Heather du Plessis-Allan Drive

Qiulae Wong fired a truth torpedo at the National Party didn't she? She says she doesn't believe Christopher Luxon when he tries to pretend he's not going to be calling her after the election. And she's right because of course he's going to call her after the election.
He knows it as well, which is why he wouldn't say no when Jack Tame kept questioning him about whether he would call her on November 8 if he had to. He will call her because he wants to be back in government and he knows his voters will forgive him if he breaks his promise to rule them out. His voters would rather have Opportunity in a government with National than no National-led government at all, right?
Now, having said that, the Taxpayers' Union-Curia poll did show that Opportunity being in Parliament is not a foregone conclusion by any stretch. They were on 4.8%, which is shy of the 5% they need to get into Parliament.
And them crashing out like that is actually the best-case scenario for Luxon because, in that poll, the coalition government wins with a comfortable majority of 65 seats to 55 for the Labour-led bloc. That's largely because of the wasted vote that Opportunity takes with it. A 4.8% vote is enormous, gone from the left bloc.
My take is that for Opportunity to actually make it into Parliament on election day, they need to go into that final week with a solid 6% in the polls. That way, their voters will be confident they're not wasting their vote and they're not going to panic and shift to the Greens at the last moment.
For the record, I still think Luxon will be Prime Minister after election day. Opportunity will either crash out spectacularly, in which case the right will win because Opportunity has fallen short, or Opportunity will get in, Luxon will call them, and they'll work out a deal.
Because Wong is right: if he has to, he's calling them.
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Opportunity leader Qiulae Wong thinks Christopher Luxon is bluffing when he says he has ruled out working with her party.
National's leader has been consistently saying he wouldn't form a coalition that included Opportunity after the vote in November.
That's despite many polls that have the party in the kingmaker position.
Barry Soper broke down the story with Heather du Plessis-Allan.
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The Wiggles are returning to New Zealand for the first time in two years.
The Australian children's entertainment superstars remain one of the biggest names in family entertainment, dominating streaming charts and winning over new generations of fans.
Among the current line-up is Lachlan Gillespie, better known as Lachy Wiggle, who has become one of the group's most popular performers.
He joined Heather du Plessis-Allan to talk the return to the country.
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Listen to the Heather du Plessis-Allan Drive Full Show Podcast for Friday 9 October.
Get the Heather du Plessis-Allan Drive Full Show Podcast every weekday evening on iHeartRadio, or wherever you get your podcasts.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

It's hard to know whether Pete Hegseth thought it through before he said it, but he said it, didn't he? And now the Pentagon has doubled down on it, and the execution of the Fort Hood shooter will be livestreamed on the internet like some sort of sporting spectacle.
Personally, I find this abhorrent because we're supposed to be a more civilised society in modern liberal democracies than one that wants to tune in and watch somebody die in real time.
But the truth is, that's just a nice thought, isn't it? We're not really above that, are we? Tens of millions of people rewatched Charlie Hebdo's murders within hours and how many people dug up the shooter's video of the mosque attack?
If the Pentagon goes ahead with this, and if Nidal Hasan doesn't use the courts to delay his execution, I bet you now that millions of people will tune in to watch him die on December 3.
And you know I'm right, not just because of recent examples of people wanting to watch other people die but also because this is what humans have done for centuries. We used to watch gladiators battle to the death. We used to watch the burning of witches, public hangings and all that sort of thing and that continued until relatively recently.
But Hegseth is an absolute idiot if he thinks that livestreaming this execution is going to deter others from committing similar crimes, which is his stated aim. This guy, Hasan, considers himself a martyr, doesn't he? He's said as much publicly. So allowing his death to be seen by millions is probably giving him exactly what he wants.
What I personally don't like about this is that watching people die seems to have become normal again because of the internet, and it worries me no end that this is the sort of thing kids can now find when their parents aren't watching what they're browsing.
And nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing says snuff is normalised more than the US government joining in with the livestreaming of it.
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