Yeah.

Yeah, I don't think so.

But I think there was moments of real energy and vigour.

I do perhaps disagree with Holly on that.

I thought Chris Hipkins started very well.

He stood tall.

He looked strong.

And there are many people interested in it.

What do you know about this? And also perhaps the response may be from Seymour, David Seymour, maybe from Shane Jones.

Look, nobody will be the least bit surprised at the responses.

Some of these groups in New Zealand, the ones that are supporting the Dutch complaint, the ones that are backing it, had to provide evidence to the European Commission that they had gone through due process first, that there had been attempts in New Zealand to hold the government to its commitments in traditional terms, you know, democratic, participative, consultative terms.

So they, you know, for instance, Ngāti Pukinga and Kete Tauranga iwi trust, they showed how they had lobbied government against the extension to the port of Tauranga.

which they felt had adverse climate impacts, not to mention encouraging more and more diesel ships to ship back and forth across the globe.

That was their instance.

There was another group called Orataio, and they're a kind of climate health group.

But critics say it's a direct attack on the courts and on New Zealanders' right to hold companies to account for the damage they cause.

For those unfamiliar, what's in the background to this? What is the problem that the royal we are trying to solve? OK, the problem

that we're trying to solve is we have enormously, rapidly growing responsibilities on local government, technical, difficult challenges.

Consenting planning is really hard now.

It's not what your little boroughs used to do 50 years ago.

Infrastructure is enormously complicated.

Look at the three waters.

Look at drinking water and wastewater and stormwater.

And, I mean, so these proposals, though, they happened at light speed, right? And they happened at light speed because the government told them that they needed to happen at light speed.

So I don't think they would mind either some government intervention.

And that's where the problem is going to be for a new government supermarket because the supermarkets, you know, First Countdown, as it was, and Progressives, and then more recently Foodstuffs, have been very effective.

It really, for want of a better word, intimidating the suppliers.

So it's been very difficult for them to sign up supply deals with smaller retailers, you know, to go out to the night.

And did you know night and day is our third largest grocery supplier in New Zealand? No, I did not know that.

The enormous gap between second and third.

Gosh, wow.

Who's that, Daddy? What does he do? What does the blue mean? Who are the yellow people? Our

So I don't think they would mind either some government intervention.

And that's where the problem is going to be for a new government supermarket, because the supermarkets, you know, First Countdown, as it was, and Progressives, and then more recently, food sites, have been very effective.

It really, for want of a better word, intimidating the suppliers.

So it's been very difficult for them to sign up supply deals with smaller retailers, you know, to go out to the night.

And did you know night and day is our third largest grocery supplier in New Zealand? No, I did not know that.

The enormous gap between second and third.

Gosh, wow.

Who's that, Daddy? What does he do? What does the blue mean? Who are the yellow people? Our

But if someone said to him, take a lower shareholding or the company's going down, surely that would be the responsible thing to do.

So Macquarie, the 22% Australian investment firm that holds nearly a quarter of the ownership of Winton, has pretty clearly expressed its displeasure with Christopher Mann in the resignation of its representative, Kemp, from the Nominations and Remuneration Committee.

I would imagine that Macquarie would at this point be considering one of two courses of action.

One is that it would want to sell out, but it put $200 million into this company.

So if it sells out for the dollar a share this company is now worth, it would take a big hit.

It would be a big hit for Macquarie, and it would not like that.

So that's one option, sell out.

and Stephen Joyce, who lasted just seven weeks in the chair's role.

But first, Jonathan breaks down where these policy ideas first started, and how exactly the scheme would work

Yeah, this is a scheme that's actually been designed, um, from outside Parliament and outside, um, the bureaucracy in Wellington.

It's called a Ratepayer Assistance Scheme, and it's, um, it was basically put forward by councils, um, around the country, and there's 67 of them, plus the regional councils, and they've been trying to look at, at ways of helping keep ratepayers afloat through difficult times and rising cost of living.

And also to pay for, you know, small scale infrastructure.

Uh, you know, could be solar panels or, or batteries or, um, or insulation in your roof.

And they've come up with this scheme with the assistance of some pretty high-powered, um, consultants actually, like, you know, lawyers and accountants and whatnot.

They've come up with this scheme that basically allows you to borrow against your future rates.

They haven't campaigned on the rates postponement part of the scheme, have they?

It all comes back to local government with you, doesn't it, Jonathan? Can you give us the sort of pricey version of what happened?

Yeah, so it's quite sudden and a little bit unexpected but we'd had a bit of a hoo-ha in some of the media up in the far north.

There was an ACT member in the far north district council who kicked up about the fact that some of the committee members on the council were able to vote and influence decisions.

It was just one ACT member but they They made quite a fuss out of it.

She accused the council of co-governance on steroids.

We know that co-governance has not been a popular phrase among many lately.

And it really set off a social media firestorm.

that's your inference that you're making? That is