The Post reports:

Labour has unveiled a fresh batch of policies promising to fix overcrowding at emergency departments, with more nurses, faster access to hospital beds and care before patients reach crisis point.

It is useful to compare rhetoric to record.

Under the Key/English Government between 90% and 95% of people at ED were dealt with in under six hours.

Labour’s record speaks for itself. It was a total disaster for emergency departments. Before they took office only 8% of ED patients waited more than six hours. When they left office it was 33%, so four times as many patients were waiting over six hours.

Why would you want to give them a second chance?

The Herald’s 2026 Mood of the Boardroom is out. How were the MPs rated this year by the CEOs?

1. Erica Stanford 4.38 (nc)
2. Todd McClay 4.12 (+0.38)
3. Mark Mitchell 4.00 (+0.34)
4. Chris Bishop 3.71 (-0.09)
5. David Seymour 3.44 (+0.28)
6. Brooke van Velden 3.40 (+0.15)
7. Winston Peters 3.39 (-0.43)
8. Barbara Edmonds 3.39 (+0.19)
9. Simeon Brown 3.34 (-0.27)
10. Kieran McAnulty 3.31 (+0.46)
11. Nicola Willis 3.17 (+0.08)
12. Louise Upston 3.10 (-0.01)
13. Chris Luxon 2.93 (-0.03)
14. Ayesha Verrall 2.33 (+0.26)
15. Chris Hipkins 2.25 (-0.03)
16. Carmel Sepuloni 2.21 (+0.17)
17. Vanushi Walters 2.00
18. Willie Jackson 1.79 (+0.01)
19. Willow Jean Prime 1.73 (+0.20)
20. Cushla Tangaere-Manuel 1.72

Feel free to share this one also.

Stuff reports:

Video has emerged of Labour candidate Kerrin Leoni campaigning at what appears to be a gang event. 

In the video, obtained by Whakaata Māori, a patched Mongrel Mob member talks about the gangs not needing to fight each other, but the government. 

The footage then cuts to Leoni who is wearing a Labour party jacket. 

“Some of them you might know, that aren’t enrolled to vote and they can have the power to change this government.”

The Post has reported it understands the event was advertised as a fundraiser for the Mongrel Mob’s Rogue chapter. 

The footage also showed Leoni holding up a campaign sign.

So the Labour Party says they won’t attend election debates hosted by the Taxpayers’ Union (because Nicky Hager doesn’t like them), yet they will have candidates attend actual fundraisers for the Mongrel Mob, where they implore the gang members to vote to get rid of the Government.

What does this say about their priorities?

Here are the facts:

1. The last Labour Government had Ministers personally approve the funding of Mongrel Mob members to run a drug rehabilitation course (of course most hard drugs in NZ are sold by gangs)
2. When Chris Hipkins was PM, Kiri Allan proposed to Cabinet they they stop funding gangs, and the Cabinet chaired by Chris Hipkins declined Allan’s proposal
3. Chris Hipkins defended the funding of gangs, when he was Prime Minister.
4. A Labour candidate solicited votes for Labour at a fundraiser for the Mongrel Mob!!

I feel sorry for all the men and women who have been bashed, robbed or raped by Mongrel Mob members who see politicians of the left cosying up to them, desperate for their votes.

The Mongrel Mob is not a community organisation. It is a gang which does organised crime. Of course you should treat any individual NZer with respect and engage with them. But that is vastly different to funding them, and attending fundraisers for them.

Liam Hehir has an amazing story.

Basically The Press ran a story about Bryan Cadogan, describing him as someone who voted National for many years and has now left National. They say the recent proposal to drug test beneficiaries seems to have greatly alienated him. So it makes it look like this is a recent decision.

Liam points out that Mr Cadogan was described in April by Labour MP Ingrid Leary as Labour’s campaign lead for Clutha. So The Press described a Labour campaign lead as a sort of swinging voter who left National over a recent policy decision. It is outrageous.

It then gets better with the follow up. Cadogan and Leary now both deny he is a campaign lead for Labour (despite Leary calling him that on social media), but she lets slip he has put up hoardings for her for “a number of campaigns”. This means that he went over to Labour a long long time ago, and was totally unrelated to anything this Government has done.

He has also been a member of Labour’s Policy Committee.

The Press still has not updated their story to reflect that Cadogan is in fact a long-term Labour Party activist, who they have portrayed as some sort of swinging voter who left National because of decision made by the current Government.

And again we wonder why trust in media is so low.

If ever a story was deserving of a Media Council complaint, it would be this one.

I blogged in March about an outrageous decision by a Law Society Standards Committee decision which fined Stephen Franks and Franks Ogilvy for the sin of “being lawyers”. I wrote:

The Legal Complaints Review Officer overturned the decision, noting:

The very purpose of a lawyer or firm sending a letter on behalf of a client is, in many if not most instances, to endeavour to lend weight to whatever concern, position or purpose the client seeks to express or advance. That is what lawyers do. This is why a client comes to its lawyer and says, “we need a lawyer’s letter about this”. This cannot conceivably be improper in principle.

This was a massive slap down. But nothing will stop some members of the Law Society who seem determined to take out anyone whose clients have the wrong politics. And once again they have been slapped down by a Legal Complaints Review Officer:

I disagree with the Committee’s reasoning and conclusions for essentially the same or similar reasons as I disagreed with the same standards committee’s reasoning and conclusions on similar issues in the Franks decision, albeit that there are differences. In Franks, the Committee’s adverse conduct finding was one of breach of r 2.3 of the Rules relating to use of a legal process for an improper purpose. Here, the finding is one of disrespect and discourteousness in breach of r 10.1 of the Rules.

I had never heard of an LCRO before the Franks decision. I am now very glad they exist!

Similarly, it is not for the Committee to second-guess how the applicant went about supporting her client in the pursuit of its cause, again provided that the means of doing so were lawful. In general terms, I do not consider that r 10.1 is intended to operate as a mechanism for attempting to constrain a lawyer’s professional involvement on behalf of a client in public discourse on any issue of arguable public interest.

Let lawyers be lawyers!

In case anyone think Chris Hipkins is the solution to any of New Zealand’s problems, I have created this handy guide to his record in office when he was a Minister. Feel free to share.

A guest post by Alex Penk:

“Woke 1” was crazy. Don’t take my word for it; that’s what Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said. The globally influential US politician made the comment when asked to explain some of her past positions, like defunding the police, and the internet went, well, crazy. 

But the most interesting thing is what the comment implies—if there was a “Woke 1”, there will be a “Woke 2”. 

In fact, I think Woke 2 is already here, for reasons we’ll get into. First, a disclaimer: I don’t like using “woke” because it’s become a pejorative term, a kind of rhetorical cudgel. But, like it or not, it’s in the discourse, so it’s important to establish what “woke” means, where it’s helpful, and where it goes wrong. 

“Woke” was said to originate with African Americans about a century ago, where staying woke meant being “awake” to racism. From there, “woke” expanded to include awareness of all forms of social injustice, especially the way injustice can be perpetuated in social structures. It then adopted the insights of intersectionality, which proposes that multiple forms of disadvantage—when, say, someone is a member of a marginalised racial minority and also has a disability—can intersect and compound. 

There is truth to this. Racism is real and evil, systems can maintain oppression, and disadvantage can accumulate. These are things we should all be aware of and opposed to. 

That, however, is not the full story of woke. 

Woke went beyond awareness and became an ideology: wokeism. In simple terms, wokeism is a form of critical theory, derived from Marxism, which says that the way we structure society is really a struggle over who has power. Some people are oppressors—they have power and use their privilege to maintain systems and structures to their advantage. Others are victims, exploited by the oppressors to maintain this status quo.

Crucially, oppressors and victims are defined not by their individual humanity, but by their identities, especially their race, sex, or gender. From the reasonable insight that groups often have shared experiences, wokeism proceeds to the conclusion that we’re inescapbly defined by the groups we belong to. To know someone’s identity is to categorise them—regardless of whether you actually know them. 

That’s a textbook example of how to dehumanise someone. 

It gets worse. As a society, it’s inevitable that we will disagree about important issues. Wokeism concluded that the way to resolve disagreement was to elevate victims, topple oppressors, and dismantle systems—all defined along those identity lines. 

Because this was a coherent system of thought, you couldn’t pick and choose elements of the ideology—say, embracethe awareness of injustice and discard the theory of oppression. Nor could you agree with the problem diagnosis but offer a different solution—say, agree that society needs to be more tolerant, but deny that the best way to show love is to prescribe puberty blockers to an adolescent still trying to work out who they are or to uncritically affirm someone’s new gender identity. 

This was a package deal, and it did not tolerate dissent. And no wonder, when, by wokeism’s definition, disagreement was simply defence of oppression. 

Thus a defining characteristic of wokeism, as observed and experienced by most people, was its willingness to punish differing views and enforce conformity. Sometimes the softer language of “celebrating diversity and inclusion” was employed, but the results were the same.

So Woke 1 was just the first major iteration of wokeism, and the revolutionary zeal that accompanied it produced an understandable and negative response—hence Ocasio-Cortez’s desire to be conciliatory about the “crazy” of that era. 

But let’s look at some representative cases, across academia, government, and law, and consider whether they sound familiar.

Start with the calls to “defund the police” that were the cause of Ocasio-Cortez’s recent comments. This is a good example of wokeism. The assumption is that policing is structurally oppressive, using force to maintain the privileged in their position and victimising marginalised identities. This goes beyond observing that policing has disparate impacts—instead, it asserts this oppression is the whole point of policing. While these calls originated in the US in the Woke 1 era, they’ve been repeated here. Quite recently actually, with two Otago academics arguing last year that New Zealand Police are structurally racist, with a “whakapapa … grounded in a long and violent colonial history.” 

Moving on to government, the Green Party’s new health manifesto uses the framework of wokeism when it promisesto “Reconfigure our health system towards recognising and acting on oppressive and intersecting biases (e.g. racism, sexism, ableism, fatphobia, ageism, queerphobia, transphobia)”. On the right, the ACT Party adopted wokeist intolerance of dissent when it doubled down on euthanasia reforms that would make it harder for hospices, doctors and nurses, to express their beliefs if they don’t believe assisted death is the best way to care for vulnerable patients. 

And the courts recently issued new guidance for lawyers, saying they should know and use clients’ and witnesses’ pronouns. Women’s rights advocate Ani O’Brien points out that the guidelines “assume that using someone’s requested pronouns is an uncomplicated courtesy. In a courtroom, it isn’t always.” That’s why equivalent UK guidancesays, for example, “a female rape victim may find it incomprehensible if the judge and others in court refer to her biologically male attacker as ‘she’”. New Zealand’s guidelines lack this insight. 

As these examples show, Woke 2 is already here. Or, in other words, the wokeism that produced Woke 1 may have been less obvious for a time, but it never went away. 

So how should we respond?  

Not with condemnation, aggression, or fear. That wouldn’t just be ironic, it would be wrong. 

If wokeism’s ultimate failing is to dehumanise, then the solution is to re-humanise. 

To begin with, we should acknowledge and embrace the truths recognised in the origins of woke—prejudice is real, systems can have unjust outcomes, disadvantage can multiply. 

But we should resist the ideology of wokeism. 

First, reject the false ideas. It’s simply not true that identity markers divide us from each other in the way that wokeism asserts. Our shared human nature means that the things we have in common are much more important than the things that distinguish us. 

Second, refuse to play the game. Don’t enter the victimhood Olympics, by which I mean don’t try to win debates on the strength of your identity rather than the strength of your ideas. And don’t try to crush dissent or cancel difference among people of good will. Deal in persuasion, not compulsion. Yes, there will be limits to what we can agree on or accept, but make them as generous as possible, and recognise your ideological opponents’ humanity by treating them with dignity. 

Third, tell the truth. If Woke 2 follows the pattern of Woke 1, it won’t take kindly to being challenged. Challenge it anyway. 

Responding to wokeism will take courage; it might even mean paying a price for holding your position in the face of opposition. 

But if we’re not willing or able to do this, then Woke 2 isn’t just here—it’s already won.   

Alex Penk is the CEO of Ethos, a registered charity that offers advice, advocacy and education to promote the rights of conscience, religion and belief: www.ethosalliance.nz

The IMF has just published their forecasts for economic growth for 2027. They show that NZ is projected to have far better growth than many other countries. An extract:

1. New Zealand 2.6%
2. US 2.3%
3. Sweden 2.2%
4. Canada 1.7%
5. Euro area 1.2%
6. UK 1.2%
7. Germany 1.1%
8. France 0.7%
9. Italy 0.6%

There are a few countries ahead of us such as Israel and Ireland, but if we don’t throw it all away next month, we are poised for very good growth next year.

The ABC reports:

The ABC has confirmed that Indi MP Helen Haines has lost a leg after being pinned between two cars outside her electorate office in Victoria’s north-east yesterday afternoon.

Victoria Police said 43-year-old Tarrawingee man Brendan Nugent was arrested at the scene of the incident.

This was almost certainly a deliberate attempt to murder the MP. The man did a u-turn in his car and rammed her twice with it.

The attacker is Brendan Nugent:

A man accused of mowing down independent federal MP Helen Haines with his Toyota Landcruiser is an environmental activist who railed against Israel online.

This appears to be his Twitter account.

It goes without saying that MPs should not live in fear of being murdered. There been far too many episodes in initially the US, then the UK and now Australia.

The only upside is once again we have an Australian hero:

In what has been labelled a heroic act by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese,local barbershop owner Ricky Jefferies managed to intervene by running to the driver’s side of the vehicle and wrenching the knife from the man’s pocket, before wrestling him to the ground and waiting for the authorities.

If he had not done that, Haines would sadly have lost her life, not just her leg.

From 1 News:

Verian is the only public pollster doing weekly polls, which makes their polls the most interesting to watch as you get a better of how the last week has impacted things. Their results are:

1. National 32% (+4)
2. Labour 27% (-1)
3. Greens 16% (+1)
4. ACT 11% (+1)
5. NZF 8% (-2)
6. Opportunity 7% (-1)
7. TPM 0.7% (+0.4)

It is of course an incredibly close race, and the outcome is very uncertain. But some useful momentum,

Three ads readers might enjoy, and want to share.

The Sensible Sentencing Trust have commissioned their own advertisement highlighting Labour’s dismal record and law and order.

Its advertisement has had less attention than other third-party groups, but based on focus groups of swing voters I have witnessed, I suspect the SST ad could be very effective (assuming the SST can raise the funds to get it on screens far and wide).

To make a confidential donation to the Sensible Sentencing Trust, go to their website here. 

The hilarious AI ad attacking Labour’s tax on inflation.

This ad simply reminds people of what happened to prices when Labour were last in office. Totally factual.

You can also donate here to get this ad more widely seen.

Very sad to see that Geoff Thompson has died, aged 86. I’d known Geoff for almost 40 years. He was National Party President when I worked in the PMs’ Office, and stayed active for decades after that. We sometimes attended IDU events together. He was a great guy who was passionate about politics and National and devoted his life to National. Always friendly, and a source of good wisdom and advice. He played a big part in getting National ready for MMP.

He was also briefly an MP from 1978 to 1984, and if he had been in a safer seat, I have no doubt he would have become a very senior Minister.

My thoughts are with his family.

Mihi Forbes writes:

The two heroes of this story are the big sisters, Storm and Jubilee Dawson.

Justice Moore’s report released to the public this week, reveals their unwavering commitment to finding their siblings. They raised the alarm and kept raising it, they spoke up when adults and agencies, charged with protecting their younger siblings failed to speak up and failed to listen, and they refused to give up on them.

In return the public shunned them, the media harassed them, the Police ignored them, Oranga Tamariki dismissed them and for nearly four years they lived with the guilt of not being able to bring their teina and tungāne home.

Of course, their actions should have been more than enough to prevent the abduction of their siblings for a miserable 1,358 days in the bush.

The big sisters are heroes for their advocacy of behalf of their (half) siblings.

We first met Jubilee Dawson in July 2023, as experienced journalists we found Jubilee extremely cautious, she had no faith in the media and little trust in the public. Who could blame her? The online abuse and ugly rumours being spread about her mother and whānau through the community were appalling. Both the media and government agencies seemed to minimise or completely ignore Cat’s relationship and mana as the children’s mum. In all our years reporting we had never witnessed a situation quite like this. Where victims were treated with such utter disregard.

Shame.

I have to admit I was one of those. Not in relations to the big sisters who I had never heard of, but in relation to the mother. I accepted the narrative about her, without any evidence if it was true or not. I still don’t know if it was. But the narrative (initially) was that he was protecting the kids from her, when in reality he was the threat.

But even more unforgivable, were the warnings Storm and Jubilee raised with Oranga Tamariki about Tom Phillips. Every single one was dismissed or ignored. They told Oranga Tamariki they were concerned about Phillips’ controlling, abusive behaviour, and his neglect of their siblings’ basic needs. They asked Oranga Tamariki to conduct an urgent visit to the Phillips home after the first abduction. Oranga Tamariki refused.

They said how he was isolating the children from them and their mother. Weeks into the second abduction they pleaded with Oranga Tamariki that this had gone on too long, they had missed Christmas, a birthday and this was the longest they had ever gone without speaking to their siblings.

But no one took them seriously, no social worker or kaimahi at Oranga Tamariki believed their warnings, they simply recorded their interactions which have now made the basis of the independent report.

Even if the mother did have issues (and I don’t know if she did) that made her unreliable, there is nothing to suggest the big sisters were unreliable. They were ignored, and it is shameful they were.

I have just read the review by a KC into how the Teaching Council allowed Timothy Fisher (note there are two teachers called Timothy Fisher – the one still teaching is not the one being referred to) despite numerous red flags.

This was not a case of potential harm, but actual harm, Fisher was convicted of “indecently assaulting nine of his students, attempting to make four intimate visual recordings of students, possessing thousands of objectionable publications depicting child exploitation, and making objectionable video recordings including of his students”

So Fisher is a paedophile and sexual abuser. But was this predictable and should he have been a registered teacher. Let’s look at the timeline.

1. 2002 – convicted of indecency offences
2. May 2011 – applied for teacher registration. Police vet was clear, as Clean Slate Act prevented Police from disclosing his convictions to the Council. TC did not ask for any reference or character checks – only the Police vet.
3. July 2014 – application for renewal of registration. TC ignored school principal saying he doesn’t meet the requirements for full registration and also ignores that Fisher left unticked the box about whether he was under investigation (he was)
4. Jul 2014 – Police advised TC “Police recommend this person does not have unsupervised access to children, young people, or vulnerable members of society”
5. March 2015 (8 months later!!) – TC asks Police for info on recommendation. Informed it related to alleged events in 2010
6. March 2015 – Fisher tells TC about his 2002 convictions for indecency. He also informs them he had taught at two schools without a practising certificate – which is a criminal offence
7. April 2015 – TC Complaints Assessment Cmte decided to take no action about either the indecency convictions or the teaching with a certificate (a criminal offence)
8. 2016 – TC renews Fisher’s practising certificate again
9. 2017 – Fisher resigns from his teaching role following complaints. School informed TC that they had concerns over both competency and conduct. TC investigated and did nothing for four years except gather info – until 2021, when they censured him!!
10. 2018 – Fisher still a registered teacher and teaches at carious schools
11. 2019 – Fisher hired by a private education facility on the basis of his teacher registration and practising certificate

The report goes well beyond the timeline. It shows the Teaching Council did almost no actual investigations. It didn’t seek more info from principals or ask them to appear. It had no sense of any urgency at all over the fact it had a teacher with indecency convictions, who admitted working illegally, and had a report from a school that he resigned after inappropriate behaviour.

What this makes clear is that the Teaching Council was not focused on child safety as its prime mission. I suspect it was far more focused on making sure no teachers had an “incorrect” view of the Treaty. Their failure did not just increase risk – it actually led to nine students being indecently assaulted.

The KC concluded:

The Council is required to cancel registration if satisfied on reasonable grounds that the requirements for registration are no longer met. …

By March 2015 the Council had a sound basis to reasonably conclude it was satisfied that Mr Fisher no longer met the requirements for registration. Assuming it reached that conclusion (which in my view it should have) it was required to follow the statutory process for cancelling registration. 

So they are required to cancel registration where there are grounds to do so. There were grounds a decade before they did, and they failed to do so. Again the end result was offending in 2020 that created a huge number of young victims.

And people wonder why Erica Stanford is referring the Teaching Council, and some sector groups saying it is an overreaction! How could it be more serious?

A reader e-mailed in:

With Timothy Fisher now sentenced and the independent review released, I wonder whether there is another story worth investigating.

Who was governing the Teaching Council when the warnings were raised, and why has the Minister made such significant changes?

In March 2016, Fisher was granted a provisional practising certificate despite previous convictions and serious red flags.

Look at some of the governing members at the time:

• Claire Amos – Convenor of the Complaints Assessment Committee, now involved with AEC and publicly critical of the Minister’s Teaching Council reforms.
• Ripeka Lessels – Council member from 2015, later Deputy Chair, and now NZEI President. In June 2026, she publicly criticised the removal of elected teacher representatives.
• Lynda Stuart – Risk, Audit and Finance Committee member, former NZEI President and now involved with AEC.

These are just three names I’ve come across. I’m sure others have roles and involvement over the years that warrant closer examination.

Interestingly, I found the original June 2015 Beehive announcement confirming their appointments. It explicitly states that the new Council would take responsibility for teacher registration and disciplinary matters from 1 July 2015.

https://www.beehive.govt.nz/release/membership-new-education-body-announced

Ripeka’s continued involvement is also documented in subsequent Beehive announcements, including her 2019 appointment and appointment as Deputy Chair in 2022:

https://www.beehive.govt.nz/release/new-teaching-council-appointments

https://www.beehive.govt.nz/release/new-chairs-appointed-teaching-council-and-te-kura

These people present themselves as respected voices in education, yet shouldn’t their own governance records face the same scrutiny they apply to the Minister’s reforms?

I’m not suggesting they personally approved Fisher’s application. But what collective accountability existed, what has been overlooked, and are we looking to the right people for independent advice about the future of education?

The reviews raise serious questions about whether protecting the profession took priority over protecting children. Surely this deserves further investigation.

The reader raises some fair points. I should stress that I am sure all those involved are shocked with the offending by Fisher, and no one should think they in any way condone or minimise what he did. But what is relevant is they were governors of an organisation that failed terribly to protect kids, and when they also stridently claim that changes to the education are not necessary, then their own records as governors is legitimate to consider.

Richard Prebble writes:

For family reasons, my wife and I are raising our 11-year-old grandson.

He has been a pupil under both Chris Hipkins and Erica Stanford.

Under Hipkins, I became so concerned about his maths that I bought an online programme and taught him myself.

Today he is doing much more maths at school.

He is now doing maths a year ahead of his age.

I have been able to retire as his maths coach. He is having guitar lessons instead.

I was shocked to hear Hipkins say in the leaders’ debate that Labour will abandon the compulsory daily hour of maths and leave the decision to teachers.

I have seen what can happen.

One of my daughters at intermediate school level had a teacher who did not like maths. So she did not teach it.

When my daughter reached secondary school, we discovered she was two years behind.

I paid for coaching. She caught up.

Her classmates did not.

One teacher’s decision not to teach maths damaged the future of many pupils.

Under Hipkins, New Zealand recorded a big fall in maths achievement in the 2022 PISA results.

I know what happens when children are not guaranteed time to learn maths.

I have seen it twice in my own family.

Labour’s policy is to abolish the minimum one hour a day of reading, writing and mathematics that Erica Stanford introduced. It was a policy recommended to Hipkins for maths by the Royal Society of NZ, and he has vowed to end it.

Our kids are now 1.5 to 2 years behind where kids were 20 years ago, and Labour seems to oppose every initiative Stanford has done to turn this around.

Labour/Greens will tell you that NACT has decimated the Public Service.

National will tell you they have applied significant discipline to spending in that area.

They are both telling BIG porkies.

The Public Sector Workforce Data has been released today.

• As at June 30 2026 their were 63,912 FTEs. This is up 2% from June 30 2025 (if down 1% from March).
• Compared to September 2023 (when the coalition took over) the FTE’s have declined by 0.5% (312 FTEs).
• For 2025/26 $655m was spent on consultants. Up 7.2% in a year.
• The total pulic service workforce spend was $7.0445billion.
  
• In my main area of interest, Education, the FTE’s for the Ministry of Education is now 4,185 (plus consultants) – up 9.1% in a year.
  
  
  
  

Your thoughts?

[email protected]

In my Patreon, I have profiled all 71 electorates, and my conclusions are 42 of the 71 are relatively safe for a party. A further 13 are likely to go to a particular party (75% too 95% likely), a further 14 lean to a particular party (60% to 75% likely) and two are to close to call (less than 60%). So 29 of the 71 seats are in some doubt, which means on election night I will have 30 tabs open on my laptop!

Having now conclude these, I have now analysed the party lists, and taking into account the current public polling averages, looked at who might be an MP for the seven parties who may plausibly be in Parliament. These are fairly simple for five of the parties, and very complex for Labour and National. The seven posts are:

• Opportunity
• Te Pāti Māori
• NZ First
• ACT
• Greens
• Labour
• National

As with all the posts, they are based on the public data available at the time of writing them, and don’t take into account recent events such as the Greens deciding to campaign with the Mongrel Mob!