Television New Zealand

I would just prefer that we move faster so that New Zealand's government chooses how to balance its finances rather than being pushed into it by rising interest rates and having to make hasty decisions.

In terms of presenting, you sort of presented in many ways in this campaign as the adult in the room, you know, the kind of, and yet when you were on that TVNZ multi-party debate, asked for your next big thing after the assisted dying reform, you announced that one law for all was top of your list.

I think, is that fair to say? Or first off the rank? Is that the priority that it appeared at that point?

Well, I was asked about long-term underlying legacy changes.

Do you think that process made New Zealand more or less harmonious?

I think it attacked something that was making us less harmonious.

If you looked at, for example, TVNZ's polling in the run-up to the Treaty Principles Bill, the number of people saying that we were more divided was outweighing those who said that we were less divided.

So we'd had five years, arguably a lot longer, but particularly the five years in the run-up to 2023 where you'd had a Māori health authority, you'd had He Puapua, you'd had a government language strategy that really turned te reo Māori from something that people were sort of comfortable with and curious and wanted to know more about to something they felt had been forced down their throat and resented.

We're all going to be watching a poll tonight.

I don't know about you, Phil, but I will be, because there's been one poll out of what has been a very consistent trend that threw up something interesting last week, and that was the TVNZ variant that saw quite a bump for National.

Remembering it's the party vote, that determines who's got the numbers to form a government, but they are well down on their numbers from last week.

Election, and they're at the risk in recent polls of bringing nobody off the list, including their current finance spokesperson, the finance minister.