Yep, I

agree.

I think that National could agree to all of them.

The problem is that ACT and New Zealand First would have some issues there.

So it's a very interesting and strategic move that they've made.

And I've been arguing with myself over how effective it is, because on the one hand, they are making intentions clear.

They're trying to edge out the other players in New Zealand First and ACT.

that fell down in the first place.

Mm.

There will be discussions after this election about the ethics and morality and the pr- principles and all that kind of thing.

Um, and that'll be a conversation we have to have then.

Um, but as it is, we've got both sides of the, of the spectrum, of political spectrum utilizing this function of splitting your vote and talking about it openly.

Do you, what you, what's your view?

I s- I pretty much agree.

I think, um, as things are, without the strategic voting, um, uh, Labor and National are locked in, and we're just looking at the, the players on either side.

And if we're looking purely at Top on paper-

I thought Chris Hipkins misled New Zealand right throughout and I thought Luxon wasn't brave enough to be bold enough to stand for what he actually stands for.

Yeah, and I think that's where we saw the difference in skill in terms of that hard skill of debating.

So I'm not talking about the skill of running a country here.

What we saw quite clearly was that Chris Hipkins has a lot more experience and a lot more skill at debating.

And so he was able to land hits, which, as you say, some of them weren't particularly genuine.

They were pretty poor sometimes, but he was able to land them effectively because he's really good at what he does.

Now, Luxon doesn't have that skill.

Start doing it now.

But I'm just worried at the moment that it's actually going to move in the wrong direction.

Yeah, I think it's on a knife edge.

I mean, we're seeing like polling is so tight.

It's not shifting from being tight.

Everyone's talking about, oh, overhangs and these type of things, ways that we can ensure that whichever side we're on gets a few more seats.

And I think there's a real desperation.

I think both sides, people who feel really strongly about their side are... feeling really anxious.

The problem we've got within the public service, as you say, Annie, is that we've got ideologues and we've got effectively activists in the public service who are absolutely dedicated to these systems and are kicking and screaming against the Erica Sanfords and the people of this world who are trying to move the needle back toward the centre and toward what most people actually expect, not just in education but in health, in welfare and a whole range of other issues where these people are determined to ignore the government dictates and actually do what they think's more

They're

positioned differently.

So you've got New World is positioned at the more affluent end of the market and Pack and Save's your budget brand.

So to the extent that they would increase competition, there is already competition.

kind of difference in quality perception and in pricing.

So I don't I'm not sure how that works.

It reads to me as National trying to do something less crazy than the left.

I know we teach past history, but what about recent history?

Annie, have they gone backwards? Are they in trouble? Have they left it too late?

Yes.

Yes, yes.

And yes.

Yes.

So I have been saying for probably a year now that their small target strategy is not going to work long term.

They basically have taken the approach of we will let the government lose the election.

So we won't be able to give you the answer to that before the election.

You think he's been honest?

To a fault.

He is being honest with us, what he intends to do.

And thank you for that, Willie.

I think he has just, he said the quiet part out loud.

And I guarantee that the campaign chairs and Hipkins would have watched that Q&A interview.

just absolutely tearing their hair out um it would be torturous for them because there were so many things it was a train wreck of an interview like just utterly from their perspective i think from from others perspectives it was like yeah yeah but it was just um it's almost like they've spent three years saying that this government has done everything wrong for maori and that it's dire it's end of the world this is an absolute worst situation maori have ever been in and yet you ask him what his plan is what he's gonna do about things he had no answers for anything it was basically like we're just gonna chuck some more money at all these different things oh and yeah we're gonna do more co-governance but we can't call it that because the people don't like it

Everything's kicked down the road and they're responsible for allowing this thing to blossom.

... need to sit down

... w- when they announced all their policies, I was jumping up and down like Chicken Little saying, "Have you guys seen this? Look at what they're going to do." And no one was bothered, but now they're a little bit higher in the polls, everyone's suddenly gone, "Oh my God, what they want to do is bonkers." And it is.

It's insane.

And the land tax is just one part of it.

They've got some bizarre, um, law and order things going on as well, but, um, basically, it, it's, it, it is pretty close to communism, some of these ideas they've [laughs] got going on.

M- my, in my view, if, if TOP makes it, I want both your views on this, if TOP makes it, um, either, either wins a seat or gets across that threshold and they come in with seven, eight MPs, Labor governs.

Uh, it, it definitely improves their chances.

It doesn't entirely rule out National, and to be honest, probably the overhang situation will come into play there.

I have...

Unfortunately, the votes they are bleeding to New Zealand First and ACT are coming from those social policies.

So that is not going to change under Erica.

There will be a lot of the same grievances around, you know, she's been the immigration minister and there are a lot of people questioning immigration settings.

So, hmm.

Not so good.

And also some of her liberal views on some of the gender and that kind of thing, people are not comfortable with.

That's not even asking, can you give us a big handout? It's just saying, please stop bloody killing us with all the bureaucracy.

Mm.

Um, I, I am totally, I am very sympathetic to, um, postpartum arguments of, of, um, depression and psychosis and stuff.

I just wasn't convinced in this case because there had been so many years and she had shown decision-making along the way that she was cognizant of what she was doing.

And we ...

Like, she could be out in like a year, like, because-

Yeah

... like if you bring it back to the top situation, um, I, I feel like they try to position themselves as this, "We are the adults in the room coming in to be in the center, and we can work with anyone, and we've got all the best ideas and smart policy people," da, da, da, da.

This one policy shows how entirely unserious that is.

Well,

I think it's been a long time because basically free speech union, we've been grappling with this issue for a while.

As we've known that the ban was potentially coming, as we've seen happening overseas, there's been these various attempts at banning.

The Australian ones pretty much failed miserably.

And so we've been having various conversations.

And there's a spectrum of views in the free speech union that There are our more absolutist ones, but we've also got, like, most of them are parents.

Most of them do get the issues that are being talked about here.

It means you're not online, doesn't it? But, yeah.

I-

Yeah, that was an interesting, that was an interesting one.

I mean, she's stuck between a rock and a hard place in terms of what she wants to convey for the election.

I'd say that it is fair to say we are recovering.

Um, it's not an easy recovery or an even recovery.

So we're seeing GDP nudge up, which is nice.

Um, we've got, you know, consumer confidence, business confidence, all of that's going in the right direction, but unemployment is still stubbornly high.

Yeah

It was a library down there, wasn't it? We've had so many wins in it so long ago that I'm sort of getting a bit hazy on that.

You know, I was involved with Speak Out for Women back then.

I was the spokeswoman.

And We used to have many stories that we'd give to the media.

We'd do polling.

We'd talk about women's rights.

And they'd never touch them.

to

[laughs]

... that it hasn't actually been the k- the kind of space for the center right before, and this is probably why for National they have taken a different stance.

They're probably recognizing a vibe shift in terms of the crisis we're gonna have around retirement and around super, and that is, that is the strongest argument for their change of position, I think.

But it is a very much a big state position to be telling people what they have to do with their savings, and that's the argument that I've seen from David Seymour in the last day or so, um, kind of pushing back a bit and saying, "Hang on, you, if you make this compulsory, who's to say it is the best thing for me as an individual?" So it might-

Yep

... that's a long-term issue that, you know, Andrew Little's piped up from the mayor's office and said, "Yeah, I had those problems too when I was the immigration minister." So, um, I think that's probably, we can write that off as that.

But yeah, she is very impressive.

And so if I was Labor, I would be staying away from making too much noise about education because they r- royally effed it up while they were in there and, and that was Chippy in charge.

Why is a law like this necessary?

Basically, we've been advocating for this for some time because increasingly we've seen regulated professions and around 200,000 New Zealanders are employed in regulated professions.

So you've got nurses, doctors, architects, that kind of thing.

These people have been increasingly finding that instead of just being regulated on competence, ethics, misconduct, they're being also policed on their thoughts, on what they're posting on social media in their private time.

and some political beliefs.

Will the bill just include firings, people who get fired from their job because they've said something, or any other type of reprimanding? Will that also be included?

Well, we haven't got a bill from ACT as such.

We've actually, our lawyers have drafted a bill recently Ourselves after our chair Stephen Franks went through an issue like this with his profession as a lawyer And for us the purpose is to restore political and ideological neutrality in the regulation of professional services So this is not about individual employment decisions made you know, between the employer and the employee.

You... [laughs]

It's the same team really.

The front, the front, um, bench, I mean, you've got Vanushi Walters, um, who is on paper very talented.

She, she's got a law degree and, and then she's got a Masters of Laws from Oxford, so clearly a very smart cookie, um, and sh- understands human rights and whatnot.

Um, she hasn't had a chance to really show us anything, so it'll be interesting if she gets some, a bit of a chance leading into the election to show her stuff.

Um, so she's there, and then Kushla, um, who is the only, um, Māori seat which isn't Te Pāti Māori, it's Labor.

But, but nearest bus is 42 Ks away.

Saw something on social media last night, it was, like, a video of this guy who had a home D bracelet on, and he was talking to some news show about how he was on home D, but he was outside a barber shop.

[laughs]

So this, this guy was, uh, uh...

I mean, it sounds like there's been some kind of bumping into each other, and then it's been about who's a tough guy, and he's stabbed him three times, slashed his face, and slashed his legs twice.

Um, the poor kid has tried to run.

He's climbed over fences.

You can tr- you can follow the trail of blood, and then it's somewhere near the, the assailant's house.

And so his parents and his brother come out, and they don't call the ambulance.

Yeah

The problem is

though that we also have to have a really honest conversation with ourselves as a populace, which is we can either have lower taxes or existing batch of taxes Or we have cuts.

We've got to choose one.

We've got to choose our poison.

Make a decision.

At the moment, we're trying to run this middle line without acknowledging that reality.

And I think we have to look at ourselves and go, what can we stomach? Can we stomach paying more when we can't afford our own bills? Or can we stomach our government cutting and saving and all that kind of thing? I mean, that would be my preference.

getting in the shtook at a slower rate.