How damaging have the campaign with gang members revelations been for Labour, Te Pāti Māori, the Greens, National?

Look, I think it has been very damaging for the left bloc.

Whether it's been terminal to their chances, I think, is too soon to tell.

But the big issue here is really the point you made before, that it's not so much that the turning up to the events is the problem, it's the denials.

And difficulties always emerge.

The thing about Watergate, it wasn't so much the original break-in, but the cover-up that became the problem in the end.

And I think it's a bit of the same here.

early,

Look, I think it

has been very damaging for the left block, whether it's being terminal to their chances, I think, is too soon to tell.

But the big issue here is really the point you made before, that it's not so much that the turning up to the events is the problem, it's the denials.

And difficulties always emerge.

You know, it's like with Watergate, the thing about Watergate, it wasn't so much the original break-in, but the cover-up that became the problem in the end.

And I think it's a bit of the same here.

And Karen Leone, in particular, denying any... meeting and then having to admit it took place.

early,

How damaging have the campaign with gang members revelations been for Labour, Te Pāti Māori, the Greens, National? I think it

has been very damaging for the left block.

Whether it's been terminal to their chances, I think is too soon to tell.

But the big issue here is really the point you made before.

that it's not so much that the turning up to the events is the problem, it's the denials.

And difficulties always emerge.

It's like with Watergate, the thing about Watergate, it wasn't so much the original break-in, but the cover-up that became the problem in the end.

It's not really clear what might happen there either, Peter.

I mean, because it's, you know, bums on seats is amazing.

Yeah.

It's so unusual because as we were saying, you don't kind of...

It's hard to get your head around that people are actually listening to it, you know? And even when I'm directing the podcast, I don't look at the actors.

I look at the floor because it doesn't matter what they're doing with their faces.

It only matters what they sound like.

So even when you're directing a live show, it's kind of like, oh, yeah, that's what you look like.

Oh, I did,

But if you, you just told us it no longer helps you.

Well, I've, I'm, I'm gonna have to reach a decision in the next, uh, little while.

Uh, but, but to not vote seems to me to be an abrogation of a real privilege.

Um, and so I would not seriously consider that.

Um, you know, I think it's a right that's been hard fought for, and I think you've got to exercise it.

But can I just give you an example of the sort of thing that really frustrates me? Um, at the moment, AI is a huge issue, and all of the parties are developing AI policies.

I don't pretend to understand it fully, but they all are.

How does he swallow that rat though?

Yeah.

And, you know, in most cases, and I think it's still the case today, all of the key players know each other pretty well.

They know their strengths, they know their weaknesses, they know the, the, the, the bits that will cause problems and the bits that won't.

So what you do is you try and build on those personal relationships, because even after the deal's done, uh, I always found there was a lot more you could achieve simply by the fact that you could go and talk directly to the Prime Minister and say, "Hey, look, you know, we're not happy with this," or, "We think this might be something you might want to think about doing." And you, you know, you develop that ongoing relationship, uh, which is important for the duration of the agreement.

Yeah.

Um, Helen was all over the detail, um, knew the policy, uh, sort of intimately, and knew your policy intimately too, and would challenge you on points and say, "But hang on, that's not what your policy says." And so she was very good in that sense, and very good also in, in respecting, you know, where the smaller parties lay in the, in the, in the bigger equation.

Key had a much more instinctive feel, I think, for just the, the relationships, and he focused a lot on building those personal relationships.

So, so at any point he could pick up the phone and say, "Hey, look, I've been thinking about this.

And then in the next breath, said in regards to nationals drug testing beneficiaries, he said the policy could be a massive attack on people's freedoms.

Yes, and in a meeting in Invercargill yesterday, apparently when someone from the audience asked about why Chinese and Indian people were getting superannuation, he gave them a lecture on racism.

and how wrong it was to racially stereotype people.

So it's very bizarre.

I mean, it's classic Peter's populism, really.

Grab an issue that he thinks is popular, make a point, and then move on to the next one.

And if they don't all join up together as being consistent, that doesn't really matter to him because he's ticked those audiences off.

Have the parties made enough impact with that deadline looming at this stage? Well,

And then in the next breath, said in regards to National's drug testing beneficiaries, he said the policy could be a massive attack on people's freedoms.

Yes, and in a meeting in Invercargill yesterday, apparently when someone from the audience asked about why Chinese and Indian people were getting superannuation, he gave them a lecture on racism and, and, you know, how wrong it was to ratio- raci- racially stereotype people.

So it's very bizarre.

I mean, it's classic Peters populism, really.

Grab an issue that he thinks is popular, make a point, and then move on to the next one.

And if they don't all join up together as being consistent, that doesn't really matter to him because he's ticked, ticked those audiences off.

And, uh, I think what he's doing now is playing to strengthen New Zealand's first position with an eye on not Act as it was at the last election, but the Opportunity Party as it is this election.

Have the parties made enough impact with that deadline looming at this stage?

He made comments about abortions, and then in the next breath said in regards to National's drug testing beneficiaries, he said the policy could be a massive attack on people's freedoms.

Yes, and in a meeting in Invercargill yesterday, apparently when someone from the audience asked about why Chinese and Indian people were getting superannuation, he gave them a lecture on racism and, and, you know, how wrong it was to ratio- raci- racially stereotype people.

So it's very bizarre.

I mean, it's classic Peters populism, really.

Grab an issue that he thinks is popular, make a point, and then move on to the next one.

And if they don't all join up together as being consistent, that doesn't really matter to him because he's ticked, ticked those audiences off.

And, uh, I think what he's doing now is playing to strengthen New Zealand's first position with an eye on not ACT as it was at the last election, but the Opportunity Party as it is this election.

Have the parties made enough impact with that deadline looming at this stage?

But with the coalitions now, um, with the fact that party policies, um, you can say what you like, but are they gonna survive the coalition negotiations, whether it's left or right? Do leaders' debates still have merit?

No, I don't think they do be- for precisely that reason.

We're in an environment now where two elections ago in 2020, Labor and National between them got 75% of the vote.

Last election it was 65%.

This election it looks like being somewhere between 50 and 55%, so their relevance overall is declining.

And with that you've got the rise of smaller parties.

Now, I'll give you one example.

What do you make of, uh, Chris Luxon's ruling out of opportunity so emphatically right now?

So, like, how much of a say do you have in terms of what it sounds like and how much does he have a say in what the script is like how much you cost or do you leave each other alone?

Script wise, he kind of leaves me alone.

And then what we would do is Liam would do his first draft and then, but because I have kind of, Liam would be a horror fan, but like I would be kind of a rabid horror fan.

And so, so I would even, you know, some of the things I'd say to him is I would listen to it and I would go, can you just give three seconds of silence before this thing? Um, or can you, um, can you, can you make, I'd even just kind of describe a level of sound or, uh, a type of knock, but then the great thing is like Liam doesn't usually use a sound bank.

Like he creates.

like all these oh he makes all the sounds himself not all the but the majority of like for instance there's one episode called the person in the empty room and as part of it there's two sisters that have like basically a brawl and so liam like put cushions on his floor and rolled around his uh his sitting room punching the pillows and himself and kind of you know and so he was going if i like he was saying you could only imagine what the neighbors thought but imagine that yeah And then there was one that we did called Creeps, and it was about like a Halloween party where it's basically like almost like the Evil Dead, like it's a big possession, but like it's kind of mass possession and everyone goes insane.

But like when we were making that, we had like the cast of how many was it? There's a cast of like tree around the table and then leo and i but we were like because we record them all in my dining room actually the room i'm sitting in now but like um we were yeah we were banging chairs we were screaming making like kind of you know gurgling noises like shrieks and this is a you know possibly well then i have to

there just has to be a point where you just go it's done yeah Well then, is there one of those stories then that is in your drawer that you're just thinking, it's never going to be finished?

What do you make of that?

Well, this is the whole thing about Labour.

For the last three years, it's been determined to make itself a small target because it doesn't want to be pilloried or sort of pigeonholed as standing for certain things.

The difficulty with that is it ends up looking as though they don't stand for very much at all.

The target's so small.

And I think it's had an adverse effect for them because one of the things National has done, probably inaccurately, but has run this nine new taxes campaign, And all it's done is forced Labour on the defensive.

It's got nothing else to argue for.

Is this us just finally understanding how MMP works?

Who do you think, if you take a look at the campaigning which has been happening to date, who in your mind is doing a good job?

Well, I think the National Party is certainly very on message on tax.

Whether that's resonating with people remains to be seen.

But it's almost a single-minded focus from every utterance they make gets tax and Labour into the same sentence.

Labour, I think, on the other hand, is trying to sort of convey a mood that things aren't right and therefore they could be better.

But as someone said to me at a function last night, it sort of stretches credibility to think that the very people we threw out three years ago are going to be the saviours for our problems today.

So they're both sort of in the shadowboxing mode still.

And I wondered whether you were sort of having flashbacks to 2013, Peter?

Yeah

...

I think we're more aware of what the extremities are.

We don't have those extreme trends here.

We have the, the fringe parties, the really fringe parties, but they're not getting any traction.

And I think what's happening is that, um, people here are just scoffing around between, it used to be the f- the six major parties, now it's seven.

And, um, you know, this is where the opportunity parties rise, but it's so significant because they've come from nowhere really, and they've, they've captured a space.

... a different set of contrasts, doesn't it?

I mean, this was immediately dismissed as communism from National on the right block.

Is it? Well, it's certainly an intervention of the type we haven't seen.

And I must say, governments have tried over the years to do something about controlling prices of supermarkets with spectacular failure.

In the 1970s, the Labour government introduced a thing called the maximum retail price, where each product would have a wee shield, which would show the maximum retail price.

And the idea was that the retailer would be encouraged to charge at a lower price to the benefit of the consumer.

In their three years in government, they got as far as getting the shield designed and implemented on a whole lot of packaging, but no maximum retail prices were ever struck, and the system just failed.

And I think this is a bit the same way.

Taking the long lens, you've been in Parliament since, well, you were in Parliament at the start of 1984.

I mean, this was immediately dismissed as communism from National on the right block.

Is it? Well, it's certainly an intervention of the type we haven't seen.

And I must say governments have tried over the years to do something about controlling prices of supermarkets with spectacular failure.

In the 1970s, the Labour government introduced a thing called the maximum retail price where each product would have a wee shield which would show the maximum retail price.

And the idea was that the retailer would be encouraged to charge at a lower price to the benefit of the consumer.

In their three years in government, they got as far as getting the shield designed and implemented on a whole lot of packaging, but no maximum retail prices were ever struck, and the system just failed.

And I think this is a bit the same way.

He didn't take it and it probably just suits them well that there's only six days of Parliament left because for whatever reason they just don't want to make a stand on this issue.

Who do you think, if you take a look at the campaigning which has been happening to date, who in your mind is doing a good job?

Well, I think the National Party is certainly very on message on tax.

Whether that's resonating with people remains to be seen.

But it's almost a single-minded focus from every utterance they make gets tax and Labour into the same sentence.

Labour, I think, on the other hand, is trying to sort of convey a mood that things aren't right and therefore they could be better.

But as someone said to me at a function last night, it sort of stretches credibility to think that the very people we threw out three years ago are going to be the saviours for our problems today.

So they're both sort of in the shadowboxing mode still.

And I wondered whether you were sort of having flashbacks to 2013, Peter?

Who do you think, if you take a look at the campaigning which has been happening to date, who in your mind is doing a good job?

Well, I think the National Party is certainly very on message on tax.

Whether that's resonating with people remains to be seen, but it's almost a single-minded focus from them.

Every utterance they make gets tax and Labour into the same sentence.

Labour, I think, on the other hand, is trying to sort of convey a mood that things aren't right and therefore they could be better.

But as someone said to me at a function last night, it sort of stretches credibility to think that the very people we threw out three years ago are going to be the saviors for our problems today.

So they're both sort of in the shadow boxing mode still.

And I wondered whether you were sort of having flashbacks to 2013, Peter?

Every Saturday morning.

Yeah, and during the...

Not election year, but during the off year, so to speak, I would often pick an area, quite a large area, send a letter out to everyone and say, I'm going to be in your area on Saturday.

If anyone wants to see me, I'll call by and we'd get appointments that way.

So it was very important for me to keep in touch locally.

So I went to every local event that I could.

If I say I ran constituency clinics usually on a Saturday morning but also again in my office on a Monday morning and even when I was a minister and we just got through a lot of people that way, and you build up over the years a big support base from people you've helped, people who might not be your natural supporters but are grateful for any assistance you've given them and feel a loyalty to you as a result.

Do you think that's still the case now, being there, being face-to-face? Yeah,

What's your feeling of where we're at right now?

Well, I think we are in a bit of a holding pattern.

You've seen a lot of policy announcements come out from all the parties, but there's no real connection between them.

It's all a bit here, a bit there.

And it's sort of game and counter game in a way.

And I think what's going on at the moment is that the government, realising it's on the back foot a little bit, is trying to actually track the opposition parties.

It's a bit like the spider and the fly, you know, come into my parlor.

Do you see parallels

interrupt you there a little bit? Because I'm hearing people, as yesterday or the day before, that are going into the private system paid for by the public system.

Well, yes.

And I'll tell you a wee story about that.

I tried at one stage to find out the extent of that interaction and was told none of it was occurring when I knew it was happening in practice.

An official said, no, no, it's not happening.

And when I challenged them, they came back to me eventually and said, oh, well, if we mandate a procedure to be provided privately, then we regard that as a public procedure.

So there's a lot of game playing going on in protection.

Is it simply politics, or is local government, in my view, should be different?

Are we more sophisticated now in understanding that things must be paid for?

Well, I think we are, but I think that creates a problem which I don't think the left has quite grappled with.

Given that reality, how do you then set out an agenda for social change, which is really what they're all about, which will be costly or expensive, and not frighten the horses when it comes to telling people how you're gonna pay for it? [computer dings] And I think that is a, um, a challenge that the Labour Party here struggles with.

It's also a factor of, of our country particularly, but not necessarily solely ours, and that is that, to put it bluntly, we don't have enough wealthy people in New Zealand for a redistributive policy to be able to work effectively.

The, the, the taxpayers at the very top of the tree, while they might be earning large amounts, are actually quite small in number and quite a small percentage of the total taxpaying community.

So that saying, "We'll take from the rich to give to the poor," just doesn't quite work 'cause there's not enough of the rich to take from, and I think that tempers a lot of the debate too.

We are now in the time of the professional politician.

I think that's a really big part of the issue, actually.

What's your summation of what you think happened there? Because I do not believe that Pink was wanting to be the Prime Minister of New Zealand.

No. I've see- I've heard that theory.

I think it's a bit f- far-fetched.

I think he was the genuine, um, slightly sort of John Boy Walton out there, you know, sort of w- knew what had to be done, thought he knew how to do it, and sort of stumbled into something.

I don't think he necessarily was actively working with Bishop and Stanford, although he was clearly, uh, touting their cases.

Is that enough? If we get two or three of those, are they, uh, are they in or we still can't say that?

I think it's too early.

For this reason, I think they've potentially peaked about a month or two too early.

What's your summation of what you think happened there? Because I do not believe that Pink was wanting to be the prime minister of New Zealand.

No, I've see- I've heard that theory.

I think it's a bit f- far-fetched.

I think he was the genuine, um, slightly sort of John Boy Walton out there, you know? Sort of w- knew what had to be done, thought he knew how to do it, and sort of stumbled into something.

I don't think he necessarily was actively working with Bishop and Stanford, although he was clearly, uh, touting their cases.

So uh, last night's poll, they're at whatever they're at, is that enough? If we get two or three of those, are they, are they in, or we still can't say that?

I think it's too early.

For this reason, I think they've potentially peaked about a month or two too early.

It can't be seen as a strong position for National.

No, it's not.

The problem they've got has been building up for some time.

They had an attempt earlier in the year.

I think that was probably even too late in the day for a change, actually.

But it was fairly obvious from a little while after Christopher Luxman took office as Prime Minister that he had a style that wasn't really going to suit him to this task.

I contrast him with Sir John Key, who came from a similar business perspective and business background, who was an outsider in politics.

But the thing is, is that... what it looks like after this going into the election is just ripe pickings for not only the opposition but the coalition partners as well.