Pita Sharples

Look, look, David Seymour in 2023 flatly ruled out ever sitting around the cab- cabinet table with Winston Peters, and look how that went.

2005, Don Brash held a meeting with Tariana Turia and Peter Sharples.

Can you believe it? Yeah.

So all sorts of conversations happen after an election.

I mean, that's the thing I always say is that elections are usually decided by vibes.

And I mean, the joke is that they're decided by Winston Peters, which there's a little bit of truth to, but for the most part, it's vibes.

And I think that for that reason, the outcome is usually fairly obvious well before election day.

I mean, if you took 2014, I think everyone except David Cunliffe knew that National was going to romp home that year.

2017 was more predictable, but even then there was a clear mood in the air for change, which Winston Peters then did deliver.

2020, the only question was how much would Labour win by.

2023, it was the opposite.

I would like to quote the great philosopher Huey Lewis, who said in...

We thought of lots of things.

I remember we worked with an amazing Maori group, Peter Sharples and Albie Pryor, they were the advisors to Sky City for all this, and at one stage they wanted to have a laser beam on the mast to point out that Rangitoto is part of the you know, connection of the EV and the...

He's ready? Yeah.

Yeah, let's go, please.

I didn't say it quite like that.

But, of course, it's not Pita Sharples unless it's got the Macron on.

Otherwise, it is more of a Pita Sharples.

Yeah, right.

Yeah, well, the thing that saved me, actually, was the editor of our show, lovely man, Chris Anderton, and he's a fluent speaker of Te Reo, and he said to me, how does the kōkako sing? What does the bird call? And I said, oh, that's easy.