Heather du Plessis-Allan Drive

UK Prime Minister Andy Burham recently claimed his Government would consider issuing an apology for the UK's role in the trans-Atlantic slave trade - but he's ruled out financial reparations.
Burnham is set to travel to the Caribbean as part of a meeting for Commonwealth leaders, where it's likely he'll face renewed calls about the UK's history in the region.
UK correspondent Gavin Grey says these comments will have caught King Charles and the royals by surprise.
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The markets have started the week on a cautious note, as the US midterm elections are due to get underway.
US President Donald Trump has recently indicated the war in Iran could end soon 'one way or another', but has yet to make any concrete statements.
Harbour Asset Management expert Shane Solly unpacked the reactions further.
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Westpac New Zealand is cautiously optimistic about the year ahead, despite annual profit dropping nine percent.
It's reported a net $1.09 billion profit for the year to September.
Lending grew five percent.
Chief executive Catherine McGrath says geopolitical uncertainty's high, but it's likely unemployment has peaked and will be about to fall.
"The other thing that we're seeing is that businesses in New Zealand are doing what great Kiwis do - they've recognized we're never going to have those calm blue waters we've had in the past and they're been really adaptive."
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Jeez, I reckon it'll be panic stations in National that we're yet again talking about the vote-splitting strategy because this, I think, is now definitely confusing voters.
I don't know if the people pushing this strategy realise how confusing it is for a lot of people, particularly those who don't engage with politics all that often. These are the low-interest voters who tune in only when an election rolls around.
I tried to explain the vote-splitting strategy to someone in my family twice and I could tell that even after two explanations, they still didn't really understand how it worked. That suspicion was confirmed when they called me again and asked me to explain it one more time because they were on their way to the voting booth and wanted to try to execute the strategy.
Now, add to that the fact that voters are hearing two different messages from elders on the right. Don Brash is telling them to split their vote. John Key is telling them not to split their vote. Then Don Brash is saying, "Please split your vote, except if you're in Epsom or Tamaki. Then please don't split your vote."
I think this confusion really raises the risk that the strategy could go badly wrong because, if voters don't understand what they're doing, what happens if they invert their vote in the booth? What happens if they accidentally give their party vote to National and their electorate vote to New Zealand First or ACT, completely defeating the thing they're trying to do?
And what if only half the voters do it and half don't? National's party vote collapses but its electorate vote also collapses and it comes out not supersized at all but quite the opposite.
Don Brash is confident, though, that voters can pull this off. He says National is denigrating the intelligence of right-wing voters. And maybe he's right. We've had MMP for 30 years now. Electorate after electorate, from Wellington Central to Coromandel to Epsom, has shown that voters do know how to split their vote.
But this is vote-splitting on steroids across the whole country and it's a big enough gamble for National to be fairly nervous about the coming days.
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On the Heather du Plessis-Allan Drive Full Show Podcast for Monday, 2 November, 2026, Netball New Zealand's boss says there'll be an "elite" domestic competition after it ditched the Mowbray deal. But will players get paid?
On The Front Bench, Barry Soper, Trish Sherson and Matt Ball try to explain an overhang but it turns into more of a hangover.
Are the Nats being too mean with attack ads against Chloe Swarbrick?
And Anthropic cracks down on cruelty to Claude.
Get the Heather du Plessis-Allan Drive Full Show Podcast every weekday evening on iHeartRadio, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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