 If Reality Check Radio enriches your day in life, support us to keep bringing you the content, voices, perspectives and the dose of reality you won't get anywhere else. Visit www.realitycheck.radio forward slash donate. Michael Bassett and I had a wonderful look at the history of our parliament before the election and in that discussion he declared that the Ardern-Hipkins regime were the worst government in living history. I'll check in with him to see if he still thinks that and then I'll ask him about the challenges that Christopher Luxon government faces. He joins me on the line now. Welcome back to The Crunch, Michael Bassett, it's good to have you. Pleasure to be here. Now before the election we had a discussion and you decided or told me that you thought that the previous government was the worst government in modern history and I pushed you a little bit further and you had to think about it but then you agreed that perhaps was the worst government we've ever had. Do you still agree with that? Yes I do. I mean it was just a terrible government. They've done no work prior to coming to office. They had more than 200 committees trying to devise things for them to do after they got to office. They had some baggage and nonsensical ideas about the treaty and a bit of an approach to welfare which if they'd known anything about Labour's tradition they'd have known it was wrong. Namely that the best way to fix welfare problems is to shower them with money and I mean the evidence has been there for donkey's ears that the more money you shower out the more people become dependent upon it and decide that free money is easier than having to work for it and I mean that government was so badly prepared intellectually bereft and had read almost nothing about their Labour Party antecedents and therefore I think they deserve that appellation the worst government in modern history. If you look at Grant Robertson he took New Zealand's debt from $5 billion to something like $95 billion with the media cheering him on like he was God's gift to accounting and then we see in recent weeks this huge uproar over $13,000 worth of entitlements for the Prime Minister's accommodation and they've written more words about Christopher Luxon's accommodation than they have ever written about Grant Robertson's financial prowess. Well that's absolutely right but then what else do you expect from the modern media? Most of them have so little academic training they don't read much they are sort of born lefties they think that the world owes everybody a living and therefore they're not inclined to believe anything that comes out of Luxon. I think to be fair to everybody that Chris Luxon handled that business of his entitlement for his apartment very stupidly. I mean the obvious thing was that he should have just taken the same entitlement that all the other ministers and MPs took. Namely I forget what the actual sum is but it's specified there was a little top up if you were Prime Minister and I mean he was entitled to the same sum as anybody else. We see this pervasive attitude within the media. I mean Duncan Garner wrote last week about the Warner Brothers discovery decision to let News Hub die and he said did Warner Brothers Discovery HQ make every effort to save News Hub letting it die is not the Kiwi way and it seems that he thinks that the Kiwi way is the state paying the huge salaries he's earned when working for those organisations. And if you watch the media all the time and I think you're as good a watcher of it as I am, that's the prevailing thinking any problem that anybody has the government should fix. I mean get real don't people have a responsibility for their own lives and the same goes for business. That's a private outfit TV3 News Hub why on earth should the government come rushing in to prop them up when they foul their nest? Well and I don't think TV3 has ever made a profit in its entire existence so you know it's shoveling good money after bad. TV1's not doing much better either by the look of it. Well that's probably why Simon Power quit as the chief executive he knew what was coming. Like will be. But the media I guess are a bellweather for the challenges that Christopher Luxon's government faces. Now you've written an article on your website Bassett Brash and Hyde about the challenges of Christopher Luxon's government apart from doing stupid things like you mentioned about the accommodation. I mean he should have just held his ground and it would have died but once he vacillated once he turned around his position in the media and then knew well we just have to put some pressure on Christopher Luxon and he'll do a runner. Yes that is always the danger with that but I mean the real thing is that he hadn't thought it through before it came up and became public. Of course he was entitled to the same amount that all other ministers and MPs are entitled to when he has to live in his own accommodation in Wellington and pay the upgoings on that. But he didn't think that through he decided that the amount of money that was paid to the prime minister which was substantially higher than the others got was all okay and above board and I mean if he'd gone for just the same entitlement everybody else had who could second guess it but instead he backtracked on the whole thing and now he is the only minister living in his own property who isn't getting any. It was bad politics all around from Luxon to the media to the opposition growing about it as well and now we've got the ridiculous situation where this Ardern created board that's supposed to look after this property is telling us all as taxpayers there's 30 million dollars which we know will be 50 million dollars. It needs to you know in repairs well if it was a business looking at that proposition we've got a house it's dilapidated it needs significant repairs to be brought up to stand we just make the decision to bold the stupid thing and build something else for much less than 30 million. Well the trouble is that you're talking to somebody who actually is responsible for a premier house in the first instance and that being my ministerial house was actually in the grounds of premier house and I used to have to drive past this thing every day and slowly it was sort of crumbling and it was the first prime ministerial house in New Zealand Julius Vogel had it in the 1870s and in fact it was inhabited by all the prime ministers through until Mickey Savage who had no family and decided he didn't want to live in it in 1935 whereupon they let it be used as the dental clinic and came the sort of murder house was what it used to be called until the need for dental nurses got so low that they no longer needed the training facility and pulled out whereupon the house started to crumble and here am I going backwards and forwards every day looking at this thing and discovering that Fran Wilde when she became an associate minister of conservation in 1987 had banged a preservation order on it as an historic house so clearly pulling it down wasn't an option and I thought right I'm chairman of the 1990 commission we're going to be making grants to for various purposes around the country Auckland Wellington Wanganui in particular and Auckland and so I put up a million dollars from the lottery grants board and said this will be a present to Wellington to have this house restored and we did and it cost a little bit more than a million but the thing was functional and Jeffrey Palmer moved in as Prime Minister early in 1990 the notion that it's 30 million dollars is frankly just ridiculous to fix it I'll bet my boots that for two or three million dollars you could get that place completely functional again it is an historic house it's probably I mean you've no idea what we discovered in it I mean there'd been a fire in the place that had all been boarded up I remember going and having a look at all these burn things dating back to Vogel's time that would be pulled out the place so anyway don't let's spend too much time on Premier House maybe it needs another fire a good long one no well it's it's in the historic house I mean I well they burned down probably yes they do but if they can be preserved I don't think they should be they should be allowed to burn down no and if for a relatively small sum of money that's fairly significant place and it's it's a got very good entertainment facilities in a time when I launched a couple of books at Premier House a couple of my political biographies and I've been to lots of functions there and it's worthy of preservation so long as it doesn't cost 30 million well you know it's it's a little known fact that in 1992 I lived for about eight or nine months at Vogel House in lower hut oh really yes yes well Doug Graham lived there at the time and I was moving to Wellington and so I needed some accommodation and I stayed there you know it was an interesting insight into how ministers live and that the other time of day that they get up and go to work and you know like I can remember Doug having his boulder cereal in a cigar at something like five in the morning I've been in the morning that sounds awfully early for Doug he didn't nothing moved him very rapidly oh well no he was always up around 5am having breakfast and that he was gone by 6am yeah so you know you don't get to know these things unless you're actually in the household so but that was an interesting experience living there with the ghost apparently yes I went there on a number of occasions when Longie was first and but Longie wanted to come back to town to be closer to his lover and well he had crown limousines to car tour around I don't know why that was a problem oh a drive your own car was better well it's a famously apparently Robert Muldoon used to drive his Triumph 2000 down the Hut motorway inebriated you know basically surrounded by police making sure he didn't crash well on the night when he called the snap election in 1984 the chief whip ran down into the basement and let the tires down on his car yeah to stop him from going home they thought hell with an election coming up it'd be just our luck for him to be caught speeding or doing something crazy yeah and they're totally so anyway let's get on to these challenges that you think that the Luxon government faces well they're manifold in my view uh probably the biggest single one that is the bureaucracy yeah uh I think I mean we've noticed that there are leaks taking place all the time I mean that's a terrible thing to do to leak a cabinet paper before it's even been seen by the minister let alone seen by the cabinet is a high crime and misdemeanor in terms of how civil servants should operate and they have clearly gotten ahead of steam on and I think it's because they had so much to do with the policy of the Labor Party when they were in office that six years they were there that they've come to trick the Labor policies as though they were their own and they don't like the thought that they're going to be unraveled many of them have been unraveled now more will be and there's a substantial change of direction but worse than that there's nearly 16 000 more of them on the payroll all enjoying quite luxurious by comparable standards in the private sector incomes and they don't want to lose their jobs and so consequently they're determined to make life as difficult for this government as possible and there seems to be as yet I don't think there's a new head of the civil service I think the public service commissioner was was going to retire whether he has I don't know he's announced his retirement but he's he's still there yeah and and they haven't got a successor as far as I know and I mean that successor has one tough job he's going to have to convince a very unprepossessing collection of heads of departments several of whom should have offered their resignations when the government changed to actually behave and make sure that their employees follow the rules like supporting the actions not out campaigning for them but doing what the new ministers want you know I mean a classic case of that is this repeal of the rather stupid smoking legislation that labor brought in and we culminated in hipkins screeching across the house this policy will kill people you know there was never any screeching when other policies that he did that would demonstrably kill people but it was just ludicrous because the smoking rates were dropping anyway they were below the targets that were set many years ago for smoking rates and it was an ideological burp to paraphrase I think it was Michael Cummins David Longy David Longy yeah it was either one of the one or other of them the only two brains that they had between them you know so it was a ridiculous policy that there was no need for it at all and now we've got this claim that oh Maori are going to be disadvantaged as they smoke more than others and that they ignore the logical conclusion that you come to which is well if Maori are going to be so terribly affected by this well why don't we just legislate to say no Maori can buy cigarettes can you imagine the outcry if that yes I can imagine the outcry quite easily oh I was the first Minister of Health to introduce the tobacco tax to lift it in the budget of 1984 at that time about 28 percent of the population smoked and as the rate of tax has gone up the number of smokers has fallen substantially and it's down to six percent now yeah we have to say that that policy is working I mean you don't see many people smoking these days it's rather rare and if they are smoking then they've had to pay a fortune for it so the policy that the Labour Party had introduced a huge sort of a sledgehammer to crack a nut and besides it hadn't come into force yet anyway exactly and it was ridiculous and so the the new government kicked it and the problems I mean there's even a full of a cartoon in the herald this morning that has somebody holding a fag very sad and unnecessary nonsense but that's the media you see there is much agitators as these embedded civil servants who think that the policy ideas are theirs and they're sacrosanct but what we saw with the Labour government over the last six years or the preceding six years was this locking in of spending with no accountability for a where the money is going to come from in the future and b no accountability for is this you know effective ways to spend taxpayers dollars and in the moment the new government comes in and says right we're going to remove that spending or we're going to remove that it's calamitous the world's ending you know the spending means that kids are going to starve you know before we had free lunches at schools how did the kids get to school and what did they eat then well I mean you know it's not enough the appearance actually accepted some responsibility for parents I mean and even if you're a beneficiary the benefit is actually paid for the kid and for looking after the child not for lying in bed and bonking or whatever it is you're choosing to do when you up making your kids lunch and sending it to school making sure it goes to school I should say but I mean the the money that is paid on behalf of the child is treated as though it is a parental entitlement by far too many people and I am of the opinion that until such time as you follow the money you're not going to get parents doing their job properly it is possible to marry up attendance rates at school with benefit payments and as soon as you started to deduct money from benefits because the kids weren't sent to school they all of a sudden turn up at school didn't they I think you they certainly will and I think the parents will have and will suddenly realize that they have a vested interest in getting the kid to school but life has just been made too easy and I blame Carmel Sepoloni we were talking earlier about the worst government she is unbelievably the worst minister of social welfare this country has ever had she doesn't even begin to understand what the welfare state was about well I mean the welfare state was always designed as a safety net yes and this last government turned it into a trampoline that's right I mean it was it was a what do they say a hand up rather than a hand out I mean you made the comment earlier that we're creating a society where people expect the government to solve all of their problems and that comes back to welfareism in a large in the way that it's been extended and extended and extended I mean working for families is a classic example and John Key railed against it said it was communism by stealth and then when he was elected not only did he keep it he expanded it you know and and that's the thing is that people then once they're getting something from the state they expect that to come every week and it becomes a death cycle for the taxpayer because there's less and less people inclined to become taxpayers and more and more people who become tax takers yep absolutely I mean that was some of the reforms that you and Roger Douglas oversaw was to recalibrate this so that working people were rewarded for their hard work and effort their nows their intellect and all of those sorts of things rather than continuing you know under the Muldoon regime where you had some people you know paying 66 cents in the dollar yeah taxation absolutely well the trouble was it didn't last long moreover we need to acknowledge that it wasn't just ordinary folk who had their fists into the till and were taking taxpayers money farmers especially farmers and business people I mean remember all of all the import protections and things that existed and there was a license to print money especially in motor vehicles if you could get the import license for something you know that was you know waved across the desk of Robert Muldoon you ended up having a license to print vast sums of money well that that was true right from the word go and the awarding of import licenses was something of a scandal I was told once by somebody who was present when Walter Nash was prime minister prime minister for god's sake was still deciding on import licenses and there was a meeting and though all these things that had put in applications for licenses and Walter would say no no no and then there came tinned Canadian salmon Walter said no hang on a minute minister says one of the officials lots of working folk rather treat tinned Canadian salmon as a special treat at the weekend oh said Walter oh oh well okay we'll allow a certain amount to come in so indeed they did and I mean that was the scientific nature of import controls they were chaotic moreover some of it was it was one of the few examples of corruption I had a relative who made elements for water heaters and so on oh yeah he used to have to get import licenses and they all tracked down to Wellington regularly to see the industries and commerce department to make applications and my uncle made inquiries of a friend how did you go about things oh well if you see Bert somebody or other if Bert's the official you see this is the technique you'll make your case to him he'll then say excuse me I've got to nip out the back to the toilet you'll discover that his top drawer of his desk is slightly open if you drop a 10 pound note in there you'll get your license and my uncle said indeed he discovered that Bert had his drawer open a little bit and he thought well why is everybody else getting licenses and I'm not so he dropped his 10 pound note in and I mean scarcely a prince's ransom you wouldn't call it corruption on a grand scale except that that official clearly was doing quite well out of regulation yeah I mean people have you know long said that there's no corruption in New Zealand and I've always said every time the Transparency International report comes out with these guys running around with blindfolds on there's so much corruption particularly at local government level I mean there was a famous case where a lot of the footpaths contracts and things like that were going to this little flea outfit that suddenly became a multimillion dollar turnover company all of the basis of fixing footpaths in Auckland well the only case I ever saw when I was actually a city councillor which I was in the early 70s involved the only corruption involved contracts and we formed the impression the works committee that the particular engineer that had signed off the awards of contracts was a bit corrupt and he didn't stick around much longer his position was made too hot to handle and he cleared off but I wondered sometimes as to whether the works area is an area where corruption still exists like I know some good examples personally having been involved in tendering for some contracts particularly in defense and that is absolutely rife with you know the only word you can use is to call it corruption but nobody ever seems to do anything about it but there's these cosy contracts that keep getting led to you know guys who you know were never any great shake as an officer in the in the military and now have resigned their commissions gone out on their own they've obtained you know their exclusive rights to a particular product or something like that and all of a sudden that's what gets selected all the time it's like this cozy little arrangement it's all right you can go out into the private sector but we'll look after you by ordering all of your products well maybe but remember New Zealand is a tiny society and when it comes to finding people who will contract to do things it's quite difficult sometimes I mean councillors I remember the councillors when I was on the works committee saying well who are you going to get to do this job that we had that we wanted done and the truth was that contractors went running around barefoot and sometimes a little bit of corruption crept in in order to get a job done but when I say New Zealand is a little society I think everything is little you've cited some examples I've cited some examples but it's small scale stuff compared with overseas corruption oh yeah it's not it's not it's not endemic and it's isolated but it it's particularly lucrative for those involved but you're right about New Zealand being a small society and New Zealand is even though they travel overseas it's like they travel overseas with blinkers on and they don't see that New Zealand is a total population of around five million people even if you add the those who are New Zealanders but live overseas which is thought to be another one and a half million people even at six and a half million people that's the size of an Australian city you know Melbourne and Sydney yeah and Brisbane's approaching I think Brisbane's approaching five million as well so we are tiny but we like to think we're bigger than we are and we're like trying to live a first world lifestyle with really a second world income and in some respects a third world income and a fourth world income approach to working I mean if if ever there's an opportunity not to work you can count on Kiwis putting their hands forward yeah I mean we look at some of these roading projects so they're a glaring example because and also the rail projects they're eye watering sums of money that cannot be sustained by the population of New Zealand in total and much less just Auckland city but they they seem to be these gold gilt edged projects that are mega billions of dollars and no prospect of ever returning anything to the ratepayers or the taxpayers who have to fund these massive boondoggles just on that count the number of jobs that have been finished within the contracted amount could be counted on the fingers of one hand take Auckland the city rail link which is now almost ruined a sizeable chunk of the city just slightly west of Queen Street and when it was first mooted as a Len Brown project it was 2.8 billion by the time they got round to signing the contract it was 4.4 billion and last sign of accounts it was 5.6 billion and it'll be well over 6 billion by the time it's finished now what on earth has gone wrong I mean how how can a country like New Zealand operate successfully if it can't calculate its infrastructure costings properly there's any number of of projects that you can look at that you know again a Len Brown one the whitewater rafting and canoe center at Manukau build it and they'll come you know they didn't nobody's come it's it you can drive past there on any day of the week and you won't see anybody there you could fire a shotgun across the water and not hit a single thing it's insane we had Michael Wood you know the Labour Transport Minister proposing a cycle bridge that was going to cost as much as a replacement for the Harbour Bridge they were going to build it beside it was insane they spent something like 25 million dollars scoping it like how on earth do you get to those sorts of money you take the northern busway extension from Constellation to Otiha Valley it's a distance of three and a half kilometers it took seven years to build it it's five lanes on either side but what's ridiculous at either end of that five lanes on either side it's two lanes on either side so all they succeeded in doing is moving the traffic jam from Otiha to Constellation 3.5 kilometers closer to the city you're quite right I drove it just the other day and it's bizarre you come sweeping down the new piece and then you get near to Constellation Drive and it all falls up because cars are fluffing in from the left off Constellation Drive and everything is blocked then until Milford. Yeah it is totally an appalling design they go from five lanes to two lanes and it's the same the other way around for the all those heading home to Whangapura each night they get to Constellation they spread out across five lanes and then they're back into two at Otiha and crawling all the way to Silverdale just ridiculous but it cost moonbeams to do it it's a good idea I mean the busway is a brilliant idea I'll support busways all day long over and above trains because as soon as you get something happen with the train line that's it the whole system's closed down because nothing can move at least with buses they can drive on a side road it's much more maneuverable yes I mean that's the problem with trains and yet Michael Wood that same sainted Michael Wood was going to give us a 30 billion dollar centre of the city to the airport light rail no but it wasn't going to go to that this is the big lie that he told right it was never going to go to the airport it was only going to go to Mangary town centre and then you caught a bus from there to the airport that's how insane it was I hadn't picked up on that but of course its origin was so suspicious I mean by the time Len Brown had done the CRL and Phil Goff had narrowed Queen Street to nothing so that there's a whole lot of shops on either side of Queen Street with four lease signs in them and there was nothing really substantial left in the centre of the city Michael Wood was going to funnel this rail link in I mean just bizarre no thinking no sort of lateral thinking the best idea for rail to the airport I mean it's a silly idea at the best of times but the best idea was you know ironically from from a left leaning counsellor who said that that should put a spur off Pua Nui and head to the airport that way it's very short it was rural land all the way through apart from a little bit at Manukau and that would solve the problem for a fraction of the cost and of course he was held down and told he was stupid and didn't know what he was talking about but you know Mike Lee actually had a very good idea and it's a shame it's never been picked up you know it would be there would have been a lot of good ideas and the cause of his life is some I don't agree with that sure but you know that's the thing about Mike Lee is that it doesn't this is the problem with the polarization in politics just because somebody from another team has a good idea doesn't mean you should howl it down it sometimes they should be investigated and Mike Lee's one of those people who actually thinks logically about these things and says well this is ridiculous spending this much in this amount of billions of dollars wrecking the communities between the city and only hunger and then from then on he's saying no let's go out we've already got a rail line that goes through Pua Nui put a spur off that there's only about 200 houses that we need to bowl to to make that happen and then the rest of it's all rural land in a straight line directly to the airport you know well I was I've always thought that a couple hundred more of those little vans with a trailer hooked on behind that goes to your house and picks you up and trundles you off to the airport for a fee would have solved the problem anyway and sure as hell wouldn't have cost 29 billion even if he wanted to have a dedicated method of transport to those areas then allow those vans to go on a busway that you've built to go to the airport you know yes certainly well so they should go on a busway just as I think Ubers ought to be allowed to go on busways if taxis can let's just get back to Luxon you've said that it appears that he's short of solutions as well I've picked that up as well and it seems that nationals been caught flat footed on some policy areas particularly in transport with the announcements on Monday of this week where they're going to hike particular rates and you know road user charges and things but they're going to wait till the second term to do that oh that's because of because of the promise that was in effect that we won't do this in the first term and they didn't qualify it that way but of course when it comes to the second term you deal with that when that election time comes around that's why they've done that I'm sure but the essential point though which again they can't explain properly but which is understandable the user should pay there's no reason why my aged aunt who doesn't go anywhere much except in her little fliver should have to pay huge sums for bus transport if she never uses a bus or vice versa the bus user should pay the petrol tax when they never drive a car I mean a user pays is how it should be and I think that's what the government is reaching towards I don't think they're going far enough though we've got all these cycle ways and the user doesn't pay for the cycle ways oh I agree I mean I'm stunned that they've only cut that in half why I mean the cycle way stuff I mean for a kickoff most cyclists don't adhere to the cycle way policy they'll drive on the road go along Ponsonby road and how many times do you have to just about bounce a bicycle because they're not on the well interestingly I was driving down Ponsonby road yesterday I didn't see a cyclist at all and that's the thing with these cycle ways you never see any cyclists on them no no I go every every every Monday I go out to Manukau for lunch with my mates I drive down Kevin to strive which has got a cycle way built into the side of it never seen a cyclist on it not once we'll take the waterfront drive where they've done an elaborate cycle lane thing and I've several times recently encountered a cyclist on the main drag on the main tarmac yeah and the thing is with cyclists they've got their little helpers in the media people like Russell Brown and Simon Wilson and they scream blue murder if a single millimeter of cycle way is removed they're almost more entitled than MPs are for entitlements yes yes and yet they don't pay a bin except through their rates in as much as they pay rates yeah of course everybody pays rates because they pay them even through their rents if they're renting so what do you think Luxon needs to do I mean I've often said when taking office in the first hundred days literally like perhaps in the first week they need to line up all the heads of departments on the front steps of parliament and metaphorically shoot one of them in the back of the head and then say to the others now let that let that be a listen to you well they certainly need to be told Kirk did that in 1972 when I was first elected Kirk was sworn into office as prime minister and he summoned all the heads of the departments around and showed them the Labor Party's manifesto this red glossy thing and said this is what we're going to do and this is what you're going to be asked to do and follow the bureaucratic rules and do it so that was as good as what you've just suggested it didn't involve shooting anybody but you know what I mean is pick a senior civil servant someone who's who's a bit mouthy and has commented on things and get rid of them and then say to the rest if you don't follow our instructions that's going to happen to you well several should have been pushed out I mean the head of social welfare the head of education police police health of course has been subjected to so much chaotic stuff rather hard to find out who it would be that you'd be getting rid of but there should have been substantial offers of resignations but ministers they're not a particularly strong set I have to say I don't think the minister of education is great I think the minister of health is good showing some real class because he knows he knows a few few things about but coming back to the prime minister the first thing is you need excellent people in your office and judging by the quality of the press statements and the speeches that have been given so far they haven't yet found the best person if a prime minister even a new chum has a good speech writer he or she can be a hell of a lot better than otherwise they might seem I don't know if you've ever watched the original office TV program with Ricky Gervais in it and he has a portrays a character called David Brent who who sits there and intones his knowledge of management and you know human resources and all and he's singularly hopeless at everything I get the distinct impression that Christopher Luxon has studied at the right hand of David Brent and is it exhibiting a lot of Brent like characteristics and it doesn't fill me with any confidence well I I haven't seen that program and I don't know it but he certainly needs better office staff than he's got and I think it's very important that he has some people around who are old hands and who can point to the dangers of things I mean a prime minister gets caught on the hop it's in the nature of the job something suddenly blows out and left field you haven't been schooled up on it and you need somebody who's an old hand and who can say oh well I wouldn't say too much about that just yet there are two sides to that story and so you instead of waiting in and making a statement that you'll do this or do that or you you hold off until you've gotten yourself properly briefed yeah I mean there's been a huge hiring frenzied swapping out staff you know since the change of government but I've noticed a lot of familiar names turning up and you know they're less than average journalists who are now sitting there in ministers offices tuning out press releases and I'm thinking what were you thinking hiring that person did did you not read all of the things that they wrote about you when you were in opposition most certainly not yeah it's nuts and there's no sort of like there's no Heather Simpson type person in the government that all of the staff and the ministers quiver in fear at seeing that number pop up on their phone you know and you're getting a summons to that office no good is ever going to come of that summons and so you quiver in fear there doesn't seem to be anybody like that in the in the Luxon led government well too many of the ministers are quite new to parliament I mean the minister of Māori affairs has only been there for five seconds in parliament won a by-election in 2022 I think didn't they and the minister of education has not been there very long Paul Goldsmiths one of the longest serving ministers he'd done a little bit between 2014 and 2017 enough to sort of have a bit of a handle on some of the people but too many of the other ministers just are quite new chums yeah and Mark Mitchell's had a bit of experience and I understand not from Mark Mitchell himself but from people that are close to what's going on there that there's been a bit of a Donnybrook between him and the police commissioner over all of these sort of ESG type woke jobs that the police have created and the minister has said we'll get rid of them we don't need that we need people on the street and there's been quite a Donnybrook around that but I'm not sure how Costa thinks he's going to win against the minister well his cost is term his five-year term comes up next year I think doesn't it and I'll be very surprised if he's reappointed yeah I think the government is missing you know a Heather Simpson type person or from the TV show the thick of it a Malcolm Tucker type character I don't know if you've ever seen that it's a British comedy show and Peter Capaldi with his broad Scottish accent plays Malcolm Tucker who's the enforcer of the government there's some just brilliant lines from there but there doesn't seem to be anybody in the government that's doing that no no no no toughies well you know we we voted for a change of government anything's better than the Ardern Hipkins regime but but you and I are perfectionists and we like to see even people that ostensibly are our team to do better than they're currently doing and and that's the I get the tone of your article was about that that you were disappointed that they haven't done better yes well I mean I don't remember I don't come from a national party or I made no secret of having voted for act this last time but I just don't think that this government looks to be any better than most of the other national governments that promised the earth and did precious little and I mean John Key's government was terrible disappointment they were going to get us an economy the equivalent of Australia and when they get a template put in front of them about how they might go about this they backed off immediately and it was the same with Sid Holland's government the same with Keith Holyoaks the national party is always the government of the status quo I've been saying that for for years and years and years it's why I'm no longer a member of the national party apart from the fact they didn't want me because I kept pointing at them and saying you're just the government of the status quo all you do is manage Labor's reforms well that's that's absolutely right and that's more or less the thrust of my book on the state in New Zealand that's a terrible state and we're not going to get ahead until politicians get brave but even P doesn't reward bravery sadly no no in fact it rewards people that want to slide off and do their own thing and that makes life more difficult piecing a coalition together MMP forces mediocrity and indolence on parliamentarians yes I agree you and I should start a campaign against MMP I think it's it I didn't support it at the time I thought it was nuts and it's proved to be nuts but we can't get rid of it because every time we try and get rid of it the incumbent prime minister screws the scrum and loads it up with lots of other choices and everyone gets around arguing about the merits of this or that and that and that and all these other things and they don't actually vote to get rid of it and it wins by being the status quo donkey did exactly that yeah I mean I agree he was a disappointment as a prime minister someone with so much ability and his government existed so that he could get a knighthood and that's about the size of it yeah well not not as successful as it could have been which is a great pity or a friend all right well I think we've covered quite a lot of ground there Michael pleasure as always having you on the crunch and we'll get you back again whenever something historic or momentous arises and we need your sage wisdom well happy to chat and good luck with your life the next in the foreseeable future thank you very much appreciate it okay I think Michael Bassett is a national treasure he still thinks the Ardern-Hipkins regime was the worst government in living memory but he also singled out Carmel Sepoloni for a special mention and he didn't hold back let me know your thoughts about my chat with Michael Bassett by emailing inbox at realitycheck.radio or text to 2057 thank you for tuning into RCR Reality Check Radio if you like what you're listening to or dislike what you're listening to either way we want to hear from you get in touch with us now you can text us with your message to 2057 that's 2057 or email us at inbox at realitycheck.radio we would love to hear from you so connect with us today