Gone By Lunchtime: New polls, old PMs and a sacrificed goat
At the political half-time mark, we assess the ritual changeover, a brace of new surveys and a very New Zealand altercation at the music awards.
We're officially in the second half of the term, a milestone marked by the historic handover of the hallowed deputy prime minister amulet from Winston Peters to David Seymour. The moment comes with pageantry, a flurry of interviews and a pair of new polls, which deliver intriguing, and sometimes divergent results.
In a new episode of Spinoff politics podcast Gone By Lunchtime, Toby Manhire, Annabelle Lee-Mather and Ben Thomas pore over the results and what they mean for the parties and the politicians in the post-budget, post-pay-equity-reshape wash-up.
Plus: Jim Bolger and Jacinda Ardern have both been in the headlines in recent days. What do these returns tell us about the performance of their Chris-themed successors?
And Chris Bishop found himself in a media moshpit after the Aotearoa Music Awards for calling the Stan Walker Toitū Te Tiriti parade 'crap' and earning the most painful denunciation imaginable: being called a dickhead by living legend Don McGlashan.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
RNZ News
3 hours ago
- RNZ News
The David Seymour ‘bots' debate: Do online submission tools help or hurt democracy?
ACT Party leader David Seyour in studio for an interview on season 3 of 30 with Guyon Espiner. Photo: RNZ / Cole Eastham-Farrelly A discussion document on a Regulatory Standards Bill is not, on the face of it, the sort of thing that might have been expected to prompt 23,000 responses. But in an age of digital democracy, the Ministry for Regulation was probably expecting it. The bill , led by ACT Party leader David Seymour, is controversial. It sparked a response from activists, who used online tools to help people make their opposition known. Of the 23,000 submissions, 88 percent were opposed. Seymour this week told RNZ's 30 with Guyon Espiner , that figure reflected "bots" generating "fake" submissions. He did not provide evidence for the claim and later explained he wasn't referring to literal bots but to "online campaigns" that generate "non-representative samples" that don't reflect public opinion. Seymour has previous experience with this sort of thing. The Treaty Principles Bill got a record 300,000 submissions when it was considered by the Justice Committee earlier this year. Is Seymour right to have raised concerns about how these tools are affecting public debate? Or are they a boon for democracy? Submission tools are commonly used by advocacy groups to mobilise public input during the select committee process. The online tools often offer a template for users to fill out or suggested wording that can be edited or submitted as is. Each submission is usually still sent by the individual. Taxpayers' Union spokesperson Jordan Williams said submitting to Parliament used to be "pretty difficult". "You'd have to write a letter and things like that. What the tools do allow is for people to very easily and quickly make their voice heard." The tools being used now are part of sophisticated marketing campaigns, Williams said. "You do get pressure groups that take particular interest, and it blows out the numbers, but that doesn't mean that officials should be ruling them out or refusing to engage or read submissions." The Taxpayers' Union has created submission tools in the past, but Williams said he isn't in favour of tools that don't allow the submitter to alter the submission. He has encouraged supporters to change the contents of the submission to ensure it is original. "The ones that we are pretty suspicious of is when it doesn't allow the end user to actually change the submission, and in effect, it just operates like a petition, which I don't think quite has the same democratic value." Clerk of the House of Representatives David Wilson said campaigns that see thousands of similar submissions on proposed legislation are not new, they've just taken a different form. "It's happened for many, many years. It used to be photocopied forms. Now, often it's things online that you can fill out. And there's nothing wrong with doing that. It's a legitimate submission." However, Wilson pointed out that identical responses would likely be grouped by the select committee and treated as one submission. "The purpose of the select committee calling for public submissions is so that the members of the committee can better inform themselves about the issues. They're looking at the bill, thinking about whether it needs to be amended or whether it should pass. So if they receive the same view from hundreds of people, they will know that." But that isn't to say those submissions are discredited, Wilson said. "For example, the committee staff would say, you've received 10,000 submissions that all look exactly like this. So members will know how many there were and what they said. But I don't know if there's any point in all of the members individually reading the same thing that many times." Jordan Williams co-founded the Taxpayers' Union in 2013 with David Farrar. Photo: RNZ / Cole Eastham-Farrelly But Williams said there were risks in treating similar submissions created using 'tools' as one submission. "Treating those ones as if they are all identical is not just wrong, it's actually undemocratic," he said. "It's been really concerning that, under the current parliament, they are trying to carte blanche, reject people's submissions, because a lot of them are similar." AI should be used to analyse submissions and identify the unique points. "Because if people are going to take the time and make a submission to Parliament, at the very least, the officials should be reading them or having them summarised," Williams said. Labour MP Duncan Webb is a member of the Justice Committee and sat in on oral submissions for the Treaty Principles Bill. He said he attempted to read as many submissions as possible. "When you get a stock submission, which is a body of text that is identical and it's just been clicked and dragged, then you don't have to read them all, because you just know that there are 500 people who think exactly the same thing," he said. "But when you get 500 postcards, which each have three handwritten sentences on them, they may all have the same theme, they may all be from a particular organisation, but the individual thoughts that have been individually expressed. So you can't kind of categorise it as just one size fits all. You've got to take every single case on its merits." Webb said he takes the select committee process very seriously. "The thing that struck me was, sure, you read a lot [of submissions] which are repetitive, but then all of a sudden you come across one which actually changes the way you think about the problem in front of you. "To kind of dismiss that as just one of a pile from this organisation is actually denying someone who's got an important point to make, their voice in the democratic process." Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero , a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
Otago Daily Times
4 hours ago
- Otago Daily Times
‘Just let them do it' an ideological attack on regulations
For a Bill set to transform New Zealand into a libertarian nightmare, it has an extremely boring name. The Regulatory Standards Bill (RSB) sounds like one of those pieces of legislation debated on a dreary Thursday afternoon in an almost empty House of Representatives. Not because anyone in particular wants it, but because those whose job it is to monitor the efficacy or otherwise of government regulations declares it to be necessary. MPs protesting to their respective party whips that they know absolutely nothing about this sort of Bill's content are told that participation in such debates is good for them. Speaking for 10 minutes about something one knows absolutely nothing about is key political skill. Without it, no politician should expect to do more than shepherd boring Bills through a nearly empty House for the rest of their (short) political career. The RSB may sound like one of those Bills, but it is anything but. According to one critic, the Bill will "neuter the ability of lawmakers to consider anything outside of individual liberty and property rights". That this proposed piece of legislative dynamite is the product of the Act New Zealand party is entirely unsurprising. David Seymour and his caucus are the most disciplined band of ideologically driven politicians in our Parliament. Liberty and property are their twin lodestars, and by them they navigate the choppy seas of New Zealand's resolutely non-ideological politics. Knowing exactly where they want to go has made it much easier for Act to determine, often with alarming and near-revolutionary clarity, what they ought to do. Boiled down to its essence, Act's political mission is captured in the French expression laissez-faire — loosely translated as "let them do it". If the actions of individuals cause no harm to others — let them do it. If those actions involve only their own property — let them do it. Contrariwise, if some individuals seek to compel other individuals for any reason other than preventing them from causing harm to others, then don't let them do it. And if that compulsion involves regulating the use of other individuals' private property, then definitely don't let them do it. Understandably, socialists are not (and never have been) great fans of laissez-faire. The collective welfare is (or used to be) their lodestar. Individuals determined to put themselves, and their property, ahead of measures designed to serve the common good should not be allowed to do it. Obviously, a great deal rests on how "harm" is defined. If your dairy farm is polluting the streams and rivers that others are accustomed to fishing and swimming in, does that constitute harm? If it does, then, surely, the state is entitled to regulate your farming practices? To restrict the ways in which you can legally use your private property. Alternatively, if a friend undertakes to sell you a few grams of cannabis, what business is it of the state's? Why should smoking weed, which most medical scientists have determined to be essentially harmless, be punishable by law? Why aren't individuals, if they're old enough to assess and accept the consequences of using cannabis, and it causes others no harm, allowed to do it? If pressed, Act will always put the rights of individual New Zealanders, and the sanctity of their private property, well ahead of the nation's collective welfare. These twin principles are what, with National's and New Zealand First's backing, Act intends to enshrine in the RSB. If it becomes law, then all regulatory legislation will be weighed carefully by an appointed board against the rights of liberty and property. If Parliament, in its wisdom, elects to override those rights, then the citizens required to surrender them must be fairly compensated. Naturally, environmental groups, iwi, trade unionists and the overwhelming majority of the inhabitants of NGO-land regard the RSB with horror and dismay. They no doubt believed that, having been soundly defeated several times already, such libertarian legislative forays were things of the past. The Left, generally, is flabbergasted and outraged that the coalition remains committed to the RSB's passage. Boy, are they making a fuss. To hear them talk, the Bill might have been co-sponsored by Sauron and Voldemort. But, don't be alarmed. One parliament cannot bind another. If the RSB looks like transforming Aotearoa-New Zealand into Mordor, then the next government can simply repeal it. ■Chris Trotter is an Auckland writer and commentator.
RNZ News
17 hours ago
- RNZ News
Parliament's contrary responses to Kashmir attacks spur debate
In February 2019, a vehicle-borne suicide bomber targeted a convoy of Indian security personnel in Pulwama in India-administered Kashmir, killing 40. At the time, Foreign Minister Winston Peters introduced a motion in Parliament condemning the attack. "That this House condemn the 14 February act of terrorism against Indian Central Reserve Police Force personnel in the Pulwama district, leading to a very large loss of life; offer its condolences to the people and Government of India; and express its support and solidarity for the Government of India at this difficult time, as well as offer our deep sympathy for all those who are grievously affected," Peters said. The motion was agreed to and passed. In the wake of another attack in India-administered Kashmir more than six years later, New Zealand's response appears to be starkly different. In April, at least two dozen people died after gunmen opened fire on tourists near the picturesque town of Pahalgam in the Himalayas. Parmjeet Parmar Photo: RNZ / Blessen Tom In May, Indian-origin ACT MP Parmjeet Parmar introduced a motion in Parliament that condemned the attack. "My motion was: I move that the House condemns the terrorist attack that occurred in the town of Pahalgam, Kashmir, on 22 April 2025," Parmar told attendees at a community event on Saturday organised by Kiwi Indian Global Connect. "We express our deepest condolences to those who lost friends and family in this tragic event, and we stand in solidarity with the people of Kashmir during this difficult time. "We also acknowledge the impact on the Indian diaspora and communities in New Zealand and India, extending our heartfelt sympathies to those affected. We recognise the shared grief and commit to supporting those impacted." Parmar told the meeting the Green Party had blocked the motion. "The Green Party said they would not support the use of [the phrase] 'terrorist attack' in my motion. And I decided not to take it out," Parmar said. "I felt removing these words would mean minimising the evil motivations behind the action." Failing to get consensus, Parmar's motion failed to pass. Mahesh Bindra Photo: RNZ / Jane Patterson "My question is, 'What changed this time as our Parliament failed to condemn the 22 April terrorist attack in India which took 26 innocent lives?'," said former New Zealand First MP Mahesh Bindra, referring to the 2019 motion. "That's my main problem with it," said Veer Khar, president of New Zealand Indian Central Association, who also addressed the gathering of about 100 people at Bruce Pullman Park in the Auckland suburb of Takanini. "Because of what happened [between ACT and the Greens], the message has gone - New Zealand Parliament failed to condemn the killings of civilians in Kashmir," Khar said. "I would have agreed to the wording as proposed by the Greens and ensured the motion is passed. "Moving forward, the Indian community would try engaging with the Green Party and exchange each other's perspectives on issues." Ricardo Menéndez March Photo: RNZ / Samuel Rillstone Responding to the allegations, Green Party MP Ricardo Menéndez March said the Greens wanted to put forward a motion that centred on victims, remained consistent with standing orders and avoided enflaming tensions surrounding the conflict. "We proposed alternative wording, as we understood [that] what the ACT Party had proposed was not consistent with standing orders - in particular SO 102(1), quote '… include only such material as may be necessary to identify the facts or matter to which the motion relates'," Menéndez March said. "The effect of SO 102 is that motions without notice of this kind are succinct statements of the House's recognition of tragedies and significant events," he said. "We would have been entirely supportive of a statement of that kind on the tragic Kashmir attack, consistent with the types of motions without notice that are regularly used in the House," he said. "We proposed an alternative that acknowledged the tragedy in Kashmir but fit within the standing orders. "We would have been open to negotiating this further with Parmjeet, however, we only heard back from them 20 minutes before Question Time." Prithi Pal Singh Basra Photo: RNZ / Blessen Tom Prithi Pal Singh Basra, chairperson of the New Zealand Central Sikh Association, said the issue was important to the Indian community. "My family has been in New Zealand for over 100 years," Basra said. "Still, we are culturally and socially linked to India. All of us have strong family ties even now. What happens there affects us here." Former National MP Kanwaljit Singh Bakshi called on Indian New Zealanders to be ambassadors for their homeland. "Talk to as many as locals as possible and explain what is happening in India [in terms of terrorism]," he said. Siva Kilari, a former National Party candidate for Manurewa, called on mainstream media to reach out to members of the Indian community when reporting on South Asia issues. "I urge the New Zealand media to make use of the almost 300,000 [people of Indian origin] we have here to understand a complicated place like the Indian subcontinent," Kilari said. Sunny Kaushal, chair of the ministerial advisory group on retail crime, termed terrorism a global issue. "Terrorism has no religion, no race, no nationality and no place in the world," he said. "New Zealand should always send a united message against any act of terrorism in the world." Dinesh Pahuja Photo: RNZ / Blessen Tom Dinesh Pahuja, a spokesperson for the event, acknowledged the condemnation of the April terrorist attack by the government. Both Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Foreign Minister Winston Peters have repeatedly issued statements condemning the attack. "On 22 April, India suffered a devastating terrorist attack in Jammu and Kashmir," Luxon said early May at a business event welcoming Pabritra Margherita , India's minister of state for external affairs, to New Zealand. "New Zealand condemns terrorism, and we sent our heartfelt condolences to the families of the victims of the attack." "[But] the government is not the voice of the nation, Parliament is," Pahuja said. "It was our expectation all lawmakers condemned the act of terrorism in Kashmir in one united voice, which unfortunately didn't happen."
