/on-air/early-edition-with-ryan-bridge/opinion/rss ¾ÅÒ»ÐÇ¿ÕÎÞÏÞ Sat, 23 Aug 2025 15:22:33 Z en /on-air/early-edition-with-ryan-bridge/opinion/ryan-bridge-ive-had-it-with-small-carparks/ /on-air/early-edition-with-ryan-bridge/opinion/ryan-bridge-ive-had-it-with-small-carparks/ We should all be happy, the weekend’s finally here. But there’s an issue of major national significance I need to get off my chest: I have had it with car parks so small, you couldn’t fit a shopping trolly in them. What exactly do they think we’re driving? Go-karts? No. People are buying big cars. Utes that cross the white lines.  Station wagons that hang out the backend, blocking the road. Enormous SUVs that do both. The Spinoff wrote about this the problem last week - the Civic in Auckland is one of the worst offenders.  Yesterday I saw a pregnant woman trying to squeeze herself, a handbag, and an unborn baby out of sedan in a carpark building. She was literally using the handbag to protect her belly from the car door. Are we trying to send them into early labour?  Apparently new cars are getting 1cm wider every two years. People like bigger cars because they feel safer. We’re also getting way more obese so literally can’t fit in Honda Civic anymore. Safety features take up lots of room. Side impact protection technically takes up a lot of space. Are councils and Wilson’s doing anything about this?  Or are we expected to bend, fold, and stretch our way into our cars if we want to leave Westfield mall? Are they going to pay for our Physio appointments? Should we take yoga classes? Colchester Council in the UK this year spent a million pounds repainting the white lines to make their bigger. Good on them.  I have a theory: panel beaters, the global insurance industry, and parking building designers are actually criminal cartels, conspiring to make us all scrape and dent each other. Forget the Comancheros - they’ve got nothing on these guys.  One things for sure, we cannot let them win.  We must fight. We must band together and put a stop to this madness before there’s no parking spaces left at all. Just think, our children couldn’t enjoy simple pleasures like visiting the mall. Our grandchildren will grow up in a world where people just drive around all day, looking for parks, fighting over parks, then giving up and going home. Is that the future you want for your family? To spend the rest of their lives in a car? I sure don’t. So join me in this crusade for common sense. Together we can help that pregnant woman. We can save our bad backs, our dickey knees, the elderly!  We can stop these crooked cartels. We can start a movement to save the lives of elderly, injured, fat, and pregnant people, not just here, but around the world. Thu, 21 Aug 2025 18:01:46 Z /on-air/early-edition-with-ryan-bridge/opinion/ryan-bridge-what-the-ocr-says-about-the-state-of-our-economy/ /on-air/early-edition-with-ryan-bridge/opinion/ryan-bridge-what-the-ocr-says-about-the-state-of-our-economy/ Remember just a few weeks ago how Sir John Key wanted 100 point cut from Reserve Bank? We'll, they've almost given him what he wants.  It's easy to be an armchair critic of the boffins down at Number 2 The Terrace - "They should have gone for 50." "Club 25 was too cautious."  But markets listen as much to the guff after the big cut announcement as much as they do the actual announcement. Need proof? Already retail banks have started slashing mortgage rates, both variable and fixed.  That's on top of the cuts they already made last week, pricing in yesterday's 25.  Some of the big ones will, in the coming weeks - I reckon we'll get down to 4.5% on short-term fixed. Look how the currency markets reacted - these guys were surprised.  Coming out with what is essentially a triple shot to 2.5% by Christmas sends is sending a strong signal. It's easy to get caught up in the hysteria of calls for double shot all at once, but the bank can have its cake and eat it too. Get businesses and households spending without risking inflation, which is touching cloth on 3%. Yes, they do look through near-term stuff. But there's also heat in the provinces - it's not all about Auckland. And remember the days of Orr where the Reserve Bank hiked the rate quick as a sherpa up Everest before nosediving it back down again? You can achieve the same outcome without risk overcooking things again.  It's only six or so weeks till the next call. If they need to do more, they can do more then.  There's no doubt we've had a Q2 recovery blip, but we've had promising July manufacturing and improving services data out last week. The message is clear: we're walking back to Everest base camp, not running.  And given the over and under cooking that went on under Orr, that's probably the right speed So, I'm with the four in Club 25 with a caveat - for now.  Wed, 20 Aug 2025 18:14:39 Z /on-air/early-edition-with-ryan-bridge/opinion/ryan-bridge-what-can-nicola-do-about-inflation-contributors/ /on-air/early-edition-with-ryan-bridge/opinion/ryan-bridge-what-can-nicola-do-about-inflation-contributors/ Electricity and groceries are your two big ticket inflation targets. Punters want to pay less for both. There are nuclear options available: Cut the gentailers in half by force. Those pro-wrecking ball argue if you force them to separate out the generation side of the business from the retail, you’d create more competition and lower prices. You could do a similar thing with the supermarkets. One idea is to force Foodstuffs and Woolworths to sell 120 supermarkets and a third of their six distribution centres to a third player. Hey presto. The duopoly’s dead. Long live Queen Nicola. Now we’re still waiting to see what cat Willis will pull out of her shopping bag on this. She has advice and considering the options. Here’s what I think she’ll do: We can get clues from the way they’re handling electricity, which is basically minor changes to bits and pieces around the edges on stuff like the super peak hedging contracts, and if things don't change, look out - we'll regulate. We'll be meaner and tougher. There's still the Frontier report of course, which Cabinet will decide on by next month. In the mean time, you tinker and threaten. Sound tough enough that voters know you’re serious, but not actually go DEFCON 1 and risk spooking markets in which you’re actually trying to attract investment, particularly offshore.  Plus, Chris Quinn told my show the other day they’d lawyer up to high heaven and fight anything like that. Messy.  So on supermarkets I reckon they’ll tinker. Options on the cards? Put supermarkets on the fast-track list, ban pocket pricing, and empower existing franchises to be more independent - buying their stock from wherever they like, setting their own prices, etc.  Slap a threat to legislate for the nuclear option across the headline of your press release if the tinkering doesn’t happen or isn’t working.  Throw the ball back in the duopoly’s court.  This would simultaneously satisfy ACT (who hate the nuclear options) and the politics of perception.  It goes further than Labour went, but doesn’t risk the court battles and potential for major changes not actually working to bring prices down. Which is the whole point.  One thing’s certain, whether it’s electricity bills or checkout prices, the chances of a return to the good ol’ days of pre-Covid prices when we could butter the toast and fire up the heated towel rail with gay abandon are slim to none.  Tue, 19 Aug 2025 18:03:40 Z /on-air/early-edition-with-ryan-bridge/opinion/ryan-bridge-the-coalition-needs-to-tighten-its-agenda/ /on-air/early-edition-with-ryan-bridge/opinion/ryan-bridge-the-coalition-needs-to-tighten-its-agenda/ In the last week we’ve had a smorgasbord of small, seemingly minor stories hitting the headlines. Helmets or no helmets for cyclists. Which name comes first on the cover of our passports. A ban then reversal on marshmallows in hot chocolates from the coffee machine at hospitals.  Not a single one of these stories is significant on their own.  But they’re the kind of stories people remember because they either simply make no sense or appear to be a colossal waste of time. Most working families can’t afford to even use their passports right now. A Hawaiian holiday - nope. The only ones dusting off travel IDs are moving across the ditch! Is this the stuff your average punter wanting to feed their kids actually cares about?  No.  The Clark Government got bogged down by a bunch of these silly little things. Think the size of shower heads and light bulbs. Instead of asking officials whether little Johnny should be allowed to ride a bike without a helmet (something no decent parent would allow anyway), why not keep your eyes on the big stuff? No shortage of that around. Just yesterday Fitch warned our AA+ credit rating could be out at risk if we Get slack on fiscal discipline See a further correction in the housing market (which isn’t completely off the cards)  See another spike in unemployment (also not out of the woods yet) It’s not that the Coalition is not focussed on these things - certainly more focussed than the last. Just there’s a bit too much noise around on little things that don’t actually matter to the swinging middle that National needs if they want to finish the big jobs they’ve set out to achieve.  Distraction is the enemy of progress. Passports and helmets are distractions and lately, there’ve been too many of them.  Mon, 18 Aug 2025 18:18:54 Z /on-air/early-edition-with-ryan-bridge/opinion/ryan-bridge-the-gen-z-stare/ /on-air/early-edition-with-ryan-bridge/opinion/ryan-bridge-the-gen-z-stare/ I went out for lunch to a cafe the other day and our table was served by a couple of waiters who all seemed to have a similar vibe about them. They just. Did. Not. Seem. To. Care. No smiling. No banter. No small talk or polite conversation.  Just this blank look on their faces. You sit there and think “did they hear me”? You ever so politely repeat yourself in case they didn’t.  But they did. They got it. There’s just no engagement. Face colder than a which's tit. No refills of your water. No "would you like another coffee? Like, hello!? Is anybody in there? Is anyone home? Why are you all moving so slowly? Shouldn’t you be rushing the joint taking orders and filling coffees?  When I was young it was drilled into us: when you’re waiting tables and taking orders. You work your way up from "dish pig" to front of House. You basically run round busy as a bee, trying to impress your boss, trying to win your guests over. Taking wagers of who might get a tip.  Can I help you, sir?  What more can I get you?  You’d help the elderly into their seats.  You’d bend over backwards to make everyone happy.  And these guys are on atleast $23 an hour.  And I know what you’re thinking. Maybe I’m the a-hole. Maybe I’ve forgotten mum’s many sermons on good manners and etiquette?  So I asked the people who I was out to lunch with. They all thought the same thing. I asked friends who are teachers. I asked parents with kids around that age. Guess what? They’ve all noticed the same thing happening. Hell, there’s even a tiktok trend called ‘the gen Z stare’…. Which describes what I saw at the cafe…  the vacant look a Gen Zer gives in response to a question or statement. If it’s in tiktok then it must be a thing, right? So the question is why? Was it covid? Was it everyone wearing masks? So much of how we communicate is through facial expressions. Maybe they’ve missed out in years of social queues and norms? Is the smartphones? Is it both? Or, maybe, just maybe, they just don’t give a shit? Maybe we have on our hands a generation of young people who don’t really think they NEED to be bothering with mundane things like work.  Disclaimer: this is is obviously not an entire generation of young people. And some people are just shy. I get that. We've all had excellent experiences. But... ya know.... is this a thing you too have noticed?  Sun, 17 Aug 2025 18:01:36 Z /on-air/early-edition-with-ryan-bridge/opinion/ryan-bridge-the-real-reason-kiwis-are-crossing-the-tasman/ /on-air/early-edition-with-ryan-bridge/opinion/ryan-bridge-the-real-reason-kiwis-are-crossing-the-tasman/ What's the point in us having more affordable property prices for first home buyers if young workers are jetting off to Australia in search of a better tomorrow?  There's a perverse logic to this, but across the Tasman right now, where our flying Kiwis are headed, they're experiencing something of a property boom.  It's the opposite of the stagnant or falling prices we're seeing here, where homes in most regions are now considered, technically at least, affordable.  In Sydney the median prices of a new pad is predicted to increase 7% this year to $2.1m NZD by June 2026.  If you want to be a Melbourne hipster, prices will be 6% higher in a year to $1.2m. They've not got a problem which we know all too well - prices are squeezing out first home buyers.  You can't get on the ladder for love nor money, look at the new loans from banks.  Landlords: 200k new loans over the year - that's the most since 2022. First home mortgages, they're down to $116k. Because they're cutting interest rates, houses are more affordable for those with equity - i.e. existing homeowners and landlords.  Typically, this is seen as a problem - you want people to have a stake in their country and the best way to do that is owning a piece of it.  But property is inextricably linked to the success of our economy, falling and flat house prices here are not actually a great news story.  The wealth effect of the biggest asset most of us own informs our spending habits. When we feel richer, we go swipe the credit card. When we don't, we don't.  So the question is: is it better to have affordable homes in a country in which young people can't find a job, or are you better off in a country where homes are less affordable but wages are higher and the economy's stronger?  The answer lies in the number of Kiwis who're voting with their feet and buggering off across the Tasman.  Thu, 14 Aug 2025 18:15:20 Z /on-air/early-edition-with-ryan-bridge/opinion/ryan-bridge-what-has-chris-hipkins-got-to-hide-over-covid/ /on-air/early-edition-with-ryan-bridge/opinion/ryan-bridge-what-has-chris-hipkins-got-to-hide-over-covid/ Yesterday they wheeled out three excuses for not fronting up and answering questions about why they went so hard on lockdowns and mandates, which they then papered over with $66 billion in spending —second in the world only to the US— thereby helping fuel the inflation we're all now paying the price for taming.  First we heard they wouldn't attend the public hearing and give public evidence because they were worried about how the public might react - that some might use their videos to spread misinformation.  The Inquiry itself basically said this was nonsense because the public interest in them appearing outweighed the risk of some nutter altering their testimony video and sharing it on Facebook.  Then Hipkins fronted for a stand-up with another reason - I already answer these questions on a daily basis.  Which, again, makes no sense. If you were worried about videos being doctored of misinformation being spread, would it not apply as much to those comments in the media —which are of course videoed and published— as it would to video livestreamed from a public inquiry?  Then there's the excuses provided to Inquiry itself. They were worried about blowback from the public online, that it might turn into some sort of which hunt.  This is, perhaps, the most egregious and insulting one.  During the Covid years, they were more than happy to troll members of the public from the podium of truth.  They were more than happy to engage in a little witch-hunting of their own, be it Charlotte Bellis, the border crossers, the river of filth.  They used the media to hammer their opponents as conspiracy theorists, anointed many public enemy number ones while they were in control of the narrative.  And that's really what this is about.  Controlling the narrative. The wall-to-wall coverage and 1pm podium sermons cynically helped secure them an historic majority in 2020.  As the old saying goes, you can fool some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time. These guys know they've been found out - most recently by that embarrassing Treasury report. And now that they can't control the narrative, it looks like they're running for the hills.  Wed, 13 Aug 2025 18:12:44 Z /on-air/early-edition-with-ryan-bridge/opinion/ryan-bridge-labours-getting-protest-votes/ /on-air/early-edition-with-ryan-bridge/opinion/ryan-bridge-labours-getting-protest-votes/ People aren't telling pollsters they'd vote for Labour because they'd actually vote for Labour. Labour hasn't got any policies - they're an empty vessel.  It's captain is still, according to most recent polling, less popular than the current Prime Minister.  It's a protest vote. They're telling the PM to hurry up and do something else to rescue the economy the last lot, and a trade war, have suppressed.  You don't throw the baby out with the bath water and back a team that has no plan.  That clown that's running in the Wellington Mayoral race has more policies than Hipkins. He wants to turn the Basin Reserve into a swamp.  Sure, it's mad, but at least it's something.  Late last year and early this year, the recovery was on-track.  We then got hit by Trump's Liberation Day. Confidence and investment took a massive hit, the markets were in freefall, remember? That's thrown everything off course.  Now, you can argue that National went too hard and fast on cutting spending and stopping infrastructure.  But at the same time, they were voted in to stop wasteful spending on dumb projects. That's what we asked them to do - many think that hasn't gone far enough.  Just yesterday we learned of 100 jobs to go at the Reserve Bank, which under Adrian Orr, wanted a budget of a more than billion bucks and twice the staff they started the pandemic with.  Does that sound reasonable?  This comes down to a question of who is best placed to invest in this country. The private sector or the state? The answer is, of course, a bit of both. But's chicken or the egg stuff right now. One thing's for sure, if the only thing capable of keeping this country afloat is government borrowing, then we'll only ever end up back in this same position. Over and over again.  The medicine needed to dig us out of this whole is nasty. Completely unpalatable. But the disease its treating is worse.  Tue, 12 Aug 2025 18:11:55 Z /on-air/early-edition-with-ryan-bridge/opinion/andrew-dickens-the-issue-of-recognising-palestine-as-a-state/ /on-air/early-edition-with-ryan-bridge/opinion/andrew-dickens-the-issue-of-recognising-palestine-as-a-state/ So the big question of today is whether New Zealand should join other nations in recognising a Palestinian state.  Now this is a much bigger question than it seems. For some it's easy - call Palestine a state and then they have a legal foothold to fight for some land I guess. And in a way, we already have done that by calling publicly for a two state solution to the conflict in the Middle East. But it's easy to confuse nations and states.  States have a multi-layered definition. A state is a political and legal entity with sovereignty over a defined territory and population. It's focus is governance, law, and authority. So many of those provisos are missing. Obviously there is no defined territory. Or maybe there was, but it's been pretty much destroyed now.   There is no authority that is recognised by most, with Hamas having lost the mandate in the eyes of many countries and the Palestinian Authority long since discredited.  A state can easily be confused with a nation, which is a group of people who share common cultural elements such as language, ethnicity, history, or traditions. Māori are a nation of people within New Zealand. Palestine can be a nation, but that doesn't mean land.  And that's where the rubber really hits the road. It's hard to recognise a Palestinian State when there is no land for it to belong in. Declaring a Palestinian State is therefore a piece of global virtue signalling. A stance with little of no practical application other than political pressure on Israel. New Zealand and its Government has been accused of kicking the can down the road because it's going to consider it's position over the next month. To be fair, we are. But this is a delicate move which on the outside seems so easy to many, but is full of pitfalls.  And seems to be putting the horse before the cart when we don't know where this state would be in the world.  Mon, 11 Aug 2025 18:04:31 Z /on-air/early-edition-with-ryan-bridge/opinion/ryan-bridge-putin-and-trump-decide-their-fate/ /on-air/early-edition-with-ryan-bridge/opinion/ryan-bridge-putin-and-trump-decide-their-fate/ You've got to feel for Zelensky on weeks like this.  Friday's the big day. Putin will fly to Alaska and meet Trump for cup of tea and biscuit.  They'll negotiate the terms of ceasefire for what the Russians are calling a 'Ukraine crisis', rather than a bloody war they started.  The body count is as astonishing as the fact there's a war raging in Europe in 2025.  One million Russian soldiers killed or injured. 400k Ukrainian casualties, including between 60 and 100k dead.  Moscow now occupies 20% of the country.  And the guy responsible for this hellfire is not being dragged by soldiers into an international criminal court to face charges, he's about to be welcome, wined and dined by the most powerful man in the world to discuss terms for a ceasefire, which includes keeping land he's not entitled to.  If we put ourselves in Ukrainian shoes for a second, if war returns to the Pacific theatre.  It would be like Washington and Beijing meeting to decide that China can keep and occupy all the land north of Auckland simply because they took it.  And you're meant to sit back grateful that at least the fighting will stop?  Ukrainians certainly aren't ready to roll over on territory.  The Europeans are huddling round Zelensky now to give him some moral support.  But, they need more than huddles and handshakes to bandage over what must feel like an insult to their country and sovereignty - two global superpowers meeting far, far away in Alaska to decide their fate. Sun, 10 Aug 2025 18:23:17 Z /on-air/early-edition-with-ryan-bridge/opinion/ryan-bridge-the-treasurys-told-us-what-we-knew-all-along/ /on-air/early-edition-with-ryan-bridge/opinion/ryan-bridge-the-treasurys-told-us-what-we-knew-all-along/ The $66 billion question hanging over Labour's head has been answered. This new Treasury report tells us what we all already knew about Labour's Covid response: they went too far. Spent like a drunken sailor. Made it rain dollar bills.  When Treasury advised them to pull back, they didn't, they kept going.  Covid was the most expensive economic to this country. The government spent $66 billion - which is 20% of our GDP. Of that, just 18% was spent on specific pandemic healthcare costs.   Then they just kept spending.  Forget the Nigerian prince, this is the biggest scam to hit Kiwi shores.  They also spent the Covid fund on things like school lunches and art therapy programmes.  The report tip toes around it, but the clear inference of this report is Labour went too far pulling the fiscal leaver. The Reserve Bank should be using monetary policy to bulk of the heaving lifting in future events.  At the same time this report landed on Labour's lap like a tonne of bricks, Chris Hipkins was in Queenstown chatting about the policies they don't have but will probably have going into the election.  Guess what's on the menu? A capital gains tax. More government spending. And talk that the Treasury-imposed safe debt cap could be increased.  So debt, tax, and spend.  People may not like Luxon's delivery of this message, it grates, but you can't hide from the fact those guys screwed the pooch. And the pooch, if they were to get back into power, best be preparing for more screwing.  Thu, 07 Aug 2025 18:00:59 Z /on-air/early-edition-with-ryan-bridge/opinion/ryan-bridge-theres-a-new-space-race-kicking-off-im-here-for-it/ /on-air/early-edition-with-ryan-bridge/opinion/ryan-bridge-theres-a-new-space-race-kicking-off-im-here-for-it/ Is there anything more thrilling than watching two countries battle hammer and tong to achieve something we all dreamed impossible, until it happens? Like going to he moon in the 60s (provided, of course, you think they actually went there).  It's like the science Olympics crossed with geopolitical Hunger Games. This time it's a bit like last time, but with the US on one team and China/Russia working together on the other.  They want to install nuclear reactors on the surface of the moon, 400km away. The US wants it done by 2030. China and Russia are aiming for early 2030s.  The scientists are hoping everybody'll come together and co-operate up there like we do with the ISS.  But, the politicians have other plans. This is about nationalism, defence and territory.  Everyone wants to be the first because there are currently no laws or treaties for colonising the moon. It's basically first come, first served.  And they reckon whoever builds the first reactor for electricity can basically bags an area, and build its base close by. He who gets there first, wins. Basically.  The moon is quite important to earth, as you know. The seasons, our crops, our ocean, our entire lives a tied to that thing.  But if you look at it closely, it's already coved in giant craters - so big you can see them from earth. So even if these guys do blow something up, one's one more crater?  I'm frothing to see this new age space race get underway. The most interesting question is: what happens if it's not a country that gets there first, but one of those weirdo billionaires and their space toys? Wed, 06 Aug 2025 18:01:11 Z /on-air/early-edition-with-ryan-bridge/opinion/ryan-bridge-are-we-taking-it-too-far-with-ai/ /on-air/early-edition-with-ryan-bridge/opinion/ryan-bridge-are-we-taking-it-too-far-with-ai/ The future's here. AI is taking over.  A team of robots kept alive in some giant warehouse with tonnes of electricity are right now whirring away, beavering away on the world's problems.  AI will soon be marking our students' exams. The Swedish Prime Minister overnight admitted he uses AI for a second opinion on running the country.  AI architects are in high demand - they're being snapped up like hotcakes.  Meta recently offered AI researcher Matt Deitke $250 million over four years - AI engineers are apparently paid upwards of $2.5 million a year.  The big tech companies are investing billions. The efficiencies are real. AI is changing the world, one data centre at a time.  So the question is: what do we do about it?  Some of the teachers are upset because they don't trust AI to mark exams. But really, we shouldn't trust the teachers. According to the Minister of Education, AI is at least as good as if not better than teachers at getting it right.  There's some stuff so nuanced you need human eyes across it, but that would be the exception, not the rule.  As for the Swedish Prime Minister, he's copping flak for not being able to do his job without the help of a robot. But you still need to use judgement, don't you? You can't just punch in "should I go to war tomorrow" and the blindly follow the answer.  Is AI not the mental equivalent of a forklift? A tool, a machine, doing the heavy lifting for our brains? The reality is, it doesn't actually matter how we feel about AI and the moral dilemmas it raises.  Like mobile phones, the internet, smart phones and social media, it's one of those phenomenon that's taking over our lives, whether we like it or not.  The best we can probably do is just get used to it. Tue, 05 Aug 2025 18:01:13 Z /on-air/early-edition-with-ryan-bridge/opinion/ryan-bridge-coal-keeps-the-lights-on/ /on-air/early-edition-with-ryan-bridge/opinion/ryan-bridge-coal-keeps-the-lights-on/ We need to be a bit practical about this business of importing coal.  Yesterday Genesis, Mercury, Meridian, and Contact announced they're going to stockpile up to 600,000 tonnes of coal to keep the lights on at Huntly power station.  The deal needs Commerce Commission's approval so it doesn't look like they're colluding on price, but the idea struck a deal, which still needs Commerce Commission approval, to keep the lights on at Huntly.  The coal gives them a back up for times when we're low on electricity, when the lake levels are low, and the wind isn't blowing.  Huntly is the largest electricity generation site in the country. It needs fuel to run on.  Eventually, they'd like it to be all biomass and green, friendly fuels. But in the meantime, they need something reliable to keep things chugging along so as we avoid another energy crunch like last year when spot prices went berserk because we realised how little gas have in this country.  And queue the predicable outcries of disbelief and feigned shock from some quarters in reaction.  Including those climate protesters, who I can only assume are still disrupting operations at the Stockton mine in the South Island. Last I saw, there was some woman up there in the bucket, health and safety be damned, zooming into a call with a journalist. Surrounded by a plethora of plastic in things like cabling, cell phones, battery packs, tools, even a helmet, she explained that coal was evil and would eventually ruin kill the planet.  Never mind the fact her presence in the bucket meant workers were now having to truck their coal from one site to another using diesel, rather than the aerial rope pulley system whose bucket she and her plastic fantastic friends were occupying.  No shame either, apparently, about a helicopter flying in, on AV gas, to check on the protesters after a bit of rain. The reality is this. Nobody's saying coal is amazing and is the only solution to our problem and let's burn it till we all burn.  They're just saying, we need this reliable fuel to tide us over till we don't need it anymore.  If the choice is to either burn coal or have a cold shower, I know what I'd be doing.  And let's not forget that even if we did stop digging up coal and using it to heat our homes occasionally, some other country would be just that anyway.  Mon, 04 Aug 2025 18:24:30 Z /on-air/early-edition-with-ryan-bridge/opinion/ryan-bridge-the-economic-freeze-has-no-end-in-sight/ /on-air/early-edition-with-ryan-bridge/opinion/ryan-bridge-the-economic-freeze-has-no-end-in-sight/ It’s about that time of year when it feels like winter really starts to drag.... and it must be feeling that way for Christopher Luxon, too. It‘a cold and dark and we just want to be at the beach like our poser friends in Bali or Europe.  But we endure this gloomy season safe in the knowledge that one day, in a month or so, springtime will come, the days will get longer and everything about life will just feel easier. Easy, breezy and warm. Contrast that to the economic winter we’re simultaneously enduring and you can see there’s an immediate problem. Unlike winter, which we know will end soon, this economic funk has graced us longer than the GFC's. Inflation is back on its way up.  We may have bounced out of recession for a few quarters but there’s also a good chance we’re currently back in negative growth territory. That’s after now three years of unaffordable food, mortgages, well, pretty much everything.  Politicians are arguing  - again at the weekend - about who's to blame.  The answer of course is a party and a reserve bank that went too far responding to a virus, and then continued down spending like a drunken sailor. Trump hasn't helped, just recently.  The problem for National is that voters don't seem to care much who started a fire, they just want the thing put out.  And they need to feel the numbers. Not the OCR announcement, but the mortgage re-fix on a lower rate.  Food price inflation's still going up. So things might be getting more expensive less quickly, but they're still going up in price.  Only once people feel different will the polls respond.  The biggest problem for the Coalition on waiting for that to happen, is not that some might convert to Labour voters in the meantime, but that they might jump ship altogether and move to Brisbane.  Sun, 03 Aug 2025 18:01:32 Z /on-air/early-edition-with-ryan-bridge/opinion/ryan-bridge-should-national-campaign-on-a-partial-float/ /on-air/early-edition-with-ryan-bridge/opinion/ryan-bridge-should-national-campaign-on-a-partial-float/ They haven't said it explicitly yet, but one day soon, our KiwiSaver contributions will rise to 12% and Kiwibank will be partially sold to foreign buyers.  On the bank, Nicola Willis is flying a kite and talking about a potentially partial float of the stock exchange for the wee Kiwi battler. It needs capital to grow and take on the big banks. They're getting access to an extra half a billion through changes already announced. But they could yet get more, should National campaign on a partial float.  It's sounding more and more like they will.  And the question is whether most voters will care? I think not. Asset sales are not the great electoral disaster they were once portrayed as - just ask John Key who whipped Phil Goff's butt in 2011 on a platform of partially privatising assets.  On KiwiSaver... the Government's already upped the amount we pay, and our bosses pay on our behalf, towards retirement.  Our default contribution is going up to 4% over three years. Add your employer's and that's 8%. Scott Simpson was at a conference yesterday and there's an interest.co.nz report quoting him as saying basically it'll happen before long. At a gradual pace. But here's the thing... like the partial float of Kiwibank, this is all stuff that needs to happen.  The Aussies' pensions funds boast $4 trillion in balances. That money is put to work. It funds infrastructure. It builds wealth. It grows a domestic economy.  Our KiwiSaver balances, collectively, sit just above $100 billion. It's David and Goliath.  So we need to save more. And if we're serious about a Kiwi bank taking on the Aussies and sticking it to them good and proper, we'll need some outside capital to give it that boost.  Wed, 30 Jul 2025 18:12:25 Z /on-air/early-edition-with-ryan-bridge/opinion/ryan-bridge-have-we-lost-the-plot-on-health-and-safety-rules/ /on-air/early-edition-with-ryan-bridge/opinion/ryan-bridge-have-we-lost-the-plot-on-health-and-safety-rules/ Brooke van Velden's anti-health and safety crusade's taken a rather bizarre twist - it's the plot twist nobody saw coming.  She's consulting the public on safe activities kids are allowed to do on farms, like watering plants and collecting chicken eggs.  It's a bit of an odd strategy, but the strategy seems to be that there's a potential problem with the law.  Anyone under 15 is technically not allowed to do work on a working farm. You could get fined $50,000.  But nobody's been done for letting little Johnny pick up eggs.  So, it's a potential problem, but not an actual problem.  The Minister's strategy, surely, is to point out how ridiculous the law is in the first place.  But her response sounds a bit off for a Minister who says we need to get away from over regulation and consultation and nonsense and just let Kiwis get on with their lives.  She is quoted as saying:  “We’ll be consulting with farmers and the agriculture sector on the safety thresholds for light chores children can do on farms... while ensuring safety is not compromised.” It does a bit gobbledegook. It sounds a bit unnecessary. It sounds a bit odd.  If there's a problem, then why not just change it? Why consult up the wazoo through till September, then waste time and money, no official advice, and blah blah blah.  If it's a problem, then make it go away. And quickly.  Tue, 29 Jul 2025 18:01:15 Z /on-air/early-edition-with-ryan-bridge/opinion/ryan-bridge-here-we-go-again-with-the-nurses-strikes/ /on-air/early-edition-with-ryan-bridge/opinion/ryan-bridge-here-we-go-again-with-the-nurses-strikes/ If you've got an appointment at the hospital this week, you might want to check it's still going ahead.  Nurses are going on strike tomorrow from 9am for 24 hours. 4,300 surgeries and specialist appointments will be affected.  It's a complete withdrawal of labour. It's 36,000 nurses. It'll affect every place where Health NZ provides health or hospital care, and it's the middle of winter.  The nurses union's been bargaining. It's the usual stuff - pay and staffing levels.  Also as usual, they say if it's life or death, you will be seen to.  They had a bargaining meeting yesterday with Health NZ, which didn't go well. They've been bargaining since last September and haven't found common ground yet.  The nurses say they are too short staffed and departing nurses are not being replaced. And without more pay, nurses will keep being tempted across the Tasman.  So, what were they being offered?  Health NZ says a new graduate nurse on $75,773 would gain a total pay increase of $8,337 (or 11%) by the end of June 2026. What's more, they say the average salary for both senior and registered nurses, including overtime, PDRP allowance, and penal rates, is $125,662. Until these guys can sort out who's right and come to a deal, this may not be the last hospital strike we patients must endure this winter.  Mon, 28 Jul 2025 18:23:18 Z /on-air/early-edition-with-ryan-bridge/opinion/ryan-bridge-cone-overkill-must-stop/ /on-air/early-edition-with-ryan-bridge/opinion/ryan-bridge-cone-overkill-must-stop/ Chris Bishop says we're sick of over-the-top cone use and expensive traffic management plans.  And he'd be right. They are so annoying and often, to the untrained eye at least, completely pointless.  They take a $100 job and make it a $1000 job.  So why is this till happening? Why are there still cones everywhere, when the government says NZTA's code of practice for traffic management rick assessment - is no longer being used? Obsolete?   Well, the problem is many councils are apparently still using this code of practice as their north star.  As a response, the government's now threatening local council funding.  They have to threaten funding to get these council to change their ways. What this shows us is just how far and deep the overly cautious, safety-at-any-cost mentality has set in.  And also, it shows you how scared they are of worksafe coming in a going them if somebody gets hurt or injured. You have to make sure people are safe, especially when working with dangers.  But you can't keep everybody safe from harm in all places, at all times and for any reason.  Fencing every waterway is impractical. So is covering every street in road cones.  We need to find a sensible middle ground and make sure the officials told to carry out the changes, actually do so. Sun, 27 Jul 2025 18:13:17 Z /on-air/early-edition-with-ryan-bridge/opinion/andrew-dickens-why-now-is-the-time-to-build/ /on-air/early-edition-with-ryan-bridge/opinion/andrew-dickens-why-now-is-the-time-to-build/ It’s no secret that the construction industry is in trouble.  There’s a number of factors. Firstly the boom in construction right after the pandemic years as money became cheaper and cheaper, so more and more projects were undertaken. We had a residential construction boom in 2022, with approximately 51,000 consents issued, driven by surging house prices and historically low interest rates.  But the good times weren’t to last.   A new government cut many projects, including the construction of 2500 state houses - cutting builders' lunches. Meanwhile the supply of cheap money dried up as the Reserve Bank attacked the recession by raising interest rates.  We ended out with too many builders for fewer projects.  As major infrastructure projects went on hiatus, waiting for a government wanting to spend on them, highly trained construction workers went looking for work - most often in Australia.  Construction went into a tailspin and there are claims we’ve lost 17,000 workers.  But in every cloud there is a silver lining.  Construction firms are now offering large discounts to avoid collapse - some offering discounts of up to 50% to keep their workers busy.  These are in the firms that are left. 687 firms have been liquidated this past year - it’s a threefold increase in just 3 years.  The firms that are left should be hailed as heroes.  Prepared to work through the bad times rather than cutting and running.  And if you’re thinking about a commercial or residential build, can I suggest that there is no better time than now. You’ll never get a better deal going forward.  And maybe. Just maybe we might be able to work our way out of a construction bust that was all our own making.  Thu, 24 Jul 2025 17:59:44 Z /on-air/early-edition-with-ryan-bridge/opinion/ryan-bridge-a-new-political-battlefronts-opening-up-on-homelessness/ /on-air/early-edition-with-ryan-bridge/opinion/ryan-bridge-a-new-political-battlefronts-opening-up-on-homelessness/ Nobody wants to see streets dotted with tents like San Francisco or downtown LA. This much-hyped government report to Tama Potaka gives a few insights, but doesn't really nail the problem.  There are more people living rough, but we can't say for sure how many more, and even if we could, we can't say how statistically significant the change might be.  Because we had census data, we know it got way worse under Labour - up 37% from 2018-2023.  The councils are reporting (what economists might call) high frequency data that things are getting worse - the rising number of phone calls and reports of concern they're getting from the public.  The real question —which is the basis of what the Opposition's upset about— is if the Government's crackdown on emergency housing caused a wave of homeless refugees camped out on the streets? Here's some interesting numbers: the number of households living in emergency motels is down by 75%, around 85% of them went to some form of housing.  So that's great. They managed to smash through the list and get most people housed.  And here's where Labour's claim gets a bit murky: declines for emergency applications are on the increase, but mostly rejected because either the client wasn't eligible or could be helped in another way. An increase in homeless doesn't necessarily mean the emergency accommodation changes were a disaster.  In fact, the numbers would, at least on the face of it, appear to show it's been wildly successful at getting people out of motels and into actual home, including 2,000 children. Correction: An earlier version of the written opinion incorrectly stated the number of emergency housing applications that had been declined had increased to 4%. The rejection rate of those applications has actually increased to 32%. The written article has been amended to reflect this.  Wed, 23 Jul 2025 19:50:12 Z /on-air/early-edition-with-ryan-bridge/opinion/ryan-bridge-is-supermarket-pricing-as-bad-as-we-think-it-is/ /on-air/early-edition-with-ryan-bridge/opinion/ryan-bridge-is-supermarket-pricing-as-bad-as-we-think-it-is/ This business with the supermarkets and their pricing...  Consumer NZ has launched a petition. They want change to stop prices being incorrectly labelled.  So you go to checkout and scan receipts, something's different to what you expected. Then we would get a refund on the product, and the product for free.  The idea is that if you make the punishment more than fit the crime, they'll stop doing it.  Which I get. But the supermarkets reckon —and Consumer NZ calls this spin— that there's just too many products and they honestly make mistakes.  More often than not the prices are out by a few cents - so $5.99 instead $5.95. The key question here is whether we think the supermarkets are doing this on purpose, or whether they're just large organisation that occasionally get small things wrong.  And correct the errors when spotted. Refunds where necessary.  If we're saying they are deliberately doing this, that's a whole other thing.  I'm not saying the supermarkets should be given a Hall Pass here, but if we're talking about a few million dollars a year spread over a population of five million, plus the free products on top of refunds they'd have to fund... You've got to ask if the potential payoff is worth the cost of pushing a policy like this.  Tue, 22 Jul 2025 18:07:10 Z /on-air/early-edition-with-ryan-bridge/opinion/ryan-bridge-should-we-be-worried-about-the-business-of-business-cases/ /on-air/early-edition-with-ryan-bridge/opinion/ryan-bridge-should-we-be-worried-about-the-business-of-business-cases/ ACT's insistence that the Waikato University doctors school cost was out of whack and based on a poor quality business case seems to have been proven correct.  Why else would the cost to the taxpayer has shrunk by $200 million? He says it was going to cost us $280 million.  If he was right, and he's one guy at the cabinet table, how many other business cases don't stack up? There's an entire lucrative business case industry in Wellington. Some of this work is done in-house by government departments, but much of it is outsourced to the private sector.  Can we trust these reports?  MBIE had a business case train wreck a few years back when calculating the benefits of hosting events like the World Dance championships.  After questions from the media, they realised they'd been incorrectly calculating the cost-benefit analyses of events for two years - more than a dozen applications had to be fixed.  We've recently had scraps over the benefits of four-laneing to Whangarei.  This is a problem because if we can't trust the numbers we're basing decisions on, then how can we make proper decisions?  I hope this Waikato uni med school is a success. They say it'll train an extra 120 doctors a year from 2028.  But there are three reasons this has the risk of becoming the government's biggest white elephant project.  1. Other unis say they could have trained the same number of doctors for cheaper 2. Waikato Uni has a tonne of its own money and untapped and unlimited access to loans, so why aren't they fully funding?  3. The business case was clearly shonky to begin with.  Perhaps we could spend the remainder on a business case school with qualifications for the getting the numbers right. Mon, 21 Jul 2025 18:18:45 Z /on-air/early-edition-with-ryan-bridge/opinion/ryan-bridge-something-needs-to-be-done-about-ncea/ /on-air/early-edition-with-ryan-bridge/opinion/ryan-bridge-something-needs-to-be-done-about-ncea/ If we could mark NCEA level One... would it even get an achieved. let alone a merit or excellence? We heard at the weekend about an ERO report.  Basically, said the whole system is too flexible. Kids are scooping up credits from all corners of the classroom. It's too broad and flexible, they reckon. As a result, students aren't being properly taught core subjects. The government's looking it. But there was a number in this report which should jump out at all parents and teachers.  22%.  In 2024, just 22% of NCEA results came from external assessment. Which means exams.  The bulk of credits come from internal assessments - stuff like essays.  This means kids can use AI and all sorts to do the work for them.  One in four don't bother sitting the exams because they've already got enough internal credits.  I went through the NCEA system and this happened to me too - but I would never dream of skipping an exam and missing out on credits.  Clearly, something has to be done. What hope do we give students if they're not being taught the basics and not being assessed properly?  Until something's done, bad headlines and reports like this one will just keep undermining the qualification so many young people rely on to get through their working lives.  Sun, 20 Jul 2025 18:10:31 Z /on-air/early-edition-with-ryan-bridge/opinion/andrew-dickens-a-different-take-on-the-covid-inquiry/ /on-air/early-edition-with-ryan-bridge/opinion/andrew-dickens-a-different-take-on-the-covid-inquiry/ We all know the Covid Inquiry is looking at MIQ, amongst other things.  And we all know that MIQ had noble aims and notable successes. But we also know the execution was far from perfect, and many people ended up feeling ostracized from the rest of New Zealand.  The idea of the Inquiry is to find out what went wrong so we do better next time.  And yesterday, Les Morgan, the Chief Operating Manager of Sudima Hotels, wrote an exceptional piece in the Herald on the rights and wrongs of MIQ and in the middle of his piece he took my heart away with a stunning piece of writing.  He learnt at a 1pm briefing that his hotel had been requisitioned for an MIQ facility. Except no-one had told him and his team and their first refugees were expected that very day. He wrote this:  "The hotel in question had been closed indefinitely, meaning staff had moved on and there were no consumables or PPE gear on site.  "Once I had run the gauntlet of shock and bad language, our team swung into action and I am proud to say our local staff welcomed the first guests by 8pm the same day with full PPE equipment and comprehensive operational procedures. (The military and public health teams involved arrived on-site equally unprepared but also rallied.)   "These were staff who had left the business earlier in lockdown but came back to bravely face an unknown health risk and the enormous task of recommissioning a hotel, all because they thought it was the right thing to do to help save the lives of fellow New Zealanders. They are all heroes, and they deserve to be properly recognised by the Government." Damn right.  In London there is a Covid Memorial Wall on the banks of the Tames opposite the Houses of Parliament.  It features over 240,000 individually hand-painted red hearts. Each heart represents a person in the UK who died with COVID-19 listed as a cause of death on their death certificate. It’s all ages, but particularly the young and the old.  We have nothing like that in New Zealand.   This Inquiry will not give everybody want they want. It will prove MIQ to be neither right or wrong.  But it will remind us that there are silent heroes in New Zealand who we have not thanked nearly enough.   Thu, 17 Jul 2025 18:08:31 Z /on-air/early-edition-with-ryan-bridge/opinion/andrew-dickens-we-don-t-need-rate-caps-we-need-smarter-councils/ /on-air/early-edition-with-ryan-bridge/opinion/andrew-dickens-we-don-t-need-rate-caps-we-need-smarter-councils/ So the Local Government Conference is underway and the Government took advantage of it to talk down to councils like a stepdad telling off their stepson.  They’ve been told to reign in wasteful spending to keep their rates increase down. It'd be good if the government that is currently spending more than any other ever practiced what they preached.  But anyway, the Government is talking about bringing in rate caps.   Sounds good. A simple idea we can all understand, but will it work?  The fact is the idea is in place in Australia. Melbourne and Sydney have them, but individual councils can apply for exemptions. And in Melbourne it means that some councils have imposed 10% rates.   But they don’t have them in Brisbane, and Brisbane has the lowest rate increases in Australia.   So why is that? Successive councils have kept the debt low. They’ve had smart long term plans with cross-party support.   They have a suburbs first policy so that improvements are made where people actually live. 85% of their budget is spent on this - it’s also cheaper than grand projects.   And they like public transport.  A record $210 million is being spent on it, which is a lot cheaper than building roads, roads, roads. Here public transport and alternative transport options are the first to be cut in hard times.   And because of their resident friendly, suburban centric approach combined with fiscal prudence, they have some wriggle room.  Senior citizens in Brisbane get the most generous rebates in the country, cutting their rates in half.   And it means that Brisbane can pursue some big stuff like the Olympics. But there they show some balls as well, canning the re-development of the Gabba because the business case didn’t measure up.  Rates caps are good slogan policy.  It sounds like a simple answer to a complex situation, but they didn’t work in Sydney and Melbourne.  In fact there they’re suffering from rates catch up. If you defer projects then eventually someone is going to pay for them.   Whanganui will find that out in the future. Work on the Opera House has been deferred, saving $8 million, but that work hasn’t gone away and will cost more in the future.  The reason we’re in the hole we’re in is false promises of rate cuts by previous councils that resulted in a rates catch up.   Wellington’s water sound familiar.  We don’t need rates caps, what we really need is sensible long term fiscally prudent governance. Look for that next election.  Wed, 16 Jul 2025 18:09:40 Z /on-air/early-edition-with-ryan-bridge/opinion/andrew-dickens-overreacting-to-the-un-again/ /on-air/early-edition-with-ryan-bridge/opinion/andrew-dickens-overreacting-to-the-un-again/ I’m always amazed at how much credence the United Nations is given in domestic New Zealand politics.  The left loves the UN pronouncements on New Zealand’s stances because if reinforces their view that we’ve got much to feel guilty about.  Meanwhile the right somehow believes that the UN can supersede our sovereignty and is an enemy to be repelled at all costs.  But the UN is actually an ineffectual bureaucracy.  A giant global virtue signaller judging its signatories to an idealistic standard that is often unachievable in the modern world.  There’s nothing wrong with the UN writing these reports because it might be nice to live in a world full of unicorns,  but they’re just words and often have little deep context.  David Seymour obviously took offence at one such report and in a fit of pique late one night, drunk on the power of being Deputy Prime Minister, fired off an angry letter signed Grumpy of Epsom.  That’s obviously not his job, and it’s right that he’s been told off about it.  And that's about that. It's caused a minor tiff amongst the coalition partners because of process and pecking order, but it's not the major crack in the coalition that some claim.  And don't worry about so called international embarrassment because the world has a lot more to be embarrassed and worried about rather than some little report by an arm of the UN that criticises one piece of legislation in a very small country globally.  So, chill out about the UN. They’re not the boss of us. They’re not the boss of anyone. That’s their biggest problem in getting anything tangible done.  Tue, 15 Jul 2025 18:12:55 Z /on-air/early-edition-with-ryan-bridge/opinion/andrew-dickens-the-great-polytech-flip-flop-we-re-all-paying-for/ /on-air/early-edition-with-ryan-bridge/opinion/andrew-dickens-the-great-polytech-flip-flop-we-re-all-paying-for/ Here we go again.  The polytechs that were centralised by the last government are going to be de-centralised by the current mob.  It's not quite back to the future because it won't be the same as we had before the politicians started tinkering. There will now be ten polytechs run locally, six others will have to prove their financial viability, but it still feels like we're going back to where we started from. And this ideological flip flop isn't free.  The Labour Government allocated hundreds of millions of dollars over several years to support the merger and transformation of the vocational education sector. And now National has budgeted $200 million to fund the reversal. Key Cost Drivers in this change include swapping out the IT and systems integration across multiple institutions from centralised to local.  Obviously, staff restructuring, which includes finding new staff for the polytechs and firing some staff created in the centralisation.  Then there's branding and communications and legal and compliance costs. It isn't cheap and at the end of the day, we're back to square one.  The same things happening over at Health New Zealand. It's happening all over the country as the government reverses Labour's changes. People are packing up their desks that they packed up four years ago. Now who to blame? Labour for coming up with the new ideas in the first place, or National's dogged determination to reverse everything the last mob did because they've built their brand on not being Labour? I don't know about you but the whole thing feels like wasteful government spending, and are we substantially better off? Mon, 14 Jul 2025 18:01:46 Z /on-air/early-edition-with-ryan-bridge/opinion/andrew-dickens-we-want-less-bureaucracy-until-we-dont/ /on-air/early-edition-with-ryan-bridge/opinion/andrew-dickens-we-want-less-bureaucracy-until-we-dont/ I find it ironic that the government and the electorate are once a gain keen on getting rid of some of the layers of our council bureaucracy. First NZ First’s Shane Jones publicly questioned the role of regional councils, pondering whether “there’s going to be a compelling case for regional government to continue to exist”. Then Prime Minister Christopher Luxon told Mike Hosking that the Government was looking at local government reform. On Friday Matthew Hooten wrote a piece about Regional Councils reiterating Chris Bishop’s question that he’s been asking many local councillors.  Is there any point in having regional councils.  So it's on the table.  Of course the battle against bureaucracy is alive and well around the world. Duplication of services and excessive layers of governance means that savings could be made easily and safely and it's something we've always discussed. Last term the government reformed District Health Board from 20 boards into a single entity Health New Zealand or just that reason but the new government has taken against that and they've announced a return to locally delivered healthcare because they believe that in regional decision making is the best way to go. We're still waiting to see what that will look like.  Meanwhile reform of regional councils looks awfully like the formation of Auckland's Super City.   A reform that has a heap of enemies because of it's devolution of power away from communities.  As Hooten says the reason we hate the Super City are the Council Controlled Organisations a move that was supposed to replicate State Owned Enterprises.   But the problem there is that we can't but shares in CCOs so they become the worst of things. A mongrel hybrid of Council bureaucracies and Private Monopolies.  So we seem to like amalgamating public bodies but then when it happens we moan that our voices are no longer heard and that bureaucracies have become too huge and out of control. So, what is it people. Sun, 13 Jul 2025 18:07:16 Z /on-air/early-edition-with-ryan-bridge/opinion/andrew-dickens-another-poll-same-discontent-winston-still-standing/ /on-air/early-edition-with-ryan-bridge/opinion/andrew-dickens-another-poll-same-discontent-winston-still-standing/ Another poll. Another rush of fevered opinion, and yet still so far away from an election.  The poll business is booming. Once upon a time we had just the two TV networks in the game, but now they’ve been joined by others.  Keeping the opinion writers in business and politics as the leading news driver in this country.  So this one was paid for by the Taxpayers Union and it breathlessly reports that New Zealand First is on the rise and is now the third most popular party.   Winston may be 80, but it looks like he’s here to stay. And the two major parties are pretty equal at 30 odd each - there is no dominant party right now in New Zealand.  Other than that, the other take away is that we don’t like the leaders of the major parities.   Both leaders have popularity rankings less than 20%, and that’s because they’re both demonstrably a bit average.  That’s particularly concerning for National and the Prime Minister, who learned that 80% of New Zealanders don’t rate him as PM.  It reflects a deep dis-ease about where the country finds itself.  In a week where we found that we grew not one jot in the last financial quarter, people are wondering why we’ve got so stuck in the mire.  National’s easy answer at the last election was that Labour was useless.   But 18 months into National’s governance I feel people are still wondering where we’re going and whether, maybe, they’re a bit useless too.  I blame politics and the urge to politicise every issue and polarise the voters. Our current default position from our politicians is the other side is crap. Vote for us.  But the country is saying you’re both crap. There is no truth teller out there leading the way through the murk.  And in this vacuum of leadership Winston shines by just doing the basics as a Foreign Minister well and not being useless.  Thu, 10 Jul 2025 18:10:49 Z