Kingβs Birthday Honours 2026 Rewards the Establishment
The Kingβs Birthday Honours 2026 list is meant to celebrate service, but Martyn Bradbury sees something uglier: a roll call of establishment media, ideological education reform, property power and transport industry influence dressed up as public virtue.
This year’s King’s Birthday Honours is more politically revealing than ever before.
Not only has ZB culture-war commentator Barry Soper been given a gong, which is weird when you consider the wholesale attack on the free press driven by this hateful right-wing government…
…then we have Atlas Network Race Baiter Elizabeth Rata, whose education philosophy critics say sidelines mΔtauranga MΔori and bicultural curriculum work is so that Β the exploitative industries who fund the Atlas Network can seize more from indigenous cultures, and then we have the National Party donating property interests and road-freight powerbrokers…
…there’s no honour here, just a butcher’s apron dripping with blood.
Kingβs Birthday Honours or establishment backslapping?
This is an award for venal self-interest masquerading as philanthropy.
If this is who the King honours, to hell with the King!
Knighthoods etc. Much of this has to be Luxon’s List. What a freak this PM is? Of course we can no longer trust him or his slimey cohorts! They are the thickest, most corrupt and arrogant politicians NZ has ever had. Of course there are deserving Awards but ruined by the toxic mix. Do match some of them with the Bribes, whoops, Donations!
But, but…Luxon’s been ‘specially flown in to “sort things out” and get the country “back on track”…. none of which has happened .
Now…if was renamed the The Biggest Joke Of The Year Awards..or..Biggest Bullshit Artist Of The Year…Sycophant Of The Year Awards……The Drive The Country Off A Cliff Awards… Braggart Of The Year Awards…or… Sugar Daddy Of The Year Awards…then there could be some justification for people like Soper…and others to get a mention.
All sounds very incestuous and further erodes the public’s confidence and enthusiasm for such traditions.
Key reinstated knighthoods so that he could have one. I have no doubt the incompetent PM is simply doing his apprenticeship and getting ready for his own knighthood. No portfolios and more interested in keeping his donors happy than anything else. He doesn’t even like NZ or NZders. I don’t count him as one. He’s too weird.
The recipients today know they are imposters. Their various businesses now look dodgy. A few genuine recipients do not disguise the picture.
In this country enough money will buy you royal honours and business favours.
We are all tarred by this corrupt brush.