Election 2026: Dominik Yanzick and Tracy Summerfield on the race to win Wigram

Oh, I tell you what, I cannot see Chris Hipkins winning the election now. I mean, if you thought that Mongrel Mob fiasco was bad before, it's got so much worse for Labour. Their candidate has quit and Chris Hipkins himself now looks like he's been fibbing to the public. It turns out, now that we've seen the video of Kerrin Leoni at the Mongrel Mob event, that it wasn't at all the family gathering Labour told us it was. She was there in her red Labour jacket with a placard featuring a picture of herself and Chippy, telling gang members to enrol and change the government. That doesn't look like a family barbecue, does it? I don't know how many family barbecues you turn up to wearing your work jacket. I also don't know how many voters are going to believe Hipkins when he says he didn't know about it and that Leoni misled him. Anyone paying attention would have seen Labour doing a fair bit of misleading themselves. When Leoni was first accused of meeting the Mongrel Mob the week before the Green and Māori parties had, Labour said it wasn't true. They said she hadn't met the gang the week before. But she had. It was nine days before, not seven, and that looks very much like Labour playing silly buggers with the timeline so we'd never know the event had happened. If they were prepared to mislead us on that, do you really believe they didn't try to mislead us when they said, "Hey, it's just a family event," when it was actually a political event? This is devastating for Labour because it's no longer just about whether you share Labour's values or what you think about criminals and gang members. It's now also about the integrity of the party leader and whether he and the party tried to hide this from voters. My suspicion is that, yes, they very much did. And that, with only two weeks until election day, is, in my view, unsurvivable for Labour short of a miracle. LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Labour leader Chris Hipkins says he wasn't told the full truth about the gathering that led to Kerrin Leoni's resignation as Tāmaki Makaurau candidate. At a debate this week, Te Pati Māori's Oriini Kaipara accused Leoni of visiting a gang pad a week before she did - which Leoni denied. Footage surfaced yesterday of her campaigning this month at a family event including gang members, wearing a Labour Party jacket. Hipkins told Heather du Plessis-Allan that Labour didn't know the extent of the event. He says it was working off the information she provided - that she had not visited a gang pad, and hadn't done what was alleged in the debate. LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The gangs, as we know, create wholesale damage and destruction in our society through their drug trafficking. Now it looks like they're causing wholesale damage to Labour. After roundly criticising members of the Greens and Te Pati Māori for visiting a mongrel mob gang pad and posing for photos, putting it on your social media, Labour leader Chris Hipkins ruled out his coalition partners holding the justice or police portfolios in any government he was in charge of. He was talking tough. Now it transpires one of his own MPs was campaigning with gang members, with a video circulating of Kerrin Leoni in a Labour jacket handing out Labour Party flyers to mobsters. Te Pati Māori's Orinii Kaipara, who appeared with Leoni in a Whakata Māori debate this week, threw the Tamaki Makaurau opponent under the bus during the debate by saying Leoni had recently been campaigning with gang members too. She did it too, miss. It wasn't just me. Kaipara said Leoni had since deleted a social media post about it after the kaka hit the fan over her posing with gang members. Leoni during the debate said, I have never been to a gang pad campaigning. I've got whanau who are gang members. I've never been campaigning at a gang pad. And then sought to clarify the situation in a Facebook post last night. "To be clear, I have not attended a gang pad at all during this campaign. I said at the debate, I have close whanau who are gang members. In early October, I attended a whanau function where some of those present were whanau gang members." If you've seen the video, it's a funny old whanau function. I mean, who am I to say how other people should hold their barbecues? But Leoni is clearly campaigning for Labour at the function. If she hadn't posted the video to social media, I'd say perhaps her case is different. You can't pick your relatives. For many families, you can have one brother who's a detective and another who's a senior gang member, and they all have to be able to still function as a family. I'd have sympathy if someone had taken a video or photo of Leoni in a T-shirt, shorts and jandals, having a BBQ with her brother at a whanau function. But she's in a Labour Party jacket, handing out Labour Party flyers, telling people to vote Labour and then posting it to social media. Apparently it's since been deleted. What kind of family function is that? It doesn't sound like a real thigh slapper to me. Not a guitar insight. Can it really be a family function if there's no singing and dancing around the BBQ? You're in your Labour Party jacket. You're handing out the flyers, you're saying vote Labour to get rid of this government. Is that a family function or is that campaigning just like a Orinii Kaipara and Hūhana Lyndon were doing? Sounds like campaigning to me. Yeah, nah. I'm sorry. I mean, Chris Hipkinson can talk tough, and I do have sympathy when you've got people who, I mean, you can't pick your relatives as my poor cousins know. I remember saying to a departed aunt, at a whanau function. She had very poor eyesight. I said, "it's me, Kerre." And she said, "yes, I know exactly who you are." In clipped tones. I said that little catch up with my aunt. She's never been a big fan and that's okay. You can't pick your relatives, but to say you're not campaigning, it sounded, come on, Kerrin Leoni, come clean. You might have a brother or whanau who are in the gangs and that's fine. But to say that you were just catching up at a family function, I don't buy it. Not in the Labour Party jacket, not handing out the flyers, not saying get rid of this government. That is not a family catch up, that is campaigning. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

David Seymour says he won't shy away race relations, despite previous backlash. The ACT Leader championed the Treaty Principles Bill to its first reading this term, sparking nationwide protests. This election ACT's promising to “end race-based hiring requirements”, prohibit cultural or spiritual practices in the public service, and to abolish the Waitangi Tribunal once historic claims are settled. Seymour told Kerre Woodham the idea New Zealand is divided by its treaty is not sustainable. He says he doesn't resile to not having the conversation, no matter how painful it may be. LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

So a good week for National and, by association, for the Government in general. There has been a shift with two weeks to go. The gang drama might just have put a nail in Labour's chances of government. Their polling is now in trouble. Their gap to National is now a problem. Thomas Coughlan's piece yesterday talking of the issues they have found with lack of enrolment in South Auckland seems to have induced an amount of panic within the party. Not a lot has gone right for them this week. As far as I can see, it's the combo for the Government. All three players are campaigning well. ACT are still my medal winners for the week. They remained disciplined, on message and haven't put a foot wrong. On each debate their leader, if he doesn’t win, is consistent and clear. Winston, although not as disciplined, turns up enough when it counts to remind you he is still a force. Luxon's week seems to have been about good news. He hung out with farmers and kids in areas where they are fairly blue. He may or may not have won the debate, but none of the debates have damaged him in any way, shape or form. The poll movement, even if he doesn’t admit it, will have given him a spring and, probably most importantly, the poll that had twice as many of us thinking the economy will be better next year than think it will be worse is the sort of news an incumbent can't buy. It may be that their line that as we get closer more people get engaged and the more engaged they are, the more they sit with the Government, is right. This week might have been the week it settled in toward the coalition. The others look ropey. The Greens in their debate didn’t mention the environment once, Chlöe came on Newstalk ZB and sounded like a councillor created by AI and the Māori Party through Oriini Kaipara looked as separatist as ever. One group looked like adults while the other looked messy. And the Opportunity Party? The polls show a trend. The air is leaving the balloon. It's touch-and-go. I still say they won't make it. Labour must be praying they do. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.