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The Tasman Daily, Auckland (2026)

03/03/2026

Donald Trump this week ordered every US government agency to immediately stop using Anthropic — the company behind the AI model Claude, which is used by millions of people worldwide including here in New Zealand and Australia. The reason: Anthropic refused to let the Pentagon use its AI for fully autonomous weapons — meaning AI, not humans, making battlefield kill decisions — and for mass domestic surveillance of American citizens. The Pentagon gave Anthropic a 5pm Friday deadline to drop those limits. Anthropic said no. Trump responded by declaring the company a national security risk — a designation usually reserved for foreign adversaries like China and Russia — and banned it across the entire US government.

Within hours, OpenAI's Sam Altman announced a deal with the Pentagon for its AI to be used on classified military networks. Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth renamed the Pentagon the "Department of War" and said Anthropic's stance was "fundamentally incompatible with American principles." Elon Musk — who owns a competing AI company — had been publicly bashing Anthropic on X for weeks, calling it a company that "hates Western civilisation." The question underneath all of this is one that will define the next 50 years: should artificial intelligence be allowed to make autonomous decisions about who to kill in a war? Anthropic said no. The US government said that answer was unacceptable. Make of that what you will.

👍 Like = NO, AI should never make autonomous kill decisions
❤️ Love = YES, the military must have unrestricted tools

03/03/2026

Australia's Defence Minister confirmed this week that Australia did not support the initial US-Israeli strikes on Iran — but crucially did not rule out future military involvement. Opposition foreign affairs spokesperson Ted O'Brien said he sees "no reason to oppose Australian involvement" if it serves the national interest. Opposition Leader Angus Taylor welcomed the killing of Iran's Supreme Leader on live television: "I welcome the fact that the Ayatollah has seen his demise." Independent Senator David Pocock was almost alone in saying Australia should learn from the past and stay out.

The last time Australia was asked this question it said yes. That was Iraq in 2003. The justification was weapons of mass destruction — which didn't exist. That war lasted 20 years, killed hundreds of thousands of civilians, destabilised an entire region, and cost Australia billions of dollars and the lives of its soldiers. Australia is still processing the moral and strategic consequences of that decision. Now, 23 years later, with a new war in a neighbouring country, one side of Australian politics is already signalling it would support joining — without a UN mandate, without congressional approval, and based on the word of a US president who announced the war in an edited social media video from his private club in Florida. Before a single Australian soldier is committed, every Australian deserves a clear answer to one question: what did we learn from Iraq?

👍 Like = YES, Australia must stay out of this war
❤️ Love = NO, Australia must stand with its allies

03/03/2026

Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown — blunt, combative, unfiltered, and the man who once signed off his Christmas message with a dig at Wellington — is now being seriously discussed in political circles as a potential Prime Minister candidate. A Sunday Star-Times column this week asked the question out loud: "Watch out Wellington: Wayne Brown for Prime Minister?" Brown has spent three years as Auckland's mayor doing things the political establishment considers deeply unfashionable — saying exactly what he thinks, refusing to speak in bureaucratic language, and making powerful enemies without appearing to care in the slightest. His financial backers include Graeme Hart and Marc Ellis. His enemies include essentially every Wellington insider.

Brown represents something a lot of New Zealanders are clearly hungry for — a politician who actually sounds like a human being rather than a media-trained spokesperson reading from talking points. Whether that translates into good governance at a national level is a separate question entirely — his Auckland mayoralty has been genuinely controversial, with critics pointing to management failures and an abrasive style that has made collaboration difficult. But in a political landscape where Luxon gives five non-answers about a war and Seymour says homeless people live like medieval kings, the appeal of someone who just says what he thinks is easy to understand. Would you vote for Wayne Brown as Prime Minister?

👍 Like = YES, give me Wayne Brown over the current lot
❤️ Love = NO, he'd be a disaster as PM

02/03/2026

At ACT's State of the Nation in February, David Seymour announced that if ACT gets its way in the 2026 election, the Ministry for Ethnic Communities, the Ministry for Women, the Ministry for Pacific Peoples, the Office for Seniors, the Ministry of Youth Development, and Te Puni Kōkiri — the Ministry for Māori Development — will all be merged into the Ministry for Culture and Heritage. Gone. Combined. Folded into a single entity. The dedicated government infrastructure for women, Māori, Pacific peoples, seniors, and youth — all abolished, all at once, as a cost-saving exercise. This is the Deputy Prime Minister's election policy.

To understand what this means in practice: the Ministry for Women exists because women still earn less than men, are more likely to be victims of domestic violence, and face structural barriers in health, housing, and employment. Te Puni Kōkiri exists because Māori have significantly worse health, housing, and justice outcomes than the rest of the population. The Office for Seniors exists because older New Zealanders face specific challenges in retirement, healthcare, and elder abuse. Seymour's view is that these dedicated institutions are unnecessary bureaucracy. Critics say abolishing them is not a policy position — it is a statement about whose problems the government considers worth solving. What do you think?

👍 Like = NO, these ministries exist for real reasons
❤️ Love = YES, merge them and cut the bureaucracy

02/03/2026

New Zealand's four big electricity companies — Contact, Genesis, Meridian and Mercury — collectively earned $547 million in profits last year while sending New Zealand households another round of price increase letters. One in five Kiwis went to bed early last winter to stay warm. One in four went without heating when it was cold. These are not statistics about poverty in a developing country — these are New Zealand families, in 2026, rationing electricity because the companies that sell it are profitable beyond comprehension. The New Zealand government owns a majority stake in some of these companies. It is collecting dividends from the firms charging its own citizens too much to heat their homes.

Shane Jones from NZ First has floated taking the electricity companies back into public hands. David Seymour shot it down immediately, saying it would "shock the market." Luxon has said nothing of substance. Hipkins has been cautious. And so every month, the gentailers bank another record profit, send out another price increase letter, and four million New Zealanders keep paying more for a system their taxes and their parents' taxes built. The hydro dams didn't appear from nowhere. They were built with public money, gifted to private companies, and are now being used to extract billions from the public that paid for them. At what point does that stop being economics and start being theft?

👍 Like = YES, bring the electricity companies back into public ownership
❤️ Love = NO, nationalisation would be a disaster

02/03/2026

A report published this morning reveals that Christopher Luxon presented Donald Trump with a gift at the APEC summit in South Korea — and received nothing in return. New Zealand is still being charged a 15% tariff on US exports, five percentage points higher than Australia's 10% rate. The government spent months cultivating a relationship with the Trump administration, sending senior ministers to Washington, offering warm words publicly, and apparently bringing gifts to summits. The outcome: a worse tariff rate than our nearest neighbour, no diplomatic wins to show for it, and now a war the government won't clearly take a position on.

Helen Clark called the government's response to the Iran strikes a "disgrace" on national radio. Opposition parties said the statement "undermines international peace." And former diplomats have pointed out that New Zealand was given no advance notice of the strikes — suggesting our carefully cultivated relationship with Washington is less close than the government implied. Small countries cannot control whether wars start. But they can control whether they spend political capital wisely, whether they say clear things when clarity is required, and whether their citizens get value for the diplomatic effort being made in their name. On all three counts, the evidence is not encouraging.

👍 Like = YES, Luxon's diplomacy has failed New Zealand
❤️ Love = NO, NZ is doing the best it can

02/03/2026

Six weeks into his second term, Donald Trump has started a war with Iran without Congressional approval, announced it in an edited video from his private golf club in Florida, and retreated from public view while three Americans died. Dubai's international airport — where hundreds of thousands of Kiwis and Aussies connect every year — was struck by Iranian missiles. Oil prices surged 12% in four days. The Strait of Hormuz, through which 20% of the world's oil flows, is effectively closed. His military accidentally shot down its own government's border patrol drone with a laser. His Health Secretary cancelled $2.7 billion in cancer, HIV and Alzheimer's research. His administration banned the AI company that said no to autonomous kill weapons. And his tariffs are hitting New Zealand harder than Australia — after the Prime Minister brought him a gift at APEC and came home with nothing.

At home in America, two people are dead at a Texas bar after a gunman dressed in Iranian symbols opened fire the night after the war started. Congress is trying to pass a resolution to stop the war — Trump will veto it. A Columbia University student was arrested by immigration agents claiming to look for a missing person and only released after the mayor called Trump personally. The Epstein files are out but thousands of pages are still redacted. Bill Gates admitted Epstein had leverage over him. The WEF CEO resigned. Peter Mandelson was arrested. Both Clintons were deposed in the same 48-hour window. This is six weeks in. There are 206 weeks left in his second term. Whether you voted for him, cheered for him, or watched from the other side of the world — the question the planet is asking right now is the same one. Was this a mistake?

👍 Like = YES, electing Trump was a catastrophic mistake
❤️ Love = NO, the world needed his disruption

02/03/2026

A gunman wearing clothes with an Iranian flag design and the words "Property of Allah" killed two people and wounded 14 early Sunday at a Texas bar. The FBI is investigating the shooting, which erupted a day after the US and Israel launched an attack on Iran, as a potential act of terrorism. The gunman also had photos of Iranian leaders at his home. He circled the block in an SUV before opening fire on bar patrons with a pistol, then parked, got out with a rifle, and continued shooting at people on the street before being shot dead by police.

The war started 48 hours ago. Iran continues to strike US assets across the Gulf. Iran's surviving leadership has vowed revenge for the killing of Khamenei and up to 40 top Iranian officials. And now, on American soil, a man dressed in Iranian symbols has opened fire on civilians at a bar in the middle of the night. Whether this was a lone actor inspired by the war or something more organised is unknown — the FBI's terrorism investigation is active. But the speed at which the war's consequences are reaching ordinary people — at a bar in Austin, Texas, on a Saturday night — is a signal of what the next four weeks may look like. This is no longer just a Middle East story.

👍 Like = YES, this is terrifying and only going to get worse
❤️ Love = NO, it's an isolated incident

27/02/2026

The US Department of Justice has released over 3 million pages of documents related to Jeffrey Epstein's s*x trafficking network. Members of Congress wore pins at the State of the Union demanding the files be released in full — because thousands of those pages are still blacked out. Prince Andrew has been arrested. Peter Mandelson has been arrested. Larry Summers has resigned from Harvard. And yet the core question — who else was involved, who knew, and who did nothing — remains unanswered behind millions of redacted lines. The files are out. But the truth is still buried.

For the public in New Zealand and Australia — watching this story from the outside — the Epstein saga is one of the most troubling examples of elite impunity in living memory. A man convicted of s*x offences in 2008 continued to socialise with presidents, prime ministers, royalty, and billionaires for more than a decade afterward. He died in custody under circumstances that remain disputed. His associate Ghislaine Maxwell is in prison. And the people who flew on his planes, stayed on his island, and attended his gatherings are slowly — very slowly — being asked to answer for it. The redactions suggest there are names in those files that someone, somewhere, does not want made public. The question is whose names — and who is protecting them.

👍 Like = YES, the full Epstein files must be released unredacted
❤️ Love = NO, some information must stay private for legal reasons

27/02/2026

The United States has assembled the largest military force in the Middle East since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Two aircraft carriers, 16 warships, hundreds of fighter jets, F-22s, F-35s, submarines, and more than 150 cargo flights of weapons and ammunition — all positioned around Iran right now. Trump has given Iran a deadline to strike a nuclear deal, saying 10–15 days is "the maximum." His own adviser told Axios there is a 90% chance of military action in the coming weeks. The USS Gerald R. Ford is now in position. Poland has told its citizens to leave Iran immediately. Germany has pulled non-essential military personnel from the region. The full US strike force is expected to be ready by mid-March.

Iran is not backing down either. It has closed the Strait of Hormuz — the narrow passage through which a fifth of all the world's oil passes — during military drills with Russia. Iranian fast-attack boats have attempted to seize US tankers in the Persian Gulf. A US F-35 shot down an Iranian drone approaching the USS Abraham Lincoln. Iran's Supreme Leader has publicly threatened US warships. Nuclear talks in Geneva are deadlocked. Senior White House advisers are reportedly pushing for Israel to strike first. The last time the US assembled a force this size in this region, it launched the Iraq War. That conflict lasted 20 years and killed hundreds of thousands of people. For New Zealand and Australia — both US allies — the question of what comes next is not academic. It is urgent.

👍 Like = YES, this is genuinely terrifying
❤️ Love = NO, it's all just posturing

The Tasman Daily

03/03/2026

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