Peters' Dying Light, Data Debate and Disappearing Commissioners

Peters' Dying Light, Data Debate and Disappearing Commissioners

August 3, 2026 · 47 min

About this episode

The episode discusses Winston Peters' controversial remarks and a debate on a new data center's energy consumption in New Zealand.

Hosted by Phil Goff and Chris Finlayson, Cross Party Lines returns with an episode that opens on Winston Peters telling a Green MP to go back to his own country and calling China’s leaders liars — and asks why the Prime Minister is applying a different standard to racism than he did to sexism. Proudly brought to you by Frank Risk Management, the 100% kiwi-owned insurance brokerage. Find out more at frankrisk.co.nz. In this episode: * Peters goes off the rails — again, and possibly for the last time — Winston Peters told Lawrence Xu-Nan, a Green MP who has lived in New Zealand for most of his life, to go back to his own country. He then labelled China’s leadership — New Zealand’s biggest trading partner — a bunch of liars, prompting a formal rebuke from the Chinese Embassy that neither Phil nor Chris can recall happening before in their combined decades in politics. Chris reaches for Dylan Thomas — do not go gentle into that good night — and reads the whole episode as a career in its dying convulsions: disproportionate, extreme and politically self-destructive. * Economies of Doubt and Data of Hope — $3.5 billion, 280 megawatts and a debate nobody is having — DataGrid, a…

People in this episode

Hosts: Phil Goff, Chris Finlayson

Topics covered

Keywords

Sponsors

Frank Risk Management

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: DataGrid, Chinese Embassy

Places: New Zealand, China, Invercargill

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