EP 8 Let's Talk Politics (at home with the Bells)

In this episode of Bellbird's Social Work Walk, the hosts discuss the upcoming election and their lack of engagement and enthusiasm towards it. They feel that there haven't been strong campaigns and they don't fully understand the policies of the different parties. They also talk about the importance of voting based on policies rather than charismatic leaders. They mention ACT's policies to freeze minimum wage and reduce the number of public holidays, which they see as beneficial for small business owners. They highlight how small businesses are impacted by the cost of living crisis. Overall, they express a sense of apathy towards the election and a desire for more inspiring leaders and clearer policies. Kia Ora and welcome to another episode of Bellbird's Social Work Walk, a podcast about all things social workery, and this is another episode in our Let's Talk Politics series. We are two weeks out from the election, so I thought this week in our episode of Let's Talk Politics, I would put my husband in the hot seat, and we would share what it is to talk politics in our household. So hi Bob. Hi, how are you? I'm really glad to be here. It's nice to finally get a chance to spot him on your podcast. Well we're really excited to have you. And so we're two weeks out from the election. When you say that, I'm thinking, I can't believe it's only two weeks, whereas, yes, there are billboards around, but it doesn't feel like elections are right here. I mean, it feels like they could still be three, four months out. You know, I'm not, we hardly have debate in the community that I'm really hearing of, but it doesn't feel that real that it's two weeks out. No, exactly. And I've seen a lot of stuff on social media, some of these Meet the Candidates kind of events, but none of them have been sort of in my face, like I haven't attended, you know, I was much more engaged with Meet the Candidates for the mayoral election and the local body elections for our council. I remember we went along to that event at the Novotel to hear the mayoral candidate speak. There haven't really been a whole lot of things that I've been engaged in or wanting to go to. Yep, we've just been for a drive and we were talking about all the billboards that there are around, but all of a sudden it does feel like this election has kind of crept up on us and we're only two weeks out and holy moly, our election packs arrived in the post yesterday and suddenly it's time to start making some decisions. We can vote come Monday. And it's funny you talk about the mayoral, mayoral to race and vice versa, because I agree with you. It seemed like there was much more awareness of that change in that vote, but I was going to say maybe that was because we knew that there was going to be a change. As the channel was stepping down, we were going to have a new mayor in the community, so there was more investment, but then this election, you know, there's a high probability this may change the government. So we should also be all invested and involved and yet it's just a little lacklustre. I mean, it's interesting you say that because I don't know, I feel like it's anyone's game. I think it's an election that's actually really hard to tell. Certainly if you'd have asked me a few months ago, I would have said, I don't know if there's going to be a change of government. I think if we could just find that actually we stay the same, you know, Labour is still on a pretty strong footing. You know, Chris Luxton is not exactly, you know, setting the world on fire is not super inspiring. You know, people were kind of feeling not necessarily as engaged. We have friends who come from all sorts of political stances and, you know, we have friends that we know would vote more on the Greens. We have friends that vote national. We have friends that vote on the Māori roll. We have friends that vote Act, New Zealand First, you know, so we've had a kind of opportunity to canvass quite a few opinions from people and differing views. And a lot of people, the overriding kind of conversation is how uninspired people are to vote and how hard it is this year more than previous years to know who to vote for. And I think in part that's because there's a whole lot of disenchantment, there's a whole lot of apathy. But I also think, yeah, we haven't really had strong campaigns. We still don't, I still don't really fully understand a lot of people's policies. I mean, yes, I have a responsibility to go out and research that and I have a responsibility to find out. But I kind of feel like it's all just a bit blah. It's a bit unengaging. There's no, like, fourth star. There's no leader that stands out and you're like, oh, they're quite inspiring, actually. And I think, yeah, I sit on the right side of middle. I don't think that there's a leader on my side that I'm particularly enamoured with that would make me think, you know, this would be a great point of time to make change. So even I feel a little bit apathetic towards the election. And I think if I was to try and let it down, I'm probably more voting for things I don't want as opposed to things I do want. But I think that's part of the problems with politics at the minute is that we've become this kind of, we vote on charisma, you know, rather than voting on policy. People liked John Key and so, you know, people voted for John Key for a long period of time. He was a great communicator. He was very good at getting people on board. He was very confident. And then there was like Jacinda Mania and everybody got behind Jacinda and everybody loved her. And now we've got kind of, oh, they're decent people, Chris Hipkins, Chris Lurkson. I mean, they're just kind of, but they're a bit more your average bloke. Maybe this is like the Joe Biden era. Yeah, we haven't got our Donald Trump or Barack Obama or someone who's like the structure in the world and grabs the media's attention. Maybe this is our Joe Biden time, just bland, vanilla, you know, magnolia. But I kind of feel like that's how politics kind of should be in terms of, we've always said don't vote people, don't vote party, vote policy. Like, it's not necessarily about, oh, I'm voting Labour because I've always voted Labour. I'm voting National because I've just voted National my whole life. Or even, I'm voting Jacinda, I'm voting John Key, I'm voting whoever, whoever. Actually, what do we know about the policies that these parties are putting forward? And I think that's where a little bit, I feel kind of some frustration because I feel like what we have seen particularly over this last term is an element of a huge amount of policies being pushed through that were not campaigned on. I do not recall in the last election anything about Three Waters. No, a lot of things that happened that we probably weren't aware were on the spreadsheet of things that we're going to push through. Also, about this last term, it felt like there was a lot of reactionary policy. Like, to avoid bad publicity, there might be a bad headline that recurred in the media for a month and there'd be a policy introduced to address it and some money diverted to try and solve the problem. It felt like there was that kind of politics. It wasn't part of the long-term strategy. It was like media stuff. Yeah, very driven by a kind of polls, right? And that kind of almost became a rhetoric in the media. So, hard to know always how true something is because we always have to take the media with a pinch of salt because they've got their own agenda. But certainly, there was a story in the media around Jacinda. If something was polling badly, she would change it because it was about being popular and having that popularist vote. Yeah, and optics. So, it's hard to know, actually, who to vote for in terms of where's the guts of it. And I think people are very, very much leaning towards, as we do, that sense of what do I want rather than necessarily what's the bigger picture of what might occur. Yeah. I mean, when we talk about policy, we're driving from the car today and I said to you that I heard ACT had introduced two policies that are actually quite beneficial for small business owners, which am one. If I'm voting on policy, I should be thinking, actually, that party has dropped something that's relevant to a lot of people like me running small businesses. They've found it very difficult in the last four years. It's hard to know the depth of all the policies. I think that's why we like to see the inspiring figurehead. It's easy for us to identify with the person and feel like it respects what goes on. That's good leadership. Yeah, and we do get behind them. Yeah, we're a good team under that captain. And Jacinda was very good at portraying that. Yeah, Jonki was very good at portraying that. Yeah, there are some leaders that really stand out. Bill English? No. Chris Hipkins? No. And again, decent people, but yeah, not inspiring in that sense. And that's where you get these people like Helen Clark, again, that you really want to get behind. And that's why you get a change of government because it's really hard to follow suit when you've had that charismatic leader. But yeah, so talking about those ACT policies. So the ones we were talking about is the fact that they have said they would freeze minimum wage. And for two or three years, I think it was, because we've had huge increases in minimum wage and cost of living, which impacts you as a small business owner, but is also something that is required when you're in a cost of living crisis, right? And then the other thing was they said because we've had Masariki as a public holiday, they would actually drop another public holiday. So we'd go back to having whatever it is, nine instead of the 10 or whatever. Because again, public holidays for small business owners, particularly hospitality, you have to pay- Do you open or don't open? It's trade or don't trade. If I trade, it costs me a lot more. And I think it's something you only appreciate when you are managing small economics, a small business where actually the dollars and the cents do matter. And those subtle changes, and there are tens of thousands of small businesses across the country, they do feel the pressure of that. And they felt the pressure, you know, we talk about cost of living crisis, the cost of inputs to run those businesses has gone up. You know, I can say that my insurances are up almost 60% on two years ago, and all our inputs and lease costs have all gone up. So they get caught in the middle because they can't just generate more income. Their income comes from sales, and it's actually the cost of living crisis, and people can't afford to spend as much as they want to spend on the luxury goods or the tea or coffee or whatever it is. Those businesses feel that pressure being caught in the middle. So in some way, I should be saying to myself, I'll look at that. They've dropped two policies that I'm aware of that actually I should be supporting. They should be getting some of my support by way of a vote. They aren't necessarily going to, but that's how I should be thinking if it's about policies. Yeah, exactly. And I think that's the difference between, again, that kind of thinking about what's right for you, your personal circumstance, what it means for you as a small business owner, versus potentially the ideological perspective around the fact that potentially more of a kind of left-wing, slightly more socialist perspective on things is that actually an ideological view might be that they don't want small businesses to thrive, that actually if there were less small businesses around, that it increases more people in the workforce, that it lowers unemployment, that actually if you have lots and lots, if you've got 30 different cafes in this community that are all fighting over the same hospital staff, that are all fighting for the same dollar from customers, that are all fighting over the same thing, actually only have five that do really, really well, that can pay their staff well because they've got more of a captive market. People are going to spend their money because they have less competition, less options. And you've got more people in the workforce and unemployment goes down. So ideologically, there could be a perspective that there's a deliberate intent to squeeze the small business because actually it serves a wider perspective around what we're looking for in terms of societal benefit. Yeah, possibly. Absolutely. Or maybe it's just about, as opposed to supporting the business owner, it's about supporting the business worker, the person that works within the business, large, small, medium, or whatever. That's probably how it's felt. Yeah, absolutely. But I'm also kind of cynical, right? So like one of the things that I have a big question mark over, Grant Robinson has been pushing his insurance scheme, right? That another thing that business people and employers need to pay into is this insurance scheme. This is a work protection scheme, isn't it? Where if you're made redundant, you're entitled to update your senior salary for six months type thing. Yeah, exactly. I understand that from the worker point of view, if I'm made redundant, then that's a pretty significant impact on me. Of course it is. That's a massive undersell. It's a huge impact. It's my ability to pay my rent. It's my ability to put food on the table. I've lost my job. The cynical part of me is, is this just another form of tax, essentially, that enables the government to say that those people are not unemployed because they're on now a six month kind of furlough of insurance payouts. Funded by? Yes, the businesses, the employers. We have to create that margin in our products and services to actually pay for that. Yeah, so we're slowing down people coming back into the workforce because why do I need to rush out and get another job if I've actually got six months of pay at 80%? Yes, it's 80%, it's not 100%, but I've got an income coming in. Because I've been unfairly disadvantaged by losing my job through no fault of my own, and I understand that, but it kind of absolves the government of having to pay out for job seeker benefit. It absolves the government from having to count widgets and data that says that people are on the job seekers, people are unemployed. They can offset that for six months, and they're basically making employers have another thing to have to pay. So you already have to pay an ACC levy, you already have to pay KiwiSaver contributions, you already have to pay superannuation contributions, tax, PAYE, all the other stuff that all comes part of being an employer, and now you're going to have to pay insurance as well on top of that, in the event that maybe you're going to have staff that, unfortunately, you have to make redundant, and therefore they're going to get six months of pay as a result of it. So I think there's some ideology in there that sounds really good, but there's also some cynicism in me that's like, is this just a way of kind of circumnavigating a responsibility? Yeah, and again, I come from that small business perspective as far as a small business owner. I employ 10 people making widgets, and I've done it hard and actually had to close down my 10 employees down in charge of this income protection scheme. As a small business owner, where I've probably been taking minimal drawings, because often we do, we mortgage our properties to try and keep our businesses running for as long as we can. Do I get the same benefits? Would I still get the same income protection if I hadn't been earning PAYE? Well, that's a good point, and to be fair, I don't know the small print in this, but that's a really good point. You're a small business owner, you are by far the lowest paid person in your business. I probably wouldn't have been told all those benefits. But that aside, back to the election. Two weeks out. It's hard to know the details of all the policies. I don't think most, talking about this, yesterday I went to lunch with a few guys. No one really takes the time to go through and read all the policies. We get the headlines, we get the debates, but one of the things I'm missing probably is a lot of televised debate. Leaders up against each other, challenged by someone who said time to go through and read the manifest to work out what the policies are, to ask the tough questions. I'm not seeing a lot of that. I saw the one Jessica Mutch McKay did last week, I think it was Tuesday or Wednesday, with the two presses, Chris Hipkins and Chris Dutton, and even then I found it uninspiring. It was questions that were like, yes or no, do you want to extend the term to four years? Yes. Yes. Okay. Okay. Would you support a wealth tax? No. No. I'm like, okay. It's hardly going to help us make a decision. Exactly, that's right. These might be the hard-hitting questions, but like I think I said to you, people keep saying wealth tax, wealth tax, and I'm like, I don't even actually really understand what it is that they're saying. What is a wealth tax? What's your approach to wealth tax? There's lots of different ways of approaching a wealth tax in society, and what's yours? Yeah. It just gets labeled. I think it's the way that you do it. You label it so that it sounds positive to some people, and it sounds negative to other people. If you go into the detail, it becomes too complicated. Or you make it palatable. Exactly. Well, that's right. I just remember the movie Vice, that's all about Dick Cheney, and when he was vice president- You're talking about global warming. Yeah. Yeah. He was basically- How do we make global warming- Yeah, more palatable. Yeah. Let's call it climate change. Right? Yeah. Our focus groups say that climate change, actually, most people can understand, give a head around. That's right, because things change. The climate changes. Global warming, people don't like the sound of that. Climate change, they can live with. Yeah. It's that kind of ... We have this terminology. We're calling something a wealth tax, and people think, no, no, no, we don't want a wealth tax because everybody theoretically aspires to be wealthy or wealthier, so no, no, we don't want this wealth tax. But actually, what does it even mean? It just feels so farcical that we have these optics, these words, these semantics that actually don't really explain what we're talking about. It just reminds me of that movie. It was so, so clever, that whole thing around how do we actually spin things to make things more palatable. We just change the name of it, and off we go. That's right. That's right. It works. We know in their household which solar panels they tend to slide off onto. It's the opposite to the fire that typically you'd slide off and fall into. Only two weeks after the election, are you feeling more comfortable where your vote's going to go? Are you still uncertain? Is there anything that your side of the fence could do that would make you not want to put your vote there? Your side of the fence has been in power for the last six years. Yes. We often joke about the fact that in this household, there's almost virtually no point in either of us voting because we just cancel each other out. What I've decided to do this year is actually just rip up your voting papers so that I'm the only one that gets to vote. Obviously, that's a joke. I've said to a lot of people that this is the first year in a long, long time where I feel very uninspired. That really worries me, if I'm honest, because I'm a great advocate for voting. I am passionate about people being self-determining in their decision-making. I really strongly feel that everybody should participate in this democratic system because we have voices and voices need to be heard. I get very frustrated when I've had conversations with people in the past and they've said, oh, I don't see the point in voting. I don't feel like there's anyone who represents me. I don't really want to vote. The frustration for me around that is that people have fought and fought and fought for the right to vote. You know, the suffragettes, women literally threw themselves in front of horses and died to make a point to say that women should have the right to vote. Like, if we turned around and said, this whole group of society, you can no longer vote anymore, people would be up in arms about it. And yet people don't vote. I am terrified that this year we're going to have an incredibly low turnout. The local body elections for the council, we had 46% turnout to come out and vote. And Rotorua was considered to be one of the best turnouts in the country. And yet it's less than half. And you're right, I think there was more publicity about it. I think there was more conversation about it because Steve Chadwick had said that she was stepping down and therefore it was an open floor. Who's it going to be? You know, people were more engaged in the conversation. And I kind of sit here and think, if I don't even know who I want to vote for, if I feel completely and utterly uninspired, then that's going to be probably a lot of people in our community, in our society, in our country, who feel pretty uninspired. And that's terrible. If we're all feeling uninspired by, I guess, some of the main parties that are standing out in this election, this is MMP, all these like minor parties out there, and there are a hundred or so minor parties. Some of them should represent our views. Why aren't we going out and giving the minor parties our vote? The ones that may not get to the 5% threshold but actually may have a voice in the community that better represents us. This is exactly right. In fact, I was reading a post on the Facebook page of Brian Bruce. He's an economist. He's a researcher. He writes a lot of stuff around the impact of policy on economy, on like deprivation, on society. He's a really interesting person that I follow on Facebook. And he was talking about the fact that he is struggling to find the party to whom he aligns in this election. And in theory, one of the parties he might be interested in voting for would have been top, because they have some of the policies that he might most align with. But there's no point voting for them, or it's waste, because they may not get to 5%, right? And so it feels like a wasted vote. And there's this kind of strategic voting perspective sometimes that we get caught into where we're like, oh, we're going to vote strategically. Like last election, a whole bunch of people who might be national voters didn't want the Greens to get in. So they actually voted for Labour instead of National to kind of water down the influence of the Greens. And that's like this strategic voting. But the problem with that is when you strategic vote, the only beneficiaries of that are the two main parties, right? The two subsidiary parties, the minor parties, don't benefit from that. And so I've heard from several people, oh, I don't think I'd bother voting for them because they won't get to their 5%. Even like the Māori party, Te Whāti Māori, last election, they got in mainly on the fact that Rāuri Waititi won the seat. And so that's what people are saying, well, top, they have to win their seat. They have to win their... And the right to... Right to get your seat by getting an electorate. So Rāuri is standing for Elam and Christchurch. If he wins that seat, the leader of top, then the party's in kind of thing. But I just think it's a little bit self-defeating in a way because we're like, we're not going to vote for this party because they might not get to their 5%. But then they're not going to get to their 5% if no one ever votes for them because they won't get to their 5%. How do you ever get over the 5% threshold without enough groundswell and enough belief to get people over that threshold? And that kind of... I don't know. I just think it's a real... It must be such a challenge for these minor parties, especially someone like top who's relatively new, relatively unheard of. I mean, New Zealand First, Winston Peters gets a whole lot of airtime. ACT gets a whole lot of airtime. The more popular they become. And then there are these other parties. We were driving past all these billboards today and you've got, we can see Hana Tamaki's face on one, Visions, New Zealand or something. And then Brian Tamaki's face is on another billboard. We've got somebody else standing. And those are the ones that are going to vote to get billboards up. That's right. And then there's somebody else that was standing who doesn't have a party at all. And we had to Google him and found that he's an independent. But it doesn't say that on his board. And so I don't even know what he stands for. There's so much sort of competition out there. But actually, you know, the media certainly doesn't promote. You know, they go to the mainstream, you know, pretty much in terms of the minor parties. Green, ACT, Te Paati Māori, New Zealand First. That's pretty much all you ever hear about. I'll give it to the minor parties like Te Paati Māori, like ACT, who in the last nine years have kicked their parties. And I guess I'll give it to Winston Peters as well. Relevant on the landscape. Because, yeah, right, that's a tough job. But in the last nine years, barely a float, right? They've all had pretty big hits. You know, when National came out of power, Te Ururoa Flavell as the leader of the Māori Party, you know, they were decimated. You know, it's taken a whole rebirth with Rawiri and Debbie to come back, re-kind of state what Te Paati Māori is about, really kind of like state in the ground, I guess, and reclaim that space. The same New Zealand First. He's had a pretty good kind of hibernation period after coming out of coalition with Labour. He just went fishing up Northland, that was all. Yeah, for a good couple of years. And he's come back out fighting. Like, you know, you've got to have that resilience to bounce back. It's tough, right? It's a really tough world out there. But I think when talking about Te Paati Māori, one of the things that we talked about as well is this whole thing that, particularly for Rotorua, you know, we've got Merepeka Krokawa-Tate standing as the first Te Paati Māori candidate in a general role. And we were talking a little bit around sort of how... How will that disrupt the boating landscape in Rotorua? And it will probably have an influence. You know, we've had Todd McClay in for the last... Forever. Yeah, 20 election cycles. Is it a given he's going to get in? Possibly, if she disrupts the boats on the left side of the spectrum, but possibly not. Actually, she disrupts all boats. Who knows? Basically, but it is interesting. Obviously, the caveat here is that neither of us are Māori. Neither of us are on the Māori roll. So we're just speaking as observers, I guess, in terms of the difference between the general role and the Māori role, because that's not a choice for us. But the thought for me is around actually, you know, given that we have a lot of people moving from the Māori role to the general role, like I said before, I think 8,000 people in the last three months went from general role to Māori role, but six and a half went from Māori role to general role. So we've got a lot of people who fluctuate between the two roles. It's interesting to think that, you know, up until now, you've only had the option of voting for a Te Pāti Māori candidate if you're on the Māori role. But you can still vote, party vote, Te Pāti Māori, but I have never been able to vote for a candidate for Te Pāti Māori as somebody who sits on the general role until now. And I think that's a very interesting change to our electoral system. I think that's actually a good level of options, choice, debate, perspective. Meripeka has been in this community for a long time. She's done a lot of things. She's sat on council. She's, you know, part of whānau ora. She's got a lot to contribute. In many ways, there will be people for whom she absolutely has an affinity, and they may be people beyond just those that sit on the Māori role. You know, my thought is that, yeah, as you say, and I'm sure we're not Māori, but if I was Māori, wanting to have more influence from a Māori perspective on governance, actually I feel like I'd probably do that more on the general role, because on the Māori role, those seats are guaranteed. They're going to be represented in government. It might be different parties, but they're going to be Māori seats represented by Māori people in government. I may as well try and get more influence on the general role and get more MPs sympathetic to voting for Māori causes. That's where I should vote. Yeah, I mean, it's an interesting one because, you know, I agree with you in that for the Māori seats and the Māori electorates, those are going to be filled by Māori who have a view on upholding equity for Māori, Māori policy. The risk is that the number of seats that are Māori electorates is dependent on how many people are on the Māori role. So if people do not go on the Māori role, if people choose to remain on the general role and say, for example, numbers went down on the Māori role, then we would lose Māori seats in those Māori electorates. Those seats are calculated by the representation on the Māori role. So you can't rely on, again, you know, you've got to be a participant. You can't rely on others to uphold those seats while you're sitting over here voting in a different space. I'm not sure you do rely on others. Just go along for the ride. Yeah. Okay. So two weeks out. Either way, in the fortnight's time, we'll be sat here having a glass of wine, no doubt. I don't know if it's toasting. I was going to say, we talked before about the fact that one of us will be sat here with a wine, having a wine. I don't think either of us is going to be devastated. Like I say, I don't think... There could be options for which I'm devastated. If nothing changes, if we carry on as we are. We've been doing this for, you know, three years or six years if you look further back. If it changes, it's not going to be a dramatic change, maybe. But I also think that there's some shift going on where people are kind of making slightly more extreme perspectives. You know, we know that outcomes for children, particularly, are probably likely to be worse off the larger influence the Act has on policy. We know that they have some pretty strong views around order and intimidacy, youth justice, the way in which children are cared for. You know, we know that there are likely to be some detrimental impact of some Act policy that does worry me. Yeah. And actually, from the field you come from, you should be worried. You've probably got a better idea of them since they have. I just think at the moment, whatever we're doing is not working. And if anyone, they're not saying it, but if anyone comes along and says, let's actually, let's take a different approach to trying to solve some of the social issues in New Zealand, I think that it's worth a chance. And therein lies the conundrum, right? Is it jumping from the frying pan to the fire? Or are we the frog that's slowly boiling to death and we need to be jumping out of the pot? Who knows? Well, that's right. That's the conundrum, right? That's the who do I vote for question. And that's why this is such an interesting election this year. Yeah, maybe I take it back. Maybe it's not vanilla. Maybe it's not bland. Maybe actually we've had a really interesting six years that we've gone through during COVID, post COVID. We're suffering a lot of the same social and economic pressures that most Western countries or globally, most countries are probably getting post COVID. And the same fatigue that most countries are probably feeling. Maybe this is what all elections are like at the moment. And maybe this is as good as it's going to be for a while. And maybe it is interesting. That's right. And in two weeks, we'll find out. So thank you, Bob, for taking the time to chit chat with me on this important topic. Thank you for inviting me. I think we did very well to still be having very civil conversations about this, what can be a very personal and potentially contentious topic. It's really great. So thank you so much for your time.