Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:05] Speaker B: Welcome to Dispatches with Dewa, the monthly episode of the Dispatchers podcast where we talk with political commentator Dewa Debord about exactly what is going on in the world of New Zealand politics. And we discuss and dissect everything that's trending globally as well. Deewa Debord is a political commentator who runs conservative think tank Right Minds New Zealand. He also writes a column for the BFD and he has a Friday morning radio show on Reality Check Radio. He advocates for a return to tradition, is optimistic about the future, and he lives in Auckland with his wife and their three kids. So without any further ado, let's get into this episode of Dispatches with Dewa Diwa. Welcome back. We are literally on the clock tonight. I have set a timer, 30 minutes max. I'm wasting time right now, in fact, and it's going to scream at us when we hit the 30 minute mark. So great to be back with you, my friend.
[00:01:21] Speaker A: Well, thank you for having me back on. And yet to the listeners, we just talked about this before, I'll have, I'll repeat it for you, but I just, I'm back to back three hours into doing interviews and podcasts. So it's about nine, was it ten past nine PM in the evening here. So we're just gonna, just gonna keep.
[00:01:37] Speaker B: Going, we're gonna go mad and then I'm gonna probably spend another hour and a half editing after that. Dewa, let's jump straight in then. Let's not waste any daylight. It's already gone. Christopher Luxon, before we get into the Luxon problem, shall we say, he went to India and he did some stuff in India and it has attracted some attention from some quarters. He, he offered to a Indian deity. It's all very fascinating. I, I, I've got some ideas, but I want to hear your thoughts. Do you have any thoughts on that little dalliance?
[00:02:10] Speaker A: Well, well, yeah, I, I saw the clips of him, you know, photos of him playing dress up and I thought, he's going to do what? I remember Simon Bridges doing that. He did this in New Zealand with the Muslim stuff. He went like one of the Muslim.
[00:02:23] Speaker B: Oh, Diwali, I think it was.
[00:02:25] Speaker A: Diwali is an Indian. One year you've got, oh, I thought.
[00:02:27] Speaker B: It was Di, False.
[00:02:29] Speaker A: You got your pagan religions mixed pagans around the, and so, you know, and I remember I wrote about that at the time, I could go and dig that up how he was, you know, sort of apostatizing and engaging in these false religions. But with Christopher Luxon I already did the. He already apostasized a long time ago. So I think he stopped going to church and he gave a. I remember his maiden speech to Parliament where he basically made, you know, which was just completely heretical, where he's like, oh, this is what Christianity is. And I'm like, that's heresy, actually.
So anyway, that's. So anyway, so him going to India and like bowing down to their demon, you know, their demonic gods, whichever they were, it. It's, it's sad to see. It's a sign, a sign of the times.
And you, you think, I don't like to do, oh, what if the situation were. Were reversed? But it's basically like, can you imagine, you know, you know, Modi coming here and going to church with, with the Prime Minister. No, there's not, that's not happening. Right. It's because, well, he would sit there.
[00:03:27] Speaker B: In the corner, but he wouldn't, he wouldn't come up, receive communion and he wouldn't, he wouldn't. And read from the scriptures, probably, or anything like that.
[00:03:34] Speaker A: No, I mean, in the, in this, in the sense that they wouldn't be allowed to, I guess. Christianity, Christianity is the true religion and everybody recognizes that. So they, they do all this stuff with these fake religions, but when it comes to the true religion, they seem to realize that something's up, something's different.
[00:03:50] Speaker B: Well, it's kind of funny, I think too, in the sense that what it really highlights for me is I know some people are. And obviously we look at it and we say as people of the Christian faith. A man claiming to be a Christian who's then offering, participating in the worship of false gods, that's never a good thing and that's never legit to be doing that. Even if you're trying to say, well, I'm a politician, just trying to get a free trade here, you know, free trade deal here, you know, you've got to sell your soul, folks.
[00:04:14] Speaker A: Yeah, he's done this long ago. He's given up on Christianity. His. His belief in Christian is, is sort of.
[00:04:22] Speaker B: It's vague.
[00:04:23] Speaker A: Right. It's. Yeah, it's vibes.
[00:04:25] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:04:25] Speaker A: And so he's post Christian already in that.
[00:04:28] Speaker B: In that sense.
[00:04:29] Speaker A: So it's not that strange for him to be doing this because he's not act, you know, left Christianity behind.
[00:04:35] Speaker B: Yeah. And when I look at it, I think the deeper issue that people are missing here is there's a much deeper cultural symptom that is being manifested here. And that is the fact that a. Despite what liberals try and claim everything is religious. It's just we don't recognize this new paganized deification of markets and power and everything else as religion. But it is, everything is religious. And also that sense in which liberalism has completely destroyed and eroded our own tradition. So we don't know. Like Luxon doesn't really know what he stands for. I don't think so when he goes overseas it's like, well what's the big deal? A Hindu nationalist is not going to do this. Well, possibly because they are pantheistic, so they might just add another God to the pantheon, but they're more likely not to do this because they actually know who they are. They have a sense of identity that we've long since lost.
[00:05:30] Speaker A: Yeah, definitely the case where every, every nation has a national religion, as you say, and it's clear what their national religion is.
And well, it's sort of clear to us now what our national religion is, which apparently is Mammon. Because it's like, oh, you know, we'll do, we'll do anything for money.
[00:05:48] Speaker B: We pray for growth. Please, please great God, give us growth.
[00:05:52] Speaker A: And that's yes, essentially it though, the worship, the worship of GDP and economic growth.
[00:05:58] Speaker B: Okay, so Luxon closer to home, he's clearly on life support here.
What is the realistic prognosis? Because I know some people are now saying, oh well, you know, the gdp, suddenly today, magically it's ticked over in the right direction. And this free trade deal, if they lock that in with India, that's a really great positive thing. But is it, is, does that get him off life support? What, what do you think? So realistic? Cuz I know the labor rights are saying he's gone because they want him gone, but is it, is that realistic?
[00:06:27] Speaker A: I think with bad polling, if it continues, is something that could kill him off. Yeah, the National Party has done this before a bunch of times to some of their former prime ministers. They would definitely do it again if they needed to. But with polling being tied so closely to economics and there being an economic turnaround, say if, if we really have seen the end of the, the bad recession that we've been in for the past two years because we've been in a per capita recession, per capita GDP recession for two years straight longer than the great financial crisis and we're now officially out of that. We had 0.4% per capita GDP growth which is not sort of non existent, but it does mark the end of the decline and I suspect that could also mark the end of the polling drops. That Luxon are seeing.
In conjunction, though, with this India. With this India thing, he has put on a massive amount of propaganda into this. He did like 40 or 50 posts about India in the space of 24 hours.
[00:07:30] Speaker B: That's right.
[00:07:31] Speaker A: Whereas he can't. He can barely. He can barely post about anything else important when he, you know, he can. He'll do like, he'll. He'll promote Ramadan. I don't know if you missed. If you saw that one, but he did, he did this big video about Ramadan.
[00:07:41] Speaker B: I did a little like hostage video.
[00:07:43] Speaker A: Him and M. Exactly. It was like a hostage video. But for this India thing, he's gone all out. Like, he's hired PR teams and special photographers and the whole thing is like a. An elaborate movie that he's. He's doing. He's an actor, right? He's an actor and the whole thing is a stage.
[00:08:00] Speaker B: But I guess the question is, okay, we've got now, you know, there's a. There's new growth figures, you know, small, but there's growth figures. Doesn't he have to get a couple of quarters back to. Back to. To really trade? Because it'll be forgotten if the next one's not looking flash.
[00:08:15] Speaker A: Yes, exactly. So the trend has to continue. It has to be an upward trend, and then the polling will come to match in. I thought that it would probably be closer to the end of the year before they would sort of stabilize things and turn things around and then they'd go into the election year, things would look better. But yeah, he probably only had about three months or so before maybe, you know, if the decline had continued and the polling decline, if it can still continue, then he would, he'd be out. But he may generate enough positivity now to keep himself going. And there's sort of the issue around who would replace him, who's gonna. Who's gonna stick their neck out, who would they. Who would the caucus get behind? There would be enough support because Luxon was kind of the. The compromise liberal compromise candidate, the managerial candidate who meant nothing, who had no beliefs and didn't mean anything. And other people could sort of impose themselves on, over the top of him, an empty suit. And, and that's, that's basically he's there for a reason. And that's because they. They couldn't agree on anyone different. The factions couldn't come together to put someone actually meaningful in. In there. And as I said, when in the. The weekly roundup on rcr, that we'll go out probably later. Today, if you're listening to this on Friday morning, I think, I think it goes out Friday at midday.
The, the only minister that keeps, you know, there's a standout is like, Simeon Brown who keeps showing up in the news knees and he goes into a government department, he like rips it to shreds and reforms it in a, in a really positive way. A man of action.
You get Simeon Brown, but you, you sort of think at the same time, well, can he ever, can he get support from the majority of caucus? I don't know. People have said for years that Simeon Brown is going to be Prime Minister one day. And I think that's realistic. I mean, he, he's. When it comes to, when it comes to someone who is a man of action, sure, he's the only one they've got, but they don't, they seem to have picked Christopher Luxon because they don't really want a man of action.
[00:10:16] Speaker B: Yeah, it's very interesting because you're right, he is the one standout.
You know, whether or not he's ready to cross the line yet. I'd love to see him as Prime Minister. I know him personally, so that's maybe just a bit of bias there. But, you know, because it's one thing.
[00:10:29] Speaker A: That'S for the both of us as well. It's like, okay, well, I know this guy.
[00:10:32] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. And it's one thing to say, yeah, wouldn't it be great to have someone, you know, who you think is a good, is a good man and he's shown some skills. But then to get into that job and all the challenges and the bureaucratic machine of not just government, but actual. The National Party's got its own bureaucratic machine and nefarious Mavillian sort of characters who are playing their own games, undermining their own leaders the whole time. So it's just. I mean, there'll be a whole another world, right?
[00:11:01] Speaker A: Yes, but I, it seems to me that, that looking at Health New Zealand, because the, the professional punditry was sort of like, oh, this is the, the kiss of death, right? Like, if you want, if you want to kill off a potential rival, you send him to, to the, to Health New Zealand. Health. Health New Zealand, you give him the Ministry of Health because he'll get bogged down and, and he'll, he'll make all of these mistakes and all these things will go wrong. Yet Simeon Brown has just gone in there with, you know, the metaphorical chainsaw and, you know, the whip, whatever it is, and, and seems to Seems to be, as far as I can see, churning out win after. When he's able to deflect various different attacks that have come up against him about the. What the Ministry of Health is doing. He seems to identify very quickly problems that might. Might be a negative on that. On that particular department because I think was like the need was a Dunedin hospital. That's right. That they had backtracked on. And he came in there and like within a week turned the whole thing around and turned it into a positive story. So he seems to. He's just got that. That skill.
[00:12:06] Speaker B: Yeah, he has. He's a guy with a plan. That's the thing.
[00:12:11] Speaker A: He's not just a guy who's like, I want the top job. Yeah. And, and works his way up to the top job. He, you know, he doesn't matter what he's doing because he's got, he's got no experience with, with health. You know, he doesn't know how to run the health department. He doesn't know anything about hospitals and blah, blah, blah. None of that really matters because he. It's this a sort of a. What's the saying? Like an A class person hires, you know, other A class people, B class person hire C class people, sort of. He, he knows where to find the people and motivate the people and empower the people who want to get things done and need to get things done. And he's willing to. He's not worried about.
About needing to be the. The guy who. Who's, you know, worried about being upstaged. Very, very comfortable in just getting everything that he needs to get done. Done. Yeah. So I've been somewhat skeptical of, like, the way that he's trying to achieve and you know what that involves because I don't think I could kind of do that.
But, you know, he, he has been very successful in that so far and will just very interested to see if, if he's able to keep that up or whether or not he will eventually be ground down by the machine. He'll be swallowed up. He has to make compromises. And also of these things that I say I couldn't do, I wouldn't, I wouldn't survive in that kind of environment like, like that. So, yeah, it's definitely something I know a lot of people are praying for him and I think that's very, very helpful and that's at this point, all that we can do for him.
[00:13:47] Speaker B: Well, I think too, what's fascinating to me is I, I contrast him with someone like my local electorate MP Matt Ducey, who really tied his wagon to Luxon and is now not doing so well. Simeon seems to have been able to walk the middle, right up through the middle. So Luxon's got his issues and the party's got their issues, but Simeon is still doing the important tasks for the New Zealand people and he doesn't seem to have become mired and all that other national party stuff that seems to be dragging others like, like in our local electorate now, it is not unusual to have people like, almost on a daily basis referring to Matt Ducey, like on his own social media as Matt Deuceless and things like this. Like, it's just crazy that that wasn't ago, year and a half ago. So like, Simeon seems to have avoided that because I guess part of it, he just got on with it. But he's also, he's in there. He hasn't been tarred and feathered by the, the Lux and failures, shall we say?
[00:14:47] Speaker A: No, it's interesting because I inquired at one point, what faction, you know, what faction is Simeon Brown in, in National? And I was told, oh, he's not in any faction. He's like the oddball faction, basically their collection of people who are factionless. That's very, that's very interesting. But it makes a lot of sense when you see him just, no matter he just takes the position that he's offered or that he's forced to take by the party and then he just does the work. Right. Same thing with the, what he was doing with building roads. And he'd been in, in parliament for a while. He got this ministry, Ministry of Transportation, and he went in first day, he was the first national minister to say, okay, your name is. You've got an English name. That's the English name as part of the deal. That's your name. You know, it's the New Zealand Transportation Agency. You're going to use it from now on. And step two, we promised to build roads, so we're going to build roads. And he made that very clear to the entire department and then he just went on and did it. And it seems that a lot of these other people, they wait for.
Wait to be told what to do. Basically.
[00:15:53] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:15:53] Speaker A: Okay. It's like that. I know you've probably seen yes Minister, which is like the BBC. It's supposed to be like a sitcom or whatever, but it's better, it's a doc, it's a satire, but it's basically a documentary. Yeah. Say you should, you should view it as a, an actual documentary. Of how the British government and our government work and how these ministries work and everything that they do is all based on, based on real, real things. That's, that's a good way to look at it. And, and Simeon Brown is the kind of guy who just cuts through that and just, just see, he can see right through the tricks that they're trying to play on him and he just carries on.
[00:16:32] Speaker B: It's almost like he's doing the work that we expect our politicians to do for the, for the people of this country.
If, if Luxon was to get rolled. So we talked about Simeon. He's the guy we'd love to see in the role. And I think really it would be great to have a Prime minister of integrity and vision in that role. However, there, you know, what are the other potential replacements? Do you see? Because initially, I guess we would have thought, oh, you know, you know, Willis is waiting there, and I imagine Judith Collins still has fantasies about taking the job and then Chris Bishop, but I think clearly they just don't seem to be up to that task.
[00:17:06] Speaker A: No, I, I don't think any of them could take it. I think going from names in, you know, from the past, Mark Mitchell and Chris Pink are two other comp, sort of more competent people perhaps, but even then they've been in the background quite a bit and neither of them seem overly ambitious.
They don't really want the job.
They don't really want to get rid of Luxon. Nicola Willis has done quite bad on the economy up until just now, but she would never have been able to roll him before, before now, before today.
And even then, like, I just don't see any appetite for the National Party Caucus, especially if they can turn the polls around a little bit. They'll be very, very happy if they get desperate. And this is where I think something like as, as crazy as it may sound to other people, I say, oh, I'm suggesting Simeon Brown because I like Simeon Brown. No, I'm actually suggesting Simeon Brown because it might actually work where the different factions in the National Party say, okay, we'll take this guy because we need to survive.
[00:18:09] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:18:09] Speaker A: And because we know that he can actually do things. He's a man of, as you said, a man of vision. We, we politicians don't have any vision at all. And, and whatever disagreements I might have with Simeon Brown, the important thing is that he has a vision. And that already makes him 100 times better than anyone who doesn't have a.
[00:18:24] Speaker B: Vision on the other side of the aisle. We've Got Chippy Chris Hipkins still hanging in there. I mean, he. As far as I'm concerned, I was on Bob McCosky show on Monday night and I just nailed my colors to the mast. I think he's a placeholder. It's just that simple.
[00:18:39] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:18:40] Speaker B: Some people push back against that. But honestly, you know, is he potential Prime Minister?
[00:18:45] Speaker A: No. And the lay. Look, the Labor Party has never ever had a. Somebody in that position as Chippy that has made it to the next election. Okay. In the entire history of the Labour Party, somebody like him has not ever made it to the next election. And he does not seem like the kind of guy who's going to do it. He can only go up in the polls. If people hate Christopher Luxon like he. It's not because they see him. The more people see of him, the less they like of him. And so it purely comes down to do people hate Christopher Luxon and do they want to vote against Christopher Luxon? And so his, his entire future is based on what Christopher Luxon does. And so that makes him irrelevant. He's not a player. He's not. He's not. And, and like I said, if Christopher Luxon does bad enough, the National Party caucus will. Will destroy him. So, you know, the only situation in which. Which Chris Hipkins could win would be is if the National Party deliberately let him win.
[00:19:44] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:19:45] Speaker A: He's got no other chance of getting anywhere.
[00:19:47] Speaker B: No. And. And the other day when he's pledging, was it on with Jack Tam? I can't remember who he's on with, but he, he pledged that he would go with Tapati Mori and he would go with the Greens. Now Greens maybe you can get away with. I'm not so sure anymore. But the Tapati Maori, I'd have to say, is absolutely going to scare the horses in the center of the elect.
[00:20:08] Speaker A: When it comes to an election campaign. There is just so much material.
[00:20:12] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:20:12] Speaker A: That these parties have. And when it comes to the 12 weeks before the election, they're spending a million, $2 million each. You got national act in New Zealand first. Each of them dumping a million dollars into tying it. Was it nailing Chippy to the. To the Tapati Mari Mast. Yeah. The Iwaka. Yeah, I should say. And there's no way he could survive that.
[00:20:37] Speaker B: No. That's why Bernie Sanders, by the way, was never ever a serious contender. Even if Hillary hadn't played dirty Paul, he still would not have been a serious contender because he had all these skeletons in his closet that they were waiting to Go with that. Really were quite loony, actually. And so, yeah, it would have sunk his campaign moving forward. I'm looking at this countdown timer. We've got about eight minutes left, man, in this episode.
[00:21:00] Speaker A: Heaps of time.
[00:21:01] Speaker B: It's heaps, folks. By the way, don't forget this is the free to air. If you're not a patron and you want to hear part two, then you have to become a $5 monthly patron at patreon.com Left Foot Media. The link is in the show notes for today. And also if you do that, we're going to talk about Trump's last five weeks. So much to talk about. The Ukraine, war, trade wars, all sorts of stuff. The auto pen scandal. It's all in there, folks. So we'll be talking about that in the next episode. D well, let's carry on with this one though. David Seymour and the school lunches.
Is this just now become like a targeted media harassment campaign?
[00:21:38] Speaker A: Well, before I, before I answer that, I just want to reiterate. Spend $5 subscribing to Brendan's show. Spend, you know that. Spend. Spend another $5 subscribing somewhere else. It really is worth it to have independent media in New Zealand more important than ever. And we've got, you know, I'm contributor, I'm a contributor to rcr. I'm a contributor to Good Oil News contributor here on. And I've got my own website, Right Minds in Z as well, of course. But please, the best thing that you can do is give a little bit of assistance to just one person in the, in the independent media space in New Zealand. You can make a massive difference.
[00:22:17] Speaker B: Thanks.
[00:22:17] Speaker A: And on that, you know, against. You can make a difference against the mainstream media and their targeted harassment campaign, in this case on the school lunches.
Two things here. One is they're trying to distract from other issues that they really should be talking about that are a big deal. We were just talking about the TE party, Mari and the shenanigans they get up to and all, you know, the country falling apart, massive social issues that we have in New Zealand and they have sort of decided, okay, we're going to do talk about school lunches because that's not dangerous for us. We can generate a lot of clicks with, with this issue and it is a weak point for David Seymour would be my second point. I don't understand why he keeps going with this because there's no good reason to keep doing these school lunches in, in the way that they're done.
It's not in line with ACT party policy. Nobody on the call who supports the coalition cares about this.
It just seems like it's a failed Labor Party policy that for some reason, David Seymour is. Is committed to running through.
[00:23:25] Speaker B: I don't understand this because I look at this, I was thinking, I was out of my walk earlier this evening. I was thinking about this, and I'm thinking to myself, this is just crazy because he's already quite openly said in principle. And he keeps saying this, in principle, I'm opposed to this. And now I get it. In politics you have to make compromises. But what you don't do is you don't say, well, my principle is X. And then you say, I'm going to oversee a ministry or a policy that is doing the exact opposite of what my actual principle is. What you normally do is you say, well, I couldn't get everything I wanted, so I had to compromise here and there. But he's overseeing it. And, and you're looking at this and you're thinking, this is just like he's, he's vulnerable. Whichever way you spin it, he's vulnerable. He's vulnerable with his own people. He's vulnerable because they can say, well, if it fails, then did you tank it? Like, it's just. It's just so strange to me.
[00:24:14] Speaker A: I have no good answers there.
Yeah. As you say, if you really didn't want to do it, you would hand it off to somebody else. Right. You say, well, I wanted to get rid of this, but I couldn't. So I'm not, I'm not part of it.
[00:24:23] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:24:25] Speaker A: Going back to. Actually, I should have mentioned this before when we were talking about Simeon Brown, but one of the things about Health New Zealand was that, you know, they do all the abortion funding to all the abortions in New Zealand, and you say, well, you, Simeon Brown, you say, well, I can't do that. But they actually, they took that away from him. It's actually one of the associate ministers where, like Nicola Willis or something is responsible for all the abortion stuff and he's not allowed to touch it. Yeah.
Which. Okay. You can say, okay, well, there's, there's a good example of essentially you being forced into a compromise, but saying, I'm not touching that stuff and whatever you think of that. Okay, but compare that to this situation then, where you have somebody like David Seymour who says, yeah, in principle, I'm, I'm, I'm against this. And yet you very deliberately pick that up and you're very deliberately running it and trying to make it work and genuinely he's still posting even today. So he's posting about it, some good News. They delivered 99.9 of the lunches on time.
And he's saying, oh, the media won't report this. I'm like, well of course they won't because it's just there to hit you over the head with. Like if there's nothing to hit you over the head with, they're not going to report on it. Of course they wouldn't. Yeah.
So. And he's, he's, David Seymour is a slick political operator. You know as much as well, hold on, hold on.
[00:25:36] Speaker B: Can I say here, I wonder. Look, I knew someone who's in the X party years ago when he was there and I remember him telling me at the time that Seymour had this idea he was talking about inside the party that basically ACT could be kind of like a libertarian version of labor. Effectively. He had this strange idea and my friend who was much more committed to his libertarian principles was like this doesn't make sense. And he had this whole idea if we put woman out the front and you're pro this and pro that, you know, like make it pink. Yeah, yeah. And so I kind of wonder if he thinks maybe if we were able to deliver this more cost effective lunch program then we become, we take labor's ground. But it was, this is, this is.
[00:26:16] Speaker A: Basically the strategy that's destroyed the national party because they've done that in the last 30, 40, 50 years, departed from their roots thinking oh yes, if we do this we can defeat labor and it's doesn't work. It's terrible. I was just talking with someone from, from Austria, Martin Sellner interview coming out next week I think for RCR and he talked about the party that one of the parties, new parties that had come together to make up the Austrian government and he basically described it as like a Libertarian party with that was like the Green Party on social issues and, and, and describing sort of like a left wing Libertarian party. I thought hey, this sounds a lot like the ACT Party to me. It was probably a lot worse in Austria. It's probably a lot worse than the ACT Party in other ways. But it seems like you're right, David Seymour is steering the ACT Party in a deliberate left libertarian direction. Yeah, increasingly. And as you say, we'll just do school lunches but make them libertarian.
[00:27:15] Speaker B: Libertarian.
[00:27:16] Speaker A: And, and if that maybe, maybe that's why he is. Because I don't I. Otherwise I could not explain why he's carrying on with this and that Must be it. Like proving that libertarianism can do social programs, but just do it, do it like cost for value for money in a value for money way. It sounds ludicrous, but maybe that's it. Maybe that's. Maybe the answer is that simple.
[00:27:41] Speaker B: I've got one last quick issue for us to touch on in the time we've got left. But before I do that, just quickly, what do you think is the most politically savvy way forward for Seymour? If you were Seymour and you're looking to disentangle yourself from all of this, what would you do?
[00:27:54] Speaker A: I've already said I would just walk away from it.
[00:27:56] Speaker B: Are you literally. That's it?
[00:27:59] Speaker A: Failed policy. Shut it down. Schools can handle this themselves if they need to. If there's students that need the school. Yeah, the individual school should handle this. And of course it's, it should be parents, you know, but, but there's no need to, to, there's no need to do this.
[00:28:12] Speaker B: People would just forget, wouldn't they?
[00:28:13] Speaker A: It would be gone in a week. Yeah, nobody would remember. And I. Look, there are, there are countries that have like school lunches as part of their schools or whatever. America I think is famous for like their school cafeterias and whatnot. But see in New Zealand schools did have cafeterias or do have cafeterias or whatever.
That's something for schools to handle. It's completely insane for this to be a government policy. If schools need cafeterias and their schools need food, then, then they do it themselves.
[00:28:36] Speaker B: Yeah, strange. One last question. I'm looking at the clock. We've got one minute and five seconds. We might, we might go a minute or so over. But Trump in New Zealand. Trump is clearly playing hardball with foreign nations now. It's the return of big power and big interests. You know, the old order is gone. The rules based order as some like to call it. The, the post war consens consensus is now collapsed. Really had been actually collapsing for a while and been predicted well before Trump by the way. So if anybody's tempted to say Trump is this evil man who destroyed the world order. No, it was already going to happen.
[00:29:10] Speaker A: It was, it was designed to fail.
[00:29:13] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah it was.
[00:29:14] Speaker A: It could never work.
[00:29:15] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. It's absolutely quite astounding really. I've been reading something recently, a brand new book actually just been published on Stalin and really he was probably the primary architect and villain of World War II and him and what's his name, at the end of World War II, the American president basically just carved up and came after Him. Yeah.
[00:29:38] Speaker A: Is it Stalin's War or is this a newer book then?
[00:29:40] Speaker B: Yeah, Stalin's War.
[00:29:41] Speaker A: I've heard so much about this wonderful book. I do need to read it. That seems to be. It seems to be the. The current book on World War II.
[00:29:49] Speaker B: Oh, it's fascinating because you realize, I mean, obviously Stalin was. He was far more evil. He killed. He killed tens of millions more people. He ran concentration camps before Hitler was even a thing. It was. Yeah. It's just crazy.
[00:30:01] Speaker A: And he, He. I mean, he started the World War II as well. Like, people like, oh, Hitler invaded Poland. I don't know. Hitler and Stalin invaded Poland.
[00:30:09] Speaker B: No, it's even worse than that. Stalin basically just got Hitler to do the key dirty work and then he just quietly moved into the. His troops and position, took all the territory he wanted. They thought that they were coming to save them, and he just took it all.
[00:30:23] Speaker A: He took it all. And then at the end of the war, because we all went to war. Don't mean to derail this, but we went to war because of the territorial integrity of Poland. And then what happened at the end of the war, it all went to Stalin anyway. We'll leave it at that.
[00:30:35] Speaker B: Yeah, that's. Gosh, that was madness. Maybe we'll talk about that in the next episode. But the question is, what does this sort of portend for New Zealand now and how can we navigate this period? Well, like, because we're now in a different phase than what we were before. What does that mean?
[00:30:52] Speaker A: It's difficult because, of course, the risk of tariffs on. On New Zealand, America being our number two trading partner. Interestingly, our foreign minister is Winston Peters, which is going to be New Zealand's asset here. And I actually consider him to be the liability for New Zealand first in a large part because he's the foreign minister. So he can't.
New Zealand first.
[00:31:14] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:31:14] Speaker A: And he can't criticize other countries when it would be in New Zealand first interest to do so. So he's. He's like New Zealand first, best asset and their biggest liability at the same time with that. But when it comes to his trip, Luxon went to India, but Winston went to America. I think that was probably a far more important trip for New Zealand in the long run.
[00:31:33] Speaker B: And they love him.
[00:31:34] Speaker A: They love him because I told. Yeah. And he does very well. And he's very positive about Trump. He's positive about J.D. vance. He fired Phil Goff from the.
[00:31:43] Speaker B: That's right.
[00:31:44] Speaker A: High Commission to the uk and so America will look very favorably on Winston Peters for that. Which means that that puts us in a good position to not get hit with tariffs and be part of this trade war. And that's all they really want. They just want, want to be respected, want us to negotiate with them. They want to want us to play the old school big power interest political games. You know, not these nonsensical bureaucratic rules based order fake stuff that's just back room deals. And then people end up funneling money to far left extremist.
[00:32:16] Speaker B: Well and you get controlled by soft power, which is not really that soft. It's like, it's like being punched with.
[00:32:21] Speaker A: A nice glove on and every single time, the, every single time it means billion millions of dollars get funneled to left wing NGOs behind the scenes. Yeah. So I think this is potentially is, is, is good stuff for New Zealand just because of who we have involved in this fight. And there's nobody silly involved who would, who would burn it all to the ground when St. Peters understand what needs to happen. So that's my two cents. I think there's a lot of hype, negative negativity from many of the professional pundits that, that you know, New Zealand's going to get tariffs, it's going to destroy the New Zealand economy.
No, America has always been, what do you call, cheaters when it comes to trade. Basically they don't do fair trade, they don't do free trade or fair trade. They play hard, they play hardball and we just, we just play the game with them. And I think Winston Peters is the only one who could really do that very well. So we are in a good position and if so, if things go bad for us, they couldn't be avoided. But I think if they can be avoided, they will be avoided.
[00:33:21] Speaker B: Just to give you a sense, just to wrap this up folks, especially if you're listening, you think, oh Brendan, I don't like Trump or I'm suspicious, I don't just don't rate what's going on. That's fair enough. I get it. Some people feel that way about him. But I have a, a very good personal friend of mine who had the privilege of being on a trade delegation with Winston Peters a few years ago and he went and dealt with the North Koreans and my friend was in the room with him with these North Korean senior leaders. These are actual tyrants and dictators and he had them all drinking and doing karaoke, singing kung fu fighting and they loved him. So if he could do that, then he can work wonders with anybody.
[00:34:02] Speaker A: I would have thought, absolutely. That's a nice, that's a, that's a funny story. And yeah, that's okay. It's the case. So if you're doing international trade and international relations, it's all about, as you say, New Zealand's interests first and what, you know, what you, you do this in a, in a way that makes New Zealand seem like a serious country as well. And this is where, going back to Christopher Luxon, I know we're really over time, but going to India, prostrating himself before the, the Hindu gods and doing all this stuff, if you look in the comments sections of his posts and, you know, the Indians don't seem particularly impressed necessarily by him. They sort of seem like they want to treat him like a doormat. They see him as, they see him as weak and they see like they can get something, I think that they can sort of get something out of him and pressure him. That's not the attitude that people who deal with Winston Peters have after they deal with him. And that's because he doesn't, you know, go around and make himself look silly for the sake of getting special, you know, whatever Luxem thinks he's doing.
[00:35:12] Speaker B: Well, that's well said. And we did go over time a little bit. We're on about 35 minutes, which is not bad. Dewa, before I ask you one last very important question that I know you can answer quite quickly because it's pretty straightforward, folks. If you want to hear part two, go to patreon.com leftfootmedia and become a $5 monthly patron. If you support our work that way, then you'll get access to Part two, which is patrons only, and we're going to be talking about Trump and Ukraine and all sorts of other stuff. Dewa, the one last thing I'm going to ask you is how do people follow your work?
[00:35:45] Speaker A: Well, thank you for that and all of the listeners and glad you. I mean, I hope you appreciate this show. Hope you enjoyed it. You can go to Right Minds NZ to find all of my articles and columns and mostly those are reposted a week later after they've been published on Goodoil News, which commissions some of those from me. You can sign up to my newsletter there as well and just get those straight to your inbox if you like. And you can also go to Reality Check Radio or RCR Media now. And there's a program called RCR plus. And I do a weekly roundup and every few weeks I do an interview with a big, big name guest or little name Guest. We did one a few weeks ago with an Anglican from Sydney and he's interesting young guy. He was looking at making the Anglicans in Sydney more conservative, more traditional. And I really enjoyed my chat with him. And I've got one coming up next week with Martin Sellner from Austria, an activist, a patriotic nationalist activist and he's got lots of good insights on politics there and also how you get involved with politics and how you change the narrative. Because he introduced a political concept into Europe and he was not just by himself, of course, but with other people. And in the space of a few years, everybody was talking about it and he sort of changed the trajectory of Europe, I think, in many ways just things like that.
So. And you can sign up for free to RCR + and please do that. I think you'll enjoy it. Sorry, I went for more than a minute.
[00:37:14] Speaker B: No, Dewa, that's great. That's good to hear. Sounds like great stuff, folks. Don't forget to. To check that out. Dewa, thanks so much. If you're not a patron, well, then, you know, I'm sorry, but we're going to have to bid you adieu. Now, if you're a patron, we'll see you on Monday. Everyone else, live by goodness, truth and beauty, not by lies. And we'll see you next time on the Dispatches.
[00:37:35] Speaker A: Look forward to next month. When I was young, my daddy said, Gotta keep one eye opening your bed.
Keep on running till the sun goes down. Run out loud.
Run all day till you can't be found. Run out.
Keep on running till the sun goes down.
You can outrun the devil, but you ain't gonna outrun me.
