For journalists, researchers + educators

Press kit & methodology

LexNZ Legislative Watch is a free public utility tracking every NZ party promise, bill and minister decision against a single primary source. This page covers how we build it, how to cite us, and how to plug our live data into your story.

What we track

Promises — party manifesto items + announced policy commitments
Bills — government and member's bills before Parliament, at every stage
Decisions — ministerial announcements (Beehive press releases) that change practice or signal policy

Each item carries a status badge, a sponsoring-party chip (factual attribution, not endorsement), a plain-English summary, an Impact Panel (who feels it, money in play, how it works, key context, wider effects), and a primary-source link.

How we verify

One primary source per item, drawn only from: legislation.govt.nz, parliament.nz, beehive.govt.nz, the NZ Gazette, or the registered party's official website.

Mainstream news coverage triggers our detection but is never the cited source. A super-user reviews every item against its primary source before it goes live. Items that fail verification stay unpublished.

How to cite us

Standard citation:

LexNZ Legislative Watch (2026). [Item title]. https://tracker.lexnz.ai/election-tracker/[slug]

Markdown:

[LexNZ Legislative Watch — [Item title]](https://tracker.lexnz.ai/election-tracker/[slug])

Attribution preferred but not required for fair-use reporting. For commercial republication, contact us below.

Public JSON API

All verified items are available as one JSON file under a Creative Commons BY 4.0 licence — free for news, research, and educational use with attribution.

/api/items.json →

Includes title, summary, status, sponsor party, primary source URL, dates, topic tags. ~50 KB. Refreshes every deploy (typically multiple times a day).

Embed live items in your article

One iframe gives you the latest 5 items, always up to date:

<iframe
  src="https://tracker.lexnz.ai/embed/recent"
  width="100%" height="420"
  frameborder="0" loading="lazy"
  title="LexNZ Legislative Watch — recent items"></iframe>

Or share a single item directly — the page is built for sharing, with per-item OpenGraph cards rendering on LinkedIn / X / Facebook.

Editorial principles

Politically neutral. No commentary, no endorsement, no spin.
Sourced. Every item links to its primary source. We don't paraphrase what we can't quote.
Plain English. Senior content-manager voice, not legalese.
Corrections in public. If we get something wrong, the item gets a "Last updated" date and a changelog. Honest corrections build trust.

Get in touch

Press, partnerships, corrections, or relationship intros for journalists who want early access to weekly summaries:

press@lexnz.ai →

We respond within 1 working day for press queries.

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