THE EXTRACTORS

This is the last Watchdog before the November 2026 election and I’ve been thinking of one word to sum up the 2023-26 Coalition Government and I’ve settled on “extractors”. As in: pushing extractive industries; extracting NZ from all commitments to fighting climate change; extracting  pay equity from low paid women workers; extracting NZ from smoke free goals; extracting pay and conditions from workers; extracting Treaty rights from Māori; extracting money from the poor to give to the rich (such as transnational corporations and local Big Business, landlords, tobacco companies; the military); extracting the right to take legal action that the Government and Big Business don’t like; extracting as much as possible from corporate lobbyists; extracting NZ from any pretence of an independent foreign policy.

This is a Government which is in love with extractive industries like mining or (hypothetical, probably imaginary) oil and gas deposits. It seeks to expedite a return to NZ’s past of digging big holes and tunnels to rip out coal and gold, sending the profits overseas to their transnational corporate owners and leaving us with, at best, big holes, or, at worst, long term environmental damage. I’m pleased to say that this has provoked major public opposition, as it should.

While I’m at it, a heartfelt shout out to the late great Sam Neill for his steadfast opposition to the proposed Santana gold mine in Central Otago. Anyone who cops insults from that flatulent blowhard, Shane Jones, should wear them as badges of honour. Watch Sam’s short documentary “Into The Dunstan Mountains”.²

This mania to dig and/or drill runs in parallel with the Government’s pigheaded and backwards-looking policy of extracting NZ from its international commitments to combat climate change—which is hitting the country hard, with a significant storm every eight days on average at present—and extracting itself from what had been tentative but promising progress towards developing alternative clean energy sources and electrification of the vehicle fleet.

Out Of Gas

Naturally, this came back to bite it in 2026 when the US/Israeli war on Iran suddenly led to a global fuel supply crisis (the Iranians have realised that they don’t need nuclear weapons—real or imaginary—when all it takes to get the world’s undivided attention is to grab it by the short and curlies, otherwise known as the Strait of Hormuz. Before this most ill-advised of American wars, that Strait was open to all. Not anymore). NZ, at the end of the global supply chain, went into panic mode and started talking about resurrecting things like carless days from the 1970s’ Middle East oil crisis.

It didn’t come to that (not yet, anyway) but, rather than resume the development of alternative energy sources like solar and wind, the Government announced a plan to spend more than $1 billion to build a terminal to process imported liquefied natural gas (LNG) as a back-up in the event of a dry year for our hydro-electricity system which provides the bulk of our power. It is proposed as a contingency asset that may never be used.

From where would this LNG be imported? The world’s two biggest exporters are the US and Qatar. One of those options would put NZ further at risk of the whims and impulses of Donald Trump; the other one would see us dependent on a country whose LNG infrastructure and tankers have been regularly targeted and damaged by Iran, in retaliation for hosting the biggest US military base in the Middle East. Great choices!

And the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing. At the same time as the LNG terminal plan was announced, the Government’s rubber stamp Overseas Investment Office (OIO) approved a proposed transnational-owned data centre in Southland that could use up to one gigawatt of electricity per year, if required (nearly double the usage of the transnational-owned Bluff aluminium smelter, which is already the country’s single biggest user of electricity, charged at an ultra-low price. Meaning that one province alone—Southland—would host the country’s two biggest electricity users, consuming a significant percentage of the country’s total electricity production on a 24/7/365 basis).

Facilitating Foreign “Investment”

Which brings us to the Government’s policy towards foreign “investment”. No surprises there—it can’t get enough and has gone to great lengths to facilitate it. Act Leader David Seymour got the Overseas Investment Act amended yet again (it was last amended under the previous Labour government) on a pretty much anything goes basis. And if anyone is churlish enough to oppose this, he is happy to try and shut them down, with a little help from his friends, the transnational corporations.

A classic example happened in 2026 - the Tairawhiti/East Coast region has been repeatedly hammered by extreme weather events which cause life-threatening landslides and floods of forestry debris (called slash), with resultant massive property damage. The locals have got heartily sick of being left with the mess, and pressured the Gisborne District Council to do something about it. The offending forestry companies, primarily foreign-owned, were ordered to clean it up, and the Council threatened to hold individual directors responsible, not just their companies.

This led to the NZ subsidiary of Japanese-owned Sumitomo Forestry writing to Seymour, who duly wrote to the District Council to go easy on the forestry companies, because it creates “uncertainty” for overseas investors. “I would like to remind you that the Government’s objective is for New Zealand to welcome those wanting to invest capital here if there is no risk to national security”. This is very ironic, because forestry slash has been shown, time and again, to pose a threat of both death and mass destruction—the very definition of national security. To its credit the District Council did not back down.

The Government is keen to be seen “getting things done.” And more and more of this is being done under its Fast Track process. This covers a sweeping range of projects, from roads to aquaculture, housing to energy plants and mines. Basically, this is plunging far back into the past to the good old days (not) when “development” was bulldozed through, ignoring any other considerations. I swear I can hear the posthumous cackle of delight from Piggy Muldoon at his Think Big philosophy being resurrected nearly 50 years later. There’s even the same use of two-word slogans. Piggy had Think Big; this crowd has Fast Track.

And, very predictably, Fast Track is being ever-expanded, so that big housing developers are now seeking to use it to get their subdivisions or new towns built despite them having been previously rejected by local councils or panels of experts. A major worry in some of these break neck housing projects is that the necessary infrastructure is not being built at the same pace. There is a major irony here—the Government came to power in 2023 promising a multi-billion rollout of major road projects. But, come 2026, it had to admit that very few of them have been started and some of them may never start. It lamely described the reason as “we were very ambitious”. You don’t say. How about instead saying “we were baldfaced liars”.

In The Pocket Of Lobbyists

I can’t think of any Government in my lifetime that has been so openly in the pocket of interest group lobbyists. It used to be behind closed doors but not with this bunch. Think about any policy of this Government and the fingerprints of lobbyists and interested parties are all over it. Big business; employers; landlords; the oil and gas industry; miners; developers; the fishing industry; the road transport industry; racists; private education providers; the gun lobby; etc, etc, etc. In all of these areas, Government policies will make people worse off, substantially so in some cases. Not to mention the environment and the climate.

I wanted to look at policy changes brought about by collusion between the Government and lobby groups and interested parties which will do much more than make people worse off but will actually kill them. For example, I could have chosen the increase in speed limits on the roads; I could have chosen the easing of gun laws (which saw the very unusual spectacle of a Rightwing government openly at odds with the cops). But the killer industry which wins hands down is the tobacco industry. I wrote about this at length in Watchdog 167³, so I won’t go over all that again.

But there has been no shortage of more recent examples, such as the one I’ve mentioned above of David Seymour acting as a messenger boy for the transnational forestry companies. The classic example, of course, was the Government killing the court case brought by veteran activist Mike Smith against the country’s biggest CO₂ emitters, most of whom are foreign-owned. It emerged that two of the corporate defendants—Fonterra and Z Energy—covertly lobbied the Prime Minister to knock the case on the head, saying it was bad for business. The Government duly obliged, faithfully repeating the reasons supplied to it by Big Business.

Gutless

When thinking about one word to sum up the Government’s foreign policy, the most apt is “gutless.” Israel and the US launched a surprise attack on Iran in June 2025, during negotiations between the US and Iran. This 12-day mini-war was just an appetiser for what was to come in 2026. New Zealand did not condemn that unprovoked Israeli/US attack. Later in 2025, Winston Peters used his speech to the United Nations’ General Assembly to announce that New Zealand would not recognise a Palestinian state, further sucking up to the US, and placing NZ firmly on the wrong side of history (unlike many of our traditional friends and allies).

When Israel and the US treacherously launched a full-on war with Iran in February 2026 (once again during negotiations), New Zealand not only did not condemn the aggressors but, instead, condemned Iran for fighting back by launching missiles and drones at both Israel and its Arab neighbours who host the US bases from which the US attacked Iran. So, the Government condemned the victim, not the attackers.

In April 2026, none other than Winston Peters, Minister of Foreign Affairs (and former Deputy PM), released emails revealing that PM Luxon had wanted to explicitly support the Israeli/US war and had to be dissuaded from doing so by Peters. This led to scathing political and media criticism of Luxon:

The revelation that Prime Minister Christopher Luxon wanted to express ‘explicit support’ for the Iran War just days after it broke out is shocking but not surprising. Luxon gave us a pretty good insight into his instincts on foreign policy in a weekly post-Cabinet media conference in early March.

There, he said New Zealand supported ‘any actions’ to stop Iran getting nuclear weapons and did not clearly deny that this catch-all included carpet bombing the country. Luxon was quick to walk his support for ‘any actions’ back with the explanation that he ‘misspoke’ but the damage was already done. His response was widely considered to be sub-optimal, at best, around the Parliamentary precinct.

… This situation could reflect two things; either a complete relationship breakdown between Luxon and Peters or a staggering lack of political judgment on Luxon’s part. It could be both. Luxon spent much of his adult life in the United States and seems to identify - at least instinctively - with US patrimony more than New Zealand’s. This is a huge problem for a Prime Minister whose personal popularity appears to be on a downward trajectory in an election year where National has much ground to make up."

(Post, 30/4/26, Anneke Smith)⁴

Crawling To Trump & Tech Bros

This crawling to Trump and the US manifests itself in all sorts of ways:

Treasury estimates a proposed Digital Services Tax would have pulled in $479 million from these firms over the next four years—but (in May 2025), under the shadow of Donald Trump’s tariff threats, the Government announced it was dropping the Bill from its legislative agenda. Without it, the firms will continue paying minimal tax. According to their latest annual accounts, Google, Amazon, Facebook and Tesla paid just $8m tax between them, off combined New Zealand revenues of $3 billion. Only Microsoft recognised a bigger $15m tax liability.

The now redundant Treasury forecast of $479m income from a Digital Services Tax indicates officials expected the big companies to average $4b a year revenue through to 2029, which would have been taxed at 3%. But the sight of all the tech moguls lined up on the stage for Trump’s inauguration (in 2025) has been a daunting one for smaller governments; tax specialists are adamant that’s the main factor in Revenue Minister Simon Watts deciding to withdraw the Digital Services Tax Bill"

(Newsroom, 22/5/25, Jonathan Milne)⁵

The US is after NZ’s critical minerals (along with those of every other country). Check out Eliot Pryor’s piece on Greenpeace.org.⁶ The Government is very keen to curry favour with Trump’s US, including its demands that allies drastically increase military spending. The “new normal” of our foreign policy is the 2025 decision to spend up to $12b on the military over the next several years, which perfectly demonstrates the priorities of this Government which is slashing spending across the board in sectors like health and education.

“Freeloaders”

Finance Minister Nicola Willis announced, in 2026, that thousands of public servants will be made redundant—but not from the military or spy agencies. And what thanks has NZ received from all this grovelling? Trump slapped us with tariffs, just like he did to every other country, friend or foe. Initially it was 15%, then reduced to 10% and, most recently, increased to 12.5%. There is no more talk of a free trade agreement with the US, spoken about for decades by both major NZ parties as the “holy grail.” Guess we’ll just have to make do with the ones with China and India.

Spending on the military will be increased to 2% of gross domestic product (GDP) over the next eight years (it currently sits at around 1%), which is a major increase in NZ terms, particularly for a country that faces no discernible military threat. And what thanks did NZ get for this from the US? In May 2026, Pete Hegseth, the cartoonish Secretary of War, said that countries spending less than 3.5% of their GDP on the military were “freeloaders.”

He said this at a high-powered international gathering in Singapore at which NZ’s Minister of Defence, Chris Penk, was present and, when asked by a NZ journalist if he was calling NZ a “freeloader”, he replied yes. Penk obligingly fell into line and said that NZ needed to have “a conversation” about our long-entrenched and sacrosanct nuclear free law.

This was too much for even a pro-US Tory like PM Luxon:

Asked if New Zealand had acted as ‘freeloaders’ over the past three decades, Luxon said: ‘No, absolutely not’ … Addressing the nuclear-free issue, Luxon said ‘we’re gonna maintain our position. We’ve got a long-standing position from ’87, it’s across the political spectrum’, he told Newstalk ZB. ‘Whether it’s nuclear propulsion or nuclear armed, that’s something that we’re not up for’.

Luxon said he was ‘very proud of our nuclear-free position, and it ain’t changing while I’m Prime Minister.’

(Stuff, 2/6/26)⁷

New Zealanders don’t like being bullied by Americans—it didn’t work in the 80s when we went nuclear-free and it still doesn’t work today. The pro-US PM wisely recognised that, at least in this case.

No More “Independent Foreign Policy”

We have a Prime Minister who “spent much of his adult life in the United States and seems to identify - at least instinctively - with US patrimony more than New Zealand’s.”⁸ We also have a Minister of Foreign Affairs who has devoted decades to serving the US Empire in every possible way. As Audrey Young wrote in the New Zealand Herald:

Peters has wasted no time in refreshing New Zealand’s foreign policy direction, away from so-called independent foreign policy and firmly into the orbit of the United States, Australia and the UK.

In a speech to foreign diplomats in Wellington, he minimised the notion that New Zealand had an independent foreign policy by acknowledging that every country had one. On security, he pledged to ‘reinvigorate’ New Zealand’s engagement with the United States, Five Eyes ‘and other key security partners in the region and beyond’.⁹

Peters is not only pro-US; he is pro-Trump. The most high-profile example of this was his March 2025 sacking of Phil Goff—a Cabinet colleague of Peters in the early 2000s’ Labour government—as High Commissioner to the UK, because Goff had publicly criticised Trump. Peters said that did not represent the view of the Government. Peters and New Zealand First have taken to using the language of Trump’s MAGA, hence all this imported American culture war sloganeering about “woke.”

The Government has maintained a conspicuous silence about all of Trump’s never-ending series of outrages. It has not criticised, let alone condemned, anything done by the US (or Israel), either collectively or individually from Luxon or Peters. It has reversed NZ into being, once again, the most loyal junior satellite of the US. But there may be a silver lining in that $12b spend up on the military—should Trump ever decide that he’ll make us an offer we can’t refuse and wants NZ for a golf course, we may have something with which to defend ourselves against the invading Yanks. I’m being perfectly serious. With friends like these, who needs enemies.

Anti-Democratic

Fundamentally, this is an anti-democratic Government. Democracy is the most important thing that this bunch of extractors are seeking to painfully extract from the New Zealand people, whether by Fast Track, interfering in the court process, or serving unelected transnational corporations and their lobbyists, rather than voters. Or by straight out frontal assault on the voting-enrolment process, which will disenfranchise many thousands of voters (whom David Seymour dismissed as “dropkicks”—a slur on a par with Christiopher Luxon’s use of “bottom feeders” in another context).

The list of the crimes of this Government could go on and on (have a look again at the list in the first paragraph of this article) but—pun very much intended—what I’ve given is merely an extract. It has caused an impressive amount of damage in just three years and it would be a safe bet that it will carry on in the same bulldozer fashion if it wins another three. The top priority at this election is to get rid of the bastards.

Watchdog 172 -- August 2026

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