The Govt's stated reason for restricting voter enrolment in the last two weeks of the election has been speeding up the final count. But the Electoral Commission just told the Justice Select Committee that wouldn't happen - with or without the law change it would take 20 days. t.co/N0vRXHMbMt

more than a decade of public scholarship has taught me that the moments when it's most tempting to react strongly and quickly are the ones when it's most useful to step back, seek context, and force yourself to think slowly. i don't always follow it, but those are my guidelines for myself.

One thing that feels different right now is the difference between structural power and rhetorical power. Usually in the aftermath of major political events (including, especially, shootings), we see contestation over framing — how each party coalition tries to make sense of the event. (…)

If I have any credibility with you from 20 years of reporting on rightwing & fascist movements, please listen when I beg you not to celebrate Charlie Kirk getting shot. Leave aside morality: this isn’t a match in dry grass, it’s a torch. We do not want what this could ignite & we would not win.

The New Zealand Election Study has been running for 35 years, polling voters (and non-voters) about their views and votes after each election since 1990. The latest edition, released recently, covers the 2023 election. I spent the past two weeks delving through the data. A 🧵 – with lots of 📊!

Former Labour voters made up more than half of all of those who voted for NZ First in 2023. Without them, the party would have failed to reach the 5 percent threshold and would not have returned to Parliament. newsroom.co.nz/2025/09/03/n...

This is about the UK, but sounds eerily familiar in the NZ context.

New: The latest data from the long-running New Zealand Election Study shows the vast majority of those who voted for the National Party in 2023 didn’t want to see New Zealand First play a role in the Government after the election. newsroom.co.nz/2025/09/01/j...

When UK Labour won last year, I had expected that they would probably run a very centrist government, which would be frustrating to many of their supporters. I can honestly say I never expect this.

Great to see some analysis of 2023 NZES data.

IMO anyone involved in vaccine uptake research, particularly in NZ (ping @janinepaynter.bsky.social ) should know of the 2023 New Zealand Election Study, dataverse.ada.edu.au/dataset.xhtm... because of the "how many covid doses have you had" as at the 2023 election + values and demographic context

That Putin will “enshrine in law” non-aggression is priceless.

Here's the Speaker's Ruling Brownlee is now relying on in order to justify requiring Swarbrick to withdraw and apologise today for what she said yesterday. It is a flat out wrong, completely unjustifiable, untenable application of the precedent. He acted from pique and now is backfilling the reasons

#nzpol alert! Janine Hayward and I are hosting a public panel this week to highlight some of the findings from our recently published special issue on Jacinda #Ardern and the Sixth Labour Government, published in @politicalsciencenz.bsky.social. Register here: www.wgtn.ac.nz/events/2025/...

NZ’s gas supply is collapsing — and the govt’s big fix? More drilling. But experts (including Shane Jones’ advisors) say it likely won’t work, and there’s no backup plan if it fails. My story here www.rnz.co.nz/news/nationa...

As predicted ... here is the NZBORA s7 report on the Government's Electoral Amendment Bill, in which the removal of same-day enrolment and voting for the entire advance voting period is declared to be an unjustifiable limit on the right to vote.

No hate to @newsroom.co.nz ... But this is why 1. We should all learn how to use data and 2. If you want to understand Māori politics go with a Māori newsroom or platform. Seriously ....

One of the fun parts of policy work is that you have a handful of extremely important, esoteric, but load-bearing legal concepts (like fair use) that only ever make it into public consciousness when they're being targeted for destruction, and public opinion about them is entirely outcome-dependent.

Observation. Been writing all week with Parliament in the background. The volume and diversity of anger at/in Select Committees right now, not just RSB, is wild. Sure, it's an unpopular government, but it's also a sign the policy advisory system isn't working.

Studied VFF's planning for upcoming local government elections posted online recently. It's a *significant* step-up in scale, strategy, & sophistication from '22's templates, in a transnational context which sees big far-right gains in electoral outcomes, esp. at LG levels. Entryism is entrenched.

Thanks for our subscribers at The Kākā for their encouragement and permission to make this fully public for listening, reading and sharing. So many extreme weather events, but no mention of climate change thekaka.substack.com/p/so-many-ex...

I get annoyed at the narrative that all the awareness and work on climate change hasn't done anything. Yes, global CO₂ emissions indeed continue to climb, but we don't know the counterfactual. When I was in grad school, we were on track for 5°C of warming. Now it's below 3°C. That's progress.

As Luxon heads to China, his government’s pivot toward the US is a stumbling block theconversation.com/as-luxon-hea...

We’ve leapt over a lot of red lines in the last week. But one I find most worrying is Trump/MAGA/ICE have ceased even pretending to claim some criminal pretext for cracking down on protected speech. It’s just straight up “if you criticize us, you’re getting throttled/arrested/disappeared.”

We are through the looking glass now. Do read this

The quiet suburban pool is a microcosm of everything wrong with New Zealand’s broken rates system. thespinoff.co.nz/politics/27-...

This is a very interesting observational paper for those working on gendered dynamics of far-right, descriptive rep & femonationalism Does women's descriptive rep. lower anti-gender discourse among far-right? No, it *increases* it (according to parl speech data 2009-2023) doi.org/10.1177/1465...

We're about 5 minutes away from authoritarian leaders imprisoning opponents based on their (alleged) conversations with LLMs.

There's a fascinating discussion up this thread (with some actual experts in the subject) on why NZ is tracking so much better than Australia (or anywhere else) with COVID-19. The excess death comparisons I dropped on this post (Australa vs NZ) will probably surprise most people in both countries.

I’m reading a bunch of work on autocracy and democratic backsliding. I’m struck that scholars in this tradition don’t get called “political” or “biased” despite their clear normative stance. Yet, race and gender scholars—who were the canaries in the coal mine for backsliding—do.

Yesterday, I immersed myself in the Standing Orders. Today, I emerge to share the knowledge that next week the Opposition, if sufficiently motivated and coordinated, has the opportunity to do the funniest thing. newsroom.co.nz/2025/05/16/h...

Not sure where Te Pāti Māori is getting this, but it doesn't appear to be true. TTR only applied a month ago. An expert panel hasn't even been convened to review their application yet.

Brownlee calls white privilege commitee recommendations "very severe and unprecedented in this parliament"; says using a narrow majority to deprive members of a minority party of their votes and speaking rights is unfair! #nzqt

OK, this is wild. In September 2023, geophysicists across the world started monitoring a very odd signal coming from the ground under them. It was picked up in the Arctic. And Antarctica. It was detected everywhere, every 90 seconds, as regular as a metronome, for *nine days*. What the HELL? 1/

We’ve traced how a network of online enforcers and political operatives orbiting NZ First is reviving a style of attack politics from the Dirty Politics era www.thepost.co.nz/politics/360...

One reason for this is that academia and research are in crisis around much of the world... Things are generally not as bad as in the US, but they are bad.

PM David Lange did promise an MMP referendum by mistake. But the counter-factual is interesting: would NZ still have got MMP if he hadn't? In my view, yes, because the change was driven by sustained public support/campaigning over many years, focussing directly on PR (not just reform in general)

Nicola Willis just announced the tightest budget since Bill English’s ‘zero’ budget of 2012. She just cut the 2025/26 operating allowance from $2.4 billion to $1.3 billion. Treasury said in December that over $1 billion was already pre-committed, which means there’s now $0.3 billion left. 1/n

I will never not be upset that mayoral elections in Wellington (and elsewhere in NZ) are referred to as STV (single transferable vote)..... when they're NOT! #nzpol

Domestically, Trump's America is on the road to autocracy and externally, it is ripping up the international rules-based order. Other liberal democracies like NZ need to stop deluding themselves. Discussion with Bernard Hickey and Peter Bale begins at the 5.23 mark: www.youtube.com/live/7i2-MGL...

After X’s repressive actions, hundreds of thousands in Turkey joined Bluesky, seeking a freer space. Reports of government censorship here are deeply troubling. Don’t squander this trust. This is a critical moment for principled leadership—not silent compromise. @jay.bsky.team

Interesting, but it overstates how good LLMs are at writing essays. Even the best models need prompt engineering to write a B+ essay of 2000 words or more. It also costs money, which is a barrier for many students. Some students pull it off, but my guess is only a small minority. #AcademicSky

There are a lot of people around the world (including well-informed, knowledgeable people), who are currently unable to grasp this. I have some sympathy, given how quickly this has unfolded. But at the same time, not believing Trump's most extreme promises only makes it easier for him.

Seeing suggestions from pundits that Ao/NZ should reconsider our anti-nuclear policy (or do whatever else it takes to appease the US). What an utter failure of imagination - that we should sell out our core values, rather than find a new alignment where we're less dependent on an erratic US. #nzpol

Trump is imposing a 10% tariff on the Heard and McDonald Islands. The Heard and McDonald Islands are uninhabited.

A thing I think we can pride ourselves on in NZ is the Select Committee system. Anyone CAN have a say, committee staff (& members to some extent) DO read your submissions &, w/in political realities, submissions DO lead to changes. It's a promise of real, meaningful democracy between elections.

Worth considering signing up as a member of InternetNZ by 31st March if you want a say in the future of the internet in Aotearoa. #nzpol billbennett.co.nz/internetnz-d...

While I actually am more skeptical than many of my colleagues about the pristine validity of findings in political science, it’s notable that this breakdown between wonky journalists and political scientists seems to have (just now) happened in the States but hasn’t in the UK or elsewhere.