Full Show Podcast: 07 September 2026

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Pressing the newsmakers to get the real story.

Speaker 2 (00:04):
It's Heather Duplessy-Allen Drive with One New Zealand, awarded New
Zealand's best mobile network.

Speaker 1 (00:10):
Newstalk ZB.

Speaker 3 (00:13):
Afternoon.

Speaker 4 (00:13):
Welcome to the show. Coming up today, got another poll out.
It's not good for National and Labour. Both are under 30.
Not good for the Opportunity Party. They're not in Parliament altogether.
We might speak to Chris Hipkins after five. We might
speak to Kiulei Wong of Opportunity. I'll keep you in
the loop on that. Porta Tauranga has just got the
final green light to go for it on the expansion.
We'll have a chat to them. And there is a
man making coffins out of mushrooms.

Speaker 3 (00:35):
Why not?

Speaker 4 (00:36):
So we'll talk to him after five.

Speaker 1 (00:38):
Heather Duplessy-Allen.

Speaker 4 (00:40):
So it's not good for Labour in the latest Taxpayers'
Union Curia poll. They have now fallen to 26%, which
is below the last election result that they got at 27%. Now,
this is not a surprise to me and it shouldn't
be a surprise to you because we have been saying
consistently on the show all of this year that Labour
is going to come down in the polls once the
policy starts being released. Because basically what's happened up to

(01:01):
now is Labour has said very little. They've been a
blank canvas of silence, if you like. Which means that
voters could up to now basically project whatever they wanted
onto Labour, right? If you like the idea that Labour
is kindness, project it on. They're saying nothing to dispel
that notion. If you believe that Labour is competent, project
it on. If you believe that Labour will fix the

(01:21):
cost of living crisis in healthcare and education and the
roads and the economy and heck, why not the whole world?
Go for it. projected on. But the problem with that
small target strategy is that it becomes really problematic the
closer we get to an election, because even though Labour
is still not saying very much, everyone else around it is,
aren't they? And it's pretty mental, isn't it? The Greens

(01:43):
with their Soviet-style supermarket plan and their wealth tax, the
Opportunity Party with its land tax and its plans to
raise the age of youth justice, the Māori Party with
its plans to establish a treaty commission that can stop
Parliament making law. And so because Labour is saying very little,
it ends up being tainted with all these weird policies.
And what's more, if there is one thing that voters

(02:03):
are really hankering for this election, it is vision. It's
a plan to get us out of this mess. And
you could argue that this is actually a problem for
both parties, Labour and National, but Labour is not producing
a vision because it's not saying anything. Frankly, I've got
to be honest with you, I'm starting to wonder if
Labour is even really campaigning at any more than just
about 60% at the moment. Their performance is so lacklustre.

(02:25):
I'm actually wondering if they're in it to win it. Notably,
on the poll, Chris Hipkins has said, He hasn't said
this time that it is a rogue poll like he
did last time. He said there is work to do.
And that's because he knows this is not a rogue poll,
is it? This is a trend that started in March
when his polling started falling and it hasn't stopped. And
this may not be the end. 26% may not actually

(02:47):
be the bottom.

Speaker 1 (02:48):
9292, hit me with it.

Speaker 4 (02:53):
And I'll explain why I'm not sure who's going to
be in the lead slot at 5 o'clock. I'll give
you a little bit of an explanation on that shortly. Now,
the hottest ticket in town today is the Warriors. One
of the biggest stars in TV sports land right now
is Sean Johnson. We've got the Warriors halfback legend as
he heads to Sky Sport to do his league lounge show.

Speaker 5 (03:10):
Hi, Sean.

Speaker 6 (03:13):
Hello.

Speaker 4 (03:14):
How much have you enjoyed this season, mate?

Speaker 7 (03:17):
Oh.

Speaker 3 (03:17):
I've loved it, but that intro you just gave me
is right up there, by the way. I'll take that every.

Speaker 1 (03:21):
Day of the week.

Speaker 4 (03:22):
Saying you're one of the biggest stars in TV sports land?

Speaker 7 (03:25):
Yeah, I just told my producer, Tav, to tune in
so he could hear that, and I hope the bosses
at Sky heard that, because.

Speaker 3 (03:30):
I'm about to go in for a renegotiation, so I
appreciate those words.

Speaker 4 (03:34):
Is that what you'll mean? You're going in right now
to chat?

Speaker 7 (03:38):
No, no, I'm on my way in there now for
League of Legends, so yeah, that's on tonight.

Speaker 3 (03:43):
Sean, do you know.

Speaker 4 (03:44):
But do you know how good you are on telly?
I was thinking about this the other day. I was
watching you and I thought it is remarkable. Like, is
there anything that's wrong with you? You are handsome. You're
in a marriage with children. You are fantastic on the
footy field. And now you take to TV like you've
been doing it your whole life. You're awesome.

Speaker 7 (04:02):
I appreciate that, Heather. But yeah, I mean, I'm not
six foot. Well, there's that. My wife would say that
that's a real ick of hers. But outside of that, no,
the TV stuff's been really enjoyable. I've enjoyed, you know,
trying to cover the game in a way that I'm
proud of, the way that as a player I would
have liked to consume, I guess, the content that was

(04:23):
coming either through the phone or through the telly. And really,
that's where the League Lounge was born, you know, like
two like-minded, I guess, Sky as a brand and as
a company and then me as an individual sort of
coming together to be able to create something that we
thought was missing in the market.

Speaker 3 (04:37):
So, yeah, I'm enjoying it. Oh, good.

Speaker 4 (04:39):
I'm pleased you are. What do you think about the idea?
Because it sounds very much like, OK, we're going to
play this week's finals at Mount Smart, but next week
might be Eden Park. How do you feel about that?

Speaker 3 (04:52):
Oh, yeah, look, it's... Look, I'm obviously biased.

Speaker 7 (04:56):
You know, it pisses me off that they can just
take a game away from the home of rugby league
in this country, you know, from a place that, you know,
this club and this organisation has essentially built into a
bit of a fortress, you know, and the fan.

Speaker 1 (05:11):
Base, like....

Speaker 7 (05:13):
I've got no doubt that we'd probably go close to
selling out Eden Park anyway, but the fan experience, even
the player experience, like, I've been fortunate to play at
both venues... And, you know, although Eden Park, you know,
is a world-class facility, it's not.

Speaker 3 (05:29):
The best ground to play at.

Speaker 4 (05:31):
Why not?

Speaker 1 (05:31):
Respectfully.

Speaker 7 (05:33):
It's a way you're away from the crowd.

Speaker 3 (05:36):
You're away from the stands. You know, you're playing in
essentially a cricket.

Speaker 7 (05:39):
Oval type feel where you.

Speaker 3 (05:43):
Don't have that... that atmosphere that feels right on top
of you. Um, but look, I can say this from
this side of the fence.

Speaker 7 (05:51):
Now I've got no doubt that won't even be an
issue to the playing group or to the coaching staff
or to everyone involved in the performance side.

Speaker 3 (05:58):
Um, you know, of, I guess, Warriors rugby league, but
I can speak to it.

Speaker 8 (06:03):
Yeah.

Speaker 7 (06:03):
From the ex player, from a fan side, like I'd
much rather pull up to Mount smart, a place that
you've just, you've had to grind out all year to
put yourself in this position to get an advantage at
this time of year.

Speaker 3 (06:12):
And yeah, To fully double down on.

Speaker 7 (06:15):
That advantage, it's making people come into Mount Smart, where
the changing rooms on the other side of the field
aren't the flashiest, you know, where the grandstand is right
on top of you, it's hostile, and not necessarily put
them up in, you know, the schmickiest of schmicks of
Eden Park, where, yeah, it's a pretty elite facility.

Speaker 4 (06:33):
Yeah, I was wondering, I mean, because the problem is,
of course, what you get is Peter Vlandys gets more money,
he gets more fans in there. So that's the appeal
of Eden Park. But then what I was worried about
is that it becomes a sort of away game for
the Warriors. Do you think they can overcome that and
still win the game and have that kind of competitive
advantage of being at home?

Speaker 3 (06:54):
Oh, yeah, 100%. Look, I'm not going to go, you know, read.

Speaker 7 (06:58):
too far past the fact that look you've worked so
hard just to host home finals and yes it's still
in New Zealand it's still going to be a home
game for the Warriors like whether they go to Christchurch
Wellington you embrace it so they're going to do that
I'm not worried about that I'm more saying like you've
worked so hard all year to create an advantage for
you now for the Warriors to double down on that

(07:18):
and maximize that it would be to play at Mount
Smart as often as possible that is as simple as
I can put it and I get the business side
of it more money for the NRL but Equally, the
way I look at it, the Warriors and the NRL,
the NRL doesn't survive a couple of years ago if
the Warriors don't do what they did and sacrifice and
move countries to keep the competition afloat.

Speaker 3 (07:38):
So you'd think it'd be nice at.

Speaker 7 (07:40):
Some point if that genuinely came back for the club.
And it would be a pretty cool moment to do
that if they said to them, look, you know, we'll
cap the cash that.

Speaker 3 (07:48):
We could possibly earn by going to.

Speaker 7 (07:51):
And we'll keep it at Mount Smart because you do
deserve that.

Speaker 4 (07:54):
Yeah, I like that. Okay, listen, so this is what
I think you need to do with the contract is
go in there and go double or nothing. What do
you think?

Speaker 2 (08:03):
All right.

Speaker 7 (08:04):
I'll tell him my acting agent, Heather, has given me
some advice here and this is what I'm running with.

Speaker 3 (08:09):
But look, it's exciting. It's an exciting time for rugby
league in this country.

Speaker 1 (08:13):
It really is.

Speaker 7 (08:13):
And it starts, you know, this Saturday. We get to
pull up to Mount Smart again and host a home final.

Speaker 3 (08:19):
Which is... which is just such a special thought to have. So, yeah,
really looking forward to that.

Speaker 4 (08:24):
Well, mate, enjoy it. We're all enjoying it. And thank
you so much for your time and best of luck
at work. That's Sean Johnson, former Warrior. And just an
all-round decent guy, isn't he? Now, these are all the
numbers for the Taxpayers Union Courier poll. Labour is on 26%.
National is the bigger party on 29%. They'll be taking
some heart from that. This is national. But they're still
below 30%, right? So it's like bittersweet, isn't it? Opportunity,

(08:46):
it doesn't make it in. It's sitting on 4.5%. The
Green Party's on 14%. So there's a significant bump up.
The ACT Party is sitting on 10.5%. So a bit
of a bump up for it as well. New Zealand
First has come back a wee bit to 8.5%. Māori
Party is still sitting at 2%. Coalition wins the election
with 64 seats. Luxon is the preferred Prime Minister. His

(09:07):
support is on 21. Chris Hipkins has come back. He's
on 17.

Speaker 1 (09:10):
16 past four.

Speaker 4 (09:21):
Heather, how come you're not gunning for Hipkins to be rolled?
If it was the Nats, you would. It's a fair point, Lesley,
and I still am of the view, and I mean,
I think I've said this enough for this not to
be a surprise for you, that I do think the
National Party has the wrong leader. The difference with Chris
Hipkins is that Chippy's favourability doesn't seem to be the

(09:42):
major problem for the Labour Party. So here's, correct me
if I'm wrong, but I think in this poll, if
I remember correctly from reading it this morning, he's sitting
at negative four. whereas Luxon sitting at negative 19. I
don't think Chippy is the Labour Party's problem. He's one
of their problems, but he's not predominantly their problem. It's
not like if you got rid of Chippy, all of
a sudden Labour would do brilliantly. Because I think with National,

(10:02):
if you got rid of Luxon, they would do a
lot better. So I don't think there's as much pressure
for him to quit. Plus also, nobody wants the job.
Heaps of people want the job in National. 419.

Speaker 1 (10:11):
Sport with Generate.

Speaker 2 (10:13):
Celebrating great performances in sport and KiwiSaver accounts.

Speaker 4 (10:16):
Jason Pine, Sports Talk host is with us. Hello, Piney.

Speaker 10 (10:19):
So I'm supposed to follow Sean Johnson. You see, this is... Fortunately,
I follow Jack Tame on a Saturday and Francesca Roggen
on a Sunday. So I'm used to following big names.

Speaker 4 (10:31):
Isn't he delightful? Isn't he just an all-round package? I mean, short,
as he says, but otherwise excellent.

Speaker 10 (10:37):
If that's his major failing, not being six foot, then
I think he's doing all right now. And you're so
right about his television persona. I mean, a lot of
former players go into television with varying degrees of success.
His authenticity is off the charts. They love him at Sky.
And yeah, he is terrific on the TV.

Speaker 4 (10:58):
He is very good. Now, what do you think about
playing at Eden Park? Is it fair? I mean, if
you think about it from the perspective of the hardcore
fans lose their ability to be at their favourite home ground,
whereas the kind of fly-by-nighter fans also get a chance
to see the team.

Speaker 10 (11:13):
That's the only counterpoint, I think, to the argument that
the Warriors are mounting. Look, the Warriors only care about, well, yes,
they care about their fans, obviously, but the biggest factor
in the venue for them is where are we more
likely to win the game? And I think that's Go
Media Mount Smart Stadium. The counterpoint to it is, if
you have it at Eden Park, twice as many Warriors fans...

(11:35):
can turn up to cheer the team on. That's really
the only counterpoint to all of this, is that they
will be roared on by a crowd which is double
the size. Yes, they're further back at Eden Park. It's
not as intimidating as Sean pointed out, but it does
give you a much bigger crowd. It doesn't benefit the
Warriors in any way, as we know. The NRL take
all of the ticket revenue, which is why they're pushing

(11:57):
so hard for a bigger venue. Heather, I'm almost certain
that the second finals game, particularly if the Warriors win
on Saturday and it's a... a qualifying final for the
grand final in two weeks will be at Eden Park.
I'm almost certain that the NRL will say, we gave
you that one, but we are going to take this
one and pack 50,000 in.

Speaker 1 (12:17):
Yeah, I heard.

Speaker 4 (12:18):
Cam George on the radio this morning, and it sounded
a little bit like he'd almost given up on it
as well. He knew that that was happening. Look, is
it fair to say that based on what's happened in
South Africa, we could say the All Blacks are a
good team getting better, but South Africa are still that
much better?

Speaker 3 (12:34):
Yeah.

Speaker 10 (12:34):
Yeah, I think that sums it up pretty well. And
the big question now is, is there enough time between
now and when we play them at the World Cup
next year? Look, let's forget about Baltimore. That is what
it is. But is there enough time between now and
next September and likely in a quarterfinal when we play
South Africa again for us to improve enough to beat
them in a knockout game? There are obvious areas around set-piece.

(12:57):
around the physicality and other bits and pieces too that
South Africa are clearly superior. Does this team have the capacity,
the All Blacks, I mean, to make the improvements? I
believe that they do. Is a year enough? I guess
we'll find out. That South African team has been together
for eight years, will be nine years under Rassi when
the World Cup rolls around. That's a head start and
a half, Heather. But we beat them at Ellis Park

(13:19):
in a one-off game at the World Cup next year.

Speaker 1 (13:20):
Could we beat them?

Speaker 7 (13:21):
Yes.

Speaker 10 (13:21):
Absolutely we could.

Speaker 4 (13:22):
Of course we can. Heaps of time for Dave Rennie
to knock them into shape. Thank you, Piney. Appreciate it.
Jason Pine, Sports Talk host. He'll be back at seven
this evening. By the way, that crash at Miami Airport,
the Amazon cargo plane, at least five people are dead
and five people in hospital.

Speaker 3 (13:36):
4.23.

Speaker 2 (13:36):
On your smart speaker, on the iHeart app, and in
your car on your drive home, it's Heather Duplessy-Allen Drive
and One New Zealand, awarded New Zealand's best mobile network.
Newstalk ZB.

Speaker 4 (13:49):
Heather Talbot-Mills will have their poll out quick as possible,
won't they just? They'll be digging through their files, trying
to find the last poll that was half decent for Labour,
and then they'll release it. We'll have a poll war going.

Speaker 11 (14:01):
On.

Speaker 4 (14:01):
426, by the way, Port of Tauranga has finally been
given the fast-track approval, like the final, final fast-track approval
for that wharf extension that the local marae has been
opposing since, what, 2019 or thereabouts. So what this means
is they're going to dredge the Stellar Passage and then
they're going to land reclaim for the extension for a
container berth and a wharf extension. And each of them
will go out another 300 meters. Interesting plot twist in this, though.

(14:26):
The port has agreed that it will pay them. Because
the story, if you haven't followed it, is that the
marae is upset about it because the extension is going
to block its view of the maunga. And so it
has been causing the fuss and various other related parties
have also been causing the fuss with them. Interesting twist
is that the port is now going to pay the

(14:47):
marae $ 1 million in a one-off payment. That's within the
first year. Thereafter, $ 25, 000 payment every single year, which is
interesting because it may well make the problem go away,
but I worry about the precedent here. which is that
if you kick up enough of a fuss, you'll get
some money out of the people who are trying to

(15:08):
do a thing. I don't like that. That's not good
for our democracy, is it? That's not good for our system,
is it? For confidence in it. Anyway, we'll have a chat.
It's not really the democracy that's affected by that. We'll
have a chat with the Port of Tauranga CFO when
he's with us. After five o'clock, I can confirm now
it's going to be opportunity. We will have opportunity on

(15:29):
the show after five o'clock. Kewlei Wong will be in.
And there's a yarn about Chippy here. So I'll tell
you that story later on and why Chippy's not going
to be on the show. Stand by. News is next.

Speaker 2 (15:44):
Cutting through the noise to get the facts, it's Heather
Duplessy-Allen Drive with One New Zealand, awarded New Zealand's best
mobile network.

Speaker 1 (15:52):
Newstalk ZB.

Speaker 4 (15:59):
Either let me guess, Chippy's in back-to-back meetings.

Speaker 1 (16:01):
How did you guess?

Speaker 4 (16:03):
He is. He's in back-to-back-to-back-to-back-to-back-to-back meetings. I think he's having
meetings through to, ooh, 6 November? Round about then, taking
the day off, 7 November. Tired after all those meetings.
Bet it would be different if the results were a
bit different. Gareth, jeez, you're smart, honestly. Are you a
Labour Party mole? Are you telling me what's really going

(16:24):
on here? Barry Soper with Politics is going to be
with us shortly. We've also got Olly Peterson standing by
out of Australia. You will have seen, like, once again, because,
of course, all the other parties were doing things at
the weekend and releasing policies and stuff. You'll have seen
New Zealand First's policy. Now, their policy is to restrict
super only to New Zealand citizens. I mean, look, tell

(16:45):
me you don't love that, right? Everybody loves it. Everybody goes, oh, yeah,
great idea. Who wants to be giving New Zealand super to, like,
Joe who just got off the plane five minutes ago?
The only trouble with it is that actually that's not
how it works. So I'm just not sure how many
people we're going to be cutting out who don't actually
deserve it. At the moment, you have to have lived
in the country for 10 years to get super. I

(17:07):
would argue that, you know, and it's increasing to 20 years,
by the way, and that's the crucial thing. I would
argue if you've paid taxes for 20 years, you are
entitled to super. And if you're here for 20 years
and you're still not a citizen, what are you doing
with your time? What are you doing with your life?
I can't imagine there's a lot of people who've been
here for 20 years, and you still haven't applied for

(17:27):
your citizenship. So I think it's a small number of
people Winston will be removing from super. Anyway, we'll talk
to a migration expert after half past five about that
and just see what the numbers actually are. It's 23
away from five right now.

Speaker 2 (17:38):
It's the World Wires on Newstalk's EpiDrive.

Speaker 4 (17:42):
A plane has overshot the runway in Miami, Florida, like
I told you earlier. It was an Amazon Prime cargo plane,
hit multiple vehicles, five are dead, five are injured. The
aftermath was caught on air traffic control.

Speaker 5 (17:53):
Looks like we have aircraft overran the runway.

Speaker 12 (17:56):
Yes, sir.

Speaker 2 (17:57):
Now we're going to show runway 30 closed for avert
aircraft noise one.

Speaker 12 (18:03):
Yes, runway 30 is closed.

Speaker 4 (18:05):
To Germany, where their far-right party has won big in
the local elections, the AFD took more than 44% of
the votes in the Saxony and the Halt region. The
sights are now sent on them toppling the Chancellor, Merz.
The party says they have a mandate to govern.

Speaker 13 (18:22):
We have achieved exactly what we wanted.

Speaker 1 (18:24):
We have written history.

Speaker 5 (18:26):
People gave a clear political signal.

Speaker 1 (18:28):
In this state.

Speaker 9 (18:29):
We need a fundamentally different political approach, putting our own interests,
our own country first.

Speaker 4 (18:35):
An Egyptian TV presenter has been sentenced to death on
drug charges. Sara Khalifa is pleading her innocence. She says
she's never even smoked a ciggy before. She and 11
other defendants were accused of running a synthetic drug smuggling
ring and kidnapping.

Speaker 8 (18:49):
The court says that it's such a high sentence because
she wasn't just merely an innocent bystander, but she was
also the one that formed and operated the group.

Speaker 4 (18:58):
And finally... New York's Metropolitan Opera has concluded the talent
search for their star snake. Their upcoming performance of Mozart's
Cosi Fan Tut requires a real onstage snake that can
perform under the bright lights, because of course... It's New York.
It must be a real snake. The audition process saw

(19:21):
snakes of all types try out, with boa constrictor Princess
taking home the role, with a snake called Nala acting
as the understudy.

Speaker 2 (19:32):
International Correspondence with NZI Insurance. Peace of mind for New
Zealand business.

Speaker 4 (19:39):
Oliver Peterson, ABC Perth Radio Drive presenters with us.

Speaker 14 (19:41):
Hello, Ollie.

Speaker 3 (19:43):
Hello there, Heather.

Speaker 4 (19:43):
Want to talk about the Warriors?

Speaker 8 (19:45):
Yeah, hopefully they turn up this week. They just won
against the Seagulls, right? So, you know, like we've seen
it here, right? So the Dockers, right, in the AFL,
they won the minor premiership, never lost here in Perth.
Then last Thursday night they lost. All of a sudden
they've lost to Hawthorne and they're in elimination this week. So,
you know, I don't want that to happen to the
Warriors because, you know what, I'm on your side, to
be honest, Heather. I'd actually like to see you in

(20:07):
the premiership, but, you know.

Speaker 3 (20:09):
Don't go the early crow.

Speaker 4 (20:09):
I don't know why when you say you're on our side,
I just, I don't know. I don't feel it.

Speaker 3 (20:16):
That's fair. I like your rugby league team.

Speaker 8 (20:18):
I like your cricket team. I hate your rugby union
team with a passion.

Speaker 4 (20:22):
Oh, because too good for you?

Speaker 8 (20:24):
Well, I think, you know, why can't we win the
Bledisloe Cup, please? Why do you always have to dominate
that particular.

Speaker 4 (20:30):
Series every year? It's fair. There are a lot of
three-year-olds who feel the same about not getting to win
races and stuff. Listen, now, what's going on? What's the
update with the social media companies?

Speaker 8 (20:40):
So the government will introduce some new legislation tomorrow to
double the maximum fine for the social media platforms. So
we're talking like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, etc., who are not
keeping the 16-year-olds off social media. So the final go
from $ 50 million up to $ 110 million. Now, the government
talks tough on this, and we know the rest of
the world is looking at this. We know that there's

(21:02):
a few European nations in particular who like this idea
of banning under-16s from social media. But the government has
never forced the social media companies into a particular way
to verify somebody's age. And we have heard stories, for example, Heather,
where people have shown faces of just printed out faces
off the internet of somebody that's over the age of
16 and voila, they've been verified. So this will come

(21:23):
into effect tomorrow. There's obviously political blowback from this. The
coalition's saying that Labor is trying to simply censor the
internet here with concerns that this harmful content algorithm provisions
give government too much discretion over what people see online.
They might try and take it towards their political advantage,
about which ads you might see, you know, maybe looking
a little more pro-Labor, say, than anti-Labor, for example. But

(21:46):
I mean, if you think about it, you know, you
go back not that long ago, Heather, and I'm sure
it was the same in New Zealand, because in Australia,
you couldn't show M15 plus, you know, movies until after
half past eight at night. Now, obviously, with cable television
and streaming and everything, you can watch anything anytime you like. But,
you know, as a father of an eight-year-old to four-year-old,
I'm pretty happy that they're going to grow up not

(22:06):
being able to access social media until they're 16.

Speaker 4 (22:09):
Yep, I agree with you on that. The super pay boost,
what's the problem with it?

Speaker 3 (22:14):
So it's got to.

Speaker 4 (22:15):
help push up inflation.

Speaker 8 (22:17):
That's the argument here by Jim Chalmers, the Treasurer. Now,
this is One Nation's latest policy, and it wants to
help renters and mortgage holders dip into a quarter of
their compulsory superfoods, up to three years, to ease the
cost of living pressures. Jim Chalmers says it's a full
frontal attack on your retirement savings. In fact, he's now
predicting that this is going to become an election fought

(22:37):
on your superannuation. Now, the policy is branded a super
pay boost by One Nation. And the medium worker would
be able to access an extra $ 2, 300 a year taxed
at the concessional 15% super rates. The government, as I said,
says that this is going to be inflationary. So all
the big super annuation members funds and the industry groups
and the like, they've come out attacking this today.

Speaker 4 (22:57):
But guess what?

Speaker 8 (22:58):
The people who are renting, trying to buy their first
house or trying to buy a house at all are going, hey,
let me have it.

Speaker 3 (23:02):
Let's do it.

Speaker 4 (23:03):
So I reckon this has got a few legs to play, Heather.

Speaker 8 (23:05):
It's a It's warming the waters, and the talkback you
feel like over here in Australia today has been quite
mixed and varied.

Speaker 15 (23:11):
Interesting.

Speaker 3 (23:11):
Hey, thanks, Holly.

Speaker 4 (23:12):
I appreciate it, mate. Look after yourself. Oliver Peterson, 6p up. Whoa, ABC,
Perth Radio Drive presenter. He switched, didn't he? 17 away
from 5.

Speaker 1 (23:19):

Speaker 4 (23:21):
Self-promotion. Heather, my wife is Japanese, can't have dual citizenship.
Same for Chinese and Singaporeans. She's been here 39 years,
paid heaps of taxes, not a citizen. Heather, my father
arrived in 1960 from the UK, still on a British passport. Heather,
I'm 83. I've been here 60 years. I've got four kids,
seven grandkids. I'm not a citizen. Heather, my husband immigrated
in the 60s with his family as a 10-pound palm

(23:43):
when he was 14. He's worked all his life in
New Zealand, raised family, has grandkids, never taken on citizenship.
Did you see the pattern there? Apart from the Japanese lady,
they're all blokes. That's because your wife didn't do the admin.
It's because your wife didn't do your citizenship, hey? But actually,
it's quite a large number.

Speaker 3 (24:02):
Jeez, the wives.

Speaker 4 (24:03):
I feel sorry for us all the time. But it's
quite a large number. But that's not fair. I don't
want to kick you off the super if you've been
here since 14 and paying your taxes. I'm starting to
not like Winston's policy at all. By the way, I'll
tell you what I am loving. It's this parenting advice
from Nicole Kidman. She's touring for this new movie that
she's doing with Sandra Bullock, which looks hideous. It's a

(24:24):
women magic movie. Honestly, come on. You're in your 50s.
You're too old to be doing magic movies. But anyway,
they did. And she's doing this tour. And in the
press tour, she's been asked about some stuff. And she's
piped up and she said she doesn't want to be
her two daughters' best friend. She's got a 15-year-old and
an 18-year-old. And she says she tells them she's their mum.
She wants to be their rock. She wants to be

(24:45):
the safe haven. She wants to be the person that
is dependable in their lives. But she does not want
to be their best friend. That is incredibly healthy, isn't it?
Like half the problem we've got into, half the problem,
not all the problem, but half the problem with the
kiddies nowadays is we're mates, aren't we? We're mates with
our kids.

Speaker 3 (25:00):
No, we're not.

Speaker 4 (25:01):
We're their parents. Go, Nicole. 16 away from five.

Speaker 1 (25:06):
Politics with Centrix. Credit check your customers and get payment certainty.

Speaker 4 (25:10):
Kule Wong, the leader of Opportunity, will be with us
after five about her party not making it in on
the latest Taxpayer Union Courier poll. With us now, 13
away from five, is Barry Sober.

Speaker 2 (25:19):
Hi, Barry.

Speaker 5 (25:19):
Good afternoon. Heather, why isn't Chris Hipkins here? I thought
he would be here talking about.

Speaker 2 (25:24):
No, that's a story.

Speaker 4 (25:24):
I'm going to tell that story in a minute. Don't
you worry. We'll get to it. He's in back-to-back meetings.

Speaker 5 (25:29):
Oh, of course.

Speaker 4 (25:30):
Back-to-back, back-to-back. And what he's busy is the lead-up to
the election. But did you also know that in the
Labour Party, they don't have cell phones?

Speaker 7 (25:36):
No.

Speaker 4 (25:36):
So you can't reach him in a meeting.

Speaker 9 (25:38):
Oh.

Speaker 4 (25:38):
Yeah, you need to, that's the only way to.

Speaker 5 (25:40):
So they're banned.

Speaker 4 (25:41):
No, it's just like telecommunications are not possible in the
Labour Party. I don't know about you, but if I'm
in back-to-back meetings, you can generally get a hold of me,
call the It's called an etixx. Not possible with chippy. Anyway,
so the Taxpayers Union Curia poll, what do you make
of it?

Speaker 5 (25:57):
You'd have to say that probably Chris Hipkins does not
want to talk about it because certainly it's not great
news for them. Labour at 25.9%. That's the party's lowest
polling since July 2024. So that's a long time, over
two years, they haven't polled as low as that. And

(26:19):
it was down 1.9%, almost 2%. National won't be laughing
all the way to the ballot box either.

Speaker 7 (26:26):
Of course.

Speaker 5 (26:27):
They've dropped two percentage points on last month's poll. They're
at 29%. But look, like I've said on many occasions
on this program, this is shaping up to be the
first MMP, true MMP election, when you've got the two
major parties and they're 20%, 20 to 30%, and then

(26:48):
you've got the minor parties who will be sort of
basically controlling what happens after the vote. Opportunity Party I
found really interesting, though, because I think the more policy
that they release, the less popular they become. And now
in this poll, I've slipped below the 5% threshold. So

(27:09):
if you took the last poll, they would have had
eight seats in the Parliament. Now those eight seats have
simply gone under 5%. So what you've got in terms
of the seats is that the current coalition, they'd get
64 seats in Parliament. That would see them relatively comfortably
back in government. But even at 64, there's not a

(27:32):
great margin between the two blocks, the left and the
right block. So, yeah, it's going to be close whichever way.
But like I've always said, Heather, I believe that the
current coalition will be returned.

Speaker 4 (27:44):
What about Winston doing favours for his mates?

Speaker 5 (27:46):
Oh, I felt that this is extraordinary because... He put
out a press statement and there were five ambassadors announced.
And right in the middle of the five that had
been announced was a name that was quite familiar to me,
and it has been for a number of years, John Johenson.
And very familiar to Winston Peters because he's worked in

(28:07):
his office since 2017. And, you know, he's been his,
I guess, MFAT advisor, even though he's never worked at MFAT.
And remember, Winston has always said he didn't never want
jobs for the boys and girls. That wasn't his thing.
He said career diplomats should be appointed to these sorts

(28:28):
of roles. Well, John Johansson is not a career diplomat. He's,
in fact, an academic from Victoria University. And Winston tells us, though,
that he's a proud Cantabrian by origin and a Wellingtonian
by inclination. He said he's got a strong Scandinavian heritage,

(28:49):
hence the ambassadorship to Sweden, which would be rather nice.
His father emigrated to New Zealand from Denmark in the
late 1940s. So That seems to be the qualification that
you need to become the ambassador to Sweden. You know,
he's only made one other exception to his rule, and
that was Annette King to Canberra. But then who would

(29:13):
have turned her down? That's right, she had been placed.

Speaker 4 (29:15):
She was already in place. And yet this was in
2017 when he came in. He was really, really vehement
about it, wasn't he?

Speaker 5 (29:20):
Oh, totally vehement about nothing. One of the reasons why,
dare I say it, Trevor Mullard was left so long
in Ireland Winston railed against his appointment at the beginning
of him going to Ireland was that John Johansson's very
close to the Mallards.

Speaker 4 (29:38):
Now, hypocrisy is ugly, and this is a case of it,
and it looks ugly. My question to you is, why
is John Johansson leaving Winston's office now with Winston's blessing?
Does this mean that Winston's preparing to wrap it up?

Speaker 5 (29:53):
Himself.

Speaker 4 (29:54):
When does John Johansson's tenure start?

Speaker 5 (29:55):
Well, I'd imagine it doesn't say, but I'd imagine it
starts early next year. But no, I don't think we've
seen the last of Winston yet. I think even on
this polling, New Zealand First isn't doing great. But I
still believe, given the crowds that Winston has been.

Speaker 4 (30:12):
Pulling in, he'll be still quite significant. I would be
surprised if he saw through the next election, don't you think?
I mean, how old is he? He's 81.

Speaker 8 (30:18):
He's 81.

Speaker 4 (30:19):
He's not going to keep going forever. And at some point,
he's going to want to have a few years of retirement,
isn't he?

Speaker 7 (30:23):
No.

Speaker 4 (30:24):
Just a few years?

Speaker 3 (30:25):
No.

Speaker 4 (30:26):
Just to go to the batch?

Speaker 5 (30:27):
Don't forget, he's had a couple of stints out of Parliament.

Speaker 4 (30:30):
Oh, that's the retirement.

Speaker 5 (30:31):
So he's had six years since he began out of
the place. So he's had enough time for retirement, Heather,
a bit like me.

Speaker 4 (30:37):
He's just got one more job to do, eh? Be
the Prime Minister first.

Speaker 1 (30:40):
That's it.

Speaker 4 (30:41):
Thanks very much. Barry Soper, Senior Political Correspondent, seven away
from five.

Speaker 2 (30:45):
It's the Heather Duplessy-Allen Drive full show podcast on iHeartRadio,
powered by Newstalk ZB.

Speaker 1 (30:54):
Fearless. Focused. Informed. It's the Mike Hosking Breakfast.

Speaker 16 (30:59):
5% deposit for first-home buyers. The income cap gets bumped
to $ 300, 000. David Cunningham runs squirrel mortgages. Is this going
to make a material difference?

Speaker 1 (31:07):
A little bit, yeah. I mean, the caps are too
low at the moment.

Speaker 6 (31:09):
Raising them to $ 300, 000, it really opens it up to
most young Kiwis looking to buy a home and gives
them access to what's a really good scheme.

Speaker 16 (31:16):
Are there many people who would come to you with
$ 300, 000 between the two of them?

Speaker 1 (31:20):
People that are in good professions, they might have been overseas.

Speaker 6 (31:24):
People are certainly pushing well over the current cap. Look,
the existing caps are way too low. You could argue
there doesn't need to be a cap at all, to
be honest.

Speaker 16 (31:32):
Back tomorrow at 6am, the Mike Hosking Breakfast with Bailey's
Real Estate.

Speaker 1 (31:36):
News Talk ZB.

Speaker 4 (31:37):
Heather, I'm a sheila. I've been here since the mid-1980s,
paying taxes, rates, contributing to the economy, have an extended
family of Kiwi yanks here, and I'm not a citizen yet.
Lord above. Honestly, guys, do your admins. Does it all
weigh on you? Anyway, four away from five. Tell you what,
I love an idea that I read about in the
papers this weekend. This is Mark Ellis' idea. You know
Mark who used to play the oval ball? Mark lives

(32:00):
out on Waiheke now, and he wants to build what
he's calling a Waiheke Onsen project, which is like a
hotel spa situation. About 180 hotel rooms, 10 Japanese-inspired Ryokan villas,
a luxury geothermal retreat, a spa facility, a large hotel venue,
a yoga meditation pavilion, and then some car park facilities
to go with it. How good does that sound? Tell

(32:23):
the locals, though, because the locals don't. But it is
people from Waiheke, right? Because, of course, people from Waiheke
still wish that it was kind of a backwater that
only they knew about, and they're really struggling to come
to terms with what's going on there. But they're worried
about the ferries being chocker, and the roads being chocker,
and the poo pipes being overused and stuff. But I
love this idea. I have always thought that Waiheke is

(32:45):
completely underdeveloped. This is a world-class city that we live
in in Auckland. And then you go over there and
you go, what the heck? Like, you struggle to find
decent accommodation for a decent price. It's always super overpriced,
and it all feels a bit hippie, doesn't it? It
all feels a bit hippie. And it would be great
if there was somewhere you could say to your friends
when they come from overseas, oh, what should we do
in Waiheke? Go, oh, Go to the spa, darling. Have

(33:07):
a great time. You could just see how something like
that would just absolutely bring in so much money for
the region. Anyway, go him. Go Mark Ellis. I love
this idea. Q. Le Wong with us next, and then
I'll explain what the hell's going on with Chippy. News
Talk ZB.

Speaker 2 (33:38):
The only drive show you can trust to ask the questions,
get the answers, find the facts, and give the analysis.
Heather Duplessy Allen Drive. With One New Zealand. Awarded New
Zealand's best mobile network. Newstalk ZB.

Speaker 4 (33:55):
Good afternoon. So the latest political poll is bad news
for Labour. It has Labour on... This is the Taxpayers'
Union Courier poll. It has Labour on 26%, which is
lower than the 27% they got at the last election.
National is better, but it is still under 30% at 29%,
and Opportunity is out of Parliament altogether, under the 5% threshold,
coming in at 4.5%. The party's leader is Kiu Lei Wong.

Speaker 17 (34:16):
Hi, Kiu.

Speaker 14 (34:16):
Hello, Heather.

Speaker 3 (34:17):
How are you going?

Speaker 4 (34:18):
I'm well, thank you. Are you worried by that result
or relieved by it?

Speaker 7 (34:21):
I think.

Speaker 12 (34:23):
We've had 10 months of upward trends in the polls,
across all polls, so we're still feeling really optimistic. And
we know that it's going to be hard work. We've
got to keep getting out there doing the work and
earning the trust of New Zealanders. That hasn't changed, and
we will continue doing that.

Speaker 4 (34:37):
But this is more realistic, isn't it, around that 5%
than the 9% that we'd seen in a Roy Morgan?

Speaker 12 (34:43):
Yeah, it's so hard to tell, especially for a new
party entering Parliament. And that's why we never take any
of those polls for granted. What we do know we
need to do is get out on the ground, talk
to as many New Zealanders as possible. And we're certainly
hearing a lot of positive feedback on the ground. People
are ready for change. They want a fresh voice in Parliament.
So that's what we can deliver.

Speaker 9 (35:01):
Right.

Speaker 4 (35:01):
Tell me how it works. If you were to get
into the kingmaker or queenmaker position, which is what has
been predicted in a lot of polls now, you would
talk with the biggest party first. And then what?

Speaker 12 (35:12):
Yeah, so we'll, as we've mentioned, we'll set out those
clear bottom lines in a few weeks time. And that
gives voters the confidence to know how we'll approach those negotiations.
So the kinds of policies we're really going to push for.
And if we can't get anywhere with that largest party,
if they're not going to agree to those things, then
we will go and speak to the next largest party.

Speaker 4 (35:33):
But what does get anywhere mean?

Speaker 12 (35:36):
Well, if they can't agree to those bottom lines as
a starting point, then we will have to walk from
the negotiations.

Speaker 4 (35:42):
All of the bottom lines?

Speaker 12 (35:44):
Yeah, but it's not going to be a long laundry list.
I think there'll be some really clear, specific things that
we want to achieve in a first term in Parliament.
So they've got to be transformative, but they've also got
to be realistic.

Speaker 4 (35:56):
OK, so are your bottom lines going to lean to
the left in the way that all your other policies
have at the moment?

Speaker 12 (36:02):
Well, I'd say all of our policies are a range
of things from across the political spectrum, and they will
be things that we imagine are realistic for either Labour
or National to agree to.

Speaker 4 (36:13):
Give me one of your policies that you've released that
you would consider to be to the right of the
political spectrum.

Speaker 12 (36:19):
I think our approach to the breakthrough economy, which is
about investment and innovation and tackling competition. That's how we
grow our economy.

Speaker 3 (36:28):
Right.

Speaker 12 (36:28):
And it's been disappointing to see National not really make
moves on this in the last couple of years because
you'd think it would be their bread and butter.

Speaker 4 (36:34):
Because, I mean, there was a set of policies that
you released last week which actually put you quite at
odds with the coalition government. Like you want to restore MACA,
which they've changed, and you want to restore all the
treaty principles which they are in the process of taking out.
So that doesn't feel like that's something that you could
sit very well with.

Speaker 12 (36:53):
Well, I think you've seen even with MACA, Chris Finlayson's
criticised National for going back on that. So I think,
you know, it might be that this current coalition... has
made certain moves, but that's not necessarily the National Party
of old or all National Party iterations of previously. So
I don't think those necessarily have to be seen as

(37:15):
left-leaning policies. They are about having good Crown-Māori relations.

Speaker 4 (37:19):
They may not be cute, but they are not this
coalition-leaning policies. Do you know what I mean?

Speaker 12 (37:25):
No, but we're not here to support the current coalition.
We are here to work with either Labour or National
on a set of policies that will move New Zealand forward.

Speaker 4 (37:32):
All right, Q. Hey, thank you very much. Do appreciate it.
It's Q Lei Wong, Opportunity Party leader. Now, just a
word about Labour. I am quite perplexed by Labour at
the moment because we asked Chris Hipkins to come on
the show today, just like we did last Monday and
like we did last Tuesday. And of course, he's not
because Q is instead. Every time we ask Hipkins to
come on the show, it seems to be a similar story,

(37:53):
which is chippies and back-to-back meetings. And the press people
can't get a hold of him. And just what a coincidence,
but his meetings will wrap up at four and they
will ask him at four and they will get back
to us at four. Now, the problem with four o'clock
is the fact that this program starts at four o'clock.
So we're holding a slot for him and we're holding
it right until the point that we're actually on air. Now,
I can't tell you how weird that is from a

(38:15):
political party before an election. We do not get this
kind of a run around from the Greens. or ACT,
or New Zealand First, or Opportunity, or National, just from Labour.
We got a message from the press person at four
minutes past four to say, no, sorry, Chippy can't come
on the show. He's in another meeting at five o'clock, apparently. Now,
I have to be honest with you, it is making

(38:36):
me wonder, this has been going on for long enough now,
it's making me wonder where they're actually trying to win
this election. I get the feeling Labour's only campaigning at
about 60%. So if Labour is your team, you should
be very disappointed because it feels very much like Labour
and Hipkins are phoning it in. It is 12 past
five now. The port of Tauranga has officially been given

(38:57):
the green light for its expansion plans. The upgrades will
allow larger ships to berth and it will nearly double
the handling capacity. Simon Kebbell is the chief financial officer
for the port. Hi, Simon. Good evening. I feel like
you can celebrate this now.

Speaker 9 (39:11):
Yeah, we've got a bit of a smile on our
face today. It's been a long time building to this
milestone and we're just really relieved that we're here.

Speaker 12 (39:20):
Okay.

Speaker 4 (39:21):
How soon will you get all of this done and
you can say the expansion is finished and the ships
can come?

Speaker 9 (39:26):
Well, it's probably going to take six months to stand
up for construction. So there will be consent conditions that
we have to meet first, get our contractor in line,
and then it's a two-year build time.

Speaker 4 (39:41):
So two years from now?

Speaker 1 (39:43):
Two and a half years.

Speaker 4 (39:43):
Yeah, brilliant. How good is that? So if you'd just
been able to do this from the minute that you
actually wanted to do it, it would be well done
by now, years ago.

Speaker 1 (39:50):
Oh, correct.

Speaker 9 (39:51):
I mean, we started formal stakeholder engagement on this project
in 2019.

Speaker 4 (39:57):
Now, what is going on with you paying them a
million dollars in the next year and then $ 25, 000 every
year thereafter? What's that for?

Speaker 1 (40:07):
It's cultural mitigations.

Speaker 9 (40:09):
I mean, we acknowledge that Whare Roa Marae is in
a position where it's had the city and the port
go around them and they have got some genuine grievances
and we think the payment goes towards mitigating the cultural impacts.

Speaker 4 (40:26):
Are you worried this is going to set a precedent?

Speaker 9 (40:30):
No, look, we've done resource consents before. We've paid small
amounts of money for cultural mitigations and I mean, it's
already been done. It's not setting a precedent.

Speaker 4 (40:43):
So it's already a thing.

Speaker 18 (40:44):
All right.

Speaker 4 (40:44):
Thanks, Simon. Appreciate your time, mate. Go and celebrate that.
Simon Kebbell, Port of Tauranga CFO. They've been fighting it
since 2019. Update on Bremworth. Now, this has been going
on for a wee bit. Bremworth's major shareholders have rejected
the revised Godfrey Hearst deal. So what happened, if you
didn't follow this last week, is the Godfrey Hearst guys
came back on Thursday with 95 cents a share. And
that was better than the 90 cents a share that

(41:06):
was going to be paid by David Ferrier. He is
the chap who was one of the Bremworth shareholders. There's
close to 20% worth of Bremworth who wanted to basically,
he wants to take it off in a different direction.
So he's offering 90 cents. They come back at Godfrey
Hurst at 95 cents. If you're going for the top dollar,
you obviously think you go with 95 cents. No, they
rejected Godfrey Hurst because not sufficient support from the major shareholders,

(41:29):
which means Ferrier may well be able to complete his deal.
Keep an eye on that. Quarter past five. If you're
in the building game, this is worth knowing about. There
was a significant announcement at Masterbuild's constructive conference last week,
with Squirrel launching something called 100% turnkey funding. Now, the
idea behind this is actually really simple. One of the
biggest constraints for builders is access to capital. You might

(41:51):
have a pre-sold home, a buyer ready to go, plenty
more work in the pipeline, but your money is tied
up funding the land and construction until that buyer settles.
Squirrel's new 100% turnkey funding is designed to help get
over that, to address that, right? So for eligible pre-sold houses,
Squirrel can fund the land and the construction, which means
that the builder can keep their own capital available for
the next site, the next build, or the next opportunity.

(42:13):
This is available to registered master builders from the 5th
of October. T's and C's and lending criteria apply, and
all you need to do is head online and have
a look at it. Squirrel.co.nz for full details, or email
them build at squirrel.co.nz.

Speaker 1 (42:28):
Heather, I agree with you, Read Chippy.

Speaker 4 (42:32):
Even in his online statements, you can see his heart
isn't really in it. Yeah, I feel much the same.
18 past five. He did, by the way, do a
press conference in Wellington, but there's a thing why he's
staying in Wellington. I'll explain that later. But anyway, he's
done that, so we'll see if there's anything interesting in
it and bring it to you. 18 past five. Now,
this is a first. In the last few days, a
woman became the first person in Australia to be buried
in a mushroom coffin. It's a new eco-burial service which

(42:55):
is being launched in New Zealand this week as well.
It's the brainchild of the Dutch firm Loop Biotech, and
Bob Hendricks is the founder and the inventor of the
Living Cocoon.

Speaker 14 (43:03):
Hi, Bob.

Speaker 3 (43:05):
Hey, hello. Thanks for having me.

Speaker 4 (43:06):
You're welcome. Why would I want to do this?

Speaker 19 (43:10):
Because right now there can be pollution when you die,
and we offer you an opportunity to.

Speaker 4 (43:16):
Be in nutrition. How long am I pollution for?

Speaker 19 (43:20):
That's a good question. Probably maybe decades.

Speaker 7 (43:23):
Oh.

Speaker 4 (43:24):
And if I go your way, how quickly am I
in nutrition?

Speaker 19 (43:29):
Actually, the cool thing is that our product, which is
a mushroom-grown coffin, we grow them in just seven days.
It's completely biodegradable, but it's actually itself nutrition for the soil.
So we have an opportunity to feed the earth when
we die.

Speaker 4 (43:44):
And it breaks down how quickly?

Speaker 19 (43:47):
In ideal conditions, it's actually very fast. It's 45 days.

Speaker 4 (43:50):
And then what about the human body?

Speaker 19 (43:53):
That's also a good question. That, of course, depends on
the soil quality and different qualities. But our estimation is
around two to three years.

Speaker 15 (44:02):
Oh, really?

Speaker 19 (44:02):
Because our product helps to facilitate the decomposition. And if
you compare this to traditional products, they, of course, form
a barrier, which in my opinion doesn't make sense. Because
why do you want to become part of the cycle
of life, I guess? And that can take up to 10,
20 years.

Speaker 1 (44:20):
But, wow.

Speaker 4 (44:22):
So do I want to, if I'm in your mushroom coffin,
do I want to go in raw, like no formaldehyde
or anything?

Speaker 19 (44:29):
Now, we actually, yeah, that's definitely true. And we actually
buried the photographer of the Royal House of the Netherlands.
And he made a statement. He went in butt naked
with only his wedding ring.

Speaker 4 (44:41):
Into the coffin?

Speaker 19 (44:43):
Into the coffin, yes.

Speaker 4 (44:44):
Why did he take his wedding ring? That's a waste
of gold, isn't it?

Speaker 19 (44:51):
I guess he met the love of his life. But
the cool thing is that you're actually laid on a
bed of moss, so it's very soft. The product is
very soft. We probably are the only coffin people actually
want to hug.

Speaker 7 (45:04):
Oh, dear.

Speaker 4 (45:05):
Why are we even doing coffins, Bob? Why don't we
just go in Egypt styles, wrap us up in some
cloth and chuck us on the ground?

Speaker 3 (45:11):
True, true.

Speaker 19 (45:12):
No, I think that's a very valid point. But what
I also learned when entering in this industry, you need
to basically carry a human around. So also for practical uses,
also for ceremonial, people want to have a ceremony. We
actually also have an option where you just have a
bed and you're laid also for mushrooms and you're laid

(45:34):
inside like a cloth, which is very good, very environmentally friendly.
But it's like maybe 1% of people want it. So
it probably will take some time. Maybe in a few decades,
we'll see it more often.

Speaker 3 (45:46):
Interesting.

Speaker 4 (45:46):
Bob, thanks very much. Bob Hendricks, Loop Biotech inventor and founder.
Have you got that song in your head now? I've got,
I want to lay you down in a bed of moss.

Speaker 20 (45:54):
Romantic, 522.

Speaker 1 (46:06):
Hard questions, strong opinion.

Speaker 2 (46:08):
Heather Duplessy-Allen Drive, with One New Zealand, awarded New Zealand's
best mobile network.

Speaker 1 (46:14):
Newstalk ZB.

Speaker 4 (46:15):
Heather, chippy alert, he's been spotted on stuff three minutes ago.
He's out of his meeting. Yeah, I'll bring you a
bit of that in a minute. 5.24. Right, where do
we start with how bonkers the green supermarket policy is?
For a start, it's bonkers to suggest that the government
could force private owners to sell their businesses to the government.
Governments and stable democracies tend to not really do that

(46:37):
because of what it will do to private investors. And
I'm not just talking about the ones offshore, but the
ones onshore as well, the ones in New Zealand, which
is to freak them out, right? Because what if, like,
let's say you're in a different industry, you own a
business in, I don't know, pick whatever. building materials. What
if the government decides it's got a problem with building
materials next, and that's happened before, and wants to start

(46:57):
just taking your business off you too? That is why
you don't do it, because private investors in any business
will freak out and start taking their money out of
the country, and we will end up poor. There is
also the problem of the cost of the Green Party policy,
which seems incredibly low. If pack and save in Albany
is was worth $ 50 million conservatively without the land and
the building five years ago, and every one of the

(47:19):
120 supermarkets the Green Party plans to buy costs the same,
they will need about $ 6 billion, not the $ 1. 3 billion
they say they will need. Plus, then they need to
get more money for the cost of the two distribution
centres that they'll be forcing the supermarkets to sell them to.
Then there is the problem of what the policy will
actually achieve. They talk of it replicating the success of KiwiBank.

(47:41):
What success of KiwiBank? It is widely accepted that Kiwi
Bank is too small to make a difference to what
any of the four big Aussie banks are doing, to
the extent that the CEO resorts to complaining about the
four Aussie banks and what they're up to in the
media to try to effect change. And then there is
the problem of Chloe wanting to punish the supermarkets for
charging too much, but then she can't say how much
is too much, which means any supermarket pricing any product

(48:03):
at any time might be overpricing it and could therefore
end up in court because they don't know what might
be unlawful or not. Is 10% too much?

Speaker 3 (48:10):
No.

Speaker 4 (48:10):
What about 15%? 16%. 17%, 18%. Who knows? Chloe doesn't know.
This is not a realistic idea from the Green Party,
starting with and especially because of taking other people's hard-earned
businesses off them by force. And isn't that a uniquely
Green Party idea?

Speaker 1 (48:26):

Speaker 4 (48:27):
Did you notice on the rugby, did you notice at
the weekend how rubbish the quality of the broadcast was?
I've been wanting to talk about this for a long time, actually.
And finally, some people noticed it and complained about it.
There's quite a lot of chat on the onlines about it.
about the extended crowd shots and how there weren't enough
replays and sort of losing the ball in action and

(48:49):
so on. Why I wanted to talk to you about this,
and I'm glad that it's been brought up, is because
I don't know if you realise how excellent our broadcasting
is of sport in this country. For all of the
failures that Sky Sport genuinely does deserve, you know, us
to beat up on them for, what we don't give
them is enough credit for how excellent they are at
bringing us exactly what is going on in the field.

(49:10):
That is very hard, actually, for a cameraman to just
follow that ball everywhere and then get the replays ready
and so on. So well done. We are over-performing in
the quality of our sports, and I'm happy for it. Right,
Huddle's with us shortly. Newstalk ZB.

Speaker 1 (49:23):
Hear what matters. The facts over the noise.

Speaker 2 (49:27):
It's Heather Duplessy-Allen-Drive with One New Zealand, awarded New Zealand's
best mobile network.

Speaker 1 (49:33):
Newstalk ZB.

Speaker 4 (49:35):
We have habeas corpus with Chippy. Well, he was briefly
out of his meeting, and he was alive and well,
and this is what he said about the rogue poll.

Speaker 1 (49:44):
I will certainly be leading Labour into the election.

Speaker 21 (49:46):
Look, I'm just not going to comment on every individual
poll between now and election day.

Speaker 17 (49:50):
There'll be increasing numbers of them.

Speaker 4 (49:52):
The one that we are really focused on is the
one that happens on election day. And this is the
other thing he said about the rogue poll. Could you explain?
what qualities of the previous poll led you to say
that it was rogue?

Speaker 1 (50:03):
Yes, but I'm not going to. Why not?

Speaker 3 (50:05):
So you're not being upfront with people around you?

Speaker 1 (50:06):
No, because I'm just not going to get into arguing.

Speaker 3 (50:08):
About every individual poll as well. Isn't that misinformation?

Speaker 5 (50:10):
Isn't that misinformation?

Speaker 22 (50:10):
Then saying, like, this is a rogue poll, but I'm
not going to tell you why I think it's rogue
because I don't want to.

Speaker 4 (50:15):
Do you still want to follow up? Sorry, sorry, sorry.
So I'm just saying, so is that misinformation?

Speaker 1 (50:21):
You've said yes.

Speaker 7 (50:21):
No.

Speaker 4 (50:22):
No, he is not phoning it in. He's putting in 100%
of his effort. We're going to have the huddle with us,
Trish Sherson and Joseph Igani shortly. But first, it's 24
away from six. New Zealand First says it will restrict
superannuation eligibility for citizens only if re-elected. They say we
spend about $ 2 million a week on migrants over 50
who move here and start claiming the super. June Ranson

(50:44):
is an immigration expert with 30 years experience, also CEO
of Woburn International. And with us, hi, June.

Speaker 3 (50:50):
Hello.

Speaker 17 (50:50):
Hello, you, Heather.

Speaker 4 (50:51):
I'm very well, thank you. Is there any point to this?
Because I thought that the migrants have to wait something
like 20 years before they could get super.

Speaker 17 (51:00):
No, Winston always comes up with something every three years. Look,
the idea, these people, when they get their residence, they're typically,
especially if they're coming in at the age of 50,
that's the height of when they're really strong schools. So
they're paying their taxes, their KiwiSaver. They're also ACC contributions

(51:23):
and they're paying all that and they need to get
something at the end of it. I've never had one
migrant come in and say, am I going to get
65 superannuation? Never, never had it. And they do need
to get it. Where your problem lies, and as far
as I can look at this, are those people that

(51:44):
come in and they're being sponsored by family members and
they do not work. They've never worked. And they are
the ones that would, in fact, end up getting the
superannuation at 65. There's no anything definitive to distinguish the
difference between those that have been legitimately working in this

(52:08):
country and deserve that as opposed to those that haven't.
That's where there needs to be a change.

Speaker 4 (52:15):
Okay. Well, what visa would those people be on?

Speaker 17 (52:19):
But they've usually come in, you're talking there about the
people that have come in that have never worked.

Speaker 3 (52:24):
Yeah.

Speaker 17 (52:24):
Typically, the ones that have come through being sponsored, so
it's a residence visa, through the family.

Speaker 4 (52:32):
So, I mean, is there any way to distinguish and
carve those people out and say you can't get the super?
Or is it actually the simplest and most elegant way
to do what Winston has done and say you have
to be a citizen?

Speaker 17 (52:43):
Now, I don't like the idea of the citizenship, and
I'll tell you the reason why. You've got a lot
of people who are working for New Zealand companies because
they're highly skilled, and they get sent overseas to work
for the New Zealand company because And they find it
incredibly difficult to be able to clock up those required

(53:07):
days in New Zealand. It may sound ridiculous, but it's
a fact. And they have to keep waiting all the time.
So you're saying, is there any way? Well, if we
say that perhaps if MBIE got their system working right
with regard to IT, then it could be captured.

Speaker 4 (53:25):
Not possible, I think, June. They will always have problems
with IT. It's brilliant to talk to you. I really
appreciate your time. June Ranson, immigration expert, CEO and founder
of Woburn International, 21 away from six.

Speaker 1 (53:35):
The Huddle with.

Speaker 2 (53:36):
New Zealand Sotheby's International Realty, a name you can trust
locally and globally.

Speaker 4 (53:41):
And on The Huddle with us this evening, we have
Trish Sherson. Sherson, Willis PR and Joe Spagani of Child Fund,
the chief executive. Hello, you two.

Speaker 5 (53:46):
Hello.

Speaker 4 (53:47):
Is that a weird policy, isn't it, Josie?

Speaker 23 (53:49):
Yeah, I mean, the basic principle is if you pay,
if you've paid, you get something back. And these people,
as she just pointed out, they've come in, they're immigrants,
they've maybe lived here for decades, they've been paying tax,
they've been paying into their KiwiSaver and so on. They
should get a superannuation. I feel like what's happening here

(54:11):
is a little bit like the Winston Peters approach, yes,
but others as well, where you do the thing you
start doing the things that voters say are not the things, right?
And what you should do is just do the things
that voters say are the things. And there's nobody going out,
as far as I can hear, saying, oh, there are
too many immigrants taking our superannuation. I mean, no one's
saying that.

Speaker 4 (54:31):
What they're saying is... Yeah, but this is what we
keep getting told, Josie, is that in the polling, in
the focus groups, migration is coming up really strongly, which
is why we're not discussing it, but there are pockets
of people discussing it, and those people vote for New
Zealand First and ACT and National, which is why all
three of those parties are releasing migration policies.

Speaker 23 (54:48):
So, yeah, they'll all be focus grouping the bejesus.

Speaker 4 (54:51):
Out of it.

Speaker 23 (54:52):
So, yeah, it will be coming out and it will
be coming out from, they'll be focus grouping very specifically for,
you know, New Zealand First or ACT voters, potential voters, right?
So I get that. But, you know, it's just a
bit of, it ends up feeling like misinformation, right? Because
there is just, isn't a big issue here. And also,
if you look at what grows our economy, it's migration

(55:13):
and It's interest rates going down, up, whatever, the cycle
of interest rates. It's the lack of productivity or the
increase in productivity. We need migrants. So, you know, why
get into this fight, really?

Speaker 4 (55:26):
It's not a big vote winner.

Speaker 23 (55:27):
I don't think.

Speaker 21 (55:28):
I think, once again, this is a headline dressed up
as an actual policy for New Zealand First, and it
is just banging the anti-immigration drums.

Speaker 20 (55:37):
A couple of examples.

Speaker 21 (55:38):
Here to just see why this is the wrong thing.
So you've got two people, right? Person A, permanent resident,
lived here for 35 years, worked here, raised a family here,
paid tax throughout, but never bothered to take citizenship. Person B,
someone who arrives later, becomes a citizen after meeting the
minimum eligibility period. If Winston's argument is contribution, how can

(56:00):
you seriously argue that person B has a higher eligibility
than person A?

Speaker 4 (56:06):
Yeah.

Speaker 20 (56:07):
So I think this falls down on this measure.

Speaker 21 (56:10):
The other thing that I found interesting yesterday in their announcement,
I think they got their numbers wrong because they were
referencing a figure, I think, of we're paying a billion
dollars a year to these people who shouldn't be eligible.
And they said that's two million a week. for this
group are receiving. But that only adds up to about

(56:31):
$ 104 million. I think they might have meant either $ 20
million a week or they've got their total figure on.

Speaker 23 (56:37):
There's another point here, though, that if you start doing
the targeting thing, and I'm a supporter of the universality
of our superannuation. We're one of nine countries, not that many,
who have universal super. And as a result, we don't
have elderly people living on the streets because they can't
pay the.

Speaker 4 (56:54):
Bills when they're old, right?

Speaker 23 (56:55):
So you start doing this targeting where you're going, ah,
we're going to target, you know, you're not a resident,
we're going to target you. Then we're going to target,
I don't know, people who don't pay, don't work for
longer years or something or other, right? You start doing
the targeting, you start saying, oh, you earn too much.
We're not going to give you superannuation. Well, then you're
starting to really diminish that universality of superannuation completely. which

(57:18):
has been an absolute winner in New Zealand.

Speaker 4 (57:20):
And before you know it, you've got elderly poverty.

Speaker 21 (57:21):
But this comes back to the bigger theme we've just
all been discussing, this election. It's all very meh and
it's all populist slop. So if you are serious about
looking at the problem, the big wave of superannuation payments
we've got, you have to look at the age of
eligibility and you have to put in a suite of
other measures around it and you should be talking about

(57:43):
KiwiSaver as well.

Speaker 23 (57:44):
And that's why Winston's doing it, right, because he's not
prepared to look at the age of eligibility. He knows
he's got to come up with something, so he's.

Speaker 4 (57:50):
Gone, I'll target the evidence.

Speaker 20 (57:51):
It's the old peanuts under the cup.

Speaker 3 (57:53):
Oh, 100%.

Speaker 4 (57:53):
Okay, I want to talk about Labour next, so let's
take a break. 17 away from 6.

Speaker 2 (57:59):
The Huddle, with New Zealand Sotheby's International Realty, the only
truly global brand.

Speaker 4 (58:04):
Nicola Lawless, Finance Minister, is with us after six o'clock,
14 away from six, back with The Huddle, Trish Herson
and Joseph O'Garney. Trish, what do you make of Labour
and where they're sitting in the polling?

Speaker 21 (58:14):
Agree with your assessment that Hipkins isn't the drag on
Labour's party vote that Luxon has been on Nationals.

Speaker 7 (58:23):
Yep.

Speaker 21 (58:23):
I think what we are finally starting to see now
in the polls is the fact that Labour hasn't even
got the campaign bus turned on, let alone backed it
out of the garage.

Speaker 20 (58:35):
Look at this weekend.

Speaker 21 (58:37):
We had three policy announcements. We had New Zealand First,
Greens and National. Nothing from Labour.

Speaker 20 (58:45):
And you had ACT?

Speaker 3 (58:49):
We did.

Speaker 21 (58:49):
So every weekend this year, everyone else has been on
this vibe, right? Sunday's your day, all get out, nothing
from Labour. Slightly different thought on this, though. If I
were both Chris Luxon and Chris Hipkins, I would be
going and reading very carefully the speech that the Maori
Queen gave on Saturday. It was an exceptional speech about

(59:13):
leadership and vision, about building a picture of the future
you want to take people on, about leaving the past
behind and setting out what the future looks like. And
I think that's why we are finding both of these
leaders so disappointing, but Chris Hipkins particularly. I could tell
you pretty much everything Chris Hipkins stands against. There's very

(59:35):
little I could tell you that he stands for in
terms of the future of New Zealand. And the way
I'm starting to feel about this is the difference between
when I look at the Waitemata Harbour versus the Hutt River.
Waitemata Harbour, sparkly and interesting.

Speaker 4 (59:51):
Hutt River.

Speaker 20 (59:52):
That feels like Chris Hipkins to me.

Speaker 23 (59:54):
How dare you, you Auckland person, you. I refute that.

Speaker 20 (59:58):
Driving down that motorway on a grey Sunday.

Speaker 4 (01:00:01):
On the shallow bits as well.

Speaker 20 (01:00:02):
Oh, very bad.

Speaker 23 (01:00:03):
But you're absolutely right that it does feel like both
Labour and National, it's charge of the lightweight brigade, isn't it?
That just not, you know, I think I said last week,
they're wandering around the country, travelling around, meeting people, stirring
up apathy. No one's getting excited, right? And you talked
about it before, Heather, people want vision. But with labour,

(01:00:23):
it's a particular problem. It's the small target problem. And
there are two problems with that. One is, you look
at someone like Keir Starmer in the UK. He did
a small target campaign, won a landslide, but then got
buried by his own landslide. So that's the problem. You
might win an election, but you're going to be a
terrible government. And the other problem with the small targets
you look at Peter Dutton across the ditch in Australia.

(01:00:46):
He ran a small target campaign for years the Liberals
were ahead in the polls. Then it came closer and
closer and closer to the election and just failed. So
it was a failure on the Liberals' part and Labour's
now doing the same.

Speaker 4 (01:01:02):
Because eventually you have to say what you stand for.

Speaker 23 (01:01:05):
More importantly, you have to deal with the frictions in
your own party. So I look at Labour now. There
are people in that party who still want to see
a ban on oil and gas. There are people in
the party who want to see, I don't know, Brexit.
banning social media giants or wealth tax or whatever, right,
or bigger capital gains tax. There's a whole lot of

(01:01:26):
different points of view. You can't deal with those differences
by having a small enough target that everybody agrees that.

Speaker 4 (01:01:34):
They like white bread. Yeah.

Speaker 23 (01:01:36):
Okay, you're going to try and do a Keir Starmer,
but Chris and the Labour Party here are not the
Labour Party in the UK after 14 years of appalling
Tory rule. So that's not going to work. So they're
going to end up like Peter Dutton, where he just
absolutely face-planted on the election. And elections are not earthquakes.
They're aftershocks. So if they leave it too late, then

(01:01:59):
the public have already had an earthquake. They've already made
up their mind. They've already gone, these are the issues
that are important to me. And they're just going to go,
you're a small target party.

Speaker 21 (01:02:06):
Well, Labour has been frothing over National's internal schmozzle. If
I were in the Labour caucus, my question to Chris
Hipkins would be, how are we polling around 25% given
that schmuzzle?

Speaker 4 (01:02:22):
I think they go lower, Trish, than 26%.

Speaker 21 (01:02:24):
Well, and here's the other thing I would say to–
God help me saying things to Labour Party strategists, but–
Thanks a lot, Trish. Learn the lesson from the last campaign.
You ignore the Newstalk ZB audience, and particularly Auckland, at
your peril. I think one of the reasons that Labour
lost Auckland so strongly last election was when Jacinda Ardern

(01:02:48):
turned off appearances on Mike Hosking. And Labour now appears
to be doing the same thing.

Speaker 23 (01:02:54):
And I'll give you one other example. You remember when
Jacinda resigned and Chippy came out and he had a baseball,
dusty baseball cap on and dirty dog glasses.

Speaker 3 (01:03:03):
Oh, yeah.

Speaker 23 (01:03:04):
And it looked great. And he talked about a policy bonfire.

Speaker 4 (01:03:07):
No, it looked really good.

Speaker 3 (01:03:09):
Working class.

Speaker 23 (01:03:09):
It looked like my family.

Speaker 4 (01:03:11):
The working class loved it.

Speaker 23 (01:03:12):
And everyone went, this is different to the, you know,
Vogue dressing designer Jacinda, right? And everyone got excited. And
he was going to chuck everything on the policy bonfire. Well,
now he wears a sort of slightly oversized suit. He
looks like a teenager who's been forced to be best
man at his mother's third wedding.

Speaker 21 (01:03:33):
I just don't think he is not comfortable as a
people person. And from here, as we've spoken about, The
leaders that are going to do well in this campaign
are the ones that can actually connect and make voters
feel something. And as I say, right now, I'm feeling
like I feel driving by the Hutt River on a
Sunday on the rare occasion I do.

Speaker 23 (01:03:52):
Enough about the Hutt River there, Trish.

Speaker 20 (01:03:53):
I'm sorry, but it's, you know.

Speaker 23 (01:03:55):
He should go back to the dirty dog glasses and
the baseball cap and just be him. You know, I
feel like he's just, he's lost a sense of himself.

Speaker 4 (01:04:01):
Is that him though? Is that him? Yeah, no, I
think that's him. Yeah, he's changed since he's got skinny,
isn't he? It's not me, it's you. Yeah, it's not
as fun anymore. It was more fun when he was fat.
All right, guys, really appreciate it. I can't believe you
just said that. If he's not coming on the show
to defend himself, you can say anything. You can say anything.
It's open slather. It's the vacuum that we're filling. Getting
rid of the broadcasting. BSA's gone, I don't care.

Speaker 20 (01:04:21):
BSA, so that's okay.

Speaker 3 (01:04:23):
Trisha, St.

Speaker 4 (01:04:23):
Joseph, Ogani. Well, Chippy, come on the show. Seven away
from six.

Speaker 2 (01:04:29):
It's the Heather Duplessy-Allen Drive full show podcast on iHeartRadio,
powered by Newstalk ZB.

Speaker 4 (01:04:37):
Heather, are you guys doing the front bench to see
I enjoyed it last time? Yes, we are, actually. Will,
thank you. We're going to, I think, Kev, producer Kev,
does the front bench start on the 4th of October?
Why have I got that in my head? Does it
feel about right? Does it? Okay, now he says it
feels about right, yeah. It's four weeks out from the election,

(01:04:58):
the Monday four weeks out from the election we start. Oh,
thank you, it is the 4th of October. Yeah, I
lodged it in there.

Speaker 15 (01:05:02):
Yep, it is.

Speaker 4 (01:05:04):
It's going to be myself and Trish and Josie and Barry.
So you're going to feel sorry for Barry, but he's
basically going to come out with boobs because there's so
much estrogen in this room. In fact, we're thinking about
just for four weeks, allowing him to identify as a
woman if he wants to. Speaking of women, there is
a piece on Business Desk you absolutely have to go

(01:05:24):
and read this evening, Inside the Crisis at the FMA. Now, look,
I'm like you, right? The 5th of October. Honestly, Kev,
you had one job. The 5th of October. Anyway, like you,
when I saw that there were stories about the FMA,
I did not care because no one wants to read
about the Financial Markets Authority when it's doing its job properly.
So no one cares when it's not doing its job properly.

(01:05:45):
Chief Executive Samantha Barris, you will have heard, has now departed.
She's basically been forced to leave, right? But this piece,
it outlines the terrible culture Several sources described an internal
project dubbed Humanising Samantha, devised to make her more relatable.
It literally included scripting conversations for her to rehearse to

(01:06:06):
then have at the water cooler with other staff. Part
of it, part of the problem there was in June 2022,
she had 300 staff of the FMA go to a
team building conference in Wellington where they were going to
discuss this new organisational strategy. It cost $ 284, 000 at the
Pipiti Amarai. Everybody was worried about doing it because there
was a winter surge of COVID. So remember, that was

(01:06:26):
when COVID was full noise. Guess what? Heaps of them
came down with COVID afterwards. Then about six months later,
nine months later, they have another conference at the Pullman
Hotel in Auckland, another $ 219, 000. Several staff members said they
voiced deep concerns about how the restructuring was causing friction
with Barris, either directly or in exit interviews. When these

(01:06:48):
concerns were raised with her, sources were taken aback at
her response, noting that she used theatrical language such as, whoa, whoa,
and thrice whoa. I can see why they had to
script some human conversations. I mean, when was the last
time you bumped into somebody and they just started doing
a bit of Shakespeare on you, eh? It's whoa, whoa,

(01:07:09):
thrice whoa. No, sounds perfect for the job. Nicola Willis,
Finance Minister with us next, News Talk ZB.

Speaker 24 (01:07:29):
Right, coming up in the next hour, Business New Zealand
wants the government to invest more in medicines because of productivity.

Speaker 4 (01:07:43):
It will lift it, obviously. They'll talk to us after
half past. Shane Solley with how the markets in our
region have reacted to the latest Middle East action and
Gavin Gray. is with us out of the UK, and
it's seven past six. And with us now is Nicola Willis,
the Finance Minister.

Speaker 3 (01:07:55):
Hi, Minister.

Speaker 15 (01:07:56):
Hi, Heather.

Speaker 4 (01:07:57):
Now, the latest poll has you at 29%, the National
Party at 29%, under 30. What's the plan to get
you guys out of there?

Speaker 15 (01:08:05):
To keep talking about our plan to fix the basics
and build the future, to highlight the proposals of the
opposition parties to impose more taxes, and to remind everyone
that a vote for National equals no new taxes.

Speaker 4 (01:08:19):
What do you reckon, when is the part of the
campaign where we're going to get the really juicy policies?

Speaker 15 (01:08:26):
Well, we've been delivering a lot of policy, whether that's
universal KiwiSaver, extending paid parental leave, extending eligibility for first-time loans,
reducing the student loan repayment rate. We've been delivering a lot,
but we're still waiting for Labour, aren't we?

Speaker 4 (01:08:42):
Yeah, what is going on with Labour?

Speaker 15 (01:08:44):
What is going on with Labour?

Speaker 4 (01:08:46):
I have no idea.

Speaker 15 (01:08:48):
Very low energy. I wonder whether internally they're conflicted, whether
they've actually got one half of the caucus pulling one
way saying let's spend and tax up a storm, and
then whether they've got Hipkins in the corner saying, oh, no,
I'm afraid if we say that, we'll look the same
as we did last time and people know that doesn't work. Look,
I don't know. That would be for Labour to explain.

Speaker 4 (01:09:10):
Are they maybe leaving their run late deliberately and so
just kind of being a no-show at the minute and
then they're going to really peak about a month out?

Speaker 15 (01:09:19):
I don't think that works because actually people still understand
the fundamentals, which is they're proposing to tax more, spend more,
borrow more. And they did that last time. So people
know what that delivers. And you can dress that up
and you can put lipstick on it and you can
call it all sorts of things. But if that's the
ultimate proposal, I just don't think that that's a winner.

(01:09:41):
And what campaigns are about is the contrast between the
government and the opposing parties. If I look back over
the past three years, the opposing parties have made much
of the fact that we've had a challenged economy, but
they haven't actually been coming up with answers. They've thought
it's enough to sit in the corner and complain.

Speaker 4 (01:10:00):
Are you still 100% ruling out opportunity?

Speaker 7 (01:10:03):
Yes.

Speaker 4 (01:10:04):
So what's the strategy here? Are you hoping that if
you keep ruling them out, they come in under 5%?
They just don't make it over the top?

Speaker 15 (01:10:11):
Well, it's a simple strategy, which is they stand for
a universal land tax and a universal income. We do
not believe in either of those policies.

Speaker 4 (01:10:20):
Yeah, but they said they don't have to do those immediately, right?
They said that's like future, future, future stuff. It's not
going to happen in the next three years.

Speaker 15 (01:10:27):
Their whole policy platform is built on a belief that
they should tax hardworking Kiwis more in order to provide
universal benefits to everyone. And we just.

Speaker 4 (01:10:37):
Fundamentally disagree with that philosophy. Totally fair. But I mean,
this poll that we're talking about currently, which is a
Taxpayers Union Curia poll, is slightly out of step with
the other polls. The other polls say you still need opportunities.
This is quite a risky thing for you guys to do,
isn't it?

Speaker 15 (01:10:51):
I don't think so. I think we need to provide
a clean proposal to the New Zealand electorate so that
when they go to cast their party vote, they can
have complete confidence. A party vote for national means no
new taxes. It means continuing to build a strong economic
future and continuing our work to fix the basics.

Speaker 4 (01:11:08):
Listen, I looked at your national first home buyers policy
over the weekend. I'll tell you what I'm worried about
here is why are we treating people who earn $ 300, 000
combined like they need government support?

Speaker 15 (01:11:21):
Well, because we want to see more people in home ownership,
and there are many people who are going to buy
their first home who can service the mortgage. They can
pay the fortnightly mortgage, but they're having a challenge getting
together their deposit because normally that deposit needs to be 20%
of the value of a home.

Speaker 2 (01:11:40):
Mm-hmm.

Speaker 15 (01:11:42):
This policy allows them to get in there with a 5% deposit.
And so it gives a leg up because fundamentally, we
believe in home ownership and we want more young New
Zealanders to be able to realise that aspiration.

Speaker 4 (01:11:54):
OK, but if people on $ 300, 000 with a family are
struggling to raise a deposit, so will people on $ 500, 000.
Why have a cap at all?

Speaker 15 (01:12:02):
Well, we didn't want a situation where we were giving
assistance to millionaires or billionaires.

Speaker 4 (01:12:09):
But you're giving assistance to people who earn three. Either way,
it's kind of awkward, isn't it? Because you're still giving
assistance to people who are in a really good wicket.

Speaker 15 (01:12:17):
Well, we think that there are still people in that
income bracket who will be struggling to get to a 20% deposit,
but whom on a 5% deposit will get into a home,
will be paying down their mortgage, will actually be investing
in their own future, will be independent of the state.
Because the great thing about homeownership is is it's really

(01:12:38):
closely correlated with people not needing housing assistance, not needing
income assistance, not needing additional assistance when they retire. So
we want more Kiwis owning a home.

Speaker 4 (01:12:47):
So what I'm trying to get to is what I'm
worried about is that we are creeping higher and higher
and higher in the pay bands that we think somehow
these people need government help, right? And if we're putting
numbers on it, would it not be better off rather than,
you know, in your case, you're giving childcare assistance to
people on a quarter of a million dollars, which is
a good wicket. Now we're helping people on $ 300, 000 into
their house. Would we be better off just not putting

(01:13:09):
a number on it so we stop making beneficiaries out
of really high-earning people?

Speaker 15 (01:13:14):
Well, as I say, in this case, we're not making
them beneficiaries. By definition, these are people who will be
paying for their own home rather than relying on the
state for ongoing assistance through an accommodation allowance or some
other form of state support. And we think that if
you've got more people independently paying down their own mortgage,
that's good for their financial security and it's actually good

(01:13:36):
for smaller government as well.

Speaker 4 (01:13:37):
Did you see S & P just before the weekend
said there's very little difference between your fiscal policy and
Labour's fiscal policy?

Speaker 15 (01:13:44):
Well, I saw SMP's report and I took the positive
news from it, which is that they've affirmed our AA
plus rating, which I take as a tick in the
box that says, yes, the government has credible fiscal and
growth plans and deserve to have good credit from the rest.

Speaker 7 (01:14:00):
Of the world.

Speaker 4 (01:14:01):
And they're not worried about whether Labour wins the next
election because it stays there regardless.

Speaker 15 (01:14:06):
Well, what I took from that was that they said
that historically there's been a reasonable bipartisanship when it comes
to debt and spending in New Zealand. And really, you
can reflect back to Michael Cullen, even Grant Robertson. They
always aspired to keep spending and revenue to 30% of GDP.
We have recently had a big departure from that consensus

(01:14:29):
with Barbara Edmonds and Chris Hipkins saying, no, no, we're
going to shoot for the stars. 33% is where it's at.

Speaker 4 (01:14:35):
That's not that high. Aren't you aiming for 30?

Speaker 15 (01:14:39):
Yes, we're aiming for 30. 33% represents around $ 10 billion
more every year.

Speaker 4 (01:14:45):
Yeah, 30 is high though as well. It's like kind
of shades of the same thing.

Speaker 15 (01:14:50):
Well, no, 30 actually, if you look back historically, is
about average, is about where it's been. And we think
that's realistic and achievable. In fact, I set out in
our budget, our plan to get there, particularly because we've
had to claw it back from the 34% it hit
under the last Labour government. So we're on track to
achieve that. Labour are proposing to spend and tax billions more.

(01:15:13):
That is a real departure from what's historically been New
Zealand's norm.

Speaker 4 (01:15:17):
Hey, have you got your bed tax replacement announcement coming soon?

Speaker 15 (01:15:20):
We do.

Speaker 4 (01:15:21):
And are you announcing that you're going to use the
international visitor levy?

Speaker 15 (01:15:26):
As we've discussed on the show previously, yes, we do
think the international visitor levy is the correct place to
go to make sure that local councils can get more
revenue to fund the extra costs associated with tourism.

Speaker 4 (01:15:40):
How much of it are they getting?

Speaker 15 (01:15:42):
I am going to let you wait. One more sleep, Heather.

Speaker 4 (01:15:45):
Is it coming tomorrow?

Speaker 15 (01:15:47):
One more sleep.

Speaker 4 (01:15:49):
Exciting. I probably am not going to sleep tonight, Nicola.
Just waiting for you.

Speaker 15 (01:15:54):
I can't wait to discuss it with you next week.

Speaker 4 (01:15:55):
I'm going to be so tired. You're so tired tomorrow
for this. I really appreciate it, Nicola Willis, Finance Minister.
Let me give you the numbers really quickly before we
get to Shane Solley. We've got the NZX 50 down 0.22% today.
ASX 50 is up 0.19% so far today. Barrel of
Brent crude oil is costing you US $ 93. One New
Zealand dollar is worth US $ 59. 82 Aussie cents. 51

(01:16:18):
euro cents, 43 UK pence and 91 yen. 16 past six.
One thing I've noticed is when the property market slows,
people start looking at what they can do to improve
the home that they've already got. And one of the
biggest transformations you can make is in the kitchen, eh?
And that's why I think you do it kitchens are
really clever. They have been doing kitchens for 50 years

(01:16:39):
and they've worked out exactly how to give people a
custom made kitchen, but without that eye-watering price tag. Now,
what I really like here, and you're going to like
this too, is that you're not stuck with the standard
sizes and They've got a use size it system, which
lets you customize the cabinets to suit the space you've
got in your kitchen. And then you've got a huge
range of colors and finishes and upgrade options to choose from.
Really make it yours. The whole thing is manufactured right

(01:16:59):
here in New Zealand. Once your design is finalized, it's
dispatched to you in just seven days. Plus, if DIY
isn't really your thing, they've got local experts who are
just an email away to answer your questions. So search UDOIT.
That's U-D-U-I-T and see why their customers proudly say, I
did it myself.

Speaker 1 (01:17:17):

Speaker 5 (01:17:18):
Oh, you know what?

Speaker 4 (01:17:19):
We've got to talk about Shane Jones. Shane Jones is
handing out the money again, and I do not like this,
and I'm going to run you through it when we
get a chance just before half past six. It's 19 past.
Shane Solly, Harbour Asset Management's with me.

Speaker 3 (01:17:30):
Hey, Shane.

Speaker 17 (01:17:31):
Evening, Heather.

Speaker 4 (01:17:32):
How have the markets in our part of the world
reacted to what's going on in the Middle East?

Speaker 14 (01:17:36):
Yeah, so the Brent oil price, it's gone up about 1.5%
to 97.70 after this tit-for-tat strikes between Iran and the U.S.

Speaker 3 (01:17:44):
Over the weekend.

Speaker 14 (01:17:45):
It hasn't actually slowed the Asia-Pac markets down. The MSCI
Asia-Pacific share market, it's up 1% today, led by strength
in the Korean semiconductor chip manufacturers. The big reason why
they've gone up is because OpenAI, one of these big
foundational models, is launching a new model called GPT-6. Got

(01:18:05):
the market excited about potential boosting demand for AI computing power.
Closer to home, New Zealand share market down 0.2%. A
little bit of weakness in Fisher & Parkway Healthcare in
Britain and Auckland Airport. Tonight, we had the US share
market close, so there'll be a bit of a delay
on the reaction in the US to the Iran-US situation
kick off.

Speaker 1 (01:18:25):
All right.

Speaker 4 (01:18:26):
Now, I see Trump wants some Fed cuts. Is there
actually a case for the cuts?

Speaker 14 (01:18:31):
The short answer is no. The economic data, it's just
too hot. On Friday, we had a very strong non-farm
payroll number out.

Speaker 3 (01:18:37):
In the US.

Speaker 14 (01:18:37):
The market had been picking to be 55,000 people get
a job, but it was actually 162,000. So unemployment rate
in the US is at 4.1%. It's just making it
very hard for a rate cut. In fact, it's or
bits on a September rate hike come through. This week,
we've got US producer price inflation, a European Central Bank

(01:18:58):
rate hike and US consumer price inflation out. It's going
to make a pretty rough tone for rate markets later
this week.

Speaker 5 (01:19:06):
That's for sure.

Speaker 4 (01:19:07):
Now, are we seeing some signs we might have a
recovery underway?

Speaker 14 (01:19:11):
Yeah, look, I think we are seeing some grinding numbers
coming through. It's not even going less bad. It's starting
to look positive. Tomorrow, we've got NZ manufacturing activity data out.
And then later in the week on Friday, we've got
the businesses on performance, the manufacturing index data out. I
think it's a bit of a flip of the coin
here that if the data is better, then it certainly
reminds us the economy is quite resilient. If it's not,

(01:19:34):
if it's a bit weak, then it's going to take–
some pressure away from the RBNZ to hike rates. Tomorrow,
we've also got Westpac Consumer Confidence and NAB Business Confidence
out in Aussie. That's important because that economy has been warm.
It's actually starting to slow a bit. Look, I think,
you know, early days, companies we've been talking to are
suggesting things are still a bit tough. They're being cautious,

(01:19:57):
but they're being cautiously optimistic, mainly because they're getting their
costs under control here. So, you know, certainly there's a
little bit of optimism starting to creep in out there.

Speaker 4 (01:20:04):
Yeah, good stuff. I'm so pleased to hear it. Shane,
thanks very much, mate. Shane Solly, Harbour Asset Management. Heather,
I love the 5% deposit option. This is the only
way I'm going to get into an Auckland house, paying
large rent to teenage boys with a lot going on,
keeping us in a good area with great schools, reduces
the ability. I'm a solo dad with business struggles. Listen,
I'll tell you what, I love the 5% option as well.
I just wonder if we just take the cap off, right?

(01:20:25):
Because if you start putting numbers on like $ 300, 000, then
that normalises the idea that that you need to be
providing some sort of welfare to support to people who
are on $ 300, 000. And then you've got people who are,
you know, now we're providing, I don't know if you're
aware of it, but Nicola's providing childcare assistance to people
who are on $ 250, 000. So it starts to creep up then.
Before you know it, we're just doing middle-class welfare all

(01:20:46):
the time. I think you take the cap off, let
everybody have an option for the 5%, and then there
wouldn't be a number that we can attach to welfare dependency. 623.

Speaker 2 (01:20:55):
It's the Heather Dupercy-Allen Drive full show podcast on iHeartRadio,
powered by Newstalk ZB. Whether it's macro, micro, or just
plain economics, it's all on The Business Hour with Heather
Dupercy-Allen and Maz Insurance and Investments.

Speaker 1 (01:21:12):
Your futures in good hands. Newstalk ZB.

Speaker 4 (01:21:15):
Right, Shane Jones. So Shane Jones loves handing out money,
that party, don't they, New Zealand First? The latest money
he's been handing out is the first recipient to the
Gas Security Fund. Now, I don't know if you recall this,
but this was a fund of, I think it was
about $ 200 million that they set up to find more gas.
And the first recipient is Todd Oil and Gas, which
is going to be given up to $ 23. 5 million in

(01:21:38):
loans to attempt to extract more gas from the existing
onshore fields in Taranaki. My question to you is why?
Why are we giving– and Todd only has to put
$ 10 million of their own money in. Why are we
giving Todd money? It's privately owned by the Todd family.
They are estimated to be worth $ 3. 5 billion. I would
have thought that they've got more than enough money. This–
I mean, middle-class welfare grinds my gears, but corporate welfare

(01:22:01):
grinds my gears even more because there is no explanation
for it. And Shane is not– but with the sounds
of things, Shane has provided very little detail even to
the point that he won't say what rate they're paying
on the loan. Because apparently that's commercially sensitive or something.

Speaker 7 (01:22:16):
Why?

Speaker 4 (01:22:17):
Why is it commercially sensitive? What are they going to do,
pull out of the deal if we know what it is?
In which case, tell us.

Speaker 1 (01:22:21):
627.

Speaker 4 (01:22:22):
There's no business like show business. A long-rumoured top-secret documentary
is about to finally see the light of day. It's
about Elizabeth Holmes. You remember her? She's the former billionaire
who founded the blood-testing company Theranos. She claimed that her
company had developed technology that could test for a range

(01:22:43):
of diseases using just a single drop of blood. Obviously,
it didn't work. And then she was convicted of fraud
and she was sent to prison. But a month before
she went to jail, she invited a camera crew to
document her life and tell her side of the story.
But it wasn't just any old camera crew. It was
Nathan Fielder, who's the Canadian comedian and filmmaker behind some
of TV's most bizarre and elaborate documentary projects. If you

(01:23:03):
don't know Nathan Fielder, his comedy is really dry and deadpan,
but his projects can be quite big. In his HBO series,
The Rehearsal, he spent millions of dollars recreating entire buildings,
airports and other environments so people could rehearse real-life social situations.
In the first trailer for his new documentary, he does
not seem to be a fan of Elizabeth Holmes.

Speaker 18 (01:23:23):
I don't have anything to deceive you on. Of course
I'm not deceiving you. I'm engaging with you as a
human being. Why would I deceive you?

Speaker 3 (01:23:35):
There's no.

Speaker 18 (01:23:37):
There's no reason for me to do that.

Speaker 1 (01:23:42):
Okay. All right. Okay, good shot.

Speaker 4 (01:23:50):
It had a secret screening at the Film Festival in
Telluride last night and the newly released trailer promises it
will hit theatres sometime in October. How good.

Speaker 7 (01:24:00):
All right.

Speaker 4 (01:24:01):
I'm going to circle that one to watch. Business New
Zealand next on why it wants the government to invest
more in medicines. Newstalk ZB.

Speaker 2 (01:24:08):
Everything from SMEs to the big corporates. The Business Hour
with Heather Duplessy-Allen and Maz.

Speaker 1 (01:24:15):
Insurance and Investments. Your futures in good hands. News Talk ZB.

Speaker 4 (01:24:22):
Gavin Gray is out of the UK for us in
10 minutes time. Weta, by the way, well done to Weta.
I mean, talk about a consistent achiever. Weta FX has
been given an early Emmy Award. For the work they've
done on the final season of Stranger Things, they did
most of the visual effects. There was some anti-aging, de-aging
that they did and stuff like that. So well done them.
They're always doing well, aren't they? 24 away from seven. Now,
Business New Zealand is calling on the government to invest

(01:24:44):
more in medicines. It's released a report which says for
every dollar that the government puts into medicine, it returns $ 1. 93,
basically double it to the economy. And the CEO of
Business New Zealand is Catherine Rich.

Speaker 3 (01:24:54):
Hi, Catherine.

Speaker 1 (01:24:55):
Good evening.

Speaker 3 (01:24:56):
Good evening.

Speaker 4 (01:24:57):
How does that work? Is it basically every bit of
medicine we give people makes it more likely that they
go to work? That's right.

Speaker 13 (01:25:05):
And I think it's something that a lot of your
listeners would think to be a known truth, but we've
just collected the economic evidence for it. If you spend
more on medicines and try and get the expenditure for
New Zealand up around the OECD average, There'll be long-term
benefits for productivity, people turning up at work, let alone

(01:25:27):
the quality of life for a lot of New Zealand families.

Speaker 4 (01:25:30):
What medicines would you like to see more money put into?
What are the ones that are going to provide the
greatest return?

Speaker 13 (01:25:37):
Well, Pharmac has quite a good system already in terms
of analysing new medicines and they put They do an
analysis and make sure that it's a good investment, but
they have about 134 medicines currently on their books that
they've ticked all the boxes for, but they just can't
fund due to not having sufficient budget. And a lot

(01:25:58):
of those medicines relate to cancer. The most recent high-profile example,
which is a good one, would be the recent funding
of Trikafta for cystic fibrosis. Now, that was a drug
where It was very clear that funding that could add
up to 27 more years of a healthy life for

(01:26:19):
a Kiwi. And it took a long time. Now, there
are others in the pipeline right now. It takes up
to six years to get a.

Speaker 4 (01:26:26):
New drug through.

Speaker 13 (01:26:28):
And these are drugs that are available freely, not just
in Australia, but around the globe.

Speaker 4 (01:26:33):
So, Catherine, I mean, obviously the stuff that abates cancer
and allows somebody to live for decades, it's very expensive stuff,
would work quite well. But does it also include things
like antivirals, which might mean that you only take a
couple of days off instead of seven?

Speaker 20 (01:26:47):
Yes.

Speaker 13 (01:26:48):
I mean, that's why Business New Zealand gets involved in
these sorts of issues, because we'd argue that health is
one of the biggest assets you own as a person
and as a contributor to the economy. If you're healthy,
then you can go to work, you can contribute. And
it certainly, if you're treated well, it keeps a lot
of people more active. And I think one of the

(01:27:09):
things that's concerned many people who have advocated for greater
funding is that we all know that we have a
health system here that doesn't deliver modern medicines that are
freely available elsewhere. Sometimes drugs are treating people around the
world for up to a decade before we even see
them here. And that's why we argue for greater funding

(01:27:32):
of medicines in New Zealand, at least to the OECD average.

Speaker 1 (01:27:34):
Probably.

Speaker 4 (01:27:36):
Which is what, 13.3% and we're at 4.9%.

Speaker 7 (01:27:38):
13.3%.

Speaker 13 (01:27:38):
Yeah.

Speaker 17 (01:27:39):
In Australia, 12.2%.

Speaker 13 (01:27:42):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:27:44):
But that's a huge amount of money that we have
to lift it by, right? Where are we going to
get that from?

Speaker 13 (01:27:50):
It is a significant amount of money and it does
require a reapportioning of current health budgeting as well as
an uplift. But it's worthwhile because if you know your
family members have access to modern cancer drugs, or drugs
for diabetes, depression, you name all the various ailments. We

(01:28:11):
do know that it will have an impact on people
being available for work, but of course, improving their quality
of life.

Speaker 4 (01:28:20):
Catherine, it's good to talk to you as always. Thank
you for your time. Catherine Rich, Business New Zealand CEO.

Speaker 1 (01:28:25):
Heather Dupacy-Allen.

Speaker 24 (01:28:26):
Hey, I'm surprised.

Speaker 4 (01:28:28):
I forgot to talk about this and no one picked
me up on this, but one of my first questions,
in fact, my first question to Q. Le Wong is,
was are you relieved that you're at 4.5%? And nobody
asked me why I asked that question and I didn't
explain it.

Speaker 1 (01:28:40):
Myself.

Speaker 4 (01:28:40):
So let me ask, let me explain myself to you
really quickly. The last poll that they were in put
them at 9%, right? That is just like impossibly high
for them. That's ridiculous. So the problem that they were
facing was that they were going to keep on going
up and keep, keep, keep, keep, keep going close to
the election and then crash once the scrutiny came on them.
It looks like, I wouldn't call this a crash, them

(01:29:00):
sitting at 4.5. I wouldn't say it doesn't go quite
that far, but they've come back enough. for it to
be a recalibration. This may be the other side of
the peak, right? So the peaks, they're coming down again
and now they can build themselves up. They should be
relieved by that. They've taken the punishment already and they've
still got, which is basically like two months to the
day before the election so they can still build themselves

(01:29:22):
from here. Jeez, have you seen what's happened to the
guy in America who was the host of Wheel of Fortune?
This is wild. Chap's name is Jim Thornton. He was
on a plane in May And he was sitting on
his laptop and he's sitting in the aisle seat in
like economy way back where somewhere, right? So it's all
cramped and stuff and he's got his laptop out and

(01:29:43):
he's typing. And another passenger who's sitting on the other
side of the aisle leans over and sees what he's
doing and takes a photograph and then sends it to
the cops and alerts the airline hostess and clearly has
now also, because this happened in May, has clearly now
also alerted the media. He's sitting there on his laptop

(01:30:03):
on that plane with people all around him, having a
chat in a pedo chat group. How weird is that?
He's talking about how he's going to go look at
some photos of kids. He's talking about how he goes
to look at places where there are really cute kids,
little hot little girlies, like gross, doing this in full view.
And I don't know if you've ever seen anything like this,
but when they go into their weirdo pedo chats, It's

(01:30:24):
like old school typing. I don't really know what I'm
talking about here because I don't go on the dark
web and I don't really know what. But, you know,
it's like that, like, 1990s computer typing. I don't know why.
Maybe because it's untraceable or it's, like, encrypted or some stuff. Anyway,
the flight attendant comes over, tells him to shut his laptop.
He then freaks out, realises he's been busted because, of course,
he has because he's sitting on a crowded plane. He panics.

(01:30:47):
He starts Googling on his phone whether anyone could, you know,
online trace to the chat room that he was hosting.
The chat GPT or whatever it is tells him no. Unfortunately, though,
of course, for him, but fortunately for the rest of
us so we can know what a creep he is,
the passenger who busted him took a photograph and then
sent it to the media, told the cops and stuff.
Cops greeted him when he came off the plane. He's
been fired following a thorough investigation into the alleged incident.

(01:31:10):
Just how brazen can you possibly be? 17 away from 7.

Speaker 2 (01:31:23):
If it's to do with money, it matters to you.
The Business Hour with Heather Duplessy-Allen and Maz Insurance and Investments.

Speaker 1 (01:31:31):
Your futures in good hands. News Talk ZB.

Speaker 4 (01:31:35):
Tell you what, there's some very cool footage that's up
at the moment of a crash in the China GT
Championship in Shanghai on Saturday. Guy who crashes his car
is a British racing driver, Ollie Milroy. And he crashes
his car really badly and he's in a Ferrari and
it bursts into flames. And then a Dutchman pulls up
immediately after him. And the camera footage is from inside

(01:31:55):
the Dutchman's car. And you can see the Dutchman just
fling himself out of his own car, run back and
grab something. I don't know what he grabbed, maybe a
penknife or something like that, and goes and runs over
to the British guy's car, starts fighting the flames, tries
to drag him out, gets a fire extinguisher, puts the
fire out, drags him out the other side. That guy
basically saved the British guy's life. It's very, very cool

(01:32:16):
that there are people who are competing against each other
and are prepared to stop and put the other person first,
14 away from seven. Gavin Gray, UK Correspondents with us now. Hi, Gavin.

Speaker 3 (01:32:26):
Hi there, Heather.

Speaker 4 (01:32:27):
What do you make of the AFD in Germany getting
this poll result?

Speaker 11 (01:32:31):
Yeah, this is a big, big moment in German electoral history.
The far-right party Alternative for Deutschland, or AFD, has now
been declared as a decisive victory in Germany's eastern state
of Saxony-Anhalt. And not just was it a victory, it
was a big victory. They've secured 43.8% of the vote.

(01:32:53):
The Conservative CDU, one of the big parties normally, just
at 17 percent. So less than half that vote. These
are interim results. We don't know them yet. Saxony-Anhalt's a
small population, just 2.1 million. But the AFD is very,
very popular there. And it looks like they are probably

(01:33:13):
going to get 39 seats of the 83-seat parliament. So
that is a slightly short of the 42 required for
an out-marked majority. But these are preliminary results. But it
sends a huge alarm bell around Germany now to say, look,
the Alternative Deutschland, which is pro-Russian, what would that mean
for Ukraine, is looking to try and minimize references to

(01:33:36):
Hitler in history books and teaching and so forth. and
is very anti-migration. So all of those things are going
to come into play now, and we're going to see
how these negotiations get on to form some kind of
a working majority. Now, the leaders of AFD say we're
not going to just form some kind of a coalition
for the sake of it. If necessary, we'll call another

(01:33:57):
election in order to try and get an outright majority.
But the mechanism of that is far from clear.

Speaker 1 (01:34:02):
Okay.

Speaker 4 (01:34:03):
These anti-migrant protests that are happening, is someone organizing them?

Speaker 1 (01:34:09):
Yes.

Speaker 11 (01:34:10):
And very well organized, actually. It's a guy called Danny
Tomo or Daniel Thomas is his full name. He is
an associate with the better known far right activist Tommy Robinson.
He was live streaming the latest incident. So last night,
our time, hundreds of protesters gathered in Portsmouth, Portsmouth, right
down pretty much in the middle of the south coast
of England. And they were there because a boat carrying

(01:34:33):
around 140 migrants in a single dinghy were rescued in
the English Channel and brought ashore there. Now, this is extraordinary.
I think it's the first time that one of these
migrant dinghies has ever actually come ashore in Hampshire. Mostly
they're down to the extreme southeast coast, and the fear
is now this will open up a new route in.
But what the protesters doing were all in black. It

(01:34:56):
seemed almost entirely men wearing face coverings and balaclavas were
trying to prevent the coaches that had been pulled up
by the British government. were trying to prevent those coaches
from leaving the city area and going to an immigration
processing centre. And they didn't succeed. There was a dispersal
order that was limited and out of pushing and to-ing

(01:35:20):
and throwing with the police, but pretty limited. And they're
pledging to carry on more, saying we must stop the boats.
But this is the second incident... in just two days.
The first was down at Dover, down at the very
busy ferry port.

Speaker 4 (01:35:33):
Okay, so they want to stop the boats, but the
boats arriving, I mean, the problem isn't at your border,
is it? It's at the French border. So what are
they hoping to achieve?

Speaker 11 (01:35:42):
I think they're hoping to pressure the government into the
whole immigration thing becoming unworkable and so unpopular that in
the end, they hope to get the government to be
more serious about stopping it at source.

Speaker 1 (01:35:54):
In other words, in the EU.

Speaker 4 (01:35:55):
Okay, I see what you're saying.

Speaker 3 (01:35:57):
All right.

Speaker 4 (01:35:57):
Now, how do you go about petitioning the king? What's
the process?

Speaker 3 (01:36:02):
Very complicated.

Speaker 11 (01:36:03):
This from the Jamaican government, which is meeting today the
king and are going to present to King Charles a
petition over slavery reparations. So the petition asks for three questions.
The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, the country's highest court,
is going to be asked over the legality of the
enslavement of Africans in Jamaica and And the three questions

(01:36:27):
are whether the enslavement of Africans in Jamaica was legal
under British law, whether it broke international law, and whether
Britain now has a legal duty to provide redress. Well,
back in 2015, the then Prime Minister David Cameron ruled
out making reparations, saying it was a very sorry saga,
but it had all been sort of done and dealt with,
because when it was abolished in 1833 across most of

(01:36:48):
the British Empire, the British government paid then 45 million
New Zealand dollars to slave owners in compensation. But that,
of course, was to the slave owners and not to
the slaves. Incidentally, the loans taken out in 1833 were
only paid off a decade ago. Now, of course, the
Jamaicans appear to be coming back and wanting money for

(01:37:09):
those reparations. I think the government is saying, we'll listen
to you. We need to work together to improve both countries, etc.
But I don't see any money forthcoming because, of course,
if they start with one country, there will be an
awful lot more coming.

Speaker 1 (01:37:21):
Down the road.

Speaker 4 (01:37:22):
Yeah, too right. Gavin, thank you very much. As always,
good to talk to you. Gavin Gray, UK correspondent. Heather,
I bet if you got rid of everyone in the
health department that had communication or policy analyst in their
job title, you could afford any number of drugs. Now
you're speaking my language. Eight away from seven. Heather, touche
is what I'd say to the last test. Stop it, friend.
We're all going to start agreeing with each other on

(01:37:42):
this show in a minute. Heather, maybe Pharmac could contract
the mongrel mob to bring the drugs in. Do you
know what Angus, like, I mean, you, okay, you've got
kernel of a good idea there, but I wouldn't go
for the mongies. Because what the mongies are doing is
they're just redistributing stuff that they're getting from within the country. Now,
we don't have these drugs in New Zealand, right? So
what we need is we need to bring the big guns,
the Comancheros. That's who you want to get. to bring

(01:38:05):
the stuff in, and the Vietnamese, as who you want
to get to bring the stuff in from offshore. So,
you know, if we're getting to the point, I mean,
once Chloe and those guys are finished, you know, communising
our supermarkets, and New Zealand first breaks up the gen tailors,
maybe we are going to be so poor that we're
going to have to rely on basically nicking cancer drugs
from other First World, from, sorry, I say other like
we still are, from First World countries. And in that instance,

(01:38:28):
that's when we call them the common heroes. For now, though,
I think we can probably see if we can just
work ourselves out of this, just try and earn a buck.
By the way, do you know how I was telling
you last week about what was going on at the
US Open with the influencers and their ring lights and stuff?
Turns out that is because the US Open created an
accreditation category. So if you are a member of the media,

(01:38:49):
you can get accredited, right? And then you go and
sit there and report on it. And they have a
special category as part of the accreditation for influencers. So
they were basically inviting this problem and 100 influencers were accredited.
So they knew they were going to have this trouble
with all these people getting a bit squiffy on the
Aperol spritz and then, I'm taking photos of me, babes. Anyway,
it's not going to happen at Wimbledon because they're not

(01:39:10):
putting up with it. They are not having an accreditation
category for for the influences, and they prohibit spectators from
going on court with any items which, in the reasonable
opinion of the All England Club, may be used to
disrupt any matches played at the championships. So it's not
going to happen there.

Speaker 22 (01:39:24):
Andy, thank the Lord. The old ways are the good ways, Heather.
That's right. Thank God for them. Now, you mentioned a
song earlier called Bed of Moss, which I ended up
spending an embarrassingly long amount of time looking for.

Speaker 3 (01:39:37):
Is it this one?

Speaker 4 (01:39:38):
Is it Bed of Roses? Yeah, why didn't you just
ask me?

Speaker 22 (01:39:40):
Well, because I kind of wanted to surprise you.

Speaker 4 (01:39:43):
Oh, you're so sweet. I can't wait to get engaged
to you.

Speaker 21 (01:39:47):
Yeah.

Speaker 24 (01:39:49):
Neither.

Speaker 22 (01:39:50):
Anyway, that's the song we've got today.

Speaker 4 (01:39:52):
You're so weird.

Speaker 1 (01:39:55):
Do you hear what you just.

Speaker 5 (01:39:56):
Said to me?

Speaker 7 (01:39:57):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:39:58):
Do you know, because you were like, it worked in
my head. Well, that all made sense. This is producer Andy,
by the way, because Ant's is still on his extended rave.
His three-week rave. Andy, are you with us tomorrow?

Speaker 1 (01:40:09):
I'm not with you tomorrow.

Speaker 4 (01:40:11):
Oh, how will I be surprised at the end with
a random song? Hey, you have done a fantastic job.
Thank you for listening. No one would have noticed that
Ants wasn't here. I'm going to head off before I
ruin Andy's day. And see you tomorrow on Newstalk CB.
I want to lay you down in the bed.

Speaker 11 (01:40:29):
Of roses.

Speaker 18 (01:40:52):
On a bed.

Speaker 14 (01:40:54):
Of nails I want to.

Speaker 8 (01:40:59):
Be Just as close as The Holy Ghost is May you.

Speaker 13 (01:41:02):
Know The bed of roses The bed of.

Speaker 2 (01:41:08):
Roses For more from Heather Duplessy-Allen Drive, listen live to
News Talk ZB from 4 p.m. weekdays or follow the
podcast on iHeartRadio.

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