Pegasus Brief — Strength in numbers
Last night’s public meeting at Pegasus Bay School drew more than 450 people inside and another hundred or so outside, as well as media.
Grant McLachlan
1 day ago5 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
2 days ago6 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
3 days ago6 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
4 days ago3 min read
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
5 days ago10 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
Pegasus Brief — Read the room
The Pegasus story breaks into the national mainstream. Residents are organised. Wolfbrook stays silent. And the public record on the people behind Wolfbrook is worth a closer look.
Grant McLachlan
May 236 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
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
Has the ‘Butter Chicken Tsunami’ already arrived?
The data New Zealanders deserve to examine — without being shut down for asking.
Grant McLachlan
Apr 226 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
Seven steps to a productive economy
New Zealand's addiction to property speculation is strangling the productive economy. Seven practical reforms — from taxing land and capital gains to protecting elite soils and standardising public infrastructure — could redirect investment where it is actually needed.
Grant McLachlan
Apr 17 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
Thomas Bracken: Not Understood
Thomas Bracken wrote NZ's national anthem and coined 'God's Own Country.' He died in poverty, buried in a pauper's grave. His satire was so perfect that 126 years later, we still don't realize we're singing a protest song. The ultimate 'Not Understood.'
Grant McLachlan
Feb 1611 min read
When noise drowns out democracy: The predictable playbook of environmental campaigns
In environmental battles, the winner isn't determined by facts—it's determined by who controls the noise. Create enough controversy, enough division, enough exhaustion, and people simply tune out. By the time Sustainable Tarras' legitimate questions get answers, no one's listening anymore. It's a strategy I've seen deployed countless times. And it always works.
Grant McLachlan
Feb 136 min read
Democracy demands more than blind obedience
Road safety campaigner Geoff Upson raised valid concerns, yet the comment section revealed a disturbing civic illiteracy about how democracy actually works.
Grant McLachlan
Dec 15, 20253 min read
New Zealand's Property-Industrial Complex: A democratic warning
In his 1961 farewell address, President Eisenhower warned America about the military-industrial complex. In 2024, New Zealand faces its own existential threat: the property-industrial complex has consumed our democracy whole.
Grant McLachlan - Column
Dec 9, 20254 min read
