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Speaker 1: This coalition needs to tighten its agenda as well as

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Speaker 1: it's belt. And the last week we've had a smagas

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Speaker 1: board of small, seemingly minor stories hitting their headlines. You know,

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Speaker 1: helmets or no helmets for cyclists. For goodness sakes, which

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Speaker 1: name comes first on the cover of your passport? A

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Speaker 1: ban and then a reversal on a ban on marshmallows

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Speaker 1: and hot chocolates from the coffee machine at hospitals. Not

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Speaker 1: a single one of these stories is significant on their

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Speaker 1: own in and of themselves, but the kind of stories

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Speaker 1: that people remember because they either make no sense or

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Speaker 1: they appear to be a colossal waste of time. Most

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Speaker 1: working families can't afford to even use their passports right

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Speaker 1: now a Hawaiian holiday. No, the only ones actually dusting

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Speaker 1: off their passports right now are probably moving across to

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Speaker 1: the ditch across the Tasman. Is this the stuff that

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Speaker 1: your average punter wanting to feed their kids actually cares about?

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Speaker 1: The answers of course, No. The Clark government got bogged

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Speaker 1: down by a bunch of these silly little things. I

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Speaker 1: think size of shower heads, size of light bulbs. Remember

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Speaker 1: that fiasco. Instead of asking officials, where the little Johnny

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Speaker 1: should be allowed to ride a bike without a helmet,

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Speaker 1: something that no decent parent would allow. Anyway, why not

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Speaker 1: keep your eyes on the big stuff. No shortage of

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Speaker 1: that around. Yesterday Fitch warned our Doba plus credit rating

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Speaker 1: could be at risk if we get slack on fiscal discipline.

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Speaker 1: If we see a further correction in the housing market,

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Speaker 1: which isn't completely off the cards, we see employments spike

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Speaker 1: up again, also not out of the woods yet. Come on,

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Speaker 1: we have big earfish to fry. It's not that this

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Speaker 1: coalition is not focused on these things, of course, certainly

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Speaker 1: more focused on them than the last one. It's just

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Speaker 1: that there's a bit too much noise around on little

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Speaker 1: things that don't actually matter to the swinging middle that

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Speaker 1: national needs if they want to finish the big jobs

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Speaker 1: that they've set out to achieve. Distraction is the enemy

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Speaker 1: of progress. Passports and helmets are distractions, and lately and

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Speaker 1: a few too many of them. For more from early

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Speaker 1: edition with Ryan Bridge. Listen live to News Talks it

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Speaker 1: be from five am weekdays, or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.