Hosted by Phil Goff and Chris Finlayson, Cross Party Lines goes fully domestic this week — a weekend of wall-to-wall policy announcements gives the panel plenty to work with, a centrist party is suddenly polling close to the threshold, and a government that spent three years going hard on conservation and fisheries has quietly started walking backwards.All thanks to Frank Risk Management, the 100% Kiwi Owned Insurance Brokerage.In this e...
Hosted by Phil Goff and Chris Finlayson, Cross Party Lines goes fully domestic this week — a weekend of wall-to-wall policy announcements gives the panel plenty to work with, a centrist party is suddenly polling close to the threshold, and a government that spent three years going hard on conservation and fisheries has quietly started walking backwards.
All thanks to Frank Risk Management, the 100% Kiwi Owned Insurance Brokerage.
In this episode:
* Labour’s apprenticeship push, National’s solar moment and a rare weekend of good policy — Labour’s congress produced one headline announcement: fully funded apprenticeships for the first two years, reinstating a scheme National halved in government. National’s solar panel policy gets a warmer reception than expected from both sides: electricity prices up, panel costs down, and every party bar ACT now backing some form of solar subsidy.
* The Opportunities Party — four percent and rising — With TOP polling at 4.1% in the Herald poll of polls and as high as 4.6% in some variants, Phil and Chris give the centrist party its most forensic examination yet. Chris invokes Peter Dunne’s historical observation — in MMP, no party has ever entered parliament from outside without an existing MP.
* Conservation backdowns, fisheries farce and the ninth floor asleep at the wheel — Tama Potaka’s partial retreat on the Conservation Amendment Bill draws a pointed parallel from Phil: this is John Key’s 2010 Schedule Four debacle replayed, almost scene for scene. Forty thousand people marched up Queen Street then. The same constituencies — trampers, Forest and Bird, Greenpeace, coastal communities — are mobilising now.
Along the way: Key as the ultimate Teflon politician and the heartbreak of trying to make things stick to him, wallabies crossing the Rangitāiki River as an emerging conservation crisis and Pauline Hanson’s maternity leave blunder costing her three points overnight.
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