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Speaker 1: To tell you what it was the fish that sums

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Speaker 1: it up for me. The Infrastructure Commission report was profound

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Speaker 1: in its nature. This week I thought Chris Bishop was

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Speaker 1: dead right on this program when he talked of its

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Speaker 1: importance and yet its dryness. Infrastructure big picture of building

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Speaker 1: and planning and funding isn't sex, he never has been,

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Speaker 1: and that in some respects is why we are where

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Speaker 1: we are and what a place that place is. Eh.

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Speaker 1: We and parts were a broken down, tragic, secondhand little

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Speaker 1: nation that has let ourselves go. We were fighting fit

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Speaker 1: once we paid our way cash and pocket did the

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Speaker 1: job properly, had big dreams in twenty twenty six, were

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Speaker 1: in hock up to our eyeballs, bitching and moaning and complaining,

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Speaker 1: wanting everyone else to wipe our bums and solve our problems.

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Speaker 1: But the fish is the real clue. The fish is

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Speaker 1: in Rakaiah. It is the town's mascot and in the

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Speaker 1: news this week for being defaced, and yet in another irony,

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Speaker 1: that wasn't actually the story, or it shouldn't have been.

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Speaker 1: The other problem with small minded, myopic New Zealand is

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Speaker 1: a defaced town mascot is what passes for news these

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Speaker 1: days when the real story was the fish that was

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Speaker 1: defaced had just had a two hundred thousand dollars reno job.

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Speaker 1: Two hundred thousand dollars to polish up a fish. Now

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Speaker 1: if Rakaia had perfect water and footpaths of gold in

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Speaker 1: record low rates, and it's be a few hundred grand

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Speaker 1: lying about looking to do luxury jobs, no problem. But

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Speaker 1: guess what it doesn't It will be like a lot

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Speaker 1: of small town New Zealand in the hole with big

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Speaker 1: picture issues that have been ignored for years, and yet

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Speaker 1: a group of people who clearly aren't up for the

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Speaker 1: real work thought it was appropriate to read you for

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Speaker 1: fish Now. Do they have the dough? No? Was there

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Speaker 1: a shed load of proper work to be done, yes,

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Speaker 1: but all that can wait because doing a fish up

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Speaker 1: is easy. It's the headline you can bang on about

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Speaker 1: civic pride until, of course it gets defaced, at which

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Speaker 1: point the media can't get hold of it fast enough

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Speaker 1: and you can complain about the crime and the ironing

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Speaker 1: of you needing even more money to fix the fish

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Speaker 1: up again. When fish are the news, the country's real

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Speaker 1: issues don't stand a chance. For more from the mic

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Speaker 1: asking Breakfast listen live to news talks that'd be from

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Speaker 1: six am weekdays, or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio