The Bolton Inc Effect
Join Louis and Bridgette Bolton as they pull back the curtain on what happens when two people dare to build something remarkable - a business, a life, a legacy. Through candid conversations about, relationships, entrepreneurship, video production, and the art of building together, they're redefining what's possible when you combine creativity, strategy, and partnership in a new land.
The Bolton Inc Effect
Eps 12 A Citizens' Solution: David Webb
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This is the first in a series of community podcasts about the people who live in Matua, Tauranga, New Zealand. The idea is to highlight and show case the diverse people and personalities of the community. To meet and explore who they are and what they do.
First up is David Webb shares his vision for transforming New Zealand's democracy through Citizens' Assemblies, a system where randomly selected but demographically representative groups of Kiwis work together to solve complex long-term challenges. We explore how this approach could break through political polarisation to create solutions that last beyond the three-year electoral cycle.
• From London legal tech to Tauranga – David's journey to putting down roots in Matua with his young family
• How the current political system incentivises short-term thinking and wastes billions on abandoned projects
• The superannuation challenge – from 7.5 taxpayers per pensioner in the 1970s to just 2 by 2040
• How Citizens' Assemblies would work – random selection, expert information, and facilitated deliberation
• Irish success story – how a Citizens' Assembly tackled abortion reform in a traditionally Catholic country
• The Opportunities Party's "not left, not right, but forward" approach to breaking political deadlock. https://www.top.org.nz/
• How Citizens' Voice policy could be implemented after the 2026 election
Learn more about the Citizens' Voice campaign and The Opportunities Party at https://www.top.org.nz/
www.boltoninc.co.nz
The Bolton Inc Effect.
Speaker 2:Hey there, I'm Louis and I'm Bridget. Welcome to the Bolton Inc Effect podcast, where we are navigating new horizons.
Speaker 1:Each week, we're pulling back the curtain on what it really takes to build something remarkable A business, a life and a legacy.
Speaker 2:So join us as we share honest conversations about relationship, entrepreneurship, video production and the art of building a life together in a new land.
Speaker 1:Because sometimes the biggest risks lead to the greatest rewards. How can we help? Hi and welcome to another episode of the Bolton Inc Effect. Today we have a really special guest. His name is David Webb. By way of introduction we'll go to david, but I just wanted to say that this is one of the first in our community um podcasts where we've invited everybody in the matua area to come and sit with us in our studio and have a yarn about what they do. So david put his hand up and so over to you, david. Tell me a little bit about who david actually is so I'm in Matua.
Speaker 3:I've been here almost five years. I have three little kids, the first of which is at Matua school. So they're six and almost four and almost two. So this is an area that I'm putting down roots and I want to live here. I didn't live in Tauranga previously. I grew up in Christchurch and in Auckland, spent some time in London where we had our first child, and then we said where do we want to move? And we said we want to go home, to New Zealand. Tauranga has so much that we're interested in, and serendipity can definitely play a role in these sorts of things. So my wife is a civil engineer. She'd get a job wherever we moved.
Speaker 3:To new zealand yeah, but I was working in legal tech in london and I'd been a lawyer, yeah, and been in tech for uh, five or six years at that point and I thought this is something I can only do in london. This is this, is it? This is the pinnacle. I'll move back to new zealand and I'll end up selling kiwi, fruit or agricultural equipment or whatever I have to do to live in tauranga. Yes. And then I found that Lawview, a legal tech company, is based in Tauranga, founded in Tauranga, and I. Just that's the moment where you go. This is meant to be. So moved back to Lawview. Perfect, perfect fit for me.
Speaker 1:So I just want to pick up on two things there. The first thing is a lawyer. One assumes that a lawyer is going to be legal all of his life, but you brought, you mentioned tech, so how of his life? Um?
Speaker 3:but you brought you. You mentioned tech. So how does where did that start and what was that sure? So when I went to university, I just studied things I was interested in, okay. So I carried on chemistry, which was something I liked in high school, and maths. So I had a science degree, double major chemistry, maths and a law degree, and they were just things that were intellectually interesting. A law degree is always useful even if you don't end up in the law. And then you get a scholarship to Russell McVeigh so you go and get that name on your CV and start that.
Speaker 3:But I didn't have this burning desire to say I am a lawyer. That defines me. It's just a path I ended up going down and I realized and I knew this before I started that that was a thing to experience and to get onto my CV, and I've ended up coming back to it in a way with LegalTech. Our customers are all lawyers. So both the job in London and the job here at Lawview, where I've been almost five years, I can speak to them with some authenticity because I have been a lawyer at some point.
Speaker 3:But it was never a burning desire, something that I said. I define myself as a lawyer's, just useful skill set and, like I said you, you do the degree, you end up at the firm and then you say, okay, I've done that, now I want to do something a bit more businessy, create something, yeah. So I ended up working quite a bit with startups and intellectual property strategy and then I ended up in a startup in london which was an AI legal tech company. Yeah, so the skills, the background, are useful, but I find it way more interesting working with small companies and with new technology. And you know, you've got this crossover between that science-y, the business-y and the legal.
Speaker 1:And there's so much variation. Right yeah, because your customers or your clients are coming from different backgrounds, different perspectives, different perspectives. They need different things from you. That's right. So just a very quick aside there is a lot of advice going out and around that our kids should now study to be plumbers. You don't need to be a journalist, you don't need to be a lawyer. Don't bother with accountancy, any of that. What are your thoughts?
Speaker 3:You're talking AI? Yes.
Speaker 1:With the advent of AI Sure.
Speaker 3:Sure, so it's a tool, right?
Speaker 3:Yes, so there still needs to be somebody driving that tool and getting more done with less.
Speaker 3:There's still going to be lawyers, there's still going to be accountants and so on, but they are going to be supercharged, and I do think there is a role at the kind of graduate level where, typically, you do the grunt work and you do the easy repetitive stuff and you draft something up and then the expert comes in and runs with what you've got.
Speaker 3:Ai is very good at that, at doing the first draft of something and having an expert look at it and review it, provided you actually do that and don't have it hallucinate and make up a case that didn't actually happen and you end up in court, as some New York lawyer did at some point. Correct, but yeah, up in court, um, as some new york lawyer did at some point, correct, but yeah, my view is there will still be and that the role of those professionals will change and they will work with that tool like they have with other tools in the past. Yes, there is an argument or a view that, because there's going to be so much change and particularly people can't get these graduate level jobs, you need something that's going to allow people the stability because the job market will be so changed, particularly for for junior level people.
Speaker 1:So there is a whole conversation around perhaps a universal basic income, but that's another topic for another day yes, exactly, we talked a little bit about that on on our previous podcast, um, but as as you say, that's that's a conversation for day. I'm going to change tack completely now and I'd like to talk a little bit about your political career. Sure, so tell me what fundamentally drove you to be part of something that was going that could implement the most amazing change in a small country like New Zealand.
Speaker 3:I think the small country is a good starting point there. Yes, you can have an impact. Yes, you're not lost like you are in London or New York or whatever there are, and in a community like Matua you can know people and meet people and raise discussions that can kind of filter through the community. So I do think people can have an impact.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:I guess it comes from a frustration, in a way. When you look at frustration, yes, and a lot of people's frustration, you look at the current political system and structure and you look at the, the career politicians that sit in that structure, and people get turned off by the tribal, the like everything they did is bad and everything we do is great. And then the new lot comes in and undoes everything the other lot did and that's really not, it's unsettling for a nation actually.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I think this is the main cost right, it's the uncertainty of bouncing back and forth and the waste of saying we start these projects or we start down this track and then we undo all the reforms and a new group comes in. So just in the last year we've had a quarter of a billion dollars uh wasted on the polytech reforms that haven't happened. A quarter of a billion dollars on light rail in auckland that has had no nothing to be built. Uh, over a quarter of a billion again on did I say million before billion for?
Speaker 3:each yeah, quarter of a billion on um three waters yeah, so three waters. There's 300 million dollars just on an it system of record that now can't be used so so these, I mean these statistics are sure shocking.
Speaker 3:Ah fairies yes, of course, the fairies, yeah, yeah. So that's already a billion dollars and I'm not saying that they were the right. You know those projects should have happened. But my point is, if you can have a longer term consensus, a longer term direction in key areas, you don't have the costs of changing your mind and cancelling and you've got the opportunity cost of all the stuff you could have done during that time.
Speaker 1:So, just to be clear, some of those numbers that you've cited. So those were initiatives, let's call them initiatives that were put in by a certain party with a certain preference and they had a long-term vision of where this country could be and the points that could be improved.
Speaker 3:Exactly.
Speaker 1:A new person comes in or a new party with a new preference comes in, and because they potentially needed to sway voters, they had to focus on things that were really hurting the nation. So those initiatives then start to seem less important, but they're actually not.
Speaker 3:That's right. So those are just examples that have dollar amounts that are really clear. But then there's a whole lot of reforms in the health space, for example. There's certainty around infrastructure and which projects can be prioritized. There's certainty around infrastructure and which projects can get prioritised. There's been some really good media around the premium we pay in New Zealand for infrastructure projects because we don't have certainty as to will they build this or will they build that We've had. So it affects people that I know. My wife's a civil engineer. A lot of people in her industry have been made redundant in the last year because a whole lot of projects have been scrapped and they haven't yet got it cranking up for the new projects. These are just illustrations. The broader point for me is there are really big, important areas like how do we adapt to climate change, like how can we deal with housing and affordable housing in New Zealand, how can we have a health care system that is appropriate and works for all, and my favourite one is how can we afford superannuation payments.
Speaker 3:That's a hot topic on everybody's head, yeah so there's a fiscal cliff coming up because our demographics keep changing. So if you go back to when the baby boomers started their professional careers, there were seven and a half taxpayers per pensioner. Now there are three and a half taxpayers per pensioner. Now there are three and a half taxpayers per pensioner and by 2040 there'll be two. So we're getting older, we're living longer, we're having lower birth rates, so we're just shifting that demographic of the society and of course, the taxpayer today is paying for the pension of last generation. So if you're a political party, your incentive is to get re-elected in three years. You're not going to rock the boat and change superannuation because you're just going to lose votes. If one party did come out and say we are going to change superannuation, maybe they get some votes, maybe they lose some votes, but that's one position for one party and everyone else can say that's bad what they're doing. They're taking something away from you Absolutely.
Speaker 1:And then their strength hinges on the criticism that they have there, blowing that up, and that's how they get the votes Exactly.
Speaker 3:So it's all very adversarial, it's very tribal. People are in their echo chambers and they're told everything they do is evil and they're stealing from you and whatever else. So in the superannuation example, the idea could be to bring that decision away from political parties and politicians back to the community to have a group of everyday New Zealanders meet together, understand the different consequences of their decisions, listen to each other and their own lived experiences, be guided by experts financial experts, treasury and so on and to say we need to be able to afford superannuation, but we need a system that's fair. We need to support people who need support. And that group of people, instead of just one party, saying here's our idea, we're going to change the age to 67 instead of 65, that group of people could come up with a series of trade-offs that are fair for everyone. So that group could say, for example, we're going to make KiwiSaver contributions compulsory and we're going to raise the amount that you have to contribute or that your employer has to contribute over time. That's what they do in Australia.
Speaker 1:Yes because in Australia your employer has to contribute. Correct, you can opt out. So as an individual you can take a contributions holiday and say that's right, your employer has to contribute.
Speaker 3:You can opt out. So as an individual, you can take a contributions holiday and say I want to keep my money because it's my money, which I can see the attraction of that argument.
Speaker 1:But if you're younger and you're living in the moment, you're like.
Speaker 3:Well, I need the money now Exactly.
Speaker 3:And, for example, we also have first home withdrawals where you can say I've saved this money up for my retirement, but I'm going to put it in the house, yeah, whatever the point is, this group of people could deal with the trade-offs in the room around ensuring that we are supporting the people who need it, but we can afford to do it. Compulsory contributions and then they might decide that over a period of time we're going to start means testing for the people who really need it get the pension and those people who have enough private savings or have enough income or both don't, and they might also potentially change the age of entitlement for the pension over time. But that package has to be taken together. It's a series of things. That is fair, that in 10 or 20 years everyone knows what's going to happen, that we're still going to support all of the pensioners who need support. But we can afford it as a country, because right now it's 18 17 percent of all government spending is just paying the pension to everyone over 65. It doesn't matter if they need it or not, but you can't politically touch it. So that's just going to get bigger and bigger, that slice of the pie which puts stress on all the other things we need to spend money on. So it's just an example of an area in which the incentives don't line up. If you're a politician, you want to get re-elected, don't rock the boat, and if you do come up with an idea like this, you just open yourself to being attacked by everyone else. If you can take the design package away from politicians, then people can. The politicians just need to implement it and they have a social license because they go. It's not blue or red. This is just what the people decided was a fair way for us to afford superannuation. And you can imagine the same thing with like.
Speaker 3:In France, they had a citizens assembly. This the same process around climate adoption. It passed if you remember the gilet ja the yellow vest protests. After that, one of the outcomes was to have a citizens' assembly. They came up with 150 recommendations about different things that France should do to enable them to transition to zero carbon and so on. But it was the people doing that, it was the community, and the best example where this has worked really well is in Ireland. So they've had seven different citizens' assemblies in the last five years. Ireland, very Catholic country, very relatively conservative, quite divided in a political sense. The politicians didn't want to touch abortion, for example.
Speaker 3:It was illegal and gay marriage illegal, and they had a citizens assembly on abortion, for example. It was illegal and gay marriage illegal, and they had a citizens assembly on abortion, for example. They heard from doctors about safety and so on. They heard from philosophers about what is a life and so on. They heard from religious people who said, look, this is why you can't allow for abortion.
Speaker 3:But the people in the room, who were old and young and urban and rural and a mixture of all Irish people 100 people in the room they came, and young and urban and rural and a mixture of all Irish people a hundred people in the room they came up with us with a way to have a safe, fair abortion regime. Their series of recommendations went out to a referendum for the whole country, yeah, and in the room, 67% of the room said this is the package, we're happy with it. 66.4% of the Irish public voted yes on that referendum. So it shows you that that room was pretty representative of the whole country and that the thinking of the Irish public was more advanced than politicians wanted to admit. So advanced is perhaps the wrong word that the people in the room and the people in the country wanted something to happen. Well, they were galvanised by something and that took them to action. Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 1:Yeah as well. And do you think that we as a society here in New Zealand are ready to be so galvanized into action?
Speaker 3:Yeah, because at the moment everything is polarized.
Speaker 1:Well, it's polarized and it allows for a lot of apathy. Mm-hmm because you don't have. So we were talking about this early on. You're in a bind. You either have this party or you have that party Right.
Speaker 3:You have one chance to signal something and you end up voting for the one you least dislike, right, because those ones are painted as so evil that you're like.
Speaker 1:Well, I have to vote for Painted by them as so evil. So you've got this terrible PR job being done on both parties.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah. So part of the idea here is to take it away from that party thing and because it's demographically representative, you involve everyone. So if we have a 70%, 75% vote and turnout in an election, that's a quarter of people who didn't even vote Right, they're not engaged, they didn't do anything Right. And then you look at local government, it's 40% turnout, right. So there's a whole bunch of people. So citizens' assemblies essentially allows for the people, all people, to be informed, to listen, to engage with each other and to co-design the direction of travel in an area.
Speaker 1:Okay. So if you could, for people who don't necessarily know what your political views are or the differences or how it could represent, paint me a picture of what that would look like. So where do the politicians sit? Where does the prime minister sit? Where do the human coalition?
Speaker 3:parties sit? Yeah, good question. So first thing to say, so I am working with the Opportunities Party on this, which is a political party, but this is not a thing that top says this has to be this way or this has to be that way on, let's say, climate action, whatever, it's a different way to make the decisions. So top doesn't care what the outcome is on any one citizens assembly, it's the way of making decisions that needs to be more community, more collaborative, broader. The way that that layers up is Parliament. The MPs are still sovereign, they're still in control, they still make laws, but they're being informed, correct, dividedly, yes, so the citizens' assembly gets convened. So the Opportunities Party policy is to have a commissioner for citizens' voice. So it's an independent parliamentary commissioner.
Speaker 1:So it's an audited person independent.
Speaker 3:And they have the job of convening these assemblies, either because Parliament says we need to work out what to do in housing, and then they find the people that um and I can talk a little bit about that process at the moment.
Speaker 3:But then that group comes up with a recommendation or a series of recommendations that they feel has balance, that has considered all of the, the people in the room who may not be at the top table in parliament making decisions, or may not be, may not even be represented by anyone in parliament in in the of their demographics, in the sense of their beliefs.
Speaker 3:So that group comes up with, after a process, they listen to each other, they deliberate, they hear each other's stories and then they work together to come up with this set of recommendations, like the Irish abortion example, like the French climate change adaption example, and then those recommendations have to be debated in Parliament. Each one of them has to be debated in Parliament. They can then say this is unworkable. They can say we just don't want to do it, but then you can vote them out. You can say these guys didn't listen to the people. They came up with a really clear way forward and you just moved on with you know you wanted to make your donors happy, and so you moved on with you know, whatever the example, is.
Speaker 1:it's still an agenda plan, exactly.
Speaker 3:So you can. Still, we want to have it so that Parliament is still able to make all the decisions. We're not taking anything away from that, but we want to give them more information, direct from communities, about what a fair, balanced, long-term approach might look like, and we need to still have them accountable. Long-term approach might look like and we need to still have them accountable. So, importantly, the people in the room aren't elected, so their incentives aren't about winning votes or about they're just there to solve the problem.
Speaker 1:They're just there to talk, and so where are these people pulled from?
Speaker 3:Great question. So the parliamentary commissioner would send out, for example, 10,000 random letters, just picked like jury service, to 10, new zealanders all around the country, the entire country. That's right, okay. And then people would receive those letters and they would be invited to be involved. And you can imagine you go to your letterbox, you open it up and you go oh, they'd like to how cool.
Speaker 3:They want me exactly yeah, this is never going to happen, exactly okay. So yeah, and as an individual, you then opt in and you say I am interested in making a decision for New Zealand's future on the health system, on how we're going to.
Speaker 1:Superannuation, whatever the issue is, and are they given some information in that letter about what the issue to discuss is? It's not a whole broad thing.
Speaker 3:We could be discussing all of this. You want to define the issue so that there's something, because these people need to learn and get the expertise as part of this process.
Speaker 1:That's exactly what I asked.
Speaker 3:So people opt in. But then you've got a self-selection issue where certain types of people are more likely to say yes and others are more likely to say no. So then the statisticians get involved and out of the people, let's say a thousand people said I'm interested. Out of the thousand, they pick a hundred. In a way that is 50-50. Men and women, old and young, the right demographic balance, rural and urban, different parts of the country, south Islanders. If you look at the cabinet, the 20 people who basically run the country, the executive there is one person from the South Island at the moment, but that's not how New Zealand is. And if there's more men than women in Parliament, there's more people with higher education in Parliament, which is great because they need to be experts to make decisions. But you're not representing and you use, typically, education level as a proxy for income in the way that you. Anyway, so you basically get this mini New Zealand, these 100 people who they want to be there. They're random, but they've been picked within the random group in a way to ensure we have a mini new zealand, yeah, yeah, representing. So then they do some learning. So some of that could be online, okay, some of that will be in person and in my abortion example, you had you know philosophers, doctors, religious folk if it's around something to do with tax, you would have you know the relevant experts and so on.
Speaker 3:And different communities and people from the public at large can submit to this group of people so they can hear other voices as well. But anyway, they go through this period of learning and understanding about their issue a bit deeper. It is really important because if you have, for example, a referendum, you just go out to everyone and say yes or no. Here's the question. And most people heard something on the radio, didn't think about it, just read the thing went yeah, fine, whatever, some people really care and they do their research and they understand things. But the people in the citizens assembly have the opportunity to get a real deep understanding from different sources.
Speaker 3:And the second half of that, when you need to be in person, is the deliberation.
Speaker 3:So your little tables of maybe eight or ten. There's an expert facilitator there who ensures that the loud voices don't get too much time speaking and that the other voices get their thoughts aired in the room. The tables mix up across different days and those hundred people come up with different recommendations and they kind of work out which ones are priorities, and then they, as a group, work out here's the package that we think is fair and they hear each other's lived experience. If you're in your echo chamber and you're on facebook or you're at work or whatever it is, you talk to people who probably have a similar view to you, similar life experience to you, and you're talking about how evil the other party is and how your tribe is good and, and that's uh, very human for us to organize in that way so this process takes away all the silos, puts people in front of people and, because you've got somebody who is mediating the process throughout, you then come up with an equal and fair view.
Speaker 1:Yep, it's about fairness, and that is then fed up to politician level and then they are the warriors who go and fight for their people's perspective.
Speaker 3:Yes, and ideally, this gives them a social licence to say it's not out, it's not red, it's not blue, it's what the people have decided is fair.
Speaker 3:So if you think about incentives again for a moment, three-year term, yeah, politicians job is to get re-elected in three years. Anything I do today that's going to hurt in the short term but be benefit in 20 years time I don't do because it won't get me elected back again. So I have to do things that are very now and immediate and short term. This room of people who are not worried about re-election, who represent everyone and who are there to solve a problem, are actually going to come up with something that works in 20 years or 50 years and prioritizes our kids and our grandkids and our environment and all these things, because there's tragedy of the commons type issues around. You can make a a decision today about this group of people, but it's got an impact on all these other people in the future. So to me, it's really powerful that we can add something like citizens' assemblies to our democracy as an extra feature. We're not replacing parliament, we're just empowering a way to make better decisions, to make long-term decisions, to make decisions that involve the whole community.
Speaker 1:But also it builds a trust in democracy Absolutely, and democracies around the world are taking a lot of strain at the moment.
Speaker 3:And it's what the polarisation feeds on. It's anti, it's us and them, and it's not working because of them. Blame them for all your things. So building trust is super important as part of this.
Speaker 1:Very much so, and I think the face-to-face element of it is crucial. So, if you look at what's happening in the world at the moment, there's a certain element that you don't know whether you can trust because you don't know how it's been generated Politics in the US, for example have been swayed by PR companies and Facebook campaigns. But that would never have happened if people. Everyone was together, Absolutely if people were sitting in a room facing each other.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I find the US example super illustrative, because the whole campaigns for president, for example, are not about converting someone in the middle to say, yeah, our ideas are better, they don't worry about the middle, it's about turnout. It's about saying can we rile up our people out of hate more than they can rile up their people out of hate? Forget about the middle. They still have 60% 65% turnout. So it's not about getting more people involved and being more inclusive and trying to find a middle ground. It's about how much hate can you spin up, and social media is very good for that kind kind of tactic disappointingly so yeah.
Speaker 3:So the one of the ideas here around trust is if more people have a chance. You know, if we did five or ten of these a year on different topics, that's 500, a thousand however many people who had a chance to be more directly involved in our democracy. They then talk to their communities. They then are more engaged in politics in a positive way about we can make change. So one of the interesting components of our policy is this Citizens Assembly. It can come from Parliament. They say go talk about this issue, but it can come from the people. So if you have 150, signatures, citizens assembly because people find a particular issue relevant.
Speaker 1:Whatever that issue may be, it comes up and you've got okay yeah and so then, yeah, and so then you can up and it's driven down.
Speaker 3:That's right, which is very powerful and one other thing I I ought to have mentioned earlier. So it is paid. So the people, the people are reimbursed for their travel expenses, they're paid for their time to be there.
Speaker 1:Yes, because politicians aren't the only people who should get paid right.
Speaker 3:True, but this is more about saying, if only the rich people who can afford to take time off their work, then they will self-select and turn up in higher numbers. So we need to ensure that business owners that it's fair and equitable for everybody.
Speaker 1:I think that's really important actually.
Speaker 3:Solo mums can afford to fund childcare while they come for a couple of days. That's a really important element, actually.
Speaker 1:So let's end on a really positive note. You frame yourself as Ford rather than partisan, which we've talked about quite a bit. So for an everyday Kiwi who is listening to this, how realistic is it that this? Do we call it a theology? Do we call it a hope? What do we call it? That this gets forwarded and heard by the people, and how realistic is it that this sort of methodology can roll out to the whole country?
Speaker 3:So the Citizens' Assembly concept is part of the Opportunities Party, have a policy called Citizens' Voice, for which I am the spokesperson, and that policy includes that independent parliamentary commissioner, the way that we convene citizens assemblies, the fact that parliament has to then debate the recommendations. So if the Opportunities Party is elected in the next cycle 2026, in the election, then the Opportunities Party is and you mentioned Ford not left, not right, but Ford. It's about the future, it's about our kids, it's about making better decisions. So you'll have noticed in New Zealand politics that there is a coalesce you know left block and a right block that's all stuck together as well, which is feeding on this us versus them thing. Mmp, the system we have, a proportional system, has done very well in Germany, for example, where you vote for the party that makes the most sense on your values, that has policies you agree with. Not everything's going to match, that's normal, but you find your best fit and then it's up to those parties to work out a way to form a government together. In New Zealand we have a very much two-party media narrative when we say who are you going to work with? Who are you not going to work with? Oh, who are you going to work with? Who are you not going to work with? Oh, you're on the left block, you're on the right block. So the Opportunities Party would be different to that in that we would work with anyone who's able to make good policy decisions and long-term policy decisions. The citizens' voice policy would be a key part of that negotiation. To say all the other stuff we think is really important, great, but there needs to be a better way to set long-term policy. There needs to be a way to involve the community more and take it away from politicians.
Speaker 3:So to get the Opportunities Party elected, we'd have to get to 5% of the party vote, so 5% of New Zealanders. So two and a bit. Last time, 2.2 for the Opportunities Party up to five, which is why we're doing this a year and a half out from the election. We've had a whole lot of volunteers who've gone since the last election. This is nuts. I need to be involved in this. I need to spread the word, because a lot of people haven't heard about the Opportunities Party. That's right. Yes, so top volunteers have been door-knocking and delivering flyers about the Citizens' Voice campaign Across the nation. Yes, particularly in Wellington and in the west coast of the South Island there's a very big group, and in Invercargill, but also I'm here in Tauranga we have a lot of people in Auckland.
Speaker 3:Anyway, this time is different in that the Opportunities Party is working now, 16 months out from an election, rather than waiting until right before the election and saying, hey, vote for us. And the other thing that's been interesting is in between cycles we obviously have polling numbers. Yes, the Opportunities Party is ones, twos, threes, couple of fours in the polls, four and a half twice. So going up and down and having a base of around 2% of people who are still saying that's the best party for me. In previous elections it would go zero after the election for the whole cycle and then get up to two just before that, but you don't get up to five.
Speaker 3:So I think the two things that are well, three things. One is we have a whole lot of volunteers spreading the message around citizens voice. We have a base of 2% to build off to get towards five. Amazing. And I think the political climate has got that much more left and right. Us and them political pendulum going back and forth and people are frustrated with that. So the best thing people can do is sign up to support the opportunities party. Look up toporgnz, toporgnz that's right.
Speaker 1:We'll put that in the show notes.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and there's a page specifically on the Citizens Voice campaign and there's some videos on social media of me talking and so on. Perfect, and yeah, it's really. When you do door knock and you meet people, they go actually. Yeah, there should be a better way to make some decisions around climate around housing and so on.
Speaker 1:I think there are so many summaries that we could pull from this discussion, but the biggest biggest thing for me is that your point about politicians need to do what's right for this three-year term If they want to get elected. They're not going to stoke any fires that will stop them being re-elected. So that is very clearly driven by what will keep them in power, what will keep them paid. That's how the system, how the system works right 100. But what does that do for my 14 year old? What does?
Speaker 1:that do for your two and four and six. Two and six year old, two, four and six, four and six year old. What does that do for them? Well, nothing. I mean you. We want to build a new zealand that's strong for everybody. You don't want your kids going to austral better opportunities. I mean I know for you that's far off, for us it's not that far off. I want my child to stay here where she can be part of the growth of this incredible nation.
Speaker 3:Yeah, kiwi, like through and through, lived in London five years, but this is where I want to live with my family, right, absolutely, and that's the idea of the….
Speaker 1:It's clean and it's got an amazing heritage and and and traditions and and it's.
Speaker 3:It's unfortunate we now have a left and a right and then everyone gets turned off from politics. So that's tops, not left, not right, but forward. Yeah, and the way we can achieve that is through getting top to five percent, which means the citizens voice could be a reality in the next term and we can make some better decisions from community, from the people, rather than just this party or that party it's. Can we co-design what the direction of travel for the next 20 years in housing and infrastructure and health, and so do you want to be a part of the solution?
Speaker 1:yeah or do you want to resent the politician that's in there because he was one of the two right, one of the worst, or what sort of one of the best out of the two?
Speaker 3:I have a lot of hope you've got to weigh those two up in your yeah, you know, and that's the current narrative, right, yeah, so I have a lot of hope in that we uh, we have a better way to make some decisions. This is a. This is a new idea that has worked well overseas.
Speaker 1:So we've got the case studies. We know that it can work.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I think New Zealanders are ready to say actually just having us or them and bouncing back and forth and wasting money and effort and spending time worrying about three-year cycles is not a way to deliver on the 20-year things, on the 50-year things.
Speaker 1:Because we're talking about some big things, talking about superannuation talking about how the way this country adapts to climate change and what we do to support the natural environment. It's about what we do with AI, it's what we do with education, it's what we do with so many things.
Speaker 3:Education and health shouldn't be partisan things. We shouldn't get a new government coming in and changing a lot of things Because as partisan things, we shouldn't get a new government coming in and changing a lot of things and because, as a parent, you need some security.
Speaker 3:And the one last anecdote. So the the thing that one of the things that is interesting for me is the politicians some politicians in blue and red, yeah, say, well, we need to be more bipartisan. So if you take housing, for example, under the last labor government there was an agreement between National and Labour, the two big centrist parties to say let's work together, we will agree that there should be medium density housing standards across the whole country, three storey houses, and they agreed to that. And then National comes in this time and then undoes that and says it doesn't apply to Auckland, for example. And then they're now doing their fast track legislation to change the way that the resource management stuff works and they say we should be bipartisan. This, we're doing this thing. And we send a letter to you and we want you to tell us if you and like give us some feedback. Doing your thing and asking the other guys to agree with you is not bipartisanship. That's. That's doing your thing and then hoping that you look good because that's PR with dictatorship.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:So that's where the co-design idea comes in. Instead of saying we flip to them, who are incentivized to divide, we design it all together as a community and say how are we going to deal with housing, for example? Rather than change, change, change. The important thing is when we're giving it to the community, just to community, and say how are we going to deal with housing, for example?
Speaker 1:rather than yeah, change, change, change the important thing is when we're giving it to the community. Just to reiterate we're giving the community the information so the experts are there, so there are multiple views and they can also inquire down whatever path they want.
Speaker 3:The room can say we want to learn more about this example, we want to learn more from this expert, or we, we want to get new experts.
Speaker 1:So there's stuff when you talk about urban development.
Speaker 3:There is stuff that I don't know, but if I had the chance, in the room with the right people and then you could weigh up the trade-offs. So the whole thing comes down to trade-offs. If you can get all the people in the room the many in New Zealand they can deal with all the trade-offs between different groups and come up with a package of things. If you don't have all the people in the room, then you have one party, you get one vote and you say you know this policy just says this is our idea and it's take it or leave it, rather than everyone being together to design the best solution for the group. It's kind of dealing with all those trade-offs.
Speaker 1:And historically we know that forcing people into something just breeds resentment.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and that's how you get this polarisation. You say, oh, that didn't work, so it must be their fault, so now we'll do the other thing yeah, because you only have two options is the media narrative, anyway. So we're a year and a bit out from the election and we've been pushing this Citizens Voice campaign. There's lots of materials online. The Opportunities Party is about to appoint a leader. One of the interesting things has been no leader since the last election, and the media won't touch the Opportunities Party because they go well, you don't have a person that I can point to, so we need a figurehead.
Speaker 3:Right. So, even though I'm the spokesperson for Citizens Voice, they didn't want to do any interviews with me, any media, just basically said you guys don't have a leader. That's interesting, yeah. So now they've. Actually, I think it's relatively clever. They went out with a Sikh advert to say you want to be a leader of a political party? I love that, and we've already had 50 different applications.
Speaker 1:So what are the requirements you need to be a nice person soon.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's quite funny. You should look it up. We'll put the link in there, um, but are you still looking for applicants? Yeah, yeah, that's, it's open at the moment, um, but I think that's quite funny because normally career politicians sort of come through the party. Yes, of course, and we do have a path.
Speaker 3:We have had for the last year, um, a group meeting once a month on a sunday, online, uh, called the candidates college. So people like me who want to be involved, meeting up, sharing experiences with each other, ideas, getting skilled up on dealing with media and so on, and it is likely that the leader will come from the group of people in the citizen, in the in the candidates college. But we also have had some really good applicants immediately from external people who you would have gone, oh, fantastic, yeah, so that's the seek advert, got a little bit of media, which is good, fantastic. So once there's a leader in place, I think people will then engage a bit more, the media in particular, and we can with the door knocking as well. People will just build up this awareness of top over time, okay, and people might start to go. Actually, that citizens voice thing would be a really good idea, anyway. So I thing would be a really good idea, yeah, anyway. So I'm here to. If anyone's interested, uh, sign up at um toporgnz to learn more.
Speaker 1:Uh, and I'm always interested if you want to send me a message or talk about anything or have a meeting, yeah, and, as I mentioned, we'll put. We'll put all of that in the show notes. Perfect, it's been very much so good having you here, david. Thank you very much.
Speaker 3:Yeah, thanks and uh, good luck with the podcast and good luck with the podcast and good luck on top.
Speaker 2:That's a wrap for today on the Bolton Inc Effect podcast. The world doesn't need more noise. It needs bold voices, real stories and people willing to show up. So if something here sparked an idea, made you rethink the rules or reminded you that you're not alone on this journey, don't keep it to yourself. Share it, talk about it. Better yet, take action, because, at the end of the day, it's not about waiting for permission. It's about showing up, doing the work and making something that matters. Thanks for being here Now. Go build, create and keep pushing forward. We'll see you next time can I ask you?
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