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Ryan Bridge: The Coalition needs to tighten its agenda · Early Edition with Ryan Bridge

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: This coalition needs to tighten its agenda as well as
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: it's belt. And the last week we've had a smagas
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: board of small, seemingly minor stories hitting their headlines. You know,
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: helmets or no helmets for cyclists. For goodness sakes, which
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: name comes first on the cover of your passport? A
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: ban and then a reversal on a ban on marshmallows
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: and hot chocolates from the coffee machine at hospitals. Not
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: a single one of these stories is significant on their
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: own in and of themselves, but the kind of stories
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: that people remember because they either make no sense or
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  Speaker 1: they appear to be a colossal waste of time. Most
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: working families can't afford to even use their passports right
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: now a Hawaiian holiday. No, the only ones actually dusting
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: off their passports right now are probably moving across to
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: the ditch across the Tasman. Is this the stuff that
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: your average punter wanting to feed their kids actually cares about?
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: The answers of course, No. The Clark government got bogged
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: down by a bunch of these silly little things. I
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: think size of shower heads, size of light bulbs. Remember
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: that fiasco. Instead of asking officials, where the little Johnny
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: should be allowed to ride a bike without a helmet,
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: something that no decent parent would allow. Anyway, why not
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: keep your eyes on the big stuff. No shortage of
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: that around. Yesterday Fitch warned our Doba plus credit rating
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: could be at risk if we get slack on fiscal discipline.
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: If we see a further correction in the housing market,
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: which isn't completely off the cards, we see employments spike
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: up again, also not out of the woods yet. Come on,
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: we have big earfish to fry. It's not that this
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: coalition is not focused on these things, of course, certainly
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: more focused on them than the last one. It's just
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: that there's a bit too much noise around on little
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: things that don't actually matter to the swinging middle that
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: national needs if they want to finish the big jobs
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: that they've set out to achieve. Distraction is the enemy
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: of progress. Passports and helmets are distractions, and lately and
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: a few too many of them. For more from early
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: edition with Ryan Bridge. Listen live to News Talks it
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: be from five am weekdays, or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.