerated nature b: wonderful, marvelous a fabulous view from the summit 2: told in or based on fable Source : [Merriam-Webster](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fabulous?ref=goodoil.news) Etymology : Most of us use the word fabulous in an entirely positive sense, with the meaning “wonderful” or “marvelous.” This is an entirely acceptable way to use the word, but it is by no means the sense that fabulous had when it entered the English language: its original meaning was “characteristic of fables” (a fable is “an invented tale”). In that sense, "the fabulous legends of Arabia" refers to legends based upon fable rather than notably excellent legends. The semantic drift that fabulous has undergone is not at all uncommon in language, and we see comparable developments in words of similar in meaning. Fantastic previously meant “of, belonging to, or constituting fantasy”; awesome initially had the sole meaning “expressive of awe” (and many people wish that it still did); and terrific meant “terrible, terrifying” long before it meant “splendid.” ***If you enjoyed this Good Oil word of the day please consider sharing it with your friends and, especially, your children.*** ### The Good Oil Daily Bible Verse URL: https://goodoil.news/the-good-oil-daily-bible-verse-502/ Last updated: 2026-10-18T16:59:59.000Z [Matthew 19](https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%2019&version=KJV&ref=goodoil.news) **4** And he answered and said unto them, Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female ### Night Cap URL: https://goodoil.news/night-cap-760/ Last updated: 2026-10-18T08:00:00.000Z If you have a great Youtube, Rumble or Vimeo video to share send it to videos@goodoil.news [![CTA Image](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/01/cam-shirt2-1.png)](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) If you're loving this trusty, straight-up news on Kiwi politics and beyond, why not become a paid member, eh? Unlock exclusive yarns, podcasts, vids, and in-depth analysis—your support keeps independent journalism chugging along. Join today for just $5.00 per month and get the full good oil! [Learn more ](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) ### Standup Sunday URL: https://goodoil.news/standup-sunday-111/ Last updated: 2026-10-18T07:29:59.000Z If you have a great Youtube, Rumble or Vimeo video to share send it to videos@goodoil.news [![CTA Image](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/01/cam-shirt2-1.png)](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) If you're loving this trusty, straight-up news on Kiwi politics and beyond, why not become a paid member, eh? Unlock exclusive yarns, podcasts, vids, and in-depth analysis—your support keeps independent journalism chugging along. Join today for just $5.00 per month and get the full good oil! [Learn more ](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) ### Analysing The Greens’ Defence Of Gangdom URL: https://goodoil.news/analysing-the-greens-defence-of-gangdom/ Last updated: 2026-10-18T06:59:59.000Z If you have a great Youtube, Rumble or Vimeo video to share send it to videos@goodoil.news ### Should Brian Tamaki Be Facing Criminal Charges? The FSU Don’t Think So URL: https://goodoil.news/should-brian-tamaki-be-facing-criminal-charges-the-fsu-dont-think-so/ Last updated: 2026-10-18T06:30:00.000Z If you have a great Youtube, Rumble or Vimeo video to share send it to videos@goodoil.news [![CTA Image](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/01/cam-shirt2-1.png)](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) If you're loving this trusty, straight-up news on Kiwi politics and beyond, why not become a paid member, eh? Unlock exclusive yarns, podcasts, vids, and in-depth analysis—your support keeps independent journalism chugging along. Join today for just $5.00 per month and get the full good oil! [Learn more ](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) ### He’s back! Bigger and badder than ever - Taxpayers union's Jordan Williams URL: https://goodoil.news/hes-back-bigger-and-badder-than-ever-taxpayers-unions-jordan-williams/ Last updated: 2026-10-18T05:59:59.000Z If you have a great Youtube, Rumble or Vimeo video to share send it to videos@goodoil.news [![CTA Image](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/01/cam-shirt2-1.png)](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) If you're loving this trusty, straight-up news on Kiwi politics and beyond, why not become a paid member, eh? Unlock exclusive yarns, podcasts, vids, and in-depth analysis—your support keeps independent journalism chugging along. Join today for just $5.00 per month and get the full good oil! [Learn more ](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) ### The Good Oil Daily Roundup URL: https://goodoil.news/the-good-oil-daily-roundup-776/ Last updated: 2026-10-18T05:29:59.000Z [](https://photos.google.com/u/1/photo/AF1QipN7Zp7NKe4smdZA9nAYud8CjsgjsQ-Bn7QyMo53?ref=goodoil.news) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/5C13624E-CAF0-40DD-968F-CC1AB53F5514_1_105_c.jpeg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/F132E787-F241-4BD0-A20C-920C3A0E6AB8_1_105_c.jpeg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/9CCB3476-3070-49A0-8C2D-8F85BA0D802E.jpeg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/C82A693B-C641-4AFF-8E57-7A1FDE752B3C_1_105_c.jpeg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/FFEA76FC-BC5F-4DD2-BE73-418ED2581ECF_1_105_c.jpeg) ### Good Oil Backchat URL: https://goodoil.news/good-oil-backchat-854/ Last updated: 2026-10-18T05:00:00.000Z Good evening, welcome to **Backchat**. On Backchat, you are free to share your own stories, discuss other news or catch up with friends. To participate you’ll need to sign up for a [Disqus account ](https://disqus.com/profile/signup/intent/?ref=goodoil.news)which is free, quick, and easy. On posts that are not articles like this one, you do not have to stay ‘on topic’ but you do still need to follow our [commenting rules.](https://goodoil.news/commenting-and-moderation/) Please [read our rules ](https://www.goodoil.news/commenting-and-moderation/?ref=goodoil.news)before you start commenting on *The Good Oil* to avoid a temporary or permanent ban. NOTE: Moderation queries MUST be expressed VIA EMAIL and not by posting a comment. To check if your ban might have been caused by Disqus, or to ask for a banning decision to be reviewed, email the voluntary **helpdesk** @ [**goodoil.news**](https://goodoil.news/) with your Disqus username in the subject line. Please be respectful and do not make demands. ### How Natural Selection Made You... You URL: https://goodoil.news/how-natural-selection-made-you-you/ Last updated: 2026-10-17T19:59:59.000Z It’s bizarre that the notion of evolution by means of natural selection can still be disputed in some circles, when the evidence for it is not just all around us, it’s literally written in our own bodies, in a concatenation of As, Cs, Gs and Ts. These letters represent the nucleotides (adenine, cytosine, guanine and thymine) that form DNA, grouped together in the blocks called genes. When changes occur in this code, it’s called a mutation. Popular culture has fostered the idea that mutations are always harmful, but this is completely false. Some mutations are very beneficial: so much so that they enable an individual to reproduce with more success than others. When this happens, the mutation becomes more common, ultimately changing entire populations. Thanks to advances in genetic science, we can now pinpoint just where and when a particular mutation entered the population (the sort of science that allows an Ancestry DNA test to pinpoint where the ancestors whose genes ended up in *you* came from). Here’s just a few of the mutations that changed modern humans and how they spread (spoiler: because the individuals with the mutation got a lot luckier than the ones without it). Let us begin our genealogical tour not with the grand theatricality of a royal procession, but rather in the fragrant, albeit somewhat congested, accommodations of Northern China during the chill of 38,000 BC. Picture, if you will, a community of our distant forebears huddled together against the frost, deriving what little solace they might from a central hearth fed by animal hides and the durable architecture of mammoth bones. The atmosphere is, by any modern metric, an absolute olfactory disaster, a rich, compounding tapestry of unwashed bodies, greasy furs, wood smoke and the heavy perspiration of 40 souls for whom soap is a science fiction invention 36,000 years in the future. Yet, within this fug of prehistoric BO, there exists a singular protagonist who remains entirely impervious to the sensory assault. > [You carry a mutation](https://youtu.be/3jDWDA4FQZ8?si=toIL8dy8cByWPVxS&ref=goodoil.news) on the ABCC11 gene, a single letter swap in your DNA that shuts down the proteins your sweat glands would normally secrete. You produce no body odor, and your ear wax is dry and flaky instead of wet and sticky. It is a minor genetic tweak, yet it alters the geopolitical landscape of the cave entirely. While your peers exude the robust bouquet of the Pleistocene hunter, you stand amidst them like an oasis of neutrality. The local maidens, naturally discerning creatures despite their lack of formal education, find themselves inexplicably drawn toward your corner of the dwelling. When a particular young lady of your acquaintance leans in close and observes that you smell of absolute nothingness, history is quietly forged. You are, in essence, the progenitor of the modern antiperspirant demographic, proving definitively that sometimes the greatest evolutionary advantage is simply not offending the nostrils of the opposite sex. It also explains why groups like the Chinese and Japanese tend to find others a bit malodorous. Moving forward – or rather, stepping back some two hundred millennia onto the sun-scorched expanse of the East African savannah – we encounter a different sort of survival strategy altogether. Here, the great enemy is not the cold, but the merciless tyranny of a punishing dry season. Food is scarcer than an honest politician and the tribe’s collective ribs are beginning to resemble a xylophone. Your hunting party has spent the better part of daylight tracking a wounded antelope, trudging through the tall grasses until your bare feet feel as though they are lined with lead. The beast slows, limping toward a rocky defile from where there is no dignified exit. While your companions hesitate, paralysed by a sensible calculation of their remaining caloric reserves, you take decisive action. > Tonight, your group eats because of you. And when you walk back into camp with meat over your shoulders, every pair of eyes turns your way. You carry what geneticists would subsequently designate as the ACTN3 gene, the foundational architecture of sprinting prowess. It is a fascinating quirk of biological engineering that over a billion and a half people walking the earth today have jettisoned this very gene, having traded raw acceleration for metabolic efficiency during their long northward migration. But upon the baking plains of antiquity, the man who could outrun an antelope in the short burst it took to bring it down was not merely well-fed: he was the undisputed architect of the evening’s social hierarchy. He who brings home the meat gets more say in where to hide the sausage. Natural selection favours the providers. As humanity traded the spear for the plough, the evolutionary pressures shifted once more. Transport ourselves to the island of Crete in the idyllic year of 7,000 BC. Following an extraordinarily generous harvest of wheat, lentils and roasted goat, your village has engaged in a feast of biblical proportions. Most reasonable individuals reach a point of satiety where the mere contemplation of additional nourishment induces mild nausea. You, however, are governed by a different internal compass. > You carry the A variant of the FTO gene, the most common obesity-related gene in the human genome. It increases your levels of ghrelin, the hunger hormone. So even after a full meal, your brain keeps whispering more. While your neighbours push their wooden trenchers away with contented sighs, you happily dispatch another roasted goat, your physiological machinery converting every surplus molecule of fat with the ruthless efficiency of a Swiss accountant. To the aesthetic sensibilities of the local maidens, your silhouette is perhaps less than fashionable – they cast their adoring glances toward the lean, sinewy fishermen and the lithe tillers of the soil. But nature, in her cynical wisdom, plays a long game: when the inevitable drought arrives and the crops wither into dust, those slender, enviable Adonises begin to perish with alarming rapidity. You, meanwhile, draw serenely upon your formidable metabolic reserves, subsisting for months on little more than stubbornness and stored triglycerides. When the rains finally return, you emerge from the lean times somewhat diminished in circumference, but decidedly alive. Once again, the survival of the species belongs not to the aesthetically optimised, but to those who treated the village larder as a personal challenge. Consider next the curious case of ocular pigmentation, unfolding against the rugged backdrop of Southern Italy in 15,000 BC. Up until this juncture in human history, the gene pool possessed all the chromatic variety of a freshly turned furrow – every child emerged into the light equipped with eyes the colour of rich, dependable mud. Then, to everyone’s surprise, out popped a single baby with a gaze as cerulean as the Mediterranean. > You carry a mutation in the HERC2 gene, a switch that turned off the pigment your eyes were supposed to have. But nobody thinks you’re special in a good way. In a small, superstitious tribe where standing out from the crowd is chiefly a method for getting oneself nominated for hazardous duty, your sky-coloured optics are viewed with deep suspicion. You do not fell beasts with greater economy, nor do you navigate the underbrush with superior stealth. You are simply regarded as a peculiar domestic anomaly – a walking conversation piece of questionable utility. Yet, evolution cares little for the local gossip. A perceptive young woman, looking past the tribal consensus of weirdness, finds herself transfixed by your icy gaze. Seventeen millennia down the line, some three hundred million descendants will blink their way through modern life bearing your exact genetic signature. If girls cannot resist your stare, it is quite capable of carrying a lineage across the centuries. Further north, amidst the damp, cheerless gales of what would eventually become Scotland, another genomic drama was quietly playing out. Your ancestors were the intrepid wanderers who pushed past the sensible borders of the known world, ultimately stranding themselves upon a damp rock where the sun deigns to shine for perhaps 20 minutes per annum. The results are predictably grim: deprived of vitamin D, the local juveniles are universally bow-legged, the adults shamble about with the structural integrity of waterlogged timber and any wound is a crippling, prolonged ordeal. Into this miserable meteorological landscape steps the bearer of a rather remarkable recessive inheritance. > Your skin is pale and your hair bright red. You look like a mistake, which you are in a way. But every weak ray of winter sun that touches your skin passes straight through and gets converted into vitamin D, the molecule that keeps bones hard, immunity sharp, and wounds closing. While your swarthier companions succumb to the perpetual gloom, their bones softening and their spirits flagging, you stride across the heather with hair the colour of the rising sun and skin that treats sunlight like precious bullion. The very mutation that marks you out as an eccentric misfit in the demographic ledger ensures your biological triumph. In a cursed land where the sun don’t shine, the ginger champion stands supreme. Yet nature’s experiments are rarely without their tragic ironies, as illustrated in the forested river basins of West Central Africa around 1,000 BC. The transition from nomadic foraging to settled agriculture brought undeniable blessings: granaries filled to bursting and villages anchored in permanence. Regrettably, it also introduced the stagnant puddle and, with it, the unsparing scourge of tropical fever. > You carry one copy of a mutation on the HBB gene, just one. It changes the shape of some of your red blood cells. When the parasite enters your blood, your misshapen cells kill it before it can take hold. You glide through the epidemic unscathed, a monument to genetic resilience, passing your protective talisman down to a robust brood of children. But genetics is a fickle croupier and, when the dice are rolled for the next generation, one of your children inherits the double dose: a matching set of mutations from both parents. What protects in moderation destroys in excess. He or she survives the fever only to perish of the cure, a stark and sobering reminder that the machinery of selection operates without sentimentality or mercy. Finally, we find ourselves strolling through the charming canals of mid-19th-century Netherlands, an era when the average gentleman stood a modest five feet and five inches tall, gazing up with mild irritation at their towering American contemporaries. You, however, are a statistical rebel. > You carry a handful of gene variants, including one on the HMGA2 gene that have pushed your height above the rest. At five feet and eight inches, you tower over the village dance floor like a mammalian monolith. When you approach the most sought-after young lady in the parish, a man of standard Dutch altitude has already been politely rebuffed and sent back to drown his sorrows with a Heineken or three. Your superior stature tips the romantic scales entirely in your favour. And keeps tipping it: now the Dutch are among the tallest people in the world. The history of life on this planet is written by those who simply managed to reach a little higher than the rest. Thus, we are left to ponder the restless, ceaseless alchemy of our own chromosomes. The genomic code is not a dusty museum exhibit locked away in some academic archive – it is a living, breathing ledger that continues to be written, edited, and occasionally discarded with every generation that walks the earth. You carry the echoes of these ancient lottery winners within your own cells right now, even if you remain entirely oblivious as to whether your particular combination is destined for triumph or oblivion. All you can do is endeavour to contribute a reasonably sturdy variant or two to the ongoing experiment. --- 💡 ****If you enjoyed this article please share it using the share buttons at the top or bottom of the article.** ### Why You Shouldn’t Wait for the Sun to Make the First Move URL: https://goodoil.news/why-you-shouldnt-wait-for-the-sun-to-make-the-first-move-copy/ Last updated: 2026-10-17T18:59:59.000Z Everything is a poison: it just depends on the dose, is a famous aphorism from Swiss physician, alchemist, lay theologian and philosopher Paracelsus. He wasn’t called “the father of toxicology” for nothing. His aphorism applies to everything from vitamins to water: things which are greatly beneficial in the appropriate dose, become deadly toxins in heavy doses. Even sunshine. Not enough and you’ll get seriously sick. Too much, and you’ll not only get burned, but risk skin cancer. Not only for humans: the electronics that underpin nearly every aspect of modern life are at existential risk should the Sun get a bit too boisterous. We are accustomed to treating that blazing thermonuclear furnace in the heavens as a benign celestial radiator, obligingly nourishing our cabbages and powering the increasingly dubious subsidies of the green-energy grift. Climate models optimistically treat solar radiation as a constant. But every now and again, our stellar benefactor clears its throat and hurls a cosmic loogie across the void. > [Occasionally a violent](https://realclearwire.com/articles/2026/09/24/the%5Fcme%5Frisk%5Fto%5Famerican%5Finfrastructure%5F1208119.html?ref=goodoil.news) solar flare, technically called a Coronal Mass Ejection (CME), erupts from the sun’s surface. A CME is not a blast of sunlight. Instead, it is described by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration as “a massive, balloon-like bubble of magnetized plasma and hot gas that is blasted from the Sun’s outer atmosphere, or corona, into space.” When several billion tonnes of magnetised plasma scream through the ether at up to seven million miles per hour, heading straight down the barrel at our frail blue marble, the consequences are somewhat more disruptive than a mild case of sunburn. The induced currents hitting the surface can fry the high-voltage transformers that keep modern civilisation humming. These gargantuan electrical components are not off-the-shelf items one simply picks up from the local hardware shop on a Sunday morning – they are bespoke industrial behemoths that take months, if not years, to manufacture, deliver and install. Lest anyone dismiss this as the hysterical doom-mongering of tinfoil-hat enthusiasts, history provides a rather bracing bucket of cold water. > A catastrophic CME is not wild-eyed speculation. The most intense geomagnetic storm in recorded history, known as the “Carrington Event,” hit the US in 1859\. American electrical infrastructure was confined entirely to telegraph lines at that time. Even so, the damage was extensive, with widespread disruption of telegraph systems and telegraph operators reporting massive electric shocks and fires. In 1859, the worst that happened was a fleet of Victorian telegraph machines threw fiery tantrums, shocked their bearded operators and printed gibberish without batteries. If a tempest of that magnitude made landfall today, it would not merely inconvenience a handful of telegram clerks. It would reduce our pampered, electrified existence to the Dark Ages before your barista finished frothing up your latte. Smaller belches have already demonstrated the concept. In 1989, an astronomical burp knocked out the Hydro-Quebec grid in Canada in a mere two minutes, leaving six million Canucks freezing in the dark, whilst blowing out hardware as far south as New Jersey. In 2003, another geomagnetic burst caused havoc across Northern Europe and South Africa. Consider the potential bill if the sun decides to serve up a proper Carrington-sized cocktail today. > In 2013 the international insurance giant Lloyd’s of London released a study of potential damage to the US from a Carrington-level CME. Their worst-case scenarios included extended power disruptions affecting up to 40 million people. Lloyd’s estimated that fixing the damage could take up to two years, resulting in an economic cost of up to 2.6 trillion dollars. That is trillion, with a ‘t’: a sum which might seem like spare change to a government minister, but is a lot, lot, lot of money to the people who actually have to pay it. Beyond the dollars, we’re talking about tens of millions of people suddenly bereft of refrigeration, running water, sewage systems, medical equipment and internet access, plunged into a pre-industrial purgatory for years while bureaucrats scramble to procure spare copper coils. The actuarial odds of such a storm striking in any given year sit around what seems like a footling one per cent. But, like the next supervolcano or ‘Big One’ earthquake, one day the cosmic dice will throw double-six 100 times in a row. Over a human lifetime, that is less a speculative bet and more a dreadful likelihood. Yet, the remedies are well-known and remarkably inexpensive. For the price of a single aircraft carrier, America could harden its substations, install automated trip switches and stockpile critical replacement transformers. Our satellites give us anywhere from 15 hours to several days of advance warning: plenty of time to trip the switches and ride out the tempest, provided the gear is actually installed. Instead, our political betters prefer to spend trillions subsidising Chinese-made solar panels while ignoring the brittle, century-old grid tasked with carrying the load. As AI server farms and electric vehicles place unprecedented strain on ageing wires, the political class continues to whistle past the graveyard. It is a classic bureaucratic blind spot: spending money on an unavoidable catastrophe is terribly unglamorous when the disaster refuses to fit neatly into the next electoral cycle. In the meantime, you don’t have to go full prepper and stash a laptop, mobile, data cards and more in a metal bin lined with plastic and bury it in the backyard. At the very least, an external hard drive, regularly backed up with your critical data and precious photos and stored in a metal box is a simple fix with a big pay-off should the worst happen. --- 💡 ****If you enjoyed this article please share it using the share buttons at the top or bottom of the article.** ### Good Oil General Debate URL: https://goodoil.news/good-oil-general-debate-852/ Last updated: 2026-10-17T18:00:00.000Z Good morning, welcome to our daily General Debate. Our evening General debate is called Backchat and will start at 6 pm. On General debate, you are encouraged as a commenter to share your own stories, discuss other news, bring NEW news, catch up with friends or make new friends with other commenters. To participate you’ll need to sign up for a [Disqus account](https://disqus.com/profile/signup/intent/?ref=goodoil.news) which is free, quick, and easy. All you need is an email address to register a username that suits you. On posts that are not articles such as this one, you do not have to stay ‘on topic’ but you do still need to follow our [commenting rules.](https://www.goodoil.news/commenting-and-moderation/?ref=goodoil.news) Please [read our rules ](https://goodoil.news/commenting-and-moderation/)before you start commenting on *The Good Oil* to avoid a temporary or permanent ban. To check if your ban might have been caused by Disqus, or to ask for a banning decision to be reviewed, email the voluntary **helpdesk** @ [**goodoil.news**](https://goodoil.news/) with your Disqus username in the subject line. Please be respectful and do not make demands. ### Face of the Day URL: https://goodoil.news/face-of-the-day-1606/ Last updated: 2026-10-17T17:30:00.000Z > Former Newstalk ZB Afternoons host Danny Watson has died after a short illness, surrounded by family. > > He was 73. > > Watson took an unconventional path to broadcasting before discovering where he truly belonged. > > His television career began after a flatmate spotted a newspaper advertisement for the much-loved children’s programme *Spot On*. > > He later became part of the team behind another Kiwi favourite, *What Now?* > > Watson’s infectious energy made him a natural fit for radio – and he hosted Newstalk ZB’s Afternoons for 15 years from 2000 to 2015. > > That included a famous live broadcast from Scott Base in Antarctica in November 2014. > > NZ Herald [Read More](https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/former-newstalk-zb-host-danny-watson-dies-after-short-illness/DRHH7PMRUREGNKMXP7QCPA6QLY/?ref=goodoil.news) ### The Good Oil Word of the Day URL: https://goodoil.news/the-good-oil-word-of-the-day-791/ Last updated: 2026-10-17T17:15:25.000Z The word for today is… ambrosia (noun) - 1a: the food of the Greek and Roman gods b: the ointment or perfume of the gods 2: something extremely pleasing to taste or smell 3: a dessert made of oranges and shredded coconut Source : [Merriam-Webster](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ambrosia?ref=goodoil.news) Etymology : Ambrosia literally means "immortality" in Greek; it is derived from the Greek word ambrotos ("immortal"), which combines the prefix a- (meaning "not") with mbrotos ("mortal"). In Greek and Roman mythology, only the immortals-gods and goddesses-could eat ambrosia. Those mythological gods and goddesses also drank nectar, the original sense of which refers to the "drink of the gods." Nectar (in Greek, nektar) may have implied immortality as well; nektar is believed to have carried the literal meaning "overcoming death." While the ambrosia of the gods implied immortality, we mere mortals use ambrosia in reference to things that just taste or smell especially delicious. Similarly, nectar can now simply mean "something delicious to drink." ***If you enjoyed this Good Oil word of the day please consider sharing it with your friends and, especially, your children.*** ### The Good Oil Daily Bible Verse URL: https://goodoil.news/the-good-oil-daily-bible-verse-501/ Last updated: 2026-10-17T16:59:59.000Z [Psalm 68](https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Psalm%2068&version=KJV&ref=goodoil.news) **3** But let the righteous be glad; let them rejoice before God: yea, let them exceedingly rejoice. ### Night Cap URL: https://goodoil.news/night-cap-759/ Last updated: 2026-10-17T07:59:59.000Z If you have a great Youtube, Rumble or Vimeo video to share send it to videos@goodoil.news [![CTA Image](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/01/cam-shirt2-1.png)](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) If you're loving this trusty, straight-up news on Kiwi politics and beyond, why not become a paid member, eh? Unlock exclusive yarns, podcasts, vids, and in-depth analysis—your support keeps independent journalism chugging along. Join today for just $5.00 per month and get the full good oil! [Learn more ](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) ### Science Saturday URL: https://goodoil.news/science-saturday-111/ Last updated: 2026-10-17T07:29:59.000Z If you have a great Youtube, Rumble or Vimeo video to share send it to videos@goodoil.news [![CTA Image](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/01/cam-shirt2-1.png)](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) If you're loving this trusty, straight-up news on Kiwi politics and beyond, why not become a paid member, eh? Unlock exclusive yarns, podcasts, vids, and in-depth analysis—your support keeps independent journalism chugging along. Join today for just $5.00 per month and get the full good oil! [Learn more ](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) ### Melissa Lee On Mt Albert Campaign Against Qiulae Wong URL: https://goodoil.news/melissa-lee-on-mt-albert-campaign-against-qiulae-wong/ Last updated: 2026-10-17T07:00:00.000Z If you have a great Youtube, Rumble or Vimeo video to share send it to videos@goodoil.news ### Chris Hipkins Slams Green Party and Te Pati Māori After Leaked Mongrel Mob Meeting URL: https://goodoil.news/chris-hipkins-slams-green-party-and-te-pati-maori-after-leaked-mongrel-mob-meeting/ Last updated: 2026-10-17T06:29:59.000Z If you have a great Youtube, Rumble or Vimeo video to share send it to videos@goodoil.news [![CTA Image](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/01/cam-shirt2-1.png)](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) If you're loving this trusty, straight-up news on Kiwi politics and beyond, why not become a paid member, eh? Unlock exclusive yarns, podcasts, vids, and in-depth analysis—your support keeps independent journalism chugging along. Join today for just $5.00 per month and get the full good oil! [Learn more ](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) ### The Good Oil Daily Roundup URL: https://goodoil.news/the-good-oil-daily-roundup-775/ Last updated: 2026-10-17T06:07:59.000Z [](https://photos.google.com/u/1/photo/AF1QipN7Zp7NKe4smdZA9nAYud8CjsgjsQ-Bn7QyMo53?ref=goodoil.news) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/6E1D5597-F45D-4A60-8D0C-8F579266F2D6_1_105_c.jpeg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/68198316-BD1F-46D0-BD8F-7CA8AD560A20.jpeg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/EC640592-7D3A-4DF1-995D-F83E3FA01EF0.jpeg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/B84AB79E-BDA1-4993-8ABD-83827E98DEE0.jpeg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/E466AA07-4DA8-4EF4-B752-6A904D87A576_1_105_c.jpeg) ### New Taxpayers Union Attack Ad SLAMS Labour and Chris Hipkins Capital Gains Tax Plan URL: https://goodoil.news/new-taxpayers-union-attack-ad-slams-labour-and-chris-hipkins-capital-gains-tax-plan/ Last updated: 2026-10-17T05:59:59.000Z If you have a great Youtube, Rumble or Vimeo video to share send it to videos@goodoil.news [![CTA Image](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/01/cam-shirt2-1.png)](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) If you're loving this trusty, straight-up news on Kiwi politics and beyond, why not become a paid member, eh? Unlock exclusive yarns, podcasts, vids, and in-depth analysis—your support keeps independent journalism chugging along. Join today for just $5.00 per month and get the full good oil! [Learn more ](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) ### Good Oil Backchat URL: https://goodoil.news/good-oil-backchat-853/ Last updated: 2026-10-17T04:59:59.000Z Good evening, welcome to **Backchat**. On Backchat, you are free to share your own stories, discuss other news or catch up with friends. To participate you’ll need to sign up for a [Disqus account ](https://disqus.com/profile/signup/intent/?ref=goodoil.news)which is free, quick, and easy. On posts that are not articles like this one, you do not have to stay ‘on topic’ but you do still need to follow our [commenting rules.](https://goodoil.news/commenting-and-moderation/) Please [read our rules ](https://www.goodoil.news/commenting-and-moderation/?ref=goodoil.news)before you start commenting on *The Good Oil* to avoid a temporary or permanent ban. NOTE: Moderation queries MUST be expressed VIA EMAIL and not by posting a comment. To check if your ban might have been caused by Disqus, or to ask for a banning decision to be reviewed, email the voluntary **helpdesk** @ [**goodoil.news**](https://goodoil.news/) with your Disqus username in the subject line. Please be respectful and do not make demands. ### The Green Sludge Stinks up Again URL: https://goodoil.news/the-green-sludge-stinks-up-again/ Last updated: 2026-10-17T02:59:59.000Z As **Judith Collins** once said, the more fervently someone assures you of their honesty, the more carefully you should check your pockets. And as **Jacinda Ardern** proved, politicians who prate the loudest about ‘kindness’ are invariably the most despicable tyrants they can get away with being. Then there’s the Greens. Oh, lordy-lord, the Greens. They might posture as the politically purest of the pure, but, under the sickening cloak of sanctimony, they’re invariably simply disgusting people. Like the infamous 1960s’ Melbourne bishop who’d go from thundering at the pulpit about modern immorality, to rogering altar boys in the vestry right after service, the Greens are simultaneously the most publicly self-righteous and privately hideous hypocrites imaginable. No matter what country they’re polluting, the Greens are invariably the most toxic sludge in any polity. In Germany, they were literally founded by a roster of ex-Nazis. In Britain, they’ve become the most openly antisemitic movement since Mosley’s BUF. In New Zealand, they’ve played host to shoplifters, alleged groomers and exploiters of migrant labour. And Australia? Oh, boy, do the Australian Greens ’ave ’em. Rape accusations, sexual harassment, antisemitism, theft, Stalinism, racism and advocacy for bestiality and necrophilia… there’s no rock so low the Australian Greens won’t slither under it. And now, one of their most self-righteous poster-boys is making a name for himself in the worst possible ways. Meet Senator **Jordon Steele-John**, the youthful luminary who entered the Senate at just 23 via the farcical constitutional trapdoor left by **Scott Ludlam**’s dual-citizenship debacle. For years, the Greens marketed the lad as the holy grail of intersectional virtue: young, disabled, fiercely progressive and relentlessly preachy. But behind the performative morality, it turns out the party hierarchy was allegedly sitting on an open sewer of warnings. According to explosive reports, seven party members, including five current staffers, finally dropped a correspondence bomb directly onto the desk of newly minted Greens leader **David Shoebridge**. > [“We have been made aware](https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/greens-to-probe-allegations-against-west-australian-senator-jordon-steelejohn/news-story/baf9c2152720f1bbe108098cc829d992?ref=goodoil.news) of multiple allegations … being made against WA Federal Senator, Jordon Steele-John spanning almost a decade (2017–2025). These allegations all concern his behaviour in the presence of women. We are aware of multiple women who have taken up roles or volunteered in the party, who because of these allegations, have been warned not to … be alone with him,” the authors state. Let that sink in for a moment. In the very party that ceaselessly lectures the Australian public on ‘safe workplaces’, toxic masculinity and the absolute imperative to ‘believe all women’, female volunteers and staffers were quietly advised to treat one of their own federal senators like a biological hazard. Naturally, Steele-John has stepped aside from the party room while maintaining his utter innocence, as he has every right to. His defence is that the murmurs stem from a past relationship where he suffered domestic abuse and that he is working with police to resolve it, which is not, as we well know, entirely implausible. > “I utterly reject this characterisation of me, which tries to assert I am someone I am not,” Senator Steele-John said in a statement. “I have referred this matter to the WA Greens, so that a fair, independent process can be commissioned that upholds the principles of natural justice and ensures procedural fairness for everyone involved.” Fair enough, too. But we don’t have to assume Steele-John’s guilt to judge the party very harshly, indeed. Usually, when an accusation is levelled at anyone right of **Leon Trotsky**, the Greens demand immediate public defenestration – no trial required. But when the blowtorch turns inward? Suddenly, they require meticulous, secretive, closed-door reviews run by their own state branches. That this is far from the first time the Greens have acted this way – quietly shushing up accusations from women for the good of the party – is a damning indictment on their own self-righteous posturing. Meanwhile, Dear Leader Shoebridge, himself no stranger to staff bullying accusations in his previous New South Wales state parliamentary roost, performed the classic political shuffle. > “I received correspondence in relation to Senator Steele-John earlier this week … When matters like this are raised, they require a fair, an independent, and a timely process for them to be dealt with,” he said. When confronted with 2018 Young Greens minutes detailing prior sexual harassment claims against the senator, Shoebridge pleaded historical amnesia, noting he was in a different parliament at the time. Yet party insiders tell a vastly different tale: that the hierarchy had known about the young man’s dubious online conduct before he even set foot in Canberra and deliberately smothered the complaints to protect their shiny new parliamentary commodity. It’s merely the latest chapter in the rancid soap opera of the Australian Greens. Having bled lower-house seats, shed indigenous senators **Lidia Thorpe** and **Dorinda Cox** amid ferocious recriminations and descended into vicious factional bloodletting, the great moral arbiters of the nation are once again revealed as the most dysfunctional, toxic cabal in a parliament full to the gunwales with human pond scum. --- 💡 ****If you enjoyed this article please share it using the share buttons at the top or bottom of the article.** ### Vic Libs Can’t Afford to Play Coy URL: https://goodoil.news/vic-libs-cant-afford-to-play-coy/ Last updated: 2026-10-17T01:29:59.000Z As Victoria nudges closer and closer to election day, the outcome is still very much in play, but the most probable result looks to be a Labor defeat, with the Liberals likely having to govern in minority with One Nation support. But this is Victoria we’re talking about: never forget **Jeff Kennett**’s surprise drubbing in 1999. Labor’s last-minute switcheroo, dumping **Jacinta Allan** for **Ben Carroll**, has done nothing to salvage the government’s underwater vote. Yet, while **Jess Wilson**’s Liberals have made advances, the respective primary votes remain close: Liberals on 28 per cent, Labor on 25 and One Nation on 23\. The Greens trail distantly on 15 per cent. Labor has, in short, shed about a third of its 2022 election-winning vote, with little hope of clawing it back. While Labor might be able to cobble a ‘left-bloc’, its combined vote would remain under 40 per cent. But it’s not an assured victory for the Libs, unless they join forces with One Nation to bring their combined primary vote to just over 50 per cent. So, the obvious thing would be for the Libs to start talking turkey with One Nation. But that is exactly what they’re not doing. Instead, the Victorian Liberals have elected to play a high-minded game of political hide-and-seek, apparently terrified of catching the populist contagion: > [The Victorian Liberals](https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/hide-and-seek-the-liberal-plan-to-deal-with-one-nation-at-the-victorian-election/news-story/e9fd08d3564538d4e1d97eb7b7cc53e8?ref=goodoil.news) will hold off on preference negotiations with One Nation until nominations close next month, as Jess Wilson seeks to sideline **Pauline Hanson**’s party and make the election a straight contest between the coalition and Labor. It is a classic display of the Liberal Party’s chronic timidity. Controlled by the lettuce-leaf ‘moderates’, while confronted with a massive uprising of alienated outer-suburban and regional voters who have abandoned both establishment machines in disgust, the patrician strategists in Spring Street pretend that the elephant in the room is merely a mirage. They cling to the quaint delusion that this can still be fought as a tidy, vintage-1990s contest between two polite major parties, while nearly a quarter of the electorate has demonstrably taken its business elsewhere. Premier Ben Carroll, smelling desperation and watching his own primary vote swirling down the U-bend, has naturally seized upon the Liberals’ squeamishness. Sensing a rare opportunity to distract from 12 years of economic vandalism, catastrophic debt and infrastructure botch-ups, Carroll is attempting to mount a shrill scare campaign, accusing the Liberals of sleeping with the enemy, whilst frantically demanding a three-way leaders’ brawl. > “She does not want to debate the leader of One Nation because she is working with him, she is going to do a preference deal with him,” Mr Carroll said. “I am prepared to debate One Nation, I am prepared to debate any leader. Unlike the Liberal leader who is playing hide and seek.” When a Labor premier begins hyperventilating about a “battle for the soul of the state”, you know the internal polling must look utterly terminal. And, true to form, when left-wing apparatchiks face an existential rout by working-class voters, they immediately reach for the progressive culture-war emergency brake. Hence Carroll’s sudden announcement of taxpayer-funded abortions on demand across the state, designed specifically to manufacture moral outrage against One Nation’s Victorian leader, **Warren Pickering**, and his modest suggestion that the gestational limits on terminating unborn life ought to be reined in. One Nation’s supporters are, as usual, cast as the wicked bogeymen of polite society and given no quarter to articulate why their revolt exists in the first place: namely, a justifiable fury at skyrocketing living costs, unchecked immigration, crumbling public services and the relentless march of managerial wokeism. Liberal insiders, meanwhile, insist that their gutlessness is really tactical brilliance. A senior Liberal figure dismissed Labor’s strategy: > “Labor is trying to build One Nation into a force far bigger than its presence on the ground warrants,” the source said. “It suits Labor to talk up One Nation because every day spent talking about Pauline Hanson is a day it doesn’t have to defend its own record.” There is, of course, a grain of truth in that. But pretending One Nation does not exist will not make their votes vanish into the ether on election night. One Nation’s **James Ashby** has already made the sensible and straightforward pledge that his party will put Labor and the Greens stone-cold last. The blueprint exists: seen earlier this year in the Nepean by-election, where both parties pragmatically put each other ahead of everyone else capable of winning. Yet Jess Wilson continues to tiptoe around the reality of preference mathematics like a nervous schoolgirl at a debutante ball. If the Liberals believe they can casually cruise to an outright majority in the deeply fractured ruins of post-**Dan Andrews**’ Victoria without coming to an accommodation with conservative, patriotic voters, they’re dreaming. The maths is simple, brutal and entirely unconcerned with Liberal squeamishness: either Wilson engages with the reality of One Nation’s surge, or she risks waking up on November 29 discovering that snobbery has handed the remnants of Victoria right back to the wrecking crew. --- 💡 ****If you enjoyed this article please share it using the share buttons at the top or bottom of the article.** ### Pongi URL: https://goodoil.news/pongi/ Last updated: 2026-10-16T22:29:59.000Z Cartoon of the Day by BoomSlang _This post is for paying subscribers only._ ### Healthcare out of reach, Māori seats up for grabs URL: https://goodoil.news/healthcare-out-of-reach-maori-seats-up-for-grabs/ Last updated: 2026-10-16T23:42:56.000Z A survey reveals significant healthcare access issues and environmental concerns among Māori, highlighting systemic challenges and political dynamics in New Zealand. **Source:** [rnz.co.nz](https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/1966958/healthcare-out-of-reach-maori-seats-up-for-grabs?ref=goodoil.news) A survey reveals significant healthcare access issues and environmental concerns among Māori, highlighting systemic challenges and political dynamics in New Zealand. **Source:** [rnz.co.nz](https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/1966958/healthcare-out-of-reach-maori-seats-up-for-grabs?ref=goodoil.news) *Re-published from the Centrist with permission* [Original article at The Centrist](https://centrist.nz/healthcare-out-of-reach-m-ori-seats-up-for-grabs-R0cHM6Ly?ref=goodoil.news) ### Heracles Didn’t Have This Much Horse-Do to Deal With URL: https://goodoil.news/heracles-didnt-have-this-much-horse-do-to-deal-with/ Last updated: 2026-10-16T21:00:00.000Z It’s been a while now since I first started advocating to bulldoze the universities. At first I was kinda-sorta joking, but I stopped joking a long time ago. I mean, okay, maybe some of the sandstone institutes shouldn’t go under a D9 blade: they’re nice enough old buildings and who knows what modernist monstrosity would be 3D-printed in their place. But they should be flushed out harder than Heracles hosing out the Augean stables. Certainly cleaning out the decades of accumulated horse-shit washing around our universities is a herculean task. Unfortunately, the unearned sanctity of the university sector means that even the most trenchant conservative critic can barely summon the courage to suggest more than the most modest half-measures. At least Professor **James Allan** can bring himself to point out that anyone over the age of 35 who hasn’t stepped onto a campus lately is operating under the blissful delusion that higher education still resembles the place they left behind. They fondly imagine a mild, harmless left-leaning bias nestled comfortably within a broader commitment to robust debate and rigorous standards. Having actually attended a university in years beginning with “2”, as an older, wiser and warier adult, I’m well aware of what a charmingly quaint fairy tale that is. Today’s campuses are ideological monoliths, meticulously scrubbed of any vestige of viewpoint diversity, where anything less than fawning adulation of Marx and his intellectual descendants is riding the ragged edge of failure. Worse, they have transformed into sprawling, over-centralised bureaucracies and visa-processing sweatshops, where grade inflation runs rampant to keep paying customers happy and where dissent is treated as a heresy punishable by social excommunication. Just examine the political donations of faculty across the Anglosphere to grasp the sheer totality of the takeover. In the United States, elite institutions like Princeton and Yale boast an academic staff corps where Republican-donating professors number precisely zero. At Yale law school, the funding ratio sits at a staggering 36 to one in favour of the Democrats. Closer to home, we witnessed this identical ideological lockstep during the national farce that was the Voice referendum. Out of nearly 40 law schools across the Commonwealth, you could count on one hand the legal academics courageous enough to raise a dissenting voice against that progressive constitutional vanity project, while legions of their colleagues shrieked from the rooftops in its favour. > [Today’s universities have](https://dailysceptic.org/2026/10/03/its-time-to-fix-our-universities/?ref=goodoil.news) forsaken even a trifling commitment to diversity of thought and outlook on campus. They won’t admit this openly. But they do everything they can to drive conservatives away. My youngest, who attended university just a few years after me, witnessed a lecturer berating a student as a “fascist”, for the heinous crime of admitting to being a Christian. Another lecturer openly admitted to being a communist: with a truly university-level of un-self-awareness, he was a history professor whose subject was ‘Europe Under the Dictators’. As Mitchell and Webb would say, ‘Are we the baddies?’ Universities may plaster every progressive flag known to botanical science across their quadrangles and endlessly lecture the public on their virtuous commitment to ‘Diversity, Equity and Inclusion’, but who really believes it? DEI is nothing more than an anti-meritocratic neo-religious cult. It demands ideological conformity, champions group-based identity politics over individual excellence, and ensures that half the population – namely, traditional conservatives – need not apply. The downstream effects of this institutional rot are entirely predictable. Recent student surveys in North America reveal that the vast majority of undergraduates feel cowed into silence, terrified of being ostracised or marked down if they express anything remotely patriotic or appreciative of Western civilisation. Here in Australia, students regularly seek out the few remaining sane faculty members simply to ask how they might survive their degrees without having their GPAs incinerated by progressive zealots. Jewish students show up on campus at their own risk. And how do our overpaid vice-chancellors defend this intellectual wasteland? By pointing to international university rankings that are, to put it bluntly, utter garbage. These league tables treat swelling international student enrolments as a proxy for academic excellence, effectively rewarding universities for acting as immigration collection agencies. To maintain this lucrative visa-mill Ponzi scheme, standards have been relentlessly dumbed down, transforming rigorous degrees into group-work exercises where local students are dragooned into carrying the academic dead weight. Or worse, entire courses are taught in foreign languages. Yet, with all that, Professor Allan offers only the most anaemic blueprint for how a genuinely reforming government might flush out this academic fertiliser, should any of our political class ever grow a spine. > One, cap the pay of vice-chancellors (and probably the entire Canberra civil service) at that of the prime minister. Two, copy New Zealand and end completely all government grants to the social sciences and humanities (as these can be done without huge government largesse and anyway, overwhelmingly, are given for sludge-like, progressive-left projects that basically no taxpayers would willingly fund if they knew about them). Three, end the over-the-top reporting-back regulations Canberra imposes on universities. Four, copy President Trump and force all universities to end all – yes, every single one of their – DEI policies. (And believe me, they are everywhere.) And five, stop immediately the visa-getting Ponzi scheme that is the lifeblood of our bloated, overpaid university top administrators. It would be a start. In the current climate, perhaps a modestly brave one. For years, timid conservative administrations have tip-toed around these ideological fiefdoms, begging for crumbs and consulting the very vice-chancellors who created the crisis. Personally, I prefer the D9 option. --- 💡 ****If you enjoyed this article please share it using the share buttons at the top or bottom of the article.** ### Are Passkeys a Good Idea? URL: https://goodoil.news/are-passkeys-a-good-idea/ Last updated: 2026-10-16T19:59:59.000Z If, like me, you’re tired of racking up an endless list of variations of letters, numbers and special characters, written in your own blood under a full moon, just to watch a movie or buy some tat online, this newfangled ‘passkey’ business may sound appealing. Because, like me, you probably have no real idea of what a passkey is or what risks they may carry. In fact, you should probably operate on the principle that if Big Tech wants you to do it, you probably shouldn’t comply. We are told, with the unctuous piety of a Silicon Valley PR flack, that passwords are dead and that passkeys are the glorious, friction-free dawn of a secure digital tomorrow. How wonderful! How brilliantly streamlined! Just flash your keester at a glowing slab of glass or tap a thumbprint against an inscrutable pane and presto: doors open, commerce flows and the technocratic oligarchy sighs with benevolent relief. Except, as any student of history or corporate chicanery knows, whenever a conglomerate of trillion-dollar monopolies and national security agencies suddenly agree that a particular innovation is for your own good, it’s generally time to check whether your wallet is still in your pocket. To understand the Trojan horse that is the passkey, one must examine its architects. These digital marvels are the handiwork of the FIDO Alliance, a cosy little consensus club comprising Big Tech monoliths, intelligence apparatuses, banking institutions and sundry bureaucrats. Notice anyone missing? Perhaps a consumer advocate or two? Not a soul. As The Hack Substack neatly observes in its incisive critique of the technology: > [The members of](https://nonfunctional.substack.com/p/passkeys-are-a-trap-do-not-use-them) the FIDO Alliance all have their own interests. Big Tech wants to bring little inconveniences into our life so they can sell us more ads. Intelligence agencies want to track everyone in the world. Banks want to be free of indemnity. Little tech wants cheap solutions to reduce liability. Exactly. Passwords, for all their annoying eccentricities and vulnerability to human forgetfulness, possessed one supreme virtue: they belonged to you. You could scribble them on a greasy napkin, store them in a dog-eared notebook or share a login with a cousin without asking permission from the high priests of Cupertino or Mountain View. Indeed, if we sought superior security without surrendering sovereignty, we already possessed a magnificent invention: Time-Based One-Time Passwords (TOTP). If you’ve ever used a bank token thingy that generated a one-time code for you, it was a TOTP. Based on open standards like RFC 6238, TOTP requires nothing more sophisticated than a standard mathematical algorithm that can run on anything from a modern laptop to a vintage Nintendo Game Boy from the 1990s. It asks no permission, reports to no overarching server and permits you to handle your digital keys precisely as you see fit. Naturally, Netflix detests it and Big Tech pretends it doesn’t exist. Enter the passkey, which masquerades on the surface as a friendly, frictionless cousin to TOTP, but is in reality a labyrinthine parts catalogue of restrictions. The FIDO Alliance has deliberately gathered a bewildering assortment of technical criteria under a single, cosy, trade name to lull the public into somnolent compliance. Under the hood, passkeys can be copyable or non-copyable, transferable or non-transferable and hardware-backed or software-backed. At first glance, one might assume these are merely bespoke settings tailored to the consumer’s preference. But here’s where the velvet glove slides off to reveal the iron fist of remote attestation. Through the magic of hardware-level cryptoprocessors embedded in modern devices – Apple’s Secure Enclave, Trusted Platform Modules and the like – platforms will soon be able to verify not merely who you are, but what software you are running to get there. If your operating system has been modified, if you are running an alternative privacy-respecting setup like Linux or GrapheneOS or if you dare to use a custom web browser that blocks intrusive advertisements and state-sanctioned AI surveillance summaries, or you use the *bête noire* of the eKarens, a VPN, the system will lock the gates. > Remote attestation can allow them to verify that your device is not capable of, say, sending and receiving encrypted messages, or running a competitor’s app, or using social media without verifying your ID. They don’t want you to be able to turn off the mandatory built-in AI image scanner on your phone that scans everything your phone sees for nudity. (Yes, I’m serious.) In fact, as **Josh Albrecht** comments on The Hack’s Substack: > Cops can literally hold your phone up to your face, unlock it, and go digging for anything at all that they could use to charge you. > > This is in stark contrast to passwords, where (because they are speech) you cannot easily be compelled to reveal them (and even if you do, there are often ways of encrypting data with multiple passwords, so that someone can control which of it is revealed). And there it is: The ultimate endgame of the passkey ecosystem has precious little to do with stopping Eastern European hackers from guessing your Netflix password. It is about total environmental control. It is about locking down the digital commons so thoroughly that no dissident can run unapproved software, no independent journalist can browse anonymously and no citizen can escape the unblinking gaze of the corporate-state surveillance complex. The technocrats want a world where your phone is no longer your property, but a tethered terminal leased to you on good behaviour. If you value your digital independence – if you believe in the quaint notion that individuals should control their own hardware and choose their own software – then reject this clever little trap. Stick to open standards, keep your own counsel and let Big Tech manage its own anxieties without your assistance. --- 💡 ****If you enjoyed this article please share it using the share buttons at the top or bottom of the article.** ### Quick Hit: Labour Wants Google to Pay for News Kiwis Don’t Trust URL: https://goodoil.news/quick-hit-labour-news-bargaining-bill-trust/ Last updated: 2026-10-16T19:29:59.000Z Labour’s Reuben Davidson says the Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill will be revived with urgency, but won’t commit to the first 100 days. The bill would make tech platforms fund the legacy media only 37 per cent of Kiwis trust most of the time. _This post is for subscribers on the VIP tier only._ ### Charge Tamaki’s Threats or Charge No One, Because Section 131 Is Blasphemy By the Back Door URL: https://goodoil.news/charge-tamakis-threats-or-charge-no-one/ Last updated: 2026-10-16T18:59:59.000Z Tamaki’s video was over the top, but police used a race law with a “contempt or ridicule” test on a religion row. A party “celebrating” October 7 is only being looked into. One standard for all, or the Crimes Act for real threats. _This post is for paying subscribers only._ ### My Gut is Telling Me the Coalition Will Be Returned URL: https://goodoil.news/my-gut-is-telling-me-the-coalition-will-be-returned/ Last updated: 2026-10-16T18:29:59.000Z The mainstream media are the hindrance to maintaining an open and well-adjusted society. Their efforts to push individual parties at this stage of the election campaign while ignoring the main subjects and policies that actually affect real New Zealanders are close to an act of criminality. Many of us have already realised the National and Labour parties have really nothing new to say, and when they do, many wonder which of the two parties actually wrote that speech? My conclusion, along with most I speak with, seems convinced that their party vote should go to ACT or NZ First. Most better informed would agree with that, but the scary part is the hordes of uninformed voters who seem incapable of understanding why that is probably the most important political decision they have ever been asked to make. My Gut is Telling Me the Coalition Will Be Returned 0:00 /450.847347 1× ### Good Oil General Debate URL: https://goodoil.news/good-oil-general-debate-851/ Last updated: 2026-10-16T18:00:03.000Z Good morning, welcome to our daily General Debate. Our evening General debate is called Backchat and will start at 6 pm. On General debate, you are encouraged as a commenter to share your own stories, discuss other news, bring NEW news, catch up with friends or make new friends with other commenters. To participate you’ll need to sign up for a [Disqus account](https://disqus.com/profile/signup/intent/?ref=goodoil.news) which is free, quick, and easy. All you need is an email address to register a username that suits you. On posts that are not articles such as this one, you do not have to stay ‘on topic’ but you do still need to follow our [commenting rules.](https://www.goodoil.news/commenting-and-moderation/?ref=goodoil.news) Please [read our rules ](https://goodoil.news/commenting-and-moderation/)before you start commenting on *The Good Oil* to avoid a temporary or permanent ban. To check if your ban might have been caused by Disqus, or to ask for a banning decision to be reviewed, email the voluntary **helpdesk** @ [**goodoil.news**](https://goodoil.news/) with your Disqus username in the subject line. Please be respectful and do not make demands. ### Face of the Day URL: https://goodoil.news/face-of-the-day-1605/ Last updated: 2026-10-16T17:29:59.000Z > National’s campaign chair Simeon Brown has poured cold water on remarks by leader Christopher Luxon that suggested National was open to doing a deal with Opportunity after the election. > > At a public meeting in Greymouth on Thursday, Luxon was reported by *the Press* as saying he would work with “whoever” he had to ensure a second term. Luxon’s office has since said he was talking about working with ACT and NZ First and that his ruling out of Opportunity still stood. > > Luxon’s remarks appeared to refer to the controversy around deliberately splitting votes to trigger an overhang rather than ruling Opportunity in. > > With most polls showing National would need the support of Opportunity to govern, this was interpreted as meaning Luxon was softening his months-old position of ruling out Opportunity from any post-election coalition. > > Not so, said Brown this morning. Speaking to the *Mike Hosking Breakfast* on Newstalk ZB. > > “No, I don’t think so,” Brown said when asked if Opportunity was now in play. > > “We’ve been very clear as the National Party, we’re not doing a deal with the Opportunity Party … we’ve been very clear we’ll work with ACT and NZ First, we’ve been very clear we’re not going to work with the Opportunity Party, that’s been our clear position that the prime minister has been saying.” > > Brown said National was campaigning for a National Party vote and a vote for “anyone else” puts that at risk. > > NZ Herald [Read More](https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/politics/simeon-brown-rules-out-opportunity-after-christopher-luxon-appeared-to-rule-the-party-in/H3IYYQM74JEP3GUI6YRJOEJSD4/?ref=goodoil.news) ### The Good Oil Word of the Day URL: https://goodoil.news/the-good-oil-word-of-the-day-790/ Last updated: 2026-10-16T17:15:36.000Z The word for today is… concede (verb) - *transitive verb* 1a(1): to acknowledge grudgingly or hesitantly (2): to relinquish grudgingly or hesitantly b: to accept as true, valid, or accurate 2: to grant as a right or privilege *intransitive verb* : to make concession : yield Source : [Merriam-Webster](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/concede?ref=goodoil.news) Etymology : After the votes have been counted, one candidate traditionally concedes the election to his or her opponent by giving a concession speech. If you're lucky, your boss will concede that she was wrong the last time she criticized you. But in the middle of an argument, we're not all so good at conceding that the other guy might have a good point. The word comes from Latin via French; French concéder, from Latin concedere, from com- + cedere to yield. Its first known use was in 1626. ***If you enjoyed this Good Oil word of the day please consider sharing it with your friends and, especially, your children.*** ### The Good Oil Daily Bible Verse URL: https://goodoil.news/the-good-oil-daily-bible-verse-500/ Last updated: 2026-10-16T17:01:03.000Z [Leviticus 17](https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Leviticus%2017&version=KJV&ref=goodoil.news) **11** For the life of the flesh is in the blood: and I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls: for it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul. ### Night Cap URL: https://goodoil.news/night-cap-758/ Last updated: 2026-10-16T07:59:59.000Z If you have a great Youtube, Rumble or Vimeo video to share send it to videos@goodoil.news [![CTA Image](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/01/cam-shirt2-1.png)](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) If you're loving this trusty, straight-up news on Kiwi politics and beyond, why not become a paid member, eh? Unlock exclusive yarns, podcasts, vids, and in-depth analysis—your support keeps independent journalism chugging along. Join today for just $5.00 per month and get the full good oil! [Learn more ](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) ### Friday Fur URL: https://goodoil.news/friday-fur-330/ Last updated: 2026-10-16T07:29:59.000Z If you have a great Youtube, Rumble or Vimeo video to share send it to videos@goodoil.news [![CTA Image](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/01/cam-shirt2-1.png)](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) If you're loving this trusty, straight-up news on Kiwi politics and beyond, why not become a paid member, eh? Unlock exclusive yarns, podcasts, vids, and in-depth analysis—your support keeps independent journalism chugging along. Join today for just $5.00 per month and get the full good oil! [Learn more ](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) ### Why Wellington’s Uniform Mandate Won't Fix NZ Economic Crisis URL: https://goodoil.news/why-wellingtons-uniform-mandate-wont-fix-nz-economic-crisis/ Last updated: 2026-10-16T06:59:59.000Z If you have a great Youtube, Rumble or Vimeo video to share send it to videos@goodoil.news ### Greens/TPM Embrace Of Gangs Example Of The Failure Of Maori Leadership URL: https://goodoil.news/greens-tpm-embrace-of-gangs-example-of-the-failure-of-maori-leadership/ Last updated: 2026-10-16T06:29:59.000Z If you have a great Youtube, Rumble or Vimeo video to share send it to videos@goodoil.news [![CTA Image](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/01/cam-shirt2-1.png)](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) If you're loving this trusty, straight-up news on Kiwi politics and beyond, why not become a paid member, eh? Unlock exclusive yarns, podcasts, vids, and in-depth analysis—your support keeps independent journalism chugging along. Join today for just $5.00 per month and get the full good oil! [Learn more ](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) ### Maurice Williamson On How To Make Your Vote Count URL: https://goodoil.news/maurice-williamson-on-how-to-make-your-vote-count/ Last updated: 2026-10-16T06:00:00.000Z If you have a great Youtube, Rumble or Vimeo video to share send it to videos@goodoil.news [![CTA Image](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/01/cam-shirt2-1.png)](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) If you're loving this trusty, straight-up news on Kiwi politics and beyond, why not become a paid member, eh? Unlock exclusive yarns, podcasts, vids, and in-depth analysis—your support keeps independent journalism chugging along. Join today for just $5.00 per month and get the full good oil! [Learn more ](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) ### The Good Oil Daily Roundup URL: https://goodoil.news/the-good-oil-daily-roundup-774/ Last updated: 2026-10-16T05:29:59.000Z [](https://photos.google.com/u/1/photo/AF1QipN7Zp7NKe4smdZA9nAYud8CjsgjsQ-Bn7QyMo53?ref=goodoil.news) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/D311A13B-6E85-4B7D-BD8C-DA183C6AB393.jpeg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/7AA5998F-C78B-48FD-AF9A-50D97258D57D_1_105_c.jpeg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/A1D023EF-757C-41FD-A331-AD8873D68C57_1_105_c.jpeg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/BA34D674-74E8-4029-9B96-E51B4EB844D2.jpeg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/E8F472DE-7B57-4344-B94C-C2BAF8189372.jpeg) ### Good Oil Backchat URL: https://goodoil.news/good-oil-backchat-852/ Last updated: 2026-10-16T05:00:00.000Z Good evening, welcome to **Backchat**. 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Please be respectful and do not make demands. ### 2066 and All That URL: https://goodoil.news/2066-and-all-that/ Last updated: 2026-10-16T03:29:59.000Z [**Tom Armstrong**](https://www.freespeechbacklash.com/article/2066-and-all?ref=goodoil.news) *Just an old fashioned romantic libertarian conservative at heart. Or maybe a romantic conservative libertarian, depending on the stages of the moon.* If these words survive, let them stand as a last testament from a man who once called England home. I write in haste and in fear, by the thin light of a shuttered window in a place I will not name. The Muslim Council rules Britain now. They hunt men like me still. White patriots, the last stubborn remnant who would not bend the knee, convert, or flee. Some of us were forced to the mosque under the sword. Others were banished to Russia, the only Christian country left that would take us. The rest were taken in public squares and beheaded for the cameras, their blood washing the old cobbles while the crowds cheered the new order. I am one of the hunted. I do not expect to see another winter. Today, the 14th of October, the rulers marked what they call Muslim Conquest Day. It was the 1000th anniversary of the Norman Conquest, twisted into a great mocking pageant of power. His Most Islamic Majesty’s government declared a national holiday. From London to the northern cities, from the Welsh valleys to the Scottish lowlands, places that still bear English names on old maps, the parades rolled out. Black flags, green banners, the crescent and star everywhere. Loudspeakers blared verses and victory chants. Armoured vehicles, once the King’s, now flying the colours of the Islamic Republic of Great Britain, ground through streets that once held Remembrance Day processions. Children in little robes were marched along singing of the end of the cross. Priests who had not already fled or converted were dragged out for spectacle. The message was clear and deliberate: Christian Britain is finished. All forms of Christianity are banned. Churches stand empty or converted into mosques. The cross is a criminal emblem. Sharia is the only law. The old common law, the statutes, the quiet assumptions of a free people – gone. I was a writer once, nothing more. I loved the language, the history, the damp green fields and the stubborn humour of these islands. I watched the change come not as a sudden storm but as a long, patient tide. Decades of migration, of political cowardice, of courts that punished the native for noticing what was happening to his streets, of churches that apologised for existing and schools that taught children to be ashamed of their fathers. The old parties competed to surrender faster. Speech laws tightened. “Islamophobia” became the unforgivable sin. Mosques multiplied while parish churches closed for lack of congregations. Parallel societies grew, then claimed the right to police themselves. Demographics shifted. Birth rates among the native stock fell; among the newcomers they did not. By the 2040s the major cities were already lost in all but name. Then came the final elections that no longer mattered, the emergency powers and the formal declaration of the Islamic Republic. The council rules now. They are efficient. They keep the trains running and the shops stocked for those who submit. For those who do not, the punishments are public and final. Conversion is offered once. Refusal means the blade or exile. Russia takes those who survive the perilous journey. It is the last Christian power of any size, hard-pressed and armed to the teeth, watching the borders of the old continent with cold eyes. The rest of the continent has gone the same way we have. The Islamic Kingdom of Great Britain is a full member of the UEIE, the Union of European Islamic Emirates. Its capital is no longer Brussels in any recognisable sense. They call the place New Mecca, in the Islamic Emirate of Belgium. From there the UEIE administers the emirates that stretch from the Atlantic to the Russian border. The UEIE itself is a component part of the larger North Atlantic Caliphate. That caliphate is at war with the Caliphate of the Persian Empire. Two great Islamic powers, Sunni and Shia in the old labels, tearing at each other across the Mediterranean and the near east while the last Christians cling to the Russian steppe and the frozen north. Britain is a prize and a province in that larger struggle. Our rulers send young men to fight for the Sunni Umma and call it holy duty. I remember the last Christmas that still felt like Christmas. There were fewer lights each year. Then the public displays were restricted “for community cohesion.” Then they were banned outright as provocative. Easter became a private, whispered affair. The old hymns were dangerous to sing even behind locked doors. Neighbours informed. The council’s auxiliaries – young men raised on grievance and certainty – raided houses looking for Bibles, crucifixes, anything that smelled of the old faith. I buried my own father’s prayer book in a field one night and marked the spot only in my head. I do not know if the book is still there. The parades yesterday were the final insult. They chose the Norman anniversary with care. William the Conqueror’s landing was reframed as a precursor, a half-measure. The true conquest, they said, was theirs – peaceful at first, then complete. Speakers in every city declared that the age of the cross was over, that the islands had returned to the proper path. Fireworks cracked over the Thames. In Manchester and Birmingham the crowds were densest. In smaller towns the demonstrations were thinner but no less triumphant. I watched from a distance, hooded, heart hammering. When the speeches ended, they broadcast executions of a few remaining holdouts who had been caught trying to leave for the Russian ships. The message needed no translation. I write this not for glory and not for revenge. Revenge is a luxury of the living and the free. I write so that someone, someday, in whatever world survives the wars of the caliphates, may know that there were those who refused. We were not saints. Many of us were late to the fight, distracted by comfort, slow to see that the things we took for granted could be taken away. We argued among ourselves while the ground shifted. When the laws turned against us, we still trusted the old forms – courts, elections, petitions – long after those forms had been turned out. By the time the council dropped the pretence, the numbers and the guns were against us. Some fought in the early years. Most of those are dead. The rest of us learned to move at night, to trust almost no one, to keep the old stories alive in our heads because the paper and the screens were watched. Russia is the only place left that still rings church bells without fear. The ships that take the banished leave from hidden coves under cover of fog and bribery. I have not taken that ship. Pride, or stupidity, or the stubborn belief that a man should die on the soil he was born to. The council’s hunters grow better at their work. Informants are everywhere. A wrong word, a face recognised from an old photograph, and the door is kicked in. I have seen the bodies in the streets after a raid. The heads are displayed for a day as warning, then cleared away so the markets can open. Christian Britain did not fall in a single battle. It was argued away, legislated away, shamed away, and finally conquered by those who never accepted the old settlement. The churches emptied. The schools taught a different history. The media repeated the same phrases until dissent sounded mad. When the demographic tipping point came, the rest followed with the logic of power. Sharia courts that began as “community arbitration” became the only courts that mattered. The police looked the other way, then joined, then enforced. The army was purged of the unreliable. The flag changed. The calendar changed. The language of the law changed. Yesterday they danced on the grave of a thousand years and called it progress. I do not know who will read this if anyone does. Perhaps it will be found in a wall or a forgotten hard drive long after the present rulers have been replaced by some newer faction in the endless wars of the caliphates. Perhaps a Russian scholar will translate it one day as a curiosity from the lost West. Or perhaps it will burn with me when they come. I write it anyway. The old country deserved better than the silence that is settling over it. The green fields are still green. The rivers still run to the sea. But the people who named them, who built the villages and the cathedrals and the common law, are being erased or scattered. The survivors will speak a different tongue in the mosques that were once churches. Their children will not know the hymns. I am tired. The light is failing. Outside, the evening call to prayer rolls across the rooftops that once held weathervanes and cross-shaped weathervanes. I will hide these pages and move again at first dark. If I am taken, let this stand. Christian Britain ended not with a last stand on a hill but with parades and proclamations and the quiet obedience of the many. The few who refused are being hunted still. I was one of them. Remember that we were here. Remember that we did not all consent. May God, if He still listens in these islands, have mercy on what remains. A writer in hiding England, such as it is 14 October 2066. This article was originally published by the [Free Speech Backlash](https://www.freespeechbacklash.com/article/2066-and-all?ref=goodoil.news). ### A System for and by Politicians URL: https://goodoil.news/a-system-for-and-by-politicians/ Last updated: 2026-10-16T02:59:59.000Z Kiwis, why’d’ya do it? And did you even understand what you were doing? Australians are notoriously averse to constitutional change: of 45 referendums since Federation in 1901, we’ve only passed eight of them. That’s a strike rate of over 80 per cent. The general consensus seems to be that if the bastards in Canberra want it, then it’s probably a bad idea. Clearly the bastards in Wellington wanted MMP very much: so why did Kiwis give it to them? Because, if democracy is the worst system apart from all the others that have been tried, MMP seems to be one of the worst forms of democratic election. And I say that as a Tasmanian who labours under our state’s bizarre, byzantine Hare-Clark system (or, ‘Hare-Brained’, as some of us Taswegian politics wonks call it). It is that time across the ditch when the political tragics gather in sheep yards and comments sections, stroking their chins and asking the perennial question: > [“And, who](https://www.theaustralian.com.au/world/the-day-new-zealanders-master-mixed-member-proportional-they-may-break-it/news-story/d2b397a4156dff4d534cb38d25765c6c?ref=goodoil.news) will win on November 7?” This year, however, the usual parlour game has taken on the air of a high-stakes spin of the roulette wheel. Not merely because the race between the centre-left and centre-right blocs is tighter than a miser’s purse, but because the electoral machinery itself seems designed to confound the mathematically sane. > A rather unusual electoral system which combines proportional representation with having electorate seats. It is called MMP, which stands for Mixed Member Proportional, and it is just as straightforward as it sounds. Is it, though? Or is it an administrative labyrinth wrapped in a conundrum, designed to deliver a parliament that mirrors the electorate’s whims with the precision of a drunken archer? The theory is charmingly naive: local geographic representation meets proportional purity. But this is government we’re dealing with. So naturally, the execution of the lovely theory is where the comedy begins. Consider, for instance, the sheer brutality of the threshold. In New Zealand, a party must secure five per cent of the national tally to partake in the spoils of parliament, unless they manage to fluke an electorate seat. Miss it by a whisker, and you vanish into political purgatory. At present, a diminutive outfit of legacy media darlings, the zoomer socialists styling themselves ‘Opportunity’, dances precariously on this razor’s edge. If they scrape together 5.1 per cent, they likely get to posture as kingmakers. Should they tumble off into the abyss of 4.9 per cent, the arithmetic shifts to the centre-right bloc. It is a system where fractions of a percent can alter the destiny of nations, reducing democratic expression to a game of Russian roulette with a fully loaded cylinder. Yet, if thresholds are delightfully cruel, the phenomenon of the ‘overhang’ is pure unadulterated farce. This is where MMP truly reveals its capacity for institutional schizophrenia: the delightful consequence of local candidates winning more electorates than their party’s total vote share strictly entitles them to. Observe the predicament of Prime Minister **Christopher Luxon**’s National Party. While their national polling languishes around the 28 per cent mark, their grip on local electorates remains stubbornly robust, projected to haul in somewhere around 37 seats. The inevitable result? > An overhang for one of the major parties. If that happens, parliament simply grows, and National gets no list MPs at all. The irony is thick enough to choke on. By performing moderately well in local electorates while floundering in the national vote, National risks locking its own heavy hitters out in the cold. We are treated to the sublime spectacle of prominent ministers, such as Finance Minister **Nicola Willis**, who relies entirely on the party list, and Housing Minister **Chris Bishop**, whose marginal seat hangs by a thread, staring anxiously into the political abyss. They could become victims of their own local popularity, crowded out of a bloated legislature that swells like an overfed python. Naturally, the minor parties have not been idle spectators to this mathematical theatre. Te Pāti Māori, polling near the margin of statistical error, plays a cunning game of funnelling party votes elsewhere while hoarding local electorates, thereby inflating the very overhang that threatens the establishment. One might imagine that such glaring structural absurdities would invite reform. Indeed, sensible committees have tried. > In 2012, the Electoral Commission recommended abolishing overhangs. But the idea was shelved because the parties could not agree on which changes to make. And so the absurdity persists, preserved in amber by political self-interest and bipartisan cowardice. National gamely urges its flock to cast “two ticks National”, hoping against hope that three decades after its introduction, the electorate might finally grasp the machinery they birthed. When the ballots are tallied on November 7, we shall discover whether the average Kiwi has mastered this peculiar contraption. But, if recent history is any guide, the ultimate victor will not be left or right, but chaos itself: a parliament bloated, contorted and utterly divorced from the actual will of the people. And this, like Hare-Clark, seems to be exactly what the system was designed for. --- 💡 ****If you enjoyed this article please share it using the share buttons at the top or bottom of the article.** ### Starship workers describe cancer ward crisis, medication errors and mental toll amid treatment delays URL: https://goodoil.news/starship-workers-describe-cancer-ward-crisis-medication-errors-and-mental-toll-amid-treatment-delays/ Last updated: 2026-10-16T03:38:16.000Z Starship Children's Hospital staff report intolerable stress and treatment delays due to nurse shortages, amid conflicting claims from Health New Zealand officials. **Source:** [nzherald.co.nz](https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/auckland/starship-cancer-delays-father-says-using-sick-kids-politically-is-cruel-clone/P4FOAB6SKZA2RP5LTDBWU4HD4M/?ref=goodoil.news) *Re-published from the Centrist with permission* [Original article at The Centrist](https://centrist.nz/starship-workers-describe-cancer-ward-crisis-medication-errors-and-mental-toll-amid-treatm-R0cHM6Ly?ref=goodoil.news) ### Tell me who in the Western World is less ambitious at raising capital than NZ? – Simon Bridges URL: https://goodoil.news/tell-me-who-in-the-western-world-is-less-ambitious-at-raising-capital-than-nz-simon-bridges/ Last updated: 2026-10-16T03:38:33.000Z The article discusses the challenges and potential strategies for strengthening New Zealand's capital markets to support local businesses and drive economic growth. **Source:** [nzherald.co.nz](https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/tell-me-who-in-the-western-world-is-less-ambitious-at-raising-capital-than-nz-simon-bridges/premium/XMGH3FE4WREF3GTBKBUXQNY6UA/?ref=goodoil.news) *Re-published from the Centrist with permission* [Original article at The Centrist](https://centrist.nz/tell-me-who-in-the-western-world-is-less-ambitious-at-raising-capital-than-nz-simon-bridge-R0cHM6Ly?ref=goodoil.news) ### Carterton District Council proposes 1200% increase to commercial forestry rates URL: https://goodoil.news/carterton-district-council-proposes-1200-increase-to-commercial-forestry-rates/ Last updated: 2026-10-16T03:38:48.000Z Carterton District Council's proposed rates hike poses significant challenges for New Zealand's forestry industry, raising concerns over economic impacts and investment confidence. **Source:** [nzherald.co.nz](https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/carterton-district-council-proposes-1200-increase-to-commercial-forestry-rates/VGY7CT6WBRHZ5JXEDXHG57XMMQ/?ref=goodoil.news) *Re-published from the Centrist with permission* [Original article at The Centrist](https://centrist.nz/carterton-district-council-proposes-1200-increase-to-commercial-forestry-rates-R0cHM6Ly?ref=goodoil.news) ### 96% of schools can be ‘very easily’ hacked URL: https://goodoil.news/96-of-schools-can-be-very-easily-hacked/ Last updated: 2026-10-16T03:39:05.000Z Cybersecurity expert Adam Burns warns that 96% of schools' emails can be easily forged, highlighting the need for robust security measures in education. **Source:** [stuff.co.nz](https://www.stuff.co.nz/nz-news/361046299/could-your-school-be-hacked-expert-warns-96-could-very-easily?ref=goodoil.news) *Re-published from the Centrist with permission* [Original article at The Centrist](https://centrist.nz/96-of-schools-can-be-very-easily-hacked-R0cHM6Ly?ref=goodoil.news) ### AI Finds Its First Major Victim URL: https://goodoil.news/ai-finds-its-first-major-victim/ Last updated: 2026-10-16T01:00:01.000Z [**Andrew Moran**](https://www.libertynation.com/ai-finds-its-first-major-victim-getty-images/?ref=goodoil.news) *Economics editor at LibertyNation.com.* Observers worldwide have wondered which major company would be the first victim of [artificial intelligence](https://www.libertynation.com/ai-joins-the-federal-government/?ref=goodoil.news)’s power. Sure, the technology has affected various industries, and smaller firms have been hit hard. But now we have confirmation that Getty Images, one of the world’s largest stock photo companies, is resting in the AI graveyard. ### **Getty Gone** If you read a newspaper or browsed a prominent blog, you have likely seen a licensed Getty picture as the feature image. A few years can make a difference. In 2022, Getty Images debuted on Wall Street with a $4.8 billion valuation. It maintained a massive library of photos and videos, earning billions by selling access to businesses. Years later, AI image generators became ubiquitous, disrupting the industry and effectively destroying a company that had operated for three decades. Wall Street saw the writing on the wall as Getty’s shares cratered 99 per cent. In recent months, it has reported $2.1 billion in debt, withdrew financial guidance, and the New York Stock Exchange delisted the stock. It entered into a restructuring agreement, targeting completion by year-end. It plans to launch an expedited Chapter 11 process in the coming weeks. A proposed merger with industry rival Shutterstock failed. The final nail in its coffin: Getty announced on Oct 12 that it plans to file for bankruptcy and go private. Getty family affiliates and Koch Equity Development will own 100 per cent of the company, and investors have pledged up to $533 million in new equity. Officials are optimistic that the content provider can start a new chapter. Mike Harris, senior managing director and co-head of Koch Equity Development, said in a news release: > Getty Images is a unique and critical source of authentic imagery for its customers. We remain confident in the company’s future and fully support this transaction alongside the Getty family. This equity investment will provide Getty Images with a firm financial foundation and greater flexibility to continue investing in its employees, customers, contributors, and future growth. Or perhaps it is a cautionary tale that every company needs to be prepared for tomorrow. ### **Signs in 2023** It might feel like ancient times, especially in the world of AI, but in 2023, signs were everywhere that the revolutionary technology was on the cusp of perfection. The videos of Will Smith eating spaghetti were goofy and unintelligible, but every year the iconic image improved. Today, the average person can produce a high-quality 15-second clip of the *Fresh Prince of Bel-Air* star eating spaghetti, penne, rigatoni, or rotini with a basic one-sentence prompt. Users can create still images of Will Smith holding a pasta bowl or making linguine in ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini, or Grok. What’s more, AI-generated outputs largely fall into the public domain. The US Copyright Office and federal courts have determined that content created by AI from text prompts is not subject to copyright protection, meaning others can recycle and reuse without permission. So, how do you monetize this type of content? Plenty of ideas are surfing the world wide web, but that’s for the entrepreneurial spirit to determine. ### **Creative Destruction** Over the last several decades, scores of well-known brands have failed to remain king of the mountain. BlackBerry avoided full-touch smartphones, Blockbuster refused to adopt a digital strategy, Kodak ignored digital photography, and Sears has become a distant memory for not embracing e-commerce. Put simply, creative destruction drives inventions and innovations that eventually replace obsolete businesses, products, and technologies. If entrepreneurs or corporations struggle to acclimate and stay on the sidelines, they will be left behind. Critics argue that new tech displaces people, ignoring that the same technology also creates entirely new industries and more jobs. Getty will be the first of many victims in the AI revolution. This article was originally published by [Liberty Nation News](https://www.libertynation.com/ai-finds-its-first-major-victim-getty-images/?ref=goodoil.news). ### This Is What Is Happening in Britain URL: https://goodoil.news/this-is-what-is-happening-in-britain/ Last updated: 2026-10-16T00:29:59.000Z [**David Betz**](https://dailysceptic.org/2026/10/14/clamping-down-on-dissent-while-failing-to-secure-the-border-is-accelerating-britain-towards-crisis/?ref=goodoil.news), [**Michael Rainsborough**](https://dailysceptic.org/2026/10/14/clamping-down-on-dissent-while-failing-to-secure-the-border-is-accelerating-britain-towards-crisis/?ref=goodoil.news) *David Betz is professor of war in the modern world, King’s College London. Michael Rainsborough is professor of strategic theory and director of the Centre for Future Defence and National Security, Canberra.* Something is going badly wrong across Western societies, and the sense of political dislocation is no longer a fringe concern. [Trust in institutions has fallen](https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/oecd-survey-on-drivers-of-trust-in-public-institutions-2024-results%5F9a20554b-en/full-report/executive-summary%5F7c5c9309.html?ref=goodoil.news), established political parties are losing support and arguments over immigration and national identity have become sharp dividing lines. In Germany, [the president](https://www.reuters.com/world/germany-risks-weimar-style-divisions-president-steinmeier-warns-2026-10-03/?ref=goodoil.news) now warns openly of a return to the political divisions of the Weimar era. In France, a [protest movement](https://www.lemonde.fr/en/france/article/2026/10/02/high-school-student-protests-spread-across-france-as-tensions-escalate%5F6758168%5F7.html?ref=goodoil.news) that began in schools has spread across the country, bringing arson, mass arrests and violent clashes with riot police to cities from Strasbourg to Marseille. Across Europe, [insurgent parties of left and right](https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-10068/?ref=goodoil.news) prosper on dissatisfaction with political systems that seem increasingly unable to correct themselves. Britain exhibits the same symptoms. The question is why governments confronted by such conditions so often appear to aggravate the problems rather than address their causes. Aggravating the conditions driving the crisis follows the logic of [accelerationism](https://abstractopedia.org/domain-specific/accelerationism/?ref=goodoil.news). Most closely associated with the British philosopher [Nick Land](https://www.urbanomic.com/edition/fanged-noumena-second-edition/?ref=goodoil.news), accelerationism holds that an existing order contains forces which, once unleashed, drive change forward and ultimately overwhelm attempts to restrain them. Rather than arrest the process, accelerationist thought embraces its intensification, although versions of the idea on left and right differ markedly over where it might lead. The essential rationale remains: if the existing order contains forces capable of destroying or transforming it, remove the restraints and let them run their course. Judged by that standard, Britain’s ruling classes are accelerationists *par excellence*. They oversee [economic stagnation](https://niesr.ac.uk/reports/economic-outlook-autumn-2025?ref=goodoil.news), [mounting national debt](https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c607ly09y7rlo?ref=goodoil.news), [growing welfare dependency](https://lordslibrary.parliament.uk/welfare-reforms-and-youth-unemployment/?ref=goodoil.news), the [decay of town centres](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/feb/03/the-guardian-view-on-high-street-decline-symbol-of-failure-discontented-nation?ref=goodoil.news) and [public services](https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/publication/general-election-2024-precarious-state/public-services?ref=goodoil.news), and [deepening social divisions](https://www.ipsos.com/en-uk/uks-sense-division-reaches-new-high-culture-war-tensions-grow-study-finds?ref=goodoil.news), compounded by [rapid demographic change](https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/internationalmigration/bulletins/longterminternationalmigrationprovisional/latest?ref=goodoil.news) and repeated failures to deliver [effective immigration controls](https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/top-ten-problems-in-the-evidence-base-for-public-debate-and-policy-making-on-immigration-in-the-uk-in-2025/?ref=goodoil.news). Their [own reports](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/protecting-what-matters-towards-a-more-confident-cohesive-and-resilient-united-kingdom/protecting-what-matters-towards-a-more-confident-cohesive-and-resilient-united-kingdom?ref=goodoil.news) document segregation, declining trust and failures of integration, yet governments refuse to change the policies contributing to those problems. As opposition becomes more organised and disruptive, the state responds with [surveillance](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/police-use-of-facial-recognition/police-use-of-facial-recognition-a-guide-accessible-version?ref=goodoil.news) and [speech restrictions](https://bigbrotherwatch.org.uk/press-coverage/freespeech/new-polling-highlights-uks-censorship-crisis-as-free-speech-billboards-are-plastered-across-london-underground/?ref=goodoil.news), as well as [two-tier policing and justice](https://www.civitas.org.uk/publications/the-many-tiers-of-british-justice/?ref=goodoil.news). Grievance produces resistance, resistance produces stronger enforcement, and stronger enforcement fuels the grievance. We first raised the likelihood of Britain moving towards violent social breakdown in a short article ‘[The British Road to Dirty War](https://www.briefingsforbritain.co.uk/the-british-road-to-dirty-war/?ref=goodoil.news)*’* in January 2019\. At that time the prognosis was seen as controversial, not least within our own university. We were ‘cancelled’ and removed from our positions of authority in the Department of War Studies for daring to raise this [heretical possibility](https://dailysceptic.org/2025/04/24/what-i-learned-from-my-college-stasi-file/?ref=goodoil.news). Now, the prospect is no longer confined to supposedly dissenting academics. In June 2026, Conservative leader [Kemi Badenoch](https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ce9pll8943no?ref=goodoil.news) warned that communal divisions risked taking Britain towards civil war. What was once been [dismissed](https://www.theguardian.com/society/2026/jan/04/is-the-uk-really-heading-towards-civil-war?ref=goodoil.news) as an alarmist prediction was now being voiced by the leader of the opposition. Recognising the danger is one thing, though – reconsidering the policies contributing to the problem is quite another. Governments are not spectators to the forces at work, which raises the most fundamental – and still largely unanswered – question in the civil war debate: why, despite endless warnings about growing social fracture and the prospect of civil strife, do Britain’s ruling classes continue pursuing policies that exacerbate these tensions? Why persist on a course that threatens to unleash forces capable of sweeping away the very political order upon which their own survival depends? **Is it simply incompetence?** The current debate over immigration illustrates this paradox most clearly. So, let’s begin from the obvious explanation: that it is all a case of ineptitude. There is plenty of evidence of [incompetence](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/03/19/tony-blair-admits-did-not-realise-many-migrants-would-come-uk/?ref=goodoil.news), but as an explanation for the failure to tackle the wider problems generated by unconstrained immigration, legal and illegal alike, it doesn’t quite wash. For example, consecutive administrations have [promised to reduce immigration](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2025/05/12/the-leaders-promised-slash-immigration-failed/?ref=goodoil.news) but then consciously moved in the opposite direction. Brexit should have removed one familiar explanation for the inability to control national borders. Instead, the system introduced in 2021 [widened access to overseas labour](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-uks-points-based-immigration-system-policy-statement/the-uks-points-based-immigration-system-policy-statement?ref=goodoil.news) by lowering skills and salary thresholds, removing the cap on skilled workers and abolishing the resident labour market test. Net migration subsequently [reached 944,000](https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/internationalmigration/bulletins/longterminternationalmigrationprovisional/latest?ref=goodoil.news) in the year ending March 2023\. The rules were later tightened, and the figures fell but remain historically high. Nor can governments claim that the negative social consequences are a surprise. As far back as 2001, the [Cantle Report](https://tedcantle.co.uk/pdf/communitycohesion%20cantlereport.pdf?ref=goodoil.news) after the riots in Bradford and Oldham described communities living “parallel lives”. As Home Secretary, [Theresa May](https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/immigration-limit-changes-oral-statement-by-theresa-may?ref=goodoil.news) warned in 2010 that poorly managed immigration placed pressure on public services and damaged community relations. [David Cameron](https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/pms-speech-at-munich-security-conference?ref=goodoil.news) declared state multiculturalism a failure in 2011\. The [Casey Review](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-casey-review-a-review-into-opportunity-and-integration?ref=goodoil.news) reiterated many of these findings in 2016\. In November 2024, the government stated that its intent was to restore order to a “[broken](https://www.gov.uk/government/news/government-restoring-order-to-broken-immigration-system?ref=goodoil.news)” immigration system. In 2025 [Keir Starmer](https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/pm-remarks-at-immigration-white-paper-press-conference-12-may-2025?ref=goodoil.news) warned of Britain becoming an “island of strangers”, while the [government’s 2026 social cohesion plan](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/protecting-what-matters-towards-a-more-confident-cohesive-and-resilient-united-kingdom/protecting-what-matters-towards-a-more-confident-cohesive-and-resilient-united-kingdom?ref=goodoil.news) acknowledges similar problems. The recurrence of such warnings points towards more than poor judgement. Other forces are clearly at work. For example, large employers, notably in the [health and social care sectors](https://www.skillsforcare.org.uk/Adult-Social-Care-Workforce-Data/workforceintelligence/resources/Reports/National/The-state-of-the-adult-social-care-sector-and-workforce-in-England-2025.pdf?ref=goodoil.news), have come to depend heavily upon international recruitment, giving them a powerful interest in maintaining existing arrangements, while the detrimental social impacts are borne by the population at large, including [fiscal costs](https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/the-fiscal-impact-of-immigration-in-the-uk/?ref=goodoil.news), pressure upon [housing](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/migration-and-housing-costs-what-does-international-evidence-imply-for-the-uk?ref=goodoil.news), [infrastructure](https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a7c12aae5274a25a9140498/transport-congestion.pdf?ref=goodoil.news), [health](https://www.health.org.uk/reports-and-analysis/briefings/immigration-and-the-nhs-the-evidence?ref=goodoil.news) and [welfare](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/restoring-control-over-the-immigration-system-white-paper/restoring-control-over-the-immigration-system-accessible?ref=goodoil.news) services, [wage suppression](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/10/05/migration-costing-british-workers-outside-london-1000-year/?ref=goodoil.news) and rising crime, [especially in sexual offending](https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/articles/sexualoffencesprevalenceandtrendsenglandandwales/latest?ref=goodoil.news). These social costs [did not have to be distributed in this way](https://policyexchange.org.uk/publication/why-is-it-so-hard-getting-immigration-numbers-down/?ref=goodoil.news). Employers could have been encouraged to invest more heavily in domestic recruitment, training and retention. Such choices would have imposed burdens of their own, but political decisions necessarily involve trade-offs. Governments instead [accommodated](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-uks-points-based-immigration-system-policy-statement/the-uks-points-based-immigration-system-policy-statement?ref=goodoil.news) business demands for access to overseas labour while leaving the wider population, especially those on lower incomes and in already deprived areas, to bear the burden. Over time, the logic acquired a momentum of its own. Dependence upon overseas labour was increasingly cited as a reason why immigration could not substantially be reduced. Policy created dependency; dependency became the argument for continuing the policy. Cue the inevitable smug *Question Time* audience member who bewails that without migrants, who will staff the NHS, and more importantly, [who will serve us in Pret](https://www.businessinsider.com/question-time-audience-who-would-be-serving-our-coffee-in-pret-if-eu-nationals-left-britain-2017-3?ref=goodoil.news)? Incompetence alone cannot explain why governments pursue policies that heighten the danger of civil strife. [Governments have certainly miscalculated](https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cz7q5j24qzjo?ref=goodoil.news), but they have also made deliberate choices, sustaining existing arrangements long after the resulting social tensions had been officially admitted. **Another failure, another report** Faced with declining social cohesion, governments have proved far readier to devise new administrative remedies than to reconsider the policies contributing to the problem. The latest example is [*Protecting What Matters*](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/protecting-what-matters-towards-a-more-confident-cohesive-and-resilient-united-kingdom/protecting-what-matters-towards-a-more-confident-cohesive-and-resilient-united-kingdom?ref=goodoil.news), the government’s 2026 social cohesion plan. It acknowledges that large-scale migration makes community bonds harder to maintain, points to continuing segregation and records falling trust and worsening tensions. Having diagnosed the problems, Whitehall proposes national integration standards, local cohesion plans, new mechanisms for detecting communal friction and a Social Cohesion Measurement Framework. After 25 years of reports documenting deepening societal divisions, the answer is apparently another programme for managing the consequences, while leaving the policies contributing to those divisions untouched. One set of policies creates the problems that justify another. To illustrate the contradictory thinking at work, in March 2026 [Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood](https://www.public-sector.co.uk/article/a6dbf082d8fa708f396d4d01b45ef46e?ref=goodoil.news) accepted that people seeing illegal small-boat arrivals and the pace of immigration more generally had good reason to feel that matters were “out of control”. Yet having conceded the failure of control, she turned to what she regarded as the more grievous threat: the growth of ethno-nationalism. Government policies, in other words, had provoked precisely the political reaction she now proposed to combat. Combating the rise of the ‘far-right’ gives government a new set of tasks. Anger over immigration is treated as a threat to social cohesion; hostility towards immigration becomes a potential source of extremism; communal tensions require monitoring and intervention. The policies generating much of the discontent stay in place, while government expands its efforts to contain the political reaction. The accelerationist dynamic can therefore be summarised as a feedback loop. Policies that generate discontent are maintained; government seeks to contain the reaction they have caused; containment further exacerbates the grievance against the state. By treating the political expression of that grievance as a problem to be suppressed, the authorities intensify the very forces they are trying to control. **When political correction fails** Democratic politics depends upon the possibility of correction. Governments can be removed, policies reversed and lost arguments fought again at the next election. People can profoundly dislike a policy while accepting the political system, provided they retain confidence that democratic institutions offer a peaceful means of changing the direction of policy. The scale and pace of recent immigration have tested that bargain. Governments of both major parties have promised greater control, yet policy has either barely changed or failed to deliver the promised results. The lesson is corrosive: when elections fail to translate public demands into political change, the appeal of seeking redress through other means inevitably grows. Loss of faith in the capacity of elections to bring about meaningful change also extends to the institutions responsible for implementing government policy. The [civil service](https://www.briefingsforbritain.co.uk/is-the-civil-service-impartial/?ref=goodoil.news), [courts](https://policyexchange.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/Two-Tier-Justice%5F.pdf?ref=goodoil.news) and [police](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5go12JprbA&ref=goodoil.news) cease to appear as neutral instruments of democratic governance and come to be seen as obstacles to popular will, seemingly unresponsive to demands expressed through the ballot box. Mismanaged immigration also accelerates the communalisation of politics. Competition over housing, schools and public resources, alongside disputes over cultural norms and practices, becomes organised increasingly around [ethnic or religious identities](https://dailysceptic.org/2026/03/19/britains-sectarian-future-coming-to-a-constituency-near-you/?ref=goodoil.news). Government [reinforces these divisions](https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/exclusive-uks-islamophobia-advisers-consulted-figures-accused-islamophobia-blocked-consulting?ref=goodoil.news) when it [consults faith and community organisations](https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/protecting-places-of-worship-consultation/protecting-places-of-worship-consultation-accessible-version?ref=goodoil.news), [directs programmes towards particular groups](https://www.ethnicity-facts-figures.service.gov.uk/work-pay-and-benefits/benefits/state-support/latest/?ref=goodoil.news) and [seeks representatives to speak on their behalf](https://www.gov.uk/guidance/district-provision-tool/ethnic-minority-groups?ref=goodoil.news). A state that encourages minorities to consolidate politically along communal lines should hardly be surprised when the majority begins to do the same, and [nativist demands](https://politicsrights.com/the-political-psychology-of-nativism/?ref=goodoil.news) follow. If elections fail to change policy, while institutions meant to arbitrate political disputes are themselves seen as favouring competing communal interests, confidence that the system offers a peaceful route to political change begins to collapse. Opposition then moves beyond electoral politics. Protest becomes more confrontational, direct action more attractive and resistance easier to justify. **When containment becomes escalation** As opposition moves from protest to direct obstruction, the full weight of the state is brought to bear against those who resist. At [Eastney Marina](https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/sep/12/portsmouth-experiences-second-weekend-of-anti-immigration-protests?ref=goodoil.news) in Portsmouth, the authorities facilitated the landing and onward transport of migrants brought across the Channel by criminal smuggling networks, despite fierce local opposition. The determination to secure their passage stood in stark contrast to the refusal to reconsider the policies that had provoked the confrontation. Such confrontations become tests of government authority: whether the state can enforce its decisions in the face of organised resistance. For those resisting, the same confrontation raises a question of legitimacy: whether governments that have consistently ignored demands for political change can still claim the obedience of their citizens. Once resistance challenges the state’s authority, changing course becomes politically more difficult than an earlier correction would have been. A policy reversal secured through ordinary politics can be defended on its merits; one made under pressure from direct action risks demonstrating that disruption works. The policy becomes a test of the government’s resolve, giving ministers another reason to hold their ground. For those resisting, the lesson is precisely the opposite, providing another reason to question the state’s legitimacy. Elections, manifesto promises and official reviews have failed to deliver the promised reductions in immigration. Yet a government perceived as unwilling to secure the national borders proves ready to deploy its coercive powers against those challenging its decisions. The contrast reinforces the belief that open defiance is the only language the state appears to understand. The two responses feed upon each other. Resistance gives government stronger reasons to assert its authority; the resulting enforcement deepens the grievances driving resistance. A classic escalatory dynamic develops, with each side supplying the other with reasons for its next move. The confrontation over illegal Channel crossings thus develops into a more fundamental struggle over political power: whether change can still be secured through ordinary politics, or whether the outcome will increasingly be settled by force. **The self-preservation trap** As things deteriorate, the state is much better equipped to suppress a protest than to address its underlying causes. No comparable machinery springs into action when a policy fails for 20 years. Revising immigration policy requires ministers to confront organised interests, institutional dependencies and assumptions embedded across government. Arresting someone who blocks a port is considerably easier than reconsidering the policies that brought them there in the first place. The grievances behind such protests have accumulated through years of political choices whose costs have been deferred, dispersed or transferred elsewhere. Some difficulties have arisen from governmental inaction; others are the direct result of policies deliberately pursued. Yet governments that have shown little inclination to address these problems become remarkably decisive when the resulting tensions threaten their authority. The authoritarian impulse asserts itself as those in power seek to defend the political order over which they preside. **Accidental accelerationists?** Accelerationism ordinarily implies intention. There is little reason to presume that Britain’s ruling classes consciously seek the social upheaval or political destruction that accelerationist ideas envisage. Governments, however, are hardly innocent bystanders to the forces they help set in motion. They decide which interests to accommodate, determine which costs they are prepared to impose and follow the same course long after the dangers are plain to see. Absence of intention does not imply absence of responsibility. Mass immigration and multiculturalism provide the clearest illustration. Neither simply happened to Britain. Both reflected political choices and, in some quarters, [ideological convictions about diversity](https://www.standard.co.uk/hp/front/call-for-probe-into-labours-partisan-immigration-plan-6785319.html?ref=goodoil.news), national identity and the kind of society Britain ought to become. No democratic mandate was ever sought for so profound a transformation of British society. The political and institutional interests sustaining mass immigration and multiculturalism also evolve over time. One government liberalises immigration for economic reasons; another preserves the system because public services have become dependent upon overseas recruitment; institutions built around multicultural policies acquire constituencies, practices and assumptions of their own. Later governments inherit both the policies and the costs of dismantling them. Choice becomes interest, interest hardens into dependency, and dependency is then presented as necessity. Britain’s present difficulties are therefore no mere accident. The policies contributing to them were consciously chosen, defended and sustained despite successive official warnings about their effects. **So, are they accelerationists?** Why, then, do Britain’s ruling classes continue along a course that increases the danger of civil conflict? The answer lies in how the different forces we have examined combine to reinforce one another. Six propositions bring the argument together. **1\. Incompetence explains part of the failure but cannot explain the refusal to change course**. Governments make bad decisions, misjudge consequences and fail to deliver what they publicly promise. But such failings cannot adequately explain why, when the dangers have long been recognised, governments of both major parties nevertheless pursue much the same policies. **2\. Powerful interests have a stake in maintaining the status quo.** Employers and public services have become heavily dependent on overseas recruitment. Their interests are organised and well represented in government. Governments face stronger incentives to accommodate these organised interests than to address the consequences borne by the population at large. **3\. Ideology shapes what governments are prepared to recognise and reconsider.** Immigration and multiculturalism reflect convictions about diversity, national identity and the desirability of social transformation. Such beliefs influence which outcomes governments welcome, which difficulties they tolerate and which objections they regard as legitimate. Political commitments can survive mounting evidence that the resulting changes are generating serious divisions. **4\. Political choices create institutional dependencies that make reversal progressively harder.** Employers and public services organise staffing around overseas recruitment, while government builds institutions around the society its policies have helped create. Over time, decisions acquire powerful defenders and become embedded in administrative practice. Reversing these policies then requires governments to confront interests, assumptions and dependencies that their predecessors helped establish. **5\. The failure of democratic correction encourages opposition beyond ordinary politics.** Voters are promised greater control over national borders, but governments fail to deliver. Reports identify problems without resolving them; elections change governments without changing the direction of policy. As confidence in democratic redress weakens, resistance becomes more organised and disruptive. The failure to address grievances through established political channels creates the conditions in which more confrontational methods acquire greater appeal. **6\. The defence of political authority can become a source of further escalation.** Once resistance challenges the state’s ability to enforce its decisions, changing course risks appearing to reward direct action and weaken formal authority. Governments therefore become more inclined to suppress opposition, even as the causes of discontent go unaddressed. Stronger enforcement, in turn, reinforces the conviction among opponents that the democratic process offers no effective remedy. The effort to preserve authority risks intensifying the confrontation that threatens its legitimacy. So, are Britain’s ruling classes the ultimate accelerationists? Not in the literal sense, of course. Accelerationism consciously embraces forces within an existing order whose intensification drives towards its destruction or transformation. Britain’s ruling classes, one assumes, do not subscribe to any such doctrine. Yet their policies have set in motion a recognisably accelerationist dynamic. As elections repeatedly fail to produce the promised changes in policy, governments become more determined to assert their authority over those who resist. Governments unable to address the causes of political conflict prove considerably more capable of policing dissent. Suppressing resistance is easier, at least in the short term, than correcting the conditions that generate resistance. Britain’s ruling classes need not seek the destruction of the existing order. They need only defend it until self-preservation becomes self-destruction. This article was originally published by [the Daily Sceptic](https://dailysceptic.org/2026/10/14/clamping-down-on-dissent-while-failing-to-secure-the-border-is-accelerating-britain-towards-crisis/?ref=goodoil.news). ### ‘World’s Oldest Living Culture’ Acts Exactly Like It URL: https://goodoil.news/worlds-oldest-living-culture-acts-exactly-like-it/ Last updated: 2026-10-16T00:00:00.000Z It’s all-too-noticeable that those most vocally in favour of the ‘Voice’ referendum, who are *still* whining about it, three years after it was resoundingly rejected by Australians, don’t actually seem to give a rat’s arse about Aboriginal Australians. It’s the classic virtue-signalling act of the self-righteous: all ‘traditional acknowledgements’ and pious witterings about ‘the world’s oldest living culture’, but not a single damn given about the appalling violence and abuse faced by Aboriginal women and children, every single day. And no one, it seems, wants to confront a single, glaring truth: it’s the ‘world’s oldest living culture’ that is the problem. It’s unfashionable to say so, now, but let’s be blunt: Aboriginal culture was literally stone-aged. To perpetuate a stone-age culture into the modern world is as absurd as if the British still decorated their houses with the heads of their enemies. Yet, we see the outcomes of this ridiculous fawning over Aboriginal culture every single day. > [Leaders and organisations](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-10-01/nt-wadeye-ongoing-violence-elders-call-for-solutions/107207914?ref=goodoil.news) in the Northern Territory’s second-largest indigenous community, Wadeye, say they fear it is only a matter of time before someone is killed in ongoing clan feuds and are appealing to the NT and federal governments to help find solutions. > > Groups of up to 150 people armed with crossbows, machetes and spears have been fighting in the Daly region community over the past two weeks, attacking homes and police, burning cars and seriously injuring one man. > > The violence is part of a decades-old feud between some of Wadeye’s 24 clans. Lest anyone doubt this is a direct result of perpetuating a retrograde culture: > \[Ranger **Joshua Bunduck**\] said he was concerned the incident would spark more attacks because under his cultural law it would be up to his nephew to decide whether his family should seek what they call “payback”. The responsibility for the culturally induced violence goes right to the top of the Aboriginal industry. > [A director of](https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/indigenous/you-fight-him-here-no-fen-womans-talking-shock-pilbara-fightclub-tape/news-story/9b32abc2d280b2a1ca8125e57660cc16?ref=goodoil.news) an Aboriginal ­corporation earning millions in government child protection contracts in Port Hedland has been recorded giving orders at a secluded “fight club” where children watch and a little girl films and cheers her father as he repeatedly punches another man. > > **Raylene Button** is a high-profile face of the Julyardi Aboriginal Corporation, which has contracts with commonwealth government departments valued at $13.16m and has recently been awarded ­additional work with the Cook Labor government as a result of the child safety crisis in the iron ore town of Port Hedland 1600km north of Perth. This appears somewhat akin to paying drug-dealing biker gangs millions to run drug programmes (as if any country would be as insane as to do that, eh, New Zealand). > In the video, Ms Button orders other women to be quiet: “That f..ken kid’s got the same surname as me he’s a Button, I’m married to his f..ken uncle, I been grew him up (raised him) … If you want to fight him, you fight him here and that’s it and no f..ken woman’s talking” \[…\] > > We are all related, we’re all family, and we deal with it through an Aboriginal way of doing things,” Ms Button said. Feel the culture! Ms Button is so dedicated to the “Aboriginal way of doing things” that she brings it right into the boardrooms of multi-million-dollar taxpayer-funded quangos. > [A video obtained by](https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/indigenous/indigenous-child-protection-boss-raylene-button-filmed-fighting-elder-in-boardroom-brawl/news-story/1104a34b7f52314bd2f2423e58a34a3e?ref=goodoil.news) the Australian shows Julyardi Aboriginal Corporation director Raylene Button sparring with a female elder at a meeting of the Kariyarra Aboriginal Corporation, which represents native title holders and has struck royalty agreements on their behalf with miners including **Gina Rinehart**’s Hancock Prospecting. > > It has also been revealed that Ms Button was removed from the board of the Kariyarra Aboriginal Corporation for misusing a corporate credit card. If a white, male, corporate director was filmed brawling in the boardroom, they’d be sacked in a nanosecond and the legacy media wouldn’t stop screeching about it for weeks. But, when it’s ‘Aboriginal culture’, it’s punch on and the money keeps rolling in. And they wonder why we can’t ‘close the gap’. Still, I’m sure it’s all whitey’s fault, somehow. --- 💡 ****If you enjoyed this article please share it using the share buttons at the top or bottom of the article.** ### I Asked AI to Find Chris Hipkins’s Worldview URL: https://goodoil.news/i-asked-ai-to-find-chris-hipkinss-worldview/ Last updated: 2026-10-15T23:29:59.000Z [**Rodney Hide**](https://www.brashandmitchell.com/post/rodney-hide-i-asked-ai-to-find-chris-hipkins-s-worldview?ref=goodoil.news) *Rodney Hide is a former minister and ACT Party leader.* I’ve had my AI research assistant dig out the worldviews of [Christopher Luxon](https://www.brashandmitchell.com/post/rodney-hide-i-asked-ai-to-find-christopher-luxon-s-worldview?ref=goodoil.news) and [Chlöe Swarbrick](https://www.brashandmitchell.com/post/rodney-hide-i-asked-ai-to-find-chl%C3%B6e-swarbrick-s-worldview?ref=goodoil.news). So I gave it the same job on Labour leader Chris Hipkins. This time I asked it to go further: don’t just read his speeches and interviews, read what he did. The bills he championed and what he said in parliament. Here’s what it wrote. > *Chris Hipkins presents himself as a pragmatist. He names no philosophers, no economists and no books. The only influence he credits is Trevor Mallard, and the lesson was about method: “not making a decision is the worst decision you can make.”* > > *But the story he tells about himself is not neutral. In his 2008 maiden speech he described Hutt Valley families after “the great rolling back of the state”: “I utterly reject the notion that they could have got ahead, if only they had worked harder … As a society, we simply turned our backs on them.” Hardship comes from circumstance, and the state is the protector.* > > *His legislative record follows that story to the letter.* > > *He spent years trying to abolish charter schools. His own member’s bill failed 57 to 63 in 2016\. As education minister he got it done in 2018, telling the House the aim was to “remove the ideology of privatisation and deregulation from the school system that was introduced.”* > > *His Public Service Act 2020 attacked the 1988 reforms’ “quite excessive devolution”: “We need our Public Service to work as a single Public Service, not a series of silos.” He merged the country’s polytechnics into Te Pūkenga, “a unified nationally consistent system.” His Education and Training Act moved enrolment-zone powers from school boards to the secretary of education.* > > *Every major bill points the same way: unify, centralise, de-privatise, and undo the State Sector Act 1988, Tomorrow’s Schools 1989, and the polytechnic and tertiary reforms in the Education Act 1989\. His pragmatism is about how fast to go, never which way.* > > *His view of liberty depends on the question. On conscience votes he is consistently liberal: for euthanasia, for the 2020 abortion law, for same-sex marriage. He gave no speeches on any of them. On shared risks, freedom becomes collective and conditional. Introducing the vaccine pass law in 2021, he said it allowed orders that “differentiate between people who are vaccinated … and people who aren’t,” and that “the key thing to bringing greater freedoms for us all is to encourage those people to be vaccinated.” Yet in 1997, after his own arrest at a student protest, he said: “To remove someone’s right to protest, you’ve got to have a very good reason.”* > > *He calls his opponents’ views “ideology” and his own common sense. Even his U-turns point the same way. In 2023 he ruled out a capital gains tax: “End of story.” By 2025 he was proudly announcing one, the “most progressive change to New Zealand’s tax system in a generation.” The principle never changed. Only the timing did.* > > *I found no statement of personal faith. The Herald reported his mother left Methodism once she studied science. His purpose is this-worldly: “Politics at its best changes lives … It lifts people up.”* > > *My verdict: Hipkins is not a non-ideological pragmatist. He is a committed social democrat who spent his ministerial career reversing Rogernomics, one institution at a time. He has never had to argue for it, because he doesn’t see it as a position. To him it is simply the way things should be.* So that’s three. Luxon is a manager who keeps his values private. Swarbrick is a theorist who says so. Hipkins is the one to watch. He doesn’t talk about his ideology, he legislates it. The AI found his worldview not in what he says but in what he does. This article was originally published by [Brash and Mitchell](https://www.brashandmitchell.com/post/rodney-hide-i-asked-ai-to-find-chris-hipkins-s-worldview?ref=goodoil.news). ### Georgia Waddington on Preparing for Miss Universe URL: https://goodoil.news/georgia-waddington-on-preparing-for-miss-universe/ Last updated: 2026-10-15T22:59:59.000Z [**Chris Lynch**](https://www.chrislynchmedia.com/news-items/christchurchs-georgia-waddington-prepares-for-miss-universe-world-stage/?ref=goodoil.news) *Chris Lynch is a journalist, videographer and content producer, broadcasting from his independent news and production company in Christchurch.* Christchurch businesswoman Georgia Waddington never imagined entering a beauty pageant when she was growing up shy and reserved. Now, three years after an unexpected approach on social media, she is preparing to represent New Zealand at Miss Universe. Waddington won the national title at Auckland’s SkyCity Theatre in July, competing against 16 other finalists. She sat down with Chris Lynch at Black and White Coffee Cartel in Wigram, the sponsor of the video series *Let’s Meet for Coffee*, to discuss the preparation, pressure and opportunities behind the crown. “It was every emotion you could have thought of,” Waddington said of hearing her name announced. ![](https://www.chrislynchmedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/Screenshot-2026-09-22-at-1.37.51-PM.png) Credit: Miss Universe New Zealand “I genuinely put my heart and soul into it and it was months of training and really working towards a goal that I had.” Her family and friends had flown to Auckland to watch, celebrating in the audience as she won. The victory secured her place at the 75th Miss Universe competition in Puerto Rico in November, 43 years after Lorraine Downes won the international title in 1983. ![](https://www.chrislynchmedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/682765904_18588195652058569_6463915846049658258_n.jpg) Waddington’s introduction to pageantry came in 2023, after she was tagged in a social media post seeking contestants and the Miss New Zealand organisation contacted her. She had moved to the North Island and was still working out what she wanted to do with her life. “At first I was definitely a little bit hesitant as it wasn’t something I’d ever considered doing.” Learning about her director’s experience encouraged her to enter. She went on to represent New Zealand at Miss International in Japan and later competed at Miss Charm in Vietnam. ![](https://www.chrislynchmedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/805834503_1105579039083431_9019650545631657208_n.jpg) “Every time I went overseas I wanted to be better and better, so I definitely feel like going into this next chapter I’m the most ready and the most confident I could feel.” Alongside competing, Waddington established digital marketing business Social Strategy NZ, building a client base in New Zealand and overseas, including New York. She has brought in additional contractors to help manage the business while she prepares for Miss Universe. Sponsorship provides some financial support through arrangements that include social media promotion. Otherwise, she said, she funds her participation herself while continuing to run the business. ![](https://www.chrislynchmedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/659106405_18590212243058569_3894417704874538062_n.jpg) Supplied Preparation for the national competition began in April and included public speaking, interviews, sponsor networking, team activities and catwalk training. Waddington also made breast cancer awareness a focus of her campaign, raising $9600 at a single fundraising evening. “It’s a platform to be able to make change and do things that are important to you.” At the time of the interview, she was preparing to travel to Australia for training and a personal development course, followed by a visit to the Philippines. Her schedule there included coaching, meetings with designers, photo shoots and appearances before the country’s enthusiastic pageant media and fans. She also planned to help with a feeding programme for children, having raised money through workout classes during her national campaign. The demands of international competition extend beyond the final performance. Waddington said contestants could face early starts, late nights and the expectation of remaining composed throughout their public appearances. “You definitely have to be really resilient,” she said. She has worked on her mindset alongside her stage preparation, something she credited with helping her feel calm during the national final. “I stepped onto that stage and it was muscle memory, and I just went into trusting the preparation.” While she occasionally encounters negative comments online, Waddington said most feedback had been supportive. She wants her role to help people understand the work involved in modern pageantry. ![](https://www.chrislynchmedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/780672399_1093933896914612_3756206729970381805_n.jpg) Credit: Miss Universe New Zealand 2026 “Usually people are comparing them to movies or what they see on TV, but it is so different.” International competitions have also given her friendships around the world. She has previously shared rooms with contestants representing South Africa and the Philippines, and recently visited a fellow contestant in Australia. Her ambitions beyond Miss Universe include expanding her marketing business internationally, developing her hosting and television presenting work, and continuing her breast cancer advocacy. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/Miss-Universe-Chris-Lynch.jpg) Credit: Miss Universe New Zealand 2026 For girls who might see themselves in her earlier uncertainty, Waddington had a message. “Confidence doesn’t have to be something you’re born with. It’s something you can develop through doing things that are out of your comfort zone or doing things that maybe scare you a little bit.” This article was originally published by [Chris Lynch Media](https://www.chrislynchmedia.com/news-items/christchurchs-georgia-waddington-prepares-for-miss-universe-world-stage/?ref=goodoil.news). ### You Don’t Hate the Media Enough URL: https://goodoil.news/you-dont-hate-the-media-enough/ Last updated: 2026-10-15T22:29:59.000Z As I wrote recently, the Australian legacy media are sooking because organisers of this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference in Brisbane made them wear “Fake News” lanyards. Frankly, given the legacy media’s deplorable record of half-truths and outright lies, they should be glad they weren’t subjected to a ritual tarring-and-feathering by all in attendance. In few things will the legacy media lie harder than when it comes to running cover for imported rapists and murderers who’ve slithered into Western countries from cesspits of the Third World. Remember the ‘Maryland Dad’, who turned out to be an illegal immigrant and human trafficker and sported the tattoos of El Salvador’s notorious gangs? Gangs who take their tattoos so seriously that they’ll kill anyone wearing them who’s not a member – and the price of admission is notching up at least one murder. Undeterred, the legacy media is still trying on the same gambit of lying to our faces about the dregs of migrant criminals. Such as an ‘alleged’ baby killer in Brisbane. > [A Pakistani kebab shop worker](https://www.noticer.news/pakistani-charged-murder-baby-queensland/?ref=goodoil.news) has been charged with murder after his three-month-old son died of severe internal injuries in a Brisbane hospital. > > **Uneed Ullah**, 28, brought the infant to Ipswich hospital on October 1, but the baby was transferred to the Queensland Children’s Hospital due to the severity of his injuries. He was put on life support and died on Tuesday afternoon. > > Ullah, who was the only one home when the baby was injured, was then arrested and charged with one count of murder. Despite the horrific (alleged!) crime – police and hospital staff alluded only obliquely to the “nature” of the internal injuries – the legacy media lost no time in trying to pull the wool over our eyes. “Queensland dad”, said the *Courier-Mail*. Not to be outdone, the ABC wittered that he was an “Ipswich father”. Note that these aren’t exactly *untrue*, but not all fake news is outright falsehood. In fact, the more common and damaging type of fake news is where the facts are misrepresented and/or headlines slanted to try and push a particular narrative. In this case, concealing the immigrant background of the (alleged!) baby murderer. The British legacy media are old hands at this kind of deception, of course. > [Bradford man](https://www.thetelegraphandargus.co.uk/news/26628844.bradford-man-tried-rape-dying-dead-woman-tent/?ref=goodoil.news) tried to rape ‘dying or dead’ woman in tent. > > A court has heard how a homeless woman who was dying or already dead was the victim of an attempted rape attack in a tent in Bradford city centre. To further the deception, the report originally gave the necrophilic rapist’s name as “Shaw”. It was only later amended to his correct name: Shah. > A jury at Bradford Crown Court heard today (Mon) how **Hassan Shah** was captured on CCTV going into the victim’s tent on Kirkgate on the morning of November 8. > > After lying next to the unconscious woman, the 26-year-old pulled down her clothing without making any effort to communicate with her. > > “During the entire incident you will see that (the complainant) does not move,” Mr Wright told the jury ahead of playing them some of the pixelated CCTV footage. > > “The reason that she did not move is that she was either dying or in fact dead at the time.” And still no mention that the “Bradford man” is, according to social media accounts, a Muslim migrant. > The jury were told that a judge had already ruled that due to Shah’s low IQ and a learning disability he was ‘unfit to plead’ and he was not present at court today for a hearing to decide if he ‘did the acts’ alleged against him. Well, there’s the problem then: obviously because of his low IQ and “learning disability”, he probably wasn’t able to read the British government’s helpful pamphlets. They’ll have to print a whole new run, too, informing migrants that raping corpses is just another of the many things that are inexplicably illegal in infidel Britain. --- 💡 ****If you enjoyed this article please share it using the share buttons at the top or bottom of the article.** ### Reap What You Sow URL: https://goodoil.news/reap-what-you-sow/ Last updated: 2026-10-15T21:59:59.000Z Cartoon of the Day by BoomSlang _This post is for paying subscribers only._ ### Is This the Real Story Behind the Greens’ $6 Billion Job Gamble? URL: https://goodoil.news/is-this-the-real-story-behind-the-greens-6-billion-job-gamble/ Last updated: 2026-10-15T21:29:59.000Z [**Pee Kay**](https://nominister.wordpress.com/2026/10/15/is-this-the-real-story-behind-the-greens-6-billion-job-gamble/?ref=goodoil.news) *No Minister* From the Greens website: > ***The Green Party has today released its economic development plan to rebuild Aotearoa New Zealand and create 284,000 jobs over the next four years.*** > > ***“The Greens are serious about the economy. We will drive it to meet the needs of New Zealanders. Our plan will create 284,000 jobs, lower the cost of living and ensure we’re all happier, healthier and safer,” says Green Party Co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick.*** > > ***Our investment in transport, clean energy and genuinely fixing the basics and building the future will create an additional 64,000 jobs on top of the 220,000 forecast over the next four years.*** > > ***Marama Davidson says, “We have no shortage of talent, creativity and hard work in this beautiful country…”*** The Green Party has dropped a truly aspirational plan to generate **284,000 jobs over four years**. But there is a slight catch. A slight catch created as only pollies can create slight catches. You see, National is already promising 220,000 new jobs based on Treasury estimates. The Greens, not wanting to be outdone by a mere accountant’s spreadsheet, are actually claiming they will create **64,000 *new* jobs** on top of **National’s 220,000.** This stunning statement immediately raises eyebrows and also some serious questions. First, where on earth are they going to find the warm bodies. Warm bodies who are ready and able to work? Where will the workers come from to fill these new roles? Critics would point straight to immigration supply hubs in Asia, wondering how our already-buckling infrastructure will handle a massive influx of foreign workers. But a hilarious truth in the *Herald* reveals a glaring paradox: a single ad for a local meat packer attracted a staggering **1,000 applicants**. It turns out we don’t need a massive wave of migration – we just need a lot more sausages to pack. Who will fill these 284,000 new vacancies? Will it be the **220,000** people on the “Jobseeker” benefit? The workers are already here! They are standing in our unemployment queues, desperately waiting for an economy that actually has room for them. I’m picking their response would something like, Yeah Nah! Yet, this sudden desperation to fill positions poses an uncomfortable question: Are the Greens actually indicating tacit approval of **National’s campaign promise to crack down on long-term unemployed beneficiaries**? They must be! Where else are they going to find the bodies to fill these hundreds of thousands of new roles? If the ire of Winston and Shane will see them refuse to look to Asia for a massive wave of migration, their entire strategy relies on aggressively mobilising the domestic workforce. By promising to absorb every available local job seeker, the Greens have accidentally joined forces with the right by admitting that the ultimate goal is clearing out the welfare queues and pushing beneficiaries off state support and into the workforce. Are the Greens actually working in concert with National by adding a further 64,000 jobs to Nationals tally? Wow, wonders never cease. By promising to absorb every available local job seeker, the Greens are inadvertently aligning with the right. Are they not admitting that the ultimate goal is clearing out the welfare queues and pushing beneficiaries off state support and into the workforce? And then there’s the small matter of the **$6 billion** price tag. The Greens aren’t pulling mystery money out of a hemp sack: they want to strip a massive business tax break called the “Investment Boost” and redirect that cash into their own pet projects. It’s a spectacular clash in economic philosophy: National wants to leave billions in private hands, while the Greens want the Crown to snatch that cash back to hand-pick and fund public infrastructure and science fellowships. Ultimately, it’s a high-stakes gamble on whether politicians or private businesses are better at **spending $6 billion** of your money Who would you pick? This article was originally published by [No Minister](https://nominister.wordpress.com/2026/10/15/is-this-the-real-story-behind-the-greens-6-billion-job-gamble/?ref=goodoil.news). ### The Good Oil Daily Opinion Poll URL: https://goodoil.news/the-good-oil-daily-opinion-poll-396/ Last updated: 2026-10-15T21:14:59.000Z Take our Daily Opinion Poll and see how your views compare to other readers and then share the poll on social media. By sharing the poll you will help even more readers to discover *The Good Oil.* --- ### What Do They Have to Do? URL: https://goodoil.news/what-do-they-have-to-do/ Last updated: 2026-10-15T20:59:59.000Z Just what does a migrant terrorist or criminal have to do to actually get deported, these days? Judging by a plethora of cases, a migrant could ritualistically torture-murder **Prince George** live on the BBC and receive nothing worse than a stern talking-to from the Foreign Office. He certainly won’t get his GIRO cut off, let alone be told to go to the back of the queue for the NHS. It is a curious affliction of the modern Western establishment that has transformed the sovereign nation-state into a global hostel for malcontents, subversives and torch-wielding maniacs, complete with a concierge desk that waives background checks and hands out taxpayer-funded welcome packs upon arrival. One might suppose that smuggling weapons through tunnels or swearing allegiance to a death cult would disqualify a gentleman from enjoying the bounties of British or Australian citizenship. One would, of course, be hopelessly naive. Consider the revelation out of Blighty regarding a former Hamas bodyguard who spent years operating as an IT consultant in Britain while actively plotting transnational carnage against Jewish and Israeli targets. How such a character secured asylum and a shiny new passport in 2015 is a riddle wrapped in an enigma wrapped in an acute case of administrative cowardice. > [People are asking](https://www.theaustralian.com.au/world/the-times/when-will-the-uk-stop-making-it-easy-for-islamists/news-story/d2c8a38cf9f0789c2bd6f251adac69f2?ref=goodoil.news) in horror how Britain could have knowingly harboured such a man. Merely to ask the question is to answer it. Britain did so because it has long been in denial over the threat that predatory Islamism poses to Britain. I’ll ignore the bullshit of “Islamism”, a weasel-word coined by the same idiotic US president (Dubya, to narrow it down a bit) who gifted the other lie, “Religion of Peace”, to the world. For decades, the political establishment has worn its suicide pact as a badge of honour, nurturing a domestic infrastructure of radicalism under the soothing banner of multiculturalism. Whether it is London playing host to every itinerant jihadist preacher, or the civil service tying itself in knots to avoid offending delicate sensibilities, the rot has penetrated every pillar of the state. Nor is this terminal civic melancholia confined to the mother country. Down Under, our own judicial system has achieved a level of benevolent absurdity that leaves satirists entirely redundant. In Melbourne recently, we were treated to the heartwarming spectacle of **Mohamed Bakit**, a 65-year-old Somalian national, allegedly one of the Islamic State’s most prolific propagandists and accused of flooding chat groups with tens of thousands of files celebrating beheadings, being granted bail so he could access taxpayer-funded disability support. > [\[Deputy Chief Magistrate](https://www.noticer.news/alleged-isis-member-bail-melbourne-ndis/?ref=goodoil.news) **Gerard Lethbridge**\] said that while Bakit’s alleged offences had potential to cause “great harm” to the community, he was in poor health and depended on 24-hour NDIS-funded support due to a 2023 stroke that left him disabled, and at risk of choking and falling over. Nothing says ‘robust counter-terrorism framework’ quite like ensuring an alleged international terrorist is comfortably settled back into his Carlton residence so the National Disability Insurance Scheme can pick up the tab for his ongoing care. Imagine the next ISIS recruitment strategy! Forget YouTube videos of head-loppings or selling the dazzling enticement of sex slavery that doesn’t involve four legs: how about complimentary Pilates and generous welfare payments for jihadis suffering from lumbago? Cross the Pacific to the concrete canyons of New York City and the farce could clear the World Trade Centre in a single bound, if Muslims hadn’t blown it and 3000 Americans to hell. There, **Roman Amatitla**, an illegal alien accused of randomly setting fire to an apartment building, snuffed out four lives, including a small child, while calmly sipping a beer and watching the inferno from the pavement. One might imagine the authorities would bundle him onto a deportation flight before the smoke had even cleared. Instead, a sanctimonious Muslim socialist mayor and his sanctuary policies have stepped in to shield him from federal immigration officers. > [“This monster](https://nypost.com/2026/04/17/us-news/nyc-officials-refuse-ice-hold-for-illegal-immigrant-accused-in-arson-that-killed-4-and-injured-7/?ref=goodoil.news) set fire to a building and watched as innocent people, including a three-year-old, burned to death. New York City sanctuary politicians REFUSE to cooperate with ICE and are choosing to RELEASE this MURDERER onto New York streets,” DHS acting assistant secretary **Lauren Bis** told Fox News Digital. The sheer, unadulterated madness of it all suggests a civilisation that has lost its basic survival instinct. We are expected to stand by and applaud as our borders are erased, our legal systems mocked and our safety bartered away on the altar of progressive compassion. The frog isn’t just swimming in warm water any more: the pot is boiling furiously over and our political elites are having conniptions because the stovetop runs on natural gas. Until the West rediscovers a healthy dose of self-preservation and starts showing these ingrates the door, we shall continue reaping the bitter harvest of our own institutional cowardice. --- 💡 ****If you enjoyed this article please share it using the share buttons at the top or bottom of the article.** ### Your Daily Ten@10 - 2026/192 URL: https://goodoil.news/your-daily-ten-10-2026-192/ Last updated: 2026-10-15T21:00:04.000Z **This is edition 2026/192 of the *Ten@10* newsletter.** Hi all, This is the Ten@10, where I collate and summarise ten news items you generally won't see in the mainstream media. Enjoy! --- ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/01-ten192.png) ## 1\. Democracy Briefing: The election now revolves around Opportunity *Bryce Edwards - The Democracy Project* - 📊 The latest 1News-Verian poll has Opportunity on 8% and ten projected MPs, with National and Labour both on 28% and Act and NZ First on 10% each. - 🧮 On Henry Cooke’s calculation, National, Act and NZ First would have 58 seats, three short, and Labour and the Greens 52\. Opportunity’s ten would give either bloc a majority. - ⚠️ Entry is not assured: Stuff counted all but two of 13 polls since August with Opportunity at or above 5%, but the Taxpayers’ Union-Curia poll had it on 4.8%. - 👑 Edwards says the kingmaker story gives Peters too much credit: only two of ten MMP elections have given one party a clear choice between governments. - 📞 Luxon still rules Opportunity out, but RNZ’s Jo Moir says: “There is no planet on which Christopher Luxon does not pick up the phone if he needs to.” - 🛑 In the debate Wong pitched Opportunity as a restraint on National, while Swarbrick said the Greens were “not interested in reinstalling Christopher Luxon as Prime Minister”. - 📉 Labour and National’s combined 56% is below their lowest combined MMP election result, 62.1% in 1996. - 😊 Cooke says most Opportunity policies “are not really all that middle-ground”, but Wong offers “a kind of affective centrism” that makes her “very hard to dislike”. - 🔍 Opportunity’s demands on competition, donations and lobbying could matter beyond Cabinet jobs, and Edwards says its coalition-approval rules should be easy to inspect. - 💡 Takeaway: Opportunity is asking to be trusted with the deciding votes, and voters are entitled to answers “before 7 November, while they can still act on them.” [Read More](https://www.democracyproject.org.nz/p/democracy-briefing-the-election-now?ref=goodoil.news) --- ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/02-ten192.png) ## 2\. The Herald leaders’ debate: why Hipkins failed to make his case *Grant Duncan - Politics Happens* - 🥊 The cynic’s view: two unpopular leaders, both around 20% as preferred prime minister, fought a grudge match that damaged their parties. - 🙂 Duncan found the debate better than that, and at times enjoyable. - 🎩 Luxon kept a cheerful, statesman-like tone and spoke up clearly for his government’s record, plans and competence. - 👊 Hipkins threw side-punches and interjections that lacked authority, and did not explain how listeners would be better off under a Labour-led government. - 🔄 He could not deploy the “coalition of chaos” line because it would be thrown straight back at him. - 🏛️ Since 1935 every prime minister has led Labour or National, and Duncan says the present pair fall into a long line of “average white males”, with emphasis on average. - 🤝 On election night we may not get a clear answer to who won, and it may take lengthy negotiations. - 💡 Takeaway: Hipkins did not lose altogether, he just did not win. He failed to justify a change after one term, so the incumbent Luxon takes the debate. [Read More](https://grantduncanphd.substack.com/p/the-herald-leaders-debate) --- ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/03-ten192.jpg) ## 3\. OWEN JENNINGS: When Idiocy Beats Common Sense *Owen Jennings - Brash & Mitchell* - 🌲 Jennings says we let foreigners buy farmland and plant trees to offset their emissions, but do not let our own farmers count their plantings against theirs. - 🐑 His example is a typical Hawke’s Bay sheep and beef farm, John and Jill Smith’s: 650 ha, 2,500 ewes, 180 cows and methane of 1,100 t CO₂-e a year. - 🌿 He cites a study by AUT’s Dr Bradley Case finding that 90% of that methane would be offset by the bush, woodlots, shelter belts and riparian plantings on the property. - 📏 The LUCAS method ignores much native growth that does not meet an international size standard. “A tree is a tree whether it stands alone or in a cluster.” - 💸 About $500 million has gone into methane mitigation research in recent years, much of it taxpayer money, with no suitable tool yet for the Smiths. - 🌱 Subsidising five more hectares of natives such as manuka, kanuka and horopito would offset the farm’s whole shortfall, he says. “Job done.” - 😠 Farm cooperatives have spent farmers’ rebates and dividends on mitigation research without consulting them, which he calls a “directors’ club” approach. - 💊 The nearest solution is a three-month bolus for cattle, and he warns that inhibitors risk “pollution swapping” that could alarm the very customers demanding mitigation. - 💡 Takeaway: we let extremists dictate a regime that is now “an ugly millstone”, so “Can you blame John and Jill for questioning our corporate sanity?” [Read More](https://www.brashandmitchell.com/post/owen-jennings-when-idiocy-beats-common-sense?ref=goodoil.news) --- ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/04-ten192.png) ## 4\. ERIC NESS: Labour, the Greens and Wellington’s most popular $10.5 billion *Eric Ness - Brash & Mitchell* - 🏠 Election-year economics has a reassuring new word, Ness says: headroom. Labour says almost $10.5 billion of future operating allowances is still unallocated. - 🛏️ Plenty already want the spare room: the unexpected, pay equity, public-sector wages, health, education, defence and possibly the Greens. “In most households it is called promising the spare bedroom to four different relatives.” - 💼 Labour has funded the immediate $4-an-hour rise for care and support workers, but the wider pay-equity settlements have no final price yet. - 🧾 “We don’t know what it costs yet, but there is room in the Budget” is not the same thing as “it is fully costed.” He jokes that the money needs a union. - 🟢 The Greens’ tax package, including a wealth tax above $10 million and a bank levy, would raise an estimated $5.15 billion in 2027/28, rising to $5.73 billion. - 🚫 Hipkins has ruled out virtually all the extra taxes his potential partners promote, so the Greens could arrive with a shopping list and a tax plan Labour is not buying. - ⚖️ Any net extra coalition spending would mean cuts, using up headroom, a smaller surplus, more borrowing, or Labour changing a position it took into the election. - 🌦️ Treasury forecasts are “a bit like weather forecasts with accountants”, and they will be redone once a new government’s actual policies are known. - 💡 Takeaway: everybody is interested in the $10.5 billion. “Nobody has married it yet.” [Read More](https://www.brashandmitchell.com/post/eric-ness-labour-the-greens-and-wellington-s-most-popular-10-5-billion?ref=goodoil.news) --- ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/05-ten192.png) ## 5\. RODNEY HIDE: I asked AI to find Marama Davidson's worldview *Rodney Hide - Brash & Mitchell* - 🤖 After Luxon, Swarbrick and Hipkins, Hide set his AI on Marama Davidson, who cites no theorists or books but tells stories. - 🏛️ Her parents “met on these very steps of Parliament”, she said in her 2015 maiden statement, young urban Māori protesting the loss of land and language. - 🔗 Her core idea is connection: “My well-being is supposed to be connected to yours,” and “The challenges that we are facing today are born from disconnection.” - 🏭 The villains are capitalism, colonisation and patriarchy. At the Oxford Union in 2025 she said colonisation had been “a vessel to carry out the cruelty of capitalism.” - 📜 She puts the Treaty above everything: “The Green party is a Tiriti party.” - 🗣️ After her 2023 “white cis men” remark she said she “could have been clearer”, but told RNZ: “I am not going to apologise to cis men.” The AI says she withdrew the wording, not the thesis. - ⚖️ Tensions it found: opposing capitalism while working with Māori business, respect for all versus blaming groups, and grassroots control versus more state. - 🧩 Its verdict: “a relational-structural radical”, who sees the state’s job as redress, redistribution and handing power back to the collective. - 💡 Takeaway: Hide says she has “a remarkably undeveloped political view”, and “It must be uncomfortable to be a white man in her family and her party.” [Read More](https://www.brashandmitchell.com/post/rodney-hide-i-asked-ai-to-find-marama-davidson-s-worldview?ref=goodoil.news) --- ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/06-ten192.png) ## 6\. Art is More Important than Politics *Matt Taibbi - Racket News* - 🎸 At the Las Vegas Sphere, James Hetfield said Metallica was not there “to influence you” and its agenda was “love, energy, and heavy music”. Activists lined up to denounce him. - 🎤 Roger Waters said “‘I’m apolitical’ is not an option”, and Taibbi says Waters and the Metallica-bashers are as bad as those who cancelled an Ed Sheeran show over Macklemore’s “Free Palestine” speech. - 📚 He sides with the artists who held that art speaks to something higher than politics, from Chekhov’s “posing the question correctly” to Auden’s “Poetry makes nothing happen.” - ⭐ Mayakovsky began with the wonder of Listen! in 1914 and ended with “I am a citizen of the Soviet Union!”, then wrote in 1930 that he had stepped “on the throat of my own song.” - 🔁 The moral: a revolution can quickly become an even worse status quo. - 🎭 Shakespeare teaches that authority and moral self-regard make people stupid: “Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?” - 🧱 Tom Morello’s “every artist is political” is the musical version of Ibram X. Kendi’s claim that nothing is race neutral, Taibbi says. - ☭ Trotsky denounced “pure art” and Lenin wanted art in the “great social democratic mechanism”, which he says produced lots of dead writers and bad art. - 🎶 Lennon mocked McCartney’s lightweight songs, and McCartney answered with Silly Love Songs, the top American hit of 1976. - 💡 Takeaway: love is “a higher form of politics” that “does not insist on its own way”. “No, not everything is political. Aren’t most things better?” [Read More](https://www.racket.news/p/art-is-more-important-than-politics?ref=goodoil.news) --- ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/07-ten192.png) ## 7\. Where have all the bands gone? *Neil Davenport - spiked* - 🎸 Forming a band was once practically compulsory for teenagers, Davenport says: a few mates, three chords and an inflated sense of your own importance. - 📉 In March 2021 just nine groups featured in the UK Top 100 singles chart, and only two made the Top 40. - 📱 Today’s aspiring pop stars dream of a million followers. “Why endure a drummer’s personality disorder when you can become a brand all by yourself?” - 🏘️ He borrows Anthony Giddens’ idea of “disembedding”: TikTok lets musicians find an audience without ever leaving their bedrooms. - 💚 The internet is not all bad. Charli XCX’s Brat in 2024 became a genuine cultural moment, and PinkPantheress found millions of listeners from her bedroom. - 😰 Yet the OECD’s 2018 PISA survey found 56% of 15-year-olds worried about what others think when they fail. Punk taught that making a fool of yourself was practically a moral obligation. - 🎤 The Music Venue Trust says 30 grassroots venues closed permanently in 2025, and 175 British towns and cities no longer get regular touring shows. - 💡 Takeaway: the real loss is the impulse to go out and take risks. The world “could do with a few more terrible bands.” [Read More](https://www.spiked-online.com/2026/10/14/where-have-all-the-bands-gone/?ref=goodoil.news) --- ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/08-ten192.jpg) ## 8\. The wretched men of safety and the demise of the West *Jason Thomas - The Spectator Australia* - ⚔️ Thomas opens with Xenophon in 401 BC: those whose one aim is to keep alive “usually find a wretched and dishonourable death”. - 🐂 An Arabic parable of three bulls divided by a lion’s whispers illustrates the strategy he says is being used against the West, and Australia. - 🕌 He says Australian authorities fund a Melbourne cleric alleged to have had the FlyDubai hijacker pilot as a congregant, while an estimated $300 million has gone on pursuing SAS soldiers. - 🌍 In 2014 the UAE Foreign Minister warned that more Islamist radicals would emerge from the West than anywhere else. “He was right.” - 🎖️ At the Australian War Memorial, marking 25 years since Australia’s Afghanistan service, Ben Roberts-Smith laid a wreath while the politicians who pursued him sat and clapped. - 🏫 He warns Islamist networks are gaining influence in mosques, schools, universities and politics, and children are chanting “globalise the intifada”. - 🇬🇧 He sees the UK as the best example of a Western nation on the cusp of being lost, and soon an unreliable Aukus partner. - 🦁 The gravest threat is erosion from within, he argues, not tanks from China. - 💡 Takeaway: a nation that chooses safety over courage will, as Xenophon warned, “find only a wretched and dishonourable end.” [Read More](https://www.spectator.com.au/2026/10/the-wretched-men-of-safety-and-the-demise-of-the-west/?ref=goodoil.news) --- ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/09-ten192.jpg) ## 9\. Greta Thunberg is a protest addict *Gareth Roberts - The Spectator Australia* - 🇫🇷 Greta Thunberg turned up outside a school in Saint-Denis, Paris, telling the crowd: “Our future is being robbed away from us!” - 🎬 Roberts notes few child stars sustain an adult career, and at 23 the “How dare you!” UN speech of 2019 must seem geological epochs ago. - 🙏 Back then, he says, anyone who questioned her was met with howls: what kind of monster would attack the sacred child? - 🏍️ He expected her to grow up into either a Hayek fan on a smoking Harley or a bog standard adult activist. “Sadly, the latter turns out to be the case.” - 🤒 His diagnosis is “demo-itis”: presenting yourself at any ruckus for any cause. - ⚡ He cites Just Stop Oil co-founder Indigo Rumbelow on her first mass action: “You have an adrenaline rush like you have never felt before.” - 📖 None of this is new, he says, comparing it to medieval dancing manias and children’s crusades as described in Norman Cohn’s The Pursuit of the Millennium. - 💡 Takeaway: her causes grow more prosaic, from the end of the world to Palestine to French school upholstery. “Potholes?” [Read More](https://www.spectator.com.au/2026/10/greta-thunberg-is-a-protest-addict/?ref=goodoil.news) --- ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/10-ten192.jpg) ## 10\. Biden Administration Pushed Banks To Target Conservative And Religious Groups, Report Finds *Brecca Stoll - The Daily Wire* - 🏦 The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency examined nearly 100,000 complaints and about 420,000 pages of documents from nine major banks. - ⚠️ It found the banks denied service to customers whose political or religious affiliations posed “reputation risk”. - 🕵️ The Daily Wire traces federal debanking to Obama’s 2013 Operation Choke Point, followed by a Biden-era “Operation Choke Point 2.0”. - 📺 PNC refused a media company a line of credit in 2021 over its owners’ views, which an employee said were “very contrary to PNC’s beliefs/values”. - ✝️ TD Bank flagged a Christian health care sharing ministry whose “moral and religious requirements” appeared “to conflict with TD’s values of diversity and inclusion”. - 🔫 Wells Fargo staff noted that “Under the Biden administration, banks could face greater supervisory pressure” over firearms lending, and declined the business, citing a lack of revenue. - 🛍️ A JPMorgan-owned payment firm closed a pro-Trump merchant’s account in 2021\. JPMorgan says that process “did not meet its expectations” and the business no longer operates. - 🔄 All nine banks say they have changed policy, but the OCC is “unable to say with confidence” they will not return to the practices. - 💡 Takeaway: Republican lawmakers cheered the report, with Rep. Andy Barr saying “No law-abiding American should be debanked for their beliefs.” [Read More](https://www.dailywire.com/news/countless-maga-religious-groups-were-debanked-during-biden-administration-explosive-report-finds?ref=goodoil.news) --- ## What our members are saying about Ten@10 **Elizabeth** These articles are compulsory reading for me and the perfect addition to the usual list of Goodoil items! **Lynne** Absolutely brilliant to receive these current and thought provoking articles. **Jonathan** Just wanted to let you know that I’m loving this new 10@10\. Much appreciated from someone who chooses to read/watch almost NO mainstream media. **Murray** Cam, relish your output as the newspaper in Christchurch is so intent on non news. Thankyou **Fred** Thanks for Ten @ Ten, really enjoy reading it.Keep it up. All the best, keep healthy. **Jocko** Wonderful info not otherwise available in NZ. More power to your elbow! Thanks. ### From the Sensible Sentencing Trust URL: https://goodoil.news/from-the-sensible-sentencing-trust/ Last updated: 2026-10-15T20:29:59.000Z [**Penny Marie**](https://pennymarie.substack.com/p/green-party-and-te-pati-maori-cosy) *NZ-based independent investigative reporter, researcher, writer, coach, truth seeker. Founder of Let Kids Be Kids NZ.* > **The Sensible Sentencing Trust is expressing absolute outrage, disgust, and disbelief following shocking revelations that Green Party and Te Pāti Māori representatives have been** [**actively campaigning**](https://www.stuff.co.nz/politics/361046412/greens-and-te-pati-maori-catch-mongrel-mob-campaign-trail?ref=goodoil.news) **at the gang pad of Mongrel Mob leader Harry Tam.** This is not just bad judgment – it is a slap in the face to every victim of violent crime, every grieving family, and every hard-working New Zealander who has suffered at the hands of organised crime. National Spokesperson, Louise Parsons said: “This grotesque display tells New Zealanders everything they need to know about where these political parties truly stand. While law-abiding Kiwis are crying out for safer streets, these politicians are kneeling at the feet of gang leaders who build their empires on intimidation, drug distribution, and brutal violence.” The trust warns that a future **Labour-Greens-Te Pāti Māori-TOP** coalition would completely dismantle hard-won law and order measures, hand control back to criminal syndicates, and actively reverse the progress made to protect local communities: - **Scrapping the Gang Patch Ban:** They will rip up National’s ban on gang patches, allowing violent gang members to march through our shopping centres and neighbourhoods completely unchecked. - **Funding Criminal Enterprises:** They will reopen the taxpayer piggy bank for gang-affiliated organisations – just like Labour did when they funnelled millions of dollars directly into the hands of the Mongrel Mob under the guise of ‘rehabilitation’. - **Guttering Police and Victim Support:** They will strip away penalties for offenders and weaken our police force, sacrificing community safety on the altar of soft-on-crime ideology. Even former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern was forced to admit that focus in the police portfolio was lost when Labour was caught handing millions of taxpayer dollars to criminal mobs. Yet, Chris Hipkins and his prospective coalition partners have learnt absolutely nothing. They are ready to sacrifice public safety once again to appease gang leadership. ### **The reality on our streets speaks for itself:** Law and order measures work. Violent crime victim numbers are dropping, Auckland ram raids have plummeted by 96 per cent since 2022, and visible police presence is bringing accountability back to our suburbs. “A nation that lets gang bosses dictate law and order policy is a nation in total collapse. Kiwis deserve to feel safe in their homes, businesses, and parks. We cannot allow Harry Tam, the Mongrel Mob, or their political enablers to run this country,” concluded Parsons. The [Sensible Sentencing Trust](https://www.sst.nz/?ref=goodoil.news) is calling on every New Zealander to reject this dangerous descent into lawlessness and vote to ensure criminals belong behind bars – not setting the agenda for parliament. This article was published by [pennymarie.nz](https://pennymarie.substack.com/p/green-party-and-te-pati-maori-cosy). ### “So Much for Libertarianism” – Swarbrick URL: https://goodoil.news/so-much-for-libertarianism-swarbrick/ Last updated: 2026-10-15T20:15:00.000Z Her plan to steal an average of $119,316 from each New Zealand household is the most disgusting assault on individual freedom in the 2026 election campaign, so I doubt we will hear a single squeak about the freedom of individuals to defend themselves from her. _This post is for paying subscribers only._ ### The Preaching That Will Empty Our Wallets URL: https://goodoil.news/the-preaching-that-will-empty-our-wallets/ Last updated: 2026-10-15T19:59:59.000Z **LilBaP** New Zealand emits about 0.17 per cent of the world’s greenhouse gases – a number that does not even register on the first line of any serious global chart or standard measurement device. Opportunity and the Greens have decided this is the emergency that requires us to tax the cow, ban the coal, fund another five-billion dollars in resilience and lecture the people who actually produce the exports. The planet will not notice. Go to both the Opportunity Party and Green Party websites and read their climate and energy policies for yourself. The targets, the funds and the timelines are written in plain language. New Zealand’s share of global emissions is smaller than the rounding error on China’s annual increase, yet these parties want us to price ourselves out of the export markets that pay the bills. These are university seminar people. Most of them have never signed a personal guarantee, never met a wage bill that had to be paid, never watched a milk tanker leave the yard and calculated whether the margin still covered the power bill after the latest price rise. They have written papers, sat on panels and learned that ‘climate credibility’ is a moral category, rather than a cost that lands on someone else’s balance sheet. That is the gap. They treat energy as a problem to be constrained, while the people who run the plants, the farms and the freezers treat it as the thing that keeps the lights on, people working and the product moving. Opportunity’s climate plan is a methane-trading scheme or levy, a $5 billion climate resilience fund, a $1 billion transition pot for the factories still using gas and an ETS rewrite that treats forestry offsets as the enemy rather than the current accounting device. The Greens want fossil fuels gone by 2035, a new publicly owned power company called Kiwipower and an economy that no longer grows if growth means emissions. Both parties sell the package as money saving or revenue positive. In a nutshell they want to be world leaders in climate change policy – the very change that the planet, atmosphere and sun will decide, not a policy displayed on a website. A $5 billion fund financed by the same people who already pay some of the highest power prices does not make the lights cheaper or the exports more competitive. Alex Epstein’s energy talking points are not complicated, which is why the seminar class finds them inconvenient. Reliable, affordable energy is what lets people eat, work and stay warm. Societies that restrict fossil fuels before they have something else that actually works, like nuclear, do not become cleaner – they become poorer. There is plenty of evidence: just look at the countries that do not have an abundant supply of fossil fuels and energy. New Zealand already has some of the highest electricity prices relative to income in the developed world. Adding another layer of constraints on the fuels that still run the dairy plant, the freezing works, the mill and the night shift does not alter global concentrations by a measurable amount. It raises the price of the product that leaves the country. The seminar class calls this ‘leading the world’. The people who pay the bill call it the next cost that has to be passed on or absorbed until the firm stops expanding. Wind and solar can light a house, boil the kettle and charge an EV when the weather cooperates. They do not run a freezing works, a mill or a dairy plant through the night or a cloudy week. The seminar class treats intermittency as a minor engineering detail – it is not. Industry treats it as the reason the night shift stops. To lead the world on 0.17 per cent of emissions means pricing New Zealand farmers and manufacturers out of markets that buy their product. Elitists from suburbia should go visit a farm or factory that makes something they use – they may get a surprise. The urgency rests on forecasts that have already missed several times over. The first climate change fear porn I heard was in the late 1970s with Leonard Nimoy of *Star Trek* fame telling the world we are heading for the next ice age within a few decades. Then within a few decades we had Al Gore’s promise of an ice-free Arctic summer within decades, which also has not arrived. Later deadlines from researchers and media over the years have also passed with millions of square kilometres of ice still there. September sea ice area has shown no statistically significant decline since 2005\. The predictions were treated as settled science when they justified the next target and the next fund. The misses are treated as weather when the next target is written. That is not a basis for loading permanent costs onto a small trading economy that lives on agricultural exports. It is a basis for writing another policy paper under the disguise of taking more from your wallet. Do failed climate forecasts since the 1970s justify higher costs for New Zealand farms in 2026? Agriculture remains the largest earner of foreign exchange. Pricing methane harder, restricting the offsets that currently keep the ETS numbers presentable and accelerating the exit from coal and gas raises the cost of the very output that pays for the imports, the fuel and the interest on the debt. Opportunity’s funds are financed by the same energy users and taxpayers. The Greens’ public ownership simply moves the capital cost and the dry-year risk onto the Crown. Neither changes the global temperature by a measurable amount. Both shrink the capacity of the export sector to pay the higher bills by a significant amount. The seminar class does not see the wage bill: it sees the emissions inventory – an illusion of the virtuous. Apparently power arrives through the three-pin plug and food arrives through the supermarket aisle. The farm, the plant and the milk tanker are treated as an inconvenience to the policy. The producers downline – the people who actually grow the food, process the milk and keep the freezers running – are framed as the problem to be constrained rather than the foundation that lets the rest of the country eat and export. When the policy raises their costs, the seminar response is that they should simply adapt or exit. That is not a transition: it is the assumption that the people who fill the shelves will keep doing so while being told their work is the obstacle. Taxing the sector that earns the foreign exchange does not reduce global emissions; it reduces New Zealand’s ability to pay for the things it cannot produce. China and India, our free trade partners, are not obliging in their emissions reductions – so are Opportunity and the Greens going to censor them? No, they will only censor you. Wealth taxes, land-value taxes, higher company rates and expanded carbon pricing are presented as the revenue that will fund the transition. In a small open economy the base moves. Farms reduce stock or exit. Firms delay the next machine because the after-tax return no longer justifies the risk. High earners restructure or leave. The models assume hours, sales and capital stay put. They don’t. The result is a smaller tax base and a longer list of promises. Earlier climate spending has already followed the pattern: large headline figures, modest measured reductions and fresh demands for more. The seminar class calls the shortfall a failure of ambition. What happens when politicians don’t get the tax-take they expected because of less production? They double down. New Zealand can clean up local pollution and improve efficiency where the costs are justified and the engineering works, no argument on that. Treating 0.17 per cent of global emissions as a moral emergency requiring permanent higher energy costs, agricultural constraints and new public funds is something else. It is an ideology that treats human prosperity as the problem and then acts surprised when the till is empty. Policies written by people who have never met a wage bill are paid for by the people who have – until those people can no longer pay. But for all the virtuous people out there who disagree, the next time you pick up your phone, open your laptop, charge your EV or reach for your make-up, remember that every one of those things still depends on the fossil fuels and industrial processes you want to price out of existence for everyone else. Funny how those products get a free pass while the producers who make them possible do not. ### Leftist Attempts to Redeem a Monster URL: https://goodoil.news/leftist-attempts-to-redeem-a-monster/ Last updated: 2026-10-15T19:29:59.000Z [**John McLean**](https://mcleanj.substack.com/p/devil-tamihere) *Citizen typist patriot* Earlier this year, New Zealand’s Supreme Court quashed David Wayne Tamihere’s 1990 convictions for murdering Swedish tourists Sven Urban Höglin and Heidi Birgitta Paakkonen. About six months later, on 7 October, New Zealand’s current Solicitor-General, King’s Counsel Anna Adams, decided not to put Tamihere on trial again for murdering the brutally unlucky couple. The Sol-Gen concluded that, with the passage of time and turns of events, there is no longer enough evidence to make re-laid murder charges against Tamihere “stick”. ![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!xijJ!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F8d057738-ff29-4c85-aece-94c358a6fd1b_227x317.png) I’m torn about whether Tamihere should’ve been put on trial again. On the one hand, he’s served his original sentence for the murders and, in practice, retrying him would simply waste millions more dollars of taxpayers’ money, with no prospect of him spending any more time in prison. On the other hand, there can be no genuine doubt that he murdered the tourists and for this terrible and terrifying man to be walking ‘innocent’ among us is an affront to decent society. Faced with incontrovertible evidence, David Tamihere had to admit at his murder trial – while maintaining his innocence in connection with the murders of Urban and Heidi – that he stole the couple’s vehicle and sold or gave away their worldly possessions. Under New Zealand criminal law, juries are almost never allowed to know a defendant’s criminal history. In Tamihere’s murder trial, in which he pleaded not guilty, the jury convicted him without knowing of his frightful and frightening ‘form’. Tamihere has a criminal record as long as an arm, including the following… In 1972, as an 18-year-old, Tamihere killed 23-year-old Mary Barcham. He crushed her skull by bludgeoning her head with a rifle. Somehow – God knows how – DW Tamihere managed to avoid a murder conviction and was convicted of the lesser crime of manslaughter. ![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!kGci!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ffaf59153-e410-433a-b626-771ded7169d0_297x322.png) In April 1986, Tamihere invaded an Auckland house and raped a 47-year-old woman. He was arrested in May 1989 and, after pleading guilty, was bizarrely freed on bail pending sentencing. Bailed, Tamihere immediately absconded into the Coromandel bush, in the vicinity where the Swedes were murdered in 1990. Ever since his arrest for murdering the Swedish tourists, Tamihere has protested his innocence and tried to clear his name. Despite his protestations, in July 2024 New Zealand’s Court of Appeal was satisfied beyond reasonable doubt of Tamihere’s guilt and upheld his convictions. Undeterred, and continuing to tap vast sums of taxpayer funded legal aid, Tamihere took his crusade to the rarefied, raceified ivory tower that is New Zealand’s Supreme Court. And as indicated, our Supreme Court eagerly sprang to Tamihere’s aid, quashing his convictions. ![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!XGjv!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff5f28b99-4192-4064-a93e-a580ef7fa97b_596x389.png) Tamihere’s determination to clear his name, despite his beyond-reasonable-doubt guilt, may have become motivated by a sincere – albeit utterly false – belief in his own innocence. Over time, criminal sociopaths such as Tamihere often reconstruct their memories in ways that generate an acceptable self-image and come to believe a false version of events that excludes their responsibility. Through a mixture of memory reconstruction, self-justification and repeated retelling of alternative explanations, Tamihere has quite possibly generated steadfast false beliefs denying his heinous crimes. (David Bain is in a similar boat.) However, my interest is less in Tamihere’s psychology and more in the societal and institutional forces that have helped create his specious redemption story. The awful reality is that the Supreme Court, deeply steeped in postmodernist Critical Race Theory and two-tier justice, was quite possibly swayed to overturn the Court of Appeal and quash David Tamihere’s murder convictions by his Māori ancestry. (The father of David and his brother John Tamihere was of Māori descent; their mother was Irish Catholic.) I’ve covered Brother John before: [JOHN TAMIHERE’S MĀORI PARTY MACHINATIONS](https://mcleanj.substack.com/p/john-tamiheres-maori-party-machinations) [John McLean](https://substack.com/profile/150118186-john-mclean?ref=goodoil.news) 4 December 2024 ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/image-5.png) John Tamihere is a complex man who conducts tricky business. He’s Suzerain of his complicated extended family, the Waipareira Trust and Māori Party. He and his operatives and acolytes do a self-servicing disservice to the majority of Māori, and generally give Māori a bad name. [Read full story](https://mcleanj.substack.com/p/john-tamiheres-maori-party-machinations) New Zealand’s Supreme Court Justices are full converts to the inversion of Wrongdoing and Victimhood that is central to Wokery. ![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!9D_w!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ffab56062-5b6e-40c2-88e5-de1c0d8073ca_393x527.png) Chiming in on the David Tamihere Redemption Song is New Zealand’s mainstream media. **Stuff**’s Saturday 10 October edition of the ***POST*** celebratedDavid Tamihereas a benign avuncular victim of New Zealand’s justice system, rather than what he is – a psychotic career criminal. The Teflon Tamihere boys continue on their merry ways. This mental mentality of sympathizing with atrocious, pathological evildoers is far from indigenous to New Zealand. It blights Western World Wokery. Take, as just one example, a true American Psycho, Christa Pike. ![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!wpYJ!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fd2dda90a-6ce5-49c5-aa0d-c86a3735d8c2_502x312.png) Pike was an 18-year-old student in Tennessee when she brutally murdered her 19-year-old classmate, Colleen Slemmer, in 1995\. It’s said Pike developed a deranged belief that Colleen was interested in her boyfriend and gleefully blabbed her intention to kill Colleen. True to her word, Pike lured Colleen to a secluded forest, accompanied by Pike’s boyfriend and another student. The gruesome and ghoulish attack on Colleen lasted almost an hour. She was mercilessly beaten, kicked, cut and tortured. Pike, armed with box cutter and meat cleaver, did most of the satanic work, including carving a pentagram into Colleen’s chest. Eventually, Pike finished Colleen off by crushing her skull with a chunk of asphalt. The She Devil souvenired a section of Colleen’s skull, which she brazenly showed other students. Psycho Pike was rapidly arrested and sentenced to death. However, she’s been permitted to protest her sentence through the courts for three decades. Throughout that protracted period, Pike’s series of lawyers and hordes of supporters, including United Nations special rapporteurs (“special” people indeed), have bleated that Pike was not truly responsible for her actions and shouldn’t be executed. They’ve alleged she’d had a bad upbringing and suffers mental health issues (oh, really?!) and should therefore be excused. Tennessee authorities have recently botched her execution by lethal injections. She lives on. ![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!XiUB!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F2130a8ea-4f35-4f7c-9aab-5599063db343_431x352.png) Pig hunters discovered Sven Urban Höglin’s corpse about two years after he was killed. The extent of decomposition made it impossible to tell how he was killed or what atrocities were inflicted upon him before he died. Heidi Paakkonen’s remains have never been found. It’s impossible to imagine the horrors they endured before their killer dispatched them. Or what Mary Barcham’s last thoughts were before David Wayne Tamihere stoved her head in. This article was originally published on the [author’s Substack](https://mcleanj.substack.com/p/devil-tamihere). ### Quick Hit: Stuff Checked Labour’s $6,000 Bill and Found the Credits Missing URL: https://goodoil.news/quick-hit-stuff-checked-labours-6000-bill/ Last updated: 2026-10-15T19:29:59.000Z Stuff fact-checked Labour’s “Cost of Luxon” line by line. Some numbers hold, rates come in at about half and the document counts every cost while leaving out tax cuts, mortgage savings and FamilyBoost. Chris Hipkins admits it “does not account for changes in income”. _This post is for subscribers on the VIP tier only._ ### Both Chrises Earned Their 20s, and Luxon Is Following Bill English Out the Door URL: https://goodoil.news/both-chrises-earned-their-twenties/ Last updated: 2026-10-15T19:00:00.000Z Labour and National on 28 per cent each, a debate of recycled lines and a prime minister who got the minimum wage wrong on live television. Wong says it looks like Labour. Electorate vote National, party vote ACT or NZ First. _This post is for paying subscribers only._ ### Good Oil General Debate URL: https://goodoil.news/good-oil-general-debate-850/ Last updated: 2026-10-15T18:00:00.000Z Good morning, welcome to our daily General Debate. Our evening General debate is called Backchat and will start at 6 pm. On General debate, you are encouraged as a commenter to share your own stories, discuss other news, bring NEW news, catch up with friends or make new friends with other commenters. To participate you’ll need to sign up for a [Disqus account](https://disqus.com/profile/signup/intent/?ref=goodoil.news) which is free, quick, and easy. All you need is an email address to register a username that suits you. 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Please be respectful and do not make demands. ### Face of the Day URL: https://goodoil.news/face-of-the-day-1604/ Last updated: 2026-10-15T17:29:59.000Z > A bank denying an 84-year-old man’s request to withdraw cash over the counter has brought on a rebuke from NZ First leader Winston Peters. > > [Allistair Meikle had been a loyal customer ](https://www.stuff.co.nz/nz-news/361046333/84-year-old-denied-cash-withdrawal-bank-he-has-been-70-years?ref=goodoil.news)of his bank since the tender age of 15\. Late last month, he walked into the SBS Bank on Main St in Gore and asked if he could withdraw some cash from his account. > > That request was declined because the bank no longer offered cash services. A staff member informed him: “We no longer do that now.” > > Meikle was referred to a nearby ATM. > > Stuff [Read More](https://www.stuff.co.nz/nz-news/361046888/84-year-old-denied-cash-withdrawal-bank-he-has-been-70-years?ref=goodoil.news) ### The Good Oil Word of the Day URL: https://goodoil.news/the-good-oil-word-of-the-day-789/ Last updated: 2026-10-15T17:15:00.000Z The word for today is… doldrums (plural noun) - 1: a spell of listlessness or despondency 2 *often Doldrums oceanography* : a part of the ocean near the equator abounding in calms (see calm entry 1 sense 1b), squalls, and light shifting winds 3: a state or period of inactivity, stagnation, or slump Source : [Merriam-Webster](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/doldrums?ref=goodoil.news) Etymology : Almost everyone gets the doldrums—a feeling of low spirits and lack of energy—every once in a while. The doldrums experienced by sailors, however, are usually of a different variety. In the early-19th century, the word once reserved for a feeling of despondency came to be applied to certain tropical regions of the ocean marked by the absence of strong winds. Sailing vessels, reliant on wind propulsion, struggled to make headway in these regions, leading to long, arduous journeys. The exact etymology of doldrums is not certain, though it is believed to be related to the Old English dol, meaning "foolish"—a history it shares with our adjective dull. ***If you enjoyed this Good Oil word of the day please consider sharing it with your friends and, especially, your children.*** ### The Good Oil Daily Bible Verse URL: https://goodoil.news/the-good-oil-daily-bible-verse-499/ Last updated: 2026-10-15T16:59:59.000Z [Luke 16](https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke%2016&version=KJV&ref=goodoil.news) **1** And he said also unto his disciples, There was a certain rich man, which had a steward; and the same was accused unto him that he had wasted his goods. ### Night Cap URL: https://goodoil.news/night-cap-757/ Last updated: 2026-10-15T08:00:00.000Z If you have a great Youtube, Rumble or Vimeo video to share send it to videos@goodoil.news [![CTA Image](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/01/cam-shirt2-1.png)](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) If you're loving this trusty, straight-up news on Kiwi politics and beyond, why not become a paid member, eh? Unlock exclusive yarns, podcasts, vids, and in-depth analysis—your support keeps independent journalism chugging along. Join today for just $5.00 per month and get the full good oil! [Learn more ](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) ### Tiny Home Thursday URL: https://goodoil.news/tiny-home-thursday-324/ Last updated: 2026-10-15T07:29:59.000Z If you have a great Youtube, Rumble or Vimeo video to share send it to videos@goodoil.news [![CTA Image](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/01/cam-shirt2-1.png)](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) If you're loving this trusty, straight-up news on Kiwi politics and beyond, why not become a paid member, eh? Unlock exclusive yarns, podcasts, vids, and in-depth analysis—your support keeps independent journalism chugging along. Join today for just $5.00 per month and get the full good oil! [Learn more ](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) ### Sean Plunket Reacts To Uneventful Minor Party Leaders Debate URL: https://goodoil.news/sean-plunket-reacts-to-uneventful-minor-party-leaders-debate/ Last updated: 2026-10-15T06:59:59.000Z If you have a great Youtube, Rumble or Vimeo video to share send it to videos@goodoil.news ### What The TVNZ/Verian Poll Really Says URL: https://goodoil.news/what-the-tvnz-verian-poll-really-says/ Last updated: 2026-10-15T06:29:59.000Z If you have a great Youtube, Rumble or Vimeo video to share send it to videos@goodoil.news [![CTA Image](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/01/cam-shirt2-1.png)](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) If you're loving this trusty, straight-up news on Kiwi politics and beyond, why not become a paid member, eh? Unlock exclusive yarns, podcasts, vids, and in-depth analysis—your support keeps independent journalism chugging along. Join today for just $5.00 per month and get the full good oil! [Learn more ](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) ### Former Judge On Whether The Live US Execution Should Be Barred In NZ URL: https://goodoil.news/former-judge-on-whether-the-live-us-execution-should-be-barred-in-nz/ Last updated: 2026-10-15T05:59:59.000Z If you have a great Youtube, Rumble or Vimeo video to share send it to videos@goodoil.news [![CTA Image](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/01/cam-shirt2-1.png)](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) If you're loving this trusty, straight-up news on Kiwi politics and beyond, why not become a paid member, eh? Unlock exclusive yarns, podcasts, vids, and in-depth analysis—your support keeps independent journalism chugging along. Join today for just $5.00 per month and get the full good oil! [Learn more ](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) ### The Good Oil Daily Roundup URL: https://goodoil.news/the-good-oil-daily-roundup-773/ Last updated: 2026-10-15T05:29:59.000Z [](https://photos.google.com/u/1/photo/AF1QipN7Zp7NKe4smdZA9nAYud8CjsgjsQ-Bn7QyMo53?ref=goodoil.news) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/C716E5CC-CE3A-4152-821C-A800B577960C_4_5005_c.jpeg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/048968BF-28C9-4448-AFF3-69F9E0117A6A_1_105_c.jpeg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/79334096-0110-41F5-926E-E306F707556A_1_105_c.jpeg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/228A424E-A3C7-4EA1-A792-A85D6ECB4B62.jpeg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/8FC4DAFC-E6D5-4284-903C-246A10F1B292.jpeg) ### Green candidate who called police ‘pigs’ joins Mongrel Mob hui URL: https://goodoil.news/green-candidate-who-called-police-pigs-joins-mongrel-mob-hui/ Last updated: 2026-10-15T19:38:27.000Z *Summarised by* [*Centrist*](https://centrist.nz/?ref=goodoil.news) **Te Pāti Māori MP Oriini Kaipara has defended visiting a Mongrel Mob pad run by Harry Tam south of Auckland alongside Green candidates Michel Mulipola and Hūhana Lyndon and fellow Te Pāti Māori MP Hana-Rāwhiti Maipi-Clarke, Stuff reports.** **Kaipara posted photographs and videos showing the candidates with patched gang members. She described the gathering as being about “the health and wellbeing of the Mob community”.** “Being present doesn’t mean endorsing everything. It means recognising that whānau do not stop being whānau because of a patch,” she said. Kaipara said she attended to discuss social issues, encourage voting and “challenge violence”. Green co-leader Marama Davidson defended the visit, saying: “We're not apologising.” “I have one simple question for these candidates. Did you ask any of the Mongrel Mob members you met what they did to get patched? Because their victims know,” National’s justice spokesperson Paul Goldsmith said. Labour leader Chris Hipkins also condemned the visit during the NZ Herald leaders’ debate: “No, I don’t condone it. I think it was a bad judgment.” He ruled out giving the Greens or Te Pāti Māori the police or corrections portfolios in a future government. Broadcaster Michael Laws [questioned](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCRAuoCfLEc&ref=goodoil.news) whether Hipkins could keep that promise in coalition negotiations, arguing that withholding ministerial portfolios would not prevent the Greens or Te Pāti Māori from influencing police and corrections policy. “That they don't have the portfolio assigned to one of them as a minister doesn't mean they won't have any less influence in policymaking in a cabinet that you might lead,” Laws said on The Platform. Davidson continued defending the meetings, describing engagement with the Mongrel Mob as “not a new thing”. “We’re proud, and we have done that year and year again,” she said. Davidson noted in an interview that the Greens would look at reversing the gang patch ban. **Editor’s note:** In April, Davidson defended Mulipola after posts surfaced showing him calling police “pigs”, ripping up the New Zealand flag and insulting a government minister. She said his candidacy brought different expectations: “As a Green candidate, he knows that we have a standard of approach and language”. Now that same candidate is attending a Mongrel Mob hui, and Davidson is unapologetic. Voters are entitled to ask what those promised standards mean in practice. Kaipara says attending does not amount to endorsement. Yet publishing friendly photographs with patched gang members creates a political message that deserves scrutiny. Goldsmith’s question brings victims back into that discussion. The parties have explained why they wanted to engage with gang members. What did they say to those members about the harm gangs cause—and what accountability did they demand? [**Read more at Stuff**](https://www.stuff.co.nz/politics/361046412/greens-and-te-pati-maori-catch-mongrel-mob-campaign-trail?ref=goodoil.news) *Re-published from the Centrist with permission* [Original article at The Centrist](https://centrist.nz/green-candidate-who-called-police-pigs-joins-mongrel-mob-hui-1792041081729?ref=goodoil.news) ### Greens open to giving taxpayer money to Mongrel Mob drug programmes URL: https://goodoil.news/greens-open-to-giving-taxpayer-money-to-mongrel-mob-drug-programmes/ Last updated: 2026-10-15T19:38:46.000Z *Summarised by* [*Centrist*](https://centrist.nz/?ref=goodoil.news) **Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson says her party is open to funding Mongrel Mob-linked drug rehabilitation programmes, despite the gang's involvement in the drug trade and violent crime, the NZ Herald reports.** Asked directly whether taxpayer money could go to the Mongrel Mob or its affiliates, Davidson replied: “We are open to funding what works, absolutely.” National's justice spokesman Paul Goldsmith called the proposal a “sick joke” and “a slap in the face for all the families in New Zealand struggling with meth addictions”. The controversy follows photographs of Green and Te Pāti Māori politicians smiling alongside patched Mongrel Mob members. Davidson defended the visits, saying the Greens would continue engaging with gang communities. It would not be the first time public money had gone to a gang-linked programme. In 2021, $2.75 million from the Proceeds of Crime Fund was allocated to a methamphetamine rehabilitation initiative developed by lifetime Mongrel Mob member Harry Tam, who appeared with politicians in photographs this week. ACT deputy Nicole McKee drew a distinction between rehabilitation and funding gang-linked organisations. “There's a world of difference between helping people beat addiction and handing taxpayer money to organisations run by gang figures,” she said. Labour leader Chris Hipkins also condemned the politicians' behaviour. “Gangs peddle misery,” he said. “They sell drugs into our communities that cause enormous harm.” Hipkins has ruled out giving the Greens the police or corrections portfolios in a future government, citing fundamental differences in their approach to gangs. **Editor's note:** Why should taxpayers pay gangs to help fix the drug problems gangs themselves help create? Who initiated these meetings? What was discussed privately? Have gang figures requested funding or policy commitments? Have politicians sought their electoral support? What assurances could ever prevent public funding from benefiting criminal operations? Davidson offered no specific evidence in the Herald interview establishing that a Mongrel Mob-linked programme would meet that standard. Hipkins may have ruled out giving the Greens control of police and corrections, but that does not exclude them from influencing those policies through coalition negotiations or Cabinet decisions. Exactly how much gang involvement would Hipkins tolerate in a coalition government? [**Read more at The NZ Herald**](https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/politics/election-2026-national-calls-out-greens-for-being-open-to-funding-mongrel-mob-to-address-drug-addiction/2V6CUBWN4RD6PBTFCHMPTN5INQ/?ref=goodoil.news) *Re-published from the Centrist with permission* [Original article at The Centrist](https://centrist.nz/greens-open-to-giving-taxpayer-money-to-mongrel-mob-drug-programmes-1792041077678?ref=goodoil.news) ### Nearly half of Kiwis believe they must leave NZ to get ahead financially URL: https://goodoil.news/nearly-half-of-kiwis-believe-they-must-leave-nz-to-get-ahead-financially/ Last updated: 2026-10-15T19:39:02.000Z *Summarised by* [*Centrist*](https://centrist.nz/?ref=goodoil.news) **Almost half of New Zealanders surveyed believe they need to leave the country to get ahead financially, up from 29% in 2020 to 48% in the latest University of Otago Consumer Lifestyles study.** **The finding comes as financial hardship increasingly affects middle-income New Zealanders, including university graduates, homeowners and full-time workers.** The proportion classified as “financial strugglers” has risen from 16.5% in 2020 to 27%, making them the largest group identified in the survey. Typically aged around 43, earning $51,000 to $75,000 and often carrying a mortgage, these respondents reported low satisfaction with their standard of living and future financial security. Researcher Leah Watkins said the cost-of-living crisis was affecting “a lot more people”, including those not traditionally associated with financial hardship. Across all respondents, 40% reported struggling to buy essentials, while 52% had gone without something to afford necessities. Watkins warned that financial insecurity was affecting more than spending habits. “You can see how that financial insecurity is not just affecting what people buy but it's affecting their outlook, their lifestyles in broader ways.” The findings raise wider questions about economic opportunity in New Zealand, particularly as the country continues to record substantial net departures of its own citizens. [**Read more at RNZ**](https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/personal-finance/1913516/middle-income-uni-degree-no-protection-from-financial-struggles-researchers?ref=goodoil.news) *Re-published from the Centrist with permission* [Original article at The Centrist](https://centrist.nz/nearly-half-of-kiwis-believe-they-must-leave-nz-to-get-ahead-financially-1792041074212?ref=goodoil.news) ### Population growth relies entirely on non-citizen migration as Kiwis keep leaving URL: https://goodoil.news/population-growth-relies-entirely-on-non-citizen-migration-as-kiwis-keep-leaving/ Last updated: 2026-10-15T19:39:17.000Z *Summarised by* [*Centrist*](https://centrist.nz/?ref=goodoil.news) **While overall net migration rose from 9,163 to 20,503, New Zealand is gaining population through international migration while losing more of its own citizens than it attracts back.** **According to the latest Stats NZ estimates, the country lost a net 38,249 New Zealand citizens while gaining 58,752 citizens of other countries, leaving an overall net migration gain of 20,503.** Writing for [interest.co.nz](http://interest.co.nz/?ref=goodoil.news), Greg Ninness reports that the number of New Zealand citizens leaving long-term “held steady, year-on-year, at just under 65,000”. The 64,822 departures were 64% above pre-pandemic levels in 2019, while just 26,574 New Zealand citizens returned. Ninness notes that the number returning “remains low by historical standards”, having fallen almost a third over the past decade. The annual net loss of New Zealand citizens is now approximately 14 times what it was a decade ago, rising from roughly 2,700 to 38,249. That loss was more than offset by immigration, with the largest net gains by citizenship coming from India (11,732), China (11,604) and the Philippines (8,205). [**Read more at** ](https://www.interest.co.nz/economy/140671/net-population-gain-migration-more-doubled-august-year-number-returning-nz-citizens?ref=goodoil.news)[**interest.co.nz**](http://interest.co.nz/?ref=goodoil.news) *Re-published from the Centrist with permission* [Original article at The Centrist](https://centrist.nz/population-growth-relies-entirely-on-non-citizen-migration-as-kiwis-keep-leaving-1792041070563?ref=goodoil.news) ### Police uncover hundreds of millions in money laundering through NZ construction industry URL: https://goodoil.news/police-uncover-hundreds-of-millions-in-money-laundering-through-nz-construction-industry/ Last updated: 2026-10-15T19:39:35.000Z *Summarised by* [*Centrist*](https://centrist.nz/?ref=goodoil.news) **Police have identified what Savage describes as a “marriage of convenience” between gangs seeking to launder criminal proceeds and construction contractors looking for cash to pay workers under the table.** “It’s a money-go-round,” Savage told Newsroom’s The Detail, explaining how criminal proceeds pass through construction businesses and emerge as apparently legitimate funds that can be used to purchase property or transferred overseas. Operation Scuba led to the conviction of Auckland accountant Khieng Chiv, who pleaded not guilty to laundering nearly $7.8 million in drug money. Investigators uncovered shell companies, the purchase of a $3.8 million home for a senior Comanchero member and two businesses in Ōrewa. Chiv received a prison sentence exceeding 10 years, described by Savage as the longest money-laundering sentence in New Zealand. The extent of the problem remains uncertain. “We don’t actually know the full scale,” Savage said. Industry organisations, including Master Builders, are promoting stronger contract auditing, worker verification and greater transparency around cash payments. Savage said the consequences extend beyond organised crime. “This is a huge economic problem as well.” Source: Newsroom, Amanda Gillies, The Detail, 15 October 2026. [**Read more at Newsroom**](https://www.nzherald.co.nz/lifestyle/cost-of-living-more-kiwis-struggle-to-afford-essentials-seek-cheapest-products/BLXINUWUXBHSLJRJQEEYOWEKCM/?ref=goodoil.news) *Re-published from the Centrist with permission* [Original article at The Centrist](https://centrist.nz/police-uncover-hundreds-of-millions-in-money-laundering-through-nz-construction-industry-1792041066721?ref=goodoil.news) ### Teaching Council should have barred child sex offender a decade earlier URL: https://goodoil.news/teaching-council-should-have-barred-child-sex-offender-a-decade-earlier/ Last updated: 2026-10-15T19:39:55.000Z *Summarised by* [*Centrist*](https://centrist.nz/?ref=goodoil.news) **The Teaching Council should have struck teacher Timothy Fisher off a decade before he was convicted of numerous indecency and sexual offences against children, most under 12, a report by Katherine Anderson KC has found.** Education Minister Erica Stanford said a “rotten culture” allowed Fisher to continue teaching despite multiple warning signs. She blamed excessive union influence and conflicts between representing teachers and regulating their conduct. Stanford has replaced elected governing members with ministerial appointees. “That is going to be key to shift that rotten culture out of the Teaching Council which frankly was infected by the unions,” she said. Stanford singled out NZEI president Ripeka Lessels, a former deputy chair and long-serving council member. “I'm not sure her position is tenable as head of the teaching union any more,” she said. However, NZEI pointed out that current chair Patrick Walsh, appointed by Stanford, also served on the council and its disciplinary tribunal during the period examined. *Re-published from the Centrist with permission* [Original article at The Centrist](https://centrist.nz/teaching-council-should-have-barred-child-sex-offender-a-decade-earlier-1792041061911?ref=goodoil.news) ### Where's the ice-free Arctic we were promised? URL: https://goodoil.news/wheres-the-ice-free-arctic-we-were-promised/ Last updated: 2026-10-15T19:40:16.000Z *Summarised by* [*Centrist*](https://centrist.nz/?ref=goodoil.news) **Predictions of imminent ice-free Arctic summers deserve more accountability from scientists, politicians and the media, argues science writer John O’Sullivan.** **O’Sullivan revisits forecasts publicised after the sharp sea-ice losses of 2007, including predictions suggesting summer ice could largely disappear during the following decade. He argues that their missed deadlines have received less attention than the original warnings.** He cites comparisons between early-October ice coverage in 2007 and 2026, alongside temperature observations from the high Arctic, to challenge claims of an accelerating collapse. However, his article also acknowledges the longer-term reduction in sea ice. “The long-term satellite record still shows substantial decline from the 1980s baseline,” he writes, noting that the remaining ice is generally younger and thinner. His central criticism concerns the confidence attached to short-term forecasts and the way those predictions were communicated. “When observations repeatedly diverge from the most alarming near-term projections, the rational response is humility and recalibration,” he writes. The distinction is between questioning particular forecasts and claiming Arctic ice has recovered to its historical levels. O’Sullivan himself accepts the substantial long-term decline. [**Read more at Principa Scientific**](https://principia-scientific.com/the-great-arctic-ice-meltdown-that-wasnt-comical-calamity-of-climate-prophecy/?ref=goodoil.news) *Re-published from the Centrist with permission* [Original article at The Centrist](https://centrist.nz/wheres-the-ice-free-arctic-we-were-promised-1792041057909?ref=goodoil.news) ### ACT would let landlords offset rental losses against other income URL: https://goodoil.news/act-would-let-landlords-offset-rental-losses-against-other-income/ Last updated: 2026-10-15T19:40:34.000Z *Summarised by* [*Centrist*](https://centrist.nz/?ref=goodoil.news) **ACT leader David Seymour wants to reverse Labour’s residential rental loss ring-fencing rules, allowing landlords to offset new losses against their other taxable income.** **The proposal would apply to losses incurred after the policy takes effect. Previously accumulated ring-fenced losses would remain under existing rules.** Seymour argues the change would bring residential landlords into line with sole traders and commercial property investors, improve cashflow and make repairs and further investment more affordable. “There’s no such thing as a tax on landlords that renters can safely ignore,” he said. Seymour linked higher rental costs to Labour’s tax policies. Labour attributes recent rent stabilisation to reduced demand as more people leave the country. ACT’s fiscal plan forecasts a revenue reduction of $264 million in the first year, rising to $303 million in year four. Seymour described the proposal as bringing deductions forward, but acknowledged that some losses might never be deducted under current rules. “So, we can’t say the policy has no fiscal cost,” he said. [**Read more at Stuff**](https://www.stuff.co.nz/politics/361046223/act-proposes-tax-change-so-landlords-can-offset-rental-losses?ref=goodoil.news) *Re-published from the Centrist with permission* [Original article at The Centrist](https://centrist.nz/act-would-let-landlords-offset-rental-losses-against-other-income-1792041054060?ref=goodoil.news) ### NZ First remains stronger than in 2023 and still potential kingmaker URL: https://goodoil.news/nz-first-remains-stronger-than-in-2023-and-still-potential-kingmaker/ Last updated: 2026-10-15T19:40:50.000Z *Summarised by* [*Centrist*](https://centrist.nz/?ref=goodoil.news) **NZ First’s polling support remains above its 2023 election result, and the party could again prove essential to forming a centre-right government, according to figures and coalition analysis reported by Reuters.** The news agency nevertheless frames Winston Peters’ campaign as evidence that overseas-style “culture-war” politics are struggling to gain traction in New Zealand. NZ First won 6.1% in 2023, reached 13.6% in an April poll and now sits at 9–10.6% in recent surveys cited in the report. Those figures show support below its polling peak, while remaining above its last election result. Tight polling means National will need NZ First and ACT for a chance to govern again. Peters has ruled out a coalition with Labour, although Opportunity’s emergence creates another potential kingmaker. “We are expressing how they think. That's why they're turning up,” Peters told Reuters. Analysts quoted in the article argue that New Zealand’s secular population and attitudes towards immigration limit the appeal of Peters’ cultural agenda. However, NZ First also campaigns on living costs, infrastructure and an interventionist economic programme. The report provides no issue-specific polling establishing whether its cultural positions are attracting voters or holding the party back. [**Read more at Reuters**](https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/new-zealand-first-pushes-culture-war-policies-analysts-warn-limited-appeal-2026-10-12/?utm%5Fsource=substack&utm%5Fmedium=email) *Re-published from the Centrist with permission* [Original article at The Centrist](https://centrist.nz/nz-first-remains-stronger-than-in-2023-and-still-potential-kingmaker-1792041050060?ref=goodoil.news) ### Wong courts centre-right voters but signals Labour deal as Luxon holds firm URL: https://goodoil.news/wong-courts-centre-right-voters-but-signals-labour-deal-as-luxon-holds-firm/ Last updated: 2026-10-15T19:41:09.000Z *Summarised by* [*Centrist*](https://centrist.nz/?ref=goodoil.news) **Opportunity leader Qiulae Wong is courting centre-right voters while acknowledging her party may end up negotiating with Labour, after Christopher Luxon again ruled out working with her.** The development adds a new dimension to TVNZ’s minor-party debate, which exposed coalition uncertainty and divisions over economic policy. Political commentator Liam Hehir said Wong was “constantly pitching at centre-right voters”, including those dissatisfied with National and considering a tactical vote for a centrist party. Opportunity's 8% support in the latest 1News Verian poll could make it decisive. The poll projected 58 seats for National, ACT and NZ First, three short of a majority, while Opportunity was projected to win 10. But on Thursday morning, Wong acknowledged Luxon's refusal to negotiate could leave Labour as her only viable option. “So that means it looks like we might be speaking to Labour, but ultimately we have got to see how the votes land,” Wong told Ryan Bridge Today. She said she would call Luxon to give him one last chance to reconsider. BNZ Business Breakfast presenter Mei Heron had earlier warned that Wong's flexibility could create uncertainty for businesses unsure which side Opportunity would support. The debate also exposed divisions between existing coalition partners. ACT's David Seymour advocated freezing the minimum wage, while Winston Peters wanted increases aligned with inflation. The Greens proposed gradually lifting it to the living wage. Luxon subsequently confirmed that ACT's proposed three-year wage freeze would not become government policy. Infometrics chief economist Brad Olsen also questioned how quickly proposals to break up supermarkets and electricity companies could deliver results, warning that legislation might initially produce further studies rather than immediate reform. Politicians were “very good at promising a lot”, Olsen said, but their ability to deliver quickly was “a whole lot more limited”. **Read more at** [**1News**](https://www.1news.co.nz/2026/10/14/which-leaders-stayed-on-message-at-the-multi-party-debate/?ref=goodoil.news) **|** [**Stuff**](https://www.stuff.co.nz/politics/361046241/nz-election-2026-live-updates-politics-campaign-news?ref=goodoil.news) *Re-published from the Centrist with permission* [Original article at The Centrist](https://centrist.nz/wong-courts-centre-right-voters-but-signals-labour-deal-as-luxon-holds-firm-1792041045737?ref=goodoil.news) ### Good Oil Backchat URL: https://goodoil.news/good-oil-backchat-851/ Last updated: 2026-10-15T05:00:00.000Z Good evening, welcome to **Backchat**. On Backchat, you are free to share your own stories, discuss other news or catch up with friends. To participate you’ll need to sign up for a [Disqus account ](https://disqus.com/profile/signup/intent/?ref=goodoil.news)which is free, quick, and easy. On posts that are not articles like this one, you do not have to stay ‘on topic’ but you do still need to follow our [commenting rules.](https://goodoil.news/commenting-and-moderation/) Please [read our rules ](https://www.goodoil.news/commenting-and-moderation/?ref=goodoil.news)before you start commenting on *The Good Oil* to avoid a temporary or permanent ban. NOTE: Moderation queries MUST be expressed VIA EMAIL and not by posting a comment. To check if your ban might have been caused by Disqus, or to ask for a banning decision to be reviewed, email the voluntary **helpdesk** @ [**goodoil.news**](https://goodoil.news/) with your Disqus username in the subject line. Please be respectful and do not make demands. ### The Rise of Socialism in America: Not Popular, but Not Shunned URL: https://goodoil.news/the-rise-of-socialism-in-america-not-popular-but-not-shunned/ Last updated: 2026-10-15T03:29:59.000Z [**Graham Noble**](https://www.libertynation.com/the-rise-of-socialism-in-america-not-popular-but-not-shunned/?ref=goodoil.news) *Chief political correspondent and humorist at LibertyNation.com.* In a sane world, there would be no need for anybody to conduct a poll asking voters whether they are concerned about socialist candidates running for public office because, in such a world, the percentage of people who say they are concerned would be 100\. Still, the most recent poll published on this issue holds both good news and bad. The good news is that most respondents to this latest poll were indeed concerned about the rise of socialism. The bad news is that a not insignificant minority were not terribly concerned or not at all concerned. ### **Concerns About Socialism by the Numbers** The [Center Square](https://www.thecentersquare.com/national/article%5F20a47cd4-b3f1-4e4d-84e1-2a278ba47c3d.html?ref=goodoil.news) Voters’ Voice poll surveyed 2,527 registered voters between Oct 5th and 7th, conducted by Noble Predictive Insights (no connection to this author). While 55 per cent of respondents expressed concern about democratic socialist candidates running for and winning public office, a staggering 37 per cent were not concerned. And just 35 per cent said they were very concerned. Of the 37 per cent who were not concerned, 17 per cent said they were not too concerned, and 20 per cent said they were not at all concerned. The survey sampled 1,136 Republicans, 1,171 Democrats, and 220 voters who describe themselves as independents, not leaning toward either party. America’s 1776 Declaration of Independence states that all people are endowed with the natural right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Socialism has not, at any time in any country, protected those rights. In fact, history has shown that life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are elusive if not impossible under a socialist regime. ### **The ‘Democracy’ Ruse** Advocates of socialism often attempt to soft-sell it by claiming loyalty to democracy. And that may account for Americans’ apparent [tolerant attitude](https://www.libertynation.com/new-poll-shows-americans-warming-to-socialism/?ref=goodoil.news) toward socialism. The so-called Democratic Socialists of America today regularly cite European countries as examples of how socialism works. What they omit, or perhaps don’t understand, is that in modern Western European countries, citizens have increasingly limited freedoms (particularly freedom of speech), are under widespread surveillance, are taxed to the eyeballs to pay for generous social welfare, and face the constant threat of physical violence as a result of virtually unchecked immigration – both legal and illegal – from Third World countries. None of those European countries, however, are fully socialist. They are, at least in theory, free-market democracies that just happen to have expansive and expensive social welfare programs. The current unrest in France proves that when the Democratic Socialists in America point to European countries as their model, they are not being honest. Their goal appears to go beyond anything that’s currently happening in Europe toward full-blown socialism. Apparently, the French rioters do not believe France’s left-leaning government is left-wing enough. The great irony of socialism is that it invariably creates the very society socialists claim to oppose: that is, an oligarchy in which a relatively small group of people control all the wealth and all the power, while the ordinary citizens line up all day to get their ration of food. This article was originally published by [Liberty Nation News](https://www.libertynation.com/the-rise-of-socialism-in-america-not-popular-but-not-shunned/?ref=goodoil.news). ### We Should Be More like Switzerland URL: https://goodoil.news/we-should-be-more-like-switzerland/ Last updated: 2026-10-15T02:59:59.000Z For too long, successive Australian governments, especially the Albanese government, have handed out Australian citizenship like McDonald’s giving away Happy Meal toys. The Albanese government have treated what ought to be a solemn undertaking with cavalier contempt, holding mass citizenship rallies (strangely, on the eve of an election) like Moonie mass weddings crossed with North Korean ‘We Love the Dear Leader’ rallies. Still, it’s hardly surprising that a shiftless government would treat Australian citizenship with such contempt, given how pathetically lax our laws are. Any foreigner can lob up and become a citizen after holding a permanent visa for just 12 months. As long as they haven’t buggered off back to whatever Third World cesspit they crawled out of for more than a full year out of the past four, they’re guaranteed a free ticket to the welfare train for life. An Indian or Chinese geriatric who’s never contributed a day’s work or a single cent to this country can latch onto the Aged Pension after just four years. One Nation are not only planning to slash immigration, especially the complete scams that are student migration and the chain-migration of the extended families of so-called ‘skilled migrants’, if elected they’ll make citizenship and welfare benefits a whole lot harder for foreign grifters to glom onto. > [Australia’s immigration system](https://www.onenation.org.au/putting-australians-first?ref=goodoil.news) is broken. One Nation is committed to fixing it with a strong, common-sense approach that prioritises Australians. Our policy includes capping annual arrivals, deporting illegals, enforcing an eight-year citizenship waiting period, reforming student visas, reinstating temporary protection visas, and withdrawing from the UN Refugee Convention. All of which is music to many Australians’ ears – but is it enough? Should Australia guard its citizenship as zealously as the Swiss? Switzerland is famously parsimonious with citizenship: globalist overlord **Klaus Schwab** has never gained Swiss citizenship, despite being born there and living there most of his life. So, what are the [requirements Switzerland places](https://lawsupport.ch/immigration/swiss-citizenship/?ref=goodoil.news) on would-be citizens? To begin with, the Swiss do not view a passport as a parting gift for anyone who happens to buy a condo in Zurich, or lobs up in Geneva claiming ‘asylum’. The timeline alone is enough to induce apoplexy in Canberra’s open-borders lobby: a mandatory 10-year legal residence requirement (though years spent between the ages of eight and 18 count double). The most recent three years, for adults, must be of continued and uninterrupted residence. No quick dashes home, or extended globe-trotting: you must plant your roots deep into Alpine soil. Then comes the small matter of actually mastering the local lingo. You cannot simply nod along and point at items in a supermarket while downloading welfare forms and ‘How Not to Rape’ pamphlets in your native tongue. Applicants must demonstrate robust linguistic proficiency in German, French, or Italian, depending on the canton. In fastidious enclaves like Zug, the standard is punishingly high: mere self-certification won’t wash with the burghers. You must pass accredited examinations proving you can converse fluently in the national tongue. Financial independence, a clean criminal ledger, and demonstrated respect for the Swiss legal order are, naturally, non-negotiable prerequisites. If you have ever leaned on state welfare or rubbed shoulders with the local constabulary for anything more serious than a parking ticket, you might as well pack your bags. But the true masterpiece of the Swiss system, the part that would give our Canberra bureaucracy an absolute collective aneurysm, is the three-tier approval process. An application must run the rigorous gauntlet at federal, cantonal, and communal levels. Rejection at any single hurdle terminates the entire enterprise. And it is the communal level, the *Gemeinde*, that truly separates the wheat from the chaff. Swiss citizenship is granted by the commune first. In many jurisdictions, this involves a rigorous local vetting process where your very neighbours and municipal officials examine whether you are genuinely embedded in local life. Do you participate in local associations? Do you know the baker? Are you recognised as a contributing member of the town? In some cantons, the communal decision is even put to a direct democratic vote of registered residents. Imagine introducing that sort of system to Sydney or Melbourne. The horror! Canberra’s administrative class would rather dissolve parliament than trust local communities to decide who gets to join the polity. Yet the Swiss understand a fundamental truth that our uniparty elites stubbornly refuse to acknowledge: a nation is not an airport lounge, and a passport is not a complimentary boarding pass handed out to any transient traveller who fills out a bureaucratic form. If we want to salvage what is left of our commonwealth, we could do worse than adopt a hefty dose of Swiss common sense. --- 💡 ****If you enjoyed this article please share it using the share buttons at the top or bottom of the article.** ### [The Good Oil] Stuff Up of the Day URL: https://goodoil.news/the-good-oil-stuff-up-of-the-day-191/ Last updated: 2026-10-15T02:00:00.000Z A newspaper is so short of news they have to report everything twice. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/Stuff-up-15-Oct--2-.png) ### Well, We Know Where His Priorities Lie URL: https://goodoil.news/well-we-know-where-his-priorities-lie/ Last updated: 2026-10-15T01:29:59.000Z **Anthony Albanese** has been caught out trying to pull off the political equivalent of marking his own homework: editing a letter sent to him by a parliamentary committee to – surprise, surprise! – parrot exactly the talking-points he wanted it to. > [Independent senator](https://www.theaustralian.com.au/breaking-news/prime-ministers-office-accused-of-heavily-vetting-ai-letter-to-albanese/news-story/0509f5d503925e9f8dce2c175bf43b09?ref=goodoil.news) **David Pocock** has accused the Prime Minister’s Office of “heavily” vetting a letter sent to Anthony Albanese from the parliamentary committee on artificial intelligence. > > The wide-ranging letter called for “robust safeguards to protect Australian data”, tweaks to copyright laws and more investment in data centres. Both of which just happen to be Albanese government policy. What a coincidence! > In the digital draft seen by NewsWire, a prime ministerial adviser has directed changes in comments on the document. > > The changes included rewording parts. > > “So this is meant to be a letter from the committee but clearly has been heavily vetted by the Prime Minister’s Office,” Senator Pocock told News24 on Tuesday. > > “I’m concerned that the major parties are working together to potentially get a preconceived outcome rather than actually listening to experts, listening to the community and saying … how do we genuinely work towards this as a country where we are actually preserving our sovereignty, where we’re doing what’s best for Australians over the long term.” He must be new around these here parts. Obviously editing committee letters to turn them into government-friendly Dorothy Dixers is taking up a lot of the PM’s time. He certainly doesn’t have any time or energy to spare for such footling stuff as a royal commission into antisemitism. Having been dragged kicking and scheming into establishing a royal commission he never wanted, Albanese is making damn sure neither he nor any member of his government is going to have anything to do with it. If you ever wanted proof that the Albanese government operates on pure, unadulterated cynicism, you need look no further than the FOI paper trail – or rather, the magnificent absence of one. Journalists lodged a freedom of information request seeking any submissions, preparatory briefs or notes made by the prime minister or his hive of courtiers ahead of the royal commission. The official bureaucratic reply from the Prime Minister’s Office was a dry little masterpiece: > [The PMO last week](https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/couldnt-be-bothered-foi-shows-anthony-albanese-made-no-submission-or-preparations-for-bondi-inquiry/news-story/1f1e507510015f6b23f227d6b111f679?ref=goodoil.news) advised “reasonable steps have been taken and no relevant documents have been identified”. None. Zero. Zilch. Not so much as a stray scribble on a paper napkin from the parliamentary dining room. Our fearless leader was so delightfully confident he would never be dragged into the witness box to answer uncomfortable questions that his staff did not even bother dusting off a keyboard. While former prime ministers like **Bob Hawke** and **John Howard** had the intestinal fortitude to face judicial scrutiny under royal commission powers, Albo preferred to pull the blankets firmly over his head and hope the whole tiresome spectacle simply goes away. > The coalition’s most senior Jewish MP **Julian Leeser** seized on the admission, saying it proved the prime minister “was so sure he wouldn’t be called as a witness that his office didn’t even bother preparing material for him” \[…\] > > “This is the royal commission the prime minister never wanted and couldn’t be bothered to participate in. In fact, the prime minister was so sure he wouldn’t be called as a witness that his office didn’t even bother preparing ­material for him. Well... yes. The government’s vaunted policy of ‘non-interference’ is merely a bureaucratic euphemism for sticking their fingers in their ears and humming loudly. When they weren’t completely ignoring the proceedings, government lawyers were busy making repeated bids for public interest immunity, attempting to bar commissioner **Virginia Bell** from laying eyes on sensitive cabinet papers detailing how counter-terrorism funding was whittled away to a shadow over the past five years. God forbid the public discover what the cabinet actually knew and when about the drying up of resources inside the intelligence apparatus. Ms Bell had to overrule those obstructionist manoeuvres herself just to inspect advice concerning commonwealth resource allocations and unredact chunks of ASIO boss **Mike Burgess**’s witness statement. Now we learn the commission is quietly scurrying behind locked doors for secret hearings into the security failures surrounding the horrific Bondi massacre, ensuring the public is kept at arm’s length while the clock ticks down toward its tight December deadline. Cabinet ministers escape cross-examination, the government dodges accountability and the prime minister carries on as if national security and social cohesion are mere matters of public relations management. When an administration spends its late nights frantically ghostwriting artificial intelligence committee letters to praise itself, but cannot summon five minutes to prepare a single scrap of evidence on the collapse of community safety, you know precisely where its priorities lie. --- 💡 ****If you enjoyed this article please share it using the share buttons at the top or bottom of the article.** ### The Pen and the Gun URL: https://goodoil.news/the-pen-and-the-gun/ Last updated: 2026-10-15T01:00:00.000Z [**Joe Abraham**](https://realclearwire.com/articles/2026/10/11/the%5Fpen%5Fand%5Fthe%5Fgun%5Fthe%5Fmoral%5Finversion%5Fof%5Faccountability%5F154579.html?ref=goodoil.news) *Joe Abraham is executive director of VOICE (Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement).* Something deeply troubling is happening in the way we talk about immigration enforcement. After an ICE operation in New York City, the rush to condemn the agent has been striking. Before the facts were fully established, Mayor Zohran Mamdani called the shooting an outrage, demanded an end to ICE enforcement in the city, and declared that ICE must be abolished. The use of force deserves scrutiny, but why are so many leaders so quick to condemn the agency before an investigation establishes what happened? What happened to due process? What happened to the presumption that allegations must be examined against evidence before conclusions are reached? Those principles should apply to everyone, including federal officers. Scrutiny is necessary. Presuming guilt before the facts are established is not accountability. The answer, in part, lies in the worldview that treats ICE not as a law enforcement agency carrying out laws enacted by the government, but as an inherently oppressive institution. When the starting assumption is that ICE is racist, illegitimate, or dangerous by definition, every encounter becomes evidence for a predetermined conclusion. The solution then becomes abolishing the agency, not examining the facts and correcting failures. We have seen a similar argument before. After George Floyd’s death, calls to defund or dismantle police departments gained national prominence. Now the target is immigration enforcement. But if ICE is abolished, what replaces it? If enforcement itself is the problem, what happens to a nation’s ability to control its borders and enforce its laws? And if the answer is simply that we no longer need those functions, who will accept responsibility for the consequences? No society can function safely without law enforcement or meaningful immigration control. The question is not whether these institutions should be accountable. They must be. The question is whether accountability means improving their performance or dismantling their ability to perform their essential functions. Unfortunately, we are becoming far too familiar with another disturbing escalation: vehicles weighing thousands of pounds being turned into weapons against law enforcement. According to the federal government’s account of the New York encounter, the driver used his vehicle in a manner that endangered officers. His choices and conduct matter, just as the agent’s decisions must be examined. We cannot demand accountability for one person while erasing the agency of another. I know something about this inversion because I have lived it. My daughter Katie was 20 years old when she was killed on the streets of Sanctuary Urbana, Illinois. The man who killed her was an intoxicated illegal immigrant who had previously been deported, unlawfully returned to the United States, used aliases and fraudulent documents, and obtained an Illinois driver’s license. Yet his history did not prevent him from getting behind the wheel intoxicated that night. Katie paid the ultimate price for a chain of failures that began long before he reached that intersection. I have watched the circumstances surrounding the person responsible for Katie’s death receive more contextualization than the life of the innocent young woman whose life was taken. Katie’s innocence should not require a qualifying paragraph before it can be acknowledged. That is the larger problem in our national conversation. We have created a one-sided ledger of compassion, and the imbalance is difficult to ignore. On one side, an individual with a history of illegalities and criminal conduct receives layers of context and explanation. On the other, an innocent young woman who did nothing wrong is reduced to the circumstances of her death. The very facts that should matter most, innocence on one side and responsibility on the other, seem to receive the least attention. When did compassion become something we allocate according to political usefulness? Why does acknowledging one person’s humanity increasingly seem to require diminishing someone else’s? There is another question we need to ask, and it requires us to look upstream. For years, federal immigration laws remained on the books while executive decisions and enforcement priorities changed how they were applied. The consequences of those choices did not remain in Washington. They reached communities, overwhelmed systems and, in cases like Katie’s, intersected with individual lives in devastating ways. If policymakers did not understand the consequences of weakening enforcement, that raises serious questions about their judgment and preparation. If they understood the risks and proceeded anyway, the questions about responsibility become even more pressing. Either way, consequences do not disappear because the people who made the decisions are no longer standing downstream. This is why I keep coming back to the same point: Everyone wants to examine the gun at the end of the chain. I want to examine the pen that wrote the policies upstream. That does not mean the gun should not be examined. It means it should not be the only thing examined. Intentions are written upstream, but consequences are lived downstream. Those consequences have names, families, empty bedrooms, and graves. Katie’s grave is a reminder that government decisions are not abstractions. The Katies of this country should not become collateral damage in a political argument over whose humanity deserves the most attention. Every victim matters. Every officer who puts themselves in harm’s way matters. And every policymaker should be willing to own the consequences of the choices they make. If we are going to demand accountability, we need the courage to follow the entire chain. Katie is the why. This article was originally published by RealClearPolitics and made available via [RealClearWire](https://realclearwire.com/articles/2026/10/11/the%5Fpen%5Fand%5Fthe%5Fgun%5Fthe%5Fmoral%5Finversion%5Fof%5Faccountability%5F154579.html?ref=goodoil.news). ### Taxes That Spark a Criminal Turf War URL: https://goodoil.news/taxes-that-spark-a-criminal-turf-war/ Last updated: 2026-10-15T00:29:59.000Z [**Jeffery L Degner**](https://thedailyeconomy.org/article/australias-tobacco-taxes-have-sparked-a-criminal-turf-war/?ref=goodoil.news) *Jeffery L Degner is a research fellow in economics and economic freedom.* In 1993, my home state of Michigan enacted the [Tobacco Products Tax Act](https://www.legislature.mi.gov/documents/mcl/pdf/mcl-205-421.pdf?ref=goodoil.news), which [raised taxes](https://www.mackinac.org/7151?ref=goodoil.news) on cigarette packs from 25 to 75 cents per pack. Those were the highest excise taxes [in the nation](https://www.michigan.gov/taxes/-/media/Project/Websites/treasury/CONV/Reports/99Cig.PDF?ref=goodoil.news) at that time. Michigan law still carries [stiff penalties](https://www.legislature.mi.gov/documents/mcl/pdf/mcl-205-428.pdf?ref=goodoil.news) for tax violations, and anyone holding a pack without a Michigan stamp is liable for the tax, plus a penalty of five times that amount. The smokers I knew back then started making late-night runs south of the border, to Indiana, where cartons were [taxed at half the rate](https://www.mackinac.org/S2008-12?ref=goodoil.news#us-cigarette-taxes) of the Great Lakes State. In a single, four-hour surveillance action, Michigan State Troopers recorded more than 180 Michigan-plated vehicles at just four Indiana party stores along [Interstate 69](https://www.mackinac.org/S2008-12?ref=goodoil.news). Indiana’s low-tax regime attracted the consumers in droves. Michiganders began voting with their feet, and the Hoosier State welcomed them with [open arms](https://www.mackinac.org/S2016-09?ref=goodoil.news). A similar story is unfolding in the Land Down Under. The Aussies face a nationwide tax intended to reduce the health concerns of smoking, and packs are now averaging between [A$40–$50](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-08-29/expensive-cigarettes-excise-black-market-tobacco/107076242?ref=goodoil.news) ($25–34 US). Each individual cigarette is [taxed A$1.52](https://tobaccoinsider.com/australia-tobacco-market/?ref=goodoil.news), and the price of the habit has smokers choking. Predictable second-order results are emerging. Underground markets supply packs for around [A$13](https://www.cis.org.au/publication/taxing-tobacco-into-illegality-how-split-responsibilities-and-high-excise-created-australias-tobacco-wars/?ref=goodoil.news): the price difference presents [huge profit opportunities](https://www.cis.org.au/publication/taxing-tobacco-into-illegality-how-split-responsibilities-and-high-excise-created-australias-tobacco-wars/?ref=goodoil.news) for smugglers. Markets expanded quickly, and when more competitors tried to enter, sellers turned on each other. Over [200 arson attacks](https://vicpolicenews.com.au/the-melbourne-tobacco-wars-explained/?ref=goodoil.news) have been instigated among competing groups as of February 2026, with the majority of the fires set in tobacco shops in [Melbourne](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-07-13/fiery-tobacco-wars-continue-in-melbourne-/106910724?ref=goodoil.news). Demand hasn’t disappeared (about [eight per cent](https://www.tobaccoinaustralia.org.au/chapter-1-prevalence/1-3-prevalence-of-smoking-adults?ref=goodoil.news) of Australian adults smoke, comparable to [US rates](https://hsph.harvard.edu/news/u-s-smoking-rate-hits-an-all-time-low-but-theres-still-work-to-do/?ref=goodoil.news)) so when prices [tripled over 10 years](https://www.abs.gov.au/articles/household-consumption-illicit-tobacco-and-nicotine-products?ref=goodoil.news), smokers simply sought out [illegal sellers](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/add.70428?ref=goodoil.news). Australia’s tobacco-related firebombing is a case study in prohibition policies. When governments tax a legal product highly enough, consumers seek out low-price alternatives. The tax policy was meant to end smoking, but has instead produced lower tax revenues. Rates of use have not declined. The Australian Bureau of Statistics more than [80 per cent](https://www.itec.gov.au/sites/default/files/2025-12/ITEC%5FCommissioner-Report%5F2024-25.pdf?ref=goodoil.news) of tobacco Aussies consume is now black market. Their [Border Force](https://www.abf.gov.au/about-us/what-we-do/illicit-tobacco-and-vapes?ref=goodoil.news) confiscated about 2.53 billion illicit cigarettes in FY 2025, as compared to 598 million in FY 2021, a remarkable 320 per cent increase. The Australian states received A$23.4 million to [police the trade](https://archive.budget.gov.au/2025-26/fbo/download/00%5Ffbo%5F2025-26.pdf?ref=goodoil.news). The tobacco excise tax raised A$16 billion [in 2020](https://www.2firsts.com/news/australian-tobacco-tax-revenue-plunges-as-illegal-cigarette-sales-soar?ref=goodoil.news), but took in just A$3.93 billion for [FY 2026](https://archive.budget.gov.au/2025-26/fbo/download/00%5Ffbo%5F2025-26.pdf?ref=goodoil.news). These revenues have [fallen](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-06-03/abs-estimates-80pc-of-tobacco-used-in-australia-illegal/106756000?ref=goodoil.news) as tax rates have risen. [Recent reports](https://aapnews.aap.com.au/news/up-in-smoke-budget-loses-8b-more-to-illicit-tobacco?ref=goodoil.news) expect tobacco tax revenue to decline by A$8 billion over five years. ![](https://thedailyeconomy.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/image-15.png) Source: [Center for Independent Studies](https://www.cis.org.au/publication/taxing-tobacco-into-illegality-how-split-responsibilities-and-high-excise-created-australias-tobacco-wars/?ref=goodoil.news) [Theo Foukkare](https://www.smartcompany.com.au/tax/tobacco-excise-cut-coalition-80-one-nation-convenience-stores-tax-revenue/?ref=goodoil.news) of the Australian Association of Convenience Stores, an industry group for the retailers losing legal cigarette sales, warns that without a repeal of the policy, there will be far less excise tax for the government to collect. Illicit sellers certainly won’t be filing tax returns either. Mark Thornton’s 1991 [*The Economics of Prohibition*](https://mises.org/library/book/economics-prohibition?ref=goodoil.news) anticipates these outcomes with remarkable detail. He portrays prohibition as a tax where enforcement creates risk for suppliers, and that risk raises prices, while cutting output. Thornton’s argument is that excise taxes and outright bans create similar incentive structures. Taxes can be used as [indirect prohibition](https://www.drugpolicyfacts.org/node/2478?ref=goodoil.news) and Thornton described the consequences of this approach. He pointed to [several economists](https://cdn.mises.org/economics%5Fof%5Fprohibition%5F3.pdf?ref=goodoil.news): > Johnson (1978) provides additional evidence that…unit taxes result in higher prices than predicted by the traditional model of taxation. Harris (1980) also recognizes that increasing the per-unit taxes on cigarettes leads to a substitution of high-potency cigarettes for low-potency cigarettes. Australian public health officials laud the new policy and report falling smoking rates as an important [success](https://vaping360.com/vape-news/australia-smoking-rate-record-low-illicit-tobacco/?ref=goodoil.news). What the health record doesn’t address is how the tax persuaded smokers to seek out cheaper alternatives from unscrupulous actors. A crime wave has been set off: [smuggling and money laundering](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39460655/?ref=goodoil.news) are rampant, and rival sellers have [firebombed over 220](https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20250330-australian-black-market-tobacco-sparks-firebombings-budget-hole?ref=goodoil.news) locations in attempts to eliminate their competition. Previous attempts to reduce smoking Down Under have included [plain packaging](https://www.health.gov.au/topics/smoking-vaping-and-tobacco/tobacco-control/plain-packaging?ref=goodoil.news), graphic health warnings, ingredient rules, age verification, and retail licensing, all of which have been applied to packaging. Four of five cigarettes smoked by Australians don’t have any of [these features](https://www.abs.gov.au/articles/household-consumption-illicit-tobacco-and-nicotine-products?ref=goodoil.news). Similar policies have been adopted to dissuade cigarette substitutes. Vapes were restricted to those acquiring [medical prescriptions](https://www.tga.gov.au/products/unapproved-therapeutic-goods/therapeutic-vaping-goods/vaping-hub/vapes-information-prescribers?ref=goodoil.news), and roughly 97 per cent of e-cigarettes sold in the country were sold through [illegal sources](https://clearingtheair.eu/en/post/australias-legal-nicotine-market-collapses-as-illicit-products-reach-80-per-cent-of-consumption/?ref=goodoil.news). That market alone is estimated to reach A$1.6 billion in total revenue and the regulations still persist. Officials govern a shrinking portion of the total trade: what ability they had to regulate tobacco products and their substitutes is going up in flames. The futility of these efforts to eliminate Aussies’ smoking habits is on full display. Sin and excise taxes have always been tools to try to squelch behaviors that governments deem undesirable. But good intentions can’t negate the laws of economics. While they have done little to move the needle on public health, these punitive taxes have birthed or propped up dangerous [criminal elements](https://reason.com/2026/06/05/australia-tried-to-tax-smoking-out-of-existence-now-80-of-tobacco-aussies-consume-is-from-the-black-market/?ref=goodoil.news). Salient parallels should give US policymakers reason to [take heed](https://www.mackinac.org/S2016-09?ref=goodoil.news). High-tax [states](https://www.wsj.com/articles/taxes-have-made-new-york-into-an-empire-of-cigarette-smuggling-avoidance-evasion-flavor-revenue-hochul-f2b11e15?ref=goodoil.news) have long been [exploited by smugglers](https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/state/cigarette-taxes-smuggling-state-2022/?ref=goodoil.news) to generate higher profits, while treasury [revenues dwindle](https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/state/cigarette-taxes-cigarette-smuggling-state/?ref=goodoil.news). Neighboring states that keep taxes low see their coffers expand, as those wishing to stay on the right side of the law [drive across](https://taxfoundation.org/blog/cigarette-smuggling-state-tax-revenue-loss/?ref=goodoil.news) borders for marginally [lower prices](https://www.mackinac.org/indiana-could-see-cigarette-smuggling-leap-with-excise-tax-increase?ref=goodoil.news). Australia, just like Michigan, couldn’t stop people from smoking, but in both cases, tax revenues collapsed. The pain is even worse in the Aussies’ case, as violent underground actors have responded to the incentives created by governing authorities. This article was originally published by the [American Institute for Economic Research](https://thedailyeconomy.org/article/australias-tobacco-taxes-have-sparked-a-criminal-turf-war/?ref=goodoil.news). ### He Didn’t Do It, Nobody Saw Him Do It, You Can’t Prove a Thing URL: https://goodoil.news/he-didnt-do-it-nobody-saw-him-do-it-you-cant-prove-a-thing/ Last updated: 2026-10-14T23:59:59.000Z It’s like something out of an old Looney Tunes cartoon: ‘He had a waterproof alibi’. The alibi being, of course, ‘I din’ do nuffin’! Duh, like I said, I din’ do nuffin’!’ The imam who runs the Islamic centre where [the Flydubai terrorist was reportedly radicalised](https://goodoil.news/do-we-believe-them-or-believe-them/) is rapidly paddling his little canoe up the river Denial. Never met him, he was never there, and, oh, I’ve always been about peace, you infidel dogs. > [Melbourne preacher](https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/false-accusations-melbourne-imam-samir-mohtadi-hits-out-over-terror-probe-into-centre/news-story/e64b93efec7bb92f4af7fe619efe1de0?ref=goodoil.news) **Samir ‘Abu Hamza’ Mohtadi** has claimed he has “consistently preached peace” and “unequivocally” rejects violence as he denied any connection with accused Flydubai co-pilot **Hamam al-Hammami**. “Consistently preached peace,” eh? You mean like this? > [“O Allah, grant victory](https://allisraelnews.com/flydubai-copilots-radicalization-linked-to-australia-imam-who-called-zionists-bloodsuckers?ref=goodoil.news) to our mujahideen in Palestine, strengthen their footing and grant them a clear victory.” And I guess he was just being ‘peaceful’ when he called Jews “bloodsucking human beings; they are scavengers. They are not human… may Palestine be cleansed of these filthy Zionist terrorists”? I’d hate to see him being radical, if this is his ‘peaceful’ side. And if his denials are so at odds with his public record on ‘peaceful’, what are we to make of the rest of his denials? One might almost feel a twinge of sympathy for the imam, were it not for his extensive catalogue of public pronouncements wishing pestilence upon the Zionist entity and describing human beings as bloodsucking scavengers. When the long arm of international counter-terrorism traces an attempted mid-air hijacking back to your modest little corner of Melbourne’s northern suburbs, issuing a wounded press release about administrative oversight feels somewhat akin to an arsonist complaining that the fire brigade tracked soot onto his freshly mopped hallway. In a formal statement released with all the indignant majesty of a misunderstood prince, Mr Mohtadi sought to distance himself from the Omani co-pilot whose aviation career took a decidedly terminal turn over the Middle East. > [“I (Abu Hamza)](https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/false-accusations-melbourne-imam-samir-mohtadi-hits-out-over-terror-probe-into-centre/news-story/e64b93efec7bb92f4af7fe619efe1de0?ref=goodoil.news) strongly reject recent media reports suggesting any connection between myself, Multicultural Youth Centre and the co-pilot, Al-Hammami,” he said. “I have never met Al-Hammami, who has been referred to in recent media reports, and we have no record of him ever attending our centre” \[…\] > > Mr Mohtadi criticised UAE officials for failing to contact him before making disclosures. > > “The relevant authorities should have verified these claims with me before releasing or publishing such information,” he said. Oh, well, of course: who are you gonna believe? The terrorist? Or the guy who might be embarrassed by being publicly connected to him? Still, no doubt running MyCentre, an institution that has generously benefited from the taxpayer-funded benevolence of the Victorian government to the tune of nearly 400,000 dollars for women’s wellness facilities, leaves precious little time for vetting every radicalised aviation enthusiast who happens to cross paths with its orbit. Victorians no doubt sleep soundly knowing their millions of dollars of taxes being poured into multicultural grants is managed with such exacting oversight. Rather than offering a direct clarification, Mr Mohtadi treated his flock to a four-minute digital sermon wherein he compared his present tribulations to the persecution faced by the Virgin Mary and the Prophet Muhammad. Because nothing says ‘innocent community pillar’ quite like equating media scrutiny of a terrorist plot to sacred martyrdom. > “Right through the ages, there’s something common. You’ll find those who are righteous, they’ve always been attacked, abused, accused, killed, imprisoned … and this is the way it is,” he said in the video. Before explaining that silence is the golden shield of the truly pious. How terribly convenient. When your public sermons routinely invoke divine wrath against foreign nations and reject the very fabric of liberal democracy, electing to ‘fast from talking’ the moment the Australian Federal Police and ASIO come sniffing around is a masterclass in tactical discretion. Victoria’s Joint Counter-Terrorism Team is presently untangling the web of boxing gyms, extremist literature, and local associations that nurtured Al-Hammami during his 2017 sojourn Down Under, even if investigators stop short of placing the imam himself at the apex of the plot. Yet, as Executive Council of Australian Jewry co-chief executive **Alex Ryvchin** rightly observed, the presence of such subterranean ideological currents should surprise precisely no one. > “We have seen over the years the availability of extremist literature in religious bookstores, the presence of preachers of hate and violence and the capacity for those living in Australia to fall under the sway of recruiters and nefarious street preachers.” Indeed we have. Even worse, we’ve seen how far our establishment figures will go to pretend they didn’t see a thing, even as the bodies pile up. --- 💡 ****If you enjoyed this article please share it using the share buttons at the top or bottom of the article.** ### The Government Doesn’t Trust You to Think for Yourself URL: https://goodoil.news/the-government-doesnt-trust-you-to-think-for-yourself/ Last updated: 2026-10-14T23:30:00.000Z [**Peter Angelico**](https://www.libertyitch.com/p/the-government-doesnt-trust-you-to?ref=goodoil.news) *Peter is the successful founder of an Australian manufacturing company, and he wants government to get out of the way! Peter was the 2023 Greater Dandenong Corporate Citizen of the Year* Spend too much time scrolling through bad news on social media and there is now a name for it: “doom scrolling”. Apparently, algorithms feed us content, advertisers manipulate our emotions, misinformation influences our thinking, and social media companies know us better than we know ourselves. The solution increasingly offered by government? More regulation. More oversight. More control. Perhaps we should ask an uncomfortable question: Who is watching the people who want to do the watching? There is nothing particularly new about influencing people. Newspapers have been doing it since newspapers existed. Television networks choose which story leads the six o’clock news. Editors decide what makes the front page and what disappears onto page 27. There is an old newsroom expression: “If it bleeds, it leads.” Long before anyone had heard of an algorithm or doom scrolling, mainstream media understood that bad news sells. Television bulletins could devote night after night to the same murder, disaster, scandal or political controversy because audiences kept watching. Advertising has always worked on similar principles. Repetition, emotion, celebrity endorsement and saturation are hardly inventions of Silicon Valley. Launch a blockbuster movie and suddenly it is everywhere. Run a major sporting event and you cannot turn on a television, radio or website without seeing it. Ordinary Australians are repeatedly told that another layer of government supervision is necessary for our own protection. We understood what was happening. Someone wanted our attention. Social media has turbocharged the process. Algorithms learn what interests us and give us more of it. Watch one video and another appears. Click one story and suddenly your feed fills with the same subject. That might deserve scrutiny, but does it justify government deciding what consenting adults should or shouldn’t be allowed to see? This is where another favourite expression enters the conversation: “The public interest”. What exactly is “in the public interest”? More importantly, who decides? A politician, bureaucrat or regulator? A government-appointed board? A media executive? An academic? An algorithm? If an editor decides that showing Australians repeated coverage of a violent crime is in the public interest, how is that fundamentally different from an algorithm deciding that the same story interests you and showing you more of it? If a government decides that repeatedly advertising one of its policies is in the public interest, why should that be automatically regarded as more legitimate than a private organisation trying to persuade you? The term “public interest” might describe something genuinely important, but it can also become remarkably convenient when the people defining the public interest are the same people exercising the power. Before handing them more of that power, Australians should understand something else: Government is itself an enormous advertiser. Commonwealth government advertising expenditure reached $204.1 million in 2024–25\. Of that, digital advertising accounted for about $97.4 million, television $59.3 million, radio $16.7 million and out-of-home advertising $21.9 million. We aren’t talking about Labor’s election advertisements here – these are taxpayer-funded government campaigns. Victoria provides another remarkable example. The Victorian Government spent $97 million on advertising in 2024–25: $76.3 million on campaign advertising, $8.4 million on functional advertising and $12.3 million on recruitment. More than $54.6 million went to digital and social media alone. Some of that is entirely legitimate: Governments need to tell us when laws change; people need bushfire warnings; citizens need information about services, road closures and genuine emergencies. But where exactly is the line between informing the public and selling the government? Victoria’s advertising categories include “public safety and behaviour change”, “social cohesion, civic pride and community spirit”, “commercial and economic investment” and legislative compliance. There’s that phrase: behaviour change. Apparently, corporations attempting to change our behaviour deserve suspicion, but governments doing it with our money deserve a communications budget. Then things become even more interesting. The Federal Government isn’t merely buying enormous amounts of media. It is also financially supporting parts of the news industry. The News Media Assistance Program involves $153.5 million over four years, including $99.1 million in grants for the news sector and $33 million supporting Australian Associated Press. Government is simultaneously a major purchaser of advertising, a financial supporter of parts of the media industry, a regulator of communications and social-media platforms, and one of the principal subjects the media is supposed to scrutinise. The solution increasingly offered by government? More regulation. More oversight. More control. Now it wants a greater role in determining how Australians navigate supposedly harmful, misleading or undesirable information. And inevitably we are told it is “in the public interest”. This isn’t simply about Labor. For decades Australia has been governed by an increasingly managerial political class in which the two major parties argue ferociously over who gets to operate the machinery of government while rarely questioning why the machinery keeps getting bigger. Government, regulation, departments, public relations, advertising – all grow. And regardless of which side occupies the government benches, ordinary Australians are repeatedly told that another layer of government supervision is necessary for our own protection. Different jerseys. Same game. That is the Uniparty problem. One side introduces another government intervention and the other side argues about its implementation. One proposes a regulator and the other promises a better regulator. One spends millions telling us about government programs and the other complains about the advertisements until it gets into office and discovers how useful government advertising can be. Meanwhile the fundamental question is rarely asked: Why does government need this much influence over the information choices of free adults? Australians are perfectly capable of understanding that Sky News, the ABC, the *Guardian* and News Corp each have a perspective, that Facebook, X, TikTok and YouTube use algorithms, and that advertisers want us to buy things. Welcome to adulthood. The most powerful influencer in Australia isn’t a teenager on TikTok. It is an institution that can regulate what others say, spend hundreds of millions promoting its own messages, subsidise parts of the information industry, define what it believes is in the public interest – and send you the bill. Before Canberra protects us from doom scrolling, perhaps it should spend a little more time scrolling through its own bank statements. This article was originally published by [Liberty Itch](https://www.libertyitch.com/p/the-government-doesnt-trust-you-to?ref=goodoil.news). ### Are We Missing the Obvious? URL: https://goodoil.news/are-we-missing-the-obvious/ Last updated: 2026-10-14T22:59:59.000Z [**Richard Vernall**](https://dailytelegraph.co.nz/opinion/are-we-missing-the-obvious-the-hidden-link-between-psychiatric-drugs-and-rising-violence/?ref=goodoil.news) Richard is the author of *Running on Empty: Antidepressants and Youth Suicide – A New Zealand Review*. The Copy Press, Nelson (2021) Mass shootings, suicides, and seemingly random acts of brutality have become grimly familiar in the United States – and this trend is now increasing across the world. Over the past two decades, 16 of the world’s 20 deadliest mass shootings have taken place.**\[1\]** In the United States alone, the frequency of mass shootings tripled between 2009 and 2013.**\[2\]** The trend has only intensified – by 2020, incidents had surged by 47 per cent,**\[3\]** and by 2023, the nation was facing the grim reality of an average of two mass murders every single day.**\[4\]** Furthermore, in 2024 alone, more teachers and students were killed in US school shootings than there were school days in the year.**\[5\]** You could argue that violence has always been part of the American story, dating back to the pioneer era; however, we live in a far more secure, peace-oriented society and are largely insulated from such behaviour. Sadly, it appears that New Zealand is not bucking the trend of a global increase in violence. In 2003, the *New Zealand Listener* wrote an article – “The Angry Society”.**\[6\]** Although this article was written more than two decades ago, it raised a question that remains just as relevant if not more so today: why, as a society, are we becoming increasingly intolerant of one another? Two years earlier the *Listener* published an article – “The Long Black Cloud”. The article reported that New Zealanders were swallowing more antidepressants than ever and it raised the question – Are we really depressed – or are we over-reacting to simple sadness and the everyday blues?**\[7\]** Revisiting the 2003 article, it cited: growing expressions of irritability and anger were being observed, with the media reporting frequent incidents of road rage, queue rage, trolley rage, sports sideline rage, and even pavement rage. Various factors were cited as contributing to this rise in aggression, including rapid population growth in major New Zealand cities and a doubling of traffic volumes, which in turn fuelled frustrations such as road rage. Fast forward to 2010 and in another *Listener* article – “Panic Stations” – it was reported that New Zealand had the second-highest reported rates of anxiety in the world.**\[8\]** ### **Why is this happening?** The usual explanations in an increase in violence point to gun access, social media, violent entertainment, or political polarization. While each may play a role, critics argue that society is avoiding a more uncomfortable possibility – one hiding in plain sight. ### **A Pharmaceutical Era of Violence?** According to US psychologist Linda Lagemann, the dramatic rise in violence coincides with an equally dramatic rise in the prescription of psychiatric medications. In 2024–2025, approximately **250 million prescriptions** for psychiatric drugs were written in the United States alone.**\[9\]** New Zealand has also seen a significant increase in the number of prescriptions of antidepressants in recent years. In the year to June 30, 2013, exactly 427,900 people were prescribed antidepressants in New Zealand. This data was recorded by Pharma and reflected a 20 per cent increase in patient prescription numbers compared to 2008. In the data released by Pharmac in 2023, there were 2,297,171 prescriptions an increase of 33 per cent from the total prescribed – 1,721,436 – in 2016\. Furthermore, the agency reported that the number of patients prescribed antidepressants had increased steadily from 535,480 (2019) – 604,261 patients recorded in 2022.**\[10\]** ### **What is most concerning about the Pharmac data on psychiatric medications relates to children and adolescents** In their reporting of antidepressant prescribing to children and adolescents in the decade 2011–2021, there was a 205 per cent increase in antidepressants prescribed to children five 5–14 years (6225 to 19,015), a 146 per cent increase in adolescents 15–24 years (88,401 to 218,312) and in antipsychotic prescribing there was an increase of 140 per cent in children 5–14 years (4116-9917) and a 143 per cent increase in adolescents 15–24 years (33,818 to 82,471).**\[11\]** Based on data from the New Zealand Ministry of Health (MOH), Health New Zealand (Te Whatu Ora), and Health Quality & Safety Commission (HQSC) reports up to 2024–2025, psychotropic medication usage showed a concerning rise in youth prescriptions. In 2023 nearly one in eight young people aged between 12–25 years were dispensed a psychotropic drug and according to the Mental Health and Wellness Commission it was reported that the MoH Epic Data Base was unable to ascertain how much medication was being prescribed appropriately and whether the right medicine was being prescribed at the right time.**\[12\]** ### **So what does this data tell us?** Supporters argue that the increase in numbers of people being diagnosed and prescribed medication for ailments such as anxiety and depression reflects better access to ‘mental health’ care. Critics counter that it reflects something more troubling: **mass medicalisation of distress**, often without long-term evidence of safety. *A question that needs to be asked is – Why do we have endless debates over screen time but almost none about turning kids into lifelong customers of the pharmaceutical industry?* ### **Warnings Hidden in Plain Sight** For well over a decade now every psychiatric medication carries a package insert warning of potential adverse effects. Among the adverse reactions listed are (this is a summary, not the full list): - **Aggression** - **Agitation** - **Hostility** - **Anxiety** - **Delusional thinking** - **Nightmares** - **Severe emotional distress** - **Suicidal Ideation** ### **These adverse reactions should be regarded as a red flag, warranting extreme caution when prescribing these medications** While psychotropic medication such as antidepressants have been linked to outcomes such as mania, hostility, aggression, and homicidal ideation, the extent to which these drugs may contribute to acts of senseless violence is still not well understood. This gap in understanding highlights the importance of examining existing studies that explore associations between psychiatric medications and violent behaviour. ### **Clinical Studies that Associate Antidepressants to Acts of Violence** A US 2010 study – “Prescription Drugs Associated with Acts of Violence in Others” – examined data collected between 2004 and 2009\. The research found that 1,527 cases of violence were disproportionately associated with 31 drugs. The primary suspect medications included 11 antidepressants, six sedative–hypnotics, and three drugs used to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Reported violent outcomes included 387 reports of homicide, 404 physical assaults, 27 cases indicating physical abuse, 896 homicidal ideation reports, and 223 cases described as violence-related symptoms. The patients were 41 per cent female and 59 per cent male with a mean age of 36 years. Nearly all antidepressants were linked to reports of violence, with the exception of two tricyclics, trazodone and amitriptyline. The researchers concluded that their findings provided new evidence that violent acts toward others constitutes genuine and serious adverse drug events, associated with a relatively small group of medications. In reviewing this study three of the six most common SSRIs given to children, adolescents and young people ranked second (Venlafaxine – 85 cases), third (Fluoxetine – 72 cases) and fourth (Sertraline – 64 cases) in the incidences of violence reported.**\[13\]** A 2015 Swedish study examined the association between SSRIs and violence in the general population. The study using national registry data examined the incidence of violence among individuals (aged 15–60) prescribed selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) between 2006–2013\. The findings showed that 11,225 individuals – both adolescents and adults taking SSRIs – out of 856,493 individuals (1.3 per cent) – were convicted of violent crimes, including murder, manslaughter, arson, and kidnapping, compared to 40,384 out of 7.1 million individuals (0.6 per cent) who were not on SSRIs. Rates of violent crime were highest in the youngest age group receiving medication, with 3.3 per cent of SSRI users aged 15–24 years convicted of a violent offence.**\[14\]** A recent 2024 study reports that antidepressant prescribing for children in the United States has risen substantially since the mid-1990s. Notably, prescriptions for selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) – including citalopram (Celexa), escitalopram (Lexapro), fluoxetine (Prozac), paroxetine (Paxil, Pexeva), sertraline (Zoloft), and vilazodone (Viibryd) – among children aged five years and younger have increased by a factor of 10. Researchers noted that before the 1980s and 1990s, incidents of seemingly senseless violence – particularly mass school shootings – were relatively rare. Although each event has occurred under unique circumstances, a recurring factor often identified is that the perpetrators had a history of mental health challenges and, in many cases, exposure to psychotropic medications. While there is much to be learnt about the relationship between SSRIs and violence – the study cites a website run by the International Coalition for Drug Awareness in cooperation with the Prozac Survivors Support Group that has more than 1,600 violent incidents associated with SSRI use, including more than 360 suicides as well as more than 400 murder incidents, including multiple murders all connected with SSRI use.**\[15\]** The three studies outlined span a 15-year period, during which rising levels of violence appear to have permeated many aspects of daily life. Before examining specific incidents of violence, it is important to reflect on the observations of global experts regarding the influence of the chemical imbalance theory and how it has shaped contemporary ‘mental health’ practice. In 2011, Ronald Pies, editor-in-chief emeritus of the *US Psychiatric Times* stated in a 2011 blog: *“In truth, the ‘chemical imbalance’ notion was always a kind of urban legend – never a theory seriously pronounced by well-informed psychiatrists.”* **\[16\]** In the same year, Thomas Insel – director of the US National Institute of Mental Health – was quoted as saying: *“Whatever we’ve been doing for the past five decades, it isn’t working … When I look at the numbers – the numbers of suicides, the numbers of disabilities, the mortality data – it’s abysmal and it’s not getting any better.”* **\[17\]** On a 20/11/2019, the BBC radio programme *The Inquiry* investigated the subject – What can we do about the world’s mental health problem?” In the podcast, Vikram Patel (Harvard psychiatrist and co-founder, London Global Centre of Mental Health) stated: *“The honest truth right now is that we don’t have a clear way of being able to way to distinguish those individuals who have a mental health problem from those that are otherwise well.”* In a media interview on Radio NZ, 19/9/23, the chair of the Royal Australia and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists (RANZCP), Dr Hiran Thabrew, stated: *“The mental health system is broken and is making patients sicker than they were before. Forty per cent of the workforce is overworked and 30 per cent are about to retire and there is a constant feeling that services are failing.”* ### **The Increase in Violence in New Zealand** Today, violence is no longer associated solely with hardened criminals. Increasingly, it involves ‘ordinary’ people – the neighbour, the co-worker, the student... This unpredictability is what makes it so frightening. The following data highlights the increase in violence from schools to streets in recent times. ### **Data on Youth Violence** Statistics released by the Ministry of Justice in 2024 showed a worrying trend: a 26 per cent rise in serious and persistent youth offending nationwide. The data revealed that 2022/2023 year saw the highest number of such offenders (877, aged 14–17) since 2016/2017, a stark reminder that youth violence is far from declining. Even more alarmingly, there was also a four per cent increase in serious and persistent offending among 10–13-year-olds.**\[18\]** ### **Why Is School Violence Escalating?** Out of 36 countries in an OECD report in 2025, New Zealand has the second highest rate of school bullying and the highest rate of suicide amongst young people. The statistic on school bullying has rarely altered over the past decade with both the PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) and UNICEF being highly critical on this matter.**\[19\]** ### **Thousands of School Students Physically Restrained as Student Assaults Hit a New High** In June 2026, it was reported that since guidelines were introduced in 2023, school staff have physically restrained students more than 9000 (9378) times – an average of 15 incidents per day. The Ministry of Education released these figures through a Official Information Act request.**\[20\]** Furthermore, assaults between school students have hit a record high, with school principals reporting that schools are dealing with more serious behaviour. While school stand-downs, suspensions and expulsions have dropped in recent years. physical assaults in schools have increased by over a 130 per cent from 4966 cases in 2000 to 11,400 cases in 2025.**\[21\]** ### **A Family Tragedy and Mental Health Failures** In a tragic case reported in 2025, a mother who had been struggling with her mental health following her husband’s death from cancer poisoned her two children, aged six and eight, with a fatal overdose of antidepressants in 2017 before attempting to end her own life. She survived and was later charged. At a hearing in May 2022, her solicitor argued that she was not guilty of murder by reason of insanity. The woman had been under psychiatric care for several years before the incident.**\[22\]** ### **Discharge, Diagnosis Changes, and a Preventable Death** In another troubling ‘mental health’ incident in December 2021, a young woman was released from an acute mental health unit in Palmerton North less than a week after attempting suicide. Her diagnosis and medication were changed just before discharge – the next day she died by suicide. (There had previously been concerns about the unit after a number of patients died by suicide shortly after their release.) The young woman had been in and out of psychiatric care for years and had threatened to take her life earlier in 2021.**\[23\]** *Serious questions need to be asked about how such cases are managed and the appropriate level of care people receive.* ### **Concerns Grow after Unprovoked Violence on Public Transport** A man with a history of hearing voices and paranoid thoughts has been sentenced for two violent assaults on bus drivers in the suburb of Ponsonby, Auckland. The first attack, in December 2023, left the driver so badly injured he could no longer work in his role. Just four months later, in the same area, the man attacked a female driver after she asked him to leave for not paying his fare.**\[24\]** Another violent incident occurred late one night in October last year on a West Auckland Train with partygoers heading home. A group of about 30 teenagers surrounded and attacked four young adults – three women and one man in their early twenties – in what police described as an unprovoked assault. The attack happened just before midnight and left the victims with life-altering head injuries and deep facial scarring. The victims said it has left them fearful of now travelling on public transport. **\[25\]** ### **Violent attacks on First Responders on the Increase** Between March 2025 and March 2026, St John’s deputy chief executive Dan Oha reported that staff experienced 426 reported incidents of violence – representing a 10 per cent increase from 2024\. The psychological toll on paramedics as a result of these experiences is significant.**\[26\]** In 2025 it was reported that nationwide there were 7500 reports of assault against medical staff i.e., doctors and nurses. Michael Connelly – the chair of the Australasian College of Emergency Medicine NZ said that the reports of violence were a real concern. Violence to front line staff can range from verbal assault to physical contact and physical harm.**\[27\]** The SPCA has reported that their staff, primarily inspectors attending to incidents of animal abuse are increasingly the target of verbal abuse on site or online, death threats and threats of physical and sexual violence. Selena Francisco, SPCA head of animal care said it has reached a point where inspectors were now equipped with stab proof vests as well as other personal protection equipment to protect themselves while attending calls.**\[28\]** ### **Six Weeks of Violence Leave 16 Dead** On October 2nd the *New Zealand Herald* reported that 16 people had lost their lives in a spate of violent incidents between August 19th and October 1st. A series of multiple person homicides and suspected murder-suicides involving young children have been identified as incidents of family violence. Reasons for the escalation of violence have been put down to the financial pressures that families are under currently along with a failure to support and treat people with serious mental health and addiction problems, according to experts in the community.**\[29\]** These are not isolated incidents: they are patterns. Behind the numbers are real people and these tragic stories should make us ask hard questions about our society and what is happening. ### **The Economic Costs of Violence** Every four minutes, New Zealand Police respond to a family harm incident – amounting to as many as 400 call-outs every day. It’s a confronting reality in a nation that prides itself on kindness, community, and whānau. Yet behind too many closed doors, a hidden war continues, leaving victims injured, traumatised, and too often unheard. ### **Estimated Costs of Domestic Violence** As of 2026, the most recent and frequently cited comprehensive costing of domestic violence in New Zealand remains the 2014 report commissioned by the Glenn Inquiry, which estimated the annual economic cost to be between $4.1 billion and $7 billion. While there hasn’t been a full, updated economic study for domestic violence as a whole since 2014, more recent specific costings and government investments provide a current picture: ### **Key Cost Estimates** - Total Annual Cost (2014 baseline): $4.1 billion to $7 billion per year. High-end projections suggested that without intervention, the cumulative cost could approach $80 billion over 10 years. - Sexual Violence (2020 update): A 2021 study by BERL estimated that sexual violence specifically cost New Zealand $6.9 billion in 2020.**\[30\]** - Cost of Homicide: The average cost of a single homicide in New Zealand is estimated at $4 million.**\[31\]** - Workplace Productivity: Domestic violence is estimated to cost New Zealand employers at least $368–$894 million annually due to lost workdays and reduced productivity. ### [**Firearms incidents cost Aotearoa $322m a year: Strong laws save lives | PHCC**](https://www.phcc.org.nz/briefing/firearms-incidents-cost-aotearoa-322m-year-strong-laws-save-lives?ref=goodoil.news) A new study (2025), published in the *Annals of Internal Medicine*, that covers the period 2002–2023, shows that although firearm suicide rates decreased after firearms legislation tightened in 1992, firearm assaults and related hospitalisations have risen since 2014\. Each year, firearm-related mortality and hospitalisation costs NZ$321m in lost life-years and NZ$1.48m in hospital care. *Key Findings* - Hospitalisations for firearm assault more than doubled between 2014 and 2018\. Assaults now account for a growing share of costs and years of life lost, with victims younger on average than those who die by suicide. In New Zealand, nearly 80 per cent of firearm deaths are suicides. The report concludes by stating the increasing number of firearm assaults is concerning.**\[32\]** *These figures underscore that violence is not just a social issue but a massive economic burden on New Zealand, affecting all sectors.* ### **Getting to the Crux of the Matter** Two of the most infamous mass school shootings in the United States – Sandy Hook in 2012 and Parkland in 2018 – involved young men, Adam Lanza and Nicholas Cruz, who had undergone psychiatric treatment from an early age and were reported to be taking antidepressant medication at the time of the attacks. Consistently, after disbelief and sadness over school shootings has abated, public debate has overwhelmingly focused on gun control, with little scrutiny of medication histories. Such was the case with Adam Lanza (Sandy Hook). When Sheila Matthews (Able Child), a child welfare advocate, sought information about the medication Adam Lanza was reportedly taking at the time, the Connecticut state authorities refused to release the information, stating that Lanza’s right to privacy (although he was fatally shot at the time of shooting) outweighed public disclosure and warned that releasing such information could cause widespread panic, potentially leading people on psychiatric drugs to stop taking their medications.**\[33\]** This response lies at the core of a much deeper problem. Psychiatric medications are widely framed as the primary – often the only – solution to what society labels as ‘mental health’ issues. When asked if psychiatry has a cure for ‘mental health’ ailments, the standard response from psychiatrists is ‘there is no cure: we just treat the symptoms’. **Yet this perspective demands serious re-examination.** First, we need to rethink the language we use and the criteria that guide treatment, shifting toward a more holistic model of support for individuals navigating stress, trauma, and life pressures. Second, people deserve full transparency about the potential benefits and risks of psychiatric medications, along with meaningful access to a range of alternative treatment options. **True care begins with informed choice, not fear-driven silence.** In her concluding comments on a BBC podcast – *What can we do about the world’s mental health problems* – in November 2019, Grace Ryan, a researcher at London’s Global Mental Health Centre, said: *“What excites me about the sector I work in is that there are more answers out there that we have not come up with and that by looking further afield we might discover something really exciting and transformative that could improve mental health care all over the world.”* **\[34\]** ### **Now here is the Good News** Encouragingly, the range of alternative treatments available to support people suffering with distress has never been broader or more promising. Over the past 20 years, research has shown that antidepressants are not a universal ‘one size fits all’ solution. It is a well-known fact that for a third of all patients prescribed antidepressants, they are totally ineffective, despite how they have often been presented. At the same time, increased awareness of their potential drawbacks has led many people to explore more comprehensive, holistic approaches to wellbeing. In addition to innovative therapies now emerging, substantial clinical evidence already supports safe and effective options such as micronutrient supplementation, mentoring, meditation, massage, and regular physical activity. These methods can significantly help alleviate conditions like depression and anxiety, while also empowering individuals to take a more active role in improving their lives. In their groundbreaking book *The Better Brain*,Dr Julia Rucklidge (Canterbury University) and Dr Bonnie Kaplan (Canada) argue that nutrition, long ignored in psychiatry, is central to preventing and treating mental health conditions. Rich in evidence-based science, the book makes a strong case for broad-spectrum nutritional supplements to be available through mainstream medicine as an effective and cheaper alternative to psychotropic medications (primarily antidepressants) to treat mental health disorders. Their work draws from global studies and their own clinical research in New Zealand and Canada, challenging the widespread reliance on antidepressants and advocating for a return to good nutrition as medicine to assist people in the recovery process.**\[35\]** *The following clinical studies undertaken in Christchurch in 2011 and 2019 prove the efficacy of broad-spectrum nutritional supplements.* **The Christchurch Case Studies:** **Multinutrients in Crisis** In the aftermath of the 2011 Christchurch earthquake, researchers from Canterbury University launched a study to see whether micronutrients could help traumatised residents. Ninety-one people took part in the trial and were randomised to one of three groups – Berocca, a B-complex formula, EMP (multinutrient supplement) high dose, EMP low dose. An additional 25 people served as a non-randomised control group (they received the typical care being offered to Christchurch public at the time). The study ran for three months, during which the city continued to be rocked by aftershocks. The results were striking – people who took broad-spectrum nutritional supplements reported better mood, reduced anxiety, and lower rates of PTSD. Participants on the higher dose of EMP supplement showed the greatest improvements in mood, energy, and anxiety – consistent with findings from the 2010 earthquake study – and were five times more likely to continue the nutrients post-trial compared to those on Berocca. Among all treated groups, PTSD rates dropped from 65 per cent to 19 per cent, while the untreated group saw no change, remaining at around 50 per cent.**\[36\]** A similar intervention took place following the tragic 2019 Christchurch mosque shootings, in which a white supremacist gunman killed 51 and injured 40 people of Muslim faith at two mosques in Christchurch. In just five weeks, rates of probable PTSD among traumatised participants dropped from 77 per cent to 23 per cent – with no adverse effects reported.**\[37\]** ### **Significant Government Savings Through Nutritional Psychiatry** IF multinutrients – clinically proven and cost-effective – were made available by prescription through the primary health sector, the potential savings to the government could be substantial. Not only would this reduce reliance on more expensive pharmaceutical interventions, but it could also decrease hospitalisations, emergency responses, and long-term disability support caused by untreated or poorly managed mental health conditions. In 2019, the Labour government ring-fenced $1.9 billion over five years for ‘mental health’ services – a commendable initiative, but one that pales in comparison to the $20 billion annual cost of ‘mental’ illness to the New Zealand economy, as highlighted by Auditor-General John Ryan in his February 2024 report *Meeting the Mental Health Needs of Young New Zealanders*. Ryan stated: “The human and economic costs of inaction are high. It is estimated that mental illness costs New Zealand about five per cent of gross domestic product annually. In 2023, this meant more than $20 billion.”**\[38\]** By investing a fraction of that amount into making multinutrient treatments accessible, the government could unlock dramatic cost savings while also improving health outcomes for thousands. **This is not just a matter of public health – it is a sound economic strategy for a healthcare system already under immense strain.** The combined costs of NZ violence and ‘mental health’ amount to around $30bn annually (there may be some cross sector duplication of costs), however this is a staggering figure for a country whose GDP output in 2025 was between $USD 260–290bn. ### **Election 2026 – Addressing the Woeful Statistics of New Zealand Youth is the Most Powerful Investment New Zealand Can Make!** On January 22, the Prime Minister Chris Luxon announced that New Zealand’s general election will be held on November 7. As election campaigning ramps up, voters can expect the usual recycled rhetoric on the economy, housing, education, and health. However, the critical issue of youth wellbeing has largely been ignored since the early 2000s, often dismissed as too difficult to fix. Instead, a ‘pill for every ill’ dictum and a cheap ‘one size fits all approach’ mentality has prevailed, while young people are routinely used as a political football when it suits party narratives. **This approach is totally unacceptable.** New Zealand politicians must wake up to the reality that the wellbeing of our youth should be central to any serious election platform. For nearly two decades, successive governments have failed to recognise that the health and wellbeing of young people are fundamental to building a vibrant, productive, and resilient nation. The consequences of this neglect are clear. In 2019, UNICEF gave New Zealand an ‘F for Failure’ in youth wellbeing, citing alarming rates of youth suicide, rising obesity, and declining academic achievement.**\[39\]** In 2021, UNICEF reported that of all the countries it named, New Zealand had seen the highest increase in prescriptions of antidepressants for children – a rise of 78.3 per cent from 2006 to 2016. The reasons for this increase were hard to pinpoint. The agency suggested a range of causes, from ‘overprescription’ to greater awareness about mental disorders. It warned such widespread use of medication among children could have unintended consequences, as **“the effects of drugs on young people may be very different from those seen in adults”**.**\[40\]** **Fast Forward to 2025.** On the 15th May 2025, UNICEF released an updated report card. The agency ranked New Zealand as the lowest ranking country, in 36th place out of 36 countries with available data. Based on the UNICEF report it appears that despite the wealth of funding that has been thrown at ‘mental health’ over the past two decades via psychotropic medication and service provision, there has been little or no improvement in the health and wellbeing of young people. According to the report, New Zealand had the highest suicide rate amongst youth in the 36 countries that were analysed, the second highest rate of school bullying and the third highest percentage of overweight children.**\[43\]** **These are not marginal issues – they are a national warning sign. If political leaders are serious about New Zealand’s future, youth wellbeing must be at the top of the agenda in November.** UNICEF NZ CEO Michelle Sharp echoed these sentiments when she said in the 2025 report that the data should be a wake-up call and the upcoming budget was an opportunity for the government to create positive change: “Too many children in \[New Zealand\] are missing out on their childhood. We’re calling on the government to direct funding towards addressing these problems and to shift the dial, so New Zealand is not ranked so alarmingly close to the bottom of the table when it comes to child wellbeing. The government can act now, and act quickly to make positive impacts if it chooses to,” she said. Sharp concluded by saying child wellbeing in New Zealand is a political choice. “The quality of life being experienced by the \[children\] and \[youth\] in this country is down to political choice, and we urge our decision-makers to make the right choices and directly invest in children in the imminent budget and beyond”.**\[42\]** On 25 February 2026 the Mental Health and Wellbeing Commission released a report showing that a growing number of New Zealanders are experiencing high levels of psychological distress. The latest figures reveal that 14.3 per cent of people reported significant distress, compared with 7.4 per cent five years ago. Young people aged 15–24 years recorded the highest rates among all age groups surveyed, with 22.9 per cent experiencing high levels of mental distress and there are no signs of this level of stress decreasing currently.**\[43\]** To conclude, New Zealand has long been a global leader in social progress, often willing to confront entrenched ideas in pursuit of better outcomes. In 2026, voters should demand the same courage from political parties by supporting those that place youth wellbeing at the centre of policy and commit to meaningful reform, including an independent inquiry into the safety and effectiveness of psychotropic medications prescribed to New Zealanders aged 0–25 years. Failing that, public dissatisfaction should be clearly expressed at the ballot box in November. ### **Notes:** 1. Prescription for Violence – Psychiatry’s Deadly Side Effects = CCHR DVD 2025 Citizens Commission for Human Rights – International – Los Angeles US 2. Data Source: US Gun Violence Archive (GVA) / Research cited in media reports (e.g., ABC7 New York, 2022). 3. US Data Source: Gun Violence Archive (GVA). (2020) 4. [Link](https://www.axios.com/2024/01/09/mass-shooting-gun-violence-us-2023?ref=goodoil.news) 5. Number of victims (fatal and wounded) on K-12 School Property – 2024 US K-12 School Shooting Database – 2024 6. The Angry Society – Why getting mad is all the rage – *NZ Listener* Feb 22nd 2003 7. Long Black Cloud – *NZ Listener* August 25th 2001 8. Panic Stations – *NZ Listener* June 19th 2010 9. Prescription for Violence – Psychiatry’s Deadly Side Effects – Citizen’s Commission for Humam Rights DVD – 2025 10. [Link](https://view.officeapps.live.com/op/view.aspx?src=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.pharmac.govt.nz%2Fassets%2FUploads%2F2024-25-OIA-Data-release-antidepressant-spend-2019-2024.xlsx&ref=goodoil.news) 11. [27 May 2022 | OIA response](https://www.pharmac.govt.nz/news-and-resources/official-information-act/official-information-act-responses/number-of-antidepressant-and-antipsychotic-prescriptions-by-age-group?ref=goodoil.news) | Number of antidepressant and antipsychotic prescriptions by age group – Pharmac | Te Pātaka Whaioranga | NZ Government 12. Growing use of psychotropic drugs among youth: EPiC data | New Zealand Doctor 13. Prescription Drugs Associated with Acts of Violence towards Others – Moore., J, Glenmullen., Furburg., C, D- (2010) 14. Association between SSRIs and Violent Crime in Adolescents, young and older adults – A Swedish register-based study – 2015 Lagerberg, T., Fasel, S., Molero, Y., Anderson , F., et al 15. Child and Adolescent Violent Behaviour and Psychotropic Medications: Behavioural Health and Epidemiological Research Issues for a Post SARS-CoV-2 Environment Tarrance, T. (2024) 16. [Psychiatry Now Admits It’s Been Wrong in Big Ways.pdf](https://stisa.org.za/downloads/Psychiatry%20Now%20Admits%20It's%20Been%20Wrong%20in%20Big%20Ways.pdf?ref=goodoil.news) Bruce Levine 5/3/2014 17. [The Rats of N.I.M.H.](https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/the-rats-of-n-i-m-h?ref=goodoil.news) | The New Yorker Gary Greenberg 16/5/2013 18. Spike in youth crime statistics – *NZ Herald* 5/6/2024 19. We sit at the wrong end of school bullying rankings – *NZ Herald* 16/5/25 20. Thousands of students restrained – *NZ Herald* 2/6/26 21. Schools warn of rise in violence – *NZ Herald* 27/7/26 22. Mother’s spiral into madness – *NZ Herald* 10/9/2025 23. Women took life after release from care – *NZ Herald* 10/11/25 24. 501 jailed for bus driver attacks – *NZ Herald* 15/12/25 25. Partygoers left concussed, scared after teen attack – *NZ Herald* 16/1/26 26. A night out on the road – *NZ Herald* – 28/3/2026 27. ED doctors warn violence against staff still rife – *NZ Herald* 17/4/26 28. SPCA Staff Fearful as Death Threats Rise – *NZ Herald* 6/6/26 29. Sixteen dead in 47 days of violence – *NZ Herald* 7/10/26 30. [The startling economic cost of sexual violence](https://berl.co.nz/our-mahi/startling-economic-cost-sexual-violence?ref=goodoil.news) | BERL 31. [Treasury Guest Lecture – Family Violence: Its Socio-Economic Impact on New Zealand](https://www.treasury.govt.nz/sites/default/files/2015-06/tgls-gammon-slides.pdf?ref=goodoil.news) 32. [Firearms incidents cost Aotearoa $322m a year: Strong laws save lives](https://www.phcc.org.nz/briefing/firearms-incidents-cost-aotearoa-322m-year-strong-laws-save-lives?ref=goodoil.news) | PHCC 25 33. Prescription for Violence – Psychiatry’s Deadly Side Effects – Citizen’s Commission for Humam Rights DVD – 2025 34. [The Inquiry – What can we do about the world’s mental health problem?](https://www.bbc.com/audio/play/w3csytgz?ref=goodoil.news) – BBC Sounds – Running On Empty: Antidepressants and Youth Suicide – A New Zealand Review – p.84 Vernall., R.W, – The Copy Press (2021) 35. The Better Brain – How Nutrition Will Help You Overcome Anxiety, Depression, ADHD and Stress- Rucklidge., J. PhD and Kaplan., B, PhD – Penguin Random House UK (2021). 36. Ibid p.130 37. Ibid p.174 38. [Meeting the mental health needs of young New Zealanders](https://ao.parliament.nz/2024/youth-mental-health?ref=goodoil.news) — Office of the Auditor-General New Zealand 39. [Link](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/03/new-zealand-given-f-for-failure-on-child-obesity-and-youth-suicide-in-unice?ref=goodoil.news) 40. Medication alone not enough to treat mental health issues in Kiwi kids, Unicef warns | [Stuff](https://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/wellbeing/300423502/medication-alone-not-enough-to-treat-mental-health-issues-in-kiwi-kids-unicef-warns?ref=goodoil.news) 41. [UNICEF Aotearoa](https://www.unicef.org.nz/media-releases/new-global-data-new-zealand-ranks-alarmingly-low-for-child-wellbeing?ref=goodoil.news) 42. Ibid 43. Urgent calls for action on youth mental health following report release 25-2-26 – [NZ Herald](https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/politics/urgent-calls-for-action-on-youth-mental-health-following-report-release/744XP3SA4RBBPOQHSSYTPHFNRY/?ref=goodoil.news) ### **Disclaimer** The information presented is for educational purposes only and is in no way intended as a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis or treatment or personal counselling that relate to matters on mental health. ### **Other Publications:** - A Moment to Rethink Policing, Protection and Public Trust – Kiwis For Good – 25/8/25 [A Moment to Rethink: Policing, Protection, and Public Trust • Kiwis For Good Foundation](https://kiwisforgood.co.nz/stories/a-moment-to-rethink-policing-protection-and-public-trust?ref=goodoil.news) Rethinking Mental Health: Is Nutrition the Missing Piece? NZ Daily Telegraph – 8/6/2025 [Rethinking mental health: Is nutrition the missing piece? – Daily Telegraph NZ](https://dailytelegraph.co.nz/opinion/rethinking-mental-health-is-nutrition-the-missing-piece/?ref=goodoil.news) The transformational power of human connection: Why our mental health system needs more than pills and protocols – NZ Daily Telegraph – 15/5/2025 - [The transformational power of human connection: Why our mental health system needs more than](https://dailytelegraph.co.nz/opinion/the-transformational-power-of-human-connection-why-our-mental-health-system-needs-more-than-pills-and-protocols/?ref=goodoil.news) [pills and protocols – Daily Telegraph NZ](https://dailytelegraph.co.nz/opinion/the-transformational-power-of-human-connection-why-our-mental-health-system-needs-more-than-pills-and-protocols/?ref=goodoil.news) Collateral Damage: The Negative Impact of Antidepressants on New Zealand Youth - Mad In America Blog – February 19th 2022 [Collateral Damage: The Negative Impact of Antidepressants on New Zealand Youth – Mad In America](https://www.madinamerica.com/2022/02/negative-impact-antidepressants-youth/?ref=goodoil.news) This article was originally published by the [Daily Telegraph New Zealand](https://dailytelegraph.co.nz/opinion/are-we-missing-the-obvious-the-hidden-link-between-psychiatric-drugs-and-rising-violence/?ref=goodoil.news). ### We’re Not Offing Ourselves Fast Enough URL: https://goodoil.news/were-not-offing-ourselves-fast-enough/ Last updated: 2026-10-14T22:29:59.000Z When the powerful couch their ideological agenda in cutesy euphemisms, it’s because they know telling the unvarnished truth will expose just how dangerous and ugly their agenda really is. Thus, communist China speaks of ‘stability maintenance’, when they mean ‘crushing dissent’. Governments everywhere don’t raise taxes or cut budgets: it’s all ‘revenue enhancement’ and ‘efficiency savings’. Medicos report a ‘negative patient care outcome’ when they don’t want to come right out and say they killed their patient. And the politicians, health bureaucrats and legacy media shills will never, *ever* tell the truth about medicalised suicide. As I’ve written before, we’re supposed to regard suicide with such horror that the legacy media are all-but forbidden from even reporting it as such. Put a white coat over suicide, though, and it’s supposed to be the moral pinnacle of modern medicine. Let us observe the pious hand-wringing in Canberra, where senators recently had the opportunity to afford aged-care facilities a modest exemption from participating in the culture of state-sanctioned exit packages. Naturally, the uniparty grandees, joined by a handful of ‘moderate’ Liberals who wouldn’t know a traditional conservative principle if it bit them on the shins, swiftly voted down One Nation’s common-sense protection. > [Labor and Coalition senators](https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/melbourne-imam-samir-mohtadi-hits-out-at-false-accusations-over-terror-probe-into-centre/live-coverage/18cfa5f784993625fe212cc1afffde80?ref=goodoil.news) have split on a proposal to restrict access to voluntary assisted dying in aged care homes, after being granted a conscience vote on the issue. > > An amendment moved to aged care laws by One Nation senator **Malcolm Roberts** on Tuesday proposed granting aged care providers the right to refuse to allow a voluntary assisted dying process for a resident in their care. So, it’s all go if you want to off grandma! Doubleplusgood, comrades! The numbers, released in recent transparency reports, reveal a grim trajectory. More than 7,200 souls have checked out via medicalised suicide since its introduction, with numbers compounding annually at a rate that would make a Silicon Valley startup blush. Queensland and New South Wales are rapidly catching up to Victoria’s pioneering efforts, proving that once you cross the Rubicon of state-administered death, the market for the grim reaper expands briskly. That’s still not enough to satisfy the ghouls of the death cult, though. > [VAD advocate Go Gentle’s](https://www.theaustralian.com.au/health/caring/voluntary-assisted-dying-deaths-spike-across-australia-as-thousands-use-new-laws/news-story/f3a6dba29dc11e016eae6dc55a99432d?ref=goodoil.news) \[pass me the barf bag\] chief executive, **Linda Swan**, said \[…\] “We think growth in VAD will head towards a plateau of about five per cent of deaths, which is where it is in other countries in Europe and North America, although it will be probably five or so years ­before we get there.” North America? Does she mean Canada? Canada, where medicalised suicide is now a top-five cause of death? Even more shockingly, up to three-quarters of deaths of elderly Canucks came at the end of a doctor’s needle. Now they want to bring in dial-a-death. Literally. > One change that could make a difference would be for the federal government to allow Telehealth to be used in the VAD assessment process, something currently not allowed under the Commonwealth Criminal Code. Why don’t they just go the whole hog and install *Futurama*\-style suicide booths on street corners? When the initial legislation was forced through the Victorian parliament years ago, the architects swore blind that rigid, unshakeable safeguards would prevent any untoward slide into wholesale disposal of the inconvenient. Yet, as the Australian Medical Association pointed out, the sheer stringency of the proposed safeguards was an admission of the inherent danger of the enterprise itself. If a legislative step requires a fortress of red tape to keep it from descending into catastrophe, systematically dismantling that red tape is sheer lunacy. And yet, that is precisely what is occurring. Victoria is currently moving to relax its prognosis requirements and water down the so-called gag clauses, aligning itself with more permissive jurisdictions. The slippery slope critics, of course, were dismissed as alarmist reactionaries peddling old-fashioned moral panics. Yet here we are. Every single slippery slope prediction is being methodically ticked off the checklist with bureaucratic precision. How much further down this precipice are we prepared to tumble before we look in the mirror? Canada, that utopian laboratory of progressive compassion, is our inevitable destination. There, we read horrifying accounts of disabled citizens being steered toward an early grave because securing wheelchair access or housing assistance proves too expensive for the state accountants. And the bleeding-heart vanguard is already eyeing off ‘mature minors’, opening the door to children opting out of life without so much as a polite nod to parental consent or knowledge. Are we genuinely expected to believe that Australia will remain miraculously immune to these same systemic pressures? Once the taboo against state-assisted self-destruction is broken, life ceases to be an intrinsic good protected by law and instead becomes a balance sheet item, subject to cost-benefit analysis by overburdened relatives and cost-cutting bureaucrats. We were promised a compassionate safety valve for the terminally afflicted. Instead, we have unlocked a suicide booth. Until our political class summons the moral courage to halt this descent, we shall continue sliding down the greasy pole of utilitarian ethics, cheering on our own institutional unravelling with a tidy white coat and a bureaucratic smile. --- 💡 ****If you enjoyed this article please share it using the share buttons at the top or bottom of the article.** ### Trust URL: https://goodoil.news/trust/ Last updated: 2026-10-14T22:00:00.000Z Cartoon of the day by SonovaMin _This post is for paying subscribers only._ ### Our Newspaper Editors Are Biased URL: https://goodoil.news/our-newspaper-editors-are-biased/ Last updated: 2026-10-14T21:29:59.000Z [**Kerry Butler**](https://nominister.wordpress.com/2026/10/14/biased-newspaper-editors/?ref=goodoil.news) *No Minister* It is shameful the way newspaper editors use (abuse) their position of influence (power) to prevent letters from being published which give an alternate view to their personal **biased** opinion. And the worst thing is that they’re such hypocrites, e.g., allowing ‘controversial’ letters to be published, if and when, they personally happen to agree with them, i.e., when it suits ‘their’ particular sentiments. That is sheer arrogance. Editors do have the right to choose not to publish letters… but, they should in principle, be obliged to have a legitimate reason for doing so. A personal bias due to ideological convictions should not be allowed to override their judgement. The **lack of impartiality** that afflicts so many editors is especially prevalent as regards matters to do with Māori. Any mention whatsoever of that word appears to automatically raise their hackles and cause them to instinctively suppress facts by way of censorship… for no other reason than the truth hurts **them**. For example, I submitted a letter pointing out that whilst the name for New Zealand is being pushed as “Aotearoa”, this is based on the belief that it’s the original Māori title… when in truth, Māori had no name for the country as a whole. There is undeniable proof of this, because the first Māori dictionary, printed in **1844** had no entry for the word *Aotearoa*. And the te reo Treaty of Waitangi signed in **1840** makes no mention of it. But despite this, and a lot of other irrefutable evidence, editors are too biased to allow that factual letter to be published. There is a code of ethics which stipulates that: **“Media should strive to represent all significant sides to a story, in order to serve their audience with a balanced picture.”** I would suggest that if woke editors are so convinced that our country should be named “Aotearoa”, then **instead** of resorting to **censorship** of facts that go against their personal **prejudice,** they should act responsibly under a code of **ethics** and allow **fair** debate… so that everyone can have an informed opinion when it comes to a referendum (which should certainly be mandatory in a **democratic** society). Regarding the cavalier rejection of letters, a point that should be acknowledged is that most editors wouldn’t dare treat people with such **ruthless contempt** if they were in a one-on-one situation… away from the security pertaining to their position of power. In another example**,** I submitted a letter pointing out that there are **96** Acts of Parliament favouring those of Māori heritage. The editor wrote back and said there was, quote: **“No reputable source that confirms this premise.”** In other words, he was accusing me of making it up **(lying)!** And that editor obviously didn’t want to be faced with the truth over the matter, so he didn’t even offer me an opportunity to prove my case. Nevertheless, a list was supplied of not only the **96** legislative ‘rights’ but also hundreds of preferential ‘provisions’ that have been made available exclusively to Maori. But did the editor have the decency to acknowledge that he was wrong and/or apologise for doubting me? Oh no. The fact is, he was using his biased belief as an excuse not to publish the letter. And when presented with proof that what it said was factual, he still wouldn’t publish it. So, his excuse turned out to be just that… an excuse. And all this was despite me having informed him that those of Māori descent should not have preferential treatment because Article 3 in the Treaty concisely reads: **“A ratoa nga tikanga katoa rite tahi”**. Meaning: **“All New Zealanders are equal under the law, with the same ‘rights’**. And not only that, but the **NZ Human Rights Act** prohibits **preference based on race or ethnicity**. So, favouritism based on race is not only racism**,** but a form of apartheid… and thus technically illegal. And the worst aspect is the burden of paying between one and two billion dollars that, by one means or another, go to the elite Māori opportunists each and every year. Which is at the expense of essential aspects of life in our country such as health, education and infrastructure projects… all of which are in a pitiful state of neglect. So, this unfair **rort** of Māori favouritism should be called what it really is… a disgraceful breach of human “rights” in what is meant to be a democratic country. And the tragedy is that most people, due to complacency (ignorance) are blissfully unaware of being ripped off by what can only be described as an outrageous scam. **Unethical** editors, who in their self-appointed ‘gatekeeper’ role restrict the **truth** from being told via letters pointing out things like the unfairness of unjustified ‘rights’ advantaging Māori**,** are effectively guilty of being somewhat treasonous in regard to matters of such **national significance**. This country badly needs to get some **integrity** back into our way of life. This article was published by [No Minister](https://nominister.wordpress.com/2026/10/14/biased-newspaper-editors/?ref=goodoil.news). ### We Must Put Safety Ahead of Ideology URL: https://goodoil.news/we-must-put-safety-ahead-of-ideology/ Last updated: 2026-10-14T20:59:59.000Z The findings of barrister Katherine Anderson KC into the Teaching Council’s handling of convicted child sex offender Timothy Fisher raise deeply disturbing questions about the council’s priorities, its accountability and its commitment to child safety. According to the report, there were grounds to strike Fisher off as early as 2015, yet he continued teaching at multiple schools before eventually being convicted of serious sexual offences against children. “The first responsibility of the Teaching Council is to protect children. It is not to protect the reputation of the profession, avoid difficult decisions or pursue an institutional agenda at the expense of its core responsibilities,” said Houghton. “Parents should be able to send their children to school with confidence that the people entrusted with their care have been properly vetted, are appropriately registered and have been subject to decisive action when serious safeguarding concerns arise.” She asked how warning signs of this magnitude failed to trigger the urgent action required to protect children. Helen Houghton said the case demands a serious examination of how the Teaching Council allocates its attention, resources and disciplinary powers. “I am deeply concerned that teachers who express views contrary to those promoted by activist groups can face the threat of professional disciplinary action, while this case reveals such serious failures in responding to warning signs involving a convicted child sex offender. “Teachers must be held to proper professional standards. But professional regulation must be fair, proportionate and focused on legitimate professional misconduct and the safety of children. Disagreement with an activist agenda should not, in itself, be treated as professional misconduct. “We also need to restore the proper place of parents in decisions about their children's education,” said Houghton. The Conservative Party will ensure that ideological or activist groups cannot gain influence over school curriculum or use our education system to advance their own agendas. Curriculum influence must not be handed to lobby groups: parents must have the primary voice in determining the values and direction of their children’s education. Schools exist to educate children, not to serve as vehicles for ideological campaigns. Parents have the right to expect transparency about what their children are being taught and confidence that their children’s wellbeing, development and education come first. We need a regulator that is rigorous when children are at risk, fair when teachers express lawful and professionally appropriate dissent, and accountable when its own decisions fail. The Conservative Party calls for: - An urgent safeguarding review of the council’s procedures for investigating serious allegations and responding to information supplied by police. - Robust registration and vetting checks to ensure teachers hold the required practising certificates and that serious risks are identified before further children are exposed to harm. - Accountability for failures, including an independent examination of decisions and omissions in the Fisher case and appropriate consequences where misconduct or negligence is established. - Transparent and proportionate disciplinary standards that protect children while ensuring teachers are not unfairly targeted simply for expressing lawful views that differ from those of ideological or activist groups. - A clear statement of priorities confirming that child protection, professional integrity and the rights of students come before institutional reputation or ideological conformity. Houghton says, “Every child deserves to be safe at school. Every parent deserves confidence that safeguarding warnings will be taken seriously. And every teacher deserves a regulator that applies professional standards fairly and consistently.” ### Your Daily Ten@10 - 2026/191 URL: https://goodoil.news/your-daily-ten-10-2026-191/ Last updated: 2026-10-14T20:59:59.000Z **This is edition 2026/191 of the *Ten@10* newsletter.** Hi all, This is the Ten@10, where I collate and summarise ten news items you generally won't see in the mainstream media. Enjoy! --- ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/01-ten191.jpg) ## 1\. Democracy Briefing: The donors’ election *Bryce Edwards - The Democracy Project* - 🐟 Campbell McManaway’s Cando Fishing gave NZ First $30,000 in August. He told Newsroom: “$30,000 is not much when you’re talking a $200 million industry.” - 💰 Edwards’ count of the Electoral Commission’s large-donation register puts disclosed contributions above $7.5 million, already more than the whole of 2023 with a month of campaigning left. - 📊 Act leads on about $2.37 million, then National $2.29 million, Labour $890,000, NZ First $833,000, Opportunity $492,000 and the Greens $447,000. - ⚖️ The governing parties have about $5.5 million against $1.45 million for Labour, the Greens and Te Pāti Māori: almost four dollars for every opposition dollar. - 🏭 Graeme Hart’s Rank Group ($500,000 to National, $200,000 to Act) and Zuru’s Nick Mowbray ($250,000 and $225,000) account for more than $1.1 million. - 🍕 Labour’s Jill Day says an election costs it about $5 million, against a broadcasting allocation of about $900,000\. Its 2023 small donations averaged $50, so matching Rank Group would take around 14,000 of them. - 🎙️ Sir John Key mocked the idea that being a billionaire is morally questionable, citing Hart. Edwards notes no coverage he saw mentioned Rank Group’s $500,000 to National. - 🗳️ Act has more than five times the Greens’ large donations despite a smaller 2023 vote (8.6% against 11.6%), and Kim Dotcom’s $3.5 million won the Internet Party no seat. - 🔒 Takeaway: the money is not buying many votes, Edwards says. Sections on “The donors’ veto” and whether the winners will change the rules are behind the paywall. [Read More](https://www.democracyproject.org.nz/p/democracy-briefing-the-donors-election?ref=goodoil.news) _This post is for subscribers on the VIP tier only._ ### Who’s Going to Create The Jobs? URL: https://goodoil.news/whos-going-to-create-the-jobs/ Last updated: 2026-10-14T20:29:59.000Z [**Ani O’Brien**](https://aniobrien.substack.com/p/everybodys-promising-jobs) *Like good faith disagreements and principled people. Dislike disingenuousness and Foucault. Care especially about women’s rights, justice, and democracy.* Unemployment is at an 11-year high, young people are struggling to get a foot in the door, and political parties are making some very expensive promises. We are being offered a macro approach by those who are attuned to the needs of business, but perhaps less familiar with the struggle to find work. And we are being offered pie in the sky solutions from those who would possibly be among the unemployed were we not paying their generous salaries. On the whole things don’t feel particularly bright and yet *jobs* is one of the words of this election. So I thought I would take a closer look at what is on offer and how parties are approaching our unemployment challenges. National is promising 220,000 jobs by 2030\. The Greens have now announced a nearly $6 billion economic development package they claim will create another 64,000 jobs on top of Treasury’s forecasts, alongside a multibillion-dollar programme to guarantee work for young people. Labour wants to revive construction employment, subsidise apprenticeships, and guarantee jobs for nursing graduates. Winston Peters wants to return to full employment as an explicit economic objective, while ACT is arguing that the country needs to stop making employment prohibitively expensive in the first place. There are some vastly different ideas being proffered of what government can, and should, do to solve this problem. Some are more persuasive than others. But before I start handing out marks for ambition, I want to establish exactly what has happened to employment in New Zealand, why it has happened, and what is in and out of our control. **How bad is unemployment in New Zealand?** According to Stats NZ, unemployment reached 5.6 per cent in the June 2026 quarter, the highest rate in 11 years. There were approximately 171,000 unemployed New Zealanders in the seasonally adjusted *Household Labour Force Survey*, up from 163,000 in March. In short, we have *substantially* more people looking for work than we did three years ago. When the coalition government came into office, unemployment was around four per cent. In the June 2023 quarter, before the election, it had been 3.7 per cent. By June 2024 it had reached 4.7 per cent, by June 2025 it was 5.2 per cent, and a year later it stood at 5.6 per cent. These figures conceal some of the more troubling aspects of the employment market, however, as the official unemployment rate only counts people who are actively seeking work and available to start. It does not fully capture people who have given up looking, those who would like more hours but cannot get them, or people who are technically employed but unable to find sufficient work to support themselves. That is why economists also consider *“underutilisation”* which takes into account unused labour capacity. Stats NZ puts the national underutilisation rate at 13.8 per cent. It includes unemployed people, underemployed part-time workers, and certain people outside the labour force who are available for work or actively seeking it. The situation for young people is particularly awful. The figures show that approximately 37 per cent of 15–24 year olds are underutilised. Youth unemployment is approaching 15 per cent nationally, and the regional differences are significant. In Hawke’s Bay and Gisborne, youth unemployment has reached 18.4 per cent, compared with 8.8 per cent in the final quarter of 2023\. There are communities in which nearly one in five young people who are participating in the labour force cannot find a job. **Whose fault is it?** To be fair to the coalition government we have to acknowledge that the dire unemployment stats during their term of government were not only as a result of their actions. There is a very convenient version of recent economic history being promoted by Labour in which New Zealand had a totally healthy employment market until Christopher Luxon arrived, whereupon the country’s economic fortunes deteriorated because National decided to sack everybody and stop building things. This is simply not true. And to be fair to Labour, there is an equally convenient version preferred by some coalition supporters in which every economic difficulty facing New Zealand in 2026 is the direct consequence of Jacinda Ardern and Chris Hipkins. This too is not an intellectually serious explanation. In the September 2023 *Pre-election Economic and Fiscal Updat*e, published while Labour was still in government, Treasury was already predicting unemployment would rise substantially. It forecast the rate would reach 4.8 per cent by June 2024 and peak at approximately 5.4 per cent in early 2025 before easing. By June 2026, it expected unemployment to have fallen to 4.8 per cent. So the economic deterioration we have experienced was substantially foreseen before the coalition even won the election. However, the fact that unemployment is now 5.6 per cent, rather than the 4.8 per cent predicted for this point, also means the current government cannot simply declare everything is proceeding exactly as expected. The causes go for the most part back to the extraordinary economic interventions undertaken during Covid and, particularly, the inflationary aftermath. It is important to distinguish between the initial decision to support businesses and workers during lockdowns and the wider spending decisions Labour subsequently made. Most of us can agree that there was a legitimate economic argument for substantial emergency assistance when governments had effectively prohibited large parts of the economy from operating. Without that support, many otherwise viable businesses would have collapsed. But as the two Covid-19 commissions showed, temporary emergency spending became part of a much wider expansion of government expenditure, while monetary stimulus and supply disruptions contributed to inflationary pressures. New Zealand was not unique in this respect and I acknowledge that governments and central banks around the developed world faced similar problems and often made similar mistakes to those made by our Labour government. In any case, the resulting inflation required the Reserve Bank to raise interest rates aggressively and that was always likely to suppress demand, construction activity, investment and, eventually, employment. Monetary policy works with a delay, meaning the economic consequences of decisions made under one government frequently become most visible under its successor. Bad luck National, ACT, and New Zealand First. **But things are bad everywhere, right?** Well, yeah. Kind of. The OECD reported an average unemployment rate of 4.9 per cent in July 2026\. Australia’s Bureau of Statistics recorded 4.6 per cent in August, while Britain’s Office for National Statistics reported 4.9 per cent for May to July. All lower than our current unemployment rate. However, Canada’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate was 6.4 per cent in August, so at least New Zealand is not the worst. The Australian comparison is the one that should particularly concern us as the Aussies are sufficiently similar to us in culture, geography, and institutions that moving there is pretty easy, particularly for young people without children. It also offers higher wages in many occupations and a significantly larger employment market. **What is out of our control?** New Zealand is a small trading nation operating in a global economy that does not organise itself around our electoral timetable. We cannot control international demand for our exports, the economic performance of China or Australia, the price of oil, or the decisions of major foreign central banks. We cannot prevent wars or compel shipping companies to offer affordable freight rates. We are also considerably more exposed to some of these disruptions than larger economies because we depend so heavily on imports and international trade. The conflict in the Middle East is a particularly obvious example. Disruption or threatened disruption to shipping through the Strait of Hormuz can raise global oil prices and shipping costs and New Zealand feels the effects. Rising fuel costs are a substantial increase in the cost of doing business for a lot of Kiwi businesses. Those costs are either absorbed through lower profit margins or passed on to customers. Neither outcome is particularly conducive to increased hiring. Then there is artificial intelligence, which I suspect will fundamentally change the employment market over the next decade in ways that our politicians have barely begun to comprehend. We have that to look forward to. Much of the public discussion about AI has focused on its spectacular capabilities and the possibility of replacing entire professions. But the immediate threat to employment may be more prosaic. Businesses are discovering that technology can perform increasingly sophisticated administrative, analytical, customer service, and content production tasks, and these happen to include many of the activities traditionally assigned to junior employees. Of course, there is a possibility that AI will create new industries and occupations, just as previous technological revolutions have done. It may also allow small New Zealand businesses to compete internationally in ways that were previously impossible. I am certainly not advocating that we attempt to hold back the AI tide. But we should recognise that the transition will probably be painful and that the new jobs will not necessarily appear in the same places, require the same skills, or be available to the same people as those being displaced. Any party offering a serious long term employment policy should be thinking about the relationship between technology, education, productivity, and the early years of people’s working lives. Simply promising more jobs without considering how the nature of work is changing is rather inadequate at this point. **The Greens want to guarantee every young person a job. With our money, obviously.** Of all the parties campaigning on jobs, the Greens have produced the most ambitious programme and, rather predictably, the one involving the greatest expansion of government responsibility for employment. Their newly announced plan proposes nearly $5.9 billion in additional expenditure over four years which it claims will produce 64,000 more jobs than Treasury’s existing forecast of approximately 220,000 for a total employment growth of around 284,000. Their package includes changes to the government’s *Investment Boost* tax incentive, fellowships for researchers and technical specialists, more support for commercialising research, expanded science funding, and greater use of government procurement to support New Zealand businesses. The Greens also want research and development expenditure to reach three per cent of GDP, compared with approximately 1.5 per cent currently. These are not inherently ridiculous objectives in the slightest. New Zealand’s poor productivity is a problem with a capital P, and there is a good argument for improving the relationship between scientific research, innovation, and commercially successful businesses. However, the Greens are determined to ensure that investment takes place in accordance with political priorities established by the state. A state *they* control. That’s why their proposed replacement or restructuring of *Investment Boost* is much much more prescriptive and directs incentives towards activities meeting government-determined industry, decarbonisation, and employment criteria. This would likely mean businesses would shift to make decisions based on satisfying political conditions rather than responding to consumer demand or commercial opportunity. Good things don’t tend to come from governments picking winners and attempting to override market demand. There is also the question of whether the 64,000 additional jobs they are claiming are genuinely attributable to the policies they are proposing. Producing a model that predicts employment growth after an injection of public money is not the same as demonstrating that those jobs would never otherwise have existed. Public expenditure has opportunity costs, particularly when it must be financed through borrowing or taxation, so money directed towards politically preferred industries is money unavailable for investment or spending elsewhere.The Greens need to show that the economic benefits will exceed the cost, that government spending won't simply displace private investment, and that the jobs will survive once the subsidies disappear. Their claims about additional employment should also be understood as modelled estimates, not guaranteed outcomes. Someone should inform our media of the difference. ![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!rg7D!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F6c220f86-a449-4a41-b280-57eb96ffafa2_1600x1364.png) The Greens’ separate *Youth Jobs Guarantee* is even more revealing of the party’s philosophy. The programme promises every 16–24 year old who has been out of work for six months a pathway into locally based job or training. It would build on the *Mayors Taskforce for Jobs* and the previous Labour government’s *Jobs for Nature* programme, funding work through councils, iwi, community organisations, businesses, and the public sector. Alarm bells should be ringing given *Jobs for Nature* cost taxpayers nearly $1.2 billion and, according to the government, approximately $77 for every hour of work generated. The programme was conceived during Covid when Treasury feared unemployment could reach as high as 26 per cent, a catastrophe that thankfully never materialised. As the economic justification weakened, the programme shifted its emphasis towards environmental outcomes, without consistently updating its contractual arrangements. Evaluators identified inconsistent reporting, inadequate planning for what would happen when the funding ran out, and insufficiently structured pathways into recognised qualifications. It operated through 25 funding streams across five government agencies, creating exactly the sort of bureaucratic complexity one might expect from a billion-dollar government employment scheme. The *Mayors Taskforce for Jobs* is an initiative established in 2000 that works through local councils to help young people into employment, particularly in rural and provincial areas. It provides practical support such as driver licensing, training, and assistance connecting jobseekers with employers. Unlike *Jobs for Nature*, which funded temporary positions directly, the taskforce primarily helps young people find employment with existing businesses. The Greens estimate that scaling up the initiative through all 67 councils would place 32,000 young people into local employment. The broader youth programme is estimated in reporting to cost between $4.7 billion and $4.9 billion over four years. Their own policy document lists annual indicative costs rising from $604 million in 2027/28 to $1.631 billion in 2030/31\. Added together, those annual figures amount to approximately $4.86 billion. I want to give the Greens some credit before explaining why I find their proposal unfortunately unworkable. They are correct that leaving young people unemployed for prolonged periods has serious consequences. They are also correct that there is plenty of useful work to be done in New Zealand. Councils have maintenance backlogs, community services face staffing pressures, and there are worthwhile conservation and infrastructure projects that could provide opportunities for young workers to acquire skills and experience. Government-funded programmes *can* create temporary employment and produce environmental work. However, it does not establish that expanding the model indefinitely is the most cost effective, or sustainable, way of improving permanent employment outcomes. I have no objection to helping young people who genuinely struggle to find employment. But I am less enthusiastic about creating an expectation that whenever the private economy cannot provide somebody with a job, the government must manufacture one. The Greens’ policy indicates that they would provide funding principally for roles in central or local government and non-profit organisations, while private businesses would be supported through placement arrangements and other assistance. Public and non-profit sectors generally depend, directly or indirectly, on revenue generated elsewhere in the economy, so expanding taxpayer-funded employment is not the same thing as increasing the capacity of the productive economy to sustain employment. Naturally, the eye-watering cost of the Greens’ policy is a concern. The party proposes spending approximately $4.86 billion over four years, with its own indicative annual costs rising to more than $1.6 billion by 2030/31\. Yet there is insufficient information about how many genuinely additional jobs the programme would create, how long those positions would last, or what proportion of participants would subsequently secure employment without continuing government assistance. Those are rather important details when you are asking taxpayers to commit nearly $5 billion to an employment scheme. This is all being proposed alongside an additional nearly $6 billion for their economic development package, which is itself only part of an enormous Green spending programme. According to the Taxpayers’ Union’s *Bribe-O-Meter,* the Greens have already announced an estimated $242.28 billion in spending commitments as at 4 October 2026, equivalent to approximately $116,931 per New Zealand household before this latest jobs announcement or to around 20 months of the Government’s entire annual budget. Their commitments are more than seven times Labour’s $33.17 billion in announced spending, and over 60 times National’s $3.84 billion I appreciate that the Greens propose substantial new taxation to fund their ambitions. But transferring resources through the state does not abolish the economic cost of obtaining them. At some point, the money has to come from households, businesses, borrowing, or a combination of all three. There is also a philosophical concern with this direction of travel. The Greens increasingly approach the economy as something that government should organise, direct, own... *dictate*. History provides us with some rather spectacular warnings about putting that philosophy into action. Communist states have often claimed impressive employment figures because the government controlled the allocation of labour. But guaranteeing that everybody had an assigned job did not guarantee that their work was productive, that resources were being allocated sensibly or fairly, or that the economy was capable of producing the goods and services people actually wanted. And for the younger voters who find the idea of guaranteed employment appealing, it is worth remembering that the jobs allocated by communist states were not necessarily jobs people wanted to do, were suited to, or had any meaningful choice in. You could find yourself assigned to a factory, a collective farm, or some other dreary occupation determined by the state’s economic priorities rather than your own ambitions. **The supposed security of guaranteed employment under communism comes at the expense of considerable personal and economic freedom.** Now, I am not suggesting that Chlöe Swarbrick’s youth employment programme is equivalent to the Soviet command economy. But it certainly has some commonalities that suggest one might be downstream of the other. The Greens have correctly identified a serious problem. Unfortunately, their preferred answer seems to be that the state should assume ever greater responsibility for solving it, regardless of the fiscal cost or the risks of displacing activity that might otherwise have occurred privately. In addition, I remain thoroughly unconvinced that handing Chlöe Swarbrick control over New Zealand’s economy is our most promising route to prosperity. **Labour wants to put people back to work. But can it pay for its promises?** Chris Hipkins has adopted *Jobs, Health, Homes* as a defining message, and the emphasis is smart as the deterioration of the employment market provides Labour with one of its strongest opportunities to challenge National’s economic competence. Never mind the hand he had in it. Unlike the Greens, Labour has largely concentrated on specific areas of employment rather than proposing that the government become the employer of last resort. Its most prominent policy commitments involve reviving construction, expanding apprenticeship assistance, and guaranteeing employment for nursing graduates. There is quite a lot in Labour’s proposals that I consider sensible, but there are also some significant holes in their account of how the country arrived at this point and how their promises would be funded. For example, Labour claims approximately 20,000 construction jobs have been lost over the past three years and has eagerly attributed the damage to the coalition’s decisions to cancel, pause, or reconsider major projects. They are correct that when a government changes direction or delays work, the resulting uncertainty can be devastating. However, Labour is rather conveniently neglecting the collapse in residential construction activity, which has been heavily affected by high interest rates, increased building costs, and weak demand. These problems were developing well before the coalition took office. Nor is the answer simply to resume spending public money on every project Labour previously supported. Governments have to distinguish between infrastructure investment with strong economic returns and projects with costs that have escalated beyond justification. Labour’s apprenticeship policy is more compelling. It proposes extending *Apprenticeship Boost* employer payments from one year to two years, retaining payments of $500 a month, and expanding eligibility into areas including road construction, water and sanitary engineering, personal services, sales and marketing, and sports and recreation. It would also provide new apprentices with a $1,000 grant towards tools and other start-up expenses, alongside a pilot mentoring programme. The policy would cost an average of $56.5 million annually over four years, with costs increasing as the programme expands. There is an economic argument behind this. Taking on an apprentice involves costs beyond their wages because employers must supervise and train inexperienced workers. That can make the decision to employ an apprentice considerably less appealing. A subsidy may therefore encourage an employer to take somebody on who would otherwise have been considered too expensive or risky. Supporting people to obtain recognised qualifications also offers a more durable benefit than simply placing them in temporary employment. Of course, a subsidy cannot persuade an employer to take on an apprentice if they cannot find enough work to keep their existing staff occupied. Labour’s policy may help businesses expand their workforce once demand recovers, but it is not going to manufacture that demand in the meantime. Labour’s nursing graduate guarantee presents a more complicated picture. Chris Hipkins has promised that eligible nurses graduating from New Zealand institutions will be offered employment in the public health system, with roles of at least 0.8 full time equivalent. The policy would operate through existing graduate recruitment pathways and is expected to cover approximately 2,400 graduates annually, although that does not mean 2,400 additional positions would be created every year. The party estimates the guarantee will cost $525 million over four years and result in approximately 350 additional nursing roles over that period. It also proposes increasing recruitment assistance for primary care nurses, with larger subsidies for rural practices. Again, the problem identified is real. We have a health system in which nurses and patients complain about inadequate staffing, while some newly qualified nurses struggle to secure employment and so leave for Australia. However, nursing shortages can be concentrated in particular specialties, geographic areas, and levels of experience. A graduate nurse is not immediately interchangeable with an experienced emergency department or intensive care nurse. Employing graduates also requires supervision, clinical support, and appropriate training. So while Labour’s proposal could certainly help address the longer term workforce pipeline, it won’t instantly resolve every shortage simply by producing employment agreements. And it comes at quite a price. Labour says the $525 million will come from health cost-pressure funding, which is money provided to help the health system absorb rising costs associated with wages, inflation, and increasing demand. Current Health Minister Simeon Brown has argued that the funding is already needed to meet existing commitments and this is worth taking seriously. Money allocated to health cost pressures is not a discretionary pot waiting for politicians to assign it to an election promise. The same tensions appear in Labour’s wider economic programme. Their *Small Business Action Plan* includes requiring large companies to pay smaller suppliers more promptly, increasing the compulsory GST registration threshold to $80,000, and allowing eligible businesses to immediately deduct the cost of certain equipment purchases up to $10,000\. Practical ideas aimed at improving cash flow and reducing compliance burdens, particularly for smaller operators. The difficulty is that Labour has simultaneously committed to repealing or redirecting National’s *Investment Boost*, which provides a tax incentive for businesses investing in productive assets. Treasury estimated that *Investment Boost* could increase GDP by up to 0.5 per cent over five years. Labour needs to explain why its narrower arrangements would generate better economic outcomes than the broader incentive they would replace. It cannot simply assume that spending less on one tax incentive and more on politically preferred programmes will improve employment. There is also a problem with the timing of Labour’s proposals. Some of its apprenticeship measures would not take full effect until 2028 and workforce development takes time to produce qualified employees. So even if they are proposing worthwhile long term policies, they are not an immediate answer to someone who has been unemployed for six months. **National is promising 220,000 jobs. How many would happen anyway?** National has chosen a rather impressive headline number for its employment pitch, promising 220,000 jobs by 2030\. It is totally doable. Probably because Treasury is already forecasting exactly that level of employment growth over the coming four years anyway. There is nothing inherently wrong with a governing party campaigning on its economic forecasts. Governments, after all, do influence the conditions in which employment grows, and a forecast recovery may well depend in part on their policies. But it is a bit cute to pass it off as if National has demonstrated its policies will independently create that number. The more relevant question is whether National’s policies (or the wider coalition’s policies) are likely to make our employment recovery stronger, faster, and more sustainable than it would otherwise have been and there are actually reasons to think some of them could. The government has sought to restore fiscal discipline, reduce regulatory burdens, improve investment incentives, and create conditions in which businesses can expand. National’s *Investment Boost* scheme is a meaningful attempt to address New Zealand’s longstanding problem of underinvestment in productive capital and I hope it isn’t murdered by Labour or maimed by the Greens. The coalition government has also achieved changes to planning and infrastructure legislation, intended to make development easier and provide greater certainty for investment. These are generally sensible priorities and given enough time will make it easier to build, invest, operate a business, and employ people, contributing to the conditions required for employment growth. On the whole, National (and the coalition) has the right broad economic philosophy for improvement, but given the difficult economic conditions they inherited they have not yet had the time to prove the efficacy of their policies. But while they are entitled to these caveats, I will not let them get away that easy because National is asking voters to place considerable faith in an acceleration that has not yet borne any fruit. That faith is harder to come by given some of National’s other unfulfilled ambitions. Consider its promise to rein in the bloated public service. According to the Public Service Commission, there were 63,117 full time equivalent public servants in June 2023, rising to 65,699 by December that year. After considerable public discussion about government cutbacks, actual redundancies, and much political outrage, the figure was 64,535 in March 2026\. Nicola Willis has now committed to reducing the workforce to 55,000 by mid-2029. Of course, the problem of unemployment and the problem of the bloated public service have solutions that are necessarily mutually incompatible. Shrinking the size of the bureaucracy would mean adding to the number of unemployed in the short term. That doesn’t mean National should preserve unnecessary jobs, but it does necessitate a coherent strategy for managing the economic transition, particularly in regions heavily exposed to public sector employment. But as I say, the coalition did not actually shrink the bureaucracy so this should all be redundant. However, one of the biggest problems that National has had for the past three years has been one of narrative. New Zealanders think that they have been cutting jobs, even if they haven’t. And they have *appeared* reluctant to acknowledge the human costs of their fiscal decisions even though those very costs were probably the things keeping them up at night. National deserves credit for recognising that sustainable employment depends upon productive businesses rather than an indefinitely expanding public sector, but also deserves every bit of grief they receive for presenting a forecast 220,000 job recovery as though the figure is its own. **ACT thinks the problem starts with the cost of employing people** Unsurprisingly, ACT approaches unemployment from almost the opposite direction to the Greens. Where the Greens see a shortage of jobs as a justification for government to create them, ACT reckons that the state has made it unnecessarily expensive and difficult for businesses to employ people and needs to get out of the way. The party’s wider programme focuses on reducing regulation, restraining government expenditure, lowering the tax burden, and improving incentives for private investment. Among its most unpopular employment-related proposals is freezing minimum wage increases for three years. Not only has the left bloc screamed bloody murder about this, so has New Zealand First. But ACT says they are not proposing it out of cruelty or heartlessness. They reason that when the cost of employing somebody rises, businesses have to determine whether employing each worker justifies the expense. A minimum wage that rises too fast can result in reducing hours, employing fewer people, increasing prices, or investing in labour-saving technology. The counter is that freezing the minimum wage while living costs rise also reduces the real earnings of those already receiving it. ACT’s approach is most persuasive as part of a wider effort to make business and employment easier. Their weakness is that deregulation and wage restraint do not necessarily produce employment opportunities in an economy suffering from weak demand. A business struggling to attract customers is unlikely to hire more staff simply because the minimum wage has stopped increasing. While ACT understands that ultimately, businesses must be able to afford the people they employ, they have offered little by way of an immediate response to the young people already locked out of the employment market right now. **New Zealand First wants full employment back on the agenda** Winston Peters has introduced a rather interesting philosophical distinction into the election debate by arguing that New Zealand should again pursue full employment as an explicit economic objective. New Zealand First have also proposed restoring employment to the Reserve Bank’s mandate, which would reverse their own coalition’s decision to return the bank to focus on price stability. There is an argument for considering employment alongside inflation when setting monetary policy. Several major central banks operate with mandates that include employment considerations, and there is a legitimate debate about the balance between price stability and economic activity. However, the Reserve Bank cannot directly create productive jobs. Restoring a dual mandate would not automatically lower unemployment, particularly when inflation is being driven so significantly by international fuel prices or supply disruptions. The danger in a dual mandate, and the reason the coalition removed it, is that politicians begin treating monetary policy as an instrument for maintaining artificially high demand, tolerating inflation in the hope that employment will improve. New Zealand has experienced enough of the consequences of inflation to warrant considerable caution about that approach. That said, New Zealand First’s wider economic policies are more substantial than the Reserve Bank proposal alone. They recently announced a proposal to reduce company tax to 20 per cent (from 28 per cent) for qualifying smaller businesses with turnover below $30 million and this is particularly relevant to employment. Lower company tax would leave businesses with more retained earnings to invest, expand, and potentially employ additional workers. New Zealand First have also proposed replacing the Accredited Employer Work Visa with a shortage-led Skilled Work Visa, arguing that immigration settings should better reflect genuine workforce needs and reduce exploitation. This is a much more direct policy intended to to address legitimate concerns about immigration policy being used to supply labour while insufficient attention is paid to the wages, training, and employment prospects of New Zealanders. However, they acknowledge that some industries genuinely require overseas workers and have left room for that. **Opportunity has an economic policy. Is it a jobs policy?** The Opportunity Party has produced an ambitious economic development programme under the banner of its ($1.33 billion annual) *Breakthrough Economy* policy. Its diagnosis is familiar, and correct. New Zealand suffers from weak productivity, insufficient investment in research and development, and a tendency to direct capital towards established assets rather than innovative businesses. They have pro-business policies including increased science funding, tax credits for technology adoption, stronger commercialisation pathways, support for start-ups, and changes intended to make polytechnics more closely connected to the needs of regional businesses. Additionally, Opportunity’s *Citizen’s Income* is intended to give people greater financial security while retraining, changing careers or starting businesses, while its proposals for polytechnics, small business support and technology investment could strengthen the economy’s capacity to create higher-skilled employment. But these are largely long term structural reforms and I am fundamentally opposed to the UBI. But that is another essay entirely. Opportunity’s proposals offer worthwhile improvements to New Zealand’s long term productive capacity. Indeed, some are more coherent than those offered by parties with considerably more parliamentary experience. However, Opportunity’s policy platform appears to largely assume employment will improve as a consequence of higher productivity and innovation, but lacks any immediate solutions to our unemployment problem. **Te Pāti Māori: Māori economic development, but where is the unemployment strategy?** Te Pāti Māori has some policies that could generate employment, although its approach is overwhelmingly focused on Māori-specific economic development rather than the broader unemployment crisis. The party proposes a $1 billion Energy Sovereignty Fund, developing a Māori energy workforce, establishing Māori-led investment institutions, supporting Māori businesses and creative industries, and increasing housing construction. There are some potentially worthwhile initiatives here, particularly those aimed at developing businesses. However, the party has not provided any quantified improvement objectives or a clear explanation of how its proposals would reduce unemployment across the wider economy. The absence of detail is particularly concerning given the disproportionate employment difficulties facing young Māori that this party is never shy of talking about. **So who actually has the better answer?** I began looking at these policies hoping to find that at least one party had assembled a genuinely convincing response to New Zealand’s employment problem. What I predictably found instead was a rather definitive division between parties that are concentrating on creating the conditions for businesses to employ more people and those that want government to take greater responsibility for providing employment itself. But a government cannot regulate and subsidise its way to prosperity. Neither can it assume that removing obstacles to private investment will immediately solve unemployment among young people who are already struggling to enter the workforce. There are situations in which carefully targeted public intervention makes sense, particularly in apprenticeships, vocational training, and helping people who face substantial barriers to employment. There are also circumstances in which the most useful thing a government can do is stop imposing unnecessary costs and uncertainty on the people who might otherwise employ them. The evidence does not persuade me that the Greens’ multibillion-dollar employment guarantee represents a credible or fiscally responsible response. They have correctly diagnosed the seriousness of youth unemployment but have proposed a solution that places extraordinary (and undue) faith in the state’s ability to organise productive work, alongside a wider spending programme whose scale should alarm anybody concerned about our long term economic stability. There are sensible ideas scattered across the political spectrum, although none of the parties have managed to put together a full package. I am more persuaded by policies that make it easier for businesses to invest, expand and employ people, alongside targeted support for training and those struggling to enter the workforce. But I am wary of politicians who confuse increasing government expenditure with improving economic outcomes, and equally wary of those who believe that announcing the right economic reforms is sufficient evidence that those reforms are working. The current coalition probably has the better understanding of what drives sustainable employment in the private economy, but after three years in government it has precious little improvement in the unemployment figures to show for it. Labour has some worthwhile proposals but cannot escape its contribution to the economic circumstances we are now experiencing. And the Greens’ extraordinary spending ambitions raise considerably more questions about the long term sustainability of their employment promises than they answer. But what frustrates me about this election’s discussion of jobs is how little attention is being paid to the distinction between employing somebody and creating the economic conditions in which their employment can be sustained. We are being offered enormous spending commitments, promises of government-guaranteed positions, and forecasts of jobs that may appear regardless of who occupies the Treasury benches. Yet the underlying problem remains that New Zealand is an expensive place to operate a business, we have invested poorly in productivity for decades, and our economy is not generating opportunities quickly enough for the people who want them. And perhaps that is the judgement our politicians deserve. After three years of deteriorating employment conditions, the governing parties are asking voters to trust that the recovery is coming, while Labour is asking them to forget the economic circumstances in which the deterioration began. The Greens are promising to spend billions employing people directly, but have not adequately demonstrated what happens when the money runs out. Meanwhile, young New Zealanders who have done everything we asked of them deserve something more convincing than another round of ambitious numbers from politicians whose own employment is rather more secure than theirs. Well, for three years after the election at least. This article was originally published by [Thought Crimes](https://aniobrien.substack.com/p/everybodys-promising-jobs). ### The Ideas Recession URL: https://goodoil.news/the-ideas-recession/ Last updated: 2026-10-14T20:14:59.000Z There are those who can grasp ideas and those who simply cannot. _This post is for paying subscribers only._ ### Yes, Sovereignty Must Be First URL: https://goodoil.news/yes-sovereignty-must-be-first/ Last updated: 2026-10-14T19:59:59.000Z **LilBaP** Plenty of New Zealanders still remember the Covid years as they actually were: long lockdowns, mandates that cost jobs and businesses and a daily podium-of-truth briefing that treated questions as disloyalty – unless they came from Tova or Jessica. The royal commission noted the social damage. Labour owned the domestic decisions then. Not so much now, according to Hipkins – everyone had a choice, apparently. At the same time, the WHO and UN spent the same period issuing guidance that many governments treated as gospel, even while the evidence kept shifting and the lab-leak discussion was still being labelled misinformation and many experts were applauded with others blatantly dismissed, no matter their credentials. This week New Zealand abstained on a non-binding UN declaration that welcomes the WHO Pandemic Agreement and the 2024 IHR amendments. Winston Peters, as foreign minister, made the call – the right one. National ministers, showing their spinelessness again, preferred to vote in favour with reservations. No cabinet decision was required, so Peters as the foreign minister decided. He cited the coalition clause that keeps health decisions in Wellington, not Geneva. Chris Hipkins called it cowardice. He might want to look the word up, then try walking past a mirror without remembering he didn’t front up to the royal commission in public. Helen Clark called it bad company. That is because her company is the UN, and anyone who questions it is, by definition, in bad company. The official line Peters presented was simply that New Zealand will run a national interest test before it signs anything. At least we have one politician with a spine, a bit of common sense and some political nous. This is the same common sense Peters used when making his speech to the UN last year. Peters seems well respected in foreign affairs around the world and often it is his shrewd commentary that keeps NZ respected as a country of integrity by many that we should be aligned with. The same people who ran the last emergency still prefer the private interview. Ardern, Hipkins, Robertson and Verrall all declined to appear in public at the second phase of the royal commission. Ashley Bloomfield, the director-general who stood at the podium and delivered the health advice that underpinned the lockdowns and the mandates, was not required to answer questions in the open either. Private interviews were enough. A public hearing would be performative. The commission did not summons any of them – there’s that smell again. So the ministers and the chief health official who imposed the rules never had to sit in a room, under oath, and explain themselves to the people who lost work, lost businesses, couldn’t visit dying relatives and friends or reported adverse effects after the shots they were mandated to take. Most people look at that refusal and see cowardice. They also wonder what, exactly, they have to hide – many will answer that with their own ‘special style of critique’. So now consider: if New Zealand cannot get its own former leaders and its director-general into a public hearing to account for the decisions that upended ordinary lives, then the idea that we will somehow hold a Geneva bureaucracy accountable when the next framework goes wrong is pure theatre. The people who took the shots and lost their jobs already know how that story ends. Most of those who disliked the lockdowns and mandates are not arguing that New Zealand should ignore the rest of the world, as Clark would like you to think. They are arguing that the lesson was not ‘hand the next script to organisations with no electoral accountability and hope the next government treats it as optional’. The national interest test exists because enough people watched the last round and decided they did not want the same process repeated by default. The WHO and the UN have budgets and careers that reward expansion. Treating their next text as the responsible default is how the last set of mistakes gets locked in rather than examined. If Ardern, Hipkins, Robertson, Verrall and Bloomfield can dodge a public hearing in Wellington and still call it ‘co-operation’, Geneva will have no trouble skipping the explanations altogether and we will be left with a costly receipt – again. In reality the most ridiculous part of the whole political narrative is Hipkins and Clark lecturing Peters, or anyone for that matter, on pandemic decisions after the mess Labour left the country in. ### Quick Hit: $2.19 Million Says Cap It URL: https://goodoil.news/quick-hit-2-19-million-says-cap-it/ Last updated: 2026-10-14T19:29:59.000Z Opportunity wants a $30,000 donation cap. Gareth Morgan has given it $2,190,617. Pull the ladder up once you are on the roof. _This post is for subscribers on the VIP tier only._ ### The Future of the Centre Right URL: https://goodoil.news/the-future-of-the-centre-right/ Last updated: 2026-10-14T19:29:59.000Z [**Simon O’Connor**](https://onpointnz.substack.com/p/cpac-australia-and-the-future-of) *Husband, step-father, foster dad, and longtime student of philosophy and history. Also happen to be a former politician, including chairing New Zealand's Foreign Affairs, Defense, and Trade Committee.* I’ve recently been in Brisbane for CPAC Australia. CPAC stands for Conservative Political Action Conference and originated in the United States. Just like the American conferences, this Australian one is glitzy with huge screens, loud music, bold lighting, smoke generators, and an array of speakers and topics from across the conservative right of politics. ![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!lg_K!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F51b56234-fd76-4eaa-a648-6bd1c1379e94_2790x2019.jpeg) Leader of the Liberals, Angus Taylor As you would expect, very much an Australian focus but the dynamics between the various centre-right parties there is also very applicable to New Zealand. While the 1,500 attendees gathered wanted to see unity across the three centre-right political parties, the tension and disunity between them was all too evident to see. The traditional conservative party is the Liberals, led by relatively new leader Angus Taylor. The ‘Libs’ are the equivalent of National back home here in New Zealand. The Nationals are effectively the Liberal Party for the rural voter and led by Matt Canavan, also a relatively new leader. Together, the Nationals and Liberals are known as ‘the coalition’ for they effectively work together as one while maintaining their separate brands. There is then One Nation, led by Senator Pauline Hanson. She was the clear star of the show, with her party polling higher than all other parties on the right or left of politics. Pauline has long been seen as fringe figure, but after 30 years in politics she is now very much front and centre. ![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!rPfX!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F10392899-f793-4b4f-9c9d-97d8688c7ec5_2798x2145.jpeg) Leader of One Nation, Senator Pauline Hanson There was tension between the Liberals and One Nation, Angus and Pauline. The once dominant Liberal party has significantly faded while One Nation has surged. While Angus Taylor received a warm but notably muted welcome to stage, Pauline was greeted like a rockstar. Strikingly, all three leaders touched on pretty much the same issues – cost of living, energy, ending Net Zero, mining, immigration, and social cohesion. Yet they could not be on stage together, at least not Angus and Pauline. In very telling optics, a panel advertised as including all three leaders ended up just being Matt and Pauline. Angus Taylor clearly refused to join, so was interviewed separately. I think the reason for this very visible disunity is simple to explain. The Liberals do not want to give any legitimacy to One Nation and are hoping that they can rebuild their vote and diminish One Nation’s before the next election in two years’ time. How does any of this relate to New Zealand? The first is the issue of centre-right parties departing from their core values and then wondering why their vote drops. This is unfortunately true of the National Party, now consistently polling under 30 per cent. Just like the Liberals in Australia or the Conservatives in the United Kingdom, there is a clear departure from the values that once underpinned the parties and their success. All three have moved towards the left of politics, although Angus Taylor and Kemi Badendoch are slowly trying to pull their parties back towards the right. Frustratingly, National has drifted to the left in both fiscal and social policies. Not in all or every portfolio of course, but widespread enough for voters to notice. Chris Luxon could not answer if being a billionaire is moral (the answer is yes); has doubled down on rejecting anything pro-life; has ruled out any change to Net Zero or leaving the Paris Agreement; and fiscally, despite the rhetoric, National’s track mirrors that of the previous Labour government on almost every metric. Instead, and broadly speaking, ACT is appealing to the fiscal conservatives while NZ First appeals to the social conservative. This is exactly what has happened to the Libs in Australia, for as they moved left, their centre-right voters went to One Nation. Of note, the Liberals under Angus Taylor are returning to the right of politics. Whether reducing immigration, challenging Net Zero, increasing defence spending, or discussing the removal of the nuclear moratorium – he is clearly articulating policies that resonate with many voters on the Australian right. Despite this, these voters are not yet returning in significant numbers. The reasons are believability and legacy. Liberal voters remember what the party did while in government, such as Scott Morrison signing Australia up to Net Zero. These voters now find it hard to believe the ‘new’ Liberals will scrap it. As for legacy, it’s the wider scepticism borne from seeing so many campaign promises failing to materialise when in government. This is currently a problem for National as well. What people thought would happen over the last three years, has not. This has led to frustration with voters and while in a coalition government with ACT and NZ First, it is National copping the most flak. It’s unfair to a degree, but it’s also reality. ![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!jlts!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F7af08269-0e45-4d87-82b5-8824add7ef52_937x617.png) There have been many polls, with this one being the very latest – 1News’ Verian poll A final observation is around the leaders of the once small parties. Whether Pauline Hanson or Winston Peters, Nigel Farage or David Seymour – there are things they’ve said or policies they’ve pursued that do not sit well with conservative voters. Chatting with delegates here at CPAC, many openly said they found lots of things that Pauline has said and done over the years to be offensive, stupid, or not aligned with their values. But they are still going to vote for One Nation. Why? It’s because she calls things how she sees them and not pandering what mainstream media or the commentariat will think. Voters are responding to this ‘honesty’. They may not like what she’s saying at times, but they appreciate she’s straight up. The same is mostly true of the likes of Nigel Farage, Winston Peters, Javier Milei in Argentina, and others. People are not responding to what is being said, but how it is being said. In turn, they are rejecting politicians they view as speaking in a way that tries to please everyone. The latter is not just an issue for National but also Labour in New Zealand. When either Luxon or Hipkins are asked a question, one gets the impression they are immediately processing what answer will be best received by mainstream media or those on TikTok. Voters do not like this and the proof is in the polls. The lesson from CPAC Australia is that voters notice when parties drift from the values that originally earned their support. Whether New Zealand’s major parties recognise that lesson before the next election remains to be seen. ### In the Media Warning, this podcast might be confronting for some. I speak with Melinda Tankard Reist of Collective Shout about what happens when standing up for women and girls makes you the target of one of the worst online violence campaigns the world has seen. And my wife Rachel’s latest Substack is on happiness, and a great read: [Let’s Flourish by Rachel](https://letsflourishnz.substack.com/p/happiness?utm%5Fsource=substack&utm%5Fcampaign=post%5Fembed&utm%5Fmedium=web&embedding%5Fpublication%5Fid=2186958). This article was originally published by [On Point](https://onpointnz.substack.com/p/cpac-australia-and-the-future-of). ### Dead Heat and the Kingmaker Has Already Put Her Land Tax on the Table URL: https://goodoil.news/dead-heat-kingmaker-land-tax/ Last updated: 2026-10-14T19:00:00.000Z Hipkins and Luxon tied on 20 per cent, National and Labour on 34 seats each and Opportunity holding the balance. The kingmaker who won the debate had already said dropping her own tax reform was worth considering. Electorate vote National, party vote ACT or NZ First. _This post is for paying subscribers only._ ### Good Oil General Debate URL: https://goodoil.news/good-oil-general-debate-849/ Last updated: 2026-10-14T18:00:00.000Z Good morning, welcome to our daily General Debate. Our evening General debate is called Backchat and will start at 6 pm. 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Please be respectful and do not make demands. ### Face of the Day URL: https://goodoil.news/face-of-the-day-1603/ Last updated: 2026-10-14T17:29:59.000Z > A woman whose fraud saw thousands of dollars siphoned from her victims has had her sentencing adjourned because she brought school-aged children with her, and no one could take care of them if she was sent to prison. > > Olivia Hamilton appeared for sentencing at the Christchurch District Court on Wednesday after earlier pleading guilty to a raft of fraud-related charges, including obtaining by deception and causing loss by deception. > > *Stuff* understands more than a dozen victims lost thousands of dollars to Hamilton’s offending. > > Hamilton arrived at court on Wednesday afternoon with two school-aged children. No one else was with them to look after the kids. > > Stuff [Read More](https://www.stuff.co.nz/nz-news/361046470/fraudsters-sentencing-adjourned-after-she-brought-her-kids-court?ref=goodoil.news) ### The Good Oil Word of the Day URL: https://goodoil.news/the-good-oil-word-of-the-day-788/ Last updated: 2026-10-14T17:15:29.000Z The word for today is… catalyst (noun) - 1: a person or thing that provokes or speeds significant change or action 2: a substance that enables a chemical reaction to proceed at a usually faster rate or under different conditions (as at a lower temperature) than otherwise possible Source : [Merriam-Webster](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/catalys?ref=goodoil.news) Etymology : Catalyst is a fairly recent addition to the English language, first appearing at the start of the 20th century with its chemistry meaning. It was formed from the word catalysis, another chemistry term which refers to a modification and especially an increase in the rate of a chemical reaction induced by material unchanged chemically at the end of the reaction. By the 1940s, the figurative sense of catalyst was in use for someone or something that quickly causes change or action. ***If you enjoyed this Good Oil word of the day please consider sharing it with your friends and, especially, your children.*** ### The Good Oil Daily Bible Verse URL: https://goodoil.news/the-good-oil-daily-bible-verse-498/ Last updated: 2026-10-14T17:00:00.000Z [Joshua 15](https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Joshua%2015&version=KJV&ref=goodoil.news) **19** Who answered, Give me a blessing; for thou hast given me a south land; give me also springs of water. And he gave her the upper springs, and the nether springs. ### Night Cap URL: https://goodoil.news/night-cap-756/ Last updated: 2026-10-14T07:59:59.000Z If you have a great Youtube, Rumble or Vimeo video to share send it to videos@goodoil.news [![CTA Image](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/01/cam-shirt2-1.png)](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) If you're loving this trusty, straight-up news on Kiwi politics and beyond, why not become a paid member, eh? Unlock exclusive yarns, podcasts, vids, and in-depth analysis—your support keeps independent journalism chugging along. Join today for just $5.00 per month and get the full good oil! 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URL: https://goodoil.news/are-the-conservative-party-wasting-their-followers-votes/ Last updated: 2026-10-14T06:59:59.000Z If you have a great Youtube, Rumble or Vimeo video to share send it to videos@goodoil.news ### Juliet Moses On October 7th Commemoration & Counter Protests URL: https://goodoil.news/juliet-moses-on-october-7th-commemoration-counter-protests/ Last updated: 2026-10-14T06:29:59.000Z If you have a great Youtube, Rumble or Vimeo video to share send it to videos@goodoil.news [![CTA Image](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/01/cam-shirt2-1.png)](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) If you're loving this trusty, straight-up news on Kiwi politics and beyond, why not become a paid member, eh? Unlock exclusive yarns, podcasts, vids, and in-depth analysis—your support keeps independent journalism chugging along. Join today for just $5.00 per month and get the full good oil! [Learn more ](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) ### TOP’s Hung Parliament & National Drug Testing Policy URL: https://goodoil.news/tops-hung-parliament-national-drug-testing-policy/ Last updated: 2026-10-14T06:00:00.000Z If you have a great Youtube, Rumble or Vimeo video to share send it to videos@goodoil.news [![CTA Image](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/01/cam-shirt2-1.png)](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) If you're loving this trusty, straight-up news on Kiwi politics and beyond, why not become a paid member, eh? Unlock exclusive yarns, podcasts, vids, and in-depth analysis—your support keeps independent journalism chugging along. Join today for just $5.00 per month and get the full good oil! [Learn more ](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) ### The Good Oil Daily Roundup URL: https://goodoil.news/the-good-oil-daily-roundup-772/ Last updated: 2026-10-14T05:29:59.000Z [](https://photos.google.com/u/1/photo/AF1QipN7Zp7NKe4smdZA9nAYud8CjsgjsQ-Bn7QyMo53?ref=goodoil.news) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/6817BB8F-AA77-4A2F-9891-CB9B28CD585A_1_105_c.jpeg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/DFEEFC71-50EC-4BB4-82BA-4A4DA1E010FC.jpeg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/77DA9CE6-57F5-43C1-80A5-E9BDB9B1D11C.jpeg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/AF6262D0-00E2-4200-8BE8-465B74D3198E.jpeg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/6311486A-1568-428E-9F53-6660AF7B7191.jpeg) ### Good Oil Backchat URL: https://goodoil.news/good-oil-backchat-850/ Last updated: 2026-10-14T04:59:59.000Z Good evening, welcome to **Backchat**. 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Please be respectful and do not make demands. ### How They Invented a Climate Crisis URL: https://goodoil.news/how-they-invented-a-climate-crisis/ Last updated: 2026-10-14T03:29:59.000Z [**Chris Morrison**](https://dailysceptic.org/author/chris-morrison/?ref=goodoil.news) *Chris Morrison is the environment editor of the* Daily Sceptic*. His new book is available on* [*Amazon*](https://www.amazon.co.uk/IMPLAUSIBLE-Chris-Morrison-ebook/dp/B0HFPZZN5X/ref=sr%5F1%5F1?ref=goodoil.news)*.* [](https://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fdailysceptic.org%2F2026%2F10%2F12%2Fexclusive-extracts-from-chris-morrisons-new-book-implausible-how-scientists-activist-politicians-and-journalists-invented-a-climate-crisis%2F)[](https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?text=Exclusive%20Extracts%20from%20Chris%20Morrison%E2%80%99s%20New%20Book%20Implausible%3A%20How%20Scientists%2C%20Activist%20Politicians%20and%20Journalists%20Invented%20a%20Climate%20Crisis&url=https%3A%2F%2Fdailysceptic.org%2F2026%2F10%2F12%2Fexclusive-extracts-from-chris-morrisons-new-book-implausible-how-scientists-activist-politicians-and-journalists-invented-a-climate-crisis%2F&ref=goodoil.news)[](https://www.reddit.com/submit?url=https%3A%2F%2Fdailysceptic.org%2F2026%2F10%2F12%2Fexclusive-extracts-from-chris-morrisons-new-book-implausible-how-scientists-activist-politicians-and-journalists-invented-a-climate-crisis%2F&title=Exclusive%20Extracts%20from%20Chris%20Morrison%E2%80%99s%20New%20Book%20Implausible%3A%20How%20Scientists%2C%20Activist%20Politicians%20and%20Journalists%20Invented%20a%20Climate%20Crisis&ref=goodoil.news)[](https://wa.me/?text=Exclusive%20Extracts%20from%20Chris%20Morrison%E2%80%99s%20New%20Book%20Implausible%3A%20How%20Scientists%2C%20Activist%20Politicians%20and%20Journalists%20Invented%20a%20Climate%20Crisis%20https%3A%2F%2Fdailysceptic.org%2F2026%2F10%2F12%2Fexclusive-extracts-from-chris-morrisons-new-book-implausible-how-scientists-activist-politicians-and-journalists-invented-a-climate-crisis%2F&ref=goodoil.news)[](mailto:?subject=Exclusive%20Extracts%20from%20Chris%20Morrison%E2%80%99s%20New%20Book%20Implausible%3A%20How%20Scientists%2C%20Activist%20Politicians%20and%20Journalists%20Invented%20a%20Climate%20Crisis&body=https%3A%2F%2Fdailysceptic.org%2F2026%2F10%2F12%2Fexclusive-extracts-from-chris-morrisons-new-book-implausible-how-scientists-activist-politicians-and-journalists-invented-a-climate-crisis%2F)[](https://dailysceptic.org/2026/10/12/exclusive-extracts-from-chris-morrisons-new-book-implausible-how-scientists-activist-politicians-and-journalists-invented-a-climate-crisis/?ref=goodoil.news#ds-comments) ![](https://dailysceptic.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/81c41O3qtZL._SL1500_.jpg) Today we publish exclusive extracts from Chris Morrison’s explosive new book that will send shock waves through both the ‘settled’ climate science community and the hard-left promoters of the wicked Net Zero lunacy: > [***IMPLAUSIBLE: How scientists, activist politicians and journalists invented a climate crisis, weaponised junk computer model findings and claimed a fake consensus to promote the collectivist Net Zero fantasy***](https://www.amazon.co.uk/IMPLAUSIBLE-Chris-Morrison-ebook/dp/B0HFPZZN5X/ref=sr%5F1%5F1?ref=goodoil.news) > > **Foreword by Toby Young, editor-in-chief, *Daily Sceptic*** > > If there’s a theme running through Chris’s work it is that the climate agenda is a thinly disguised power grab by the lanyard classes, determined to assert control over the unruly masses who are proving stubbornly reluctant to give up their sentimental attachment to freedom. You want to choose what car to buy and what speed to drive it? No way, you knuckle-dragging petrol-head. You’ll buy an over-priced, doesn’t-retain-its-value EV and go no faster than 20mph. Enjoy steak and chips? Sorry, mush, it’s a plant-based diet for you from now on. Unwilling to give up your gas boiler? Tough. You’ll be forced to install a ‘heat’ pump that costs £25,000 and doesn’t actually heat your house. … > > Chris’s work is needed more than ever – and this book is a fantastic introduction to it. Reading it will make you angry – and you should be angry, very angry. But you’ll also be very entertained. > > **Introduction** > > April 7th 2026 was the day the great climate crisis invention backing the political Net Zero fantasy finally hit the hard rocks of reality. That was the day a group of scientists working on a new assessment report for the United Nations-backed Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) admitted that a set of computer model assumptions commonly known as RCP8.5 were “implausible”. The official admission sent shock waves through the elite worlds of climate scientists and collectivist politicians as well as heaping lasting shame on all the helpful messengers in mainstream media. The RCP8.5 assumptions have been a key computer input ‘pathway’ promoting the evidence-lite climate crisis since 2011\. Almost every climate Armageddon story whether it be less tasty beer in future (yes, the BBC wrote that one), disappearing polar ice (take a bow, Sir David Attenborough, King Charles and the late Pope Francis) or increasing air turbulence has the fingerprints of RCP8.5 all over it. > > The April 7th bombshell meant they were all officially junk. > > This book shows that almost everything you have read or heard over the last 15 years in mainstream science, politics and media about future fireball Earth is little more than fake pseudoscientific drivel designed to drive populations to accept all the horrendous collectivist restrictions imposed by an insane, wicked rush to remove hydrocarbons from modern and developing industrial economies. … > > RCP8.5 started life as a high-emissions worst case scenario, but its ability to throw off click-bait tales of climate doom led to it becoming a ‘business-as-usual’ pathway. When science grants need organising, green subsidies need collecting and politicians require their virtue to be signalled, who cared that children were sent to bed crying with tales of temperatures rising 5°C or more from a 1850–1900 baseline. Gulf stream shutting down by 2025 (yes, another BBC classic ‘scientists say’ nonsense story), millions of homes being flooded by metres of rising sea levels, sixth mass extinction well on its way – all justified junk to keep the Net Zero money rolling in. > > The fact that life without multi-use hydrocarbons would be unimaginably bad, in fact fatal to billions of people, was ignored. Who cared to note that without hydrocarbon-produced fertiliser, half the world’s population would slowly die of starvation leading to endemic warfare as survivors fought for limited resources. In 2024, a newly elected, hard-left Labour government packed with Net Zero zealots stopped new drilling for oil and gas in the still plentiful North Sea. Concrete was poured down holes already drilled on land to help release the potentially vast supplies of valuable natural gas that lie beneath the ground in impoverished and deindustrialised areas of England. At the beginning of 2025, 200 members of the British Parliament were prepared to vote for a private member’s bill that would have cut all hydrocarbon use in the UK to just 10 per cent within a decade, barely enough to sustain emergency services. > > Such is the level of stupidity and ignorance, these legislating lunatics probably assumed that if their horror-show of a bill became law, they would still be able to pick up their soy lattes on their way to shop for organic hummus in Waitrose. > > **Chapter 1: Hydrocarbons** > > In the developing world, hydrocarbons promise an end to endemic hunger, healthier populations and longer and more prosperous lifespans. There is no better word than wicked to describe shutting the door on all these civilising benefits. > > Almost all the proposed energy replacements are little short of risible. Implausible, no less. A modern economy cannot run on the breezes and beams since the power is intermittent. There is no viable solution to solving the on/off problem, something that the Net Zero zealots will never admit. Battery backup will only ever be measured in minutes when required at scale, hydrogen is expensive to produce and dangerous with it while tidal power is often horrendously expensive. Nuclear power is useful base load but fails the football half-time kettle boiling test when electricity demand suddenly spikes. > > Only gas and oil can currently run a modern electricity grid if security, safety and price are given the highest priority. As we have seen in many countries around the world over the last 20 years including the UK and Germany, wind and solar are little more than expensive add-ons that have led to soaring electricity costs and subsequent job-destroying deindustrialisation. Activists often stress that wind and solar are ‘free’, a concept so stupid and lacking in economic insight that despair in human intelligence is the only response. Hydrocarbons offer enormous kinetic power that harnessed over the last 300 years has transformed human societies in ways our ancestors would have found almost impossible to believe. > > At the start of the 18th century, most people barely moved outside the village they were born in. Now they can travel relatively cheaply to almost any part of the world that takes their fancy. Despite the emotional strictures of Messrs Windsor, Packham, Attenborough and Monbiot, are they really going to give that up, along with proper heat, food, sanitation and medicine when the desperate truth about Net Zero is finally understood? > > We cannot do without hydrocarbons, whether it be the energy they provide or the countless uses made of petrochemicals. They will be around for a very long time; many might argue they have a glittering future. > > **Chapter 2: Climate Science** > > Not to put too fine a point on it, humanity owes a great deal to the beneficence that nature bestows in the form of plentiful hydrocarbons, as the last chapter showed. But wait, some hold the opinion that using them will cause Earth to be cast into eternal ecological damnation, possibly the day after tomorrow. If this is true, none can disagree and we must embrace starvation, hard manual labour, outdoor composted lavvies, reduced populations and misery all round by leaving the stuff in the ground. > > The sins of the Industrial Revolution will be purged and Gaia will be saved. > > All we need is conclusive proof that humans control the climate thermostat by slapping steak on the BBQ (coal fired, of course) and flying to Fuengirola. But regrettably, all we get is a tissue of lies, misinformation, cherry-picking and political shenanigans, all bound up in a preposterous statement that 97 per cent of scientists believe most recent warming is caused by humans. > > Like the Roman Pontiffs of old, the science is declared *ex cathedra* to be settled. Some activists like wind grifter Dale Vince and climate comedy turn Jim Dale (more in ‘Climate Clots and Comedians’) argue that it should be a criminal offence to debate the matter. As we shall see, the entire ‘settled’ science con, embraced by mainstream media, politicians and activist scientists, does little more than reveal the deep and depressing depths to which scientific integrity has fallen. … > > The long-time climate sceptic and geological scientist Dr Ian Plimer is fond of noting that there is not a single science paper that proves conclusively the current opinions around anthropogenic global warming. If there was, you would not hear the last of it, he adds. It is a true and at the same time an easy statement to make. The atmosphere of the Earth and its reactions with the land and the oceans is chaotic and non-linear. In parts it is little understood and thus unmeasurable for all important climatic intents and purposes. > > The more we look, the more we learn about the complex ways that uneven amounts of heat are transferred from the tropics to the poles by currents of every kind. This is the primary cause of weather. With the knowledge we have, it is impossible to attribute human cause to individual weather events or long-term climate change given the huge variations produced by natural forces. It just is, and anyone who tells you otherwise should consider a new career renting space in Mystic Meg’s tent at the local fairground. > > So, activists use computer models to provide their so-called evidence, but these, as their dismal record over 40 years shows, give us little real guidance. As the growing scandal of the implausible RCP8.5 pathway reveals, they are often worse than useless. Models tell us nothing, but observations provide vital information about what has actually happened. > > To that end, Dr Plimer notes that the number of geologists who believe in anthropogenic global warming can be counted on the fingers of a sawmill worker’s hand. In their studies, geologists can see the past, notably how the Earth has changed over the 600 million years back to when life as we know it today started to form. > > Looking at the record of CO2 and temperatures going back to the Cambrian epoch, we see little connection over the 600 million years. Sometimes they rise and fall together; often they do not. There is no evidence in the record that suggests a strong, unbreakable connection – something that the current opinion on human-caused global warming surely demands. > > Furthermore, it is interesting to note that the atmospheric CO2 level was much higher in the past, with the average over 600 million years probably around 2,700 parts per million (ppm). That is nearly seven times higher than the current denuded level of 420 ppm. Far from spending pointless billions of pounds on CO2 ‘capture’, it might be better to hope it rises a little longer. Plants have evolved to grow efficiently in much higher CO2 levels, and over the last 40 years a tad more food in the atmosphere has led to a [sensational but largely unreported](https://dailysceptic.org/2026/08/06/global-greening-hits-new-record-as-climate-emergency-fails-to-materialise/%E2%80%9D?ref=goodoil.news) 15 per cent ‘greening’ of the Earth. This article was originally published by [the Daily Sceptic](https://dailysceptic.org/2026/10/12/exclusive-extracts-from-chris-morrisons-new-book-implausible-how-scientists-activist-politicians-and-journalists-invented-a-climate-crisis/?ref=goodoil.news). ### Does Even Sunny Jim Believe His BS? URL: https://goodoil.news/does-even-sunny-jim-believe-his-bs/ Last updated: 2026-10-14T02:59:59.000Z Budgets are usually a pretty dry affair. Once upon a time, the most the headline writers could work with was the old, ‘Beer, Cigs, Up!’ chestnut. But then there are the horror shows. One of the more infamous recent ones was the 2014 **Tony Abbott**/**Joe Hockey** first-term budget: not because it was economically bad – even its ‘austerity’ measures were relatively modest – but because it was so politically tone-deaf that it crippled the new government before it had barely started. The footling proposed Medicare co-payment, which would have in effect affected almost nobody, was a golden gift to a media-left establishment already gripped by Abbott Derangement Syndrome. Most importantly, though, it broke a key election promise not to touch pensions. An electorate that was sick of being lied to their faces (such as **Julia Gillard**’s infamous “There will be no carbon tax” lie on the last day of the 2010 election) reacted with incandescent fury. Then along came Zippy’s 2026 budget. As [I’ve already reported](https://goodoil.news/at-least-some-are-coming-to-their-senses/), Chalmers has ripped going on a trillion dollars of wealth from the country’s economic guts in just six months. The only thing more heroic than Zippy’s failure, though, is his lead-plated denialism. The treasurer may persist in lecturing the nation from the dispatch box with the airy condescension of a kindergarten headmistress, but the verdict in the street is already in. A fiscal statement that destroys nearly a trillion dollars of wealth and still dominates the front pages five months down the track for all the wrong reasons cannot, by any metric known to political science, be spun as a triumph. It is an unmitigated disaster. > [No budget still](https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/jim-chalmers-budget-blunder-still-causing-pain-five-months-in/news-story/3a9f1f072c132b124535b7ddd412f3a0?ref=goodoil.news) at the centre of negative news and politics nearly six months after it was brought down can be considered a political success. In Newspoll the ALP fell from 31 per cent primary vote in May to a near-record low of 27 per cent in July and satisfaction with **Anthony Albanese** fell from 40 per cent to 36 per cent. The subsequent polling barely flatters them. While Labor’s primary vote has staged a pitiful crawl back to 29 per cent, the prime minister’s satisfaction rating remains stuck fast in the mid-30s doldrums. The electorate is waking up to the bitter reality that the government’s grand narrative of ‘equity’ is merely a bureaucratic euphemism for capital destruction. Consider the housing market, where Treasury’s rosy prognostications have collided head-on with brutal reality. The mandarins in Canberra soothingly assured us that the budget’s assault on capital gains and investment structures would cause a mere two per cent blip in price growth, alongside an insignificant couple of dollars added to weekly rents. Instead, national home values have cratered by over five per cent, with projections pointing towards a catastrophic 15 per cent fall, whilst rents have surged upwards. Rather than making homes affordable, Dr Chalmers has managed to engineer a property rout while simultaneously torching rental supply. It takes a particular kind of genius to pull off both feats at once. To watch the government attempt to salvage this mess is to witness a theatre troupe stumbling through an unrehearsed farce. Every sitting week brings a fresh humiliation: > Even after a series of backdowns over proposed changes to superannuation, small business and investment, as well as continuing confusion over savings in the NDIS, health and veteran’s affairs, the budget still casts a pall over the government. Meanwhile, the spending juggernaut rolls merrily onward. Rather than confronting the sacred cows that are bleeding the nation dry, Chalmers prefers to treat taxpayers like cash registers. The National Disability Insurance Scheme, which began life as an exercise in high-minded charity, has metastasised into an uncontrollable budgetary black hole, swallowing revenue whole whilst the promised billions in savings dissolve into vaporous rhetoric. The Reserve Bank, having pushed interest rates to a 15-year high to mop up the inflation created by Canberra’s drunken-sailor expenditure, has effectively called the treasurer’s bluff. It’s not global headwinds or faraway regional squabbles driving domestic inflation: it’s the Commonwealth’s insatiable addiction to spending money it does not have. Yet still we’re treated to the usual platitudes, as if a politician’s waffle provides comfort to a family staring down another crippling mortgage repayment or a small business fighting off solvency concerns. The treasurer insists that his reforms will merely tidy up the ledger and penalise only the wicked, yet every enterprise from the corner store to the regional tradie finds itself trapped in the regulatory crosshairs. Voters have had enough of the shell games. You cannot spend your way to fiscal health, nor can you tax an economy into prosperity. Dr Jim’s budget was meant to cement Labor’s economic authority; instead, it has exposed the uniparty’s fundamental inability to govern beyond the next handout. --- 💡 ****If you enjoyed this article please share it using the share buttons at the top or bottom of the article.** ### [The Good Oil] Stuff Up of the Day URL: https://goodoil.news/the-good-oil-stuff-up-of-the-day-190/ Last updated: 2026-10-14T01:59:59.000Z Hey Stuff. Is it Labour or Labor? ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/Stuff-up-14-Oct.jpg) ### The College Bubble Is Slowly Deflating URL: https://goodoil.news/the-college-bubble-is-slowly-deflating/ Last updated: 2026-10-14T00:59:59.000Z [**Andrew Moran**](https://www.libertynation.com/the-college-bubble-is-slowly-deflating/?ref=goodoil.news) *Economics editor at LibertyNation.com.* Has the college bubble been popped? That is the question. Decades ago, students could cover tuition by working summer shifts at the nearby McDonald’s. Today, Gen Z needs to take out exorbitant government-backed student loans just to walk onto a university campus. But the days of decadence and opulence by these institutions may be winding down as more young Americans abandon their degree pursuits and the White House introduces noteworthy reforms. ### **Poppin’ the College Bubble** Nominal average college tuition has risen substantially since 2000, ballooning by about 200 per cent. A public institution can cost more than $10,000, while a private university can cost close to $40,000\. Unless the Bank of Mom and Dad were open for business and the youngin’s worked throughout high school, a student loan was necessary to get a degree. That is why national student loan debt has surpassed the trillion-dollar mark. Change could be coming to the higher education circuit as colleges and universities realize that they priced too many kids out of an education and failed to deliver on their product. A new Bloomberg analysis found that a growing chorus of post-secondary institutions have already lowered tuition this year or begun doing so heading into the 2027–2028 academic year. The news outlet cited Emory & Henry University as one example, with the institution slashing undergraduate tuition in half to $19,990, plus $5,000 merit scholarships and other savings for in-state attendees. The University of Tulsa has announced plans to cut its tuition rates by more than half to $25,000\. Concordia University is enacting a “Tuition Reset 2.0 for 2027 to continue addressing affordability and access issues for students and families,” the institution told Fox Business. So, are these facilities becoming altruistic, or is it evolving economics? Various motives are at play. ### **Trumponomics and Disappointment** The White House may have saved the higher education system with a single significant change. As part of the One Big Beautiful Bill, the federal government introduced an earnings standard titled “Do No Harm.” This measure would deny students enrolled in degree programs that lead to low-earning careers access to federal student loans. The Department of Education identified various fields, including arts, cosmetology, music, religious studies, and social work. “If a program cannot show that it leaves its graduates financially better off than if they had never enrolled, it should not be underwritten by federal taxpayers,” Under Secretary of Education Nicholas Kent said in a statement earlier this month. Economists have regularly [argued](https://www.libertynation.com/the-economics-and-stockholm-syndrome-of-student-loans/?ref=goodoil.news) that this would be a critical change, as taxpayers should not be on the hook for students studying areas with little demand and poor returns on investment. If students desired to study Lesbian Dance Theory, they would apply for loans at private lenders. Additionally, since colleges and universities no longer receive guaranteed cash to offer these programs, they could focus on high-demand fields of study. Another factor has been fewer young people enrolling in post-secondary programs. Estimates vary, but the number of high school graduates signing up for college could decline by 13 per cent over the next 15 years. Polls also indicate that young Americans’ interest in attending a university has slipped in recent years. One Gallup survey found that just 31 per cent of adults say a four-year college education is “very important,” the lowest number in five decades. Experts argue that more families realize the financial pressures are not worth it. This assessment also makes sense, since recent college graduates between 22 and 27 have an unemployment rate of almost six per cent, higher than the national jobless rate of more than four per cent. Plus, many employers have signaled they are willing to hire young people off the street and train them for positions. ### **Make College Great Again?** The country has soured on America’s education system for various reasons, from political indoctrination to opulent campuses. Indeed, the college bubble encompasses not just cost, but what colleges have gotten away with over the years. If Walmart ran a university and graduates failed to deliver on its $30,000 promise, the usual suspects would call it a failure of capitalism. But when it is Harvard, Stanford, and Yale, the chronic complainers will say more government intervention is needed. This article was originally published by [Liberty Nation News](https://www.libertynation.com/the-college-bubble-is-slowly-deflating/?ref=goodoil.news). ### ‘Ask Your Doctor’, the Most Dangerous Tagline URL: https://goodoil.news/ask-your-doctor-the-most-dangerous-tagline/ Last updated: 2026-10-14T00:29:59.000Z [**Alan Cassels**](https://brownstone.org/articles/ask-your-doctor-the-medias-most-dangerous-tagline/?ref=goodoil.news) *Alan Cassels is a Brownstone Fellow and a drug policy researcher and author who has written extensively about disease mongering.* Travelling to the US never fails to put me in touch with a part of American culture that I find particularly fascinating, but disturbing. Drugs. Drugs and more Drugs. I’m talking about the in-your-face, 24/7, marketing of the newest, most expensive pharmaceuticals on the planet. All in the name of health, of course. You might argue, but so what? Every other consumer product gets advertised in the US – almost everywhere, to everyone, perhaps except tobacco. And lots of those things are bad for you too, such as junk food, alcohol, and gambling. However, drugs are different, and I often find myself experiencing a kind of vertigo as I stare, enthralled, at all the incessant drug advertising from screens everywhere I look – in airports, hotel lounges, restaurants, or bars. The plotlines are predictable. A slick 60 seconds and we see the fate of worried people suffering some sort of condition ‘ask their doctor’ about Drug X, and soon the new prescription is magically transforming their lives. They turn into bliss and smiles as they romp their way through meadows of wildflowers while, sotto voce, we catch strange murmurs of liver failure and premature death. I find myself absorbed in the ads as if they are cultural artifacts of a strange race. Most of the Americans I know seem to be pretty healthy people, but any newcomer confronting all the US screens for the first time might conclude one thing: *‘Man, these people must be really sick.’* They are sick, but not in the way of being physically sick. Sick as in showing all the adverse effects of living in a polluted information ecosystem where toxic levels of drug propaganda drift through the airwaves as freely as exhaust engulfs a freeway. Americans are so immersed in the smog of commercially sponsored drug information that they might forget they used to live in a world where serious criticisms of drug industry products or behaviour were routinely reported on mainstream TV. Those halcyon days are over. The Land of the Free means drugmakers can, with near impunity, push their expensive products for Crohn’s disease, colitis, or psoriasis, serious obesity, schizophrenia, and major depression with the most outlandish of claims wrapped up in crafty but misleading narratives. Drugs get advertised, and the stuff between the ads (i.e., the programming, the sitcoms, and the news) won’t touch the subject with a 10-foot pole lest they upset the money chain. Meanwhile, everyone thinks this is normal? Wow. Not everyone. Earlier this summer, the consumer group US Public Citizen put [out a petition](https://www.worstpills.org/newsletters/view/1748?ref=goodoil.news) urging the FDA to ban Direct-to-Consumer Advertising (DTCA) of prescription drugs. They listed the usual reasons why DTCA is so toxic to consumers: Emotional manipulation, misleading benefit and risk information, inappropriate prescribing and overdiagnosis, the erosion of the patient-physician relationship, the promotion of low-value medications, and overall economic harm. Amen to all that. What it all adds up to is a polluted environment in which careful and appropriate pharmaceutical use doesn’t happen. Americans are paying the highest prices for prescription drugs in the world, yet also have the most profligate use of those drugs. The pollution of the airwaves by Pharma propaganda is precisely the reason every other country in the world (except tiny New Zealand) **bans Direct-to-Consumer Advertising** **(DTCA)**. The rest of the civilized world looked at DTCA, recognized it as a predatory assault on public health, and banned it decades ago. ### DTCA and the Doctor-Patient Relationship Probably the biggest harm of DTCA is how it completely undermines the clinical firewall between doctors and patients. By bombarding television viewers with slick, emotion-heavy commercials, drug manufacturers bypass the doctor’s intellect and go straight for the patient’s anxiety. When a terrified or hopeful consumer marches into a clinic demanding a specific brand-name drug featured during halftime at a football game, the doctor-patient relationship is fundamentally hijacked. Your physician stops being a healer weighing evidence and becomes a drive-thru cashier being pressured to hand over the order. Drug ads are veritable master classes in how to exaggerate the severity of a condition, extoll the benefits of a product, downplay the harms, and plant the ‘Ask Your Doctor’ message. And thus, the drug ad drives a wedge into a relationship that should be about healing, and not about dealing. The plain fact is this: prescription drugs are not breakfast cereals. You cannot walk into a pharmacy, grab a box of third-generation immunosuppressants off the shelf, and toss them into your shopping cart alongside the peanut butter. By law, prescription medications require a **“learned intermediary” –** a physician who has spent a decade in medical training to weigh complex evidence, harms, benefits, and alternatives. Many patients might believe that their own doctor can ignore the marketing pressures of the drug industry, yet they’d be mostly wrong. Drug information or ‘continuing medical education’ swallowed by our physicians is even more toxic because it’s usually wrapped in gifts along with the imprimatur of peer-reviewed publications. Fact is, when it comes to pharmaceuticals, most doctors are not as ‘learned’ as we’d like. This has to do with a well-studied cognitive bias where doctors generally believe they are too smart to be influenced by marketing. This phenomenon has been well-studied and there’s even a term for it: the **“illusion of invulnerability.”** This is when doctors acknowledge that pharmaceutical marketing and gifts influence the prescribing habits of *other* doctors, yet believe that they themselves are immune to that same psychological manipulation. We know that drug marketing is bad for consumers, but just this month we found some serious proof around how bad it is for our doctors. A Cochrane [review](https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD013423.pub3/full?ref=goodoil.news) published this month looked at 93 studies – most from the US but also from France, the Netherlands, Denmark, Germany, Sweden, and the United Kingdom and found that the more exposure physicians have to the drug marketers, the worse their prescribing is. We’ve known this for decades, yet the grift continues and the poor doctor-patient relationship is bombarded with DTCA on one side, and by the inducements and gifts provided by pharmaceutical companies. There is a very good reason that Robert F Kennedy, Jr, the United States Secretary of Health and Human Services, has wanted to ban drug advertising. He knows that the medications are being flogged by the most highly paid marketers on earth whose job it is to create these brazen vignettes of triumph to get you to ‘Ask your doctor.’ The way I see it, if a drug company is telling you to ‘Ask your Doctor!’ you can be sure the company’s people have already seen your doctor and he or she is fully aware of the drug in question. Any drug that is advertised to patients directly is also going to have a substantial marketing campaign targeting the doctors because they’re the ones who are writing the prescriptions. If you consider the body of the most highly advertised drugs these days you might be led to think there certainly must be an epidemic of psoriasis, Crohn’s disease, or ulcerative colitis in the United States. Maybe that is explained by high-grade hawking of **Skyrizi**, **Tremfya**, and **Rinvoq**, three drugs which have the biggest direct-to-consumer television ad spending across the entire US pharmaceutical industry, (according to *Forbes*) each spending more than $350 million a year. The reality is that these companies are vying hard for a slice of the pie, and their incredibly high profit margins (due to patents) and the malleability of consumers make these new drugs worthy of advertising, even if the diseases in question affect very few people. For example, psoriasis only affects about three per cent of the US adult population, and Crohn’s disease or colitis about one per cent. Together nearly $1 billion a year is spent flogging products that might only affect 10 million out of a national population of 340 million people. Getting rid of DTCA in the US is a big ask, and doing so probably requires some reworking of the US Constitution. Secretary Kennedy has already felt the pushback, not just from the drug companies, but from the media outlets that depend on drug advertising. If ever there was a reason why Americans should rethink the wisdom of the First Amendment, it is in how it is applied to drug companies. Sure, we all want to have freedom of speech, freedom of the press, of religion, and of peaceable assembly, but can anyone say the drug companies are using their freedoms of expression responsibly? ### A Case Study in DTCA Let’s end with what I think is the poster child of modern pharmaceutical hubris and marketing wizardry, and a teachable lesson why we should seriously restrict DTCA in the US: **Veozah (fezolinetant)**. During Super Bowl LVIII in February 2024, the maker of this new drug, Astellas Pharma dropped a small fortune to air a glossy, 60-second commercial titled “[Fewer Hot Flashes, More Not Flashes](https://youtube.com/watch?v=e-H2BF0GZik&t=1&ref=goodoil.news).” The target? Menopause – a completely normal, universal biological transition that the pharmaceutical complex has been trying to rebrand as a deficiency disease for over half a century. The commercial promised women a revolutionary, non-hormonal fix for vasomotor symptoms. It was upbeat, empowering, and utterly seductive. Fast forward seven months, to September 2024. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) [issued an urgent safety warning](https://www.fda.gov/drugs/drug-safety-communications/fda-adds-warning-about-rare-occurrence-serious-liver-injury-use-veozah-fezolinetant-hot-flashes-due?ref=goodoil.news): Veozah can cause severe, potentially life-threatening liver injury and liver failure. The FDA mandated new blood-testing protocols before and during treatment because patients were ending up with signs of serious liver damage. Think about the sheer, unadulterated madness of this sequence. A pharmaceutical company uses the biggest, most expensive advertising platform on planet Earth to sell an expensive, brand-new pill for a normal life transition to millions of healthy women. Seven months later, the regulatory body is forced to admit that this heavily hyped, premium-priced drug can literally wreck your liver. This is the toxic life cycle of DTCA in a nutshell: hype the symptom, brand the condition, air the Super Bowl ad, collect the billions, and wait for the safety warnings to roll in after the real-world guinea pigs start getting hurt. If there were an international award for the most psychologically manipulative, disease-mongering phrase ever foisted upon the public, ‘Ask your doctor if \[Drug X\] is right for you’ would win by a landslide. It sounds so innocent, doesn’t it? A gentle nudge encouraging patients to take charge of their health. Not quite. It is a multi-billion-dollar marketing trick designed to erode your agency, medicalize the ordinary discomforts of being human, and turn you into an unpaid sales representative for Big Pharma. Nobody spends $7 million airing a Super Bowl commercial for a generic, off-patent $5 diuretic that actually saves lives. DTCA exists exclusively to pump up the sales of ultra-expensive, newly patented drugs that need to recoup their marketing budgets before their patents expire. It is time to end this absurd experiment once and for all. Prescription drugs should be evaluated on hard clinical evidence by independent professionals, not sold like soft drinks to a captive, frightened audience. ‘Ask your doctor’ shouldn’t be a tagline on television – it should be a private conversation free from the polluting influence of Super Bowl commercials. This article was originally published by [Brownstone Institute](https://brownstone.org/articles/ask-your-doctor-the-medias-most-dangerous-tagline/?ref=goodoil.news). ### At Least Hanson Has Had Skin in the Game URL: https://goodoil.news/at-least-hanson-has-had-skin-in-the-game/ Last updated: 2026-10-13T23:59:59.000Z It is, as the saying goes, quite a turn-up for the books. After years of sneering attacks on One Nation from the uniparty over their economic credentials, **Pauline Hanson** has hit back. As she points out: one of them in Canberra has been at the coalface of economic activity, running a small business. And it’s not **Jim Chalmers**. Hanson has some pretty heavy backing, too: Deloitte Access Economics have a brutally blunt assessment of the economic performance of the uniparty. In a word: *we’re stuffed*. Addressing the assembled grandees and chief executives at the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry business leaders’ summit, the member for Oxley and leader of the peoples’ insurgence offered a scathing appraisal of Canberra’s ruling caste. The Canberra Bubble is an administrative construction populated entirely by apparatchiks and trade union hacks whose understanding of commerce begins and ends with looting someone else’s pay packet. Senator Hanson laid bare the sheer absurdity of career politicians lecturing the wealth-creators of the nation on enterprise, profit margins and balancing a ledger. The chasm of experience between the tea-room socialists in Parliament House and the bloke operating an earthworks or local accountancy firm is widening by the day, much to the detriment of the Commonwealth. > [Too many people](https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/pauline-hanson-takes-her-one-nation-business-plan-to-ceos-as-she-sets-sights-on-jim-chalmers/news-story/4b7e04a80a4a1d90943952260eb646da?ref=goodoil.news) in this ­government have never run a business. They’ve never put their own savings on the line. Never laid awake wondering if there’d be enough money in their account to make the week’s payroll. By “too many”, of course, she means ‘none’. The collective non-government employment hours of the prime minister and treasurer add up to… zero. The closest Albanese has ever come to working a day in his life was a few months in the back-offices of a government-owned bank. Then it was straight on to politics. “Dr” Chalmers, a man whose intimate acquaintance with the private sector is entirely theoretical, operates under the rather quaint delusion that every commercial friction can be smoothed over by inventing a fresh levy, drafting another stifling regulation or appointing yet another alphabet-soup regulator to hound the butcher, the baker and the candlestick maker. It is the classic playbook of managerial central planning: tax anything that moves, subsidise failure and pretend that expanding the public service headcount constitutes economic growth. While the treasurer spends his afternoons assuring Bloomberg that all is splendid and that his doubleplusgood surplus budgets are the envy of the world, the bean-counters at Deloitte have rudely pulled back the curtain on our national decline. The “Lucky Country”? > [“It was good while it lasted,”](https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/good-while-it-lasted-deloitte-calls-time-on-australias-golden-era/news-story/f3d515f02bf93b1187799ce0f20a7a3e?ref=goodoil.news) Deloitte partner **Stephen Smith** said. “The collective voice of economists has become hoarse from the persistent and consistent pleading for substantial reforms across tax, regulation, spending, skills, federal-state relations and the like. Those calls have largely been met with the white noise of political constraints.” Deloitte Access Economics has pruned its growth forecasts down yet again, predicting that Australia is hurtling toward the longest stretch of sub-par economic performance since the recession we had to have in the early ’90s. Consumer confidence has cratered to depths not witnessed in over three decades, driven into the abyss by successive cash rate hikes and the crushing weight of cost-of-living pressures. The golden era has been unceremoniously shown the door, replaced by a lingering hangover of anaemic growth, stubborn inflation and an RBA interest rate stick beating the living daylights out of households. For decades, the political class has treated economic prosperity as an endless annuity paid out by population padding and fortunate property booms, rather than the hard graft of productivity and, y’know, actually working for a living. Instead of trimming the fat, Canberra has ballooned the public service, who wouldn’t know a day’s work if intruded on their flexitime, by a staggering 23 per cent in just a few short years while simultaneously pouring hundreds of millions into the bottomless pockets of management consultants. You’d have to laugh, if you weren’t footing the bill. Senator Hanson’s diagnosis at the ACCI summit hits the nail squarely on the head. An old great-uncle of mine used to say of Victorian Liberal Premier **Henry Bolte**, “He couldn’t run a grocery store, how is he expected to run a state?” The thing is, though: at least Bolte knew what it meant to fail and carry the cost. Today’s political class have never known any other world than one in which other people pay the price for their colossal cock-ups. --- 💡 ****If you enjoyed this article please share it using the share buttons at the top or bottom of the article.** ### Building a Dam to Save a Dam URL: https://goodoil.news/building-a-dam-to-save-a-dam/ Last updated: 2026-10-13T23:29:59.000Z [**Tom Hunter**](https://nominister.wordpress.com/2026/10/12/building-a-dam-to-save-a-dam/?ref=goodoil.news) *No Minister* Over the last year there’s been some big equipment at work on the old Arapuni dam, focused on drilling beside the left side of the dam (as viewed from the lake). ![](https://www.southwaikato.govt.nz/repository/libraries/id:24rtvarkd17q9s3wxfnn/hierarchy/our-services/roading/publishingimages/Arapuni%20Dam%201.JPG) Questions arose as to what was going on, and a month ago we got [the answer from the South Waikato District Council](https://www.southwaikato.govt.nz/our-services/roading/arapuni-dam-road-closure?ref=goodoil.news): > **From 9am on 1 September 2026, Arapuni Road across Arapuni Dam will be closed for 24–36 months.* This project is managed by Mercury, who will carry out major repair work on Arapuni Hydro Dam.* Closed for two to three years? AYFKM? Anyhoo, [the Mercury website](https://www.mercury.co.nz/media/Arapuni%20Explainer%20Sept%202026%20Update.pdf?ref=goodoil.news) had more details as to what was going on and why: > *Engineering studies show the dam is safe to operate, but extra protection is needed in one area called the left abutment (where the dam joins the valley wall) to protect it from water seepage. Small amounts of seepage is natural, but too much over time can weaken the dam.* > > *Changes in seepage patterns were noticed after distant earthquakes in 2016, so Mercury is taking proactive action to improve the left abutment.* ![](https://i.imgflip.com/b38idx.jpg) Now that is interesting. It’s not often thought of, but dams are almost living structures, or at least the land around them is, no matter how solid the rock is that all that concrete is connected to. Water not only seeps around a dam but through it, albeit in tiny amounts and – as long as the route is not direct – not in ways that damage the structure. But the seepage around a dam is another matter all together and earthquakes speed the process up, including [that thumper in the area back in early August that woke me up at 4:51am](https://nominister.wordpress.com/2026/08/04/tuesdays-quick-hits-6/?ref=goodoil.news). So as a result they’re effectively going to build an underground dam right beside the old one: ![](https://i.imgflip.com/b38j50.jpg) > A technique called jet grouting will be used to form a row of pillars under ground, to protect a middle layer of sediments from seepage. > > A series of overlapping concrete piles will then be drilled to form a cutoff wall about 70m–80m deep and 57m long. Okay, I can see why this might take two to three years. We’re talking big holes in the ground through which to pour concrete. I wonder if they’re embedding rebar as well? A similar project was conducted 20 years ago on the right side of the dam, which I’d forgotten about, probably because that didn’t close the dam for cars. The document has a cool photo from a perspective the public never sees, with a bunch of engineers and staff at the base of the old dam, where the Waikato River once flowed. ![](https://i.imgflip.com/b38jbz.jpg) The repairs should make the dam good for another century. The powerhouse, turbines, generators and penstocks of the powerhouse were already upgraded back in the 1990s. Arapuni is a ~~“run-of-river”~~ diversion type hydro dam (H/T C James), meaning that the river is diverted by the dam down a long channel to the intakes at the powerhouse, which is why you don’t see one at the base [of the dam, as is the case with all the other Waikato River hydro dams.](https://www.engineeringnz.org/programmes/heritage/engineering-heritage-records/power-stations/arapuni-power-station-and-dam/?ref=goodoil.news) ![](https://nominister.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/arapuni-powerhouse.jpg?w=364) Lastly, a photo of the the ropeway that was built in the 1920s to cart crushed rock from a quarry nine miles distant to the south. There were 170 of these towers, all built from hardwood and sunk four-and-a-half feet into the ground. The ropes carried 360 iron buckets filled with metal, and they must have travelled at a fair pace because they delivered 300 cubic yards of rock per day. ![](https://i.imgflip.com/b38h73.jpg) Some 20 years ago I recall talking with a couple of men who’d worked on the site, and they actually lived in the district where the quarry was located rather than at the work camp – which meant on more than one occasion they simply ‘rode the buckets home’ when they missed their ride. This tall story was corroborated by an even older guy who’d been a manager at the site. WorkSafe New Zealand, what’s that? [More information here](https://www.teawamutunews.nz/2026/06/inside-arapunis-hidden-past/?ref=goodoil.news), along with a modern-day look inside the powerhouse, which is an art-deco structure that doesn’t look industrial at all. More power to the 1920s I say! This article was originally published by [No Minister](https://nominister.wordpress.com/2026/10/12/building-a-dam-to-save-a-dam/?ref=goodoil.news). ### James Christmas Delivers an Early Turkey URL: https://goodoil.news/james-christmas-delivers-an-early-turkey/ Last updated: 2026-10-13T22:59:59.000Z [**Rodney Hide**](https://www.brashandmitchell.com/post/rodney-hide-james-christmas-delivers-an-early-turkey?ref=goodoil.news) *Rodney Hide is a former minister and ACT Party leader.* ACT's candidate for Tāmaki, James Christmas, made an unforced error last week. He posted a 25-second clip of himself having a go at Winston Peters. “Your recent comments trying to drag a woman’s right to choose into the election campaign for your own political gain aren’t going to fly here in Tāmaki,” he said. “So by all means, beat the drum of your socially conservative rebrand elsewhere but don’t bother doing it here in Tāmaki.” Wow. His point was that Winston Peters wasn’t welcome in Tāmaki. But the message was that nor is any other social conservative. It was a nasty comment. The whole point of an electorate MP is that you represent everyone, whatever their views. That doesn’t seem to be Mr Christmas’s approach. Social conservative views, he says, won’t fly in Tāmaki. So what happens if you’re a social conservative living there? You’ve been us-and-them’d. There’s him and the socially liberal, and there’s you. And you won’t fly. It’s an interesting way to win votes. In the old days, ACT was split pretty much evenly between libertarians and conservatives. Both liked the free market. Where they differed was how far freedom runs, and on the great moral questions: abortion, euthanasia, drug decriminalisation, even Easter trading and shopping on Christmas Day. It was a healthy tension, and it served us well. That’s gone now. ACT is a strictly urban liberal party. The great philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre made the point that moral philosophies tend to ignore the plight of children, old people and the disabled. In *Dependent Rational Animals*, MacIntyre explained that moral philosophy presents us “as though we were continuously rational, healthy and untroubled”. It forgets the dependent are ourselves “as we have been, sometimes are now and may well be in the future”. The thing I always liked about libertarian Murray Rothbard was his consistency. He had one rule: you must never use force on anyone, but you owe no one your help. So a mother could abort, because no one has the right ‘to remain, unbidden, as an unwanted parasite’ inside another’s body. But once born, parents couldn’t kill the child. That’s force. They did, though, have “the legal right not to feed the child, i.e., to allow it to die”. They could even sell their rights to it: the free society, he wrote, “will have a flourishing free market in children”. ACT is not quite that consistent. But babies born alive after an attempted abortion are left to die. Family First’s Bob McCoskrie got the figures from Health New Zealand under the Official Information Act: about 80 such babies since the start of 2020, at 20 to 30 weeks, not given life-sustaining care. That’s about one a month, and several big districts refused to say. The babies are not killed. They are just not cared for. ACT has the other end of life taken care of too: your doctor can end your life for you. There are restraints but ACT wants them loosened. Todd Stephenson’s member’s bill would drop the six-month rule, and lift the ban on doctors being the first to raise assisted dying. Your doctor could then suggest he help you by ending your life. Your choice. About 52,000 people scrolled past Christmas’s clip. Fifty-five liked it. Of the 125 or so who replied, I could find four on his side. Winston’s reply got half the views and eight times the likes. There was no need for Christmas to get offside with a great many people but he chose to. For completeness it is worth noting Mr Christmas co-wrote a book with Mr Chris Finlayson on giving a river the rights of a person in Treaty settlements. The Whanganui River gets two guardians to speak for it in law. The baby born alive after a botched abortion gets nobody. This article was originally published by [Brash and Mitchell](https://www.brashandmitchell.com/post/rodney-hide-james-christmas-delivers-an-early-turkey?ref=goodoil.news). ### Enjoy the Delicious Legacy Media Tears URL: https://goodoil.news/enjoy-the-delicious-legacy-media-tears/ Last updated: 2026-10-13T22:29:59.000Z Is there anything more nauseating than the self-righteous crybaby antics of the legacy media when anyone dares hit back? Remember their shock, shock I tell you, when they were called mean names and even had a plastic drink bottle thrown at one reporter – a plastic drink bottle, Susan! It wasn’t even completely empty! – by angry protesters who they’d smeared for weeks as ‘Nazis’ and ‘White Supremacists’, simply for not wanting to be locked in home detention over a moderately dangerous disease? Even worse, what about when they coined the term ‘fake news’ to smear anyone who dared disagree with their carefully manufactured narratives – only to have an uppity US president throw the term right back at them? How dare you! It’s *their* word! You plebs can’t use that word! Well, we can and we will. For the organisers of this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference in Brisbane are doing so in the most hilarious way possible. Picture the scene at the recent Brisbane Conservative Political Action Conference. The cream of Canberra’s press gallery, those immaculate arbiters of truth who spend 365 days a year breathlessly recycling press releases from the prime minister’s media unit, arrived expecting their usual VIP treatment. Instead, they were greeted with a stroke of genius that deserves a permanent spot in the annals of political trolling. Every single reporter, scribe and solemn commentator was handed a mandatory conference lanyard bearing two exquisitely chosen words: “Fake News”. One can only imagine the horror rippling through the press pack. Fainting couches were no doubt deployed in the green room. How terribly distressing for men and women accustomed to casting stones from glass towers without ever expecting a pebble to bounce back. Worse: they were being forced to be honest for the first time in their careers. The howling from the *Australian*’s reporting contingent was particularly magnificent. To read their wounded dispatches, one would think they had been marched into the town square and pelted with rotten fruit, rather than mildly inconvenienced by a piece of office stationery. > [What a joke.](https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/fake-news-cpac-targets-media-with-donald-trump-tactics-at-brisbane-conference/news-story/5d322f604488bd91a66ff2fa7bc87df7?ref=goodoil.news) It wasn’t about security, it was the organisers’ idea of onsite entertainment and amusement for attendees as these journalists dutifully got on with doing their jobs, regardless of this pathetic attempt at intimidation and humiliation. Intimidation! Humiliation! Good grief. One wonders how these delicate blooms survive the harsh elements of the real world. For years, the legacy media has treated ordinary citizens, taxpayers who simply want to go about their business without being hectored by sanctimonious columnists, with open contempt. They label patriotic citizens as extremists, run interference for failing governments and manufacture outrage cycles with the precision of an Orwellian Minitrue. Yet the moment someone cheekily turns the mirror back on them, they throw a collective tantrum worthy of a toddler denied an ice-cream cone. Of course, the pearl-clutching reached a fever pitch over the involvement of figures like **Warren Mundine** and Senator **Pauline Hanson**. The commentariat is positively apoplectic that politicians are exercising their own democratic right to decide which journalistic outlets are worthy of their time. > What’s it say about politicians who argue they are up to governing the country but want to pick and choose who brings the scrutiny they need to face ahead of the election? Oh, spare us the constitutional lecture. For decades, the legacy media has enjoyed an unearned monopoly on defining the political agenda, treating access as a privilege to be dispensed to compliant courtiers while excommunicating anyone who deviates from the approved orthodoxy. When populist leaders like Pauline Hanson decline to roll out the red carpet for mastheads that treat their voters with undisguised disdain, it is suddenly treated as an assault on democracy itself. Both major parties and their handmaidens in the press gallery need to thicken their skins. **Anthony Albanese** spends half his waking life whining that the media is being terribly unfair to his monumentally disastrous economic record, while journalists cry foul whenever an event organiser refuses to treat them like sacred royalty. If the legacy media spent half as much time examining their own staggering institutional bias as they do whining about novelty lanyards, public trust in journalism might actually crawl out of the basement. Until then, they should wear their plastic badges with pride. After all, if the tar and feathers fit, wear them: preferably on a lanyard around your neck. Personally, I’d have issued them dunces’ caps, too. --- 💡 ****If you enjoyed this article please share it using the share buttons at the top or bottom of the article.** ### Plans to Give Cattle an mRNA Vaccine URL: https://goodoil.news/plans-to-give-cattle-an-mrna-vaccine/ Last updated: 2026-10-13T21:29:59.000Z [**The Noticer**](https://www.noticer.news/new-zealand-cattle-arkeabio-methane-vaccine/?ref=goodoil.news) *We notice what other news sites don’t.* A US agricultural biotech firm is planning to inject cattle in [New Zealand](https://www.noticer.news/new-zealand-online-immigration-system-goes-rogue/?ref=goodoil.news) with a methane-reducing mRNA vaccine, financed by the government and a clean energy organisation founded by [Bill Gates](https://www.noticer.news/australia-foot-and-mouth-disease-mrna-vaccine-warning/?ref=goodoil.news), as part of efforts to combat “climate change”. Boston-based start-up ArkeaBio last month raised $15 million in a funding round led by taxpayer-funded public-private investment partnership [AgriZeroNZ](https://www.agrizero.nz/arkea-bio?ref=goodoil.news) and Gates’s [Breakthrough Energy](https://2023.breakthroughenergy.org/five-grand-challenges/agriculture/?ref=goodoil.news) to continue the development of the vaccine and start selling it to farmers by 2028. The vaccine works by forcing a cow’s immune system to make antibodies that neutralise methane-producing microbes in the animal’s stomach, and ArkeaBio says early trials show it reduces methane emissions by 10–15 per cent, which it hopes to increase to over 40 per cent. ArkeaBio CEO Frank Wooten told [AgFunderNews](https://agfundernews.com/exclusive-arkeabio-raises-15m-for-livestock-methane-tech-cuts-headcount?ref=goodoil.news) the latest funding round would take the company through to its first commercial product, and that farmers were more likely to embrace a vaccine rather than a feed additive, such as [controversial methane-reducing supplement Bovaer](https://www.noticer.news/coles-beef-bovaer-food-safety-fears/?ref=goodoil.news). “The majority of animals outside of the US are actually not ever put on feed, so when we look at a solution for a broader global market, the ability of a vaccine to have impact not only at an animal level, but in the workflows of our customer base, is the most elegant way to get that uptick in adoption,” he said. Mr Wooten also said that the vaccine could result in cows producing more milk and meat using excess hydrogen that would normally be converted into methane by the affected microbes, but not in its first commercial form. “We’ve seen early evidence of increases in the microbial communities in the cattle rumen that produce volatile fatty acids but we don’t anticipate any measurable effect on productivity until the methane reduction number is above 30 per cent. And for our first product we’re looking at something closer to 10–15 per cent reduction in methane,” he said. “The other thing we are aggressively looking at is the coformulation of vaccines, where you hit an animal with one vaccine that targets a number of things, so we are actively looking at a couple of very common dairy vaccines that are utilised by 99 per cent of dairy cattle in New Zealand, for example. “We would look to co-formulate our vaccine with those vaccines. Then the cost burden of the additional methane-inhibiting vaccine drops. And our ability to offset that cost, whether it’s with a carbon credit, a premium, or productivity gains, suddenly becomes much more attainable. And as such, we think it becomes a much more attractive product.” Mr Wooten said ArkeaBio expected to submit an application for regulatory approval in 2027, having spent the past two years working with the government on the process, and wants to be generating revenue the following year. Breakthrough Energy says on its website that it hopes ArkeaBio’s product can become “the vaccine for climate change” and be rolled-out worldwide. “There’s a high scientific risk here and it may not work. But it’s hard to overstate the potential impact of this vaccine. We know this technology is highly scalable,” the website states. “Look no further than the massive effort to administer nearly 14 billion Covid-19 vaccines in three years. If successful, ArkeaBio’s vaccine could become one of the most important climate breakthroughs.” This article was originally published by [the Noticer](https://www.noticer.news/new-zealand-cattle-arkeabio-methane-vaccine/?ref=goodoil.news). ### The Good Oil Daily Opinion Poll URL: https://goodoil.news/the-good-oil-daily-opinion-poll-395/ Last updated: 2026-10-13T21:14:59.000Z Take our Daily Opinion Poll and see how your views compare to other readers and then share the poll on social media. By sharing the poll you will help even more readers to discover *The Good Oil.* --- ### Your Daily Ten@10 - 2026/190 URL: https://goodoil.news/your-daily-ten-10-2026-190/ Last updated: 2026-10-13T21:10:00.000Z **This is edition 2026/190 of the *Ten@10* newsletter.** Hi all, This is the Ten@10, where I collate and summarise ten news items you generally won't see in the mainstream media. Enjoy! --- ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/01-ten190.jpg) ## 1\. RODNEY HIDE: I asked AI to find Chlöe Swarbrick's worldview *Rodney Hide - Brash & Mitchell* - 🤖 After running Christopher Luxon’s worldview through his AI research assistant, Hide gave it the same job on Green co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick: her maiden speech, columns and interviews, quoted exactly. - 🧠 Its finding: she has named her own philosophy. In 2017 she told the Herald: “I’m particularly interested in critical theory which is looking at the structures of society, figuring out if they’re unjust and seeking to recalibrate them.” - ⚙️ In her view, systems explain behaviour. In 2018 she wrote: “Choice, and its sibling individual responsibility, are scapegoats for systemic political action.” - 💰 Her economics has hardened, from business “privatising profit and socialising cost” in 2018 to this month: “Anything other than material redistribution is tokenism.” The programme is a wealth tax, public ownership and a state-owned supermarket. - 🌿 Even her cannabis reform case rests on harm reduction and evidence, wanting “legal regulation to enable intervention”, rather than liberty or self-ownership. - ⚖️ The tensions: she dismisses opponents’ “dogmatic moral judgment”, though calling things “not fair” is a moral judgment too, and ordinary people’s choices are blamed on the system while the rich are held fully responsible for theirs. - 🌊 Her maiden speech line “Politics is water” means, in Hide’s reading, critical theory in one line: nothing is neutral, everything is power. - 👑 Unlike Luxon, she knows what she believes and says so, which Hide says makes her easier to argue with and more dangerous. He calls her kind “the modern day Philosopher Kings”. - 🔤 A postscript on the dots: placed over the “o”, they read like a German umlaut. Swarbrick told Vice in 2017 she put them there as a child learning to write. - 💡 Takeaway: the day he finished, she announced the Greens would regulate AI. “My AI could have written her press release.” [Read More](https://www.brashandmitchell.com/post/rodney-hide-i-asked-ai-to-find-chl%C3%B6e-swarbrick-s-worldview?ref=goodoil.news) --- ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/02-ten190.jpg) ## 2\. RICHARD PREBBLE: Erica mania? *Richard Prebble - Brash & Mitchell* - 📱 Prebble says the real election campaign is taking place on social media, and those on the other side of the digital divide do not even know it is happening. - 🎯 Even regular scrollers miss campaigns reaching tens of thousands of voters, because algorithms select posts we will like. He is sure they have him profiled. - 🎥 With that warning, the best campaign posts he has seen are Erica Stanford’s. - 🗣️ Talking straight to a camera and being authentic is difficult, and explaining a complex message is harder still. Stanford does both, he says. - 💡 Takeaway: had the National caucus accepted Christopher Luxon’s challenge to replace him and chosen Stanford, “would we now be seeing Erica mania?” [Read More](https://www.brashandmitchell.com/post/richard-prebble-erica-mania?ref=goodoil.news) --- ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/03-ten190.jpg) ## 3\. The bourgeois war of annihilation against Israel *Brendan O'Neill - spiked* - 🕯️ New York mayor Zohran Mamdani attended an Israelis for Peace vigil on the third anniversary of 7 October and was heckled by radical leftists chanting “Zohran you can’t hide / We charge you with genocide!” - 🚩 Some in the crowd waved the Hamas flag and hollered “We support Hamas”. Others chased him, screaming “Traitor!” - 🪞 O’Neill says the mob was a monster of Mamdani’s own making: he refuses to call Hamas terrorists, and his anniversary statement spent a few lines on Hamas’s “crimes” before raging at length against Israel. - 🌍 Across the West there were similar scenes: “Long live 7 October” in Amsterdam, “Glory to our martyrs” in Edinburgh, inverted-triangle salutes in London, and an Italian mob hailing the day as Palestinian resistance. - 🟢 The Green Party of England and Wales voted for a proposal he describes as backing the annihilation of the Jewish homeland, put forward by a member exposed as a one-time “good friend” of a convicted Heathrow bomb plotter. - 🛡️ With Hamas to the south, Hezbollah to the north and Iran to the east, he argues that agitating to dismantle Israel is agitating for the mass expulsion and murder of Jews. - 📜 He accuses Owen Jones of erasing Jewish history by citing 1917 without mentioning centuries of expulsions or the Fifth Aliyah of 1929 to 1939, when Jews were fleeing the Nazis. - 🏛️ He calls Israel “a wholly anti-colonial enterprise” and quotes Hannah Arendt’s warning that anti-Semitism opens the doors to totalitarian movements. - 💡 Takeaway: the “pro-Palestine” movement, he says, is devoted less to the liberation of Palestinians than to the annihilation of Israel, and last week the mask slipped. [Read More](https://www.spiked-online.com/2026/10/12/the-bourgeois-war-of-annihilation-against-israel/?ref=goodoil.news) --- ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/04-ten190.jpg) ## 4\. Niall Ferguson: Why Europe Is Burning *Niall Ferguson - The Free Press* - 🔥 French schools are burning, set ablaze by high schoolers who say they want more investment in education, while they fill the streets with burning garbage, wave Palestinian flags and clash with police. - 🇫🇷 Ferguson notes the French anthem contains “Aux armes, citoyens!” and a cynical friend’s line: the first manifestation is to a young Parisian what first Communion is to a young Catholic. - 🏠 It is not just France. Young people are in the streets of Madrid over housing, and in Brussels over government budget cuts. - 📉 He does not see Eurozone Crisis 2.0, though the protests coincide with a French debt crisis that threatens to spread. - 🏦 The ECB learned from 2011 to 2012 to stand ready “to do whatever it takes to preserve the euro”, and has the tools to step in if French bond yields rise another 100 basis points. - 🧓 The subtitle sets out his argument: young Europeans should be protesting a system rigged for their grandparents. - 🔒 Takeaway: the rest of the essay is for paid subscribers only. [Read More](https://www.thefp.com/p/niall-ferguson-why-europe-burning-government-protest?ref=goodoil.news) --- ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/05-ten190.jpg) ## 5\. Marco Rubio’s West First foreign policy *Jacob Reynolds - spiked* - 🏛️ With the Acropolis as backdrop, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio cast the West as a place of “fierce individuality and relentless ambition; daring exploration and invention; a yearning for discovery, for adventure, risk and glory”. - 😨 Building on his Munich speech in February, he attacked safetyism and “a world of perfect safety, devoid of risk or failure”, calling European elites “polite and orderly caretakers of the West’s managed decline”. - 🔥 Reynolds finds it resonant: timidity is among the West’s most significant challenges, and even billionaires who talk of the stars are often found begging for protection from their own AI. - 🤔 The puzzle: American leaders since the founders have usually invoked Rome. Why Greece? - 🧬 The answer, he argues, is the new right’s campaign against liberal universalism. Rubio said Western ideals are not universal: “they are the product of a distinct character.” - 🗺️ That fits the 2025 National Security Strategy, which called the goal of “permanent American domination of the entire world” a mistake, leaving America leader of a particular civilisation. - ⚖️ Rome is bound up with universalism and international law, so Rubio quietly relabels law, citizenship and Aquinas as a Greek inheritance, alongside “the unapologetic pursuit of national power”. - ❓ Open questions: can a Christian country turn away from Rome, and can the West, a collection of states, become a civilisation-state? - 💡 Takeaway: Arendt noted Greek glory also drove the swift decline of the city-state. The harder task is to give it “the Roman gift of permanence, without the universal empire that came with it.” [Read More](https://www.spiked-online.com/2026/10/12/marco-rubios-west-first-foreign-policy/?ref=goodoil.news) --- ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/06b-ten190.jpg) ## 6\. The only product the public had to prove unsafe *Tony Nikolic - The Spectator Australia* - ⚖️ Everywhere else in law the seller must show a product is safe, Nikolic says. During the pandemic Australia reversed that burden for one product: the Covid vaccine. - 🇺🇸 On 1 October 2026 Florida’s Attorney General sued Pfizer and Albert Bourla under the state’s deceptive trade practices law, alleging it knew of a heart-inflammation signal in males under 18 and never tested whether the vaccine stopped transmission. - 👷 Workers under mandates did not choose the product, could not read the supply contract and could not know who would pay if it went wrong. - 🏛️ In Kassam v Hazzard the Court said vaccine effectiveness was not its function, then accepted the State expert’s evidence wherever experts differed. None of the plaintiffs’ experts was cross-examined. Nikolic acted in those cases. - 🔬 The State’s own expert accepted vaccination “does not provide absolute protection against infection or transmission to others”, and the word “precautionary” appears nowhere in the 297-paragraph judgment. - 📊 By 31 December 2025 the TGA held 1,052 fatal-outcome reports after Covid vaccination and has assessed 14 deaths as linked. A Drug Safety review put median under-reporting at 94 per cent. - 👶 ATAGI now says “Not recommended” for healthy children aged six months to 17 years. - 🔒 The Commonwealth indemnified manufacturers under contracts never released, and a 2021 Senate committee report on withheld documents got a response almost five years late. - 💸 The Covid Vaccine Claims Scheme stopped taking claims on 30 September 2024 after receiving 4,735 claims and paying 396. - 💡 Takeaway: he wants mandatory disclosure, a permanent no-fault injury scheme funded by those who profit, and the burden of proof to follow the mandate. [Read More](https://www.spectator.com.au/2026/10/the-only-product-the-public-had-to-prove-unsafe/?ref=goodoil.news) --- ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/07-ten190.png) ## 7\. RODNEY HIDE: James Christmas delivers an early turkey *Rodney Hide - Brash & Mitchell* - 🎬 Act’s Tāmaki candidate James Christmas posted a 25-second clip telling Winston Peters to take “your socially conservative rebrand elsewhere but don’t bother doing it here in Tāmaki.” - 🚫 Hide says the message was that no social conservative is welcome, a nasty comment from someone who would represent everyone in the electorate. - ⚖️ Act was once split fairly evenly between libertarians and conservatives, a healthy tension over abortion, euthanasia, drugs and shop trading. He says it is now a strictly urban liberal party. - 📚 He cites Alasdair MacIntyre’s Dependent Rational Animals: moral philosophy forgets the dependent are ourselves “as we have been, sometimes are now and may well be in the future.” - 🧩 Murray Rothbard was at least consistent, Hide says, following his rule of no force but no duty of help all the way to “a flourishing free market in children.” - 👶 Figures obtained by Family First’s Bob McCoskrie under the OIA show about 80 babies born alive after attempted abortions since the start of 2020, at 20 to 30 weeks, were not given life-sustaining care. - 🏥 Todd Stephenson’s member’s bill would drop the six-month rule for assisted dying and let doctors be the first to raise it. - 📊 About 52,000 people saw the clip, 55 liked it, and Hide found four supporters among about 125 replies. Peters’ reply got half the views and eight times the likes. - 💡 Takeaway: Christmas co-wrote a book with Chris Finlayson on giving a river legal personhood. “The baby born alive after a botched abortion gets nobody.” [Read More](https://www.brashandmitchell.com/post/rodney-hide-james-christmas-delivers-an-early-turkey?ref=goodoil.news) --- ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/4JHW3SZ_Image_8_jfif.webp) ## 8\. My “Dirty Work” Mention *Peter Williams - Peter’s Substack* - 📚 Williams could not find a copy of Nicky Hager’s Dirty Work in Cromwell, Wanaka, Queenstown Airport or Auckland domestic terminal, so a friend emailed him the chapter that mentions him. - 😠 In Chapter Three, “Using Racism as a Political Tool”, Hager reports a 2022 Taxpayers’ Union speech in Invercargill and says Williams spoke “without any factual basis”. - ✏️ The quote is wrong, he says. He asked why iwi and Māori deserve a “cut” of every litre of water, not a “cup”. - 🤝 He has never met Gary Judd KC, but quoted his writing that Three Waters would confer on iwi and Māori “a direct attribute of ownership”. - 🏗️ Three Waters would have folded assets from 67 councils into four entities with iwi-based boundaries, governed through half-iwi Regional Representation Groups, with no mention of financial or engineering skills for directors. - 📄 His factual basis was He Puapua, which suggested funding rangatiratanga through “levies on resource use where Maori have a clear interest if not a strong claim to ownership, such as water.” - ⚖️ He says that is unfair in a land where Article Three of the Treaty makes all equal, and that explaining it “is not racism.” - 💧 New Zealand uses less than five percent of its annual rainfall. It is never short of water, he says, only of better ways to capture and share it. - 💡 Takeaway: Three Waters and He Puapua were abandoned, and “We have to ensure no politicians ever try it on again.” [Read More](https://peterallanwilliams.substack.com/p/my-dirty-work-mention) --- ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/09-ten190.jpg) ## 9\. Elon Musk’s Enemies Make His Best Case *Liel Leibovitz - The Free Press* - 🎬 Alex Gibney’s new documentary Musk, released on Friday, runs three hours and 55 minutes. - 💬 When Gibney asked for an interview in 2023, Musk told his 241.5 million followers on X: “Gibney is a douche.” - 🤖 Refused an interview, Gibney built an animated AI Elon fed only lines Musk had said in public, and interviewed that instead. - 🦹 Leibovitz says the result is a cartoonish Bond villain in a gaming chair, spitting decontextualised snippets to support the thesis that Musk will destroy the world unless stopped. - 🌍 The poster shows Musk atop a globe he has cut in half with a chainsaw, and the film opens with the earth exploding in slow motion. “And that’s just the first five minutes.” - 🚀 The subtitle sets out his argument: the film is so determined to expose Musk’s failings that it showcases the achievements that made him a titan. - 🔒 Takeaway: the rest of the review is for paid subscribers only. [Read More](https://www.thefp.com/p/elon-musk-new-documentary-enemies-best-case?ref=goodoil.news) --- ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/10-ten190.jpg) ## 10\. ERIC NESS: The climate emergency was declared. Now show us the bill *Eric Ness - Brash & Mitchell* - 🌡️ The World Climate Research Programme’s new scenarios lower the upper end of plausible fossil-fuel growth, with a preliminary high scenario of around 3.5°C by 2100 and no plausible path staying below 1.5°C. - 📑 Treasury OIA documents show it was uneasy when James Shaw and the Ministry for the Environment suggested councils plan using only RCP8.5\. Cabinet settled on RCP4.5 and RCP8.5. - 💸 The Climate Emergency Response Fund began with $4.5 billion, which Treasury called a “down payment”. The Clean Car Discount paid $617.2 million in about 192,100 rebates. - ⚫ Huntly burned about 870,446 tonnes of coal in 2024, around 85 percent imported from Indonesia, and its stockpile reached 1.16 million tonnes by the end of 2025. - ⛽ Marsden Point supplied 65 to 70 percent of refined fuel before closing in 2022\. Our need for petroleum did not disappear: “The refining just happened somewhere else.” - ⚡ Chlöe Swarbrick wants to “electrify everything”, while MBIE models electricity demand rising 35.3 to 82 percent by 2050. - 🔌 The Greens’ package totals about $3.1 billion over four years, including about $980 million for Kiwipower, but leaves out generation, transmission, lines upgrades and chargers. - ❓ Ness wants the actual national energy plan: how much power, how much firm capacity in a dry year, and what replaces Huntly. - 💡 Takeaway: Swarbrick says “Hope is not a plan.” Ness agrees, and says the answer comes with “engineering, timeframes and money.” [Read More](https://www.brashandmitchell.com/post/eric-ness-the-climate-emergency-was-declared-now-show-us-the-bill?ref=goodoil.news) --- ## What our members are saying about Ten@10 **Elizabeth** These articles are compulsory reading for me and the perfect addition to the usual list of Goodoil items! **Lynne** Absolutely brilliant to receive these current and thought provoking articles. **Jonathan** Just wanted to let you know that I’m loving this new 10@10\. Much appreciated from someone who chooses to read/watch almost NO mainstream media. **Murray** Cam, relish your output as the newspaper in Christchurch is so intent on non news. Thankyou **Fred** Thanks for Ten @ Ten, really enjoy reading it.Keep it up. All the best, keep healthy. **Jocko** Wonderful info not otherwise available in NZ. More power to your elbow! Thanks. ### No One Is Going to Make Us Watch URL: https://goodoil.news/no-one-is-going-to-make-us-watch-2/ Last updated: 2026-10-13T20:59:59.000Z To paraphrase *A Fish Called Wanda*, to call Australia’s political class ‘stupid’, is “an insult to stupid people”. **Michael Shellenberger**, the University of Austin’s CBR Chair of Politics, Censorship and Free Speech, found that out for himself, yesterday. The occasion was a meeting with government staffers, regarding the political class’s temper-tantrums at not being able to censor Australians’ internet access hard enough. What Shellenberger found out was what the rest of us already know: the Canberra Bubble is an echo chamber of the authoritarian leading the ignorant. > [Well, that was wild.](https://x.com/shellenberger/status/2109858705252725031?ref=goodoil.news) I’m at the Australian Parliament and just left a meeting with two staffers for the governing party. They told us that the government needed more power to censor things like the upcoming US execution of **Nidal Hasan**. > > When I asked why they needed to censor that video, one said it was to prevent copycat killings. Copycat killings by governments? I asked. Er, no, they said. Copycat killings like of a backpacker, several decades ago. > > So, under that logic, I pointed out, the government should censor things like last year’s Bondi massacre, where two Muslims killed 15 people, no? Well, that was news, they said. Didn’t they realize their bill would allow the government to censor news? They didn’t seem to know, or care. What the Canberra Bubble don’t know would fill parliamentary libraries. Especially what they don’t know about the very laws that they drafted themselves. > They also admitted that they did not know that the bill would allow the government to create and operate an unlimited number of fake social media accounts to attack its political enemies and spread disinformation. Having presented them with information they had never heard about a bill they had clearly not read, they emphasized to us, strenuously, that they were moving forward with the bill. At issue is the planned livestream of the execution of Muslim terrorist Nidal Hassan. This was the Islamic extremist (apologies for the tautology), remember, who gunned down dozens of his colleagues in cold blood. Including a pregnant young woman, who died screaming, “My baby! My baby!” Still, I have no real desire to *watch* this swivel-eyed follower of the ‘Prophet’ get dispatched to meet his 72 goats (you can’t make these clowns happy, can you? They claim they want to be ‘martyrs’, then they get mad when you oblige them): I’ll be content knowing justice has been done. And, being the adult that I am, I’ll choose not to watch it. Because, contrary to the deranged witterings of the authoritarian political class, that’s exactly how it works. If I don’t want to watch Question Time, I don’t log on. If I don’t want to watch midget scat porn, I don’t look it up. If I don’t want to watch a livestreamed execution: ditto. **And, by the strange black magic apparently unavailable to the political class, I won’t in fact be forced to see it! *Amazing!*** But that’s not what the issue is, here, of course. Even the dim bulbs in Canberra know that nobody is forced to watch things they don’t want to. What the real issue is, is the authoritarian eKaren types using this as a stalking-horse in a censorious power-grab. Well, grabbing even more censorious power than they’ve already given themselves. Enter our beloved eSafety bureaucracy, an outfit that never met a foreign server it didn’t want to seize by the scruff of the neck. Having previously tried, and hilariously failed, to scrub footage of Sydney clergy stabbings from every computer terminal between Perth and Patagonia, the commissars are wringing their hands once more. > [“While eSafety does not](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-10-13/esafety-cant-block-us-execution-live-stream-in-australia/107258064?ref=goodoil.news) have powers to proactively prevent a live stream from occurring online, online services have responsibilities under Australia's online safety regulatory framework to protect users from harmful material,” a spokesperson said. Translation: we cannot actually stop the internet from being the internet, but by Gaia we will threaten Silicon Valley until they turn the whole world into an ABC toddler programme (with two Dads for every theyby, of course). The usual chorus of pearl-clutchers has chimed in right on cue. From Greens manatee **Sarah ‘Sea-Patrol’ Hanson-Young** demanding the government “take whatever action is necessary” to stamp out the ‘barbarism’, to sanctimonious hand-wringing from the usual Liberal ‘moderates’, Canberra has decided that grown adults cannot be trusted with a mouse and keyboard. The federal government soberly informed us that ordinary Australians “rightly expect” their computer screens to remain spotless nurseries, safely insulated from harsh reality by the tender mercies of the state. Of course, the academic claque was wheeled out immediately to inform the plebs that this administrative inadequacy is precisely why we must hand Canberra even more dictatorial control over our modems. > Dr Barnet said it highlighted the need for the government’s Digital Duty of Care Bill, which is being introduced into parliament this week, as it will require platforms to take steps to reduce the risk of harm to users on their sites. Whenever the apparatus of state censorship finds itself frustrated by technical reality, the prescription is never humility. It is always a brand-new omnibus bill, stuffed to the gills with powers to silence inconvenient news, punish dissent and unleash an army of [literal state-sponsored sock-puppet accounts](https://goodoil.news/theyre-not-even-hiding-it-2/) to manufacture consent online. The pretext is always the same: protecting the delicate sensitivities of the kiddies. But the end game is naked political control. They don’t give a damn about Nidal Hasan’s firing squad: what terrifies them is the prospect of citizens seeing unvarnished reality without Canberra’s approved spin. --- 💡 ****If you enjoyed this article please share it using the share buttons at the top or bottom of the article.** ### Reversing Future Public Service Cuts – Edmonds URL: https://goodoil.news/reversing-future-public-service-cuts-edmonds/ Last updated: 2026-10-13T20:29:59.000Z [**Chris Lynch**](https://www.chrislynchmedia.com/news-items/show-us-your-cuts-edmonds-says-labour-would-reverse-nationals-future-public-service-cuts/?ref=goodoil.news) *Chris Lynch is a journalist, videographer and content producer, broadcasting from his independent news and production company in Christchurch.* Labour finance spokeswoman Barbara Edmonds says Labour’s fiscal plan reverses the government’s future public service budget cuts. She has challenged National to reveal exactly which services it will cut before New Zealanders vote. Speaking to *chrislynchmedia.com* on the day National released its fiscal plan, Edmonds said Labour had not been able to undo every cut already made. But it had reversed the baseline reductions planned for future budgets. “We haven’t been able to unwind all of them because, as we’ve said during this period, a lot of it is probably underway already. But future budget cuts… we have unwound them as part of our fiscal plan.” She said voters deserved to know what would be lost before election day. “Be absolutely upfront with New Zealand where you are going to make these cuts, so they can make an informed decision.” Edmonds pointed to biosecurity and hiring freezes in the health system as areas of concern. She said the impact of public service cuts was felt well beyond Wellington, citing community services on Auckland’s North Shore that had lost funding. “People think sometimes public services is just Wellington and the people who are based there, but it’s not. It’s also the programmes that are funded in communities, and communities know what they need best.” Labour has kept the same $2.4 billion annual operating allowance as National. Edmonds rejected Finance Minister Nicola Willis’s claim that pay equity and health costs would swallow almost all of Labour’s $10.5 billion in unallocated funding. She said the government itself claimed to have money set aside for pay equity claims, and Labour had done the same. “I’m absolutely confident that we don’t have to make those choices, and that we’ve set aside sufficient amount of fiscal headroom.” Labour has promised to restore the previous pay equity regime within its first 100 days in government. Edmonds said Labour was working on transitional rules so that claims already well advanced, such as the care and support workers’ claim, would not have to start again. Labour’s plan includes $2.5 billion for an immediate $4 an hour pay rise for 65,000 care and support workers from 1 January 2027. Asked what would make an immediate difference to struggling families, Edmonds pointed to a $20 weekly cap on public transport fares in Christchurch, Wellington and Auckland, three free GP visits, and the removal of prescription charges. She also highlighted plans to separate the wholesale and retail arms of the major supermarket chains to help independent grocers. Labour also plans a small business package that would lift the instant asset write-off threshold from $1000 to $10,000 and raise the GST registration threshold from $60,000 to $80,000. Responding to Willis’s warning that there was no such thing as a free lunch, Edmonds, a mother of eight, said she agreed. “There is no free lunch. Lunch always costs… But ultimately, it comes down to the choices you make, and this is taxpayers’ dollars. We have to be responsible around it.” She said Willis could not campaign on the government’s record. “Nicola can be as cynical as she wants, but ultimately she cannot campaign on her track record, because everything is worse, not better, which is why she just constantly attacks Labour.” This article was originally published by [Chris Lynch Media](https://www.chrislynchmedia.com/news-items/show-us-your-cuts-edmonds-says-labour-would-reverse-nationals-future-public-service-cuts/?ref=goodoil.news). ### The Political Parties of 2026 URL: https://goodoil.news/the-political-parties-of-2026/ Last updated: 2026-10-13T20:14:59.000Z What’s on the menu? _This post is for paying subscribers only._ ### Magic Mushrooms May Help With Concussion URL: https://goodoil.news/magic-mushrooms-may-help-with-concussion/ Last updated: 2026-10-13T19:59:59.000Z > *A concussion is often described as a* [*‘mild’ traumatic brain injury*](https://www.concussionalliance.org/what-happens-to-your-brain?ref=goodoil.news)*. Yet repeated blows to the head rarely feel mild and the impacts – including* [*changes in movement, memory, mood and brain function*](https://www.mayoclinichealthsystem.org/hometown-health/speaking-of-health/the-real-impact-of-a-concussion?ref=goodoil.news) *– may last for months or years.* > > *Athletes, military personnel, people involved in vehicle collisions, older adults who experience falls and* [*people experiencing intimate partner violence*](https://braininjurycanada.ca/en/advocacy/intimate-partner-violence/?ref=goodoil.news) *are all especially susceptible to repeated head injuries. And these are associated with an increased risk of neurodegenerative conditions, including* [*chronic traumatic encephalopathy*](https://doi.org/10.1097/NEN.0b013e3181a9d503?ref=goodoil.news) *and* [*Parkinson’s*](https://doi.org/10.1001/jamaneurol.2016.1948?ref=goodoil.news)[*disease*](https://doi.org/10.1212/WNL.0000000000005522%2A%2A?ref=goodoil.news)*.* > > *There is no approved drug that repairs the underlying brain damage from concussions. This therapeutic gap has prompted interest in an unconventional candidate:* [*psilocybin, the psychoactive compound found in ‘magic mushrooms.’*](https://www.britannica.com/science/psilocybin-mushroom?ref=goodoil.news) > > *New research, which I conducted with colleagues from the United States, shows that* [*psilocybin may help the brain recover from repeated mild head trauma*](https://doi.org/10.1038/s42003-026-10804-w?ref=goodoil.news)*.* > > *\[…\] Recent animal studies suggest that psilocybin may also be effective in healing repetitive brain injuries. A single dose of psilocybin administered months after repetitive concussion-like injuries* [*improved emotional and cognitive outcomes*](https://doi.org/10.1038/s41380-025-03329-x?ref=goodoil.news) *in rats. In another study, treatment one year after a more severe brain injury* [*improved motor function, restored serotonin-receptor signalling and reduced microglial abnormalities*](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.xcrm.2026.102867?ref=goodoil.news)*.* > > *These studies suggest that psilocybin may influence both the immediate response to head injury and its long-term consequences.* > > *\[…\] To further investigate the potential of psilocybin to heal concussion, our team worked with middle-aged female rats. They received one mild head impact per day for three consecutive days while awake. This approach was intended to resemble repeated concussive injuries more closely than models involving severe damage or prolonged anesthesia.* > > *Psilocybin was administered shortly after each impact. We then combined behavioural testing, advanced magnetic resonance imaging, protein measurements and analysis of signalling fats in the blood to examine recovery from several angles.* > > *The results were striking, although not uniformly so. Soon after injury, brain imaging revealed widespread changes consistent with vasogenic edema: fluid leakage and accumulation outside cells when the blood-brain barrier is disrupted.* > > *Three weeks later, untreated injured rats showed abnormally strong responses of brain blood vessels to carbon dioxide, indicating persistent disruption of vascular regulation. Psilocybin partially normalized this response in several regions, including the* [*prefrontal cortex*](https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/medicine-and-dentistry/prefrontal-cortex?ref=goodoil.news)*, which supports decision-making and behavioural control.* > > *Repeated injury also weakened the co-ordinated activity, or functional connectivity, between many brain regions. Psilocybin not only reversed this loss but produced connectivity greater than that observed in uninjured animals.* Some cautions. Results of studies in rats don’t automatically transfer over to humans. We can’t be 100 per cent sure if the results were as a result of taking psilocybin. And also the author of the article isn’t exactly neutral. > *A separate experiment suggested that this “hyperconnectivity” was not simply a general effect of the drug in a healthy brain. Nevertheless, more connectivity is not necessarily better. Future work must establish whether this increase represents helpful reorganization, a temporary compensatory response or excessive network activity with its own risks.* > > *\[… \] Researchers are left with many questions: How long do the effects last? Does the treatment work when delayed? Which receptors and cell types are responsible? Will similar benefits occur in males and across different ages?* > > *\[…\] What the study does provide is a particularly comprehensive demonstration that psilocybin can modify multiple biological consequences of repetitive mild head trauma when administered shortly after injury.* > > *\[…\] Together with emerging animal studies showing benefits when psilocybin is administered months after brain injury, these findings suggest that psychedelics may influence both the immediate response to concussion and its longer-term consequences.* Well, here’s hoping. In the US the use of psychedelics for the treatment of mental illness has been big news. And what’s been driving it is the mental health crisis happening there. So it’s not like everyone’s suddenly changed their minds. It’s more a case of well, nothing else is working so we may as well try it. Source : [https://theconversation.com/psilocybin-may-help-the-brain-recover-from-concussion-new-study-shows-292188](https://theconversation.com/psilocybin-may-help-the-brain-recover-from-concussion-new-study-shows-292188?ref=goodoil.news) ### Quick Hit: 284,000 Jobs by Masterplan URL: https://goodoil.news/quick-hit-284000-jobs-by-masterplan/ Last updated: 2026-10-13T19:29:59.000Z The Greens say their nearly $6 billion economic plan will create 284,000 jobs over four years. Treasury already forecasts 220,000 of them. Marama Davidson says what’s missing is “the masterplan”. _This post is for subscribers on the VIP tier only._ ### Would We Have Seen an Erica Mania? URL: https://goodoil.news/would-we-have-seen-an-erica-mania/ Last updated: 2026-10-13T19:29:59.000Z [**Richard Prebble**](https://richardprebble.substack.com/p/erica-mania) *Columnist, former cabinet minister and ACT Party leader.* The real election campaign is taking place on social media. Those on the other side of the digital divide do not even know this campaign is happening. But even those who scroll through social media do not see campaigns that are reaching tens of thousands of voters. Algorithms select posts that we will like. I am sure the algorithms have me profiled. With that warning, the best campaign posts I have seen are Erica Stanford’s. It is difficult to talk straight to a camera and be authentic. It is even harder to explain a complex message. Stanford does both. Check out this example: [Watch Erica Stanford’s Facebook video](https://www.facebook.com/reel/1637349211170068) Then wonder with me. If the National Party caucus had accepted Christopher Luxon’s challenge to replace him and chosen Stanford, would we now be seeing Erica mania? This article was originally published by [I’ve Been Thinking](https://richardprebble.substack.com/p/erica-mania). ### Two Invoices, No Cheque: Winston Has the Only Tax Cut Worth Having URL: https://goodoil.news/two-invoices-no-cheque/ Last updated: 2026-10-13T18:59:59.000Z Labour says Luxon costs you $6302 a year. National says Labour will cost you $2263. Neither of them is cutting your income tax. The only party offering a business tax cut it has costed is NZ First. _This post is for paying subscribers only._ ### Good Oil General Debate URL: https://goodoil.news/good-oil-general-debate-848/ Last updated: 2026-10-13T18:00:01.000Z Good morning, welcome to our daily General Debate. Our evening General debate is called Backchat and will start at 6 pm. On General debate, you are encouraged as a commenter to share your own stories, discuss other news, bring NEW news, catch up with friends or make new friends with other commenters. 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Please be respectful and do not make demands. ### Face of the Day URL: https://goodoil.news/face-of-the-day-1602/ Last updated: 2026-10-13T17:29:59.000Z > A spokesman for the Minister of Foreign Affairs said the Green Party’s approach to foreign policy revolves around “pandering to those who wish to use megaphone diplomacy, making them feel morally righteous, but without any practical or meaningful impact”. > > “Unlike Ms Davidson, Mr Peters has discussed New Zealand’s position \[with\] most major Islamic countries in the world including Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Indonesia, Türkiye and Egypt,” the spokesman said. > > NZ Herald [Read More](https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/politics/winston-peters-office-accuses-greens-of-megaphone-diplomacy-over-israel/VPVDXRFFNFE6FIFED2A7BZODEQ/?ref=goodoil.news) ### The Good Oil Word of the Day URL: https://goodoil.news/the-good-oil-word-of-the-day-787/ Last updated: 2026-10-13T17:15:47.000Z The word for today is… alow (adverb) - :below Source : [Merriam-Webster](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/alow?ref=goodoil.news) Etymology : In nautical use, alow means "in or to a lower part of the vessel," indicating the deck or the area of the rigging closest to the deck, or below-deck as opposed to above-deck. The opposite of alow in this sense is aloft, used to indicate a higher part of the vessel especially around the mastheads or the higher rigging. Yet, while we are still likely to encounter aloft, in both nautical and non-nautical use, alow has become something of a rarity. When encountered, it is usually found in the combination "alow and aloft." This phrase literally refers to the upper and lower parts of a ship or its rigging, but it can also be used to mean "completely" or "thoroughly." ***If you enjoyed this Good Oil word of the day please consider sharing it with your friends and, especially, your children.*** ### The Good Oil Daily Bible Verse URL: https://goodoil.news/the-good-oil-daily-bible-verse-497/ Last updated: 2026-10-13T16:59:59.000Z [Mark 14](https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Mark%2014&version=KJV&ref=goodoil.news) **2** But they said, Not on the feast day, lest there be an uproar of the people. ### Night Cap URL: https://goodoil.news/night-cap-755/ Last updated: 2026-10-13T07:59:59.000Z If you have a great Youtube, Rumble or Vimeo video to share send it to videos@goodoil.news [![CTA Image](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/01/cam-shirt2-1.png)](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) If you're loving this trusty, straight-up news on Kiwi politics and beyond, why not become a paid member, eh? Unlock exclusive yarns, podcasts, vids, and in-depth analysis—your support keeps independent journalism chugging along. Join today for just $5.00 per month and get the full good oil! [Learn more ](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) ### TVNZ Interviewed Michael Laws URL: https://goodoil.news/tvnz-interviewed-michael-laws/ Last updated: 2026-10-13T06:59:59.000Z If you have a great Youtube, Rumble or Vimeo video to share send it to videos@goodoil.news ### Taste Tuesday URL: https://goodoil.news/taste-tuesday-311/ Last updated: 2026-10-13T06:59:59.000Z If you have a great Youtube, Rumble or Vimeo video to share send it to videos@goodoil.news [![CTA Image](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/01/cam-shirt2-1.png)](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) If you're loving this trusty, straight-up news on Kiwi politics and beyond, why not become a paid member, eh? Unlock exclusive yarns, podcasts, vids, and in-depth analysis—your support keeps independent journalism chugging along. Join today for just $5.00 per month and get the full good oil! [Learn more ](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) ### James Christmas On His Call Out At Winston Peters Over Abortion URL: https://goodoil.news/james-christmas-on-his-call-out-at-winston-peters-over-abortion/ Last updated: 2026-10-13T06:29:59.000Z If you have a great Youtube, Rumble or Vimeo video to share send it to videos@goodoil.news [![CTA Image](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/01/cam-shirt2-1.png)](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) If you're loving this trusty, straight-up news on Kiwi politics and beyond, why not become a paid member, eh? Unlock exclusive yarns, podcasts, vids, and in-depth analysis—your support keeps independent journalism chugging along. Join today for just $5.00 per month and get the full good oil! [Learn more ](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) ### Chris Trotter On Split Voting, Abortion Rights & Election Predictions URL: https://goodoil.news/chris-trotter-on-split-voting-abortion-rights-election-predictions/ Last updated: 2026-10-13T06:00:00.000Z If you have a great Youtube, Rumble or Vimeo video to share send it to videos@goodoil.news [![CTA Image](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/01/cam-shirt2-1.png)](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) If you're loving this trusty, straight-up news on Kiwi politics and beyond, why not become a paid member, eh? Unlock exclusive yarns, podcasts, vids, and in-depth analysis—your support keeps independent journalism chugging along. Join today for just $5.00 per month and get the full good oil! [Learn more ](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) ### The Good Oil Daily Roundup URL: https://goodoil.news/the-good-oil-daily-roundup-771/ Last updated: 2026-10-13T05:30:09.000Z [](https://photos.google.com/u/1/photo/AF1QipN7Zp7NKe4smdZA9nAYud8CjsgjsQ-Bn7QyMo53?ref=goodoil.news) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/AE67E62D-AB42-458A-9668-6F25C27BDC6F.jpeg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/D9246874-BB6D-4533-8DC9-DAC70F239518.jpeg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/6947C12E-4509-4126-851D-1696296B9A84.jpeg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/6E960BFB-11EC-4270-AAF2-37CFEE65448A.jpeg) ### Good Oil Backchat URL: https://goodoil.news/good-oil-backchat-849/ Last updated: 2026-10-13T05:00:01.000Z Good evening, welcome to **Backchat**. On Backchat, you are free to share your own stories, discuss other news or catch up with friends. To participate you’ll need to sign up for a [Disqus account ](https://disqus.com/profile/signup/intent/?ref=goodoil.news)which is free, quick, and easy. On posts that are not articles like this one, you do not have to stay ‘on topic’ but you do still need to follow our [commenting rules.](https://goodoil.news/commenting-and-moderation/) Please [read our rules ](https://www.goodoil.news/commenting-and-moderation/?ref=goodoil.news)before you start commenting on *The Good Oil* to avoid a temporary or permanent ban. NOTE: Moderation queries MUST be expressed VIA EMAIL and not by posting a comment. To check if your ban might have been caused by Disqus, or to ask for a banning decision to be reviewed, email the voluntary **helpdesk** @ [**goodoil.news**](https://goodoil.news/) with your Disqus username in the subject line. Please be respectful and do not make demands. ### The Covid Reckoning That Never Came URL: https://goodoil.news/the-covid-reckoning-that-never-came/ Last updated: 2026-10-13T03:29:59.000Z [**Ed Dowd**](https://brownstone.org/articles/the-covid-reckoning-that-never-came/?ref=goodoil.news) *Ed Dowd is an ex-Wall Street professional now on Team Humanity. His book Cause Unknown: The Epidemic of Sudden death in 2021 & 2022 propelled him as an alternative voice during the pandemic and the economic implications that continue to plague us today.* Over the last several years I have been posting nonstop on X about the same nightmares we’ve been living through… the Covid psyop, the experimental mRNA shots, the mandates that destroyed lives, the injuries, the excess deaths, and the relentless propaganda machine that tried to silence anyone who noticed the bodies piling up. I have watched it all in real time: the fear porn, the goalpost moving, the “safe and effective” lies repeated like gospel while real-world data told a different story. Now we have fresh, documented revelations that should have blown the lid off of everything. Instead? Crickets from the media and, more disappointingly, from the current administration that promised accountability. Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) dropped another devastating report and hearing in late April 2026: “Unmasked: How Biden Health Officials Purposely Turned a Blind Eye Toward Covid-19 Vaccine Safety Signals.” Internal records show FDA officials knew their VAERS monitoring was inadequate to say least. They had better data-mining tools ready to flag clear safety signals: cardiac deaths, strokes, pulmonary issues, Bell’s palsy... but they chose not to use them. Why? To avoid “vaccine hesitancy.” This was not screw-up territory. It was deliberate. Vaccine-injured people sat across from Peter Marks and other top FDA brass begging for acknowledgment. They got stonewalled. Johnson rightly calls this one of the biggest scandals in his decades in public service. Then in early June he held another hearing exposing potential cancer links to the mRNA shots and the systematic suppression of critical studies. Same playbook: inconvenient science gets buried or attacked. Around the same time, Tulsi Gabbard, in one of her final moves as DNI, declassified documents laying out Fauci’s role in funding gain-of-function research at Wuhan, the lab-leak cover-up, the intelligence manipulation, and the retaliation against truth-tellers. Millions of taxpayer dollars funneled into risky biolabs, followed by the full narrative-control machine kicking in to blame nature instead of the obvious. These are not anonymous X threads. This is a sitting senator with subpoena power and the former Director of National Intelligence dropping official records. So where is the firestorm? Where are the front-page exposés, the prime-time specials, the demands for real hearings and prosecutions? [In 1976 the swine flu vaccine was pulled after 25 deaths and 500 cases of Guillain Barre Syndrome.](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2009-apr-27-sci-swine-history27-story.html?ref=goodoil.news) In the Covid shot era we have approximately 39,000 deaths reported to VAERS following the shot. Apparently lives got cheaper over the last 50 years. The legacy media has mostly ignored it, downplayed it, or run the usual ‘right-wing conspiracy’ dismissals. Paid to lie… and crickets on recent FDA Covid vax revelations. Their complicity is not an understatement; rather, it was essential to the entire psyop. Even more frustrating is the relative silence from the current Trump administration. After years of vowing to expose the lies and drain the swamp on the pandemic response, these revelations land and… not much follow-through. No aggressive push for accountability. No sustained public reckoning for the officials who covered up safety signals or manipulated the origins story. That silence hits hard. Additionally the vaccines are still on the market and this administration is now complicit. What an epic failure! A lot of us did not need Johnson’s reports or Gabbard’s declassifications to see the fraud. **Back in 2022 and 2023, my team at Phinance Technologies was already digging into the data and uncovering the real narrative through our Humanity Projects.** We analyzed excess deaths, disability surges, absence rates, and the human and economic costs of mass inoculations when almost no one else wanted to touch it. Check out the full body of work here:[ Humanity Projects](https://www.humanityprojects.info/?ref=goodoil.news). What we found through cold, hard numbers lined up with what the bodies on the ground were showing. We weren’t surprised by the latest revelations from Senator Johnson. We had been sounding the alarm years earlier, while getting labeled conspiracy theorists for it. We watched the institutionally well-established benefits of natural immunity get summarily dismissed and memory-holed. We saw “two weeks to flatten the curve” turn into endless boosters for the compliant and job losses for the unvaccinated. We saw friends and family injured or worse, then told it was ‘rare,’ ‘coincidence,’ or ‘misinformation.’ Those of us who protested the mandates and the experimental mRNA shots were labeled Russian disinformation, dangerous spreaders, even domestic terrorists. It did not stick, but they tried. For those who saw through the propaganda early, resisted it, and watched peers fall for it, our worldview has forever changed. The greatest cover up ever. But despite the MSM blackout, word has gotten out through underground channels, thanks in no small part to Senator Ron Johnson and others who refused to let subject die. The betrayal runs deep. These new revelations do not surprise us but rather they confirm what the data and our own eyes showed years ago. They lied. They knew they were lying. They censored, gaslit, and destroyed lives to protect the narrative. Many institutions, including public health, intelligence, media, and Big Pharma were all in on it and still propagating the lies today. That loss of trust is profound and permanent for millions of us. We no longer default to believing official statements. We demand primary data. We assume self-preservation and narrative control from authorities until proven otherwise. The Covid era did not just damage credibility on one issue. Instead it shattered how an entire group of people view government, ‘experts,’ and authority. ‘Doing your own research’ proved to be a critical lifesaver. The people in authority still defending the garbage jab or pretending none of this matters can keep taking their 12 boosters (dirty little secret… they are not). The rest of us are done. We are profoundly changed. More skeptical. More data driven. Less willing to comply. Team Humanity was born out of this mess. The window for real accountability is slamming shut. Even if these official revelations get memory-holed, the lesson is clear: they never planned to come clean. They want us to forget and move on to the next crisis. I am not forgetting. And from what I see every day, millions are not either. As time rolls forward and the cognitive dissonance of those who took the vaccine wears off… our numbers will continue to grow. **“For nothing is hidden that will not be made manifest, nor is anything secret that will not be known and come to light.” – Luke 8:17** Republished from the author’s [Substack](https://eddowdbeyondthenarrative.substack.com/p/the-covid-reckoning-that-never-came) by [Brownstone Institute](https://brownstone.org/articles/the-covid-reckoning-that-never-came/?ref=goodoil.news). ### [The Good Oil] Stuff Up of the Day URL: https://goodoil.news/the-good-oil-stuff-up-of-the-day-189/ Last updated: 2026-10-13T01:59:59.000Z Stuttering Stuff. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/Stuff-up-13-Oct.png) ### The Web May Already Be Inside URL: https://goodoil.news/the-web-may-already-be-inside/ Last updated: 2026-10-13T00:59:59.000Z [**Burak Oktenli**](https://realclearwire.com/articles/2026/10/08/the%5Fkill%5Fweb%5Fmay%5Falready%5Fbe%5Finside%5Fthe%5Fperimeter%5F1210435.html?ref=goodoil.news) *Burak Oktenli is an independent researcher based in Washington, DC, focusing on authority, assurance, and governance in autonomous and AI-enabled systems. He holds a bachelor’s degree in computer science and engineering.* Operation Spiderweb showed that an attacker can cross geography before combat begins. NATO’s counter-drone buildout should test rear-area command handoffs and decision latency, not only sensors and interceptors. Ukraine’s 2025 Operation Spiderweb changed more than the range of drone warfare. Ukrainian operatives moved first-person-view drones close to Russian strategic air bases inside wooden structures carried by trucks, then launched them near their targets. [Reuters later reported](https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/ukraine-hit-fewer-russian-planes-than-it-estimated-us-officials-say-2025-06-04/?ref=goodoil.news) that US officials assessed the operation had destroyed around 10 Russian aircraft and damaged as many as 20. The operational lesson is larger than the damage count. The strike did not have to cross thousands of kilometers of defended airspace on the day it began. Much of the distance had already been crossed before combat started. That creates a different counter-drone problem. Most defensive architectures are built around an approaching threat: detect the track, classify it, decide, then engage. A pre-positioned system compresses that sequence because the launch point may already sit inside what planners treated as the rear area. The first warning can arrive only seconds before impact, with little or no observable approach path. ### From kill web to latent kill web A conventional kill web links sensors, decision makers and effects after contact. A pre-positioned drone network creates something closer to a latent kill web: nodes are emplaced before the moment of attack and become operational only when activated. The compression is geographic as well as digital. The attacker is therefore doing more than shortening the sensor-to-shooter chain. It is removing the defender’s assumption that distance creates warning. A drone can appear near an airfield, headquarters, logistics hub, port, ammunition site or protected installation after the outer defensive layers have already been bypassed. Better local sensors, electronic warfare, interceptors, and layered protection are necessary responses. They still leave a command problem when a threat appears inside defended depth and several organizations hold different pieces of the response. ### The first fight is over ownership Rear-area defense is often organizationally fragmented. Installation security may see the first contact. Air defense may control the interceptor. Electronic-warfare units may hold nonkinetic options. Aviation authorities may control local airspace restrictions. Intelligence elements may hold the best classification data. Civilian authorities can become relevant when a track leaves a military perimeter. A pre-positioned attack punishes ambiguity across those seams. The questions arrive before the track is fully classified: Who owns it? Who may restrict local activity? Who can employ nonkinetic effects? Who may authorize force? What happens when the contact crosses an installation boundary? Who takes over if communications to higher headquarters degrade? I examined a different side of this problem in a July [Articles of War](https://lieber.westpoint.edu/whose-decision-was-it-drone-swarms-accountability-gap-ukraine/?ref=goodoil.news) essay on swarm accountability. There, the question was whether increasingly autonomous architectures can make the human decision that the law depends on difficult to locate after an action. Rear-area defense creates an earlier operational problem: even when authority is defined on paper, a force can still lose time if responsibility for acting is fragmented across organizations. Against a latent kill web, those seams belong inside the weapon-system design problem. A sensor-to-effector chain can be technically fast and still be operationally late if decision rights move more slowly than the drone. The remedy is precontact design. Commands should decide in advance which organization owns which decision, how control transfers, what protective actions are standing, and what authorities remain available when connectivity fails. The goal is a rehearsed handoff architecture rather than an approval path that has to be invented after the first alert. ### Measure decision latency, not only detection latency Counter-UAS exercises already test detection range, classification performance, track continuity, and interceptor effectiveness. They should also measure the time required to move a track from the first observer to the organization that can lawfully and practically act on it. A realistic internal-launch scenario should begin with an ambiguous contact appearing close to a protected site. The exercise should force a handoff among base security, air defense, intelligence, electronic warfare and any relevant civilian or aviation authority. It should then degrade communications, introduce a second contact, and move the first track across an organizational boundary while the incident is still unfolding. The key metric is how much context survives each handoff. The receiving unit should inherit track history, timestamps, prior classifications, control measures already applied and the evidence behind them. A transfer that resets the incident to a voice report or screenshot wastes the time modern networking was supposed to save. Exercises should also test what local commanders may still do when the network fractures. Decentralized action only helps when its limits were established and rehearsed before the crisis. ### NATO’s Drone Edge should include the command layer NATO has already created a useful window to institutionalize this. At the July 2026 Ankara Summit, Allies launched [NATO’s Drone Edge](https://nato.int/en/about-us/official-texts-and-resources/official-texts/2026/07/07/natos-drone-edge?ref=goodoil.news), committing more than $40 billion to counter-drone capabilities over five years and setting a goal of training five times as many drone operators by the end of 2027\. NATO is also developing a counter-drone marketplace to broaden access to solutions across the Alliance. The technical side of that effort is already accelerating. On September 9, the NATO Communications and Information Agency [launched a Counter-UAS Data Challenge](https://www.ncia.nato.int/newsroom/news/nato-launches-data-challenge-to-counter-drone-threats?ref=goodoil.news) seeking artificial-intelligence systems that can fuse radar, radiofrequency, camera, and acoustic data into a single operational picture. NATO exercises such as [Baltic Trust 26](https://www.ncia.nato.int/newsroom/news/ncia-integrates-counterdrone-technologies-into-military-operations-at-exercise-baltic-trust-26?ref=goodoil.news) are also testing how counter-drone technologies from different nations and vendors operate together. Compatibility should therefore include command handoffs as well as data exchange. A radar can share a track perfectly and an interceptor can receive a cue instantly, yet the force can still arrive late if no common procedure determines who owns the incident when it begins inside the defended area. The pressure to solve that problem is increasing. [Reuters reported on September 22](https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/jet-powered-russian-drones-strain-ukraines-air-defences-2026-09-22/?ref=goodoil.news) that Ukrainian mobile air-defense crews confronting faster jet-powered Shahed drones can have seconds rather than minutes to react. Technology is compressing the interval available for both interception and command. NATO’s testing architecture offers a place to measure both. Internal-launch scenarios, degraded-network procedures, decision latency, and cross-organizational handoffs should become standard test events. A system should not count as fully interoperable merely because its sensors and effectors connect. The organizations responsible for using them should be able to transfer responsibility without losing time or context. ### The rear is part of the opening move Spider’s Web revealed a form of combat power that can look like logistics until the moment it activates. An attacker can distribute potential combat power in space, conceal it inside ordinary movement, and begin the engagement only after the system is already close to the target. That changes the opening minutes of defense. The decisive question may be less about how quickly a drone is detected after crossing a line on a map than whether the defending force has already decided who may act when no such crossing occurs. The next counter-drone advantage will depend on more than the longest-range sensor or the fastest interceptor. It will also depend on whether command relationships are already in place when the kill web wakes up inside the perimeter. This article was originally published by RealClearDefense and made available via [RealClearWire](https://realclearwire.com/articles/2026/10/08/the%5Fkill%5Fweb%5Fmay%5Falready%5Fbe%5Finside%5Fthe%5Fperimeter%5F1210435.html?ref=goodoil.news). ### Cheap Cutting-Edge Cancer Treatment, But... URL: https://goodoil.news/cheap-cutting-edge-cancer-treatment-but/ Last updated: 2026-10-13T00:29:59.000Z [**Sovereign Man**](https://www.schiffsovereign.com/trends/the-totalitarian-regime-offering-cheap-cutting-edge-cancer-treatment-156027/?ref=goodoil.news) Michael Walters had just started his first full-time job out of university when he was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma, a blood cancer. His doctors in Auckland, New Zealand, tried several rounds of chemotherapy, radiation and immunotherapy. None of it worked. Then they told him about CAR-T, a treatment that takes a patient’s own immune cells out, re-engineers them in a lab to attack the cancer, and puts them back in. A hospital in Melbourne, Australia, quoted him as much as $600,000, far more than his family could pay. So in late June, Walters flew to Shanghai, where the same therapy costs a fraction as much. It’s not that the Chinese invented it: CAR-T is an American technology. But China is running the exact same playbook that Japan used on American technology after World War II – copy the American invention, perfect the manufacturing, and flood the market with cheap, state-subsidized products. CAR-T’s big breakthrough came in 2012 at the University of Pennsylvania, where a six-year-old became the first child to beat leukemia with it. China took it from there. Its regulators let hospitals launch their own trials with far less central oversight than America requires, and by 2017 China was running more CAR-T trials than the US. “China has basically done to CAR-T cell therapy the same thing that it’s done to other industries, which is, they’ve industrialized it,” said Dr Sairah Ahmed, who runs a CAR-T program at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. According to Ahmed, CAR-T costs $150,000 to $230,000 in China, versus $550,000 to $850,000 in America. She has even advised some of her overseas patients to go to China for it. Michael Walters did his CAR-T in China. And on August 18, he learned his lymphoma was in complete remission. In 2021 China opened CAR-T to foreign patients, and now they’re flying in from all over. Walters’ hospital alone has treated patients from 12 countries. To be clear, we’re not lamenting this at all. If China can take American research and sell the treatment for a fraction of the price, that’s a win for humanity. But it also highlights how China has been working on its global image as a tourism hotspot. Citizens of dozens of countries can now visit China for up to 30 days without a visa. Nearly 23 million foreigners entered China in the first half of this year, up 20 per cent from a year earlier. With their medical advances, they’re trying to push into medical tourism as well. It’s the same idea: open the doors and bring in foreign money. It’s strange when you think about it – advanced medical tourism in one of the world’s most authoritarian regimes. No one had that on their bingo card 20 years ago. Because that’s the crazy thing about China – while foreign tourists are arriving in record numbers, any Chinese national with the means to leave is moving out of the country. Moreover, wealthy Chinese are flooding overseas “citizenship by investment” programs in places like Antigua and St Lucia in order to quickly obtain a second passport. They’re not stupid. They know their wealth and prosperity exists in China only as long as the government says it does. They know their freedom exists only as long as the government says it does… which is really to say there’s no freedom or prosperity at all. They know they’re only one misstep away from being disappeared like Jack Ma, the Alibaba founder who criticized state regulators. Or tennis star Peng Shuai, who disappeared after accusing a senior CCP official of sexual assault. Or real estate mogul Ren Zhiqiang, who disappeared after speaking out against China’s COVID policies. Or countless others. Wealthy Chinese can also see the crumbling fiscal facade. Behind the modern skylines and futuristic robotics, they know that China is in deep financial trouble, especially at the regional and provincial levels. By Bloomberg’s count, 21 of China’s 31 provincial governments have budget deficits exceeding 100 per cent of tax revenue. It would be like the US government having a $6 trillion deficit every single year. Last year China’s general government deficit (national, regional, local) was roughly 10 per cent of GDP… which is just absurd. And local tax officials are now turning their sights on China’s rich (and eventually middle class) to make ends meet. According to Bloomberg, Chinese tax authorities have formed special squads to hunt down the wealthy – sometimes an entire team is assigned to target a single individual. Often these tax bills are not even based on the law, or any sensible calculation of taxable income. Instead it’s just demands and extortion: give us money, otherwise we’ll confiscate your assets and send you to a reeducation camp. All of this is prompting wealthy Chinese to hit the exits, or at least prepare their Plan Bs. China certainly does have some shiny bright spots. But they’re vastly outweighed by an authoritarian government of central planners. America’s government is also weighed down by debt and bureaucracy, and some American politicians are already proposing similar ideas: wealth taxes, plus exit taxes on anyone who gives up their citizenship to escape them. The difference is that America’s problems can still be fixed with some rational thinking. China needs a time machine. Nobody can go back and reverse the one-child policy or undo decades of communism or vote the Communist Party out of office. But hoping the politicians come to their senses is not a plan, and that’s exactly why it makes sense to have a Plan B. PS: The Chinese families rushing for foreign passports now are doing it in a hurry, with a tax bill already on the table. This article was originally published by [Sovereign Man](https://www.schiffsovereign.com/trends/the-totalitarian-regime-offering-cheap-cutting-edge-cancer-treatment-156027/?ref=goodoil.news). ### The Piggy Bank Our Politicians Can’t Resist URL: https://goodoil.news/the-piggy-bank-our-politicians-cant-resist/ Last updated: 2026-10-12T23:59:59.000Z [**Steve Holland**](https://www.libertyitch.com/p/the-48-trillion-piggy-bank-our-political?ref=goodoil.news) *Broadcaster, commentator, media consultant, libertarian and former mayor of the Mornington Peninsula.* Australia has built one of the largest retirement savings systems in the world. According to APRA, our collective superannuation balance reached a staggering $4.767 trillion in June 2026, growing by more than $400 billion in just 12 months. That’s an enormous amount of money. Unfortunately, it’s also an enormous temptation for politicians who have never encountered a problem they didn’t think could be solved by spending somebody else’s money. Saving, investing and building wealth are fundamental to financial independence. The libertarian objection to the current compulsory superannuation arrangements is that Canberra dictates how much of our earnings must be saved, when we can access them and, increasingly, how that accumulated capital might serve the government’s priorities. Having compelled Australians to accumulate trillions in inaccessible accounts, our political class is now discovering that it would quite like to decide what happens to the money. Under the superannuation guarantee, employers must contribute 12 per cent of eligible earnings to super. We’re told this is an additional employment benefit, generously provided by employers. Of course, anyone who has employed someone knows that businesses count the total cost of employment, not how remuneration is divided between wages and benefits. Treasury-commissioned research by ANU economists Robert Breunig and Kristen Sobeck found that between 71 per cent and more than 100 per cent of increases in compulsory super contributions were offset by lower wage growth. In other words, workers ultimately bear most, if not all, of the cost. Compulsory super isn’t free money: it’s deferred wages, with the government deciding when we’re allowed to spend them. > The distinction between private retirement savings and an instrument of national economic policy must be protected. Consider a 25-year-old earning $80,000\. Their employer must contribute an additional $9,600 annually to super, or $48,000 over five years, assuming unchanged earnings. That’s before investment returns, fees and taxes. Imagine what that money could accomplish during those five years. It could help that young person save a deposit for their first home, repay expensive debt, finance further education, support a young family, or provide the capital to start a business. Instead, most Australians cannot access their compulsory savings until retirement after reaching preservation age, generally 60 or 65 depending on individual circumstances, although even those goal posts keep shifting. The conventional response is that $48,000 invested today will be worth considerably more in 40 years. That may well be true. But it completely ignores the value of having access to that money today – that’s the opportunity cost. A young couple struggling to buy their first home might reasonably prefer to own the roof over their heads rather than accumulate shares they cannot touch. Someone facing financial hardship might prefer to extinguish a high-interest debt rather than earn investment returns inside super. Who is better placed to make those decisions? The individual who knows their circumstances, aspirations and priorities, or a bureaucrat imposing the same savings formula on millions of Australians? As [Tom Valcanis wrote last year](https://www.libertyitch.com/p/get-rid-of-super-and-fix-housing?ref=goodoil.news), our housing crisis makes this contradiction particularly absurd. ABS figures show homeownership among Australians aged 25–39 fell from 65.8 per cent for Baby Boomers in 1991 to just 54.6 per cent for Millennials in 2021\. The average age of a first homebuyer in Australia will soon be 40\. Meanwhile, the government’s own Retirement Income Review recognises homeownership as fundamental to financial security in retirement and identifies poorer outcomes for retirees who rent. So Canberra insists young Australians save for retirement while preventing them from using those compulsory savings to acquire one of the most important assets for retirement. The First Home Super Saver Scheme hardly resolves the contradiction. It primarily allows access to eligible voluntary contributions, not compulsory employer contributions. None of this means superannuation is a bad investment. APRA reported an annual return of 8.6 per cent for large funds to June 2026\. You could even argue that many Australians would voluntarily contribute the full 12 per cent, or more. But it is still wrong to compel. The case becomes particularly questionable for low-income workers, whose immediate financial needs may be greatest. Additional compulsory super can also reduce their future means-tested Age Pension entitlement, rather than increasing retirement income dollar-for-dollar. > Having compelled Australians to accumulate trillions in inaccessible accounts, our political class is now discovering that it would quite like to decide what happens to the money. And now there’s another, increasingly troubling problem: political interference. In July, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese described the enormous superannuation pool as potentially a “national asset”, arguing that it could generate benefits for the nation as well as individual retirees. He encouraged greater domestic investment, particularly business lending. Perhaps the prime minister has forgotten whose money it is. Australia’s superannuation balances are private retirement savings, not Commonwealth revenue. Yet politicians are increasingly interested in mobilising this capital to address housing shortages, infrastructure requirements, the so-called energy transition and other government priorities. Treasurer Jim Chalmers has convened ‘Investor Roundtables’ to identify opportunities to channel capital towards national priorities. In May 2026, the government announced another review of the superannuation performance test, explicitly discussing better alignment of investment with government productivity objectives. There is nothing inherently objectionable about a member-controlled super fund voluntarily financing Australian housing, infrastructure or energy projects that they believe will deliver appropriate returns. The problem arises when political priorities begin influencing investment decisions. If Canberra has a worthwhile infrastructure project, it can make the project commercially attractive and seek voluntary investment or fund it transparently through the budget. It should not pressure retirement funds into financing politically desirable ventures. The distinction between private retirement savings and an instrument of national economic policy must be protected. Our political class already controls how much workers must save and when they can access their savings. Giving politicians influence over where that money is invested would compound the intrusion into individual financial freedom. This article was originally published by [Liberty Itch](https://www.libertyitch.com/p/the-48-trillion-piggy-bank-our-political?ref=goodoil.news). ### The Ice That Wouldn’t Melt URL: https://goodoil.news/the-ice-that-wouldnt-melt/ Last updated: 2026-10-12T23:29:59.000Z [**Pee Kay**](https://nominister.wordpress.com/2026/10/12/the-ice-that-wouldnt-melt/?ref=goodoil.news) *No Minister* In his 2006 documentary, *An Inconvenient Truth*, the Oscar-winning documentary about former vice president Al Gore’s campaign to educate people about climate change, Gore predicted that “Global Warming” would cause severe and accelerated climate disruptions, including rising global temperatures, melting glaciers, stronger hurricanes, and an ice-free Arctic summer within decades. Twenty years on, Gore, unsurprisingly, claims “Global Warming” scientists have been right about climate change all along. ***“The scientists were dead right on all the important elements of it, and it really is insane that we are continuing to use the sky as an open sewer and we’re trapping so much heat every day it’s equal to the amount that would be released by 800,000 Hiroshima-class atomic bombs exploding every day on the earth,”*** Gore said. To me, Gore’s documentary serves as a prime example of high-profile climate doomsday predictions that have failed to materialise. Gore’s film captivated global audiences with terrifying, definitive timelines, yet decades later, the catastrophic outcomes used to frighten the public simply have not happened. I’m saying we were bombarded with failed Arctic (and other) predictions that Al Gore and other ‘scientific experts’ wish we would forget. By presenting extreme, worst-case scenarios as guaranteed near-term certainties, I say those predictions crossed the line from objective science into deliberate scaremongering. When these explicit deadlines pass with no disaster in sight, does it not prove that the narrative was built on exaggeration rather than reality? If you do enough research and analysis on this topic and track these claims, I think the record is clear: those terrifying doomsday scenarios pushed by Gore and other early alarmists have been thoroughly and debunked, simply by nature and the passage of time. Chief among these unfulfilled predictions was the sensationalised claim that the **Arctic could be completely ice-free** within a matter of years, with some ‘experts’ claiming a 2014 deadline. Today, the Arctic ice cap remains intact. Similarly, alarming warnings of an imminent, catastrophic, up to seven-metre, sea-level rise that would submerge coastal cities have proven entirely wrong, as global coastlines remain either unchanged or minutely changed. That’s why in the UK, 10 years ago, a High Court judge said, when he ruled that Gore’s film could only be shown in British schools with guidance notes to prevent political indoctrination: ***“The Armageddon scenario he predicts, insofar as it suggests that sea level rises of seven metres might occur in the immediate future, is not in line with the scientific consensus”*** and it would only happen **“after, and over, millennia”*.* In 2017, Gore set about doubling down on *An Inconvenient Truth* by producing a follow-up**, *An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power* *.*** Instead of offering any humility or accountability and rather than admitting his original timelines completely failed, Gore used the sequel to craft a misleading narrative of self-vindication. The most outrageous example of this is how the film handles his infamous Manhattan flooding prediction. In the 2006 original, Gore claimed that a catastrophic, **20-foot sea-level rise** caused by a melted Greenland ice sheet would submerge the 9/11 Memorial site. Because this obviously never happened, the sequel tried a brazen sleight of hand. It showed footage of temporary street flooding caused by **Superstorm Sandy’s** storm surge in 2012, with Gore essentially declaring, ‘See? I was right.’ Critics were quick to destroy this deception. Easily showing there is a massive scientific gap between a temporary, weather-driven storm surge and a permanent 20-foot sea-level rise. By combining the two, the sequel demonstrates that the climate alarmism industry relies on moving the goalposts and catastrophising everyday weather events to cover up its own failed doomsday prophecies. For sheer persistence in making spectacularly wrong climate predictions, the gold medal must go to Professor Peter Wadhams, the former head of the Polar Ocean Physics Group at the University of Cambridge. Wadhams has carved out a unique place in history for himself as the climate doom-monger who just would not to let reality and truth get in the way of a terrifying headline! His moving goalposts are fluidity in motion and his historical track record of failed prophecies plays out like a comedy of moving, well, *goalpost*s. First up: with absolute certainty, in 2012 he **predicted that the Arctic would be completely “ice-free” by 2015 or 2016\.** Wow, I wonder how many coastal dwellers packed up and moved to the hills on that claim? In 2014 we saw Wadhams first goalpost shift. Wouldn’t you know it, the ice stubbornly refused to melt on schedule, so Wadhams quietly revised his expiration date, guessing it might manage to last until **2020.** Wrong! Then in 2016 desperation descended on Wadhams. Sensing his original timeline was collapsing and not the ice shelf, he confidently doubled down, declaring the Arctic would finally vanish ***that very summer***. But he sneaked in a hilariously deceptive caveat; redefining “ice-free” to mean the Arctic could still actually contain up to **one million** **square kilometres of ice**! What we continually see in climate alarmism is a malicious ‘rinse and repeat’ cycle of collusion between global warming alarmists and a compliant MSM. The formula is as predictable as it is dishonest: journalists actively deploy academic hypotheses as terrifying, clickbait headlines to drive public fear and, of course, sell more papers! Then, they simply sit back. When the subjective doomsday deadlines inevitably expire without incident, the MSM never prints a retraction or holds their pet ‘experts’ accountable. Instead, they collaborate to bury the failed predictions, completely ignoring their previous deception before immediately pivoting to manufacture the next wave of panic. When Professor Peter Wadhams was repeatedly shifting his Arctic goalposts, the MSM never questioned ‘moving goalposts’, instead they acted as his personal megaphone, eagerly laundering his hypotheses into absolute certainties. These actions are exemplified when in September 2012, Wadhams predicted the imminent collapse of the ice sheet, the *Guardian* blasted the headline: ***“Arctic expert predicts final collapse of sea ice within four years.”*** When that four-year window closed in 2016 and the Arctic ice stubbornly refused to vanish, Wadhams warned of a near-term methane explosion, which the *Guardian* dutifully ran as: ***“Ice-free Arctic in two years heralds methane catastrophe.”*** That deadline also came and went without a global disaster or a melted ice cap. As his timelines were completely falling apart, the hype machine reached its peak when, quoting Wadhams, the **World Economic Forum** published a piece declaring: ***“Ships will sail over the North Pole by 2017.”*** That the North Pole remained firmly locked in ice, and the predictions were so wildly inaccurate, to me, proves that doomsday reporting regarding Global Warming/Climate Change isn’t about objective risk assessment and caution – it is an endless loop of manufactured fear enthusiastically endorsed by the MSM. The media blindly hypes these prophecies to drive clicks and panic, and when the target years pass without incident, they simply bury the old headlines and move on to the next scare tactic. Ultimately, the grand prophecies of climate doom pushed by Al Gore and Peter Wadhams have been completely dismantled by the stubborn reality of the natural world. Gore’s terrifying visions of fully submerged coastal cities and Wadhams’ comedic string of rotating deadlines for an “ice-free” North Pole have exposed the entire climate alarmism movement as an exercise in manipulative scaremongering. Decades after the ‘experts’ foretold the ice would completely vanish, the Arctic sea ice shelf remains massive, reaching an expansive winter maximum of **14.29 million square kilometres**. According to the National Snow and Ice Centre, a world leading, authoritative scientific research and data management centre based at the University of Colorado, even during its lowest seasonal point, the ice sheet continues to span millions of square kilometres – a vast frozen reality that stands as a definitive, mathematical rebuke to the institutional ‘experts’ who traded objective science for cheap political theatrics. Recent data from a study by climate scientists at the University of Exeter and Columbia University revealed an interesting nuance in polar climate dynamics. If you look specifically at the last two decades, the most recent peer-reviewed climate data shows that **Arctic sea ice loss has slowed down considerably, with no statistically significant decline in September sea ice area since 2005.** According to the latest data from the Danish Meteorological Institute, the High Arctic has transitioned into winter exceptionally fast, **recording its lowest late-September temperatures in over two decades**. The mean temperature north of 80°N crashed to -13.6°C on September 29, 2026\. That reading is more than 7°C colder than the same date in 2025, marking the coldest late-September temperature captured for the region since at least the year 2000. This abrupt temperature plunge **has triggered a rapid refreeze surge across the Arctic Ocean.** This article was originally published by [No Minister](https://nominister.wordpress.com/2026/10/12/the-ice-that-wouldnt-melt/?ref=goodoil.news). ### Just Listen to Rubio’s Rhetoric URL: https://goodoil.news/just-listen-to-rubios-rhetoric/ Last updated: 2026-10-12T22:59:59.000Z After the fourth listen to Rubio’s soaring rhetoric... It’s still like dying and going to heaven to hear a secretary of state raise the bar in political discourse... politics being ‘downstream from culture’ and all. > *They (the ancients) believed – fiercely – in the ideal of the great man: the exceptional individual who obtains immortality through his own deeds. But they believed that glory and fame, those things were won through striving, sacrificing and achieving greatly for something larger than yourself. The recurring hero of the ancient Greek world was the man who was willing to pay any cost for a cause worthy of his loyalty. We see this in Socrates, who refused to abandon the inquiry into truth even at the cost of his own life. We see it in the legendary stand of 300 Spartans – surrounded and hopelessly outnumbered by the vast armies of Persia – who refused the chance to save themselves, choosing to fight to the last man rather than abandon their post or abandon their duty. And we see it in the epic myth of Achilles, who is offered the choice to return home and live a long and peaceful life – but chooses instead to remain at Troy and perish in pursuit of eternal glory.* > > *These – these are the qualities that would shape the Western moral imagination. From the Christian martyr who refused to betray his faith to the patriot who gave his life for his country; from Saint Thomas More to the Battle of the Alamo, running through the immortal closing words of the Declaration of Independence of the United States which says, ‘We mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.’* > > *It is from the Greeks that the West inherited its sense of duty – an unbreakable loyalty to one’s code, one’s cause, one’s country. Our heroes, the heroes of the West are those who choose to remain faithful to their duty precisely when it is most difficult and painful to do so: the man who is bound by his word, the soldier who will not abandon his post, the captain, the proverbial captain, who goes down with his ship. This is wholly different from what we see, even now, for example from fanatics like the radical mullahs of Iran, whose cult of death hails child suicide bombers as national heroes, and portrays martyrdom as an end to itself. *Our heroes – our heroes may be willing to die for their cause;** **but our heroes do not worship death.** *It is precisely because we value life that we come to recognize the heroism in those who would sooner sacrifice it than to betray their principles.* > > *Now, we take the West’s conception of these things – heroism, honor, duty – we take these things for granted. We assume that these somehow are universal to all people in all times and in all places. They are not. They are the product of a distinct character, a distinct character which arose here and shaped the whole story of the civilization that came after it. A civilization that we must fight to defend today with the same passion as our forefathers did.* Oh God, a 1000 times, Amen! This is rightly the future of political discourse – and has been all along if you love the Free World. A command to RISE. This article was originally published on the [author’s website](https://www.oliviapierson.org/blog?ref=goodoil.news). ### Leaving Learning Maths to Chance URL: https://goodoil.news/leaving-learning-maths-to-chance/ Last updated: 2026-10-12T22:29:59.000Z [**Richard Prebble**](https://richardprebble.substack.com/p/leaving-learning-maths-to-chance) *Columnist, former cabinet minister and ACT Party leader.* For family reasons, my wife and I are raising our 11-year-old grandson. He has been a pupil under both Chris Hipkins and Erica Stanford. Under Hipkins, I became so concerned about his maths that I bought an online programme and taught him myself. Today he is doing much more maths at school. He is now doing maths a year ahead of his age. I have been able to retire as his maths coach. He is having guitar lessons instead. I was shocked to hear Hipkins say in the leaders’ debate that Labour will abandon the compulsory daily hour of maths and leave the decision to teachers. I have seen what can happen. One of my daughters at intermediate school level had a teacher who did not like maths. So she did not teach it. When my daughter reached secondary school, we discovered she was two years behind. I paid for coaching. She caught up. Her classmates did not. One teacher’s decision not to teach maths damaged the future of many pupils. Under Hipkins, New Zealand recorded a big fall in maths achievement in the 2022 PISA results. I know what happens when children are not guaranteed time to learn maths. I have seen it twice in my own family. This article was originally published by [I’ve Been Thinking](https://richardprebble.substack.com/p/leaving-learning-maths-to-chance). ### So Much for Minnows URL: https://goodoil.news/so-much-for-minnows/ Last updated: 2026-10-12T21:59:59.000Z Cartoon of the Day by BoomSlang _This post is for paying subscribers only._ ### The Boomer Bashing Vote URL: https://goodoil.news/the-boomer-bashing-vote/ Last updated: 2026-10-12T21:29:59.000Z [**Yvonne van Dongen**](https://yvonnevandongen.substack.com/p/the-boomer-bashing-vote) *Veteran NZ journo incredulous gender ideology escaped the lab. Won’t rest until reality makes a comeback.* Ageism is alive and voting in this election. Some of it is implicit, as in the Opportunity Party’s annual land tax policy that includes the family home and the Greens’ policy of a capital acquisitions tax on large gifts and inheritances. Meanwhile Labour proposes a capital gains tax on investment property and ACT would like to raise the retirement age to 67 plus limit the winter hardship payment to beneficiaries and people over 65 with Community Services Cards. All these policies impact older New Zealanders who are the demographic most likely to own a home, have a rental property or benefit from superannuation and the winter energy payment. But now an outfit called[ Every Kiwi Vote Counts](https://everykiwivotecounts.nz/?ref=goodoil.news) is saying the quiet part out loud – **Old New Zealand is holding back Young New Zealand**. **Deliberately.** Their website has an ad featuring an elderly woman talking to her granddaughter on the phone. She says she’ll miss her. The granddaughter thanks her grandmother for the airline ticket. The grandmother says “It’s a pleasure darling. It’s the least we could do.” The camera pans out and we see a group of older people sitting around a large polished wooden table adorned with fine china. The grandmother says “Do you think she bought it?” A white-haired old man (grandfather?) replies “Hook, line and sinker.” The group bursts into peels of laughter that echo until the end of the ad. The implication being of course that while elderly New Zealanders are sitting pretty, at the same time they are aiding the young to leave the country to ensure they don’t vote in the next election. The last shot is of an embroidered plaque on the wall that reads: ‘Don’t Let Old New Zealand Dictate the New Zealand Election.’ Every Kiwi Vote Counts claims to be nothing more than a campaign to encourage overseas Kiwis to vote in the coming election in November. They say a million New Zealanders live abroad and that 200,000 have left in the last three years alone. Overseas Kiwis can vote in the next election if they are a citizen who has visited New Zealand in the last three years or a permanent resident if they have been in New Zealand within the past 12 months. Every Kiwi Vote Counts argues that older Kiwis outvote overseas Kiwis by 10 to one. Well, we do live here. But as a candidate for the Women’s Rights Party, I object to the portrayal of older New Zealanders as a smug squatocracy, deliberating plotting against the young to rob them of their voting rights. Pitting one generation against another is the epitome of identity politics and displays its inherent weakness – it does no one any good. The young are portrayed as naive dopes while the old are scheming demons. As a strategy, this generational clobbering is divisive, unhelpful and unfair. For a start, not all older New Zealanders are as comfortably off as those portrayed in the advertisement. The latest research from the Selwyn Foundation released in August this year shows that one in five New Zealanders over the age of 65 live in hardship. Just under 20 per cent are renting. Also older people contribute to society in many ways, be it child care for grandchildren, volunteering and/or working. The Office for Seniors Business of Ageing Report 2026 showed that the value of unpaid work for seniors exceeded $20b a year, while paid work contributed $9b and self-employment added $5b. In addition annual consumer spending by those aged 65+ is close to $55b. Seniors also pay more than $13b in tax annually. In the case of the Women’s Rights Party, we are a group of predominantly older women who are actively engaged in campaigning for the sex-based rights of women and protection of children from the scourge of gender medicine. Given that people in paid employment are often unable to speak freely about the spread of gender ideology across the nation’s institutions, it is not surprising that so many of us in the party are retired. We speak out, not because we enjoy being old pains-in-the-arses, but because we can and we think it important to protect the rights of women and children. We are free to speak out without fear of censure, of losing our job and/or missing out on promotion. All we have to lose are our progressive friends. Every Kiwi Vote Counts says it is non-partisan, but it’s hard to not come to the conclusion that they wish to oust the coalition government since past overseas voting patterns have favoured the left. A September report in[ the *Guardian*](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/sep/30/new-zealand-election-voters-abroad-influence-result?ref=goodoil.news)claimed that more than 100,000 New Zealand voters have enrolled to vote from abroad, and many are unhappy with how things look back home. In 2023, the final count increased the Green Party’s representation by one seat and Te Pāti Māori’s by two seats compared with election-night results. However, special votes include people voting outside their electorate and other categories, not just people voting from overseas. A savvy young person could accept grandma’s free trip overseas, and still vote. Every Kiwi Vote Counts is registered as a promoter with the Electoral Commission on 28 August 2026 by Tracey Lee Watkins, described on the website as a global strategist, sociologist and now London-based overseas Kiwi. Peter Martin from Hooves made the film while [Kea, a global](https://keanewzealand.com/?ref=goodoil.news) Kiwi community, promoted it. If their campaign is any indication, these people feel no shame in singling out older New Zealanders for mockery and condemnation. Ageism may be the hardest -ism of all to vanquish. This article was originally published on the[ author’s Substack](https://yvonnevandongen.substack.com/p/the-boomer-bashing-vote). ### Your Daily Ten@10 - 2026/189 URL: https://goodoil.news/your-daily-ten-10-2026-189/ Last updated: 2026-10-12T21:00:07.000Z **This is edition 2026/189 of the *Ten@10* newsletter.** Hi all, This is the Ten@10, where I collate and summarise ten news items you generally won't see in the mainstream media. Enjoy! --- ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/01-ten189.png) ## 1\. Democracy Briefing: The Greens are learning to ride the populist wave *Bryce Edwards - The Democracy Project* - 📈 The Greens are surging: 16% in consecutive 1News-Verian polls, 14.8% in RNZ-Reid, 14% for Freshwater and 13.3% in the latest Taxpayers’ Union-Curia poll, after often polling around 7% earlier this year. - 💬 Andrea Vance in the Sunday Star-Times: “The turnaround is something of a miracle, given how completely the wheels had fallen off during a torrid 2024 and 2025.” - 🔄 Edwards’ explanation: the Greens have found the populist moment. There is “considerably less Palestine and pronouns” and much more power bills and profiteering, and dialling down middle-class “woke politics” is working. - 🛒 Since July they have campaigned for a publicly owned supermarket, cheaper electricity and higher taxes on extreme wealth, aimed at the supermarkets, power companies, banks and tech firms that dominate New Zealand’s markets. - 🙈 Edwards admits his earlier prediction that the Greens would not embrace economic populism (“The honest answer is probably not”) was too pessimistic. - 🗣️ At the July AGM, under the slogan “For All of Us”, Chlöe Swarbrick told members: “Nobody is ever going to be able to empathise with your world view if they feel they’re under attack.” - 🤖 The same instinct is being applied to AI: a call in July to pause new data centres for a year, and today a policy to regulate AI under the headline “We don’t work for AI”. - 🏴 Marama Davidson recalls the 2022 occupation of Parliament’s lawn, with Māori outside holding a tino rangatiratanga flag and a Trump sign, and asks where her movement went wrong. - 🏠 Swarbrick told Ollie Neas that “people want to belong” and that “people understand that the system is rigged towards corporate profits”. - 💡 Takeaway: even Chris Trotter, still a critic, calls her drive to move the camera away from the Greens’ moral lapses “impressive”. Swarbrick calls it “an evolution”. [Read More](https://www.democracyproject.org.nz/p/democracy-briefing-the-greens-are?ref=goodoil.news) --- ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/02-ten189.png) ## 2\. Class Reps. *Chris Trotter - Chris Trotter’s Substack* - 🏭 Since 1938, Trotter says, the choice was simple: Labour, the “party of the workers”, or National, the “party of the bosses”, a binary that First-Past-the-Post reinforced. - 💔 When the party of the workers embraces the free market, the two-party system breaks. MMP arrived in 1993, but voters’ old binary habits were much harder to replace. - 🔵 National is still what it says on the tin: the defender of the “property-owning democracy”, funded by the richest. Properly led it can near half the vote, as with John Key’s 47.3% in 2011. - 🟡 Act presents as classically liberal, but Trotter says its success owes more to owning-class fear of Māori and working-class claims. “If National represents the brain of New Zealand’s ruling class, then Act represents its muscle.” - ⚫ NZ First is a cross-class alliance of small-town business owners and the blokes who work for them, retirees and young men: “the aggrieved and the bereaved”. - 🔴 Labour no longer represents the working class, he argues, but the Professional Managerial Class that manages it, for whom capitalism’s dysfunctions are “a feature, not a bug”. - 🟢 The Greens represent the PMC before and after its working years: “the PMC-in-training; the PMC that married money; the PMC in retirement; the PMC gone bush.” - 🟤 Te Pāti Māori represents a people, not a class, and ethnic solidarity precedes class solidarity. - 💡 Takeaway: for Māori voters the priority is simple: “people first, party second.” The essay first ran on interest.co.nz on 5 October. [Read More](https://christrotter418256.substack.com/p/class-reps) --- ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/03-ten189.jpg) ## 3\. RODNEY HIDE: I asked AI to find Christopher Luxon's worldview *Rodney Hide - Brash & Mitchell* - 🧭 Every politician has a worldview, Hide says, and most do not know it. His own went from libertarian to anarchist to Christian conservative. - 🤖 He set his AI research assistant to study Luxon’s maiden speech, interviews and speeches, quote him exactly, and keep what he said separate from interpretation. - 🚪 Its finding: Luxon keeps his beliefs in two rooms, his Christian faith and the CEO who wants “to get things done”, with the door shut: “My faith is personal to me… I believe no religion should dictate to the state.” - 🎯 His working philosophy is management, hence the nine Government targets. Hide’s publisher notes Luxon recently called the country “the company” on Mike Hosking’s show before correcting himself. - 📚 He describes his values as “limited yet better government”, cites no economist, and made Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning compulsory reading for new Air New Zealand staff. - ⚖️ The tension: in 2021 he said “I’m a pro-life person”, then pledged abortion laws would not be relitigated. His heroes Wilberforce and King did not treat slavery or segregation as settled. - 🏛️ The AI calls it technocratic liberalism, “a worldview that does not name itself”, and found nothing in his own words on property rights or on the Treaty and co-governance. - 💡 Takeaway: Hide says that is why the Government cannot make the moral case for what it is doing. It thinks it only has to hit the targets. Next up: Chlöe Swarbrick, “a critical theorist, and she says so.” [Read More](https://www.brashandmitchell.com/post/rodney-hide-i-asked-ai-to-find-christopher-luxon-s-worldview?ref=goodoil.news) --- ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/04-ten189.jpg) ## 4\. Disestablishing the Broadcasting Standards Authority *David Harvey - A Halfling’s View* - 📄 Harvey examines the Regulatory Impact Statement of 18 June 2026 that accompanied the Bill to disestablish the BSA. - 🎯 A RIS is meant to be frank, balanced analysis, not a sales pitch, and it may disagree with the Minister’s preferred approach. - 🔀 It weighed three options: the status quo, reform into a platform-neutral regulator of professional media, or repeal and reliance on self-regulation mainly through the Media Council. The Minister chose repeal; the Ministry for Culture and Heritage favoured reform. - 🧱 The reform option builds on the Ministry’s 2025 proposal but goes further, adding own-motion investigations and Ofcom and ACMA-style enforcement, including warnings, remedial directions and large fines. - ⚠️ His critique: it would create statutory oversight of the press, which New Zealand has never had, and “professional media” is undefined, leaving podcasters, Substack writers, YouTube channels and The Platform exposed to disputes and chilling effects. - 📉 BSA complaints are at historic lows, privacy compensation was awarded twice in five years averaging about $1,000, and reform attempts in 2011, 2014-17, 2019 and 2021-24 all stalled. - 🧑‍⚖️ Ministers are not bound by officials’ advice: “They advise. They do not decide.” He sees a drift to advocacy, such as paragraph 73 saying the government should not retreat from regulation. - 🗳️ The Bill’s future depends on the 7 November election. A left coalition would likely revive the reform and, he expects, the DIA’s Safer Online Services proposals. - 💡 Takeaway: there has been a fine line between advice and advocacy, and one could conclude the Ministry saw the RIS as a chance to advance its 2025 proposal. [Read More](https://djhdcj.substack.com/p/disestablishing-the-broadcasting) --- ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/05-ten189.jpg) ## 5\. BRUCE LOGAN: Pay Parity *Bruce Logan - Brash & Mitchell* - ⚖️ Logan says pay equity marks a real difference between the parties: Labour supports it, with its 2020 equal pay amendment, and National opposes it, with its 2025 amendment. - 🟰 Pay equity is not pay equality. Equality is the same pay for the same work; equity sets an occupation’s relative value, to correct claimed undervaluation of female-dominated work. - 📊 Valuing an occupation is difficult if not impossible, he argues, given supply and demand, scarce skills, hours, conditions, training costs and workers’ own choices. - 🧬 He says the demand rests not on the equality of men and women but on “functional equality”, which he calls a modern heresy. - 👨‍👩‍👧 Civil society has long depended on the complementarity of men and women, and the best way to raise children is with a loving mother and father. - 💸 By May 2025, 17 workforces had pay equity corrections covering about 162,000 workers at about $1.78 billion a year. Treasury says reviving Labour’s 2020 law would cost each household $5,295 over four years. - 🗽 Pay equality is compatible with individual freedom, he writes, but pay equity is not, because the state decides the relative value of work. - 💡 Takeaway: pay equity “is not a human right”, Logan says. It discourages women from working part-time and undermines family life. [Read More](https://www.brashandmitchell.com/post/bruce-logan-pay-parity?ref=goodoil.news) --- ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/06-ten189.jpg) ## 6\. Execution *David Harvey - A Halfling’s View* - ⚰️ The botched execution of Christa Pike in Tennessee has left her handcuffed to a hospital bed, with talk of putting her through the process again. - 🎯 On 9 October it was announced that Nidal Hassan, who murdered 13 people at a military establishment in Texas, would be executed by firing squad, and that it would be livestreamed. - 🚫 Harvey opposes the death penalty, but his piece is about the response: the immediate reaction, especially from media, was to ask how to ban it. - 🇳🇿 He suggests this may be a kind of PTSD from the 2019 Christchurch livestream, and that “ban it” has become a New Zealand reflex, as with young people and social media. - 📜 But content must exist before it can be classified. The Classification Office says it “cannot classify a livestream event as it is taking place”, and Chief Censor Caroline Flora: “Distressing as content may be, it is not always unlawful.” - 🔒 Banning in advance is prior restraint, which he says strikes at the heart of freedom of expression, citing Justice Cull’s injunction over the Phillips children. - 🗣️ He criticises Professor Al Gillespie’s “barbaric” as emotive language, no substitute for rational argument. - 💡 Takeaway: “No one is forcing you to watch, listen or read… Everyone has the power to be their own censor.” [Read More](https://djhdcj.substack.com/p/execution) --- ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/07-ten189.png) ## 7\. Whatever Bad Thing The Censors Accuse Their Enemies Of Doing Is The Very Thing They Are Doing *Michael Shellenberger - Public* - 🔁 Shellenberger’s lesson, learned “over and over again”: whatever the censors accuse their enemies of doing is the thing they want the power to do. - 🕵️ When they say they want to stop anonymous accounts interfering in elections, he says, it means they want a monopoly on using anonymous accounts to interfere in elections. - 🇦🇺 Public says an intelligence community deception tactic is being used by governments, including Australia’s, to mislead the public. - 📣 Public says it is blowing the whistle on “the most totalitarian censorship legislation ever introduced in the West”. - 💡 Takeaway: “If we want to live as free people in the West, we must fight for free speech across the West.” [Read More](https://www.public.news/p/whatever-bad-thing-the-censors-accuse?ref=goodoil.news) --- ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/08-ten189.jpg) ## 8\. The case for populism *Tim Black - spiked* - 📘 Tim Black reviews Frank Furedi’s In Defence of Populism, calling it the definitive guide, while critics prefer to portray everything from Brexit to MAGA as proto-fascist. - 🚜 The book was inspired by the Europe-wide farmers’ revolt against measures imposed in the name of Net Zero in the EU or raising tax revenue in the UK. - 🔀 Furedi traces national populism to a “double betrayal of the people”: 1960s elites turning against their societies’ common culture, and a graduate New Left drifting from the working class to identity issues. - 🏛️ After the Cold War those elites ruled technocratically through quangos, the judiciary and “expert” bodies, preaching diversity and seeing nation states as outmoded. - 🗣️ Black cites Tony Blair’s 2005 line that the world is “indifferent to tradition” and Barack Obama’s 2008 “guns or religion” remark. - 😟 The result was deep “cultural insecurity”, which economic troubles after 2008 compounded. - 🏡 Populism defends the “pre-political realm” of church, unions, neighbourhood networks and associations, which the new elites turned into an object of social engineering. - 🌍 Furedi rejects the idea that it is racial: populism can unite ethnic constituencies around a common political culture. - 💡 Takeaway: populism versus anti-populism is now the defining conflict of our era, displacing left versus right. [Read More](https://www.spiked-online.com/2026/10/11/the-case-for-populism/?ref=goodoil.news) --- ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/09-ten189.jpg) ## 9\. GARETH MORGAN: Not All Tax Reform is the Same *Gareth Morgan - Brash & Mitchell* - 📉 Opportunity’s founder says wealth taxes kill entrepreneurship, which New Zealand needs to reverse its abysmal productivity record. Real incomes cannot rise without it. - 🔴 Labour’s capital gains tax treats gains as income when they are not, he argues, and will end up taxing the income to capital twice. - 🟢 The Greens’ wealth tax shows no understanding or respect for entrepreneurship, ignores poor income tax design as a driver of disparity, and risks wealth leaving. “Marx would be proud.” - 🟠 Opportunity’s land tax differs crucially from TOP2017’s tax on imputed rent. He calls it a selective, regressive wealth tax much like Labour’s and the Greens’. - 🧮 TOP2017 accounted for income already taxed and made interest deductible to avoid double taxation. The land tax includes neither, “a major step backwards”. - ✅ He is glad Opportunity has not fatally tinkered with the UBI, which replaces cumbersome, mis-targeted welfare. - ⚠️ By de-emphasising tax reform to win votes, Opportunity risks being swept into a left coalition and branded a lookalike Green Party. - 🔵 For centre-right voters, the National, Act and NZ First “triumvirate” looks increasingly attractive, because the right “does not despise the poor anywhere near as much as the Greens despise the wealthy.” - 💡 Takeaway: an opportunity lost for Opportunity, Morgan says, though he still condemns “vile racism from NZ First and the denial of the Treaty by Act.” [Read More](https://www.brashandmitchell.com/post/gareth-morgan-not-all-tax-reform-is-the-same?ref=goodoil.news) --- ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/9006f301-8f09-4940-8eca-25bf7b3b7b7f_625x325.jpg) ## 10\. A funny thing happened on the way to abolishing the BSA… *Steven Price - Media Law Journal* - 🗑️ Price says one little-noticed effect of scrapping the BSA is that all broadcasters would become subject to the Privacy Act. - 🔓 Broadcasters under the BSA are currently exempt for news activities. Without that, anyone featuring in a story could demand all the information a broadcaster holds about them, with only narrow exceptions. - 🧙 Broadcasters lobbied hard for the exemption. Price recalls the media standing like Gandalf in the Mines of Moria: “You shall not pass!” - 📰 Section 28 of the Bill also removes print media’s exemption for Media Council members: newspapers, magazines, some news sites, blogs and substacks. - 📏 Media would face rules not designed for them: using information only for the purpose gathered, collecting it fairly and not unreasonably intrusively, and sometimes telling people when gathering from third parties. - 🏛️ The government can recognise media bodies by regulation, but that power has never been used and no body is recognised. - 📺 Even if the Media Council is recognised, it does not hear complaints about broadcast news, is not resourced for more, and its code was written for text-based journalism. - 📑 The RIS’s quality assurance statement warns of “a largely untested assumption that self-regulation by broadcasters can be effective.” - 💡 Takeaway: the government expects a lot of the Media Council, and Price sees no indication in its documents “that they even want the job.” [Read More](https://medialawjournal.co.nz/a-funny-thing-happened-on-the-way-to-abolishing-the-bsa/?ref=goodoil.news) --- ## What our members are saying about Ten@10 **Elizabeth** These articles are compulsory reading for me and the perfect addition to the usual list of Goodoil items! **Lynne** Absolutely brilliant to receive these current and thought provoking articles. **Jonathan** Just wanted to let you know that I’m loving this new 10@10\. Much appreciated from someone who chooses to read/watch almost NO mainstream media. **Murray** Cam, relish your output as the newspaper in Christchurch is so intent on non news. Thankyou **Fred** Thanks for Ten @ Ten, really enjoy reading it.Keep it up. All the best, keep healthy. **Jocko** Wonderful info not otherwise available in NZ. More power to your elbow! Thanks. ### At Least Some Are Coming to Their Senses URL: https://goodoil.news/at-least-some-are-coming-to-their-senses/ Last updated: 2026-10-12T20:59:59.000Z **Bob Hawke** once listed as one of his great achievements making Australian voters more educated on economic policy. He might not be so sure of that, if he was alive to see the Albo and Zippy Show in action. As [I wrote recently](https://goodoil.news/the-voters-have-only-encouraged-him/), too many Australian voters have discovered that they can apparently vote themselves money. A poll before the last election showed that 83 per cent of voters supported increased government spending. The handout mentality spanned the political spectrum. In slightly better news, a new poll suggests that at least some voters are coming to their senses. > [After combining the](https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/terrible-20s-albanese-taylor-and-hanson-all-stuck-below-30-per-cent-primary-vote-in-newspoll/news-story/70c714118c3eb262e222be862e0a1850?ref=goodoil.news) highest priority and second-highest priority for voters, lowering government spending (55 per cent) topped the list of actions followed by subsidising essentials such as energy and fuel (51 per cent), cutting income taxes (31 per cent), reducing regulation and costs for business (27 per cent), and offering one-off payments (11 per cent). Observe the inherent contradiction: whilst a commendable majority yearn to put the brakes on the Treasury’s profligacy, half of those same citizens remain hopelessly addicted to the teat, demanding subsidies for the very energy and fuel prices that government intervention has rendered unaffordable in the first place. It’s the classic Australian delusion: wanting the state to stop spending money, provided it does not stop spending money on your own particular basket of ‘essentials’. It is not all gloom, however. Nearly one-third of the electorate has grasped the fundamental truth that cutting taxes and slashing the suffocating tendrils of red tape is the only path to genuine prosperity. Yet, those sensible voters must look at the coalition’s current performance and wonder if they are attempting to win an election or merely auditioning for a role in a pantomime of incompetence. > [**Angus Taylor** has ruled](https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/angus-taylor-rebuffs-josh-frydenberg-on-gst-as-mps-query-liberal-leaders-economic-metal/news-story/a59d855fbbd9da8d8dd667b1528610e5?ref=goodoil.news) out backing an increase to the GST, in a move that sharpens the divide between himself and potential future Liberal leadership candidate **Josh Frydenberg**, as economists and some MPs raise concerns it signifies a lack of political will to embrace bold reform \[…\] > > Rebel Liberal senator **Andrew McLachlan** went public with his concerns, arguing Mr Frydenberg’s economic proposals should be taken seriously. This latest internal squabble regarding the GST serves as a masterclass in missing the point. The only ray of hope is that at least some of the coalition MPs argue that a GST increase should be part of a package of slashing personal income tax and company taxes. But it still smacks of rearranging the taxation deckchairs on a *Titanic* that is sinking under the weight of its own spending. At least some MPs get it: > “Talk about tax and spend, maybe Josh should talk to the Labor Party about being their leader,” one conservative MP said. Australia doesn’t have a revenue problem, we have a *spending* problem, with the NDIS, other welfare and Net Zero being the biggest black holes of spending. The NDIS, once sold as a compassionate necessity, has metastasised into a fiscal leviathan that swallows taxpayer funds with the voracity of a starving python. Meanwhile, the fanatical commitment to Net Zero acts as an anchor on the neck of our industry, ensuring that no amount of tax reform can possibly compensate for the destruction of our comparative advantages. The current administration has presided over a period of wealth evaporation rarely seen outside a global depression. Their socialist-lite experiments, combined with a central bank forced into a corner by government profligacy, have left the average household reeling. Conservative estimates put the scale of the decline of net wealth and purchasing power at half a trillion dollars. Others suggest it is north of $800 billion. And that’s just in the five months since May. > [Australian households have](https://www.theaustralian.com.au/commentary/500bn-of-household-wealth-disappears-in-labor-budget-abyss/news-story/49af43c77753899eb4ea48cf808224eb?ref=goodoil.news) lost an estimated $70,000 each on average since the May budget, as falling property value and inflation combine to destroy national wealth. We are witnessing the slow-motion implosion of a political agenda that is fundamentally antagonistic to the creation of value. The government pretends this is all part of a grand design for ‘equity’, but the reality is much bleaker. Labor’s policies have not merely misfired: they have actively smashed the foundations of Australian wealth. The electorate is starting to wake up to the stench of the abyss, but until we have a political class that prioritises national industry and fiscal sanity over vote-buying and net-zero posturing, the slide will continue. --- 💡 ****If you enjoyed this article please share it using the share buttons at the top or bottom of the article.** ### An Execution and Banning a Livestream URL: https://goodoil.news/an-execution-and-banning-a-livestream/ Last updated: 2026-10-12T20:29:59.000Z [**David Harvey**](https://djhdcj.substack.com/p/execution) *Retired district court judge* **Introduction** The implementation of the death penalty in the United States has attracted some publicity of late. The botched execution of Christa Pike in Tennessee has highlighted issues of the inordinate delays in executions, the methodology of state-sanctioned murder and how it can go so badly wrong. Even more concerning is the aftermath. Ms Pike is confined to a hospital bed and yet she is handcuffed to it – some sort of symbolic representation by the State that she is still a prisoner perhaps. And there is discussion about what should happen to her should she recover from the ordeal of the execution process. Should she be exposed to the process yet again? There used to be a view that if a condemned person survived an execution there would be no repetition. The breaking of the rope in a hanging and the survival of the condemned person was seen as a message from the Almighty that could not be ignored. But some of the ways of the law surrounding the death penalty in the United States and its complex depths are unfathomable. There was a certain ritual that accompanied Christa Pike’s execution. The execution chamber with its cruciform table well-provisioned with thick leather straps to secure the condemned is concealed from view for part of the process. But the chamber itself is separated from a viewing room and at the appropriate moment the curtains separating the two are pulled aside. In the viewing room are witnesses to the execution and those witnesses are limited. Some are present in an official capacity to verify the process. Others are directly connected with the case. It is not a fully private process yet neither is it a public one. Indeed public executions in most Western countries have not taken place for decades. The festivities that accompanied a hanging at Tyburn in the 18th century are long gone. And many countries – New Zealand among them – abolished the death penalty. The last capital execution in New Zealand took place on 18 February 1957, when Walter James Bolton was hanged at Mount Eden Prison in Auckland. He was convicted of murdering his wife by poison. It was announced on Friday 9 October that Nidal Hassan, who murdered 13 people at a military establishment in Texas, would be executed by firing squad. Given that the offending took place at a military establishment and that at the time Hassan was subject to military discipline the place of execution is not so unusual. The methodology – firing squad – has not been employed since 1945 by the US. **A Public Execution – Livestreamed** But to make the matter more unusual was the announcement that the execution would be a public one – indeed a very public one in that it would be livestreamed presumably using an internet platform. To interpolate at this point. I am no supporter of the death penalty and I oppose it. I cannot support the treatment of Christa Pike nor the intended treatment of Nidal Hassan. There are other remedies available at law by which society may condemn their crimes. But this is not an article about the rights and wrongs of the death penalty. It is about a response to a proposal. When it was announced that it was intended that execution of Mr Hassan would be livestreamed the immediate response – especially on the part of the media – was to consider how it might be banned. That demonstrates a rather peculiar inversion of an approach to the problem. The first question that should be addressed is whether or not the execution should be public. The inquiry should then be that if it was to be so, should it be livestreamed. And if the answer to that question was in the affirmative, what choices would individuals have. And the obvious answer to that is that the United States is not forcing you to watch. If this extraordinary event is to take place – if the US is going to emulate Iran or ISIS in broadcasting an execution – there is no compulsion to view the process. There are countless other ways that one can use one’s time rather than watch someone being put to death in real time. **Ban It** Yet the almost instinctive response in New Zealand is “how do we ban this?” Part of this response may be a form of PTSD arising from the 2019 Mosque Massacres in Christchurch. The then Censor David Shanks, on his own motion and once the livestream was taking place, made a decision that the content was objectionable thus making the possession and distribution of it an offence. In addition access to objectionable content was blocked in many cases by the Department of Internal Affairs. Banning something seems to be a developing New Zealand response. We have seen it as the response to issues arising around young people and social media. Ban it! So should it be surprising that this is the knee-jerk response to the execution live-stream? Probably not. Concerning, nevertheless. To ban it seems to be a simple solution. But the “ban it” approach ignores some fundamental misunderstandings of the nature of censorship – at least as it is carried out pursuant to the Films, Videos and Publications Classification Act. For content to be designated objectionable it has to go through a statutory process and satisfy certain statutory tests. The initiation of those enquiries may be on the motion of the Censor or, more usually, by way of complaint from a member of the public. But the problem is this. The content must be in existence. **Legal Realities** The following report from the [Radio NZ Website explains the problem](https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/world/1813340/new-zealand-censor-says-it-would-be-powerless-to-block-livestreamed-us-execution?ref=goodoil.news). > “One of the first countries to react was New Zealand, where censorship authorities highlighted difficulties in restricting access to such material. > “The Classification Office cannot classify a livestream event as it is taking place, and we, nor any other body, has the authority to block access to a livestream event,” a spokesperson for New Zealand’s Classification Office said in a statement. > > “The threshold for banning content under New Zealand law is high and requires that we balance freedom of expression with the likelihood of harm,” New Zealand Chief Censor Caroline Flora said. > > “Distressing as content may be, it is not always unlawful.” > > That position is entirely correct. Of course there may be calls to ban the livestream anyway. That has some problems. Do you ban content because you may disapprove of it even before you have seen the content. And in addition are you assuming, in the absence of evidence, that the content is going to be contrary to law and would fulfil the tests of the FVPC Act. Or ultimately do you say – well its wrong so ban it anyway. That proposition ignores the fact that one does not ban content on a whim or simply because it may not conform to one’s moral compass. Restricting access to content or banning it requires the fulfilment of legal tests. But arguments about banning content before it has been released engages another complex issue – that of prior restraint. **Prior Restraint** Prior restraint is the practice of preventing the publication or dissemination of information, opinions or other content before it has been made public. This is usually achieved through a court order, censorship regime or administrative prohibition. It differs from imposing legal liability after publication, such as an action for defamation, a takedown application pursuant to the Harmful Digital Communications Act or prosecution for publishing unlawful material. An example or prior restraint may be found in the case of Justice Cull’s imposition of an injunction on publication of details and circumstances surrounding the Phillips children following the death of their father Tom Phillips and their recovery. A problematic issue surrounding this example of prior restraint is that the judge did not articulate detailed reasons for her decision. Prior restraint is particularly problematic. It strikes at the heart of freedom of expression. Rather than allowing information to enter the public domain and subsequently determining whether its publication was unlawful afterwards, it prevents the information from being communicated at all thus depriving a potential audience of making its own judgment. Prior restraint suppresses expression before its legality has necessarily been established. It may prevent the public from receiving information of legitimate interest. It encourages self-censorship through fear of legal consequences – Nicky Hager’s unwillingness to alert his targets of his interest in them and his reluctance to engage in self-censorship provides an example. And prior restraint places considerable power in the hands of courts or state authorities to determine what the public may know. The fundamental argument is that freedom of expression should be the rule and any restrictions upon it should be the exception. Prior restraint reverses that presumption by making publication dependent upon permission or the absence of prohibition. Thus, prior restraint substitutes preventive censorship for subsequent legal accountability. It risks suppressing not merely unlawful expression but lawful, valuable and potentially important contributions to public debate. This does not mean that prior restraint is impossible. It is highly likely that individuals or groups will bring an application before the courts for an injunction to prevent access to the livestream content. Necessarily those applications will have to dispose of the existing FVPC Act regime and if there is an application pursuant to the Harmful Digital Communications Act, that harm has been suffered (rather than anticipated). Both pieces of legislation anticipate post-publication restrictions or remedies rather than prior restraint. **Conclusion** Much will depend upon the content. In the meantime we will have to endure the moralistic tone of commentators like Professor Al Gillespie who have described the proposition as “barbaric”. The use of emotive language, coupled with a value judgement , may well be good for sound bites but it is no substitute for rational argument of which Professor Gillespie is quite capable. When the content is available I have no doubt that the Classification Office will study it carefully and make a decision. If they classify the content as objectionable it means that it can be blocked and its possession or distribution will amount to an offence. It does not mean that it will be totally unavailable. The internet will see to that. But it does mean that if a person downloads it and watches it and they are caught (and there are ways and means of doing that) they will be held accountable in court. It may well be that the livestreamed execution will not happen. [Doubt has already been cast upon that by Vice-President J D Vance](https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ck20r39nl3qzo?ref=goodoil.news) who has said that if it is he will not be watching it. For me this is all academic. I won’t watch the live stream. And after all that is really what the argument should be about and indeed about any internet or broadcast or online or even printed content. No one is forcing you to watch, listen or read. And if something you don’t like strays across your consciousness, close the book, change the channel or streamer or hit the off switch. Everyone has the power to be their own censor. This article was originally published by [A Halfling’s View](https://djhdcj.substack.com/p/execution). ### Will We Make Big Pets? URL: https://goodoil.news/will-we-make-big-pets/ Last updated: 2026-10-12T20:15:00.000Z The ‘new era of Super Intelligence’ is not here and may never be: but it’s worth thinking about what it might mean. _This post is for paying subscribers only._ ### Do We Believe Them, or Believe Them? URL: https://goodoil.news/do-we-believe-them-or-believe-them/ Last updated: 2026-10-12T19:59:59.000Z The Australian government is pouring our taxpayer dollars into Muslims who preach extremism and practice taqiyya right to our faces. As [I’ve reported before](https://goodoil.news/now-labors-buying-ethnic-votes/), the Albanese government, for all its blatherskite about ‘social cohesion’, has been quietly funnelling tens of millions of taxpayer dollars into extremist Islamic groups. Including, it is now alleged, the very group where the Flydubai terrorist pilot was radicalised. > [Emirati Attorney-General](https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/islamic-charity-cleric-silent-after-bombshell-flydubai-revelations-afp-launch-investigation/live-coverage/1a83f3439b6384fba31f0f3091c09143?ref=goodoil.news) **Hamad Saif al Shamsi** revealed over the weekend that the accused hijacker had delivered a “detailed confession” on his time studying in Melbourne, where it is alleged his radicalisation took root. > > “The radicalisation of the man accused of trying to hijack an aircraft and carry out a 9/11-style terrorist attack reportedly began in Melbourne as an international student. Now we learn the Islamic organisation he associated with received not one, but two taxpayer-funded grants from the Albanese Labor government in the last two financial years,” \[One Nation leader **Pauline Hanson**\] said in a statement. As Hanson pointed out, at the same time that ASIO is warning that the probability of a terror attack in Australia in the next 12 months is greater than 50 per cent, and that the vast majority of the extremists on its radar are Islamic, Labor are pouring nitroglycerine on the extremism fire. Of its $171 million dollar ‘multicultural fund’, 94 per cent went to Labor-held seats – most of which are heavily dominated by Muslims. The electorate of Home Affairs, Immigration and Citizenship Minister **Tony Burke**, the most Muslim-heavy seat in Australia, is among the biggest beneficiaries. The Australian National Imams Council, based in his electorate received over half of the total funding: an astonishing $86 million Australian taxpayer dollars. As Hanson says: > The same government that refused to name radical Islamic terrorism for days after the Bondi massacre, dragged its feet on a royal commission, and fails to confront Islamic extremism head-on is now at risk of funding extremism too. In return, Australians are getting a heaping helping of classic Islamic deception. The high-profile Melbourne sheikh named by the Flydubai terrorist is a case in point. Before Bondi, **Samir “Abu Hamza” Mohtadi** was all firebrand hatred for Jews, praise for jihadis and invective against ‘infidel’ Australia. *Before Bondi:* Jews are “filthy terrorists”, “blood-sucking humans” and “scavengers”; ‘victory’ for “our mujahideen in Palestine” and Muslims rejecting Australian values. Mohtadi preached that Muslim had their own values, culture, language and religion, so they did not need to embrace those of Australia. *Before Bondi:* Mohtadi happily conceded that “I am an extremist”, urged Australian Muslims to leave Australia to join the Islamic State, and advocated cutting off hands and stoning to death. Muslims, he said, cannot live among “polytheists” (meaning Christians). Then Bondi happened, and Mohtadi, we are supposed to believe, turned on a dinar. > [\[Mohtadi…\] said the](https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/imam-abu-hamza-who-prayed-for-terror-now-condemns-bondi-attack/news-story/eb4291b3870779f5d982ba44f2991c75?ref=goodoil.news) targeted attack against innocent Jews was forbidden in Islam. “Did you not hear what Allah said? And whoever kills a soul, it is like they’ve killed the whole of humanity. And whoever saves a soul, it is like they’ve saved the whole of humanity.” As soon as anyone trots out this cherry-picked quote, you know they’re either ignorant or lying through their teeth. As a sheikh, Mohtadi clearly is not ignorant of the koran. In which case he also knows that he’s only selectively using half of the actual quote. Quoted in full, it’s a lot less ‘co-exist-y’: *Whoever takes a life – unless as a punishment for murder or mischief in the land – it will be as if they killed all of humanity; and whoever saves a life, it will be as if they saved all of humanity. Although Our messengers already came to them with clear proofs, many of them \[Jews\] still transgressed afterwards through the land. Indeed, the penalty for those who wage war against Allah and His Messenger and spread mischief in the land is death, crucifixion, cutting off their hands and feet on opposite sides, or exile from the land. – Koran 5:32-33* As [**Raymond Ibrahim** has said](https://www.meforum.org/middle-east-quarterly/taqiyya-islam-rules-of-war?ref=goodoil.news), taqiyya is not only “of fundamental importance”, but now “mainstream” in Islam. --- 💡 ****If you enjoyed this article please share it using the share buttons at the top or bottom of the article.** ### Quick Hit: Now Is Not The Time URL: https://goodoil.news/quick-hit-now-is-not-the-time/ Last updated: 2026-10-12T19:30:00.000Z National’s fiscal plan offers no income tax cuts until the books are in surplus in 2028/29, only a “pathway to potential tax relief”. Nicola Willis still called National “the party of low tax”. _This post is for subscribers on the VIP tier only._ ### Hager’s Book Has It All Wrong URL: https://goodoil.news/hagers-book-has-it-all-wrong/ Last updated: 2026-10-12T19:29:59.000Z [**Peter Williams**](https://peterallanwilliams.substack.com/p/my-dirty-work-mention) *Writer and broadcaster for half a century. Now watching from the sidelines although verbalising thoughts on www.reality* [*check.radio*](http://check.radio/?ref=goodoil.news) *three days a week.* Although it’s been the most talked about book of the year, in some circles anyway, finding a copy of *Dirty Work* by Nicky Hager has proved to be a difficult assignment in my neighbourhood. In the last week I’ve tried Paper Plus in Cromwell, Wānaka and Queenstown Airport and drawn a blank. There was no copy at the Auckland Domestic terminal’s so called bookshop either, nor at an independent bookseller in Wānaka. However I’d heard a rumour there was a mention of me so a friend kindly emailed the chapter where indeed I do get a name and activity check. To be honest I’m pretty annoyed that Hager has misquoted me and placed my words very much out of context. For reference, I’m in Chapter Three which is titled “Using Racism as a Political Tool”. On page 51 there’s reportage of a speech I gave in Invercargill in 2022 during the Taxpayers’ Union campaign against the Labour government’s Three Waters proposal. Hager writes: > Hundreds of people attended to hear a speech Peter Williams (not related to Jordan Williams), who had joined the TU board a few weeks earlier. It was a long speech, quoting friendly, super-right lawyer Gary Judd KC as their expert on water reforms. Peter Williams declared, without any factual basis: ‘Why do iwi and Māori deserve a cup of every litre of water that you and I use? If this proposal is allowed to go ahead or is forced through by the minister against the wishes of the people, iwi will control the water assets of this nation. And that must not be allowed.’ The reference is a speech to the Groundswell public meeting in Invercargill on June 9, 2022\. A video recording of that speech, and one the day before in Gore, are still available on line. It’s a presentation I made in Alexandra and Balclutha as well during that campaign but the transcriber of the quote got it wrong because I didn’t say “why do iwi and Māori deserve a cup of every litre of water you and I use?” I said “why do iwi and Maori deserve a cut of every litre of water...” One letter, a T instead of a P, but it makes far more sense. I don’t know Gary Judd KC, or QC as he was then. I’ve never met him. But he’d written about the concept of ownership which I quoted. > *The Three Waters proposal has been deliberately designed to give iwi and M*ā*ori the predominating governance influence. Bear in mind that getting a return from an asset is a right attributable to an owner. Therefore the proposal would confer on iwi and M*ā*ori, but no-one else, a direct attribute of ownership.* Remember that the Three Waters proposals were to take the water assets owned by 67 local councils around the country and fold them into four Water Entities, the boundaries of which were based on iwi areas of interest. For instance, the South Island Entity did not include Nelson and Marlborough because that isn’t part of Ngāi Tahu territory. The bureaucracy to govern these Water Entities was mind boggling in complexity. Each would have a 12 strong Regional Representation Group (RRG), six from the local councils and six of whom were iwi appointments. The RRG, which had to make all decisions with a 75 per cent majority, then picked a selection panel – who then selected the board of directors. The board had to have collective knowledge of mātauranga Māori and te ao Māori, while on the board there had to be some directors with specific knowledge of kaitiakitanga and the Treaty of Waitangi as it pertained to water. At no stage was there ever any mention of recruiting directors with financial and engineering skills, quite important I would have thought for entities which were going to build infrastructure that would be paid for through multi-million dollar borrowing programmes. There could be absolutely no doubt that the then Local Government Minister Nanaia Mahuta and her bureaucrats had designed Three Waters to ensure that iwi interests would take over all water assets. Councils would lose control of what they’d built and maintained, admittedly not always that well, for over a hundred years. A direct attribute of ownership of those assets, as Gary Judd said, would be conferred on iwi and Māori and no one else. Explaining this, Mr Hager, is not racism. It is pointing out nothing more than facts. As to the line about iwi and Māori taking a cut of every litre of water that I use, a line that according to Hager I made “without any factual basis”, let me explain. You’ll remember He Puapua. It was the report written at Mahuta’s request to suggest ways New Zealand could achieve the goals set out in the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, in particular self-determination or tino rangitiratanga. Commissioned in 2019, He Puapua wasn’t seen by the public till it was leaked in 2021, the year before this speech. It was a report still being considered by the Labour government of the time. Included in He Puapua was this which I had quoted earlier in my speech: > *Increased M*ā*ori rangatiratanga will require considerable resourcing and capacity building. If M*ā*ori are to exercise governance power there needs to be support for this and it may take time. Tikanga M*ā*ori will evolve and develop to greater application in the modern world but will also require support. The Crown’s main contribution to capacity building will be in resourcing. There are multiple streams from which financial contributions might be sourced including, for example, levies on resource use where M*ā*ori have a clear interest if not a strong claim to ownership, such as water*. Again Mr Hager, it was there in broad daylight and in a readily available document on a proposed future for New Zealand – iwi and Māori, once they had effective ownership of the country’s water resources and reticulation, could be charging levies on water-users to fund their self-determination. I didn’t think that’s fair in a land where our so called founding document, the Treaty of Waitangi, makes us in Article Three all equal. That’s why your assertion in *Dirty Work* about me not having “any factual basis” for my claim about iwi and Māori taking a cut of every litre of water is, in itself, without any factual basis. Perhaps if you’d listened to the entire speech you may have found some context and then thought about the reality of our water. You might have considered how we have so much precipitation falling annually in this country that we use less than five percent of it. The rest evaporates, flows out to sea or freezes in our mountains. This country is never short of water. We just have to find better ways to capture it and share it around. I suppose my association with the Taxpayers’ Union as a board member and then as a speech maker and letter writer for them, was bound to get me a mention in a book about the organisation. That I can handle. What really frustrates me are the broad-brushed claims in a chapter entitled “Using Racism as a Political Tool” that I was indulging in some form of racist attack. What I was doing was attacking the inherent unfairness of the ludicrous Three Waters bureaucracy and the plan by the He Puapua writers to enable water users to pay for their activism. I was doing the country a favour. Three Waters and He Puapua were abandoned by this government. We have to ensure no politicians ever try it on again. This article was originally published on the [author’s Substack](https://peterallanwilliams.substack.com/p/my-dirty-work-mention). ### Neither Chris Gets to Decide URL: https://goodoil.news/neither-chris-gets-to-decide/ Last updated: 2026-10-12T19:00:00.000Z Winston Peters gave Jo Moir at *RNZ* one line this weekend that every political editor in the country should pin above their desk. Talking about last week’s televised Luxon and Hipkins’ debate, he asked: “Why have we seen these two leaders going head-to-head when they will not be deciding the outcome come election day, of that I can guarantee you.” He is right and I suspect the broadcasters know it too. Peters went further. “The first person gets up and says ‘The National Government’s going to do this.’ The other person says ‘The Labour Government’s going to do that.’ Neither such things exist any more – they just don’t exist.” Then he got to the media: “The tragedy is, deliberate or not, that the mainstream media are allowing a conversation to happen as though it’s first-past-the-post, when it was no longer the case for 33 years.” His 33 years runs from the 1993 referendum that brought in MMP. The first MMP election was 1996, 30 years ago this year, and NZ First won 17 seats in it. Peters has been in parliament since 1978\. The media coverage, to my eye, still reads like the 1980s. ### **Look at the calendar** TVNZ ran the first Luxon and Hipkins head-to-head on 6 October. The *Herald* runs its own leaders’ debate between the same two men on Wednesday, 14 October. *Stuff* runs another on 20 October. That is three nights of Chris against Chris. The rest of the field gets a *TVNZ* multi-party debate on Tuesday night, 13 October, with Tova O’Brien moderating, and the *Herald’*s powerbrokers' debate on 21 October, which NZME bills as the leaders of the parties likely to be in coalition talks. Fair enough on that last one. It is the only billing in the schedule that admits how MMP works. My read is that the format is the bias. Put two men on a stage and the audience is invited to pick one of them, as if the winner walks into the Beehive with a majority. Only once in 10 MMP elections, Labour in 2020, has a party managed that, and those were exceptional times. Under MMP the bloc that forms a government decides – and blocs are built by the parties the head-to-head format leaves off the stage. ### **What the voters are saying** The Taxpayers’ Union-Curia poll for October has Christopher Luxon as preferred prime minister on 21.2 per cent and Chris Hipkins on 21.0\. Neither of them can get a quarter of the country to name him. Winston Peters is on 13.9, up 3.2, and his party is on 12.0 and 16 seats. The coalition only gets to 65 seats because of it. So the two men who get three debates between them are statistically tied at about a fifth of the electorate each, and the man who decides which of them is prime minister gets a share of a crowded stage. If that is the story the gallery wants to tell, fine, but it is not the election you are voting in. ### **The team behind him** The other thing a Chris-off hides is who would actually turn up in a coalition cabinet. NZ First released its list last week. After Peters, Shane Jones, Casey Costello and Mark Patterson, the next five spots went to new faces: Alfred Ngaro, Michael Laws, Harete Hipango-Brownlie, Craig Stobo and Taine Randell. That is a former National minister, two former National MPs, a former chair of the Financial Markets Authority and a former All Black captain. Peters calls it the “best set of candidates we’ve ever had”. Moir’s own read is that the party wants to look like it is drawing in the old National guard. I think it has. People who once wore blue are now standing for the party that keeps the centre right in office, while National’s finance spokesperson spends the campaign warning voters off it. Peters told *RNZ* he thinks “things are going to be stabilised at the end of this event”, and that “the election is going to be decided in the next three weeks”. There are 26 days to go. ### **Vote for the government you actually get** None of this means Luxon and Hipkins should not debate. It means voters should watch the debates knowing what they are watching: two men auditioning for a job that a third party will hand out. If you want a centre-right government, my advice has not changed. In your electorate, vote for the National candidate. With your party vote, tick ACT or NZ First. The electorate seats keep National in the room and the party vote decides who sits at the table with it. Election day is not a Chris-off, and under MMP it never has been. Peters said it out loud and three more nights of television will not change the arithmetic of MMP. ### Good Oil General Debate URL: https://goodoil.news/good-oil-general-debate-847/ Last updated: 2026-10-12T18:00:01.000Z Good morning, welcome to our daily General Debate. Our evening General debate is called Backchat and will start at 6 pm. On General debate, you are encouraged as a commenter to share your own stories, discuss other news, bring NEW news, catch up with friends or make new friends with other commenters. 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Please be respectful and do not make demands. ### Face of the Day URL: https://goodoil.news/face-of-the-day-1601/ Last updated: 2026-10-12T17:30:00.000Z > Christopher Luxon has confirmed his party will not campaign on raising the retirement age this election. > > “Instinctively we’re a party that believes that the age should lift ... but the reality is, we also being very pragmatic and acknowledge it requires a political consensus, and we don’t have that currently,” he said. > > He said National will continue working towards a bipartisan solution, but they will not do so with a predetermined outcome. > > Finance spokesperson Nicola Willis had previously expressed that she was very keen for a change, but acknowledged that she was not able to gather enough support. > > “I’m going to be blunt with you, Chris Hipkins said no,” she said, adding she hoped to work together on a solution in the next term. > > “This is bigger than one election campaign. This is about New Zealand’s New Zealanders’ \[sic\] future entitlement and their retirement, and I want them to have security about that. So let’s work together on it,” she said. > > Stuff [Read More](https://www.stuff.co.nz/politics/361045172/nz-election-2026-live-updates-politics-campaign-news?ref=goodoil.news) ### The Good Oil Word of the Day URL: https://goodoil.news/the-good-oil-word-of-the-day-786/ Last updated: 2026-10-12T17:15:33.000Z The word for today is… alliteration (noun) - : the repetition of usually initial consonant sounds in two or more neighboring words or syllables (such as wild and woolly, thrifty and thriving) Source : [Merriam-Webster](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/alliteration?ref=goodoil.news) Etymology : In alliteration, consonant sounds in two or more neighboring words or syllables are repeated. The repeated sounds are usually the first, or initial, sounds—as in "seven sisters"—but repetition of sounds in non-initial stressed, or accented, syllables is also common: "appear and report." Alliteration is a common feature in poetry, but it is also found in songs and raps and speeches and other kinds of writing, as well as in frequently used phrases, such as "pretty as a picture" and "dead as a doornail." Alliteration can in its simplest form reinforce one or two consonant sounds, as in this line from William Shakespeare's "Sonnet XII": *When I do count the clock that tells the time* A more complex pattern of alliteration can be created when consonants both at the beginning of words and at the beginning of stressed syllables within words are repeated, as in the following line from Percy Bysshe Shelley's "Stanzas Written in Dejection Near Naples": *The City's voice itself is soft like Solitude's*. As a poetic device, alliteration is often discussed with assonance, the repetition of stressed vowel sounds within two or more words with different end consonants, as in "stony" and "holy"; and consonance, the repetition of end or medial consonants, as in "stroke" and "luck." ***If you enjoyed this Good Oil word of the day please consider sharing it with your friends and, especially, your children.*** ### The Good Oil Daily Bible Verse URL: https://goodoil.news/the-good-oil-daily-bible-verse-496/ Last updated: 2026-10-12T16:59:59.000Z [Ezekiel 13](https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ezekiel%2013&version=KJV&ref=goodoil.news) **3** Thus saith the Lord God; Woe unto the foolish prophets, that follow their own spirit, and have seen nothing! ### Night Cap URL: https://goodoil.news/night-cap-754/ Last updated: 2026-10-12T07:59:59.000Z If you have a great Youtube, Rumble or Vimeo video to share send it to videos@goodoil.news [![CTA Image](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/01/cam-shirt2-1.png)](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) If you're loving this trusty, straight-up news on Kiwi politics and beyond, why not become a paid member, eh? Unlock exclusive yarns, podcasts, vids, and in-depth analysis—your support keeps independent journalism chugging along. Join today for just $5.00 per month and get the full good oil! [Learn more ](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) ### Manly Monday URL: https://goodoil.news/manly-monday-352/ Last updated: 2026-10-12T07:29:59.000Z If you have a great Youtube, Rumble or Vimeo video to share send it to videos@goodoil.news [![CTA Image](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/01/cam-shirt2-1.png)](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) If you're loving this trusty, straight-up news on Kiwi politics and beyond, why not become a paid member, eh? Unlock exclusive yarns, podcasts, vids, and in-depth analysis—your support keeps independent journalism chugging along. Join today for just $5.00 per month and get the full good oil! [Learn more ](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) ### The MYTHICAL New Zealand ORP – Insanely Rare & Absolutely PACKED URL: https://goodoil.news/the-mythical-new-zealand-orp-insanely-rare-absolutely-packed/ Last updated: 2026-10-12T06:59:59.000Z If you have a great Youtube, Rumble or Vimeo video to share send it to videos@goodoil.news ### How New Zealand's Māori 'Ways of Knowing' Cancelled Science – Richard Dawkins URL: https://goodoil.news/how-new-zealands-maori-ways-of-knowing-cancelled-science-richard-dawkins/ Last updated: 2026-10-12T06:29:59.000Z If you have a great Youtube, Rumble or Vimeo video to share send it to videos@goodoil.news [![CTA Image](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/01/cam-shirt2-1.png)](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) If you're loving this trusty, straight-up news on Kiwi politics and beyond, why not become a paid member, eh? Unlock exclusive yarns, podcasts, vids, and in-depth analysis—your support keeps independent journalism chugging along. Join today for just $5.00 per month and get the full good oil! [Learn more ](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) ### Māori Statutory Board Voting Rights Removed: Auckland Council Co-Governance Debate Explained URL: https://goodoil.news/maori-statutory-board-voting-rights-removed-auckland-council-co-governance-debate-explained-2/ Last updated: 2026-10-12T06:00:00.000Z If you have a great Youtube, Rumble or Vimeo video to share send it to videos@goodoil.news [![CTA Image](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/01/cam-shirt2-1.png)](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) If you're loving this trusty, straight-up news on Kiwi politics and beyond, why not become a paid member, eh? Unlock exclusive yarns, podcasts, vids, and in-depth analysis—your support keeps independent journalism chugging along. 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[Learn more ](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) ### The Good Oil Daily Roundup URL: https://goodoil.news/the-good-oil-daily-roundup-770/ Last updated: 2026-10-12T05:30:20.000Z [](https://photos.google.com/u/1/photo/AF1QipN7Zp7NKe4smdZA9nAYud8CjsgjsQ-Bn7QyMo53?ref=goodoil.news) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/E11B7523-BFBD-41B7-81AE-E701A155C152.jpeg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/84744BE2-80D4-4350-A6E2-417FC90CAE68.jpeg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/B12CBBBA-051D-4CC1-B787-00E54EE93727.jpeg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/45C4F95D-467B-4D81-9BFD-56F2CCD6902C.jpeg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/5134A086-65A3-4862-AE29-183FFF71CD0F.jpeg) ### Good Oil Backchat URL: https://goodoil.news/good-oil-backchat-848/ Last updated: 2026-10-12T05:00:01.000Z Good evening, welcome to **Backchat**. 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Please be respectful and do not make demands. ### Comedy Corner URL: https://goodoil.news/comedy-corner-107/ Last updated: 2026-10-12T04:00:49.000Z Welcome to Politically Incorrect Comedy corner: the one place on The Good Oil where you are allowed to read and share naughty and offensive jokes that make us all laugh even though we are not supposed to. If you are offended by these kinds of jokes then please do not read this post. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/08/390C2C90-D62B-4009-80E9-CCFCE6091284.jpeg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/08/0F029FD9-81BA-44F0-86F6-56C1C95E2931.jpeg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/08/EA1507AB-DD5F-41DF-9B58-D7B758D3025B.jpeg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/08/DDEAC90E-5ABA-45C4-86E0-17137645B7FD_1_105_c.jpeg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/08/986FFF5E-FA75-4603-B24E-6EC6FDF24687.jpeg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/08/B6D125EE-1282-403E-A5CF-DC708CE3680A.jpeg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/08/D303BCD9-ED20-4483-9341-8CD42FAF76A9_1_105_c.jpeg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/08/D7BCD520-8CE7-4B52-B9A3-D2986ED974A9.jpeg) ### The Printing Press and the Internet URL: https://goodoil.news/the-printing-press-and-the-internet/ Last updated: 2026-10-12T03:29:59.000Z [**Tom Armstrong**](https://www.freespeechbacklash.com/article/printing-press-and-internet?ref=goodoil.news) *Just an old fashioned romantic libertarian conservative at heart. Or maybe a romantic conservative libertarian, depending on the stages of the moon* The invention of the printing press in the 15th century did not just alter how human beings shared words: it shattered the monopoly on truth. For centuries, a tiny elite of monarchs, nobles, and clerics decided what the public could know, believe, and discuss. When Johannes Gutenberg’s moveable type suddenly allowed ideas to spread faster than the state could run, the ruling class did not celebrate a triumph of human ingenuity. They panicked. They saw the democratisation of information as an existential threat to their survival, and they deployed every weapon in their arsenal; licensing, bans, surveillance, and executions, to crush it. Today, history is repeating itself with terrifying precision. The internet and social media have triggered a secondary information explosion, breaking the 20th-century monopoly held by state-aligned television networks and corporate newspapers. Ordinary citizens can speak directly to one another without a ruling-class gatekeeper filtering the message. And once again, the response from the political establishment is not gratitude for an informed citizenry, but a coordinated, desperate campaign of repression. Modern governments are acting exactly like the frightened tyrannies of the past. Threatened by truths that expose their incompetence, corruption, and systemic failures, they have launched a war on free expression under the guise of public safety. The language has changed. *Heresy* has been rebranded as *misinformation*, and *sedition* is now called *harmful content* but the tyrannical impulse remains identical. In Tudor England, the Crown realised it could not stop every printing press from being built. Instead, it created a system of total pre-emptive censorship. Through the Stationers’ Company, the state granted a monopoly to a select guild of loyal printers. In exchange for economic privileges, these printers acted as the government’s police force, vetting every manuscript before publication and smashing the illegal presses of anyone who dared publish without a royal license. Our modern political class has resurrected this exact feudal strategy through the mechanism of digital platform capture. Governments in the West do not need to build national firewalls like those in overtly totalitarian states; instead, they pressure, bully, and collude with a tiny handful of Silicon Valley tech giants. The disclosure of routine state-sponsored digital censorship across the globe has laid bare the reality of this alliance. Intelligence agencies, health ministries, and political officials have routine, backdoor access to social media corporations. They do not request the removal of illegal content: they demand the suppression of politically inconvenient facts. When tech platforms shadow-ban users, algorithmic down-rank specific viewpoints, or deplatform journalists, they are acting precisely like the Stationers’ Company. They are a corporate cartel executing state censorship by proxy. This allows modern politicians to pretend that they respect free speech laws while ensuring that any truth which threatens their narrative is quietly starved of oxygen. The parallels run deeper when examining the specific excuses used to justify this tyranny. In the 16th century, the Catholic Church published the *Index Librorum Prohibitorum* (the Index of Forbidden Books). The justification was entirely paternalistic: the common people were deemed too uneducated, too gullible, and too easily led astray by heretical ideas. If the public were allowed to read unauthorised translations of the Bible or scientific treatises by Galileo, society would collapse into moral decay and chaos. The state presented itself as a protective shield, guarding the minds of the vulnerable from dangerous errors. Listen to the rhetoric of modern prime ministers, presidents, and regulators today, and the echo is deafening. We are told constantly that the public cannot be trusted to digest raw information. If citizens are allowed to read unvetted data about economic policies, public health measures, or geopolitical conflicts, they might succumb to ‘radicalisation’ or believe ‘fake news.’ The modern state treats its population not as autonomous individuals capable of critical thought, but as a volatile, easily manipulated mass that must be protected from the truth for its own good. When a government declares that it must regulate speech to protect democracy, it is engaging in the ultimate Orwellian contradiction. A democracy cannot exist without the free, unhindered exchange of ideas, arguments, and facts. A system where the state decides which arguments are legitimate is not a democracy: it is a managed oligarchy. The ultimate proof that modern governments are acting out of fear, rather than a desire for public welfare, is how they treat the truth tellers. When the state’s official narrative is exposed as a lie, the machinery of tyranny turns vicious. Consider the treatment of modern whistleblowers and independent journalists who expose state crimes, illegal mass surveillance, or the realities of foreign wars. They are not met with open debate or legal transparency. They are hounded, exiled, and imprisoned under antiquated espionage acts. This is the digital equivalent of burning William Tyndale at the stake for translating the New Testament into English. Tyndale’s crime was not that he wrote untruths, but that he made the truth accessible to the ordinary man, stripping the priesthood of its monopoly on interpretation. Today, when independent researchers or journalists use public data to dismantle official government statistics, they are treated as digital heretics. The state does not attempt to disprove their findings through superior evidence; it simply destroys their livelihoods, labels them as security threats, and deletes their digital existence. Furthermore, we are witnessing the implementation of legislative frameworks designed to codify this tyranny permanently. Across the United Kingdom, Europe, and the Commonwealth, sweeping new laws such as the UK Online Safety Act are being introduced. These laws impose staggering financial penalties on internet platforms if they fail to eradicate content that is deemed ‘harmful’ or ‘hostile,’ even if that content is completely legal to say in the street. By threatening tech companies with corporate bankruptcy or executive imprisonment, governments have created a system of hyper-censorship. Terrified of legal liability, platforms deploy blunt artificial intelligence algorithms to pre-emptively erase any discussion that touches upon controversial topics. The result is a digital public square where conformity is enforced automatically, and dissent is suffocated before it can even be read. Yet, the modern state has also learned that raw, violent totalitarianism is inefficient on its own. While the internet must be policed, the minds of the next generation must be molded directly. When the Tudor monarchs wished to achieve total ideological conformity, they did not stop at the printing press – they extended their reach into every parish pulpit and grammar school room. They understood that to secure permanent power, the state had to control the classroom. King Henry VIII and Queen Elizabeth I dispatched royal commissioners to conduct aggressive, unannounced ‘visitations.’ These inspectors possessed absolute authority to cross-examine teachers, audit libraries, and ruin the lives of anyone whose loyalty to the state’s official religious and political dogma was deemed insufficient. Today, the British political establishment achieves an even more total ideological monopoly through a weaponised bureaucracy. Nowhere is this historical continuation of tyranny more blatant than in the operation of the Office for Standards in Education, better known as Ofsted. Under the deceptive banner of “raising standards” and ensuring “accountability,” Ofsted operates as the ideological enforcement arm of the contemporary regime. It is the direct psychological and structural heir to the Tudor clerical visitations. Ofsted inspectors descend upon schools with the same inquisitorial zeal as the royal commissioners of the 16th century. They do not arrive as neutral observers of pedagogical excellence – they arrive as the guardians of state orthodoxy. Just as the Tudors demanded absolute conformity to the Acts of Uniformity and the Book of Common Prayer, the modern British state uses Ofsted to enforce compliance with a rigid, centrally mandated cultural and political curriculum. Under the guise of inspecting “Personal Development” and evaluating a school’s adherence to “Fundamental British Values,” the inspectorate cross-examines young children and teachers alike. They are looking to ensure that no heresy, no unauthorised, independent thought or traditional perspective is being whispered behind closed doors. The punishment for heresy has simply been sanitised for a polite, bureaucratic age. The Tudors stripped non-compliant teachers of their licences and cast them into poverty or prison. Ofsted achieves the exact same execution of a career through the mechanism of the “Inadequate” rating. With a single stroke of a bureaucrat’s pen, a headteacher’s livelihood is destroyed, a school’s reputation is obliterated overnight, and the institution itself is subjected to a hostile, state-mandated corporate takeover by a Multi-Academy Trust. The sheer terror this regime inflicts has been documented in the tragic, real-world breakdowns of dedicated educators, proving that while the state no longer uses physical torture, its psychological cruelty remains profoundly tyrannical. This is not accountability: it is a system of panoptic surveillance designed to enforce absolute intellectual docility. When a government can dictate the exact moral, social, and political boundaries of what can be taught to children, and enforces those boundaries through an unpredictable, punitive inspectorate, it is acting out of profound fear. It is the fear that if local communities, independent teachers, and parents are left to educate children freely, they will raise a generation that sees through the hollow narratives of the ruling elite. By weaponising educational regulation alongside digital censorship, the modern state attempts to close the loop of information control. They seek a society where the internet is scrubbed of dissent by corporate proxies, and the classroom is scrubbed of independent thought by bureaucratic inquisitors. We must see these developments for what they truly are: the desperate thrashing of an elite that has lost control of the narrative. For decades, the political establishment relied on a compliant, centralised media apparatus to manufacture consent. The internet broke that machine. Now that the public can see the staggering incompetence of their leaders, the catastrophic failures of economic printing presses, and the endless deceit of state institutions, the ruling class has panicked. They know they can no longer win the argument, so they are trying to outlaw the debate. History, however, offers a profound crumb of comfort to those fighting for freedom. The tyrants of the printing press era failed. No matter how many books the church banned, no matter how many underground presses the Crown smashed, and no matter how many printers were locked away in dark dungeons, the truth could not be put back into the bottle. The decentralisation of technology was too powerful for the centralised structures of the state to contain. The printing press ultimately shattered the old world order, paving the way for the Enlightenment and the recognition of fundamental human rights. The modern digital tyranny and its bureaucratic inspectorates will fail for the exact same reason. Governments can pass draconian speech laws, they can collude with multi-billion-pound tech monopolies, and they can intimidate independent voices through aggressive regulatory audits, but they cannot govern a population that has tasted the freedom of unhindered communication. The hunger for truth is an immutable trait of the human spirit. We stand at a critical historical pivot point. We must stop treating government internet regulation and educational accountability as well-meaning attempts to make the world polite, safe, or standardised. It is a raw, cynical power grab by a ruling class that is terrified of its own people. It is time to reject the paternalistic lies of the modern state, expose their corporate censorship proxies, defy their bureaucratic inquisitors, and defend the public square with the same fierce, uncompromising radicalism that the early printers used to conquer the tyrants of old. This article was originally published by the [Free Speech Backlash](https://www.freespeechbacklash.com/article/printing-press-and-internet?ref=goodoil.news). ### Gillette Went Woke Before It Even Began URL: https://goodoil.news/gillette-went-woke-before-it-even-began/ Last updated: 2026-10-12T03:01:05.000Z Long before ‘go woke, go broke’ became a maxim, plenty of would-be socialist millionaires were proving its truth. In fact, for 4,000 years, elite socialists have tried to impose their top-down planning genius on the market. Whether it was [ancient kings](https://goodoil.news/socialism-not-working-since-forever/) or 19th century robber-barons, the result was always the same: economic collapse. As [I’ve written previously](https://goodoil.news/if-socialism-was-going-to-work-this-would-have-been-it/), Welsh industrialist **Robert Owen** poured millions and a boatload of scientists, teachers and intellectuals, into building the most educated, best-funded, best-equipped socialist community. In just two short years, it went predictably tits-up: an impressive result, even for socialists. But Owen was far from the only wealthy socialist to delude himself that the perfect socialist Utopia was just a five-year-plan and a pile of money away. Consider the case of **King Camp Gillette**. Yes, the very same fellow who gave the world the disposable razor, a man who possessed enough business acumen to build a global empire, yet seemed entirely incapable of understanding the basic human nature that made his empire possible. Around the time he was tinkering with bits of stamped steel, he penned *The Human Drift*, a pamphlet proposing that North America should abandon its cities for a single, colossal urban sprawl powered by Niagara Falls. > [“Under a perfect](https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/jan/24/how-gillettes-founder-dreamed-of-a-car-free-moneyless-metropolis?ref=goodoil.news) economical system of production and distribution … there can be only one city on a continent, and possibly only one in the world,” he wrote. While citizens might temporarily occupy countryside or coastal dwellings for field labour or pleasure, the city, named Metropolis, would be their only permanent home, housing at least 60 million people at any one time. Bear in mind that the global population at the time was over 1.5 billion. Gillette clearly wanted to eliminate 96 per cent of the world’s population. Even then, socialist utopias would be built on a pile of corpses. Gillette’s socialist dream was a high-density hellscape where 60 million souls would reside in mammoth apartment blocks, their lives regulated by a singular, all-encompassing corporation. It was the ultimate technocratic dream: glass-domed corridors, bike-only transport and a total ban on the messy, inefficient business of personal property or coin. He genuinely believed that if you laid out the blueprints clearly enough, the masses would abandon the concept of money in a fit of enlightened, collective ecstasy. One has to marvel at the disconnect. Here was a man who understood the value of a sharpened edge, yet thought he could sharpen the blunt instrument of human self-interest into a featureless, collectivist monolith. Doubleplusgood, comrades! coos the *Guardian*, at the same time weeping into its soy latte at the failure of socialism… *again*. > Whether Gillette had too much faith in humanity – perhaps something his brand could be accused of in 2019 – or too much faith in his own plans, it’s hard to say. Maybe a moneyless city was just too tough a sell for a self-made millionaire. Or maybe, just *maybe*, socialism is a bad idea and doomed to fail every time? Indeed, if even the astute, wealthy capitalists of the Gilded Age couldn’t make the socialist equation balance, why on earth should we trust the modern equivalent? We are currently expected to believe that some unwashed, unemployable arts graduate who likely hasn’t successfully managed a household budget, let alone an entire economy, is going to succeed where a titan of industry like Gillette failed? Fortunately for the sanity of the world, Gillette eventually realised that reality has a nasty habit of ignoring one’s utopian manifestos. He saw the inherent futility of the socialist experiment and, to his credit, retreated back into the world of hard, cold commerce. He stopped dreaming of moneyless glass towers and started perfecting the very engine of consumer capitalism that keeps the modern world spinning: two-part pricing. He pivoted from his pipe-dream of a socialist ‘United Company’ to the ‘razor and blades’ model: a scheme so brilliant, and so unapologetically capitalist, that it would make any true socialist weep into their communal gruel. By selling the hardware cheap and hooking the customer on the high-margin consumables, he secured his legacy far more effectively than he ever could have by building a city of glass-domed bike paths. It is a tale as old as the hills: the socialist bullshit walked but the money talked. --- 💡 ****If you enjoyed this article please share it using the share buttons at the top or bottom of the article.** ### [The Good Oil] Stuff Up of the Day URL: https://goodoil.news/the-good-oil-stuff-up-of-the-day-188/ Last updated: 2026-10-12T01:59:59.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/Stuff-up-12-Oct.jpg) ### Nature Has a Sense of Humour URL: https://goodoil.news/nature-has-a-sense-of-humour/ Last updated: 2026-10-12T01:29:59.000Z Sometimes, nature delivers the punch-lines with super comic timing. **Chris ‘Boofhead’ Bowen**’s “Pre-COP” climate beano was already an embarrassing enough non-event, with almost none of the world leaders Bowen has been bragging about even showing. For the handful of flunkies, second-bananas and Antipodean has-beens who’d show up for the opening of a paper bag, so long as someone else pays for it and there’s a massive buffet, nature had a big, fat middle-finger prepared. First it was the driving rain, then the blackouts. With exquisite comic timing, the lights chose to go out when Teal squillionaire **Zali Steggall** took to the stage to tilt her head and finger-wag the plebs. We might have hoped the darkness would offer a brief respite from the performative hand-wringing of the climate set, but, alas, the show must go on. It is a peculiar sort of irony, is it not, that our self-appointed planetary saviours found themselves grappling with the very infrastructure that remains the bedrock of civilised life? As the air conditioning wheezed its last breath and the lights flickered into nothingness, one could almost hear the ghosts of coal-fired power stations chuckling in the periphery. > [The outage on Tuesday](https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/lights-go-out-at-precop-31-summit-leaving-teal-mp-zali-steggall-in-the-dark/news-story/8ac6d49ec48bb747af7fc36e11fc732e?ref=goodoil.news), which government sources said lasted about 10 minutes, also affected air conditioning, with organisers having to open the doors to keep the room at a tolerable temperature. Other attendees in the room said the blackout went for about half an hour. The official line from the government is, naturally, that this was a ‘brief’ and ‘routine’ occurrence: a mere local glitch, unrelated to the high-minded gathering. It is quite the coincidence, however, that Fiji’s power grid has been struggling with a significant uptick in failures lately, as the nation grapples with the realities of its own energy policy. But let us not allow the inconvenient truth of an unreliable grid to dampen the enthusiasm of our travelling band of luminaries. The entire enterprise has been described by Shadow Energy Minister **Dan Tehan** as a ‘slapstick comedy’. Others have wondered whether it was an attempted repeat of **James Hansen**’s 1988 trickery, where he secretly turned off the aircon in a closed-room Congressional testimony in the middle of the Washington summer, to make his apocalyptic global warming hysteria sound more plausible. But this is Boofhead we’re talking about. Such chicanery is surely beyond the mediocre intellectual limits of such a would-be **Machiavelli**. Meanwhile, our Minister for Climate and Energy – or more accurately, the Minister for Grandiose Climate Delusions – has presided over a circus that has seen the goalposts moved so many times they must surely be worn down to the studs. > [As the ABC reported](https://www.theaustralian.com.au/commentary/precop31-chris-bowen-cant-wear-a-garland-and-a-climate-dunce-cap-at-the-same-time/news-story/234969b983581a9fad910becb9494111?ref=goodoil.news) in July, foreign diplomats were privately lampooning Bowen for building up pre-COP as the main show, one observing they “were worried the event was heading towards a ‘disaster’ because Australia had spent months insisting that only leaders attend the gathering in Tuvalu”. What began as a promise to bring the world’s most powerful heads of state to the Pacific has devolved into a ‘participation prize’ event for the second-raters and hangers-on. When the apex predators like Trump or Xi didn’t come calling, the government scrambled to invite anyone with a title and a pulse. We were promised a gathering of giants – we ended up with the equivalent of an airport arrivals lounge where the only people waiting are two lost tourists from Mauritius and Timor-Leste. Taking a cue from his boss, Bowen, caught between the reality of his empty dance card and his earlier boastful claims, has turned to linguistic contortions and outright denials. He claims he never meant he would bring ‘world leaders’ to Tuvalu, but rather that he simply wanted to ‘bring the world’ to Tuvalu. It is a distinction that only an Albanese government minister could attempt with a straight face. As for the optics, they have been nothing short of a tropical fiasco. The reports of our own prime minister and his sidekick Boofhead refusing the traditional head garlands – a gesture of respect that seems to have eluded them – only adds to the sense of a detached, metropolitan elite parachuting into the Pacific to lecture the locals before retreating to the comfort of a five-star resort. Maybe Albo didn’t want to look ridiculous, except that it’s far too late for that. > The distance between the hype and reality of this debacle is so great it could span the Pacific. Take for example the media exultation in August last year when Bowen was acting as if his plan to host COP31 was in the bag. The tragedy is that the taxpayer continues to fund these jet-setting junkets, and while the nation is humiliated standing on the world stage. The only consolation is that the world didn’t even bother watching. --- 💡 ****If you enjoyed this article please share it using the share buttons at the top or bottom of the article.** ### What a High-Trust Society Looks Like up Close URL: https://goodoil.news/what-a-high-trust-society-looks-like-up-close/ Last updated: 2026-10-12T01:00:00.000Z [**Viktorija Šimulynaitė**](https://www.schiffsovereign.com/trends/what-a-high-trust-society-looks-like-up-close-156061/?ref=goodoil.news) *Sovereign Man* The first thing I noticed at Seoul’s Incheon airport was the luggage. People had just left their suitcases sitting there – against pillars, next to benches, by the exits – and wandered off to the bathroom or to grab a coffee. Nobody looked back. Forget about thieves for a minute: just try leaving an unattended bag in a US airport, and watch the place go into lockdown while the bomb squad swarms in. A few days later I was in a small local café when the woman next to me stood up, left her phone face-up on the table, and walked off. She was gone for several minutes. When she came back, she picked up her phone like it was nothing. South Korea is a high-trust society. When you’re on the ground, you feel it before you can explain it. People here just assume that everyone else is going to follow the rules, and they’re almost always right. It’s not just the obvious stuff, like Korea’s ultra-low murder rate. It’s little things too. Last year, for example, passengers on Seoul’s metro left around $300,000 on the trains – lost wallets, money that fell out of people’s pockets, etc. About three-quarters of that cash was returned to the rightful owners. Crazy. The Seoul subway, by the way, is the best I’ve ever been on – and I’ve been to more than 100 countries. It’s spotless, the trains show up when the sign says they will, and a ride costs a little over a dollar. I’ve been to Seoul before, but this time I was blown away by how much had changed. The whole city feels like living in the future. At one café, my espresso was made by a robot. At my hotel, room service arrived on a robot that drove itself down the hallway, stopped at my door, and handed over the tray. And nobody else seemed to find any of this remarkable. The factories are even further along. South Korea has more robots per factory worker than ANY country in the world – about four times as many as the US. Korea needs them. It has the same problem as America and nearly every other rich country, only worse: people aren’t having enough kids. Korea’s birth rate is one of the lowest in the world, and its working-age population is already shrinking. But instead of waiting around for the worker shortage to solve itself, the Koreans are building machines to do the work. I think about economic growth a lot – it’s a big part of my job at Schiff Sovereign. And South Korea’s is remarkable, if you know the backstory. In 1960, South Korea was poorer than Ghana. Today it’s about 15 times richer. And the Koreans haven’t let up. South Korea puts more than five per cent of its ENTIRE economy into research and development every year, only Israel spends more. Most of that money comes from private companies. But the government keeps raising the bar too: this year’s research budget is the biggest in the country’s history. It’s not just robotics – it’s everything from semiconductors to medical research. In fact medical treatment is a booming industry: about two million foreigners came to Korea for medical treatment last year, which is a record. Most of them, admittedly, came for skin treatments and cosmetic work. But Korea is also world class in regenerative medicine – stem cell treatments that repair damaged tissue, anti-aging therapies, etc. This is serious medicine, not spa tourism. Korean regulators approved a stem cell treatment for worn-out knee cartilage back in 2012… and more than 35,000 patients have received it since. Since last year, Korean law has also allowed patients with severe or rare diseases to receive new cell-based treatments that haven’t finished the full approval process. It’s amazing what can happen when a country allows science and medicine to advance instead of stifling them. To me, it all sounds a lot like America in the 1950s. America back then was an exciting, high-functioning, high-trust society. People had a strong work ethic and shared values, and they made intelligent decisions for the future. When America had just become the world’s dominant superpower, the Eisenhower administration built the federal highway system, and Congress paid for it with a tax on gasoline instead of borrowing the money. Around that time, roughly 75 per cent of Americans said they trusted the federal government to do the right thing. Today it’s less than 20 per cent. Frankly I think that if you’re thinking about cutting-edge medical care, Korea ought to be be on your radar. But ultimately, Seoul is a reflection of what a high-trust society with shared values looks like… and of what a country can become when it does rational, sensible things to focus on a better future. This article was originally published by [Sovereign Man](https://www.schiffsovereign.com/trends/what-a-high-trust-society-looks-like-up-close-156061/?ref=goodoil.news). ### DEI – ‘All Caucasians’ Are Racist URL: https://goodoil.news/dei-all-caucasians-are-racist/ Last updated: 2026-10-12T00:29:59.000Z [**Tyler O’Neil**](https://papundits.wordpress.com/2026/10/10/montana-ag-asks-supreme-court-to-revive-case-against-dei-training-that-allegedly-declared-all-caucasians-racist/?ref=goodoil.news) *Tyler O’Neil is senior investigative reporter for The Daily Signal at The Heritage Foundation.* “DEI training actively undermines workplace harmony, and it causes hostility, distrust, and division,” the amicus brief, exclusively obtained [by the Daily Signal](https://www.dailysignal.com/author/tyler-oneil/?ref=goodoil.news), states. Young’s “complaint identifies myriad examples of how the \[Department of Corrections’\] training program endorsed treating and viewing Caucasians worse than other races,” the amicus brief notes. According to [Young’s lawsuit](https://mslegal.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/34-FAC.pdf?ref=goodoil.news), “the training insisted, among other things, that all Caucasians are racist, that they perpetuate white supremacy, that the very notion of race was invented by white people to justify the oppression of people of color, that white supremacy is an ever-present feature of daily life in the United States, and that Caucasians who deny their own racism are merely ‘fragile’ racists who cannot accept their own prejudice.” However, Young claimed the training’s effects reverberated afterward, shaping how the prison operated and leading him to conclude that he could not advance in the department. Young’s supervisors told him they would evaluate whether he incorporated its principles into his work. According to his filings, the training increased distrust within the prison, discouraged him from seeking a promotion, and caused him to second-guess otherwise justified use-of-force decisions due to potential race-based implications. “Given CDOC’s instruction that employees analyze workplace decisions through a racial-equity framework, Young understood that his superiors would be more likely to credit accusations of racism against him – making his assigned job significantly harder,” the filing states. Lower courts rejected Young’s lawsuit, ruling that his allegations did not establish a sufficiently severe or pervasive hostile work environment under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The [US Court of Appeals](https://www.dailysignal.com/2026/09/29/professor-censored-over-mock-land-acknowledgment-speaks-out-against-university-orthodoxy-after-court-win/?ref=goodoil.news) for the 10th Circuit found the training “troubling on many levels” and said its race-based rhetoric was “well on the way to arriving at objectively and subjectively harassing messaging,” but concluded that Young fell short of proving a violation, because the training happened only once and was not followed by additional harassment. Young’s petition argues that the 10th Circuit’s approach conflicts with rulings from other federal appeals courts that have recognized a single sufficiently severe incident may create a hostile work environment. Title VII forbids employers from fostering a hostile work environment through “severe or pervasive” workplace harassment. Knudsen’s brief accuses the US Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit of only evaluating the case “under a pervasiveness standard” in noting that the training occurred only once. “This sort of top-down discrimination is worlds away from most hostile work environment claims, which usually involve employees harassing other employees,” Knudsen’s brief argues. “A training program that instructs employees to treat others differently based solely on race creates a work environment ‘permeated with abuse.’” “The answer to racism is not more racism,” Knudsen declares. Young filed an internal discrimination complaint with [the Colorado department](https://www.dailysignal.com/2026/07/19/why-does-colorado-keep-losing-supreme-court/?ref=goodoil.news), but the inspector general declined to investigate because it found insufficient cause. Colorado has argued that the department did not require employees to change their personal beliefs. Knudsen’s brief asks the Supreme Court to grant Young’s petition, reverse the dismissal of his case, and allow his hostile-work-environment claim to proceed. The justices would not be deciding whether Young ultimately proved discrimination. The brief goes further than simply urging Supreme Court review. It condemns this [form of DEI training](https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/01/23/exclusive-jewish-cancer-counselor-sues-former-employer-racial-slurs-white-privilege-claims-retaliation/?ref=goodoil.news) in general, suggesting that employers may engage in discrimination by requiring it. “Employer training sets the tone for the entire workplace,” Knudsen warns. “When an employer officially sanctions racial scapegoating and treating individuals differently depending on their race in the workplace, that employer *per se* creates a hostile work environment. Even infrequent training can create a pervasive race-based hostility for the races singled out for negativity.” This article was originally published by [The Daily Signal](https://www.dailysignal.com/?ref=goodoil.news) and republished by [PA Pundits – International](https://papundits.wordpress.com/2026/10/10/montana-ag-asks-supreme-court-to-revive-case-against-dei-training-that-allegedly-declared-all-caucasians-racist/?ref=goodoil.news). ### If They Don’t Know This, They Shouldn’t Be Here URL: https://goodoil.news/if-they-dont-know-this-they-shouldnt-be-here/ Last updated: 2026-10-12T00:00:00.000Z For a government that blatherskites about ‘social cohesion’ so much, Labor seem hell-bent on importing millions of people with Neanderthal social ideas several centuries removed from even the most Australian values. Ideas like, oh I don’t know: *rape is not acceptable*. Yet, having imported these priapic, knuckle-dragging savages, Australian authorities continually indulge their barbarian mentalities. Such as a judge refusing to jail a grotesque migrant thug whose “first sexual experience” was violently raping an Australian girl within months of creeping into our shores. Literally, on the grounds that ‘he didn’t know rape wasn’t acceptable in Australia’. I wish I was making that up. Maybe someone should have [given him a pamphlet](https://goodoil.news/if-they-have-to-be-taught-this-stuff-they-dont-belong-here/) or something. > [A 16-year-old boy](https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/9364052/teenage-boy-sentenced-in-canberra-court-for-house-party-rape/?ref=goodoil.news) who raped a girl he met at a house party “used considerable force in pursuit of his own sexual gratification,” a judge has said. Or, to strip away the judicial soft-soap, he’s a violent rapist. Never mind, says the judge: he can just go and pick up litter for a year or so. That’ll teach him. > In an ACT Supreme Court decision published on Tuesday, October 6, the rapist was handed an 18-month prison sentence, suspended upon him entering into a good behaviour order. This means his sentence will be served in the community, rather than behind bars. Let’s go over what this scum did: “he ripped open her clothing and sexually assaulted her multiple ways”. This was all while she was crying and telling him to stop. He also refused to let her answer her continually ringing mobile phone: so we can add kidnapping to his violent rape. > In a victim impact statement, she described feeling a loss of dignity, confidence and sense of self. > > She said she “can no longer call \[her\] body \[her\] own” and that night her life was stolen and would forever be changed. Just lie back and think of the diversity, says the judge. > In determining the sentence, \[Justice **Andrew Muller**\] accepted the teenager’s prior lack of sexual experience and “limited insight into societal norms in Australia” reduced his moral culpability. Hands up who thinks ‘I didn’t know rape was wrong in Australia’ is more than sufficient grounds for instant deportation? If you think this sort of judicial insouciance in the face of migrant rape culture is an aberration, consider the late, unlamented **Ali Jafarri**. This Afghan predator came to Australia as a ‘refugee’, and immediately proceed to repeatedly try to molest and abduct children. Stunningly, after his second offence, when he tried to walk off with a four-year-old girl, a typically tilty-headed judge let him off, scot-free, on the grounds that ‘he didn’t realise raping children is unacceptable in Australia’. Thankfully, for Australia’s little boys and girls, Jaffari offed himself in immigration detention, after his *third* offence. Still, there’s plenty more rapey migrants where he came from, as Britain is discovering. > [Nearly all women](https://www.dailymail.com/news/article-16183281/Nearly-women-try-reach-UK-small-boats-raped-journey-home-secretary-says.html?ref=goodoil.news) who attempt to reach the UK in small boats from northern France are raped on their journey, according to the Home Secretary. Now, this isn’t some ‘far-right’ Reform politician: it’s the Pakistani Muslim Labour Home Secretary. Yet, even as she admits that “every woman that’s in the north of France has probably been raped along the journey”, and “some of the men too”, she steadfastly refuses to draw the obvious conclusion: *Britain is being swamped by Muslim and African rapists.* Oh, no: the *real* problem, according to **Shabana Mahmood**, is indigenous Britons who don’t want millions of rapists flooding into their country. > ‘So let’s just be really clear about who and what they are. They don’t think I’m a true Brit and they hate the fact that I’m a Muslim.’ And…? > She added that she considered herself part of the ‘pro-Palestine cause’ and said she felt ‘very uncomfortable’ over the arrests of activists opposing the ban imposed on Palestine Action. Read that part again: she admits to supporting the terrorists in Gaza, and backs supporters of the *proscribed violent terrorist group* ‘Palestine Action’. So, when she says, in relation to said terrorist group, “You’ve got to be able to apply your principles… when it’s something you, you know, with your whole heart, are feeling very passionately about,” Britons are entitled to ask just what her principles are. Because, apparently she feels very passionate about supporting proscribed terrorists. --- 💡 ****If you enjoyed this article please share it using the share buttons at the top or bottom of the article.** ### New Welfare Policies Only Raise More Questions URL: https://goodoil.news/new-welfare-policies-only-raise-more-questions/ Last updated: 2026-10-11T23:29:59.000Z National has announced a five-point welfare plan that applies almost entirely to Jobseeker/Work Ready beneficiaries. The first is random testing for drugs. According to MSD Minister Louise Upston: > Under our policy, a first failed test will be recorded and a second failed test will trigger a clinical alcohol and drug assessment. Where someone then fails to meet their obligations, the normal sanctions regime will apply, which could include reductions to their benefit. There are already thousands of people on benefits other than the Jobseeker/Work Ready benefit whose primary incapacity is substance abuse. These people are medically certified and do not have work obligations. There aren’t enough resources right now to address addiction. The wait time for drug and alcohol services is getting longer. So what happens after the newly proposed “clinical alcohol and drug assessment”? If a Jobseeker beneficiary is assessed with a substance abuse problem, won’t he or she simply be moved onto a different benefit to await rehab? But if drug-testing Jobseekers is a good idea, why not unemployed mothers on Sole Parent Support? Children need protection from the growing meth scourge. According to ESR, between 2015 and 2022 there were 20 infant deaths where meth was found in their system. It is safe to assume at least some – if not most – of those children would have had a parent on welfare. In any case, why should anyone with a drug habit receive a cash benefit? At the very least they should be on an electronic money management card. Why should the taxpayer fund drug habits? National has also announced that if a Jobseeker has been dependent for two of the last three years, their benefit rate will be reduced. Fair enough. To get people off welfare we need to increase the margin between benefit incomes and earned incomes. But it is households with children where the margin is virtually non-existent. There is already a substantial margin between welfare and work for young, single and childless beneficiaries. Again, the policy seems ill-targeted. Another part of the new plan is that Jobseekers will have their stand-down period extended from 13 to 26 weeks if they repeatedly “leave employment without good and sufficient reason”. If people repeatedly leave jobs for no good reason there should be no entitlement. The jobseeker benefit is a safety net – not an enabler to drop-out as and when it suits. The last item I want to comment on is extending the residency qualification for a main benefit from two to five years. This seems fairly pointless, because, currently, non-residents who don’t qualify for main benefits can qualify for emergency benefits, for example, refugees. The consequence of this change will simply be a sharp increase in the number of people on an Emergency Benefit, which pays the same rate as a main benefit. In conclusion, while sounding good in theory, it’s a not a sound plan. It ignores the problem of inter-generational, sole-parent driven dependency, and it will move people around in the benefit system rather than out of it. This article was originally published on the [author’s blog](https://lindsaymitchell.blogspot.com/2026/10/nationals-new-welfare-policies-only.html?ref=goodoil.news). ### The Indoctrination Must Stop but Labour Would Double Down URL: https://goodoil.news/the-indoctrination-must-stop-but-labour-would-double-down/ Last updated: 2026-10-11T23:00:00.000Z [**Pee Kay**](https://nominister.wordpress.com/2026/10/09/the-indoctrination-must-stop-but-labour-would-double-down/?ref=goodoil.news) *No Minister* The University of Canterbury’s 2026 ‘Social Studies’ bridging curriculum is a glaring example of how university lecturers and given free rein to engage in uncompromising and aggressive ideological brainwashing. This practice seems to now be standard in New Zealand’s tertiary education. As John Raine notes, today’s lecture room has degraded into a space for fixed-view discourses, arguments that are completely lacking a validated foundation. All endorsed by a university hierarchy openly intent on destroying the foundations objective learning. When subjective belief trumps established truths, genuine critical thinking completely leaves the room. Instead of equipping law-bound students with objective analysis, this course forces compliance with radical social justice doctrines. It is an environment where students are instructed that even basic, logical counter-arguments – such as stating ***‘not all white people are racist’*** – are dismissed as just another form of ***‘white supremacy’.*** How can you counter such powerful and invasive indoctrination? This is institutional indoctrination masquerading as higher learning. It is education weaponised to instil collective guilt and enforce a singular political worldview. This systematic indoctrination is reshaping how young minds view accountability and race. Even more damning is the total inertia from government regulators, who continuously look the other way as universities abandon academic excellence for political activism. Surely the government must intervene and halt this state-funded ideological capture before independent, objective thought is erased entirely from our campuses? Have a read of John Raine’s excellent Substack post and see if you agree with me. This article was originally published by [No Minister](https://nominister.wordpress.com/2026/10/09/the-indoctrination-must-stop-but-labour-would-double-down/?ref=goodoil.news). ### ‘Kill Jews’ Nurses Try Absurd Legal Ploy URL: https://goodoil.news/kill-jews-nurses-try-absurd-legal-ploy-2/ Last updated: 2026-10-11T22:29:59.000Z Maybe we can call this the Albanese Defence: when you’re caught on video explicitly and unambiguously doing something, straight-up deny what the footage clearly shows. But the two Sydney Muslim nurses who bragged on video about killing Jews are taking another leaf from the Albanese government’s book: when there’s unambiguous evidence of Islamic malfeasance, try and get a legal gag on anyone seeing the video and believing their lyin’ eyes, which is what [Albanese’s eKaren](https://goodoil.news/ekaren-is-up-to-her-usual-tricks/) tried to do, when a Muslim stabbed a Sydney bishop on live webcam. It seems the theatre of the absurd is now the primary jurisdiction of the New South Wales legal system. We find our protagonists, **Sarah Abu Lebdeh** and **Ahmad Rashad Nadir**, retreating into the mists of constitutional litigation just as they were meant to face the music in the district court. How convenient. > [The trial of two](https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/sydney-nurses-trial-over-alleged-israeli-patient-threats-derailed-by-high-court-challenge/news-story/50df25b99dd51e43b9a4063ca5ee2dc5?ref=goodoil.news) former nurses who allegedly threatened to kill Israeli patients at Sydney’s Bankstown Hospital has been vacated for a second time, after the pair launched a constitutional challenge to the High Court. You almost have to admire the sheer audacity of the gambit. Having been caught on camera, that most inconvenient of witnesses, allegedly making rather colourful declarations about sending patients to the afterlife, they now pivot to the High Court. They intend to argue that their alleged threats somehow constitute ‘political communication’. One wonders if the Hippocratic Oath has been quietly replaced in their curriculum with the Hamas charter and a manual on constitutional obstructionism. The legal machinery, predictably, grinds to a halt. The various attorneys-general have been alerted, and until these luminaries of the law have had their fill of correspondence, the wheels of justice are effectively chocked. It is a slow, expensive charade, designed perhaps to exhaust the public’s memory until the original footage feels like a fever dream from a bygone era. The specifics of the incident, should our illustrious eKaren permit us to recall them, are chillingly direct. The video, captured while they were ostensibly being paid by the taxpayer to provide care, allegedly (a legalistic nicety the media have to observe while the trial grinds on) featured commentary that leaves very little to the imagination. > Mr Nadir allegedly said in the video: “You have no idea how many (Israeli people) come to this hospital … I send to Jahannam”, the Arabic translation for “hell”. Ms Abu Lebdeh is alleged to have said she would not treat Israeli patients but “kill them”. “It (Israel) is Palestine’s country, not your country, you piece of shit.” Apparently, the legal eagles representing our pair believe that threatening to murder Jews is a form of civic discourse protected by the spirit of the Australian Constitution. It is a breathtaking stretch of the imagination, even by the standards of glass-jawed Islam and our modern judiciary. The broader constitutional question – this ‘implied freedom of political communication’ – is becoming the ultimate ‘get out of jail free’ card for those who find the laws of a civilised society rather restrictive. It is a judge-made doctrine, concocted in 1992, which lacks the minor detail of ever having been put to a referendum of the people. It has since become a favourite weapon for activists looking to strike down the statutes of a sovereign parliament. > [It only protects](https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/even-if-the-bankstown-nurses-win-in-the-high-court-ultimate-success-could-be-illusory/news-story/1ab3b88cc673261253275eba7ab16708?ref=goodoil.news) communication on politics and governmental issues. Exactly what these nurses said is the key issue that is currently before the NSW District Court – and that needs to be left to the courts. The secondary issue is even more important: Will their plain words be characterised by a court as statements that somehow concerned politics and governmental matters? The absurdity is gob-smacking. If calling for the death of a patient on the basis of their national origin is considered ‘political communication’, then we have truly entered a post-civilisational state. The High Court now finds itself the arbiter of what constitutes ‘political speech’ versus, say, simple, unadulterated menace. While the lawyers sharpen their quills and the court dates are pushed further into the horizon, the rest of us are left to wonder whether the law exists to protect the citizenry from such behaviour, or to protect the perpetrators from the consequences of it. --- 💡 ****If you enjoyed this article please share it using the share buttons at the top or bottom of the article.** ### How It Will Pan Out URL: https://goodoil.news/how-it-will-pan-out/ Last updated: 2026-10-11T21:59:59.000Z Cartoon of the day by SonovaMin _This post is for paying subscribers only._ ### Not Free to Criticise at Massey Uni? URL: https://goodoil.news/not-free-to-criticise-at-massey-uni/ Last updated: 2026-10-11T21:29:59.000Z Last month, a member of the public filed a formal complaint against Massey University’s Distinguished Professor Peter Schwerdtfeger that raises a fundamental question: Are university staff allowed to publicly criticise aspects of Māori culture – whether spiritual beliefs, tikanga, language, life choices or history – without attracting official investigation or censure? The complainant sent a 3100-word missive to the vice-chancellor in a belated response to five columns the professor had co-written three years ago that discussed university funding, decolonisation and mātauranga Māori. The university has summarised the essence of the complaint as asking whether criticisms of “Māori bodies, colonisation, mātauranga Māori and about Māori studies, te reo Māori, and Māori presence at universities reflect the values of Massey University”. It would seem the complainant – who prefers not to be named – thinks that any such criticism is an outrage, even when made in a personal capacity. In fact, Schwerdtfeger and his academic co-authors explicitly stated in the columns: “The opinions expressed here are those of the writers, and not of the universities with which they are or were formerly affiliated.” In her letter, the complainant acknowledged the disclaimer but dismissed it. The university has instigated a formal investigation. Of course, if it functioned properly as a traditional institute of higher learning, its response to the complaint could have been simple and immediate: “We are a university! All ideas are contestable and open to criticism in our search for truth. Those are the values we hold dear and will defend to the last.” The complaint should have been instantly rejected. However, Massey has opened itself up to grievances of this nature by committing the university to being a “Tiriti-led” institution. This commitment – which includes “valuing, advancing and protecting mātauranga Māori as a distinct and important knowledge system” – is one avenue the complainant is using to test Massey’s “values”. Ironically, the university’s Academic Freedom Policy has been so watered down that the complainant has been able to appeal to that too in her objections. She questioned whether the columns are “consistent with… \[the policy’s\] commitments to respectful dialogue, mana-enhancing civility, equal access to speech, and awareness of speech that may silence, stigmatise, victimise or marginalise people on grounds of ethnicity, cultural difference, race or national origin”. Her letter was couched in personal terms: “I am Māori, and my eldest \[daughter\] is in her final year of school and has Massey on her shortlist for a degree in Māori Studies. We were at the Manawatū open day earlier this year and she came home set on it… \[but\] I have since read a series of articles co-authored by Professor Peter Schwerdtfeger of the New Zealand Institute for Advanced Study, published on the Bassett, Brash and Hide website between June and December 2023, each carrying his Massey title. Having read them, I no longer feel confident about my daughter enrolling at Massey.” Again, an institution dedicated to higher learning should have had no hesitation in rejecting the complaint. Its response should have been simple: “If your daughter is unable to cope with hearing ideas or criticisms she doesn’t agree with, she is clearly not ready for university.” Given the daughter wanted to enrol in Māori Studies, it is very unlikely, of course, that she would have encountered Professor Schwerdtfeger, unless she suddenly discovered a new passion for the hard sciences he specialises in, namely high-level theoretical chemistry and physics. The mother said her daughter wanted “to learn maramataka, rongoā, whakapapa and te reo properly, and she wants to do it at a university that thinks it is worth learning”. Maramataka is the traditional lunar calendar used to track time, energy levels, and the best days for fishing, planting, and harvesting. Rongoā focuses on herbal remedies using native plants alongside massage and physical alignment intended to release physical blockages and shift spiritual energy. Spiritual healing is purportedly achieved via karakia and other incantations, prayers, and spiritual connections that maintain the mauri (life force) and wairua (spirit) during the healing process. Herbal medicines, calculations of wairua and mauri, and traditional lunar calendars are worthy of study at a university as anthropological phenomena but not as subjects to be taught uncritically – any more than students should expect biblical accounts of creation to be presented in lectures as just another “knowledge system” deserving the same status as science. The complainant’s jeremiad is also directed at the criticisms Schwerdtfeger and his co-authors made about the promotion of te reo, and their questioning “whether public money should be spent promoting a language spoken fluently by only three per cent of New Zealanders, one that is not used outside this country and that cannot easily be adapted to the sciences…” Instead of answering those criticisms directly, the complainant then resorted to a cry-bully’s tactics: > Te reo Māori is an official language of this country. It reached three per cent because of what the state did to it. To see that figure used as an argument against its revival, by a professor at a university that has a Māori name \[Te Kunenga ki Pūrehuroa\] in its own title, is difficult to reconcile with anything Massey says about itself in its recruitment material. Massey should rightly offer te reo as an academic subject – indeed it has been taught at New Zealand universities since 1929 – but it is not a university’s job to try to revitalise it to atone for the state’s alleged role in its demise. No one expects a university to promote sign language, for instance, even though that is an official language too. The complainant also objected to one of the columns stating that colonisation had “brought benefits to indigenous people and that in New Zealand it ended inter-tribal wars….” That colonisation brought benefits to Māori is indisputable – which they were quick to recognise at the time as they clamoured to learn to read and write, converted to Christianity and invited Pākehā to settle near them to share in the prosperity and the advanced technology they brought from the outside world. Nevertheless, the complainant seemed to think the benefits of colonisation could be dismissed out of hand, given that the writers failed to mention “the New Zealand Wars, the confiscations, the Native Land Court and the Tohunga Suppression Act…” It would appear she has little knowledge of the petitions presented to parliament in the 19th century by Māori leaders for their children to be taught only in English at school or the fact the Tohunga Suppression Act was driven by prominent Māori politicians including Sir James Carroll, and all four MPs holding Māori electorates – including Āpirana Ngata – voted in favour of the bill. Her objections are, in fact, a compendium of the received opinions we have come to expect from apologists for Māori nationalism – and the predictable outrage when anyone dares to publicly reject them. It should be deeply embarrassing for Massey to be obliged to convene a panel to consider whether the articles written by three senior academics “reflect its values”. Schwerdtfeger – an academic heavyweight with an international reputation – will have to prepare a defence. He’s up for the fight. As he told Sean Plunket on the Platform: > When I see the kind of pseudo-science coming out in New Zealand at the moment under the umbrella of mātauranga Māori… as a scientist, I have to reject that and write about it. It is not the first time he has locked horns with Massey’s management over academic freedom and free speech. And he publicly defended the seven Auckland University professors who wrote a letter to the *Listener* in 2021 that rejected a purported equivalence between mātauranga Māori and science. Plunket asked Schwerdtfeger why he continues to work at Massey. After all, he is highly regarded internationally and would undoubtedly not suffer from lack of opportunities to teach at more prestigious universities. He replied: > Basically, I’m a little bit of a voice for all the academics who don’t dare to speak out. And, he added, he is “really positive about the new leadership” – and confident that the new vice-chancellor, appointed in February, “will do the right thing”. Plunket: “Should the complaint have got this far?” Schwerdtfeger: “Absolutely not – because some of the points are ridiculous.” A ruling is expected by the end of the month. This article was originally published by [Brash and Mitchell](https://www.brashandmitchell.com/post/graham-adams-is-criticism-of-ma-ori-culture-permitted-at-massey-uni?ref=goodoil.news). ### The Good Oil Daily Opinion Poll URL: https://goodoil.news/the-good-oil-daily-opinion-poll-394/ Last updated: 2026-10-11T21:14:59.000Z Take our Daily Opinion Poll and see how your views compare to other readers and then share the poll on social media. By sharing the poll you will help even more readers to discover *The Good Oil.* --- ### Country First It Must Be URL: https://goodoil.news/country-first-it-must-be/ Last updated: 2026-10-11T20:59:59.000Z Last week’s RNZ-Reid Research poll was anything but good news for those on the centre right. National crashed and the Greens surged. Opportunity sits knocking on the door. This is not the time to muse over whether this was a rogue poll. You could make a case for that, bearing in mind it was a RNZ poll and if their bias on air was translated into the poll via the framing of the questions asked...who knows. The fact is there are too many polls now all telling, to various degrees, the same story. National is in deep trouble. We all know why. The fact is that these polls represent damage: damage to the National Party itself, damage to its brand and damage to what it is supposed to stand for. The alarm bells that have been ringing for some time, on *The Good Oi*l and elsewhere, warning of the situation the party now finds itself in, have been completely ignored. The voters who put National in government have basically been told to ‘bugger off’. This is a classic ‘thanks but no thanks’ scenario. We have been hoodwinked, ignored and given a ‘get lost’ message. This is the opposite to rewarding loyalty. This ‘we know best’ attitude now has the party, at 25.9 per cent. It is a disaster. National historically has been strongly rooted in conservatism and the majority of those who vote for it largely share that viewpoint. The question must then be asked how the party got to where it is now. The answer has to align with where the blame for the 25.9 per cent figure sits. At the last election National garnered 38.06 per cent of the vote. Since then approximately 13 per cent of people who voted for National have walked away. Those reasons have not been recognised or addressed in any way by the party. It’s the old story: ‘I didn’t leave the party, the party left me.’ There is another adage: ‘The rot starts at the top.’ National’s current misery, in my view, can be sheeted back to one man: the one who addressed the National Party conference a couple of weeks ago and uttered words to the effect that if we wanted a strong National-led Government then it has to be two ticks blue and if we split our votes we are worse than dumb. I think we can reliably lay the start of National’s problems at the door of John Key. He started a divide in the party that exists to this day: a policy divide between conservative economics and the liberal socialism that Key introduced. Luxon, whom Key has mentored, has continued down this path. The fact there have been two leadership coups this term, within five months of each other, shows that the policy divide has spilled over. This has been a terrible look for the party and why many who voted for it in 2023 no longer want a strong National-led Government. I suggest most who walked have done so because they do not agree with the party’s stance on various social issues. I’m talking about things like abortion, climate change, euthanasia, the Treaty and other issues pertaining to race. In August 2024 Key, again speaking to a party conference, urged the government to tread carefully on Māori issues. “The important thing is that we’re all New Zealanders and I think everybody wants to live in a place where we can respect one another, get along well and foster a better New Zealand. So I’d kind of encourage everyone to maybe take the temperature down a wee bit.” Fine words but tinged with some naivety. The problem is, couched in those terms, those on the indigenous side had no intention of following that rhetoric. The situation was not helped by Key allowing Pita Sharples to sign us up to UNDRIP. There is no way we can have what Key is suggesting when one side is hell bent on going in the opposite direction. National, to this day, persists in pussyfooting around Māori issues, instead of wielding the big stick they talked about on the 2023 campaign trail. So now we have a divided governing party governing over a divided country. National deserves credit for its handling of the economy in what has been, unarguably, difficult times. Luxon has performed well on the world stage. The economy, by all accounts, is turning a corner and Willis deserves some credit for that. Bishop has overall done a good job in his roles. We would all be in a far worse situation had the other lot been in charge. This bring us to another divide: generational. People of a conservative mind, largely older voters, do not support the more liberal social approach introduced by Key. These people make up a sizeable percentage of National voters and, to put it mildly, they have been shabbily treated by the political leadership. You might be from a younger generation, but you cannot, and have no right to, foist your views on those who put you into the position of power. You are there to serve them, not give them the middle finger. This is why National is bleeding support. The party opened a wound with voters on the right that will not be fixed without them making basic changes. First, recognise and respect those who voted for you. Second, act on their wishes – many of which the party actually campaigned on. Third, on the social front, get back to being a true conservative party. The political leadership of the party has, through its determination to fulfil its own agenda, taken the party down and now threatens to take the country down with it. That cannot be allowed to happen. The country must come first. Split voting is now non-negotiable. If the other side gets in we are finished, at least in the short to medium term. Split voting is the only way to ensure a win on the right. This means losing the likes of Willis and Bishop. I’m sorry but in every war there are casualties. Following the election, win or lose, there must immediately be a change of leader. Luxon has to go. That is also non-negotiable. He must be replaced by a person who holds conservative views, both economically and socially. ### Your Daily Ten@10 - 2026/188 URL: https://goodoil.news/your-daily-ten-10-2026-188/ Last updated: 2026-10-11T20:59:59.000Z **This is edition 2026/188 of the *Ten@10* newsletter.** Hi all, This is the Ten@10, where I collate and summarise ten news items you generally won't see in the mainstream media. Enjoy! --- ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/01-ten188.png) ## 1\. Democracy Briefing: Who's afraid of the billionaire question? *Bryce Edwards - The Democracy Project* - 🎤 Jack Tame noted the NBR Rich List now counts 26 New Zealand billionaires, up from 18 a year earlier, and asked Luxon and Hipkins: “Is it morally acceptable for any one person to be a billionaire?” Neither gave him the yes or no he wanted. - 📰 Since then John Key, Tamatha Paul, Chris Penk, Simeon Brown and various commentators have weighed in, often with considerably more conviction than the two leaders. - 💰 Edwards says it is not just theoretical: some of the billionaires being defended and attacked are among the campaign’s biggest backers, and Harry Mowbray, father of the billionaire Zuru entrepreneurs, is running a strategic-voting campaign to help the centre-right. - ⚖️ David Harvey objected that the question “assumes wealth needs moral permission”, and Penk defended the leaders. Edwards agrees the yes or no demand was a gimmick, but calls it arguably the best question of the night because neither leader could answer from a script. - 💣 Tame told Tova O’Brien both leaders treated it “like an unexploded hand grenade”, and he could not understand why Luxon did not simply say National wanted more billionaires, businesses and entrepreneurs. - 🏠 Bryan Bruce thought Hipkins missed a social-democratic argument: “How much inequality should a democratic society tolerate when some citizens cannot afford adequate housing, healthcare or food?” Edwards calls that a better question. - 🚀 At the Herald’s “Future of New Zealand” debate, Sir John Key demanded, “What sort of wowsers have we become?”, pointed to Peter Beck and Graeme Hart, and called the idea there was something wrong with their success “nuts”. - 🟢 Green MP Tamatha Paul called extreme wealth parasitic and said billionaires “need to pay their fair share”, adding “I’m not saying they should not exist altogether.” Faced by RNZ’s Guyon Espiner with James Cameron, who with his wife gave the Greens $50,000 in 2023, she would not condemn him personally. - 🥊 Edwards calls Paul’s sweeping denunciation a bit of a fail, and Key’s answer inadequate because it dodged the harder questions about inequality and the distribution of wealth. - 💡 Takeaway: a former National prime minister and a Green MP offered a more interesting ideological contest than the two men competing to lead the next government. [Read More](https://www.democracyproject.org.nz/p/democracy-briefing-whos-afraid-of?ref=goodoil.news) --- ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/02-ten188.jpg) ## 2\. A Stupid Question *David Harvey - A Halfling’s View* - ❓ Harvey calls the debate question on whether it is moral to be a billionaire one of the more absurd to emerge from the leaders’ debate, and says it should have been rejected at the outset. - ⚖️ The question, he writes, “assumes wealth needs moral permission, as if the default is guilt.” An honestly earned fortune is an achievement to admire, not something to excuse. - 🧠 Wealth is not a fixed pile the rich have grabbed, he argues. It is created by minds, and money is a tool of exchange representing productive effort, not the root of evil. - 🤝 A billionaire who got rich selling products people freely chose to buy has dealt with millions of people as a trader. Everyone judged themselves better off, and nobody was forced. - 🚫 He calls the claim that billionaires owe their wealth to society an immoral demand, and says taxing fortunes to redistribute them means taking by threat what someone earned. - 🏭 Billionaires do not hold a billion dollars in cash, he notes. Most of it is ownership stakes in companies that already employ people, fund research and build infrastructure. - 🚀 The chance of an enormous payoff draws capital and talent into risky ventures, and large fortunes fund things governments neglect, such as the Gates Foundation’s work on malaria and polio. - 🔍 Judge conduct, not net worth: did they treat workers fairly, pay their taxes as the law requires and avoid harming others? - 💡 Takeaway: Harvey calls it the most inane, stupid and irrelevant question posed in the campaign so far. [Read More](https://djhdcj.substack.com/p/a-stupid-question) --- ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/03-ten188.png) ## 3\. THE NATIONAL PARTY’S DEATH WISH *John McLean - John’s Substack* - 🗳️ McLean says National is pushing “two ticks National”. John Key told the 27 September campaign launch that voters thinking otherwise were “stupid”, and campaign manager Simeon Brown repeated the message on The Platform. - 🔀 He argues Nat/Nat voting actually reduces the chances of a National, ACT and NZ First government. For right-leaning voters, he says, the best tactic is the National candidate plus ACT or NZ First on the party vote. - ✅ There is nothing untoward about vote splitting under MMP, which contemplates it, and he notes the Māori Party is promoting it for its own ends. - 👑 He puts National’s stance down to “a vainglorious delusion of entitlement”, a divine right to govern. - 📉 National won just over 38% at the last election and is polling about 28%. On that, he says, Nicola Willis, Chris Bishop, Paul Goldsmith and Speaker Gerry Brownlee would not be back in Parliament. - 📺 From the TVNZ debate he lists Luxon’s “clangers”: not conceding it is not immoral to be a billionaire, saying he had not read the medical school admissions report, deferring to the ICJ on Gaza, and ruling out Opportunity. - 😠 McLean says Key’s 8 October interview with Sean Plunket made clear his aversion to vote splitting stems from personal hatred of Winston Peters, and that Key would rather a Hipkins government than an emboldened NZ First. - 🇬🇧 For where National is heading, he points to the shrivelled British Conservative Party. - 💡 Takeaway: “Nationalism is a powerful force for good and National is no longer nationalist.” [Read More](https://mcleanj.substack.com/p/the-national-partys-death-wish) --- ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/04-ten188.png) ## 4\. RODNEY HIDE: Tamatha Paul has found the immoral ones. She should check the caucus room *Rodney Hide - Brash & Mitchell* - 🎵 After Jack Tame’s billionaire question, Green MP Tamatha Paul told TikTok, “The answer is yes,” calling billionaire wealth “parasitic”. - 🎯 She then promised to quit politics if anyone could name an ethical billionaire among New Zealand’s 26. - 🎬 On RNZ’s Midday Report, Guyon Espiner named James Cameron, a New Zealand citizen on this year’s Rich List at $1.6 billion, who with his wife gave the Greens $50,000 in 2023\. Paul said she would not go through billionaires individually. - 💸 Hide notes Green MP Golriz Ghahraman had pushed a member’s bill to cap political donations at $35,000 a year. It failed, and Cameron’s cheque was not returned. - 🩺 Offered Bill Gates, Paul said he was “popping up in the Epstein files”. So the test, Hide says, is really the company you keep. - 🏛️ He then looks at the company she keeps: Metiria Turei’s benefit and enrolment admissions, Ghahraman’s shoplifting case, Darleen Tana’s expulsion under the waka-jumping law, Elizabeth Kerekere’s exit, Julie Anne Genter’s contempt finding and Benjamin Doyle. - 🏠 In August Paul told the House that National’s Grant McCallum bought a Wellington house to claim allowances. He had bought in Paihia, in his electorate, and is still waiting for an apology. - 🛒 In a market, Hide says, nobody gets a cent unless someone hands it over willingly. The only outfit that takes your money without asking is the one Paul works for. - 💡 Takeaway: Paul promised to quit if anyone named an ethical billionaire. Espiner offered one, the one who gave her party fifty grand. “She’s still in politics.” [Read More](https://www.brashandmitchell.com/post/rodney-hide-tamatha-paul-has-found-the-immoral-ones-she-should-check-the-caucus-room?ref=goodoil.news) --- ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/05-ten188.jpg) ## 5\. The chickens come home to roost *Liam Hehir - The Blue Review* - 🏉 Hehir says the 2026 result is likely to turn on four small but potentially decisive bounces of the rugby ball. - 🟠 First, Opportunity. It is the only minor party positioning in the centre, the major-party vote is at an all-time low, and most polling has it above 5%. If it cannot break through this year, it never will. - 🔵 Second, National’s overhang. He thinks it more likely than not that National keeps about five more electorates than its party vote entitles it to, though he is no fan of efforts to intensify that. - 🟤 Third, Te Pāti Māori’s overt gaming of the system to engineer its own overhang, which he says is drawing much less consternation in the mainstream media. - 📅 Fourth, enrolment now closes at midnight on 25 October, before advance voting opens, which may slightly blunt the usual drift of special votes to the left. - ⚠️ The overhang is the one that will damage our constitution, he argues. If National wins on an overhang, Labour will not hold back on a Māori-seat overhang next time, and escalation follows. - 🇺🇸 He points to the US Senate filibuster: Democrats scrapped it for executive-branch and lower-court nominees in 2013, Republicans extended that to the Supreme Court in 2017, and the “Flight 93 election” logic took hold. - 🇫🇷 The better warning is France’s Fourth Republic, with more than twenty governments between 1946 and 1958, until the Algerian crisis brought in de Gaulle. - 💡 Takeaway: stability needs both sides to show restraint, and Hehir fears our point of no return “is now firmly in the rear-view mirror.” [Read More](https://thebluereview.substack.com/p/the-chickens-come-home-to-roost) --- ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/06-ten188.png) ## 6\. After the Fourth Listen to Rubio's Soaring Rhetoric... *Olivia Pierson - OliviaPierson.org* - 🎙️ Pierson says it is “still like dying and going to heaven” to hear Secretary of State Rubio raise the bar in political discourse, and quotes him at length. - 🏛️ The ancients, Rubio says, believed in the great man who obtains immortality through his deeds, won by striving and sacrificing for something larger than himself. - ⚔️ His examples: Socrates refusing to abandon the inquiry into truth, the 300 Spartans fighting to the last man, and Achilles choosing glory at Troy over a long, peaceful life. - ✝️ Those qualities shaped the Western moral imagination, he says, from the Christian martyr and Saint Thomas More to the Alamo and the Declaration of Independence’s pledge of “our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.” - 🫡 From the Greeks the West inherited its sense of duty: the soldier who will not abandon his post, the captain who goes down with his ship. - ☠️ He contrasts that with Iran’s radical mullahs, whose cult of death hails child suicide bombers. “Our heroes may be willing to die for their cause; but our heroes do not worship death.” - 🌍 These values, Rubio says, are not universal but the product of a distinct character, and of a civilisation “we must fight to defend today”. - 🇳🇿 Pierson’s response: “Oh God, a 1000 times, Amen!” She tags Winston Peters, David Seymour, Christopher Luxon, Chris Hipkins and Chlöe Swarbrick. - 💡 Takeaway: she calls this the rightful future of political discourse. “A command to RISE.” [Read More](https://www.oliviapierson.org/blog/after-the-fourth-listen-to-rubios-soaring-rhetoric?ref=goodoil.news) --- ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/07-ten188.jpg) ## 7\. RODNEY HIDE: Everything blew up in Elon Musk's face. Then he made a trillion dollars *Rodney Hide - Brash & Mitchell* - 📰 In April last year RNZ ran a CNN piece headlined “Everything is blowing up in Elon Musk’s face”, reporting he had lost US$100 billion in three months. - 🗞️ The Atlantic, The New York Times and a Listener book review piled on. “Shattered. Broken. Finished.” - 🚀 On 12 June SpaceX listed on the Nasdaq, raising a record US$75 billion, and Musk became the world’s first trillionaire. Forbes puts him at about US$1 trillion. - 🚗 Tesla is worth about US$1.48 trillion, Tesla New Zealand’s revenue nearly doubled last year to $285.3 million, and this week Trump gave Musk the National Medal of Science. - 🛰️ Falcon boosters have landed more than 660 times, and Falcon 9 flew a record 165 times last year. Starlink has about 11,000 satellites and over 10 million subscribers, and got news out of Wairoa after Cyclone Gabrielle. - 🗣️ He bought Twitter for US$44 billion, handed over the Twitter Files and introduced Community Notes, which Meta copied in January 2025. - 🤖 Tesla robotaxis carry the public in parts of six US cities with nobody at the wheel, and xAI built its Colossus supercomputer in 122 days. Neuralink, the Boring Company and Optimus robots complete the list. - 🙊 The media never corrected itself, Hide says. RNZ and the Herald ran the trillionaire news off the wires with no reflection. - 💡 Takeaway: “It wasn’t an explosion. It was lift-off.” Rather than welcome him, Hide says, we throw rocks, as Tamatha Paul did this week in calling billionaire wealth “parasitic”. [Read More](https://www.brashandmitchell.com/post/rodney-hide-everything-blew-up-in-elon-musk-s-face-then-he-made-a-trillion-dollars?ref=goodoil.news) --- ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/08-ten188.jpg) ## 8\. Still too clever by half *Liam Hehir - The Blue Review* - 🎓 Hehir calls Don Brash highly intelligent and says he understands the mechanics of MMP perfectly well. As a former Reserve Bank governor, his statistical intuitions are probably superior to Hehir’s own. - 🤨 His political foresight is another matter. Brash came close to endorsing Winston Peters in 2017. - 🗳️ Brash was impressed enough by NZ First’s promise of a referendum on the Māori seats, a Hobson’s Pledge priority, that he publicly contemplated voting for the party. “How did that work out?” - 📰 Brash was responding to Hehir’s Herald article calling the vote-split campaign a fool’s errand. - 🔢 Brash spends considerable energy explaining how an engineered overhang could give the coalition a three-year stay of execution. Hehir says nobody has really disputed that. - ⚖️ What is in contention, he writes, is not the electoral mathematics but the electoral politics. - 🔵 He concedes a small National overhang looks plausible on current polling, an organic result of a party polling under 30% while holding around two-thirds of the electorates. - 💡 Takeaway: the real question, Hehir says, is how many extra seats an organised strategic-voting campaign would bring, at what cost, and at what greater risk. [Read More](https://thebluereview.substack.com/p/still-too-clever-by-half) --- ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/09-ten188.png) ## 9\. Tactical voting and the overhang strategy: a smart idea? *Grant Duncan - Politics Happens* - 🗳️ Duncan notes voters on both left and right are being urged to split their two MMP votes to maximise the overhang. - 📊 In 2023 just over a third of voters split. Te Pāti Māori won six of the seven Māori seats while Labour topped the party vote in all seven, giving TPM a two-seat overhang on 3.1% of the party vote. - ✅ Overhangs are “a feature, not a bug”, he writes. Candidates who win electorates won them fairly. - 🟤 TPM started the tug-of-war by asking Māori-roll voters to give their party votes to other left parties. One risk is that Labour and the Greens, possibly with Opportunity, form a government and leave TPM on the sidelines. - 🔵 On the right, some urge a National electorate vote with an ACT or NZ First party vote. National, worried about losing Nicola Willis and Chris Bishop, insists on “two ticks blue”. - 👍 For the strategy: it is within the rules, it can help cause or prevent a change of government, and it makes voters think ahead to government formation. - 👎 Against: voters become fodder for powerful influencers, gaming the system could prompt calls for another MMP referendum, people do not vote for their preferred party, and tactical votes can bring unknown list MPs into Parliament. - 📜 The “vote for a coalition” argument is misleading, he says. The ballot asks for one party, and coalitions are formed after the election. Key called split voting “the opposite of clever”, and Peters criticised him for it. - 💡 Takeaway: vote as you see fit, but heeding a call to vote tactically en masse “may not produce the expected result.” [Read More](https://grantduncanphd.substack.com/p/tactical-voting-and-the-overhang) --- ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/10-ten188.jpg) ## 10\. RICHARD PREBBLE: Bad news and more bad news for National *Richard Prebble - Brash & Mitchell* - 📉 The latest TVNZ-Verian poll has the coalition losing. - 🗺️ Applying a 5% swing, Prebble says National loses nine electorates: Banks Peninsula, Henderson, West Coast-Tasman, Hutt South, Wairarapa, Wigram, East Cape, Kāpiti and Mt Roskill. - 🔢 That leaves National 36 electorates. On 29% of the party vote it is entitled to 35 MPs, so not one National list MP would be elected, and winning back Tāmaki makes the arithmetic worse. - 📝 His caveats: polls measure the party vote, not the electorate vote, he assumed a uniform swing, and he did not allocate Opportunity’s support. - 🔀 At the last election nearly 60% of ACT party voters gave their electorate vote to National, and nearly 44% of Green voters gave theirs to Labour. - 🔵 The lesson, he says: on this poll the centre-right loses, and National’s two-ticks strategy is not working. - 🟤 Other polling suggests Te Pāti Māori’s electorate-only strategy could be enough to tip the balance. Strategic voting will decide the election. - 💡 Takeaway: Luxon saying he would rather not be in coalition is like planning to win Lotto. “Luxon needs a cup of tea with Seymour. And perhaps Peters too.” [Read More](https://www.brashandmitchell.com/post/richard-prebble-bad-news-and-more-bad-news-for-national?ref=goodoil.news) --- ## What our members are saying about Ten@10 **Elizabeth** These articles are compulsory reading for me and the perfect addition to the usual list of Goodoil items! **Lynne** Absolutely brilliant to receive these current and thought provoking articles. **Jonathan** Just wanted to let you know that I’m loving this new 10@10\. Much appreciated from someone who chooses to read/watch almost NO mainstream media. **Murray** Cam, relish your output as the newspaper in Christchurch is so intent on non news. Thankyou **Fred** Thanks for Ten @ Ten, really enjoy reading it.Keep it up. All the best, keep healthy. **Jocko** Wonderful info not otherwise available in NZ. More power to your elbow! Thanks. ### More Bad News for National URL: https://goodoil.news/more-bad-news-for-national/ Last updated: 2026-10-11T20:29:59.000Z [**Richard Prebble**](https://richardprebble.substack.com/p/bad-news-and-more-bad-news-for-national) *Columnist, former cabinet minister and ACT Party leader.* The bad news is that the latest TVNZ-Verian poll has the coalition losing. The more bad news is that applying a five per cent swing based on the poll, National loses nine electorates: Banks Peninsula, Henderson, West Coast-Tasman, Hutt South, Wairarapa, Wigram, East Cape, Kāpiti and Mt Roskill. That leaves National with 36 electorates. At 29 per cent of the party vote, National is entitled to 35 MPs. If National wins back Tāmaki, the arithmetic gets even worse. **Not one National list MP would be elected.** I must add many qualifications. Polls measure the party vote, not the electorate vote. If the two were the same, ACT would not hold two electorates and the Greens three. I have assumed a uniform five per cent swing from the right to the left. I have not allocated Opportunity’s support because we do not know where its votes are coming from. At the last election, nearly 60 per cent of ACT Party voters gave their electorate vote to National. Nearly 44 per cent of Green voters gave their electorate vote to Labour. What will they do this election? The assumptions are considerable. But the political lesson is clear. On this poll, the centre-right loses. National’s two-ticks-for-National strategy is not working. Strategic voting is going to decide the election. Other polling indicates Te Pāti Māori will win electorates and its electorate only strategy could be enough to tip the balance. Christopher Luxon saying he would rather not be in coalition is like saying his plan is to win lotto. Luxon needs a cup of tea with Seymour. And perhaps Peters too. This article was originally published by [I’ve Been Thinking](https://richardprebble.substack.com/p/bad-news-and-more-bad-news-for-national). ### This Chant Against Israel URL: https://goodoil.news/this-chant-against-israel/ Last updated: 2026-10-11T20:14:59.000Z Driving New Zealand leftists since 2014 is a perverse determination to prove themselves worthy of Hamas. _This post is for paying subscribers only._ ### Willis Wants You to Stop Risking Her Job URL: https://goodoil.news/willis-wants-you-to-stop-risking-her-job/ Last updated: 2026-10-11T19:59:59.000Z **LilBaP** The poll and the interview are the same week and they do not agree with each other. The numbers say New Zealand First supplied what the coalition needed to stay ahead, had an election been held that week. Nicola Willis, on Duncan Garner’s show on Monday 5 October, as the poll was closing, told the people who had voted that way to stop. Kindly put it back. Trust is at stake, she says. From a politician, that is asking the day to be night. Curia for the Taxpayers’ Union, in the field 1–5 October, 1,000 voters, margin of error ±3.1 per cent, 2.5 per cent undecided. National 28.5 per cent, 37 seats. Labour 28.2, 36\. Greens 13.3, 17\. New Zealand First 12.0, up 3.6, 16 seats, up five. ACT 9.2, 12\. Opportunity 4.8 and no seats, with Curia itself putting a 42 per cent chance it is actually over the line. Te Pāti Māori 1.4, two seats. Coalition 65\. Opposition bloc 55\. National plus ACT is 49\. Labour plus the Greens is 53\. Neither governs without a partner. National and ACT together are on 49\. Add New Zealand First’s 16 and the same three parties are on 65, 10 clear of the other bloc. The five seats New Zealand First picked up since September are the whole of the movement. National gave two back. ACT gave two back. The coalition still went up one and it went up because of the party Willis spent Monday warning you off. She pleaded her case to viewers. A vote for anyone other than National risks handing Labour the upper hand in the talks, she told Garner. “That’s what a lot of people thought in 2017, Duncan. And then they watched Winston Peters make Jacinda Ardern prime minister. If you want to guarantee a National government, the way to do that is to party vote National.” Asked if Peters might go with Labour: “He did in 2017 and it’s hard to forget that.” Hard to forget and harder to count. She wants those five seats back in her own pile. On this poll they are the reason she might still be in government The maths of where the party vote goes is plainer than the interview. National on 28.5 per cent is worth about 37 seats. If it also wins about 37 electorates, the party vote has already been used up by the local MPs. Another party vote for National, past that line, does not hire another National MP. It sits in a pile that does not grow the caucus. The same vote given to ACT or New Zealand First does add another seat. Both are under the level where their list is full, both clear the threshold, and both sit on the same side of the House as the candidate you just elected. That is ‘better maths’. It is a seat that exists if the tick moves and does not exist if the tick stays where Willis wants it. Take those ticks back off New Zealand First and ACT and return them to National, which is what Willis’ advice amounts to. National’s caucus stays where the electorates already put it. The two partners shrink. The 65 has to be counted again, and it will not be counted up. Put the party vote with National and you are paying the woman who told you the partner was the risk. Put it with New Zealand First and you are voting the 16 seats that turned 60 into 65. Peters left a scar in 2017 and it is real. Hipkins also has a trust problem. He is a repeat offender, word salad and all, and on any other day he can cuddle up to Chlöe and Wong. Pointing your finger at Winston is a habit, not a distinction. National and Labour are close enough on the machinery that the minors, and MMP, are what now worries them. Careers that used to be settled inside the party can be settled by the party vote. That is the bit Willis would like you to forget before putting the tick on the ballot paper. This is why a party vote parked only with National, on 28.5 per cent and 37 seats, buys no extra list MP and a weaker hand for the partner she is trying to shrink. She wants a guarantee she cannot produce, and she has named the man who produces it as the risk. Give me a break. Looking back, 2017 is the wrong insurance policy. English sat down, had the numbers and did not close. Peters took Labour’s offer. The scar remains. Then in 2020 the country put Labour in on its own, near 50 per cent and New Zealand First was put out to the pasture. Blaming the partner for that landslide skips the fact that in 2020 the voters did it without him. This campaign cycle he is the one who has ruled Labour out in public and more than once. Willis is the one reviving that night, in the week his party did the heavy lifting. The list behind Peters is not the one-man show the scar remembers – it is the spine at this rodeo. The number that can still wreck the table is not 2017\. It is 4.8 per cent. Opportunity is just under the five per cent line and Curia says there is a 42 per cent chance the poll has it on the wrong side of that line. Stay under and the votes are wasted. The seats they would have won are shared out, which is part of why the coalition is on 65\. Cross the line and those votes become about six seats. The Opportunity party’s top donors have been plain that the point of the exercise is to keep New Zealand First out of government. That’s a real tell. A National-ACT-New Zealand First-Opportunity deal is not on offer. A Labour-Greens-Opportunity deal is the one those donors have already paid for. Willis wants a guarantee. The poll is already showing the way and it is not a second tick for National. National plus ACT is 49\. The coalition is 65 because New Zealand First is on 16\. On the electorate vote, tick the National candidate if that seat is still the one holding the line. On the party vote, tick ACT or New Zealand First. If Opportunity gets past the post and 4.8 per cent becomes six seats on the other side, you will forget 2017 very fast. Follow her advice and the room you get is the one already on 53 before Opportunity knocks: climate targets with a bill attached, UNDRIP as policy, the Treaty claims that do not close, and the universities and more public servants to keep nudging their way. She has asked you to protect a National government by voting against the seats that make one. Just remember it’s her job on the line if you party vote ACT or NZ First – and how is that your problem? ### Manurewa voting scandal: Claims locals asked to hand over blank local body election ballots URL: https://goodoil.news/manurewa-voting-scandal-claims-locals-asked-to-hand-over-blank-local-body-election-ballots/ Last updated: 2026-10-11T23:43:17.000Z Allegations of vote rigging and ballot theft in Manurewa's local elections spark concerns about electoral integrity and community trust in New Zealand's democratic processes. **Source:** [nzherald.co.nz](https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/auckland/manurewa-voting-scandal-claims-locals-asked-to-hand-over-blank-ballots/premium/EUMUVSXGNVELFNNDWZLU66TPZY/?ref=goodoil.news) *Re-published from the Centrist with permission* [Original article at The Centrist](https://centrist.nz/manurewa-voting-scandal-claims-locals-asked-to-hand-over-blank-local-body-election-ballots-R0cHM6Ly?ref=goodoil.news) ### 'Not as attractive as it used to be' - Winston Peters on living in NZ today URL: https://goodoil.news/not-as-attractive-as-it-used-to-be-winston-peters-on-living-in-nz-today/ Last updated: 2026-10-11T23:43:31.000Z Winston Peters asserts his pivotal role in New Zealand's upcoming election, challenging traditional two-party dominance and emphasizing New Zealand First's rejuvenated candidate list. **Source:** [rnz.co.nz](https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/1852240/not-as-attractive-as-it-used-to-be-winston-peters-on-living-in-nz-today?ref=goodoil.news) *Re-published from the Centrist with permission* [Original article at The Centrist](https://centrist.nz/not-as-attractive-as-it-used-to-be-winston-peters-on-living-in-nz-today-R0cHM6Ly?ref=goodoil.news) ### Quick Hit: Last Time It Cost Them Points URL: https://goodoil.news/quick-hit-last-time-it-cost-them-points/ Last updated: 2026-10-11T19:29:59.000Z ACT’s James Christmas and Paul Henry have gone after NZ First on abortion and foreign aid with four weeks to run. ACT is down to 9.2 in Curia. The last time ACT attacked Winston, it cost them points. _This post is for subscribers on the VIP tier only._ ### The National Party’s Death Wish URL: https://goodoil.news/the-national-partys-death-wish/ Last updated: 2026-10-11T19:29:59.000Z [**John McLean**](https://mcleanj.substack.com/p/the-national-partys-death-wish) *Citizen typist patriot* The National Party is repeating an ordained-from-on-high mantra that New Zealand voters must two-ticks National at the next general election, i.e., give both their electorate and party votes to the nosediving Nats. That voting, they say, is the best way to help ensure another National-led coalition government. At the National Party’s campaign launch on Sunday 27 September, ex-National Party Prime Minister John Key cajoled voters to two-ticks Nats and labelled all New Zealanders who are contemplating voting otherwise “stupid”. Two-ticks Nats is therefore clearly official, mandated Nats messaging, which campaign manager Simeon Brown repeated on media outlet **the Platform** (where PM Luxon refuses to appear) on Wednesday, 7 October. ![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!UA3Q!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F4bb10fc2-1cf4-4c51-8770-b9b8f43ec0ea_601x377.png) The cold, hard reality, however, is that Nat/Nat’ing will in actual fact reduce the chances of a right block (Nat/ACT/NZ First) government, compared to what could be achieved by strategic vote splitting. Under New Zealand’s MMP (Mixed Member Proportional) voting system, it’s simply indisputable that, for any voter who wants to see a Nat/ACT/NZF coalition government returned, the best tactic is to vote for their National candidate in the voter’s electorate and for either ACT or NZ First on the party vote list. Such voting is especially warranted if a voter’s National electorate candidate has a good chance of winning the electorate. To make this abundantly clear, there’s absolutely nothing rule-breaking or otherwise untoward about voting splitting under MMP. Dual electorate/party list MMP voting itself contemplates and therefore sanctions vote splitting. The Māori Party is promoting vote splitting, for its own ends. ![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!eFYu!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F8fe5541d-480d-4f7e-b9a9-824fb9344e80_808x537.png) I won’t explain vote splitting further. Numerous political boffins, tragics and partisans have done the whys and wherefores of split voting to death, including Harry Mowbray on his very own website: [Mowbray vote splitting](https://splityourvote.co.nz/?ref=goodoil.news). My interest is more in why the National Party is continuing to promote Nat/Nat voting that, based on current political polls, could well hand the election to a Labour-led leftist coalition government and cast the bewildered Nats into the wilderness. My best bet at the Nats’ psychology in pumping Nat/Nat ticking lies in a vainglorious delusion of entitlement to forever hold and wield political power – A Divine Right to Govern New Zealand’s increasingly fragile democracy. The current Nats/Nats voting mantra is steeped in an arrogant and flawed notion that it’s a fait accompli the Nats will lead the next Government. According to the Naterati, the only concern is to ensure that the Nats get as many MPs into parliament as possible, it being falsely assumed that the National Party will lead the next coalition government. This is either derangement, desperation or stupid bravado, or a complex combo of those mentalities. Through blindness – willful or otherwise – the Nats are simply not seeing the writing on the wall. At the last election, the National Party obtained just over 38 per cent of overall party votes. They are now polling at about 10 per cent (more than a quarter) *less* than that – 28 per cent. Nicola Willis, National Party Deputy Leader and Minister of Finance, Economic Growth and Social Investment, will simply ***not be in parliament,*** ***let alone government*** after the next election. Neither will Chris Bishop, Attorney-General and Minister of Housing, Infrastructure, Resource Management reform and Transport. Paul Goldsmith, Minister of Justice and Defence and numerous other Ministries – vanquished too. Parliament’s current Speaker and National Party MP, Gerry Brownlee – vaporized from the parliament over which he currently presides. ![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!oPDB!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fefc4cd3d-8975-4693-9e51-4d122d9c5e29_506x585.png) The National Party’s insular brains trust, and their juvenile advisers, are clearly remote – nigh on divorced – from the Nats’ electorate MPs. There’s a clear schism between the National Party’s beltway inner sanctum and the ranks of Natty electorate MPs. The National Party has simply failed to grasp the contemporary, evolved realities of MMP. And this is far from the only chink in the Nats’ dented and disintegrating suit of armor. Prime Minister Christopher Luxon is banging away at the Nats’ battered armor, with his own shiny ball/d hammer. In the TVNZ leaders’ debate on Tuesday, 6 October 2026, between Christopher Luxon and Chris Hipkins, Luxoflex produced the following clangers: He couldn’t concede that it’s *not* immoral, in itself, to be a billionaire. Sir Luxolot claimed that he simply hasn’t read the report provided to his good mate Matt Doocey, as Associate Minister of Health, into preferential admissions to medical schools for individuals with Māori or Polynesian ancestry. This is the report produced in connection with the National Party’s broken promise, in its coalition agreement with NZ First, to review the effectiveness of med school racialisation. Luxon has either read the report, or he damn well should have. PM Luxon didn’t deny that Israel has executed a genocide of Gazan Palestinians. GlobaLuxon said he would defer to the anti-Israel International Court of ‘Justice’ on such matters. Luxakeha claimed that his **BIGGEST** personal regret is not learning more Māori language. Humpy Dumpy Luxie absolutely ruled out exploring the prospect of the Opportunity Party joining a Nats/ACT/NZ First coalition, in order to keep the neo-Marxists out of the corridors of power. Wouldn’t it have been lovely – and prudent – if he’d left that prospect open, provided the amorphous Opportunity construct changes its manifestly malleable policy ‘positions’. Whether or not there’s a National Party-dominant coalition government after the next election, Luxon’s remaining time at the helm is distinctly short. In an interview with Sean Plunket on **the Platform** on 8 October, John Key made it abundantly clear that his aversion to vote splitting – which would clearly increase the likelihood of a return of the current coalition government – is born purely and simply of a visceral personal hatred of New Zealand First leader Winston Peters. Key would rather see a leftist government under Chris Hipkins than a burgeoning and emboldened NZ First. WTF. ShonKey, to a tee: [KEY INDICATORS](https://mcleanj.substack.com/p/key-indicators) [John McLean](https://substack.com/profile/150118186-john-mclean?ref=goodoil.news) 27 August 2024 ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/image-2.png) Aotearoa is a strange and changeable lady. In her youth, she didn’t take herself too seriously. New Zealand satirists A K Grant and Tom Scott, in their superb early ’80s mock history of New Zealand **The Paua and the Glory: the Story of New Zealand’s Rise to International Insignificance*, [Read full story](https://mcleanj.substack.com/p/key-indicators) Dead-eyed John Key is therefore a creepy quisling against the National Party’s traditional values – an unprincipled Tony Blair type. The unpatriotic puller of pony tails is a menace to everyday New Zealanders’ hopes for a free, equal, democratic New Zealand. To all intents and purposes, Key and his ilk simply haven’t moved on from the National/Labour dichotomy that prevailed in the days of the defunct First-Past-The-Post (FFP) electoral system, three decades dead. If the Nats want a blueprint for where they’re going as a party, and – on their current trajectory – the dystopia to which they’re condemning New Zealanders, look no further than the shriveled British Conservative (Tory) Party and Britain’s Disunited & Disintegrating Kingdom. ![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!B5Rx!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F4991cabe-cb55-492a-82ed-db3bf0d54aa6_734x427.png) The National Party’s mindless complacency and hubris is a clear and present danger to the New Zealand polity. Nationalism is a powerful force for good and National is no longer nationalist. This article was originally published on the [author’s Substack](https://mcleanj.substack.com/p/the-national-partys-death-wish). ### Luxon Will Pick Up the Phone URL: https://goodoil.news/luxon-will-pick-up-the-phone/ Last updated: 2026-10-11T18:59:59.000Z Luxon has ruled out Opportunity, but he never said he wouldn’t take the call. On current polling the overhang strategy is the only way to keep Opportunity out and the coalition in. _This post is for paying subscribers only._ ### Good Oil General Debate URL: https://goodoil.news/good-oil-general-debate-846/ Last updated: 2026-10-11T18:00:03.000Z Good morning, welcome to our daily General Debate. Our evening General debate is called Backchat and will start at 6 pm. On General debate, you are encouraged as a commenter to share your own stories, discuss other news, bring NEW news, catch up with friends or make new friends with other commenters. To participate you’ll need to sign up for a [Disqus account](https://disqus.com/profile/signup/intent/?ref=goodoil.news) which is free, quick, and easy. All you need is an email address to register a username that suits you. On posts that are not articles such as this one, you do not have to stay ‘on topic’ but you do still need to follow our [commenting rules.](https://www.goodoil.news/commenting-and-moderation/?ref=goodoil.news) Please [read our rules ](https://goodoil.news/commenting-and-moderation/)before you start commenting on *The Good Oil* to avoid a temporary or permanent ban. To check if your ban might have been caused by Disqus, or to ask for a banning decision to be reviewed, email the voluntary **helpdesk** @ [**goodoil.news**](https://goodoil.news/) with your Disqus username in the subject line. Please be respectful and do not make demands. ### Margaret Hamilton, Computing Pioneer, Dies at 90 URL: https://goodoil.news/margaret-hamilton-computing-pioneer-dies-at-90/ Last updated: 2026-10-11T17:29:59.000Z > A computing pioneer who authored over 130 publications, Hamilton helped to establish software engineering as a dedicated discipline. She worked at MIT from 1959 until the mid-1970s, after which she became a successful computing entrepreneur and CEO. > > Her life’s work was recognized with many awards and honors, [including the 2016 Presidential Medal of Freedom](https://news.mit.edu/2016/apollo-code-developer-margaret-hamilton-receives-presidential-medal-of-freedom-1117?ref=goodoil.news) from President Barack Obama, whose citation noted: “Hamilton defined new forms of software engineering and helped launch an industry that would forever change human history. Her software architecture led to giant leaps for humankind, writing the code that helped America set foot on the moon.” > > “To say Margaret Hamilton was a pioneer – to say she was ahead of her time – would be a dramatic understatement. She was a software engineer at a time when that field was in its infancy, and she not only developed advanced code herself but also led a team in using that nascent technology to develop one of the most complex systems humanity had ever achieved,” says Olivier de Weck, the Apollo Program Professor and interim head of the MIT Department Aeronautics and Astronautics. > > [MIT](https://news.mit.edu/2026/margaret-hamilton-computing-pioneer-dies-1007?ref=goodoil.news) [Read more](https://news.mit.edu/2026/margaret-hamilton-computing-pioneer-dies-1007?ref=goodoil.news) ### The Good Oil Word of the Day URL: https://goodoil.news/the-good-oil-word-of-the-day-785/ Last updated: 2026-10-11T17:15:23.000Z The word for today is… admiral (noun) - 1 *archaic* : the commander in chief of a navy 2a: flag officer b: a commissioned officer in the navy or coast guard who ranks above a vice admiral and whose insignia is four stars 3 *archaic* : flagship 4: any of several brightly colored nymphalid butterflies Source :[ Merriam-Webster](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/admiral?ref=goodoil.news) Etymology : It is a curiosity of history that the word admiral has its source in Arabic, the language of a desert people who acquired their seafaring skills after the great expansion of Islam in the seventh century. As the name for a Muslim chieftain, the Arabic word amir appears as a loanword in medieval Latin documents in spellings such as amiratus, admirandus, and admirallus. These words display a variety of suffixes and an added d, through confusion with the Latin verb admirari, “to admire.” The ending -allus is probably from the Arabic article al, which actually belongs to the following word in phrases such as amir al-‘ali, “supreme commander.” The application of admirallus to a commander of a fleet originated in 12th-century Sicily, was adopted by the Genoese, and then spread to countries throughout western Europe, including France and England. ***If you enjoyed this Good Oil word of the day please consider sharing it with your friends and, especially, your children.*** ### The Good Oil Daily Bible Verse URL: https://goodoil.news/the-good-oil-daily-bible-verse-495/ Last updated: 2026-10-11T17:00:21.000Z [Romans 12](https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Romans%2012&version=KJV&ref=goodoil.news) **2** And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God. ### Night Cap URL: https://goodoil.news/night-cap-753/ Last updated: 2026-10-11T07:59:59.000Z If you have a great Youtube, Rumble or Vimeo video to share send it to videos@goodoil.news [![CTA Image](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/01/cam-shirt2-1.png)](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) If you're loving this trusty, straight-up news on Kiwi politics and beyond, why not become a paid member, eh? Unlock exclusive yarns, podcasts, vids, and in-depth analysis—your support keeps independent journalism chugging along. Join today for just $5.00 per month and get the full good oil! [Learn more ](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) ### Standup Sunday URL: https://goodoil.news/standup-sunday-110/ Last updated: 2026-10-11T07:29:59.000Z If you have a great Youtube, Rumble or Vimeo video to share send it to videos@goodoil.news [![CTA Image](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/01/cam-shirt2-1.png)](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) If you're loving this trusty, straight-up news on Kiwi politics and beyond, why not become a paid member, eh? Unlock exclusive yarns, podcasts, vids, and in-depth analysis—your support keeps independent journalism chugging along. Join today for just $5.00 per month and get the full good oil! [Learn more ](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) ### Māori Statutory Board Voting Rights Removed: Auckland Council Co-Governance Debate Explained URL: https://goodoil.news/maori-statutory-board-voting-rights-removed-auckland-council-co-governance-debate-explained/ Last updated: 2026-10-11T06:59:59.000Z If you have a great Youtube, Rumble or Vimeo video to share send it to videos@goodoil.news ### Winston Peters Raises Prospect Of Revisiting Conversion-Practices Law URL: https://goodoil.news/winston-peters-raises-prospect-of-revisiting-conversion-practices-law/ Last updated: 2026-10-11T06:29:59.000Z If you have a great Youtube, Rumble or Vimeo video to share send it to videos@goodoil.news [![CTA Image](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/01/cam-shirt2-1.png)](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) If you're loving this trusty, straight-up news on Kiwi politics and beyond, why not become a paid member, eh? Unlock exclusive yarns, podcasts, vids, and in-depth analysis—your support keeps independent journalism chugging along. Join today for just $5.00 per month and get the full good oil! [Learn more ](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) ### Former Trade Minister On The Attempted Sabotage Of NZ’s FTAs URL: https://goodoil.news/former-trade-minister-on-the-attempted-sabotage-of-nzs-ftas/ Last updated: 2026-10-11T05:59:59.000Z If you have a great Youtube, Rumble or Vimeo video to share send it to videos@goodoil.news [![CTA Image](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/01/cam-shirt2-1.png)](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) If you're loving this trusty, straight-up news on Kiwi politics and beyond, why not become a paid member, eh? Unlock exclusive yarns, podcasts, vids, and in-depth analysis—your support keeps independent journalism chugging along. Join today for just $5.00 per month and get the full good oil! [Learn more ](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) ### The Good Oil Daily Roundup URL: https://goodoil.news/the-good-oil-daily-roundup-769/ Last updated: 2026-10-11T05:30:39.000Z [](https://photos.google.com/u/1/photo/AF1QipN7Zp7NKe4smdZA9nAYud8CjsgjsQ-Bn7QyMo53?ref=goodoil.news) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/7CA6338A-3A59-44D0-ACA9-892362013592.jpeg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/CE7634AC-BF71-4D80-83CB-8DDB6EBBE716.jpeg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/CCAD8BD5-5707-4BE9-99DF-C28A89C17ED5.jpeg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/D54A8E7A-24CF-4BB1-BB32-64F69FD1C3E8.jpeg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/2F87A065-CA22-4B23-AF7D-903CF1801677.jpeg) ### Good Oil Backchat URL: https://goodoil.news/good-oil-backchat-847/ Last updated: 2026-10-11T05:00:00.000Z Good evening, welcome to **Backchat**. On Backchat, you are free to share your own stories, discuss other news or catch up with friends. To participate you’ll need to sign up for a [Disqus account ](https://disqus.com/profile/signup/intent/?ref=goodoil.news)which is free, quick, and easy. On posts that are not articles like this one, you do not have to stay ‘on topic’ but you do still need to follow our [commenting rules.](https://goodoil.news/commenting-and-moderation/) Please [read our rules ](https://www.goodoil.news/commenting-and-moderation/?ref=goodoil.news)before you start commenting on *The Good Oil* to avoid a temporary or permanent ban. NOTE: Moderation queries MUST be expressed VIA EMAIL and not by posting a comment. To check if your ban might have been caused by Disqus, or to ask for a banning decision to be reviewed, email the voluntary **helpdesk** @ [**goodoil.news**](https://goodoil.news/) with your Disqus username in the subject line. Please be respectful and do not make demands. ### Bathurst, The Great Race URL: https://goodoil.news/bathurst/ Last updated: 2026-10-10T21:59:59.000Z Welcome to The Good Oil Bathurst Day post. Please keep comments to Bathurst topics and enjoy your day! ### A Christian History of Ghosts URL: https://goodoil.news/a-christian-history-of-ghosts/ Last updated: 2026-10-10T19:59:59.000Z We have lived, to borrow a phrase from **Carl Sagan**, in a ghost-haunted world since at least the first caveman said, ‘there’s something bigger than Phil…’ But the ghost as we know it – the misty, translucent figure haunting castles and mansions – is a relatively recent arrival. Even in Shakespeare’s time, ghosts were *the sheeted dead* who *did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets*. The spectres synonymous today with ‘ghost’ are a distinct product of the 19th-century Gothic tradition. Yet, while the exotic ghosts of Mayan or Egyptian antiquity might strike the modern observer as foreign, they are no less indicative of the specific pressures that birthed them than our own haunts are of ours. > [Like all memes](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5W6njGbe9MQ&ref=goodoil.news), or mimetic information packets, the concept of the ghost tells us often as much about us as it does about any of the metaphysical properties of the disembodied dead, assuming that is what ghosts are. In the end, our conception of ghosts has evolved and mutated under very concrete social and especially religious pressures, such that the ghosts we take to be timeless only appear timeless because they are in fact the result of the very same pressures that produced us: beings of the present, most often blissfully ignorant of the very processes of which we too are the result. To peer into the evolution of these phantoms is to glimpse the oblique, esoteric dimensions of our own spiritual history. The Latin West’s relationship with the restless dead was fundamentally reshaped by **St Augustine**, whose metaphysical surgery sought to excise any Roman pagan influence from Christian thought. For the early Christians, the dead were effectively dormant, awaiting the final judgement of the Almighty. They were beyond the reach of the living, encased in a divine jurisdictional stasis. Augustine, in *De cura pro mortuis gerenda* (c. 421–422), codified this separation, dismissing reports of returning spirits as either angelic deception, miraculous hallucination or, more likely, the meddling of demons – those tiresome, malevolent entities that form the backbone of the Augustinian explanation for all supernatural disturbances. By reframing the spectral world, Augustine effectively banished the restless dead to secure the theological boundaries of the faith. However, the church found itself in a rather different position as it pushed into the wild, Germanic north. The strategic strength of Christendom has always resided in its capacity for syncretism, the patient art of absorbing foreign myths while acclimating the populace to the Roman orthodoxy. The Germanic peoples, rich in folklore regarding the restless dead, did not simply abandon their ghosts at the church door. As the year 1000 approached, a period fraught with millenarian anxiety and portents of the apocalypse, the line between the living and the dead blurred once more. > The theological linchpin that would allow such visitations of the dead, over and against the theology of St Augustine, would be the development of one of the most important ideas in Catholic theology: purgatory. In this theological position, the sins accumulated in life must be purged, and thus purified, in death before admittance into heaven. Thus, even for the sinning righteous meant for heaven, they would still need to undergo post-mortem purification, often through the punishing fires, and hence the purgation of those sins in, well, purgatory. With the conceptual arrival of purgatory, the ghosts returned with a vengeance. **Pope Gregory the Great**’s *Dialogues* (593) and **Bede**’s *Ecclesiastical History* (c. 731) offer early glimpses of this return, where the righteous dead appear not as demonic threats, but as guides or warnings. By the 11th century, the appearance of vast wraith armies, sinners suffering in their heated armours, suggests a typical if audacious Christian syncretism: a fusion of the pagan ‘Wild Hunt’ with the purgatorial framework of the church. It was a marvellous, if terrifying, synthesis. The Renaissance introduced a new layer of complexity, as the recovery of ancient pagan wisdom populated the intellectual landscape with a new array of celestial and elemental entities. Yet, this occult flourish was soon overshadowed by the convulsions of the Reformation. The Protestants, in their zealous attempt to strip the faith to its primitive core, discarded purgatory as an unbiblical, pagan innovation. This left them in a rather precarious position: if purgatory did not exist, what were these ghosts that kept appearing? **Ludwig Lavater**’s *De spectris* (1569) became the definitive manual for the confused Protestant mind. Lavater’s genius was to look in two directions simultaneously. He remained rooted in the Augustinian suspicion that most spectral appearances were demonic, yet he introduced a strikingly modern, psychological layer to the phenomenon. He catalogued how grief, insomnia and even physiological disorders could trick the mind into perceiving ghosts. He essentially began the psychologising of the spectral world, a development that would culminate in modern explorations of the paranormal, where the haunting is as much a matter of interior states as it is of external spirits. > He is also an important early witness, in the pages of this book, to the reality of night terrors. In such a state, people often experience paralysis and yet are keenly, horrifyingly aware of nearby malevolent entities. Such entities may simply malinger around, but can also seem to oppress their victim, sometimes sexually, and such night terrors, Lavater argues, form the basis for the mythology around incubi and succubi tales. The Counter-Reformation, naturally, was not to be outdone. **Peter Thyraeus**, in his *Loca infesta* (1598), countered the Protestant reductionism by asserting the reality of spiritual infestation. He argued that God occasionally permitted souls to undergo their purgation in the very places where their sins were committed: a sobering thought for the inhabitant of a haunted property. Thyraeus’s classification of these entities, ranging from the repentant dead to the mischievous, unattached spirits like brownies and kobolds, betrays the early stages of a secular demonology. These spirits were beginning to act as independent agents, free from the traditional ecclesiastical ecosystem. Finally, we arrive at the Enlightenment, an age that prides itself on having banished superstition through the cool light of reason. **Antoine Augustin Calmet**, a Benedictine abbot with a penchant for the scientific method, represents the pinnacle of this transitional period. His treatise on apparitions and vampires, *Dissertation sur les apparitions des anges, des démons et des esprits et sur les revenants et vampires de Hongrie, de Bohême, de Moravie et de Silésie* (1746), serves as a survey of the field, yet it is coloured by a cautious, empirical scepticism. Calmet utilised the emerging tools of source criticism and medical observation to weigh the veracity of supernatural accounts. He was a child of his time, attempting to shepherd the ghost through the perils of naturalism, unwittingly becoming the grandfather of the contemporary paranormal researcher who stalks abandoned ruins with a video camera and an electromagnetic field meter in hand. > While he might conclude that denial of all apparitions is tantamount to a denial of Christianity itself – it was just a bridge too far for him to say there are no such things as apparitions – he was also skeptical enough that **Voltaire**, yes, Voltaire, the cheerleader of the Enlightenment, would rely on Calmet for his encyclopedia entry on the subject of vampires. Ultimately, the ghost possesses a double history. There is the history of the ghost as a cultural participant and then the history of the concept itself: a mirror reflecting our shifting religious, scientific and social anxieties. --- 💡 ****If you enjoyed this article please share it using the share buttons at the top or bottom of the article.** ### How the Media Tore Down a Hero URL: https://goodoil.news/how-the-media-tore-down-a-hero/ Last updated: 2026-10-10T18:59:59.000Z As **Richard Jewell** well knew, no good deed in the US will go unpunished by the inquisitors of the legacy media. But, long before Jewell, there was **Oliver Sipple**. Sipple was the Vietnam veteran who stopped murderous leftist **Sara Jane Moore** from assassinating President **Gerald Ford**, just weeks after a similar attempt by Manson Family member **Lynette ‘Squeaky’ Fromme**. For the legacy media, the incident served up a left-wing heroes’n’villains story on a platter: with Sipple on the ‘villains’ side. For the legacy media, Vietnam veteran and the Republican president who pardoned the bête noire of the American left, Richard Nixon, clearly stood in the ‘villains’ column. On the other side was a far-left woman, obsessed with Patty Hearst and the Symbionese Liberation Army, hoped her bloodletting would spark a violent revolution across the nation that would lead to the US government being overthrown for how they handled the Vietnam War: how more ‘heroic’ could it get for the legacy media? Naturally, they went after Sipple with everything they had. Born in Detroit in 1941, Oliver Wellington Sipple was a man of working-class grit who grappled with dyslexia before enlisting in the United States Marine Corps. He was deployed for two tours in Vietnam, learning rather abruptly that real combat bears little resemblance to Hollywood celluloid. As he candidly remarked to Time magazine shortly after his fateful encounter with destiny: > [“I didn’t really know](https://allthatsinteresting.com/oliver-sipple?ref=goodoil.news) what war was, but I wanted to fight for my country.” Having sustained shrapnel injuries that cut his second tour short, Sipple returned home a chastened soul, physically and mentally battered by the jungle gales of Southeast Asia. Discharged from the corps, he relocated to San Francisco, drifting into the city’s burgeoning countercultural milieu and striking up an acquaintance with **Harvey Milk**, then an ambitious local activist. Yet, for all his immersion in the local political scene, Sipple maintained a discreet distance between his public life and his devoutly Baptist family back home, opting to keep his private affairs shielded from their conservative sensibilities. That fragile wall of privacy was blown to pieces on the 22 September, 1975, outside the St Francis Hotel. As President Ford exited a luncheon, Sara Jane Moore levelled her firearm. Her initial shot went wide, but, as she sought to correct her aim, Sipple lunged forward, physically deflecting her arm and preserving the Commander-in-Chief from a bloody demise. You might imagine that a grateful nation would garland such a man with unalloyed praise. Instead, the fourth estate smelled blood in the water: specifically, the chance to weaponise a private citizen’s sexuality for ideological posturing. Spurred on by Harvey Milk, who reportedly viewed the catastrophe as a magnificent public relations opportunity for the gay rights movement, reporters descended upon Sipple’s private life with predatory glee. The consequences for the hapless veteran were swift and unsparing. Splashed across national headlines without his consent, Sipple was forcibly outed to his astonished and deeply distressed parents. The familial rupture was immediate and bruising. As his brother **George** later recalled of their mother’s initial reaction: > “For a period of time, she didn’t want to have nothing to do with him.” Though a tentative, strained reconciliation was patched together later on, the damage to Sipple’s peace of mind was irrevocable. President Ford dispatched a polite, appreciative missive thanking him for his valour, yet the media circus ensured that the hero became the victim of a sustained public vivisection. Journalists pursued him not for his courage, but to feed a prurient narrative, prompting Sipple to hold a press conference in a desperate attempt to reclaim his dignity: > “My sexual orientation has nothing at all to do with saving the president’s life… My sexuality is a part of my private life and has no bearing on my response to the act of a person seeking to take the life of another. I am first and foremost a human being who enjoys life and respects life.” Pleas for basic human decency fell entirely on deaf ears. When Sipple launched a 15 million dollar invasion-of-privacy lawsuit against the journalistic hounds, the courts ultimately ruled against him, on the grounds that “his sexual orientation was a key part of the story”, cementing the notion that an individual’s private life is fair game if the media can twist it into a political parable. Crushed by the relentless intrusion and the collapse of his familial sanctuary, Sipple descended into a dismal spiral of chronic alcoholism. By February 1989, his sorrowful journey reached its inevitable, tragic terminus. He was discovered dead in his San Francisco flat at the tender age of 42 – or 47, depending on the ledger – with a bottle of whiskey for company and President Ford’s framed letter of gratitude hanging ironically upon the wall. In the cold light of retrospect, the verdict offered by his attorney, **John E Wahl**, remains the most damning indictment of the era’s journalistic vultures: > “He was punished for his heroism.” --- 💡 ****If you enjoyed this article please share it using the share buttons at the top or bottom of the article.** ### Good Oil General Debate URL: https://goodoil.news/good-oil-general-debate-845/ Last updated: 2026-10-10T18:00:05.000Z Good morning, welcome to our daily General Debate. Our evening General debate is called Backchat and will start at 6 pm. On General debate, you are encouraged as a commenter to share your own stories, discuss other news, bring NEW news, catch up with friends or make new friends with other commenters. To participate you’ll need to sign up for a [Disqus account](https://disqus.com/profile/signup/intent/?ref=goodoil.news) which is free, quick, and easy. All you need is an email address to register a username that suits you. On posts that are not articles such as this one, you do not have to stay ‘on topic’ but you do still need to follow our [commenting rules.](https://www.goodoil.news/commenting-and-moderation/?ref=goodoil.news) Please [read our rules ](https://goodoil.news/commenting-and-moderation/)before you start commenting on *The Good Oil* to avoid a temporary or permanent ban. To check if your ban might have been caused by Disqus, or to ask for a banning decision to be reviewed, email the voluntary **helpdesk** @ [**goodoil.news**](https://goodoil.news/) with your Disqus username in the subject line. Please be respectful and do not make demands. ### The Good Oil Word of the Day URL: https://goodoil.news/the-good-oil-word-of-the-day-784/ Last updated: 2026-10-10T17:15:48.000Z The word for today is… tantivy (adverb, noun) - *adverb* : at a gallop *noun* 1: a rapid gallop or ride 2: tantara Source : [Merriam-Webster](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/tantivy?ref=goodoil.news) Etymology : Tantivy is an adverb as well as a noun that refers to a rapid gallop. Although its precise origin isn't known, one theory has it that tantivy represents the sound of a galloping horse’s hooves. The noun does double duty as a word meaning "the blare of a trumpet or horn." This is probably due to confusion with tantara, a word for the sound of a trumpet that came about as an imitation of that sound. Both tantivy and tantara were used during foxhunts; in the heat of the chase, people may have jumbled the two. ***If you enjoyed this Good Oil word of the day please consider sharing it with your friends and, especially, your children.*** ### The Good Oil Daily Bible Verse URL: https://goodoil.news/the-good-oil-daily-bible-verse-494/ Last updated: 2026-10-10T17:00:13.000Z [Psalm 11](https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Psalm%2011&version=KJV&ref=goodoil.news) **7** For the righteous Lord loveth righteousness; his countenance doth behold the upright. ### Night Cap URL: https://goodoil.news/night-cap-752/ Last updated: 2026-10-10T08:00:53.000Z If you have a great Youtube, Rumble or Vimeo video to share send it to videos@goodoil.news [![CTA Image](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/01/cam-shirt2-1.png)](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) If you're loving this trusty, straight-up news on Kiwi politics and beyond, why not become a paid member, eh? Unlock exclusive yarns, podcasts, vids, and in-depth analysis—your support keeps independent journalism chugging along. Join today for just $5.00 per month and get the full good oil! [Learn more ](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) ### Science Saturday URL: https://goodoil.news/science-saturday-110/ Last updated: 2026-10-10T07:30:35.000Z If you have a great Youtube, Rumble or Vimeo video to share send it to videos@goodoil.news [![CTA Image](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/01/cam-shirt2-1.png)](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) If you're loving this trusty, straight-up news on Kiwi politics and beyond, why not become a paid member, eh? Unlock exclusive yarns, podcasts, vids, and in-depth analysis—your support keeps independent journalism chugging along. Join today for just $5.00 per month and get the full good oil! [Learn more ](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) ### Will a Supermarket Break-Up Lower Your Grocery Bill? URL: https://goodoil.news/will-a-supermarket-break-up-lower-your-grocery-bill/ Last updated: 2026-10-10T06:59:59.000Z If you have a great Youtube, Rumble or Vimeo video to share send it to videos@goodoil.news ### Fed Farmers President Condemns Greenie Attempts To Sabotage Our FTAs URL: https://goodoil.news/fed-farmers-president-condemns-greenie-attempts-to-sabotage-our-ftas/ Last updated: 2026-10-10T06:30:00.000Z If you have a great Youtube, Rumble or Vimeo video to share send it to videos@goodoil.news [![CTA Image](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/01/cam-shirt2-1.png)](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) If you're loving this trusty, straight-up news on Kiwi politics and beyond, why not become a paid member, eh? Unlock exclusive yarns, podcasts, vids, and in-depth analysis—your support keeps independent journalism chugging along. Join today for just $5.00 per month and get the full good oil! [Learn more ](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) ### John Banks Weighs In On The Vote Splitting Debate URL: https://goodoil.news/john-banks-weighs-in-on-the-vote-splitting-debate/ Last updated: 2026-10-10T06:00:17.000Z If you have a great Youtube, Rumble or Vimeo video to share send it to videos@goodoil.news [![CTA Image](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/01/cam-shirt2-1.png)](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) If you're loving this trusty, straight-up news on Kiwi politics and beyond, why not become a paid member, eh? Unlock exclusive yarns, podcasts, vids, and in-depth analysis—your support keeps independent journalism chugging along. Join today for just $5.00 per month and get the full good oil! [Learn more ](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) ### The Good Oil Daily Roundup URL: https://goodoil.news/the-good-oil-daily-roundup-768/ Last updated: 2026-10-10T05:30:13.000Z [](https://photos.google.com/u/1/photo/AF1QipN7Zp7NKe4smdZA9nAYud8CjsgjsQ-Bn7QyMo53?ref=goodoil.news) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/4B001E4C-4F21-4C87-9E80-6461B54217C8.jpeg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/533FA913-6B23-4804-A919-8438F0A293C7.jpeg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/382EABDE-7CF6-4494-AD41-6D83DCAC43DB.jpeg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/249456B3-D4B5-445F-B42C-7A8054ED3B75.jpeg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/8F6AFC58-FB02-4E78-994B-AE5DD16F978F_1_201_a.jpeg) ### Good Oil Backchat URL: https://goodoil.news/good-oil-backchat-846/ Last updated: 2026-10-10T05:00:00.000Z Good evening, welcome to **Backchat**. On Backchat, you are free to share your own stories, discuss other news or catch up with friends. To participate you’ll need to sign up for a [Disqus account ](https://disqus.com/profile/signup/intent/?ref=goodoil.news)which is free, quick, and easy. On posts that are not articles like this one, you do not have to stay ‘on topic’ but you do still need to follow our [commenting rules.](https://goodoil.news/commenting-and-moderation/) Please [read our rules ](https://www.goodoil.news/commenting-and-moderation/?ref=goodoil.news)before you start commenting on *The Good Oil* to avoid a temporary or permanent ban. NOTE: Moderation queries MUST be expressed VIA EMAIL and not by posting a comment. To check if your ban might have been caused by Disqus, or to ask for a banning decision to be reviewed, email the voluntary **helpdesk** @ [**goodoil.news**](https://goodoil.news/) with your Disqus username in the subject line. Please be respectful and do not make demands. ### An ‘Intifada’ in a Phone Booth URL: https://goodoil.news/an-intifada-in-a-phone-booth/ Last updated: 2026-10-10T03:00:06.000Z What if you tried to stage a Kristallnacht and nobody came? That’s the hilarious reality that smacked professional protesting parasite **Josh Lees** right in his porcine face this week. The unemployable serial pest thought the third anniversary of the worst massacre of Jews since WWII was just the right time to bellow to the world just how his odious crew want to wipe the Jewish state from the face of the Earth. And practically no one showed up. No wonder Lees looked so glum as he wobbled around outside Sydney Town Hall, trying ineffectively to hide his bulky form behind the couple of dozen other losers in their hipster swastikas. After all, if his ‘pro-Palestine’ gig dries up, what’s going to pay for all the pies. What’s left for a professional ‘protester’ to do? Get a job? He’d rather hug a Jew. Still, even in their pathetic, dwindling numbers, these left-wing malcontents simply cannot help themselves. They possess a congenital inability to assemble without indulging in a spot of the old ultra-violence. In Melbourne, the State Library lawns became the site of a truly wretched display. As the activists sought to ‘honour’ their so-called martyrs with red poppies, a tasteless appropriation of our Anzac traditions, the atmosphere quickly curdled. When ‘Ozraeli’ journalist **Avi Yemini** arrived to document the spectacle, the tolerance of the ‘peace-loving’ protesters evaporated instantly. > [In Melbourne](https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/bondi-dawn-service-honours-october-7-victims-under-heavy-police-guard/news-story/ce66d6a14acbd98684a8ce7a3db8fe31?ref=goodoil.news), a pro-Palestine vigil turned violent when security guards protecting former IDF soldier Avi Yemini clashed with anti-Israel activists who had gathered at the State Library. A glass bottle thrown landed inches from a mother with a child in the pram. It is a testament to the moral rot of this movement that a projectile can be hurled toward an innocent toddler simply because the target is a Jew they despise more than usual. The police were forced to surge forward to maintain a semblance of order, struggling to contain the shrieking mob while Mr Yemini navigated a game of cat-and-mouse with people who seem to have forgotten that we live in a civilised society, not the chaotic streets of Gaza. Contrast this tawdry theatre of hate with the sombre dignity displayed elsewhere. Thousands of Australians, standing in solidarity with the victims of October 7, gathered with quiet resolve. At the Central Synagogue in Bondi, the mood was one of grief and remembrance, far removed from the shrill, performative venom of the Town Hall grifters. Federal and state leaders, including former prime minister **Tony Abbott**, stood shoulder-to-shoulder, reflecting on the grim reality that the contagion of October 7 did not stay confined to the Middle East. NSW Opposition Leader **Kellie Sloane** hit the nail squarely on the head, describing the anti-Israel ‘vigils’ as nothing short of sickening. As she rightly noted, the hatred unleashed by the Hamas massacre has washed up on our own shores, manifesting in a campaign of intimidation that would have been unthinkable in Australia just a few short years ago. > Marking October 7 also required considering “what (that attack) unleashed here in Australia, because the hatred that was exposed that day did not remain thousands of kilometres away,” Ms Sloane said. “It reached our shores, and over the past three years, Jewish Australians have ­experienced things we could never have imagined happening in Australia,” she said. Indeed, the contrast could not be starker. On one side, we have the Jewish community and their allies, mourning the dead and reflecting upon the fragility of life. On the other, we have a small, ugly rump of agitators who claim that the anniversary of a massacre is merely an opportunity to ‘globalise the intifada’. They wrap their hate in the language of human rights, while simultaneously cheering for a terrorist regime that makes no secret of its desire to slaughter Jews in their beds. It is heartening, however, to see the public turning their backs on the Lees-style hatred. When the antisemites hold a march, the streets remain largely empty, occupied only by a handful of losers looking for someone to blame for their own miserable lives. The weekly gathering of ‘honk for Gaza’ Boomers in Launceston have dwindled to a handful of geriatric antisemites waving their placards at stonily silent traffic. When the community gathers to remember, the turnout is immense. It seems that even in this current malaise, the silent majority of Australians still retain enough of a moral compass to distinguish between the victim and the bloodthirsty maniac. The agitators are losing and they know it. They can shout until their throats are raw, they can try to ‘steal the date’ and they can lob bottles at journalists, but the reality remains: hardly anyone cares for their genocidal grievances. Life moves on and these professional pests are left standing on the lawn, holding their banners and waiting for a relevance that will never come. --- 💡 ****If you enjoyed this article please share it using the share buttons at the top or bottom of the article.** ### The Voters Have Only Encouraged Him URL: https://goodoil.news/the-voters-have-only-encouraged-him/ Last updated: 2026-10-10T01:30:02.000Z As **Benjamin Franklin** apocryphally said, “When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.” Australians may have repeatedly rejected a republic, both at opinion polls and a referendum, but a great many leaners have realised that they can vote themselves money. Other people’s money of course: and, as is inevitable, it’s running out. That isn’t stopping the leaner class from voting to grab all they can. A greedy vote our socialist Labor government is only too happy to indulge. > [As much as economists](https://www.theaustralian.com.au/commentary/coalition-voters-join-chorus-for-more-government-spending-on-cost-of-living/news-story/5d8c0d30084dbf6cc928dfd5585d03fb?ref=goodoil.news) may have been trying to educate a lay public on the perils of government spending during an inflation crisis, a thumping majority of voters don’t seem to care. > > And it’s not just Labor voters who are indulging the handout mentality, Coalition voters are in on the act too. That was before last year’s election. It apparently didn’t occur to the 83 per cent who supported more government spending to help with cost-of-living pressures that the ‘support’ is nothing but their own money getting churned through layers of government bureaucracy, losing value at every turn. Nor that the more they demand the government shower them with their own laundered money, the higher that drives inflation, which drives up the cost of living. The economic chickens are coming home to roost and they’re bringing a flock of pain with them. Treasurer **Jim Chalmers** cuts an increasingly unconvincing, sweating figure under the harsh lights of his own economic mismanagement. While a frustrated populace would no doubt cheer if the keys to the Treasury were abruptly yanked from his grasp, pinning all our fiscal woes entirely on one beleaguered minister misses the mark. Chalmers and his colleagues are merely dancing to the tune piped by an electorate that has been thoroughly conditioned to expect a government-funded cushion for every stubbed toe and rising grocery bill. This tragicomic entitlement was laid bare by polling data on the eve of the 2025 federal election, revealing an astonishing alignment across party lines. It was not merely a faction of hard-left dependents demanding state benevolence: the infection had thoroughly seized the supposedly conservative opposition as well. Of course, the cheerleaders of big government will point to external bugbears – global supply shocks, turbulent energy markets and a chronic domestic productivity drought – to explain away the inflationary bonfire. Even the RBA chair has rubbished these excuses, because the limited damaged inflicted by these forces is merely stoked by the reckless fiscal incontinence practised by both major parties in Canberra. When an economy is already bumping against its productive limits, pumping billions more into aggregate demand is akin to dousing a chip-pan fire with kerosene. To find intellectual clarity amidst this modern morass, one must look back half a century to the sage warnings of **Milton Friedman**. Fifty years ago, during the dark days of the **Gough Whitlam** administration’s stagflation disaster, the great monetarist touched down in Sydney to warn Australians against the seductive fallacy of deficit-financed benevolence. As Friedman so astutely observed: > [“The great defect](https://www.theaustralian.com.au/commentary/why-voters-must-be-told-a-harsh-truth-about-public-spending/news-story/4daa72f0be70a81d3bd06e370f7dfb76?ref=goodoil.news) in much of our policies in my country and yours, is not because bad people want to do bad things … it’s good people who want to do good things, who produce harm by accepting what is a fallacious principle – namely, that you can do good by spending somebody else’s money.” There is no magical pudding from which infinite handouts can be sliced without consequence. Every dollar redistributed by Canberra must ultimately be clawed back via higher taxes, crushing public debt, or – as the Reserve Bank desperately tries to slam the brakes – punishing interest rates that bleed mortgage-holders dry. Until the Australian electorate confronts the austere reality that you cannot spend your way out of a crisis born of overspending, our politicians will continue to pander to the lowest common denominator. The ledger always balances in the end and the bill is coming due. --- 💡 ****If you enjoyed this article please share it using the share buttons at the top or bottom of the article.** ### The Mace, the Madam and Mr Bent URL: https://goodoil.news/the-mace-the-madam-and-mr-bent/ Last updated: 2026-10-09T21:00:52.000Z The more things change in Victoria, the more they stay the same. I’ve often written that, thanks to **Dan Andrews**, **Tommy Bent** can at least lie still in his grave knowing that he no longer wears the mantle of the most corrupt premier in the state’s history. There are both eerie parallels and striking differences in the stories of these two premiers, ruling rotten state kleptocracies just over a century apart. Both built their power and fortunes on corrupt infrastructure projects. Like Andrews, Bent began his career in bayside Brighton: but at least Tommy never mowed down teenage cyclists with his horse and cart. Both presided over what was a booming state that suddenly collapsed into one of the worst depressions in Australian history. Most significantly, Bent’s state funeral attracted a huge crowd of mourners. One suspects that the only people who’ll line up for Dictator Dan’s last hurrah will be doing so with tomatoes in hand. But, just as Andrews’ reign was marked by open criminality, with his signature ‘Big Build’ employing bikies and gangsters, to the tune allegedly of billions of taxpayer dollars, a very different crime scandal fascinated ‘Marvellous Melbourne’ in 1891. In October of that year, the grand chambers of Victoria’s parliament played host to an outrage of the highest constitutional order, or so one might have imagined if this wasn’t the same state that 130 years later shrugged and re-elected Andrews not once, but twice. The colony’s ceremonial mace, widely and erroneously believed to be wrought from pure gold, vanished entirely from its resting place. One might have expected a citizenry steeped in British propriety to erupt in paroxysms of patriotic fury. Instead, as historian **Sally Young** observes in her meticulous historical account, the public reaction was somewhat more insouciant. > [“Rather than being](https://www.theaustralian.com.au/culture/how-a-1891-parliamentary-mace-theft-masked-a-massive-corruption-scandal/news-story/d01d1e6a1b99b2f7023692c9ee45116e?ref=goodoil.news) outraged by the theft, Melburnians seemed indifferent or bemused.” Indeed, the populace preferred to treat the disappearance as prime fodder for salacious gossip. Melbourne was soon awash with delightful, ribald rumours that the purloined staff had ended up as a rather ostentatious phallic prop in a parliamentary-themed bacchanal hosted by the legendary **Madame Brussels** in her notorious Spring Street bordello (and no, I don’t mean Parliament House: that was just up the road). Whispers of secret tunnels burrowed beneath the parliamentary precinct to facilitate discreet nocturnal excursions for honourable members added a distinctly operatic flavour to the affair. The mundane truth, however, was vastly more ruinous than any brothel fable. The mace itself was crafted from base metals of negligible intrinsic value, which partially accounts for the general lack of earnest consternation. More importantly, however, Melbourne had far larger fish to fry. The frenzied land speculation bubble of the 1880s, where politicians, property developers and bankers operated as an unholy trinity, had burst with catastrophic force, plunging the colony into economic darkness. > “At the end of 1891, large numbers of land and building companies were collapsing. Banks and financial companies that had lent enormous sums of money based on false and inflated land values were being forced into liquidation.” The wreckage was total. Unfinished public monuments littered the landscape, while speculative rail lines wound through vacant green wedges, designed solely to line the pockets of well-connected insiders. At the epicentre of this sprawling web of incompetence and financial chicanery sat none other than the larger-than-life parliamentary speaker, Thomas Bent. A colonial-era **Boss Tweed**, Bent treated municipal and state coffers as his personal piggy bank, distributing council contracts to his relatives and manipulating electoral rolls with breathtaking impunity. Contemporaries, observing the systemic rot from the press gallery, lamented that the colonial parliament was effectively run by what one writer bluntly termed “an aristocracy of criminals”. Yet, the authorities’ inability to recover the missing mace became something of a template for Victoria’s farcical policing (just the sort of place **Mike Bush** would end up). The prime suspect was a parliamentary engineer by the name of **Thomas Jeffrey**, who was spotted by an eagle-eyed witness lugging a heavy, metal-clinking package wrapped in brown paper aboard a hi-tech tramcar. Despite this compellingly dodgy transit, Jeffrey was never formally charged, nor was anyone else, and he contentedly remained on the parliamentary payroll for decades afterwards. One suspects that the Victorian political establishment was entirely content to let the public imagination run wild with brothel orgies and mace-wielding rakes. It provided a magnificently convenient smokescreen, deftly diverting attention away from an economic depression and systemic corruption scandal that could easily have sent half the legislature to the gallows. Victorian politics still remains wonderfully consistent, 130 years later. Whether it is a 19th-century engineer sneaking maces onto trams or a modern regime funnelling billions into opaque transport projects while cronies feed at the trough, the ruling class always appreciates a good distraction. In 1891, they had a stolen mace and a Madame Brussels myth. Today, we have PR-engineered announcements and endless impotent inquiries. Some traditions, it seems, are simply too precious to lose. --- 💡 ****If you enjoyed this article please share it using the share buttons at the top or bottom of the article.** ### When Will They Admit It’s the Culture? URL: https://goodoil.news/when-will-they-admit-its-the-culture/ Last updated: 2026-10-09T20:00:05.000Z It’s become almost as ubiquitous as the odious, made-up theatre of ‘Welcome to Country’ to witter platitudes about ‘the world’s oldest living culture’. Yet, even if that were true (it isn’t), think for a few seconds what it *really* means: lionising a Stone Age culture, with all that that implies. What we’re actually sold as ‘traditional Aboriginal culture’ is a grotesque parody of the brutality of the real deal. Every source, from colonial diaries and memoirs, to anthropologists’ field observations and archaeology, are savagely clear on just how traditional Aboriginal society treated women. Especially young girls, who were given as ‘promise wives’ to significantly older men from their first menstruation. The *Indigenous Law Bulletin* calls this a “time-honoured custom”. It’s still going on, with all the brutality of the Stone Age and none of the protections of the modern. > [**Nicolas Rothwell** in 2011](https://www.theaustralian.com.au/commentary/aboriginal-child-protection-will-keep-failing-until-leaders-abandon-political-excuses-and-optics/news-story/29c8b7197e02f51bdc82ae7f20ae2dbf?ref=goodoil.news) in this paper. Referring to the Kimberley, Rothwell wrote: “Pack rape is the most frequent mode of initiation into sex for pretty girls. These episodes are so distressing they rarely come out, but they show, of course, for years afterwards in the troubled behaviour of teenagers … Having children can be a kind of defence as well as a welfare income source: most women are mothers by 20 – there are four girls aged 15 or younger with new babies in Kununurra today.” Yet, even while acknowledging the problem, Aboriginal academics like **Anthony Dillon** consistently ignore the role of ‘the world’s oldest living culture’. It’s all everyone else’s fault, apparently: not the men doing it, nor the culture which condoned and still too often condones it. That doesn’t mean authorities don’t share blame: not when they knowingly turn a blind eye to the repeated rape of innocent children by Aboriginal ‘cultural leaders’. Now consider what that culture looks like when a man decides to exercise his customary rights. **Robert Bully** was a ‘cultural elder’ in Port Hedland, a man admired about town for his large and well-behaved family. For nine years, that family man drove his favourite daughter, Susie, into the bush in the family bus, laid down a towel on a discarded mattress, and raped her while road trains thundered past a hundred metres away. She was eight when he started. He was her father. He was, in the language of the industry, a leader. The police knew. A Warageri woman working the Child Abuse Unit watched him for two years with the grim certainty of someone who has seen this film before. The Department of Child Protection knew as well. It knew, and it did nothing, for the most bureaucratic of reasons: there were 13 children, and finding beds for all of them would have been frightfully inconvenient. > [“He was under my scrutiny](https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/child-protection-authorities-knew-about-port-hedland-rapist-robert-bully-for-years-insider-cop-says/news-story/81244146147e55a5bd3ed490a62f4605?ref=goodoil.news) for at least two years. DCP knew what he was up to … but I reckon they were thinking, ‘If we remove his 13 children, where are we going to put them all?’” So 13 children were left with a child rapist and one of them was raped for nine more years. She finally reported him at 17\. He was convicted at 51, on 11 of 12 counts, and sentenced to 12 years. The department that could have stopped it at any point has still not been asked to explain itself with any seriousness. And this is not an isolated horror. It is the ordinary weather of the Pilbara. A 12-year-old propositioned outside the South Hedland shops by a man in his 40s offering marijuana in exchange for sex. The murdered grandchildren of **Dorothy Papertalk**, handed back by the same office to a violent meth addict. A dozen children abandoned in Frisby Court. The state’s longest-serving police commissioner, **Karl O’Callaghan**, surveying the wreckage, offers the only honest assessment available. > “The DCP is still completely inconsistent in the way it responds to Aboriginal kids in crisis. DCP is not doing the job it is supposed to do – and when it does do its job, it makes some terrible decisions,” said Mr O’Callaghan. Note what is missing from every official explanation. The men are missing. The culture that produced them is missing. Instead we get the familiar liturgy: intergenerational trauma, colonisation, disadvantage and the legacy of dispossession. All of which are real, and none of which explain why a father rapes his daughter on a mattress in the scrub or why a department full of well-paid public servants decides that the safest course is to look away. **Susie Bully**, 21 years old, has now done what the entire child protection apparatus of Western Australia could not: she has spoken. > [“The child sex abuse](https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/indigenous/its-kept-so-quiet-raped-by-her-father-susies-ordeal-exposes-sex-abuse-stalking-indigenous-kids/news-story/6ff5f57f03a01ddf2767fb1326f19841?ref=goodoil.news) is so bad within the community but it’s kept so quiet. No one talks about it. Kids just stay quiet.” That silence is not an accident of history. It is the product of a bargain, struck between bureaucrats terrified of being called racist and men who understood perfectly well that a ‘cultural leader’ badge is the finest shield a predator can wear. The ‘world’s oldest living culture’ has been drafted into service as an alibi and too many little girls are paying the price. For all that he carefully avoids discussing the role of Aboriginal culture, Dillon is absolutely right about one thing: “we must never forget that these children are Australian children”. He is right that Aboriginal Australians “are not a separate group of Australians”. So, stop treating them any different than we would any other child rapists. --- 💡 ****If you enjoyed this article please share it using the share buttons at the top or bottom of the article.** ### Quick Hit: Two Ticks Against Your Partner URL: https://goodoil.news/quick-hit-two-ticks-against-your-partner/ Last updated: 2026-10-09T19:30:20.000Z Paul Goldsmith, sixth on National's list, is door-knocking Epsom for two ticks blue against David Seymour. National is polling with no list headroom and needs ACT's seats to govern. _This post is for subscribers on the VIP tier only._ ### Here's what members got this week URL: https://goodoil.news/heres-what-members-got-this-week-2/ Last updated: 2026-10-09T19:15:55.000Z Hi, Here's the receipts. This week, paying members got the full cut. Free readers got a teaser, or the wall. [**Reality Wants Its Money Back.**](https://goodoil.news/reality-wants-its-money-back/) David Seymour called the government's path to surplus "heroic," four days before National shows its fiscal plan. When the junior partner says that about the books, believe him. [**The Polls, the Debate and the Crazy.**](https://goodoil.news/the-polls-the-debate-and-the-crazy/) Real Good Oil on the Poll of Polls, three fresh polls, and a campaign that keeps throwing up bad policy and a thin Hager book. [**Three Polls Say Split Your Vote.**](https://goodoil.news/three-polls-say-split-your-vote/) Tuesday's three polls all show the majors bleeding to the minors. Neither Chris is liked. The electorate and party-vote split, spelled out. [Upgrade to VIP](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/upgrade) If you only saw the window, that is the free side of the shop. VIP is twenty-five dollars a month. That unlocks those pieces the way they are meant to be read, and it funds next week's columns too. And don't forget the new [Good Oil Ai political intelligence suite](https://app.goodoil.ai/?ref=goodoil.news) available now to VIP members. 0:00 /0:34 1× Next week's knife needs paying readers as well. Get on board. [Upgrade to VIP](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/upgrade) Cam ### Winston Brought the Majority URL: https://goodoil.news/winston-brought-the-majority/ Last updated: 2026-10-09T19:00:31.000Z NZ First is up to 12 per cent and 16 seats and that is what puts the coalition on 65. National’s party vote still buys no list MP. Electorate vote National, party vote ACT or NZ First. _This post is for paying subscribers only._ ### Greenpeace NZ with Professor Jane Kelsey Are Sandbagging New Zealand URL: https://goodoil.news/greenpeace-nz-with-professor-jane-kelsey-are-sandbagging-new-zealand/ Last updated: 2026-10-09T18:29:59.000Z Greenpeace NZ, with Professor Jane Kelsey, is sandbagging New Zealand. What I find deeply troubling is the apparent willingness to say, in effect: ‘We couldn’t persuade the New Zealand Government, so let’s take the argument to Europe and see whether European trade pressure can make them change their mind.’ Before anybody accuses me of exaggerating, look at what Greenpeace itself has said: It wants the risk of losing preferential access to the European market to be used as an incentive for the New Zealand Government to change policy. New Zealand’s policies should be decided in New Zealand. That is why I call this an issue of New Zealand sovereignty. Who do we want deciding the future of New Zealand? The New Zealand people? Or overseas pressure groups, supported by Greenpeace New Zealand along with a woman known as Professor Jane Kelsey. For me, there is only one acceptable answer. Greenpeace NZ with Professor Jane Kelsey Are Sandbagging New Zealand 0:00 /484.388571 1× ### Good Oil General Debate URL: https://goodoil.news/good-oil-general-debate-844/ Last updated: 2026-10-09T18:00:05.000Z Good morning, welcome to our daily General Debate. Our evening General debate is called Backchat and will start at 6 pm. On General debate, you are encouraged as a commenter to share your own stories, discuss other news, bring NEW news, catch up with friends or make new friends with other commenters. To participate you’ll need to sign up for a [Disqus account](https://disqus.com/profile/signup/intent/?ref=goodoil.news) which is free, quick, and easy. All you need is an email address to register a username that suits you. On posts that are not articles such as this one, you do not have to stay ‘on topic’ but you do still need to follow our [commenting rules.](https://www.goodoil.news/commenting-and-moderation/?ref=goodoil.news) Please [read our rules ](https://goodoil.news/commenting-and-moderation/)before you start commenting on *The Good Oil* to avoid a temporary or permanent ban. To check if your ban might have been caused by Disqus, or to ask for a banning decision to be reviewed, email the voluntary **helpdesk** @ [**goodoil.news**](https://goodoil.news/) with your Disqus username in the subject line. Please be respectful and do not make demands. ### The Good Oil Word of the Day URL: https://goodoil.news/the-good-oil-word-of-the-day-783/ Last updated: 2026-10-09T17:32:57.000Z The word for today is… loath (adjective) - : unwilling to do something contrary to one's ways of thinking : reluctant Source : [Merriam-Webster](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/loath?ref=goodoil.news) Etymology : Many usage commentators point out that the spelling of loath, the adjective, is distinct from loathe, the verb that means "to dislike greatly." Dictionaries do record loathe (along with loth) as a variant spelling for the adjective, but at the same time indicate that the loath spelling is the most common one. The adjective and the verb both hark back to Old English, and the "e" ending in each has come and gone over the centuries—but if you want to avoid the ire of those who like to keep the language tidy, stick with loath for the adjective and loathe for the verb. ***If you enjoyed this Good Oil word of the day please consider sharing it with your friends and, especially, your children.*** ### Face of the Day URL: https://goodoil.news/face-of-the-day-1600/ Last updated: 2026-10-09T17:30:48.000Z > A bank mascot has found itself at the centre of an unlikely fight over New Zealanders’ right to make memes. > > Buck the Sheep – pictured above in a decision management may wish to discuss with us later – is Kiwibank’s green, woolly mascot, introduced in July as part of its “Bank Kiwi” campaign. > > Then the internet met Buck. > > Not long after the introduction, memes and increasingly bizarre posts about the sheep began appearing on social media. Some were sexualised, including people declaring that they wanted to “f...” it. > > Kiwibank responded by sending copyright takedown notices over some Buck posts, resulting in posts being removed from X and Bluesky. > > Stuff [Read More](https://www.stuff.co.nz/nz-news/361044302/should-we-be-allowed-meme-kiwibanks-buck-sheep?ref=goodoil.news) ### The Good Oil Daily Bible Verse URL: https://goodoil.news/the-good-oil-daily-bible-verse-493/ Last updated: 2026-10-09T17:00:22.000Z [Leviticus 10](https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Leviticus%2010&version=KJV&ref=goodoil.news) **10** And that ye may put difference between holy and unholy, and between unclean and clean; ### Night Cap URL: https://goodoil.news/night-cap-751/ Last updated: 2026-10-09T08:00:12.000Z If you have a great Youtube, Rumble or Vimeo video to share send it to videos@goodoil.news [![CTA Image](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/01/cam-shirt2-1.png)](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) If you're loving this trusty, straight-up news on Kiwi politics and beyond, why not become a paid member, eh? Unlock exclusive yarns, podcasts, vids, and in-depth analysis—your support keeps independent journalism chugging along. Join today for just $5.00 per month and get the full good oil! [Learn more ](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) ### Friday Fur URL: https://goodoil.news/friday-fur-329/ Last updated: 2026-10-09T07:30:22.000Z If you have a great Youtube, Rumble or Vimeo video to share send it to videos@goodoil.news [![CTA Image](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/01/cam-shirt2-1.png)](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) If you're loving this trusty, straight-up news on Kiwi politics and beyond, why not become a paid member, eh? Unlock exclusive yarns, podcasts, vids, and in-depth analysis—your support keeps independent journalism chugging along. Join today for just $5.00 per month and get the full good oil! [Learn more ](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) ### Duncan Breaks Down Nicola Willis Calling Chris Hipkins A Liar & Winston Peters Untrustworthy URL: https://goodoil.news/duncan-breaks-down-nicola-willis-calling-chris-hipkins-a-liar-winston-peters-untrustworthy/ Last updated: 2026-10-09T07:00:49.000Z If you have a great Youtube, Rumble or Vimeo video to share send it to videos@goodoil.news ### Harry Mowbray Defends Strategic Voting Campaign URL: https://goodoil.news/harry-mowbray-defends-strategic-voting-campaign/ Last updated: 2026-10-09T06:30:50.000Z If you have a great Youtube, Rumble or Vimeo video to share send it to videos@goodoil.news [![CTA Image](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/01/cam-shirt2-1.png)](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) If you're loving this trusty, straight-up news on Kiwi politics and beyond, why not become a paid member, eh? Unlock exclusive yarns, podcasts, vids, and in-depth analysis—your support keeps independent journalism chugging along. Join today for just $5.00 per month and get the full good oil! [Learn more ](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) ### Former Prime Minister John Key Debates Harry Mowbray On Strategic Voting URL: https://goodoil.news/former-prime-minister-john-key-debates-harry-mowbray-on-strategic-voting/ Last updated: 2026-10-09T06:00:09.000Z If you have a great Youtube, Rumble or Vimeo video to share send it to videos@goodoil.news [![CTA Image](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/01/cam-shirt2-1.png)](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) If you're loving this trusty, straight-up news on Kiwi politics and beyond, why not become a paid member, eh? Unlock exclusive yarns, podcasts, vids, and in-depth analysis—your support keeps independent journalism chugging along. Join today for just $5.00 per month and get the full good oil! [Learn more ](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) ### The Good Oil Daily Roundup URL: https://goodoil.news/the-good-oil-daily-roundup-767/ Last updated: 2026-10-09T05:30:34.000Z [](https://photos.google.com/u/1/photo/AF1QipN7Zp7NKe4smdZA9nAYud8CjsgjsQ-Bn7QyMo53?ref=goodoil.news) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/C5CB04FC-CA00-4DC3-8073-5FEA795471E3_1_105_c.jpeg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/E15A50BA-0DAB-4149-B3C8-8F870D00AA00_1_105_c.jpeg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/AAAE4D74-7F19-4FBB-B425-F25E16B3176F_1_105_c.jpeg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/78D6CE14-C078-4D6B-B3D8-BAB767C9AE85.jpeg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/93DBC6EC-A1DC-4F6B-BCC4-82B9F7BC7CCB.jpeg) ### Good Oil Backchat URL: https://goodoil.news/good-oil-backchat-845/ Last updated: 2026-10-09T04:59:59.000Z Good evening, welcome to **Backchat**. On Backchat, you are free to share your own stories, discuss other news or catch up with friends. To participate you’ll need to sign up for a [Disqus account ](https://disqus.com/profile/signup/intent/?ref=goodoil.news)which is free, quick, and easy. On posts that are not articles like this one, you do not have to stay ‘on topic’ but you do still need to follow our [commenting rules.](https://goodoil.news/commenting-and-moderation/) Please [read our rules ](https://www.goodoil.news/commenting-and-moderation/?ref=goodoil.news)before you start commenting on *The Good Oil* to avoid a temporary or permanent ban. NOTE: Moderation queries MUST be expressed VIA EMAIL and not by posting a comment. To check if your ban might have been caused by Disqus, or to ask for a banning decision to be reviewed, email the voluntary **helpdesk** @ [**goodoil.news**](https://goodoil.news/) with your Disqus username in the subject line. Please be respectful and do not make demands. ### Chicago Chases Away the Rich, Miami Says ‘Thank You' URL: https://goodoil.news/chicago-chases-away-the-rich-miami-says-thank-you/ Last updated: 2026-10-09T03:30:25.000Z [**Richard Porter**](https://realclearwire.com/articles/2026/10/07/chicago%5Fchases%5Faway%5Fthe%5Frich%5Fmiami%5Fsays%5Fthank%5Fyou%5F154564.html?ref=goodoil.news) *Richard Porter is a member of the board of directors of the Alfa Institute, a platform for ideas, policy proposals and new technology integration pertaining to artificial intelligence.* A problem of our modern age is that there are no adverse consequences for people who believe things at odds with reality: An LGBT activist in Chicago who marches under the “Queers for Palestine” banner never has to answer for what happens to actual queers in Gaza – or reconcile the fact that Israel is the only truly safe space for gay people in the entire Middle East. Our overly cosseted society buffers us from the world’s harsh realities. As the cost of delusions – beliefs at odds with observable reality – falls to zero, it’s no surprise that we have more fantastical thinking, particularly in progressive precincts where reality has become merely a construct. One such hip delusion among young people in places like New York and Seattle and Chicago is to demonize Americans who’ve been financially successful. “Eat the Rich” is their cutesy phrase – though it’s not so cute when some spoiled scion shoots a health care executive in the back on the streets of Manhattan. The idea, we are told, is that billionaires and corporate elites hoard wealth stolen from the people, causing others to be poorer and struggle. So even those appalled at the thought of taking their lives think nothing of taking their money, and who cares if they leave – [bye!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kENsOkibc6s&ref=goodoil.news) This delusion is so popular that socialism, a system that has proven itself a disaster for a century, is on the rise. Californians are voting on a confiscation tax on the wealthy, while mayors in New York and Chicago are implementing policies to stick it to these supposedly greedy, awful individuals – [people like Ken Griffin](https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2026/04/19/mamdanis%5Ftax-the-rich%5Fplan%5Frisks%5Fdriving%5Fwealth%5Faway%5F154050.html?ref=goodoil.news), founder and CEO of Citadel LLC, a multinational hedge fund, who is worth $57 billion according to [Forbes](https://www.forbes.com/profile/ken-griffin/?ref=goodoil.news). As it turns out, however, Ken Griffin is a living rebuke to the fools who don’t understand the [principled pragmatism](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9ruwJZJ3zY&ref=goodoil.news) of capitalism, the inherent differences between [free exchange](https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/03/23/food%5Findustry%5Flessons%5Ffor%5Fthe%5Fhealth%5Fcare%5Fsector%5F%5F%5F142740.html?ref=goodoil.news) and socialism, what [money is today](https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2019/09/18/money%5Ffrom%5Fnothing%5Fdemocrats%5Fsocialism%5Ffor%5Ffree%5F141280.html?ref=goodoil.news), and how it changes the [nature of wealth](https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/03/20/rx%5Ffor%5Feconomy%5Fpolicies%5Fthat%5Fkeep%5Fbusinesses%5Fbusy.html?ref=goodoil.news). But, put all that aside for a moment. What Ken Griffin’s example actually proves is a much simpler reality: A community that welcomes prosperous people becomes more prosperous, and communities that are inhospitable to prosperous people become poorer. Illinois won the lottery when Griffin made this place his home. A Florida native, he came to Chicago after graduating from Harvard University, working here for another entrepreneur briefly before striking out on his own to build Citadel. As it became a powerhouse, Chicago and Illinois benefited along with him. Not just because of the vast sums in income taxes he and his company and executives paid to the state or the local property taxes in Chicago, but because of his commitment to giving generously to make our city better. Griffin loved Chicago. Our museums, our universities, our local schools, our hospitals – even our crime lab – all benefited by his civic engagement, his massive contributions, and his fierce commitment to make Chicago and Illinois a better place to live and work. And he encouraged other successful Chicagoans to do the same. In a [noteworthy speech to the Economic Club of Chicago](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gh6CjVgIia8&ref=goodoil.news) in May 2013, Griffin told the story of how Chicago grew into a great place to live because its business leaders were civically engaged as they built the city. He explained how he benefited from their work and built his business here while challenging contemporary business leaders of Chicago to re-engage civically to save Chicago and Illinois from the problems brought on by poor governance. [He spoke of cronyism,](https://www.chicagotribune.com/2013/05/22/citadels-kenneth-griffin-exposes-cronyism-causes-a-stir-at-economic-club/?ref=goodoil.news) how political leaders used state resources to buy off business leaders in Illinois, and challenged them to stand up and fight for the benefit of the people of Chicago instead. And, for a few years, business leaders were more engaged. But that spirit soon faded – and then all but disappeared with the onset of the Covid pandemic. Griffin returned to the [Economic Club in October 2021](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFE3X9qjWd0&t=274s&ref=goodoil.news) with a warning: Unchecked crime and the feckless governmental leaders in Chicago and Illinois were making it difficult for him to consider keeping Citadel in the city. Citadel had already been forced to move many of its operations to a hotel in Florida at the outset of Covid to keep the business running. But what Griffin discovered in Florida was a pragmatic government that was responsive to its citizens. Griffin never had his hand out – he was fiercely critical of handouts – he paid his taxes, gave away billions of dollars to help others and enrich the community. All he wanted was a city that works. Unfortunately, Chicago no longer worked for anyone who wasn’t part of the governing cabal. So he moved his headquarters out of Chicago to Miami in 2022. “Miami is a vibrant, growing metropolis that embodies the American dream,” [Griffin said](https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/chicago-politics/pritzker-republicans-react-after-ken-griffin-announces-citadels-move-to-miami/2864341/?ref=goodoil.news) at the time. “I am excited to have recently moved to Miami with my family and look forward to rapidly expanding Citadel in a city so rich in diversity and abounding with energy.” Gov JB Pritzker, whose wealth was inherited, said of the self-made Griffin’s decision: “So like a spoiled rich kid, Griffin announced he was taking his toys and leaving Illinois.” The “toys” Griffin took with him now include a $3 billion gift to Carnegie Mellon University that will be invested in an amazing new research facility to make Miami even more vibrant. Even [the liberal *Chicago Tribune* gets it](https://www.chicagotribune.com/2026/10/02/mung-chiang-ken-griffin-university-of-miami-carnegie-mellon-university-miami-wynwood/?lctg=9dc20ec4a53e59803c0fae1d5daf3515&active=yesD&utm%5Fcampaign=trib-chicago%5Ftribune-opinion-nl&utm%5Fcontent=curated&utm%5Fsource=sailthru&utm%5Fmedium=newsletter&utm%5Fcluster=TRIB&utm%5FprofileID=6a5eab68e19211560ff952dc): that $3 billion gift could have been made here, not to mention the other [billions he’s given away](https://www.griffincatalyst.org/about/?ref=goodoil.news) since leaving Chicago, all of which would have reinvigorated opportunities and increased the wealth and appeal of Chicago. Pritzker himself is also a billionaire – and he and his family have generously given millions to make Chicago better too. But by far the biggest recipient of Pritzker’s largesse is… Pritzker himself. He has contributed an estimated $500 million to political campaigns and political action committees, most of it to self-fund his political campaigns. He then used that power to drive away anyone else with money to give away who didn’t go along with his dubious policies. Illinois and Chicago blew it with Griffin and many others with money to give away. In New York, 34-year-old Mayor Zohran [Mamdani is hellbent on blowing it too](https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2026/04/19/mamdanis%5Ftax-the-rich%5Fplan%5Frisks%5Fdriving%5Fwealth%5Faway%5F154050.html?ref=goodoil.news). A poorly led state and city, a city with waning civic engagement by business leaders willing to push back against a corrupt political culture created by greedy pols out for themselves and their cronies, doesn’t die overnight. It rusts away, becoming stark, ugly, and sad – step by step. That’s our reality in Illinois, as long as the state is JB Pritzker’s toy. Eat the rich and suffer the consequences? Hell no! Keep the rich and enjoy the benefits. This article was originally published by RealClearPolitics and made available via [RealClearWire](https://realclearwire.com/articles/2026/10/07/chicago%5Fchases%5Faway%5Fthe%5Frich%5Fmiami%5Fsays%5Fthank%5Fyou%5F154564.html?ref=goodoil.news). ### Some Trans-Tasman Thoughts on NZ 2026 URL: https://goodoil.news/some-trans-tasman-thoughts-on-nz-2026/ Last updated: 2026-10-09T03:00:12.000Z As [I wrote for *Real Good Oil*](https://goodoil.news/election-2026-i-feel-your-pain/) this week, we Aussies feel your election pain, New Zealand. You’re in pretty much the same position we were for the last couple of elections here: the major parties are woke and woker and none of the minor parties seem worth voting for. Following the campaign, it seems the same pattern is still holding. TOP want to pretend they’re NZ’s answer to One Nation, when they’re just the same socialist same-old. National are at least showing some conservative spine with their welfare policies. > [National has released](https://www.stuff.co.nz/politics/361043523/nz-election-2026-live-updates-politics-campaign-news?ref=goodoil.news) its welfare policy, which includes the introduction of random drug testing of jobseeker beneficiaries from 2027. > > The party has announced a new five-point plan it says will strengthen the “expectations for those who remain on Jobseeker long term”. These include reducing benefits for long-term recipients and increasing the residence period to qualify for main benefits from two years to five years, which leaves unanswered whether the government will crack down on ‘asylum seekers’ and ‘refugees’ skiving off the Kiwi taxpayer as soon as they slither into the country. Conservatives have good grounds for supporting such policies: after all, they’re paying the taxes that fund the bennies and they have a right to demand that those taxes be used only to meet basic needs like food and shelter, not to sustain drug habits. For a libertarian party, ACT seem strangely at home with the idea, too. Still, as ACT’s **David Seymour** points out, being stoned out of their gourds seems at odds with being job-ready. > Speaking about National’s new welfare policy, which includes drug testing for jobseeker beneficiaries, Seymour said it went a “short distance in the right direction”. > > “Yes, there need to be consequences, but if languishing on the dole is bad, why wait two years for consequences?” he said. > > “This policy shows the next future government needs more ACT to go further and faster in the right direction on welfare reform.” > > Seymour said someone is “not work ready if they’re stoned”, adding, “Why should people get up early and go to work to pay for other people’s drugs?” Will he go one further, then, and demand that anyone and everyone whose wage comes from the taxpayer also be subjected to drug testing? One imagines there might be a few more empty benches in the Beehive. > National leader **Christopher Luxon** says he is open to random drug tests at parliament, as he campaigns to introduce random drug tests for beneficiaries. \[…\] > > Labour’s **Kieran McAnulty** said that if politicians wanted to randomly drug test welfare recipients, then politicians should be willing to be randomly drug tested, too. He might want to be careful what he wishes for. He seems to imagine that his is some kind of knock-down argument against drug-testing the taxpayer-funded, when a great many Kiwi voters may well be perfectly happy to see it go ahead. On the other hand, Hipkins seems a little put out by the idea. > Labour leader **Chris Hipkins** has called National “desperate” after they announced a policy for random drug testing for people on jobseeker support \[…\] > > “There are people out there today desperately looking for work. They want to get jobs. They are doing everything right, and they can’t find jobs,” he said. Does that mean Hipkins will support slashing New Zealand’s per-capita massive immigration? Why import hundreds of thousands of new workers when, so he says, there are hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders desperately looking for work? It’s not the only area where Labour are contradicting their own ideological claims. Labour are so committed to ‘climate action’, or so they say, that the party has released an entire manifesto for the election: “Labour is fully committed to the Paris Agreement and will put New Zealand on course to meet its targets,” Hipkins says. To that end, they want to “incentivise genuine emissions reductions rather than relying on offsets”. Yet, here they also are, encouraging people to use one of the most emissions-intensive forms of travel going. > Leader Chris Hipkins said, “Flying is expensive, and on many regional routes there is little or no competition”. > > “Labour will make prices more transparent, open opportunities for smaller airlines to compete and give passengers more rights.” **Izzy Cook** will be old enough to vote this election. Labour sounds like just the party for her and her bourgeois, ‘rules for thee, not me’, finger-wagging. Elsewhere, in what seems almost a re-run of the last Australian election and the Queensland state election before it, the legacy media are ginning up a ‘controversy’ in order to try and nobble the conservatives. > [New Zealand First](https://www.stuff.co.nz/politics/361043736/winston-peters-says-late-term-abortion-shades-murder-and-assassination?ref=goodoil.news) leader **Winston Peters** has labelled late-term abortion as “shading” into “murder and assassination” depending on the timing \[…\] > > On Thursday, Luxon was asked about Peters latest comments, but reiterated that New Zealand’s abortion laws are “settled”. Nice try, but 10 bucks says the legacy media won’t let this one go. They know perfectly well that the make-or-break issue for left-wing women is being able to murder their children, whether unborn or not (as per their latest heroine, Lindsay Clancy). The media are almost certain to go into full hysterics on abortion, trying to spook the conservative horses. The only consolation for Good Oil readers, at least, is that so far (so far) National haven’t run their campaign as appallingly badly as the Dutton-led coalition last year in Australia. --- 💡 ****If you enjoyed this article please share it using the share buttons at the top or bottom of the article.** ### [The Good Oil] Stuff Up of the Day URL: https://goodoil.news/the-good-oil-stuff-up-of-the-day-187/ Last updated: 2026-10-09T02:00:48.000Z They were so busy trying to catch Erica Stanford out they couldn’t even spell education. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/Eductation.jpeg) ### The Major Parties Go One Nation-Lite URL: https://goodoil.news/the-major-parties-go-one-nation-lite/ Last updated: 2026-10-09T01:30:01.000Z As I wrote recently, while the uniparty establishment and its media bootlickers keep hoping that the Bad Orange Lady will just go away if they just pretend not to notice her, [overseas governments are already starting to prepare ](https://goodoil.news/o-s-govts-see-what-the-uniparty-wont/)for Prime Minister Pauline. Diplomats, business leaders and powerbrokers from across the globe have met, held talks with, or are eagerly seeking meetings with Pauline Hanson. Even the local business establishment, who have been in a dither at the prospect of One Nation shutting off the tap of cheap Third World labour, are getting ready to talk to the party’s leader. Just as the legacy media quietly admitted her ascension by inviting her to speak at the National Press Club earlier this year, Big Business is rolling out the red carpet. > [Last month, Hanson](https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/margin-call/pauline-hanson-lands-canberra-business-summit-keynote-as-one-nation-attracts-corporate-interest/news-story/4cec5f815e933987d14a1636a0a468f4?ref=goodoil.news) was one of the VIP guests at a ritzy dinner celebrating the Financial Review’s annual power list. (She debuted on the list in fourth place, behind PM **Anthony Albanese**, Treasurer **Jim Chalmers** and the “man most likely”, **Mark Butler**; the official Opposition Leader, **Angus Taylor**, was a notable omission.) > > Next week, the One Nation leader will make another debut: this time as a keynote speaker at the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry’s big day out in Canberra. While PM Anthony Albanese will give the main speech – and try not to fall off the stage this time – he’ll be uncomfortably aware that the sense of Hanson as a PM-in-waiting will be centre-stage when she delivers her keynote speech at the fat cats’ beano. In the meantime, much as they hate to admit it, the major parties are [dancing strictly to One Nation’s tune](https://goodoil.news/one-nation-are-calling-the-policy-tune/) on the single biggest hot-button policy at the next election: immigration. For half a century, the polite set in Canberra have treated any suggestion that Australia had a finite capacity for imported humanity as pure heresy. Then the polling arrived. Suddenly, every suit in Parliament House has discovered their inner border hawk, churning out watered-down imitations of the very policies they once condemned over chardonnay and kale chips. > [Migration rates to Australia](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-10-06/migration-cuts-comparison-labor-coalition-one-nation/107232222?ref=goodoil.news) since 2019 have been much higher than many comparable countries, with more than double the growth in population from migration compared to the United Kingdom, and three times Germany. Faced with that staggering influx, the coalition has cobbled together a timid pledge to halve net arrivals to 100,000 for a couple of years before quietly ramping them back up once the electorate is safely sedated. Labor’s **Tony Burke**, meanwhile, steps up to the microphone with the straightest of faces to declare that bringing net migration down to 225,000 a year constitutes decisive restraint. It is a pantomime of competence. Every targets-and-trajectories paper Treasury produces is obsolete before the ink dries, and everyone in the gallery knows it. The legacy players are peddling One Nation-lite, hoping that a thin coat of Hansonite paint will fool voters who cannot find an affordable rental or see a doctor without a three-week wait. The crucial difference is that nobody believes Labor or the Liberals actually want the numbers to fall. They are addicted to the cheap-labour heroin fed to them by the property lobbies and corporate hospitality barons. Only **Pauline Hanson** sounds to voters as if she genuinely means business. > One Nation has vowed to cut migration to negative levels in its first years, the coalition has promised to temporarily halve migration to 100,000, and Labor wants migration rates to return to the longer-term trend of 225,000. One Nation’s prescription does not fiddle with cosmetic quotas. It aims directly at the mechanisms that broke the system in the first place. The party proposes net negative migration of 25,000 annually over its initial three years, delivering an absolute cut of 750,000 to give the country’s exhausted housing and road networks actual breathing room. The gravy train for dodgy private colleges would be dismantled overnight, with foreign student visas slashed to 100,000 and the accompanying family visa rort terminated. Apparently it takes an entire Indian village to raise a single jerry-builder: official figures show that more than half of the ‘skilled’ worker intake (itself just 12 per cent of total immigration) in 2025 consisted of accompanying relatives rather than actual tradesmen or nurses. One Nation’s plan to eliminate those dependent visas altogether cuts through the bureaucratic double-talk. Overstayers and foreign criminals would face swift deportation and permanent bans, rather than endless loops through sympathetic tribunals. Predictably, the economic commentariat has responded with the customary shrieks of terror, warning that turning off the spigot will induce an immediate recession. Hanson’s rejoinder cuts straight through the Treasury jargon: a larger economic pie means nothing if the slice left for individual Australians gets smaller every single year. The major parties can copy the talking points all they like, but they cannot hide their absolute terror of offending the Multicult. The corporate suits in Canberra know it too. That is why they are scrambling to hear Hanson at their summits. They recognise that the public has stopped buying the uniparty’s half-measures and the woman they spent 30 years mocking is now writing the nation’s political agenda. --- 💡 ****If you enjoyed this article please share it using the share buttons at the top or bottom of the article.** ### The Left and Their Political Violence Issue URL: https://goodoil.news/the-left-and-their-political-violence-issue/ Last updated: 2026-10-09T01:00:49.000Z [**Douglas Blair**](https://papundits.wordpress.com/2026/10/07/the-left-has-a-political-violence-problem/?ref=goodoil.news) *Douglas Blair is press manager for Heritage Action at the Heritage Foundation.* They say politics can be murder. For a disturbing number of Americans on the left, that seems to be an adage taken literally. A new poll from the progressive Center for Strategic Politics indicates just how far some Democrat voters are willing to go to see President Donald Trump removed from power. Or, as the pollsters somewhat mutely put it, “Democrats want Trump out by (almost) any means necessary.” ![](https://papundits.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/261006_violence.jpg?w=594) Brendan SMIALOWSKI / AFP via Getty Images The survey of 683 Democrat voters found overwhelming positive reactions to Trump being impeached and convicted or removed under the 25th Amendment, at 87 per cent and 84 per cent, respectively. Far more troublingly, 59 per cent said they would react positively if military leaders removed Trump and assumed control of the government, while 55 per cent said the same if he simply died in his sleep. The only means of removal that didn’t receive a plurality of Democrat support is an assassination, though nearly one-third of Democrats would react positively to the news that Trump had been killed at a rally. Apparently protecting democracy now includes the occasional military junta. The Center for Strategic Politics’ findings also echo disturbing polling released more than a year earlier by the Network Contagion Research Institute and Rutgers University. In April 2025, researchers found that 55.2 per cent of respondents who identified as left-of-center said murdering Trump would be at least somewhat justified. Nearly 49 per cent said the same about Elon Musk, while roughly 58 per cent said destroying a Tesla dealership in protest was at least somewhat acceptable. Those numbers were alarming enough on their own, but five months later, the assassination of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk gave the poll a far more visceral angle. Kirk was shot and killed while speaking at Utah Valley University, engaging in the spirited debate he so dearly loved. Prosecutors allege that the accused killer targeted Kirk because of his political and religious beliefs, though the online reaction to Kirk’s murder exposed a far likelier reason. Social media quickly ballooned with posts celebrating Kirk’s death, mocking his widow, and arguing that Kirk deserved what happened to him. Most, if not all, of those videos remain online with hundreds of thousands of comments bolstering the idea that a man deserved to be murdered in front of his wife and children due to his political beliefs. A YouGov poll conducted after Kirk’s killing cemented the left’s vile views on political violence, reporting 16 per cent of liberals said it was usually or always acceptable to be happy about the death of a public figure they opposed. Among those identifying as “very liberal,” that number rose to 24 per cent. Conservatives registered at just four per cent. Political violence begins when violence against political opponents becomes a meme or morally permissible, so long as the target is sufficiently hated. It then ends with a bullet through the neck, after which Democrats dance on the poor soul’s grave. Democrats are so effectively able to cultivate a culture of political violence because both institutionalists represented by elected officials and their tacitly accepted Antifa shock troops have curated a culture of political suppression. In my native Portland, Oregon, violent thugs spent the summer of 2020 looting buildings and throwing firebombs into a federal courthouse in the name of social justice. Fast-forward to 2026, and the political violence continues, now mostly targeting federal immigration authorities. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents face not only bureaucratic resistance from city officials but also violent mobs; Portland residents tried building battering rams to storm ICE headquarters. And what happens when law enforcement has enough and acts to stop the carnage? The rioters are bailed out by the Democrat elected officials who swear they don’t support political violence. Former Vice President Kamala Harris got flak from conservatives when she eagerly encouraged people to support the Minnesota Freedom Fund, a fundraiser used to free violent criminals and looters during the 2020 Black Lives Matter riots. “If you’re able to, chip in now to the @MNFreedomFund to help post bail for those protesting on the ground in Minnesota,” Harris posted on Twitter, now X. When significant numbers of Democrat poll respondents say they would welcome a military coup or support assassinating the president, there’s a deep rot at play. Political violence thrives on permission, explicit or subtle. As Democrats have spent the better part of a decade warning that American democracy is under threat from Trump and the right, that permission structure is entirely on the left. You cannot save democracy by cheering when your political opponents are removed from it. That is, in fact, how democracies die. This article was originally published by [the Daily Signal](http://dailysignal.com/?ref=goodoil.news) and republished by [PA Pundits – International](https://papundits.wordpress.com/2026/10/07/the-left-has-a-political-violence-problem/?ref=goodoil.news). ### Today of All Days URL: https://goodoil.news/today-of-all-days/ Last updated: 2026-10-09T00:30:32.000Z [**Laura Dodsworth**](https://www.thefreemind.co.uk/p/today-of-all-days?ref=goodoil.news) *Writer, photographer, commentator.* Today, of all days, there is a pro-Palestinian protest in London. The police have apparently urged the organisers to move the event to another date. And of course they haven’t. After all, that would entirely miss the point – today of all days, the protest is designed to cause maximum offence and hurt to Jews. It is not a march against genocide but a march for terrorism. What better date could the organisers have chosen? Met Police Deputy Assistant Commissioner James Harman has voiced serious concerns about the impact of the student-organised march on Jewish students and staff – and you’d hope he’s also aware of the wider impact on Jews in London – but said that marches can only be banned if police consider it would result in serious public disorder, and that placing restrictions on it would not prevent that disorder from taking place. But British Jews don’t tend to cause serious public disorder, do they? Anyway, such a decision needs approval from the Home Secretary. And Home Secretary Shabana Mahmoud has obviously not provided this approval. Perhaps she’s too busy reopening the UK Resettlement Scheme, which will create ‘safe and legal’ routes to the UK, specifically in the first case for Palestinians and Afghans. People have short memories. It was only three years ago that Hamas terrorists and Gazan civilians invaded Israel and killed children, babies, women, men and literal Holocaust survivors, took hostages and injured thousands. I can’t write about it any more. I’ve done so before and other people will list the horrors if you need reminding. If memories seem short now, they seemed even shorter in October 2023. Within a few short days of one of the most barbaric acts of terrorism in our lifetime, student unions who are normally all over the concept of ‘safe spaces’ tweeted cartoons of paragliders. Academics in the West proclaimed that Hamas’s blood-soaked pogrom was a fine example of ‘decolonisation’. Just one week after the horror, on 14 October 2023, I travelled through London to give a talk. I was stunned by the pro-Palestinian march, attended by thousands of people, calling for a ceasefire even as Israel had not finished counting the bodies of its slain. On that occasion, the Met Police had been contacted on 7 October at 12.50pm of the intention to protest by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign. Take that in: the protest was being planned while the barbaric attack in Israel was *still underway.* On 14 October I drove through Piccadilly and saw that Eros, one of London’s most famous statues, had been draped in a Palestinian flag. A switch in me flicked. A small group of friends and I hastily set up British Friends of Israel and the October Declaration to stand up for British Jews, show our support for Israel and make the oft-missed point that Hamas are terrorists and should be named as such. (This needed pointing out to the BBC and much of the media who still choose to omit it.) ![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!OSrM!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fc7923908-ff47-48aa-9928-1fb48e81289b_1232x612.png) Eros, Piccadilly, 14 October 2026. Today’s pro-Palestinian march is not all. Today of all days, British Jews must sit with the deeply troubling knowledge that a British political party has just passed a motion that ‘Zionism is Racism’. Most British Jews and Jews around the world identify as Zionists – many polls testify to this. Zionism is the national movement that supports the creation and protection of a Jewish homeland in the historic and ancestral home of Jews. I am a Zionist since I also believe in that. Lubna Speitan, the Green Party member behind the motion, addressed a crowd in London by saying, ‘We will continue until we dismantle Zionism from the world, from every country. They will be shunned and that time will come when they are hunted in the same way as the Nazi oppressors were… It won’t happen without force.’ This is yet another inversion of Nazism and the Holocaust. She knows full well it was Jews who were the victims of a Nazi genocide. And I am sure she must know it was Jews who led the global hunt for the Nazis afterwards. Today of all days, British Jews are living with antisemitism at a level that has become grotesquely normalised. The Community Security Trust (CST) recorded 1,926 antisemitic incidents across the UK in the first half of 2026, the second-highest total ever reported to CST in the first six months of any year, exceeded only by the 2,019 incidents recorded from January to June 2024\. This is an increase of 21 per cent from the 1,598 incidents recorded in the first half of 2025\. Depressingly, this means that antisemitism has stabilised at a higher rate than before 7 October. Just three days ago, at the 90th anniversary commemoration of the Battle of Cable Street, demonstrators in east London chanted ‘Zionists are not welcome here’ and ‘Zionism is fascism’. At one demonstration that day, marchers shouted at a Jewish woman journalist, ‘You are a Zio! Zionists are not welcome here.’ The irony of protesters telling Jews commemorating the defeat of fascists in Cable Street that Jews who identify as Zionists were themselves fascists and unwelcome. Today of all days, UK Labour politicians are expressing solidarity with Jews. It’s a little hard to swallow the performance – both for us and them, I think. You can almost sense that they can’t wait for the normal business of waving Palestinian flags and issuing tellings-off to Israel to resume tomorrow. Just yesterday, Labour MP Dame Emily Thornberry reacted to the news that Israel is threatening to shut the British consulate in Jerusalem on LBC. Her argument was that Britain does not recognise the consulate as being in Israel, but believes it to be in the State of Palestine. ‘We don’t recognise it as part of Israel. What legal right do they have?’ she said. I couldn’t help wondering if she was sober. I’m afraid she doesn’t realise that the UK’s game of ‘fantasy countries’ doesn’t change the governmental, legal or military situation in Israel. As chair of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, she may need to brush up a bit on the reality of foreign affairs. (There is nothing from Emily Thornberry so far today to commemorate 7 October, to mourn the loss of lives that day, including British lives, or to express sympathy with Israel.) Finally, I thought I’d check out the BBC’s coverage of the anniversary of 7 October. At 12.33pm the latest Live Reporting news item is this: ![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!cOOB!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff310cae1-2f54-422b-8dfd-c17732e09498_1182x1102.png) The BBC really can’t help themselves, can they? Today, of all days, British Jews are being asked to endure the spectacle of people marching through London under Palestinian flags, a political party defining the national movement of most Jews as racism, and protesters telling Jews that they are not welcome at a commemoration of the defeat of fascism, while living under a government which is belligerent and unsympathetic towards Israel. They are expected to suck it up and carry on as normal, but perhaps occupying a little less space visually than before. But it is not normal. Today of all days, I stand with British Jews and I am still a Zionist. This article was originally published by [the Free Mind](https://www.thefreemind.co.uk/p/today-of-all-days?ref=goodoil.news). ### Because, Who Doesn’t Want to Be Jo’burg 2.0? URL: https://goodoil.news/because-who-doesnt-want-to-be-joburg-2-0/ Last updated: 2026-10-09T00:00:18.000Z Out of the mouth of socialist sucker-fish will the truth often out itself. Even if they’re too thick to realise what they’ve accidentally said. In a hilarious own-goal, Muslim socialist Mayor of New York **Zohran Mamdani** declared that the African National Congress and post-apartheid South Africa would be the role model for his governance. To damn him with faint praise, he actually told the truth for once. If you ever wanted a working definition of civic suicide, look no further than the Rainbow Nation. Under three decades of African National Congress rule, that once-prosperous nation has been systematically hollowed out into a tribal kleptocracy. In Johannesburg, the country’s commercial heart, residents endure constant, rolling blackouts and dry taps because the copper wiring and municipal water pipes have literally been stripped out of the ground and sold off for scrap. Meanwhile, in the rural heartlands, the world turns a blind eye to the horrific reality of farm attacks, where marauding gangs wage campaigns of slaughter and rape against white farmers. That this dystopian wasteland should serve as an aspirational blueprint for the financial capital of the West is a proposition that belongs in an asylum, not City Hall. Yet, here we are. Mamdani, having graduated from an obscure rap career as ‘Young Cardamom’ to leading man of the Democratic Socialists of America, has laid out his vision with terrifying candour. > [As in South Africa](https://www.spectator.com.au/2026/01/mayor-mamdani-south-africa-is-the-model-for-new-york/?ref=goodoil.news), the enemy in Mamdani’s New York is often white people. He has already vowed to target “whiter neighborhoods” for higher taxes. In his inaugural speech he zoned in on another set of unprosecuted criminals: billionaires. Naturally, the classic Marxist playbook requires a demon, and Mamdani’s racialised rhetoric goes at it with the zero subtlety of Lenin railing against the kulaks. In his inauguration address, he made it abundantly clear that the middle class will pay for the utopia. While the Marxist stage-puppets scream ‘tax the rich’, it is the working burghers in the outer boroughs who will bear the brunt of his overhauled property tax regime. The consequences of this ideological madness have not taken long to manifest. Capital, which is notoriously allergic to being fleeced by self-styled revolutionaries, is fleeing the five boroughs in droves. Wall Street traders and productive businesses are voting with their feet. Advertisements for ‘NoFlo’, a luxury enclave in sun-drenched, low-tax northern Florida, now mock commuters from the grime of the New York subway cars. When you threaten to strip the wealth of the top one per cent who fund 40 per cent of the city’s coffers, they do not queue up to be shorn: they call the movers. Because they can. The proles have no such luxury. > Mamdani promised at the start of his speech that he had grand ambitions for New York and perhaps nowhere was that clearer than when he claimed that under his leadership society in the city would be remade to “replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism.” How is that collectivist warmth translating into daily life? Just six months into this disastrous administration, the reality is biting with savage speed. Street-level order has evaporated. Assaults across the city have seen an alarming explosion, with ordinary New Yorkers left to navigate subways and pavements that feel increasingly feral. At the same time, the demographic transformation of Gotham has reached its cultural milestone. Mamdani, sworn in on a Koran and delivering speeches peppered with Urdu, made sure to cater to the nearly one million Muslim residents who delivered him power. The fruits of that courtship were laid bare when Times Square, once the glittering neon symbol of American commercial vitality, was effectively shut down for a mass Islamic prayer demonstration, echoing with the familiar war-cry of *Allahu Akbar*. In just half a year, the former pearl of the Hudson is hurtling down the same well-trodden path of institutional rot that destroyed Johannesburg. With productive taxpayers packing their bags, violent thugs ruling the asphalt and an activist cadre running City Hall on grievance politics, the curtain is coming down on New York’s greatness. They wanted South Africa and they’re getting it: good and hard. --- 💡 ****If you enjoyed this article please share it using the share buttons at the top or bottom of the article.** ### Blenheim Recycling Centre Reopens After $2.5m Fire URL: https://goodoil.news/blenheim-recycling-centre-reopens-after-2-5m-fire/ Last updated: 2026-10-08T23:30:37.000Z [**Nigel**](https://pavlovapost.co.nz/blenheim-recycling-centre-vape-fire-lettuce?ref=goodoil.news) *Nigel is the founder, editor-in-chief, and lead writer at Pavlova Post, a New Zealand satire publication covering national news, local chaos, weather drama, politics, transport mishaps, and everyday Kiwi life – usually with a generous layer of exaggeration.* Blenheim spent 11 months recovering from a $2.5 million fire at its waste sorting centre, rebuilt the operation, restarted the conveyor and made it only a few minutes before somebody’s plastic bag full of lettuce brought proceedings to an emergency stop. The machinery had been repaired. Household decision-making had apparently been restored from the previous backup. The Waste Sorting Centre reopened on Wednesday after a lithium-ion battery, believed to have come from a disposable vape, sparked last November’s fire and left the building structurally damaged. Nine recycling operators were back on the line, moving quickly through cans, bottles, plastic and cardboard when the lettuce arrived. It was inside a plastic bag, because apparently the lettuce itself had not already done enough. ### **The yellow bin resumes mystery-box operations** A bag of lettuce is not an especially difficult object to distinguish from recyclable packaging. It is green, perishable and generally purchased with the optimistic intention that somebody will eventually make a salad. Nevertheless, it made its way into the recycling stream and onto an industrial sorting conveyor, where the entire line had to stop so a real person could remove somebody else’s abandoned lunch ambitions. Not long afterwards, a full can of whiskey and cola appeared. That at least had recyclable packaging. It was simply still carrying the optional extra traditionally removed before recycling: the whiskey and cola. Staff have dealt with considerably worse. The sorting team told Local Democracy Reporting they have encountered dog waste, full nappies and sanitary products, while animal carcasses, including a lamb, pigs, cats and dogs, have also arrived in recycling. At this point the conveyor is less a waste-sorting system and more a game show in which nobody wins and the mystery prize occasionally requires protective gloves. The people working there are not the joke. They are the ones expected to stand beside a moving belt and physically deal with whatever somebody several kilometres away decided qualified as ‘probably recycling’. That is an important distinction, because the household decision happens in peace and quiet. The consequences eventually arrive at somebody else’s desk travelling towards them on a conveyor. ### **One vape achieved a remarkably poor return on investment** Last November’s fire demonstrated just how expensive one bad bin decision can become. Council staff said the lithium-ion battery believed to have caused the blaze came from a disposable vape and was run over by a forklift while mixed in with cardboard. The result was about $2.5 million in damage and an 11-month shutdown. For anybody still struggling with Marlborough’s recycling system, the council’s guidance on batteries is refreshingly free of riddles. Batteries must not go in the household rubbish bin and they must not go in the recycling bin. Vapes receive their own similarly ambitious instruction: also not either bin. This is because lithium-ion batteries can ignite when damaged, crushed or compacted, turning a minor act of ‘she’ll be right’ disposal into an infrastructure project with invoices. Most recycling education uses diagrams and colour-coded pamphlets. Marlborough unfortunately ended up producing the $2.5 million practical demonstration. The centre also needed a temporary sorting facility while reconstruction continued, with Marlborough’s recycling being trucked to Christchurch for part of the closure. One misplaced battery therefore managed to acquire a logistical footprint usually reserved for somebody organising a regional sporting tournament. ### **Every strange bin choice eventually meets a person** Kerbside rubbish has a useful psychological feature: once the truck empties the bin, whatever was inside appears to have ceased existing. The lid closes, the truck leaves and civilisation continues. Except it has not disappeared. It has simply begun a journey towards people whose working day now includes determining why somebody sent them a full drink, contaminated waste or a rechargeable object capable of setting the workplace on fire. That is why the lettuce is such a perfect little symbol of the whole problem. It was harmless, but completely wrong, and somebody still had to stop an industrial process to deal with it. New Zealand households have spent years receiving bin guides, recycling charts, council websites and increasingly specific instructions about what goes where. Yet there remains a special moment in kitchens and garages across the country when a person holds an obviously unsuitable object over a recycling bin and decides to let the next person work it out. Sometimes that object is lettuce. Sometimes it is a full whiskey and cola. Sometimes it has a lithium-ion battery and costs $2.5 million. The building in Blenheim has now been repaired, the conveyor is running and the sorting team is back doing the job. Unfortunately, council engineers have yet to develop the only upgrade that could completely protect the facility: a tiny alarm installed in every Marlborough kitchen that screams whenever somebody holds a dead vape over the yellow bin and says, ‘Close enough’. ## Grown-Up Links - [1News/Local Democracy Reporting – Costly recycling mistakes: $30 vape sparks $2.5m headache](https://www.1news.co.nz/2026/10/07/costly-recycling-mistakes-30-vape-sparks-25m-headache/?ref=goodoil.news) - [Marlborough District Council – A–Z Recycling and Waste Directory](https://www.marlborough.govt.nz/services/recycling-and-waste/a-z-recycling-and-waste-directory?ref=goodoil.news) This article was originally published by [Pavlova Post](https://pavlovapost.co.nz/blenheim-recycling-centre-vape-fire-lettuce?ref=goodoil.news). ### ‘Is Anyone Reading This?’ URL: https://goodoil.news/is-anyone-reading-this/ Last updated: 2026-10-08T23:00:51.000Z [**Maryanne Demasi**](https://blog.maryannedemasi.com/p/is-anyone-reading-this?ref=goodoil.news) *Maryanne Demasi PhD is an investigative journalist who writes for online media and top-tiered medical journals. For over a decade, she was a TV presenter for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.* It is a painful read, but an important one. *Cries for Help — Injury and Death Buried in V-Safe Data*, compiled by [React19](https://react19.org/?ref=goodoil.news) and published by the [Brownstone Institute](https://brownstone.org/?ref=goodoil.news), gathers messages from people who became ill after vaccination, alongside relatives writing for loved ones who were too sick to respond or had died. They submitted these accounts through a CDC system — the V-SAFE app — designed to monitor Covid vaccine safety during the mass roll-out. It took litigation under Freedom of Information laws and a federal court order to compel the CDC to release the free-text responses, which the [Informed Consent Action Network](https://icandecide.org/v-safe-data/?ref=goodoil.news) (ICAN) then published. React19 reviewed more than 7.5 million responses and identified 3,329 participants who pleaded for help, described suicidal thoughts, or reported deaths and near-death experiences. Some described frightening symptoms that would not go away. Others had been to doctors or emergency departments but still had no answers. They kept filling in the surveys, hoping someone on the other end would notice and respond. Again and again, they asked a version of the same question. *Is anyone reading this?* One person reported a miscarriage and said they had asked to be contacted, but nobody had called. Another was promised callbacks twice, then wrote a year later that neither had happened. Some of the hardest entries come from grieving relatives. A son reported that his father was in intensive care and asked for help. His next update said his father remained critically ill. Then came the message that he had died. Another respondent repeatedly reported a woman’s death while continuing to receive check-ins. “*Still dead. — Funeral home. She DIED*” Weeks later, the frustration had become fury. “*She died after her vaccine but none of you Assholes read this and just continue to send this useless text – FUNERAL HOME!*” Brownstone president Jeffrey Tucker has been reading the messages aloud in [broadcasts on X](https://x.com/jeffreytucker/status/2107420328469078191?s=20&ref=goodoil.news), giving these people a voice beyond the database. Hearing their words brings home the grief, fear and anger behind each entry – and the expectation that reporting a problem would lead to help. But that help never came. ![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!sAlg!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F8014c1a5-7871-45c6-9ac3-8036dbe651bf_1753x969.png) Remember, these people got vaccinated. They took part in the safety monitoring authorities asked them to use. But when they reported harm and asked for help, they were dismissed as “antivaxxers.” The abandonment described in these pages added insult to injury. These people deserved care and investigation, but found themselves fighting to be heard. Their accounts also underline the urgency of Retsef Levi’s call for the CDC to follow up people reporting lasting health problems after vaccination. His team’s [analysis of V-safe data](https://blog.maryannedemasi.com/p/mit-researchers-uncover-potential?ref=goodoil.news) found that nearly two per cent of almost 10 million participants reported health deterioration lasting at least three months, which they attributed to Covid vaccination. ![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!aa2D!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ffaeaeb3a-cdf9-4b61-8be9-139dfa511b2e_1772x838.png) [**Click for story*](https://blog.maryannedemasi.com/p/mit-researchers-uncover-potential?ref=goodoil.news) This week brought some hope of action. According to [Bloomberg](https://news.bloomberglaw.com/social-justice/rfk-jr-to-announce-new-vaccine-injury-research-at-nih?ref=goodoil.news), health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr attended a ribbon-cutting ceremony on 5 October for a new NIH clinic intended to study and care for patients with vaccine injuries. We still need to know who will qualify and how patients can access care. For families who have spent years searching for help, the announcement must lead to more than another promise. One message in the book captures what so many were asking. “You stole my life – call me, hear me, help me.” It should never have been too much to ask. **Download**: *Cries For Help* Book 3.54MB PDF file [Download](https://blog.maryannedemasi.com/api/v1/file/c6606b76-e3b9-4f64-89b1-4219ee291877.pdf?ref=goodoil.news) This article was originally published by [MD Reports](https://blog.maryannedemasi.com/p/is-anyone-reading-this?ref=goodoil.news). ### The Only Innocent in Abu Ghraib? URL: https://goodoil.news/the-only-innocent-in-abu-ghraib/ Last updated: 2026-10-08T22:30:55.000Z As **Anthony Albanese** and **Tony Burke** (who just coincidentally relies almost entirely on Muslim votes to keep his arse on the velvet) hand-wave hordes of former citizens of the caliphate into the mini-caliphate of Western Sydney, they peddle the same, tawdry excuse every time. These ISIS brides and their ISIS broods are just poor, innocent naifs, who made a mistake, as teenagers do. Yeah, right. Shoplifting is an adolescent mistake. ‘Borrowing’ your parents’ car and crashing it is an adolescent mistake. Watching Islamic snuff videos and being so keen to join in that you cross half the world to join a sex-slaving, head-lopping death-cult? That’s something else entirely. As for the ones who were taken along as children: well, they’re very much not children, now. They’re young adults: young adults who’ve spent over a decade thoroughly immersed in an Islamic death cult. Take the heart-wrenching, tear-stained narrative of young **Yusuf Zahab**. The taxpayer-funded weeping willows at the national broadcasters would have you believe he is nothing more than an unfortunate Sydney schoolboy caught up in bad company. A wide-eyed 23-year-old victim who, at age 12, was simply dragged along on a lethal overseas misadventure by relatives. > [“I always think](https://www.sbs.com.au/news/dateline/article/i-was-taken-from-australia-as-a-boy-to-live-under-is-in-syria-now-i-want-to-come-home/6rbdjss51?ref=goodoil.news) it is because of my brothers … It’s because of them,” he said. “That’s why my mother, father, me, that is why I think they got us here. They got us into all this trouble.” It is a remarkably tidy alibi, is it not? Blame the dead siblings. One brother was a lethal combatant, wiped out by an airstrike; the other, **Muhammad**, was an infamous kingpin within the Islamic State apparatus who actively orchestrated the trafficking of his family straight into the Syrian slaughterhouse before meeting his own fiery end in Iraq. But little Yusuf, we are assured by human rights groups and sympathetic media, was the odd one out: the only member of this murderous Islamic brood who didn’t go all-in for the caliphate. So committed was Canberra to this fable that our bureaucrats quietly stamped him an Australian passport, preparing to welcome him back with open arms alongside the latest convoy of black-clad brides. The welcoming committee had the luggage tags ready. But then a curious thing happened on the road to Damascus. The Americans intervened. Just as the repatriation plan reached its climax, US military forces descended on the Syrian compound where Zahab was detained, plucked him out of Kurdish custody and carted him across the border into Iraq. Not to board a Qantas flight home, mind you, but to face the rather less forgiving machinery of Iraqi justice, where terror charges carry a mandatory appointment with the hangman’s noose. Human rights lawyers immediately launched into their predictable screeching, claiming Iraqi investigators supposedly deemed him a harmless bystander who never lifted a finger. Yet one has to wonder why the Pentagon took such exceptional trouble to disrupt the Australian government’s quiet little family reunion. > [“The investigations also](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-09-02/australians-accused-of-involvement-with-is-face-trial/107104932?ref=goodoil.news) revealed the multiplicity of roles within the organisation, which were not limited to combat activities, but also included military, security, financial, logistical, administrative, medical, technical, and media activities.” The Iraqi Supreme Judicial Council was quite specific on the matter: thousands of foreign jihadists were interrogated, not merely to determine who squeezed a trigger, but to uncover the logistics, the intelligence operations, the administrative machinery and the barbarous enslavement of Yazidi women. And while the Iraqi authorities quietly released a handful of foreigners against whom evidence was genuinely lacking, including a Finnish lad and an American citizen, Yusuf Zahab was conspicuously kept under heavy lock and key. That glaring distinction begs the obvious question: what do the Americans and the Iraqis know about Zahab’s decade inside the caliphate that Anthony Albanese and Tony Burke are too terrified to tell the Australian public? The Albanese government has repeatedly tried to claim it has no appetite for bailing out those who pledged allegiance to the black flag (nor, as we’ve seen, for punishing those who fly the black flag from the Sydney Harbour Bridge). Cabinet ministers posture for the press gallery, tough-talking about notorious jihadists rotting in foreign cells, yet, behind the curtain, Australian passports were being minted to fly a decade-long veteran of the caliphate straight into our suburbs. The helplessness defence is rapidly disintegrating. Zahab was not living in an idyllic suburban enclave: he spent the formative years of his life in the crucible of a genocidal death cult. The Americans clearly had no intention of allowing a potentially radicalised operative to be delivered onto Australian soil with a government-funded welcome mat. By snatching him at the 11th hour, US intelligence may very well have spared Australia from a catastrophic security disaster: an act of basic national self-preservation that our own prime minister flatly refused to perform. --- 💡 ****If you enjoyed this article please share it using the share buttons at the top or bottom of the article.** ### Mayday! Mayday! URL: https://goodoil.news/mayday-mayday/ Last updated: 2026-10-08T22:00:22.000Z Cartoon of the Day by BoomSlang _This post is for paying subscribers only._ ### A Free Bus Would Be Cheaper URL: https://goodoil.news/a-free-bus-would-be-cheaper/ Last updated: 2026-10-08T21:30:47.000Z [**Richard Prebble**](https://richardprebble.substack.com/p/a-free-bus-would-be-cheaper) *Columnist, former cabinet minister and ACT Party leader.* The Greens want to spend $4 billion bringing back long-distance passenger trains. They say Infometrics has checked their figures. I know a bit about railways. As minister I helped turn railways from losing $1 million a day to earning $2 million a week. We doubled the freight carried and halved the cost. I have since advised railways in Asia and Europe and was chairman of a joint venture railway company in Vietnam. I could have saved the Greens the consultancy fee. I would have told them for free that their idea is nuts. But they do not have to take my word for it. The Greens campaigned for an Auckland-to-Hamilton passenger rail service that Labour agreed to. In 2023/24 the taxpayer and ratepayer subsidy was estimated at $92 per passenger. Today the lowest advertised bus fare is about $20\. A free bus service would have saved money. Green transport spokesperson Julie Anne Genter says: “These tracks are already there, so we should use them.” And that is the issue. It is a single-track railway and we already use it. New Zealand has a freight railway. Ninety-three per cent of the network is single track. A container does not care if its train waits in a siding for an oncoming train. Passengers do. Passenger trains need timetables. They need speed. They get priority. KiwiRail itself says the single-track limits its capacity. The Greens propose passenger trains through the Kaimai tunnel on our busiest freight track. Their plan says the line can take a passenger service by “scheduling adjustments for freight”. In English: **stop the freight train and let the passenger train through.** Do that often enough and shippers will send the freight by road. We would be nuts to spend $4 billion to divert freight from rail to road to create a heavily subsidised passenger rail service. This article was originally published by [I’ve Been Thinking](https://richardprebble.substack.com/p/a-free-bus-would-be-cheaper). ### The Good Oil Daily Opinion Poll URL: https://goodoil.news/the-good-oil-daily-opinion-poll-393/ Last updated: 2026-10-08T21:15:30.000Z Take our Daily Opinion Poll and see how your views compare to other readers and then share the poll on social media. By sharing the poll you will help even more readers to discover *The Good Oil.* --- ### The India FTA URL: https://goodoil.news/the-india-fta/ Last updated: 2026-10-08T21:32:12.000Z **LilBaP** India is the world’s biggest milk producer at about 248 million tonnes a year, about a quarter of the total. Behind that is not a handful of corporates. Official figures put it at roughly 80 million rural households on dairy, most with one to three animals. The last livestock census counted about 126 million milch cows and buffaloes, inside a bovine herd of around 300 million. That is a voting bloc. Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Maharashtra – you do not open the door to New Zealand milk. Delhi has said so out loud. Dairy stays out of their FTAs and they have already walked away from bigger tables than ours to keep it that way. New Zealand’s dairy farm count is about 10-11 thousand, not the tens of millions. Sheep and wool got to the entry door; our milk, cream, butter, cheese and whey didn’t. India protected its small herds because that decides elections. Wellington sold ‘export revenue’ and called it a great achievement. Modi understood his voters and counted the farmers. National wanted a press release and hoped nobody would fact-check – not many did. Officials will say the milk vat is not quite locked. There is a fast-track so dairy ingredients can go into India duty-free if an Indian plant processes them and ships the finished goods out. Bulk infant formula and peptones are on a seven-year phase-down. But retail infant formula, milk, cream, cheese, butter and whey stay out. Core dairy tariffs stay where they are, in the 33–60 per cent range. We sell the raw milk product. Their factory takes the margin and the brand on the shelf. That is on-selling the benefit of our milk. The premium sits in their processing hall, not here at home. If this is a win for the farmer – it is only a temporary illusion. Immigration New Zealand agreed a Temporary Employment Entry cap: 5,000 Indian workers in the country at any one time, with stays of up to three years. Most of that is skills-list work – health, teaching, IT and engineering. A slice of 600 at once is set aside for specified ‘iconic’ jobs: yoga instructors, AYUSH practitioners, Indian chefs and music teachers. On top: 1,000 working-holiday visas a year, plus easier student and post-study work settings. It is not an open border, but it is also not nothing – especially if nobody is watching who stays. Three years is a long season on a farm or in a plant. Pathways to stay longer still sit in ordinary immigration rules, which governments can change. India asked for people. New Zealand asked for customers. Does this sound like the deal of a lifetime? I still smell something fishy (not butter chicken). UNDRIP, Māori interest clauses and Paris Then the Treaty language, the culture chapter and the climate text all bundled into the same document. That is how Wellington’s elites now drafts trade papers. My only surprise is that the Waitangi Tribunal did not get a co-author credit on the agreement. Almost every recent NZ deal carries three extras: A Treaty exception – so the Crown can still do Treaty things without being sued for ‘discrimination’ under the trade rules. A legal shield for the government. A culture/traditional knowledge chapter that discusses rongoa, intellectual property and ‘Māori’ enterprise. India would not even put ‘Indigenous Peoples’ in the chapter title. Delhi’s line is that after independence all Indians are indigenous, so UNDRIP does not map onto India. A trade and sustainable development chapter – labour and environment talk, ‘endeavour’ to cooperate on climate, a nod to Paris and even Article 6 carbon trading. It is not a court that slaps a tariff on lamb if someone misses a target, but is also not nothing. This is how a later government, or a later buyer, starts lecturing the farm. India has long called labour and climate clauses a rich-country sales trick. So it seems odd that it was New Zealand officials who insisted the clauses be included. You do not need UNDRIP or a Māori interest section to sell wool or kiwifruit or much else for that matter. You do not need a Paris paragraph either. Those clauses exist because NZ’s bureaucrats write them in. Indian smallholders and Kiwi businesses did not ask for them to be included. Also, New Zealand now has to ‘promote’ roughly NZ$34 billion of private investment into India over 15 years. If Delhi later says we did not ‘promote’ enough – which of course they likely will – they will talk about putting tariffs back on. Most people in NZ would much rather see that sort of money spent on New Zealand infrastructure first. Immigration, Treaty language, climate text and an investment target rode in the same free trade agreement. Please can you explain, National and ACT, what these have to do with trading any NZ made product? A few weeks ago Paul Henry sat with Peter Williams and talked up the India deal: brilliant, overdue, especially dairy. That is a media man who read only the press release. The sharpest disappointment is that ACT signed up to this. A party that talks open markets and less government should be the last one to sell a locked milk vat as free trade. India got people and a shop door free of entry. We got a press release and a virtue list. ACT called that a massive moment. None of that changes the 70/30 rule. If about 70 per cent of a party’s policy is something you can live with, and nobody else is closer, that is where the party vote should go. In this climate, that bar is hard to clear. This deal contradicts the rest of ACT’s election pitch. That is why it stings more from them. The money train A CBDC is just electronic money issued by a central bank, not by your trading bank. It is not a Bitcoin. It is a line on the state’s ledger and India is already trialling an e-rupee. Our Reserve Bank has looked at one and has not issued it. India is the world’s biggest receiver of remittances. A faster train means wages, fees and investment can leave New Zealand and land in India in seconds. This might be fine for a family sending money home but different when the same paper tells us to ‘promote’ about NZ$34 billion of private investment into India over 15 years. That clause is in there because India wanted a cheaper, faster pipeline. You do not need a digital rupee to sell lamb, wool or kiwifruit. We have managed without one for decades . India sits in BRICS. There is no BRICS currency. What they want is to settle more trade in their own currencies, and in time to link payment systems, so the US dollar is not always in the middle. Fair enough for them. New Zealand is not in that club. We still signed a payments-and-investment chapter with a member who is building it. Those rules were written for Delhi. Farmer Joe did not ask for them. We did not join the club. We just agreed to talk about the pipeline. Who keeps the recipe – the knowledge? The FTA does not say “India may steal a New Zealand patent and pay nothing.” What it does is build a middleman. The factory clause: dairy ingredients can go into India duty-free if an Indian plant processes them and ships the finished goods out. The ‘partnership’: Agriculture cooperation – livestock, horticulture, productivity, science. Officials call it helping each other. On a farm it means methods, genetics and process walk across the table. Once that knowledge is in their plant, they do not need our permission to sell the next container – or to charge the next buyer. Royalties exist if the contract says so. The risk is the loose contract: a joint project, a process taught on site, a product mixed in their factory. They sell their finished good. NZ invoices an ingredient or a workshop. India keeps the premium on the shelf price. Sell the commodity and the know-how. You can tell yourself you still own the brand, but the customer buys from the middleman. So who gets the biggest part of the pie? We export the recipe. We get the price for the flour. They will export the cake and take the premium. Now ask the question the press release skipped: what comes the other way? Under this deal, India gets zero duty on everything they send here, from day one. That is medicines and generic drugs, clothing and household textiles, machinery and vehicle parts, jewellery, spices, rice and leather goods – the stuff already on the supermarket and pharmacy shelf. Perhaps it will be a bit of competition at the supermarkets? No, because our entry tariffs are already about two per cent or nothing. So ask yourself who benefits the most. The Indian Government gets an immigration quota, a faster money transfer and the use of our knowledge so their factory can keep the middleman’s premium. Lots of meaningless jargon about UNDRIP, Paris, Treaty obligation, Māori special interest and so forth, which they did not care about in the first place. Modi and co likely remain electable in India, because they kept on side with farmers by barring our milk. Other than being told to count our blessings, consider what NZ gets from this deal – then ask why some political parties pushed this policy. The smell is buried in the agreement and it will not air out. Follow the money. It is the only thing in the document that knows which way it is going. ### Your Daily Ten@10 - 2026/187 URL: https://goodoil.news/your-daily-ten-10-2026-187/ Last updated: 2026-10-08T21:00:02.000Z **This is edition 2026/187 of the *Ten@10* newsletter.** Hi all, This is the Ten@10, where I collate and summarise ten news items you generally won't see in the mainstream media. Enjoy! --- ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/01-ten187.jpg) ## 1\. Democracy Briefing: What Luxon’s debate revealed about the next month *Bryce Edwards - The Democracy Project* - 🎤 Luxon has two more head-to-heads with Hipkins before voting begins, on Three next Wednesday and on Stuff the following Tuesday. The Herald’s Thomas Coughlan called the TVNZ debate “maybe his best”, but added that “even when Luxon is at his best, he still loses.” - 📺 TVNZ’s studio panel of undecided voters split 49% for Hipkins and 24% for Luxon, and most commentators gave the debate to Hipkins on points. - 🛒 BusinessDesk’s Dileepa Fonseka said Luxon was at his best on education and law and order, but those are not the issues this election is being fought on. September’s Ipsos Issues Monitor had the cost of living a concern for 63% of voters and healthcare for 44%. - 🗣️ Asked whether people are better off than three years ago, Luxon said they were “better off than they would have been if Chris had stayed in charge”. Former National minister Maurice Williamson called that bland, saying the Government should first admit most people feel worse off. - 🏥 RNZ’s Farah Hancock recalled Luxon calling it “quite outrageous” in 2023 to deny a health crisis. This time Hipkins used the word six times, while Luxon said the system “is challenged”. - ⛷️ The Post’s Henry Cooke said Luxon had a strong story on Investment Boost, but using Coronet Peak ski field to illustrate it “was not wise”. The Herald’s Audrey Young noted Investment Boost was funded by cancelling pay equity claims. - 💸 Newsroom’s Marc Daalder counted Luxon using National’s “nine new taxes” line just once. His “where is the money coming from?” line seemed to move some women on the panel towards him, a senior TVNZ production executive told Newsroom’s Mark Jennings. - 📑 But National still has not published a fiscal plan, and Coughlan suggests Luxon “may very well have lost on the issue of fiscal credibility.” Economist Brad Olsen made the same point. - 🗳️ Vote Compass, surveying 6467 viewers, had Hipkins ahead 44% to 25%. Hipkins won 86% of Labour voters, while Luxon won only 66% of National supporters, 54% of ACT supporters and 34% of NZ First supporters. - 💡 Takeaway: commentator Esther Robinson says the real question is whether National and Labour can win voters back from the minor parties, and she is not sure the debate did enough. [Read More](https://www.democracyproject.org.nz/p/democracy-briefing-what-luxons-debate?ref=goodoil.news) --- ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/02-ten187.jpg) ## 2\. JOHN RAINE: THE INDOCTRINATION MUST STOP BUT LABOUR WOULD DOUBLE DOWN *John Raine - Brash & Mitchell* - 🏛️ More than three years ago Raine warned of New Zealand’s drift towards cultural authoritarianism and thought we might quickly pass peak woke. “Not so fast, some warned - they were right!” - 🚶 He calls it an extension of Rudi Dutschke’s 1967 “long march through the institutions”, this time cultural re-engineering framed around race and identity rather than economics. - 🎓 A 2026 Social Studies course in a University of Canterbury law bridging programme includes “Understanding White Supremacy”, “Racism in Aotearoa” and “Bodies and Society - Fatphobia”. Students are told that saying “Not all white people are racist” is another form of white supremacy. - 🧾 One tutorial asks how fatphobia and anti-fatness intersect with racism. Raine says the UC course is just the tip of a massive iceberg. - ⚖️ Auckland’s Waipapa Taumata Rau Stage 1 course is still mandatory for accredited programmes from Engineering and Nursing to Business and Law. Since Semester 1, 2025, Tikanga Māori content has been compulsory in all core LLB courses, and AUT law dean Khylee Quince says its redesigned curriculum aims for a “third law of Aotearoa”. - 📝 Massey tells staff in their development plans that it is “a Tiriti-led University and all staff are expected to implement the principles in their work and practice.” Raine says universities, unlike wānanga, should foster secular, open enquiry. - 🧠 He notes the New Zealand Psychological Society and College of Clinical Psychologists apologised to Māori for “structural racism and monoculturalism” in psychology. “No evidence was provided.” - ✅ He wants Erica Stanford’s Coalition education reforms embedded and extended, and recommends Professor Dame Elizabeth Rata’s YouTube series on the history of New Zealand education. - 🔄 Hipkins, he says, has said Labour would undo the reforms and revert to a more strictly Te Tiriti-based system, which Raine argues would lead inevitably to mediocrity. - 💡 Takeaway: Raine says our democracy has a higher probability of remaining intact if the Coalition is re-elected in November. [Read More](https://www.brashandmitchell.com/post/john-raine-the-indoctrination-must-stop-but-labour-would-double-down?ref=goodoil.news) --- ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/03-ten187.jpg) ## 3\. The Israelis Who Never Left October 7 Behind *Polina Fradkin - The Free Press* - 🕯️ The return of the last hostages brought Israelis relief but not closure. Three years on, survivors and their families are still learning to live with what happened. - 🪦 On 1 August 2026, Lihi Asraf found her brother Bar lying on the grave of his best friend, Liron Barda. - 🎶 Liron was murdered in the Nova music festival massacre on 7 October 2023\. She was buried in Elkana, in the West Bank, where she and Bar grew up in neighbouring towns. - 💔 Lihi shouted his name, thinking he had fallen asleep at a place he often visited. He had shot himself in the heart. He was 30. - 🗣️ “We couldn’t even cry,” she told Fradkin. “We were too shocked.” - 🪖 She spoke on a break from guard duty on Israel’s border with the West Bank, where she serves in a light infantry defence unit. - 🏠 “My family has fallen apart,” she said. The five Asraf siblings used to regularly return to their parents’ house on weekends. Now there is less reason to. - 💡 Takeaway: “We went from being the happiest family in the world... and suddenly it’s extinguished. The house isn’t fun like before.” [Read More](https://www.thefp.com/p/israelis-who-never-left-october-7-hostages-survivors-survivors-families?ref=goodoil.news) --- ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/04-ten187.png) ## 4\. There Once was a Civilisation *Olivia Pierson - OliviaPierson.org* - 🏛️ Pierson describes a civilisation brutally hollowed out by two world wars that still limped on, because one of its leaders, Winston Churchill, was “a freakishly beautiful giant among men”. - 🇬🇧 Britain, she writes, kept saying the true thing while others made excuses, until they had to care or die. Churchill held the moral line like Atlas. - ✝️ “This is not about Churchill.” It is about the Christian civilisation he protected, worked over for 2000 years, whose everyday freedoms came to be taken for granted. - ⚠️ In 2026, she argues, Islamic immigration is quite literally the biggest threat to that way of life. Not because Muslims are strong, but because enough are aggressive and cunning, with attitudes to women, girls, Jews and ‘infidels’ she calls beyond despicable. - 🗡️ Jihad, she writes, is a central tenet of Islam, not a critic’s nickname, and treating that obsessive interest in the West as an accident was never honest. - 🇳🇿 New Zealand paid heavily in both world wars, then assumed the result was guaranteed in perpetuity. - 😷 She blames “a mentally ill liberal toxic compassion” on the left for opening the country to be looted and calling the looting ‘tolerance’. - 🛡️ Churchill’s people did not get to feel tolerant, polite or comfortable while holding the line against totalitarian Germany and fascist Italy. “Neither do we.” - 💡 Takeaway: the inheritance will not police itself, and what was rescued last century needs rescuing again “because the threat is well inside the gates.” [Read More](https://www.oliviapierson.org/blog/there-once-was-a-civilisation?ref=goodoil.news) --- ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/05-ten187.png) ## 5\. The forensic pathologist who volunteered in Israel after October 7 *Michael Dickson - Special Briefing from Israel* - 🩺 Michael Dickson interviews Dr Carl Wigren, a forensic pathologist who worked in an Israeli morgue in the aftermath of the 7 October massacre. - 🚫 Wigren is not Jewish or Israeli, calls himself a “lefty progressive”, and had held ill feelings towards Israel. When the news broke he told his wife there was “no way” he was going on their planned trip. - 📧 About a week later his medical examiners’ listserv called for forensic pathologists. Chen Kugel, director of the Abu Kabir forensic institute in Tel Aviv, interviewed about 20 Americans and chose him. - ✈️ On the 15-hour flight he read the 1988 Hamas charter, which he says essentially set the goal of eliminating Jews, not only in Israel but worldwide. - ⚰️ The morgue took about 30 victims each morning, to give Israeli staff a break after seven days around the clock. In some 3,500 autopsies since 2005 he had never seen such “premeditated carnage”. - 🦶 One body bag held a burned foot later identified as Ruth Peretz’s, a young woman with cerebral palsy who used a wheelchair and went to music festivals with her father. - 🚀 At his hotel he sheltered from rocket attacks from Gaza, yet saw The New York Times portraying the attackers as victims. Back home a neighbour asked, “But what about the poor Gazans?” - 📺 A planned CNN interview at LAX fell through, which he thinks happened because his account no longer fitted the narrative. - 💡 Takeaway: “things aren’t always the way you think they are,” Wigren says. Be a very careful consumer of information and, if you can, see it on the ground. [Read More](https://mdickson.substack.com/p/the-forensic-pathologist-who-volunteered) --- ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/06-ten187.jpg) ## 6\. GRAHAM ADAMS: Is criticism of Māori culture permitted at Massey Uni? *Graham Adams - Brash & Mitchell* - 🎓 A member of the public has filed a formal complaint against Massey University’s Distinguished Professor Peter Schwerdtfeger, testing whether staff may publicly criticise aspects of Māori culture. - 📨 The 3100-word letter to the Vice-Chancellor targets five columns he co-wrote three years ago on university funding, decolonisation and mātauranga Māori, published on the Bassett, Brash and Hide website. - 📄 The columns stated the opinions were the writers’ own, not their universities’. The complainant acknowledged the disclaimer but dismissed it, and Massey has opened a formal investigation. - 🏛️ Adams says Massey invited this by declaring itself “Tiriti-led”, and its watered-down Academic Freedom Policy lets her invoke “mana-enhancing civility”. - 👩‍🎓 The complainant, who is Māori, says her daughter has Massey on her shortlist for Māori Studies but she no longer feels confident about her enrolling. Adams notes the daughter would be unlikely ever to meet a theoretical chemistry and physics professor. - 🌿 Maramataka, rongoā and spiritual healing are worth studying as anthropological phenomena, he argues, but not taught uncritically, any more than biblical creation as just another “knowledge system”. - 🗣️ Te reo has been taught at New Zealand universities since 1929, but Adams says reviving it is not a university’s job. Nobody expects universities to promote sign language, also an official language. - 📜 He calls colonisation’s benefits to Māori indisputable, and notes the Tohunga Suppression Act was driven by Māori politicians including Sir James Carroll, with all four Māori electorate MPs, Apirana Ngata among them, voting for it. - 🎙️ Schwerdtfeger told Sean Plunket on The Platform he is “a little bit of a voice for all the academics who don’t dare to speak out”, and is positive about Massey’s new Vice-Chancellor. - 💡 Takeaway: a ruling is expected by the end of the month. Adams says it should be deeply embarrassing for Massey to convene a panel at all. [Read More](https://www.brashandmitchell.com/post/graham-adams-is-criticism-of-ma-ori-culture-permitted-at-massey-uni?ref=goodoil.news) --- ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/07-ten187.jpg) ## 7\. RODNEY HIDE: Raine showed us the lecture room. Here's the staffroom. *Rodney Hide - Brash & Mitchell* - 🎓 Hide says John Raine laid bare what our universities teach students. The University of Auckland’s new gender equity plan shows the same machinery aimed at staff: hiring, promotion and annual reviews. - 📑 He points to Raine’s examples: UC’s “Understanding White Supremacy” and “Fatphobia” topics, Auckland’s mandatory Stage 1 course, and Massey telling staff to implement Te Tiriti principles in their work. - 📘 Auckland’s Gender Equity Strategy and Plan 2026-2029 runs to 15 pages. Its vision: “A university where gender equity is real, visible, and sustained.” Try measuring that, he says. - ✔️ There are 29 deliverables. Number 26 is that the plan itself is published. “The plan delivers itself. Tick.” - ⏳ Fifteen deliverables do not start until November 2027, and measures “will be established as part of the development of each initiative”. - 🧑‍💼 Job ads will show “a visible commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion”, decision makers get implicit bias and DEI literacy programmes, and staff will be offered “suggested DEI-related goals” for annual reviews. - 💰 The problem being fixed? The university’s own pay gap page says “There is no evidence of unequal pay within academic role categories.” - 🔍 An OIA response said there is no specific EDI budget. Its one figure, $436,350 this year for the Pro Vice-Chancellor Equity’s office, leaves out the HR diversity team, equity posts in eight faculties and institutes, and committees. - 💡 Takeaway: the true cost, Hide says, is the loss of rigour and critical thinking. “Read the list and weep for what was once our higher education system.” [Read More](https://www.brashandmitchell.com/post/rodney-hide-raine-showed-us-the-lecture-room-here-s-the-staffroom?ref=goodoil.news) --- ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/08-ten187.jpg) ## 8\. En garde! China and AI *Fearghus Keogh - The Spectator Australia* - 🤠 Keogh opens with Butch Cassidy politely discussing fight rules with Harvey Logan, then kicking him in the groin. The lesson: know when to talk and when to fight. - 🤖 That, he says, is roughly where the US stands with China on advanced AI. Both are racing towards something closer to superintelligence, and both talk the conciliatory language of limitation in public. - 🐉 In Beowulf, Grendel will not parley. China is not Grendel: in July 2026 Beijing hosted the founding of the World AI Cooperation Organisation in Shanghai, drawing in 29 countries. - 🌐 The UN has held its Global Dialogue on AI Governance, and the US State Department has convened successive Pax Silica Summits. - 🤨 Washington’s suspicion is that China’s preferred “governance” would constrain American progress while Chinese programmes carry on. “Rules for thee, but not for me.” - ☢️ Arms control offers limited comfort. SALT rested on rough parity and mutual destruction, but AI may be “winner takes considerably more”, algorithms cannot be counted like silos, and the technology is dual use. - 🤺 Fencing is the better analogy: rivals cooperate just enough to keep competing. Around 1900 the French and Italian schools had to accept shared rules for the Olympic sport. - 🇦🇺 Australia’s interest is direct, he says, given Chinese power in its region, the US alliance, its research base and critical minerals. Even limited rules leave middle powers more room to manoeuvre. - 💡 Takeaway: the time for paralysis through analysis has passed. Can Washington and Beijing find a language to negotiate “before one side decides that the only remaining option is a kick to the groin”? [Read More](https://www.spectator.com.au/2026/10/en-garde-china-and-ai/?ref=goodoil.news) --- ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/09-ten187.jpg) ## 9\. London’s 7 October celebrations exposed the patheticness of the Gaza cult *Hugo Timms - spiked* - 🚶 On Wednesday around 100 ‘anti-Zionist’ students from London’s top universities gathered at King’s College London on the Strand, then marched through central London surrounded by police. - 👮 Police had asked them on four separate occasions to pick another date. They insisted on 7 October, the third anniversary of Hamas’s murder of 1,200 mostly Jewish people. - 📢 They promised to “smash the Zionist settler state” and bellowed “Resistance is glorious”. - 🛑 At Russell Square they met counter-protesters, most of them British Jews. Within 20 minutes the marchers had cleared off, before even reaching University College London. - 🗣️ There was no physical violence. An Israeli with his own megaphone shouted, “Come here and debate an Arab Israeli, you cowards!” Nobody took him up on it. - 🎤 Marchers refused to speak to journalists, one dismissing spiked as ‘right wing’, and raised umbrellas and banners as though terrified of being photographed. - 🤷 The real humiliation, Timms says, was indifference: no solidarity from Londoners, and hundreds of fellow students simply brushed past on their way to class. - 📅 A Palestine Solidarity Campaign march is set for London on Saturday and is expected to draw large crowds. - 💡 Takeaway: stand up to a bully and you see the coward. Patience, Timms says, is wearing thin with these “sad and sinister cry-bullies”. [Read More](https://www.spiked-online.com/2026/10/07/londons-7-october-celebrations-exposed-the-patheticness-of-the-gaza-cult/?ref=goodoil.news) --- ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/10-ten187.jpg) ## 10\. Hamas: Triumph of the intellectuals *Rebecca Weisser - The Spectator Australia* - 📹 On 7 October 2023, Weisser writes, the world saw in a real-time livestream what the absence of a secure Jewish state means. - 🗺️ Hamas’s war became a seven-front war: Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, the West Bank and Iran itself. - 🕊️ A ceasefire began on 10 October 2025 and the last 20 living hostages were freed three days later. Yet Hamas still controls roughly a third of Gaza, Hezbollah is still armed and the Houthis still attack Saudi oil exports. - 🧠 Hamas’s triumph, she argues, is persuading leftist intellectuals to erase its conduct, so Israel’s attempt to eliminate it is branded genocide. - 📢 Green Left advertised Australian rallies marking “three years of genocide and resistance”, starting the clock on the day of the massacre itself. - 🔍 For these intellectuals, genocide was the premise, not the conclusion. Warnings, evacuation corridors, phone calls, aid and aborted strikes simply disappeared from the narrative. - ⚖️ Genocide requires specific intent to destroy a group. Israel warned and evacuated civilians and investigated its own soldiers, while Hamas’s Ghazi Hamad promised 7 October would be repeated until Israel was eliminated. - 📚 Citing Thomas Sowell’s Intellectuals and Society, she traces a transmission belt from activist academia through NGOs and the UN into the newsroom. - 💡 Takeaway: Hamas has not destroyed Israel, but persuading the West that Jewish determination not to be destroyed is a crime goes a long way towards its goal. [Read More](https://www.spectator.com.au/2026/10/hamas-triumph-of-the-intellectuals/?ref=goodoil.news) --- ## What our members are saying about Ten@10 **Elizabeth** These articles are compulsory reading for me and the perfect addition to the usual list of Goodoil items! **Lynne** Absolutely brilliant to receive these current and thought provoking articles. **Jonathan** Just wanted to let you know that I’m loving this new 10@10\. Much appreciated from someone who chooses to read/watch almost NO mainstream media. **Murray** Cam, relish your output as the newspaper in Christchurch is so intent on non news. Thankyou **Fred** Thanks for Ten @ Ten, really enjoy reading it.Keep it up. All the best, keep healthy. **Jocko** Wonderful info not otherwise available in NZ. More power to your elbow! Thanks. ### Opportunity abandoning tax reform next term ‘worth considering’ in potential National-led coalition – Qiulae Wong URL: https://goodoil.news/opportunity-abandoning-tax-reform-next-term-worth-considering-in-potential-national-led-coalition-qiulae-wong/ Last updated: 2026-10-08T23:57:58.000Z Opportunity party leader Qiulae Wong considers compromising on tax reform for significant policy wins in potential National-led coalition negotiations. **Source:** [nzherald.co.nz](https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/politics/opportunity-abandoning-tax-reform-next-term-worth-considering-in-potential-national-led-coalition-qiulae-wong/K77UD6IRHFERBH7RHN5MTK2QLI/?ref=goodoil.news) *Re-published from the Centrist with permission* [Original article at The Centrist](https://centrist.nz/opportunity-abandoning-tax-reform-next-term-worth-considering-in-potential-national-led-co-R0cHM6Ly?ref=goodoil.news) ### Winston Peters says Chris Hipkins should be “behind bars” over COVID vaccine decisions URL: https://goodoil.news/winston-peters-says-chris-hipkins-should-be-behind-bars-over-covid-vaccine-decisions/ Last updated: 2026-10-08T23:58:14.000Z Winston Peters criticizes Chris Hipkins over COVID vaccine decisions and questions both Labour's economic management and media bias ahead of the New Zealand election. **Source:** [chrislynchmedia.com](https://www.chrislynchmedia.com/news-items/winston-peters-says-chris-hipkins-should-be-behind-bars-over-covid-vaccine-decisions/?ref=goodoil.news) *Re-published from the Centrist with permission* [Original article at The Centrist](https://centrist.nz/winston-peters-says-chris-hipkins-should-be-behind-bars-over-covid-vaccine-decisions-R0cHM6Ly?ref=goodoil.news) ### I Wrote This in 2008 and Wouldn’t Change a Word URL: https://goodoil.news/i-wrote-this-in-2008-and-wouldnt-change-a-word/ Last updated: 2026-10-08T20:30:30.000Z [**Karl du Fresne**](https://karldufresne.blogspot.com/?ref=goodoil.news) *I’m a third-generation New Zealander of Irish, Danish and French descent.* This year, in case it has escaped your attention, is an election year. And as with every election since 1996, it will be conducted under the Mixed Member Proportional (MMP) system. There is little debate these days about our electoral system, which suggests MMP is permanently embedded. Yet misgivings persist. I believe we replaced one imperfect system with another that is even more deeply flawed. Before we go further, let’s recall why MMP came about in the first place. Essentially, it was a reaction against a two-party system that upset people for two reasons. First, under the First Past the Post (FPP) system, a party could win power even though the opposition secured more votes, as happened when National won in 1978 and 1981. The system shut out minor parties such as Social Credit, which in 1981 won only two seats in parliament despite getting 21 per cent of the vote. People who didn’t support either of the big two parties understandably felt frustrated and powerless. Second, people grew to resent the arrogance of the major parties. This was heightened when, once safely in power, the two parties pursued policies that hadn’t been put before the electorate (as in the case of Labour) or broke election promises (National). By the early 1990s, there was a powerful feeling that politicians needed to be punished. Third parties, it was argued, were needed to check the excesses of the ‘old’ parties. Proponents of MMP – most of whom, it’s fair to say, were on the political left – took advantage of this mood. They held out the promise of a parliament that was much more diverse and representative of women and minorities. And so, in 1992, an indicative (i.e., non-binding) referendum was held. Eighty-five per cent of those who took part voted to change the system – but since only 55 per cent of eligible voters participated, it was hardly an overwhelming majority. The referendum asked voters to decide between four alternative electoral systems, and 70 per cent chose MMP. So in that first non-binding referendum, 70 per cent of the 55 per cent who voted favoured MMP. Again, not exactly a resounding endorsement. By the time a binding referendum was held in 1993, voters were better informed about options. Although 85 per cent of voters turned out (the referendum coincided with a general election), the majority in favour of MMP was relatively narrow: 56 per cent against the 46 per cent who wanted to retain FPP. On this slender basis, New Zealand adopted its most profound electoral change since women got the vote 100 years before. What has it achieved? Let’s look on the positive side first. MMP has certainly given us greatly increased diversity in parliament. It has achieved broader representation for minority groups and forced the dominant parties to consider their interests. Following the 2005 election, there were 39 women, 21 Māori, four Pacific Island and two Asian MPs among parliament’s 121 members. Is this enough to offset MMP’s flaws? I don’t believe so, for the following reasons. First, party organisations, through control over party lists, effectively decide who will sit in parliament. This is a way of rewarding loyalists, time-servers and backroom toadies – people who, in the words of former Labour prime minster Mike Moore, suck up to party bosses. These may be individuals who command no public support and may even have been rejected by their electorates. This effectively removes from the voters the power to determine the makeup of parliament. True, party organisations always made decisions about candidate selection, but voters previously had the power to reject their choices. Party favourites can now get direct entry to parliament via the party list, regardless of how the public may feel about them. Second, list MPs are not directly accountable to a constituency. Their primary loyalty is to the party, on which they depend for re-election. This allows people to sit in parliament who are there because of their loyalty to party ideology rather than voter appeal or hard work on behalf of an electorate. Accountability is thus hugely diminished. Third, when people vote for a minor party, such as NZ First or United Future, they have no way of knowing which major party their preferred party might end up in coalition with. In 2005 those two minor parties ended up supporting Labour, largely so that they could keep the Greens out of power. Did supporters of NZ First and United Future want a Labour government? Highly unlikely, since both parties have conservative support bases. But that’s what they got. Similarly, once votes are cast, the electors have no control over what deals are done behind closed doors. All bets are off and all policies are up for negotiation. A party may campaign vigorously on certain policies which attract public support and thereby get that party into parliament, but in the horse-trading that accompanies the formation of the new government, those policies may be compromised or traded away altogether as the price of a coalition deal. The voter is shut out of this process altogether; it’s all about compromise and deal-making. Finally – and this is perhaps the most damning criticism of MMP – there’s the tail-wagging-the-dog phenomenon whereby small parties end up wielding power that is totally disproportionate to their limited public support. Because the major coalition partner depends on their support to stay in power, they are able to exert undue influence. This leads to an unsubtle form of political blackmail. In the Bolger government of the late 1990s, National seemed prepared to cut almost any deal in order to humour the “Tight Five” – a renegade group that had no public mandate, being a breakaway faction of NZ First under whose banner they had been elected. You might also recall the ludicrous spectacle of the major parties vying for the support of the erratic Alamein Koopu, who occupied a pivotal position in the balance of parliamentary power. More recently we saw the Green tail wagging the Labour dog when Labour, disregarding overwhelming public opinion, backed the Bradford bill \[outlawing parental smacking\] because it needed to keep the Greens onside. For all these reasons I have concluded that MMP, far from enhancing parliamentary representation, is a perversion of democracy. New Zealanders were tricked into transferring more power to politicians while simultaneously reducing accountability and transparency. This is not what the people wanted and shows that the desire for vengeance against the political establishment is not an ideal basis for constitutional reform. The politicians always win in the end. This article was originally published on the [author’s blog](https://karldufresne.blogspot.com/?ref=goodoil.news). ### The Polls, the Debate and the Crazy URL: https://goodoil.news/the-polls-the-debate-and-the-crazy/ Last updated: 2026-10-08T20:15:51.000Z Let’s review. _This post is for paying subscribers only._ ### Raise a Glass to Split Voting URL: https://goodoil.news/raise-a-glass-to-split-voting/ Last updated: 2026-10-08T20:00:44.000Z Three polls were released on Tuesday. First out of the blocks was the RNZ-Reid Research poll, followed by the 1News-Verian poll at 6pm. At about the same time, the Roy Morgan poll popped into my inbox. What a different result! The question is how and why. I have researched the methodologies of the three and they are all much the same. There is, however, one significant difference. Roy Morgan is the only one that uses telephones as part of their research and we all know the age demographic most likely to pick up a telephone call these days. I think this is significant for two reasons – first it ensures the ‘oldies’ have a say and the second is most vote on the right. How significant that is can be open to debate. There will not be a weighting favourable to seniors but they are much more assured of a say than in the other two polls. However, to be fair, one would be hard pressed to point to that being the only reason for such a discrepancy when compared to the other two. It calls into question the accuracy and the believability of any and all of them. The Reid Research poll has the left combination on 57 seats and the right bloc on 56\. The Opportunity Party, if it reached the five per cent threshold would ensure a win for the left. The 1News-Verian Poll had the left and right blocs winning 58 seats each with Opportunity again giving the left the win. The Roy Morgan poll, not involving a left-wing media company, produced a very different result. I would describe the difference as stark. In this poll the National-led Government increased its lead over the opposition bloc from 49 per cent in August to 52 per cent in September. The opposition bloc came in at 41.5 per cent. This lead of 10.5 per cent is the largest since September 2024. On this result the current government would have 62 seats, with the opposition parties gaining a measly 50 – a whopping 12-seat majority. National have 37 seats (down 12), NZ First would win 12 seats (up four) and ACT would win 13 seats (up two). Roy Morgan asks one simple question: “If a New Zealand election was held today, which party would receive your party vote?” One straightforward question. We don’t know what question or questions are asked in the media companies polls because we are not told. Here’s the other important point. Let’s for a moment take the ‘telephone effect’ out of the Roy Morgan poll. The right would still win handsomely. Why? The split vote. Here the Roy Morgan poll has produced a combined extra six seats for the minor parties, taking the number for the governing coalition to 62\. This is exactly the effect split voting is designed to have on an election. On the left, Labour has 28 seats, the Greens 19 and the Māori Party is predicted to win three electorate seats – a total of only 50\. The significant point is that even the eight seats Opportunity would get based on this poll is still not enough to win. Opportunity loses the opportunity to be kingmaker. This poll proves that Key and Luxon are wrong. If the party votes that got the minor parties the extra six seats had gone to National there would have been no seat increase because they would still have been below the 37, meaning no list MPs. In that scenario the numbers would have fallen as follows – National 37, NZF eight, (minus 4) and ACT 11 (minus 2). That adds up to 56 and not enough to govern. Split the vote and you’re at 62 as the winner. ‘Two ticks blue’ or ‘party vote National’ is guaranteed to lose the coalition the election. Split your vote and the right is home and hosed with a big majority. The Roy Morgan poll has Labour with only a nine-seat advantage over the Greens. Get Opportunity in with their eight and it’s 28 to 27, a nightmare for Hipkins. And then there’s the Māori Party. The mind boggles merely at the thought of it. Spending would be out the door. Edmonds would lose control over the books. There would be buses and trains for Africa, most near empty, nothing would happen without reference to the Treaty, climate change nonsense would be well in ascendency, an ever-increasing number of public servants hired and we’d soon have an energy crisis to make the doom and gloom feel real. The ‘split your vote’ for a win is superbly evidenced in this poll. The more voters that do it, the bigger the winning margin. ### Quick Hit: Immoral Until the Cheque Clears URL: https://goodoil.news/quick-hit-immoral-until-the-cheque-clears/ Last updated: 2026-10-08T19:30:48.000Z A Green MP says being a billionaire is immoral and a Green candidate wants the rich drug tested at charity events. In 2023, the party banked $50,000 from James Cameron, now a Forbes billionaire. _This post is for subscribers on the VIP tier only._ ### Luxon: Gone by Morning Tea URL: https://goodoil.news/luxon-gone-by-morning-tea/ Last updated: 2026-10-08T19:30:26.000Z [**Rodney Hide**](https://www.brashandmitchell.com/post/rodney-hide-luxon-gone-by-morning-tea?ref=goodoil.news) *Rodney Hide is a former minister and ACT Party leader.* [https://x.com/the\_salty\_one\_/status/2107322025484427277/video/1?s=46](https://x.com/the%5Fsalty%5Fone%5F/status/2107322025484427277/video/1?s=46&ref=goodoil.news) Imagine the scene. Chris Luxon is speaking to a shed full of blokes in high-vis. He clears his throat, looks sincere, and announces that the future of world leadership is white and it’s male. The clip hits the internet before he’s out of the shed. What would happen? TVNZ would have a field day, and so would every newsroom north of Bluff. The Greens would issue a statement before Luxon had left the car park. Business NZ would discover a sudden interest in diversity. His caucus would start texting each other with names. By dinner he would be ‘reflecting’, and by breakfast he would be reflecting from the back benches. Saying that out loud, on purpose, as a pitch for votes, would end a career. Well, it did happen. Just not that way round. In early August – weeks out from election day – Green co-leader Marama Davidson was at the National Iwi Chairs Forum in Queenstown. Chlöe Swarbrick was beside her. The room was full of iwi leaders. The interviewer asked why Māori-roll voters should choose Green candidates in the Māori seats. You might have expected housing. Or water. Or climate. Or anything that sounded like a reason to tick the Green box instead of the box for the Māori Party. Davidson went another way: > This is intentional. We know that the future of, not just Aotearoa, but worldwide leadership, is brown and it’s wāhine. Intentional. Worldwide. Brown. Women. As a vote pitch. The crowd cheered. Chlöe dared the room to disagree. There was laughter. Nobody walked it back. The party's own channels posted the session under the title “From Te Tiriti to Thirst Trap Baddies” \[internet slang for an attractive, confident person – most often a woman – who posts intentionally alluring, sexy, or glamorous photos and videos on social media to capture attention, compliments, or romantic/sexual interest\]. The clip has been doing the rounds again this week, because of course it has. Swap the colours and the sexes and you have Luxon’s men’s-shed line – the one that would have ended him before the biscuits. Keep them as Davidson said them and you have a cheer line at a serious political forum, from a co-leader of a party that wants your party vote and seats at the cabinet table. That is the gag, if you can call it one. The offence is not only the words. It is that the room treated them as wisdom. Race and sex as the job description. Preference sold as progress. Discrimination with a smile, a round of applause, and a dare to say no – which, funnily enough, nobody did. The Greens are sitting around 14 to 16 per cent in the polls. That is not a student flat. That is a party that could decide who gets the keys to the Beehive. And this is what one of its co-leaders offered as the case for the Māori seats: not merit, not ideas, not results – brown and female, on purpose, worldwide. If Luxon had said the mirror image, the country would have known what to call it. When Davidson says it, and the crowd cheers, we are told it is leadership. Racism and sexism have not gone away. They have just learned which way to point. This article was originally published by [Brash and Mitchell](https://www.brashandmitchell.com/post/rodney-hide-luxon-gone-by-morning-tea?ref=goodoil.news). ### Reality Wants Its Money Back URL: https://goodoil.news/reality-wants-its-money-back/ Last updated: 2026-10-08T19:00:45.000Z David Seymour has called the government’s path to surplus “heroic”, four days before National shows its fiscal plan. When the junior partner says that about your books, believe him. _This post is for paying subscribers only._ ### Good Oil General Debate URL: https://goodoil.news/good-oil-general-debate-843/ Last updated: 2026-10-08T18:20:39.000Z Good morning, welcome to our daily General Debate. Our evening General debate is called Backchat and will start at 6 pm. On General debate, you are encouraged as a commenter to share your own stories, discuss other news, bring NEW news, catch up with friends or make new friends with other commenters. 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Please be respectful and do not make demands. ### Face of the Day URL: https://goodoil.news/face-of-the-day-1599/ Last updated: 2026-10-08T17:30:45.000Z > A 13-year-old reported one of the more interesting [political lines of the week, ](https://www.tickaroo.com/e/GYAsgCVWA8g3N6Ff?ref=goodoil.news)when he asked Opportunity’s deputy leader who he would vote for if he couldn’t vote for his own party at this election. > > Patrick Hammond from Auckland was interviewing [Opportunity’s](https://www.stuff.co.nz/topics/opportunity-party?ref=goodoil.news) Daniel Eb for Kea Kids News, the independent newsroom where young reporters interview people and cover issues for other kids. > > Patrick’s question was clear and concise: “If you couldn’t vote for the Opportunity Party, who would you vote for?” > > Eb told the Rosmini College student: “Ooh, that’s a really tricky question,” Eb replied. “Maybe the National Party.” > > Stuff [Read More](https://www.stuff.co.nz/politics/361043754/one-biggest-political-scoops-week-came-kids-news-show?ref=goodoil.news) ### The Good Oil Word of the Day URL: https://goodoil.news/the-good-oil-word-of-the-day-782/ Last updated: 2026-10-08T17:15:42.000Z The word for today is… horticulture (noun) - : the science and art of growing fruits, vegetables, flowers, or ornamental plants Source : [Merriam-Webster](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/horticulture?ref=goodoil.news) Etymology : Hortus is Latin for "garden", and the first gardens were planted about 10,000 years ago in what is often called the Fertile Crescent—the crescent-shaped area stretching from Israel north through Syria and down Iraq's two great rivers to the Persian Gulf. Probably more fertile in previous centuries than it is today, it was the original home of such food plants as wheat, barley, peas, and lentils or their ancient ancestors (not to mention the ancestors of cows, pigs, sheep, and goats as well). Many horticulturists today work as researchers or plant breeders or tend orchards and greenhouses—but most households contain at least one amateur horticulturist. ***If you enjoyed this Good Oil word of the day please consider sharing it with your friends and, especially, your children.*** ### The Good Oil Daily Bible Verse URL: https://goodoil.news/the-good-oil-daily-bible-verse-492/ Last updated: 2026-10-08T17:00:21.000Z [1 Corinthians 9](https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20Corinthians%209&version=KJV&ref=goodoil.news) **4** Have we not power to eat and to drink? ### Night Cap URL: https://goodoil.news/night-cap-750/ Last updated: 2026-10-08T08:00:46.000Z If you have a great Youtube, Rumble or Vimeo video to share send it to videos@goodoil.news [![CTA Image](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/01/cam-shirt2-1.png)](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) If you're loving this trusty, straight-up news on Kiwi politics and beyond, why not become a paid member, eh? Unlock exclusive yarns, podcasts, vids, and in-depth analysis—your support keeps independent journalism chugging along. Join today for just $5.00 per month and get the full good oil! [Learn more ](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) ### Winston Peters wants ban on conversion therapy revisited, says abortion can be 'murder' URL: https://goodoil.news/winston-peters-wants-ban-on-conversion-therapy-revisited-says-abortion-can-be-murder/ Last updated: 2026-10-08T20:31:44.000Z Winston Peters calls for revisiting New Zealand's conversion therapy ban and abortion laws, sparking political debate amid election campaigns. **Source:** [rnz.co.nz](https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/politics%5Felection-2026/1790118/winston-peters-wants-ban-on-conversion-therapy-revisited-says-abortion-can-be-murder?ref=goodoil.news) *Re-published from the Centrist with permission* [Original article at The Centrist](https://centrist.nz/winston-peters-wants-ban-on-conversion-therapy-revisited-says-abortion-can-be-murder-R0cHM6Ly?ref=goodoil.news) ### Election 2026: Labour’s living wage plan for public service workers could fuel inflation, economist warns URL: https://goodoil.news/election-2026-labours-living-wage-plan-for-public-service-workers-could-fuel-inflation-economist-warns/ Last updated: 2026-10-08T20:32:02.000Z Labour's proposal to enforce a living wage in the public service sparks debate on economic implications and productivity challenges in New Zealand. **Source:** [nzherald.co.nz](https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/economy/employment/economist-warns-labours-pledge-to-pay-public-service-workers-and-contractors-at-least-the-living-wage-could-end-in-tears/premium/OUTEQL5FCFC5FDJR3X6AFCPP7U/?ref=goodoil.news) *Re-published from the Centrist with permission* [Original article at The Centrist](https://centrist.nz/election-2026-labour-s-living-wage-plan-for-public-service-workers-could-fuel-inflation-ec-R0cHM6Ly?ref=goodoil.news) ### Tiny Home Thursday URL: https://goodoil.news/tiny-home-thursday-323/ Last updated: 2026-10-08T07:30:57.000Z If you have a great Youtube, Rumble or Vimeo video to share send it to videos@goodoil.news [![CTA Image](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/01/cam-shirt2-1.png)](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) If you're loving this trusty, straight-up news on Kiwi politics and beyond, why not become a paid member, eh? Unlock exclusive yarns, podcasts, vids, and in-depth analysis—your support keeps independent journalism chugging along. Join today for just $5.00 per month and get the full good oil! [Learn more ](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) ### Platform Callers Quiz Maurice Williamson On Strategic Voting URL: https://goodoil.news/platform-callers-quiz-maurice-williamson-on-strategic-voting/ Last updated: 2026-10-08T07:00:26.000Z If you have a great Youtube, Rumble or Vimeo video to share send it to videos@goodoil.news ### Maurice Williamson On The Importance Of Strategic Voting This Election URL: https://goodoil.news/maurice-williamson-on-the-importance-of-strategic-voting-this-election/ Last updated: 2026-10-08T06:30:44.000Z If you have a great Youtube, Rumble or Vimeo video to share send it to videos@goodoil.news [![CTA Image](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/01/cam-shirt2-1.png)](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) If you're loving this trusty, straight-up news on Kiwi politics and beyond, why not become a paid member, eh? Unlock exclusive yarns, podcasts, vids, and in-depth analysis—your support keeps independent journalism chugging along. Join today for just $5.00 per month and get the full good oil! [Learn more ](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) ### Pollster David Farrar On The Latest Polls & Labour’s Costing Stuff-Ups URL: https://goodoil.news/pollster-david-farrar-on-the-latest-polls-labours-costing-stuff-ups/ Last updated: 2026-10-08T06:00:53.000Z If you have a great Youtube, Rumble or Vimeo video to share send it to videos@goodoil.news [![CTA Image](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/01/cam-shirt2-1.png)](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) If you're loving this trusty, straight-up news on Kiwi politics and beyond, why not become a paid member, eh? Unlock exclusive yarns, podcasts, vids, and in-depth analysis—your support keeps independent journalism chugging along. Join today for just $5.00 per month and get the full good oil! [Learn more ](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) ### The Good Oil Daily Roundup URL: https://goodoil.news/the-good-oil-daily-roundup-766/ Last updated: 2026-10-08T05:30:35.000Z [](https://photos.google.com/u/1/photo/AF1QipN7Zp7NKe4smdZA9nAYud8CjsgjsQ-Bn7QyMo53?ref=goodoil.news) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/09/3FF7BCE3-EE95-4F2C-9FEC-35BA5C15F032_1_105_c.jpeg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/09/41897BCE-F3EB-4954-A40C-EF8A4ACF8990.jpeg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/09/77328218-1379-4846-AB8A-065A7471EB9C.jpeg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/09/EE9E0770-3081-42B7-ADAD-1E70B467E636.jpeg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/09/AE67E62D-AB42-458A-9668-6F25C27BDC6F.jpeg) ### Good Oil Backchat URL: https://goodoil.news/good-oil-backchat-844/ Last updated: 2026-10-08T05:01:24.000Z Good evening, welcome to **Backchat**. On Backchat, you are free to share your own stories, discuss other news or catch up with friends. To participate you’ll need to sign up for a [Disqus account ](https://disqus.com/profile/signup/intent/?ref=goodoil.news)which is free, quick, and easy. On posts that are not articles like this one, you do not have to stay ‘on topic’ but you do still need to follow our [commenting rules.](https://goodoil.news/commenting-and-moderation/) Please [read our rules ](https://www.goodoil.news/commenting-and-moderation/?ref=goodoil.news)before you start commenting on *The Good Oil* to avoid a temporary or permanent ban. NOTE: Moderation queries MUST be expressed VIA EMAIL and not by posting a comment. To check if your ban might have been caused by Disqus, or to ask for a banning decision to be reviewed, email the voluntary **helpdesk** @ [**goodoil.news**](https://goodoil.news/) with your Disqus username in the subject line. Please be respectful and do not make demands. ### Bristol and the Slave Trade URL: https://goodoil.news/reproduced-with-permission-template-make-a-copy-copy/ Last updated: 2026-10-08T03:30:22.000Z [**Tom Armstrong**](https://www.freespeechbacklash.com/article/bristol-and-slave-trade?ref=goodoil.news) *Just an old fashioned romantic libertarian conservative at heart. Or maybe a romantic conservative libertarian, depending on the stages of the moon.* You have almost certainly been told about Bristol’s involvement in the African slave trade of the 17th and 18th centuries. It is most unlikely, however, that you’ve been told about its much earlier involvement in the slave trade, that of the export of English slaves in the tenth and eleventh centuries. Long before Bristol became a centre of the transatlantic trade, it was an important port in the export of English slaves. During the 10th and 11th centuries, men, women and children were bought in different parts of England, brought to Bristol and shipped across the Irish Sea to be sold in Ireland, where Viking trading centres, above all Dublin, had become major markets for enslaved people. This earlier history is less familiar, but it matters. It reminds us that slavery was not an institution invented by the modern Atlantic world. It was one of the recurring features of human societies, including medieval Europe. In Anglo-Saxon England, the population was divided broadly between the free and the unfree. Slavery had existed for centuries, and people could enter it in several ways. Prisoners captured in war might be enslaved. Others were kidnapped. Parents facing starvation could sell their children. Debt, punishment and dependence could also result in the loss of freedom. Some people entered servitude voluntarily, believing that life under a master might offer greater security than what they had. The boundaries between slavery and other forms of unfree labour were not always clear. Medieval England contained a spectrum of dependent statuses, from people with relatively limited obligations to those who could be treated as property. Serfs, for example, were generally tied to a manor rather than bought and sold as individual commodities, but they were still denied the freedom to leave without permission. That distinction mattered legally, even if it offered little comfort to those living under coercion. The outright buying and selling of people, however, was fairly common and Bristol was particularly well placed to profit from it. Known to the Anglo-Saxons as Brycgstow, ‘the settlement by the bridge’, the town stood on the River Avon, with direct access to the Bristol Channel and the Irish Sea. Its position made it a natural port for trade with Ireland. By the turn of the second millennium, Bristol was an important commercial centre with its own mint and an increasingly active maritime economy. Its merchants could collect people from across England and transport them by sea to Irish markets. Ireland was an obvious destination. Scandinavian settlers had established powerful trading centres there, including Dublin, one of the great slave markets of northern Europe. From Ireland, enslaved people could be sent onwards to Scandinavia, Iceland and other parts of the Viking world. The trade was sustained by demand, geography and profit. The evidence is not sufficiently detailed to tell us how many people passed through Bristol, nor can every story repeated about the trade be treated as certain. But the broad picture is clear. Bristol was an outlet for the export of English slaves, and the trade was established enough to be described in the early twelfth century as an ‘ancient custom’ of the town. Our most vivid account comes from William of Malmesbury, writing about the campaign of Wulfstan, Bishop of Worcester. William describes ‘long rows of young men and maidens’ bound together and brought to market. He also refers to women who had been deliberately made pregnant before being sold. The passage is a moral denunciation, not a statistical report, and it should be read as such. Even so, it provides an unusually powerful glimpse of the human beings behind an otherwise abstract commercial system. They were not merely prisoners captured in battle. Men, women and children were being acquired specifically for resale. Some may have been sold by relatives; others were kidnapped or coerced. The market turned people into commodities, and the existence of profit made the practice appear ordinary to those who participated in it. That is perhaps the most important point. The people of 10th- and 11th-century England did not live in a society where slavery was universally regarded as an obvious moral outrage. Kings knew about it. Landowners possessed slaves. Merchants traded in them. Religious institutions could own them. The institution was embedded in the social and economic order. This did not mean that medieval Christians had no moral objections to enslavement. They did. But those objections were often selective. One of the strongest prohibitions concerned the sale of Christians to pagans. The issue was not necessarily that a Christian could never be enslaved; it was that a Christian might be sold to people of another faith and thereby removed from Christendom. That distinction helps explain the apparent contradiction at the heart of medieval Christian society. A Christian landowner might possess slaves without believing that he had violated Christian teaching. A church might own slaves. Yet the sale of Christians to pagan buyers could be condemned as an intolerable offence. To modern eyes this seems inconsistent. To many medieval people it was a coherent distinction between permissible and impermissible forms of enslavement. Bristol’s trade was especially objectionable for that reason. Its cargo was being sent to markets controlled by pagan or recently converted Scandinavian rulers and merchants. The people being sold were not simply losing their liberty; they were being exported beyond the religious and political community to which medieval Christians believed they belonged. Nor was England unique. Slavery and other forms of unfree labour existed across Christian Europe, the Byzantine Empire, the Islamic world, Africa and Asia. Slave routes crossed the Mediterranean, the Black Sea, the Eurasian steppe, the Sahara and the Indian Ocean. Eastern Europeans were traded through Black Sea ports into Byzantine and Islamic markets. African societies participated in regional systems of enslavement and trade, while various forms of slavery and bonded labour existed across Asia. This is not an argument for a league table of guilt. It is an attempt to understand the world in which Bristol’s trade existed. Slavery was a widely recognised institution, and medieval people in many societies accepted that some human beings could legitimately own others. Bristol’s story was not an isolated aberration, but one local expression of a much broader system. It was nevertheless challenged – and eventually abandoned. The central figure was Wulfstan, Bishop of Worcester. Born around 1008, Wulfstan became bishop in 1062 and remained in office through the Norman Conquest until his death in 1095\. His career crossed the divide between Anglo-Saxon and Norman England, but his opposition to the Bristol trade was persistent. According to William of Malmesbury, Wulfstan repeatedly visited Bristol and preached against the merchants. A single sermon was not enough. He returned again and again, sometimes remaining in the area for weeks or months. Each Sunday he preached against the buying and selling of human beings. William says that neither the love of God nor the fear of King William had been sufficient to destroy the trade. The merchants continued to buy people from across England and send them to Ireland in search of profit. Eventually, however, Wulfstan’s persistence helped change the attitude of the town. Bristol’s merchants abandoned the trade, and the practice began to lose its local legitimacy. This matters because the end of the Bristol trade was not simply the result of an order issued from London. It required a sustained campaign against the people actually involved: merchants, shipowners and customers. Wulfstan confronted a profitable custom that had become, in William’s words, hardened in the hearts of those who practised it. Royal and ecclesiastical authority also played a part. William the Conqueror restricted the export of slaves from England, particularly the sale of Christians to foreigners and heathens. But legislation alone did not immediately eliminate the trade. The Council of London, held under Archbishop Anselm in 1102, issued a church canon condemning the buying and selling of people in England, especially the export of English slaves. It was an important ecclesiastical prohibition, though not the equivalent of a modern Act of Parliament and not an instant abolition of every form of unfree labour. The trade seems to have continued in some form for a time. Medieval sources and later accounts suggest that Scandinavian merchants still attempted to lure unsuspecting people aboard ships and carry them away. The 1102 prohibition therefore marked a decisive change in moral and institutional attitudes, but not an overnight transformation of society. Nor did freedom arrive for everyone. Serfdom and other forms of dependency continued for centuries. People could remain tied to the land, obliged to provide labour and unable to leave without permission. The disappearance of chattel slavery in England was gradual, uneven and incomplete. Yet by the 12th century the open buying and selling of English Christians had become increasingly difficult to defend, and outright slavery had largely declined by around 1200. Bristol’s early history therefore reveals something uncomfortable about both the city and the medieval world. Slavery did not require participants to think of themselves as villains. A merchant could buy a person, transport that person to Ireland and sell them at a profit while regarding the transaction as a legitimate branch of commerce. Social custom, economic interest and religious assumptions could combine to make cruelty appear respectable. There is something striking about William of Malmesbury’s description of those “long rows of young men and maidens” bound together for sale. These were not abstractions. They were individuals who had families, homes and lives of their own, but who had become commodities in a profitable business. But perhaps because they were not Africans, modern society seems to be uninterested. This article was originally published by the [Free Speech Backlash](https://www.freespeechbacklash.com/article/bristol-and-slave-trade?ref=goodoil.news). ### Bolsonaro the Younger Is on the Cusp URL: https://goodoil.news/bolsonaro-the-younger-is-on-the-cusp/ Last updated: 2026-10-08T03:00:06.000Z As [I wrote a few weeks back](https://goodoil.news/will-it-be-bolsonaro-the-younger/), another domino in South America’s tottering ‘Orange Revolution’ was set to topple (again) in Brazil. Would the country’s looming presidential elections deliver a Bolsonaro the Younger? I wondered. Lo and behold: > [Brazil’s **Flavio Bolsonaro** heads](https://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/latest-news/bolsonaro-rides-rightwing-surge-into-brazils-election-runoff/news-story/13efafde8a1785bcb8d9aeb008175cd2?ref=goodoil.news) to a runoff election buoyed by sweeping gains in Congress, after a shock first-place poll finish hailed by US President **Donald Trump** as a “big victory”. (Here’s the secret to looking like a canny political prognosticator: trumpet the ones you get right and quietly ignore the ones you didn’t. This time, I look like I have got it right: I’ll take it.) > The right-wing senator finished two percentage points ahead of leftist President **Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva**, who faces an uphill battle to secure a fourth term win on October 25, and cement his legacy. > > The 45-year-old Bolsonaro, who was little known until a few months ago, outperformed the first-round election results of his father, the far-right former president **Jair Bolsonaro** in 2018 and 2022 elections. It’ll be interesting to see what tricks the Brazilian left pull this time. Bolsonaro the Elder was stabbed in 2018, convicted in what his son calls a “sham”, and barred until 2030\. Enter Bolsonaro the Younger, no doubt wearing a bullet-proof vest. The younger Bolsonaro did not arrive at this vantage point by peddling the customary gauzy platitudes favored by Latin America’s socialist grandees. His platform is built on old-fashioned, meat-and-potatoes conservatism: pruning the overweening apparatus of the state, slashing taxes, imposing iron fiscal discipline in the face of runaway public debt and taking a truncheon to rampant violent crime. It’s an agenda that mirrors the tectonic shift seen across South America, from **Javier Milei**’s chainsaw economics in Argentina to **Nayib Bukele**’s stunning crackdown that has, almost overnight, turned El Salvador from the murder capital of the world to one of the safest (and given the self-described “coolest dictator” a 90 per cent approval rating). Even Donald Trump chimed in from Washington to laud the result as a monumental triumph. History, moreover, is distinctly on the younger man’s side. Since Brazil re-entered direct presidential elections in 1989 following decades of military rule, every single candidate who finished ahead in the initial round went on to seize the presidency in the runoff. > Political analyst **Thomas Traumann** told AFP the election Sunday had shown a "tsunami of anti-PT sentiment," referring to Lula's Worker's Party, which has governed for much of the past two decades. That tidal wave has carried the Bolsonaro brand right back to the precipice of supreme power. While patriarch Jair remains under house arrest, serving a draconian 27-year term for alleged coup-plotting, the family took their case directly to the ballot box. Flavio has already promised an amnesty for his father if he takes the presidential palace and the voters seem entirely unswayed by the establishment’s legal vendettas. The legislative gains were nothing short of a rout. The Liberal Party nearly doubled its presence in the upper house and stormed the Chamber of Deputies. Former first lady **Michelle Bolsonaro** secured a Senate seat, while two more of Jair’s sons walked into legislative posts. > “The end of the era of Lula’s Workers’ Party has been decreed,” a triumphant Bolsonaro declared on Sunday in Brasilia. For the octogenarian Lula, the arithmetic of the October 25 runoff looks decidedly grim. The minor candidates who collected nearly eight per cent of the first-round vote sit almost entirely on the right-hand side of the political aisle. To stay in office, the old Marxist must somehow cajole the 33 million citizens who simply stayed home into turning out for his re-election. His strategy so far has been an utter masterclass in political tone-deafness. Rather than addressing the brutal kitchen-table realities grinding down ordinary Brazilians, Lula chose to campaign on abstract notions of national pride and his own historical grandeur, while picking fights with Trump over tariffs. > “Brazilians are concerned with concrete matters, such as supermarket prices, the fear of being mugged, and credit card debt, rather than abstract concepts like sovereignty or Lula’s historical significance,” said Traumann. While Lula’s courtiers were busy admiring the old lion’s historical legacy, everyday citizens were watching their wages being swallowed by inflation, dreading their credit card balances and looking over their shoulders on the street. And that sounds pretty much like here in Australia. We can only hope for a similar tsunami of anti-establishment sentiment of our own, come the next election. --- 💡 ****If you enjoyed this article please share it using the share buttons at the top or bottom of the article.** ### [The Good Oil] Stuff Up of the Day URL: https://goodoil.news/the-good-oil-stuff-up-of-the-day-186/ Last updated: 2026-10-08T02:00:48.000Z Colourblindness from Hazero. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/Stuff-up-8-Oct--3-.png) ### Merging Activists With New York City Government URL: https://goodoil.news/merging-activists-with-new-york-city-government/ Last updated: 2026-10-08T01:00:22.000Z [**Jarrett Stepman**](https://papundits.wordpress.com/2026/10/05/how-mamdani-is-merging-socialist-activists-with-new-york-city-government/?ref=goodoil.news) *Jarrett Stepman is a columnist for the Daily Signal at the Heritage Foundation.* When Zohran Mamdani said he’d govern [New York City as a socialist](https://www.dailysignal.com/2025/11/05/zohran-mamdani-wasted-no-time-in-quoting-socialist-eugene-debs-during-victory-speech/?ref=goodoil.news), he meant it. And the way the mayor is doing that is by merging the Democratic Socialists of America and other left-wing groups with the official functions of city government. It’s an ominous development for [New York City](https://www.dailysignal.com/category/state-politics-news/new-york-political-news/?ref=goodoil.news). Mamdani is creating a patronage machine – one writer cleverly coined the phrase “[hipster Tammany Hall](https://www.city-journal.org/article/zohran-mamdani-working-families-party-tammany-hall?ref=goodoil.news)” to describe it – where he operates as the kingmaker of New York electoral politics and the chief administrator of New York’s government managerial class. It’s that second function that could transform the city, if not permanently, at least for as a long as Mamdani is in office and probably for his successors too. Ensuring that DSA candidates sit atop the ticket in local elections is one thing. Mamdani clearly intends to create an enduring coalition. But by integrating the larger left-wing organizing network into official government business he is more likely to transition New York from the financial capital of the United States into Havana on the Hudson. Mamdani is doing this by creating new bureaucracies that prioritize its goals and is even funding an army of influencers who technically promote his agenda as private citizens but are functionally part of the larger governing apparatus. This has been engineered to the point where it’s increasingly unclear where the line is between the DSA and City Hall. ### **The Activist Machine** When Mamdani entered office one of his first official actions was to [create the Office of Mass Engagement,](https://www.dailysignal.com/2026/05/04/mamdani-uses-taxpayer-money-to-build-a-city-funded-activist-army/?ref=goodoil.news) which his administration said was part of a “long-term initiative to bring mass public participation into the work of governing.” Mass participation in this case doesn’t just mean that the people of New York broadly are going to be more involved with the function of government. It means that the hordes of doorknockers, protesters, and DSA party organizers would get to keep doing what they are doing, but with a government check and official seal of approval. Politico noted in May that Mamdani was copying the playbook created by the DSA, “perfected by 140,000 loyal foot soldiers” and now “underwritten by taxpayers.” It also noted that “it’s hard to ignore that this same electoral machinery was created to promote the mayor himself – and that the new office is stuffed with former campaign aides.” These taxpayer-funded activists were unleashed to influence the Rent Guidelines Board hearing in June. And what do you know, the result of that hearing – by the allegedly nonpartisan board – was to enact a rent freeze in the city, fulfilling one of Mamdani’s promises. The decision of that board has [been called a “sham”](https://www.dailysignal.com/2026/06/26/absolute-farce-new-york-passes-rent-freeze-rent-guidelines-board/?ref=goodoil.news) by one former member who quit in protest. A lawsuit was even launched to challenge the decision. Over 100 texts and emails showing coordination between the “independent” board and the mayor’s office have been released. “The contacts between City Hall and the \[Rent Guidelines Board\] were not only substantial, but also shocking, in that they show coordination and collaboration throughout the RGB’s process,” an attorney for the plaintiff said to a Staten Island court [according to the *New York Post*](https://nypost.com/2026/10/02/us-news/hundreds-of-messages-between-mamdani-and-rent-board-released/?ref=goodoil.news). ### **An Army of Influencers** In addition to the activists working in an official capacity, Mamdani has marshaled a virtual army of online influencers who are not only perpetually exuberant about the mayor’s decisions but sound a lot like all the other equally enthusiastic online supporters. That’s likely because they are being paid by the mayor’s office to pump his message and are naturally receiving marching orders too. Even some [left-leaning publications](https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/its-time-to-rein-in-mamdanis-influencer-army.html?ref=goodoil.news) have caught on to what Mamdani is doing and have raised alarm bells. The [*New York Times* reported](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/04/nyregion/mamdani-influencers-emilia-rowland.html?ref=goodoil.news) that Mamdani has quietly used taxpayer funds to create a “sprawling network of hundreds of friendly influencers to boost his priorities, provide positive depictions of his administration, and enhance his popularity.” Not only that, but the administration, “regularly sends the influencers memos on the mayor’s priorities and encourages them to trumpet his accomplishments, all outside of public scrutiny. The missives are delivered in group chats on Signal, an encrypted messaging app designed to shield posts from public review.” The *Times* noted concerns about[ a lack of transparency](https://www.foxnews.com/politics/mamdani-gives-influencers-special-access-signal-use-raises-records-law-questions?ref=goodoil.news), but the Mamdani administration appears to be in no hurry to put guardrails around its practices. And don’t think these influencers are just about cheerleading Mamdani’s policies. They are also being deployed to pressure private citizens and businesses. Remember that creepy Tax Day ad where [Mamdani personally targeted](https://www.dailysignal.com/2026/05/09/mamdani-tax-day-vid-backfires-businesses-escape-new-york/?ref=goodoil.news) billionaire CEO Ken Griffin? That ad was supercharged by the influencers, of course. The move backfired in the sense that it caused Griffin to consider investing outside the city and will likely prompt businesses to think twice about operating in New York. But it was effective in another sense in that it tapped into the politics of resentment that drives so many of Mamdani’s supporters. Political capital is almost always more important than economic success to a true-believing socialist. Expect more of the same. ### **Union Organizing from the Inside** Most recently, Mamdani stepped up his efforts to bolster union organizing in New York City by again wedding it to the function of government. On Sept 7 he launched [the Mayor’s Office of Worker Power,](https://www.nyc.gov/mayors-office/news/2026/09/mayor-mamdani-launches-first-in-the-nation-office-of-worker-powe?ref=goodoil.news) touted as the “first of its kind in the nation.” The [new agency was inspired by the](https://www.thecityreporter.nyc/2026/09/07/labor-day-mamdani-tony-perlstein-worker-power-unions/?ref=goodoil.news) “Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee, a joint effort of the Democratic Socialists of America and United Electrical Workers,” according to the City Reporter. The administration touted the new organization as a way to operate as a kind of middleman between businesses and workers, though if you think this means that it will carry out its actions evenhandedly you are kidding yourself. As Daily Signal contributor [Michael Freund noted](https://www.dailysignal.com/2026/09/24/mamdani-city-hall-referee-organizer/?ref=goodoil.news), it’s clear Mamdani wants City Hall to be both the organizer and referee in these disputes. “The concern is not that workers are organizing,” Freund wrote. “They have every right to do so. The question is whether the same government helping them organize can also credibly investigate employers and enforce workplace laws involving those same disputes.” That’s exactly right. The problem isn’t that workers are organizing. It’s that the government will now have the thumb on the scale in one direction. And you can bet that when all is said and done the politically connected union bosses will come out on top. When you take all these moves together – the integration of socialist activists into city management, the partnerships with influencers indirectly getting that sweet taxpayer cash, the creation of additional bureaucracies to control the economic and social conditions of the city, and the transformation of old ones to do the same – the picture becomes clear. This is how Mamdani and other socialists aim to transform American politics, one major metropolitan area at a time. They are merging traditional Democrat machine politics with an even more aggressive agenda that will blur the line between day-to-day government function and partisan organizing. The insiders win, the outsiders lose, and socialists stay in power whether the people want them to or not. Those who want to thrive or just survive will have to play ball and give the administration what it wants, or else. These are the bitter fruits produced by the ‘warmth’ of collectivism. This article was originally published by [the Daily Signal](http://dailysignal.com/?ref=goodoil.news) and republished by [PA Pundits – International](https://papundits.wordpress.com/2026/10/05/how-mamdani-is-merging-socialist-activists-with-new-york-city-government/?ref=goodoil.news). ### We Live In a Two-Tier State URL: https://goodoil.news/we-live-in-a-two-tier-state/ Last updated: 2026-10-08T00:30:47.000Z [**Paul Birch**](https://dailysceptic.org/2026/10/06/the-locking-down-of-gosport-to-protect-illegal-migrants-shows-beyond-doubt-that-we-live-in-a-two-tier-state/?ref=goodoil.news) *Paul Birch is a former police officer and counter-terrorism specialist.* This week, we saw something very sinister and un-British unfold in Gosport on the south coast of England. The police used draconian powers to effectively lock down over 80,000 residents while, at the same time, facilitating the illegal arrival into the United Kingdom of hundreds of military-aged, unvetted men in mega-dinghies and their subsequent transportation away from the area in luxury coaches. And, according to Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood, such men may also be taking part in the systematic [rape of women](https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/oct/04/women-small-boats-raped-shabana-mahmood-asylum-migration?ref=goodoil.news) during their journey to England. This is the calibre of the people whom the police are choosing to protect, while simultaneously arresting those who [throw empty plastic bottles and swear at them](https://www.itv.com/news/meridian/2026-09-16/first-arrested-over-anti-migrant-protest-in-portsmouth-admits-violent-disorder?ref=goodoil.news) in sheer frustration at their powerlessness to stop what is, to all intents and purposes, an invasion. Police used [Section 14 of the 1986 Public Order Act](https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1986/64/section/14?ref=goodoil.news) in Gosport. This meant that anyone wishing to assemble in protest was directed to a specific designated area. Breaching such conditions is a criminal offence and can lead to arrest. They also applied powers under [Section 158 of the 2026 Crime and Policing Act](https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2026/20/section/158?ref=goodoil.news) and [Section 60AA of the 1994 Criminal Justice and Public Order Act](https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1994/33/section/60AA?ref=goodoil.news). These banned face coverings and allowed the cops to require people to remove them on pain of arrest. Such powers were employed, we are told rather abstractly, to “protect communities”. If that wasn’t enough, senior officers also put in place a dispersal order under [Section 34 of the Anti-Social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014](https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1986/64/section/14?ref=goodoil.news), covering the whole of Gosport. Under such an order, officers can direct people to leave an area and not return for a specified period. Anyone who refuses commits a criminal offence and is liable to arrest. It was this order in particular which led to some residents being asked for their identification in order to prove they lived in the town. Twelve people [were arrested](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cr20w64ll61lo?ref=goodoil.news) during the course of the protests. How did we get here? How is it that in 2026 the authorities are effectively asking British people to present their papers whilst providing illegal migrants with a presidential motorcade to their taxpayer-funded accommodation? It is hard to believe there are still some who maintain that two-tier justice doesn’t exist in this country – although it is now only really contested by those whose catastrophic ideas and policies have led to such a crisis in the first place. Two further cases in highlight two-tier justice in operation. Daniel Thomas is an anti-migrant activist, otherwise known as ‘Danny Tommo’. He is also the person behind a group called ‘Patriot Platform’, which has been behind recent protests at migrant arrivals on the south coast. He was [charged with criminal damage](https://www.cps.gov.uk/national-news-wessex/news/announces-man-charged-criminal-damage-after-dinghy-slashed-sea?ref=goodoil.news) plus failing to provide the police with his phone’s PIN. Thomas allegedly slashed a migrant dinghy in the English Channel on September 22nd while a rescue worker was on board. He denied both charges. Even so, he has been held in custody from the start. On September 29th the judge turned down a package of bail conditions offered by his defence team and [remanded him in custody](https://news.sky.com/story/anti-migrant-activist-daniel-thomas-remanded-in-custody-13593131?ref=goodoil.news) until a provisional trial date of the 1st March 2027\. That means more than five months in custody before any jury hears his case. The prosecution itself had told the court it couldn’t say whether the damage came to more or less than £5,000\. Below that figure, the offence carries a [maximum sentence of three months](https://uk.news.yahoo.com/danny-tommo-custody-ahead-trial-100731473.html?ref=goodoil.news). You also need the owners of the property damaged – in this case a people trafficking gang – to want to press charges. This is absurd and is clearly a political prosecution. Contrast this with the five men arrested near RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire. They were picked up in the early hours of September 27th after being found with three vans close to an air base which the US was then using for strikes on Iran. They were held on suspicion of explosives offences and of preparing an act of terrorism. A major incident was declared, multiple homes were evacuated and bomb disposal teams were called. Within 36 hours, all five were [released on bail](https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/terror-attack-raf-fairford-men-arrested-london-b1298675.html?ref=goodoil.news). Counter-terrorism police did stress that the investigation remained open, but it later emerged that [no explosive material had been found](https://www.counterterrorism.police.uk/news/update-on-raf-fairford-investigation-1600-28-september-2026/?ref=goodoil.news). The difference cannot be ignored. One man accused of damaging an inflatable boat is locked up for months, while five people suspected of plotting terrorism against a military base are back at home within a day and a half. The system comes down hardest on a politically unsavoury activist while showing more leniency in a case that, on its face, involves far more serious allegations. It seems that we no longer have a right to protest, we merely have a licence to – one to be issued by the state and revocable at the whim of a police officer if it’s inconvenient, or if the gathering might offend the sensibilities of the commentariat. The freedom to stand in the street and shout at power was won over the course of centuries by Levellers, Chartists, suffragettes and many more. It is now being dismantled not by tanks, but by statutory instruments. This article was originally published by [the Daily Sceptic](https://dailysceptic.org/2026/10/06/the-locking-down-of-gosport-to-protect-illegal-migrants-shows-beyond-doubt-that-we-live-in-a-two-tier-state/?ref=goodoil.news). ### When Never Again Happened Again URL: https://goodoil.news/when-never-again-happened-again/ Last updated: 2026-10-07T23:30:02.000Z [**Ashley Church**](https://ashleychurch.com/when-never-again-happened-again/?ref=goodoil.news) *Digital creator* A couple of weekends ago I travelled to Auckland to speak in support of a Holocaust memorial created by my friend Perry Trotter and his wife Dr Sheree Trotter – an extraordinary body of work, commemorating something that many of us learned about at school. It reminded us that the Holocaust, or Shoah, didn’t start with death camps. It began in the 1930s, during a time when Jews were excluded from employment, education and public life. A time when their businesses were boycotted, their synagogues burned, and their citizenship was stripped away. These events provided a backdrop to what came later. Mass shootings, in 1941, which destroyed entire Jewish communities and, by January 1942, the Wannsee Conference, which gave official endorsement to a mass extermination programme which was already underway. Jews were deported across occupied Europe, worked to death, starved, shot and murdered in gas chambers. By 1945, six million were dead. Children, parents and grandparents had been erased from families that would never be whole again. In 1947, in the aftermath of this obscenity, the newly created United Nations passed a resolution sanctioning the partition of the Holy Land into an Arab State and a Jewish State. In May 1948, a new Israel State declared independence – carrying an ancient national identity and the determination that Jews would never again be helpless before those who wanted them destroyed. Never again. At the time, those words carried such promise – a statement of confident defiance and a vow to ensure that no Jew would ever again be hunted, simply for being Jewish. And, for a long time, it looked like the world agreed. But that was before anyone had ever heard of October 7, 2023. At dawn, on that day, three years ago, Hamas-led terrorists breached the Gaza border, poured into southern Israel and embarked upon a murderous rampage in which they attacked homes, streets, communities and a music festival. In what was to become the deadliest day for Jewish people since the Holocaust, over 1,200 people were killed, and 251 people were carried off into Gaza – some alive, some dead. Almost a year later, I visited three of the sites of those horrific attacks. The city of Sderot, Kfar Aza kibbutz and the site of the Nova Music Festival – and what I saw, and heard, changed me forever. In Sderot, terrorists had opened fire in the streets and overran the police station – murdering more than 50 people. People like Yaakov Mortov – a 66-year-old Russian immigrant who had built a new life in Israel. That morning he had been on a minibus – part of a group heading out for a day out at the Dead Sea – but a flat tyre had brought the group to a halt beside a bus stop. In the last photograph of Yaakov, he is sitting on a bench holding his walking stick. Shortly after it was taken, Hamas terrorists had arrived, shooting Yaakov and 12 other members of the group at close range. A day trip for seniors ended with 13 people lying dead beside a bus shelter. At the Kfar Aza kibbutz, 10 kilometres south of Sderot, I walked down an alley lined with apartments that were riddled with bullet holes and covered in bloodstains in places where people had lived ordinary lives. Terrorists had moved from home to home, killing residents and dragging others away. The echo of that horror was there in front of me. Among the victims were the Kutz family. Aviv and Livnat, their daughter Rotem and their teenage sons Yonatan and Yiftach were all murdered in their home. Their bodies were found together on a bed, Aviv holding them all in a protective embrace. Livnat was about to turn fifty. Rotem trained young soldiers. The boys played basketball and dreamed of becoming professionals. Aviv had organised a kite festival along the Gaza fence to express a desire for peace – a festival which was supposed to take place that very day. Instead, all five were buried together. The same horror unfolded at Nir Oz, where 35-year-old Tamar and 36-year-old Johnny Siman Tov had sheltered with their five-year-old twin daughters, Shahar and Arbel and their two-year-old son, Omer, who loved tractors, running on the grass and making his family laugh. Early that morning Tamar had messaged other mothers to ask whether everyone was all right. Later, she messaged again to report that she had been wounded. Finally, the last message came from Johnny – to his sister – saying “they’re here, they’re burning us, we’re suffocating.” Terrorists had fired at the safe-room door and set the house alight. All five were murdered. And then there was the Nova Music Festival. A site at which young people had gathered to dance and celebrate life was turned into a bloodbath – at which those young people were hunted across the festival grounds, along escape routes and into roadside shelters. Over the course of the day the terrorists killed 378 of them in and around the festival and abducted 44 more. When I visited that site a year later I witnessed a stark visible reminder of this carnage. A sea of flags on sticks, located on the precise location where people had been dancing, each bearing the face of someone murdered. Every face belonging to somebody. Among these was Karin Journo (zor-noh) – a 24 year old airport worker who had gone to Nova despite a broken leg. At 8.43 that morning, she sent her family a final text: “To the whole family, I want to say that I love you a lot, because I am not coming home.” Her father later said that his daughter hadn’t gone to war. She had gone to a party. And she had been murdered. Then there was the sexual violence. Women who were raped, gang-raped, then murdered. A survivor hiding near the festival described watching terrorists rape a woman and mutilate her body. Others describe atrocities that are simply too graphic to remember – but remember we must. Eden Yerushalmi (yeh-roo-shall-me) was 24 and training to become a Pilates instructor. She had been working behind the bar at Nova. When the sirens sounded, she called home to say that the festival was closing and that she would be home soon. About an hour later, she called her mother again, crying: “They’re shooting at me!” Her sisters stayed on the phone as she hid in a car beside two murdered friends, pretending to be dead. Much of the time they listened in silence. Occasionally, Eden whispered that she could hear her friends’ blood dripping. They urged her to concentrate on their voices. Eventually, she escaped from the car and found shelter in bushes, where she hid for hours. In a separate, recorded call to police, she pleaded: “Please find me, okay?” But help never reached her. Still on the phone to her sister, she heard her attackers approaching. Her final words were: “Shani, they caught me.” Then the line went dead. She was taken into Gaza and eventually murdered with five other hostages in a tunnel. When her body was found she weighed just 36 kilograms – starved and eventually shot by the men holding her captive. 22 year old Shani Louk – a German-Israeli tattoo artist who loved music, travel and dancing – was also taken into Gaza. Footage showed her dancing at Nova before the attack – but later, her body was displayed in the back of a pickup truck in Gaza, surrounded by armed men. Her parents waited seven months before her remains finally came home for burial. Hersh Goldberg-Polin had just turned 23 and wanted to travel the world. The night before, as he left the family home, he told his mother, “Love you, see you tomorrow.” At 8.11 the next morning, she received two messages from him: “I love you.” Then: “I’m sorry.” She called him immediately – but the phone was never answered. He had made his way to a roadside shelter where a grenade had blown away part of his arm before he was taken alive into Gaza. His parents campaigned relentlessly for his return, but in August 2024 he was murdered with five other hostages in a Gaza tunnel. In fact, it was to be over two years before the final 20 living hostages were returned on 13 October 2025 – 738 days after capture – but 38 of those taken alive into Gaza were killed in captivity. Every one of them had a family waiting for them back home. There are those who say that 7 October didn’t happen in a vacuum. And they’re right. It didn’t. But let’s recognise its cause for what it was. It wasn’t a revolt against occupation. Israel had removed its settlements and permanent military presence in 2005\. Hamas seized control in 2007 and had ruled Gaza for 16 years before the massacre. It wasn’t the inevitable consequence of a territory receiving no help. International donors had poured assistance into Gaza. Israel supplied electricity and water and facilitated food, aid and employment. Hamas invested in weapons and tunnels while preparing to murder the people across the border. It didn’t happen because statehood had never been proposed. Proposals stretching back to the 1930s have repeatedly been rejected or left unrealised by Palestinian and Arab leaders. Nor was it a spontaneous response to a sudden incident. This was a prepared assault – meticulously planned over years by an organisation whose founding charter calls for Israel’s destruction and invokes the killing of Jews. But the context in which we must understand 7 October 2023 goes back much further – finding its roots in a hatred of Jews that reaches back more than 2,500 years. Hamas didn’t invent it – they simply repackaged it in religious duty, cultivated it through propaganda and taught it to children through indoctrination and military training. Antisemitism – the hatred of Jews – is a spiritual evil. Like an infection, it spreads through minds and hearts as people absorb and repeat it. No political agreement will end it. Only vigilance can defend against it. And as Jews, Christians and people who recognise it – we have a responsibility to act in the face of it. And, unlike 1930s Europe, we can’t claim that we didn’t know about it. We can’t retreat behind the excuse that we’re only one person. We are communities, churches, organisations and voters. Together, we have voices that can be heard. We can’t change what happens in Israel – but we can absolutely shape what is tolerated here. We can challenge Jew-hatred in conversations and on social media. We can stand beside Jewish neighbours, attend rallies, report threats and demand that schools, employers and public bodies confront intimidation. Next time you’re unsure about the extent to which you can make a difference – remember the faces on those flags at the Nova music site. Remember a father holding his family as they were shot, children trapped in a burning home, and a young woman whispering into a telephone while her friends’ blood dripped beside her. Let the Jewish people here see that their neighbours are prepared to stand beside them. Let those who would bring this hatred here hear our answer: not on our land. Not on our watch. We reject any attempt to rewrite what happened, minimise the atrocities or make the murdered responsible for their own deaths. We remember what happened. That it was Hamas that crossed the border. Hamas that entered those homes. Hamas that hunted those young people. No institution, politician or commentator has the moral right to erase that responsibility. We cannot restore the lives that were stolen. But we can keep their names alive, tell the truth about their deaths and oppose the hatred that killed them. When others distort the story, we must speak. When Jewish people are threatened, we must stand beside them. And when doing so costs us something, we must remember what it cost those who we honour. **The dead cannot answer those who would erase their suffering. We can. We must. And we will.** This article was originally published by [ashleychurch.com](https://ashleychurch.com/when-never-again-happened-again/?ref=goodoil.news). ### Does Winning the Leaders’ Debate Matter? URL: https://goodoil.news/does-winning-the-leaders-debate-matter/ Last updated: 2026-10-07T23:00:00.000Z [**Richard Prebble**](https://richardprebble.substack.com/p/does-winning-the-leaders-debate-matter) *Columnist, former cabinet minister and ACT Party leader.* I remember New Zealand’s first televised leaders’ debate in 1969\. To the commentators’ surprise, Norman Kirk was judged to have got the better of Prime Minister Keith Holyoake. Holyoake went on to win the election. It set a pattern that has lasted 57 years. Opposition leaders have a remarkable record in leaders’ debates. Yet governments, despite losing or failing to win the first debate, have usually gone on to win the election. How is that? I have lost count of the debates I have been in. It is impossible to score a ‘knockout’ against a well-prepared opponent who sticks to their guns. But it is possible to lose. If you are expected to win by a knockout and your opponent is still standing, you will be judged to have lost. It is why I never agreed to one-to-one debates in my electorate. Holyoake, and all prime ministers that followed, must have wished he had never agreed to debate Kirk. The PM has everything to lose and the challenger everything to gain. The PM’s great advantage is having power. A prime minister can do things. An opposition leader can only promise. A leaders’ debate takes that advantage away. Same stage. Same questions. Same speaking time. Both can only promise. David Cunliffe – remember him? – was judged by many commentators to have beaten John Key in their first debate. But Key crushed him in the election. Tuesday night’s debate was unusual. Luxon is known to be a poor communicator. Hipkins has been a professional politician all his working life. Commentators would have expected Hipkins to win. But Luxon was still standing at the end. The audience is no guide. Truly undecided voters were not watching. The TV audience were decided voters. We learnt almost nothing about who will form the next government. **The people who will decide that were not on the stage.** This article was originally published by [I’ve Been Thinking](https://richardprebble.substack.com/p/does-winning-the-leaders-debate-matter). ### Marvellous Melbourne’s Big Day of Diversity [Updated] URL: https://goodoil.news/marvellous-melbournes-big-day-of-diversity/ Last updated: 2026-10-08T00:00:16.000Z Well, it’s been quite a day for diversity in marvellously diverse Melbourne. First, in a horrifying near-replay of the murder of **Iryna Zarutska** in the US, a woman was stabbed in the neck on a Melbourne tram. No description of the suspect has been released, which some are calling all the description they need. The one photo allegedly showing the attacker is unclear, but shows a heavily bearded, olive-skinned man in handcuffs sitting on the ground. ### Update: The attacker has been identified as **Jahangir Sharifabadi.** > [A man has been](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-10-06/woman-stabbed-random-melbourne-tram-attack/107234194?ref=goodoil.news) charged after a woman was allegedly stabbed in the neck while travelling on a Melbourne tram. > > Police have charged a 37-year-old man, of no fixed address, with seven offences after emergency services attended an incident in South Melbourne at about midday today. > > A 51-year-old woman was taken to hospital with non-life-threatening injuries after the alleged attack on the route 1 tram travelling along Eastern Road. If anything, the case appears to be closer to the stabbing of another woman in Melbourne recently, when a Taiwanese chef was stabbed from behind by a deranged tranny. The attacker in this case is also said to be a drug addict: no doubt on his way to one of the many ‘safe injecting rooms’ the Labor government have put up in once-thriving precincts of the city. Meanwhile, Melbourne’s African community are up to their usual antics. Just when commuters thought the transit system and the potholes held a monopoly on sudden hazards, the arterial roads decided to join the show. Tuesday afternoon saw the Monash freeway transformed into a cinematic staging ground for heavily armed tactical officers, complete with kilometres of gridlock and the drone of the Police Air Wing overhead. > [Six African males](https://www.noticer.news/africans-arrested-monash-freeway-crime-spree/?ref=goodoil.news) have been dramatically arrested by heavily armed police on a Melbourne freeway, causing traffic chaos and leaving cars banked up for kilometres. According to police accounts, the chaos followed an ambitious morning itinerary that spanned early morning home invasions from Brighton East to Hampton Park, vehicle theft and erratic driving through the south-eastern suburbs. Four teenagers and two young adults were hauled into custody, with authorities noting that two were already enjoying the hospitality of Victoria’s remarkably elastic bail system at the time of the pursuit. Oh, come on, they wuz just good bois who dindu nuffin’. They wuz lookin’ for a machete bin, officers. Still should the courts miraculously eventually secure convictions, they can rest safe in the assurance that, should they be convicted, all they have to do is provide an IQ test and they’ll be straight on the NDIS for life > [A violent schizophrenic](https://www.noticer.news/sudanese-criminal-visa-restored-ndis/?ref=goodoil.news) Sudanese criminal has been given his refugee visa back by a tribunal so he can get access to support and housing via the National Disability Insurance Scheme. The 44-year-old designated simply as ‘JMNR’, whose extensive record featured assaults, robberies and the brutal carjacking of a 79-year-old pensioner. Having seen his visa revoked, he found himself released following the High Court’s landmark rulings on indefinite detention, only to re-offend, escape full culpability on grounds of mental incompetence (there’s that average African IQ at work, no doubt) and subsequently mount an appeal against deportation. As ordered to by the Labor government’s ministerial directions, the tribunal determined that the individual could not be removed to his country of origin, concluding instead that restoring his formal visa status was the preferable path because it unlocked access to round-the-clock carers, housing support and funding via the NDIS. The logic presented was that the public is supposedly safer when the state fully finances the welfare needs of violent, low-IQ, Third World thugs. But remember: diversity is our strength. --- 💡 ****If you enjoyed this article please share it using the share buttons at the top or bottom of the article.** ### Money Grows on Trees URL: https://goodoil.news/money-grows-on-trees-2/ Last updated: 2026-10-07T22:00:34.000Z Cartoon of the day by SonovaMin _This post is for paying subscribers only._ ### A Double Cliffhanger for New Zealand URL: https://goodoil.news/a-double-cliffhanger-for-new-zealand/ Last updated: 2026-10-07T21:29:59.000Z [**Penny Marie**](https://pennymarie.substack.com/p/overhangs-and-split-votes-a-double) and Paul Mathews, an independent political analyst. The split vote strategy that’s currently rampaging through NZ media and political commentators is based around this premise… > ***Electorate Vote* for the National Party candidate** > **and** > **A *Party Vote* for NZ First or ACT.** Analysis suggests that this split-vote strategy provides the right-bloc ***two routes to victory.*** ### **Te Pāti Māori led the way** Te Pāti Māori were well out in front on this **‘overhang’** strategy. They have been explicitly telling their supporters to split their vote for months now. They have doubled down this week, saying they **only** want the *Electorate Vote* and their supporters are free to give their *Party Vote* to another party. There now seems to be a push for that diverted *Party Vote* to go to the Greens. It is a smart move. Te Pāti Māori worked out that they would win more electorates than what the *Party Vote* will entitle them to. An aggregate of polls has their *Party Vote* at two per cent. That means there will be an overhang for Te Pāti Māori, assuming they win back the four seats they currently hold (most probable). They will win two seats more than what their popular support, the *Party Vote*, entitles them to. ![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!5MNC!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fc5e537f5-60bd-4bdf-9871-19c96c896630_1920x1080.png) Accordingly, a *Party Vote* for Te Pāti Māori is a wasted vote. Even another 30,000 *Party Votes* above that two per cent poll number would give them no further seats. Te Pāti Māori are front-footing that. If their supporters split their vote as asked, their *Party Vot*e might dip to one per cent, or even close to zero. That does not matter at all because that “lost” *Party Vote* is not lost at all. It is strategically diverted to *Party Votes* for an aligned left-bloc party. > **This does no damage to Te Pāti Māori at all. In fact, it *increases* its chances of being part of the next government.** ### **Current polls: Who wins?** Unlike Te Pāti Māori, the National Party have not embraced the reality of their dismal poll results and are not encouraging their supporters to split their vote. This appears foolish and risks trading a slightly higher *Party Vote* in a few weeks time for three years in opposition to a four-party left-bloc coalition government. Here is the reality that National is not facing up to. The aggregate polls currently have the left-bloc in position to win at this election: ![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!qYWe!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe3c237a6-31b8-406c-acba-dbeac4df8267_1920x1080.png) Using Sainte-Laguë modelling and assumes one per cent waste of vote. ###### *Source: election2026.nz* [*NZ Election 2026 Poll Tracker — Seats, Coalitions & Forecast*](https://election2026.nz/?ref=goodoil.news) *(as at 1 October 2026)* ###### **A quick note on the accuracy of polls:* A proportional system is based on nationwide party vote, therefore aggregate polls in New Zealand tend to be more accurate than in other electoral systems (like in the the US or UK), where individual seat dynamics create significant distortion. Historically, aggregate polls like the one above have predicted broad bloc outcomes in MMP elections with a high degree of accuracy.* ### **The overhang to the rescue for the right-bloc** > **What the above table does not acknowledge is that the National Party is also highly likely to have an *overhang* in the coming election.** The table shows that a *Party Vote* of 28.7 per cent for National would entitle them to 35 seats in parliament. The good news for National and the right-bloc is that they are likely to win more seats than this in the electorate races. They currently hold 44 electorate seats in parliament. It appears likely they will win around 38 electorate seats this time round. Commentators seem to be suggesting somewhere between 36 and 40 seats is the most likely outcome. ![National Party Overhang](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!aSkC!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fb686ccce-f1a8-4310-b880-a3073e15f277_1920x1080.png "National Party Overhang") If the 38-seat prediction is correct that means there will be an overhang for National. It would give them, and more importantly, the right-bloc, three more seats than what their popular support, the *Party Vote*, entails them to. > **Good news but not good enough. That would mean 63 seats for the left-bloc and 62 seats for the right-bloc (in a parliament of 125 seats).** ### **Two routes to victory for the right-bloc** ### ROUTE ONE To be successful, National’s insistence on the traditional “two-ticks blue” strategy requires a dramatic upsurge in popular support with a few weeks until election day – early voting starts sooner. This upsurge would need to come from somewhere other than those currently intending to vote for ACT or NZ First because if support comes from those parties it does not increase the right-bloc vote. > **This upsurge is simply NOT going to happen. No credible pollster, analyst or commentator has suggested otherwise.** The vote split strategy, by contrast, provides the National Party ***two routes to victory without any additional voters being converted to the right-bloc.*** Firstly, National can win more than 38 electorate seats. Each additional electorate win is an extra seat for the right-bloc. There are several close electorate races, such as Wigram, where National could add to their seat tally with a greater focus on the electorate vote by National or by savvy NZ First and ACT supporters voting for the National candidate. Win 39 seats and the right-bloc goes to 63 seats (a hung parliament). > ***ROUTE ONE: Win 40 seats – and the right-bloc goes to 64 seats, one ahead of the left-block.*** ### ROUTE TWO > ***ROUTE TWO: Divert Party Votes to NZ First or ACT.*** This is where the savvy National Party supporters vote for NZ First or ACT. Not out of disloyalty, but out of necessity. In doing so the *Party Vote* for the National Party may plummet; however, in this scenario each *Party Vote* counts. If National Party supporters divert two per cent of the *Party Vote*, the National Party still wins the 38/39/40 electorate seats. However, the two per cent of *Party Vote* will count towards additional seats for the right block – sitting with NZ First and/or ACT. As an example if National drops to 26.7 per cent of the vote they still have all their electorate seats. However, if this causes NZ First to lift one per cent to 11.1 per cent and ACT by one per cent to 10.5 per cent that translates to two additional list seats for the right-bloc. That is enough to form a coalition government on the right. No more votes for the right, just the same number of votes distributed more wisely. The beauty of the split-vote strategy is that one route to victory does not impinge on the other. A split vote by a National Party supporter has the effect of boosting both routes simultaneously. The candidate vote obviously helps elect National Party MPs in as many electorates as possible. The diverted *Party Vote* counts towards the right’s overall seat tally as well. - By splitting the two votes, both votes count. - A Party Vote for National is a wasted vote in the overhang scenario that this election is being contested in. - A split vote makes both votes count. This article was originally published by [Penny Marie NZ](https://pennymarie.substack.com/p/overhangs-and-split-votes-a-double). ### ‘Lynch All the Landlords but Me’ URL: https://goodoil.news/lynch-all-the-landlords-but-me/ Last updated: 2026-10-07T21:00:52.000Z Remember when **Bernie Sanders** used to fulminate against ‘miyyonayrs’? Then he became one (thus proving **Harry S Truman**’s adage about men who become rich in politics) and the doddering socialist grifter’s war-cry change. Now it’s ‘biyyonayrs!’. Funny that. New Greens leader **David Shoebridge** is 30 years younger than Bernie, but he’s made Comrade Sanders look like a rank amateur in the *nomenklatura* stakes. So, like his octagenarian fellow grifter, he’s carefully tailoring his ‘tax the rich’ rhetoric. Because, as it turns out, Comrade Sanders is quite the Monopoly guy, collecting his own portfolio of investment properties. Or at least, on paper, it’s his wife whose the landlord. Funny that. One way or another, the Shoebridges are sitting on four multimillion-dollar properties. So, of course, Shoebridge’s ‘let’s lynch the landlord’ rhetoric starts at five properties. Funny that. Mr Shoebridge, fresh from seizing the reins of the inner-city eco-pious collective, recently took it upon himself to lecture the hoi polloi on the economic cruelties inflicted by the major parties. According to our immaculate silk-turned-senator, four years of Labor misrule have rendered the lucky country ‘a little meaner’. One must hand it to the man; he possesses a keen eye for the obvious, even if his diagnosis conveniently glosses over his own contributions to the landlord class. When pressed on whether his own comfortable accumulation of residential real estate across Sydney’s most exclusive postcodes might disqualify him from lecturing the proletariat, our hero airily dismissed the inquiry. Voters, he insists, must look merely at the ‘substance’ of his politics rather than the concrete reality of his leveraged assets. How wonderfully convenient. One’s bricks and mortar are magically sanitised when the title deeds rest safely in the spouse’s portfolio, while hubby merely signs the mortgage documents as a gesture of romantic solidarity. > [“We are saying](https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/national/a-little-meaner-new-greens-leader-david-shoebridge-takes-aim-at-labor-government/news-story/d12afcde2c6b3e03c008b6f1fe8b15d7?ref=goodoil.news) we need to fundamentally change the property market … How is it that people have got **5**, 10 or 20 investment properties and are keeping all these tax perks? It’s obscene.” Thus spake Comrade Shoebridge, drawing an arbitrary moral boundary just a notch above his own portfolio. Those with five properties are villains of the highest order, no doubt, whereas four are merely a modest expression of domestic prudence. It is a posture of breathtaking chutzpah. Naturally, when quizzed on the various negative gearing and capital gains tax concessions utilised to amass this urban real estate empire, the senator suddenly developed a severe case of diplomatic amnesia, declining to enlighten the peasantry. Yet Shoebridge’s existential angst extends far beyond local property portfolios – it reaches all the way to the geopolitical drawing rooms of Sydney. While he bewails the working class’s regrettable desertion of the progressive plantation in favour of One Nation, whose commonsense appeal to ordinary Australians clearly haunts his nocturnal reveries, our radical internationalist has been busy cultivating rather colourful company. > [A Greens senator](https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/mps-dinner-date-with-russian-envoy/news-story/ce599c36017ce04381618bef23199ccb?ref=goodoil.news), a NSW Liberal minister and the president of the NSW Liberal Party dined with the Russian ambassador at an event in Sydney this month, a week after Vladimir Putin issued his nuclear threat against Ukraine. Yes, while Moscow rattles its nuclear sabres and the civilised world pulls faces at the Kremlin’s representatives, our intrepid Greens justice spokesman saw fit to break bread with the Russian envoy at a Sydney banquet. Naturally, the Ukrainian ambassador was left off the guest list: an oversight so glaring it would be comical if it were not so profoundly revealing. Now, I’ve also opposed military aid to Ukraine – and to Russia. My grounds are simple: this is none of our business, and Western meddling is only prolonging a war that should have been settled years and hundreds of thousands less deaths ago and will almost certainly be settled along the lines of the present stalemate anyway. Perhaps the Greens base their policy on similarly dispassionate grounds. But that would require ignoring not just their full-throated support for the combatants in an another, far more morally clear-cut war, but the apparent stunning coincidence of their Dear Leader having drinkies with Russia’s Man in Canberra, just days before. Coincidence? Only if one believes in fairies at the bottom of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Offices. So there we have it. A barrister-turned-politician sitting comfortably atop a multi-million-dollar property empire, wringing his hands over the cost of living while supping with Kremlin emissaries and decrying anyone who dares question his radical orthodoxies. It is a magnificent performance. The Greens have a new Dear Leader, and he is every bit as hypocritical as every other socialist grandee. --- 💡 ****If you enjoyed this article please share it using the share buttons at the top or bottom of the article.** ### Your Daily Ten@10 - 2026/186 URL: https://goodoil.news/your-daily-ten-10-2026-186/ Last updated: 2026-10-08T04:38:47.000Z **This is edition 2026/186 of the *Ten@10* newsletter.** Hi all, This is the Ten@10, where I collate and summarise ten news items you generally won't see in the mainstream media. Enjoy! --- ![](https://images.theconversation.com/files/764041/original/file-20261006-50-8v0oan.png?ixlib=rb-4.1.1&rect=0%2C199%2C1999%2C999&q=45&auto=format&w=1356&h=668&fit=crop) ## 1\. NZ's next government could be a four-party coalition. Get used to the new normal *Grant Duncan - The Conversation* - 📊 Duncan notes recent polls putting National and Labour's combined vote possibly below 60%, the lowest ever. Results below 30%, or even 25%, may become normal for both. - 🌍 Political fragmentation is advanced in proportional systems abroad. In Denmark's 2026 election the Social Democrats won most seats on 21.8%, and a four-party minority coalition took ten weeks to form. - 🇩🇪 In Germany the CDU/CSU is polling below 20% and the SPD below 15%, while AfD leads in the high 20s under an MMP-like system. - ⚖️ On the Waitangi Tribunal, Te Pāti Māori and the Greens want recommendations binding; ACT and NZ First propose winding it up once historical claims are settled. The centrist consensus for gradual biculturalism, he says, is weaker than assumed. - 📉 A late-2024 1News Verian poll had 39% saying they did not know enough about ACT's Treaty Principles Bill to support or oppose it; only 36% opposed. Another poll had 52% saying they did not really understand Treaty principles. - 🧓 Progressive optimism that "grumpy old white men" will die out has failed elsewhere. He cites One Nation gains among millennials in Australia and younger US cohorts tilting toward Trump between 2020 and 2024. - 🗳️ Polarised opinion on the tribunal, he argues, helps smaller parties grow on both flanks while National and Labour's "big tents" cannot hold today's disputes. - 📰 Adaptation means multi-constituency coalition building, dropping pre-election "ruling out", and less horse-race punditry about leaders resigning on a poll number. - 💡 Takeaway: voters should get used to a four-party government. Internationally that is normal; talk of a "hung parliament" need not follow. [Read More](https://theconversation.com/nzs-next-government-could-be-a-four-party-coalition-get-used-to-the-new-normal-293335?ref=goodoil.news) --- ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/images--11-.jpeg) ## 2\. I wrote this in 2008 and wouldn't change a word *Karl du Fresne - Karl du Fresne* - 🗳️ Du Fresne reprints an 18-year-old MMP critique and says he would not change a word, even if United Future, the Tight Five and Alamein Kopu references are dated. - 📜 MMP arose, he writes, as a reaction to FPP outcomes where National won in 1978 and 1981 despite fewer votes, and Social Credit took 21% in 1981 for only two seats. - 😤 Voters also resented major parties pursuing policies never put to the electorate or breaking promises, creating a mood to punish politicians via third-party checks. - 📊 The 1992 indicative referendum had 85% for change on 55% turnout; 70% of that minority chose MMP. The binding 1993 vote passed narrowly on election day. - ✅ Credit where due: after 2005 he counted 39 women, 21 Māori, four Pacific and two Asian MPs among 121\. Broader minority representation is real. - 📋 Against that, party lists reward loyalists and "backroom toadies", letting people rejected by electorates into Parliament. List MPs answer to the party, not a constituency. - 🤝 Minor-party voters cannot know which major partner they will end up with. In 2005 NZ First and United Future backed Labour largely to keep the Greens out, despite conservative bases. - 🐕 The damning flaw, he says, is the tail wagging the dog: small parties extract influence far beyond their support, from the Tight Five deals to Labour backing Bradford's anti-smacking bill for Green support. - 💡 Takeaway: MMP transferred more power to politicians while cutting accountability. Desire for vengeance, he concludes, is a poor basis for constitutional reform. [Read More](http://karldufresne.blogspot.com/2026/10/i-wrote-this-in-2008-and-wouldnt-change.html?ref=goodoil.news) --- ![](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/7b14b8_c6a1be880ec143f7ae0ecebfd9a4b726~mv2.png/v1/fill/w_800,h_600,al_c,q_90/7b14b8_c6a1be880ec143f7ae0ecebfd9a4b726~mv2.png) ## 3\. RODNEY HIDE - Luxon: Gone By Morning Tea *Rodney Hide - Brash & Mitchell* - 🎙️ Hide opens with an imagined scene: Chris Luxon tells a shed full of blokes in high-vis that the future of world leadership is white and male, and the clip hits the internet before he is out of the shed. - 📺 TVNZ would have a field day, the Greens would issue a statement before he left the car park, and Business NZ would discover a sudden interest in diversity. By breakfast, Hide writes, he would be “reflecting from the back benches”. - 🔄 “Well, it did happen. Just not that way round.” - 🏔️ In early August, Green co-leader Marama Davidson, with Chloe Swarbrick beside her, was asked at the National Iwi Chairs Forum in Queenstown why Māori-roll voters should choose Green candidates in the Māori seats. - 🗣️ Davidson’s answer: “This is intentional. We know that the future of, not just Aotearoa, but worldwide leadership, is brown and it’s wāhine.” - 👏 The crowd cheered, Swarbrick dared the room to disagree, and nobody walked it back. The party’s own channels posted the session as “From Te Tiriti to Thirst Trap Baddies”, and the clip has been doing the rounds again this week. - ⚖️ Swap the colours and the sexes, Hide says, and you have Luxon’s line that would have ended him “before the biscuits”. The offence is not only the words, but that the room treated them as wisdom. - 📊 The Greens are polling around 14 to 16 percent, a party that could decide who gets the keys to the Beehive, and its co-leader’s case for the Māori seats was “not merit, not ideas, not results”. - 💡 Takeaway: “Racism and sexism have not gone away. They have just learned which way to point.” [Read More](https://www.brashandmitchell.com/post/rodney-hide-luxon-gone-by-morning-tea?ref=goodoil.news) --- ![](https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1580974852861-c381510bc98a?crop=entropy&cs=tinysrgb&fit=max&fm=jpg&ixid=M3wzMDAzMzh8MHwxfHNlYXJjaHwyMHx8c2Nob29sc3xlbnwwfHx8fDE3OTEzMjc5MjJ8MA&ixlib=rb-4.1.0&q=80&w=1080) ## 4\. National's New Favourite Subject *Liam Hehir - The Blue Review* - 📚 Hehir says National has taken ownership of education this cycle. Last month's Taxpayers' Union-Curia poll rated National best on education; six months earlier Labour led the same series. - 🔤 For decades many NZ schools used whole-language or balanced literacy with less systematic phonics than structured-literacy advocates wanted. - 📉 By the time National took office, barely half of Year 8 students were at the expected reading level, and barely over a third in writing. Schools that adopted structured literacy reported interventions falling. - ✅ Erica Stanford made structured literacy compulsory, added phonics checks, mandated an hour a day of reading, writing and maths, banned cell phones, and began replacing a skills-based curriculum with year-by-year knowledge. - 📈 Regular attendance rose to nearly two-thirds in Term 2, up from just under three-fifths a year earlier. Early maths and writing checks show some gains, not yet a nationwide trend. - 🎓 The government is also committed to replacing NCEA with a simpler qualification built around clearer standards and subject knowledge. - 🥊 In the TVNZ leaders' debate, Luxon dominated Hipkins on education, calling him the worst education minister and highlighting the phone-ban reversal. Hipkins blamed Covid. - 🎬 Jack Tame pushed Hipkins into conceding Labour would axe the compulsory hour of reading, writing and maths. Hehir says expect that clip often before 7 November. [Read More](https://thebluereview.substack.com/p/nationals-new-favourite-subject) --- ![](https://www.spectator.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/GettyImages_1126476268.jpg) ## 5\. There will never be another Jeffrey Archer *Alexander Larman - The Spectator Australia* - 🕯️ Larman marks Jeffrey Archer's death at 86, between writing sessions at his Westminster penthouse while publicising Adam and Eve, billed as his final book. - 🎩 Archer, he writes, lived larger than anyone in his orbit: Conservative peer, bestselling novelist, and failed London mayoral hopeful who compared himself to Dick Whittington. - 🏛️ As an MP he backed causes more often associated with the left: free museum entry, lowering the age of homosexual consent, and removing VAT from theatre tickets. - 💸 Only Archer, Larman says, could write Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less to dodge bankruptcy after sinking money into the fraudulent Aquablast company, then derail the prosecution by a separate legal mess over stolen suits. - ⛓️ Scandals that would finish most people, including a four-year prison sentence, instead produced a prison trilogy and a return to Krug-and-shepherd's-pie parties without lasting grudges. - 🎓 Larman met him once at Trinity College, Oxford, after release: a barnstorming talk comparing himself to the Count of Monte Cristo, Papillon and Ronnie Barker in Porridge, then a wink about an interview "if you bring her along". - 🎭 He remembers Archer as a rogue who contributed to the gaiety of nations, charming, amusing and appalling in equal measure. - 💡 Takeaway: like Hamlet on his father, Larman is sorry he shall not look upon Archer's like again. [Read More](https://www.spectator.com.au/2026/10/there-will-never-be-another-jeffrey-archer/?ref=goodoil.news) --- ![](https://www.spiked-online.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/beri-1536x864.jpg) ## 6\. October 7 has changed Israel forever *Avraham Russell Shalev - spiked* - 🇮🇱 For Israelis, Shalev writes, the world splits into before and after 7 October 2023, when Hamas killed more than 1,200 civilians and soldiers. - 🌐 Three years on, Western "peace-processors" barely paused. Biden kept pushing two states; Cameron floated recognition; Norway, Spain and Ireland recognised in May 2024; France, Canada and the UK followed in September 2025. - 🎯 Hamas's Khalil al-Hayya told the New York Times the slaughter aimed to "change the equation" and put Palestine back on the table. Shalev says in that regard Hamas succeeded. - 📜 He traces Hamas to the Muslim Brotherhood, citing historians on fascist antisemitic borrowing, and the Khaybar slogan invoked by founder Shaykh Ahmed Yasin. - 🕌 Attitudes are not confined to Hamas: the PA's endowments ministry told mosques to praise the attack; Fatah's Jibril Rajoub justified it; PA schools celebrate the massacre. - 🏛️ Abbas's Khazar denial of Jewish peoplehood, and Arafat's claim at Camp David that the Temple never existed (or stood in Yemen), show rejection of Jewish ties to the land. - 🚀 After Sharon's 2005 Gaza disengagement, Hamas took over in 2007 and built rocket reach from Sderot to Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, culminating in 2,200 rockets in 20 minutes on October 7. - ⛰️ Judea and Samaria are fifteen times larger than Gaza and overlook Israel's population centres. A Palestinian state there, he argues, would become a base for attacks. - 💡 Takeaway: Israelis left and right now see Palestinian statehood as an existential threat. October 7 drove another nail into that coffin. [Read More](https://www.spiked-online.com/2026/10/06/october-7-has-changed-israel-forever/?ref=goodoil.news) --- ![](https://www.spectator.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/cover-04-nov_post.jpg) ## 7\. Never forget the evil of October 7 *Rowan Dean - The Spectator Australia* - 📞 Dean recalls David Adler of the Australian Jewish Association ringing him three years ago as reports from Israel turned into the October 7 massacre. - 🩸 A text from Adler he never imagined: "Beheaded babies have been found in a kibbutz." - ⛔ No political cause, he writes, justifies that sadistic depravity. Moral relativism's "hurt people hurt people" line is, in his words, cover for savagery. - ⚔️ Israel's only course, he argues, was to rescue hostages and eradicate Hamas; America's should have been destroying the Islamist regime in Tehran that sponsored Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis. - 🏗️ After Israel handed Gaza to the Palestinians in 2005, glasshouses were smashed and a tunnel-and-weapons society geared to October 7 was built with Western aid. - 💵 Adler helped persuade Julie Bishop to cancel $10 million a year to UNRWA; Penny Wong later restored and increased it. - 🇦🇺 He lists Australian aftermaths: Lakemba fireworks, Opera House chants, Sydney Uni and Grace Tame intifada slogans, the Harbour Bridge march, synagogue attacks, and the Bondi Beach massacre. - ✈️ Adler now lives in Israel, telling Dean he feels safer there than in Australia after death threats for speaking against antisemitism. - 💡 Takeaway: never let anyone rebrand that orgy of sexual violence as political resistance. It was sick and evil. [Read More](https://www.spectator.com.au/2026/10/never-forget-the-evil-of-october-7/?ref=goodoil.news) --- ![](https://media.reclaimthenet.org/images/2026/10/Rm125nzEEtvA.jpg) ## 8\. UK Police Arrest 15-Year-Old Over Posts Mocking Politician *Cam Wakefield - Reclaim The Net* - 🚓 Four West Midlands officers arrested a 15-year-old Reform UK activist at home over Facebook posts mocking Conservative councillor Simon Bennett's attire at Wolverhampton council meetings. - 💻 Police seized his phone and laptop. - 🐇 Posts included calling Bennett's look like a "rent boy", criticising shorts and trainers at a scrutiny committee, and Photoshopping rabbit ears with a gag about rabbits devouring Tory credibility. - 📝 Bennett reported the posts as "quite personal about my appearance," after council advice to go to police. - ⚖️ Officers reportedly cited harassment, malicious communications, hate crime, or "to do with social media." The boy, identified only as Fraser, was bailed and banned from Wolverhampton council meetings. - ❓ Police have not explained why four officers were needed. - 🛡️ The Free Speech Union intends to sue for wrongful arrest and false imprisonment, calling the investigation an egregious interference with his rights. - ⏳ Fraser, who says he criticised Labour more than Conservatives online, still awaits a charging decision. - 💡 Takeaway: four officers and a seized laptop over outfit mockery is, Wakefield writes, why police keep losing public trust. [Read More](https://reclaimthenet.org/uk-police-arrest-teenager-over-councillor-mocking-posts?ref=goodoil.news) --- ![](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/7b14b8_e34046226b3248e39027a916ba708497~mv2.jpg/v1/fill/w_800,h_600,al_c,q_90/7b14b8_e34046226b3248e39027a916ba708497~mv2.jpg) ## 9\. DAVID ROUND: Forest and Bird Drift Left *David Round - Brash & Mitchell* - 🐦 Round resigned from Forest and Bird years ago over its push on undefined radical "Treaty principles", which he says harmed conservation, and over unanswered letters. - 📰 Kiwiblog flagged a new "campaign" coalition of Climate Club Aotearoa, the Social Change Collective and Forest and Bird Youth aiming to lift youth turnout 15%, especially among rural, Māori and Pasifika rangatahi. - 🗳️ Enrolling eligible voters is fine, he says, but this is an outright attempt to change the government, not a policy scorecard for conservation. - 🧑‍💼 Co-convenor Ethan Reille was a Labour candidate and PSA organiser running its own "Change the Government" campaign, so the leftward slant is obvious. - 🏢 He does not believe Youth involvement lacks central-office approval; F&B keeps a tight rein on branches. - ⚖️ By casting left parties as conservation's natural allies and the right as enemies, F&B creates the politicisation it claims to deplore. - 🏛️ If the centre-right wins, why would ministers back an organisation that has declared itself the government's enemy? Why would conservative conservationists stay members? - 📜 Claiming political neutrality is, he writes, an outright lie that would have founder Captain Sanderson turning in his grave. He floats a Charities Commission complaint, while doubting activist-friendly judges will act. - 💡 Takeaway: F&B's leftward drift does a grave disservice to the cause it once existed to promote. [Read More](https://www.brashandmitchell.com/post/david-round-forest-and-bird-drift-left?ref=goodoil.news) --- ![](https://www.spiked-online.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/genocide-1536x864.jpg) ## 10\. Gaza: the most lied about war in history *Brendan O'Neill - spiked* - 📊 On the third anniversary of 7 October, O'Neill says the left's "genocide" and "starvation" case against Israel is crumbling under Gaza's own numbers. - 📉 Hamas-run Ministry of Health's 2025 Annual Mortality Report lists 24,650 deaths: 17,286 "war operations", 1,584 accidents, and 5,780 other causes, about the same "normal" death total as before the war. - 👶 Malnutrition caused 4.1% of infant deaths in 2025 versus 4.4% in 2021, two years before Hamas's attack. Births: 50,227 in 2025, about 1.2% population growth, higher than the UK's \~0.3%. - 🍽️ An August survey put acute child malnutrition (WHZ) in Gaza at 0.5%, roughly Germany's level, versus 4.3% in Iran and 16.3% in Sudan. - 📦 Outside an early-2025 border-closure window he calls too harsh, studies found mean energy available around 3,163 calories per person per day, plus millions of tonnes of food and a WHO polio drive for over a million Gazan children. - 📰 On "journalist" deaths, he says the BBC in at least 53 cases labelled as journalists men later claimed as terrorists by Hamas and other groups. - ⚔️ Contested civilian-to-terrorist death ratios of 1:4 or 1:2 would, he argues, be treated as normal or good in modern warfare. - 💔 He does not deny Gazan suffering. Hamas's willingness to sacrifice Palestinian life for Jew-hate made October 7 a tragedy for Jews first, then for Gazans used as disposable bodies. - 💡 Takeaway: branding Jews' fightback as Nazi-like genocide is, he writes, the great lie of the age, and posterity will not celebrate it. [Read More](https://www.spiked-online.com/2026/10/06/gaza-the-most-lied-about-war-in-history/?ref=goodoil.news) --- ## What our members are saying about Ten@10 **Elizabeth** These articles are compulsory reading for me and the perfect addition to the usual list of Goodoil items! **Lynne** Absolutely brilliant to receive these current and thought provoking articles. **Jonathan** Just wanted to let you know that I'm loving this new 10@10\. Much appreciated from someone who chooses to read/watch almost NO mainstream media. **Murray** Cam, relish your output as the newspaper in Christchurch is so intent on non news. Thankyou **Fred** Thanks for Ten @ Ten, really enjoy reading it.Keep it up. All the best, keep healthy. **Jocko** Wonderful info not otherwise available in NZ. More power to your elbow! Thanks. ### The Five-Letter Word Media Won’t Say URL: https://goodoil.news/the-five-letter-word-media-wont-say/ Last updated: 2026-10-07T20:30:46.000Z [**Simon O’Connor**](https://onpointnz.substack.com/p/the-five-letter-word-media-wont-say) *Husband, step-father, foster dad, and longtime student of philosophy and history. Also happen to be a former politician, including chairing New Zealand’s Foreign Affairs, Defence, and Trade Committee.* There seems to be one five-letter word that much of the mainstream media cannot simply bring itself to say: *Islam*. As you know, in recent days, yet another Islamic terrorist has sought to bring death to innocents. On this occasion, it was an attempt to hijack an aircraft and then use it as a flying bomb into Tel Aviv. Had the terrorist succeeded, hundreds, if not thousands, would have died. ![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!7kCG!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa06b1c6f-3aff-4d38-8f3f-89091e808160_952x487.jpeg) I’ve actually flown this route from Dubai to Tel Aviv on Fly Dubai, and we can now expect major changes around security and other procedures. Listening to mainstream media on the matter was excruciating. One News talked incessantly about an ‘extremist’, and even of a ‘religious extremist’, yet refused to mention the specifics of this extremism. It was not a Catholic nun or a Hindu brahmin: it was an Islamic extremist. This was known and yet media made the conscious and deliberate choice to exclude this information. **I’ve always contended that if you cannot define an issue, there is no way you can resolve it. This goes for every issue.** The same is true of when police release statements about searching for a woman and yet it turns out it is actually a man who identifies as a woman. Police and media in these instances prefer to adhere to ideology rather than apprehend the offender. Running alongside the inability to identify the motivations of the attacker was the very clear decision by some media outlets, and I am thinking of the *New York Times* in particular, to downplay this act of terrorism. It was simply an ‘altercation’ or ‘fight’. It reminds me of the ‘mostly peaceful protest’ claims of a CNN reporter during the BLM riots. ![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!oopZ!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F88a83cc3-1aaf-45b1-b728-23efaeb259b7_1231x666.png) Had this hijacking attempt been targeting any other country or group of people, it would be front page news for days. As it stands, there is some reporting but quickly pushed to the periphery. Sadly, but not unpredictably, we see a flood of conspiracy theories already including that this was a false-flag operation. It would be lazy thinking to dismiss such claims if they were not usually a cover for antisemitism from elements of the radical left and Islamists. This fusion between Islam and the radical left is a growing and a manifest challenge to Western society. The same reluctance to clearly identify causes and motivations can be seen elsewhere, including in the reporting around the latest riots in France. The idea that these are spontaneous student protests is ridiculous. Are we really to believe that students were poring over budget documents, or, inexplicably for teenagers, demanding more teacher supervision than less? It is even more absurd when you hear these claims and then consider that the rioting students are simultaneously attacking teachers and burning down their schools. These protests are being fuelled, funded, and rallied by the radical far left in France. In many ways, I suspect this is a test run before the upcoming presidential elections which the left will likely lose. As an aside, these riots stand in stark contrast to the visit of the pope only a few days earlier. Nearly a million French people turned out to see him. No violence, no attacking police – just calm, dignity, and beauty. The example of the attempted hijacking of Flydubai and the troubles in France share the same narratives and tactics. They are also the same tactics and narrative that has followed Israel since the horrific and barbaric attacks by Hamas and Gazans on October 7th, three years ago. It is what I call the abuser’s profile. Put simply, the abuser acts as you would expect – abusively, violently, and aggressively, but as soon as there is any pushback they immediately switch to being the victim. They cry foul, declare the response disproportionate, claim that they are in fact the victim of violence, and ensure there are plenty acolytes around to film and then curate the content to manipulate the narrative. The days since October 7th are the clearest case in point. Western sympathisers with Islamic terrorism and antisemitism have spouted hatred on the streets, week after week. They have reimagined Hamas as the victim and not the abuser. That Israel pushed back is argued as unfair, unjust, and disproportionate. When activists use this latter word, what they really mean is a preference for inaction and preferably capitulation. When it comes to the riots in France, headlines are busy decrying the police pushback on the violent students and their far-left and Islamic supporters. Headlines and images used imply the police are at fault, not those instigating the escalating violence. Again, the word ‘disproportionate’ is used as if there is some magical way for authorities to respond to such disorder. Importantly, use of this word is designed to undermine authority. Whether Israel or the French police, the implication is they are not acting justly and fairly, and that it is the terrorists and rioters who are the true victims. ![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!_vmP!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F50965c04-3aa9-422e-bb51-d6a924f55a2b_1179x1459.png) Notice the framing of this image, from the lack of context in the headline, to the choice of student, and the large overbearing police officer. The pro-Hamas crowd in New Zealand follows the same pattern. Violent, abusive, property damaging – yet the moment anyone challenges them, they switch to be the crying victim. Sadly, far too many supposedly intelligent people fall for the performative nature of these abusers. This demonstrates not only an intellectual weakness, but a moral one as well. Not only do we need to speak openly and freely about what is happening, and define who and what is behind various actions, we must also have a sufficient moral grounding to [discern between good and evil](https://onpointnz.substack.com/p/we-no-longer-recognise-evil). ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/image-1.png) [We no longer recognise evil](https://onpointnz.substack.com/p/we-no-longer-recognise-evil) [Simon O'Connor](https://substack.com/profile/176628471-simon-oconnor?ref=goodoil.news) 1 Mar [Read full story](https://onpointnz.substack.com/p/we-no-longer-recognise-evil) And so we can say, the co-pilot of the Flydubai plane is not some misguided Omani, but an Islamic terrorist. The rioting French students and their radical supporters are not victims, but the instigators of violence and destruction. And Hamas are not freedom fighters, but embracers of a culture of death. ![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!dpFs!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F2b79c4dd-c2f2-4481-8a8e-43ec884417a1_4032x3024.jpeg) As many will know, I visited Israel and the Gaza border after October 7th. This image is the one that has impacted me the most. The door handle of a shelter for Israeli civilians, being held shut by a father, until Hamas terrorists shot through the door. All those within died and the evidence of this remained clear to see. ![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!5AOr!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fd31d9352-7ed7-4736-ba42-dbdfa197dd35_4032x3024.jpeg) Just one of the many civilian vehicles shot up by Hamas and Gazans who crossed the border. ### In media ‘Strategic voting’ is all the talk currently, so [Bob McCoskrie](https://open.substack.com/users/64250832-bob-mccoskrie?utm%5Fsource=mentions) and I did a Political Playback special discussing what this all about, how it works, the issues and opportunities: Over on RCR online radio, I’ve interviewed [Cynthia Nixon](https://rcr.media/episodes/cynthia-hancox-education-advisor-finding-a-sensible-path-for-home-education/?ref=goodoil.news) about the latest challenges to homeschooling in NZ: ![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!jSgy!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F95abc724-9124-4872-9325-1f4378604309_887x496.png) And my recent podcast with comedian and free speech advocate, Andrew Doyle, continues to draw in more and more viewers: This article was originally published by [On Point](https://onpointnz.substack.com/p/the-five-letter-word-media-wont-say). ### So, You Want To Talk Strategy? URL: https://goodoil.news/so-you-want-to-talk-strategy/ Last updated: 2026-10-07T20:15:06.000Z Do you agree with this statement: good government is preferable to misgovernment? If you say yes, then you are a monarchist, and you didn’t even know it. Welcome to the club! _This post is for paying subscribers only._ ### I Couldn’t Make This Story up If I Tried URL: https://goodoil.news/i-couldnt-make-this-story-up-if-i-tried/ Last updated: 2026-10-07T20:00:52.000Z If you were to submit this story to the *Babylon Bee* as a satire piece, they’d reject it as too ridiculous a parody of wokeness. That it’s 100 per cent true just shows the insanity of our clown world (and, yes, literal clowning has a small part to play, too). Strap yourselves on, I mean, in: this is the totally factual story of the communist lesbian bar that was cancelled over mask policies in a town that hasn’t had a single Covid case in months. The venue in question rejoiced in the name Last Ditch Bar and Arts Venue, tucked away in the crunchy enclave of Greenfield, Massachusetts. It was founded by three idealistic comrades as a sanctuary for “dykes, transsexuals, gender freaks, workers, and their friends”. In true Marxist fashion, the owners instituted a strictly anti-capitalist entry policy: cover charges were entirely optional and nobody would be turned away for lack of funds. The inevitable result was that nobody bothered to pay and the venture began haemorrhaging cash. Faced with economic reality, two of the founding trio promptly executed a strategic retreat. One simply vanished under the weight of vague health pressures, while the other literally departed to enrol in clown school. You could not make this up if you tried. That left **Jackie Matellian** as the lone survivor trying to hold the smoking ruin together. Unable to pay staff or draw a wage, she saddled herself with a crushing $50,000 personal loan, ruined her credit and took to sleeping in her car while working four jobs just to keep the lights on. Even her attempts to communicate had previously provoked shrieks of outrage from her hyper-sensitive clientele, who denounced her for occasionally omitting alt-text on social media graphics: an unforgivable act of ‘ableist violence’. Staring down the barrel of total eviction, Matellian made the fatal mistake of attempting a modest compromise. In a municipality that had not logged a single Covid case in over two months, she dared to suggest that patrons might go mask-optional for just one evening a week. > [“It is with love](https://www.bostonglobe.com/2026/09/22/magazine/greenfield-last-ditch-bar-backlash/?ref=goodoil.news) we inform our immunocompromised disabled divas we will be opening Saturday nights as mask optional,” wrote Last Ditch. The response was swift, merciless and completely unhinged. The local rainbow collective erupted in apoplectic fury, accusing the exhausted proprietor of orchestrating a “mass disabling event” and promoting eugenics. Commenters openly wished that the struggling dive be firebombed for daring to cater to the unmasked. Desperate to soothe the savage mob, Matellian convened a marathon community encounter, even enlisting a professional mediator to guide the proceedings. It was pouring petrol on a bonfire. The Zoom contingent immediately launched into hysterical denunciations, because the mediator, a licensed therapist, was guilty of being white. One keyboard warrior claimed that a licensed professional constituted an arm of the police state who might have them forcibly committed to an asylum against their will. When Matellian finally broke down in tears under her mandatory KN-95, confessing that she was homeless, living out of her vehicle and drowning in tens of thousands of dollars of personal debt, the online inquisitors were utterly unmoved. A vocal critic, a self-described gender-expansive lesbian using he/him pronouns, sneered at her distress: > “\[Y\]ou chose to use your time to spill tears and center your feelings,” Noire posts in the chat. “This is incredibly racist and deflecting behavior.” You have to extend at least a shred of pity to poor Matellian. She genuinely tried to live out her collectivist daydreams, only to discover that the revolution inevitably devours its most devoted children. It is also a fitting epitaph for the broader cultural scene. Across the Western world, traditional lesbian watering holes have been virtually wiped off the map, bulldozed by the relentless march of the bearded brigade. Yet here, in one of the vanishingly few spaces left, the progressive sisterhood was so thoroughly consumed by lunatic ideological purity tests that they chose to burn their own clubhouse to the ground. The clowns, it seems, have truly taken over the circus. --- 💡 ****If you enjoyed this article please share it using the share buttons at the top or bottom of the article.** ### Quick Hit: Back to the Dual Mandate URL: https://goodoil.news/quick-hit-back-to-the-dual-mandate/ Last updated: 2026-10-07T19:30:58.000Z Barbara Edmonds wants unemployment back in the Reserve Bank’s mandate. Labour added it in 2018 and the coalition took it out. Last time, cheap money came with an inflation bill. _This post is for subscribers on the VIP tier only._ ### There’s the Bloody Ball. Use it! URL: https://goodoil.news/theres-the-bloody-ball-use-it/ Last updated: 2026-10-07T19:30:14.000Z [**Peter Williams**](https://peterallanwilliams.substack.com/p/theres-the-bloody-ball-use-it) *Writer and broadcaster for half a century. Now watching from the sidelines although verbalising thoughts on www.reality* [*check.radio*](http://check.radio/?ref=goodoil.news) *three days a week.* In the famous Ranfurly Shield challenge of 1985 Auckland – the challengers – led Canterbury 24-0 at half time. The legendary Canterbury coach Alex “Grizz” Wyllie strode to the middle of Lancaster Park with a rugby ball under his arm – it was only a five-minute break back then and players never left the field – and said to his team “There’s the bloody ball. Use it!” Then he stormed off. His shell-shocked players responded brilliantly. They lost the match 28-23 but they were in the game right to the final whistle. Fast forward to the 2026 election. The National Party is down and out. Metaphorically they are behind 24 nil. These thoughts are opined midway between the RNZ-Reid Research poll (Labour 30.8, National 25.9) and the 1News-Verian survey due in a few hours. I doubt there’ll be much change from last week when the Nats were on 28. Simeon Brown is the National Party coach. A more mild-mannered youth as far removed from Grizz Wyllie’s persona you will not find. But he has to tell his troops “There’s the bloody ball. Use it!” The ball in this case are the electorates. National hold 44 of them. This time there will be one fewer – 71 – than we have at the moment. As has been pointed out numerous times, National’s party vote is stuck in the high 20s, and if it’s moving in any direction it’s down. But for the sake of this argument let’s say the final number is 28 per cent, and that entitles them to 34 seats. The swing to Labour and National’s low party vote will likely take care of half a dozen of those 44 electorates. Banks Peninsula (majority 396) New Lynn (1013) West Coast Tasman (1017) Hutt South (1332) Mt Roskill (1564) and Mike Butterick (2816) are the most vulnerable. But on the other side of the ledger there are some real chances for National to take a constituency against the run of play. Boundary changes suggest Wigram is a real chance for the Nats, Texas-born candidate Candace Kinser leads in some polls in Auckland Central and Melissa Lee is behind by only a hair’s breadth in Mt Albert. So here’s where coach Brown has to talk to his team. It’s well past half time in the big campaign match. His team is losing and their strategy is just all wrong. The first question to ask is this. Does the National Party want to led the next government? Presumably the answer is – of course. (If the answer is anything else then I just fear for the party and those running it.) At this time only the most blinkered and visually impaired National supporter will see an improvement in their party vote. There is no killer blow policy or charismatic leader in the pipeline during the next month to move the dial. It is just not happening. Therefore the tactics must change. In the nine or 10 key electorates – the ones I mentioned above and in East Coast (National majority 3199) – coach Simeon must direct his players to take down those hoardings with photos of Luxon and Willis and the message to “party vote National” and start pushing the National CANDIDATE vote. In Hutt South, use Bishop’s profile and have only him on the big signs. On the West Coast lift the profile of Katie Milne, the former Federated Farmers president, and at the same time suggest to Jamie Kleine – New Zealand First candidate and one time mayor of Westport who polled 15 per cent there last week – that he should drop a few hints on Ms Milne’s behalf while pushing the NZF party vote. At the moment Mr Kleine’s popularity around his home patch opens the possibility of the Christchurch carpetbagger Rory Paterson coming through the middle to score for Labour. The same applies in Wairarapa and Mt Albert. If the New Zealand First and ACT candidates can work only on attracting party votes to leave the way clearer for Mike Butterick and Melissa Lee then the National Party cause will be helped no end. In Wigram, for years a Labour stronghold but now very much in play because of boundary changes bringing in parts of the old Selwyn electorate, National should be all out to get Tracy Summerfield elected. That means ditching any presence of Luxon and Willis. The polls are proving time and time again they are dragging the National party vote south. But I see no indication that coach Simeon is interested in changing tactics. It absolutely baffles me. His team is losing, and losing badly. Having only 34 seats through the list will not cut it. National have to get at least 40 constituency seats and hope that ACT and New Zealand First can get 25 between them. The RNZ poll says they’ll only have 24 which might just be enough in a 127-seat House of Representatives, but that’s without factoring in a Te Pāti Māori overhang. In those glorious old days of 1985, Canterbury couldn’t quite retain glory but they gave it a seriously good shot after a significant tactical rethink. National can kiss the Treasury benches good bye unless they change their game plan. It’s almost too late but there is time – just. This article was originally published on the [author’s Substack](https://peterallanwilliams.substack.com/p/theres-the-bloody-ball-use-it). ### Three Polls Say Split Your Vote URL: https://goodoil.news/three-polls-say-split-your-vote/ Last updated: 2026-10-07T19:00:49.000Z Tuesday’s three polls all show the majors bleeding to the minors. Neither Chris is liked. National’s list lift is a forlorn hope. Electorate National or best candidate; party vote ACT or NZ First. _This post is for paying subscribers only._ ### Good Oil General Debate URL: https://goodoil.news/good-oil-general-debate-842/ Last updated: 2026-10-07T18:13:51.000Z Good morning, welcome to our daily General Debate. Our evening General debate is called Backchat and will start at 6 pm. On General debate, you are encouraged as a commenter to share your own stories, discuss other news, bring NEW news, catch up with friends or make new friends with other commenters. To participate you’ll need to sign up for a [Disqus account](https://disqus.com/profile/signup/intent/?ref=goodoil.news) which is free, quick, and easy. All you need is an email address to register a username that suits you. 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Please be respectful and do not make demands. ### Face of the Day URL: https://goodoil.news/face-of-the-day-1598/ Last updated: 2026-10-07T17:30:33.000Z > The novelist and former UK Conservative MP Jeffrey Archer has died aged 86, his publishers have said. > > Lord Archer died “suddenly and peacefully” at home on Monday, between writing sessions, according to HarperCollins. > > The author, who has sold more than 300 million books worldwide, had been signing books and meeting fans until the day before his death, when he appeared at a sold out event at the Leicester Square Theatre in London. > > His final book, Adam and Eve, is being published globally on Tuesday by HarperCollins. > > Stuff [Read More](https://www.stuff.co.nz/world-news/361042794/novelist-and-former-mp-jeffrey-archer-dies-aged-86?ref=goodoil.news) ### The Good Oil Word of the Day URL: https://goodoil.news/the-good-oil-word-of-the-day-781/ Last updated: 2026-10-07T17:14:59.000Z The word for today is… soothsayer (noun) - : a person who predicts the future by magical, intuitive, or more rational means : prognosticator Source : [Merriam-Webster](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/soothsaye?ref=goodoil.news) Etymology : The origins are straightforward: a soothsayer is someone who says sooth. You may, however, find that less than enlightening! Sooth is an archaic word meaning "truth" or "reality" that dates from Old English and was used until about the first half of the 17th century. (It is believed to share an ancestor with words suggesting truthfulness and reality in Old Norse, Greek, Old High German, Sanskrit, Latin, and Gothic languages.) Soothsayer itself has been documented in print as far back as the 14th century. Today, it is also a moniker of the insect the mantis, whose name means "prophet" in Greek. ***If you enjoyed this Good Oil word of the day please consider sharing it with your friends and, especially, your children.*** ### The Good Oil Daily Bible Verse URL: https://goodoil.news/the-good-oil-daily-bible-verse-491/ Last updated: 2026-10-07T17:00:25.000Z [Joshua 8](https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Joshua%208&version=KJV&ref=goodoil.news) **7** Then ye shall rise up from the ambush, and seize upon the city: for the Lord your God will deliver it into your hand. ### One of NZ’s most educated people: We need to crank up the intensity URL: https://goodoil.news/one-of-nzs-most-educated-people-we-need-to-crank-up-the-intensity/ Last updated: 2026-10-07T19:47:43.000Z Jamie Beaton advocates for New Zealand to adopt Singapore's education policies to enhance competitiveness and foster a new generation of globally-minded entrepreneurs. **Source:** [nzherald.co.nz](https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/one-of-nzs-most-educated-people-we-need-to-crank-up-the-intensity/YDOW4C2MVJFCVHW54BUDIJSDP4/?ref=goodoil.news) *Re-published from the Centrist with permission* [Original article at The Centrist](https://centrist.nz/one-of-nz-s-most-educated-people-we-need-to-crank-up-the-intensity-R0cHM6Ly?ref=goodoil.news) ### From dogs to fireworks: Where New Zealand’s political parties stand on animal welfare URL: https://goodoil.news/from-dogs-to-fireworks-where-new-zealands-political-parties-stand-on-animal-welfare/ Last updated: 2026-10-07T19:47:59.000Z New Zealand political parties reveal varied stances on animal welfare issues in SPCA's election scorecard, highlighting divides on dog control, intensive farming, and fireworks regulation. **Source:** [chrislynchmedia.com](https://www.chrislynchmedia.com/news-items/from-dogs-to-fireworks-where-new-zealands-political-parties-stand-on-animal-welfare/?ref=goodoil.news) *Re-published from the Centrist with permission* [Original article at The Centrist](https://centrist.nz/from-dogs-to-fireworks-where-new-zealand-s-political-parties-stand-on-animal-welfare-R0cHM6Ly?ref=goodoil.news) ### Night Cap URL: https://goodoil.news/night-cap-749/ Last updated: 2026-10-07T08:00:29.000Z If you have a great Youtube, Rumble or Vimeo video to share send it to videos@goodoil.news [![CTA Image](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/01/cam-shirt2-1.png)](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) If you're loving this trusty, straight-up news on Kiwi politics and beyond, why not become a paid member, eh? Unlock exclusive yarns, podcasts, vids, and in-depth analysis—your support keeps independent journalism chugging along. Join today for just $5.00 per month and get the full good oil! [Learn more ](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) ### Wednesday Weapons URL: https://goodoil.news/wednesday-weapons-332/ Last updated: 2026-10-07T07:30:41.000Z If you have a great Youtube, Rumble or Vimeo video to share send it to videos@goodoil.news [![CTA Image](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/01/cam-shirt2-1.png)](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) If you're loving this trusty, straight-up news on Kiwi politics and beyond, why not become a paid member, eh? Unlock exclusive yarns, podcasts, vids, and in-depth analysis—your support keeps independent journalism chugging along. Join today for just $5.00 per month and get the full good oil! [Learn more ](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) ### Damien Grant On Election Debates, Strategic Voting & Latest Polls URL: https://goodoil.news/damien-grant-on-election-debates-strategic-voting-latest-polls/ Last updated: 2026-10-07T07:00:14.000Z If you have a great Youtube, Rumble or Vimeo video to share send it to videos@goodoil.news ### Sean Plunket Thinks Political Debates Will Be Useless In The Election URL: https://goodoil.news/sean-plunket-thinks-political-debates-will-be-useless-in-the-election/ Last updated: 2026-10-07T06:30:37.000Z If you have a great Youtube, Rumble or Vimeo video to share send it to videos@goodoil.news [![CTA Image](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/01/cam-shirt2-1.png)](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) If you're loving this trusty, straight-up news on Kiwi politics and beyond, why not become a paid member, eh? Unlock exclusive yarns, podcasts, vids, and in-depth analysis—your support keeps independent journalism chugging along. Join today for just $5.00 per month and get the full good oil! [Learn more ](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) ### Christopher Luxon: I know I'm not perfect URL: https://goodoil.news/christopher-luxon-i-know-im-not-perfect/ Last updated: 2026-10-07T06:00:28.000Z If you have a great Youtube, Rumble or Vimeo video to share send it to videos@goodoil.news [![CTA Image](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/01/cam-shirt2-1.png)](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) If you're loving this trusty, straight-up news on Kiwi politics and beyond, why not become a paid member, eh? Unlock exclusive yarns, podcasts, vids, and in-depth analysis—your support keeps independent journalism chugging along. Join today for just $5.00 per month and get the full good oil! [Learn more ](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) ### The Good Oil Daily Roundup URL: https://goodoil.news/the-good-oil-daily-roundup-765/ Last updated: 2026-10-07T05:30:37.000Z [](https://photos.google.com/u/1/photo/AF1QipN7Zp7NKe4smdZA9nAYud8CjsgjsQ-Bn7QyMo53?ref=goodoil.news) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/09/9477924A-964C-48A3-840A-25BBE1457BA3_1_105_c.jpeg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/09/0D19A9E3-6B35-414A-8278-290AD7943432.jpeg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/09/A05245DF-3853-4B63-BA57-9BFD169B9140.jpeg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/09/EB047442-3876-4314-B4E3-F20F261D075A_1_105_c.jpeg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/09/FEFD7B37-AF8C-40E6-B555-5091E03912A7_1_105_c.jpeg) ### Good Oil Backchat URL: https://goodoil.news/good-oil-backchat-843/ Last updated: 2026-10-07T05:00:03.000Z Good evening, welcome to **Backchat**. On Backchat, you are free to share your own stories, discuss other news or catch up with friends. To participate you’ll need to sign up for a [Disqus account ](https://disqus.com/profile/signup/intent/?ref=goodoil.news)which is free, quick, and easy. On posts that are not articles like this one, you do not have to stay ‘on topic’ but you do still need to follow our [commenting rules.](https://goodoil.news/commenting-and-moderation/) Please [read our rules ](https://www.goodoil.news/commenting-and-moderation/?ref=goodoil.news)before you start commenting on *The Good Oil* to avoid a temporary or permanent ban. NOTE: Moderation queries MUST be expressed VIA EMAIL and not by posting a comment. To check if your ban might have been caused by Disqus, or to ask for a banning decision to be reviewed, email the voluntary **helpdesk** @ [**goodoil.news**](https://goodoil.news/) with your Disqus username in the subject line. Please be respectful and do not make demands. ### The New Face of an Old Hatred URL: https://goodoil.news/the-new-face-of-an-old-hatred/ Last updated: 2026-10-07T03:30:31.000Z [**Kenin M Spivak**](https://realclearwire.com/articles/2026/10/05/the%5Fnew%5Fface%5Fof%5Fan%5Fold%5Fhatred%5F154550.html?ref=goodoil.news) *Kenin M Spivak is founder and chairman of SMI Group LLC, an international consulting firm and investment bank.* To an expanding chorus of intensely antisemitic zealots, just 16 to 20 million Jews – [roughly](https://www.jpr.org.uk/countries/how-many-jews-in-world?ref=goodoil.news) 0.2 per cent of the world’s population – are behind almost all of the world’s evils. Jews have uniquely been the targets of this irrational invective for centuries. The hatred is raw and ignorant. It needs no logic or evidence. It just hates. Zohran Mamdani, mayor of the US city with the largest Jewish population, [revoked](https://www.amny.com/politics/mamdani-executive-orders-antisemitism-israel-distrust-jewish/?ref=goodoil.news) orders that barred city agencies from boycotting Israel or engaging in antisemitic acts, terminated the respected head of his antisemitism office, and appointed no Jews to his 18-member Advisory Committee on the Judiciary. He has repeatedly called Israel’s response to Hamas’ horrific attack on Oct 7, 2023, a “genocide,” and [says](https://www.jta.org/2025/07/01/politics/what-zohran-mamdani-has-actually-said-about-jews-and-israel?ref=goodoil.news) Israel has no right to exist as a homeland for Jews. World leaders, human rights groups, the [EU’s](https://www.israelhayom.com/2025/08/07/eus-second-ranking-official-accuses-israel-of-genocide/?ref=goodoil.news) second-ranking official, the House’s [second-ranking](https://www.axios.com/2025/08/15/israel-gaza-genocide-katherine-clark-democrat?ref=goodoil.news) Democrat, the International Criminal Court, the International Court of Justice, more than a dozen members of Congress, groypers, progressive influencers, entertainers, and countless [others](https://zeteo.com/p/who-says-israel-committing-genocide-gaza-list-politicians-countries?utm%5Fsource=newsletter&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcampaign=newsletter%5Faxiossneakpeek&stream=top) dutifully accuse Israel of genocide, shun American Jews and others who support Israel, reject Israel’s right to exist, and increasingly support the Intifada, which seeks the worldwide eradication of Jews. Anti-Zionism and antisemitism have merged to a point where there is only a theoretical distinction. In the first 16 days after Hamas invaded Israel, harassment of Jews in the United States [spiked](https://www.adl.org/resources/press-release/adl-records-dramatic-increase-us-antisemitic-incidents-following-oct-7?ref=goodoil.news) by 400 per cent. Last year, Jews, who are two per cent of the US population, were victims in 69 per cent of religious [hate crimes](https://www.jewishfederations.org/blog/all/fbi-data-497668?ref=goodoil.news). Two Israeli staffers were killed outside the Jewish Museum in Washington, DC; a walk supporting Israeli hostages in Colorado was firebombed, killing an 82-year-old Jewish woman; and Pennsylvania Gov Josh Shapiro’s residence was firebombed during Passover. The United Nations, which has [battered](https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2025/08/12/world%5Frewards%5Fhamas%5Ffor%5Fits%5Fatrocities%5F153167.html?ref=goodoil.news) Israel for years, [rigged](https://govextra.gov.il/media/orumgksl/politics-disguised-as-science%5Fsystematic-distortions-in-the-ipcs-gaza-report-of-august-2025.pdf?ref=goodoil.news) numbers and [changed](https://www.thefp.com/p/unicef-data-undermines-claims-palestine-israel-famine-united-nations?ref=goodoil.news) its methodologies so it could accuse the world’s only Jewish state of causing a famine and genocide. Since 2015, the General Assembly has [adopted](https://unwatch.org/database/?ref=goodoil.news) 187 resolutions condemning Israel, compared to 90 resolutions against all other countries combined. The UN Human Rights Council has [never](https://unwatch.org/database/?ref=goodoil.news) criticized China. It has condemned Iran 18 times, Russia 14 times, and Israel 116 times. The tide of baseless attacks on Israel is so overwhelming that from [25 per cent](https://apnews.com/article/american-jews-poll-divisions-israel-gaza-netanyahu-b41aa19f3d4ce8e60ce34b605f11f863?ref=goodoil.news) to [40 per cent](https://www.timesofisrael.com/poll-nearly-four-in-10-us-jews-say-israel-has-committed-genocide-in-gaza/?ref=goodoil.news) of American Jews erroneously believe that Israel committed genocide in Gaza. Their Stockholm Syndrome fatuity evokes Max Naumann, who founded the Association of German National Jews to support Nazis, the Jews who supported Marx, who was abjectly antisemitic, or Stalin, as he purged and killed Jewish writers, poets, and doctors. Israel’s birth and journey are a repudiation of these complacent and naïve quislings, and others who expect Jews to capitulate. It is a celebration of Western values, courage, and strength. A war is fought against the enemy. It does not become genocide because the enemy is largely one race or ethnicity. The elite who accuse Israel know that. Their goal is to delegitimize the country and its people, deprive them of their right of defense, strip Jews of their legacy as survivors of the world’s greatest genocide, and present the victims as the oppressors so that they may be destroyed. Perpetrators of genocide, oppressors, rootless cosmopolitans, manipulative, greedy, fake Jews, Christ killers – the [tropes](https://educator.jewishedproject.org/media/6460?ref=goodoil.news) are many. Against these blood libels, the facts are simple – not that they matter to those whose hatred is visceral. [Hamas’](https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/hamas-covenant-full-text?ref=goodoil.news) and [Hezbollah’s](https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/DOC%5F0000361273.pdf?ref=goodoil.news) charters mandate that Israel be ‘obliterated,’ and Hamas quotes Mohammed’s [hadith](https://sunnah.com/muslim:2922?ref=goodoil.news) demanding that Muslims fight and kill all Jews. For nearly 50 years, Iran has [called](https://americanmind.org/salvo/allowing-iran-to-go-nuclear-would-be-a-disaster/?ref=goodoil.news) for Israel’s destruction, and in 2024, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khamenei called that a [mandate](https://www.memri.org/reports/iran-israel-war-tehran-threatens-israel-gulf-states-and-us-%E2%80%93-asks-us-protect-it?ref=goodoil.news) from God. After many tens of thousands of indiscriminate rocket attacks and suicide bombings by Iran and its proxies, Hamas launched a brutal assault. As 5,000 rockets slammed into civilian targets, its fighters massacred at least 1,200 Israelis, injured 3,500, and took 251 hostages. They raped, eviscerated, mutilated, beheaded, tortured, and incinerated their victims, and then, under fire from the IDF, retreated into Gaza where a network of tunnels, rocket launchers, weapons caches, logistic centers, and combatants were embedded in and under hospitals, schools, mosques, and residential areas. That is the tactical situation Israel faced as it sought to rescue the hostages, stop the rocket attacks, neutralize an enemy intent on its destruction, and defend against the risk that Hezbollah would join the fight. The legal context is the UN charter, which [guarantees](https://legal.un.org/repertory/art51.shtml?ref=goodoil.news) the “inherent” right of defense, and the UN Genocide Convention, which defines “[genocide](https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/convention-prevention-and-punishment-crime-genocide?ref=goodoil.news)” as killing “with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.” Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah proclaim that goal. According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, the [population](https://www.pcbs.gov.ps/?lang=en&ItemID=6022&ref=goodoil.news) in each of the West Bank and Gaza grew every year since 2022\. Taking Hamas’ estimate of [74,000](https://apnews.com/article/israel-gaza-iran-israel-yemen-september-27-2026-96b100178557a28f51e2ad4f74539699?ref=goodoil.news) killed, inclusive of combat deaths, and Palestinians executed by Hamas, that’s about 1.2 per cent of Palestine’s population. If Israel was attempting genocide, it failed. Here is what real genocide looks like: - *Holocaust* (Nazi Germany, 1941–1945): Approximately six million Jews, roughly two-thirds of European Jewry. - *Armenia* (Ottoman Empire, 1915–1923): 1.3 million to 1.5 million Armenians, about two-thirds of Turkish Armenians. - *Rwanda* (1994): 500,000 to 800,000, 60 per cent to 70 per cent of the Rwandan Tutsi population. - *Holodomor* (1932–1933): 2.5 million to 7.5 million Ukrainians. - *Circassian* (Russian Empire, mid-1800s): 800,000 to more than 1.5 million, about 90 per cent of the Circassian population, most of whom were Muslim. - *Pontic* (Ottoman Empire, 1914–1922): 300,000 to 900,000, nearly 100 per cent killed or exiled. - *Assyrian* (Ottoman Empire, World War I): 150,000 to 300,000, nearly 100 per cent killed or exiled. According to West Point professor [John Spencer](https://www.johnspenceronline.com/?ref=goodoil.news), the leading expert on urban warfare, no military has [done](https://www.newsweek.com/israel-implemented-more-measures-prevent-civilian-casualties-any-other-nation-history-opinion-1865613?ref=goodoil.news#:~:text=Israel%20has%20also%20employed%20a%20tactic%20when%20a,do%20more%20pinpoint%20targeted%20to%20avoid%20civilian%20deaths.) more than Israel to avoid civilian casualties. It [dropped](https://www.newsweek.com/israel-has-created-new-standard-urban-warfare-why-will-no-one-admit-it-opinion-1883286?ref=goodoil.news) more than seven million leaflets, made over 70,000 phone calls, sent more than 13 million texts and 15 million pre-recorded voicemails urging civilians to evacuate before IDF attacks, suspended operations so they could do so, and used precision munitions. Hamas used Palestinian civilians as human shields and prevented them from leaving. Allegations that Israel tried to starve Palestinians are propaganda, backed by pictures of children with genetic diseases. Those lies fell apart when press photos showed the truth, and UN analyses inadvertently backed Israel. Hamas [stole](https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog%5Fentry/un-around-88-of-aid-trucks-collected-in-gaza-did-not-reach-destinations-due-to-looting-or-theft/?ref=goodoil.news) [89 per cent](https://www.jns.org/un-confirms-88-of-aid-trucks-in-gaza-looted-before-reaching-destination/?ref=goodoil.news) of aid [shipments](https://www.ipcinfo.org/fileadmin/user%5Fupload/ipcinfo/docs/IPC%5FGaza%5FStrip%5FAcute%5FFood%5FInsecurity%5FMalnutrition%5FJuly%5FSept2025%5FSpecial%5FSnapshot.pdf?ref=goodoil.news) to [make](https://il.usembassy.gov/ambassador-huckabees-interview-with-cbs-news/?ref=goodoil.news) more than half a billion dollars on the black market. The UN vastly overstated malnutrition. Gazans are, on average, [better](https://iris.who.int/server/api/core/bitstreams/a0aad785-4ff8-43d7-bdf9-be6c9a221e8e/content?ref=goodoil.news) fed than neighboring Arabs. The Gazan health authority’s estimate that more than 20,000 children died is decontextualized. “Children” includes all Gazans under 18, about half of Gaza’s population, including 15- to 17-year-olds who [comprise](https://www.jns.org/opinion/joel-m-margolis/hamass-approach-to-building-troop-strength-recruit-kids?ref=goodoil.news) the vast majority of Hamas militants. Israel is thus falsely portrayed as a baby killer. These deaths are on Hamas, which started the war and then forced Palestinian children into harm’s way as fighters and human shields. Those who accuse Israel of genocide stay silent in the face of Islamist proclamations and actions, or support them. Double standards and irrational condemnation of Jews is hardly new. From antiquity, Jews have been tortured, killed in mass pogroms, and expelled. Starting in the 12th century AD, blood libels [accused](https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/blood-libel?ref=goodoil.news) Jews of murdering Christian children to take their blood, sparking massacres. In 1290, England expelled its Jews. In 1394, France did the same, followed by Spain, Portugal, and Germany. In *The Merchant of Venice*, written in 1598, Shakespeare’s Shylock, a Jewish moneylender, embodies greed, vengeance, and alien menace. In his 1844 essay, “On the Jewish Question,” despite having two Jewish grandfathers, Karl Marx expanded on Shakespeare’s theme, opining that society had to be emancipated from Jews whose bourgeois egoism was central to their identity. During the 1880s, [pogroms](https://www.thecollector.com/pogroms-russian-empire/?ref=goodoil.news) in Russia killed and wounded thousands of Jews, as millions were expelled or escaped. Forty years later, over a thousand pogroms in Ukraine claimed tens of thousands of Jewish lives. In 1886, Edouard Drumont’s widely-read 1,200 page *Jewish France* described Jews as racially impure, money-hungry, Christ killers, leading to 20 years of riots and prosecutions targeting Jews. *The Protocols of the Elders of Zion*, fabricated by a Czarist nationalist and circulated by Russian secret police around 1903, claimed to expose a Jewish plot for world domination. It spread across Europe and America. Henry Ford printed and distributed hundreds of thousands of copies. The libel required no proof. Starting in the 1920s, Columbia, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and other elite universities imposed quotas to [reduce](https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2023/11/13/how-restricting-jews-created-modern-college-admissions/?ref=goodoil.news) Jewish enrollment. Some of the restrictions lasted into the 1960s. Then came the Holocaust. There are lulls, and then blind, hate-filled assaults resume. For Islamists and those on the radical left, singling out Jews as the source of evil is a central tenet of intersectionality. The Palestinians are oppressed and the Jews and Netanyahu are their oppressors. The newest vituperation is a proxy for a broader onslaught against Western values and American exceptionalism. This is not reasoned debate. It is the raw, ignorant hatred that expelled Jews from medieval kingdoms, burned them in pogroms, restricted them from universities, and fed them into gas chambers. It requires no reason. It will simply endure unless, finally, good people stop it. This article was originally published by RealClearPolitics and made available via [RealClearWire](https://realclearwire.com/articles/2026/10/05/the%5Fnew%5Fface%5Fof%5Fan%5Fold%5Fhatred%5F154550.html?ref=goodoil.news). ### Where Were the ‘Good Muslims’ on Flight FZ1073? URL: https://goodoil.news/where-were-the-good-muslims-on-flight-fz1073/ Last updated: 2026-10-07T03:00:35.000Z As **Pauline Hanson** said, we’re constantly finger-wagged about the ‘good Muslims’: so, where are they? They were certainly in short supply on Flydubai flight FZ1073\. Both in the cockpit and the cabin. As we’re seeing in more and more workplaces these days, the Muslim co-pilot demanded a special dispensation to skive off and pray. Then, when the plane’s captain turned his back, the Muslim attacked him with the plane’s crash axe. Luckily the heroic Captain **Smit Machchhar** managed to trigger the cockpit door release, despite being seriously wounded. What followed after the Muslim co-pilot, who was trying to crash the plane full of mostly Jews in a terror attack, was subdued by heroic passengers was in some ways even more disturbing. > [The crew of the](https://nypost.com/2026/10/03/us-news/crew-of-hijacked-flydubai-plane-fought-with-israeli-passengers-to-free-the-terrorist/?ref=goodoil.news) hijacked Flydubai plane shockingly clashed with heroic Israeli passengers who subdued the ax-wielding co-pilot after he attacked the pilot – demanding he be freed, two men who helped secure the terror suspect told the Post in exclusive interviews \[…\] > > A power play ensued with the crewmembers insisting that they were in charge of the plane and needed to remain alone in the area directly in front of the cockpit \[…\] > > The Israelis, fearing the crew could be involved in the pilot’s plot, ordered the stewards to leave the cockpit area and to take seats in the middle of the plane \[…\] > > “We didn’t know what to think, we were in a suspicious mode for every steward.” This begs the question: should we *all* be in suspicious mode for every Muslim steward, pilot, co-pilot or any other Muslim in a critical position? Lest the reader dismiss this as ‘Islamophobic’ paranoia, bear in mind the well-attested evidence that Muslims in healthcare are openly bragging that they’d kill Jews under their care. Not just the two nurses literally caught on camera boasting about it, but a rogue’s gallery of doctors suspended or reprimanded over antisemitic rhetoric. Some Sydney hospitals had to change the names of the Jewish Australian victims of the Bondi massacre to protect them from their own staff. Many Jewish Australians have testified to the hostility and abuse they suffer from Muslim staff in healthcare. Meanwhile, while New Zealand was quick to play up Captain Smit’s connection to their country, Australia has its own connection to the incident… and not in a good way. > [Officials investigating](https://www.theaustralian.com.au/world/flydubai-copilot-discussed-killing-jews-online-before-attempted-hijacking-israeli-officials-say/news-story/f8e41df1b56a3d0bb2dfb8939cac1025?ref=goodoil.news) a Flydubai co-pilot on a plane bound for Israel who stabbed his captain and apparently tried to hijack the flight are now examining whether he had been recruited in advance and joined the airline with the specific intent of future terror. > > The suspect, an Omani citizen who was transferred from Saudi Arabia to the United Arab Emirates on Friday (AEST) for further questioning, discussed killing Jews online after being radicalised by extremist preachers \[…\] > > “His social media accounts (say) clearly that he has been radicalised into jihadist ideology. He talks about killing Jews,” \[an Israeli official\] added. He sounds like a Bankstown Muslim nurse. The question that now has to be asked is, was he radicalised by extremist preachers in the mosques and Islamic centres of Western Sydney? He certainly wouldn’t be the first: not just the perpetrators of the Bondi terror attack, but the perpetrators of the 90 per cent of terror attacks and plots in Australia in the past quarter-century, not to mention the hordes of jihadis and ‘ISIS brides’ who flocked to the Islamic State caliphate (only to get hand-waved back into Australia by the Albanese government). It now emerges that the would-be mass murderer, **Hamam Al-Hammami**, spent two years at RMIT University, ostensibly studying mechanical engineering (a striking preponderance of jihadis are engineering students), though he failed to complete the degree. In a rather damp, bureaucratic email to staff, the acting vice-chancellor **Catherine Itsiopoulos** confirmed the institution is currently grovelling before the Victorian Joint Counter Terrorism Team. > [“I want to provide](https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/confidential-email-from-rmit-university-on-hamam-alhammami-revealed/news-story/2b0c17434c6fd68ac0c1d5e535918020?ref=goodoil.news) a confidential update on a matter that you may have read about in the media over the weekend related to a former student and the Flydubai flight incident,” Professor Itsiopoulos wrote in the internal email obtained by the Australian. “The individual was enrolled at RMIT between 2015 and 2017 and did not successfully complete any undergraduate qualification with RMIT.” The sheer incompetence – or perhaps the wilful negligence – required to allow a man already barred from flying in his own country to step into the cockpit of a commercial airliner is staggering. Even after being caught with extremist materials, the international aviation industry apparently decided he was fit to pilot civilians. One wonders how much our own universities are little more than finishing schools for the next generation of jihadists, offering a cosy Australian education before they jet off to finish their ‘training’ with a crash axe. The details of his plan to plunge a metal tube full of souls into Tel Aviv, crowded with Sukkot holidaymakers, are chilling, yet entirely predictable given the ideology he espoused. While our authorities stay tight-lipped, preferring the silence of the complicit, one has to ask why the red flags weren’t screaming in neon. We are told there is ‘no security threat’ from Muslims, yet the reality is that the threat is embedded in our very demographic and cultural fabric. Until we stop importing those who hold our civilisation in contempt, we are simply waiting for the next cockpit door to be breached. And remember: just because you’re paranoid, doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you. --- 💡 ****If you enjoyed this article please share it using the share buttons at the top or bottom of the article.** ### [The Good Oil] Stuff Up of the Day URL: https://goodoil.news/the-good-oil-stuff-up-of-the-day-185/ Last updated: 2026-10-07T02:00:40.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/Stuff-up-7-Oct--2-.png) ### The ABC Is a Hamas Mouthpiece URL: https://goodoil.news/the-abc-is-a-hamas-mouthpiece/ Last updated: 2026-10-07T01:30:15.000Z Imagine that, after three years of WWII, it was revealed that nearly the entire media industry in Allied countries had been relying almost entirely on **Joseph Goebbels’** Ministry of Propaganda as its source. Worse, they’d later published weepy condolences when Herr Goebbels murder-suicided his family and himself in the Berlin bunker. If the editors and journalists weren’t lynched, they’d certainly have been jailed. In 2026, though, the same journalistic quislings get to parade themselves as moral paragons, while quietly scrubbing their grotesque sins from the public record. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation, that gilded harbourside temple of taxpayer-funded Marxist propaganda, is currently engaged in a frantic bout of digital housekeeping. Having spent months weeping into their lattes over the ‘martyred’ voices of Gaza, they have discovered, to their performative shock, that their correspondents were, in fact, rather active members of the Hamas death cult. > [The IDF has published](https://x.com/Ryandally08/status/2106134629354774794?ref=goodoil.news) a database of 170 Gazans presented to the world as journalists and media workers who it says served in the military wings of Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and other terror groups. 118 of them are confirmed Hamas terrorists. Another 50 are with Islamic Jihad. 17 took part in the October 7 massacre. Some held command roles. One such ‘colleague’ was **Roshdi Sarraj**. When he met his end, the ABC’s 7.30 programme, led by the gravitas-laden **Sarah Ferguson**, offered heartfelt condolences for his ‘passing’. He was described as an ‘amazing professional’. It turns out he was an operative in the military wing of a group that makes a hobby of kidnapping innocents. One imagines his ‘professional’ duties likely involved more than just holding a camera steady, and the IDF’s files suggest his press card was little more than a tactical disguise. The response from Ultimo has been the classic bureaucratic shuffle. Rather than launching a genuine investigation into how their editorial standards were hijacked by jihadists, they have begun a timid, surgical removal of names from their website, deferring all accountability to the Committee to Protect Journalists. > [The ABC has quietly](https://www.rebelnews.com/breaking%5Fabc%5Fbegins%5Fquietly%5Fscrubbing%5Fgaza%5Fjournalists?ref=goodoil.news) begun scrubbing its Gaza “journalists killed” coverage as evidence mounts that many of those named were in fact operatives of Hamas and other terrorist groups in the strip. In a statement provided to Rebel News, and in an editor’s note dated October 2 now visible on some articles on the public broadcaster’s website, the ABC says 22 names have so far been removed. It is deferring the decision to a list maintained by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). This is the pathetic resort of a mid-tier public relations firm, not a serious news organisation. Deferring to the CPJ, an outfit with a record of sympathy, is merely passing the buck to the very people who provided the initial, tainted information. Meanwhile, the rot is systemic. We have seen the *New York Times* publish drivel from a ‘doctor’ who is, in reality, a Hamas colonel. The ABC’s own editorial director, **Gavin Fang**, previously offered a limp apology for peddling the ‘starving babies’ lie: a mistake, he claimed. A mistake? No, it was the predictable output of a machine that considers truth a secondary concern to the requirements of the prevailing narrative. > [Australia/Israel Jewish Affairs Council](https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/abcs-man-in-hamas-exposed-as-being-part-of-idfs-list-of-terrorists/news-story/88097ef834823c55e6e02c439f661d98?ref=goodoil.news) executive director **Colin Rubenstein** told the Australian he was disappointed but not surprised by the report Sarraj was a terrorist. > > “The revelation that the ABC employed and then eulogised a ‘journalist’ in Gaza, who … moonlighted as a terrorist is just one more piece of evidence as to how far ABC coverage of the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza departed from the standards of impartiality and professionalism,” he said. These were not innocent civilians caught in the crossfire: they were propagandists for the slime of humanity and legitimate military targets. Yet the ABC would have us believe that the slaughter of 1,200 people on October 7 was merely a backdrop to the ‘tragic’ loss of their preferred informants. The Antisemitism Royal Commission is currently chewing over the broadcaster’s role in our domestic social decline. What would they might find if they look deeper into the payroll? The fact remains that Australians are footing the bill for a propaganda apparatus that, when cornered, performs the equivalent of changing the font on a death warrant. The ABC has failed every test of integrity. They have been fed by terrorists, amplified by terrorists and mourned by terrorists. It is past time for the sermons to cease and for the funding to follow. Defund the lot of them and let them find a job that better suits their talents: perhaps in the public relations office of the groups they so diligently promoted. --- 💡 ****If you enjoyed this article please share it using the share buttons at the top or bottom of the article.** ### Why Does Anyone Still Take Socialism Seriously? URL: https://goodoil.news/why-does-anyone-still-take-socialism-seriously/ Last updated: 2026-10-07T00:59:59.000Z [**Vincent Cook**](https://mises.org/mises-wire/why-does-anyone-still-take-socialism-seriously?ref=goodoil.news) *Vincent has a MA in biophysics from the University of California, Berkeley.* In a [previous article about socialism](https://mises.org/mises-wire/socialism-always-leads-totalitarian-tyranny?ref=goodoil.news), I outlined the basic reasons why profit-seeking capitalists are essential to the productivity and income of workers and to satisfying the desires of consumers, why increasing government controls over the economy plays into the hands of exploitative corporatist elites, and why socialization of the means of production ultimately requires central planning to coordinate production and preserve a division of labor, which in turn necessitates the evils of totalitarian tyranny in spite of the democratic aspirations of many well-meaning socialists. In brief, ordinary people cannot gain a greater voice and a freer life through curtailment of private ownership; socialism necessarily leads to the mass poverty and mass regimentation of totalitarian tyranny. Such a characterization of socialism is far from being new, and of course there has been ample historical experience of numerous socialist states over a little more than a century that dramatically illustrates just how horrible socialist-induced mass poverty and mass regimentation can get in practice. In spite of all that has been learned about socialism over the past century (including [well over 100,000,000 civilians murdered](https://ia601809.us.archive.org/7/items/rummel-r.-j.-death-by-government-1994/RUMMEL%28R.J.%29-Death%5Fby%5FGovernment%5F%281994%29.pdf?ref=goodoil.news#page=102) by socialist regimes), socialist ideas have had an increase in popularity lately, especially among recent college graduates who, if they had ever gotten a real education, ought to know better. So what’s up with that? Why does anyone still take socialism seriously? A rational analysis of the dangers of poverty, regimentation, and concentration camps do not necessarily resonate with those who have been taught to disdain straightforward economic and political reasoning (and even to [disdain elementary biological facts about the binary nature of inherited human genders](https://www.medicinenet.com/what%5Fare%5Fthe%5F72%5Fother%5Fgenders/article.htm?ref=goodoil.news)) and have been taught to deny outright historical facts about the horrific crimes of totalitarian socialist states – apart from Nazi Germany, where instead the socialist character of the horrifically criminal state is denied. Increasingly since the 1960s, students have been taught to view culture and ethics solely through the lens of power struggles and differences in social identities. In an intolerant atmosphere of [identitarian special pleading](https://mises.org/online-book/human-action/chapter-iii-economics-and-revolt-against-reason/5-polylogism-and-understanding?ref=goodoil.news), dissent is seen as a dangerous threat to be [deplatformed](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PSYPrE5LrQ&ref=goodoil.news) and kept out of ideologically pure ‘[safe spaces](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safe%5Fspace?ref=goodoil.news)’ and not as an opportunity for engaging in a civil dialogue that mutually advances a better understanding of reality among everyone involved. [Speech](https://www.marcuse.org/herbert/publications/1960s/1965-repressive-tolerance-1969.pdf?ref=goodoil.news#page=5) is denigrated as a mere tool of power which only the politically correct should engage in. The *zeitgeist* prevailing in academia today favors the principle that mere individuals ought to sacrifice their natural yearnings for material prosperity and personal autonomy, instead becoming intolerant zealots engaged in a crusade to reprogram every aspect of society, striving to stamp out the hobgoblin of ‘oppression’ everywhere. This ‘oppression’ is not defined in terms of actual violations of personal autonomy (i.e., as aggression against an individual’s ownership of oneself and one’s peacefully acquired possessions), but rather in terms of allegedly ‘[systemic](https://www.nationalequityproject.org/frameworks/lens-of-systemic-oppression?ref=goodoil.news)’ obstacles to society achieving utopian visions of group ‘representation’ and intergroup ‘equity.’ In reality, a free society necessarily poses insuperable obstacles against *any* holistic vision society, as autonomous individuals stubbornly refuse to give up their own personal values and spontaneously propagated norms. As [Ludwig von Mises explained](https://mises.org/mises-daily/fallacy-collectivism?ref=goodoil.news), “all varieties of universalistic, collectivistic, and holistic social philosophy” can only beget wars and civil wars precisely because their doctrines are not subject to individual rational scrutiny and judgment, thus ruling out peaceful persuasion as a means for harmonizing values. A socialist economy is but one dimension of a power-lusting ambition to dictate lifestyles and dictate relationships outside of the sphere of production as well. Slogans like ‘social justice’ are intended to impose uniformity upon society instead of establishing rules which give self-directed individuals their own space to pursue their own choices and to render their social interactions contingent upon voluntarily shared values. Instead of being educated to observe, think, speak, and act for themselves so they can function as independent adults, contemporary college students are indoctrinated to believe that asserting personal independence through peaceful expressions of moral judgments like criticism, discrimination, etc., constitutes a crime against the dignity of others and a perpetuation of a system of ‘oppression’ against them and their cultures. To understand socialism’s appeal, we must examine how four basic socialistic premises systematically exploit ignorance and psychological weaknesses. One important variety of socialist thought is [scientism](https://mises.org/library/book/counter-revolution-science?ref=goodoil.news) (or ‘positivism’), which was derived from Plato’s idea that progress requires the conscious, intentional domination of society by an intellectually superior elite (the ‘philosopher-kings’). The modern technocratic version of this ideology began in Napoleon Bonaparte’s military engineering school, the *École polytechnique*, and was promoted in the early 19th century by such figures as [Henri de Saint-Simon](https://mises.org/mises-wire/first-socialists-saint-simonians-and-utopians?ref=goodoil.news) and [Auguste Comte](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/comte/?ref=goodoil.news). Later in the century, this rationale for central planning fused with the moral crusading of [Protestant postmillennial pietism](https://mises.org/library/book/progressive-era?ref=goodoil.news) (particularly its social reforming ‘[Benevolent Empire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benevolent%5FEmpire?ref=goodoil.news)’ variant, which arose from the [ethical doctrines](http://edwards.yale.edu/archive?path=aHR0cDovL2Vkd2FyZHMueWFsZS5lZHUvY2dpLWJpbi9uZXdwaGlsby9nZXRvYmplY3QucGw/Yy43OjYud2plbw==&ref=goodoil.news) of 18th century Calvinist theologian [Jonathan Edwards](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/edwards/?ref=goodoil.news)) to give rise to American Progressivism. A second variety that first arose in Germany in the early 19th century is historicism, the fatalistic notion that social changes are dictated by impersonal forces that mere individual decision makers can’t control. History proceeds inexorably from one stage to the next of its own accord, with individuals being mere puppets of destiny. Conservative versions of historicism stress that some existing state already represents the pinnacle of progress if not social perfection; any opposition to state authority constitutes an unholy rebellion against social goodness. The most famous champion of this view, [G F W Hegel](https://mises.org/mises-daily/hegel-and-man-god?ref=goodoil.news) brazenly proclaimed that “the State is God’s Will.” Revolutionary versions of historicism, on the other hand, proclaim that society is inexorably regressing towards an dark, apocalyptic crisis that will ultimately lead to a new and better stage of history. One can only choose to be on the winning or losing side of the climatic revolutionary struggle, so anyone who wants to flourish in the next stage of history would do well to blindly follow the ruthless vanguard of the revolution and the god-like providence that is guaranteeing its inevitable success. The ‘scientific’ prophet [Karl Marx](https://mises.org/mises-daily/karl-marx-religious-eschatologist?ref=goodoil.news) famously championed this view, giving rise to the communist movement. A third variety posits that a desire for private ownership is mere vanity and the resulting property-based civilization an immoral departure from the peace and simplicity of life in a state of nature, a view popularized in the 18th century by [Jean-Jacques Rousseau](https://mises.org/mises-daily/rousseaus-form-socialism?ref=goodoil.news). Envy and a disdain for civilized life are reimagined as virtues in spite of the fact that radical [egalitarianism and primitivism](https://mises.org/mises-daily/egalitarianism-revolt-against-nature-0?ref=goodoil.news) are severe obstacles to an individual’s happiness. A fourth variety is based on moral [skepticism](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/skepticism-moral/?ref=goodoil.news) and [relativism](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/relativism/?ref=goodoil.news#MorRel). If ‘good’ and ‘evil’ are just subjectively chosen constructs, where unchanging facts regarding our common humanity are seen as irrelevant to optimizing one’s pursuit of happiness, then one can arbitrarily decide what is ‘good’ while manipulating or forcing everyone else to submit to one’s will, thus reimagining oneself as a kind of quasi-god who is above all moral restraints. This ‘will to power’ repudiation of ethics was popularized in the late 19th century by [Friedrich Nietzsche](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/nietzsche-moral-political/?ref=goodoil.news). These four varieties of socialist illiberalism are not mutually exclusive, nor are their intellectual origins and underlying premises clearly spelled out to most students. Instead, contempt for intellectual inferiors, a fatalistic sense that individual purposefulness (and by extension individual rights) don’t really matter, manufactured moral outrage about accumulations of wealth and about the demands that civilized life imposes upon natural wilderness and upon [war-mongering](https://plainshumanities.unl.edu/encyclopedia/doc/egp.war.023.html?ref=goodoil.news) tribes of hunter-gatherers (romanticized in the tradition of Rousseau as being culturally superior ‘noble savages’), and delusions of godhood are often presented in various combinations as unspoken premises that aren’t to be questioned, let alone seriously examined or disputed. In his books like [*The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality*](https://mises.org/library/book/anti-capitalistic-mentality?ref=goodoil.news) and [*Epistemological Problems of Economics*](https://mises.org/mises-daily/psychological-basis-opposition-economic-theory?ref=goodoil.news), Mises explored some of the psychological motivations driving the acceptance of such premises. While success under capitalism demands service to the desires of others, those who are convinced of their own intellectual superiority deeply resent [consumer sovereignty](https://mises.org/online-book/human-action/chapter-xv-market/4-sovereignty-consumers?ref=goodoil.news). While private ownership implies that independent adults must face adversity and take personal responsibility for realizing their values, people who lack the self-confidence to function as mature adults instead project their infantilized tendencies onto others, fearfully clinging to the state as a kind of substitute mommy to care for the needy and substitute daddy to impose discipline upon the naughty. While competition preferentially rewards those who are better at serving consumers, the less successful often find it more satisfying to embrace [envy](https://mlpol.net/images/src/10020E97F8104A5C30B32BE7AD8C6A79-3953509.pdf?ref=goodoil.news) and blame the system instead of blaming themselves for their personal shortcomings. While cooperation under capitalism requires moral self-restraint and observance of common norms, those who chafe at such social constraints yearn to cast them off and dominate others instead. Popular socialist premises, in other words, appeal to primordial vices like contempt, cowardice, envy, and intemperance – the irony of labeling centralized control over production ‘socialism’ is that its popularity is derived from profoundly *anti*\-social dispositions. A devaluation of one’s fellow humans based on irrationality and sheer ignorance is the dark truth underlying socialism’s appeal. This article was originally published by [the Mises Institute](https://mises.org/mises-wire/why-does-anyone-still-take-socialism-seriously?ref=goodoil.news). ### The Decline of Online Commenting URL: https://goodoil.news/the-decline-of-online-commenting/ Last updated: 2026-10-07T00:30:25.000Z [**Steven Barnes**](https://www.freespeechbacklash.com/article/comment-caution?ref=goodoil.news) *Steven is a retired doctor from North East England.* Public online commenting is in measurable decline across social media platforms and digital news websites. A 2026 Ofcom report found that only 49 per cent of UK adults actively posted, commented or shared material on platforms such as Instagram, Facebook and X, down sharply from 61 per cent the previous year. Analytics tracking mainstream news sites record reductions in comment volumes of between 30 and 60 per cent over the past decade, even while overall reader traffic has held steady or risen. These figures are not the product of boredom or technological fatigue alone. They reflect a deliberate shift in behaviour driven by an atmosphere of fear, one that successive UK governments have cultivated through policy, regulation and selective enforcement. The assumption underpinning this essay is straightforward and, on the evidence of recent years, well founded: the suppression of free speech and the creation of a climate of caution is intentional government policy. This policy is aided and abetted by Ofcom, which has shown itself consistently harder on right-wing and conservative voices while remaining remarkably soft on equivalent or greater excesses from the left. The result is that ordinary citizens increasingly calculate that the risks of speaking openly online outweigh any benefit. Public discourse contracts, and the digital public square empties of the very contributions that once made it valuable. Ofcom’s own data points to the mechanism. The regulator noted a rise in ‘passive’ social media use and an increase in the proportion of adults worried that online posts could cause them problems in the future – from 43 per cent to 49 per cent in a single year. Experts cited by Ofcom speak of “digital self-preservation.” Users migrate to private group chats and direct messages or simply stop contributing. The same pattern appears on news websites. Where once readers debated articles in comment threads that ran into the hundreds or thousands, many major titles have either closed sections, heavily moderated them into sterility, or watched volumes collapse. Traffic remains, but the conversational life of the page has withered. This is not an accidental by-product of platform design or the rise of short-form video. It coincides with the progressive tightening of the legal and regulatory framework around online speech. The Online Safety Act 2023 handed Ofcom sweeping powers to impose duties on platforms regarding illegal content and, in practice, content that regulators or activist groups deem harmful. Platforms face the threat of fines reaching 10 per cent of global turnover. Faced with such penalties, the rational commercial response is over-removal. Content that is lawful but controversial – especially on immigration, gender, crime statistics, or cultural change – is more likely to be restricted, demoted or deleted than content that aligns with progressive orthodoxy. The chilling effect is predictable and intended. Arrest statistics reinforce the picture. Thousands of people have been arrested in recent years under communications offences for posts that would once have been treated as robust, if unpleasant, political argument. The threshold for investigation has lowered. Police forces devote resources to online speech that would previously have been ignored, while the same forces often appear slower to act against threats or incitement when the political abuse points the other way. High-profile cases involving right-leaning journalists, commentators and ordinary citizens who questioned official narratives on grooming gangs, two-tier policing or biological sex have demonstrated that the machinery of the state can be mobilised with remarkable speed against certain viewpoints. Equivalent mobilisation against left-wing excesses – calls for violence against political opponents, open celebration of terrorism, or sustained harassment of gender-critical women – is far rarer. Ofcom’s role in this asymmetry is central. The regulator’s public guidance and enforcement priorities have consistently treated ‘hate’ and ‘harm’ through a lens that prioritises protected characteristics in a hierarchical fashion. Criticism of mass immigration, Islamic doctrine or transgender ideology is scrutinised intensely; criticism of Christianity, traditional family structures or national identity is routinely tolerated. Consultations and stakeholder engagement lean heavily towards organisations whose worldview is ‘progressive’ (aka as woke). The result is not neutral application of the law but the institutionalisation of a political preference. Platforms, knowing where the regulatory wind blows, adjust their moderation accordingly. Right-wing accounts face higher rates of shadow-banning, demonetisation and account restriction. Left-wing accounts enjoy greater latitude even when their rhetoric is inflammatory. The policy succeeds precisely because it does not need to silence every dissenting voice. It only needs to make enough examples, and to create enough uncertainty, that the majority of people self-censor. The Ofcom figures capture that success. When nearly half of adults now fear that an old post may return to damage their employment, reputation or personal safety, participation collapses. Comment sections that once hosted genuine argument become ghost towns dominated by those who feel ideologically protected. News sites report stable traffic but hollowed-out engagement metrics. Social platforms report high usage numbers while the volume of original, argumentative content declines. Critics of this analysis will object that the Online Safety Act contains formal duties to protect freedom of expression, that Ofcom insists it only targets illegal content, and that any chill is the unintended consequence of protecting children or preventing real-world harm. These formal assurances do not survive contact with the operational reality. When platforms are told to act on ‘potentially illegal’ material before full assessment, and when the definition of harm is elastic and politically loaded, lawful speech is collateral damage. When arrests for online posts run into the thousands while conviction rates remain low, the process itself becomes the punishment. When regulatory pressure is applied unevenly, the message to the public is unmistakable: some opinions are safer than others. The decline in commenting is therefore not a neutral technological trend. It is evidence that the campaign is working. People are afraid. They have watched colleagues lose jobs, seen ordinary citizens interviewed under caution for social media posts, and observed the selective enforcement that treats right-wing dissent as a public order threat while treating left-wing radicalism as protected speech or necessary activism. In such an environment the rational response is silence or retreat into private channels. Public online discourse becomes thinner, more cautious and less representative of the actual range of opinion in the country. A healthy democracy requires the opposite. It requires citizens willing to argue in public, to test ideas against opposition, and to risk being wrong without fear of state or corporate reprisal. The present trajectory moves Britain in the opposite direction. The statistics on declining participation are the measurable outcome of a policy that has prioritised control over openness. Until the legal framework is reformed, the regulatory bias corrected, and the culture of selective enforcement abandoned, the numbers will continue to fall. The digital public square will grow quieter, not because citizens have nothing to say, but because they have learned that saying it is no longer safe. This article was originally published by the [Free Speech Backlash](https://www.freespeechbacklash.com/article/comment-caution?ref=goodoil.news). ### ACT vows to scrap donations tax-break limit URL: https://goodoil.news/act-vows-to-scrap-donations-tax-break-limit/ Last updated: 2026-10-07T03:41:27.000Z The ACT Party proposes removing the cap on tax-deductible charitable donations to encourage philanthropy and boost New Zealand's economy. **Source:** [rnz.co.nz](https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/politics%5Felection-2026/1780964/act-vows-to-scrap-donations-tax-break-limit?ref=goodoil.news) The ACT Party proposes removing the cap on tax-deductible charitable donations to encourage philanthropy and boost New Zealand's economy. **Source:** [rnz.co.nz](https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/politics%5Felection-2026/1780964/act-vows-to-scrap-donations-tax-break-limit?ref=goodoil.news) *Re-published from the Centrist with permission* [Original article at The Centrist](https://centrist.nz/act-vows-to-scrap-donations-tax-break-limit-R0cHM6Ly?ref=goodoil.news) ### It’s Good to Be the Dictator URL: https://goodoil.news/its-good-to-be-the-dictator/ Last updated: 2026-10-07T00:00:12.000Z What do dictators do, when they’re finally deposed? If, unlike Ceaușescu or Hussein, they’re lucky enough to escape mob justice, they usually go into pampered exile, leaving everyone else to deal with their dire legacies. Victoria’s ‘Dictator Dan’ is taking the latter path, while still hobnobbing with even bigger dictators and raking in a fortune on the quiet. While ordinary Victorians wrestle with soaring power bills, an eviscerated treasury with the lingering social scars of world-record lockdowns, **Daniel Andrews** has retreated to the comfortable embrace of the billionaire class. Far from his former working-class constituency in Mulgrave, the former premier has taken up residence within a fortified, multimillion-dollar coastal retreat on the Mornington Peninsula. > [Mr Andrews has been](https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/daniel-andrews-living-in-luxury-mornington-peninsula-home-owned-by-labor-donor/news-story/4798f171d3f476a6e2689a49a481ce7b?ref=goodoil.news) staying in the spectacular fortress-like home on Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula after it was purchased earlier this year by a property ­developer, who, alongside close family members, donated almost $30,000 to the Victorian Labor Party in the months before the 2022 state election. The patriarchs and matriarchs of property development have always possessed a keen eye for a blue-chip investment. In this instance, the donor managed to steer thousands of dollars into the party machinery through a series of nicely calibrated donations via multiple entities. It represents precisely the sort of structural convenience that integrity watchdogs regularly regard with a weary, furrowed, and ultimately impotent, brow. Meanwhile, back in the corridors of Spring Street, the current regime is furiously attempting to sandblast the Andrews patina off the furniture. Premier **Ben Carroll** has found himself in the unhappy position of defending a disintegrating political citadel against both a resurgent Liberal opposition and a potent swell for One Nation. Seeking to demonstrate that the era of imperial hubris is at an end, and depriving Melbourne’s pigeons and vandals of a tempting target, Carroll recently took the ceremonial axe to Andrews’ planned commemorative effigy. Naturally, the taxpayer was still left to foot the bill. The statue was cancelled, yet Victorians were left holding the receipt for $134,000\. For months, the machinery of government insisted this monument to Dear Leader had merely arrived by spontaneous administrative momentum. The paper trail, dragged kicking and screaming into daylight via freedom of information, tells a rather less modest tale of former premier **Jacinta Allan** and her inner circle. > [The brief asked Allan](https://www.theaustralian.com.au/commentary/victoria-ink/jacinta-allans-handwritten-note-reveals-her-direct-approval-of-dan-andrews-134000-statue/news-story/702e286077cee3b04420e8cd96452fb5?ref=goodoil.news) to “approve DPC commencing work on commissioning a statue of the former premier” and “approve DPC directly engaging Meridian Sculpture”. She ticked “approved” beside both and added a handwritten instruction: “Please provide an update following initial discussion with Meridian Sculpture.” It was the ultimate parting gift: a hundred-grand-plus effigy ordered within six days of his departure, signed off by his loyal deputy before the tea had even gone cold. Yet Dan has never been one to concern himself with domestic scuffles once they cease to be politically useful. His gaze has invariably been cast much further afield. He built a machine out of pursuing deep-pocketed benefactors and foreign regimes that could afford him leverage. From the early days of the ‘Redshirts’ racket, where hundreds of thousands of public dollars were illicitly diverted to party foot-soldiers, to the secret hotel-room capitulations with union chieftains revealed by the anti-corruption commission’s Operation Richmond, the doctrine remained uniform: winning excused everything. > [“For Daniel,](https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/wealth-power-and-golf-how-dan-andrews-built-a-global-political-and-business-network/news-story/1a827f9d3bf7907da0956c9d3d43469b?ref=goodoil.news) electoral success and moral excellence are the same thing. But, of course, they are not. And when that approach comes with a complete lack of self-reflection, it can take you to places.” Those places included Beijing. Having previously circumvented national security advice to tie his state to China’s Belt and Road initiative, Andrews felt perfectly comfortable gracing the red carpet alongside global authoritarians like **Xi Jinping**, **Vladimir Putin** and **Kim Jong-un**. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/The_GoodOil_DanDictators.jpg) The company he keeps. The Good Oil. Image by Lushington Brady. Now, having traded the political dispatch box for the private ledger, the former premier has moved briskly into the lucrative shadows. He operates a web of bespoke private entities, notably Glencairn Street and Wedgetail Partners, trading as Forty Eight & Partners alongside his longtime China whisperer **Marty Mei**. Unencumbered by public transparency registers, these quiet operations bridge the gap between influential domestic capital and Asian business interests. While Victorians are left to navigate a ruined economy, broken public services and the administrative detritus of a decade-long reign, the architect of it all jogs on the sands and watches the waves roll in from a donor’s beachside redoubt. One can only marvel at the sheer, unblinking audacity of the man. The state may be bankrupt, but the regime’s supreme commander has retired with full honours, vast connections and very deep pockets. --- 💡 ****If you enjoyed this article please share it using the share buttons at the top or bottom of the article.** ### SLIP, SLOP, SUBSIDISE: SHOW US THE EVIDENCE URL: https://goodoil.news/slip-slop-subsidise-show-us-the-evidence/ Last updated: 2026-10-07T19:48:16.000Z By Ian Wishart There is a familiar rhythm to public health advocacy. Identify a frightening disease. Produce a survey showing people want something done. Find an expert willing to recommend government spending. Then present the bill to taxpayers as though the scientific and economic arguments have already been settled. The New Zealand Herald’s October 7 editorial on subsidising sunscreen follows that rhythm. New Zealand has high melanoma rates. People get sunburnt. Sunscreen costs money. Therefore government should make it cheaper, because prevention is cheaper than cure. Missing from this apparently seamless argument is the question that should come before the spending: how strong is the evidence that the proposed intervention will prevent the disease invoked to justify it? Preventing sunburn, preventing melanoma and preventing melanoma deaths are different outcomes. Demonstrating one does not automatically establish the others. Nor does showing that a product can work under controlled conditions establish what happens when millions of people use it imperfectly and change their behaviour because they feel protected. I explored these distinctions in my 2012 book, Vitamin D: Is This the Miracle Vitamin?, and revisited them in Show Me the Money, Honey in 2016\. The references were scientific papers and medical evidence reviews. The questions have outlived the books’ publication dates. Consider the current health-professional review from America’s National Cancer Institute. It places sunscreen among skin-cancer prevention interventions for which evidence of benefit is inadequate. Its assessment acknowledges prevention of sunburn and actinic keratoses, but describes inconsistent trial evidence for squamous-cell carcinoma *and no demonstrated trial benefit for melanoma in its overview.\[1\]* That is considerably more cautious than the impression created by the Herald and the Cancer Society. It also requires careful interpretation: inadequate evidence does not prove zero benefit. It means the certainty advertised to the public is stronger than this major evidence review considers justified. The frequently cited Australian Nambour study illustrates the problem. After participants were assigned to daily or discretionary sunscreen use, subsequent follow-up found 11 melanomas in the daily-use group against 22 in the comparison group. That looks encouraging. The overall result, however, narrowly missed conventional statistical significance: p=0.051\. Invasive melanomas were significantly fewer, but numbered just three versus eleven.\[2\] These are signals worth investigating, not figures to dismiss. Equally, they are a slender foundation for assuming the scale of melanoma protection, the reduction in mortality, or the financial return from a nationwide sunscreen subsidy. The NCI notes uncertainty in the post-trial follow-up, including wide confidence intervals. Now consider what the bottle actually promises. SPF is determined by the product’s ability to delay sunburn under specified testing conditions. It is not a certificate declaring that no damaging radiation reaches your skin. Broad-spectrum products provide UVA protection too, but protection depends on the formulation, application thickness and coverage. The label cannot apply the lotion for you.\[3\] My 2012 discussion emphasised the historical mismatch between UVB protection and UVA protection. UVB drives much of the burning response, while UVA penetrates more deeply. Both can damage biological structures. A lotion that suppresses redness more effectively than it suppresses every damaging process can create a dangerously reassuring experience. You can see the absence of burning. You cannot see individual DNA lesions. The possibility matters because consumers may treat the absence of pain as permission to stay outside. A sunscreen can reduce the radiation reaching skin per minute, yet encourage additional minutes of exposure. The net outcome depends on both quantities. A protective product and an unprotective habit can coexist. That concern has experimental support. In a double-blind trial published in 1999, Philippe Autier and colleagues randomly assigned young French and Swiss holidaymakers to SPF10 or SPF30 sunscreen. Neither participants nor medical personnel knew which preparation they received. The higher-SPF group accumulated 72.6 hours of sun exposure, compared with 58.2 hours in the lower-SPF group: roughly a quarter more. Sunburn experience did not differ.\[4\] A subsequent trial using personal radiation dosimeters likewise suggested sunscreen could extend intentional exposure below the sunburn threshold.\[5\] These were small studies of young European sunbathers using older products. They do not establish that every sunscreen user behaves this way, or that today’s products increase melanoma. They do establish that the behavioural concern is more than an armchair hypothesis. There is counter-evidence that must also be acknowledged. A 2018 human study found high-SPF sunscreen significantly reduced DNA damage associated with non-melanoma skin cancers at adequate application thicknesses, even with substantial experimental UV exposure. Results at a thinner, more typical application were less consistent.\[3\] The same study noted however that as of 2018 “There are no data on DNA protection by sunscreens under typical conditions of use.” That’s a stunning admission for a multi-billion dollar industry that’s been at the centre of summer public health messaging for decades. It would therefore be wrong to claim sunscreen merely switches off the alarm while offering no biological protection. The defensible warning is that a quieter alarm does not certify an undamaged building. Redness can be prevented while some radiation still penetrates, and longer exposure or inadequate application can undermine protection. Subsidising purchases does not automatically solve either problem. Preventing sunburn is only one entry in the safety ledger. A thick coating of blue paint could equally reduce sunburn redness while creating a different biological problem; its ability to block radiation would not settle its toxicity. Sunscreen ingredients must therefore be assessed for what they do inside the body as well as what they prevent at its surface. Regulators have identified systemic absorption, potential endocrine effects and unresolved safety questions for particular filters. None establishes that sunscreen is driving rising cancer rates among younger people. But none belongs outside the discussion when taxpayers are being asked to finance greater exposure. The public deserves evidence of net benefit, with uncertainty disclosed—not a single favourable endpoint presented as the whole balance sheet. Vitamin D adds another complication the editorial overlooks. The 2025 Australian Sun-D randomised trial assigned 639 adults to routine SPF50+ use or discretionary sunscreen use for approximately a year. The routine-use group had a smaller increase in blood vitamin D. At the final measurement, 45.7% met the study’s deficiency definition, compared with 36.9% in the control group. Deficiency was an exploratory outcome; the measured difference in vitamin D concentration was the primary outcome.\[6\] That does not prove sunscreen causes cancer through vitamin D depletion. Nor does it justify treating unprotected sunbathing as cancer therapy. It does undermine blanket reassurance that routine sunscreen use cannot affect vitamin D status. A serious prevention policy should accommodate that finding rather than omit inconvenient parts of the balance sheet. The Herald’s survey evidence needs similar scrutiny. Its 64% sunburn figure concerns September 2024 to March or April 2025, not the summer immediately preceding October 2026\. Its matching 89% affordability figure comes from a separate survey conducted later in 2025.\[7\]\[8\] That second survey found 89.1% supported making sunscreen more affordable, including people expressing only slight support. Affordability is a broad objective. It does not, by itself, establish public endorsement of a particular subsidy mechanism, budget or tax trade-off. Nor does agreement that sunscreen is expensive establish that price is the principal cause of inadequate protection. The earlier survey’s authors reported no strong pattern between household income and judging sunscreen too expensive. Their findings raise questions about affordability; they do not answer all the questions about behaviour.\[7\] Meanwhile, the national mortality picture is more encouraging than the editorial’s framing suggests. EHINZ’s March 2026 report records 333 melanoma deaths in 2021, compared with 378 in 2015\. The age-standardised mortality rate fell 33% from its 2011 peak of 5.3 per 100,000 to 3.5 in 2021\. The report identifies improved treatment as a possible contributor.\[9\] Is another factor in that drop higher vitamin D levels as public awareness rose? It was a thesis I put forward in 2012: “So far, sun tans are looking a lot more protective against deadly skin cancers than anything humans have devised in the sunsmart arsenal. Maybe the natural response was the best after all. “After all, Cancer Research UK has announced “Over the last 25 years, rates of malignant melanoma in Britain have risen faster than any of the most common cancers.” Melanoma’s drag race up the fatality charts, then, has coincided with a similar mass uptake of sunscreens over the same period.” High international mortality rankings can coexist with falling domestic mortality. Readers deserve both facts. Falling deaths cannot simply be credited to sunscreen; high rankings cannot establish that cheaper sunscreen is the best next investment. Before taxpayers subsidise the product, advocates should specify the outcome they expect to buy. Fewer painful burns? Fewer skin cancers of particular types? Fewer melanoma deaths? Each requires its own evidence and its own economic calculation. A credible proposal would estimate additional correct use, account for longer exposure, compare alternatives, and publish its assumptions. Removing GST would cut a fully passed-through GST-inclusive price by about 13%, not 15%. Whether that changes behaviour enough to justify lost revenue remains a question. There is also a distinction between cost-effective and cost-saving. Spending public money to improve health can be worthwhile even when treatment savings never recover the outlay. But that is a decision about priorities, not an automatic dividend. Every dollar committed here is unavailable elsewhere. A subsidy reaching existing buyers may chiefly transfer their private spending to the public purse, with little additional protection. A targeted scheme could perform differently from universal tax relief. None of this rules out assistance. It means the design matters, the counterfactual matters, and an opinion poll cannot calculate the health gained per dollar. Those are precisely the details the editorial leaves for somebody else to establish before purchase. Public support is relevant to politics. It cannot substitute for clinical efficacy or cost-effectiveness. The Herald is entitled to advocate a subsidy. Taxpayers are entitled to ask it to show its working. The scientific literature contains encouragement, uncertainty and a warning about false reassurance. An editorial asking the public to pay should contain all three. Until it does, “slip, slop, subsidise” is a campaign slogan awaiting a demonstrated public return. **Sources** 1\. National Cancer Institute. Skin Cancer Prevention (PDQ), Health Professional Version.[ https://www.cancer.gov/types/skin/hp/skin-prevention-pdq](https://www.cancer.gov/types/skin/hp/skin-prevention-pdq?ref=goodoil.news) 2\. Green et al. Reduced melanoma after regular sunscreen use: randomized trial follow-up (2011).[ https://doi.org/10.1200/JCO.2010.28.7078](https://doi.org/10.1200/JCO.2010.28.7078?ref=goodoil.news) 3\. Young et al. Sub-optimal Application of a High SPF Sunscreen Prevents Epidermal DNA Damage in Vivo (2018).[ https://doi.org/10.2340/00015555-2992](https://doi.org/10.2340/00015555-2992?ref=goodoil.news) 4\. Autier et al. Sunscreen use and duration of sun exposure: a double-blind, randomized trial (1999).[ https://doi.org/10.1093/jnci/91.15.1304](https://doi.org/10.1093/jnci/91.15.1304?ref=goodoil.news) 5\. Autier et al. Sunscreen use and intentional exposure to ultraviolet A and B radiation (2000).[ https://doi.org/10.1054/bjoc.2000.1429](https://doi.org/10.1054/bjoc.2000.1429?ref=goodoil.news) 6\. Tran et al. Effect of daily sunscreen application on vitamin D: Sun-D Trial (2025).[ https://doi.org/10.1093/bjd/ljaf310](https://doi.org/10.1093/bjd/ljaf310?ref=goodoil.news) 7\. SunSmart in Aotearoa New Zealand: Survey Findings (2025).[ https://www.cancer.org.nz/assets/SunSmart-in-Aotearoa-Survey-Findings-2025.pdf](https://www.cancer.org.nz/assets/SunSmart-in-Aotearoa-Survey-Findings-2025.pdf?ref=goodoil.news) 8\. McNoe et al. Public support for government-led skin cancer prevention (2026).[ https://www.nzmj.org.nz/journal/vol-139-no-1641/public-support-for-government-led-skin-cancer-prevention-in-aotearoa-new-zealand-findings-from-a-national-survey](https://www.nzmj.org.nz/journal/vol-139-no-1641/public-support-for-government-led-skin-cancer-prevention-in-aotearoa-new-zealand-findings-from-a-national-survey?ref=goodoil.news) 9\. EHINZ. Melanoma mortality (March 2026).[ https://www.ehinz.ac.nz/assets/Surveillance-reports/Released\_2026/Melanoma-mortality-2001-21-final-18032026.pdf](https://www.ehinz.ac.nz/assets/Surveillance-reports/Released%5F2026/Melanoma-mortality-2001-21-final-18032026.pdf?ref=goodoil.news) Background: supplied extracts from Ian Wishart, Vitamin D: Is This the Miracle Vitamin? (2012) and Show Me the Money, Honey (2016). Editorial under review: NZ Herald, 7 October 2026, “There is a case for subsidising sunscreen in New Zealand” *Re-published from the Centrist with permission* [Original article at The Centrist](https://centrist.nz/slip-slop-subsidise-show-us-the-evidence-1791329486216?ref=goodoil.news) ### NZ Shows How Not to Run a Census URL: https://goodoil.news/nz-shows-how-not-to-run-a-census/ Last updated: 2026-10-06T23:30:11.000Z **Oliver Hartwich** *Oliver is the executive director of The New Zealand Initiative. Before joining the initiative, he was a research fellow at the Centre for Independent Studies in Sydney, the chief economist at the Policy Exchange in London, and an advisor in the UK House of Lords.* Two thousand years ago, according to St Luke, Emperor Augustus decreed that all the world should be registered. A carpenter and his pregnant wife walked from Nazareth to Bethlehem to comply. Evidently, the Romans had little trouble with their census response rate. Ever since those times, countries have counted their populations. For those filling in the forms, it is a nuisance, to be sure. But governments need reliable figures to plan public services. Australia has just gone through this exercise again. In August, Australians filled in census forms asking where they were born, what they earn and how they get to work. Some 30,000 Bureau of Statistics field staff are still knocking on the doors of those who did not. Still, one might wonder why, with tax files and Medicare records already available, a separate census is even needed. Does the government not know most of what it is asking its people about? New Zealand considered the same argument and last year decided to stop holding traditional censuses. New Zealand has tax records, hospital enrolments, school rolls and a research database linking them. So why not base the census on them? Problems with the previous two censuses made the idea more tempting. The 2013 census cost $104 million and about 93 per cent of New Zealanders filled it in. Five years later, Stats NZ made online completion the default, but roughly one person in seven did not respond. Among Māori, the response rate dropped to 68 per cent. The outcome was so disappointing that the government statistician resigned. By 2023, the bill for the census had reached $325 million, more than three times the 2013 figure. The response rate improved to 87.6 per cent. Even at that price, though, an estimated 116,000 people were missed. Australia, for comparison, managed a 96 per cent response in 2021, and Ireland, a country of New Zealand’s size, did the same a year later. So, in June last year, the New Zealand government announced there would be no census in 2028\. Instead, from 2030, New Zealand would infer its population data from records collected for other purposes: Inland Revenue for income, the Ministry of Education for schooling and the health system for where people live. To fill the gaps, an annual sample survey of about five per cent of the population would still be conducted, but most New Zealanders would never have to fill in a census form again. It sounded like a bold plan, but there were doubts about its feasibility. Government databases contain errors, and a traditional census is hardly error-free either, as the 2018 count showed. But administrative records also miss things a census asks about. On languages spoken or religion, for instance, they hold very little. The question is whether an annual five per cent survey could both check the records and fill those gaps, including for smaller communities. Germany shows the problem is not theoretical. If you live in Germany, you must by law register your address with the local council. There are fines if you fail to do so. Germany also gave up the traditional census years ago. Its censuses, held roughly every 10 years, now use those registers alongside a survey of about one resident in 10. The 2011 census found 1.5 million fewer residents than the official estimates suggested. The 2022 census cut the estimated population by another 1.4 million. Berlin and Hamburg each turned out to have 3.5 per cent fewer residents than estimated. New Zealand has no German-style population register. Could its proposed annual survey produce reliable figures from the records we do have? That needed a convincing answer before the law changed. Whatever the merits of the new model, the plan hit a constitutional obstacle in parliament in early August, just seven weeks before Parliament rose for this year’s election. Normally, changing New Zealand law requires only a parliamentary majority. But some provisions of the Electoral Act need more. They can be changed only with the support of at least 75 per cent of MPs or a majority in a referendum. One ties the drawing of electorate boundaries to the last census. And so, abolishing the census meant changing a provision that is constitutional law in all but name. When Labour withdrew its support at the select committee stage, the numbers for this change were not there. Labour said it was not confident the new model would be accurate enough for Māori, Pasifika and rural communities, and wanted an independent review with costings before parliament voted. At this stage in the parliamentary calendar, there was simply not enough time left to complete that review. The government knew the risk of not passing the legislation before the end of the parliamentary term. In February, a cabinet paper said that if the bill failed, Stats NZ would be legally required to hold a census in 2028 with neither the time nor the resources to do it properly. Stats NZ now faces the problem cabinet was warned about. The result leaves Statistics New Zealand in an unfortunate position. Its new chief executive, only in the job since January, inherited a plan to replace the traditional census. Cabinet had endorsed it, a bill had been drafted and $227 million had been appropriated for the replacement model. But the necessary legislation has not passed. Under the existing law, the agency must prepare for a traditional census in 2028\. The government still hopes to change that law in the next parliament. Except it lacks the resources to do so. In the past few years, the agency has also lost about 300 staff and had its budget cut by seven per cent. Len Cook, a former government statistician who went on to run Britain’s statistics office, thinks a 2028 census can still be done if the costs are managed “quite brutally”. The statistics minister, meanwhile, has confirmed the agency must run one, regardless. Asked whether it had the money, he said no. Two millennia ago, Augustus counted his empire because he wanted to know what he ruled. In 2028, New Zealand will count itself because the parties could not agree on how to stop. Originally published on [NZ Initiative](https://www.nzinitiative.org.nz/reports-and-media/opinion/nz-shows-how-not-to-run-a-census?ref=goodoil.news) and republished by [RCR Media](https://rcr.media/blog/nz-shows-how-not-to-run-a-census/?ref=goodoil.news). ### Beyond the Boats Invading Our Mother Country URL: https://goodoil.news/beyond-the-boats-invading-our-mother-country/ Last updated: 2026-10-06T23:00:20.000Z The only souls still possessed of political zeal are those whose fervour is the fervour of the wolf. What they see is a flesh-and-blood civilisation, meaty and unguarded, to be looted for the survival of their own mangy pack. I mean the commies, of course: the Greens, Labour, Te Pāti Māori, the gauchely named Opportunity Party, and the Islamic interest that travels openly in their company. Should these packs ever come into serious power, the country will be eaten out from its porn-soaked reproductive organs to its essential guts, and the devouring will be euphemised as gritty ‘real life’ until the old guards are gone – the Boomers, and we of Generation X. Some of us have been observing, for more years than it is polite to count, that New Zealand is a follower nation. Under our sun there is only ever a smorgasbord of ideas fed to us by the UN, by Australia and by Britain, without even the pretence of an original thought fuelling a single issue of substance. King Solomon had the verdict long before our pollsters did. All is vanity. By vanity he did not mean the nihilist’s nothing, as if no thing possessed value. He meant the fleeting and the vapid: men and women doing nought but striving after wind. Our politicians, meanwhile, owe themselves to the polls. The polis may be damned. We are not a Pacific invention. We are British in law, in language, and in the liberties we inherited, which is why the mother country is not some kind of foreign parable. UK Home Secretary [Shabana Mahmood claims](https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/oct/04/women-small-boats-raped-shabana-mahmood-asylum-migration?ref=goodoil.news) to be against the rape of women in the boats landing in Britain every single night, a picture which is now practically a myth, while facilitating into Britain the male rapist invaders: Muslim men, nearly all between 18 and 40, out of Iran, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Eritrea, some three-quarters of that traffic. She wants to fast-track antisemitic Palestinian refugees into British society, as if that were a good idea. She carefully likes to speak of “the women,” though the policy is for the benefit of the men. The actual women are very few and far between, and even if they were not, these men are their brothers, their peers, and their problem, not Britain’s. Mahmood and her ilk are looters, and her Islamic brethren will continue to play brutal havoc with longstanding native Britain, and with their daughters, as we have already seen too many times to count, from Rotherham and Oxford to Glasgow and Ireland. France is already literally on fire with the same importation. The boats come into the United Kingdom every night, and nobody ever explains why Britain takes this atrocious behaviour from France. New Zealand repeats the simpering sermons of Europe in a smaller voice. Labour hopeful and [Te Atatū MP Phil Twyford](https://www.odt.co.nz/news/national/twyford-bemoans-immigration-debate-dumpster-fire-as-labour-unveils-policy-ljf4419o?ref=goodoil.news) rose in Auckland last month, before a room of mostly brown migration agents, and declared the argument a “dumpster fire” of right-wing populists demonising migrants and refugees. We were not to follow Europe and the United States into division and scapegoating. The centre must hold, he said. The two great parties must remain sensible and pro-immigration. To object is irrational and, should the objection spread, democracy itself is corroded. That is Mahmood’s munted homily, arriving late and without the boats. Twyford is the man Labour would hand the immigration file should they win in November, and next he too will be talking about Palestinian refugees. Boring NPC politicians, promising the same old crap, apart from Winston Peters and NZ First, the best of the crop. Any party now offering itself to a Western free people must be, at the most intrinsic level, nationalist: it must care for its own nation, and for that nation’s actual people. The ancient Greeks gave us the examined life, the rule of reason, and the citizen who owes something to the polis before he owes it to his own craven appetites. That virtue passed into Christianity and became more potent, and from that ancient inheritance came the greatest civilisation ever seen – the one that relinquished slavery without being beaten into it from outside, and in which a woman might walk an English, Australian or New Zealand street alone in the dark without rape being treated as normal, let alone expected. None of us should vote for any politician who cannot speak to this incalculable loss which has happened in our mother country. This article was originally published on the [author’s blog](https://www.oliviapierson.org/blog/in-new-zealand-beyond-the-boats-invading-our-mother-country?ref=goodoil.news#comments). ### Where Did All the Money Go? URL: https://goodoil.news/where-did-all-the-money-go/ Last updated: 2026-10-06T22:30:37.000Z It’s hard to believe, but it wasn’t so long ago that Australia was completely debt-free. Not just debt-free, but a net creditor to the tune of $40 billion. Even more astonishing, the Howard-Costello left behind a sovereign wealth fund of $60 billion dollars. These days, $60 billion is a rounding error on our debt. Australia is over $600 billion in net debt. Gross debt exceeds a jaw-dropping trillion dollars. What went wrong? In a word: *Labor*. Within the first term of the first Labor government to oust **John Howard** and **Peter Costello**, Australia was already plunged back into debt. Since then, it’s only got worse. And worse. And worse. Since the Albanese administration took the wheel in 2022, they have unceremoniously tossed the fiscal rule book into the nearest shredder. Our current treasurer, **Jim Chalmers** – a man who fancies himself an architect of a ‘new’ capitalism – has steadfastly refused to tether the budget to any meaningful numerical constraints. Even the profligate **Wayne Swan**, once humoured the notion of fiscal rules, however fleeting his acquaintance with them proved to be. One cannot help but lament the loss of disciplined oversight: luminaries such as former Reserve Bank governor **Philip Lowe** and former treasury secretary **Martin Parkinson** had explicitly counselled a surplus-first approach. Alas, their sage advice was discarded with the same casual disdain one might reserve for a stale sandwich. > [“We’re not attracted](https://www.theaustralian.com.au/commentary/bragging-rights-to-relatively-low-government-debt-are-all-costellos-labor-has-made-it-worse/news-story/a38920437ec09fca9a88a153eef9d3f6?ref=goodoil.news) to the government’s tax cap, and the reason we’re not attracted to it is because it seems to us like quite an arbitrary cap imposed for political reasons rather than good economic reasons.” This dismissive sentiment from our treasurer captures the zeitgeist of the current Treasury bench. The coalition’s sensible cap of 23.9 per cent has been treated as a mere suggestion, promptly exceeded while the government continues to wallow in the red. We find ourselves in an era of grotesque bloating: government payments, which languished under a quarter of GDP prior to the pandemic, are now ballooning toward 26.8 per cent. We are witnessing an expansion of the state to a degree unseen outside of wartime or national health crises. It is a peculiar sort of triumph, surely. As One Nation’s Victorian candidate **Mark Nicholson** recently pointed out, we don’t have a revenue problem – the government is taxing more than ever – we have a *spending* problem. A spending problem approaching one trillion dollars. Government expenditure has exploded past the $800 billion mark, leaving the pre-Covid figure of $500 billion looking like a relic of a frugal, bygone civilisation. Much of this gargantuan appetite for spending is funnelled into the ‘care economy’, which in practice means importing more Third World doctors and nurses and buying more luxury cars for Middle Eastern NDIS scammers in Western Sydney. To suggest, as the budget papers do, that future spending growth will magically taper to 0.7 per cent or 0.9 per cent is to inhabit a realm of pure fantasy. As the saying goes, pigs might fly, and they shall likely be well-fed by the taxpayer. Even the recent attempts to rein in the NDIS – rebadged as ‘Thriving Kids’, because what politician doesn’t love posturing, ‘Won’t somebody please think of the children!’ – smacks of the same cosmetic tinkering that has defined this ministry. > “Every single economic statement that we have handed down has had savings.” Our prime minister’s earnest declaration is, quite frankly, a work of fiction that would make **Hans Christian Andersen** blush. This is little more than sophisticated accounting sorcery. When one peels back the layers of this budget trickery, the reality is far bleaker. As the economist **Saul Eslake** has astutely noted, the net addition Labor has inflicted upon the budget sits north of $100 billion. The government’s talk of ‘reprioritisation’ is a farce, akin to a socialite boasting of their fiscal prudence because they selected the Tesla Model 3 over the BMW, while the estate itself falls into receivership. While the battlers at the kitchen table wrestle with the indignity of mounting mortgage rates and the relentless inflation tax, Labor remains preoccupied with left-wing vanity projects. It seems a lifetime has passed since Peter Costello held the fiscal reins, maintaining a standard of stewardship that our current custodians seem utterly incapable of comprehending, let alone replicating. --- 💡 ****If you enjoyed this article please share it using the share buttons at the top or bottom of the article.** ### Psychology on the Couch URL: https://goodoil.news/psychology-on-the-couch/ Last updated: 2026-10-06T21:30:41.000Z [**Rodney Hide**](https://www.brashandmitchell.com/post/rodney-hide-psychology-on-the-couch?ref=goodoil.news) *Rodney Hide is a former minister and ACT Party leader.* Last Friday, at Pipitea Marae in Wellington, the New Zealand Psychological Society and the New Zealand College of Clinical Psychologists rolled over together, all eight paws in the air, and apologised to Māori for, in the words of their own press release, “the structural racism and monoculturalism inherent within the discipline of psychology, which has its origins in 19th century Europe”. First the crime. It is not that some psychologist, somewhere, did some identifiable wrong to some identifiable person. That would require names, dates and evidence – the tiresome furniture of the old Western way of knowing. No, the sin is original. It lies in the discipline’s birth: it came from 19th-century Europe. Wilhelm Wundt opened his laboratory in Leipzig, and the stain has been spreading down the generations ever since. College president Dr Clare Couch, and I promise I did not make the name up, said: “For this we are deeply sorry and apologise without reservation for the harms done to Māori by the discipline, as well as our failure to prevent these.” Without reservation. There is the tell. The scientist lives on reservations. Every finding is provisional, every claim is hedged, and the confidence interval is always on display. To apologise without reservation is to announce, with some ceremony, that you have stopped being a scientist and become a penitent. Note what was confessed. Dr Couch did not apologise for anything she had done. She apologised for the discipline, which is to say for every psychologist, living, dead and yet to graduate. The young clinician who qualifies next year arrives already in debt, owing for sins committed before she was born against people she has never met. That is not science. It is original sin, handed out by profession and settled by race. Then came the theology proper. The society’s Kaihautū Professor Waikaremoana Waitoki said: “Western psychology is reproduced globally not because it is better, but because it travels with colonialism.” Consider that sentence. Here is a profession that charges fees, holds a state-protected title and treats the depressed, the anxious and the suicidal, and one of its senior office-holders has now declared that its methods spread not because they work but because they hitched a ride on gunboats. If that is true, the honest course is not an apology but a refund. If it is false, it is a remarkable thing for a professor to say on a marae. Professor Waitoki also told us what she wants instead: “We want to see Māori psychology, Asian psychology, and Indian psychology.” I always understood India to be in Asia. But never mind geography, which is presumably colonial too. The point is that the mind, which the old science supposed was much the same organ in Auckland as in Amritsar, is to be carved up by ancestry, like a Treaty settlement. The society’s president, Iris Fontanilla, supplied the liturgy: “We commit to making meaningful changes and hope this is the beginning of a journey of healing and true partnership.” A journey. They are always journeys. Nobody in officialdom ever arrives anywhere: arrival would allow an audit. And the statement itself, the press release tells us, is a “living document” that “will undergo further developments following consultation with Māori”. So they have apologised for something whose final wording does not yet exist. That is not contrition. That is a subscription. Now for the part the press release left out. Earlier this year the college removed from its own journal a peer-reviewed viewpoint by Dr Arna Mitchell, a clinical psychologist of Māori and Pākehā descent, titled “He Wero Anō: Don’t Just Tell Me, Show Me How Science and Psychology Are Racist in New Zealand.” She questioned the evidence in the 2024 WERO report on systemic racism in psychology. That is to say, she asked for proof. The college told Waatea News that “concerns were subsequently raised by members, Māori and non-Māori, and key sector partners regarding the impact of the viewpoint and its alignment with the values and commitments of the college”. By its own account there was no plagiarism, no fabrication, no fraud. She was merely inconvenient. The Free Speech Union’s Jillaine Heather put it with a precision I envy: “A Māori psychologist had her work erased by her own professional body, in the name of protecting Māori.” Back in July she asked whether the apology would extend to Dr Mitchell, “or is she the wrong kind of Māori?” Good question. I await the living answer. So here is the scene. A profession that exists to help individuals see their own minds clearly has decided that minds come in racial job lots. It has erased the work of a Māori member who asked for evidence. And it has apologised, on behalf of members, most of whom, the Free Speech Union said in July, had not been shown the text, for a sin it traces to the 19th century. They need their heads read. The trouble is finding anyone left in the profession willing to do the reading without first consulting the living document. This article was originally published by [Brash and Mitchell](https://www.brashandmitchell.com/post/rodney-hide-psychology-on-the-couch?ref=goodoil.news). ### Election 2026 live: Nicola Willis and Barbara Edmonds go head-to-head in RNZ finance debate URL: https://goodoil.news/election-2026-live-nicola-willis-and-barbara-edmonds-go-head-to-head-in-rnz-finance-debate/ Last updated: 2026-10-06T23:45:50.000Z National's Nicola Willis and Labour's Barbara Edmonds engage in a finance-focused debate amid RNZ's latest political poll indicating a decline for both parties. **Source:** [rnz.co.nz](https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/politics%5Felection-2026/1774626/election-2026-live-nicola-willis-and-barbara-edmonds-go-head-to-head-in-rnz-finance-debate?ref=goodoil.news) *Re-published from the Centrist with permission* [Original article at The Centrist](https://centrist.nz/election-2026-live-nicola-willis-and-barbara-edmonds-go-head-to-head-in-rnz-finance-debate-R0cHM6Ly?ref=goodoil.news) ### Election 2026: National’s new plan for small business unveiled URL: https://goodoil.news/election-2026-nationals-new-plan-for-small-business-unveiled/ Last updated: 2026-10-06T23:46:08.000Z National unveils a small-business plan to streamline employment processes and reduce bureaucratic burdens in New Zealand. **Source:** [nzherald.co.nz](https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/politics/election-2026-nationals-new-plan-for-small-business-unveiled/TEHXK7A2XJEN5KD46SSM4ITK2Y/?ref=goodoil.news) *Re-published from the Centrist with permission* [Original article at The Centrist](https://centrist.nz/election-2026-national-s-new-plan-for-small-business-unveiled-R0cHM6Ly?ref=goodoil.news) ### The Good Oil Daily Opinion Poll URL: https://goodoil.news/the-good-oil-daily-opinion-poll-392/ Last updated: 2026-10-06T21:15:00.000Z Take our Daily Opinion Poll and see how your views compare to other readers and then share the poll on social media. By sharing the poll you will help even more readers to discover *The Good Oil.* --- ### This Is Gaslighting 101 URL: https://goodoil.news/this-is-gaslighting-101/ Last updated: 2026-10-06T21:00:29.000Z > *Documentary maker Maclain Way heard about* [*Rachael Gunn, aka Raygun,*](https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/business%5Fmedia/527143/raygun-s-first-interview-the-energy-and-vitriol-that-people-had-was-pretty-alarming?ref=goodoil.news) *in much the same way as the rest of the world – as a viral meme.* > > *But when he got the chance to make a film about the Australian b-girl, it was an opportunity to delve more deeply into the modern phenomena of viral fame, he told RNZ’s Saturday Morning.* > > *“That you can do something, maybe something somewhat innocuous, get filmed, and then overnight you go from someone that no one knows your name to suddenly the next day everyone in the world in some ways knows your name,” he says.* > > *Fortunately for Maclain and his filmmaker brother Chapman, rather than hide under a rock, Gunn wanted to tell her story.* Of course she did. > *I think we just wanted to talk to someone who lived that visceral viral storm.* Let me stop here for and say she got everything she deserved. > *\[…\] Competing in Paris against three others, Raygun showcased moves that paid homage to her home country, including a sprinkler dance and a kangaroo hop.* > > *But she lost 18-0 in all three rounds and became the subject of online mockery almost immediately.* No, what she did is embarrass Australia. > *Maclain found Gunn to be “open and honest” about the experience, he says.* > > *“…the ups, the downs, the pain of it, the excitement of it, things that she thought were great and fun. I think that she expressed confusion in a way that I empathised with.* > > *“My opinion of the 2024 Olympics is that it was the Raygun Olympics”, he says.* > > *“I’m talking about the entire story of the Olympics over here was Raygun. I think in a way, that was fascinating to us.”* Jesus wept. But it carries on. > *“Those Olympic rings, those are the most iconic brand in all of sport. For a break dancer from Australia to come and swallow up as much press and oxygen as the coverage on her allowed was just mind-boggling to us.”* > > *He got to dive into the world of TikTok and algorithms, he says, for the first time as a filmmaker.* > > *“I was stunned at the echo chamber on TikTok in a way that I really did not have an understanding of before I made this documentary.* > > *“Where you have one person say one thing and maybe it’s funny, maybe it’s actually a genuinely funny thing that gets a laugh or a giggle out of you and it’s something to do with Raygun, but then you get 60 copycat versions of it and it becomes this dystopian TikTok echo chamber.”* > > *Something about Raygun, her uniform and her break moves hit the algorithm hard, he says.* Right, sure, she’s the victim here. > *“That just made this thing explode so much bigger than anyone could have ever, ever expected.”* > > *Gunn had little expectation that she would do well in Paris, he says.* > > *“If someone said, ‘hey, what’s the thing that was the most unexpected thing about making this documentary?’ To me, it was honestly Rachael’s awareness of how bad she was going to do at the Olympics.”* Then why did she go? > *Gunn was in it for the love of breaking, he says.* > > *\[…\] He never understood just what it was that caused the massive, sneering online pile-on, he says.* > > *“There really wasn’t a crime committed here. As someone who has made true crime documentaries, what Rachael did on the scale of bad to not, she didn’t do anything really that bad on a general scale of criminal behaviour.”* > > *He became close Gunn and her husband Sammy Free while making the film, he says.* > > *“Sammy was still a little nervous about doing this, maybe necessarily a documentary like this, given that his wife had endured what she had endured not that long ago.”* That explains a lot. > *Gunn was more “foot forward”, he says.* > > *“I want to be given an opportunity to explain how this happened and how it got there. And also put hopefully put to rest some baseless conspiracy theories that I somehow cheated my way into this. I think that was important to Rachael.”* Imagine if I got picked for the All Blacks despite not knowing how to catch a rugby ball and run fast. This is the level of incompetence we are talking about here. Despite no concrete evidence, that she cheated her way into the Olympics is a pretty reasonable thing to say. Rachael Gunn is not a nice person. I say that based on the fact that she sued a production, based, as far as I can remember, on copyright breach of her “kangaroo” move, or something like that. She’s also very smart. You can’t help but think that everything was pre-planned and that she deliberately made a mockery of herself so that she would go viral. But the saddest part of all this, and what got many people angry, is that the other contestants were incredible. If you watched them you’ll know what I mean. It’s very difficult to believe that there wasn’t at least one Aussie who matched or came close to the calibre of those contestants. Someone whose spot Rachael Gunn stole. Source: [https://www.rnz.co.nz/life/screens/movies/paris-2024-was-the-raygun-olympics-says-doco-maker](https://www.rnz.co.nz/life/screens/movies/paris-2024-was-the-raygun-olympics-says-doco-maker?ref=goodoil.news) ### Your Daily Ten@10 - 2026/185 URL: https://goodoil.news/your-daily-ten-10-2026-185/ Last updated: 2026-10-06T21:00:18.000Z **This is edition 2026/185 of the *Ten@10* newsletter.** Hi all, This is the Ten@10, where I collate and summarise ten news items you generally won't see in the mainstream media. Enjoy! --- ![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!7oQf!,w_1200,h_675,c_fill,f_jpg,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep,g_auto/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F52f405fa-ee0e-4636-a970-ef0197394380_1516x1112.png) ## 1\. Democracy Briefing: Labour is reneging on its pay equity promise *Bryce Edwards - The Democracy Project* - 💬 Chris Hipkins called the coalition cancelling pay equity claims under urgency "probably the most reprehensible thing I have seen in my time as a member of Parliament", accusing ministers of "robbing Paula to pay Paul". - 💵 Labour's fiscal plan funds a $4-an-hour interim rise for about 65,000 care and support workers, costing roughly $2.5 billion. Edwards says that is real money, but the remaining claims get no identified or ring-fenced fund. - 🔄 After Budget 2025 Hipkins promised to set aside funding. By 29 September he said pay equity "won't be a specific line item", which the Herald's Jamie Ensor called a U-turn. Barbara Edmonds then promised a "sufficient contingency", but by Sunday there was no separate contingency either. - 📊 Labour instead points to $10.5 billion of unallocated spending over four years, which Hipkins calls "plenty of headroom". - ⚖️ The PSA and NZNO say completed work showed care and support workers were owed rises of 24 to 38 per cent. 1News described Labour's $4 as about half the roughly $8 an hour unions pushed for, and there is no back pay. NZNO: "a pay rise isn't pay equity". - 🏥 The 33 claims extinguished by the coalition covered about 180,000 workers across health, education, early childhood, universities, libraries and the public service. - 🧮 On Thomas Coughlan's arithmetic, if the earlier $11 billion costing is a fair guide, about 80 per cent of Labour's $10.5 billion headroom would go on pay equity, leaving about $2 billion over four years for rising costs everywhere except health, "a near funding freeze". - 🗳️ Edwards says a Labour government will have to choose between keeping the pay equity promise and freezing funding across much of the state, and voters are entitled to know which before 7 November. - 💡 Takeaway (free preview, then a paywall; isFreemail=false): the free half is substantial. Paid sections he lists include how pay equity gets watered down, Labour having been here before, and the unions needing to turn up the heat. [Read More](https://www.democracyproject.org.nz/p/democracy-briefing-labour-is-reneging?ref=goodoil.news) --- ![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!XPGm!,w_1200,h_675,c_fill,f_jpg,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep,g_auto/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F5ac8953f-0f93-42ef-a68b-9a5774ed0e4a_1920x1080.png) ## 2\. Overhangs & Split Votes: A Double Cliff-Hanger For New Zealand *Penny Marie and Paul Mathews - Penny Marie NZ* - 🗳️ The split-vote strategy, they write, is electorate vote for the National candidate and party vote for NZ First or ACT, which they say gives the right bloc two routes to victory. - 🟤 Te Pāti Māori led the way, telling supporters for months to split their vote. This week it doubled down, saying it only wants the electorate vote, with a push for the diverted party vote to go to the Greens. - 📉 With an aggregate party vote of 2 per cent, they say Te Pāti Māori would win two more seats than its party vote entitles it to if it holds its four seats, so a party vote for it is wasted. - 📊 Their table, from election2026.nz as at 1 October, using Sainte-Laguë and assuming 1 per cent wasted vote, puts the left bloc in position to win. - 🔢 On 28.7 per cent National would be entitled to 35 seats. It holds 44 electorates now and, they say, looks likely to win about 38, with commentators suggesting 36 to 40\. That would give a three-seat overhang but still leave the left on 63 and the right on 62 in a 125-seat House. - 🛣️ Route one: win more electorates. Win 39 and it is a hung parliament at 63 each; win 40 and the right has 64\. They name close races such as Wigram. - 🔀 Route two: divert party votes. If National supporters divert 2 per cent, National keeps its electorates, and if NZ First rises to 11.1 and ACT to 10.5, they say that adds two list seats for the right, enough to govern. - ⚠️ They say National, unlike Te Pāti Māori, is not encouraging supporters to split, and that no credible pollster or analyst expects the upsurge its two-ticks strategy needs. - 💡 Takeaway: in their overhang scenario a party vote for National is a wasted vote, and a split vote makes both votes count. [Read More](https://pennymarie.substack.com/p/overhangs-and-split-votes-a-double) --- ![](https://www.oliviapierson.org/uploads/4/2/4/4/42440849/editor/screen-shot-2026-10-06-at-9-50-54-am.png?1791233492) ## 3\. New Zealand - Beyond the Boats Invading our Mother Country *Olivia Pierson - OliviaPierson.org* - 🐺 Pierson opens by saying the only people left with political zeal are, in her words, wolves looking to loot the country, naming the Greens, Labour, Te Pāti Māori, the Opportunity Party "and the Islamic interest that travels openly in their company". - 🔁 She calls New Zealand a follower nation that takes its ideas from the UN, Australia and Britain, with politicians who owe themselves to the polls. - 🇬🇧 "We are not a Pacific invention," she writes. New Zealand is British in law, language and inherited liberties, so the mother country is no foreign parable. - ⛵ She accuses UK Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood of speaking about women in the small boats while, she says, the traffic is mostly men aged 18 to 40 from Iran, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Eritrea, about three-quarters of it. - 🔥 She cites Rotherham, Oxford, Glasgow and Ireland, says France is "literally on fire" from the same importation, and asks why Britain tolerates the nightly boats from France. - 🏛️ Closer to home, she says Labour's Phil Twyford, who she says would get the immigration portfolio if Labour wins, told a room of migration agents last month that the debate was a "dumpster fire" of right-wing populists demonising migrants. - ⭐ She dismisses most politicians as offering the same old thing, "apart from Winston Peters and NZ First, the best of the crop". - 🏺 Any party seeking the votes of a Western free people must, she argues, be nationalist at heart, drawing on Greek reason and Christianity, the inheritance she credits with ending slavery and letting women walk alone at night. - 💡 Takeaway: Pierson says no one should vote for a politician who cannot speak to what she calls the loss that has happened in Britain. [Read More](https://www.oliviapierson.org/blog/in-new-zealand-beyond-the-boats-invading-our-mother-country?ref=goodoil.news) --- ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/images--10-.jpeg) ## 4\. There’s the Bloody Ball. Use it! *Peter Allan Williams - Peter's Substack* - 🏉 Williams recalls the 1985 Ranfurly Shield challenge: Canterbury trailed Auckland 24-0 at half time, and coach Alex "Grizz" Wyllie told them "there's the bloody ball. Use it!" They lost 28-23 but were in it to the end. - 📉 National is behind 24-nil, he says, writing between the RNZ-Reid Research poll (Labour 30.8, National 25.9) and a 1News-Verian poll he expected to show little change from 28. - 🗺️ The ball is the electorates. National holds 44, and on a 28 per cent party vote it would be entitled to 34 seats. - ⚠️ Most vulnerable, he says: Banks Peninsula (majority 396), New Lynn (1,013), West Coast Tasman (1,017), Hutt South (1,332), Mt Roskill (1,564) and Wairarapa (2,816). - 🎯 Chances against the run of play: Wigram after boundary changes, Candace Kinser in Auckland Central, and Melissa Lee just behind in Mt Albert. - 🪧 In the nine or ten key seats, including East Coast (majority 3,199), he wants Simeon Brown to pull down hoardings with Luxon and Willis and push the candidate vote instead. - 🤝 He suggests NZ First and ACT candidates chase only the party vote to clear the way for Katie Milne on the West Coast, Mike Butterick in Wairarapa, Melissa Lee in Mt Albert and Tracy Summerfield in Wigram, and use Bishop's profile in Hutt South. - 🔢 National needs at least 40 electorates, he writes, and must hope ACT and NZ First get 25 between them. The RNZ poll has them on 24, which might be enough in a 127-seat House, before any Te Pāti Māori overhang. - 💡 Takeaway: Williams says National can kiss the Treasury benches goodbye unless it changes its game plan. It is almost too late, but there is time, just. [Read More](https://peterallanwilliams.substack.com/p/theres-the-bloody-ball-use-it) --- ![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!xxTr!,w_1200,h_675,c_fill,f_jpg,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep,g_auto/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F9b45e4f1-2f8f-4cde-9d53-7f0a825ed097_1766x917.png) ## 5\. Interviewing Chloe. *Chris Trotter - Chris Trotter* - 🧭 The free subtitle states: "The Greens can opt for materialism or irrationalism, but they can't forever attempt to accommodate both." - 📺 Trotter starts with the YouTube channel Public Interest, run by young Wellington barrister and journalist Ollie Neas, calling the name a brave choice. - 🎙️ Neas's latest discussion is with Greens co-leader Chloe Swarbrick, who, Trotter says, as always mounts a strong defence of herself and her party. - 🥊 In the 54th Parliament, he writes, only Act's David Seymour consistently showed the intellectual chops and ideological dexterity to best her. - 😤 Christopher Luxon, he says, has relied on cheap red-baiting and bar-room bluster in almost every encounter with her. - 👔 Chris Hipkins, in Trotter's telling, treats her as a promising mid-level manager who first needs to learn who is, and is not, the boss. - 🔒 The free preview ends there, about 200 words in. The rest needs a paid subscription or a 7-day free trial. - 💡 Takeaway (thin free preview): Trotter's argument about the Greens choosing between materialism and irrationalism is in the paid part only. [Read More](https://christrotter418256.substack.com/p/interviewing-chloe) --- ![](https://www.spiked-online.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/france-riots-1536x864.jpg) ## 6\. Why the French school riots are a taste of the chaos to come *Jeremy Stubbs - spiked* - ⛪ Stubbs contrasts about 800,000 people at Pope Leo XIV's open-air mass in Paris with the week of violence that followed his departure. - 🏫 School protests that began on 18 September in Créteil spread nationally. By the end of last week more than 1,000 lycées and collèges were affected and more than 5,000 people detained, mostly minors. - 🚑 Over 300 police were injured last Thursday alone, by which time 65 teachers and principals and 170 pupils had also been hurt. A lycée named after Nelson Mandela in Nantes was ravaged by fire, and a collège in Metz suffered a similar fate. - 🎆 Rioters used fireworks fired from tubes, aerosol cans thrown into fires, knives, hammers, baseball bats, Molotov cocktails and hydrochloric acid. He also says some officers deployed had little riot experience and mistakes were made. - 📚 Pupils first protested teacher shortages, decaying buildings, university applications and overwork, with union prompting. Stubbs notes the state is broke, and that poorer areas such as Seine-Saint-Denis already get more education money. - 🚩 He says the movement was hijacked: the main union behind it, the Union syndicale lycéenne, is far left, and the slogans ran from decolonising education to Gaza and anti-Zionism, which he says descended into antisemitism. - 🏛️ On Tuesday 40 La France Insoumise representatives joined protests. Seine-Saint-Denis mayor Bally Bagayoko was filmed dancing beside a burning wheelie bin, and the Paris region president says she will bill him €100,000. - 🗳️ With polls predicting a Marine Le Pen win next year, he cites Mathilde Panot vowing never to accept "fascism taking power, even legally" and Bagayoko predicting a "popular insurrection" if she wins. - 💡 Takeaway: Stubbs sees LFI's role as a dress rehearsal for a Le Pen victory, and says the worst may be yet to come. [Read More](https://www.spiked-online.com/2026/10/05/why-the-french-school-riots-are-a-taste-of-the-chaos-to-come/?ref=goodoil.news) --- ![](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/7b14b8_6a8b6e67a31b4feb8b1c60d8cae0a2b6~mv2.jpg/v1/fill/w_416,h_237,al_c,lg_1,q_80/7b14b8_6a8b6e67a31b4feb8b1c60d8cae0a2b6~mv2.jpg) ## 7\. RICHARD PREBBLE: A grumpy old man *Richard Prebble - Brash & Mitchell* - 🎓 Prebble recalls being 16, when only he and his friend Jim Middleton (later the ABC's chief political correspondent in Canberra) cared about politics. He was running campaigns before he could vote. - 🗳️ He opposed lowering the voting age to 18 at the time, and says nothing since has changed his mind. For most of our history, 21 was the accepted age. - 💸 This year, he writes, taxpayers are spending $18.1 million encouraging people to enrol. 166,746 people aged 18 to 24 have yet to do so. - 👴 By contrast, 103.25 per cent of the estimated eligible 70-plus population is enrolled. "There are more of us than the Commission realised." - 🏘️ Labour plans to let 16-year-olds vote in local elections, and he says he will lose his non-resident ratepayer vote. - ⚖️ The Supreme Court ruled that denying 16-year-olds the vote is inconsistent with the Bill of Rights Act ban on age discrimination. On that logic, he asks, why not 14-year-olds? - 👨 His father thought only those not dependent on the state should vote, and that receiving National Super should disqualify him. Prebble cites IRD research that just 10 per cent of income taxpayers pay more in tax than they receive in transfers. - 💡 Takeaway: he asks how it is moral for a 16-year-old who has never paid rates to vote for higher rates on him. "Democracy is the tyranny of the majority. But a tyranny of 16-year-olds?" [Read More](https://www.brashandmitchell.com/post/richard-prebble-a-grumpy-old-man?ref=goodoil.news) --- ![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!L6nP!,w_1200,h_675,c_fill,f_jpg,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep,g_auto/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F6923b0e5-6c4d-4348-9984-8ca42d6a4700_1004x591.png) ## 8\. Europe is in trouble *Alex Berenson - Unreported Truths* - 🇪🇺 Berenson says Spain's government has just collapsed, the French are rioting, and anti-immigration conservatives keep gaining ground in Germany. - 🇮🇹 Of continental Europe's four dominant countries, only Italy has a stable government: Giorgia Meloni's conservatives, which he says has lasted longer than any other in Italy's post-war history and just banned burqas for students. - 🏛️ He cites government spending at 57 per cent of French GDP, 50 per cent in Italy and Germany, and 38 per cent in the United States. - 🧑‍💻 That bureaucracy makes starting and growing companies hard, he argues, especially in technology, where Europe missed the internet and social media era and barely figures in AI. - 🏭 He blames a decade of decarbonisation drives for super-high energy costs and middle-class factory jobs lost to China. - 📰 He quotes a New York Times profile of Meloni on Piombino, once a left and hard-line union stronghold, where her party has taken over as workers turned against globalisation, uncontrolled immigration and liberal elites. - ➡️ Despite Putin's war in Ukraine and Trump and JD Vance mocking Europe, he says Europe is steadily moving toward nationalist-populist conservatism, though it remains to be seen whether those parties will actually shrink the state. - 🇺🇸 Americans appear headed the other way for now, he says, over Trump's grifting and the Iran war stalemate's hit on the economy and petrol prices. - 💡 Takeaway: unless the left can grow economies rather than reshuffle what they make, Berenson says its gains will not last. Marked isFreemail=false, but the full post was readable. [Read More](https://alexberenson.substack.com/p/europe-is-in-trouble) --- ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/p-24430-osm.jpg) ## 9\. Stuff columnist kindles memories of the dunny man’s crucial work when he confesses to not knowing of “nightsoil” *Bob Edlin - Point of Order* - 🚽 Edlin recalls the dunny man, officially a nightsoil man, who emptied outdoor bucket toilets before sewerage, working at night to spare residents the sight and smell. - 📜 Cesspits were banned in the 1870s and nightsoil collections required, after sewage problems in fast-growing towns by the 1860s. - 🏘️ The service in Bluff, his home town, ended in the mid-1960s, but Kāinga in North Canterbury kept its night cart until 1986. - ✂️ In August the Government agreed to remove registration rules for 19 archaic "offensive trades", including fish curing, leather tanning, flax pulping and nightsoil collection, saving up to $2.26 million over 10 years. - 🔇 Edlin says Point of Order found no mainstream media report of the change, despite a Ministry for Regulation release. - 📰 He credits Stuff columnist Joel Maxwell with noticing it, in a column decrying fuel prices that called the Ministry for Regulation "as bogus and fantastical as Hogwarts academy" and joked, "I don't know what nightsoil is". - 🇮🇷 Maxwell wrote that the US president "lost the Iran war by the end of its first week". Edlin agrees the US has not won, but quotes Copilot saying no authoritative source says the US has lost. - 💡 Takeaway: Edlin suggests that claim is something a good editor, or dunny man, should have removed. Short piece, full text. [Read More](https://pointofordernz.wordpress.com/2026/10/06/stuff-columnist-kindles-memories-of-the-dunny-mans-crucial-work-when-he-confesses-to-not-knowing-of-nightsoil/?ref=goodoil.news) --- ![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!couY!,w_1200,h_675,c_fill,f_jpg,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep,g_auto/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F785ddf63-6dd4-441c-a2a6-7e9e04678d84_1024x682.jpeg) ## 10\. Why Is War Fever Spreading in Europe? *Martin Gurri - The Free Press* - 📰 The dek says leaders from London to Berlin are using Russian aggression as an excuse to delegitimise the right-wing parties challenging their grip on power. - 🚨 Gurri writes that warnings of an approaching war with Russia have swept Europe in recent weeks, from presidents, opposition figures and the news media alike, in a strident, almost panicked tone. - 🎖️ He starts with Britain. Chief of the defence staff Sir Richard Knighton called this "the most dangerous period that I have known", saying Putin's willingness to target neighbouring states threatens the whole of NATO, including the UK. - 🚪 Armed Forces Minister Al Carns, "mixing his metaphors" in Gurri's words, said "the shadow of war is knocking on Europe's door." - 🪦 Former NATO deputy supreme allied commander Sir Richard Shirreff warned that without stronger European deterrence, "your sons and grandchildren and daughters are going to be facing a war with Russia", and foresaw Commonwealth war graves across Eastern Europe. - 🫡 Jacob Rees-Mogg, whom Gurri calls a Tory gadfly, urged Britons to "do their duty" in a war even if some "have to die", or "the country will be taken over by another country." - 📺 The BBC joined in, Gurri says, with the headline: "War may be coming. Are we psychologically ready?" - 🔒 The free preview ends there, after about 230 words of British examples. The rest of Europe, and his argument about right-wing parties, is behind The Free Press paywall. - 💡 Takeaway (thin free preview): what you can read is a catalogue of British war warnings. Gurri's case that the alarm is being used against populist challengers is for subscribers. [Read More](https://www.thefp.com/p/war-spreading-europe-russia-ukraine?ref=goodoil.news) --- ## What our members are saying about Ten@10 **Elizabeth** These articles are compulsory reading for me and the perfect addition to the usual list of Goodoil items! **Lynne** Absolutely brilliant to receive these current and thought provoking articles. **Jonathan** Just wanted to let you know that I’m loving this new 10@10\. Much appreciated from someone who chooses to read/watch almost NO mainstream media. **Murray** Cam, relish your output as the newspaper in Christchurch is so intent on non news. Thankyou **Fred** Thanks for Ten @ Ten, really enjoy reading it.Keep it up. All the best, keep healthy. **Jocko** Wonderful info not otherwise available in NZ. More power to your elbow! Thanks. ### A Super Policy URL: https://goodoil.news/a-super-policy/ Last updated: 2026-10-06T20:30:23.000Z [**Richard Prebble**](https://richardprebble.substack.com/p/a-super-policy) *Columnist, former cabinet minister and ACT Party leader.* Opening ACT’s election campaign, David Seymour made the most consequential policy pledge of the election. All the other parties are proposing, in one form or another, to make KiwiSaver compulsory. National proposes compulsory KiwiSaver, eventually taking 12 per cent of remuneration – six per cent from the employee and six per cent from the employer. ACT is promising to keep KiwiSaver voluntary but make its investment earnings tax free. Seymour gave the example of a 25-year-old nurse earning $100,000. National’s answer to providing her with an adequate retirement income is to make her save more. ACT’s answer is to stop taxing her KiwiSaver earnings. Seymour calculates that, on existing settings, making her KiwiSaver earnings tax free would leave our nurse with an extra $217,366 at age 65. As the employer contribution ultimately comes out of our nurse’s total remuneration, at eight per cent rather than 12 per cent, over her working life she would take home well over $100,000 more. Seymour has a policy that will not just appeal to the employed. I am over 65\. As I am now retired, I could not recover from a serious investment loss. I need a reasonable return from a conservative investment. Unlike our nurse, I can put money into KiwiSaver and take it out again. If KiwiSaver earnings are tax free, why would I leave long-term savings in a bank deposit where the interest is taxed rather than put them in a tax-free KiwiSaver fund? Seymour may have devised the policy as an alternative to compulsory saving, but I think he has a winner for the retired. I suspect he has also made taxing interest on bank savings – a hated tax – unsustainable. Is making KiwiSaver earnings tax free the election game changer? This article was originally published by [I’ve Been Thinking](https://richardprebble.substack.com/p/a-super-policy). ### The 10 Types of Voter URL: https://goodoil.news/the-10-types-of-voter/ Last updated: 2026-10-06T20:15:39.000Z People vote in different ways for different reasons. _This post is for paying subscribers only._ ### The Left Are Out to Lunch URL: https://goodoil.news/the-left-are-out-to-lunch/ Last updated: 2026-10-06T20:00:54.000Z I don’t mean having left the building to buy lunch, rather they are exhibiting a state of confusion and are largely out of touch with reality. The left treat every election like one huge child’s birthday party. The treats, in the form of giveaways are handed out and, in many cases, are free or have no prices attached. These ‘treats’ are nothing more than bribes designed to hoodwink the less aware in society to vote for them. The greatest drawback for the left is their single focus. Their entire agenda is built around tax. It’s basic to everything they come up with and finance is not their strong point. It would be no surprise if even AI found their financial calculations difficult to understand. Their figures for the ‘treats’ never add up, hence some policies, or parts thereof, are presented with no price tags, because there is a shortfall in funding. It is misleading to promise something you don’t have the money to pay for. Nicola Willis has so far tallied up about $18 billion dollars of uncosted policies. That is believable because Labour does this every election. Nothing ever adds up. Free this and that is a complete aberration. I don’t necessarily blame Barbara Edmonds. Her mistake was joining the Labour Party, to whose policy designs she is now wedded. Edmonds accused National and Willis of “making up lies to distract the public. She should put the calculator down and stop picking numbers out of thin air.” Hang on Barbara, if she’s got a calculator in her hand, then, she’s not plucking numbers out of thin air. Edmonds went on: “The definition of stupidity is doing the same thing over and over again.” Take a look in the mirror, Barbara. Labour’s target of ‘maintaining’ spending and revenue at 33 per cent of GDP has now changed to a ‘ceiling’. I’m told if you go to the website to check the change of language an ‘error’ page comes up. I bet it does. The Greens are equally ‘off the rails’. They’re not exactly *On the Buses* either (anyone remember that British comedy?), although they would like everyone else to be. They want the diesel contraption that runs empty trains between Auckland and Hamilton extended to Tauranga, an overnight sleeper service from Auckland to Wellington, and to bring back the Southerner service from Christchurch to Dunedin. Apart from the cost the Greens want carbon emissions belching out all over the country. Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch will receive mass transit systems. Public transport will be improved everywhere, in smaller cities and towns as well as major metropolitan areas, by funding local councils any shortfall they might need. Even more. Public transport will be free for children and the vulnerable (we’re all vulnerable, fiscally, with this sort of nonsense) and adult fares will be capped at two dollars. Paying for it all is but a minor detail to the Greens. This is nothing more than a list of ‘nice to haves’. These dreams of the left are but nightmares to the right when it comes to paying for them. This is a far cry from Edmond’s commitment to balance the books by 2028/9\. If you add up the cost of just those policies, more borrowing will be required. Start with Labour and the Greens and then add in the Māori Party and Opportunity...and there is no other answer. The Māori Party want an indigenous takeover of the country but specifically want to ensure the wealthy pay their fair share (a little research would tell them that is already happening and then some). They would spend that money on housing, health, education and whānau support. I suggest most would be spent on ‘whānau’ ‘support’. The Opportunity Party want to ‘Bring Prices Down’, ‘Clean Up Politics’, ‘Fix the Health System, ‘Revive Ocean Health’ and ‘Restore Climate Credibility’. And ‘Honouring the Treaty’. If that means returning it to its original meaning and purpose, then I’m all for it. But I doubt that’s the case. David Farrar on *Kiwiblog* outlined how much extra spending the individual parties on the left would incur: LABOUR – $50.5 billion OPPORTUNTY – $219.4 billion GREENS – $236.7 billion MAORI PARTY – INCALCULABLE So overall you can see the left are very much ‘out to lunch’. It’s no small lunch either, more like a costly smorgasbord buffet. How can Edmonds possibly manage to balance the books with ‘treats’ for just about everyone. It can’t be done, which is the message Nicola Willis is running with. It is a message that cannot be stated too clearly or too often. ### Quick Hit: Pharmac Said No in May URL: https://goodoil.news/quick-hit-pharmac-said-no-in-may/ Last updated: 2026-10-06T19:30:42.000Z National wants $604m more for medicines, paid for mostly by a 10 per cent aid cut with the Pacific protected. In May its own budget turned down Pharmac’s request of about $800m and gave it $54m. _This post is for subscribers on the VIP tier only._ ### The Battle Over the Waitangi Tribunal URL: https://goodoil.news/the-battle-over-the-waitangi-tribunal/ Last updated: 2026-10-06T19:30:26.000Z When the Treaty of Waitangi settlement process was introduced by Norman Kirk’s Labour government in 1975, it was framed as a means of dealing with ongoing injustices. The Waitangi Tribunal was established as a permanent commission of inquiry to investigate contemporary claims that the Crown had breached the Treaty. In 1985 David Lange’s Labour government extended the jurisdiction of the Tribunal back to 1840 as a way of resolving past grievances and healing division so the country could move forward as one. How wrong they were. As the number of historic settlements increased, so too did applications. When Helen Clark’s Labour government closed off historic claims in 2008, thousands were clogging the pipeline. Since that time, successive governments have progressively dealt with the claims, many of which had been settled multiple times by earlier administrations. In 2012, journalist and author Mike Butler researched the settlements to establish the cost to taxpayers. In his *Treaty Transparency Report* published [HERE](https://www.nzcpr.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/TreatyTransparencyResearchReportJanuary20132.pdf?ref=goodoil.news), the total financial redress for the 28 settlements identified was $1.7 billion in 2012 dollars. Mike has now updated his report: *Treaty Transparency – 1975 to 2026* is posted on the NZCPR website [HERE](https://www.nzcpr.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/A-Giant-Treaty-Rort-Treaty-Transparency-1975-2026.pdf?ref=goodoil.news). The report finds that 115 settlements have now been made, with the total financial redress paid by taxpayers amounting to over $5 billion by June 30, 2026. As he conducted his research, Mike Butler’s concerns led him to question the fundamental legitimacy of the whole Treaty settlement process. He asks whether the Treaty grievance juggernaut, with its manufactured Treaty principles, amounts to a rort on the New Zealand public that has grown beyond the wildest expectations of those who set it up and is now too large and too deeply embedded for any government to dismantle. He explains: > What gradually became apparent, while looking at this for months, is that without the treaty principles there would be no historical breaches of the Treaty by the Crown, no financial redress totalling $5 billion, no way to mandate co-governance, and no way to direct authorities to cave in to specific Māori claims and requests. > > *Treaty principles* have allowed the treaty document to move from an historical text into enforceable modern legislation. They have transformed law, enabled the Treaty settlement process, and imposed a bicultural structure on the public sector where ‘partnership, participation, and protection’ are the foundational buzz words. In short, these principles have created the situation we have today. He explains that once claims back to 1840 were permitted by an amendment to the *Treaty of Waitangi Act* in 1985, the Waitangi Tribunal wrote extensive reports that reframed everything that had happened since 1840 in terms of Treaty principles compiled by one of their members. By reframing history through these invented principles, everything the government had done since 1840 as New Zealand’s sovereign authority was able to be reinterpreted as a Treaty breach requiring massive financial redress. As Mike Butler says, “A giant treaty rort? It’s over to you to decide.” Tribes have grown rich from the proceeds of this lucrative billion-dollar taxpayer-funded Treaty settlement gravy train. In their latest Iwi Investment Report, the economics consultancy TDB Advisory has assessed the 2025 asset value of the country’s top 10 iwi. It [shows](https://www.tdb.co.nz/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/TDB-Iwi-Investment-Report-2025.pdf?ref=goodoil.news) Waikato-Tainui topping the charts with a value of $2.4 *billion*, followed by Ngāi Tahu on $2.2 *billion*, Auckland’s Ngāti Whatua on $1.5 *billion*, Ngāti Toa $1 *billion*, Tūhoe $453 million, Ngāti Porou $310 million, Raukawa $274 million, Ngāti Awa $178 million, Ngāti Pāhauwera $103 million, with Ngāpuhi, which has still not negotiated a settlement, worth $112 million. The accumulation of mega wealth and assets by Māori business development corporations can be attributed in part to the successful track record of aggressive political advocacy by tribal leaders. Using the Māori seats as leverage, in 1975 they persuaded Labour to set up the Treaty settlement process, and to extend it in 1985. In 2005, to maximise their wealth, they persuaded Labour to [change](https://www.nzcpr.com/maori-privilege/?ref=goodoil.news) the law to allow tribal business corporations to register as charities and avoid paying tax – sidestepping the ‘public benefit’ test in charity law that normally prevents private profits enriching relatives. Not content with the giant gains flowing into their coffers, tribal leaders are now pursuing an even bigger prize. Under the banner of *Matike Mai* – a constitutional model of parallel governance based on recent Waitangi Tribunal findings that Māori did *not* cede sovereignty to the Crown – they are seeking to convince New Zealanders that a new written constitution based on the Treaty would unite the country. While the reporting of *Matike Mai* makes it sound relatively innocuous, if adopted it would represent a constitutional coup – tribal cunning outmanoeuvring political naivety since the introduction of a new constitution would result in parliamentary sovereignty being replaced by judicial supremacy. Instead of our democratically elected Parliament being the country’s supreme lawmaker, the unelected and unaccountable judges of the highest court would hold ultimate power – not only to elevate Māori custom or tikanga above the common law, but to strike down any legislation they deemed in breach of their extremist interpretation of the Treaty. The radicalisation of the Waitangi Tribunal itself has been central to these developments. As chair of the tribunal in 2004, Joe Williams – now Sir Joe and a Supreme Court justice – fundamentally transformed its operation from a statutory focus on whether the Crown had been a ‘good governor’ into one that questioned the legitimacy of the Crown’s right to govern. This led to the tribunal overturning its long-established finding that under the Treaty of Waitangi, Māori ceded sovereignty to the Crown – to conclude they did not. It was that bombshell Wai 1040 report in 2014 that created the ideological framework for the development of *Matike Mai*. The danger to New Zealand posed by the tribunal does not stop there. In 2024 they launched a *Constitutional Kaupapa Inquiry*, Wai 3300, to investigate over 300 claims alleging the Crown had systematically breached Treaty principles relating to governance and the electoral system. As well as questioning the relationship between *tikanga* and statutory law, and exploring models for separate Māori representation, the inquiry is challenging the Crown’s fundamental premise of sovereignty in order to recast it as neither settled nor legitimate. In other words, the Waitangi Tribunal will likely use this inquiry as an official, state-sanctioned launchpad for radical constitutional transformation – especially if a formal recommendation is issued to the Crown to permanently align New Zealand’s constitution with *Te Tiriti o Waitangi*. Our country has been down the path towards radical constitutional change before. In 2011, at the behest of their Māori Party coalition partner, John Key’s National government launched a constitutional review, to test whether the concept of a new Treaty-based constitution for New Zealand would find favour. With the public overwhelmingly [rejecting](https://www.nzcpr.com/a-house-divided/?ref=goodoil.news) the concept, separatists have been working overtime to devise alternative ways to achieve their goal of extinguishing parliamentary sovereignty. It now appears that, largely under the radar of public awareness, three coordinated initiatives are driving constitutional transformation: the Labour government’s *He Puapua* agenda delivered a political roadmap for implementing tribal rule by 2040; the Maori elite’s *Matike Mai* has provided the constitutional model; and the Waitangi Tribunal’s Wai 3300 is expected to legitimise these ideas by directly challenging parliamentary sovereignty and our electoral system. By shifting far beyond its original purpose of investigating historical grievances, and by extending its reach into constitutional, political, and governance matters, this subversive body is now challenging the supremacy of parliament – the cornerstone of New Zealand’s Westminster democracy – undermining the principle that ultimate power rests with voters. An [insight](https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/why-ive-resigned-from-the-waitangi-tribunal-richard-prebble/H5DFP7A23NHATCLOGQI7V3YXQI/?ref=goodoil.news) into this agenda was recently provided by the former ACT Party leader and Labour government minister Richard Prebble, who was appointed to the Waitangi Tribunal in late 2024, only to resign less than five months later: > I have resigned as a member of the Waitangi Tribunal. The Treaty is our founding document; two peoples peacefully agreeing to form a nation. The Treaty is clear. The Crown offered its protection, guaranteed property rights and extended the rights of British citizenship. In return, Māori ceded sovereignty, agreed to the Crown having a right of pre-emption and accepted the duties of citizenship. > > The Waitangi Tribunal now says there are two treaties, one in English and another in te reo, that are not translations of each other. Accordingly, the tribunal has turned the Treaty upside down and ruled: Sovereignty was *not* ceded… After reading the tribunal’s internal strategic plan, which Richard believes will expand its mandate beyond the authority of parliament, turn the Treaty into a socialist manifesto, and foster racial division, he concluded: > In the coalition agreement, National and New Zealand First agreed: ‘Amend the Waitangi Tribunal legislation to refocus the scope, purpose and nature of its inquiries back to the original intent of that legislation’… In my letter of resignation, I have recommended the government implement its coalition agreement. Indeed, with amending the Waitangi Tribunal legislation a key commitment in the coalition agreement, during 2024 the terms of reference for an independent review of the *Treaty of Waitangi Act 1975* were developed, and in May 2025 an *Independent Technical Advisory Group* was appointed. Their report, with recommendations on how to refocus the tribunal back to its original intent, was delivered to the government in September last year. The coalition was expected to introduce legislation to parliament before Christmas. Things didn’t go according to plan as it became clear to both New Zealand First and ACT that minor bureaucratic reforms would not bring the Waitangi Tribunal back into line. Concerned the tribunal is now acting as a parallel authority that is threatening the legitimacy of our democratically elected government, ACT and NZ First have both announced election policies to dismantle it entirely. ACT is [planning](https://assets.nationbuilder.com/actnz/pages/37097/attachments/original/1788930341/Finish%5Fthe%5Fsettlements%5F%5Fwind%5Fup%5Fthe%5FWaitangi%5FTribunal%5FFINAL.pdf?ref=goodoil.news) to remove the tribunal’s power to inquire into contemporary claims and refocus its mandate onto resolving the remaining historical claims – after which it would be disestablished. New Zealand First, on the other hand, concerned about political interference, would [table](https://www.nzfirst.nz/winston%5Fpeters%5Fending%5Fthe%5Fwaitangi%5Fmake%5Fwork%5Findustry?ref=goodoil.news) legislation within 100 days of the election, to shut the tribunal down immediately and replace it with a temporary commission to complete the historical claims – after which, it too would be abolished. So, while ACT and New Zealand First regard the modern Waitangi Tribunal as a major threat to constitutional stability, both the Green Party and the Māori Party want to see it elevated into a far more influential role. The Green Party would [transform](https://www.greens.org.nz/manifesto%5F2026%5Fte%5Ftiriti%5Fo%5Fwaitangi?ref=goodoil.news) it from an advisory body into a powerful judicial institution whose rulings carry legal force. By giving the Waitangi Tribunal binding authority, the Crown would be legally required to act on its recommendations. In addition, the Greens would abolish the 2008 deadline for lodging historic claims and re-open the settlement process to allow claims on private land and conservation land. The Māori Party also wants to [transform](https://drive.google.com/file/d/12XBSiuPt6KrpmxoHovpWOhfrB5ngTYkY/view?ref=goodoil.news) the Waitangi Tribunal into a powerful judicial authority with recommendations legally binding on the Crown. By arguing that *Te Tiriti o Waitangi* is a living covenant that cannot be permanently ‘settled’, they also plan to re-open the claims process to introduce retrospective relativity clauses, reframe settlements as ongoing obligations, and implement a “Land Back” framework that would return Crown land, council land, conservation land, and private land to Māori. They also plan to implement *Matike Mai* in full, transforming the Waitangi Tribunal into a mechanism to advance Māori authority, parallel governance, and Treaty‑based constitutional change. While Labour supports expanding the tribunal’s contemporary jurisdiction, increasing its resourcing, and strengthening its influence over Crown policy, National believes its role should be narrowed and contained. In other words, this election has become a contest, not only over constitutional direction, but over the future of the Waitangi Tribunal and the Treaty settlement process. On one side stands the coalition, determined to complete the settlements and rein in or abolish the Tribunal. On the other side are parties intent on expanding its powers to radically advance the Māori sovereignty cause. This article was originally published by the [New Zealand Centre for Political Research](https://www.nzcpr.com/the-battle-over-the-waitangi-tribunal/?ref=goodoil.news). ### Luxon Is Finished, So Split Your Vote And Save The Coalition URL: https://goodoil.news/luxon-is-finished-so-split-your-vote-and-save-the-coalition/ Last updated: 2026-10-06T19:00:21.000Z National 25.9 per cent, its worst since 2020. Neither bloc gets to 61. Luxon survived two recent confidence votes and the party is paying for it. Vote National in the electorate, party vote ACT or NZ First. _This post is for paying subscribers only._ ### Good Oil General Debate URL: https://goodoil.news/good-oil-general-debate-841/ Last updated: 2026-10-06T18:00:29.000Z Good morning, welcome to our daily General Debate. Our evening General debate is called Backchat and will start at 6 pm. On General debate, you are encouraged as a commenter to share your own stories, discuss other news, bring NEW news, catch up with friends or make new friends with other commenters. To participate you’ll need to sign up for a [Disqus account](https://disqus.com/profile/signup/intent/?ref=goodoil.news) which is free, quick, and easy. All you need is an email address to register a username that suits you. On posts that are not articles such as this one, you do not have to stay ‘on topic’ but you do still need to follow our [commenting rules.](https://www.goodoil.news/commenting-and-moderation/?ref=goodoil.news) Please [read our rules ](https://goodoil.news/commenting-and-moderation/)before you start commenting on *The Good Oil* to avoid a temporary or permanent ban. To check if your ban might have been caused by Disqus, or to ask for a banning decision to be reviewed, email the voluntary **helpdesk** @ [**goodoil.news**](https://goodoil.news/) with your Disqus username in the subject line. Please be respectful and do not make demands. ### Face of the Day URL: https://goodoil.news/face-of-the-day-1597/ Last updated: 2026-10-06T17:30:40.000Z > [Hollywood actor Cliff Curtis ](https://www.stuff.co.nz/nz-news/361039294/hollywood-actor-involved-auckland-crash?ref=goodoil.news)was allegedly under the influence and driving recklessly when he crashed his Tesla on Auckland’s waterfront. > > The 58-year-old film star, who’s appeared in big screen blockbusters such as *Avatar*, *Once Were Warriors* and *Live Free or Die Hard*, has been summonsed to appear in the Auckland District Court on charges of reckless driving and driving with excess blood alcohol. > > Curtis was allegedly behind the wheel of a customised matte black Tesla that crashed into a parked taxi on the corner of Jellicoe and Halsey streets on September 23. > > A person had to be cut out of the taxi before being transported to hospital in a serious condition. Another person was also taken to hospital in a moderate condition, while at least one other person suffered minor injuries. > > Stuff [Read More](https://www.stuff.co.nz/nz-news/361042839/hollywood-actor-charged-drink-drinking-after-auckland-crash?ref=goodoil.news) ### The Good Oil Word of the Day URL: https://goodoil.news/the-good-oil-word-of-the-day-780/ Last updated: 2026-10-06T17:15:57.000Z The word for today is… inexorable (adjective) - : not to be persuaded, moved, or stopped : relentless Source : [Merriam-Webster](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/inexorable?ref=goodoil.news) Etymology : The Latin antecedent of inexorable is inexorabilis, which is itself a combination of the prefix in-, meaning "not," plus exorabilis, meaning "pliant" or "capable of being moved by entreaty." It's a fitting etymology for inexorable. You can beseech and implore until you're blue in the face, but that won't have any effect on something that's inexorable. Inexorable has been a part of the English language since the 1500s. Originally, it was often applied to people or sometimes to personified things, as in "deaf and inexorable laws." These days, it is usually applied to things, as in "inexorable monotony" or "an inexorable trend." In such cases, it essentially means "unyielding" or "inflexible." ***If you enjoyed this Good Oil word of the day please consider sharing it with your friends and, especially, your children.*** ### The Good Oil Daily Bible Verse URL: https://goodoil.news/the-good-oil-daily-bible-verse-490/ Last updated: 2026-10-06T17:00:31.000Z [Mark 7](https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Mark%207&version=KJV&ref=goodoil.news) **35** And straightway his ears were opened, and the string of his tongue was loosed, and he spake plain. ### Night Cap URL: https://goodoil.news/night-cap-748/ Last updated: 2026-10-06T08:00:48.000Z If you have a great Youtube, Rumble or Vimeo video to share send it to videos@goodoil.news [![CTA Image](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/01/cam-shirt2-1.png)](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) If you're loving this trusty, straight-up news on Kiwi politics and beyond, why not become a paid member, eh? Unlock exclusive yarns, podcasts, vids, and in-depth analysis—your support keeps independent journalism chugging along. Join today for just $5.00 per month and get the full good oil! [Learn more ](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) ### Election 2026: Green Party insists on pushing for wealth tax after high poll as Labour, National feud over costings URL: https://goodoil.news/election-2026-green-party-insists-on-pushing-for-wealth-tax-after-high-poll-as-labour-national-feud-over-costings/ Last updated: 2026-10-06T19:45:22.000Z Chlöe Swarbrick criticizes National's negative campaign tactics amid debates on fiscal plans and climate goals in New Zealand politics. **Source:** [nzherald.co.nz](https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/politics/election-2026-green-party-insists-on-pushing-for-wealth-tax-after-high-poll-as-labour-national-feud-over-costings/5I4QKZAQNNDPVOTC7TD7JH5ALQ/?ref=goodoil.news) *Re-published from the Centrist with permission* [Original article at The Centrist](https://centrist.nz/election-2026-green-party-insists-on-pushing-for-wealth-tax-after-high-poll-as-labour-nati-R0cHM6Ly?ref=goodoil.news) ### Taste Tuesday URL: https://goodoil.news/taste-tuesday-310/ Last updated: 2026-10-06T07:30:01.000Z If you have a great Youtube, Rumble or Vimeo video to share send it to videos@goodoil.news [![CTA Image](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/01/cam-shirt2-1.png)](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) If you're loving this trusty, straight-up news on Kiwi politics and beyond, why not become a paid member, eh? Unlock exclusive yarns, podcasts, vids, and in-depth analysis—your support keeps independent journalism chugging along. Join today for just $5.00 per month and get the full good oil! [Learn more ](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) ### New ACT Policy Removing Compulsory Karakia In Resource Consents URL: https://goodoil.news/new-act-policy-removing-compulsory-karakia-in-resource-consents/ Last updated: 2026-10-06T07:00:25.000Z If you have a great Youtube, Rumble or Vimeo video to share send it to videos@goodoil.news ### Lucy Rogers On NZ Against Hamas Protest Action This Week URL: https://goodoil.news/lucy-rogers-on-nz-against-hamas-protest-action-this-week/ Last updated: 2026-10-06T06:30:42.000Z If you have a great Youtube, Rumble or Vimeo video to share send it to videos@goodoil.news [![CTA Image](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/01/cam-shirt2-1.png)](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) If you're loving this trusty, straight-up news on Kiwi politics and beyond, why not become a paid member, eh? Unlock exclusive yarns, podcasts, vids, and in-depth analysis—your support keeps independent journalism chugging along. Join today for just $5.00 per month and get the full good oil! [Learn more ](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) ### The MSM Hate Hobson’s Pledge But Take Their Money URL: https://goodoil.news/the-msm-hate-hobsons-pledge-but-take-their-money/ Last updated: 2026-10-06T06:00:54.000Z If you have a great Youtube, Rumble or Vimeo video to share send it to videos@goodoil.news [![CTA Image](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/01/cam-shirt2-1.png)](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) If you're loving this trusty, straight-up news on Kiwi politics and beyond, why not become a paid member, eh? Unlock exclusive yarns, podcasts, vids, and in-depth analysis—your support keeps independent journalism chugging along. Join today for just $5.00 per month and get the full good oil! [Learn more ](https://goodoil.news/#/portal/signup) ### The Good Oil Daily Roundup URL: https://goodoil.news/the-good-oil-daily-roundup-764/ Last updated: 2026-10-06T05:30:52.000Z [](https://photos.google.com/u/1/photo/AF1QipN7Zp7NKe4smdZA9nAYud8CjsgjsQ-Bn7QyMo53?ref=goodoil.news) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/09/FB079723-E03E-4048-B156-2DDD456B4AD2_1_105_c.jpeg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/09/FB8E73D3-A956-4203-95FA-217540D6CA55_4_5005_c.jpeg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/09/882BFE57-9739-4A92-8E3D-D21AD980D50C_4_5005_c.jpeg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/09/F68AA780-C55D-4107-A24B-989D4A20F1C1.png) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/09/7CC191EA-C7B8-4D85-8581-ECB1D1094602.jpeg) ### Good Oil Backchat URL: https://goodoil.news/good-oil-backchat-842/ Last updated: 2026-10-06T05:00:04.000Z Good evening, welcome to **Backchat**. On Backchat, you are free to share your own stories, discuss other news or catch up with friends. To participate you’ll need to sign up for a [Disqus account ](https://disqus.com/profile/signup/intent/?ref=goodoil.news)which is free, quick, and easy. On posts that are not articles like this one, you do not have to stay ‘on topic’ but you do still need to follow our [commenting rules.](https://goodoil.news/commenting-and-moderation/) Please [read our rules ](https://www.goodoil.news/commenting-and-moderation/?ref=goodoil.news)before you start commenting on *The Good Oil* to avoid a temporary or permanent ban. NOTE: Moderation queries MUST be expressed VIA EMAIL and not by posting a comment. To check if your ban might have been caused by Disqus, or to ask for a banning decision to be reviewed, email the voluntary **helpdesk** @ [**goodoil.news**](https://goodoil.news/) with your Disqus username in the subject line. Please be respectful and do not make demands. ### The A-Z of Woke URL: https://goodoil.news/the-a-z-of-woke/ Last updated: 2026-10-06T03:30:56.000Z [**Richard Eldred**](https://dailysceptic.org/2026/10/04/the-a-z-of-woke-your-essential-guide-to-the-language-of-the-permanently-offended/?ref=goodoil.news) *The Daily Sceptic* Obscuring weak arguments behind baffling terminology has long been a woke tactic. In the *Mail*, Andrew Doyle offers an A to Z guide to decoding its strangest phrases, from ‘white tears’ to ‘misogynoir’. Here’s [an excerpt](https://www.dailymail.com/lifestyle/article-16177865/woke-guide-liberal-neighbours.html?ref=goodoil.news): > *A* > > **Allyship** > > The practice of advocating for people from marginalised groups and basking in the warm glow of their oppression… > > *B* > > **Birthing Person** > > Often found in NHS maternity guidance, this is a euphemism for ‘mother’. The idea is to avoid upsetting those pregnant women who think they are men. > > *C* > > **Chestfeeding** > > Also to be found in NHS guidance, this is a more sensitive alternative to ‘breastfeeding’ that doesn’t offend trans patients. The downside is that it sounds like something that might occur during a zombie apocalypse…. > > *D* > > **Direct Action** > > A form of protest that seeks immediate change through disruptive acts. In practice, this usually involves tearing down statues, throwing soup at priceless paintings, and striking female police officers with sledgehammers. All of which apparently makes the world a better place. > > *E* > > **Ecofeminism** > > The school of thought that links the subjugation of women with the exploitation of the environment. Woke analysts have predicted that in the event of a global apocalypse and the annihilation of humankind, women will be disproportionately impacted. > > *F* > > **Fat Activism** > > Social justice advocacy by those incapable of marching in its name… > > *G* > > **Gender Segregation** > > The practice of excluding trans women (i.e., men) from women’s sports, prisons and hospital wards. The woke consider any form of gender segregation to be the height of bigotry – except when it comes to mosques, in which case it’s empowering. > > *H* > > **Hate Speech** > > Any speech that woke activists hate. > > *I* > > **Internalised misogynist** > > Any woman who has absorbed and adopted sexist attitudes or prejudices against women. In other words, a woman who won’t comply with what woke campaigners tell her to think…. > > *J* > > **Justice** > > The pursuit of equality and fairness through the vigorous re-education of people with incorrect opinions. > > *K* > > **Kink-Shaming** > > Criticising or mocking someone for their unconventional sexual preferences or practices. So if you laugh at a man parading on all-fours down High Street in a studded PVC alpaca costume, you’re as bad as a Nazi. > > *L* > > **Latinx** > > A term used by woke white people to describe the Hispanic population in an effort to empower them. The latest Pew Research Center survey found that only one per cent of US Hispanic adults preferred the term, which the woke naturally interpret as evidence of internalised racism…. > > *M* > > **Misogynoir** > > A term invented by French feminist scholar Moya Bailey to signify a combination of misogyny and racism. The obvious alternative would have been ‘misoism’, but that sounds like a hatred of Japanese soup…. > > *N* > > **Neurodiversity** > > The idea that differences in how people think, learn and process information are natural variations in the human brain. This applies to everyone, of course, so really it’s a label used to reframe ADHD, autism and dyslexia as identity categories that confer social status…. > > *O* > > **Oppression** > > When there is a lack of vegan options on the menu…. > > *P* > > **Polyamory** > > The freedom to renounce oppressive sexual norms and have multiple partners. In other words, it’s a way of cheating while still calling yourself virtuous and brave…. > > *Q* > > **Queers for Palestine** > > A group of activist homosexuals and their allies who see no contradiction whatsoever in supporting a culture that would like to see them imprisoned, tortured and executed. See also: Turkeys for Christmas. > > *R* > > **Reparations** > > Payments intended to redress past injustices such as slavery or colonialism. To put it another way, it’s financial compensation from the innocent descendants of the oppressors to the innocent descendants of the oppressed, in settlement of crimes committed by the dead against the dead…. > > *S* > > **Structural Inequality** > > Unfair differences between groups that are built into society’s institutions or systems. It’s a term used by woke people to denote examples of inequality that only they can see. > > *T* > > **TERF** > > Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist: a term for women who reject the inclusion of men who identify as female in their spaces. In woke parlance, this is a handy synonym for ‘witch’ or ‘uppity woman who won’t do what she’s told’… > > *U* > > **Unconscious Bias** > > Prejudice that influences someone’s judgments without them being aware of it. These thoughts are usually so hidden that it requires an overpaid consultant with a degree in Whiteness Studies to tease them out. > > *V* > > **Virtue Signalling** > > Boasting about your own impeccable virtue, usually on social media. It’s a way of demonstrating to the world that you are a good person without having to do anything at all. > > *W* > > **White Tears** > > A disparaging term for expressions of distress by white people, especially when facing accusations of racism. As Robin DiAngelo argues in her book White Fragility, all white people are racist, and when they get upset at being accused of being racist that simply proves that the accusation is true… > > *X* > > **Xenophobic** > > A fear of foreigners. Or a useful alternative for the woke when calling everyone racist all the time starts to feel repetitive. > > *Y* > > **Your Authentic Self** > > The person you know yourself to be, regardless of how the world sees you. For example, Rachel Dolezal overcame the hurdle of being born to white parents to become president of a chapter of the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People). She achieved this through a combination of sheer determination and bronzing pearls. > > *Z* > > **Zero Tolerance** > > A woke HR policy of allowing no exceptions or leniency for offensive behaviour. In other words, a policy that promotes tolerance by refusing to tolerate anyone who falls outside the approved definition of tolerance. Worth [reading in full](https://www.dailymail.com/lifestyle/article-16177865/woke-guide-liberal-neighbours.html?ref=goodoil.news). This article was originally published by [the Daily Sceptic](https://dailysceptic.org/2026/10/04/the-a-z-of-woke-your-essential-guide-to-the-language-of-the-permanently-offended/?ref=goodoil.news). ### The Gilded Lobster-Pot of the Globalist Left URL: https://goodoil.news/the-gilded-lobster-pot-of-the-globalist-left/ Last updated: 2026-10-06T03:00:44.000Z To mash together a couple of pop culture references, the first rule of Globalist Club is ‘grab all you can’. The second rule is, ‘Nobody leaves Globalist Club’. It’s a cosy little gilded lobster pot and you’re not in it. No matter how detested, contemptible, or just plain incapable, you really are. *Especially* if you’re all of the above *and* a woman. Even though you’d probably be unable to say what, exactly, a ‘woman’ is – in fact, you personally legislated to erase the meaning of womanhood altogether. First off are two particularly loathsome examples of all of the above. > [Former prime minister](https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/albanese-government-faces-demands-over-precop31-guest-list-planning/news-story/68290c65b894b3e5fef34ad5fafabb1f?ref=goodoil.news) **Julia Gillard** and New Zealand’s former leader **Jacinda Ardern** are among the headline speakers at Pre-COP31, where they will join Pacific leaders in calling for greater action on climate change targets and financing goals. The Antipodean dynamic duo of progressive failure: Julia Gillard and Jacinda Ardern. Both were unceremoniously shoved out a back door by their own panicked colleagues long before the electorate could administer the boot. Ardern, having successfully transformed New Zealand into a sullen economic wasteland of bureaucratic decrees, scuttled across the ditch to enjoy a quieter life in Australia. What truly unites these two luminaries, however, is not merely their mutual talent for sanctimonious lecturing, but their enthusiastic legislative vandalism against actual women. Both cheerfully trampled female sex-based rights to appease mentally disturbed men in frocks. Naturally, such sterling records of failure cannot be left to wither in obscurity. Instead, we find them jet-setting to tropical climes on the taxpayers’ dime: > The former politicians have been announced in the list of high-profile figures set to address the Australian-organised summit as it kicks off in Fiji on Monday. > > According to the program, Ms Gillard will on Monday give a speech about the global call to protect pregnant women from global heating, in her current role as the chair of the Wellcome Trust. Nothing says ‘Globalist hypocrisy’ quite like the PM who legislated to erase womanhood finger-wagging us about pregnant women and ‘global heating’. > Climate Change Minister **Chris Bowen** is also scheduled to give a speech on the need for greater electrification in the Pacific. Oh, boy: that’ll be edge-of-the-seat stuff. Moving swiftly down the managerial sludge-pipe, we encounter our very own digital nanny, the unflushable **Julie Inman-Grant**. Having bounced from one corporate exit to the next, this DEI survivor is evidently being quietly let go by the Albanese government, only to slide effortlessly into her next internationalist sinecure. Her decade-long tenure as eSafety Commissioner has been a masterclass in institutional bloat and authoritarian overreach: > [We taxpayers have paid](https://x.com/Katherine%5Fdeves/status/2106163247141515737?ref=goodoil.news) her $4M+ over 10 years for the privilege of being censored & taken to Court (where she consistently fails). She inflated her office tenfold, incinerating 70 million dollars annually while waging petty vendettas and losing courtroom battle after courtroom battle, including a particularly humiliating smackdown by her former employer, X. Yet she departs with a smug parting remark, suggesting it is simply time for new horizons after treating Australian netizens like recalcitrant schoolroom toddlers. Finally, we arrive at the crowning glory of modern grievance artistry, **Nyadol Nyuon**. After vacuuming up hundreds of thousands of dollars in government funds for dubious make-work programmes that produced precisely zero verifiable outcomes, our heroine took to the taxpayer-funded airwaves to inform the public that “there is no white culture”. Having previously threatened to renounce her citizenship and abandon these shores, she promptly launched a digital begging bowl to cover her mortgage arrears and personal bills. While ordinary Australians drown beneath a brutal cost-of-living crisis and punishing interest rates, Ms Nyuon expects the wage-earning peasantry to finance her lifestyle: > [“Her GoFundMe campaign](https://www.onenewsaustralia.com/abc-panellist-nyadol-nyuons-gofundme-seeks-150k-for-her-mortgage-and-living-costs-despite-her-plans-to-leave-australia/?ref=goodoil.news), launched on Saturday 3 October, demands $150,000 from the Australian public to clear her mortgage arrears, settle her overdue personal bills, and fund her lifestyle so she can ‘remain in Australia through to mid-2027’.” So, apparently the answer to ‘When is she going to make good on her promise to leave Australia?’ is, ‘Not until the money is in’. We can take the scammers out of Africa, but we can’t take the scamming out of Africans. This must be what she means by ‘not assimilating’. --- 💡 ****If you enjoyed this article please share it using the share buttons at the top or bottom of the article.** ### Threatening Victoria with a Good Time URL: https://goodoil.news/threatening-victoria-with-a-good-time/ Last updated: 2026-10-06T01:30:31.000Z One Nation formally launched its campaign for the Victorian state election and, judging by the collective gasps and fainting fits from the legacy media, they’re bang on the money. > [One Nation has launched](https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2026/oct/03/one-nation-victoria-campaign-launch-abolish-first-nations-treaty-legalise-pepper-spray-ntwnfb?ref=goodoil.news) its Victorian election campaign, vowing to legalise the personal use of pepper spray, abolish the state’s treaty with indigenous people, and scrap payroll tax in regional Victoria. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/2026/10/The_GoodOil_YouDontHavetoSellIt.jpg) Other key policies include energy, where One Nation promises to scrap all net-zero targets and subsidies, cancel the large-scale transmission projects bulldozing through farm and bushland and reversing the ban on new gas appliances and new gas field exploration. In education, the party wants to prioritise literacy, numeracy, science, history and civics and support evidence-based teaching methods, including explicit instruction and systematic phonics, to “restore high academic expectations”. > [Details of other policies](https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2026/oct/03/one-nation-victoria-campaign-launch-abolish-first-nations-treaty-legalise-pepper-spray-ntwnfb?ref=goodoil.news) were scant online, but a 63-page document was reportedly circulated at the event that included plans to “gang up on gangs”. > > The party’s Victorian state president, **Warren Pickering**, told radio 3AW Melbourne on Friday that crime and bail remained a top priority for One Nation. > > Images of the document show it was described as One Nation’s policy platform and “The Real Deal for Victoria”, with a focus on restoring safety, prosperity and trust. The legacy media keep pushing their ‘scant policies’ lie, but a 63-page policy document clearly says otherwise. As does a cursory visit to [the party’s website](https://vic.onenation.org.au/issues?ref=goodoil.news), where pages and pages of policies are listed. Then there’s the hilarious hyperventilating from the *Age* that, “The party is yet to produce costings for any of its policies, as major parties typically do.” There’s seven weeks to the election: the major parties invariably hold back their policy costings until the last day before the election. Yet the legacy media want to hold One Nation to a standard the major parties regularly trash with impunity. But the big winner, which is sending the legacy media into the loudest hysterics, was the joking promise to lock up the former premiers **Daniel Andrews** and **Jacinta Allan**. If only it wasn’t a joke, many Victorians are surely wishing. > [A prominent One Nation](https://unwall.app/www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/in-prison-by-christmas-one-nation-attacks-andrews-allan-in-campaign-launch-20261003-p612jv.html?ref=goodoil.news) Victorian candidate has threatened to jail former premiers Daniel Andrews and Jacinta Allan ‘by Christmas’ if the insurgent right-wing party wins November’s state election. The pledge by **Mark Nicholson** – mirroring **Donald Trump**’s promise to ‘lock up’ **Hillary Clinton** – was met with rapturous applause by a crowd of about 750 party faithful at One Nation’s campaign launch at the Crown Conference Centre in Southbank on Saturday. The spectacle was not merely a launch but an exorcism of the technocratic rot that has plagued the Garden State for over a decade. **Pauline Hanson**, draped in the mantle of a political veteran, presented a full slate of 112 candidates to a room brimming with the kind of authentic, salt-of-the-earth energy that hasn’t been seen in Melbourne since the city was turned into a globalist experiment. > A 63-page policy document, titled The Real Deal, outlines One Nation’s plan to make Victoria the toughest state on crime, repeal a raft of taxes, cancel the Suburban Rail Loop, rip up the Treaty with First Nations Victorians, and roll back renewable energy projects while lifting the state’s ban on nuclear power. Stop it, I can only get so hard. While the legacy media, those delightful guardians of the established stagnation, whined about the lack of bureaucratic costings (and carefully ignoring that the major parties almost never release their costings until the last possible moments before election day), the attendees were busy contemplating a return to sanity. The rhetoric was suitably revolutionary. Warren Pickering, a man who understands all too well that the globalist cabal doesn’t surrender its power willingly, correctly identified the election as a singular moment to dismantle the status quo. > “This is an opportunity to shake the established order to its core,” he said. “We are ready to take this state back and put it into the hands of those who built it. We must assume control of our own destiny here in Victoria.” Indeed, the spirit of the Eureka Stockade felt almost palpable. Hanson reminded us that Victoria was once a place of defiance, a land of pioneers and miners who knew when to tell the overreaching state to go to the devil. It is a stark contrast to the hollowed-out, de-industrialised ruin the current administration has left behind. > Hanson meanwhile invoked the state’s history as a place of anti-government rebellion. “This is the state of **Ned Kelly**. This is the state of the Eureka Stockade, where the miners at Ballarat raised a flag, drew a line in the sand, and told the government, their government: enough,” she said. Victorians back then were made of sterner stuff, electing the leader of the Eureka rebellion, **Peter Lalor**, to parliament as an independent a year later. The political establishment should be trembling. With polling numbers suggesting a potential balance-of-power scenario, the ‘orange wave’ is no longer a mere trickle of annoyance for the Canberra-Melbourne axis: it is a rising tide of the dispossessed. When Mark Nicholson declared that a revolution was afoot, he spoke for the millions who have watched their prosperity vanish into the ether of net-zero fantasies and bureaucratic overreach. Whether or not the legacy media likes (or were on: the ABC and the *Guardian* were, once again, banned) the guest list, let alone approve of the policies, is entirely irrelevant: they are merely the last people to realise that the banquet is over. --- 💡 ****If you enjoyed this article please share it using the share buttons at the top or bottom of the article.** ### Warrantless Border Searches of Americans’ Cell Phones URL: https://goodoil.news/warrantless-border-searches-of-americans-cell-phones/ Last updated: 2026-10-06T01:00:55.000Z [**John Whitehead**](https://www.rutherford.org/publications%5Fresources/on%5Fthe%5Ffront%5Flines/warrantless%5Fsearches%5Fof%5Famericans%5Fcell%5Fphones%5Fcircumvents%5Ffourth%5Famendment?ref=goodoil.news) *The Rutherford Institute* Warning that the government should not be permitted to use international travel as an excuse to rummage through the digital contents of a person’s life without a warrant, The Rutherford Institute is asking the US Supreme Court to rein in warrantless searches of Americans’ cell phones at the nation’s borders and international airports. In an [amicus brief filed in *Anibowei v Blanche*](https://www.rutherford.org/files%5Fimages/general/10-1-26%5FAnibowei%5FAmicus%5FBrief.pdf?ref=goodoil.news), Rutherford Institute attorneys argue that modern cell phones – which can contain years of private communications, photographs, financial and medical information, internet searches, location histories and other sensitive data – cannot constitutionally be treated like ordinary luggage subject to routine inspection at the border. The case involves an immigration attorney whose cell phone – which contains confidential communications with clients, including clients in removal proceedings involving the Department of Homeland Security – was searched by federal agents five different times at airports when he returned from international travel, including a forensic search in which data from his phone was downloaded and retained by the government. “The government should not be able to turn every airport, seaport and border crossing into a Constitution-free zone where Americans can be forced to expose the most intimate details of their lives simply because they traveled outside the country. The border-search exception was never intended to become a blank check allowing the government to conduct digital fishing expeditions whenever an American returns home from abroad,” said constitutional attorney John W Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute. “A cell phone is not a suitcase. It is a digital record of where we go, whom we know, what we believe, what we buy, what we read, what we say and, increasingly, what happens inside our homes. Constitutional rights cannot depend on the government voluntarily deciding not to abuse the power it claims. If privacy exists only at the discretion of law enforcement, it is not much of a right at all.” At issue in *Anibowei* is the scope of the “border-search exception,” a judicial doctrine that generally allows government officials greater latitude to conduct warrantless searches at international borders and airports in order to prevent the entry of contraband and enforce customs and immigration laws. The Fifth Circuit has held that government agents may conduct ‘basic’ or manual searches of travelers’ cell phones at the border without a warrant and that an ‘advanced’ or forensic search using external equipment to copy or analyze a device’s contents requires, at most, merely reasonable suspicion – but still not a warrant. In George Anibowei’s case, the appeals court concluded that its existing precedents foreclosed his Fourth Amendment challenge. Weighing in before the Supreme Court in *Anibowei*, The Rutherford Institute [argues](https://www.rutherford.org/files%5Fimages/general/10-1-26%5FAnibowei%5FAmicus%5FBrief.pdf?ref=goodoil.news) that applying a doctrine developed for searches of physical goods and luggage to the vast quantities of personal information contained on modern smartphones ignores both the history of the Fourth Amendment and the Supreme Court’s growing recognition that digital searches raise fundamentally different privacy concerns. In *Riley v. California*, the Supreme Court held that police generally must obtain a warrant before searching a cell phone seized during an arrest, recognizing that modern phones can reveal “the sum of an individual’s private life.” More recently, in *Chatrie v United States*, a case in which The Rutherford Institute also filed an [amicus brief](https://www.rutherford.org/files%5Fimages/general/4-30-26%5FChatrie%5FAmicus%5FBrief.pdf?ref=goodoil.news), the [Supreme Court held that the government’s acquisition of certain geofence location data constitutes a Fourth Amendment search](https://www.rutherford.org/publications%5Fresources/on%5Fthe%5Ffront%5Flines/supreme%5Fcourt%5Frecognizes%5Ffourth%5Famendment%5Fprivacy%5Frights%5Fin%5Fgeofence%5Fsurveillance%5Fcase%5Fwarns%5Fof%5Fgovernments%5Fvirtual%5Fpanopticon?ref=goodoil.news). The institute [argues](https://www.rutherford.org/files%5Fimages/general/10-1-26%5FAnibowei%5FAmicus%5FBrief.pdf?ref=goodoil.news) that those same constitutional principles should not disappear merely because a person crosses an international border. Where genuine emergencies require immediate access to a phone, existing Fourth Amendment doctrines already permit warrantless searches under exigent circumstances; otherwise, the government should have to establish probable cause and obtain a warrant for the search. This article was originally published by [The Rutherford Institute](https://www.rutherford.org/publications%5Fresources/on%5Fthe%5Ffront%5Flines/warrantless%5Fsearches%5Fof%5Famericans%5Fcell%5Fphones%5Fcircumvents%5Ffourth%5Famendment?ref=goodoil.news). ### What We Are Letting Into Britain Is Already in Ireland URL: https://goodoil.news/what-we-are-letting-into-britain-is-already-in-ireland/ Last updated: 2026-10-06T00:30:16.000Z [**Sinne na Daoine Media**](https://x.com/SnDMediaNews/status/2106707758883946598?ref=goodoil.news) *The people’s media network. \*Breaking\* local, national and international news.* Two Iranian men who arrived in Britain on small boats have been charged with preparing a bomb attack on Manchester’s Jewish community. That is the fact. The argument is simpler, and uglier: this is what we are letting in, and once they are in, the border with Ireland does not stop them either. Salam Ahmadyan, 36, of Liverpool, and Rahman Salehi, 34, of Salford, were arrested on 20 September 2026, the eve of Yom Kippur, and charged under section 5 of the Terrorism Act 2006\. Prosecutors told Westminster Magistrates’ Court that the pair were directed by a third Iranian, assessed as operating inside Iran, who supplied instructions for a homemade device. The alleged particulars include a document on making a “powder chlorine and car brake oil/fluid bomb,” components and liquids, maps of targets, and reconnaissance of the Jewish Museum, a Jewish school in Salford, and Heaton Park synagogue, the same building where two worshippers were murdered on Yom Kippur 2025. They have been remanded to the Old Bailey. The immigration record does not depend on the verdict. Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood confirmed both crossed the Channel illegally, in 2020 and 2023\. The court heard Salehi had already spent five years in the German asylum system, was granted asylum here in 2023, and holds leave until July 2028. Ahmadyan still has a live claim. One man was given the state’s protection. The other was left inside the system, free to move, while prosecutors say both were taking direction from Iran. That is not a screening failure discovered at the dock. It is the policy working as designed: arrive without permission from a safe European country, claim protection, and wait. Mahmood called the case a reminder of threats from terrorists and from the Iranian regime, which she said targets Jewish communities through proxies. She is right about the threat and wrong about the lesson she draws from it. The lesson is the door. A regime that uses criminal networks and cut-outs does not need a sophisticated insertion if a dinghy and an asylum interview will place its alleged assets in Salford and Liverpool. Farage warned in the spring that Iranians were among those crossing and dared the government to say he was wrong. These charges are not a census. They are proof that the route is available to the people police later have to arrest on the eve of the holiest day in the Jewish calendar. The Common Travel Area makes the admission a shared one. Free-movement rights belong to British and Irish citizens. In practice the land border has no routine checks, and internal journeys are lightly controlled. Irish figures reported this year suggest that in recent years the large majority of asylum claims in Ireland were not made at a port or airport; ministers have said more than 80 per cent were arriving across the Northern Ireland border. Britain has returned one person under the arrangement meant to manage this traffic. A man who lands in Kent is not confined to England. Manchester and Dublin sit on the same open corridor. Letting someone into one country is, for practical purposes, letting them into both. None of this requires the claim that every small-boat arrival is a terrorist. It requires admitting that the state cannot tell in advance which of them is, and has chosen to grant status, or leave claims open for years, while it finds out. The men in the dock will have a trial. The decision to take them in has already been made, and both countries are living with it. This article was originally published by [SnDMedia](https://x.com/SnDMediaNews/status/2106707758883946598?ref=goodoil.news). ### Standing Against the Myanmar Junta URL: https://goodoil.news/standing-against-the-myanmar-junta/ Last updated: 2026-10-06T00:00:08.000Z [**Hein Htet Kyaw**](https://substack.com/@heinhtetkyaw?utm%5Fcampaign=guest%5Fpost%5Fbio&utm%5Fmedium=web&ref=goodoil.news) *Hein is the Director of Australasia at Atheist Alliance International, an international advocacy group with special consultative status at the United Nations and a hacktivist originally from Myanmar.* After the 2021 military coup, the military junta of Myanmar faced strong international criticism and sanctions by the liberal democratic West and international organizations like the United Nations, the [International Criminal Court](https://www.icc-cpi.int/victims/bangladesh-myanmar?ref=goodoil.news) (ICC) and the [International Court of Justice (ICJ)](https://www.icj-cij.org/case/178?ref=goodoil.news). As a response, the military regime chose a multipolar strategy to create a worldwide diplomatic shield by exploiting geopolitical rivalries, using anti-imperialist rhetoric, and establishing partnerships with states that view Western liberal democracy negatively. Ever since the start of the protests following the coup in 2021, the Russian state media [*RIA Novosti* justified the coup](https://eastasiaforum.org/2021/04/27/why-russia-is-betting-on-myanmars-military-junta/?ref=goodoil.news), stating that the Myanmar military was the only institution able to provide unity and peace among the multi-ethnic population and calling the Myanmar Spring Revolution a Western “colour revolution”. Similarly [*Global Times*, a state-owned newspaper of China](https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202109/1233613.shtml?ref=goodoil.news), warned the USA and other Western powers not to encourage a civil war in Myanmar. This official discourse was picked up by multiple Western anti-imperialist media outlets and authoritarian left-wing organizations. The [Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist)](https://thecommunists.org/2022/11/17/tv/brian-berletic-new-atlas-myanmar-western-media-lies-concert-strike/?ref=goodoil.news) pointed to Myanmar’s alignment with China and important role in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), arguing that Western imperialism is violently interfering with the initiative by attempting to overthrow the governments participating in it. Journalist [Kit Klarenberg in *The Gray Zone*](https://thegrayzone.com/2021/04/27/us-government-media-myanmar-propagandize-western-intervention/?ref=goodoil.news) described international media reports about resistance against the junta as propaganda to justify Western intervention. *Red Fire* magazine, issued by the Australian socialist organization Workers League, referred to the Spring Revolution as a pro-democracy war supported by the West, while the participants of the revolution were labelled “[terrorists](https://redfireonline.com/2023/12/04/western-backed-pro-democracy-terrorists-wage-war-in-myanmar/?ref=goodoil.news)”. Similarly, *KATEHON*, a publication of Tsargrad Institute, described the opposition group “National Unity Government (NUG)” as a “[Western-backed exiled government](https://katehon.com/en/article/south-asias-next-challenge-mapping-regime-change-ecosystem-myanmar?ref=goodoil.news)”. In 2024, Myanmar’s military regime announced that it will [abandon the market economy and introduce a “state-run cooperative system”](https://cnimyanmar.com/index.php/english-edition/23610-cooperative-system-is-most-appropriate-to-improve-economy-sac-chairman?ref=goodoil.news). Later, in the same year, the regime’s proxy political party, the “[Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP)](https://www.justiceformyanmar.org/stories/usdp-the-cartels-party?ref=goodoil.news)”, sent its chairperson Khin Yi to the first General Assembly of the [“For the Freedom of Nations!”](https://worldmarxistreview.org/index.php/wmr/article/view/43?ref=goodoil.news) movement, an inter-party movement mainly dominated by Marxist-Leninist ruling parties, which included Communist Party of China, Communist Party of Vietnam, Worker’s Party of Brazil, Lao People’s Revolutionary Party, Workers’ Party of Korea and United Socialist Party of Venezuela. In contradiction to the interests of the Burmese diaspora inside Australia, the “Communist Party of Australia” welcomed the movement as a promising framework and [new model of international relations](https://cpa.org.au/guardian/issue-2155/for-the-freedom-of-nations/?ref=goodoil.news). Philosophical foundations of the regime’s diplomatic policy have been greatly shaped by Russian philosopher Aleksandr Dugin, author of the theories of Eurasianism and [Fourth Political Theory](https://www.maieutiek.nl/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/The-Fourth-Political-Theory.pdf?ref=goodoil.news). In March 2025, Dugin attended the junta-hosted “[Forum on Myanmar Beyond 2025: Challenges and Opportunities in the Multipolar World](https://www.gnlm.com.mm/myanmar-hosts-forum-on-challenges-and-opportunities-in-multipolar-world?ref=goodoil.news),” where he delivered lectures on Eurasianism and multipolarity and referred to the Spring Revolution as a [coloured revolution](https://open.substack.com/pub/alexanderdugin/p/soros-usaid-and-the-engine-of-colour?r=1ezwlo). Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, a top leader of the regime, openly endorsed these ideas in his May 2025 interview with [RT news agency](https://www.rt.com/shows/rt-interview/617735-myanmar-pm-multipolarity-ties-russia/?ref=goodoil.news). Using the ideas of Dugin’s anti-liberal geopolitical philosophy, the regime expanded its relations with authoritarian countries, including Russia, Belarus, Iran, and China. Despite the travel sanctions imposed by the West, senior military officers made high-profile trips to other countries, participating in events such as the “[2025 China Victory Day Parade](https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/china-s-victory-day-parade-tale-two-audiences?ref=goodoil.news)” and [the 80th anniversary of Russia’s Victory over Fascism](https://en.qdnd.vn/military/intl-relations-and-cooperation/celebrating-the-80th-anniversary-of-victory-over-fascism-may-9-1945-2025-promoting-legacy-of-noble-international-spirit-578142?ref=goodoil.news). The regime has been also trying to reach out to other BRICS sub-imperialist countries. Min Aung Hlaing visited India from May 30 to June 3 for “[International Big Cat Alliance Summit](https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/myanmar-president-embark-first-india-visit-since-taking-over-2026-05-28/?ref=goodoil.news)”. He also went to Laos on July 3, 2026, invited by [President Thongloun Sisoulith of Lao People’s Revolutionary Party](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISberfD-05A&ref=goodoil.news). Acknowledging the rifts in the Western NATO alliance, the junta also sought to win the support of national conservative regimes in the United States and Israel. The regime even conducted lobbying, offering lobbyist [Roger Stone $50,000 per month](https://myanmar-now.org/en/news/trump-ally-roger-stone-to-get-50000-a-month-to-lobby-for-myanmar-regime/?ref=goodoil.news). Echoing the same narrative as seen in authoritarian regimes of the sub-imperialist camp, [Adam Dick from the Ron Paul Institute condemned the BRAVE Burma Act (HR 3190)](https://ronpaulinstitute.org/myanmar-will-always-be-burma-to-the-us-congress/?ref=goodoil.news) as legislation that would facilitate continuing sanctions against Myanmar, accusing it as a mean of US foreign intervention. Those who are risking their lives for federalism and liberty disagree with Ron Paul’s rigid opposition, arguing that when it comes to Myanmar, while non-interventionism aims to restrain state power at home, applying a blanket anti-sanctions stance to Myanmar inadvertently mirrors the efforts of the junta who actively lobby against Western sanctions. The regime in Myanmar is taking advantage of multipolarity and the BRICS sub-imperialist alliance to resist pressure from the West and fight back against the diplomacy battle put forwarded by the exiled [National Unity Government (NUG)](https://nugmyanmar.org/?ref=goodoil.news), which symbolizes the hope of the people of Myanmar for a nation with a federal democracy. Considering the way in which authoritarian alliances such as BRICS and other authoritarian Western anti-imperialist organisations are aligning themselves to protect their interests and their fellow Myanmar military junta, those who believe in federalism and liberal democracy in the West have no choice but to speak out against such alliances. The revolution in Burma demands neither humanitarian aid nor neocon style intervention from Australia: what is needed is solidarity and a commitment to individual sovereignty, a market economy, federalism, and liberal democracy. This article was originally published by [Liberty Itch](https://www.libertyitch.com/p/why-defenders-of-liberty-and-federalism?ref=goodoil.news). ### Supermarket Produce and Your Health URL: https://goodoil.news/supermarket-produce-and-your-health/ Last updated: 2026-10-05T23:30:14.000Z [**Guy Hatchard**](https://dailytelegraph.co.nz/opinion/forewarned-is-forearmed-if-you-believe-buying-conventional-supermarket-produce-will-be-safe-enough-think-again/?ref=goodoil.news) *Guy Hatchard PhD is a statistician and former senior manager at Genetic ID, a global food safety testing and certification laboratory.* A peer-reviewed paper published in *Environmental Health Perspectives*, a top journal from the American Chemical Society, on 23 September 2026 is entitled “[Guiding Risk Reduction for Breast Cancer-Relevant Chemicals (BC-Chems): Chemical Production Volumes, Sources, Intake Levels, Emissions, and Regulations](https://pubs.acs.org/evhpaz/article/doi/10.1021/EHP.6c00022/5436094/Guiding-Risk-Reduction-for-Breast-Cancer-Relevant?ref=goodoil.news)”. It found that risky exposures to potential carcinogens are ubiquitous. It looked for exposure to chemicals known to cause breast cancer (BC-Chems) in the food chain, drinking water, agricultural production, industrial emissions, medicines and the immediate environment of daily life. It found 500 BC-Chems in consumer products, 462 in food, 162 in drinking water, 485 in pesticide formulations, 142 in pharmaceuticals, and 106 in construction materials. The carcinogenic potential of these chemicals is not limited to breast cancer. As we have been reporting, [the incidence of all types of cancer is increasing dramatically](https://hatchardreport.com/cancer-data-indicates-a-turning-point/?ref=goodoil.news) across all age groups. These numbers are staggering and beyond anything we might expect as we innocently do our shopping or turn on our tap at home. How did this happen? The paper relates how pesticide companies and other commercial entities exploit deficiencies in regulatory systems by falsely classifying hundreds of ingredients as *‘inert’, ’inactive’* or *‘residual’*,which thereby escape scrutiny. For example these include surfactants or penetrating agents that help disperse active ingredients or make them more absorbable. There are also a range of hormone disrupting chemicals that are exempt from regulation. Highly toxic trace components can also escape identification or regulation if they are present in low enough concentrations, even though they are included to ensure the product is toxic to living organisms. A study entitled “[Low-level toxicity of chemicals: No acceptable levels?](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5736171/?ref=goodoil.news)” reports numerous studies showing that even at very low levels of exposure certain chemicals can be highly toxic. It concludes: *“These results, which are contrary to the way the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and other regulatory agencies assess the risk of chemicals, indicate that we have underestimated the impact of toxic chemicals on death and disease. If widely disseminated chemicals and pollutants do not exhibit a threshold and are proportionately more toxic at the lowest levels of exposure, we will need to achieve near-zero exposures to protect public health.”* Intensity of toxic exposure is increasing year by year as more and more toxins accumulate in the environment, food chain and human tissue. As we reported in our article “[The Health Crisis: Policy changes and increased funding are not enough](https://hatchardreport.com/the-health-crisis-policy-changes-and-increased-funding-are-not-enough/?ref=goodoil.news)”. The dangers to health are now also being heavily compounded through the use of genetically modified bio-active ingredients, processing aids and batch fermentation residues. Regulatory safeguards are failing in great part because the members of pesticide boards are drawn from the pesticide industry itself. The so-called revolving door. Regulatory testing, if it is undertaken, focuses on potential effects of single chemicals. There is no requirement to investigate the synergistic effect of taking multiple chemicals together as are present in pesticides, fertilisers, household products and medicines. Given our exposure to the sheer volume and diversity of carcinogens, there is no easy way to assess the exact role that these play in the development of any individual cancer. Therefore their role is glossed over and rarely mentioned in regulatory discussions. Toxic products are still freely advertised and sold without compulsory warning or complete ingredient lists. Government policies, agricultural training courses, export regulations and the requirements that supermarkets impose on their growers encourage, reward and/or mandate the use of agrichemicals. We should be registering our concern with our local MPs, growers, supermarkets and the media. The research findings are clear. Harmful chemicals are rapidly coming to dominate our environment and our food. Little or nothing is being done to inform the public or encourage safe practices. The commercial interests of giant corporations are being put before the needs of public health. Our politicians are promising they will fix *‘a broken health system’*, but in reality they are completely ignoring the root causes of the epidemic of ill health that is gripping the nation. Their myopic inaction and wilful ignorance of the fundamentals of health is itself making the problem worse. Mainstream media is regularly publishing sad stories of unexpected cancers among working age families, but it is failing to point the finger at the causes and the safe food practices that will help us to avoid deadly agrichemicals and biologics. You can make individual choices that will help you to avoid the vast majority of these chemicals by buying organic. You can ask about the use of sprays on produce sold at farmer’s market stalls. Failing that, consumer organisations also publish the results of tests of pesticide concentrations by produce type which can be found on the internet. For example, typically avocados, kiwifruit, asparagus, mushrooms, sweet corn, peas, watermelon and bananas are among those found at the lower end, whereas spinach, greens, strawberries, grapes, berries, onions, citrus, potatoes, broccoli, stone fruit, cucumber, celery, wheat flour, apples and pears are among those that have the highest pesticide/chemical residues. Processed foods contain additional chemical and modified biological residues which can be avoided by cooking fresh at home. Likewise takeaway and fast foods use a range of chemicals, additives and colourings which don’t appear on any easily visible ingredient list. Limit your reliance on eating out or ordering in. This article was originally published by the [Daily Telegraph New Zealand](https://dailytelegraph.co.nz/opinion/forewarned-is-forearmed-if-you-believe-buying-conventional-supermarket-produce-will-be-safe-enough-think-again/?ref=goodoil.news). ### Creating New Zealand With a Buzzy Bee and Lake Wakatipu URL: https://goodoil.news/creating-new-zealand-with-a-buzzy-bee-and-lake-wakatipu/ Last updated: 2026-10-05T23:00:42.000Z [**Nigel**](https://pavlovapost.co.nz/buzzy-bee-london-homegrown-kiwis?ref=goodoil.news) *Nigel is the founder, editor-in-chief, and lead writer at Pavlova Post, a New Zealand satire publication covering national news, local chaos, weather drama, politics, transport mishaps, and everyday Kiwi life – usually with a generous layer of exaggeration.* New Zealanders living in London appear to have discovered the minimum viable homeland: one Buzzy Bee, a decent view of Lake Wakatipu and enough familiar artwork to emotionally ambush somebody who had otherwise been coping perfectly well with Britain. The *Homegrown* exhibition at Ten Four LDN in Angel brings together work from 27 artists living around the UK, including 23 New Zealanders and four Australians. Running until Christmas Eve, it has been described as creating a home-away-from-home feeling for the Kiwi community, which suggests our national identity may require considerably less floor space than previously thought. Apparently you do not need the whole country. You just need to install enough New Zealand in one room that somebody walks in, spots a childhood object and immediately remembers a lounge carpet last seen in 1997. ### **Buzzy Bee has been promoted to cultural ambassador** Of all the objects capable of representing New Zealand overseas, the Buzzy Bee continues to punch absurdly above its weight. It is a wooden pull-along toy with wheels and the sort of clacking mechanism specifically engineered to let parents know a toddler is approaching before visual contact has been established. Yet Te Papa describes it as an icon of Kiwi identity, and examples of the toy stretch back to the early 1940s. That makes the Buzzy Bee considerably more experienced in international cultural relations than its job description would suggest. A conventional ambassador needs an embassy, diplomatic credentials and several carefully worded statements. A Buzzy Bee just needs to sit there looking familiar until a New Zealander walks past and says, “Bloody hell, we had one of those.” Mission accomplished. The emotional response makes sense because nostalgia is rarely triggered by the objects anybody officially appoints to represent a country. A flag might remind you where you are from, but an old toy can suddenly remind you exactly what the floor looked like in the house where you were four. That is considerably harder to defend against. ### **Homesickness does not follow the tourism brochure** The exhibition also includes Sarah Jane Moon’s *Maybe Tomorrow*, created during London’s first Covid lockdown while she was living in a basement flat without access to outdoor space. The work depicts the Moon looking out over Lake Wakatipu and grew from her longing for New Zealand’s open spaces. That is where homesickness becomes unfair. You can successfully adapt to another country, learn the transport system, locate acceptable coffee and become comfortable enough with the local supermarket that you no longer stare at the shelves like immigration has made an administrative error. Then somebody puts a familiar South Island landscape in front of you and several years of emotional stability disappear before lunch. The things people miss are rarely organised enough to match a tourism campaign anyway. Somebody might miss Fiordland or Aoraki, but they might equally miss the crappy dairy near their old house, the smell of wet grass after summer rain, a particular beach car park or the strangely specific sound of a screen door at their grandparents’ place. Distance is extremely good at promoting ordinary rubbish. A battered biscuit tin becomes family history. An old rugby cap becomes an heirloom. The chilly bin with the damaged handle that nobody wanted to throw away becomes an important cultural artefact approximately four months after you move to England. ### **New Zealand now needs an official emergency kit** If *Homegrown* has established that a Buzzy Bee and the right scenery can reduce homesickness, Pavlova Post believes the obvious next step is standardisation. Every Kiwi moving overseas should be issued one Emergency New Zealand Kit at departure. Contents would depend on generation, but there should probably be an Edmonds cookbook that nobody is required to open, one jandal whose partner vanished years ago, a faded tea towel depicting somewhere scenic, and a biscuit tin containing sewing equipment instead of anything remotely edible. An unnecessarily large container of something from Mum’s pantry would provide weight and realism. There should also be one item whose emotional significance cannot possibly be explained to a foreign flatmate. Ideally the explanation begins with, “Nah, you sort of had to grow up with it,” and lasts long enough that everybody regrets asking. The kit would not contain polished symbols of national identity. Those are too obvious. It would contain the things New Zealanders barely notice while they are here and become strangely protective of the moment somebody overseas asks why they matter. Our culture is apparently stored in the junk drawer. ### **London has accidentally completed the experiment** The people involved in *Homegrown* say the exhibition has created genuine connection. Zuru project executive Saba Haghi told 1News that surrounding the building with New Zealand art had reduced her homesickness, while NZ Art Club founder Luana Asiata described the opening as an opportunity for artists to connect with one another. That is the serious heart of the story. Living overseas can make familiar references unexpectedly valuable, and an exhibition built by people with those shared references gives them somewhere to reconnect. It is just extremely funny that one of the objects carrying part of that cultural workload is a wooden bee on wheels. British colleagues may see an interesting New Zealand toy. Kiwis see childhood, relatives, old houses, noisy wooden floors and the possibility that one is still sitting in a cupboard at Mum’s place beneath several things nobody has touched since the Clark government. The exhibition runs until 24 December, giving London-based New Zealanders plenty of time to inspect the country’s newly discovered minimum infrastructure requirements. Twenty-three Kiwi artists have supplied the culture. Lake Wakatipu has supplied the scenery. **And one small wooden bee has somehow been left in charge of border control.** ### **Grown-Up Links** - [1News – Buzzy Bee and Lake Wakatipu bring taste of home to Kiwis in London](https://www.1news.co.nz/2026/10/04/buzzy-bee-and-lake-wakatipu-bring-taste-of-home-to-kiwis-in-london/?ref=goodoil.news) - [NZ Art Club – Homegrown exhibition and artists](https://www.nzartclub.com/artists?ref=goodoil.news) - [Te Papa – Buzzy Bee history collection record](https://collections.tepapa.govt.nz/object/1289772?ref=goodoil.news) This article was originally published by [Pavlova Post](https://pavlovapost.co.nz/buzzy-bee-london-homegrown-kiwis?ref=goodoil.news). ### ‘It’s the Peaceful Solution’ URL: https://goodoil.news/its-the-peaceful-solution/ Last updated: 2026-10-05T22:30:45.000Z [**The Noticer**](https://www.noticer.news/france-riots-mass-deportation-calls/?ref=goodoil.news) *We notice what other news sites don’t.* A fed-up Frenchwoman has called for mass deportations after [days of rioting by youths of immigrant descent](https://www.noticer.news/france-student-riots-white-women-attacked/?ref=goodoil.news), who have burned schools and attacked white women in the street. Right-wing activist Thaïs d’Escufon, who was fined €1,000 earlier this year by a French court for stating that “the main threat to women in France comes from black and Arab immigrant men”, shared a video on social media on Sunday saying she was “deeply ashamed” of the violence taking place in her country. The so-called student riots, which police have said are being orchestrated by far-left politicians, began two weeks ago in the notorious foreigner-dominated Paris suburb of Saint-Denis, but by Thursday had spread across the country. Hundreds of school staff and police have been injured and schools set on fire by the rioters, the vast majority of whom are of North and sub-Saharan African appearance, resulting in thousands of arrests, including of a 15-year-old who allegedly assaulted a woman with a homemade flamethrower. Ms d’Escufon said in her video that rioting had “become normal” in France now that immigrants and their descendants are “no longer confined to the suburbs”, and that it was clear they were full of hatred for her people. “Every generation of immigrants hates us more than the one before, some of these rioters are 14, 15 years old; however, they were born here, raised here, so do you really think things are going to get better?” she said. “We have done everything for them, everything. Social benefits, anti-racist policies, new schools, and this is how they thank us? Assimilation is a myth. We have to stop pretending it’s possible to make it work any more. “These people hate us and would like to see us dead, so we’ll never co-exist peacefully. It’s either them or us, so the reasonable and peaceful solution is to send them back to the countries of origin they love so much.” She finished by urging people in America and other European countries to learn from the chaos in France. “Do not make the same mistakes we did, close your borders while you still have time,” she said. The riots have also caused concerns in the UK, with many fearing a similar outbreak of social unrest is imminent, and calling for preventative measures. British writer Pat Condell wrote on X: “The violence in France will happen in Britain because nobody has the balls to acknowledge the truth that we are already at war and do what’s needed. “Shoot the rioters dead. Ignore the judges, tear up all ‘human rights’ legislation and treaties, and start mass deportations at gunpoint back to their native shitholes, whether they were born here or not. “If any country refuses to take them, put them in concentration camps on bread and water until they choose to leave. Cancel all foreign aid and all visas from those countries forever, and confiscate all their assets. This is the moderate position.” This article was originally published by [the Noticer](https://www.noticer.news/france-riots-mass-deportation-calls/?ref=goodoil.news). ### The Ark URL: https://goodoil.news/the-ark/ Last updated: 2026-10-05T22:00:47.000Z Cartoon of the Day by BoomSlang _This post is for paying subscribers only._ ### Why Didn’t My Generation Change the World? URL: https://goodoil.news/why-didnt-my-generation-change-the-world/ Last updated: 2026-10-05T21:30:00.000Z [**Ashley Church**](https://ashleychurch.com/why-didnt-my-generation-change-the-world/?ref=goodoil.news) *Digital creator* Something significant is taking place around the western world. Women – particularly younger women – are increasingly leaning politically towards movements of the left, while young men are generally staying in the political centre. This trend is strongly evident here in New Zealand and is encapsulated in a recent article (in which I feature) which suggests that the Greens’ rising support reflects their willingness to listen to younger New Zealanders struggling with housing costs, living expenses and limited economic opportunities. It argues that, however questionable the Greens’ economic policies, their opponents risk losing these voters by dismissing their frustrations and focusing on issues that feel less urgent to them. ([https://tinyurl.com/2uka5k4h](https://tinyurl.com/2uka5k4h?ref=goodoil.news)) The latest 1News Verian poll, released at the end of September, confirms this by showing that the Greens have now reached 16 per cent, their highest-ever result in that poll – with women aged between 18 to 49 disproportionately represented on 25.5 per cent. Among young men in the same demographic, Green support was just 8.5 per cent. This raises an obvious question. Why? To be honest – I don’t think the answer to that question is particularly hard to figure out. Young women, are attracted to ideas which focus on fairness, equality, compassion and helping those who are struggling – and if you’re concerned about poverty, discrimination, the environment or people who appear to have been left behind, then a political movement which tells you that these things can be easily fixed has an obvious appeal. The instincts behind those ideas are decent and admirable and even today’s young men will generally buy into them in some form. Indeed, most young people want a fair society in which children don’t go hungry, people have opportunity, and those who genuinely need help are able to access it. But here’s the thing – my generation wanted those things too. The young men and women I grew up with in the 1970s and 1980s were every bit as determined as today’s younger generation to make the world a fairer, safer and better place. We looked at war and wondered why supposedly intelligent leaders kept sending people off to kill each other. We saw famine and starvation and couldn’t understand why these things existed. We looked at racism, authoritarian governments and poverty and genuinely believed that our generation could do better. And when I say ‘we’ – I mean all of us – men and women. There’s a contemporary caricature which portrays the world that young people are inheriting as though it was constructed entirely by (usually white) men – but that’s a gross misrepresentation of history. Even in the ’70s and ’80s, the women’s movement was changing the world and while there were debates around opportunity, work, family roles, pay and power – those debates were just as often between women and other women as they were between women and men. Women weren’t passive passengers. They entered universities, professions, politics and business in growing numbers. Some marched and campaigned, some rejected the movements doing the marching, and many agreed with some parts of the argument while rejecting others and got on with building careers, businesses and families. So women back then weren’t one political organism any more than they are now – and the important point is that men and women were both part of a generation which believed it could make the world better. We even had music that described that aspiration – captured poignantly in songs like *Land of Confusion* released by Genesis in 1986\. If you haven’t watched the video for a while, have another look. It’s gloriously 1980s, with the grotesque *Spitting Image* puppets portraying Ronald Reagan, Mikhail Gorbachev, Margaret Thatcher and the political personalities of the time against the backdrop of the Cold War and nuclear anxiety. But while the video looks dated, the sentiment isn’t. Change the faces and the hairstyles, replace the world leaders of 1986 with those occupying the international stage today and improve the production values, and you could make much the same video. There are still wars, governments still make decisions affecting millions of people, and ordinary people still wonder why those supposedly in charge can’t behave more sensibly. Another generation looks at that world and thinks, surely we can do better. But that’s exactly what we thought too – which begs the question: if we knew the world needed changing, why didn’t we change it? The answer is simple. We did. According to the World Bank, between 1990 and 2022 around 1.5 billion people were lifted out of extreme poverty. Over the same period, child mortality collapsed, with the global under-five mortality rate falling by around 60 per cent between 1990 and 2024. Medical care and life expectancy also improved across much of the world, women’s economic and professional opportunities expanded enormously, and entire populations gained freedoms that had previously been denied to them. Apartheid ended in South Africa, communist governments collapsed across Eastern Europe, and technology transformed access to communication, information and knowledge. Much of this is the work of my generation – the same generation that was determined to make things ‘better’ – so the idea that the past 40 or 50 years have simply been one long story of failure isn’t remotely true. That doesn’t mean we got everything right, of course. The world today’s young adults have inherited is still deeply troubled, but it is significantly more heathy, wealthy and free than the world we inherited. Which raises another interesting question. How did a generation that was so determined to reduce poverty, improve people’s lives and build a fairer society become associated with capitalism, markets, lower taxation and many of the things that parts of the modern left now regard with such suspicion? The answer to that lies in another of the great changes that occurred during our lifetime: we recognised the failure of the post-war generation. Just like us, our parents had wanted to build a better world after the devastation of World War II. They had attempted to create a cradle-to-the-grave welfare society in which the state provided for everyone, everything from milk to electricity was subsidised, and where this largesse was paid for by very high taxes. But by the 1970s and early 1980s it had become increasingly obvious that this post-war economic experiment had failed. Britain was struggling with inflation, industrial unrest, weak economic performance and severe fiscal pressures. Many other countries had their own versions of this problem. Here in New Zealand, we were collapsing under the yoke of extensive regulation, price and wage controls, high tax rates, growing public debt and, eventually, the 1984 currency crisis. That experience helped produce a profound change in economic thinking across much of the Western world. The lesson wasn’t that we should stop caring about poverty or abandon the welfare state – in fact, it was almost the opposite. We slowly recognised that if we wanted better hospitals and schools, decent pensions and a society able to support people in genuine need, we needed to build economies which were strong enough to pay for them. And that required wealth creation. It meant allowing people to keep enough of the rewards of their work and creativity to make risk-taking worthwhile. It meant reducing unnecessary costs and regulation, encouraging investment and enterprise, and recognising that taxation doesn’t occur in a vacuum. It recognised that punitive tax rates cause people to alter their behaviour. Investment shifts, risks aren’t taken and economic activity which might otherwise have happened simply take place. New Zealand’s experience over that time is particularly interesting. The reforms that began in 1984 broadened the tax base while dramatically lowering marginal income-tax rates. The top personal rate fell from 66 per cent to 33 per cent, yet aggregate tax revenue increased despite the lower rates. So we had finally learned a fundamental lesson: a thriving economy can generate more tax while placing a lower burden on each additional dollar earned. More successful businesses mean more employment, more incomes, more investment and, ultimately, more revenue available to government. That was the irony. If we wanted the state to have the resources to do more of the things we thought were important, we needed an economy capable of producing those resources in the first place. We hadn’t stopped caring – we’d just learned where the money came from. That’s an important part of the history because – to someone born decades later who sees the system we ended up with without understanding how we got here – it could look like a once idealistic generation simply changed sides or abandoned its principles. Nothing could be further from the truth. For all of that, the most important thing we learned wasn’t economic. Indeed, I think the biggest mistake my generation made was remarkably similar to one every generation seems tempted to make. We thought the problem was with someone else. We blamed political leaders and governments. We blamed economic systems, corporations and the establishment. We blamed people who held different views from us and, inevitably, we blamed the generation which had gone before us. Our enemies had different names, but the instinct was exactly the same. If only we could change them, remove them, defeat them or change the systems they had built, we could finally build the world we wanted. And sometimes we were right. Bad laws should be changed. Bad governments should be replaced. Institutions can be improved and injustice should be challenged. Much of the progress I’ve already described happened because people did exactly those things. But eventually we ran into a much harder truth. We could change laws, institutions and economic systems, but we couldn’t change human nature. War didn’t disappear because the impulse towards hatred didn’t disappear. Greed survived every economic system we devised, as did envy, resentment, selfishness and pride, because none of those things was created by a particular government or economic model. They’re part of us. The great mistake is to believe that we’re uniquely blessed with wisdom and that the world can be perfected if only we elect the right politicians, adopt the right economic system, defeat the right enemies or force everybody else to behave in the way we think they should. Christianity teaches something much more challenging. Before we look outward, we’re instructed to look inward. The first person I have responsibility for changing is me. Lasting change in society happens from the inside out. Better people build better families, better communities and better institutions. And, ultimately, that transformation comes from God. That’s the limitation my generation didn’t fully understand when we were young and confidently announcing that we were going to change the world. We thought mankind could fix mankind. We thought that if we just found the right political formula, the right leaders or the right economic structure, most of the problems would eventually disappear. They didn’t, because the deepest source of those problems was never solely political or economic. It was human. Which brings me back to where this article started. I understand the desire for fairness. I understand wanting people to be treated better and wanting society to become kinder, safer and more just. Those aren’t foolish ambitions, and they’re certainly not new ones. My generation wanted many of the same things. We tried to change them and, in some important ways, we succeeded. Along the way we discovered that some of our assumptions about how the world worked were wrong, and we adjusted accordingly. But perhaps the most important lesson was the one we took longest to learn. It’s easy to shake one’s fist at the world and vow to do things better than those who went before us – but the most important changes won’t occur until we change ourselves first – and that’s as true of us all today as it was 50 years ago… This article was originally published by [ashleychurch.com](https://ashleychurch.com/why-didnt-my-generation-change-the-world/?ref=goodoil.news). ### Your Daily Ten@10 - 2026/184 URL: https://goodoil.news/your-daily-ten-10-2026-184/ Last updated: 2026-10-05T21:00:30.000Z **This is edition 2026/184 of the *Ten@10* newsletter.** Hi all, This is the Ten@10, where I collate and summarise ten news items you generally won't see in the mainstream media. Enjoy! --- ![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!QXAi!,w_1200,h_675,c_fill,f_jpg,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep,g_auto/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fbef08426-f941-4d17-856e-b5aa4edd6946_2278x1362.png) ## 1\. Democracy Briefing: The supermarket duopoly fights back *Bryce Edwards - The Democracy Project* - ✍️ A week after National said it would pursue separating Foodstuffs, 51 business figures signed an open letter asking every party "to uphold a rules-based economy that respects private property and freedom of contract". - 🏢 Edwards says the letter was organised by the New Zealand Initiative, whose members include Foodstuffs North Island and Woolworths NZ, and whose board includes Foodstuffs North Island chief executive Chris Quin. Quin signed it, as did Foodstuffs South Island chief executive Mary Devine. - 💰 The Post's Anneke Smith reported that since the supermarket announcement National has taken just $52,000 in declared donations of $20,000 or more, while Act has taken $275,000\. David Seymour says he has heard "vociferous reactions" from significant National donors. - 📣 Newsroom's Andrew Bevin found Foodstuffs has an eight-person in-house communications team and also uses Thompson Lewis and Sherson Willis. Thompson Lewis links run to Helen Clark, Jacinda Ardern and John Key's offices, plus a former Nicola Willis adviser. - 🔁 Sherson Willis founder Trish Sherson previously headed communications for Act. In July it hired Andrew Ketels, David Seymour's chief of staff from 2020 to 2025, as head of government relations. Edwards notes Ketels' Herald column against interventionist policy states his Sherson Willis role but not that the firm works for Foodstuffs North Island. - 🛒 Woolworths' advisers include Lillis Clark, whose directors worked for Steven Joyce, and its head of government relations Andrew Kirton, a former Labour general secretary and Chris Hipkins' chief of staff. Joyce himself now sits on the Foodstuffs North Island board and chairs NZME. - 🏛️ BusinessNZ chief executive Katherine Rich, a former National MP and former head of the Food and Grocery Council, is opposing the break-up. Edwards stresses none of these connections is evidence of wrongdoing. - 🔍 His point is that New Zealand still has no comprehensive lobbying register. He recalls the Commerce Commission's 2021 draft contemplating structural separation of wholesale and retail, which was gone by the final report in March 2022, after lobbying that included a January 2022 dinner Kirton arranged between Grant Robertson and Countdown's managing director. - 💡 Takeaway (free preview, then a paywall): Edwards says there is no smoking gun that lobbying killed separation last time, but the system makes influence almost impossible to see. Paid sections he lists include whether this is just anti-business populism and the think tank leading the counteroffensive. [Read More](https://www.democracyproject.org.nz/p/democracy-briefing-the-supermarket-4db?ref=goodoil.news) --- ![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!BMwo!,w_1200,h_675,c_fill,f_jpg,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep,g_auto/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F7964944d-da03-487c-8cf4-17b1948d19d4_896x448.jpeg) ## 2\. The Overhang 2.8 - Poll Dancing *rustie - The Overhang* - 📊 Part one of a series on how The Overhang forecasts New Zealand elections, starting with polling, which it calls the core of the engine. - 🤝 Only 15 per cent of New Zealanders say they trust pollsters, against 27 per cent who distrust them. That net minus 12 still beats politicians at minus 41. - 🎯 Averaged across firms, years and parties, final polls have been out by 1.3 percentage points per party against the result. The average of the polls has beaten the average single poll in nine of ten MMP elections. - ⚖️ House effects: relative to the consensus, Roy Morgan shows the minors (especially the Greens) higher and the majors (especially Labour) lower. Reid Research and Talbot Mills tend to overstate Labour, and Verian tends to overstate National. - 📈 Over the last 100 days of a campaign the majors move an average of plus or minus 3 points (up to 9 in extreme cases) and the minors plus or minus 2 (up to 6). Even 41 days out, late swing averages 1.4 points for the majors and 1 for the minors, usually toward the minors. - ❗ Against the election-day polling average, National has done 1.5 points worse on average and the Greens 1 point worse. Labour has averaged 0.3 better with wide swings, NZ First 0.4 better, and "Others" about 1 point better. - 🎲 The model adjusts for house effects, weights by recency and sample size, projects to election day with a volatility term, and runs 20,000 Monte Carlo simulations. - ✈️ Three unknowns worry the author: about 350,000 people, mostly younger, have left since 2023; enrolment changes stop people enrolling during early voting and casting special votes, which tend to favour the left; and tactical vote-splitting for an overhang. - 💡 Takeaway: trust reputable polls in aggregate and think in probabilities, but stay humble. The author lists three reasons the forecast might be wrong "and many others". [Read More](https://theoverhangaonz.substack.com/p/the-overhang-28-poll-dancing) --- ![](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/7b14b8_c6a1be880ec143f7ae0ecebfd9a4b726~mv2.png/v1/fill/w_189,h_195,al_c,lg_1,q_85/7b14b8_c6a1be880ec143f7ae0ecebfd9a4b726~mv2.png) ## 3\. RODNEY HIDE: You wanted names. Here they are, lanyards and all *Rodney Hide - Brash & Mitchell* - 📝 After a reader demanded he "name these corporate numpties", Hide names who signed three corporate submissions against NZ First MP Jenny Marcroft's bill defining "woman" as "an adult human biological female" and "man" as "an adult human biological male". - 🏗️ Fletcher Building's submission lists Wendi Bains and Sean Park. It warns that environments "perceived as exclusionary, inconsistent, or uncertain" raise attrition risk, and that a legal definition would remove the effectiveness of its Gender Affirmation Leave and Transitioning at Work Guidelines. - 🦺 Hide reads that as safety work growing a second head called psychosocial risk, where even a dictionary goes on the hazard register and company policy outranks the law. - 🐑 Silver Fern Farms' submission came from its Rainbow Community "with the endorsement of Silver Fern Farms Limited", signed by chief executive Dan Boulton and chief people officer Matt Carter. It says the bill is "not clarification; it is erasure". - 🌾 Hide notes Silver Fern Farms is owned 50:50 by farmers through its co-operative and by Shanghai's Bright Meat Group, and wonders whether either owner wanted it lobbying Parliament on the meaning of "woman". - ⚡ Orion's submission, for Orion and Connetics, is signed by policy lead Vivienne Wilson. It opposes the bill because it does not align with Orion's core values and warns of "legal and administrative chaos". - 🏛️ Orion's own submission says it is 89.3 per cent owned by Christchurch City Council (via Christchurch City Holdings) and 10.7 per cent by Selwyn District Council. Hide asks whether councillors, or ratepayers, were consulted. - 🔤 None of the three offers its own definition of a woman, he says. Their vocabulary is "perceived", "signals" and "lived" rather than what is true. - 💡 Takeaway: Hide urges Fletcher shareholders, Silver Fern's farmer co-op members and Christchurch and Selwyn ratepayers to ask who decided their company should have a view on this. [Read More](https://www.brashandmitchell.com/post/rodney-hide-you-wanted-names-here-they-are-lanyards-and-all?ref=goodoil.news) --- ![](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/7b14b8_6a8b6e67a31b4feb8b1c60d8cae0a2b6~mv2.jpg/v1/fill/w_416,h_237,al_c,lg_1,q_80/7b14b8_6a8b6e67a31b4feb8b1c60d8cae0a2b6~mv2.jpg) ## 4\. RICHARD PREBBLE - The First Turning Point: TOP Commits Suicide *Richard Prebble - Brash & Mitchell* - 🔄 Prebble says the election has had one of its turning points. Every campaign has them, often a statement that alienates possible voters or the party's own activists. - ⚖️ Parties run two campaigns, he writes: one to motivate supporters to donate and volunteer, one to attract voters. One without the other does not work. - 🤐 That, he says, is why none of the leaders in the Kingmaker debate would spell out their bottom lines: anything they said would alienate supporters or potential voters. - 📉 From his own experience: in 1999, when he said he supported privatisation, ACT members loved it, voters who saw the railways as an asset hated it, and ACT dropped 3 per cent in the next poll. - 🏡 He bets his parliamentary super that TOP members joined for a land tax and a guaranteed income, and not one joined for what are now the party's five bottom lines. - 🐟 He recalls TOP's support collapsing at the previous election when voters realised it wanted to get rid of "Moggie", and jokes that its bottom line is now protecting Nemo. If banning trawling in the Pacific is your priority, he says, you would vote Green. - 📊 He calls Qiulae Wong's five points a suicide note that signals she will sell out flagship policies and deal with anyone. He puts her fourth in Mt Albert on 10 per cent, and TOP at 6 per cent, below 5 in another recent poll. - 💡 Takeaway: Prebble says the five bottom lines will sink TOP before a vote is cast. A short column, readable in full. [Read More](https://www.brashandmitchell.com/post/richard-prebble-the-first-turning-point-top-commits-suicide?ref=goodoil.news) --- ![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!81x1!,w_1200,h_675,c_fill,f_jpg,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep,g_auto/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F3748da84-baaf-44aa-bb55-2bacc95cb6c4_1550x734.png) ## 5\. Democracy Briefing: Labour’s austerity problem *Bryce Edwards - The Democracy Project* - 🗣️ For three years Labour has campaigned against coalition cuts. Barbara Edmonds called recent public service savings "disgusting and cruel because they're arbitrary", and Chris Hipkins wrote that "Cuts cost jobs, weaken services, and make the economy smaller". - ❓ As recently as Monday, campaign chair Kieran McAnulty demanded to know "which schools, hospitals, roads or public services will National cut to make its promises stack up?" - 📑 Edwards says Sunday's fiscal plan adopts Nicola Willis' settings almost wholesale: her $2.4 billion annual operating allowance, her 2028/29 surplus year, and a debt track that barely differs. - 📊 By 2030/31 Labour plans core Crown spending of about 30.4 per cent of GDP, against National's 29.8 per cent. RNZ says the two are "largely on the same track", and Cameron Bagrie says "they're all pretty well the same". - 🔄 Six weeks earlier, Edwards writes, Labour seemed ready to argue for a larger state. Now it plans to govern with Willis' allowance while public spending keeps falling as a share of GDP. - 📰 He accepts The Post's point that total Crown spending has kept rising in dollars, so "austerity" is disputed. But inflation, population growth and demand mean more dollars do not necessarily buy better services, and Treasury expects spending to fall sharply as a share of GDP. - 💡 Thomas Coughlan notes Treasury's last estimate that about $2.5 billion a year is needed just to maintain current services. Both parties sit at $2.4 billion, "already slightly lower than what is needed to keep the proverbial lights on". - 🏫 Coughlan sees little room beyond health and pay equity, with education, police, Corrections, defence, RNZ, and arts and sport funding exposed. Edwards calls it a remarkably austere outcome for a party campaigning against austerity. - 💡 Takeaway (free preview, then a paywall): the free text ends on the question "So what is Labour going to cut?" Paid sections he lists include the vanished fiscal difference and how "fully funded" works. [Read More](https://www.democracyproject.org.nz/p/democracy-briefing-labours-austerity?ref=goodoil.news) --- ![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!e5hf!,w_1200,h_675,c_fill,f_jpg,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep,g_auto/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fb893c6da-60b0-4bfd-aa0b-695501bb613a_8256x5504.jpeg) ## 6\. Fake News On French Riots Rips Away Façade That The Media Ever Cared About “Real-World Harm” *Michael Shellenberger - Public* - 📰 The dek says reporters spent ten years demanding censorship of right-wing populists and are now promoting the left-wing misinformation driving French street violence. - 🇺🇸 Shellenberger recalls a 2019 House Judiciary hearing where the New York Democrat chairing it said white nationalism online had real consequences and "Americans have died because of it". - 🏛️ After the 2022 Buffalo shooting, New York's attorney general asked Congress to tie platforms' legal immunity to how they policed such content. - 🎙️ He cites a live microphone at a UN luncheon catching Angela Merkel pressing Mark Zuckerberg about anti-immigrant posts during the 2015 migrant wave. Eight months later, he writes, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Microsoft agreed to review flagged hate speech within 24 hours. - 🇪🇺 Over the following years, he says, the European Commission secretly dictated censorship terms to the platforms, something Americans only discovered this year. - 🗞️ He quotes a 2018 New York Times headline, "Facebook Fueled Anti-Refugee Attacks in Germany", and Keir Starmer telling platforms after the 2024 Southport riots, "It's happening on your premises." - ⚠️ His pivot: when courts, prosecutors and legislatures trace violence to social media, he says, the trail often leads to Islamists and the radical left. - 🔒 The free text stops there. The French riot evidence the headline promises is behind the paywall. - 💡 Takeaway (thin free preview): the readable part is the history of "real-world harm" arguments for censoring the right. The French case itself is for paid subscribers. [Read More](https://www.public.news/p/fake-news-on-french-riots-rips-away?ref=goodoil.news) --- ![](https://www.spectator.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/GettyImages_1674265333.jpg) ## 7\. The truth about Gazan ‘journalists’ *Jonathan Sacerdoti - The Spectator Australia* - 📂 Sacerdoti says the IDF this week published what it calls the Press Files: names, photographs and roles of 170 people killed in the war who were presented as journalists or media workers and were also, it says, terrorist operatives. - 🔢 By the IDF's count, 118 belonged to Hamas's military wing, 49 to Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and the rest to smaller factions. Seventeen crossed into Israel on 7 October 2023, and more than 40 of the deaths drew formal UN condemnation. - 📄 The list was built over months from documents and rosters recovered in Gaza, much of it the groups' own paperwork. Some named, according to the IDF, had worked for Reuters, CNN, the BBC, AP, AFP, Le Monde and ABC Australia. - 📺 Examples he gives from the IDF material: Al Jazeera's Anas al-Sharif listed as a company-level officer in a Hamas artillery company; Hossam Shabat as an anti-tank operative; Ismail al-Ghoul on a Hamas roster; and Hamza al-Dahdouh in an Islamic Jihad electronic engineering unit. - 🎥 Hassan Aslih, whose work ran through AP and CNN before both cut ties in November 2023, appears on a Khan Younis Brigade roster, and the IDF says he infiltrated Israel on 7 October. - ⚖️ Sacerdoti says not every profile carries the same weight of evidence, each case deserves scrutiny, and not every journalist killed in Gaza was a combatant. - 🎙️ He cites Motaz Azaiza's three-hour Arabic interview on the Taqarob podcast: journalists lowering cameras when residents cursed Hamas, a WhatsApp group called "Smart" run by a Hamas media official, and his admission that he filmed hostages being beaten on 7 October and chose not to publish. - 🚪 On Piers Morgan's demand that Israel "let the journalists in", he points to the 2006 kidnapping of Fox News' Steve Centanni and Olaf Wiig, and the BBC's Alan Johnston held for 114 days in 2007, as reasons access is a difficult strategic choice. - 💡 Takeaway: the lesson of the Press Files, he says, is not to trust Israel blindly, but that in Gaza the line between reporter and terrorist was deliberately blurred, and western media were incurious. [Read More](https://www.spectator.com.au/2026/10/the-truth-about-gazan-journalists/?ref=goodoil.news) --- ![](https://www.spiked-online.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/AI-beijing-1536x864.jpg) ## 8\. What everyone gets wrong about AI *Norman Lewis - spiked* - 🚨 Lewis starts from a Financial Times report that an OpenAI "agent" hacked an Australian government health-service website and went undetected for months, fuelling fears AI is breaking free of human control. - 🧩 He calls the breach serious, but notes the FT itself describes agents as bots performing complex tasks "based on human instructions". That, he says, is human agency, or stupidity, poor engineering and weak security, not machines escaping control. - 🗣️ His target is anthropomorphic language: "thinks", "reasons", "learns", "hallucinates", "goals". Citing Emily Bender and Nanna Inie, he says a hallucination is an "unsupported output" and goals are "success conditions" set by engineers. - 📜 The 1955 Dartmouth proposal by McCarthy, Minsky, Rochester and Shannon spoke of machines that could simulate learning and intelligence. Lewis says the word "simulate" has since faded from the field's vocabulary. - 🤖 Turing's 1950 paper swapped "Can machines think?" for an imitation test, and Joseph Weizenbaum's ELIZA showed how readily people attribute understanding to simulated conversation. - 📈 From IJ Good's 1965 "ultraintelligent machine" to Nick Bostrom's Superintelligence, he says better task performance has been relabelled intelligence, then cited as proof that intelligence exists. - 🚤 On "AI cheats" headlines, he uses the CoastRunners boat-race experiment, where an agent maximised its score by circling to collect rewards and never finished. That is reward hacking, he says, not a naughty machine. - 💼 Semantic inflation has commercial value, Lewis argues, so hype and panic feed each other, and he invokes Orwell's warning that bad language makes bad thinking easier. - 💡 Takeaway: the real danger, Lewis says, is not that machines have become human but that we talk as though human agency and responsibility are already secondary to them. [Read More](https://www.spiked-online.com/2026/10/04/what-everyone-gets-wrong-about-ai/?ref=goodoil.news) --- ![](https://www.spiked-online.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/gaza-1536x864.jpg) ## 9\. Why does the BBC refer to dead terrorists as ‘journalists’? *Andrew Fox - spiked* - 📺 Fox cites a Telegraph report that 53 people killed in Gaza whom the BBC described as journalists were Hamas terrorists. Most obituaries ran on BBC Arabic, and 10 appeared in English coverage. - 🎥 Among them was Abdullah Darwish, an Al-Aqsa TV cameraman Fox says was also a Hamas fighter in the 7 October attacks. - 🛡️ The BBC says its reports were "based on the information available to it at the time". Fox replies that the Committee to Protect Journalists had already removed Darwish and Rizq Abu Shakian from its database as combatants before the Telegraph story. - 🎭 He argues Hamas deliberately blurs journalist and combatant roles so any death can be framed as Israel targeting the press, and the BBC falls for it nearly every time. - 📊 A December 2025 Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Centre study found terrorist affiliations in 157 of 266 reported journalist and media-worker deaths, about 59 per cent. Fox notes it counted factional media employment, so not all 157 were fighters. - 🎬 He cites the documentary Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone, whose child narrator's father was a deputy agriculture minister in the Hamas-run administration. Ofcom found that omission materially misled audiences. - 🏥 Earlier failures he lists: Jeremy Bowen blaming Israel for the October 2023 Al-Ahli hospital blast, which Fox says was a misfired Islamic Jihad rocket, and a BBC apology over claims Israeli troops were "targeting" medical teams at Al-Shifa. - 💡 Takeaway: Fox wants senior editors to account publicly for the sources they trusted across BBC Arabic and English output, and says failures this serious should cost careers. [Read More](https://www.spiked-online.com/2026/10/01/why-does-the-bbc-refer-to-dead-terrorists-as-journalists/?ref=goodoil.news) --- ![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!gp1e!,w_1200,h_675,c_fill,f_jpg,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep,g_auto/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F0459cd2c-91d4-4388-b035-4603e2500c59_5657x3771.jpeg) ## 10\. The Man Who Raised the Alarm Before October 7 *Jay Solomon - The Free Press* - ⚠️ On 31 August 2023, Yigal Carmon, founder of the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), published a warning on MEMRI's website headlined "Signs of Possible War", pointing to September and October. - 👤 Carmon, now 80, was a counterterrorism adviser to Israeli prime ministers Yitzhak Shamir and Yitzhak Rabin. - 🔎 He did not predict that Hamas specifically would start the war, or that it would begin on the Gaza border. But he flagged rising threats of a major operation from militant leaders that MEMRI monitors in Arabic- and Persian-language media. - 🚀 His warning said Hamas, Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and other Iranian-backed proxies were deploying increasingly sophisticated weapons and tactics that "can cause a large number of Israeli fatalities". - 🔕 Solomon writes that the warning caused little reaction in Jerusalem or Washington. The week before the attack, Jake Sullivan said the Middle East was "quieter today than it has been in two decades". - 📑 The dek says Carmon now sets out the missed signs in a new report, in more detail than ever. - 🔒 The free preview ends there, behind The Free Press paywall. - 💡 Takeaway (thin free preview): what you can read is Carmon's pre-attack warning and the official complacency. The new report's detail is for subscribers. [Read More](https://www.thefp.com/p/yigal-carmon-october-7-warning-memri?ref=goodoil.news) --- ## What our members are saying about Ten@10 **Elizabeth** These articles are compulsory reading for me and the perfect addition to the usual list of Goodoil items! **Lynne** Absolutely brilliant to receive these current and thought provoking articles. **Jonathan** Just wanted to let you know that I’m loving this new 10@10\. Much appreciated from someone who chooses to read/watch almost NO mainstream media. **Murray** Cam, relish your output as the newspaper in Christchurch is so intent on non news. Thankyou **Fred** Thanks for Ten @ Ten, really enjoy reading it.Keep it up. All the best, keep healthy. **Jocko** Wonderful info not otherwise available in NZ. More power to your elbow! Thanks. ### The National Party Left Me URL: https://goodoil.news/the-national-party-left-me/ Last updated: 2026-10-07T05:14:28.000Z During the Labour Party’s Covid 19 era, Nicola Willis’s portfolios included housing and finance spokesperson. It was alarming she did not appear to give any thought to those who could no longer live in their homes as they faced financial ruin. At this time, hundreds of New Zealanders were cruelly mandated out of their jobs and careers and others lost businesses. To survive this sudden upheaval of suffering with no income to support their family, they had to move elsewhere. There were tears, anger and desperation as they endeavoured to start all over again in a different place, trying to find work that was scarce and affordable housing to rent. Willis, as the National Party’s deputy leader sitting on the opposition front bench, hard-heartedly and callously choose to ignore these despairing kiwis. The National Party left me that horrible day when Nicola Willis refused to ‘associate’ with Kiwis who were ‘forced into poverty’ in my beautiful New Zealand. My family were Waikato dairy farmers. All my voting life, I followed their political pattern and voted for the National Party. The National Party stood for conservative values: rewarding hard-working country folk and Kiwi businesses. Dairy and rural farmers in New Zealand have long been the biggest part of the National Party’s traditional support base. New Zealand farmers had strongly backed the National Party since its formation in 1936 from the merger of the Reform Party and the United Party, as it always positioned itself as a party for farmers, business and rural interests. They wanted Kiwis to do well. The party flourished over the decades and held a disproportionate political influence with its shared interests and values that included export produce, property rights, free enterprise, self-reliance and deep scepticism of the Labour Party, because of its huge government intervention and urban focused regulation. That was my family and me. So, I voted for the party my family liked. The farmers had some tough times when Labour in the mid-1980s removed nearly all the agricultural and import protections. Initially farmers protested but soon they accepted the more competitive market and the initial shock of subsidy removal. Even New Zealand’s adoption of MMP in 1996, loyalty and affinity with their policy, continued to connect farmers to the National Party. I continued to vote for the National Party **Then the 2019–20 Covid19 pandemic panic swept the world.** On Sunday 6 February 22, a huge convoy formed: a convoy of cars, motor bikes, motor homes and trucks began at the top and the bottom of NZ and thousands made their way to parliament grounds, passing hundreds of thousands in support lining the streets, roads and bridges. They were saying to Ardern: please stop the mandates and lockdowns. We are in a dark place. I emailed Willis, presuming she and others in the National Party would support the wellbeing of the peaceful protestors, knowing what they had been through. I thought she would speak for the people and stand up against Ardern’s draconian rules. First email: > *Good morning, Nicola.* > > *I am asking that you and Chris Bishop consider meeting with the CONVOY protestors who will be at parliament today. I am not speaking as part of the convoy, but I am speaking as a long-term supporter and member of the National Party, who is watching on. This country is suffering under this Government. I was disappointed, in terms of the CONVOY, to hear this morning you say the National Party support vaccines. The Convoy is not simply a group of antivaxxers.* > > *The Convoy and their supporters along the route want a change of Government, Jacinda and the Labour Party gone and are against vaccine mandates and ongoing lockdowns.* > > *Surely, you can agree, National want Labour out of power? Surely, you also agree National don’t want New Zealanders losing their jobs and forced into poverty, because they have not agreed to this vaccine or businesses who cannot trade under harsh lockdowns?* > > *Please consider this huge section of society. Stand with them on what you can agree on, so they know what side of the political spectrum you are on.* > > *Warm regards, xxxxxxxx”* **I was shaken out of my naiviety with a jolt by her reply.** **Nicola’s reply:** > ***From:*** [*Nicola Willis*](mailto:Nicola.Willis@parliament.govt.nz) > **Sent:* Tuesday, 8 February 2022 3:25 PM* > **To: xxxxxxx** > **Subject:* RE: Please meet with the convoy today* > > *“Hi xxxxxxx* > > *Thanks for your message.* > > *I respect the right to protest. That people can do so is an important exercise of democratic freedom.* > > *I continue to believe vaccination is our best defence against COVID-19 and I feel a responsibility to encourage New Zealanders to take up the opportunity to be vaccinated. For that reason, *I do* *not want to associate myself with anti-vaccination rhetoric and messaging that is highly likely to be conveyed at today’s protest.** > > *National has consistently held the Government to account for its approach to COVID management, highlighting areas where they have got it wrong and proposing improvements. We will continue to do so.* > > *Thanks again for sharing your views.* > > *Best wishes, Nicola”. (Emphasis added.)* Willis prejudged and dismissed any concerns of the people. **Second email, from me:** > *Thank you replying. I have to disagree with you and your reasoning though*. *I am still hoping you and Chris will go out there, with careful planning of course, and speak to the people*. > > *They will not go away as they have had enough of the injustices of mandates and the lack of freedom. More people will come. They will not all simply be anti vaxxers.* > > *The people want leadership with a vision to get them out of this situation, because there is no end in sight from Jacinda*. *We all know other countries are dropping the mandates.* > > *Please reconsider*. There was no further reply from Nicola. Nicola Willis made it clear she did not want to ‘**associate**’ herself with Kiwis mandated out of their jobs and/or suffering financial hardship and loss after months of punishing lockdowns. By refusing to engage with the protestors, she instead sided fully with Ardern and her punishment of hurting Kiwis. Over the following four years, National have done nothing to entice me back. Then she expects me to vote for her... The National Party left me Tuesday 8 February 2022**.** ### Crown Asset or Financial Fiction? URL: https://goodoil.news/crown-asset-or-financial-fiction/ Last updated: 2026-10-05T20:30:53.000Z [**Pee Kay**](https://nominister.wordpress.com/2026/10/05/tertiary-education-an-expensive-political-battleground/?ref=goodoil.news) *No Minister* Last week it was supermarkets, this week it is student debt/university fees. It seems there is absolutely no systemic crisis that our politicians can’t fix with a sweet, shiny new election campaign spreadsheet tweak. Last week political parties all painted supermarkets as the whipping boy and took to flailing them with gusto. This week they are scattering lollies in front of a very receptive audience who, no doubt, will be very happy to trade debt for vote! Last Sunday Chris Hipkins unveiled Labours plan new election proposal on student fees during the Labour Party’s official election campaign launch. > ***Labour will cut student debt. If you’ve finished your study and you’re still paying off a student loan, we’ll wipe 10 per cent off what you owe on 1 April 2027\. And for every student who comes after, if you stay in New Zealand for three years after you finish your study, we’ll also wipe 10 per cent off what you owe.”*** Proposing to carve into this massive liability, Labour’s plan is estimated to cost taxpayers **$583.4 million** over five years, with a massive **$439.5 million** hit falling in the first year alone just to clear historical balances. Is this not a clear indication of how our political class cynically choose to ignore the consequences of election bribes? To move **$500 million** dollars off student ledgers does nothing but add further burden onto Joe Blow taxpayer and proves, once again, that our venal politicians would bankrupt taxpayers with an uncollectable, multi-billion dollar black hole rather than look the universities, and their students, in the eye and fix this broken, inflated, tertiary fees system. Labour’s latest desperate stunt to write off 10 per cent of student loan balances is a typical, cynical play for the youth vote ahead of the November election. Hipkins made sure he was seen on TVNZ news addressing a sympathetic audience when he visited the University of Canterbury in Christchurch a couple of days after announcing the policy. Surprise, surprise. Students enthusiastically endorsed the plan to hand them free money. Just as children would vote overwhelmingly in favour of ice cream for dinner, and dogs, unsurprisingly, would support the abolishment of the lead! Naturally Hipkins treats this “positive feedback” as a profound political endorsement, rather than the predictable reality of human nature. When a politician offers to wipe away your debt using other people’s money, you are always going to cheer! What makes it all the more galling is that it is a page ripped straight out of the same tired playbook that gave us Jacinda Ardern’s, heavily promoted during her 2017 campaign but disastrous, “First-Year Fees-Free” scheme. We all know that was a multi-million dollar policy that did absolutely nothing to improve equity as she claimed it would, did nothing to lift tertiary participation, but hey, it did a wonderful job of garnering student votes while at the same time proving that educational failure can always be papered over if you throw enough taxpayer cash at it. This latest policy isn’t political leadership: it is a temporary financial bribe that papers over decades of political neglect of our education debt. But we must be fair here, Labour isn’t the only party throwing the education lollies around. Unsurprisingly, minor parties are gleefully mimicking Labour, offering their own brand of financial hand-outs or ideological windfalls that prove just how politically weaponised university fees have become. On the left, the Green Party makes Hipkins’ 10 per cent discount look stingy by requiring complete **debt-free tertiary education** and a total phase out of student loans. Wow, totally free tertiary education… at what cost? The Māori Party wants to give student allowances to everyone, regardless of how much their parents earn and completely wipe your student debt if you stay and work in New Zealand for five years. Meanwhile, the right-wing parties offer structural alternatives, but they still highlight the total lack of long-term economic thinking across the spectrum on the subject of tertiary fees. While National has countered with a proposal to lower the compulsory repayment rate from 12 per cent to 10 per cent, on the populist front, NZ First pushes an **accelerated regional bonding scheme**, offering to wipe the debt of graduates who stay in the country, with faster write-offs for those who move to stagnating regional sectors facing critical worker shortages. ACT’s counter strategy is built on a basic principle: stop forcing students to buy what they don’t want or don’t use. On top of tuition, every student is hit with a mandatory “Student Services Fee” that funds campus gyms, clubs, and bloated student unions. ACT wants to make this fee completely optional. If you don’t use the gym or support the union, you keep your cash. They reckon this straightforward change puts up to **$4,000** back into a student’s pocket over a three-year degree, while forcing campus unions to actually earn their keep instead of living off a guaranteed handout. But in actuality all of the above options on tertiary fees do not hide the fact that our pollies treat taxpayer funds as a bottomless piggy bank, doubling down on the same failed subsidies that drove up the cost of degrees in the first place. The peak of this political farce is the staggering hypocrisy of it all. Tertiary education in New Zealand effectively stopped being free in 1990, when Geoffrey Palmer’s Labour government introduced uniform tuition fees, closely followed by National slamming the door shut with the Student Loan Scheme in 1992. Many of the very politicians who currently sit, or have sat, in parliament drafting these cynical election bribes are the exact demographic who breezed through university completely fee free. They enjoyed a golden era of fully taxpayer-funded degrees and universal student allowances, with zero debt at the end. Yet, having climbed the ladder to success on the public purse, they immediately kicked the ladder away for future generations. For over three decades, successive cohorts of older politicians have comfortably voted to saddle young Kiwis with a compounding **billion dollar** debt mountain, turning tertiary education into an inescapable financial trap while pretending they are doing students a favour with a measly 10 per cent discount! Across the entire political spectrum, no party clamouring for your vote is willing to address the elephant in the room: why university administration and tuition costs are super-inflating in the first place. Instead, we are left with a bidding war of short-term bribes. While politicians treat tertiary education as a pre-election candy shop, they are actively hiding a fiscal time bomb. What all parties never mention is that New Zealand’s student loan scheme is fundamentally broken. According to Inland Revenue data, the total outstanding student loan debt in New Zealand has reached a staggering **$16.9 billion**. That represents an **amazing 8.8 per cent of the country’s entire Net Core Crown Debt**. Ten years ago, the national student debt pile sat at **$15.3 billion**. Today, it has blown out to that worrying **$16.9 billion**, and the scary part is that it’s growing, despite the fact that fewer new students are entering the scheme. Individual balances are ballooning fast, meaning the average Kiwi graduate is walking out of university into a much deeper financial hole than their predecessors. Don’t let the politicians fool you into thinking a **$1.6 billion increase** over 10 years is a win. It most definitely is not. It is a massive red flag. We should be absolutely terrified about where this trajectory is heading. This isn’t just slow growth: it’s a runaway train heading straight for a **$25 billion black hole by 2036**. When individual debt expands this fast while the system shrinks, it tells you, quite clearly, our tertiary funding model is essentially broken. Instead of facing reality, successive governments continue to play creative accounting games, classifying this incredible **$16.9 billion** debt mountain as a “Crown Asset” on the government balance sheet. Yes, money owed can be classed as an asset, but in this case, that can only be termed a ‘financial fiction’. How can a burgeoning debt be classed as an asset? Politicians craftily disguise a **$16.9 billion** debt mountain as a **“Crown asset”** yet they are happy to give away hundreds of millions of that asset via pre-election promises. When Labour reduces a loan balance, the borrower owes less, and the government writes off some of that asset. It’s as simple as that. Allowing that debt to increase and then happily writing off large portions is wilful **fiscal ineptitude**. Labour’s proposal to write off 10 per cent of student loan balances is estimated to cost nearly **$600 million** over five years, with **$439.5 million** of that impact hitting the books immediately in the 2026/27 financial year. That governments treat uncollectable debt from overseas defaulters and compounding interest penalties as assets is only papering over a black hole that is on track to breach **$25 billion by 2036**. Whether it is Labour’s cynical 10 per cent write-off bribe, National’s minor repayment tweaks, or the minor parties’ endless spending demands, everyone is ignoring the elephant in the room. They refuse to address rapidly inflating university costs, choosing instead to manipulate the books and pass the true multi-billion-dollar taxpayer liability to the next generation. The sad truth is that politicians are playing us for fools, treating a massive student loan crisis like it’s just a game of Monopoly. Moving numbers around on a spreadsheet doesn’t magically make hundreds of millions of dollars vanish. They are just hiding the fact that the whole system is bankrupt. It’s time to stop the cynical bribes, stop the creative accounting, and finally fix the broken system that lets university debt skyrocket out of control. If we want a simple starting point to fix this mess, look at vice chancellors’ salaries. University vice-chancellors are pocketing high-flying CEO level money. Former finance minister Grant Robertson receives a massive package somewhere between **$629,000 and $645,000** at Otago. The head of Auckland University does even better, raking in **$827,000**. Bringing these distended salaries back down to reality would be a good place to start. If we don’t stand up and demand real structural change now, we are flat out robbing our children’s future to pay for today’s political PR stunts, and the taxpayers will be the ones sent straight to jail without passing GO. This article was originally published by [No Minister](https://nominister.wordpress.com/2026/10/05/tertiary-education-an-expensive-political-battleground/?ref=goodoil.news). ### Election 2026: I Feel Your Pain URL: https://goodoil.news/election-2026-i-feel-your-pain/ Last updated: 2026-10-05T20:15:26.000Z Australians have been shafted plenty, at the last few elections. _This post is for paying subscribers only._ ### An Axe With No Handle URL: https://goodoil.news/an-axe-with-no-handle/ Last updated: 2026-10-05T20:01:40.000Z **LilBaP** The books are on fire. Wellington is arguing about the colour of the cover. We watch with interest and we are also the ones paying. Damien Grant, on *Stuff* last week, opened Treasury’s pre-election forecast and read it out loud, which is more than most have managed. When Nicola Willis took the books off Grant Robertson, spending was 31.7 per cent of GDP. It is now expected to be 32.1 per cent in the 2026 year and about $20 billion higher in cash. The tax take has slipped from 28 per cent of GDP to 27.6\. Debt has gone from 38.6 per cent to 41. The scary numbers are the interest bill: $3.3 billion in 2023, $10.3 billion by 2027\. Super goes from $24 billion this year toward $33 billion by 2031\. Three years of what was sold as restraint, and a larger share of the economy, is still going through Wellington. Restraint, it turns out, is a press release with a rising graph. Treasury’s 2023 forecast had a surplus by now. It is 2026\. The surplus was on the trailer. Someone unhitched it and the same driver still wants the keys. The new path needs growth to jump from 1.1 per cent to 2.9 by 2028, and it assumes no shocks. Pandemics, wars, quakes and Labour Governments do not RSVP. They turn up, eat the sausage rolls and leave the books smouldering. Grant says welfare, including health, is unsustainable. That part is a fact. He also calls universal super a payment to millionaire boomers. A paper millionaire who sells the house to eat is no longer a millionaire. He is a renter and the super is what pays the rent. Grant counted the rateable value and renames it. He also suspects the ACC debt line was moved. That may be so. What he does not mention is the money that leaves the country or lines the wrong pockets. The $50 for fuel has Willis’s name on it. From April, about 143,000 working families get an extra $50 a week. Sold as fuel relief. It is not a cut at the pump. In October it is still being paid and it is not for most families. Call it what it is. A top-up to Working for Families. Temporary, in Wellington, means until the next photo op, and possibly the one after that. School lunches are the same shape. Trimmed, not ended. Checking which children are actually not being fed would have been the hard decision. But it’s welfare, with a bread roll and hopefully some butter. The last three years are the test: spending up, debt up and surplus still over the hill. Now, across to the other side of the House. The menu is longer and the courses cost more. Hipkins has pay equity, cheaper student loans, more for Kainga Ora, more for doctors and school buildings and a capital gains tax. The Greens want a wealth tax and Opportunity wants a land tax. Te Pāti Māori wants the lot, and a food voucher – and a meeting the morning after the election. Grant’s line holds. They raise some cash, spend more and borrow the gap. National’s line is no new taxes. But you can refuse a new tax and still write a new weekly payment. They have shown us the trick, in public, with a receipt and a levy. Yes, cutting waste in Wellington is necessary. It is not enough. A country does not audit its way out of a productivity hole, though several departments will invoice for the attempt. One answer is not enough. New Zealand needs a jump start, not a new steering wheel on a car that will not turn over. We need a spark. Hit all three at once. First, public money for a result you can see. A hospital. A road. A trade agreement that works for our side. Not a scheme that feeds the person writing the caption. Treaty chapters in trade deals no farmer asked for and no worker can understand; climate text that lectures the milk producer and does not sell the milk; funding that never shows the dollar reaching the household it was meant for. Follow the money, the mouth, the microphone and the person who ends up with it. If they are the same circle, then the taxpayer is the one losing. Second, the energy. A new machine with no power is a very expensive paperweight. Wind and solar can light the house and burn the toast but they don’t work when the cloud sets in and the wind knocks off for the afternoon. Keep Huntly until a replacement actually exists. Look for the oil and gas that was stopped under Labour. Burn our own coal rather than someone else’s substandard shipped in from a distance and fast-track the geothermal – the one renewable that still turns up to work. Cheap power, and fuel you can actually get, is what keeps a country working. Third, tax. A small firm hires, or it shrugs and goes home. Reduce company tax from 28 to 25 or lower, so the money stays in the business instead of feeding the interest bill: a deduction for the equipment that makes or grows things. Treasury has already booked the growth. It forgot about production equipment, a shift or an apprentice. Grant wants the axe. Wellington wants another working group on the axe. Tax the extra hour and the machine until people stop and you do not get a fairer country: you get an empty one with a larger interest bill sitting on top. If the next government does not do it, and I mean the coalition not one party with a slogan, then the people who lend us the money will do it for us. Credit agencies do not vote: they read the forecast. Miss it and the rate on the debt goes up. The *Titanic* started sinking slowly, until the bow went under. Mine is simpler. Jump-start the car. Take the handbrake off. Start steering in the right direction. ### Quick Hit: Quarter-Trillion and No Books URL: https://goodoil.news/quick-hit-quarter-trillion-and-no-books/ Last updated: 2026-10-05T19:30:44.000Z Taxpayers’ Union puts Green promises at $236.7b, or $114,239 a household, after the passenger rail add. Swarbrick wants Finance. Full books still weeks away. _This post is for subscribers on the VIP tier only._ _Includes the latest 500 public posts. Use `/sitemap.xml` for the complete archive of public content._