 If Reality Check Radio enriches your day in life, support us to keep bringing you the content, voices, perspectives and the dose of reality you won't get anywhere else. Visit www.realitycheck.radio forward slash donate. Simon Laska is a seasoned campaigner and David Farat is a polling expert. Today they're joining me for a panel discussion about Labour leader Chris Hipkins and what the Labour Party needs to do to become relevant again. Simon and David are both on the line now let's get cracking. Okay so we've got a first here for the crunch, a panel discussion. With me is Simon Laske. Welcome Simon. Good day Cam. You're a political campaigner, lobbyist and you're going to give us some insights into what on earth is going wrong with Labour at the moment. And then we've got David Farah who's a polling genius and a political tragic as well. Welcome David. Good to be here. Right, so let's just kick this discussion off a little bit with the little contra-toms that occurred between Christopher Hipkins and Winston Peters. David, I'll go to you first. What are your thoughts on that in-anity? That's the way I see it from Hipkins. What do you think? My constant advice to all MPs, let alone leaders from what you call the two major parties is never pick a fight with the small party because it's great for them and it's terrible for you. You're meant to be the alternate Prime Minister taking on the major party of government and if you're trading insults with the party on 6% well that's not going to get you back into government is just going to make people think well maybe you're a 6% party too. I mean, you know, Hipkins didn't do well out of that engagement. He put out a press release called Winston Peters a drunk uncle and Winston Peters slammed him back and said you can talk, you'd get drunk on a wine biscuit. I mean, how do you recover from that? Well, you just go quiet and move on basically because it's one of these things where you think, oh, it's a great scandal. Winston's used some rhetoric which I don't like, et cetera. But look, voters care about inflation, schools, hospitals. They really don't give a flying F about two politicians critiquing each other's speech. Simon, what are your thoughts on that? Oh, yeah, we always backfarer as judgment because he's got the numbers and we're guessing. But yeah, I would have exactly the same advice. Ignore Winston, come out with a policy and if you're getting to trouble, have a dead cat to throw on the table. Yeah, but all it did was give Winston another probably 12, maybe 18 hours of news cycle and likely they'll do something stupid in the house today. And you know, come on guys, get your act together. This fighting Winston isn't going to win you the next election. I can't remember a politician who's ever got one over Winston when it comes to verbal entanglements. There isn't one that I can remember. Possibly Longie in his day. Maybe. But it would probably a draw, really, to be fair. So is this symptomatic, though, of where Labour is at that they're chasing parked cars or any passing car to see if they can get some traction on anything? Is that where they're at at the moment, Simon? I just don't think they've got a strategy. The strategy isn't particularly complex. They've got to work out a way to get to 61 seats in the next parliament. And, you know, I think if you said to Hipkins, mate, how are you going to get to 61 seats? He wouldn't know. And I don't think anyone in Labour would really know. And I think it's pretty obvious and you'll correct me if I'm wrong, Farah. 61 seats for the centre-left probably includes the Greens and the Maurits. And that really puts Labour in a position where they've got to work out whether they want to seed some ground to the Greens and to the Maori Party and take votes off the right or whether they want to scrap over a small number of votes on the left. And I don't think they've actually worked that one out either. No, look, they haven't got a strategy or not an apparent one yet. And there's two big things I think they've been doing wrong. And to be fair, they're not the only opposition that does this wrong. The first thing is no humility. They had the biggest decline in support of any government in history. Tupahi system. They went from 50 to was it three six, three seven percent? That's massive. But Hipkins says, oh, I can't think of anything we do differently. Then else when you all the time are taking national for repealing the policies that national vowed to repeal. And these are the very policies. What is why national won the election because they are unpopular? So you need to be actually going a bit quiet for your first six, nine months in opposition. You need to be listening. You need to work out what you did wrong and not just to continue. We were right on everything. You know, the people are wrong. I mean, we had great Robertson come out and saying he wishes he'd borrowed more. I mean, just on the weekend, that's what he came out with. That is his final statement and probably his last media appearance. I wish I'd borrowed more. I mean, the guy was unfit to be a finance minister. Absolutely unfit to be a finance minister. Probably the worst finance minister since Arnold Normayer. But maybe even worse than that, because the legacy of his debt is yet to be realized. And they haven't even said sorry. It's like Elton John Song. Sorry seems to be the hardest word. Politicians can't seem to say sorry for the mistakes they've made. Yeah, even if there's a disagreement over your policy, the fact is on some of their major pledges, Kiwi Bill, they made two percent of their target on a Belgian trees, funded four percent electric cars, 15 percent and zero percent for Dunedin Hospital Rebuild. And like rail zero percent never hear them say where we had good ideas. They might think that we didn't do well enough in delivering. They just say, oh, it's covid's fault. Well, I mean, that's the funny thing about delivery, isn't it? Member Jacinda Ardern said that this year is the year of delivery. Well, I must have been stillborn. Well, I thank you for that because that's why actually encourage me to at the end of the year of delivery, look at how labor were tracking against their promises. And it became so popular. I now do that every year. And I've just done those steps. You just heard, I've just published that we can now look at their entire six years in office and again, Jacinda, she promised the two big things were climate change and child poverty while kids and material hardship went up slightly and greenhouse gas emissions went up. And these were the centre of her political being. And then you mentioned about and Simon mentioned you need to be able to count to get to 61 seats in Parliament. And you can't get there without the Greens and the Maori Party, both of which seem to have gone completely crazy. Yeah, and look, Labour do is a tough decision they have to make because you don't just want to be in government. You do want to be like in government with a decent proportion of the vote. And they have lost a lot of Maori votes to party Maori and they've lost the youth boat quite convincingly to the Greens. And they have to either say, as Simon said, do we try and get back back? Which will be really hard because how do you out radical? Yo, Tepahi Maori talking DNA, genetic superiority, white supremacy, genocide or the Greens who think it's cruel to not let people terrorise their neighbours. So that's not a good strategy. They do have to go for the centre vote aim for that. But their worry is, well, if we don't get our votes back from the two more left parties, we are a main a pahe in the 20s. Even if, you know, they gain 3 percent, they're still going to be on 29 percent. But isn't there a, you know, I've been around a long time, look like you two have. Isn't it best they just ignore the Greens and the Maori Party and that support that went in the last election because they couldn't bring themselves to vote in New Zealand First Act or National will just naturally drift back there. And so you're better off just to focus on, you know, to want for want of a better term, the enemy, which is the three governing parties. Yeah, you also need to work out what their brand is. I did laugh on election night when Chris Hipkins said, you know, we still remain the party of the worker because actually National got more votes from blue collar voters according to exit polls I've seen than Labour did. And that's not new. This is actually happening around the world. So they're not the party of the working class anymore. Are they going to be the party of, you know, university elites or the party of urban progressives, etc. But you can't beat everything to everyone. Simon, what's your thoughts on that? I just constantly think about what Tony Abbott did in 2010, and he was their third leader in the first term of opposition and he nearly won. And what would Tony Abbott do? I'm pretty sure Tony Abbott would have one look at what's going on and go and have a chat to the Greens and the Marys and say, you guys get on with it, we're going to leave you alone and we're going to bash the crap out of the governing parties and we'd like your help. We can ordinate, but that's our game plan. We are just going to absolutely hammer the hell out of the government and make Chris Luxon look really, really, really bad. And we're going to try and make Act look bad. And we're probably going to leave Winston because we might just need him, even though we're saying we don't. But, you know, the first thing I would have done after the election as far as Hipkins was send bloody Winston a case of whiskey. And so, mate, I got that one wrong, didn't I? And that would make it easy to get to 61. But obviously, he is too thick to do that. But it is, you know, Farah, what do you reckon Abbott would do if he was running Labour here? Well, Abbott was probably the most effective opposition leader we've seen. He just focused on the government mercilessly and totally out of favour with the media and the elites. But as you say, he almost did it. And then, of course, he did win the time after. So he did couple of things. One was he was true to himself. He never pretended to be anything he isn't. And he ran very good campaign against the government. Of course, the government gave them, you know, are they were infighting themselves so much? So no great surprise there. I think the Labour does rather than rather, of course, they need to attack the government. They also do need to, though, be doing what you call the sort of listening thing, which is what did we do wrong? What do people want from us, et cetera? Not the sort of, you know, almost arrogance. You know, there's nothing we would have done differently. They're not going to do that until they get a change of leader. And it was because I'll make a prediction right now. Labour will muddle along until they change their leader. And then they'll get this new leader who will announce to us with great gravitas as he does it. I'm going to go on a tour around the provinces and I'm going to listen to what people say. They all do it every single time. It's ridiculous. They should be doing it anyway when they do there. They're usually Thursday little trips around the country. But they're going to say that, but they're going to waste heaps of time getting there. And the reason I think that they're going to waste heaps of time getting to that point is that right now they probably can't afford any polling. And so they've got no information other than public polling that's out there. Yeah, that's just bullshit, Cam. But those bastards should go and raise the money and get some proper polling. I mean, they're just useless. But they've always been bludgers, haven't they? I mean, they're always piggybacked off Talbot Mills expecting things for free. And the National Party goes and pays for its polling. You see, I disagree a little bit with what Farrah said about going out and listening, I don't think that you learn anywhere near as much as listening as if you'd spend a whole heap of money on proper research. So lots of polling and lots of focus groups and focus groups are really expensive. But they tell you what the target voters think. And what the regression analysis fair would you include that? If you were, you know, if someone come and said, Pinko, mate, we want you to do all the research for labour that you can. What's your budget and gave you a free hand? What would you do? You'd do polling focus groups. Would you do the regression analysis as well? Yeah, absolutely. The regression analysis is what helps tell you what actually moves the party vote. It's almost the most important part of that. So you're not guessing. And the focus groups are why you do the listening thing isn't so much as an alternative to focus groups, because in focus groups, you can really get into the detail. But it's showing a bit of humility. And if you have a new leader, especially it's a chance to introduce them. People are interested in the new leader, et cetera. So it's not that you're going to sit down and analyze the feedback from 50 public meetings. But it's allowing you to get a bit in touch with the community. In Wellington, people get so out of touch, they think everyone is urban liberal. So part of the reason you do over Tua is actually to talk to normal people. But that's why you do the focus groups, too, because they're the ones where you don't just find out what people say on the surface, but you get underneath the why. Why do people feel this? You know, this might be a top tier issue, but is it a second tier issue that they're really concerned about, like law and all that? So I'm listening to what I'm hearing in the back channels and to find out how serious I need to take labor. And until they do this detailed research and spend some money and until they fundraise, I'm not taking on that seriously. In the same way that Farah, you told me in 2002 when National got a hiding, their polling budget increased. And then in 2017, it went down to almost nothing. And now, like, you know, National were just useless because they didn't have the numbers. And I mean, I'm pitching for Talbot Mills. They need to go and get a whole lot of money to Talbot Mills to get them to do the necessary work. And what I'm hearing is they're not paying Talbot Mills anything. I mean, it's just useless. Yeah, look, I haven't heard that. And obviously I've a financial interest in this, but the analogy I use is doing good research is making sure the money you spend on ammo is hitting the right targets, because if you don't understand what's going to shift voters, then all your other spend can be an absolute waste. There's no even that. If your brand is crap, if people just don't like you, then it doesn't matter how much money you spend. The example I always give was the poll Lord Ashcroft did of the Conservatives under Michael Howard's leadership, where he asked people, what do you think of the Conservatives immigration policy? And around 69 percent of people loved it. But in another poll, when they were told it's the Conservatives immigration policy, only 40 percent of people loved it. So what they told you was their brand was so terrible that doesn't matter how many good ideas they came up with, they weren't going to win. And that's the point at which you say what we need to change leaders are brand is too tied to a non-popular leader. It's like David Cunliffe, when he was the leader, they came out with these, you know, vote positive billboards that didn't mean anything. Vote positive. What does that mean? And it was everywhere in the sort of trying to justify it. And then all of a sudden, Nicky Harger writes dirty politics and vote positive. All of a sudden comes clear that they were hand in glove with each other. But the problem was, is that a leader who was sorry for being a man and he just made a pig's ass of of the entire campaign and nationals vote actually went up. Got a majority on the night, I recall. Yeah, you know, because I live in way out of big cities and now live in the country. And most people don't know who Nicky Harger is. They certainly don't know who the three of us are. They don't really care about dirty politics or vote positive. You know, they sort of look up, do I like that person? Are they going to do anything for me? And if not, well, they've probably lost interest. And, you know, I think that Jacinda showed that they looked up and said, yeah, I do like you. And, you know, that made a difference. But the previous leaders hadn't. And that's something that I don't think that the people in Wellington, as as Farrah has just said, you know, the liberal elite in Wellington who think everyone's a trendy urban liberal, well, they're just not. You know, the people I run into, I have a role in Hawkes Bay. I never talk politics unless someone brings it up with me. And it's very rare for anyone to bring it up with me. They all know what I do, but they're just not very interested. And that's the baseline that you've got to work with. People who really don't care and are not that interested in them. Well, do I like them? Are they competent? Will they do anything for me? And I don't know that they could answer those questions. Yeah, in terms of this of what you call normal person, I always used to rely on good friends of mine who were parents. And it's what they talk about at school pick up and drop off. It used to be what they talk about in the smoking room. And again, since I've become a parent and do the school pick ups and drop offs, people, a lot of people know I'm in politics, do polling, blogging, etc. 99% of the conversations are never about politics. Occasionally something comes up where people are talking about like the accommodation allowance we saw recently. And that's how I know when it's got cut through is when normal people actually start talking about it. But, you know, 99% of them want to talk about the playground, the weather, how your day went, not, you know, GCSB or paying or. Is it is part of Labour's problem, really, that at the moment, they literally are chasing every passing car and attaching themselves to complex political issues with simplistic arguments. A good example would be a referendum on Maori wards. I know I can almost predict what Labour is going to do there. They're going to say that this is anti-democratic, that the government is not is racist and trying to get rid of them, all that sort of stuff. Is this that out of touch nature of the Labour Party now that they just don't actually understand what ordinary people think about these things? Well, they can't read because they've got to be able to read previous referendum results. I think there's been one successful one and that was in Wairoa where the population was 58% Maori. Yeah, so they're just not very smart. But but I think the problem on the complex issues is they haven't actually sat down and thought about how the complex issues fit into their strategy and what people are hearing when they start going on about, you know, like the the referendum on Maori wards is a good example. If they go too far on on taking the side of anti-democratic Maori wards by rights, that's going to piss off a lot of New Zealanders and it will cost them votes. And, you know, that they're going to do something similar. I mean, for how long have they been going on about a capital gains tax and naval gazing over that? And it's just not going to happen. And more importantly, I mean, I don't know. Anyone that's come and told me they want a capital gains tax. I heard plenty of people say, who do I give money to to stop one? Yeah, I was going to say, I don't want one. They want them to propose one because as a former co-founder of Tax Files Union, let me tell you that it really gets people worked up. But I'm sure that Act National and New Zealand first raised vast amounts of money on on stopping the capital gains tax. But, you know, like you go to a school in Hawke's Bay for the school pick up and no one is talking about the capital gains tax. And, you know, why would you spend time talking about that rather than just saying that, no, we're not going to talk about that. That's just nonsense. Let's not talk about dumb stuff and talk about, you know, what is the defining issue of our times? And for probably it's got to have something to do with with cost of living and cost of living in New Zealand is really linked to excessive regulation that makes everything way too expensive to do. So cost of living is really cost of housing. And that's the regulatory environment. How would they solve it? Well, Kiwi Booth was a complete disaster because they pack a useless student unionist arguing about stuff. You know, they needed to fix the planning system and free up a whole lot of land and build a whole lot of houses. And they couldn't get the head around that. But it was as Phil Twyford did, but he then didn't implement his own policy. He said, we need to get rid of the rural, urban boundary in Auckland. New Zealand initiative. Others all chaired on product of the commission said that artificially, you know, multiplies it and they go into government and then they dropped it. Just I just it staggers me that people took Phil Twyford seriously at any point. I mean, the guy was just a motor mouth. And I still remember him, you know, this is the thing that annoys me about all politicians is they put on the fluoro vest and the hard hat and the safety glasses and the earmuffs and they walk around jabbering innately, looking stupid. And Twyford was terrible at it. He's, you know, I remember one TV segment, he was there in his hard hat and his fluoro vest, saying, oh, look, you've got to have big balls to do what we're going to do. Really? Well, what did you do? What is it, two percent? Or that you found, David, on KiwiBuild, two percent of the one that maybe if we've been generous, yeah, two point one. I mean, it's pathetic. They said they were going to deliver 10,000 houses a year. Oh, yeah, 10,000 houses a year for 10 years. Well, they had six years. Where are the houses? And they said, oh, they're going to be affordable homes. And well, that changed, didn't it, because everything became expensive. So how do you do that? You came to about barking at every car. It does happen to more than one part in opposition. And we saw national do it multiple times. Yeah. And there's two reasons for it. One is you think whatever is the issue of the day in parliament and the house is actually important to people. So you throw out your strategy of we want to talk about education health. But the other thing is the media do play a bit of a role in this and that they come to you on the issue of the day. And unless you incredibly well disciplined, they will take what you say on that issue and ignore what you're trying to talk about. Now, there is a way around that is called discipline. This is again, that across. Luxem did quite well when Labour ministers kept imploding, where he kept saying, I don't want to be talking about them. I want to be talking about cost of living, which at least got across. He's not focused on that. And yet most most part is an opposition. They're just desperate for something that will chunk away at the government. So whatever comes up, you have a go at. But most of them won't work. We're seeing that now, aren't we, with the attacks in the media on Winston for his state of the nation, saying that he's comparing co-governance with Nazi Germany. Winston is certainly laughing. He's laughing his head off at this at the media doing this. And you mentioned that media come at you with the issue of the day. It's their issue that they want raised. It's not the general public's issue that they want raised. And we've seen how out of touch the media are because they're running campaigns now on social media and just getting absolutely slaughtered. Every time we hear about a media company in trouble and shedding jobs, you can hear the echoes along the streets of celebration at their demise. And they're so out of touch, they don't actually realise we don't like them. Well, I did note that the CTU has launched on their campaign site a sort of save our jobs with all the TVNZ stars, et cetera. And what do I take a look at of how many signatures it had so far? And it was at around 700 after 24 hours. And you think saying with all the stars behind it, you would be at 40,000, 50,000, et cetera. But I think that tells you no one likes people losing jobs. But as Liam here pointed out, entire swaths of people in the mining, the gas oil industries have lost their jobs as government have done policies, et cetera. So they don't really see when it's one particular sector that should be held up on a pedestal. Yeah, well, how are they going to rehab? But I mean, I interviewed Michael Bassett and he says that the last government was the worst government in living memory. And even when you push him and try and think about all of the governments in New Zealand, no, worse than all of them. How do you recover from that? How do you rehabilitate your party from the impression where a political tragic like Michael Bassett, who was a Labour minister, thinks that the Labour Party were the worst government ever? And aren't they setting National up to run, you know, remember the black budget type campaign for years and years and years? Yeah, I mean, Labour's problem will be when they take the government on health education stats. Everyone's going to remember how much worse, despite the extra spending under them. Look, there will be a leadership change, and we just have to look at the history of MMP. National in 2002 was in the 20s, and then they changed to Don Brash and they went up to high through his 40s. Labour spent their entire opposition in the 20s and then Jacinda came in and she shot them up to high through his 40s. And National, to be fair, was it? She polling well under Simon Bridges, but then combination of COVID response and his personal favourability. They dropped to through his in 20s and they stayed there pretty much in the 20s until Christopher Luxon came in. And again, if you look at all three of them, it's quite interesting because the three or four who really made a difference were Brash and Key and Jacinda and Luxon. And most of the weren't your typical politicians. Key and Luxon and Brash were also seen as people who made their careers outside politics and were now coming in to serve. Well, Jacinda had a phenomenal communications ability, popularity, et cetera. So, Hipkins will go, no doubt. Probably the replacement sepal only because she's the only one who hasn't been involved in Scandal, who's quite competent and she is the deputy leader. But is she going to be enough of a turnaround to not be associated with the last government? Probably not. So really, it's going to be have they either got a star on the backbench, like Kamala Belich or Irina Williams, or is there something are coming next time who's their potential leader who can get people to look at them again? Simon, what are your thoughts on that? Can they be rehabilitated simply by changing to Kamala Sepal only? Well, I think that if she went and spent a few years or a few months working out what Tony Abbott did and then got out and raised the money to do the proper polling and came up with a nice set of four slogans to Bash National with, I think she has a chance. I just don't think she's got a clue and she won't do it. And what's up and said about some slogans? Yeah, and Winston's usually very good at this. People will remember around three things, Max. Sometimes, you know, pledge cards have five or seven, but really three or four. So you need to, again, do the research, but work out one of the three issues we're going to campaign on for next election and hammer them for two years are not changed them every month, etc. But work it out. Twelve months should be enough to do that. And then make that your brand, that we are the people who are going to fix the school system or, you know, improve the health system, however you do that. But again, the problem is all the stats went backwards under them. So they have to pick ones that have believability. You know, if you say you're going to fix the school system, then I can see National more likely act piping up in the house and saying, what do you mean fix the school system under the school system that you were running? We had attendance levels of 40 percent at schools. And now we've got attendance levels at 75 percent. We've already fixed it. We don't need you. Thanks very much. Just a big problem. They're going to run into those. But I think that if we were running the campaign and for Carmel and she was saying, OK, well, how do we do it? So yeah, look, we got it wrong. Those policies weren't good enough. And we made it sure that a whole lot of poor brown kids missed out on a decent education. Under my watch, that's not going to happen. Far now across the country are going to get educated. And if we've got to punish their parents for not sending their kids to school, we will. And under my watch, all New Zealanders are going to get a great education. May work, but they'll probably end up with a teacher's union going spastic at her and she'll back down and, oh, well, it's not the parents fault that the kids don't go to school. And so all that's just like everyone thinks that kids should go to school and that if they don't, it's the parents fault. Just come out and say, we are cutting off opportunity for poor brown New Zealanders because we don't make sure they get a decent education. And that had recently, but I don't think Labour's got it in them to say it. Well, no, they're more focused on things like accusing the government of being anti-democratic for using urgency when they used it themselves. It's just nonsense. You know, it's like no one cares. Yeah, Farah, what do you reckon? Do you reckon 1% of New Zealand would understand what parliamentary urgency is? Oh, it might be 4% or 5%. But yes, it's not a big issue. And as Cam said, Chris Hipkins moved 24 different bills in one motion under urgency as leader of the House. What Simon said, though, is so right. And it goes back to when Simon, of course, has studied hundreds of campaigns professionally. But what Bill Clinton called triangulation, which is you do something which people don't expect from you. They pay attention and it wedges your opponents to. A lot of Labour came out saying, we're going to increase fines for truancy. Nationals suddenly either look weak for not agreeing or they'll say, we'll do it, too. And then they look like they're following. So to get people's attention, you do have to go to something that will surprise people. Same, we now agree with the Greens on a capital gains tax or a wealth tax. Isn't going to surprise anyone. That might get them votes from Greens and Te Pahimari, but it's not going to get them votes in the center. Well, get them votes from Martin Bradbury, Simon Wilson, and Russell Brown. But that's about it. Just not going to work. Cam, I think that there is something that Farrah has mentioned also. But they can't defend their COVID record as being perfect and they're stupid to try. They should have some humility and say, well, maybe we've got some things wrong. Maybe we should have adopted more of a Swedish model. What would we do differently next time? Brother, I know we were great in COVID. You should all just love us because of how great you were. That's worse than that, though, Simon, because you had hipkins come out and say, nobody was forced to take the jab. Well, that's just a lie. Yeah. And we now got a shortage in the health system because they still won't let a whole lot of unvaccinated people back in. And in defense, it's nuts. They could say, look, yeah, that was a mistake. We should reinstate them all. And that would send a message that they reflected and show some humility. And for the life of me, I can't understand now why you wouldn't want guys back in the military just because they didn't have the jab. The military have lost in the High Court and in the Court of Appeal on the mandates that they forced on their staff. And you would have thought they would have given up on doing that. But oh no, they've announced they're now going to the Supreme Court to overturn the Court of Appeal. Well, the chances of that happening are almost zero. I mean, they've categorically lost in the High Court and in the Court of Appeal. But they're still going on. It's like they've forgotten there was a change of government. And Labour have forgotten that they're losing in the Court of Public Opinion because they aren't defending the indefensible. I mean, it went too far. It worked for a while. And pretty much fair, I think I'm right in saying, everywhere in the world, there was a big increase in the polling to the government at the beginning of any COVID response. And then it fell away rapidly when people were looking around going, well, this is just bullshit. You know, I'm not that sick. And we don't need to lock down our whole economy. And where Sweden took a much more pragmatic approach where they didn't get sucked in with models that said, oh, lots of people will die because Swedish people were just a bit sensible and took some responsibility so they didn't kill their economy. And that's something that Labour could come out and say, look, we've got some things wrong. And if there was another pandemic, we would do it differently. I think that's really important because the reality is if there was another pandemic, the social licence has gone. There was no way that people would now accept six weeks under house arrest at home, only able to walk to the beach, et cetera. There's no way people would accept jobs going, employers closing for too much. And most of all, I understand even Labour ministers have now acknowledged this, would we close the schools? The evidence is massive that closing schools was the wrong thing to do because once the kids are out of that education system, it's so hard to get them back. And there's been some great air reviews between states and the US. So yeah, there's some stuff they did very well to be fair during COVID. But what they don't understand is how they're re-evaluating. Sorry, Cam? Yeah, what they did really well was marginalise and demonise people. Yeah. Well, there are other things in terms of we were fortunate that we managed to keep the COVID out when there wasn't, when it was a far more lethal strain. And I think that was very beneficial there. But there's a sentence of the population who feel very aggrieved. They lost their jobs, their livelihoods. And this isn't a one-off for them. And Labour has to find a way to say, here's what we did right, but we do regret this. Because these people aren't going to forget it for one term or two terms. No, forever. We're not going to forget it forever. There's people that are listening to the show be sitting here nodding their head and going, I'm never going to let those guys forget what they did to me, my family, my business, everything else. And especially what was done to Auckland. They've tacitly, quietly admitted the Labour Party that perhaps we locked down Auckland for a bit too long. Instead of actually saying, well, we shouldn't have done that, the anger in Auckland still with the Labour Party for those lockdowns is palpable. And that's the thing that they can easily do while coming back from and being showing some humility to say, look, we got locking down Auckland wrong. And we got locking down Auckland wrong because we decided we wanted to prop up hotels by having quarantine in Auckland, our biggest commercial centre. And New Zealand First policy was to fly them all into army bases or air force bases, have temporary accommodation and have them quarantine there. So if COVID escaped, it didn't cause the biggest economic engine in New Zealand to close. And I mean, from an economic perspective, that makes sense. Because it was costing about a billion dollars a week to close Auckland. But from a straight polling perspective, I'm pretty sure I remember you telling me Farah that Labour, that was at the third lockdown, they've vote just tanked so they were down around what the Greens were getting. And they got it wrong politically, it just killed them. Yeah, I remember complaining to an Auckland friend about the lockdown in Wellington and my friend just went, you only had one, shut the F up. We had five or something. Yeah, I mean, that's the thing. You know, there's never been any critical analysis of the spending that they allowed under all of these COVID provisions. And I'll just give you a couple of examples. There was multi-millions of dollars spent on laptops so that kids could distance learn using Zoom or whatever. They rolled all this out, thousands and thousands and thousands of laptops were going to school kids. Well, where the hell are they now? They were given to those people. Where are they? What about the millions of dollars at rack rates that the government was paying to all the motels and hotels around Auckland to run the MIQ? They weren't paying discounted rates for bulk buyout of underutilized resources. They were paying full rack rate. And on top of that, there was restitution clauses to repair all the damage from all the scumbags that were in these places. So, you know, how do they recover from that? Because someone should dig into that stuff and those are golden handcuffs to hang the Labour persistently on over ridiculous, unaccounted forespending. But the Labour Party seems to have this innate ability to say that all spending is good spending. No, they've just got to come out and say, we got some things badly wrong and if it happened again, we would do it differently. Well, this is what we would do differently. And if they don't say, I thought one of the better things the government's done is it's spanned the terms of reference or they can sell him on it for the Royal Commission because the current terms of reference were basically just going to be a once-over, no real scrutiny of government decisions. But what they propose, and I think Brook Van Velden's the lead on this, is to actually ask those hard questions about what went right, wrong, what should we do differently. And Labour, if I were them, would want to come to my own conclusions and get them out with a bit of a mea culpa first rather than wait for the Royal Commission to come out where a lot of people probably won't realise that, Rao, everyone's happy we had a relatively low death toll, et cetera. But the delays in the vaccine roll out when they promised we'd be first in the queue and many, many other things. I think biggest scandal was the testing where they refused to do the saliva testing just because they were on a huff with the company behind it, et cetera. And that could have opened up businesses and universities overnight, basically. So there's going to be, I suspect some pretty damning stuff come out. Well, the banning of ivermectin and other cheap things like vitamin D3 and stuff like that, which has been shown multiple times now in peer-reviewed studies to have been a good prophylactic way to treat COVID-19. Yeah, look, camera's a scandal. I don't think that that's the real big thing because I know you go on about that, but I don't know anyone else that does. And I think that the really big stuff that they got wrong was MIQ in Auckland, the mandates were way too harsh. And, you know, Hipkins forgot to order the f***ing vaccines for six weeks. So we're all locked down for longer. I mean- But it was someone else's fault. It was someone else's fault. But he was in the midst of a COVID recovery. And I just couldn't believe that they weren't ads when he became Prime Minister. If I had been running National's campaign, the moment he came out, I go, this bastard forgot to order the COVID vaccines. You can't expect him to run the country. And, you know, just mock him for all his failures, which were many, many-fold by the time he became Prime Minister. Well, you look at all his portfolios that he held. Minister of Police, it went backwards. Minister of Education went backwards. COVID recovery backwards. Everything he did, he is the reverse Midas. He has the literal poo finger. Everything he touched leads a smear of poo on it. And that's just hipkins. But all they've got to replace them, that you guys can come up with is Carmel Sepoloni. Is there anyone else? Well, Kimala Bellach looks the part and that counts for a lot. I don't know whether she's necessarily got the support of the party, which isn't a bad thing. But, you know, Labor found the biggest donkey they possibly could find and put her in Mount Albert and nearly lost it to the Greens. I mean, that is a seat nearly lost it to Melissa Lee. Yeah, it's just useless. And, you know, they really did pick a donkey instead of someone with a bit of talent. And, you know, I don't know that Kimala is that talented, but she certainly looks the part. And you'd think that with her CV being as strong as it is compared to most of the people, you know, it's not as if she was a diversity officer or a university. She's actually a lawyer. Yeah, I guess she was also a diversity officer at her university students. She was the woman's rights officer. But, no, I rate her, but she hasn't held even junior ministerial role. She's an unknown, I think she'll need time and opposition to prove herself. People talk to Karen, and I like Karen. If he won his seat, I think there would be the case to be made. This guy's relatable. He's popular. He's electable. But he got trounced in his seat. And that makes it hard to say the guy who got kicked out of his seat and is now a List MP is the messiah who's going to lead us back because he's so relatable. Yeah, that'd have been... Yeah, well, I just don't know that he actually is that relatable, is he? No, I mean, sure he's got a bit of fight in him. He'd certainly have more fight than Kimala Balich. But, yeah, I just don't rate him. He just... Here's the thing, right? I look at people and they know they're not being filmed, but they are being filmed. They're just comfortable with themselves. And Karen McInerdy, as a guy, walks around with playing pocket billiards. He's always got his hands in his pockets. I'll add that so does Christopher Luxon. It's something he needs to stop doing, right? But my grandfather always says, they never trust a man with his hands on his balls all the time. And he's right. You just look at him and you think, you're sloppy. You've always got your hands in your pockets. You always look like the wreck of the Hesperus. You look at your vehicle. Sure, it's an old ute, but it just looks tatty. Even his beard looks tatty. That might sound petty and childish to say that, but it's the blink test. If you can look at somebody and you think, oh, oh, no, then you're not going to get elected. We all know if he shaves his beard off, it's all on, or a tidy stuff. Well, he can't really afford to lose any more weight, has he? He's almost got the body of a half-saccharity. So, well, we can't find any realistic leadership things. No, but we can look at some metrics because I don't think that anyone really thought that Tony Abbott, despite being a Rhodes scholar, was going to come in and absolutely smash our brunt so badly that Labor got rid of a rug. I think that it is possible to see someone that is determined to copy Abbott's playbook. And I've already talked about polling. The other thing that I'm looking at is fundraising. And if they're serious about being Prime Minister, they will get out and they will raise a shitload of money and they will be able to fight national with a huge budget. And the budget will start off with research and then it'll be the staff and to get out the vote and just running a good comprehensive campaign, hammering their three or four messages, many slogans. And when the donation returns start coming in, you've got to look for who are the big donors and there probably won't be any because Labor think asking for money is beneath them. The unions, well, the unions don't give much because they're just a bit useless here. It's not like in the US where they fund the Democrats. And you never really know what's going on with the small donors, but you're here in the back room, what's going on with the small donors and it's usually not much. And then people will say, well, Labor can't go and raise money from big donors. Well, that's just bullshit. Well, Mike Williams did. Fat Tony was good at shaking down money and they should actually go and give them a call and say, look, how about you and Bob Harvey who were good fundraisers for the Labor Party? How about you to get together and go and raise us half a million dollars to start with? Mike Williams should be able to shake down half a million dollars with about three phone calls. I would have thought so. I mean, I know some of the hardest right businessmen in New Zealand who have huge respect for Fat Tony. I mean, they just love him because while they didn't agree with his politics and they're a bit scared that he's gonna bash them if they did anything wrong. He always got back to them. He always treated them with dignity. He would find stuff out. He managed them properly and he was a great fundraiser. Clark didn't really have any problem with fundraising. And you know, they go, oh, well, you know, Fat Tony, well, he's the best in the past. They're not so distant, fast. Stu Nash was able to raise a shitload of money, but he played rugby, drank beer, rooted women. Labor didn't really like him so they didn't use his fundraising abilities. Well, so did Louisa Wall, but they didn't like her either. No, yeah, common theme. This is if you're a sparring Labor candidate. But they should be able to go out and get money. I mean, Farah, you built the tax payers union with a few others. You raised more than the political parties in New Zealand. Most of the time anyway, don't you? And all, well, 80% small dollar donations, too. If you get a brand that you're gonna fight for what you believe in and you actually will get results, people can disagree with you on some stuff, but they'll donate to you for the stuff that they, yeah, see your effect upon. Well, that's a good point. You've got to be visible on issues that mean something to people. And it seems that Labor is not visible on issues that mean things to people. I mean, let's just run through a few of them and let's see what you guys think. Where should their position be on these? Should they be in favor against or indifferent? I mean, I think those are the three things, but then we'll see what Labor actually is. So let's just run through a list. Let's kick off with, well, Palestine. Indifferent. Indifferent, you say. Simon, David, what do you say? Yep, indifferent too. It's not an issue that's going to determine any votes in New Zealand. It will get people worked up who think strongly on one side or the other, but you're not getting people shifting votes on it. And I agree with that. I mean, for most people, I mean, I'm not one of them, but most people think, well, it's over there and it doesn't affect us. So we shouldn't really be talking about this, but Labor and the Greens are donkey deep on one side of that issue. So they're getting that one wrong. What about electric cars? David, you're an EV fan. You've even got one. Yep, and I'm on my second electric car, actually. And look, I do think that climate change, you know, in the polling, it's normally a third-tier issue. Usually 5%, sometimes if it's in the news, 10%. And certainly in Wellington, but we're about unusual, you know, you're seeing a big uptake on electric cars. So it is an issue you need to be out on and have a policy on, but it's not a top-tier issue. It's not like, can I afford to buy groceries? Do I have a good hospital? Do I have a good school? The reality is with electric cars is that traditional Labour voters can't afford them. So it's not an issue that you should be, you know, betting the bank on. Do you agree with that, Simon? Yeah, and not only that, the Economist, and if there's anyone literate in Labour, they should be reading the Economist to find out what's happening in the rest of the world. They had this wonderful article about how the Greens around Europe then vote has fallen away. The more the climate change affects the population, the less votes the Greens get, because the Greens solution is to taxes all more and not to mitigate. And for some reason, voters are sensible and they don't like paying more for stuff that makes a bug or a difference. So they just, well, we're not gonna vote for you. If I was running Labour's campaign, yeah, I think electric cars are okay if you want them, but I'm here to talk about how you put your school lunch in your kids' lunchbox and afford it and can pay down your mortgage or pay your rent. It's not electric cars. It is very, very much an elite income earning issue, whether you can have an electric car, even if you want one, if you're poor, you can't have one because they're too expensive. Well, you touch on global warming there as well. I mean, there's this big push for having global warming solutions. My anecdotal evidence around ordinary New Zealanders is no one gives us stuff about it. In fact, I always joke that I think people would welcome the ability to grow mangoes and pineapples in their back garden, even in the cargo. I don't know what you ever said about climate change. And he said, when it's a moral issue, we lose on it, when it's an economic issue, we win on it. And to a degree, you saw that with the last Labour government, they took the talk on it, but then after the regional fuel tax didn't prove popular, Jacinda announced that we know more regional fuel taxes ever, ever, ever in my time as Prime Minister because that wasn't popular. And there were a couple of other ones where they backfliped on it. Everyone, you know, wants a good environment and can never concern about the climate. But if your solution is to tax people thousands of dollars more a year so they can't afford, you know, shopping, then that's not gonna be popular. Right, what about mining? And then you're using one in five cows. Yeah, I mean, we all do our bit for climate change by eating steak, don't we? Mining, we all know Labour's position on mining. They don't want it, which is ironic considering they were founded on the West Coast in a mining community. And I think this is one where they need to be indifferent. They're not gonna win any votes from national on mining. They're gonna win votes off the Greens and perhaps the Maori Party and they should be leaving those parties to fight that fight. And they should be taking the fight to national in areas where they can win and they get to that 61 votes in parliament after the 2026 election. And just for the life of me, can't see how getting upset about mining is gonna get them to 61 votes. And what are your... Well, it also goes back to what we were just talking with electric cars. If you do think electric cars are a big part of the future and I do because I believe in markets and I do think that the costs of them will come down over time as you get economies of scale. But you know what? They need lots of parts from mines. You know, you need a massive amount of mining to produce batteries for electric cars. There's absolutely no alternative way around it. There's not substitutes for them. So, you know, you can understand some people can be against coal mining because of greenhouse gases but the people who are zealots who say nothing should ever be dug up out of the ground, well, I guarantee you they have a cell phone and we all know what the cell phones made out of, metals. So, yeah, they should be indifferent at the least on mining. Okay, what about the latest thing that's hit the news where we're hearing lots of wailing from the left about these scumbag statehouse tenants that are housed by the world's worst landlord, I think you dubbed them as or maybe New Zealand's worst landlord, Kaeing Aura. I think it's just the soldier moment. They need to come out and smack the shit out of them. You know, these scumbags are wrecking places, they're stabbing people, they're horrible to live next to. It's a privilege to get subsidised housing and they don't deserve it. You know, they end up having to spend a few weeks living under a bridge because they can't behave properly. I think most New Zealanders are in favour of them spending that couple of weeks under the bridge so they learn their lesson and I don't think that we should be paying for it. And, you know, Farah talked about Clinton's triangulation. That's another, it's just an opportunity to come down not on the side that they are at the moment but on the other side, we got that one wrong. Just allowing people to behave badly didn't work. We've got to change our policy. It was interesting they've been a bit muted to the government's policy change that's come out. They've just said, well, you need to also look at this. Well, the Greens of course have called it evil and that somehow evicting gang members who terrorise their neighbours is evil. I think leaving them there is evil. But if you ask, I haven't actually done polling on this because you don't need to but I'd say 80 to 90% of New Zealanders, if you ask them, do you think a state house tenant who constantly terrorises their neighbours should be evicted from their state house? Massive overwhelming support. You probably get quite good support for saying, should these people be taken outside and shot? I mean, it's just how far that average person thinks it is wrong and Labour look wrong on this issue, morally wrong. Scumbags shouldn't get away with being scumbags and they're saying, yes, they should and that's what the average voter is thinking. Labour wants these scumbags to be allowed to be scumbags and it just shouldn't happen. And 80 or 90%, I think you're probably close at 90 than 80, they should be treated with contempt and punished for their stupidity and their bad behaviour. Which comes down to school lunches then. Labour's on the wrong side of this one too, aren't they? Oh, not so sure on that. I think putting aside the economics of it and also I guess the philosophical point, it is potentially an issue where you can get some cut through with the public because a bit like Apple Pie, do you want your kids to be well fed? Do you want them hungry at school? The case against is a bit more complicated because you have to say, well, actually, though it's the parents' job to do it, you make the problem worse by actually not solving the problem of parents who don't prioritise their kids having food. But I do think on the school lunch is one, there is one where they may get some traction. Farrah, in my memory of the people that objected to the useless parents the most were the hardworking blue-collar parents who were doing their best just to keep their head above water and to look after their kids properly. Is that the case on the school lunches? Like, the three of us are pretty comfortably off. We don't really care one way or another, but if we were doing two jobs and a wife was doing one and the kids had to kick in while they're still at school to help the family out, and they seem to have scumbag neighbours who play spaces all night and send their kids to school without the right uniforms and without lunch and taking just complete bludges, that should be the working people should be the ones that labour are targeting, isn't it? They're the ones... Working class people are probably got the hardest viewed on welfare fraud. Just as the people who are most against the bad-kaila or a resident are the many good ones. They're the ones who suffer the most there. And yes, with school lunches, it does tend to be that the concern comes from people who actually, you know, sort of the liberal elite again because they just see these poor people, we have to... We can't speak them to actually look after their kids. If you're poor, you know, you can't be expected to actually have self-respect and focus on your kids. And they, you know, can't handle, I think, the philosophical thing about, well, why stop at school lunches? Why not school dinners and school breakfasts? I mean, you know, kids are going hungry. Why shouldn't the state be responsible for feeding every child? Here's a thing that kills the school lunches argument dead in five seconds. Who fed the kids during the lockdowns? There you go. In school holidays. In school holidays, you guys are speechless, right? In school holidays, and in the lockdowns, who fed the kids? Their parents did. Yeah, but I think it depends. It's an interesting philosophical argument. And I tend to come down on the side, as a taxpayer, I'd rather the kids were in school getting educated rather than not in school and behaving badly. And so I'm willing to pay for some of them to have lunch as much as I object to it, I'm willing to. But I think it does, this is where Labor could take a very strong moral stance. So look, we just think this is right or we think it is wrong. We stand for these things and we're going to keep standing for them. But at the moment, I don't know what Hibkin stands for. I mean, that guy, what does he stand for? He stands for not liking Winston, not being that competent. What else? He's been around forever. I mean, what's the word for Hibkin's, Farrah? Haven't done one lately, would be interested. Okay, last issue, transgender. Okay, I'm going to mention a very, very competent and informative British author called Matt Goodwin, who has all the data on all the issues in Britain saying how far the liberal elites in the luxury belief class are out of touch with people, average voters. And the trans stuff is the prime example where it's something like 80% of Britons don't believe that biological male should be allowed in biological female only spaces. They don't believe that you should be able to change your gender with three months notice, self-identify. And there's so few of them. It's just gone too far and it's really not an issue that is going to win Labour the next election. So just leave it alone. They should be indifferent to it and concentrating on the kitchen table issues and whether we allow men to compete against women and women's sport, just... I just think that's wrong, totally wrong. Yeah, and I think that probably 80% of New Zealand is doing it if you think otherwise. I think, well, you're not fit to be in government if you can't work that out. But if you don't know whether you're Arthur or Martha, I mean, can we expect you to run a ministry? I think the trans activists, as I called them, it's been incredibly sad. It's probably the biggest own goal I've seen in community sentiment because up until the last few years where there was the zealotry that you can't have a discussion about, I think most people were very tolerant of trans individuals. Look, I know, I couldn't even count how many I know, but there's some amazing people I know who are trans. I've also met a beautiful Indian woman who told me she was originally a male, et cetera, and she's living her life. No one knows, she doesn't make a fuss about it. She's had the operation done the change. So we had, I think, actually great tolerance. But then when you come out and you say, you must support us on everything. You must support puberty blockers for children. You must support no matter what the sport is or the league. People being able to compete based on their gender identity rather than their sex. When you say you can't debate these issues, the vast majority of people have now just said, oh, well, my attitude's again harder on this. No, stuff you. And I think it's a terrible own goal because I think you can have huge empathy for people with gender dysphoria who are trans and they should be left to live their life as they want to, but also be able to just say, look, there are a few areas, you know, if you're in prison and you're a rapist and you're a biological male, there is real concern for you in a woman's prison. You can also accept, though, that if someone's genuinely transgender, like, take example, Georgina Barr, the former MP, lovely person, if she for some reason been sent to prison, you know, I would say, like, it should be wrong to put her into a men's prison. She's been living life as a woman for 40 years. But what it comes down to is you need more flexibility. You need governments in that to be able to say, okay, here's how we'll deal with the situation, but the trans activists all the way up there, if you have any debate on this, we're going to commit suicide. You know, you're threatening our identity, you want to eradicate us, and that's not the case. It's just that there are challenges. So yeah, I just find it incredibly sad and probably the biggest political ongoing goal. Same-sex marriage, which I campaign for, how they got that through was by being tolerant, by saying, you can have your beliefs, but this is about allowing people who love each other to marry? Why would you want to stop that? But on the trans issue, they've gone for such an aggressive lobby, you know, where JK Rowling, you know, is of his death and demonized, and of course it doesn't stop. I mean, the big thing you find out is you have all the people on Twitter saying this is terrible, and then she releases a video game that becomes the biggest selling video game of all time. So sorry, that's me going on about, but yeah, it just pisses me off, actually, how badly this issue's been handled by the activists. See, I was a big fan of gay marriage because I believed not all this hocus-pocus about love and everything else. I just thought everybody deserves a mother-in-law. I think the phrase was, or the slogan was, anyone stupid enough to want a mother-in-law deserves one. Yeah, but Cam, once again, if someone in Labour is taking the time to read and think about these issues, UK Labour maybe six months ago came out and said, look, I think on trans issues, we've gone a little bit too far in favour of inclusion and at the expense of fairness, and we need to edge back towards more fairness. We want to be inclusive, but we've got to be fair, and that means we can't have women's sport being dominated by biological males. Fairness means, yes, you are trans, it's unfortunate, but some things are going to be difficult, and some things are difficult for everyone. We all have problems in our lives, they're just different. So do you want the very, very, very tiny number of biological males that want to compete against women and women, or do you not? And I think that Labour need to ask that question, where is the balance between inclusion and fairness? As you say, it's a balance, like on the sporting issue, you can't have both inclusion and fairness. No, there's a reason, otherwise we wouldn't have male and female competitions, would we? We wouldn't have them, we'd have everybody to compete against each other in our local, first, second and third of men. Yeah. Yeah, there's things such as you just have an open category, but I actually think you can have a more nuanced approach, which is at school community level, I wouldn't have a problem that people play with their gender, I didn't hear as long as it's physically safe, because I actually think if you're a 15, 16 year old, it is really important not to be felt shunned or isolated, but when you get to professional sport, when you get to the Olympics, then I think you have to be very strict on the biological thing. So again, I think you should be able to have a reasonable debate about where you draw the line, but the activist community will say any drawing of the line anywhere is bigoted, and that just turns people off. Okay, we're going to wind up this little discussion that we've had about how screwed Labour is. It was a 30 second summary each of you, to start off with you, David, the 30 second summary on what Labour, you think Labour needs to do to start being credible again. Hipkins should go in around 12 months, 18 months before the election is probably quite good for a new leader. They need to pick the three things they're going to campaign on, start doing the policy work on those, they'll need a signature policy that's exciting, but also isn't typical. Not one you just would normally expect from them, and they need to be disciplined. They need to just focus on the core messages, not keep sniping, not getting into fights with Winston. Simon? You've got to work out how to get to 61 votes. They want to get Tony Abbott's playbook. They want to make sure that they fundraise properly, and they want to spend heavily on research. And when we know that they're doing those things, we'll start taking them seriously. Until then, we'll just think, oh, you guys are probably not going to come back. Yeah, I agree with both of you on that. We need to have a strong opposition, and right now, Labour is not a strong opposition. They're all over the place, as I keep saying, chasing passing cars, and one day they're going to chase a car, and it's going to stop, and they're going to run into the back of it at 100 miles an hour. But we do need a strong opposition. We saw what happens when you have a strong government with a weak opposition, and I don't think we want to repeat of the years between 2020 and 2023. And on that note, guys, I thank you very much for coming on the crunch again, and hopefully the Labour Party will listen to us, but more likely they won't. Always a care. Thanks a lot. Between the three of us in that discussion, there must have been around 90 years of experience in campaigning and polling. Now, I don't think for a second, the Labour Party will ever listen to us, but they should. Let me know your thoughts about my chat with Simon and David by emailing inbox at realitycheck.radio or text to 2057. Thank you for tuning in to RCR, Reality Check Radio. If you like what you're listening to or dislike what you're listening to, either way, we want to hear from you. Get in touch with us now. You can text us with your message to 2057, that's 2057, or email us at inbox at realitycheck.radio. We would love to hear from you, so connect with us today.