This is edition 2026/130 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. Winston’s Coalition of the Disgruntled
Bryce Edwards — The Democracy Project
- 🎤 At NZ First’s Auckland conference, Shane Jones told other parties to “take off your knee pads” before foreign leaders — Stuff heard a crude sexual allusion; Jones later claimed “obsequiousness”; Luxon: “crass and unprofessional.”
- 🗺️ Two faces (Harman): anti-immigrant/anti-elite/anti-vax populism and a regionally focused economic-development party — break supermarket duopoly, split gentailers, buy back BNZ, state money into mining/manufacturing/water.
- 🕰️ Peter Dunne: “back to Muldoonism” — active state, protectionism, champion of those sneered at by Wellington experts — now with showgirls and sparklers.
- 🎆 Conference vibe: smoke, electric-guitar anthem, Vegas dancers; president Julian Paul says other parties run PowerPoints — NZ First sells hope and belonging.
- 📢 Crowd energy (Hayden Donnell): polite clap for supermarket/power breakup; wild cheers for vaccine-injury inquiry, anti-digital ID, UN boos, men-out-of-women’s-sports — culture-war hardcore still louder than the economic remits.
- 🎯 Takeaway: interventionist-nationalist-conservative showmanship courts the disgruntled — whether the hall’s culture-war roar wins the next few percent is the open question. (Further sections paywalled.)
2. India’s View of ‘Indigenous’ Rattles Māori Advisers
Graham Adams — Brash & Mitchell
- 🔥 Peters 2023: Māori not indigenous — “we come from Hawaiki”; Luxon flatly “wrong”; kumara/kiore logic still punctures the UN’s hazy “prior to colonisation” definition.
- 📜 UNDRIP slipped into the India–NZ FTA without Trade Minister Todd McClay’s knowledge — critics call it a Trojan horse; Gary Judd KC cites Clark’s 2007 refusal (special rights, veto, two citizenship classes) and He Puapua as proof those fears were real.
- 🇮🇳 Ngā Toki Whakarururanga “dismay and disbelief” that India, endorsing UNDRIP, declared all Indians indigenous — denying Adivasi-style internationalisation of tribal policy and secession leverage.
- 🦅 Seymour: next trade minister must “watch woke MFAT bureaucrats like a hawk” so UNDRIP isn’t sneaked into deals again; McClay vows to keep it out of future agreements.
- 🎯 Takeaway: ethno-state politics needs indigeneity + UNDRIP; India’s universal-indigenous stance and Seymour’s settler-nation equal-rights narrative are kryptonite to that project.
3. We’ll Miss You, Sam
Chris Trotter — Substack / ODT & Greymouth Star
- 🎬 Short-story elegy for Sam Neill (d. 78): Otago winter pub, photocopied face on the noticeboard — “We’ll miss you, Sam.”
- 🇳🇿 Laurie and Les toast a Baby Boomer shaped by golden post-war NZ: effortless warmth and brooding Kiwi reserve (Sleeping Dogs), light and dark of Pearson’s “fretful sleepers.”
- 🏆 “Is there anyone to equal Sam Neill in representing… the qualities… New Zealanders most admire?” Crowe half-Aussie; Morrison’s rage, Waititi’s scorn, Lorde’s one good song — not the same affection.
- ❤️ Kiwis loved him because he never embarrassed us abroad — held his own with Yanks, Brits, Aussies — “ageing, self-deprecating, Scots-Irish bloke from the South Island” adored across races.
- 🎯 Takeaway: a national mirror we didn’t cringe to look in — and a reminder of values harder to cast today.
4. Searching in the Dark
A Halfling’s View (David Harvey) — Substack
- 📂 OIA tech audit of DPMC, DIA and Justice: collective toolkit is “a search bar, some spreadsheets, and a lot of people reading” — fine for 2005, institutional failure in 2026.
- 🖥️ DPMC: iManage keyword/title search = Ctrl-F with due dates; MOTO tracks process, finds nothing. Justice: JAX reports → personal spreadsheets emailed around; rename files #1/#2, drag emails one by one, hand redactions.
- 🤖 DIA: no policy on digital tools for OIA; Copilot/NotebookLM only, most OIA staff lack CMS premium licences; doesn’t even track whether Copilot is used.
- ⚖️ E-discovery (predictive coding, continuous active learning) court-approved since 2012/2016; NZ High Court Rules allow it — agencies refuse to modernise then invoke s 18(f) “substantial collation” as if the burden were natural law.
- 🎯 Takeaway: the s 18(f) racket — refuse the 21st century, then charge obsolescence to the requester in delay and denial. MoJ claims to be an “exemplar”; the private sector already solved volume.
5. Can NZ First Win Over the Traditional Labour Voter?
Grant Duncan — Politics Happens
- 🇮🇹 Meloni/FdI still polling ~at 2022’s 26% after nearly four years — rare Italian stability; kept immigration/cost-of-living goals in sight without constant crash-and-burn.
- 📈 NZ First could roughly double 2023’s 6.1% if an election were held now — abnormal for a coalition minor; many gains from National voters who see Luxon’s party as weak.
- 🎯 Next target: traditional Labour voters (blue-collar, Pacific communities via Alfred Ngaro) after the March pitch.
- ⚖️ Populists name “globalists and wokesters,” then face office constraints; Peters balances Foreign Minister diplomacy with undiplomatic jabs (Cook ferry “snivelling wokesters,” India FTA scepticism).
- 🎯 Takeaway: Shipley — “Winston could have been PM but for want of himself”; Meloni shows how disruptors can hold support if they stay authentic and keep core goals visible. (Full plan analysis paywalled.)
6. Rediscovering the Relationship Between Risk and Return
Paul McBeth — Jenny Ruth’s Just the Business
- 💼 Commerce Minister Cameron Brewer’s capital-markets tranche goal in one line: cut the cost of capital — jobs and growth via equity as well as banks.
- 📄 MBIE discussion doc: proportionate rules, strong equity ladder, globally competitive markets — fix a “convoluted regime” that doesn’t attract firms.
- ⚠️ Trade-off alert: lighter investor protections vs SpaceX-style index free-rides and Du Val / Chance Voight wholesale wreckage; Simon Power’s old point — government cannot legislate risk away.
- 💸 Constant “10%” property-developer mortgage funds that never budge whether term deposits are 1% or 6%; Bridgecorp-era echo of “too good to be true.”
- 📊 ~70k Sharesies Rocket Lab holders prove retail has options; Spark’s yield vs value destruction, Gentrack snakes-and-ladders, inflation-eaten term deposits.
- 🎯 Takeaway: cheaper capital only works if big and small investors can price failure — private markets still hide that book.
7. Anatomy of a Struggle Session
Matt Taibbi — Racket News
- 📺 Drop Site’s Grim/Mustafa/Scahill “interview” of Ro Khanna was not journalism — “histrionic, emotional political performance” / struggle session.
- 🇵🇸 Khanna just returned from the West Bank denouncing settlers’ “toxic oppression,” “apartheid,” “genocide,” opposing Iron Dome, considering a presidential run — still not enough for the progressive pack.
- 🔪 Scahill’s demand: endorse killing Israeli soldiers on 7 Oct — “Did the Qassam brigades… have a right to kill… Yes or no?” Khanna: innocent Israeli civilians matter; Scahill seethes that Israel “puts their lives at risk by waging genocidal wars.”
- 🐺 Pattern: progressive press is cruellest to allies (Wiener, AOC, Sanders) who capitulate then face bigger mobs; group interrogation is fear of each other, thin ice, knife-passing.
- 🎯 Takeaway: the dynamic ratchets rhetoric upward; this dogpile is among the era’s most appalling “reporter” performances. (Full essay largely paywalled after the lede.)
8. National Opened Door and NZ First Closed Door
Natalia Albert — Less Certain
- 🤝 Mixed coalition signals: National to India — come work, study, staff hospitals, light the Sky Tower for Modi; NZ First to permanent residents — campaign to strip the vote (since 1975) unless citizens who’ve “sworn allegiance.”
- 📅 Timeline: 27 Apr FTA signed; 5 Jul Peters in Warkworth announces franchise strip; 10 Jul Modi lands — policy five days before the guest of honour.
- 🏟️ Spark Arena: Luxon drowned out by Indian-Kiwi roar; community now third-largest ethnicity (overtook Chinese at 2023 census); outside, 100+ protesters chant “send them back” / “remigration now.”
- 🛂 India bans dual citizenship — many PRs cannot naturalise without surrendering the Indian passport; policy hits those forced to choose two lives.
- 🎯 Takeaway: “Come do the work. Just don’t expect a say” cracks national-level social cohesion whether or not anyone planned the timing.
9. “OPERATIONAL”
John McLean — John’s Substack
- 👮 IPCA + Police National Integrity Unit probe two historical sexual-conduct complaints against Commissioner Richard Chambers; Minister Mark Mitchell expresses confidence, awaits outcomes — treats it as operational, not for ministerial theatre.
- 🔄 Contrast: Labour’s Andrew Coster as “lapdog” — gangs/property crime deprioritised under Ardern; COVID-era cover culture.
- 🚗 23 Jul 2023 Kiri Allan crash: fled scene, resisted arrest/breath test, blew over criminal limit at 9:32pm; Coster texted Ginny Andersen 9:56; Hipkins briefed 10:00; evidential test delayed to 11:43 (335 mcg) → non-criminal infringement.
- ⚖️ Charged with lesser offences only; OIA “locked down due to high-profile nature”; $300 careless-driving fine + reparation; Hipkins played mental-health card; media puff pieces.
- 🎯 Takeaway: rule-of-law politicians defer to operational independence; post-modern left works the machine when ideology demands — a future Labour–Green–TPM government would make Allan look like child’s play.
10. Who Really Was Ann Widdecombe?
James Delingpole — Substack
- 📰 Personal 2019 Dorset encounter with Brexit Party star Widdecombe: bossy, forthright, old-fashioned, kind underneath — “I’m toothy, dumpy, ugly, overweight, a spinster — what the hell.”
- 🎭 Thesis: public figures become brands (Snoopy/Pitbull/Snoop Dogg logic); media image is performance — so confident claims about how/why she died rest on spin and on-brand eccentricity.
- 🕵️ Delingpole refuses to take the official murder narrative at face value — not asserting she is alive, but treating the episode as showing “signs of… psyop” after Kirk, Southport, etc.
- ⚔️ Attacks “shroud-wavers” and “purple-pilled” allies who police doubt with moral blackmail; cites manufactured-doubt tactics against “awake” influencers.
- 🎯 Takeaway: a contrarian grief-and-scepticism essay — blunt, polarising, and a window on the post-Widdecombe information war. (Read the full argument before judging the tone.)
What our members are saying about Ten@10
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