Gone By Lunchtime

Like a self-consuming serpent, the 2026 election has begun to feed on itself. With just a few days till advance voting begins, Toby Manhire, Annabelle Lee-Mather and Ben Thomas gather to feast upon a lively final pair of leader debates and look at what comes next. Plus: we take a handful of questions from the smartest listeners in the podcast universe. How much do we miss pri...

Three weeks to go and Chris Hipkins has put his finger on it: this campaign does have some of the post-apocalyptic survival energy of Cormac McCarthy's The Road.
Toby Manhire, Annabelle Lee-Mather and Ben Thomas gather for some group therapy, to assess the performances in the TVNZ multi-party debate and the NZME leaders' debate, the controversy over pics of Green and Te ...

Round one of the Chris v Chris debate season played out last night on TVNZ. Ben Thomas was in the pundit capsule. Toby Manhire was in the studio. Annabelle Lee-Mather was in bed. The morning after, they assemble in the Spinoff pod studio to share their assessments, and at times they seem to have been watching very different events.
Did Hipkins out-debate Luxon on the cos...

The Kingmakers’ Debate is the highest-profile of a burst of events in the first full-throttle week of the 2026 campaign. How did the party leaders do in the Press-Post thing, and what happened to the worm? Toby Manhire, Annabelle Lee-Mather and Ben Thomas gather at the roundtable to exchange their piping takes.

Plus: What does new polling tell us about the way Mā...

Here’s a taste of our new podcast, At Large with Toby Manhire: this week Jack Tame came in to talk about how he’s preparing to host the first leaders’ debate in 2026, how the campaign is taking form, and the struggle to get the prime minister (and others) to talk to him on Q+A.

Watch the Mt Albert debate in full here: https://youtu.be/LZO7gu6rhQg

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