Navigation for News Categories
Comment & Analysis
Featured Comment & Analysis stories
Playing politics with AI: Why NZ needs rules about ‘fake’ images in election campaigns
Seeing is no longer believing in the age of images and videos generated by artificial intelligence.
-
Australian election on a knife edge, thanks to Donald Trump
30 Apr 2025Analysis - Nothing is certain in politics, and Labor could still lose the election as polls are known to get it wrong in Australia, writes Corin Dann. Audio
-
Willis warns of a ‘tight’ budget to come, but NZ should be going for productivity, not austerity
30 Apr 2025Analysis - Finance Minister Nicola Willis has warned her 2025 "Growth Budget" will be "one of the tightest budgets in a decade".
-
Aside from Anzac Day, NZ has been slow to remember military veterans
28 Apr 2025Expansion of the term 'veteran' will add 100,000 service people, without automatically changing existing entitlements.
Comment & Analysis headlines with summaries.
-
Debut album by There's A Tuesday is wildly impressive
27 Apr 2025The Sampler - The Christchurch band shows off some fantastic songwriting on Blush, local dub merchants Pitch Black release a collection of top-tier remixes and American indie folk band Beirut…
-
What will make rents affordable in NZ?
Analysis: Research has found the accommodation supplement, which costs almost $2 billion a year, might not be an effective tool in addressing the housing affordability crisis.
-
NZ's over-reliance on roads for freight means natural disasters hit even harder. But there is a fix
20 Apr 2025Analysis - New Zealand's long coastlines could help.
-
Trump's retribution sends a chilling message to dissenters
13 Apr 2025Analysis - Donald Trump's White House has a threatening message for anyone who might even be perceived to disagree with the president.
-
Aussie larrikins Babe Rainbow make silly songs with substance on their sixth surf-rock opus
20 Apr 2025Tony Stamp checks out the latest release from Babe Rainbow, the reissue of Unrest's final album and DJ Koze's kaleidoscopic new LP.
-
WTF: Weird Tariff Frenzy - what it means for NZ and the world
Analysis: The US and China are head-to-head in a trade war, and as the saying goes 'when two elephants fight, it's the grass that gets trampled'.
-
'I will never attend an Anzac Day service at the Shrine again'
Analysis - The ugliness on display at Melbourne's war memorial has shaken the Aboriginal community, Indigenous veterans especially. Video
-
Women still locked out of church leadership, despite its impact on their lives
24 Apr 2025Will Pope Francis's successor continue, cement or narrow his reforms?
-
JD Vance: Donald Trump's global 'bad cop'
21 Apr 2025Analysis - The ambitious 40-year-old has taken the historically thankless job of US vice president by the scruff of the neck.
-
The real strategy behind Russia's sudden Easter truce announcement
20 Apr 2025Analysis - Putin's ceasefire is a logistical nightmare, and will likely be used to support the false notion Kyiv does not want his war to stop, writes CNN's Nick Paton Walsh.
-
What's the message as Ukraine parades Chinese nationals who fought for Russia?
18 Apr 2025Analysis: Putting prisoners of war in front of media is almost certainly a violation of international humanitarian law.
-
Owners are officially no longer responsible for tourism accidents on their land - but they never really were
15 Apr 2025Analysis - Reforms mean landowners will no longer be responsible for tourism-related injuries on their properties. But it's not clear this has ever really been a problem.
-
Damning study of online abuse of female MPs shows urgent legal reform needed
10 Apr 2025Analysis: Recently released research found online threats of physical and sexual violence have caused those MPs to feel fearful, anxious and distressed.
-
RNZ celebrates 100 years - where to now for the national broadcaster?
13 Apr 2025Comment - Paul Thompson, chief executive and editor-in-chief of RNZ, takes a look at the state of journalism in 2025 and the role RNZ has in its future.
-
Six ideas NZ could borrow from Australia to cut smoking rates
8 Apr 2025New Zealand seems unlikely to achieve its goal to reduce smoking to 5% of the population or less.
-
Why Trump's tariffs highlight the need for NZ to build local capacity
7 Apr 2025Analysis: When retail executives start swearing during earnings calls, something is clearly amiss.
-
As more communities leave, what happens to the land?
11 Apr 2025Analysis - New research explores how land use changes after humans leave.
-
Peters at 80: 50 years of political comebacks
9 Apr 2025Analysis: Like a Pied Piper in a double-breasted pinstripe suit, he led the disgruntled all the way to the ballot box at the last election, Grant Duncan writes.
-
Australia election: Dutton's nightmare week as candidates meet for first debate
9 Apr 2025Analysis - As Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton met for their first debate before the 3 May Australia election, Dutton has had just about as bad a start to his campaign as could possibly be imagined…
-
Five years on from its first Covid lockdown, NZ faces hard economic choices
4 Apr 2025Analysis - Five years after New Zealand's first Covid-19 lockdown, it is clear there will be no going back to the pre-pandemic "normal".
-
NZ's Broadcasting Act is as old as Video Ezy. We need media reform for the streaming age
In 2025, New Zealanders' viewing and listening habits are radically different to what they were in the late 1980s.
-
Art for art’s sake? How to maintain integrity and still make money
31 Mar 2025Does an overemphasis on profit make cultural groups wary of market and strategy, hampering innovation in the art and culture sector?
-
Allies flinch as Trump blows up the West as we know it
Analysis - Some of the US's closest friends are rethinking their relationship in the face of isolationism.
-
Musk's grandfather and the 1930s movement aiming to merge the US, Canada and Greenland
A movement that wanted to merge North America into one nation and extend its borders might sound incredibly familiar.
Top News stories
- Weather live: State of emergency continues as heavy rain, gales hit South Island, Wellington
- Australia's election tightly poised
- Regulatory Standards Bill claim accepted for urgency by Waitangi Tribunal with 12,000 claimants signed on
- Release plan for Joseph James Brider 'a very good one', insists Corrections
- Cricketer Vaibhav Suryavanshi age controversy explained