affection with them? Why is the public actually— Well, because they're

the anti-politicians, aren't they? And Kulé is—I've met her on a couple of occasions.

She's extremely competent and really, I mean, very, very impressive as a person.

But they set themselves up as the anti-politicians.

They say, we're fresh.

We want to do things differently.

Well, OK, Mark and I are sort of grizzled old veterans of politics.

The Nats are up one.

What is the solution?

Well, there's a very simple thing here.

It's the law is the law is the law, and it applies to the private and the public sector.

Just think about where the Wellington Water, Te Akiwai, whatever they call themselves, was a private company, and they did that.

We'd all be screaming and shouting and saying, gosh, hang them high, get on a pike, they should go to jail.

Just because it's a publicly owned organisation, you say, oh, I'll let them off.

But you can't do that.

Do you think, Phil, that Chippy is right, that this overhang thing is a rort?

And that has remained a problem for us.

New Zealand stock market, poorly performing, dreadful performance over the last 10 years.

What are we doing about making sure that KiwiSaver accounts can invest more in the New Zealand stock market rather than the US stock market? That's the policy problem that we need to sort out.

Far too often in my mind, For every complex problem, there's a bright, shiny, simple solution that's wrong.

So the stock market, what could happen? I mean, why haven't we sorted it out in the last 10 years? A

whole bunch of reasons.

We're small, obviously.

And we've got, because of the nature of our economy, our stock market is dominated by companies that actually aren't all that entrepreneurial.

Phil?

That's right.

The, the, this choice is right.

In fact, the, the, the, you, there's a million [laughs] opportunities, there's a million things that could happen in the polls right now, which is, which is really what the poll of polls stuff is telling you.

There's, there's 20 or 30 permutations out there right now.

But Josie's absolutely right.

What the Opportunity party is doing is fundamentally taking votes off the, off the left because their policies are relatively left, actually.

Phil, um, i- i- this, this business about talking about the taxes is weird, isn't it? It's backfiring on the Nats, isn't it?

Phil?

That's right.

That, that, that's totally right.

In fact, the, the, y- there's a million [laughs] Oppor- sh- there's a million things that could happen in the polls right now, which is, which is really what the polar poll stuff is telling you.

There's, there's 20 or 30 permutations out there right now.

But Josie's absolutely right.

What the Opportunity Party is doing is fundamentally taking votes off the, off the left because their policies are relatively left, actually.

Yeah

If he's big enough to apologise, why can't the Migrant Association or even Winston Peters?

Yeah, that's right.

I thought the Prime Minister did the right thing, actually.

He just put his foot in his mouth there and I think he took it out and said sorry.

And I think that's probably right.

And I think, you know, he's...

I've heard him many times be very supportive of business solvers.

Is it OK per se or is it not?

On Mondays, the 20th of the month, I've got to pay my pay.

And you were so cynical coming back to me and said that.

You burst my balloon.

I was trying to get the story out, get the whole Wellington thing going.

I'm going to talk about it later on.

I reckon Wellington's going hot right now, it's going to be.

So you're right, we do have this problem with always hoping for something.

When you first heard all this, I mean, this is in your neighbourhood, am I right?

Now, Phil, what do you reckon? Do you reckon the OCI had to go up today?

I think what was really a judgment call, as you could see, half the economists were saying yes, half no.

When I was at Business New Zealand commenting on these things a bit more specifically over the years, we said that the better idea was to do a bit early rather than wait and then have to do a lot later.

And I think that's what they've done.

They've looked at what's going on in the economy.

We're out of, hopefully we're out of the problems of Hormuz now.

The economy looks like it might be getting back on its feet.

What do you think, Phil?

Now, um, Phil, what do you reckon? Do you reckon the OCI had to go up today?

Uh, I think the, the ...

Well, it was a really a judgment call, as you could see.

Half the e- economists were saying yes, half no.

When I was, when I was at Business New Zealand commenting on these things a bit more specifically over the years, we said that the better idea was to do a bit early rather than wait, and then have to do a lot later, and I think that's what they've done.

They've, they've looked at the, what's going on in the economy.

You know, we're out of, hopefully we're out of the problems of Hormuz now.

What do you think, Phil?

I want to know what these business leaders are worried about and sweating about at night.

Well, of course, right now they're worried about, well, they're not worried, they're activated about AI.

They're activated about the digital revolution.

That's more broadly the case right now.

They're kind of talking a lot about what I call re-globalization.

I describe it as that.

And I take a view in those meetings that actually New Zealand is likely to be actually quite well off.

So what is your vision like for New Zealand? What do you hope New Zealand would look like in five years?

Do you see it as a budget of austerity, Phil?

No, no.

In fact, they're still spending in a relatively big way.

An austerity budget would be 20% out.

An austerity budget would be 40,000 civil servants losing their jobs tomorrow.

That's what austerity looks like, and that's been practised in the past.

In this case, what the government's trying to do, I think... is to balance the need to get the books in order, which is clearly something we all need to worry about, but then also think about how they might counter-cyclically try to get some activity going in the economy.

I mean, should the government have put that on the table?

Yeah.

How do they get the public services they need? Is that through talking to a person? Is that through talking to a piece of digital infrastructure? Is it, is it gonna be some sort of tech solution? Here's a good example of how a tech solution could work.

Tech might mean that social welfare beneficiaries actually more capably and more accurately get the benefits to which they're entitled.

Maybe that's a good way we could do it, and we could do it without more, without more people.

So in terms of how many people we have, it's just a, just a null thought.

The better idea is to, is to really factor in what a good public service looks like, what a good public service for the citizens looks like, which may well be very different.

I, I agree with you.

Yeah.

Yeah

... also I think what they're doing is setting up a bit of a political thing where they say, "Well, we're not gonna spend anything that Labor's doing.

They're gonna spend some more." You know, tell me how incredible that is.

And so I thought that was, that, that's the politics of it, of course.

The other thing that I thought was interesting was the prime minister talking about security and resilience in terms of, in terms of the, you know, the monetary position of the government.

I think that's actually ...

It's happening all around the world, but the first time I've seen a prime minister in New Zealand in the last few years use it quite that bluntly.

Totally

Phil?

Well, I agree with it, not because I necessarily think it'll do a massively different job, but you look at some of the biggest challenges that are going on in a place like Europe.

I was just chatting to a bunch of German business people a minute ago.

One of the biggest issues in Europe right now is illegal migration and a feeling amongst the population that they don't welcome migrants, including illegal migrants, because they don't share the values of, say, the UK or France or Germany.

You're already seeing in Australia right now as well, where migrants are speaking out saying, we don't agree with the values.

We don't agree with women having the vote.

We don't agree with freedom of religion.

What

What do you think, Phil?

Well, the problem here, I think, as Josie said, it's actually about activist lawyers going off the court and to get a declaration when actually what should be happening is the public should be voting on the various options here.

The government should stand up and say, here's what we're doing.

And it's a matter of intense politics because, of course, it goes to the costs that you and I pay for our home heating, for our fuel at the pump, the choices that we make.

I don't think those choices are best decided by judges.

And I don't think, in fact, anything like that is best decided by judges.

It should be decided by politicians.

So, Phil, speaking of which, the social media post that Hipkins' ex-wife has put out about him, what does he do about this, if anything?

Either of you, raise your hand or say your name, willing to take a punt on the outcome?

Yeah, I'll have a go.

The two things that you've got to worry about with elections, if you're the government or the opposition, actually, one is Is the economic recovery that's currently going on going to be widely felt by New Zealanders, right, by November? And that's what Seymour was just talking about a minute ago.

He put it more nicely than that, but he's really saying the government wants some time to see that the economic recovery is going to go on.

The second thing is, does the government get to own it? Does the government get to say to New Zealanders, well, we helped that, we helped that come, and as a result, you should vote for us and not the other mob because I'll up your taxes or whatever the lines they use.

And that's where you've got to make a guess.

Now, I'm going to make a view.

Yeah, hard to argue with that, Phil.

Like, that should be about $500, shouldn't it?

Yeah, I think that's right.

I mean, I'm all for user pays, but I agree with Jack.

You need to be cautious a little bit about taking the concept too far where the user simply can't afford it and I can't take my kids to the swimming pool.

Take them to the beach then.

Well, maybe we should charge for that too.

But you get the idea.

Yeah.

Do you believe the theory that Winston's prepared to go with Labour again?

No.

What Winston's trying to do is maximise his vote share.

So they're already in full election mode.

Shane Jones is running around the country saying, Talking at what he says, and I've got no reason to disbelieve him, fully sold out to regional meetings.

They are absolutely setting out their stall.

They're early out of the blocks on the selection stuff.

What do you think?

OK, Phil?

Look, Erica, Stanford's done exactly the right thing here.

The reality is the Crown, the Government of New Zealand is the partner to the Treaty of Waitangi, as the Minister says.

And this endless sprinkling of treaty obligations throughout our country so that everybody seems to have to live with it, is required to comply with the treaty, is not only just illogical given the fact that the Crown's the partner here, but it also puts them in an impossible position.

As you know, the Treaty of Waitangi is the subject of heated debate and change by the courts and changes in interpretation.

How a volunteer... school boards supposed to comply with all of that? It's an impossibility.

What I think they're focusing on properly, and what the Minister's asking to focus on properly, is please make sure that everything you do tries to reduce the inequity between the achievement of Māori students and the achievement of other students.

How do you feel about this?

What do you think?

And then they do a haka in the Parliament today.

Yeah, unfortunately.

It's kind of weird.

I'm not sure that by just calming down a bit they'll be seen as any more or many more part of a cabinet by the non-Maori Party voter than before, actually.

I think they really do need to come out with some policy that's more than just grievance and more than just protest and actually sit down and say, hey, we should make New Zealand better.

And I just don't see them doing that, frankly.

What do you think, Phil?