National leader Christopher Luxon and Labour leader Chris Hipkins step into the ring tonight for one of their only one-on-one debates of this election campaign.<\/p>\n
The 90-minute Leaders’ Debate starts at 7pm in front of a live studio audience, screening live and free on 1News, TVNZ+<\/a>, and TVNZ 1. Q+A presenter Jack Tame will moderate. <\/p>\n Key topics the leaders will be asked about include cost of living, health and education, as well as the climate and environment. <\/p>\n Tonight’s debate is the first of four TVNZ will screen before the November 7 election, and the only one featuring the two leaders alone. <\/p>\n Luxon declined an invitation to a second head-to-head on November 5.<\/p>\n TVNZ has extensive coverage of the election campaign. (Source: TVNZ)<\/p>\n With both major parties on 28% in the latest 1News Verian Poll<\/a>, tonight’s debate comes at a tight and critical point in this year’s campaign.<\/p>\n The Leaders’ Debate is the first of several live debates and part of 1News’ extensive campaign coverage<\/a>, including the interactive Vote Compass tool<\/a> which launched Sunday.<\/p>\n Breakfast presenter Tova O’Brien will host the 1News: Multi-Party Debate on October 13 at 7pm. TVNZ will confirm which party leaders will be able to take part the week of the debate, once qualifying polls are in.<\/p>\n Te Karere presenter Scotty Morrison and 1News M\u0101ori Affairs Correspondent Te Aniwa Hurihanganui will co-host the 1News: Kaupapa M\u0101ori Debate on October 29 at 7.30pm.<\/p>\n TVNZ will use the November 5 slot \u2014 intended for a second Leaders’ Debate \u2014 for the Q+A People’s Debate, which puts voters’ questions to every party that qualifies under TVNZ’s debate criteria, including National and Labour. Tame will moderate.<\/p>\n All debates will screen on the 1News app, TVNZ+, and TVNZ 1. <\/p>\n Viewers will be able to share their reactions in real time through interactive features.<\/p>\n Follow live updates of the debates on the 1News app and website.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"National leader Christopher Luxon and Labour leader Chris Hipkins step into the ring tonight for one of their…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":621815,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[44152,11508,42,43,135,40,38,41,39,6445,270122],"class_list":["post-621814","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-chris-hipkins","tag-christopher-luxon","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-politics","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-tvnz","tag-vote-2026"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/621814","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=621814"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/621814\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/621815"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=621814"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=621814"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=621814"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}