September 30, 2025 • 10 mins
Tonight on The Huddle, former Auckland mayor Phil Goff and Conor English from Government relations firm Silvereye joined in on a discussion about the following issues of the day - and more!
US president Donald Trump recently unveiled a 20-point peace plan for Gaza. Do we think Hamas will agree to this? Could this be a gamechanger - or just another plan that goes nowhere?
Should Kāinga Ora have negotiated better to get more for the Dixon Street apartments in Wellington?
The CTU is calling for electricity generators to be returned to public ownership ahead of the Government's big energy announcement. What do we make of this?
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
On the Huddle of Us this evening, we have Phil
Goff and Connor English high lads. Listen, Phil, I want
to talk to you about Trump's peace plan. Has this
got any chance of working? Do you think?
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Well? You hope so, because you want to support any
move that will end the slaughter of just numerous civilians.
You know, sixty six thousand people Palestinians killed. Now some
of them would have been harmassed, and I'm not shedding
tears over that they were combatants, but a third of
them are kids. And you see the suffering there at
the moment, and you say that there's got to be
(00:33):
a way of bringing a sustainable peace there. The plans
promising for a couple of reasons. One, it's supported by
neighboring Arab countries and the Palestinian authority and Mettaya who
has also accepted it. But you know it's it doesn't
answer all the questions who provides the peacekeepers, who provides
the money to rebuild? And will the parties either harm
(00:56):
us if they agree to it and Israel if they
agree to it, keep their word because they're both notorious
for failing to keep their word and breaking their promises.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
Yea feels a little bit like Hummas has been snookered
here Connor they have to agree to it otherwise they
become the bad guys all over again.
Speaker 3 (01:14):
Yeah. I think Donald Trump has the art of the negotiator.
Hopefully it comes off, and hopefully he can do something
that plenty of the presidents before him haven't been able
to do, which is to get sort of declared police
amongst the parties in the Middle East.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
I feel the thing here that has disappointed people is
that there is no talk in the steal of a
Palestinian state. But it feels like it is kind of
laying the groundwork for a Palestinian state, isn't it.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
Well, you'd hope so, because the two state solution that
everybody except Israel seems to agree to and supported by
the United States, is the obvious solution. There are two
people that have their homeland on one piece of land,
Palestinians that were pushed out when Israel was formed. Everybody
understands why Israel formed and the aftermath of the Holocaust,
(02:03):
but they deserve to have a decent future, a decent present. First,
now to survive the present and build a decent future
for their kids and those that follow, and it can't
be just a case of having peace and not finding
a long term solution that gives them some hope for
the future, because there's one thing that feeds terrorism, and
that's firstly when you have no hope that nothing's going
(02:26):
to get better, and secondly, when you watch your members
of your family being slaughtered by attacks and starving, it's
hard not to hate the people that are doing that
to you.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
Right, Okay, now, Connor the Dixon Street apartments in your
part of the world, Does someone at KO need to
be fired for selling them to the EWE for one
million dollars, who within three weeks sold them for three
million dollars to someone else.
Speaker 3 (02:53):
Well, it's hard to know all the details, but on
the face of it, that does seem like a a
bit of a rise over a short period of time.
I suspect when they sold it they were looking at
getting rid of what was probably quite a big liability
with earthquake e strength thing, although that might be different
today than what it was a couple of days ago,
and I suspect they were looking at it more as
(03:14):
let's get rid of the liability off their books, and
so we're prepared to take very little to just get
rid of the future costs of operating that building.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
That's not being very good at business, is it.
Speaker 3 (03:25):
Well, you'd like to think they've got the full market value,
or they could have got it. Then. I don't know
how they went to market or how they really didn't.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
But doesn't this look on it to you?
Speaker 3 (03:33):
Like?
Speaker 1 (03:33):
What may potentially have happened here is old ian Castle's
the developer got hooked up with the EWI, and so
the EWIE gets first right of refusal. EWIE buys it
for one million, sells it to ian Castle's for three million,
And that just seems like a really tidy way of
making sure that it never goes to the open market
and achieves its full value.
Speaker 3 (03:52):
Well, there maybe some people who speculate on that process.
I just don't know enough about it either, Phil.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
What do you think has happened here?
Speaker 2 (04:00):
Well, it is certainly a liability. The cost to remediate
and strengthen the building is something like one hundred and
twenty five million, which puts you know, whether the price
was one million or three million into context. Having said that,
I think that if King Aura and its minister is
going to sell it for one million, and three weeks
(04:22):
later the purchaser, whether it's EWE or anybody else, sells
it for three million. That raises some pretty big questions
and I think you need a lot more transparency and
accountability around what happened. Now, yea, the EE we had
the first right of refusal, but you don't have to
sell them. You don't have to sell it to them.
And the question is whether they could have sold it
directly to Castles or whether an agreement between Castles and
(04:47):
the EWI prevented that. Now, if that were the case,
then King Aura should simply come out and say we
did not have that option. But you know it is
public money and therefore you want to make sure that
you're not gifting a couple of million dollars for somebody
that simply exites an intermediary holding the property for two weeks.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
Yeah, Connor, I need to ask you this question, which
I haven't warned you about at all. Did you watch
the Ragby?
Speaker 3 (05:10):
I did watch the rugby, the Wallabies and the Willbecks
and what did you think of the flyover? Well? I
was at the Athletic Park on the last day that
they played a game there with the French and seven
four seven short wheelbows threw over and it was awesome
being in the crowd because you.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
Sound plane nuts at the moment you were playing nut.
Speaker 3 (05:31):
Yeah, I do quite like planes, but often at these
sporting events like Formula one and that they do sort
of have fighter jets flying over, don't they. And those
two planes that he were slightly different than that.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
Well, I feel it was so weird to me. Was
it not weird? The reason we're talking about it obviously, fellers,
because it turns out it cost US twenty thousand dollars
to send the two planes over the top, we find
out today. But was it not weird to just all
of a sudden flecks on the Aussies when we didn't
flex on any other team.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
I didn't get to see the game because I went
down the beach, so I missed them and the black ferns.
But yeah, probably it probably was a little bit. I'd
have a bit of excitement for the crowd. I mean,
the thing that I remember about it is after an
appalling weekend the previous weekend, we had a consolation of
a win over the Aussies and at least the bronze
(06:18):
medal for the for the Black ferns. So yeah, I was.
I thought a good weekend of Rugby four in New
Zealand hell of a lot better than what had preceded it.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
That's true. I surprise, We'll take them. We'll go with
the glass half full thing. What did you what did
you make kind of of Richard Waggstow's idea earlier?
Speaker 3 (06:38):
Well, look, I think he's got a point that the
price of energy and the cost of energy to not
any consumers but to business is really crucial in the
economy and society, and it is too expensive. And so
I'm just hoping that the government, when they make whatever
announcements they make tomorrow, change the incentives on on the
gen taylors so that there is more incentive to generate
(07:01):
more power and lower prices, because at the moment, I think,
you know, there is more generation coming through, but clearly
not a muff to get ahead of the demand, and
we are running a risk on the resilient side of things,
of potential blackouts if we have a particularly dry year.
So I don't know what the regulation is going to be,
(07:22):
but it needs to be something that makes the difference.
And I also think we need to build a few
more dans around the place to build the resilience up
a bit.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
You're probably right on that, Phil having a crack at
the gen Taylor's. I mean, look, they have a role
to play in it, but it does feel like addressing
the wrong problem at the moment, which seems to be
that we're wildly running out of gas.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
Well, I think there's a number of problems and you
have to address all of them. One of the critical
problems you've got to address, and this is the problem
with privatization, is that a private company comes in, it's
really tempting to take the money, feed it out and
dividends to your shareholders that keeps them happy, but not
make the investment you need to make in the future.
Now we're seeing that in Ireland with Kiwi Rail when
(08:02):
we privatized it and they simply ran the thing down,
took the money out and we had to end it
up bringing it back into public ownership. But more recently
I also saw it in London where we were supplied
by Thames Water. Thames Water took a fortune and dividends
out of providing water for the city of London and
(08:22):
its surrounding area and left it as an absolute cotcase,
it's about to go bankrupt. That the water quality and
the reliability isn't great, and it's because they did just that.
They sucked out the dividends. They didn't reinvest. Now, if
the government owned it and did that, you could hold
them to account. How do we hold the private sector
to account?
Speaker 1 (08:43):
Well, I meant you can, can't you? You basically you
get rid of the management. Like there's a shareholder revolts.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
Well, well, the shareholders are happy because they got the money.
It's the consumer that's unhappy, and the consumer that doesn't
have the pah.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
I mean still, I take your point, but yearholder aren't
going to be happy when they start getting the regulation
coming at them because these guys have been running the
show badly, right, which is a threat.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
Yeah, well, shaholders will end up being unhappy. But in
the meantime, they'll take the money and run. Yeah. Look,
I'll put myself on the line. In twenty eleven, I
opposed the partial privatization of the companies. And why did
I do that? Because I knew the companies that they
are natural monopoly. They were producing a high return. I
wanted to see that high return go back into investment.
(09:27):
And go back to the public that actually paid in
their tax dollars to build the dams and all the
other things. And you know, it is a strategic asset.
And when the power supply doesn't work, it damages the
rest of industry. And we've seen those damages, you know,
with the spikes and power prices and the closure of
a whole lot of our manufacturing industries because they haven't
(09:48):
planned well enough. Now, that's in part the responsibility of
the private sector, also in part the responsibility of the government.
We could have been doing a whole lot more, a
whole lot sooner. And you know, you know my put.
I'm always keen on renewable energy, both because it doesn't
produce carbon emissions, but also because it's a hell of
a lot cheaper to generate from.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
All right, guys, listen, thank you, I do appreciate it.
Phil GoF Connor, Englisher Huddle this Evenings.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
For more from Heather Duplessy Alan Drive, listen live to
news Talks.
Speaker 3 (10:17):
It'd be from four pm weekdays, or follow the podcast
on iHeartRadio.
On the Huddle of Us this evening, we have Phil
Goff and Connor English high lads. Listen, Phil, I want
to talk to you about Trump's peace plan. Has this
got any chance of working? Do you think?
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Well? You hope so, because you want to support any
move that will end the slaughter of just numerous civilians.
You know, sixty six thousand people Palestinians killed. Now some
of them would have been harmassed, and I'm not shedding
tears over that they were combatants, but a third of
them are kids. And you see the suffering there at
the moment, and you say that there's got to be
(00:33):
a way of bringing a sustainable peace there. The plans
promising for a couple of reasons. One, it's supported by
neighboring Arab countries and the Palestinian authority and Mettaya who
has also accepted it. But you know it's it doesn't
answer all the questions who provides the peacekeepers, who provides
the money to rebuild? And will the parties either harm
(00:56):
us if they agree to it and Israel if they
agree to it, keep their word because they're both notorious
for failing to keep their word and breaking their promises.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
Yea feels a little bit like Hummas has been snookered
here Connor they have to agree to it otherwise they
become the bad guys all over again.
Speaker 3 (01:14):
Yeah. I think Donald Trump has the art of the negotiator.
Hopefully it comes off, and hopefully he can do something
that plenty of the presidents before him haven't been able
to do, which is to get sort of declared police
amongst the parties in the Middle East.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
I feel the thing here that has disappointed people is
that there is no talk in the steal of a
Palestinian state. But it feels like it is kind of
laying the groundwork for a Palestinian state, isn't it.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
Well, you'd hope so, because the two state solution that
everybody except Israel seems to agree to and supported by
the United States, is the obvious solution. There are two
people that have their homeland on one piece of land,
Palestinians that were pushed out when Israel was formed. Everybody
understands why Israel formed and the aftermath of the Holocaust,
(02:03):
but they deserve to have a decent future, a decent present. First,
now to survive the present and build a decent future
for their kids and those that follow, and it can't
be just a case of having peace and not finding
a long term solution that gives them some hope for
the future, because there's one thing that feeds terrorism, and
that's firstly when you have no hope that nothing's going
(02:26):
to get better, and secondly, when you watch your members
of your family being slaughtered by attacks and starving, it's
hard not to hate the people that are doing that
to you.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
Right, Okay, now, Connor the Dixon Street apartments in your
part of the world, Does someone at KO need to
be fired for selling them to the EWE for one
million dollars, who within three weeks sold them for three
million dollars to someone else.
Speaker 3 (02:53):
Well, it's hard to know all the details, but on
the face of it, that does seem like a a
bit of a rise over a short period of time.
I suspect when they sold it they were looking at
getting rid of what was probably quite a big liability
with earthquake e strength thing, although that might be different
today than what it was a couple of days ago,
and I suspect they were looking at it more as
(03:14):
let's get rid of the liability off their books, and
so we're prepared to take very little to just get
rid of the future costs of operating that building.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
That's not being very good at business, is it.
Speaker 3 (03:25):
Well, you'd like to think they've got the full market value,
or they could have got it. Then. I don't know
how they went to market or how they really didn't.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
But doesn't this look on it to you?
Speaker 3 (03:33):
Like?
Speaker 1 (03:33):
What may potentially have happened here is old ian Castle's
the developer got hooked up with the EWI, and so
the EWIE gets first right of refusal. EWIE buys it
for one million, sells it to ian Castle's for three million,
And that just seems like a really tidy way of
making sure that it never goes to the open market
and achieves its full value.
Speaker 3 (03:52):
Well, there maybe some people who speculate on that process.
I just don't know enough about it either, Phil.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
What do you think has happened here?
Speaker 2 (04:00):
Well, it is certainly a liability. The cost to remediate
and strengthen the building is something like one hundred and
twenty five million, which puts you know, whether the price
was one million or three million into context. Having said that,
I think that if King Aura and its minister is
going to sell it for one million, and three weeks
(04:22):
later the purchaser, whether it's EWE or anybody else, sells
it for three million. That raises some pretty big questions
and I think you need a lot more transparency and
accountability around what happened. Now, yea, the EE we had
the first right of refusal, but you don't have to
sell them. You don't have to sell it to them.
And the question is whether they could have sold it
directly to Castles or whether an agreement between Castles and
(04:47):
the EWI prevented that. Now, if that were the case,
then King Aura should simply come out and say we
did not have that option. But you know it is
public money and therefore you want to make sure that
you're not gifting a couple of million dollars for somebody
that simply exites an intermediary holding the property for two weeks.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
Yeah, Connor, I need to ask you this question, which
I haven't warned you about at all. Did you watch
the Ragby?
Speaker 3 (05:10):
I did watch the rugby, the Wallabies and the Willbecks
and what did you think of the flyover? Well? I
was at the Athletic Park on the last day that
they played a game there with the French and seven
four seven short wheelbows threw over and it was awesome
being in the crowd because you.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
Sound plane nuts at the moment you were playing nut.
Speaker 3 (05:31):
Yeah, I do quite like planes, but often at these
sporting events like Formula one and that they do sort
of have fighter jets flying over, don't they. And those
two planes that he were slightly different than that.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
Well, I feel it was so weird to me. Was
it not weird? The reason we're talking about it obviously, fellers,
because it turns out it cost US twenty thousand dollars
to send the two planes over the top, we find
out today. But was it not weird to just all
of a sudden flecks on the Aussies when we didn't
flex on any other team.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
I didn't get to see the game because I went
down the beach, so I missed them and the black ferns.
But yeah, probably it probably was a little bit. I'd
have a bit of excitement for the crowd. I mean,
the thing that I remember about it is after an
appalling weekend the previous weekend, we had a consolation of
a win over the Aussies and at least the bronze
(06:18):
medal for the for the Black ferns. So yeah, I was.
I thought a good weekend of Rugby four in New
Zealand hell of a lot better than what had preceded it.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
That's true. I surprise, We'll take them. We'll go with
the glass half full thing. What did you what did
you make kind of of Richard Waggstow's idea earlier?
Speaker 3 (06:38):
Well, look, I think he's got a point that the
price of energy and the cost of energy to not
any consumers but to business is really crucial in the
economy and society, and it is too expensive. And so
I'm just hoping that the government, when they make whatever
announcements they make tomorrow, change the incentives on on the
gen taylors so that there is more incentive to generate
(07:01):
more power and lower prices, because at the moment, I think,
you know, there is more generation coming through, but clearly
not a muff to get ahead of the demand, and
we are running a risk on the resilient side of things,
of potential blackouts if we have a particularly dry year.
So I don't know what the regulation is going to be,
(07:22):
but it needs to be something that makes the difference.
And I also think we need to build a few
more dans around the place to build the resilience up
a bit.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
You're probably right on that, Phil having a crack at
the gen Taylor's. I mean, look, they have a role
to play in it, but it does feel like addressing
the wrong problem at the moment, which seems to be
that we're wildly running out of gas.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
Well, I think there's a number of problems and you
have to address all of them. One of the critical
problems you've got to address, and this is the problem
with privatization, is that a private company comes in, it's
really tempting to take the money, feed it out and
dividends to your shareholders that keeps them happy, but not
make the investment you need to make in the future.
Now we're seeing that in Ireland with Kiwi Rail when
(08:02):
we privatized it and they simply ran the thing down,
took the money out and we had to end it
up bringing it back into public ownership. But more recently
I also saw it in London where we were supplied
by Thames Water. Thames Water took a fortune and dividends
out of providing water for the city of London and
(08:22):
its surrounding area and left it as an absolute cotcase,
it's about to go bankrupt. That the water quality and
the reliability isn't great, and it's because they did just that.
They sucked out the dividends. They didn't reinvest. Now, if
the government owned it and did that, you could hold
them to account. How do we hold the private sector
to account?
Speaker 1 (08:43):
Well, I meant you can, can't you? You basically you
get rid of the management. Like there's a shareholder revolts.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
Well, well, the shareholders are happy because they got the money.
It's the consumer that's unhappy, and the consumer that doesn't
have the pah.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
I mean still, I take your point, but yearholder aren't
going to be happy when they start getting the regulation
coming at them because these guys have been running the
show badly, right, which is a threat.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
Yeah, well, shaholders will end up being unhappy. But in
the meantime, they'll take the money and run. Yeah. Look,
I'll put myself on the line. In twenty eleven, I
opposed the partial privatization of the companies. And why did
I do that? Because I knew the companies that they
are natural monopoly. They were producing a high return. I
wanted to see that high return go back into investment.
(09:27):
And go back to the public that actually paid in
their tax dollars to build the dams and all the
other things. And you know, it is a strategic asset.
And when the power supply doesn't work, it damages the
rest of industry. And we've seen those damages, you know,
with the spikes and power prices and the closure of
a whole lot of our manufacturing industries because they haven't
(09:48):
planned well enough. Now, that's in part the responsibility of
the private sector, also in part the responsibility of the government.
We could have been doing a whole lot more, a
whole lot sooner. And you know, you know my put.
I'm always keen on renewable energy, both because it doesn't
produce carbon emissions, but also because it's a hell of
a lot cheaper to generate from.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
All right, guys, listen, thank you, I do appreciate it.
Phil GoF Connor, Englisher Huddle this Evenings.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
For more from Heather Duplessy Alan Drive, listen live to
news Talks.
Speaker 3 (10:17):
It'd be from four pm weekdays, or follow the podcast
on iHeartRadio.
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