Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Huddle with New Zealand Southeby's International Realty Find you're one.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Of a kind onion breath hither. I can smell it
from Hawk's bait you. No, here's the thing, because you're
only getting a forty percent onion flavor. You're not getting
the onion breath, are you?
Speaker 3 (00:12):
So? You that?
Speaker 2 (00:13):
So maybe if you want to, you know, munch down
on an onion and then head out for a hot date,
this is your guy to go to because you're not
going to be You're not gonna be chasing any vampires
away with us? Are you with us? On the huddle
we have Trish Sherson and Stuart Nash. Hello you too?
Speaker 3 (00:27):
Hello here there's Trish. How are you well?
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Thank you? How are you going? Trish? I'll see you
faced your onion away from me though.
Speaker 4 (00:33):
So Stuart, you know you're lucky you're not in the
studio because I walked in, I had a cut onion
thrust under my eyes and been treated like some sort
of human guinea pig.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
Do you want to? I tell you what would you
take a little nibble on that for me and just
tell me what you think flavor wise? If we're getting
if we're getting, like, I think it's a forty percent.
Speaker 4 (00:53):
You smell o breath, Trish, Well, what do you think.
I'm a big onion fan and I think, like with anything,
there's no free lunch, so you're not going to get
the no teens compromise. There's a trade off.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
Here, yeah, and are you tasting that trade off?
Speaker 4 (01:07):
It's not too bad, Yeah, not too bad, but not
the full oomph Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
Okay, anyways to you. So, I don't know if you
you probably don't care in the slightest about this, but
what you probably love to do is have a crack
at the government. So what's your reaction to the fact
they've only reduced the public servants by two thousand.
Speaker 3 (01:24):
At the bottom line? As as David Seymour was out
after the budget having a real go at the government.
This is a This is an Associate Finance Minist's saying
publicly that the government hasn't cut spinning enough. In fact,
he was the one that highlighted that Grant Ronson was
spending less in our years of this government spending now.
So but for me, it's not about cutting. It's not
(01:45):
about the number of public servantship cuts, the quality of
services deliver and I just don't think there's been a
notice will increase at all. In fact that I think
there's been an erosion in the quality of publics.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
Were you surprised by that trush to hear it was
only down by two thousand after all of this.
Speaker 4 (02:00):
Well, I heard the Prime Minister this morning on the
interview with Mike Hosking and he was sort of dancing
around the head of a pin on this and trying
to say, oh, look, this is all about getting outcomes
in the front line. There's a couple of things here.
One is I think for the government there is a
divergence at the moment between what they're saying and the
(02:23):
results that New Zealanders are actually seen on the ground.
So even if you take the economy, you know there's
a lot of hype.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
Around going gangbusters, going.
Speaker 4 (02:34):
Gangbusters, Well that's just not the not the case, and
there is a there's there's a real danger in that
because you know New Zealanders are they're still in tough times.
It's a big grind and they really want to see
that you know that there is a there is an
end in sight.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
Yeah, don't you think Stu, that we realize as voters
that there is something close to something of a crisis
going on at the moment right the country is in
a really bad way and tough decisions have to be taken.
And part of the problem here is the government is
not being seen to take those decisions.
Speaker 3 (03:09):
They're not they're not. You know, Chris Lucksen made a
virtue with the fact that you know he knows how
to run a country because he ran in New Zealand. Well,
well news, Chris country, New Zealand is not in New Zealand.
And just because you run a big corporate it doesn't
mean you know how to run a country particularly effectively.
And I agree with Trisha. I agree with the vast
majority of people I talked to, and including a whole
(03:29):
of your list, is no doubt who were saying these
guys made a whole lot of promises around how they
were going to drive economic growth and productivity, They're going
to get rid of the cost of the eleven crisis,
et cetera, et cetera. Nothing has happened after eighteen months.
So there's a whole lot of people out there who
voted for Luxem because he was the CEO of the
in New Zealand, who have every right feel a little
bit disappointed at this point in time, I would say,
I would.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
Say, so what do you think, though, Trish? The counterfactual
is if they were prepared to take the really tough decisions,
and I think I think Ruth Richardson was talking about
this yesterday on Q and A, where you know, you
have to take the decisions that will potentially lead people
to hate you. If they took it, would they be
more popular?
Speaker 4 (04:07):
Well, while we're putting the slipper in, it is good
to recognize that there are some big reforms happening. So
the RIMA stuff that is really good stuff, the education
stuff that is really good stuff. My concern is that
in terms of the economy, there is a propensity to
(04:27):
go after the easy, shiny things on the periphery. I mean,
think about how much energy has been expended on pumping
up the investment boost for companies. Look, it's great, but
at the moment companies have to have the capital available
to be able to invest and to get the investment
for both.
Speaker 3 (04:45):
Sure, it's not great. Will I see that it's going
to increase GDP by one percent over twenty years and
the investment boost was the you know, was the crowning
glory in her budget one percent over twenty years. I
don't think that's particularly aspiration of the truck.
Speaker 4 (05:00):
Well this is the issue, though, isn't it.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
You know?
Speaker 4 (05:03):
I know you referenced earlier Heather the eighty four love
Labor government and look at what Ruth Richardson had to
do in nineteen ninety. In my view, we have got
away from governments who really want to get under the
hood of serious policy issues and address them, whether or not.
That means, you know, you might be in for you know,
(05:26):
not for a long time, but that is really the
purpose of being in parliament. And I think that really
hard policy grunt work isn't happening as much as it
should be. I know it's easy to say that from
the outside, but look at you know, other debates that
are going on at the moment, the likes of superannuation,
(05:46):
and it's hard to get a read on are we
really going to tackle that.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
Or are we not?
Speaker 2 (05:51):
Are you so tris what you're saying is they're putting
their reelection chances ahead of making those really tough calls
that actually we need to make as a country.
Speaker 4 (05:57):
On balance, if I look at what's happening right now,
I would say yes, if the rhetoric is right that
we have come through and we're still in the worst
recession historically, then that means the decisions that you making
are making are very big, the structural and the fundamental,
and they aim to getting that structural debt fixed up.
Speaker 3 (06:21):
I would go a little bit further than that. I
think any government can make changes if they go to
the public with a bold vision and then they say
this is where we want the country to be and
pick a time ten twenty thirty years out and this
is what we need to do enable in order to
be able to achieve that. What I would say around
this government is there is actually no bold vision that
(06:41):
people can buy into and look at and go oh yeah, okay,
that's why they're doing this. It just seems very it's
not even business as usual. It's sort of muddling on
through with a strong dose of mediocrity.
Speaker 4 (06:52):
Well well and rich coming from you, stew.
Speaker 3 (06:58):
I'll tell you what I will agree with you. Look,
I agree with you. I think in twenty twenty to
twenty twenty three we had an opportunity to be really
transformational because we had over fifty percent of the vote.
And I don't think that the second term of our
government we took advantage of that when we absolutely should have.
And that's a you know, that's a story for another day.
But we had that opportunity, we didn't take advantage. But
(07:20):
this government has learned nothing from any other government and
so there is no vision, There is no bold aspiration.
It is just like I said, it's just mediocrity, which
is not good for our country at this point in time.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
All right, we'll take a break, come back to you guys.
It's thirteen minutes away from six.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
The Huddle with New Zealand Southeby's International Realty achieve extraordinary
results with unparallel reach.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
Back with the Huddle Stuart Nash and Trisherson. Stu, what
did you make of the sick leave debarcle today?
Speaker 3 (07:48):
I always listened to that interview and I thought to myself,
I didn't know that this was one of their policies.
And I also thought to himself, well, they've pissed off
every single woman in the country with pay equity, and
now they're going to piss off every single work of
cutting back sickly to five days. Wow. And then I
read that it actually wasn't one of their policies, and
I heard Brook van Belden being interviewed earlier on she
(08:08):
said everyone's got to allow to be a human and
I'm going here, but the Prime Minister should know the policies.
I thought that was unbelievable, but you know Chris Lackslin's
track record, it wasn't surprising, to be honest, What do
you think, Chrish.
Speaker 4 (08:22):
I listen every Monday to that interview with the PM
because it's a good setup, particularly for the huddle, and
I think if you went and analyzed pretty much every
one of those weekly interviews, there would be something on
a scale of small to big gaffs that someone picks
up on during the day. So the most recent example
(08:44):
I thought of was when there was the stoush over
banning social media for under sixteens. The Prime Minister was
on being interviewed about it and he said, oh, well,
you know ACT was opposed to it, but they are
changing their position over the Weekendavid Semol was out within
about five minutes saying absolutely no, we're not and there
(09:05):
are You know that this sounds a little bit like
telling someone how to suck eggs. But when I listen
to Chris Luxen, I often think of two great acronyms
that can help you in your work life not dig
yourself into holes with talking too much. Number one is wait,
why am I talking? Number two is waste? Why am
(09:26):
I still talking? And I think that's often where these
gafts come from. It's from wanting to not say no,
I don't know, no, we're not doing that and and
sort of really take take take the bull by the
horns in these interviews, rather than trying to be the
nice guy.
Speaker 2 (09:45):
Yeah, is he trying to be too agreeable to you?
Is that what's up?
Speaker 3 (09:49):
Yeah? Well, you know, Mike is a mass interviewer, you know,
second only to you here that and you know I
love that wait and waste. I wish I knew that
five years ago. But but you know, he has the
ability to draw things out of people in a way
very very few other interviewers are. And I agree with you.
I think Chris likes to be liked. He knows that
(10:11):
his media performances in the past haven't been great Chris luctnesses,
and so if he agrees with Mike and gets Mike
on side, it's all goes he thinks it all goes
very well, but then you end up with this pr
disaster where you've got his coalition partner on saying well, no,
we're not going to do that, and we discussed that
about a year ago and decided we wouldn't go down
(10:31):
that track. I mean, I don't know what's going on
the ninth floor, but I do know. You know, whenever
I was a minister, and I've seen what the Prime
minister gets when you're about to go on a show
like Mike Costking or hither Duke to see Allen, you
brief like there is no tomorrow, so you are over
every single topic that could possibly be asked. And I
don't know if his press sex just aren't giving him
(10:52):
the briefing notes or what's going on. But as Tri said,
it just seems to be gaff after gaff after gaff
and he's just not learning. It's quite surprising.
Speaker 4 (11:00):
I think the problem is it goes to that underlying
theme of inauthenticity that's coming across and that's why there's
just no traction being gained in the preferred Prime Minister
ratings because there's really nothing for you to grasp onto
when you listen to these interviews apart from the odd mistake.
Speaker 2 (11:17):
Yeah, okay, listen, how's your onion breath?
Speaker 4 (11:20):
Well, as I said to you, it's it's a strong
onion breath that I wouldn't normally have at ten minutes
to six on a Monday night. It's unusual.
Speaker 2 (11:29):
I apologize, I'll see I'll dig out some mints for you. Attack.
That's our huddle's evening, Trecious and stud.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
Ash for more from Heather Duplessy Allen Drive. Listen live
to news talks it'd be from four pm weekdays, or
follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.