Cross Party Lines

Hosted by Phil Goff and Chris Finlayson, Cross Party Lines reaches its 50th episode — just over a year in, and with an audience that has grown beyond either man expected. They mark the occasion the way they mark everything: with a tribute, a historical detour, and absolutely no let-up on the campaign. Three weeks out from election day, there’s too much to get through.Thanks to Frank Risk Management, the 100% Kiwi owned Insurance Brokerage. In this episode:* Gang pads, political missteps and the skeleton in everyone’s closet — The Greens and Te Pāti Māori’s visit to a Mongrel Mob pad — photographed against gang patches — draws Phil’s bluntest assessment of the campaign: stupid, naive, and politically self-destructive in precisely the seats the Greens need to hold. But Phil won’t leave the history untouched. Muldoon funded millions into gang work schemes. Chris’s concern is different but equally sharp: in a campaign where repetition and message discipline are everything, going off-script to cozy up to organised crime in the final weeks is an act of self-indulgence that could cost the Greens two or three points — and potentially their Wellington North seat.* Peters unilateral at the UN, the right to silence and a missing fiscal plan — New Zealand voted against a World Health Organization resolution on pandemic preparedness — alongside the United States, Israel and one other country, against 154 nations. Phil is unambiguous: this was Peters playing to his anti-vax base using New Zealand’s international reputation as a chip. Chris reports that National ministers wanted to vote for the resolution. Both ask the same question: did it go to cabinet? If so, Luxon owns it. If not, the coalition is more out of control than anyone has acknowledged.* Māori seats, the TOP threshold and the defining moment that hasn’t happened yet — Phil gives his most detailed read of the Māori electorates: Labour likely to pick up three seats, Ikaroa-Rāwhiti safe with Cushla Tangaere-Manuel, Te Tai Tonga a genuine contest, Te Tai Tokerau close but leaning Labour’s way. Chris keeps a close eye on Te Tai Hauauru — formerly Tariana’s stronghold, now genuinely split — and notes Willie Jackson’s bold declaration at Adrian Rurawhe’s tangihanga that it was now Labour’s marae earned him a look that suggested otherwise. Then there’s the defining moment question: could the gang visit be this campaign’s Metiria Turei? Could there be a Peter Dunne common-sense moment that shifts 15% of undecideds overnight? Both men think the race is not yet settled, and Gerald Ford’s Poland moment — and Biden’s 2024 implosion — are offered as reminders of how fast things can move.Along the way: the 50th episode milestone and why people keep stopping Chris at airports to say they appreciate civilised disagreement; Marilyn Waring ringing to correct the OIA history and give proper credit to Mike Minogue; a tribute to Geoff Thompson, former member for Horowhenua, who passed away this week.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.📋 Election day is 7 November. Make sure you’re enrolled — and make sure everyone you know is too. 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

Hosted by Phil Goff and Chris Finlayson, Cross Party Lines opens with a tribute to former Speaker Adrian Rurawhe — a man of great humility, dignity and genuine cross-party respect — before turning to the final sprint of the election campaign: empty promises from every direction, billionaires gaming the electoral system, the minor parties’ kingmaker debate, and a Burnham bounce that might finally put Brexit on trial.All thanks to Frank Risk Management, the 100% Kiwi Owned Insurance Brokerage.In this episode:* The campaign’s hollow promises and the policies that actually matter — Chris reaches for Horace — the mountain labours and a ridiculous mouse is born — as his summary of the policy avalanche hitting voters in the final week. The BNZ nationalisation is a barefaced lie that will never happen. The Greens’ $2 train fare is potty. ACT’s Paris Agreement withdrawal would torpedo both the EU and UK free trade agreements and is equally dishonest — as Laura Clark, former British High Commissioner and now a climate advocate, pointed out bluntly on RNZ, New Zealand is already facing a complaint from a Dutch environmental group over its weakening of climate commitments.* Billionaires gaming the system and the Kingmaker debate’s tired chestnuts — The Mowbray family — New Zealand’s wealthiest — and Don Brash are publicly urging voters to give electorate votes to National but party votes to ACT, engineering a potential overhang that Phil connects directly to the German experience: the Germans had an identical MMP system, the same tactic was tried, and they were forced to change the law. Both Phil and Chris are unambiguous — this rots the system, undermines electoral credibility, and should be condemned.* Burnham’s Brexit courage and Farage on the ropes — Andy Burnham has said what no Labour leader has dared to since 2016: Brexit was born in a lie, largely propagated by Boris Johnson, it has not increased wealth, it has devastated it, and it is time for a new arrangement with Europe. Chris is delighted. Phil notes the Burnham bounce is real — Labour up to 30% in some polls, reform down to 23-25%, the Conservatives in the high teens — is exactly what real political leadership looks like, and what New Zealand has been missing.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.📋 Election day is 7 November. Make sure you’re enrolled and make sure everyone you know is too. 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

Hosted by Phil Goff and Chris Finlayson, Cross Party Lines returns for a week of policy overload, parliamentary chaos, and language in the House that both men thought they’d never hear. With 46 days to go, the episode cuts through the confetti of promises to ask which ones are serious, which are wacky and which are simply dishonest.Thanks to Frank Risk Management, the 100% Kiwi Owned Insurance Brokerage and our Foundational Partner for the podcast.To hear more from the Both Sides Now Podcast, use this link.In this episode:* Policy week: supermarkets, farming, Paris Agreement and the BNZ fantasy — New Zealand Firsts “Make New Zealand Healthy Again” health policy — promoting prevention while having just repealed the Smokefree Act and halved the tax on heated tobacco products — draws Phil’s sharpest word of the episode: hypocrisy. On farming and the environment, Phil draws a direct line from ACT’s deregulatory instincts to the Paris Agreement clauses embedded in both the UK and EU free trade agreements — breach them, and the tariff preferences that have grown New Zealand’s exports by 25% and 38% respectively are at risk. And on New Zealand First’s proposal to renationalise the BNZ for $30 billion — Chris parks it under wacky, and moves on.* Debt: when to borrow, when to pay down and what the Taxpayers Union gets wrong — Chris is asking Katie Bradford and anyone who would listen for a serious debate on debt. Phil obliges with the clearest statement of fiscal philosophy either man has offered all season: borrow for intergenerational infrastructure investment, not for operating costs or tax cuts; pay down debt when times are good; keep powder dry for the unknown unknowns — Christchurch, COVID, and possibly the alpine fault. Chris’s concern: we don’t know what’s coming next.* Parliament’s final sitting: bad language, worse legislation and valedictories worth watching — Sixty-five hours across five days, legislation passing at midnight with drafting errors that left 70,000 people without payments they were owed, and two MPs using the C-word on the floor of the House — one by spoonerism, one deliberately. Phil is forgiving of the former (John Carter, who reported the incident in his own valedictory); he is not forgiving of the latter. Chris invokes JFK’s inaugural address — civility is not a sign of weakness — and tells every candidate watching that they are signing up to one of the oldest democracies on earth and should dress and speak accordingly.Sharp, wide-ranging and funnier than any episode this close to an election has any right to be, this episode is a reminder that the difference between good government and bad government is rarely the promises — it’s what happens when the promises meet the books, the drafters and the midnight sitting hour.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.📋 46 days to go. Make sure you’re on the roll — and make sure everyone you know is too. 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

Hosted by Phil Goff and Chris Finlayson, Cross Party Lines opens with breaking news — a Chinese missile test heading for the South Pacific — before working through a packed episode that moves from America at 250 to Brexit at 10, and closes with a forensic dissection of New Zealand Firsts increasingly chaotic behaviour inside the coalition.Thanks to our foundational partner Frank Risk Management, the 100% Kiwi-owned insurance brokerage.In this episode:* China’s missile test and a new American ambassador — The episode opens with China’s announcement of a test missile launch into the nuclear-free South Pacific. Phil is direct: the message to all nuclear weapon states, and particularly China, should be blunt — we don’t want your war games in our part of the world. The new American ambassador Jared Novelly gets a measured welcome the same week a survey showing New Zealanders now see China as a closer friend than the US should tell him everything he needs to know about why.* America at 250, Brexit at 10 and the John Major interview everyone should watch — Trump’s 4th of July celebrations at Mount Rushmore — labelling opponents communists, smashing down the historic East Wing of the White House — prompt a comparison with Gerry Ford’s dignified handling of the bicentennial in the shadow of Watergate. We then turns to the tenth anniversary of the Brexit vote, anchored around what Chris calls the most devastating political interview he has seen in years: John Major’s conversation with The Independent. Both strongly urge listeners to find it.* New Zealand Firsts zombie candidates, voting rights attack and Peters sabotages the India FTA — The second half turns entirely domestic. Andrea Vance’s description of New Zealand Firsts new candidate line up — a cast of embittered zombies shuffling back to reanimate their dead careers — gets enthusiastic endorsement from both Phil and Chris. And on the India FTA — Peters, as Foreign Minister, has been publicly claiming the government is discriminating against Indians, directly contradicting his own party’s prior claims of a migrant tsunami, and doing so the week before Prime Minister Modi visits New Zealand. Phil’s verdict: this is deliberate sabotage of the free trade agreement.Along the way: Helen Clark confirmed as special guest for the Auckland live show at Q Theatre, Chris’s law clerk Oliver from Leeds asking why he can’t vote and a reminder that the lessons of Brexit are the lessons of every populist movement that has come before it.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.🎟 Auckland live show at Q Theatre — 8 August. Helen Clark joins Phil and Chris on stage. Tickets at tapliveevents.com. 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

Hosted by Phil Goff and Chris Finlayson, Cross Party Lines returns for a policy-heavy episode — a weekend of conference announcements, party platforms and pre-election positioning gives Phil and Chris more material than they can get through in an hour, and they try anyway.All thanks to Frank Risk Management, our foundational partner and the 100% kiwi owned insurance brokerage.In this episode:* $32 million, nothing to show and the eternal curse of government IT — Immigration New Zealand’s biometric system has consumed $32 million and produced precisely nothing. Phil and Chris trace the familiar pattern: INCIS in the nineties, Novopay, and now this. Chris wants a centralised specialist IT contract unit in government rather than every department reinventing the wheel. Phil adds a sharper question: if the public service can’t get biometrics right, what on earth makes anyone think it can safely replace 9,000 workers with AI?* KiwiSaver, Green taxes and the election’s big policy weekend — National’s conference in Lower Hutt produced the headline announcement: compulsory KiwiSaver contributions rising to six percent. Chris calls it a seismic and welcome shift — one of Cullen’s great legacies, finally being taken seriously. Phil agrees in principle but worries hard about low-income workers living week to week, and raises a troubling allegation from a trade union that some employers are substituting KiwiSaver contributions for wage rises, meaning workers are effectively funding both sides. The Greens launched a sweeping tax package — inheritance tax above a million dollars, wealth tax, higher corporate rates, bank levies, tech company withholding tax.* Starmer’s last days, reform’s wobble and the UK’s revolving door — Three British by-elections dominate the international segment. Andy Burnham cleaned up reform in Makerfield — a white working-class seat reform was confident about — while the Conservatives beat reform in Aberdeen South and held on in Angus East. Chris is delighted: reform may have peaked. Farage is being investigated over a £5 million payment. And Kemi Badenoch, about whom Chris had initial doubts, is fighting a genuine rebuilding effort from the pavement. Phil counts the prime ministers: if Burnham succeeds Starmer, Britain will have had seven in ten years.Along the way: the Parliamentary Budget Office gaining rare cross-party momentum with both Willis and Sepuloni expressing support, Labour’s transport fare cap policy and the $30 million costing dispute versus National’s roads of national significance out by $30 billion and Chris washing his mouth out with soap for agreeing with Shane Jones twice…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 is almost sold out. Auckland still has tickets. Get in now at tapliveevents.com. 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

Hosted by Phil Goff and Chris Finlayson, Cross Party Lines welcomes Phil back from China with a packed episode that moves from the streets of Beijing to the corridors of Parliament — and closes with a sharp verdict on American politicians who can’t stop telling other countries what to do.Thanks to our foundational partner, Frank Risk Management, the 100% Kiwi owned insurance brokerage.In this episode:* Phil’s China dispatch — infrastructure, trade and a more controlling Beijing — Phil’s first China visit in nine years left him genuinely impressed and genuinely concerned in equal measure. The infrastructure shames us and the air in Beijing is so clean it’s unrecognisable from the smog-choked city he visited in the 2000s.* Lobbying, Gmail accounts and the OIA that disappeared — Emails sent to the Prime Minister’s principal policy advisor’s private Gmail account — from Fonterra in June 2024 and Z Energy in July 2024, both lobbying on the Mike Smith climate litigation — were never disclosed under OIA requests. Phil is unambiguous: two separate incidents, two private email accounts, no disclosure. This was not a stuff-up. Chris thinks it was probably cock-up rather than conspiracy, but agrees the Official Information Act needs teeth.* Hegseth, Vance and the Americans who won’t stay in their lane — Pete Hegseth managed to enrage most of Western Europe with an immigration rant at D-Day commemorations. JD Vance tried to weaponise the killing of an 18-year-old student by a British-born Sikh to score points about mass migration. Phil’s response is the most direct of the episode: New Zealand has nothing to apologise for, the Yanks were late for both world wars, and Mike Moore’s line captures it perfectly — we might do anything you ask, we won’t do anything you tell us.Wide-ranging, historically rich and sharper than usual on democratic accountability, this episode is a reminder that the same principles apply whether you’re talking about Beijing, Wellington or Washington: transparency matters, sovereignty matters, and the rules only work if everyone plays by 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.🎟 Live shows — Auckland 8 August, Wellington 12 August. General sale now open at tapliveevents.com. 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

Hosted by Phil Goff and Chris Finlayson, Cross Party Lines dive into a budget week episode that is almost entirely domestic: 8,700 public service jobs cut, state house rents going up, culture war bills clogging Parliament, and a defence announcement both men broadly welcome but want to interrogate.Cross Party Lines is made possible by Frank Risk Management, the 100% Kiwi owned insurance brokerage.In this episode:* 8,700 jobs — efficiency or ideology dressed as savings? — The government’s announcement of a 14% public service reduction draws a forensic and at times sharp response from both sides. Phil’s theory: this was never about efficiency — it was about finding $2.5 billion before the credit rating agencies moved again, and the justification was built around the number, not the other way around.* Social housing - who pays the bill?— The social housing changes draw Phil’s sharpest words of the episode: $31 a week more from people who are, by definition, at the bottom of New Zealand’s social and economic heap. Chris asks whether Margaret Thatcher had a good idea selling council houses to their occupiers and we pass judgment on Nicola Willis’ “lotto” comment.* Defence — necessary, expensive and long overdue — The pre-budget defence announcement draws broad agreement: New Zealand spent two decades at 1% of GDP on defence during what Helen Clark correctly called a strategically benign environment. That environment no longer exists. The frigates are nearly 30 years old. Ships sit at Devonport without enough crew to sail them. Any government serious about defence has to make the career attractive enough to keep the sergeant majors you can’t simply replace.Along the way: a tribute to Jules Topp, Stuart Nash’s road-to-Damascus conversion to New Zealand First forensically dismantled, ministerial housing horror stories including Phil’s garage demolished by the USA and Chris tormenting Annette King about childhood dentistryCross 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.Live shows announced — Auckland 8 August, Wellington 12 August. Podcast listeners get early access to tickets next week. 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

Hosted by Phil Goff and Chris Finlayson, this is a special bonus episode of Cross Party Lines — the live Q&A from the Featherston Booktown Festival, released separately so nothing from that remarkable afternoon gets left on the cutting room floor. Before the questions, Sam takes the temperature of the 400-strong room with four quick audience polls.The audience then takes over:* Could the Opportunity Party break Winston Peters’ cycle?* Should political parties be state funded?* The Electoral Act rollback — disenfranchisement by design?* Is voting for the two big parties really enough to stop populism?Along the way: Trevor Mallard in the audience demanding short questions, Judith Tizard’s advice on grand coalitions, Marion Hobbs telling Chris not to read The Economist during Question Time and Sam’s emotional farewell to his first and last live audience.This bonus episode is a reminder that when you put 400 curious New Zealanders in a room and give them a microphone, something rather good happens.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 is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit crosspartylines.substack.com