Hilda.
I'm Chelsea Daniels and this is the Front Page, a daily podcast presented by the New Zealand Herald. The divided nature of our politics has been spotlighted once again. A fiery debate has seen Tabatti Mouldi's leaders suspended from Parliament in the harshest punishment ever handed down to a politician. It was a vote made along party lines, with the government parties voting in favor of the Privileges Committee recommendations.
And the Left bloc voting against it, and.
That split was highlighted once again by two polls with conflicting results showing who will win next year. Today on the Front Page, we're joined by Newstalk z B political editor Jason Walls to discuss the latest in politics, starting with a scandal that has hit the Prime Minister's office. First off, Jason, a staff investigation found the PM's former deputy Chief Press Secretary, Michael Forbes, allegedly recorded audio of
sessions with Wellington's sex workers. Christopher Luxen was understandably fuming when he fronted media last week about it. He said there'd be a deep dive of investigation into the questions raised by the scandal.
I have to say my sympathy is with the women who raised these allegations and were made to feel unsafe due to the actions of this person. I do want to acknowledge and thank the staff and the beehive in the Parliament who have worked alongside this individual and understandably have found the news upsetting and distressing, and I'm committed to ensuring that they have all of the support that
they need. I have zero tolerance for any behavior that makes women or anyone feel unsafe, and this individual's conduct fell unacceptedly short of the standards that I expect from our people.
What questions do you think this raises?
Well, the number one question is why was the Prime Minister's office not informed that there was a police complaint laid against somebody that was applying for a job in the prime Minister's office. The Deputy Chief Press sect is an important role. They have access to a lot of information. They're sorting out how the government communicates with the public. So it's obviously of paramount importance that somebody like that
can be trusted. And the fact that this wasn't elevated a as we now understand to then Police Commissioner Andy costa and then he was not able to give it to the beehive. Suggests that something has gone really wrong in the system here. The importance is that the Prime Minister's office needs to know about every part of a staff member that is applying for their office, because it's
about safety of the information. I mean, it's not about the character of the person per se, but it's about if any bad actors are able to get any leverage on somebody that works in the Prime Minister's office, then that could be used for purposes which are not advantageous for the country. We could put it that way. So of course a's big issue that have been raised because of the fact that the Prime Minister's Office was not flagged. This issue was not flagged with them. Now it wasn't.
It was never elevated the police. It was a complaint, no charges were laid. It's important to make that distinction. But still the fact that there were people within the government that were aware of the serious nature of the complaint and that did not get passed onto the Prime Minister's office, it shows that there has been a lapse in the system.
To say the least, these types.
Of scandals have the potential to be quite damaging for the party leader involved. Look at the Labour Party summer camp sex assault cases one example. Do you think this will have some kind of blowback for National or the Parliamentary services.
Well, what it will do is it distracts from the message and it means that the things that the government want to be talking about, they won't be able to be talking about them because this scandal will follow them. I think people will quite rightly look at this and say it wasn't the prime minister's fault. He was never informed of this. But the problem is it's a fault somewhere in the government and the Prime Minister is ultimately
responsible for that. And anytime you have any sort of allegations of sexual impropriety around politics or around politicians, it immediately becomes a scandal. And so there is really no way of avoiding something like this.
I did see that he was pretty quick to say if he didn't resign, he would be asked to leave. That's something that famously he did not do recently, with Husking in particular, a would you.
Have secked him if he hadn't offered to resign, Well, hypothetical he did resign. No, I know that, but just answer the question, well, would you have seck Well.
He didn't meet the expectations of a minister, so was it a secable offense? Well, I think give him how clear we'd been on the first instance about why.
Just answer the question. So this is why you get yourself reputationally in so much trouble. Would you have secked him?
Yes or no. I could say he didn't meet the expectators I have ministers, so you would have secked him. I didn't need to because he.
Resigned, and he copped a lot of criticism for that, and he eventually had to walk it back after days of bad media coverage on that one. But it was ultimately untenable. I mean, there is no way that he could have said anything else than he would have been
sacked if he didn't resign. He did caveat by saying that there would be a short investigation because New Zealand's employment laws dictate that the reasons around firing somebody is a little bit more stringent than other countries in the world, so an investigation would have been needed, but as the Prime Minister said, it would have been short and he would have been fired.
Moving on to another big story. You can only describe.
The debate about debudy Maldi's suspension as chaotic.
Why don't you put your brain into gear, get some words in your mouth and sat debating.
You can only keep your head buried in the colonial sands of time for so long.
Having had the first two minutes, he's never shut up ever since.
I say, two members of the government gets an absolute scrap.
What did you make of the debate?
Well, unfortunately I was watching it from up here in Awakland because I was at the radio awards with you hard Luck on the front page. You're always the winner in my mind, now stop it. But it was watching from Afar, watching Parliament TV. You did get a sense of the emotion in the room. I haven't heard heckling like that in some time, and if you're hearing it on the internet live stream, it's probably about ten times louder in person. And the assistant speakers had to stop
the debate a number of times because of the heckling. Now, ultimately the sentence passed down by Parliament, and it's important to say that parliament, because it was a vote by Parliament, not the government. Was that they would be suspended for twenty one days, that is Rawdi Waititi and Debbie Natti Warepacker with seven days for Hannah Rapati might be clark.
But the opposition are affuming about this because they say, although it is a vote of parliament, it was the government parties that were the only one in support of the twenty one days So therefore is it really a vote of parliament if only the government parties are supporting it and everybody else is in opposition. And that's the lingering question here. But there were no surprises as to how it played out in the House. I mean, Winston Peters was had a bit of a shameful episode talking
about this quote unquote scribbles on Araudi Whiteity's face. And this comes from the man that is talking about upholding parliamentary standards and how those standards have been slipping. And I think that he needs to take a good look in the mirror and ask himself who is it that's letting these standards slips, because something like that, despite the context of what's going on, is not acceptable in the House.
The Mari Party are a bunch of extremists and Middle New Zealm and Middle New Zealm and the Mari world has had enough of them. In fact, in the pole, in the in the last pole, the last twenty four hours, the one that the one on the cowboy had who hates colonialism, the one that's shouting down there, well, the scribbles on his face, the god that got half theself. Oh Hangman's nick.
Can't point of it. Well, it's both sides as well.
Aytt held up a noose at one point, which was pretty out there. And like you say, Peters was the one decrying the lack of standards in the House only a few weeks ago. I guess the C word is crossing a line, but scribbles is okay.
Well, I mean according to Winston Peters that must be the case. I mean it's very offensive. And imagine if it was a Pakihart politician saying it, you know, there'd
be no end to the headlines. I mean, Winston gets away with quite a lot just because of the fact that he's been around for a long time, and people tend to say it's just Winston being Winston, but I think, yeah, Rahwiti has done some things in the House that have been very unparliamentary, as has Debbie referencing what is alleged to a being the gun signal or the gun hand gesture that she made it, David Seymour that she denies making. That you look at the footage, make up your own mind.
All of these things are very unparliamentary, so you just need to really take a good look and you can't accuse other people of letting down the standards if you yourself as so often being the one that is letting them down yourself.
What's the harshest punishment anyone's ever faced in terms of suspensions? Do you reckon? It's fair?
It's a tough one, isn't it.
It's tricky because you don't want to make a precedent.
But also twenty one day.
Twenty one days, Robert Muldoon got three and it was Robert Muldoon. You know, twenty one days is a long time. But from the Privileges Committee, well, i should say the National Act and New Zealand first members of the Privileges Committee. But essentially their line was that they tea party Marty have consistently time and time and again broken protocol, breached the privilege of not just the House but of the
Privileges Committee. And something needed to be done. It couldn't just be a slap on the wrist, or else it would continue happening. So twenty one days was a shot across the bow. I mean that shot probably punctured the bow because it's more than just that. It's actually something that's severely going to impact Tea Party Marty. But at the end of the day, you know, twenty one days.
But I guess the bright side to this, as if you could call it, that is for the next two weeks parliament's on recess, so it doesn't really matter anyway. It just essentially means there's one sitting week of Parliament where they're not going to be there. And frankly and Chris Bishop has made this point. TI Party Mary's absence in the House has been noted. They're absent a lot, so it might not even amount to being that much
of an issue for the House. There other MP's are still there, they can still vote on things, and they can still give speeches. It's just that the three MP's or the two MP's by that time won't be able to be physically present.
Do you reckon it was worth it for Tipati Marti though, because it was the Hakka heard around the world, it grabbed international headlines.
That has to mean something, doesn't it.
And quite frankly, a punishment this severe is only going to embolden their supporters.
Well, I mean, the downside is the fact that they don't get paid for twenty one days. But I would imagine if you're TI Party Mari, I mean, you have the coffers of your political party and that could be dug into to supplement the pay over that time. But you know, cost benefit and analysis on this one, how much money would it take to get a pr strategy that was as far reaching as what Tea Party Marty
was managed to do. I mean, I was in Peru a couple of days after it happened for the EPEC summit and people there were talking about it, you know, and that's just sort of publicity that you can't buy. So on balance, if you're a Tea Party Marty strategist, you'd be saying this is victory.
So in amongst all this chaos, we've had a couple of poles that are slightly contradicting TV and z's. One us Varian Research poll gave it to the coalition last week about twelve hours later are in Z's read research Pole went in the other direction, Labor Greens into putty Maori would have enough to win together.
National is down two points on thirty four percent, a NOBS result after a NOBS budget, Labor takes a bigger four, down three on twenty nine no new points, with still no new policies. The Greens, though, after releasing its alternative budget, jumps up too points to twelve percent. The ACT Party meanwhile slides down one now on eight percent. But look who's on the up. New Zealand First now nick and neck with Act on eight.
Percent right, So we have got National in this poll on thirty point seven points. That's down two point two on our last poll in March. Labor has jumped ahead of Nationals, so they're sitting on thirty three point two. That's a slight increase of zero point nine. New Zealand First is coming. They have bumped up one point nine. That puts them on nine point one points in this poll, while ACT has fallen two point eight down to six points six points. Now the Greens and to Party Marti
they are both up. The Greens are up one point six points to eleven point six while to party, Marti has nudged up zero point five to five point five points. Of course, that's just above that five percent three Shold needed to return to parliament.
First of all, isn't this a bit of a sign that political polls this far out from an election are a bit of a crack.
Yeah, And what there's design to do is give a bit of a flavor of the electorate at that point in time. So the fact that things jump around isn't that surprising, the fact that we're in an MMP environment and the two results were actually relatively close, I mean they mirrored each other exactly the opposite way. But what it does show there were some levels of consistency in there. One of them was the Green Party. People actually liked
their alternative budget. I mean that's said. It lumped us with eighty eight billion dollars of new taxes forty four billion dollars of new debt, but you know, people like the offering that it was free GP visits and a universal basic income for university students and people on the benefit. And Choe Swarbrick is probably seen through a lot of the noise and she'll be happy with these numbers, and
it also shows that Winston Peters is riding high. I mean, if you look at where Winston usually is at this point in the electoral cycle, it's way lower. I mean we're looking at two or three percent. Now he's at eight and rising, and we're still eighteen months out from an election. Winston's vote tends to rise the closer we get to the election. Now he's not shackled with the burden of being deputy Prime minister, expect to see campaign Winston well underway.
And looking at these numbers, neither side is really pulling ahead in a massive way. It all feels pretty even at the moment. Do you see either of the main parties breaking out in a big way, being able to gather on their own or is it going to be a really tight race next year?
No, I don't think that's going to happen. I think we saw that with Jacinda Ardern once extraordinary circumstances with the COVID nineteen pandemic and this sort of rally around the flag mentality that happened at the same time. Unless there is a major national disaster and Chris Luxon knocks it out of the park or he really fumbles the bag I don't think we're going to see something like that. I think we've really starting to as a country mature
into MMP and the way that it works. And that is a big question for Chris Hipkins because he's looking at Tea Party Marty right now. A lot of people do not like Tea Party Marty. They have their supporters. But if you're a left leaning voter, there is polling I've seen from David Farrier that suggests that if you're a right leaning voter and you're national voter, you tend to like the likes of Winston Peters and David Seymour
even though you're giving your vote to the NATS. On the other side, if you're a labor voter, you tend to not like Chloe Swarbrick very much, and you really don't like Debbie Nadi Wapacker and at Awiti Waitititi. So he's going to have to deal with that going forward. And I think Matthew Houghton in his column on Friday made similar points about the idea that at some point Chris Hipkins is going to have to make a call
about who potentially would be his deputy Prime minister. Would it be Debbie, would it be RAUDI, would it be Chloe or would it be Matama? And I think there are a lot of voters that would look at that and say that's not my cup of tea. But if you're looking at the other side and you've already seen three years where the coalition government so far has held
it together, there hasn't been anything. You know, there's been wobbles along the way, but there hasn't been anything too majorly in terms of bust ups between the big three.
Do you reckon Chris Hipkins has the chops?
Yeah, yeah, I do. I think that he's a good communicator. I think that he's a good leader. It takes a special kind of politician to be able to lead the opposition in its first after government. There has been relatively little infighting. Even if there is, we haven't heard about. It is a really good sign for him. And he's very good in the House. He has all the markings of a prime minister, and he was a prime minister for about six months. He probably chomping at the bit together a long.
Ago this time.
And Jason, we're halfway through this term of parliament. How do you think it's gone so far? And do you have any predictions for the second half of the year.
Yeah, well, I think if you're looking at it from Chris Luckson's perspective, you'd be probably optimistic about how it's been so far. I mean, I think one of the great things that the Prime Minister was able to do was this coalition agreement. I think it's one of the great political master strokes that we've seen in some time. Getting three parties around the coalition table was an absolute doozy. And the fact that he's also allowed those coalition partners
to continue to be their individual parties. We're not seeing some gray lump of a politician that David Seymour has become, not stepping outside the line, afraid of saying something that might offend the people that hold the Cabinet manual very tight. He's still David Seymour, He's still got his personality in the scene with Winston Peters, and we see that reflected
in the polls. I mean, there's a reason, as I was saying before, Winston Peters is still sitting at about eight percent, where in other years it's been closer to two. He's been allowed to be Winston and Luxon has allowed him to be Winston because he knows when we come to the next election, he needs to form a coalition and he needs to have the numbers across the House, not just within national Thanks for joining us, Jason anytime.
That's it for this episode of The Front Page. You can read more about today's stories and extensive news coverage at enzed Herald 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 tomorrow for another look behind the headlines.