 It's Friday morning and here we are for number two. I should be careful about saying that could mean something else. Let me rephrase that. The second in our series of political panels, ongoing program on Friday morning here at Reality Check Radio. Last week, Cam Slater, Olivia Pearson and Chris Trotter. This week, Cam Slater is back. Also, Marie Buske and added to our panel this morning, Marty Gibson, freelance journalist and cohost of Media Matters on RCR. Welcome everybody. Good morning. Okay. Big long list of stuff to get through. And I guess, well, first of all, where's Chris? Okay, where's Chris? Well, you know, connectivity. Connectivity is the issue. The phone. Maybe he needs to invest in a new phone. Maybe he should get an internet connection. It's so consuming like the rest of us. Even dial up. Wow. Is that still a thing? And I don't think it is a thing. All right, we've got to start with the budget, right? Yeah, I think we do have to start with the budget. But what about the ad that TVNZ was running? Yeah. I mean, that was incredible. I hope you can cure it up and play it for the listeners. I've got it right here. Should we play it and then talk about it and feel free to comment about it over the top, all right? Over the top of the ad. So here we go. I'm going to push the play button. Here we go. Welcome to Restaurant Altairi. The unique menu designed by Chef Grant Robertson is unveiled once a year, known as the budget. Customs. They've got a weaker man to read it. And to the tell. Say that again. Because they've got a weaker man to read it. And borrowing to cook up the food. In 2022, our chef served up a well-being menu based on the review. Not the well-being menu again. It came as a surprise. Customers welcomed the extra health seasoning. And the climate shout out was expected. The climate watch shout out is a short-term sweat. Shout out, I think. Shout out. Oh, shout out. He didn't say that. And it didn't really satisfy their cost of living cravings. Chef Grant gets his feedback from Treasury. Oh, that's a feedback from Treasury. He says his books are strong compared to some of the other restaurants around the world. So... You mean countries? Economies? Early signs point to... I hate how they compare us to the rest of the world. We live here in New Zealand. Back to the basics. Yeah, but we've got to understand it. You see, you've got to... Otherwise, we wouldn't understand. Rising inflation. What they're really saying is, like, shit, but it's shit over there. It's even higher. It's here, there, there. We've also heard the kitchen is cooking up a special dish based on cyclone recovery cuisine. Oh, a special dish. For his sake, the chef gets his portions right. I can't believe they had the gall to use a metaphor of hospitality in restaurants when they have viscerated hospitality in the last three years. Usually they use rugby analogies, don't they, so we can all understand. What's even funnier is the last line of that ad where they're saying that the chef gets the proportions right. The portions right. This is Grant Roberts, who we're talking about. He's a combination of Billy Bunter and the Fat Controller. It's hilarious to even meet in portion control with them. He looks like he's nicked all the pies. Well, if you're measuring our economy on him, people will say, hey, you're doing well. Especially if their measure is good. But here's the thing. It sounds like it's made by a five-year-old, four or five-year-olds. It insults your intelligence. TVNZ, right? Yeah, isn't this the continued infantilization of society from the top down? We had Jacinda Ardern treating us all like children during the pandemic. The media just carried on with it, with all their little cartoons and that crazy woman with the pink hair talking down to us. Yeah, this is just, they had the reserve of the general public and they treat us like children. We should all just act like naughty children, stamp our feet and throw wobblies and get rid of them. Did you read the Herald, when was it? The lead story about the budget said, Hipkins would, however, confirm that he would inherit former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern's tradition of giving Robertson a new tie on Budget Day. And then went on to detail, also had a tradition of eating cheese rolls together on Budget Morning, a play on the National Party tradition of a Budget Day pie. The Herald has confirmed this tradition will be adjusted today. Robertson's office will supply the cheese rolls while Hipkins will bring his trademark sausage rolls. And you've got to read right down to the end of that to see is he satisfied with the outcomes, was from Seymour, is he satisfied, or maybe was Luxon, with the outcomes taxpayers are getting from the increase in government spending from 76 billion in 2017 to 129 billion in the current financial year. So that's kind of at the end of the story after the cheese rolls and pies. What's going on here with that kind of reporting and writing? Surely it's a joke that they have a laugh. We should start seeing tags on to the adverts and to the articles saying that this was a party political broadcast on behalf of the Labour Party, paid for by the Herald and TVNZ. It's that bad. There would be absolute squawking if they'd done something like that when there's a national government. But because it's Labour, it's all fig up, cop. Let's all talk to people like children and let's promote their agenda rather than actually telling us the facts. And the facts of the budget are dreadful, but we're not going to see that in the mainstream media. So I guess it's up to us. Yes, but are the media missing the point because they've kind of lost the plot and can't get their heads around this sort of stuff anymore? Or is it a strategy to report in a particular way? Like most New Zealand school kids, journalists are functionally enumerate. I used to do a roaring trade when I worked in a newsroom doing percentages for them and I wrote out a cheat sheet so they could do it and never quite got it. And the 20-something girls, you know, it was during COVID, all the stories were about hairdressers and cafes. That's a point. But they probably high-fived themselves in the office after making that. That is a great job. Yeah, but if you ever want to look at that, how they high-fived themselves, you just have to look at the media awards that they have each year where they all paint each other on the back and talk about how fantastic their storytelling has been. And they actually use those words and it's laughable. I mean, they are telling stories, but you know, when I was a kid, my grandfather used to say, you're telling stories again when he actually meant you're telling lies. Yeah, exactly. There's a word for that. It's called gas lighting. This is the gas lighting budget. I mean, we all know everything. We all know that it's rubbish. We all know what out there is rubbish. We know the inflation is real. They serve this up. I mean, surely only the most devoted would... Well, I mean, the reality of the economy can be measured very quickly by talking to car dealers and asking them how many cars they're selling. The answer is none. I was talking to... Or is that right? I thought they were doing well. No, they're not. And I was talking last night to a businesswoman who is in the technology industry. And she was saying that retail sales are 20% down on last year. 20%. That's a huge contraction. People are looking at the budget. They're looking at the election. They're looking at this government. They're saying, you know what? I'm going to keep the money in my own pocket because I just don't know what's coming. Well, I always measure it by the price of eggs. And I saw a dozen for $15. And it was just a regular brand. And that was $3 more than about three weeks ago. But what gets me as you go to the supermarket, there are no eggs. You know, there's still shortages of eggs. Do we live in a first-world country or a third-world country? Anyone else going to comment on eggs? I often say, you know, I was in Venezuela in 2004 and it was a nice country. Very, very well-stocked supermarkets. And it was only a few years later that children are starving to death and the government's solution is to ban doctors from putting starvation as a cause of death. Oh, no. You see, they did socialism wrong. And New Zealand's going to do better than Venezuela. Because everybody who's failed at socialism before, they did it wrong. So we've learned from that and we're going to do it right. But this budget is appalling, really. You know, the government signaled huge subsidies for public transport so that school kids can apparently choose to go on a bus rather than mummy's Range Rover. You know, my experience of public transport is everybody thinks it's a great idea to use farther people. They never want to use it themselves. So we're just going to wait millions and millions of dollars subsidizing private bus companies again. The public transport one, we've just moved one of our sons from the school that he was in because he relied on public transport to get to school. That public transport is still not running post-cyclone months later. Education department will not put on a bus. The regional council are claiming that to change the bus route because of the bridge that's blowing out that prevents that bus route from running. It's going to cost $100,000. And then they're turning around and saying in this budget, oh, but that's okay. We'll get the kids there for free or for half price. It's, I mean, they took quite derelict care again. They're dreaming. It's not going to happen. Tell them they're dreaming. They used to have a whole fleet of buses, the education department, up and down the country. Back in the day. And now we've got ship service. So I knew your own user bus. Is that an e-wee company that doesn't pay tax? Probably. And also the buses are unreliable. There's not enough drivers and they keep dropping trips out of schedule. So you can't even be confident you're going to catch one in some places. So, you know, how about fixing that first? Well, they can't even fix the basics. You know, look at the budget and the initiatives they've got around home heating and ventilation and stuff like that. They're just going to pour more millions of dollars into subsidies. But the landlords who are putting all of these things into their residences are simply going to pass on the cost. So the increase in the subsidies is now actually going to increase rents on the people who can least afford it. And this is the sort of thing that this government is doing. You know, they've just jacked up the tax rate on trusts. Well, most of those trusts are holding those investment properties that they've now got increased costs to having to put heat pumps and insulation and all of that sort of stuff in, which is all admirable, but it gets passed on. Also, will the tax hike get passed on and increased rents? These falls don't even understand basic economics. And then if you then look at the big ticket items, the billions and billions of dollars that they're tracking at additional housing and infrastructure, do they think we're stupid and we've forgotten what key we build in light rail to the Auckland Airport and the Second Harbour Crossing? We're all promised of billions of dollars and never eventuated. Do they think that we've got sort of post COVID brain fog or something and we've forgotten that they can't deliver anything that they've ever promised? They couldn't build a house in a room full of Lego and they couldn't manage any of the finances that they've had. Well, according to this, they're going to be building a whole bunch more houses for Māori, so. Well, they couldn't build them before when they promised us 100,000. We're six years down the track. There should be 60,000 new homes. Well, that's okay. They reckon it's only going to be 400 relocatable cabins. So that's plug and play really, isn't it? Yeah, but there's 34 million for Tomatitini, the country's largest kapa haka competition over two years. 34 million. That'd buy a lot of houses, wouldn't it? How come so much? It'll buy a lot of houses. It'll buy a lot of grommets. It'll buy a lot of first specialist assessments. It'll buy lots of things. Hap replacements. Yeah, if I was going to take money from anywhere, I probably wouldn't take it from Tomatitini. I think there are some valid criticisms about funding for a kapa haka competition versus Tomatitini. And it's probably, of all the expenditure, probably the least objectionable. There was an increase in funding to whātuaura as well. I didn't quite catch how much it was, but I did catch Grant Robertson and say, it's for the first thousand days after birth. Now, I did a project once for an iwi health organisation about fetal spectrum disorder. And I thought, well, they really should do it before birth. And then I looked at to whātuaura's website, and it is actually, it says, website says the clock starts at conception. So I guess Grant Robertson was playing to the crowd who wants to see babies as collections of cells and foreign bodies before they pass through the magic vagina that makes them human. But I think also too that funding was only for Māori babies. Yeah, yeah. So let's call it for what it is, right? This is race-based funding designed to calm down the very fractious labour Māori caucus that are terribly upset with Chris Hipkins because he acts the whole of their pet projects and basically told them when they got a bit uppity in the caucus room, they could get stuff, which led to mechawhaitiri bailing out to the Māori party. So what this is is a sock to the labour Māori caucus to buy off their silence so they can get through to the election, hopefully win it, and then bring back their divisive racist policies to govern the country with this heroic assumption about how the treaty was signed back in 1840. So that'll be enough to stop any more jumping, will it? That sort of those, you know. Well, I always say turkeys never vote for an early Christmas and jumping into another party that has a history of only having two or three MPs. Yeah, it's probably not a wise choice. Yeah. What about the extension of child care subsidies down to two-year-olds? That doesn't bring families together, does it? Parking two-year-olds in child care centres? No, they help strong plunket funders. House cynical. The interesting thing with that is there was also a piece about child care centres who a number of them are under financial distress going in. A few of the major players are signalling they could go to the walls. So it's very interesting that they've announced this budgeting increase for them. My question is, though, is that the assumption is there are the two-year-olds to actually go into care. From what I understand, the number of kids coming through to and sub are greatly reduced in what they have been in previous years. That's interesting. That's interesting. Yeah, we've been having a dwindling birthrate here in this country, even pre-COVID, and the modelling that a lot of these child care centres base themselves on was on a certain level of population growth. And once you shut the doors and didn't bring an immigration, I don't know whether they're going to see the uptick on this. I think a lot of parents are going to still keep these kids at home. Do you think they know that already? Well, when I saw $1.2 billion, I thought they were putting that in to make that look pretty jolly good. But in reality, they know that it's going to be a nice to sort of have, but it's not going to cost the money we need it. Well, the birthrate is going to go even lower with all the vaccinations, too. Well, apparently it is already lower, I'm hearing. Yeah. Not only here, but around the place. So we know why that is perhaps. What about the gaming industry? They've done pretty well. Yeah, more corporate welfare. We've got all these bloodshed companies out there that are getting subsidies and grants and special privileges. We've got the movie industry. To be fair, that spends a lot of money locally with hiring expertise and that. But the gaming industry, come on. This is an international market. Do we really need to keep them here? Don't half of the people who are working in these gaming companies all work from home anyway. So why are we funding them all of this money? And if such geniuses, they're going to make it anyway? Well, that's my argument for all of these subsidies. So if it was a good idea, the market would have supplied solutions for it without the need for subsidies. And I've always stated that if a business needs a subsidy to operate, then it's not really a business. Yeah, I used to get a lot of R&D money and he said, oh, I would spend it anyway. But if they're going to give it to me, I'll take it. Yeah, that's the bludgeon mentality that's been fostered by this government. The staff is reporting that the phrase cost pressures featured 52 times in the list of new spending compared with 26 times last budget. Cost pressures. Well, the cost pressures are largely due to inflation and that's largely due to profligate spending by Grant Robertson. The cost pressures could be eased without, by him actually not spending like a drunken sailor. Well, the $6 million question is, is Grant the chicken or the egg? Well, I think he's the egg. Or the sausage roll. The good news is, is he at least knows what a woman is because it says here, new gender budgeting approach has delivered new investments for women. The government will spend $20 million on KiwiSaver contributions to match and employment contribution paid to people while they're on paid parental leave. So I just wanted to know, did they clarify whether that was biological or identified as? It didn't seem to. What about all the men that are giving babies and having time off? Good question. One thing that isn't mentioned is house prices because that's the big one that's hurting people. They're not offering to subsidize mortgages. No, of course not. They never do. It's like the capital gains takes they really desperately want. They only ever look at the capital gain. They never look at when the economy turns south and the capital losses. They never want to talk about refunds for capital losses, do they? What about the tax on trusts? Well, again, this is going to be passed on to renters because a lot of those trusts hold property. For mum and dad investors, they've got a couple of rentals to supplement their pension. Now they've got an increased tax bill because of the trust. Well, they're just going to pass it on. This is not rocket science stuff. You could summarize a lot of that stuff with we seize the precious and we want it. Yeah, we already know Grant like stepping into the cookie tin. So look at the billions that they spent in the COVID fund on shooting wallabies and stupid stuff like that, painting marae and just a whole lot of rubbish that they've perpetrated in the name of COVID funding. And in terms of inflationary spending, $2.3 billion on pay increases in the public sector. So is that before we pay the teachers out for striking or is this all those extra journalists that are now working in the public sector? Where is that all going? The bottomless that's called government expenditure. We're doing the political panel. Cameron Slater, Marie Buskie and Marty Gibson with us. And we're talking about the budget at the moment. I was just thinking that whole infrastructure resilience spend, that's just more money for consultants really is what that means. Well, more money for consultants, but they're not actually going to build anything. And the record of building things is poor to say the least. So do we really believe that they're actually going to deliver on these things? I just don't think they will deliver to the consultants. Of course, make consultants wealthy clause in the budget. In the pre announcement for the cyclone funding as part of the budget, they discussed about bringing that infrastructure spending to take roading and rail and other infrastructure affected back to the levels that was pre cyclone. Well, there is a rail link that got blown out in a previous cyclone that's still not re-established between Napier and Gisborne. The roading infrastructure between Napier, Hawkes Bay, and Central Plateau was a dog's breakfast to begin with anyway without even starting with the potholes that would sink a ship between here in the East Coast. So what are they saying that they're going to take that infrastructure back to the poor state that it was in before it even got destroyed? I mean, Jesus wept. All right. Anything more to say about the budget? I'm bored with it now. Yeah, I was bored with it before it began actually, but okay. All right. Touching on Hawkes Bay. What's this about Stuart Nash and his texts? Well, dear old Stuart Nash and his loose lip sink ships. He sunk his own ship by, you know, injudicious texts and the latest round of text messages have revealed that when Christopher Hickton said it was nonsense that the National Party was, you know, scaremongering about increased crime in the weight of the cyclone, turns out that it was actually true and that his own police minister, Stuart Nash, had texted them about it and the sycophantic police commissioner, replied to him, even though Nash said I'm doing this in my capacity as a local MP, not as the policeman, replied to him, minister, I'll give you a call shortly. So it's just a more inappropriate use of communications. It's showing Hickton's following the path that he's always followed where he's ridiculed and abused people like, you know, the journalist, the pregnant journalist and the three women who went up North. He never apologizes for telling fibs and porkies. He just carries on and hopes that we all forget it. You know what? People usually do forget it. That's the sad thing. He just gets away with it. Yeah. And also speaking of police commissioners, what's this story about the former police commissioner throwing around 500K for memes? Marie, you had a good one on that when we had a discussion earlier. Oh, about the infantile nature on the memes. Yeah, the infantile memes. The infantile means, yeah, $500,000 contract for COVID-19 memes. That went out to a, here we go. Topham Guerin. Yeah. And it's, you know, this, the thing that I found really interesting, gosh, I am so in the wrong job, I tell you, a three month contract for work that only lasted three weeks for half a million dollars. Yeah. Gosh, that's good. Hoot, if you can get it. And breakfast or all meals covered and a nice hotel to stay in. Tell you what? One of them was follow the rules. If we don't, people will die. You know, it's just childish. I might read a few out in a moment. I'll read a few out in a moment to carry on. Well, these guys have got a contract to do the National Party's election social media. And I can't wait. Given the standard of these memes, which, which you'll read out shortly, I'm just imagining what they're going to say about Christopher Luxemey. Maybe it's going to have a picture of him and it'll say Chris Luxemey, just like the other Chris, but less shit. Or, or maybe Chris Luxemey sure is an unlikable spineless weasel, but let's face it, what choice do you really have? Well, I listened to, with interest to you, saying just that at the last political discussion, Cam, were you weren't convinced that Erica Stanford, who I like to look of, or Nicola Willis would be much better? Well, Nicola, Nicola Willis is a scold. She's got a dreadful diction. The way she speaks is like she's talking down to four children who have been terribly naughty. And I really fail to have any sort of confidence in her because as the finance spokesman for the National Party, she hasn't even produced a alternative budget. You know, this is, this is the sort of stuff that even the ACT Party can do, but Nicola Willis hasn't even managed to produce an alternative budget. And Erica Stanford, let's just say I know a little bit more about that than most people see on the surface, but I can't say what the details are of that just yet. You're such a tease. Do you want to hear some of these memes? Okay, no wonder everyone had fear, you know, were, were riven with fear, not me, not probably any of us here, but many New Zealanders. Be kind, stay home, save lives. And it's a kiwi in a heart. Okay. Go home, stay home, you played it as a kid, play it now, save lives. When I see you not staying at home and it's this like sort of emoji figure with a very grumpy look, going outside your bubble can kill. Bullshit. No, my favorite things is banned this Easter weekend traveling to the batch, driving to the beach, 5G tower burning. These people, why didn't they run a meme that said snitches get stitches? Because that's what I learned at school. But no, instead, we're fostering the snitch culture that are doing encouraged, you know, it's just ridiculous. I'm just sick of these people. And they did one, they did one with Hobbiton stay home, save lives with a picture of Hobbiton. And then they realized it's stuff at Hobbiton and lost their jobs. So they pulled that one. That's ridiculous. But now, good money, all part of them, you know, capitalists and all that, getting 500 grand for three weeks work. But who's this? Who's Mike Bush just sort of rocking up to these guys? It seems that they met them at some sort of function and suddenly they're in. How does that work? But remember, this is Mike Bush who warned the Prime Minister that the lockdown, first lockdown was illegal and they did it anyway. And then he stood there on television saying, if you don't stay at your home, you'll come and stay at ours. You know, threatening everybody when he did it. It's like a meme in itself. That one. Yeah. They wonder why people don't trust the police anymore. Well, then he gets to sort out the whole Auckland flood response as well. So it's just a roundabout, isn't it? It's mediocrity rewarded with more mediocrity. All right. Shall we get on to the Durham report? Marie, when you talked to Naomi Wolfe, did you touch on that at all? No. We stayed away. She was quite keen to stay away from anything political, but she is seeing that things need to change at a grassroots level. So she's got very little trust with anything now, particularly in the Democratic Party. She was quite scathing about, well, she literally called them a pack of criminals, but she's also quite concerned that RFK Junior is looking at running as a Democrat. She really firmly believes he should be running for independent. I wanted about that too. Yeah. Yeah. Well, there's never been an independent president in the United States. So RFK Junior would be unwise to do that politically. But the problem we've got is the Democratic Party are actually a glower of almost as bad as the mafia in the way that they behave. And the Durham report actually outlines the falsity of the steel dossier, how that was fed to the FBI, who in their communications with each other was saying, well, this is a bit thin. There's nothing that can be verified. This is, you know, how are we going to run with this? And then they did it anyway. And then they leaked key parts of the steel dossier to the media, who pounced on it was, you know, gay abandoned, because they were going to get Trump. And it was all false. And so, you know, Hillary Clinton famously in that election campaign called Donald Trump supporters deplorables. But the only deplorable actions that went on in that election campaign of 2016 were the deplorable actions of the Democrat Party and Hillary Clinton's campaign that tried to subvert the Democratic will of the people through disinformation and false narratives. Well, it's being called an attempted coup d'état. Well, absolutely. You know, and the FBI and the CIA were involved in it. And then when you look at four years later, and the Hunter Biden laptop story, which was suppressed by big tech, and you add in that all of the same people who were involved in running Operation Crossfire Hurricane, which was the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax, the same people who made decisions on that, James Brennan, Coma, all of those people, they then signed the letter to say that the Biden laptop story was Russian disinformation. And it was a flat out laugh. So they were again four years later meddling in democracy when they should have actually been upholding the law. And that dossier, which I think was put together by someone called Steele, who was ex-MI6, so plenty of connections there, that was put in front of their FISA court, which authorized then them to wiretap, as Trump famously said, Trump and Trump Tower. Well, that's where they had that little weasel that I think Trump called them a pencil neck on that FISA court. Just an appalling person. He's trying to stand as senator for California in the next election. Just a nasty, spiteful little man. And that he's continuing the narrative that Trump was a Russian agent, despite the Durham report proving that it was a fantasy concocted by the Clinton campaign. It's just appalling. And that guy, Peter Stroke, remember him, the FBI guy with the weird eyes, or the other guy had weird eyes too, the one you're talking about. The guy was having an affair with another investigator and texting each other saying, we have to get Trump. That's right. It's all there. It's all there, but they will get a free pass. Yeah. I mean, what does it say about the state of the United States? I think Olivia made a comment about that the state of that Republic. She said she thought it wasn't a functioning Republic anymore. Well, you know, we're actually quite close to that in New Zealand because even under MMP, which is theoretically supposed to allow smaller parties to come in and be involved. The reality is, is that we've had no new parties into Parliament since 1996, when the ACT Party did. And we've seen a growth in the size of the two major parties, Labor and National, into a similar sort of dynamic with the Democrats and Republicans, where we've got this polarization of politics with the nastiness that goes with that. And the people who are suffering are the poor, unsuspecting voters who think that they're empowered by MMP, but in actual fact, all they've done is empower the parties. So we're really close to this. We're always about five or six years behind what happens in the United States. So the future does not look rosy. I think it was Adam Schiff you were thinking of. That's the one. The guy with the googly eyes. Yeah, and the pencil neck. Yeah. Trump used to call him pencil neck. And here he is, their worst nightmare. They're going to try and stop him this time, surely. That's not all these court cases. They're using lawfare to try and stop him. But they're stupid. All it's doing is showing people how partisan they are, how nasty they are, how awful they are. And it's just going to backfire on them. It just really is going to backfire on them. And they're going to get cleaned out at the next election. I want to ask you about two developments here. Number one is the NZ Freedoms umbrella group of parties coming together. That was announced last weekend. And we had Matt King Democracy on NZ on the program this week. A lot of people were interested in that. Have these people got any chance at all? I guess you're asking me that. I'm throwing it around, but yeah, feel free. There's two questions that people need to ask the leaders of these organizations. Matt King in the Democracy NZ situation and Brian Tammacky. The first question they need to answer and answer credibly is how are you going to get 150,000 votes? He said he's going to win in Northland. That's how he's going to do it. That's the second question. How are you going to win an electorate seat? But all of these people don't have any solutions. They don't have any answers. And their answers actually reflect to their addiction to hope. They've got all this hope and that it's going to work out. And they hope people are going to do this. And they hope that they can cut a deal with a major party. And if your election strategy is based on hope and hope in them, then you don't have a strategy. And it's very, very difficult. And for Brian Tammacky and this umbrella party or whatever they're calling it, you just have to look at past performance to give us a predictor of future performance. And Brian Tammacky can only muster about one in 20 votes from his own congregationalists. So his own people don't even vote for him when he steps up or his wife when she steps up. They've done it twice before. And this is a third time. And if he only gets one in 20 voters out of his own congregation, well, it says everything that you need to know about the potential of that party. Any of the others got Marty and Marie? Yeah. My thought about the party thing is, you know, you can put new parties into the old party system as it is. And there's no real good reason to vote for one rather than the other. But I read some data from the publicservice.gov.nz the other day, which the public sector had around 448,200 employees in 2022. And of the 395,000 employees in the central government sector, 88% were in central government. The other 53,212% were employed in local government. If you had a political party that empowered each region to move towards a Swiss canton system and switch those figures, so central government got 12% of total public spend and the region's got the rest, that'd be a difference you could maybe get behind and then you could get strategy for each region and you might get people a little bit more excited. But Marty, with respect, that's hopey him. Because everyone looks at Switzerland and they go, oh, they use citizens in the shared referendum. They use the canton system. Yeah, they've got 400 years of experience with it. They've got an education system that teaches civics. They're a high net worth country that values education and has smart people there. There's a reason why that small society surrounded by a whole bunch of belligerent nations has managed to stick around and do things. So is New Zealand capable of that? No way. I'd agree with that. So people say to me, right, they say, oh, we should have binding citizens in the shared a referendum. I said, I've got one word for you that will stop that. And then they say, what? And I say, the pandemic. Because we saw 92% of people do what they were told. There was no thinking. There was no one standing up for a small group of us that was standing up. And everyone else just went along with it. And you want those people to have a say on policy? Come on. Yeah. Without focusing on the referendum aspect of it, if you make a plan for a region, rather than a nation, and then you can have some competition between regions to see who's got the better system, it's not as big a jump as focusing on a poorly educated public making decisions. Because each region has its leaders. Sure. But what does it look like? I mean, what that looks like for in the cargo is 30 years of an idiot being the mayor. So each region, it has the potential for a good idea and please start scratching the surface because local government attracts people who can't make it in national government. And mostly they're no hopers or jobsless. And I just can't see it working. Maybe it's just I'm too cynical about politicians in general, maybe. Can you get enough people joining the National Party to reorientate them away from these corporate drones? Yeah. The days of mass membership of political parties are long gone. When Muldoon was the leader of the National Party, I think they had 70,000 members or might have been more than that. I would suggest that the National Party has barely got 12,000 members. So you need to take it over? Well, I've always said that. I did a speech once to the Libertarians and I said to them, trouble with you guys is you're always on the outside of the tent pissing in. And you'd be better off to go and infiltrate other political parties and be inside the tent pissing out. But they were purists. And so they were never going to do that because there was never a party that was as pure as what they thought they were. And of course, the Libertarians disappeared. They don't exist anymore. There's barely any Libertarians in the ACT Party. David Seymour was as far from a Libertarian as Jacinda Ardern was. So there's a lot of really good ideas that are out there. But the reality is that there aren't enough people who like those good ideas to break that 5% threshold. So maybe the answer is to lower the threshold in NNP. But then you'll end up with a situation like Israel or Italy. And do we really want that? We're sitting here in Napier looking at what's going on for this next election in Northland, listening to Matt. I mean, he is, you know, betting the farm on winning that Northland electorate. Well, he's just not going to. No, he's not going to. And I mean, you know, with all the good intention in the world. I mean, the only thing I can see happening is if all of the freedom is did a Hecoite in Northland and got themselves enrolled on the electorate up there to get him over line. What I worry about is that in Northland, we're going to see Napier 2014 all over again. And in 2014, we had a strong candidate running for the Conservative Party, Garth McVicar. He was the head of the sensible sentencing trust. And he split that vote. That vote was something like 15 and a half thousand votes between the National candidate and McVicar. I think Walford, Guy Walford was running. And that's how we ended up with Stuart Nash with only barely seven thousand votes. So, you know, it's I can just see with Shane heading off against Matt King, it's going to hand that seat to Willa Jean Prime on a platter. And surely, and when I thought your question, Paul was, I mean, honestly, your question when you asked Winston, him about Winston, did he like Winston? Not necessarily what he worked with him. The pause on that, you could drive a freight train. Yeah, he didn't know where to run on that. And it's sad because ultimately, if he had, if he could actually park his own sort of confidence for a second and really, truly want to believe that he's wanting to do something for freedom, he would be sitting down having a coffee with Winston and saying, OK, Winston, I will rally all my people here in Northland behind Shane. You make sure on number three on that list and I can bring my democracy New Zealand crew in. I think you're on to something there, Marie. You're on to something there. I was thinking similar. It just won't work. It just won't work because like what Winston is would rightly say, and any party would say is hang on a second, you used to be in the National Party and then you left that and then when you lost your seat and then you've created this party and now you're saying you want to be number three on our list. But I've got this guy here who's been a member of New Zealand First for 20 years and you're wanting him to sit behind you on the seat. What's more important though? What's more important than nation or someone you know, taking it. But that's the problem with Sue Gray and Matt Canyon and all of these people is they they all think that they've got the answer and they're just not listening. And the reality is if we need to, if we're going to change this government, you're not going to get any new parties elected into parliament. So forget that. So the only way that you can, you know, you can change this government is to put your electorate vote with, say, the National Party for the local MP there and then give you a party vote to either act or New Zealand First, because that's the only way they're going to change the government. And if you don't like that, you know, no party is perfect. Democracy New Zealand is not perfect. They're just not perfect. So you have to look at who is the the one that gives you the most bang for your buck. So if you're a freedom voter, the reality is that New Zealand First is the only party that's standing in this election with a credible chance of getting into parliament. That wasn't part of the orchestrated, you know, banning of speaking to the freedom protesters. So you can't give you vote to act because they didn't stand up for us. You can't give you vote to the National Party because they did everything that Labour did. And they said they'd just be more efficient at taking away our rights. And you can't vote for Labour, the Greens or the Maori Party. So you're left with New Zealand First if you're a freedom voter. If you are a national person, you really just can't stand Luxem. Then you don't waste your vote because you can then go and put it with the ACT Party. If you're a Labour voter or a Green voter and you don't want this government anymore, then you've got lots of choices. But the reality is, there's probably two New Zealand First and the National Party. So we can change the government, but it's going to require the big parties to be the ones that swallow the dead rats, not the little parties. Wouldn't it be smart for Winston, I know Winston knows all the tricks, to have a back channel to these folks. Maybe he does, maybe he doesn't. And they probably know that it's a Snowballs chance in hell anyway, even regardless of what they say. And say, look, if it's not going to work for you, come to me, throw them all in for me and we're in. Well, what they need to do is, particularly in Northlanders, do what happened in Auckland where you had four centre-right candidates all saying that they were going to win. And somebody paid for a poll that showed that only one of them was going to win, and then that forced the others to withdraw. So maybe someone, maybe reality check radio needs to do a poll in Northland and have a look at where the stats lie. Now, I happen to know that Willow Jean Prime is actually doing a good job up there, that there's a good chance for the vote splitting that she will be returned, which is what Marie said. My gut tells me that the national candidate's coming second, that Shane Jones is coming third or third equal with the act candidate, and Matt King is a distant fourth or fifth. And the only way we're going to see that properly is if we get a poll and it shows that it's, you know, it's fallen for three of them and they just actually need to drop out and stop the vote splitting and then there'll be a change. Whoever that is, it might be the national candidate, it might be Shane Jones, it might be, you know, the act candidate. But I can tell you right now, it's not going to be Matt King. And all these people who leave big parties, who have previously been electorate MPs, all think that those people in the electorate voted for them because they're great guys. And it's not true. What the people in those electorates voted for is the donkey with the blue rosette or the donkey with the red rosette. And that's the reality of it. So taking that analogy, do you think that's going to cover for Mecca? Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean with Matt King as well, because he's still behaving like a national party retail politician, he's cheerfully saying, oh, I've got great looking girls with me. And at the same time, he's saying the government willfully forced an experimental gene therapy on you that did all this stuff. It doesn't really match his whole fellow well-met shtick. No, but these are all positive. Everyone thinks that these people are saviours. They're not. They're all the same. Even the ones who think that they're saviours aren't. They're all the same. They're venal sociopaths trying to get your vote and they'll say and do anything to do it. And that sounds cynical, but that's the reality of the situation. All right. Anything more to say about anything else, politics wise, before we wrap it for this week? Well, I just think that we have got an exciting campaign. And I think that this panel has an opportunity to be truthful to the listeners rather than what other media panels and things are doing out there, just glibly talking about issues as though they don't matter. And I think if we focus on the things that do matter, cost of living, those sorts of things, we should see a change in government, but we can be a change agent to help that. Marie? No, I think, I mean, my biggest concern is that we're going to end up with 1.3% of the electorate, i.e. the Māori Party deciding the fate for all of us. And I think people need to wake up and actually really think about what they're going to do with their voting because if we're not careful, that's where we're heading. And that really does worry me. But the Nats have ruled them out, right? But the good thing, though, about the Māori Party is that they always score really well in polls because anyone can answer a phone and say, yeah, I'll vote for those guys. Or they can hit like on Facebook or they can retweet something. But likes on Facebook and tweets and saying, yeah, I'll vote for them in a telephone poll. That's easy to do. Getting out of bed in the morning on a Saturday of election day and going and actually casting a vote. Yeah, I can't be bothered. I'd rather go fishing. Yeah, but they did so well last time because remember all that voting, so much that voting was done ahead of time. So that's the other thing. There has the Electoral Commission actually released how many early voting and polling places are going to be open because I think that that's going to have a huge influence. And when you look at what happened last time, the Māori Party, Debbie Packard would not have been there unless it was those special votes. I mean, she got in by the skin of her kaka. She did. What about this early voting? It doesn't make any sense to me. I don't believe in it. I think we should have an election day and you tip up and do your duty. You stand in line if you have to and go and vote. I just think it's important that it's done in person and I don't want to see electronic voting. I don't want to see kiosks and I don't want to see any of that. I want to see people turning up in person and voting. And Marty, anything, any last message? I thought I was the most black-pilled guy around. Cam's more black-pilled than I am. I despair of those people who will just go with the herd. And I also am amazed that we can get info like that 55% of the kids who go through 10 years of this union-approved education are functionally enumerate and illiterate. I think if that doesn't get people excited and the fact that we're still talking in terms of that being okay astonishes me. But we've got a world-class education system. The unions tell us that. Yeah, where have you been, Marty? Well, I've been employing people and I know where the unionists sit in my one to five classification of workers. I know what they're like. They're the people who look at you and think, look at all the money that Bastard's making. Why should I work hard? But we do seem to have a problem where I don't want to sound harsh, but most people are pretty dumb on this level, right? They just don't want to know whether they're dumb or if everything's all right in their little cotton wool world, then everything's all right everywhere. It's about as deep as that, isn't it? Yeah, the black-pilled realization or dawning understanding of that is it's exactly what they want. Maybe it's, I said to Marie, people always say, oh, these guys talk about labor. They're just dumb and they're doing a terrible job. And I'd say, well, maybe they're not dumb and they're doing a great job. It's just you don't know what the job is or who they're working for. True or worse, we're never spoken before. Great to finish on that. I want to thank Cameron Slater, Marie Buske and Marty Gibson for being on our panel, our political panel today. We'll do it all again next Friday. Maybe we'll have Chris back. Hopefully, we'll see. I'll get him a bottle of Chardonnay and then he can be a Chardonnay socialist with a free bottle. And just hold it out in front of him until he says, okay. Yeah. Maybe, maybe not. Anyway, thanks guys. Have a great weekend. No problem.