[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hi, everybody. Welcome along to this, the Friday Freebie episode of the Dispatchers podcast. It is great to be back with you again. And today you're in for a real special treat because in this episode we are launching the inaugural debut episode of our brand new monthly show called dispatches with Diwa. And it's called dispatches with Diwa because once a month, we are going to be having an in depth conversation with Dubois and we're going to be talking about New Zealand and overseas politics. So if it's trending, we're going to be talking about it. Even more than that, Diwa is doing the hard yards of tracking the current New Zealand government. He has established something called his coalition tracking tool. He is tuning into parliament. He is watching the policy updates and the progress of various policies to see whether or not the coalition government in New Zealand is really delivering on its promises as it has claimed it will do. Is this government all talk or are they actually going to deliver? Because I think that's what most New Zealanders are looking for. So we're going to be updating that every single month, tracking exactly where the coalition is at. So if you want to know exactly what's going on without any of the spin, and you want to get your handle on whether or not the government is delivering on various promises, this is definitely the podcast that you are going to want to tune into. Once a month, every single month, there will be a part one and a part two to dispatches with Diwa. So part one will be published as our Friday Freebie, free to air. Anyone can tune in part two of dispatches with Diwa. Once a month will happen on a Monday, and it will be an exclusive patrons only episode. So if you don't want to miss a beat and you want to hear everything that we discuss, hear all of the topics that we talk about, then make sure you go to patreon.com left foot media. The link is in today's show notes and become a $5 monthly patron. That's less than the cost of a cup of coffee. And for that unbelievably cheap amount, you will be able to track this coalition month by month and see exactly what is happening, what's being delivered upon, and what is not. Plus, you get access to all of the other awesome daily podcast episodes. That's right. They're daily now exclusively available to our patrons only. So without any further ado, let's start this brand new series, dispatches with Diva.
Hi, my name is Brendan Malone, and you're listening to the Dispatchers, the podcast that strives to cut through all the noise in order to challenge the popular narratives of the day with some good old fashioned contrarian thinking. You might not always agree, but at least you'll be taking a deeper look at the world around you.
Welcome to Dispatchers with Diwa, the monthly episode of the Dispatchers podcast, where we talk with political commentator Diwa Deborah 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. Diwa Deborah is a political commentator who runs conservative think tank rightminds 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 Diwa.
[00:03:35] Speaker B: Run out, I better run on. Run all day till you can't be found run out, I gotta run on. Keep on running till the sun goes down.
You can hour on the devil, but you ain't gonna hour on me.
[00:03:53] Speaker A: Alrighty, Diwa. It's great to be here with you. The inaugural debut episode of Dispatches with Diwa. Once a month, we are gonna dissect all things political and, yeah, I guess we're going to solve the problems of the world, like all good men should try and do. Diwa people are going to ask me, what is the ethnic, the racial, the national background of that name? Tell us a bit about your background, man.
[00:04:21] Speaker C: Thank you for having me on your show. I'm a big fan. Been a fan of Brendan Malone and left foot media for a long time.
[00:04:29] Speaker A: Oh, you're too Colin.
[00:04:30] Speaker C: My mum even comes back from conferences sometimes, and she. Oh, I heard this guy had to speak Brendan Malone. He was. So.
[00:04:39] Speaker A: Mate, now you're behind the curtain, and the wizard of Oz is just an old man pulling a few levers.
[00:04:44] Speaker C: Yeah. So the name itself comes from Frisia, which is a province in the north of the Netherlands. So my father's side of the family, my grandfather, who actually passed away in December, was Frisian, full blooded Frisian. And their name comes from that area, because the Dutch have a tradition of giving you two different types of names. So you have a legal name and a christian name. So my legal name is Dirk, which is too boring for my mother. So she brought in this frisian name, which was Diwa and similar sort of meaning. And the Frisians are actually an ethnic minority in the Netherlands.
The population is split between the Netherlands and Germany, but they have their own province, they have their own language. And actually they're the ones that invaded and colonized.
[00:05:48] Speaker A: That means you're an uber colonizer.
[00:05:52] Speaker C: Absolutely, yeah. So that's where the Saxons came through from Germany, Frisia and into England. So the root of the language is actually the same. It's Anglo frisian root. Root language. So old Freezian and Old English are almost the same. But then you get to modern Frisian and modern English, and a name like Diwa is suddenly no longer compatible with English.
[00:06:17] Speaker A: Classic man. What does it mean?
[00:06:19] Speaker C: A man of the.
[00:06:21] Speaker A: Well, appropriately named.
[00:06:24] Speaker C: I know I've become a true believer in the power of names now because.
[00:06:29] Speaker A: You had a tilt at the new conservative party and the movement.
Before we even talk about politics in New Zealand, which we're about to do in just a second, how would you describe that experience and did that give you any insights or change your views in any way about all of that?
[00:06:46] Speaker C: I've been involved, or I should say I was involved for two election cycles in politics there. Before that I looked at running for local elections, which I never actually did, but I got fairly close. I was a bit more libertarian in my late teens, early twenty s.
And anyway, I didn't end up going through with that. But I did get into politics at the new conservatives. Didn't really change my views of politics in the sense that I'd been involved around the edges since I was a teenager. My father at the time was quite involved in politics in the ACT party when it was Rodney Hyde. And just like Rodney Hyde now, Rodney Hyde hates the ACT party. My father hates the ACT party. I hate the act party. So those things have changed. But I think the hard thing that I found with the new conservatives is that to get the kind of interest from people, to have it work out, to get the money, the big names, to make it all come together is insanely difficult.
And the kinds of people you attract in politics are usually not, especially at the lower level, and not the kinds of people who make great politicians.
I don't want to say there were great people there, great, wonderful people. Nothing bad to say about any of them, even the ones who I fell out with and had political problems with. Still great people, but just really hard to get something off the ground and to get interest. And yeah, the voters are very much satisfied with the status quo or low risk things or if they feel like they're winning, like, okay, well, I'm going to vote for the party that's going to get in, because then I feel like a winner. It's just really hard to overcome that in New Zealand's political system. That's my biggest takeaway.
[00:08:36] Speaker A: That's a great insight, actually, isn't it? And I think you're right. I think probably the new conservatives had one big opportunity in front of them and it was when Colin Craig was involved. But I think what the opportunity was, or should have been, was I think he should have remained the money man in the background. And if they'd invested at that point in some really strong, charismatic leadership, then maybe that would have been their chance.
[00:08:58] Speaker C: I think, yeah, the structure is difficult because what you described there is exactly what you need and it seems to be the one thing that New Zealand politics doesn't get. And I've spoken, I wasn't involved in those times with Colin Craig, but people have said who were trying to get political, people who were not necessarily conservative, but just purely political, people who talked to him basically said, we offered him the way to win in politics and he wasn't interested. He wanted to do his own thing because he was the money man.
But he did get fairly close for what he did. But nothing has happened since then. Basically, it's been a slow, almost downhill journey. Up and downs a little bit. The fortunes of the new conservatives ended up being tied to the fortunes of Winston Peters. So people hated on Winston Peters. One year you'd get lucky and get some more support and then the next year people would go back to loving Winston Peters and then you'd lose support. That was kind of the up and down.
[00:10:00] Speaker A: I remember actually going to an event where Winston Peters spoke and Colin Craig spoke. And it was clear Peters knew that his target audience was the same people who were going to vote for new conservative. And so he spent most of the time he's interviewed about political matters, talking about how he could deliver, whereas the new conservatives couldn't deliver. It was very interesting. He was astute enough to see that and understand that. And I've long believed that it's really only once Winston Peters retires or passes on that there will actually be a genuine gap in the political landscape for a new minor conservative party. I think.
[00:10:38] Speaker C: I don't think you're wrong. I definitely am in agreement with you there.
I don't want a conservative movement to go away or to fail in any way. I want them to succeed. But like you, I don't see a clear path forward. So that's one of the reasons why I've stepped away and decided to focus on other things, still full support for the people involved. But I think at some point you have to accept that you're not making a difference and then it becomes really hard to continue.
[00:11:11] Speaker A: Yeah, it's again a very astute and prudent insight. And I guess the challenge for guys like us is what do we do outside of the political house to make a difference then and try and shift the dial? So that's the million dollar question.
Let's talk now about something you're doing. And when I saw that you'd tweeted about this, I thought, man, this is excellent. We've got to actually follow what you're doing here. You've got this coalition tracker and you're tracking the coalition to see the new government. It sounds a bit dodgy. He's not stalking them, folks. It's nothing like that. It's legitimately assessing their performance and the promises they've made. Are they actually delivering? And what usually happens, of course, in the political cycle is we get to the end of the three years and we discover then whether they've delivered or not. Whereas what Diwa is doing here is he's tracking this. It's almost week by week, isn't it? You're tracking what's going on the house, what their policy positions are, where things are coming into play, what's happening in the house and all that kind of stuff. So before we get into what the tracker actually does, what motivated you to do this?
[00:12:18] Speaker C: I decided that I didn't want to be involved in politics anymore. I made a post saying I'm taking a break from politics. And then I thought, what am I going to do now?
And I wanted to do a little bit of programming over the summer, some hobby programming. I'm a programmer by trade, it's what I do for a living. But I enjoy doing it as a hobby as well because sometimes you want to learn some new skills, try out some new technology.
And I've actually got a different programming project in process and have for many years, which is a metrical salter app for the Presbyterians.
[00:12:54] Speaker A: Awesome.
[00:12:56] Speaker C: But it was quite a bit more of a complex project and so I wanted to start with something fresh. Chat GPT had just been really big last year, so I wanted to really push Chat GPT to its limits as well. And so I got started on this tracker because the coalition parties had actually released documents like line items of item like pages and pages and pages of promises. And the previous government didn't do that. At all. And like you've said, very rare to get all of these documents out in public, to get 100% transparency on what the government is claiming to deliver. So I had the data set to be a metric to be able to do this and had the technology to be able to do it. So put a spreadsheet. Basically put a spreadsheet as things happen during the week because I'm following politics anyway. I love following politics.
I hate loving following politics, mate.
[00:13:52] Speaker A: Praise God for train spotters like you, brother. That's what I'll say.
[00:13:56] Speaker C: And so as soon as I see something is posted on Twitter that they delivered on a promise and the parties themselves are very good at telling you, hey, we've delivered on a promise. So I just punch that into the spreadsheet, update the line items on how any progress they've made, if they've completed it. I've basically got three states not started in progress and delivered. Then there's also a fourth failed option.
[00:14:22] Speaker A: So that would be what? A bill that they tried to pass but didn't go anywhere?
[00:14:26] Speaker C: Yeah, I won't be entirely unbiased. I will take my own biases in a little way, but I'm somebody who wants them to succeed. But I'm not actually currently involved in either of these three parties. So if I think they failed something, I will basically say they failed. And here's my reference, here's my notes as to saying why I believe they failed this particular item.
I don't know how they will handle that internally if they fail, because obviously they've made these promises to each other, so that could get it very interesting.
[00:14:59] Speaker A: Yeah, that's a whole big question, white. You've got this marriage of convenience, political convenience, like every political marriage is. And what happens when the vows are broken? Because it's not just two parties either, it's three. And it seems to me there are some complex moving parts, policy wise, in this coalition, right?
[00:15:20] Speaker C: Absolutely. Some complicated items. I was surprised by the number of items that overlapped. So there's quite a few promises that are identical in both documents between New Zealand first and National, and between act and national. And they've roughly both promised also to support each other's documents. So one of the promises is basically, we will also support all of the promises that are in the other.
They. The negotiations behind this are solid. I remember during the negotiations, the media was going all out at Christopher Luxon.
I don't know whatever they were making up, I don't remember anymore. People don't remember the details, but they were making up all kinds of stories about how terrible the negotiations were going to be, how long it was taking, how they weren't making any progress. I'm looking at this document, putting it all into a spreadsheet, going through it sentence by sentence and finding all the little details. And I'm thinking, this is amazing work. They really, really put a lot of work into it.
[00:16:19] Speaker A: Yeah. And that's always a good sign. So just one other thing before we jump into the tracker and we start actually examining where things are at. When you update, what does that entail? You are assessing new announcements, press releases, progress of bills, stuff like that.
[00:16:36] Speaker C: Exactly. That's basically exactly what I'm assessing. A lot of the updates, the information that I collect will basically come through Twitter. Like, Twitter is just really good for aggregating everything that's happening on any particular subject. If you're following the right people, you'll get that information and I will source references if things are completed, whether it's mainstream media articles, whether it's press releases, whether it's tweets even, I'll just reference those so that people can actually go and check. Okay. Viewer thinks it's finished. Why does he think it's finished? So they can go through and follow those claims.
[00:17:11] Speaker A: Do you have a tolerance, like as in typical politicians type rhetoric and approach, is to say, yeah, we're getting to that, we're getting to that. We will deliver, it's coming, Christmas is coming, but never arrives. There's no presents under the tree. What's your tolerance? Before you say, nah, they're just mucking us around here.
[00:17:29] Speaker C: So I was wondering how I'd handle that and I thought, I will cross that bridge when I get to it. So the first thing that came up was the 100 day plan. So they did the policy agreements and then they came out with 100 day plan. There were about 50, 60 items in the 100 day plan. In fact, I could probably, yeah, I think about 50 or so items in that plan. And then I could say, cool, they've said they're going to deliver these things in the next 100 days. I can say that they're all in progress, 10% in progress. They've begun, they've announced that they're going to happen in the next 100 days. And if they don't deliver them in 100 days, well, then I'll mark them as failed and say, well, you said you were going to deliver this in 100 days and you didn't, and maybe they'll come back later and deliver on it and then I can always bring it back and say, okay, they didn't get it in 100 days, but they did it in 200 days and they still did it in the end.
[00:18:23] Speaker A: Wow, there's no NCA marking in this.
[00:18:28] Speaker C: No, I'm not going to do that. I'm going to be nice and harsh. If they say it's coming, then I'm going to hold them to their own deadline.
[00:18:35] Speaker A: And to be fair, if they do deliver later, then that's still a positive. They have delivered. But you don't want to see a party that's constantly overly ambitious and over promising. Right. Because that speaks to a certain ineptitude as well.
[00:18:49] Speaker C: Correct. And with the last government, it was a lot of announcements. Announcements about announcements. Sometimes I see that with items in the tracker already, they'll say, we're making an announcement that we're going to do this thing. And I'll often just ignore that and say, okay, they've just announced it. Unless they've given a deadline on it, I'm not going to say that it's in progress. I'm going to actually wait for something concrete.
[00:19:14] Speaker A: All right, so that's the tracker, folks. You know how it works. You know the history and you know why. So we've also got a special tracker theme song. So each episode you'll hear this little sting, this musical sting. And that tells you that we are about to start tracking the progress of the New Zealand coalition government. So without any further ado, let's introduce the theme song and start talking about where things are at.
[00:19:45] Speaker B: Blah blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
[00:19:49] Speaker A: Okay, so, Diwa, we've just heard there that whenever I hear your voice, it's a whole lot of blah, blah, blah. So is it a whole lot of blah, blah, blah at the moment?
Where are they at right now? How are the coalition government in New Zealand tracking, in your estimation, right now?
[00:20:05] Speaker C: Since this is the first update, I'm basically going to have to start from the beginning. I guess I can't say, oh, we've delivered a few new items this month. We're counting February, we're counting January, we're counting December from last year. And I've got in my coalition tracker, which doesn't have a nice URL at the moment. Sorry. You can probably Google NZ Coalition tracker and find it, but it's Diwadebor GitHub IO Coalition tracker NZ.
[00:20:34] Speaker A: Send me the link and I'll put it in the show notes so people can click straight on it.
[00:20:38] Speaker C: And I'm going to buy a coalition tracker domain to make it nice and easy in the future. But I've got out of the 230 specific items that I've put in it at the moment. So I've narrowed down a number of duplicates. I've added in some stuff that the National Party has promised specifically as well. It's not just the two act and New Zealand first agreements, it's also stuff the National Party has specifically promised. Got 230 items. Of those, they've actually finished 18 of them. So that's about 8% of their promises they've delivered on. And the in progress items is currently at 35. And those 35 items are mostly 100 day plan items. So if they don't deliver on most of those 35 items in the next. I don't know how many days they've got left in their. 100 days.
[00:21:31] Speaker A: Can't be long.
[00:21:32] Speaker C: It's not very long. I'm probably going to double check whether they are going to count 100 parliamentary days. You can look at the fine print and say, oh, we actually meant 100 days of parliament.
[00:21:45] Speaker A: Of course.
[00:21:46] Speaker C: I'll see how we go.
[00:21:47] Speaker A: They're politicians, mate. There will always be a twist in the tail.
[00:21:50] Speaker C: Exactly. And sometimes you can see the wording on these items as well. I've carefully pasted in the exact wording because we'll just hold them to their words and people may read things into that that aren't there. The one that was completed just this week, the big one, was the repeal of three waters. That was actually not something that was in the New Zealand first and ACT agreements or something that the National Party put specifically in their 100 day plan. The ACT party had only asked them to just stop funding it on day one.
[00:22:21] Speaker A: Can I say on that point, that particular issue, I actually had doubts about whether they would go through with that, the national government, but they have.
[00:22:31] Speaker C: And being in this coalition with ACt and New Zealand first made them go through it. So one of the other items, one of these other 18 items also relates to three waters, which is stop work issue, a stop work notice on three items which the act party had wanted. And for instance, they finished that in the first week. Basically, they issued a stop work notice and that really was the death of three waters until it was properly repealed. So all of these things you can find in the tracker, I tell you which party asked for it. And sometimes I'll include information about lobby groups as well that are supporting those particular policies or trying to fight against those policies.
[00:23:08] Speaker A: What that means then is we got a whole lot of stuff still sitting there that what is in progress or there's no failures yet.
[00:23:16] Speaker C: No failures, just things that haven't been started. So I'm currently tracking 177 items that have not been started that have not had any mention that I've been able to find of progress being made or being completed.
[00:23:31] Speaker A: Do you expect that they will add more items? I mean, let's say there's not some earthquake or some emergency that requires that kind of thing. Let's say it's just business as usual. Do you expect more will be added, or do you think this is close to it?
[00:23:46] Speaker C: I'm keeping myself to the things that they've promised at the beginning, so I'm not going to track everything that they do. That would be too much. If somebody else wants to do that, that's fine. We're sticking with what they promised at the outset. And there are some items that they have promised at the outset that I haven't included here. So the National Party had 100 point economic plan somewhere. I just haven't had the time to go and get every single item and put that in there and cross reference it against items in the agreements and so on. So there will be some more items added, but it's only stuff that I just haven't got around to that are specifically from the act party. Sorry, specifically from the National Party. But everything that they've agreed with New Zealand first and with ACt, everything the coalition partners have agreed on together is in there.
[00:24:31] Speaker A: So what we're going to do, folks, is we are going to, over the coming months, every single month, we're going to have dispatches with Diva and we're just going to talk about where things are at. We're going to talk about any glaring policy points that really stick out, whether things have failed or they're succeeding or maybe some surprises along the way. And we will give you a sense of where things are at. How successful is this government actually at delivery? To be fair, Diwa, I don't think you have to be too spectacular at this to improve on what we had in the previous regime.
[00:25:06] Speaker C: No, in fact, they have already improved on the previous regime because the previous regime promised nothing and delivered even less.
[00:25:27] Speaker A: All righty. So that was the political tracker, complete with a nice little jab at the end there from Diva. Let's talk about some issues. Diva Waitangi Day 2024 how do you think the government acquitted itself regarding Whiteungi this year? Because this was probably an absolute baptism of fire almost straight out of the gate and they are thrown into the racial cauldron and, man, the media and commentary space was intense, but how do you think they acquitted themselves?
[00:25:57] Speaker C: I think they did a really great job of it. In fact, I would even say that there wasn't much to it for them. All they had to do was show up, don't get any embarrassing stories in the news, make some generic speeches and get home without things being thrown at.
[00:26:16] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:26:17] Speaker C: And that's what they did. All of them managed it. David Seymour, Christopher Luxon, Winston Peters, they all managed that. And they had a generic, like, very generic speech from Christopher Luxon. And the media pounced on him for making a repetition of his previous speech from last year. I had a little joke on that. I said, the repetition will continue until the lessons are learned. So I hope he keeps doing that.
[00:26:49] Speaker A: Brilliant.
[00:26:49] Speaker C: Nothing wrong with his generic message. Well, I say nothing wrong. Lots wrong with his generic message, but nothing wrong for him. For his generic message.
[00:26:57] Speaker A: Yeah. People often forget that, don't they? It is very, you're right, politically safe, especially at the moment when your opponents are. Are kicking up mary hell. And I have to say, as someone who, like, I'm authentically conservative and in the mold of Edmund Burke, and one of Edmund Burke's greatest, probably of the five key moments of his life, the things he dedicated himself to, was fighting against the unjust behaviors of, like, the East India Company and some of the colonies. And in fact, he said people remember him for the French Revolution and stuff like that. But he said that he considered that to be his greatest work, his attempt to basically impeach the governor general.
I'm someone who says, look, an authentically conservative position is one which has respect for traditions and for custom and culture, and there is a relationship here that must be civil and maintained. And we're not some liberal, bland, amorphous, just blob we call New Zealanders. There's more to it, however, what I saw from the other side leading into Waitangi, for me, it was just like, do they not understand how this is not rhetoric that plays well to ordinary New Zealanders? In fact, it's quite alarming at times. The revolutionary set, love it. But ordinary New Zealanders surely must have. A lot of them must have had the jitters. And that new poll out a couple of days ago would seem to reflect that. Right.
[00:28:22] Speaker C: The kind of almost savage behavior that you get does not really bode well for any kind of popular appeal for the grievances that they're trying to put forward against the government. And I do think that's a little bit sad because they could have a rich tradition that's well respected by everyone in the country that people look up to. In fact, it could be in the sense like the english royalty. They have all of their pageantry and all of their displays of tradition that go back hundreds of years and people look at it with a sense of awe and they could really have that at Whiteungi. And they choose to give it up for just generic left wing politics.
[00:29:11] Speaker A: Seymour's treaty principles bill, what is it? And what's up with Luxon flip flopping and now seemingly refusing support? And gosh, it seems maybe in the last couple of days or so, that looks like it was a huge mistake on his part. But what's the bill? Explain it for those who maybe have heard nothing about it other than the mainstream media narrative. And what do you think about Luxon's flip flop?
[00:29:39] Speaker C: The bill that's put forward by David Seymour is actually very straightforward. He's put forward the idea that the treaty principles will be recognized as per a few quotes, very selective from the three articles of the treaty, effectively that the New Zealand government has the right to govern all of New Zealand. That's his principle number one. And then principle number two is that all New Zealanders will be protected in the chieftainship of their lands. And then principle number three is that all New Zealanders will have the same rights and privileges as other New Zealanders. And this is a very selective trimming down of the Treaty of Whiteungi. But what makes this very different and what makes it reactionary compared to the revolutionary treaty principles that are currently used by the courts and they're referenced in legislation, is that these revolutionary principles used by the left have no basis in the treaty itself. They don't try to quote any text of the treaty. They don't try to harmonize themselves the treaty in any way. Whereas David Seymour has put quite a bit of effort into trying to harmonize his principles with the actual text of the treaty while leaving out the bits in the treaty that are not fully compatible with his form of liberalism.
So, for instance, references to the subtribes, references to the chiefs, references to Maori specifically, he hasn't included in his principles. So that's what has made it contentious with the left and with Maori specifically as well. Like even the right wing ones may be less happy with his exclusion of that. And obviously that comes from his liberalism. Everybody's the same.
We can't recognize different people as not being individuals.
[00:31:40] Speaker A: Now is he playing a long game here though? Because there is a traditional political strategy and I've seen him use it previously. And what you do is you put out a more intense version of your bill, some might say extreme. And then what you do is you actually go back to the ground, the territory where you knew you would win on, and you make it look like you've compromised, and you make your opponents feel like they've won something, when, in actual fact, you're the one who's gained. So is he about to negotiate some of this stuff back into it, do you think?
[00:32:07] Speaker C: I'm not sure if that's what he's doing here, though. I think, while he is good at doing that, as far as I can tell, he is going to force this through. This is a winning issue for him in its current form, and I think he does have some aces up his sleeve to really make it a winning situation for him where he doesn't have to compromise.
[00:32:28] Speaker A: So Luxon's flip flop, then, is that going to be a double flip flop, where he ends up having to backtrack on this because public support might actually swing in behind Seymour?
[00:32:39] Speaker C: Yeah, this is a bad spot for Luxon.
He doesn't have a win situation that I can think of. So I'm not sure what Luxon's strategy is. He's not silly, he's not stupid. He knows what he's doing as well. Luxon's team is, as far as I can tell, very clever. But I think they realize that they're between a rock and a hard place, because Seymour has at least three, if not four, different paths to victory. And the national party has a problem where probably most of their supporters want it. But the more elite members of the national party are very much opposed to it. So this is part of their internal power struggle. The national party has two factions, a Liberal and a more conservative wing, and they're in constant conflict where the base tends to be more conservative and the people who run the show tend to be more liberal.
Luxon's trying to navigate that, I think less so than him trying to navigate what David Seymour wants. He's actually trying to navigate the internal conflict within his own party.
[00:33:40] Speaker A: Yeah, it'll be interesting, won't it? Because, in a sense, the best thing that could probably happen now would be another poll to show that there is big public support for this kind of change, because then he can at least say, well, I'm a man of the people, and I go with what the police wants. And basically, in a sense, probably the flip flop would be forgotten and forgiven by most. And at the same time, he can also play off against the more liberal base by saying, well, look, we tried to do this, but the people wanted it. That kind of a good cop, bad cop thing?
[00:34:12] Speaker C: Yeah. It's a political speak as well that he's using. So when he says no, we've promised to support it to the first reading, that is what they've promised. That's in the coalition tracker.
As soon as Luxon supports this, to the first reading, it goes green. In the coalition tracker, his promise is not to get it passed into law. So when he's talking to the media as well and saying, no, we don't support this, they haven't promised to support it, but anything can happen at a second reading, even Luxon could vote against it, but other national mps could vote for it. You really don't know what's going to happen.
And even then, the bill itself is not David Seymour's victory condition. I think he's got some bigger plans up his sleeve.
[00:34:52] Speaker A: I was going to ask you then, and I think the poll that we've seen in the last couple of days might have changed this a little bit, showing a big increase in support over time for act, massive drop off for the greens. Hardly surprising.
And, yeah, really, in theory, if the activists and the revolutionaries were correct, it should have been the other way around, but it hasn't been that way.
And so I was going to ask you, do you think Seymour is about to discover the brutal reality of failing to be able to deliver on promises? And the reason I ask that is because this is something he's never been tested on previously. Because he's been in opposition, he's been able to snipe away from opposition positions at the edges. And you never have to deliver. All you have to do is point out what's wrong with your opponent's position, but you never have to even provide or prove that your alternative would even work. But now he's in that position where people are going to expect delivery.
Is the brutal reality of that going to hit? Or do you think somehow he's got himself out of jail here a little bit?
[00:35:52] Speaker C: A few months ago, I would have told you that he got shortchanged, that he got outmaneuvered in the coalition negotiations and that the people who poured millions of dollars into the acT party got ripped off. That's what I would have said.
That was my position in December. But then, through my contacts in the political sphere, I found out that this was basically a bottom line for both of them. So for the coalition to go ahead, the ACT party had to get a bill into parliament and basically the National Party had to not commit to supporting it the whole way through. So that's why they got their first reading, compromise. So just in case there are people listening to the show who aren't that politically savvy, every bill goes through three readings, first reading, second reading, third reading, unless they're doing it under urgency. And so it only has to go into the first reading. Then I found out later, behind the scenes, basically after, while they were negotiating with the National Party, inside the act party, they said, okay, well, where do we go to from here? What are our contingencies? How do we still deliver for voters? So they were really thinking about that. They were thinking, how do we actually deliver for voters? We could just say, first reading, walk away and say, oh, well, we tried, but no, they got behind the scenes. I've heard rumors. This is all just rumors. There are millions of dollars have been pledged in support of either supporting the campaign for the bill itself or supporting alternate measures. So you can take a citizens initiated referendum. As you know, if you get the signatures of 5% of the voting, I think it's 10%, 10% of the voting population sign a petition, then you can force a referendum to be held on that issue at the next election.
And that takes millions of dollars. So basically, they've got that pledged behind the scenes that they will be able to get that referendum and they're easily going to get 10% signatures easily. And that's the ace. That's the ace up his sleeve. Either the bill gets passed through parliament and there's a referendum, or they go through the massive effort to get a citizens initiate a referendum, which seems almost guaranteed to me and or even if that fails, they can still make it an election issue. The polls from this week have proved it. It's going to be an election issue. In fact, it is the number one election issue on par with, I think, the health ministry of Health and whatever, the general category that they use for public health measuring and polling.
That is the number one issue and has been for a long time alongside now the treaty principles.
Very successful move from the act party.
[00:38:34] Speaker A: Clearly the horses are spooked here as well then that there's enough of the public.
And it's interesting talking to people I know who. They're definitely not act voters. They are people who have very much been what I would call very culturally sensitive people, and they're not wandering around complaining about Tareo or anything. In fact, some of them I know have learnt Tareo, but even people like that have been saying to me over the last six months or so that they are concerned about this identity question and how we identify ourselves, how we are as a people, what it means to be one people, basically. So, yeah, the horses, it seems, have been spooked. Right.
[00:39:14] Speaker C: At the electorate level, national identity is becoming more important among people globally, and that is factoring in here, obviously, to a very large degree. It's also a dominant ideology of liberalism that factors into this, because people kind of struggle more so with the idea of people acting in ethnic interests, and that's seen as being very dangerous. So I disagree quite a bit on that subject, but I understand why it's become such a big issue because of those two things coming together.
Who are we as a people? Who are we as a nation? And then also concerns around ethnic conflict.
[00:39:56] Speaker A: Yeah, it's interesting, isn't it? That whole liberal notion of we'll all just be servile economic units in the melting pot and no one should step outside of that. And that's really breaking down. And the pot has well and truly been tipped over, that's sure, globally. And I think it's just a matter of time before us as well. Does Seymour, though, have the necessary charm to win the public all the way through or what needs to happen here?
[00:40:23] Speaker C: Unfortunately, he's done it before with the euthanasia referendum, so I'm going to say yes to that because he has proved that he could take the act party from nothing to a big force in politics.
He got the euthanasia bill and the referendum across the line, so I don't think there's any doubt around his ability.
[00:40:46] Speaker A: To do this about his charisma so negatively. The risks here, I guess, is what we're asking about, could this negatively affect Seymour's support, or is Luxon really the one who's walking the tightrope here?
[00:40:59] Speaker C: It's basically a win win situation for Seymour at this point. At this point, obviously, you've got to be a little bit careful to say you can take it to the bank because anything can happen. But currently he's holding all the cards and, yeah, for Luxon, it's very, very difficult. He could get into a bit of trouble over this. And I was just thinking, a big part of the national party's opposition is the referendum on this. They think the referendum will be too divisive. Your only other alternative is then just have parliament pass it and say, well, no referendum, we'll just do it. But that also creates problems, especially if it's seen as being a constitutional change, if it's seen as making definitive statements on what is our founding document, really, that is a constitutional change so they can't get rid. He does not have an easy way out. He really does not have an easy way out.
[00:41:55] Speaker A: Well, barring some miracle, where suddenly he discovered some hidden inner statesman and I don't know, he reappeared at Waitangi next week and then came off the marai and announced that he'd got all the chiefs on side and that they were going to enact this new principles bill then.
You know what I mean? Like where he had that total buy in and consensus from the majority, then you're right. I can't see how this plays. Well, one last question on this before we wrap up this episode. And don't forget, folks, this is a two parter. So part one, this is the Friday freebie you're listening to. If you want the second part, become a
[email protected]. Left footmedia with $5 or more per month, and that will give you access to the full conversation because we've got a few other interesting issues to talk about. But the end of part one. Let me ask you this question. Do you think, as some of the media are claiming, that basically this period over Waitangi has made the government look weak and inept, or are they really just signaling the fact that Luxon has put himself in a bit of bother here by not being strong enough? What do you think?
[00:43:02] Speaker C: Definitely a tough spot for Luxon. But again, I don't think that reflects on the government itself or whether they're looking weak or inept. I did complain in a column last week for the BFD. I basically wrote that they need to get moving.
They started off too slow. The media and the forces on the left wing of New Zealand, the radicals, have moved into position. They've taken two months to start making their case, to start creating all kinds of problems to generate a narrative. And the government is really on the back foot when it comes to controlling the narrative. But when you look at the polling, that tells you a very different story.
I think if anything, the government isn't taking the fact that it's in a war with the media seriously enough. At least Luxon isn't. And yeah, I still think his biggest problem is internal, internal to the national party. Those are his really big problems. And whether or not that will end up undermining the government remains to be seen.
[00:44:13] Speaker A: It also seems to me, too, based on we've had another leak in the last 24 hours that seems that they clearly are at war with a stacked public service. It seems as well, I feel like someone's got to come out and start, I don't know, chopping heads and throwing them off the city walls or something so they get the message that the leaking has got to stop.
[00:44:29] Speaker C: It's exactly what I would suggest, what I have suggested in my columns, in my tweets, whatever. However I can get the message across, they need to understand the public service is effectively at war with them. The left just runs on the back of the media and the bureaucracy that is the left wing, as it were. The media, the bureaucracy, that's all they've got. If you can really take an axe to either of those, or both of them, preferably, you effectively destroy the power of the left, probably for good.
And that has been shown to be the case in some other countries recently, around the world. And we'll get into geopolitics later, I guess.
[00:45:11] Speaker A: Yeah, well, they're in a grimmer worm tongue moment. He's got the king's ear, he's got him under his spell, and that's the bureaucracy. That's, I guess the media is out the front doing the propagandizing.
And I think also Luxon is. He's trying to play the middle. That's always been his weakness, trying to play the middle. That's the worst thing you can do, I think, in politics, is try and play and placate everybody. It never works. It just never, ever works.
[00:45:38] Speaker C: He's a manager. He worked as a CEO. He's the king of the managerial class, the king of managerialism. He just wants to.
We're slowly, the entire world is moving away from this system of managerialism that's just abroading the entire west at its foundations, and he is the ultimate manager. So either he's going to have to move away from that and like you said, become a statesman, he's going to have to seize the day or he will get himself into more and more problems as the years go on.
[00:46:14] Speaker A: Yeah, well, that's right, isn't it? You've either got to be, what, a roman emperor who goes down in history for really changing the game up, breaking things open, or you're going to be the last one who sat on the throne before it all collapsed. And that's not a good place to be in.
[00:46:28] Speaker C: I saw an interesting point that somebody made saying that the roman emperors we remember from history would not necessarily have been the popular ones.
So that's what it sometimes comes down to.
[00:46:45] Speaker A: That's a great point. All righty, folks, so that is the end of part one of our conversation. If you're listening in on Friday, the Friday Freebie. We are about to carry on our conversation, though for our patrons only. On Monday, we will be having part two of this conversation and our two big topics that we're going to be focusing on are Tucker Carlson talking to Putin and the president Biden classified document case, and maybe a few other things as well if we get time. So part two of that conversation available exclusively to our patrons at foot media. The link is in today's show notes. Thank you so much for tuning in and Diwa, I guess I should give you the opportunity to say goodbye to our Friday freebie listeners. Let them know where can they follow you? How do they follow your work?
[00:47:30] Speaker C: The main places where I post on an almost daily frequency would be my Twitter account. I refuse to call it x.
It's always going to remain twitter to me. So twitter.com writemindsnz or you can search through for my name. If you can remember how to spell Diwa Dubor, you can also look for that. And then Telegram is my other platform that I use quite a bit. So you can also look for Diwa Deborah on Telegram. So just at Diwa Deborah and you'll find me. And we've got a telegram chat as well. If you want to talk, bring up issues or get my thoughts on specific things. I used to be quite active on Facebook, but don't bother with that anymore. So those are your two choices. Also got right Minds NZ, which is where most of my long form blog posts end up.
I am a columnist for the BFD and their insight program, which is for their paid subscribers. So if you want to read my paid work, it's every Saturday morning on the BFD. Those do get archived weeks later on right Minds NZ. And of course, I'm a host for reality check radio as well. If you're listening to this on Friday, I will just have had my first show in the morning. They will run from 10:00 a.m. To 01:00 p.m. On Fridays.
It's called the dialogue with Diwa de Boer and we explore politics, power and culture. And there's a lot of classical music, a lot of history, a lot of interesting guests who will talk about forbidden subjects.
[00:49:03] Speaker A: Well, there you go, folks. If you want to get upskilled and upskilled, then definitely make sure you tune in. If you're listening on Friday morning and it's early enough, get in there and have a listen on reality check radio. If not, I'm sure, Dewey, that it'll be available. Won't it as a podcast, downloadable at some point.
[00:49:19] Speaker C: That's right. So through the app you can get the full show playback, you can get the specific interviews. So one of the interviews I did this morning was with William McGimpsey, and he's a public policy professional. And yeah, so that is going to be a really great interview, and I do hope that you go back and listen to it if you get the chance.
[00:49:39] Speaker A: Diwa, just to remind our listeners, too, on the Friday freebie one last time, we will be having this conversation once a month. We'll be tracking the government. We'll be talking about politics, local and abroad. And part two will always be on Monday morning for patrons only. Alrighty, folks, thanks for tuning in. We'll sign off now. Patrons, you hang around until Monday. We'll see you soon. Thanks for tuning into this episode of Dispatches with Diwa. If you don't want to miss out on part two of our conversation, which is available exclusively to our patrons only, then make sure you go to patreon.com left foot media and sign up to become a five dollar monthly patron. The link is in today's show notes. Thanks once again for tuning in. Don't forget, live by goodness, truth and beauty, not by lies. And I'll see you next time on the dispatchers.
[00:50:29] Speaker B: When I was young, my daddy got to keep one eye opening your bed. Because there's a time coming when the devil going to come for you.
So much of your finger. Stay prepared. I've got my weapon and I got my prayers. Because if you don't run this town, they'll walk all over you.
Run out, I better run on, keep on until the sun goes down. Run out, I better run on, run all day till you can't be found. Run out, I gotta run on. Keep on running till the sun goes down.
You can hour on the devil, but you ain't gonna hour on me.
