The Prosper Podcast

Lee Vandervis has been a Dunedin City Councillor since 2004 and has run for mayor eight times, finishing third in 2025. He chaired the council’s finance committee under the late Mayor Jules Radich and has spent two decades as the council’s loudest critic of its spending and its debt.

Lee sits down with Tyler to talk about $258,000 spent on three shade poles at the George Street playground, $1.2 million for 800 metres of Andersons Bay cycleway, and council debt rising from $243 million in 2020 to a forecast $786 million. They also cover South Dunedin’s $1.6 to $2.4 billion flood options and the Tahuna pump that wasn’t switched on in the 2015 flood, Port Otago and the Otago Regional Council, why he wants to scrap STV and postal voting, a single Otago-Southland council, and bottle store hours in the student quarter. Lee also corrects the record on his $12 parking ticket case and the 10% payment hesays he made to win a council contract.

Francisco Hernandez is a Green Party list MP, the Greens' Tertiary Education and Public Services spokesperson, and their candidate for the Dunedin electorate in the 2026 election. A former OUSA president and Climate Change Commission analyst who calls himself a market socialist, he sat down with ProsperNZ two weeks out from election day for our last Dunedin candidate interview of 2026.

We go through Kiwi Mart and the plan to force a South Dunedin Woolworths to divest, a universal student allowance versus fees free (he floats roughly $400 to $420 a week), the wealth tax and the Greens' tax priorities, reversing about $3 billion of public service cuts, his 29,000 written questions to ministers, ACT's push to make the student services fee optional, and what the Greens did when Labour cut Dunedin Hospital's beds and theatres. We also ask why a young voter who cares about climate but disagrees with the Greens on tax should still tick green.

David Bainbridge-Zafar is Opportunity's spokesperson for transport, housing and infrastructure, number eight on the party list, and its candidate in Dunedin. He spent his New Zealand career as a public servant: in property at the DunedinCity Council, then running infrastructure for Health NZ across the southern region, and now as a general manager at the Gore District Council. He told us he left Health NZ because he couldn't sign off on cuts he believed would cost lives. With free public transport now in Opportunity's costings, we started with the obvious question for the man who pushed for it: did he change the party, or did the party change him?

We get into Chris Bishop's mega-ministry and why he thinks bigger government is less efficient, New Zealand's 40mm walls and the passive house standard, the 16 Kāinga Ora homes that cleared Gore's social housing waitlist, the 12-year New Dunedin Hospital build and the $20 valves that need replacing every five years, why 60% of infrastructure spending should go on maintenance, and why he turned down a ribbon cutting for an unfinished maternity ward. Plus fast-track, free fares versus better buses, Roads of National Significance, a five-hour wait for an ambulance, the five bottom lines and a universal basic income, co-governance, NZ First and the Peters/Davidson comparison, why he doesn't expect to win Dunedin, the old hospital site, Warmer Kiwi Homes for student flats, and why he calls standing a "reluctant civil duty".

ProsperNZ,because we all deserve to prosper.

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Hon Mark Patterson is New Zealand First's Minister for Rural Communities and Associate Minister of Agriculture, and the party's candidate for Taieri. A farmer before entering politics, Patterson went from advocating for farmers through Federated Farmers to being a minister as part of the current coalition government.

We get into what surprised him most about the transition from lobbying government to being in government, what farming taught him about solving problems, and the biggest challenges he's faced as a minister. We also discuss the cost of living, housing and tertiary education, including what Patterson thinks young New Zealanders need from the government as they graduate university and enter the workforce.

Also covered: New Zealand First's priorities for the election, the party's approach to young people and why MMP is so important to NZ First, how the government can create more opportunities outside Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch, and what Dunedin and the Taieri need to do to retain young people after university. We also ask what the biggest economic opportunity for the region is over the next decade, what Wellington overlooks about the Taieri, and how voters in the electorate should approach the local and party votes to give NZ First the best chance of returning to government.

ProsperNZ, because we all deserve to prosper.

linktr.ee/prospernz

Victor Billot is the Alliance Party's candidate for Dunedin and communications officer for the Maritime Union of New Zealand, one of the party's first big institutional backers since it relaunched. He joined the original Alliance (a merger that included the New Labour Party) as a 17-year-old in 1989, watched it win 10% of the vote in 1996, go into government with Labour in 1999, split over the invasion of Afghanistan in 2002, and deregister in 2015 after dropping below 500 members. Now it's back, campaigning on a wealth tax, a 35-hour working week on the same pay, and public ownership of the parts of the economy still in private hands.We get into how he'd tax a farming couple with $6 million in land and $80,000 a year in income, why the GST-off-food promise from his February speech didn't make the final policy, what a financial transactions tax with no published threshold actually means, and the difference, in his own words, between business and capitalism. Also covered: the Maritime Union's dual affiliation to both Alliance and Labour, buying back the 49% of Meridian, Mercury and Genesis the Crown doesn't already own, opposing new coal mines while wanting the existing ones renationalised, and why he doesn't think an Alliance vote is a wasted vote for National.

ProsperNZ, because we all deserve to prosper.linktr.ee/prospernz

Wellington is down to one high-reach ladder truck. On Saturday 19 September a 32m ladder truck from Thorndon caught fire in its own engine bay, not even on a call-out. It came in the same week the Minister said she'd lost confidence in Fire and Emergency's chief executive over information withheld for a year, and FENZ confirmed the matter is with the Serious Fraud Office. Harrison and Tyler go through the fire levy you pay on your insurance, the trucks ordered in 2017 that never arrived, a fleet that's now 52% past its target age, up to $254,000 spent on PR and lawyers for a select committee, and why this lands hardest on young Wellingtonians in high-rises.

We open with digital ID: Westpac becoming the third accredited issuer into the government wallet, NEC and the unnamed second company, the UK's flip-flop and Australia's audit, and why the "slippery slope" argument might actually hold this time. Then the government's plans to make the Official Information Act harder to use, a $50m immigration IT write-off, Woolworths moving 130 jobs to Sydney, the Regulatory Standards Act failing twice in a month, $40m in concert funding, the new stalking and citizen's arrest laws, Liz Dotcom's run in Kaipara ki Mahurangi, new policy from National, Labour, the Greens, ACT, NZ First, and Te Pāti Māori, the Taxpayers' Union debate boycott, and the numbers.

New episode every week, available wherever you get your podcasts.

ProsperNZ, because we all deserve to prosper.

linktr.ee/prospernz

Daniel Leamy is President of the Otago University Students' Association (OUSA), with three months left in the job. We asked him what OUSA has changed this year. His answer: "Honestly, bugger all." But that, he says, doesn't stop OUSA being a "good lobby group" for Otago students.

We get into why: an executive that turns over every year, a president who sits on 24 university committees, and a governance structure he calls "nuts for the size of what OUSA is." Then we go through the record: the bookshop OUSA stopped propping up, Healthy Homes with next to no enforcement, $5 lunches and the student hardship fund, why the student bar isn't coming back, university cuts and 6% fee rises, and why humanities and commerce students now pay about half their own tuition. We also put the MAPAS entry grade boundaries to him, and ask him to grade his own year.

OIA responses on medicine entry grades:
https://fyi.org.nz/request/33205/response/137569/attach/html/2/Jess%20OIA%20Response.pdf.html
https://fyi.org.nz/request/31143/response/125527/attach/html/2/Sara%20OIA%20Response.pdf.html

The government's review of Māori and Pacific medical entry pathways:
https://waateanews.com/2026/09/04/act-targets-maori-and-pacific-medical-entry-pathways-but-government-review-remains-hidden/

Healthy Homes standards:
https://www.tenancy.govt.nz/healthy-homes/

Enrol to vote before the 7 November election:
https://vote.nz

ProsperNZ, because we all deserve to prosper.⁠https://linktr.ee/prospernz

Harrison and Tyler recap the week that was. Hoarding vandalism, potential deduption in the dational darty, immigration, polling and more!

Fuel, power, groceries: the price of everything keeps going up, and in almost every one of those markets only two firms set it.This week's big topic is New Zealand's addiction to oligopoly. Not just the supermarkets everyone talks about, but the pattern underneath: one forced-Kiwi or government-propped company sitting opposite one foreign competitor, repeated across hardware, fertiliser, ports, ferries, airlines, cell towers and plasterboard. Tauranga exports more than every other port combined. Air New Zealand holds 86% of the domestic market. GIB controls 97% of plasterboard. The gentailers made $959 million while power bills rose 20%, and the Crown owns half of three of them.Then the policy: every party's plan for the supermarkets and the gentailers, National's new $300k First Home Loan cap, ACT on net zero and the Waitangi Tribunal, and 10,000 public servants walking out. In the Debate Room, the rural debate out of Morrinsville. In The Numbers, the first run of our weekly election tracker.ProsperNZ is independent New Zealand political media. New episode every week. Subscribe to keep up to date!

Mentioned in this video:Limi's video on Duopoly: https://youtu.be/SrdcQzFNSC4?si=8eyHU-jnp9s9siaJGumboot Takeover: https://bookhub.co.nz/p/the-gumboot-takeover-the-story-of-the-ravensdown-co-operative?srsltid=AU7gw4UQyFPw0UJvW47tejdeX9uC_TuVq6L7ez4jCxDMlXSwJJ1SthS6Curia Poll: https://www.taxpayers.org.nz/sept26_pollnztughjkuhnQ+A Rural Issues Debate: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYL4uqxmPuACommerce Commission Statement of Issues: https://www.comcom.govt.nz/news-and-media/news-and-events/2026/statement-of-issues-released-for-jpt-to-acquire-t-and-g-fresh/

New Zealand First's Dunedin candidate Kym McDonald-King is a registered nurse who got into politics because her 15-year-old emailed Mark Patterson and signed the family up to a campaign. She's running for the party vote, not the seat.We put the coalition record to her: the 500 police that never arrived, the live export ban ACT got $79m of wilding pines for, and 19 members' bills lodged with 15 quietly withdrawn again. We get into the health system she trained in, the gentailers and the supermarket duopoly, buying BNZ back off the Australians, the India FTA, the under-16 social media ban, and what New Zealand First actually has for anyone under 30.Plus the answer she keeps coming back to: "I would never tell Winston he got it wrong."