News Briefing Top 10 for 2 November 2026
1. Tim Murphy (Newsroom): The most febrile final week since the days of the Exclusive Brethren
Newsroom’s Tim Murphy goes back to 2005 for a comparison, when Exclusive Brethren businessmen secretly ran a $1.2m ad campaign to help Don Brash’s National. This time the push is against a National party vote, and it comes from Brash’s Hobson’s Pledge, Reality Check Radio, the anti-vax group Voices for Freedom and Harry Mowbray, founder of Split Your Vote and father of the Zuru founders. None of them would appear to be of middle New Zealand, Murphy says. Unlike the Brethren, they are open about it, but he asks the same question: who benefits? Their campaign could reshape the result. Or voters could resent being told how to vote, and resist. With National fighting its allies and Te Pāti Māori running its own overhang strategy, Murphy says Parliament could grow to as many as 130 seats. If it does, he writes, the two major parties have only themselves and their weak campaigns to blame.
2. Henry Cooke (Post): The weekend the overhang became real (paywalled)
No one on the 50 or so Auckland door-knocks the Post watched over the weekend brought up the overhang. Yet it was the main topic at both of Christopher Luxon’s press conferences. The Post’s Henry Cooke explains National’s bind. The more voters hear about split voting, the more of them may try it, and National’s party vote could plunge. One analysis suggests that on current polling National would need to lose 11 or 12 seats to avoid an overhang. Paul Goldsmith, campaigning hard for Epsom, isn’t hiding the risk. The National list, he said, “is not as certain as it was in the past”.
3. Fox Meyer (Newsroom): Labour outspends entire coalition Government on Facebook ads
Newsroom’s Fox Meyer has been through Meta’s Ad Library. Labour has spent $276,070 on Facebook and Instagram ads in the past 30 days, which he says is roughly equal to the combined 90-day totals of Act, NZ First and National. National has spent $121,000 over 90 days. It is leaning on unpaid, meme-style posts instead, some using AI-generated images of opponents. Eleven of its 17 Facebook posts in the 24 hours to October 30 featured Chlöe Swarbrick. Act’s most popular ad has Paul Henry asking voters to split their votes between Act and National.
4. Danyl McLauchlan (Listener): 30 years of drifting off course under MMP demands future governments keep a surer hand on the steering (paywalled)
The Listener’s Danyl McLauchlan dates most of New Zealand’s decline in housing, schools, infrastructure and productivity to the 30 years of MMP, more than to the neoliberal reforms of the 1980s. He calls it the era of Drift. Mistakes such as electricity “reform”, NCEA and district health boards were rarely reversed, and each hardened into a fixture defended by whoever benefited. He sees some encouraging signs, including the competition debate. Whoever governs next, he warns, will face intense pressure from the Drift’s beneficiaries to stay the course.
5. Chris Trotter (Interest): Tied up tight in an election that nobody will win
An election decided by overhang seats is bound to bring angry claims of illegitimacy from whichever bloc loses, warns Interest.co.nz’s Chris Trotter. If National’s overhang keeps the right in power after the left wins more party votes, or Te Pāti Māori’s four overhang seats do the same for the left, he doesn’t expect the losing side simply to shrug. Voters name living costs, health and crime as their priorities, but Trotter doubts many believe politicians can fix them. Te Tiriti, free speech, biological sex and Palestine are different. Changes there cost little and are doable, he says, and they make people feel heard. That helps explain the intensity of a contest in which both sides sense much more is at stake than usual. New Zealanders, he concludes, are voting for a “vibe”.
6. Thomas Coughlan (Herald): The political careers on the line this week (paywalled)
If the Herald-Motu Research Poll of Polls is right, National will be the first major party under MMP to return no list MPs. The Herald’s Thomas Coughlan has done the sums. List-only Nicola Willis, Gerry Brownlee and Nancy Lu would be gone, and Chris Bishop and Paul Goldsmith must win their electorates to survive. Labour has a list problem too. A projected 23 electorates would leave it only nine list places, putting Camilla Belich, Deborah Russell and Priyanca Radhakrishnan at risk.
7. David Williams (Newsroom): ‘Disgrace’ that minister is sitting on public health advice (paywalled)
The independent Public Health Advisory Committee has given the health minister six pieces of advice this term. Two have been published. Newsroom’s David Williams obtained the list under the Official Information Act. The committee’s 2024 advice on the Cabinet circular on needs-based service provision is still unreleased, and its June advice on primary care to 2036 has been withheld. Last November Simeon Brown changed the committee’s terms of reference so that publishing any advice needs his approval. Public health expert Boyd Swinburn calls keeping the reports hidden “an absolute disgrace”. Brown, who is also National’s campaign chair, didn’t respond to Newsroom.
8. Michael Neilson (Newsroom): Inside Labour’s fundamentally rewired Māori campaign strategy
Three years ago Labour’s Māori campaign ran on its record. This time, Newsroom’s Michael Neilson reports, it is about jobs, health and the cost of living, with major constitutional change and restoring the Māori Health Authority off the immediate agenda. Willie Jackson says that is what voters are asking for: “They’re not talking about the Treaty. They’re talking about how much their rent is.” Te Pāti Māori’s Debbie Ngarewa-Packer says the backlash of the past term scared Labour. Her party is offering wealth taxes and constitutional transformation, and John Tamihere promises to sweep away fast-track laws in a left government’s first 100 days. Political scientist Lara Greaves thinks Labour’s caution could still work, because the coalition’s rollbacks make even the status quo look progressive. In individual Māori seats, she adds, local ties can count for more than national positioning.
9. Richard Harman (Post): Outside the tent: What Michael Wood’s distance says about Chris Hipkins’ campaign (paywalled)
Michael Wood stood under his own umbrella, outside the gazebo, while Chris Hipkins and Kieran McAnulty briefed journalists in Mt Roskill. The Post’s Richard Harman reads a lot into that. Hipkins must know his job is on the line on Saturday, he writes, and McAnulty and Wood are his rivals. Harman credits Hipkins with pulling Labour level with National after trailing by 11% in 2023. If Labour falls short, though, the “small target” strategy will get the blame. Only one of the front bench, Barbara Edmonds, wasn’t a minister last time.
10. Verity Johnson (Stuff): I can’t believe I’m gonna say this, but I think you should vote for Chris Bishop
Stuff’s Verity Johnson gives the Greens both ticks and would sooner use her eyeballs as cocktail olives than party vote National. She still wants Hutt South voters to keep Chris Bishop, who is out of Parliament if he loses the seat. She liked him far more than she expected when she interviewed him for Polls Apart. He has done much of National’s intellectual heavy lifting, she says, from rewriting the RMA to openly wanting lower house prices. They argued about climate policy, including subsidies for rooftop solar, but at least he engaged.
Below the paywall are 38 more summaries and then 24 further links. They cover Winston Peters telling National voters they’re wasting their party vote, Don Brash admitting his ads are inconsistent, John Key’s Epsom video for Paul Goldsmith, National’s Tāmaki supporters told not to wear blue, Labour beating National on the economy and tax in the Ipsos poll and why that isn’t showing up in voting intentions, the most interesting electorate races, the paths to power, the lobbyists already waiting for the next government, the Greens leading in Te Tai Tokerau, insults at the Māori leaders’ debate, where the parties stand on te Tiriti, borrowing for consumption, National and Labour’s near-identical health promises, the Reserve Bank’s surprise hold, leadership failings at the FMA, the rural sector’s verdict on the coalition, fees making up almost half a trans-Tasman fare, Opportunity’s doubts about Fair Pay Agreements, the hospice nurses’ stalled pay equity claim, a “pointless” $392,000 water job, and Jacinda Ardern on the crisis of leadership. Plus today’s cartoons.
