Cross Party Lines

Hosted by Phil Goff and Chris Finlayson, Cross Party Lines returns for an episode that moves from the Iran peace deal to the election campaign taking shape around them.
And all thanks to our foundational partner, Frank Risk Management, the 100% Kiwi Owned Insurance Brokerage.
In this episode:
* The Iran deal — incomplete, expensive and Trump’s to own — A purported peace deal between the US, Israel and Iran arrived as this episode was recording, and both Phil and Chris give it a cautious and sceptical reception. Chris has read the Obama agreement and the Trump version side by side: Obama’s was more comprehensive.
* Election season: polls, Peters and the Rakesh Naidoo affair — With four months to go, the election campaign is warming up fast. National is hovering at 29-30%, low enough that — on David Farrar’s own modelling — they would return just two list MPs, potentially losing Nicola Willis and Chris Bishop from cabinet. The Opportunities Party is polling near the threshold in one poll and nowhere near it in two others; Phil’s warning to progressive voters is direct: a TOP vote that doesn’t cross 5% is effectively a vote for the current government.
* Where’s the money coming from — and who’s counting it? — Nicola Willis has accused Labour of $18 billion in unfunded promises. Phil points out that National announced its fiscal plan two weeks before the 2023 election. Both agree the real fix is a Parliamentary Budget Office — independent, empowered to cost everyone’s promises, and long overdue. Australia has one. Canada has one. Victoria and New South Wales have one. ACT and New Zealand First have blocked it. Phil and Chris end the episode in rare complete agreement: this is an idea whose time has come.
Sharp, wide-ranging and more electorally focused than usual, this episode is a reminder that with four months to go, the campaign has already started — and some of the most consequential moves are being made before a single vote is cast.
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.
🎟 Live shows — Auckland 8 August, Wellington 12 August. Wellington is 85% sold. Get your tickets now at tapliveevents.com.


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 welcomes Phil back from China with a packed episode that moves from the streets of Beijing to the corridors of Parliament — and closes with a sharp verdict on American politicians who can’t stop telling other countries what to do.
Thanks to our foundational partner, Frank Risk Management, the 100% Kiwi owned insurance brokerage.
In this episode:
* Phil’s China dispatch — infrastructure, trade and a more controlling Beijing — Phil’s first China visit in nine years left him genuinely impressed and genuinely concerned in equal measure. The infrastructure shames us and the air in Beijing is so clean it’s unrecognisable from the smog-choked city he visited in the 2000s.
* Lobbying, Gmail accounts and the OIA that disappeared — Emails sent to the Prime Minister’s principal policy advisor’s private Gmail account — from Fonterra in June 2024 and Z Energy in July 2024, both lobbying on the Mike Smith climate litigation — were never disclosed under OIA requests. Phil is unambiguous: two separate incidents, two private email accounts, no disclosure. This was not a stuff-up. Chris thinks it was probably cock-up rather than conspiracy, but agrees the Official Information Act needs teeth.
* Hegseth, Vance and the Americans who won’t stay in their lane — Pete Hegseth managed to enrage most of Western Europe with an immigration rant at D-Day commemorations. JD Vance tried to weaponise the killing of an 18-year-old student by a British-born Sikh to score points about mass migration. Phil’s response is the most direct of the episode: New Zealand has nothing to apologise for, the Yanks were late for both world wars, and Mike Moore’s line captures it perfectly — we might do anything you ask, we won’t do anything you tell us.
Wide-ranging, historically rich and sharper than usual on democratic accountability, this episode is a reminder that the same principles apply whether you’re talking about Beijing, Wellington or Washington: transparency matters, sovereignty matters, and the rules only work if everyone plays by them.
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.
🎟 Live shows — Auckland 8 August, Wellington 12 August. General sale now open at tapliveevents.com.


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 Chris Finlayson, Cross Party Lines welcomes a familiar face from across the Tasman, special guest co-host Annette King — beaming in from Sydney while Phil is in China.
All thanks to our foundational partner, Frank Risk Management. The 100% kiwi owned insurance brokerage.
🎟 Live shows — Auckland 8 August, Wellington 12 August. Podcast listeners get pre-sale access. Head to tapliveevents.com and use code CPL26 (all caps).
In this episode:
* Nicola Willis’s budget — a bit of this, a bit of that — Annette gives her verdict: not easily named, cautiously welcomed on health and defence, but carrying the familiar ring of a surplus promise that every New Zealand government makes and few deliver. The conversation deepens quickly into the long shadow of the Muldoon decision to abolish the contributory super scheme in the 1970s — a move both Annette and Chris agree was one of the great shames of New Zealand politics.
* Australia’s CGT tweak, broken promises and the lessons for New Zealand — Jim Chalmers’ budget included changes to capital gains tax concessions for investors — not promised, immediately attacked by the Liberals as a broken promise, and now a test of whether Labour can hold its nerve. Annette has enormous respect for Chalmers as a treasurer and thinks the changes are defensible — but acknowledges that the optics of doing what Bill Shorten proposed in 2019 and lost an election over are not straightforward.
* The Liberal Party’s death spiral, One Nation’s rise and the Barnaby Joyce problem — Tony Abbott, newly installed as Liberal Party president after losing his own seat to a teal in 2019, is Chris and Annette’s exhibit A for a party that has lost the plot. The old Liberal heartland — Wentworth, Warringah, North Sydney — is now teal territory. One Nation has won its first lower house seat. And the Liberal response, apparently, is to move further right. Both agree this is a guaranteed path to irrelevance.
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 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 dive into a budget week episode that is almost entirely domestic: 8,700 public service jobs cut, state house rents going up, culture war bills clogging Parliament, and a defence announcement both men broadly welcome but want to interrogate.
Cross Party Lines is made possible by Frank Risk Management, the 100% Kiwi owned insurance brokerage.
In this episode:
* 8,700 jobs — efficiency or ideology dressed as savings? — The government’s announcement of a 14% public service reduction draws a forensic and at times sharp response from both sides. Phil’s theory: this was never about efficiency — it was about finding $2.5 billion before the credit rating agencies moved again, and the justification was built around the number, not the other way around.
* Social housing - who pays the bill?— The social housing changes draw Phil’s sharpest words of the episode: $31 a week more from people who are, by definition, at the bottom of New Zealand’s social and economic heap. Chris asks whether Margaret Thatcher had a good idea selling council houses to their occupiers and we pass judgment on Nicola Willis’ “lotto” comment.
* Defence — necessary, expensive and long overdue — The pre-budget defence announcement draws broad agreement: New Zealand spent two decades at 1% of GDP on defence during what Helen Clark correctly called a strategically benign environment. That environment no longer exists. The frigates are nearly 30 years old. Ships sit at Devonport without enough crew to sail them. Any government serious about defence has to make the career attractive enough to keep the sergeant majors you can’t simply replace.
Along the way: a tribute to Jules Topp, Stuart Nash’s road-to-Damascus conversion to New Zealand First forensically dismantled, ministerial housing horror stories including Phil’s garage demolished by the USA and Chris tormenting Annette King about childhood dentistry
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.
Live shows announced — Auckland 8 August, Wellington 12 August. Podcast listeners get early access to tickets next week.


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 — fresh off the stage at Featherston — for an episode that opens with a tribute to one of New Zealand’s greatest legal minds and moves through a week of elections, populist tremors and an education debate that has been going around in circles since the 1990s.
Thanks to Frank Risk Management, the 100% Kiwi owned insurance brokerage.
In this episode:
* The Trump-Xi summit — pomp, ceremony and a ridiculous mouse — Chris reaches for the Latin poet Horace to deliver his verdict: all the hype, all the ceremony, and nothing of substance emerged. No breakthrough on Taiwan, 200 Boeings ordered instead of the promised 500, and none of the Nixonian moment that a genuine Sino-American summit could have been.
* The pre-budget squeeze — $300 million less and nowhere to hide — The government has cut its operational allowance from $2.4 billion to $2.1 billion, meaning $300 million less new spending in a budget that already has to find money for defence, health, education and law and order. Phil is blunt: there will be cuts, the lolly scramble is off, and Labour faces the same fiscal straitjacket as the government it hopes to replace.
* NCEA — a debate going around in circles since the 1990s — Phil and Chris both remember this argument from when they were on opposite sides of the House. The OECD’s early 2000s push toward skills over knowledge went too far; the pendulum is swinging back; but the question is whether it’s swinging with the evidence or against it. Phil is particularly troubled by a cabinet paper that acknowledges the reforms will likely reduce achievement rates for Māori, Pasifika and low-income students — a problem New Zealand already has and cannot afford to worsen.
Along the way: a tribute to Sir Ken Keith, New Zealand’s only ever ICJ judge; the opera about Nixon in China that Chris thinks was pretty bad; why nationalising the BNZ for $24 billion is both impossible and unaffordable; a mystery special guest joining Chris in two weeks while Phil travels to China; and a big live show announcement coming next week.
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 is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit crosspartylines.substack.com