This is edition 2026/088 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. Democracy Briefing: The Regulator has confirmed the NZ economy is rigged
Bryce Edwards
- 📊 The Commerce Commission's first economy-wide competition study draws on 22 years of Stats NZ firm-level data to assess competitive conditions across New Zealand.
- ⚠️ The report identifies electricity, gas, financial services, insurance, telecommunications, and mining as the country's least competitive sectors.
- 📉 Commission Chair Dr John Small said market conditions favour larger incumbents and it is harder for smaller, newer businesses to displace them.
- 💰 Financial and insurance services show the strongest worsening competition trend across the entire 22-year period studied.
- 👥 Journalist Rob Stock noted competitive pressures were weakest in essential industries households cannot avoid doing business with.
- 🌍 OECD New Zealand desk head David Haugh told a Commerce Commission conference that in a small, remote economy competition does not emerge organically — it must be designed.
- 🏦 Haugh said a key priority is to reduce the profitability of banks, whose lending margins sit at the upper end of the OECD range.
- 💸 Bank profits extracted from New Zealand are being shipped to Sydney and Melbourne rather than recycled domestically, Haugh told the conference.
- ⚡ New Zealand generates around 96% of its electricity from renewables yet runs wholesale power prices among the highest in the OECD.
- 🏛️ Commerce Minister Cameron Brewer met executives from energy, banking, supermarkets, insurance, and telecommunications the night before the report's release.
- 🔍 The roundtable was hosted by lobbying firm Lillis Clark, whose principals are former senior staffers to National ministers under Key and English.
- 🔥 Political journalist Richard Harman has reported Lillis Clark is "said to write much of the Beehive policy" for the current government.
- 🔵 Anna Lillis of Lillis Clark is engaged to Trade Minister Todd McClay, deepening questions about the firm's proximity to government decision-making.
- 🧾 New Zealand has no lobbying register, making it impossible to fully reconstruct Lillis Clark's client list or the extent of its influence.
- 📰 Brewer's public response to the most significant competition diagnostic in living memory was a cheerful LinkedIn post and a conference promise to "watch this space".
