The Spinoff’s panel of pundits cast their gaze forward to election year 2023, and take some big swings at guessing what’s just over the political horizon.
Shane Te Pou
A high profile politician’s career will end in scandal.
Danyl Mclauchlan
I think we’ll start to see commercial and enterprise AI tools start to roll out next year, and the impacts of that are very hard to predict. But it could, for example, be the last year in which humans write year-end predictions.
Lara Greaves
2023 election polling will be sufficiently wrong that we all freak out and need a national inquiry, UK Brexit polling and Australia 2019-style.
Brooke Stanley Pao
Everyone who doesn’t vote does – and ends up changing the parliamentary political landscape.
Andrew Geddis
A week before polling day, Brian Tamaki, Voices For Freedom, Counterspin and Groundswell call for protests to be held outside the Electoral Commission offices to “Stop The Steal” after rumours circulate that the ink in the pens used to mark ballot papers can be made to disappear via a special signal transmitted over 5G radio waves. Or something. Doesn’t really matter what it is, does it?
Madeleine Chapman
Now that it’s not on the table, there’ll be cross-party consensus in favour of legalising cannabis.
Liam Hehir
Labour will turn very negative on Christopher Luxon. For the most part, the negativity will be seeded through the party’s surrogates and lobbyist pundits. Eventually, however, even Jacinda Ardern will be dragged into the strategy.
Stewart Sowman-Lund
Labour’s big election policy will be to wipe all student debt.
Anna Rawhiti-Connell
Nicola Willis will lead the National party into the election. Absolutely no logic to this looking at National’s polling, although Luxon is a bit stuck in the same gear in the preferred PM rating.
Ben Thomas
New Zealand First will regret turning towards the conspiracy constituency and not make it back into parliament.
Toby Manhire
Not one but two unexpected high profile political resignations before the election.
Follow our politics podcast Gone By Lunchtime on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or your favourite podcast provider.