Articles by Dr Bryce Edwards

At the end of the year, commentators across the spectrum have crowned Chris Bishop as 2025’s “Politician of the Year”. It’s an almost unprecedented honour for someone who isn’t even a party leader, but he spent the year at the centre of most big political stories. He was, as The Post put it today, “the main character of New Zealand politics”, often making more headlines than the Prime Minister and driving the Government’s most ambitious reforms.

We talk a lot about money in politics in New Zealand, but we rarely actually examine it in detail. Today that changes. I’m pleased to announce the publication of Following the Money in 2025, the Democracy Project’s inaugural annual audit of political donations in New Zealand. This is the first report of its kind, and I hope it will become an indispensable resource for journalists, researchers, and citizens who want to understand who is funding…

The local government election donation returns are in, and they tell a familiar story. Money talks in local government, and it speaks loudest on behalf of those with the most to gain from council decisions. The 2025 campaigns in Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin were awash with cash from property developers, corporate magnates and other vested interests. Big money in the big city · Nowhere was the money gap starker than in…

Andrew Coster’s interview on Q+A has blown the police integrity scandal wide open again. It’s now obvious the public has been left with a mess of clashing accounts, shifting explanations, and gaps that the existing investigation was never designed to resolve. If the Government wants any hope of restoring confidence in the Police, it needs to authorise an independent inquiry with proper powers. Coster went on television insisting he’d “acted…

The Labour Party faithful gathered in Auckland this past weekend for their annual conference, and for any progressives watching from outside the hall, there were two possible reactions. If you’re excited by the prospect of a change of government next year, then you’ll be buoyed by what you saw. If you’re excited by the prospect of progressive change actually occurring under that new government, you might well have your head in your hands. Becaus…

As Labour convenes in Auckland this weekend for its annual conference, the political atmosphere is almost unrecognisable from the despondent aftermath of the 2023 election defeat. The party that won just 26.9% of the vote less than two years ago now sits between 32-38% in recent polls. One-term governments are no longer unthinkable. Chris Hipkins, improbably, remains secure in his leadership without any meaningful challengers circling. Yet this…

New Zealand is in the midst of a debate over a single word: “corruption.” The explosive police cover-up scandal involving former Deputy Commissioner Jevon McSkimming and then-Commissioner Andrew Coster has rattled public trust. But is it corruption? In a country that prides itself on being “least corrupt”, many leaders are tripping over themselves to avoid the term. This reluctance at the top is now part of the scandal’s fallout, raising deeper…

The late Bruce Jesson captured something essential about New Zealand politics when he observed in the 1980s: “The National Party governs for capitalists. The Labour Party for capitalism”. Jesson was writing for Metro Magazine at the time, as their politics writer. What he meant was simple: National tends to hand out favours to their mates in business, cutting deals that keep the rich happy one by one. Labour, on the other hand, steps in during…

Yesterday’s bombshell report from the Independent Police Conduct Authority has exposed what Public Service Minister Judith Collins starkly described as corruption within New Zealand’s police force. On the question of whether the IPCA findings amounted to corruption, Collins was blunt: “If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck”. Her assessment of the scandal was equally damning: “a total lack of leadership and integrity at the highest…

After months of anticipation, the Government has unveiled its electricity market reforms. The verdict from across the political spectrum is damning: the package is a damp squib. · Despite soaring power prices and an energy crisis that saw factories shuttered and households shivering, the coalition’s package is startlingly modest. Newsroom journalist Marc Daalder was the first to label the plan a “damp squib” that ignores 8 of the 10 key…