Pros versus cons: Why Australia will likely never host a FIFA World Cup
The stadiums are built, the fans would come, and the sums could be made to work — the obstacle is the bidding process itself.
Grant McLachlan
10 hours ago8 min read
Why does the press conference now come before the disaster?
Prediction is the riskiest science in public life — but the political rewards for fronting a forecast have never been higher.
Grant McLachlan
2 days ago11 min read
Why does one poll count and another vanish?
When TOP recently cracked five percent, the newsrooms that live off polling looked the other way — just as they do when a rival wins an award.
Grant McLachlan
4 days ago6 min read
Is New Zealand really the most beautiful country in the world?
We sell the world a postcard and then punish anyone who turns it over. The published record — and our own talent — tells a harder story.
Grant McLachlan - Column
5 days ago4 min read
Why are New Zealanders turning on their politicians?
Two attacks in a year are a symptom. The disease is a political class that no longer feels within reach.
Grant McLachlan
Jun 44 min read
Is New Zealand the best democracy money can buy?
We are almost certainly not the most corrupt country in the world. We may simply be the cheapest to influence — and the least likely to check the receipts.
Grant McLachlan - Column
Jun 26 min read
Is the Crown really the villain of this story?
Liam Ratana aims his King’s Birthday anger squarely at the monarch. The historical record keeps pointing somewhere closer to home.
Grant McLachlan - Column
Jun 16 min read
The Bullshit Budget: who actually believes these numbers?
Arbitrary cuts, heroic forecasts and no map to the surplus — a Budget engineered to win a week of headlines before anyone does the maths.
Grant McLachlan
May 313 min read
Shield or weapon? Why the new stalking law arrived already broken
Today, 26 May 2026, a new stalking offence comes into force. The bar has been lowered, the police given new powers to dispose of complaints without a court, and the records kept selectively. What could possibly go wrong?
Grant McLachlan
May 269 min read
The kids who lit matches in the mine
A motorway extension, a mortgagee golf-course sale, a $40,250 donation and a rezoning bid — all inside the same fortnight. Horncastle and Brooks aren't the canary in the mine. They're the kids who lit matches inside the underground network Auckland built.
Grant McLachlan
May 247 min read
Vindicated, then banished: Three days that exposed Queenstown council’s playbook against its only watchdog
How a ratepayer-funded communications operation removed the journalist who proved it wrong — seventy-two hours before RNZ confirmed his reporting.
Grant McLachlan - Column
May 2012 min read
Donations don’t follow policy. Policy follows donations.
Stuff’s Glenn McConnell asked New Zealand’s biggest political donors why they give. He should have asked what they got.
Grant McLachlan - Column
May 195 min read
Cutting themselves out: how two Wellington ministers engineered their own unemployment
It started with the civil servants. Then the cafés, landlords, contractors and small businesses. Willis and Bishop spent thirty months gutting Wellington. On 7 November, every Wellingtonian they hurt gets to vote — and the arithmetic is unkind.
Grant McLachlan - Column
May 197 min read
Immigration is the economy, stupid!
“It’s the economy, stupid” is a phrase coined by Bill Clinton's campaign strategist James Carville in 1992, highlighting that voters prioritize their personal financial situation over all other issues. In New Zealand, immigration has been the driver of economic growth.
Grant McLachlan
May 174 min read
The great butter racket: How New Zealanders pay export prices for milk we produce
A pale $0.80-per-100g American import has done what a year of inquiries couldn't: shown New Zealanders how thoroughly the butter market is rigged against them. Why the press won't say so. And why the Finance Minister won't either.
Grant McLachlan - Column
May 147 min read
Days, not decades: Auckland already has the data to settle its bridge argument
The Mayor and the Transport Minister are arguing about whether to put a bridge or a tunnel parallel to the existing harbour crossing. I crunched the data that they ignored and modelled the solution.
Grant McLachlan
May 137 min read
Marking their own homework: Why the Anti-Corruption Taskforce pilot makes the case for a truly independent agency.
The Serious Fraud Office has just audited the public sector. The most useful thing in its report is the silence about who audits the SFO.
Grant McLachlan
May 74 min read
A simpler council? Auckland tried that — and got the country's biggest bribery case.
Hawke's Bay's mayors are being asked to design something Auckland already failed to deliver. The order of operations matters more than the merger.
Grant McLachlan
May 65 min read
A generation of ambition lost?
New Zealand's brain drain has been measured to exhaustion. What the academics keep missing is that the country is not just losing people — it is losing the kind of people who refuse to play in-house.
Grant McLachlan
May 36 min read
Auckland’s stadium decision is non-sensical — and the rest of the country is just as bad
We are about to spend more public money on more single-use stadiums to host fewer events for fewer people. Melbourne worked out the answer twenty-six years ago.
Grant McLachlan - Column
Apr 294 min read
