October 16, 2024 • 64 mins
In Leaders Getting Coffee episode 28, our guest is the former ACT Party Member of Parliament and NZCPR Founder, Dr. Muriel Newman.
Dr. Newman moved to New Zealand with her family as a young girl, and brought with her an approach to her education typified by her desire not to let her parents down. That education led to a career teaching in New Zealand and subsequently the USA, before returning to New Zealand to bring up her young children.
Her work as a part of Sir Michael Hill’s Whangarei team led to a position as President of the local Chamber of Commerce and subsequently as a founding member of the ACT party.
After nine years as an MP, she founded the New Zealand Centre for Political Research an independent public policy think tank that provides research-based analysis and commentary on matters of national interest.
NZCPR is guided by a firm belief that informed citizens are at the heart of a well-functioning democracy.
During the Leaders Getting Coffee podcast, she speaks to Bruce Cotterill about the enormous challenges for the New Zealand government in the aftermath of the Ardern Hipkins Labour government, in particular the implications of unravelling the failed centralisations, bloated bureaucracies and inflated expectations of those who were set to benefit from government decisions based on race.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
This is an iHeartRadio New Zealand podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
Hi everyone, and welcome back to episode twenty eight If
the Leader's Getting Coffee podcast. My name is Bruce Cottrell
and it's great to have you with us for another discussion,
this time with a leader whose work is probably not
as well known as it should be, but we will
get to her shortly. As always, it's great to have
the team. It ends ed me on board with us,
the people from Used Talk ZEDB who put these podcasts together,
(00:50):
and of course the people at the Business Herald where
my regular column appears. And the last of those ran
on Saturday, the twelfth of October under the heading New
Zealand's Orange Cone Culture, How we lost common Sense on
the roads. It all happened because a few weeks I
was driving along into State forty between Memphis and Nashville
(01:10):
in the United States, and I was three lanes wide
on a four lane highway, traveling along at a speed
at the speed limit of about one hundred and twenty
kilometers an hour in our language, and up ahead, I
noticed the traffic slowing down on the inside lane. A
closer look revealed a road working crew. There were two
orange cones in front of a small barrier about two
meters wide, and behind the barrier were two men working
(01:33):
waist deep in a hole on the road. A third
man stood on the verge, observing. As the traffic on
the inside lane approached, the cars slowed and moved out
to the second lane, easing past the workmen before picking
up speed and continuing on their way. Believe it or not,
the drivers were actually able to make their own decision
to slow down and change lanes without the need for
(01:57):
signage or direction. I couldn't help but think how different
such a scene would have played out if the location
had been in New Zealand. You see here we'd have
at least four hundred meters of orange cones, signage of
plenty advising us to drive at thirty kilometers an hour.
Our men in the whole would typically be accompanied by
at least a couple of vehicles parked on the affected lane,
(02:17):
and a team of a dozen or so people moving
around a five thousand square meter work site. So what's
my point? I feel that orange cones have become a
metaphor for the state of the country. We're really good
at putting obstacles in the way to prevent us making progress.
We've become a country where the bureaucratic few would prefer
rules for us to abide by, rather than see us
supply common sense as we navigate our day. The article
(02:41):
mentions a few examples, including the fact that now if
you've got a hole on the roof of your warehouse
or your shop, it's no longer sufficient to arrange someone
to fix it. First, you have to submit a health
a health and safety plan to work safe. And I've
lost track of the cost of meeting our obligations under
the anti money laundering legislation. Just one of my clients
(03:02):
alone has three full time people involved in AML. Our
building industry is so homestrung by red tape, the consent process,
traffic reports, geological surveys, and a long and costly council
inspection process that dogs the entire project. And now we
have large businesses having to sign up to climate reporting standards.
(03:23):
I know of one organization that's spent two hundred and
fifty thousand alone in order to comply with the new
climate reporting These are just a few examples, but the
trend is obvious. Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown recently declared almost
half of all road repair costs are tied to traffic management.
That is the business of orange cones. Can you believe
(03:43):
that half the cost of fixing the roads is traffic management?
Why can't we just rely on common sense like those
American drivers were demonstrating, Instead of legislating people into the
behaviors we prefer. Common sense well exercised would save us
hundreds of millions of dollars. And instead of following a
blind path of obedience, mediocrity and dependency on the rule makers,
(04:05):
the exercise of common sense when encountering an obstacle will
ultimately result in people who can make good decisions themselves.
People who are more capable and more resilient will result,
and of course so too will better communities. So please
go and check out the column. You can see it
under the headline New Zealand's Orange Cone Culture how we
(04:27):
Lost common Sense on the Road, and you can find
it at nzid Herald dot co dot NZ or under
published articles at dubdubdub dot Bruce Kottrel dot com, Forward
Slash Blog. Thanks again for being with us. We'll be
back shortly with this week's guest. Welcome back to episode
(04:52):
twenty eight of leaders getting coffee. My guest today is
former Act Party MP doctor Muriel Newman. Muriel holds a
Bachelor of Science degree in mathematics and a Doctrine in
Mathematics education from Rutgers University in New Jersey in the
United States of America. But a long time before that,
she was born in the North of England and she
moved here with her young with her family as a
(05:14):
young child in the late nineteen fifties and the family
settled in Wangarey in the North were in nineteen fifty
eight and she subsequently attended the local schools in that area,
and we'll talk a bit more about that shortly, but
her early career was an education at secondary and tertiary
level in both New Zealand and the USA, where she
taught at the United Nations International School in New York.
(05:36):
And later she became involved in agriculture while running the
family farm and raising her children, and even had a
stint in retail as the assistant general manager for listed
retailer Michael Hill Jeweler in New Zealand. During that time,
she was elected the president of the Northland Chamber of
Commerce and was a government appointee on the Northland Health
Board and was also on the Conservation and Business Development boards,
(05:59):
and that all led to her joining the ACT Party
as a founding member, where she became a member of Parliament,
serving for nine years from nineteen teen ninety six to
two thousand and five. She even had a crack at
the leadership of ACT, but lost out to Rodney Hyde
and lost her seat in Parliament of the two thousand
and five election when ACT was reduced to just two MPs,
(06:19):
but that prompted her to establish the New Zealand Center
for Political Research or NZEDCPR. You can find it at
NZEDCPR dotz or dot com. It might be actually no
other I think about it where and her work continues
to this day for the good of the country. NZEDCPR
is an independent public policy think tank that provides research
(06:39):
based analysis and commentary on matters of national interest, and
they are guided by a firm belief that informed citizens
are at the heart of a well functioning democracy. Gee
that's hard to argue with, isn't it. You only have
to look at their website to accept that they take
that obligation very very seriously. Along the way, she's brought
up a couple of kids and currently has four grandchildren.
(07:01):
She's the co author, with her husband Frank, of a
number of money management books. She holds a black belt
in kung fu and remains living in the North, where
she resides on a lifestyle block and Tuda Karak and Onora.
Doctor Muriel Newman, welcome to lead us getting coffee.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
Thank you Bruce for having me.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
You're you're most welcome. We had a couple of technical
issues getting this one to us, but we're underway. Tell
me a black belt in kung fu? Is that a
necessity for a member of Parliament these days?
Speaker 3 (07:31):
Funnily enough, I actually graduated with the black belt after
I became an MP, so it was.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
Quite a funny, funny thing.
Speaker 3 (07:40):
But no, it was one of those things that you
do when you've got kids. They wanted to learn kung fu.
I'd done karate when I was younger, and so I
went along to watch. And you know, like many clubs,
they say come on, mum, you know, come and have
a go. So we dragged husband along too, and all
(08:01):
four of us did it for quite a few years.
The kids went off to university, but and I both
managed to get our black belts. And yeah, it was
a lot of fun, so.
Speaker 2 (08:11):
It became a family affair. Well done, Well done. You
tell me, did you get a chance to look at
the column over the weekend, and if so, what were
your thoughts.
Speaker 3 (08:20):
Well, look, you've articulated what a lot of New Zealand
is are worried about, and that is that this overbearing
regulation is just become.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
Too dominant in this country.
Speaker 3 (08:33):
It's crippling enterprise and it's actually crushing the human spirit.
All these people who come up with these great ideas
to do stuff and then they start looking into what's
involved and many of them just give up. It's just
become too hard. And I think the traffic cones is
a great example. You know, people now count them. It's
(08:56):
become a national pastime. You know, for God's sake, did
you see that there are x number? You know, it's
just ridiculous. And I heard the other day that these
come and he's get paid per cone, and I thought
to myself, Wow, you know that's probably why there are
so many out there.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
Well, it has become rather ridiculous. And we're probably going
to talk about a few things over the next hour
that are rather ridiculous. But before we do. Your family
story is an interesting one. You moved from the UK
to New Zealand. What do you know what prompted your
parents to come this way.
Speaker 3 (09:31):
Yeah, it was really to give us kids, my brother
and I he's three years older than I was or
I am, to give us a better opportunity. Neither of
them nor any of their other family had ever gone
past primary school. And so when we came to New Zealand,
the big thing was that we were going to university.
And it was interesting really when you look back, because
(09:54):
both of us did not want to let our parents down,
and no matter how hard things were, you made sure
you went as far as you could. And I think
it's probably that, you know, both of us ended up
with doctor degrees one way or another.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
It wasn't to do with brains.
Speaker 3 (10:10):
It was to do with not wanting to let your
parents down and working really hard and being dedicated.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
So you settled in, you said, settled in WANGARRAI. What
do you remember about those times? Oh?
Speaker 1 (10:23):
Just it was pretty care free days.
Speaker 3 (10:25):
You know, we were in a small suburb and you know,
you could kids were roaming around the district and you
could ride your bike up and down the road.
Speaker 1 (10:35):
Without any danger, and you know, it was sort of
care free.
Speaker 3 (10:39):
Days and it was a great upbringing really for children.
And you know, I sometimes look at you know, how
things have changed.
Speaker 1 (10:47):
You all walked to school. There was no worried, worries
about anything like that, and you think to yourself.
Speaker 3 (10:55):
You know, have we gone forwards or have we actually
gone backwards in some of these areas.
Speaker 2 (10:59):
So yeah, So did you go to school in WALLARRAI?
Speaker 1 (11:03):
Yes, Carmo Primary School, then Carmo High School.
Speaker 2 (11:06):
Okay, Camo Intermediate in between.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
No, there wasn't in my day. There wasn't an intermediate.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
I only sat because I went to Camo Intermediate. So
oh really, well, but that's another story. What were you
like at school?
Speaker 1 (11:24):
Well, first of.
Speaker 3 (11:25):
All, I was a bit of a square peg in
a round hole because I arrived from England with a
broad Yorkshire accent, you know, Coronation Street like, and of
course I was a sort of kid with red hair,
a little bit different war homemade clothes.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
And because you know, a family was pretty poor and.
Speaker 3 (11:48):
So I didn't really fit in and I can remember
probably you know, feeling out of the main stream if
you like. But I think I compensated by working as
hard as I could, and I was always striving to
keep up with my brother. As I said, he was
(12:09):
three years older, so he was way, you know, further
ahead than I was. So he was his younger sister
struggling to do as well as he did in maths
and science and all those subjects, even though probably they
weren't My natural affinity wasn't in that direction. But nevertheless,
I persevered and that's where I focused.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
And did you did you fit in eventually or was.
Speaker 3 (12:34):
It a oh yes, yeah, yeah, it was just a
matter of time really, and then people started understanding you
instead of saying what she's saying, you know, but no.
Speaker 1 (12:45):
It was I have fond memories of all of that.
You know.
Speaker 3 (12:50):
It was a good place to grow up, and the
schools were good in those days, and you got a
really great grounding and of course with parents who were
very much dedicated towards you doing well at school.
Speaker 1 (13:04):
It was it was pretty good, really good stuff.
Speaker 2 (13:07):
And did you have interest outside of school? Were you
sporty or a debater or what else did you do
outside of school?
Speaker 3 (13:15):
Well, funnily enough, my parents sent me, or my grandparents
sent me off to Speech and Language classes so that
I would learn not to speak with a Kiwi accent,
because of course I tried to compensate and become like
everyone else. And then of course at home they couldn't
understand what I was saying.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
So one way or another, I.
Speaker 3 (13:36):
Did speech competitions and all that sort of thing.
Speaker 1 (13:40):
But I also loved sport. I wasn't very good at it,
but I used to.
Speaker 3 (13:45):
Try really hard, so you know, tennis and netball, and
then basketball later on, and athletics and gymnastics. So I
did spend a lot of time practicing, but I can't
say that I.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
Excelled in any of that. And I loved animals.
Speaker 3 (14:02):
That was my other passion, and so you know, my
early life, wanted to be a vet and every opportunity.
We had a neighbor who had a farm, and so
I started working on farms when I was about thirteen
and carried on really through most of my time at home,
when I was at home and holidays.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
Sounds like a very typical key we upbringing for a
girl from Yorkshire. Were you always interested in politics or
did that come later?
Speaker 1 (14:33):
No, that came way later.
Speaker 3 (14:35):
No, our family wasn't interested in politics at all. They
never talked about it. They were a typical labor voter,
working class family, and so that's how I grew up
as well.
Speaker 2 (14:48):
Interesting, so life before politics. You went off to Auckland University,
I think, if my facts are right, and you became
a teacher, tell me a little bit about that.
Speaker 3 (15:04):
Yeah, it was because my qualifications were and had maths
in them. In those days, schools were short of maths teachers.
They still are, of course, and so you ended up
by teaching maths, becoming a specialist in that area. So
when we moved across to New York and got it
(15:27):
was the early seventies, I started teaching maths at the
United Nations International School, and that was a pretty interesting
experience because a lot of the kids at that school
didn't really speak English, and they were kept in home
language classes for a while until they learned enough English
(15:48):
to be able to join the mainstream school. But they
moved into maths really early on because they didn't need
quite so much English to be able to make sense
of mathematics. So you'd have a class they weren't streamed
at all, so you'd have a class with ability from
the first percentile to.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
The ninety ninth percentile, many of whom didn't speak.
Speaker 3 (16:12):
English, and so it was quite a challenging environment, very rewarding,
but nevertheless for a Kiwi teacher, it wasn't always easy.
And I think I had one of those groundbreaking moments
at that time, and it was one of the parent
teacher meetings.
Speaker 1 (16:32):
There was a particular child, an American kid, who.
Speaker 3 (16:36):
Was quite disruptive in class, and I was looking forward
to meeting the parents to suggest that they might like
to have a word with their daughter because it wasn't
really working with me trying to improve things. And funnily enough,
she was the first. They were the first family at
this particular first parent meeting that we'd had when I
(17:00):
since i'd been there. And I went and opened the
door to let the parents in and the child and
and there were four parents lined up, so the couple
had been divorced remarried and all four parents came along,
so that was all right. So the four parents are
sitting on one side of the desk guy I'm on
the other, and the daughters on their side obviously, and
(17:25):
I started to say, you know, what are you going to.
Speaker 1 (17:28):
Do about Mary?
Speaker 3 (17:30):
Because of her being so disruptive and that they pointed
at me.
Speaker 1 (17:36):
It was like a machine gun lineup.
Speaker 3 (17:39):
They pointed at me, and they said, why are you
failing our daughter?
Speaker 2 (17:44):
Wow?
Speaker 3 (17:44):
And it was an interesting development, one that I wasn't expecting.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
And I said, but hang on a minute. You know, your.
Speaker 3 (17:54):
Daughter is quite disruptive, and she's you know, not interested,
really doesn't seem to be interested in learning.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
And they said, hang on, you, hang on. You are
the profession. Your job is to ensure our.
Speaker 3 (18:09):
Daughter succeeds in the learning of mathematics. And I thought
about that, and they were right, you know, and from
that time on, I saw teaching as quite a different thing.
That my job as a teacher was to ensure every
kid in my class succeeded. And I had to go
(18:32):
to extraordinary lengths with some kids, but it changed my
attitude completely. Instead of saying a kid's naughty, it's the
parent's fault, it was my responsibility to ensure that that
child behaved well enough in my.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
Class that they learned the subject and succeeded. And you know, I.
Speaker 3 (18:54):
Often thought later on that if every teacher in the
classroom had that attitude or understood that responsibility towards their students,
you would transform teaching in this country.
Speaker 2 (19:09):
Absolutely, so was that before you went off and did
a PhD.
Speaker 1 (19:13):
It was about the same time.
Speaker 3 (19:15):
So we were studying at Rutger's University part time teaching
full time. So you know, that was a bit of
a labor of love, and it was because it was there.
You know, when you when you oftentimes you don't live
in a university town and so it was just a
great opportunity to carry on and you know, do more
(19:40):
professional development.
Speaker 2 (19:42):
Really, what was it that took you to the US
in the first place.
Speaker 3 (19:46):
It was my husband at the time who wanted He
just wanted to go and work at the United Nations School.
He'd heard a lot about the un school circuit and
New York was an opportunity that was there and I
could get a job as well.
Speaker 1 (20:03):
So yeah, just made sense with.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
All of that happening in your life. What made you
come back to New Zealand.
Speaker 3 (20:11):
I just love New Zealand. It was always temporary and
it was three years and then yeah, it was time
to come back home, settle down by the farm we'd.
Speaker 1 (20:23):
Always wanted and have children and that's what we did.
Speaker 2 (20:28):
And then somewhere along away, the decision to go into politics.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
What prompted that, well, when.
Speaker 3 (20:36):
After the children started growing up, so I was doing
tutoring at the Northern Politic for quite a while.
Speaker 1 (20:44):
I left high school teaching.
Speaker 3 (20:47):
And it was during that time that I started really
enjoying adult education. And one of our friends at the
time was Michael or the family was Michael and Christine Hill,
and Michael, of course was a had a jewelry shop
(21:07):
in fung Array and he was interested in my adult
education experiences and so at a particular moment in time,
when he'd expanded his chain to four stores in New Zealand,
he decided he needed somebody who might be able to
do staff training, and so he invited me to join
(21:30):
the company, which I did. I got started out behind
the counter and the fung Ray jewelry store to learn
retail and then eventually, you know, within a few years
really we'd taken the company public and we had over
one hundred stores.
Speaker 1 (21:50):
And at that stage I was asked by.
Speaker 3 (21:54):
Roger Douglas if I wanted to become involved in politics,
and so that's when I moved on. But it was
a wonderful experience of working with Michael and Christine, and yeah,
it was they've of course gone.
Speaker 1 (22:09):
From success to success. So that's a real key we story, what.
Speaker 2 (22:13):
A neat story. So you go into politics, you become
an MP with the ACT Party. Did you on turning
up at Parliament did you find what you expected or
did you find something different?
Speaker 3 (22:31):
I didn't really know what to expect, to be honest.
It was heady days. If you remember it was the
first MMP election.
Speaker 1 (22:39):
Sure the ACT Party.
Speaker 3 (22:41):
Everybody had written is off and said that no party
could suddenly get into Parliament without having a sitting member.
We proved them wrong, and you know, we made it.
And so I think we're all so focused on the
challenge of getting into parliament that you know, what happens next?
Speaker 1 (23:06):
Didn't you cross our mind too much?
Speaker 3 (23:07):
So we all just it's like a duck to water,
you know, you just start swimming, don't you. So that's
what happened. But it was a culture shock. I'd come
from the business world by that stage, and then to
sort of try to get my head around what politics
is all about.
Speaker 1 (23:26):
Yeah, it was quite a quite a challenge.
Speaker 2 (23:28):
Yeah, I'll bet so nine years in parliament as an MP,
what were the highlights?
Speaker 3 (23:36):
I think it's the feeling that you can actually make
a real difference. It was an enormous privilege to be
in Parliament and to start to understand, you know, why
really bad policies persist and be time involved in actually
(23:58):
making change.
Speaker 1 (23:59):
You know, there's a huge inertia.
Speaker 3 (24:01):
I mean, you know, you take a particular policy change
that's going on right now with the Resource Management Act.
You know, for thirty years we've known that that act
is not delivering what it was intended to do, that
it's actually been holding back progress in New Zealand and
(24:22):
now you know, finally it is going to be changed.
I know Labor had to crack at it, but they
made it worse. So you know, you look at the
challenge of getting good policy in place, and that's what
you live through when you're in Parliament. You know, whether
it's through being in government, which I never was. We're
in opposition the whole time, but through private members' bills
(24:45):
and I had a few of those drawn in the
ballot during that time, and also through being a spokesman
you know in your particular subject areas and for me,
welfare reform was a big issue and so it was
making the case for change and you know that's a huge,
(25:05):
huge time, and you know, you can't ever say that
you've succeeded when you're in opposition, but you can see
progress and so you know that's what you were elected
to do, and that's what you did.
Speaker 2 (25:19):
We're with doctor Muriel Newman, former ACT MP. We're going
to come back in a moment and talk about n
z CPR. Back with doctor Muriel Newman. Life in politics.
(25:42):
I guess came to a conclusion after nine years, not
totally your choice. From from what we understand, the ACT
Party had a rough election in two thousand and five
and you were one of the victims of that, I guess,
losing your seat, but you went on very quickly and
founded in z CPR. Tell me a little bit about
(26:02):
how that came about.
Speaker 1 (26:05):
It was one of those you know, you're.
Speaker 3 (26:09):
Running for election, your party is doing badly, you wonder
if you're going to survive, but you don't have the
capacity to develop a plan B.
Speaker 1 (26:24):
It's like all or nothing. And that's like a lot
of things in life, isn't it.
Speaker 3 (26:28):
You know, you give it your all and so you
don't have a safeguard really, and so the day after
the election, we looked at the reality of the fact that,
you know, I had to look at doing something different
and it was like, well, what do I really love doing?
And one of the things that I'd developed was a
(26:50):
newsletter that I sent out on a regular basis when
I was an MP, and.
Speaker 1 (26:55):
I really loved writing. I loved writing the.
Speaker 3 (26:58):
Newsletters about public policy issues, explaining stuff and encouraging people
to get involved. And so I thought, I wonder if
I could make that work. I wonder if I could
form a think tank and you know, build a base of.
Speaker 1 (27:15):
Informed thinking, trying to help.
Speaker 3 (27:17):
People bridge the gap between you know, the public in parliament,
given that I had had the privilege of being there
for those nine years. And so that's what we did.
We formed the New Zealand Center for Political Research. We
built a website, we launched it, We sent out a
newsletter and invited people to sign up, and we said,
(27:40):
if you we're giving away all our stuff for free.
Speaker 1 (27:43):
So I had guests who were experts in the field.
Speaker 3 (27:46):
About whatever it was I was writing about, and so
we put it all on our website for free, and
we said, but hey, if you like what I do,
would you mind sending in a donation?
Speaker 1 (27:59):
And so we carried on from there.
Speaker 3 (28:03):
And it was in the days where people only gave
donations really if you were called a charity, and so
it wasn't easy.
Speaker 1 (28:11):
It was rather a struggle. It's a lot different now,
but yeah, that's what we've been doing.
Speaker 2 (28:17):
That's how it came about. Do you remember your first
cause that you championed.
Speaker 1 (28:22):
It would have been welfare.
Speaker 3 (28:24):
Yeah, I mean I was very strong on again, you know,
in public policy.
Speaker 1 (28:31):
As I said, there's inertia.
Speaker 3 (28:32):
The key problem we have in the welfare area is
that we pay parents to have children as single parents
and we keep them out of the workforce for ten, twelve,
fifteen years.
Speaker 1 (28:48):
It used to be the domestic Purposes benefit.
Speaker 3 (28:51):
It's now shared a different one. It's got a different name.
Name it eludes me. But it's not related to work
and that's the problem. And so what you're doing, you're
encouraging dependency on the state. You're preventing these mums from
(29:14):
being able to leave welfare and build independent lives for themselves.
You're locking kids into welfare dependent families. All the research
tells you that that does not bode well for those children.
And everyone's known about it, and positions of authority I
have known about this problem where one of the few
(29:34):
countries in the world that doesn't link the sole parent
benefit to work properly, and people wonder why we have
this terrible dependency problem in this country. They know it's there,
they know what's causing it, but they haven't got the
courage to do anything about it. And so that was
the cause that I used to champion.
Speaker 2 (29:55):
They're fantastic and a very worthy cause of that. Where
with doctor Muriel Newman, we're going to take a short break.
We're back with doctor Muriel Newman and we are talking
about the the nz CPR. Muriel, your stated purpose includes
(30:26):
the following words. A firm belief is that informed citizens
are at the heart of a well functioning democracy. How
difficult is that given the state of the global media today.
Speaker 3 (30:40):
Oh gosh, it didn't used to be that much of
a problem. If people were interested in politics, you know,
the media used to provide balanced commentary for them with
news obviously, But nowadays it's completely different. It's become propagandized.
(31:05):
The amount of misinformation that's dished out as news is appalling.
It's just extremely scary because what it means is that
unless people don't look for themselves at the information.
Speaker 1 (31:21):
If they just take what they read in.
Speaker 3 (31:23):
The papers, half the time they're getting the wrong end
of the stick. And you know, how we turn it
around again, I really don't know, because it's got so
bad that, you know, it's you almost want to encourage
people not to not to bother with the media anymore,
which of course is not right.
Speaker 1 (31:44):
You know, we rely on the media.
Speaker 3 (31:46):
A good democracy relies on a strong media as a watchdog.
But in New Zealand it's just gone. The mainstream media
has just gone complete, completely off the off the rails.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
Well, I don't think it's it's limited to New Zealand.
It's a global problem. The media sector doesn't have the
funding that once has once had and it's up against
a you know, it has a totally diluted position, up
against the various channels that social media provides, and that's
that's what's very hard to recover from.
Speaker 1 (32:21):
I think, yeah, that's right.
Speaker 3 (32:24):
And of course in New Zealand we had the added
problem of the Public Interest Journalism Fund, of course Labor
introduced in twenty twenty one just after that election where
they won a majority, and of course that fund of
fifty five million dollars was you know, theoretically to help
(32:47):
the media through tough times.
Speaker 1 (32:50):
But it had a twist in it and.
Speaker 3 (32:52):
That if you took the money, then what you had
to do was sign up to the government's partnership agenda.
Speaker 1 (33:00):
So in other words, you had.
Speaker 3 (33:01):
To believe that the Maori had a partnership with the Crown,
that you had to you know, push the Treaty of
Waitangi at the forefront of everything you did. That you
couldn't speak out against that partnership. And so during the
(33:25):
period where you know, three Waters was on the go,
the Mari Health Authority with the health reforms was being formed,
the media could not essentially give a balance view because
that might threaten their funding.
Speaker 1 (33:42):
And so you know, we're in a terrible position.
Speaker 3 (33:45):
There for quite a long time where the media bias
when it came to anything to do with this tribal
push which Labor was orchestrating, where it was out of bounds.
And the worst thing is, of course, that the funding
is still carrying on.
Speaker 1 (34:03):
It doesn't finish until January.
Speaker 3 (34:05):
Twenty twenty six, and this government has done nothing to
actually stop it, which I find quite extraordinary. So in
other words, too, if you want to balance media. That's
not going to happen until after January twenty twenty six.
Speaker 2 (34:25):
Yes, it's a challenge, isn't it. And it's difficult to know,
like everything to do with the media, how you how
you turn that around quickly. But one of the things
you recently, in fact, it caught my attention in the
newsletter that you referred to. You recently wrote about the
last government and it's I want to quote from that
(34:48):
and bear with me. It's a rather long quote, but
I do want to quote from that article because you've
led me, you've actually led quite well into this, and
you wrote the following. From the start of her regime,
Jasindra Adan imposed her destructive ideology on to New Zealand
behind a mask of kindness and compassion. Nothing was sacred.
(35:11):
Her government knows best to approach crushed businesses, even industries.
Is the oil and gas sector contestify and her Bigger
is Better ideology created chaos through botch centralizations. You then
go on to refer to the unmandated hayper Per Agenda
for tribal co governance, the restructure of health, which alarmingly,
(35:31):
as you point out, was undertaken in the middle of
a COVID pandemic, the abolishment of the community based district
health boards during the pandemic, the equally disastrous polytech centralization,
and of course three Waters or the review of water services.
And you go on to say this blind pursuit of
ideology has had a devastating effect, the failed centralizations of
(35:55):
bloated bureaucracies and declining service provisions and a is stabling,
destabilizing effect on everything the economy, education, law and order, justice, infrastructure,
and even local government. And while it's captured under the
economy heading, I would probably add the nation's indebtedness to
your list. Are you surprised at how much damage was
(36:16):
done in such a short time?
Speaker 1 (36:19):
Yes, yes, I am surprised.
Speaker 3 (36:21):
I mean, you know, we've seen incompetence and governments before,
but never on this. This was like on an industrial scale.
They embedded a lot of stuff into our legislative and
regulatory framework that we weren't even aware of. I can
recall not long after Disindra Ardun became Prime Minister, she
(36:46):
was gloating, if you like it, a meeting in New
York with the Bill Gates Foundation about how she'd embedded
all the elements of Agenda twenty thirty into our regulatory framework,
and we didn't have a clue that this was going on.
Speaker 1 (37:07):
And of course that's the UN's.
Speaker 3 (37:10):
Set of goals, Agenda twenty thirty. It is quite a
distructive agenda. And lo and behold it.
Speaker 1 (37:20):
Was signed and sealed in New Zealand and we never
talked about it.
Speaker 3 (37:25):
So I can remember then thinking, God, you know, this
is different. This type of governing is different from anything
we'd seen before.
Speaker 1 (37:35):
And of course it went from bad to worse.
Speaker 2 (37:37):
Absolutely well. There's plenty of people who've suggested that the
government we're referring to the Labor government from two thousand
and seventeen to and twenty three was particularly incompetent. I
would suggest the opposite. I think they were very competent
at driving the agenda that they wanted to drive. It
just wasn't They just didn't do so with the country
(38:00):
behind them, or even with the country informed. What do
you say to.
Speaker 3 (38:04):
That, Oh, look, I agree with you. And that's the
tragedy of it all that so much went on that
it was never put to the people at an election,
so we blindly gave them a second term and we
had no idea what they were planning to do, and
(38:27):
of course a lot of it now is being embedded
and it's very difficult for the government to actually put
it right. I was listening to news Talk Z'DB this
morning to the Prime Minister being interviewed by Mike Hoskins,
and you know, he was talking about the new sentencing
(38:51):
guideline that the Solicitor General has put out, which essentially
says you have to take into account the race of
the person that's coming before the courts. And you know,
so Mike said to Chris, you know, is this right
that you have race embedded in this sort of stuff?
(39:12):
And I think the Prime Minister have been a bit
blindsided by it. And you know, their coalition has very
much said that they want the public service and all
of the functions of government to be color blind, and
yet here we are elements of the public service are
(39:33):
really just still pushing the labor agenda and it must
be very frustrating for the coalition trying to not only
get their.
Speaker 1 (39:42):
Head around what's going on, but figure out how to
correct it.
Speaker 3 (39:46):
And so I think it's a very dangerous situation that
the country is still in.
Speaker 2 (39:52):
And I guess You've led me into this one as well,
because you were the first or the first think tank anyway,
or the first outside Parliament to discover the existence of
hippo pod. How did you find that?
Speaker 1 (40:06):
Yeah, we were trying to figure out what was going on.
This was in.
Speaker 3 (40:10):
Early twenty twenty one, after the election, so we knew that,
you know, Labor had the power to govern alone. And
then all of a sudden, a whole lot of stuff
started happening. You know, the media started using Mari words
all the time. All of a sudden, government departments became
(40:31):
known by Mari terms, and no one actually knew what
was being talked about. The weather person started using you know,
Mari names through all these different parts of the country,
and we were thinking, well, what is going on here?
And I remember writing a column a newsletter just you know,
(40:51):
probably speculating about there was something going on. You know,
we were sort of wondering what it was. And someone said,
sent me an email and they said, have you seen this?
And so I followed the Lincoln had a look and
it was hippur poor. It was heavily redacted. The full
documents over one hundred pages, and I think that one
(41:13):
was about twenty pages.
Speaker 1 (41:15):
It turned out that it had been.
Speaker 3 (41:19):
Publicly released onto I think it was Tipuni Kocher's website,
just the day of the election. In other words, as
soon as they knew that Labor was going to win,
and it had sat there undiscovered. And then we looked
at it and realized that this was a blueprint for
(41:41):
tribal control. This was a blueprint to take away democracy
replace it with tribal control by twenty forty. So I
wrote about it, and it didn't take long before everybody
jumped on it, and you know, collectively, anybody who understood
what was going.
Speaker 1 (41:59):
On was outraged. You know, how could.
Speaker 3 (42:02):
This have got so far? And that was really need
just to start. It's been pushing the government of the day,
pushed tribal rule across all government departments.
Speaker 1 (42:18):
We knew about it in Three Waters.
Speaker 3 (42:21):
We knew about it in the Mari Health Authority because
all of a sudden, patients were being prioritized on the
basis of race, not clinical need.
Speaker 1 (42:31):
And so it went on.
Speaker 3 (42:33):
But a lot of it, of course, if you remember,
there was all of a sudden, you know, in the
Real Estate Institute, the new people had to do compulsory
course in the Treaty.
Speaker 1 (42:47):
Of Waitangi, stuff like.
Speaker 3 (42:48):
That that had never been there, So the fingers of
hippo poor were everywhere, and that again is something that
this government is struggling to actually.
Speaker 2 (43:00):
Curtail absolutely, and they'll spend a lot of time trying
to ravel the pieces that they can, but whether or
not they can they can get it to an appropriate
level is yet to be seen, which I guess leads
to your thoughts on the existing government. It's almost a
year since they were elected. It's just on a year
(43:25):
since they were elected, not quite since they start commenced
in government. But I guess, firstly, from your perspective, your
old party, the ACT part are now playing a role.
What's your view of the role that they're playing.
Speaker 3 (43:39):
Look, I think ACT and New Zealand First have been
very good for this government. I think the coalition has
been working really well. I think a lot of us
were a bit worried, but I think we've been pleasantly surprised.
Speaker 1 (43:55):
The three parties seem.
Speaker 3 (43:56):
To have quite a bit of autonomy as well as
a collegial approach to things, and obviously a collectivism which
works the country. I think that you know, in some
respects they don't seem to be going.
Speaker 1 (44:12):
Far enough quickly enough.
Speaker 2 (44:15):
You know.
Speaker 3 (44:16):
I was just looking at the new figures economic reports
that are dissed out and how the government is still
spending more than it's earning, and that's a worry. And
then you look at one of the key areas they
were going to reign and spending was the public sector.
And of course we all know that the public sector
(44:37):
under labor ballooned and that went from forty seven thousand
public servants in twenty and nineteen twenty seventeen, sorry, to
sixty six thousand in December of last year. And so
that's nineteen thousand extra public servants. And so you look
(45:00):
and see, well, you know, how.
Speaker 1 (45:02):
Much has the government cut back?
Speaker 3 (45:04):
And in spite of all the sort of criticism they've
received from the unions and from the media and the
opposition parties, it turns out that they've only shared about
two thousand jobs. So there were nineteen thousand new jobs created,
two thousand have been dropped. There was apparently another five
(45:25):
to six thousand vacancies that haven't been filled. But in
terms of you know, how they're going on cutting back
the nineteen thousand, they haven't gone very far at all,
and so you know, I think in some ways they're
a bit timid. I think they're problem They have a
huge problem with the media. You know, the media are
(45:48):
loath to say anything at all that's good mainstream media
good about the coalition and that must get you down.
But in spite of that, they have to work around it,
and they have to be bolder and deliver a growing economy.
Speaker 1 (46:05):
That's what's want, That's what kiwis need.
Speaker 3 (46:08):
We need jobs, we need, you know, an economy that's
giving opportunities to people again.
Speaker 1 (46:15):
And of course it's a pretty bad patch right now.
Speaker 2 (46:18):
Yeah, sure, well I agree with you. I think I
think the coalitions working better than than I thought it would.
I think act in New Zealand First are playing a
very valuable role. My concerns are we going hard enough,
fast enough exactly the same as what you're saying. I,
for one, welcome the latest announcement regarding getting people back
(46:40):
to work, getting public servants back to the office. It
would strike me that we've actually lost track of how
many public servants we actually have had, and working from
home has has contributed to that. What do you what
are your thoughts on things? Like health, education, crime, you know, trade,
some of those areas that they've they've clearly focused on
(47:03):
and championed on the trade front. The Prime minist and
the Foreign Affairs Minister have been very active internationally. We've
seen plenty from the Minister of Education. What's your view
on those those big headline policies in terms of how
they're going.
Speaker 3 (47:19):
I think they're definitely going in the right direction. I
think they're laying the groundwork, and you know, it's like
planting a seed, isn't it. You know that as long
as you water it and fertilize it and everything, it
will grow. We're probably waiting for the growth to be seen.
Speaker 1 (47:37):
If you know what I mean.
Speaker 3 (47:38):
It's like in health, you know they've brought in huge changes,
but the system was such a mess that it's going
to take a while before the benefits are actually seen.
And so you know, it's this lag that goes on
in a government and you know it shouldn't be like
this shit it. I mean, you know, you tend to
(47:59):
think of governments like big ships, you know, to try
and turn them around. It's not easy, but you know,
we're only five million people, for goodness sake, and you
think to yourself. We should be light on our feet,
we should be able to speedily do stuff, and yet
we seem.
Speaker 1 (48:18):
To have got ourselves really bogged down.
Speaker 3 (48:20):
And I'm hoping that if the public sector can get
paired back. You mention people working from home, well, you know,
you look at our productivity figures and they're just dreadful.
Speaker 1 (48:33):
And perhaps if people you know.
Speaker 3 (48:34):
Are more accountable back in the office, maybe even the
public sector productivity will improve.
Speaker 1 (48:43):
But you have to get rid of so much of
this bureaucracy and.
Speaker 3 (48:46):
Red tape, because you know, it is harming everything. And
that's not just the private sector, it's the public sector
as well.
Speaker 2 (48:55):
Sure, I wonder if somebody should jump on a plane
and go and have a look at what they're doing
in Argentina, because the new president there seems to be
making progress very, very rapidly. So he's obviously got a
recipe that perhaps perhaps we could borrow.
Speaker 1 (49:10):
Do you think, yes, Well, the funny thing is, so
when you look at all these plans that the government
puts out.
Speaker 3 (49:18):
You know, they've just put out a new one, haven't they,
with forty odd points in it action points in it?
And that followed one with you know, thirty eight in it,
and another one with forty seven.
Speaker 1 (49:30):
In it, and so on. So they are getting a
lot of stuff done.
Speaker 3 (49:34):
And I think it's just this whole problem that we
have turning around the economy. I suspect that once it
does turn around. I mean, you've got to remember, the
Reserve Bank printed money like water, and they were responsible
for flipping well, you know, driving up the cost of
living and causing inflation to peak. And so once they
(50:00):
start to bring interest rates down properly and people start
to become more confident again, I think the economy will
take off.
Speaker 1 (50:10):
At least I hope it will. So. I think a
lot of groundwork is done now and I think.
Speaker 3 (50:15):
Hopefully we will start to see the benefits next year.
Speaker 2 (50:19):
Well, I hope you're right. I want to just touch
on briefly another project that you've picked up at the
Center for Political Research, and that is the distribution of
a million copies of Apparana NAT's nineteen twenty two explanation
of the original Mari version of the Treaty of Way Tanny.
So you've got a million copies that you're distributing to
(50:41):
New Zealand households. How have you got about that that's
a big project.
Speaker 1 (50:47):
Yeah, it was.
Speaker 3 (50:48):
We've read Sarapparana Nata's explanation of the Mari version of
the treaty, which of course you know, says that Maori
seated sovereignty to the crown, that property rights will be protected,
and that everybody will be equal.
Speaker 1 (51:06):
This country have equal rights.
Speaker 3 (51:08):
And we saw that in about nineteen forty oh gosh, no,
nineteen sixties.
Speaker 2 (51:19):
It was.
Speaker 3 (51:19):
It was republished by a government department and sent out
to all Murray families, and so that made us think, well,
you know, if they could send it out to all
Murray families, why don't we send it out to all families.
So we found that if we printed it as a good,
high quality insert, it could be put into newspapers and
(51:41):
distribute it in.
Speaker 1 (51:43):
An affordable manner. And so that's what we did.
Speaker 3 (51:46):
We raised some money and we printed a million copies
of them, and we sent it out in two tranches,
South Island, then North Island, and now we have some
printed as little a five booklets and we you know,
people send us a donation, we send them ten books
that they can give to family and friends. Just trying
(52:07):
to get what I think is a wonderful explanation of
what actually went on in those times. We wanted out
there because there's so much propaganda now about the treaty
and so much reinterpretation that is just rubbish, to be
quite honest. It's been reinvented for political reasons, and we
(52:28):
think it would be nice for more people to actually
read the truth.
Speaker 2 (52:33):
Good stuff, and people can get that via your website
at enzcpr dot com. Just touching on from it, at
the state of local government. I'm not sure how closely
you watch that, but of course the Prime Minister gave
them a serve at the New Zealand Local Government Conference
a few months back. I've written a column about it.
(52:54):
A few other people have written a column about it.
Do you have a view on the state of local
government in New Zealand.
Speaker 3 (53:00):
Yeah, we really do worry about local government. It's like
a ticking time bomb. I mean, you know, it's been
completely captured by environmental interests and mari interests, and you know,
Labor ruined local government in two thousand and two when
they passed the Local Government Reforms and gave local government
(53:25):
the power of general competence and also introduced those four
well Beings the need to consider social wellbeing, environmental cultural
wellbeing as well as economic and so what's happened since
that time is essentially local government has gone off the
rails and it has got a lot worse.
Speaker 1 (53:47):
This capture that's gone on.
Speaker 3 (53:48):
It started with, you know, people being pointed onto councils
as advisors, and now all of a sudden, these advisors
have got voting rights, and so all of a sudden,
the people making the decisions and not those who've.
Speaker 1 (54:07):
Been elected by the public.
Speaker 3 (54:10):
It's all been manipulated, and I think the government was
exactly right to say they're going to cancel the well beings.
Speaker 1 (54:18):
They should.
Speaker 3 (54:19):
I think it's also take away the powers of general competence.
They should go back to asking local government to be
involved in service delivery and local stuff and forget about
all these high faluting plans that they all have building
empires for themselves.
Speaker 1 (54:39):
And try and get the whole thing back on the rails.
Speaker 2 (54:42):
Well, there's a lot of work to do there, as
there is across the board. Where with doctor Muriel Newman
from the New Zealand Center for Political Research, and we'll
be back in a moment. Back with doctor Muriel Newman.
(55:03):
I want to talk about your leadership experiences because it
it takes a lot of effort and nerve to sort
of pick up the challenges that you've picked up since
two thousand and five. Can you just share with us,
perhaps what your earliest memory of taking on a leadership
role was and what prompted you to do that.
Speaker 3 (55:26):
Look, I think you know, like a lot of kids,
you know, the teacher asks, you know, will anybody volunteer
to be a I don't know, a lab technician or
a monitor for something or other, and you your library
assistant or whatever, and so you put your hand up
because you want to help. And so I think that
(55:48):
for a lot of people, leadership actually starts surreptitiously.
Speaker 1 (55:53):
You know, when you're growing up.
Speaker 3 (55:55):
And I remember the funniest example of leadership though, was
when I worked with Michael Hill and the company was
a member of the Chamber of Commerce that was in
the early days, but no one wanted to go to meetings.
(56:15):
They were all too busy, you know, running the business
and being involved in jewelry. And so because I was
a new kid on the block, I got sent along.
You know, you have to go to the Chamber of
Commerce meetings. So I went along and I really knew
nothing and didn't really know who all the people were either,
And so I sat there very quietly, and I don't
(56:36):
think I said a word apart from to introduce myself.
And then the next month I went along to the
next meeting, and I think I might have volunteered a
couple of ideas or suggestions for whatever it was they
were talking about, and blow me down. The next meeting
I went along, I was elected flipping president. And so,
(56:58):
you know, I always sort of thought to myself, you
know that leadership can pop along when you least expect it,
And yeah, so you just do your best and you
try and encourage people around you to do their best,
and it just sort of works, doesn't it.
Speaker 2 (57:15):
You've mentioned Sir Michael Hill a couple of times. Was
he an important mentor or were there other mentors in
your life that helped show you the way? Look?
Speaker 3 (57:24):
I think the people you work closely with, you know,
inevitably become your mentors. And Michael, of course, is a
great example of a Kiwi who's done so well and
led in so many different areas, again from inauspicious beginnings,
you know, but he's shone and.
Speaker 1 (57:48):
So has Christine. But I think Roger Douglas was another one.
Speaker 3 (57:53):
You know, I work closely with Sir Roger, and you
know I admire people like him.
Speaker 1 (58:00):
He doesn't give up.
Speaker 3 (58:01):
You know, he's in his eighties now and he still
is passionate about trying to transform the New Zealand economy
as he ever was. And it's all to give the
people at the bottom a chance to get ahead.
Speaker 1 (58:14):
You know, that was always his driving passion.
Speaker 3 (58:18):
And so when you're around people like that, you know
you can't help but admire them. And of course there
are many others that you come across in your life.
Everybody has got the power I think to be a
leader and to do well. It's just many times they
don't understand it and they don't give it a go. Ye.
Speaker 2 (58:37):
Interesting, what do you think is your best skill or
your best set of skills that helps you to be
successful in that in the leadership space?
Speaker 3 (58:47):
Look, I think you know, tenacity is a big thing,
isn't it That You know, when you're trying to do something,
you just keep going, you don't give up.
Speaker 1 (58:57):
And when you think about you know, successful people in
all fields of life.
Speaker 3 (59:04):
You know, whether you're an Olympic medalist or you know,
a sport and art and.
Speaker 1 (59:12):
Culture and history anything. You have to be very dogged,
don't you.
Speaker 3 (59:17):
You have to carry on and instead of getting discouraged,
you just you know, wind yourself back up again and
keep going. And I think that's a really important skill
to have for anybody who wants to succeed in anything.
And I think that's one thing that we could teach
our kids a little bit more when they're at school,
(59:38):
just to be tenacious and don't give up.
Speaker 1 (59:42):
There was always you know, these sayings when I was
a kid.
Speaker 3 (59:46):
You know, if at first you don't succeed, try try,
try again. I think, you know, things like that, that
sort of wisdom that we got from our parents is
still as valid today as.
Speaker 1 (59:58):
It ever was.
Speaker 2 (59:59):
Absolutely couldn't agree with you more. You've just got to
keep at it. And it's and it's not limited to politics.
It's everywhere. Whether you're setting out on a business career
or starting a little retail business or whatever, there's going
to be some tough times and you've just got to
hang pretty tough and grind your way through. Sometimes I've
got to ask you the question, because I ask everybody
(01:00:22):
this question. And in your case, you've already had a
crack at it, so at getting pretty close to it anyway,
so you'll be more informed than most. But my final
question of you, Muriel, if you could be the New
Zealand Prime Minister for a day, what is the one
thing you'd like to do?
Speaker 1 (01:00:40):
Well?
Speaker 3 (01:00:41):
Obviously, I've been studying this whole problem that we've got
with race in New Zealand, and you know how there's
this real push now to try to segregate us more
and divide us more as a society, and I think
it's totally wrong. And now there's a number of countries
around the world have addressed this. Switzerland I think was
(01:01:04):
one of the latest to do it. And what they
did was they made the conscious decision to take race
out of all their statute books and that's what they did,
and they joined in doing that. They joined France and
Austria and Belgium. And you know, if you look at
(01:01:25):
New Zealand, there is so many instances now where whatever
it is, you know, you have to say your ethnicity
and that is not a color blind society. That doesn't
lead to an equal society. And so that's what I
would do. I would take race out of the statute
books everywhere, and so you know, Kiwi's would be Kiwi's
(01:01:49):
and we would all have a chance to go forward
as one people. And I think that would be so
wonderful for this country. We haven't been able to do
it in recent memory, and I think it would be
a unifying force.
Speaker 1 (01:02:03):
It's sort of like when you think.
Speaker 3 (01:02:06):
Bad you know, when we've been chairing on our sports teams,
you know, we forget about all the detail about color
and anything. We don't even think about it. And that's
what we need to do as a country. We need
to be one people, all pushing together.
Speaker 2 (01:02:24):
Well, doctor Muriel Newman, I think you will find that
there are a few people listening to this podcast who
will absolutely agree with that, There's no question about that.
Thank you so much for joining us on leaders getting Coffee.
We've had those technical hitches, haven't we, But we've managed
to get it all done. You know, it's good to
have minds like yours working behind the scenes, challenging the
(01:02:46):
status quo, trying to look out for, I guess, the
things that are in the best interests of our country.
So first and foremost, thank you for the work you
do and of course, thank you for joining us on
leaders Getting Coffee.
Speaker 1 (01:03:01):
Thank you, Bruce, thank you for having me.
Speaker 2 (01:03:04):
Finally, folks, my leadership dip for the week. It's kind
of consistent with the theme of the day. It comes
from the American economist and social philosopher Thomas Sole, and
it's one of his little sayings. He says, it's hard
to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of
making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands
of the people who pay no price for being wrong.
(01:03:27):
It's hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous
way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in
the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong.
And with the events of the last few years in
this country and the roles that many of those former
politicians now occupy, it seems like something that we all
need to think about a bit more. That's it, We're
(01:03:49):
done for another week. Thanks again for joining us on
leaders Getting Coffee, Episode twenty eight with our guest doctor
Muriel Newman. I'm sure she'd love you to check out
her website at dubdubdub dot nz, CPR dot com. Dubdubdub
dot NZCPR dot com. As always, if you have any feedback,
please get in touch at info it leaders getting coffee
(01:04:10):
dot com. Remember our favorite charities Boke for Blokes dot
cot on ENDZ and we'll look forward to seeing you
again with another great leadership story in the next few weeks.
Until then, have a great couple of weeks and we'll
catch you next time.
This is an iHeartRadio New Zealand podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
Hi everyone, and welcome back to episode twenty eight If
the Leader's Getting Coffee podcast. My name is Bruce Cottrell
and it's great to have you with us for another discussion,
this time with a leader whose work is probably not
as well known as it should be, but we will
get to her shortly. As always, it's great to have
the team. It ends ed me on board with us,
the people from Used Talk ZEDB who put these podcasts together,
(00:50):
and of course the people at the Business Herald where
my regular column appears. And the last of those ran
on Saturday, the twelfth of October under the heading New
Zealand's Orange Cone Culture, How we lost common Sense on
the roads. It all happened because a few weeks I
was driving along into State forty between Memphis and Nashville
(01:10):
in the United States, and I was three lanes wide
on a four lane highway, traveling along at a speed
at the speed limit of about one hundred and twenty
kilometers an hour in our language, and up ahead, I
noticed the traffic slowing down on the inside lane. A
closer look revealed a road working crew. There were two
orange cones in front of a small barrier about two
meters wide, and behind the barrier were two men working
(01:33):
waist deep in a hole on the road. A third
man stood on the verge, observing. As the traffic on
the inside lane approached, the cars slowed and moved out
to the second lane, easing past the workmen before picking
up speed and continuing on their way. Believe it or not,
the drivers were actually able to make their own decision
to slow down and change lanes without the need for
(01:57):
signage or direction. I couldn't help but think how different
such a scene would have played out if the location
had been in New Zealand. You see here we'd have
at least four hundred meters of orange cones, signage of
plenty advising us to drive at thirty kilometers an hour.
Our men in the whole would typically be accompanied by
at least a couple of vehicles parked on the affected lane,
(02:17):
and a team of a dozen or so people moving
around a five thousand square meter work site. So what's
my point? I feel that orange cones have become a
metaphor for the state of the country. We're really good
at putting obstacles in the way to prevent us making progress.
We've become a country where the bureaucratic few would prefer
rules for us to abide by, rather than see us
supply common sense as we navigate our day. The article
(02:41):
mentions a few examples, including the fact that now if
you've got a hole on the roof of your warehouse
or your shop, it's no longer sufficient to arrange someone
to fix it. First, you have to submit a health
a health and safety plan to work safe. And I've
lost track of the cost of meeting our obligations under
the anti money laundering legislation. Just one of my clients
(03:02):
alone has three full time people involved in AML. Our
building industry is so homestrung by red tape, the consent process,
traffic reports, geological surveys, and a long and costly council
inspection process that dogs the entire project. And now we
have large businesses having to sign up to climate reporting standards.
(03:23):
I know of one organization that's spent two hundred and
fifty thousand alone in order to comply with the new
climate reporting These are just a few examples, but the
trend is obvious. Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown recently declared almost
half of all road repair costs are tied to traffic management.
That is the business of orange cones. Can you believe
(03:43):
that half the cost of fixing the roads is traffic management?
Why can't we just rely on common sense like those
American drivers were demonstrating, Instead of legislating people into the
behaviors we prefer. Common sense well exercised would save us
hundreds of millions of dollars. And instead of following a
blind path of obedience, mediocrity and dependency on the rule makers,
(04:05):
the exercise of common sense when encountering an obstacle will
ultimately result in people who can make good decisions themselves.
People who are more capable and more resilient will result,
and of course so too will better communities. So please
go and check out the column. You can see it
under the headline New Zealand's Orange Cone Culture how we
(04:27):
Lost common Sense on the Road, and you can find
it at nzid Herald dot co dot NZ or under
published articles at dubdubdub dot Bruce Kottrel dot com, Forward
Slash Blog. Thanks again for being with us. We'll be
back shortly with this week's guest. Welcome back to episode
(04:52):
twenty eight of leaders getting coffee. My guest today is
former Act Party MP doctor Muriel Newman. Muriel holds a
Bachelor of Science degree in mathematics and a Doctrine in
Mathematics education from Rutgers University in New Jersey in the
United States of America. But a long time before that,
she was born in the North of England and she
moved here with her young with her family as a
(05:14):
young child in the late nineteen fifties and the family
settled in Wangarey in the North were in nineteen fifty
eight and she subsequently attended the local schools in that area,
and we'll talk a bit more about that shortly, but
her early career was an education at secondary and tertiary
level in both New Zealand and the USA, where she
taught at the United Nations International School in New York.
(05:36):
And later she became involved in agriculture while running the
family farm and raising her children, and even had a
stint in retail as the assistant general manager for listed
retailer Michael Hill Jeweler in New Zealand. During that time,
she was elected the president of the Northland Chamber of
Commerce and was a government appointee on the Northland Health
Board and was also on the Conservation and Business Development boards,
(05:59):
and that all led to her joining the ACT Party
as a founding member, where she became a member of Parliament,
serving for nine years from nineteen teen ninety six to
two thousand and five. She even had a crack at
the leadership of ACT, but lost out to Rodney Hyde
and lost her seat in Parliament of the two thousand
and five election when ACT was reduced to just two MPs,
(06:19):
but that prompted her to establish the New Zealand Center
for Political Research or NZEDCPR. You can find it at
NZEDCPR dotz or dot com. It might be actually no
other I think about it where and her work continues
to this day for the good of the country. NZEDCPR
is an independent public policy think tank that provides research
(06:39):
based analysis and commentary on matters of national interest, and
they are guided by a firm belief that informed citizens
are at the heart of a well functioning democracy. Gee
that's hard to argue with, isn't it. You only have
to look at their website to accept that they take
that obligation very very seriously. Along the way, she's brought
up a couple of kids and currently has four grandchildren.
(07:01):
She's the co author, with her husband Frank, of a
number of money management books. She holds a black belt
in kung fu and remains living in the North, where
she resides on a lifestyle block and Tuda Karak and Onora.
Doctor Muriel Newman, welcome to lead us getting coffee.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
Thank you Bruce for having me.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
You're you're most welcome. We had a couple of technical
issues getting this one to us, but we're underway. Tell
me a black belt in kung fu? Is that a
necessity for a member of Parliament these days?
Speaker 3 (07:31):
Funnily enough, I actually graduated with the black belt after
I became an MP, so it was.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
Quite a funny, funny thing.
Speaker 3 (07:40):
But no, it was one of those things that you
do when you've got kids. They wanted to learn kung fu.
I'd done karate when I was younger, and so I
went along to watch. And you know, like many clubs,
they say come on, mum, you know, come and have
a go. So we dragged husband along too, and all
(08:01):
four of us did it for quite a few years.
The kids went off to university, but and I both
managed to get our black belts. And yeah, it was
a lot of fun, so.
Speaker 2 (08:11):
It became a family affair. Well done, Well done. You
tell me, did you get a chance to look at
the column over the weekend, and if so, what were
your thoughts.
Speaker 3 (08:20):
Well, look, you've articulated what a lot of New Zealand
is are worried about, and that is that this overbearing
regulation is just become.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
Too dominant in this country.
Speaker 3 (08:33):
It's crippling enterprise and it's actually crushing the human spirit.
All these people who come up with these great ideas
to do stuff and then they start looking into what's
involved and many of them just give up. It's just
become too hard. And I think the traffic cones is
a great example. You know, people now count them. It's
(08:56):
become a national pastime. You know, for God's sake, did
you see that there are x number? You know, it's
just ridiculous. And I heard the other day that these
come and he's get paid per cone, and I thought
to myself, Wow, you know that's probably why there are
so many out there.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
Well, it has become rather ridiculous. And we're probably going
to talk about a few things over the next hour
that are rather ridiculous. But before we do. Your family
story is an interesting one. You moved from the UK
to New Zealand. What do you know what prompted your
parents to come this way.
Speaker 3 (09:31):
Yeah, it was really to give us kids, my brother
and I he's three years older than I was or
I am, to give us a better opportunity. Neither of
them nor any of their other family had ever gone
past primary school. And so when we came to New Zealand,
the big thing was that we were going to university.
And it was interesting really when you look back, because
(09:54):
both of us did not want to let our parents down,
and no matter how hard things were, you made sure
you went as far as you could. And I think
it's probably that, you know, both of us ended up
with doctor degrees one way or another.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
It wasn't to do with brains.
Speaker 3 (10:10):
It was to do with not wanting to let your
parents down and working really hard and being dedicated.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
So you settled in, you said, settled in WANGARRAI. What
do you remember about those times? Oh?
Speaker 1 (10:23):
Just it was pretty care free days.
Speaker 3 (10:25):
You know, we were in a small suburb and you know,
you could kids were roaming around the district and you
could ride your bike up and down the road.
Speaker 1 (10:35):
Without any danger, and you know, it was sort of
care free.
Speaker 3 (10:39):
Days and it was a great upbringing really for children.
And you know, I sometimes look at you know, how
things have changed.
Speaker 1 (10:47):
You all walked to school. There was no worried, worries
about anything like that, and you think to yourself.
Speaker 3 (10:55):
You know, have we gone forwards or have we actually
gone backwards in some of these areas.
Speaker 2 (10:59):
So yeah, So did you go to school in WALLARRAI?
Speaker 1 (11:03):
Yes, Carmo Primary School, then Carmo High School.
Speaker 2 (11:06):
Okay, Camo Intermediate in between.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
No, there wasn't in my day. There wasn't an intermediate.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
I only sat because I went to Camo Intermediate. So
oh really, well, but that's another story. What were you
like at school?
Speaker 1 (11:24):
Well, first of.
Speaker 3 (11:25):
All, I was a bit of a square peg in
a round hole because I arrived from England with a
broad Yorkshire accent, you know, Coronation Street like, and of
course I was a sort of kid with red hair,
a little bit different war homemade clothes.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
And because you know, a family was pretty poor and.
Speaker 3 (11:48):
So I didn't really fit in and I can remember
probably you know, feeling out of the main stream if
you like. But I think I compensated by working as
hard as I could, and I was always striving to
keep up with my brother. As I said, he was
(12:09):
three years older, so he was way, you know, further
ahead than I was. So he was his younger sister
struggling to do as well as he did in maths
and science and all those subjects, even though probably they
weren't My natural affinity wasn't in that direction. But nevertheless,
I persevered and that's where I focused.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
And did you did you fit in eventually or was.
Speaker 3 (12:34):
It a oh yes, yeah, yeah, it was just a
matter of time really, and then people started understanding you
instead of saying what she's saying, you know, but no.
Speaker 1 (12:45):
It was I have fond memories of all of that.
You know.
Speaker 3 (12:50):
It was a good place to grow up, and the
schools were good in those days, and you got a
really great grounding and of course with parents who were
very much dedicated towards you doing well at school.
Speaker 1 (13:04):
It was it was pretty good, really good stuff.
Speaker 2 (13:07):
And did you have interest outside of school? Were you
sporty or a debater or what else did you do
outside of school?
Speaker 3 (13:15):
Well, funnily enough, my parents sent me, or my grandparents
sent me off to Speech and Language classes so that
I would learn not to speak with a Kiwi accent,
because of course I tried to compensate and become like
everyone else. And then of course at home they couldn't
understand what I was saying.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
So one way or another, I.
Speaker 3 (13:36):
Did speech competitions and all that sort of thing.
Speaker 1 (13:40):
But I also loved sport. I wasn't very good at it,
but I used to.
Speaker 3 (13:45):
Try really hard, so you know, tennis and netball, and
then basketball later on, and athletics and gymnastics. So I
did spend a lot of time practicing, but I can't
say that I.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
Excelled in any of that. And I loved animals.
Speaker 3 (14:02):
That was my other passion, and so you know, my
early life, wanted to be a vet and every opportunity.
We had a neighbor who had a farm, and so
I started working on farms when I was about thirteen
and carried on really through most of my time at home,
when I was at home and holidays.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
Sounds like a very typical key we upbringing for a
girl from Yorkshire. Were you always interested in politics or
did that come later?
Speaker 1 (14:33):
No, that came way later.
Speaker 3 (14:35):
No, our family wasn't interested in politics at all. They
never talked about it. They were a typical labor voter,
working class family, and so that's how I grew up
as well.
Speaker 2 (14:48):
Interesting, so life before politics. You went off to Auckland University,
I think, if my facts are right, and you became
a teacher, tell me a little bit about that.
Speaker 3 (15:04):
Yeah, it was because my qualifications were and had maths
in them. In those days, schools were short of maths teachers.
They still are, of course, and so you ended up
by teaching maths, becoming a specialist in that area. So
when we moved across to New York and got it
(15:27):
was the early seventies, I started teaching maths at the
United Nations International School, and that was a pretty interesting
experience because a lot of the kids at that school
didn't really speak English, and they were kept in home
language classes for a while until they learned enough English
(15:48):
to be able to join the mainstream school. But they
moved into maths really early on because they didn't need
quite so much English to be able to make sense
of mathematics. So you'd have a class they weren't streamed
at all, so you'd have a class with ability from
the first percentile to.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
The ninety ninth percentile, many of whom didn't speak.
Speaker 3 (16:12):
English, and so it was quite a challenging environment, very rewarding,
but nevertheless for a Kiwi teacher, it wasn't always easy.
And I think I had one of those groundbreaking moments
at that time, and it was one of the parent
teacher meetings.
Speaker 1 (16:32):
There was a particular child, an American kid, who.
Speaker 3 (16:36):
Was quite disruptive in class, and I was looking forward
to meeting the parents to suggest that they might like
to have a word with their daughter because it wasn't
really working with me trying to improve things. And funnily enough,
she was the first. They were the first family at
this particular first parent meeting that we'd had when I
(17:00):
since i'd been there. And I went and opened the
door to let the parents in and the child and
and there were four parents lined up, so the couple
had been divorced remarried and all four parents came along,
so that was all right. So the four parents are
sitting on one side of the desk guy I'm on
the other, and the daughters on their side obviously, and
(17:25):
I started to say, you know, what are you going to.
Speaker 1 (17:28):
Do about Mary?
Speaker 3 (17:30):
Because of her being so disruptive and that they pointed
at me.
Speaker 1 (17:36):
It was like a machine gun lineup.
Speaker 3 (17:39):
They pointed at me, and they said, why are you
failing our daughter?
Speaker 2 (17:44):
Wow?
Speaker 3 (17:44):
And it was an interesting development, one that I wasn't expecting.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
And I said, but hang on a minute. You know, your.
Speaker 3 (17:54):
Daughter is quite disruptive, and she's you know, not interested,
really doesn't seem to be interested in learning.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
And they said, hang on, you, hang on. You are
the profession. Your job is to ensure our.
Speaker 3 (18:09):
Daughter succeeds in the learning of mathematics. And I thought
about that, and they were right, you know, and from
that time on, I saw teaching as quite a different thing.
That my job as a teacher was to ensure every
kid in my class succeeded. And I had to go
(18:32):
to extraordinary lengths with some kids, but it changed my
attitude completely. Instead of saying a kid's naughty, it's the
parent's fault, it was my responsibility to ensure that that
child behaved well enough in my.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
Class that they learned the subject and succeeded. And you know, I.
Speaker 3 (18:54):
Often thought later on that if every teacher in the
classroom had that attitude or understood that responsibility towards their students,
you would transform teaching in this country.
Speaker 2 (19:09):
Absolutely, so was that before you went off and did
a PhD.
Speaker 1 (19:13):
It was about the same time.
Speaker 3 (19:15):
So we were studying at Rutger's University part time teaching
full time. So you know, that was a bit of
a labor of love, and it was because it was there.
You know, when you when you oftentimes you don't live
in a university town and so it was just a
great opportunity to carry on and you know, do more
(19:40):
professional development.
Speaker 2 (19:42):
Really, what was it that took you to the US
in the first place.
Speaker 3 (19:46):
It was my husband at the time who wanted He
just wanted to go and work at the United Nations School.
He'd heard a lot about the un school circuit and
New York was an opportunity that was there and I
could get a job as well.
Speaker 1 (20:03):
So yeah, just made sense with.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
All of that happening in your life. What made you
come back to New Zealand.
Speaker 3 (20:11):
I just love New Zealand. It was always temporary and
it was three years and then yeah, it was time
to come back home, settle down by the farm we'd.
Speaker 1 (20:23):
Always wanted and have children and that's what we did.
Speaker 2 (20:28):
And then somewhere along away, the decision to go into politics.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
What prompted that, well, when.
Speaker 3 (20:36):
After the children started growing up, so I was doing
tutoring at the Northern Politic for quite a while.
Speaker 1 (20:44):
I left high school teaching.
Speaker 3 (20:47):
And it was during that time that I started really
enjoying adult education. And one of our friends at the
time was Michael or the family was Michael and Christine Hill,
and Michael, of course was a had a jewelry shop
(21:07):
in fung Array and he was interested in my adult
education experiences and so at a particular moment in time,
when he'd expanded his chain to four stores in New Zealand,
he decided he needed somebody who might be able to
do staff training, and so he invited me to join
(21:30):
the company, which I did. I got started out behind
the counter and the fung Ray jewelry store to learn
retail and then eventually, you know, within a few years
really we'd taken the company public and we had over
one hundred stores.
Speaker 1 (21:50):
And at that stage I was asked by.
Speaker 3 (21:54):
Roger Douglas if I wanted to become involved in politics,
and so that's when I moved on. But it was
a wonderful experience of working with Michael and Christine, and yeah,
it was they've of course gone.
Speaker 1 (22:09):
From success to success. So that's a real key we story, what.
Speaker 2 (22:13):
A neat story. So you go into politics, you become
an MP with the ACT Party. Did you on turning
up at Parliament did you find what you expected or
did you find something different?
Speaker 3 (22:31):
I didn't really know what to expect, to be honest.
It was heady days. If you remember it was the
first MMP election.
Speaker 1 (22:39):
Sure the ACT Party.
Speaker 3 (22:41):
Everybody had written is off and said that no party
could suddenly get into Parliament without having a sitting member.
We proved them wrong, and you know, we made it.
And so I think we're all so focused on the
challenge of getting into parliament that you know, what happens next?
Speaker 1 (23:06):
Didn't you cross our mind too much?
Speaker 3 (23:07):
So we all just it's like a duck to water,
you know, you just start swimming, don't you. So that's
what happened. But it was a culture shock. I'd come
from the business world by that stage, and then to
sort of try to get my head around what politics
is all about.
Speaker 1 (23:26):
Yeah, it was quite a quite a challenge.
Speaker 2 (23:28):
Yeah, I'll bet so nine years in parliament as an MP,
what were the highlights?
Speaker 3 (23:36):
I think it's the feeling that you can actually make
a real difference. It was an enormous privilege to be
in Parliament and to start to understand, you know, why
really bad policies persist and be time involved in actually
(23:58):
making change.
Speaker 1 (23:59):
You know, there's a huge inertia.
Speaker 3 (24:01):
I mean, you know, you take a particular policy change
that's going on right now with the Resource Management Act.
You know, for thirty years we've known that that act
is not delivering what it was intended to do, that
it's actually been holding back progress in New Zealand and
(24:22):
now you know, finally it is going to be changed.
I know Labor had to crack at it, but they
made it worse. So you know, you look at the
challenge of getting good policy in place, and that's what
you live through when you're in Parliament. You know, whether
it's through being in government, which I never was. We're
in opposition the whole time, but through private members' bills
(24:45):
and I had a few of those drawn in the
ballot during that time, and also through being a spokesman
you know in your particular subject areas and for me,
welfare reform was a big issue and so it was
making the case for change and you know that's a huge,
(25:05):
huge time, and you know, you can't ever say that
you've succeeded when you're in opposition, but you can see
progress and so you know that's what you were elected
to do, and that's what you did.
Speaker 2 (25:19):
We're with doctor Muriel Newman, former ACT MP. We're going
to come back in a moment and talk about n
z CPR. Back with doctor Muriel Newman. Life in politics.
(25:42):
I guess came to a conclusion after nine years, not
totally your choice. From from what we understand, the ACT
Party had a rough election in two thousand and five
and you were one of the victims of that, I guess,
losing your seat, but you went on very quickly and
founded in z CPR. Tell me a little bit about
(26:02):
how that came about.
Speaker 1 (26:05):
It was one of those you know, you're.
Speaker 3 (26:09):
Running for election, your party is doing badly, you wonder
if you're going to survive, but you don't have the
capacity to develop a plan B.
Speaker 1 (26:24):
It's like all or nothing. And that's like a lot
of things in life, isn't it.
Speaker 3 (26:28):
You know, you give it your all and so you
don't have a safeguard really, and so the day after
the election, we looked at the reality of the fact that,
you know, I had to look at doing something different
and it was like, well, what do I really love doing?
And one of the things that I'd developed was a
(26:50):
newsletter that I sent out on a regular basis when
I was an MP, and.
Speaker 1 (26:55):
I really loved writing. I loved writing the.
Speaker 3 (26:58):
Newsletters about public policy issues, explaining stuff and encouraging people
to get involved. And so I thought, I wonder if
I could make that work. I wonder if I could
form a think tank and you know, build a base of.
Speaker 1 (27:15):
Informed thinking, trying to help.
Speaker 3 (27:17):
People bridge the gap between you know, the public in parliament,
given that I had had the privilege of being there
for those nine years. And so that's what we did.
We formed the New Zealand Center for Political Research. We
built a website, we launched it, We sent out a
newsletter and invited people to sign up, and we said,
(27:40):
if you we're giving away all our stuff for free.
Speaker 1 (27:43):
So I had guests who were experts in the field.
Speaker 3 (27:46):
About whatever it was I was writing about, and so
we put it all on our website for free, and
we said, but hey, if you like what I do,
would you mind sending in a donation?
Speaker 1 (27:59):
And so we carried on from there.
Speaker 3 (28:03):
And it was in the days where people only gave
donations really if you were called a charity, and so
it wasn't easy.
Speaker 1 (28:11):
It was rather a struggle. It's a lot different now,
but yeah, that's what we've been doing.
Speaker 2 (28:17):
That's how it came about. Do you remember your first
cause that you championed.
Speaker 1 (28:22):
It would have been welfare.
Speaker 3 (28:24):
Yeah, I mean I was very strong on again, you know,
in public policy.
Speaker 1 (28:31):
As I said, there's inertia.
Speaker 3 (28:32):
The key problem we have in the welfare area is
that we pay parents to have children as single parents
and we keep them out of the workforce for ten, twelve,
fifteen years.
Speaker 1 (28:48):
It used to be the domestic Purposes benefit.
Speaker 3 (28:51):
It's now shared a different one. It's got a different name.
Name it eludes me. But it's not related to work
and that's the problem. And so what you're doing, you're
encouraging dependency on the state. You're preventing these mums from
(29:14):
being able to leave welfare and build independent lives for themselves.
You're locking kids into welfare dependent families. All the research
tells you that that does not bode well for those children.
And everyone's known about it, and positions of authority I
have known about this problem where one of the few
(29:34):
countries in the world that doesn't link the sole parent
benefit to work properly, and people wonder why we have
this terrible dependency problem in this country. They know it's there,
they know what's causing it, but they haven't got the
courage to do anything about it. And so that was
the cause that I used to champion.
Speaker 2 (29:55):
They're fantastic and a very worthy cause of that. Where
with doctor Muriel Newman, we're going to take a short break.
We're back with doctor Muriel Newman and we are talking
about the the nz CPR. Muriel, your stated purpose includes
(30:26):
the following words. A firm belief is that informed citizens
are at the heart of a well functioning democracy. How
difficult is that given the state of the global media today.
Speaker 3 (30:40):
Oh gosh, it didn't used to be that much of
a problem. If people were interested in politics, you know,
the media used to provide balanced commentary for them with
news obviously, But nowadays it's completely different. It's become propagandized.
(31:05):
The amount of misinformation that's dished out as news is appalling.
It's just extremely scary because what it means is that
unless people don't look for themselves at the information.
Speaker 1 (31:21):
If they just take what they read in.
Speaker 3 (31:23):
The papers, half the time they're getting the wrong end
of the stick. And you know, how we turn it
around again, I really don't know, because it's got so
bad that, you know, it's you almost want to encourage
people not to not to bother with the media anymore,
which of course is not right.
Speaker 1 (31:44):
You know, we rely on the media.
Speaker 3 (31:46):
A good democracy relies on a strong media as a watchdog.
But in New Zealand it's just gone. The mainstream media
has just gone complete, completely off the off the rails.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
Well, I don't think it's it's limited to New Zealand.
It's a global problem. The media sector doesn't have the
funding that once has once had and it's up against
a you know, it has a totally diluted position, up
against the various channels that social media provides, and that's
that's what's very hard to recover from.
Speaker 1 (32:21):
I think, yeah, that's right.
Speaker 3 (32:24):
And of course in New Zealand we had the added
problem of the Public Interest Journalism Fund, of course Labor
introduced in twenty twenty one just after that election where
they won a majority, and of course that fund of
fifty five million dollars was you know, theoretically to help
(32:47):
the media through tough times.
Speaker 1 (32:50):
But it had a twist in it and.
Speaker 3 (32:52):
That if you took the money, then what you had
to do was sign up to the government's partnership agenda.
Speaker 1 (33:00):
So in other words, you had.
Speaker 3 (33:01):
To believe that the Maori had a partnership with the Crown,
that you had to you know, push the Treaty of
Waitangi at the forefront of everything you did. That you
couldn't speak out against that partnership. And so during the
(33:25):
period where you know, three Waters was on the go,
the Mari Health Authority with the health reforms was being formed,
the media could not essentially give a balance view because
that might threaten their funding.
Speaker 1 (33:42):
And so you know, we're in a terrible position.
Speaker 3 (33:45):
There for quite a long time where the media bias
when it came to anything to do with this tribal
push which Labor was orchestrating, where it was out of bounds.
And the worst thing is, of course, that the funding
is still carrying on.
Speaker 1 (34:03):
It doesn't finish until January.
Speaker 3 (34:05):
Twenty twenty six, and this government has done nothing to
actually stop it, which I find quite extraordinary. So in
other words, too, if you want to balance media. That's
not going to happen until after January twenty twenty six.
Speaker 2 (34:25):
Yes, it's a challenge, isn't it. And it's difficult to know,
like everything to do with the media, how you how
you turn that around quickly. But one of the things
you recently, in fact, it caught my attention in the
newsletter that you referred to. You recently wrote about the
last government and it's I want to quote from that
(34:48):
and bear with me. It's a rather long quote, but
I do want to quote from that article because you've
led me, you've actually led quite well into this, and
you wrote the following. From the start of her regime,
Jasindra Adan imposed her destructive ideology on to New Zealand
behind a mask of kindness and compassion. Nothing was sacred.
(35:11):
Her government knows best to approach crushed businesses, even industries.
Is the oil and gas sector contestify and her Bigger
is Better ideology created chaos through botch centralizations. You then
go on to refer to the unmandated hayper Per Agenda
for tribal co governance, the restructure of health, which alarmingly,
(35:31):
as you point out, was undertaken in the middle of
a COVID pandemic, the abolishment of the community based district
health boards during the pandemic, the equally disastrous polytech centralization,
and of course three Waters or the review of water services.
And you go on to say this blind pursuit of
ideology has had a devastating effect, the failed centralizations of
(35:55):
bloated bureaucracies and declining service provisions and a is stabling,
destabilizing effect on everything the economy, education, law and order, justice, infrastructure,
and even local government. And while it's captured under the
economy heading, I would probably add the nation's indebtedness to
your list. Are you surprised at how much damage was
(36:16):
done in such a short time?
Speaker 1 (36:19):
Yes, yes, I am surprised.
Speaker 3 (36:21):
I mean, you know, we've seen incompetence and governments before,
but never on this. This was like on an industrial scale.
They embedded a lot of stuff into our legislative and
regulatory framework that we weren't even aware of. I can
recall not long after Disindra Ardun became Prime Minister, she
(36:46):
was gloating, if you like it, a meeting in New
York with the Bill Gates Foundation about how she'd embedded
all the elements of Agenda twenty thirty into our regulatory framework,
and we didn't have a clue that this was going on.
Speaker 1 (37:07):
And of course that's the UN's.
Speaker 3 (37:10):
Set of goals, Agenda twenty thirty. It is quite a
distructive agenda. And lo and behold it.
Speaker 1 (37:20):
Was signed and sealed in New Zealand and we never
talked about it.
Speaker 3 (37:25):
So I can remember then thinking, God, you know, this
is different. This type of governing is different from anything
we'd seen before.
Speaker 1 (37:35):
And of course it went from bad to worse.
Speaker 2 (37:37):
Absolutely well. There's plenty of people who've suggested that the
government we're referring to the Labor government from two thousand
and seventeen to and twenty three was particularly incompetent. I
would suggest the opposite. I think they were very competent
at driving the agenda that they wanted to drive. It
just wasn't They just didn't do so with the country
(38:00):
behind them, or even with the country informed. What do
you say to.
Speaker 3 (38:04):
That, Oh, look, I agree with you. And that's the
tragedy of it all that so much went on that
it was never put to the people at an election,
so we blindly gave them a second term and we
had no idea what they were planning to do, and
(38:27):
of course a lot of it now is being embedded
and it's very difficult for the government to actually put
it right. I was listening to news Talk Z'DB this
morning to the Prime Minister being interviewed by Mike Hoskins,
and you know, he was talking about the new sentencing
(38:51):
guideline that the Solicitor General has put out, which essentially
says you have to take into account the race of
the person that's coming before the courts. And you know,
so Mike said to Chris, you know, is this right
that you have race embedded in this sort of stuff?
(39:12):
And I think the Prime Minister have been a bit
blindsided by it. And you know, their coalition has very
much said that they want the public service and all
of the functions of government to be color blind, and
yet here we are elements of the public service are
(39:33):
really just still pushing the labor agenda and it must
be very frustrating for the coalition trying to not only
get their.
Speaker 1 (39:42):
Head around what's going on, but figure out how to
correct it.
Speaker 3 (39:46):
And so I think it's a very dangerous situation that
the country is still in.
Speaker 2 (39:52):
And I guess You've led me into this one as well,
because you were the first or the first think tank anyway,
or the first outside Parliament to discover the existence of
hippo pod. How did you find that?
Speaker 1 (40:06):
Yeah, we were trying to figure out what was going on.
This was in.
Speaker 3 (40:10):
Early twenty twenty one, after the election, so we knew that,
you know, Labor had the power to govern alone. And
then all of a sudden, a whole lot of stuff
started happening. You know, the media started using Mari words
all the time. All of a sudden, government departments became
(40:31):
known by Mari terms, and no one actually knew what
was being talked about. The weather person started using you know,
Mari names through all these different parts of the country,
and we were thinking, well, what is going on here?
And I remember writing a column a newsletter just you know,
(40:51):
probably speculating about there was something going on. You know,
we were sort of wondering what it was. And someone said,
sent me an email and they said, have you seen this?
And so I followed the Lincoln had a look and
it was hippur poor. It was heavily redacted. The full
documents over one hundred pages, and I think that one
(41:13):
was about twenty pages.
Speaker 1 (41:15):
It turned out that it had been.
Speaker 3 (41:19):
Publicly released onto I think it was Tipuni Kocher's website,
just the day of the election. In other words, as
soon as they knew that Labor was going to win,
and it had sat there undiscovered. And then we looked
at it and realized that this was a blueprint for
(41:41):
tribal control. This was a blueprint to take away democracy
replace it with tribal control by twenty forty. So I
wrote about it, and it didn't take long before everybody
jumped on it, and you know, collectively, anybody who understood
what was going.
Speaker 1 (41:59):
On was outraged. You know, how could.
Speaker 3 (42:02):
This have got so far? And that was really need
just to start. It's been pushing the government of the day,
pushed tribal rule across all government departments.
Speaker 1 (42:18):
We knew about it in Three Waters.
Speaker 3 (42:21):
We knew about it in the Mari Health Authority because
all of a sudden, patients were being prioritized on the
basis of race, not clinical need.
Speaker 1 (42:31):
And so it went on.
Speaker 3 (42:33):
But a lot of it, of course, if you remember,
there was all of a sudden, you know, in the
Real Estate Institute, the new people had to do compulsory
course in the Treaty.
Speaker 1 (42:47):
Of Waitangi, stuff like.
Speaker 3 (42:48):
That that had never been there, So the fingers of
hippo poor were everywhere, and that again is something that
this government is struggling to actually.
Speaker 2 (43:00):
Curtail absolutely, and they'll spend a lot of time trying
to ravel the pieces that they can, but whether or
not they can they can get it to an appropriate
level is yet to be seen, which I guess leads
to your thoughts on the existing government. It's almost a
year since they were elected. It's just on a year
(43:25):
since they were elected, not quite since they start commenced
in government. But I guess, firstly, from your perspective, your
old party, the ACT part are now playing a role.
What's your view of the role that they're playing.
Speaker 3 (43:39):
Look, I think ACT and New Zealand First have been
very good for this government. I think the coalition has
been working really well. I think a lot of us
were a bit worried, but I think we've been pleasantly surprised.
Speaker 1 (43:55):
The three parties seem.
Speaker 3 (43:56):
To have quite a bit of autonomy as well as
a collegial approach to things, and obviously a collectivism which
works the country. I think that you know, in some
respects they don't seem to be going.
Speaker 1 (44:12):
Far enough quickly enough.
Speaker 2 (44:15):
You know.
Speaker 3 (44:16):
I was just looking at the new figures economic reports
that are dissed out and how the government is still
spending more than it's earning, and that's a worry. And
then you look at one of the key areas they
were going to reign and spending was the public sector.
And of course we all know that the public sector
(44:37):
under labor ballooned and that went from forty seven thousand
public servants in twenty and nineteen twenty seventeen, sorry, to
sixty six thousand in December of last year. And so
that's nineteen thousand extra public servants. And so you look
(45:00):
and see, well, you know, how.
Speaker 1 (45:02):
Much has the government cut back?
Speaker 3 (45:04):
And in spite of all the sort of criticism they've
received from the unions and from the media and the
opposition parties, it turns out that they've only shared about
two thousand jobs. So there were nineteen thousand new jobs created,
two thousand have been dropped. There was apparently another five
(45:25):
to six thousand vacancies that haven't been filled. But in
terms of you know, how they're going on cutting back
the nineteen thousand, they haven't gone very far at all,
and so you know, I think in some ways they're
a bit timid. I think they're problem They have a
huge problem with the media. You know, the media are
(45:48):
loath to say anything at all that's good mainstream media
good about the coalition and that must get you down.
But in spite of that, they have to work around it,
and they have to be bolder and deliver a growing economy.
Speaker 1 (46:05):
That's what's want, That's what kiwis need.
Speaker 3 (46:08):
We need jobs, we need, you know, an economy that's
giving opportunities to people again.
Speaker 1 (46:15):
And of course it's a pretty bad patch right now.
Speaker 2 (46:18):
Yeah, sure, well I agree with you. I think I
think the coalitions working better than than I thought it would.
I think act in New Zealand First are playing a
very valuable role. My concerns are we going hard enough,
fast enough exactly the same as what you're saying. I,
for one, welcome the latest announcement regarding getting people back
(46:40):
to work, getting public servants back to the office. It
would strike me that we've actually lost track of how
many public servants we actually have had, and working from
home has has contributed to that. What do you what
are your thoughts on things? Like health, education, crime, you know, trade,
some of those areas that they've they've clearly focused on
(47:03):
and championed on the trade front. The Prime minist and
the Foreign Affairs Minister have been very active internationally. We've
seen plenty from the Minister of Education. What's your view
on those those big headline policies in terms of how
they're going.
Speaker 3 (47:19):
I think they're definitely going in the right direction. I
think they're laying the groundwork, and you know, it's like
planting a seed, isn't it. You know that as long
as you water it and fertilize it and everything, it
will grow. We're probably waiting for the growth to be seen.
Speaker 1 (47:37):
If you know what I mean.
Speaker 3 (47:38):
It's like in health, you know they've brought in huge changes,
but the system was such a mess that it's going
to take a while before the benefits are actually seen.
And so you know, it's this lag that goes on
in a government and you know it shouldn't be like
this shit it. I mean, you know, you tend to
(47:59):
think of governments like big ships, you know, to try
and turn them around. It's not easy, but you know,
we're only five million people, for goodness sake, and you
think to yourself. We should be light on our feet,
we should be able to speedily do stuff, and yet
we seem.
Speaker 1 (48:18):
To have got ourselves really bogged down.
Speaker 3 (48:20):
And I'm hoping that if the public sector can get
paired back. You mention people working from home, well, you know,
you look at our productivity figures and they're just dreadful.
Speaker 1 (48:33):
And perhaps if people you know.
Speaker 3 (48:34):
Are more accountable back in the office, maybe even the
public sector productivity will improve.
Speaker 1 (48:43):
But you have to get rid of so much of
this bureaucracy and.
Speaker 3 (48:46):
Red tape, because you know, it is harming everything. And
that's not just the private sector, it's the public sector
as well.
Speaker 2 (48:55):
Sure, I wonder if somebody should jump on a plane
and go and have a look at what they're doing
in Argentina, because the new president there seems to be
making progress very, very rapidly. So he's obviously got a
recipe that perhaps perhaps we could borrow.
Speaker 1 (49:10):
Do you think, yes, Well, the funny thing is, so
when you look at all these plans that the government
puts out.
Speaker 3 (49:18):
You know, they've just put out a new one, haven't they,
with forty odd points in it action points in it?
And that followed one with you know, thirty eight in it,
and another one with forty seven.
Speaker 1 (49:30):
In it, and so on. So they are getting a
lot of stuff done.
Speaker 3 (49:34):
And I think it's just this whole problem that we
have turning around the economy. I suspect that once it
does turn around. I mean, you've got to remember, the
Reserve Bank printed money like water, and they were responsible
for flipping well, you know, driving up the cost of
living and causing inflation to peak. And so once they
(50:00):
start to bring interest rates down properly and people start
to become more confident again, I think the economy will
take off.
Speaker 1 (50:10):
At least I hope it will. So. I think a
lot of groundwork is done now and I think.
Speaker 3 (50:15):
Hopefully we will start to see the benefits next year.
Speaker 2 (50:19):
Well, I hope you're right. I want to just touch
on briefly another project that you've picked up at the
Center for Political Research, and that is the distribution of
a million copies of Apparana NAT's nineteen twenty two explanation
of the original Mari version of the Treaty of Way Tanny.
So you've got a million copies that you're distributing to
(50:41):
New Zealand households. How have you got about that that's
a big project.
Speaker 1 (50:47):
Yeah, it was.
Speaker 3 (50:48):
We've read Sarapparana Nata's explanation of the Mari version of
the treaty, which of course you know, says that Maori
seated sovereignty to the crown, that property rights will be protected,
and that everybody will be equal.
Speaker 1 (51:06):
This country have equal rights.
Speaker 3 (51:08):
And we saw that in about nineteen forty oh gosh, no,
nineteen sixties.
Speaker 2 (51:19):
It was.
Speaker 3 (51:19):
It was republished by a government department and sent out
to all Murray families, and so that made us think, well,
you know, if they could send it out to all
Murray families, why don't we send it out to all families.
So we found that if we printed it as a good,
high quality insert, it could be put into newspapers and
(51:41):
distribute it in.
Speaker 1 (51:43):
An affordable manner. And so that's what we did.
Speaker 3 (51:46):
We raised some money and we printed a million copies
of them, and we sent it out in two tranches,
South Island, then North Island, and now we have some
printed as little a five booklets and we you know,
people send us a donation, we send them ten books
that they can give to family and friends. Just trying
(52:07):
to get what I think is a wonderful explanation of
what actually went on in those times. We wanted out
there because there's so much propaganda now about the treaty
and so much reinterpretation that is just rubbish, to be
quite honest. It's been reinvented for political reasons, and we
(52:28):
think it would be nice for more people to actually
read the truth.
Speaker 2 (52:33):
Good stuff, and people can get that via your website
at enzcpr dot com. Just touching on from it, at
the state of local government. I'm not sure how closely
you watch that, but of course the Prime Minister gave
them a serve at the New Zealand Local Government Conference
a few months back. I've written a column about it.
(52:54):
A few other people have written a column about it.
Do you have a view on the state of local
government in New Zealand.
Speaker 3 (53:00):
Yeah, we really do worry about local government. It's like
a ticking time bomb. I mean, you know, it's been
completely captured by environmental interests and mari interests, and you know,
Labor ruined local government in two thousand and two when
they passed the Local Government Reforms and gave local government
(53:25):
the power of general competence and also introduced those four
well Beings the need to consider social wellbeing, environmental cultural
wellbeing as well as economic and so what's happened since
that time is essentially local government has gone off the
rails and it has got a lot worse.
Speaker 1 (53:47):
This capture that's gone on.
Speaker 3 (53:48):
It started with, you know, people being pointed onto councils
as advisors, and now all of a sudden, these advisors
have got voting rights, and so all of a sudden,
the people making the decisions and not those who've.
Speaker 1 (54:07):
Been elected by the public.
Speaker 3 (54:10):
It's all been manipulated, and I think the government was
exactly right to say they're going to cancel the well beings.
Speaker 1 (54:18):
They should.
Speaker 3 (54:19):
I think it's also take away the powers of general competence.
They should go back to asking local government to be
involved in service delivery and local stuff and forget about
all these high faluting plans that they all have building
empires for themselves.
Speaker 1 (54:39):
And try and get the whole thing back on the rails.
Speaker 2 (54:42):
Well, there's a lot of work to do there, as
there is across the board. Where with doctor Muriel Newman
from the New Zealand Center for Political Research, and we'll
be back in a moment. Back with doctor Muriel Newman.
(55:03):
I want to talk about your leadership experiences because it
it takes a lot of effort and nerve to sort
of pick up the challenges that you've picked up since
two thousand and five. Can you just share with us,
perhaps what your earliest memory of taking on a leadership
role was and what prompted you to do that.
Speaker 3 (55:26):
Look, I think you know, like a lot of kids,
you know, the teacher asks, you know, will anybody volunteer
to be a I don't know, a lab technician or
a monitor for something or other, and you your library
assistant or whatever, and so you put your hand up
because you want to help. And so I think that
(55:48):
for a lot of people, leadership actually starts surreptitiously.
Speaker 1 (55:53):
You know, when you're growing up.
Speaker 3 (55:55):
And I remember the funniest example of leadership though, was
when I worked with Michael Hill and the company was
a member of the Chamber of Commerce that was in
the early days, but no one wanted to go to meetings.
(56:15):
They were all too busy, you know, running the business
and being involved in jewelry. And so because I was
a new kid on the block, I got sent along.
You know, you have to go to the Chamber of
Commerce meetings. So I went along and I really knew
nothing and didn't really know who all the people were either,
And so I sat there very quietly, and I don't
(56:36):
think I said a word apart from to introduce myself.
And then the next month I went along to the
next meeting, and I think I might have volunteered a
couple of ideas or suggestions for whatever it was they
were talking about, and blow me down. The next meeting
I went along, I was elected flipping president. And so,
(56:58):
you know, I always sort of thought to myself, you
know that leadership can pop along when you least expect it,
And yeah, so you just do your best and you
try and encourage people around you to do their best,
and it just sort of works, doesn't it.
Speaker 2 (57:15):
You've mentioned Sir Michael Hill a couple of times. Was
he an important mentor or were there other mentors in
your life that helped show you the way? Look?
Speaker 3 (57:24):
I think the people you work closely with, you know,
inevitably become your mentors. And Michael, of course, is a
great example of a Kiwi who's done so well and
led in so many different areas, again from inauspicious beginnings,
you know, but he's shone and.
Speaker 1 (57:48):
So has Christine. But I think Roger Douglas was another one.
Speaker 3 (57:53):
You know, I work closely with Sir Roger, and you
know I admire people like him.
Speaker 1 (58:00):
He doesn't give up.
Speaker 3 (58:01):
You know, he's in his eighties now and he still
is passionate about trying to transform the New Zealand economy
as he ever was. And it's all to give the
people at the bottom a chance to get ahead.
Speaker 1 (58:14):
You know, that was always his driving passion.
Speaker 3 (58:18):
And so when you're around people like that, you know
you can't help but admire them. And of course there
are many others that you come across in your life.
Everybody has got the power I think to be a
leader and to do well. It's just many times they
don't understand it and they don't give it a go. Ye.
Speaker 2 (58:37):
Interesting, what do you think is your best skill or
your best set of skills that helps you to be
successful in that in the leadership space?
Speaker 3 (58:47):
Look, I think you know, tenacity is a big thing,
isn't it That You know, when you're trying to do something,
you just keep going, you don't give up.
Speaker 1 (58:57):
And when you think about you know, successful people in
all fields of life.
Speaker 3 (59:04):
You know, whether you're an Olympic medalist or you know,
a sport and art and.
Speaker 1 (59:12):
Culture and history anything. You have to be very dogged,
don't you.
Speaker 3 (59:17):
You have to carry on and instead of getting discouraged,
you just you know, wind yourself back up again and
keep going. And I think that's a really important skill
to have for anybody who wants to succeed in anything.
And I think that's one thing that we could teach
our kids a little bit more when they're at school,
(59:38):
just to be tenacious and don't give up.
Speaker 1 (59:42):
There was always you know, these sayings when I was
a kid.
Speaker 3 (59:46):
You know, if at first you don't succeed, try try,
try again. I think, you know, things like that, that
sort of wisdom that we got from our parents is
still as valid today as.
Speaker 1 (59:58):
It ever was.
Speaker 2 (59:59):
Absolutely couldn't agree with you more. You've just got to
keep at it. And it's and it's not limited to politics.
It's everywhere. Whether you're setting out on a business career
or starting a little retail business or whatever, there's going
to be some tough times and you've just got to
hang pretty tough and grind your way through. Sometimes I've
got to ask you the question, because I ask everybody
(01:00:22):
this question. And in your case, you've already had a
crack at it, so at getting pretty close to it anyway,
so you'll be more informed than most. But my final
question of you, Muriel, if you could be the New
Zealand Prime Minister for a day, what is the one
thing you'd like to do?
Speaker 1 (01:00:40):
Well?
Speaker 3 (01:00:41):
Obviously, I've been studying this whole problem that we've got
with race in New Zealand, and you know how there's
this real push now to try to segregate us more
and divide us more as a society, and I think
it's totally wrong. And now there's a number of countries
around the world have addressed this. Switzerland I think was
(01:01:04):
one of the latest to do it. And what they
did was they made the conscious decision to take race
out of all their statute books and that's what they did,
and they joined in doing that. They joined France and
Austria and Belgium. And you know, if you look at
(01:01:25):
New Zealand, there is so many instances now where whatever
it is, you know, you have to say your ethnicity
and that is not a color blind society. That doesn't
lead to an equal society. And so that's what I
would do. I would take race out of the statute
books everywhere, and so you know, Kiwi's would be Kiwi's
(01:01:49):
and we would all have a chance to go forward
as one people. And I think that would be so
wonderful for this country. We haven't been able to do
it in recent memory, and I think it would be
a unifying force.
Speaker 1 (01:02:03):
It's sort of like when you think.
Speaker 3 (01:02:06):
Bad you know, when we've been chairing on our sports teams,
you know, we forget about all the detail about color
and anything. We don't even think about it. And that's
what we need to do as a country. We need
to be one people, all pushing together.
Speaker 2 (01:02:24):
Well, doctor Muriel Newman, I think you will find that
there are a few people listening to this podcast who
will absolutely agree with that, There's no question about that.
Thank you so much for joining us on leaders getting Coffee.
We've had those technical hitches, haven't we, But we've managed
to get it all done. You know, it's good to
have minds like yours working behind the scenes, challenging the
(01:02:46):
status quo, trying to look out for, I guess, the
things that are in the best interests of our country.
So first and foremost, thank you for the work you
do and of course, thank you for joining us on
leaders Getting Coffee.
Speaker 1 (01:03:01):
Thank you, Bruce, thank you for having me.
Speaker 2 (01:03:04):
Finally, folks, my leadership dip for the week. It's kind
of consistent with the theme of the day. It comes
from the American economist and social philosopher Thomas Sole, and
it's one of his little sayings. He says, it's hard
to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of
making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands
of the people who pay no price for being wrong.
(01:03:27):
It's hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous
way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in
the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong.
And with the events of the last few years in
this country and the roles that many of those former
politicians now occupy, it seems like something that we all
need to think about a bit more. That's it, We're
(01:03:49):
done for another week. Thanks again for joining us on
leaders Getting Coffee, Episode twenty eight with our guest doctor
Muriel Newman. I'm sure she'd love you to check out
her website at dubdubdub dot nz, CPR dot com. Dubdubdub
dot NZCPR dot com. As always, if you have any feedback,
please get in touch at info it leaders getting coffee
(01:04:10):
dot com. Remember our favorite charities Boke for Blokes dot
cot on ENDZ and we'll look forward to seeing you
again with another great leadership story in the next few weeks.
Until then, have a great couple of weeks and we'll
catch you next time.
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