This is edition 2026/115 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. Could Hipkins Be the Next Starmer?
Grant Duncan — The Conversation
- 🇬🇧 Keir Starmer won a "landslide" 411-seat UK majority in 2024 on barely one-third of the popular vote and turnout of just 59.7% — meaning only about one in five eligible voters backed Labour.
- 📉 Within two years Labour’s support collapsed to 20% or lower as voters defected both right (over immigration) and left (over insufficient progressivism), united by dissatisfaction with Starmer himself.
- 🥀 Duncan diagnoses a wider crisis of social-democratic parties retreating to "thin labourism" — neither post-war social democracy nor Third Way Blairism, but a diluted mix of growth, competition, and cost-of-living tweaks.
- 🇳🇿 New Zealand still looks like a two-party contest, but combined support for Labour and National may be at a 30-year low.
- 🗳️ Hipkins could return to power in November 2026, but if he does he will face the same structural trap: an electorate fragmenting to the progressive left and the populist right while he competes with Luxon for the centre.
- 📉 Hipkins’ preferred-prime-minister ratings have often fallen below 20% and his approval has slipped into negative territory.
- ⚠️ Luxon is no breakout figure either — the contest features "two contestants with weak or declining leadership capital."
- 🎯 Labour’s proposed capital-gains tax to fund GP visits is cited as the kind of modest tax-and-transfer tweak that signals ideological thinness.
- 🔥 Winston Peters is already targeting traditional Labour territory — the West Coast and South Auckland Pacific communities — with anti-mainstream, immigration-sceptical messaging.
- 🎯 Takeaway: a Hipkins victory is possible, but the conditions that destroyed Starmer are already visible in New Zealand.
2. The 2026 Greens Tax Policy: The Good and the Bad
Natalia Albert — Substack
- 💰 The Greens’ 2026 tax policy has three themes and eight clauses, scored by the author as six solid and two questionable.
- 🏠 The headline shift: a 2.5% wealth tax now kicks in at **$10 million**, not the previous $2 million threshold, with the family home exempt.
- 🧑🌾 The author argues the higher threshold is strategic: it spares Waikato dairy farmers, Wellington couples with rentals, and provincial business owners who would have been hit at $2 million.
- 📜 A 33% Capital Acquisitions Tax (inheritance/gift tax) applies only above $1 million in lifetime receipts, with family homes and family farms carved out.
- 🏢 Company tax returns to 33%, but only for the largest 0.7% of firms — banks, supermarkets, and energy companies.
- 💵 A new 45% top income-tax rate applies above $160,000, cutting in $20,000 sooner than the current 39% rate.
- ✅ The author praises honest modelling: the Greens assume 28.5% of the super-rich tax will be lost to avoidance, an admission of political maturity.
- ❌ The bad: the framing conflates "the shitty rich-lister with the helipad" with "the couple with one rental and the family running a panel-beating shop."
- ❌ The 45% top rate is described as too sharp a jump; the author suggests 41% or 42% would be more defensible.
- 🎯 Takeaway: the Greens have produced their most electorally disciplined tax policy in a decade, but the anti-wealth framing may still alienate the asset-holding middle.
3. Who Really Wins From Compulsory KiwiSaver?
Bryce Edwards — The Democracy Project
- 🏦 National has proposed auto-enrolment for every newborn with a $1,500 "Baby Boost" and contribution increases to 6% each from workers and employers by 2032.
- 📊 That would direct a combined 12% of most employees’ pay into KiwiSaver or equivalent retirement schemes by law, in perpetuity.
- 📈 A Post poll found 71% public support — before voters had seen the detail.
- 🔄 National’s conversion is striking: it ran the 1975 "Dancing Cossacks" campaign against compulsory super, opposed Winston Peters’ 1997 compulsory-savings referendum, and spent years chipping away at KiwiSaver.
- 🚨 Richard Harman calls the move a "circuit breaker"; Chris Trotter detects "the unmistakable note of panic" and compares it to David Shearer’s KiwiBuild launch.
- 💡 The author argues compulsory KiwiSaver is less about retirement savings than about quietly shifting NZ Super from a universal public promise to an individual private account.
- 🗣️ Nicola Willis has hinted a "subtle combination" of KiwiSaver and Super will be needed, while industry figures say you don’t need both systems.
- ⚠️ Critics warn the real endgame is a future government raising the retirement age or means-testing the pension, using private savings as political cover.
- 💸 Fees managers will collect from forced savings are another winner, while low-income workers absorb a compulsory pay cut.
- 🎯 Takeaway: the policy has genuine positives, but its most important effect may be on the politics of NZ Super — advanced quietly through a popular savings initiative.
4. Pride Cometh Before the Fall: The Sporting Backlash
Ani O’Brien — Thought Crimes
- 🏳️🌈 Ani O’Brien, who identifies as gay, argues it is time to end Pride campaigns in professional sport because they have shifted from tolerance to compelled political performance.
- 🎭 She says modern Pride initiatives have been "hijacked by the identitarians" who demand public affirmation rather than peaceful coexistence.
- ⚽ Sport historically brings together people who disagree; turning games into "compulsory political sermons" erodes that shared space.
- 🇮🇷 FIFA designated an Iran vs. Egypt fixture in Seattle as a Pride Match — even though both countries criminalise homosexuality, with Iran still executing gay people.
- 🤝 Both football federations objected on cultural, religious, and legal grounds; FIFA rejected the protests, treating the Pride branding as a local initiative.
- 🏉 The 2022 Manly Sea Eagles Pride jersey saw seven Pacific-Island players stood down after refusing to wear it; the coach admitted the club had failed to consult.
- ⚾ The York Revolution baseball team forfeited an entire game after players refused rainbow-sleeved uniforms rather than find a compromise.
- ⚾ San Francisco Giants pitchers wrote Bible verses on Pride caps; MLB warned them for uniform violations while previously allowing Black Lives Matter messaging.
- 📉 O’Brien’s core warning: activists are mistaking visibility for acceptance and burning through goodwill by demanding performance rather than respect.
- 🎯 Takeaway: the essay argues genuine inclusion looks like coexistence, not coerced branding.
5. OPPORTUNITY…
John McLean — John’s Substack
- 📈 A 1 News–Verian poll conducted 13–17 June put The Opportunity Party at 4.6%, trending toward the 5% MMP threshold.
- 👔 Leader Qiulae Wong got the job after applying through a national recruitment campaign, including a SEEK listing; deputy Daniel Eb calls himself a "social impact founder in the food & fibre sector."
- 🕵️ General manager Iain Lees-Galloway is a former Labour MP sacked by Jacinda Ardern in 2020 over an affair with a staffer.
- 🗳️ McLean argues Opportunity’s only realistic route to power is a Labour/Greens/Māori Party/Opportunity coalition, since NZ First has ruled out working with Labour.
- 🎙️ Wong attacked NZ First and Winston Peters in a 10 June RNZ interview with Guyon Espiner, reportedly asking "what has he really done for New Zealand."
- 🌱 The party’s palette is "teal": fiscal conservatism + environmental activism + social liberalism.
- 📜 It supports a Te Tiriti reinterpretation under which Māori did not cede sovereignty, opposes NZ First’s Definitions of Woman and Man Bill, favours no jail for offenders under 26, and backs unelected citizens’ assemblies.
- 💰 A 1.75% annual land tax and ETS changes to tax farmers for animal emissions are part of the platform.
- 💵 Les Mills founder Phillip Mills donated $100,000; he reportedly "hates NZ First" and wants a Labour-led government. Les Mills received $4.5 million in COVID subsidies from Labour.
- 🎯 Takeaway: McLean frames Opportunity as a media-favoured, elitist leftist construct whose coalition arithmetic points left regardless of its centrist branding.
6. Opportunity Knocks
Liam Hehir — The Blue Review
- 🤼 Hehir uses a professional-wrestling analogy: the recent rise of The Opportunity Party is a "push" — the promotion decides to give a wrestler favourable storylines and main-event bookings.
- 📰 Evidence of the push: RNZ sit-down with Guyon Espiner, a warm 1News profile by Mava Moayyed, and a long NZ Herald premium piece by Derek Cheng.
- 📊 This culminated in "surprise surge" stories after a single Verian poll put TOP at 4.6%.
- 📉 The author notes TOP was previously stuck in a 1–2% rut despite earlier media relaunches — "the press can no more conjure enthusiasm from nothing than a wrestling promotion can."
- 🆕 What may be different this time: electoral attrition and the party acting more like a normal, disciplined political operation rather than a novelty gimmick.
- ⚠️ Hehir discloses he would never vote for TOP and opposes its UBI, land-value tax, and devolutionary Treaty stance.
- 🧠 His central point: media amplification can put a party on the card, but the crowd still decides whether to cheer.
- 🎯 Takeaway: if TOP’s poll rise is real, it is at least partly organic; if it fades, the media push will look like another failed attempt to manufacture momentum.
7. Luxon’s Silence on Te Tiriti o’ Waitangi Is Undemocratic and Deafening
William Ludbrook — Brash & Mitchell
- 📝 William Ludbrook, great-great-grandson of Treaty translator Archdeacon Henry Williams, argues Prime Minister Luxon is failing to defend Crown sovereignty against expanding iwi influence.
- 🗣️ In April 2025 Luxon said he had been talking to iwi leaders for 12 months; Ludbrook counters that the issue is iwi leaders assuming a privileged role in shaping government policy.
- 🏛️ The National Iwi Chairs Forum objected to the government’s review of Treaty clauses and complained of insufficient consultation before Cabinet considered reforms.
- ⚖️ Ludbrook’s response: the government was elected by all New Zealanders and has a democratic mandate to review legislation; iwi veto power is not democracy.
- 📜 He states Henry Williams translated "sovereignty" as "Kawanatanga Katoa" — Governor for all / Government — and argues Māori ceded sovereignty in 1840.
- 🚫 He rejects the view that Māori retained independent sovereignty through tino rangatiratanga, calling modern interpretations deliberate revisionism.
- ⚠️ Ludbrook describes co-governance and race-based laws as a "toxic culture of division" and "apartheid, plain and simple."
- 📉 Past prime ministers from Bolger to Ardern are accused of extending Waitangi Tribunal powers and then "running away" from the consequences.
- ✅ His remedy: equality before the law, individual rights, and a shared national identity rather than "racial favouritism" or "endless guilt-tripping."
- 🎯 Takeaway: Ludbrook frames Luxon’s quiet engagement with iwi as a failure to defend one-law-for-all democracy.
8. TOP's Citizen's Income Policy
Lindsay Mitchell — Brash & Mitchell
- 💰 Lindsay Mitchell argues The Opportunities Party under-costs its proposed Citizen’s Income and overstates administrative savings.
- 📊 TOP’s 2024 net CI costing was $15.788 billion; Mitchell’s updated estimate puts the net cost at **$20.438 billion**.
- 🧮 Headline cost: $19,400 per adult × 4.16 million adults = $80.7 billion, minus tax clawback and replaced benefits.
- ❌ RNZ’s Lisa Owen reportedly described the CI as tax-free; Mitchell says it is not — TOP would tax income up to $50,000 at 28%, clawing much of it back.
- 👶 Supplementary supports include Child Support Income payments, sole-parent allowance, disability allowance, superannuitant top-ups, and housing support — all abated from household income between $50,000 and $75,000.
- 📉 Mitchell’s audit of supplementary supports produces a running total around **$17.33 billion**, while TOP budgets only $15.614 billion — she is "dubious."
- ⚠️ The central contradiction: TOP claims to abolish means-testing and punitive effective marginal tax rates, but abatement **is** means-testing and creates the same work-disincentive problem.
- 🏛️ Mitchell argues the policy would still need a large bureaucracy to verify status, track income, and prevent fraud.
- 🎯 Takeaway: Mitchell treats TOP’s flagship welfare reform as mathematically optimistic and conceptually inconsistent with its own rhetoric.
9. Why We Cannot Talk About Climate Change
Richard Prebble — Brash & Mitchell
- 🌡️ Prebble, former Labour MP and ACT leader, says climate policy in New Zealand has become tribal — sensible debate is almost impossible.
- 📉 After writing about carbon pricing, he received 90+ responses: only one discussed carbon pricing; the rest either called climate change a hoax or accused him of understating the threat.
- 🌍 He argues the question of whether climate change is man-made or natural is largely irrelevant for NZ policy because trading partners accept the Paris framework and NZ cannot walk away.
- 🔬 The science has moved on: methane breaks down after about 12 years and the resulting CO₂ is reabsorbed by the grass livestock eat, so stable agricultural methane does not accumulate warming like CO₂.
- 🐄 NZ methane emissions are already falling, mainly because sheep numbers have declined, and new feed additives and vaccines could deliver larger cuts.
- 💡 Prebble’s opportunity: make NZ the world’s leading centre for methane-reduction research and sell the technology globally.
- 🏛️ National, Labour, and the Greens insist NZ must meet Paris exactly as written; Treasury says this could cost billions; ACT wants to renegotiate or leave; NZ First says Paris doesn’t fit the Pacific.
- ✅ Prebble’s proposal: take Oxford analysis seriously and argue that reducing agricultural methane could contribute to cooling, which Paris should recognise.
- 🎯 Takeaway: Prebble says the science has moved on and it is time the policy did too — but expects the same polarised response.
10. A Good Bill and a Bad Detour
A Halfling’s View
- 📷 Laura McClure’s member’s bill amends the Crimes Act and Harmful Digital Communications Act to extend the definition of an "intimate visual recording" to cover AI-generated or altered sexually explicit material made without consent.
- ✅ The author calls it a "clean, proportionate, conduct-focused fix" that regulates behaviour, not speech; satire, art, and legitimate generative uses are untouched.
- 🎙️ Coming from ACT, a party with no appetite for content regulation, the bill is framed as genuinely about conduct rather than speech control.
- 🔊 InternetNZ’s narrower suggestion to also capture audio deepfakes is endorsed as reasonable and technology-neutral.
- ⚠️ But InternetNZ also calls for a sweeping new independent digital regulator with "real-time audit powers," "dynamic compliance," and the ability to impose industry standards.
- ❌ The author argues that proposal is vague, procedurally improper, and an attempt to win by adjacency what could not be won on the merits.
- 🗳️ New Zealand has already rejected similar regulator models twice: the DIA Safer Online Services review was shelved in 2024, and the Ministry for Culture and Heritage media reform direction was reversed.
- 🧩 The remit would cover violent extremism, CSAM, misinformation, hate speech, self-harm, and cyberbullying — a sprawling list mixing serious crime with contested lawful speech categories.
- 🏛️ The author says a generational decision about state power over online speech needs its own legislation, RIA, consultation, and mandate — not a rider on a deepfake bill.
- 🎯 Takeaway: support the deepfake amendment, but reject the regulator detour.
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