John Banks

Leighton Roy says, thank you for your wonderful podcast.

I particularly enjoyed the ones with Rodney Hyde and John Banks.

They really hit the nail on the head with their commentary.

There was one point, though, I wanted to push back with Rodney.

And I agree with you and I agree with him on that.

Now, from Liz.

There are few people who can send my acrylic nails rattling across a keyboard with quite the urgency of John Banks.

And I mean that as a compliment.

...

so only one person got elected, and that wasn't Don, that was John Banks.

Um, so I, I then went and worked for John Banks, uh, in Wellington for a year.

Did the whole charter school legislation, which was a cool experience.

Um-

So I was sort of like the, the background guy that did the sort of grunt work really, so.

Yeah.

What did John Banks teach you, bro?

That's a very colourful background.

John Banks, lovely to have you.

Thank you very much.

But the Lord doesn't have a quiet life for me.

Welcome to podcast 349 for October 14, 2026.

John Banks features in the interview in this podcast.

The unfortunate thing was that, um, after we had recorded it yesterday, we had the minor parties battle.

And I was disappointed that we, uh, didn't have, um, John Banks involved in it.

So I, I've done something this morning which I've never done before, and that is I rang him and I said, "I want you to give me your opinion on, uh, on what you saw last night," having established that he did watch it.

Amongst other things, here is what he, uh, he said, and it's in brief.

At this point, he hadn't mentioned the Opportunity Party, so I asked him.

He said Quile, uh, in his opinion, presented well, but her answers were shallow, and he referred to them, uh, also as being vanilla.

So anyway, there's plenty more twists and turns.

Uh, of course, there was the John Key teacup tape with John Banks.

There was Don Brash and the Brethren, uh, situation.

There was Helen Clark and the...

Uh, is there historically a, a clear indicator of that by the time you're a week out, say?

There, there can be some really quirky shifts, like [laughs] 2011, I think it was John Key and John Banks were having some sort of cup of tea in Parnell to sort out some strategy, and their conversation was overheard, and that, um, resulted in a, in a three-point shift away from National, uh, right in the last week.

So some quirky things can happen, and I suspect that there is gonna be something out of left or right field that happens in the last two weeks because there's just so much pressure being placed on the politicians and their advisors to get a result that, uh, you know, pressure can create diamonds, and sometimes, uh, really extreme pressure can create, uh, unpredictable events.

There's one other factor, though, in talking about when those polls, uh, kind of reach their maximum usefulness, and that is the amount-