Homepaddock

The Holocaust did not begin with the gas chambers of Auschwitz or Treblinka. It began much earlier, with ideas, laws, exclusions, and the slow normalisation of cruelty. The part that history often forgets.

When Hitler became Chancellor of Germany in 1933, there was no plan to exterminate the Jews. What did exist was a heavily racist worldview: that Jews were alien, that they were a corrosive presence within society – and that the economic hardship, moral decay, and national humiliation that the Germans were facing was their fault.

So the early years were not about mass murder. They were about isolation. – Ashley Church

At every stage, the cruelty increased incrementally. Each step made the next possible. Each outrage became the new normal. –

By the time the war ended, six million Jews were dead. Not because the world didn’t know – but because it looked away, rationalised, delayed, and normalised the unimaginable until it was too late.

But the Holocaust was not an aberration in Jewish history. It was just its most industrialised expression.

For more than two millennia, Jews have been expelled, ghettoised, scapegoated, and massacred across continents: – Ashley Church

The pattern is unmistakable: Jews tolerated when useful, vilified when convenient, attacked when politically expedient. As such, Germany did not invent antisemitism – it simply systematised it. – Ashley Church

So the State of Israel was declared in 1948. Not by military might – but by the agreement of the world community following a UN-backed partition plan. But the surrounding Arab states rejected coexistence and launched a war aimed at annihilation. Many Arab residents fled, expecting a swift victory and a return. That victory never came.

Israel survived. Barely.

And so the cycle continues. Eighty years after the Holocaust, Jews once again find themselves singled out. – Ashley Church

Once again, the wheels of irrational hatred are turning again and we’re reminded of why we remember the Holocaust. Because “Never again” was never meant to be a slogan. It was meant to be a warning.

Any reasonable person can understand why Israel is uncompromising about its security. History has taught the Jews that promises fail, guarantees expire, and sympathy evaporates under pressure and changing leadership.

Holocaust Remembrance Day is not just about mourning the dead. It is about recognising the pattern that led to those deaths while there is still time to interrupt it.

Because the Holocaust did not begin with gas chambers. It began with the same things that we’re seeing, right now.

And history has a habit of repeating itself – first slowly, then all at once. – Ashley Church

I’m aware there’s a lot of misinformation and stuff going on out there, there always is in circumstances like this. . .

The people on the margins with their rhetoric, they just need to, frankly, keep it to themselves. – Christopher Luxon

My reflection on having been minister now for two years, I’ve had 24 local states [of] emergency, iwi and hapū know how to do emergency management, they’re outstanding, they step up every time, and for everyone, for the whole community. – Mark Mitchell

Christopher Luxon’s speech was competent, restrained, and unprovocative. He laid out the challenges his government inherited, spoke to progress on getting New Zealand “back on track,” and conspicuously avoided naming Labour or Chris Hipkins at all. This mirrors the strategy he adopted in his State of the Nation speech last week and signals a leadership style that is increasingly clear…Luxon is not interested in mud wrestling.

This no doubt frustrates some critics on the right who want fireworks and showmanship, but there is no point crying for a spectacular sundae with all the toppings when you have a perfectly decent vanilla ice cream. After all, sometimes the most super sweet sundaes that are delivered to your table by a tap dancing waiter end up taking on a decidedly authoritarian flavour, destroying your economy, and doing nothing to solve child poverty.

Anyway! Luxon’s strengths do not lie in showmanship. They lie in what he painfully refers to as “hustling” for trade deals, setting direction, and letting ministers own their portfolios. He (mostly) defers foreign affairs to Winston Peters and this is a good thing. He has allowed his ministers to own their reforms. Erica Stanford and Chris Bishop have to share the stage with him for the big announcements as one would expect, but he allows them to own the wins. Ardern famously did not do the same for her ministers.

The other part of this strategy to keep Luxon out of the muck in an election year, is clearly to let Nicola Willis get stuck into it and to prosecute the case against Labour. He will rise above and she will do the job of a good deputy party leader and get the punches in.

Boring? Maybe, but he does not clutter his speeches with personal attacks or rhetorical flourishes designed to dominate the evening news. His speech “did the job.” It did not soar, but it did not wobble either.

In a political environment saturated with performance, this kind of steadiness can look underwhelming. But it can also look like governing by behaving like an adult who can be trusted to deliver. Whether that approach holds under sustained economic or social pressure remains to be seen, but as Prime Minister, he is playing to his strengths. And is certainly far better than our last. – Ani O’Brien

However, once again, Hipkins attempted to rewrite economic history, recycling claims from his State of the Nation speech the previous week. And again, he had to delve back a few years to find an old gaffe of Luxon’s to breathe new life into. . . . 

The recycling indicates that Luxon has not given Hipkins fresh material to work with. There have been no major scandals, catastrophic blunders, nor rhetorical own-goals. So Hipkins is bringing the ghosts of Luxon’s past into the ring to fight. He is shadowboxing with a version of the man that was less experienced and less savvy and who no longer exists. – Ani O’Brien

 It was a familiar diatribe delivered with no attempt to conceal the level of derision she [Chloe Swarbrick]  plainly feels for more than half of New Zealand voters and the politicians they voted into government. As always, capitalism was the villain, the government was callous and evil, and all suffering was proof that only her ideological perspective is the right one. Her rhetoric was vicious, her framing absolutist, and her tone suggested not disagreement but moral disgust. She speaks not as if others are wrong, but as if they are subhuman.

This has become Swarbrick’s signature. In 2025, she underwent an ugly transformation from an idealistic, precocious, but hardworking young politician to a cynical, extremist who became distracted, by ideological warfare, from what really mattered to her constituents. Sadly, it appears the Christmas break has not been a reset. Today, she picked up where she had left off and delivered sweeping denunciations, before concluding by lecturing the House about the need to come together to save people and the planet, on her terms. Always on her terms.

She claimed the Greens are not there for “power for power’s sake,” yet insisted they are there to get stuff done. She suggested that unlike everyone else they are the party of action. But real, substantial change requires power and power requires compromise. By refusing compromise, the Greens ensure they never hold real power, only space on the stage for their moral theatre. – Ani O’Brien

With humour and sentimentality, Seymour pivoted the vibes from seriously negative to framing New Zealand as a positive society built by risk-takers, settlers, and strivers. And he did so carefully and deliberately making the point that this applies to all of us whether our ancestors arrived on waka, ship, or plane.

He walked through ACT’s case for fiscal restraint, regulatory reform, and property rights. He reckoned his ACT ministers have saved the country an estimated $57,000 in savings per ACT voter too. Whether one accepts the exact arithmetic or not, the broader argument he was making was clear and consistent; when government wastes less, ordinary people are materially better off.

He was unapologetic in his rejection of the moral framing that dominates the other side of the House, openly mocking, for example, the idea that kindness to criminals produces public safety.  – Ani O’Brien

The overall point he conveyed was that while others speak in abstractions about systems and suffering, he speaks in terms of incentives, behaviour, and outcomes. Love him or loathe him, ACT is not in government to posture. It is there to argue, relentlessly, that responsibility still matters and to laugh at those who think naming slugs is hardship. – Ani O’Brien

Nicola Willis spoke as the National Party’s chief enforcer, drawing a sharp and disciplined contrast between describing problems and actually fixing them. Chris Hipkins, she said, confuses sympathy with leadership. Labelling him “Hapless Hipkins,” she characterised his speech as one built on wishes (lower bills, nicer foreign leaders, fewer worries) without any explanation of how those outcomes would be delivered. Politics, she argued, is not a Hallmark card; it is a set of choices, trade-offs, and actions.

Willis refused to let Labour memory-hole its economic record and mocked the spectacle of a man who opposed every savings measure for two years suddenly “discovering” debt and inflation over summer.

Willis is unmatched at delivering speeches in the House and is skilled at pairing critique with substance. She showed this when she listed concrete reforms already underway including fast-track legislation, tax relief, Investment Boost, rates caps, RMA replacement, health targets, and a back-to-basics education, and declared that each one was opposed by Labour. The pattern, she argued, is unmistakeable; Hipkins claims to care about cost of living, yet resists every mechanism designed to address it. – Ani O’Brien

Her most crucial moment came when she spoke about her “normal friends”. These are the kind of people who don’t spend their evenings writing political Substacks. They watch Netflix and occasionally the news, but they are people exhausted by COVID, inflation, and economic uncertainty. She acknowledged how hard things have been without pretending hardship can be solved by kindness alone. This came with the warning not to be fooled by politicians who say “I hear you” but offer no solutions. Willis closed by arguing that New Zealand’s future depends on reform, growth, and courage, not wallowing in problems, but acting. –

So this is my take of the first part of the first day of Parliament in 2026. Luxon was competent. Willis prosecuted. Seymour mocked. Peters corrected. On the other side, Hipkins recycled, Swarbrick raged, and Davidson reached out. And Waititi hated. – Ani O’Brien

But clearly Fees Free was too much of a free lunch. Not enough discipline or focus. 

Now the problem is Winston and National have kept this policy alive, they’ve just changed it to the final year of study.

The idea is this will encourage students to finish their studies. 

The problem? It’s not doing that either. No evidence.

So, you’ve got to ask, with such a high price tag, is the whole thing worth having at all?  – Ryan Bridge

Congratulations on your new role as President of the Law Commission @JudithCollinsMP  & thank you for your service to New Zealand. It was a privilege to work for such a courageous, principled woman & I learned a lot in my year with you. Often I read things online or in the media about Judith & think “wow you people do not know her at all”. She is a tough gal and “Crusher” suits her, but she is also caring, wise, and super smart. What an immense loss to the National Party and Parliament. – Ani O’Brien

October 7 was the single deadliest attack on Jews since the Holocaust with more than 1,200 men, women and children brutally murdered by Hamas terrorists. Women were raped, and children and seniors were butchered in an orgy of hate, including a 91 year old Holocaust survivor.

Perpetrators of war crimes often go to great lengths to hide what they do. The Nazis went to extraordinary lengths to cover up and minimise the Holocaust. Milosevic and Pol Pot did the same.

It says something about the sheer depravity of Hamas that they did the opposite. One commander was heard to say, “Document the scenes of horror, now, and broadcast them on TV channels to the whole world”, and “Slaughter them. End the children of Israel”.

I have found the response to October 7 almost unfathomable, both here in New Zealand and worldwide.

Rather than unequivocal condemnation of clear human rights violations, war crimes and mass brutality on an industrial scale, the response from many people has been the opposite.

The Jewish people know all too well that there is always a “but”

“October 7 was wrong, but…

“It’s bad that over 250 hostages were ripped from their homes and taken to Hamas tunnels, but…”

“Rape and sexual violence is abhorrent, but…”

“Believe all women” – but not Jewish women.

Rather than spark a global wave of condemnation, October 7 perversely sparked an outpouring of anti-Semitic hatred, including here in New Zealand. – Chris Bishop

Antisemitism is the world’s oldest hatred. History shows it can never be defeated but right now New Zealand sadly seems to oscillate between apathetic acquiescence and even aggressive adoption.

Western societies were so traumatised by the horrors of the Shoah that we vowed, post 1945, to never let it happen again.

A new international order was built on a foundation of universal civil and political rights and the rule of law, the apotheosis being the United Nations.

In New Zealand we like to tell ourselves we were in the vanguard of these developments – and we were.

But antisemitism has always been present in New Zealand and sadly it always will be.

My great fear is that it is now too ingrained in the New Zealand psyche – that too many Kiwis are prepared to tolerate antisemitism rather than aggressively confront it and challenge it.

Every incidence of hate unchallenged makes the next one more likely. – Chris Bishop

In my view we need a renewed national and international effort to tackle antisemitism.

It’s time for us all to be “Upstanders”, not bystanders. – Chris Bishop

First, leadership matters. This is a time for moral clarity and for a clear enunciation of right and wrong.

People do rightly take their cues from people in positions of responsibility. Too many people in positions of responsibility have been too willing to indulge the politics of hate.

So, please, let’s drop the “From the River to the Sea” chants. The Jewish community has made it very clear what they think this chant means.

Political leaders in New Zealand involving themselves with this should know better. Can we make the “lived experience” of Jews matter too please?

Likewise, “long live the Intifada” and “globalise the Intifada” are not just simple protest slogans.

They mean violence and plenty of it.

When Jewish people hear these chants, what they hear is not a call for liberation, but a call for the denial of their basic humanity. – Chris Bishop

Now is not the time or place for a long digression into how the language of human rights has been perverted by post-modernist critical race theory and settler/colonial theory, but like so often, Jews have been singled out with a weird, obscene obsession. – Chris Bishop

It is our collective responsibility to pass the memories of the survivors onto the next generation. The memory of the survivors must become not their story, but our story, and the Holocaust must become not just a Jewish story or a Polish story or a Russian story or a Hungarian story but the story of all humanity. – Chris Bishop

We can stand up and advocate for free trade and being against US tariffs. At the same time make our points to the Americans but equally find a way to make sure that we continue to do trade and do well there,” he told me later.

It’s an ‘and’ world not an ‘or’ world. You’ve got to find a third way through. We’re not a medium power, we are a small power. We can express our values and we have our principles, but we can also be pragmatic about it. – Christopher Bishop

But the other main reason for climate-related deaths to fall so remarkably is the very thing warmists decry so loudly and so monotonously, i.e.,human industry,which is the very thing that keeps folk safer from the dangerous weather events that do occur.

It was the Netherlands’ rising wealth, for example, that allowed them to build the dikes and dams that protected their sub-sea level provinces from flooding. And mortality from extreme heat in the US for example, as heat waves have recently kicked up and more and more people have moved to live in desert regions, has fallen pretty much all over the country over the past 50 years. In this case, it’s because of things like air conditioning and better medicine that more and more people can afford.

And in the general case, as Bjorn Lomborg explains is succinctly, it’s “because richer and more resilient societies are much better able to protect their citizens.”

The climate catastrophists don’t want you to know this [points out energy advocate Alex Epstein] because it reveals how fundamentally flawed their viewpoint is. They treat the global climate system as a stable and safe place that we make volatile and dangerous. In fact, the global climate system is naturally volatile and dangerous—we make it liveablethrough development and technology—development and technology powered by the only form of cheap, reliable, scalable reliable energy that can make climate liveable for 7 billion people.
As the climate-related death data show, there are some major benefits—namely, the power of fossil-fuelled machines to build a durable civilisation highly resilient to extreme heat, extreme cold, floods, storms, and so on.

It’s not just that GDP is correlated with fewer climate-related deaths and disasters, although it is; it’s that the whole relationship between economic progress and human flourishing itself is actually causal. The richer and wealthier a society is, the better able it is to train the engineers and to raise the capital and to devise and build the infrastructure that allows human beings in all the many places on this fragile planet to master all the many things that nature is ready to throw at us.

And that’s one phenomenon that really is global. – Peter Cresswell

There’s a life lesson in this for all of us – wait around long enough, do things the right way, and you’ll make a comeback. And politics will be just a little less fun without Ju‑Co in it. – Heather du Plessis-Allan

Christopher Luxon’s response to the Mount Maunganui landslip has been impressive so far. He has spent a lot of time at the site, meeting and comforting the families of the victims and encouraging and supporting the emergency rescue workers, quietly and genuinely without grandstanding. His demeanour in Parliament when the House resumed this week was in a similar vein – a mixture of compassion and sorrow, commitment to support those who have been affected by the tragedy, and a willingness to thoroughly examine all aspects of what happened to make sure such events do not occur again. –   Peter Dunne

As with all major natural disasters, the country has come together for a brief period of shared grief and shock. That will not last, and people will soon get on with their lives again. But while immediate memories may begin to fade, the lessons learnt, and how the government and the other authorities responded, will linger longer in the public mind. And the judgment of whether Luxon is a good leader in a crisis will be determined less by his words and actions in the immediate aftermath than by the extent to which he is seen to have honoured the commitments he made. – Peter Dunne

 Iran’s circumstances are exceptional. The familiar Western assumption that a secular republic is the natural and inevitable destination for all societies fails to account for Iranian history, political culture, and the reality of where power currently lies. –   Lewis Holden

British history itself is a case in point: the development of parliamentary supremacy was a long-run process wherein the democratic chamber gradually gained the upper hand, and expanded its franchise to include all citizens. This did, admittedly, result in the abolition of the monarchy for a short period, then a revolution where parliament established absolute sovereignty.

Republics Are Not Inherently Democratic

Republics, by contrast, are not inherently democratic. The Islamic Republic of Iran is itself proof of that. Many authoritarian regimes call themselves republics or “democratic” republics, while systematically denying political freedom. What matters is not the label attached to the state, but whether power is constrained, pluralism protected, and political competition allowed to be real rather than theatrical. Iran today fails on all counts. –  Lewis Holden

For many Iranians, particularly among younger generations and the diaspora, the monarchy is no longer primarily associated with the Shah’s abuses, but with the idea of a secular national state that predates the Islamic Republic and stands outside its ideological framework.

Reza Pahlavi and the Case for a Non-Executive Monarch

Reza Pahlavi has consistently emphasised that he does not seek absolute or even executive power. He has presented himself as a potential constitutional monarch or transitional figurehead whose role would be to facilitate a peaceful transition to democratic governance, not to dominate it. That distinction is critical.

The argument for monarchy in Iran is not an argument for restoring the political system of the past, but for using a familiar national symbol to help escape the dead end of the present. –  Lewis Holden

Calls for an immediate transition to a secular republic are understandable, but they underestimate the damage done to Iran’s institutional and political culture. Iran currently lacks the trust, independent media, judicial credibility, and habits of compromise required to sustain a fully competitive republican system in the short term.

A constitutional monarchy, whether permanent or transitional, lowers the stakes of political competition during a fragile period. It allows Iranians to focus on building durable institutions rather than fighting over who symbolises the state.

Pragmatism Over Ideological Purity

Supporting the return of the Iranian monarchy is therefore not an endorsement of the Shah’s rule, nor an exercise in nostalgia. It is a pragmatic judgement about how Iran might realistically escape totalitarianism. It accepts that symbols, history, and legitimacy matter, and that democratic ideals sometimes require indirect paths rather than clean theoretical solutions. –  Lewis Holden