Shamabil Yacob

What we can see in the data is that the loss of trust in government has been taking place pretty much since COVID days.

So there was actually a small period of a pop in trust in government in the early days of COVID.

Since then, it's been trending down.

So I don't think it's necessarily about media per se, but I think it's much more to do with the fact that

We had relatively easy options when it came to government in the past.

We had enough money to pay for the things that we wanted.

We didn't have those pressing problems of aging, of government borrowing, of climate change on us in the way they're at the moment.

What we're finding is our system of government is currently just not up to task to deal with those big changes because politics is, at its core, oppositional.

It's confrontational.

And yet the kinds of changes we need require broad consensus or a broad base of agreement.

So we've kind of got this system of government that I think is counterproductive to the kinds of changes that New Zealanders want.

And I feel like that's why New Zealanders are so turned off by politics at the moment, but also because we've become ideological.

So we can't see the merit in somebody else's solutions.

Absolutely.

Our views on immigration are hardening very fast, as it is around the world.

So we're seeing the same across the Tasman in Australia.

We're seeing the same in Europe, in UK.

And it is really quite frightening because New Zealand, of course, is built on many generations of immigration.

This is not new.

What's really also frightening is how over half of New Zealanders do not think that immigrants make good citizens and that negative attitudes towards immigrants is very focused on some people.