The Week at The Good Oil, 23 to 29 Oct

Eight days out and the gangs row is still running. Labour held steady but the left bloc went backwards, the Greens want billboards pulled, and Rodney Hide reckons an overhang ends National's list gravy train. Here is what we ran from Friday 23 to Thursday 29 October.

Cam's columns

• The Gangs Row Did Not Miss The Left. It Hit The Whole Bloc. (Paid). Labour held steady. The left didn't. The right bloc sits on 61 seats to the left's 56.
• The State Broadcasters’ Favourite Kingmaker (Paid). On NZ Media World's count Opportunity got good press in 17 of 33 items. NZ First got two of 22. Guess which party the left needs.
• The Greens Want The Truth Taken Down (Paid). The billboards say BACKING THE GANGS and rest on the Greens' own words. The Greens complained and JCDecaux paused them.
• Hipkins Wrote The Rule, Then Called It Racism (Paid). Hipkins ruled the Greens and Te Pāti Māori out of police over the Mob pad photos. Then his own candidate quit over a Mob video and he called the reaction racist.
• An Overhang Ends The List Gravy Train (Paid). If Rodney Hide is right, National's list loses its power. Paul Goldsmith has lost Epsom five times.
• Interest, Yes. Pressure, No. (Paid). Police sent Tamaki statements to parliamentary offices before the public saw them. A senior officer swore it was interest, not pressure.
• Paid For By You (Paid). John Minto told people to go and confront two visiting Israelis. His party has $82,011 of your money for broadcasting.

Quick Hits

• Quick Hit: What the Court Actually Said (VIP). The High Court struck the puberty blocker ban down on consultation and discrimination. It also found the minister had a rational basis to act.
• Quick Hit: The Greens’ Plan In Numbers (VIP). $26.6b more debt by 2030/31, nearly $29b in new taxes, and $176.4b of promises missing on the Taxpayers' Union count.
• Quick Hit: Petty and Pathetic, by the Numbers (VIP). Regular school attendance fell from 64 per cent to 39.9 per cent on Hipkins' watch. Numbers are not petty.
• Quick Hit: Hipkins’ First Week, Unpriced (VIP). Five actions for his first cabinet meeting. Labour's own fiscal plan prices two of them.
• Quick Hit: ACT’s $22b In Four Lines (VIP). $22b of savings, debt $12.4b lower by 2031, and one headline that muddled it to $2b.
• Quick Hit: Hipkins Dumped Leoni, Now He Might Need Her Seat (VIP). Leoni is still on the ballot as Labour and was two points off the seat in a Curia poll taken before she quit. If she wins, it's Hipkins' call.

Real Good Oil

• Are We Over-Polled? (Paid). Eleven party vote polls in 30 days, and Stephen Berry says it still isn't a record.
• A Promise at Eberswalde (Paid). Chris Trotter on what happens to a democracy that stops offering a real choice between left and right.
• Politicians and Gangs: An Etiquette Guide (Paid). About 10,000 gang members, roughly as many as Rotarians and Freemasons. John Black on how MPs should behave around them.
• You’ll Know When There’s A Real Cost Of Living Crisis (Paid). Nathan Smith says there is no cost of living crisis, and you'd better pray the upper classes never decide there is one.

The election, the polls and the overhang

• The Real Losers Won’t Be On the Ballot. Rodney Hide calls it. Centre-right government, a National overhang, Opportunity out, and the media the big losers.
• The Case for Saving Chris Bishop. An overhang could cost Willis, Bishop, Goldsmith and Brownlee their seats. Ani O'Brien says parliament would be worse without Bishop.
• Williamson on the Seats That Could Decide. Even an impossible 20 per cent lift takes National to about 33.6. Maurice Williamson on why two ticks could cost the coalition.
• Guy Fawkes Is Two Days Too Early. JC reckons the left's plot gets foiled on 7 November by the split vote.
• It Will Be Right on the Night. Hosking, Laws and McCoskrie all point the same way. JC says the right pops the corks on 7 November.
• Defining Election Issues in 2026. Over 60 per cent voted early last time. Muriel Newman on the five issues that decide this one.
• Why Can’t We Just Do It on the Day?. We don't have an election day any more. We have an election fortnight.
• The Most Important and Boring Election. Simon O'Connor found the debates dull and rehearsed, in an election this close.
• How to Fix the Overhang Problem. Peter Williams says the mixed bit of MMP is the problem. Make it purely proportional.
• The Five Demands for Opportunity’s Bottom Lines. Five non-negotiables with almost no numbers, costs or rules. Trojan horse, anyone?
• Opportunity Needs a Reality Check. Growth is finally gathering some momentum. Labour, the Greens and Opportunity want to hit the brakes.
• The Limits of Cleverness Versus Capitalism. Rodney Hide's 2017 verdict on Ardern was clever stupid. Now imagine Labour back with the Greens and Te Pāti Māori.

Gangs, Greens and Te Pāti Māori

• Why Does the Left Soft-Soap Māori Gangs?. Oriini Kaipara's Mob hui video lit the fire, and the coalition can barely believe its luck.
• So, Who Else?. Any candidate hiding gang support is open to a reporter or to blackmail. Prebble asks who else.
• Harry Tam and Human Rights. Mongrel Mob life member Harry Tam says the attacks on gangs reek of fascism. The irony.
• These Are Stupid and False Claims. Joel Maxwell says fear billionaires more than gangsters. Gangs turn up in police stats, hospitals and court lists.
• Claire Charters Calls Democracy a ‘Fairy Tale’. The He Puapua lead author and her blueprint to swap equal rights for a system based on race.
• Who Should Hold the Political Power to Govern New Zealand?. Te Pāti Māori wants a $220m Mātike Mai Fund and binding Waitangi Tribunal recommendations.

Around New Zealand

• I Left New Zealand Over an Email. A GP with almost 40 years' experience, one four-sentence email, and a year of re-education. So he left.
• Is the Health System Really Collapsing?. TVNZ has gone overboard on hospital horror stories. Richard Prebble says the official statistics tell another story.
• Moa Point and the Shitty Deflection. The regional council is prosecuting the city council and Tiaki Wai over Moa Point sewage. They're all as bad as each other.
• The Price of a Drop. More than 30,000 Tiaki Wai accounts are unpaid. Angry letters won't be enough.
• It Seems Like a Bad Deal. About $30m to the WHO in ten years, and all we got back was guidance.
• The Pacific Has Spoken. Labour Doesn’t Like the Answer.. Fiji's deputy PM explains why the Pacific embraces Israel. Labour wanted a veto.
• Shrinkflation Is Good. You pay the same and get fewer grams. Shrinkflation is the polite word.
• Dame Jacinda, An Empathic Leader. Ardern is off to the University of Sydney to teach empathetic leadership. Kevin isn't even going to try.
• A Monkey in a Banana Shop. The Great Divider gets paid to preach on the taxpayer's dime.

Across the Tasman

• Judge Labor Collabos by Their Actions. Albanese preaches civility while his own office circulated a dirt sheet on Helen Haines.
• Why Is Our Government Funding This Stuff?. Preaching social cohesion while funding hate preachers. Albanese pulled one grant.
• Tone It Down? We Wish They Would (Paid). After the attack on Helen Haines, the political class could use some self-reflection.
• This Is Nothing New. Political violence in Australia has a long history they'd rather you didn't mention.
• Spare Us the Wailing of the Cry-Bullies. Glass-jawed politicians who dish it out by the shovel-load.
• Aussies Know What the Real Threat Is. The ABC blamed toxic masculinity. Australian voters know better.
• The Standard They Walk Past. Folau got sacked for his views. Imams get a free pass.
• Aussies Boo Greens Leader at Protest. Shoebridge tried a land acknowledgement at the Victoria Barracks protest and got booed.
• Wind Turbines vs Nature. 39 kilometres of road bulldozed through rainforest for 28 turbines. The Greens look the other way.
• When Are They Going to Admit It?. Childcare abuse keeps surfacing and the ABC's fix is more government.
• The Case for Bureaucrat Term Limits. If nobody should govern forever, nobody should administer forever either.
• What Are Feminists Making up Today?. The whales got saved decades ago. Feminists still can't declare victory.
• Is This Just Silly... Or Sinister?. A government website compares paedophilia to gay rights.

Britain, Europe and the world

• What Useful Idiocy Is Really Like. A French shop owner begs looters, "This is not our cause!" They grab the wine.
• This Is Fiction. France's riots show spending and integration don't buy a peaceful society.
• Great Replacement Has ‘Already Occurred’ in Europe. Musk says it has already happened. Brussels went from 95 per cent native Belgian to 21.
• ‘La Grande Illusion’. Getting those 1940 vibes about France.
• The New Symbol of Anti-Western Hatred. The keffiyeh and the Palestinian flag haven't always been the uniform of Western protest.
• The Left Forgets. A German schoolteacher in the middle of a river-to-the-sea protest.
• Britain Has Three Trillion Knives in Its Back. Every man, woman and child in Britain now owes £43,165.
• Britain Is a Joke, but It’s Not Funny. 12,000 arrests for online posts in 2025. Just 11 per cent of violent crimes end in one.
• My Heartfelt Apology for My Tweet-Crimes. CJ Hopkins fined €4,800 in Berlin for tweets he was acquitted over almost three years ago.
• We Were Right All Along. Covid care homes and the rape gangs. The so-called cranks were right.
• The Psychopathology Behind the Third-Gender Proposal. An Irish bill for an X marker. Logic or lunacy?
• Israeli Voters Set to Swing Right. Young Israelis might be leaving Likud, but not for the left.
• Israel Puts Its People First. Pilots from Muslim countries barred from flights to Israel.
• The Democracy Nobody Wants to Discuss. Israel's tenth election since 2005. Abbas hasn't faced voters in nearly 22 years.
• I Mentioned Taiwan, but I Didn’t Get Away With It. A Hong Kong lecturer, one mention of Taiwan, and a compromise.
• Brazil Election Done but Not Dusted [Updated]. Lula wins the runoff by roughly the number of invalid votes. Nothing to see here.
• Musk Pulls the Switch. SpaceX closes the loophole that let Ukraine use Starlink for drone strikes.
• Democrats Want to Destroy Musk. AOC and Omar call Musk dumb and lucky. They couldn't turn a profit at a lemonade stand.
• Here’s One to Cheer You Up. Americans who fled Trump for Europe have buyer's remorse.
• The Biden Mandates That Broke the Ranks. Refusing the jab ended a lot of military careers.
• Is EMR Harmful to Health. RFK Jr's health department wants the data on electromagnetic radiation.
• Accountability Is All That Matters Now. A retired doctor says Covid accountability has to come through the courts.
• The New Alaska Gold Rush. South Korea and Taiwan eye $54b and $80b for an Alaska gas pipeline.

Culture wars

• WNBA Says Only Women Can Play. The WNBA says only women can play. Apparently that needs saying now.
• This Is Why Judges Are like They Are. Canadian students go to bat for a serial rapist. That's where judges come from.
• Shut Up, Woman, They/Them Explain. A community radio stalwart fired for talking to another woman.
• Preferring Conformity Over the Pursuit of Truth. The Cambridge scandal shows what happens to academics who insist on the truth.
• Why Are We Going Along with This?. How much longer will parents be gaslit into handing their kids to strangers?
• How They Are Enslaving Us with Smiles. Cute surveillance, cute propaganda, cute robots. The boot now wears a smiley face.

Science, history and the odd bit of fun

• Here We Go Again. Climate change is so yesterday. AI is the new apocalypse.
• Japan Sets Its Sights on Phobos. Japan launches a probe to bring back samples from Mars' largest moon.
• Why Don’t You All Go to Stull?. The road to Hell runs through Kansas.
• How Did We Get from Goths to Goth?. From fourth century barbarian kings to 21st century drama queens.
• When Congress Quizzed a Winner. The quiz show scandal that nearly killed the genre.
• Manhattan Wanted Manners, the Kids Wanted to Skate. Politics should be about fixing, not fiddling. Trump learned that from his father.

Ten@10 and the cartoons

• Ten@10, the stories they chose not to tell you: 2026/197, 2026/198, 2026/199, 2026/200.
• Cartoons of the day (Paid): Sunset, Alone at Sea, The Maze, Universities’ DEI Hires.

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