One podcast, one livestream, 12 hours. Watch now:
There are 24 days until election day, and just 12 days until the orange signs start springing up on the streets of Aotearoa, signalling the start of advance voting. To mark this moment, we’re embarking today on a very special, endurance-level episode of Gone By Lunchtime.
The Spinoff Election 2023 Megapod will be livestreaming on YouTube (and will be available to view right here in this post) for 12 hours from 9am, with a smorgasbord of politicians, pundits and the good people of The Spinoff.
Along the way we’re going to be investigating the state of the country’s mojo, discussing political TV, guessing turnout, and time willing we’ll get into the state of the campaign and the alternatives being offered to the New Zealand public.
We’ve got a killer lineup for the day.
9am: I’ll be joined by Gone By Lunchtime heartthrobs Annabelle Lee-Mather and Ben Thomas – we’ll be talking mostly about the first TV leader debate, maybe a bit about Angry Fence Man and the Act campaign launch.
10am: Mad Chapman, Duncan Greive and Anna Rawhiti-Connell jump into the studio for more post-debate chat – the view from the room, what the commentators said, all that.
10.30am: Michael Wood, MP for Mt Roskill, and until recently a senior Labour minister, is in the studio to discuss the campaign, the challenges faced by Tāmaki Makaurau and Labour’s prospects.
11am: Debbie Ngarewa-Packer, co-leader of Te Pāti Māori, talks Aotearoa Hou and the party’s priorities.
11.30am: An Auckland Central debate with Chlöe Swarbrick of the Greens, National’s Mahesh Muralidhar and Labour candidate Oscar Sims.
Noon: Greens co-leader James Shaw is in the studio to talk elections and climate change.
12.30pm: The insightful and excellent political commentator Lara Greaves.
1pm: National high-flyer and education spokesperson Erica Stanford.
1.30pm: Robert Patman on the election and the foreign policy questions we should be addressing.
2pm: A whistle-stop tour of some of the box-office electorate seats in election 2023 – with my colleagues Shanti Mathias, Stewart Sowman-Lund, Charlotte Muru-Lanning and Joel MacManus.
3pm: Deputy leader of the Act Party Brooke Van Velden is in the studio.
3.30pm: Ben McKay, the dashing Australian reporter in the press gallery on the campaign and the other vote on October 14 in Australia, the Voice referendum.
4pm: Andrew Geddis on how to put a coalition together.
4.30pm: Grant Robertson, Labour money man, will join us.
4.50pm: Raf Manji of TOP.
5pm: Youth Wings revisited: I’ll be joined by Aryana Nafissi and Felix Poole from series one of The Spinoff show to find out what happened since.
5.30pm: Policy.nz’s Ollie Neas on how the tool works and what the way people use it can tell us.
6pm: A dive deep into the psyche and philosophy of one of New Zealand’s smartest and most interesting people, Bernard Hickey.
7pm: We’ll start loosening the nuts on the wheels for an hour of Gone By Lunchtime versus Real Pod, talking reality TV and politicians, memes, zodiacs and political telly from back in the day, with Jane Yee, Duncan Greive and Madeleine Chapman.
8pm: Gong! Annabelle and Ben are back in the studio. God knows what we’ll talk about. Please send your questions for the three of us to toby@thespinoff.co.nz to help us crawl over the finish line. Send us questions, in fact, for any of our guests and we’ll do our best.
Stewart will keep us up to pace with news as it happens across the day, and who knows who else might spring a cameo along the way. Godspeed.
The Megapod will also be released in digestible hour-long episodes on the Gone By Lunchtime feed. Follow on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts.