Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
You're listening to the Kerry Wood of morning's podcast from
newstalk s ed B, Jason.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Wills's Newstalk zedb's political editor. A very good morning to you, Jason.
Speaker 3 (00:17):
Oh, good morning, Kerry.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Lovely to withak you twenty six percent, dangerously close to
the twenty five, which is when the party faith will
start to get a bit shifty.
Speaker 3 (00:27):
Yeah, it's it's not looking good for the Labor Party.
I mean, I will note that they're up zero point
eight percentage points, so it is a bit of a
bounce for them, But I mean we're in an M
and P environment and you've got to take the whole block,
left block as a whole. And we did see you know,
altiparty Maria looking very strong at five percent, so they've
breached that five percent threshold, which doesn't mean as much
(00:48):
for them because they do have six of those Marii
electric seats, but still it's a good psychological barrier the path.
The Greens having an absolute terrible time. They're down one
point five percentage points to eleven. No prizes for guessing
why that is. Of course, the Dai and Karnasaga continues
to drag off. But what we need to look at
is seats in the House and at this stage, I
(01:09):
mean the National Party along with ACT in New Zealand. First,
they're still sitting pretty at about sixty eight seats and
the left blocker on fifty three, so there's still a
long way off and that gap has actually gotten a
lot wider.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
Yeah, finally the Greens saw some downward movement. It took
a while for the party faithful to actually give become disenchanted.
Speaker 3 (01:33):
Yeah, I was surprised that it took this long time
to see that much of a drop. I mean, the
fact is, you know, the Greens do have a strong
base support who's going to stay with them through thick
and thin. But the problem they have is the Darli
and Tana saga is not over yet. I mean, she
is looking to injunct the party or have an injunction
against the party from meeting to kick her out of Parliament.
(01:56):
So it's messy and it's scrappy, and it means that
they're not really talking about the things that they want
to talk about. No matter how many times Chloe Swarwick
might want to stay on message, it's hard to do
so when there's such a significant distraction like this exactly.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
Is the only thing saving I mean, this happens. This
is not Chris Hipkins per se. This is what parties
do when they're languishing in the polls. National did it.
They've hunt around trying to find somebody appropriate. Labor did
it before them, and now Labor have to do it again.
Have they learned anything from the pick a leader, any
leader from the last time they tried to find someone?
Speaker 3 (02:35):
Oh well, I mean the Labor Party were in the
wilderness for nine years and it was a very very
dark wilderness where they bounced from leader to leader until
they settled on just Cinda our durned ten minutes before
the twenty seventeen election. And Chris Hipkins, you know, on paper,
is still the best candidate to lead the Labor Party.
But looking at these net favorability ratings, Chris Hipkins's net
(02:57):
favorability fell sixteen points. He's now sitting on minus ten.
So that is basically the net favorability is your how
many people like you versus how many people don't like you,
And if more people don't like you than like you,
your net favorability is negative. Chris Luxin, meanwhile, is on
a net positive seven percent when it comes to net favorability.
So there is quite a gap between the two leaders
(03:19):
as well. And you know we're listen, and I've said
this before, I'll say it again. We're an MMP system.
We elect parties, not leaders. We're not a presidential system,
so this doesn't matter as much. But with the way
that politics is in New Zealand, so much of a
political party's popularity is based on the leader, and if
you have a leader doing this badly in the net favorability,
(03:40):
it doesn't spell well and it doesn't bode well for
the rest of the party as a whole.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
Barbara Edmonds too youthful within within the parliamentary system to
not enough experience.
Speaker 3 (03:53):
I think she's gonna text you and thank you for
such a compliments. Too youthful. I think you'll love that.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
But I mean, well, she is still relatively as what
she's in her early forties, isn't she well.
Speaker 3 (04:04):
I mean she's still a junior MP. She's still she's
still hasn't been around for too long. I mean she
may she's made quite an impact. She's a literally attacked expert.
She she used to work for Judith Collins back in
the day, so she knows this inside and out. However,
she has yet to may get any real credible traction
in terms of big hits on Nikola Willis. I mean,
(04:26):
it used to be I mean, and it's not really
one hundred percent her fault. It used to be Chris
Hipkins versus Chris Luxon was the main draw card, and
then the undercard was Grant Robertson versus Nicola Willis, and
that was the site to behold because those were two
politicians at the top of their game. Barbara Edmonds is
still finding her feet in that finance role, and I
think in terms of you know, I watched the house
(04:48):
every day, it's a bit Beltway, but she's still yet
to really really get anything on Nikola Willis, who is
probably the most skilled politician in the House. So it's
always a really really hard battle for her. But in
terms of taking over the leadership, no, she's she's nowhere
near in her place where she's ready for that yet.
Speaker 2 (05:04):
Karen Mcanoughtie then.
Speaker 3 (05:06):
Oh listen, he talks like a rural man and everybody
likes that about him, and you know, maybe, I mean,
I think that there's a bit of a self fulfilling
prophecy here that enough people keep talking about it, political
or politicians start to feel well, hang on a second,
I do have some momentum and other people in their
parties start to say, well, this guy's being talked about
quite a bit, so we there could be a scenario
(05:28):
where he's talked into the leadership. We've seen it happen
before with the likes of you know, I think probably
the best example of that was Simon Bridges or maybe
a David Shearer back, sorry, David cun left, get my
David's mixed up.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
And at the time it were a gaggle of.
Speaker 3 (05:45):
David's I think it was, but another one he genuinely
doesn't seem to want it at this stage. Now that
might be the mark of a skilled politician to seem
like you genuinely want it, because the worst thing for
a leadership bid is to publicly say that you want
to be the leader. It just doesn't happen. And if
you do say it, then you're we have that kiwi
(06:05):
cut them down before they get too high sort of mentality.
You need to pretend that you don't want it, and
you know, I will say he's doing a pretty good
job at pretending.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
You heard it here first. So when Chris Hopkins I
was talking to him ten days or so ago, he
was like, I've had a long, hard think about it,
and I'm absolutely convinced that I can lead Labored in
the next election to the next election. He's convinced he
can do it.
Speaker 3 (06:33):
Yes, And just before I get into that, I really
love your hours that doesn't sit downs with the politician.
The Prcipkins one was great. The lux and one was good.
It's good to actually draw out a little bit of
more of their personality as well, and it's good to
get their talk back callers. So just a bit of
a well done for me on that one. I'm a
big fan.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
But yeah, he was love the callers having direct access
to them as well.
Speaker 3 (06:56):
The great and I love it when they really give
it to them as well. It's just like, you've screwed
this up, what are you going to do? And just
kind of seeing them on the spot because they're used
to people like me. If if I come along and
say you've screwed it up a little bit, they have
their responses ready because they've dealt with me for so long.
But when it's a talkback caller's somebody that is actually
out there that is actually really suffering from things. It's
(07:17):
really good to hear it from the coal face. So
a big fan of those. But in terms of Chris Hipkins,
you know, it's you're right, he said that he's in
it for the long wall. But then again, what's the
counterfactual if he said on your show that he was
considering not doing it or he hasn't made up his
mind yet. That all that would do was would lead
to a basically a death spiral is what we call
it down here in the gallery, where you can't ever
(07:39):
say that you're thinking about not doing something. I mean,
you'll remember Andrew Little. He all he had to say was, yeah,
I've had conversations with my colleagues about maybe not doing this,
and that was the end for him. So although he
is saying this thing publicly, you can't say anything else
but that. And it's the same with leadership hopefuls. They
can't say anything but oh I don't want it. So
(08:00):
you need to kind of read in between the lines
and you need to keep your ear to the ground
and what people was saying because publicly you can't really
trust anything that they're saying on these things.
Speaker 2 (08:11):
Always good to hear your expertise. Jason, thank you so much,
Jason Wall's News Talk said be's political editor, thank you
for your insights.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
For more from carry Wood and Mornings, listen live to
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