Cross Party Lines

Live Q&A: New Zealand's Greatest Mistake, the Foreshore Lie and Who's Worst

Hosted by Phil Goff and Chris Finlayson with special guests Helen Clark and Tracey Martin, this bonus episode brings together the questions from the live Q&A sessions at both the Auckland Q Theatre and Wellington Hannah Playhouse shows.All thanks to Frank Risk Management, the 100% Kiwi owned insurance brokerage.The audience asks, the panel answers:* What was New Zealand’s biggest missed political opportunity? — Phil and Chris are in rare and emphatic agreement: Sir Robert Muldoon winding up the Kirk government’s superannuation scheme in 1975 — for short-term political advantage — is the single most costly decision in New Zealand’s modern history.* Energy, health, the Crown-Māori relationship and urgency in Parliament — The audience covers the waterfront. On energy: all three panellists back pumped hydro over an LNG terminal, and Phil draws a line connecting Malcolm Turnbull’s climate pragmatism to what New Zealand’s current government is getting catastrophically wrong.* AI, trans rights, capital gains tax and the Opportunities Party — The rapid-fire second half covers the issues the audience most wanted answered. On AI: Tracey always says please and thank you to AI, because when they take over the world she intends to be fine; Phil is more concerned about the military applications.Along the way: a four-year term referendum that never happened and probably should have, Chris’s view that the Intelligence and Security Committee should be chaired by a senior opposition MP rather than the Prime Minister, why the UK delegation that came to study New Zealand’s select committee process now has a better system than we do.Cross Party Lines exists to lift political literacy and create space for calm, good-faith political conversation. New episodes every Tuesday. If you value thoughtful debate, follow the podcast and share it with someone who might too.🎙 Christchurch is next — part of the Word Festival, second week of September. Tickets at word.co.nz. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit crosspartylines.substack.com

Penk, Peters and Citizens Arrests (LIVE with Tracey Martin)

Hosted by Phil Goff and Chris Finlayson, Cross Party Lines goes live at the Hannah Playhouse in Wellington — sold out in a week — with a very special guest: Tracey Martin, former deputy leader of New Zealand First, former Minister for Seniors and Children, and current CEO of the Aged Care Association.An episode that moves from the psychodrama of National’s leadership crisis to the slow-motion crisis in aged care — with an insider’s account of life in the New Zealand First caucus along the way.Thanks for Frank Risk Management, New Zealand 100% Kiwi-owned insurance brokerage - find out more at frankrisk.co.nz.In this episode:* National’s leadership crisis — Penk’s defenestration and what comes next — Phil walks through the numbers with forensic clarity: Luxon is lucky to be standing. The week that preceded the vote was arguably the worst of his premiership — the small business comments, the MMP referendum blurt, the Air Force plane to a party fundraiser, wages up 2% against inflation at 4.1%. Chris is blunt about Chris Penk: a good minister, probably not the only one involved, and now made an example pour encourager les autres. Tracey offers the most nuanced reading: what if Penk was genuinely motivated by loyalty to the party and believed a new leader would save the election?* Inside the New Zealand First caucus — and was the Peters outburst planned? — Tracey Martin spent years as one of the most senior figures in New Zealand First, and she doesn’t pull her punches. She describes her own caucus colleagues as occasionally weird — but notes that every caucus has weird people, because weird people deserve representation too. On Peters telling Lawrence Xu-Nan to go back to his own country: she had her husband check the Hansard. All Lawrence said was “are you vaccinated?” What followed was not planned — but that, she argues, might be the more alarming conclusion.* Citizens’ arrest, aged care and the promises nobody can afford — The episode’s final stretch is its most policy-dense. Chris dissects the Crimes Amendment Act’s enhanced citizens’ arrest powers: who decides what constitutes reasonable force? What happens when a 40-year-old man sits on a 15-year-old child? Phil cites the Police Association, Retail New Zealand and Business New Zealand all opposing it — because all the evidence shows that fatalities in retail crime happen when retailers chase or tackle offenders. Tracey adds the constitutional concern: the law says you can detain someone if you merely think they did it. On aged care — Tracy’s professional domain — the warning is stark: superannuation is the base funding model for all residential age care in this country. TOP’s policy of transitioning away from superannuation was designed without understanding that, and she has had to explain the consequences to them herself.Along the way: Tim Groser performing with Sam Neill at Downstage in its heyday, Annette King messaging Chris to be nice to her cousin Tracey, Chris describing himself as Captain Smack in National Party circles, Count Binface polling between 20 and 30% in Clacton and Tracy’s observation that misogynists exist in every party — not just New Zealand First.Cross Party Lines exists to lift political literacy and create space for calm, good-faith political conversation. New episodes every Tuesday. If you value thoughtful debate, follow the podcast and share it with someone who might too.🎙 Wellington sold out. Christchurch is next — second week of September as part of the Word Christchurch Festival. Tickets available now at wordchristchurch.co.nz. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit crosspartylines.substack.com

Numpties, Captains Calls and the Populist Menace (LIVE with Helen Clark)

Hosted by Phil Goff and Chris Finlayson, Cross Party Lines goes live at Q Theatre in Auckland — with a very special guest: the Right Honourable Helen Clark, former Prime Minister, former UNDP Administrator and member of The Elders.An episode that moves from a government having a terrible week to the West Bank, and doesn’t pull a single punch along the way.All thanks to Frank Risk Management, the 100% Kiwi Owned Insurance Brokerage. Find out more at frankrisk.co.nz.In this episode:* A bad week for Luxon, a worse week for Peters — and a referendum nobody asked for — The week opened with unemployment at 5.6% nationally, 6.5% in Auckland — the highest in eleven years — wages up 2% against inflation running at 4.1%, and Labour leading National on all five of the top issues in the Ipsos poll. Then came Luxon’s comments to small businesses — essentially telling them to stand on their own feet — which he backtracked on within hours. Helen’s verdict is pointed: to change something as fundamental as the electoral system, you need a royal commission, a proper process and a mandate — not a prime minister who’s sick of his coalition partners.* Populism, The Elders and the rise of the illiberal right — Chris is reading a book called Centrists of the World Unite and using it as a frame for the episode’s most wide-ranging conversation. He is genuinely alarmed: a potential President Le Pen next year, the AFD in Germany and Pauline Hanson in Australia. Helen welcomes Andy Burnham as a confident new leader capable of dispatching Farage and makes the structural point: social democratic and liberal centre parties have failed to build the kind of cross-bloc flexibility that the German FDP or the British Liberal Democrats offered at their best. The Opportunities Party, both Chris and Helen note, may be trying to fill that space — though Helen is sceptical of their land tax, and Phil’s concern remains unchanged: a TOP vote that falls below 5% is a vote for the status quo.* The West Bank, Gaza and Palestine disappearing before our eyes — Helen has just returned from her third visit to the West Bank as part of The Elders’ work, and her account is one of the most vivid and sobering of any episode. Seven hundred thousand illegal settlers. Israeli flags lining the roads into Palestinian villages. Tear gas thrown into schoolyards. Olive groves inaccessible. A village with one road in after the other was closed. Her conclusion, shared with The Elders: Palestine is disappearing before our eyes.Along the way: Paul Henry naming Helen Clark as the most impressive politician of recent decades, the SIS agent thrown down the stairs of the Political Studies Department in the 1970s, Raybon Kan’s line that when Peters told him to go back where he came from, he was relieved it wasn’t back to the third world — or Masterton.Warm, historically rich and more emotionally charged than any episode before it, this live show is a reminder that the best political conversation happens when three people who have actually done the job sit in a room and tell the truth.Cross Party Lines exists to lift political literacy and create space for calm, good-faith political conversation. New episodes every Tuesday. If you value thoughtful debate, follow the podcast and share it with someone who might too.🎙 This was our Auckland live show at Q Theatre. Wellington’s Hannah Playhouse is next — with special guest Tracey Martin. Follow us so you don’t miss the announcement. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit crosspartylines.substack.com

Peters' Dying Light, Data Debate and Disappearing Commissioners

Hosted by Phil Goff and Chris Finlayson, Cross Party Lines returns with an episode that opens on Winston Peters telling a Green MP to go back to his own country and calling China’s leaders liars — and asks why the Prime Minister is applying a different standard to racism than he did to sexism.Proudly brought to you by Frank Risk Management, the 100% kiwi-owned insurance brokerage. Find out more at frankrisk.co.nz.In this episode:* Peters goes off the rails — again, and possibly for the last time — Winston Peters told Lawrence Xu-Nan, a Green MP who has lived in New Zealand for most of his life, to go back to his own country. He then labelled China’s leadership — New Zealand’s biggest trading partner — a bunch of liars, prompting a formal rebuke from the Chinese Embassy that neither Phil nor Chris can recall happening before in their combined decades in politics. Chris reaches for Dylan Thomas — do not go gentle into that good night — and reads the whole episode as a career in its dying convulsions: disproportionate, extreme and politically self-destructive.* Economies of Doubt and Data of Hope — $3.5 billion, 280 megawatts and a debate nobody is having — DataGrid, a Singapore-based company, is planning a data centre near Invercargill that would consume more than twice the power of all 62 existing data centres in New Zealand combined. Both Phil and Chris land cautiously in favour — New Zealand would effectively be exporting sustainable energy in the form of data, worth potentially $50-70 billion in economic benefits according to the Boston Consulting Group — but both are frustrated that neither the government nor the company is making the public case.* Too many commissioners? — The episode closes on a genuine disagreement: Children’s Commissioner Claire Achmed has been removed halfway through her term after calling out worsening child poverty — 170,000 children now, up from 148,000. Phil defends her forcefully: child poverty in New Zealand is three times the developed-country average, a bipartisan approach is needed. Chris pushes back: we have too many commissioners, the role should sit with the minister responsible, and the Salvation Army, the Child Poverty Action Group and the Catholic Social Justice Commission make the case perfectly well without a separate office. They agree to disagree — and both agree the underlying problem is real, urgent and not being addressed.Along the way: Jim Bolger yelling “racist” at Peters across the House in 1995 and then sharing a bench with him two months later and Chris’ memorable answer to Michael Cullen on the Iwi Kiwi advertisement (”that was then, this is now”).Cross Party Lines exists to lift political literacy and create space for calm, good-faith political conversation. New episodes every Tuesday. If you value thoughtful debate, follow the podcast and share it with someone who might too.🎟 Cross Party Lines Live is sold out — Live stream available for both shows at tapliveevents.com. $10 per show or $16 for both. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit crosspartylines.substack.com

Double Standards, Tariff Hypocrisy and Parliament on the Clock

Hosted by Phil Goff and Chris Finlayson, Cross Party Lines returns to a week that generated more podcast fallout than any episode before it — the Stuart Nash story broke on this show — and moves through Trump’s forced labour tariffs, the Iran quagmire and a parliamentary endgame that Phil and Chris think is being handled badly.All thanks to our foundational partner, Frank Risk Management - the 100% Kiwi owned insurance brokerage. Find out more at frankrisk.co.nz.In this episode:* The Nash fallout, Shane Jones’s knee pads and one rule for some — The Stuart Nash story dominated New Zealand media after breaking on Cross Party Lines, and both Phil and Chris use this episode to set the record straight on how it happened — and why Chris has no apology to make. But the more pointed argument is Phil’s: in the same week Nash was sacked by Peters for ill-judged comments about maternity leave, Shane Jones used the term “knee pads” to describe the Prime Minister’s behaviour toward Modi — a clear sexual innuendo that drew no consequences whatsoever.* Trump’s forced labour tariffs — hypocrisy dressed as principle — The Supreme Court struck down Trump’s original reciprocal tariffs six to three, so the administration has now reimposed them under a forced labour justification. Phil dismantles the argument completely: the Global Slavery Index rates the United States itself as having 1.1 million people in modern slavery, Trump has gutted domestic funding to combat forced labour, and he is simultaneously doing favourable nuclear deals with Saudi Arabia — one of the world’s worst human rights offenders.* Iran, the RMA and a parliament running out of time — Back home, 21 sitting days remain before the House rises on 24 September and the election writ is issued in early October. The order paper is heavy — the RMA replacement legislation alone will generate a hefty debate — and the government has already used urgency more than any administration since MMP, stripping select committee scrutiny from legislation that deserves it.Sharp, historically grounded and angrier than usual in all the right places, this episode is a reminder that double standards in politics — whether applied to MPs or to nuclear deals — always have consequences, and the people who pay them are rarely the ones who set them.Cross Party Lines exists to lift political literacy and create space for calm, good-faith political conversation. New episodes every Tuesday. If you value thoughtful debate, follow the podcast and share it with someone who might too.🎟 Wellington sold out. Last few tickets for Auckland Q Theatre — 8 August with Helen Clark. Live stream also available for both shows at tapliveevents.com — $10 per show or $16 for both. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit crosspartylines.substack.com