Who is the state really housing?
How New Zealand’s great housing experiment turned from sheltering the poor to subsidising the people who profit from them.
Grant McLachlan
4 days ago10 min read
A quagmire on a swampy battlefield: What Wolfbrook actually walked into at Pegasus
Two of New Zealand's premier residential golf courses collapsed twenty minutes apart in 2026. One is being cannibalised by a developer who has just donated to National. The other is in liquidation. The model is broken. The fix starts at Pegasus.
Grant McLachlan
May 2124 min read
Cannibalising Pegasus: How a 77-hectare slice of a championship course becomes a land bank
A developer has bought 77ha of Pegasus Golf Course — clubhouse, practice range, six holes — and wants it rezoned for housing. That contradicts the consent that built Pegasus, the zoning that protects it, and the reason the course exists at all.
Grant McLachlan
May 2015 min read
A very natural progression
A real estate empire’s fundraiser, its donations, its former chief executive and a friendly columnist all point the same way. The pattern is the story.
Grant McLachlan - Column
May 1623 min read
When the journalist is the target
How a year-old apology became a two-week pressure campaign — and how the architecture of New Zealand’s astroturf industry was used to take out a wahine Maori political editor in election year, while the Prime Minister smiled.
Grant McLachlan - Column
May 1228 min read
Going out — but staying home
New Zealanders eat out as often as Melbournians and drink as much. So why are the cinemas, stadiums, concerts and racecourses emptying out? The answer is not just money. It is time, fuel, congestion and exhaustion.
Grant McLachlan
Apr 2721 min read
Stupid is as stupid does: How the Police buried a complaint, only implicating themselves
Imagine committing a serious crime in front of a judge, registrar, and Crown Prosecutor. It was all documented and the Chief Justice and Criminal Bar Association were notified. Yet, the Police covered it up, which only exposed their complicity.
Grant McLachlan
Apr 2624 min read
The naming rights fire sale
New Zealand taxpayers and ratepayers have wasted more than a billion dollars building three stadiums — and handed the corporate branding rights away for what amounts to small change. There were better options - demonstrated in Melbourne and Los Angeles - but nobody in this country took notice.
Grant McLachlan
Apr 2537 min read
The rot in New Zealand sport hosting
This is the story of an attitude problem masquerading as an economics problem.
Grant McLachlan
Apr 2416 min read
The overhang trap: How National could lose power to its own coalition partners
We could have an 'overhang' Parliament of 130 MPs if National retains more electorates than its party vote would allow.
Grant McLachlan
Apr 2030 min read
The Bullshit Economy
New Zealand has constructed an elaborate economy out of its own inefficiencies.
Grant McLachlan
Apr 1725 min read
The gift you can’t refuse: How naming-as-performance is failing Maori culture, public infrastructure, and the Treaty alike.
New Zealand's infrastructure is being renamed not to locate people, but to perform cultural partnership — through a gifting process that forecloses dissent, rewards commercial relationships, and quietly hollows out the very culture it claims to honour.
Grant McLachlan
Apr 1518 min read
Medals, alleged war crimes, and the long road to court
Australia's most decorated living soldier was arrested last week. The alleged murders began a year before he was awarded the Victoria Cross. If the law had acted then, the medal would never have been awarded. That is not an argument for acquittal. It is an argument for why this trial matters.
Grant McLachlan
Apr 1329 min read
Crooked Cop Culture: How New Zealand Police condoned a culture of wrongful convictions
A generation of Supreme Court reversals has exposed a disturbing pattern at the heart of New Zealand policing — evidence fabricated, witnesses coerced, disclosures withheld, and vulnerable suspects railroaded into cells they had no business occupying.
Grant McLachlan
Apr 628 min read
New Zealand’s entrenched culture of corruption
Australia was settled by convicts.
New Zealand was settled by conmen.
While Australia convicts corruption, New Zealand condones it because it never knew any better.
Grant McLachlan
Mar 2743 min read
Rivers of wasted power: How New Zealand's three great hydro systems underperform their physical potential — and who benefits from the gap
If the Waikato/Tongariro, Clutha, and Waitaki hydro schemes operated to its potential, it would eliminate the need for coal and gas generation - and lower electricity prices substantially.
Grant McLachlan
Mar 2441 min read
Drowning in its own harbour: How Auckland's Waitemata Harbour crossings epitomise everything wrong with Auckland politics
In the history of large Western democracies, few cities of comparable size have managed to so comprehensively, repeatedly, and expensively fail themselves on a single piece of infrastructure as Auckland has with the crossing of its own harbour. The Waitemata Harbour is not a vast or treacherous body of water — it is barely a kilometre wide at the bridge point. Sydney crosses a harbour roughly five times wider. Yet Auckland has spent more than 160 years proposing, debating, di
Grant McLachlan
Mar 219 min read
Power Failure: What is wrong with the New Zealand electricity industry
Three decades after the most radical electricity market reforms in the developed world, New Zealanders are paying record prices for power generated by assets their grandparents built. Here is a comprehensive investigation into what went wrong — and what a genuine solution looks like.
Grant McLachlan
Feb 2813 min read
Manufacturing the poor: How neoliberalism built the welfare state it loves to hate
How neoliberal governments manufactured the social crises they campaign against — and why beneficiary bashing is the oldest con in New Zealand politics.
Grant McLachlan
Feb 2718 min read
The Cook Strait Tunnel: Has Elon Musk made it feasible?
The question shouldn't be “How much will it cost?”
The question should be “At what cost does this become feasible?”
Grant McLachlan
Feb 29 min read
