 RCR with Paul Brennan, reality check radio. Okay, it's our first Friday political panel following the general election. So that's something. And joining the panel today is Cameron Slater and Marty Gibson, Olivia not feeling too good today. I don't know if that's related to the aftermath of this election or there's something going around who knows or a bit of both. Anyway, welcome chaps. Thanks for coming in this morning. Good morning. Morning Paul, how are you doing? Well, I don't know, are we happy? Are we? I'm a bit flat to be fair. Dad, are we flat? How are we feeling? I'm a bit flat because, you know, I sat there and watched the, you know, and of course we ran our own coverage. And I think we did a fantastic job at RCR in delivering what people needed to know as the night went on. You know, we had Morris Williamson. Of course, I was coming in from Russell and we had all the other hosts coming in and doing their stuff. And I think we did a great job. I've had so many comments from people who were saying that when we finished at 1030 and they changed over to TV one or to TV three, just how appalling it was. And, you know, you had instances like Tover O'Brien, for example, who was saying, you know, hand on heart and standing by the grave of a daily departed, who would have seen this result happening? Oh, come on. You know, like it was obvious. But I feel a bit flat because I watched Christopher Luxon and Seymour's victory speeches. And I thought that they were rather presumptuous and also rather early because, you know, at that time that Luxon was declaring victory, he was looking at like 41%. And then slowly over the next two or three hours, it crawled back to 38. something. And I think that when the specials come in, that nationals gonna lose at least one seat on the specials. They're at 50 seats at the moment. They think that they can govern with the ACT Party, with their seats, but it's a razor thin majority. And you only need one, you know, dickhead MP to lose the plot or have shonky business dealings or something like that. And all of a sudden your majority's gone. And it is rather presumptuous to have to, you know, declare that they're the winners when we don't know what the specials are. And just let's put this in perspective. The special votes are estimated to be about 540,000 special votes. Now, the Electoral Commission always underestimates that by about 50 or 60,000. So there's likely to be around 600,000 special votes. So what's that a percentage of the, of the? Well, that's a good question. And it's 20%, 20% of the vote has not been counted yet. Wow, okay. So it's not gonna change the outcome of the election, you know, the end of the tyranny, but it is gonna change how that government is going to be made up. And, you know, just talking with Matt McCartan yesterday afternoon on my show, he's pretty certain that the Maori Party is gonna pick up Tee Tai Tokarau and also Tamaki Makaro. And that will then create an overhang. And of course, we've also got the by-election. So 61 is not gonna be enough and they are gonna have to go cap and hand to Winston Peters. Well, that we, well, that should, you shouldn't be feeling that flat then, Cam. Well, I think it's just the hiatus, you know, when you're living on Coca-Cola and adrenaline and putting together the show every week and doing all that sort of stuff, you kind of don't poke your head above the parapet and then the election's finished and you poke your head up and you think, oh, okay. Well, what next? Yeah, yeah, something like that. And, you know, I've stopped drinking Coke as well. And so I don't have sugar and I don't have caffeine and, you know, maybe I just need to smoke a few more times. That's a whole nother show. Tell me about it. What was I gonna say? In terms of the overall result, I guess why I feel a little flat is I've come to the realization that, you know, so much can happen. We can be dicked around so much, unprecedented, and the needle only moves a little bit in the end. And I don't want to lose faith in my fellow countrymen, but I kind of have, I've got to say. Yeah, I mean, I've just gone around talking to people. I think the mood of the country has lifted. I mean, it helps that the sun's come out and I guess to people who voted green, that's... And the all-black swan. It's kind of the global warming taking off our nationals in charge. But I take a more positive sign than that. And I think New Zealand First's gonna have more leverage. Well, that's the only bright spot. Forget the party, but the off-setting of the tyranny is a bright spot. Yeah, well, I mean, if we can start talking about that excess deaths, up 16% in the latest data, which was in August, and once that stuff starts coming up, and I think there's just general concern about, well, how do we let that out? And that's a theme. And I think maybe that's why, you know, if I've got any feelings of what we're saying, feeling flat, it's just because I know there's all that built-up tension. And we've been living on so many lies. And there's this, oh, when the truth comes out, you can see it all in that phrase, mal-information. It's this kind of demonizing of the truth. Yeah. And, you know, the truth will set us free. The gaslighting hasn't stopped though. I mean, on election night, Chris Hipkins was saying, we did so many things. We've lifted all of these kids out of poverty. Did they bother to go and ask the parents of those kids? How does it feel that your kids out of poverty now? Because I bet you they're living in the same crappy house, in the same crappy suburb, going to the same crappy schools, doing the same crappy thing. And their parents are sick and can't go to work at a 37% disability level. Yeah. And we've saved 20,000 people. You know, how do you square that with the excess deaths going up? Well, I'm going to be interviewing someone about that early next week. And I can tell you that user, that figure is so loosey-goosey, it's laughable. Yeah. Well, I mean, the figure I'm using of 16% in August comes from the world and data. I'm talking about the 20,000, the claim that 20,000 lives were saved. It's based on nothing. No, it's disinformation, you know. And the biggest purveyors of disinformation, that is deliberate misinformation, was the government. And, you know, we've cut their throat, we've got rid of them, but like, you know, rust, these guys never sleep. And you know, Who do you vote for? The government still wins, Cap. Yeah. I mean, you look at the electorate races of the, you know, what Labour lost, they lost half their seats. But half of those people are still back in there, because of the list, which, you know, that is the system, we're stuck with MMP, it's never gonna change. I don't think I like MMP. No, it isn't, but what staggers me, and it staggered me on how much time we as a radio station had to spend to educate people about the electoral system. Good point. For the first time. And we've had MMP for 27 years. That's how dumb we are. And it staggers me that a lot of these minor parties, minor, minor parties that were out there, battled on when, and when you look at the results that they got, right? And we gave them heaps of coverage. We interviewed hundreds of candidates from all of those different parties and the things like that. The ones who didn't get interviewed, it's because they didn't want to be interviewed. Apparently we're traitors. Yeah, they had even more opportunities to get coverage than they took. But I discussed this again with Matt McCartan last night. And he said, Cam, the thing is, you and I are realists. We look at polls, we look at the numbers and we deal with reality. And I cannot emphasise that enough. There's a lot of people out there, very, very good people who were hoodwinked by deluded leaders who thought something different. And I see yesterday in the media, when Liz Gunn appeared in court and then afterwards did a stand-up, she now says that the two million votes that they were gonna get was all, she was just joking. Well, I watched when she said it and she wasn't joking. Neither was she joking when she said, if everybody in Southland votes for us, we'll get the 5%, despite the fact there aren't enough electors in Southland to do that. So it annoys me immensely that we had an opportunity to get some really good quality candidates into parliament and the narcissism and the... Histrionics, isn't it? Histrionics and everything around these, look at Matt King, for example, I told him, you're not gonna win. And we even commissioned a poll and it said he'd come forth. There was three other polls in Northland that said he'd come forth. Gunn, have a hazard of guess of where Matt King came in the voting. We know how that story. Exactly. Yeah. Do you think, and maybe this shows it up, that we really need to have a look at ourselves as a nation. We've seemed to have outsourced the responsibility for keeping reality in check to someone else. Yeah. We kinda need to just grow up and be adults for once. But we saw this during the pandemic where everyone put their hand out for the government to put money into their pockets. And then also at the same time, expected the government to tell them what to do. And we actually crippled society in ways that we cannot imagine, but manifests itself in all sorts of ludicrous things. For example, during the Women's Soccer World Cup, when their fire alarm went off at Eden Park in this absolute dalt of a man, was on TV saying, nobody told us what to do when the fire alarm went off. Hmm. Right, and they expect the government to tell them what to do. How do we get to this? How do we get to this? Well, when the masks came off, when the masks went on, you got to see who was who. And they're still talking about COVID caused this. And COVID was like a possum crossing the road. And the COVID response was driving off a cliff and an effort to avoid hitting it, basically. And I mean, I always use that figure of the 33% of registered Democrats who thought people who didn't get VAC should have their kids taken off them. I mean, there's a pathology in humanity that we've been able to ignore because we've had cheap energy and things are easy. But we're supposed to be the plucky, can-do pioneering, well, that was a while back now, nation that can make use of number eight wire and let's anything get in the way. And no, we're not. I've been reading a bit of Confucius and that's instructive, you know, in terms of the conscious building of culture. And that's what it's gonna take. And I don't know that nationals got the imagination to do it. Bek on trick. Well, I'm speaking of Bek on trick. The first thing he said he's gonna do is cancel the light rail. So that light rail is not even gonna get on the track, not let alone back on it. Well, that was a no brainer anyway, wasn't it, to be fair? Well, that's good, because there's 20-odd billion dollars that was allocated in a sum budget a few years ago. We can refill that back now and spend it on something more sensible. Or, I don't know, how about putting it back in the taxpayers' long-suffering taxpayers' pockets? Well, it took me out of the taxpayers' pocket, it got printed and we lined up for the toilet paper money. And, you know, the first in line for the toilet paper money are the big investment firms like BlackRock. And I've said this before, but I think that's where the missing money from the overseas buyers' tax is gonna come from. They've just got all this toilet paper money. And I think they've probably said, hey, look, we can put billions of dollars into your economy to make your books balance. No worries. We can't give this stuff away. Mind you, you pay a price for that. Oh, we pay a terrible price for it. It's an unimaginative solution, but it's a corporate guy solution. We're gonna be paying a price for what was done in the last six years for at least a generation. We had a financial journalist from Australia on in our money talk segment yesterday, David James. And he said, the problem is that management has no conscience. It doesn't need to have a conscience. It only has deliverables. And you just get to those deliverables any way you can without conscience. That's the problem. Yeah, the rate of psychopathy in the general population is about 1%. I think among CEOs, it's something like 15%. And you've got to be very suspicious anytime the government gives you a license to hate. And a lot of people, there's been a big part of the technique they got given a license to hate. Women got given a license to hate. Men, Māori have been given a license to hate, whitey. And if you're weak in character, you take it. And it has terrible consequences for you. What do you think about the media? Do you think they still, they seem to be carrying on like this never happened? Well, the media are acting like petulant children who have had their toys taken away. And in many respects, I guess they have. But I mean, you had the Herald, who are probably one of the worst outfits out there. Run an article on the 18th about what's set to get cut under a National Act New Zealand First government and then list all sorts of things like co-governance. Well, good. That's what happens when you have an election. You have a contest of ideas and one person or one team's ideas get accepted and the others get thrown out. We threw out the ideas of the Labour Party, the Green Party and to party Māori. We don't want that recipe. The voters have spoken. There's a clear majority. It's about 55% of the population don't want co-governance. We don't want bans on offshore oil and gas exploration. We don't want agricultural emissions pricing. We don't want three waters. We don't want the light rail. And these are all things that these liberal elite tosses in the media have lobbied for gone after promulgated all without actually asking the voters. And we finally have had the voters asked and those solutions were found wanting and the solutions of the National Party, the Act Party and New Zealand First were chosen above all else and they need to get over themselves. But now the reality is I don't think that the media will get over themselves unless they suffer a fair bit of pain. Well, they'll suffer pain because their business models are crumbling and it's questionable as to whether most of them will still be in business in three years in the form they are now anyway. They're propped up by millions of dollars of state-funded advertising from government departments. Now, if I was Winston Peters sitting down with Christopher Luxon right now, I'd pull out my media U2 policy and I'd say, right, what we need to do is get all the heads of all the government departments in, put a moratorium on any government spending with any media outlet for at least six months, turn that tap off while we sit down and work out how we're gonna go forward. And then the next step of that would be to say, well, this is all public interest advertising so we're not gonna pay for it anymore. The media can carry that free of charge. PSA is public service announcements. Yep, and carry it free of charge and starve them of the thing that's kept them going that means that they don't listen to their audience. Yeah, it's a perfect storm for them. There's the prospect of losing that government funding. They're probably drinking a lot more booze because you need to if you have to lie because it hurts your soul. And they've got National and New Zealand First not saying anything. There was an amazing story on Tuesday in the Herald by Thomas Coughlin where he wrote an intro that you looked all through the story. He wrote, there was nothing in the story that related to his intro. And having worked, trying to sneak colorful things through sub-editors, it's pretty tough. They are the blanderers. How would that have gone through then when there was no reference to the headline? Is that what you're saying? Well, no, there's no reference. The story, this is his intro. New Zealand First is looking to spook National into making early concessions before special votes have been counted. But National leader Christopher Luxon has signaled he might be ready to call the parties bluff and wait for the final results on November 3rd. Oh, whatever. There was nothing. But it's just total bollocks. That is total bollocks. It's like also the media are running at the moment that, you know, National's gonna use Jerry Brownlee because he's very friendly with Winston Peters. Well, anybody who knows the dynamic of those two knows that that's completely made up. It's not even close to being true. And there's probably only two people in the National Party that Winston Peters would have any comfort with in dealing with, and that would be Todd McClay and Mark Mitchell. And Mark Mitchell will be there because he's been in the parliamentary rugby team with these guys in New Zealand First, right? And at the same time, nobody in the media has picked up something that's bleedingly obvious is that guess who Christopher Luxon's next door neighbor is? Okay. Like literally next door, David Seymour. Oh, really? Right. So there's this cozy little arrangement there with National and ACT. And then there's a whole bunch of other cozy little arrangements that exist out there like Andrew Keetles, for example, the chief of staff of the ACT Party. And his partner is Jenna Lynch from News Hub. So it's so incestuous. Yeah, I didn't want to say the word, but yeah, that's the word. Wellington Central Green Wave. You know, that really summed it up, didn't it? Just you guys who are all about taking money off us, telling us what to do and blowing it on your little things to make you feel good, you know, all want to vote for a party that's essentially communist. Green Party welcomes new MPs vows to fight for climate change, Māori Titiriti Justice. Is the headline I'm reading from October 18th. And there's a picture of James Shaw, Marama Davidson, behind James Shaw, probably 90% young woman and a guy and he can't be long for that world. Well, you know, the Green Party are as deluded as some others that are out there. They think that they had a stunning campaign, that they had brilliant policies and that the voting public loved them because we've got more MPs. That's literally, you know, the same as the gnomes in South Park who came up with a business plan to steal underplants, then something, and then make a profit. That was their three point plan. What the Greens don't understand is that they only got those numbers because the Labour Party was so rubbish. Yeah, so it was just a cannibalization. Correct. Exercise, like a seesaw. Yeah. Well, it's helped along by how the education system sends people out into the world, illiterate and incapable of critical thinking. That's on their side in the same way as, you know, an upside of so many Labour Party MPs being out of a job. As I guess it'll help address the teacher shortage. Okay. Is that a good thing? I don't know. I'm not sure I'd want Jan Tinedi in a classroom. Just circling back quickly to media. I see that in the New Zealand TV Awards, Fire and Fury is a finalist in New Zealand on air best documentary. Up against no Maori allowed and inside child poverty revisited. What do we make of that? How could that ever be a finalist in anything? They just can't stop patting themselves on the back. But it takes no boxes of quality. I mean, as you say, Paul, we're on the precipice of a major collapse of the media. You know, once this mal-information starts coming out, which is that people are actually getting sick and they're dying and they're having spontaneous abortions. And they knew some of that was going to happen. And rather than saying to doctors, hey, look, there's a risk of this. So if someone presents showing signs of myocarditis, you know, take it seriously and treat it. Instead, they sent them away saying, oh, you're probably just a bit anxious. Once that comes out, it's really going to change the complexion of New Zealand. And that's why I say it's really important that we take the heat out of a lot of these things that arise from lies, whether it's the principles of the treaty or, you know, there was if you haven't listened to that interview, Rodney Hyde did with Professor Elizabeth Rata Rata. Sorry. Yeah. Yeah. It's incendiary. It was really gently put, but well worth a listen when you consider how much has flowed out from Jeffrey Palmer, basically saying, oh, it's just window dressing. Well, I mean, you know, in that, in that is also been exacerbated by John Key signing us up to UNDRIP, you know, and and that had consequences that flowed from that. I mean, Matt McCudham was talking and I keep harping on about, but he knows a lot of stuff. And he was saying to me that he thinks that the the win of the Maori Party in the Maori seats is baked in that labour aren't going to get those back. Oh, really? And that concerns me immensely because the Maori Party of Tariana, Turia and Peter Shapples no longer exists. We've got a Maori Party that is deeply Marxist in its outlook. And angry, right? The angry angry and racist against everybody they call people colonizers and, you know, settlers and all sorts of derogatory terms. Rauri said, we consider them subhuman. He said that in a bloody debate. Given permission to hate, you know, it's a dangerous thing. And if you get permission to hate from your government, you better take a real hard look at your character and what they stand to gain from that. I mean, what was good about my discussion with Matt McCudham, he said, look, and we need to have grown up discussions about this. You know, it isn't about, you know, trying to force everybody into their way of thinking that's never going to work. And that's what concerns me is I think we're going to see increased activism, increased and, you know, attacks on people who aren't Maori. But but Morris Williamson raised it, you know, on the panel with us at the beginning of the week. Paul, when he said, what is a Maori? Yeah, exactly. Right. What is what is a Maori? Because because everybody in New Zealand is made up of a genetic makeup of lots of different things. And Fiji went through this and, you know, I was born in Fiji and I consider myself a Fijian. Well, that's what that's what of Anakava Kalevu. That's what of that country, by the way. Frank Baini Marama said when when he had his coup, we we're going to have one standard of citizenship for the whole country if you're born in Fiji, you're a Fijian. Right. You may be italkai. You may be of Indian instruction, or you might be like me, who, who, you know, is from European extraction. But I'm not a Kaivalangi that that's a foreigner. I'm not I was born in Fiji. I'm Kaiviti. And we need to have the same sort of same sort of discussion in New Zealand and get rid of this talk of separate this and separate that. And you see not about separatism. Can you see an administration led by Christopher Luxem, with his back on track, you know, smoothing smoothing that over? Well, I think he's just so incredibly woke that he'd entertain it. I know. Woke is weak that he was having discussions with the Maori Party several months ago. They all he ruled them out, Cam. He ruled them out. That's right. He did. But he was having discussions with them. And, you know, he did rule them out. And but he had discussions with them. Well, he's some he's taking the money from the decommissioned Maori Health Authority and giving it to Iwi. I've got the figure here somewhere. It's it's a hundred and what is it? One hundred and forty seven million or something. No, it's kind of same old, same old. Well, I mean, different label kind of thing, isn't it? Yeah, again, you've got to have an understanding of the way pre-European Maori society work to understand the completion of the way it's reflected in New Zealand's politics. Winston Peters is representing the Tutu, the commoners, who basically really quite like the treaty because it conferred on them that an Englishman's home is his castle, right of ownership, which they didn't have before. They existed at the pleasure of the of John Tamahiri's niche. And so when he says, you know, we're going to be ruling these people, you know, that's what he meant. And so that radical faction has taken Tino Rangatiratanga to mean Maori as an ethnic group get to rule themselves when it meant that, yeah, again, every man is as every an Englishman's home is his castle, that you could have right of ownership. Willie Jackson not committing to serving a full three year term in parliament. But he says, and I'm reading here from our Maori news, he will stay on to consolidate Labour's Maori caucus and to work with Tepati Maori and the Greens to prevent what he says will be an attack on our people, an attack on our people under a national enact government, an attack. Well, he didn't just say work with either, Paul, he said, organised with. Oh, which is which is a very loaded kind of lefty. But what is but what is our people? Right, because Willie Jackson's got Jewish. Genetic DNA in him, he he had a test, a DNA test done and now hello, it threw up a bit of Jewish DNA. So what does he mean by an attack on our people? I mean, this is just bollocks and our people. Where's the equivalent? What's his net worth? What's millions? OK. Right, but does that matter? Does it does that matter? I mean, I don't know. Well, when you're talking about our people, you're kind of making it sound like you're down there in the working class, fighting the battle. No, he's not. Yeah, yeah, that's a fair point. He doesn't have any insecurity in life in in those terms at all. He doesn't have poor health outcomes because he's educated. Well, he did have a hard bypass. Mind you, so did I. Well, he probably got prompt treatment for it because he turned up to his appointment because he's got the education to know that if you don't, you're in the crapper. And it's not that the health system is prejudiced against Maori. It's that they have a higher rate of did not attend. I've got a I've got a bit of time for Willie Jackson, and you might be sitting there rolling your eyes, kind of. Well, no, no, that's OK. You know, I've I've had a bit of respect for him. You know, he he involved me in his radio show when he was on. And, you know, I've had some years ago now, can't. Yeah, sure. But I've had some just good discussions. Women and it disappoints me when he comes up with statements like this because he's better than that. But isn't that where the money is? That's kind of what I was alluding to. I mean, this talk about it, you know, he says he thought there was going to be an attack on Maori. Well, he might be right. And there will be an attack on Maori. But I think he left a couple of words out like I think he left out elites or something like that, because what I can see happening in the coalition negotiations is Christopher Luxon saying to Winston Peters or Winston Peters saying to Christopher Luxon more likely. These are the areas that we want to take portfolios in. And then go after the woke in the week and the and the racism and stand up for that for every Kiwi saying that, you know, for instance, let's see, you know, I can imagine seeing Shane Jones as the energy minister and that will just unhinge the Greens hugely funny. I can see Casey Costello being Minister of Maori Affairs and Shane Jones helping here and saying, well, that's nonsense. When we don't need Maori Affairs Ministry anymore, we don't even need those seats. The proportion of representation exceeds the 25 percent of what are we talking about here? It's over for that. Yeah, 25 percent of of Parliament is Maori. That's what MMP has delivered. Then it's done a very fine thing. And I'm OK with that. But hey, it can't go on beyond a certain threshold. Otherwise, there's no credibility in your system. Well, the other point the other point that you could make is, you know, if you took away race based funding, would Maori outcomes get worse? Could they conceivably get worse than 50 percent of the prison muster being Maori and the terrible rates of failure within the school system? Would it change the diets of people health? I think they'd get better. You know, anything that's race based is never going to work. It's never anywhere in the world. Yeah, I saw a comment this morning. I was reading through some because I've been looking at some one money of Porto's interviews, which have been quite interesting. But you know, it is going to be a huge visceral hatred for whitey and and, you know, characterised the resistance to co-governance as radical white people scaring ordinary white people rather than that it's a terrible idea that always makes murder and. But it's the language they use, Marty, isn't it? I mean, look at what Willie Jackson is saying. He says there's going to be an attack on Maori. He says there's going to be a real attack on our people over the next couple of months, and I'm not going to just leave that to them. They're going to need a lot of support. Now, what he means by that is that there's going to be some robust debate. That's not an attack on Maori. That's not people going out in the street with axes and, you know, battens and bottles and attacking Maori that's having a debate that we've been denied for the last six months, six years. You know, they foisted separatism onto this population, whether it was through mandates or it's through co-governance through three waters, through the splitting of the health system. They forced that on us, they didn't ask anybody. And now, when we're going to have a proper debate about these things, all of a sudden it's attack on Maori. No, it's not. It's a discussion. And if you can't grow up, Willie Jackson, and have a discussion without reverting to racist tropes to push your agenda, well, then you don't belong in the discussion. I mean, they play this game so much better than we do because they've got that idea that language constructs everything, that constructionist idea. But, yeah, the dog whistles, the dog whistles, I mean, it's and it's, you know, part of that they're always doing what they accuse you of. I mean, a dog whistle that I notice that I haven't seen anyone else talk about is the Hana Rafiti Maipi Clark. You know, in a red beret, you know, and it's like, oh, yeah, I was sort of, you know, but I always think it's a bit of a nod to that former ANC Youth League president and current South African politician Julius Malema. You know, the guy killed the boar, killed the farmer. Yeah, in the sports stadium. Yeah, that's a dog whistle. Speaking of dog whistles, race relations calls time on abuse of wahini Maori politicians. A new study confirms anti-Maori bias. And this is an acting race relations commissioner saying here, and I'm reading from MSN.com that protection is needed against abuse and violence directed at them and their far now. And what they say here is, I think that needs to be taken up by Parliament. It's not just physical violence. It's also through social media. What physical violence? Yeah, I don't recall hearing anything reported. Absolutely condemn it. Yeah, but if there is no physical violence, you can't say it's not just physical violence. If there hasn't been any. Some old National Party supporter did poke his head into someone's house. Well, that's what they're citing. That's not violence. I mean, I guess I'm sounding a little exercise because this gins up the tension. It creates in people's minds. It's meant to. I know and it works, you can see. Yeah, it's BS. It's bullshit. It's just bullshit. Upward pointing fist, Paul, you know, that's the sign of of the Marxist revolutionary. It means what the means justify the ends. Violence against your oppressor is is what you should do. Yeah, and they'll lie about it. And I hope we, you know, part of this taking the pressure out, I think, is acknowledging, yeah, it'd be great to see Maori do better. It'd be great to see the education system working for them. That was why I was so disgusted when one of the first moves when Labour got in was to to take away to established charter schools because they were actually working for a lot of those kids who had been failed by the unionist education system. That was the teacher unions. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, right. Making that happen. Well, which is to say it was the Labour Party, right? Yeah, because they're to a same. Yeah. OK. But they've always got to pay back the unions, the Labour Party. That that's the thing is, you know, they're lurking there underneath the Labour Party all the time. I mean, you know, I've had some information come to me. I have no reason to disbelieve it that, you know, earlier in the year when Jacinda Ardern was still the Prime Minister, she had a Zoom conference call with all the union leaders. She, you know, got them all on there. And she said, look, guys, we don't think we can win this election, but we're really going to need your help to give it a good go. And they said, oh, yeah, well, what do you want? And they and she said, look, you know, there's, you know, the nurses and the doctors and teachers and all the pay rounds are all coming up this year before the election. It'd be really, really helpful to us if you could make those reasonable and and not, you know, have any strikes or anything like that. They will just, you know, annoy people. And, you know, they went on for for quite some time. And then the meeting ended and then there was another Zoom meeting that was started immediately afterwards without Jacinda Ardern, where they all said, you know, stuff that if they don't think they're going to win, that means the Nats are coming in and we won't get any pay rises with those guys. So we'll go to the doctor. And of course, that's exactly what happened. We saw those pay rises. Andrew Little was sitting there trying to, you know, sort out the health system and the pay rises and they just caved. They just caved. Yeah. But those costs, those increased costs are now baked in because of that. And the rise in the minimum wage, the right. They saw that as, you know, kind of a pathian shot, you know, as they're off, just just making it more difficult for for the incumbent government to succeed. It's terribly cynical in a way that you don't, you know, you wouldn't do yourself so you can't concede. It's like putting booby traps in, you know, it's just like landmines. I mean, Richard Preble, you know, I don't know if he caught his his column on Wednesday and the Herald. He was basically saying that Luxon should let Act take the tough jobs and catch the flak. He patronizingly said, oh, and, you know, if Winston's part of it, he could make the gold card better or something. But, you know, poor old Prebs, poor old Prebs. Yeah. Should we talk about these? We've got to talk about these small parties as well. I did a quick scan read of the judgment of, you know, the NZ loyal thing and where it fell to pieces on list candidates. And one thing I did pick up from it and there's a lot of detail in there to digest. But how loose, how loosey-goosey the whole thing was. There really wasn't any checking or serious engagement with finding out, you know, what you had to do, you know, what was the vibe of the thing, the tease that needed to be crossed, the eyes that needed to be dotted. And which tells me that you can't be that serious if you neglect those. It's not hard to do. And no other political party, including Leighton Baker and Democracy New Zealand had any sort of problem, right? No other party had a problem, but NZ loyal debt. Yeah. And, you know, then to listen to Liz Gunn saying, you know, the Electoral Commission has a job to do. Its job is to help these smaller parties. Well, that's a heroic assumption about what the Electoral Commission is is there to do. They're there to actually enforce the electoral act. Administer. That's administer and enforce the electoral. Yeah. Right. That's their job. But their job isn't to babysit the newbies who haven't learned even the basics of MMP. But when you sit down and say, OK, guys, we need to do this. This is the serious part of it. OK, what do we need to do? Line item by line item, check off everything, make sure it's done. Well, I mean, you just have a look at some of the policy development that went on in these small small parties, you know, Liz Gunn herself basically picked up a whole lot of fruit loop policies and everybody uncritically said, oh, this is great. It's like the one percent transaction tax. You know, this will work. Well, that's social credit. That was the right it's never had any pick up anywhere in the world where it's successful, where it works, where where would even, you know, even get any sort of semblance of support in New Zealand. It's a slimy tune stuff. But we were told this was going to solve the problems of the world, you know, and and that's the that what they haven't realized. A lot of these minor parties is that in the contest of ideas, they lost and doesn't mean the ideas were dumb. It means they didn't sell them properly. And, you know, you can't expect the media to be your friends. They we learned that with the Wellington protests, the media, our enemies, they're not our friend. So if you're sitting there moaning now that you didn't get in because the media didn't give you a fair go, well, you knew that before you even got started. What could have been the strategy to do better? Well, Winston's strategy, he just did everything on Twitter and Facebook and bypassed the media and refused to talk to them. And it worked. And these, you know, it's that old thing of people overestimate what they can do in the short term and underestimate what they can do in the long term. And that they they wanted to get there. And they were looking for a Donald Trump kind of miracle, but forgetting that he had that kind of profile that fit with. And he did the work. Why did he do the work? I mean, you know, yes, they held public meetings. Yes, they knocked on doors and, you know, I'm sure Matt King worked his ass off, right? But you're up against the machine and it takes generations to get there. Like New Zealand first has been in existence for 30 years and they've got the result of eight seats. So why did anybody like Baker, Liz, Gunn, Matt King, all of these people? Why did they think that they were going to get five seats or four seats or eight seats when they haven't even been in existence for five minutes? Electrally, the act party has been in existence for longer than New Zealand first thirty six years to get to the point that they're at. The Green Party has been there since the values party. Fifty years to get to the point where they're at. It's a it's a hard slog. Starting a new party and going, we've got these cool ideas. Vote for us doesn't work. Yeah, I've drawn the analogy. It's a bit like trying to cook bacon fast. You know, doesn't bacon doesn't transmit heat in the same way as passionless Kiwis don't tend to transmit enthusiasm that well. You've got to just slowly warm them. Yeah, you know, if the pans do hot, the baking gets crispy and it's horrible. Nobody likes you. You can feel a lot of energy at the pan level and think, well, all the whole the whole Russia must be heating up. But no, it's not. Yeah. Do you think that there's any hope for any of those parties where they just disappear, they just evaporate into nothing now? Well, you know, looking at the Facebook comments and, you know, we've started this movement, it's it's going to grow. It's going to rah, rah, rah, you know, I admire their enthusiasm. I really do. But three years in the wilderness and the issues that, you know, galvanized you dissipate over time and at the same time, you've got political parties that are in the parliament that will make some inroads on some of the things that galvanized support for you, particularly around a covid inquiry and those sorts of things mean, means that your support is going to wane and New Zealand first support and ex support is going to grow. And that's just the way I see it going. And, you know, I could be wrong and I've been known to be wrong. But hey, I make I make a living talking about this sort of stuff. And if I was wrong all the time, then, you know, I wouldn't have much of a living. Hmm. Yeah, I think that the collapse has been hasn't been particularly graceful, which would have helped longevity. You know, there's, as I said, there's been a fair bit of histrionics. And yeah, I think what Cam said earlier about the that kind of surety that there was going to be some kind of miracle has effectively resulted in two or three or maybe four really good candidates who were all on board with telling the truth exactly in Parliament when they could have been. Here's a question. This is a bit navel, Gazy. Do you think we made any difference anywhere? Yeah, I think we did. What, how many percent do you reckon, Cam? I don't know about percent, but I think we did make a difference. You know, we we interviewed a whole lot of people who would never have made it to any media ever. Right. We we talked to all sorts of candidates across the various different political parties. And we educated people. We particularly focused on the issue of wasted vote. And that upset some people. Boy, that was like pulling teeth. But but I think we did. We, if I look at the coverage across the mainstream media, they didn't cover anywhere near the number of candidates that we did. They didn't cover anywhere near the parties that we. And we did long form stuff. We wasn't just on the surface. It was like, yeah, everything we could think of. We asked. Yeah. When I shared and often shared the crunch, I'm a big fan of the crunch. I feel it, by the way, and enjoy it. Just like I'm loving your world news at the moment, Paul, it's the best world news available on New Zealand. Good to know. Thank you. And the crunch is the best political journalism in New Zealand. It receives zero government funding, which probably isn't a coincidence. Yeah. I mean, that's the thing is that we let these guys talk. We let people talk, right? If you have a look at the way the mainstream media does things, it's combative, it's confrontational. It's like, you know, sticking camera in Winston Peters face when he arrived at the Wellington Airport on on Wednesday. Yeah. What was the point of that? You know, trying to get reactions. Well, it's part of the game show, isn't it? Yeah. But we sat down with candidates and like I look, I think, one of the best interviews that I had was with Hecker Robertson from Vision New Zealand in Wellington and and also on the the week before the election with Kane, who runs the man up program. I just, you know, I I felt energised by speaking with them for an hour or so, right? And we that's what we do. And that's that's why we're better than everybody else, because everyone or the other mainstream media will you're a flea candidate in, you know, some place that no one's ever heard of, so we're not going to talk to you. But we talked to those people and we heard what they had to say. And it was bloody interesting. It is, you know, and some of them, I felt sorry for them because I just knew they weren't going to get there. Yeah. I did well not saying that too brutally, though. Well, I didn't want to. I wanted to understand the person that I was talking to, not the character that the media is portrayed. And, you know, the discussion that I had with Brian Tamaki about crime and law and order and the law and order policy. That's another example. I think he had some good things to say and they're worth saying just because it's Brian Tamaki doesn't mean we should turn our ears off. You know, there's a lot of things I don't like about Brian Tamaki, but it's not my job to tell everybody that I don't like those things about Brian Tamaki. It's my job to have a discussion with that person. Let them explain what their policy is or where the what their core beliefs are and let the listeners make their own. Well, that's what we're all about. Yeah, that's the mission, as I say. Do you think we added is another sort of kind of naval gaze equation? Do you think we added in the end to the New Zealand first vote total in any way? I think we did. And, you know, when I interviewed Winston on election night, it was the only one on one interview he's given since the election. He hasn't given any other one on one interviews. He hasn't been on any other TV or radio or anything else. He was effusive in his thanks to the listeners of reality check radio. And if he's thanking the listeners of reality check radio, I guess he's thanking the station as well. And, you know, even if you compare his interviews that he had on with Sean Plunkett and that, you know, he was on with us. You know, Paul, you spoke to him for quite a considerable time. Four times would have been half an hour or more each time. I spoke to Winston twice. It was an hour each time. So people got to hear the real Winston Peters, the Winston Peters that I've, you know, known over 30 or 40 years. They got to see beyond the headlines and beyond the mainstream media and how they paint them. And I think that helped. And I don't do anything different. You know, here's the thing, right? I asked probably 30 National MPs to come on my show. I asked probably 10 or so Labour MPs to come on the show. I asked David Seymour and some ACT MPs and ACT candidates. And every single one of those, apart from Mark Mitchell, either didn't reply to us asking or just said no. Whereas every candidate from a smaller party that I asked on, including New Zealand First, as soon as I said, you know, would you like to come on the show, I was, yes. And they were there. There was no coordination. No, that's right. And so you want them to listen to us understand that. Because we had to get that I'm getting a bit sick of pushing New Zealand First. I mean, for me, it was like, I'm getting sick of the lies. And at this stage, they're the only game in town that's willing to call bullshit on the bullshit. And and so, you know, I'd never voted for New Zealand First. I and I hadn't really understood the said this on a couple of occasions, the extent to which the decision to install the Marxist student politicians who didn't have any work experience in charge of a whole country. I didn't understand the extent to which that was a caucus decision rather than a Winston Peters decision. And that ameliorated my my rage at a little bit. I didn't understand the extent to which national been inept in in negotiating with them. So, yeah, I wasn't left. And then I know Kirsten Murphy personally and and I know that she's there for all the right reasons and would rather not be there and has got a career where she'd earn more money if she wasn't there and dealing with a whole lot of stuff at home, too. Yeah. Yeah. And that, you know, that never came came out really. Yeah, we had David Seymour once. I don't think he enjoyed the experience. And like you say, Cam, we reached out to all the leaders, all the players. We were so nice about it. So inclusive. And I think most of them didn't even reply. So it reminds me a bit of, you know, I think I mentioned the Godfather earlier, but that scene in The Godfather, too, where Michael Corleone sees the rebel and Cuba blow himself up and he tells a story and he says, well, you know, the soldiers get paid to fight. But the rebels just do it because they believe in it. That means they can win. And I think the mainstream media will be looking across at reality check radio and thinking much the same thing. I wonder what they think of us. Well, I don't really care what they think of us. No, I know. But you know, I mean, I've got that background. So I know what it's like. And I know what the attitude is to new players and not many that come along. And you wonder what they're thinking because one thing's for sure, there have been no hit pieces, none. No one, you know, and there's a reason for that. And I'm known as somebody who does hit pieces, right? But not one of my interviews. Did I attack anybody? Yeah, you're changed, man. Can something's something happened. No one's done it on us is the point I'm making. And we are fair game, man. Well, we're sort of just probably coming into the out of the first to ignore you face and they're probably looking for an opportunity. You know why? Because we're doing what they dream of doing. Yeah, that's why. Yeah. I think we should finish up on a light note. And I'm going to play some of this because I think it's worth hearing again. I put it in the the news yesterday. And this is the Canadian opposition leader, Pierre Polyev, smacking down, as people are saying, while he's eating an apple, while he's eating an apple. So cool, so laid back, yet such a heavy punch to this guy. I think it says it all. So I'm going to play this and then I will some of it anyway. And then I want to come and get a few comments at the end before we wind it up. Are you OK with that? Yeah, here we go. On the on the topic, I mean, in terms of your sort of strategy, currently you're obviously taking the populist pathway. What does that mean? Well, appealing, appealing to people's more emotional levels, I would guess. I mean, certainly you certainly you tap certainly you tap very strong ideological language quite frequently like what? Left wing, you know, this and that right wing. They are I mean, it's that that type of ideological. I haven't really talked about left or right. But anyways, a lot of people really believe in that. OK. A lot of people would would say that you're simply taking a page out of the Donald Trump like which people would say that? Well, I'm sure a great many Canadians. But like who I don't know who. But well, you're the one who asked the question. So you must know somebody. OK. I'm sure there's some out there. But anyways, the point of this, the point of this question is, I mean, why should why should Canadians trust you with their vote given? You know, not not just the sort of ideological inclination in terms of taking the page of Donald Trump's book. But what are you talking about? What page? What page? Can you give me a page? Give me the page. You keep saying in terms of turning things quite dramatically in terms of of Trudeau and the left wing and all of this. I mean, you you you make quite a you know, it's it's quite a play that you make on it. So I'm I'm not sure. I don't I don't know what your question is. Then forget that. Why should Canadians trust you with their vote? And so it goes on. You know, it's a masterclass, isn't it? A masterclass. If you're going to come to, what do they say, a gunfight? Don't bring a knife, you know. But I mean, that's the thing is they make these truisms. You know, they say things are your populist. What does that mean? I mean, he came back at him with brilliant. Well, what does that mean? So give me an example and a page out of Trump's book. What what page? Give me a page. Give me a page. I mean, it made the guy look like a complete fool, which he was. There's that glibness, isn't there? Where there's just this accepted reality that doesn't bear close scrutiny or questioning. And I mean, you could do the same thing about climate change. You could do the same thing about the COVID response. You could do the same thing. But we've got this terrible situation where journalists don't ask those kind of questions and the education system doesn't prime people to be curious in that way. And so we're just hurtling for a war. I'd like to see some, you know, some responses like that to our. Our journalists, you know, because it's so easily taken apart. It's like, who could do it? You know, you think about there's only one name that comes exactly. It's the one name that comes to mind. I mean, David Seymour wouldn't be able to do that. I don't think Christopher likes to say something snarky, personal and snarky, that wouldn't be funny. Yeah, probably. I mean, you have to actually have your wits about you to do something like that. And and, you know, this is the problem with MMP, is that we've actually dumbed down our MPs. And, you know, they're so anodyne. They're so, you know, polished up into nothingness. They're too scared to actually say something. And, you know, I think that is the fault of MMP, where we're going constantly for the middle ground, but no one knows what the middle ground is. So we'd be it's not. We don't want to upset anybody. I don't know about dumb them. Sorry, Paul. I don't know. You go dumb them down. There's there's a selection process that eliminates people like that. And it eliminates conscious conviction politicians. Yeah. And there's very few conviction politicians. And it turns out that after 30 years, most New Zealanders don't even know how it works. Still. Fundament, I mean, it's OK to be woken up. And people talk about I've been woken up about the political system, but that in many respects, that's all they did is wake up. What they didn't do is is the, you know, I mean, the feedback I had on my show from people and argue the toss about, you know, what I was thinking about something or how something was going to operate or how it did actually operate. And I get this all the time and people want to come up to me in the street and they say, you know, you you're wrong on that. Yeah, no, I'm not. No, so it's like you're going to be chewing an apple, chewing on an apple to get that one right. But it's like they woke up and then put their fingers in the ears and shouted, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, when everyone when anybody pointed out the reality of situations to them. Yeah. And then got angry and then got angry. And, you know, we should be doing this and we should be doing that. Look, I've had it for years. And when I ran whale oil and the BFT, I've had it for years. People would say to me, you know, you should be supporting the National Party. And because you're not, I'm cancelling my subscription. I want nothing more to do with you. Well, you know what? In almost every instance that somebody did that, they never had a subscription. They were just being all about Aztec and bullying and threatening. And, you know, you have to look yourself in the mirror. You have, you know, especially doing what I do, you have to be able to be to look yourself in the mirror and say, well, I actually didn't mislead anybody here. This is this is the truth. This is reality in some ways. We're in a bubble, but the bubble is not about the information. The bubble is about the sort of people who do say, hey, this is this is not right. This is unacceptable. And this is not going in a good direction for everyone. And right at the outset of the covid response, I went to I went to a dinner. I think it might have been a Jodi Brunning's place. And I think she said to me, you know, everyone who's who's against this is an outsider. They've been an outsider as a child. And interesting. I think I think that's if you if you tap into what people's backgrounds are, that's often true. I changed school four times. I'm thinking of myself now. Was I? What was I? I've always been an outsider. Yeah. Yeah. Comfortable, not being in the herd. Yeah. And it's hard for people who are comfortable not being in the herd to really fully understand the terror a lot of people feel of leaving it when they're threatened with exclusion from the herd. It's a very powerful force. And it's like Matt Shelton told me and I think he's right. And we talked about this, that if you're inside that herd and you see people who are not part of the herd and especially if it's a medical thing where there's fear of death, you kind of seen as dead already to them. Yeah. Yeah. That zebra is going to get eaten by the they did an experiment where they marked a zebra so they could study how they moved in the herd. And the zebra that was marked got nailed because the lions could kind of keep an eye on them and and and and follow them specifically. Right. Murderers, murderers. Any any last words, any any last words, chaps? Well, I think that things are going to get interesting when the special votes come in. We're going to see that last 20 percent of the vote. I think there's going to be some changes. I don't think nationals going to be as ascendant as they think they are. We are going to have a three way government. That's not a bad thing. In fact, that's what we've mostly had under MMP. So the National Party lines about getting on with it. We have to fix things fast. We can't wait. We it's just PR and spin and ultimately anti-democratic. And I think we do have to wait for the specials. It's part of the voting system. It's how it works. It's not long. It's only two weeks. And on the day after my birthday, we'll we'll find out what what it actually looks like. Is the most temperamental and staunch party in a three party set up the one that has the power in the end, because they're the one who could flip at any moment. What I'm thinking is if again, NZ first, if, you know, if there are some bottom lines that won't be met, there's not much the other two can do. Well, bottom line, it's NZ first. Well, bottom lines is a media construct. Well, they seem to have they could be the more grumpy is what I'm thinking. Yeah. But again, you can only deal the deal. You can only play the cards have been dealt. And this is the perennial problem with NZ first and indeed, the act party. In the act party, they've they've normally only been dealt one card. And even first has only been dealt five or six. And so when you're really small, you really can't. Yeah. And that's the thing that people who hate Winston Peters say, they are never on as his promises. Well, did you vote for him? No. Well, then why are you complaining? Well, he never honest as promises. Well, you didn't vote for him to give him the power to be able to negotiate. This time around is a little bit different. Yes, he said ruled out labor and doing anything with them. And they're out of the game anyway. There's no way that anything can happen in that respect. But they've got more MPs than they've had, you know, for a while. And so and national actually does need them. So yeah. So he can say, look, we want this inquiry. Oh, we want to water it down. No, if you water it down, this won't happen. This won't happen. This won't happen. Yeah. And I think he can do those things. And, you know, in my interview that I had with him after the election results were nine. That's the one thing he focused on. He really thinks that there has been a huge injustice to many people and come and he's got a plan for if national doesn't agree with it with an inquiry, well, that's all right. Oh, he said to me, you'll just use parliamentary questions and ask them over and over and over again until we get questions answered. And national was actually it's in their best interest to actually allow an inquiry because they can completely have clean hands. They can have the inquiry. You know, Christopher Hipkins and Jacinda Ardern and Ashley Bloomfield and all of those people can be dragged before the inquiry. They can be made to answer and it will destroy the Labour Party. They must be crapping themselves. Well, they they they should be because I mean, Andrew Little. Andrew Little is now, you know, quit. He's not going to be an MP. He can see the writing on the wall. He was the health minister, right? So he can happily now that he's no longer an MP, come before an inquiry and throw all of his all of his fellow people under the bus to save his own skin. So I think that we should have that. This could be a great show. Absolutely. And imagine it over a year. It's death by a thousand cuts. Yeah. Marty, any last words? The truth will set us free. You know, just keep keep pushing the truth and looking for the truth and and being genuinely kind. No, I totally agree with that. I think that'll like I think that'll get us through. And I really hope, you know, if we can make a place where Marty can can understand that that by seeing people like us as allies, they're not we're not bashing Marty. We're bashing bullshit and lies. There's our post election Friday political panel. I want to thank Cam Slater and Marty Gibson for being here this Friday morning. We've got a long weekend now. I've got a 60th birthday to celebrate on Saturday. How about that? I made it that far. Happy birthday. Thank you for a few moments there along the way. I wanted to forget here, but here I am. And and we'll do it all again next Friday here at RCR. OK. Awesome. I'll be here. Have a great week. RCR with Paul Brennan, Reality Check Radio.