THE RE-WRAP: Really Not That Beltway After All

THE BEST BITS IN A SILLIER PACKAGE (from Thursday's Mike Hosking Breakfast) C-Words In Da House/They're Supposed to Serve the Public/More Brains Drained/Slow and Boring and Proud Of It

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:09):
You're listening to a podcast from news Talk said be
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Speaker 2 (00:25):
Oh, get there and welcome to the Rewrap for Thursday,
all the best bits from the make Hosking Breakfast on
Newstalk s dB in a stillier package. I am Glen
Hart and today the public service still savings to be made?
There do we think? Why are our brain's still draining?
And it seems like it's extraly gathering pace? And finally

(00:52):
we'll ask are we boring and slow? But before any
of that, this pay equity thing. Remember the other day
Mike told us it was bout way. He can't stop
talking about it.

Speaker 3 (01:02):
Small update on what I said this time yesterday on
pay equity see my gut says and upset it a
couple of times. Now it's not This isn't going to
damage the government now, Don't get me wrong. If I
was the opposition, I'd be prosecuting this as hard as
it possibly could the way they are in fact, because
they have a genuine issue and ongoing issue at least
until the budget that they quite rightly believe is there

(01:23):
for the taking. In terms of points and headlines and
moral high ground. Now I don't think that ultimately is true,
but I fully get that they think it is. The
tide though turned yesterday in Question Time, not because Brook
van Velden dropped the sea word. Watching it live, it
really was quite the moment. Question Time has become dura.
As I said earlier on in the program, there's limited
talent in the house these days, and the speaker's cantankerous

(01:45):
and ruins the fund. But yesterday was alive with freshant.
Van Velden's might drop moment was in fact pointing out
that Jantinetti, the questioner, a former woman's minister, a woman
who railed against misogyny, was using misogyny by quoting a
misogynistic article authored by a woman to make her point.

(02:05):
That led to applause and rightly save and further exposed
the Labour Party and in fact most of the Opposition
benches as frauds who are arguing the pay equity issue
using bogus material and fake facts. The more this is debated,
the more hope you have that a wider grouping of
us will tune in and get into the detail, because
it's in the detail the truth lies. And the truth
is the equity laws or rules were a shambles and

(02:27):
being milked by unions, an example of which was just
given on this program a couple of moments ago. But
the tide turned also are because there seems genuine anger
within the government over what Andrea Vants was allowed to do.
And when I say aloud, I assume she's edited and
therefore cleared. The odd thing for me is I struggle
to get upset at being attacked. I mean, being a
public figure, you are open for this sort of stuff,
and I've received more than most its water off a

(02:49):
duck's back, especially from an angsty journalist Van Velden Collins
and as Varce calls them, the hype squad seem though,
and you saw this yesterday, seem genuinely outraged. And it's
that outrage that turned or at least will turn the dial.
If they argue on fact and the other side continue
to argue on emotion, lies, bogus material and foul language,

(03:10):
they will eventually lose. Hints the dent that so many
thought was coming for the government will never arrive.

Speaker 2 (03:16):
Yeah, so the foul language, it certainly achieved everything. Probably
that Andrea Vantz wanted it too, and she didn't even
really use it, did she so re wrap Like so
many stories, it's been slightly overblown because of course she
said she put C dot dot dut and then you've

(03:40):
got people actually using the word in parliament.

Speaker 3 (03:44):
Brownly seems to be like a fish out of water. Yeah,
it's not a bad point. I'm disappointed and Brownly, as
Speaker of the House, I would regard myself not scouting.
I'm just saying I watch a lot of it. I
would regard myself as an aficionado of question time. I've
watched a lot of speakers at work. He's not particularly good.
He's contankerous. He tries to be funny periodically, he is,
he's got quite a good sense of humor and a
reasonably good one line periodic, but most of the time

(04:06):
he's just in a bad mood and it doesn't help,
and he doesn't let the house flow, and it should
be allowed to flow. Mike, I'm surprised you would think
that the show of profanity in our parliament's okay. Didn't
say it was okay, and if I did, I misspoke
what it was. What I am a big proponent of
is using the language in an appropriate fashion. And what
Brooke van Velden did yesterday was steel the moment. If

(04:28):
you watched it live, there was that you saw a
shift in the debate. You could almost see the whole
house go whool because it came out of nowhere. And ironically,
Brownly had butchered the whole process up until that point
in time, and he had prevented her from speaking, and
that in and of itself looked misogynist. And I'll come

(04:51):
back to this because the point everyone lost there, you
know what, over the sea word. But the real point
Van Velden made was completely missed by the media, and
it was an important point and she made it so
well that you saw the entire thing move. So the
other thing about sea word is it as part of
the language, like it or not. And she was quoting somebody.

(05:14):
And when you quote somebody, in my view, you're allowed
to use the word.

Speaker 2 (05:18):
But doesn't that mean that you can say anything about
anyone because everybody said the words. Sometimes I don't quite
follow that that you can say whatever you want just
because you're quoting somebody. And she was misquoting them anyway,
As I just said, she didn't say see dot dot dot,
the re wrap right back to cleaning up the public service.

(05:41):
Doging it that you like seems to be the adjective
these days. Where are we at with.

Speaker 3 (05:46):
That quick question on how we employ people in the
public sector? Can you draw a dot or two between say,
the Brian Roch Report into the public sector that said
it's not fit for purpose or the Deloitte report into
health in New Zealand that said pretty much the same thing,
and the overarching direction on hiring in the public service
which tells you to favor diversity. The Minister Judith Collins

(06:06):
is looking to rewrite all this and removing inclusion or
diversity and replace it with merit. The fact we're even
talking about this shows just what a wayward country we've become,
and it's only now we're waking up to the damage this.
By the way, this diversity inclusion nonsense is for CEO
type jobs, people who actually run things, shape things, make
major decisions. Health New Zealand is eighty five thousand strong.

(06:28):
It's a city of people. Get the wrong personal people
at the head of that and you're done for. As
we've seen, it must surely be hard enough to find
top talent for the public service. At the best of times,
the pay is not market leading for real talent, and
you would have thought that once you got a few
diversity highs in the wrong place, that would lead to
a reputation that would make it even more difficult to
hire talent, because the real talent can spot a fraud

(06:50):
of mile away and doesn't want a bar of it.
So the vicious cycles created, so you end up with
fivedoms and departments run by people who shouldn't be They're
making decisions that shouldn't be made, all driven by a
mixed up ideology that was somehow going to change the
world or feel good or whatever mad thought. Bubble drove
the decision of the day in simple terms, whether private
or public, but especially public, less is more simple as

(07:10):
better and talent should be there on merit and be
paid for the skills. Having worked in the private sector
most of my life, I've seen how hard it is
to find the right people for the right job, even
in the best of environments. God knows how hard it
must be in the public sector when they've been busy
ankle tapping themselves.

Speaker 2 (07:26):
Yeah, I mean, take me, for example, Mike must come
into work every day and look at me and think
that can we not do better than this? I mean,
it is certainly what I'm thinking. Oh rewrap, That's probably
why nobody's wanted to drain my brain to another country.

Speaker 3 (07:41):
Yet people are still leaving in droves because they've given
up on this government getting rid of DEEI and reinstating meritocracy. Equally,
the morification of New Zealand has a huge negative impact
on employment and migration that the government has failed to address.
Do you know, once upon a time, and not that
long ago, I wouldn't have dismissed that view, but I
wouldn't give it the weight that I am at the moment.
And I think increasingly you might be right. It's easy

(08:03):
to go our dei. That's no big it is and
I'm just looking at just a small story, but it's
indicative of everything that's wrong with this country. This Terao
Maori stop go sign. You know the fact that that's
still going. And I've told lux in this god knows
how many times, this is the stuff you clamp down on. Yes,
he's got big fish to fry, but this is the
stuff you promised you would do something about. And yet

(08:26):
there's still somebody sitting in Hawk's Bay. Some smart ass
who thinks they can turn up with a sign and Maori,
and not only that in a language we don't speak,
by and large, and therefore you could argue in a
safety situation is illegal, and yet it's still allowed to happen,
and no one's clamped down on.

Speaker 2 (08:45):
Has anybody ever really moved countries because of stop go
signs being in the wrong language. Well so somebody else
said it was the price of something to do with
the price of salmon this morning, and they were finding
the salmon cheaper in London or Edinburgh or somewhere. People

(09:08):
say some random stuff the stock go sign. I've had
a look at them, one's read, one's green. I would
have thought that they've made it relatively easy to understand there.
People really need to stop caring so much about things
that don't make any difference the rewrap. They should be

(09:29):
more concerned about who has the most boring airport than
slowest drivers most unfortunate.

Speaker 3 (09:33):
I was reading the Sydney Morning Herald yesterday, as I
do most days are Australia's most read newspaper, and I
saw the headline, no, I don't want emails from the
world's most boring airport things. I thought, Oh, it's interesting,
it's under the treble section. I wonder what the world's
most boring airport is. Opening words of the article from

(09:53):
Ben ground Water, the travel writer Auckland Airport so awesome.
Auckland Airport would like to know if it can spend
or send me some updates on its latest developments. Auckland
Airport would I like to be kept up to date
on all its exciting news? Why no, Auckland Airport. I
would not writees Ben, I could not give the smallest

(10:17):
stuff about your new duty free offering, or your discounts
on parking, or whatever it is you consider exciting news.
Now I read a bit of Ben Groundwater. I don't
know him from a bar of site, but he's a
travel right and he does a lot of traveling. He
does a lot of reports on traveling. So he had
been to a few airports. And what a most unfortunate
set of circumstances that we apparently have the most boring

(10:39):
airport in the entire world. What we also have in
this world is some of the slowest driving. And now
this will not be newsed to you, because if you're
a driver, you will know full well that this country
is crippled in terms of speed. There's a global study
from Money Supermarket average driving speeds around the world. They
analyze long distance and urban driving speeds of one hundred
and forty different countries. The average long distance actually I

(11:03):
won't tell you US yet. North America first, and second.
When I say North America, the US and Canada. Their
average driving speed in the US is one hundred and
nine point five kilometers. Now Canada it's one hundred and seven,
oman one hundred and four. So you think desert, open spaces,
smooth wide roads, quality roads, et cetera. Croatia one o two. France,

(11:26):
Now this did surprise me. If you've ever driven round
the chance Lesse one oh one, so you've obviously got
a bit of speed out in the countryside Germany, which
you would think would be fast because the auto barns,
mind you, they limit the auto barns these days. Average
speed on the auto barns is one fifty. But the
average speed in Germany is ninety three. Actually it's ninety
three point nine. It's called it ninety four. Australia comparative country,

(11:49):
surely ninety seven point five. So I'm with that information,
you'd be looking at what would you guess us given
I've just told you, no, we're not going to be
similar obvious leader to the States, but we would be
similar to Australia made what up front at ninety seven? Well,
would you believe we are one hundredth and first in
the world out of the aforementioned one hundred and forty countries.
The average speed in this country is sixty to get
at meters are now and you wonder why we're not

(12:11):
going in?

Speaker 2 (12:12):
How exciting do you want your airport to be? Surely
Melbourne is the most boring airport in terms of international airports.
I certainly wanted to leave my body while standing in
queues at Melbourne Airport. But the slow driving thing, it's

(12:33):
something to be proud of, isn't it. It's one of
those rankings where you feel like you're only getting half
the story, Like we might be the one hundred and
first slowest drivers, but where do we rank in terms
of road deaths the head of capita. I'd like those

(12:53):
figures alongside the speed of driving stats. Maybe I'm wrong.
I am a slow driver though, and a slow walker
must be said slow podcaster not too bad today. I
think we're going to come in an under fourteen minutes.

(13:15):
That's all right, isn't it? Would you prefer me to
go for the tens of a target, Very rarely meet
it though, especially because at the end I often go
on like this, So I should probably stop going on
like this. We see you tomorrow.

Speaker 1 (13:35):
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