After a year, 271 questions and more than one million interactions, Waatea’s #QuestionOfTheDay series is building a revealing picture of what people across our platforms are actually worried about — and beneath the political noise, the message is remarkably consistent: people want secure jobs, affordable homes, accessible healthcare and enough money left in their pockets to live.
For more than a year, Radio Waatea and Waatea News have been asking our audiences what they think.
Not once a month or only when an election rolls around, but continuously across Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, on air and Waatea’s wider digital platforms.
The questions have ranged from politics and the economy to Te Tiriti, housing, health, education, climate change, homelessness, immigration and the cost of kai.
Now, after 271 separate Questions of the Day, we have grouped those conversations into six major kaupapa — Economic, Cultural, Social, Environmental, Health and Education.
The scale of engagement is significant.
Across the series there have been more than one million interactions and just over 200,000 comments.
Around 71 percent of interactions came from people identified by the respective platforms as being in New Zealand.
Online, the average age range of those engaging was 35 to 46, while around 62 percent identified as female.
These are not scientific opinion polls. People choose whether to participate, audiences vary between platforms and highly contentious questions can attract significantly more engagement than others.
But after 271 questions, patterns begin to emerge.
And some of those patterns are difficult to ignore.
ECONOMY: JOBS AND HOUSING DOMINATE
When Waatea audiences talked about the economy, two issues repeatedly rose above the rest — jobs and housing affordability.
Employment anxiety was particularly pronounced when people discussed rangatahi.
There was a recurring concern that young New Zealanders increasingly see Australia and other overseas destinations as offering better wages, stronger career opportunities and a more achievable future.
The anxiety was not simply about unemployment.
People worried about what happens to communities when their young people conclude that the best way to get ahead is to leave.
That feeds directly into the second major economic concern — housing.
Rent remains a major source of pressure, but across the series another sentiment has become increasingly visible: a growing number of people no longer believe they will ever own a home.
For some, home ownership is becoming less a difficult goal and more something they believe has moved permanently beyond their reach.
That has consequences well beyond property.
Housing security affects where whānau live, whether they can put down roots, how much they can save and what wealth they can eventually pass to the next generation.
CULTURE: PEOPLE ARE TIRED OF THE FIGHT OVER MĀORI
Across the cultural questions, one of the strongest themes was fatigue.
Many respondents expressed frustration at what they regarded as the constant bashing of Te Tiriti o Waitangi, te reo Māori and kaupapa Māori.
The significant point was not simply whether respondents supported or opposed a particular government policy.
It was the sense of exhaustion around repeatedly returning to arguments about Māori rights, identity, language and the place of Te Tiriti.
For many engaging with Waatea, these are not abstract political concepts.
They affect how people understand their whenua, whakapapa, language, institutions and relationship with the Crown.
There is clearly disagreement across our audience about individual policies, and the #QuestionOfTheDay series has never produced one uniform Māori or Waatea view.
But one sentiment has appeared repeatedly: many people are tired of Māori issues being used as a permanent political battleground.
SOCIAL: HOMELESSNESS HAS BECOME IMPOSSIBLE TO IGNORE
In the social category, homelessness emerged as one of the biggest concerns.
Waatea’s questions around move-on orders generated significant debate over what should happen when people are sleeping rough or occupying public spaces.
Some respondents supported stronger enforcement and argued communities have a right to feel safe in their town centres.
Others asked a more fundamental question.
Where exactly are homeless people supposed to move on to?
That tension ran throughout the discussion.
People want safer communities, but many also recognise that enforcement cannot create a home, a mental health service, an addiction treatment bed or an affordable rental property.
The response suggests homelessness is increasingly being seen not simply as a policing issue, but as the visible end result of failures across housing, health, income and social services.
ENVIRONMENT: CLIMATE CHANGE IS NOW ABOUT WHAT HAPPENS AT HOME
Environmental questions produced another clear shift.
For many respondents, climate change is no longer primarily being discussed as something that may happen decades from now.
People are connecting it with infrastructure and events they can see around them.
Flooding.
Coastal inundation.
Forestry slash.
Road closures.
Landslides and slips.
Damage to infrastructure and communities.
From concerns about vulnerable transport routes such as the Manawatū Gorge to repeated flooding and coastal risks around Aotearoa, the conversation increasingly centres on resilience.
The question people are asking is becoming less about whether climate change exists and more about whether our roads, pipes, homes, marae, towns and communities are prepared for what comes next.
For Māori, that conversation also intersects with whenua, urupā, marae, mahinga kai and coastal communities that cannot simply be relocated without profound cultural consequences.
HEALTH: PEOPLE JUST WANT TO BE ABLE TO GET TREATMENT
Health generated some of the most personal responses across the series.
The recurring concerns were access, funding and workforce.
People talked about difficulty finding a GP, waiting for specialist appointments, pressure on hospitals and shortages of doctors, nurses and other health professionals.
Again, the frustration was often practical rather than ideological.
People want to know that when they or their whānau become sick, someone will be there to treat them.
For rural communities and many Māori communities, the issue becomes even sharper when workforce shortages combine with geography, transport costs and fewer local services.
The health conversation also repeatedly returned to equity — whether a system can truly be considered universal if some populations consistently find it harder to access it or experience poorer outcomes.
EDUCATION: WHAT ARE WE TEACHING OUR TAMARIKI?
Education conversations were dominated by the curriculum.
Parents, teachers and whānau debated what children should learn, how it should be taught and how much political interference should exist in determining classroom content.
Questions around literacy, numeracy, history, te reo Māori, mātauranga Māori and curriculum reform all generated engagement.
But underneath those arguments sat another common concern.
People want an education system that prepares tamariki and rangatahi for the world they will actually enter.
That means the debate is increasingly about more than individual subjects.
It is about whether young people leave school with the skills, knowledge, confidence and opportunities necessary to build a future in a rapidly changing economy.
ONE ISSUE RUNS THROUGH ALMOST EVERYTHING: THE COST OF LIVING
Across all six categories, one issue kept appearing.
The cost of living.
Housing is about rent and mortgages.
Health is partly about whether people can afford appointments, prescriptions, transport and time away from work.
Education affects household costs.
Environmental disasters can increase insurance, rates and infrastructure costs.
Employment determines whether wages keep up.
Even cultural and political debates are being judged against the immediate financial pressures households face.
Again and again, people talked about rising prices and wages that have not kept pace.
That appears to be influencing how audiences assess political promises as well.
LESS PATIENCE FOR FASHION POLICIES
Another theme has emerged across the year — declining patience for what some respondents described as fashion policies.
These are policies people perceive as attracting headlines or ideological arguments while failing to address the issues dominating their everyday lives.
That does not mean audiences are disengaged from politics.
The extraordinary level of participation in the series suggests precisely the opposite.
But many respondents appear to be applying an increasingly practical test to political announcements.
Will this help me find a job?
Will it make housing more affordable?
Will I be able to see a doctor?
Will my children have a better future?
Will it reduce the weekly bills?
If the answer is unclear, enthusiasm can disappear quickly.
IMMIGRATION SHOWS HOW THE CONVERSATION IS CHANGING
Immigration provides an interesting example.
Some respondents continue to see migration levels as an important economic and social issue.
But across our conversations, others appear increasingly reluctant to buy into highly divisive arguments that reduce complicated economic problems to migrants themselves.
Recent Waatea discussions around NZ Super and citizenship demonstrated that complexity clearly.
People who initially supported restricting Super to citizens began questioning what that would mean for permanent residents who arrived as children, worked for 40 or 50 years, paid taxes, raised New Zealand families and built their lives here.
It does not mean the public has reached consensus on immigration.
Far from it.
It suggests people are increasingly interested in the detail and consequences rather than automatically accepting the political framing presented to them.
THE AUDIENCE IS NOT AFRAID TO CHANGE ITS MIND
Perhaps one of the most interesting features of #QuestionOfTheDay has been watching people reason through an issue in public.
Someone may begin with a strong yes or no.
Another person introduces a personal experience.
Someone challenges an assumption.
Another provides an example.
And sometimes the conversation changes.
That is precisely what public debate should be capable of doing.
The series has also demonstrated that the Waatea audience cannot easily be placed into a single political box.
People can support greater government intervention on supermarket prices while opposing it somewhere else.
They can strongly support Te Tiriti while questioning a Māori political party.
They can demand tougher action on crime while opposing move-on orders for homeless people.
They can support immigration controls while defending permanent residents who have spent their lives contributing to New Zealand.
The audience is complicated because Aotearoa is complicated.
271 QUESTIONS LATER — WHAT HAVE WE LEARNED?
After more than a year, 271 questions, one million-plus interactions and more than 200,000 comments, Waatea has accumulated something more valuable than a collection of online polls.
We have built an ongoing conversation with our audience.
And while the individual answers differ, the big kaupapa are becoming increasingly clear.
People want jobs that pay enough to live.
They want homes they can afford.
They want their children to see a future in Aotearoa rather than believing they must leave to build one.
They want Te Tiriti and kaupapa Māori treated with respect rather than repeatedly weaponised.
They want homelessness addressed rather than simply shifted somewhere else.
They want infrastructure capable of surviving a changing climate.
They want access to healthcare when they need it.
They want an education system that prepares their tamariki for the future.
And above almost everything else, they want relief from a cost-of-living squeeze that touches virtually every part of daily life.
That may be the biggest lesson from Waatea’s #QuestionOfTheDay series.
Beyond the political slogans and election promises, people are increasingly asking a very straightforward question of those seeking to govern them — will what you are proposing actually make our lives better?
With Election 2026 approaching, Waatea will keep asking the questions — and, more importantly, keep listening to the answers.
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