00:00:00
Speaker 1: The Front Bench. Thrashing out the big issues. Analyzing the facts. Throwing out the fiction. Hearing what matters. No topic off limits. No holding back. No scripts. No rules. No bull. Barry Soper. Josie Pagani. Trish Shearson. Heather Dupacy-Allen. The Front Bench. On your home for election 2026.
00:00:20
Speaker 2: Newstalk ZB.
00:00:24
Speaker 3: Hey, good afternoon. Welcome to the show. Coming up today, former Māori Party co-leader Te Orerua Flavell on why they won't shut up about the mongrel mob, Callie Jackson, the MVP of the Silver Ferns game last night, and Nicola Willis, the finance spokesperson for the National Party, is with us after six. It's seven past four.
00:00:40
Speaker 1: The Front Bench.
00:00:41
Speaker 3: Unbelievably, the mongrel mob drama is still rolling on today, and this is now day six. There is now a video that has emerged of the hui at the gang pad. in which Oriini Kaipara, the Māori Party MP, tells the mongrel mob that the Māori Party policies reinstate what should have always been. And depending on how you interpret that statement in the context of what she was just talking about previously, she was either meaning that the Māori Party policies will reinstate housing for gang members or will reinstate the mana of gang members. Either way, neither are probably a priority for most voters, I would say. But it gets worse because the video shows that the Hui was a campaign event, which is basically where the parties were asking for votes. That is what the Green Party denied. They said it was a health and wellbeing promotion day. Doesn't look like that. Gets worse yet because now the MP, Orini Kaipara, has given an interview defending herself in which she says she is more afraid of MPs in suits who are pushing policy about the Waitangi Tribunal than she is of gang members. And it gets worse yet, if you can believe it, because Kiri Tamahere Waititi, the daughter of John Tamahere and the wife of Rawiri Waititi, has also released an Instagram video slagging off Labour for decrying meeting with game members who are whānau. Now, you do not need me to tell you that this is bad, that it's in day six, because just when Chippy finally got on the phone to Marama Davidson and basically told the Greens to shut up, and they did at the end of last week, then the Maori Party decided to pipe up. And it's bad for the left wing because swing voters hate gangs, which then swings them to the right, and both sides are fighting over 15% of swing voters at the moment. But also, this drowns out everything. that either the Labour Party or the Green Party say when this story is in the news. They can promote any policy they like. All they're going to get asked about is gangs. Every day that it carries on, they'll just get asked about gangs. It is unbelievable that these two parties, the Greens and the Maori Party, are taking turns digging this hole even deeper for themselves.
00:02:39
Speaker 1: The Front Bench.
00:02:40
Speaker 3: Right, on The Front Bench with me, we have Barry Soper, Senior Political Correspondent, Trish Sherson of Sherson Willis PR and Josie Pagani, Child Fund Chief Executive. Hello, you three.
00:02:48
Speaker 2: Good afternoon.
00:02:49
Speaker 3: All right, Barry, what the hell was the Māori Party thinking.
00:02:51
Speaker 1: Then, eh?
00:02:52
Speaker 4: Well, there's a supreme irony in this when you consider that last week Christopher Luxon said in the leaders' debate that law and order wasn't really part of the campaign because it was well and truly under control. And indeed it had been. The patches had been taken off gangs and they weren't.
00:03:11
Speaker 2: Really an issue. And what happens? Oh dear.
00:03:14
Speaker 4: You know, you've got naive politicians to the extreme going into a patch headquarters and and campaigning, as we now understand, with the gang members.
00:03:25
Speaker 2: I mean, it's nothing short.
00:03:27
Speaker 4: Of disgraceful when you think about it, but nothing short of damning for the centre-left. I mean, poor old Chris Hipkins must be laying awake at night wondering how he can put this thing right, because no matter what he does, talking to the Greens, telling them to button it, and then the Māori Party coming out, and these are his coalition partners. So, You know, it's a nightmare for the Labour Party.
00:03:53
Speaker 5: Absolutely.
00:03:54
Speaker 6: And this is the kind of thing that you would expect from the sort of arty, slightly woke crowd in Grey Lynn to romanticise gangs.
00:04:03
Speaker 5: And I don't think.
00:04:07
Speaker 1: So.
00:04:07
Speaker 6: Obviously, present company accepted. Well, yes, that's right. But look, I've had extended family connections where there's been gang members. This is not how you restore mana to gang members, to Māori gang members. I used to go into the prisons with an old kuia called Anatia, who would teach these hardened criminals kapahaka. I used to go in with Pate, Catholic priest, who was a wonderful man, who would teach them whakapapa, where their marae was, where they came from, and that returned the mana. And that was the only thing that allowed them to leave the gangs. So what Oriini Kaipara is doing here is actually undermining the ability for some of these men to leave the gangs. Like, you know, you talk to someone like Dave Luteli and his dad. They've worked with these communities out of the prisons all the time. And the best thing that they can do is give them tikanga, Māori culture and get them out of the gangs.
00:05:03
Speaker 5: Well, this is clearly, it was a pep rally for the mongrel mob. And I thought the text that summed it up best for me was someone who came through to me and said, what does Orini think these guys do to get their gang patches? Yeah, totally. And I grew up in.
00:05:19
Speaker 6: Well, they're not volunteering for child fund, are they?
00:05:20
Speaker 5: They're not. I grew up in Tamaranui, where the mongrel mob when I was a kid was the dominant gang. Some of the crimes committed were absolutely heinous. Your friend, Mike Valentine, back in 1989, did a story after the murder of my high school friend's dad, who was a service station owner there. about the mongrel mob connections in my town, and certainly that story is one that scarred our entire community. There is no pep rally for these guys. There is no glossing over the reality of what happens in these gangs. And I also happen to know a lot of very amazing, beautiful young guys who I went to high school with in Taumaranui. That was their life path, and I know what an initiation into these gangs looks like for those guys. There is a reason that their emblem is a dog. It is because they are treated like dogs and that's then how they behave. I think this entire thing is disgraceful. This campaign hadn't had a scandal until this happened. This is the scandal of this election. Self-inflicted, which is the remarkable thing, right? It is.
00:06:31
Speaker 4: When they were starting to look good, certainly... in the eyes of the public in terms of the opinion polls, the centre-left, they were looking pretty strong and you have this sort of thing happening. And this happens, election campaigns after election campaign. There's always something that comes out to derail it. And this is your classic, comes out one side or the other on this occasion. It's come out on the opposition.
00:06:58
Speaker 5: And I just want to take that point to task. I don't think there is any right-minded New Zealander, whether you live in Grayland or wherever, no matter how woke you are, you know what these gangs are about. You know what feeds them, what their lifeblood is, how they get their money. And there is just no way that they should at all be venerated or celebrated, in my view.
00:07:22
Speaker 3: Do you think, Josie, this is bad enough to actually lose the lefty election?
00:07:26
Speaker 6: I think it's really hard for Labour because one of the big questions around this election, and we've talked about it, is that for the first time ever, we've got two very weak major parties on 28%. They could be on 25, they could be on 30, but they're weak. And so we don't know what that coalition is going to look like with Labour leading. Now, the problem with Luxon and Chris Hipkins is that they keep saying, you know, Christopher Luxon says, oh, we're going to get 20 National Party ministers in my cabinet.
00:07:55
Speaker 5: I'm going to win them all.
00:07:56
Speaker 6: Well, he's not. We know that. I mean, the polls are telling us that. For Labour, we know what a national-led coalition looks like with ACT and New Zealand First. We don't really know what it looks like with Te Pāti Māori, with Greens and with Opportunity.
00:08:09
Speaker 5: Yeah, too right.
00:08:10
Speaker 3: And so, therefore, it's a bit freaky. Listen, let's take a quick break. We'll come back to you guys shortly. It's quarter past you at the front bench. Just quickly, we have Te Ururoa Flavell, just a reminder, former Maori Party co-leader, who will be with us after five o'clock on the gangs issue. Back with the front bench. Trish, what do you make of the National Party's policy to remove the right to silence, re the kids being killed?
00:08:30
Speaker 5: Another one of those headline policies that sounds great when you pull it out of the hat, you can't argue with it, right? And we all know of the terrible cases, including Baby Rosa, whose anniversary it is right now.
00:08:43
Speaker 3: The Kahui twins.
00:08:45
Speaker 5: Exactly, where they've never found the perpetrator because of this. However— This is an enormous step to take in law. And once again, it feels to me like the ninth floor of the beehive, which has been running the National Party campaign, has put its fist into the grab bag hat of policies and gone. This will get a few headlines. I am very concerned about policy like this in an area like this of the law. I'm certainly no lawyer. But you can't pull something like this out.
00:09:19
Speaker 3: It's common law.
00:09:20
Speaker 5: In isolation.
00:09:21
Speaker 2: It's common law. Exactly right.
00:09:22
Speaker 5: You can't pull it out in isolation. So that is my concern. And also, this again, it's a big headline. It is a tiny number of cases. And I would remind everyone here of the big number around child abuse this year. reported cases of concern to Oranga Tamariki has gone up from 73,000 to over 100,000 in the last 12 months. If you are serious about looking after our little children in New Zealand, you tackle those numbers.
00:09:54
Speaker 6: The problem with this is our whole legal system is built around the presumption of innocence. So if you reverse it for one thing, and you can, as you say, Trish, totally understand why you would want to do it, it's awful to think that.
00:10:06
Speaker 3: That you've got.
00:10:07
Speaker 6: Family members who might know how a child was killed and they don't say anything, but you reverse it for child murder, why not murder?
00:10:14
Speaker 3: Why not rape? Ruth Money, victims advocate, already this morning saying, well, actually it would be quite good if we did it for adult murder too. So you can see it happening.
00:10:22
Speaker 6: So then you're going to change our entire legal system to one that's closer to the French system, which is the adversarial system where you do investigations to find the truth. Now, if we want to have that debate, let's have that debate. But this to me is a little bit like when Labour proposed the hate speech laws. Who wants to make hate speech okay?
00:10:41
Speaker 3: Sounds like a great idea.
00:10:42
Speaker 6: Sounds like a fantastic idea. The unintended consequences is that you break 300, 400 years of freedom of speech if you get rid of the speech you don't like.
00:10:50
Speaker 3: It's a pity, Barry, because this just makes the Nats look like they are not thinking very deeply about this stuff. They look like they're not deep thinkers.
00:10:59
Speaker 4: I heard Chris Luxen trying to explain it away today why– he waited so long while they had been done it earlier. And he said, essentially, we'll just run out of time, which is actually true. You can say what you like on an election campaign. But the thing is, right to silence, and this is totally arguable, that right to silence... The only people that worry about right to silence, to me, are those who are guilty anyway, because if a cop's questioning.
00:11:31
Speaker 2: You about something.
00:11:32
Speaker 3: I don't think that's.
00:11:32
Speaker 2: True at all. Well, no, but there is an element of truth.
00:11:36
Speaker 4: But it's not to say that it is the basic, as you said, Josie, the basic tenet of our law is the right to silence. But when I've seen, and I've seen it, you mentioned the Kahui twins and others, when I see a family that can draw the wagons around and say nothing and you've got children dying without any consequences to those who are in the house, you have to say... Do they have a right to silence? And my feeling on that is when it comes to kids, no, they don't.
00:12:10
Speaker 6: Well, the law commission's looked at this many times in the past, though, Barry, and one of the things they came up with was that what if you are a woman in that environment and you say something to police and you end up being a victim of partner violence yourself? So they're trying.
00:12:25
Speaker 2: Well, the child's dead.
00:12:26
Speaker 6: Yeah, the child's dead, but you don't want to create another victim, right? And so there's all these unintended consequences.
00:12:31
Speaker 3: The unintended consequences are enormous, Barry. There is coerced evidence. There are people being forced into making statements just so they don't go to jail for 10 years. They just make stuff up, and therefore you just muddy the waters with testimonies.
00:12:46
Speaker 4: An inescapable fact, though, that you've got children in this country... who are being murdered.
00:12:53
Speaker 3: No one's denied that.
00:12:53
Speaker 2: And no one's being held to account.
00:12:55
Speaker 5: I think an inescapable fact here, though, also, too, is the rise of populism has seen these types of far-reaching policies developed in a backroom in Wellington without the proper consultation with the experts, i.e. the lawyers. And I thought there's been some very good comment from the legal profession around this today. And I think it's a real caution for our politicians. You know, what sounds great in a, In a press release headline, we have said this ad nauseum for the last nine years. Often in practice is an absolute schmuzzle. The problem definition isn't right. Therefore, the solution is an absolute cock-up.
00:13:34
Speaker 6: Can I add one fact to this, which is really interesting, that this right to silence actually goes way back to the medieval ages where you had a right not to take a religious oath, i.e. to say I'm not a Catholic, which I happen to be. But so this is a principle that's been there for many, many hundreds of years and you remove it, you're removing the protections across the board from the little guy.
00:13:56
Speaker 2: Totally.
00:13:56
Speaker 3: Okay, let's take a break. We'll come back to you shortly. 4.23.
00:13:59
Speaker 1: Thrashing out the big issues, the front bench on Heather Duplessy-Allen Drive, Newstalk ZB.
00:14:06
Speaker 3: Heather, you're all on the wrong side of this right to silence law. The conversation needs to be had. Britain has some laws around it. Well, Barry was on the right side if you were on the right side.
00:14:13
Speaker 6: Yay, Barry.
00:14:14
Speaker 3: Yeah, well done, Barry. One for Barry.
00:14:17
Speaker 4: But it seems as though he missed it.
00:14:19
Speaker 2: Nobody heard it.
00:14:20
Speaker 3: It's because you couched it too much, Barry. Your opinion was couched and you only had it right at the end. You've got to come out in front with your opinion. Anyway, listen, mood of the boardroom. We've got three things coming out this week worth looking at. Mood of the boardroom, I think The Post has got a poll tomorrow and TVNZ has got a poll tomorrow. Trish, what's most important for you and what are you looking for?
00:14:37
Speaker 5: I'm looking at the mood of the boardroom. As you might remember, last year's mood of the boardroom marked down several senior ministers. In my view, it will be a fairly tough report card this time round.
00:14:51
Speaker 3: I think especially for Nicola Willis.
00:14:53
Speaker 5: I think especially for Nicola Willis. And I think the concern there is if you are the National Party and you have lost that particular room, that is one thing I would reflect upon in my autopsy of what went wrong this election.
00:15:06
Speaker 1: Yeah, Barry?
00:15:06
Speaker 4: Well, my view is they, in fact, they will see all the positive signs in the economy at the moment. And these are well-informed people. many of whom I know, and they can read the economy better than many other people. And I would imagine that they'll now look at the way things are moving, the way various sectors are moving.
00:15:31
Speaker 2: And it'll be relatively positive.
00:15:34
Speaker 5: For the government?
00:15:34
Speaker 2: Yes, indeed.
00:15:35
Speaker 3: For the government?
00:15:36
Speaker 1: Yes.
00:15:36
Speaker 3: Are we clocking this conversation? I'm coming back to Barry.
00:15:39
Speaker 1: Just very quickly.
00:15:40
Speaker 5: I thought you were joking, Barry. Just very quickly. Just very quickly, let's just remember what the premise of this upswing is. Yes, there are some good movements. They are coming off a very, very low base. And also the big rah-rah around things are so great, and I repeatedly hear this from– from National, we are steering down the barrel of 220,000 jobs. These are all heroic Treasury assumptions.
00:16:07
Speaker 3: Quickly, Josie, sorry.
00:16:08
Speaker 5: Sorry, Barry, I'm going to pop your bubble again.
00:16:11
Speaker 6: Look, I would say the leaders' debates make about as much difference as.
00:16:18
Speaker 6: The price of coriander in the Pakistani spice market.
00:16:22
Speaker 3: Yes, because there is a multi-party leaders debate on TV3 and The Herald this week. But the mood of the boardroom makes a difference.
00:16:28
Speaker 5: That's my point.
00:16:29
Speaker 3: All right, listen, we're going to talk about Luxon and Opportunity when we come back. Newstalk ZB. Right, if you watched the Silver Ferns game last night, you will know Callie Jackson was the MVP, the most valuable player on court. We're going to have a chat to her in about 45 minutes' time. Right now it's 24 away from five. Heather, you three ladies need to pause and listen to the wise head of the experienced political commentator Barry Soper, brackets friend of Mandela.
00:17:06
Speaker 5: Stand in your power, Barry.
00:17:08
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right, Barry. So we bow to you, Beth. Yeah, your age. Yeah, get over it, get over it. Do you think then, Barry, Barry the wise, do you think that Chris Luxon is starting to look unbelievably ridiculous by ruling out opportunity and pretending he's not going to need them when every poll, bar one recently, says he's going to need them.
00:17:31
Speaker 4: Yes, I do think he sounds ridiculous, but I think even more ridiculous are the media that keep asking him. It's a bit like them saying to Winston Peters, are you going to go with Labour? He kept saying, no. I'm not going to go with Labour. Similarly here, you've got Chris Hipkins. I think it was fair to ask the question of opportunity when they dropped their bottom lines and then they became a much more malleable, easier fit for the National Party. Then it was appropriate to ask him. But to go on and on, day after day after day, he's now being accused of repeating himself Who can blame him? Because you've got dickheads in the media asking him all the time.
00:18:13
Speaker 3: Oh, now I know where my son heard the word dickhead that he started saying recently. Now we've found the culprit, Josie.
00:18:19
Speaker 6: But, I mean, don't you want to hear Christopher Luxon say, I could not be clearer.
00:18:24
Speaker 3: Let me be crystal clear.
00:18:25
Speaker 6: I could not be clearer with you guys. And I do think this undermines his credibility because it's so obvious that he's not going to get 20 national ministers in his cabinet. And I know what they're trying to do. The strategy is they don't want to turn any national voters towards opportunity.
00:18:43
Speaker 5: I get that.
00:18:44
Speaker 6: But they could actually, he could say something really honest, like, we want you to vote national because we're in a weak position here and we want to be in a stronger position. Of course, we'll talk to anybody. The New Zealand public decides that opportunity is someone we should talk to, we'll talk to them. But we encourage you to make sure.
00:19:00
Speaker 5: That we're the stronger party.
00:19:01
Speaker 2: But that's reasonable, Josie.
00:19:02
Speaker 5: That's what I would say if I'm him. But he doesn't.
00:19:04
Speaker 6: And I also think it looks like the whole campaign, the spatchcocked campaign from National has been an absolute disaster. The focus on nine new taxes, you know, are.
00:19:16
Speaker 2: The taxes in the room with us now, Mr. Luxon? Well, no longer nine new taxes.
00:19:20
Speaker 6: Oh, no, they're still doing the videos and the silly, silly videos.
00:19:23
Speaker 3: They've got the other new favourite subject, which is the mongrel mob.
00:19:27
Speaker 6: Well, to that point, imagine if they'd focused on crime and they'd focused on their record on crime, which is good, 37,000 fewer violent crimes, ram raids, education. If they'd focused on that, it's too late to pivot now, I believe. If they'd focused on that, they'd be in a much better position. Oh, and change their leaders, both of them.
00:19:47
Speaker 5: The problem is that. our Prime Minister does have a record of saying, let me be clear, and then things become vastly more opaque. So that's one of the challenges that we have here. The other challenge, I think, and this struck out to me at last week's leaders' debate, When Ryan Bridge asked both leaders, why do you think your parties are languishing at 28%, neither of them had the ability for deep self-reflection. Neither of them in that moment could come up with a plausible sort of answer to that. And that reminds me of what someone said to me this week, Josie, that– They feel like what we have lost in politics is the ability to say when things are hard.
00:20:38
Speaker 2: To laugh at yourself.
00:20:39
Speaker 5: Or to laugh at yourself or, you know, to explain that you don't have all the answers. And, you know, I think with Chris Luxon repeating this thing about I've got 20 seats around the cabinet and I'm going to get 20 cabinet ministers in. It just looks and sounds utterly ridiculous.
00:20:57
Speaker 2: I don't think he says he's going to get 20.
00:20:59
Speaker 5: He says, I'm going to win. I'm going to win.
00:21:02
Speaker 2: Of course he's got to say he's going to win. He can't go out there.
00:21:06
Speaker 4: And say, I'm going to lose. And what he would ideally like, as any prime minister would, is 20 faces around the cabinet table.
00:21:13
Speaker 3: Yeah, I want to win lotto.
00:21:14
Speaker 4: But he said, no, the thing that interested me about that particular comment, he said between 20 and 30.
00:21:20
Speaker 2: And I thought, hello.
00:21:21
Speaker 1: Hello.
00:21:21
Speaker 2: He's increasing the size again.
00:21:23
Speaker 5: But also, the thing for those two parties is a new phrase has been coined this election now in the last week. So instead of having small, medium and large, we have now got the minor parties and the medium parties.
00:21:38
Speaker 6: Oh, and we've also got jibber-jabber. Thanks to Ryan Bridges as the phrase for the election.
00:21:44
Speaker 3: Have you read Politic today? I know you're a fan of it, Trish.
00:21:47
Speaker 5: No, I haven't read it today.
00:21:48
Speaker 3: Okay, so the story today in Politic.co.nz, which is the political nerd's newsletter. is that National Party, senior members of the National Party are now discussing the fact that they will have to roll Luxon after the election because he has wasted so much political capital saying he's not going to work with Opportunity, that when he almost inevitably has to work with Opportunity, they've got to get rid of him.
00:22:08
Speaker 5: Well, remember when he first said he wouldn't work with them, it appeared to be a mistake, right? It didn't appear to be planned. So that's the problem. But that is the equation that other people have raised with me over this week. What happens post-election if Luxon said, I'm not picking up the phone? The only option then for the National Party caucus is to roll the leader, which they can do.
00:22:32
Speaker 3: And put someone in who will pick.
00:22:34
Speaker 5: Up the phone.
00:22:34
Speaker 6: Let's just imagine for a moment that they had rolled Christopher Luxon when they had the opportunity, because he's not popular, even if he's a likeable guy and all of those, you know, you can say all sorts of things about him that are good. But imagine if they had actually succeeded in that coup and Erica Stanford was standing there now, they would not be in this position.
00:22:51
Speaker 2: Oh, well, I can't agree with that. Well, how would I surprise? Because you don't know, of course, and nobody knows.
00:22:58
Speaker 3: And they should have kept Lux.
00:22:59
Speaker 2: In there, Gary. The very notion that.
00:23:02
Speaker 4: During coalition negotiations, the caucus is going to come together and say, now we're going to dump Christopher Lux and bring in Erica Stanford and she'll talk to Cui Lei Wang.
00:23:13
Speaker 2: I mean, politics don't happen like that.
00:23:15
Speaker 3: And that's not going to happen, Barry, because they've demonstrated that on three separate occasions they can't finish the coup.
00:23:20
Speaker 5: But what we do know is that while Luxon and Hipkins are campaigning to lead the next government, the minor parties are campaigning now. to decide what mandate either of those two men have. And that mandate is looking increasingly shaky.
00:23:36
Speaker 6: Which is the same for Christopher Hipkins. He doesn't necessarily have the mandate to say who will be finance minister, who will be minister of justice, who will be.
00:23:43
Speaker 3: Minister of police.
00:23:44
Speaker 2: Well, I'll wait and see what the public say.
00:23:45
Speaker 3: Let's take a quick break. Come back to you guys. 17 away from five.
00:23:49
Speaker 1: No topic off limits. No sacred cows. It's the Front Bench on Newstalk ZB.
00:23:55
Speaker 3: Okay, you're back with the Front Bench. Trish Hurston was just saying in the ad break she wants to do a little whip around the other parties. What do you want to whip around there?
00:24:02
Speaker 2: Oh dear, we've got a dominatrix amongst us.
00:24:06
Speaker 5: You wish, Barry. I'm not getting into any role playing on this programme. Keep it tidy. We're dying.
00:24:15
Speaker 3: This is a safe place.
00:24:17
Speaker 5: This is a safe space.
00:24:18
Speaker 3: Should be for Barry.
00:24:20
Speaker 5: The one thing that I have been banging on about this campaign is we've banged on about a lack of vision. One of the things that I have been watching with some interest is, you know, Active sent Paul Henry out into the wilds. He's had his first bus trip, which has been unusual. I don't think he's ever been on a bus before.
00:24:38
Speaker 2: Unbelievable.
00:24:39
Speaker 5: Everywhere he goes, the message is a positive message. Every small town he visits, what a great town. Here's what someone's doing here. It is in stark contrast, in my view, to a lot of the sort of fear and scare tactics that are going on in a lot of the other campaigns.
00:24:56
Speaker 2: Because he's not a politician.
00:24:57
Speaker 6: But it's interesting, though, because the national campaign is... failing dismally to where they wanted to be. And I heard Mike Hosking this morning saying he thinks they need to go negative big time. And usually I would say the same thing, Trish, that you're more likely to win with a positive campaign about the future, own the future. That's the sort of Tony Blair mantra, right? Whoever owns the future wins the election. I think at this stage, Because National has dropped the ball on their nine new taxes campaign, it's been an absolute failure, that their only option now is to do the better the devil you know, don't put it at risk, these guys will return to Ardern. Remember the crime, the ram raids, remember the inflation, remember the debt. So I think they've got so many limited choices now as to how they can possibly turn that 28% round. Labour, on the other hand, have got to be really careful, I think, to not look like they are the restoration of the Ardern government. And there's been a bit of an element of that come back in where they're going, no.
00:26:00
Speaker 2: Well, that's what they've got to be reminded of as well.
00:26:03
Speaker 4: You know, I was looking at that promise that– Helen Clark made in 2005. That was seven weeks out, so it's further up than it is now, seven weeks out from the polling day. And the result on the night was a gap between Labour and National of 2%. Don Brash missed taking the job by 2%. And that's where a big event late in the campaign can work. I was thinking, what could they do? Well, or what could anyone do?
00:26:34
Speaker 5: An October surprise.
00:26:35
Speaker 2: I think the biggest event now is the gangs.
00:26:37
Speaker 5: Yeah.
00:26:39
Speaker 2: That's not what people want.
00:26:40
Speaker 5: We must be in the last week really for any major policy because then we're into actually voting is open in a few days.
00:26:48
Speaker 3: Did your heart sink, Trish, when you saw the Prime Minister say this morning that if he was re-elected, there's a chance there won't be a government performed before Christmas?
00:26:58
Speaker 5: I think the way this election is shaping up, it may be that coalition discussions go on for much longer. You know, remembering that normally we're used to New Zealand First going in and, you know, it's the kingmaker and we've had anything up to six weeks. This time around, you may have at least four parties or four parties on both sides. Pairing with that, the relative strengths of each party in those negotiations and then also put this into the mix. You're going to have the Opportunity Party, potentially, if it is the kingmaker, going into those negotiations with zero political experience. They have got not one MP in their caucus who will have ever been there before. their only sort of party official who has even been around Parliament is Ian Lee's Galloway from Labour, who's not, you know, that's enough said.
00:27:59
Speaker 2: I don't think he's one that you would rely on for good information.
00:28:02
Speaker 5: But if you're the Prime Minister, imagine in that mix of stuff, how on earth are you going to get through that?
00:28:10
Speaker 4: But see, what we're all presupposing, I think, is that, look, We know it's going to be close, but we're presupposing that the Opportunity Party will be there. And I'm not sure that they will be there. They're now polling around 5%. And We've seen plenty of parties.
00:28:29
Speaker 3: Five to eight.
00:28:30
Speaker 2: Five to eight. But lately, in the last couple of polls.
00:28:34
Speaker 3: Eight per cent in the last one year has varied last week.
00:28:35
Speaker 6: And Matthew Hooton had a good column over the weekend, which I think is right, that because they are in play, even if it's only 5 per cent, Barry, but let's say five to eight, that they should have a lot more scrutiny, not just on their policies, but on who's making the decisions.
00:28:48
Speaker 3: Who created the party.
00:28:49
Speaker 5: Who's the board?
00:28:50
Speaker 6: I mean, I looked at the names.
00:28:51
Speaker 3: I don't know any of them, right?
00:28:53
Speaker 2: They're very powerful, very powerful business people.
00:29:02
Speaker 6: What are her KPIs? And what if she doesn't deliver her KPIs?
00:29:05
Speaker 5: I told someone that fact the other day, that the leader of this party had been selected via applying for an ad on Zeek.
00:29:12
Speaker 2: A job.
00:29:12
Speaker 5: And they laughed so much. They had tears rolling down their face.
00:29:16
Speaker 2: See, people don't understand that about them. I've always said they're a corporate party.
00:29:20
Speaker 5: They are.
00:29:21
Speaker 6: I don't think we'll have a government by Christmas, and I think we'll.
00:29:23
Speaker 3: Go back to the polls next year. No, oh, what?
00:29:26
Speaker 6: If the seat of Westminster in the UK can have seven prime ministers in 10 years and first pass the post, why not us?
00:29:34
Speaker 3: Okay, we're remembering this because we're coming back to you on this.
00:29:36
Speaker 2: Winston won't like it. Honestly.
00:29:38
Speaker 3: Take a quick break. Eight away from five. Right, just a reminder, after five o'clock to Ururoa Flavell, former Māori Party leader on this business with a mongrel mob that just keeps on rolling on. It's five away from five. You're back with the front bench, Josie Pagani, Trish Hurston and Barry Soper. Josie, do you think ACT is in fact campaigning for the split voting? Because this has been alleged over the weekend.
00:29:58
Speaker 6: Well, I had one view until the break and Trish just said something that convinced me the other way, that I actually don't think that they're playing the same game as Harry Mowbray and Te Pāti Māori. I think they're doing the, you're right, Trish, I think they're doing the classic kind of split vote, like Party Vote Act, you know, as you would any small party.
00:30:13
Speaker 3: It just so happens that it's their consistent message, but this time it plays into the vote splitting.
00:30:18
Speaker 6: It plays into that. And I think for the public, it's just all noise around, you guys are gaming the system here, you're gaming, and I don't like it. Just like they don't like it when, you know, there's a cup of tea in Epsom or whatever, right? They don't like it when you're trying to play games with them. And I think what that does is, A, it shows that you're not going to the electorate and.
00:30:38
Speaker 5: The voters with a vision. It shows that the.
00:30:40
Speaker 6: Coalition government isn't going to voters with a record of what we've achieved in government. They're going, no, no, if you do this and do that and split that and you'll get an overhang and we'll get more votes for the right.
00:30:52
Speaker 2: That's right. It's the mechanics of MMP that's taking precedence.
00:30:55
Speaker 3: Trish, you're worried about the unenrolled people. Are you the young people?
00:30:58
Speaker 5: So the young people, the current tally for 18 to 24-year-olds, and remembering the reason this is important, if you don't vote the first time you are able to, the chances of you voting subsequently are lower, which isn't a great thing. So I would say, parents, if you've got an 18 to 24-year-old in your household, Invite them out for brunch, do whatever you can to get them down to vote. There are still 167,000 of them who are unregistered. So they're at about 60-something percent of registered. In the next age cohort, that jumps up to 80, and then ultimately with the older ones, it goes up to 90. So they are really lagging behind. It's also a message to political parties. Find a way to get through to these kids and let them see something in you.
00:31:46
Speaker 3: And what's up with you, Barry? What are you thinking about today?
00:31:50
Speaker 4: Just picking up on Josie that, you know, the technical side of MMP, like no other time, it's being exploited now.
00:31:59
Speaker 2: And, you know.
00:32:01
Speaker 4: Maybe we should have to have a look at MMP again. And for example, to preclude the overhangs that we've been talking about, you could have 60 electorate seats and 60 list seats and set it at that. And then, you know, it would play out that way. You would have a set number. If you look at what happened in Germany recently, they changed their electoral system to some extent, the MMP system that we're based on.
00:32:28
Speaker 2: And it ended up an absolute mess.
00:32:31
Speaker 3: How many more weeks have we got?
00:32:33
Speaker 2: That's enough.
00:32:34
Speaker 3: Our front bench, Barry. So Patricia and Joseph O'Garney. We'll be back next Monday. News Talk ZB.
Speaker 1: The Front Bench. Thrashing out the big issues. Analyzing the facts. Throwing out the fiction. Hearing what matters. No topic off limits. No holding back. No scripts. No rules. No bull. Barry Soper. Josie Pagani. Trish Shearson. Heather Dupacy-Allen. The Front Bench. On your home for election 2026.
00:00:20
Speaker 2: Newstalk ZB.
00:00:24
Speaker 3: Hey, good afternoon. Welcome to the show. Coming up today, former Māori Party co-leader Te Orerua Flavell on why they won't shut up about the mongrel mob, Callie Jackson, the MVP of the Silver Ferns game last night, and Nicola Willis, the finance spokesperson for the National Party, is with us after six. It's seven past four.
00:00:40
Speaker 1: The Front Bench.
00:00:41
Speaker 3: Unbelievably, the mongrel mob drama is still rolling on today, and this is now day six. There is now a video that has emerged of the hui at the gang pad. in which Oriini Kaipara, the Māori Party MP, tells the mongrel mob that the Māori Party policies reinstate what should have always been. And depending on how you interpret that statement in the context of what she was just talking about previously, she was either meaning that the Māori Party policies will reinstate housing for gang members or will reinstate the mana of gang members. Either way, neither are probably a priority for most voters, I would say. But it gets worse because the video shows that the Hui was a campaign event, which is basically where the parties were asking for votes. That is what the Green Party denied. They said it was a health and wellbeing promotion day. Doesn't look like that. Gets worse yet because now the MP, Orini Kaipara, has given an interview defending herself in which she says she is more afraid of MPs in suits who are pushing policy about the Waitangi Tribunal than she is of gang members. And it gets worse yet, if you can believe it, because Kiri Tamahere Waititi, the daughter of John Tamahere and the wife of Rawiri Waititi, has also released an Instagram video slagging off Labour for decrying meeting with game members who are whānau. Now, you do not need me to tell you that this is bad, that it's in day six, because just when Chippy finally got on the phone to Marama Davidson and basically told the Greens to shut up, and they did at the end of last week, then the Maori Party decided to pipe up. And it's bad for the left wing because swing voters hate gangs, which then swings them to the right, and both sides are fighting over 15% of swing voters at the moment. But also, this drowns out everything. that either the Labour Party or the Green Party say when this story is in the news. They can promote any policy they like. All they're going to get asked about is gangs. Every day that it carries on, they'll just get asked about gangs. It is unbelievable that these two parties, the Greens and the Maori Party, are taking turns digging this hole even deeper for themselves.
00:02:39
Speaker 1: The Front Bench.
00:02:40
Speaker 3: Right, on The Front Bench with me, we have Barry Soper, Senior Political Correspondent, Trish Sherson of Sherson Willis PR and Josie Pagani, Child Fund Chief Executive. Hello, you three.
00:02:48
Speaker 2: Good afternoon.
00:02:49
Speaker 3: All right, Barry, what the hell was the Māori Party thinking.
00:02:51
Speaker 1: Then, eh?
00:02:52
Speaker 4: Well, there's a supreme irony in this when you consider that last week Christopher Luxon said in the leaders' debate that law and order wasn't really part of the campaign because it was well and truly under control. And indeed it had been. The patches had been taken off gangs and they weren't.
00:03:11
Speaker 2: Really an issue. And what happens? Oh dear.
00:03:14
Speaker 4: You know, you've got naive politicians to the extreme going into a patch headquarters and and campaigning, as we now understand, with the gang members.
00:03:25
Speaker 2: I mean, it's nothing short.
00:03:27
Speaker 4: Of disgraceful when you think about it, but nothing short of damning for the centre-left. I mean, poor old Chris Hipkins must be laying awake at night wondering how he can put this thing right, because no matter what he does, talking to the Greens, telling them to button it, and then the Māori Party coming out, and these are his coalition partners. So, You know, it's a nightmare for the Labour Party.
00:03:53
Speaker 5: Absolutely.
00:03:54
Speaker 6: And this is the kind of thing that you would expect from the sort of arty, slightly woke crowd in Grey Lynn to romanticise gangs.
00:04:03
Speaker 5: And I don't think.
00:04:07
Speaker 1: So.
00:04:07
Speaker 6: Obviously, present company accepted. Well, yes, that's right. But look, I've had extended family connections where there's been gang members. This is not how you restore mana to gang members, to Māori gang members. I used to go into the prisons with an old kuia called Anatia, who would teach these hardened criminals kapahaka. I used to go in with Pate, Catholic priest, who was a wonderful man, who would teach them whakapapa, where their marae was, where they came from, and that returned the mana. And that was the only thing that allowed them to leave the gangs. So what Oriini Kaipara is doing here is actually undermining the ability for some of these men to leave the gangs. Like, you know, you talk to someone like Dave Luteli and his dad. They've worked with these communities out of the prisons all the time. And the best thing that they can do is give them tikanga, Māori culture and get them out of the gangs.
00:05:03
Speaker 5: Well, this is clearly, it was a pep rally for the mongrel mob. And I thought the text that summed it up best for me was someone who came through to me and said, what does Orini think these guys do to get their gang patches? Yeah, totally. And I grew up in.
00:05:19
Speaker 6: Well, they're not volunteering for child fund, are they?
00:05:20
Speaker 5: They're not. I grew up in Tamaranui, where the mongrel mob when I was a kid was the dominant gang. Some of the crimes committed were absolutely heinous. Your friend, Mike Valentine, back in 1989, did a story after the murder of my high school friend's dad, who was a service station owner there. about the mongrel mob connections in my town, and certainly that story is one that scarred our entire community. There is no pep rally for these guys. There is no glossing over the reality of what happens in these gangs. And I also happen to know a lot of very amazing, beautiful young guys who I went to high school with in Taumaranui. That was their life path, and I know what an initiation into these gangs looks like for those guys. There is a reason that their emblem is a dog. It is because they are treated like dogs and that's then how they behave. I think this entire thing is disgraceful. This campaign hadn't had a scandal until this happened. This is the scandal of this election. Self-inflicted, which is the remarkable thing, right? It is.
00:06:31
Speaker 4: When they were starting to look good, certainly... in the eyes of the public in terms of the opinion polls, the centre-left, they were looking pretty strong and you have this sort of thing happening. And this happens, election campaigns after election campaign. There's always something that comes out to derail it. And this is your classic, comes out one side or the other on this occasion. It's come out on the opposition.
00:06:58
Speaker 5: And I just want to take that point to task. I don't think there is any right-minded New Zealander, whether you live in Grayland or wherever, no matter how woke you are, you know what these gangs are about. You know what feeds them, what their lifeblood is, how they get their money. And there is just no way that they should at all be venerated or celebrated, in my view.
00:07:22
Speaker 3: Do you think, Josie, this is bad enough to actually lose the lefty election?
00:07:26
Speaker 6: I think it's really hard for Labour because one of the big questions around this election, and we've talked about it, is that for the first time ever, we've got two very weak major parties on 28%. They could be on 25, they could be on 30, but they're weak. And so we don't know what that coalition is going to look like with Labour leading. Now, the problem with Luxon and Chris Hipkins is that they keep saying, you know, Christopher Luxon says, oh, we're going to get 20 National Party ministers in my cabinet.
00:07:55
Speaker 5: I'm going to win them all.
00:07:56
Speaker 6: Well, he's not. We know that. I mean, the polls are telling us that. For Labour, we know what a national-led coalition looks like with ACT and New Zealand First. We don't really know what it looks like with Te Pāti Māori, with Greens and with Opportunity.
00:08:09
Speaker 5: Yeah, too right.
00:08:10
Speaker 3: And so, therefore, it's a bit freaky. Listen, let's take a quick break. We'll come back to you guys shortly. It's quarter past you at the front bench. Just quickly, we have Te Ururoa Flavell, just a reminder, former Maori Party co-leader, who will be with us after five o'clock on the gangs issue. Back with the front bench. Trish, what do you make of the National Party's policy to remove the right to silence, re the kids being killed?
00:08:30
Speaker 5: Another one of those headline policies that sounds great when you pull it out of the hat, you can't argue with it, right? And we all know of the terrible cases, including Baby Rosa, whose anniversary it is right now.
00:08:43
Speaker 3: The Kahui twins.
00:08:45
Speaker 5: Exactly, where they've never found the perpetrator because of this. However— This is an enormous step to take in law. And once again, it feels to me like the ninth floor of the beehive, which has been running the National Party campaign, has put its fist into the grab bag hat of policies and gone. This will get a few headlines. I am very concerned about policy like this in an area like this of the law. I'm certainly no lawyer. But you can't pull something like this out.
00:09:19
Speaker 3: It's common law.
00:09:20
Speaker 5: In isolation.
00:09:21
Speaker 2: It's common law. Exactly right.
00:09:22
Speaker 5: You can't pull it out in isolation. So that is my concern. And also, this again, it's a big headline. It is a tiny number of cases. And I would remind everyone here of the big number around child abuse this year. reported cases of concern to Oranga Tamariki has gone up from 73,000 to over 100,000 in the last 12 months. If you are serious about looking after our little children in New Zealand, you tackle those numbers.
00:09:54
Speaker 6: The problem with this is our whole legal system is built around the presumption of innocence. So if you reverse it for one thing, and you can, as you say, Trish, totally understand why you would want to do it, it's awful to think that.
00:10:06
Speaker 3: That you've got.
00:10:07
Speaker 6: Family members who might know how a child was killed and they don't say anything, but you reverse it for child murder, why not murder?
00:10:14
Speaker 3: Why not rape? Ruth Money, victims advocate, already this morning saying, well, actually it would be quite good if we did it for adult murder too. So you can see it happening.
00:10:22
Speaker 6: So then you're going to change our entire legal system to one that's closer to the French system, which is the adversarial system where you do investigations to find the truth. Now, if we want to have that debate, let's have that debate. But this to me is a little bit like when Labour proposed the hate speech laws. Who wants to make hate speech okay?
00:10:41
Speaker 3: Sounds like a great idea.
00:10:42
Speaker 6: Sounds like a fantastic idea. The unintended consequences is that you break 300, 400 years of freedom of speech if you get rid of the speech you don't like.
00:10:50
Speaker 3: It's a pity, Barry, because this just makes the Nats look like they are not thinking very deeply about this stuff. They look like they're not deep thinkers.
00:10:59
Speaker 4: I heard Chris Luxen trying to explain it away today why– he waited so long while they had been done it earlier. And he said, essentially, we'll just run out of time, which is actually true. You can say what you like on an election campaign. But the thing is, right to silence, and this is totally arguable, that right to silence... The only people that worry about right to silence, to me, are those who are guilty anyway, because if a cop's questioning.
00:11:31
Speaker 2: You about something.
00:11:32
Speaker 3: I don't think that's.
00:11:32
Speaker 2: True at all. Well, no, but there is an element of truth.
00:11:36
Speaker 4: But it's not to say that it is the basic, as you said, Josie, the basic tenet of our law is the right to silence. But when I've seen, and I've seen it, you mentioned the Kahui twins and others, when I see a family that can draw the wagons around and say nothing and you've got children dying without any consequences to those who are in the house, you have to say... Do they have a right to silence? And my feeling on that is when it comes to kids, no, they don't.
00:12:10
Speaker 6: Well, the law commission's looked at this many times in the past, though, Barry, and one of the things they came up with was that what if you are a woman in that environment and you say something to police and you end up being a victim of partner violence yourself? So they're trying.
00:12:25
Speaker 2: Well, the child's dead.
00:12:26
Speaker 6: Yeah, the child's dead, but you don't want to create another victim, right? And so there's all these unintended consequences.
00:12:31
Speaker 3: The unintended consequences are enormous, Barry. There is coerced evidence. There are people being forced into making statements just so they don't go to jail for 10 years. They just make stuff up, and therefore you just muddy the waters with testimonies.
00:12:46
Speaker 4: An inescapable fact, though, that you've got children in this country... who are being murdered.
00:12:53
Speaker 3: No one's denied that.
00:12:53
Speaker 2: And no one's being held to account.
00:12:55
Speaker 5: I think an inescapable fact here, though, also, too, is the rise of populism has seen these types of far-reaching policies developed in a backroom in Wellington without the proper consultation with the experts, i.e. the lawyers. And I thought there's been some very good comment from the legal profession around this today. And I think it's a real caution for our politicians. You know, what sounds great in a, In a press release headline, we have said this ad nauseum for the last nine years. Often in practice is an absolute schmuzzle. The problem definition isn't right. Therefore, the solution is an absolute cock-up.
00:13:34
Speaker 6: Can I add one fact to this, which is really interesting, that this right to silence actually goes way back to the medieval ages where you had a right not to take a religious oath, i.e. to say I'm not a Catholic, which I happen to be. But so this is a principle that's been there for many, many hundreds of years and you remove it, you're removing the protections across the board from the little guy.
00:13:56
Speaker 2: Totally.
00:13:56
Speaker 3: Okay, let's take a break. We'll come back to you shortly. 4.23.
00:13:59
Speaker 1: Thrashing out the big issues, the front bench on Heather Duplessy-Allen Drive, Newstalk ZB.
00:14:06
Speaker 3: Heather, you're all on the wrong side of this right to silence law. The conversation needs to be had. Britain has some laws around it. Well, Barry was on the right side if you were on the right side.
00:14:13
Speaker 6: Yay, Barry.
00:14:14
Speaker 3: Yeah, well done, Barry. One for Barry.
00:14:17
Speaker 4: But it seems as though he missed it.
00:14:19
Speaker 2: Nobody heard it.
00:14:20
Speaker 3: It's because you couched it too much, Barry. Your opinion was couched and you only had it right at the end. You've got to come out in front with your opinion. Anyway, listen, mood of the boardroom. We've got three things coming out this week worth looking at. Mood of the boardroom, I think The Post has got a poll tomorrow and TVNZ has got a poll tomorrow. Trish, what's most important for you and what are you looking for?
00:14:37
Speaker 5: I'm looking at the mood of the boardroom. As you might remember, last year's mood of the boardroom marked down several senior ministers. In my view, it will be a fairly tough report card this time round.
00:14:51
Speaker 3: I think especially for Nicola Willis.
00:14:53
Speaker 5: I think especially for Nicola Willis. And I think the concern there is if you are the National Party and you have lost that particular room, that is one thing I would reflect upon in my autopsy of what went wrong this election.
00:15:06
Speaker 1: Yeah, Barry?
00:15:06
Speaker 4: Well, my view is they, in fact, they will see all the positive signs in the economy at the moment. And these are well-informed people. many of whom I know, and they can read the economy better than many other people. And I would imagine that they'll now look at the way things are moving, the way various sectors are moving.
00:15:31
Speaker 2: And it'll be relatively positive.
00:15:34
Speaker 5: For the government?
00:15:34
Speaker 2: Yes, indeed.
00:15:35
Speaker 3: For the government?
00:15:36
Speaker 1: Yes.
00:15:36
Speaker 3: Are we clocking this conversation? I'm coming back to Barry.
00:15:39
Speaker 1: Just very quickly.
00:15:40
Speaker 5: I thought you were joking, Barry. Just very quickly. Just very quickly, let's just remember what the premise of this upswing is. Yes, there are some good movements. They are coming off a very, very low base. And also the big rah-rah around things are so great, and I repeatedly hear this from– from National, we are steering down the barrel of 220,000 jobs. These are all heroic Treasury assumptions.
00:16:07
Speaker 3: Quickly, Josie, sorry.
00:16:08
Speaker 5: Sorry, Barry, I'm going to pop your bubble again.
00:16:11
Speaker 6: Look, I would say the leaders' debates make about as much difference as.
00:16:18
Speaker 6: The price of coriander in the Pakistani spice market.
00:16:22
Speaker 3: Yes, because there is a multi-party leaders debate on TV3 and The Herald this week. But the mood of the boardroom makes a difference.
00:16:28
Speaker 5: That's my point.
00:16:29
Speaker 3: All right, listen, we're going to talk about Luxon and Opportunity when we come back. Newstalk ZB. Right, if you watched the Silver Ferns game last night, you will know Callie Jackson was the MVP, the most valuable player on court. We're going to have a chat to her in about 45 minutes' time. Right now it's 24 away from five. Heather, you three ladies need to pause and listen to the wise head of the experienced political commentator Barry Soper, brackets friend of Mandela.
00:17:06
Speaker 5: Stand in your power, Barry.
00:17:08
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right, Barry. So we bow to you, Beth. Yeah, your age. Yeah, get over it, get over it. Do you think then, Barry, Barry the wise, do you think that Chris Luxon is starting to look unbelievably ridiculous by ruling out opportunity and pretending he's not going to need them when every poll, bar one recently, says he's going to need them.
00:17:31
Speaker 4: Yes, I do think he sounds ridiculous, but I think even more ridiculous are the media that keep asking him. It's a bit like them saying to Winston Peters, are you going to go with Labour? He kept saying, no. I'm not going to go with Labour. Similarly here, you've got Chris Hipkins. I think it was fair to ask the question of opportunity when they dropped their bottom lines and then they became a much more malleable, easier fit for the National Party. Then it was appropriate to ask him. But to go on and on, day after day after day, he's now being accused of repeating himself Who can blame him? Because you've got dickheads in the media asking him all the time.
00:18:13
Speaker 3: Oh, now I know where my son heard the word dickhead that he started saying recently. Now we've found the culprit, Josie.
00:18:19
Speaker 6: But, I mean, don't you want to hear Christopher Luxon say, I could not be clearer.
00:18:24
Speaker 3: Let me be crystal clear.
00:18:25
Speaker 6: I could not be clearer with you guys. And I do think this undermines his credibility because it's so obvious that he's not going to get 20 national ministers in his cabinet. And I know what they're trying to do. The strategy is they don't want to turn any national voters towards opportunity.
00:18:43
Speaker 5: I get that.
00:18:44
Speaker 6: But they could actually, he could say something really honest, like, we want you to vote national because we're in a weak position here and we want to be in a stronger position. Of course, we'll talk to anybody. The New Zealand public decides that opportunity is someone we should talk to, we'll talk to them. But we encourage you to make sure.
00:19:00
Speaker 5: That we're the stronger party.
00:19:01
Speaker 2: But that's reasonable, Josie.
00:19:02
Speaker 5: That's what I would say if I'm him. But he doesn't.
00:19:04
Speaker 6: And I also think it looks like the whole campaign, the spatchcocked campaign from National has been an absolute disaster. The focus on nine new taxes, you know, are.
00:19:16
Speaker 2: The taxes in the room with us now, Mr. Luxon? Well, no longer nine new taxes.
00:19:20
Speaker 6: Oh, no, they're still doing the videos and the silly, silly videos.
00:19:23
Speaker 3: They've got the other new favourite subject, which is the mongrel mob.
00:19:27
Speaker 6: Well, to that point, imagine if they'd focused on crime and they'd focused on their record on crime, which is good, 37,000 fewer violent crimes, ram raids, education. If they'd focused on that, it's too late to pivot now, I believe. If they'd focused on that, they'd be in a much better position. Oh, and change their leaders, both of them.
00:19:47
Speaker 5: The problem is that. our Prime Minister does have a record of saying, let me be clear, and then things become vastly more opaque. So that's one of the challenges that we have here. The other challenge, I think, and this struck out to me at last week's leaders' debate, When Ryan Bridge asked both leaders, why do you think your parties are languishing at 28%, neither of them had the ability for deep self-reflection. Neither of them in that moment could come up with a plausible sort of answer to that. And that reminds me of what someone said to me this week, Josie, that– They feel like what we have lost in politics is the ability to say when things are hard.
00:20:38
Speaker 2: To laugh at yourself.
00:20:39
Speaker 5: Or to laugh at yourself or, you know, to explain that you don't have all the answers. And, you know, I think with Chris Luxon repeating this thing about I've got 20 seats around the cabinet and I'm going to get 20 cabinet ministers in. It just looks and sounds utterly ridiculous.
00:20:57
Speaker 2: I don't think he says he's going to get 20.
00:20:59
Speaker 5: He says, I'm going to win. I'm going to win.
00:21:02
Speaker 2: Of course he's got to say he's going to win. He can't go out there.
00:21:06
Speaker 4: And say, I'm going to lose. And what he would ideally like, as any prime minister would, is 20 faces around the cabinet table.
00:21:13
Speaker 3: Yeah, I want to win lotto.
00:21:14
Speaker 4: But he said, no, the thing that interested me about that particular comment, he said between 20 and 30.
00:21:20
Speaker 2: And I thought, hello.
00:21:21
Speaker 1: Hello.
00:21:21
Speaker 2: He's increasing the size again.
00:21:23
Speaker 5: But also, the thing for those two parties is a new phrase has been coined this election now in the last week. So instead of having small, medium and large, we have now got the minor parties and the medium parties.
00:21:38
Speaker 6: Oh, and we've also got jibber-jabber. Thanks to Ryan Bridges as the phrase for the election.
00:21:44
Speaker 3: Have you read Politic today? I know you're a fan of it, Trish.
00:21:47
Speaker 5: No, I haven't read it today.
00:21:48
Speaker 3: Okay, so the story today in Politic.co.nz, which is the political nerd's newsletter. is that National Party, senior members of the National Party are now discussing the fact that they will have to roll Luxon after the election because he has wasted so much political capital saying he's not going to work with Opportunity, that when he almost inevitably has to work with Opportunity, they've got to get rid of him.
00:22:08
Speaker 5: Well, remember when he first said he wouldn't work with them, it appeared to be a mistake, right? It didn't appear to be planned. So that's the problem. But that is the equation that other people have raised with me over this week. What happens post-election if Luxon said, I'm not picking up the phone? The only option then for the National Party caucus is to roll the leader, which they can do.
00:22:32
Speaker 3: And put someone in who will pick.
00:22:34
Speaker 5: Up the phone.
00:22:34
Speaker 6: Let's just imagine for a moment that they had rolled Christopher Luxon when they had the opportunity, because he's not popular, even if he's a likeable guy and all of those, you know, you can say all sorts of things about him that are good. But imagine if they had actually succeeded in that coup and Erica Stanford was standing there now, they would not be in this position.
00:22:51
Speaker 2: Oh, well, I can't agree with that. Well, how would I surprise? Because you don't know, of course, and nobody knows.
00:22:58
Speaker 3: And they should have kept Lux.
00:22:59
Speaker 2: In there, Gary. The very notion that.
00:23:02
Speaker 4: During coalition negotiations, the caucus is going to come together and say, now we're going to dump Christopher Lux and bring in Erica Stanford and she'll talk to Cui Lei Wang.
00:23:13
Speaker 2: I mean, politics don't happen like that.
00:23:15
Speaker 3: And that's not going to happen, Barry, because they've demonstrated that on three separate occasions they can't finish the coup.
00:23:20
Speaker 5: But what we do know is that while Luxon and Hipkins are campaigning to lead the next government, the minor parties are campaigning now. to decide what mandate either of those two men have. And that mandate is looking increasingly shaky.
00:23:36
Speaker 6: Which is the same for Christopher Hipkins. He doesn't necessarily have the mandate to say who will be finance minister, who will be minister of justice, who will be.
00:23:43
Speaker 3: Minister of police.
00:23:44
Speaker 2: Well, I'll wait and see what the public say.
00:23:45
Speaker 3: Let's take a quick break. Come back to you guys. 17 away from five.
00:23:49
Speaker 1: No topic off limits. No sacred cows. It's the Front Bench on Newstalk ZB.
00:23:55
Speaker 3: Okay, you're back with the Front Bench. Trish Hurston was just saying in the ad break she wants to do a little whip around the other parties. What do you want to whip around there?
00:24:02
Speaker 2: Oh dear, we've got a dominatrix amongst us.
00:24:06
Speaker 5: You wish, Barry. I'm not getting into any role playing on this programme. Keep it tidy. We're dying.
00:24:15
Speaker 3: This is a safe place.
00:24:17
Speaker 5: This is a safe space.
00:24:18
Speaker 3: Should be for Barry.
00:24:20
Speaker 5: The one thing that I have been banging on about this campaign is we've banged on about a lack of vision. One of the things that I have been watching with some interest is, you know, Active sent Paul Henry out into the wilds. He's had his first bus trip, which has been unusual. I don't think he's ever been on a bus before.
00:24:38
Speaker 2: Unbelievable.
00:24:39
Speaker 5: Everywhere he goes, the message is a positive message. Every small town he visits, what a great town. Here's what someone's doing here. It is in stark contrast, in my view, to a lot of the sort of fear and scare tactics that are going on in a lot of the other campaigns.
00:24:56
Speaker 2: Because he's not a politician.
00:24:57
Speaker 6: But it's interesting, though, because the national campaign is... failing dismally to where they wanted to be. And I heard Mike Hosking this morning saying he thinks they need to go negative big time. And usually I would say the same thing, Trish, that you're more likely to win with a positive campaign about the future, own the future. That's the sort of Tony Blair mantra, right? Whoever owns the future wins the election. I think at this stage, Because National has dropped the ball on their nine new taxes campaign, it's been an absolute failure, that their only option now is to do the better the devil you know, don't put it at risk, these guys will return to Ardern. Remember the crime, the ram raids, remember the inflation, remember the debt. So I think they've got so many limited choices now as to how they can possibly turn that 28% round. Labour, on the other hand, have got to be really careful, I think, to not look like they are the restoration of the Ardern government. And there's been a bit of an element of that come back in where they're going, no.
00:26:00
Speaker 2: Well, that's what they've got to be reminded of as well.
00:26:03
Speaker 4: You know, I was looking at that promise that– Helen Clark made in 2005. That was seven weeks out, so it's further up than it is now, seven weeks out from the polling day. And the result on the night was a gap between Labour and National of 2%. Don Brash missed taking the job by 2%. And that's where a big event late in the campaign can work. I was thinking, what could they do? Well, or what could anyone do?
00:26:34
Speaker 5: An October surprise.
00:26:35
Speaker 2: I think the biggest event now is the gangs.
00:26:37
Speaker 5: Yeah.
00:26:39
Speaker 2: That's not what people want.
00:26:40
Speaker 5: We must be in the last week really for any major policy because then we're into actually voting is open in a few days.
00:26:48
Speaker 3: Did your heart sink, Trish, when you saw the Prime Minister say this morning that if he was re-elected, there's a chance there won't be a government performed before Christmas?
00:26:58
Speaker 5: I think the way this election is shaping up, it may be that coalition discussions go on for much longer. You know, remembering that normally we're used to New Zealand First going in and, you know, it's the kingmaker and we've had anything up to six weeks. This time around, you may have at least four parties or four parties on both sides. Pairing with that, the relative strengths of each party in those negotiations and then also put this into the mix. You're going to have the Opportunity Party, potentially, if it is the kingmaker, going into those negotiations with zero political experience. They have got not one MP in their caucus who will have ever been there before. their only sort of party official who has even been around Parliament is Ian Lee's Galloway from Labour, who's not, you know, that's enough said.
00:27:59
Speaker 2: I don't think he's one that you would rely on for good information.
00:28:02
Speaker 5: But if you're the Prime Minister, imagine in that mix of stuff, how on earth are you going to get through that?
00:28:10
Speaker 4: But see, what we're all presupposing, I think, is that, look, We know it's going to be close, but we're presupposing that the Opportunity Party will be there. And I'm not sure that they will be there. They're now polling around 5%. And We've seen plenty of parties.
00:28:29
Speaker 3: Five to eight.
00:28:30
Speaker 2: Five to eight. But lately, in the last couple of polls.
00:28:34
Speaker 3: Eight per cent in the last one year has varied last week.
00:28:35
Speaker 6: And Matthew Hooton had a good column over the weekend, which I think is right, that because they are in play, even if it's only 5 per cent, Barry, but let's say five to eight, that they should have a lot more scrutiny, not just on their policies, but on who's making the decisions.
00:28:48
Speaker 3: Who created the party.
00:28:49
Speaker 5: Who's the board?
00:28:50
Speaker 6: I mean, I looked at the names.
00:28:51
Speaker 3: I don't know any of them, right?
00:28:53
Speaker 2: They're very powerful, very powerful business people.
00:29:02
Speaker 6: What are her KPIs? And what if she doesn't deliver her KPIs?
00:29:05
Speaker 5: I told someone that fact the other day, that the leader of this party had been selected via applying for an ad on Zeek.
00:29:12
Speaker 2: A job.
00:29:12
Speaker 5: And they laughed so much. They had tears rolling down their face.
00:29:16
Speaker 2: See, people don't understand that about them. I've always said they're a corporate party.
00:29:20
Speaker 5: They are.
00:29:21
Speaker 6: I don't think we'll have a government by Christmas, and I think we'll.
00:29:23
Speaker 3: Go back to the polls next year. No, oh, what?
00:29:26
Speaker 6: If the seat of Westminster in the UK can have seven prime ministers in 10 years and first pass the post, why not us?
00:29:34
Speaker 3: Okay, we're remembering this because we're coming back to you on this.
00:29:36
Speaker 2: Winston won't like it. Honestly.
00:29:38
Speaker 3: Take a quick break. Eight away from five. Right, just a reminder, after five o'clock to Ururoa Flavell, former Māori Party leader on this business with a mongrel mob that just keeps on rolling on. It's five away from five. You're back with the front bench, Josie Pagani, Trish Hurston and Barry Soper. Josie, do you think ACT is in fact campaigning for the split voting? Because this has been alleged over the weekend.
00:29:58
Speaker 6: Well, I had one view until the break and Trish just said something that convinced me the other way, that I actually don't think that they're playing the same game as Harry Mowbray and Te Pāti Māori. I think they're doing the, you're right, Trish, I think they're doing the classic kind of split vote, like Party Vote Act, you know, as you would any small party.
00:30:13
Speaker 3: It just so happens that it's their consistent message, but this time it plays into the vote splitting.
00:30:18
Speaker 6: It plays into that. And I think for the public, it's just all noise around, you guys are gaming the system here, you're gaming, and I don't like it. Just like they don't like it when, you know, there's a cup of tea in Epsom or whatever, right? They don't like it when you're trying to play games with them. And I think what that does is, A, it shows that you're not going to the electorate and.
00:30:38
Speaker 5: The voters with a vision. It shows that the.
00:30:40
Speaker 6: Coalition government isn't going to voters with a record of what we've achieved in government. They're going, no, no, if you do this and do that and split that and you'll get an overhang and we'll get more votes for the right.
00:30:52
Speaker 2: That's right. It's the mechanics of MMP that's taking precedence.
00:30:55
Speaker 3: Trish, you're worried about the unenrolled people. Are you the young people?
00:30:58
Speaker 5: So the young people, the current tally for 18 to 24-year-olds, and remembering the reason this is important, if you don't vote the first time you are able to, the chances of you voting subsequently are lower, which isn't a great thing. So I would say, parents, if you've got an 18 to 24-year-old in your household, Invite them out for brunch, do whatever you can to get them down to vote. There are still 167,000 of them who are unregistered. So they're at about 60-something percent of registered. In the next age cohort, that jumps up to 80, and then ultimately with the older ones, it goes up to 90. So they are really lagging behind. It's also a message to political parties. Find a way to get through to these kids and let them see something in you.
00:31:46
Speaker 3: And what's up with you, Barry? What are you thinking about today?
00:31:50
Speaker 4: Just picking up on Josie that, you know, the technical side of MMP, like no other time, it's being exploited now.
00:31:59
Speaker 2: And, you know.
00:32:01
Speaker 4: Maybe we should have to have a look at MMP again. And for example, to preclude the overhangs that we've been talking about, you could have 60 electorate seats and 60 list seats and set it at that. And then, you know, it would play out that way. You would have a set number. If you look at what happened in Germany recently, they changed their electoral system to some extent, the MMP system that we're based on.
00:32:28
Speaker 2: And it ended up an absolute mess.
00:32:31
Speaker 3: How many more weeks have we got?
00:32:33
Speaker 2: That's enough.
00:32:34
Speaker 3: Our front bench, Barry. So Patricia and Joseph O'Garney. We'll be back next Monday. News Talk ZB.
