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.
In Newsroom today (8 June 2023), Dr Iresh Jayawardena, a lecturer in the School of Architecture and Planning at the University of Auckland, has a column criticizing the National Party’s recently-announced housing policy.
A few days ago, I spoke in the Public Forum part of a Western Bay of Plenty District Council meeting. For me, this was a first – I had never spoken at a local body council meeting before.
Some months ago, this blog reprinted the final chapter of my autobiography, Incredible Luck. The chapter was headed “Does democracy have a future? ” and dealt with the inherent temptation for elected governments to bribe voters with their own money.
My heart sank when I saw the results of the latest Roy Morgan poll yesterday: if those results were reflected in the election in October, New Zealand would be in for three years of a Labour/Greens/Maori Party coalition government, arguably a worse government than the three years of Labour that…
The announcement over the weekend that Australia has decided to allow New Zealanders who have lived in Australia for four years to acquire Australian citizenship has been greeted with mixed emotions in New Zealand.
A review appeared at Newsroom on April 5 titled, "Book of the Week: The truth about 'Māori privilege'. " Despite it containing an attack on Don Brash, he was refused right of reply by Newsroom editor Jonathan Milne who stated, "It’s a book review.
A few weeks ago, the New Zealand media gave some coverage to the spectacle of the US President and the Prime Ministers of Australia and the UK signing an agreement whereby Australia will buy eight nuclear-powered submarines over the next two decades at a cost of some $400 billion, confirmation…
I’m not sure whether to be amused, depressed or angry at the reaction to the article by Richard Dawkins in The Spectator recently.
Richard Dawkins wrote the piece after his visit to New Zealand in late February.
I’ve just read a book entitled New Zealand’s History Curriculum: Education or Indoctrination? It makes it clear that Goebbels would have been proud of the new curriculum!
When the Government decided that New Zealand school children should learn something of our history, I was delighted.
All my life I’ve had an intense interest in foreign policy. Growing up in the shadow of the Cold War, that was hardly surprising.
As a young adult, I was a Christian pacifist and supported the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.
It’s impossible to avoid the conclusion that New Zealand is rapidly approaching a crisis point.
There are now two fundamentally different views of our future and there is no way to reconcile them.
The following is an updated version of the final chapter of Don's autobiography Incredible Luck, published in 2014
Over the last couple of decades, the world has watched the Middle East as country after country has tried to establish a democratic regime and country after country has failed.
I’ve been told that our new Prime Minister used the words “New Zealand” at Ratana the other day where Jacinda Ardern would have used “Aotearoa”, or “Aotearoa New Zealand”.
Until a few days ago, I had never heard of Craig Jepson, and I suspect that that is also true of most New Zealanders. He has suddenly become almost as well-known as Meng Foon, the Race Relations Commissioner.
Three months ago, financial media company Bloomberg looked at housing markets in 30 countries and concluded that the New Zealand housing market was the one at greatest risk of a sharp decline based on the relationship of house prices to rent, house prices to household income and the growth of…
The following was written by Don Brash in his capacity as Trustee for Hobson's Pledge.
Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth has passed away, and the overwhelming majority of people in New Zealand mourn her passing.
I’m told that there is evidence that learning a second language has some benefits in terms of brain development, especially for young children, and I understand that this was the rationale in the last National Government’s decision to encourage schools to teach a second language.
An address to the Omokoroa Residents & Ratepayers Association AGM
29 June 2022
Ladies and gentlemen,
There are a great many serious challenges facing New Zealand at the present time but most of them – like our falling literacy rates, like the prospect of a very serious increase in government debt over the…
Liam Dann (Herald on Sunday, 29 May 2022) seems very keen to absolve the Government of any responsibility for the pain which a great many people are going to endure as the Reserve Bank grapples with getting inflation back under control.
On 13 May Newsroom carried a column by four writers at Victoria University under the heading “Commitments to equality in Te Tiriti mean co-governance”. In attacking those who disagree with that proposition, they particularly cited Hobson’s Pledge, for which I am one of two spokespeople.
Copyright © 2026 Don Brash.