The Standard

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Kamikaze Chris does Labour a favour

Written By: - Date published: 8:33 am, June 5th, 2026 - 31 comments

On May 21st, 2026 National’s Chris Bishop did his best to lose the 2026 general election and his Hutt South electorate.

No nukes

Written By: - Date published: 9:37 am, June 1st, 2026 - 30 comments

The timing of the recent suggestion by Chris Penk that New Zealand should review its nuclear free policy makes you wonder if the Trump Administration has applied pressure to do so.

National wages war on the poor

Written By: - Date published: 8:19 am, May 22nd, 2026 - 32 comments

How cruel do you have to be to raise rents for some of our poorest citizens during a cost of living crisis?

National Is Destroying Wellington

Written By: - Date published: 9:48 am, May 21st, 2026 - 13 comments

Wellington is being deliberately targeted by National and it is destroying the third largest region of New Zealand.

The beatings will continue until morale improves

Written By: - Date published: 1:24 pm, May 19th, 2026 - 73 comments

National today intensified efforts to alienate the entire public service by announcing that a further 9,000 public positions will be culled if, god help us, they are returned to power.

Constitutional outrage

Written By: - Date published: 10:01 am, May 12th, 2026 - 26 comments

The Government’s plans to retrospectively change the law to stop a case seeking damages for climate damage caused by heavy emitters is a constitutional outrage and shows not only contempt for the rule of law but also contempt for any action taken by a citizen against climate change.

Crisis what crisis

Written By: - Date published: 11:01 am, April 30th, 2026 - 23 comments

Christopher Luxon has responded to Winston Peters releasing emails suggesting Luxon wanted to support the US invasion of Iran by dressing him down publicly. The Government is clearly in crisis.

Will the real National leader please stand up

Written By: - Date published: 8:33 am, April 21st, 2026 - 19 comments

Christopher Luxon will today face his sternest challenge as leader as repeatedly bad polls are having their effect on National’s caucus’s morale.

Tick tock …

Written By: - Date published: 9:42 am, April 17th, 2026 - 34 comments

National is leaking like a sieve. Either a coup is under way or a group of disgruntled MPs are busily attempting to destabilise Luxon’s leadership. Either way this is not good for National.

National’s incredulous plan for challenging times

Written By: - Date published: 4:46 pm, April 11th, 2026 - 36 comments

An ideological reflex to an economic challenge has severe limitations by design.

Missing in action

Written By: - Date published: 10:15 am, April 6th, 2026 - 48 comments

As this Government’s inaction over the oil crisis becomes more pronounced more and more people are noticing that Christopher Luxon is missing in action.

Pawn takes Bishop

Written By: - Date published: 5:38 pm, April 5th, 2026 - 19 comments

Christopher Luxon this week showed strong leadership by demoting Chris Bishop for a coup against Luxon that was staged six months ago.

In a crisis the left does better

Written By: - Date published: 12:13 pm, April 2nd, 2026 - 31 comments

The Government’s complete reluctance to do anything about the approaching oil crisis is in stark contrast to the approach adopted by more progressive administrative governments overseas.

Is the Government’s $50 a week a vote winner?

Written By: - Date published: 2:57 pm, March 25th, 2026 - 31 comments

The Government’s targeted fuel support is pork-barrelling.

Cash for Access: $8000 for National Party Cabinet, $10000 for PM

Written By: - Date published: 1:16 pm, March 25th, 2026 - 5 comments

National is fundraising and for $10,000 you can buy access to sit with the PM

We owe a great debt to Grant Robertson

Written By: - Date published: 5:16 pm, March 22nd, 2026 - 9 comments

Today I learned, we owe a great debt to Grant Roberston and just wanted to say thanks

What We Can Do

Written By: - Date published: 6:50 pm, March 20th, 2026 - 30 comments

In absence of a concrete leadership plan from this government to address the impending oil supply crisis, this post is for us to simply note down what actions we are taking ourselves. 

Why scrapping Labour’s climate change policies has made the oil crisis worse

Written By: - Date published: 1:38 pm, March 17th, 2026 - 10 comments

Driven by ideology, this Government has worsened the country’s prospects to reduce oil dependance by axing policies that would have cut greenhouse-gas emissions.

Dead man walking

Written By: - Date published: 8:46 am, March 6th, 2026 - 65 comments

It has been a hell of a week for Christopher Luxon. His performance particularly over Iran has been appalling. And a new poll puts National under 30%.

Paul Goldsmith tried to get homeless arrested 18 years ago

Written By: - Date published: 2:28 pm, February 26th, 2026 - 7 comments

Senior National Party Cabinet Minister tried to have police arrest homelessness in Auckland 18 years ago. This year he succeeded

A comparison between the LNG Terminal deal and the NZ Steel deal

Written By: - Date published: 11:11 am, February 16th, 2026 - 14 comments

A comparison of the LNG Terminal deal and the previous Government’s deal with NZ Steel to replace its coal fired furnace with a renewable energy supplied electric arc furnace clearly shows what this Government’s priorities are.

Think Big 2.0

Written By: - Date published: 2:02 pm, February 12th, 2026 - 34 comments

The Government has responded to a perceived urgency caused by dry years to the country’s power supply by proposing something that is counter intuitive. Instead of rolling out solar it wants to burn imported Liquified Natural Gas. And use enabling legislation to avoid any overview of the proposal.

Fast Track law fails at the first big hurdle

Written By: - Date published: 9:19 am, February 8th, 2026 - 18 comments

Environmental groups have cheered the draft Panel’s decision refusing to allow Taranaki’s continental shelf from being smashed up to extract rare earth minerals. But how will the Government respond?

Shane Jones loves fossil fuels

Written By: - Date published: 1:09 pm, February 2nd, 2026 - 9 comments

National has allowed Shane Jones to effectively veto the country signing up to a road map away from the use of fossil fuels supported by much of the world that was consistent with current policy settings.

Who would have thunk that slashing Health IT budgets would result in IT outages

Written By: - Date published: 2:03 pm, January 29th, 2026 - 9 comments

A year after the Government slashed a third of Health IT jobs the Auckland hospital system has suffered a massive IT outage.

Management speech mumbo jumbo

Written By: - Date published: 11:16 am, January 20th, 2026 - 17 comments

Christopher Luxon’s latest State of the Nation speech suggests that over summer he has been spending more on his Spotify summer list than he should have.

Some random predictions for 2026 …

Written By: - Date published: 10:22 am, January 2nd, 2026 - 8 comments

What will election year 2026 bring to Aotearoa?

Peters spits the dummy over India Free Trade deal

Written By: - Date published: 7:54 am, December 24th, 2025 - 22 comments

“National preferred doing a quick, low-quality deal over doing the hard work necessary to get a fair deal that delivers for both New Zealanders and Indians.”

Good work if you can get it

Written By: - Date published: 11:36 am, December 21st, 2025 - 9 comments

National’s Ministerial Retail Advisory Group leader Sunny Kaushall has hit the headlines for huge catering costs inluding paying $9 for bottles of coke worth $5.50. But the deeper story should be why his activity, which is clearly political in nature, being funded by a fund set aside for victims.

Accelerating climate change under urgency

Written By: - Date published: 2:02 pm, December 11th, 2025 - 7 comments

The Government is legislating to halve methane emission reduction targets and remove the requirement for the ETS to accord with Paris Accord obligations. And intends to pass these changes under urgency despite there being no requirement to do so.

“National is Getting NZ Back on Track”?

Written By: - Date published: 2:21 pm, December 8th, 2025 - 13 comments

That’s the headline of the pamphlet in the letterbox. But from their own measures is that true?