 With your help, we can continue to fight for freedom. This is not possible without your generosity. Join our quest for the truth and our freedom. Simply visit www.realitycheck.radio forward slash donate to make a difference today. Right, now it's time for Cams Buddies. And this week, we'll find out what they think about the fiscal cliffs or land mines, as I like to call them, left by the Labour Party. My producer has them all lined up and ready to go. So let's hear what Cams Buddies have to say about the fiscal land mines left by Labour. Good afternoon. Welcome to Cams Buddies, Paul. Good afternoon, Cam. How are you this day? Fantastic. I've only got one more show to go. There's a story. One, so we're gonna have to hit home runs. Oh, it's disappointing there's only one more show so far this year. We enjoy these shows. Yeah, that's a whole heap of phone bits. All right, I'll be back next year. So the topic this week is what Christopher Laksim calls the fiscal cliffs that he's finding as they open the box and realise that Grant Robertson appears to be an economic pygmy. What do you think about these fiscal cliffs, in particular the land mines or cliffs that they found in the Three Waters legislation? Well, I think a lot of this is quite interesting because is it stupidity or is it deception? For example, if we were to cancel the Three Waters project, the theory is you save 300 million. But is it 300 million that they've allowed for or is it 300 million that they were going to allow for? So in fact, the hole's still there whether you get the saving or not. And for when our finance ministers see that he's what the books look like but he hasn't actually factored in all the things that he was going to do because he's only done it on a temporary basis. I look at that and think that doesn't seem like he's naive. It seems like he's deceptive and I'm always concerned about such things. I mean, they do things like we haven't funded what we're going to do next with Pharmac because it's under the hospital boards as opposed to under our Pharmac provisioning or something like that, they move it around and then it's ignored in both camps and you think, yeah, interesting. Now you used to sit on the board of a public company. If you booked expenditure but no revenue for that and then no ongoing expenditure for that capital expenditure, what would the financial markets authority in the stock exchange say about that sort of behavior? They'd be none too impressed I can tell you and there would be these regulations and laws that stopped you doing that and you get to go to jail if you play hide and seek with the truth and financials of public companies. I know we had to be more open and open and more honest than honest and it gave in some cases your position, opportunities to look at what was happening and they wanted to print your staff. They knew how much the most expensive staff and your company got within certain brackets and all this sort of thing, but this is the law. And so when I see that they've done these sorts of things like light rail, if they shut that project down what do they get a hundred million or so? Yeah. But is it being allowed for? Or is it just another, the things that we could shut down they weren't allowing for them anyway because that's next year's, coming out of next year's funding and so they're saying we're at this position at the moment, I think there's quite a bit of deception that's going on. And I think also some of these food programs in schools again in cybersecurity in schools these are all things that are gonna cost someone money at some time, but they haven't allowed it in because they just said when they funded it this year they're gonna relook at it and see if they wanna fund it again next year. And any time you fully depend on some of these things there's a hue and cry like we've never heard before. But I guess the benefit that they've got is the number of billions that were spent in the last half a dozen budgets that they did. I think there's got to be some things there that you can take away. I think they spent an additional spending of over 50 billion in the six budgets. So I think there must be ways to get three, four, five billion out of that boy shutting some of those projects down because they're not necessarily necessary. Well, I reckon that we know a guy that we go fishing with who's a ninja with spreadsheets. I reckon the government should hire him, pay him half a million dollars a year and let him go at it at the government accounts and find all the holes that could be filled or carved out. I'm pretty sure he'd be able to find several billion dollars that could be saved. Exactly. It's a bit like that when the president on some movie was looking like he was going to pass or they put some other bloke in place and he got his mate from down the corner. But he's at the accountant to have a look at it and he came up with a number of ways to save money. If you just get Joe's visit in the street at this at accountant, who just from nowhere in particular, they would look at this and say, this is ridiculous in a number of areas. In fact, with the limited budget, I don't have a different finances that I've looked through different companies. I could give them some good places to start. Yeah, I mean, the three waters one is astonishing. They hired something like 400 people, put them on five year contracts at the time when it looked like the Labour Party was going to lose the election anyway. And I'm heading towards this as mischief because I think the Labour Party assumed the National Party wouldn't do anything because it'd be too hard to unravel it. But they seem to have grasped the nettle and wanted to actually start unraveling this. And so all of these little landmines and traps and cliffs that are out there need to be faced. But the problem with landmines is if you leave them in place, well, they tend to blow up sometime down the future. Exactly. And if you set people up on five year contracts when you've only got a three year term, I think there's a degree that you could call those folk back and say there was outside your delegated financial authority to do that. Unless you've got a consensus over a multiple, you know, like over all the government options. So in other words, if the people from each of the parties say, yes, we can all agree by part of them that will work, then you can sign up such things on five year contracts. But if you've got something that we, one part of the government is saying, or the opposition is saying, we don't like that and we won't do that and we won't be continuing it. And then you sign the folk up on five year contracts. It's like, should they be signing the charter schools up on 20 year contracts, so that they can make sure that they get some longevity because last time people invested in the education and we're doing a fantastic job with many of these students, then Labour came and said, oh, because the teachers union doesn't like the way you've authorized different teachers, doesn't matter that they're doing a good job, we'd better get rid of them all, even though the poorest in our communities were doing the best in such schools. Now, we can't have that. So they shut it down. Well, who wants to be a charter school operator and try round two if you can't get a long contract? And because Labour have proved that they can give a five year contract when the opposition is saying, we don't want to do that. And it's really a three year maximum contract they should have and only one left or a one plus three. If giving a contract out in the last year of their term, I do think it's very mischievous. Yeah, by design, I think it's completely dishonest though of the Labour Party that they were gaslighting everybody telling us that they were good economic stewards. They were poo-pooing anything that Nicola Willis said. They especially derived anything that David Seymour says. Turns out that Nicola Willis and David Seymour were bang on the money that there was these massive holes that needed to be filled. You know, I think we're steering down the barrel of Grant Robertson taking over from Robert Muldoon as the worst finance minister we've ever seen. Well, it's looking very much that way. And even then Muldoon put in place some quite lead-ups that think big projects that are still infrastructure things that they've done today. What Labour's done in the last six years is just spend money so that people are all happy not on things that count, not on infrastructure they've made our roads with the help of our councils and stupidity narrower, nowhere to park and nothing to see when you get there. You know, they've made every road a choke point I hear just on the way home today. It takes an hour and 20 minutes to get from the city to jury, which at a good time you can do in 25 minutes. Yeah, I mean, all these sorts of things. I mean, that's a bugbear that I've got having lived on the North Shore for quite some time. They spent seven years, millions of dollars on three kilometres of road, if that, making it five lanes either side. But at either end of it, it's two lanes either side. So you've got three kilometres of smooth flowing traffic that comes running to a standstill at the end of it. And it doesn't seem that there's any joined up thinking in any of these infrastructure projects. And there's certainly not any joined up thinking with the finance minister we've had for the last six years. Exactly. I've just had my sister over from Australia and she was saying, I can't believe how many road cones there are. There's just road cones everywhere. Did you tell her they were more than road cones? She's telling me there was plenty more where they came from. Maybe we should be selling those to try and help for the school bit that we'd like to be flying ourselves and my sister could probably sell road cones to help. Maybe we should put the road cones in the potholes. That's easy to say. Yeah. All right, Paul, thank you very much for your thoughts on that. And we'll talk next week for the last show. OK, take care. Good afternoon, Jack. Welcome to Cam's Buddies. Hello, Cam. I always resist the temptation to say hi, Jack, because that'd be funny. You've probably heard that a million times. And more. Not on an aeroplane, though. I'd never do it on an aeroplane. No, you wouldn't. I'll be your host. This week's topic, Jack, is the landmines, as I call them, or fiscal cliffs, as Christopher Luxem calls them, that they're discovering in the government's books, standout things are treasury identified, a whole lot of infrastructure projects where there was capital expenditure booked, but no ability in the workforce to deliver it. There, of course, is three waters where they've signed up staff members on five-year contracts when it was apparent that the government was going to lose office, and there's many more happening on a daily basis. We've got unfunded pharma stuff going on. What are your thoughts on these? Well, it's the same old story when the government changes. The incoming blames the outgoing for everything. And we knew it was going to happen. Now it's happened. I'll just wait for it to blow over. Some of those things didn't need to have any ongoing funding because it may not have been required. But really, it's just a standard sort of response that every new government makes when they come in. So I don't think too much about it at all. I think let it all wash out and let's see what happens. Yeah, some of these things catch you up later. Like, I mean, Auckland Council's got some classic examples, like the central rail loop, which the government funded 50%. But what they didn't fund and aren't going to fund and will fight funding is the ongoing maintenance costs and annual costs to keep it running, which is eye-wateringly expensive, something like $220 million a year needs to be found by Auckland ratepayers. And there's only a projected, which means it'll probably be half that, but a projected income stream of just 30 million. Yeah. And Auckland Council don't need any more problems like that. I'm just glad I'm not running it. Yeah, you've got these ridiculous situations where with the Three Waters legislation, they were funding the Commerce Commission to conduct oversight of the setup of it, but they only gave them one year's worth of funding. And it's gonna run out and like I think it's in April, it runs out, the funding for that. Nationals, of course, repealing Three Waters, putting in place their own strategy, but it's gonna require funding from the Commerce Commission to actually oversee those anyway. But this is the sort of stuff that Labour left unfunded at all. Some time ago, I said to my brother-in-law, who's the CEO of Watercare, hey, this is a wasted exercise. It's not gonna happen. I can't even remember his response, but I'll be catching up with him soon on Christmas Day in fact. So that'll be interesting. Find out what the hell's going on. You don't mention my name to him. Why not? I mentioned your name to everyone. Ha, ha, ha. You'll get a stone-cold silence coming out of his... Do I? Yeah, well... Do I care? Do I look like I care? No, you don't. That's precisely why you're a made-of-mind, because you don't care. I treat everyone on faith value, whoever they are. Yeah. And then what comes out of their mouth if it's sensible or not? Yeah, exactly. Unfortunately, people are not sensible. No, that's right. You're your own man and so am I. But anyway, pass on my kind regards to then see what happens. Yeah, no, look, it's all... Let's just wait and see what happens. There's all this stuff about we borrowed too much. Borrowing's good. I love borrowing. I've heard my company 50 years and I've been in debt the whole time. I borrow everything, just the way I operate. But lending money is just a business. So you've got to keep those people in business. How do the Jews make money? Well, the thing is... They lend it out. Yeah, the thing is, though, Jack, there's good debt and there's bad debt. And the previous government spent eye-watering sums of money on borrowing billions upon billions of dollars, which they then effectively threw into a fan outside of a window and blew it out into the economy, of which we have nothing to show for it. We haven't got any infrastructure projects that are completed. We haven't got any fixes in things that are seriously in need of repair, including the health system. We didn't get anything for it. The last people that ever made in the infrastructure for the things work were Muldoon and Bill Birch and everyone sort of like the Muldoon at some sort of crackpot that ruined the economy. It was the best one. We haven't had anything since. Well, I like pointing out to people who drive EVs that all their power comes from the big projects that they all opposed. Yes, exactly. Exactly. And you know, Manipuri Power Project, which I know intimately, having worked on it, when the people of New Zealand decided not to finish the project, in other words, raised the lake to the intended level so we could get full power. Look at all that work, all that money that went in there and only half the power was produced. We could change that now by raising the lake. It's one of my pet hobby courses. And I know, yes, it's a long way down there and to get it up, there'd be losses, but it'll still be an easy thing to do and a very cheap fix, relatively speaking, to get more power. Well, the trouble with the power is it's at the wrong end of the country. Yes, that's what I just said. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, we make all this power in the South Island, but it's all needed in the North Island. We need to perhaps have some power solutions that aren't reliant on wind or sun in the North Island. But maybe we could put a new... Was it you that were saying the cost of putting another line across the Crook Strait, the price was astronomical? Was it you that said that the other day? Yeah, absolutely. It's billions of dollars to put a new cable across. Yeah, so maybe my idea is not a good idea. Well, it might be a good idea if people wanted to live in the South Island a bit more. Maybe we could send some of the rap bags in Auckland down there. What do you mean? Are you talking about me? Oh, definitely not. Can't have you in the South Island. Mind you, you can always fly up. You can always fly up for lunch on Monday. Hey, look at the weather around Wellington at the moment. You wouldn't want to be flying through that, would you? No, the best seat in Wellington is the seat on the 737 just after they close the door and push back. Yes, that's dead right. It's a horrid place. There's only Qantas flying 737s out of there now, but that's good. Oh, that's right, they're all airbuses, aren't they? Sorry, I'm arguing with an airline expert. Yes, you're saying everyone should be going to Australia. Yeah, dead right. That'd be a good start. Get all the civil servants living in Australia. Oh, that would be good, wouldn't it? It would. Don't get me started on that. Well, my solution is to move them to Waoru. Just build some, you know, Russian-style, utilitarian bunkers for accommodation and set up all the civil servants living in Waoru. We wouldn't need to do that. Just hire some of the army barracks there. If you've been down there, you have. You actually lived down there, didn't you? I did. My goodness, it's croaky. That deserves some respect. That's the coldest place ever. It's horrible. Yeah, so it is a horrible place. But we had heaps of fun blowing things up. So anyway, it was all good. Of course. I wanted to make a man out of you. Yeah, exactly. All right, Jack, thank you for your comments. And we'll talk again next week for the last show of the year. Sorry, I was useless tonight. I'm so sorry. Oh, well, you'll have a fan out there that'll say you were wonderful. I bet you. It might be your brother. It's not likely to be your brother, though, is it? No, no. All right, thanks for your call. Welcome to Cams Buddies, Jimmy. Good, I can't tell you today. Yeah, good, mate. So the topic this week is these fiscal cliffs that Christopher Lux and Nicola Willis describe. I prefer to call them fiscal landmines. But we've got all of this unfunded and costed spending by the previous government, like things on three waters, like five year contracts for staff. You've got the Fire Mac funding that isn't being funded, a whole lot of other things like that. What are your thoughts on those? Well, is anyone surprised? No. I mean, this was to be expected. I mean, there'll be loads more for another 12 months of all this unexpected stuff that the government we just got rid of was so unbelievably fiscally reckless that it's just not a surprise. And things are going to have to get real tight to pay for all this. So it's going to be a difficult year. And I guess Nicola's going to do a mini-budget before Christmas. So we're going to see some of the damage that's going to be caused in nationals' plans. They're going to have to probably cut back some of their plans, pay for it all. It's not a surprise whatsoever. I think they're going to have to take an axe to all the spending. I mean, there was billions upon billions of dollars spent, but we haven't got anything for it. We need to cut that as quickly as possible. Yeah, well, you just can't spend like that. It's insane. It's why we have so much inflation and high interest rates. And it's really hurting people. There was things that government did when they knew they were going to buy the factory in Kingsland for the light rail. They knew that was going to be canceled. And they still went ahead with the purchase. I mean, it's just completely morally reckless. Forenders, it's amazing. They can't be held to account for it. Well, that's the problem with politicians is we've got laws that are in place, like the Fiscal Responsibility Act. But it doesn't appear to be any penalties for reaching the act. I talked to earlier to Paul, and he was saying, this looks like mischief rather than mistake. Well, yeah, exactly. I mean, if a CDO acted in this way, that they could be quite easily charged with financial crimes or misleading. It's horrendous what's happened. And the fact that Graham Robertson still sits in Parliament questioning and laughing and mocking the new government is just mind-boggling, actually. More stuff's going to come. Like, there's been way more spending in other areas. Like, I know that New Zealand Housing Agency has got spent billions. There'll be heaps of bombs out there, won't there? They're like IEDs, terrorist Jews. And they just sit there lurking, waiting for a small child to pick them up, or in this case, Nicola Willis. Well, the government's just going to inherit them all over the show. It's going to be really hard to govern, because they'll say one thing, and they'll discover some more plan or just keep destroying their budgets all over the show. And it'll be hard to deliver what they promise, and then the media will attack them for it. So, but I am quite pleased with how the new government's going. I see this week that the lower speed limits across the country just wiped off, fantastic. Yeah. That's the road to zero, Don Berger. I mean, that was ridiculous anyway, and you're never going to have a zero road toll. I mean, it's just fanciful nonsense to even come up with that. I mean, the only thing that zero represented was the political future of Michael Wood. Yeah, but that particular policy shows the stupidity of the government and their inability to weigh up other things. To get to zero road toll, you'd have to massively sacrifice productivity, you know, have cars going at 10 kilometers an hour or whatever. So, people will suffer in other ways. It's unmeasurable. You know, whereas all they're focused on is this big zero dumbest picture, and it just makes no sense. They're not prepared to have a proper discussion around the trade-off versus policy outcome of particular policies, you know? We saw it right through that whole government, particularly around COVID, say, just lockdowns. It's also really bad in local government. I mean, I was talking earlier on the show to Daniel Newman, and he was aghast at the ongoing costs of the central rail loop, which is something like $220 million a year. And the revenue potential is only about $30 million. I mean, which morons voted for that? And can we hunt them down and put them to work trying to pay that off? How does the train going round and round in a loop cost $270 million per annum? There's no business case. There's no business case for that. It was like the business case for the bike bridge. There was no business case for that. There was no business case for light rail to the airport. Thank God that's being canceled. I mean, there's several billion dollars there that's being canceled, even though we've spent tens of millions of dollars on feasibility studies and other nonsense. I know, I just can't. But what's interesting to me is that they couldn't get that across the line, even though they had a majority. Why didn't they just start? Order some diggers there and start? Like, they're so literally incompetent that they couldn't even start a project where they had the full majority. They couldn't even get their own business cases past themselves. Well, that's the problem with socialists, right? They believe in a command and control economy. And they think if they issue commands and control the economy, then magical things will happen. It's like Phil Twyford saying, we're going to build 100,000 new homes. Well, they didn't even get to 3,000. That's six years and they didn't even get to 3,000. Well, Phil Twyford had a blinder through that six years. He started off at number three or four. Now he's number 50 and he only just got his seat by 120 votes. Yeah. I mean, the guys are functional, idiot, really. Yeah, barely functional. I mean, he's just completely in it and he was ahead of KiwiBuild. Yeah. And no wonder it was a complete and utter failure. I mean, there's some great videos of him, you know, bloviating about how fantastic this KiwiBuild is and, you know, you've just got to do it. It's the right thing to do. And out of that he goes on and on and on. Someone should resurrect all of those videos, put them all together into a classic hits of Phil Twyford or classic hits of Grant Robertson, classic hits of Chris Hipkins and play it back to these fours. Well, from the politicians, they just don't seem to care about that, hey? They don't have any much accountability. They just laugh and say our thing to change and move on. Yeah. I mean, most politicians in Parliament would have said things five, 10 years ago that they don't agree with now and they just, they don't seem to have much principles. They don't have any principles. They're not principled like you, mate. They don't stick to the same beliefs over years and years. Well, you know, if evidence comes up to suggest that I might have been wrong and the unlikely event that I was wrong, then I'd change my opinion. But, you know, I'm not often wrong. Oh, geez, here we go. Anyway, the, but this new government's term has started well. I mean, it really is like sticking to the principles. It's so unlike any politics I've seen in my lifetime, more than I can remember. I just love watching the Parliament on Tuesday when Rauri Waititi bangs on in Maori and Winston Peters refused to answer the question. He says it's an insult to everybody else who doesn't speak Maori, so I'm not going to answer it and sit down. I mean, everybody will be going, that's why we voted for you, Winston. That's exactly what we want you to do. Well, I see that there's a poll out on Tuesday and Winston's gone up. Yeah. We need a poll. Why is anyone surprised about that? He's bashed the funny thing was this little Thomas Coglin who wrote the article has a little snide comment at the end of the article saying, you know, the poll was taken during the first week of the new government and Winston Peters attacked the media. Hello, Thomas. Hey, he went up in the polls. You all whined and moaned and complained and said he was wrong and it wasn't true and we're not biased and we're not bribed and we're not bent. And everyone else said, yeah, we like, what Winston says? Well, that's the thing, he's gone from 6% to 8% in a month, whatever it is. In a month? Yeah, and he's going to read that. He's wise enough to go, well, I'm just going to keep doing this. So you're not going to see him stifling. Didn't he insult Madam of Davidson on Tuesday in the house as well? Yep. David, I think he called her something about a woke lefty shill. And that's enhanced today. Yep, yep, that sure is. And I think Jerry Brownlee pulled him up and said, you realise, of course, to the members that what you say here is recorded in the hand side. And I think Winston Peters just said, you bet it is, you know. He's probably already jumped up another point, Kev. Probably. From Tuesday to something. Look, I'll tell you what, if the Maori Party and the New Zealand First spend the next three years fighting, it can only be good for both of them. Well, I did see the Maori Party had gone up in that poll as well. Yeah, well, the thing is, they're fighting doing their stuff. That stops Labour winning those seats back again. And New Zealand First opposes it, and they go up. And so they look like they're going to, you know, if they keep going up and they keep on hitting home runs like they are, then they could be increased in the next election and be hilarious. It's good to see not just two massive parties dominating. I mean, they're still massive compared to the rest, but, you know, it would be nice to get to the point where it wasn't just either Labour or National, it could be a combo. If you remember rightly on one buddy's thing a few months ago and I asked what's your ideal party structure. And I said what mine was. Mine was that we had a three-way coalition with National Act and New Zealand First with Act and New Zealand First on about the same amount. Well, you're there. Pretty much came true, didn't it? Oh, well, you must be happy, mate. You must be enjoying life, reading the book, left howling on Twitter and loving it. Yeah, I'm loving watching them all, you know, especially Simon Wilson, he writes an article on the National Party's role on Tuesdays. Yeah, whatever, Simon, you know, go back to cycling. Maybe your Lycra is pinching you. You know, he seems to be a grumpy old communist. Oh, I like reading Russell Brown's tweets. He can't get more outraged. He was strangely silent for six years, though. Oh, yeah. I mean, that's one thing you one thing you can't say about me is that I haven't been silent with parties that are, you know, theoretically, I'm on side with. I kicked them just as hard as I would other parties. No, no, I always liked that approach of your political writing, Cam, was that you bash both sides. And that's the way we all should be. We should need to lose the partners in this. If your team's been crappy, you need to abuse them. If they're doing good things, you need to applaud them on both sides. Because all politicians are terrible. You know, they're mostly in it for themselves. People used to say to me, you know, Cam, you're attacking the National Party, you know, you need to dial it back and do the right thing. And I'd say, no, I want them to be better. That's why I'm criticising them. I want them to be better. And it's the same reason why I criticised the Labour Party or I want them to all be better, try harder. Yeah. And I think generally people are aiming for the rule, aiming for the same thing in the end, you know, less human suffering, more, more, you know, better outcomes for people. It's just the pathway to get there. We fight over. Yeah. So really all of us should bash both sides. Metaphorically bash both sides. Yeah, they need to be fighting. All right, Jimmy, thanks for your thoughts this week. And next week's the last week of the crunch for this year. And but we'll be back next year. But I'll pull you up next week as well. Thanks, mate. No worries. Thanks. Welcome to Cam's Buddies, Marcus. How was the sailing trip on the weekend? It was fairly sprightly on Sunday on the way back and beating into wind all the way. We got shook up a little bit. It was awesome. We had a great time. We know it's a white hecky and hang out there and drink a bit of whiskey and smoke a few cigars. Should be any, mate. Yeah, I should have. I was a bit busy on the weekend. Well, talking about beating into the wind, it seems the government is discovering all sorts of fiscal cliffs and landmines and all these sorts of things. The great financial genius of Grant Robertson is being exposed on a daily basis. What are your thoughts on those? Well, I mean, they're a bit silly if they're surprised by it, to be fair. Weird, well, I mean, I knew that all the promises I'm making couldn't be funded. I mean, what I understand the majority of it is that we just short funding. They haven't promised it all the way out. So they're going to pay for a certain policy for a period of time. I mean, then after that, who knows? But they're always planning on running them all the way through, so they're always short. But I mean, hey, Labour was just planning to do what they always do, mate, print some more money. I think the only politician who said anything before the election about this was Winston Peters. And he kept saying in his meetings and speeches and interviews, well, we can't agree to anything until we see the box because we don't know what the state of the box is. But it appears that it's not good. And it seems that he was right on that. I think David Seymour was making some noises as well. And Nicola Willis was, I think, as well. But basically, yeah, Winston was obviously a bit more cagey about the whole thing. And like you said, he didn't want to do any grander promises because he didn't know what the books were like. But I mean, if anyone else did this sort of thing, it's called fraud, you know? If you have a budget, you have to be open and honest in the budget. And that means being clear about what you're planning to spend over the next forthcoming time and not hiding it away in the pages of the budget and making it difficult for anyone to see. The whole point is it's supposed to be nice and clear. So everyone knows what's going on. And the previous government just has been anything but transparent. And this is just another example of that. You know, these guys, they're trying to be clever. And no one likes anyone that's clever, you know? Tricky Dickie. Or Tricky Grant, as the case may be. We got laws that were put in place in 1990 after National took over and opened the books and found there was a massive, you know, the BNZ was tipping over. There was just a whole lot of stuff that was going on then. That was bold, wasn't it? Yeah, and they passed the Fiscal Responsibility Act. But there's no penalties. There's no danger for a politician who cooks the books. And Grant Robertson's been cooking up a storm when it comes to the books. Like I said, mate, it's fraud. If I ran my business that way and was trading in solvent, then I don't have the luxury of just printing more money. You know, I have to actually answer to shareholders and likes. They're off. And at the end of it all, if you're promising the world and you have no way of paying for it, that's literally fraud by definition, you know? And these guys should be held under law. Just because it's government. Why are they not held the same law as commercial businesses? I mean, you mentioned there, the BNZ, they were bailed out way back then from my memory. And then they later sold off. Yeah, so all of our tax money, all this small business owners and that sort of money, all of that money went to pay off another private company. And then they sold it and basically got all that money for free and it's just fraud. The whole thing is fraud, you know? It's just a big Ponzi bloody scam. It really irritates me because money in my business, I have to be fiscally responsible because I've got no backstop, you know? If I make bad decisions, then those bad decisions will come back and bite me in the arse. And cash flow is always a problem. It seems that these government types, they just don't care about cash flow. They just get more cash, you know? Just print some more. That's why we're in a state we are in the world today, you know? And that's a hard point about the CBDC because these guys, they'll have a party specifically because they're all following the world economic forum mantra and they all want to go to digital accounts and they want the US and the NZ dollar to crash and all fed money around the world to crash. And this is just a mechanism they're using to make sure that happens. And it's frustrating because little guys like us, you know, trying to make ends meet for our families and their sibling, we don't have that luxury, mate. We have to abide by the rules. We have to do the right thing, otherwise we get hauled up before the courts and bankrupted. But no, no, if you're in the government, it's all good. Don't worry, like you said, there's no penalty for these guys to be shysters and hide the books, which is exactly what Grant Robinson's done. There's no doubt about that. I mean, I think possibly there's a little bit of policy can go on with regards to national as well. Obviously, this was always going to be the line. They were going to drum out afterwards because I can look a bit better. They'll put in, I understand you're doing another little budget before Christmas to show the true side of the finances. But I mean, I doubt that this is such a surprise for Nicola Willis. I'm pretty certain she knew all about this, but she's playing the politics and this is the way to do it. Anyway, it's all smoke and mirrors and these guys are just the elites and us little fellows will just keep doing what we're doing. Well, yeah, I mean, I guess we just have to grin and bear it and hope that the government are smart enough to back us out of ongoing costs, minimize the expenditure of the existing stuff and start getting the economy actually back on track. They just need to cancel the money. They need to cancel all of those dumb policies that they said they were going to do, just cancel and say, no, we're not doing that anymore. We're saving money because that's exactly what they were supposed to be doing. They got voted in to be fiscally more responsible with our money and that doesn't mean printing more. So they've got to do that. They've got to actually halt it and say, no, we're not doing this anymore. This particular project, I mean, I had a look and some of it was Farmac, I think, and I mean, Farmac, they don't need any more money and transport, I mean, transport does, but they just need to be a little bit clever about how they're going to spend this money and make sure that we've got the money to spend rather than just printing it. And the way that they do that is to support SMEs, supporting SMEs to make more money because if they're making more money, you're getting more tax, therefore you can actually work your way out of the hole as opposed to just digging the hole deeper with a spade, you know? Exactly. And as usual, Marcus, you've cut right through all the bullshit and got to the nub of the issue. And before you start, you have to come over and have a spoke, mate. I'm going to start calling you on it because you haven't come over yet. No, that's right. Yes, you do. Once my head clears and I've got a bit of bandwidth and we'll definitely do it. I'm not going anywhere over the Christmas break. So maybe we can catch up during then. All good. Yep. All right, Marcus, thank you for calling. All right, buddy. See you. Good afternoon, Miles. Welcome to Cam's Buddies. Good afternoon, Cam. How are you today? Box of birds. Getting better and betterer. Betterer and betterer. Well, at least it's betterer and betterer than the landmines that are currently exploding. Well, that's exactly what I want to talk about with you, the landmines or fiscal cliffs, as Christopher Luxem calls them, that the government is discovering on almost a daily basis and what your thoughts are on those. Well, let's take a little walk down memory lane. It's 2008 and Helen Clark is about to have an election in November and Finance Minister Cullen of Rich Prick's fame suddenly buys Kiwi Rail, a stripped-out Kiwi Rail, stripped out of all its cash producing activities from toll, and he spends 690 million doing it. And this is four months, yes, four months before a general election, which would turf Helen Clark and the left, including Finance Minister Cullen out of power. So he spent 690 million, and that we haven't even added the $140 million worth of debt and the promise that the tracks needed for $60 million worth of upgrades. So financial vandalism is not unknown to the left. They've done this before. It's despicable. Yeah, I understand toll holdings has a party every year on that date, celebrating how much they ripped off the New Zealand government. Because Price Waterhouse, who are not slow with these things, valued it a mere few months later at 388 million. So that's just economic vandalism beyond belief. And so that's memory lane, John Key's government subsequently spent $3.5 billion on the railways. So let's consider this current government. This current government has come into power a few short weeks ago. And before they came into power, even when there was a caretaker government, contracts were being signed by bureaucrats that actually were going to rear up their ugly heads and hobble the so-called changes that the National Lead Coalition wanted to do. And the point I'm trying to make is that this has happened before in New Zealand and it's solely sheeted home to labor. And if you look at three, five, 10 waters, and the fact that people have been signed up to five-year contracts and let alone all the buildings and other infrastructure needed, it begins to make me feel very, very sick. Yeah, I mean, I suspect there's going to be even more land mines out there lying around waiting for someone to stand on them. Labor does have a habit of doing this. And I think what they've done is they've banked on National being the party of the status quo, which of course they usually are and they're not unwinding anything because it's too hard. But it seems to me that Christopher Luxon and Nicola Willis are prepared to grasp the nettle and yank it out by the roots and start a bonfire on all of this ridiculous expenditure. And that is pleasing to see. Oh, look, we need it. We desperately need it. It's better to lance the boil. These costs that labor has tried to make permanent are things that are going to cripple the country in the long term. And I commend National. I think that we are seeing some real steel here and they're prepared to actually pay the price to pay these people out of contract. And I think that any contract signed by a caretaker government which basically labor was while the coalition negotiations were going on, all those contracts need to be scrutinized because I don't think they had the authority to sign them. Well, that's right. I mean, you can't sign people up for five-year contracts in the last, you know, effectively the last three months or six months of your government with an election bearing down on you, all of those things should be null and void. And the government should say, well, okay, we're going to sack you all. Here's a month's pay. See you later. And if you don't like that, well, Sue us, we've got lots more money because we've just saved it from all of your salaries. Yep, and it's not only the poor people that got sucked in by labor trying to embed things. It should be the civil servants as well. They should be paying the price for this. I'm extremely angry that civil servants were signing contracts right up into the last few days and even after the election, that affected outcomes years in advance. And I think they knew that to get out of these contracts, there was going to have to be some sort of payment of, and I just find that really irresponsible. It's totally irresponsible, but that's what Grant Robertson has done to us. Him and Ardern and Hipkins have begot the nation and then gaslit us along the way saying that they're good custodians of the New Zealand economy and the evidence suggests that they're not. Yeah, everything we heard is, oh, yeah, this is great. And listen, I lay the blame fairly at the feet of the mainstream media as well. What on earth sort of a job they were doing? I'll tell you what job they were doing. They were just singing the praises and they weren't doing their job looking into it because the other thing that I'd like to raise is not only the land mines where contracts were signed for people's employment with the likes of Three Waters and other ideological pushes like centralizing the polytechs and instituting a Maori health authority. All of that was ideological and contracts were signed so that it was going to be very difficult, if not impossible to go back. I'd also like to look at some of the funding decisions that Robertson made. He's clearly short-funded a lot of projects and what this means is that projects were set up, funded for a year or some other short term and then in the economic statements, the funding for these in the long term wasn't taken into account simply because he had set up a project but only funded it for a short time and that's the other sort of economic vandalism. It's just big as belief really. Well, it big as belief but it doesn't really. That's the thing. I mean, Grant Robertson I think is going to go down in history as New Zealand's worst finance minister which is really saying something because Rob Muldoon made a pig's ear of finance when he was the finance minister and for Grant Robertson to do worse than him is quite some achievement. It's shocking in fact. It seems that everywhere that you look, there's been financial mismanagement of the economy and is it any wonder we're in the doldrums? All this money is being shoveled into non-productive areas. I mean, we need to actually hold our heads up, bite the bullet, get rid of all this ideological clack-trap that Labor tried to implement with the polytechs, with the three, five, 10 waters and with the health authorities. We need to actually get rid of that and get back to basics with actual value propositions and measurement of successes. I mean, don't forget one of the first things that Labor did when they took over in the healthy area was remove all those measuring sticks which used to be published so that you could tell how good your DHB was doing against targets. Well, that all went. We can't have those targets ideologically. It's not right. I mean, good Lord. What gets measured gets done and if you're not measuring it, nothing gets done and we've seen that the health system go backwards despite multi-billions of dollars. When we did the $1.9 billion for mental health go, is anything being built? Have we got anything extra for it? I think they've got a very flash building in Gisborne that added, I don't know, two beds for millions of dollars spent. I mean, look, it beggars belief and everywhere it seems that you look in the economy, the government has pursued an ideological pathway and that ideological pathway has been poorly thought out and poorly funded in many cases and this is what I'm calling the fiscal cliff. The landmines are the likes of three, five, 10 waters where contracts have been signed but fiscal cliffs are where the money literally runs out and you've got all this infrastructure and people but no budget going into the future. I mean, how on earth is that not economic vandalism? Yep, well, I'm starting to have a serious thought that we need a rewrite of the Fiscal Responsibility Act with some pretty hefty penalties and I'm not talking fines because they always mitigated and talked their way out of it. I think the penalties should be prison and prohibition from holding public office ever again permanently if they cause fiscal mischief like these guys have done. And it's not the first time, that's my point. In 2008, Cullen did a very good job of spending every last red cent. And he gloated about it too, he said we've spent it all, the cupboards beer. And that's right and how on earth did he get away with that? And John Key's government was on the back foot from the very beginning and austerity programs, et cetera. So guess what's going to happen now? We're on the back foot economically speaking right now and the national government is going to work with its partners and act and its partners in New Zealand first and they're going to deliver a program and it's going to be tough and you could call it austerity but it's going to be economically responsible and we're going to get New Zealand back on track. And then everyone's going to go, oh man, those years were tough but we're doing well now. And guess what? Oh, they're going to try and elect a Labour government again because the mainstream media is going to once again highlight people living in cars. Something they never did under the Labour government. No, all living in motels as they are now. I mean, that's the thing is that the media are part of the problem. And I guess that's why- That's exactly my point. I guess that's why Reality Check Radio exists. And Reality Check Radio is a naveling message of economic vandalism to get out there and people can really think about whether their taxpayer money is getting value at the level of, say, for example, the Polytex where my dollars have gone to spend on a centralized management system, flash salaries, new cars. And what about the courses on the ground? I'd rather do something to improve productivity. What about welding courses? What about mechanics courses? No, no, no. The money's gone on three bureaucrats and however many brand new cars. Oh, and you just have a look at the amalgamated Polytex with their, you know, Bukeko name or whatever it is. And there's all these brand new masters running around all signed written up. That would have cost an absolute fortune. I'm not sure how all these Polytex need to have all these people with cars. And the funny thing is, they're not actually part of the Polytex, they're part of some sort of ideologically centralized management group. It's just exasperating in the extreme. And there's our favorite bug bear, T-Tari Pu-Ricky, the Tari Pukeko, as I like to call it. The firearms authority that spent millions of dollars on branding and everything. Now they're all going to have to change it and actually call it what everybody should call it, the firearm safety authority. And that's another thing where there are some real fiscal clicks in that firearm safety authority. Is there any funding for it to continue? I seriously doubt it. And the problem that they're going to get is they've seriously underestimated the amount of budget they need. And this is reflected not only in this department, but in many other of the ideologically driven schemes that Labor has, or centralization schemes that Labor has instituted. And I'm afraid to say that I think that this is going to hurt a lot of people. And a lot of people are going to be angry because you can't change these schemes without affecting people's jobs. And that anger should rightly be directed at Grant Robertson, Jacinda Ardern and Hipkins. And I hope, and this is my fervent belief, that these people never touch the range of power again. Well, let's hope so. I mean, there's some seriously things that have gone wrong here. And I hope that Christopher Luxon, as the Prime Minister, doesn't shirk his responsibilities in holding those responsible to account. I think that there is going to be some steel needed. And I think there's going to be a lot of squealing because I'm sorry to say, I think people are going to suffer because they are going to lose their jobs because it's been poorly thought out by the left. It's, as I said, I'm harping on. It's an ideological project and the centralization hasn't worked. It's cost more money and much more money than any purported savings. And like I said, there's fiscal cliffs where the money will just run out and it's going to be terrible. And I think you're absolutely right. And that's about all we've got time for today with Cam's buddies. So we'll be having one more show next week and we'll have some sort of, I don't know, Christmas and New Year type topic for the buddies. What do you think? Sounds fantastic. Let's have a, what are you doing on your holidays topic? Something like that. Something a bit light rather than the serious stuff. Yes, indeed. All right, thank you. And I'll talk to you next week, Miles. Thank you. Thank you. 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