Cross Party Lines

Hosted by Phil Goff and Chris Finlayson, Cross Party Lines returns in a week dominated by tax promises nobody can keep, a CEO pay packet that defies all decency and a rare moment of cross-party agreement on social media and children that both men want to see survive the campaign.
All thanks to Frank Risk Management - the 100% Kiwi owned insurance brokerage and proudly the foundational partner of Cross Party Lines.
In this episode:
* The tax debate nobody’s having honestly — National is running a campaign claiming Labour will introduce nine to eleven new taxes. Labour is talking about one: capital gains. But Phil is equally unsparing about his own side — jumping on the bandwagon to promise no fuel excise increase, regardless of the road maintenance bill that creates, is not honest politics either. Chris reaches back to George H.W. Bush’s “read my lips, no new taxes” pledge — delivered in New Orleans in 1988, broken within two years for entirely good economic reasons — as the canonical warning against definitive promises in election campaigns.
* $30 million for a CEO while the stock tanks — and what it says about corporate governance — The revelation that a major New Zealand CEO received $30 million in remuneration while the company’s share price was falling prompts one of the more animated exchanges of the episode. Phil draws a direct line between runaway executive pay, the collapse of faith in institutions, and the rise of populism. Chris is equally blunt: a board that approves that package while the stock is declining has failed its most basic governance responsibility.
* Social media, children and a rare cross-party moment worth protecting — In the episode’s most substantive segment, Phil and Chris give a thorough and genuinely cross-partisan treatment to the social media age restriction bill. Phil went away and read the expert literature: psychologists documenting compulsive and addictive platform design, decreased attention spans, social isolation, predators and paedophiles operating with industrial efficiency online, and mothers at overseas protests holding photographs of children who took their own lives after being bullied. Australia’s under-16 ban hasn’t been perfectly enforced — 70% of banned children found workarounds — but as Phil argues, an imperfect solution to a real problem is not a reason to do nothing.
Cross Party Lines exists to lift political literacy and create space for calm, good-faith political conversation. New episodes every Tuesday. If you value thoughtful debate, follow the podcast and share it with someone who might too.
🎙 Next episode live from Christchurch — Word Festival, 6 September. Sold out, but follow us so you don’t miss the recording.


This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit crosspartylines.substack.com

Hosted by Phil Goff and Chris Finlayson, Cross Party Lines returns to its usual programming for an episode that is almost entirely about the health of democracy itself: in New Zealand’s hospitals, in its political donation system, in its local body elections and in the United States with 74 days to go.
Thanks to Frank Risk Management, the 100% Kiwi owned insurance brokerage. Get more info at frankrisk.co.nz.
In this episode:
* Health, housing and the election’s tier-one issues — Phil opens with a forensic and at times furious account of New Zealand’s hospital emergency departments: patients waiting up to fifty hours for a bed, wards operating at two to three hundred percent capacity, people in acute pain sitting in bright lights unable to sleep. Chris adds property rights as his personal tier-one issue — invoking the OECD Secretary General Matthias Cormann’s argument that the rule of law is the single most important ingredient in a wealthy, functioning economy, and connecting it to the greyhound racing shutdown, the MACA amendment and sixty Treaty settlements he signed.
* Cleaning up New Zealand politics — donations, lobbying, ballot theft and postal voting — Phil walks through a list of reforms both men broadly support: a Parliamentary Budget Office (Labour has now officially adopted it as policy, prompting an alleluia from Chris); a lobbyists’ register; a strengthened Official Information Act with real enforcement; and caps on political donations. The $245,000 donated by thoroughbred breeder Peter Feller to New Zealand First — whose leader is the Minister of Racing — and the half-million from Graham Hart to the National Party are held up as symptoms of a system that allows money to buy access in ways that undermine equality.
* Trump’s five outrages and the American midterms taking shape — With 74 days until the US election, Phil delivers five rapid-fire outrages: threatening to bomb Oman — an American ally; curtailing military exercises with South Korea to avoid offending Kim Jong-un; doing nothing about Netanyahu rejecting his own peace envoy’s plan; losing his Supreme Court appeal on the E Jean Carroll sexual abuse case; and fleeing a purported Iranian assassination plot via catering van while leaving Marco Rubio and the entire press corps on Air Force One as a decoy — accompanied only by the woman who types his Truth Social posts. Chris notes Iowa — reliably Trump country — is now in play because of soybean tariffs, that Susan Collins is vulnerable in Maine, and that Trump’s approval has dropped from 52% at inauguration to 33% in the Reuters poll. The independents are leaving. The farmers are hurting. And a proper midterm conversation with a guest is being planned.
Cross Party Lines exists to lift political literacy and create space for calm, good-faith political conversation. New episodes every Tuesday. If you value thoughtful debate, follow the podcast and share it with someone who might too.
🎟 Christchurch Word Festival — 6 September. Tickets available now at wordchristchurch.co.nz


This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit crosspartylines.substack.com

Hosted by Phil Goff and Chris Finlayson with special guests Helen Clark and Tracey Martin, this bonus episode brings together the questions from the live Q&A sessions at both the Auckland Q Theatre and Wellington Hannah Playhouse shows.
All thanks to Frank Risk Management, the 100% Kiwi owned insurance brokerage.
The audience asks, the panel answers:
* What was New Zealand’s biggest missed political opportunity? — Phil and Chris are in rare and emphatic agreement: Sir Robert Muldoon winding up the Kirk government’s superannuation scheme in 1975 — for short-term political advantage — is the single most costly decision in New Zealand’s modern history.
* Energy, health, the Crown-Māori relationship and urgency in Parliament — The audience covers the waterfront. On energy: all three panellists back pumped hydro over an LNG terminal, and Phil draws a line connecting Malcolm Turnbull’s climate pragmatism to what New Zealand’s current government is getting catastrophically wrong.
* AI, trans rights, capital gains tax and the Opportunities Party — The rapid-fire second half covers the issues the audience most wanted answered. On AI: Tracey always says please and thank you to AI, because when they take over the world she intends to be fine; Phil is more concerned about the military applications.
Along the way: a four-year term referendum that never happened and probably should have, Chris’s view that the Intelligence and Security Committee should be chaired by a senior opposition MP rather than the Prime Minister, why the UK delegation that came to study New Zealand’s select committee process now has a better system than we do.
Cross Party Lines exists to lift political literacy and create space for calm, good-faith political conversation. New episodes every Tuesday. If you value thoughtful debate, follow the podcast and share it with someone who might too.
🎙 Christchurch is next — part of the Word Festival, second week of September. Tickets at word.co.nz.


This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit crosspartylines.substack.com

Hosted by Phil Goff and Chris Finlayson, Cross Party Lines goes live at the Hannah Playhouse in Wellington — sold out in a week — with a very special guest: Tracey Martin, former deputy leader of New Zealand First, former Minister for Seniors and Children, and current CEO of the Aged Care Association.
An episode that moves from the psychodrama of National’s leadership crisis to the slow-motion crisis in aged care — with an insider’s account of life in the New Zealand First caucus along the way.
Thanks for Frank Risk Management, New Zealand 100% Kiwi-owned insurance brokerage - find out more at frankrisk.co.nz.
In this episode:
* National’s leadership crisis — Penk’s defenestration and what comes next — Phil walks through the numbers with forensic clarity: Luxon is lucky to be standing. The week that preceded the vote was arguably the worst of his premiership — the small business comments, the MMP referendum blurt, the Air Force plane to a party fundraiser, wages up 2% against inflation at 4.1%. Chris is blunt about Chris Penk: a good minister, probably not the only one involved, and now made an example pour encourager les autres. Tracey offers the most nuanced reading: what if Penk was genuinely motivated by loyalty to the party and believed a new leader would save the election?
* Inside the New Zealand First caucus — and was the Peters outburst planned? — Tracey Martin spent years as one of the most senior figures in New Zealand First, and she doesn’t pull her punches. She describes her own caucus colleagues as occasionally weird — but notes that every caucus has weird people, because weird people deserve representation too. On Peters telling Lawrence Xu-Nan to go back to his own country: she had her husband check the Hansard. All Lawrence said was “are you vaccinated?” What followed was not planned — but that, she argues, might be the more alarming conclusion.
* Citizens’ arrest, aged care and the promises nobody can afford — The episode’s final stretch is its most policy-dense. Chris dissects the Crimes Amendment Act’s enhanced citizens’ arrest powers: who decides what constitutes reasonable force? What happens when a 40-year-old man sits on a 15-year-old child? Phil cites the Police Association, Retail New Zealand and Business New Zealand all opposing it — because all the evidence shows that fatalities in retail crime happen when retailers chase or tackle offenders. Tracey adds the constitutional concern: the law says you can detain someone if you merely think they did it. On aged care — Tracy’s professional domain — the warning is stark: superannuation is the base funding model for all residential age care in this country. TOP’s policy of transitioning away from superannuation was designed without understanding that, and she has had to explain the consequences to them herself.
Along the way: Tim Groser performing with Sam Neill at Downstage in its heyday, Annette King messaging Chris to be nice to her cousin Tracey, Chris describing himself as Captain Smack in National Party circles, Count Binface polling between 20 and 30% in Clacton and Tracy’s observation that misogynists exist in every party — not just New Zealand First.
Cross Party Lines exists to lift political literacy and create space for calm, good-faith political conversation. New episodes every Tuesday. If you value thoughtful debate, follow the podcast and share it with someone who might too.
🎙 Wellington sold out. Christchurch is next — second week of September as part of the Word Christchurch Festival. Tickets available now at wordchristchurch.co.nz.


This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit crosspartylines.substack.com

Hosted by Phil Goff and Chris Finlayson, Cross Party Lines goes live at Q Theatre in Auckland — with a very special guest: the Right Honourable Helen Clark, former Prime Minister, former UNDP Administrator and member of The Elders.
An episode that moves from a government having a terrible week to the West Bank, and doesn’t pull a single punch along the way.
All thanks to Frank Risk Management, the 100% Kiwi Owned Insurance Brokerage. Find out more at frankrisk.co.nz.
In this episode:
* A bad week for Luxon, a worse week for Peters — and a referendum nobody asked for — The week opened with unemployment at 5.6% nationally, 6.5% in Auckland — the highest in eleven years — wages up 2% against inflation running at 4.1%, and Labour leading National on all five of the top issues in the Ipsos poll. Then came Luxon’s comments to small businesses — essentially telling them to stand on their own feet — which he backtracked on within hours. Helen’s verdict is pointed: to change something as fundamental as the electoral system, you need a royal commission, a proper process and a mandate — not a prime minister who’s sick of his coalition partners.
* Populism, The Elders and the rise of the illiberal right — Chris is reading a book called Centrists of the World Unite and using it as a frame for the episode’s most wide-ranging conversation. He is genuinely alarmed: a potential President Le Pen next year, the AFD in Germany and Pauline Hanson in Australia. Helen welcomes Andy Burnham as a confident new leader capable of dispatching Farage and makes the structural point: social democratic and liberal centre parties have failed to build the kind of cross-bloc flexibility that the German FDP or the British Liberal Democrats offered at their best. The Opportunities Party, both Chris and Helen note, may be trying to fill that space — though Helen is sceptical of their land tax, and Phil’s concern remains unchanged: a TOP vote that falls below 5% is a vote for the status quo.
* The West Bank, Gaza and Palestine disappearing before our eyes — Helen has just returned from her third visit to the West Bank as part of The Elders’ work, and her account is one of the most vivid and sobering of any episode. Seven hundred thousand illegal settlers. Israeli flags lining the roads into Palestinian villages. Tear gas thrown into schoolyards. Olive groves inaccessible. A village with one road in after the other was closed. Her conclusion, shared with The Elders: Palestine is disappearing before our eyes.
Along the way: Paul Henry naming Helen Clark as the most impressive politician of recent decades, the SIS agent thrown down the stairs of the Political Studies Department in the 1970s, Raybon Kan’s line that when Peters told him to go back where he came from, he was relieved it wasn’t back to the third world — or Masterton.
Warm, historically rich and more emotionally charged than any episode before it, this live show is a reminder that the best political conversation happens when three people who have actually done the job sit in a room and tell the truth.
Cross Party Lines exists to lift political literacy and create space for calm, good-faith political conversation. New episodes every Tuesday. If you value thoughtful debate, follow the podcast and share it with someone who might too.
🎙 This was our Auckland live show at Q Theatre. Wellington’s Hannah Playhouse is next — with special guest Tracey Martin. Follow us so you don’t miss the announcement.


This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit crosspartylines.substack.com