 You're listening to The Crunch with Cam Slater, right here on RCR, Reality Check Radio. Liam here is a staunch National Party supporter, but he describes himself as a little squishy these days. He wrote a memo to Christopher Luxon, so we'll discuss that, along with his thoughts about the election campaign, the results, and where to from here. He's on the line now to discuss the results of the election with me. Welcome to The Crunch. Hello. Good to have you here. I've been following your articles, your sub-stack and your tweets, and I've always had a bit of a soft spot for some of the points that you make, even if you are a blinked, sycophantic National Party person. That's about the level of beat-up you're going to get from me today. I think that's completely fair. I think over the years, I started out writing about politics in 2013, so 2011, for the manor to be standard and stuff and things like that. At the time, I've always been a National Party sort of guy, like Dairy Farmers Sun, and that sort of just the tribe that I belong to, I guess. But I certainly was a lot more right-wing than I am now. The reason why I've become a lot less outspoken or a lot less radical is simply I've become really pessimistic over the years. I've become really pessimistic about what can be achieved politically, and so my standards are just a lot lower, and it's a loss of hope really. I did an interview with Damien Grant, and he just said, you're just supporting the National Party out of not believing that better things are possible. And I was like, yeah, that's basically me right now. Yeah, it's interesting you said it because people accuse me of being a tribal National Party supporter, but they clearly haven't kept up with developments at least since 2014, where effectively I felt the National Party chucked me under the bus to suit a political narrative, and not whilst I accept that at some point. It opened my eyes up to the fact that I believe that they're the party of the status quo. They very rarely make significant changes, and they like to tout themselves as efficient managers of the economy of the things that the Labour Party did. So I think that's completely fair, and so first of all, you've never really been a National Party sicker fan like I am, right? Like even back in the glory days, you were always involved in the internal strife within the party. It wasn't like a party line. You weren't David Farrah, because the quickest thing for David as a friend of mine, too, is that if you want to see what way the wind is blowing, look to where Kiwi blog is, and that's where the National Party is going with things, but that was never really the case with your old blog. For me personally, like I just think, yeah, you're right. And, you know, the National Party doesn't, it makes changes at the margins. And historically, sometimes it has rolled back big things, but what you're getting out of the National Party is a slower, a slower acceleration towards the cliff, perhaps, and more skillful driving, but it's not going to fundamentally change the politics of this country. But I've always had the view, you know, it's like what that guy Andrew Breitbart said, that if you have a fundamentally left-wing media, you have a left-wing civil society, all the charities, the left-wing, you tune on TV, you're getting left-wing messages, you can't expect that the elected government is going to be anything other than sort of a soft left. And so I'm always just felt that politics has been about choosing between the least worse alternative, really. And I know it's really like it's not inspiring, right? But it's just where I've got to in life. Yeah, it's the old saying is that you have to learn to swallow dead rats. But, you know, it's funny you mentioned Andrew Breitbart, because many years ago, this left-wing foghorn on Twitter, as it was then, had his own blog, a guy called Peter Irani had a meeting with me. He said, you know what? You're just like Andrew Breitbart. And he was meaning it as an insult. And I thought, hang on a second. This guy's a multimillionaire. He's founded a news network. He's talked about all around the world. Yeah, that sounds like me. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, it's kind of weird to hear the thing where he would go after me for a long time. Is he still kicking around? Is he is very obsessive. A strange man who when you meet him, his first thing he says is I used to work with Paul Holmes. And my answer to that was so what? Like in the 90s, I want to think they hang on to. I know, you know, it seems he has a falling out with almost everybody. And he seems to be a very bitter man. Very smart, can be erudite as well. But just bitter and snarky. And, you know, there's unfortunately, there seems to be a lot of humulus people on the left. And, you know, I look back on the things that have been described about me, you know, especially by Nicky Harger, who's probably the most bitter person I've ever met. But, you know, he wrote a book and said there was this vast conspiracy of people that were working to do this and do that and undermine that. But because he never asked us what why we did what we did when we were writing. And if he had, I would have said for fun. I do it for fun. Yeah. I've got to confess, I've never, like I personally never had anything that very pleasant interactions with him, possibly because I'm trying to make sure I never writes a book about me. But my criticism of him is that, you know, if you're doing journalism, you know, like you need to put the other side, you know, you need to put it to the other side, right? And so I think there's this fear that, you know, that, you know, somehow there'd be an injunction taking out, prohibiting the publication of the book, which means that, you know, they're rushed to press, keep it under wraps, don't tell the other people that the book's being written about them and don't get the sign of it. And there were some, there were some, well, I think, you know, the one that I think was quite bad, you know, one that sticks in memory anyway is the Princess Party allegations and dirty politics where, you know, there was some party in Palmer's North of all places that Farrah was going. And without context, it sounded like it was some sort of nefarious, you know, hitting on girls who are the drunk thing. But it turned out it was just, you know, it was about the royal wedding. And it's exactly what it was. It was a royal wedding. There was about 20 people in a room having a few beers and it was the most boring party out. In fact, I went elsewhere because it was just so like National Party. People are pretty boring, really. And, you know, that was just nothing. And it was blown out of context. You're right. It was blown out of context. It was pathetic. Yeah. And the National Party people are very boring. Oh, yeah, you're right about that. Like, you know, people think that the average National Party person is like some, you know, plutocrat in a shark skin suit. But it's actually normally some old man in a woolly jumper, you know, with old man breath or a young net nerd, you know, like it's it's, you know, people have these ideas about the National Party. You can tell that they've never ever been to a single National Party conference. Yeah, and I've done plenty of those, you know, and I'm no longer a member of the National Party. So maybe I should hand in my seal skin hubcaps. Are you a member of any party? Or are you never going to go down that path again? No, I'm never going to go down that path again. I've thrown partisan politics aside. I'm actually enjoying what we're doing here at Reality Check Radio. And yes, I have my opinions. I have my views. I have my own personal biases, but it's not attributable to any one party. And yeah, I've been accused of being a bit of a sicker fan. But if they could, if only they could make a go ploy that would last nine hours and we just set it up and watch Winston and I over a couple of whiskeys and some cigars just absolutely going hammer and tongs at each other, disagreeing with each other. You know, and that's the thing that I think is missing from New Zealand politics these days is the ability to discuss things with people that you might be impeccably opposed to, but you can have a civil discussion about it. Yeah, I do agree with that. And it's one thing that's really interesting, though, is, you know, I do every now and then I'll do a bit of TV work and I'll do Q&A or the nation or whatever. And in the green room, you sometimes meet people that you've had go at you on social media and the most the biggest pussies. And, you know, like, you know, like when it comes to fronting up in person, the nice is anything, you know, it's only the cowardice of social media that makes them horrible. And, you know, I think that's part of why it's so toxic, right? Like, you know, people, most people, most like my wife's, you know, like a green Labour Party sort of voter. We talk about politics very, very rarely. Occasionally we do. But but actually, you know what, people have more in common than then they have in difference. People say, how can you be married to, like, the school teacher? He sort of sometimes green vote. I like we talk about our kids. We have other things going on in our life. We're not losers who, like, you know, dominated by politics all the time. And therefore, when we do talk about politics, we can do so not hating each other. That's I think you're absolutely right about that. Yeah, you're calling me a loser here. I'm saying I'm saying we're all losers. If we weren't losers, we would be interested in things that were more fulfilling instead of things that were just frustrating. You know, we're all we're all losers. I mean, I love I love I'm the number one loser. I wouldn't say that. You've got a successful law practice. So you can't be that much of a loser. Mind you, then again, so is Greg Presland. That's right. Yeah, I hope to be as much of a winner one day as Greg. Oh, dear. Yeah, it's it's funny you talk about the green room because I've always viewed the green rooms and media. And it's it's a number of years since I've done that, in fact, it'd be more than basically since 2014. So what's that seven years? No more eight years. Yeah, so. Whenever I was in the green room, I used it as an opportunity to sledge very hard and very robustly those people so that they got wound up like a clock clock spring. And then when you go on with them, they're still wound up. And then I adopt a patient and calm demeanour. They look completely manic. And if you want to have a look at the results of something like that, go and have a look at at an eight. It was on the nation. It was in 2012 and I was on with Brian Edwards and Bill Rolston. Now, you go and have a look at that video and you'll see my calm demeanour and you'll see Brian Edwards losing it. And that's because I wound him up in the green room. There's a very good old book about that. It's called Gamesmanship. And it was this guy who wrote it. It was like, you know, it's hard to read. It's all old, tiny language. You know, it's not written by today's standards. But it's all about the art of of winning by not cheating, but doing the next thing next to cheating. And, you know, in terms of how you get one over people psychologically. And, you know, it's things like, you know, if you're playing tennis with them and, you know, they call the ball out, you know, how to react in a way that will, you know, just ruffle their feathers and make them feel like, you know, they're being accused of cheating or being unfair, but without actually saying it and how you just really put people off their game. It's called Gamesmanship. It's a great little book. And maybe I should use that more often. Maybe I'd come across better on TV if I if I was willing to play the game a bit more. Unfortunately, I'm a complete pussy, too. So, you know, there we go. I'm one of the people who's completely nice to people on in the green room because I just can't stand the awkwardness of of argument face to face. I've always been a writer rather than a talker. This is coming from a lawyer, you know, whose entire life really revolves around arguments. Well, I'm a commercial. You know, I'm a commercial lawyer, right? Like, I almost about trying to get the deal done, right? And the way you get the deal done isn't by putting getting people's backs up. And it's about actually it's about being constructive. It's about guarding your client's interests. And but, you know, your client wouldn't come to you if they didn't want to deal to be done one way or the other. I always kind of think of the law I do is this is the sort of solution oriented stuff. And, you know, if it gets the arguments for if we need arguments, then we give it to a barrister at that point. But, you know, like it's I've never if you ever convinced anyone of a political point by getting their backs up and arguing with them and putting them in a position where they can't concede, I never have. I've always thought it's better to try and let them talk themselves into it by asking questions. That's the approach that I prefer now with politics. You know, I've interviewed all sorts of people that I just do not agree with them in any way, shape or form. But just let them talk. And then we can, you know, like Chris Trotter and I have very good discussions, even though we're pretty much implacably opposed to to the solutions or the differing solutions that we have. But but the but Chris and, you know, even Matt McCartin, they're good people at heart and they want results for New Zealand. They just have a different way of wanting to achieve those results. And, you know, you'd know in business as much as in politics, there's no right way to do anything. There's a way. Oh, you're right. There's a way to do something, right? Let's let's find some common ground. And this is the thing that I find so frustrating. We've nearly had 30 years of MMP, but we've still got this adversarial. You know, we're right. You're wrong. Or we won. You lost eat that type mentality in politics. When everybody who voted for MMP had this motherhood and apple pie, that they'll all work together now and be nice. It's an interesting point that you raise about that, because I've often thought about it, which is, you know, MMP was supposed to herald in, as you say, the sort of era of consensus-based politics, you know, and it would be you'd have more working across the aisle because you'd have a multiplicity of parties represented in the parliament. But while we've got the electoral system, but we kept the FPP mentality, you know, we had the 100 plus years of FPP in our political culture and you can't just graft, you know, a new electoral system on to it when the culture is still the same. And so something that was really interesting to me and I just I can't wonder if the dam can't help but one of the dams broken on a little bit. This election is how, you know, we still had this long term trend where we had all these little parties sort of in that sort of in the mid 90s and they would all die out as, you know, you know, Peter Dunn's career died out and all that sort of stuff. And there was this trend towards sort of back to a two party system. And then this election has kind of exploded all that, right? You've got you've got these minor parties winning electorate seats. And I just wonder if, you know, we're finally starting to we may be doing MMP as was actually intended to be done. You know, which is I think is bad because I'm against MMP, but we might finally be, you know, getting getting there as it was intended to be. Yeah, I mean, I'm against MMP, too, but we've had to referendum on this. It is not changing. Right. So anytime you put put in a comment on a site or something about the electoral system, you'll always get somebody who says, oh, but we'd be better with this TV. It's look, it's pointless even talking about we're not having it. Yeah, I couldn't agree more. It's similar to it's like fantasy politics, right? It's like it's like talking about a UBI or a wealth tax. It's just, you know, like it's maybe it's a fun academic exercise. But like politics is actually about the practicalities of getting stuff done. And, you know, that's that's always, you know, it's the criticism. There's a piece in the in the spinoff today about how some there was a green voter who's saying, oh, I've just realized now that, you know, voting for the greens and actually, you know, get a wealth tax. So I'm going to get these big things done. It's like, no, it never it never was, you know, like it's the, you know, politics is always the big parties. They make the decisions on the big things. And if you want a small party, you might get some concessions and the trick for the small parties is to get those to make those concessions as meaningful as possible. And that's why I'll be really interested to see what New Zealand First rings out of national this time round, because I think New Zealand First is it's a really interesting position compared to where it's been in the past. Well, let's just go back a little bit to 2017. And this is from I'm interested in your perspective here as a national party person, because in 2017, Bill English led the National Party. They came first, if you want to use, you know, that analogy. They had the most votes. The Labour Party came second, and they were a long way short of where the National was, but them in the Greens, plus New Zealand First, added up to more than what National had and actually an act was only one seat then. And so with the benefit of hindsight, we can now look back and then say, well, did Winston Peters do the right thing? Now, a lot of national party people on my website would say, Winston Peters betrayed the country because he didn't go with the National Party. And I always thought that was rather arrogant from a national supporter to expect that Winston Peters would go with them because they were the largest party. What are your views on that? Oh, I think there was always a real cope, like the idea that the biggest party is owed the chance to form the government. It's just there's never been something that's ever been talked about until the National Party started being the biggest party, right? Like, you're right, that's sort of that's the most unattractive part of the National Party coming out, which is the born to rule sort of thing. And so, you know, as you say, Winston Peters was in a position where he could negotiate with both sides. And negotiation is pointless unless you're realistically going to go with either side. You know, like it's there's no real negotiating unless you've got a walk away position, right? And I just said the National Party screwed up the negotiations, frankly. And I think, you know, they they had Steven Joyce and Paula Bennett in the negotiation team, Winston Peters was sewing like Paula Bennett at the time. So, you know, it may not have been the dream team in terms of like who they chose to negotiate. And then from my understanding, and I don't know if it's true or not, it's just an understanding I have is that they basically insulted the guy by offering him, you know, all the baubles, thinking that's what he was all about. And that's such a such a fundamental misunderstanding Winston Peters to think that he's he's just about that because he is about that. You know, the baubles are important. But like he he believes in stuff, right? Like he's not a complete grifter, like he's got beliefs. He wouldn't have had that political career he has his head. If you didn't fundamentally believe in stuff, I just think the National Party just freed it wrong and they just insulted him. And I think, you know, if there's any truth to the idea that they suggested he be the speaker this time around, you know, same mistakes again. You know, just that inability to is exactly what they were doing. You know, again, they're repeating the same mistakes. I mean, they were putting it about it was hilarious. Where I live, a couple of floors above as a mate, he's a true blue net. And just before the election, like the Thursday before the election, you're saying, oh, you know, it's terrible. We need to be voting for national because we need to have a government straight away because we need to get into it. We can't waste any time. And then over the weekend, this was the week before, then over the weekend, we had Chris Bishop come out and say pretty much exactly that. And then I knew that this was a talking point that had been pushed out into the electorates to the supporters that we need to have an emphatic result so that we can get on with make governing because we can't waste any time. And I said to my mate, mate, you're not aware of the statutory requirements. We've got to wait 20 days for the for the special ones. You know, that's so anti-democratic. What you're saying that you're asking a government to be formed, unless it was so totally emphatic like Labour was at the end of in 2020. The reality is, though, we've got this fractured electorate where Labour was really in it until the last six weeks. And then it just collapsed. But you had the arrogance of national thinking that they were going to get a two party solution when we haven't had a two party solution in forever. Yeah, apart from that time, we had a one party solution. You're right. And how did that all work out for us? Been hung. Yeah, I mean, you're right. Every single if you take the definition of a hung parliament is a parliament in which no one party or pre-agreed coalition a party. Yeah, sort of wins on election night. So we've had every single election part, but the previous one has been a hung parliament. So you're right there. In terms of that strategy, you know, in terms of saying, you vote, vote, blue or, you know, get chaos or whatever. Well, what I do know is I do know that was a deliberate strategy. I don't know how well it worked, but for one one piece of evidence that it was there was something behind it, pretty weak. But so my wife, she told me that she was probably going to vote for Labour. You know, just she's a school teacher type. But she's one of those people who has sort of strong feelings about Winston and sort of is she's quite anti. And, you know, people have very polarized opinions about Winston. She's one of them. So she came to me. She said, honey, do you think I said, look, I'm thinking maybe I need to vote national, which would be the first time ever in our life to make sure that it's not a once the Peters hung parliament, you know, blah, blah, blah. And I said, of course, I said, of course, honey, you must vote yes. That's right. She'd vote for national. That's the exact right thing to do. So she I went away, came back the day after the election, after being in Auckland for election day. And I said, how'd you vote, honey? She said, I didn't vote in the end. I didn't, you know, I just couldn't bring myself to do other things to do. And I didn't, you know, I was I was that sort of depressed about it. And, you know, I wasn't thinking, feeling great about it. So I just didn't vote. So I just wonder, you know, whether or not, you know, like how that message was targeted at that sort of type of voter. I mean, didn't work because we didn't get it to the polls to vote for the national, but it might have kicked it from voting red. I don't know. We'll have to see how all that played out. I mean, there'll be a New Zealand election study that comes out, and it's going to be really interesting to see. But you're right. I think, you know, it's always going to be the case, the selection that there was going to be, I mean, it's been obvious for about a year, right? It was going to have to be National Act in New Zealand first. That's what I've been saying for you and all these National Act people were going, no, no, no, it's going to be just National Act. You know, at the end of 20, you know, about October 20, 22, Act was sitting at 15, 16, even up to 18 percent in some polls. Yeah. You have to say that David Seymour had an appalling campaign, really. Thank you. Thank you for saying that because everyone keeps talking about it as if they had this great campaign on the basis that they won Tamaki. They added one extra MP, you know, it was they went from being the most disciplined over-performers of the Parliament to completely dropping the ball in the campaign completely. Yeah, let's discuss that a little bit. I mean, let's just look at that because you're absolutely right. They were overperforming. They were the opposition. National was playing. We're just like Labour, but less crap. Right. That was that was the game that's the game that worked in 2008 for John Key. They were John Key was advising Luxon right through the selection campaign. They were making themselves a very, very small target. They were the pitch to the electorate was we're like Labour, but less crap. And they actually forgot the next part of that is that they were actually asking people to vote for crap. Yeah, right. But yeah, but it was the party that was performing. They had got the shooting community on board. They had had a couple of MPs off the basis of that in the in the 2020 election. And they were polling in October, September, October, 2022 at very high rates. And people were actually talking about them catching up to National. And then so they you're right. And they made huge inroads into the rural farming sector, you know, where I live. I mean, to so many visit with clients and on the farm. And so often, you know, say, well, actually, you know what? I think we're going to go for acts this time around. You know, it was like a real thing that is a National Party. So what was sort of like worrying to me? I was like, you know, as a farm vote being sort of shaken loose in the National Party because of the strong political performance of David Seymour. But then in the campaign, I think they did a couple of things. First of all, they just they just started to believe their own bullshit. A bit too much about, you know, and they got, you know, like it was sort of just got over their skis a bit and got ahead of themselves. But the other thing classic mistake is, you know, get picking a fight with Winston Peters. Why the hell would you do that? Why would you make your campaign as the leader of the Act Party getting into a fight with Winston Peters, who is so much more retellented politician than you and you're bringing more and more attention, more and more contrast to Winston Peters, who's actually fundamentally quite a charismatic politician and, you know, that billboard in Auckland. You know, the Act Party billboard featuring Winston Peters, you know, saying, don't get fought again. For God's sake, it could look like a news on first. It was when I saw that I thought, oh, it's awesome. That's a great billboard that Winston's put up. And then I find him. I said, well done on the billboard. And he says, it's not mine. I said, what do you mean? He says, it's the Act Parties. I said, well, it's got a quote that you could have said. I said, you know, you should do it. I said to him, you should just start saying, yeah, Max got some good advice there. Don't get fooled again. Vote for New Zealand first. So, you know, it was bizarre. Do you know what it reminded me of? It reminded me of of the referendum campaign in 2011 for MMP to go back to that. And in fairness, I think a lot of us thought it was a good strategy at the time, which was to say, ditch MMPs, don't make Winston, you know, the kingmaker, you know, remove his kingmaker status by getting it at MMP. And that was an election where Winston Peters was out of, he wasn't, he came back into Parliament after being out of it. All it did was sort of draw attention to Winston Peters and his enduring relevance to New Zealand politics and a campaign where Winston doesn't need to have 30 percent of the population like him. You know, Winston only needs five percent between five and 10 percent is a great result. So the more and more attention you draw to Winston, the more and more you start fighting with him, the stronger you make him. And so what I wonder about acts is acts still a strong enough party as a party that it can look sort of introspectively at how its campaign went and it can learn those lessons or has it become so dominated by David Seymour and Brock Van Velden that, you know, like it's their party now. And so they'll they'll just have the sick of ants who say, look, you know, you did great. It was amazing. You know, you held up while national. Yeah. Yeah. And I act as sort of strong party. They'll take some serious lessons out of this campaign. But, you know, I'm an internal pessimist. I doubt they will. Look, I know a fair few people who are act supporters and some who have actually been on the board of the act party and they've got nothing to do with the act party now because of David Seymour. And yeah, especially his behavior during COVID, all of that sort of thing. But I don't think they have what did he do when he was suggesting that were vaccination buses that would go door to door and drag people out of their homes and vaccinate them, you know, and his doctrinaire and arrogant behavior towards the Wellington protests, you know, all that sort of stuff. And the enact people in my experience had genuinely very libertarian, very free, funnily enough. You know, and that's the thing. In twenty twenty two, David Seymour was running around the country holding free speech meetings. That's how they got the percentage up there. He was talking that he was talking the talk. But when it came to walking the walk, he was decidedly crippled in his outlook. Yeah. So to push my own barrow a little bit on it, too, like I think something that happened was like he's like, you know, as like I'm one of the minority New Zealanders who's a church goer, right? I got a mass every Catholic, I got a mass every week. And, you know, it's an important part of my life, even though I, you know, make lots of mistakes and I sin constantly. But it's still something that's important to me. And a lot of those people, obviously, you know, people of my tribe, you know, thinking national is not really that, you know, strong of a supporter of our liberties and all that. Yeah. And I think there was a lot of people who, you know, who sort of in that way inclined to support it, but Seymour is so arrogant about Christians and antagonistic towards them. And he did when he did an interview with Bob McCroskey. And what do you think about Bob? There was a ball in you. Oh, no. And then so then, you know, I'll tell you something. Do you know who's not going to insult religion? Christianity? Winston Peters. You know, the Winston Peters is not that dumb, you know, like, I don't know what Winston's religion is, probably nothing, but like he's on his face, you know, I've had discussions with him about that. Well, he's he's respectful enough, right? And Seymour just doesn't, you know, doesn't respect for. I mean, Bob McCroskey is the most inoffensive person you can meet. I mean, he's congenial, he's jovial. He talks about some serious things. But the way David Seymour acted in that interview was just appalling, you know, as a person of faith, I really struggle with politicians and in in general, especially politicians who profess a faith about are involved in politics. And Christopher Luxon is one of those where he's, you know, says he's a Christian. But when he's questioned on it, he's very squishy indeed. And I don't know how you can exist in politics and have a Christian outlook on life because politics and by necessity involves lying and deception and dissembling, you know, all these things, right? Yeah, it's so interesting because I think it's exactly true. You know, and it's one reason it's one reason out of many. Well, I probably didn't even want to go into politics myself, despite thinking it would be quite fun in a lot of ways. You just have to make too many compromises, right? Like the way to get power is to compromise, compromise way all the way through and to the point where, you know, you're doing things that you say that you're diametrically opposed to because it's the expedient thing to do. I don't like politicians talking about their religion for that exact same reason. I'd rather not know about it. But the thing is with Bob McCroskey is he's got thousands of followers, right? Like he does. There's networks of thousands of people in the act party just doesn't have the margin to annoy people like that. When they've got Winston Peters as an alternative. Yeah, that's exactly right. And you write too about, you know, politicians have to compromise all the time. That's why I'm never going to be a politician, because I've got principles I will not compromise on. And, you know, part of the rehabilitation of me and what I do around politics is that I've put faith at the center of everything in my life. And so I won't compromise on that. Yeah, you know, you know, it's something that's important and you can't. You just can't be involved in politics and have faith at the center of life. You know what? A lot of people, I think, would would have a lot of scorn for you saying that you're putting faith in the center of your life. But I always say to people, though, is, you know, religion isn't like a club for people who are really good. It's a field hospital for those of us who need to work on our lives constantly. You know, like it's it's for us. People like you and me, we need it because we need healing. You know, like we're not great people. You know, we make mistakes. We've made mistakes. We've all made mistakes in our life. That's the reason to have faith, not because of, you know, because you're some pure and good person. And that's the reason why I don't like politicians talking about it, because they're never talking about it in terms of their own need for salvation or healing or to be fixed in some way. They always use it as a, you know, as an example of why they are good people, why the what's good about them, not what's bad about them. So they should just not talk about it. Exactly. You know, people forget that Jesus said himself said that he without sin cast the first stone. And he wasn't that he was there in the crowd. And he didn't pick a stone up either. Yeah, right. So that's the thing, you know, the church I go to every Saturday. We've got a big sign up. You know, it's in Papatoe. It's got a big sign up and it says come as you are. He's a 7th day Adventist. Oh, yeah. So, you know, come as you are and there's all types that come. You know, gang members wearing patches and stuff like that. It's a field. It's a field hospital. Well, we're all sinners. That's the other thing, too, that I find a lot of people don't understand what the word sin is. I mean, for a start, the word sin in English didn't exist before about nine hundred eighty, right? It's a right. It's a protogemenic word. The original Greek from the Bible and translations means to miss the mark. Right. Yes. Ah, so for me being this will be hard for you as a Catholic. I go for a lot of things are hard for me as a Catholic. But I look in a shooting analogy, right? So if I go out to the gun club and I'm shooting trench, there's 25 targets and I do it and I shoot and I shoot 20 out of 25. Do I now like pack up and go, I'm not very good at this. I'll quit now. I missed the mark on on four on five of those targets. Or a little if you're shooting, you know, at a target downrange somewhere and you get out of 100, you might get 95. Do you now pack up your iPhone and go and do any more of that? Or do you keep practicing and try and hit the mark more? Yeah, that's a terrific analogy. Yeah, I might just steal that one. So that's what I do. I have these discussions all the time with friends and people and they're going, oh, you know, you say you're a Christian, but you do this and you do that and say, yeah, yeah, I missed the mark. But, you know, I'm trying to minimize that. Imagine how bad I would be if I wasn't a Christian. That's what I say to people. Really see some bad stuff then. And for years, you know, I was a token Christian. I'd say I was a Christian. I changed all of that in the last couple of years. It could be you, mate. I tell you what focuses your mind nearly dying. Yeah. Well, it came within a Nats whisker of dying and you sit there and take stock. And I decided to make some changes. It took me five years to make those changes. Yeah. But, you know, I think I'm in a better place now because of that. Well, you certainly seem very philosophical now, you know, and and good on you. Like, like, but we're all a work in progress, right? Like, it's just that unfortunately for you, Cameron, is that, you know, you're you're a work in progress in public. And, you know, and if you make the mistakes I make in life, you know, I don't have that private, you know, people don't jumping all over me. I mean, one day I'll make a really big mistake and then I've got enough enemies at this point that they'll really go for me in public. But, you know, like, it must be an additional burden. Just knowing that, you know, because of your political blogging, you've just got people who are willing to pounce on everything. You're wanting to be every misstep you make. And, you know, I guess the big thing is I hope you just don't care about them anymore. I don't care about what those people think. No, I don't care about them. I, you know, I get every time I say something on X, you know, you'll get somebody says you're irrelevant or almost everything you say is wrong. And then my response to them now, I mean, before I would have attacked them or ridiculed them. Yeah. Now I either ignore them or I just say, and yet here you are. Yeah, great. Shall we? Shall we talk about the election a bit more? Now, you've written a memo to Christopher Luxon on your substack, the Blue Review. Tell us about that. Well, look, I mean, I think fundamentally this election, Labour lost the election because people, you know, have just lost faith in Labour's ability to deliver things that matter, right? Like, you know, we talk endlessly about all this, you know, the debate meant this and the debate meant that or look at this, you know, misstep that happened. But, you know, people, people can't afford to fill up their cars with petrol, you know, like it's, you know, the pain at the pump, the pain at the grocery toll matters so much more, the fear of going to the hospital or waiting room matters so much more than anything else. So the first mandate that Luxon's got, I think, is that he just has to somehow, and I'm not hopeful even really that he can do it, but they've got to concentrate on fixing those, but getting the basics right. Now, you might say, and plenty of people on the right will say, well, you're just promising to manage stuff better that already exists. And it's like, yeah, actually, that's the first thing, right? Like, you know, first, first prove that you can be competent and then people might trust you to implement, you know, more changes. But you've got to, if National can't get on top of the cost of the living crisis and broken public services, they're going to look like a one-term government very, very fast. There'll be lots of people who are going to be, you know, you know how it is, you know, a new government coming into place. There are jobs up for grabs for people on the right. And there'll be a whole lot of people putting their hands up, wanting jobs, you know, flooding in people who have been fair where the friends in the past, not principled enemies, but, you know, sort of fair where the friends will be coming in, trying to sell the National Party on, you know, doing this or that or having some sort of vision about this. But I think that I just think Luxon, the testing of him in the next 12 months, he's going to have to work with Seymour and Peters and prioritise actually just making those broken things work better. If he can do that, he'll get a big second reelection and that's the time that you might try to implement some serious reforms that don't run before you can walk. Yeah, Matt McCartan is the one who taught me an analogy that New Zealand politics is a game of two halves. We have a three year electoral cycle, but each every three years is is a half of a game. So you get elected, the voters watch you in the first half of the game, the three first three years, if they think you're doing OK, then you get to play the second half and you get another three years. And if you've done OK in that, then they might let you play another game. But under MMP, we've never had a four term government. The last four term government we had was Keith Holyoaks, you know, which is decades ago. So the reality is you get to play a game in a half if you're. Partially competent, if you're fully incompetent, you get to pay a half game or you get a full game and then you don't get another one. That's a good analogy. The way I often think about it is I've thought about politics as being similar to a commercial lease. You know, you get you got three five plus five plus five or three by three by three. And so you get three by three by three. So you get to renew it those three times, but you're not allowed to exercise the right of renewal unless you're not in breach, right? So if you're if you're in breach of it as a tenant, then the landlord can refuse, you know, to let you renew the lease. And that's kind of how it is, right? Like it's a good analogy to. Yeah, there's not there's not a depressing commercial lease and allergy cam, which is the ratchet clause. And the ratchet clause is the clause that says the rent can go one way. It can be increased on a review, but it can never be decreased or operates like a ratchet. And unfortunately, for us, the ratchet effect in terms of commercial leases and in terms of politics is as government programs, government spending can go one way. And then, you know, to get in, you've got a promise to continue it. You've got to swallow the dead rat of workers and families. And that's where the pessimism comes in, I guess. But my my my view and my advice to the national is, listen, you've got to get some runs on the board quickly on on making things work because this country just feels so broken. You know, you were talking before that, hey, you had to go to the ED and you somehow got in got in within 10 minutes. But, you know, I was lucky, I think. Yeah, well, it must be because I've had to take my kids to the ED a couple times in the last year and just, you know, the fear of going and having to wait for the kids and what's like purgatory. Sorry to use a Catholic idea, but you know, the purgatory of the waiting room, sitting there for the drunks, you know, who are vomiting their guts out and and you have to wait five, six hours, you know, and you get to that three hour point and you think, do I just find or just go home and come back? You know, go to the GP, I've waited for three hours. You know, what if they're going to call me in the next half an hour? That is the type of stuff, I think, that just makes New Zealanders and such a depressed mood at the moment. And I don't know how he's going to do it, but man, Peters, Seymour and Luxon have got to get some runs on the board on that type of stuff. I mean, there are some huge things that, you know, if we look at what Labour promised, they promised the earth in 2017 and did it again in 2020 and they delivered the leavings of a post of a of a pothole, basically, in terms of achievement. And I'm not sure that they're going to be trusted for a long, for a long, long time, but that will only be true if what you say is correct, that national gets the basics. I mean, we've gone from government spending of around 60 billion dollars. Yeah, per annum to one hundred and sixty billion. Yeah, I know. Incredible. No discernible increase in services or anything else. And it seems the only metric that the Labour government had was that we'll spend more money than you can imagine. That's incredible. When you think about it, it's kind of like this is New Zealand disease, the New Zealand disease where you can everything cost more now, but you get less of it. You know, everything everything is over over budget, you know, behind schedule. And, you know, there's just like nothing in this country works. That's how it feels. I don't know if that's the mood elsewhere in the Western world, but man, like I didn't listen, it didn't feel that way when I was a kid. You know, like it just didn't feel that way then. Well, I'll give you a more personal analogy. I was born in CG, right? And periodically I go back there and and, you know, five years ago, I spent a considerable amount of time there in 2018, came back and had a stroke. And then that's why I haven't been back since. But in Fiji, doing simple things is almost impossible. Like going to get a driver's licence, right? You basically have to set aside at least a day to go to go and get into the queue. You have to queue to get into the queue. Yeah, and then you get given a number and queue again to be called. And you think you've got everything right. And then some guy sits there with a clipboard and a pen and you get down the page and something's missing instead of trying to solve it right then. And then he goes, oh, no, no, you haven't got this denied. And then you've got another day to do that. If you want to go to the bank, if you're an ordinary citizen in Fiji, you want to go to the bank. There's queues out the door and around the corner. Now, this is the tragic thing about it, right? In Fiji, if you're a European and you go to the bank, they come out and pull you out of the queue and deal with you separately, which is appalling. But that's how they operate, right? And everything in Fiji grinds to a halt because of the bureaucracy. And I've been seeing over the last five, six years in New Zealand, exactly the same thing happening with this overabundance of bureaucracy and bureaucratic procedures and policy and it's grinding everything to a halt. But it started 30 years ago. It started when Simon Upton brought in the Results Management Act, the single worst piece of legislation ever to be foisted on the New Zealand population and no one will do anything about it. So that's a classic example of a guy who's really clever, you know, with all the right intentions. Yeah, you know, give me give me a dummy who understands his limitations any day, I think, over a smartass, you know, there's the Fiji thing you see that's really interesting for two reasons. One one quite personal. She's a bit lighter, something personal for me. I took my kids on a like a cheap Fiji holiday when I had three kids. And like it was quite like I don't mind telling you this, it was a time of my life. And I was under a lot of a lot of stress and I've sort of had a very bad anxiety disorder, which I had refused to do anything about to get it diagnosed. A typical Kiwi bloat. And I had, yeah, you know, well, you know, just, you know, I just thought, you know, I just have to get through one more day, one more day to be fine. And I had this horrible panic attack. You know, when I got to Fiji and the resort and and I was convinced I was having a heart attack, which it just, you know, it's awful. I know what you mean. Yeah, it was like this most excruciating pain. But anyway, the doctor in Fiji, he was really in the resort. He was really nice. He said, oh, yes, I've been to Palmerston North. That's a nice quaint little place. I was like, well, OK. But he said, listen, you have you have to go to the medical center because nothing I'm going to tell you is going to convince you that you're not having a heart attack. You have to have an ECG. So I went there and they basically saw me straight away. They, you know, they dusted off this, you know, ancient machine like it was from, you know, 1850s or whatever. And they gave me an ECG and they gave me a bill and I went up and, you know, paid the bill and all said and done. It was probably about 90 minutes, you know, had the reassurance that I didn't have a wasn't having a heart attack. And it hadn't occurred to me till now, you know, that for whatever reason, you know, like it would probably take, you know, I probably got the first class service there, right? Like that was if I was a Fiji and they would have told me to go home, right? Is that probably how it would be? It breaks my heart every time I go back to Fiji. You know, I don't usually go to the resorts, right? I was born in Suvo. It feels like home when I get off the plane at the airport. You know, I get in the cab to take me to the hotel and the guy says, oh, where are you from? They always want to know where you're from. Right here. Oh, yeah, you're a cavity. Yes. And then then they know to take me directly to where I'm going because they know where I'm going, I know where I'm going, but it breaks my heart when you see like I mean, the house that we lived in was in Suva Point. It's some of the most expensive real estate in Suva. You know, houses there are over a million dollars. Fijian and yet 200 meters from there is the largest squatter settlement in Suva. Yeah, and there are people living cheap by jail, literally in in ramshackle huts. But you also look at that and you see these kids coming out of there. Yeah, going to school and their shirts are immaculate and white. And they got this beaming smile and this pride of going to school. And I sit there and I think, you know, Kiwis don't realise how well off we actually are. Yeah, I know. I couldn't agree more. And I had I had conflicted feelings about the whole thing. Because, you know, I'm a bit of a cheapskate. And so, you know, it was something I promised the family would do. But I got the cheapest possible resort, right? So we got we got to the Nandi Airport. We got into the exchange and the transfer and, you know, like a whole lot of families and the resorts were nicer, nicer to get with. And they got more and more dilapidated as we got on. The kids were like, is this one ours? I was like, no, it's way too nice this way. So it was it was fine, you know, it was a sort of it was a comfortable sort of 70s era, quite family friendly one. But it was first time I'd been overseas in a long time. First time I'd been to CG. And the people were just so lovely and polite. And it was the place was full of Australians, you know, like, you know, loud, obnoxious Australians. Well, we went for a walk along the along the coastline of the beach and right next to the resort, right next to it was where the, you know, like, I guess the village where the blue work there lived. And it was like from one thing to the next, you know, it was like comfortable, you know, you know, not luxury because it was, you know, it was an older resort. But, you know, Western comfort right next to this grinding poverty. And yet the people who, you know, came who worked in the resort, you know, had no they were lovely kids. They were lovely to us. They were lovely to the borish, rude Australians who were just, you know, beckoned to them and things like that. And it was really jarred with me as a Kiwi because, of course, I guess, as New Zealanders, we pride ourselves on sort of not having that sort of class awareness, but at the same time, like, presumably, they were quite good jobs that, you know, people wanted and they wouldn't have otherwise. So I just felt conflicted about the whole thing. But one thing you're really right about is that those communities, they really do pride and take, they take a lot of pride and they take a lot of what's the word, the word is gratitude in terms of the education opportunities that are available to them when they are available. And we just take this for granted here. You know, we are we are living off the capital of hard work of previous generations. We've got a situation where all kids are not attending school, then are attending school in some area. Yeah. You know, and you look at the kids in Fiji and they're desperate to go to school and learn and they see education as a way out of the mile that they're in. And, you know, you touched on why labor lost and it wasn't just the lack of delivery. And it's exactly the same reason why Helen Clark lost in 2008, where they've talked a big game about lifting people out of poverty. You know, Chris Hipkins and we've done this. We've lifted 80,000, whatever number, some fanciful number based on statistics lifted out of poverty. But yeah, but I would bet you that not a single Labour politician or indeed any other politician in our parliament ever bothered to identify just one of those kids and go and ask them, how do you think you've been lifted out of poverty now? How do you feel? Because I'll say when we moved, we're in the same house in the same street with the same crime going to the same rubbish schools. Nothing's changed. And it's been like that. Do you remember there was a blog post you wrote that was a long time ago, maybe like in 2014, 2013, it just comes to mind. It was about there was someone who had like they had got they got on to the media and they'd complained about the national government and the local MP was Jacinda Ardern or she was, you know, she was the list MP who was standing locally or whatever. And they'd gone to the MP, the Labour MP to Jacinda and Jacinda had said something like, oh, we can put you in touch with the media. Like that was the help that they had offered to give them. And then the person followed up with you about how disappointing it was. Do you remember that? Yeah, it was a lady who actually lived in out near Pocacaui, if I remember rightly. Yeah. And, you know, I did follow up with her, went to her house and I saw how she lived. And I spent some time with her. And she was gobsmacked that I was the only journalist who had bothered to do anything like that, you know, see her as a person. And funny you say that, I thought the other day, I must look that person up again and see how they're getting on. Yeah, because they're a person, because they're a real person. They're not just a statistic or a story or an illustration. You know, I think you're right on that. Do you know the other thing that's interesting though is when you talk about, you know, the bureaucracy and how hard is to get things done is I think we take the ground to do this always going to be New Zealand's always going to be our first world country. And what I was thinking about for a second world at the moment. But, you know, it's so interesting how Argentina, like, you know, before the second world war, Argentina was more prosperous per capita than the United States, you know, it was it was on the way to being an economic superpower. It was a really strong agricultural country like New Zealand. And and look at Argentina now, right? Like it's it can happen, you know, and it can happen here in Australia. Right. They've got oil. They've got abundant resources and they're living in grinding poverty all because of a lack of leadership. Yeah, to press it. So, you know, your memo to Christopher Luxon, that struck a chord. That's why I call jumps and let's talk about this. You know, I worry, too, that national will be ground down by the bureaucracy, by the intransigence of the civil servants who have their own agenda in there. You know, that's the thing you can change the government, but you never change the service. It's a blob, right? It's like fighting against the blob. The more you punch it, the more you get sucked into it and the tire that you get. And that's why I'm a pessimist, right? Like I think, you know, David and Grant was having me on about how, you know, not being ambitious enough in terms of the education sector, something we've talked about today. But educational forms have to be implemented by school principals and school boards and teachers and unions and unions. And in three years, you know, you can pass the law in three years, you're not going to get the time to do to do that. And then you're not going to be able to step out of the way and you'll give up. You look at charter schools, right? Yeah, the charter schools that were implemented did amazing things. And then the government changed and they were gone in a heartbeat. Because they only built 12 of them, you know, they didn't build it. They didn't make them too big to fail. That's the problem, right? And yeah, one thing that that labor are very, very good at doing, right? They put things in place knowing that the National Party, because of their party of the status quo, will invariably just adopt it. And you raised earlier, you know, working for families. Yeah, that was brought in. John Key was the leader of the National Party. He said it was communism by stealth and we'd repeal it. And when he got into power, yeah, he didn't repeal it. In fact, he extended it. So that's the ratchet effect. It can move one way. Unless and this is the I don't want us to have this, but unless you have a giant crash and, you know, we had a giant crash in the early 80s and that gives you the leeway to fix things, you know, it's but you know, you need that crisis. We have a paradigm shift. I mean, you know, things that can't if they can't go on forever, it won't go on forever. But the fall, the crash is going to be the correction is going to be really, really hard and we're going to have it, you know, it has to happen. Education is a huge, I mean, you know, like we used to be world leaders in reading and maths and it's just, you know, if you don't teach your own kids reading and maths down, there's just no guarantee they're going to be literate or numerate. You know, we have gone backwards so much. Well, that's the problem is that too many people in New Zealand now and we saw this as a result of the COVID stuff and it's really accelerated. Now, too many people in New Zealand expect that the solutions for anything, whether it's their education of their children or the health of their children or anything else, completely reliant on the government and aghast when there isn't someone from the government saying, hi, I'm from the government, Ronald Reagan said the most dreaded words in the English language are, hi, I'm from the government. I'm here to help you. Yeah. But that's our culture now. We've taught ourselves to be helpless like that, right? And it's a hard thing to unlearn. I mean, you know, we had constant, you know, three or so years, constant advertisements on television and politicians saying that these communities, communities were vulnerable. Yeah. If you tell someone they're vulnerable for long enough, guess what? They'll become vulnerable. Yeah. Give a dog a bad name, right? Yeah. There's no difference. Yeah. Dogs. Dogs aren't bad. Their owners are. Yeah. Yeah. Very, very true. So just a quick summary then to wrap up, because we've been talking for an hour or so, right? Yeah. You've got a little bit of hope, but there's a sense of disappointment there with you on what you think might happen over the next three years. I'm just I'm a pessimist, right? For all the reasons we've talked about, I've sort of been taking the view for a while now that forces and trends matter more than individual politicians. You need to have the right politician in place. But, you know, it's the broader economic and social trends are going to lead to a certain place. And when we get to the point that there's no longer sustainable, then we'll see the change. And if I'm being honest with you, I think that the best candidate can be hoped for, for the short term, is not to make things worse. Right. For a national party that will run things properly, that won't go out of its way to bring in new big spending programs or new social interventions and really just going to leave the rest up to, you know, up to the media, to the culture, to the communities, to create the demand for the actual change. Yeah. If the knock on the National Party is that it runs communism better. I hope for a better run communist state that, you know, but one thing I can tell you is that if they don't deliver that, then we'll get the badly run version again and it'll come sooner than you think. And then the minor parties will grow even more power. They will. They will. And, you know, maybe that's not the worst thing in the world, but I'm still enough of a true blue dairy farmer's son that, you know, I have hope for the National Party, but I don't expect much. Well, on that note, Liam here, thank you for coming on the crunch and sharing your thoughts from a national party perspective. My absolute pleasure. And I'm sorry it was so rambling, but feel free to call me back if you want. No problems. Thanks a lot. Well, who knew a discussion about politics would get a little sidetracked with a discussion about faith and the journey we end up on as we discover our faith. But there you go. Faith can and does drive some of us to try and be better humans, even in politics. Tell me your thoughts on what Liam had to say by emailing inbox at realitycheck.radio or text to 2057. This is the crunch with Cam Slater. Conversations with a side of controversy right here on RCR.