The final election debate: Five key moments that cut through

Voters posing questions at the Q+A People’s Debate, the last major televised clash of the election campaign, wanted to know everything from stances on vaping laws to what New Zealand would do if Donald Trump came to take the South Island.

Leaders and MPs from National, Labour, the Greens, ACT, NZ First, Opportunity and Te Pati Māori answered questions put directly by members of the public, both recorded and in-person.

With fewer than two days until voting closes, it was the final opportunity for parties to make breakout moments for their social media campaigns or to dazzle any still-undecided voters.

Early in the debate, NZ First’s Shane Jones was also asked for his reaction to fellow candidate Michael Laws’ apology over remarks about an Opportunity rival.

“It was a reckless and foolish thing to have said,” Jones said, as Greens co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick interjected: “And sexist.” Asked whether he would work with Laws after the election, Jones said he would “leave all that up to Winston”.

"That remark has been very distractful ... there'll be more to be said about it, no doubt, after the election. ... no one covered themselves in glory in that particular episode,"

Here's a collection of some of the other key moments from throughout the night.

Standing next to each other, National's Nicola Willis and Opportunity's Qiulae Wong had moments where they directly debated each other's points - perhaps offering a preview of what future exchanges might hold if the latter's party makes it into Parliament.

Their sharpest exchange came when Professor Nicola Gaston, a physicist, asked how parties would stop New Zealand losing its best researchers after years of underfunding.

Wong said New Zealand invested well below the OECD average of 2.7% into research.

“Nicola, you’ve focused this term of government on cuts, not on investing to grow,” she said.

“It is chicken and egg. We have to invest to grow, and we need to grow the economy so that we have more to spend. But if we don’t fund the science and the research of today, we won’t have the Rocket Labs.”

Willis had just argued “the countries that invest the most in science are the wealthiest countries … that's why I always talk about economic growth. I want us to be a wealthy country capable of making those investments, and that means managing the books well."

But she hit back hard on Wong's suggestion.

"Would you have preferred I didn't invest $600 million in cancer drugs? If I took the money from special needs education? Would you prefer it if I took the money from investing in new hospitals in Nelson and Palmerston North?" said the National MP and current Finance Minister.

"I would rather you take it from the oil and gas industry," Wong replied.

Candidates also confronted a question about the increasing number of Kiwis who have moved across the ditch in - though the trend has stabilised and eased more recently.

Chris has lived in Sydney for about 15 years. He asked what parties would change “to give us more reasons to come back”.

Debate moderator Jack Tame pointed out the unemployment rate is 4.7% in Australia, compared with 5.7% in New Zealand. Willis responded that Kiwis should still come home.

“Because inflation in Australia is far higher than here. That means prices on everything. Your cost of living is increasing more dramatically. Interest rates are higher, so getting a mortgage is more expensive,” she said.

NZ First's Shane Jones made a pitch for mining.

“Dig, baby, dig. There are heaps of Kiwis coming back from Aussie to take roles in the expanding mining sector, but the left of politics have an aversion to mining. They want to sing kumbaya and stroke papatūānuku," he said.

"That's probably why you don't see an opportunity. The jobs are here if we use our resources, we fund them and we invest them."

Greens co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick responded: “I don’t even really know what to say there, to be honest.”

She said New Zealand was exposed to “imported fossil fuel inflation”. Willis cut in to blame the previous government’s 2018 ban on oil and gas exploration.

Swarbrick said Jones wanted to triple mining’s value from $1 billion to $3 billion, which would lift jobs from 5000 to 7000. By comparison, she said arts and culture employed 124,000 people and was worth $18 billion.

"We can make active decisions to invest in research and development in our creative sectors, in rebuilding our hospitals and our schools, to ensure that we are all far more educated, prosperous, and productive."

Next up, ACT's David Seymour said voters were “being offered a false choice”.

“Why can’t we have arts and culture, wine, mining, tech, and farming? Actually, we need all of them … the thing that should unite us is an attitude that we can make a difference in our own lives and choose our future” he said.

“If there’s one thing the Australians have, I hate to admit it … they have an attitude of 'confidence, and hey, what’s next?' That is the attitude that we need to take.”

Te Pāti Māori’s Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke said 170,000 Māori were now living in Australia.

She had recently returned from Melbourne, where she met about 400 people of Waikato-Tainui descent.

“All of them are saying that they’re actually homesick to come back. But the opportunity why they had to leave was due to financial,” she said.

Unusually throughout the debate, there were several moments of agreement between the leaders present on-stage. But the biggest show of unity actually came over a policy that no party wanted to commit to.

Lisa, a minimum-wage receptionist in Hamilton, is close to hitting the 30% tax rate. She asked whether parties would automatically adjust tax brackets for inflation every year.

Nobody on stage raised their hands to her suggestion.

Willis jumped in to note she had been “the first finance minister in 14 years to adjust tax brackets for the effect of inflation”, referring to her 2024 tax cuts. “Once I have these books in balance, which we will if we stick to our plan, then tax relief will follow,” she said.

Fireworks also brought together an unlikely pair.

On Guy Fawkes night, Nelson fire alarm technician and dog owner Darren asked whether parties would ban private fireworks sales.

McAnulty, a former volunteer firefighter, suggested a middle ground. “We restrict the time that we sell them. Why don’t we restrict the time that we can use them?"

Seymour followed: “I actually think Kieran’s right about this.”

Nuclear energy also brought most of the panel on-stage to the same place. When engineering student Nathaniel asked about it, none of the seven backed it outright.

“This is one where I agree with Chlöe and Kieran and others. The way forward for us is solar, wind, offshore wind,” Willis said.

Seymour was the most open to nuclear, arguing that the tech was safe, but that the real problem was economic viability in a small nation like Aotearoa.

On an under-16 social media ban, Seymour and Swarbrick then found themselves on the same side. The question came from Thomas, a 17-year-old student from Christchurch.

"The problem with a ban for under 16s is what happens when you turn 17. It is not fair for us solely to focus on users and allow platforms off the hook. These platforms are not neutral. Tech bros are taking billions of dollars out of our economy," Swarbrick said.

When asked if they agreed, she said: “Largely, although probably for different reasons.”

“We have overlapping views while maintaining our distinct identity," Seymour interjected to laughter. He said a ban drove youth usage "underground" and that New Zealand would be better off aligning with other jurisdictions on pushing more in-app changes.

Willis, meanwhile, supports the ban. She said that “at each extreme end of the ideological spectrum, you lose pragmatism”.

Swarbrick and Maipi-Clarke also agreed they both wanted to bring back a year of fees-free tertiary study, and to scrap the coalition's fast-track regime.

Throughout the debate, there were also more personal moments from those on-stage.

In a section about neurodiverse children in education, Willis recalled opening one of New Zealand’s first new special schools in decades, which she called “one of the most impactful moments in my time as finance minister”.

“I still have tear stains on my blazer from the mothers hugging me, saying that is what we needed,” she said.

Labour's Kieran McAnulty, in a question about vaping, spoke from his own time getting off smoking, saying that he had been chewing a nicotine tablet only moments before.

“Not that long ago I did smoke, and the only reason I got off the smokes was the vapes. And now I’m off the vapes. I’m on the nicotine tablet, so I’m on a bit of a journey here,” he said. “I had one in my mouth until the very second that we went live.”

He said he knew young people who had never smoked “but then became hooked on vapes and are now smoking”.

He said Labour would restrict access and bring back the repealed smokefree laws.

Taking a both aligned and different view, Seymour said “nothing has reduced smoking in the last 20 years like the onset of vaping”.

He wants the existing law enforced with “mystery shoppers and tougher penalties” before any new laws were put in.

Meanwhile, Wong said vape shops “popping up on every street corner” showed why lobbying needed to be regulated due to its influence over politics.

Some of the night’s more unusual questions came from viewers who submitted them online ahead of the debate.

Daniel, who works in film in Auckland, asked how parties would respond if Donald Trump demanded the South Island, as he has done to Denmark over Greenland.

McAnulty said Labour would not realign foreign policy “disproportionately towards the US” and away from China, New Zealand’s largest trading partner.

“We saw yesterday with the results in the US that the American people wholeheartedly rejected the division and the toxicity that we’re seeing in their politics over there. We don’t want to be associated with that,” he said.

Bay of Plenty teacher Adam asked what parties would do about "state media bias". He had added a note to his submission: “I bet you won’t ask this.”

Asked whether RNZ or TVNZ was biased against them, Jones said: “One of those two is biased against me and my leader.” The NZ First MP said taxpayer-funded broadcasters’ boards and charters should “root out any institutional bias” and serve Kiwis, “not small special interest groups that seem to dominate the agenda of Radio New Zealand”.

Maipi-Clarke said Te Pāti Māori relied on its own social media channels to reach voters “because often, we’re not a good favourite on mainstream media”.

“We’ve seen heaps of funding cuts towards the presenters, towards the reporters, towards the infrastructure in the background,” she said.

Jones, who is a NZ First minister, said the government had backed Māori media.