Has anybody got any boats? Or, failing that, some bolts?

It’s increasingly looking like large parts of New Zealand are held together by stray bolts, sticky tape and – the hokiest, least helpful national euphemism of them all – No 8 wire.

Steering fails on the Aratere ferry, and it ploughs into mud and sand (fortunately, not something harder) in the Sounds. A power pylon collapses in Northland, uprooted because bolts were not replaced, plunging 100,000 into a lengthy, expensive electricity outage. The prime minister’s plane goes kaput, again.

And that’s just the tip of the infrastructure iceberg. In a new episode of our politics podcast Gone By Lunchtime, Annabelle Lee-Mather, Ben Thomas and Toby Manhire throw on the hi-vis and assess the state of short-term New Zealand.

Plus: a bright solution to a messy situation on cancer drug funding, the first ever scrutiny week at parliament, and are Christopher Luxon’s remarks about “C-listers” and “tag-alongs” on previous trade delegations fleeting gaffes or something bigger?

Follow Gone By Lunchtime on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts.