Shocking and who would eat it if they knew?

from the Radio NZ website

The Kāpiti Coast District Council has voted to restore protections to a Māori burial ground after more than fifty years of challenges by iwi.

Local iwi Ātiawa ki Whakarongotai welcomed the decision which adds Kārewarewa urupā in the Waikanae Beach area to the District Plan as a site of significance to Māori.

Kārewarewa urupā is associated with the 1839 Battle of Kūititanga, many of those who died in the battle were buried at the urupā, and the site has been used as an urupā since the mid-19th century.

Continue reading

See earlier posts about this area. It’s good news, not just for the fact that burial grounds or cemeteries should not be built on, but preserves it as a patch of open ground free of ‘cheap and affordable’ houses. —Eds

Army Reserve age limit raised to 65. They’ll be raiding our care homes next. pic.twitter.com/9k2AKpzOnk

— HJB News (@HJB_News__) October 27, 2026

Power and fuel prices are going sky high and their coming winter will be very cold. At the same time their goverment pays tens of thousands of illegal migrants to lounge around in 4-Star hotels while they engage in predatory behaviour towards indigenous British women, and many other crimes. And it continues to shower the gangsters of Ukraine with ‘mahney’ and gives them cruise missiles.

Maybe the UK Labour government want to get rid of the 55-65 age group by sending them to NATO’s meat grinder so they won’t have to pay their pensions?

Its bulletin last night began with a complaint about it by Qiulae Wong, who is not mentioned in it but for whatever peculiar reason seems to be TV1 News’ go-to hero at present. (They got a comment from Hippy Chippy next.)

SYMPATHY FOR THE CRIMINALS, SILENCE FOR THE VICTIMS

from BrashandMitchell.com

The Coalition parties can barely believe their luck as the gang scandal continues to engulf their political rivals.

Little wonder Oriini Kaipara has been described as a “sleeper-agent for the centre-right” given that a video she posted of herself at a Mongrel Mob hui — alongside Te Pāti Māori MP Hana-Rāwhiti Maipi-Clarke, Green MP Hūhana Lyndon and Green candidate Michel Mulipola — sparked the political firestorm.

Belated attempts to mount a counter-attack by publishing photos of National MPs alongside gang members is only slightly easing the agony for the left but at the cost of keeping the issue in the media spotlight. Not least, it has given National more opportunities to advertise the fact Labour voted against legislation the government passed this term to clamp down on gang crime.

National is doing its best to hide its glee. In his newsletter to supporters on Friday, Chris Bishop tried to levitate above the tumult:

“Every election there’s always an unexpected event or ‘moment’, but I did not see a two-week rolling controversy over left-wing parties seeking support from gang members coming [in this campaign]. It’s definitely distracted attention from what should be the major focus of the election (how our economic plan is beginning to work and we shouldn’t go backwards) but has also probably focused attention on just how crazy a Labour/Green/ Māori Party government would be.”

The left’s “craziness” with regard to Māori gangs has certainly been on full display since Kaipara’s inflammatory social media posts. And it is nowhere more apparent than when they argue that gangsters should not be ostracised or condemned because they are part of society and have family like anyone else.

The very mention of “whānau” is meant to wash away a myriad of gang sins. Yet the view that that we should hate the sin while loving the sinner only goes so far when the sins include meth dealing, intimidation, bloody violence, sexual abuse and rape.

In fact, it has been estimated that gang members — who make up a quarter of one per cent of New Zealand’s adult population — are linked to 18 per cent of all serious violent crime, 19 per cent of all homicides, 23 per cent of all firearms offences, 25 per cent of all kidnapping and abductions, and 25 per cent of all the crime harm caused by illicit drug offences. Their appalling treatment of women is no secret.

However, even staunch feminist Sandra Coney has defended Kerrin Leoni — a candidate for the Tāmaki Makaurau electorate — campaigning for the gang vote at a Mongrel Mob gathering: “Whether we like it or not, [gangs] are part of us. They are the product of the society we have created. We should continue to extend a hand, not turn our backs.”

But while Jacinda Ardern’s mantra “They are us” worked very well when innocent Muslims were murdered in a mosque, it really doesn’t work so well among the public when it is used to support gangs.

Nevertheless, that sentiment has been trotted out blithely by Oriini Kaipara and Greens co-leader Marama Davidson, among others, in defence of MPs explicitly drumming up Mob votes and posting videos and photos of their encounters.

Leoni justified a video clip of her urging gangsters to oust the government while wearing a Labour jacket and a photograph of her holding a party placard at a Mongrel Mob gathering, saying: “I cannot change who my whānau are or who I grew up with, nor would I ever turn my back on them.”

Chris Hipkins, realising how offensive those images would be to many voters, turned to the theme of families himself when he told journalists he had made it clear to Leoni that her role as a Labour candidate was no longer tenable. He became teary when he said: “It’s her family! All of us navigate family situations in politics, and it’s bloody hard.”

It’s true that you can’t choose your family, but if it includes members of an organisation that unrepentantly peddles misery and violence — and you are neither willing to denounce their behaviour nor distance yourself from them — politics is always going to be a very risky career choice.

It is obvious that anyone hoping to be a successful politician would be reckless to tell voters, for example, that their family members have always been neo-Nazis and that they will always stick by them because they are kin. Posting photos of sitting among them while they gave Nazi salutes and shouted “Sieg Heil” would immediately torpedo any political future.

Yet, when it comes to Māori gangs we are apparently expected to view them with indulgence on account of the negative effects of colonisation, “intergenerational trauma”, and because they have wives, children and many relatives (although some will be wondering whether the word “whānau” is so elastic it covers anyone Leoni knows who happens to be Māori and turns up to a shindig).

While appealing to “whānau” is a common justification for cuddling up to gangs, a video clip of Kaipara’s pitch for Mob votes at their pad revealed another reason the left often treats them as valued citizens rather than as members of organised crime groups.

She told them: “You are tangata whenua. You are of this land. You are Maui’s descendants. You are the descendants of Toi, of Kupe, of Tupaia.”

Kaipara appeared to imply that Māori ancestry and a supposed mystical connection to the land should automatically confer special rights on Mob members — including state housing and other benefits — in order to restore their “mana”.

Her approach looks like a muddled variant of a “blood and soil” ideology — as if being both “of the blood” and “of the land” is inherently ennobling.

The historical manifestations of a “blood and soil” ideology in Nazism are so repugnant, of course, that very few will acknowledge any such similarity. And it might seem far-fetched at first glance given that “blood and soil” is normally seen as a right-wing ideology while Te Pāti Māori is classed as a party of the progressive left with its promotion of wealth taxes and massive state spending.

However, it is also an ethno-nationalist party that embraces a romantic nationalism rooted in the idea of a supposedly paradisiacal existence for Māori before colonisation turned a South Pacific Garden of Eden into a hellhole for them. Certainly much of our legacy media and political class seems to find that myth seductive.

Auckland University professor Dame Elizabeth Rata has described a “blood and soil” ideology as a common element of ethno-nationalism:

“It is the idea that an ethnic group indigenous to an area is autochthonous. The group is ‘of the land’ in a way that is qualitatively different from those who arrive later. As a consequence of this fact, the first group claims a particular political status with entitlements not available to others.”

Indeed, a core part of Te Pāti Māori’s philosophy is centred on two classes of citizens, with all non-Māori living in New Zealand purportedly the guests of anyone with a Māori forebear.

Rawiri Waititi made that division clear during the first reading of the Gangs Legislation Amendment Bill in March 2024. He argued that the proposed measures to ban gang patches in public and to give police greater powers to disperse their members hadn’t worked in the US or Australia.

“[The gangs] just moved from one region to another… And I heard the Minister [Goldsmith] today say… ‘I wish they could relocate to another country and leave us alone.’

“E kī rā, if the majority [of gang members] are Māori, you’ve got the manuhiri [guests] kicking tangata whenua out.”

Waititi appears to believe gangsters should be treated with respect by the vast majority of New Zealanders who don’t have Māori ancestry, despite their viciousness and depravity.

It will come as little surprise to many voters, of course, that the Greens’ view of gangs is just as crazy and divorced from reality.

During the second reading of the bill, Green MP Tamatha Paul recommended the government speak to gang leaders:

“They’re just normal people. Go and have a chat with them. I think you’ll find they’re quite nice.”

Graham Adams is a freelance editor, journalist and columnist. He lives on Auckland’s North Shore.

Source

by Robert Williams

• [German] Chancellor Friedrich Merz has made it clear that he wants to end anonymity on the internet.
• Internet anonymity makes it harder to arrest people for inconvenient speech — “hate speech” and “insults” — and Germany’s police have been raiding the homes of such internet participants for years. Merz himself has filed hundreds of criminal complaints against ordinary German citizens perceived to have insulted him online, including against a 71-year-old pensioner who committed the unconscionable crime of calling him “Pinocchio” on Facebook….
• Meanwhile, in the United Kingdom, the totalitarian strain has become just as strong, if not worse. The government has been making examples of citizens who protest the mass migration, which has been continuing across the UK’s open borders.
• By contrast, the men who were arrested on September 27 for what is believed to have been an Iranian-orchestrated attempted attack on England’s RAF Fairford air base, used by U.S. warplanes to carry out strikes on Iran, were all released on bail the next day.
• [T]he UK government has released more than 70,000 criminals early since 2024 under the Labour government’s plan to “combat jail overcrowding.” So far, since their release, a third of those released have committed new crimes. One man sexually assaulted a woman the day he was freed. Some of the victims of the criminals released early have fled the country.
• The room they are eager to make in prisons seems to be for ordinary citizens fed up with how their country is run and had the gall to state it. That is how it works in totalitarian systems. Criminals are freed so that dissidents can take their places.
• Over three years of pro-Hamas protests inciting violence in the form of calling for a “global intifada” and “intifada revolution is the only solution” on the streets of Britain, not a single protester even came close to that kind of sentencing, even though Hamas is a proscribed terrorist organization in the UK. Protesters who wore the Hamas paraglider symbol or the Hamas headband were convicted of terrorism offenses but discharged by friendly judges and never served any time in prison.
• It is evidently all right to be carried away by emotion in favor of Hamas’ mass slaughter, dismemberment and rape of Jews. The judge even seems to be saying that their view is understandable… When it comes to trying to protect your family from predatory third-world illegal male migrants arriving by the thousands on the shores of your country, that is not all right.
• This seems to be how the UK “justice” system works. If you support Hamas, a terrorist organization, it is considered either not really support at all, or not to cause “serious harm.” Instead, protesting illegal immigration must immediately be punished with unconditional prison sentences. If this is not an example of the state emboldening terrorism, it would be hard to say what is.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has made it clear that he wants to end anonymity on the internet. “I want to see real names on the internet. I want to know who is speaking,” he said. In other words, he wants the government, and the big tech companies, to know exactly who is behind every single comment, tweet, and meme on the internet. Pictured: Merz delivers a speech in Munich on October 24, 2026. (Photo by Alexandra Beier/ AFP via Getty Images)

Germany’s governing coalition of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and Social Democratic Party (SPD), increasingly desperate to cling to power as the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) continues to hammer them in the polls, is turning ever more totalitarian.

For a start, Chancellor Friedrich Merz has made it clear that he wants to end anonymity on the internet.

“I want to see real names on the internet. I want to know who is speaking,” Merz said back in February. “In politics, we engage in debates in our society using our real names and without visors.”

In other words, Merz wants the government, and the big tech companies, to know exactly who is behind every single comment, tweet, and meme on the internet.

Continue Reading

Two good, hardworking health professionals have been driven out of our health system over things they said.

In 9 days, we choose a government that can stop this, and I need your help to make sure it does.

If you missed Dr David Smylie’s story, I’ve forwarded it below. The short version: a GP of almost 40 years sent a hasty, private e-mail. The Medical Council ruled it “objectively racist” and ordered him into a year of re-education. He now practises overseas.

I’ve spoken to Dr Smylie at some length, and I’d be glad to have him looking after myself or my family.
Will you chip in today so we’re ready to take this issue straight to the next government?
Help us fight back against the regulators   This is a pattern

We also just had Cath Simpson on our podcast. A mental health nurse with 19 years’ service, she was prosecuted by the Nursing Council over posts on her personal X account, suspended and sent for re-education by a tribunal, then sacked by Health NZ.

Neither case was about how they treated patients. Both apologised, yet it made no difference. And both were ordered to study colonisation.

That’s a pattern and we simply can’t afford for it to continue.
By the Medical Council’s own figures, more than 43% of our doctors trained overseas, the highest share in the developed world.

Yet that same council drove out Dr Smylie over an e-mail.

You can’t wring your hands about staff shortages while driving hardworking doctors and nurses away for lawful speech.

If this makes you as angry as it makes me, please give what you can today. Back us, so we can fight this, the weeks after an election decide what a government does. Coalition deals get written, priorities get set, and anything left off the table might have to wait three more years.

Our Council Chair, Stephen Franks, has drafted the Regulated Professions Neutrality Bill, which would stop regulators punishing professionals for lawful views expressed outside work.

New Zealand can’t afford to lose healthcare professionals over their speech. Thanks for your ongoing support at this crucial time.

Best wishes,

Adam Waugh — Communications and Marketing Manager | Free Speech Union
PS. This story is getting serious traction – it’s already been viewed by over 250,000 Kiwis. Can you share this post to 5 people who care about us not losing healthcare staff for ‘wrongthink’?

I left New Zealand over an e-mail. It was a private, four-sentence reply to a sales rep, sent late one night. For that, the Medical Council found my comments “objectively racist” and put me through a year of ‘re-education’ that I was expected to pay for myself. In the process, New Zealand lost a GP with almost 40 years’ experience and a deep commitment to genuine patient care. I’ve just told the whole story on the Free Speech Union’s Free to Speak podcast, which you can watch here: Here’s how it started. I’ve practised medicine in Britain, Australia, the US and New Zealand, including two years providing care to Aboriginal Australians in the Outback. In 2022, I was a senior partner at Cambridge Medical Centre in the Waikato. I had a blemish-free record. That November, a sales rep from a nutrition company emailed me and other health professionals an invitation to a sponsored education evening. Her email opened “Ate Marie Everyone”. She meant “ata mārie,” meaning “good morning.” I’m a Scot with a dry sense of humour, and I couldn’t resist the typo. I replied the moment I read it: Was it wise? No, and I wish I hadn’t sent it. It was a hasty, knee-jerk reaction to the language in her email, not a calculated attack on her. It was also private: it went to her alone, and none of the other invitees were copied in. And she was a sales rep, not a patient or a colleague. I didn’t think it was a big deal, and it never crossed my mind that I might hear from the Medical Council over it. Nine days later she wrote back saying it was “offensive and inappropriate”. That same day, her manager reported me to the Medical Council.Then the Medical Council got involvedI did what I thought a sensible professional should do. I didn’t argue. I went along with the process. I regretted doing so later. Within days I’d written to the Council with an apology for her, and in January my lawyers asked for it to be passed on. In February 2023, before the Council had even referred my case for investigation, I did three online courses off my own bat, on bias in health care, disability equity and cultural competency. Five or six months later, the committee investigating me would demand I send them a written critique of what I’d learned. In May the Council appointed a Professional Conduct Committee to investigate me. They interviewed the rep and her manager. The rep told the committee an apology would have made her feel a lot better. Mine was sitting in the Medical Council’s file, and nobody had told her. When the committee’s chair suggested she might meet me face to face, one of the other members jumped in and warned her off. Meeting someone like me could be bad for her mental health: “…a bit hard, isn’t it? Traumatising?” And in the same breath: “it’s tough calling out racism.” I could have appeared before the committee in person. But having read those transcripts, I didn’t believe I’d get a fair hearing. In August my lawyers asked again for my apology to be passed on. Still nothing. So why was my apology never passed on? First, because she hadn’t been the one who had complained, the Council had “no basis” to pass it on. Then the Committee made her a formal complainant anyway, but decided that passing on my apology would “interfere with an active investigation”. Their own investigation. Finally, they ruled that an apology only has value if it’s made directly, at the time, and therefore refused to pass mine on at all. You really couldn’t make it up. The verdict In September 2023, the Committee delivered its verdict. My comments were “objectively racist, offensive, and insensitive”. Whether I’d meant any harm was “of little consequence”. My four sentences even had “the potential to contribute to current health inequities”. The three courses I’d done unprompted were only “the beginning of your journey”, and I lacked “insight”. It acknowledged that my practice had “not yet received a complaint” about my care. Note the “yet”. Even so, it couldn’t rule out that I’d be a risk in future, especially to the Māori community and to patients “whose gender expression is important”. That last part came from my remark about pronouns. The committee’s remedy was “counselling”. In practice, that meant what I’d call twelve months of reprogramming. The Council called it an “Educational Programme”. I had to see a Council-approved supervisor every month, and the supervisor reported on me to the Council every month. There were readings on Te Tiriti, colonisation and institutional racism, discussion of “the concept of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) as a concept”, and strategies for managing my “implicit biases (which are inevitable)”. If the supervisor reported badly on me, my case would go back to the Council. At the end I was to write two essays: 500 words reflecting on my e-mail, and 1,000 on structural racism in New Zealand health care. And I was expected to pay for all of it: $125 an hour plus GST for the supervisor, plus their travel time and petrol. As it turned out, I didn’t pay the supervisor a cent. The Council eventually agreed that one of my partners at the practice, who had a lot of experience teaching students and trainees, could take on the role, and she kindly didn’t charge me. (I made sure a few bottles of very good wine and some flowers came her way at the end.) But that doesn’t change the principle: the Council expected me to pay for my own punishment. Before the programme started, I’d managed to apologise to the sales rep directly, and she had accepted. My lawyers told the Council, and asked for the programme to be halved and the essays dropped. It went ahead anyway. I sat through all twelve sessions. But, out of principle, I would not write those essays. So I left New Zealand So, I left. I’m now practising overseas. I’m told I might be allowed to work in New Zealand again if I write them. Clearly, that is not going to happen. Those two years were a living nightmare. I lost more than 10 kg and a great many nights’ sleep, over something a sensible regulator would have settled with a quiet word. At a time when Health NZ are reporting severe staffing shortages, and are looking to bring in staff from overseas, I have to be blunt: based on my experience, I would not advise any health professional to work in New Zealand until the regulators get back to their core purposes. The Free Speech Union is asking for regulators to stay neutral and stick to their core purpose and function of keeping patients safe, and I hope that spares the next doctor or nurse in my position. Back the FSU’s call for neutral regulators. I loved living and working in New Zealand, and it really saddened me to have to leave in the circumstances that I did. Best wishes, Dr David Smylie Former senior partner | Cambridge Medical Centre NB. When the Free Speech Union heard Dr Smylie’s story, we thought our supporters should hear it too, so we asked him to share it with you, and he kindly agreed. Dr Smylie isn’t formally affiliated with the Union, and we’re grateful to him for speaking up.

Ok, so I woke up this morning to discover my open letter is STILL trending here on X. 😂

Between Facebook and X, it's now been viewed more than 945,000 times!

Naturally, it's also unleashed the unhinged troll brigade, who have provided some excellent entertainment along the… pic.twitter.com/tWxGRkMwL5

— Alia Bee (@AliaVFF) October 27, 2026

The Sydney Morning Herald took up the story and found it had to turn off a deluge of hostile comments. 🙂

If Sydney University can find the money to pay Ardern, it’s time to take a chainsaw to the $1,237 million they received from taxpayers last year alone.

It’s sickening that hard working Australians are now being forced fund Ardern‘s luxury lifestyle. https://t.co/hsUAwGHDdJ pic.twitter.com/jfwyi9DHFG

— Craig Kelly:🇦🇺Foundation for Economic Education (@craigkellyAFEE) October 27, 2026

from Real New Zealand News

Bad News for Jacinda Ardern. After boasting yesterday to media about her new job lecturing kids at the University of Sydney, students and their parents are cancelling their classes as they discover why Ardern can no longer live in her own country.

Rising anger in New Zealand led to Ardern fleeing to the USA as over 311000 NZ kids were poisoned due to Ardern and Hipkins hiding Pfizer’s heart damaging side effects. The medical harm monitoring agency CARM recorded over 64,000 injuries from the Pfizer injection before Ardern shut down monitoring in 2022. Many more were injured since then.

Prior to this Ardern and her deputy Hipkins had instructed Grant Robertson – Arderns Finance Minister- to Indemnify Pfizer from all claims, strongly suggesting she Knew the product was dangerous.

It gets worse. During phone calls with Melinda Gates – then a major Pfizer shareholder – Ardern agreed to Mandate Pfizer despite knowing it injured men, women and children. Gates went on to publicly announce a $30Million USD payment directly to Jacinda Ardern. Those 311,000 kids? They all had Mothers and Fathers.