Gone By Lunchtime

Three weeks to go and Chris Hipkins has put his finger on it: this campaign does have some of the post-apocalyptic survival energy of Cormac McCarthy's The Road.

Toby Manhire, Annabelle Lee-Mather and Ben Thomas gather for some group therapy, to assess the performances in the TVNZ multi-party debate and the NZME leaders' debate, the controversy over pics of Green and Te Pati Māori MPs hanging out with the Mongrel Mob, and the re-emergence of the bitter fight between Winston Peters and Christopher Luxon over the New Zealand position on the war in Iran.

Cast your vote for Gone By Lunchtime in the Listeners' Choice category in this year's NZ Podcast Awards:https://www.nzpodcastawards.com/nominate

Watch Toby's interview with Winston Peters here:https://youtu.be/gseBfePQzMM
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Round one of the Chris v Chris debate season played out last night on TVNZ. Ben Thomas was in the pundit capsule. Toby Manhire was in the studio. Annabelle Lee-Mather was in bed. The morning after, they assemble in the Spinoff pod studio to share their assessments, and at times they seem to have been watching very different events.Did Hipkins out-debate Luxon on the cost of living and the economy? Where were they on the morality of the billionaire? Who fared better on education, on health, on te tiriti? Were the real winners the parties that weren't in the room? And how about Jack Tame's wall?Plus: the scene was set for the encounter by two polls that tell a striking story: Labour and National are both going to struggle to hit 30%. Is that locked in, or can they claw their way back?
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Kingmakers’ Debate is the highest-profile of a burst of events in the first full-throttle week of the 2026 campaign. How did the party leaders do in the Press-Post thing, and what happened to the worm? Toby Manhire, Annabelle Lee-Mather and Ben Thomas gather at the roundtable to exchange their piping takes.

Plus: What does new polling tell us about the way Māori are planning to vote? Now that John Key has knocked it down, is Harry Mowbray’s overhang campaign a serious thing? Who are the breakout stars of the election to date? And a word on Adrian Rurawhe.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Here’s a taste of our new podcast, At Large with Toby Manhire: this week Jack Tame came in to talk about how he’s preparing to host the first leaders’ debate in 2026, how the campaign is taking form, and the struggle to get the prime minister (and others) to talk to him on Q+A.

Watch the Mt Albert debate in full here: https://youtu.be/LZO7gu6rhQg

Watch the debate debrief with Lyric Waiwiri-Smith and Hayden Donnell here: https://youtu.be/1KewN5ilXtc

Watch the full interview with Jack Tame here: https://youtu.be/RYOI7d16ApQ

Follow At Large with Toby Manhire now on ⁠⁠⁠Spotify⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠Apple Podcasts,⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠⁠, or wherever you get your pods.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Parliament has disgorged its politicians ahead of a Super Sunday of campaign launches, with just a month and a day until advance voting begins. Toby Manhire, Annabelle Lee-Mather and Ben Thomas leaf through the brand new Ipsos Issues Monitor, which reveals which issues matter most to New Zealanders in election season, which parties they consider best equipped to tackle those concerns, and where people rank out of 10 the government’s performance. Have the competing parties successfully shaped their campaigns to meet a mood in which voters are very exercised about cost of living and increasingly worried about the health system?Plus: Nicky Hager has published Dirty Work, the third in a trilogy – what does the book tell us? And how alarmed should we be about a flagrant subversion of the Official Information Act in the curriculum overhaul project at the Ministry of Education?
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices