Newshub Nation: Political panel highly critical of National and Labour's policy announcements before general election

Newshub Nation's political panel slammed the major parties' lack of vision during the show's Saturday panel. 

Forest & Bird CEO Nicola Toki said that the lack of substantial policy thus far released by Labour and National meant that the New Zealand public was completely unengaged in this year's general election. 

"I'm a political nerd and I could not be less interested," she said. 

She said that Kiwis are "searching for leadership".

"People are afraid about the environment, they're worried about the economy."

PR consultant Matthew Hooton highlighted that New Zealand's cash deficit is going to be over $20 billion this year, something not seen since the Muldoon era. 

He said: "There is a complete lack of leadership on every issue facing this country."

"There is just bland bureaucratic talk from the two big parties and a desire to leave everything as it is if you're Labour or a race to return to 2017 if you're National."

Hooton pointed out that this is not what the public wants, as evidenced by the fact that the combined Labour-National vote is the lowest it's been since the early days of MMP. 

"Our political class is letting this country down, terribly," he said. 

Newshub Climate Correspondent Isobel Ewing said that "the Greens and ACT are the only ones putting policy out there that that's meaningful".

"The Nats and Labour are offering nothing."

National has been promoting the idea that it has been releasing plenty of policy so far this campaign, but the panel said that the policy is often ill-thought-out. 

"A major party issuing a document of three bullet points that they wrote the night before may enable them to say they've announced a policy but serious people don't regard that sort of thing as policy," Hooton said.

All panel members then went on to criticise and laugh at National's recent announcement that they would be introducing a Minister of Hunting and Fishing if elected.

Watch the full video for more. 

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