Pee Kay: Pork Barrel Politics

Is this not typical, unvarnished pork barrel politics from New Zealand First, yet again cutting up the taxpayer pie to buy regional relevance just in time for the election?

Now, surely this will be seen as a remarkably convenient pre-election handout?

Regional Development Minister Shane Jones stands on a podium somewhere and begins tossing millions of taxpayers dollars at a pair of “exploration” projects under the guise of addressing “…gaps in geothermal knowledge…”.

Gaps in knowledge? Let’s be real Shane!

Richard Prebble: We decide how we vote

There are hysterical claims that vote splitting is somehow against the spirit of MMP.

MMP is not even fully proportional.

Last election, 159,585 party votes elected nobody. Yet these commentators are effectively saying National voters are being undemocratic if they refuse to waste their party votes.

I have split my vote for the last three elections.

Richard Prebble: Interesting electorate races - Wellington North

My old electorate, Wellington Central, is now Wellington North, gaining the traditionally right-leaning suburbs of Khandallah, Ngaio and Wadestown.

Suburbs that once elected me, an ACT MP.

Wellington North is one of the country’s highest-income electorates. It should be National.

Richard Prebble: Interesting electorate races - Epsom

John Key was the best natural politician in my time in Parliament.

The skills that made Key a successful currency trader — the ability to react to the present — made him a formidable campaigner.

Our strengths are often our weaknesses.

Dr Bryce Wilkinson: NZ Unbound - Freeing up growth and fixing the books

Dr Wilkinson and the Initiative’s Executive Director Dr Oliver Hartwich will discuss the report in a webinar at 2 pm on Tuesday 3 November. Register here.

New Zealand heads into the election with two big problems barely mentioned on the 2026 election campaign trail: rising government debt and stalling productivity.

Our report says the answer starts with getting value for money. That means value from what government spends and from the rules it makes.

Kerre Woodham: If we have a cure for a problem, why wouldn't we invest in it?

I know that there are people who think that being fat is indicative of moral weakness. You're a slave to the pleasures of the flesh if you're fat. You can't control your appetite. No self-control. Being greedy is an unattractive trait, in fact gluttony is right up there in the list of the seven deadly sins, all of which I seem to commit on the daily. And sure, if back in the day food was scarce, if you had to grow or gather your dinner, it was a precarious business. It was difficult to store food in times of plenty, hard to find food in winter, during famine, during difficult times. So anyone whose belly hung over their belt would have been looked at askance. You wouldn't have trusted him, or her for that matter. But times have changed and now we all have enough, at least in this country.

Bob Edlin: Simeon Brown would be struck out as a candour-date (if PoO was umpiring)....

.....but the Nats are more tolerant on transparency

Three strikes and you are out.

That’s the principle which the Luxon Government has endorsed when it comes to law and order and sentencing policies.

PoO ventures that maybe it should be applied also to politicians who persistently flunk the candour test.

Guest Post: Money Does Not Grow On Trees and nor Does Experience

Guest Post on GoodOil by LilBaP

Christopher Luxon ran Air New Zealand and, before that, part of Unilever. A solid record, though the conditions were favourable. He still talks as if he is running a company. Managing cabinet, coalition partners and a public service is a different job.

Many have suggested he simply ignores other ideas, lacks stage presence or basic dignity for the job. You cannot do that when you are prime minister. Political experience takes a while.

Wednesday November 4, 2026 

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Taxpayers' Union-Curia Poll: November 2026

Here are the headline results for November's Taxpayers’ Union – Curia Poll:


Click to view

Frank Newman: Election 2026 - The electorates to watch on election night

Unlike previous general elections, the electorate results are likely to determine the next government. When a party wins more electorate seats than its party vote entitlement allows, it retains those additional seats, creating an overhang. In this election, the Maori Party will almost certainly create an overhang, but for the first time since MMP was introduced in 1996, it may also apply to National.

Of the 71 electorate seats, 58 appear safe, barring any major shift in election dynamics during the final days of the campaign or significant errors in the polling data.

These predictions take account of boundary changes and assume that the decline in National’s party vote (down eight percentage points since the 2023 election) will not be significant enough to change the outcome in the safe electorates. That seems a reasonable assumption, given that a majority of National’s lost support appears to have shifted to its coalition partners, which are generally not actively campaigning for the electorate vote, apart from ACT in its two seats.

The electorates I consider safe are:

Owen Jennings: TOP in Hypocrisy

Questions for Voters:

Opportunity (TOP), helped by a fawning media, are posing as kingmakers in this election.  Given that this critical role would determine our future for a decade or more should we not know more about them?

Gary Judd KC: A Sacred Trust Betrayed

Judicial independence and the reliance on tikanga in New Zealand courts

In A Story is Not Enough — Witchcraft and all that, I explained why there is justification for thinking that we, or some of us at any rate, do witchcraft. It reflects how low those who exercise power have come that even Parliament has attributed human personality to rivers and mountains.

Perspective with Heather du Plessis-Allan: Here's what the data from police move-on orders tells us

Have you seen the data from the first nine days of police using move-on orders?

Guess how many of the 29 people police moved on were homeless. Four. Four of them.

Four out of the 29 were homeless, which means 25 of them, the vast, vast, vast majority, had homes, or at least addresses, they could go and spend their day at instead.

Breaking Views Update: Week of 1.11.26

Wednesday November 4, 2026 

News:
Government backing iwi-led geothermal potential
Funding for two iwi-led geothermal projects near Rotorua will help build the knowledge needed to better understand the Bay of Plenty’s geothermal potential, Regional Development Minister Shane Jones says.

The Regional Infrastructure Fund will provide a $3.82 million loan towards the $5.53m Ngāti Rangiteaorere geothermal exploration programme in the Tikitere-Ruahine geothermal field, northeast of Rotorua.

JC: Facts Are Facts Mr Luxon

Since 1996 we have voted under the MMP electoral system. Until now the need to highlight the difference between the current and previous electoral system has not been necessary. This time the ‘bright on the right’ have become aware that in 2026 things are different. The National Party leadership don’t see it that way. They are running a campaign for ‘two ticks blue’, asking for both your electorate and party vote.

Ani O'Brien: The Left does not have a monopoly on empathy

Compassion for me, contempt for thee: Chloe Swarbrick and the politics of selective compassion

When a man approached the home of New Zealand First leader Winston Peters with a crowbar last year, Peters was not home. However, when the man shattered a window sending glass raining down on Kobe the black labrador, Peters’ partner and a friend were inside. It is fair to assume the women were utterly terrified. The house had been surrounded for a few days by pro-Palestine activists chanting at times abusive and aggressive slogans. It was actual violence.

Professor Jerry Coyne: Polynesian navigation and Indigenous “ways of knowing”

One of the most-cited empirical achievements of indigenous peoples is the ability of Polynesians, Melanesians, and Micronesians to navigate their way across vast, unmarked expanses of the Pacific Ocean to get to small, uninhabited islands. How did they do it? And, regardless of their navigational methods, how many attempted voyages failed, with the navigators and their human cargo perishing? We’ll never know because there was no way to keep records.

David Farrar: The one thing everyone agrees on – Parliament is better off with Bish there

I blogged a few days on how Winston Peters endorsed Chris Bishop for Hutt South, saying he is “is a cut above the regular MP”.

Richard Prebble also wrote on Chris Bishop:

Richard Prebble: Interesting election races - Chlöe Swarbrick

Auckland Central is a remarkable electorate.

The Greens hold the seat. National won the party vote in 2023. Nikki Kaye defeated Jacinda Ardern twice.

When I represented Auckland Central for Labour, I twice had the biggest majority in the country.