This is edition 2026/146 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: Luxon’s Enemies Are Counting
Bryce Edwards — The Democracy Project
- 📞 Herald/Coughlan: MPs hit phones after MMP talkback captain’s call. Quote: “There’s going to be change in the top job. It’s just a question of who.” Bishop/Stanford named; Bishop won’t deny appetite for change. Online caucus tonight (recess week).
- 🐴 Harman/Politik: Penk allegedly “stalking horse” for wider contest (Bishop, Stanford, Willis, maybe Brown). Thatcher 1989 model. O’Brien, J. Williams (coffee-spill meme), Hehir all treat reporting as real.
- 📊 April confidence: circulating 27–22 (or 28–21) — three flips reverse it. Narrow margin with no declared challenger = weakness. Post: five MPs on record for Luxon; rest ground.
- 👩 Bridge: Stanford the “reluctant hero”; Bishop/Willis baggage. Willis–Stanford windfarm optics = “next leadership team.” Right drafting the indictment: fiscal theatre, “no new taxes on working people,” Grant’s “in office but not in control.”
- 🎯 Takeaway: Hehir case against — still competitive; spill becomes the blame forever (Gillard/Rudd; Muller 25.6%). Luxon may survive tonight. He survived April too.
2. Losing the Room
Chris Trotter
- 🗣 Rotorua Chamber: “adult, adult, adult” / disrupt yourself aggressively / retool-refinance-rehome. Trotter: tell cats to become lions. Corner dairy, husband-wife café — how “radically disrupt” before pandemic or bank freeze?
- 🏛 Hands-off state for SME “children” vs fast-track favours for donors — who is parent, who is client? Rome still full of tiny specialists; NZ wiped them 40 years ago. Italy GDP/cap PPP #37; NZ #45 — not for lack of smacking it.
- 🧮 MMP concentrates angry 12% parties; FPP feeds extremes into 50% major-party takeovers (see US). Captain’s call on third MMP referendum = political illiteracy. 200k SMEs = property-owning democracy bedrock.
- 🎯 Takeaway: small isn’t proof of inadequate ambition. Insult the backbone, expect worse than a National loss. (Interest.co.nz, 10 Aug.)
3. Twice Bitten, Twice Hopeful
Liam Hehir — The Blue Review
- 🐺 Phones buzzing again — Coughlan not inventing it; boy-who-cried-wolf lesson is wolves are real, so false alarms matter. April: quotes, frenzy, no challenger, Luxon-staged vote.
- 📉 Parties knife PMs when hopeless (Trudeau −20). Nat still likely forms next govt on published numbers. Say it out loud: ahead/close and the plan is roll our own PM over a fortnight and a referendum no one will care about by polling day.
- 🇦🇺 Gillard/Rudd 2010: Labor led 52–48; honeymoon gone; hung parliament; spill became the explanation for everything. Successor loses November → forever “we were even and you lost.” No contender popular with public and caucus.
- 🎯 Takeaway: hold nerve, fight the opposition, three months of fiscal-repair discipline. Or keep feeding the gallery. Your call.
4. The Greens Are Being Remarkably Honest. We Should Listen.
Ani O’Brien — Thought Crimes
- 📗 Not greener management — overhaul: larger state, wealth tax, private→public power, iwi control, Matike Mai constitution, Waitangi Tribunal binding. Tax package ~$5.1–5.7b net — dwarfed by the wish list.
- 💸 Wealth tax 2.5% >$10m assumes 28.5% leakage; Scotland 48% top rate lost £22m year one. Free health/dental, income guarantee (~$12b), universal public housing, Kiwipower, animal-welfare department, climate funds — each doc written as if alone.
- 🏛 Te Waonui a Tāne: $2.44b Crown cash into hapū/iwi trust ($2b permanent fund); Crown surrenders control. Davidson: “actual tino rangatiratanga.” Not co-governance — devolution by ancestry. AI data-centre ban: fair conditions vs dystopian freeze.
- 🎯 Takeaway: credit for candour. Destination = redistributive, maximalist, ethnonationalist, undercooked. Read the suite, not the slogans.
5. National Leadership in Crisis / Luxon on the Line Again
Grant Duncan — Politics Happens / The Conversation
- 🔥 Bad week: Rotorua apology, MMP captain’s call, Brent comparisons, spill talk. April self-vote already. No Ardern waiting — Bishop/Stanford better timed carefully; late switch = desperate.
- 📉 Labour no windfall: Hipkins preferred-PM as weak as Luxon; Lab <28% in two polls. Culture war = Treaty/co-governance (not just immigration). Both leaders hostage to partners (ACT TPB; Peters’ “go back”; Greens/TPM push).
- 🎯 Takeaway: neither major benefits from a late spill. Leadership capital peaked early. Voters priced them in. Febrile fun for gallery; unlikely to move the middle. (Free Conversation piece; Substack pointer paywalled.)
6. Hipkins’s Pathway to Another Defeat
Grant Duncan — Politics Happens
- 🔄 Flip the adage: governments don’t win — oppositions lose. Flip side of Brent-week coverage: could Chippie lose to Luxon again?
- 🍠 Treaty/co-governance silence at conference = hot kumara. Can’t walk back base; can’t soothe settlement-yes / co-gov-no voters. ACT/NZF will force the debate. CGT forgotten, negligible revenue, already spent on free GP stuff — not a centre winner; Greens’ manifesto fuller.
- 🧩 Four-party arithmetic with TOP. Leadership capital still low; Lab now <30% twice. “Dumb and Dumber” déjà vu debates. Right logic: “Luxon’s a dufus, but he’s our dufus — the other lot are worse.”
- 🎯 Takeaway: boredom + fear of hangers-on can reinstall David Brent by default. Watch the debates.
7. Cowardice of Professors and Class Interest of Radicalized Administrators
Michael Shellenberger — Public
- 🎓 Arday/Cambridge fabulism not “smear” — skin-colour + dogma hire. Atlantic cover (Harper/Bates): DEI “crackers,” “lynching” roommate row, near-hire of 50-year-out-of-date biologist for pigment/DEI zeal. Hired “visibly Black first.”
- 📊 Faculty conservative: 28% (1969) → single digits (Harvard 9%). Bates: race requirement inside every major incl. physics; 73% faculty yes after private opposition. CRT: racism permanent/invisible → endless auditors. Sommers: radicals only hire radicals.
- 💼 Contingent faculty (~¾) fear non-renewal; elite overproduction (22m grads vs 10m degree jobs 2000–19) fuels status war. Confidence in higher ed 57%→38%. Some DEI retreat; University of Austin alternative.
- 🎯 Takeaway: rot deeper than a few frauds. Recover “a man is a man” or get replaced.
8. URGENT: Tony Fauci Appears to Have Misled Congress in 2024
Alex Berenson — Unreported Truths
- 💬 Slack 4 Jan 2022: Folkers (chief of staff) to Morens — “new assignment from asf that we did not want to put in email” (secret review of Gates book MS). Minutes later Morens on it.
- ⚖ 3 Jun 2024 House testimony: Fauci said never did official NIH business with Morens off govt email (science papers exception). Assignment ≠ papers. Biden 20 Jan 2025 pardon covers 2014–pardon day — no perjury risk; explains Fifth ×100+ now.
- 📂 Paul tranche: Fauci to Gates calls Morens “trusted colleague” vs “not close / no substantive advice.” Folkers: “use gmail to write back to bill g.” Morens faces 51 years on records charges; Fauci doesn’t.
- 🎯 Takeaway: investigators keep finding contradictions he thought deleted. Pardon ≠ public truth.
9. A Ray of Light Amid Rampant Censorship
Jenny Ruth — Just the Business
- 💡 LinkedIn removed her post defending sex-based girls’ sport as “hateful”; appeal restored it hours later with apology. Rare review win amid routine gender/Israel censorship.
- 🇦🇺 Contrast: Tickle v Grover (Giggle) — appeal court doubled fine to A$20k+costs. Nomes Whitney, women-only pole studio Gold Coast — QCAT claim A$30k; QHRC backs “gender identity” over women’s single-sex safety. Complainant US citizen <1 year in Aus.
- 🏛 Kirralie Smith: NSW SC rejects appeal; A$95k for identifying two males on women’s teams from public photos/scoreboards — “vilification.”
- 🎯 Takeaway: glad to be in NZ. Across the ditch, stating sex can cost five figures.
10. Total Coverage, Optional Oversight
Christina Maas — Reclaim The Net
- 📷 Members-only deep dive (Flock / ALPR / Fourth Amendment / FL–CA tags). Open lede only free:
- 🎯 “Surveillance companies do not promise their systems will never be abused. They promise the abuse will be caught, which is a different promise and a much smaller one.”
- 🔗 Full piece for supporters — button below is the source URL.
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