Matt King’s journey from political mainstream to the fringe was precipitous. The former National MP for Northland literally fell off the political cliff.

In this episode we speak with Matt about the human side of that story.

What was going on behind the scenes as his political career was imploding, how did the drama impact his family, what was it like to watch the nomination for National’s Northland seat - a nomination that was surely his to win - pass to someone else? And why did his brand-new political party, built on the back of his random but significant Northland supporter base, fail to fire?

We traverse these and other questions to hear the story, first-hand and for the first time, from behind the headlines, the social media posts, the high emotions, and the fire and fury of those hectic pandemic days.

Links to items referred to in the show:

Email from Northland Regional Council about how Northland tourism spend in Auckland was calculated:

The figures derive from the Tourism Electronic Card Transactions (TECTs) dataset, published by the Ministry of Business, Innovation & Employment (MBIE). You can access the relevant page here: ⁠https://www.mbie.govt.nz/immigration-and-tourism/tourism-research-and-data/tourism-data-releases/tourism-electronic-card-transactions⁠

(We) specifically drew on the “Spend per region by origin” section.

TECT data is provided by Marketview, who use electronic card transaction (ECT) data from the Paymark network, which covers approximately 70% of total ECT spend, to estimate national totals. These estimates are then filtered to isolate tourism-related spend by visitors within New Zealand.

Because detailed address data is no longer available, Marketview now infers cardholder residence from spending patterns via Paymark, down to the territorial authority (TA) level. To align with the agreed definition of domestic tourism - NZ residents travelling more than 40km from home - a hybrid approach is used: spend is counted if it occurs either 40km from the largest urban centre within a cardholder’s home TA, or outside their home TA altogether.

To avoid misclassifying regular or commuter activity as tourism, Marketview excludes spend in any TA where a cardholder’s transactions are frequent and substantial, including their home TA. This helps ensure the data reflects genuine tourism behaviour rather than habitual shopping or commuting.

In addition, although the concept of the messaging (does) not change, (we are) providing below the data for period YE June 2025, as opposed to the period referred to in the newsletter (YE December 2024), if you were interested in reporting the latest insights:

- Aucklanders spent $251 million in Northland (47% of total domestic tourism spend).

- Northlanders spent $393 million outside the region, with $247 million going to Auckland.