This is edition 2025/150 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!
1. The Once and Future Nation
Chris Trotter
- 🗳️ NZ First’s Longevity — Despite critics calling it “nostalgic,” NZ First has maintained 30+ years of electoral success by appealing to voters with relevant, future-focused policies rather than being trapped in the past.
- 🧭 Winston Peters’ Five Principles — NZ First’s core values remain:
- New Zealand and New Zealanders first
- Integrity and accountability in government
- Fairness with shared sacrifice
- Moderate policies
- Common sense solutions
- 🕰️ Nostalgia’s Power — Trotter argues nostalgia isn’t about going backwards but about restoring lost opportunities and imagining alternative futures New Zealand “could have had” before neoliberal reforms.
- 🏦 Lost Economic Potential — Cites Brian Gaynor’s view that a 1975 political decision derailed NZ from becoming an “Antipodean Tiger” with thriving banks, industries, and living standards.
- 🇺🇸 Parallel with Trumpism — Compares NZ First’s vision to Donald Trump’s “reset” politics: not restoring the past but choosing a better path from where things “went wrong.”
- 🏛️ Neoliberal Entrenchment — Despite coalition promises, Trotter says NZ remains trapped under four decades of neoliberal policies and bureaucrats who still control institutions and resist real change.
- ⚖️ Permanent Government Problem — Warns that unelected bureaucrats, experts, and elites operate like an “occupying power,” ignoring democracy and preserving the failed neoliberal agenda.
- 📜 Legislative Sovereignty — Stresses the need to defend Parliament’s supremacy against executive overreach, judicial activism, and professional associations undermining citizens’ rights.
- 🗣️ Free Speech Under Threat — Highlights Graham Linehan’s arrest in the UK as a warning, urging New Zealand to fiercely protect freedom of expression as the foundation of liberty.
- 👩🦰 Protecting Women’s Rights — Emphasizes NZ First’s role in defending women’s spaces, rights, and safety, resisting pressures to erase biological realities.
- 🔨 Punching Holes in Neoliberalism — Points to NZ First’s tangible wins: free doctor visits for under-fives, SuperGold cards, saving racetracks, preserving Cook Strait ferries, and supporting provincial industry.
- 🌅 Things Worth Saving — Reaffirms NZ First’s five principles as “things worth saving” to rebuild New Zealand and resist political, cultural, and economic decline.
- 🧠 Memory vs. Forgetting — Concludes with Milan Kundera’s quote: “The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting,” urging NZ First to keep giving New Zealanders hope and direction.
