Nothing says election year quite like writ day, rosettes and pledges to crack down on gangs. Annabelle Lee-Mather, Ben Thomas and Toby Manhire look at the debate around the influx of gang members and police to Ōpōtiki. Also on the agenda: it's officially a recession - what kind of political weight does that carry? National embraces GMO and abandons He Waka Eke Noa as it attempts to wrench the rural vote back from Act - does it risk alienating voters in the middle? Plus: the Green Party's tax policy, the resignation or not of Meng Foon and the question that goes to the zeitgeist: have we, as Christopher Luxon says, really become a "very negative, wet, whiny, inward-looking" country?

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