Andrew Dickens Afternoons

New Zealand seems to be waking up to an issue I thought would have caused more concern.

As part of the bonfire of the public service, the Government seems to be eyeing cuts to our public research and development sector.

Principally that means the Callaghan Institute, the Crown agency that employs about 300 people and has been the target of attack, particularly from David Seymour.

He sees the agency's work as being a form of corporate welfare, a bugbear of ACT's.

Other ministries and departments conduct significant research funded by the taxpayer. The Department of Conservation has developed major techniques and processes that have been adopted around the world.

The Primary Industries ministry also funds valuable research, including work into climate change mitigation.

It's feared that all this work will be affected as the Government saves costs in the backroom.

Last week, Stats NZ revealed that private industry is starting to put their money where their mouth is.

The New Zealand business sector has shown a robust increase in research and development (R&D) spending, reaching a new high of $3.7 billion in 2023.

That's $540 million increase, or 17 percent, from the previous year, marking the largest annual growth since annual data collection began in 2018.

There's value in research spending. So it would be short-sighted to reduce Governmental spending on it

R&D funding cuts could mean we will lose our best and brightest scientists, like those at Callaghan, to overseas countries who are investing in science.

As we enter a regime determined to cut spending I think it's good to remember a famous quote by Oscar Wilde.

He said - " a fool is a person who knows the price of everything but the value of nothing".

The worry is that the Government goes too far and starts to cut things of value.

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It is fair to say the country is not in a good place right now.

Job cuts dominate the headlines. A double-dip recession came true. Inflation is robbing us of our purchasing power.

Last week an IPSOS poll found that 60 percent of us think that New Zealand is in decline and 65 percent believe that the economy is rigged to benefit the rich and the powerful.

And when people bemoan our situation and wonder how we got here a common response is to blame the Labour Government and the Reserve Bank.

A common refrain is Robertson blew all the money so we can't afford to do anything now, even something as important as paying our police more so they don't quit or leave the country. You also hear that Labour caused a debt so large our children and their children will be paying for it for decades to come.

So I pricked up my ears last week when Mike Hosking talked to ASB economist Nick Tuffley about inflation and the economy in general.

Mike asked him how bad was our economy and he said pretty bad but still nowhere near what happened after the GFC.

To remind you, the GFC ended early in 2009 and John Key's government was in charge. To remedy the situation we borrowed, we opened up immigration and we went through austerity to a far greater degree than we're doing now. And it worked.

Need I remind you that within 5 years we were described as having a rock-star economy.

This is not to diminish the situation that we're in right now but it is to put a perspective on things.

But Nick was also asked why inflation and bad economic tidings were still happening here when other economies like the States, the UK and Australia are bouncing back. Economies with far greater debt and spending.

Tuffley essentially blamed our static productivity. He says considering we imported nearly 3 percent more population over the past 2 years our GDP should have raised, but it didn't.

We seem incapable of making more money per person year on year. And it's a problem that we've had ever since Ruth Richardson's Mother of all Budgets early in the 90s. And it's a problem that exists no matter the colour of the government.

It's something we need to look to ourselves for not something we can blame on the government.

And it relates to the comments that Christopher Luxon made overseas that angered some when he boasted that New Zealand is now open for business.

We've always been open for business. The real question is how much business are we open for?

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Since we were last together, the collapse of television news and current affairs has continued.

And with it, we have been subjected to a lot of highfalutin thinking about the metaphysical and cultural reasons why linear TV is dying.

You know - go woke go broke. Or- this is because nobody trusts you, because you're all raving lefties.

Meanwhile, Melissa Lee has been asked what she is going to do about it, when it's obvious that there's very little she can do.

These are commercial entities that are suffering at the hands of market forces that have been long predicted to hit.

Commercial broadcasting and journalism is an easy business model. Inventory control and labour costs. In other words, you can't employ any more people than the money you make from the advertising.

Hearing that more than 300 were employed by Newshub was pretty revealing. That's a lot of salaries.

For some perspective, NZME employs just over 200 for it's papers and radio and digital content. And the lid has been sinking steadily for a years now.

That's because digital players are siphoning off $100 million a year in advertising content

Despite the 6 o'clock news having the highest spot rates, they were unable to make the budget balance

Faced with this environment I was confused after Warner took over 3 that they added to the news output with full-service late-night shows and more. They increased their costs at a time when revenue was going down.

It seemed to me that no matter how woke or unwoke or how biased or unbiased, Newshub was increasingly modelled to lose money without a huge recalibration.

Meanwhile, despite warning bells sounding about the theft of revenue by digital companies, our TV operators seemed timid to adapt.

Facebook and Google sell clicks. They gain news content and then clicks when punters repost links. Yet the links from so many news operators continue to be free.

There's a reason the Herald is now behind a paywall, so at least we can clip the ticket. When we did it the industry thought we were audacious. It's beginning to look very smart.

Furthermore, TVNZ in particular has made a foray into the digital world with TVNZ+. But it's free to air and the ad inventory is so low it's better to watch it online with time shifting, thereby missing out on the ads that pay for the whole shebang.

The model is broken not because of politics or bias but because of fear.

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I vividly remember the first time I saw Christchurch Cathedral.

I was 10 so it was 1973. I was on tour with the Auckland Boys Choir.

It was winter and it was twilight and we went into the Square, which was bustling with cars and buses and Victorian buildings and a marvellous magic shop. People wore overcoats and scarves and there was the cathedral.

It as like being transported to England.

We went in to listen to the cathedral's boys choir performing Evensong and my choirmaster said they were the best in the land. And they were.

I say this after the news that the restoration may be put on hold due to the escalating cost.

I can't comprehend stopping something halfway through. It's too late to go back. Forward is the only way to go.

To paraphrase the Prime Minister - we have passed through the decision gate and in passing that gate there can only be commitment to finishing the job, even if it seems to be escalating out of control.

It's called aspiration. It's called determination. Perhaps this is the lack of ambition that our Prime Minister accuses us of.

Opponents say tear it down, because in 100 years who will know the difference? But using that logic, why do anything outstanding?

I'm reminded of the Notre Dame in Paris which will open to the public in December - 5 years and 7 months after being gutted by fire.

They have harvested an entire oak forest for the timber and raised 2 billion dollars through donations.

French billionaires are scrambling over each other to fund the thing so that their name lives on through generations.

The cathedral is 160 years old this year. Notre Dame is 860 years old. But they're worth the same to their cities.

Marking stones to the start of great cities. And in 100 years, who'll care how much it cost?

Sometimes it seems that New Zealand knows the price of everything but the value of nothing.

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I was not going to talk about dolphin-gate- but from first thing this morning, everyone was talking about it.

Sir Russell Coutts has had an epic meltdown over the cancellation of Saturday racing of his SailGP series.

He had to refund the spectator's tickets, which meant at least a third of his income went up in smoke.

Now he's belittling all New Zealand for their bureaucratic torpor that stops go-getters like him getting their way.

I would have raced. And if a foiling boat traveling at 80 kilometres an hour ran over a calving dolphin, turning it into sashimi, I could then say we learnt our lesson- and please pass the rice and the wasabi.

But I think it's important to realise how we got here.

Coutts sailed Lyttleton last year. With dolphin protocols. 1 race-day got delayed. He knew the Lyttleton problem but carried on.

This year he decided to race in Auckland. He wanted to build a stadium and hospitality on the site of a former oil and chemical storage site.

Auckland said you can't put people and food on poisoned land.

Russell said stuff you and flounced back to Lyttleton. There was no investigation of alternative Auckland sites. Or even going to Wellington.

He went back to Christchurch and signed a contract knowing all the protocols and the possibility of disruption. He knew the Lyttleton problem but carried on, hoping for the best.

When the Saturday race was delayed because of a mammal on course the telly coverage, owned by Russell, promptly played a promo praising SailGP's respect for the environment. That they were powered by nature and they look after our marine mammal buddies.

It was good press. Until the dolphin didn't move on.

Then he unleashed a spray about New Zealand holding people like him back. I don't think it's in his construction to admit he made bad choices and to assume some personal responsibility. And then he tried to make it seem like he was a victim.

I don't think this is a left versus right issue. Or a nature versus industry issue.

It was all good until Sir Russell lost some money.

So take a deep breath. Realise New Zealand loves the product. Put it on in an appropriate venue and let's move on, shall we?

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So if you've listened to me for any length of time, you'll know I respect Liam Dann very much indeed.

Liam is the Herald's Business Editor at Large. He hosts podcasts and writes stories about the business world and he's been at the NZ Herald for 21 years.

He's at pains to stress he's not an economist. He's the guy who interviews economists and then translates their technical stuff into news we can all use and we need.

He's just written a book called Barbecue Economics, which explains all this stuff for the average man and woman on the street.

He also writes a column every Sunday, and yesterday he asked the question I've been asking myself for a long time.

"Is the Government’s shock about this 'worse than expected' economy political theatre or just ignorance?"

Last August, Nicola Willis stated the cupboard was bare, and we all knew that.

They then campaigned on fixing it all up. Killing inflation. Solving the cost of living crisis. Building the missing infrastructure. And then on top of it all, giving up on $14.5 billion worth of tax revenue by giving us a tax cut.

But some of us wondered that if the cupboard was indeed bare, was all this possible or was this exaggerated rhetoric to get votes based on some magical thinking that all will be fine in the end?

Now the Finance Minister is saying the economy is worse than expected and maybe some of the policies can't happen.

I'm not sure it is worse than expected, because the government's accounts have never been secret- thanks to the Fiscal Responsibility Act introduced in 1994 to stop nasty surprises. And people were warning National of this last year.

Liam Dann reckons: "To put it generously, it looks like National was using best-case economic scenarios to justify policy promises that were marginal at best."

The question that remains is whether National knew the promises they were making were unaffordable or whether they just don't know what's going on.

Or to put it more bluntly.

Are they stupid or were they lying? And if they were exaggerating their ability to afford their policies, did they think we'd be too stupid to realise?

We all got sick and tired of the last Government gaslighting us and making promises they can't keep. I'm not going to be happy if it happens again.

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When National formed it's new government there was a snappy little phrase that supporters were fond of using.

Thank God the adults are back in charge.

Suggesting that the left wing Labour Government were naive, inefficient fools who had driven the country into the ground like a 12 year old in a ram raid.

National would lead a government run by grown ups who know what to do and how to do it and then actually DO it.

So when Christopher Luxon presented his State of the nation address yesterday, the expectation was that the grown ups were about to tell us how all our problems will be fixed.

What we got was a warning that times were going to get tough. What we got was a promise that our PM would not shy away from tough talk.  What we got was a lot of talk about beneficiaries. They were told the free ride was over. And then at the end an admission to reporters that the Government was yet to explain how it would address and finance the solutions to our woes.

We also got a lot of talk about how bad the last Government was and the implication that they were the root of the parlous state we find ourselves in.

That our water problems and our transport problems and our health problems and our labour problems and our housing problems and our energy problems and our weather problems and our farming problems and of course our economic problems all rest with one cohort of politicians who were in power from 2017 to 2023

It's that sort of blame game that got the Labour Government called childish. I would like to think that this government might have resisted that urge. To be the adults.

I think what many of us want is governance that is future focussed. That considers a time 30 years in the future when our population has doubled or even tripled.

That acknowledges that the mess we're in has taken many different governments and decades to create and will take many different governments to fix.

The most powerful part of Christopher Luxon's speech was the line that New Zealand is fragile.

We are. At a very fundamental level. And have been for a long time. And will be for a very longtime.

So the sooner the adults turn up with a real plan that we can all get behind and that will work, the better.

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So two big video interviews over the weekend.

Firstly, Tucker Carlson interviewed Vladimir Putin.

Tucker said it was because no-one but him had bothered to ask which is BS. There's always people in the media claiming they're the only people holding power to account.

My feel is that Putin knew Tucker was desperate for the scoop following his embarrassing downfall at Fox, so obliged him as a useful idiot.

But that's not to denigrate the appearance. It was great to watch and listen to Putin. Know your enemy, they say, but you can't if no-one lets you hear them.

The interview was reported 2 ways. Either Putin keen for World War 3 or Putin keen to negotiate for peace.

He alluded to both things but what I took as more chilling was his half hour history lesson on the Russian/Ukraine situation. It went back centuries.

It showed his depth of feeling. Māori would understand, having such long held historical grievance. It's a depth that means he's not pulling out or pulling back. In fact, his keenness for peace negotiation only requires USA to stop funding Ukraine. He's playing a long game. This conflict will only stop when Putin has gone which is no time soon.

So the other interview was Jack Tame's conversation with Chloe Swarbrick.

It was a shocker.

Her refusal to understand how her Palestinian chants had been received was remarkable. This after mediation by the Human Rights Commission. This after Jewish members of her electorate had spoken with her.

The left are famous opponents of hate speech, but to understand if speech is offensive you need to have the empathy to understand how the offence has been taken.

Chloe seemed unable to comprehend the fear Jewish people have of that chant. She was unable to own any blame.

The rest of the interview made me feel that the fresh and intelligent woman who entered parliament has been replaced by a hard line radical informed only by her own echo chamber.

The Greens are in deep trouble. The Ghahraman resignation and forthcoming trial. James Shaw, the one calming influence, the man billed as a relationship builder, gone. The prospect of Davidson and Swarbrick ruling a radical socialist party.

The damage is already evident in the polls this weekend with the Greens dropping 4.8 per cent to sit at 9 per cent.

They're fast becoming unelectable. A socialist party that pays lip service to the environment and has forgotten about why they came into being in the first place.

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So there was a little bit of excitement yesterday as Jack Tame caught the National Party spreading misinformation on Q+A.

Chris Bishop was talking about dropping smokefree legislation and made the claim that there would only be one outlet in all of Northland.

Tame had done his research and said there was more likely going to be 35, which resulted in a classic caught out face from Chis Bishop, who stuck to his line and said he understood there was only going to be 1.

Unfortunately, Jack never asked him where that understanding came from. It came from the Prime Minister, who made the same claim earlier in the week. It was not questioned then, but there was more than enough time for the media to research it and wait for someone to use it again publicly. Which Bishop did and walked into a "gotcha" trap.

Now you've got opponents of the Government jumping up and down going on about the lying Government. Which is a wild over-exaggeration. The factoid was not crucial to their argument about black market trade and gang involvement in tobacco.

Mr Luxon did the right thing and came out and said his team made a mistake. He has urged them to fact check more before they give his Government talking points.

But it's still a thing- and a lesson not to be loose with facts.

As the Prime Minister noted last week about the Pubic Interest Journalism Fund - he stopped short of calling it bribery, but said there was a perception of it. And perceptions are dangerous. But not necessarily true.

The Prime Minister has already been caught out amplifying incorrect statistics through the campaign, so there is a perception that making up statistics is their modus operandi.

As the numbers of outlets was clearly and easily available, a perception could be made that policy is being formulated without sufficient research.

Chris Bishop used to be a tobacco industry lobbyist. Now caught using misleading statistics to support continued sales of tobacco there could be a perceptions of favour for former employers- which is a bad look.

The Prime Minister could be perceived to be in thrall of the Dairy Owners Association who have argued against prohibition, because it would wreck dairy profitability.

The Labour Government found out that perceptions stick. Considering this new Government is only a week old, they might want to learn that lesson fast.

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Congratulations to the new coalition Government, which was sworn in today by Governor General Dame Cindy Kiro.

And as our new Prime Minister says- they're ready to get stuck in.

But things are already getting better. Some say it's just because of the vibe. But don't discount plain good luck and timing.

The so-called hermit kingdom is over. As we heard a week ago, nearly a quarter of a million people chose to emigrate to New Zealand in the past year.

Today we learn tourism is up- and spending in the year to September hit $30 billion dollars.

That's up $6.6 billion on the previous year - and pretty much back to pre-Covid levels.

This while the international spend is still recovering.

As Nicola Willis finally gets her warrant to fool with the economy, the economy appears to be turning a corner.

In today's paper is a report that economists believe the Reserve Bank will not be raising interest rates anytime soon. It also reports that markets are predicting a rate cut as early as May and as many as 3 cuts through 2024. Which is great news for first-home buyers.

With all this good news, there's still one thing that bugs me about this Government and that's the disconnect that you feel when a tax cut has to be funded by a tax rise.

You'll remember that was the problem I had during the election where the tax cut for the squeezed middle was funded by a wealth tax on rich foreigners buying houses. For a Government averse to taxes, it seemed off brand.

The new version came up after the Government's surprise axing of the smokefree programme, and I say surprise because no one can find mention of it in any pre-election manifesto but axed it has been on New Zealand First and ACT's insistence.

Yesterday on Newshub Nation, Nicola Willis said extra revenue from more widespread cigarette sales would help fund tax cuts in lieu of the now-scrapped foreign buyers tax.

This was a loose thing to say prompting accusations that long-term public health had been sacrificed for a short-term cash-grab.

Which is a bad way to start a term.

It's not rocket science. If you cut a tax you cut expenditure. You don't tax a fall guy to make it work. That's inequitable.

Jack Tame asked Nicola Willis if she accepted more people would die because of cancelling the #Smokefree policy.

Willis says- "I have not seen advice or analysis of that so I am not prepared to answer that question".

FFS, this is what we can expect in the next three years.

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So, still no Government.

It's not a biggie. Remember, they only started talking after the specials were counted so it's only been a fortnight. But then again, why did they only start talking after the specials were counted? But still not a biggie. 

Meanwhile, all those getting stuck into Winston are not using their knowledge of history or politics. 

He doesn't have to be in Government. He can say no easily and then bring the Government down whenever he wants. Yes, he's the tail and National's the dog but the dog needs Winston's tail far more than Winston needs the dog. 

And when it comes to the difficulties of the negotiation, many seem to forget that Winston is an old-fashioned anti-globalist who hates immigration and the stress it puts on our infrastructure. 

They seem not to remember that it was Winston's idea to slap a foreign buyers ban in our property market. And he was part of the team that did in 2017. 

But letting foreign buyers back in is at the centre of National's tax plan. 

So they're asking New Zealand First to do an absolute U-turn in terms of policy and principles. That's a big ask. It was always going to be. It was evident weeks before the election. And Luxon has already hinted that the foreign buyers ban may stay. That's a big U-turn too. 

If there's something to criticise National for, it's dropping their 2 ticks blue campaign and letting Winston in. They have much in common but the differences are big stones in the path of coalition. 

Meanwhile, while the cat's away Wayne Brown comes out to play. National's policy of dropping the Auckland fuel tax is leading the mayor to ways to raise money to build the roads. All of a sudden congestion tax is on the fast track. 

It's proof that there is no such thing as a free tax cut. National wants to drop the tax to give Aucklanders more money in the back pocket, but as Wayne Brown points out that comes at the expense of roads. So what do you want more? Roads or tax cuts. Tax cuts or congestion taxes. 

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This is my first ZB shift since the election brought in our new Government-to-be.

And I must say it’s been the most fantastic fortnight, until we lost the Rugby World Cup final due to first half sloppiness and a trigger-happy TMO.

But we had our chances. We can’t complain. You have to play to the rules.

But really, it’s been 2 weeks of calm and confidence and a feeling of recovery and renewal after the election

Business Confidence went from a number in the 20s to a number in the 50s overnight.

Inflation came in in the 5s, despite most expectations being half a percent higher.

Credit agencies said we’re in ok shape and didn’t make our borrowing more expensive.

New Zealand came in 4th in a global tax competitiveness survey.

The real estate section in the paper suddenly doubled in size. Real estate agents starting calling telling me to invest now, because the property market is about to explode.

I even felt that crime has stopped. Just like that. Until I checked and saw there has been a ram raid. In Waihi Beach at 3.40am. 4 perps captured by police. Suddenly the cops are tough on crime.

And suddenly I realised what had changed- nothing.

What was different was no chorus of wet and whingy commentators and politicians telling anyone who was listening that this country was wrecked.

You know the mantra:

“The second to last economy in the world. Heading towards Venezuela. A crime rate to rival the most lawless areas of the world. The last bastion of communist dictatorship in the western world. Our children’s children’s children will be paying for this Government’s 6 years in charge”

It is such a relief not to hear the doomsayers yelling with their megaphones into a dark and depressing echo chamber, every day. Trying to convince us that only they know the answers and New Zealanders wouldn’t know success if it slapped us in the face and said congratulations.

I’ve always said that the country was not doing nearly as well as Labour thought it was, but it’s also not nearly as bad as National would like to have you believe.

We’ve been talked out of our mojo.

It reminds you to always be wary of politicians and their slogans. They don’t seek a legacy. Just your vote so they’ve got a job for 3 years.

So enjoy the respite from criticism of this country, because it won’t last. As soon as the specials are counted we’ll back to the race to the bottom.

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So the political party that didn’t know what it stood for anymore and offered no real future lost the election to the party that offered tax cuts that are affordable only by increasing taxes on the wealthy and then claim that we’re back on track. 

I’d argue that New Zealand is confused. 

How else can you explain a nation that just 3 years ago so gratefully gave a red tide to Labour and now switches to a blue tsunami after a thousand days? 

I think the theme of the election is more that it was time for a change than getting back on track.   

It’s been an horrific four years of pandemics, cyclones, floods, fires. On top of that some ineptitude as Labour gave us slogans rather than policies. Exactly what they criticise National for. 

It was decades worth of angst in just six years so we changed the one thing we could. 

So National get their turn. 

But the wholesale switcheroos we’ve seen in the past two elections are not a good thing for the country. 

When Labour took an outright majority in 2020 we lost some of our best National MPs. The retirement of senior MPs like Joyce and English took the wise rudders. 

Now the same thing has happened to Labour. 

The upshot is a parliament full of newbies on both sides with no real depth of experience and knowledge in governance. 

And governance is not like regular business. If you don’t believe me read Stephen Joyce’s book about his experiences as a newly minted Transport Minister.   

Yes Minister is a documentary not a comedy. 

Such dramatic flip flops smacks of a lack of core belief and that a lot of us will vote for whoever offers us the most moolah in the back pocket. 

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Well, here we are. Finally in the last week of an election campaign between the most incompetent cohort of politicians seen in a long time and wouldn't you know it, an international geo-political crisis just to accentuate that statement.

Obviously, Nanaia Mahuta sympathises with Palestinians. She feels they've been colonised the same way Maori were. That doesn't make her an anti-Semite.

BUT- you must condemn a surprise raid on civilians that killed thousands.

She didn't, while the rest of the world did. So it was left to Chris Hipkins to do the right thing.

Isn't that just like Labour. The few competent people trying to tidy up after the incompetent after yet another cock up.

So why do I think this is the most incompetent cohort of politicians? They all blow in the breeze and will say anything to get the job.

It started when Hipkins got the big job and started the bonfire of the policies, leaving me to ask whether he stood for anything at all.

Since then, he's announced more and more spending despite advice to tai hoa and pay down debt

It continued when National announced that to afford tax cuts for landlords and the middle class, they had to impose a wealth tax on rich foreigners. What a mixed up ideology.

Christopher Luxon announced he could work with Winston Peters just two weeks ago, but now he's taking out full page ads telling voters not to vote for Winston. This is a mess entirely of the leaders' own making.

Meanwhile, Winston tells the world in a debate that he doesn't support GST-free fruit and veg even though it's there on his party's website. 15 minutes later it isn't.  

As Ben Thomas said: "Imagine being in Winston's team and having to concoct and then delete whole policies in real time as he is thundering on live tv."

And now we've got National suggesting we may need a second election and Hipkins agreeing he'd rather have a second election than break his promise about not working with NZ First. So why not cancel the first election and go straight to the second? That's me being facetious.

What a mess. How can I vote for any of them?

But saying that all politicians are useless - don't vote is the sort of empty thing that Russell Brand would say.

So my final word before this election is just vote for the party that matches how your gut feels.

This is a vibe election. So just do it and we'll fix it all up on Monday.

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I want to start the show with tributes to 3 people.

The first is Brooke Graham. My neighbour and friend from the Coromandel who died recently at the age of just 42 from brain cancer.  A fast death inside 9 weeks but slow enough for her to make plans for her 10 year old daughter and her husband. Hers was a death of great grace and I am immensely sad. So to Carrick and MacKenzie, here's to your amazing wife and mother.

Then there's Simon Barnett and his support of his wife, Jodi over the past 6 years in her fight against brain cancer as well. This was featured in the Weekend Herald on Saturday. Of course all of us here have on the afternoon show have known what Simon and his family have been going through. His strength, courage and love while still working this demanding job is amazing. It's good that you now know.

And finally I want to acknowledge Richie Poulton, the director of the Dunedin study who passed away yesterday at the age of 61, again of cancer.

Richie and I were at Auckland Grammar together. In the same cohort were people like Martin Crowe and Grant Fox and business people Ian Narev and Simon Herbert. But Richie is the best of all of us. At school he was smart and sporty.  I knew him as a nice bloke and a very good cricketer. I had no idea of the greatness within him. He was featured last night on the Sunday programme. It was a heart-breaking watch.

Now, if you don't know, the Dunedin Study is a research programme that has followed the progress of 1,000 children born in Dunedin, New Zealand in 1972-73, from birth to midlife.

Over 1300 papers have been published about how your environment and upbringing influences your situation. It's world famous, as is Richie.

Last night, John Campbell asked him what the greatest finding was. Richie said poverty. He said you can't undo what happens in childhood.

In 2016 the Dunedin Study published a paper called "Childhood disadvantage strongly predicts costly adult life-course outcomes".

It found that nearly 80 percent of adult economic burden can be attributed to just 20 percent of the study members.

The researchers determined that this “high cost” group accounted for 81 percent of criminal convictions, 66 percent of welfare benefits, 78 per cent of prescription fills and 40 percent of excess obese kilograms.

Professor Poulton says that they also found that members of this group can be identified with high accuracy when as young as 3. Target these guys and you solve a lot of problems.

But as he said last night no-one has talked about poverty in this election campaign.

Labour made it their core goal over the past 6 years, and yet all they've done is throw money at all beneficiaries. And National doesn't utter the p word at all. It was- cut benefits and belief it can stem criminality with longer sentences.

Yet back in 2017, Bill English quoted the 2016 study and talked about social investment. If we can identify the truly vulnerable, why don't we help them, and just them. National has abandoned all that work it did 6 years ago and I have no idea why.

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What a funny old week it's been listening to the media and the Government howling for National's costings on their foreign house buyers tax and National's refusal to release them.

Personally I don't give a flying fig on the costings.

It seems perfectly obvious that National will not raise the money it says it will because that would take a record level of overseas sales.

And National doesn't care. The overseas buyers tax is a sideshow. They are committed to tax cuts. That's their thing. That's non negotiable. They will happen.

So if they can't subsidise the cuts with the new tax what could they do?  Either borrow more or cut Government spending. Cutting services will make their coalition partner happier, so what do you think will happen?

The overseas buyers tax seems like a strange one for a so called right wing neo-liberal globalist party to propose. One that says it's committed to fighting inflation.

In essence it's a wealth tax. "You can afford a $2 million dollar house. Great we'll have another $300,000 bucks in tax thanks, you rich prick." I guess it's OK to tax the wealthy if they're foreign. That $300,000 is another incentive for foreign buyers to find places without the tax because they don't like tax either, so that's another blow to National's optimistic projections.

The opening of the market is another strange call in a time of inflation. It will mean more buyers and therefore higher prices which all contribute to inflation.

If the market picks up steam because of the foreign buyers, then the wealthy with property will have more capital to borrow against to spend on their next overseas trip or car or new kitchen. Again spurring on inflation.

Houses will get more expensive freezing out first home buyers. That's headline news and more inflation.

Meanwhile, National is squirting $2 billion into consumers back pockets, will also spur inflation.

In fact, when you look at National's suite of policies, they're all stimulatory, which is not the thing you do in a high inflation environment with historically high house prices. Margaret Thatcher would be having kittens. It's no wonder some true neo-liberals call National Labour-lite.

At the end of the day, I don't know why National is so wedded to the tax cuts other than they're an easy sell to house owners.

Why couldn't they just cut the wasteful spending and delay the tax bracket changes until we're better placed to wear them?

Cut all the wasteful spending and then spend the savings on stuff we really need. Like doctors, hospitals, water pipes, roads and public transport.

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What a wild and woolly weekend on the hustings.

Christopher Luxon turns up on Q&A to talk about National's policies.

First up, he promises to close Rotorua's emergency housing motels and kick any troublesome Kainga Ora social housing tenants out.

Obviously, this is great news for law abiding Rotorua residents and New Zealanders suffering from the neighbours from hell.

But he forgot that people ask follow up questions. Like, so where do you put these people? To which he has no answer.

This is not good.  Don't take my word for it. Avowed right winger Ashley Church was on Early Edition said this went too far. The State is the landlord of last resort, blah blah blah blah.

The social housing and the motels were a bad answer to a bad problem.  Get rid of them and all you have is a badder problem getting worse. And if you think feral's behaviours are bad in a state house you wait until they live in a car. Luxon offered nothing.

Then he said their housing policies would provide downward pressure on rents. Of course, we all know he's a landlord so Tame asked the obvious question, "So will you reduce rents for your tenants in this new environment?". What followed was a stammering exercise.  Claire Trevett describes it as a rookie MP in an interview with no answers.

Here's the thing, he's auditioning for the top job in the nation. If he can't stand up to Jack Tame, what's going to happen when Xi Jinping starts asking some hard house tax questions? What's going to happen in the leader's debates?

The reason this is a concern is because Labour really does seem like the Walking Dead. Fresh from their spectacular second term implosion and the loss of cabinet Minister after Cabinet Minister. After 6 years of failed promise after failed promise. With Hipkins seeming to be low on energy and new ideas and only bursting into life slagging the opposition. With all the other Labour MPs existing in radio silence either because  they've been muted or they've got nothing to say. After all that, National should be romping home.

It should be like shooting fish in a barrel. Instead, Christopher Luxon just shoots himself in the foot. Time and time again.

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So we're off and running with an election 40-odd days away and both parties promising the world.

Labour is out of the gate with their policy of free dental care for the under 30s.

A policy they, themselves, said was unachievable just a month ago. A policy that needs more dentists, but we only train 60 a year and it takes 6 years for them to be in the workforce. Everything is against this policy and Labour knows it, which is why they won't even try to do it until 2026, and only if they get back in.

It's almost as if Labour doesn't get what's driven the electorate off them over the past 3 years. Pie in the sky word salads that are barely possible if not impossible. They were given an incredible mandate just to repair what pandemic lockdowns did to us but instead, they started chasing unicorns.

My pet peeve is the Light Rail that might bother some shop owners, so they thought- let's just stick it underground at eye-watering cost. And you want us to take you seriously.

To win, National just needs to seem capable and the first reactions to their near $15 billion in tax cuts seemed favourable. But that is waning.

On Friday, Matthew Hooten rubbished it and called it cynical. On Saturday, tax experts said it breaks tax treaties overseas. On Sunday, even Heather du Plessis-Allan was saying the foreign house buyers sales tax figures were ludicrous, and they are.

Nearly $900 million of tax cuts are dependent on foreign buyers suddenly buying half of all the $2 million dollar plus houses available. It's starting to have that "made up a month ago and costed on the back of an envelope" feel.

Meanwhile, a question they've never answered is whether spraying nearly $15 billion into the money market will be inflationary. So tax cuts are inflationary because they increase the money supply the same way money printing and borrowing does. They need to be timed very carefully.

The only way they would not be inflationary is if you reduce Government spending by the amount you're giving back in tax cuts so that spending is net zero. But they're not doing that, which is why they've invented the foreign buyer tax and casino tax.

And the other problem is productivity. We're running at nearly full capacity. Look at our participation rates and particularly the food price index. There's no room for job growth to drive prices lower. Meanwhile, giving the people more money means you give the people the ability to afford higher tomato prices and inflation carries on and becomes embedded even if you do slash Government spending.

National is running on the promise of being prudent financial managers. A prudent manager would bring in the bracket changes when inflation has abated. But they're not.

To that end, National shows themselves to be just as hostage to ideology as Labour is. Just promise tax cuts. it always works.

A letter to the editor on Sunday called National and Labour Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dumber, and said give your vote to someone else. However, the other parties seem like Tweedle-Dumbest.

So as I've been saying all year. New Zealand deserves some smart leadership but no one is offering it.

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So last week we lost Sir Michael Parkinson, the great interviewer. His son interviewed in the weekend saying his father was proud of his working-class roots but hated politics. While he hated politics but loved policy. He thought most of politics was just an act, but policies are actions. 

I thought about that watching the corny play that was acted out over the weekend. Hipkins ruled out Peters even though Peters had ruled out Hipkins ages ago. Then Dunne says great politics and that it snookers Luxon, but Luxon comes back and says he's not thinking about Peters at all. 

Honestly. So much hot air over almost nothing. 

Then Chippy calls National, ACT, New Zealand First a coalition of cuts, chaos, and confusion. 

Virtually the same thing that Luxon has been saying all year. Could you be any more insipid? 

I said last week that I fail to comprehend what Chris Hipkins actually stands for anymore, and there's more proof. 

Then we have Paul Henry in the paper on Sunday. John Key's bestie and former National party candidate. 

He’s seen no evidence that if a new government is elected in October, things will “dramatically” change. 

He says National are paralysed with the fear of dramatically committing themselves to anything and that Luxon is too obsessed with not screwing things up, and not screwing things up is not success. 

And he's right. National's policy planks seem to be just removing anything Labour has done and throwing tax cuts at the cost of living which is like using gasoline to put out a fire. 

There's a lack of a vision thing in our major parties, and when they do have a vision then they fail to realise it. 

The National Party's policy on cancer drug funding last week was the closest to vision we've had from them in years, but they didn't sell it very well. 

It's a return to Bill English's social investment philosophy. Using the Community Card to target help those who really need it rather than splashing cash around universally on prescriptions for everyone including the rich. 

At the moment all the politicians in all the parties seem either misguided, . 

It's time the politicians figure out what they stand for. Stop complaining that New Zealand's lost its mojo and ambition and get some yourself. 

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So the World Cup has finished it' stellar month downunder with a victory for Spain.

Who, I hope, took the time to thank Palmerston North for the city's contribution towards their success.  After all one would presume that if the team was so bored with the Palmie nightlife then they'd be getting good sleep and spending plenty of time practicing and improving their game during the day.

And that is the magic of this World Cup. That New Zealand was so significantly and visibly involved.

We hosted half the draw in a tournament whose ratings far exceeded anything we've hosted before. Bigger than a Rugby World Cup, bigger than the America's Cup, bigger than a Commonwealth Games. 2 billion pairs of eyes watched us. Despite what negative columnists wrote about our domestic problems being visible to the world I can assure you that was not the case. We looked great. And if a fraction of those people decide to visit us in the future that's a win.

The monetary benefit is still to be calculated but it's fair to say the whole thing was an unqualified success and we owe it to public servants from the council and the government who oiled the wheels in the first place.

Some of the workers at Tataki Auckland Unlimited had been working for 15 years to convince FIFA that we were up to the task. They had to battle against super powers like England and Germany who were against us co-hosting. But they got there.

But those are the people who are currently under threat. Wayne Brown wants his civil service to return to rubbish bins and water and no more. 200 jobs are going at Tataki Auckland Unlimited. It's the sort of short sighted populist policy that is alarming Auckland businesses who understand that nothing happens without incentives, which they told the Mayor back in May.

It's why Coldplay is playing Perth and Taylor Swift is playing Sydney and Melbourne but neither are playing New Zealand. The cities and the country cut them a deal.

ACT's David Seymour is waging the same fatwa against public servants which he continued this morning. Now while I have no problem with KPI targets I do have a problem with his belief that this country can survive his drastic cuts to the public workforce.  

A few months ago Mr Seymour said he could cut $1 billion out of the public sector in a week. He went further reckoning he could cut $38 billion out of the annual bill. He particularly dislikes event incentives and sweetheart deals for things like films and Research and Development, calling them corporate welfare. He wants to eviscerate Stephen Joyce's innovation, MBIE.  

He believes business initiatives should stand on their own feet. But he ignores the fact that without public money some of things wouldn't even be able to crawl.

The sort of cost cutting Mr Seymour is suggesting would also provoke an enormous austerity and impact the whole economy. Public servants buy goods and services from the private sector. But they don't if they're unemployed.

But it's a popular policy. He's exploiting an embedded dislike of public servants that has been stoked along by small government capitalists for decades now. The belief that all public servants are bad wastes of money and stuff would happen without them.

Stuff would happen but not at the scale we've enjoyed lately. After all what business is prepared to throw 15 years of effort and incentive at an event that might not even happen?

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So Chris Hipkins’ big roll of the dice has happened. Two months out from the election. 61 days if you're counting

GST comes off fruit and veg, Working For Families gets even more money and higher thresholds. It's a 2 billion dollar giveaway for poor vegetarians and breeders. The rest of the poor are left out.

And this is it. The economic situation, both local and global, preclude any more big spend ups. We've heard Grant Robertson say that. But we've also heard Grant Robertson say many other things only to be guzumped by political expediency, so who knows?

So will this do the trick?

I don't think so. Nicola Willis got the GST debate out early stealing its power. Meanwhile, the increase in In Work Tax Credits and Working For Families cash is being largely ignored as it benefits only 160,000 families. Still a big number but not big enough. There's a lot of other poor people getting nothing

And it's very hard to vote for Labour in 2023 after their six years in power, for two main reasons.

I'm reading a book by Dylan Jones, the former GQ editor. It's all about the Nineties. Cool Britannia, Britpop, Young British Artists and politics. New Labour. Tony Blair and the Third Way.

In it he talks to a former advisor to Gordon Brown who pointed out that New Labour became more obsessed with the presentation of an idea than the idea itself. The catchy phrase. The snappy nonsensical slogan. It killed them.

The same malaise has befallen New Zealand's Labour since they came to power. 100,000 Kiwibuild houses.

Light rail by 2021 was incredible. They seemed to have no idea how long it takes to build a piece of kit like that. Or The Road to Zero, which fails because unless you hit zero, which we won't, then the policy fails. It's in the name.

This is not to say this government has achieved nothing at all, which is a common complaint. They have achieved a lot but even they seem unaware of exactly what it was.

And secondly, the problem with Tony Blair became that nobody knew who he was, or where he came from, or what he stood for. Unlike his predecessor John Smith, a campaigner for the working class, Tony was just a kinder Thatcher or a more interesting John Major. But at the end of the day, you just didn't know what he was about. Other than lying about Weapons of Mass Destruction on behalf of the Americans

And that's what's happened to Chris Hipkins. He's rolled back so many policies he has nothing left except a desperate desire to keep the right form having a crack, and that's not enough. What does he stand for other than sausage rolls and Barkers suits?

But you can have the same criticism of Chris Luxon and the right, who are running on a campaign of repealing everything Labour has done and then giving you an inflationary tax cut.

One of the slogans in play this election is Let's Take Our Country back.

It's slightly depressing that six years after being promised a transformative government we've ended out with all our politicians promising a return to the policy settings of seven years ago. As if nothing has changed in the world in nearly a decade.

When we ask whether New Zealand has lost its mojo and its ambition, should we really be starting with our politicians who seem to be content competing in a lightweight personality poll?

And mistrust of the cynicism of politicians who will say anything to get a vote is at its peak. With our leading party polling just 34% right now you have to ask if they will really have any mandate at all come October.

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Infrastructure is hogging the headlines as Labour and National push separate priorities.

Unfortunately both priorities are pressing. But this is the New Zealand way. We ration our spending which invariably means everything costs more and happens too late.

But there is a much criticised piece of infrastructure that is currently working very well.

I'm talking about Eden Park which is taking a starring turn at the Women's World Cup.

The weekend game of Spain versus Switzerland saw a new record for a football match in New Zealand. 43,217 spectators for a game that featured no New Zealanders. It's the third time the record has been set in the tournament as the audience enjoys the experience enough to go multiple times.

Now where I live has been the base for a number of travelling supporters of teams and I have taken the time to have a chat to them about their experience.

The love the stadium. They say it's quirky and has character and they are aware of the venue's history. They're a little surprised at the the lack of rooves but that is also a part of its charm.

They've been impressed how quickly the stadium empties and how easy it was to train back to the city.

Back in the city they've loved our restaurants. One couple I talked to from New York couldn't believe the quality of their meals and their prices compared to restaurants back home.

A family from Arkansas raved to me about the Commercial Bay food hall, saying how quick and cheap and good the meals were for a family.

They've also used the fan zone a lot, which is right beside the construction site where 2 people were shot dead at the start of the tournament. When I asked them if they had seen anything scary they said no.

In fact, everyone commented on how nice New Zealanders are and how many people had gone out of their way to help and talk to them.

It's worth remembering that the USA team alone brought 15,000 supporters with them, and so far I've yet to find a supporter who will not go home and rave about our country. Meanwhile their boost to the local economy has been very welcome.

All this stands in direct contrast to many New Zealanders who believe that we've lost our mojo and our ambition and we are becoming the laughing stock of the world.

We're halfway through and the Women's World Cup is proving to be an outstanding success on a global scale. Well done. Let's bid for the men's event, shall we?

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The media seems to be writing to a theme and the theme is "Rats leaving the sinking ship".

Over the past few weeks there have been a string of stories about high profile and high net wealth New Zealanders leaving New Zealand because the place has apparently lost its vibe and energy. It's election year and a tactic to get rid of the Government is to prove that the country has gone to wrack and ruin

I hate the tactic. It's like we had to burn the village to save it.

Marc Ellis kicked it off. He made his fortune in professional sport, the media and the orange juice business. He's semi retired. He's relocating to Puglia in Italy where the property prices are cheap as chips, unlike New Zealand.

He's right on that. Puglia is the heel of the boot of Italy. Its main industry is olive oil, that has seen technology strip the work force so there are empty houses galore in an area with loads of beaches. He's a rich man going to live in a poor place

Also remember that Italy's tax rates are higher. Its GDP growth is slower. Central Government debt is 4 times higher per capita and the mafia still pull the strings.

But despite all that he still thinks it's better than New Zealand

I found the whole thing a bit disingenuous. He's got an Italian wife and Italian kids and they want to spend some time learning the language and seeing her family. It makes sense that they'd want to go home. But I don't see why he had to kick the country that made his fame and fortune as he went out the door.

Ben Cook the property developer made the same headlines. He' selling up his 100 million dollar property portfolio and moving to Australia, prompting headlines suggesting New Zealand is rubbish. But Ben Cook said he just likes Sydney now his kids are grown up and he still loves New Zealand and that it's the best place for lifestyle and the outdoors.

I think it's great for the country that Ben Cook is selling up. It gives a new generation a chance at the assets and to move forward. People who have had success in New Zealand are keen to have a crack at bigger markets. That's what made them rich in the first place

And finally there's Tamzyn Adding who's taking her design business to Brisbane. But her reasons were different. She doesn't blame the government. She blames business people. She reckons she's landed more work in Brisbane in 5 weeks than she got in 5 years in New Zealand because the business people have a better attitude.

She calls New Zealand an old boys club where no-one wants to try something new. She's sick of business people constantly bagging the country and creating a toxic environment.

And there's the nub of it. We've gone to sleep and prefer moaning about it rather than doing something about it. The Koru Club is one big depression party with everyone moaning about how bad we are and making empty threats to leave the country if Labour gets back in again.

We're not nearly as bad as so many make us out to be, but then again we're not nearly as good as Labour pretends we are. But let's all be a little positive.

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Well didn't Kiri Allan throw the cat amongst the pigeons last night.

Driving along Evans Bay parade, the windy road on the East side of the bay that is used as a route out of Wellington, the Justice Minister hit a car. The cops turned up.  It turns out she's been drinking.  She refuses to accompany a police officer so she's hauled off to the police station to sit on a naughty chair until the early hours of the morning.

She's the Justice Minister. She's been detained by the police. The Number 1 thing not to do in that job.

She had returned a breath test over the legal limit but at a level considered an infringement offence and police will not press charges in relation to that.

She was described as being very distressed

So she quits her ministries and then the Prime Minister starts blaming her mental health. Just a few days after assuring us that her mental health was good enough to continue in her job.

None of this is good.  None of this shows an ability to deal with stress and responsibility.  All of this smacks of a government just holding on by the skin of it's teeth.

And the whole year has been like this. An inability to handle the basics.  All Michael Wood had to do was employ an accountant to sort out his affairs.  All Stewart Nash had to do was not email cabinet deliberations.  All Kiri had to do was call an Uber.

Simple mistakes by supposedly smart people.

And now we have 5 more parliamentary weeks left and the Labour Party has created a rod for it's own back.  3 years ago they had the most decisive parliamentary win in MMP history. 65 MPs on the government benches and yet the big jobs have been shared amongst a small coterie of politicians. There's been no future planning, there's been no blooding of new talent.

We need a new Justice Minister. we need a new conservation minister, we need a new emergency management Minister in a time when emergencies seem to be coming at us left, right and centre. Who will Hipkins turn to?

And while he doesn't need to should he call an snap election?  I mean, things are not going to get any better for this Labour Government. The opposition parties will get their guns in a row and the next 3 months will be a horror show

You can almost hear an echo of the time when Muldoon called a snap election when half cut.  When challenged that it didn't give his party time to prepare, Muldoon replied it didn't give his opponents time to prepare either.

Whatever happens Chris Hipkins is a lame turkey right now, waiting for Christmas

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So, welcome back after the Matariki holiday weekend.

Yesterday our media was full of stories of New Zealanders celebrating Matariki in all sorts of ways. Whether it was kite flying, or welcoming the dawn and trying to spot 9 dim stars as they pop over the horizon, or music festivals, or —in the case of the visiting US Womens Football team here for the World Cup— wishing everyone a happy Matariki and reminding you to remember all those in your family who have passed on.

It was all a bit rah rah, but then again it's only the second time the holiday has been marked, so it's still new and we're figuring out what the holiday means

Which gets up a lot of people's nose. They accuse the media of being complicit in a Government scheme to force an unwanted and unneeded holiday on New Zealanders. Social media was full of people claiming that Matariki is a made up holiday.

Well, if you want a made up holiday, try King's Birthday Weekend which celebrates the birthday of a man who doesn't live in this country and even more bizarrely, it's not even his birthday.

Many claimed the real New Year always starts on January the first so what's this holiday all about?

Ignoring the fact that the financial New Year starts on April 1^st, and New Years around the world have different dates like Diwali, the Jewish New Year starts in September, and the Chinese New Year in February.

Labour Weekend celebrates unionism and the 40 day working week, yet many capitalists opposed to unionism gladly take the day off and head to their bach for a kip.

The real argument against Matariki is that it pushes us into a territory of too many statutory holidays, which is bad for productivity. But then again, the beach I was staying at had all their stores open. They were doing a great trade, and were thankful for the holiday and some much needed cashflow.

But I didn't see that sentiment echoed by too many others. Most of the complainants about Matariki just don't like Maori stuff, but whatever you do don't call them racists because they hate that too. But they'll have to get over themselves because the holiday is not going away. That's what Christopher Luxon promised last year.

I liked Matariki. I liked the positive attitude of many. I liked the sentiment of remembering your ancestors that goes with it. It comes at the right time of the year because winter is a long slog of full weeks and bad weather.

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Well the culture wars and cancel culture just grows and grows and grows.

All Black captain Sam Cane was criticised by some, including himself, when he tripped a pitch invader after the All Black game in Agentina.

The invader was one of about 15 that took to the pitch, generally making a nuisance of themselves. The invader ran past Sam who swung a foot and tripped the invader, who then scampered off while security staff ambled along in his wake.

Promptly the All Black captain apologised in front of the media, All Black management sought the invader out and apologised and members of New Zealand media including Andrew Gourdie from Newshub castigated the captain for actions.

And yet a poll soon after showed that nearly 80% of New Zealanders had no problem with Sam's actions at all.

So why did Sam do his mea culpa?

Fear of a backlash from the minority who thought his actions were unworthy of an All Black captain. Fear of a media firestorm.

Because that's the way the world operates today.

There's always someone offended somewhere and these days if they announce their offence it gets publicity. Yes from the mainstream media, but then that's always happened. The difference these days is the citizen channels. The whole world is a media outlet with the invention of social media and these controversies can lose all sense of perspective rapidly.

Another culture war swept a small but vocal part of New Zealand this weekend.

A Spark social media editor supported a Threads post that hoped that anti-transgender comments would be banned from the social media network.

The social media editor is herself lesbian and married with a wife, and Spark supported her taking the stance through their official channels.

This got up the nose of some who believe that trans-activism is preventing free speech by women. Let Women Speak is the name of their campaign.

It's all a bit over the top to be fair

But they've started a campaign to get clients of Spark to leave the telecommunication company. Cancel culture.

Which used to be the weapon of choice of the left and liberals, remember Lauren Southern and Phil Goff. And conservatives and right wingers would moan about cancel culture and the death of free speech.

But now Conservatives and the right seem to have adopted the exact same tactic.  

The most extreme example has been the Budweiser go woke got broke boycott over a transgender marketing campaign which has seen the stock lose billions and Bud Light selling for less than water in many states. Which is killing the jobs of many innocent employees and investors who want nothing to do with this culture war.

It appears to me that too many on the more extreme sides of our political spectrum have lost the plot when it comes to expressing their ideology and the politics of division is rife in both the left and right.  Both sides are determined not just to argue with their opponents but to silence them and it feels like free speech is now under attack more than ever before.

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There's an old political wisdom that if you've got bad news to tell, drop the news last thing on Friday so it gets buried by the weekend.

So I was a bit confused to be watching One News on Friday with John Campbell oozing and gesticulating all over the screen, telling a story that on the surface seemed to be good news.

1News exclusively revealed that nearly 40,000 charges have been laid with over 8,300 people arrested to date as part of Operation Cobalt, their operation against gang activities.

The operation was originally set up after an intensive spate of Killer Beez and Tribesmen-linked shootings in Auckland last year.

Police said the arrests include patched gang members, gang prospects, and gang associates.

Over 400 firearms have been seized and more than 1,100 search warrants executed. By any metric this is a significant blow against organised crime.

Now the cynic in me immediately thought the Labour Party has leaked this before the National Party conference, which we could all tell was going to be hard on crime and law and order.

But closer inspection saw the release came from the Police and the tone was defiant.

Detective Superintendent Uraia Vakaruru, the officer in charge of the operation, told 1News that seizing prized possessions —for example, a gang member's motorbike— tends to really send a strong message. He said police are just focusing on the business at hand.

I get their pride in their work and I've been worried about police morale for a while.

With opposition parties and editorial writers bellowing away that the government is soft on crime, day in and day out for weeks, every sector of our justice system gets tarred with the brush.

After the gang funeral a week ago the police were also criticised for their inaction by people with no operational experience at all.

But these figures and the nine arrests made in the week after the tangi says to me that the police are fighting crime smart rather than stupid. The police have to play by the rules and they have to make arrests stick into corrections.

Letting the perception that the police are soft on crime run rampant in the media sends a bigger signal to criminals than anything else. The fact that National and ACT beat this drum to beat Labour in an electoral contest is regrettable.

I'd like to take this opportunity to praise the police and thank them for their work.

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The first thing I thought when I heard of the new surgical wait list criteria policy which includes ethnicity is that Labour wants to lose this election.

If their strategists didn't immediately see the risks in this policy then what are they doing in the job.

After an autumn full of racially tinged politics where it is obvious that that National and Labour are more than willing to hoe into any policy favouring Maori and Pacific Islanders, this should have been placed in the "not now, not ever" pile.

And I say not ever because this is fundamentally bad policy.

It asks doctors to award care based on race and not need which is against the fundamental tenet of providing care to everyone with no fear of favour.

From the Hippocratic Oath through to the Geneva Convention doctors are taught to treat people humanely, without any adverse distinction founded on race, colour, religion or faith, sex, birth or wealth, or any other similar criteria.

But not in New Zealand. If the doctors are moaning about it then you know it's not kosher.

It has whole layers of racism. In the waiting list acquired by Newstalk ZB the person at the end of the list had been waiting the longest. And he was a Middle Eastern migrant. So now we all know who's at the bottom of the race rankings.

But while some dimwit might have thought they were doing good they obviously don't understand healthcare and inequity.

The inequity does not occur in the hospital but in the home. The negative outcomes for certain races stem from poverty, bad housing, fear of doctors and the state, bad diet, bad exercise, and smoking and drinking.

Surgery is the end of the healthcare process. It literally is the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff and not the fence at the top. By the stage you're needing to be operated on your condition has gone beyond your income or the colour of your skin.

Any competent politician should have seen how mad the policy is and the fact that it was sliding towards nationwide policy throws doubt on the competency of this government which has already been called into question countless times.

I'm just so amazed that they have blundered into this giant bear trap.

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It must be election year because the signature polices are coming out to play.

The latest is the Greens wishlist policy of more taxes on more stuff and income owned by well off people.

Which, in my opinion, is barely worth the paper it's written on.

Three reasons: first of all, as James Shaw told Mike this morning it's not a bottom line policy for coalition formation. And Labour is not politically stupid, well. They might be, but they’re not that stupid, and they know this will not aid them forming a government.

I mean, this thing isn’t happening. This is virtue signalling; this is them saying “this is what we would do if we could, but we can’t, so we probably won’t.”

Secondly the policy is a radical and revolutionary change to the very foundations of New Zealand’s economy and people's economic planning. And New Zealand is no longer a place where revolutions happen. We're cautious and afraid of change and like turkeys we don't vote for Christmas. So why should any ambitious generation vote against a system that has benefited many generations before them.

Who’s going to take the hit? Newbies? No one.

And thirdly, the tax changes as proposed are not confined to the very rich. The impact will be felt for those earning $125,000+. And in case the Greens have not hung around normal people lately, $125,000 is not the rich. $125,000, well, it’s pretty good, but you are not the rich with that. You are part of the squeezed middle, already balancing our high cost of living with trying to build a future for your family.

They may approve of more taxes in principle there's no way they'd vote for them.

But like clockwork the rich have come out caterwauling about the policy like whimpering snowflakes. The politics of envy, the rich will pay for everything, government is the enemy of ambition, poor us.

Which I find distasteful and reeking of their privilege they don't seem to recognise they have.

It comes from a generation with free tertiary education who have never been burdened by educational debt, people who grew up with free healthcare. Unlike most countries in the world they've never had a capital gains tax, they've never paid death taxes, or stamp duty. Or significant numbers of tolls or levies.

Tell any investor overseas that our landlords could write their investment property loan interest rates off and they're gob smacked. No wonder the young can't get on the property market while the rich get richer. Our tax rates have always been low. We've never had the extraordinarily high top tax rates that caused rock stars to relocate to Monaco.

New Zealand is a good and cheap place to be rich and a tough place to be lower middle class and lower.

New Zealand's economic settings were made back in the day when we all paid near enough the same, and we all had ambitions for a bach and maybe an investment property to retire on. And there's no way we're turning our back on that no matter how many other New Zealanders it affects.

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So I come to you fresh from 12 days holiday in Japan.

For those of you who are keen but the language difficulties keep you from going, I've got 2 words for you.

Google Translate. The free app that translates anything written in most languages. It's the key to unlocking a different culture.

Japan is the home of high performing public transport. The government decided to put all its effort into trains and subways, letting private enterprise build the motorways.  As a result the roads are tolled and expensive.  While the trains are plentiful and cheap and so on time. No one is ever late for work.

Meanwhile bicycles and cycle lanes are everywhere because the costs associated with cars are prohibitive. Watching mums cycling around with 2 kids on their mama chariot bikes was eye-opening.

It was my first big trip overseas since 2015 and Japan had only just lifted Covid vaccination controls the week beforehand. I was bracing myself for all the people calling New Zealand a laughing stock because of our overreaction to Covid because that's what so many people had told me they were saying on my talkback sessions.

I met a lot of French and Americans.  We weren't a laughing stock. They called New Zealand mature and wise unlike their own childish and tribal politicians.

Which made me laugh as I read about Megan Woods advising New Zealanders to take shorter showers in wake of the cost of living crisis.

The return of nanny state politics which ran Helen Clark out of office back in the day. You would have thought that the first thing Labour politicians learn is not to talk about New Zealander’s showers.

Then little Simeon Brown who believes that New Zealanders are so dumb we can't handle 2 languages on a road sign. For your information Simeon, Japanese road signs are written in both English and Japanese. And no one is confused. Be proud of your casual racism if that's what you are.

Meanwhile people are saying that Labour has nothing new after their Labour Congress apprentice policy announcement. That's true. At the moment they're just extending existing policy or postponing unpopular policy, there sure ain't anything new.

And National just u-turned on their housing policy, the one Nicola Willis, Judith Collins, and Megan Woods spent months working on. That's got to be a slap on the face for Nicola.

But frankly it was a blunt and stupid law change. Auckland in particular had already thrashed the issue out with their Unitary plan.

If National really wants to speed up housing provision perhaps they should get stuck into Resource Management Act reform. Something they've been promising for decades now.

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So why are so many mainstream media outlets so poor at telling the news?

I say this after tuning into One News coverage of the coronation only to blunder into a 5 minute piece about Harry, followed by how to cook coronation quiche.

Maybe they thought they were being entertaining, but instead they came off as infantile.

So I tuned over to BBC World. There, they were talking about the King’s involvement in the arts and they followed it with more details about the ceremony.

The story was about the King and his country, not his errant son.

In fact, Harry arrived on a commercial flight, gave no interviews, joined the rest of the family, sat with other retired or non working royals (which is what he is), and afterwards he went to the airport to go home to see his own family. No fights, no showdowns, no dramas.

Yet the Mirror alone, over the week ran 100 articles about Harry, mostly derogatory. People have described the onslaught as 'hate for hire'.

Even when Mike Hosking wrote 1000 words about the Coronation for the Herald the paper chose to highlight one sentence in which he said Harry looked alone and a little lost as the headline.

I actually thought Harry seemed relaxed and chatty, but who cares.

It's only the media that was so obsessed with Harry.

Today they've moved on to another royal cliché. The breakfast show on TV1 was covering whether it was time for New Zealand to become a republic. Too soon and too stupid in my book. I don't believe it will happen in my lifetime. Particularly after the success of this weekend.

The reason the British monarchy the most successful monarchy on Earth is that they have spent hundreds of years slowly backing out of the day-to-day affairs of state so that today they are purely performative and symbolic. No one is feeling oppressed or ruled by this family.

This story was not about the King, or his son, or the institution of the constitutional monarchy. It was about the British nation.

It's about their capability and their spirit.

In the past year the Brits have seen three historic royal events - the Diamond Jubilee, the Queen’s funeral, and now the King’s coronation.

And they’ve all been faultless triumphs of organisation, story telling and co-ordination involving thousands.

This was not live coverage of an old toff sitting in a chair in a church and having someone put a fancy hat on his head, as some critics portrayed it.

This was a nation showing the world what it can do and that it's the best in the world in doing it. It was a show of strength and order and no-one is cancelling that any time soon.

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In less than a week, King Charles the Third will be crowned, sealed and delivered.

Officially invested as the new King of the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth and our official head of state.

What a thing. In 2023.

Which has led to a number of protests and general grumbling about the anachronism of the monarchy.

Then to make things worse Charles wants us all to stand up and say this in the middle of the ceremony.

 “I swear that I will pay true allegiance to Your Majesty, and to your heirs and successors according to law. So help me God”

That’s not going down well with some saying Swear At the King rather than Swear For the King.

But that’s not enough for me to go off the whole palava.

I think it’s a marvellous folly. A useful sideshow from the drudgery of everyday life. A bit of fun with a handy side serving of pragmatism and finance.

Firstly why should the UK persevere with the monarchy? Well, it’s a real money-spinner.

A recent study found the British people paid 100 million pounds in costs to keep royalty running.  In return, they got 1.7 billion pounds of benefit. That’s an incredible return.

The Royal Seals of Warrant keep firms in business and act as international calling cards. The King’s farms sell 60 million pounds of goods all self-financed and the proceeds go to the Princes Trust charity which then funds programmes for the underprivileged.

And then there’s tourism. London is currently an orgy of overseas visitors and their capital. Even this station has got 4 members of staff there consuming hotel rooms, food, airfares and the like.

The Royal Family is a goldmine for the UK and with Charles promising a slimmer and more modern set up they’re only going to become more profitable.

But then there’s his position as head of State. But really what does that mean?

In the UK he is irrelevant and he is kept out of the national conversation.  

If you worried about hereditary influence then the House of Lords is far more of a thing. For all the opponents of co-governance, how would you feel in the UK where the House of Lords has 777 members all given their place by appointment, who their daddy was or what their job is? Not a democratically elected member among them.

But the King is not one of them. The King does not have a vote.

Here he is represented by the Governor General. There is no interference and the powers exist as an unbiased external regulator just in case of an extreme breakdown in civil order. And in a country of just 5 million, that’s important.  I trust the Governor General and the Court of St James to adjudicate in the case of civil or democratic breakdown far more than I would trust a locally appointed President.

For those who say having the King as Head of State is a sign that we’re immature as a nation, I say stop virtue signalling. It ain’t broke don't try to fix it.

And finally, there’s King Charles himself. A man who had a terrible childhood and absent parents and extraordinary interference in his personal life. But still came out of it as a complex man but with wisdom born of complex issues. I think he’s going to be great.

Far better than his spoilt sons and far more interesting than his cautious mother.

Long live the King.

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It didn't take long, did it, for the headlines to change.

One moment the Prime Ministers of both New Zealand and Australia were trumpeting a new deal for Kiwis living in Oz. Nek minnit. New Zealand is petrified about a brain drain.

The new deal means a faster and cheaper path to residency more in line with the pat for Aussies here in New Zealand. And that means a faster line to the dole, and pensions and healthcare for Kiwis in Australia.

That makes it more attractive if you're wanting to plant some roots in a place.

But the real kicker that makes Australia so attractive for New Zealanders is the pay. You get paid more there. You pay more tax principally because there are 3 tax levels. Rates, State taxes, and federal taxes. But you get paid more and stuff is cheaper there. So on balance it's more attractive.

So my real question is why do you get paid more in OZ?

Many say that the population is bigger which means more demand and there's a mineral wealth that flows into the economy. And while that is true it masks the bigger truth that Australians are paid more because they chose to be.

And the opposite is true. New Zealanders are paid less because we also chose to be.

The Herald compared pay this morning. Nurses, Teachers, and Doctors are paid, on average, 20 to 30 thousand dollars less in New Zealand. But who decides their wages. We do. As taxpayers. As politicians. As a country. Principals are currently on strike while simultaneously looking at better pay across the Tasman.

So in a competitive international labour market we are not as attractive as we could be.

And yet we baulk at paying nurses and teachers more. There's conniptions at any raise of the minimum wage and then complaints that we don't pay well enough. There’s horror at Fairpay legislation but Australia has had Fairpay legislation for decades.

This is not some issue that's popped up because we've got socialists in charge. For 30 years we've been hearing that New Zealand's low wage and low productivity labour market was profitable in the short term but would eventually bite us in the bum. Welcome to bum biting season

But not all is lost. Many have argued workers are not coming because of our immigration settings. And yet as Liam Dann reported yesterday migration is smashing records.

The net migration gain of 11,700 in February this year was the second highest for any month ever.

We're on track for a net gain of 100,000 in a year. So people are still finding reasons to choose New Zealand.

In fact, according to the OECD, New Zealand is currently the most desirable destination for highly educated migrant workers.

The OECD has just launched its Indicators of Talent Attractiveness (ITA) index, and New Zealand tops the list for “high-educated workers”. We come in fifth for attracting entrepreneurs, and fare less well (15th) for attracting start-up founders.

So New Zealand is not a basket case. But we do have to figure out how to pay people more.

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There's an ad on ZB these days about reversible vasectomies.

It talks about how easy it is to make the wrong decision and then have regrets. The example it uses is the Auckland Harbour Bridge, which has become famous as the bridge that austerity failed to build sufficiently.

Back in the 50s the Bridge was proposed to be 6 lanes wide with a movable centre barrier. But to keep the cost down both economically and politically, only 4 lanes were built. Within 2 years the bridge was packed and 10 years later we had to add 4 more lanes at great expense.

It's a lesson we fail to learn.

We're currently in the middle of the same thing with Dunedin's new hospital. For the sake of a saving of 100 million on a 1.7 billion dollar project we were on the verge of cutting the construction of operating theatres and ward rooms. Facilities that will invariably need to be built in the future and ill inevitably be far more expensive to build.

It's the Bridge all over again.

The government is slowly crumbling on the issue but you have to wonder about the false economy and austerity that's on display, while at the same time 14 billion dollars is being earmarked for a light rail system that few seem to want.

The cost of projects and the politics of cost saving is all over water infrastructure decisions too.

Back in 1996 the Mangawhai District was agonising over an 11 million dollar wastewater scheme. Political arguments over cost saw the whole thing delayed by a decade, and when it was finally built it cost 60 million dollars. There was an outcry and a report that damned the whole decision making process and the Mangawhai wastewater project is held up as a poster boy for how not to do things amongst water engineers.

And now just 25 years later the project is nearly at full capacity and another 60 to 90 million dollars has to be spent and the District is once again arguing about cost.

And rightly so, as there are only 25,000 ratepayers in the District and they're facing a big bill. But for goodness sake, it's deja vu all over again.

So the Affordable Waters reform would spread that cost over a bigger population and save Mangawhai residents from the biggest bills.

But I'm not going to say that's the answer because there's plenty wrong about the 10 Waters concept.

What I do want to say is that New Zealand has a long and inglorious record in infrastructure planning and construction. And it's because politicians play political football based on 3 year terms.

It's costing us dearly.

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Some of the things that have scuppered the Labour Government are their use of hyperbole, and exaggeration, and magical word salads that are easily debunked and ridiculed

The good old favourites like the 100,000 houses from Kiwibuild or the light rail that would be started by 2021.

Too many times the words and promises have not matched the deeds and that reduces trust in their ability to govern.

So with this quite obvious it's a gimme for Opposition parties in their campaigning.

All they have to do is project competence, and common sense, and achievable goals and aspirations and we'd consider them a government in waiting.

So on Friday, Chris Bishop launched National's Electrify NZ policy. This is designed to create more renewable electricity to power on a green future away from oil, gas, and coal.

I was doing Drive so I got the first crack which is always hard because you haven't had long to digest the policy.

But right from the start, I realised that the policy principally involved shortening the resource consent process. I asked and Chris confirmed there was no financial help for generators.

I wondered whether this was just a resource management policy repackaged as an energy policy because Labour had just released its Second Harbour Crossing policy. I wondered whether this was just a piece of political flannel.

So Chris Bishop turned up on Q+A yesterday. By then questions had been asked of generators about what they needed. Turns out there are 8 wind farms already consented, but the generators are waiting for favourable market conditions. So consenting is not the immediate problem.

Now look, I have no problem with streamlining of resource processes. Nobody does. Minister David Parker has been wrestling with that for the past year. And Bishop's policy is not of itself bad. But… it's not a clean energy policy.

It's time for all politicians to realise that we're not stupid and present policy to us that makes sense and to back away from the bluster.  

We've had too much of it over the past 6 years and we won't want to vote for more.

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Welcome to the new world of performative politics and the battle of the outraged.

Though it's not a new world, but the same old world now amplified by social media and our move away from the written and spoken word and into pictures on screens.

The visit of Posie Parker went exactly as anyone could predict over the weekend and the fallout is just as predictable.

All sides played their part in this passionless play. All feeding on each other for validation. All throwing out vast generalisations.

It all started with with the calls to ban her entry. Free speech crusaders railed against it. Trans activists bellowed for it.  Ignoring the fact that entry could only de denied on criminal record. Posie Parker is many things but she's never been a criminal. But the drama acted out broadcast by media entities both professional and social who only report what's right before their eyes

Posie Parker is nothing without opposition and we'd all be ignorant of her stance if opponents hadn't highlighted it.

She claimed to be representing New Zealand women despite never having been in the country. I wondered what the point of her tour of New Zealand and Australia was for and it is obvious it was for her supporters back in the UK, therefore she needed the protests. She needed the pictures to become a hero for her people.

This was evident in her bizarre choices of venues in public open spaces both here and Australia. A security consultant over the weekend asked whether she was naïve or stupid in choosing Albert Park. Wide open spaces, hard to defend with easy access for supporters and opponents. I'm pretty sure Posie knew she was vulnerable and didn't mind. Remember, Lauren Southern and Stefan Molyneux's cancellation came at the hands of landlords of the venues.

On the other side, trans activists needed a perceived threat to publicise their cause, so Parker was perfect. They amplified the threat and mobilised their forces and built up a lather. They talked about the threat to their lives of being trans and yet turned up to a protest with signs saying 'Kill the TERFS' with absolutely no sense of irony.

The Nazis smelt some attention in Melbourne and turned up with their masks and salute and got coverage. Brian Tamaki smelt opportunity to follow up his 'gays caused the cyclones' outrage. The Greens meanwhile smelt the opportunity to demonise all white straight males. Meanwhile, right wing and conservative broadcasters hitched their horse to the issues to push the "New Zealand has been trashed by a Labour Government".

So the actors played their part to a willing audience.

But it was interesting to hear a caller this morning talking about how 95 percent of the Albert Park protestors were polite and law abiding. Which was exactly what we heard about the Parliamentary protests on the vaccinations. Which is the truth.

What we saw this weekend was the extreme minorities of both sides having a go at each other which meant the news that the IOC has banned athletes who transition after puberty from Olympic Sports passed by with little comment.  

There's no drama when the grown ups speak.

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So, it's been a week since I was last on ZB, and last Monday we were talking law and order and what really needs to happen.

But of course in the week since, the former Police Minister Stuart Nash has had a spectacular meltdown and we now have our 5th Police Minister in 5 years. In fact, it's our 10th in 14 years. Police would like the revolving door to stop spinning so fast, but that's not in their control.

But the funny thing I noticed about Stuart Nash's supposed crime is how little anybody really cared. In fact, one woman questioned by telly over the weekend said the classic line: he was just saying what everybody is thinking.

The people who were most vocal about Nashie's misbehaviour were the opposition MPs. Particularly Mark Mitchell and David Seymour.

"A flagrant overreach of ministerial authority and an instantly sackable offence" they chanted in unison.

What Stuart Nash did was suggest what the police should do operationally. The Cabinet manual for all parties forbids this. It also forbids instructing the judiciary. These are facts that the opposition choose to ignore when they spin their "the Government is soft on crime" line. Operationally the police and the judiciary will be exactly the same no matter what the government.

And last week the talkback also seemed to ignore was is really possible.

We had suggestions of trucking offenders off to other countries and overseas detention camps. International Law Courts might have something to say about that, I said.

Callers wanting judges to be told to increase their sentences. Can't do that they're independent.

Mark Mitchell even phoned and said what was needed was more wrap around services, which is exactly Labour's line, and military academies. Which he told me were already operating well in Whenuapai and elsewhere.

Now I can find no mention of military academies for offenders anywhere in New Zealand. The closest is Vanguard school, which is a special character school which started as a charter school. It's one that requires a voluntary choice by parents and kids who are committed to a change. And the thing that Defence Forces have told me is that they don't want feral, foetal alcohol affected, life time crims to rehabilitate.

And towards the end of the conversations, a caller texted me and said you've dismissed all our ideas, what are yours?

I guess the first thing I'd do is support the police more. Having talkback callers parrot an opposition line that police have no respect anymore damages only the police and empowers the crims.  

I'd insist on a standard ratio of police numbers to population. An idea and target floated in 2022 but still being missed. The problem is churn. We're employing new police, but they're not replacing the police who have had enough and are leaving the force. So I would up the numbers of new police.

And like everyone, I'd like to toe rags identified early and interventions put in place.

Policing and crime is not simple and the soft on crime rhetoric helps no-one.

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Have you ever considered how amazing it is that the health system operates at all.

If you think about the pure logistics of every operation that will happen in New Zealand today, it is an awesome collaborative exercise that most industries couldn't match.

A half dozen extensively skilled practitioners have to meet in a purpose built room. Some of them will have studied for 15 years or more to be at this level. The surgeons not only need knowledge but physical prowess and stamina as surgeries can last as long as 12 hours or more.

The whole team need to be spotlessly clean and hygienic.  As does every piece of highly technical equipment they're about to use.

An army of post operative carers need to be ready to provide 24 hour attention after the procedures.

It's a small miracle that happens every day and we take it for granted.

But at the same time as recognising the brilliance of our health system, we also have to admit the system is broken.

The past weeks' headlines of staff shortages, room shortages and bureaucratic bungles are evidence of this.

So how can we have a system packed full of so many intelligent, skilled and hard working professionals fail so spectacularly.

At first glance, miserable investment by successive Governments. As the population of New Zealand swelled by half a million over the past dozen years, did we see a corresponding increase in facilities and staff? No, we saw extravagant claims of extra funding which in reality was barely keeping up with inflation.

Auckland City Hospitals new building was opened 20 years ago.  It has 1100 beds and saw Greenlane Middlemore and Starship integrated into one complex. Auckland got less beds at a  time when it needed more.

Our traditional DHB model never helped with competing regions sabotaging each other.

And we have a bureaucratic class between the politicians and the workers that spend more time trying to hide the deficiencies and avoiding blame than they do trying to make sure the dollars reach the patients.

We know this after the departing spray by outgoing chairman Rob Campbell. A man who was not appointed to overhaul the system as people erroneously say, but to oversee the people charged with the overhaul. As we heard he was not impressed with their torpor.

Are we prepared to fix the system.

I don't believe so. We're too busy using it as a political weapon.

When former Minister David Clark threw Ashley Bloomfield under the bus during the Covid days we roundly turned on him.  The concept of Ministerial responsibility.

But as the Simpson Roche report showed us. The Ministry was failing to inform Bloomfield and the Government accurately, meanwhile not dispersing orders downward.

It's a broken underfunded, understaffed system with some mandarins who are hesitant to change.

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So it is now officially the silly season as Christopher Luxon finally got off his State of the Nation speech and released his first policy in the election year.

And who saw that coming?

National has promised it would give households with a joint income of up to 180-thousand dollars a year a 25 percent rebate on their child care costs.

Now strangely enough the last politician to use an early education bribe was Jacinda Ardern. And that was only last November and the new settings come in next month.

National has taken that policy a bit further.  It's a classic case of not staying in your lane, hijacking another party's policy to swing some of their supporters your way. And that makes it good politics.

The policy is not cheap at $249 million dollars. But National says it will claw that money back from the amount consultants currently charge the government.  There's a certain irony that National will fire consultants to give tax rebates so that parents can hire consultants to look after their children.

Now painting the consultants as the bogeymen makes sense on one hand and none on the other.

As Ben Thomas said yesterday "no-one has sympathy for consultants," so they're fine to paint as bad guys. But I think you'll find an awful lot of the consultant economy vote national so they won't be feeling the love. Consultants are a 1.7 billion dollar slice of our economy. Target them and the economy at large will take a hit.

It's easy to scapegoat consultants. But we need to remember that government after government of all colours has made the consultant a more and more necessary evil.

Since the 80s governments have tried to reduce the size of the civil service and their pay by coring out their full time paid experts and hiring consultants project by project. Private practice has been doing this for years. It's the call centre in the Philippines trick.

National has uses them as much as anyone because they are always on a mission to reduce the public service.

So now it works like this.

Politicians, who know nothing, come up with an idea. They hand it to the Civil Service, who have no idea, so they hire a consultant to find out if the idea works and if it does they then advise how to make the idea happen.

More and more the consultants are the ones who scope, cost, plan, and facilitate large projects like roads, bridges, flood protection, and water needs.

So, if you reduce public services you will need private consultants.

Which means the question for National going forward will be, "How can you reduce both public servants and consultants if you want anything to be done?"

And maybe the answer is that National hasn't got anything it wants done.

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Former National MP Chester Borrows has died, aged 65.

He was diagnosed with cancer last year.

Borrows campaigned in two elections before winning the Whanganui seat in 2005, which he held for four terms.

He served as Courts Minister and Deputy Speaker of the House in John Key's Government, before retiring in 2017.

Andrew Dickens reflected on the political legacy of Chester Borrows after his death.

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As part of getting back to basics and bread and butter, Prime Minister Chris Hipkins announced that Three Waters is over.

Just the name, mind

It's an acknowledgement that the Opposition's campaign against Three Waters has tarnished its’ name.  So it's gone.  Not the reform. Just the name

That was met by crowing by National Party members.

In reply, I have said all along that I will not be voting for any party that doesn't have a cogent water reform policy.

If you've listened to me you'll know that Labour's water reform rankles with me because of the appropriation and redistribution of assets and debt raised on them.  It penalised the councils doing well and rewarded councils that have been slack in investment and maintenance. But it did address the issue of raising enough equity to fund the work that is necessary for a water system we can be confident in

So I was quite excited to see that National had finally stirred itself to present a water reform policy which they've called "Local Water Done Well".

So what is it?

Well in Chris Luxon's words: "a National Government will set and enforce strict water quality standards and require councils to invest in the ongoing maintenance and replacement of their vital water infrastructure, while keeping control of the assets that their ratepayers have paid for"

So far that's what we already have.

But it's made even harder for councils because the Government will create an agency to oversee and demand the Councils do a good job.

So there will be greater scrutiny and obligation on Councils to get it right, which is going to cost a lot of money.  So where's that coming from?

National will ensure that water assets and income are ring fenced from the Council's other activities so they'll be able to raise capital separately from the Council's books. But that doesn't help smaller councils with less assets and ratepayers

To help them they suggest the smaller cash strapped councils band together and form regional co-operatives to give them the ability to raise more money.  I'm starting to laugh now because that just seems like Three Waters, only voluntary.

National's plan is magical thinking. It's the status quo with even more costs.

It's worth reminding yourself that Water Reform is necessary because we don't have enough water pipes and the ones we do have are breaking and leaking and we need money to fix them.  It doesn't matter if that money is $130 billion as Labour says, or $100 billion, or $50 billion.  It's money that Councils don't have and to get it we're all going to have to pay more. Either through sky rocketing rates or massive new water charges.

National doesn't address that.  Nor does Labour.  So I guess I'm voting for no-one this year.

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It's been a week since I was on the radio.

It's been one of the worst weeks in New Zealand as Cyclone Gabrielle did its worst in areas that were not expecting it.

There's much to talk about the present but talk has started about the future.

To fix our battered country up is going to take a lot of money. 13 billion was Grant Robertson's first forecast.

Where do we find that? Over summer I was bailed up by a grandfather who felt for his grandchildren who were being lumbered with a crippling debt because of this bloody socialist government.

I said the debt is not that bad in reality. This weekend Stephen Toplis the BNZ economist talked about our current debt to GDP target of 21.4%. Currently we're about 30 percent.

Now to give you some context on that debt. Japan tops the list at over 250% debt to GDP, The United States is around 120%, Canada 110%, the UK at 100%.  Now sure, these are not levels to aspire to. So let's look at our brothers Australia. They're on 36%.

My point is that we're not the macro financial basketcase that many make us out to be because they just hate a left wing government.

I don't care what the government's colour is. I just care about the numbers.

So Stephen Toplis says if we move the debt target from 20.4 to 27 percent then that's 20 billion we can borrow without any impact on our debt rating.

The numbers say we can do this. So take heart.

But it's important that we rebuild better.

Take the Redclyffe substation that serves Napier.

Even at a casual glance it looks vulnerable. Built by the sea, by a river, and on a flood plain.

The substation was designed in 1927 and refurbished in the 1970s and was designed to withstand a “one in 100 year” flood.

Now first it's important to understand 1 in 100 year floods.  What that actually means is that they have a 1 per cent chance of flooding in any given year. It's an international standard thought to be a fair balance between protecting the public and overly stringent regulation. With over 300 days in the year it's possible to have 1 in 100 year floods 3 times

In fact if you know anything about statistics and the concept of annual exceedance probability you'll know that the real probability is that there'll be a flood every 20 years. Water experts have debated forever the wisdom of saying a 1 in 100 year flood when what they're really saying is a 1 in 20 year flood on average.  It gives false security

This substation has had plenty of opportunity to be made more resilient but we didn't because we're cheap.

The Napier expressway could have been raised higher over its flood plain but it wasn't.

Our cellphone network can be made more resilient but it hasn't been.

It's time to stop doing only enough to get by until tomorrow because it will only become more expensive the longer we leave it.

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Philip Duncan from WeatherWatch joined Andrew Dickens to give an update on Cyclone Gabrielle and the current weather around the country.

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There is so much to unpack from the great Auckland anniversary weekend flood and organisational screw up that I’m just going to detail a few points.

Firstly that the storm was unexpected and unforecasted. Well, it was and it wasn’t. All Spring we were told that La Nina was into its third successive cycle. The implication of that was a very warm, wet, and windy summer. Well that sure came true.

Some have immediately jumped onto the storm as evidence of climate change. Except this weather cycle was already predicted and has happened many times before. Climate change may be adding to the impact of La Nina, but that’s a very difficult calculation to make and certainly not one that should be barked at local body politicians hours after the event.

Forecasters knew it would be a significant event, but not quite as significant as it turned out to be. That said, the fact that we sent 40,000 Elton John fans out into the eye of that storm and the concert was not cancelled until 15 minutes before showtime is still inexplicable to me.

An earlier declaration of a state of emergency might have prevented the exodus of innocents into harm’s way.

So, the state of emergency was not declared until 9.30 and then made public at 10.18pm at night. The Mayor explains that this was when the emergency services officially informed him that they were overwhelmed. This is all technically correct but it lacks basic common sense.

It's not what the Mayor and his advisors got wrong. What was lacking was leadership and communication. Proactive leadership from a mayor and emergency staff. Geeing us up. Helping the spread of information.

Auckland Emergency Management issued no social media alerts for four hours between about 6pm and 10pm. I find that incomprehensible. But also incomprehensible is that the Mayor didn't recognise the problem and kick them into action. Not for the first time, Mr Fixit didn't know what to do to fixit.

Wayne Brown doesn’t get it but others do. Thank God.  

Councillor Richard Hills was brilliant on twitter. Praised by Mt Albert MP Jacinda Ardern on Saturday for his compilation of info. Councillor Desley Simpson was the real Mayor on Facebook and posted all night long.

Marcus Lush’s programme stopped my son going down an on ramp closed by a fallen tree with just minutes to spare

From the Mayor’s office we got no advice on how to cope all Friday evening. We got one picture of him signing a piece of paper and that’s it.

And that was symbolic arse covering. Look I did something. The next morning he was sniffy about twitter versus official channels. Well, Twitter saved my family mate. Welcome to 2023.

Mayor Brown's performance is part of the pantomime of leadership amongst the politicians we see these days, which views the pursuit of political power as some sort of theatresport, rather than a competition of valid and workable ideas.

We saw examples all week long. Jacinda Ardern steps aside for Chris Hipkins and suddenly we think that the Labour Party has essentially changed?

Nicola Willis saying raising the minimum wage by a few cents would be inflationary after spending last year claiming a tax cut for the rich would not be.

It’s time to remember: many of these politicians aren’t leaders, they’re politicians. They'll say anything to keep power and popularity.

They’re people who don’t get that government is different than business because you have to worry about everything and everyone all the time and not just your mates.

And it appears that many of them really don’t care for what Christopher Luxon charmingly calls the bottom feeders.

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Happy New Year.

It's nice to be back after a long summer break during a summer that was both brilliant and awful.

When it was beautiful it was very beautiful and when it was horrible it was appalling.

The East Coast mutilated not just by the elements but by the slash washed down from the hills. This is not the first time this has happened by any stretch and it has to stop.  The industry is well aware of the risk.  Like any industry you need to be able to clean up after you.

And now the new year welcomes a new Prime Minister.

Firstly, the resignation of Jacinda Ardern saw the most incredible outbreak of Jacinda Derangement Syndrome I've ever seen. Fans and acolytes from the left were left wailing and despairing. Truly bereft. Grown men crying. Meanwhile champagne corks were popping in the Koru Lounge, rural pubs filled up and the right wingers felt that all their troubles were over.

All of which was a wild over exaggeration of Jacinda Ardern and her acheivements and abilities.

For the past 5 years I've been saying that Ms Ardern was not as wonderful as her fans believed but nor as dangerous as her enemies said.

But she was becoming a liability to her party. 5 years of mud throwing was sticking. The middle ground of voters were starting to believe the claims that she was a dictator and a control freak. That she was a narcissist ruling an idealogically driven cabal of communists committed to ruining everything about the country right up to changing the name unilaterally.

So with a quick sidestep Cindy was replaced by Chippy.

And that's an important point. An older generation used Cindy to infantilise her which was part of their misogyny. Hipkins used to hate Chippy but is now at home with it so that's an offensive weapon neutralised.

Hipkins is a good call. He's a scrapper. He's got a thicker skin. He's not addicted to always being right. He's prepared to accept and admit he's made a mistake. He's a worker and he seems normal. Like the New Zealanders who vote. Like the New Zealanders who are doing it hard, and they're the people he mentions every time he's near a microphone.

I see today on Twirtter that Matthew Hooten said: ‘In 3 days the Labour party rebranded themselves from Grey Lynn to Glendene and Wadestown to Naenae.’ And that's a good line.

Meanwhile, take note that Chris Hipkins was on ZB this morning unlike the previous Prime Minister. He's prepared to stand his ground.

Whether this is enough for Labour to regain the Treasury benches is a matter we'll have to wait and see. But I think they have more chance under Hipkins than Ardern.

Hopefully it will be a wakeup call for National, who seemed to be sleep walking to the election.

Christopher Luxon makes much of his party having real world experience but he seems to forget how new his troops are, and that Hipkins and Robertson do have real world experience that his Ministers don't. They've been running the shop for the past 5 years and should not be underestimated.

It's making for a great election. I'm looking forward to the Hipkins-Luxon debates and the Robertson-Willis debates. And then we'll see who really has the chops to lead a country.

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So the election result in the Hamilton West by-election is proof that this election year is going to be a thrilling ride.

The electorate was always a soft blue one which swung hard red after the government's handling of Covid. But now it has swung back to the sort of political leaning it had before the pandemic. In fact it may have gone hard blue.

But it needs to be taken with a grain of salt, as only 31 per cent of the electorate voted. The election was also missing a Green candidate, Gourav Sharma also took 1200 votes with him, which was a surprisingly good result in my book.

Crucially National Leader Christopher Luxon also saw that it wasn't as one sided as some made out and warned the party against arrogance and lethargy.

It must be tempting as a National party supporter to hear the constant criticism of this Government and then see the turning of the tide in polls being confirmed by this by election result and think you're home and hosed.

And this Government is constantly criticised. "The most incompetent Government ever. A Government obsessed with control. A Government beholden to Maori interests. A Government with no business experience"

But this is still a Government that won the biggest mandate in MMP history just 3 years ago.  It is a Government with 5 years on the Treasury benches.

And National has a lot of new talent on its books after the evisceration of the last election.  Even its leader is only one term in.

The Prime Minister's statement that the economy will be Labour's main focus this coming year is also a sign that they're beginning to see the writing on the wall.

If they're smart they'll start jettisoning the policies that are starting to alienate voters. The RNZ/TVNZ merger. The hate speech legislation is disappearing.

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So I went to Billy Joel on Saturday.

Great concert. The sound for the top tiers of the stadium was not good, but I blame that on Billy's team who had a rushed set up. The video walls were also very loose but the music was amazing.

The real beef was transport. There were no trains because Kiwirail scheduled maintenance without anyone looking at what was on that weekend. It created a lot of chaos.

Now, I live on the Shore and taking a ferry and a train to Eden Park is normally a delight. So instead we opted to take our electric scooters to the Park taking the NW motorway bike path. Not ideal. Had to stay sober but hate delays and not fond of buses.

So we ferried to downtown which took 15 minutes.

Then rode up Queen Street and on to Eden Park.  That took us 15 minutes.

Coming back it was well lit and we were in a hurry so it took us just 12 minutes. So it was surprisingly efficient and a lot of fun.

But the real take home is that we were the only people on the bike path. Now, that's not the path's or the council's problem. You can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink.

Aucklanders were offered a choice with the bike path. While rush hour is seeing big numbers no one chose it for the concert.  All the better for me.

It's all about choice.

I have a friend who lives round the corner from me who bikes. But he chose to Uber home from the concert. It cost him $100 and he arrived home an hour after me. My total transport cost was 5$ return on the ferry.

So Michael Wood's transport spend up announced this weekend will be an investment that will never be appreciated unless New Zealanders freely make a choice to take a punt on PT. For that it needs to be safe and efficient.

I have often talked about how I use public transport and bikes and electric scooters and I get swamped by texters telling me how they're not able to use public transport.

They've got kids and sports practices and shopping to cart around. They seem to think I don't have the same pressures.  And of course I have 2 cars and I too use them for shopping and what not.  

But when there is a choice and I weigh up the pros and cons I will take the scooter or the bus or the train or the ferry. But only when it makes sense. Bit by bit it is making sense.

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We are now just moments away from the nationwide vigils and protests against retail crime planned to take place outside dairies and Labour MPs offices.

This comes after the murder of 34 year old Janak Patel outside the Rose Cottage Dairy in Sandringham last Wednesday. In the half week of debate after this crime we have seemingly talked about every aspect of crime without touching the major factor behind the Rose Cottage crime. People assumed it was part of the ram raid fad that has taken hold this spring, that it was theft of cigarettes and vapes that have gained a new transactional value due to their high price due to the taxes imposed upon them. That the offenders were youth who have no fear of consequence from the NZ Police or Justice System. That this crime was spurned on by a government that is portrayed as soft on crime.

As we have found out in the fullness of time, the alleged offender was 34. His accomplice 42. These were not kids.  It was not a ram raid.  They were after the cash register not the ciggies. There has been a consequence as the alleged offenders have been caught and charged. We found out that Rose Cottage has a long history of violent crime that pre dates this government, including being hit 2 months in a row in 2016 and one of those incidents was an armed robbery.

And most tellingly we have discovered the alleged offender was deported from Australia.

The grounds for his deportation from Australia cannot be reported for legal reasons but he joins a long list of deportees returned to New Zealand that have gone on to cause havoc.

The 501 strategy of deporting New Zealanders on bad character assessments has been happening since 2016. In that time 3000 odd holders of New Zealand passports have been sent back to this country. They have boosted gang numbers and brought a new level of organisation and violence with them. They have committed 8000 offences with more than a third of those offences have been violent.

We have been used as a rubbish bin and the Aussies know it which is why Peter Dutton famously called the policy taking the trash out. A new government is now in place and more sympathetic to New Zealand.  Does this mean the mass importation of criminals raised in Australia might stop?

Well, the Australian Home Affairs Minister, Clare O'Neil, featured on Q&A yesterday. She said that while they were looking at the treatment of New Zealanders in Australia, the 501 deportation policy wasn’t going anywhere because it is an important national security policy for their country. So the mass importation of hardened criminals continues.  

In my opinion it is the single biggest driver of a perceived rise in crime and yet we are powerless to resist.

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The debacle that was the awarding of the Football World Cup to Qatar is once again back in focus with the start of the tournament.

But make no mistake there's been controversy ever since the awarding of the tournament back in 2010.

The appointment turned heads.  The smallest country to ever host the cup, the first Arab country. The first country to host the cup that had never qualified for the cup.  A country with little football history.  But a country with a lot of petro dollars

The appointment came as 2 FIFA officials were suspended due to allegations of corruption and money laundering. And the appointment process has been tainted ever since even though there is now concrete allegation as yet.

Immediately there was concern about human rights of the country's construction workers because they don't have any of their own.

Arab countries have long imported their labour from South East Asia, paying them little and taking their passports causing allegations of modern day slavery.

Meanwhile 10 years ago, the Guardian estimated that 4000 construction workers could die because Qatar's lax safety and employment history.  As it turns out they under-estimated the number to die and to date it's closer to 6500.

So all this was predicted but the beginning of the tournament has still been fraught.  Ambassadors for the cup have expressed religous disgust for the LGBTQ community. Journalists have been stopped and threatened. At the 11th hour beer was banned from the stadiums upsetting major sponsor Budweiser. At today’s game the Ecudorean fans started chanting WE WANT BEER. The entire Australian squad has signed an open letter criticising Qatar. Rod Stewart told us he turned down 2 million bucks to croon a tune.  David Beckham has been shamed for taking the oil dollar. Tent camps have sprung up for the fans at 175 pounds a night to sweat it out under canvas in 40 degree heat. Others fly in jets to nearby Oman to find hotel beds in the middle of a climate crisis.

The whole thing is a mess and not an advertisement for the so called "Beautiful Game"

It's caused some people to say teams should boycott the tournament and that fans should not watch the games.  Which is all too little too late.  Where were you when this was all so obvious 12 years ago.

My hope is that Qatar hears the criticism and joins the 21st Century.  Their money has taken their humanity. And FIFA’s. Football is a rich game enjoyed by the poor and all. Remember your roots.

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Friday saw the committee charged with reviewing public submissions on the Three Waters water reform return their recommendations.

Changes to co-governance was not in their list of suggestions

It beggars belief that out of the 88,000 New Zealanders that bothered to make their voices heard that co-governance wasn't high on the list of concerns.

But as I said on the Friday drive show, the lady is not for turning. Co-governance appears to be a hill that this Labour Government is prepared to die on.

But as I also said on Friday, co-governance should be the least of your worries if you're concerned with creeping socialism.

The Three Waters reform suggested is property theft and that's the reason that Phil Goff was against it and had to be bought off.

This Government wants to seize assets paid for by ratepayers, amalgamate them and then borrow off them, so that funding for water stays off the Governments and Councils books. It's blatant nationalisation by a left wing government

It's like needing to do urgent repairs on the house but you have no money.  So you take your neighbour's house and use it as equity to borrow money to fix your place. It's just wrong.

But this is happening because the deferred maintenance and investment has become so huge that we don't have enough money to fix it.

Meanwhile, National MP Simon Watts told TVNZ’s Q+A on Sunday that the party agrees there needs to be reform, but it opposes the Government's current proposals. So Jack Tame pressed Watts pretty hard on what National’s alternative model would be.  Watts said National would reveal its policy closer to the election.

Frankly that's not good enough.  If Labour's dodgy scheme is the only game on the table then it will limp across the line.

And reform is needed.

Today the front page of the Wairarapa Times Age reports that close to half of all drinking water in the region is lost in leaks before it even gets to the tap. Meanwhile the region is booming with new houses.

Imagine if you went to fill up your car and only half of it made it into the tank

You wouldn't tolerate it.

It has to be fixed.

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A couple of weeks ago, I warned you that Winston is back and I was right.

The latest political poll by Horizon Research released today finds New Zealand First with 6.75% support – and in a position to decide which parties would form a Government.

This result would deliver the party 9 seats in a 120-seat parliament.

So, Horizon finds Labour would win 40 seats, the Green party 15. A total of 55.  Not enough to form a Government.

Meanwhile, National would win 37 seats and ACT 17. A total of 54.  Again not enough.

Meaning that NZ First would be the kingmaker once again.  To get back into parliament the party needs either an electoral seat or 5% of the vote and on this poll it does that.

Horizon is a company that involves Graeme Colman, ex of NBR, and other professionals with 30 odd years of experience so I don’t feel it is biased.

So the coalition partners are stable. ACT continues to be strong with 13% of the vote but that seems to be coming from National voters.  

This result should worry both the main parties.  Labour has continued to track down while National has stalled in tracking up. There’s a feeling that both parties are under performing.

Labour’s problems are well documented. Grand promises, poor achievements.

For instance, 100,000 Kiwibuild houses promised 5 years ago.  As of the end of last month we were at 1430 Kiwibuild houses. It’s a better picture for all public social housing with nearly 10,000 built in 5 years.  But remember that 4800 public houses have been sold or demolished in the same time.

And so it goes on.

It should be a free ride for National but it hasn’t been. Perhaps it’s that the electorate can see the emperor has no clothes on.

Tax cuts are not a cost of living policy. They inject more money into those above the median wage and very little to those below. The wealthier continue to fuel the inflating prices while the poor suffer.   It’s economics 101 and the electorate can see it, they saw it in real time in the UK, and so centre right voters continue to leach to ACT.

Of course National voters get conniptions whenever Winston hits kingmaker level because of the perceived treachery of his Labour coalition deal 5 years ago.

But on the evidence of this poll perhaps they need to get over that because it doesn’t look like Winston’s going away.

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As we digest the local government elections, it's important to realise that in the wider world our concerns are small change.

Roadcones, cycleways and speed limits are small fry compared with Ukrainian war, global recessions and rampant inflation worldwide.

And then there's climate change and controls on our emissions.

In the past fortnight, you may not have noticed stories that put climate issues into perspective.

The sabotage of the Russian gas pipe was the single greatest man-made climate disaster in history.

The pure mass of methane that escaped into the atmosphere was incredible. Remember that methane is over 80 times more effective at warming the atmosphere than CO2. Decades of emission controls were written off in just a few days.

Meanwhile, the Government admitted that the drive to replace the entire Government fleet with electric vehicles by 2025 is way off track.

It's looking like 25% of the fleet will be electric, and not by 2025 but more like 2030.

Why?

There are just not enough electric vehicles available. Words are easy but actions are hard.

On Friday, Environment Commissioner Simon Upton told us that to offset all our emissions with trees would require 2 thirds of our country to be pine forests, proving the unsustainability of offsets.

Then there's the fact that came out of an Indian Dairy conference that the Indian cow herd is 10 times bigger than New Zealand's but New Zealand produces more milk than all of India. With a tenth of the cows and a tenth of the emissions. Showing that New Zealand's intensive and efficient farming is climatically better than India's.

This all goes to show that the worldwide battle against emissions is failing.

It shows that we've been lectured by simplistic group think by people who drive their cars to protests to tell us to emit less.

Which is not to say we should give up.

What it says is that we need to praise the small victories and not hysterically demand inefficient broad-stroke virtue-signalling policies.

Because that is the real blah blah blah.

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As this is my first time on ZB since the death of Elizabeth the Second, may I add my gratitude to the many who have praised her exceptional service.

In the days since the expected but still devastating news I have been struck by how history is unfolding before our eyes.

History is made up of milestones and crossroads and we are in the middle of an astounding period of change that we will all point to in the future.

We are at the end of the Second Elizabethan age.  A 70 year period of incredible progress and modernisation, where technology has aided and abetted more individuality and self-determination than ever before.

In coincides with the greatest pandemic for 100 years. The most impactful war since the World conflicts of last century.  Brexit and other economic developments changing world trade patterns. A worldwide inflation outbreak. And a climate that is becoming increasingly volatile.

I feel people in the future will look back to this point as a significant point in this planet's history and here we are right in the middle of it.

So change is in the air.

And one of things that may change is the identity of our head of state.

Already, many are saying why is a 73 year old Brit 12,000 miles away our head of state. And I get that.

But my feeling is if it ain't broke, why fix it.

We have a sophisticated political, constitutional and legal system that has evolved from our links with the Crown.

As Head of State the King has no real power over our direction as a nation.  We are fully self-governing and autonomous.

What he and his system does is provide is an impartial tool for when things go very wrong as they did in Australia in the Gough Whitlam years.

For those unaware of the story the Australian Senate ended out in an impasse that crippled the country constitutionally.  Eventually the Governor General Kerr dissolved the Whitlam government, put opposition leader Malcolm Fraser in charge, and called a new election which Fraser won.

To take such drastic action requires impartiality and a position beyond impunity.  You can't be seen to have a dog in the fight.

The Crown has that position for countries like New Zealand and Australia. Political neutrality.

The Armed Forces are also responsible to them which distances the Forces from accusations of political influence.

And we get all this for next to nothing.

To set up a President or a New Zealand Head of State would take a mountain of money and and bureaucracy.

Add to all that the Maori point of view that the deal over nationhood and governance is with the Crown, then it's removal creates a wealth of issues over the Treaty which could become very fractious and further disadvantage Maori or settlers.

Some say that we need to separate from the Crown to prove our national identity. To that I say our national identity is strong and independent.

And so, if it ain't broke, why fix it?

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Another day and another debate on crime and what to do with it.

There is no doubt the craze for ram raiding amongst the young has contributed to the perception that crime is out of control.

Add to that the growing number of gun crimes particularly amongst the gangs.  It has led to a feeling that our streets are more unsafe than they've ever been before.

It has led to the debate on crime to be all about punishment and all about crimes of violence and trespass.

But the iceberg of crime is far bigger than we mostly hear and like an iceberg the biggest crimes are unreported.

Jarrod Gilbert writes today about the incredible level of white collar crime we have in New Zealand and our laissez faire attitude towards it.

He cites a couple of cases recently. The bloke charged with stealing $ 600,000 by defrauding the Covid wage subsidy.  Another case saw an allegation of an employer pocketing his staff's PAYE payments to the tune of $300,000.

The size of the problem is even more evident when you look at the assets of criminals seized by the Police.

On the list of the top nine people who have had assets seized or frozen only one was a gang member. The other eight were businessmen.

The alleged illegal assets of the gang member made up just 3 per cent of the total assets of those on the list.  The combined assets of the white collar criminals loot was some $322 million.

These are big numbers and big crimes but they're not supported by big sentences.  A fraudster who took investors for $115 million dollars was out of prison on parole after just 6 years. No New Zealand drug lord makes anything near that sort of illegal money.

There's another statistic going about.  For every $1 stolen in common or garden crime, there's $40 stolen by white collar criminals.

Who knows why we are so lenient on the business people defrauding the meek.

The victims are legion.  The investors and super annuitants who lose their nest eggs and their security for the rest of of their lives.  The fraud that dwarfs any beneficiary fraud in this country.  But do the white collar criminals face the daily barrage of disgust that we direct at solo mums and residents of emergency housing.

Maybe we just can't imagine that people who send their kids to nice schools and wear nice suits can be just as bad as any low life mongrel.

If you're a tough on crime supporter you might want to get your dander up about that statistic.  

White collar crime destroys lives in a far more widespread and invidious manner and the sooner we get tougher on it the better.

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So last week, my opening comments centred on how opposition MPs and anti-government commentators have been fear mongering about the state of the economy.

When it was published online it became one of our most commented on pieces of the day with over 500 people expressing what they thought.

Many called me a Labour party apologist. A lot asked why I was praising Labour's management of the economy.

Problem is; I wasn't. 

Nowhere did I say Labour was doing a good job. In fact I'm on record as saying the Government and the Reserve Bank have not handled the reality of the economic situation appropriately.

But, I'm also pointing out how many are exaggerating the possibility of economic gloom and doom for political effect. And the more it's said the more chances it has of becoming real.

Last week a number of economists from home and abroad came out and said they don't believe New Zealand will fall into recession.

But on Friday, retail figures came out with a 2.6 percent fall. The headline was "Fears of a recession as retail spending falls".

A Westpac economist was interviewed. In it he actually said Westpac does not believe a recession is coming.  But the headline in the story did not give that impression did it?

He said that hard goods like furniture and electronics were down but he also pointed out that the comparative figures were swollen by the pandemic, when we didn't travel we just bought a new telly online.

He did warn of a Christmas slowdown citing shipping costs, petrol and interest rates, but one of the biggest factors he highlighted was consumer confidence.

People believing bad times are coming closing their wallets.  Probably because they keep hearing fears of recession headlines.

We are talking ourselves into hard times.

Liam Dann interviewed two visiting Australian economists in the weekend, including the guy who invented the phrase ‘Rockstar Economy’ for New Zealand. He's one who does believe that a recession is likely.  

Both believe that Australia and New Zealand are very well placed to be the fastest recovering economies on Earth inside the next year.  

Our government spending was excessive but not as bad as most. Shipping prices are falling rapidly. We don't have the energy crisis that Europe is about to undergo and our primary exports are still desirable.

That's the story I prefer hearing rather than biased players calling us a basket case to get rid of the incumbent government.

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I only work at Newstalk ZB one day a week so I've been spared having to talk about the Guarav Sharma drama. Or as we now know the Sharma Drama.

But my god it's still going.  

Over the weekend he revealed that Kieran McAnulty called him a terrible MP and that was bullying. Knowing how fruity Kieran's language can be, I think Gourav got off lightly. There's a reason Kieran's a whip. He's good with the old don't argue.

I've realised that the MP for Hamilton West really doesn't like being yelled at. Sharma's maiden speech in February 2021 alleges a paediatric surgeon bullied him while he was at university. It also contained many claims of bullying and racism while he was on the campaign trail. Sharma appears to feel he's been bullied his entire life.

It was the Prime Minister's turn this morning and she once again ruled out an investigation saying that there needs to be a threshold to instigate these things. Otherwise any time anyone called anyone a bully or a racist we'd have investigation after investigation.

We of course can't judge whether that threshold has been reached as all we have so far is the good Doctor's account because the PM is not open and transparent.

Anyway, this "he said she said" thing is terribly frustrating and has kept the issue in the headlines for nearly 2 weeks now.

So some say that the launching of an investigation would at least shelve the conversation.

They point to National hiring a QC to investigate Sam Uffindell which has silenced the debate.

That may be so but what will that investigation prove? Mr Uffindell has already admitted his misdemeanour. And secondly, Mr Luxon has already stated that the result of the investigation will not be publicly released.

If there is an investigation but no public result has there really been a result at all? The debate may have been silenced but not the practices and attitude that sparked the whole thing in the first place.

Just shows that National is just as good, possibly better, at hiding their dirty laundry as Labour.

And that was the way I felt throughout the whole Sharma drama.

None of it surprised me. Politicians have been playing games like this for years.

National was perfectly capable of fudging Official Information requests. Labour appears to have lifted the bar to a new high or should that be low point.

It's all brought our respect for politicians to such a depth.

It's why we have such polarised debate now. It's why our debate has fallen to name calling with words like liars and corruption thrown around willy-nilly.

And it makes me nostalgic for the days when the backbench would wage war on the front bench over policy issues and not office demeanour.

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So let's be honest with each other

Did you, in your darkest heart, secretly hope the All Blacks would lose to prove that Ian Foster was always the wrong man. To get Scott Robertson into the driving seat?

C'mon. Many did. Some even admitted it on social media.

Now if you did, it's quite a dark place really. Actively rooting against your own team, even if you think it would be best for the team eventually.  

Diehard fans would be disgusted. They'd call you a fairweather fan. Not there for the team, only to share in their glory. If you're important enough or your voice is loud enough the players may hear of it and it may crush their spirit which no-one wants.

It's OK to think that others could do a better job but there is no benefit in wishing for failure.

I say this because for some time I've been appalled by the number of people who appear to want New Zealand to fail because they don't like the current Government.

It's almost like they're hoping for a recession just to prove to everybody, or maybe just to themselves, that the Government is an ignorant, economically illiterate mess.

It's important to differentiate between those people analysing the economy as scientifically as they can and others offering opinion for their own benefit.

You get that negative stink off the Opposition right now who would be the only leaders praying for economic Armageddon, because it may see them elected to the benches.

But hoping and praying for economic doom is not a sound idea. Either you inherit the doom and it proves hard to fix, or the doom never really arrives, making you look stupid.

There is no arguing that New Zealand is doing it tough at the moment but that's true of every economy on Earth. Every government running an economy is falling backwards in popularity no matter what side of the political fence they're on.

But awkwardly, New Zealand might not be heading for doom.

The ANZ last week in their quarterly outlook suggested we look like avoiding recession.  

They predict inflation will be at 2.5 percent next year. Goldman Sachs has also come out and said that both Australia and New Zealand will skip recession. Sydney based Capital Economics sees the cycle turning even faster with the OCR going no higher than 3.5 percent and three cuts next year.

Jucy, the motorhome rental firm, has just announced a $40 million credit line to buy more homes due to demand. A mate of mine who runs a tourism firm in his retirement is complaining about working too hard and his forward orders are huge.

If it all adds up to the economy looking better by next year's election, not worse, that could prove problematic for all those predicting doom and gloom.

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So the National Party conference was held over the past weekend in Christchurch.

Things went well until late on Sunday night when planes started being cancelled and MPs and party members went mumbling off into the wet cold winters’ night in search of a bed.

The conference was organised and dull which is just what a party wants. An action filled conference is not the sign of a settled party. But they seem settled on Luxon and Willis and so the game continues with a policy thrown out to keep the party in public discussion.

Maybe I've just been in the game too long, but I could have guessed it would be some sort of benefit policy that says something along the line of kids don't want to work, benefits are a lifestyle and the Ministry of Social Development are useless.

Which is exactly what they said.

I've heard these plans so many times in so many guises. I wonder where this army of competent community advisors are going to come from in a time of skilled staff shortages, and I wonder about the cost of bureaucracy to monitor the spending of taxpayers dollars by NGOs and third party providers.

But that's the National way. In an election year, tax cuts and benefit bashing are their bedrock.

But here's a thing. Is National really promising tax cuts?

ACT finally called their potential coalition partner out this weekend pointing out that National is not planning tax cuts at all but just shifting the brackets.

Their release says tax bracket indexation is just Labour's tax policy adjusted for inflation.

Therefore it’s not a tax cut. It’s tax tinkering that effectively freezes Labour tax policy in time.

Which, of course, it is. Always has been.

Brackets haven't moved under three administrations now, both National and Labour. That's nearly a decade of increased tax revenue year on year. That's nearly a decade of people being placed into higher tax brackets than they can afford.

It really is a rort.

It's not the rich getting richer that bothers me.

It's the policies from both parties that see the poor getting poorer that makes our country impoverished.

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Just at the moment when New Zealand should be getting back to business, the wheels keep falling off for this Government.

On Sunday, we finally opened up completely to the rest of the world.  After two and a half years the so-called hermit kingdom was over. There's even a cruise ship scheduled to arrive in a few weeks

We should be emerging triumphant, but we're not.

Today we're bickering over a government handout that's supposed to help with the cost of living crisis but is proving to be a thorn in the side of the Labour Government.

And it is probably just going to make inflation worse.

Nicola Willis and the National Party are claiming that overseas residents are going to be getting the three instalments of $116.67, even though they don't live here.

Ms Willis claims a man living in Dubai who has not been a NZ resident for 22 years is going to be getting the payments and he's feeling embarrassed.

This is an outrage, if it's true. But you should never totally believe a politician.

So 2.1 million people are in the process of getting a payment or an email from the IRD, who have been charged with running the scheme.

The letter says all sorts of things. Only people who have filed their IR3 returns or taxed at source will get the money. So you need to have earned taxable income from NZ to be eligible and to have paid it.

You have to be a tax resident.

You also have to have a current functioning New Zealand bank account. And all the way through it says YOU MAY BE ELIGIBLE. Which is not to say you will get the money.

There are many reasons why many people will get the money around the world.  It is because they are taxpayers and therefore their taxes are being used to be given back to them.  But I'm picking that Mr Dubai will not get a cent. However, Handout Shame was the headline in the paper.

So this is a badly designed bureaucratic mess that rewarded tax residents, not just physical residents. Add to that the people who most need it are denied it. The poorest beneficiaries and the OAPs who are paid the winter energy payment

But that is not its worst crime. Before we even come to who gets it or not, this pork barrel exercise will barely help ease the cost of living while at the same time add fuel to the inflation fire.

Because, despite what the Prime Minister said on Q and A yesterday, it will be inflationary.

Just for the record. All excessive spending is inflationary. Government spending, corporate spending, excessive profits and even private spending

It all spills cash into an economy, increasing demand at a time when supply is limited.

So the lesson from today is carry on with business but remember all politicians never tell the whole truth.

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