Author: Natalia Albert

OPINION: Natalia Albert/Substack Tax policy is the most important political statement. Everything else is downstream. It is also complex, boring and a nightmare to implement. Capital gains tax, wealth tax, land tax, income tax, inheritance tax, corporate tax, bright-line test, GST, blah blah blah. And then, ok, more tax, sure, but for what? Off we go into the endless list of possibilities, which is exactly why it is confusing and boring. So, it gets reduced in a way that removes the complexity and it gets oversimplified. The Left wants more, the Right wants less, and it is just not that…

OPINION: Natalia Albert. The minister responsible for reforming New Zealand’s public service currently holds eleven portfolios. Eleven. That’s too many. Paul Goldsmith is Minister for Defence, Justice, Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations, Arts and Culture, Veterans, Pacific People, Space, National Security, Media and Communication, Digital Government and drum roll: the Public Service. In what world? Goldsmith is not the point. The point is that we have designed a public service where one minister holds eleven portfolios, running from Space to the needs of Pacific People to TVNZ. We built a system where that arrangement is possible, and then decided the problem…

OPINION: Natalia Albert. My obsession this week has been: how many public houses does New Zealand actually have? And trying to answer that basic question sent me down a very painful rabbit hole. I am drowning in 7,078 New Zealand housing-policy documents published between 2000 and 2025. So, despite trying to engage with the current political news cycle: the Luxon-and-MMP debates, whatever Winston Peters said, Helen Clark weighing in – I could not look away from the data. The problem is that New Zealand has changed who owns, manages, and reports on its state’s homes. Which means that keeping up,…

OPINION: Natalia Albert Back in April I wrote that Luxon likely wouldn’t make it to November as National’s leader, while arguing the party itself would still be fine because of the bench behind him. This week’s caucus meeting and the Bishop/Stanford speculation are exactly what I meant. Resurfacing the original piece below, unedited, dated 10 April 2026. How do we know if National is performing well as a party? The obvious answer is polling. The slightly more sophisticated answer is ministerial delivery. The lazy answer and the one that dominates most political commentary right now is to look at the…

(cvnznews.com editorial note: Qiulae Wong referred to in this opinion piece is also known as “Q” and is the leader of the Opportunities Party.) Opinion: Natalia Albert. Peters has turned into a pantomime villain, the man who turned up to the COVID protest camp and who has been accused of betraying every political ally he has ever had. Peters is also a political phenomenon: the politician who, across ten MMP elections, built and rebuilt a position of genuine cross-bloc leverage, deciding the shape of three governments and nearly two more. He is both, but today I will address the latter.…