The debate explosion

The morning after the night before, Annabelle Lee-Mather, Ben Thomas and Toby Manhire gather to chew through the key numbers, the surprises, the scenarios that could now play out and the big questions that come next. We assess the performance of all the main parties, and the impact of overhangs, enrolment changes and turnout. Plus: we exclusively reveal what we got up to last night. Cast your vote for Gone By Lunchtime in the Listeners' Choice category in this year's NZ Podcast Awards: https://www.nzpodcastawards.com/nominate Support our mahi by becoming a Spinoff Member: https://thespinoff.co.nz/members Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hyperventilating, overheating and sometimes just plain cringe-making, the 2026 election campaign is at its end. Annabelle Lee-Mather, Ben Thomas and Toby Manhire gather at the final hour to assess a week on fumes, with Don Brash and Michael Laws leading the way, a major scandal over the status of an Opportunity Party van’s warrant of fitness, and a flurry of final polls to parse. Plus: impressions of the final multi-party debate and 100% correct predictions about what will happen on Saturday night. Cast your vote for Gone By Lunchtime in the Listeners' Choice category in this year's NZ Podcast Awards: https://www.nzpodcastawards.com/nominate Support our mahi by becoming a Spinoff Member: https://thespinoff.co.nz/members Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Who says politicians don't change? Christopher Luxon revealed his evolving approach this week by breaking his habit and commenting on a poll. A poll that delivered a horror result for the National Party.Ben Thomas, Annabelle Lee-Mather and Toby Manhire gather in the final, stir-crazy phase to unpack the latest exchanges and growing indications that the result could hinge on two variables: the fate of Opportunity and the double overhang dynamic.Plus: which of the small party leaders are shining and who starred in the kaupapa Māori debate? Cast your vote for Gone By Lunchtime in the Listeners' Choice category in this year's NZ Podcast Awards: https://www.nzpodcastawards.com/nominate Watch Toby interview the party leaders on At Large with Toby Manhire: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-xxT3W4uRNYaMSygz5MlwdL122PYMZTg&si=jhlmZ5Vey2NYsurV Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Like a self-consuming serpent, the 2026 election has begun to feed on itself. With just a few days till advance voting begins, Toby Manhire, Annabelle Lee-Mather and Ben Thomas gather to feast upon a lively final pair of leader debates and look at what comes next. Plus: we take a handful of questions from the smartest listeners in the podcast universe. How much do we miss printed manifestos? Is there a bias baked into different social media platforms? What is happening in Te Tai Tonga? And why have the farther excesses of rightwing populism not taken grip in New Zealand as they have elsewhere? Cast your vote for Gone By Lunchtime in the Listeners' Choice category in this year's NZ Podcast Awards: https://www.nzpodcastawards.com/nominate Watch Toby's interview with Qiulae Wong here: https://youtu.be/VX8ZOfycCa8 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Three weeks to go and Chris Hipkins has put his finger on it: this campaign does have some of the post-apocalyptic survival energy of Cormac McCarthy's The Road. Toby Manhire, Annabelle Lee-Mather and Ben Thomas gather for some group therapy, to assess the performances in the TVNZ multi-party debate and the NZME leaders' debate, the controversy over pics of Green and Te Pati Māori MPs hanging out with the Mongrel Mob, and the re-emergence of the bitter fight between Winston Peters and Christopher Luxon over the New Zealand position on the war in Iran. Cast your vote for Gone By Lunchtime in the Listeners' Choice category in this year's NZ Podcast Awards:https://www.nzpodcastawards.com/nominate Watch Toby's interview with Winston Peters here:https://youtu.be/gseBfePQzMM Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Round one of the Chris v Chris debate season played out last night on TVNZ. Ben Thomas was in the pundit capsule. Toby Manhire was in the studio. Annabelle Lee-Mather was in bed. The morning after, they assemble in the Spinoff pod studio to share their assessments, and at times they seem to have been watching very different events.Did Hipkins out-debate Luxon on the cost of living and the economy? Where were they on the morality of the billionaire? Who fared better on education, on health, on te tiriti? Were the real winners the parties that weren't in the room? And how about Jack Tame's wall?Plus: the scene was set for the encounter by two polls that tell a striking story: Labour and National are both going to struggle to hit 30%. Is that locked in, or can they claw their way back? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Kingmakers’ Debate is the highest-profile of a burst of events in the first full-throttle week of the 2026 campaign. How did the party leaders do in the Press-Post thing, and what happened to the worm? Toby Manhire, Annabelle Lee-Mather and Ben Thomas gather at the roundtable to exchange their piping  takes. Plus: What does new polling tell us about the way Māori are planning to vote? Now that John Key has knocked it down, is Harry Mowbray’s overhang campaign a serious thing? Who are the breakout stars of the election to date? And a word on Adrian Rurawhe.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Here’s a taste of our new podcast, At Large with Toby Manhire: this week Jack Tame came in to talk about how he’s preparing to host the first leaders’ debate in 2026, how the campaign is taking form, and the struggle to get the prime minister (and others) to talk to him on Q+A. Watch the Mt Albert debate in full here: https://youtu.be/LZO7gu6rhQg Watch the debate debrief with Lyric Waiwiri-Smith and Hayden Donnell here: https://youtu.be/1KewN5ilXtc Watch the full interview with Jack Tame here: https://youtu.be/RYOI7d16ApQ Follow At Large with Toby Manhire now on ⁠⁠⁠Spotify⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠Apple Podcasts,⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠⁠, or wherever you get your pods. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Parliament has disgorged its politicians ahead of a Super Sunday of campaign launches, with just a month and a day until advance voting begins. Toby Manhire, Annabelle Lee-Mather and Ben Thomas leaf through the brand new Ipsos Issues Monitor, which reveals which issues matter most to New Zealanders in election season, which parties they consider best equipped to tackle those concerns, and where people rank out of 10 the government’s performance. Have the competing parties successfully shaped their campaigns to meet a mood in which voters are very exercised about cost of living and increasingly worried about the health system?Plus: Nicky Hager has published Dirty Work, the third in a trilogy – what does the book tell us? And how alarmed should we be about a flagrant subversion of the Official Information Act in the curriculum overhaul project at the Ministry of Education? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Just when you thought the two main parties were fixed on a do-little election, the National Party bursts out the triangulator and gazumps its Labour rivals with a pledge to pursue a breakup of the Foodstuffs group of Pak’nSave, New World and Four Square. Annabelle Lee-Mather, Ben Thomas and Toby Manhire race their trolleys to the studio to ask: will Nicola Willis’s bold call cut through the blancmange like a Smeg blade through an Ooshie? Will the popular appeal outweigh the pushback from local businesses? Are the KiwiMart Greens, NZ First and their "copycat" pals National now natural partners? Where does it all leave Labour? And does Annabelle deserve more respect for her "menage-opoly" bit?Plus: The report on the four-year ordeal for the Phillips children has been released and it's a horror show. What are the lessons for agencies including Oranga Tamariki and the Police, and is New Zealand suffering from an “accountability sink”?And what to make of the moves to wind down the Waitangi Tribunal? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices