Hilda. I'm Chelsea Daniels and This is the Front Page, a daily podcast presented by The New Zealand Herald. While twenty twenty four may not have brought the shocks of cyclones, prime ministerial resignations or election campaigns, there's a lot to digest from the last year. The government delivered tax relief, gang crackdowns and a fast Track bill while dealing with
controversy over Maulti relations, smoking laws and apartment entitlements. Tibatti Maldi led the fight against the Treaty Principal's Bill, while Labor began to rebuild from its election loss and the Greens contended with rogue MPs and personal tragedy. Inflation started to fall, but a tough economy saw thousands loose their jobs, including the end of iconic news brands, Maulti dam farewell a King and welcomed a new Queen, while the British
monarchy was dealt a double cancer below. Globally, conflict continued across Ukraine and Gaza, while the year of elections delivered a new PM for the UK and an old president for the US, and fans around the world found time to hold space for brat Summer Wicked, the Menendez Brothers
and the Errors Tour. Today on the front page for our final episode of twenty twenty four, we're discussing all the highs and lows of the year with Coast host Lorna Riley and Enzied Herald business editor at Lange, Liam Dan. Let's start with politics. One year in and the Coalition government has achieved a lot, but it doesn't feel like their successes have cut through their more controversial policies. Hey, and we've seen multiple polls show doing a pretty even
split between the two sides. Lorna, what are you hearing from callers? Are people liking this government?
I think the consensus is that they are achieving a number of things, but they seem to be things that nobody asked for. Cell phone bans and schools, for example. I know they say there was a great call from schools and children apparently, but it seems to be not that way at all. My daughter is using her phone at school. They're all doing it undercover. It's all the book camps. I probably don't need to go into details about those. Nobody really asked for those, and they don't
necessarily seem to be working raising speed limits on certain roads. Again, I don't recall great lobbying for that, changing Waka Kotahi New Zealand Transport Agency to New Zealand Transport Agency.
Work them around.
I don't think that was necessarily a priority. All these things. They've been in doing all these things, but nobody really asked for them. And I'm pretty sure nobody asked for one point four billion dollars to be from our health sector. But nevertheless, here we are. So they've certainly been busy. I'll give them that.
Yeah, Liam, do you reckon? They've been busy.
Yeah, Look, I agree with Lorna. I think they've been chipping away incrementally at some pretty important things for the economy. So business will say great, there's been some regulations shifted
around to make doing business a bit easier. They've been, you know, getting the fiscal situation under control to some extent, but they're still getting beaten up by the right and the left on that because they're not going as far as the right would like, further than the left would like, so they kind of.
Get caught there.
But yeah, it's sort of it's all been overshadowed a bit by these some of those other things that Launa mentioned, policies that they've had to do for the coalition partners.
I mean, the Treaty Principles bill stands out to me as one that just maybe there's a debate there, but right now New Zealand needed to come together after COVID and obviously it's sort of David Seymour thinks it works for him and his party, but you know, it just has felt like a lack of leadership probably from the top to sort of get a cohesive narrative about bringing New Zealand together. We just didn't need that division this year.
Well it's unclear that that was even one of act's bottom lines. Nevertheless, it did enter the coalition agreements, and of course the big winner out of it would be David Seymour, and I bet he's going to bring it up again in twenty six.
But saw of the latest polls and was he the big winner or was it actually to party Maori. You know, like ACT didn't shift that much. It looked like they'd got a little bit, he had gone up a bit, they'd taken a bit off New Zealand first, because that's sort of the space they're playing.
I don't know. I think ACT.
You know, that's there's plenty of things ACT could be doing to reform the economy. They're getting if you listen to the commentators that you'll read in the you know, the Business Herald from the right, there are a lot of things they'd like to be see focus on that aren't this, that are actually to do with the economy, and that's you know, really what bottom lines should be for ACT as economic stuff.
Well, Liam, what are you hearing from the business community, what do they want to see from the coalition?
Well, you know, because ident to get so use the word productivity this early in the part. You know, so, look, they're actually quite the mainstream business community is actually quite happy with some of the changes that have been made.
Inflation is under control, whether you say, you know, Nikola Willison, Christopher Luxen claiming that you know that's that's to do with their policies working with the Reserve Bank, or whether it would have happened anyway, whatever, you know, we've got inflation under control, interest rates coming down, some of those top line economic statistics are starting to head in the
right direction. But I think there is a feeling that there's a need for a bit more urgency around the kind of economic reform and change and innovation that will drive some real economic growth, because it looks pretty flat from here, there isn't much driving it.
Und percent of people say you're out of time.
Well I just say to you, I think I am, because I'm out and about talking to New Zealanders. I've done that right from when I've come to politics. It's been a belief system of mine. If you don't talk to the customer, to the to the public, to the people, the voters and actually find out what their concerns are, and their concerns are really play back in. It's interesting to use.
That word though, Ay you just used the c word customer.
Well, just because of my background of it, when you've lost in business.
Do you need to ditch down on him?
Just talk a little bit more normally. Prime Minister Christopher Laxon is bearing the brunt of criticism at the moment. Lorna, how would you rate his performance out of ten so far?
Oh? Oh, I'd say you've got a problem. For a start, when your deputy says that you're struggling.
That was unbelievable.
Unbelievable, And when your deputy says that the tax cuts you put forward are unaffordable. That's problematic, although Winston did vote for them. So it's interesting that he says that.
Now.
I'd probably give him a I think a six, maybe a six and a half. I think nobody envies him pulling together a coalition that includes Winston and David Seymour, but he hasn't shown it. I don't think any decisive leadership. He's come out with some I think fatuous statements, like he said that he said that the Crown and Marty relationship was the worst, was worse now than it was a year ago, but he blamed that on labor for
their treatment of Marty. Now, that is just being blind, I think to the division that the Treaty Principals Bill has brought in. So I think that's really disingenuous on his part. And for that, yes, six and a half I think.
Liam yeah somewhere around that.
I mean, I do feel some sympathy for him, because you know, he's not a career politician, he's a career executive, and so he is used to things being organized around him and things, you know, generally having the team all going the same direction and he's got to deal with Winston Peters and David Seymour, who loved them or hate them, two of the savviest political operators country scene for generations, and you know, he's struggling there.
So unfortunately for him though he you know, in recent memory, we've had John Key, who also was not a career politician, who came in and got stuff done. And so even though I take your points, you can't help but compare to John Keys, and it.
Is a tough comparison.
I think I might have talked about it before on this podcast, but you know the difference between Key, who was a trader compared to a corporate executive and a trader as a decision maker. He ended up managing people as a currency trader, but essentially he made his way by making split decisions, trusting his gart learning how to sort of make calls. I don't think Christoph Luxe is
terrible at that, but he's not. Where he's not been great is probably articulating it really strong, too much corporate gobbledygook.
Yeah, well, the corporate speak. Actually I spoke to Christopher Luxan for that end of your chat yesterday and he was it was a surprise to him. I pointed out that he says what I what I say to you is and he said, nobody's ever told him that he says that much. Incredible, And I thought to myself, I cannot be he first, do you know what I mean? I cannot be the first person to let you know that this is yours.
We talked about that in advance and I thought he said it so much now and he said it again as press as a joke that I thought what he was leaning into it to sort of make it a thing and they would be just having these discussions in the background about you know, it's a classic just Andra dun had her version is a classic way in a press conference or whatever to buy yourself seven seconds to think of an answer.
Sure, you know, And that's part of but never noticed apparently.
So on the other side, the opposition really isn't really capitalizing. I guess on this negativity. Was it a good year for labor greens into part Maori in a nutshell?
No, I don't think so. I think in a year where they really could have made some traction, they've been relatively quiet. And I say that mainly about labor. I think, yeah, they've just been invisible.
To my mind, the opposition in recent memory has just been to PARTI Mali.
Right.
Yeah, well, I guess because that issue has dominated so much. But you know, it's been a bit of a disaster of the year for the Greens with all sorts of personal internal issues, so that sort of put them on the back foot a bit.
I guess.
Chloe Swarbrick would normally be really out there attacking things, and she hasn't been as much. And you know, it isn't an election year, and look, it makes it kind of makes sense given the mood of the public that Labor's stepped back a bit, because you know, they are the party that's just been in charge, and all the inflation and the recessionary stuff. It's pretty easy to look back and say.
Well, you know that was on your watch here.
Yeah, yeah, and people are pretty unhappy about it. So you've got to let a bit of time go, I think, and almost give that the new guys a chance to do things and maybe get some things wrong, and then you're away again as an opposition.
Well, speaking of division, we're a month away from Trump two point zero. What do you think we can expect from the next four years from the US launa.
I'm hoping more great memes like they're eating the dogs, They're eating the cat.
As soon as they made that into a remixed track, I couldn't, I couldn't get out of my hand.
It's my meme of the year. I know we're not talking of means of the year, but it is anyway, well interesting that you said, Liam, that you know we're looking forward to more interest rate cuts, and yet you know, some experts are predicting that with Trump and his tariffs coming in, the interest rates could actually swear here. So that is a problem for US, the hight tariffs. It may create some opportunities with other trading partners like China. So I guess we're gonna have to suck it and see.
But if he brings in the tariffs, that's the thing he's promised them. But I mean, he's got a free trade agreement with Australia. How's it all going to work. I guess we just have to wait and see a little bit.
And on the campaign trial his numbers were everywhere. I think he was promising fifty percent tariffs, eighty percent pariffs, like all of the percentage more.
On everything, and so nobody knows. I mean, nobody knows exactly the extent, and that's the big variable. Market people are very bullish at the moment. They do think the US economy will continue to be pretty strong, which I guess implies that they don't believe he will tank the economy with tariffs. I think the expectation is that he'll do something around tax cuts and something around tariff's, but it won't be as much as he talked about on
the campaign trail. Whether that's the case, who knows, You know that that's the sort of central case that the market's pricing in. I guess at this point, he's already backed down on a big one, you know, like he was going to take control of the US FED and he was going to sack Jerome Powell, fed chairman, and they asked Jerome Powell if he'd be resigning or anything like that, and Jerome Pale said nope, And can he can he be sacked?
Nope?
And just the other day Trump said, oh no, let him, you know, finish his term. So you know, he's pretty good at backing away from the things that people don't don't remember, like who's going to remember the exact numbers.
No one these days, apparently back home.
Did either of you feel much benefit from the tax cuts this year?
No, no, not at all. Again, didn't ask for it, didn't really need it. Eighteen dollars a week or whatever. I don't know. I haven't even for eighteen.
Teenage boys my grocery bill.
You know, that's not gonna change.
So it was. It wasn't a big variable. I wish that.
I don't know how broke they are around things, you know, talking about things like health and.
Things, and just police force.
Seem worth it.
I mean, I think, aren't they looking at the acc levy going up? Wasn't it just going to be like take with one you know, give one handtake with the other.
Just you know.
I got into a bit of trouble arguing the case over and over again, and eventually gave up the idea that they were you know, the tax cuts were inflationary, and the tax cuts weren't neutral and all that sort of stuff. That was one of the bigger arguments of the year. But I think we ended up going down a bit of a rabbit hole of economics talk about whether or not you could define them as fiscally neutral or not, And there was a lot of semantics, and
so we sort of gave up. But you know the end of the day, if they hadn't done them, they'd have had some more money for something else.
Actually, I hate to double back, but that is kind of a hallmark of this coalition government, is that giving with one hand and taking back with the other. Like a lot of people celebrating the rise in frontline cops, so that's fantastic, but not realizing that actually they're pivoting away from domestic violence callouts. And we have such a problem in this country with domestic violence. It counts for so many of our police callouts. If they're not attending,
who is, what's happening? What's going to happen to our society? So you know, there is a lot of.
It freaky news. The alleged CEO killer Luigi Manngoni denied bail as many people are sympathizing with him online tonight, the book Delay, Deny, Defend, which is about the health insurance industry's tactics, jumping to number two on Amazon's nonfiction bestseller's list. Those three words delay, denied, defend were almost identical to the ones found on shell casings near the
crime scene and on yelp. The McDonald's where he was apprehended, has been hit with a flood of one star reviews following the employees quote snitches and rats.
We have to talk about one of the biggest stories of the year, and that's only slipped in right at the end, Luigi Mangioni and the alleged murder of health insurance boss Brian Thompson in the US.
What do you think it.
Says about us as a society and where it's at that you've got a thousands, if not millions of people on social media celebrating Luigi and the death of a health boss CEO in the US.
Lamb, Well, I think it's a bit of a mess and it shows you how messed up people are. I mean, and this is often on the liberal or the left or the use the word woke side. Well, how does that work?
I mean?
You know, in my day, if you were liberal, you are against the death penalty, and I still am. And there's some horrible, horrible people who you have to then sort of make the case for why you don't want a death penalty for some horrible So you can't be celebrating an execution of anybody. I mean, it's just just crazy.
And I don't know. I guess it just goes to the polarization and the sort of amplification of things on social media, on the Internet, which is one of the worst things about the whole political discourse at the moment.
Really.
Having said that, it's hard for New Zealanders with our healthcare system to understand just how broken the American system is, and that was, you know, the whole manifesto behind this guy's assassination. I guess yeah.
And do you think it's this generation that we're hearing more of Generation Z and Alpha? I think now coming growing up on social media. I mean this year as well, we got Gen Z's on TikTok celebrating Osama bin Laden's Dear America letter. Now we're all old enough to remember and live through September eleven, and you've got kids on TikTok saying well as have bin Laden has a point. I also see this saw the other week they're celebrating Aileen Wernos.
But isn't the problem the fact that they can actually self publish. I mean, kids say stupid stuff. If you go to the playground. You know, fourteen year old boys horrible misogynists. I don't want to slander every fourteen year old boy, but you know, it's it's kind of like in the playground and going all the generations.
Kids are idiots.
No offense to kids, but I'm educated. Now they've got that.
Now they get a platform, and yeah, it's right and it's dangerous. Really yeah, I guess Australia's banning. So that's something of twenty twenty four. Australia's looking at banning social media for under sixteens. And you know, on that basis, you maybe there's a.
Lot of point hit the whole TikTok trend around how hot the healthcare assassin was as well.
He didn't turn out to be as hot as it.
I didn't want to say that, but yes, all the photos.
Because when he wears that, yeah he had a good he's a nice smile.
He's got a great smile. But when they I thought they've got the wrong guy.
I love how out of the three of us, Liam, you're the one to point that out.
Just had cross my just impact.
I don't support the guy.
So if we get into some quick fires, now, first, who would your person of the year be, Politics, business, entertainment, what have you and who do you think dominated twenty twenty four? Starting with you, Lorna.
I really think the Coleman family are to be celebrated. They're the Paquihar family from up north who regifted the Napui Pa back to the local ewi. It had been confiscated wrongly I'm trying to think of another word, but wrongly in sixty seven and so it was fantastic for
them to be able to do that. And it's a bit symbolic because I saw Pakiha and Maori working together to fix a wrong and move forward together and I thought that was absolutely brilliant, coming as it did around about the same time as the Treaty Principals Bill was introduced. So to me, I think I think they were pretty heroic.
Yeah, well, I think perhaps sadly this is not an endorsemith think of these as like my Time magazine. But you know, in the States it's Trump and in New Zealand it's probably David Seymour. So in terms of the politicians have been able to make the discourse about them or their cause or their issue, and you know, I'm not a huge fan of either. I would say I've talked to David Seymour. I had a really interesting conversation
with David Seymour on a podcast. But you know, just stepping back and going, well, look, they really they're the two people that stand out as having sort of dominated the political debate and the Trump and the world, I guess, and US and the world and Seymour here.
Well interesting. My next question Liam is do you have a Villain of the Year.
Yeah, I want to be more a bit more esoteric on that. I sort of debating. I really am getting sick of AI, and I don't know who the villain is.
There.
May be my villain's Elon Musk, because he's sort of jump jumped the shark completely and become an anti woke warrior, a Trump supporter and all these things, and he's building his own of even more annoying AI, as annoying as all.
The AI is.
But yeah, I just sick a death of AI. Low grade rubbish what they call kids call it slop, just just filling up our feeds, and it just bothers me that you know, people say, oh, you know, have a debate about whether or not AI will be able to do things as well as humans. It's not going to be an issue because we're just going to accept it. It's not going to do it as well as humans, but it's gonna do it much cheaper, so we'll just
accept this more rubbishy version of everything. It turns out well, I hope not, but it's what it feels like at the moment, so I'm happy to make that my villain.
I'm not just Maga, I'm dog gothic Maga. Vote Early vote.
Now, America's just not not It's just going to be great.
America is going to reach heights that it has never seen before.
The future is gonna be amazing.
I'm taking it more literally. I'm thinking of the guy that ties the Maiden to the railway tracks as the train comes along, and mine are all the dictators around the world who are power hungry and territory hungry and are killing millions of innocent people in their wakes. So people like alas sad and we've seen some horrific stuff coming out of the prison that they liberated there putin
of course, he's every year's standard favorite villain. Nettan Yahoo controversial, but that's what I'm going to put that out there and their ilk and there are many many more around.
Them strong men.
Yeah, and men men, this whole, this whole thing. And then unfortunately it's been a year where they've kind of made a comeback Argentinian bloke I won't pronounce.
And they're almost allowed to the world is kind of going, what can we do?
Yeah, they're going, oh, look, look they've got inflation under control Argentina, and then you read about it and it's actually pretty.
Rough, yeah, dire.
But Trump's mates with a couple of them.
So yeah, because he believes in a world where he can go and see them in the room and sort everything out between mates, and you know, we're all supposed to trust them.
So we love ending on predictions here on the front page. What's one thing that you both think will happen next year.
Or something that you'd like to see happen? Lorna, I think we're going to see more severe weather events. So that's my definitely going to happen, and my wishful I hope it's going to happen. Is some meaningful discourse on capital gains tax, even if it's amongst opposition ranks. I don't expect it to be amongst government ranks.
Yeah, I think something a bit more transformational from the government. They've something that really lifts the economy. So the economy I'm predicting is going to go much better in twenty two five. And that's not rocket sciences it I mean, you know, but it's looking like a fairly flat recovery. It's not going to be an economic boom. So something
bigger needs to be done. I'd like to see the government look at like they're talking about what they might do with overseas investment, with investment and infrastructure, all those sort of things, because the government can't afford it. So I think we're going to see more public private partnership and maybe if they can twist Winston's arm, look at bringing some foreign capital into this country. So yeah, I predict that that's where they should be heated.
Lorna and Liam, thanks for joining us.
No Ice, Judie Christmas.
That's it for this episode of The Front Page and for twenty twenty four. We'll be back on January thirteenth with new episodes, but stay tuned over summer for highlights from the year from the Front Page and The Herald podcast network. You can keep up with the news at enzedherld dot co dot nz. The Front Page is produced by Ethan Sills and Richard Martin, who is also our
sound engineer. I'm Chelsea Daniels. Subscribe to The Front Page on iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts, and tune in on Monday for the first of our compilation episodes of the year's big stories.