Election 2023: Mike Hosking - Kieran McAnulty thinks Labour will win, I have $1000 for charity betting he’s wrong

Opinion

OPINION

I will take Kieran McAnulty’s bet.

An ex professional tipster, he is suggesting Labour are at $1.87 to win the election.

I have $1000 for the charity of the winner’s choice (mine is the guide dogs) because Kieran is dreaming.

I am reasonable at this betting game.

Winston Peters owes me $100 from the last election over the fact I bet him he wouldn’t make 5 per cent.

When I raised it with him recently he said I didn’t need the money, which is kind of not the point, but we did agree to go double or quits on the 5 per cent this time round (I bet again he wouldn’t get there.)

I also had a bet with Stuart Nash, for a case of wine, that the Government wouldn’t reach the 90 per cent vaccination rate.

It got controversial because the Government you might remember changed the criteria around lockdowns and split the country into regions, so it went from being a national 90 per cent (which it never reached) to a regional 90 per cent which some did and some didn’t.

That’s before you get to the even more controversial aspect where the real numbers apparently will never been known because Health NZ took the rates from the population that had been in contact with their local health service, not the entire population ... almost certainly meaning it didn’t get to 90 per cent.

So with a record of three from three, I am ready to collect McAnulty’s money, should he accept my offer.

I think in all honesty we know why he has said what he has said - namely, what else can he say?

He, along with his fellow travellers, is staring down the barrel of an election night nightmare, but even in the darkest of campaigning times you don’t admit defeat, even though it is imminent.

I have been amused of late at the growing number of commentators who are now openly asking the question as to whether the Kiri Allan debacle has sealed their fate.

Regular readers of this column will remember that, as far as I am concerned, their fate got sealed many, many, many months ago.

The final nails in the coffin are perhaps Kiri Allan, almost certainly the caucus leak over the Allan meeting, if not the leak around the GST policy. Caucuses that leak are in a death spiral.

Kieran McAnulty is willing to bet Labour will win the election. Photo / Audrey Young

But as Steven Joyce pointed out in the Herald over the weekend, as bad as the Allan scandal is, of much more material importance to us is the state of the country, and the state of the country is risible.

People are leaving in their droves, notably younger ones.

We found out last week the students who were given free credits as a result of being locked down don’t pass their university courses at anywhere the rate those who achieved their credits do ... thus they were led on a path to nowhere.

We are one of the few countries which has suffered a recession as a result of Covid, and quite possibly the only Western one to enter a double-dip recession if the bank forecasts are right.

Dare we enter the world of crime, where this week we find out there are nine gang members for every 10 sworn police officers, in many areas the gang members now outnumber the police, all the while there are 22 per cent fewer people in prison despite the crime rate exploding.

Those are just the facts. What can’t be quantified, but most definitely felt, is the malaise that has swept the country, the abject disillusionment of so many who have seen the place they loved, shafted, in six short years.

It’s that anger, disappointment and sense of overdue revenge that will see Labour swept from power.

One of the many advantages of having been around a while is I have seen the tide go out on governments and I know what it looks and feels like.

I saw it in 1990 after David Lange, I saw it in 2008 with Helen Clark.

The difference this time is it’s worse.

Kieran and his $1.87? The easiest money I’ll make all year. My odds would be there can’t even be a book, because Labour are unbackable.

Mike Hosking hosts Newstalk ZB’s breakfast programme and is New Zealand’s number one talk host.