Podcast: Free to Disagree: Do celebrity candidates actually win votes?
Dr Oliver Hartwich
4 September, 2026
Paul Henry is standing for ACT and Taine Randell for New Zealand First. Oliver and Damien ask whether celebrity candidates actually win votes, and why New Zealand tends to produce the reverse, politicians who become famous through politics. They then unpack deadweight loss and why higher taxes change behaviour in ways revenue forecasts often ignore. And finally, they turn to MBIE's failed biometric project and whether New Zealand has created a permanent bureaucratic class too insulated from ministers and too weakly accountable when things go wrong.
Recorded on Wednesday 2 September 2026.