Summary
Labour leader Chris Hipkins faces internal scrutiny after a video surfaces of MP Karen Leonie campaigning alongside gang members. This incident follows Hipkins' strong criticism of Green and Te Pāti Māori members for similar actions, leading him to declare that these parties would not hold justice or police portfolios in any future Labour-led government.
During a recent debate, Te Pāti Māori's Oreni Kaipara highlighted Leonie's involvement with gang members, prompting Leonie to deny campaigning at a gang pad. She clarified that while she has family connections to gang members, she attended a family function where campaigning occurred. However, her presence in a Labour jacket while distributing party flyers raises questions about the nature of her participation, with critics arguing that it contradicts her claims of merely attending a family gathering.
The controversy underscores the challenges Labour faces as it navigates its stance on gang affiliations while attempting to maintain a strong political image. Leonie's situation complicates Hipkins' tough rhetoric against gang associations, as the party grapples with perceptions of its members' actions in the community.
Show Notes
The gangs, as we know, create wholesale damage and destruction in our society through their drug trafficking. Now it looks like they're causing wholesale damage to Labour. After roundly criticising members of the Greens and Te Pati Māori for visiting a mongrel mob gang pad and posing for photos, putting it on your social media, Labour leader Chris Hipkins ruled out his coalition partners holding the justice or police portfolios in any government he was in charge of. He was talking tough. Now it transpires one of his own MPs was campaigning with gang members, with a video circulating of Kerrin Leoni in a Labour jacket handing out Labour Party flyers to mobsters. Te Pati Māori's Orinii Kaipara, who appeared with Leoni in a Whakata Māori debate this week, threw the Tamaki Makaurau opponent under the bus during the debate by saying Leoni had recently been campaigning with gang members too. She did it too, miss. It wasn't just me. Kaipara said Leoni had since deleted a social media post about it after the kaka hit the fan over her posing with gang members. Leoni during the debate said, I have never been to a gang pad campaigning. I've got whanau who are gang members. I've never been campaigning at a gang pad. And then sought to clarify the situation in a Facebook post last night. "To be clear, I have not attended a gang pad at all during this campaign. I said at the debate, I have close whanau who are gang members. In early October, I attended a whanau function where some of those present were whanau gang members." If you've seen the video, it's a funny old whanau function. I mean, who am I to say how other people should hold their barbecues? But Leoni is clearly campaigning for Labour at the function. If she hadn't posted the video to social media, I'd say perhaps her case is different. You can't pick your relatives. For many families, you can have one brother who's a detective and another who's a senior gang member, and they all have to be able to still function as a family. I'd have sympathy if someone had taken a video or photo of Leoni in a T-shirt, shorts and jandals, having a BBQ with her brother at a whanau function. But she's in a Labour Party jacket, handing out Labour Party flyers, telling people to vote Labour and then posting it to social media. Apparently it's since been deleted. What kind of family function is that? It doesn't sound like a real thigh slapper to me. Not a guitar insight. Can it really be a family function if there's no singing and dancing around the BBQ? You're in your Labour Party jacket. You're handing out the flyers, you're saying vote Labour to get rid of this government. Is that a family function or is that campaigning just like a Orinii Kaipara and Hūhana Lyndon were doing? Sounds like campaigning to me. Yeah, nah. I'm sorry. I mean, Chris Hipkinson can talk tough, and I do have sympathy when you've got people who, I mean, you can't pick your relatives as my poor cousins know. I remember saying to a departed aunt, at a whanau function. She had very poor eyesight. I said, "it's me, Kerre." And she said, "yes, I know exactly who you are." In clipped tones. I said that little catch up with my aunt. She's never been a big fan and that's okay. You can't pick your relatives, but to say you're not campaigning, it sounded, come on, Kerrin Leoni, come clean. You might have a brother or whanau who are in the gangs and that's fine. But to say that you were just catching up at a family function, I don't buy it. Not in the Labour Party jacket, not handing out the flyers, not saying get rid of this government. That is not a family catch up, that is campaigning. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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There's an old saying, "there's money in muck". And that still holds true – waste recovery contributed $3.3 billion to the economy last year. But another old saying, "safe as houses", doesn't ring quite so true. There were just over 6,500 property transactions across New Zealand in September, according to the latest CoreLogic report. And that's around 14% fewer than the same month last year. It's the ninth consecutive year on year decline. New Zealand house values are falling overall, down 1.3% nationally over the year to September 2026, again according to the CoreLogic data. But it should be noted that it's a two-speed market – the South Island's going gangbusters and without that region holding up, the national average would be a lot worse. In Auckland, average property values are down about 3.2% annually. In Wellington, it's a dumpster fire. They're down 28% from the 2021 peak, which is pretty tough. Property used to be seen as a safe investment, people saw it as a way to make money. That's only relatively recently though, probably in the last 25 years. Before that, it was a place to live. It was a home. It was a roof over your head. It wasn't seen as a great big ATM that you could dip into and have enormous fun spending up once your equity got to a certain point or the mortgage was paid off. Unless you are a true professional and that's your job, you know houses, you know what to do with them, you can spot good bones, you can make a lot of a rundown property using your own skill and vision and abilities. I don't think anyone sees property as a safe investment now, do they? And even once you'd paid off your mortgage on the property, in the olden days, you had so much money. You had so much money left over, you had so much money in the property, you could upsize, you could downsize, you could buy a bach, you could use the house as an ATM again. But I'm not sure that that still stands true either. Even if you've paid off your mortgage, if you want to sell, you've got to find a buyer, and in a market like this, it's pretty tricky. If you want to downsize, if you want to go into a retirement village, if you want to move to be closer to grandchildren, it can be pretty tricky even with everything signed off. And that's kind of the contract we enter into, that you pay off your mortgage and then you have choices, then you have options. I'm not entirely sure those choices and options are there now. And I don't know how long it will be before the good old days return, if they ever do. I'd love to hear from those of you who have either bought a rental property, do you believe the good old days will return? Is that what you're doing it for, to make money from it, or do you just want a steady little 3% return on your investment and you're good at fixing things up, you don't need to employ a property manager, you're good. If you're a young person who's bought into their first home, and thank heavens for you because you are the ones holding up the market, would you or do you see your property as a home or as an investment? Something that's going to grow in value over time that you can then turn to your advantage. If you've paid off the mortgage, do you want to downsize or relocate and are you stuck? Are you looking to buy another property like a bach or a rental, or are you going to put your money into managed funds? That being said, the housing market is not what it was, we still have $1.66 trillion in housing assets, and it accounts for about 50% of household assets. That is a lot of money. Houses still cost a lot, we still need a place to live, you still want a place to raise the family. But are we back to the days of seeing it as a home and not an investment, or do you still believe that there's gold in the foundations of where you're living right now? See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
There's a text here, "talk about a beat up by ZB on politicians and threats. If you raise the possibility and keep flagging potential problems, you may get what you predict. So stupid to highlight this on your news at this time," says Paul. I don't think that's true. I think there are very, very, very few people worldwide, even with all the problems that abound, that would act in the way that this 43 year old Australian has done. Very few. But what people need to understand is that violent words, violent rhetoric can breed violent actions, and it may help temper the kind of madness that you see online. And the attack on the Australian independent MP Helen Haines is absolutely horrific, and it will make the news. It is newsworthy. The 43 year old man has been charged with a number of serious offences in relation to the attack, which was brutal and premeditated. Haines was unloading her car outside her electoral office when the man did a U turn and ran into her a number of times with his Land Cruiser, crushing her between the two vehicles. It wasn't a one off, it wasn't a moment of madness, it was several moments of madness. She has lost one leg, doctors are fighting to save the other, and in a cruel irony, it appears the man was a family friend. His father and stepmother have been friends with Haines for more than 20 years. She certainly sounds like one of the good guys, one of the very people you want to attract to Parliament. She had a life before entering Parliament, she was a nurse, a mother, an advocate for the rural community, and then once elected she led an anti corruption campaign within Parliament. It was a senseless, cruel attack on a good woman. And our MPs must have had a shiver go down their spines because many of them have been on the receiving end of personal attacks and death threats. My own MP, Dan Bidois, had to bring in the police when he received death threats that were deemed credible. Dan is a hardworking MP, a dad of two little ones, he's always at the local community events, does an amazing job for his constituents, but for whatever reason, probably because he had the temerity to stand for National, he received death threats. Speaker of the House Gerry Brownlee says they are well aware of the threats to MPs and even to candidates, and they take it very seriously. "Massive increase in threats to members of Parliament, particularly to women members of Parliament. And I think it's also the nature of those threats has changed from, you know, it might have been a bit of personal abuse about how someone presented themselves or other such, right down to now increasingly threats of physical violence as well. We've had to respond, we've set up a unit called the Security Intelligence Research Advisory Service, SIRAS, and they've got a team that will go out and be with MPs, they've deployed quite considerably during this period. But it's also candidates out there, and I think the work we've been able to do with the New Zealand Police, and I've got to take my hat off to them, I think they've done a great job in contacting all candidates and giving them personal numbers to be able to call should they feel threatened. Because, you know, you just don't know, you can't blanket everybody all the time, but you certainly need to have something that makes it very clear that if people are out of line, they're going to get prosecuted or at least deterred." And they do need to be prosecuted and deterred because that angry, angry rhetoric, that violent rhetoric can lead to physical assaults. I mean, look at James Shaw, he's one of the more reasonable, hardworking, lovely MPs, whatever you think of his politics, assaulted by a man in the street and needed hospital attention when he was in Parliament. And a lot of people throw off at the fact that Jacinda Ardern lives offshore with her family, well, in large part that's because of the truly horrific threats that were made not just against her, but her daughter, her lit