PODCAST · news
Gone By Lunchtime
by The Spinoff
A New Zealand politics podcast hosted by The Spinoff's Toby Manhire with Annabelle Lee-Mather and Ben Thomas.
Episodes
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We are all covered in ash and yearning for the ocean
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...
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Were we watching the same debate?
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...
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The debate explosion
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…
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Why won’t Christopher Luxon go on Q+A? We asked Jack Tame
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…
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What is this election really about?
Parliament has disgorged its politicians ahead of a Super Sunday of campaign launches, with just a month and a day until advance voting begins. Toby Manhire, Annabelle Lee-Mather and Ben Thomas leaf through the brand new Ipsos Issues Monitor, which reveals which issues matter most to New…
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Fifty days out, the campaign ignites
Just when you thought the two main parties were fixed on a do-little election, the National Party bursts out the triangulator and gazumps its Labour rivals with a pledge to pursue a breakup of the Foodstuffs group of Pak’nSave, New World and Four Square. Annabelle Lee-Mather, Ben Thomas and Toby...
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Only 64 more days of tax, tax, tax, tax, tax, tax, tax, tax, tax
This just in: we have nine more weeks of this. Can National's indefatigable campaign manager Simeon Brown sustain the unremitting tax focus all the way to election day, can Labour move the discussion to somewhere that suits it better, and with politicians across the board shrugging off requests…
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Luxon vs Brown, and how the govt fell so violently out of love with localism
Christopher Luxon sailed into NZ politics six years ago as a champion of localism. Since becoming prime minister, his government has fallen deeply out of love with devolution. Changes including a rates cap and National’s ruling out of a bed tax have especially irked Wayne Brown, mayor of Auckland...
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Post-coup chat, with guest star Chris Penk
In the nine days since he stared down his second caucus uprising within just a few months, Christopher Luxon has really bounced back. Toby Manhire, Annabelle Lee-Mather and Ben Thomas assess that rebound and the rapidfire tax attack lines against Labour. Plus: thoughts on Te Pāti Māori's overhang...
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Emergency pod: Do you get déjà coup?
Christopher Luxon has survived a showdown vote in caucus, a lot like he survived a showdown vote in caucus in April. Toby Manhire, Annabelle Lee-Mather and Ben Thomas convene in the cause of making some sense of the failed coup (if that's what it was), where it fell apart, whether Luxon…
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What is Mr Luxon doing?
It should have been a good day for the National Party. Instead, it was derailed by the latest bit of riffing by Christopher Luxon, in declaring, prompted by a listener's text on Newstalk ZB, that he'd like a referendum next term on MMP. A big day for the CRL, for education and for decrying Labour...
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Someone take away Stuart Nash's phone, please
The resurrection of former Labour minister Stuart Nash has come to an end, much like Icarus, with Winston Peters accepting his resignation as a NZ First candidate. Ben Thomas, Annabelle Lee-Mather and Toby Manhire examine Nash's political ashes to assess how this will impact intra-coalition...
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Are the Oppies unstoppable?
The Opportunity Party has shot up to the threshold fun zone, with Qiulae Wong at the helm and running a line as an alternative to NZ First. Will the distaste for the establishment parties and the salvos from across the board mean an unprecedented fully new arrival in parliament soon? Will it be…
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Jamboree season in an election year
Fresh from the bright lights and bitter recriminations of the National, Labour and Act party bashes, Lyric Waiwiri-Smith and Joel MacManus join Toby to reveal all, in this excerpt from the Spinoff’s new podcast, At Large with Toby Manhire. Follow At Large with Toby Manhire now on Spotify, Apple...
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Unhappy families
The gun for election 2026 was fired with great fury and much shrapnel on Sunday, with National campaign manager Simeon Brown sparing almost no one. Annabelle Lee-Mather, Ben Thomas and Toby Manhire huddle together to revisit those dramatic scenes and seek to understand why Brown thought it was a...
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At Large with Toby Manhire: Britain’s great big prime minister problem, continued
Keir Starmer has walked out from Downing Street and said it’s all over, meaning Andy Burnham is almost certain to be the next UK PM, the seventh since 2016. Why did Starmer fail, who is Burnham, and is this all really about Nigel Farage and Reform? Toby talks to UK-based NZ journalist Richard…
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Hardcore lobbying and the emotional senior staffer
The story of Mike Smith's climate court action, the parliamentary response, and hard-copy briefings from lobbyists that went mysteriously missing has officially reached "saga" mode. Ben Thomas, Annabelle Lee-Mather and Toby Manhire dive into the mire and debate whether there are dots to join....
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Budget special with Bernard Hickey
Bernard dashes out of the lockup to patch in to the studio and talk through with Toby the top lines from today's budget, the rosy economic forecasts on which it is built, and the battle lines it draws for the campaign ahead. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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Live at Auckland Writers Festival with Tova O'Brien guest star
In a special six-months-to-the-election edition, Toby, Annabelle and Ben, joined by a special surprise guest who may or may not be the brilliant Tova O'Brien of TVNZ Breakfast, size up the State of Things across the parties and putative combinations.Recorded live at the Kiri Te Kanawa theatre for...
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Jane Wrightson on Super squabbles, Seymour and the state of the media
In a special edition of Gone By Lunchtime, Toby talks to Jane Wrightson, who is retiring after two terms as retirement commissioner. She shares her thoughts on the political football around Superannuation and KiwiSaver, the reforms to retirement-village legislation. Reflecting on a career that...
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Asher Emanuel on The Valley: the book everyone, politicians especially, should read in 2026
In a bonus episode of Gone By Lunchtime, Toby Manhire talks to Asher Emanuel, author of The Valley: Crime and Punishment in a New Zealand City. A gripping, true story of a group of people whose lives keep winding back to the Hutt Valley District Court, it offers an eye-opening insight into the...
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The deepest breach in the Luxon coalition, and a National reboot
Messages suggesting the prime minister sought to support the US-Israel attacks on Iran landed with more than one explosion. Not only did it undermine Luxon’s position on the war and its impact, it delivered the deepest fissure yet in the coalition, with the PM saying his foreign minister had put...
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Luxon stares down rebel moan squad across 100 white-knuckle hours
On Friday morning a bombshell report revealed a group of unnamed National MPs questioning Christopher Luxon's leadership, with the chief whip, Stuart Smith, said to have been "ghosted" by the PM. One hundred hours later, Luxon called their bluff and put a motion of confidence in himself.…
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The force majeure election
Donald Trump has gone within hours from genocidal threats against Iran to talking about a joint venture with Tehran tolling the Strait of Hormuz. A fragile ceasefire is very good news, but the havoc is set to continue to flow down into the New Zealand economy. Now with the perilous Cyclone Vaianu...
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Special ep with Anna Fifield on the US, Iran, and Winston in Washington
The NZ foreign minister was in DC to meet Marco Rubio just as Donald Trump raged about destroying Iran's civilisation. Mercifully, within hours the US president had announced a two-week ceasefire in the conflict. To help us get our heads around it all, Anna Fifield talks through the latest...
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Is NZ getting the fuel crisis right? Here's your timely, targeted and temporary analysis
Covidesque in crisis-mode, but anti-Covid in substance, the government response to the economic shockwaves released from the war on Iran is playing out in New Zealand this week. Have Nicola Willis and Christopher Luxon got it right with a $50 weekly payment that will help many, but miss out many...
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We don't know how to be any clearer, guys
It was Christopher Luxon's worst week as prime minister, beginning with flubbed attempts to explain New Zealand's position on the war on Iran and ending with a nightmare poll that put National at 28.4% and sparked headlines suggesting he was considering his position. We step through those painful...
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10th birthday special: Live with Wayne Brown and Andrew Little
The mayors of Wellington and Auckland join Toby, Annabelle and Ben for two very special live events in recent days at the Embassy and Q Theatres. Discussion ranges from the state of the two cities to dealing with the Luxon government, from the last decade of politics to the stakes in the 2026...
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Ben Thomas reports from the shitstorm
A catastrophic failure at the Moa Point wastewater plant in Wellington has laid bare a short-term crisis and a crisis of short-termism. Fortified by nothing but the balm of poo jokes, Ben Thomas relates the mood in the city and the measures under way in response. But does it say something deeper...
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Are Peters and Luxon on a collision course?
As Christopher Luxon announced an election date of November 7, a strip of the North Island was under siege from another bout of brutal weather. As the clean-up and recovery continues, and families and communities grieve the loss of nine lives, questions swirl around the response. In the first…
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Summer Reissue: Bonus ep - Thoughts on the Jacinda Ardern film and book
Gone By Lunchtime is taking a break over summer. We’ll be back soon with new episodes but, until then, here’s one of our favourites from 2025: Hot on the heels of the publication of A Different Kind of Power comes Prime Minister, an enthralling new film that applies a genuinely gobsmacking lens…
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Summer Reissue: Juggernaut 2
Gone By Lunchtime is taking a break over summer. We’ll be back soon with new episodes but, until then, here’s one of our favourites from 2025: After the breakneck reforms of the 80s, Jim Bolger’s promise of a calmer, more inclusive New Zealand hits the spot. Emerging from the shadow of Muldoon…
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New Year special: 2026 in NZ politics
Annabelle Lee-Mather, Ben Thomas and Toby Manhire take a quick break from partying atop the Sky Tower to discuss the highlights from the political year that was, before sharing their predictions for 2026. Happy new year! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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Summer Reissue: Emergency politics Toddcast - The National Party after Muller
Gone By Lunchtime is taking a break over summer. We’ll be back soon with new episodes but, until then, here’s one of our favourites from the vault: At 7.30am, just 53 days after he replaced Simon Bridges as leader of the National Party, Todd Muller announced his immediate resignation from the…
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Breaking: everything is good now
His summer break may only be 20 minutes long, but Christopher Luxon goes into it grinning, on the back of a poll that saw a swing to the right, boosted economic confidence data, maybe staring down a maybe-coup, and most crucially, snipping the ribbon on the big green, yellow and blue shoot: Ikea....
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The Luxon conundrum
There’s a lot of talk about challenges to Christopher Luxon’s leadership. Toby, Ben and Annabelle do as they must and talk about the talk and whether there’s more to it. First on the agenda, however, is a reform trailed as the biggest overhaul of local government since 1989 – just how will this…
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The Police and the bad apple thesis
A shocking report by the Independent Police Conduct Authority has revealed a litany of serious failings in the handling of complaints relating to the disgraced former deputy commissioner Jevon McSkimming. Not only were the complaints from a former lover diverted from the appropriate channels by...
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Good news: NZ is back on track
In his first face-to-face encounter with Donald Trump, Christopher Luxon has exchanged hair jokes and golf banter. Does that confirm that back on track level has been achieved? Toby Manhire, Annabelle Lee-Mather and Ben Thomas deliver their verdicts on the latest from the PM, Winston Peters…
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Meltdown in Te Pāti Māori
A 10pm email to members blew apart the reset mood in Te Pāti Māori on Monday night with a litany of allegations and appendices dating back years, as part of a “transparency” effort in response to claims of bullying and a “dictatorial” leadership by Eru Kapa-Kingi of the Toitū Te Tiriti movement....
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Peters delivers Palestine decision in New York
After a protracted process and plenty of speculation, Winston Peters has announced the cabinet decision on acknowledgement of Palestinian statehood in his address to the general assembly at the United Nations. Not now, he said. “We are not ready to make that gesture.” Variously received as a...
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Te Pāti Māori wrenches defeat from the jaws of victory
Celebrations for a big and bodacious Oriini Kaipara byelection victory were shortlived for Te Pāti Māori thanks to Tākuta Ferris's decision to double down on a social media post aghast at a multicultural group of Labour supporters for Peeni Henare on the campaign trail. That was compounded by…
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Pulse check, pub quiz & predictions: live from WORD Christchurch
In a special live edition of GBL in Ōtautahi, Toby Manhire, Annabelle Lee-Mather and Ben Thomas complete a stocktake of the governing and alternative coalitions with a little over a year to election time. There is heckling, there are pub questions from politicians, and there are piping hot takes....
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Bonus ep: Thoughts on the Jacinda Ardern film and book
Hot on the heels of the publication of A Different Kind of Power comes Prime Minister, an enthralling new film that applies a genuinely gobsmacking lens on Jacinda Ardern's time in power. In this special edition of Gone By Lunchtime, Madeleine Chapman, editor of the Spinoff (and author of Jacinda...
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It’s all fine apart from butter, Trump, netball, etc
Christopher Luxon took a short and sharp mindset into the National Party conference on the weekend and with good reason: there is much getting back on track still to be done. He arrived in Christchurch amid a blur of bleak headlines, focused mostly on an economic mood epitomised by butter…
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‘The one thing they could blow up the government over’
We rattle through the regulatory standards bill, its advocates, its dissenters, and the tension it has created within the coalition. How serious is the fissure it has prodded between Act and New Zealand First Party (amplified by a cameo appearance by a United Nations special rapporteur)? Also on...
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We have issues, many issues
With an election about 15 months away, there are few better ways to get a sense of the political terrain than the Ipsos Issues Monitor, a survey that tracks the issues of greatest concern to New Zealanders, the parties they consider best equipped to deal with those issues, and how all of that has...
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New Zealand punches above its tightrope
Around the world, the flames of aggression and instability are burning. As Christopher Luxon arrives in China his immediate challenge is to douse the alarm from several former politicians and ensure that the relationship with leaders in New Zealand’s biggest export market are sweet. From there…
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Polling, ex-PMs, dickheadery and a goat sacrifice
We're officially in the second half of the term, a milestone marked by the historic handover of the hallowed deputy prime minister amulet from Winston Peters to David Seymour. The moment comes with pageantry, a flurry of interviews and a pair of new polls, which deliver intriguing, and sometimes...
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Budget special: When The Facts Change x Gone By Lunchtime
In the year of growth, Nicola Willis has presented a growth budget. But does the Investment Boost initiative, which speeds up depreciation for businesses, promise the kind of growth that the economy needs? In this special Spinoff pod for budget day, Toby Manhire asks Bernard Hickey for his take…
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House of C****
Unprecedented punishments imposed on Te Pāti Māori MPs, and the scramble to avoid banning them from the budget debate, is top of the agenda this week. Annabelle Lee-Mather, Ben Thomas and Toby Manhire assess the fallout, before rewinding to last week’s theatrical parliamentary controversy, all of...
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
A New Zealand politics podcast hosted by The Spinoff's Toby Manhire with Annabelle Lee-Mather and Ben Thomas.
HOSTED BY
The Spinoff
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does Gone By Lunchtime have?
Gone By Lunchtime currently has 316 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is Gone By Lunchtime about?
A New Zealand politics podcast hosted by The Spinoff's Toby Manhire with Annabelle Lee-Mather and Ben Thomas.
How often does Gone By Lunchtime release new episodes?
Gone By Lunchtime publishes regularly with 316 episodes available. Check the episode list for the typical release schedule.
Where can I listen to Gone By Lunchtime?
You can listen to Gone By Lunchtime on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts Gone By Lunchtime?
Gone By Lunchtime is created and hosted by The Spinoff.
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