PANEL DISCUSSIONS
HOSTED BY GREG BOYED

In response to JOHN KEY interview

GREG BOYED
Time to welcome the panel this week. Dr Raymond Miller from Auckland University, good morning to you. Josie Pagani, former Labour candidate and communications consultant, welcome along. From the right, welcome to Matthew Hooton, public affairs consultant and columnist. All right, first of all, Matthew, we’ll start with you. John Banks. John Key, he believes him. He is backing him.

MATTHEW HOOTON - Political Consultant
He didn’t quite say he believes him. He says that he enjoys his confidence. I think it’s probably fair enough that the Prime Minister doesn’t read every word of that police file, but he has 40 staff in his office, including a chief of staff, and I think he should get his chief of staff to read it carefully. He’s right that it’s politically motivated, but that doesn’t mean that what Mr Banks said in that clip and what the police file said are impossible to be reconciled. And this is not going to go away, because Labour knows this is the government’s majority. If they can somehow get rid of Mr Banks, then Mr Key becomes reliant on the Maori Party. So Labour’s going to fight this all the way.

JOSIE PAGANI - Political Commentator
I mean, ‘enjoy his confidence’. I mean, let’s just have a look at this. If the bar is lowered to such an extent that if you haven’t committed a crime, you can be a minister in John Key’s Government, that’s lowering the bar a bit too far, I think. And that seems to be what he’s saying is that he enjoys his confidence. Clearly he lied. He solicited the donations, he accepted them in person and then he forgot about them and then he remembered. So in the court of public opinion, he’s clearly lied. But I just think this is remarkable. What John Key seems to be saying is he’s not in jail; he’d make a fine minister.

GREG Raymond, how acceptable is this? The bottom line seems to be, ‘I haven’t read the report, so I take him at his word, and he enjoys my confidence.’ Is that enough for a prime minister? ‘I just haven’t read the report.’

DR RAYMOND MILLER - Political Scientist
No, and I suspect that most of our viewers will agree that John Banks is really on very thin ice on this. A lot will say he’s lying. And it’s strange that the Prime Minister continues to support him given John Banks’ own inability to defend himself credibly. I think there are political implications in all of this. I think the Prime Minister is concerned about getting rid of the leader of the ACT Party, because he needs him for support, for confidence, for decisions that go through his government. And he’s got a slightly different set of standards for him than he does for ministers of his own party.

JOSIE You imagine, Greg, if there was a referendum on asset sales, which there could hypothetically be given the delay, he would need the vote of John Banks to get the asset sales through. And I think everybody looks at that and goes, ‘This is yet another result of this disastrous asset sale plans, when you’ve still got John Banks there.’

MATTHEW The legislation for the asset sales is through. This is about the ongoing stability of the government.

GREG Let’s move on to job. 600 jobs in the past month, with Tiwai Point, Kawerau and the list goes on. ‘Always going to be job losses’ is the line that John Key took there.

JOSIE Yeah. Here’s the other thing he said about the Kawerau paper mill - that no one is reading newspapers anymore, therefore we’ve got these job losses. Well, that just ignores the prime reason. All these job losses that we’re seeing recently are export industries. They’re timber mills, coal, aluminium. And that’s the major problem. He’s been to Europe, and what we’ve seen there is that all our trading partners, whether it be Australia or China and all the countries of Europe, are trying desperately to make their dollar competitive. Our dollar is so overvalued that our exporters are simply priced out of the market. And that’s the problem that he’s failing to-

MATTHEW This is the statement that we’ve heard from David Parker-

JOSIE It’s not David Parker. It’s the IMF. The IMF line.

MATTHEW David Parker from the Labour Party has come up this week saying that he believes that the New Zealand Government and the New Zealand Reserve Bank can somehow control the value of the New Zealand dollar in the face of the economic storm with the euro and the US dollar and so forth. This is just simply incredible that after all these years of having a floating dollar, there is absolutely no possibility our Reserve Bank-

JOSIE No, but our Reserve Bank Act was written at a time where the biggest problem we had was inflation. Well, now the biggest problem we’ve got is that our exporters are not competitive.

GREG I want to bring you into this, Raymond, with the paper mill we saw in Kawerau. We’ve heard what Australia has done. The government there is subsidising pretty much the same operation in Tasmania to keep that going. Why are we not even looking at that?

RAYMOND I think for ideological reasons as much as anything. I don’t think the government is in a position where it wants to be propping up industries, believing that it’s the survival of the fittest, in a sense. Some industries will survive; others will fall. But it doesn’t want to engage that level of kind of propping up ineffective or inefficient industries. A few months ago, we were talking about the problems of the Eurozone, and I was waiting for Bill English to break into the Fred Dagg song We Don’t Know How Lucky We Are. It’s now spread to Asia, and there are concerns expressed there. The Prime Minister today said everything is interconnected, and it is. China’s our second most important export market. Japan is number four. Australia’s number one. Australia’s in difficulties with its exports to China. So what we’re seeing in New Zealand is this interconnectedness in very practical terms, and jobs are one aspect. What is really going to be important is the next time the unemployment figures come out to see whether what’s happening in Kawerau and Greymouth is happening right through the country.

MATTHEW Well, it isn’t, because the economy is creating more jobs than it’s losing.

GREG Let’s quickly jump on to water because we are running out of time. I apologise. Common law supports the government’s view of where they are with water and their stance on water. That was fairly emphatic what John Key had to say this morning and where the government will be going next on this.

MATTHEW Well, that’s going to be tested in the courts. And so is wind, and so is sunlight-

GREG And earth, wind and fire, apparently.

MATTHEW Who knows? And I think what the government might find is it may well prevail in the High Court, but by the time this gets to the Supreme Court, I think we’re going to find the courts are going to rule that there is some Treaty right to water, and it’s going to create a terrible dilemma for the government. But it also creates a terrible dilemma for the Labour Party. The Prime Minister has declared that, in his view, water is state owned. Does David Shearer agree with that? Does he endorse the Prime Minister’s position that water is owned by the state, or is he prepared to say, like the Maori King is, that it’s privately owned? Or is he going to waffle? If he agrees with the Maori King or waffles, then I think the government is quite entitled to say Labour is prepared to countenance the privatisation of water. Let’s see how that one goes.

GREG We will find all that out in just a moment. David Shearer’s here in just a moment, so we will ask him, I’m sure.

PANEL DISCUSSIONS
HOSTED BY GREG BOYED

In response to DAVID SHEARER interview

GREG BOYED
The panel - Josie Pagani, Dr Raymond Miller, Matthew Hooton. First of all, Raymond. ‘Labour Leader, David Shearer, what would you do with the water?’ ‘I don’t know.’ Wasn’t that an opportunity to sink one for Labour?

DR RAYMOND MILLER - Political Scientist
Oh dear. Where do we begin with this interview, quite frankly? Um, honestly, here was an opportunity for him to show where they are different from National, and unfortunately I think he loses people by trying to explain things. And this happened both in terms of water and in terms of education. Almost devoid of fresh ideas. And any idea that he might have gets completely lost in the explanation. And I sensed with the water one, ‘We all own water.’ But then on to asset sales. I honestly felt that here is a person who has not been able to clear his head and think through the issues that are very important to his party. He seems to me like a very reluctant leader, and he’s trying to explain himself, but without the passion or the clarity that you need as a leader, particularly a leader of the Opposition.

GREG Josie, he’s your guy.

JOSIE PAGANI - Political Commentator
I think where you’re seeing a difference in terms of policy statements between Labour and National is on monetary policy. And I know Matthew will disagree with me on this. But the truth is we have all our trading partners and all of Europe doing a lot to deal with their overvalued dollar, overvalued currency, and we’re doing nothing. And what the Labour Party’s saying, actually, is quite a revolutionary change to monetary policy where you would suddenly have to consider the effect that the exchange rate has on exporters or jobs.

MATTHEW HOOTON - Political Consultant
That’s precisely why it’s so stupid.

JOSIE The capital gains tax is another thing that would transform the economy in terms of moving it away from incentives to speculate on property to the productive sector. If Labour could spell that out clearly and talk about the economy, talk about jobs, I think that would have almost an instant effect-

GREG He had five minutes to do that. Was that done?

JOSIE Well, I mean, it could have been done clearer, but the point is that is a substantive difference. I think on water, I think Raymond’s right. He could have come in a lot stronger and said that what we’ve seen with these hui is Maori coming together with very diverse views, but saying that you cannot debate with one of us and consult with one of us - ie: commercial iwi leaders who have got a commercial interest - and not debate with local hapu, iwi and Maori Council who have a different view of it. So I think he could have been very clear about that.

GREG Matthew, are we any clearer?

MATTHEW Well, on the dollar thing, it’s just so stupid. As Josie says, you do have the US Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank, the Bank of England, the Australian Reserve Bank, the Bank of China. They are all trying to reduce their currencies.

JOSIE That’s good.

MATTHEW Which has the effect of pushing ours up. The idea that little old Reserve Bank at 3 The Terrace is going to be able to manipulate the value of the New Zealand dollar against the might of the Federal Reserve, the Bank of China is so stupid that we will be laughed out of court on that.

JOSIE But, Matthew, the alternative is that the National vision is do nothing.

MATTHEW The alternative is to wait. As has happened in the past, hundreds of billions of dollars trying to manipulate the New Zealand dollar, which will fail.

JOSIE Well, why hasn’t it failed elsewhere?

GREG Let’s look at things more broadly. Let’s look at people who were listening to the two leaders back to back, which doesn’t happen that often. Let’s face it, it doesn’t happen an awful lot at all. Was that different, was that message any more definitive, different, a change to what John Key had to say? Is anyone going to see that and go, ‘Oh, well, right. He’s my man’?

RAYMOND Yes, if we could illustrate with reference to the education thing. Because they claim to be the party of education. Sort of defending National Standards, but not going too far. Saying, well, OK, we think reading recovery should be in every school. My gosh, reading recovery’s been around for decades.

MATTHEW It’s amazing it’s not.

RAYMOND And food in school. Well, there are 232 schools currently where children are being fed, and there are hundreds more on the waiting list. So, in a sense, these are supposed to be new ideas, but they’re not. They’re not new ideas.

JOSIE I think Raymond’s got a really good point there. This speech, I mean, people like me love it. It’s heartland Labour stuff. It’s school meals and it’s reading recovery. These are the things that people love about Labour anyway. I’m not sure that it’s going to change anybody’s vote or change anybody’s mind. And that’s the problem I think that Labour has. They’ve actually got to swallow some dead rats, just like National did before they could make themselves electable. They had to agree not to touch Working For Families. They had to agree not to touch student interest-free loans.

MATTHEW National Standards is in that category. I mean, the two parts of the speech - the universal reading recovery. I bet we’ll find that’s National Party policy at the next election, and I’m sure National will announce before the next election some sort of initiative on meals in schools. So those ideas will be taken over by the National Government. On National Standards, it polls well. Parents love it. Labour knows it has to keep National Standards if it wants to be a credible government. Of course, its education policy is controlled by the teacher unions, so it’s got that dilemma.

JOSIE I think this is a good compromise to say that school boards can choose whether or not they have National Standards.

MATTHEW Why? Because they’re against charter schools being able to make choices.

JOSIE You should in favour of that choice.

GREG We’ll come back after the break.

PANEL DISCUSSIONS
HOSTED BY GREG BOYED

In response to PROFESSOR JIM FLYNN interview

GREG BOYED
Turning one last time to our panel - Raymond Miller, Josie Pagani and Matthew Hooton. He made a bit of a dig at David Shearer there. What did you make of what he said?

JOSIE PAGANI - Political Commentator
As the token woman here, I was thinking I should probably take over.

GREG (To Raymond and Matthew) Well, you were nodding off in between.

JOSIE You guys can just leave, and I’ll say some intelligent comments.

GREG Go on, then. He did have a bit of a dig at David Shearer.

MATTHEW HOOTON - Political Consultant
I think in terms of measuring the system as a whole, he’s absolutely right that a random sample is better than surveying everyone. But this is about individual kids-

DR RAYMOND MILLER - Political Scientist
I have to confess, I’m one of the social scientists he’s talking about, and I didn’t think about a random sample. So obviously my IQ is something I need to work on.

JOSIE I think what’s wonderful about this, though, is the so-called Flynn Effect. It’s extremely hopeful. He set out in the ‘60s to prove that black people weren’t less intelligent than white people, that women aren’t less intelligent than men and that there isn’t a biological drive that makes us different. So it’s extremely hopeful. Not only can people actually improve their IQ between races and gender, personally we can improve our IQ over a lifetime, which is wonderful. Hopeful.

GREG All right, we will leave it there. Thank you to all three of you.