News Briefing Top 10 for 12 November 2026
1. Bryce Edwards (Democracy Project): The Right face a miserable time in power
Christopher Luxon is on course to be the first prime minister under MMP to lead a government on less than 30% of the party vote, and in today’s Democracy Briefing I argue that winning may turn out to be the easy part. The right bloc’s 67 seats rest on seven National overhang seats, leaving one to spare before almost 400,000 special votes are counted. Act and NZ First have gone from 19 seats to 25, and NZ First’s 12 give it as much power to block the government as National’s 42. Every partner holds a veto, and every government backbencher will be walking around with a loaded gun. National goes into negotiations without Nicola Willis, Chris Bishop and Paul Goldsmith, and Luxon faces a caucus already watching for concessions.
For paid subscribers, the Further Analysis section looks at the remedy most often suggested, a deal with the Opportunity Party, and why it would come at a high price. Qiulae Wong told the Spinoff’s Toby Manhire that both a coalition and a confidence and supply agreement would require her five bottom lines, including recommitting to Paris and banning bottom trawling, which Act and NZ First oppose. Her looser option, abstaining from the crossbenches, would let Luxon take office but leave him running a minority government with a fourth party able to bring it down.
2. Stewart Sowman-Lund and Amelia Wade (Post): RNZ board signed off unlawful $5m loan facility (paywalled)
It was RNZ’s own board that approved the $5 million loan facility that broke the law, on June 9, at a time when members say they believed the finances were on track. Brent Impey, now the chair, was one of them, and he told Stewart Sowman-Lund and Amelia Wade he didn’t know of the breach until auditors went through the books in October. Ministers’ permission to borrow was last given in 2006, for up to $3.5m. The facility was meant to last 90 days, yet the annual report signed off on October 30 says RNZ still “intends to exit” it. Staff costs ran $3.2m over budget in a year when funding was cut by 7%, and Paul Thompson’s salary went up 5.6% to $528,000.
3. Katie Harris and David Fisher (Herald): From chief to civilian: Tony Davies leaves NZ Defence Force as fallout from affair grows (paywalled)
Tony Davies resigned as Chief of Defence Force on October 23, and he has now left the military altogether. Katie Harris and David Fisher have learned he was “administratively released” on October 30, after the usual three months’ notice was shortened by mutual agreement. A 2006 inquiry didn’t substantiate his relationship with a junior airwoman, which let his career carry on all the way to the top job. The Inspector-General of Defence is likely to investigate, and the Public Service Commission is reviewing the appointment. An Auditor-General’s report in August found 17.2% of personnel had experienced harmful behaviour in the previous year.
4. Sue Wood (Post): Former National Party president Sue Wood’s open letter to MPs: Reclaim our values (paywalled)
Former National president Sue Wood has written to the party’s electorate MPs to tell them they won “despite – not by virtue of – the National Party’s lacklustre nationwide campaign”. With no list MPs beholden to the leader and the board, she says their local mandates give them the authority to rebuild the party from below. She urges them to recruit beyond their usual networks, listen to new migrants, young urban professionals and working families, and restore democratic influence within the organisation. Drawing on the 1984 defeat she presided over, Wood says recovery means listening and letting policy change, while holding to National’s founding principles of equal opportunity, personal responsibility and reward for hard work.
5. Henry Cooke (Post): National Party old guard implores MPs to retake control of party, broaden church (paywalled)
Sue Wood’s appeal has support from other senior National figures. Henry Cooke reports that two former MPs and another former senior office-holder share her discontent with centralised control and the neglect of the party’s founding principles. One says too many people now use National “as a vehicle for their own self-advancement”. Another blames the early-2000s constitutional change that stopped members electing the president, so the board now calls the shots and public opinion reaches the leader through focus groups. With every National MP now elected locally, they see a chance to restore constituency influence over policy and direction, starting with Standing Orders changes to free MPs from the whips. Erica Stanford rejects the idea that National has lost its broad church, saying the caucus still has a good balance of liberals and conservatives. Cooke notes that Wood is the mother-in-law of the Post’s editor-in-chief, Matthew Hooton.
6. Dileepa Fonseka (BusinessDesk): Christopher Luxon, National and the trouble with winning an election you almost lost (paywalled)
National’s 29.21% is its lowest share as an incumbent government under MMP, and BusinessDesk’s Dileepa Fonseka thinks its problem runs deeper than Luxon. Drawing on Niki Savva’s account of the Australian Liberals’ 2025 defeat, he warns that a centre-right party can be pulled towards voters on its right while losing touch with a changing centre. Voters are now spread almost evenly across age groups, and many younger professionals are, as one former Liberal MP put it, “rich in education but poor in assets”. A recovery that looks like a house-price boom to owners will look very different to them, and Fonseka suggests this year’s Pyrrhic win could become an actual loss in 2029.
7. Herald: Editorial – Politicians sowing seeds of doubt in our electoral integrity are extremely damaging (paywalled)
A Herald editorial is scathing about Chris Hipkins’ claim that National is “only holding on to the prospect of power because they’ve manipulated the electoral system”, and about his later denial that he said it. Only last month he told Q+A he would accept the result, and warned then that questioning the system risked confidence in it. The editorial puts Helen Clark, Chlöe Swarbrick and Trevor Mallard in the same camp, points out that the Greens gained more than 50,000 party votes in the Māori seats through vote-splitting on the left, and reminds Labour that it lost the party vote in 2017 and still formed a government. It accepts there may be a case for a constructive conversation about whether MMP is the best system, but warns that sowing doubt about the integrity of the result does real damage to public confidence.
8. Fox Meyer (Newsroom): Act and NZ First can take the wheel as development law moves past Bishop (paywalled)
Chris Bishop’s departure could leave Act and NZ First directing the planning and fast-track systems he built. Fox Meyer explains that the new Planning Act and Natural Environment Act run on ministerial national directions, so whoever inherits the portfolio will have real say over how urban density, freshwater protection, mining and property rights are weighed. Act’s Simon Court, Bishop’s under-secretary, puts private property rights first, and NZ First’s Shane Jones, who helped design the fast-track, wants to “turbo charge” critical minerals exports. Both are a long way from Bishop’s urbanism. If the specials go the other way, Labour’s Rachel Brooking would honour projects already committed but amend the law to make environmental protections paramount for future decisions.
9. David Williams (Newsroom): Animal welfare codes ‘extremely vulnerable’ to court challenge (paywalled)
Andrew Hoggard sent the draft dairy cattle welfare code back to its advisory committee in August 2024, a few months after telling it to give greater regard to costs for farmers. Early this year he declared a conflict of interest and handed the matter to Nicola Grigg, who issued the final code in September. David Williams has traced how the code changed after public consultation, through a targeted round with DairyNZ, Federated Farmers and others, losing proposed rules on winter grazing and shelter. Animal Law Association president Marcelo Rodriguez Ferrere says both the dairy and pig codes are “extremely vulnerable” to court challenge. Hoggard won’t say what the conflict was, and MPI wouldn’t front for an interview.
10. Liam Hehir (The Blue Review): A strange game. The only winning move is not to play.
Liam Hehir warns the right against assuming an overhang strategy will keep delivering for it. In The Blue Review he runs hypothetical scenarios in which both blocs coordinate. If Labour took 30 of the 64 general electorates and Te Pāti Māori all seven Māori seats, the right’s advantage would reverse, leaving the left with a majority in a much bigger Parliament on fewer party votes. As the smaller parties grew relative to the major ones, policy swings would get wilder, with the finance job moving between David Seymour and Chlöe Swarbrick on tiny shifts. Hehir wants National to use its present strength to negotiate reform that applies equally to general and Māori electorates, before gaming the system becomes a routine part of elections.
Below the paywall are 56 more summaries and then 26 further links. They cover Richard Prebble’s call for both Chrises to resign, Michael Reddell’s verdict on Nicola Willis as an “inconsequential placeholder”, Don Brash’s plan to make Winston Peters Speaker, Qiulae Wong’s first meeting with Luxon, Richard Shaw on National becoming an electorate-only party, Kevin Hackwell on the money behind the anti-MMP push, which MPs would lose their seats if the overhang were banned, Graeme Hart becoming New Zealand’s biggest political donor, whether the Mowbray campaign actually worked, Harry Mowbray’s “women driven by emotion”, National’s party vote falling in every seat, Gerry Brownlee on a campaign that was “too negative”, lobbyists’ names hidden in Fonterra’s climate-law correspondence, the abuse aimed at women candidates, NZ On Air being blindsided by RNZ’s blowout, how many journalists are left, NZTA’s scrapped $40m tolling contract, the parties’ split on retirement village repayments, a navy ship stuck in port, the fragile 111 system, and the growing backlog for abuse-in-care survivors. Plus today’s cartoons.