# Peters' Dying Light, Data Debate and Disappearing Commissioners

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/cross-party-lines-7562106/peters-dying-light-data-debate-and-disappearing-commissioners
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/cross-party-lines-7562106/peters-dying-light-data-debate-and-disappearing-commissioners.md
Podcast: [Cross Party Lines](https://stenobird.com/podcast/cross-party-lines-7562106)
Published: 2026-08-03T16:30:00+00:00
Episode link: https://crosspartylines.substack.com/p/peters-dying-light-data-debate-and
Audio file: https://api.substack.com/feed/podcast/209601992/10470928984e55a5a385b52f79095c7f.mp3
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JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/cross-party-lines-7562106/episodes/peters-dying-light-data-debate-and-disappearing-commissioners
Duration seconds: 2823

## Resource

Hosted by Phil Goff and Chris Finlayson, Cross Party Lines returns with an episode that opens on Winston Peters telling a Green MP to go back to his own country and calling China’s leaders liars — and asks why the Prime Minister is applying a different standard to racism than he did to sexism. Proudly brought to you by Frank Risk Management, the 100% kiwi-owned insurance brokerage. Find out more at frankrisk.co.nz. In this episode: * Peters goes off the rails — again, and possibly for the last time — Winston Peters told Lawrence Xu-Nan, a Green MP who has lived in New Zealand for most of his life, to go back to his own country. He then labelled China’s leadership — New Zealand’s biggest trading partner — a bunch of liars, prompting a formal rebuke from the Chinese Embassy that neither Phil nor Chris can recall happening before in their combined decades in politics. Chris reaches for Dylan Thomas — do not go gentle into that good night — and reads the whole episode as a career in its dying convulsions: disproportionate, extreme and politically self-destructive. * Economies of Doubt and Data of Hope — $3.5 billion, 280 megawatts and a debate nobody is having — DataGrid, a Singapore-based company, is planning a data centre near Invercargill that would consume more than twice the power of all 62 existing data centres in New Zealand combined. Both Phil and Chris land cautiously in favour — New Zealand would effectively be exporting sustainable energy in the form of data, worth potentially $50-70 billion in economic benefits according to the Boston Consulting Group — but both are frustrated that neither the government nor the company is making the public case. * Too many commissioners? — The episode closes on a genuine disagreement: Children’s Commissioner Claire Achmed has…

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## Transcript

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