This week on the Raw Politics podcast: The hikoi’s over, now for a half year of claim and counterclaim, dissent and debate. Plus: NZ speaks out of both sides of its mouth at COP29.

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon did not meet the Treaty Principles Bill hikoi crowd, sees “nothing” of merit in the Act-proposed law but the Parliament his Government dominates will spend six months debating a “divisive” measure.

That’s because he has accepted there needs to be “aeration” of people’s views on the Treaty, and his party acceded to Act’s pressure to include the Bill in the coalition agreement. So, having made this legislative bed, Luxon will now have to lie in it.

Newsroom political editor Laura Walters and co-editor Tim Murphy look at how Luxon has played his cards so far, and how he might withstand an ongoing storm of criticism from Māori and others.

For Act’s David Seymour, a possible nominee for most effective politician of the year before this latest play, the hearings on his Bill will finish just as he receives his coalition-deal-bauble of becoming Deputy Prime Minister until 2026.

While he’s successfully grabbed the political ground this year, and will no doubt use the new position to continue pushing his policies and views, is there a risk that Act will repeat the sins of its own past in straying away from economic reform, personal freedoms, minimising the state and ending waste, and be diverted by race and stunts?

For our second topic, Laura talks to regular Raw Politics panelist Marc Daalder who is reporting for Newsroom at the COP29 climate summit in Baku, Azerbaijan. He describes the pressures and expectations facing the 60,000 attendees in seeking answers on carbon finance and agreements to hold the world to the Paris targets.

And we hear how the New Zealand climate minister Simon Watts has performed, with messages for an external audience that might not fly so easily to the domestic crowd.

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This week's recommendations:

Tim: A story from Stuff’s Tony Wall who was with the Mongrel Mob in Ōpōtiki on the eve of the ban on gang patches and consorting. A rare example of hearing direct from the gangsters on such a policy.

Laura: Also crime-related, the NZ Herald’s Jared Savage profiled the new police commissioner Richard Chambers and revealed where he’d come from and his path to the top.

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