I was listening to the podcast ‘The Rest is Politics’ last night. The speakers were saying that Trump's inclination to invade countries at will, will almost certainly result in nuclear proliferation and will drive countries to find protection in the shadow of Russia and China. The thinking being, what will stop the big orange guy from invading me? Nuclear warheads. Or a mate as big as he is. And then what do you know, a couple of hours later President Macron announced that France is to boost its nuclear arsenal and extend the deterrent to cover other European countries. It's a major development of its nuclear defence policy. The next 50 years, he said, will be an era of nuclear weapons. He said eight other European countries, the UK, Germany, Poland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Greece, Sweden, and Denmark had agreed to participate in a new advanced deterrent strategy. The aim, he said, is to convince potential adversaries that if they have the audacity to attack France, there will be an unsustainable price to be paid.

Anyway, back to the future we go. Remember MAD magazine, the American satirical magazine? It was huge in the 60s and 70s and took its name from mutually assured destruction. Sure, press the button, but if you press the button, I press the button and we both go. The catchphrase for MAD magazine was “What, me worry?" And yep, we're back there. You just watch those Golden Visas fly off the shelf as wealthy Americans and Europeans look for a safe haven. Our isolation can work to our advantage.

At the moment, when it comes to nuclear weapons, nuclear warheads, there are nine countries that have them. Russia has around 5,500, the US just over 5,000, China 600 – they're rapidly expanding their stockpile. France has 290 stable and mostly sea based as of yesterday, but today it'll be a different story. The UK 225, India 180, they're increasing their stockpile, Pakistan 170, increasing their stockpile. Israel has kept shtum about how many it has, and North Korea, who would know? But experts say they're actively testing and expanding. You've also got countries that host nuclear weapons: Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Turkey host US and NATO weapons. Belarus has Russian tactical nuclear weapons.

So, 50 years of nuclear weaponry Macron is predicting, where mutually assured destruction is the only thing stopping people from pressing the button. It happened before and we got through it. And it does, I mean, you would have to have a death wish for yourself and your people and your country. But are there any guarantees on human behaviour these days? Given our isolation, will that work to our advantage? Hopefully, to a certain extent. We don't have anything of major military strategic importance. No minerals that you can only find here that can be used to make a super bomb, and then we should be relatively safe.

As of late February this year, the Active Investor Plus, the Golden Visa program, has seen 573 applications received, 196 applications approved, and you can imagine that that will increase. Coming back to The Rest is Politics’ theory that as a result of America going into Venezuela and attacking Iran, that will see smaller countries looking to buy nuclear weapons to keep themselves safe or looking to cosy up to Russia and China. That theory is all well and good, but we should remember that having nuclear weapons didn't stop the US from attacking Iran. They just neutralised the nukes before they went in. And having Russia as your mate, “don't attack me, I've got Russia in my corner," is all very well and good, but as Syria's Bashar al Assad and Venezuela's Maduro and now the mullahs in Iran have found, Russia right now is all talk and no trousers. It can do a great line in rhetoric and they've given their friends a lot of verbal support, which will be pretty cold comfort, but when it comes to on the ground troops and military resources to go in and back up their mates, they're all tied up in Ukraine right now and Russia won't want to commit to wars on two fronts in two different zones.

So, mutually assured destruction, the threat of one keeping someone pressing the button keeping you from pressing yours, worked before. Tensions eased and there was a relative period of peace. Can you see the same thing happening again? Tensions will rise, tensions will get high, people will get very nervous, and then we can all relax. Do you see New Zealand's isolation as its best defence?

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Golfer Daniel Hillier's won the New Zealand Open by two strokes at Millbrook, eight days after getting married.

The 27-year-old finished at 22-under overall after a final round four-under par 67, marking the first time a Kiwi has won the tournament since 2017.

Hillier told Kerre Woodham that the crowds were among the best he's played in front of.

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The 105th New Zealand Golf Open has teed off at Millbrook.

It’s a unique Pro-Am event, where 156 professionals compete alongside amateur partners, and is the only Open tournament in the world to be played in this format.

Australian Ryan Peake won the title in 2025, and has returned to defend it in 2026.

Chairman John Hart told Kerre Woodham the Pro-Am format is the reason the tournament is so successful, and that if it were solely professionals, they’d struggle to hold the funding.

He says it’s established itself as one of the leading Pro-Am tournaments in the world, and has gotten fantastic recognition from tours they work with and professional players.

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Another way of keeping older folks safer on the roads.

Aucklander Boyd Steel has started a business producing ‘S’ plates – a car sticker designed to let other drivers know there’s an older driver behind the wheel.

The blue sticker is similar to the yellow ‘L’ plate for learner drivers, signalling that the driver may be slower or less confident and asking for patience.

Steel told Kerre Woodham it was inspired by his nana, for who driving was an important part of her freedom, but had become slow driver towards the end of her life.

“It wasn’t until sort of after she passed, and I sort of started seeing other senior drivers on the road, I just started thinking, God, I hope no one ever gave her a hard time.”

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I can't even believe we're having to discuss this, but we are. It seems absolutely ludicrous that drunk drivers who say, kill their passengers, maim their passengers, smash their own selves up after crashing their vehicles —hopefully not into innocent victims, but sometimes it will be— are able to claim ACC, but the volunteer firefighters and the first responders who are volunteers who respond to the crash and have to deal with the horror of the aftermath, quite often they will know the people involved if it happens in a small community. If they're the ones that have to unwrap a kid from a drive shaft, they are not able to claim ACC for trauma counselling or PTSD. What they do is considered a leisure activity.

Volunteers have been lobbying the Government to change the legislation for years. In 2025 a petition with 36,500 signatures was presented to Parliament but was ultimately unsuccessful. Now Land Search and Rescue are pushing the Government to reconsider, saying January's Mount Maunganui tragedy showed the level of trauma they're repeatedly exposed to with no long-term protection. So as it works at the moment, ACC can provide broad physical injury cover to volunteers, and that would be the same to you and me. Those of us who don't lift a finger to help others in our community, same sort of thing. The volunteers can access that. So if they got a physical injury and that resulted in a mental injury, that would be covered by ACC. But unlike employees, volunteers don't get any support for mental injury caused by what they see on the job.

So somebody standing next to them, a paid police officer who was horrified by what they'd seen, would have access to ACC for counselling. They would not. Because what they're doing when they're saving lives and doing the most horrific clean up is a leisure activity as defined by law. ACC cannot under law right now help mentally unwell volunteer emergency responders. LandSAR Chief Executive Wendy Wright agrees the legislation falls far short when we look at the reliance we have as a country on volunteers across emergency services and search and rescue. 95% of the search and rescue workforce are volunteers. And look at the firefighters – as of 2024 there are approximately 11,800 to 12,000 volunteer firefighters in New Zealand. They make up around 80 to 85% of the country's total firefighting force.

These volunteers who primarily serve the small towns, the rural areas, the outer suburbs, provide more than 820 million in annual value to the community if you want to put a dollar value on it. They basically keep communities together. They save lives within their communities. They deal with the trauma that accidents cause local communities. They are their local communities. Apparently, I've struggled to find any kind of rationale for denying them. Apparently it's going to open the floodgates for other volunteers in other in other fields. Apparently we can't afford it. Not every volunteer is going to need counselling. Not every volunteer wants to go to counselling. Not every paid employee wants it or needs it.

There was a time when the UK tried to force their police officers to go to counselling. For some it was it was the last thing they needed. Their minds did not need to go over and over and over what they'd seen. They were able to compartmentalise and stay healthy. That was the way their minds worked. So they've scrapped that.

You don't have to go now, but it should be an option, it should be a choice, it should be available for these incredible men and women who give up their time, give up their weekends, are willing to be roused in the middle of the night to go and try and save someone from themselves. The very least we can do when they finally get back to bed after working through the night is help them sleep soundly and not have to live with the recurring nightmares that come with PTSD that is left untreated. We owe it to them.

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Credit to those 120 business people who went along to hear Chris Hipkins' State of the Nation address yesterday, hosted by the Auckland Business Chamber. Credit to those few people who watched it live, like my colleague Mike Hosking. My word, it was dull. And that is not me being a lickspittle mouthpiece for the Tory overlords. Have a listen to this:

“I know we didn't get everything right when we were in government last time. Many of you have been very clear on what you think we did wrong. But one thing is clear, we were trying to do too much, too fast, and we weren't focused enough. We're going to be making further announcements later in the year as we get closer to the election. But I want to be very, very clear on this. I want to know that I can deliver on any promises that I make. That's the standard that I'll be holding myself to and our next Labour Government to.

“Because frankly, Kiwis have had enough of promises that aren't kept. And I don't want to repeat that cycle. We won't try and do everything in our first term. We'll be focusing on what matters the most and delivering on those things. I'm not promising perfection. Where we make mistakes, I'll take responsibility for those. But I'm promising this: a government that puts the cost of living first, a government that partners with business to create jobs and raise wages, a government that invests in our people and backs our potential. Not just managing the country, building it.”

Yes. So there was another 20 odd minutes of the same, 20 odd minutes. He banged on about affordability, that word was used a lot. Repeated the mantra I first heard when he came in for the quarterly catch up, and which we will no doubt hear throughout the campaign: jobs, health, homes. He went big on renewable energy, promised Labour would scrap the Government's proposed gas import terminal. Also went big on his future fund.

As speeches go, he was no JFK. It is not one for the history books. But commentators say that was by design, like Tim Murphy from Newsroom. Tim says this was Labour trying to convey maturity, a little contrition, humility, and to claim it could be the adult in the room now and after the November 7 election. Luke Malpass from The Press says the speech was to present as a calm port in a cost of living storm, to be dependable, reliable, and boring even. That was the aim. Well, that's something Labour's achieved.

Above all else, says Luke, at this stage of the game, to not change the strategy that has served Labour well so far, which is not say much, not do much, not announce much. And it has worked for them. When there is nothing that you can argue against, it's steady as she goes. They're just letting the Coalition Government make mistakes, or not work fast enough, or not be snazzy enough for the electorate, and they're just sitting there and collecting the votes of the centre, who are underwhelmed by the Coalition Government. Basically, they're saying vote for this Chris because he's not Christopher Luxon and we're not National.

But that works both ways. You might not be wowed by the Coalition Government and the Prime Minister, but the message could be at least they're not Labour, Greens, and Te Pāti Māori, and at least Christopher Luxon isn't the Chris that was in charge last time.

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