STITCH UP: New investigative podcast lays out the documentary trail behind a jury acquittal — and names names
Six-part series traces four years of complaints, staged incidents and internal police records through a former ACT Party deputy leader, two sitting Cabinet ministers and the current Police Commissioner
Grant McLachlan
3 days ago14 min read
The octopus that turned on National
Jordan Williams started as an apprentice to the men who wrote the playbook. Twenty years later he runs the octopus they trained him to build — and its tentacles now reach into National’s own polling and the Prime Minister’s “captain’s calls.” This is how the apprentice became the thing his masters never controlled.
Grant McLachlan
4 days ago13 min read
The one detail 1News left out
An undeclared conflict of interest doesn't stay hidden. It just waits for someone else to expose it — and turns the story into something else entirely.
Grant McLachlan
6 days ago3 min read
What would it take for National to lose Rodney?
Paul Goldsmith is weighing a switch from Epsom to Kaipara ki Mahurangi. History suggests the seat will not much care whether he fits.
Grant McLachlan
Aug 163 min read
Why did Chris Penk knock himself out?
A building industry and defence minister called a confidence vote he could not win, lost every portfolio he held within hours, and left behind more questions about who benefits than about himself.
Grant McLachlan
Aug 128 min read
Luxon panics and resorts to old MMP tricks
Fifty years after a fringe party decided Auckland Central, the Prime Minister is reaching for the same panic Richard Prebble once rode into Parliament.
Grant McLachlan
Aug 93 min read
The problem with MMP is Luxon, not MMP
A Prime Minister who can't manage his own coalition wants voters to fix his problem for him.
Grant McLachlan
Aug 64 min read
Police shouldn't get to decide who never sees a judge
The Solicitor-General's Prosecution Guidelines were meant to keep politics out of criminal justice. In practice, they let police quietly bury the cases that embarrass them.
Grant McLachlan
Aug 56 min read
Was New Zealand capitalism's soft underbelly?
China wrote down the industries it intended to dominate, then found a small, indebted trading partner willing to hand them over one contract at a time.
Grant McLachlan
Aug 38 min read
The tentacles of ACT: the lobbyists who never really left
A grocery lobbyist’s career move has drawn attention to one insider. Follow the money and the bylines and the network is much bigger, and it runs both ways through the Beehive.
Grant McLachlan
Jul 295 min read
Was Paul Henry ACT's dead cat?
The same Tuesday ACT unveiled its newest star candidate, the Herald confirmed the party’s own former president had pleaded guilty to further sex offending. Coincidence, or convenient timing?
Grant McLachlan
Jul 164 min read
Will backlash against donors decide this election?
Imagine gloating about donating tens of thousands of dollars to National, ACT and the Taxpayers' Union. Imagine paying thousands more for a selfie at the Prime Minister's table. Then imagine becoming the reason voters can't stand the government you paid for.
Grant McLachlan
Jul 1211 min read
Pegasus Brief — Poisoning the well
Pegasus residents have built a moral position stronger than anything the fast-track process can withstand on the merits — a council opposed, a mayor opposed, the local MP opposed, more than 16,000 signatures, and Golf New Zealand on the record.
Grant McLachlan
Jul 27 min read
How noise drowns democracy
How political noise is engineered to silence debate and freeze the vote.
Grant McLachlan
Jun 289 min read
An independent anti-corruption commission: who keeps blocking it?
Four parties have demanded one for three decades. Journalists and watchdogs back them. So why does an anti-corruption commission never survive a coalition negotiation?
Grant McLachlan
Jun 1311 min read
Who polices the Police Minister?
Mark Mitchell built a career on the cosy traffic between cops and a political party. Now he is shocked — shocked — that Labour has done the same.
Grant McLachlan
Jun 84 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
How to takeover TVNZ and RNZ with pocket change
Stuff was bought for $1. Newshub’s TV news operation was absorbed into it. NZME was infiltrated by Jim Grenon. Is TVNZ and RNZ next?
Grant McLachlan
Jun 310 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
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
