Or Luxon's charisma. :p
Why is he scared of a debate with chris hipkins for instance, who has minimal achievements in govt.
Weak and ineffective.
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He probably fears an ambush, perhaps a biased mediator, some Left wing plants in the audience asked skewed questions, collusion between Labour and the organisers. You know, standard Left wing tactics. If he talks himself down then he lowers expectations for the whole event.
I just saw a video of Chipkins talking to media today and he was practically frothing at the mouth, he seemed very wound up and angry and verging on hysteria as he spewed forth a torrent of lies. Luxon by contrast always seems quite relaxed.
He really did talk himself down by saying his wife was a better debater (why isn't she running then lol).
Luxon would make a good finance minister, not a PM.
He's got 'progressive' journo's haranguing him every day. Is reasonably calm under fire under the circumstances. Imagine a world where Chipkins was also asked 'tough questions'.
Prime Minister, you've committed to building Light Rail in Auckland, how will you pay for it and why are the costs not included in your projections?
Prime Minister, how can you say your promises are fully funded when you are set to borrow $940 million a week in 2024?
Prime Minister, why have public services not improved even though your government has increased spending by 80%?
Prime Minister, why has the expected net debt projection for 2027 exploded by $55 billion since 2021?
Prime Minister, how will you pay for a second Auckland harbour crossing?
'Go Woke, Go Broke' far left media outlet 'Stuff' has accused ACT of 'targeting' drug addicts and 'the mentally ill'. At least, that's the inflammatory headline to the article written by a young progressive journalist. Of course, the accompanying photo features David Seymour in a silly hat.
This is the woke media company that aleady 'went broke' once.....it was such a loss maker that Nine Media sold it to its editor Sinead Boucher for the token sum of $1.
Since then Boucher has loaded the organisation with young progressive journalists, while periodically taking a razor to costs....usually by sacking staff. Who knows if any of what she is doing is actually working. The company is certainly woker.
But now the company seems to have staked everything on hiring acidic 'Queen of Mean' political journo Tova O'Brien, trumpeting her podcast with increasing desperation - including a banner this week on the website with the wording: 'Look out politicians - Tova's back'. Oooooh....I'm sure they are quaking in their boots.
Without soft shooting-fish-in-a-barrell targets like Jami Lee-Ross to inviscerate & her moosh on TV, the waspish O'Brien is just another talking head. Podcasts and opinion pieces by someone with tickets on themself? Why would anyone bother to read them or tune in?!
Anyway, the predictable demise of 'Stuff' is probably just a matter of time. Nine Media must be breathing a sigh of relief that they were able to off-load it at all. Better to recieve $1 that to have it kark itself while on their books.
I wonder if people were paid by Labour to show up and 'gasp' at Willis's answer. As if National's policies would not be supportive of house prices.
Labour enacted a whole bunch of policies without any analysis that produced the biggest surge in NZ house prices that this nation has ever seen.
The hypocrisy of Labourites knows no bounds.
People who are desperate to sell their house will have the sensation of a penny dropping. People who are now in negative equity will have the same sensation. If you need to sell up to go into a retirement home, or move up the ladder, or head off to Australia, you'll hear something like what Bernard Hickey said on the news last night - "prices could go up 20%!" - and you'd say to your significant other "sounds good to me - two ticks Blue!"
People in the 'squeezed middle' seeing their equity increase - how NZers really measure their wealth - will also be saying "yes! Two ticks Blue!"
The reason for the faux outrage from the Labourites and the media is because house prices have been falling, and Labour now wants to make out they've deliberately engineered that to help out first home buyers. Turn it up! It's been Reserve Bank interest rate rises that have done that. (Unless Labour want to 'take credit' for high inflation?!)
Anyway, interesting comments re ACT below -
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/politi...J6L4SCVDTXKDI/
On the Campaign, September 15: What you missed on the election campaign today
NZ Herald
15 Sep, 2023 06:01 PM
'While the first televised leaders debate does not take place until next Tuesday, two debates last night have already showed where some voters are swinging.
The main party’s financial spokespersons - Labour’s Grant Robertson, National’s Nicola Willis, the Greens’ James Shaw and Act’s David Seymour - butted heads in Queenstown last night for the ASB Great debate.
At the same time, Hamilton played host to a debate on rural issues, hosted by Newstalk ZB’s Heather du Plessis-Allan and organised by Dairy NZ, Beef and Lamb and Federated Farmers. In attendance were Labour’s Damien O’Connor, National’s Todd McClay, the Greens’ Eugenie Sage, Act’s Andrew Hoggard, and NZ First’s Mark Patterson.
Speaking to On the Campaign, the Herald’s daily election podcast, du Plessis-Allan said National’s Todd McClay was the big winner, while Labour’s Damien O’Connor performed well but not well enough to counter the toxic view farmers have of the Government.
Du Plessis-Allan said she expects Labour to lose many of their rural seats in a “bloodbath”, but does not think those votes will automatically go to National.
“I think what you will see is a huge swing from Labour to Act. I think part of that is they have been courting the farmers for a long time, but also people like [former Federated Farmers president turned Act candidate] Andrew Hoggard are bringing the votes over.
“Don’t expect red to blue, expect red to blue and yellow.”
The Herald’s Derek Cheng was at the ASB Great Debate, and said Willis and Seymour received the most warmth from the room, but Seymour won the debate in his eyes with his interjections and good humour throughout.
However, some of Willis’ answers provoked a “gasp” from the audience.
“One of them in particular was when she was asked National’s plans on interest deductibility and the brightline test and rolling those changes back and what effect that would have on house prices, and she said ‘I don’t know what effect that will have on house prices’, and the audience was deafeningly silent and was taken aback by that.”
Another comment from Willis potentially caught her leader off guard this morning, when she told Breakfast she will resign if the party’s promised tax cuts can’t be delivered, as the debate continues over the foreign buyer tax policy.'
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Depends what you mean by "the money" - white man.
I can't say what happens now, but I know that in the North when I was involved, iwi organisations involved in education supplemented contractual. govt services with their own funding.
Whether TOW settlements should be "earmarked" for particular purposes as a condition of their provision or scrapped completely and replaced by an expanded education and health/welfare/social service/housing system is another matter altogether.
Northland maori are being left behind because their in-fighting over who should be negotiating with the Crown is seeing them standing at the station bereft while the gravy train sits idly on the tracks. Meanwhile Waikato maori are becoming an economic powerhouse, deploying capital into everything from mega shopping centres to inland ports.