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
3 hours ago15 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
12 hours ago12 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
1 day ago5 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
4 days ago23 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
6 days ago7 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
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
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
Who watches the watchmen? The slow death of New Zealand investigative journalism — and the industry that could bring it back
The lack of investigative journalism is costing New Zealanders - and it is cheaper that industries affected sponsor it.
Grant McLachlan
Apr 2313 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
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
Fame for sale: Why celebrity property hype should come with a warning label
New Zealand's property media is drowning in celebrity clickbait and engineered prestige — pumping prices with star power while buyers absorb the risk when the glamour fades.
Grant McLachlan
Apr 519 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
Two bills that could end New Zealand’s dirty politics era — if politicians have the courage to pass them
I have documented corruption and abuse of electoral systems. These two bills provide the tools to fix it.
Grant McLachlan
Mar 299 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
Toothless by design: how New Zealand’s competition law fails consumers — and why it must change
Since I was a law student, I have analysed the weaknesses in New Zealand's competition laws. Today, I dusted off a 30-year old law assignment and updated a bill to fix it.
Grant McLachlan
Mar 2510 min read
Price gouging at the pump: the regulator's empty tank
In Australia, the government regulator is investigating price gouging by petrol companies. Here, the Commerce Commission told us to download the Gaspy app. Why?
Grant McLachlan
Mar 2310 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
