Labour’s Willie Jackson accused Herald NOW host Ryan Bridge of “trying to write off all Māori” during a heated on-air exchange about the growing unrest inside Te Pāti Māori.
Jackson’s outburst came after Bridge suggested co-leaders Rawiri Waititi and Debbie Ngarewa-Packer had “lost control of their caucus,” given the party’s string of internal meltdowns.
Martyn Bradbury’s October 5 post on The Daily Blog attacked Winston Peters in unusually vicious terms, accusing the Deputy Prime Minister of “siding with genocide” and calling him a “sad old Zionist coward.”
From November 2026, the government is tightening eligibility for Jobseeker benefits.
Social Development Minister Louise Upston said the new Parental Assistance Test means 18- and 19-year-olds will only qualify for Jobseeker or emergency benefits if their parents earn below the income threshold of $65,529 (before tax) or can prove they cannot reasonably rely on them for support.
New Zealand’s economy “was supposed to be better by now,” says Herald business editor Liam Dann, who admits even economists are baffled.
The Official Cash Rate has dropped 250 basis points, yet “rate cuts seem to have had little impact on the economy so far,” according to Mark Brown of Harbour Asset Management.
Oxford University has posthumously awarded an MPhil in anthropology to Mākereti Papakura, a pioneering Māori scholar who died in 1930, just weeks before submitting her thesis documenting the traditions of her Te Arawa people.
Her thesis, The Old-Time Māori, was later published by her mentor, anthropologist TK Penniman, and remains a cornerstone of Māori cultural study nearly a century later.
Te Pāti Māori MP Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke has been named one of the world’s “most influential rising stars” by Time magazine, though the recognition appears to rest more on performance than policy.
A high-profile lawsuit in the United States centres on 19-year-old design student Krysta Michelle Tsukahara, who died alongside two friends after their Tesla Cybertruck crashed into a tree in Piedmont, California.
The suit alleges Tesla’s battery-powered doors failed when the vehicle lost power, leaving Tsukahara unable to escape. The manual release mechanism was “too difficult to find in an emergency.”
