On this week’s Raw Politics podcast: We honour the standout performances and policies, good and bad, of this year, plus make our predictions for 2025

Four different MPs are nominated by our four Raw Politics panelists for the honour of standout politician of 2024 – and consensus is hard to come by for many of our other accolades.

The Raw Politics podcast weighs the good and bad for 2024 – leaders, new MPs, policy pushes, controversies and cringeworthy moments. A sneak preview: the cringe of the year is shared by two big names in Parliament, both for their actions captured on video.

A full bench this week of Newsroom political editor Laura Walters, senior political reporter Marc Daalder, national affairs editor Sam Sachdeva and co-editor Tim Murphy shows we don’t succumb to groupthink on this podcast.

The nominations, and the predictions for next year, are broad and varied, including a preview of the Newsroom press gallery’s more considered ‘Awards of the State’.

The panel pitches forward into 2025 with predictions of big Budget cuts, exits for parliamentary heavyweights, failure on international deals, and critical moments in climate policy. 

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This week's recommendations:

Tim: Predictable, I imagine, but mine is Aaron Smale’s big series at Newsroom on the Crown-cover-up over the legal cases taken by victims of abuse in care

Marc: Joel MacManus’ Budget debate dispatch – I laughed when I read it in May and I laughed when I read it this morning too

Sam: Guyon Espiner’s reporting on Casey Costello and tobacco policy

Laura: Marc Daalder’s fantastic early scoop on the PM claiming the $52k accommodation allowance. It was the story that kept on giving, and continues to be referred to in the context of whether the PM is in touch with struggling, everyday NZers

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Raw Politics will be available every Friday here on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube too.

Read more on Newsroom - https://newsroom.co.nz

This week on the Raw Politics podcast: what voters want on climate change policy, will ministers ditch the foreshore repeal, plus Ayesha Verrall's faux pas


Climate change is hard and changing New Zealanders' attitudes and behaviour seems harder still for this Government and its predecessors. Should the coalition accept that's the reality and go slow and low in its ambitions for change?

The Raw Politics podcast looks at the coalition's latest report on methane from farm animals – a dense scientific fig leaf that could allow ministers to let NZ do less to cut emissions.

Newsroom political editor Laura Walters, senior political reporter Marc Daalder and co-editor Tim Murphy ask if the national and international mood on dealing with climate change is enabling National, Act and NZ First to give up, even if just a little, on our national targets.

For our second topic, Murphy recaps the short history of the foreshore, seabed Māori customary rights and the Marine and Coastal Areas Act. And he explains the Government's latest options to either withdraw its urgent repeal Bill or stay staunch and restrict Māori from winning claims in the courts.

Would the ruling coalition get egg on its face if it backs down, or would that act to lower tensions that exist in Crown relations with Māori over other controversial measures like the Treaty Principles Bill?

The panel asks if Labour's Ayesha Verrall went too far in her personal comments against Health NZ chair Lester Levy – and whether that took the focus off the actual scandal of the health commissioners trying to game their annual budgets.

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This week's recommendations:

Tim: Jonathan Milne’s scoop revealing Health NZ and Lester Levy were stopped by the auditor-general from shifting costs from this year into last, in what could have been embarrassing for the last, Labour government

Marc: RNZ’s story on the oil and gas lobby asking the Government to underwrite fossil fuel exploration

Laura: A piece by Tom Hunt from The Post on the Vision for Wellington lobby group and their communications with the PM and other senior Government ministers 

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Raw Politics will be available every Friday here on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube too.

Read more on Newsroom - https://newsroom.co.nz

This week on the Raw Politics podcast: Remembering Nikki Kaye, assessing the Labour Party one year on, and Christopher and Winston's nostalgia trip on foreign affairs

Labour's MPs and party members gather in Christchurch this weekend, a year after a humiliating defeat took them from the historic, first majority MMP government into the wilderness, watching a centre-right coalition dismantle their legacy.

The Raw Politics podcast assesses where the party finds itself, with the electorate and members of the public still not answering the phone, but too early to reveal a new strategy, policies or even a new leader. 

Newsroom political editor Laura Walters, national affairs editor Sam Sachdeva and co-editor Tim Murphy ask if Labour can do anything to beat the NZ aversion to throwing out one-term governments and if Chris Hipkins is the leader to pull off such a stunning upset.

For our second topic, the panel assesses New Zealand's new foreign policy, Sam Sachdeva delivers his views having watched Christopher Luxon's impact at Apec in Peru, and we ask if Winston Peters' exhaustive travel schedule means he's effective at his job. 

Raw Politics also marks the death of former National MP and minister Nikki Kaye, a politician with a real difference, unmatched energy and a weakness for long, long phone calls with journalists. 

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This week's recommendations:

Tim: A lovely, poignant podcast chat between Nikki Kaye and the Island Stories host Tim Higham, on politics, life, cancer and hope for the environment.

Sam: Newsroom's Laura Walters and Fox Meyer's detailed analysis of Regulatory Impact Statements about new laws and policies from the Govt’s first year.

Laura: Our colleague David Williams' story analysing the Brexit possibilities of a referendum here on the Treaty. 

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Raw Politics will be available every Friday here on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube too.

Read more on Newsroom - https://newsroom.co.nz

This week on the Raw Politics podcast: The hikoi’s over, now for a half year of claim and counterclaim, dissent and debate. Plus: NZ speaks out of both sides of its mouth at COP29.

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon did not meet the Treaty Principles Bill hikoi crowd, sees “nothing” of merit in the Act-proposed law but the Parliament his Government dominates will spend six months debating a “divisive” measure.

That’s because he has accepted there needs to be “aeration” of people’s views on the Treaty, and his party acceded to Act’s pressure to include the Bill in the coalition agreement. So, having made this legislative bed, Luxon will now have to lie in it.

Newsroom political editor Laura Walters and co-editor Tim Murphy look at how Luxon has played his cards so far, and how he might withstand an ongoing storm of criticism from Māori and others.

For Act’s David Seymour, a possible nominee for most effective politician of the year before this latest play, the hearings on his Bill will finish just as he receives his coalition-deal-bauble of becoming Deputy Prime Minister until 2026.

While he’s successfully grabbed the political ground this year, and will no doubt use the new position to continue pushing his policies and views, is there a risk that Act will repeat the sins of its own past in straying away from economic reform, personal freedoms, minimising the state and ending waste, and be diverted by race and stunts?

For our second topic, Laura talks to regular Raw Politics panelist Marc Daalder who is reporting for Newsroom at the COP29 climate summit in Baku, Azerbaijan. He describes the pressures and expectations facing the 60,000 attendees in seeking answers on carbon finance and agreements to hold the world to the Paris targets.

And we hear how the New Zealand climate minister Simon Watts has performed, with messages for an external audience that might not fly so easily to the domestic crowd.

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This week's recommendations:

Tim: A story from Stuff’s Tony Wall who was with the Mongrel Mob in Ōpōtiki on the eve of the ban on gang patches and consorting. A rare example of hearing direct from the gangsters on such a policy.

Laura: Also crime-related, the NZ Herald’s Jared Savage profiled the new police commissioner Richard Chambers and revealed where he’d come from and his path to the top.

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Raw Politics will be available every Friday here on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube too.

Read more on Newsroom - https://newsroom.co.nz

On this week’s Raw Politics podcast: The Act and Māori parties at point-blank range, plus the risk of the Crown apology petering out

Parliament saw two historic days this week, one of great solemnity and unity, the other a raucous and high-stakes stand-off between political foes over the Treaty of Waitangi.

Raw Politics looks first at the volatile reception for Act’s Treaty Principles Bill at its first reading, how parties performed to their voting bases, and what lies ahead now in select committee hearings over the next six months.

Newsroom political editor Laura Walters and co-editor Tim Murphy, co-piloting the panel with both Marc Daalder and Sam Sachdeva on assignment overseas, look beyond the heat of Thursday’s drama to search for any light in the arguments both ways for a law change.

Before the first reading, Act leader David Seymour had claimed the bill was not “divisive”. National leader Christopher Luxon responded that it was divisive. Parties traded allegations over the origins of division.

The optics of the three opposition parties standing together in haka, but the three parties of government divided by Act’s proposed law, were a first this parliamentary term.

The panel discusses the motivation of the National speakers who spoke from remarkably similar talking points, dissing Act while seeking credit for their party’s approach to individual Treaty and race measures.

Then it’s onto the milestone moment of the Crown Apology to victims of abuse in state care – an occasion unlike the Treaty Principles Bill first reading, that could be the beginning of meaningful, lasting change.

But will it? Or might the goodwill and hope and promises of Tuesday dissipate as the bureaucracy, politicians and voters tire of the complexity and burden of creating a just system of redress.

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This week's recommendations:

Tim: A report by the US broadcaster ABC on satirical site The Onion swooping in and buying from liquidators the assets, brand and database of the far-right InfoWars site that went bankrupt after owner and shock jock Alex Jones claimed the Sandy Hook school massacre was fake.
Sam: Marc’s morning-after opinion column on the US election and the threat of Trump to democracy

Laura: Tim’s story with David Williams on Newsroom revealing Parliament’s Speaker Gerry Brownlee relented on Monday to allow journalist Aaron Smale to attend the Crown apology.

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Raw Politics will be available every Friday here on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube too.

Read more on Newsroom - https://newsroom.co.nz

This week on the Raw Politics podcast: David Seymour floats a new law labelled the single greatest breach of the Treaty of Waitangi. Plus political editor Laura Walters joins us from the US.

Each time the tide comes in, it comes further up the beach. Well, that appears to be the Act Party’s strategy launching its Treaty Principles Bill in Parliament with not a single vote in support of it passing likely from any of Parliament’s other five political parties.

Raw Politics looks at the political motivations behind a Bill widely judged to be dead-on-arrival and the challenges it presents to everyone from the Waitangi Tribunal to the National, NZ First and opposition parties.

Newsroom senior political reporter Marc Daalder, national affairs editor Sam Sachdeva and co-editor Tim Murphy discuss the introduction of the Bill, with no fanfare and in the absence of its solo advocate Act leader David Seymour.

Parties have undermined their coalition partners in the past, withdrawing support for proposals or making untenable conditions to prevent their passing. But Act’s prize of a select committee hearing and then a dead end could be an unprecedented event in our coalition politics under MMP.

In our second topic, we welcome in our usual host political editor Laura Walters from the US where she’s been reporting on the election’s final week and outcome.

She joins Marc to discuss what it is like right now in an America stunned or relieved simultaneously and how voters from either side move forward now.

Our home panelists offer some distant thoughts on takeouts for the rest of us from a country rocked again by Trump.
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This week's recommendations:

Marc: An analysis piece from Politico Europe on Trump’s effect on global climate action:

Sam: Marc’s morning-after opinion column on the US election and the threat of Trump to democracy

Tim: RNZ reporter Ella Stewart’s story looking at the people behind Toitū te Tiriti, the activist group leading protest action against Govt policies

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Raw Politics will be available every Friday here on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube too.

Read more on Newsroom - https://newsroom.co.nz

This week on the Raw Politics podcast: Who’s closing it out best ahead of next week’s US election; Act’s education wins; plus relaxing the checks on your new house

The end of the country, or the end of its democracy. That’s what the two camps are predicting if their candidate doesn’t win the US presidential election next week.

Raw Politics, from the great safety of half a world away, weighs in on the neverending American campaign, which many predict will go on in the courts, on the streets and in Congress even after polls close, voting is counted and the preliminary result declared.

Newsroom senior political reporter Marc Daalder, national affairs editor Sam Sachdeva and co-editor Tim Murphy assess the closing arguments of vice-president Kamala Harris and former president Donald Trump and the shows of confidence by their two campaign teams.

Who to believe? What to trust?

And how a statistical tie in the current pre-election polls nationally could end up perversely giving one or other candidate a substantial victory, with just minor movements in voter behaviour.

In our second topic, the panel returns to home territory, marking the Act Party’s homework on its two populist education policies, cut-price school lunches and rounding up the truants.

Our reader question asks if there are risks from the Government relaxing who can sign off building work on certain types of new homes under construction, and the panel hears echoes from the privatisation of building inspection a generation ago.

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This week's recommendations:

Marc: The 2024 film Civil War, which is about journalism but also maybe a preview of what’s to come

Sam: Newsroom’s Jonathan Milne’s new investigative podcast Powder Keg

Tim: Trump’s ‘secret’ plan with US House Speaker Mike Johnson to overcome an election loss, from progressive US site The Nation

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Raw Politics will be available every Friday here on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube too.

Read more on Newsroom - https://newsroom.co.nz

This week on the Raw Politics podcast: This Govt was going to be push localism but is instead pushing in on cities and regions. Plus: Time for the Greens to rediscover the environment. And what's cooking with Brooke van Velden?

Both Wellington and Otago councils lost a little of their political souls this week as the coalition Government grabbed control of the local levers of power.

Raw Politics asks if the National ministers who promised 'localism' and devolving of power have now drunk the Bowen St kool aid and believe that only they can put things right for cities and regions as well as the nation.

Newsroom senior political reporter Marc Daalder, national affairs editor Sam Sachdeva and co-editor Tim Murphy discuss the twin interventions and some contradictions offered by Local Government Minister Simeon Brown in justifying central government stepping in.

How did it come to this, and should other councils with high debt, high rates and political divisions be worried that their masters in Wellington will claim to know best.

In our second topic, the Raw Politics panel looks at how the Greens regather themselves after the resolution of the Darleen Tana saga - and how they can start to make an impact for their voters on issues that they've been missing in action on.

Finally, the panelists recommend something to read, listen to or watch on the weekend ahead.

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This week's recommendations:


Marc: Nate Cohn in the NYT on polling misses in 2020 and what they mean for 2024

Sam: Newsroom political editor Laura Walters' interview with Cabinet minister Erica Stanford ahead of
the Crown apology to abuse victims

Tim: Maiki Sherman's 1News disclosure that the complainant against MP Andrew Bayly is ex-military

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Raw Politics will be available every Friday here on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube too.

Read more on Newsroom - https://newsroom.co.nz

This week on the Raw Politics podcast: There were two scandals over abuse of kids in state care - one was run from some of the highest offices in the land. Plus, the new NZ First party, polls and Nimbys vs the fast-track

One of the biggest political and government scandals in NZ history - the abuse of thousands of children in state care - will soon be subject to a formal Crown apology.

Raw Politics examines if this generation's politicians and mandarins can make it right.

Newsroom political editor Laura Walters, senior political reporter Marc Daalder and co-editor Tim Murphy discuss the enormity of not only the actual abuse but the state's campaign to silence and defeat court actions from victims, as set out in a powerful new series by Aaron Smale on Newsroom.

His series - Crown cover-up? - forensically pieces together the findings of the Royal Commission with the who, what, when, where and why of the establishment, from Prime Ministers and Attorneys-General to police, justice, welfare and Crown Law leaders.

The Raw Politics panel looks at the huge political challenge thrust onto Cabinet minister Erica Stanford to resolve this injustice, the steps forward for the Luxon government, what real justice and truth might seem like for victims and whether anyone could yet be held accountable from the state.

In our second topic, we run our eye over the New Zealand First Party's conference and its policy focus in 2024 as against its foundation planks and populist and nationalist heritage, and ask if you can teach an old dog new tricks.

Our reader question is on whether Nimbys might get in the way of the Government's 149 listed fast-track development projects and should landowners and residents be worried about something large and disruptive landing on their boundaries.

Finally, the panelists recommend something to read, listen to or watch on the weekend ahead:

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This week's recommendations:

Marc: Two articles on misinformation after Hurricane Helene and ahead of the US election

Laura: A piece from Madeleine Chapman of the Spinoff on how the controversial appointments to head the human rights commission weren’t recommended by the panel

Tim: No contest this week. Aaron Smale’s formidable news series on Newsroom this week on the Crown cover-up over abuse in care

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Raw Politics will be available every Friday on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube too.

Read more on Newsroom - https://newsroom.co.nz

This week on the Raw Politics podcast: We mark one year since the election by rating the parties, MVPs and duds, and weighing their risks and opportunities for the next two years.

Next week marks 12 months since the election that ejected the left from power and ushered in Christopher Luxon’s three-headed coalition of the right.

Newsroom political editor Laura Walters, senior political reporter Marc Daalder and co-editor Tim Murphy discuss how the parties of government and opposition have performed, and what their political risks and opportunities might be between now and the 2026 election.

It has been a year of thunderous, cascading political change and the panel marks the high and low points for the government and Labour Party.

We come up with a potential MP to succeed Luxon as PM, nominate most valuable politician, least valuable MP, the figure most likely to break up the coalition and MP most likely to get the boot.

Finally, the panelists recommend something to read, listen to or watch on the weekend ahead:

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This week's recommendations:

Marc: Laura Walters’ piece on Christopher Luxon’s email font choice – blue comic sans. No, seriously, her fascinating piece on the PM’s redrafted speech for the Koroneihana

Laura: Stuff’s Bridie Witton’s look at the lack of open and transparent process around the Government’s $24m of funding given to Mike King’s mental health charity

Tim: The Working Group podcast episode of David Seymour debating Helmut Modlik on Treaty Principles. Special shout out to the person who branded it “Iwi vs Peewee”

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Raw Politics will be available every Friday on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube too.

Read more on Newsroom - https://newsroom.co.nz