Our podcast trio on gangs as a political football, National’s effort to seize back the rural vote from Act, and whether we are indeed wet, whiny and inward-looking.

The leadup to an election brings a host of familiar ingredients, such as writ day, rosettes and arguing about who will crack down hardest on gangs. In a new episode of the Spinoff’s politics podcast Gone By Lunchtime, Annabelle Lee-Mather, Ben Thomas and Toby Manhire assess the rhetoric around the influx of gang members and police to Ōpōtiki and National’s new “tough on gangs” policy.

Also on the agenda is the formal declaration of a recession. It might be technical, it might be shallow, but what kind of political weight does it carry? National has embraced GMO but abandoned He Waka Eke Noa as it attempts to wrench the rural vote back from Act. What is the strategy here, and does it risk growing National’s share of the vote while eroding the overall vote for the right bloc?

The Green Party has released its tax policy; how does it measure up and will it be extinguished by Labour? A word on Meng Foon, who has resigned as race relations commissioner (or has he?). And the question that goes to straight the zeitgeist: has New Zealand, as Christopher Luxon says, really become a “very negative, wet, whiny, inward-looking” country?

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