For three years Labour has campaigned against the coalition’s cuts. In August Barbara Edmonds described the latest round of public service savings as “disgusting and cruel because they’re arbitrary”. Chris Hipkins wrote that same month that “Cuts cost jobs, weaken services, and make the economy smaller, which is exactly what’s happened”, and last month he said “I’m not willing to leave our schools rotting the way they are now.” As recently as Monday, Labour’s campaign chair Kieran McAnulty was demanding to know “which schools, hospitals, roads or public services will National cut to make its promises stack up?”

The case Labour has made is that the coalition’s restraint is wearing down the public services people depend on. Edmonds said in a recent statement that “While families are paying more, National has been cutting the services they rely on. Thousands of public service jobs have gone, including jobs in education, health and other frontline services.” When Labour set out its fiscal rules in August, Hipkins promised that Labour would “get the books back into shape” without “making life harder for New Zealanders or cutting the services they rely on”.

Sunday’s fiscal plan sits awkwardly with all of that. Labour has adopted Nicola Willis’ fiscal settings almost wholesale. It keeps her $2.4b annual operating allowance and her 2028/29 surplus year, and its debt track barely differs from hers. By 2030/31 Labour plans core Crown spending of about 30.4% of GDP, against National’s 29.8%. On the fundamentals, there’s now remarkably little argument between the two major parties.

RNZ says today that Labour and the Coalition are “largely on the same track”. Independent economist Cameron Bagrie’s conclusion is that “they’re all pretty well the same”. Sam Sachdeva at Newsroom says that “in key respects, the party has stuck closely to the coalition Government’s own numbers”. Henry Cooke’s analysis in The Post similarly emphasises how closely Labour now matches National on the big fiscal aggregates.

What is harder to see is how Labour’s rhetoric about “rebuilding New Zealand” fits inside those strict limits. Labour says hospitals, schools and government services have deteriorated. It says infrastructure has been neglected. It says National’s cuts have damaged state capacity and weakened the economy.

In it’s earlier fiscal statement six weeks ago, Labour seemed ready to argue that a larger state was part of the answer. This changed yesterday, and now it proposes to enter government using Nicola Willis’ operating allowance while public spending continues to decline as a share of GDP.

That is Labour’s austerity problem.

Labour has adopted the squeeze

“Austerity” is itself a disputed description of what the Coalition has done. The Post’s editorial on Friday made a fair objection to the term: overall Crown expenditure has continued rising in dollar terms under National, including spending on health and education. Particular programmes and jobs have disappeared, but the Government has not literally been shrinking aggregate spending every year.

Inflation, population growth and rising demand complicate that argument. More dollars do not necessarily buy more healthcare or better schools, and a government can increase nominal expenditure while service provision deteriorates. The forward track is also much tighter than the recent past. Treasury says Crown expenses are expected to decline sharply as a share of GDP because of “tight future operating allowances” and savings decisions that bite increasingly hard over time.

Fiscal consolidation or a fiscal squeeze might therefore be more precise language. But Labour itself has spent the parliamentary term calling the practical consequences “cuts” and “austerity”, accusing the Government of hollowing out public services and creating managed decline. The important question is not what label to stick on the process. It is why Labour has now accepted so many of the constraints producing it.

The $2.4b operating allowance is the key. It sounds like a large sum until you consider what it is required to do. This is the additional ongoing money available in each Budget, and before it can fund new Labour priorities it must help absorb rising wages, school costs, Corrections spending, police costs, government IT contracts, inflation and population growth across the state.

Thomas Coughlan points out that Treasury’s last estimate was that roughly $2.5b in extra funding was needed each year simply to maintain existing public services at about their current level. Both National and Labour have gone below that, at $2.4b. As Coughlan puts it, the parties begin with allowances “already slightly lower than what is needed to keep the proverbial lights on”.

Labour then wants that money to do more. Coughlan argues that once Labour’s election commitments and future cost pressures are taken seriously, there is very little room for spending growth through much of the state beyond health and pay equity. He identifies education, police, Corrections and defence among the areas exposed to the squeeze, extending all the way to RNZ and arts and sport funding.

That is a remarkably austere outcome for a party campaigning against austerity.

Marc Daalder saw the problem back in August when he wrote: “Labour’s own allegations of National Party austerity raise questions about why Labour would embark on such a similar fiscal path.” McAnulty’s challenge to National becomes even more relevant now. If governments refuse additional revenue while insisting on tight expenditure limits, something eventually gives.

So what is Labour going to cut?

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A week after National announced it would pursue the separation of Foodstuffs, 51 business figures signed an open letter asking every political party “to uphold a rules-based economy that respects private property and freedom of contract”. It was organised by the New Zealand Initiative, whose members include Foodstuffs North Island and Woolworths NZ among many other companies, and whose board includes Foodstuffs North Island chief executive Chris Quin. Quin signed the letter, as did Foodstuffs South Island chief executive Mary Devine.

National’s radical supermarket policy has clearly rattled many in business, especially incumbents who fear their privileged position in concentrated markets might be disrupted. At the moment the Act Party appears to be the beneficiary. The Post’s Anneke Smith reported on Friday that since National’s supermarket announcement, National has taken donations of just $52,000 (in declared donations of $20,000 or more) while Act has taken in $275,000.

Leader David Seymour says he has heard “vociferous reactions” from significant National donors unhappy with the supermarket policy. The supermarket fight has also become entangled with a wider argument within the political right over business and the role of the state.

In yesterday’s Democracy Briefing I argued that the shift of radical supermarket reform from the political fringe to the centre of this election is a healthy democratic response to years of public anger. I also highlighted that the polls mainly show scepticism about whether politicians will deliver. But the fightback from business is a reminder of how much power incumbents can bring to bear on policy, both in public and behind closed doors.

The lobbying counteroffensive

On the day National announced its supermarket policy, Nicola Willis warned that Foodstuffs was one of the best-resourced lobbying operations in the country and that she expected a tough fight. Newsroom’s Andrew Bevin has since documented who is involved. Foodstuffs says its in-house communications, public-affairs and marketing-communications team numbers eight. It also uses lobbying firm Thompson Lewis and corporate-affairs firm Sherson Willis.

Thompson Lewis was co-founded by GJ Thompson, who worked for Helen Clark and later took leave from the consultancy to serve as Jacinda Ardern’s chief of staff. Director Wayne Eagleson was John Key’s long-serving chief of staff. Paula Oliver was Key’s deputy chief of staff. Newsroom also notes that its senior staff include a former adviser to Nicola Willis in the current Government.

Sherson Willis brings another set of political connections. Founder Trish Sherson previously headed communications for Act. In July the company hired Andrew Ketels, who served as David Seymour’s chief of staff from 2020 to 2025 and previously advised National. Ketels is now Sherson Willis’s head of government relations. Newsroom reported that he had recently completed a short government-relations stint with Woolworths.

Ketels also has a Herald column this weekend attacking the wider vogue for interventionist election policy. His argument ranges well beyond supermarkets, across petrol regulation, data centres, KiwiSaver and student loans, but lands squarely in this debate when he writes: “Politicians are just responding to the incentives in front of them. Voters want governments to ‘do something’ about problems, even if doing nothing is the better option.”

Ketels’ column makes the case that interventionist policies being promoted as solutions to problems such as supermarket competition are populist measures likely to produce unintended consequences. The column’s byline states his role with Sherson Willis, but doesn’t mention that his firm does public relations work for Foodstuffs North Island.

Woolworths has its own network. Its advisers include lobbying firm Lillis Clark, whose directors Anna Lillis and Kenny Clark previously worked for former National finance minister Steven Joyce. Woolworths’ head of government relations, Andrew Kirton, is a former Labour Party general secretary who later served as Chris Hipkins’ chief of staff when Hipkins was prime minister.

Joyce is an interesting figure in his own right. After the Grocery Commissioner’s first report last year, he wrote in the Herald that Foodstuffs “could voluntarily agree to split their brands into two co-operatives” in return for being allowed to merge each brand’s North and South Island operations. A few months later he joined the Foodstuffs North Island board, and he also chairs NZME, publisher of the Herald.

Then there is BusinessNZ chief executive Katherine Rich, a former National MP and former longtime head of the Food and Grocery Council. BusinessNZ, whose membership includes both major supermarket groups, is opposing National’s break-up proposal. These networks run across party lines: Labour-aligned political operatives have worked for supermarket companies just as National and Act figures have.

None of these connections is evidence of wrongdoing. They matter because New Zealand still has almost no transparency around lobbying. Voters can see some ministerial diaries and political-donation disclosures, but there is no comprehensive register showing who is lobbying whom, for which clients, or what arguments and material they are putting before decision-makers.

That matters particularly because we have been here before. Earlier this year I wrote about how the previous round of supermarket reform was watered down amid extensive lobbying. During the Commerce Commission’s market study, Countdown retained Capital Government Relations, run by former Labour chief of staff Neale Jones. In January 2022 Kirton arranged a dinner between then finance minister Grant Robertson and Countdown’s managing director. The Commission’s 2021 draft had contemplated structural separation of wholesale and retail. By the final report in March 2022, that option was gone, replaced by a much more limited wholesale-access regime.

There is no smoking gun showing that the dinner or lobbying killed structural separation. The problem is that our lobbying system makes it extremely difficult to know what influence did.

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On Wednesday night I appeared on 1News talking about supermarket reform, which has become the defining policy debate of this election. The news item was built around a new Verian poll that looked like bad news for the politicians promising to shake up the grocery industry. Only 32% thought the proposed policies would lead to lower grocery prices within three years, while 54% said no and 14% didn’t know or preferred not to say.

I told 1News the supermarket policy choice “does really channel some of the zeitgeist of discontent in the electorate at the moment”, and that “these sorts of policies would have been seen as quite fringe a few years ago.” But I also pointed to an obvious credibility problem. “The public do have questions about the competency and credibility of the politicians,” I said, “especially after so many years of no progress on this.”

The supermarket debate has nonetheless become a radical one. Years of anger about broken markets have forced the parties to come up with structural fixes, and I think that shift should be welcomed as a sign of democracy working. I don’t read the Verian poll as undermining that. What it mainly measures is doubt that reform will reach the checkout any time soon.

The politician credibility gap

The Commerce Commission estimated the supermarket duopoly’s excess profits at around $1 million a day back in 2022. Since then, voters have watched successive governments appoint a Grocery Commissioner, whose specialist role is now due to be replaced by a regulatory committee in 2028, and hunt the world for a third player. This week The Warehouse ruled itself out of becoming that third player. Yet the Commission’s latest annual grocery report found “little observable change in core competition metrics”, with the two groups’ combined market share essentially unchanged at 82%.

Jacinda Ardern said in 2022 that she would “unlock the stockroom doors” of Woolworths and Foodstuffs, and Nicola Willis has spent well over a year promising more competition. Yet as Tom Pullar-Strecker wrote in the Post when the Commission’s report came out in June, “the supermarket duopoly is about as strong as ever.” Mike Hosking was blunter on Newstalk ZB: “No one has jawboned groceries like Nicola Willis, so her hot air outpaces any action.” Consumer NZ was picking up this scepticism well before the campaign. In its survey in April last year, 66% of people had low confidence in the Government’s grocery policies, with only 9% expressing high confidence.

Nor is there much confidence on the other side of the argument. Consumer NZ’s trust tracking found supermarkets suffered the biggest fall of any sector it measured between 2021 and 2024, with only 35% of shoppers expressing high trust in supermarket pricing and promotions.

So the politics is being driven by two kinds of distrust at once: dissatisfaction with the supermarkets and scepticism that governments can successfully reform them.

The Verian result shouldn’t be mistaken for a referendum on the reforms themselves. The question was essentially whether any of the proposed policies would leave respondents personally paying less for groceries within three years, which asks quite a lot of a voter. A policy has to get through coalition negotiations and actually work before it shows up in anyone’s grocery bill, all within a fairly short period.

Danyl McLauchlan’s cover story in this week’s Listener rates the parties’ supermarket policies against the evidence. He gives both the Foodstuffs break-up and Labour’s wholesale separation a verdict of “GOOD”, which he reserves for policies where “the mechanism is sound and the costs are honest”, though he warns that the break-up’s benefits would vanish if it raised the chains’ costs by more than 2%.

Foodstuffs’ own polling tells the same story as Verian’s. The co-operative commissioned Talbot Mills to survey 1325 people between 16 and 21 September, and its headline results were leaked to Stuff’s Jenna Lynch, who reported on them yesterday. Asked about National’s policy to investigate separating Pak’nSave and New World, 45% were in favour and only 38% opposed. When Stuff approached Foodstuffs, it confirmed the poll and shared further results. Asked whether forcing the separation would lower grocery prices, just 28% said yes and 48% said no.

So, supporting a break-up and believing it will make groceries cheaper are plainly not the same thing.

Support for National’s policy crossed party lines. National voters backed it by 58% to 34%, and a majority of Green voters were in favour. Even Act voters supported it by 45% to 43%, despite their party’s opposition, while Labour voters were evenly split. New Zealand First voters, whose party proposed the split first, were narrowly against it, by 41% to 39%.

Earlier polling found even stronger support for radical action. In September 2021, after being told of the Commerce Commission’s draft finding that competition wasn’t working well for consumers, 70% of respondents in a Phoenix Research survey for Monopoly Watch NZ supported splitting up the two supermarket groups, with only 15% opposed.

How 2026 turned into “the supermarket election”

It’s remarkable how quickly those dramatic proposed interventions have moved into the political mainstream.

In January the Herald’s Anne Gibson asked Foodstuffs North Island chief executive Chris Quin what the key election issue would be. “Hopefully,” he replied, “it will be about things other than supermarkets and grocery prices.” Instead, as a Herald editorial put it last week, “After years of governments talking around the issue while the Commerce Commission did studies, and everyone hoped an Aldi-shaped caped crusader of competition would ride to the rescue before anyone actually had to do anything – we are now awash in policies.”

New Zealand First promised in April to split Foodstuffs into separate Pak’nSave and New World/Four Square cooperatives. On 6 September the Greens went much further with KiwiMart, a $2.8 billion plan to require Woolworths and Foodstuffs to “divest at least 120 stores and distribution centre capacity into public ownership”. National adopted the Foodstuffs split in September, subject to a Commerce Commission assessment, and Labour announced a price-gouging ban the same morning and, four days later, a plan to separate the duopoly’s wholesale arms from their stores. Te Pāti Māori is backing Māori-owned supermarkets, and outside Parliament the Opportunity Party wants the Commerce Commission empowered to seek break-ups through the High Court.

Act stands almost alone in Parliament in insisting the answer is not to restructure the incumbents. Its proposal is to make it easier for another operator to enter: streamlined consenting, fewer local-government hurdles and recognition of some overseas food labels – basically deregulation and cutting of red-tape.

Until mid-September National’s official policy was relatively aligned to Act’s approach, although Willis had told the Post in July that she was looking “in detail” at structural separation. Former Act leader Richard Prebble notes on his Substack that at 2.37pm on 15 September, Commerce Minister Cameron Brewer was still describing that approach to Parliament, starting with “making it easier to consent and build supermarkets”. Nineteen hours and 46 minutes later, by his count, National gave the media seven minutes’ notice of a press conference to announce a break-up.

Gareth Hughes, the former Green MP who now heads the Wellbeing Economy Alliance Aotearoa, says in the Post: “The cost-of-living election has become the supermarket election.” Of National, New Zealand First, Labour and the Greens, he writes: “After four decades of governments reluctant to intervene directly in markets, all four parties now accept that New Zealand’s supermarket duopoly is not working and needs major structural reform.”

Consumer NZ chief executive Jon Duffy told RNZ: “What is really encouraging is that we seem to be now not having a debate around whether the government needs to step in and do something about this sector, it’s how they should do that.” As Glenn McConnell wrote in Stuff, “A once radical proposal is, thanks to the election, becoming the mainstream consensus.”

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The battle on the political right over strategic voting is heating up. Harry Mowbray has turned the right’s overhang argument into a public campaign. His new Split Your Vote website tells National supporters to give their party votes to Act or NZ First while continuing to elect National’s local candidates. Mowbray, father of the billionaire Zuru siblings, has backed it up with a series of short whiteboard videos on YouTube, and a busy presence on his own social media, where the campaign posts sit alongside others such as “Trump is the best president in my lifetime”.

Mowbray argues that if enough rightwing voters follow his instructions, the quirks of MMP could produce an “overhang” of up to 40 additional MPs for the coalition parties. The proportionality of Parliament would be severely skewed, allowing the right to win this election, and future ones, even if more New Zealanders voted for the opposition parties. His website says so plainly: “If we can learn to strategically split our votes like this in future elections a centre-right coalition will retain the Treasury Benches for the foreseeable future.”

National’s leadership wants supporters to reject the advice. Some rightwing advocates, however, regard weakening National and removing its senior MPs as part of the attraction.

Labour leader Chris Hipkins has condemned the campaign today as a “rort” by “entrenched interests”. He told the Post’s Henry Cooke: “Billionaires shouldn’t be spending their money to try and rort the electoral system.”

I have previously examined how both sides could game MMP and the campaign to engineer a National overhang. The launch now makes it possible to examine who is organising it and what they want voters to do.

Who’s behind the campaign

Mowbray appeared on The Platform with Sean Plunket this morning and explained that he had initially planned to organise the campaign with others. Plunket referred to a meeting at Mowbray’s Coatesville home three weeks ago and a fundraising target of $400,000–$500,000.

Ani O’Brien says she provided paid consultancy advice on the proposed campaign. Her advice, she says, was that a full campaign was not possible under electoral law, and she then ended her involvement. She says she had nothing to do with the campaign Mowbray subsequently launched. Mowbray also identified Stephen Franks as one of those who had warned him about the electoral rules. He denied that the Taxpayers’ Union was involved, while acknowledging talking with Jordan Williams and having him to lunch “a few times”.

Mowbray denied that the Taxpayers’ Union was involved. He acknowledged talking with Jordan Williams, having him to lunch and attending the political debate with him the previous evening.

Then the organisers encountered the Electoral Act. According to Mowbray, O’Brien and Franks explained that the proposed campaign would have to comply with electoral rules. He says the collective project was abandoned, and he started again on his own, saying he would spend no more than $17,000.

Plunket was sceptical that this was really a one-man operation, pointing out that the campaign’s Facebook page described it as a political organisation, and that the website invited people to subscribe to “our” newsletter. Mowbray said he would check the wording, and acknowledged that he had “mates that are helping me do bits and pieces”. The website now invites readers to subscribe to “my newsletter”.

Calling it an individual campaign does not, by itself, remove the advertising rules. Anyone promoting an election advertisement for a party or candidate is required to have that party’s or candidate’s written authorisation. Staying under the spending threshold does not remove that requirement.

Mowbray told Plunket he has no third-party promoter approval from National, Act or New Zealand First, and Seymour confirmed that Act hadn’t been approached. Paid promotion of a website telling people to party vote Act or New Zealand First would appear to need exactly that permission. Seymour’s view was blunt: “if they want to become a promoter in the election, I think they got to register and get the permission of the person. If they’re breaking the rules, then I’m sure someone will dob them in and they’ll be in big trouble.”

However, individuals publishing personal political views online without making or receiving payment are exempt. Whether Mowbray’s campaign qualifies depends on how it is run and what paid work went into it. Paying O’Brien does not, on its own, establish a breach.

What the campaign promises

Mowbray’s argument is that on current polling National will win about 40 electorates but won’t get enough party votes to bring in any list MPs, so every National party vote is effectively lost. On Facebook he put the upside in sweeping terms: “If everyone was to split the approx 870,000 votes you would get 36 extra seats plus 4 national overhang seats, if 240,000 people split you would get 10 extra seats plus the 4 Nats seat overhang. Zero risk only upside”. Elaborating on The Platform, he again described a 40-seat overhang under which “the centre right would govern New Zealand for the foreseeable future”, and explained why he thinks this is necessary: “The present situation is MMP will continue to drive this country to the left.”

The 40-seat overhang only arrives if virtually every National party voter abandons the party, leaving National with almost no party vote at all. The claim that a National party vote achieves nothing is also overstated. Seats are shared out across all parties according to their share of the party vote, so every National party vote still reduces the entitlement of the other parties, including those on the left, so the “wasted vote” line doesn’t stand up.

The campaign’s stated goal is to keep the centre-right in power for the foreseeable future, using a feature of MMP that was intended to protect local representation. As Cooke points out, the mechanism would let the coalition parties “enjoy a majority in the House without necessarily winning more votes than the Opposition”.

Responding to the “rort” accusation, Mowbray told Cooke: “In terms of rorting it - the rules are there. We are only just using the rules that are there.” But it is clear that his campaign asks voters to make Parliament less proportional on purpose.

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For the first time, the regulation of lobbying has become a condition for forming a government in New Zealand. Yesterday the Opportunity Party named five “non-negotiable” policies that any party wanting its support to form a government would have to accept, and one of them is regulating political lobbying. Leader Qiulae Wong said that “New Zealanders deserve to know who is trying to influence their government, and no one should be able to buy disproportionate political influence.” She was blunt on what the party would not compromise on: “We will require real reform of lobbying and political donations.”

The announcement comes after a fortnight in which the Greens published a detailed lobbying policy and draft legislation, Victoria University researchers released a major report on lobbying, and the Public Health Communication Centre tried to pin the political parties down on where they stand.

Lobbying reform is receiving more sustained attention in this election campaign than ever before. But the history of the issue provides plenty of reason for scepticism. New Zealand has never been short of politicians willing to criticise lobbying from opposition. What it has lacked is governments willing to impose significant restrictions on political access and the revolving door once those relationships become useful to them.

Opportunity’s announcement matters because the latest 1News-Verian poll has the party on 6%, or seven MPs. Under both seat scenarios calculated by 1News, neither the current governing bloc nor Labour, the Greens and Te Pāti Māori reaches a majority without Opportunity. So, on those numbers, lobbying reform has something it has rarely possessed in New Zealand politics: bargaining power.

The easiest promise to keep badly

Of all Opportunity’s bottom lines, lobbying reform may be one of the easiest for a major party to concede. It has little direct fiscal cost, there is substantial public support for greater transparency, and politicians on both left and right have previously endorsed variations on the usual reform package.

That also creates a risk: lobbying reform may be easy to satisfy in name while changing rather less in practice.

There is already some ambiguity in Opportunity’s position. Its full Clean Up Politics policy promises a one-year cooling-off period between senior government roles and lobbying, a mandatory public and searchable register, and a statutory code of conduct with “real consequences for misconduct, including deregistration and fines”. But its new bottom-line document is narrower. It says any governing partner must accept “a mandatory register and code of conduct for lobbyists”, along with its separate requirement on political donations. The one-year revolving-door restriction is not expressly included in the bottom-line wording, nor are the proposed fines.

That may simply be shorthand. But what would another party actually have to agree to? Would the complete lobbying package need to be enacted? Would a register and mandatory code be enough? Could the next government agree to the principle, send officials away for another year of policy design and declare the condition met?

There is plenty of history of lobbying reform going into the system and very little coming out. In 2023 Chris Hipkins responded to a series of lobbying controversies by backing the development of a voluntary code and announcing longer-term work on regulatory options. National was then in opposition, and Nicola Willis went further, supporting a transparent public register and a 12-month stand-down before former ministers could move directly into lobbying. Once National took office, however, the urgency drained away. Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith put lobbying reform alongside all the other competing demands on his portfolio and the regulatory project stalled. The pattern is bigger than National: lobbying reform always seems more urgent from the Opposition benches.

Max Rashbrooke put the political pattern rather neatly to Newsroom’s Fox Meyer last week. He said lobbying reform is something opposition parties can use to “embarrass” governments, only for it to become “suddenly not a priority” after they take power. Of National’s earlier commitments, he observed: “In practice, however, they have – strangely enough – not found it a matter of urgency to implement them.”

That is what makes Opportunity’s move potentially different. A manifesto promise can quietly drop down a ministerial work programme. A provision in the coalition agreement that establishes a government is harder to lose without somebody having to explain why. But that only works if the commitment is precise enough that another review, another code and another promise to look at the difficult bits cannot be presented as delivery.

Labour answers without answering

Yesterday the Public Health Communication Centre released a survey report on what the various parties will commit to on lobbying and democracy reforms. Apart from Opportunity and the Greens, no other parties were fully committed to reform of lobbying. On lobbying reform the report’s summary table labels Labour’s response as “Unclear”.

The full response explains why. Labour was asked a straightforward question: “Will your party introduce an online, public and searchable register of lobbyists…?” It replied: “Labour believes it’s important we have a sensible and transparent system that does not give the impression that lobbyists enjoy an unfair advantage over other New Zealanders.”

That is not a yes. The wording is also notable: it talks about the impression of unfair advantage rather than explicitly saying that an unfair advantage exists.

Labour can reasonably point out that it initiated the 2023 reform work and that health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall has lodged a Tobacco Transparency Bill. But the party has still not set out a clear general package covering a statutory lobby register, disclosure of lobbying activity and restrictions on the revolving door.

The other party responses are hardly conclusive either. Te Pāti Māori says it is “open to supporting specific policies which promote greater transparency over commercial lobbyists as a part of Coalition Agreement negotiations”. New Zealand First did not give a clear answer on a lobby register and warned that “for a lot of areas” its 2026 policies were yet to be finalised. National and Act did not respond to the Public Health survey at all. The authors find broad support for reform, but agreement on an actual statutory regime is much thinner.

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Labour and National are now on 28% each in the 1News-Verian poll released tonight, giving them just 56% of decided voters between them. Their leaders are doing even worse, with Christopher Luxon preferred as prime minister by 19% and Chris Hipkins by 14%.

The poll was taken between 23 and 27 September, mostly before the two parties launched their campaigns in Auckland on Sunday, so it shows the slump that the launches were supposed to turn around. Neither launch suggested the parties know how to do that.

Kerre Woodham’s verdict on Newstalk ZB this morning was that “For both parties, the launches pretty much reeked of desperation.” The description seems even more apt after tonight’s numbers. And neither launch exactly looked like a major political movement sweeping confidently towards election day.

Three weeks ago I wrote about the “politics of meh”, arguing that both major parties were struggling to offer much beyond warnings about what the other side might do – see: Democracy Briefing: The politics of meh. Their campaign launches were an obvious opportunity to move beyond that. Instead, Sunday largely confirmed the problem, albeit at much greater volume.

Short on hope and heavy on fear

With so little enthusiasm for either party, both major party leaders spent Sunday mostly talking about the other. Luxon told his audience “You can’t afford Chris Hipkins”, and a couple of hours later Hipkins was telling his that “I’ve never felt more strongly in my life that the National Party is a risk to the future of this country.”

Stuff’s Jenna Lynch captured the choice neatly: “National wants voters afraid of what a Labour-led government might tax. Labour wants them afraid of what another three years of a National-led government might cost them.”

In that sense, the politics of meh hasn’t disappeared. It has simply become louder and more negative, with much of the campaign increasingly built around fear of what the other lot might do. The Listener’s Danyl McLauchlan, who welcomes the absence of unaffordable promises this time, argued that if Labour and National “can’t resort to their usual gimmicks, they have next-to-nothing to offer other than their mutual loathing.”

No political party is entitled to anything

The two parties’ combined support in the 1News poll has gone from 67% in April to 61% in June, 59% in August and 56% now. Hipkins dismissed an August Taxpayers’ Union-Curia poll as “rogue”, but he can no longer do that. Two other polls this month had both parties below 30%. If tonight’s figures were repeated on 7 November, it would be the lowest combined vote for the two parties since National was formed in 1936. The lowest so far under MMP was 62% in 1996, and as recently as 2017 the pair took about 81% between them.

The voters leaving Labour and National are ending up with the smaller parties. The Greens are on 16%, their best result ever in the poll, with Act on 11%, NZ First on 9% and Opportunity on 6%.

Asked whether the Greens were taking Labour’s votes, Green co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick said: “No political party is entitled to anything.” Luxon fell back on the old standby that “The only poll that matters now is November the 7th.”

Mr No New Taxes

National made its central message impossible to miss yesterday. The strategy is straightforward: National wants tax to become the defining risk voters associate with changing government.

Newsroom’s Sam Sachdeva counted the word “tax”, or variants of it, about 64 times in 54 minutes of speeches — “an impressive, or horrifying, 1.2 taxes per minute”. Christopher Luxon was introduced as “Mr No New Taxes”. Nicola Willis described a possible alternative government as “a potpourri of half-baked socialists who seek to punish success, destroy wealth, and take what you’ve worked so hard to earn”. Sachdeva also noted that Simeon Brown invited the audience to imagine Chlöe Swarbrick as finance minister, Rawiri Waititi in Corrections and Opportunity leader Qiulae Wong imposing a land tax as revenue minister.

The “No New Taxes” slogan was “recited ad nauseam by supporters in the crowd”, according to the Herald’s Jamie Ensor and Adam Pearse. They explained that until the slogan arrived, “the party was lacking a central unifying narrative at a time when it felt like there was more momentum behind attempts to roll its leader than towards victory.” Beyond the absence of new taxes, “there also wasn’t much new of anything else”, and apart from a couple of policies, such as compulsory KiwiSaver, the pledge card read as if “someone had copy and pasted the 2023 pledges, and just changed them up a tad.”

The paywall now starts partway through all Democracy Project newsletters. Please take out a paid sub if you want to support this service and access the full content, including the following sections:
National’s loyalty problem
Hipkins finds his temper
What the major parties are missing in the campaign

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Henry Cooke’s frontpage article in the Post yesterday opened with a striking sentence: “There is an attempt – a very nascent one – from a very rich right-wing man to fundamentally skew the New Zealand election.” The man is Harry Mowbray, father of the siblings behind the Zuru toy company, and Cooke reports that he “has been calling around looking to get a campaign going that exploits the ‘overhang’ in MMP to get the current parties of the coalition an advantage.” Mowbray apparently believes “anywhere from 10 extra MPs to 30 is possible.”

A month ago I wrote about how both sides could game MMP – see: Democracy Briefing: How both sides could game MMP. At that stage Te Pāti Māori had built its campaign around the candidate vote, and people on the right were mostly just discussing whether National voters could do the same on a bigger scale. That talk has since turned into something closer to a campaign, and a steady stream of broadcasters and bloggers repeating one instruction: “electorate vote National, party vote Act or New Zealand First”.

None of the three coalition parties will put its name to the strategy, and National is openly hostile to it. The advocacy is coming from donors, commentators and some candidates, while the parties themselves resist the proposal. If it develops into paid campaigning, the organisers will face requirements that ordinary political commentary does not.

I’ve criticised Te Pāti Māori’s version too, but at least it is owned by a party that voters can punish on 7 November. In this case, however, a campaign organised outside the parties raises an additional question: who takes responsibility for its funding and methods?

More seats without more support

Here’s why this overhang strategy is very clever, but not very ethical.

Normally, the party vote determines each party’s total entitlement to MPs. Electorate winners fill part of that entitlement, and list MPs make up the balance. If a party wins more electorates than its party vote entitles it to, however, it keeps those electorate MPs and Parliament expands. That is an overhang.

The broader strategy promoted by individuals like Don Brash exploits that exception. National supporters would keep electing National’s local candidates while transferring party votes to Act or NZ First. If National retained enough electorates, reducing its party-vote entitlement would enlarge its overhang while the transferred votes helped elect more of its partners’ MPs.

Consider a hypothetical result in which the governing parties’ combined party votes would ordinarily produce 58 seats against the opposition’s 62. If transfers within the governing bloc generated a six-seat National overhang, the result could become 64 against 62. Parliament would grow to 126 MPs, with 64 needed for a majority. The coalition would have crossed that line without increasing its combined party vote.

Of course there is nothing inherently wrong with splitting your votes. Someone can prefer a National electorate candidate and Act’s policies. The objection is to deliberately coordinating votes to produce a Parliament less representative of the party vote, potentially allowing a bloc with less support to remain in government.

From talkback to a campaign

Anyone who listens to rightwing talkback will have heard the pitch by now. Don Brash brought the idea to wide attention in August, telling The Platform that “The right would be unstoppable.” Michael Laws, a New Zealand First candidate who also hosts a daily show on The Platform, says he has been “hammering” the case for the “overhang ruse or rort” since February. Peter Williams conceded on his Substack that the tactic was “not absolutely ethical or in the spirit of the electoral system but needs must.” Ashley Church has pushed it on his blog and on Leighton Smith’s podcast, and Act candidate Paul Henry has hinted at it on his roadshow.

Muriel Newman’s New Zealand Centre for Political Research has since published detailed advice on vote-splitting, identifying electorates where Act and NZ First supporters could help National. She argues that National party votes may produce no additional MPs, while acknowledging that a recovery in its support could change the calculation.

Cameron Slater has been pushing the same split at the Good Oil. A website called “Two Votes, Two MPs” already advocates an electorate vote for National, except in Epsom and Tāmaki, and a party vote for Act or NZ First. The site names Dieuwe de Boer in its authorisation statement and says it is unaffiliated with any party or third-party promoter.

And at the start of September Nick Mowbray, who has given $250,000 to National and $200,000 to Act this year, set out the strategy on X: “The objective is simple: maximise the chances of the current coalition continuing to govern.”

Much of the arithmetic comes from Oliver Hartwich of the New Zealand Initiative, whose modelling found that “If one National party vote in nine moved to a coalition partner, the Government would gain a parliamentary majority even if the opposition wins more votes in total.”

Writing about Te Pāti Māori’s tactic, Hartwich warned: “This tactical manoeuvre makes political sense, it is legal, and that is exactly the problem.” As Toby Manhire observed at the Spinoff, “All of this might be dismissed as fanciful were it not for the fact that it has been championed by a group of intelligent and influential figures on the right.” Newman and others have since treated Hartwich’s paper as a how-to guide.

The Mowbray plan

Cooke describes Harry Mowbray wanting Act and New Zealand First voters to pledge their electorate votes to National, while some National voters give their party votes to Act. Cooke is blunt about what that would mean: “Mathematically, this could give the right a large number of extra seats – without having to win over actual new voters.” It would also “make it entirely possible for a Government to be elected that had far fewer votes than the Opposition, but were simply better organised.”

This is reminiscent of the first past the post electoral era, such as in the 1978 and 1981 elections, in which the party with the most votes lost. Mowbray’s proposal could produce a comparable mismatch between votes and power.

Cooke found Mowbray “refreshingly open about his goal”, and reports that he “thinks MMP is a dog of a system for allowing such a move.” Hartwich, for his part, told the Taxpayers’ Union’s podcast that he would prefer first past the post, although he argues MMP should be repaired before voters are asked whether to keep it. I suspect some on the right wouldn’t mind much if MMP were discredited along the way.

What remains unclear is who would finance such a campaign and how much voters would learn about its spending.

The paywall now starts partway through all Democracy Project newsletters. Please take out a paid sub if you want to support this service and access the full content, including the following sections:
“The obstacle to an advertising campaign”
“The prospect of paid influencers”
“Doing what the parties can’t”
“Changing the rules”

The obstacle to an advertising campaign

Mowbray has run into two obstacles. The first, as Cooke tells it, is that “the parties he wants to involve in this are completely aghast at the idea.” National doesn’t want to become an electorate-only party, and Act and New Zealand First know that chasing two ticks keeps their volunteers working.

The second is electoral law. “Instructing someone on how to vote, especially in a paid pamphlet as Mowbray was mulling, would likely be seen as an election advertisement under the Electoral Act,” Cooke writes. An outside campaigner who wants to run advertising promoting a party or candidate needs that party’s or candidate’s written permission, and Cooke’s reporting suggests National would be unlikely to welcome such a request.

Advertising against a party is a different matter, and Cooke notes “There is space to encourage people to vote against another party, but there are still rules and limits around that spending.” A campaign confined to opposing National’s party vote would raise different authorisation questions. But material that also promotes Act, NZ First or electorate candidates would still need to satisfy the relevant rules.

Cooke also reports that Mowbray “was now looking to see if he could spend $17,000 promoting a website that pushed the plan – but this was not yet final.” The figure matches the unregistered third-party advertising limit. Staying within it would avoid compulsory registration, but election advertisements would still need to identify their promoter and obtain any required authorisations. Identifying the promoter, however, does not necessarily tell voters who supplied the money.

The prospect of paid influencers

Separately, I am told that paid promotion through social media influencers is being considered by some on the right, in lieu of an official campaign. But paying influencers would not automatically avoid the advertising rules. The Electoral Commission’s exemption for online political content covers “individuals publishing their personal political views online without making or receiving payment”.

Paying someone to promote particular parties would not qualify for the unpaid personal-views exemption. Whether the content constituted election advertising would depend on its substance and any other applicable exemption, including for editorial content. If it did, promoter identification and the relevant written authorisations would be required.

There is a problem of enforcement though. Undisclosed paid content could be difficult to identify and investigate before election day. Therefore the Electoral Commission would do everyone a favour by spelling out now how the rules apply.

Doing what the parties can’t

Michael Laws has been admirably frank about why the parties must be kept at arm’s length from such a campaign. He told his listeners that the parties “cannot admit this particular strategy”, going on to say: “But the rest of us aren’t bound.” His justification is retaliation against Te Pāti Māori: “We’re going to screw the scrum as well.”

According to a Herald report, Paul Henry told a Lower Hutt audience that people who had “worked it out” would talk to others, “and maybe that’s the best way this news should filter around”, then remarked that “there are members of the media here”.

Chris Bishop’s response to Brash was that “voters would punish that kind of game-playing”. But that deterrent works best when a party is doing the playing. Hartwich argues that “A National voter who understands this needs no instruction from anyone.” Those voters are now receiving a great deal of instruction, and some of it may soon be paid for.

Changing the rules

New Zealand’s rules on third-party campaigning were largely designed before paying social media influencers became a campaign tool. The question is whether existing disclosure and enforcement arrangements are adequate for paid political promotion through social media, particularly when audiences cannot see who is financing it. Once the votes are counted, the next government might want to look at the rules again, alongside the overhang itself, which has survived several reviews recommending change. As I argued last month, that review should be independent and cross-party, rather than run by whichever side happened to benefit in 2026.

Hartwich put the broader danger well: “An electoral system that punishes sincere voting and rewards clever voting will not stay legitimate for long.” I’d say the same about campaign rules that let a wealthy backer spend right up to the registration limit while the public learns almost nothing about the money.

As Manhire has pointed out, the Royal Commission that recommended MMP forty years ago trusted that “any attempt to deliberately manipulate the system would be both difficult to implement and likely to attract an electoral backlash”. Harry Mowbray will not be on the ballot. Any electoral backlash would fall on the parties his campaign sought to help.

In a further Democracy Briefing I’ll look at who on the right stands to gain from all this, and why National itself may be one of the campaign’s targets. Until then, Michael Swanson’s advice on his Substack is the best available. He says the overhang strategy is “a corruption of what the system was designed to do” and concludes: “The honest advice is the boring advice: vote for the person you want in your electorate, and give your party vote to the party you actually want in Parliament.”

Dr Bryce Edwards
Director of the Democracy Project

Further Reading:
Henry Cooke (Post): Why the Mowbray plot to skew the election probably won’t work (paywalled)
Toby Manhire (Spinoff): The calls on the right to ‘rort’ MMP by engineering a National Party overhang
Muriel Newman (NZCPR): Strategic voting to win
Oliver Hartwich (New Zealand Initiative): Tactical voting could sink MMP
Oliver Hartwich (NZCPR): Unravelling MMP
Taxpayer Talk: Jordan Williams and Oliver Hartwich on MMP gaming and overhang chaos
Ashley Church: Could an MMP loophole return a centre-right government?
Peter Williams: Should Nats follow the TPM Method?
Michael Laws (The Platform): MMP overhang is the only effective answer to Te Pāti Māori’s tactics
Cameron Slater (Good Oil): Still no list MPs. Still no answer.
Michael Swanson: Gaming the House: overhang seats and the 2026 election
Nik Dirga (RNZ): Explainer: What is an overhang and how could it change NZ’s election result?
Electoral Commission: About election advertising
Electoral Commission: For third party promoters

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Nicky Hager’s Dirty Work is the third in his trilogy about the political right, following on from The Hollow Men and Dirty Politics. It’s the weakest of the three, and yet it’s still well worth reading for what it tells us about the organisations around Jordan Williams.

My first column about the book set out what it contains, and my second examined the fight over its facts, including Hager’s decision not to seek responses before publication. But the argument over errors, and over Three Waters, has crowded out what I think is the book’s most valuable contribution. Several organisations around Jordan Williams present themselves as grassroots movements, community campaigns, student groups or independent trusts. Hager traces their founders, staff, campaign suppliers and, in some cases, their money. Whether these bodies are what they appear to be deserves more sustained attention than it has received.

Hager doesn’t fully answer that question. He examines some organisations closely and others hardly at all, and at times he slides from scrutinising their independence to attacking their politics. But this is where the book is strongest, and it tells the public things that political insiders knew and most voters didn’t.

“Everyone does this”

Some of Hager’s most persuasive critics admire his earlier work. In the Listener, Danyl McLauchlan praises The Hollow Men but argues that much of Dirty Work describes “the routine practice of activism, fundraising and media campaigns”. “Everyone does this,” he writes, “but it’s all described as if there’s something novel and sinister going on.” He says Hager too readily treats “the ordinary, pedestrian work of politics as shocking crimes unique to his subjects”. Collecting email addresses, commissioning polls and soliciting small donations are familiar campaigning methods.

The Herald’s Thomas Coughlan identifies a related weakness. Earlier books allowed readers to inspect political operators’ own correspondence. Here, much depends on anonymous former staff “of unknown seniority whose remarks are often so vague it is unclear how close they were to the allegations they describe”.

Henry Cooke reports in The Post that Hager was pressed at the launch on “what exactly was wrong with a group that believed in right wing beliefs doing things to further those right wing beliefs”. As Cooke points out, Hager “could not, obviously, argue that the Taxpayers’ Union had been working in secret”.

On Newsroom’s Raw Politics podcast today, Tim Murphy and Sam Sachdeva have also questioned how far this instalment matches its predecessors. Both nevertheless saw material worth pursuing, with Sachdeva singling out the tobacco connections for further investigation.

Effective rightwing campaigning is a legitimate part of democratic politics. But “everyone does this” leaves the question of representation unanswered. Who commissions a campaign, who controls it, and what does the public understand about those arrangements?

Grass roots or astroturf?

At the book launch, Sam Sachdeva reports, Hager said Williams saw himself as setting up “a whole constellation of little groups” that “would appear to us silly public as being independent and having different points of view … but actually they were all part of his spider’s web”. That is essentially a claim of astroturfing, a term Hager uses in the book and defines as a situation “where an orchestrated political operation is disguised as a spontaneous grassroots movement”. He uses the term only five times in the main text, although the problem runs through much of the book. It is familiar territory for him. His 1999 book with Bob Burton, Secrets and Lies, was subtitled “The anatomy of an anti-environmental PR campaign”.

Chlöe Swarbrick, quoted in The Post, listed “the astroturfing” among the things that set the Union apart when the Greens pulled out of its debates, and the word is easily thrown around. Employing professional campaigners or running online petitions does not, in itself, make an organisation fake. McLauchlan is right that “Everyone does this”, but not everyone hides who is running a campaign. The astroturf question arises when a campaign’s public presentation disguises the sponsorship, direction or constituency behind it.

I’ve made a similar point before. When David Fisher profiled the Union for the Herald in 2015, I told him it was “disingenuous in the way it represents itself”, with “the appearance of standing for wider society”. I also called it “a legitimate part of the political scene”. That is still roughly my view.

The Union rejects Hager’s claim, as Stuff put it, that it is “a ‘fake’ organisation posing as a broad public movement”, and says about two-thirds of its donations come from grassroots donors. On Duncan Garner’s podcast, Ani O’Brien said yesterday that “If Jordan was trying to hide something, he wouldn’t have a website that is out there, and he wouldn’t be so public.” She has a point about the Union itself. But according to Hager, O’Brien also built the relaunched Sensible Sentencing Trust’s website at the Campaign Company, and that is a different story.

Hager’s early example is Williams’ 2011 Vote for Change campaign against MMP. He calls it “a classic example” of astroturfing, “essentially a three-person initiative” with Williams as spokesperson, Simon Lusk as campaign manager and Cameron Slater as online publicist, and “the model for establishing the TU two years later”.

For me, this is what makes the organisations around Williams worth investigating. We are being asked to listen to these groups because they speak for taxpayers, students or small businesses. That claim deserves checking.

The business behind the campaigns

Hager adds a lot to what was known about Williams’ Campaign Company, which I wrote about in April last year. Set up in 2021 and sharing the Union’s Auckland office, it follows what Hager calls the “United States astroturf model”, and “can organise a major political or issue campaign with just a few staff and a budget”.

It starts with a petition. People who sign one have their email addresses added to a campaign database. “At this point, these people are not really supporters,” Hager writes. Regular emails, memes and appeals for money then turn some of them into donors. One former staffer objected to the Union calling the people on its own list “subscribed supporters”: “These people have not subscribed. They just signed an online petition.” Williams has described taking a client that had plateaued at about 4,000 supporters to “nearly 70,000, achieving legislative victories”. Hager identifies the client as Hobson’s Pledge.

The same small team can also serve several apparently independent groups. The Campaign Company has worked for Hobson’s Pledge, Groundswell, the Sensible Sentencing Trust, the Free Speech Union and the Union itself.

The paywall now starts partway through all Democracy Project newsletters. Please take out a paid sub if you want to support this service and access the full content, including the following sections:
Big Tobacco and the dairy owners
The return of the Sensible Sentencing Trust
Real supporters and questions of control
When Hager argues with the politics
What insiders know and readers do not
A worthwhile third book

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Nicky Hager’s Dirty Work reaches bookshops around the country today, but since Tuesday night’s launch in Wellington most of the argument about it has been over whether its claims are true. The Taxpayers’ Union, its co-founders and others named in the book have issued detailed denials, and Hager has now challenged the Union’s executive director, Jordan Williams, to waive any confidentiality over the book’s most serious allegation.

Yesterday I published a chapter-by-chapter guide to the book. Today I’m sticking to the disputes over the facts. The wider argument about what the book means, and the case for it, can wait for another column. On the evidence so far, the Union has made some fair points against the book, and the argument over its most serious allegation has turned into a dispute that remains unresolved.

The harassment allegation and the denials

Hager writes that the Union’s board paid out money to deal with “at least one sexual harassment case against Williams”. Williams calls the allegation “a disgusting smear” that “has come from absolutely nowhere”. The Union’s chair, Ruth Richardson, says the board “categorically denies” it: “There have been no claims, let alone settlements.” She says she has spoken to previous chairs and to co-founder David Farrar, and that all are “unequivocal” that the allegation is “totally untrue”.

Hager is standing by the claim. He told the Herald’s David Fisher he had checked it independently with people who knew about it first-hand. He also told Ryan Bridge that two separate sources knew what had happened and that he “wouldn’t make an allegation like that without having very solid information”.

And in a public statement through his lawyer, Felix Geiringer, he challenged Williams and Farrar to waive any confidentiality over the alleged complaint and settlement. “If the complaint letter and subsequent settlement do not exist, as Jordan Williams and David Farrar claim, then they will have no problem publicly waiving any and all rights they have to any claims of confidentiality, non-disclosure, or privilege, in relation to them,” he said, adding that documents could be redacted to protect the woman’s identity.

Hager also argued that Richardson, who became chair in June 2025, would have no direct knowledge of a settlement that predated her, and that at least two earlier chairs would know about it, although Richardson says she has already spoken to previous chairs. Farrar says payments require authorisation by at least two directors.

Why the waiver became an issue

Heather du Plessis-Allan put the waiver challenge last night to Williams in a Newstalk ZB interview about an hour after Hager’s statement came out. “Is it true that you settled a sexual harassment case?” she asked. “No, it is not,” Williams replied.

Williams repeatedly said there was “nothing to waive”, and adding that he couldn’t offer a blanket waiver because “We have employees that deal with confidential information.” Du Plessis-Allan treated his answers as a refusal and kept pressing him for an explicit waiver.

Williams called the challenge “frankly, desperate”, and said Hager had now given “three different versions of an allegation that came from nowhere”. The book, he pointed out, says the board paid out. On Wednesday morning Hager told Ryan Bridge Today that the settlement had been hidden “even from members of their own board”, and by the afternoon he was saying at least two earlier chairs would know about it.

Du Plessis-Allan kept pressing Williams: “If it doesn’t exist, there’s no risk in waiving it,” she told him, and at one point: “Front up, front up.” Asked if he would sue, Williams said he was “taking advice” and had been “in regular discussions with lawyers”, but that his focus was on not letting “this leftwing activist” derail the Union’s work in the six weeks before the election.

On Newstalk ZB’s “Huddle” panel that evening, former National minister Maurice Williamson was no kinder to Hager, calling the book’s reliance on anonymous claims “despicable journalism at the very, very worst”. But he said he was surprised Williams hadn’t simply offered a waiver. “I’d just say I give a full waiver to anybody that’s ever had a settlement with me over a sexual harassment because I know that doesn’t exist,” he said. “There you go, done.” He allowed that Williams “may be just trying to take the very cautious legal view”. Q+A host Jack Tame thought a waiver “would be a relatively easy thing to do should you choose to do that”.

Williams says Hager has changed his story. But a settlement known to some directors could have been concealed from others, so the accounts are not necessarily contradictory. Hager says he checked the allegation with people who had direct knowledge; the Union categorically denies it. The reporting available so far does not resolve that dispute. It is reasonable to ask Hager for a fuller explanation of how he verified the allegation, without requiring him to identify the woman or expose confidential sources.

Hager says the dispute is distracting attention from the book’s wider findings, and he’s right that those findings deserve more attention. But he published a serious allegation about Williams, and explaining how he verified it is part of defending the book.

The paywall now starts partway through all Democracy Project newsletters. Please take out a paid sub if you want to support this service and access the full content, including the following sections:
The database and the invoice
The other disputed claims
Why not ask before publication?

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Nicky Hager’s new book, Dirty Work: The Taxpayers’ Union and New Zealand’s Hard Right, was launched last night in Wellington. Copies sold out within about 20 minutes, and the rest of the country won’t be able to buy one until it hits bookshops tomorrow. In the meantime, a handful of copies are being passed around Parliament and the Beehive, and everyone else is relying on second-hand accounts.

So here’s a chapter-by-chapter guide to what’s in it. This is the first of a number of Democracy Briefings I’ll write on the book. It’s a bit different in format from my usual columns, with my own reactions woven through a summary of what Hager alleges. Later I’ll publish a second column on the reaction, including the Taxpayers’ Union’s fightback and Hager’s responses.

I should say where I’m coming from. In 2015 I gave expert evidence in Hager’s legal challenge to the police raid on his home, describing Dirty Politics as “a work of public importance”. Before Hit & Run came out in 2017, I wrote that “the real value of Hager’s work is that it enhances the democratic process.” I still think that. But I’ve never thought his work should be taken on trust, and that matters more with this book than with his others.

Preface: The book Jordan Williams summoned into existence

In July 2023 the Union issued a defensive press release about a book it believed he was preparing. He says there was no such book, or even a plan for one. But the publicity prompted a former insider to contact him. Others followed.

Dirty Work rests principally on interviews with former staff and associates, most of whom, Hager says, are National Party members. Some supplied internal papers. He presents them as people troubled by methods and behaviour they had witnessed on their own side of politics.

That makes this a different kind of investigation from the large documentary leaks behind The Hollow Men and Dirty Politics, the earlier books in what Hager calls a trilogy. Some claims rest on former employees’ recollections, others on documents and public records. At points, Hager draws his own conclusions from that material.

Chapter One: Roll, Jordan, Roll

The book opens at Alan Gibbs’s property overlooking the Kaipara Harbour, where wealthy supporters gathered to celebrate the Union’s tenth anniversary in November 2023. The new National–Act–New Zealand First government had just taken office. British Conservative peer Daniel Hannan praised Williams and his Stop Three Waters campaign, borrowing the refrain “Roll, Jordan, roll”.

Hager then rewinds to Williams’s political education under Don Brash, Simon Lusk, Cameron Slater and Stephen Franks. The 2011 Vote for Change campaign against MMP becomes an early model for his subsequent work: a small, professionally organised political operation presented as a broader public movement.

The day after the February 2011 Christchurch earthquake, Williams contacted Slater about preparing the public for spending cuts to pay for the rebuild. In the exchange Hager recounts, their discussion moved through public-sector wages, arts funding, Working for Families and interest-free student loans. Williams urged Slater to consider “what sacrificial lambs we can slaughter”.

In Hager’s account, the Union’s foundation in 2013 gave these politics a more respectable vehicle. Stories about supposedly absurd spending could undermine confidence in public provision and prepare the ground for much larger cuts. Hager quotes former campaigns manager Louis Houlbrooke from the Union’s tenth-anniversary book: “Politics is as much about emotion as logic.” Houlbrooke argued that people often found small amounts easier to relate to than millions or billions.

Hager contrasts the repeated attacks on arts funding with the Union’s limited campaigning against the favourable electricity arrangements enjoyed by Rio Tinto’s aluminium smelter. This is because on the day of the Union’s launch, Farrar cited the $30 million subsidy to Rio Tinto, the smelter’s owner, as an example of government waste he had been working on for years. Hager says the Union then did almost nothing about it for 11 years. This is the question that has concerned me in examining “Broken New Zealand”: which costs to the public attract sustained outrage, and which powerful interests escape it?

Chapter Two: False and Spiteful Words

Hager notes that the saga of the Conservative Party leader Colin Craig is mostly remembered as a battle between “two unlikeable men”. He treats it as a guide to Williams’ character, and leans heavily on the court record to make his case. In late 2014, Williams assured Craig’s former press secretary Rachel MacGregor that he would keep her allegations confidential. He then shared them with Conservative Party officials, embellishing some along the way, and fed anonymous posts to Whale Oil under the name “Concerned Conservative”. Justice Sarah Katz found that his claim to have seen sexually explicit texts from Craig was untrue. MacGregor had asked him in writing not to use her material against Craig, and he launched his campaign the next day.

Williams won a $1.27 million jury award in his defamation case against Craig, one of the largest defamation awards in New Zealand history. Justice Katz set it aside as a miscarriage of justice. Hager writes that Williams ultimately didn’t receive a dollar, and instead made a payment to Craig and apologised.

The second theme is Williams’ attitude to women. Former staff say he loudly rated women’s looks in the office and commented on colleagues’ bodies, and Hager says a striking number of them used the word “gross”. Hager also claims the Union’s board paid out at least one sexual harassment case against Williams, which is the book’s most serious allegation. Williams and chair Ruth Richardson categorically deny it, and Richardson says “there have been no claims, let alone settlements”. Hager says he has two solid sources. I’ll look at that dispute properly in my next column.

Chapter Three: Using Racism as a Political Tool

This is the book’s central political chapter. Hager argues that Stop Three Waters transformed the Union from a relatively modest pressure group into a substantial campaigning force.

For its first eight years, the Union had much less impact than Williams and Farrar wanted. Staff told Hager that its “subscribed supporters” were mostly people who had clicked on a petition. By 2021, staff say, Williams was bored and wanted more influence and more money.

On 30 June 2021, staff scanning the week’s news for subjects they could beat up into stories spotted a government announcement about funding for council water services. Nobody expected much. The Stop Three Waters campaign launched on 28 September, and it took off. The petition went from 1,325 signatures on day one to more than 100,000 by December. Hager says 70,000 of those arrived in the five weeks in which the Union began its “asset grab” and co-governance rhetoric. The Union’s supporter list jumped from 60,000 to more than 150,000.

One former staff member recalls Williams watching the numbers climb and asking, “How can we make money from this?” By 2022, another said, money was “pouring in like a pokie machine”, and Williams was constantly refreshing the online banking.

Hager also describes an internal fight in 2022. He says Farrar wanted the Union to weigh in more on Māori issues, and staff pushed back, saying that wasn’t the Union’s mission. Staff told Hager that chair Ashley Church resigned because he disagreed, and his successor, Laurence Kubiak, later wrote that co-governance had been “huge for us”. Farrar says Hager is wrong on both counts. He denies pushing the Union towards Māori issues, and says Church had resigned before the mission statement was changed.

Hager says Hobson’s Pledge paid Williams’ Campaign Company $60,000 a month during 2023. Staff say Williams used income from those ads to buy a Jaguar, which is owned by the Campaign Company but used only by him.

This matters most for the parties. Hager argues that in his first six years in Parliament, David Seymour steered clear of race politics. He campaigned instead on housing, education, youth crime and euthanasia, and even appeared on Dancing with the Stars. When Brash asked him to join a campaign against the He Puapua report, Seymour said no. Brash told an associate that Seymour’s reason was that “there are not enough votes in race”. Once the Union showed there were votes and money in it, Hager says, Act followed, all the way to a referendum on the Treaty.

Christopher Luxon initially resisted Williams’s attempts to make Three Waters primarily about Māori involvement. In an October 2021 podcast interview, Luxon explained that iwi representation on a group involved in appointments did not amount to direct control of water operations. Hager follows Luxon’s subsequent shift towards campaigning against co-governance, arguing that pressure from the Union and its allies helped bring it about.

The paywall now starts partway through all Democracy Project newsletters. Please take out a paid sub if you want to support this service and access the full content, including the following sections:

Chapter Four: The Jordan Williams Show
Chapter Five: The Apprentice
Chapter Six: Big Tobacco and the Taxpayers’ Union
Chapter Seven: Follow the Money
Chapter Eight: Who Supports the Taxpayers’ Union?
Afterword: The media as enablers

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This year the Taxpayers’ Union is campaigning to keep Labour out of government while helping supply the news through which voters understand the election. It commissions opinion polls, organises candidate debates and now has the NZ Herald livestreaming its electorate debate series. In the Union’s latest annual review, its executive director Jordan Williams tells supporters the aim is to “do everything in our power to ensure that Labour does not return to office”.

Many voters share its goals, and it is perfectly legitimate for it to campaign for them. But an advocacy group playing such a big role in an election deserves scrutiny of its own. Voters should know who finances these campaigns, what interests the Union’s policies serve, and how its relationships with the media work.

Its new manifesto sets out an agenda for both the election and the coalition negotiations that follow. Williams’ appearance on TVNZ’s Q+A with Jack Tame on Sunday gave some indication of how the organisation intends to pursue that agenda. With Nicky Hager launching a new book tonight (with the title, apparently, of “Dirty Work”), the Union could soon face further scrutiny.

Supplying the election news

There is an obvious attraction for newsrooms in the material the Union supplies. Polls cost money, debates take organisation, and reporting teams are under pressure. The Union provides stories, figures and events that journalists and audiences want. Its annual review reports 2,467 media mentions over a one-year period. That is its own count, but it gives some indication of the scale of the operation.

Co-founder David Farrar is candid about the ambition. In the review he describes a political “battle tank” and says the organisation sometimes takes on the role of the “fourth estate”. He explains that its strength is translating research into messages for a broad audience and making politicians respond.

Some of its authority has been earned through worthwhile work. Economist Brian Easton wrote in 2024: “Seeking out that waste has been a key element in giving the NZTU so much public authority.” The difficulty comes when credibility earned by exposing a particular instance of waste is carried over into much wider claims about the proper size of government. Finding a badly spent million dollars does not establish how much should be spent on hospitals, benefits or public housing.

The Union’s current seven-electorate debate programme, hosted by former Labour MP Anna Lorck and commentator Damien Grant, combines candidate debates with fresh electorate polling and a national media platform. The Herald’s Wellington Bays page labels the material “Sponsored Stories” and “advertorial”, prepared by the Union. That disclosure is useful. The wider arrangements still deserve explanation: who pays, who chooses the questions, and what editorial control does the Herald retain? Any news reporting arising from the Herald-Union partnership should make the relationship clear.

The Union can commission an accurate poll and still gain political influence from it. Newsrooms should explain their arrangements with the organisation and scrutinise its policy claims as closely as they would those of a political party.

Pushing National further right

The Union’s campaign against Nicola Willis shows how hard it is prepared to push National on spending. As Henry Cooke reported in The Post, during last December’s dispute with Union chair Ruth Richardson, Willis challenged her: “Instead of lurking in the shadows with secretly funded ads in the paper, come and debate me right here in Parliament.” Richardson eventually rejected a “sideshow designed to distract from fiscal failure”.

On Q+A, Williams explained that securing National’s commitment to “no new taxes” had been an objective set by his board. The purpose was to increase pressure on the next Parliament to tackle government spending. He acknowledged that it was difficult to know how much credit the Union deserved, but the strategy was clear. By ruling out new taxes, the Union narrows the next government's fiscal options and leaves spending restraint as the main lever.

The Union therefore wants more than the re-election of a National-led government. It wants to shape what that government can do. Its manifesto expressly invites parties to carry its programme into coalition negotiations.

What cutting waste would mean

The scale of that programme deserves more attention than the publicity stunts. Its manifesto seeks to reduce core Crown spending to 25% of GDP, against its stated baseline of 32.6%. Tame put the gap at roughly $35 billion a year on current numbers. Williams said the target would not be reached within the next three years. Even allowing for a longer timetable and economic growth, this is a major change in the share of national income spent through government.

Williams pointed to superannuation, public-service growth and poorly targeted assistance such as the Winter Energy Payment. Some are legitimate subjects for reform, but do not explain how the full target would be reached. Pressed by Tame about which services would worsen and whether cuts would cause harm, he eventually acknowledged trade-offs.

Government spending cuts can mean larger private bills for taxpayers, or services no longer available. After all, a taxpayer may also depend on a hospital, disability support or housing assistance. A campaign conducted in the name of taxpayers should explain what happens to their overall living standards. Describing expenditure as waste does not answer that question, especially when the proposed reduction is this large.

Tame also challenged the manifesto’s interpretation of wealth-tax modelling. Treasury and Inland Revenue’s advice assumes that a particular 1% wealth tax would reduce the wealth base subject to the tax by 17.5%, allowing for changes in taxpayers’ behaviour. It does not forecast that 17.5% of all New Zealand wealth would leave the country. The manifesto conflates these things and then extrapolates to suggest that a 2.5% tax could drive out nearly 44% of the country’s wealth.

Treasury and Inland Revenue themselves warned of substantial economic risks and recommended against proceeding with the tax in Budget 2023. That does not support the manifesto’s claim that 17.5% of all New Zealand wealth would leave the country. The Union should correct that claim.

The supermarket test

The Union’s position on the supermarket duopoly provides another test of whose interests its programme serves. It would be wrong to say it denies the duopoly problem. In January 2024, its policy adviser James Ross condemned “cartel-like price setting” and “bumper profits for the fat cats at Foodstuffs and Woolworths”.

The issue is the remedy. The Union attributes the problem largely to government-created barriers: planning restrictions, consenting delays, overseas-investment rules and compliance costs that make it difficult for competitors to establish themselves. Its preferred solution is to remove those obstacles. This closely resembles Act’s approach, which also emphasises new investment and warns that compulsory restructuring could deter potential entrants.

On that basis, the Union has opposed several measures intended to constrain the existing supermarket groups. It has criticised the Grocery Supply Code, rejected the Greens’ publicly owned supermarket proposal as “CommieMart”, and attacked Labour’s proposed prohibition on excessive pricing. Responding to Labour, spokesman Rhys Hurley said the answer was “more competitors, not more red tape”. The Union has supported some intervention, including removing restrictive supermarket land covenants.

National would pursue the separation of Foodstuffs into competing nationwide chains, subject to an independent Commerce Commission assessment that it would benefit shoppers. The Union’s 19 September newsletter questioned whether politicians should be “forcibly redesigning” existing businesses. It concentrated on the signal this would send to potential investors.

So, National is now more willing than the Union to contemplate using state power to change the structure of this market. But does the Union believe that taxpayers would have to compensate the supermarkets for National’s policy if implemented? After all, the Union’s new manifesto calls for compensation when regulation “takes or materially restricts the use of someone’s property”. The proposal follows a discussion of resource-management law and does not expressly address supermarket restructuring. The Union should clarify before the election whether it believes the principle would apply to National’s proposal.

Who pays for the campaign

On Q+A, Williams emphasised ordinary supporters as funders, saying roughly two-thirds of income came from small online donations and less than 3% from industry. Its annual review gives a different breakdown: 54% small-dollar support, 42% “Taxpayer Caucus”, 2% industry and 1% other income. Its small-dollar category includes membership dues and donations from individuals giving less than $1,000 in the preceding year. The categories are not identical and the reporting periods may differ. The annual review shows that larger donors are a substantial funding source.

Supporters contributing at least $1,500 a year become eligible for the Taxpayer Caucus, with exclusive polling information, board updates and events. The website says the organisation relies on them to give opinions on its direction and “the choice of campaigns”. Membership is confidential unless the donor chooses otherwise.

The Union’s general assurance that “donations never buy influence” therefore sits alongside a fundraising offer that invites significant supporters to help shape its work. The Union should explain how those donors are consulted about campaigns, and whether it discloses any financial interest they have in the policies being promoted. The industry percentage tells us little about donations made personally by business owners, how concentrated larger donations are, or whose interests overlap with the campaigns being funded.

Asked by RNZ’s Guyon Espiner in May 2024 about tobacco-industry funding, Williams defended confidentiality: “It’s not my place to dox who supports us.” Privacy for someone contributing $25 is understandable. Substantial funding for an organisation campaigning nationally creates a different public interest. Voters do not have to prove that a donor dictated a policy before asking who supplied the money.

Transparency on its own terms

The Union has also converted from an incorporated society to a not-for-profit company, while promising to keep publishing financial information. Asked why on Q+A, Williams said the new incorporated-societies regime contained provisions that opponents could use to cause mischief. “They could bombard us with information requests, for example,” he said. He denied that avoiding an audit requirement was the reason for the change.

Writing at The Standard, Greg Presland drew attention to the irony: the TPU makes extensive use of information requests to scrutinise others, yet Williams had identified such requests as a concern for his own organisation. The society provisions concern requests by members; they are different from the official-information laws that apply to public bodies. Even so, it is a revealing explanation from an organisation whose public identity rests so heavily on accountability.

Williams told Tame the Union would continue to be “more transparent than the political parties”, referring to its voluntary publication of accounts and a donor breakdown. Registered political parties must identify donors above disclosure thresholds; the Union does not offer equivalent disclosure. Publishing totals and funding categories leaves voters unable to establish who supplies much of the money.

The people and organisations behind the campaigns

The Union’s influence also rests on its relationships. Farrar has long polled for National, Richardson was a National finance minister, and its board includes former Act MP John Boscawen and former Act parliamentary chief of staff Chris Milne. Former campaigns manager Louis Houlbrooke went on to work for Act, while former economist Joe Ascroft moved into senior work in Christopher Luxon’s office. Callum Purves, formerly the Union’s chief operating officer and head of campaigns, is now Act’s campaign director. These connections, also recorded in my Lobbying and Influence Register, help explain the organisation’s political knowledge and reach. They do not make it formally controlled by a party.

Casey Costello’s move from Union chair to New Zealand First MP and Associate Health Minister deserves scrutiny for a more specific reason. A former leader of an organisation that has received tobacco-industry support took responsibility for the coalition’s reversal of tobacco restrictions. Williams told Espiner the Union had played no role in formulating that reversal and that Costello had not been involved in its industry fundraising. Her previous role makes transparency about the assessment of any actual or perceived conflicts particularly important.

In Ruth Hill’s 2021 RNZ reporting, former Act researcher Grant McLachlan alleged that Act used apparently independent groups to prepare the ground for its positions. He cited the Union’s Campaign for Affordable Housing, which opposed the Greens’ wealth-tax proposal. Williams defended that campaign and rejected the suggestion that the Union was a party mouthpiece. Asked whether Act used or created organisations such as the Union to generate support for its positions, David Seymour answered “no”. The allegation remains contested; the need to examine the funding and relationships does not depend on accepting it as fact.

Andrea Vance reported in April 2025 that Williams’ business, The Campaign Company, produced the Sensible Sentencing Trust’s anti-Green billboards. Vance also reported that the Trust rented desk space in an Auckland office shared by the company and the Union, but its spokesperson Louise Parsons said the TPU “had nothing to do with” the campaign.

I examined The Campaign Company’s wider political role in Dirty Politics 2.0? Lobbying in the Shadows. The shared premises make it reasonable to ask how office costs are allocated and how potential conflicts are managed. The Union said in a 2023 statement that it had procedures for managing conflicts of interest. It should explain how those procedures apply to these arrangements. A commercial client should not automatically be described as a Union donor.

Registered to campaign

The Union is registered as a third-party promoter and can spend up to $424,000 on election advertising during the regulated period. But the Electoral Commission’s 2026 handbook tells promoters: “You don’t have to record or report any donations to your campaign.” The rules therefore allow an organisation to conduct a substantial election campaign while keeping its financial backers confidential.

The remedy should apply across the political spectrum. Business-backed organisations, trade unions and left-wing campaign groups should all face appropriate disclosure requirements for substantial electoral funding. In David Williams’ 2023 Newsroom reporting, legal scholar Timothy Kuhner called the broader problem the “privatisation of democracy”. The Union’s claim to represent all taxpayers cannot resolve that: taxpayers also include people who support higher taxes and better public services.

What might Hager reveal?

Nicky Hager’s new book launches at Unity Books at 6pm today, with its subject still under wraps. My suspicion is that the Taxpayers’ Union and the campaigning organisations around Williams could feature. This is a hunch, not advance knowledge. In 2023 the Union itself said it believed Hager was researching it, although that statement did not establish that a book about the organisation was forthcoming. At the time, Hager denied it, saying “They’re not important enough for a book“. And this afternoon Williams has posted on social media about the rumours that the book would be about his organisation, adding “I’m flattered we may have finally made the cut”.

Hager has already examined Williams in Dirty Politics and criticised the Union’s Campaign for Affordable Housing. In Hill’s 2021 RNZ report, he questioned the interests behind a campaign presented as a concern about housing affordability: “We still don’t know whose money was behind it, whose interests, who pushed it along, what they were trying to achieve.” Williams defended the campaign as a legitimate response to a wealth-tax proposal.

Asked on Sunday whether he expected to feature in Hager’s new book, Williams replied: “I think your guess is as good as mine.” He said Hager had not contacted him, that he understood former staff had been approached, and that he was not worried.

The Union wants politicians held to account for the money they spend and the promises they make. Voters should also be able to assess its policy claims and know who finances its work. They should not have to wait for an investigative author to discover who is paying for a campaign conducted in their name.

Dr Bryce Edwards
Director of the Democracy Project

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Further Reading:
New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union: Annual Review 2025/26 — The Campaign Plan for 2026.
Jack Tame (TVNZ): Why the Taxpayers’ Union wants government spending slashed, interview with Jordan Williams.
Brian Easton: The Taxpayers’ Union at eleven
New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union: 2026 Election Debates
NZ Herald, Sponsored Stories: Taxpayers’ Union Election Debate — Wellington Bays
Henry Cooke (Post): Ruth Richardson pulls out of ‘circus’ debate with Nicola Willis (paywalled)
New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union: Taxpayer Manifesto 2026
Treasury and Inland Revenue: Advice on a wealth tax
James Ross (Taxpayers’ Union): Small-Fry Grocery Pricing Investigation Won’t Stop Spiralling Food Prices
Act: Token supermarket policies show desperate, visionless election campaigns.
New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union: Grocery Supply Code will drive food prices even higher.
Tory Relf (Taxpayers’ Union): Greens’ CommieMart plan won’t fix supermarket competition
Rhys Hurley (Taxpayers’ Union): Labour’s Price Gouging Plan Ignores the Cause
National Party: National to pursue separation of Foodstuffs.
Tory Relf (Taxpayers’ Union): Taxpayer Update
New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union: Budget 2022 analysis
New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union: Join the Taxpayer Caucus and About Us.
Guyon Espiner (RNZ): Jordan Williams on why the Taxpayers’ Union went to Panama to debate vaping
Greg Presland (The Standard): Hager’s next book
Bryce Edwards (Democracy Project): Taxpayers Union, Lobbying and Influence Register entry.
Act: ACT Party appoints new General Manager/Party Secretary, announcing Callum Purves’s appointment.
Act: Online session — Taupō Conference, identifying Callum Purves as campaign director.
Ruth Hill (RNZ): Ex-ACT staffer Grant McLachlan says party created fake grassroots groups
Andrea Vance (Post): Firm owned by Taxpayers’ Union boss behind Green Party attack billboards
Bryce Edwards (Democracy Project): Dirty Politics 2.0? Lobbying in the Shadows
Electoral Commission: Register of promoters for the 2026 General Election, guidance for third-party promoters, Third Party Handbook 2026, and rules for party donations and loans.
David Williams (Newsroom): Chiding in plain sight
New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union: Pre-election Books — Avoiding False Impressions, 2023 statement.
Nicky Hager: Dirty Politics: How attack politics is poisoning New Zealand’s political environment, Craig Potton Publishing, 2014.

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The newly released inquiry into the Tom Phillips tragedy is a damning account of how Police and Oranga Tamariki failed his three children. It documents family warnings that were discounted, evidence that went unread and opportunities to find the children that were mishandled.

Phillips concealed the children in the bush around Marokopa from December 2021 until September 2025, when he was fatally shot by Police and the children were recovered. The inquiry, led by Simon Moore KC, finds that better cooperation between agencies could have prevented the second disappearance or brought the children home sooner.

Ministers have accepted the report’s nine recommendations and agency leaders have apologised. But it remains unclear what accepting responsibility will mean for the agencies and the people who made these decisions. Here are ten questions about those failures and what should happen next.

1: Why were the mother and sisters not taken seriously?

The most disturbing feature of this case is how hard the maternal family had to work to get the authorities to recognise the danger. As Juliet Speedy reports for Stuff, an Oranga Tamariki (OT) record from October 2021 noted that one sister asked whether the agency “would be held responsible if the children went missing again”. The family was warning about the very thing that subsequently happened.

Mihingarangi Forbes says the people who deserve recognition are the children’s older sisters, Storm and Jubilee Dawson: “They raised the alarm and kept raising it, they spoke up when adults and agencies, charged with protecting their younger siblings failed to speak up and failed to listen”. Forbes and Annabelle Lee-Mather have followed the sisters and their mother, Cat Christey, for several years. Forbes writes: “Both the media and government agencies seemed to minimise or completely ignore Cat’s relationship and mana as the children’s mum.”

The inquiry found that agencies often minimised the maternal whānau’s concerns as part of a parenting dispute. Michelle Duff, writing in The Spinoff, argues that the case exposes “damaging and misogynistic narratives” that “cast men as heroes and women as complainers and overreactors”. The children’s mother also told OT she felt disadvantaged because she was Māori and the Phillips family were white. That does not establish the motive behind every decision, but it does require an explanation of why the family’s detailed warnings carried so little weight.

2: How did the children get declared “completely fine”?

RNZ’s Sam Sherwood reports that an older sister sent OT an affidavit describing what she said was controlling and abusive behaviour by Phillips. The affidavit was affirmed on 4 October 2021, and the inquiry found it appeared nobody at OT read it. After a home visit, OT recorded Phillips as “a very capable and loving father”. On 6 October, it told the Family Court the children were “completely fine”, without telling the court about the maternal family’s concerns or the ongoing Police investigation and concerns.

When a sister subsequently challenged that assessment, Sherwood reports that she was told the judge had made his decision and nobody could change it. OT had failed to give the court important information, then invoked the court’s decision when the family questioned its assessment. The inquiry found that OT could have taken further steps through the court to protect the children.

Amanda Malu, OT’s chief executive, has acknowledged the significance of the unread affidavit. As Speedy reports, she said: “had we read it, the advice we would have given to the court would have been different.”

3: Why did Oranga Tamariki close its file while the children were missing?

By February 2022, the children had been missing for more than two months, and their sisters were still trying to get action. One wrote: “There needs to be the utmost urgency placed upon this case, as these children do not deserve this… Those children did not ask to be kidnapped.” In the correspondence reported by Speedy, she described missed Christmas celebrations, a birthday and weeks without contact. The family understood that prolonged isolation was itself harmful.

Yet Sherwood reports an internal OT response stating: “If the children are missing that is a police matter not an Oranga Tamariki matter anyway.” OT closed its report of concern that month. By then, according to the inquiry, it had gone almost five months without meeting either sister or the children’s mother. It should have kept the file open and informed Police and the Family Court about the risks.

4: Why were opportunities to find them mishandled?

Although some officers feared for the children from the outset, the initial Police approach after the second disappearance reflected a prevailing belief that they were not in immediate danger. In May 2023, a woman identified as Rhonda gave a man she suspected was Phillips a lift and saw children at his vehicle. She also had a photograph of him, taken at her home, which she later supplied to Police.

Jenna Lynch reports that a dispatched unit was diverted to another family-harm incident. The original callout was subsequently recorded as requiring no further action, a designation Police could not explain to the inquiry. Further contact occurred, but the lead was not investigated promptly enough. The other family-harm incident explains why the unit was diverted. It does not explain why Police failed to arrange a prompt follow-up.

As Sherwood reports, a March 2023 Police review had already criticised the investigation’s lack of momentum, fragmented records and insufficient direction. This was a difficult and dangerous search, but its management was being criticised while it was underway. The agencies cannot dismiss it all as hindsight.

5: Why were firearms warnings not properly acted on?

Duff highlights the different assessments Police recorded after the first disappearance. In the case for revoking Phillips’ firearms licence, they wrote: “His large and regular consumption of alcohol and his irrational thinking are ingredients of a man willing to do anything to keep his children in his care.” Yet their report to OT recorded no immediate concerns for the children’s safety. The inquiry found that Police reported their concerns promptly, but did not adequately explain why they feared Phillips might take the children away again.

Nor was the firearms response adequate. As Benn Bathgate reports, Police had not properly pursued the mother’s firearm-safety complaints and delayed serving Phillips’ licence-suspension notice. Some guns had been seized, but Police had not done enough to locate all of them or address his access to other weapons where he was required to stay. Nobody can guarantee that different decisions would have prevented the eventual shooting. But the later emphasis on how dangerous Phillips was makes those earlier failures especially difficult to excuse.

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The National-led Government should not sign a binding contract for its proposed LNG import terminal before the 7 November election. This is a major, billion-dollar, long-term commitment with disputed benefits, an unsettled funding model and explicit opposition from parties that might form the next government. Yet Energy Minister Simeon Brown insists a contract could be signed during the campaign. His explanation, reported yesterday by Jenna Lynch in Stuff, is that “the government is the government right up until the election”. That establishes his authority to act. It does very little to justify the decision he wants to make.

National should be making its case to voters before creating financial obligations that a different government might have to pay to escape in terms of contractual break-fees. The energy-security problem is real, and there are serious arguments for retaining access to liquefied natural gas. But the public is entitled to scrutinise this particular solution, its costs and its alternatives before being committed to it. The latest reporting makes the need for restraint stronger: ministers envisage signing the commercial agreement before Parliament even passes the legislation intended to enable the terminal to be built.

A contract before the law

Tom Pullar-Strecker reports in The Post today that the Enabling Liquefied Natural Gas Bill has not been introduced and is not on the expected business list for Parliament’s final sitting week. Brown’s spokesperson defends signing first as “the more responsible approach, because the legislation can then be written for a known facility in a known location, with consents and conditions to match”. She adds: “A contract is not a consent. Until the enabling legislation is passed, all existing relevant law continues to apply in full, and no contract can override it.” Brown also says the Government will not sign a contract that fails to offer value for money.

So the sequence being proposed is this. Sign the commercial agreement. Hold the election. Then ask the next Parliament for the law. Which raises a question nobody has put to the Minister: what would New Zealanders owe if the contract were signed and the next Parliament refused to pass the bill? A contract might reserve a vessel or pay for preparatory work, but it cannot itself authorise construction of the actual terminal. Depending on its terms, MPs could be asked to choose between approving the terminal and leaving taxpayers with a compensation bill. Parliament would still have the right to refuse. Brown needs to tell us what using that right could cost.

There is a second cost that has had almost no attention. Karen Boyes, chief executive of the Major Electricity Users Group, favours signing the contract and passing the enabling legislation in tandem. But if the contract is signed first, she asks in Pullar-Strecker’s report: “are there any other risk premiums that are being factored into the commercial contract because they know there isn’t an enabling environment guaranteed?” She adds: “Perhaps if we had the time to get the legislation in, you might remove some of that risk in the commercial negotiations.” If the political rush increases the commercial risk, electricity users or taxpayers could end up paying for National’s determination to sign before polling day.

The election is part of National’s calculation

The political deadline has been part of this project for months. In February, RNZ’s Kate Newton reported that the Cabinet paper recognised the risk of a future government abandoning LNG and recommended signing contracts by mid-year to lock in the concept. The paper stated: “Our objective is to provide as many of these approvals as possible before the election.” The timetable has slipped, and the legislation remains outstanding, but the determination to sign before voters go to the polls persists. The Government’s own paperwork shows that making the project harder for a successor to abandon was part of the calculation. That is a serious democratic objection to signing now.

Brown is correct that the Government retains its powers. The Cabinet Office’s pre-election guidance expressly says the caretaker convention does not apply before polling day. It also recognises that governments exercise restraint when an election and possible change of government are imminent, particularly over appointments and advertising. The Prime Minister makes the final judgement about whether a decision should proceed. Christopher Luxon can tell Brown to wait, and he should do so. Officials can continue their work without signing the terminal contract.

Even the coalition’s final position is unresolved. Shane Jones told The Post this week that Cabinet must determine “whether it’s the right time to sign up to such a deal”. His stand-in at the Te Papa energy debate on Wednesday, Martin Gummer, called LNG “the least worse option” and stressed that procurement options had not yet gone to Cabinet. Gummer also argued that a terminal decision should ideally have been made last year, and warned about the risks of further delay before a possible dry year in 2028. NZ First supports pursuing imports, but Cabinet has yet to settle the timing and terms of the deal.

What would cancellation cost?

In February, the Herald’s Kate MacNamara reported that Treasury had been examining indemnities to protect investors in thermal generation against policy changes. She wrote: “Such insurance would essentially see the New Zealand public guarantee investments against the financial losses that would arise if that same public chose a new government intent on policy U-turn.” That work concerned a separate proposal for thermal generation. We do not know whether the LNG agreement will offer comparable protection. Before it is signed, voters should know what they could have to pay if they elect a government that wants to stop the project.

Chris Hipkins has already acknowledged the difficulty. Asked about cancelling a signed agreement, this week he told The Post’s Rob Stock: “We’d need to see what the overall implications of that would be. I don’t want to be giving compensation to the oil and gas industry.” His promise to stop LNG “if there is any way to stop it” is therefore qualified. The termination terms have not been published, so claims that the Government is deliberately including a punitive break fee remain speculation. Brown should disclose what taxpayers could owe if the project is cancelled, before he signs the agreement.

Suppliers can legitimately expect payment for commitments they undertake. Governments also routinely sign contracts extending beyond their terms. But ministers should avoid creating a foreseeable and expensive dispute just before an election. The ferry debacle ought to have taught them something: KiwiRail’s final settlement with the shipbuilder was $144 million. Those contracts were signed in 2021, so the timing is different. National knows from the ferries how much taxpayers can lose when a government abandons a signed contract. It should take that experience seriously before signing another agreement that the Opposition has already said it wants to abandon.

The paywall now starts partway through all Democracy Project newsletters. Please take out a paid sub if you want to support this service and access the full content, including the following sections: “The energy argument still needs scrutiny”, “Other expensive council decisions”, “The funding and safety questions remain”, “National should follow its own infrastructure principles”, and “Put the proposal to voters”.

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BusinessNZ’s Catherine Beard thinks New Zealand is starting to look like Venezuela. This morning when she was asked by broadcaster Ryan Bridge whether National’s supermarket policy was “banana republic” stuff, she replied: “It seriously is. You know, we’re starting to look a bit like Venezuela.”

What has produced this alarm is a proposal to restructure Foodstuffs so that Pak’nSave competes independently against New World and Four Square. Individual supermarket owners would keep their stores and their brands.

National deserves credit. The country’s main party of the right has accepted that fixing a broken market might require confronting the businesses benefiting from it. That is a significant departure for a party whose relationships with corporate New Zealand have so often discouraged action.

There are conditions. Within its first 100 days, a re-elected National government would change the law to authorise a Commerce Commission assessment of the proposed separation. The Commission would have six months from the directive taking effect to report. If it recommended separation, National would legislate to implement it.

There is a considerable distance between that promise and cheaper groceries. But Nicola Willis has finally said what years of incremental reform have made increasingly obvious: “after years of reviews and incremental reform, it’s clear the status quo isn’t working. It’s time for change.”

Making capitalism work

Some commentators seem unable to reconcile the proposal with National’s identity. Newstalk ZB’s Heather du Plessis-Allan responded with “WTF” and called it “completely bonkers”. Kerre Woodham declared herself perplexed by a policy she considered contrary to National’s political DNA. Yet any party that believes in competitive enterprise has good reason to challenge a market in which competition remains persistently weak. Businesses should have to win customers by offering them a better deal. Where entrenched advantages make that exceptionally difficult, governments have a legitimate role in changing the conditions.

Therefore Luxon is right to defend the policy by saying that National is a “party of competition”. The difficulty has been persuading the party to act on that principle when doing so upsets established businesses.

In a column titled “National’s crony capitalism problem”, published in October last year, I argued that National had an opportunity to champion consumers against powerful incumbents, including the supermarket duopoly. Its corporate relationships were an obstacle. Willis seemed the most plausible person within the leadership to push for something stronger. I doubted National would get this far. I’m pleased to have been too pessimistic.

The full force of the supermarket lobby

Willis is unusually frank about the resistance. She said today about Foodstuffs: “They are one of the most well-resourced entities in New Zealand when it comes to lobbying, they have expensive public relations spend, lobbying spend, advertising spend, and they deploy it with force.” Furthermore, she says “I have already seen them doing that whenever I have made suggestions about the unfairness of the current supermarket structure, I felt the full force of that, so have our MPs, and what I really don’t think is reasonable is for one group of lobbyists with a vested interest to determine what is best for the Kiwi shopper.”

She was blunter still when BusinessNZ came out against her, telling RNZ that its opposition was hardly surprising given Foodstuffs is one of its major members.

Richard Harman’s reporting in Politik shows how that influence works in practice. Foodstuffs has had its owner-operators develop close relationships with their local MPs. Food has been donated to political fundraisers and MPs hosted in stores. Two of the co-operative’s independent directors, former National finance minister Steven Joyce and Sir Henry van der Heyden, hold influential networks inside the party. None of this establishes wrongdoing and none of it is unlawful. What it establishes is access. An owner-operator is a significant local employer and a familiar community figure who can get an MP on the phone. The people struggling with their grocery bills have no comparable organisation, and never have.

Harman also reports that a senior National MP recently told a stakeholder lobby group that a breakup would be “bonkers” and would provoke a caucus backlash. Willis rejected the account, telling RNZ’s Russell Palmer that her caucus was “fully on board” and suggesting the story had probably come from “someone with a significant vested interest in the supermarket industry, rather than the MP themselves”. Asked what she based that on, she conceded it was “just because I think that it is highly unlikely that that would have occurred”. That is speculation. It is also the first time a senior figure in government has publicly accused the grocery industry of working her own caucus against her.

The lobbying will continue. The terms of the Commission’s assessment, its assumptions about costs, and any eventual coalition agreement will provide opportunities to weaken the proposal.

Business groups warn about investment confidence, saying National’s policy will have a “chilling effect”. Grocery Action Group chair Sue Chetwin offers an appropriate rejoinder: consumers have experienced their own “chilling effect” for decades.

The EMA’s Alan McDonald told the Herald’s Tom Raynel that the proposal is “not quite nationalising a private business but it’s too close for comfort”. Yet he suggests that “a better option might be to find a stronger regulator” with greater powers. Even this objection leaves room for stronger government intervention. The argument is about how far it should go.

The political tide has turned

NZ First proposed a similar Foodstuffs split in April. The Greens have raised the stakes with KiwiMart. Monopoly Watch, the Grocery Action Group and Consumer NZ have pressed for structural reform for years. National has now joined the argument. Consumer’s chief executive Jon Duffy, talking to RNZ’s Susan Edmunds, measured the movement: the debate had shifted further in six weeks than in the preceding four years, and every major party except Act now carries some form of structural reform or measure against excessive pricing. “It’s strange territory for the National Party but that’s how bad the problem is,” he said.

The No Right Turn blog, while questioning National’s willingness to follow through, captures the significance: “The fact that the party of protecting established economic interests has been forced to publicly support the breakup of one of the most established economic interests in the country shows how far the public mood has shifted, and how desperate National are to avoid being on the wrong side of that shift.”

This is the Overton window moving: a proposal once treated as politically outlandish has become something National thinks it can win votes with. And there is plainly electoral calculation involved. Harman suggests the timing may have been accelerated by Labour’s planned announcement proposing a law against price gouging. The Herald’s Audrey Young sees National positioning itself as a consumer champion even at the risk of damaging its relationship with business, on internal polling showing 60% support for a breakup.

Pattrick Smellie, who strongly doubts the policy’s economics, identifies the same opportunity in BusinessDesk: “A centre-right government could follow through on this policy, knowing it would likely be wildly popular among New Zealanders who want their governments to ‘stick it to the man’ occasionally.” Smellie’s “man”, in this case, is supermarkets, banks, power companies and petrol stations, “among other purveyors of grudge purchases and essentials”.

That is the opening created by “Broken New Zealand”. Voters meet these markets through bills they struggle to pay, and they have little reason to defend arrangements that politicians and business leaders keep assuring them are difficult to change. McDonald calls this a “populist policy for a grumpy electorate”. The electorate has had years in which to become grumpy. If National is chasing votes, it has at least chosen a worthwhile fight. It should also explain why it took so long.

That is the opening created by Broken New Zealand. Voters encounter these markets through bills they struggle to pay. They have little reason to defend arrangements that politicians and business leaders keep assuring them are difficult to change.

EMA’s Alan McDonald calls National’s proposal a “populist policy for a grumpy electorate”. The electorate has had years to become grumpy. If National is chasing votes, it has at least chosen a worthwhile fight. It should also explain why it took so long.

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Anyone concerned about public money being squandered on council vanity projects received more evidence for their discontent this week. On Monday, Wellington City Council released the independent review of how officials came to spend almost $600,000 on a website promoting the refurbished Te Matapihi ki te Ao Nui central library. The findings are damning. A costly promotional project went ahead without clear measures of success, adequate scrutiny or a convincing explanation of why something cheaper would not do.

The council has apologised and promised to learn. Wellingtonians have heard that before. The question is what, beyond another report and another assurance, will change.

The website looking for a reason

Responding to the review, deputy mayor Ben McNulty told The Post: “The website seems to have been built as a solution to an undefined problem and Wellingtonians are $600,000 worse off for it.”

The council spent $595,801 on a website that does not itself let you join the library, reserve a book or search the catalogue. For those services, visitors are directed to the existing Wellington City Libraries website, wcl.govt.nz.

The separate Te Matapihi site is essentially a brochure for the building. As chief operating officer James Roberts told Newstalk ZB’s Nick Mills yesterday: “It’s really a visitor attraction website.” It provides information about visiting, accessibility and events. But Dave Armstrong asked the obvious question in The Post back in June: why couldn’t the existing libraries website provide this information?

Armstrong described what visitors get: “You are welcomed to the website by a skip-able karakia and can learn all about Te Matapihi: its kaupapa, the many events on, things tamariki can do – there’s a lot – and information about the building.”

The site also attracted criticism for a Maramataka Māori link that sent visitors to a business selling lunar calendars, workshops and video lessons. The council said it had intended to explain a feature and acknowledge its knowledge source. It accepted that the destination was inappropriate and removed the link after inquiries from The Post’s Julie Jacobson.

Jacobson deserves credit for bringing the spending to public attention and pursuing an explanation. The Post was initially given a figure of $13,961 for the cost of the site, later explained as the cost of an interim mini-site. A separate official-information response to a member of the public disclosed the full $595,801 bill.

What the new report says

The review was conducted by former Government chief digital officer Colin MacDonald. As Jacobson and RNZ’s Bill Hickman report, it found weaknesses in procurement, oversight and value for money. Almost $600,000 had been spent without establishing how the council would judge whether the website was a success.

The procurement process was rushed. The council used what the review calls “procurement-in-a-day”, assessing proposals and selecting a preferred supplier in a single sitting. The job was not advertised through GETS, the Government’s tendering service. Initial approval was based on the $75,000 first phase rather than the likely cost of the whole undertaking.

RNZ reports that MacDonald cited an expected broad range of $100,000 to $350,000 for a government website. Such comparisons cannot settle what this particular site should have cost, but they hardly make a bill approaching $600,000 look modest. Nor had the council established what extra benefit the more expensive option would deliver.

Roberts told Mills he had personally signed off a $384,000 commitment because it exceeded his team’s delegation. Asked whether the number had scared him, he replied: “Absolutely.” He approved it anyway, explaining that he had been thinking about the wider investment in the precinct.

That wider context was a $614 million programme for the library and civic square (renamed “Te Ngākau civic precinct”). Against such a budget, the website amounted to less than 0.1%. It seems that a sum substantial enough to matter greatly to a community organisation or library service could appear administratively trivial inside a megaproject.

The council’s executive leadership team had delegated authority to approve spending of up to $750,000 without taking it to elected members. So, the website cost did not need to slip through a loophole to avoid their scrutiny. Its cost sat comfortably below that threshold. According to the review, the website was never discussed by the programme board overseeing the wider library and Civic Square redevelopment.

Roberts’ account of what happened is disarmingly simple: “The team got excited, tried to do something fabulous, it didn’t work out, it’s cost too much money.”

In his written response, he also accepted that he “didn’t pay enough attention to this element of the project”. Tom Hunt reports that Roberts did not discover the overall cost until late in 2025, when most of the money was committed. That leaves an obvious question. If approving a commitment of $384,000, while being alarmed by it, did not prompt sufficient attention, what would have?

The larger the project became, the smaller $600,000 apparently looked. A broad ambition to regenerate Wellington became permission for expensive promotion, while procurement and senior management did too little to challenge it.

The council’s contracting out model

Roberts made another revealing concession to Mills: “We could have done something a lot more modest that probably would have achieved the same end point.”

He estimated that the council employed between 70 and 90 people in IT. Could its own staff have built a website instead of contracting the work out? “They absolutely could have done that.”

That makes the failure harder to excuse. The council had the capacity to pursue an alternative, yet committed itself to an expensive external build without demonstrating why that was necessary. Internal experts did raise concerns. Those warnings did not produce the reconsideration of scope and cost that the project needed.

The contract went to Auckland agency Journey Digital. The decision to commission the work, and the responsibility for demonstrating value for money, remained with the council.

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Chris Hipkins was having a pretty good night holding his first election meeting in Naenae last Wednesday when a supportive woman in the audience inadvertently handed him the line that may come to define Labour’s election campaign. The woman, who had been out door-knocking, told Hipkins that people kept asking where Labour’s policies were. Yet seeing him in person was different. “Tonight I hear someone with fire in his belly and fire in his voice,” she told him. “I don’t know why some of that just isn’t getting cut through.” Hipkins replied: “Well, you’ll be pleased to know I’m just getting warmed up.”

It got the desired response in the room. Hipkins was telling Labour supporters there was plenty more to come, and by all accounts he was good that night: energetic, comfortable and much more obviously engaged than the version of him voters often see in short television clips. But once the “just warming up” quote escaped Naenae it sounded rather less reassuring. There are now under eight weeks until election day. Hipkins has had almost three years as Opposition leader. Why exactly is Labour still warming up instead of actually running?

Stuff political editor Jenna Lynch immediately seized on the remark. “A newsflash for Chris Hipkins – the warm up is over,” she wrote. “Everyone else has been campaigning all year, if not for the last three.” Lynch argued Labour had spent most of the term listening, rebuilding trust, keeping its powder dry and deliberately making itself a small target. But, she says, “small-target politics only works if, eventually, you take aim. And Labour is failing to fire.”

That criticism resonates because Labour supposedly started firing some time ago. At the Christchurch launch of the “Better Starts Now” slogan last month, Hipkins declared: “Our campaign is kicking up a gear today.” More recently, however, he was still saying the election campaign was “sort of getting underway now”. There is a recurring problem with Labour’s promises of imminent political action: Better starts now; the campaign starts now; the fight is coming; Hipkins is just getting warmed up. At some stage, now actually has to arrive.

Labour’s support was softer than it looked

Two weeks ago I argued that Labour’s small-target approach was running out of road. I still think that, but the past fortnight has made me think Labour’s more immediate problem is slightly different. I think the party has confused dissatisfaction with the Government for enthusiasm for Labour. For much of the last year that was an easy mistake to make. Labour recovered remarkably well from its 26.9% defeat in 2023, at times polling comfortably well into the 30s. National had leadership turmoil, Christopher Luxon was unpopular, the economy remained weak, unemployment rose and households continued to complain that the cost-of-living crisis hadn’t gone away. Labour could sit back and watch.

Lynch puts it nicely: the party “had its feet up, grabbing the popcorn as National panicked itself into two failed coups”. Perhaps Labour did begin to believe that National would eventually hand back the Beehive keys without requiring too much effort from the Opposition. Heather du Plessis-Allan’s version yesterday in the Herald is much harsher. Labour’s earlier polling strength, she argues, came because Hipkins wasn’t saying enough to upset anybody, allowing the party to become “a blank canvas that voters could paint their own version on to”. Then, she says, “the minute Labour was forced to start delivering a few policies here and there, the beautiful, projected image got broken up by static.”

There is something important in her argument. Plenty of people who told pollsters they would vote Labour were probably expressing a desire to get rid of Luxon rather than declaring themselves enthusiastic Hipkins converts. That sort of support doesn’t necessarily stay put. Sooner or later Labour had to give those voters a positive reason to stick around, and the polling suggests some have instead begun looking elsewhere.

The latest Taxpayers’ Union-Curia poll put Labour on 25.9%, below even its disastrous 2023 election result. That poll may well be at the low end: Hipkins says Labour’s own polling has it above 30%, while other published polls have produced considerably better numbers. But even Hipkins now concedes there has been a downward trend. When that was put to him on Morning Report, he said Labour’s goal was “to obviously turn that trend back around”. Peter Dunne says the decline has been visible since around April, and Newsroom’s Raw Politics team reached much the same conclusion last week. One poll can be dismissed fairly easily. A pattern is harder. And tomorrow morning The Post publishes its own latest Freshwater Strategy poll, which will give further sense of the trend for Labour.

What makes all this remarkable is the political environment. As du Plessis-Allan notes, Labour is heading backwards against a Government presiding over a difficult economy, widespread dissatisfaction and a coalition that has spent a fair amount of time fighting itself. “How a party is not soaring in the polls against that backdrop,” she writes, “is actually quite an achievement in being bad.” That is characteristically severe, but the underlying question is reasonable: if these conditions aren’t enough to send voters towards Labour, what exactly will be?

Where has Hipkins been?

Anneke Smith in The Post offers one of the better explanations. Hipkins, she says, hasn’t been sufficiently visible or “earning enough currency in the attention economy”. That phrase is useful because voters aren’t sitting at home waiting for Labour policy PDFs to arrive. If Hipkins isn’t in front of them – in halls, on television, in social-media clips, having arguments and telling a story – somebody else will be.

Christopher Luxon has completed 20 town-hall-style meetings as part of National’s Building the Future Tour, which his team estimates attracted about 8000 people. Winston Peters and Shane Jones have been touring. Act has taken Paul Henry around the country. By contrast, more than 100 people and a cat turned up to Hipkins’s first public campaign meeting in Naenae. There is nothing inherently wrong with small meetings – sometimes they are better political events than stage-managed rallies – but the difference in accumulated public exposure is significant.

The interesting thing is that Hipkins apparently did very well. RNZ spoke to attendees who were impressed by his command of the room; one supporter said he “spoke with passion”, while another voter, who plans to give Labour only her electorate vote, said she was “pleasantly surprised” by how articulate and passionate he was. Yet she also indicated that none of this had previously come across. That is Labour’s problem: Hipkins may have more political energy than his public image suggests, but elections are won on the version of politicians that voters actually encounter, not the one familiar to caucus colleagues or supporters sitting in a community hall.

Smith notes that Hipkins has always been better at explaining things than performing them. In Parliament he is quick, confident and often very effective. Public campaigning is different, and Labour insiders, she reports, worry that he can look as though he “just isn’t that pumped to be there”.

There are some fair excuses for the late public-meeting campaign. Thomas Coughlan has reported that one consideration for Labour’s timing was when an Opposition leader becomes able to use the Diplomatic Protection Service during an election campaign. Given increasingly ugly behaviour at political meetings, that is hardly trivial. But really explain Labour’s inaction for three years.

Labour insider and corporate lobbyist Neale Jones was blunt about that on RNZ’s Nine to Noon Politics panel this morning: “You can’t fatten the pig on market day, and you need to be making your case strongly and stridently for the years leading up to the election campaign. And Labour hasn’t taken that approach.” Coming from someone in the Labour camp and familiar with how its campaigns operate, that is a fairly damning assessment.

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Winton Land has been one of the property development sector’s most prominent companies, with its founder Chris Meehan celebrated as a “visionary” businessman with close connections to politicians. Now the company is in turmoil, facing workplace allegations, falling share prices and a succession of departures from its board and senior management. Yesterday Meehan finally announced his resignation as a director, effective 14 September. Yet he and his wife retain majority control of the company.

What does Winton’s rise and subsequent turmoil tell us about business and political power in New Zealand?

The story of Winton is one of how a property developer can pursue exceptional planning treatment through political advocacy, donations, professional lobbying and litigation. Such mechanisms have helped Winton rise to the top of the sector. Yet all its political connections and capital haven’t been able to make up for the failings of bad business operations and governance.

At the centre of Winton’s ambitions is Sunfield, its controversial development near Ardmore in Auckland. Next week, Auckland Council is due in the High Court to challenge its fast-track approval. The council says the development is in an unsuitable, flood-prone area.

Winton’s political connections

Meehan has been a major political donor, and his support reaches across the governing coalition. Electoral Commission returns record about $52,895 from Speargrass Holdings to National in 2022, another $103,260 from Chris and Michaela Meehan in 2023, $50,000 from Chris Meehan to Act that year, and $7,500 to New Zealand First in 2025. That is more than $213,000, with subsequent in-kind support also reported.

Newsroom’s Jonathan Milne has documented exclusive fundraising dinners for Shane Jones at the Meehans’ home near Queenstown. Party returns record the value of a contribution. They can’t tell us what was discussed over dinner, or how those conversations shaped a relationship with a minister.

Winton has also employed Lillis Clark, the lobbying company founded by former Steven Joyce staffers Anna Lillis and Kenny Clark. Labour transport minister Michael Wood’s ministerial diary records a November 2021 meeting with Meehan, other Winton representatives and Clark. Winton’s access to ministers, accompanied by a professional lobbyist, predates the current coalition.

Former National finance minister Steven Joyce joined Winton’s board in June 2023. For a developer seeking government support, that was a valuable appointment.

As Brent Melville reported in NBR in July, Winton’s third-largest shareholder was Christchurch developer Philip Carter, holding 7.07% through JWAJ Ltd. Readers of my column on The Press power list will recognise Carter from third place on it. The people who own our cities are a small group, and they turn up in each other’s stories.

Speaking to Newsroom in 2025, Meehan said he expected fast-track to speed up consents for his projects, but denied this was an outcome of his political donations. As he told Milne: “I donate to loads of things, including various political parties and lots of charities. And I don’t regret donating to any of those charities or any of those political parties.”

The donations do not prove that a decision was bought. But they are part of the account of how Winton pursued its interests, alongside its lobbying and ministerial access. Most people affected by its projects cannot assemble an equivalent operation.

Bishop and the limits of recusal

Chris Bishop has been an enthusiastic advocate for Winton’s Sunfield development. In April 2022, while in opposition, he attacked the government for failing to progress the development. Speargrass Holdings’ recorded donations to National followed the next month.

When the coalition selected projects for the Fast-track Approvals Act 2024, Bishop’s previous advocacy became a conflict-management issue. Responsibility for considering Sunfield was transferred to Simeon Brown, and the Government selected Sunfield for inclusion in the fast-track legislation. An expert panel granted consent in March 2026.

But recusal addresses only part of the political problem. The framework for granting exceptional treatment was created by a government whose three parties have all accepted support from Meehan or associated donors. Moving a file from one minister’s desk to another does not resolve the wider question of how those relationships shape government priorities.

Sunfield and the bill for growth

The Fast Track expert panel’s decision on 10 March approved 3,854 homes, including retirement village units, on roughly 225 hectares. The development includes a town centre and provision for a school.

Maria Slade’s BusinessDesk reporting sets out the difficulties. Much of the rurally zoned site is flood-prone, with no existing water or stormwater connections. It has no existing public transport services and sits in the Ardmore Airport flight path. Councillor Richard Hills told her it was “70% to 80% in the floodplain”.

Auckland Council argues that the panel made legal errors in its consideration of flooding, water and wastewater infrastructure, and highly productive land. The court has yet to rule on those arguments.

Planning restrictions can protect existing homeowners at the expense of renters and first buyers. But Sunfield still has to be assessed against the cost of servicing it and the other places Auckland could accommodate growth. The council doesn’t believe this adds up. A consent does not, by itself, answer who pays for the infrastructure or what other investment must wait.

Matthew Hooton made a sharp version of this argument in The Post yesterday, under the headline “Politicians pick losers, because losers pick politicians”. He argues that Sunfield and the Delmore development illustrate the danger of politicians embracing developers’ complaints about consenting without first asking whether their projects have stalled for good economic or environmental reasons. “Politicians ought to become extra suspicious if there is talk of party donations from the very same people,” he writes.

The danger Hooton identifies is that a project’s difficulties can give its promoter a powerful reason to lobby, without giving the government a powerful reason to intervene. Ministers eager to demonstrate action can mistake a promoter’s persistence and confidence for evidence of a project’s public value.

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The easiest way to dismiss the Green Party’s KiwiMart supermarket reform proposal is to turn it into a joke. So, within hours of the Greens announcing their plan for a publicly owned supermarket chain, opponents had rechristened it “CommieMart”. Winston Peters called it “textbook communism by stealth”. National called it a “Soviet-style” government-owned supermarket chain, while former Act leader Rodney Hide imagined the scheme progressing from cheaper milk to shortages, rationing and, eventually, what he called a “Lettuce Board”.

Some of this ridicule lands because governments can make dreadful retailers. Public companies can become expensive and vulnerable to political meddling. But a state-owned chain competing for customers alongside private supermarkets is not Soviet central planning. The jokes also let opponents avoid answering the Greens. After years of inquiries, regulation and promises, why has New Zealand still failed to produce a serious third supermarket competitor?

KiwiMart might ultimately prove too expensive. Its business case is incomplete and its governance arrangements remain vague. But after the failure of more modest reforms, simply opposing KiwiMart is not an adequate supermarket policy. Its critics need to say what they would do instead.

A supermarket policy born of failure

New Zealand’s supermarket problem has been studied almost as intensively as it has been complained about. The Commerce Commission completed its market study. Parliament passed new regulation. A Grocery Commissioner was appointed. A regulated wholesale-supply regime was established in an attempt to help smaller competitors. Restrictive land covenants were targeted, planning processes altered and overseas chains encouraged to consider the New Zealand market. Yet Foodstuffs and Woolworths still account for about 82% of the national grocery retail market, and the Commerce Commission’s latest annual report found that retail prices increased while most national measures of competition showed little change.

The commission says the reforms need more time. That might be true, but it is a difficult message to sell to households watching their grocery bills continue to rise. For years, political leaders have held out the prospect that better competition will eventually arrive if the Government removes enough barriers and makes New Zealand sufficiently attractive to an overseas chain. But no large entrant came.

Nicola Willis eventually acknowledged the limit of that strategy in as many words: “I can’t force a third entrant in... All I can do is open my arms as wide as possible.” KiwiMart begins where that admission leaves off. If the private market will not produce a third chain, the state could create one. The radicalism of the policy is partly a measure of the failure that preceded it.

KiwiMart’s answer to the entry problem

Under the Greens’ policy, Foodstuffs and Woolworths would be required to divest at least 120 stores and distribution-centre capacity into public ownership. The party’s costing assumes the acquisition of two distribution centres. The Parliamentary Library modelling used by the Greens estimates that acquiring the assets would cost about $1.3 billion. The Crown would provide another $1.5 billion to capitalise the business, taking the initial commitment to roughly $2.8 billion. The Greens say KiwiMart would begin with about 15% of the grocery market and operate at arm’s length from ministers, with a mandate to prioritise affordability while remaining commercially viable.

A serious supermarket entrant needs much more than a collection of shopfronts. It requires enough purchasing power to negotiate with suppliers, warehouses and trucks to move the goods, compatible computer systems, customer data and stores in locations where people already shop. KiwiMart would acquire an operating network rather than spend a decade assembling one store by store. As Chlöe Swarbrick puts it, “We’re not short of supermarkets, we’re short of competition.”

Grocery Action Group chair and former Consumer NZ chief executive Sue Chetwin describes the proposal as “a plausible answer to bringing those prices down”. Tex Edwards of Monopoly Watch says its focus on distribution is crucial. New Zealand already has plenty of supermarket floor space, but the established chains’ control of distribution and wholesale supply makes it extraordinarily difficult for a challenger to reach competitive scale.

Easing planning rules might allow another shop to be built. It does not give the new owner a national supply chain. Liberalising foreign investment does not make a small and geographically isolated market commercially irresistible to Aldi or Lidl. The Greens are aiming at the real bottleneck. Their proposed solution may prove to be the wrong one, but it is a serious response to the entry problem.

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Foreign Minister Winston Peters has spent years railing against governments handing diplomatic jobs to political insiders. He has called it “jobs for the boys” and complained that trained diplomats are elbowed aside to reward politicians. In 2016 he described the pattern as a “mainly white brorocracy”. Last year, when he brought Trevor Mallard home early from his posting as Ambassador to Ireland, Peters said politicians should not be getting diplomatic jobs at all.

Now one of Peters’ own closest political advisers, Jon Johansson, has been appointed as New Zealand’s next Ambassador to Sweden.

Johansson has worked closely with Peters for much of the past decade. He was Peters’ chief of staff during the 2017–2020 Labour-NZ First government and returned after the 2023 election as a senior specialist ministerial adviser with a particular focus on foreign affairs. He travels overseas with Peters, has sat in meetings with foreign ministers, and has helped with some of Peters’ more substantial speeches. Before entering the Beehive he spent 17 years as a political scientist at Victoria University of Wellington and was a regular political commentator.

Johansson plainly has relevant experience and may well be a good ambassador. That is not really the dispute.

The problem for Peters is reconciling this appointment with the standard he has spent years demanding of everyone else. There is also a basic question about process: how are New Zealanders meant to know that Johansson was the best person available for the job, rather than simply the person the Foreign Minister already knew and trusted?

Peters’ own standard

Peters could hardly have been clearer in the past. For example, speaking to politics students at the University of Otago in 2022, he attacked the practice of governments using diplomatic postings to reward politicians leaving Parliament. He stated: “Diplomacy and diplomats should be confined to careerists dedicated to the art of diplomacy and not former politicians being ‘grass widowed’, ‘rewarded’, or as a ‘trade off’ for early retirement from politics”.

He compared appointing inexperienced people to diplomatic positions with putting “a novice into a surgeon’s operating room or a gyrocopter operator into a cockpit of a 747”. Peters added: “Only in exceptional exceptions should this rule not be followed.”

That was not a one-off. RNZ’s Russell Palmer has pointed to another particularly awkward Peters quote from 2016. Peters complained then that meritocracy in diplomatic appointments had been abandoned in favour of a “mainly white brorocracy”. Political appointments, he said, should be “the absolute exception”.

The same year, after former National minister Maurice Williamson was appointed Consul-General in Los Angeles, Peters called it “just another example of National’s jobs for the boys and born to rule sense of entitlement”. He said: “The government has elbowed aside professional and experienced diplomats who are trained and know what they are doing”. Furthermore: “We have seen too much of this sort of thing under National with former politicians holding positions of authority that rightfully should be filled by our diplomatic corps.”

And then came Trevor Mallard. Peters attacked Labour’s decision to send the former Speaker to Dublin. When he ended Mallard’s posting early last year, Peters went further: “It’s a circus where instead of looking at the national interest, you’ve got people like Jacinda Ardern appointing politicians to important jobs, and that should not be happening.” He then said: “We should not be having politicians in diplomatic jobs, full stop.” And: “I’ve opposed it in all my career.”

That was last year.

Johansson is not a former MP, and Peters can reasonably point to that distinction. He is not Trevor Mallard heading overseas after leaving Parliament.

But Peters’ 2022 argument was broader than simply keeping former MPs out of embassies. He defended a professional diplomatic service and said diplomacy should ordinarily be the preserve of people who had made a career of it.

Johansson is certainly outside that conventional career-diplomat route. He is also about as politically close to the Foreign Minister as it is possible to be. Audrey Young reported in the Herald in 2024 that Johansson’s advice to Peters was independent of the official advice supplied by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, and that he had written some of Peters’ “chunkier speeches”. The Post has described Johansson as belonging to Peters’ closest circle of advisers. Peters himself described Johansson in a 2019 speech as his “most senior and trusted advisor”.

So this is not just another outsider with some political experience. The appointee was serving as one of the Foreign Minister’s own most trusted advisers.

Yet there has been surprisingly little scrutiny of how Johansson actually got the job.

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On Saturday the election hoardings went up. Francesca Rudkin was driving around Auckland watching the billboards being hammered into the ground and found herself feeling flat, thinking there were only nine more weeks of this to endure. That bothered her because, as she explained on Newstalk ZB yesterday, she actually likes elections. She likes the contest of ideas and is excited that her son will vote for the first time on November 7. Yet she is already worried that “this contest of ideas is going to be frightfully dull, and short on ideas”. Her description of what we have been getting so far was especially good: “It’s politics by warning label.”

Then this morning came a poll showing how far the big parties have fallen. The latest Taxpayers’ Union-Curia poll has National down to 29% and Labour down to just 25.9%. Between them, the two parties that have dominated New Zealand government since the 1930s have only 54.9% support. The Post says this is the first credible nationwide poll it has been able to identify since the Labour-National duopoly emerged in which both parties are simultaneously below 30%.

It is only one poll, but it fits a wider pattern. National is weak, yet Labour is not harvesting that weakness. Both went backwards in this poll, while the Greens and Act made strong gains.

Toby Manhire identified the personal version of the problem back in July. Looking at a 1News-Verian poll that had Christopher Luxon on 18% as preferred prime minister and Chris Hipkins on 16%, he observed that “basically, two in three people prefer neither Chris”. His conclusion was that the prime minister heading the next government could arrive on “a wave of meh”.

The phrase has stuck with me because the “meh” now seems to extend beyond the two leaders. There is plenty of anger and anxiety about the state of the country. What is harder to detect is much enthusiasm for either of the two large parties proposing to run it.

Politics by warning label

Rudkin’s complaint is that the campaign feels “defensive, reactive and relentlessly focused on the other side”. That seems right. National’s campaign chair Simeon Brown appears determined that almost every political conversation must eventually arrive at Labour’s supposed collection of new taxes. Policies advocated by Labour, the Greens, Te Pāti Māori and Opportunity are bundled together as “Labour and their mates”, creating the impression that they will somehow all become part of one grand post-election tax package.

Labour is running its own version. Its warning is that National has another round of cuts lined up for schools, hospitals and public services which voters will only discover after the election. So the choice is increasingly framed around catastrophe avoidance: National says Labour will tax you; Labour says National will cut the things you rely on. Whatever you think of us, both sides effectively say, just think how much worse the others would be.

Political scientists sometimes call this “negative partisanship” — voters being motivated by hostility towards the other side rather than enthusiasm for their own. There is an obvious reason parties use it. Fear works. But when a party’s own positive programme is not especially exciting, increasing the perceived danger of the alternative becomes even more useful.

Peter Dunne opened a Newsroom column last week with a line that could almost serve as an epitaph for this campaign: “Elections are often billed as a contest of ideas, but the election looks much more like a grim struggle for power between the competing blocs.” His argument is that National has kept Labour occupied responding to attacks over tax and spending, while Chris Hipkins’ deliberately cautious “small target” strategy leaves Labour with relatively little else to seize control of the debate.

There are meaningful policies around. National’s compulsory KiwiSaver proposal is significant, and Labour’s capital gains tax and health policies are hardly trivial. But neither party has put it all together into a particularly compelling account of what New Zealand might look like after another three years of its government, let alone ten. The parties are much clearer about what voters should fear than what they should hope for.

Boring by design

The feeling is hardly new. Kerre Woodham said last month: “I do not think I have ever felt less inspired, less hopeful about an election, ever.” Back in January, political scientist Grant Duncan was already predicting “a close contest – between dull and duller”, joking that Luxon’s pitch amounted to “Make NZ Boring Again”.

Chris Trotter went further in LawNews, arguing that “Christopher Luxon is betting on boring.” His argument is more provocative than simply saying incumbents prefer stability. Trotter says “the general absence of excitement is what keeps potentially unhelpful voters at home”. In his reading, “strategic boredom” can help an incumbent by reducing the political temperature and making change seem less urgent.

That probably goes too far. There is no evidence National’s campaign strategists have consciously decided to suppress turnout by boring people. But Trotter does identify a genuine political incentive: National hardly needs a huge national argument about transforming the country. Such a debate could be positively dangerous for a first-term government polling below 30%. It needs enough voters to conclude that, whatever their frustrations, changing government would be riskier.

Labour has arrived at roughly the same place for different reasons. Hipkins watched his party get crushed in 2023 after Labour became associated with too many controversial reforms and unfulfilled promises. His answer has been deliberately modest: jobs, health, homes, some cost-of-living relief, and careful management of expectations. Labour wants the election to be a judgment on National, not a referendum on an ambitious new Labour programme.

The oddity is the mismatch between this caution and the size of the problems in New Zealand at the moment. Housing affordability, infrastructure, weak productivity, strained health services, power prices, an ageing population and the continuing departure of young New Zealanders are hardly minor administrative matters. Boring politicians are not the problem. Sometimes they are exactly what a country needs. But the politics feels unusually tentative for the circumstances.

The paywall starts here. Paid subscribers can continue for the Hyperpolitics argument, what the polls really suggest about disengagement, and who might benefit from an increasingly fragmented political system.

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