Speaker 1: Hello and welcome to Armor Tiles, New Zealand Herald's politics podcast,
Speaker 1: Scrutiny Week special edition The Herald Gallery Officers coming to
Speaker 1: Your Life from Parliament Delayed live with its views on
Speaker 1: Scrutiny Week, Parliament's first of a Scrutiny Week. I'm Thomas Cotland,
Speaker 1: the Deputy Political Editor, first up with her thoughts as
Speaker 1: the political editor of the New Zealand Herald. Clear Tribette. Clear,
Speaker 1: it feels a strange interviewing my boss. What if Scrutiny
Speaker 1: Week has stood out for you?
Speaker 2: Well? Well, my first counter with Scrutiny Week was Speaker
Speaker 2: Jerry Brownlee doing the Parliamentary Service Budget in which he
Speaker 2: first of all had at Heritage New Zealand for having
Speaker 2: designate the Beehive a Heritage listed meant that I couldn't
Speaker 2: do anything with the old concrete bunker NIX which used
Speaker 2: to house the press gallery out the back. Has asked
Speaker 2: that they do something with Heritage New Zealand so that
Speaker 2: old buildings don't just have to sit there until they
Speaker 2: fall apart. You're not allowed to do anything with them.
Speaker 2: And he then proceeded to show his generation when talking
Speaker 2: about MP security by saying that in the olden day,
Speaker 2: MPs were given their handbooks, their kind of things they
Speaker 2: were allowed, like security allowances and stuff in hard copy form,
Speaker 2: and that didn't happen anymore these days. And then he
Speaker 2: continued on that theme to note he also found it
Speaker 2: very puzzling that nobody answered their landlines on their desk anymore,
Speaker 2: and every time he tried to ring someone, nobody answered.
Speaker 1: Interesting stuff. Thank you for your contributions to Scrutiny Week. Clear,
Speaker 1: Julia Gable is not here and our US reporter, so
Speaker 1: she will skip this episode. Adam Piers, our second US
Speaker 1: Adam Cura. Good a Scrutiny Week highlights for yourself, It's.
Speaker 3: More of a low light for me. I think I
Speaker 3: was probably a little disappointed by all maps. I had
Speaker 3: higher expectations of what Scrutiny Week might provide us in
Speaker 3: a I suppose democratic sense. It was essentially an extension
Speaker 3: of what we see normally with select committees, where opposition
Speaker 3: members try and find out pieces of information, go along
Speaker 3: lines of inquiry, but eventually they are shut down by
Speaker 3: patsy questions from the government. However, I will say that
Speaker 3: Scrutiny Week did provide a lot of opportunities for us
Speaker 3: to be able to inquire about topics that we wanted
Speaker 3: to learn more about, particularly given that a lot of
Speaker 3: the ministers have different portfolios to appear before select committees
Speaker 3: across the week on multiple occasions, so we're able to,
Speaker 3: for example, prosecute the government's cancer drug policy and able
Speaker 3: to see that there are quite different perspectives between certain ministers,
Speaker 3: namely Nikola Willis, Shane Retti, David Seymour.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was probably the biggest story to come out
Speaker 1: of Screwed in the week, I think, which is funny
Speaker 1: because it wasn't really you know, we only it was
Speaker 1: a story that was already existed and it was only
Speaker 1: taken forward. It wasn't really a news story. I sort
Speaker 1: of agree with that actually, Like it just feels like
Speaker 1: an extension of all ordinary estimates weeks. There's some interesting details,
Speaker 1: Like I felt like I found some interesting stuff out,
Speaker 1: but it was interesting rather than it was it was
Speaker 1: e femera wasn't it was interesting rather than newsbreaking. I
Speaker 1: think one of the Labor press releases one of the
Speaker 1: days was the fact that the examples and the tax
Speaker 1: package were ghost families. They were real families. They were
Speaker 1: just you know, fake, and it wasn't really that interesting
Speaker 1: to me. I mean, obviously you just make up examples
Speaker 1: to illustrate a policy. It didn't really seem that scandalous
Speaker 1: to me. But you know, anyway, Winston Peters was good.
Speaker 1: He seemed quite good. You were in Winston's yesterday.
Speaker 3: Yes, well, I was in Winston's earlier in the week
Speaker 3: with his racing hat on, which is always entertaining to see.
Speaker 3: I think I'd agree with you in the sense that
Speaker 3: it is. It is interesting but not necessarily groundbreaking. But
Speaker 3: when we see instances like Pawtucker, who talked about how
Speaker 3: it was ambitious that we're going to save every species
Speaker 3: now depend regardless of your position on that matter, it's
Speaker 3: still interesting just to hear your conservation minister talking about
Speaker 3: that we might actually not save every species and that
Speaker 3: it's a vicious goal. You know, it's just provides an
Speaker 3: opportunity for them to put their feet in their mouth,
Speaker 3: as it were.
Speaker 1: So I suppose we did get to see which ministers
Speaker 1: were vulnerable to putting their feet in their mouths and
Speaker 1: which ones are sort of safe. I thought. I spent
Speaker 1: all of Tuesday and christ bishops committees and he really didn't,
Speaker 1: you know, letting the goals and he's fine lasted under
Speaker 1: scrutiny for hours and hours and hours even in the
Speaker 1: sports portfolio, you know everything. Whereas yeah, Tama goes up here.
Speaker 1: I had a long committee as well, but this conservation
Speaker 1: committee just totally put his foot In't it very funny, Adam?
Speaker 1: Thank you very much for your contributions. Sophie and the
Speaker 1: ZIB office, Jason and Demelza away. Jason managed to make
Speaker 1: it safely back from Japan and the Papua New Guinea
Speaker 1: and Australia, but Sophie's been holding the thought. So for
Speaker 1: your your views on screen.
Speaker 4: In your week, Yeah, I've been eavesdropping slightly on what
Speaker 4: Adam said, and he did pick up two of my
Speaker 4: favorite things, which were the cancer drug discrepancy in what
Speaker 4: the ministers were saying, and what the Conservation minister said
Speaker 4: about protecting endangered species. I have really enjoyed seeing some
Speaker 4: important issues kind of prosecuted or canvassed over a much
Speaker 4: longer period of time than we would normally see in
Speaker 4: question time. For example, so yesterday in the Justice Select Committee,
Speaker 4: there was quite a lengthy and back and forth between
Speaker 4: Ginny Anderson and Police Minister Mark Mitchell about whether or
Speaker 4: not police were stepping back from family harm and mental
Speaker 4: health callouts, and so that was sort of a bit
Speaker 4: of a theme throughout the whole day of the Justice
Speaker 4: lect Committee and Police Commission. Andrew Costa was able to
Speaker 4: sort of explain how cases were triaged, and I thought
Speaker 4: that while it may not have been groundbreaking, it was
Speaker 4: kind of interesting to see an issue that we haven't
Speaker 4: heard much about from this government kind of sort of
Speaker 4: being able to be interrogated in a long format like that,
Speaker 4: do we.
Speaker 1: Get to the bottom of that issue?
Speaker 4: The government has said and the Police Minister have said
Speaker 4: that you know, where violence is occurring, where family violence
Speaker 4: has occurred, police will always be dispatched. But Labour's Ginny
Speaker 4: Anderson is arguing that in the Minister's letter of intent
Speaker 4: it says they are stepping back from family harm callouts.
Speaker 4: And the Commissioner did say that as well, that if
Speaker 4: police attended every single incident where there is a risk
Speaker 4: of something bad happening, then they just wouldn't have capacity
Speaker 4: to discharge the rest of their responsibilities.
Speaker 1: It's a really interesting story to coming out. You never really,
Speaker 1: you always get to close to the bottom. You never
Speaker 1: quite get to the bottom of that in this leakmmittee,
Speaker 1: but that is an interesting, interesting little detail. On the titles, listeners,
Speaker 1: we'll be able to pick up in your accent at
Speaker 1: can Burn an Australian. Are you keeping an eye on
Speaker 1: what's happening at home? The climate war was back on
Speaker 1: back home in Australia, and you know, any thoughts on
Speaker 1: what's happening across the ditch.
Speaker 4: I have been focusing on scrutinizing this government this week,
Speaker 4: so I probably wouldn't comment on that.
Speaker 1: That's interesting, it's interesting stuff, you know. I mean, I
Speaker 1: should read my own newspaper, read, you know, but like
Speaker 1: I can't, can't help them keep an eye on what's
Speaker 1: happening across the ditch. It's interesting, certainly interesting. Thank you
Speaker 1: Sophie for joining us on the podcast. Thanks for the listening.
Speaker 1: Sorry so a bit short this week. That is the
Speaker 1: way the cookie crumbles, but thank you for listening. It
Speaker 1: was on the tiles for another week, our producers, even Sills,
Speaker 1: and we'll be back next week with our local edition
Speaker 1: up on the tiles. Thanks for listening.