OPINION: Central Hawke's Bay farmer Mark Warren recently told the Hawke's Bay Times it's time for a conversation about allowing skilled and properly equipped locals to help councils clear debris and reopen roads after severe weather events.
OPINION: A nation that relies as heavily as NZ does on functional global shipping lanes will have to do its bit on the international security front, hence the additional $1.58b in military spend over 4 years that Dame Lynda Topp thought should have been spent on sheet music.
OPINION: Well-known and politically very neutral RNZ DJ John Campbell may be having politically neutral kittens about the news that Fonterra lobbied the PM's office over climate change laws, but John and his definitely-not-lefty mates are really pretending that political lobbying isn't the second oldest profession and that all political…
OPINION: While we're on the topic of lumberjacks, Biosecurity Minister Andrew Hoggard has no doubt used a chainsaw hundreds of times, but your old mate reckons he would’ve still been sweating on getting it right when cutting down a pine in front of the cameras, as he did above Queenstown…
OPINION: To a chorus of crying greenies, and not a minute too soon, the Government has moved to put the courts back in their place through proposed amendments to the Climate Change Response Act 2002, intending to limit climate litigation claims such as Smith v Fonterra, in the interests of…
OPINION: On the same day that pigs were reportedly seen airborne over the capital, a political journalist gave the PSA union a chip for being biased towards Labour – not the revelation of the year if you ask the Canine Crusader, but very rare to hear coming from a member…
OPINION: The old saying 'a new broom sweeps clean' doesn't always hold up, if you ask the Hound.
OPINION: This old mutt went to school to eat his lunch, but still knows the future of the country, and the primary sector, depends on a conveyor belt of well-educated youth coming through the system.
OPINION: It's been an eye-opener watching the big media companies behaving exactly like the powers-that-be who the crusading hacks from the likes of One News and Stuff claim to be "keeping honest".
OPINION: Town and country find themselves on the same page when it comes to anger over price hikes from NZ Post.
OPINION: When Donald Trump returned to the White House, many people with half a brain could see the results for the world might be a bit average, and our boy has been busy trying to prove them right.
OPINION: Media trust has tanked because of what media's more woke members do and say.
OPINION: Bouquets this week from the old mutt for Fed Farmers and Groundswell for continuing to resist the proposed Gore District plan and its intention to apply costly "cultural values" across the district and a raft of land classifications that are unworkable and counterproductive.
OPINION: In what world does old mate Christopher Luxon live?
OPINION: If you ask this old mutt, the choice at the next election isn't shaping up as a contest of good ideas, more like a choice of who's the least bad option.
OPINION: A mate of yours says we're long overdue for a reckoning on what value farmers really get for the $100 million plus they collectively pay in levies to DairyNZ, Beef+Lamb NZ and Deer Industry NZ (DINZ).
OPINION: President Trump's tariff wars have torpedoed the US grain belt's biggest market, China, sending many US family farms to the wall.
OPINION: It's no surprise to this old mutt that some politicians are done playing nice with the low rent media pack that hounds them looking for a 'gotcha' moment.
OPINION: Election years are usually regarded as the silly season, but a mate of the Hound reckons 2026 is shaping up as the ‘stupid season’.
OPINION: If farmers poured just a few litres of some pollutant into a stream, the Green Party and the wider wooden bicycle enthusiast community would be on their soapboxes screaming about dirty farmers and demanding a harsh penalty, which regional authorities would be gagging to administer.
OPINION: Your old mate hears an international incident is threatening to blow up the long-standing Anzac alliance as Kiwis and Aussies argue over who wants new Australian resident and former NZ Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern.
OPINION: The media is already playing the 'who will Winston choose?' game every time the polls show Labour and National neck and neck.
OPINION: A mate of yours truly reckons rural Manawatu families are the latest to suffer under what he calls the Government's "performative restraint" - penny pinching on needed community stuff while the bureaucrat head count and wasteful spending in Wellington charges on undiminished.
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The Hound
Great Idea!
OPINION: Central Hawke's Bay farmer Mark Warren recently told the Hawke's Bay Times it's time for a conversation about allowing…
No Choice
OPINION: A nation that relies as heavily as NZ does on functional global shipping lanes will have to do its…
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