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
5 days ago18 min read
The silent 'H': How academic vanity rewrote the sound of New Zealand
For more than a century, New Zealanders — Maori and Pakeha alike — said "Wangaray". Then academics decided it was "Fongaray". Now media have been instructed to say "Fongaaray". The recordings beg to differ.
Grant McLachlan
Apr 49 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
The unintended consequences of the gang patch ban
New Zealand's gang patch ban has removed visible insignia from public view—but gang membership has grown by over 700. Has the legislation made communities safer, or has it simply made an existing threat harder to identify and more attractive to join?
Grant McLachlan
Jan 3128 min read
Would they go to jail? Comparing New Zealand's corruption gap with Australia's integrity framework
New Zealand lacks the robust anti-corruption infrastructure that exists across every Australian state and at the federal level.
Grant McLachlan - Column
Dec 7, 202533 min read
How much of our culture is contrived?
Is our changing culture making us any the wiser Grant McLachlan asks.
Grant McLachlan
Sep 21, 20234 min read
