Budget In, Stuart Out — and Is Australia Actually Better?

Hosted by Chris Finlayson, Cross Party Lines welcomes a familiar face from across the Tasman, special guest co-host Annette King — beaming in from Sydney while Phil is in China.

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In this episode:

* Nicola Willis’s budget — a bit of this, a bit of that — Annette gives her verdict: not easily named, cautiously welcomed on health and defence, but carrying the familiar ring of a surplus promise that every New Zealand government makes and few deliver. The conversation deepens quickly into the long shadow of the Muldoon decision to abolish the contributory super scheme in the 1970s — a move both Annette and Chris agree was one of the great shames of New Zealand politics.

* Australia’s CGT tweak, broken promises and the lessons for New Zealand — Jim Chalmers’ budget included changes to capital gains tax concessions for investors — not promised, immediately attacked by the Liberals as a broken promise, and now a test of whether Labour can hold its nerve. Annette has enormous respect for Chalmers as a treasurer and thinks the changes are defensible — but acknowledges that the optics of doing what Bill Shorten proposed in 2019 and lost an election over are not straightforward.

* The Liberal Party’s death spiral, One Nation’s rise and the Barnaby Joyce problem — Tony Abbott, newly installed as Liberal Party president after losing his own seat to a teal in 2019, is Chris and Annette’s exhibit A for a party that has lost the plot. The old Liberal heartland — Wentworth, Warringah, North Sydney — is now teal territory. One Nation has won its first lower house seat. And the Liberal response, apparently, is to move further right. Both agree this is a guaranteed path to irrelevance.

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