Wealthy Americans flock to New Zealand as MFAT considers handing NZ biometric data to the USA
Today's headline roundup
Golden Visas see wealthy Americans flock to NZ but former Minister warns it’s just a “flash in the plan”
- Erica Stanford’s announcement that she is personally chaperoning the world’s wealthiest and loosening residency requirements to a week a year is being met with a surge of wealthy Americans, and applications from China doubling.
- And while she has touted ~$3 billion of investment, claiming that they are interested in “healthcare” privatisation businesses, cloud and AI, it’s unclear whether this is a boon to New Zealand over the longer term.
Winston Peters’ MFAT may give US Government New Zealanders’ biometric data
New Zealanders' biometric information and other sensitive data may be handed over to the United States. MFAT has confirmed we are considering the move, reports RNZ’s Keiller MacDuff:
“New Zealand's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT) refused to clarify what safeguards were being considered to protect New Zealanders' private information or if it was aware of any ICE personnel stationed in New Zealand at present.”
What could go wrong with handing it to Trump & Palantir?
Banning and stifling peaceful protest is a hallmark of the Atlas Network. New Zealand continues it.
- “Noisy protests outside the Prime Minister’s official residence could lead to criminal charges”, writes Sam Sadcheva (Newsroom), “Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith announced the Government would introduce a new offence for engaging in disruptive demonstrations outside private homes.”
- Paul Goldsmith is the same Minister who tried to have police arrest the homeless 18 years ago, and succeeded this year.
- This week, Carmel Claridge from New Beginnings Court, Te Kooti o Timatanga Hou, in central Auckland, said: “The simple fact is there are no options for places to take them. So it’s all very well to say, ‘Oh police can issue a removal order and if someone fails to comply they can take them to a social service … I’d like to know which one the political commentators have in mind.”
- “Auckland University family law academic Professor Mark Henaghan says homelessness is one issue, and people who are violent or threatening on the streets is a different one – which already has legal measures in place to deal with.”
- George Monboit’s article on Atlas “What links Rishi Sunak, Javier Milei and Donald Trump” remains the definitive source on Atlas Network policy areas - all of which the current NZ Government Coalition has implemented.
BBC covers right wing think tank’s Project 2025, citing that over 51% of their policies have been implemented by Trump
- Just months before he won the 2024 presidential election, Trump publicly distanced himself from Project 2025, a 900-page policy “wish list” that some believed was a detailed blueprint for his second term.
- “I have no idea who is behind it,” he said at the time. “I disagree with some of the things they’re saying and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal.”
- But now that Trump is in office, many of the ideas suggested in Project 2025 have become reality.
- BBC’s report outlines how in short succession, over half of Project 2025’s plans have already been implemented by the Trump Administration, including a halt to billions of dollars of foreign aid, moves to end federal diversity, equity, inclusion (DEI) programmes, and an end to federal funding of public broadcasters NPR and PBS
“Hipkins’ speech wasn’t boring by accident”
Tim Murphy for Newsroom wrote in his piece this week: “Quite why his opponents got to have the first assessment and most prominent headlines on the Labour leader’s speech is a mystery of the political-media industrial complex,” describing prominent headlines.
He continued: “It’s superficially tempting to agree with Nicola Willis that Chris Hipkins’ state of the nation speech was “jelly”. Or with Winston Peters that it was one of “the most boring in recorded history.” Or with David Seymour that it was “lightweight..The speech was no headline-grabber. It was both deficient and disciplined. A relatively considered declaration of intent, a cold facecloth on the fevered political forehead of election year. It was Labour trying to convey maturity, a little contrition, humility and to claim it could be the adult in the room now and after the November 7 election.
“Whether it can hold that pose for nine months or will be allowed to, as demands for specific policies and revenue solutions build, is another thing.”
Janet Wilson, a former National Party communications contributor, argued that “Hipkins risks being overlooked by voters” if he continues what commentators are calling Labour’s small-target approach.
Other conservative commentators have lamented Labour’s political discipline, causing National, ACT and NZ First to largely flail in its three way pronged attacks, supported by affiliates such as the Taxpayers Union.
Bryce Edwards bats for NZ Parliament presence on X while ignoring key points. Stephanie Cullen’s counterpoint is worth reading
In a recent article, Bryce Edwards argues that NZ Parliament should not have left X, citing “650,000 Kiwi users”. Edwards seems to omit that reports cite 76% of X users are bots which would make even a conservative estimate 170,000 Kiwis.
It also comes after Edwards lay blame for Moa Point at the feet of Tamatha Paul and her colleagues without any later acknowledgement that the vote NZCPR described never even happened as described - as confirmed by left and right wing councillors and the meeting minutes.
On X, Stephanie Cullen writes:
“Discounting for now that House presence on X requires Parliamentary staffers to use a site that features increasing amounts of racism, Nazism, queerphobia, disinformation, misinformation, rape and pedophilic content, and other stressors and threats to employee wellbeing (which is the duty and primary consideration of David Wilson).
Parliament’s bureaucratic arm is perfectly entitled to make political decisions when and where they affect his administrative duties. It misrepresents the situation to pose leaving X as a political decision arising from a neutral stance; it is a political decision to have a presence on X at all.”
New Zealand’s meat exports are experiencing higher profits, but workers are having their hours cut and debt increase
Blayne Slabbert for The Press reports “Meat workers are having their hours slashed and are taking on debt to pay the bills as processing plants cut back their operating days, even while tight global supplies push New Zealand’s red meat export returns to record levels.”
Tight global supply is responsible for the price boom even as volumes remain steady/fall.
Separately, farmers, fresh from winning a battle to ensure Chris Bishop doesn’t tax water in future (a clause he inserted into the RMA), are calling on the government to ban a loophole that allows meat and eggs to bypass local welfare standards.
Other: Luxon ditches his KPIs etc.
- National’s ditching of its “Quarterly Plans”, heralded by Luxon as about bringing energy, delivery and outcomes to the country, changes little in practice. National has failed on most of its KPIs, including job beneficiaries and police recruits. The only KPI it unequivocally “succeeded in” was reducing emergency housing, which it celebrated in 2024, even as homeless advocates were warning homelessness was increasing in parallel.
- Meridien warns energy bills could rise 7% as the gentailer records a bumper profit of $227 million. Note: It’s already up 11.5% this year (2026)
- Donald Trump is now selling watches during Fox News ad breaks
How National are selling their homelessness plan
Cartoons
