Chris Hipkins dumped Kerrin Leoni over gang campaigning. She is still on the Tāmaki Makaurau ballot as Labour, a pre-resignation Curia poll had her two points off the seat and, if she wins, only Labour can pull the party-hopping trigger.
1News says Labour held steady through the gangs row. Labour did. The left did not. The poll was in the field the week Kerrin Leoni’s footage came out, and the right bloc now sits on 61 seats to the left’s 56.
Rodney Hide says National is heading for an overhang. If he is right, National’s party vote stops buying seats, the list loses its power and MPs who have never won an electorate lose their free pass. Paul Goldsmith has lost Epsom five times.
ACT’s manifesto puts $22 billion of savings on the table over four years, debt $12.4b lower by 2031, Super at 67 by 2035, and a three-year minimum wage freeze. One headline muddled that to $2b. Hipkins still has not priced his first week.
Sensible Sentencing Trust put Swarbrick, Davidson and Hipkins under “BACKING THE GANGS”. The Greens complained. JCDecaux paused the ads. Swarbrick called it a “despicable downgrading of democracy”. The billboards rest on the Greens’ own words.
Hipkins promised five actions at his first cabinet meeting. Labour’s own fiscal plan puts a price on two of them. For the hiring freeze, the ED plan and the price-gouging law, we found no published cost.
NZ Media World read a month of 1News and RNZ Midday bulletins. On its count, Opportunity got favourable treatment in 17 of 33 items. NZ First got two of 22. Te Pāti Māori got none. The party the left needs to reach 60 is the one the broadcasters like best.
Hipkins called Luxon’s education attack “petty and pathetic”. The ministry’s own figures show regular attendance fell from 64 per cent to 39.9 per cent while he was minister, and it was falling before Covid arrived.
A senior officer swore parliament was merely interested in Brian Tamaki. The emails she was shown, and the protests nobody chased, tell a different story.
The Greens promise $3b more for health at each of four budgets, a surplus a year later and $26.6b more debt by 2030/31, paid for with nearly $29b in new taxes. The Taxpayers’ Union says 17 other promises, worth $176.4b, are missing from the plan.
Hipkins ruled Greens and Te Pāti Māori out of police and corrections over the Mob pad photos. His own Tāmaki Makaurau candidate quit after a Mob video. Then he called the reaction racist and left her name on the ballot.
The High Court struck down the puberty blocker ban on consultation and discrimination grounds. It also found the minister had a rational basis to act, made his own decision and did not act for an NZ First purpose.
John Minto posted photos of two visiting Israelis and told people to go and confront them. His party has $82,011 of your money to spend on broadcasting.
Luxon and Hipkins both said engineering an overhang is cheating. The Electoral Commission says it is how MMP works, and parliament has had one in five of the last seven terms.
National jumped four points and Labour hit its lowest since 2023, yet the 1News-Verian seat maths leaves the right one seat short. A party on eight per cent and a party on 0.7 per cent now decide who governs.
The Post/Freshwater poll has Labour 28.7, National 27.6 and the left reaching 61 only with Opportunity on 5.4 per cent. Electorate vote National, party vote NZ First or ACT.
