News Briefing Top 10 for 4 November 2026
1. Tom Day (1News): Analysis: Steel yourself for a four-party coalition
1News’s Tom Day thinks voters should steel themselves for a four-party coalition, with Opportunity still holding the balance of power and neither major party clearly ahead. Six weeks of campaigning have barely moved the numbers. National is on 30%, up from 28% in the first campaign poll, and Labour on 29%, up from 28%. Day finds the latest results more encouraging for the left, which can govern with Opportunity unless there’s a big overhang on the right, although electorate results could still produce one large enough to keep National in office. He calls Luxon’s decision to rule out Opportunity “by far the most significant of this campaign”, and says his path to power may now rest on going back on his word.
2. Thomas Coughlan (Herald): Are Don Brash and Harry Mowbray this election’s Kim Dotcom? (paywalled)
The overhang campaign may be driving voters away from the parties it was meant to help, the Herald’s Thomas Coughlan suggests. Despite days of publicity for Don Brash and Harry Mowbray’s vote-splitting appeals, Act and NZ First each fell two points in the latest 1News-Verian poll, while National rose. Coughlan draws a parallel with Kim Dotcom’s 2014 intervention, when Dotcom spent at least $3.5 million and his Internet Party won less than 1.5% of the party vote. Voters have followed party leaders who asked them to vote strategically, he writes, but moneyed outsiders have had less luck. He cautions that a National overhang is still likely on current polling, because of the party’s electorate strength.
3. Andrea Vance (Post): Health NZ keeps nurse numbers secret until after the election (paywalled)
Health NZ won’t release its latest quarterly nursing figures before the election, saying final checks are still under way and publication is expected “in the coming weeks”. The Post’s Andrea Vance has asked three times for a date and got none, and the agency refused health economist Bill Rosenberg’s urgent OIA request. The figures could help settle one of the campaign’s fiercest arguments, in which the Government’s headcount claims and the earlier full-time-equivalent data use different measures and starting dates. The last release showed a gain of just 54 FTE nurses over two years. Rosenberg calls the delay political suppression.
4. Derek Cheng (Herald): Revealed: Dozens of public servants on paid gardening leave – some for years (paywalled)
In August, Paul Goldsmith told agencies to “cease passive management” of public servants suspended on full pay. Two months later the Herald’s Derek Cheng found the number was still 36. The minister had acted after the Ministry of Justice paid former Lotto presenter Russell Harrison about $500,000 over a five-year suspension. Two police staff had been on restricted duties or suspension for an average of more than three and a half years.
5. Henry Cooke and Nick James (Post): ‘Don’t let Luxon sneak back in’: Labour pushes its own form of strategic voting in tight races (paywalled)
Labour is urging Green supporters in close electorate races to lend it their candidate votes, warning that splitting the left could hand seats to National. Henry Cooke and Nick James think the tactic is likely aimed at countering a right-wing overhang. Kāpiti candidate Sophie Handford calls her seat “a two-horse race between me and National”, and Mt Albert MP Helen White, who won by 18 votes last time, is running ads using a Spinoff poll. Chris Hipkins wants two ticks for Labour. Chlöe Swarbrick isn’t telling anyone how to vote, but warns legacy parties they aren’t entitled to it.
6. Derek Cheng (Herald): The return of ‘Luigi’s ferret’: Why Michael Laws wants to be an MP again after 30 years (paywalled)
Michael Laws, sixth on NZ First’s list, is set to return to Parliament after 30 years, and wants ministers to have more control over the public service. “I have never found populism to be a bad thing,” he tells the Herald’s Derek Cheng, and he backs referendums on social issues as a way of getting rid of elites and lobby groups. Laws wants ministers, not the Public Service Commission, appointing chief executives, and thinks an emboldened NZ First and Act would give the coalition more steel. He resigned in 1996 over the Antoinette Beck affair, but says that because he accepted the blame, apologised and atoned, he can now claim the moral high ground.
7. Harriet Laughton (Post): Billboard complaints surge this election compared to last as attack ads dominate campaign (paywalled)
No billboard complaints reached the Advertising Standards Authority during the 2023 campaign. Harriet Laughton has found it has dealt with 25 this time, more than 90% of them about attack ads aimed at left-wing parties. Fifteen targeted National’s “no new taxes” billboard, and the ASA rejected them all. The Sensible Sentencing Trust’s billboards accusing Hipkins and the Green co-leaders of backing the gangs came down after complaints that they copied Green Party branding, but Reality Check Radio’s billboard of Hipkins as Freddy Krueger was ruled political opinion. Laughton explains that the ASA’s advocacy rule allows robust expression as long as the advertiser’s identity and position are clear, and chief executive Hilary Souter notes the self-regulatory body can’t ban or take down ads.
8. Simon Wilson: A lament for Christopher Luxon
Simon Wilson argues on his Substack that Christopher Luxon’s real enemies this election are on the right, from Don Brash and the Mowbray family to Winston Peters, David Seymour and Reality Check Radio. And Simeon Brown, whose campaign as National’s manager dug the hole that invited the overhang push. In Wilson’s view the push is really about avoiding tax reform, and he notes the Mowbrays and another 300 megawealthy families pay an average effective tax rate of 8.1%, against a median of 17.4%.
9. Nicholas Jones (Stuff): Who New Zealanders trust: Scientists, police rate - but one group is remarkably distrusted (paywalled)
In the final instalment of Stuff’s State of the Nation survey, Nicholas Jones finds only 13% of New Zealanders trust social media platforms to act in the country’s best interest, and 61% distrust them. Scientists, researchers and academics come top on 72%, with the police next on 66%. News media and parliament/government are both more distrusted than trusted. None of the party leaders gets a net positive rating. Luxon’s is −25, and only Rawiri Waititi, on −30, does worse.
10. Farah Hancock (RNZ): Political donations tracker: The wealthy donors dominating large donations
Ten donors account for almost 40% of the more than $8 million in large donations given this election year, RNZ’s Farah Hancock has found from Electoral Commission disclosures. Rank Group, owned by Graeme Hart, has given $700,000 and Nick Mowbray $475,000, and parties in the current coalition have received more than $6m, roughly three quarters of the total. Anonymous donations protected from disclosure add a further $629,322. Opportunity and the Greens both want a $30,000 cap on donations.
Below the paywall are 55 more summaries and then 46 further links. They cover Reality Check Radio asking Harry Mowbray for $300,000, the seat maths of the final 1News-Verian poll, Hipkins telling Nicola Willis to “go out with dignity”, Andrew Geddis on overhangs as electoral cheating, John MacDonald on keeping MMP but reining in wealthy third parties, Mowbray’s $35 website and the police, Labour warming to a four-year term, Chris Penk on where he’s putting his ticks, the National ad filmed on an empty lot, Opportunity’s biggest donor and his say over any coalition deal, Kiwis wanting the power companies split up, nearly one in three considering leaving the country, Māori voters walking away from an Ōtaki booth, the fat voting pen crisis, the union taking the solicitor-general to the ERA, what a 45% top tax rate would really raise, why only 14% of GP owners back Labour’s free appointments, and whether Wellington can afford both the Michael Fowler Centre and the Opera House. Plus today’s cartoons.
