News Briefing Top 10 for 26 October 2026
1. Bryce Edwards (Democracy Project): Democracy Briefing: What business thinks of the politicians and parties
Business leaders are hard to impress this election. In my column, I look at what the Herald’s Mood of the Boardroom survey of 150 business leaders reveals about the relationship between business and politics. Politicians across the spectrum get poor or middling ratings, several among the lowest in the survey’s history, even though business optimism about the economy is at its highest since 2016. I argue National has lost standing in the boardroom, and that any government willing to challenge powerful business interests should expect to be marked down for it.
2. Te Rina Kowhai (Te Ao Māori News): Kerrin Leoni to stand as an independent in Tāmaki Makaurau if elected
Kerrin Leoni has decided to stay in the Tāmaki Makaurau race, just three days after resigning as Labour’s candidate, and will sit as an independent if elected, Te Ao Māori News’ Te Rina Kowhai reports. It is a defiant stand against the party she represented until Friday, when a video showed her in Labour gear at a whānau fundraiser attended by Mongrel Mob members, after which Chris Hipkins said campaigning alongside gangs was unacceptable. Her name stays on the ballot beside Labour’s logo, and she remains on Labour’s list. “The decision now belongs to the voters of Tāmaki Makaurau,” she says.
3. Derek Cheng (Herald): David Seymour has no issue with Māori customary rights - just ‘activist’ judges (paywalled)
David Seymour tells the Herald’s Derek Cheng that constitutional reform, not lower taxes, is Act’s next big move, because challenges such as productivity, housing and infrastructure stem from “insecurity about who we are as a country”. He says he has no issue with Māori customary rights in specific instances, only with judges he says have interpreted them too widely. Otago law professor Andrew Geddis counters that Act’s plan to instruct courts on interpreting statutes contradicts the Regulatory Standards Act that Seymour himself secured.
4. Andrea Vance (Post): Fix what we’ve got: Voters put hospitals ahead of big builds (paywalled)
A Post/Freshwater Strategy poll funded by Infrastructure New Zealand, the industry body with a direct stake in how much is spent on infrastructure and how, finds 50% of voters favour fixing bottlenecks and maintaining existing assets even if it means fewer new projects, the Post’s Andrea Vance reports. Just 22% want large developments funded by significant borrowing. Hospitals dominate, with 72% putting health facilities among their top three priorities. Only 7% back more government borrowing and 7% higher general taxes. Infrastructure New Zealand’s chief executive, Nick Leggett, uses the same results in a Post opinion piece today.
5. Ethan Manera and Katie Bradford (Herald): The 10 battleground electorate races to watch
The Herald’s Ethan Manera and Katie Bradford profile 10 general electorates that could shape the result: Tāmaki, Auckland Central, Mt Albert and Epsom in Auckland, plus Wairarapa, Kāpiti, Hutt South, Nelson, West Coast-Tasman and Wigram. Helen White held Mt Albert by 18 votes in 2023, Chris Bishop could leave Parliament altogether if he loses Hutt South, and in Epsom National’s Paul Goldsmith is now campaigning for the candidate vote against David Seymour. National pollster David Farrar says about 15 National ministers have campaigned in Tāmaki.
6. Richard Harman (Post): Simon Bridges boosts NZ First (paywalled)
Former National leader Simon Bridges praised NZ First’s “very clear, very explicit focus on growth” at an Auckland Chamber of Commerce event with Shane Jones, adding that not all in Parliament have been that focused, the Post’s Richard Harman reports. Harman argues that business frustration with energy prices, a concern for 80.4% of executives in a BusinessNZ survey, is reopening questions about the state’s economic role that the major parties have largely avoided during the campaign. While National and Act want to leave prices to the market, Jones rejects the idea of the state as a neutral referee, and Harman says NZ First in a National-led Cabinet would keep asking the question Grant Robertson raised in 2020 and then forgot: what is the role of the state?
7. Adreanne Ormond (Post): Voting from the margin: Forgetting the anxiety and continuing the struggle without end (paywalled)
Adreanne Ormond, a Māori academic at Victoria University, reflects in the Post on the tension between feeling compelled to vote and distrusting institutions she believes repeatedly fail Māori. Her example is the Government’s August law change ending Mike Smith’s climate case against Fonterra, Genesis Energy and Z Energy, after documents showed Fonterra and Z Energy had met the Prime Minister’s office; the Prime Minister said he had no record of the meetings. She sees it as another case of the rules being changed after Māori gain ground through the courts, like the foreshore and seabed. Drawing on bell hooks’ writing about the margins, she argues for participating without pretending that voting is sufficient or surrendering the wider struggle for change.
8. Elliot Crossan: Have the Greens Capitulated to the Logic of Austerity?
The Greens promise $30bn for health over four years, double Labour and National, but Elliot Crossan argues their fiscal plan still accepts the logic of austerity. He says scaled-back tax changes, raising just $5.35bn in net new revenue in 2028/29, and a return to surplus would squeeze welfare and other public services as health, superannuation and financing costs grow. Crossan welcomes the party’s cost-of-living campaign but criticises its retreat from major welfare reform, arguing that its fiscal limits undermine its redistributive ambitions and that programmatically the party has “shifted sharply to the right”.
9. Claire Robinson: Christopher Luxon may be the sharpest tool in the shed after all
Opportunity’s average across six October polls is 6.26%, so a fall of a point or so on election night could keep it out, writes Claire Robinson. She argues Luxon’s repeated ruling-out of Opportunity may help National, perhaps not by design. If Opportunity misses, the soft Labour votes it attracted vanish and the coalition’s 49% becomes more than 51% of votes that count; if it gets in, National is likelier to get Qiulae Wong’s first call. She sketches how Luxon could govern with Opportunity abstaining.
10. Listener: Dear PM: What should be top of the next PM’s to-do list? 40 Kiwi thought leaders offer ideas (paywalled)
The Listener asked sector leaders and newsmakers for the next prime minister’s top priority in 100 words. Common themes are children, health, the cost of living and the environment. Federated Farmers’ Colin Hurst wants 10 national standards to replace farm consents, Auckland mayor Wayne Brown wants no more “interference from Wellington”, economist Shamubeel Eaqub asks governments to publish who wins and loses from each decision, and Monopoly Watch’s Tex Edwards proposes a policy office in Copenhagen, Oslo or Brussels.
Below the paywall are 26 more synopses and 24 further links. They cover Labour’s Starship visit, Christopher Luxon’s messages to state abuse survivors in gangs and the gang-photo row, National dropping a volunteer with a sexual offending conviction, Opportunity’s Future Generations Commissioner and its blue-green Nelson candidate, the flip-flop electorates, National’s 100-day plan, the enrolment deadline and young voters, household financial resilience, tax in the campaign, KiwiSaver compulsion, Infrastructure New Zealand’s case for maintenance, Kiri Allan on what the two Chrises lack, and business leaders’ verdicts on supermarket policies and the pension age. Plus today’s cartoon.
