Podcast

Hold the Line

Plus: NZME Newstalk's Barry Soper claims a TVNZ executive called National Party's Mark Mitchell to apologise for gang story. If so this is a serious progression of Trump MAGA politics

Housing Minister Chris Penk was at it again yesterday, lamenting that Labour haven’t released enough policies for National’s liking.

“But they’re not proposing anything!”, Penk laments continuing a clear and present trend I wrote about in July last year:

Before we get into this, let’s take a moment to thank Minister Chris Penk for spending over two years to come up with a granny flat law that experts say is no cheaper, still complex & now shifts any problems from councils onto homeowners.

Do we think that’s what Penk means by positing his supposedly superior, low regulation reforms above?

It’s sort of like watching a guy boasting about how he’s creating the same conditions for a Leaky Homes and thinking that that’s a positive.

Penk claimed RNZ’s was “weirdly inaccurate” but never responded why.

Back to the policies, my message today is simple:

Hold the line

And if anyone wants to remember why, go to my article above.

The reasons stand.

National released their policies only weeks before the October 2023 election so it’s also rather rich to see them moan about Labour for the best part of almost 2 years.

Does National not have a country to manage and to get our country “back on track”?

Losing 3% of our working age population, 10 year unemployment highs, 15 year business failures, undoing environmental protections, rolling back workers’ rights, stealing pay equity settlements to make Nicola Willis’s financial books look better, lowering wages, cancelling our inter-island top shelf ferries that we bought at the best price of the century, and never ending cost spirals in energy and food isn’t worthy of their attention?

What about the $60 billion gap in their road budget, with business cases that not only don’t stack up, but are regarded as suspect?

Finally, we also shouldn’t forget that National did end up stealing Labour’s retirement home policies - exactly as Sam Uffindell said they would, in the leaked audio -

Hold the line, folks.

We’re still 8 months out from the election.

Barry Soper claims TVNZ Executive Called Mark Mitchell To Apologise For Record Gang Story

The word going around the grapevine from right wing figures is that a TVNZ executive personally called Police Minister Mark Mitchell to apologise for this week’s report that gang numbers now surpass police numbers.

To be clear:

TVNZ’s report was based on the police’s official records and are not under dispute.

Luxon made a clear election promise that he would see gang numbers fall and increase police numbers.

Both of those have not occurred - but instead, gangs now outnumber police.

Finally, law and order is a signature promise of National and an important matter to report on.

So why would a TVNZ executive personally ring Mitchell to grovel and apologise?

If this story has any legs at all, it is highly concerning because it shows a clear perpetuation of MAGA / Trump style politics in media circles.

If I had to speculate, I’d guess it was Paul Henry, a National Party appointee to TVNZ’s Board.

But either way - it should be heavily investigated as a matter of severity.

BTW

What is under dispute is the government’s violent crime press releases.

This text from Victor Consulting Director, Clint Smith reveals a sharp deterioration between National’s touted violent crime survey with police statistics.

Many media commentators I saw didn’t bother with the nuances, and between interference in media ala Barry Soper’s claims, and an unwillingness to call out context, I think that the people of the country risk not being served