nz-ministers

name	nz-ministers
description	Query New Zealand government ministers, their portfolios, and their press releases from beehive.govt.nz. Use when the task involves NZ ministers, who holds a portfolio (health, finance, energy, etc.), a minister's bio, or all the releases/speeches by a given minister, plus the latest government announcements. The latest-releases feed is keyless; per-minister data uses an optional --browser (CloakBrowser) bootstrap to clear bot protection, then cached cookies for plain HTTP. Read-only; no login or account.
license	MIT
compatibility	Requires Python 3.10+ and network access for live data
metadata	{"thecolab.category":"government","thecolab.source_owner":"New Zealand Government","thecolab.source_type":"official","thecolab.auth":"none","thecolab.access_mode":"public-api","thecolab.data_class":"public","thecolab.writes":"false","thecolab.browser":"true","thecolab.risk":"medium","thecolab.cache_ttl":"24h","thecolab.schema_version":"1","thecolab.skill_type":"public-api","thecolab.pack":"nz-public-data","thecolab.source_url":"https://www.beehive.govt.nz","thecolab.allowed_domains":"www.beehive.govt.nz","thecolab.last_verified":"2026-07-19","thecolab.health":"gated","thecolab.maintainer":"@adam91holt"}

NZ Ministers

Query NZ government ministers, the portfolios they hold, and the press releases / speeches attributed to them, from beehive.govt.nz (the official NZ Government website). Read-only; no login, account, or API key.

Use this when

• A user asks who is the Minister of , or what portfolios a minister holds
• A user wants a minister's profile (roles, biography, latest diary, recent articles)
• A user wants a minister's roles & responsibilities (portfolios + position)
• A user wants all articles by a minister (releases, speeches, features)
• A user wants a minister's diary / calendar (latest published ministerial diary)
• A user wants the latest government announcements site-wide

Do not use this for

• Drafting, editing, or sending anything (read-only)
• General NZ news — use the nz-news skill
• Parliamentary bills/Hansard, MP voting records, or electorate data
• Defeating CAPTCHAs or bot walls — challenges are treated as blocked states

Commands

cli=skills/nz-ministers/scripts/cli.py

# Latest government releases/speeches — KEYLESS, no browser needed
python3 $cli latest --limit 10
python3 $cli latest --type speech --json

# A minister's full profile: roles, biography, latest diary, recent articles
python3 $cli minister hon-simeon-brown --browser --json
python3 $cli minister "Simeon Brown" --browser

# Roles & responsibilities (portfolios + position)
python3 $cli roles hon-simeon-brown --browser --json

# Latest published ministerial diary (calendar) + archive link
python3 $cli diary hon-simeon-brown --browser --json

# All releases/speeches by a minister
python3 $cli articles hon-simeon-brown --limit 20 --browser --json

Arguments

• latest — --limit N, --type {release,speech,feature}, --json
• minister <slug|name> — --browser, --json
• roles <slug|name> — --browser, --json
• diary <slug|name> — --browser, --json
• articles <slug|name> — --limit N, --type {release,speech,feature}, --browser, --json

A minister is identified by slug (hon-simeon-brown, rt-hon-christopher-luxon, hon-dr-shane-reti) or plain name ("Simeon Brown", "Shane Reti"); the CLI tries the hon- / rt-hon- / hon-dr- honorific forms.

Bot protection & --browser

Only the latest-releases RSS feed is openly accessible. Minister pages are behind Incapsula bot protection, so minister, roles, diary, and articles need a browser to clear the challenge once:

• Pass --browser to launch CloakBrowser, clear the wall, and cache the clearance cookies (~5-minute TTL in a temp file).
• After that, those commands work over plain HTTP from the cache — no browser — until the cookies expire.
• Without clearance, those commands return a machine-readable blocked state (clearance_required, or cloakbrowser_not_installed if CloakBrowser is missing); latest always works regardless.

The full ministerial-diary archive is rendered by a JavaScript search on beehive; diary returns the latest diary (title, date, PDF) directly plus the archive_url for the complete history.

Resources

• CLI entrypoint: scripts/cli.py
• Smoke test: scripts/smoke_test.py
• Source, bot-protection, parsing, and blocked-state details: references/api-notes.md

Notes

• Data are live snapshots from beehive.govt.nz; releases reflect current site content.
• Use NZ English in any summaries you build from the output (organisation, colour).
• --json on every command gives machine-readable output for agent chaining.