Good morning, everyone.

It’s absolutely fantastic to be here today at Constructive 2026. 

I’d like to thank Ankit Sharma, Phil Brosnan and their team at Master Builders for hosting this event.

I’d also like to acknowledge my colleagues Leader of the Opposition, Chris Hipkins and MP Arena Williams.

Being Housing minister is interesting because it spans so many different domains.

It’s the housing theory of everything – which essentially boils down to the idea that restricting urban land and housing cascades into a wide range of national problems.

That’s why I’ve been convinced for some time that fixing the fundamentals of our housing system is one of the best things we can do to address so many of New Zealand’s intractable economic, social, and generational challenges. 

I’m really proud of the massive progress we’ve made over the past three years, and I want to reflect on that with all of you today. 

To finish, I’ll talk to you about what’s next and what you can expect from a second term with a National-led government. 

Achievements and highlights

So, let’s take it back to the start. 

Three years ago, I had the enormous privilege of being appointed Minister of Housing. 

From my time in Opposition, where I’d deliberately consulted widely and worked hard, I knew there was an incredible amount to do. 

From the early-2000s to 2023, research from the Productivity Commission, Auckland University, Motu, Treasury, the Reserve Bank, the New Zealand Initiative, Statistics New Zealand, the International Monetary Fund, the OECD, and many more showed that New Zealand was creating one of the most unaffordable housing markets in the world. 

Between 1998 and 2022, inflation adjusted house prices rose by more than 250 per cent – close to four times the OECD average and more than double that of Britian.  

For over two decades, our housing market has slowly eroded social and economic outcomes. 

Economically, housing eats up disposable income, meaning less can go toward goods, services, and investment. It ties up wealth and displaces productive investment.

A lack of housing in the right place also leaves productivity and agglomeration benefits on the table.

Socially, housing plays a large factor in young kiwis deciding to leave New Zealand to find better opportunities.

Unaffordable housing also tips more people into situations where they need support. 

Currently, there are around 19,00 families on the social housing waitlist.

Various governments of different stripes have put housing in the too hard basket and failed to make the tough calls required.

Not this Government. We are up for the challenge because the future benefits of getting it right are worth it.  

I am determined to fix housing for three reasons.

Boost the economy
Help get the books back in order
Close the intergenerational gap

Boost the economy

The first reason to fix housing is to boost the economy.

Achieving genuine economic prosperity is the driving ambition of this Government. 

The only way to do this is to address our decades-long productivity disease. 

As Paul Krugman so famously observed, “Productivity isn’t everything, but in the long run, it’s almost everything.”

Productivity is what drives peoples’ standard of living and our prosperity as a country. 

And even though New Zealand is blessed with extraordinary competitive advantages like our natural resources, an abundance of land, and relatively cheap renewable energy – we have fallen behind.

We used to make the most of our advantages. 

In 1900, New Zealand had the highest number of patent applications per capita in the world, and in the 1950s and ‘60s we built innovative, world-leading infrastructure. 

In the early ‘60s, our productivity was well above Australia’s, but somewhere in the ‘70s our productivity dropped, and the gap kept widening.

Now, our productivity is closer to places like Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic than it is to Australia and other western European countries we like to compare ourselves to.

In other words, our productivity rates are on par with countries that endured 40 years of communism.

The hope or assumption that New Zealand’s advantages will automatically confer prosperity is wrong. 

Complacency is a blight on progress.

It will take sustained effort and difficult trade-offs over many years to really get productivity going again. 

It isn’t going to be easy.

But a good place to start is housing.

There is now a mountain of economic evidence that cities are engines of productivity, and the evidence shows bigger is better.

In New Zealand, it is estimated that doubling a city’s population could increase output by 3.5 per cent. And, on average, workers in cities earn one third more than their non-urban counterparts.

Throughout history, cities have also been the hub of innovation. Think 15th century Florence, 17th century Amsterdam, 18th century London, and arguably Houston today.

Competitive housing and land markets that deliver thriving cities, growing productivity, and super-charged industry will do more to create a better future for everyone in this room – and for everyone in New Zealand – than just about anything else we can do.

New Zealand can simply raise our productivity by allowing our towns and cities to grow up and out. We need bigger, denser cities and we need more houses.

Books back in order

The second reason to fix housing is to help get the government’s books back in order.

Central government spent over $5 billion last year alone on housing assistance in many different forms. 

That includes the accommodation supplement, subsidies for income-related rents for people in social housing, emergency housing grants, transitional housing, and initiatives to address homelessness.

Each new government programme has begat another government programme; and they have grown like mushrooms.

The system is complicated, confusing, and often duplicative. Most importantly, it is extremely expensive.

If that $5 billion stays flat over the five-year forecast period, the Government will spend over $25 billion on helping people to be housed. That’s 17 Transmission Gully motorways, four-and-a-half City Rail Links, or around 10 New Dunedin Hospitals – an astonishing amount of money to spend every five years.

Every dollar spent on subsidising rents is money that can’t be spent improving education or on fixing our health system.

There will always be some people who require housing support no matter how affordable the general market is. 

But my wider point is that improving housing affordability will mean more people can afford housing without government support and that we can invest that money elsewhere, including on the people who really need it. 

Close the intergenerational gap

The third reason to fix housing is the intergenerational gap.

I’m so proud to say that under this Government we have seen first home buyers dominating the housing market. In July this year, had a new monthly high of 29 per cent market share, the highest in more than 20 years.

But even accounting for this good progress, young people just don’t have the same opportunity to get into the housing market as their parents or grandparents did. 

Something has gone wrong when the average age of a first home buyer is 36 and when homeownership rates are near record-lows. 

I think many of us – but not enough – have woken up and realised that we have a generation of young people ready to leave a country that did not make room for them.

This costs all of us. Fundamentally it is an issue of intergenerational inequity.

So – economic, fiscal, and intergenerational – that’s the case for changing housing in New Zealand.

But no one had a credible long-term plan to fix the fundamentals. 

This is not what Kiwis deserve from government, and it is my strong view that we need to do better.

I had five priorities coming to office:

Our Going for Housing Growth policy.
Reform of the Resource Management Act.
Improvements to the rental market to make it easier to be a landlord, and easier to be a tenant.
Building and construction changes to improve competition and lower building costs.
Better social housing to better look after those who need support.

I’m proud we’ve made significant progress on all of these priorities. 

An enormous amount of work has been done in just three years.

But before I get into those six, I just want to touch on a few highlights. Since we came into Government – 

Rents have been flat to falling. 

Both housing deposits and mortgage serviceability are more affordable. 

First home purchases have been at record highs. 

The social housing waitlist is down by over 6,300 applicants. 

We have delivered 8,500 net new social homes. 

And, we have successfully turned Kāinga Ora (KO) around. Through strong governance by the new Board and financial discipline, KO has reduced its peak debt by $10 billion so far – all while lowering their build costs and increasing tenancy satisfaction.

Just on build costs, when we came into Government, KO were building state homes for up to eight, nine, ten thousand per square metre. In late 2023, the average cost per square metre was about $3,400.

In the year to June 2026, the average cost had fallen to around $2,700 per square metre, and KO tells me that they are now contracting for as low as $2,600 per square metre.

This reduction in cost means that Government can provide and renew more social homes for those in need within the same funding envelope.

That is the power of value for money – it gives us the ability to do more with what we have.

Those are some of my highlights, now let’s get into the five housing priorities I started with in 2023. 

Five housing priorities delivered

Going For Housing Growth

The first is Going for Housing Growth. 

This policy is about fixing the fundamentals and is focused on three pillars:

Pillar One: Freeing up land for urban development, including removing unnecessary planning barriers.
Pillar Two: Improving infrastructure funding and financing to support urban growth.
Pillar Three: Providing incentives for communities and councils to support growth.

I’ll quickly run through where we are at on each.

Pillar One is being implemented through the Resource Management Act reforms. The key components are the goal of competitive urban land markets, an independent Urban Land Market Officer, and strong National Policy Direction on Housing and Development. 

Our new planning system will deliver the most significant pro-housing reforms in a generation. 

A specific goal of the new Planning Bill is for the system to “enable competitive urban land markets by making land available to create abundant development opportunities for residential and business use.”

This creates a statutory obligation on councils to ensure that the supply of urban land is responsive to demand such that land prices do not materially or persistently reflect scarcity premiums. 

In other words, councils will be put on notice. They will need to be conscious that their planning rules do not create an artificial scarcity of developable land, which in turn pushes up land prices.

To ensure councils actually do this, Cabinet has agreed to establish a new Urban Land Market Officer – an independent economic umpire to ensure councils achieve competitive urban land markets through the new planning system. 

I want to get out of the business of watching councils like a hawk and let the experts do the work.  

I want the Officer to tell government whether councils have competitive urban land markets or not. And if not, how bad is it?  

The Officer will focus on monitoring and advising on urban land market competitiveness. 

If the Officer makes a determination that a local authority’s actions under the Planning Act have contributed to a non-competitive urban land market, then the local authority will need to take action to address this, such as by progressing a plan change to enable more capacity for housing.

Monitoring in other markets that have monopolistic characteristics drives better outcomes for New Zealanders – like the Commerce Commission and regulated utilities. 

Urban land markets are similar as a council effectively controls the supply of urban land and development capacity in an urban market.

The Independent Officer is what gives Pillar One teeth. It is a strong mechanism that will ensure that every council is zoning abundant land for housing. 

Pillar One also includes polices that make it easier for our cities to grow up and out:

a requirement for Housing Growth Targets, which will set a requirement for councils to live-zone 30 years of feasible development capacity,
the abolition of urban growth boundaries and/or requirements for development to be connected to existing urban areas,
a requirement for intensification in city centres, metropolitan areas, town centres, and around rapid transit,
new standardised zones which will provide for a mix of uses across urban areas and not allow for minimum floor areas or balcony requirements. 

The first three are already reflected in the recently released Illustrative National Direction. 

The work on standardised zones will be done through National Standards and tie into Regional Spatial Plans. 

I have thrown the kitchen sink at sorting out the fundamentals of housing supply. 

It’s been suggested to be that we are the first country in the world to have an independent referee for competitive urban land markets. 

Similar to how we were the first country in the world to adopt an explicit inflation-targeting regime backed by an operationally independent central bank.

I am incredibly proud of the work officials, urban nerds, and others have done to achieve this. It will make a huge difference for the prosperity of New Zealand. 

Resource Management Act Reform

Just taking a step back, the biggest improvement the Government is making to housing is reforming the RMA.

We are not just improving but are fundamentally transforming the consenting framework by replacing the RMA with two new pieces of legislation: The Planning Bill and the Natural Environment Bill. 

Both Bills have now been through the Committee of the Whole House and will soon become law. 

Our new system will be effects-based, embrace standardised zoning backed by Regional Spatial Plans, and will be far more permissive and enabling while also protecting the environment. 

I know that many people in this room are deeply frustrated with the culture of “no” and pervasive micromanagement that has festered under the RMA. 

But under the New planning system there are a range of out-of-scope effects including internal site matters, visual appearance, business competition, project finances, and subjective character. 

There will be no more litigating which way the door faces. 

No more four-month argument with the council about why you picked a particular design for your garage. 

No more discussion on the internal configuration of living rooms and where the TV goes.

No more delaying social housing builds because the “grass colour is too similar to the footpath colour”.

And no more saying no to 11-storey, wooden office buildings on gravel pits right next to a multi-billion-dollar public transport investment just because of: “scale” and bad vibes. 

That’s enough on Pillar One. Let’s move onto Pillar Two. 

When it comes to infrastructure funding and financing to support housing growth, we have also pulled multiple levers. 

In July, the Infrastructure Funding and Financing (IFF) Amendment Bill passed into law, making it easier for developers, councils, and other infrastructure providers to use the Act to deliver projects free from local authority funding and financing constraints.

The updated IFF Act now also allows New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) to use Levies to fund projects like highways and rapid transit. 

We have also made significant progress replacing the broken Development Contributions regime with Development Levies, which is a new flexible funding and financing tool to match our new flexible planning system. 

Councils will be far better enabled to recover the costs of growth, no matter where it occurs.

To ensure they use this new flexibility appropriately, the Government has also agreed to the Commerce Commission becoming the regulator for Development Levies.

I’ve spent a lot of time on Development Levies, because it is both fiendishly complicated and incredibly important. We need to get it right. Decision on this will be announce shortly.

On Pillar Three, in Budget 2026 we set up the $400 million Incentives for Growth Fund. Under the Fund all councils are rewarded for every single home consented.

The aim of the fund is to help change the political economy of housing by providing direct financial incentives to local councils and communities that welcome new housing development.

Payments will commence from 1 April 2027 for consents granted in the year to January 31, 2027.

Auckland is expected to get $32.4 million. 

Christchurch City is expected to get $9.1 million

Selwyn District is expected to get $8.4 million

Waimakariri District is expected to get $1.8 million. 

Councils have been asking for new funding and financing tools for a long time, and we have delivered improved IFF Act Levies, the Incentives for Growth Fund, and – shortly – Development Levies.

Improvements to the rental market 

That brings me to improvements to the rental market. 

The previous Government’s war on landlords caused worse outcomes for tenants. Rents went up $180 per week from 2017 to 2023, the social housing waitlist increased by about 20,000 households, and thousands of families were living in emergency housing motels. 

In 2024, we introduced a suite of sensible pro-tenant and pro-landlord changes.

This included reintroducing 90-day notice ‘no cause’ terminations for periodic tenancies, reducing landlords’ notice periods for ending a periodic tenancy to 42 days in specific circumstances, reducing tenants’ notice periods for ending a periodic tenancy from 28 to 21 days, and allowing landlords to require a pet bond alongside the introduction of new pet consent and damage liability rules. 

We also fully restored interest deductibility for residential property – and I can promise you that we won’t be changing that!

Together, these changes have been giving landlords confidence to re-enter the market and tenants more ability to secure a rental home, including for their beloved household pet.

In fact, around 12,500 pet bonds have been lodged to date, which is fantastic!

Since coming into Government, rents for new tenancies have been flat, and even falling in some places. 

The latest CPI data release also shows rents for new and existing tenancies rose at their slowest rate in 25 years. 

To further improve the rental market, we also passed the Overseas Investment (Build to Rent and Similar Rental Developments) Amendment Bill, which facilitates increased foreign investment in the Build to Rent housing sector.

We signalled to the world that we are open for business and open for Build to Rent investment.

Research from Property Council New Zealand indicates that, with supportive legislation, developers could deliver 25,000 Build to Rent homes in the next decade.

And, using their tracker, you can see there are now around 2,500 units in the country with 1,400 under construction and a further 4,400 in the pipeline. 

Building and construction changes

Now, this isn’t in my area, but I think it’s really important to touch on the building and construction changes we progressed this term. 

We can’t build houses and we can’t rebuild the economy without our builders. 

Right now, it’s around 50per cent more expensive to build a house here than in Australia, so we have taken action to save builders time, money, and hassle. This includes:

Right-sizing the wealth destructive earthquake-prone building rules.
Making it much easier for Kiwis to build a simple granny flat by removing the need for both building and resource consents in most cases for units up to 70 square metres, provided they meet clear national standards.
Trusting skilled plumbers, drainlayers and builders to sign off on their own work.
Increasing the use of remote inspections to speed the process up.
Allowing builders and homeowners to swap out similar products without needing another consent.
Tackling joint and several liability. 
Making it easier for up to 250,000 overseas building products to come into New Zealand.
And, of course, providing Investment Boost – a 20per cent deduction off the cost of your new gear, on top of regular depreciation.

These changes will make a huge difference in reducing costs and cutting red tape. 

It’s incredibly promising to see that more than 41,000 new homes were consented in the year to July 2026, up 21per cent on the last year. 

This is a significant turnaround for a sector that has faced some challenging conditions over recent years following a decline in building activity that began in 2022. 

More consents mean more building, more jobs and more opportunities for economic growth. Fantastic. 

Better social housing 

Now, we are onto the last of my five priorities: better social housing. 

As a Minister, there are some things I don’t like to do, and there are many long hours and late nights away from home.

But one of the best parts of my job is attending openings of life changing homes across the country and meeting the people who are receiving support – seeing the difference it makes.

You’ve heard me say this before: the Government backs affordable housing and social housing.

But – like many New Zealanders – we also think the current system is broken.

The Government can do a much better job at supporting those in most need and being more ambitious for people.

That’s why we’re creating an entirely new Housing Investment System centred on three principles: building the right types of homes, in the right places, for the right people.

We’re also progressing a broader Review of the Social Housing (ROSH), which I’m not pretending will be easy, but I believe is the right thing to do.

I’ll just quickly go over our investment in social housing, the new Flexible Fund, and the new Housing Investment Plans. 

Across Budgets 24, 25, and 26 we have built a genuine, long-term social housing and affordable housing pipeline of opportunities for the CHP sector and other providers.

This is something that the sector has been asking for, and that no government has really delivered – until now.

I’ll break down the pipeline.

In Budgets 24 and 25, we funded at least 2,050 places to be delivered by June 2027. Doe to better value for money we have got that up to 2,200 places. 

Of these places, 85 per cent will be one or two bedrooms. These smaller homes are what the vast majority of people on the waitlist actually need.

In Budget 2025, the Government also established the Flexible Fund, which funded 820 places for delivery from July 2027 to the end of 2029 through its first tranche of investment. 

The Flexible Fund collapses and combines previous housing programmes.

Until recently, the status quo was a confusing alphabet soup of tightly defined, duplicative programmes where providers are forced to mould their models to rigid criteria or be left out.

We aren’t doing that anymore.

We are moving to a future state with one flexible pot of money that can be deployed to all types of interventions – including affordable rentals and new, innovative solutions – that best meet housing need and represent good value for money.

Budget 2026 then topped up the Flexible Fund to support the delivery of an additional 1,800 to 2,250 homes over three years starting from July 2028.

I’m really proud of building a credible, deliverable, and long-term pipeline of around 5,000 social and affordable homes. 

I don’t want to get ahead of the Budget process, but my intention is to keep topping up the Flexible Fund and building the long-term pipeline.

Now, a key differentiating factor of the Flexible Fund is how places are allocated.

In the past, governments have invested in social housing without a clear understanding of what is needed, where it is needed, and who is best placed to deliver it.

But now we have a Housing Investment Plan, which will be updated every year and/or funding round.

The first Plan was published in 2025 and uses detailed data and local insights to identify where housing need is highest and which types of homes are required.

In other words, we want to ensure future investment reflects the real-world needs of communities.

The first Plan had a large focus of need in locations – like Far North, South Auckland, Eastern Bay of Plenty, Gisborne, Hastings, and the main centres. That’s where those 820 Flexible Fund places funded in Budget 2025 are going!

This is a good first step.

But my vision is for the Housing Investment Plan to use high-quality data to identify and target investment into priority cohorts.

Cohorts that, if we invested in them, would deliver the greatest benefits to households, to government, and to society.

A real social investment approach.

I have a hypothesis that some of these cohorts are recently released prisoners, families doing it tough with young children, and kiwis with mental health challenges or disabilities.

Here’s one statistic that has stuck with me – NZ longitudinal research following people post release shows a 4.6 times higher reimprisonment risk for those with unstable housing.

On a more personal note, I have been exercised about stories of people falling through the cracks.

Now, I don’t want to guess what the cohorts are, I want to get it right.

That’s why I’ve asked the Social Investment Agency to do the analysis with the Ministry of Cities, Environment, Regions, and Transport; and the Ministry of Social Development using IDI and other rich data.

This analysis will get more sophisticated overtime and will feed into future Housing Investment Plans.

I could keep on going… including on ROSH. 

But I think to sum up – I have a clear vision. I want to provide the right house, in the right place, for the people who need it most. 

There’s a long way to go but we are making progress. 

Now all of this work in housing from social housing to intensification has required difficult trade-offs and tough choices.

 However, these are the choices that will set New Zealand up for years and years of prosperity into the 2030s and beyond. 

If that’s my legacy as Minister of Housing, I’ll be happy. 

However, I am hungry to do more for New Zealand. 

What’s next 

To finish, I’ll talk to you about what you can expect from a second term with a National-led government. 

First things first – what is in train is significant. 

We need to keep doing what we are doing:

Replacing the Development Contributions regime with a more flexible Development Levies system 
Working on the four priority growth areas in the Auckland Deal – particularly the Maungawhau to Morningside corridor
Finishing off the Auckland City Centre Investigation 
Seeing PC120 finished
Supercharging the CHP sector, getting KO back on track, and building on the social housing pipeline 
Reforming the social housing system 
Setting the Ministry for Cities, Environment, Regions, and Transport (MCERT) up for success
Finishing off the job we started on fixing our planning system including national standards.

There’s also so much more. 

If I can impress anything on you all here today, it’s that these work programmes are critical to achieving genuine prosperity in New Zealand. 

National will keep the momentum going. 

Conclusion

I’d like to thank all of you in this room for coming along the journey with me for the past three years as Housing Minister. 

Housing is my great passion. 

If we can fix housing there is nothing, nothing that we can’t fix together as a country. 

My dream is of a market which is affordable for people to rent, but most importantly is affordable for young kiwis to get into a home they can call their own. 

I also want Kiwis to be free, ambitious, and have access to abundant opportunities – knowing they are backed by an equally enterprising nation. 

If we make good, bold choices, we can all enjoy better lives. 

Our country, at the bottom of the world, can choose to be wealthy, and modern, and prosperous. 

That’s why I’m in politics.

Thank you.

Original source: https://nz.mil-osi.com/2026/09/03/speech-to-constructive-2026/

A total of 25 appointments and reappointments have been made to nine of the 12 community trusts around the country, Associate Finance Minister Shane Jones says.

They are: 

• Waikato Community Trust: Blair Currie, Christine Hall, Andrew Peckham and Chris Williams have been appointed.
• Eastern and Central Community Trust: Catriona McKay and Jared Pullar have been appointed.
• Toi Foundation: Ryan Eagar, Bali Haque and Chris Ussher have been reappointed.
• Wellington Community Fund: Sir Peter Boshier and Lloyd Percival have been appointed.
• West Coast Community Trust: Simon Bastion has been reappointed. Pavel Bares, Ivan Iraia and Jack O’Connor have been appointed.
• Rātā Foundation: Peter Floris, Pat McEvedy, Lynette Rayner and Erin Reeve have been appointed.
• Community Trust of Mid and South Canterbury: Janine Holland has been reappointed. Cara Gregan and Michelle Thompson have been appointed.
• Otago Community Trust: Phil Hunt and Mary Jane Kivalu have been appointed.
• Community Trust South: Erin Moogan has been appointed.

“These individuals will help the trusts serve their communities by bringing varied expertise including education, business, healthcare, community services, marketing, sports, governance, law, environmental protection, grant allocation, and community development,” Mr Jones says.

“I believe the trust and their communities will benefit from the rich experience, knowledge, and community links the appointees bring, Mr Jones says.

“The 12 Community Trusts of New Zealand are the custodians of more than $3.5 billion of investments, and collectively grant about $100 million back into thousands of organisations throughout New Zealand each year.

“The work done by these trusts helps to grow and build strong and empowered communities.”

Editors’ note

Terms for appointees are for up to four years. Community trusts are governed by the Community Trusts Act 1999. They manage large investment portfolios and distribute grants for charitable, cultural, philanthropic and recreational purposes within their respective boundaries.

Original source: https://nz.mil-osi.com/2026/09/03/community-trust-board-members-appointed/

Traffic is being diverted following a serious crash on Rosebank Road in Avondale, Auckland.

The serious crash involved a car and cyclist.

Police were first alerted to the incident at approximately 3.50pm.

Serious injuries are being reported and the Serious Crash Unit has been advised.

Eastbound traffic along Rosebank Road is blocked and diversions are in place along Mead Street.

Police advise motorists to expect delays and to take alternative routes where possible. 

ENDS

Original source: https://nz.mil-osi.com/2026/09/02/serious-crash-rosebank-road-avondale/

The Reserve Bank’s assessment that the economic recovery is resuming and expected to broaden, has been welcomed by Finance Minister Nicola Willis.

Announcing a 0.25 basis point lift in the Official Cash Rate today to 2.75 per cent, the Reserve Bank said it expected the recovery to strengthen and broaden, the export sector to remain resilient and household spending to increase. 

The bank also expects purchasing power to increase as inflation returns to the mid-point of its target range.  

“The bank’s assessment demonstrates the economy has proved to be more resilient in the face of the Middle East conflict than many commentators thought,” Nicola Willis says.

“Unlike some previous upturns, this recovery is being driven by the export sector rather than rising house prices. That augurs well for the future. 

“Many people are doing it tough and we still have a way to go but New Zealanders can take heart from the resilience shown by the economy.”

Original source: https://nz.mil-osi.com/2026/09/02/increasing-resilience-of-economy-welcomed/

The Reserve Bank’s decision to lift the Official Cash Rate to 2.75 percent will make life harder for the 171,000 New Zealanders already out of work, says the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions Te Kauae Kaimahi.

“The OCR hike today is not what this country needs”, says NZCTU President Sandra Grey.

New Zealand has been through a prolonged economic downturn, in large part because of the Reserve Bank’s decision to keep the OCR too high for too long through 2023–24. Raising it again repeats that mistake.

“Unemployment, underutilisation and Jobseeker numbers have all climbed steeply over the past three years, and today’s decision will push them higher still”, says Grey.

There were 171,000 people unemployed in the June 2026 quarter, the highest number of unemployed New Zealanders since the early 1990s. A further 440,000 people were underutilised, meaning they want more work than they can get. Jobseeker Support numbers have increased 26 percent over the past three years, to more than 218,000. Meanwhile wage growth is running at 2 percent, a five-year low, while annual inflation was 4.1 percent in the year to June.

“Unemployment can have lifelong financial consequences for the individuals, whānau and communities affected. It can mean lower lifetime earnings and can lock some people out of the labour market for good. It also has deeply negative impacts on people’s mental and physical health and can fracture households and communities”, says Grey.

“A higher OCR will simply make the much-needed economic recovery harder, and will mean further misery for people who are out of work or who can’t get the hours they need”, says Grey.

“The OCR is not the right tool for dealing with the current drivers of inflation, which are council rates, household energy prices and global oil prices. Squeezing working people will not bring down the price of electricity. We need a more sophisticated approach to managing inflation that doesn’t rely on putting people out of work”, says Grey.

Original source: https://nz.mil-osi.com/2026/09/02/ocr-increase-will-deepen-the-damage-in-an-already-very-weak-job-market/

Foreign Minister Winston Peters has welcomed the United States’ decision to provide energy support to the Pacific.

 “Since travelling to Washington DC in April, we’ve been regularly discussing with the United States the impacts of the Middle East conflict on the Pacific, and the need for tangible support to the region,” Mr Peters says.

 “In that context, we welcome today’s announcement by the United States to help address budget shortfalls caused by the ongoing global energy crisis.”

 The US support, of US$60 million was announced at the Pacific Islands Forum in Palau by Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau.

 “The Pacific, given its isolation and near total dependence on imported fuel, is exceptionally vulnerable to oil price shocks, especially this year.

 “That’s why Pacific Islands Forum Foreign Ministers have been regularly discussing how best to respond to the fuel crisis, and why New Zealand – alongside Australia, Japan the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank – has been working so hard to assist Pacific Island countries to deal with it.

 “We are pleased to have the United States on board contributing to this vital work.

 “New Zealand’s Pacific development programme has a strong focus on economic and energy resilience in order to help our Pacific partners reduce demand for imported fuels through increased renewable generation and improved energy efficiency,” Mr Peters says.

Original source: https://nz.mil-osi.com/2026/09/02/nz-welcomes-us-energy-support-to-the-pacific/

An alleged Facebook Marketplace scammer is now facing a raft of charges after he defrauded victims out of thousands of dollars. 

Earlier this year, Police received multiple complaints about a Facebook Marketplace user who had failed to send items to buyers. 

The seller had allegedly pocketed more than $13,700 after taking payments for goods including electronics, fishing reels, sports merchandise, music equipment, Lego, and Pokémon cards.

Acting Detective Senior Sergeant James Kim, Waitematā North Area Investigation Manager, says Operation Camrose was established to locate the serial scammer. 

“Enquiries revealed that between February and August of this year, the offender had been defrauding victims through Facebook Marketplace on a daily basis. 

“He operated under multiple identities, and his fraudulent activity spanned the North Island.” 

Due to the scale of offending, the investigation required a coordinated response between Police districts across the country. 

Yesterday, investigators in the Orewa Tactical Crime Unit executed a search warrant at an address in Arkles Bay. 

A 42-year-old man was arrested and charged with 22 counts of obtains by deception; failing to comply with obligations relating to a computer search; possession of cannabis utensils; possession of methamphetamine utensils; injuring with intent to injure; and two counts of contravening a protection order.

He has been remanded in custody and will reappear in North Shore District Court on 13 January 2027.

Acting Detective Senior Sergeant Kim says Operation Camrose highlights the importance of exercising caution when using buy and sell platforms. 

“These sites are a hunting ground for criminals to buy items using a fake bank transfer or sell items that don’t exist.

“We are urging those who use these platforms to do their due-diligence and not exchange any money without first examining the product.”

Police encourage consumers to only purchase items from trusted retailers or, when purchasing off TradeMe, using the PING payment method which provides buyers with some protections. 

ENDS.

Frankie Le Roy/NZ Police. 

Original source: https://nz.mil-osi.com/2026/09/02/in-the-market-for-charges/

Farm workers will soon be able to use their own KiwiSaver savings to buy their first home under legislation introduced this week, say Finance Minister Nicola Willis and Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Cameron Brewer.

The KiwiSaver (First Home or Farm) Amendment Bill fixes two rules that have kept rural New Zealanders from a first-home withdrawal available to everyone else. It began as a member’s bill in the name of Rangitīkei MP Suze Redmayne, and the Government has adopted it.

“If your job comes with a roof over your head, you should not be locked out of your own savings,” Nicola Willis says.

“Many farm workers are required to live where they work. But a first-home withdrawal requires you to move into the home you buy, so they have been paying into KiwiSaver alongside everyone else while shut out of a withdrawal every other member can make.

“That rule was written with a suburban street in mind, not a farm gate. Rural New Zealand has been wearing the cost of it, and we are fixing that.”

The Bill also allows first-time farm buyers to use their KiwiSaver towards a farm bought through a company, trust or partnership they majority own and control, where the farm will be their main home. Current rules only allow it if the farm is in the buyer’s own name.

“A farm is a business and a home at the same time, which is why almost nobody buys one in their own name. The KiwiSaver rules were never written with that in mind, and aspiring farm owners have been shut out because of it,” Mr Brewer says.

“So a young couple who have spent a decade milking someone else’s cows and saving hard have been blocked from their own KiwiSaver by a technicality about whose name is on the title. That is not fair, and it is not smart.

“This change recognises how farm ownership actually works in this country, and it means new farm owners start out with less debt around their necks.

“Since 2010, hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders have used their KiwiSaver to get onto the property ladder. The people who milk the cows and work the land deserve to be among them.

“This is the Government fixing the basics and building the future, so the people who work our land can own a piece of it,” Mr Brewer says.

Original source: https://nz.mil-osi.com/2026/09/02/opening-the-farm-gate-to-first-time-buyers/

Legislation to halt excessive rates increases and ensure councils’ focus to be on fixing the basics and keeping rates affordable has passed its first reading in Parliament today, Local Government Minister Simon Watts says.

Under the Local Government (Rates Capping) Amendment Bill, councils will be required to keep annual rates increases within a target range of 2-4 per cent.

“Steep and unexpected rates increases add pressure to household budgets at a time many New Zealanders are already feeling the squeeze,” Mr Watts says.

“This Government is serious about bringing stability and certainty to rates increases for New Zealanders and this Bill clearly demonstrates that drive.

“We are committed to refocusing councils on delivering core services, keeping rates down for ratepayers, and putting more money back into Kiwi pockets.

“Nice-to-haves should never come at the expense of delivering the basics and the days of double-digit yearly rates increases are coming to an end.”

Councils will be required to consider the cap range from 1 July 2027 when preparing their long-term plans, and the rates caps will take full effect from 1 July 2029.

The Finance and Expenditure Committee will now consider the Bill.

Editors’ notes:

Under the proposed rates capping system:

• Annual rates increases will remain within an initial target range of 2 to 4 per cent.
• The target range will be reviewed every six years and updated where necessary to reflect costs outside councils’ control.
• The target range includes a minimum level of rates increase to support councils to continue delivering essential services and investing in infrastructure.
• Two types of time-bound exemptions will be available:
  • Exceptional circumstances: where additional rates revenue is needed to recover from events such as natural disasters that go beyond what a council can reasonably be expected to plan for.
  • Prudent financial management exemption: where a council can demonstrate prudent financial management and a justified need to operate above or below the target range. Councils will be required to consult their communities before setting rates.
• Water services are excluded from the rates capping system and will continue to be regulated separately.
• The legislation also establishes an independent regulator responsible for:
• Monitoring compliance with the rates capping system.
• Assessing exemption applications.
• Advising on future target ranges.
• Supporting councils through implementation and transition.
• Providing guidance to councils and reporting on how the system is operating.

Original source: https://nz.mil-osi.com/2026/09/01/rates-capping-bill-passes-first-reading/

The Government is investing further in repairs to the Hauraki Rail Trail to ensure it remains a world-class attraction for tourists and local communities following severe storm damage, Tourism and Hospitality Minister Louise Upston says.

“This investment will help ensure the Hauraki Rail Trail can continue playing its important role in supporting tourism, local jobs and regional economic growth,” Louise Upston says. 

“This additional $400,000 investment builds on an initial $300,000 assistance in April for immediate safety work so the cycle trail could reopen following extensive damage when the Ohinemuri River flooded in January.”

The repairs are funded by the International Visitor Levy, via the New Zealand Cycle Trail Fund. The Hauraki Rail Trail Charitable Trust will also contribute funding to this stage of repairs. 

“The Hauraki Rail Trail is an important tourism asset for the region, attracting more than 32,000 visitors each year and contributing approximately $12 million annually to the local economy. 

“The trail supports local accommodation providers, hospitality businesses, transport operators and tourism experiences throughout the region, making its recovery important for both local communities and the wider visitor economy.” 

The January weather event caused extensive damage to trail surfaces, riverbank edges, structures and access points, requiring significant repair work, particularly to the Karangahake Gorge section of the trail. 

More than 2 million people enjoy the 23 Great Rides of Ngā Haerenga New Zealand Cycle Trails each year, contributing an estimated $1.28 billion to regional economies. 

“Repairing and reopening Great Rides after extreme weather events remains a priority so these trails can continue to drive regional tourism, support local businesses, and provide high-quality outdoor experiences,” Louise Upston says. 

Original source: https://nz.mil-osi.com/2026/09/01/backing-the-hauraki-rail-trails-recovery/

Date:  01 September 2026

The nursery, based at Motukārara, 30 minutes southwest of Christchurch, is growing and selling plants with ‘superpowers’ with a mission to make the region more resilient to fires, floods and the impacts of climate change.

Nursery Manager Jess Ward says there’s only half a per cent of native vegetation left on the plains, and on Te Pātaka o Rākaihautū/Banks Peninsula it’s around 22 per cent. The dream is to grow forests and protect property through resilient planting.

“Climate change is a huge issue facing us all, and we need to start work to mitigate the effects, which include more fires and floods. We’ve put together special plant packages including a fire protection package with plants that are fire resistant, a package with plants to help stop erosion, and a wetland package to help farmers protect waterways on their property,” she says.

Jess says the seeds are eco-sourced so people can order plants with the best chance of flourishing in a particular area.

“We’ve done the research to work out which plants are best suited to where you live and which ones will help you mitigate the risks your land may face. It’s about helping farmers and others protect and enhance their land, so everything thrives.

“This is one way we can really make a difference for nature. You can create your own backyard forest, which will feed the birds and help at-risk species. You end up with a fantastic ecosystem,” she says.

Jess says the plant packages are available to order now, and the plants will be grown and ready for planting in the 2027 season. She says the plants are grown to order and that anyone interested needs to place their order by the end of the month.

“We need to start thinking about this urgently. Around the world we are seeing the devastating effects of the climate changing. Nature can really help us mitigate these effects if we act now,” she says.

You can start with a full package (1,000 plants for $4,400 + GST) or a starter pack with 100 plants for $460 + GST. There are six different packages – Riparian/Streamside/Wetland, Banks Peninsula/Port Hills Forest, Plains Forest, Fire Protection, Erosion Protection, and Dryland.

For more information on the packages:

Motukārara Wholesale Conservation Nursery: Our work

To order, please use this form:

Motukarara-plant-package-2027-order-form (DOCX, 2,100K)

Contact

Original source: https://nz.mil-osi.com/2026/09/01/plants-with-superpowers-and-how-they-can-help-protect-us/

The Government is seeking feedback on changes that would make it easier for people to buy an animal from a local farmer and get it processed sooner, Food Safety Minister Andrew Hoggard says.

Under current rules, people can already buy a live animal. But before it can be processed by a homekill provider listed with MPI, the buyer has to show they actively cared for it for 28 days.

“These rules haven’t been looked at in 20 years. The way we live, farm and share food has changed, and the rules need to catch up.”
“This is about removing rules that no longer make sense. homekill can currently only be eaten by the animal owner, their family or household, and farm employees.”

“With the cost of living still biting, people are looking at what else is on offer. Buying an animal from a local farmer means the farmer sets the price, and while I can’t promise it will be cheaper, it could well be.”

The consultation also proposes that homekill and hunted meat be labelled, so people know it has not gone through the same checks as meat sold in shops, particularly if restrictions on who can eat it are relaxed.

There are no proposed changes to requirements for providers, or to the ban on selling homekill or recreationally hunted meat. Where a slaughter or processing provider is used, that provider must still be listed with the Ministry for Primary Industries.

The consultation also covers whether recreational hunters can share hunted meat more widely.

“We have heard the current rules are vague, and that uncertainty is putting people off donating hunted meat to foodbanks and charities.
Hunters want to give meat to their local foodbank, but many are not sure whether they are allowed to. Meat is the most asked for item at foodbanks and the most expensive to provide. We should not have unclear rules getting in the way of that.”

“I encourage farmers, hunters, processors and Kiwis who value local food to have their say. This is a chance to shape practical rules that support local food, not hold it back,” Mr Hoggard says.

Consultation runs until 5 October 2026. Have your say on homekill and recreational catch

Original source: https://nz.mil-osi.com/2026/08/31/cutting-red-tape-between-the-farm-gate-and-the-freezer/

Finance Minister Nicola Willis has welcomed rating agency S&P’s vote of confidence in the New Zealand economy.

The agency has affirmed New Zealand’s AA+ foreign currency credit rating with a stable outlook and is forecasting the economy to grow 2.5 per cent in the 12 months to June next year.

“New Zealand is one of just 18 economies to have an AA+, or better rating,” Nicola Willis says.

“S&P affirmation of our rating is a vote of confidence in both the economy and the Government’s management of the books. 

“S&P says New Zealand’s economic outlook is improving and it expects stronger growth to help reduce the government’s deficit over the next three years.

“Its expectations accord with the Government’s fiscal intentions which are to gradually reduce government spending as a proportion of GDP, return the books to surplus and bend the debt curve down.

“Getting the tick of approval from S&P is important because rating agency decisions can move markets. Downgrades lead to higher borrowing costs for both governments and people.” 

In its review, S&P pays tribute to New Zealand’s monetary policy flexibility, wealthy economy, relatively low net debt, and strong institutions. It says these strengths offset weaknesses associated with external imbalances and fiscal deficits.

It notes that action taken by the current Government to reduce the deficit and revitalise the economy includes: reducing income taxes, streamlining the public service, incentivising foreign investment through the reversal of offshore oil and gas exploration bans, and reforming the local government sector.

“I know many people are still doing it tough, but S&P’s latest report is further evidence that Kiwis can look forward to a growing economy creating more jobs and the government’s books returning to surplus,” Nicola Willis says.

Original source: https://nz.mil-osi.com/2026/08/31/stable-credit-rating-a-vote-of-confidence/

The fuel excise hike planned for next year has been cancelled to help Kiwis with the cost of living and deliver lower taxes for New Zealanders, Finance Minister Nicola Willis and Transport Minister Chris Bishop have announced.

“Fuel excise was scheduled to resume annual increases starting with a 12c per litre increase from 1 January 2027, with equivalent increases to road user charges. That has now been scrapped, with the next increase of 5c a litre now taking effect from 1 January 2028,” Ms Willis says.

“Cancelling next year’s fuel excise increase and spreading the change over time from 2028 will give Kiwis more time to recover from the period of post-Covid economic pain and recent uncertainty in the Middle East.

“It follows our decision to cancel the last Government’s proposed fuel excise hikes, which were due to kick in this term, along with the Auckland Regional Fuel Tax.

“The short-term sugar-hit approach to economic management we saw post-Covid drove a period of record-high inflation and soaring interest rates that hit New Zealanders hard.

“That’s why, since the start of the fuel crisis, we have sought to get the balance right between supporting New Zealanders with the cost of living and being responsible managers of the economy.

“Our careful economic management means inflation has fallen significantly from its peak of 7.3 per cent, wages are expected to grow faster than prices each year, and around 220,000 new jobs are expected to be created by 2030.

“But times are still tough and there remains uncertainty in the Middle East. As we have demonstrated this year, we will keep a watchful eye on international events and ensure Kiwis are supported if the crisis leads to higher fuel prices in 2028.”

Mr Bishop says that since 2020, the average cost of transport projects has increased by as much as 45 per cent, while fuel excise has remained frozen – falling in real terms by around 20 percent.

“While pausing fuel excise increases was the right choice as New Zealanders weathered an economic storm, unless they begin again soon, the financial foundations of our land transport system will be undermined,” Mr Bishop says.

“For New Zealanders, that would mean roads littered with potholes, cancelled projects, and an inability to respond when communities are cut off following severe weather events.

“To prevent this, the Government has agreed on a new, more sustainable path for fuel tax increases. There will be no increase to fuel tax in 2027, with the next increase taking effect on 1 January 2028.

“Instead of a one-off 12-cent increase, we have spread these changes over time to make the transition fairer and more manageable for New Zealanders, as the economy continues to pick up and wages grow.

“Fuel tax will rise by 5 cents on 1 January 2028, followed by three further 5-cent increases at six-month intervals. Annual increases will then resume from 1 January 2030, of 5 cents per year. Road user charges will be subject to equivalent increases at the same intervals.

“It would be irresponsible to reduce funding for the land transport system to pay for this change. Doing so would require significant reductions in road maintenance, public transport services and infrastructure investment. Officials have advised that a reduction of this scale would not be credible without serious reductions in funded services.

“On that basis, Ministers have agreed to top up the National Land Transport Fund to account for the reduction in fuel excise revenue. This is expected to cost $1.476 billion over the forecast period,” Mr Bishop says.

Nicola Willis says the cost will be partly offset by the $450 million fuel response contingency established through Budget 2026. The remaining cost will be managed through and reflected in the PREFU.

“Cancelling next year’s planned fuel tax increases is the responsible choice. New Zealand can only afford to do this because of our Government’s careful management of the finances, which has ensured the country is on track to return to surplus in 2028/29, earlier than forecast last year,” Ms Willis says.

“We are getting on with the job of fixing the basics and building the future.”

Note to editors:

• The Government is also delaying the increase to road user charges scheduled for 1 January 2027. Instead, road user charges will be increased from 1 January 2028 at rates equivalent to the increase in fuel tax.
• The 45 per cent increase in transport project costs is a weighted average based on costs that are captured in the Producers Price Index (PPI) which tracks the costs of steel, concrete, aggregate, and fuel, among other construction costs, but also factors in NZTA’s higher exposure to increases in the price of bitumen (which has increased 220%).

Original source: https://nz.mil-osi.com/2026/08/31/government-cancels-fuel-tax-hike/

Climate Change Minister Simon Watts has hosted China’s Minister of Ecology and Environment Huang Runqiu for the Seventh Ministerial Climate Change Dialogue between New Zealand and China. 

“Cooperation on climate action is a longstanding and valuable part of our relationship with China,” Mr Watts says. 

“This is the third Dialogue I have led with Minister Huang and this meeting has been an opportunity to build on the strong and constructive relationship we have developed over recent years.” 

While in New Zealand, Minister Huang has been able to learn more about Kiwi expertise in climate innovation and technology. He also had the opportunity to visit Zealandia, a unique conservation sanctuary showcasing New Zealand’s native biodiversity. 

“There are opportunities for us to strengthen our collaboration in areas such as agricultural methane emissions and sustainable finance,” Mr Watts says. 

“Continued engagement enables us to share experiences, learn from one another, and explore practical ways to support the transition to low-emissions economies. 

“Climate change is a global challenge that requires international cooperation. Constructive dialogue and practical cooperation with key partners such as China is important to advancing effective and durable climate solutions.” 

New Zealand’s climate engagement with China is underpinned by the 2014 New Zealand-China Arrangement on Climate Change Cooperation, which was updated during Prime Minister Christopher Luxon’s visit to China in June 2025. 

Original source: https://nz.mil-osi.com/2026/08/28/chinese-minister-visits-new-zealand-for-ministerial-climate-dialogue/

The fourth and final bill in the Government’s overhaul of New Zealand’s anti-money laundering laws will soon be introduced to Parliament, says Associate Justice Minister Nicole McKee.  

“The AML/CFT (Omnibus) Amendment Bill represents the most substantial reform of the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism Act since it was passed in 2009,” says Mrs McKee.  

“For too long, our AML rules have treated ordinary New Zealanders as though they are potential criminals first and customers second. That has meant unnecessary paperwork, delays and frustration for people doing perfectly normal things like establishing a family trust, opening a bank account for their child, or buying and selling property.  

“The Government has pushed for a system that targets actual risk rather than burying every New Zealander and every business under the same compliance burden.  

“This Bill delivers that by giving businesses greater flexibility to simplify customer verification where the risk of money laundering or terrorist financing is low. Resources can then be focused where the risks are real.  

“The Bill also strengthens the tools available to deal with genuinely suspicious activity, including allowing an issuing officer, such as a judge or Justice of the Peace, to approve the temporary freezing of high-risk transactions and accounts.  

“It will also create powers to regulate cash payments involving remittance services and virtual assets, such as cryptocurrencies and tokens, where there is evidence that restrictions are necessary to address criminal misuse.  

“Before any regulations are made, the Ministry of Justice will consult affected users and providers so the Government understands the real-world consequences for legitimate customers and businesses.  

“Our aim is to reduce criminal misuse and harm while allowing lawful transactions to continue.  

“This Bill completes a reform programme that is already delivering practical improvements. Changes passed in 2025 and 2026 removed the requirement to verify address information for standard customer due diligence, and removed the mandatory requirement for costly source of wealth verification simply because a customer was using a family trust.  

“Earlier reforms also established the Department of Internal Affairs as the single AML/CFT regulator, replacing a fragmented system with one regulator responsible for providing clearer and more consistent guidance. 

“Taken together, these reforms move New Zealand away from rigid box-ticking and towards regulation based on actual risk.  

“New Zealand needs effective safeguards against money laundering and terrorist financing, and we will continue to meet our international obligations. But good regulation should be proportionate, targeted and workable. That is what these reforms are designed to deliver.”

Notes to editors:

• Given the proximity of the General Election, the Ministry of Justice intends to consult on any proposals for regulations to restrict cash payments for remittance services and virtual assets in early 2027, allowing meaningful engagement with affected users and providers.
• A copy of the Bill is attached.

Original source: https://nz.mil-osi.com/2026/08/28/final-aml-cft-bill-targets-criminals-cuts-red-tape-for-kiwis/

Good Afternoon,

The coming election is going to be pivotal for the direction of our country. What is needed now more than anything else is real skill, and serious experience in the next government.

You here today know that more than most. You’ve seen governments of various stripes come and go and do nothing more than manage the decline of this once great country.

In 2026 this country needs Members of Parliament that have a proven track record of delivery and competence, who have the right experience and know-how, to enhance and support this nation and its people. 

Thirty-three years ago, we created this party, and over the following decades we have remained steadfast, and grown to become the most successful new political party in modern New Zealand history.

Superannuation

Let’s make one thing very clear. New Zealand First does not support changes to the entitlement or eligibility of New Zealand Superannuation. We don’t support raising the age to 67 as some have proposed, we don’t support means testing as some have proposed, nor do we believe that Superannuation is unaffordable as some have proposed. 

NZ First Defending NZ Super

Defending NZ Super was one of the reasons we came to be a political party.

We attacked the pernicious surtax which the Labour Party brought in and the National Party increased.

And exposed those politicians who would sell older people down the drain.

We fought the National Party bid to slash super from 65% of the net average working wage down to 60%.

We repealed the surtax.

And we legislated for NZ Super to be not 65% as it once was when National and Labour reduced it, but 66 per cent of the net average wage. 

We wrote that percentage into law.

We worked hard for our elderly providing extra money for elective surgery; funding tens of thousands more operations, providing free influenza vaccines for seniors, and we introduced the SuperGold Card.

That means free bus rides, train rides, ferry rides and tens of thousands of businesses honouring the SuperGold card price concessions.

Important fiscal facts

At the moment NZ’s experiencing the most unusual political debate. 

All the other parties are telling you what they are going to spend, but only one party, NZ First, is talking about an economic plan to uplift this countries earnings and afford what the other parties are going to spend.

And don’t listen to the doom merchants who have spread their propaganda over the affordability of NZ Super.

What these doom merchants are admitting is that they can’t run the economy properly so year after year we grow much higher than 3 per cent.

Because they have no such plan their policy is to mask their failure with attacks on the old and the young. 

They haven’t got a credible economic strategy and the only way they can balance the books is by further selling state assets that your grand parents built and cutting payments to the old.

Much of it comes from vested interests who want superannuation funds, not spent on smoothing out future retirement costs, but something sinister – they want the Superannuation Fund privatised.

If you doubt that then why have they never mentioned the fund when they talk about future costs.

Here are the facts:

Our NZ Super is world class and is recognised as such around the world.

At 5.2 percent net of GDP per year the cost of New Zealand Super is low by international standards.

Our record compares very well with an OECD average of around 9%.

NZ Super ensures all Kiwis have some retirement income security.

Our NZ Super as a percentage of GDP would stay the same even with an ageing population, with the top up of the Super Fund, and with New Zealand doubling its GDP by 2050.

Plus tens of thousands of seniors are working way past 65 years of age and none of the economic experts are factoring this into their calculations.

With the sharks of the other parties circling around your retirement payments, it is vitally important for you to know what you are voting for. 

A Labour, Green, Maori Party, Opportunity Government will be a total shambles for our seniors. 

What did the leader of the Opportunity Party say when questioned about a couple on the pension, who worked hard and saved all their lives, bought a house for their future and their children’s future, who would now, under Opportunity Party, face a $20k land tax bill every year? She said, yes, they will have to downsize their house to afford it.

This is totally ignorant. But it gets worse.

Do you know what Opportunity’s $20k per senior couple home tax revenue would be used for?

• Critical Infrastructure? 
• Supporting the Healthcare system? 
• Education? 
• Fuel security? 
• Stabilising food prices? 

No. 

The $20k land tax per annum taken from you will be used to give everyone in New Zealand, working or not, a Universal Basic Income of $19,400 a year – for free, for life. 

The Opportunity Party calls that “Fairness” 

We call it what it truly is – “Communism” 

And now here is the real stinger for you all. 

Opportunity proposes that this Universal Basic Income will replace the Superannuation scheme as we know it.

You have worked incredibly hard, some of you since the age of 15. You’ve saved, bought a house, paid your taxes and contributed. 

What will you get for it under the left? 

A new $20k tax bill funding a benefit for all, and no Superannuation. 

Universal Basic Income won’t even come close to what you need to live.

The question is, what are you, as the voter, going to do about it?

This “robbing Peter to pay Paul” approach is as shallow as it is obnoxious. 

We’re talking about governing here, not some 101 political science group project. This isn’t amateur hour. 

The left bloc wants 

• Capital Gains taxes, 
• Wealth taxes, 
• Inheritance taxes, 
• Land Value taxes, 
• Asset Taxes, 
• and Gift taxes. 

As one person once said “the problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money”. Anyone with half a brain and enough gumption to leave Wellington and work hard for their money can appreciate this isn’t a credible path to national prosperity. 

This is the sort of policy direction you expect under Labour, the Green Party and Opportunity and TPM. 

Seniors Policy

New Zealand First understands the real pressures that are put on our Seniors. 

We will continue to deliver important and practical solutions.

In the last two and a half years, we’ve delivered improvements to the rates rebate scheme thresholds, 

·       retained the Winter Energy Payment, 

·       boosted Super payments by $84 per fortnight for a single, and $130 for couples. 

·       We’ve put $35 million of funding allocation to make the SuperGold card a valid form of government ID, in case you don’t have a driver license or passport. 

New Zealand First is acutely aware of the challenges and also the opportunities that our ageing population will create. We are seeking bipartisan agreement on aged care reform after securing a select committee inquiry and ministerial advisory group to look into the issues.

Experience Matters

Ladies and Gentlemen, we started our long campaign in March this year and have been packing the halls around the country ever since. 

We’re delivering the message to thousands of Kiwis that we are focussed on two things – campaigning on the bold policies that our country needs to drive real change, and the promise continue to fight for ordinary hard-working kiwis against the establishment, elitist, status quo.

Bold Policies

Now is not the time for weak leadership.

We need leaders of the next government to say the things that people are thinking without fear or favour.

We need leaders to say the things that might be unpopular.

To say the things that others only talk about behind closed doors but are too afraid of the backlash from the left, or worse, the mainstream media.

We simply cannot continue to allow the two old parties to tinker round the edges of big issues and do nothing but manage the decline of our country.

It is high time we move away from the Pepsi or Coke type politics we’ve had for the last few decades.

We will create a $100 billion future fund to invest in a thirty-year infrastructure plan for our country. Not the on-off approach to infrastructure we’ve seen.

We will future proof our fuel security by investing $1 billion over the next term of government in a ‘National Subsurface Development Survey’.

We face an ongoing existential threat to fuel security and supply, all because we are totally susceptible to the geopolitical choices made by other nations. 

Fossil fuels aren’t going anywhere for the time being. 

As much as the left will decry anything extracted from the ground, the simple reality is that cheap and readily available energy is the lifeblood of any economy. Alongside this, we will create 

• A special economic Zone in Marsden Point.

• We will continue to fight against high costs by breaking up the gentailers to make power prices more affordable again.
• We will buy back the BNZ and drive down bank costs.
• We will invest in your grandkids future by making Kiwisaver compulsory, with an automatic $1000 at birth. This will create a whole generation of Kiwis investors from birth. We call this the “Kiwisaver Generation”. 
• We will pull out of the failing Paris Agreement that is senselessly hamstringing our economy.

New Zealand has one of the loosest electoral laws in the world. 

We want to bring meaning to citizenship and that is why we have announced that by 2029 only citizens will be allowed to vote in our country.

We will establish a proper transparent inquiry into those who were injured by the Covid-19 vaccine – so we can find out exactly what happened, who was responsible, and publicly hold them to account.

Conclusion

Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve played our role in this government as a stable, experienced and prudent coalition partner. 

More importantly, we have been a steadfast advocate of the issues that matter to you – jobs, health, education, economy and retirement. 

We constantly punch well above our weight. We have achieved so much with just eight MPs. Imagine what we could do if we had more. We can’t fly a microlight to the moon, but if you give us a rocket, we will, together, reach the stars.

We must change the path we are on as a country and make New Zealand the number one country in the world, like we once were.

There is a lot of uncertainty around the world and at home, but with hard work and perseverance, tomorrow will be better. We live in a country that, at its core, traditional New Zealand values once saw us amongst the world leaders.

We have inherited a country that our forebears fought and died for, but only if we are proud of what we inherited can we come together and move forward to shape the vision of our country’s future.

Original source: https://nz.mil-osi.com/2026/08/28/winston-peters-seniors-sole-defender/

New Zealand First is announcing today that former Chair of the Financial Markets Authority Craig Stobo will stand for New Zealand First in the Botany Electorate at the general election.

Stobo grew up in Oamaru and attended Otago University where he graduated with a BA in Economics (First Class Hons). He subsequently worked for the New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

He moved into investment banking with DFC/ Zealcorp in Wellington and then Bankers Trust NZ in Auckland. He helped establish BT Funds Management New Zealand – growing it to $3 billion of funds under management, and was CEO from 2000 to 2004.

After attending The Wharton School in Philadelphia he commenced a career in business startups, advisory work, and governance. This included chairing the Review of Taxation of Investment Income in 2004 for Finance Minister Dr Michael Cullen, the International Funds Services Development Group in 2010 for Prime Minister John Key, and chairing the Establishment Board of the Local Government Funding Agency in 2011, which funds Council capital expenditures, is a AAA rated multi-currency issuer, and has grown to $26 billion.

He is also a founding director of the Auckland Future Fund, which is investing globally on behalf of Auckland Council.

Stobo was appointed Chair of the Financial Markets Authority in May of 2024 and left his position in May this year after offering his resignation following an investigation commissioned by MBIE.

He was found to have allegedly breached standards of ‘political neutrality’ when he made a personal submission to the select committee on the Treaty Principles Bill where he outlined his views on the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi, and when he queried mandatory climate reporting disclosures.

“Standing for New Zealand First offers me the opportunity to speak freely on issues of public importance” says Mr Stobo.

“I am looking forward to representing the public who also share my views and who want to hear their representatives speak frankly on key issues that affect them and their families”.

Stobo brings a wealth of experience, skills, and knowledge to New Zealand First.

He is outspoken on issues that matter, he is not afraid to challenge the status quo, and he has the ability to get things done.

Stobo is a tremendous asset to the team and will be a force in parliament representing New Zealand First.

Original source: https://nz.mil-osi.com/2026/08/28/former-fma-chair-craig-stobo-to-stand-for-nzfirst-in-botany/

Hawke’s Bay Police have arrested two people and seized over $700,00 of assets and cash following an investigation into the sale and supply of drugs in the area.

Detective Owen McCool says several search warrants were executed across Napier and Hastings last week.

“Armed police were in attendance during the search, and the investigation brought together specialist staff from across the district.  

“The searches uncovered methamphetamine, cocaine, cannabis, and synthetics packaged for sale.”

Over $5,000 cash, two unlawful firearms and ammunition were also found, with all the items being seized.

Detective Sergeant Shaun Kennard says among the assets ordered restrained under the Criminal Proceeds (Recovery) Act 2009 are:

• A residential property
• Cash and bank accounts totalling over $100,000
• Three motor vehicles, including a drift car and a motorbike

In 2025, the Eastern District Police Organised Crime Unit commenced Operation Sleep, an investigation into the supply and distribution of controlled drugs by a couple in the Hawke’s Bay.

The couple, a 34-year-old man and 34-year-old woman were arrested and charged with multiple counts of supplying and possession for supply of drugs.

They will appear in Hastings District Court on 8 September.

Enquiries are ongoing, and further charges haven’t been ruled out.

As part of the termination of the operation, the Police Asset Recovery Unit obtained restraining orders for assets identified as belonging to the couple.

“This is an example of Police targeting organised crime through both criminal and civil courts,” says acting Detective Sergeant Shaun Kennard.

“By targeting illicit benefits obtained by drug offending, the offenders are denied the success of their offending and removes their ability to expand their offending.

“Seeing offenders held accountable and stripped of their criminal proceedings should remind the community that Police will continue their efforts to hold these offenders to account across the region.

“Organised crime and gangs cause serious harm to our communities. Police will continue to work to strip organised crime groups and their associates of their wealth earnt from criminal activity.”

The Criminal Proceeds (Recovery) Act 2009 allows Police to restrain and forfeit assets acquired or derived from the proceeds of crime.

Once forfeited to the Crown, the proceeds can be directed towards initiatives that help reduce the harmful impacts of frug-related and organised crime in the community, supporting efforts to create safer and more resilient communities.

Illegal drugs cause significant harm to individuals, families and communities. Reducing that harm requires a collective effort, and Police continue to encourage anyone with information about drug-related offending to come forward.

If you are aware of suspicious activity involving drugs, call 111 if it is happening now, or report information after the fact via 105.

ENDS

Issued by Police Media Centre

Original source: https://nz.mil-osi.com/2026/08/25/over-700000-of-assets-and-cash-restrained-following-operation-termination-in-hawkes-bay/

Good morning, everyone.

It’s absolutely fantastic to be here today at Building Nations 2026. 

I’d like to thank Nick Leggett, Fraser Wyllie and their team at Infrastructure New Zealand for hosting this event. 

Building Nations is always one of the highlights of my year, because it brings together nearly a thousand of our smartest people to talk infrastructure policy. 

Being Infrastructure Minister is an interesting one because my interests span different sectors like health, education, energy, corrections, justice, and transport – but there are already Ministers for those (including myself, of course). 

But my point is that when it comes to the infrastructure portfolio the job is about systems thinking and going back to the fundamentals. My job is to progress policy that lifts the bar for all sectors like proper asset management, high-quality assurance, and better infrastructure funding and financing tools.

I’m really proud of the massive progress we’ve made over the past three years, and I want to reflect on that with you all today.

Then, I’d like to talk a bit about the Auckland Strategic Motorway Plan, which I have apparently announced four or so times already – but I’ll properly announce it today!

To finish, I’ll talk to you about what’s next and what you can expect from a second term with a National-led government. 

Achievements and highlights

So, let’s take it back to the start. 

Three years ago, I had the enormous privilege of being appointed Minister for Infrastructure. 

From my time in Opposition, where I’d deliberately consulted widely and worked hard, I knew there was an enormous amount to do. 

From 2019 to 2023, research from the New Zealand Infrastructure Commission showed that our system wasn’t in good shape. 

Despite being in the top 10 per cent of OECD countries for infrastructure spending, we are in the bottom 10 per cent for what we get for our spend. 

We rank fourth to last in the OECD for asset management. 

Half of all capital-intensive central government agencies reported that they did not have robust asset registers or adequate asset management plans – and even fewer had long-term investment plans. 

And around half of all proposals for investments in recent Budgets did not have complete detailed business cases. 

On top of this, the time between funding and delivery has been too long, with some projects starting years and years after a project had been announced, which has been incredibly frustrating for the construction sector.

Every New Zealander experiences the flow on effects of our underperforming infrastructure system. 

I can rattle off too many failures like communities waiting years for basic investments in schools, whilst a lucky few get architectural masterpieces; frequent transport disruptions due to weather events; and leaky, mouldy, asbestos-ridden hospitals that haven’t been looked after properly.

We had no long-term plan to fix these underlying issues.

This is not what Kiwis deserve from government, and it is my strong view that we need to do better.

I had six priorities coming to office:

Developing a 30-year National Infrastructure Plan
Strengthening asset management
Establishing a national infrastructure agency
Improving infrastructure funding and financing
Improving the consenting framework
Improving education and health infrastructure

I’m proud we’ve made significant progress on all of these priorities. 

An enormous amount of work has been done in just three years.

But before I get into those six, I just want to touch on some highlights. 

By the end of 2026, we will have started construction on over $20 billion worth of central government infrastructure projects. 

We have signed two major Public Private Partnership (PPP) contracts: Stage 1 of the Northern Expressway, and Christchurch Men’s Prison. 

These two projects alone represent thousands of jobs, and I’m told workers are already onsite. 

By early 2027, we will have started construction on six Roads of National Significance, which – within the space of just three years, is a significant achievement. 

And, behind it all sits a pipeline of funded projects across transport, health, education, corrections, and justice. 

This includes Cambridge to Piarere, a $400m road resilience package, the Nelson Hospital Redevelopment, a new ward tower at Whangārei Hospital, several new police stations and courthouses, and over $2 billion for schools and classrooms.

So, let’s talk about the six infrastructure priorities I started with in 2023. 

Six infrastructure priorities delivered

On the National Infrastructure Plan (NIP), we asked the independent Infrastructure Commission to produce a 30-year NIP, and in June this year the Government provided a formal response – supporting all 16 recommendations either in full or in part. 

I won’t go into all the details, but there are a few main actions that are critical. 

For example, the Government has agreed to introduce legislative requirements for asset registers, asset management plans, and long-term capital plans in the Public Finance Act. 

Regulated utilities and local government are required to have these artefacts by law, but we currently don’t hold central government to the same standard. 

That is going to change. 

We are also shifting independent assurance for central-government-funded infrastructure from Treasury to the Infrastructure Commission and creating a new assurance function for asset management plans and long-term capital plans. 

Ministers want better quality information, and we want clear, actionable advice from the experts – 

Is this a good or bad project? Is it needed now? Is it consistent with the asset management plan or long-term plan? Can we strip some cost out? 

We want those answers because, ultimately, Ministers are accountable to the public for investment decisions.

When it comes to strengthening asset management, the NIP was instrumental. 

Actions like legislating for asset registers and asset management plans and reporting on asset performance will be a game changer, as will having independent assurance over asset management plans. 

Fixing the fundamentals of our system is the single best thing we can do to build a pipeline that endures political cycles. 

Right now, there is about $290 billion worth of infrastructure projects in the pipeline – around $190 billion with a confirmed funding source. I reckon all parties probably agree on 90 to 99 per cent of those projects. 

But I think we should move away from the rhetoric of needing a fully bipartisan pipeline – we are never going to agree on every single project, and that’s okay. That’s the nature of politics and of people having different views.

Instead, we should commit to building bipartisan consensus on the idea that governments of all flavours should use best practice to plan, select, fund and finance, deliver, and look after infrastructure. 

A robust system will make it politically untenable for Ministers to just go out and announce unfunded, inadequately planned projects. 

Where farcical projects have been stopped, like in the case of Auckland Light Rail, there are legitimate reasons for that. 

Equally, a robust system should make it punishing for a new government to stop or pause genuinely good, funded projects that make it through the rigours of the system.

In my view, this is the missing piece – a credible and clear evidence-base for the public, the sector, and others to properly hold governments to account for their investment choices. 

We are fixing that.

On establishing a national infrastructure agency, we established National Infrastructure Funding and Financing Limited (NIFFCo) on 1 December 2024 to be New Zealand’s shopfront for private capital in public infrastructure and the Government’s centre of expertise on funding and financing.

To date, NIFFCo has delivered key transactions including arranging the Te Awa Lakes Infrastructure Funding and Financing (IFF) Act Levy, which will support 1,500 new homes in Hamilton. 

They also led the early monetisation of the Crown’s loans to Chorus, which we provided back in the day to accelerate the UFB rollout.

This deal delivered $702 million in net proceeds to the Crown and allowed the Government to reinvest the funds into more of the infrastructure New Zealand needs – including Cambridge to Piarere, upgrades to hospitals, and hundreds of new classrooms.

When we established NIFFCo, we also took the opportunity to clarify who does what in the infrastructure system. 

The Infrastructure Commission focuses on long-term strategy, the pipeline, and – now – assurance. Crown Infrastructure Delivery help deliver infrastructure projects for central government agencies that don’t do delivery as BAU.  And Treasury continues to be the steward of the Investment Management System and provides fiscal and economic advice.

On improving infrastructure funding and financing, public infrastructure in New Zealand has historically been primarily funded by taxpayers or ratepayers. 

But our heavy reliance on this blunt approach has not served us well and has led to perverse outcomes including congestion, run-down assets, and the unresponsive provision of enabling infrastructure – contributing to unaffordable housing. 

At the end of 2024, the Government released a suite of frameworks and guidance – like Treasury’s Funding and Financing Framework and the refreshed PPP blueprint – to help government be a smarter owner and purchaser of infrastructure services. 

In the transport space alone, we have made significant progress on utilising a broader range of funding tools. 

We are making tolling rules more flexible so they can better support funding for new roads and are exploring the use of toll concessions. 

In addition, the New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) can now use IFF Act Levies to fund projects; light electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids are now required to pay their fair share through road user charges (RUC); we are transitioning New Zealand’s entire vehicle fleet to RUC; and we are believed to be the first country in the world to pass law enabling time of use charging with completely unanimous cross-party support.

This is fantastic progress in transport and there is more to come, which I will touch on later. 

When it comes to infrastructure to support housing growth, we have also pulled multiple levers. 

In Budget 2026, we set up the Incentives for Growth Fund so that all councils are rewarded for every single home consented. Just last month the IFF Amendment Bill passed into law, making it easier for developers, councils, and other infrastructure providers to use levies to help fund infrastructure. 

We are also progressing the replacement of the failed Development Contributions regime with a more flexible Development Levies system that will match our new flexible planning system. 

Arguably, the biggest improvement to the infrastructure system is fixing the Resource Management Act (RMA). Consenting takes too long, costs too much, and makes delivering the infrastructure we need too difficult.

We are not just improving but are fundamentally transforming the consenting framework by replacing the RMA with two new pieces of legislation: The Planning Bill and the Natural Environment Bill. 

In fact, the main Amendment Papers to wrap it all up are being tabled today!

Our new system will be effects-based, embrace standardised zoning, and be far more permissive and enabling while also protecting the environment. 

We knew that the new planning system would take time to bed in. So, in 2024, we established the Fast-track consents process, which has been incredibly successful. 

As of 14 August, 32 projects have been approved – representing tens of thousands of jobs and billions in investment, with more in the pipeline. 

There are eight new renewable energy projects approved through Fast-track which will add more than 990 megawatts of new generation capacity. That’s more than five per cent of New Zealand’s current generation capacity and enough to power approximately 322,000 households annually.

The Port of Auckland Expansion, Green Steel project, and the two quarry expansions are fantastic examples of approved projects that will boost growth and productivity.   

The Port of Tauranga’s extension has received provisional approval, with a final decision due next month. 

Lastly, we have improved education and health infrastructure. 

When we came into government, the average cost of a classroom was about $1.2m, an astonishing amount of money for a classroom. We have gotten that down to around $620k. 

At the same time, we delivered more classrooms in 2024 than Labour did in 2023 – and even more again in 2025. 

To continue this good work, we have established the New Zealand School Property Agency, which will be focused on ensuring all Kiwi kids can learn in safe, warm, and dry buildings.

The power of value for money is that we can deliver more infrastructure to more kiwis with what we have. 

We are also getting health infrastructure back on track including through our Building Hospitals Better approach. 

This means taking a staged approach to building and redeveloping hospitals; applying standardised designs; considering alternative financing and funding arrangements; and aligning the design of hospitals with wider digital, clinical, and service planning for health. 

Smaller build packages rather than one large mega project is enabling us to deliver healthcare faster to communities – which is what they want.

All this work across the infrastructure system is not necessarily sexy, but it’s what’s needed to fix the basics and to set New Zealand up for years of prosperity into the 2030s and beyond. 

If that’s my legacy as Minister for Infrastructure, I’ll be happy. 

However, I am hungry to do more for New Zealand. 

So, what’s next? 

Auckland Strategic Motorway Plan 

Well, right now I’d like to announce the release of Auckland’s Strategic Motorway Plan. 

Auckland’s motorway network carries around 1.5 million trips every day and is critical to keeping people and freight moving. 

It isn’t just critical to Auckland’s success – it’s critical to New Zealand’s. Freight and people must be able to travel efficiently, safely, and quickly, getting to where they need to go. 

This motorway plan being released today by NZTA sets out how we will approach the next 30 years as Auckland’s population grows beyond two million. 

The plan sets out how smarter traffic management, targeted investment, and wider transport improvements will help keep the city moving. 

On optimising the existing network, we must make better use of the network we’ve already got. We can do this through smarter traffic management, quicker responses to crashes and breakdowns, small-scale improvements, and delivering time of use charging.

On targeted investment, we need to be strategic in the way we increase capacity. This includes only adding extra capacity where bottlenecks are impacting efficiency, progressively delivering rapid transit to underserved areas like Manukau, closing critical gaps in active mode networks where they interact with motorways, and prioritising projects to increase capacity and address resilience risks.

And finally, there are a range of wider system improvements that need to be made. Improving the wider transport system, including public transport capacity, rail network improvements, and local roads/active modes, so fewer trips need to use the motorway network.

These are all very practical measures, most of which are already underway. 

This plan follows the Infrastructure Commission’s consistent advice that we need to focus more on what we have, rather than looking for the next shiny project. 

Don’t get me wrong, there are new projects the Auckland motorway network does need, like the Second Harbour Crossing. 

The Government is taking the advice of the Infrastructure Commission and other experts by committing to complete a Detailed Business Case (DBC) before making an announcement.  

Part of the reason why the wheel has been spinning on this project for decades is precisely because successive governments of all flavours have just gone out and announced just the built solution – without doing sufficient work to credibly lay out a plan for how it will be paid for or delivered. 

A DBC does not mean we are starting from scratch – it actually means the opposite. 

We will take all the good work done to date by NZTA like the options analysis, detailed due diligence, ground condition works, early funding and financing work, and more and put it into the DBC. 

We are taking the time to get it right and bring Auckland and the Opposition along with us. It is the right thing to do. 

Back to the Auckland Motorway plan. What this plan shows is the need for smart, cheap, targeted interventions on a network desperate for modernisation. 

We are releasing this plan alongside my friend Mayor of Auckland Wayne Brown. It is important that the Council and the Government are working in lockstep on the future of Auckland. 

It’s a good plan, and I hope you all read it.

What’s next

To finish, I’ll talk to you about what you can expect from a second term with a National-led government. 

First things first – what is in train is significant. We need to keep doing what we are doing:

Implementing the National Infrastructure Plan including legislating for asset registers, asset management plans, and long-term capital plans – as well as land transport funding and oversight reform
Getting on with the major transport project cost driver review led the Infrastructure Commission
Landing a good Government Policy Statement on Land Transport 2027
Transitioning to fleet-wide RUC
Finishing the Second Harbour Crossing DBC and making a decision
Working on the Utilities Access Act, the code, and a National Underground Asset Register 
Getting a time of use pricing scheme up and running
Setting the Ministry for Cities, Environment, Regions, and Transport (MCERT) up for success
Finishing off the job we started on fixing our planning system including national standards. If you want the enabling standards that you’ve been asking for then we need three more years to bed it in. 

There’s also so much more.

If I can impress anything on you all here today, it’s that these work programmes are critical to achieving genuine prosperity in New Zealand. National will keep the momentum going. 

[Party political content removed.]

Conclusion 

To finish, I’d like to thank all of you in this room for coming along the journey with me for the past three years as Infrastructure Minister. 

I’ve learned a lot and I think it’s safe to say, I threw the kitchen sink at the system. 

In my view, achieving genuine economic prosperity – the great challenge facing this country – depends on infrastructure that meets our needs, is good value for money, and is deliverable. 

It’s the foundation everything else is built on.

I want kiwis to be free, ambitious, and have access to abundant opportunities – knowing they are backed by an equally enterprising nation. 

I want all of us to enjoy better lives. 

I truly believe that our country, at the bottom of the world, can choose to be wealthy, and modern, and prosperous. 

That’s why I’m in politics.

Thank you. 

Original source: https://nz.mil-osi.com/2026/08/25/speech-to-building-nations/

The demand intelligence leader provides users with immediate summaries of impactful events tailored to what influences their demand; announces new category in wake of COVID-19: Health Warnings

SAN FRANCISCO, July 28, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — PredictHQ, the demand intelligence company, today announced a new Notifications platform that makes its API of intelligent event data instantly actionable. In addition, PredictHQ announced a new category that it is now tracking called Health Warnings, so the platform and API can be used to track epidemic and biological health hazard warnings, as well as pandemics and lock downs – both starting or easing.

Each year, businesses lose billions in revenue due to their inability to accurately forecast the demand causal factors, such as events that change demand, customer interest and activity. This is due to the challenges of tracking and predicting the impact of events in advance, which are difficult to identify at scale because of their dynamic nature and diversity: severe weather, sports games, school holidays and more. Companies that rely on historical trends without knowing why those trends occur leave them underprepared to meet their customers’ needs. On top of this, the COVID-19 crisis has intensified these challenges and business operations teams are desperate to stay informed about all disruptions due to closing and opening orders from state governments. 

“The questions we’re getting constantly from customers are what events are coming up, how are they changing and how can I know about them first? While many impactful events continue, others are canceled or postponed requiring businesses to know new dates ASAP,” said Campbell Brown, PredictHQ co-founder and CEO. “We understand that demand is complex and volatile, further compounded by the chaos caused by COVID. Therefore keeping our customers informed in real-time on potential incremental or decremental impact to their demand is mission critical.”

With PredictHQ’s Notifications platform, companies can know almost instantly when relevant demand causal factors are planned or as breaking unscheduled events occur so they can respond quickly. This means they can update their staffing, stocking, and supply chain plans and pricing strategies immediately to capture as much of the demand as possible. The Notifications platform enables a broader cross section of a business — from operational managers, COVID-19 recovery teams right up to chief revenue officers — to know immediately when an impactful event is scheduled or updated, or as breaking events occur in real-time, so decision makers can respond swiftly. The Notifications platform also allows companies to set up alerts with thresholds for when a cluster of impactful events is detected and will collectively spike demand in particular locations. These clusters are often made up of smaller events, which are easy to underestimate.

“Every moment matters in demand forecasting,” said Kevin Ger, VP of Revenue Management, Alaska Airlines. “Imagine finding out a couple of hours too late that say Coachella is scheduled for a different weekend in April than years past. That delay cost millions of dollars in a missed opportunity to update pricing to reflect demand. With Notifications, we won’t have to worry about this ever again for any event that impacts our business.”

Health Warnings Provides Instant Insight to all Health Related Events, Especially COVID-19
The biggest challenge facing demand forecasting teams around the world is the constantly evolving impact of COVID-19. PredictHQ enabled global tracking of all lockdown restrictions starting and easing in May and now adds to this capability with their new category, Health Warnings. Health Warnings is a response to the dynamic landscape of health and life events impacted by COVID-19. With Health Warnings, PredictHQ customers can now track:

• Pandemic warnings
• Epidemics and epidemic hazards
• Biological hazards (diseases and insect infestations)

PredictHQ still has pandemic lockdown changes in its Disaster category and lockdowns that are starting or easing in varying cities across the U.S. in its Community category.

“COVID has confirmed that demand is a lot like energy – it can only be transferred or changed from one form to another. We are also in an environment where not everything is equal. Countries, states, counties, and even cities are recovering at different rates than others, making it nearly impossible for businesses to have a cohesive and scalable view of demand.  That’s why we expedited this product during COVID-19, so our customers could know well before demand began that a major event or cluster of impactful events has been scheduled, changed or even canceled,” Campbell said. “Whether you are in retail, travel, transport, CPG or finance, it enables your business to either capitalize on new demand being generated or mitigate losses from demand decreasing. In such disruptive times, having a platform like Notifications will help you navigate more confidently through the different phases of the current environment we find ourselves in.”

API Provides Holy Grail to Companies Needing Intelligence to Forecast Better
Over the past few years, PredictHQ’s API has proven popular with data scientists and data engineers from a wide spectrum of industries all grappling with the same problem – not understanding the ‘why’ around demand anomalies to better inform their forecasting models. With the Notifications Platform, users can access all relevant event notifications without integrating code or investing in development time.

PredictHQ’s customers include Uber, Domino’s, Accenture, First Data and Alaska Airlines, as well as leading accommodation, aviation, transportation, finance, coffee and retail companies.

Resources
●   Website
●   Blog
●   Twitter
●   LinkedIn
●   Careers

About PredictHQ
PredictHQ, the demand intelligence company, empowers global organizations to anticipate changes in demand for their products and services. PredictHQ’s demand intelligence API aggregates events from hundreds of sources and verifies, enriches and ranks them by predicted impact so companies can proactively discover catalysts that will impact demand. With PredictHQ, businesses gain a leg up on competition and remain confident in their ability to meet customers’ ever-changing needs. Learn more at www.predicthq.com. 

Media Contact
Danielle Salvato-Earl
Offleash for PredictHQ
predicthq@offleashpr.com

Original source: https://globenewswire.newzengine.com/2026/08/24/predicthq-introduces-notifications-platform-for-instant-alerts-on-incoming-demand-impact/

PERTH, Australia, Aug. 23, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Alkane Resources Limited (ASX: ALK, TSX: ALK, OTCQX: ALKRY) (‘Alkane’) is pleased to announce the appointments of Dr Jennifer Purdie and The Hon. Gabrielle Upton to the Alkane Board as independent Non-Executive Directors, with effect from today, 24 August 2026.

Dr Jennifer Purdie

Jennifer brings a wealth of expertise across mining, heavy manufacturing and energy sectors. During her time with BHP as Asset President Olympic Dam, she led the team to stabilise and significantly improve performance across the business, delivering successive production records and positioning the Asset for growth through the acquisition of Oz Minerals and subsequent mine and surface expansion projects that are now underway. She has also served as Executive GM, Gas Distribution with Jemena, as CEO of Adani’s Australian Renewables business and as Global Practice Leader, Technology Delivery for Rio Tinto.

Jennifer currently serves as a Non-Executive Director of Metro Mining Limited (ASX: MMI), Terra Metals Ltd (ASX: TM1) and Queensland’s water business Urban Utilities.

Jennifer holds a PhD in Engineering from the University of Auckland, and Executive MBA from the University of Queensland, is a Fellow of the Institute of Chemical Engineers (IChemE) and a member of Chief Executive Women.

Jennifer will also serve as a Member of the Company’s Audit and Risk Committee and Technical Committee.

Hon. Gabrielle Upton

Gabrielle is an experienced board director and former Senior NSW Cabinet Minister with international commercial experience in banking and law. She served as NSW Attorney General and Minister for the Environment after working in corporate finance with Deutsche Bank in New York and as a lawyer with Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer.

Gabrielle has extensive experience in governance, strategy, regulation, risk management and stakeholder engagement, including oversight of major investment decisions and complex organisations operating in capital-intensive and highly regulated environments.

Gabrielle is a Non-Executive Director of the Australian Olympic Committee’s Investment Management Services, The Florey Institute of Neuroscience, Netball Australia and O’Connell Street Associates. She also serves as an Advisor to law firm Mallesons. 

She previously served as Deputy Chancellor of the University of New South Wales and as a member of the Federal Government’s Corporate & Markets Advisory Committee.

Gabrielle is a Fellow of the Australian Institute of Company Directors and a member of Chief Executive Women.  

Gabrielle will also serve as a Member of the Company’s Nomination and Governance Committee and the Remuneration Committee.

Alkane’s Chairman, Andy Quinn, said:

“I am delighted to welcome Jennifer and Gabrielle to the Board of Alkane as independent Non-Executive Directors. Together, they bring a wealth of experience gained across careers in the resources industry, capital markets, complex regulated operations and the environment that will be invaluable as Alkane continues to grow as a gold and antimony producer.

Their appointments align perfectly with our objective to deliver long-term value for our shareholders and all other stakeholders, and I look forward to working with them both.”

This document has been authorised for release to the market by the Board of Directors.

ABOUT ALKANE ‐ alkres.com ‐ ASX:ALK | TSX: ALK | OTCQX: ALKRY

Alkane Resources (ASX:ALK; TSX:ALK; OTCQX:ALKRY) is an Australia-based gold and antimony producer with a portfolio of three operating mines across Australia and Sweden. The Company has a strong balance sheet and is positioned for further growth.

Alkane’s wholly owned producing assets are the Tomingley open pit and underground gold mine southwest of Dubbo in Central West New South Wales, the Costerfield gold and antimony underground mining operation northeast of Heathcote in Central Victoria, and the Björkdal underground gold mine northwest of Skellefteå in Sweden (approximately 750km north of Stockholm). Ongoing near-mine regional exploration continues to grow resources at all three operations.

Alkane also owns the very large gold-copper porphyry Boda-Kaiser Project in Central West New South Wales and has outlined an economic development pathway in a Scoping Study. The Company has ongoing exploration within the surrounding Northern Molong Porphyry Project and is confident of further enhancing eastern Australia’s reputation as a significant gold, copper and antimony production region.

Interactive Analyst Centre™

Comprehensive financial, operational, resource and reserve information for Alkane Resources is available through the Interactive Analyst Centre™ located in the Investors section of our website at alkres.com.

CONTACT:  NIC EARNER, MANAGING DIRECTOR & CEO, ALKANE RESOURCES LTD, TEL +61 8 9227 5677

INVESTORS & MEDIA:  NATALIE CHAPMAN, CORPORATE COMMUNICATIONS MANAGER, TEL +61 418 642 556

Original source: https://globenewswire.newzengine.com/2026/08/24/appointment-of-non-executive-directors/

Date:  24 August 2026

DOC Freshwater Species Manager Emily Funnell says the season starts on 1 September, so whitebaiters have a bit of time to make sure they’ve got everything they need to check, clean and dry their gear “so pests don’t hitch a ride”.

Freshwater pests like didymo, weeds and invasive freshwater clams can reduce water quality, clog nets and choke waterways, including whitebait habitats.

Emily says that moving from one river to another increases the risk of taking a nasty with you.

“Ever since invasive freshwater clams were found in Waikato waterways three years ago, and last year at Lake Rotomanu, Taranaki, we’ve been encouraging whitebaiters in these areas to stick to one river for the whole season.

“But no matter where you fish in Aotearoa, always make sure you follow the Check, Clean, Dry advice and follow the whitebaiting rules. By doing this, you’re helping take the pressure off whitebait species and their habitat.”

Emily is also encouraging whitebaiters to ensure they have the right safety gear before the season starts.

“We want whitebaiters to have a fun time down at the river and get home safe. That means wearing a wader belt and life jacket, carrying two waterproof communication devices, fishing with a mate, and definitely not fishing from rocks where waves can wash over them.”

Visit DOC’s website for whitebaiting rules, safety information and Check, Clean, Dry advice: Whitebaiting: Things to do.

Background information

If you want to move to a different waterway and it’s not possible to use a separate set of gear, Check, Clean, Dry before you move.

• Check: Before you leave, remove any weed, mud or pests and leave it on the bank and drain all river or lake water.
• Clean: Blast your gear with tap water and treat gear made from absorbent materials with an approved treatment. For details, see the Ministry for Primary Industries’ Check, Clean, Dry resources.
• Dry: Once your gear is dry to the touch, leave it to dry for two days before going into another waterway.

Contact

Original source: https://nz.mil-osi.com/2026/08/24/stop-pests-hitching-a-ride-this-whitebait-season/

Today ladies and gentlemen we will discuss what we are going to do, but first let’s discuss what we have to deal with.

We must not forget what we inherited just three short years ago from an economically destructive and morally bereft Labour government, that left this country in an economic and social mess.

We inherited a broken economy, a fractured society, and a country on a road to social disaster. 

New Zealand’s debt skyrocketed, there were multiple policies with no allocated funding, racist co-governance and woke ideology had spread into legislation and throughout the public sector, universities, government departments, and schools – and ramraid after ramraid of ordinary shopping centres.

On their own, Labour had simply run roughshod over our country.

Labour left us:

·       A crumbling, underfunded, overwhelmed Health System.

An education system that had seen:

• ·       a record number of children not attending school
• ·       a record number of children failing basic standards
• ·       an unmanageable number of schools without adequate classrooms, and

A Defence Force that had lost more than a third of its personnel over Labour’s three years.

An undermanned Police Force:

• ·       haemorrhaging officers to Australia,
• ·       massive shortages in recruitment,
• ·       massive increases in crime, and
• ·       youth ramraids and violence that was simply out of control.

Gang numbers that ballooned over the three years.

A cost-of-living crisis.

A housing crisis with skyrocketing prices and unprecedented numbers living in emergency hotels. Remember the Labour promise 100,000 new Kiwi-Build houses in ten years?

They left us a rate of child poverty even higher than when in 2021 Jacinda Ardern made herself the ‘Minister of Child Poverty’.

A mental health system that had seen more and more young people suffering with no help.

Crumbling infrastructure around the country with no plan, no funding, and no idea.

An unprecedented, uncontrollable level of immigration – over 133,000 entering in 2023 alone.

And during Covid, Labour left large numbers of people ostracised, demonised, shutdown and shutout, ignored and cancelled – all because those people fought for their right to say ‘no, we disagree.’

And they are hoping we have all forgotten about all of that. 

They are now actively banking on working with the wacky Greens and racist mess of the Māori Party. Labour care more about the seats that will give them a road to power, rather than the danger of who it is that will fill those seats.

The Labour Party of just twenty years ago would never entertain working with the likes of those in the current Greens or Māori Party. Those two parties are self-confessed Marxists and separatists, who have unworkable dangerous policies, and care more about globalist woke ideology and geopolitical wars happening ten thousand miles away than understanding the real world here in New Zealand.

A Labour, Greens, Māori Party, Opportunity government would be a total disaster for our country. 

The reality is, Labour long ago deserted the traditional blue-collar workers of New Zealand.

The movement of the party to the far left has caused longtime Labour voters to feel abandoned by a party that once stood for the ‘ordinary hard-working kiwi’. 

Instead, Labour now cares more about ‘social justice’ issues, socialist economics, and cultural separatism. 

That is why we ruled out working with Labour before the last election and why we are again ruling out working with the Labour Party in 2026.

For those voters thinking of changing the government, we suggest they carefully look at the four parties on the left, have a good look at their track record, then view the list of changes they want to make to New Zealand, and then ask this question – are these changes possible without inflicting irreversible harm on New Zealand. 

And we mean all four of the parties on the left because they will all be needed to form a government. 

It is not just a vote for Labour, or just a vote for the Greens, or just a vote for the Māori Party, or just a vote for the Opportunity Party.

They will all be needed to form a four-headed government combination the type we have never seen in this country’s history. 

Because within these four groups are communists, separatists and worse still they are all globalists. Which is a sure fire toxic concoction to turn our country into the Venezuela or Myanmar of the South Pacific.

That is not an exaggeration. 

We cannot be more serious in our warning that those parties of the left would destroy the New Zealand we know. Our values, our character, our economy, and our society.

In an interview last week, Ryan Bridge asked the Māori Party co-leader Rawiri Waititi why the Māori Seats are needed when this current government has the highest number of Māori in Cabinet on record – that’s even more Māori in Cabinet than when Labour and the Greens were in power.

Do you know what Rawiri said? 

“They may have whakapapa Māori, but they’re not kaupapa Māori based MPs.”

You know what that means don’t you? That Rawiri thinks that you’re the wrong kind of Māori if you don’t agree with what Rawiri thinks.

Here is someone leading a party that purports to ‘represent Māori interests’ in our country, yet only received three percent of the vote – out of a claimed seventeen percent population of Māori in New Zealand. That means less than one in eight Māori even voted for the Māori Party, so who do they represent exactly?

What is worse, is the Māori Party are now actively campaigning against people giving their party vote to the Māori Party.

They are wanting to manipulate the Māori vote by telling people to party vote for some other party on the left.

This is after giving everyone a lecture for decades on the importance of an independent Māori vote, and why other Māori MPs are not Māori enough.

All they have done is treat Māori with disdain, turn up to parliament once a month, and do a haka now and again in the House.

And who wants to sit with them at Cabinet with their extremist views? The Labour Party.

Another party the Labour Party wants to work with is the shiny new Opportunity Party.

The Opportunity Party wants homeowners to pay 1.75% of your home’s land value every year, that’s on top of your local rates.

Now you will have to pay an annual rent to the government.

And what did the leader of the Opportunity Party say when questioned about a couple on the pension, who worked hard and saved all their lives, bought a house for their future and their children’s future, who would now, under Opportunity Party, face a $20k land tax bill every year? She said, yes, they will have to downsize their house to afford it.

This is blisteringly ignorant. But it gets worse.

Because, do you know what that money would be used for? 

The $20k for an old couple on the pension? Infrastructure? Health? Education? Fuel security? Or food prices? No.

The $20k of land tax taken from the old couple, will be used to give everyone in New Zealand, working or not, a Universal Basic Income of $19,400 a year – for free, for life, even if you’re doing nothing.

Opportunity Party calls this ‘fairness’. 

New Zealand First calls it ‘communism’.

The question is, what are you as the voter, going to call it?

The Opportunity Party also wants to raise the youth court age to twenty-five years of age – however, when they were questioned on that, they quickly deleted the 25 year court age from their website and then said they haven’t figured out the new court age yet.

Something Opportunity also changed, only when they were found out, was that their constitution that stated the unelected board could veto caucus decisions. The leader, on television, revealed that she didn’t even know there was such a provision.

Their ‘redistribution of wealth’ and bludging tax policy doesn’t stack up, their ridiculous view on law and order doesn’t stack up, and their policy to intrench Te Tiriti into law along with a Māori Upper House in parliament is worse than the Māori Party’s racist policies.

The mainstream media promoted Opportunity Party campaign is falling apart everyday – just ask the Labour Party leader Helen Clark.

But who wants to sit across from them in Cabinet? The Labour Party.

As for the Green Party, they have proven themselves to be the nutbars they always were.

The Greens want an $88 billion debt increase, and have a new policy bribe to give $2.4 billion to Marae – without any oversight or audit.

If you’re a Māori in this room today, tell us honestly, what does that reflect about what they think of you?

This is inverse racism of the worst sort. They think they can use a bribe to get your vote. Does that reflect respect for you or sheer contempt?

The Greens care more about a geopolitical war happening ten thousand miles away that they know nothing about, than they do about what is happening in their own country.

The are obsessed with race, gender, pronouns, and protests, performative politics, virtue signalling, and woke cancel culture, and they have lost sight of what their party once stood for.

They are no longer worried about the environment like Rod Donald and Jeanette Fitzsimons once were – they have turned into a bunch of weirdo globalists who like to sanctimoniously lecture people – while wearing costumes from some other country.

And who wants to sit across the Cabinet table with them? The Labour Party.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is the stark truth. The Labour Party that you once knew, perhaps even supported, is no more.

That party is gone. All of these polices and parties they are willing to support are proof of that.

Can you imagine Helen Clark or Michael Cullen, or Bob Tizard or Peter Frazer signing up to this?

These parties on the left are not people who see New Zealand as one people, one country, one flag, one law, or who believe in fundamental kiwi values like hard work, ambition, and personal responsibility.

These are people who believe in a separatist society, and who want to borrow, tax, and spend – but have zero economic credentials, or even vision, to deliver growth.

Chris Hipkins and Labour are willing to work with parties like Opportunity, Greens, and the Māori Party because Labour care more about the number of seats that will give them power, rather than the danger of who it is they will share power with.

Ladies and gentlemen, part of New Zealand First’s mission is to keep these dangerous lefties out of power.

New Zealand Needs Bold Policies

A country that does not control its energy, essential infrastructure, banking competition, or strategic supply chains cannot control the cost of living.

There is only one political party in parliament that understands that and that party is New Zealand First.

That’s why we have announced practical, logical and workable policies to break up the power companies’ monopoly, and drive power prices down.

We have announced practical, logical and workable policies to split the supermarket duopoly, and drive food prices down.

We have announced practical, logical, and workable polices to re-establish a competitive New Zealand owned state bank, to drive banking charges down.

We have announced polices to return mining royalties, created in the regions, back to the regions.

We have announced establishing a proper transparent inquiry into those who were injured by the Covid 19 vaccine – so we can find out exactly what happened, who was responsible, and publicly hold them to account.

And we are going to further inquire into how over 311,000 twelve to seventeen year olds got the second vaccine when the then Prime Minister Ardern, and two Ministers in charge Hipkins and Verrill, were advised not to.

Ladies and gentlemen, the fact that this is not headlining in the mainstream media or in parliament is testimony to how the establishment, media and political, almost completely conformed to the “podium of truth”.

The reason why you aren’t seeing any headlines is that both the media and politicians are exposed to their wanton compliance and obedience in how they mislead the public of New Zealand – this is a conspiracy.

We are going to expose the cover-up on this issue by the other political parties and the establishment who all signed a document not to talk to the protesters.

KiwiSaver and Future Fund

We announced our KiwiSaver policy of making it compulsory with automatic $1000 sign-up at birth. It means the day a baby is born it gets $1000 in its account to start saving.

We have announced our policy is to establish a $100 billion Future Fund that will invest in a thirty-year infrastructure plan for our country. And that’s where we are going to get the money to build the projects that we promise in our country.

Paris Agreement 

We have also announced that we will pull out of the failing Paris Agreement that is senselessly hamstringing our economy.

Loose Electoral Laws

New Zealand has one of the loosest electoral laws in the world, and that is why we have announced a policy to ensure that by 2029 only citizens are allowed to vote in our country.

Making NZ Energy Independent 

At our Campaign Launch, we announced a policy to invest $1billion to start exploring our gas and oil reserves in our deep-sea basins so we can own and export our own oil and gas – we need to be independent from events like in the Strait of Hormuz.

We have announced the ‘Kiwi Kids Grant’ that will support New Zealand citizens raising their first three children, through the first three years of their lives – $5000 per child for each of the three years.

We have also announced New Zealand First is proposing changes to the Dairy Industry Restructuring Act to incentivise investment in value-added dairy manufacturing in New Zealand.

We are giving certainty for any business willing to manufacture dairy products in New Zealand.

We want industry in New Zealand. If investors want to invest more in higher-value manufacturing, then our economic settings should welcome them.

Build the factories. Build the brands. Take New Zealand dairy products to the world.

Experience Matters Most

New Zealand First started our long campaign in March this year and we have been packing the halls around the country every week delivering the message to thousands of kiwis that we are focussed on two things – bold policies our country needs for a real change, and the fight for ordinary hard working kiwis against the establishment, the elites, and the status quo.

Experience and leadership has never mattered more.

We need leaders of the next government to say the things that people are thinking without fear or favour – even the things that might be unpopular.

New Zealand needs strong leadership who are not afraid to be strong on important issues.

And we don’t need weak leaders who don’t understand New Zealand values.

We can’t go on allowing the two old parties to tinker round the edges of big issues and do nothing but manage the decline of our country.

These two old parties have spent the last forty years arguing over fiscal or spending policy whilst having no economic strategy to grow New Zealand’s Gross Domestic Product, to lift your wages and your standard of living.

The old parties’ fiscal policies have been devoid of economic strategy.

Only one party has an understanding of the economic strategy that is required, even to the extent to when we criticised the then National Party’s spending policy and lack of economic strategy, the New Zealand First leader was expelled from the National Party caucus.

Value of Citizenship

New Zealand needs to start viewing our citizenship as most other countries around the world do – as a privilege that comes with special and unique rights. 

This does not take away from migrants the ability to move here and help build our country, from showing total commitment and patriotism for New Zealand by becoming a citizen. 

We have massively allowed so many of our standards to drop.

Even the most basic of privileges and rights in any country like voting has in our country become more like an expectation for anyone, rather than a unique right for New Zealanders.

Ladies and gentlemen, why do so many ‘apologetic globalists’ act shocked and dismayed that a political party is wanting to ensure that citizenship actually mean something? 

There is a difference in this election. Kiwis are looking at what parties are offering as their values and principles in these uncertain times.

NZFirst Party of Conservatism, Patriotism, Nationalism

We signed a coalition agreement to govern with stability and experience three years ago – and we have kept our word. 

New Zealand First brings what is too often missing in politics – experience and common sense. 

New Zealand First brings a commitment to New Zealand industry, to manufacturing, to jobs right here for our own people.

Immigration Policy

New Zealand First brings commonsense to immigration policy – where we allow in people that we need, not people who need us.

We believe in infrastructure before imported population growth, not afterwards, and infrastructure focused on fixing what’s broken, not flash upgrades and vanity projects.

And we believe in policies that despite immigration preserve the pre-eminence of our culture – and not the threat that we are seeing overseas of imported cultures taking over New Zealand.

New Zealand First fights for traditional kiwi conservative values – where hard work should be rewarded, where job security and home ownership underpins a stable family life. 

We want a country where young people aren’t worried about their family’s future, or where they see better opportunities overseas.

We in 2023 inherited an economic nightmare. But too few government members understood that. 

We knew the economic crisis would take years to fix. Our coalition colleagues said they could fix it in three years – and hence the public’s confusion as to what is happening now. 

This pivotal election voters want to hear a clear and unified message. 

First, to turn the economy around and that we are going to win, and take New Zealand back to being a leading economy again.

Challenging the Status Quo

The greatest threat to this blind ideology, to social elitism, and to the status quo, is New Zealand First.

And the country we are defending is called New Zealand – it’s in our party’s name.

We are asking you to make a choice with our future generations in mind.

Take back control from the Wellington bubble.

Take back control from those who choose to be CV politicians, where they are here one day, “no more gas in the tank”, and are gone the next – taking with them a rolodex of international jobs, speaking circuits, or book tours, looking back over their shoulder at New Zealand’s decline – which they caused. 

New Zealand First, from our launch thirty-three years ago, has been battling that elitist status quo. No one can deny that. On issue after issue that needed public exposure, the rest remain silent. When others wouldn’t raise a finger, we have raised the roof.

Conclusion 

Ladies and gentlemen, we are all here because we love our country, and we are proud of it.

True democracy is a rare flower in the history of humanity.

Down thousands of years living in democracy with freedom is not common. 

We have inherited a free country that our forebears fought and died for, and it’s our job to preserve it.

But only if we are proud of what we have inherited can we come together and move forward to shape the vision of our country’s future.

We live in a country that, at its core, traditional New Zealand values once saw us amongst the world’s leaders – hard work, fair pay, valuing our citizenship, building a sense of community, and knowing who we are as kiwis.

We must remember, New Zealand is the beneficiary of Western values, democracy, and the rule of law. And the advancement and enhancement of those principles have only occurred in those societies that have united together as one people – and who celebrate their nationhood instead of perpetuating division.

There is a lot of uncertainty around the world and at home, but we must keep hope alive that, with hard work and perseverance, tomorrow will be better.

New Zealand First is nationalist, patriotic, and socially conservative values that we fight for. 

It hasn’t been easy – but things in life worth doing never are. 

We must never forget that challenge.

We must never stop believing in New Zealand.

That is our vision and that is our mission.

To protect, to save, and to restore New Zealand’s place at the top of the world.

By putting New Zealand and New Zealanders first.

We are asking you to join us – and Party Vote New Zealand First. 

Original source: https://nz.mil-osi.com/2026/08/23/winston-peters-old-parties-fiscal-policy-devoid-of-economic-strategy/

Democracy

As we each day draw closer to the election, New Zealanders are beginning to focus more on political parties and the policies they stand for.

It is true that we all get to exercise our democratic right every three years, but the reality is that we only exercise that right on one day every thirty-six months. 

That means the electoral choice on that one day is critical. It is important for New Zealanders to understand the values, principles, and character of the party they choose to vote for on Election Day.

However, what’ s different this time is, that if New Zealanders as a country make the wrong choice in November, it will put New Zealand on a pathway from which we may never recover. 

There are countless examples in other countries where the wrong choice has taken the country from being a leader, straight to the third world. 

For those voters thinking of changing the government, we suggest they carefully look at the four parties on the left, have a good look at their track record, then view the list of changes they want to make to New Zealand, and then ask this question – are these changes possible without inflicting irreversible harm on New Zealand. 

Later in this speech we will be talking about our polices, but first, lets look at the other side.

And we mean all four of the parties on the left because they will all be needed to form a government.  

It is not just a vote for Labour, or just a vote for the Greens, or just a vote for the Māori Party, or just a vote for the Opportunity Party.

They will all be needed to form a four-headed government combination the type we have never seen in this country’s history. 

Because within these four groups are communists, separatists and worse still they are all globalists. Which is a sure fire toxic concoction to turn our country into the Venezuela or Myanmar of the South Pacific.

That is not an exaggeration. 

We cannot be more serious in our warning that those parties of the left would destroy the New Zealand we know. Our values, our character, our economy, and our society.

In an interview last week, Ryan Bridge asked the Māori Party co-leader Rawiri Waititi why the Māori Seats are needed when this current government has the highest number of Māori in Cabinet on record – that’s even more Māori in Cabinet than when Labour and the Greens were in power.

Do you know what Rawiri said? 

“They may have whakapapa Māori, but they’re not kaupapa Māori based MPs.”

You know what that means don’t you? That Rawiri thinks that you’re the wrong kind of Māori if you don’t agree with what Rawiri thinks.

Here is someone leading a party that purports to ‘represent Māori interests’ in our country, yet only received three percent of the vote – out of a claimed seventeen percent population of Māori in New Zealand. That means less than one in eight Māori even voted for the Māori Party, so who do they represent exactly?

What is worse, is the Māori Party are now actively campaigning against people giving their party vote to the Māori Party.

They are wanting to manipulate the Māori vote by telling people to party vote for some other party on the left.

This is after giving everyone a lecture for decades on the importance of an independent Māori vote, and why other Māori MPs are not Māori enough.

All they have done is treat Māori with disdain, turn up to parliament once a month, and do a haka now and again in the House.

And who wants to sit with them at Cabinet with their extremist views? The Labour Party.

Another party the Labour Party wants to work with is the shiny new Opportunity Party.

The Opportunity Party wants homeowners to pay 1.75% of your home’s land value every year, that’s on top of your local rates.

Now you will have to pay an annual rent to the government.

And what did the leader of the Opportunity Party say when questioned about a couple on the pension, who worked hard and saved all their lives, bought a house for their future and their children’s future, who would now, under Opportunity Party, face a $20k land tax bill every year? She said, yes, they will have to downsize their house to afford it.

This is blisteringly ignorant. But it gets worse.

Because, do you know what that money would be used for? 

The $20k for an old couple on the pension? Infrastructure? Health? Education? Fuel security? Or food prices? No.

The $20k of land tax taken from the old couple, will be used to give everyone in New Zealand, working or not, a Universal Basic Income of $19,400 a year – for free, for life, even if you’re doing nothing.

Opportunity Party calls this ‘fairness’. 

New Zealand First calls it ‘communism’.

The question is, what are you as the voter, going to call it?

The Opportunity Party also wants to raise the youth court age to twenty-five years of age – however, when they were questioned on that, they quickly deleted the 25 year court age from their website and then said they haven’t figured out the new court age yet.

Something Opportunity also changed, only when they were found out, was that their constitution that stated the unelected board could veto caucus decisions. The leader, on television, revealed that she didn’t even know there was such a provision.

Their ‘redistribution of wealth’ and bludging tax policy doesn’t stack up, their ridiculous view on law and order doesn’t stack up, and their policy to intrench Te Tiriti into law along with a Māori Upper House in parliament is worse than the Māori Party’s racist policies.

The mainstream media promoted Opportunity Party campaign is falling apart everyday – just ask the Labour Party leader Helen Clark.

But who wants to sit across from them in Cabinet? The Labour Party.

As for the Green Party, they have proven themselves to be the nutbars they always were.

The Greens want an $88 billion debt increase, and have a new policy bribe to give $2.4 billion to Marae – without any oversight or audit.

If you’re a Māori in this room today, tell us honestly, what does that reflect about what they think of you?

This is inverse racism of the worst sort. They think they can use a bribe to get your vote. Does that reflect respect for you or sheer contempt?

The Greens care more about a geopolitical war happening ten thousand miles away that they know nothing about, than they do about what is happening in their own country.

The are obsessed with race, gender, pronouns, and protests, performative politics, virtue signalling, and woke cancel culture, and they have lost sight of what their party once stood for.

They are no longer worried about the environment like Rod Donald and Jeanette Fitzsimons once were – they have turned into a bunch of weirdo globalists who like to sanctimoniously lecture people – while wearing costumes from some other country.

And who wants to sit across the Cabinet table with them? The Labour Party.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is the stark truth. The Labour Party that you once knew, perhaps even supported, is no more.

That party is gone. All of these polices and parties they are willing to support are proof of that.

Can you imagine Helen Clark or Michael Cullen, or Bob Tizard or Peter Frazer signing up to this?

These parties on the left are not people who see New Zealand as one people, one country, one flag, one law, or who believe in fundamental kiwi values like hard work, ambition, and personal responsibility.

These are people who believe in a separatist society, and who want to borrow, tax, and spend – but have zero economic credentials, or even vision, to deliver growth.

Chris Hipkins and Labour are willing to work with parties like Opportunity, Greens, and the Māori Party because Labour care more about the number of seats that will give them power, rather than the danger of who it is they will share power with.

Ladies and gentlemen, part of New Zealand First’s mission is to keep these dangerous lefties out of power.

NZ First will not let Waikato farmers be buried by “Plan Change 1”

This week New Zealand First has made our position clear that the Waikato Regional Council’s “Plan Change 1” must be paused before it becomes a bureaucratic death sentence for farmers and growers across the region.

“Plan Change 1” is a 14-year-old regulatory mess, dragged out by the old RMA, and now threatening to strangle the very people who feed this country.

These rules were designed under a planning system the Government is already replacing. It is absurd to force Waikato farmers into costly consents, gold-plated farm plans, and layers of compliance just as Parliament is moving to scrap the very framework that created this mess.

More than 4500 farms across the Waikato and Waipā catchments could be affected, with hundreds facing the prospect of needing resource consent simply to continue existing farming operations.

That is not environmental management. That is economic vandalism.

New Zealand First will not stand by while regional bureaucrats and courtroom processes make it harder to grow vegetables, milk cows, produce food, and keep rural communities alive.

We are in a cost-of-living crisis. And the last thing New Zealand needs is a planning regime that pushes food prices up.

New Zealand First is calling for PC1 implementation to be paused until the replacement RMA system is in place, existing lawful farming operations are protected, and any future freshwater rules are subject to a primary production viability test.

Cleaner rivers do not come from bankrupting farmers. They come from practical, workable rules that recognise the work already being done on-farm.

And we are not going to allow, PC1, to continue to be the tool for Treaty of Waitangi claims that were not there when the Tainui settlement happened in the 1990s.

New Zealand First’s position is common sense. We must protect productive land, protect food production, and stop the bureaucratic war on farmers.

“Use it or Lose it” Dairy Policy

This week we also announced another policy.

New Zealand First is proposing changes to the Dairy Industry Restructuring Act 2001 to incentivise investment in value-added dairy manufacturing in New Zealand.

The ‘use it or lose it’ policy would give qualifying manufacturers investing in new value-added dairy production access to up to 500 million litres of Fonterra milk per year for ten years, by lifting existing regulatory settings tenfold from 50 million litres at present.

As you know Fonterra recently flogged off a number of well-known brand-names to Lactalis France. 

That means Anchor, Mainland, Kapiti, and more were sold off and now all of that added value to milk products is going to some other country, not ours. 

How ignorantly economically counterproductive to your own economy can you be?

Fonterra was created, by Parliament, and by statutory monopoly, to build a dairy co-operative of extraordinary scale to sell milk and dairy products, and Parliament has the right and the responsibility to ensure the policy is to turn our milk into the maximum possible value for New Zealand jobs, wages, skills, exports, and wealth.

The legislation currently allows independent processors to access up to 50 million litres of milk per season, but this is too low to incentivise manufacturing of substantial scale, so we will lift it tenfold to 500 million litres.

The current regime can help investors start, but it is specifically designed not to help them reach industrial scale, and that is not appropriate now that Fonterra has sold its own consumer products to another company in another country.

The current rules obstruct future investors in added value. That must change.

We are changing the rules, but for those who wish to use the new rules, they must use the rule change now, or lose the benefit.

To qualify, you need to establish a dairy product manufacturing base in New Zealand, majority owned by New Zealanders, marketing ‘New Zealand dairy’ to the world.

Milk would not be subsidised. Manufacturers would pay the farm gate milk price plus efficient collection and delivery costs.

Fonterra and farmers would be paid as usual, but we wish to give certainty to new investment in the dairy market to diversify, secure New Zealand jobs, and add value to New Zealand milk.

We are giving certainty for any business willing to manufacture dairy products in New Zealand.

We want industry in New Zealand. If investors want to invest more in higher-value manufacturing, then our economic settings should welcome them.

Build the factories. Build the brands. Take New Zealand dairy products to the world.

Experience Matters Most

New Zealand First started our long campaign in March this year and we have been packing the halls around the country every week delivering the message to thousands of kiwis that we are focussed on two things – bold policies our country needs for a real change, and the fight for ordinary hard working kiwis against the establishment, the elites, and the status quo.

Experience and leadership has never mattered more.

We need leaders of the next government to say the things that people are thinking without fear or favour – even the things that might be unpopular.

New Zealand needs strong leadership who are not afraid to be strong on important issues.

And we don’t need weak leaders who don’t understand New Zealand values.

We can’t go on allowing the two old parties to tinker round the edges of big issues, and do nothing but manage the decline of our country.

Ladies and gentlemen, we have already announced a number of bold policies this year.

It is what we need for real change to drive down the cost of living, secure a better future for kiwis, and reinforce who we are as New Zealanders.

Announced Bold Policies

We have announced practical, logical and workable policies to break up the power companies’ monopoly, and drive power prices down.

We have announced practical, logical and workable policies to split the supermarket duopoly, and drive food prices down.

We have announced practical, logical, and workable polices to re-establish a competitive New Zealand owned state bank, to drive banking charges down.

We have announced polices to return mining royalties, created in the regions, back to the regions.

We have announced establishing a proper transparent inquiry into those who were injured by the Covid 19 vaccine – so we can find out exactly what happened, who was responsible, and publicly hold them to account.

And we are going to further inquire into how over 311,000 twelve to seventeen year olds got the second vaccine when the then Prime Minister Ardern, and two Ministers in charge Hipkins and Verrill, were advised not to.

Ladies and gentlemen, the fact that this is not headlining in the mainstream media or in parliament is testimony to how the establishment, media and political, almost completely conformed to the “podium of truth”.

The reason why you aren’t seeing any headlines is that both the media and politicians are exposed to their wanton compliance and obedience in how they mislead the public of New Zealand – this is a conspiracy.

We are going to expose the cover-up on this issue by the other political parties and the establishment who all signed a document not to talk to the protesters.

We announced our KiwiSaver policy of making it compulsory with automatic $1000 sign-up at birth. It means the day a baby is born it gets $1000 in its account to start saving.

We have announced our policy is to establish a $100 billion Future Fund that will invest in a thirty-year infrastructure plan for our country. And that’s where we are going to get the money to build the projects that we promise in our country.

We have also announced that we will pull out of the failing Paris Agreement that is senselessly hamstringing our economy. 

New Zealand has one of the loosest electoral laws in the world, and that is why we have announced a policy to ensure that by 2029 only citizens are allowed to vote in our country. 

At our Campaign Launch, we announced a policy to invest $1billion to start exploring our gas and oil reserves in our deep-sea basins so we can own and export our own oil and gas – we need to be independent from events like in the Strait of Hormuz.

We also have announced the ‘Kiwi Kids Grant’ that will support New Zealand citizens raising their first three children, through the first three years of their lives – $5000 per child for each of the three years.

Value of Citizenship

New Zealand needs to start viewing our citizenship as most other countries around the world do – as a privilege that comes with special and unique rights. 

This does not take away from migrants the ability to move here and help build our country, from showing total commitment and patriotism for New Zealand by becoming a citizen. 

We have massively allowed so many of our standards to drop.

Even the most basic of privileges and rights in any country like voting has in our country become more like an expectation for anyone, rather than a unique right for New Zealanders.

Ladies and gentlemen, why do so many ‘apologetic globalists’ act shocked and dismayed that a political party is wanting to ensure that citizenship actually mean something? 

There is a difference in this election. Kiwis are looking at what parties are offering as their values and principles in these uncertain times.

NZFirst Party of Conservatism, Patriotism, Nationalism

We signed a coalition agreement to govern with stability and experience three years ago – and we have kept our word. 

New Zealand First brings what is too often missing in politics – experience and common sense.

New Zealand First brings a commitment to New Zealand industry, to manufacturing, to jobs right here for our own people.

New Zealand First brings commonsense to immigration policy – where we allow in people that we need, not people who need us.

We believe in infrastructure before population growth, not afterwards, and infrastructure focused on fixing what’s broken, not flash upgrades and vanity projects.

New Zealand First brings traditional kiwi conservative values – where hard work should be rewarded, where job security and home ownership underpins a stable family life. 

We want a country where young people aren’t worried about their family’s future, or where they see better opportunities overseas.

We are the party of social conservatism, patriotism, and nationalism. Those values are what it means to be a Kiwi – and New Zealand First is proud to not only stand by those values, but to fight for them.

We must be focussed on what New Zealanders gave us a mandate to do – turning this country around with policies and values that will give our country a better future – driving down the cost of living, cost of food, cost of power, cost of fuel, and turning this economy around – and doing it all with stability and experience.

We in 2023 inherited an economic nightmare. But not enough government members of parliament understood that. 

This pivotal election voters want to hear a clear and unified message – that we are going to win, and take New Zealand back to being a leading economy again. 

Challenging the Status Quo

The greatest threat to this blind ideology, to social elitism, and to the status quo, is New Zealand First.

And the country we are defending is called New Zealand – it’s in our party’s name.

We fight for the hardworking blue-collar Kiwi battler, who just wants the chance to help build a country they are proud of.

In this election, we have a rare chance to change the shape of parliament for the better, and in doing so, to reshape our country the way you want it.

We are asking you to make a choice with our future generations in mind.

Take back control from the Wellington bubble.

Take back control from those who choose to be CV politicians, where they are here one day, “no more gas in the tank”, and are gone the next – taking with them a rolodex of international jobs, speaking circuits, or book tours, looking back over their shoulder at New Zealand’s decline – which they caused. 

New Zealand First, from our launch thirty-three years ago, has been battling that elitist status quo. No one can deny that. On issue after issue that needed public exposure, the rest remain silent. When others wouldn’t raise a finger, we have raised the roof.

Conclusion

Ladies and gentlemen, we are all here because we love our country, and we are proud of it.

True democracy is a rare flower in the history of humanity.

Down thousands of years living in democracy with freedom is a historical rarity. 

We have inherited a free country that our forebears fought and died for, and it’s our job to preserve it.

But only if we are proud of what we have inherited can we come together and move forward to shape the vision of our country’s future.

We live in a country that, at its core, traditional New Zealand values once saw us amongst the world’s leaders – hard work, fair pay, valuing our citizenship, building a sense of community, and knowing who we are as kiwis.

We must remember, New Zealand is the beneficiary of Western values, democracy, and the rule of law. And the advancement and enhancement of those principles have only occurred in those societies that have united together as one people – and who celebrate their nationhood instead of perpetuating division.

There is a lot of uncertainty around the world and at home, but we must keep hope alive that, with hard work and perseverance, tomorrow will be better.

New Zealand First is nationalist, patriotic, and socially conservative values that we fight for. 

It hasn’t been easy – but things in life worth doing never are.  

We must never forget that challenge.

We must never stop believing in New Zealand.

That is our vision and that is our mission.

To protect, to save, and to restore New Zealand’s place at the top of the world.

By putting New Zealand and New Zealanders first.

We are asking you to join us – and Party Vote New Zealand First.

Original source: https://nz.mil-osi.com/2026/08/22/winston-peters-adding-real-export-value-use-it-or-lose-it/