This is edition 2026/177 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 fight over the facts in Dirty Work
Bryce Edwards - The Democracy Project
- 📚 After Tuesday night's Wellington launch, Edwards says the fight over Dirty Work has shifted from the book's wider case to whether its claims are true, as the Taxpayers' Union and others issue detailed denials.
- ⚖️ The sharpest clash is Hager's claim the Union board paid out 'at least one sexual harassment case against Williams'. Williams calls it a 'disgusting smear'; chair Ruth Richardson says the board 'categorically denies' any claims or settlements.
- 🗣️ Hager tells the Herald and Ryan Bridge he checked with first-hand sources, then through lawyer Felix Geiringer challenges Williams and Farrar to waive confidentiality so any complaint letter and settlement can be shown, with the woman's identity redacted.
- 📻 On Newstalk ZB, Heather du Plessis-Allan presses Williams for an explicit waiver; he says there is 'nothing to waive', calls the challenge 'desperate', and says he is taking legal advice while focusing on the six weeks before the election.
- 🏛️ Maurice Williamson brands anonymous-claim journalism 'despicable' yet says he would waive if the settlement did not exist; Jack Tame calls a waiver relatively easy. Edwards notes Hager's board-known vs board-hidden lines are not necessarily contradictory.
- 🧾 Edwards judges the Union has scored some fair points so far, but the harassment dispute remains unresolved on the public record and still needs a fuller account of how Hager verified it without naming the woman.
- 🧱 The free preview ends as paid sections turn to the database and invoice, other disputed claims, and why Hager did not ask before publication.
- 💡 Takeaway: A facts-only follow-up that treats the harassment allegation as the live fight, with the Union's denials loud and Hager's verification still contested behind the paywall.
2. THE DO-NOTHING NATS
John McLean - John's Substack
- 📜 McLean says a government without enactments is just an administration, then lists three coalition promises National had the numbers to pass and still failed to honour.
- 🩺 First: the Nats/ACT pledge to examine Auckland and Otago MAPAS-style medical admissions. He says the review report is sitting with Associate Health Minister Matt Doocey and has not been published.
- 🧑⚕️ Auckland Med School Dean Warwick Bagg wants more Maori and Pasifika doctors to 'reflect' the population; McLean suspects the buried report shows headcount gains without proof of better Maori/Pasifika health outcomes.
- ⚖️ He argues indefinite race preferences without proven benefit breach the UN Convention against racial discrimination, and that non-publication itself breaches the coalition deal.
- 🧾 Second: National-NZ First promised a comprehensive rewrite or repeal of 'Principles of the Treaty' clauses. McLean says the review was delayed, narrowed, then reduced to late-term tweaking legislation with no realistic chance of passage before Parliament rises.
- 🏛️ Third: the NZ First deal to refocus the Waitangi Tribunal to its original intent became a May 2025 review under Tama Potaka; the August 2025 panel report is still unpublished and no amending Bill has been introduced.
- 📚 Meanwhile the Tribunal's 16 September curriculum report faults a 'knowledge-rich' / science-of-learning focus for not consulting Maori frameworks, which McLean treats as more word salad from an unreformed body.
- 💡 Takeaway: With absolute coalition numbers and no partner veto, he concludes National never meant to finish these Maori-file commitments, and that 'do-nothing' risk hands the next election to Labour.
3. September polling and forecasts
rustie - The Overhang
- 🗳️ With the 54th Parliament risen, The Overhang's consensus has National on 30% and Labour on 29%, a 1pp National lead after House effects are factored in.
- 🤝 NZ First 10%, ACT 9.0%, Greens 13%, Te Pati Maori 2.0%: the government bloc leads the opposition bloc by about +5.6pp, while Opportunity sits over the threshold on 6.1%.
- 📉 Since April Labour has shed about 4.5pp at roughly 1pp a month; Greens (+2) and Opportunity (+3 since April) look to be picking up that vote.
- 📊 Over the term National is still about 8pp below the 2023 result despite a recent +1pp recovery; NZ First and Opportunity are the big winners at +3.9pp each versus election night.
- 🔮 Monte Carlo forecasts put National and partners in an unassailable position about 52% of the time, Labour's side under 10%, and Opportunity choosing between blocs about 38% of the time.
- ⚖️ The median path is the coalition narrowly missing a majority, leaving Opportunity as kingmaker if National will deal and NZ First does not somehow remake with Labour.
- 🏝️ Seat maths could still matter: TPM overhang tactics, a National overhang, splinter Maori parties, and Opportunity in Mt Albert all sit in the noise with six to eight weeks of campaign left.
- 💡 Takeaway: Luxon's side is favoured but not safe; Hipkins needs a late surge, and Opportunity is the hinge neither major party can ignore.
4. The US Has a Message for Australia's Internet Regulators: Back Off
Cindy Harper - Reclaim The Net
- 🇺🇸 The US government has told Australia to drop plans forcing platforms to algorithmically suppress content under 'ambiguous government-defined safety criteria'.
- 📄 The demand sits in Washington's submission to the consultation on the Online Safety Amendment (Digital Duty of Care) Bill 2026, which closed on 22 September.
- 🛡️ The Bill would add a digital duty of care on top of the 2021 Online Safety Act, requiring platforms to protect Australians from material labelled harmful.
- ⚖️ The US says the existing Act already gives 'robust protections' against illegal content and hands the eSafety Commissioner significant takedown powers.
- ⚠️ Its 'serious concerns' centre on viewpoint-based censorship: vague 'harm' rules push platforms to over-moderate protected speech to avoid penalties.
- 🧭 Harper frames the dispute as who decides what the public may see, not a narrow child-safety tweak.
- 🔗 Read alongside Reclaim The Net's earlier coverage of Australia remaking the internet 'in the name of safety' and US pressure on eSafety.
- 💡 Takeaway: A short diplomatic shot across Canberra's bow: more algorithmic safety mandates look, from Washington, like speech control with extra steps.
5. ZORAN RAKOVIC: The Electoral Consequences of the Unrestrained Schnauzer
Zoran Rakovic - Brash & Mitchell
- 🐕 Selwyn Independent candidate Zoran Rakovic argues New Zealand can survive inflation and consultation theatre, but representative democracy may not survive the suburban dog.
- 🚪 He says a parallel unelected 'territorial government' runs behind BEWARE OF DOG signs: access to voters depends on whether Bobby is secured, not on electoral law.
- 📖 Max Weber's monopoly on legitimate force, he jokes, is now shared with Rex the border collie, Bella the mastiff, and the 'mostly huntaway' that looks like a lab escapee.
- 📢 Friendly dogs are worse than biters: golden retrievers practise soft power, turning housing talk into tennis-ball diplomacy until sovereignty shifts to Molly's approval.
- 🧠 Habermas's rational public sphere dies at the beagle; volume replaces argument, and candidates quietly skip households they cannot reach, filtering democracy spatially before politics starts.
- 📋 He proposes mock reforms: democratic corridors to front doors, registering continuous barkers as third-party broadcasters, and disclosing particularly persuasive Labradors' affiliations.
- 😄 Dogs at least show transparent loyalty and never call a bite 'robust engagement with stakeholders', satirising institutions that cannot get humans talking face to face.
- 💡 Takeaway: A canvassing satire that treats the schnauzer at the gate as New Zealand's unacknowledged constitutional actor, and foreign-interference panic as looking in the wrong yard.
6. A smart defense of AI - and our power to manage it
Alex Berenson - Unreported Truths
- 🤖 Berenson is tired of the AI argument: doomsayers he distrusts from climate/Covid fights, versus boosters whose 'psyop' and cash-crisis jibes he calls unserious.
- 📧 He publishes a long email from a veteran cybersecurity / signal-processing engineer who asked not to be identified more precisely, arguing AI risk is mostly an engineering problem.
- 📈 The engineer notes technological plateaus are common: chemical explosives barely advanced since WW2, humans have not left lunar orbit in 50 years, lifespans still hit hard limits.
- 🔐 On AI 'breakouts', colleagues blame weak sandboxes more than unstoppable intelligence; better containment is buildable, and the maths of encryption favours defenders over time.
- 🛠️ AI can mass-apply vulnerability hunting so important systems get patched faster, pushing cybersecurity toward certification rather than an endless arms race (quantum aside).
- 🛰️ Training runs and compute are trackable, he says, so misuse by bad actors is nearer to export-control and monitoring problems than to unstoppable god-machines.
- ⏸️ Berenson still fears transformative loss of control and says he prefers a pause, but calls the engineer's decades-long view worth hearing, with Jensen Huang making similar points in the NYT.
- 💡 Takeaway: A platformed counter-brief that AI apocalypse may be oversold, even if Berenson himself is not ready to relax.
7. The New York Times' Sued by Shareholders Over Biased Israel Coverage
Maya Sulkin - The Free Press
- 📰 Shareholders sued The New York Times Company on Wednesday, arguing the paper failed its duty to tell the truth and correct itself promptly when it does not.
- 🏛️ Plaintiffs are Florida's State Board of Administration and the National Center for Public Policy Research, filing in New York County Supreme Court.
- 📁 They ask a judge to force the Times board to hand over internal records refused for four months, mostly about Israel-Hamas war coverage.
- 🎤 The filing leans on a Jewish former video-desk staffer who spent nearly a decade at the paper and left in March 2026.
- 🚨 According to the suit she raised antisemitism and anti-Israel bias concerns at least 15 times from 2019, via managers, standards and HR.
- 🗣️ In an exclusive Free Press interview she said the public needs a better picture of how the Times 'manufactures the news when Jews or Israel are involved', and stays anonymous over family safety.
- 🧱 The free preview ends there; the rest of Sulkin's reporting sits behind The Free Press paywall.
- 💡 Takeaway: A records fight dressed as shareholder duty, with a named institutional plaintiffs list and a whistleblower complaint trail the Times allegedly ignored.
8. On Hurricanes, Sea Level Rise And Droughts, Scientists Manipulated Models To Show Climate Trends That Aren't In The Real-World Data
Michael Shellenberger - Public
- 🌪️ Shellenberger stacks two decades of claims that emissions made hurricanes stronger, seas rise faster and droughts worse, from Emanuel's 2005 PDI paper to Kossin, WWA on Melissa, Rahmstorf sea-level ranges and IPCC cyclone lines.
- 📉 He says the instruments that directly measure storm strength, tide gauges and rain gauges show no trend, or no acceleration, beyond natural variability.
- 🚢 Atlantic hurricane counts rose across the 20th century mainly because ships and satellites found storms earlier methods missed, per Vecchi and Landsea in Nature Communications 2021.
- 📭 2026 is flagged as the first year since 1914 with six named Atlantic storms and no hurricanes so far in the season discussed.
- 🌊 On sea level, he cites Douglas (1992) and a 2025 Voortman/De Vos test finding ~95% of suitable tide-gauge sites show no statistically significant acceleration.
- 🏜️ On drought, Vicente-Serrano's 2022 review finds no substantial global meteorological-drought change over 120 years; a Sept 2026 Communications Earth & Environment paper finds no significant acceleration across ~99% of land under either PET type.
- 🧪 A Nature drought paper Oxford touted in June 2025 was retracted on 2 September, which he includes in the charge sheet of model-led scare over measurement.
- 💡 Takeaway: A citation-heavy free preview arguing climate headlines outrun the gauges, with the fuller 'manipulated models' case held for paid readers.
9. The memory-holing of Mitchell and Webb tells us the BBC are the baddies
Fraser Myers - spiked
- 🎬 Myers opens with the famous 'Are we the baddies?' Waffen-SS sketch, then asks whether the BBC should put the same question to itself after its latest censorship bout.
- 📺 For the 20th anniversary of That Mitchell and Webb Look, all four series returned to iPlayer, but 11 sketches were cut, including burqa makeover, garden-centre tribe and Congo civil-war re-enactment bits.
- 🪞 He says the sketches target racism, stereotypes and liberal awkwardness around race, with Webb breaking character to ask if they have gone too far, not celebrating prejudice.
- 🗣️ A BBC spokesperson told The Times they kept sketches that 'still work today' and dropped those that do not, which Myers reads as humourless scold logic from the comedy department.
- 📚 With Orwell's statue outside New Broadcasting House, he argues the Beeb is practising Nineteen Eighty-Four memory-holing while pretending Big Brother is the good guy.
- 🧹 He links it to 2020 BLM-era iPlayer trigger warnings on League of Gentlemen and Mighty Boosh, and wholesale removals of Little Britain and Come Fly With Me despite those shows sending up prejudice.
- ❄️ The chill on future comedy matters more than lost classics: race as a forbidden subject means more regime-approved, unfunny fare from the state broadcaster.
- 💡 Takeaway: Scrubbing Mitchell and Webb is less about protecting audiences than teaching writers that the BBC now sides with the Party's version of the past.
10. Armageddon and Artificial Intelligence
John Mikkelsen - The Spectator Australia
- ☢️ Mikkelsen says climate 'global boiling' panic is easing just as AI extinction warnings rush in to claim the end-of-decade slot.
- 🧪 He cites frontier-lab voices: a former OpenAI/Anthropic researcher claiming builders privately fear decade-end wipeout, an Anthropic alignment scientist putting greater than 10% odds on unaligned AI killing humanity in 10 years, and a DeepMind alum near one-in-three on takeover.
- 📺 He compares the tone to streaming paranoia (The Capture, Person of Interest) and asks whether the scientists have had too much Kool-Aid.
- ⚡ His counter is physical: hyperscale data centres already out-eat steel mills, cloud traffic is measured in zettabytes, and AI chips only raise the power and water bill.
- 🇦🇺 He mocks Albanese and Bowen for demanding data centres run on renewables only, while the US and UK move toward nuclear for the same loads.
- 🇺🇸 Trump, he notes, likens AI apocalypse talk to the 'Global Warming Scam' and says existing criminal and regulatory powers already cover 'bad things' without new speech-style restraints.
- 🔌 A Texas contact suggests 'safety' slowdowns may really be about developer cash burn and noisy pushback against data-centre siting; Mikkelsen adds that if bots turn hostile, who mines and builds the power they need?
- 💡 Takeaway: Pull-the-plug materialism versus lab existentialism: AI doom, on this telling, still needs humans to keep the lights on.
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