Political parties faced voters across two major debates this week, with rural issues taking centre stage at Mystery Creek before five minor-party leaders went head-to-head in Thursday night’s Kingmakers debate.
Rural debate
The Rural Issues Debate at Mystery Creek saw National, Labour, NZ First, ACT and the Greens clash over taxes, freshwater rules, the Gene Tech Bill, the India FTA, the Paris Agreement, rural connectivity, the ETS and synthetic nitrogen limits.
The India FTA was a major flashpoint, with NZ First’s Mark Patterson calling it “a pretty tight deal”. He claimed the agreement would allow uncapped students to come to New Zealand with work rights and that New Zealand had signed up to invest $35 billion into the Indian economy.
“If it was a free trade deal, we would have been all over it. But look at what we’ve had to give up here,” Patterson said. “This is a massive trade off for actually very small gains”.
Green MP Steve Abel also attacked the deal, questioning why New Zealand had agreed to the investment commitment.
Agriculture and Trade Minister Todd McClay defended the FTA, saying it was “a better deal than most any other country that has signed an FTA with us”.
“It’s not perfect. We didn’t get enough dairy”.
McClay said other sectors would have an opportunity to “beat the Australians”.
The debate also became heated over New Zealand’s climate commitments under its EU free trade agreement, with McClay saying the Government was “absolutely not” backing away.
Labour’s Jo Luxton defended the party’s proposed capital gains tax, saying farms and family homes would be exempt.
NZ First’s Mark Patterson was also grilled over Winston Peters’ proposal to force Fonterra to supply more raw milk to other processors. Patterson called it pro-competition, while moderator Heather du Plessis-Allan labelled it a “crazy idea”.
Kingmakers debate
Thursday night saw NZ First’s Winston Peters, ACT’s David Seymour, Greens co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick, Opportunity’s Qiulae Wong and Te Pāti Māori’s Rawiri Waititi clash over the cost of living, wages, supermarkets, energy, health, superannuation and AI.
Seymour said politicians “can’t just throw any promise around that sounds good” and need a pathway to balance the books. He also rejected making ACT’s minimum wage freeze a coalition bottom line, saying: “You don’t set bottom lines… before you see what cards have been dealt.”
Peters rejected ACT’s proposed minimum wage freeze and said NZ Super could remain affordable if the economy was working.
“Don’t please attack the old and the young because you can’t run an economy properly,” Peters said.
Health was another flashpoint, with Peters calling for more doctors, nurses and GPs to be recruited from overseas, adding that “a whole lot of nurses and doctors got mandated out of their jobs during Covid” and asking how they felt losing their careers. Waititi then cited a case of someone waiting 16 hours in Hamilton Hospital’s emergency department, calling it “a shocking time frame”.
AI also featured, with Wong saying Opportunity’s policy would be released on Friday. She said AI needed to be taken “incredibly seriously,” while Seymour said there were “real dangers” but New Zealand did not have the power to shape the global AI industry. Swarbrick said the Greens had a policy covering AI data centres and accused the Government of “kicking the can down the road”. Peters admitted he does not use AI at all.
The debate also turned to the next Government and whether the parties could work together. Seymour said he trusted Peters now and pointed to what the coalition had achieved, while Peters refused to say whether he trusted Seymour.
Peters ended by stressing coalition stability, saying the responsibility of coalition partners was not to like each other, but to make the Government work.
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