From 2021 to 2026 Don wrote numerous articles which appeared at the website Bassett, Brash and Hide, his fellow authors being former politicians Michael Bassett and Rodney Hide. These appear below.
A speech prepared for delivery at Massey University, 5 May 2022
Over the last few years, and especially since the current Government was elected late in 2020, there has been an increasing trend to use the Maori language where there are perfectly acceptable English alternatives.
What a year 2021 has been! For many people, especially those of us who endured the near-four-month lockdown in Auckland and for the many more throughout the country hugely impacted by that lockdown, it has been a truly awful year.
This Bill must be one of the worst pieces of legislation ever to come before the New Zealand Parliament in that it unashamedly and explicitly introduces racism into the New Zealand health sector.
In 1987, in the landmark case of New Zealand Maori Council v Attorney-General before the Court of Appeal, the President of the Court, Cooke J., held that “the Treaty [of Waitangi] created an enduring relationship of a fiduciary nature akin to a partnership [between Maori and the Crown], each party...
That was the headline on an excellent article by Audrey Young in yesterday’s Weekend Herald – except that there was no question-mark at the end of the headline.
In recent years, the Ardern Government has gone heavily over-board with the notion that the Treaty of Waitangi created a partnership between Maori New Zealanders and the rest of us. It now appears to be an absolute requirement of those who would make progress under this Government to sign up...
1984 is the scariest book I’ve ever read. When it was published in 1949, I was far too young to read it, let alone understand it. I only read it much later. And no, we’re not yet in the tightly regimented world which Orwell envisaged but there are profoundly disturbing...
In the last couple of days, poverty and inequality have been in the news.
There was a very depressing article published by Stuff earlier this week. Under the heading “Pharmac’s lack of Maori staff ‘appalling’, ‘unacceptable on every level’”, the article lamented the fact that only three of Pharmac’s 130 staff identified as Maori last year, “despite the country’s drug-buying agency vowing to prioritise...
Copyright © 2026 Don Brash.