Debates and standards around openness and accountability in New Zealand local government, covering how councils disclose decisions, handle councillor conduct, manage confidential information, and communicate with ratepayers and the public.
How the framings classify across 4 articles. Each framing is labelled by a small AI stance classifier; see the methodology page for details.
Up to 12 framings across outlets and orientations — each a short phrase the extractor generated to characterise the piece's editorial angle (not a quote). Filter by lean to see how each bloc is spinning the story; click through to read the original.
transparent accountability through public disclosure
City councils: transparency about a suspension in Dunedin but mystery about a resignation in Wellingtonleague tables expose hidden financial practices
Ratepayers’ Report 2026: Council League Tables Launched by Taxpayers’ UnionLobby groups, unions, think tanks and industry bodies whose own releases or whose people’s media appearances touched this topic over the last 12 months. Owned = their own press releases; earned = their people quoted across radio, press & commentary. A card carried in both — with the release coming first — is the agenda-setting signal. Co-occurrence isn’t proof a group drove the coverage.
league tables expose hidden financial practices
Stacked weekly counts; colour by lean. “n/a” covers government and iwi-Māori sources where lean isn't applicable.
How this topic has been named, week by week. A new alias winning out is usually a framing shift.
How the news corpus has covered this same topic over the last 12 weeks. 7 articles from RNZ, Stuff, NZ Herald, ODT, 1News, Newsroom and The Spinoff. Click through to the press view for the full panel.
Verbatim segments from politicians speaking on podcasts and radio shows about this topic. Sourced via the voice-reference library — each speaker has been confirmed manually from their voice clip. Click play to stream the original audio from the publisher, pre-seeked to the moment the quote starts.
OK, well, let me read it to you. So this is what the taxpayers' union says. Local government minister Simon Watts has failed to grasp the nettle. Instead of fixing …
Social-media signal on the same topic, drawn from the social lens. Engagement is likes + 2×shares + 3×replies, the same weighting used across the digest cards. View on /social →
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