Gone By Lunchtime

The Opportunity Party has shot up to the threshold fun zone, with Qiulae Wong at the helm and running a line as an alternative to NZ First. Will the distaste for the establishment parties and the salvos from across the board mean an unprecedented fully new arrival in parliament soon? Will it be Q, anon? Annabelle Lee-Mather, Ben Thomas and Toby Manhire discuss the fourth attempt by Opportunity (nee TOP) to cross the line.

Christopher Luxon is about to welcome Narendra Modi in Auckland, to celebrate the signing of the free-trade deal. The Indian prime minister's visit will mark the biggest political leader on our soils for more than a decade and Luxon has seized on the moment to pledge as National leader a catalogue of new bilateral deals. But does the FTA stance of his foreign minister (Winston Peters, curiously, is overseas during Modi's visit) risk pissing in the PM's punch?

Headlines around homelessness, rough sleeping and emergency housing have surged into the foreground with revelations around MSD KPIs, move-on orders and the prime minister's admission he didn't know Auckland city has no night shelter.

Plus: the New Zealand First redemption train continues, with Michael Laws added to an increasingly bulging carriage of survivors from decades past. Is it like Cocoon? Is it like the Thriller video? Or more like a scene from the Book of Revelations? We answer (or at least address) all these questions and more.
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Fresh from the bright lights and bitter recriminations of the National, Labour and Act party bashes, Lyric Waiwiri-Smith and Joel MacManus join Toby to reveal all, in this excerpt from the Spinoff’s new podcast, At Large with Toby Manhire.

Follow At Large with Toby Manhire now on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, or wherever you get your pods.
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The gun for election 2026 was fired with great fury and much shrapnel on Sunday, with National campaign manager Simeon Brown sparing almost no one. Annabelle Lee-Mather, Ben Thomas and Toby Manhire huddle together to revisit those dramatic scenes and seek to understand why Brown thought it was a good idea to say that Winston Peters and David Seymour are his squabbling children and to declare NZ First irredeemably untrustworthy. A KiwiSaver policy staked out territory for the months to come, while the Greens were also in bold policy mode, laying out their plans on tax. And the dam has burst on the policy front for Labour, too. Did the public transport cap hit the mark?Plus: Erica Stanford turns the scrutiny spotlight squarely on MBIE officials over their questionable persistence on a multimillion-dollar biometric tech project. And is Tama Potaka just tweaking Conservation policy for the sale of "bits and bobs" or does the new act entail something more troubling?
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Keir Starmer has walked out from Downing Street and said it’s all over, meaning Andy Burnham is almost certain to be the next UK PM, the seventh since 2016. Why did Starmer fail, who is Burnham, and is this all really about Nigel Farage and Reform? Toby talks to UK-based NZ journalist Richard Adams about the latest drama, and asks whether Christopher Luxon could learn anything.

Plus: In How Good, Lyric Waiwiri-Smith reveals what she has learned about British romance from two powerful texts: Jane Austen’s Persuasion and Love Island UK.

Follow At Large with Toby Manhire now on ⁠⁠Spotify⁠⁠, ⁠⁠Apple Podcasts⁠⁠, ⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠ or wherever you get your podcasts.
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The story of Mike Smith's climate court action, the parliamentary response, and hard-copy briefings from lobbyists that went mysteriously missing has officially reached "saga" mode. Ben Thomas, Annabelle Lee-Mather and Toby Manhire dive into the mire and debate whether there are dots to join. Elsewhere in this GBL buffet episode, they offer their budget verdicts, assess the latest bout of entitleditis besieging our MPs, search valiantly for Labour Party policy, revisit a busy weekend for Chris Penk in Singapore navigating "freerider" chat and radioactive conversations. Plus: a celebration of the new king of Twitter, MP Joseph Mooney.
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