# Hospital Crisis, Dirty Money and Trumps Midterm Nightmare

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/cross-party-lines-7562106/hospital-crisis-dirty-money-and-trumps-midterm-nightmare
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/cross-party-lines-7562106/hospital-crisis-dirty-money-and-trumps-midterm-nightmare.md
Podcast: [Cross Party Lines](https://stenobird.com/podcast/cross-party-lines-7562106)
Published: 2026-08-24T16:33:00+00:00
Episode link: https://crosspartylines.substack.com/p/hospital-crisis-dirty-money-and-trumps
Audio file: https://api.substack.com/feed/podcast/212529643/9be197991b2fa493f14bbcb7dbab7ea3.mp3
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JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/cross-party-lines-7562106/episodes/hospital-crisis-dirty-money-and-trumps-midterm-nightmare
Duration seconds: 3089

## Resource

Hosted by Phil Goff and Chris Finlayson , Cross Party Lines returns to its usual programming for an episode that is almost entirely about the health of democracy itself: in New Zealand’s hospitals, in its political donation system, in its local body elections and in the United States with 74 days to go. Thanks to Frank Risk Management, the 100% Kiwi owned insurance brokerage. Get more info at frankrisk.co.nz. In this episode: * Health, housing and the election’s tier-one issues — Phil opens with a forensic and at times furious account of New Zealand’s hospital emergency departments: patients waiting up to fifty hours for a bed, wards operating at two to three hundred percent capacity, people in acute pain sitting in bright lights unable to sleep. Chris adds property rights as his personal tier-one issue — invoking the OECD Secretary General Matthias Cormann’s argument that the rule of law is the single most important ingredient in a wealthy, functioning economy, and connecting it to the greyhound racing shutdown, the MACA amendment and sixty Treaty settlements he signed. * Cleaning up New Zealand politics — donations, lobbying, ballot theft and postal voting — Phil walks through a list of reforms both men broadly support: a Parliamentary Budget Office (Labour has now officially adopted it as policy, prompting an alleluia from Chris); a lobbyists’ register; a strengthened Official Information Act with real enforcement; and caps on political donations. The $245,000 donated by thoroughbred breeder Peter Feller to New Zealand First — whose leader is the Minister of Racing — and the half-million from Graham Hart to the National Party are held up as symptoms of a system that allows money to buy access in ways that undermine equality. * Trump’s five outrages and the American…

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## Transcript

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