The full list of candidates for next month’s Port Waikato byelection has been announced, revealing Act is joining Labour in not standing a contender.

Triggered by the death of Act’s Neil Christensen, it’s widely expected National’s Andrew Bayly will safely retain the seat. National has never lost the electorate.

Bayly, who was reelected to parliament on Saturday night on National’s list, will be on the ballot alongside New Zealand First’s Casey Costello. If Bayly does indeed win the seat, he will become the MP for Port Waikato and forfeit his list position in favour of another candidate from National.

There’s also a strong showing from fringe parties with candidates from DemocracyNZ, New Zealand Loyal, Newzeal, Vision NZ and the Women’s Rights Party also standing, alongside one independent and a candidate for the single-issue Animal Justice Party.

Overseas voting for the byelection starts on November 8 and advance voting starts on the 13th. The election will take place on November 25.

The ballot paper for the November 25 byelection in Port Waikato will not feature a Labour candidate. “Port Waikato is a traditional National Party electorate that Labour’s never won,” said party president Jill Day in a statement. “Our focus is on forming a formidable opposition that holds the incoming government to account. Contesting an unwinnable by-election takes focus and resources away from that role.”

National’s Andrew Bayly is expected to comfortably win the byelection, which was triggered by the death of Neil Christensen, the Act candidate, after advance voting had begun. The electorate vote was suspended in the constituency and Bayly entered parliament on the list. Assuming he contests and wins Port Waikato, the next National MP on the list will enter parliament, increasing the number of seats in the house by one.

Christopher Luxon and Winston Peters have reportedly had two phone calls since last weekend’s election as coalition talks between the parties continue.

The National leader has remained defiant in his decision not to reveal any details of the closed door discussions, refusing yesterday even to say whether he’d seen Peters wandering around parliament after he landed in Wellington on Wednesday.

According to BusinessDesk, the two leaders have been in contact this week, largely facilitated by National’s Gerry Brownlee and Todd McClay and NZ First’s deputy Shane Jones.

Earlier in the week it was reported that National had offered Peters the role of speaker, but Luxon later claimed this was untrue and said there would be a lot of speculation before special votes were counted that he didn’t want to debate. The outcome of the special vote count, which should shed light on the shape of the next government, will be released on November 3.

Auckland mayor Wayne Brown has rated his performance a seven out of 10 after 12 months in the top job.

But he’s continued to criticise his councillors, saying they are “nothing like a team” and often prove difficult to work with.

“It’s a working relationship,” the mayor told RNZ. “We go issue by issue to find a consensus, to find a majority.

“It’s working with some difficulty, and I’m getting better at it, and they’re getting better and understanding that quite often what I’ve said turns out to be actually right.”

The first year of Brown’s tenure hasn’t been an easy ride, with a tense debate over council budgets along with natural disasters in the form of flooding and a cyclone. More recently, he launched a manifesto for Auckland that he’s hoping the incoming government will adopt.

“[Christopher] Luxon rang me up on Monday, and we had a long conversation,” Brown said.

“His business background is just what the country needs at the moment, and I think he’s quite keen to find that he’s got a business mayor in his biggest city.”

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What makes New Zealand one of the most geographically perfect places to harness the power of Tāwhirimātea? This week on When the Facts Change, Bernard Hickey talks with Giacomo Caleffi from Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners about how the NZ Super Fund could bolster their plan to build a massive offshore wind farm off the coast of South Taranaki.

They discuss why offshore wind is so necessary in the transition to 100% renewable energy, and how renewable energy differs from renewable power.

Listen below or wherever you get your pods

Neither National nor Labour have done much to improve housing affordability for first home buyers while in power, according to a study by Interest.co.nz. The Housing Affordability Report takes data from 2011-2017, under National, and 2017- 2023, Labour, and uses the median prices of lower quartile homes (which first home buyers are more likely to buy), mortgage rates, and “median after-tax pay for couples aged 25-29 working full time”, again as a proxy for likely first home buyers, to calculate overall affordability.

Reporter Greg Ninness finds that while at the national level, affordability didn’t decrease significantly under National, mortgage payments as a fraction of take-home pay had ballooned in Auckland by 2017. Once Labour gained power, Auckland affordability continued to slip further for first-home buyers, with other regions rapidly playing catch-up. “So looking at the affordability picture for first home buyers over the last 12 years, it tells a pretty sorry tale whichever political party has been in power,” Ninness writes.

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A Wellington city councillor has suggested the mayor’s claims around the Golden Mile come with political baggage.

As reported by The Spinoff, Tory Whanau said that the contract for the beleaguered Golden Mile construction was “literally days away” and that would mean getting it confirmed before the new government was in place. The likely transport minister, Simeon Brown, has made it clear he would scrap the project entirely. But Whanau said he wouldn’t be able to if a contract was in place.

“It’ll be well signed by the time they’re sworn in, as it should be,” she told The Spinoff.

But Diane Calvert told Newstalk ZB’s Mike Hosking that Whanau’s comments were, in part, just a way of sticking it to the incoming government. “She’s continually championed the Green agenda no matter whether it was good or bad,” Calvert said.

“It’s an alternative set of facts. Two months ago she said the contract had been signed and then we found out it had not been signed… and now it seems she’s drawing back a bit from what she had said. It’s really hard when comments like that happen for the public to have confidence in the mayor.”

Calvert said the council had also been served with a draft judicial review from a group of Wellingtonians who made it clear they would only formally lodge it if the contract was signed.

There was a “real lack of unity” at council at the moment, said Calvert. “The mayor came on board saying ‘I want unity, I want compromise’… but it’s turned out there is no unity,” she said. “She can’t even talk to a third of the council properly. You don’t always have to agree but if you won’t be prepared to sit down and talk and find some common-ground the city is going to lurch from one disaster to another.”

Meanwhile, Whanau has told The Spinoff this morning she remained absolutely committed to light rail in the capital and had a plan to get support over the line.

“What I’m proposing is that me, Christopher Luxon, Simeon Brown and our local MPs head over to Canberra, Brisbane or Sydney and look at their really successful projects. I am putting it on the table, saying ‘look, let’s go check it out and talk to the people who’ve experienced it.’ The second they’re sworn in, I’m going to put in a request, hopefully for early next year.”