 If reality check radio enriches your day and life support us to keep bringing you the content, voices, perspectives and dose of reality you won't get anywhere else. Visit www.realitycheck.radio forward slash donate. Simon Lusk is a hunting buddy of mine and we've also done plenty of political hunting together, but that'll probably be for our book. I've asked him back, despite his views on Jacinda Ardern, to see if we can plot a course for the Labour Party to find their way forward. He joins me on the line now. Welcome back to The Crunch, Simon Lusk. You're famous on The Crunch. As the person who said Jacinda Ardern was nice, we had so much email about that. Well, that's quite incorrect, Cam. I never said she was nice. I said she was lovely. Well, now we'll have even more emails. Well, I also said that she was thick and not competent, but she was genuinely lovely. Yeah, I mean, I agree with you, I'm thick and not competent, but we'll have to disagree on the lovely. Although I did have lunch with her in 2008, but David Farrah was besotten with her at the end of that lunch, and I said to him, she's as dumb as a bag of hammers, David, how can you, you know, like that? And he says, oh, well, you know, I think she's going places. So maybe he was right and I was wrong. Maybe, maybe. I have huge admiration for her as a person and almost none as a politician. She was an abject failure as Prime Minister and really failed to deliver on any of her key promises. And that's the key thing, isn't it? The Labour's sitting there with Chris Hipkins boxing on, mainly because there's nobody else to replace him. But they're sitting there thinking that the electorate got it wrong and they haven't had the, the naus to sit down and think, well, actually, is it a legacy of all the over-promising and under-delivering? Or is it a legacy of our nanny-statism or is it a legacy of the divisiveness that has occurred as a result of the policies we pushed through? And so it seems that they seem a bit directionless. It's almost like they're relying on people to wake up. And we saw this in 2002, didn't we, when Bill English arrogantly thought he was going to win the election because the voters got it all wrong and Labour will only be in for one term and then we'll get back in. It's the same sort of thinking that we're seeing now of the Labour, isn't it? Well, and the nine years for the three elections with John Key where he beat them absolutely smashed them, really. And they just kept waiting for people to think John Key was something other than what he was, which was both competent and likeable. He might not have done very much, but no one could accuse him of not being competent. And his likability remained very high. I mean, most people would welcome to have a drink with John Key. Very few people want to have a drink with Presupkins, but that's probably because he drinks Chandy's. Well, I haven't pink cocktails while he's watching the Boxing Day Test match. I mean, yeah, I think part of being in the modern Labour Party is you've got to hand in your man card. And it's why guys like Nash and Chainsaw never really did that well in there because they wouldn't. So what is the Labour Party going to do moving forward or what should they do? You know, I've got some ideas. You've got some ideas. Let's chew the fat on this one and see if we can steer them in a direction that might see them being competitive at the next election. Well, the first thing they've got to do is concentrate on winning a majority in Parliament. And, you know, if they concentrate on anything else, they're largely wasting their time. They've got to get to 61 or whatever the majority is in Parliament. And they've got to probably do that via a coalition. And, you know, if they spend their whole time navel gazing about whether they need a weight wealth tax or something, it's just not relevant. And no one really wants to vote for someone that looks backwards all the time either. They need to be looking forward. And, you know, they've got bloody good pollers in Talbot Mills. Those guys know what they're doing. They've been around for ages and they learned from Fat Tony who was a genius. And, you know, they should spend very, very heavily on research in the next six months, especially the qualitative stuff. They need really deep-seated research to understand what the public are thinking, what the public care about, where they got it wrong and where the opportunities are. What do people think of Luxon and what are their attack lines on Luxon? What are the criteria for success? And, you know, while it can't be done with Chris Hipkins, they really seriously need to be thinking about who he goes and buys a case of whiskey and goes and has a peace conference with New Zealand first. They probably won't because they now think Winston is evil, but, you know, they probably shouldn't do that. But in principle, what they've really got to do is work out the issues that matter to voters and fight on those. And, you know, don't fight the last war and don't spend too much time worrying about things that won't have much impact. Like, you know, if Winston wants to have a go at the media for being biased, well, I think our good mate Farrah has proven that the most New Zealanders, including half of Labour voters, think they are biased. So stop fighting them on that and start fighting on the cost of living or, you know, immigration is something where they can make a material difference to people's lives rather than just living around the edges. I've seen a few of the, I described them as hard left media commentators saying if only Labour had brought in a wealth tax as their policy mix, if only they had extended capital gains tax, if only they had removed GST off fruit and vegetables. All of these things that they've been talking about, and they seem to think that we'll vote for more taxes. And the empirical evidence suggests that the opposite is true. If you propose new taxes or more taxes, very rarely do you succeed. I mean, Helen Clark famously raised the top tax rate, but she said it was only going to apply to 5% of tax payers. I mean, it was a lie. It applied to far more than 5%. But she's the only one I can think of that got away with proposing an increased tax, albeit on a small portion of the population. And I think this is something that the left don't understand. The average voter doesn't mind people being wealthy. They like to think that they one day might make it. And they also think that the government wastes most of the money they get, so they resent paying taxes. More taxes is not an issue that's going to when you vote on. We've got to tax these people more, and that's why you guys just waste it anyway. And that's one of the things they're going to have to deal with. They set up a whole lot of useless bureaucracies that have cost a vast fortune and service has gone down. Our education system is an abject failure and our health system is just way worse than when national war and power. And they've got to get their heads around the difference between spending money and delivering results. We've seen this with a number of politicians. I mean, Stephen Joyce wrote an article about a week ago in the New Zealand Herald where he was this newfound fan of devolution and putting decision making out to the regions. But he was the minister that created MB, this massive ministry that centralized a whole lot of work streams around. And now he's saying that we need to have devolution. In some respects, I agree with him. There seems to be in the Labour Party this preponderance of thinking that central government knows best and that we're best to merge all the polytex, merge all the hospitals and health boards and everything else, merge everything into this one big amorphous beast that is sitting there in Wellington sucking the life out of the New Zealand economy. And they never seem to have, I mean, the last rational thought they had about this sort of stuff was when Roger Douglas was their finance minister. And maybe they need to actually start thinking about these things more. Well, I think that, you know, the whole argument about centralization or decentralization is just, you know, I live in Hawkes Bay. No one cares. They just don't care. And this is the trap that Labour fall into. They think that people actually do care. And if they just could educate them a bit more, they would. What they do care, what their voters here are listening for is, how are you going to make my life better? How are you going to get the cost of living down? You know, how are you going to make housing more affordable? Because bloody hell Kiwi bill was just a disgrace. I mean, you guys were just useless. We've got to have a plan that will work. And, you know, they've got to, Labour need a plan that they can say this will work unlike in the last six years. And, you know, that that's a really important point. They need to be thinking about probably the 97% of people that aren't interested in aren't listening. And how do you get some cuts through to them? And I don't know that they, you know, that if they want to keep going on about centralization and big bureaucracies, you know, you turn up at the A&E ward and you don't get seen for 12 hours, all you think is the government's useless. Not, oh, it's great. We've got a new bureaucracy. And that's the kind of thing where voters just have lost trust in government a lot because Labour were so inept and couldn't deliver anything. And, you know, they've got to work hard on saying our plans will work this time because we have done this. Not, oh, well, we dreamed up 100,000 houses for KiwiBuild without addressing the problems of building houses to begin with. I mean, take the health sector, for example. I mean, Andrew Little in the middle of a pandemic had this rush of shit to the brains where he thought we'll reorganize the health system, we'll get rid of all the health boards, we'll give them some flash Maori names and issued all these badges. All the staff have got their Te Whatu Ora badges on and everything. But the services never improved. Nothing changed. Went backwards. It went backwards in many respects. And people are sitting there thinking, why is the Labour Party fighting over Maori names for government departments when the government departments don't bloody work in the first place? And they want the health system to see them quickly. They want the roads to have no potholes and to be fixed and repaired, you know, with great alacrity. They don't want some fancy... I mean, I imagine you're getting the same feedback that I'm getting from people on the street where they're saying, oh, just thank God we can actually say things as they are now and these woke wumbles frowning at us because we're not pronouncing something correctly or whatever. And I think that leads on to really Labour's biggest strategic opportunity, although I'm not sure that they will really embrace it, which is coalition politics. They need to have a coalition to form a government. And they've got the absolute fruit-loop greens who are going to take up all the learning green vote. But they've also got the Maori Party. And the Maori Party is always going to outmarry Labour. And there's no point in Labour fighting them because it only takes left-wing votes. Labour has to move to the middle and expand the coalition towards the middle. And, you know, getting into an argument about what a government department is called when no one really knows what it is or how to pronounce it, it just doesn't have any bearing on the average person's life. That is, as Matt Goodwin in the UK writes, he always talks about it being the luxury belief class. You know, the luxury belief class here thinks that all this te reo is going to change the way that Maori succeed in New Zealand. It defies common sense. And, you know, that means that you probably, you know, your mate Willie Kim, who's a bloody good guy and I love reading what he writes, I don't agree with much of it, but at least he tells us what he thinks, which most of them don't. And, you know, good on him for that. But if Labour try and outmarry the Maori Party, they're just going to alienate a whole lot of immigrants and a whole lot of white working class voters who should be voting for Labour. Because they'll be going, you bastards care more about those people than you do about me. So I'm not going to vote for you. And, you know, that is what they will be thinking and what they have done. So they've got to get away from the trap of the treaty because it won't win elections. And I would spend quite a lot of time working, getting Maori elected. They're wonderful candidates, far better than anyone else. But, you know, you need to be talking about results for Maori, not te reo. You know, housing, education, health, employment and results, not bureaucracies. You know, the whanau here, my fiance is Maori and the whanau are all, you know, they care about things like, are there going to be enough houses? Are the kids going to get a decent education? Can they get nanny in to see a doctor when they need to? They don't really care that much about te reo. And quite a lot of them, their kids have learnt te reo at home. And now they're in normal schools learning English because they've already got it. And, you know, arguing that kind of stuff just puts people off. And I'm sure the qualitative research would say that if they got Talbot Mills to do the work and they actually listened to them. And that leads on to the next point, which is, you know, they really probably should sit down with a Maori party and say, guys, you're going to look after the Maori's. We've got to win over the middle ground and then we can work together to improve things that we all agree on. But why not get your voters to party vote Labour? And we'll get our voters to electorate vote Maori and we'll create a bigger overhang and we'll make it harder for the right to do all the things that we don't want them to do by being in government. And, you know, that is something that a sensible Labour party would be considering. Now, I don't believe they will. I think that their luxury belief people in the, you know, the white urban liberals all couldn't stomach that. And the Maori part of the caucus would be, oh, no, we've got to win over Maori voters, they're ours. But, you know, you and I, we're pretty cold-blooded about these things. We'd do anything to win if we were running Labour and we would go and have that chat with the Maori Party. But it seems to me that the Labour Party has a problem now and it's their coalition partners because if you vote Labour, you're going to get the fruit loops in the greens who don't say anything sensible ever. You seem to like playing dress-ups as much as the Maori Party like playing dress-ups in Parliament. But, by and large, they're not an environmental party. They're a hard-left socialist party, if not communist in many regards. And then you've got the Maori Party that is morphed from something that was respected when it was run by Tariana Turia and Peter Sharples which is something where they're actually a laughing stock and most people are laughing at them, not with them. Yeah, although I think that they have a substantial constituency, I think there is a constituency for both the greens and the Maori Party and if you're just looking to get to 61 votes in Parliament, you've got to work out what is the most efficient way of doing it and you can shave off some of the loony stuff that those parties want to do in their own portfolio so Labour becomes a sensible mainstream party that's okay to vote for for the average voter. You've still got to deal with them in government but you're better off dealing with them in government than fighting them in opposition. Yeah, I mean, still, if you're trying to convince that squishy middle to not vote for national, because I mean, let's face it, that's where the squishy middle sits as a national party at the moment and if you go with Labour, then having the lunatics of the greens and the racists of the Maori Party as your only potential coalition partners because of your decisions that you made over a period of time isn't going to endear voters to wanting to swap across to the Labour Party because if you vote for Labour, you get them. Definitely not. They really need to, you know, when they cut the hipkin's throat, which I'm sure they will be forced to at some point, they need the first move is they've got to turn up at New Zealand First caucus with a big case of whiskey and sit there and drink it with them and have a peace conference. That would give them more flexibility to move further to the right and stop the loonies from on the left from causing too many problems. None of this is particularly, well, it's not rocket science and the guy that writes the best on all of this kind of stuff, in my view, is a pommie guy called Matt Goodwin who's got a great sub-stick site and he's written a brilliant book called Value's Voice and Virtue which is basically how the left in Britain has managed to alienate their traditional working class voters and the same applies in the US and I think the same applies here. They emphasise values of the luxury belief class rather than the values of the people that are working hard to get ahead. They've denied them the voice that they had in Parliament because there's very few working class people left in the Labour Party and their view of virtue is doing stupid stuff on trans and things like that rather than what the average working class voter thinks and I'd be making that mandatory reading for every member of the Labour caucus and look at what can be implemented that he talks about in Britain here and the first thing that I'd be implementing is a really aggressive policy on immigration to reduce immigration to get housing prices down and public services available to New Zealanders because that's just something that is offensive when you see all these new people turn up, block the roads, take the houses and clag up your schools and your health system and why are we letting these people in? Because they're also driving our wages down and that argument could be a very, very powerful one for Labour if they can get their heads round they've got to stop going on about virtue and looking after the minorities and start looking after hard-working New Zealanders. And hard-working New Zealanders are the majority although I was shocked to see the other day some statistics particularly around the Labour Party's unfunded promises that Treasury were absolutely slating after the fact shame they never said it beforehand but they said that Labour's promises around infrastructure and what they were wanting to spend was going to require the magical appearance of 100,000 skilled workers and then in the article it went on to say that the current workforce is around 880,000 people either it was a typo, either it was a typo or it just shows how few working people there are in New Zealand I mean I think 180,000 seems rather small I mean I think 1.8 million might be more appropriate given we've got a population of 5 million. Yeah look I think there's some big issues in terms of getting people who aren't working back to work and it's not unique to New Zealand Britain now has one in five working-age adults on the benefit or out-of-work benefit and I'm sure that we have a similar sort of problem where for both structural reasons and because we just let blood just get away with it they stay on the benefit for life rather than getting out and working and there's plenty of jobs but we're not really pushing them now that if Labour were really serious they'd say look our name states what we believe in you work with the Labour movement we're not the bludger movement we're not the beneficiary movement we believe in and everyone having to do their bit for society and that means working and I think that the other really one of the best lines I think I've ever heard in politics was when Julia Gillard rolled Kevin Rudd and she said I want to be the Prime Minister for the Australians that work the hardest not those who complain the loudest and I think too often you get Labour Yeah well that's bloody right and that should be Labour's mantra we want to look after the New Zealanders that work hardest not those that complain the loudest and that have all sorts of people saying hallelujah someone finally gets it I really resent the fact that I'm doing two jobs I'm getting up really early and I see my useless bloody neighbour who's been on a benefit for years and sells a bit of dope and plays spaces all night he never does anything and I'm expected to work my guts out so he can afford to play spaces and smoke dope and that's not the kind of thing that you'd hear that anyone in Labour talk about and it probably should be because it's their voters that are now thinking I can't trust Labour they want to sell me out to everyone that isn't like me and I don't believe that my beliefs are worth having you've got to be so careful around what you say with the rainbow community and you can't say bad things about transvestites and it's like come on just as Obama said perhaps we should be a little less judgemental and we should understand that the frustrations of people are not the frustrations of the well-off educated people the people are struggling to pay their mortgage or their rent and they're struggling to buy their kids their school uniforms and pay for a little bit of extra and they're the people that Labour need to concentrate on not the people that complain the loudest I mean I can't ever see Labour saying that but I can see Winston saying it oh yeah definitely yeah I think he'd love saying it but you know you're thinking of Julia Gillard's remarkably unsuccessful tenure and I watched her first press conference and that was in her first speech she had me thinking oh yeah that's bloody good and I was not predisposed to like the Labour Party in Australia and other things that she did which she just didn't dwell on identity someone said oh you're proud to be the first woman Prime Minister and she said well I'm the first ranger too and just took the piss out of the identity people and she said yeah you know we didn't mean much so Prime Minister gender didn't have any bearing on it any more than her red-haired did well you know we saw in New Zealand the media and the left-wing lovies bent out of shape when Ginny Shipley became New Zealand's first woman Prime Minister and we had this crazy construct in the media when Helen Clark was finally elected that she was the first woman elected Prime Minister it was just a joke you know that they pushed that but that's what those identity identitarians I like to call them do and the Labour Party seems to have more than its fair share of them we've almost got as many as the Lunatic Green Party despite the disparity in sizes of the parties and this identitarian stuff has has headed them down the cul-de-sac I mean I was reading a spectator article on how progressivism has ankle-tapped the Democratic Party and I'm sitting there reading the article I thought I could just change Democrats for Labour and it'd be exactly the same for New Zealand yeah and you know that's probably where Labour need to start thinking about what the information they're consuming you know they need to be consuming things like a spectator and people that are critical of them rather than perhaps the new statesman or the Guardian which is affirming their own views listen to the views that are different to yours and see if you can apply some of that knowledge and it's not exactly hard but I don't know that they're going to have the intellectual curiosity to work that out and that's perhaps one of their greatest weaknesses now I mean I've talked politics with Michael Bassett for a very long time now and he said that the really smart people in the Labour Party when he was serving in the 70s and 80s they had really inquiring minds they were before the internet they were seeking out good international journals and reading them like the New Republic or the Atlantic you know he said one of his colleagues he read The Economist every week and he was one of the most well-informed people in Parliament because he had an inquiring mind and he just knew what was going on around the world and that it's harder now with the amount of information that's coming through but you do need to inquire and you probably need to ration the time that you spend reading right wing sorry left wing stuff if you're in Labour and spend more time reading the stuff from the right to find out what they're thinking and why and what their people are thinking because you've got to win them over not win over the people that have voted for the Greens or the Marry Party because that doesn't get you any closer to a majority in Parliament it's funny you say that because just earlier on the show was talking to Daniel Newman and he said exactly the same thing that he finds door knocking talking to people on the street their politics may be different from mine but I'm still going to listen to them because they might actually have a solution to a particular problem that's vexing other constituents and if I only talk to the people that I agree with then I'm just going to form an echo chamber and we're not actually going to get solutions for the constituents and I thought that was an admirable attitude to have for a local body politician but indeed for a national level politician you just got to get out there and find out why people aren't voting for you and you know what you can do to persuade them otherwise and you know like what is it that will change the key demographics vote you know Labour managed to lose about half their vote from the previous election and that's staggering think about it what was the cause of it obviously there was lack of performance and being gaslit I mean people were sick of being gaslit being told that their life was better off I mean this is what I said to a couple of Labour politicians that I was talking to and they said they were going well I said no you're not and they said well why do you say that I said because I'm talking to people that you should be talking to and they're telling me that life sucks that you know you've told them that you've lifted all of these children out of poverty you go if you went to any one of those households and said to them do you consider yourself to being lifted out of out of poverty that all have said no my kids are going to the same shitty schools we still live in the same shitty street with the same shitty neighbours nothing's changed for us and so your grants, your payments your stipend that you've given us to lift us out of poverty it's gone nowhere because the cost of living has gone through the roof and so you're gaslighting us into thinking that we should be grateful and we know we hate your cuts yeah deservedly so but it does it gets back to that early point you've got to throw a heap of money at Talbot Mills to find out what people are thinking and what you should be running on and Talbot Mills is competent they'll be able to tell you but you've got to do the work and you've got to listen and that means you need to invest I think that it was really noticeable that David Farrah tells us that when Bill English after he lost in 2002 National increased its research budget and they got pretty close in 2005 but after or when Simon Bridges was leader the research budget fell dramatically because they didn't have as much budget so they just cut it and they were spinning it on all sorts of other stuff so they didn't really know what the voters were thinking although in fairness they probably did know the voters were thinking we don't like Simon Bridges and it wouldn't really matter what else he did they just didn't like him and you know that's unfortunate for him but it's part of what Labour need to look at who are the people when it comes the time to replace Hipkins who are the people that voters won't look at and immediately dismiss they've got to test the potential leaders and it's possible to do Talbot Mills would be able to do it and one of the really really important things is just a blink test and on the time you take the blink you make your mind up about a politician which is why you and I will never hold an elected office camp at the time that it takes people to blink they think that that guy's a bastard and I'm never going to vote for him and that's just how it is and there's nothing we can do about it and we're realistic but you put up someone that fails the blink test and they will be as successful as all of the leaders that have failed for Labour in the past and Jacinda was a phenomenon because she turned up with absolutely no policies that they didn't have already though the policies were useless her slogan was let's do this I mean what did that mean what did they do? yeah yeah and you know and yet she got about a 14 point bounce in the polls and ends up on 34% in Prime Minister but that was because she'd done so much work in the media and was very likeable and a very pleasant lovely person in the eyes of the public and that's the kind of person that you need you can't have someone that's down or defensive who gets angry and who can't relate to people who you know I think that in the beginning everyone seemed to think that they could probably relate to Jacinda until they worked out they didn't really agree with her but at least they thought oh yeah she's okay I wouldn't mind having a drink with her so who has Labour got I mean if Hipkins decides oh this is all too hard I'd rather go and play Happy Families with Tony and decides to go I'm not sure he would do that but let's say he did who have got Labour got in their caucus now that could fill the role of a credible leader I mean surely it can't be Grant Robertson I mean he's going to go down in history as New Zealand's worst finance minister and given the competition from Sir Robert Moldoon that's a tough ask but that's where he's heading but no I mean I think the blink test with Grant Robertson is he looks like a Cardi wearing civil servant off the set of gliding on and I'm sure you'll be able to share the photo of Jim gliding on and he's a dead ringer for Grant Robertson he's not a vote winner what I would suggest is I think that everyone listening to this needs to go and have a look at our team page on the Labour website and look at the people the caucus members and look at them and the time it takes you to blink make your mind up about whether you like them or not and there are a few there that look the part and probably could be quite confident but you know well it's not Megan Woods is it oh wait no no she's just you know she's like you and I she just isn't someone who's going to pass the blink test it's not going to be Tamo Sepoloni either I mean you know she doesn't look anything like it yeah yeah yeah yeah look I think that let other people make their judgement because my judgement is that I quite like the look of Camilla Billich and I think that the bloke from Palmerston North who I've known people who served on council with them said he was a really friendly good bloke and you know they were national supporters and he looks the part I'm just not sure that there's many more there that actually look the part and pass the blink test yeah Pena Henry looks the part he he's an outlier but the problem that these guys have got is that under Ardern's leadership the ministers don't appear to have actually done very much despite the large pay packets and all the perks that go with being a minister. If you look through press releases very few of them did anything there was about five members of cabinet that actually did all the heavy lifting you know they were Chris Hipkins Grant Robertson, Jacinda Ardern to a certain extent and David Parker and that's about it then they brought in of course Megan Woods who was the campaign chair and she probably thinks she did a great job getting the number that they got but everybody else seems to be decidedly ordinary and I can't see a leader coming through there it's just almost impossible to Yeah I can I can see a leader I think that it's not that hard to imagine someone actually being competent I'm sure in 1993 we would have been saying the same thing about Helen Clark and she's been vindicated when her preferred Prime Minister number was 2 when she had Labour at 14% She just had she just had raw political talent though and a bloody mindedness as well which is admirable in some politicians They could copy what Helen does and they could work closely with her in the Helen Clark Foundation to develop the policy and the campaign plans outsource some of the thinking to that organisation as happens in just about every other country in the world Someone we haven't mentioned is Irina Williams She was young has potential because she's in a safe red seat but one of the tragedies for Labour was that they ended up with a whole lot of useless old people and not much new blood so I think they had two new MPs so there wasn't any real new blood and all the List MPs coming in next on the list have basically failed members of the previous administration that don't have that much potential I'm not entirely pessimistic I think they have some options but they're going to need to work as hard as Helen Clark, they're going to build the team that she did and through the grunt work that her team did to put her in a position to win Yeah, they've only got seven List MPs Yeah, and there are no new ones that there will be retreads if they come back Willo Jean Prime Aisha Verrill Willie Jackson Yeah, I mean the ones outside of Parliament with the List of Labour the ones that will come in Yeah, but they need someone like they need David Parker and Kelvin Davis and all these other you know, dead shits really to quit and go to revitalise but it's encouraging them to do that but that's the problem with troffers who have been there forever they don't like to have to go and find a new troff to suck at Yeah, and you know they're scarcely going to get much support from the current government because they spent so much time alienating especially ACT and New Zealand First so I think they'll probably have a bit of a fat wire against former Labour people getting government appointments too unless you just want to be you know, spiteful and give them a government job so that it takes them out of the Labour Party and shuts them up but I just don't think they've got enough grunt there I don't think there's anybody there who has the capability of making a huge difference to the fortunes of the Labour Party unfortunately and maybe they're going to have several iterations of leadership in the next few years. Yeah, I think that's a fair call I think that where I running Labour strategy and only getting paid to win, I'd still back myself to be able to be able to be a male national but they'd have to be there'd have to be some quite tough conversations inside the Labour caucus about the need to win rather than the need to have a virtue signal and I'm not sure how that would go they seem to be very virtuous and not very results orientated and that's the biggest problem for them is we tend to look at strategies Labour tends to look at tactics of course tactics being shorter term but they don't have this over-arching strategy and I think they thought after they got 50% of the vote under Jacinda Ardern in 2020 that they could go another two terms before their support diminished to such an extent to let national come in through the back door but they lost 50% of their vote in three years Yeah, you know and they're not alone in that there's plenty of other people that did well in the immediate COVID election and now are extremely unpopular but you know your point about tactics not strategy I think they're probably going to think that Parliament matters and basically Parliament doesn't matter that much it's not going to change many people's minds you know the Parliamentary Press Gallery gets smaller and smaller all the time because with the number of click-throughs being counted now the media organisations know that no one really follows what goes on in politics they shouldn't well yeah but at the same time I think it's more because no one's interested you know it's not very interesting politics we may care about it but most voters don't and they sort of emerge near election time and have a look around and think well those bastards were useless or yeah John Key hasn't done too badly we'll give him another crack but you know in Parliament itself it's important that they don't adopt the Simon Bridges strategy of asking questions of the Prime Minister all the time and he just soundly got beaten and got nowhere it's got to be a question time Serengeti strategy you've got a lot of feast on the week you go after the ones that are unethical and competent and you put pressure on those ones and unless you've got an opportunity to land a real blow on Lachlan or Peters or Seymour you stick to feasting on the week and if that means that the Prime Minister is not really getting too many questions so bad last time we talked you mentioned the great job Lockwood Smith did Tato Phillip Field and how Helen Clark had to sit there watching one of her ministers basically getting rinsed and there's nothing she could do and you know that would have frustrated the hell out of her and it would frustrate Lachlan if that happens to him but it just made the point that Labour went competent and she didn't sack him quick enough it was a wound that National exposed and Lockwood exposed over that long period of time that really made people think it's time to move on from Helen Clark and Labour they've lost their touch and ethics and competence is always where Nick Gringrich was the one that has probably done it best where he just spent four years hammering his opponents on ethics until they actually got done for ethics because they were unethical and obviously you and I have nailed a few people quite unethical and quite a few of them no one actually knows that we're involved in getting rid of them but at the same time that's an opportunity for Labour to exploit because there will be people in National that do stupid things that require them to be removed from Parliament Yeah that's the funny thing too about Parliament is the general public don't really care about what goes on in there but it is important for morale amongst your own team and here's a classic case on Tuesday during question time Rauri Waititi got up and started speaking in Maori 100% in Maori and asking questions of Winston Peters who then stood up and said that Waititi speaking Maori is ignoring all the English speaking people who are watching the broadcast so I'm not going to answer any questions that are asked in Maori Yeah and I think that probably appealed to both New Zealand First voters and the Maori Party voters and I think that's one of the big risks for Labour this term is that the Maori Party and New Zealand First are going to spend three years fighting each other because strategically it makes a lot of sense for them to fight each other and Labour will get drawn on the Maori Party side rather than just letting them have that ground and trying to win over the middle voter they'll be backing up the Maori Party The hilarious thing is about Winston being back in Parliament and Labour must be sitting there cringing because they know if they go after Winston if they ask him any questions he's just going to come back and throw all the dirt that he's undoubtedly got all over them and splatter them from breakfast time to dinner time Oh and with a big smile and there'll be a whole lot of people that don't like Labour just cheering Winston on as they've been cheering Winston and Shane on for fighting the Maori Party in the media I'll tell you what I've really enjoyed since the election is watching died-in-the-wall Blinken National Party people who were always never Winston he's corrupt he's this, he's that, they've got all sorts of stuff or every reason in the sun to not vote for Winston Peters or support Winston Peters are now having to actually like what he's saying and doing in Parliament because he's on their team Yeah well I think some of them will probably realise that Winston might reflect some of their views a little bit more than National too you know I think that's something that perhaps hasn't been discussed enough from National's perspective, you know some of Winston's views on Nationhood are probably closer to what the media and National are than the very free markets a liberal approach, especially to immigration that National is taking but we're not really here to talk about National, I mean maybe we'll do that in the new year but you know the thing here with Aber that the next major tactical thing that they probably should be doing is firing up for the 2025 local body elections and getting their people running good campaigns, building their profile and getting elected, having a reason to be in the media constantly reminding people that there are good people in the Labour Party that there are some and they are electable and if they push all their candidates to run for local government the dodgy ones will get found out I mean you and I have found out quite a lot of dodgy local government candidates when we used to run New Zealand's dodgiest local government candidate award but anyway that would be the real going out to all the people that want to be Labour MPs saying you prove yourself at local government level you get yourself elected, you build your campaign team you learn how to get out there and campaign and that will help you because National have won a whole lot of seats that they weren't expecting to win and those seats will be won back by Labour but they've got to win some of the seats in a longer margin like Tokitoki with a majority of over 10,000 that they've lost and that's not going to happen without someone that is pretty competent and they can't turn up three months before the election and run a campaign with any expectation of winning and while people might go on about oh well it's the party vote that counts in my view the single best way of raising the party vote in a seat is to have a really good candidate running a good campaign and that's why local government matters you need to lift your party vote by having good people running good campaigns right across the country you can't have too many donkeys running in seats that Labour need to be picking up votes and really even a seat like Fonga Parole where National weighs its vote in its majority you've still got to have someone incompetent because a few hundred votes might be the difference between an extra seat or not in a seat and in a tight election that those few hundred votes in Fonga Parole could make the difference between a Labour and National government that's the thing I guess that's why the National party keeps standing candidates in the Maori seats although I can't actually work out why but there are a couple of hundred votes for them in it in each of those elections it's MMP in a really tight election it could be the difference between being in government and being in opposition get good people in in every seat you can and get them all running good campaigns and that will lift your party vote you probably also got to go have a bit of a quiet word to a few of the people that have just been around a bit too long and are useless to begin with and move them on I mean Phil Twyford Jesus why didn't they get rid of him, I mean that blokes just useless and Helen White I mean Helen White managed to almost lose the safest Labour seat in the country comprehensively bad and Melissa may be a competent minister and she was competent in Parliament but she's never been a vote winner and she almost wins absolutely biggest belief that a seat that has had three of the last six Labour leaders owning that seat and they've got someone that can't even really beat Melissa Lee by 10,000 votes by under a hundred I mean Helen Clark and Jacinda Radion were both Prime Ministers I'm sure they've got a third Prime Minister in Mount Elbert yeah yeah yeah might be a green Prime Minister in Mount Elbert if they keep Helen White in there she's there and it's a very good chance of that David Shearer represented Mount Elbert of course after Helen Clark and also Michael Joseph Savage he represented Auckland West of which Mount Elbert was part of so Warren Freer again another Labour leader in there so Mount Elbert's the hot house I guess for Labour leadership and Helen White just nearly lost it hmm yeah and she was never very impressive in Auckland Central either no so what does Labour need to do they need to be honest with themselves don't they about why they lost and that's a problem politicians have generally doesn't matter what party they're often never honest with themselves after a loss absolutely and the honesty needs to really start with two things the first one is admitting the voters weren't wrong and the second thing is getting the largest amount of cash possible and taking it to Talbot Mills and say you've got to do the deep-seated research we know you're capable of because you do it for Australian parties and you've got to tell us the positions that will put us in play again we want to be in play and we've got to do this professionally so how much cash do you need and when can we have the results and what's it going to cost over three years so we get our strategy right otherwise it's just a random group or not a random group a group of essentially failed politicians standing around arguing about opinions rather than having any hard data just on Talbot Mills last week they released a poll that showed that prescription fees being free was very very popular even when national party voters and I want to thought releasing that poll before the election might have been more beneficial than after the election when we all knew that national was going to change that that was a stated policy they refused to buckle despite media pressure despite political pressure it makes me think that the Labour Party aren't actually directing Talbot Mills to go looking at sensible things they're actually telling them to go and look after things that the battle was lost at the election and again fighting those things that those virtue signaling things that they're fighting are not things that I just care about and fighting the last war you go to Talbot Mills and say come on guys you're the experts you tell us what you recommend that we pay you to do not us telling you what to do because that won't work when we talk to Farrah it's always well Farrah you tell us where we're wrong we think this Farrah you get your polls to tell us that we're right because we're just not his polls are right we're not unless we actually get our opinions congruent with what his polls are that's the bit that I think that Labour probably lack the professionalism to get Talbot Mills to do the real work that's required they probably are sitting there thinking oh we need to ask this question because if we ask it that way we'll get an answer we don't like what you actually need to be doing as a pragmatic politician and political leader is to actually find out exactly what it is that the voters don't like about you guys and it's unpalatable to hear the criticism but it's vitally important if you want to change and to change that perception that people have of you very basic politics just very basic we've got to go and get your polling company to give you the answers you don't go and tell them what the answers are or what the questions are I spent quite a lot of time arguing with people that wanted rid of the last government and we're commissioning polling that's oh well you want the question asked this one as well why do you want to just have your beliefs reinforced or do you want to know what the voters think I mean that's the thing and whenever I've wanted to do polls I've always said to David Farrell you write the question right because he's a professional pollster he's going to write a question that is going to get us to the truth of the matter rather than as you say reinforce your own particular view or agenda or whatever it is you're pushing it just reminds me to ask you when you're getting Matt King back on I mean he didn't agree with the polls but you know the polls tend out to be they may not have been perfect but they showed he had no chance and he had no chance election night proved it well the poll that reality check radio ran from Northland showed that he'd come forth and that's where he came yeah and you know he objected the way the question was asked and so he had another poll and it basically took him up a little bit but it didn't change the result and it's just a classic example of oh well I don't like the question rather than well what does the poll are actually saying my chances are well there were four polls in Northland and they all showed the same thing and yet he went out to all his supporters saying no I'm seeing people on the street that are saying to me go Matt go well you know Morris Williamson's got great anecdotal evidence of that where he gets these new candidates who say I'm going great guns everyone says they're voting for me says of course they are New Zealanders applied they'll lie to you because they don't want your feelings and that's where polling allows you to find out what the truth is without getting your feelings hurt yeah yeah yeah and you know if you're professional feelings aren't going to be hurt you're going to take it as a data point and you're going to try modify something to change it not complain about the number itself just to sum up then what Labour needs to do is acknowledge that they lost that the voters got it right for the voters and then they need to embark on a strategy that basically involves them shutting up for the next at least six months doing huge amounts of research and then coming back with policies and outlines and a direction of travel that will give them a pathway to getting that majority yeah and I think the thing that inevitably the pathway will include is going to be working with the Maori Party and the Greens so work out whether you want to spend your time fighting for those parties for voters or you want to try and take votes off the three parties in government which gives you a better chance of winning than if you go after the centre left and try and increase your vote that way it won't get you any closer to being in government if all you do is take votes from the Maori Party and the Greens you've got to take them off the three parties in government it's the same situation that National found itself in they're watching a resurgent ACT Party taking their votes because ACT was never going to take them off the Labour Party and National was sitting there trying to work out how to shore up their support for the Maori Party who were sitting there cannibalising votes off people who were dissatisfied with National Labour and ACT and then they had these grand assumptions that it was just going to be a National and ACT Government and they'd have a two party coalition that was an election night I was sitting there watching Winston laughing at the results coming in saying it's not over yet it's not over yet we've got to wait until the fat lady sings and I said I don't think Megan Woods has got her vocal chords tuned up just quite yet Winston he said I'm not talking he said I'm not talking about here I'm talking about the we've got to wait until the final count comes and then we'll see where we're at and he was dead right absolutely dead right he certainly was he's a cutting old fox and I tell you what I'm enjoying watching him in the house and the Labour Party needs to work out a strategy on how to rebuild those bridges to New Zealand first otherwise I think they're going to find life very very difficult being paddled up to the Greens in the Maori Party undoubtedly there's not 51% of the population that appears likely to vote for those three parties so they've got to keep options open do you want to be in government or not well I mean the thing here for them is the Greens are deluded they think that they've had their best ever result because of their grand policies and they're fabulous not because Labour was shit and the Maori Party is exactly the same they think they had a grand electorate strategy and they're going to hold these seats forever I mean you know they've said that to me privately that they're going to hold them forever now and again it hasn't occurred to them that they won because the Labour candidates were shit and so if the Labour Party corrects that has decent candidates more palatable policies then I see in the next election that the Greens and the Maori Party are going to lose support the Labour Party is going to grow support but there's still not enough to get to 61 amongst them at the current policy settings all you're doing is cutting a pie a different way that's all it's the same pie but it's just being cut slightly differently yeah absolutely well Sir Iman thank you once again for coming on and sharing your knowledge and dark arts and making a valley in plotting one of me is really all that dark arts it's like get a truckload of money and give it to Talbot Mills and then work out how you're going to get to 61 votes yeah but I think it might be a little bit more complex for the people in the Labour Party to understand that and you know I think for the viewers they need to know that neither of us are getting a stock in from Talbot Mills we just believe that polling matters yeah I mean it's not our preferred polling company it's not our preferred polling company if I couldn't get David Farrow to do something I'd ring Talbot Mills second you know but they're competent guys and the guys who run that know what they're doing and they talk sensible game and the Labour Party really does need to listen to them but you know the Labour Party will never listen to you and I but perhaps they should well perhaps they should listen to Talbot Mills at least yeah that would be that would be a good start yeah definitely anyway I'd better let you get back to your fishing commitments yep right I think so time out from your serious fishing commitments and puppy raising yeah yeah the weather was a bit dodgy today I've been doing a bit of work but I'll be heading out shortly yep there's never a day that you don't yep alright thank you polling polling polling that's Simon's prescription for Labour but will they follow that advice time will tell don't forget to send comments on Simon's interview to inbox at realitycheck.radio or text to 2057 thank you for tuning into RCR reality check radio if you like what you're listening to just like what you're listening to either way we want to hear from you you can 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 to connect with us today