Election 2023

Every week until the election The Front Bench will take on the biggest talking points of the election campaign. Heather du Plessis-Allan, Newstalk ZB Senior Political Correspondent Barry Soper, Sherson Willis' Trish Sherson and Childfund CEO Josie Pagani have the insight and analysis as the campaign rolls on.  This week on The Front Bench, Heather asks her panel whether the claims of Donald T...

Chris Hipkins spent two hours with Mike Hosking this morning and did nothing to convince me to vote Labour. He’s had a political week from hell. Just when he probably thought Labour’s gang connections were so 2023, MPs and candidates from Labour, the Greens and Te Pāti Māori have been caught hanging out with gang members during the current campaign. Mike asked him if it had blown his chances. Not...

Most voters have not realised how difficult New Zealand's fiscal predicament is, says a think tank boss.  New Zealand Initiative executive director Oliver Hartwich said the ACT Party's manifesto shows it is the "most radical" about getting government spending to 2017 levels.  Released yesterday, the manifesto pledged to cut "wasteful spending" by $22 billion over four years, getting debt...

What do they say about the truth always coming out?  By Friday morning Kerrin Leoni was gone.  She lied and she got caught with the photo and the video. Not only didn’t it pass the pub test, it didn’t pass the truth test.  Campaigns almost always have things in them you never saw coming. For Labour it was a combination of dishonesty and their past.  Law and order was not part o...

Chris Hipkins has confirmed the Finance portfolio's off the table for any potential coalition partners, as well as Police and Justice for Greens and Te Pāti Māori MPs.  The Labour leader says everything else is up for discussion after the election.   Hipkins told Mike Hosking on the Leaders Breakfast he wouldn't agree to increasing the size of Cabinet beyond the 20 Ministers it has now....

Chris Hipkins says he has no regret over his level of involvement with the Covid inquiry.   The Labour leader was criticised for not appearing at the public hearing when the Royal Commission was gathering evidence.   Hipkins told Mike Hosking on the Leaders Breakfast he answered every question thrown at him.    He also says the reviews of the Reserve Bank’s response to the Covi...

Labour Leader Chris Hipkins admits his party wasn't totally ready to govern in 2017.  National won the largest share of the result in that election, but New Zealand First chose to go into government with Jacinda Ardern's Labour instead.  Hipkins told Mike Hosking on the Leader's Breakfast because of the nature of the election, they weren't as ready as they could've been.  He says he...

Labour Leader Chris Hipkins is certain their campaign hasn't been impacted by the controversy surrounding MPs visiting gang members.  Former Labour candidate Kerrin Leoni resigned on Friday after fallout from her campaigning at a whanau event, attended by gang members.  Hipkins told Mike Hosking on the Leaders Breakfast that having family members in gangs was not the main issue, her enga...

There's potential for National and Labour to find common ground on education, despite disagreement over curriculum reforms.  National's Erica Stanford told Ryan Bridge she tried to engage Labour while NCEA changes were being drafted, but to no avail.  She says a recent meeting with Ginny Andersen revealed plenty they agree on —like the structured literacy mandate— but Labour still doesn'...

Odds are on we'll get another hike to the OCR tomorrow.   That'll take us to 3%.   Markets are pricing the chance of that hike happening at about 85%.   It's not great timing for a Coalition Government trying to get elected when cost of living is the number one issue.   But that's obviously not something the Reserve Bank should or would care about – their job is inflation.&nbsp...

The Electoral Commission hopes its efforts to get voters ready for election day will help lift turnout this year. The deadline to enrol ticked over at midnight, with just over 92-percent of eligible voters enrolled as of Saturday. Advance voting has now opened, with people able to look up polling stations by suburb. Chief Electoral Officer Karl Le Quesne told Andrew Dickens they've worked hard to...

National's unveiled a 26 point plan for its first 100 days if re-elected. The first pledge will be introducing KiwiSaver changes to parliament, including $15,000 for every newborn, and making the scheme compulsory. Other promises include cutting student loan repayments, extending paid parental leave, boosting Pharmac funding for cancer medicines and capping council rates increases. Nicola Willis s...

Opportunity is moving to try and end the cycle of short-term political thinking. The party is pledging to establish a Future Generations Commissioner - appointed through Parliament for five years, to hold Governments and public bodies accountable for the long-term consequences of their decisions. Leader Qiulae Wong says they've followed international modelling - and New Zealand needs to think more...

Gangs remain a contentious topic during this election campaign, following another week of high-profile incidents. Labour's Kerrin Leoni has resigned after a video emerged of her campaigning at a whanau event, with gang members present. A photo recently emerged of National's Tama Potaka standing next to patched members of the Mongrel Mob., prompting Labour's Chris Hipkins to accuse Luxon of 'double...

There's hope for a last minute rush tonight, as a significant number of Kiwis still aren't enrolled to vote in the election yet. The deadline to enrol to vote is midnight tonight, with voting starting from Monday until election day on November 7. Chief Electoral Officer Karl Le Quesne says they're hoping 100 percent of eligible people will enrol to vote. "We want to see that rise, and we're gettin...

If you were feeling a little election fatigue before this week, you may now be reaching for the remote, the mute button and possibly something stronger than a cup of tea. We’ve had the policies, the debates, voting strategies and enough political point-scoring to qualify as an Olympic sport. Voters have listened patiently to arguments about the cost of living, health, education and the economy. Al...

Oh, I tell you what, I cannot see Chris Hipkins winning the election now. I mean, if you thought that Mongrel Mob fiasco was bad before, it's got so much worse for Labour. Their candidate has quit and Chris Hipkins himself now looks like he's been fibbing to the public. It turns out, now that we've seen the video of Kerrin Leoni at the Mongrel Mob event, that it wasn't at all the family gathering...

Labour leader Chris Hipkins says he wasn't told the full truth about the gathering that led to Kerrin Leoni's resignation as Tāmaki Makaurau candidate.  At a debate this week, Te Pati Māori's Oriini Kaipara accused Leoni of visiting a gang pad a week before she did - which Leoni denied.  Footage surfaced yesterday of her campaigning this month at a family event including gang members, we...

This week's Politics Friday Election Special focused on the Wigram electorate. The candidates, Labour's Dominik Yanzick and National's Tracy Summerfield made their pitch to become the next local MP. They discussed their backgrounds before entering politics and outlined how they would tackle the key issues facing the newly redrawn Wigram electorate. LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for priv...

The gangs, as we know, create wholesale damage and destruction in our society through their drug trafficking. Now it looks like they're causing wholesale damage to Labour.   After roundly criticising members of the Greens and Te Pati Māori for visiting a mongrel mob gang pad and posing for photos, putting it on your social media, Labour leader Chris Hipkins ruled out his coalition partners ho...

David Seymour says he won't shy away race relations, despite previous backlash.  The ACT Leader championed the Treaty Principles Bill to its first reading this term, sparking nationwide protests.  This election ACT's promising to “end race-based hiring requirements”, prohibit cultural or spiritual practices in the public service, and to abolish the Waitangi Tribunal once historic claims...

So a good week for National and, by association, for the Government in general.  There has been a shift with two weeks to go. The gang drama might just have put a nail in Labour's chances of government.  Their polling is now in trouble. Their gap to National is now a problem.  Thomas Coughlan's piece yesterday talking of the issues they have found with lack of enrolment in South Auc...

ACT wants charter schools in every major town.  The Party's pledging if elected to lift enrolments to 10,000 by 2029 and increase conversions from state schools.  The current 20 schools have about 2000 students.  Leader David Seymour told Mike Hosking when it comes to demand for the schools, they've been overwhelmed.  He says that each time they do a round, there will be 60 or...

National and Labour are offering quite different solutions to persistently high inflation.  Headline inflation's eased back to 3.7%, but some economists say it could reach as high as 4.7% by the end of the year.  Labour's Barbara Edmonds says freezing the fuel tax would address the single biggest factor – surging fuel prices.   But National's Nicola Willis told Mike Hosking National...

Inflation's eased up slightly - but it's also become more persistent and widespread. The official inflation rate has fallen in the past three months - from 4.1 percent to 3.7 percent - due to a brief fall in fuel prices. But underlying core inflation has been rising and more items are increasing in price. Labour's Finance Spokesperson Barbara Edmonds told Francesca Rudkin the government doesn't ha...