This is edition 2026/138 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: Lobbyist Watch – July 2026
Bryce Edwards — The Democracy Project
- 🚪 New series: the shuttle between public office and private influence — lobbyists, ex-staffers, ex-ministers. Most of it lawful because NZ has almost no rules.
- 🛒 Andrew Ketels (ex-Seymour CoS) → Sherson Willis head of govt relations (Foodstuffs NI client) after a short Woolworths contract — as break-up / wholesale-retail split talk heats up.
- 🔄 Duopoly shopping the spectrum: Kirton (ex-Hipkins CoS) at Woolworths; Ellen Read (ex-Ardern deputy press sec) before him; Steven Joyce on Foodstuffs NI board.
- 🎭 McLauchlan’s Capital GR model (Jones/Thomas/Tabuteau): left puppet, right puppet — ignore the person working both hands. Anyone can email a minister; not everyone hires the minister’s former CoS.
- 🎯 Takeaway: Foodstuffs/Woolworths still ~82% of grocery sales; they keep paying for influence because they think it works. (Further sections paywalled.)
2. Behind the Curtain of a NZ Media Scandal
Ani O’Brien — Thought Crimes
- 📋 Simeon Brown’s Medical Council appointees Kalupahana (paediatric anaesthesia lead, ASMS Waitematā president) and Mulgan (GP + barrister, FSU board) — competence first; FSU/BORA interest treated as corruption by Vance/Stuff.
- 🗣️ Hipkins: FSU + Taxpayers’ Union as Brown’s “personal troll farm”; FSU chair Stephen Franks: “competence, not conformity” — and they refused to wait for the hit piece before pushing back.
- 🪞 Glass house: Labour’s Dr Rachelle Love (cultural safety / privilege / “dismantle” inequities) was alignment-as-virtue until Brown didn’t renew; Maharey, Dyson, unionists Wagstaff/Wilson/Rosenberg, ambassadors King/Mallard/Goff — normal then, scandal now.
- 👪 Nanaia’s sister Tipa Mahuta across Te Aka Whai Ora, Taumata Arowai, Health NZ — family connection never got the Vance treatment.
- 🎯 Takeaway: appointing the aligned is how elected governments govern. Outrage is about the politics of the appointees, not the process.
3. Opportunity Party: What of Our Conservation Estate?
Spaniard — Brash & Mitchell
- 🏞️ Kayla Kingdon-Bebb (TOP leading candidate, He Puapua co-author) fronted DOC’s 2022 Options Development Group — “fundamental reform” of the whole conservation system to honour Te Tiriti and rangatiratanga/kaitiakitanga.
- 📐 One-third of NZ land: equal open-access stakes + science-first protection would end; “recast legal status,” reform ownership, centre kawa/tikanga/mātauranga, “revoke Crown ownership of indigenous species.”
- 📊 64% opposed sale of conservation land (incl. 63% ACT, 83% Green) — TOP voters not polled; commercial concessions skewed to those claiming Māori ancestry while taxpayers still fund the system.
- ⚖️ ODG lineage is Ngāi Tai ki Tāmaki (2018 SC) — narrow case stretched into iwi vetoes, Ngāi Tahu West Coast land command, and He Puapua-style playbooks that survive UNDRIP exit.
- 🎯 Takeaway: TOP’s soothing “protect high natural values” monologues say nothing about the estate itself. Voters deserve an explicit answer before November.
4. The IRGC Threat Ends When the Islamic Republic Does
Pejman Amirnejad — The Spectator Australia
- 🇮🇷 IRGC is not a rogue fringe — central pillar of regime repression at home and hostile ops abroad; listing it is necessary and late.
- 🇦🇺 ASIO: Iran directed Oct 2024 Lewis’ Kitchen arson (Sydney) and Dec 2024 Adass Israel synagogue firebombing (Melbourne) via criminal proxies; diplomats expelled, IRGC listed after years of delay.
- 🚤 UK reporting (unverified layers): state-linked networks using Channel smuggling routes — migration as a deniable insertion path Australia must not treat as “immigration only.”
- 👑 Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi’s Transition System as shadow government for orderly post-collapse security/admin — engage practically with allies, not as recognition theatre.
- 🎯 Takeaway: disrupt plots forever or remove the regime that funds them. A wounded theocracy may lash out harder before it falls.
5. Malcolm Roberts Sets Record Straight on Media Conspiracy Meltdown
Malcolm Roberts — The Spectator Australia
- 📰 MSM Google-job hit pieces: chemtrails? No. 9/11/school-shooting conspiracies? No. Bondi false flag? No. Globalism ≠ “Jewish banker” canard — shame on the editors.
- ✅ What he does say: Covid vaccine safety concerns, Net Zero is a scam you’re paying for, lab-origin was covered up while lab-leak talk was “racist conspiracy.”
- 📈 One Nation above Libs+Nats combined; Paris Agreement Substack went viral — then opposition “turned rabid.”
- 💸 Bowen’s Climate dept: ~$4.2m Fiji luxury resorts for pre-COP31; ~$150m for COP31 co-president role + 70 FTE; $100m “Pacific engagement”; $650k activist grants while families freeze on power bills.
- 🎯 Takeaway: call him a cooker if you like — he’s got stronger labels for the minister hosting beachside champagne on the taxpayer.
6. Fauci and the Fifth Just Threw the ‘Cult-of-Fauci’ Under the Bus
John Nolte — Breitbart
- ⚖️ Biden/autopen pardon covered 2014–pardon date — so at Paul’s hearing Fauci could tell the truth with no legal jeopardy on covered years, or risk contempt by pleading the Fifth.
- 🤐 He chose silence — reportedly 111 Fifths — rather than square public “science” with the damning diary that showed serial deception and narcissism for the faithful.
- 🕯️ Cult needed Dear Leader to own Rand Paul with logic and science; instead he left worshippers without talking points and admitted he can’t explain himself.
- 🎯 Takeaway: a man who prefers contempt risk to a cost-free truth has already told you everything. Oh, and it was glorious.
7. The Berlin Pride Attack Shows Why Gays Are Flocking to the Right
Seán Atkinson — spiked
- 🚐 Abdul Ballout into Berlin Pride: 1 dead, 29 hurt; prior ISIS try, Lebanese incitement sentence, recent German prep-of-violence conviction — then activists wished the attacker had been a “white Christian.”
- 🩸 Blood-soaked Antifa flag irony: the same movement that branded Islamism concerns as “far right” now blames white conservatives for the van.
- 🪜 Oppression hierarchy: when contradictions hit, gays drop ranks — Sligo 2022 gay murders blamed by a gender-studies professor on gender-critical feminists.
- 🏳️🌈 Polanski Greens: rainbow flags Mon, 5Pillars (anti-Pride guides; editor celebrated Taliban) Tue — Islam does not accept homosexuality; identity politics demands you pretend otherwise.
- 🎯 Takeaway (AfD’s Kotré): “We don’t have to be friends. We are the only guarantor of their safety.” Millions of gays hear someone naming the problem.
8. 2025 Was Deadliest Year for Antisemitic Violence Since 1994
Leona Salinas — The Daily Wire
- 📊 J7 Task Force: 20 killed across seven countries in 2025 — deadliest antisemitic violence year since 1994; 23,000+ incidents in US/UK/France/Germany/Australia/Canada/Argentina (90%+ of Jews outside Israel).
- 📈 Violent incidents +97% since 2022; total incidents +136%; Australia +270% since 2021; Germany highest per capita; US 6,274 incidents incl. 300 assaults.
- 🎓 Anti-Zionism as vehicle for antisemitism; campuses as acute flashpoint; Jews hiding identity in public and doubting a future in their home countries.
- 🚨 ADL Erdemir: “not a warning sign anymore — it’s already happening”; protect institutions before attack, not after — security alone isn’t enough.
- 🎯 Takeaway: Jews as canary — unchecked hatred doesn’t stop at Jewish communities.
9. The Most Seductive Lie in Politics
Ben Shapiro — The Daily Wire
- 🗣️ “It’s not your fault” — the line that kills personal responsibility and balloons government: subsidise you, boss you, or both.
- 📊 OECD: US #1 global social-programme spender when public + private (employer health, 401k, credits) combine; #2 per capita behind France — yet core defence still gets treated as optional vs SNAP-of-the-day.
- 📉 Three results: radical state expansion; core functions neglected; worse people, because nothing is ever their fault — short road from “no agency” to “I can take whatever I want.”
- 🏛️ Founders: capacity for good and evil → checks, balances, protected freedoms. Choice in pursuit of the good is the point of being here.
- 🎯 Takeaway: government cannot make up for failed personal decisions. Promise the world, short the people, wither the virtue.
10. Why National Ruled Out the Opportunity Party
Bryce Edwards via Point of Order
- 🎯 Luxon: “We wouldn’t be working with them” — office locked no coalition and no C&S; McAnulty claimed accident + stairs sprint; Luxon says caucus/board discussed TOP “for several months.”
- 📊 Policies unchanged (land tax + citizen’s income since Morgan) — polls changed: 4.6–4.7%; +0.3pp could wipe Nat–ACT–NZF majority.
- 🧭 Talbot Mills: largest TOP bloc is ex-National (23% vs 18% Labour); Ensor to shoppers: “you may not like what you end up buying.”
- 📦 McCulloch’s dream: scare right-leaning TOP voters home, TOP stays under 5% on left votes — wasted ballots pad the coalition share.
- 🎯 Takeaway: National is closing half of TOP’s kingmaker market before Parliament. (PoO runs the free half of Edwards’ Democracy Project briefing.)
What our members are saying about Ten@10
Elizabeth
These articles are compulsory reading for me and the perfect addition to the usual list of Goodoil items!
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Wonderful info not otherwise available in NZ. More power to your elbow! Thanks.
