The News Agents: Why do we have to choose between new homes and clean water?

This is a global player original podcast Mr. Speaker he talks about trust he

talks about action just today this government is taking action to reform

defective EU laws to unlock over a hundred thousand homes boosting our

economy supporting jobs and ensuring that we can realise the aspirations of

homeowners now he tried he talks about trust he tried in this house to talk the

talk on house building but at the first sign of a cheap political hit what did he

do he's caved in mr. Speaker rather than make the right long-term decisions for

the country he's taken the easy way out it is typical of the principles free

conviction free type of leadership that he offers flip-flopping from being a

builder to a blocker mr. Speaker the British public can't trust a word he

this is the new battleground that Rishi Sunak the Prime Minister was setting up

today in Prime Minister's questions do you want to see a party that gets on with

things that builds houses or a party that blocks things like Kirstama and today

we're asking whether to flip it round we are really being made to choose between

more houses and clean water that's the way Labour is framing the argument is

that fair welcome to the news agents the news agents it's Emily and it's Lewis

and later on we are going to be returning to something that was on the

show yesterday which created I think it's fair to say a bit of a war of words

between the Labour Party and the Lib Dems which is exactly how nasty is the

by-election in mid-bedfeature becoming and exactly what has been said about

whom in terms of the local candidates and what does it all tell us this

acrimony about whether actually in the end it probably be the Tories who come

through the middle yeah today we get the response of the Lib Dems but we're

going to start with houses V sewage because that is the way that this whole

thing is being framed do you want fresh houses fresh houses do you want new

houses or fresh water I think Britain screwed it's quite the choice houses or

do you want oh you can have a clear to flush the toilet do you want a clean

river or do you want a new house or the rest of it this is pretty much the way

Labour is framing this argument they're saying oh my god the Conservatives have

been in power for 13 years they finally decide to get on and build some houses

and the only way they can do that is by changing the environment regulations

what they call the nutrient neutral regulations that allow where you can or

can't build and to explain there is quite a lot that lands in this legislation

because the yes I'm going to say it again the nutrient neutral stuff comes

from the EU and Russia's next government Michael Gove in fact who was

levy up minister was basically putting this forward as a way of saying scrap

those rules scrap regulations and you watch we'll be able to get loads and

loads of new houses built how neutral are you about nutrients in your

experience I'm very very pro-nutrients are you I would say a partisan in a

it's been be we have this of course we always very important I'm a bit of a

detail yeah this is a thing that has this idea around nutrient neutrality rules

which is on one level a bit arcade I mean it's been part of politics really for

the last couple of weeks a couple of weeks ago Michael Gove the levelling up

secretary said that he was abandoning EU related rules as Emily was saying with

regards to nutrient neutrality now nutrient neutrality in relation to

housebuilding basically means that when developers build new homes in protected

areas they are required to provide mitigations to ensure that no new

additional nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus make it into Britain's

waterways so like rivers and lakes where they can cause don't think this is

something we've said on a podcast before algal blooms that deprive plants and

animals of light and oxygen IE they pollute the riverways and the waterways

and so on and of course the government says that this will unlock about a

hundred thousand hundred and thirty five thousand homes or so that are

currently being bogged down in the planning system that developers cannot

get off the ground as it were because of these rules and everyone thought this

was going to go forward Lisa Nandi when she was until what last week the

shadow levelling up secretary had indicated that she would support it but

today the new levelling up secretary shadow levelling up secretary Angela

Rayner and the new shadow environment secretary Steve Reid have written a

piece in the Times saying that Labour peers Labour members of the House of

Lords are going to oppose these changes in the Lords as they come up for a vote

tonight and because of quite obscure parliamentary processes which need not

detain us in this particular circumstance that means that this will be dead if

they vote against it because unlike usual because of these particular

circumstances the Commons will not be able to send it back in this process that

we call parliamentary ping pong basically it will be dead on arrival and

these changes won't happen because we think the Lib Dems will also vote against

it and that will be the end and you might cynically say no one would be

happier with that outcome than conservative MPs who maybe for lots of

reasons don't particularly want to see massive rounds of house building in as

it were their backyard in their constituents maybe their constituents

don't want to see a huge number of new houses being built right where they

are living and yet the government has to be on the front foot for this it has to

get to grips with house building because that is a sign of something that's in

absolute stasis in our country and we know we've talked about it on the news

agents before just how many of the younger generation are struggling even

to rent because housing is so tight let alone to be able to afford a place of

their own I think it's worth saying and this I suppose goes to a wider question

which is regulation good or bad there is a sort of default which is you know when

we talk about red tape regulation the conservatives say cut red tape and

Labour say oh lose all the workers protection or whatever and of course

there are gray areas to this whole thing and Robert Colville I'm going to cite

here writes quite a detailed blog on this today he's a columnist and he does

go into depth with what this should we say one more time the nutrient

neutrality means and whether you know are we actually talking about Aaron

Brockovich are we talking about Flint Michigan and we talk about rules that

actually stop whole villages and wells being poisoned or are we just talking

about preserving a specific species of frog you know and if you actually gave

it to the electorate like that this frog might disappear from this river over

time for these houses what would people be deciding then I mean he says

natural England wrote to 74 councils saying they had to halt house building

because there was a risk that it would add pollution pausing what home builders

Federation estimates the construction of 145,000 homes and I guess it depends on

the definition of pollution like I guess it depends what they are saying would

happen because you know the government saying we're going to get rid of the

nutrient neutrality and I think this is now becoming a real hot button issue

because we've had sewage in the seats because we've had people literally

getting stomach ache after going for a day out at the beach it might be that

these rules actually do free up things and get rid of slightly arcane laws but

I don't think the public the electorate is prepared to believe that right now I

think that is what is really interesting about this and sort of takes it in

terms of the realm of politics and the issue around house building is why

Labour have made this change so although in one sense Colville and other people

like gov who are arguing that look nutrients that are created by house

building are a relatively small part of the problem in terms of Britain's

waterways you know it's estimated that perhaps only a third of the nutrients

that end up in rivers and so on are from house building much of it comes from

agriculture as opposed to that that can all be true but the thing is you cannot

divorce this story from the set of wider stories that we've had for like what a

year or so now around sewage and around Britain's polluted rivers and so on

this has become I mean you talk to Labour people about this this has become

one of those things that in focus groups people just bring up completely

involuntarily because it's so visual as well like Britain is full of shit like

is a really easy headline for the opposition to sell yeah I can't go and

swim because oh what what's that kind of brownish sludge that's coming out of

that pipe my kids can't go and swim in the sea you know just have the summer it

has become something that has both epitomized and come to epitomize kind

of where this popular feeling is at with regards to Britain isn't working on

something as basic as that and is also something which is so shareable like

social media memes articles being shared about this and it has become and

you look at the polling as well has become one of the biggest issues that

people have come to care about now this just wasn't here this wasn't sort of

part of the landscape of British politics or seascape of British politics

you know a year 18 months ago and so it is something that Labour think okay they

can take a little bit of a hit on the idea of us you know blocking houses and

so on they'll say we'll build a mouse where but it is an indicator I think you

mean right it is an indicator though of where Labour thinks the politics is

around this particularly in these more semi-rural seats that they're actually

doing slightly better in me beds for example that's like doing better in

than they would have ever imagined a few years ago so it is an indicator of where

they think the strength you know what we talked yesterday on the news agents USA

to political commentator David from who talked about the difference between

rationality and sentiment and he said you know if you look at the US the economy

is doing really actually pretty well it's recovering pretty well you know they've

got all the right data they've got the jobs numbers in the right place they've

got the inflation numbers you know much more under control and yet people think

Biden is failing failing at the job failing as president and he said because

people have started to put sentiment before the rational data and I think it's

a really interesting one here for Labour that there is a world in which you

know what a grown-up government would say we're going to work out our house

building numbers and working out alongside our environmental strategy like

they shouldn't be we shouldn't really be in an either or we should be able to go

yes you know we'll do that with that and I guess Labour does have a point where

other conservatives really turning around now and saying we're going to do

this we're going to build houses now and we're going to do it by getting rid of

that and Labour can sort of go you've had 13 years to do this like please you've

had 13 years but somewhere there is probably a missing chink where you can

look at some of those nutrient laws and go there must be a way there must be a

way where you can actually end up building the houses and not pollute our

rivers if we're prepared to think of how this is done and I wonder where the

Labour is slightly leaning into the fact that the toys have set up what looks

like this impossible choice well exactly and we should also I mean if you being a

bit more cynical about it you would also say well for a start in terms of EU law

I mean you remember the assembly during the Brexit years remember what was the

mantra the mantra whenever there was concern about well yeah but well

whenever any MP during the sort of May Brexit deal and all that stuff when

there was concern particularly from the opposition benches of saying well this

is just going to lead to dilution of environmental regulation of law and the

argument including from people like Gove I think particularly from Gove who was

the environment secretary at the time he's saying why on earth would we want to

dilute environmental law we've got the highest environmental standards and we

can make it stronger and we can make it stronger things can go up as well as down

quite so and here we are now in a different position you can also say

that look this is a hundred thousand homes sure fine interesting timing of

doing this as well in the sense that what are some of the companies who are

struggling at the moment seen it in their share prices and so on house building

companies home builders because interest rates rising increasingly suppressed

demand in terms of for new builds and so on quite so and so suddenly out of no

there is this change which potentially could help house builders on starts that

they've already begun on now I'm not saying that's a bad thing but we should

also bear in mind this will be a drop in the ocean we're talking about a hundred

thousand houses here I mean I've been chairing the National Housing Federation

conference this week Monday Tuesday I mean that is just social housing but

their estimate which is widely accepted is we need 90,000 social homes not just

homes social homes a council homes an affordable rent every year for the next

10 years to even begin to make a dent on the enormous social housing waiting

lists that there are so that's just social homes so a hundred thousand with

regards to this I mean okay yeah might be nice to have but it isn't going to

make a systemic change it's you know the problem we have it's year one and okay

maybe it would help other projects in future but let's be honest what we

really need and I think I suspect this is what label position label will end up

on is this is a small change in the grand scheme of things or it would be what

you really need is systemic planning reform which is something that of course

soon next government retreated from under pressure from his MPs you need to

get away from a situation where frankly you know really quite modest objections

from communities Nimbus let's be honest can stop development pretty easily we've

got one of the most regulated tightly regulated strictest set of planning

laws and planning apparatus anywhere in Europe and you combine that with the

fact that we've got a house-building sector which is dominated by a very few

select number of companies so you have a situation where the land is very tightly

controlled and the power to build is very tightly concentrated this is the

situation you end up in with a housing crisis the only problem I have with that

phrase NIMBY which basically means and it's pretty insulting it means you're

small-minded and you only think about yourself and you don't think about the

wider good is that actually one person's NIMBY is another person's well let's

actually protect the environment and the rivers and stop it being polluted I

think they are two sides of the same coin that actually all the people now

saying I don't want to see a housing development that crashes through

environmental protection rivers whatever sulfates phosphates or the rest of it

that is NIMBYism it's just a different kind of NIMBYism because we recognize

that yeah sometimes the rules and the regulations do help and they do have a

place there can be yeah you're right and obviously the planning process has to

take account of that on the other hand there is I think a slightly more cynical

element of NIMBYism or I think it can be an appropriate term which is to say

there is a type of person who will absolutely accept that we need house

building but it can never be anywhere near there and there does have to be a

compromise I mean look only 10% of the land in this country is developed 15% of

Scotland is devoted to Grousemore shooting you know about 4% to 5% of

England is devoted to Grousemore shooting for goodness sake you know that's a

huge massive of course so we need to look after them but you know the fact of

the matter is this is not a country that as is sometimes presented just

basically one big load of tarmac and concrete from one end to the other the

truth is there is a lot of and there I say this is something a lot of people

never seem to ever want to accept there is a lot of really unsatisfactory

countryside in this country we've got a slight tendency sometimes of just looking

at the field and going oh isn't that nice no your average field is just as

industrialized as an industrial estate because guess what England never used to

look like that England was one big forest Bombay wood we tore it all down

over the last 2,000 years and we've just got we've just got a load of you know

quite boring fields you know what we can afford to lose some of them and

actually build houses for younger people and at the same time not end up in a

situation where we have sewage and sludge and environmental destruction

everywhere we look coming up off the break we'll be talking dirty briefs but

a different kind we'll be looking at the election campaigning in mid-beds and

whether it's getting ugly

this is the news agents

now yesterday on the news agents we inadvertently started a bit of a row and

that was between Labour and the Lib Dems over the mid-bedfeature by-election

that is Nadine Doris seat that they will be fighting on October the 19th and

Peter Karl put out a fairly strong charge against the Lib Dem behavior in this

seat and the Lib Dems responded quite angrily saying he was out of order but

today we've seen an email this has come from Lib Dems to Lib Dem members and it's

about the candidate themselves and the candidate for Labour is Alasdair Strathen

and he has been involved in Greenpeace protests he is a Wolfham Forest councillor

and the Lib Dem candidate is called Emma Holland Lindsay and she is local to

mid-beds and in this email it says a Labour candidate who is vulnerable to

significant attacks from a ruthless conservative party and then they go on

to say what the headlines from the mail will be about the Labour candidate and

they have pictures from the paper and headlines from the mail and from the

Express and from the Sun so this is a reminder of what Peter Karl said yesterday

you asked about voters in mid-bevichure and I said that they are the most

informed I've ever come across we have done almost no conservative attack in

that election so far we have done zero Lib Dem attack because that is a

community that says we want to know the best of political parties going forward

because we have experienced the worst and what I'm seeing from the Lib Dems is

deeply personal it is aimed at the person our candidate not at the policies or

politics of the person or the party and I see hints and I sense a style of politics

by the Lib Dems in mid-bevichure which is reminiscent of the campaign they ran

against Peter's actual in the 1980s and I have no doubt because they are so

desperate to make an impact in mid-bevichure that if they were if our

candidate was gay they'd be doing a family values campaign that's the level

you're saying they're homophobic no I'm saying that they would they would go

nowhere moral high ground does not count in the way the Lib Dems are acting in

that constituency well this is the right to reply of the Lib Dems Christine Jardine

the Equalities Shadow Minister is here were you surprised by what you heard

yesterday Christine it's disappointing I've no idea what you're talking about

and he said I heard the interview earlier and he himself when you asked him couldn't tell you

what the allegations were they're just it's very disappointing because in this election campaign

what we should be doing is attacking the policies of this conservative government

and speaking to the electorate about why we can provide better representation I don't understand

why Peter is attacking us the reason that they're attacking you is because you're attacking them

and because you're both going well you're both going for this constituency in a very

hard in a in a serious way in a way that you haven't with the others and the force that could

potentially win out from that is the conservatives no what what what I see and what I hear from

mid-bedfordshire is that it's a seat where we can appeal and we are appealing and we're hearing

on the doorstep it's two people who are dissatisfied with this conservative government let's get to

the rub of it because we went back to Peter Carr we said where's the evidence yeah he sent us and

showed us an email that your party sent out to Lib Dem members and these are just some of the bits

I'm going to read here Labour have already shown in Uxbridge they cannot withstand and

rebut those full frontal attacks here is a headline from the mail and you show the headline from the

mail here's the accompanying photo from the Greenpeace website and you show a picture of the

Labour candidate at a Greenpeace protest dressed on that day as a zombie here is the headline from

the express Labour's zombie Greenpeace candidate here is the sun now I'm just wondering at what

point the Lib Dems became the party that quoted right-wing newspaper headlines

as part of their manifesto attack in a campaign I mean that's an internal you said yourself that's

an internal email that went out to Lib Dem members so that they've pushed this forward no no no no

it went out to Lib Dem members to say look we think we have a chance in mid-bedfordshire

why do you care why do you care how the mail sees the candidate why do you care how the

Sun sees the candidate what that was doing was it was an incentive to local members to say look

we can do it if it's criticising anyone it's criticising the Labour leadership for the lack

of a strategic awareness of what will appeal in terms of policies and approach to you don't care

about that the electorate in mid-bedfordshire look it has every party cares about that when

they're appealing to their own activists to go out they say look we can win this because

and that's what we're saying that's not um you know something for the doorsteps

on mid-bedfordshire that's not that's not anything that's that is purely to say to our

members you know come on we've got to go out there and make an effort it had a slight touch

of what I'm going to call that that mean girls gossip where you go up to somebody and you say

I obviously think you look great but I'm just saying there are other people out there who

think you look terrible I'm really sorry that photo of you went everywhere you must have felt

awful it feels like you're trying to do the work of the male of the Sun of the express for them

no no no what we are trying to do and everything we do in mid-bedfordshire is listen to what the

people in mid-bedfordshire are telling us about why they are dissatisfied with this conservative

government it's the same reasons we heard in the doorsteps in tibetan and honiton

southern tibetan frim no shropshire it's a rural constituency where they are dissatisfied with

in this constituency in particular problems with gps and that's what's important to people

what's really disappointing about this for me is that one of the things I get from people on the

doors in my constituency in edinburgh west and all over the country is that people are fed up

with politicians taking a pop at each other playing the man rather than the bottle to use a

football analogy not talking about the issues that's what they say you're doing to them no what we are

doing in mid-bedfordshire is talking about the issues issues which our candidate Emma Holland

lindsay understands perfectly well you say who is listening to them play the man not the ball I mean

this is the email and this is the picture of the labour candidate dressed as a zombie but that you

included in the email I mean if that's not playing the man not the ball then what is

that's not criticizing him it's criticizing it's not criticizing the labour leadership

it also says an email that's all it also says an email if you're trying to overturn the biggest

majority ever in a constituency with traditional values selecting this particular candidate makes

your job pretty much impossible that's a criticism of the labour leadership for not

what does traditional values mean well what they're talking about there is that you have a

rural seat which is concerned about rural issues which is concerned about gps which is concerned

about all of these things and that the labour party that they have not understood that why would this

particular candidate mr stratham not not not understand those things it's not about him

it's not about him if you're selecting this particular candidate make sure your job pretty

much impossible so what do you mean by that that's what we're saying well I didn't write the email but

what I took from it was that we felt that we had picked an ideal candidate for mid-bedfordshire

someone who understands I would hope you would well we think that as well yeah but we felt that

we had picked a better candidate than they had because we had picked someone who as I said is a

councillor in bedfordshire who understands the constituency and that is all that it was about

now to try and make the by-election about an internal email I think is to miss the point

this by-election is about what the people in that constituency want from their representatives

and they've been let down in mid-bedfordshire badly I think by their previous conservative MP

who I don't think had the sort of presence in the constituency the sort of you know

awareness of the constituency that the people deserve and that we as liberal Democrats like

to think that we provide and I think that that's what will be important here. Christian isn't that

the point that you know you've got people in the beds who haven't had any representation

for the last few years absolutely thinking they're about to get grown-up politics and instead of

there being something that suggests you know one party or another is going to get in they see you

too fighting it out slugging it out we're not we're criticising the conservative party what

we are saying but I'm just saying you're both standing in a in a seat that arguably would have

been a really easy one for one or other of you to lose and which you you might actually

cede to the conservatives again this is not a seat in which Labour has a great record if you

look at Tamworth for example they came second yeah but if you look yeah but I've never won if you

look at Tamworth for example which is going to be on the same day I understand it is a seat that

they won in 97 they also won Selby in 97 when they won the general election they didn't win

mid-bedfordshire and the reason they didn't win mid-bedfordshire is because it's a rural constituency

it's not the sort of constituency where Labour traditionally win now the people in mid-bedfordshire

are people who are in tune with our beliefs who are in tune with our policies and will vote for us

because they are fed up with the conservative party that's why we're putting our resources there

doesn't all go particularly well for the general election doesn't it can't

aren't sort these things out between you well it's not up to us it's not up to us to sort it out

between us it's up to the electorate they have to have the choice in who they want and there are

seats you understand an elector in if you were in mid-bedfordshire and you you just thought you

were wanted a non-conservative to win that seat you can understand you'd be pretty confused right

now as to who to vote for i think if you're a voter in mid-bedfordshire or for that matter

any other part of the country you look at the government and you think what's the best chance

i have of changing the government of beating the conservatives and you look at the party

who you think can do that and who is most in tune with your values and what you want to see

and the representation you want and i think in mid-bedfordshire that's us i accept that in other

parts of the country that will be the Labour Party thanks so much for coming in thanks for your welcome

you know Millie that really reminds me of something which we've kind of forgotten in

in recent years because obviously they've been on the opposition benches together and they've

often worked together in parliamentary terms particularly the brexit period but it's how

much Labour and the Lib Dems used to really hate each other and still in so many ways kind of do

i mean in the Blair years for example i mean you know particularly a local level the dislike

was absolutely visceral and actually it's something that Labour and the conservatives

kind of have in common which is particularly a local level they usually regard each other as

opponents but if the Lib Dems are nearby they really dislike them because they often consider them

i mean particularly in the in the Blair period the argument against them was always they used to run

to the left of Labour in Labour areas and they'd run to the right of the conservatives

in Tory areas and that kind of changed under the coalition because they had to sort of

really believe in something but it is a little glimmer perhaps into not only what some of the

politics around particular seats where both are competitive will look like in the general election

but also potentially beyond that in the next parliament as well yeah i mean i have to say i

was quite struck by the ferocity of Peter Karl's words yesterday i mean he really and he didn't

back down at all afterwards and the Lib Dems got straight back and said right we want a right

reply we don't think anything we've done is wrong but what you have to entertain is the possibility

just going back to the numbers now which is that the people of mid-beds the votes in mid-beds are

thinking oh great we finally get to elect a new leader we finally get to you know get rid of Nadine

Doris who hasn't actually shown up not a party political thing but just you know having the

representation in their own constituency and right now there is every chance that if the

vote is split between two very vocal warring second and third parties that the conservatives come

through the middle again and i wonder if that will sort of you know yeah you keep coming back to

well this is democracy and democracy is is wonderful and messy and all those things and

that kind of happens but will they start if that happens just to look a little bit more carefully

how they're waging these battles yeah i mean again another absurdity of our electoral system

the voters have to kind of make this calculation but it is what we have the person who of course

will be most happy and i think that this is a perfectly credible outcome is of course soon

out because we now know as christine was saying we now know there are going to be two by elections

on october the 19th one in mid-beds the other one in tamworth after pinches resignation now i think

that the label will really be the hot favourites for tamworth as christine was saying they used to

have the seat despite the fact the Tory majority is very large if soon out were to lose both these

rock solid conservative seats that would be really really really bad and to lose both to the same

party and to lose both the same party or either you know this would represent i think you know

it's not inconceivable that i mean there are these murmurs of this of letters going in

about his leadership i don't think it's inconceivable that we could be in a state where

those rumors start to i don't think would happen immediately would start to accelerate

if though they can squeeze out a win in mid-beds again the entire narrative changes and

it will all become as we saw with uxbridge the story will instantly switch not to oh my god

they've lost tamworth that's really bad and they probably almost lost mid-beds it will be oh look

at the lib dems and labour they can't get their act together under any circumstances and it'll

change the narrative and allow sued sunak even though tamworth would be really bad to squeak through

we are a month away from that though in fact we are going to be in mid-beds talking to people

on their doorsteps are we yes i'm just announcing that on the show okay right when we go next week

and we're going to find out what actually is happening beneath the waves well we've got to go

now that's it that's like when that's why when blair went on frost feet to the bar that's like

when blair went on frost and just announced that they were going to increase an hs spending by

i do know if i was doing this i'd just do that the whole time yeah just say it costs us billions

you've just cost us about 60 quid at least at least we'll be back after this

this is the news agents

mr speaker probation prison schools china yet again inaction man

fails to heat the water and then blames everyone else for the consequence well we'd like to make

a correction here on the news agents because rishi sunak spokesperson has just come back

to kiss dameron that one and said rishi sunak is quotation marks a man of action so there you go

that's a right of reply clarified again that's sorted that conundrum then hasn't it that's that

it is funny isn't it that the the role that superheroes have in prime minister's questions

i'm sure there's a dissertation on not just captain hindsight but now inaction you're gonna

write that you're gonna announce that you're gonna write that just like you just announced that we're

going to but it means it hurt yeah it means to get your spokesperson to say you know if somebody said

to me if you call me oh you mate less where are your mates i wouldn't actually say uh do you get

that on twitter no i don't you know what i get on twitter sometimes i'm sorry i'm quoting someone

again my mother's not going to be like me swearing here but occasionally i get a really good one

which is oh it's lewis good for fuck all that's quite a good one yeah i get that but you're not

going to get your spokesman person to call up and go actually lewis is good for very many things

i would i would definitely do that i would get tom our editor to put out a press release say no we

don't recognize that picture at all not he's good at least quite a few things yeah he's good at three

things a good three things and then they name them yeah just like it would have my mate's names

underneath my name so you can call these people to check well again anyway so clearly that sort of

hurt yeah and it goes back look it was a pretty torture prime minister's questions in the sense

that was particularly good for either was it well no but at the same time it was again sunak trying

to find scrambling around trying to find any sort of narrative you know breaking glass in case of

emergency brings out the corbin stuff started to suggest that there were more prison escapies under

labor in like you know the late 90s and early 2000s and there are now a different world really cares

remembers anything about that and again he's just i suspect starman now he'll return to

an action man they've obviously focus groups it they're going to use it again and again and it

just speaks to that sort of sense of malaise that there is right listeners to this i just sort of

like dropping their jaws at the idea that money is being spent in focus groups what do you think

action man yeah can i just run a few of these past you make less what do you think of that we're

no action man in action man or captain foresight which which do you like the best

and this is somebody's profession somebody's profession is to go and find the perfect phrase

that they can shout out at prime minister's questions another news by the way we're going to

suva in fiji on an ob yeah now i've announced it now so we're off to do that we're going to go and

look at the coral reefs yeah we can be up with john while we're there he's probably busy with the

australian prime minister actually i think he's having lunch with he'll be back one day one day

i actually thought neither of you were coming back excuse me i mean you had a you had a summons

jean like you were sort of english earl in the 19th century for the whole month three month tour of

the levant yeah and what's wrong with that absolutely nothing thank you very much see you in suva

bye bye the news agents with emily matress john sople and luis goodall

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Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.