Raw Politics newsroom.co.nz

In this week’s episode of Newsroom’s weekly politics podcast, we look at the allegations against Te Pāti Māori over the misuse of personal data, and unpick the party’s political strategy.

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Recommendations:

Tim – Professor Chris Jackson’s commentary for Newsroom on the flaws in the Government’s failed promise to fund 13 new cancer drugs from this Budget.

Marc – Bill McKibben’s latest newsletter on record heat: Intensity.

Laura  – David Wallace-Wells' New York Times newsletter on what’s driving the American – but also global – school attendance crisis 

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Raw Politics will be available wherever you get your podcasts every Friday, and you can watch it on YouTube.

newsroom.co.nz 

In this week’s episode of Newsroom’s weekly politics podcast, we peer over a fiscal cliff and search for the hits and misses of Budget 2024.

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This week's recommendations:

Laura - Joel MacManus' hilarious Spinoff Budget debate sketch from the House

Marc - Tim Murphy's view on Newsroom of Nicola Willis' big Budget speech

Tim – Tova O'Brien's story from the Budget lock-up revealing Willis overstated a crucial tax number

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So many numbers, so many claims and counter claims, and so much planned so far into the future that we might never see it bear fruit. This week's Raw Politics tries to sift the real from the risible in this year's Budget and to judge whether the coalition will get political bouquets or brickbats from the voting public.

First, the panel of Newsroom political editor Laura Walters, senior political writer Marc Daalder and co-editor Tim Murphy run their abacuses over the Budget's costly, broad-based tax cuts. Are the sums 'meaningful' as the finance minister hoped, or just 'not meaningless' for people's back pockets. 

Then we look at one aspect that Nicola Willis surely can't be happy about – a big increase and stubbornly high budget deficits for the next few years and a net debt refusing to budge down below her 40 percent of GDP target for the entire forecast period.

We have a go at the game of find-a-pithy-name for the Budget, examine the political hypocrisy of ongoing 'fiscal cliffs' and nominate the big things conspicuous by their absence. 

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newsroom.co.nz

National promised a “back pocket boost” when it unveiled a tax package before the election, and now in Government in tough economic times its Budget next week will sort the easy promises from reality.

The tax bracket changes and other in-work and family payment adjustments might need to land with a thump rather than a flutter for hard-pressed Kiwi households – but that isn’t easy to achieve.

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Recommendations:
Tim - A great exchange in the House on housing between Kieran McAnulty and Chris Bishop. Watch here.
Emma - David Seymour’s inner circle, by Audrey Young in the Herald.
Marc - The Return of Evan Price, by Emma Hatton on Newsroom.


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The Raw Politics panel this week, Newsroom senior political writer Marc Daalder, politics and business writer Emma Hatton and co-editor Tim Murphy, look ahead to a Budget that will put the confident Finance Minister Nicola Willis and her new Labour counterpart Barbara Edmond to the test.

The panel weighs the gains and losses from the mass layoffs in the public service as the coalition parties make good on their promise to cut what they called a bloated sector. Do back-office cuts really allow those in the front line to keep doing their jobs effectively? The example of the corporate world would suggest not.

Our reader question asks why the National-led Government axed the first home grant suddenly (spooked by a Newshub scoop that it was going). And the panel discusses former PM Bill English’s radical proposals to change our public housing landscape. The bottom line is we won’t have as many state houses, or as much Crown-owned housing land after this process is underway.

In this week’s episode of Newsroom’s weekly politics podcast, the Press Gallery office patches in the Christchurch studio to discuss a big law and order announcement and Shane Jones’ undeclared dinner.

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Read more:

Jones’ undeclared dinner had two more mining industry attendees https://newsroom.co.nz/2024/05/15/jones-undeclared-dinner-had-two-more-mining-industry-
attendees/ 

Mega-prison’s missing business case
https://newsroom.co.nz/2024/05/14/mega-prisons-missing-business-case/

Health negotiators told to put sovereignty ahead of stopping pandemics
https://newsroom.co.nz/2024/05/16/health-negotiators-told-to-prioritise-sovereignty-over-stopping-pandemics/

Strapped down, blindfolded, held in diapers: Israeli whistleblowers detail abuse of Palestinians in shadowy detention center.
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/05/10/middleeast/israel-sde-teiman-detention-whistleblowers-intl-cmd/index.html

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Produced by newsroom.co.nz

Exhausted by the general election campaign, horrified by the twilight zone of coalition negotiations, distracted by the silly season and waiting for the honeymoon to begin, Raw Politics has been in hibernation since October.

From today, we’re back. Our weekly political video show and podcast returns for a second season, and in a week with ups and downs for almost all the parties in Parliament.

With our anchor, our rock, Jo Moir having graduated to a higher class of audio banter at RNZ, Raw Politics is led by Newsroom political editor Laura Walters, with co-editor Tim Murphy and senior political writer Marc Daalder.


This week:
We do a fast rewind on the missing six months of this three-way coalition’s gestation and early days. 

We look at Act leader David Seymour’s deft politics on school lunches and daft politics in using ‘woke’ to describe sushi.

Then the panel analyses the separate meltdowns of the Greens Julie Anne Genter and Corrections Minister Mark Mitchell.

Our reader question on how much MPs get paid also focuses attention back on the double-dipper from NZ First, MP Jamie Arbuckle, who wanted to keep both his parliamentary salary and that from his councillor duties in Marlborough.

And we end with recommendations for you to read, watch or listen to over your weekend.


Raw Politics will be available wherever you get your podcasts every Friday morning, and you can watch it on YouTube here.

Newsroom.co.nz

This week on the Raw Politics podcast: How good a PM might Christopher Luxon be, why Chris Hipkins shouldn't think of quitting, the Greens and Te Pāti Māori the big winners, and silence from Winston.


Raw Politics signs off for 2023 with our panel's take on the government that might emerge from an election that had something for everyone, other than the Labour Party.

Some raw takes: National's victory is a remarkable turnaround but hardly an epic triumph, the Greens' three seats will be a longer-term guarantee of making it back to Parliament, Te Pāti Māori stunned and buried the old wisdom that Labour is the party of tangata whenua.

The Raw Politics panel looks at the first week of shadow governing among the three parties of the centre-right and concludes the public will probably welcome the political silence after such a raucous campaign.

We argue why Chris Hipkins should hold his nerve and stay on and see what kind of Opposition leader and possible election contestant in 2026 that he could be. And we look at who else might follow Andrew Little off the party list and out the parliamentary door in the early days of this term.

We have some final recommendations: things we read or listened to this week that are well worth your while catching up on over the long weekend - including an analysis of Labour's demise, a report from a sad night at Lower Hutt, and a poignant New York Times commentary from an Arab member of Israel's parliament on the war with Hamas.


Every week for almost seven months leading to the election, Newsroom editors and political journalists have talked through the big issues and scrutinised politicians’ performances in a lively, 25-minute show aiming to take viewers and listeners inside the actions and motivations of our elected leaders.