This week on the Raw Politics podcast: Whatever did Chris Hipkins do to deserve the absent-minded, busy, superior minister Michael Wood, and which electoral reforms deserve to be adopted.
The Raw Politics team shakes its collective head at Transport Minister Michael Wood and wonders what he could possibly have been thinking to land his leader in a political bushfire so close to an election.
Wood's failure to follow agreed MP and ministerial requirements to declare his personal assets was an affair that started messily and then got progressively worse for him, his Prime Minister and Labour.
We also discuss this week's independent report calling for electoral reforms, including a ban on corporate donations to political parties, the possibility of a four-year parliamentary term, lowering the voting age and extending voting to more prisoners.
And, we answer a listener's question on court cases over National and NZ First donations, inconveniently returning to the public sphere ahead of the election .
The panel recommends a story revealing the government's awards for workers during Covid seem to have run into trouble, a column on Wayne Brown and the hoary old political mantra of TINA, and the work of a brave journalist at CNN who called out his big boss publicly.
Every Friday, Jo Moir, Sam Sachdeva and Tim Murphy talk through the big issues and scrutinise politicians’ performances in a lively 25-minute show aiming to take viewers and listeners inside the actions and motivations of our elected leaders.
Moir is Newsroom’s political editor, having been in the gallery for eight years also with Stuff and RNZ, Sachdeva is our national affairs editor, former political editor and was a Stuff political writer and Murphy is Newsroom’s co-editor, a former member of the Parliamentary press gallery and former editor-in-chief of the NZ Herald.
Watch Raw Politics on YouTube, or download or listen to it as a podcast on Spotify, or via Apple Podcasts.
And send us your burning political questions to sam.sachdeva@newsroom.co.nz and we’ll endeavour to find the answer and explain the issues.
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This week's recommendations:
Sam: Duncan Greive's in the Spinoff on whatever happened to the Covid awards: https://thespinoff.co.nz/politics/07-06-2023/the-covid-response-awards-were-designed-to-recognise-service-for-many-they-erased-it
Jo: Tim Murphy on Roger, Ruth, Wayne and Tina https://www.newsroom.co.nz/roger-ruth-wayne-and-tina
Tim: Oliver D’Arcy of CNN reporting bravely on his own’s CEO’s prolonged demise and exit.
