 Contention. Critique. Conjecture. Conclusion. I look with paperplusoffice.co.nz. Shop online any time. They're open 24-7. It is 26 this evening's huddle, Josie Pagani and Cameron Slater and a very good evening to you both. Hello. Good evening. Alright, let's start with this messy, messy, messy labour stuff. Why on earth Josie did Cunliffe when asked just say yes, I support him for now. Well, exactly. You really got two choices. Either you come out and you say I'm challenging the leader and you're up front about that, or you say I am endorsing the leader 100% and you don't try and say for now or, you know, qualify it. And that's the mistake he made. I think he's overplayed his hand for that reason that people just think, look, if you're going to do it, you've got a right to challenge the leadership. Absolutely. But go ahead and challenge it. And instead he's created this hiatus where everybody's going to say, that's where everybody's going to be second guessing until February. And I tell you, it's heartbreaking as a labour supporter to sit there in a slow news week again and watch the party melting down in the public glare. I mean, this conference, we're not talking about the substance of the speech. We're not talking about any policy. We're just talking about how did this train wreck of a conference happen? Cameron, how much damage has Cunliffe done to himself and how much to the party? I think he's done a huge amount of damage to the party. If not him, then certainly his loyal band of hardcore activists who basically mounted a coup on his behalf during the week, which they bottled, by the way. And this is why I wrote a post earlier today saying that they discussed me the Labour Party because they can't even have a proper blood and guts coup without bottling it and getting all squeamish about the whole thing. One person or the one group of people I blame for this is the party leadership itself because the whole point about party conferences, no matter which party it is, they're stage managed, exactly. I mean, look at the American conferences and stuff like that. You anticipate the problems, you plan the balloons, you manage the conflict, and they drop the ball. How do you manage this though? How do you manage a guy who essentially went rogue on you? Well, what you don't do is follow the play card of Bill English and others where you now say that you're going to discipline this person, you're going to deal with them, you're going to smack them up, you're going to do all of these sorts of things. All David Shearer has done is paint himself into a corner and he's used his own brush and his own paint. And he's got a situation now where if he doesn't deal with David Cunliffe, he's damned as being weak and vacillating. If he does deal with David Cunliffe, then the conference was a very clear indication that the party organism for want of a better term is not happy with the way that the parliamentary wing is operating. But I think what we saw though, we saw David Shearer show a bit of mongrel this weekend, which is good for him. We saw the man who stared down the militia with the AK-47 pointing at his wife. You know, he did. He sounded different. He had a bit of backbone. And I think what he's got to be careful here is not to turn David Cunliffe into a martyr. He can't humiliate him, but he does have to do something like that. You've got to send him to the back benches though, don't you? You've got to send him off to the back benches. Absolutely. I think you've got to show some strength. And that cuts some oxygen off for him Cameron too, doesn't it? Because if he sits out at the back for three months and doesn't get much news media, that cuts him off. We're heading into the barbecue season metaphorically and physically for the Labour Party. It's all going to go quiet after another couple of weeks in Parliament. You're going to have a hiatus over Christmas. I think it will be a rehab. They're going to come back after some of the polls aren't going to show any improvement for Labour. In fact, if I was a pollster now, I'd be in the field and engaging just how much, how damaging this has been to Labour. And I'm predicting probably three or four or five points. I can hear a breath there, Josie. Hold that breath, hold that thought. We'll come back in just a moment more on the Labour leadership spill with Josie Begani and Cameron Slater, 16-6. It's Susan Wood on Larry, Williams Drive with the Business Banking Specialists at Westpac. 13-6, the huddle this evening, Josie Begani and Cameron Slater. Now I hope you held that breath for me and that thought, Josie, because what I did want to get out of you. David Shearer heard him talk to my cosking this morning. It was a different interview. He got a sentence out. He made sense. He did a great speech at that conference yesterday as he's starting to show some leadership chops. Well, I think what you said earlier, Susan, is spot on, that he needs to believe in himself. He needs to start trusting his own instincts. He got into Parliament and he wanted the leadership for one reason, which was to turn the country around, to create jobs, to create a whole new economic vision for New Zealand. Now, if he can somehow locate that and really communicate that to the public of New Zealand, he'll be fine. But the problem he's got now is that there's been a massive shift of power away from the caucus, away from MPs, to the party. Now, that's a good thing for democracy. Party members can have a say on the leader, they can have a say on policy. Pretty messy, though. He's going to have to keep the party happy, which is an ever-dwindling membership and a narrow and narrow base. He's going to have to also appeal to the public and I think that's going to be a hard juggling act. The party, the public and the unions camp. Well, and that's the joke of it. Basically, the Labour Party has ceded 20% of the choice of the leader to the unions. But, I mean, the bigger joke, though, is that all from the lead-up to the conference last week, you had the base baying for Shearer's blood. All during Saturday, we had this massive, you know, from what I'm told from the insiders that were inside the actual room. And there was pretty intense blood and guts everywhere. A leadership argument without a leadership battle. And, again, wanting to eviscurate David Shearer, then he delivers one speech and all of a sudden they're all sick of fans again. I mean, honestly, one speech and then a good interview the next morning does not make a leader. And John Key's absolutely right. But if they can't organise a conference, then they surely can't organise the country. All right. Quick subject change here, Josie. Tertiary Education Minister Stephen Joyce is giving Auckland University extra money. He says, spend it on engineering and science. The tertiary education union says, no, that's against academic freedom. They should be able to spend it on what they will, Josie. Well, the irony here is that it was Michael Cullen who initiated this approach and tried to push the universities into, for example, specialising, I don't know, if you're in the Hawke's Bay, specialising in food and wine. Let's have one world-class engineering school. Let's have one world-class... Well, he's got a poll. We've got a lot of universities in this country spread up and down, all competing against each other. It's nuts, I think, yeah. When Michael Cullen did it, Stephen Joyce was the first to turn around and call him a nanny stator telling students what they want to study. So, I mean, I actually think this kind of intervention from government is a good thing. But the government's paying. If the government's paying for it, Cam, surely they can say what the money's spent on. Exactly. And look, I think we need to do something really drastic in our tertiary sector. We can't keep funding willy-nilly people doing pathetic, hopeless degrees, like a bug or all or anything like that. You're basket-weaving and faking this. What we've got to do is we've got to fund people into you. If you want to be an engineer, we'll fund you. And we're going to lock you in and you're going to stay here and you're going to work on those sorts of things, but you'll have your education pay for it. If you want to do a Bachelor of Arts and study politics or other useless subjects like that. Oh, come on. We love politics. We love politicians. But you don't need to go to university to study politics. It opens your mind. It opens your mind. All right, we're going to leave it there. Jocie Bougani and Cameron Slater. It is now nine before six o'clock.