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  • Top topics digest — the cards score the selected period against the prior 4 weeks.
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  • Coverage gap quadrant — scores the selected period against the 12 weeks before it (not including it).
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What stays as-is
  • Outlet orientation strip / lean colours — context-only, drawn from the last 12 weeks of activity regardless.
  • Co-occurrence graph — recent-activity anchored, not picker-driven.
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Topic

Ratepayers Assistance Scheme

8 items · 5 aliases · peaked week of 19 Apr 2026 · first seen 28 Apr 2026

A political commentary piece analyzing declining support for National and Christopher Luxon, rising green calls for electrification, and concerns over the government's secret moves to weaken Treaty of Waitangi obligations in 23 pieces of legislation.

Stance breakdown Methodology →

How the framings classify across 4 articles. Each framing is labelled by a small AI stance classifier; see the methodology page for details.

75%
25%
Supportive 3 Critical 1

Volume by source orientation Methodology →

Stacked weekly counts; colour by lean. “n/a” covers government and iwi-Māori sources where lean isn't applicable.

Alias drift

How this topic has been named, week by week. A new alias winning out is usually a framing shift.

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In the press Methodology →

How the news corpus has covered this same topic over the last 12 weeks. 3 articles from RNZ, Stuff, NZ Herald, ODT, 1News, Newsroom and The Spinoff. Click through to the press view for the full panel.

12-week press volume 3 articles
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Heard on radio

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.

  • Now a coalition of mayors who are all connected to local government New Zealand have come up with an alternative idea to the rates gaps. Instead of being forced to keep rates increases down, they propose being allowed to carry on as they are, but then allowing their ratepayers to defer the payments and lodge the debt against the house that they're in to be paid when the house is sold. Nelson Mayor Nick Smith is chair of the strategic advisory group that came up with this policy and is with us now.
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Sample framings

Up to 12 framings spread across orientations. Each framing is a short phrase the topic extractor generated to characterise the piece's stance — not a quote from the source. Click through to read the original.

a pragmatic step toward solar access for homeowners

Sparks fly as energy dominates first major political debate
18 May
the-kaka Centre-left

affordable solar financing for homes

Preview & invite to 10.30 Substack Live of Bernard's Chorus
19 Apr
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