Leighton Smith Podcast #247 - July 17th 2024 - Jordan Williams & George Friedman

Estonia is gifted with the world’s most efficient and balanced tax regime.

Co-founder of the New Zealand Taxpayer’s Union, Jordan Williams suggests our Prime Minister should look seriously at that system for New Zealand.

It’s easy to argue it is way better than what we have.

We have a different perspective on the attempted assassination of Donald Trump, from Geopolitical Future’s founder George Friedman.

And we visit The Mailroom with Mrs Producer.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:09):
You're listening to a podcast from news talks it B.
Follow this and our wide range of podcasts now on iHeartRadio.
It's time for all the attitude, all the opinion, all
the information, all the debates of this now the Layton
Smith Podcast powered by news.

Speaker 2 (00:27):
Talks it B.

Speaker 3 (00:28):
Welcome to podcast two hundred and forty seven for July seventeen,
twenty twenty four. When I framed this podcast at the
end of last week, there was no way of knowing
the political temperature chains waiting in the wings, and I
state the obvious. Just prior to recording. On Wednesday morning,
I was listening to the most recent opinions on what

(00:49):
took place in Butler, Pennsylvania a few days ago. As expected,
there are many and varied opinions. In the second interview,
George Friedman offers his thoughts and the connection of the
attempted assassination of Donald Trump to what he wrote in
the book The Storm Before the Calm. But first, in
a Jordan Williams, co founder of the Taxpayers Union, a

(01:12):
discussion which I based on the suggestion that Christopher Luxon
should consult with the Estonians read their tax system the
best in the world. I might add while they were
both attending the NATO conference in Washington, but Jordan and
I covered much more regarding the palace state of New Zealand,
and I think you'll find it very good listening. Now,

(01:34):
I think you'll find in both the interviews there is
as much comment as is needed in one podcast. So
I'm going to add nothing new apart from at the
back end of this podcast, i'll read you the opinion
of one retired senator on what took place in Butler.
But first, in just a moment, Jordan Williams, there are

(02:03):
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(02:48):
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(03:10):
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Speaker 2 (03:37):
Layton Smith.

Speaker 3 (03:39):
I'm looking at a headline that arrived in my inbox
a few days ago, and I'll read it to you
in just a second. Before that, I want to quote
you something from the back of a book. In twenty thirteen,
a couple of political troublemakers called David Farr and Jordan
Williams created what they called the New Zealand Taxpayers Union.
The country had never had anything quite like it. Taking

(04:00):
a cue from similar advocacy groups abroad, the new group
set itself against unaccountable government spending, physical, wasteful and unnecessary
tax Now. I don't know that there would be anybody
listening to this podcast who would disagree with any of
those things and not be right behind this group. They
have since been joined in their quest by two hundred

(04:21):
thousand Kiwi well Wishes, along with an absolute pig of
a mascot called Porky the WTATA, and they have just
recently celebrated their tenth birthday. They published this book, The
Mission the Taxpayers Union at ten were the Ford by
Sir Bill English and edited by David Cohen. It was
the Taxpayers Union that issued the email that I'm talking about,

(04:46):
and the headline was something that I grasped instantly, p M.
Luxon needs to talk tax with Estonian Prime Minister And
it begins like this Taxpayers Union is calling on the
Prime Minister, Christopher Luxen to discuss tax policy with Estonia,
which has ranked number one on the tax Foundation International

(05:07):
Tax Competitiveness Decks for ten years in a row. Estonia
World leader. Estonia's world leading tax policy has led to
significant economic growth, far outpacing New Zealand's. It caused me
to pick up the phone and ring somebody with whom
i'm familiar, co founder of the Taxpayers Union, Jordan Williams.

(05:28):
And you said yes, and I'm grateful that you didn't
thank you. Laden. It was very subdued. You've had a
busy day, I gather having a big, long day, long
staff meeting.

Speaker 4 (05:41):
Right, yeah, Well, we sort of every every quarter we
get together the staff and plan out what's on the
priority list over the next few months. The nature of
the organization as it's difficult to plan out much more
than six months or even a year because you're so

(06:03):
dependent on the agenda of the day. You know, there's
some things that we can set the agender on. I'd
hold up three Waters as being a good example. No
one was willing to talk about that. No one was
willing to take on this scary thing called co governance,
although you couldn't really use that word three years ago
when we launched that campaign. But on most things, actually

(06:25):
the agenda is set by the government of the day
and our job is to make sure whatever debate it
is that the taxpayer point of view is injected into.

Speaker 3 (06:34):
It good Sticking with Estonia at the moment, Estonia has
the best tax code in the OECD. It ranks first
overall and second behind Latvia and Neighbor. I called them
the three communist kids who grew up anyway, Whilst New
Zealand ranks highly overall, our corporate tax ranking is where
in relation to Estonia's.

Speaker 4 (06:57):
Well in terms of the complexity of the tax system,
and the same that the tax foundations INDIEX Historically since
the early nineties, we haven't gone too badly. The point
is that we quickly marching backwards, and that particular media
release was slightly tongue in cheek focusing at Christopher Luxan
because the National Party have seemed to adopt it, this

(07:20):
drift that continued under the last government of going backwards. So,
for example, the reason Estonia's tax system is really held
up as a model, there's a couple of things. Firstly,
they don't tax company profits until they're actually distributed, which
incentivizes reinvestment back in the good things in terms of
capital and promoting labor productivity, and that if only we

(07:45):
could do that here. But the other thing that they
have is all the rates of twenty percent, which is
what New Zealand used to strive for of having our
company rate roughly aligned with our top marginal personal tax rate,
our trust rate, et cetera.

Speaker 2 (08:02):
You know, labor stuff that up.

Speaker 4 (08:04):
With a thirty nine percent top marginal tax rate, and
then that's come along and instead of abolishing that, they
have held on to Labour's money grab on or tax
rate on trusts. I think that for many farmers across
New Zealand, it's come into law. Labour kept us. Sorry,
the new national government kept it. It won't be until

(08:27):
the end of this tax here there's a nasty surprise
coming for a heck of a lot of farmers that,
for quite legitimate reasons hold their businesses or farms and trust. Now,
for the big end of town, they will reorganize, they
will shift over to company structures and pay only twenty
eight percent tax. Meanwhile, for the smaller end of town

(08:51):
this is going to be very expensive.

Speaker 2 (08:52):
Indeed, But I use it as an example.

Speaker 4 (08:54):
Because it just shows that the government has sort of
reverted it is not taking a leadership in terms of
making changes to our tax system that promote economic growth,
efficiency and attract the sort of investment that you know
Estonia or the other examples Ireland set out to achieve.

(09:17):
Now I look at the test like this, and it's
a good test between whether a Minister of Finance is
a minister of finance first or a politician first. So
a lot of politicians and it's and it's quite a
popular set of ideas. The idea of something like tax
free thresholds or lowering the marginal rates at the bottom end.

(09:38):
Now that's good, and you know, the tax payer, you know,
we'll take tax relief pretty much any day, you know,
that's our job. However, it is always the marginal rate,
Like any sort of economic thing, it's it's the incentives
at the margins that incentivize the person to work that

(09:59):
but extra hard to take that extra over time, to
make the investment to improve their business or make it
more productive. And tax free thresholds, invariably over the long term,
increase what you're paying at the margins. And I use
it as an example because the National Party's are tax

(10:21):
relief that frankly only went a little way of even
compensating for the fiscal drag, the increase in tax that
we pay because of inflation. We earn no more, but
we get pushed into higher marginal tax brackets. It only
went partially way to compensate for that. And the way

(10:44):
it was structured is it doesn't really increase the incentives
to work or be more productive. And then i'd point
to you the National Party playing the politics as opposed
to the good economics and putting New Zealand on a
more productive path. And you know, we saw that mister
Luxon was seeing the Estonian Prime Minister. He might learn

(11:07):
a thing or two from the approach the Estonians take.

Speaker 3 (11:11):
I suppose you didn't. You didn't find out whether we
did or not.

Speaker 4 (11:14):
I haven't run into Christphal lux did an event with
our donors earlier this year. We haven't had them back yet.

Speaker 3 (11:23):
Okay, break that down for me in very simple language,
if you would, so that we can all understand it.
When you talk about when you talk about the margins,
when you talk about incentives, give me an example that
or build an example for me that will explain to
all of us exactly how you would have it work.

Speaker 4 (11:43):
Ideally, so the New Zealand used to strive for this.
It shouldn't matter how you structure your affairs, whether you
earn the income personally as a payu uner or whether
you own a business and a company structure or whether
you own it in a trust, that tech should at

(12:04):
least be roughly the same to avoid business decisions or
structural decisions being driven by tax incentives, that's what you're
trying to strip out. So these stoneans just make everything
twenty They even go as fast for capital gains at
twenty percent. And there's a very mixed economic literature whether
you should tax capital gains differently. But the point is

(12:29):
is that you wouldn't have that incentive that is happening
right now.

Speaker 2 (12:32):
For example in New.

Speaker 4 (12:33):
Zealand, where you've got a big difference between twenty eight
percent and thirty nine percent tax rate dependent on if
you'll farm, for example, is owned in a company structure
or in a trust.

Speaker 3 (12:47):
How big is that difference, Well.

Speaker 4 (12:50):
In that case it's eleven percent twenty eight percent versus
thirty nine percent on the dollar. These are not small amounts. Now,
you could argue that you know, there's still a difference
between the old trust rate of thirty three percent and
twenty eight. Now that marginal you might you know, you
might affect decision making, but certainly, eleven percent, eleven cents

(13:13):
in the dollar is a heck of a big incentive
to change your affairs. Now, for many farmers, they won't
miss you know that, they won't have business advisors and
management accountants of tax accountants.

Speaker 2 (13:26):
Up the wazoo.

Speaker 4 (13:26):
They're probably going to be caught by this when it's
too late to change. Whereas I can tell you the
beginning of town. Of course, they are restructuring their affairs
for it because they see it coming down the line.

Speaker 3 (13:39):
They see it from the thirty second floor exactly all right.
Just with regard to something else, but associated the money
that's available in this country for business, for working, for development,
for advancing is in very short supply. It has been
said by others that we need we need to get

(13:59):
foreign money into the country and it doesn't matter where
it comes from. Do you subscribe to that.

Speaker 4 (14:07):
Yeah, I mean, the the thing is is we are
the most, according to the OECD, the most restrictive in
terms of being able to get foreign direct investment in
New Zealand. Now, I appreciate that you will have listeners
that don't like the idea of having businesses owned from overseas.

(14:30):
You know, the other end of that spectrum would be Ireland,
where enormous amounts of capital have flown in. And a
big reason for that is that they took the very
conscious decision in the nineteen seventies that we no longer
want to be the poor man in Europe anymore. I
mean it's the prior to Jacinder Ardurn resigning, I re

(14:52):
called doing a similar sort of planning day with the
board and staff in December.

Speaker 2 (14:58):
What was that December twenty twenty two.

Speaker 4 (15:00):
And the assumption we were working on is that, you know,
the Ardourn government is toast, we were likely to get
a change of government in twenty twenty three.

Speaker 2 (15:10):
What is the role of the taxpas union?

Speaker 4 (15:12):
And we were actually calling it a Project Horizons or
Project Ireland because one thing that New Zealand seems to
have fallen into the trap of is not only are
we getting progressively poorer and in this sort of economic drift,
is we seem to have not we seem to be
accepting it a big I think I may have told sorry,

(15:36):
I may have told you this story before, but it
was particularly influential on.

Speaker 2 (15:42):
Me.

Speaker 4 (15:42):
And I tell the story about in Ruth Richardson's Batch
and Warnakah. There is the Garrick Tremaine cartoon from when
she was sacked by Bulger and ruth A.

Speaker 2 (15:53):
She's in a space.

Speaker 4 (15:54):
Costumer and you know, a spacesuit on the moon and
the speech bubble coming out is inflation under two percent.
I think she inherited it about six or seven government
books in the black which he inherited. The bailout wasn't public,
but she inherited the bailout of the old old ben

(16:17):
zed economic growth five percent. My job here is done.

Speaker 2 (16:24):
Beat me up, Scotty. Now. It really stood out to
me because.

Speaker 4 (16:29):
I cannot remember the last time he had a politician
even talk about aiming for the goal of growth at
five percent. You know, that's what Ireland and Estonia are
achieving on average, whereas we are more sort of two
to three percent and even worse right now, where we've

(16:50):
got a tiny bit of growth, but we are getting
on a per capita basis, on a per person basis,
we are not only getting poorer on that measure, we're
in the longer recession since records began. When you look
at GDP per capita or or per person. So we

(17:10):
saw the role of you know, a group like the
Taxpayer's Union to actually promote that conversation of what, you know,
the little country that could, what could New Zealand be?
And we see symptoms of that every day. You know,
the the drugs that until recently we weren't able to

(17:31):
we didn't have the money to.

Speaker 2 (17:33):
How could we still don't have the money to do it.

Speaker 4 (17:35):
But the services and drugs that are available in Australia
because they produce on a per per hour work or
per capita.

Speaker 2 (17:47):
They produce a third more.

Speaker 4 (17:48):
It's not having those options for what government services you
can have, what households can afford.

Speaker 2 (17:57):
That's what you.

Speaker 4 (17:59):
Know when you're in a fiscal fiscal drift for basically
a generation, when you haven't when your labor productivity hasn't.

Speaker 2 (18:07):
Moved a decade. It these are the flow on effects.

Speaker 4 (18:12):
So the role of the taxpayers units is to focus
on how do we promote the political conversation, So it's
not just about how you slice the pie, but actually
getting ruthlessly focused in the electorate, focused on how do
we grow it and how do we make not just
an asiell and catch.

Speaker 2 (18:33):
Up with Australia.

Speaker 4 (18:34):
At least John Key used to talk about that but
we don't even hear that anymore coming from the beehive,
but actually setting our sites higher. And i'd hold up
Estonia or Sorry, or Ireland in particular. You know, Ireland's
the only country in Europe that its population now is

(18:55):
still less than it was at the beginning of the
eighteen hundreds.

Speaker 2 (18:58):
It's the only.

Speaker 4 (18:59):
Basically its history was Its history was exporting people and
being poor. In the nineteen seventies, they took a very
anxious decision that we're not going to be poor anymore,
and they made public and continue to make public policy
choices to get off that track. And I'd argue, have

(19:20):
they are on the very opposite end of us in
terms of foreign direct investment. They've made themselves very attractive
and they've also reaped the rewards.

Speaker 3 (19:30):
There's a couple of things I'd mentioned, And see how
you feel if it had been Bulgerho had been sacked
and by Ruth Richardson in the positions that they were
both in. But let's say he was sacked and she
was and she remained in business. Do you think the
world would be a better place for New Zealand.

Speaker 4 (19:52):
Well, New Zealand profited for a long time off the
hard work that was done by a generation of politicians
in the mid eighties to about the mid nineties, and
then we've really drifted. I mean, this is the common
theme of the economic experts you have on your show
late and you know we've we look at that and

(20:15):
it's what made that budget, you know, so disappointing that
you know, I sweet, I've had a lot of kickback
from our people how rough we were.

Speaker 2 (20:26):
On the maze.

Speaker 4 (20:26):
Budget, because of course we all know that Grant Robinson
in the last government put us on a terrible, terrible path.
I sweated bricks to get rid of the last government.
You know when when Ardurn resigned and Chris Hipkins took over.
Let me tell you, those plans absolutely went out the
window when the polls tightened and it wasn't clear you know,

(20:50):
what the election result may be. I sweated bricks to
get rid of them, but I didn't do it to
have a national lead or a Tory coalition government which
is spending more than Grant Robinson, including as a percentage
of GDP, is pushing back us getting the books back

(21:12):
into black and instead of you know, sacking those twenty
thousand extra public servants is actually I think the last
count it's only two hundred and fifty. They talk about
all these sackings, but then the new ones they're coming
in the latest Public Service Report Public Service Commission reporters
that only two hundred and fifty have actually met, have

(21:34):
actually gone. What their own effect doing is locking in
that sort of post COVID bonanza of government spending.

Speaker 2 (21:43):
Oh and that's the other thing.

Speaker 4 (21:45):
Is the pathway back to surplus under Nichola Willis's first
budget relies on the exact same mischief of fiscal drag,
of not changing tax thresholds with inflation that she spent
all her years in opposition complaining about, and rightfully so
about Grant Robertson. And yet that instead of rationalize in spending,

(22:09):
that is what the government is relying on to get
us back into surplus.

Speaker 3 (22:14):
All right, let me back up a bit. You mentioned
capital gains a couple of times. That's one blessing we
do have that we don't have capital gains. Every time
it comes up for discussions, it's shot dead. Do you
think there is grounds for capital gains?

Speaker 4 (22:31):
I think reason our minds can differ on it. The
proposal that was put in front of us by the
Tax Working Group in Sir Michael Cullen would have been
one of the most aggreatable, actually not one of the most.

Speaker 2 (22:44):
We could not find an example in.

Speaker 4 (22:46):
The world as aggressive as that one for a couple
of reasons. The first is that unlike I mean, it
was a minisatively very complex because it had everything came
in from day one. It wasn't like the Australians where
it was it came in as assets were sold and purchased.

Speaker 2 (23:05):
That's the first. The second is that it would be among.

Speaker 4 (23:07):
The highest in the world because poy income or if
you know, you go and turn up for work and
get wages as much lower risk than putting capital on
the line and investing in say a business, and almost
all of the world have a much lower rate for
capital gains for that reason because you're risk adjusting it,

(23:31):
whereas Michael Cullen's proposal had it at the at your
marginal rate. So it was it was, it was very high.
I was also not reven neutral.

Speaker 2 (23:44):
It was done.

Speaker 4 (23:44):
Clearly as a tax grab rather than attach a tax switch.
And it also tax inflation. If you simply your return
on the on the asset was no higher than the
inflation rate. The politicians still came along and grabbed you.
So it was an unfair tax in that regard to

(24:05):
that wasn't the model I would hold up, but it
was the model that was in front of us when
we had that capital gains fight some years ago. In
terms of we survey our supporters pretty regularly, and you know,
I can tell you that you know, as I say,
reasonable minds can differ on this. I remember my former

(24:27):
Chia Barry Saunders, is relatively relaxed about the capital gains
tax in principle. But the problem that we didn't have
to have that argument because of the one that was
in front of us was so bad. Just step back
though in a New Zealand context. The problem, the economic
problem that you and I have talked about around our

(24:52):
productivity issue, it's the story of the economic history of
New Zealand in my lifetime, is low productivity, under capitalization
of our businesses, poor productivity per labor, are per for
our work, too much money going into housing.

Speaker 2 (25:15):
How could the solution to that issue be to tax.

Speaker 4 (25:19):
Capital and capital investment or the gains from capital investment
except for the family home that would drive And yet
somehow that is the economic solution. It would actually make
worse the very problem that New Zealand has, which is,
as I say that under capital investment. And that's why

(25:41):
the tax Payers Union, you know, we're promoting different tax
changes to encourage more of what we want, which is
more money going into good investments.

Speaker 2 (25:52):
And what good are?

Speaker 3 (25:55):
What are good investments?

Speaker 4 (25:57):
Oh give an example, So the one if there was
one thing we could have from a wish list in
next year's budget, it's the best tax idea you've you've
never heard of, which is the full expensing of capital items.
So right now, if you're a business and you go

(26:17):
and buy a big piece of capital kit, you have
to look up the depreciation rates with that ird set
and you can expense that investment over many years to come.
Something that Donald Trump did and Russie Sink did when he.

Speaker 2 (26:32):
Was chancellor is.

Speaker 4 (26:37):
Allow the full expensing of any capital items and have
a time limit on it. So if we did that,
for example, in the next year as part of next
year's budget, it would bring forward capital investment because you'd
want to get the tax right off, and it wouldn't

(26:57):
actually push back the date to getting back into surplus.
Now the Americans made it permanent. But by having that
expiry date, as I say, it brings full with capital
and investment, which is great in a in a recessionary environment.
And two it actually achieves what you want, which is
businesses investing in the sort of capital kit to long

(27:21):
term increase your labor productivity. And we'd hold that up
as a something that a good sort of not necessarily
politically sexy idea, but economically very wise.

Speaker 3 (27:34):
All right, A couple of things. Welfare is enormous in
this country. Is there is there a need to curtail
welfare and specifically welfare expectations.

Speaker 2 (27:48):
Were the elephant in the room.

Speaker 4 (27:51):
In New Zealand's public finance is that the superannuation simply
becomes unaffordable over the long term. You know, forget the
super fund. It's a drop in the ocean compared to
the enormous growth in New Zealand Super over the next
twenty years. And that is actually probably long term. My

(28:14):
greatest concern is that the unwillingness, by at least what
we've seen, it could be wrong. But you know, we
six months into this, more than six months into this
government now, is that simply kicking the can down the
road is the sort of thing we did in the seventies,
and we all know how the eighties turned out.

Speaker 3 (28:34):
Talking of capital gains, my philosophy is, you don't allow
the government to you prevent the government from introducing any
new taxes except in what might be considered exceptional circumstances.
And I'll use GST as the prime example. GST was
introduced to ten percent. We all know this. Then it
went up to twelve and a half percent, and it's

(28:55):
now fifteen percent. One day I expected to go even higher,
but the deal was that it wouldn't go up, it
would stay where it was, and then there was a
trade off for that. Now, if you introduced a capital
gains tax at whatever level, sooner or later, that'll change
and you'll get pursued for it, et cetera. So is
there based on that, and I'm accepting that I'm right

(29:16):
on this occasion, is there a problem with the what
I shall momentarily call the collective intelligence of the country
in that the education system fails dismally to teach kids
the importance of matters of finance and and and and

(29:41):
and economics. If every if every kid got some form
of economics, that taught them how effort work. Putting in
that extra extra hour in your job, if you if
you're getting paid by there or what, or even if
you're not, is going to lead to you being better
off in the long run.

Speaker 2 (29:59):
Yeah, I think it's even it's even simpler than that.

Speaker 4 (30:02):
As you get older, you you start to appreciate, you
know that this radical idea that you you spend your
money better than town Hall and better than those people
in Wellington.

Speaker 2 (30:13):
You know that's a big You know, the.

Speaker 4 (30:17):
Reason dontrial the Taxpayers Union is you know, to convince
people a little bit earlier, remind them why are we
in the media every day on exposing government waste? You
know it is because you know that the government is
very poor at doing a lot of stuff. I mean,
I'm I'm not a sort of you know, I don't

(30:39):
believe in no government. I'm not an anarchist or anything,
but I do think that there are some things that
only the government can do. And you know, I take
a view that the government should focus on doing those
things well rather than doing so much and frankly so poorly.

Speaker 3 (30:57):
Go back to a studium, go back to Ireland, and
any other example you want to include doesn't matter. Is
it a case that we in New Zealand have not
yet sunk to the depths where we're so desperate that
we would we would alter the things that need to
be altered now, and you do it under more extreme circumstances.

Speaker 2 (31:17):
Well, that's what had to happen.

Speaker 4 (31:18):
It had to get so bad in the eighties before,
you know, we had to take because there was simply
no option but to take quite radical measures, you know,
because the you know, it couldn't continue. It was as
simple as that. It wasn't out out of choice. I'd
hold up local government as an example of a very

(31:39):
clear area where things are going wrong. You know, you've
got councilors that we've just done our annual rates dashboard
looking at the rates increases of every council across the country,
you know, and and for many rate payers. You know,
you're talking about a doubling of rates over only four
or five years, you know, on on on current numbers.

Speaker 2 (32:02):
This is simply unsustainable.

Speaker 4 (32:04):
And I understand that the counselors argued, oh, well, we
need money for the three waters and for the capital
and investment, and you guys you want infrastructure. Well, you know,
the politicians say that, but as soon as you strip
away where the money is actually going. At least the
story of over the last ten and a half years
since the Taxpayers Union was founded is that every year

(32:27):
that's what they say, and you come back a year
later and a greater and greater proportion of the budget
is being spent on operational expenses, not on the capital
items that the infrastructure that we were promised. Very clearly
there does need to be a real rethink in New
Zealand about don't think it's the role. I think it's
the governance and the tools of governance. Now we're moving

(32:51):
towards a Franklin undemocratic, co governed direction.

Speaker 2 (32:56):
And unfortunately there's another.

Speaker 4 (32:59):
Area where I'd argue that the government talked a very
good talk through the election, but is at least in
some areas really failing to deliver. And you know, with
the role of the Taxpayser Union is to snuff that out.
But also there is a heck of a lot of

(33:19):
councils that aren't just dysfunctional, they're actually unable to do
their jobs and governor and I'd hold up an example
where many counselors ask for information from the officials or
chief executives, any chief executives look them back and say, look,
I'm I'm sorry, counselor, but that's an operational that's an
operational matter, and you're not entitled to that information. Well

(33:42):
i'm sorry, but you know, if you're on a board,
on the board of a company, you know where you've
got statutory rights of information, you just laugh at that.

Speaker 2 (33:54):
You're damn well entitled to it.

Speaker 4 (33:56):
Astonishingly, local counselors don't have statutory rights to information. I
think it's just always been any expectation and implied. But
officials are now that sort of seem determined to run
the show simply refuse to provide it. Well, it's all
very well for the Taxpayers Union to jump up and
down every day about government's piddling away money.

Speaker 2 (34:18):
Sorry, your council's piddling away money.

Speaker 4 (34:21):
You can't expect them to be well governed if you're
not giving councilors or elected officials the tools to be
able to second guests, review or keep the keep the
heat on, however you want to describe it. The chief
executive and executives.

Speaker 3 (34:39):
It wouldn't be intentional by any chance, would it.

Speaker 4 (34:43):
Well, I think it's a I actually think that it's
a big reason why councils or councilors are starting to
pull out of local government New Zealand is that it
used to be a club of sort of of of
represent the council the councils in terms of the council laws,
whereas it's much like so much across the West, their

(35:06):
institutions as it sort of been consumed by the blob.
In this case, the blob is very much the professional
managerial class, the bureaucrats and officials that are actually quite
arrogant and look down their nose at democracy. I mean,
look at the way that even at the moment with

(35:27):
the government's fast track legislation, and we've been doing a
bit of work around this because we're pretty frustrated that
the government's fast track regime includes special consultative rights sort
of John Key style approach to co governance and.

Speaker 2 (35:45):
In racial privilege.

Speaker 4 (35:47):
But there there's this huge drive to take it away
from democrats, take the decisions away from democratically elected politicians
that I'd argue are accountable, because we must put these
decisions in the hands of experts. That's that I'm becoming
just more and more uncomfortable that that's actually code for

(36:08):
we know better. Another one of our campaigns.

Speaker 3 (36:11):
Just before you leave that what you're talking about is
the administrative state.

Speaker 2 (36:18):
Yeah, well the next example is going to go onto
with Aukin transport.

Speaker 3 (36:21):
That well, I was about to beat you into it,
but you take it.

Speaker 4 (36:26):
Everyone knowsorts Well, I mean it's it's it's all very
well to call your local counselor and go bananas, but
you know, it's it's its own serfdom. I think that
you know, we've sort of got the I understand that
you want some stuff taken.

Speaker 2 (36:41):
Out of day to day politics.

Speaker 4 (36:43):
You know that a few people would argue that, you know,
our reserve bank model was copied by pretty much you
know the rest of the Western world. But you know,
for stuff like public services like UK and transport, of
course you wanted to at some degree of political electoral accountability.

(37:04):
And here at the Taxpayers Union, in fact, we changed
our mission to bring that used to be lower taxes,
this waste more transparency. We replaced that last limb with
more accountability, because transparency is not enough if you can't
hold to account the decision makers, and whether that's undemocratic

(37:24):
co governance or these arrangements where you get frankly, and
we had a former staffer that was out of Auckland
Transport and I remember interviewing him and here's a bit
of a lefty and I asked him, you know why,
why do you want to come work for us? He said,
because I've seen the inside of the beast. They think
that the public served them, not the other way around.

(37:45):
And I want to hold these people to account.

Speaker 3 (37:47):
How old was he.

Speaker 4 (37:50):
Maybe about probably coming up thirty now he got Fortunately,
he got pinched by the Mayor of Auckland is now
his deputy chief of staff.

Speaker 2 (37:59):
Well, one of the.

Speaker 4 (38:01):
Challenges of running the taxpayers union is your staff are
constantly constantly being pinched. But that's right, that's part out
of the role of think tanks is to be a
incubator of talent.

Speaker 3 (38:12):
Well, the fact that he was in his twenties at
the time is encouraging. At least he at least he
could recognize what the what the issue was. But in
the meantime, of course, that that same organization just rolls
on regardless. Give me your thoughts then on the dispersal
of information to the public, And by that I really
mean the media.

Speaker 2 (38:33):
Yeah, I think that.

Speaker 4 (38:36):
I remember putting in our early business documents, business planning documents,
that the greatest threatened challenge to the Taxpayers Union was that,
unlike all her equivalents around the world, we don't have
a single mainstream you need to be the exception latent but.

Speaker 2 (38:55):
Conservative news service.

Speaker 4 (38:57):
We don't even equivalent to the Australian, the National Post,
even the Spectator in Britain actually or the Telegraph, but
even the Spectator and Britain actually break stories. We've got
good conservative talk radio, but the newsroom is certainly isn't
sort of isn't a sort of center right newsroom. But

(39:19):
having said that, you know, the Hero would be the best.
But this isn't me saying it. The opinion polling and
you ask New Zealanders and they consider the hero down
the middle. In every other mainstream publication on the left
or far left, New Zealand is an outlier the air.
It's what made this decision a few weeks ago, the
announcement from the government that can have an effect introducing

(39:42):
a tax and pale out the legacy media companies, which
is again a terribly short term decision by the government
and frankly probably isn't going to work, but also makes
the sort of it harder to see a sort of
new generation media come through as we're seeing around the

(40:05):
Western world.

Speaker 2 (40:06):
On the other hand, you know, the Taxpaars.

Speaker 4 (40:09):
Union New Zealander is now the largest per capita in
the English speaking world, and i'd put to you the
reason for that. When we ask our supporters, you know,
why do you subscribe and what do you like about
the Taxpars Union, they say, I feel like I get
the real news or what's really going on from you.

Speaker 2 (40:27):
We've sort of it in a way filled that space.

Speaker 4 (40:30):
But you know, it is a real worry that and
I think it partly drives that horrible polarization and distrust
of of institutions and things, because you know, our media
environment no longer reflects the population it's supposed to serve,

(40:50):
and I just don't see that being sustainable in the
long term.

Speaker 3 (40:54):
Just finally, the government is too big. We have too many,
too many politicians, too many departments. Even even if there
are ministers who are who are handling the governents of
you know, three or four or even five different different sectors.
How would you how would you approach reducing the size

(41:17):
of the Parliament, and.

Speaker 2 (41:21):
You know my view, I'm certainly no fan of MMP.

Speaker 4 (41:23):
And actually it was the lack of any sort of
or the lack of any willingness of for example, Business
New Zealand or any or even the National Party at
all to shift the dial or advocate in that referendum
in twenty eleven. That sort of is a what was
I about twenty five? That sort of really alarmed me that,

(41:45):
you know, if we're not going to turn up to
these fights or you know, advocate for a conservative, center
right or common sense position, well you can't complain if
you're continually losing to the left because they.

Speaker 2 (42:00):
Are turning up.

Speaker 4 (42:01):
You know, there's hundreds of groups out there that are
complaining that the government isn't spending enough on albino snails
or whatever particular pet causes. You know, I mean something
that's that will motivated me to set out the Taxpayers
Union and subsequently, you know, co found the Free Speech Union,
for which you were a huge part of getting that

(42:21):
off the ground back back when you were on radio.
You know that the purpose of these groups is to
actually turn up and wave the flag you need. We've
we certainly did that on on Three Waters and a
few other issues. But you also need the politicians down
the road to be willing to show a little bit
of leadership to you know, our our job and what

(42:44):
gets up up in the morning is to you know,
wave the flag of fiscal prudence.

Speaker 2 (42:48):
You know, we haven't gotten in a wall to government debt.

Speaker 4 (42:52):
You know, it's ticking over ninety thousand dollars per household
and that's just central government.

Speaker 2 (42:58):
You know.

Speaker 4 (42:58):
Add on another I think it's about twenty twenty two,
twenty five grand if you're in Auckland that a successive
mayors and Auckland have now borrowed for every letterbox that
you pass as you drive home tonight.

Speaker 2 (43:10):
You know, these are at what point do these numbers
start to get scary?

Speaker 4 (43:14):
And it's our job to be the canary in the
coal mine, ensure that you know that that that that
is part of the political consciousness these things uh and
ultimately build you know, build movements or build parades for change,
as we did for Three Waters, for the politicians to
come and lead them. You know, we knew we were

(43:34):
winning that by the time that you know, the new
mayor of Auckland and Chris Luxon, who had been pretty
pretty reluctant to say anything about co governance at all.
Once once they were sort of handing glove on on
our position, we can sort of move on and you know,
get into the next.

Speaker 3 (43:53):
Namely one person in well not one, but any as
many as you can in government, in leadership who are
conviction politicians.

Speaker 2 (44:05):
Oh, I think that.

Speaker 4 (44:06):
I mean David Seymour was a he's out of the
think tank world. I mean, they're all there for the
right reasons, like don't get me wrong. For me, the
litmus test is actually, you know, this government is not
going to be a big reforming government. But I'm not
breaking any state secrets because I've told Chris Bishop this

(44:28):
many times.

Speaker 2 (44:29):
If Chris Bishop achieves the sort of.

Speaker 4 (44:35):
Relaxation of planning laws or rips off the band aid,
that is an effect. Well it's not a band aid,
it's a handcuff on our economic.

Speaker 2 (44:46):
Unleashing of them and actually.

Speaker 4 (44:50):
Delivers planning reform or planning framework based on property rights.
I think that will be the equivalent to taking away
import licenses during the eighties. I would just absolutely unleash
the ability to get stuff done in New Zealand. But
also shift capital. One of the one of the huge

(45:12):
problems with therma is it's just the bias of the
status quo, no matter how bad that is.

Speaker 2 (45:19):
If they achieve it now, it's a real worry.

Speaker 4 (45:23):
That, you know, and you know, it literally cost us
millions to get a replacement for three waters, you know,
ready and drafted and ready to go. Unfortunately, no one's
done that with the r A and they're trying to
put that into place right now. They're talking about it
taking a year to get through parliament. That really worries

(45:45):
me because the more it's in parliament, the more complex
it's going to end up. You're going to eat something
that that's not just simple principles. And I don't know
what the what the result could be, but it's going
to be a heck of a lot harder to get that
through in a year's time than it would be if
they were going to get you know, putting it through
right now. On the other hand, if Chris Bishop does it,

(46:08):
he will rightly go down in history as as you know,
one of the great ministers of the state that unleashed
the New Zealand economy.

Speaker 3 (46:19):
And I could say that you say, if he does it,
he can't do it on his own, no.

Speaker 4 (46:24):
Of course, but he's got the he's got you know
that it's Simon Court an act from what I understand
a particular senior official and Chris Bishop the real driving
forces behind it. And it's really the extent to which
how much political capital the NATS are willing to spend

(46:44):
on it, because I don't think we're going to if
that budget is indicative of the fiscal strategy. I don't
think we're going to see miracles on the on the
tag side, or the or the efficiency or size of
the state side of things.

Speaker 2 (47:00):
We're not.

Speaker 4 (47:02):
You know, there is a lot of good work being
done in education, and I'll take that as red and
boy boyd does that need to be done because he
can't have a first world economy if you haven't got
first first world educated population.

Speaker 2 (47:15):
But then it.

Speaker 4 (47:16):
All roads lead back to the RIMA because what this
is now the second government national government that has promised
ARIMA a reform at every or a new at every election,
have gone into well, if they don't deliver this time around,
it's not very credible as it and.

Speaker 3 (47:33):
The danger is that there will be more people fleeing
the country as time goes on and things worsen, And
if you want an example of things worsening, I'll give
it to you in the final breath from this podcast.
I heard the exchange rates this morning, as I do
most mornings. When I came to New Zealand some decades ago,

(47:54):
there was five cents difference between the Australian dollar and
the New Zealand dollar. It really didn't matter. It wasn't
that great for the first time for as long as
I can remember. In fact, I can't remember the last
time it was under ninety cents. It was eighty nine cents.
Now it may have been lower, but this is the
first time for quite some time. Against the British pound,
it's been forty eight, which was down from about fifty two.

(48:17):
I can't recall, not that long ago, but it's hung
around forty eight today it was forty seven, and there
are other examples that are the same. You can't survive
on the international front if you're dealing with that sort
of exchange rate.

Speaker 2 (48:37):
Yeah, I just come back to that.

Speaker 4 (48:39):
You know, I set up the tax Pass Union because
I didn't want New Zealand to continue to drift and
be poor. I've now got two kids, and I don't
want to look at them and feel guilty bringing them
up an awkwund You know that am I setting them
up in a place where your economic opportunities aren't like Australia.
And because of this awful direction and race relations, we're

(49:03):
going who your ancestors are determines what what rights you have?
You know, I mean that is not a recipe for
long term prosperity. And you know that's what gets me
up every day and to do this job, because you
know that's what we're you know, that's what we're taking on.

Speaker 3 (49:26):
I know he gets up early because I texted him
the other morning over this interview and I said to him,
I know it's early, but when you.

Speaker 4 (49:34):
Get it, when you.

Speaker 3 (49:36):
Wake up, give me a call if you would, if
you ran straight away and said, I'm at the office,
what are you talking about? Listen. Appreciate the time. I
appreciate more than the time. I appreciate the input.

Speaker 2 (49:49):
Thank you, cheers, lady.

Speaker 3 (50:00):
Back in February of twenty twenty, there were two events
that coincided in the one week, in fact, on the
one day. The first was the release of a book
called The Storm Before the Calm by George Friedman from
Geopolitical Futures. The second was the breaking news of COVID
nineteen and the medium mania that resulted. Cancelation was the

(50:23):
main result as far as the book is concerned. Cancelation
of numerous interviews for the book on television and at
least two major speeches that George was supposed to give
that week. It all disappeared. Now, when you release a
book and you've got the sort of coverage that was
listed and all of a sudden the rugs pulled from

(50:44):
under you, then you get a pretty good feeling that
the book sales aren't going to be what they should
be because book sales depend on a great launch, and
so that was never really rectified. Unfortunately, my understanding is
that the book is a steady seller, but now any
of the best seller ever since that took place. So

(51:06):
I can't say it's with pleasure because the circumstances under
which we're talking to George. But he's back on the podcast,
and I'm appreciative, thank you. How are you?

Speaker 5 (51:15):
I'm extremely well, especially as you reminded me of that book.

Speaker 3 (51:19):
Well, the book is the cause that I wanted to
speak with you. The attempt at assassination was was the
hook for doing exactly that? Your take on what took
place on that day, what is it?

Speaker 5 (51:34):
Well, it's very hard to understand. One mystery is why
the building next to the to say wasn't cleared. The
answers it's been given is that we did clear it,
but somehow he got back up. So what you see
is a lot of inevitable accidents. So when you're a

(51:56):
Secret Service guy, you're going to be doing this a lot,
and you will make mistakes. And it's different from everybody
else because they think the mistakes are deliberate or planned
by someone else.

Speaker 2 (52:07):
So on.

Speaker 5 (52:08):
So what I think really happened was that they took
the hor of well, they didn't cover the area as
well as they should have, and this happens.

Speaker 2 (52:21):
That's a conspiracy. It's very hard to believe.

Speaker 3 (52:24):
I'll be quote you Eric Prince, Well, I'm not quoting
him directly. This is from an article headed Malice or
Massive Incompetence. Former Navy seal and Blackwater founder Eric Prince
gave a detailed assessment of yesterday's Secret Service to debarcle
in the wake of a failed assassination attempt on former
President Trump, hopefully quote hopefully. After the tragedy yesterday in Butler, Pennsylvania,

(52:49):
we can all recognize that unaccountable, bloated bureaucracies continue to
fail us as Americans. Donald Trump is alive today solely
due to a bad wind estimate by an evil would
be assassin. As the graphics show, the full value wind
of just five miles per hour was enough to dis
the unconfirmed but likely light fifty five grain bullet two

(53:13):
inches from Djt's intended forehead to his ear. One more
little paragraph Trump was not to say. By US Secret
Service brilliants, the fact that the US Secret Service allowed
a rifle armed shooter within one hundred and fifty yards
to a pre planned event is either malice or massive incompetence. Clearly,

(53:34):
there was adequate, uncontrolled dead space for a shooter to
move into position and take multiple aim shots. Watching the newsreel,
one can hear how proximate the shooter is by the
very short time lapse between the crack of arriving bullet
to the boom of the muzzle blast. I'll leave it there,
And is there anything you'd say about that?

Speaker 2 (53:53):
Well, a general thing.

Speaker 5 (53:55):
I know your service guys, they're far more likely to
be voting for Trump and far more likely to be
arresting anybody who wanted to hurt him than the Secret
Service people that I know in general. Okay, you can
have conspiracies all you want. You can explain any event

(54:17):
easily by you know, some malicious force. Okay, Well, one
of the things you have to do is understand you
know that everybody's talking about the Secret Service.

Speaker 2 (54:27):
These guys are Trump guys.

Speaker 5 (54:28):
These guys really hated the Democrats, so and this this
was a special group that didn't have any of them
in there, which I doubt there was. These are not
the people that it kills somebody. Plus the fact that
there's superiors at all toast.

Speaker 3 (54:43):
There's one other aspect of the Secret Service that I
do want to raise with you, because I'm interested obviously
in your in your opinion. But there has been some
considerable criticism from from even from House members about the
makeup of the squad that was looking after Trump, and

(55:05):
they were referring one or two of them at least
was referring to the women. I saw I think two
women who were part of that squad. They were much
shorter than the men they were, and they're being criticized
for having them in that particular squad, that they were
uncapable or incapable of providing the sort of cover that

(55:27):
was necessary in a case like that. Now, I don't
know whether you hang on. I don't know whether you've
seen them or not. But they were fairly I would say, squat,
little overweight, and they were one in particular, was what
you would say was very short compared to her fellows.

Speaker 5 (55:45):
I assure you that if one of those men tried
to take to those women, they'd break in their half.
These women are very tough and capable. And the people
who are saying this are not security experts. They are
coming out of the woodwork trying to get a little attention.
But you know why do they have women there? Well,

(56:08):
because very frequently part of the party that they're protecting
are women. The women have to be accompanied into a restroom.
Men can't do that. So you see that they have
a short woman there. First, she's an expert shot. Second,
she knows more lines of ways of breaking my back

(56:30):
than anybody else would. Third, you can't have a mix
something like this with the wives present without women. So
I mean, this is the kind of stupidity I'll be
very frank, I regard it as stupid. They're saying why
they're women there? Well, because they were in the party.

Speaker 3 (56:48):
No, it it wasn't why were they women, It was
the size of them.

Speaker 2 (56:51):
It was we.

Speaker 5 (56:54):
Oh well, I can assure you, having once I had
my head handed to me by one of these women
who were short years ago, they've been there for many years,
that they're very qualified at what they do.

Speaker 2 (57:06):
They need to if they come close to a person,
you don't need height.

Speaker 5 (57:11):
I won't tell you the part of their body that
those women are going to hit. Did you take them down?
Because I wouldn't be in forever. But these are women
who are trained in taking men down, and if they're
not far away, they're expert chats. But you would not
want to engage these women in combat, okay.

Speaker 3 (57:30):
A further quote from Jonathan Turley, the law professors from
George Washington, in a column that he's written the assassination
attempt to form a President Trump left the nation stunned.
But the most shocking aspect was that it was not
nearly as surprising as it should have been. And this
was the first comment that I saw that f I

(57:52):
can reverse it, that agreed with what I thought. I
wasn't surprised at it happened. I'm i'mly surprised that it
hasn't happened sooner. Four months, politicians, the press, and pundits
have escalated reckless retric in this campaign on both sides.
That includes claims that Trump was set to kill democracy,
unleash death squads, and make homosexuals and reporters disappear. The

(58:18):
claim about the homosexuals and reporters disappearing came from Whoopi
Goldberg on the television show that she's on every day.
What I'm really targeting here is the media, which I
think has a great deal to account for in the
circumstances that exist today, the mainstream media in particular.

Speaker 5 (58:40):
Well to me, the most irresponsible thing in her it
was that statement that none of us are surprised at
the killing. I certainly was surprised most people I knew
who were the president who wasn't so immediately, Bartle, He's
hit the ground. We are holding something to someone. This

(59:01):
is a serious problem that Americans have, which is without evidence,
they claim something happened on purpose. We are still investigating
the Kennedy killing for who did it? On purpose, as
you're saying that a hostile It was a very hostile event.
It was a very hostile attack on both sides. But

(59:24):
we've had lots of those. American politics is not a
pleasant place to be to infer from that that we
shouldn't be surprised or the killing. I think that's pretty responsible.

Speaker 3 (59:33):
Okay, I disagree. It's just it's just that it's something
that has been made. It's a part of the fact
that's been mentioned from time to time, the atmosphere of
hatred that exists and has for years now, something that
would give cause to an attempted assault.

Speaker 5 (59:52):
Well, I'm sitting in the middle of Texas right now,
which is gun country, and there are many feelings on
both sides. What and the fact of the matter is
that we are not nearly as divided as people over
Cason and elsewhere. I think that we don't care nearly

(01:00:13):
as much about politics. So one of the things that
people who are involved in politics think that the citizens
are sitting here just living and exciting about what's going
on out there, and to a great extent, a lot
of people are just shrugging their shoulders and not hearing.
So the impact you think they have is by the

(01:00:36):
analysts or whatever on themselves. Here in Texas, it's not
a subject of conversation much. There's some feeling, but there's
certainly nothing to lead to the killings that are happening.
I think this was a young boy who, for so
various reasons, felt he had to do it.

Speaker 2 (01:00:54):
Some people are like that. But for an American to say.

Speaker 5 (01:00:58):
That this is the evil that has grown the country, well, yes,
Washington perhaps are the places not I.

Speaker 3 (01:01:05):
Want to move. I want to move to the book
The Storm Before the Calm, because this has I think
an intricate attachment to the scenario. And I want to
quote you from a review from Australia for the book,
Colin Chapman, who wrote, it's almost thirty years since the

(01:01:26):
Supreme Soviet voted to the USSR out of existence. The
United States was the only global superpower for the last
decade of the twentieth century. Since the turn of the
twenty first century, rightly or wrongly, the US has arguably
been a nation in decline. Seventy percent of Americans polled
by Politigo believe that under Donald Trump, the United States

(01:01:48):
has gone on the wrong track. An earlier Pew survey
was more specific, citing concerns over burseoning national debt, a
widening gap between rich and poor, and a workforce threatened
by automation. George Friedman will have none of it. He
has rejected the notion of American decline for well over
a decade. He dismissed as nonsense the view widely held

(01:02:09):
by some prominent Australian academics that China would replace the
US as the world's largest economy. Freedman has been proved right.
The GDP of the People's Republic currently hovers around five percent.
But this fascinating book is not about big power rivalry,
nor a reassertion of American power, military or otherwise. Rather,

(01:02:32):
Friedman cosiently argues that the US is transiting through the
latest of a series of waves of cycles that have
permeated American history since white men first came ashore and
founded what was then a British colony. Friedman argues there
are or have been two cycles, one institutional, the other economic,

(01:02:53):
roughly every eighty years. It happens that for the first
time these cycles are coinciding to create a bumpy ride
for America before the emergence of a new dawn in
a decade or so. Is that a fair assumption of
your thoughts?

Speaker 5 (01:03:10):
Well, yes, and so far this year we're going through that.
The shooting was part of it. Part of it is
an economy that is moving back and forth. Part of
it is the excitement there is in a supreme court
over the whether or not phish can be taxed in otherwise,

(01:03:33):
everything is up for debate.

Speaker 2 (01:03:35):
Everything is angry. Okay.

Speaker 5 (01:03:37):
Now you go back to the nineteen fifties when you
know you had both sorts of crises from the Vietnam
War and otherwise.

Speaker 2 (01:03:47):
Okay, we recover from them. In these.

Speaker 5 (01:03:51):
Periods we do two things. We cleanse ourselves of the
issues that have been ripping us apart. We put them
on the table, and we holler at each other, blame
each other for everything. Then we come out of it
into a stable thing. This is true since the founding
of the United States. It's about a fifty year cycle,
and every fifty years we go to a position of

(01:04:16):
mutual rage followed by a refounding of the country.

Speaker 3 (01:04:20):
Now you predicted that that would be the cycle would
finish with the twenty eight election, right, How can you
put an event like an election as the point of
the end of the crisis.

Speaker 5 (01:04:37):
It's not the election per se. It is all the
issues that come to bear in an election. So, for example,
when Reagan was elected, all the crises in nineteen seventies
came to bear, and that process we came to some
sort of understanding of what was going on. So it's
not the election exactly the president, who generally doesn't matter

(01:05:00):
very much, but it's much more the question of how
we approach the election, how we fight with each other
over the election, and how we save the situation. So
we're having an election now in the United States. It
is bitter, it is angry, it is seemingly catastrophic, and

(01:05:21):
out of this we will come to a new stable
pointer for the next fifty years.

Speaker 3 (01:05:25):
So something that you've been saying for a long time,
and that is the president doesn't have as much power
as people think they have. And yet there is a
concentration at the moment of concern about the assuming of
power out of the White House and the oval office
over Well, I wouldn't put a time on it, but

(01:05:49):
certainly the last ten years.

Speaker 5 (01:05:52):
Well, the presidency is a weak institution. It can't do
anything unless Congress approves of it or not anything with
most things. It has a Supreme Court that's enormously power
powerful and determines a great deal of.

Speaker 2 (01:06:08):
What can be done.

Speaker 5 (01:06:09):
And then it has fifty state governors, and each of
these state governors has significant powers of their own, which
the president doesn't have.

Speaker 2 (01:06:18):
Any right to.

Speaker 5 (01:06:20):
Heck, so if you understand the way the United States
is built, it was built by the founders because they
did not trust people to govern fairly, so they created
a system that was designed to block all of these actions.

Speaker 2 (01:06:38):
That doesn't mean that we don't believe that the.

Speaker 5 (01:06:40):
President is ultraally responsible for everything that happens. It just
means that it's something that people feel better thinking of that,
and then no one's quite involved, and very frankly, it's
just not true. So people talk about the United States
as if it were a monarchy. We're going to have
Trump as president, and then Trump will face the rest

(01:07:04):
of his term in place that we've all seen this happen,
all seen greatly promising presidents reshrival, but we don't remember it.
We don't really understand what it is. Even people in
the United States who believe that if you let Trump,
wonderful things will happen Chreck Biden, don't understand that every

(01:07:28):
president president is really a disappointment to people.

Speaker 3 (01:07:32):
What's your thought then, on the growth over a period
of time of the authoritarian states it's known, and all
the different departments that existed didn't exist before. And the well,
let me use as an example. It's probably not a
good one at the moment. But the appointment of Jack

(01:07:53):
Smith illicitly to pursue to pursue a particular goal that
was set for him by that authoritarian state.

Speaker 5 (01:08:04):
Well, I don't know anything about it's being set for
him or what have you. His persecution is a collapsing.
I mean, what we see happening is a whole bunch
of things that they say they planned not working out.

Speaker 2 (01:08:20):
So if this was if this was.

Speaker 5 (01:08:23):
A plan put forward, this was the gang that goes
shoes straight. Most of the charges against Trump are evaporating.
And so what it does is you look at it
and you see how the system breaks things apart and
frees them up. And the emergence of Trump is a
likely winner perhaps and no prosecution really so the way

(01:08:48):
he had there, we are for all the prosecution that
Jake did against him, He's Trump is doing well tonight.

Speaker 3 (01:08:57):
Well, I certainly can't disagree with that, but I've already
got I think one more question on this, and that
is the you mentioned the Supreme courtin it's power, and
that's the way that it should be. But if you've
got a loaded Supreme Court, which could be on the
make if there was another Biden administration, it's the makeup

(01:09:21):
that really decides what the outcome is going to be.
So if you've if you've got some genuine constitutionally based
justices operating the way that they were supposed to operate
in the first place, as set up as opposed to progressives,
then you're going to get the right result. But if
you have an overloading of progressives, then it could be

(01:09:42):
something completely different.

Speaker 5 (01:09:44):
Well, you know, we've wrote to collapse, I suppose. But
the truth is that the Supreme Court is selected by
the President and elected by the House, where everythent is.
So these guys don't suddenly appear in these conspiracies. That
is a conspiracy to really go through the rest of

(01:10:05):
the place. And if you see the people who are
on that community right now, it's hardly one that was
positive toward Biden so on and so forth. So yeah,
if you could load it completely. But what the Founders did,
he made it impossible to do that. He made it
impossible by making the entire system have to approve of him,

(01:10:28):
and they don't approve of him. There six or seven others,
and so the power is distributed. So the only thing
you can do in political life is to create a
system that has elements stopping it. And also by complicating
the entire process. So as to blonde, who are they

(01:10:50):
afraid of of? Well, six of them are conservatives, three
of them are liberals, and the Supreme Court is never
able to get anywhere.

Speaker 2 (01:10:59):
They're fighting with each other.

Speaker 3 (01:11:01):
And so how would you summarize your approach at the moment, Well, my.

Speaker 5 (01:11:05):
Approach is the American approach. The States was created by
the Founders for not to work, so that there was
no such thing as tyranny with one person coming out
and control continually and so on. So we have our
three branches, we have our sovereign states, and the problem
with the system is it can't get anything done because

(01:11:28):
trying to get things done are very difficult. So the
kind of thing you would expect in a country with
the prime minister it was in charge simply getting things
done don't work that way in the United States. It's
a really tough job. Biden has been torn apart by it,
and he tore the self aside by it. It's just
the way it works.

Speaker 3 (01:11:49):
So finally, then the storm before the calm, the book
that we have been discussing, how would you say you
feel about your position on that you've taken in this
book in the current climate.

Speaker 5 (01:12:02):
Well, I said that at that time a next few years,
we're going to be terrifically unstable and pretty terrifically unstable
in the United States, but no more unstable that it's
been at these points of cycle before. What we were
to see after this in five years is a dramatic

(01:12:23):
turnaround as we had in the past, where the country
booms and develops and then in due course collapses again
and goes around. So we were built to fail and
all of the conspiracies against the nation fail. The fact
that is just too complicated to get fire. You working

(01:12:47):
on a new book, I am. It's a book about
of the moon and the function that the moon will
serve in foreign policy in the coming years. In this
Longe book, it's tiresome.

Speaker 3 (01:13:00):
In this current cycle.

Speaker 5 (01:13:03):
Though, that'll be. The US is currently putting these on
the moon. It within two years we're going to have
colonies on the Moon. So when the United States wants
to do something, it does it well. And the United
States are going to dominate the Moon, which means the
shoot looks down the throat of everybody else.

Speaker 3 (01:13:22):
So once again, thank you, appreciate your time, and we
will converse at some stage while we're both still on
the planet. While we're both still on the planet.

Speaker 2 (01:13:34):
I'll be here. I'm too mean to go.

Speaker 3 (01:13:37):
I thought you might go to the moon. George, Thanks
so much.

Speaker 2 (01:13:41):
Take care. Bye, Layton Smith.

Speaker 3 (01:13:55):
Now to the mail room for podcasts number two hundred
and forty seven. Missus producer has returned. She's been back
for three nights and still be covering later.

Speaker 6 (01:14:05):
So lovely to be home. I'm sorry I have brought
with me a fearsome cold, but what do you expect
when you travel twenty four hours on a couple of planes.
But it was a wonderful holiday with my daughters. But
it is wonderful to be home.

Speaker 3 (01:14:21):
I just got an email by the way from and
it's wonderful to have you back home. By that, thank you.
I just got an email just a short while ago
from somebody who is well known in business circles who
sought my advice on New Orleans and followed it again.
I'm going to get a full report tomorrow because he
got caught by the hurricane when he was in Houston,

(01:14:42):
had to layover. I guess that wouldn't have been fun.
So why why did you warm up? Because you've gotten
a bit chilled?

Speaker 6 (01:14:52):
I will so, Jin says. When James Bovard started a
recent survey showing that thirty percent of young adults supported
mandatory government surveillance inside their homes, I wondered what in
the world could possess them to so freely surrender their
personal free Then James himself answered my question. This is

(01:15:12):
the result of a young adult population who is quote
unfamiliar with life living free from government control, having only
lived through COVID. In other words, they learned from COVID
that their freedom's are government driven, not God given. They
remember COVID vividly, but they forget Nazi Germany. Kids from
a young age have been taught how to protest, but

(01:15:35):
not taught the right things to protest against. They are
taught to fight for their freedoms but not taught what
true freedom is. They are taught skills but not knowledge.
I recall a recent interview Jordan Peterson conducted with Britain's
strictest headmistress, Katherine Berbelsingh. She founded London's Michaela community school,

(01:15:57):
which received Britain's highest Progress eight score, outperforming even the
most expensive private schools in the UK. She said, should
we teach them knowledge or we teach them skills? How
to think is a skill and it can only be
done within a particular domain. I don't know how to
think about cars. If you, for instance, if you put

(01:16:19):
a car in front of me and said create a
different kind of car, I wouldn't know what to do
because I don't know what to think about cars. But
if you tell me to turn education on its head,
I've done exactly that. I've been very radical. I've thought
outside the box and I've done things very differently. Why
Because I know education inside out. The only way you

(01:16:40):
can think in a creative manner, or think outside the
box and have independent thoughts about anything is to know
it really well. So that means children at school level
need to be taught loads of knowledge. And that was
Catherine Berbelsingh's commentary. In Your podcast one seven two, Professor

(01:17:01):
Elizabeth Rater said the same thing. She said, we teach
knowledge to children, we don't teach children. In podcast one
nine nine, Patrick Gale said that students need to have
knowledge in order for them to think. Dr Michael Johnson
said that students don't know what they need to know,
so the teachers need to tell them what they need

(01:17:21):
to know. So it all comes back down to education.
Climate change is not an existential threat, but clueless children are.

Speaker 3 (01:17:30):
Oh, I like that. I can think of one or
two or ten and now thoroughly enjoyed this episode. Later
and this was over James Bouvard, and I think I
read this last week, but there was there was something
or did I I can't recall either I read it
last week thinking there was something else to come back

(01:17:51):
to so I would or I didn't read it last week.
So I'm now tackling it for the first time. I've
got to do better, must do better, must try harder.
Thoroughly enjoyed this episode. Later in great banter and insight
between the two of you, just one glaring omission a
president candidate not mentioned even once, one who the mainstream

(01:18:12):
media have elected to ignore, much to my surprise, you,
who I do not consider to be mainstream, and the
slightest have ignored to my knowledge so far. Rfk jor
Robert Kennedy is most certainly in this presidential running, and
running as an independent should not preclude him from the
debate nor from the media's consideration. He did that he

(01:18:34):
is a threat to the hegemonic status quo in America,
all the more reason to be tuning in. CNN did
not allow him to be on the debate for so
he answered all of the questions on a stream of Twitter,
much more eloquent than the other two. Also, I might add,
the state that Biden is in makes you wonder who

(01:18:55):
is actually running the show. It's certainly not him. I'm
not going to explain anymore. But I read letters and
I can't remember whether they were on air or off here,
so to speak. Sometimes but there was something missing from here,
and I think it might be in another one. So
I could be getting confused. We'll wait and see what's
in the in the pile.

Speaker 6 (01:19:14):
Ladon George says. Recent government roading announcements include the option
of funding significant projects through tolls. Recent Successful examples include
the Papamoa to Pangurea bypass, Takatimu Drive in Tawonga, and
the State Highway one tunnel, diverting heavy traffic away from

(01:19:34):
Ariwa to provide a direct route through to Puhoi and
the North All three have delivered savings in travel time
and running costs. Similarly, the Auckland Harbor Bridge was also
paid for through tolls and revolutionized State Highway one travel
and the development of the north shore. Another successful project
in the Bay of Plenty is the large scale flood

(01:19:56):
protection works carried out on the lower reaches of the
Kaituna River. Through redirecting parts of the river and the
construction of substantial stock banks. The protection of of surrounding
farmland from perennial flooding allowed highly fertile land to reach
its productive potential. Those works were funded through targeted rating

(01:20:18):
of the landowners, who were rewarded with the certainty of
flood protection and resulting increased productivity. The value of these
projects is beyond question. Effective flood protection works on the
Esque and Wiroer rivers may have made a substantial difference
to the devastating outcome now faced by residents and producers

(01:20:39):
on those fertile river flats. Increased targeted rating costs would
no doubt have been welcomed rather than the enormous cost
and heartache resulting from insufficient flood mitigation measures in an
area prone to flash flooding. And that's from George.

Speaker 3 (01:20:57):
George very Well said thank you. Going back to the
Robert Kennedy one, somewhere, I think I worked it out.
Somewhere there's another one talking about Kent, Robert Kennedy not
not being well, being denied protection by the Secret Service.
Biden himself said no. The White House Oval Office said no,

(01:21:21):
bugger off. What was I going to do it now?
From Bryce in brisnoy Land, except he's not. I'm currently
in the South. My lad is currently at Space Camp
at the US Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville in Alabama.
We've been here since July four and were at the
downtown Nashville fireworks, et cetera. I've been staying in Huntsville

(01:21:45):
and Nashville. I'm off to Jack Daniel's distillery today, one
of his left and the and the Opry tonight. There
seem to be two main views here. Trump will win
and why is it. These two are the best that
we can put forward. No one I've spoken with, including
other space Camp parents from all over the States, believes

(01:22:10):
that Biden will win, and there is a palpable dismay
that he is actually running. Cheers images attacked. Thank you,
I've got the images. I've got another one somewhere to
do with that, but not with me today. And one
more um now this comes from Australia, ed As I

(01:22:31):
will refer to you as may I writes a very
simple letter subject awful, Guy Hatchett saying last week we
want the COVID nineteen pandemic to never happen again. As
a lifelong applied scientist, I deleted the podcast straight away.
Has there ever been a vaccine or medical treatment anywhere

(01:22:54):
without unintended consequences and occasionally serious side effects. Now at
that point I almost screwed it up myself. I'm thinking
missing out on a bit of information, a lot of
it maybe on the mRNA vaccines or so called vaccines,
and what's taken place, what's been revealed in a number

(01:23:14):
of instances in different parts of the world, North America, Europe,
is that the company's developing these so called vaccines hid
lots and lots of information, lied about lots of things.
And that's the point that everyone's upset about. In particular,
is that they were given and forced in many many

(01:23:36):
cases to take the shots, and they were unproven and
in some cases shown to have a considerable downside, and
it was a matter of pot luck who got it
and who didn't the downside. I mean, I just think
you've rushed into this judgment too much. And I say
that with the greatest respect. Because he concludes, thanks for

(01:23:56):
the great podcast anyway, and thanks for your letter, missus producer.
I'm going to release you now. Thank you. You may
take to the void.

Speaker 6 (01:24:06):
Yes, I'll go and rest my voice.

Speaker 3 (01:24:08):
I think you're better anyway, as long as I can
understand you take care.

Speaker 2 (01:24:14):
Most of the time. Anyway, rags later.

Speaker 3 (01:24:25):
Now, if you don't have enough to assimilate with regard
to the attempted assassination of Donald Trump, the sorts of
Ron Paul, the retired American senator are worthy for a
number of reasons, and they'll reveal themselves. I just want
to point out that he makes reference here to a
couple of things that I said in the discussion with George,

(01:24:46):
But I only found this well a day later, actually
just before we went to air, So this was published
on the sixteenth of July. Why we'll never know what
really happened in Butler, Pennsylvania, just days after the attempted
assassination of former President Donald Trump. Theories are flying from

(01:25:07):
all directions. Many who ridiculed the conspiracy theories of conservatives
are now suggesting the whole event was a set up
at to boost Trump and the polls ahead of the election.
Others suggested was the Deep State or even foreign actors
who organized it. Former US Navy seal and founder of

(01:25:27):
Blackwater Eric Prince claims that the fact that the Secret
Service allowed a rifle armed shooter within one hundred and
fifty yards to a pre planned event is either malice
or massive incompetence. That's a direct quote. He went on
to observe that again quote, unaccountable, bloated bureaucracies continued to

(01:25:49):
fail us as Americans, adding that un serious and unworthy
people in positions of authority got us to this near disaster.
Merit and execution must be the only deciding factors in
hiring and leadership, not the social engineering priority of the day.
Video has emerged that for at least two minutes, law

(01:26:10):
enforcement knew someone with a gun was on the roof
aiming at the former president, and no one communicated the
need to pull Trump from the stage. You can clearly
hear the crowd warning law enforcement that someone was on
the roof, yet he was unhindered until the first shots
rang out. Considering this fact, Erik Prince has a point.

(01:26:31):
If this is like any previous governmental foul ups, we
can expect hearings, investigations, and commissions that will actually serve
to hide the official errors or even malicious intent by
some in the government. That's what government does, no matter
who is in office, protect itself from actual scrutiny and
resist being exposed as incompetence or worse. But what if

(01:26:54):
there was a genuine investigation that actually revealed the truth
about what happened at the Trump rally over the weekend?
Could we rely on the mainstream media to even report it.
This is the same media that, after Trump was clearly
shot on live television, reported Trump escorted away after loud

(01:27:15):
noises at PA rally The Washington Post. But I just say,
don't ever believe anything that comes from the Washington post
until it is confirmed by about ten sources. And secondly,
Secret Service rushes Trump off stage after he falls at
rally CNN. This is the same mainstream media that's been

(01:27:38):
comparing Donald Trump to Hitler for years and now pretends
to be shocked that their vile retoric ended up in violence.
There is a good reason why the mainstream media is
regarded by the American public with record levels of contempt.
The current Director of the Secret Service has been interviewed
expressing her dedication to diversity in hiring agents. What of

(01:28:03):
her dedication to deigals led to an agency that is
more diverse es but fails at its core mission. Can
we rely on the media to inform us of this
or will they, as usual, disblame it all on the
Second Amendment, that is, the right to bear arms. What
if the problem with the Secret Service is that it

(01:28:25):
was moved into the bloated, incompetent, and menacing Department of
Homeland Security, the creation of which I strongly opposed when
I was in Congress. We shouldn't count on hearing the
truth about the attempted assassination from the mainstream media. No wonder,
the elites remain determined to censor social media sites like Twitter,

(01:28:45):
slash x, and TikTok. We live in an empire of lies,
propped up by the mainstream media, and seeking the truth
in this empire of lies is the greatest challenge for
us in the moral bankruptcy in which we live. I
applaud that the editorial piece from Ron Paul and there
we have podcast number two hundred and forty seven. Like

(01:29:08):
to correspond with us. Love to hear from you, particularly
with regard to some of the comments that were made
today in the interviews. Whatever you think, love to see it.
So latent at news Talks AB dot co dot nz
or Carolyn with a wy Carolyn at Newstalks AB dot
co dot nz. The two forty eight is up next

(01:29:28):
in the meantime. As always, thank you for listening and
we shall talk soon.

Speaker 1 (01:29:41):
Thank you for more from News Talks B Listen live
on air or online, and keep our shows with you
wherever you go with our podcasts on iHeartRadio.