Focus on Politics

New Zealand is now in formal negotiations with the European Union to nail down a Free Trade Agreement, with negotiators to meet in Brussels in about three weeks time. The EU is New Zealand's third largest trading partner, with two-way trade worth more than 20-billion dollars. What's in it for New Zealand, and what are the challenges that could get in the way of the deal getting over the line?

More from Jane Patterson and the focus team...

The apologies have been coming in thick and fast over the last week after the Prime Minister's chief scientific advisor delivered a king hit to the country's meth testing industry. It's now clear hundreds of Housing New Zealand's tenants have been needlessly kicked out of their homes and blacklisted, while in the private sector landlords coughed up many millions of dollars to decontaminate their homes, because it was wrongly assumed that meth residue posed a risk to people's health. An entire testing industry has sprung up in New Zealand offering to test homes for traces of meth while the legal system and local government have punished those unfortunate enough to get caught up in what is nothing more than a groundless moral panic.

Focus on Politics for 1 June 2018

New Zealand's prison population has been increasing quite rapidly over the past few years. In 2013 there were just over 8200 people incarcerated in New Zealand, the prison muster as of now is 10,481. The Corrections Department says it currently has capacity for about an extra 450 prisoners. The former National-led Government had proposed building a new 1500-bed facility at Waikeria, which Labour labelled a mega-prison. This week the Government confirmed that prison was now off the table, but what will it do instead?

The Finance Minister, Grant Robertson, delivered the coalition Government's first budget this week, spreading the spending widely, but also keeping three-billion dollars in the kitty. Our Deputy Political Editor, Chris Bramwell takes a look at the budget's winners and losers.

The Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has promised her Government will bring down the rates of child poverty, and wants to address one of the key drivers of that - family violence. New Zealand's domestic violence rate is staggering high - with the police attending an incident every five minutes in 2016. The Government this week announced a big funding boost for the providers of family violence services around the country - but is it enough? Here's our Deputy Political Editor, Chris Bramwell.

While the Finance Minister Grant Robertson puts the final touches on his first Budget, the blame game has already begun. The government's been dampening down expectations as it comes under scrutiny about what it's going to deliver, compared with what it promised voters. Part of the strategy is to lay some of the blame at the feet of its predecessor - National.

Budget day is looming and political parties are starting to position themselves. Coalition government ministers are claiming big funding holes in several portfolios - one of those is education. Our political editor, Jane Patterson, spoke to the Education Minister Chris Hipkins about the challenges he's facing in his portfolio.

The Green Party finally has a new female co-leader after several months, but Marama Davidson has her work cut out for her. Since the election there has been fierce debate within the party's membership about decisions made under leader James Shaw and accusations of a departure from the Green Party kaupapa. The party is teetering dangerously close to the five percent threshold in political polls, the most tenuous its survival has looked in more than a decade. Here's our Deputy Political Editor, Chris Bramwell.