 RCR with Paul Brennan, Reality Check Radio. It's Friday morning on Reality Check Radio, and we're gonna try something new here at RCR. We're gonna launch a political panel, and we're gonna do it hopefully every Friday morning. And we've got three people planned for this. I won't talk about the third because we're waiting on the third. Anyway, I wanna introduce Cameron Slater. I probably don't need to introduce you, Cameron, actually. No, my infamy precedes me. Yeah, yeah. Sitting there with all those cigars, sitting in those drawers behind you and ready to go. Yeah, and all my cookies and, you know, military, and I'm a gunnaught and a conspiracy theorist and all the other things that mainstream media tells lies about. Well, maybe we shouldn't be talking to you. We didn't do our due diligence. I didn't think you guys were into that sort of thing. I thought you were into everything, hearing every type of opinion. I'm glad you've been listening to the marketing. Yeah. It does get in. And Olivia Pearson, blogger, author, is this true? Olivia, I've done hardly any research. Western values defended. Yes, I defend those quite tenaciously. Yeah, okay. Well, maybe you'll have to defend them here. I'll be happy to. Okay, I'm sure there'll be something in this list that will require you to say something about that in that direction. Okay, so we're here to talk about local, well, when I say local politics, the politics of New Zealand. And Cameron, you've kind of shaped the list of topics here. Where do you want to start? Where do we start in this? Well, I think we should start with the polls because there's been three polls out within the last week or so. We had the Roy Morgan poll, which showed Labour and National, you know, sitting at around about 30, 32%. Labour slipping a little bit there. Greens going up a bit, act sliding. But it really looks like a situation where the Maori Party or New Zealand first could hold the balance of power. And then we've got a choice then between a hard left, racially divisive type government was the Labour Party, the Green Party and the Maori Party, or a centre right with New Zealand first anointing National and Act. And then we had the Taxpayers Union Curia poll, which came out this week, which again showed Labour on the slide, but no growth in the National Party. We're not seeing any growth in National's numbers in these polls. And then of course, the latest poll came out yesterday and that is the Talbot Mills, who of course are the pollsters for the Labour Party. And that shows a similar pattern where Labour's falling, but National is still sort of mired on that percentage around the 30, 32% that isn't growing. And all of these polls in my mind are pointing to the fact that the voters or the electors are not warming to Christopher Luxem, his net favourables are negative. And it's very hard to win government when your leader has a negative net favourable. So for listeners, if they don't know what net favourables are, net favourables, they take all the people who said that they've got a favourable opinion of you and then you take away the people who have an unfavourable opinion of you. And if you're a decent politician who is worth their salt, then you'll have a positive number. And if you're in the negative, then basically you're unfavourables outweighing your favourables. And that's where Luxem is. He's in the negatives. A month ago, he was negative one. In the latest career poll, he's negative seven, so he's going down. The more people get to see Christopher Luxem, the worse it gets for him. I said we'd have a third member joining this panel and he's now coming into the program. I'd like to welcome Chris Trotter. Chris, welcome to Reality Check Radio. Thanks for joining the panel. It's a pleasure. OK, so we've just been doing a bit of early chat about the polls and I think you're aware of where they're at. And I think, Cameron, you're making the choice that... Oh, sorry, the comment that Christopher Luxem has just... He's stalled out, right? He's stalled out. He's going down in the net favourables and it's now affecting the ability of National to grow their votes. They are stagnant. And these three polls, they either went down slightly, you know, within the margin of error or didn't grow at all with no change. And you can attribute that directly to the leader because, you know, if a leader is very popular and you get the Jacinda Ardern situation where she came in at the last minute replacing Andrew Little and all of a sudden it lifted Labour up because she had very positive net favourables. You know, the last leader that had negative favourables but managed to win an election was Jim Bolder. Right. And that was because people were just heartily and Chris could probably expand on this a little bit more being involved deeply in the left wing on that particular era. But Jim Bolder's government was elected mainly because people were heartily sick of the Labour Party at that stage. Chris? Yes, well, that's true. There's no doubting that. Rodionomics had made Labour unelectable and so Jim Bolder was the man who stepped in as Prime Minister. Three years later, however, as as Cam rightly says, his party was very unpopular also. But we were on the first pass the post still in 1993. And even though National barely got a third of the votes, the rest of the country divided, it's votes among Labour, the Alliance, New Zealand first. And so National squeaked back in. But yeah, that would not be the case now. It's a very, very different system. And Luxon has just surprised me in terms of his inability to to make that connection with the electorate. I mean, on paper, he should be a reasonably popular national leader. I mean, he he takes the boxes, but he just doesn't tickle the fancy of the voters, unfortunately. Olivia, I need to ask you because they say I've heard that he or that party has to appeal to the female vote. Christopher Luxon does not appeal to females as far as I can tell. Absolutely not. There's there's some he's too spineless. I mean, I don't know when many are going to get this through their head, but women actually admire strong men in leadership. And that is a worldwide phenomenon. And Christopher Luxon has been so spineless on absolutely everything that I'm not surprised that women are just yawning every time his face is on or his voice is on. He's he's he's he's basically got no nuts. Well, the other thing with Christopher Luxon and people mock me for this is that he's bald. Now, you might think that's rather superficial, but they name me a bald leader. Anywhere in the world that succeeded. And I only say there's one exclusion to this. And that is Dwight D Eisenhower, but he won two wars before he became president. He had something else going. Yeah, not exactly a spineless man. Yeah, those that go hoonies. Well, I'm not sure that this that this for help national at all, but there is another world leader who was bald as a badger. And that was Benito Mussolini. But as I say, I'm not sure that will help national. Well, if he was a dictator and then there was Nikita, Nikita Khrushchev as well, of course, but that's true. That's true. Another dictator, but dictators can be bald, but democratically elected bald men don't exist. I remember watching an interview ages ago back in the day. Chris, you probably remember this. It was a debate between, I think, Bill Rowling and Robert Muldoon on and I think Rob actually barefaced right in front of Bill Rowling questioned the sound of his voice. He did. And the reason I mentioned that is because now, you know, you've got the voice you're born with or whatever. But it seems to me and I know a bit about voices, that Christopher Luxen lacks a powerful voice. You can't you can't deliver that soaring sort of sound, that lifting rhetoric, because it's all like this, you know? Is there something in that? Is there something in that? Do you think? Yes, I do think I think you're absolutely bang on with that again, because it doesn't it doesn't bespeak strength, does it? It's another tell on spinelessness. Well, certainly Bill Rowling, you know, was not blessed with the attributes of your political hero. I mean, he was a mild mannered sort of man. Churchill might say with a lot to be mild mannered about. But no, he had the he had the high pitched voice. And of course, Sir Robert Jones or Bob Jones, as he was then, just pilloried him all the time, calling him the mouse and even walking through a TV studio in a mouse costume when the Prime Minister was being interviewed. Those were the days. For Muldoon, I think the quip that Muldoon said was that he had heard that the Labour caucus was going to dig a pit for Bill Rowling to campaign from in an attempt to lower his voice. Well, that wasn't the worst of of Rob's insults. The one that I remember most vividly was when he said that he'd seen the shivers all over Bill Rowling's body. Looking for a spine to crawl. Great line, by the way, it is a good line. Yes, well, he was he was the dab hand at the political insult. The most famous, of course, is he said that people who immigrated to Australia lifted the intelligence quotient of both countries. So could they change him out? Like you mentioned, the Jacinda move now would be the time, wouldn't it? Well, to who? To what? I mean, people say to me, oh, Erika Stanford. Well, what's he ever done, apart from Phil Murray McCulley's boots? Nothing. You know, do we get Nicola Willis? I mean, honestly, if we think that Christopher Luxon is weak and woke, what we'd end up with was someone like her who's weak and woke and sounds like a scold. And, you know, I don't think the voters would go for that. Yeah, she's just so shrill. Yeah, well, I mean, this explains acts success because National really has, you know, run through its face cards, it seems to me. And it's not got a lot left to play with. And so if you're on the right, then, you know, you have got this other party, which seemingly alone of all the parties in parliament now has maintained a Prussian like discipline over the past, you know, three years or more and hasn't really put a put a foot wrong. So we don't have a right. The problem is that you're only eating, you know, your own vote, in a sense, if you look at the centre right in the same way that people think of Labour and Green as the centre left. Yeah, acts can go up, but almost always at the expense of the National Party and vice versa. Yeah, they don't grow the pie, but Olivia made a point there that we don't have a right in New Zealand because National's not a right wing party. We don't have anything like a centre right and that certainly isn't coming from act. Active act did like all the way through just, you know, well, through especially the February protest. I mean, Seymour was just in this other lap dog and it made really clear we do not have a right wing in New Zealand. But I mean, I've known that for a long time. It just sort of came out around the time of that protest. We really didn't have any opposition. And what centre right are you talking about, Chris? Do you really mean act? Well, it all depends where you stand, Olivia. That's the only thing we know is national and act, you know, fill the description of the centre right quite adequately. Oh, dear. Oh, dear. But that's because you're so far left. That's I was going to say, I'm going to have to use the term Mr. Trottersky there. Mr. Trottersky. Oh, no, no, don't worry about the ER. My old mates on the left just used to call me Trotsky. That's nothing they can do. No, no, no, no beating about the so split pushes there. So there's nothing, no move that can be pulled to get them out of this. I don't think there is. Well, I mean, I think that I think the obvious move is to do a deal with New Zealand first and bring in Winston. And I say this because I think unlike ant, Winston will extract supporters who otherwise in normal circumstances would vote Labour because, you know, Winston's always had a kind of leftish support base and a rightish support base. And I just get the impression that there are people who have voted Labour or voted green every time ever since MMP came along or even before then. But they look at Labour now, they look at the greens and they go, oh, I just can't see myself voting for them. Not, not, not with the policies and the attitudes that that they're showing to the country. And they won't vote national because that's just a tribal thing. And they won't vote acts because, well, from their perspective, Olivia, you know, act is very right wing indeed. But but Winston, Winston, they might vote for. And that would grow the pie for the centre, right, because it would take a crucial few percentage points away from the Labour Party. And and that in this very, very tight situation between the two blocks, that's that's all that national needs. Well, the other thing that Winston will be able to attract is that around eight to 10 percent of voters who previously voted national and then in 2020 because Jacinda saved us, decided to vote Labour. And they're looking at the National Party and they're saying, well, you know, they're just like Labour, just less shit. So but we don't really want to vote for them. So they could they could easily say, well, we're going to vote for Winston because, well, I think we need a rascal and a scallywag and that's going to act as a handbrake against these big parties that seem to do whatever they want to us. You know, this whole thought that we keep lurching between the red team and the blue team needs to stop because we're just encouraging them to be like each other and we don't actually get any meaningful changes to society. And by God, we have we've got some serious problems in society now and continuing on similar policies is not going to solve those. And so we need somebody who's actually prepared to grasp the nettle and say the things that need to be said. And I think only Winston Peters can do that. Well, yeah, certainly Winston would be able to play that handbrake metaphor for all that that he's worth because, you know, there are people who look at the Greens and to party Maori and just kind of blanch and horror. And then from the other side of the political divide, there are people that look at national acts and blanch and horror. And so, you know, once again, that that middle ground that the New Zealand First Party has always sought to capture that idea of there being a force in Parliament that could, you know, halt the more crazy stuff. I think I think there's there's there's a lot of there's a lot of of mileage for him to make in that regard. I had David Seymour on this program on Wednesday morning. And I'm bringing this up because we kind of touched on this because I saw that it was possible. And after hearing you guys talk, I think it's still possible that it might need New Zealand First Act and National to get that block over the line. And I asked him about that. And he was very disparaging of Winston Peters. He called him a strange little man and and basically, you know, dumped on him and indicated, I think, Cameron, you picked up on that. No deal, no deal. Is that a very smart move? Well, I wrote about that on Thursday and said I thought it was stupid to have that that attitude that David Seymour was attacking and he's been attacking national consistently over the last few months. And now he's attacking New Zealand First, but he's going to have to work with these people, whether he likes it or not. And it's it's a very strange tactic, but it's kind of a tactic that Chris alluded to earlier that he kind of has to because the Act Party is not going to attract any voters from the Labour or the Greens or the Maori Party. So all he can do to grow his vote and his vote alone is to attack his potential coalition partners and and to try to them and make their vote smaller so he becomes more powerful. But it doesn't grow the pie beyond the the the lock that we've got on on the polls at the moment where it could go either way. And and he's not going to be able to do that. But he kind of has to do what he's doing because it's the only way he can grow his vote, but it doesn't grow the pie. And and so it's ridiculous for him to attack Winston Peters, because eventually they're going to have to sit down and cut a deal. And he'll say, hey, you call me a strange little man. Now, I've actually spoken to Winston about that. I had a chat with him yesterday and I said, I wanted to think about what David Seymour said. He says, so I don't know what David Seymour is playing at. I know who the enemy is and the enemies, the Labour Party and the Green Party and the Maori Party, they're the enemies of New Zealand. And they want to send us down a divisive path that will end badly for everybody. And that's what my focus is. And I said to him, well, you need to say that publicly, Winston, because that's exactly what people want to hear. Olivia, is that what they want to hear? Well, I mean, I still can't get over the fact that the irony of David Seymour calling anybody else a strange man. I mean, that you don't cross my mind, Olivia. I, you know, the guy has such an immense lack of self-awareness. But most politicians do seem to have this lack of self-awareness now, which is painful. They don't actually realise the impact they have on people. I mean, like, like Christopher Luxon, as we were talking about before, but David has no self-awareness. But as for, I mean, the people that I know who have changed their votes to act, which, of course, I always try and talk them out of now, are longstanding, lifelong standing national party voters who realise that national sits on the centre-left now, not the centre-right, not even moderately in the middle, you know, not even on the right wing, but centre-left. I think that's where nationals sit. But those people are saying for the first time, they will vote Seymour. Will act. But I think that's a, you know, I mean, it's everybody's right to vote for who they want, of course, but Seymour's a mistake because I just think he speaks out of both sides of his mouth. As Winston Peters always did. I see Seymour and Peters as very similar beasts, actually. I don't think there's a huge difference between them. One's more likeable. I mean, Winston actually is likeable. Seymour is not. He pisses people off left, right and centre for just being chronically arrogant. That interview with you, Paul, the other day is an excellent example of that. I mean, the cocky arrogance all the way through that was palpable. And I think and I'm glad that a lot of people wrote into you and said that after hearing that interview, they would never vote Seymour. Well, I noticed that. I think quite a few of our listeners, given the space we're in, see that as an option. But I would say probably at least a third or maybe more of the text and emails that came in stated that. Yeah, it was he made himself extremely unlikable. But he always does. He's done that very very. He often does that at public meetings as well, where people go along who actually like him and throw a question at him and they get a very cocky, condescending, slightly nasty response. And that's vintage Seymour. Well, that's exactly what happened at our staff party a couple of years back after the 2020 election. He was surrounded by about 20 people who would probably have voted for him at the 2020 election. He was asked a couple of questions. And one question was, where do you see Act growing? And he said, I think it's a 10% party and no more than that. And so we're at where we are. And I'm happy with that. Which kind of left everybody dobsmacked. And then the second one was he was asked about what he was going to do for firearms owners and licensed firearm owners. And he said, I'm not going to do anything for them. I've got their vote. I've got them forever. They've abandoned New Zealand first. I'm not going to do anything for them because where else are they going to go? And the arrogance that he just displayed when he said that. I just couldn't believe and it was in front of 20 other people. And now he's come out this week or last week, attacking New Zealand first over firearms. And I thought, did you forget what you said to me? Well, maybe I should remind you of that, David, because I don't see you as doing anything for people like me as a licensed firearms owner. In fact, I think you're going to do absolutely nothing for us. And I'd rather hear an apology from Winston Peters in New Zealand first and then attempt to fix what has been broken than listen to an arrogant little man who thinks that he's got those votes forever. An arrogant, strange little man. It's our political panel here at RCA. We've got Cameron Slater, Chris Trotter and Olivia Pearson. I think he did mention firearms really briefly in that interview, but I don't know what he was saying about it, whether he were... My impression was that he'd supported something. But David Seymour's got a position on everything until he doesn't. Exactly. And then he changes it. And he was just Seymour's little cheerleader. Everything that she proposed, he didn't oppose it. He supported it and just criticised it. They weren't going harder, faster or more efficiently as they took away our rights and our freedoms. Well, I'm sorry, you can't be a classical liberal and stand there and advocate for buses to go around jabbing people on the street, forcing beneficiaries to fill in census forms if they otherwise they lose their benefit or penalising people who object to the powers of the state being extended. But there he was as a little cheerleader and he showed his true mettle when the protest was at Parliament and he was hiding behind Jacinda's skirts. Hangman nooses, they were nooses. He kept going on about the nooses, didn't he? I mean, all our lives there's been an idiom where people get together in a pub and they'll go, politicians should be hung from the nearest lamppost. That is a very acceptable sentiment that gets expressed. Nobody goes out and hangs politicians anymore, unfortunately. And Seymour has got this, he was, you pointed it out Paul. It sounds as though you were sitting in Parliament feeling quite scared. Yeah, he didn't like that. He didn't like that, but that he came across like a total pussy, cringing away in Parliament, scared that people had nooses for God's sake. And anyway, Going nooses or nooses? Sorry, nooses. All right. My English, that bad. They had nooses. They had nooses, but he'd be scared of a nurse, I'm sure. But as for nooses, it was such a ridiculous thing for them to keep going on about, especially considering the left and the greens, having guillotines and pretending to behead John Key on Parliament grounds. Remember that? Yeah. And when you trample over people's rights, when you make the Bill of Rights worth nothing, when you cut freedom of speech away and everybody's censored, you should have angry people with pitchforks on your Parliament lawns. You should have. Morally, those people were doing something right and expressing that kind of outrage, and I was proud of them. But there was Seymour cringing away, quivering in his boots. And it's just pathetic, it really is. Well, they all were to be there. They all were to be there. On that pitchforks thing, we were told by the media, by the police that there was pitchforks, there was all these weapons. Now, when the police went and bashed everybody and cleared the place out, where was the display of these offensive weapons that they told everybody that were there? Have you seen any photos of anybody with a pitchfork? There was literally thousands of cameras there, the media were there, the police were taking photos. Where's the photos of these pitchforks and all of these offensive weapons? They just simply don't exist. It was made up. It was an attempt by the state to put people in their place, who they'd already put in their place and begged them by mandating them out of jobs and costing them their livelihoods and their houses and their families and everything else. Why were we surprised that after 23 days or however many days it was, that when the police showed up to dish out violence, that they were met with violence in return? They weren't met by violence. They were met by people trying to protect their computers, their tents, their gear, you know. They weren't met by violence. There were some weirdos, anti-filite thugs bought in at the last moment. That was so obvious by the way. Why doesn't anyone get that or even ask the question? I feel like sharing with you two, Cam and Olivia, the wisdom of the old trade unionists who had lived through the 51 waterfront lockout and they would say to the youngsters who talked about standing up to the bosses and standing up to the government, they would just look at us and shake their heads sadly and say, listen son, you can't take on the state and win. And they were right. They just grind you down. They can always escalate up. This is the thing that I've been aware of, for a long, long time. If you go to a protest with a stick, they'll come back with a baton. If you go to a protest with a piece of iron, they'll come back with tear gas and rubber bullets. If you go to a protest with a gun, they'll come back with an armored car and a 50 caliber machine gun. I mean, the state can always ratchet up the level of force at its disposal. And they do. Yeah, well, got that. We got that, but this is why we need our Bill of Rights to have stood for us, let alone having a politician to actually act as if it was in violence, but that did not happen. And even then, when I actually think violence would have actually been a proportionate response, but that protest was peaceful and there were people running around Chantal Baker, her father, everybody else, all the Maori's that were there, they were making sure everybody was peaceful. They were almost dogmatic and religious about it. So the fact that they could still call that a violent protest really annoys me because it is just so far from the truth of what happened. I got a question for all three because we've got to move on, obviously. And that is, okay, we're talking about Luxon and should they change them out? Based on what I saw the response yesterday into our inboxes and texting machine, maybe it's time to consider swapping David out for someone else, because there's some talent in there, isn't there? And I- Is there? Well, I don't know, I'm asking. You mean Brooke Van Velden? Well, that was the name I was thinking of. She certainly speaks better than David does. You know, like she can actually hold a line of thought, but I don't feel like- Okay, well, that's a good start. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know because, you know, they announced that they were going to stand, Brooke, in Tamaki Electric on the basis that apparently Simon O'Connor doesn't share their values. Now, I thought that was incredibly strange to say that because, and making the whole argument about abortion, and you know, I suppose it's relevant though for David Seymour who wanted to kill grannies and now seems to be okay with killing babies, but to make a challenge against an MP on the basis that MP doesn't share their values, whatever those are, is suggesting that we have to have this homogenized view of what society is and we can only select the MPs with those views and everybody else should be discarded. And I just find that anathema to democracy and the belief of free speech and challenging ideas, having a contest of ideas. I mean, you know, Chris Trotter and I don't share a lot of things together. I think what lies behind that move by Brook Van Belden and ACT is based on their analysis of the polls, the right has won over a majority of men but women are still holding out from a sort of general shift. And the way there was a general shift to John Key, I mean, Labor knew it was all over when the people I called, you know, white-tackery man and white-tackery woman made the decision in their gut that Key was okay. They could vote for him with a clear conscience. Now, I think there's an element of that thinking in the move against O'Connor and Tamaki. ACT is trying to say to women who, you know, gave a vote of thanks to Jacinda in 2020 but certainly aren't very happy with Labor now. Look, come and vote for us. We're a libertarian party. We're not going to interfere with a woman's right to choose. And so that in the end is ACT's sole strategic priority, it seems to me, to get as much of that centre-right vote as they can because they quite rightly deduce that the more they get, the biggest share of that centre-right vote that they get, the more they're going to be able to get of their agenda enacted. So for them, there really is only one goal and that is don't sit at 10%, get 15% and if you can get 20% go for that as well. Do whatever it takes to eat as much of national's vote as you possibly can because then, if you win, you're sitting there with roughly half the votes on the right-hand side and you're saying to Christopher Luxon, if you think you can just pat us on the head and send us away and you'll do all the heavy policy lifting, well, think again because we've got an agenda and we've got the share of the vote to make that agenda a viable proposition. So I think that's what's behind moves like Brook Van Belden into Tamaki. And I think that's really what's driving ACT. They can't make themselves, well, as Cam says, they can't grow the pie, but they can sure as heck grow their share of it. Chris, do you mean what you said that that's them trying to scoop up the centre-right vote? Did you mean to say the left or did you mean to say the centre-right? If I misspoke, I'm sorry, but no, what I'm talking about is the national vote and the ACT vote. At the moment, National has a preponderance of conservative voters in its corner. Now, what ACT, obviously what ACT wants to do is pull as many voters out of the National Party Corral and allow them into ACT Corral because when the votes have all been cast and counted and if the right has emerged victorious, well then the more seats they have, the bigger share of the party vote that they are able to win, the more influence they're gonna have about policy going forward. What about Andrew Hoggard going to ACT? Andrew who? I think he follows in the fine tradition of Owen Jennings, doesn't he? He was another federated farmer's man who joined ACT way back in the 90s. There's always been an element out there in rural New Zealand that has been willing to vote for ACT and it's waxes and wanes, but if they look at National out there in the provinces and then rural New Zealand and they don't like what they see, well ACT is always there and Hoggard, like Jennings I think, prefers the clear reviews that you can hear coming from ACT to the rather muddled messages coming from Christopher Luxon. I think Andrew Hoggard has fallen into the trap that a lot of these people who have got positions elsewhere and largely talked to the converted or their members, they mistake that support or they perceive it as support as translating into votes. It's a little bit like all the Greens and everybody saying, well, we've got 400,000 likes on Facebook. And then you point out to them their vote and you say, well, if everyone has said they liked you on Facebook, voted for you, you'd have a lot more MPs, but they just don't. And this is the problem that you've got with people like Andrew Hoggard and then you've got these other people and the smaller parties that are out there saying, well, we've got a real chance of winning this seat and winning that seat and all of those living, that's the polls aren't showing that. And they'll say, oh, well, the polls are crooked. And it was like, you could put your head in the sand if you like, but the last political party that entered parliament without a sitting MP to piggyback them in was the ACT party in 1996. And since then, if you don't have a sitting MP in your party, you don't get elected. And so people like Matt King who are out there trying really hard and he's doing an admiral a good job. The thing is, is that he's just not gonna get there. He's not gonna win Northland and he's not gonna get the 150,000 votes or so that are required to get 5%. And so it's just a waste of time. And what people in those small, minor parties should really do is pick either New Zealand first or ACT and support them. And that's the way that they affect change. Well, I have to say that that's what I think was the maximum institute and a number of others. That's what they impressed upon right wing voters, particularly Christian right wing voters. Back in 2005, I think it was, it was this splintering the vote is nuts. If you want to get rid of labor and that should be what you want to do, then you have to vote for the national party. And they were very successful in that. Don Brash came within a whisker of winning that election. In fact, I've always said if the vote had been on the Wednesday and not the Saturday, national would have won in 2005. And that would have made for a very interesting three years. It seems to me. That's because they had John Ansel as their admin. Sorry? They had John Ansel as their admin. Did they not? John Ansel. Yes, the advertising campaign by John Ansel was one of the best I've seen. In fact, I haven't seen a better one since 1975, to be honest. OK, one last comment. I've just got to be mindful of the time, you know. Yeah, that's right. Let's move on. OK, so let's bundle these two together, maybe the Walker jump and the other one who left the green. So Mecca jumping the walker. There's there's a new term. And Elizabeth leaving your kitty, kitty, leaving. So it's what kinds of end all of this sort of happened within QE of each other. These things happen. Yeah, I think there are slightly different stories going on there. I think there's there's an element of the history of of Matt Rata and what Mecca Fateri has done. You know, I think people in the in the parking lot world. They they struggle to understand the the the the sensitivities of of Maori sometimes. I mean, Matt Rata, he left the Labour Party when he was passed over by Bill Rowling of all people. And I think that same sense of of being slighted was was very much present in the mind of of Mecca Fateri. When she went back home and consulted her gut and said goodbye to the Labour Party and Hulu to to party Maori. So I think there's there's a sort of a story and a sort of a a political historical background to that sort of move, which, you know, is is may not be laudable, but it's at least understandable. I think in the case of Elizabeth Kirikiri, that is just the the result of fratricidal strife, just internal warfare, which she lost. She was on the losing side and she decided that the game was no longer worth the candle. And knowing also, I suspect, shrewdly that the Greens had voted against the Electoral Integrity Act, and so they wouldn't go to invoke it against us. She could go on drawing her salary for another four or five months and then leave. So that's that's where we are with the Greens. I mean, it's not a good look for the center left. I mean, it does speak of instability of internal ructions of outright strife and and deep seated animosities, particularly in the case of the Greens. And this is not a good look going into an election, not a good look at all. Yeah, I tend to agree with with you on that, Chris, in that it's not a good look for the left. It looks shabby. It looks tawdry. It looks convenient. We are we passed laws that are supposed to prevent these things. And then when this happens, what we see is the elites again, five stepping conveniently the law when it suits them and creating a construction, at least in the case of microfactory, that the law doesn't apply because this is our team. And therefore, we're going to create this assumption that she's still a Labour MP despite standing there and telling the whole country that she resigned from Labour. You know, and then saying, well, she didn't write a letter. She sent an email, but we're not allowed to see the email. And so, you know, the official Information Act doesn't help us because we can't use that on Parliament. We can only use that on ministers and then create a narrative that can't be challenged. And if we do create that narrative or start creating a narrative around that, you get called racist. And so all we're seeing or the ordinary voters are seeing is again, the elites in Parliament writing rough shot over our laws and our rights and everything else when it suits them. And, you know, I agree, too, with the Elizabeth Carey, Carey situation. And what you've got is the hard left fighting the less hard left in the Green Party for control. And you're seeing some green on green fact fratricide, but I'm not sure we're allowed to use that name because it's sort of a. Terrible sexist language is not in the neutral at all. It's misogynist, so, you know, and racist as well. And, and, you know, that's not acceptable. When I was racist, homophobic, Islamophobic, you name it anymore. Yeah, although all the the poly the polyphobes, you know, they've got one for every occasion. There's a hangman's noose in there somewhere as well. A noose. A nurse, a nurse, a nurse and a conspiracy hanging from a nurse. The difference between a conspiracy theory and facts these days. Yeah, it's about three weeks. Goes down every time, right? Goes down every time. All right, are we finished with that one? Yeah, absolutely. I've I've I've I've got a I'm going to love you and leave it. I'm I'm really sorry to have held you up, but. No, that's fine. You can you can you can quit on us. But we will have you back next time. We will. OK, look, that's. I was going to hear your voice, Mr Trotsky. Yeah, and and and likewise, Olivia, put a voice to the to the words to the very good words I have to say. Thank you, sir. OK, Chris, thank you. And we'll just clean up the tail of this. Thank you so much. And we'll talk next time we do it, which will be next Friday. All right, thank you. OK, then. Bye bye. So that was Chris Trotter quitting on us. It reminds me, Paul, of of those great stages of British humour who knew everything 40 years ago in Monty Python and the life of Brian, you know, where they talk about Loretta, how he wants to change his name to Loretta because he wants to be to be a woman and an old smocking and the reason of the whole of the whole thing. And then there's the splitters. And yeah, it reminds me of the Green Party. Oh, they're not the right type of Green Party. And then people's grunt, people's grunt of Judea. And then, of course, there was the one of the Romans ever done for us, which, of course, we're seeing a reprise of that with what have what have the British ever done for us with colonialism. You know, it shows how forward-thinking Monty Python was back then. Were they sitting in the Coliseum saying that they're in the Coliseum? Yeah. What did the Romans ever done for us? Well, apart from the aqueducts. OK, apart from the aqueducts. Well, it's it's it's it's the road. But this is what we see. We're seeing a guy in a cowboy hat telling people off for cultural appropriation and abusing colonialism while he's flying in planes and using laws and sitting in the parliament, which colonialism literally built for him. Yeah. And he's criticizing it, saying that it that it's been negative. Really? Well, I'm going to just point to the average life expectancy of Maori in 1840 versus now and say, that's what colonialism. Certainly quickly taking the plane. Then it used to be. That's a long paddle. It's the same thing as when, I don't know if you remember, Churchill's takedown of Gandhi when the Great India Movement were looking very strong. And, you know, Churchill made those remarks about how dare that savage stride half naked up the vice regal palace and assertors, you know, anti anti British, anti Victoria, anti royal stance and it disgusted Churchill. But that's I feel that same level of disgust. Exactly what you said, Cam. It's like some savage, you know, that that has has actually gotten all the way to the top, sits there and does nothing but, you know, take a dump on every European or what he would see. See, you know, the trappings of colonisation, but they want to be in there. And of course, they take all that money. The EU is the heavily funded millions and millions of dollars. And none of that goes down to just average Joe Blow, Mares like you and me, but Mares. And that was really evident again at the protest, which was such a great cultural reference point. And I'm so glad we had it because it's now culture forever. We'll never lose it. Those Mares that I bumped up with and they babysat my car, they bought me coffee in the morning. They adopted me into their whanau. They felt completely abandoned and betrayed by their own Iwis, the Maori party, most exclusively. And I was really, really happy to see Tariana Turia at that time. I don't know if you remember, she came out and called Jacinda a Nazi. Remember that? I do. Yeah. And I remember thinking and the Mares at the protest because that happened during the protest. They were really, really happy that at least somebody that was part of their race and their ilk saw what was happening, that they were being rough shot over by all this totalitarianism and blatant authoritarianism. And Tariana had the guts to call it out and she used the most extreme language, you know? And I mean, good for her. It was extreme. Well, OK, a couple more things you've put on the list here. Cam, WCC Wellington City Council votes to cut speed limits on all Wellington streets, just what we need. Mind you, people driving slow motion anyway these days, I've noticed. But so down to what? Well, I think they'd rather have go back to the days when motor vehicles had to have a runner in front of them with a red flag to warn people that anti progress and against, you know, the internal combustion engine, one of the greatest inventions that man has ever created. These nutters that the people of Wellington keep electing just show that that voters actually get the governance that they deserve. And, you know, this is the sort of crazy lunatic type behavior that these green-tinged people, Luddites even seem to want to take us back to, you know? I mean, the prefix of Pauling in Wellington at the best of times, but slowing it down will just make it worse. It's not going to make people change from a car to a bus. I mean, everyone who's an advocate for public transport almost never takes it themselves. So there are these kinds of people who believe that public transport is for other people to use. Although right in the middle of the road on their bike. Well, that's right. And then they get pulled over, you know, with their kids on the back. But you know what that reminds me of, Cam, is at the end of the Iron Rans great magnum opus that was shrunk right at the end, the train, which is the great symbol of man's achievement, you know, in the internal combustion engine that, you know, intercontinental, transcontinental railways and everything. The train is broken on the tracks and the people have to be driven away from it by a horse and cart. And that's what they want. That's what they want. I thought it was for safety, you know, for well-being and safety. It's not. They're just trying to drive people out. I thought they had our safety. I don't know. No, not safety. They're luddites. They're luddites and they're anti-progress and they want us to all cycle. You know, we gave up cycling when we got our driver's license, because, you know what, it didn't matter if it was raining. It didn't matter, you know, you could carry around three or four of your mates when you went out. You know, cycling became a pain in the ass. And so we gave that up. But these people have all stuck in their teenage years riding bikes and then then they moralize and tap, tap and wag their finger at us all and say, we should all be cycling too. Well, I tell you what, on Tuesday, when it was absolutely hosing down in Auckland and everything was flooded, I bet you wanted a youth on that day and not a cycle. Totally. All right. OK. And to finish it off, I don't know how much of a huge issue this one is, but the Bill to ban seabed mining defeated in parliament. Well, what what was funny about that was the Maori Party thinking they had three votes voting against the bill when they were actually in favour, it was their own bill that they were in favour of, but they voted against it. Then they were through their vote. Then they realised that they only had two votes and not three votes. And it was just a complete fuss, which kind of explains the whole law. Anyway, I mean, New Zealand is blessed with these amazing natural resources and these fools that are out there, the Green Party in particular and the Maori Party seem to want to have us get our resources from overseas rather than from our own country. It's just insane. I think it's unbelievable. It's unbelievable. It's not. We can't import coal. We can't use our own coal, but we can import dirty Indonesian coal. Dirty Indonesian coal. Yeah. And no master point. And so these fools are now doing the same for seabed. We're surrounded with huge natural resources. And these clowns don't want us to use them and want to actually impoverish us and impoverish ourselves as a nation and bigger us importing stuff and making Indonesians and other countries wealthy instead of our own country wealthy. It's so tragic, isn't it? And even I mean, with the fishing stuff, we've got land in the north up on the beautiful mighty Kaipara. And, you know, we could survive there through the fishing, but you just know that they're coming for our fishing rights. You know, the maoris, the Iwi maoris, not common maoris, because I do make a huge distinction between them. They they're not going to be happy until we have to ask their permission to fish for a fish for dinner. You know, they really want everything. It's good to know that there's a gold hole in the north. That's what Iwi stands for. I want it. I want it. All right. David Seymour, to be fair, did say that he should be. He thought we should be mining. He did say that. I remember him saying that. We should we should mine it. He said, exactly, baby dig, you know, we've got these natural resources that we could be. We're self-sufficient and cold. So and totally instead of spending billions and billions of dollars paying money to some pros for to give to the third world, we should be investing those billions of dollars into developing clean, cold power plants. You know, that would be a far more effective solution. We'd be energy energy, you know, efficient. We'd be energy secure and and would be cleaner and do it better than the rest of the world. Probably be cheaper as well. Way cheaper and can't cost, you know, several billion dollars to work out a way to scrub the the the stacks from, you know, the the pollutants that come out from burning it. You know, it's. But it's more cynical than that because there are many. There are people all over this world who have developed technology and innovation to be able to draw energy to run households that don't require fossil fuels. But those products are always suppressed or they're bought out and they're never they're never developed. I mean, they, you know, and it's the big oil and the big energy companies that buy out those kind of entrepreneurs that come up with those kind of inventions. I don't think we're going to be allowed to be to move past fossil fuels by by big energy. They're not going to allow it because because they have to control it. I mean, people call this line, I'm on a bit of a conspiracy, but it's not. Many people have been able to make engines and energy that are drawn well away from fossil fuel energy, but they die in the tracks. They never make it to the market, and that is not by accident. All right. You've reminded me of an old TV local news thing. I remember as a kid when some guy claimed he had invented an engine, which he'd put in an old Cortina that ran on water on one water. Yeah, I bet he did. Yeah. Well, I think it went well down the Brooklyn Hill, but he couldn't come back up. It couldn't quite it couldn't quite cut it. But now you hear these inventions coming through all the time. And I mean, people can claim anything, but some of them have been. I mean, Tesla had this idea about drawing ambient energy. You know, back 100 years ago, had they run with that at some point, we would be in a very different place, but they don't, they squash them. All right, that's our first political panel. We had Chris earlier, but he quit on us. No, he didn't. That's not fair. He had another engagement and we won't talk about his ancient phone. Send them in. It's dinosaur phone. Can't get service for them anymore. Lose a component. It's all over. Anyway, I want to thank Cameron Slater, Olivia Pearson, and he's not here at the moment, Chris Trotter. That was a lot of fun and it was some great information, great views, et cetera. I hope you guys will be happy to come back and do it again. Absolutely. Loved it, Paul. And I'll be back next week. All right, thank you, Paul. Thank you very much. Who are you committing to a return, Olivia? Maybe. Typical female Cameron will work on you during the week. You can try. OK, have a great weekend, you guys. Thank you. You too, Paul. Thank you. Thanks, Paul. RCR with Paul Brennan, reality check radio.