Kerre Woodham Mornings Podcast

Auckland's Acting Mayor says the Microsoft outage should be a wake-up call for New Zealand. 

Organisations including Auckland Council and Retail NZ began reporting problems with the company’s software including cloud-based services like Outlook and Copilot more than five hours ago. 

Microsoft says its attempts to fix the outage have not worked as expected and it's now testing a new fix. 

Desley Simpson told Kerre Woodham digital outages are the type of disaster event we should prepare for as a country. 

She says Norway recently had a preparedness campaign specifically on what to do if mobile or internet services went down. 

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Hundreds of hectares of vineyards are being pulled out across the country due to an oversupply of wine. 

The New Zealand Winegrowers Association's told RNZ an estimated two thousand hectares of grapes have been uprooted. 

A combination of several years of large harvests and falling alcohol consumption has led to a drop in demand. 

Fruitfed Supplies Technical Horticultural Representative Blair McLean told Kerre Woodham we're also lacking diversity. 

He says they have 32-thousand hectares of grapes in Marlborough, but 90% are sauvignon blanc. 

McLean told Woodham growers are turning to kiwifruit and apples, or even farming livestock instead. 

He says a lot have put sheep in their vineyards, and some are making a lot more money than they do off grapes. 

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Outgoing National MP Vanessa Weenink and sacked National MP Chris Penk say National's gone way too far to the right. They're losing voters because they've gone too hard. Voters who deserted National and ticked the box for Act say I don't think so. National's too soft and centrist, needs to find a backbone. That's why we went away from two ticks blue and we gave our vote to Act.

That's certainly what a number of people have been telling me. Voters on the left have said thanks but no thanks to Labour and gone with the Greens or Opportunity. Both main parties in New Zealand appear to have lost their identities and in their struggle to capture the voters in the middle, generally considered to be around 20 to 30% of the electorate, they have lost their authentic selves, as a wellness influencer might say. They don't know who they are anymore. They might say one thing and then do another, which leaves voters feeling confused.

If anybody thinks that Labour is the party for the working class, it really isn't anymore. There'll be some people who voted Labour just because they always have and because it's slightly more for the working class than National, but not that much more. Labour's kind of lost its way, National's lost its way.

They're not alone. Major legacy parties around the world are struggling. The Tony Blair Institute did some research and found that the popularity of traditional centre left and centre right parties across major democratic countries have plummeted from 73% in 2000 to just 51% today. Researchers looked at the views of samples of 2,000 voters that were polled in the UK, US, Australia, Germany, France, and Canada and found they were remarkably similar.

They concluded that voters were increasingly turning away from centre left and centre right parties, according to this piece in the Guardian, not for ideological reasons, but because confidence in their competence and integrity have plummeted.

Former politician Richard Prebble argues that both Chrises need to go before the parties can begin attracting their faithful back to the fold.

Both Christophers have run very bad campaigns, but it's worse than that. You've got to listen to the country, and the country has been telling them for three years that they don't want either of them to be Prime Minister. At some point you have to listen.

That was Richard Prebble talking to Mike Hosking this morning on the Mike Hosking Breakfast. He's not wrong.  The polls have had National and Labour down for quite some time. Everybody's been underwhelmed by the performance of both National and Labour. But is it as simple as putting lipstick on a pig? Because a dysfunctional party that doesn't know its why or for whom it exists is still a dysfunctional party that doesn't know its why, even with a shiny new leader.

Would simply changing out the leader bring you back to the party you used to vote for? What would it take for either National or Labour to earn your vote?

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As we wait for bated breath for the results of special votes to finally determine the result of the election, I think there is a big question that is just sitting there waiting to be asked and waiting to be answered: what's wrong with MMP? And is there any way we can fix it? 

With all the noise about supposed electoral manipulation that Chris Hipkins is going on about, the focus has been around the changing of the rules around enrolment. But I would say the real unease in the country is just how big our parliament has become because of the concept of the overhang, and that's there because of the way MMP is structured. Parliamentary Services is currently planning on fitting all these extra people into the house. They have to shoehorn some desks into the debating chamber. They have to find more offices. They have to find more staff. The whole project is going to cost us, the taxpayer, millions, and it will not be completed until April. And none of that is anything that we want. 

Especially when you remember just how many calls we've had to talkback over the years calling for a smaller parliament which is more proportionate to the size of our country. And this is the thing, MMP is about providing a proportionate government, but has it succeeded this time? Will it succeed this time? I don't think it will. You can see the problems. How can we fix it?  

The two votes enabling vote splitting, is that a good idea? The threshold enabling cups of tea between parties, which again adds more MPs. Clearly, the fault lies with the system that is MMP and the way it's structured right now. A lot of talk has been going on about that vote splitting campaign funded by Nick Mowbray, fronted by Don Brash, but there's also Nick's dad, Harry. He's a businessman, and he says his controversial vote splitting campaign wasn't really about this election at all. In fact, he says, this is all in a Newsroom article by Jonathan Milne, he says the bigger goal for him is replacing New Zealand's MMP system. 

Alongside former National minister Maurice Williamson, also a man very good at crunching the numbers as we found out on Saturday night, the two are promoting a model called Positive MMP. They reckon there should only be 100 electorate MPs, 20 list seats, and just one single vote cast in the electorate. Does that appeal to you?  

In fact, here's the thing that Harry Mowbray says. Despite campaigning against tactical voting, Mowbray says he'd actually be happy to keep MMP, even though he says the system's flawed, because he believes it will continue to deliver right leaning governments. And that's obvious as well. Just look at the map. Look at all the blue. The blue is in the rural areas, and the red is in the urban areas. In fact, the blue is in the wealthier areas of urban places, the red is in the poor. Just look how many seats are there, and each one of those are winnable by the blue side, that gives them the overhang. It seems obvious to me. 

The question lies, is there any problem with MMP? And if there is, how would you fix it? I'm sure you've got ideas. If you don't, I will run you through options later in the hour, but as I say, the question remains, is MMP broken and if so, how would you fix it? 

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Well, isn't the taxpayer funded radio station the absolute epitome of all that is wrong with the public service? I'm not talking about their journos or producers. There are some excellent journos down the road trying to do some excellent work in extremely trying times. But boy, have they been let down by their masters, their paymasters in particular. 

Radio New Zealand's posted an unexpected and unbudgeted deficit of almost $12 million and is preparing to cut almost 60 roles instead of the 25 to 30 previously signalled. They're also expected to make another loss, another deficit of $7.8 million this year before they hope to return a balanced annual financial result in 2027/28. 

The board announced an independent review into its shock $11.8 million deficit after it said financial reporting during the year did not accurately reflect the true position of the books. In other words, the books bore no relation to the financial reality. Apparently, there is no evidence of criminality or fraud, which I think in a way is even worse. How on earth can you womble your way into a $12 million hole? How can you possibly be spending a million dollars more a month than you're taking in and not know? 

Again, everything that's wrong with the public service. Their CFO, Hilary Parker, made an abrupt exit from the building last month and that's when it was all uncovered. There'll be more on that down the track. RNZ board chair Brent Impey sounded brassed off and incredulous when he did the media rounds yesterday and this morning. 

IMPEY: Some of what I've witnessed here is inexplicable. I just cannot understand some of the issues around accounting treatment, the difference between personnel expenses being explained one way and being inconsistent with the payroll. It's, I've never seen anything like it before. 

HOSKING: Is it an accounting cock up, basically? 

IMPEY: It's two things. One is an accounting cock up, which can be fixed. They're one offs, they're not consistent. The second thing is the personnel costs, which are ongoing. 

That was Brent Impey talking to Mike Hosking this morning. How on earth does this happen? It's bad enough to have one numpty in charge of the books, but to have multiple numpties who don't know enough to ask questions or to recognise that they're spending more than they're getting. Is that a system failure? I am extremely concerned that there might be systems failures in other government departments. 

Remember the previous Auditor General John Ryan saying about the Covid spend up that some government department schemes might be good value for money, but there simply wasn't enough paperwork or information about the budgeting and the outcomes to determine that. There was no paper trail, so he couldn't offer an opinion as to whether it had been public money well spent or not. Look at the immigration disaster where people lie, where people cover up, where people keep wombling until they hope it gets better. Magically, somehow, they wake up and this disaster of their creation has magically disappeared. It's the equivalent of a three-year-old closing their eyes and saying, "You can't see me." Yeah, eventually you can. 

I don't set the alarm for 6am to go into work, earn my keep, pay my taxes for the fiscal philistines to squander it. There are some people who clearly should not be in charge of budgets of millions of dollars. I'd put myself at the top of the list. After that would be most members of the previous Labour government and right now RNZ's national's CFO. 

Do we have the resources, and do we need to do a check of other government departments? The only reason I'm perhaps being alarmist is that $12 million is a lot to lose in a year without even knowing you've lost it. And if it was just a one off, if you hadn't had the previous Auditor General going, "I don't know, the systems and the paperwork are so bad I cannot determine whether this was good value for taxpayer dollar." 

The RNZ result made me think of that. Then you've got immigration where you've got layers upon layers upon layers of numpties who either don't want to bring the minister bad news or don't even know that there is bad news until it's all too late. All of these departments are funded by you and me. You and me doing what we're doing now. It's our taxes. 

And the thing, one of the things that used to really ruck me up with the previous government was that there was no accountability for the money. It was just, "Oh well, bugger it, you know. Let's just, let's just get more taxpayer dollars. Doesn't matter. We don't have to earn it. We'll just get more." And you've had the bosses, the outgoing bosses at RNZ complaining about cuts to their budget. They shouldn't have even been in charge of the morning tea kitty when they didn't know where it was going. How dare they ask for more money when they don't even know how much they've got or haven't got. 

Those of you with understanding of running a business will be able to answer this question more than I, because is it a systems failure? Is it particular to one government department or is it a warning sign that perhaps we need to look at other government departments and make sure that their systems and accounting doesn't have any holes that suddenly appear when it's tens of millions of dollars too late? If you can pick it up in time, that's fine. If you can see that there's something wrong in the way you report or the way you account or the way you put one figure into one box and another into another. 

And I also just wonder if when I look at some really successful companies in New Zealand, hugely successful, they've started with one person or one husband and wife team. And then they've grown and grown and grown. And they've tended to stick with the people that they started off in business with, same accountants, same bookkeepers who grew into accountants. They stick with family. And is that because you can trust one another? You can march in and have a look at the books without having to go to HR and explain yourself or I don't know. And are there some businesses that don't want to grow? You could, but you choose not to because you want to maintain oversight over your business. Once you start having to trust that people are doing their job, then you really are dependent on them knowing what they're doing. 

So I'd be really interested to hear from those of you who run businesses. Is there any possible way to explain how you could not know that you were $12 million out of whack? Should there be at least a cursory look at the books in other government departments to make sure it's not systemic failure across government? And what do you do in your business? Once you get really big, how do you keep the oversight that's got you into the successful position you're in now? 

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And here we are, right back where we started on Friday. I hope you had a wonderful weekend and you got along and voted. We went as a family on Saturday and there was a sausage sizzle at the local school and it was all very straightforward. Showed my voter card, my smart voter card on my phone and in we went and all went off and did our own thing really.

I think there was one clear winner on Saturday night and that would be the pollsters. They got it bang to rights all the way through. I took some screenshots of polls leading into election night just to see and they were pretty much bang to rights. People are fed up with the two main parties, Opportunity was always going to get in and too close to call between the right and left blocks.

The second winner for me on the night and I don't want to blow smoke up his designer jeans, but I have to say Mike and Barry and Maurice and the team who put together the election night coverage did a fantastic job. And I guess that's what it comes down to is that ultimately election coverage is a radio job. There's nothing to see until the leaders' speeches and that's much, much later in the night. In the absence of anything to see, if you're a television channel, you manufacture things to see, like panels. And then everybody sits there and has their reckons and fills in time until the votes start coming in and the seats start coming in thick and fast.

And really, I think the telly coverage is all a bit forced and manufactured. Radio with pictures, we watched it on YouTube. The ads were annoying, yes, but then you could always sign up to be a YouTube premium watcher, but the ads were a little bit annoying, but I much preferred that because if there's one thing Mike Hosking knows how to do, it's radio. And that's what election coverage should be, on the radio really. And I think no discredit to the presenters of the different television shows, they were just doing what they do best, standing there and trying to present a show, but when there's nothing to see, what is the point of television?

Anyway, however you saw it or heard it or what have you, the results are in and none of us is really any the wiser as Chris Hipkins put it so beautifully.
Tonight New Zealand has spoken. It may take us a little bit longer to figure out exactly what it is that you've said.

Brilliantly put. Winston Peters also sounded a note of caution. He's not his first rodeo, is it? Hey?
A lot of people are getting carried away right here, right now about what the outcome means. It'd be very wise if they held their counsel for a bit longer.

Well, quite. Qiulae Wong, Opportunity, they were the story of the election really.
You have voted to change New Zealand politics for good. I cannot express how grateful I am to all of you that have put your faith in us tonight.

And the Greens, they had a good night.
Tonight you made history. This is the biggest result the Green Party has ever achieved. And tonight we are also seeing an historic Green wave in the Māori seats and Māori support.

Yes, and before Chloe starts throwing her weight around about rigging elections, maybe she should have a long, hard look at just how the Greens did so well. And for Christopher Luxon, yet again it was a win that wasn't a win that was almost a win but was also a loss.

Some of the hardest phone calls tonight have been to colleagues and friends who look unlikely to make it back into Parliament. And in particular, I'm thinking of our most incredible deputy leader, Nicola Willis. I want to thank you, Nicola, for your dedication, for your determination and for your years of service to our party and this great country of ours. I'm also thinking of my friends Paul Goldsmith and Gerry Brownlee, Melissa Lee, Nancy Lu and Vanessa Weenink who've also missed out tonight.

So yes, where do we go from here? They'll cobble together some sort of government depending on the results. We're waiting for the specials that do tend to go left, but all of the pundits are saying it would have to be every single one of the specials would have to before anything would change. Probably National will cobble together a coalition that will be much the same as we had last time except they'll be just a little bit more demanding, I imagine New Zealand First and ACT because they've got a few more votes.

I did think Shane Jones was sounding very statesmanlike when he was saying people have said to him very, very clearly that they want less of the squabbling. People are fed up. And I think you can certainly look at the election, look at the results for the parties, look at the low voter turnout. Maurice Williamson had us all thinking it was the most amazing and the biggest and a record turnout.

Apparently the Electoral Commission got the numbers wrong on the website, but I was thinking, wow, well there you go, people are obviously really engaged in whatever side they want, they know they have to get out and vote. No. No. We did have a very, very good rate of enrolment, 93.7% of the population were registered to vote, but only 74.6 chose to cast their vote. Voter suppression again, Chloe cool your jets. There were 3.7 people enrolled to vote.

The fact that only 74.6% of them chose to cast a vote means that unless the voters were held at gunpoint inside their homes, there was no suppression of voting. How absurd is that? They just couldn't be asked. They were uninspired, completely and utterly uninspired by what the parties had to offer. Helen Clark has called for a thorough review into New Zealand's electoral system, looking specifically at campaign funding and disenfranchising enrolment changes. Should we look into whether vote splitting should be allowed? Should we go back to voting on the day? I don't think so.

I like the fact that people have to take it seriously and understand that there's an election coming up and they have to vote. They have to think about it. Campaign funding, well Opportunity benefited enormously from campaign funding. It was certainly ACT does a good job at getting money into the into the war chests, maybe. But the vote splitting, yeah, I don't think we're going to put up with having 130 MPs in Parliament, are we? Maybe we should be looking at that. But it's both sides that did it, both the left block and the right block. Te Pāti Māori started it, the Greens certainly benefited from it as referenced by Marama. Harry Mowbray, well a bit of thanks would be nice. You've had your moment in the sunshine.

I don't know. I think both National and Labour need a major refresh, a major refresh. They cannot rely on old party loyalties, they cannot rely on history. They have to make themselves modern and relevant, otherwise they will die. They will just become a footnote in history. Should both Chrises keep their jobs? It'll be hard to get rid of whoever leads the next government, very hard to get rid of somebody who is the Prime Minister, but I give the one who forms the government 18 months. I give the one who doesn't about enough time to clean out his desk. And which way should Opportunity go?

I'm kind with the pundits who think they should go on the cross benches and learn the ropes, learn where the loos are before they start throwing their political weight around.

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The MMP system has faced criticism in recent elections, but some believe the 2026 election exposed it's shortcomings. 

Earlier this year, NZ Initiative Executive Director Dr. Oliver Hartwich did a deep dive into MMP and wrote a research paper titled "Unravelling MMP: How the 2026 election could break the voting system from two sides".

He joined Kerre Woodham to reflect on the research paper, and what this election tells us about the current system. 

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Well, the polls close at 7pm tomorrow, fat orange pens notwithstanding, and the votes will be counted. By the time I'm back here on Monday, we should have a fair idea of what the government for the next three years could look like. Notice I have used a conditional sentence: should, could, because really, who would know if you look at the polls? 

It's been a funny old election. At least it'll be interesting – the electorate battles, there are many of those that are going to be fascinating. I will be glued to ZB throughout the evening. This is one of the times when you think, oh, wish I could be working on Election Night. It's great being part of the team that brings you results. But the next best thing is being able to hear the fruits of everybody's hard work, so I'll be listening to ZB – I'll find that more interesting than the television coverage. 

And there were so many undecided voters, myself included. I think the most helpful comment came from a texter a couple of weeks ago who said, "rule out who you simply cannot vote for and tick the box for who's left", which is advice I've heard before, but that text came at a time when I needed to hear it. Are you still undecided? I think I'm clear now, pretty clear now. 

Are you still undecided? Have you changed your mind over the course of the election campaign? And when it comes to the election campaigns, who in your mind ran the best one? As far as I'm concerned, National and Labour ran terrible campaigns, absolutely awful. Boring, repetitive, uninspiring, negative, nasty. 

Losing Chris Bishop as campaign manager as punishment – never have the lines "this is going to hurt you more than it's going to hurt me" or "this is going to hurt me more than it's going to hurt you", never have they rung more true, as you dump Chris Bishop as campaign manager for being involved in the attempted coup. And that's cost National. I don't think Simeon Brown will be getting another call up. The National campaign was so bad that Harry Mowbray and Don Brash decided to put down the lattes and take over the campaign. And then core voting messages were a distraction. Split voting: no, yes, no, yes. To convince voters you're a strong and stable party, surely you need your supporters to be harmonising and singing from the same song sheet. So no, absolutely dreadful. 

Their coalition partner hasn't helped them either. ACT's been very sensible, they've learnt their lesson from the last campaign, but ew, Michael Laws, ew. But then Labour's coalition partners haven't helped them either. The Greens and Te Pāti Māori might have policies that their voters support and that they believe in and that they think will reduce the impact of gangs and the misery they wreak by engaging with the gangs. But good solid swing voters get mightily spooked by soft on gangs policies and Chris Hipkins had to come out all puffed of chest and steely of jaw to try and right the ship. 

No, the minor parties have run relatively good campaigns: ACT, the Greens, Opportunity, they've stuck solidly to their guns. They probably will get over, just. But for if you're a centre swing voter, it's been pretty uninspiring. 

When it comes to voting, are you pretty clear? Have you been clear all the way through? What was the pivotal moment of the campaign for you, or was it simply taking the advice of my texter: ruling out the parties you simply cannot, cannot bring yourself to vote for and ticking the box for what's left? 

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General practices around New Zealand are still overwhelmed, thanks to a shortage of doctors and a influx of patients. 

Dr John Armstrong returned to general medicine after seven years of retirement as the practice, taken over by his daughter, was overwhelmed with demand. 

With more than 6,500 patients on the books, the wait time for a routine GP visit was around four months. 

Armstrong told Kerre Woodham GPs up and down the country are doing 15-20 minute consultations, but it's difficult when you have so many patients to deal with the multitude of problems people come in with..

He says if people are on a waitlist for three or four months, they often come in with a list of issues.

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Michael Laws. It should come as absolutely no surprise that he has shown his colours, he's shown them time and time again. When Winston Peters was in studio with me when we were doing the leaders discussions and you were phoning in and asking questions of the leaders, I thought I'd said it to him on air, but I must have said in a commercial break after I'd talked about the sort of calibre of the candidates and I said to Winston, "Michael Laws, what on earth are you doing with him?" Winston looked a bit surprised and said, "No, he's very intelligent. What's wrong with Michael? Very intelligent." I said, "He's awful, he's. No, I don't think he's going to be an asset to you. Oh, no, no." And the thing about Winston is he is very loyal, he and Michael Laws go way back, but I could not understand the rationale. Are there not enough candidates of sufficient calibre wanting to stand for New Zealand First? Why on earth would you bring Michael Laws back into the fold unless you were myopically loyal to somebody with whom you'd had a long-standing professional relationship?  

And what do you know? Just a few short days later, he's proving a problem for New Zealand First and a distraction, a major distraction. I know we live in a world where you can have a US president who boasts about grabbing women by the pussy, but still, that's the US. We don't have to follow suit. Winston Peters told Ryan Bridge this morning that they haven't had time as a party to decide what they're going to do about Laws, they'll deal with that after the election. 

WP: It's careless, it's not thinking the issues through and thinking out loud is a silly way to behave, especially if you're a candidate for a party in an election. And it's all of those things and worse. So we've just made it very clear to Michael how we feel about it. The party's brassed off, the women in the party are very annoyed because they've done so much work to get this party where it is. 

RB:After Stuart Nash? 

WP:Well, you know, Stuart Nash was never. When he made the comments he wasn't an approved candidate, so it was not difficult to deal with. 

RB:Right. 

WP:I'm going to make sure that the party's fully aware of all the circumstances of this and the moment this election's over, but we are flat out with two days to go in a campaign. Is it a serious difficulty or is it a handicap in what we're trying to do? Of course it is. It's all of those things and we are brassed off the beat the band, make no bones about it. 

I'm glad he didn't try and minimise it because the dichotomy is that you have Winston Peters as leader of the party and whatever criticisms I have of Winston, he is a chivalrous man. I do not believe for a second he would make the sort of comment that Michael Laws did or the previous candidate Stuart Nash has made about women, not even in private, he wouldn't even think those thoughts. And yet his party attracts men who seem to have extremely odd views of women. Michael Laws' sexualising of women in the Opportunity Party, which was gross, comes on top of Stuart Nash's comments about his former opponent in Napier taking parental leave and also his crude definition of a woman, let's not forget that. And Ron Mark's linking the sinking of the Manawanui, which was captained by a woman, to the appalling diversity in the New Zealand Defence Force. 

Thomas Coughlan has written an excellent piece in the Herald this morning and as he says, this shouldn't rattle what people think of New Zealand First. It has always been scandal prone and like the lost boys without Wendy, has always been a home for candidates, often male, who have a habit of saying outrageous, often offensive things. Lost boys without Wendy, excellent line. But it's true. I mean, here you've got and that's what the dichotomy is, that's what's so dichotomous. You've got Winston Peters, who is a gentleman. You can, and I have, fulminate against all sorts of things that he does, but he's never crude. I don't believe for a second he thinks women are just sex bits or lazy cows for taking parental leave or whatever, and yet this is what the party attracts.

And he is going to have to deal with Michael Laws after the election because these are the comments from the party leaders. Christopher Luxon: "He will not be a minister in my government," referring to Michael Laws. Chlöe Swarbrick: "It's just gross." Yes, it is. "He's from another era, he should go back to Noah and the Ark," Nicola Willis. Barbara Edmonds said, "Women have a place in politics, we have a place in leadership. The fact that we have three finance spokespeople who are wāhine shows that women have a place here. We should be respected as opposed to being talked down to." And Qiulae Wong, "He makes my skin crawl," which sums it up beautifully.  

But still, I have never voted for New Zealand First and I can't imagine doing so. Stranger things have happened and hopefully I've got a few elections left in me, but I've never voted New Zealand First, so what I think doesn't really matter. It's not going to affect my vote and it's certainly not going to affect my opinion of Laws because it's pretty much what I thought of him before he made the comments, he's done it before, he'll undoubtedly do it again. But it makes me wonder, is there a place in politics for this sort of party? Are there people who yearn for the days where women were just two tits and a pussy? Is there a cohort of people who think that? Maybe so. I don't know any of them, it doesn't mean they don't exist. I mean, how could you possibly have somebody like that in politics?

It is going to be a problem for New Zealand First the way I see it, but as I say, never voted for them and it's not going to change my vote. Will it change yours? If you're a New Zealand First supporter, do you scratch your head about the candidate selection? And if you are leaning towards New Zealand First, does this change your opinion whatsoever or do you still think it's basically a Winston Peters party, you love Winston, he would never say anything like that, so therefore your vote goes to Winston?

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Politicians are being urged to adopt stronger electric vehicle incentives ahead of the election. 

Climate and energy advocacy group Rewiring Aotearoa is arguing that EVs are one of the most effective long-term solutions for rising transport and energy costs. 

They're promoting an EV Salary Boost proposal, which would allow workers to access EVs through pre-tax salary arrangements – similarly to already existing schemes in the UK and Australia. 

Policy and Government Relations Spokesperson Ngaio Neumegen told Kerre Woodham that even with the rising cost of power, it's still cheaper to run an EV than a car running on imported fuel. 

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It looks like EVs are having a hot girl summer. They first had their time to shine when the previous Labour Government brought in subsidies for New Zealanders to buy EVs. In July 2021, the very first month that the rebate scheme kicked in, overall EV sales increased by more than 200% depending on the specific brand and model. Pure electric and hybrid light vehicle new regos nearly quadrupled to 1,944 units in July '21, compared to just 521 the previous month. Look what happens when you give people free money – they use it. At the peak of the subsidy scheme, battery powered EV market share rose from less than 4% of new light vehicle registrations in January 2022 —so less than 4%— to just over 20% by December 2022. It was big.  

Conversely, when the National-led Coalition Government axed the clean car discount at the end of December '23, or to put it another way, asked the purchasers of cars to pay for them themselves rather than expecting a subsidy from the taxpayer, new EV sales sharply dropped from 20% of market share to less than 10%. Now though, we're seeing another surge in popularity of EVs, this time driven by buyers, not by free money, given the high price of fuel. EV regos rose sharply last month, up 174.1% on this time last year. 

Now Rewiring New Zealand wants to see either of the Chrisses, Luxon or Hipkins, offer an EV salary boost policy based on similar schemes in the UK and Australia. Rewiring NZ said petrol is the largest upward contributor to the inflation rate, and when we're looking at ways of easing the cost of living on households, EVs is one of the biggest ways to go. If you're not paying for petrol, then that's $150-odd in your pocket straight away. The EV salary boost is a policy that would let employees lease a new or used electric vehicle using pretax salary deductions, similar to Australia's scheme.  Lease costs, the vehicle, the insurance, and maintenance are deducted from an employee's gross before tax pay, so that lowers their taxable income.  

Rewiring Aotearoa, who's putting a very positive spin on it, says workers could save an average of $36 a week compared to a standard car loan, and then there's the petrol, and second hand market supply would improve because after the three to five year lease ends, the vehicles enter the second hand market and that makes it more affordable for other motorists who might not be eligible for the employee lease scheme. Do we have to pay for it? Yes, we do. Yes, we do. Proponents estimate the income tax reduction costs the Government roughly $5,000 per vehicle. 

But you know when politicians, and Chris Hipkins was specifically asked this when he was on with me between, they're asked how are you going to ease the cost of living? How are you going to make life easier for households who have to pay rates and insurance and mortgages or rents and food and petrol? Well, says Rewiring Aotearoa, Rewiring New Zealand, here's a way you could do it almost immediately. Reduce the upward pressure on inflation and ease the cost of buying petrol and the maintenance and the like on employees. Doesn't cover the self-employed and the small businesses, but then I guess you can claim back vehicle costs when you submit your tax forms at the end of the year, tax returns at the end of the year.   

What do you think of it as an idea? This was a question that was asked of Chris Hipkins: how? How will you ease the cost of living for your average household? He said public transport, capping public transport fares. What else did he say? I think that was it. Capping public transport fares. Rates were too hard, insurance was too hard, food was too hard. So this is a way of doing it. For those who took advantage of the Government's, the previous Labour Government's clean cars discount, you must be laughing all the way to your electric charge in the middle of town. How many of you have decided to go the EV way? You were on the fence, but then the price of fuel went astronomically high, and you thought to yourself, no, now's the time to do it.  

Is there more choice and more range? Just looking at the different utes and work vehicles available, more and more of them seem to be coming onto the market as hybrids or EVs. But then you also look at Ford, who's reporting billions of dollars in losses in their EV division. Many of them have shelved plans to make workhorses that operate on electric motors. Is there more range for you to have a look at when it comes to finding a workhorse for your business? And would this be something you'd be interested in? If your boss says to you, all right, well you won't get as much money in your pocket, but you will get brand new EV for the term of your employment. 

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Elections at home and abroad may have a played a part in the latest rise in the number of people out of work. 

Unemployment's hit 5.7%, up from 5.6% three months ago. 

The unexpected rise has coincided with an increase in casual and fixed-term roles, and a move towards more part-time employment. 

Infometrics Principal Economist Brad Olsen told Kerre Woodham businesses appear to be holding off on making decisions. 

He says they want to see both what happens in our election, but also how the mid-terms affects the war in Iran and global fuel prices. 

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I know that there are people who think that being fat is indicative of moral weakness. You're a slave to the pleasures of the flesh if you're fat. You can't control your appetite. No self-control. Being greedy is an unattractive trait, in fact gluttony is right up there in the list of the seven deadly sins, all of which I seem to commit on the daily. And sure, if back in the day food was scarce, if you had to grow or gather your dinner, it was a precarious business. It was difficult to store food in times of plenty, hard to find food in winter, during famine, during difficult times. So anyone whose belly hung over their belt would have been looked at askance. You wouldn't have trusted him, or her for that matter. But times have changed and now we all have enough, at least in this country.  

But some of us don't stop when we reach enough. And because we're a little more sophisticated than we were in the 18th century, we know now that it's not a sign of moral weakness, moral corruption, but merely different bodies processing food differently and the brain playing a bigger part than the stomach when it comes to obesity. It makes sense surely to treat obesity differently. Rather than castigating people for their lack of self-control or for their poor decisions, you look at the brain and work on that.  

Obesity related illnesses cost us a fortune as a country. The direct costs are $2 billion a year, the indirect costs are around 7 billion a year. Surely if there's a way to keep people out of hospital, out of the healthcare system, we take it. Pharmac certainly thinks so. Pharmac's cardiovascular experts have recommended funding a weight loss drug for people with cardiovascular disease and a BMI of 27 or more as a high priority. Fat jabs are already used widely in New Zealand, but they're unfunded, meaning that patients have to cover the cost.  

In May, Pharmac added Wegovy, one of the fat jabs, to its list of medicine suitable for future funding specifically for weight loss, but this too remained unfunded. The most recent recommendation, which comes from the cardiovascular team, is a high level provisional outcome, so it doesn't reveal the reasons behind the recommendation, which are surely obvious to even those of us who haven't done six years at med school. And we're not certain how many New Zealanders would qualify for treatment if the drug was funded specifically for cardiovascular disease.  

According to Health New Zealand, about a third of New Zealanders over 15 were considered obese, giving New Zealand one of the highest adult obesity rates in the OECD. Cardiovascular disease is responsible for almost one in three deaths in New Zealand, and maintaining a healthy weight helps you manage cardiovascular risk. So we have a problem on the one hand, we have a way to solve it on the other hand. Why don't we get over the pursed lips and the moral judgment of 1762 and accept that the cost benefit ratio of funding Wegovy or something similar would save lives and save the country billions. It's a no brainer, isn't it?  

I would love to hear from you on this one. We've heard from people who have taken Wegovy before or the other fat jabs, whatever they are. It helps with the weight loss, it helps with appetite, it helps with nail biting, compulsive shopping, drinking, smoking. I've heard that from all of you, or not from all of you, from those of you who rang in talking about taking the jabs. Doesn't just help you with the weight loss, it helps with all sorts of things.  If we have a problem and we have a cure for the majority of people who take it, doesn't it make sense to invest in it and stop spending billions and billions of unnecessary dollars? 

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The Labour leader's promising other parties' tax proposals are off the table under his watch – even if the Greens get a good chunk of the seats in Parliament. 

The Green Party's campaigning on new taxes and increases to the corporate tax rate, as well as taxes on earnings above $160,000. 

Labour's pledging what it calls a simple, targeted capital gains tax. 

Leader Chris Hipkins told Kerre Woodham the Greens will not force him to do things he's promised are not happening. 

He says they can continue to make their case, but says Labour will not betray its voters. 

Hipkins is expecting a high turnout this election if the early voting momentum's maintained.  

But the Labour leader says it's unfortunate 260 thousand people aren't on the roll to vote.  

He says many of these people are young and may have only started tuning into the election in the past week, but now it's too late.  

Hipkins told Woodham we need a robust electoral process, but the main issue we encounter is people voting more than once, quite often older people who might not realise.  

He says there's a human element – it's not an intention to defraud the voting system, it's just what happens. 

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This time next week we'll have voted. The preliminary results will be in, discussions will be underway to form a government. Thank heavens. Seems like a very long haul this particular election, but I have to remind myself that we are so very lucky to have the luxury of getting bored during an election campaign. Mexico, Colombia, the Philippines, Serbia, they're countries that would love the unimaginable luxury of peaceful campaign meetings and walkabouts in public and election days where you can just walk up, cast your vote, and come home to family members that might have voted differently from you, doesn't matter. 

Christopher Luxon was on with Mike this morning for a couple of hours – that concludes the Leaders Breakfasts. I have Chris Hipkins on tomorrow between 10 and 11, taking your questions and that will conclude the Leaders Hour for me, and then it's just a matter of counting down to Saturday. Some of you may have voted already. I do like to cast my vote on the day because I recognise what a privilege it is to vote and the actual casting of the vote feels really special. 

There's been some argy bargy about the timing of the election. With the election date being November 7th, that meant advance voting opened on Labour Day, a public holiday, and in a letter to the Prime Minister, the Chief Electoral Officer back in August of '25 warned that school and public holidays could see large numbers of voters away from home, potentially reducing voter turnout. "Our practice has been to advise on avoiding an election date during those times." But the actual election date isn't on a public holiday, it was just the advance voting opened on a public holiday. Surely people can sort it out. They can wait, they don't have to vote on the very first day. I think the Guy Fawkes night and fireworks and things like that was also a concern. 

But there's been a bit of snarkiness about having to register to vote early with extreme claims of voter suppression and locking young people out of the of the election, which to me is just absolute nonsense. The ability to rock up on the day has been removed and I actually think that's a good thing. Maybe it will make people take their vote more seriously, encourage people to think about the responsibilities around voting along with exercising their right to vote. I wasn't so very concerned about that. 

But where I do scratch my head when it comes to National and the coalition government is why you would introduce benefit changes involving young people with just six days to go before the final day to cast your vote. I very much doubt that 18 and 19 year olds on Jobseeker would be National voters or ACT voters or New Zealand First voters, but making it harder for them and their parents to get any kind of support at a time when youth unemployment is extremely high seems somewhat ill advised, if I can put it mildly. Why couldn't they have introduced benefit changes on April 1st, which is when most benefit changes take place and long after any kind of election? 

18 and 19 year olds now need to do a parental assistance test before they receive Jobseeker support. Payments will be blocked for young people whose parents earn more than $67,000. It seems somewhat punitive at a time of high youth unemployment, as I say. But yeah, it could make undecided voters look at that and think, well that's a bit mean, it's a bit unreasonable. $67,000 is not a lot of money in this day and age. It's very, very hard to find jobs at all, but especially for young people. 

This whole campaign seems to have been somewhat disorganized, honestly. I'll put up my hand for campaign manager of National and Labour next time, see who takes me, because they could have done a whole lot better. I'd love to get your thoughts on the actual campaigns that have been run by the parties and also on the 18 and 19 year olds being dependent on their parents if the parents earn more than $67,000. Sure, I was off and away at 18, I didn't need parental support from then on in, but they were vastly different times. I think it was even you, Producer Helen, you leeched off your gorgeous family for a bit longer, didn't you?  

But no, I was off and away and a lot of us were. Some people were even married. Well, you didn't really go to university, it was polytech, but nonetheless, a lot of kids need to stay at home in this day and age. It just it just seems unnecessarily punitive at this particular point in time and why you'd introduce the benefit change with six days to go before voting day seems insane. Anyway, love to hear your thoughts on this. Have you voted? Do you have a problem with having to enrol and register early to vote? Do you see it as denying people their right to vote if they can't rock up on the day? I just see it as taking it seriously basically. And why would you introduce the benefit changes with a week to go before voting? Nuts. 

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A drug that could slow a rare form of lung cancer is out there, but it's not funded by Pharmac and costs around $11,000 a month.

A look at the Givealittle pages out there shows there are drugs that cost a way lot more a month than that one, up to $25,000 a month. 

The ACT Party has proposed an increase the share of the New Zealand health budget spent on medicines by one percentage point every year.

David Seymour, ACT Party leader and Associate Health Minister responsible for Pharmac, joined Kerre Woodham to discuss the plan. 

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What would you do? I've been thinking about this ever since Paul's phone call yesterday. You might have been listening when he rang in. We were talking about the cost of living and how you can make economies and you can get an extra job and you can do all this and all that and try and get through, unless life throws you a curveball.  

And that's exactly what happened to Paul. He and Sandra have been together for 34 years. They have two sons, 18 and 20 They've lived good lives. They've worked hard, they've paid off the house, they've got all their insurances including medical insurance. They've never asked for anything. They've never needed to ask for anything. They've just lived their lives and been your typical Kiwi family. Then out of the blue, Sandra gets diagnosed with lung cancer. She's never smoked. It's a rare genetic condition and this particular lung cancer is a killer. This particular type doesn't respond to the treatments that are available and funded under our public health system, but there is a drug that's available that will slow the progress of the disease.  

So the bad news, you get the diagnosis. The good news, there's a treatment. The bad news, it's not funded by Pharmac. You can buy it on the open market, but you have to come up with $11,000 a month —nearly $4,000 a week— to pay for the drug that will give Sandra more time with her family. They don't have a lot, but they've never needed a lot. They've got their own home, and they've looked after themselves and they've never been on benefits, but where the hell do you come up with nearly $4,000 a week?  

It's not a story that's unique to this couple. If you have a look on the Givealittle pages, there are so many that are dedicated to families desperate to find the money for unfunded drugs that will keep their mum or their dad alive just that little bit longer. For some, there's hope of a cure, for many it's buying time. And it seems so cruel. The diagnosis is bad enough, terminal cancer. Then you're given a lifeline, oh but there is a drug that will keep you well for a lot, lot longer than you can expect or imagine. And then that lifeline evaporates because you find out that it's not funded by Pharmac and if you want it, you're going to have to lose everything.  

It's a real Sophie's choice. You might have to sell the house if you own the house, you might have to sell everything you own, you might have to sacrifice your pride and put yourself out there asking for help from strangers to just buy you that little bit of extra time. If you sell the house, you're going to leave the family without security if the treatment doesn't work. I mean, what an awful, awful situation to be in and an awful, awful conundrum.  

What would you do? And perhaps what are the discussions that you've had within your family? Remember when Herceptin wasn't funded and that seemed to hit younger women particularly. That was a dreadful decision to have to make. And yet Herceptin had very good survival rates, so what do you do?  

I suppose it depends on your circumstances, your age and stage. If you're a parent with young children, I imagine you would fight and you'd fight tooth and nail to get a bit of extra time. Whereas I think, and you never know until you're in that situation, but I think I would let fate take its course. My daughter is an adult now, she's happy, she's settled, she has her own family and that makes a big difference when you're a parent. I've had more than my share of good times, more than my fair share of life, I think I'd probably go rather than use all my KiwiSaver and everything else just to buy me a bit of extra time. But I'm at a different stage.  

There are so many applications before Pharmac at the moment to fund unfunded medicines that have a proven track record. There are so many pharmaceutical companies that want approval to be funded by Pharmac that offer people a lifeline. It just seems so, so cruel that you're given the diagnosis, you're reeling from that, then you're told, oh but we can fix you or we can give you time, but it will cost you $11,000, $16,000, $25,000 a month. Impossible money, monopoly money. I would love to hear your stories and how much more you think should be put into Pharmac to give people a fighting chance. 

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There's a story in the New Zealand Herald this morning about a young couple in Hawke's Bay who are earning good coin, above the average between them, but they're barely able to make ends meet. This is the cost of living election – at least that's what the media outlets are telling us. But I don't know if you heard Enda Brady on with Mike this morning. Have a listen to what he had to say around the British budget. 

"People are worried about energy bills, cost of living, food. I went to the petrol station earlier on to get petrol, so I looked at the prices specifically for you, Mike. We are looking at $4.02 a litre for diesel, and I pay $3.52 for unleaded." 

The British Government releasing the budget said they just want to be able to give ordinary working families breathing room. This is a budget for, in the UK, for the immediate future. It's not setting the country up to recover, it's just trying to give your ordinary working family breathing room. Things are tight there and they have been for a while. People are finding out what they can do without and what are necessities. They're doing that here, but they're also doing it around the world.  

Post-Covid and the money printing, nations who went for that strategy are paying the piper and it's grindy. The prices paid for everyday items such as food, energy, transport, and household bills have risen by between 59% and 78% since the year 2000 in France, Italy, Spain, and Portugal. Between 2021 and 2023 prices increased by 12 to 15% in the four countries. Wages didn't keep up and because prices don't fall back once inflation eases, many households are still feeling the squeeze today. It would be the same in the UK as well.  

In Australia, one in three households are going hungry as the cost of living crisis bites, according to a charity. Many people are reducing meal portions to make ends meet and they're being forced to cut the use of shampoo, toothpaste, and soap. Really cutting it right back down. In Australia, inflation data to be released this week is expected to confirm ongoing price pressures for household essentials, prompting a further interest rate hike from the Reserve Bank when it meets at the start of next month. The biggest increase in prices over the past year has been in petrol, up by almost 14%, but steep lifts in other essentials that Aussies consider their own, like beef 9.4%, lamb 10.1%, milk 8%. Sound familiar?  

Is there anywhere in the world that is doing just fine? I know we have a number of listeners who listen from various points of the globe. Is this the same story where you are? Are governments really finding it tough to meet their obligations, to meet their commitments, to look after those citizens who are not doing well, trying to find jobs for young ones? Again, Enda Brady referred to that in the UK – they've got more than a million young people who aren't in education, training, or jobs. People are really struggling to pay the basic household bills. Same in Europe, same in Australia.  

Doesn't make you feel any better, I suppose, if you're wondering how the hell you're going to pay the household rates, but this is not particular or peculiar to New Zealand. Economies are correcting and contractions, as at least half the population knows, are painful. There are signs that things are getting better globally. A lot of it will be dependent on the situation in the US, Iran, Israel, and that calming down. But even above and beyond that, there are signs things are getting better. Xero reported more business confidence, more sales, more employment, more jobs advertised and people employed. And this has been, this wasn't a blip in the data, this has been ongoing. So things are slowly, slowly improving.  

But in the meantime, in your house, what are you doing without? What have you found is a non-essential just to get by until things improve? Insurances, have you kept all the insurances? A young family I know who should be doing just fine, they concede that as much as anyone, but it's the power, it's the rates, it's the insurance, it's all those. They gave up their pet insurance and what does Sod's Law say? Sod's Law says the moment you do that, in their case I think it was a week, a week after doing that their beautiful cat who had never had a moment's ill health in her long and happy life needed emergency vet care and it was $750 for the first night and rising, it will be a bill that will be big. And of course that's what happens when you give up the insurance.   

Are there insurances you've given up? Are there gym memberships you've sacrificed and you're going online? Are, you know, what is it that you have done to tide you over until things do in fact get better and you see that reflected in the prices you're paying and the wage that you're earning? What have you not been able to afford to give up?  What have you decided to commit to and keep? We were discussing this in the office and a couple of the women said hairdos, getting the hair done, getting the hair coloured, cut, treated, $300 to $400 every eight to nine weeks. They're trying to push it out a bit longer. They're saying no, happy to give up going for a night out if it means we can get the hair done.  

Do you see things getting better? Xero sounded a voice of optimism, a voice of hope going into 2027. I'm not even going to come up with a silly little motto after "Thrive in '25" turned out to be such a dud. Let's not do that again. But do you see things getting better and have you found that you can live without a number of things you thought were absolutely essential? Love to hear what's going on in your house and if you're any of our listeners from around the world, I'd love to hear what it's like where you are. Is it the same story repeated in many languages, in many countries right around the world? 

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When I look at Labour's campaign and I look at National's campaign, it's like, look, I'll do it for you next time. Seriously, when something is being done so badly, you think, you know what? I can do that so much better. They've had shocking campaigns, both of the main parties. Just negative, silly stuff. And yesterday, Labour had an absolute clanger. Of all the issues and all the policies that Labour could have come up with to attract voters, to point out deficiencies in the Coalition Government, why on earth did they have to decide on housing as one of their last big pushes before the election?  

You'll have heard Kieran McAnulty yesterday announcing a new rent to buy scheme that would allow public housing tenants to save for a house deposit. $100 a week from their taxpayer subsidised rent would be credited towards a house deposit with the funds held in a trust account. The scheme would help people save $5,200 a year, Labour says, and allow tenants to accumulate enough to put down a deposit on a home. Public housing tenants would have the option to buy the home they're living in. Labour said that for each house sold, three more would be built in its place. Really? What's your track record like on building houses, Labour? Pretty damn poor. Three more would be built in its place? Labour would have been turfed out after one term were it not for Covid last time round because of their failures of execution when it came to policy.  

One of their biggest embarrassments was KiwiBuild, the building of houses. 100,000 houses were promised. Remember that? And everybody went, oh, I don't think so. No, no, I think you've got that wrong. And it wasn't just people like me having a rick and going, I don't think you'll be able to do 100,000, it was people in the industry going, no, that's not going to happen. No, they knew best, Labour did. They went ahead, they promised it. 100,000 houses would be built for hardworking Kiwis. Total amount of houses built: 2,003. Quite a big differential. 100,000 promised, 2,003 delivered. So forgive me if I call BS on Labour's ability to build three houses for every one sold, unless they go down the Kāinga Ora route where they damn near bankrupted the country building houses at any cost. We've only just got Kāinga Ora under control after the build at any cost order was given by the last Labour government.  

There are two policy areas Labour should be staying well away from: law and order and housing. They are proven failures in both areas, unless they're willing to spend anything at all and lock other young people out of the housing market by buying up, spending money we don't have, and paying it down on the never never. This latest announcement, if you are living, say, in GI in Auckland in a state house, which is being gentrified, a little suburb that's being gentrified, how long would you have to live there before you'd saved even for a 5% deposit? If you're living in Greymouth in a Kāinga Ora house, you might in seven and a half years have enough to put down a 5% deposit loan on your home. But it's sticking two fingers to hardworking young people who are working and who are renting and who are saving for their first home. And it is nothing like the capitalisation of family benefit that McAnulty referred to when he was talking to Heather du Plessis Allan last night. 

"There'd be many people listening to your show who bought their home or their parents bought their home by capitalising the child benefit. And that set them up for life. Now, we haven't had a scheme like that for a very long time. And the announcement today to expand the 5% deposit and also have a scheme to actually get Kāinga Ora tenants out of state housing, out of a poverty trap and into home ownership, I think is something that will benefit the whole country. And I reckon it'll actually get broad support across the political spectrum." 

Will it? I'll be fascinated to find out. If we look at capitalisation of the family benefit, that came in in 1958, the rate of unemployment was virtually non-existent. I think they had it down at 0.1%, just to put something down on paper. People were working, mostly men. They had a good working wage that could look after a family. They had steady employment. There were good prospects. So they were able to service a loan, they were able to make improvements on a house, and yes, it did set them up. But they were working. As we all know, buying a home is only the beginning of the expense. The maintenance, the rates, the insurance, it's all got to come from somewhere. And if you're not working, where's it going to come from?  

I think home ownership is a very, very good thing. I think state housing is a very, very good thing. My dad grew up in a state house in Christchurch. My grandmother still remembers the day they qualified and came out of the transit camps and into a state house. It was like winning Lotto. But neither my brother nor his five siblings, my aunt and uncles, needed the Government ever again. They were very grateful, they were, thank you very much, they bought their own homes using their own money, working three jobs. That's what you have to do. You use the state house as a base from which to launch your kids to do better. Or at least that's what used to happen in the olden days.  

I love that first home buyers right now are the biggest players in the market. They're young people who've paid off their student loans and saved and scrimped and lived with their parents and forgone the trips overseas to get the money together for their first house. Nobody's giving free money to these kids. All of this hoo ha, all of this bringing back the spectre of Labour's dumpster housing policies for 1,100 Kāinga Ora tenants who may or may not be interested in buying their state house. They sure as hell couldn't if they're living in Auckland, no matter how long they live there. And who may or may not be able to afford to continue living there once they've bought the bloody thing.  

Look, let me do Labour's election campaign next time. I could not do a worse job. Chris Hipkins had a zinger of a line in one of the debates when he said to Chris Luxon, no, you are certainly not John Key. Well, right back at you, Kieran McAnulty, you are certainly no Michael Joseph Savage. 

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The Transport Agency says it needs a long-term plan sooner rather than later for Awakino Gorge, as the vital Taranaki to Waikato link faces more closures. 

The stretch of State Highway 3 is closing every night until Thursday next week as transport crews work to restore the road following a slip earlier this year. 

It's been closed several times over the last year, causing long detours for drivers 

NZTA Project Manager Caleb Perry told Kerre Woodham they'll be looking to finish planning over the next three years. 

He says that'll be the driver for them to decide if they invest more money into the route, or if they need to explore more options. 

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The Awakino Gorge on State Highway 3 that connects Waikato to Taranaki will be closed for nine nights as of tonight. Every time there's a major storm it seems Karangahake Gorge between Paeroa and Waihi is closed. It was closed for five days this month. The Waiwera Gorge is open, then closed, then open, then closed. The Brynderwyns are a constant worry. Is it time to revisit our national highways and accept that what might have worked in 1923 —widening a dray track into a road— is not really fit for purpose in 2026?  

Sticks of gelignite blasting away through the Karangahake Gorge worked fine in 1875, but if you've driven through the gorge recently, looking like a goldfish with one eye out the side looking at the rock face, praying it stays up, the other goldfish eye looking out at the river and the road and hoping there's no landslip, you wonder how long these gorges are going to be drivable and whether it's worth patching them up, opening them, patching them up, opening them, patching them up, opening them. Round and round and round we go. We don't seem to be advancing. It's just spending hundreds of millions to stay in place.  

Transporting New Zealand says we have to start thinking about plan B when it comes to the transport network. They say when the Awakino Gorge is closed, it costs the sector up to a million dollars per day in additional travel time, fuel consumption, and vehicle operating costs. Transporting New Zealand, in the case of the Awakino Gorge, has suggested developing a 20km windy metal road, and suggested a one way route north for a couple of hours, then opening it for a couple of hours to the south. Which sounds like it would have been a brilliant thing to do in 1952, but in 2026, is that really the way to go when we're trying to connect two major provinces, two major exporting provinces, Taranaki and Waikato? I wouldn't have thought so. The New Plymouth mayor says he would sue NZTA if he could for their successive failures over the years, which have cost the people of his region millions and millions of dollars.  

Are our road networks still fit for purpose? Does it make sense to keep going over the same roads that were initially, in many cases, horse tracks, then dray roads, then roads for the old Model Ts? It worked back then. They made it work. And back then it was rip, shit and bust, hoots wahay, let's just blast our way through, and the quickest way to get anywhere is in a straight line between two points. Given the precarious state of the climate, given that the extremes are becoming the norm when it comes to the storms, the landslips, the torrential rain, do we need to redraw the map rather than keep retracing over existing lines? 

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The gangs, as we know, create wholesale damage and destruction in our society through their drug trafficking. Now it looks like they're causing wholesale damage to Labour.  

After roundly criticising members of the Greens and Te Pati Māori for visiting a mongrel mob gang pad and posing for photos, putting it on your social media, Labour leader Chris Hipkins ruled out his coalition partners holding the justice or police portfolios in any government he was in charge of. He was talking tough. Now it transpires one of his own MPs was campaigning with gang members, with a video circulating of Kerrin Leoni in a Labour jacket handing out Labour Party flyers to mobsters.  

Te Pati Māori's Orinii Kaipara, who appeared with Leoni in a Whakata Māori debate this week, threw the Tamaki Makaurau opponent under the bus during the debate by saying Leoni had recently been campaigning with gang members too. She did it too, miss. It wasn't just me. Kaipara said Leoni had since deleted a social media post about it after the kaka hit the fan over her posing with gang members. Leoni during the debate said, I have never been to a gang pad campaigning. I've got whanau who are gang members. I've never been campaigning at a gang pad. And then sought to clarify the situation in a Facebook post last night. "To be clear, I have not attended a gang pad at all during this campaign. I said at the debate, I have close whanau who are gang members. In early October, I attended a whanau function where some of those present were whanau gang members."  

If you've seen the video, it's a funny old whanau function. I mean, who am I to say how other people should hold their barbecues? But Leoni is clearly campaigning for Labour at the function. If she hadn't posted the video to social media, I'd say perhaps her case is different. You can't pick your relatives. For many families, you can have one brother who's a detective and another who's a senior gang member, and they all have to be able to still function as a family. I'd have sympathy if someone had taken a video or photo of Leoni in a T-shirt, shorts and jandals, having a BBQ with her brother at a whanau function. But she's in a Labour Party jacket, handing out Labour Party flyers, telling people to vote Labour and then posting it to social media. Apparently it's since been deleted.  

What kind of family function is that? It doesn't sound like a real thigh slapper to me. Not a guitar insight. Can it really be a family function if there's no singing and dancing around the BBQ? You're in your Labour Party jacket. You're handing out the flyers, you're saying vote Labour to get rid of this government. Is that a family function or is that campaigning just like a Orinii Kaipara and Hūhana Lyndon were doing? Sounds like campaigning to me. Yeah, nah. I'm sorry. I mean, Chris Hipkinson can talk tough, and I do have sympathy when you've got people who, I mean, you can't pick your relatives as my poor cousins know. I remember saying to a departed aunt, at a whanau function. She had very poor eyesight. I said, "it's me, Kerre." And she said, "yes, I know exactly who you are." In clipped tones. I said that little catch up with my aunt. She's never been a big fan and that's okay.  

You can't pick your relatives, but to say you're not campaigning, it sounded, come on, Kerrin Leoni, come clean. You might have a brother or whanau who are in the gangs and that's fine. But to say that you were just catching up at a family function, I don't buy it. Not in the Labour Party jacket, not handing out the flyers, not saying get rid of this government. That is not a family catch up, that is campaigning. 

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David Seymour says he won't shy away race relations, despite previous backlash. 

The ACT Leader championed the Treaty Principles Bill to its first reading this term, sparking nationwide protests. 

This election ACT's promising to “end race-based hiring requirements”, prohibit cultural or spiritual practices in the public service, and to abolish the Waitangi Tribunal once historic claims are settled. 

Seymour told Kerre Woodham the idea New Zealand is divided by its treaty is not sustainable. 

He says he doesn't resile to not having the conversation, no matter how painful it may be. 

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We may be at a turning point when it comes to property investment. 

Cotality data shows residential property is worth $1.66 trillion and still accounts for more than 50% of all household assets.  

But it also shows property sales and values are largely subdued.  

Chief Property Economist Kelvin Davidson told Kerre Woodham over the last couple of decades, strong capital gains and low interest rates were a big driver for the housing market. 

He says mortgage costs went down and selling provided capital gains as well, but this potentially won't last into the future. 

Davidson says property investment will probably need to be done a little bit differently, focusing on active management and cash flow rather than relying on capital gains.  

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Inflation is still much higher than it should be, largely because of high global oil prices. 

Stats NZ data shows the rate's now on 3.7%, down from 4.1% three months ago. 

Domestic non-tradeable inflation —for things like housing, electricity, and healthcare— has been trending down. 

Internationally-driven tradeable inflation —for things we import and export— has dipped, after trending up. 

But NZ Herald Business Editor at Large Liam Dann told Kerre Woodham economists are forecasting anywhere up to 4.7% inflation for the December quarter, which is pretty ugly. 

He says even if the Reserve Bank were to look through the impact of oil prices, the Consumer Price Index would still rise around 3.2%, which they can't ignore.  

Dann says it's one of the reasons economists expect them to hike interest rates. 

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There's an old saying, "there's money in muck". And that still holds true – waste recovery contributed $3.3 billion to the economy last year. But another old saying, "safe as houses", doesn't ring quite so true. There were just over 6,500 property transactions across New Zealand in September, according to the latest CoreLogic report. And that's around 14% fewer than the same month last year. It's the ninth consecutive year on year decline. 

New Zealand house values are falling overall, down 1.3% nationally over the year to September 2026, again according to the CoreLogic data. But it should be noted that it's a two-speed market – the South Island's going gangbusters and without that region holding up, the national average would be a lot worse. In Auckland, average property values are down about 3.2% annually. In Wellington, it's a dumpster fire. They're down 28% from the 2021 peak, which is pretty tough. 

Property used to be seen as a safe investment, people saw it as a way to make money. That's only relatively recently though, probably in the last 25 years. Before that, it was a place to live. It was a home. It was a roof over your head. It wasn't seen as a great big ATM that you could dip into and have enormous fun spending up once your equity got to a certain point or the mortgage was paid off. Unless you are a true professional and that's your job, you know houses, you know what to do with them, you can spot good bones, you can make a lot of a rundown property using your own skill and vision and abilities. I don't think anyone sees property as a safe investment now, do they? 

And even once you'd paid off your mortgage on the property, in the olden days, you had so much money. You had so much money left over, you had so much money in the property, you could upsize, you could downsize, you could buy a bach, you could use the house as an ATM again. But I'm not sure that that still stands true either. Even if you've paid off your mortgage, if you want to sell, you've got to find a buyer, and in a market like this, it's pretty tricky. If you want to downsize, if you want to go into a retirement village, if you want to move to be closer to grandchildren, it can be pretty tricky even with everything signed off. And that's kind of the contract we enter into, that you pay off your mortgage and then you have choices, then you have options. I'm not entirely sure those choices and options are there now. And I don't know how long it will be before the good old days return, if they ever do. 

I'd love to hear from those of you who have either bought a rental property, do you believe the good old days will return? Is that what you're doing it for, to make money from it, or do you just want a steady little 3% return on your investment and you're good at fixing things up, you don't need to employ a property manager, you're good. If you're a young person who's bought into their first home, and thank heavens for you because you are the ones holding up the market, would you or do you see your property as a home or as an investment? Something that's going to grow in value over time that you can then turn to your advantage. If you've paid off the mortgage, do you want to downsize or relocate and are you stuck? Are you looking to buy another property like a bach or a rental, or are you going to put your money into managed funds? That being said, the housing market is not what it was, we still have $1.66 trillion in housing assets, and it accounts for about 50% of household assets. That is a lot of money. Houses still cost a lot, we still need a place to live, you still want a place to raise the family. But are we back to the days of seeing it as a home and not an investment, or do you still believe that there's gold in the foundations of where you're living right now?

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There's a text here, "talk about a beat up by ZB on politicians and threats. If you raise the possibility and keep flagging potential problems, you may get what you predict. So stupid to highlight this on your news at this time," says Paul. I don't think that's true. I think there are very, very, very few people worldwide, even with all the problems that abound, that would act in the way that this 43 year old Australian has done. Very few. But what people need to understand is that violent words, violent rhetoric can breed violent actions, and it may help temper the kind of madness that you see online. And the attack on the Australian independent MP Helen Haines is absolutely horrific, and it will make the news. It is newsworthy.  

The 43 year old man has been charged with a number of serious offences in relation to the attack, which was brutal and premeditated. Haines was unloading her car outside her electoral office when the man did a U turn and ran into her a number of times with his Land Cruiser, crushing her between the two vehicles. It wasn't a one off, it wasn't a moment of madness, it was several moments of madness. She has lost one leg, doctors are fighting to save the other, and in a cruel irony, it appears the man was a family friend. His father and stepmother have been friends with Haines for more than 20 years.  

She certainly sounds like one of the good guys, one of the very people you want to attract to Parliament. She had a life before entering Parliament, she was a nurse, a mother, an advocate for the rural community, and then once elected she led an anti corruption campaign within Parliament. It was a senseless, cruel attack on a good woman.  

And our MPs must have had a shiver go down their spines because many of them have been on the receiving end of personal attacks and death threats. My own MP, Dan Bidois, had to bring in the police when he received death threats that were deemed credible. Dan is a hardworking MP, a dad of two little ones, he's always at the local community events, does an amazing job for his constituents, but for whatever reason, probably because he had the temerity to stand for National, he received death threats. Speaker of the House Gerry Brownlee says they are well aware of the threats to MPs and even to candidates, and they take it very seriously. 

"Massive increase in threats to members of Parliament, particularly to women members of Parliament. And I think it's also the nature of those threats has changed from, you know, it might have been a bit of personal abuse about how someone presented themselves or other such, right down to now increasingly threats of physical violence as well. We've had to respond, we've set up a unit called the Security Intelligence Research Advisory Service, SIRAS, and they've got a team that will go out and be with MPs, they've deployed quite considerably during this period. But it's also candidates out there, and I think the work we've been able to do with the New Zealand Police, and I've got to take my hat off to them, I think they've done a great job in contacting all candidates and giving them personal numbers to be able to call should they feel threatened. Because, you know, you just don't know, you can't blanket everybody all the time, but you certainly need to have something that makes it very clear that if people are out of line, they're going to get prosecuted or at least deterred." 

And they do need to be prosecuted and deterred because that angry, angry rhetoric, that violent rhetoric can lead to physical assaults. I mean, look at James Shaw, he's one of the more reasonable, hardworking, lovely MPs, whatever you think of his politics, assaulted by a man in the street and needed hospital attention when he was in Parliament. And a lot of people throw off at the fact that Jacinda Ardern lives offshore with her family, well, in large part that's because of the truly horrific threats that were made not just against her, but her daughter, her little girl.  

You can have an opinion, you can have a reckon, you can have a strong opinion, and that's the other thing that concerns me, that people are so wary of the nutters out there that you can't even voice a strong opinion against policy or against decisions made by MPs, which dampens down free speech because people aren't responsible when it comes to the right to free speech. Free speech doesn't mean you can abuse, insult, threaten to kill, threaten to rape, threaten to murder MPs and members of their families. It's a responsibility as well as a right, and you have to use it accordingly.  

Social media's given people license to be real heroes. They say terrible things that they would never say when they were face to face with the individual. A friend of mine who's got quite a high profile on the social medias, that's part of how she makes a living, said, "Whatever happened to the days of talking about people behind their back? I don't need some troll to come on my page and tell me how ugly and revolting and what a loser I am. Tell your mates! I don't need to know about it. Bring back the days of talking about people behind their backs." And she's got a point. Not everybody has to hear your views of how ugly or how stupid or how ignorant or how politically misguided you are.  

I've never done it. I've been annoyed with people before online, people have annoyed me, and I've thought, "Well, I won't read this anymore. I'll make sure that my algorithms don't throw up this kind of content." I don't really feel the need to go on and tell people that they're ugly losers and completely hopeless at what they do and I'll shoot them. No matter how annoyed I've got over the years about political decisions, I have never wished the individuals harm. Ever. Ever. You don't even think it. I really do think that the rhetoric that people feel emboldened to use because they feel they can be anonymous can fuel the kind of completely irrational violence that we saw in Australia yesterday. It's not very far away in terms of geographical distance in Australia, but also in terms of that kind of violence. We need to be careful. 

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The Greens co-leader says she's not taking anything for granted as the party surges in the polls. 

The latest 1News-Verian poll has the Greens up one point to 16% — retaining a record high result— with National on top, rising a huge four points to 32% and Labour dropping one to 27%. 

Chlöe Swarbrick told Kerre Woodham people have felt disillusioned by legacy parties, and it's a global trend. 

"They have failed to reach the challenges of our time and tackle the big structural economic issues, in particular wealth inequality, which means regular hard working people are struggling to get by day-to-day." 

Swarbrick said whether you're on the left or the right, when you look at the current theatre —"or circus"— on Parliament TV, it is clearly not fit for purpose or working. 

"I think that's part of the reason we're starting to see a convergence from New Zealanders on all sides of the aisle, all sides of the political spectrum, on the need to just agree on some really big long-term plans to address the issues that we are facing. And that has really changed the tone quite a lot this election. 

"There are a lot of people sick of the tit-for-tat and just want genuine solutions." 

Swarbrick said it is really important for future governments to collaborate and work together on the big issues. 

She said the last few weeks since Parliament has risen have been "amazing", describing the last three years as "challenging" because of the amount of legislation that has been rushed through under urgency. 

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Requiring people to have health insurance could take some pressure off our health system. 

Chronic underfunding has put the public health system under strain, leading to stretched emergency departments, lengthy wait times, and difficulty accessing care. 

The problems are compounded by a shortage of medical staff. 

Financial Services Council CEO Kirk Hope told Kerre Woodham that insurers are incentivised to keep people healthy, as they have to pay out claims if they're not. 

He says it might look like access to different types of medications to keep people out of the hospital, which creates a fence at the top of the cliff as opposed to an ambulance at the bottom. 

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In light of the Green and Te Pāti Māori MPs' visit to the Mongrel Mob pad and their stated determination to restore the mana of the mob, I read Jamie Ensor's piece in the Herald with interest. According to Jamie, Labour hasn't proposed any specific new law and order policies with just days to go until the election. 

Law and order was a big flashpoint at the last election. The cost of living was also big, but law and order was right up there. People were fed up with teenage ram raiders and neighbourhood robbery sprees. Remember the footage, the awful footage from people's home cameras of young children being shoved out of cars, like nine and ten year olds, and pushed over fences in the middle of the night to nick what they could find. 

But this time around, it's the economy, stupid. Law and order isn't a thing because for the most part, there is law and order. Obviously, crime still occurs, but violent crime is down and the gangs aren't so in your face taking over the streets and drumming up business and recruiting young kids on every street corner. And the kids themselves seem to have moved on to another TikTok trend other than ram raids. And to be fair, according to the data, the ram raids were starting, starting to come down by the end of 2023. 

Even for the main opposition party, law and order is not a priority come this election. It seems to be pretty much, yeah, what they're doing, we'll do that. Earlier in the year, Labour promised to repeal the boot camps. Fair enough, if the evidence isn't there to support keeping them, do away with them. They were going to focus on evidence-based interventions. And without explicitly stating what those are, I imagine it would be a continuation of that wrap around support that they introduced in 2023 that was starting to get the ram raids down. Every time a kid was caught, they'd bring in what parents they could find or what caregivers they could find, police, school, social workers, psychologists, the whole shebang. And that did seem to be working. 

Labour has said their thoughts on law and order, if you really want to know what they are, are in the manifesto. And besides, as is quoted in Jamie's piece, "We're campaigning on policies focused on the cost of living, jobs, health, and homes as a priority." That's what they see as the main drivers of the 2026 election. In '23 law and order was a thing. It's a bit like diseases, really, childhood diseases. They were a thing back in our grandparents' day, a really big thing. When vaccinations came in, it was fantastic. And then a couple of generations later, we don't see them anymore. They're not a thing. You don't vaccinate because they're not around, so you don't think of them. Law and order's a bit like that. When, when things are steady as she goes, you don't think about it because you don't have to. 

I spoke to Chris Hipkins' person, and she said she'd get a list of their law and order policies to me. They were updating the website right now because when Jamie did a search on justice, police, crime, nothing came up on the Labour Party website. And I had another check and nope, nothing came up either. It's not a thing for them. They don't see it as something that's going to be a flashpoint for voters this election. 

I'd be really interested to hear your thoughts on this one. When it comes to this election, what are the main things you're focusing on? What is it for you? Are you voting the way you've always voted because that's the way you vote? Are you voting on policies? That's pretty much what I'll be doing. For me, it's education and law and order. They were the things that were really bugging me last time around. I don't think there's a lot you can do about the cost of living. That's international influences and it really wouldn't matter who was in. Yes, Labour contributed to it by spending so much money that was not Covid related on Covid related things, but ultimately, they had to borrow a lot of money, we have to pay it back. I do wonder where they're going to get the money from for the pay parity and that makes me nervous. I don't care about a capital gains tax. I am concerned about who comes in, but I have to hold my nose if I vote National too, given their political partners. Ultimately, what it comes down to is the policies for me. And education, law and order, and that's what I'm going to be voting on. 

What concerns you? One of our callers the other day said he was thinking about the Opportunity Party because of the cost of living. Opportunity Party because he thought he was sick of the others. Another caller said he was going to vote the Greens because of their supermarket, because he was so sick of trying to find the money to pay for the family's household grocery bill. Anything that was going to relieve that he'd look at. So is it the economy, stupid? Is that what concerns you most? Are you looking at the different parties' policies and deciding, or are you just going with who you've always gone for and that's the way it is? 

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Coming out of a difficult winter period for hospitals, New Zealand’s nursing shortage has become an election issue.

New Zealand currently uses Care Capacity Demand Management, which calculates staffing requirements according to patient needs, to determine nursing numbers.

But Andrew Jull, Professor of Nursing at the University of Auckland, argues the evidence from NZ and overseas now makes a strong case for putting minimum nurse-to-patient ratios into law. 

Jull told Kerre Woodham the advantage to having minimum nurse-to-patient ratios is it stops the government from stopping the flow of nurses, allowing for a consistency of health investment. 

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National is promising to take away the right to silence in child murder cases if re-elected. Which might be an enormously popular move. Who doesn't want to see somebody held accountable for the deaths of so many babies and children in this country over the years? But I hope they've done their homework on how exactly they're going to force people to speak and what the unintended consequences might be.  

I really, really don't want multi-million-dollar lawsuits being settled down the line. The party admits sure, the policy may breach the Bill of Rights Act, but says public sentiment towards bringing accountability and justice to unresolved cases outweighs the potential harms arising from it. Paul Goldsmith, National's justice spokesperson, said the party would amend the Crimes Act to make it an offence for a person to withhold information from police when they've been present at a location where a child aged 12 and under has been killed. The Bill of Rights Act and the Crimes Act would probably have to be tinkered with, but Prime Minister Chris Luxon says that's not an insurmountable problem. 

"Yeah, we had the same thing when we banned the gang patches. That was against their rights, you know, what's called a BORA assessment. We've had that in the past as well with whether it's been, you know, alcohol testing and other things I think from memory way back in the day as well. So quite normal, you know, the Attorney General will look at the legislation, may decide it's inconsistent with the rights. That has happened, but equally in this case it's one I think most New Zealanders would sit there and go, yeah, that doesn't feel right and actually there are responsibilities, not just rights." 

Absolutely. If you're going to remain silent, you have a responsibility to give information and if you decide to withhold it to cover your own desperate skin or those of your mates, then there will be consequences. Chief victims advisor Ruth Money says the change could lead to good outcomes and that defendants won't have an excuse to hide behind. 

"It's giving them a reason to speak. At the moment they don't have a reason to speak. They can stay schtum and that baby and the wider family get no justice. You literally get away with killing a child." 

Yeah, and that's that. Former defence lawyer and former Crown prosecutor John Munro was speaking to Mike Hosking Breakfast, but he says coercing people can disadvantage defendants. 

"There's probably very few sort of situations where that's happened where somebody has maintained their right to silence and then somebody hasn't been charged or convicted. There's probably just as many people that have been under right to silence, had been forced under duress or have low IQ or can't, are very intimidated by the police. So there's just as many people on the other side of that coin. It's not very helpful I think to enter into emotive sort of comments." 

But what do you do? I mean, for years we've stood by and watched people, families maintain their right to silence and child murderers go free. Perpetrators of unspeakable trauma on generations of children go free. And that doesn't sit right. I've heard people talking about a change to the right to silence interfering with justice. And that's so wrong. It will interfere with the legal system, sure, I concede that point, but not justice. Justice is when somebody is held accountable for the death of a baby and the trauma to a household of children. The legal system will be impacted if there's change, but changes to the legal system might allow for justice to finally be served. 

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The Greens are under fire with Marama Davidson doubling down on her desire to work with the mob to get positive health outcomes. First there was the photo in the mob headquarters, cha ching, look at us, woo hoo! That was the Greens and Te Pāti Māori MPs popping along to a health hui.  

And when asked about that in faintly judgy tones by the media, Greens co leader Marama Davidson said, "We are open to funding the Mongrel Mob to deliver drug prevention programs. We're open to funding what works. We're an evidence-based party."  And that instead of pushing problems under the carpet, they want to bring problems out into the light, get to the people who are hard to reach, and if that means working with the mob, well, all well and good.  

They have got the receipts already, we will support more of that work. But have they? The thing with receiving government money for pet projects and worthy community initiatives is that you have to show you get results, measured in hard data, before you can get any more dosh. And when it comes to drug rehabilitation and trying to rehabilitate people who are not part of the mainstream, sure, try something different. 

But Labour has tried. Under Jacinda Ardern, they funded the Harry Tam marae-based rehab program for gang members. Harry Tam's a lifelong Mongrel Mob member. The money didn't come from the taxpayer's pocket per se, it came from the Proceeds of Crime Fund, which seemed perverse to critics but logical to supporters: use gang money to rehabilitate gang members.  

But the whole thing boils down to whether or not it worked. And the answer is: who would know? There were 80 participants across nine intakes who went through an eight-week live-in program at Waipawa, followed by two weeks of reintegration and then wrap around support services for six weeks. All of the intakes were drug tested at the beginning, almost all of them testing positive for meth. The program was addiction treatment, then cultural immersion to build self-worth, physical activity programs, and help towards the end of the program with welfare applications, writing CVs and applying for driver's licenses or training courses to make you more employable. 

All very well and good and marvellous, but did it work? Did the graduates kick the meth? Again, who would know? To quote from Derek Cheng's story in the Herald, "an exact figure is not possible from the reports, as only some of them include data for the post program checks, while others have the data redacted." Available data shows that some relapsed at some point, while a minority were using methamphetamine regularly after the program, and this data is caveated as mostly self-reported." And that's the thing, Lynn, as Tom Sainsbury would say. You cannot self-report and rely on anecdotal evidence and reckons if you want more money from the government. You don't get that when you're dealing with the government. They want to know that if they're putting in money, there is a set of measures, there's a set of outcomes, and you have to tick a certain number of them before you can get the money.  

You'll know that if you're working in a not for profit or a community initiative or a community organization. Trying to get funding is really, really difficult, and you have to show that your program works. I feel much the same way about the boot camps.  If they're not working, can them. I don't expect a 100% success rate. You simply won't get that when you're dealing with drug addiction, nor will you get that with lawless kids.  I'm not asking for 100%. You do need a bit more than "it felt really good to talk with the brothers" from the participants. An early evaluation of the program after the first two intakes found of the 22 people who had completed the program, two thirds still used meth, although most said they used less than they used to. 

On the positive side, 65% of those participants self-reported an improvement in their physical health between week one and week eight of the course. Cool. Healthier, fitter, stronger gangsters. And of the 22 unemployed participants who attended the first two intakes, 10 had since found employment of some kind, although whether they're still in employment, who would know.  

Now, if Harry Tam was doing all this through private funders and sponsors, great. Go for it. Show them and see if they want to keep funding the rehab program. If the mob wants to put its members through a rehab program and pay the going rate for a place in a rehab centre for each of the lads, again, go for it. None of our business, good luck, I wish you the best of British. But as every worthy organization reliant on public money needs to know, before we show you the money, you need to show us we're going to get value for it. When Marama Davidson says, hey, we're an evidence-based party," on that level, Harry Tam's rehab program fails. 

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The manager of a popular West Auckland campground is claiming a win with its short-term future being saved. 

The Waitakere Ranges Local Board will again let people camp overnight at Piha Domain, despite the area being a high flood hazard environment.   

It has updated its monitoring and warning systems, occupancy restrictions, evacuation procedures and reporting requirements - with a long-term plan being decided next year.  

Fiona Anderson told Kerre Woodham the community has pulled together to make this happen. 

She says the phone has been ringing constantly this morning, and the bookings are now flooding in.

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Sweet mercy. I don't know about you, but the sight of Green and Te Pāti Māori MPs posturing and posing with members of the Mongrel Mob brought back very bad memories of the bad old days. Remember when gang members were given funding for dubious rehab programs? And when they took over the roads and the streets as they were going to tangihanga or just, you know, going from point A to point B and wanted to put on a show?  

Remember when the Mongrel Mob Kingdom tried to tell New Zealanders, "Hey, look, we're just ordinary everyday members of society who want the best for our kids and our families just like you," who got Don Brash on board with their education trust, and had their own media liaison person, Louise, who would ring me almost on the daily for a while and harangue me for my anti-gang sentiments? This is the same Mongrel Mob Kingdom that said, "Hey, we're not like the other Mongrel Mob. I mean, we might have it in our name, but we're anti-drugs." Bit awks then when the 2IC of the Mongrel Mob Kingdom was jailed for 10 years in 2023 for importing, distributing, and supplying meth and the date rape drug. Cool story, guys. Some of somebody believed it.  

One of the best things about the gang patch ban is that it's stopped the gang members overtly recruiting in my neighbourhood. They used to park up on sunny days on their gleaming bikes on the patch of grass next to the roundabout, and the local kids would ooh, aah around the bikes while these men swaggered and punked around. Now the recruiting is not quite so obvious and not quite so overt, not so bloody shamelessly in the face of the neighbourhood. I couldn't agree more with Casey Costello when she condemned the MPs for their ill-advised photo op. 

"It was beyond despicable. They have done more damage for our fight against organised crime than I think they even realise. You know, these are trying to legitimise themselves and they've just played into their hand and told young people, "Oh, look at these cool guys." Just pathetic. If they want to be treated legitimate, take their damn patches off and meet as individuals. Don't try and come as a collective entity as if you're representing some legitimate business. And I wouldn't allow them into my office. I wouldn't allow them into I wouldn't meet with them full stop. Take your patches off and be treated as individuals." 

Absolutely. Could not agree with her more. And I accept that there are people within gangs who are hardworking, productive members of society. I don't know if you remember Paul who rang us from Kawerau around home detention. People are complicated. The world is not binary. But when you wear that patch, you have to accept that people will judge you on that patch. They've worked very, very hard to build up a reputation around the patch so that as soon as you see it, you know what it stands for. They want to make you fearful. That's the point. And the reason you do feel fearful when you see it is that they associate it with so many violent crimes and drug dealing. It's like working at ZB a bit. You know, there are people who think that everyone who works at ZB is a foaming right-wing racist. They've never listened to any of the shows, but because ZB has been branded that, that's what people believe. And the truth's a little bit more nuanced than that, I hope.  

I think Casey Costello is right. I mean, individuals, absolutely fine. Take off the patch, have a discussion, cool. But these guys look like 16 year olds posing with the gang members inside the pad. "Ooh, look at us flirting with danger. Oh my god, we're just so cool. Just so cool." No, you're not cool. Looks pathetic. And it gives validation to a criminal organisation that that organisation has not earned. 

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Christopher Luxon says National's delivered a lot of what it wanted to this term.  

While taking talkback with Kerre Woodham, a supporter asked why he allowed ACT and New Zealand First to veto National promises after the 2023 election. 

She pointed out although Luxon had expressed support for capping vape stores at 600, in Coalition negotiations he handed NZ First responsibility for regulation of smoking and cessation tools.  

Luxon says voters decided the election, and National had to make that work.  

He says you have to make trade offs, but the minor parties had to sign up to the National Party agenda.   

Another supporter told Luxon he's foolish to rule out working with the Opportunity Party, saying he owes it to New Zealanders to at least have a conversation if Qiulae Wong’s party holds the balance of power. 

Luxon responded with a well-worn answer saying he opposed Opportunity’s land tax policy, despite Wong previously saying it would be worth considering accepting no tax reform next term if it meant forming a government with other policy gains. 

“Taxing New Zealanders is just the wrong thing at the moment.” 

The caller encouraged the National leader to reconsider, saying they don't have to agree with the minor party's policies, but closing the door from the get-go is foolish if they want to get into power.  

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What would you rather? New Zealand jobs in a premium product or cheap materials? The aluminium extrusion industry says the government's decision not to impose a safeguard on imports may have signed the New Zealand industry's death warrant. Under advice from MBIE, the government has rejected a request to give special temporary protection to the aluminium extrusion industry in the face of growing competition from offshore.  

The industry, which manufactures aluminium into products such as windows and door frames, had asked the government for what is known as safeguard protection measures to give it time to adjust to the competition. However, Minister of Commerce Cameron Brewer decided the threshold for a safeguard measure had not been met, which is interesting because the MBIE report noted that the domestic industry had suffered serious injury in recent years. It also said the increase in imports was one source among many, including a contracting domestic market and cost increases. It said while a safeguard measure might help the domestic industry in the short term, it would be likely to raise prices for consumers and would not support New Zealand's trade goals. 

However, it was odd because the industry, who was talking to Mike this morning, said that the MBIE officials had asked them to investigate taking a dumping case. Clearly MBIE thinks that there is a case there, or at least a case to be made, but in the meantime, they're not willing to put in the safeguard protections.  

Dave Slomp, Managing Director of McKenney Aluminium Solutions says what they need in the short term to look after jobs and to ensure that a quality world class product remains on the market. 

"We operate at world-class levels of quality, service, productivity, the envy of the world, and we're an industry that services the New Zealand market extremely well. And what we're seeing here is Chinese extrusion being landed in New Zealand for less than what extruders pay for the raw billet that we make extrusions out of." 

When you are bringing in a product for less than the price of the material in the home country, that is dumping, pure and simple. You would have thought it was an open and shut case. He said it's going to put the country's manufacturers' skilled jobs and critical industry capability at immediate risk. And all very well and good for those of us who want to buy aluminium extrusion products thinking, "Oh yay, they're cheap as chips because the Chinese are dumping their products here." What happens if they decide they're not going to? What happens if they decide that New Zealand's not a market worth bothering about?  

We won't have the product at all because our premium product, our New Zealand made product, will have shut up shop. We've been here before with the imported peaches versus homegrown. The government found that Chinese peaches were in fact being dumped into New Zealand following an investigation of claims made by Heinz Wattie's last year. Again, goods are considered to be dumped if they're exported for less than their normal value in their home country.  The peach industry just took an absolute hammering when all of the imported produce turned up, and despite the fact that tariffs were put on, it was all far too late for the peach growers.  

But ultimately, Heinz Wattie's said we won't be able to can New Zealand peaches because of a declining demand for canned peaches of New Zealand origin. It's a premium product, just like our New Zealand aluminium extrusions. Premium, costs more, and consumers decide with their wallets. The consumers ultimately decided they'd rather have the cheaper imported fruit, and that was the end of the premium product. That's the rub. Ultimately, the consumer will decide. If you're a customer, if you're somebody who is buying aluminium extrusion products, do you want the cheaper or do you want New Zealand aluminium industry safeguarded? 

And I can't understand if MBIE is saying to the industry, "Go ahead, put together a dumping case." Surely, it's incumbent upon them to put safeguards in place to protect the industry while the case is considered. As a consumer living in a free trade world, do you want the cheapest available goods that are on the market globally, or is there some merit in paying more to keep New Zealand jobs here? 

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New Zealand First has confirmed it's not putting out a fiscal plan this election that would detail funding for its promises. 

The plans also allocate extra spending during the term. 

So far, they've been released by Labour, National, and ACT.  

Costly NZ First policies this election include buying the Bank of New Zealand. 

Winston Peters says that could cost as much as $15 billion, but he told Kerre Woodham Governing parties don't need to produce fiscal plans.   

He says the 2026 Budget is New Zealand First's fiscal plan. 

Peters also says people planning to stay here long-term should sign up to being a New Zealander.  

A resident who arrived here as a two-year-old has asked the NZ First Leader why it would make her a more loyal Kiwi to officially become a citizen after 65-years. 

She says she never needed to officially apply for citizenship, but Peters told her he'd have expected her to sign up years ago. 

He says the least we can expect is people to sign up to our country, sign up to our flag, and make this the country of their future. 

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I've seen a few posts on my social media over the past month from young people moaning that "they're locking us out of voting". They, presumably being the rich white patriarchal establishment, us, presumably being the 18 to 24 year olds. What absolute hogwash. Yes, the rules around enrolment have changed and same day enrolment is no longer possible, but they are doing everything they can to get young people registered to vote and have been doing so since time immemorial, since every election.  

In 2020 the Electoral Commission paid 12 Kiwi social media stars a combined $160k or thereabouts to create and share dozens of pieces of nonpartisan content about voting on their TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram, and Facebook pages. Overall, in 2020 the Commission spent $3 million on advertising that targeted 18 to 29 year olds alone. The budgeting bill for advertising was higher than that, but $3 million was spent on younger voters. It'll be more this time round, heaven only knows what's been spent, it'll take an OIA to find out.  

I don't think there's anything wrong with a message that says if you want to vote, you've got to take it seriously. Registering is a very good start to understanding that with rights come responsibilities. If you want to vote, you have to think about it. If you want to vote, you have to get your act together and enrol. A young colleague was saying to me this very morning that an acquaintance of hers, who would describe herself as an activist and will attend a protest march at the drop of a keffiyeh, posted that she wouldn't normally use her platform to encourage people to vote, but this one matters. What is wrong with using your platform to encourage people to vote?  

I know it's a lot harder to think about issues and problems that we have at home, far easier to rig yourself up a witty slogan painted on a placard and get out there and march, be on the six o'clock news, show that you care. Actually showing that you care is registering, voting, taking an interest, reading the policies, things that 18 to 24 year olds are perfectly capable of doing. And interestingly, of those young people who do get off their chuffs and enrol to vote, they show up on election day.  

Mike was quoting a story from the Herald this morning that showed in '23, 74% of young people who were enrolled to vote did in fact cast their vote. They were the biggest proportion of the enrolled voting population to actually use the power of their vote to cast it. It matters. In our household, I think we've got three of us voting differently across the spectrum. And that's okay, that's democracy, and aren't we lucky to live in a society where men and women can debate political matters, can turn up without fear of getting mown down to cast their vote, to know that for all its faults and for all a few spot issues, voting is fair, you're not going to get corruption at the ballot box.  

It's an imperfect society in which we live. Very few of us going to get a government that we're passionate about. For a lot of us, turning up to vote is going to be holding your nose and ticking the box. But it matters. And if young people cannot be bothered, not be sufficiently informed to understand that they have to enrol to vote, they can't rock up on voting day, then perhaps they shouldn't be in possession of a vote. If they don't care enough, they're not informed enough to know that they need to be enrolled, fine by me if they don't cast their vote. 

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Well, it looks like a matter of when, not if, given that Barbara Edmonds and Nicola Willis, Finance Minister and Finance spokesperson respectively, were appearing on Jack Tame's Q&A yesterday, and they've agreed they'll work together on the future of superannuation in this country.

This is Nicola Willis:

"We can afford superannuation right now, but in the future the settings are going to have to change in order to ensure that it's sustainable and that every Kiwi knows that they can rely on the government to support them in their retirement. If we don't make changes, we are going to end up in a situation where we can't foot that bill. So what National has said for a couple of elections now, is let's come together and agree on a date in the future when we will start progressively, modestly increasing the age of eligibility in a way that is predictable and fair on New Zealanders, so that younger generations coming through don't miss out on the entitlement that people today are getting. And we have called on Labour to work with us on that, to do this in a way that's open, honest, transparent and fair."

And Barbara Edmonds, Labour's finance spokesperson, said absolutely, they're more than happy to have an accord, but they want to look at the wider issues around superannuation:

"Well, ultimately it comes down to the full retirement system. The conversation with New Zealanders needs to be what is KiwiSaver, when you have these large sums of money, what does that decumulation framework look like as people start to spend that money? What does universal super look like when contributions are being stopped by Governments? How do we stop that flip flop? How does housing, what does housing look like for our aged care? Is that part of that wider aged care system? Is it retirement homes? Are we building sufficient social housing to meet that need? So that conversation around universal super needs to happen within the wider conversation around the retirement system as a whole. What do Kiwis expect when they go to retire, young and old right now, and how do we get there?"

So big questions, but the agreement was around an accord to sit down together and work out, thrash out when and how the age of universal super will be raised. And ACT has always said they want to raise the superannuation age by three months every year, put contributions to the New Zealand Super Fund on hold, and they would include compassionate access for those who'd spent a substantial portion of their career in physically demanding jobs.

David Seymour spoke to Tim Beverage on Newstalk ZB yesterday:

"People are living much longer and having far fewer children. That means that the number of taxpayers per retiree is going down. Every other country is raising its age of entitlement to superannuation. And I know there's people who will try and get a few votes by saying, oh that guy's wrong, vote for me, we'll keep it all the same. I don't think that that is putting New Zealand's long term interests first. I think it's important that we make the adjustment, but we do it slowly so people can plan for it. It goes from 65 to 67 it affects no one that's already retired, and we do a few other things."

So National, Labour, ACT, all in agreement that the age of entitlement needs to go up, and it's just ironing out the finer points. I still don't understand why we would be giving superannuation to people who do not need it.

On the 1st of November 1898 New Zealand was the first in the world to give an old age pension, which we call the Super these days. There was stringent criteria, including open court hearings to attest that you were of good moral character before you could receive it. How many of the old rockers would pass that now, I wonder to myself? Myself included. 

Through the Social Security Act in 1938 a two tier public pension system was introduced, and that lasted up until the 1970s, and then New Zealand Super became the Super that we have today, that Super's been around for more than 50 years without any kind of changes, which seems bizarre. 

So in the beginning we had means testing and open court hearings for good moral character. I think we'll do away with those, thinking purely of myself here, I don't think we need to go through those.

In the 1930s, they changed it to a Super, but there was also means testing as well. In the 1970s it was just universal, didn't matter if you were a billionaire or not, you got the Super. Benefits and taxpayer funded payments these days tend to go to people who need them, other than Super. That just goes to everybody.

I'd love to hear from those of you 60 and under, because this is who it's really going to affect. All of you over 60 you don't have to worry. If it goes up as of the next Government, it'll be three months at a time, it's neither here nor there really.

But for those 60 and under, this is who it's really going to affect. Super in the future as far as I'm concerned would look like it does in Australia. 67 means and asset tested, and a resident of the country. 

And like ACT, I think there should be the ability to get the Super early if you're in a truly physical job where your body's breaking down, or a really high stress job where you're exposed to all sorts of trauma, like a frontline responder or something like that.

But hopefully by the time somebody who's working now, who's 35 gets to 67 they'll have a good healthy sum locked away in their KiwiSaver. Hopefully they'll have their own house because you'll be able to buy one at a good price around about now. And then the super will be there as a backup, but if you need it.

Take it back to the future, take it back to how it was originally intended, so that it was mainly for single men, because in the olden days they believed that family should look after you. If you were a single man, you were stuffed once you got old and couldn't work anymore, so it was primarily for the single men who didn't have family that could take them in.

But keep it for those who need it, the same way that we give the dole to those who need it while they're looking for work in an ideal world, the sickness benefit, disability benefit, working for families benefit, for those people who need it. Not just holus bolus as a little yay for you, you survived to 65.

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National's Erica Stanford says the Government's put a lot of work into boosting educational outcomes - and she wants students to improve. 

The Party is campaigning on requiring students to stay in school until they finish Year 11, rather than being able to leave as soon as they turn 16.

Stanford says the best place for these young people to be is in school, where they can get the proper support they need. 

"Where is the best place for a 16-year-old who feels like that? In our school, where we know where they are, we can wrap around supports, we can put these things in place where we can have the guidance counsellors and the careers councillors talking to them." 

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Northland's MP believes National's plan to introduce drug testing for beneficiaries is a smart move. 

It's proposing ten thousand random drug tests next year – ramping up over the years. 

It also wants to reduce payments from April 2028 for people who've collected it for two of the previous three years, with a smaller cut for those with children. 

Grant McCallum told Kerre Woodham there are employers who have casual work or things like fruit picking available, but can't get workers because they can't pass a drug test. 

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Everyone on board vessels up to six metres in length must wear a lifejacket, starting from today. 

Maritime NZ says the nationwide rule means all people heading out on the water have a better chance of coming home.  

On average, 17 people die in recreational boating accidents each year, with two thirds not wearing properly-fitted jackets. 

Maritime NZ's Matt Wood told Kerre Woodham the rule change not only lifts the minimum standard nationally, but removes the regional differences, which makes the overall messaging clearer.  

He says they believe it will make a tangible difference, as when this rule was introduced in Tasmania in 2001, fatal boating numbers halved straight away and have stayed that way since. 

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Anybody who is taking money from the rest of us because they can't find a job should be ready, willing, and able to work when work is there to get. There should be an unwritten contract, and I think there is amongst most of us, that we as New Zealanders look after our fellow New Zealanders when they need a hand up until they can get back on their feet and get back into providing for themselves and providing for others who might suffer misfortune. And if people are simply using the money the rest of us are giving them to sit around at home and do drugs or skip off to the beach with their barbecue or wander through the wheat fields whistling, then sure, of course there should be penalties.  

But why didn't National introduce the "get tough on druggy beneficiaries" when they were running the government, when they introduced traffic light rules around beneficiaries in the welfare system? If they believed in it so strongly, why didn't they do it then? To do it now, to say, "oh well, vote for us and this'll happen", when they're languishing in the polls looks desperate and cynical and plays into the hands of their opponents. "Oh, we're not polling well. I know, let's bash druggy beneficiaries because the punters will love that." And indeed the punters will.  

But unemployment is at an 11 year high. The economy is not booming despite the promises National made last election. Drug use is rampant and while that I do not believe is something the Government can fix, the need for more detox centres and public rehab clinics is acute. Total government-funded mental health and addiction beds tracked by Health New Zealand increased from 1,317 to 1,368 over the past 12 months. An extra 51 beds is great, but that's like sticking your finger in the dyke, the need is so great. Perhaps 5,100 beds would be more meaningful and make more of an impact. What do you do if you live in Kaitaia or Moerewa or Ohakune where sawmills are closing and factories are shutting down? No, if you're not going to sit around and take drugs, you're going to move to Australia. That's what you're going to do.  

I do not think it is unreasonable to expect people to be ready for work when they're taking money from you and me, but I do think we need to be slightly more aware that for some young people and definitely for some older people, finding a job in a recession that's been engineered and that hasn't recovered as quickly as the Government promised might be a bit tough. And that addiction services might need more funding to try and get people off their drugs and more ready for work. Had National announced a one two yesterday, drug testing for beneficiaries and more funding for rehab, I might believe the assertions that it's all about the young people. As it is, I think yesterday's announcement was more about helping their list MPs claw their way back into Parliament. 

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This election is highlighting yet another war being fought on the ideological battleground that is education. Charter schools, as they operate now, are in the sights of Labour because they're doing something different. To be fair, Labour's never liked the idea of schools operating under their own curriculum. Nothing new there. As Chris Hipkins told Mike Hosking this morning, they're all for new ideas in education, so long as the schools follow the party line. 

CH: I believe that when you're spending public money on education, there needs to be good, strong accountability. Schools, there should be a level playing field. There are gaps in our education system. Some of those charter schools are doing interesting things. They can do that within the public education system. 

MH: Interesting or good? 

CH: Well, some of them are good. And but we demonstrated last time, I think of the charter of the schools that were set up as charter schools last time, most of them are still operating. They're still operating within the public education system and they're operating successfully. 

Yes, but under the party line, aren't they? Not doing their own thing. Partnership schools, as they were once known, opened in 2014 born out of frustration from parents who could see the state school system was failing their children. They were closed by the Labour Government in 2018 and either shut their doors or became state integrated or special character schools. The charter school model was brought back following the 2023 election. David Seymour, the Associate Education Minister and champion of charter schools, says families are choosing charter schools precisely because they offer something different.  

You can see by attendance whether they're working for parents or not. Seymour cites Northwest College. That grew from 22 students in March 2025 to 150 by July of this year. Five of the first seven charter schools, he says, exceeded their attendance targets in the first year. Five exceeded their achievement targets. At Tipene, initial assessments on February 25th found more than half of students were below expected level in maths, reading, and writing. By the end of the year, 81% were achieving at or above the expected level in maths, 79% in reading, 80% in writing. 

Parents are choosing to take their children to these different schools. Schools that are run differently, that operate differently, because their kids run and operate differently on different programs. You know, a state school education works pretty well for most kids. The quality of it, well, we can debate that, but for most kids, they fit in. The school suits them, they suit the school. But for other kids, it doesn't. It doesn't work at all. And until the charter schools came along, there was really very little you could do. You just had to try and mash a square peg into a round hole. And it wasn't comfortable for either the school or the student or the family. 

If you've got a school that opens with 22 students in March 2025 and then just over a year later the school rolls grow to 150, doesn't that indicate that the school is working? And it's working because parents are telling each other about it, they're sharing the results they're getting with their children. They're saying we don't have to come and pick up the child from school because they simply cannot be there. They're saying our child is willing to get up and go to school. That is a win for a lot of families. Forget about what happens when they get there. The fact they walk through the school gates is a win for a lot of families. 

And there's got to be flexibility. I just cannot understand why everybody has to march to Labour's drumbeat. You know, what about what happened to interpretive dance off on the side somewhere? You know, some people are more interpretive dancers than they are rigidly marching in formation. And if the schools are working, if there's accountability, if the teachers are accredited, if you're ticking boxes and teachers and principals and families have the freedom to find the best way to educate a certain cohort of children, then everybody wins. The poor little square pegs who are trying to be mashed into the round hole aren't disrupting the rest of the class. The teachers aren't expected to do specialist teaching when they're generalists. They're not feeling frustrated and cross because they can't give that one child everything that one child needs and they know they're not giving the other 32 the time and attention they deserve.  

I just don't understand why, so long as you've got quality control, and surely the parents would dictate that, if you've ticked off all the quality control boxes, why can't Labour let people educate their own children the best way they see fit? 

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Hopes new rules will stop people stripping our beaches of kaimoana. 

From November 1st there will be a ban on collecting and recreational gathering of shellfish and mussels from Auckland and Coromandel's rockpools and intertidal zones. 

There will also be daily limits on crabs, octopus, prawns, sea cucumbers, and squid. 

Protect Whangaparaoa Rockpools founder Mark Lenton told Kerre Woodham a local ban on Whangaparaoa, which started in March, has done wonders.  

He says there's been a natural regeneration of life.  

However, Lenton says guarding the coastlines can be a dangerous job as the law can be tough to enforce.  

He says fisheries officers wear stab-proof vests and he's been threatened while patrolling. 

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Well last night I took my mum to the Q Theatre to see a performance of Joseph and his Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat, which was fantastic. Last couple of days, I really recommend you get along and see it – I think there's a few tickets left. It was fantastic. And then I had to come home and watch the leaders' debate on demand, and I know what I'd rather have been watching, that's for sure. I agree with Mike, the format of these "debates", in inverted commas, because they're not debates. A debate as I remember it from our cup winning Sacred Heart debating team, was where each speaker got the chance to make a speech around a certain premise or topic, why I would be the best Prime Minister for New Zealand, and then the second speaker got a chance to argue against it and rebut and finesse some of the points that were made by the first speaker. It was a proper speech, debate, argument, considered, reasoned. This is not a debate. I'd say it's a television performance. And I was listening to Mike this morning and he said that he was arguing against the format in 1997, and I couldn't agree more. Oh no, 2017 but he was probably arguing about it in 1997 as well. It's outmoded, past its use by date. 

I thought Jack Tame did as good a job as he could given the format. He was very even handed, but he's trying to cover so many topics. I didn't learn anything I didn't already know. But then I have to remember that I'm in a privileged position where I talk the news every single day. I'm reading, absorbing, digesting the news, party political statements, press releases every single day, and most people have the luxury of not having to do that. So I didn't learn anything I didn't already know. And the single word yes or no answers, again it comes back to the fact that's not a debate, it's a performance. It's not elucidating, it's not insightful – all you got to see was who was better on the telly than the other. And on that, within the limitations of the format, I thought Chris Hipkins was very good. He came across well, he acknowledged work that National had done, recognised where he believed he could have done better when he was Prime Minister. I thought he came across well. And Christopher Luxon was way better than I thought he was going to be. I thought Chris Hipkins would wipe the floor with him, but he coped well in that environment. 

Ultimately did we learn anything though? That's what I keep coming back to. I get far more from the hour that I get to have with each leader where they can sit down and have the time to properly talk, they can articulate policy, you get to hear a bit about the person. And while I accept that my questioning is more gentle nibbling from a toothless chihuahua than a kind of mauling from an attack dog, Jack didn't really get the opportunity in that format to do the good hard attacking journo questions either. You get far more of that on Q&A, where you can see again that Jack's really done his homework and puts them to the sword when he gets the party/political leaders in. I think we'd have learned more having reruns of Q&A on in that time slot than that debate. More of the long form, less of last night really.  

The only thing that really came back when I was, and again I didn't watch it all including the ads, I was skimming through it, but you'd have to wonder why anyone under 50 would vote for Labour when they won't even look at options around the Super. There were some truly dumb questions in there, and I'd have to ask why Christopher Luxon just will not work with Opportunity. Like flat out. I mean he might not want to, but could he not be a little bit more accommodating perhaps in his language? Anyway, love to hear your thoughts on this if you were good citizens and endured and watched, I'd love to hear your feedback. But seriously, there's some really good pieces in the Listener where Danyl McLauchlan has gone through and is looking at policy and each party's response to it and the experts are giving their opinions on whether it's good, bad or ugly policy. There are hour long debates with the different spokespeople on their portfolios. I've got the hours with the party leaders. I'm not sure I'll watch another debate. I just don't get enough out of it to make me invest that time. 

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Finally, after much hinting and promising and ooh, winking and teasing, Labour's revealed how it will fund the core pay equity policy it has been promising for the past three years.

Except that they didn't.

"In terms of being able to pay for pay equity, you'll see there's plenty of headroom within the fiscal plan that we've released today. We have a $10 billion unallocated amount of headroom. We've got multi billion dollars for health cost pressures and many of the pay equity claims are within the health system. So we're confident we will be able to meet the costs of pay equity within the flexibility that we've built into the plan."

That was Chris Hipkins at the launch yesterday. So under a Labour coalition Government from the 1st of January 2027, care and support workers, who are the ones who kicked off the whole pay equity drive and who are the first to have had their claim settled, would receive an immediate pay rise of $4 an hour.

That's $2.5 billion right there. But there is no mention of how the 33 other settlements waiting in the wings will be settled.

There was an allusion to the fact that the midwives and those associated with the health sector who have their pay equity claims waiting to be settled, that might be accounted for within the health budget, but not really because further along in the fiscal plan, Labour stayed pretty close to the National Government's party line. 

So the surplus is going to arrive in the exact same year as National promised it would. Core crown spending would continue to drop relative to the rest of the economy.

It would be slightly higher than National spending, but not much. And when it comes to health, cost pressures in health are forecast to be the same under both National and Labour and the narrow budget operating allowance is exactly the same.

When he says that they're going to be able to settle the healthcare workers' equity claims and he said, oh well and that will come in under health, well not really because if they're saying that they think that the cost pressures will be the same, that's if you don't take the pay equity claims into account.

That really is become an albatross around their necks. They have been promising this for three years. They excoriated the coalition Government for not settling the claims.

But I still can't see it myself. I mean, you might be able to. Chris Hipkins said, look, we've got $10 billion to play with and that came from PREFU and that's what the coalition Government said is around. But that will be it.

If you lead a Labour led coalition, there might just be the ability to settle equity claims, but there'll be nothing else. No money for anything else at all. And that includes anything that the coalition partners might want to spend on.

All very well and good to say - we're Labour and this is what we're going to spend every spare cent on. We're going to die on this hill. And that's fine. That's Labour's choice and that's the people who vote for them, that's their choice and that's great.

But what about the Greens, Te Pāti Māori and possibly the Opportunity party? I mean, the Opportunity party's not asking for much, just get us into Parliament please, anything.

But the Greens have got a shopping list and I can't imagine savvy political operators like Chlöe Swarbrick and Marama Davidson saying, oh yeah okay, no you settle those claims, that's absolutely fine.

Barbara Edmonds, Labour's finance spokesperson, says just because Treasury has costed pay equity claims at around $13 billion and rising, it doesn't mean that's what the bill will be.

She says it's all about negotiation and Labour's fiscal plan is credible because as she told Mike Hosking this morning on the Mike Hosking Breakfast, she knows her stuff.

"I'm absolutely credible. You've asked me a whole bunch of questions and I've answered them every single one. I'm absolutely credible. This is not my first rodeo, as another politician would say. This is my 17th budget I've had to analyse. I've been in tax for over 10 years. I know my stuff and this is why our fiscal plan is credible."

Well yeah, I mean she has got a great track record, but she can't sit there spinning and weaving and making gold out of straw, can she?  

If you've been taking an interest in politics, you'll have heard Labour's announcement over the weekend. Do you think it adds up? Nicola Willis doesn't, in a stunning revelation.

She says the release of the plan over the weekend was an opportunity for Chris Hipkins and Barbara Edmonds to make Labour's numbers add up and they've failed. She says far worse than anyone could have expected.

She says Labour says the rest of the money to fully restore the previous pay equity scheme will come from cost pressure funding. 

If that's true, she says, that would mean taking almost every dollar of unallocated funding for the next four budgets, which will mean nothing for schools, police, prisons, defence and other frontline social services. So who do you believe?

Labour says they won't be putting up any taxes other than the ones they've already stated. Where's the money going to come from?

I'm sure Barbara Edmonds is a very savvy negotiator. I'm not entirely sure she can negotiate $13 billion and rising down to three or four billion. And even then it's still not much to come and go on.

If you are big on pay equity, do you believe in it sufficiently to have every last spare cent that the Government has spent on it? Is that how important it is to you?

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The topic of New Zealand-owned banks is arising again, with NZ First pitching to buy back BNZ to bolster competition. 

Kiwibank is already New Zealand-owned, but only holds a little over 6% of the lending market, raising the question – how much do Kiwis actually care about backing a Kiwi bank? 

Kiwibank CEO Steve Jurkovich told Kerre Woodham that they've been in operation for much less time than some of those bigger banks —around 25 years compared to over 150— so they've had less time and capital to grow. 

Jurkovich told Woodham they could always be bigger and have more impact, but over the last few years they've been growing pretty strongly. 

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I talked about accountability this time last month, specifically about MBIE boss Nick Blakely. You'll remember that the Privileges Committee found Blakely and former Immigration New Zealand head Alison McDonald deliberately misled —what you and I know as lying— Parliament. The Privileges Committee said their conduct was an insult to the public service, and yet who's the current head of MBIE? Nick Blakely. Doesn't seem to have bothered him. Sure Alison McDonald's gone on to a nice board somewhere. She won't be locked up at home, covered in sackcloth and ashes, rueing and repenting. 

Now we have the Greater Wellington Regional Council filing charges against the Wellington City Council and Wellington Water for the catastrophic failure of the Moa Point wastewater plant, with the Wellington City Council and Wellington Water facing $100 million fines if the prosecutions are successful. And in the same week, we have the CEO of Tauranga City Council, Marty Grenfell, resigning after the deadly landslide at Mount Maunganui. A report found that the council had been warned repeatedly over many years that there was a risk of landslides to those staying at the Mount Maunganui Holiday Park at the base of the mount, and yet the reports were shelved, never read, didn't go to the right people, whatever. 

Right up until a matter of months ago, there were reports warning of the dangers. Systemic failure at the council, and the guy in charge, Marty Grenfell, initially says he's staying, he's not resigning. Hell no. No, the buck does not stop with the top guy. No, he's staying because it wasn't his fault and he's the best person to fix the systemic failures at the council. Then all of a sudden, after a closed door meeting earlier this week, he's resigned and his last day's today. 

Now you cannot tell me that that man had an epiphany and a sudden attack of moral conscience. "Oh no, hang on a minute, the reason I get the big bucks is because the buck does stop with me. I was in charge when the latest reports came out warning of the failures. Maybe I should resign." No. He would have been persuaded to go and part of that persuasion would have been a golden handshake. Now I don't know if that's true, nobody's talking. Feel free to ring up and prove me wrong and say, "No, Kerre, incorrect. He did not get a golden handshake and a payout." But I reckon he would. 

You and I know, this is the thing about getting old, you're supposed to know stuff, but the older I get, the more confused I seem to be becoming. Because you and I know that when we stuff up, if our careless actions or our lack of due diligence, even just a moment's inattention, results in death or damage or environmental disaster, by crikey we're held accountable. Our names become public, we're dragged through the courts, we're financially ruined, in the worst cases we go to jail. 

But these guys, they keep their jobs, Nick Blakely, or they're paid a fortune to leave, I strongly suspect Marty Grenfell. And if we want to see any organisation taken to court, as you would, say, a big private company that was spilling waste into the river or the sea, then they would be prosecuted. The taxpayer would prosecute them and they, as the private company, would have to pay monumental fines. But in this case, if we want to see people who've made the most appalling errors that have resulted in a loss of life degradation of the environment on a massive scale, we have to not only fix the damage they've caused as ratepayers and taxpayers where we can, we then have to pay to prosecute them through the courts and if we're successful, we end up paying the fine. 

How does that work? There has got to be a system somewhere on this silly spinning rock that we call planet Earth, there has got to be somewhere where there is a structure by which public servants can be held personally liable. If you can have the CEO of the Ports of Auckland held personally responsible for the deaths of those on his watch, can we not have individuals who get paid the big money because they are responsible for these big organisations? Can they not be held personally responsible too? That only seems fair. How is it that as ratepayers, taxpayers, private individuals, we're held accountable, we've got our heels held to the fire, these guys either stay in their job, Nick Blakely, walk away with wads of cash, pick a CEO any CEO after systemic failure of the organisations they've run, or you've got something like Moa Point and we pay and we pay and we pay and they never do. 

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How big is his hole? Nicola Willis was asking Grant Robertson back in 2023, where are you going to find the money to fill that Government's financial fiscal hole? And now yesterday, she says that Labour has another fiscal hole to fill and it's a beauty. She told us yesterday when she was a guest in studio that there is no way Labour can afford to fund their pay equity promises, far less many of the other promises they're making to voters. Labour in response has said, well just taihoa, all will be revealed when our fiscal plan is produced sometime soon.  

Now some of this is electioneering and there's a surprise given we're in the middle of an election campaign. For example, National says that Labour's promise to fund public transport for many parts of the country, up to a certain point, will come out of the Crown balance sheet. Labour says absolutely not, they'll take the money from the Land Transport Fund. They won't pay for something that's been promised out of the Land Transport Fund. They won't pay for that, they'll pay for their public transport fares. It's called reprioritisation – the money does exist for the public transport fares, they just won't pay for something else. Some of the funding though is a mystery. I have no idea where they think they're going to get 11, 13, 14 and counting billion dollars for pay equity. Chris Hipkins, opposition leader, is adamant the money can be found within the budget as he told Mike Hosking yesterday. 

CH:We're going to set out in our plan, you know, we're going to demonstrate in our fiscal plan, you know, when we set out our breakdown of numbers that we have room there to pay for pay equity. What I said yesterday, and you know, there's a bit of divining tea leaves has been going on here, is that we're not going to have a specific line item, but the, our fiscal plan will clearly demonstrate that there is money in there to be able to meet the cost of pay equity. 

MH:So why isn't it a line item? 

CH:Because you don't basically, when you're going through a bargaining process, you don't tell the other side what's in the envelope. And you know, we wouldn't do that with any other process of bargaining. We've never done that with pay equity. The Crown has never put a line item in the budget that said here's how much we're setting aside for pay equity, but it has been there. And our fiscal plan will be the same. 

MH: It'll be about $12 or $13 billion. Is that fair though? Within that ballpark, that's what we're dealing with. 

CH:We certainly expect it to be a big number. 

Yeah, so it's going to be a big number. If it's coming from the budget, that's 13, 14, 15, whatever billion —billion, not million— that won't be spent on something else. And I don't know that there's that much wiggle room. The free doctors visits aren't going to be funded by a capital gains tax, I think surely even Labour's accepted that, given that Treasury forecasts house prices not going up anytime soon. Something else will have to be cut to fund those. Nicola Willis has accused Labour of fiscal fraud, but until Labour finally comes up with their fiscal plan, it's a bit like waiting for Keri Hulme to come up with a sequel to The Bone People. You should, I suppose, give them the benefit of the doubt. But do you believe it is in any way possible for any party to find —let's be generous— $10 billion from the budget without ripping the guts out of the essentials and without undoing the hard work that we have endured over the past three years? Where the hell do you imagine it's going to come from? 

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I really like the idea of David Seymour's to turn the old teachers' training college in Epsom into a new co-ed public school. I like even more the idea that it not be zoned. In David Seymour's ideal world, the lovely old 37 acre site that is owned by the University of Auckland and currently lies empty would be jointly operated by two of the top state schools in the country, Auckland Grammar and Epsom Girls Grammar. They're both bursting at the seams with the number of students wanting entry through their gates. If the land that the teachers' training college is on right now was sold and used for more housing, there'd be even more pupils knocking on the door looking for entry at Auckland Grammar and Epsom Girls Grammar. If it was retained for educational purposes, in this case a school, not a teachers' training college, it would also mean there's a bit of green grass in a highly intensified area.  

I love the idea of it being available to any student across Auckland, no zoning, which begs the question around zoning full stop. Why should your child have to go to the state school nearest you? Why should you not be able to shop around and decide for yourself which school aligns with your child's educational abilities, your child's educational needs, and with your family's values? Is zoning archaic? Being told you have to go there, you don't have a choice. School zones don't just affect education, they also affect property prices too. Zones drive up housing and rental prices in sought after areas, sometimes adding massive premiums to homes near top performing schools, and buying into the area, even if you might have gone to that school and you'd quite like your children to go there, but you can't afford to get there, your family connections count for nothing.  

Is your child going to the school you want them to go to, or are they having to go to the one that's in your zone? And if you have been resigned to the fact that they have to go to the one that's in zone, are you happy with it, or given the choice, would you send them somewhere else that you think delivers more on your aspirations, your belief about what education should look like? Should families be able to decide for themselves where their children receive their education? Is it time to put an end to zoning full stop and just let parents decide? Are you for or against the idea and the reality of zoning? If you could, would you send your child to another school, or are you perfectly happy with the one you've got now? And for those who are living in the leafy suburb of Epsom, what's the ideal use of the vacant teachers' training college? A school? Sold for more housing? I think I know what you'd prefer. 

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The idea of a new co-ed school in the Auckland suburb of Epsom came from the schools involved – Epsom Girls and Auckland Grammar. 

ACT Leader and Epsom MP David Seymour says the idea is to ease pressure on the existing single-sex schools. 

He'll campaign on acquiring Auckland University's $150 million site, formerly used for teacher training and which currently sits empty. 

Seymour told Kerre Woodham the heads of EGGS and Grammar have had this idea in the works for months. 

He says Brenda McNaughton and Tim O'Connor approached him, have the backing of their boards, and are very serious. 

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The Finance Minister says tough choices aren't just made for the sake of it with the Crown books now opened for pre-election scrutiny. 

It shows we're on track for a good surplus in the 2028/29 financial year, with a much smaller current deficit than expected. 

But it’s not entirely rosy, with predictions slashed on house price growth, more money needed for health, and concerns over Super costs 

Nicola Willis told Kerre Woodham she's pushed to re-prioritise spending for a reason. 

She says she's reduced back-office costs and stopped programmes that weren't working, so she could find the money to invest in things Kiwis really want. 

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The centre-right bloc is at odds over voting strategies. 

Christopher Luxon and former leader John Key implored voters at National's campaign launch to simply party vote National and ignore any call for strategic voting. 

The strategy is aimed at creating an overhang and maximising the number of aligned MPs in Parliament. 

Key told Kerre Woodham for the Coalition, it would result in a lot more ACT and NZ First ministers, trading talented National ministers like Nicola Willis, Chris Bishop, or Paul Goldsmith for people voters have potentially never heard of and don't want. 

He says if you broadly want a National Government, then vote for what you want instead of potentially ending up with buyer's remorse. 

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There's an old saying, "you're so sharp you could cut yourself". Similar to "you're too clever for your own good", meaning sometimes a person tries to be too tricky or clever, which leads them to make a simple task messy or fail completely. And that is the warning being given by the main parties to voters who are trying to rig the system.  

To be fair, Te Pāti Māori started it this election with the message to their voters in the Māori electorates to give the party their candidate vote, while leaving the party vote entirely up to the individual voter. The understanding being, of course, that anyone voting for a Te Pāti Māori candidate in the Māori seats will be voting for a party from the left block. That strategy could lead to the creation of an overhang where there are more seats in Parliament, and following the message from Te Pāti Māori, more seats in Parliament for a left block. Now supporters of the Coalition Government are asking their voters to do the same thing, split their votes in order to get an overhang. An overhang happens when a party wins more electorate seats than its share of the party vote should entitle it to. This grows the size of Parliament and skews its proportionality. It means the shape of Parliament does not reflect the overall party vote. Don Brash was the first to call for National voters to give their electorate vote to National and party vote ACT or New Zealand First.  

Harry Mowbray, father of the rich listers, is trying to get a campaign going to do the same thing. If you heard him on Heather du Plessis Allan last night, you'd have heard him explaining how it works. The maths wasn't mathsing for me when I listened to Harry. My brain was trying to crunch the numbers, and the cogs weren't working when I was listening, but my young boss said, well just look at Te Pāti Māori, there's the overhang. The party vote does not entitle them to any seats in Parliament, but they have six electorate seats. When it comes to National, basically it means that if National's going to, according to Harry's calculations, get all of its electorate seats, the party vote would just entitle it to those same electorate seats, whereas if you party vote for New Zealand First or ACT, it will give them more seats that they couldn't get through an electorate.  

Henry Cooke in the Post has a piece outlining Harry Mowbray's attempt to game the political system. And I like Henry's writing, but the editorial starts, "there's an attempt, a very nascent one, from a very rich right wing man to fundamentally skew the New Zealand election." Well yes, but there's nothing in there about Te Pāti Māori, who, without resorting to seven-year-old playground tactics, started it. Where's the mention about Te Pāti Māori's call to its party faithful? Come on Henry, be fair. There's also a call, a very nascent one, from very left leaning Te Pāti Māori politicians to fundamentally skew the New Zealand election. You could have started the column just like that. So they're both doing it. The fact that we have a political system that allows this is just a nonsense. It just shows the flaws of MMP. It also, and that was something Willie Jackson pointed out and it's something that New Zealand First Winston Peters pointed out, puts the Māori seats at risk. If you're going to play silly buggers was their message, you'll lose the seats.  

It's all too complicated for me really. I get where voters are annoyed with National. They might think that National hasn't gone far enough, and that's what happened to Labour. Labour had the opportunity to bring in sweeping reformist change with their absolute majority. They chose not to, they chose to squander that, so their supporters were really grumpy and flounced off to the minor parties. If you're a bit cross, but you like your electorate MP who happens to be National, you vote National and then say, oh, I'm going to give my party vote to ACT, that'll toughen them up, that'll teach them a lesson. But doing that sometimes, as Sir John Key warned, can give you unintended consequences and can mean that you are being so sharp you'll cut yourself, and then you'll be sorry. Is anybody thinking that they're being clever, or is it just pure emotion? You're grumpy with the way your party's performed, be it Labour or National, so you're going to give your party vote to the minor parties like the Greens, like ACT, to give them a bit more grunt in coalition talks, or you're trying to be clever and play the system. 

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Health New Zealand's adamant health outcomes remain positive and are turning a corner.  

Health's under scrutiny ahead of the election, with workers and unions calling for more support.  

The Government's acknowledged struggles, but claims wait times, cancer treatment, and child immunisation rates are getting better. 

Health NZ Chief Executive Dale Bramley told Kerre Woodham there are other improvements beyond waiting lists and EDs.  

He says life expectancy continues to rise.

Bramley also says he wants every nursing student to find employment, but admits there are caveats.  

There've been ongoing concerns around students struggling to get work, despite unions and workers crying out for staff. 

Labour's promising every eligible New Zealand-trained graduate a job from next year if elected.  

The CEO told Woodham Health New Zealand's recently announced they will take 800 new grads. 

But he says employment also relates to the ensuring the right mix of skills, and it's not just about Health New Zealand, noting there are other places that take nursing grads. 

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The election campaign officially kicked off over the weekend with the two main parties, but honestly, it feels like we've been in campaign mode for years now.

National and Labour gathered their party faithful in their respective happy places: the swanky International Convention Centre for the blue team, Dew Drop Events Centre in South Auckland for the red team.

Both had their party heavyweight champions in their corners: John Key and Bill English in the blue corner, Helen and Peter Clark in the red. Both Chrises had their senior ministers alongside them.

Only one party came up with something new, and that was Labour, using the same old election trick that Helen Clark used so well in 2005 appealing to student voters, using the student loans to pull them in.

This time Labour promised to cut the loans by 10 percent if New Zealand grads stay in the country for three years. But apart from Chris Hipkins being a bit sweary, trying to get a bit sort of - "wahey, I'm the man" on it in South Auckland, that was it really.

For both parties, the launches pretty much reeked of desperation. National knows the parlous state of the economy and so cannot and will not promise election treats. 

I don't know what's driving Labour. Getting back into power at any cost? Showing that they're not as useless as they were last time? I don't know. 

ACT, in response to Labour's student loan bribe, released a press release which I think pretty much sums up where we're at. They said paying down debt and returning to surplus is job number one for any Government serious about unlocking New Zealand's potential.

We pay $24.8 million a day servicing the interest on our debt. In 2018-19 it was $10.1 million a day servicing the interest on our debt. 

ACT says this is the 'back to the future' election for Labour: they're promising higher taxes, higher spending, more complicated monetary policy, and billions of dollars of promises without showing how the books add up. That was ACT's response to the student loans. 

But what else have they got? When everything's feeling a bit blah, you can understand them trying to entice voters, trying to say - "Look, things aren't so bad, we've got this for you." They haven't said how they'll pay for it. 

The capital gains tax isn't going to bring them in the money they thought it was going to bring them in, and that's besides they've promised that's ring fenced for the three GP visits for absolutely everybody. But they're relying on the fact that voters are just at the end of their tether.

So what are you going to do? Go with the party that promises ponies and castles for Christmas, even if they know they can't afford it and you know that Mum and Dad can't afford it, but you still want the pony and the castle? 

Or do you go with the party that says -"Sorry kids, all I have for you is a lump of coal"? What are you going to do?

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There's a belief New Zealand First's proposal to slash the tax rate for small businesses could make a positive difference to our business landscape.  

The party's promising to lower the tax rate from 28% to 20% for firms with turnover under $30 million.

Its estimated cost is about a billion dollars a year.

BusinessNZ Chief Executive Katherine Rich told Kerre Woodham it would apply to a majority of our businesses. 

She says it would need to be researched for implementation, but it's bold and could transform business in New Zealand   

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The political parties have pressed go on their election campaigns and every morning from now until November 7th, we'll have a full smorgasbord of party promises to pick over. Lucky, lucky us.  

Of course, most of them aren't worth the paper they're printed on. The minor parties have the luxury of promising you a pony and a castle and fairy bread for the rest of your life, then when it comes time to stump up after the election, they'll be all, "Oh, soz, we really wanted to, but those mean Nats/Labourites wouldn't let us. Sorry." So everything you hear, take with a grain of salt.  

And everything the two main parties promise, ask yourself how they expect us to pay for it, because they won't be paying for it out of their party war chests. We will be. You and me. So when the policies come out from National and Labour, think like a supermodel – one of the OG supermodels, Linda Evangelista, famously said, "I don't get out of bed for less than $10,000 a day." And that was back in the 80's, that would be serious coin now. Ask yourself when you hear the policies promised by National and Labour, "is this worth me getting out of bed for to do a full day's work and pay my taxes?" 

Back to the breakfast buffet of election promises. New Zealand First says it will cut the tax rate for small businesses by almost a third, from 28 to 20% The reduced rate would apply to companies with a turnover under $30 million, which sounds like small businesses are pretty big businesses. They say, New Zealand First, it will cost a billion dollars, but that will be more than returned with increased productivity, long term investment, and increase in labour demand, employment, and wages.  

But what would you do if your tax was cut by 8%? Where would you put that extra money? Because it comes back to the reason why you started your own business, became your own boss. Is it to be the next Bill Gates? There are a number of you that I've talked to over the years who could grow your businesses, but you don't want the hassle. You could take on more staff, but you don't want to. Once your business gets to a certain turnover, you want to kick back and enjoy life, coach the kids' sport, take time off during the holidays. It's the batch, the boat, the BMW mentality. You have enough for the life you want to live. You don't want to invest in new capital or more staff or do more hours or pack your bags and head overseas and hustle for the next contract. Why? You've achieved a level of comfort that you're happy with. You don't want to be a billionaire.  

What does success look like to you? If you became your own boss, if you set up your own business, what was that for? To give you freedom? To give you independence? To make a fortune? If New Zealand First got this one over the line in a coalition agreement with National or Labour, what would you do with that extra 8%? Do like New Zealand First believes you will, reinvest it back in the business? Or would you use it to just live your best life, get there faster? And I'd love to know the motivation behind setting up your own business. For the people who've phoned me over the years, it's been about lifestyle, about making your own choices, making your own decisions. It's not been about chasing the buck, but I'd love to hear from you. 

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Time is running out for the businesses that generate billions of dollars worth of GDP and that employ a quarter of a million New Zealanders.

They're the businesses that run on gas. Your bakers, your coffee roasters, your wineries, your wood processors, your ag sec. And that's not counting the schools and hospitals dependent on gas to heat their buildings.

Time is running out because the gas they operate on is running out. It's a finite resource. And as yet, they haven't found anything to replace it.

And yes, we've probably heard about the high profile businesses like Glenbrook Steel Mill and Spates Brewery in Dunedin who've transitioned to electric arc furnaces and electric boilers respectively. But for a huge number of businesses, a shift is not yet technically or financially possible but the gas is going to run out.

They can't say, we'll just keep it going until we transfer over because when it's gone, it's gone. And when it comes to making the transition, it's not just the cost of a new electric furnace.

If bakers, for example, want to make the move from gas to electric, that will cost upwards of $10 million. And that's just the beginning. There are the connection costs. That starts at a couple of million, just to get the thing connected. And then there's the backup plan. Electricity isn't as reliable as gas.

BusinessDesk quotes the country president of Schneider Electric who had a customer that had to dump 19 million litres of milk because they lost energy for 30 seconds.

As a result, businesses that are transitioning are spending capital on battery stabilisation just to make the grid usable before they can completely transition over. And it makes for a really uncertain environment and that's reinforced by a Schneider Electric survey.

They looked at 288 senior business leaders and found 39 percent of them had delayed expansion or lost contracts due to energy costs or supply issues in the past year. We've talked about it before.

 I think we've talked about it and about the fact that it's coming, that the end of the gas is coming, and yet people and businesses, don't seem to be able to afford to make the transition or else they've looked at the numbers and thought - we'll have to go overseas because there we'll have a reliable energy source. It won't be as expensive as it is here.

It's a shame. But we've still got the business and we can set up offshore.

Energy costs have doubled over the past five years. But even though we've complained about the cost of everything going up, the cost of a loaf of bread hasn't doubled.

Where are you at if you are one of those businesses? They're big and they're small in terms of those that rely on gas. With the smaller ones, is it even worth transitioning?

Do you just shut up shop and start again? With the bigger ones, I mean, you probably can't afford not to. Now, the eventual exit, as BusinessDesk writes, of Methanex, New Zealand's single largest user, would free up some volumes currently used for methanol production, but that's only a temporary reprieve.

What are we doing here? I can't even imagine what the future looks like. That is, one day you'll go to turn on the gas and it won't be there. What will you have done before that?

Will you be long gone, reading about it from Australia? Will you be in another business entirely? Where do we go from here?

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There's uncertainty from those whose businesses rely on gas as the Government hits pause on an LNG import terminal procurement process. 

The Energy Minister wanted to secure a deal with one of two possible candidates before the year's end, but time has run out before the election. 

New Zealand Association of Bakers President John Cockburn says it's not the news he wanted. 

He told Kerre Woodham many bakeries are built around a large oven, which would take years to replace if a new energy source was needed.  

Cockburn says continuing to play ping-pong with this issue means people in his industry don't know where to put their money. 

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Let's start with the good news. The annual State of the Thriving Nation report prepared for the Business Leaders Health and Safety Forum says workplace injury claims have fallen 28% over the past decade, and some of the biggest drops have come in the industries with the worst histories of harm, those like forestry and construction and the like. Although the report says rates of harm are still much higher than in Australia or the United Kingdom – that's the bad news. And that work related mental wellbeing is the one area getting consistently worse. 

One of the reasons for the lower rates of workplace injuries in other countries, according to the Forum CEO Francois Barton, is that it costs businesses more in Australia and the UK if their workers come to grief, as he told Ryan Bridge. 

"In short, it's more expensive in those countries when we get safety wrong. In Great Britain and Australia, there are much clearer signals, I think, to business and workers alike from the regulatory system, the insurance system is obviously a different industrial makeup over there. So it can sound a little brutal, but in essence it's cheaper to injure and hurt people in New Zealand than some of these other countries." 

The Health and Safety at Work Amendment Bill passed its third reading at the beginning of July. Workplace Relations and Safety Minister, as she was then, Brooke van Velden, argued the existing regime was confusing and expensive for businesses without making workers safer, and that attention should go to the risks most likely to cause death, serious injury or serious illness. Labour's promised to repeal the bill and will go one step further, introducing a corporate homicide law that could send employers to prison for life when failures kill workers. 

The Government's argument is that smaller businesses shouldn't have to go through the red tape and the hoops and hoopla that larger businesses do. But if you look at some of the worst workplace accidents, there was a Timaru lumberyard, which would be classified as a small business, where one of the young workers was crushed to death on a conveyor belt that didn't have a guard on it. And a year earlier, a three-year-old boy was crushed to death after a stack of logs collapsed and rolled on him while he was visiting his dad at the same yard. So this is a small business that presumably wouldn't have to go through the bells and whistles that some of the larger businesses do, and yet it's clearly an unsafe working environment. 

The young scaffolder, Jaden Nelson, who lost both his arms when he was electrocuted setting up scaffolding back in 2022, that one still fills me with horror, that poor young father of three is having to navigate life now without his arms after numerous surgeries to repair his kidneys and his heart and his organs after a massive electric shock. That scaffolding business would have been a small business too.  

The Business Leaders Health and Safety Forum says neither more legislation nor lighter rules will fix a system that businesses struggle to navigate in the first place. The report says we need better regulatory practice, not more law. National argues, or the coalition government argues, that the Health and Safety at Work Amendment Bill will make things less confusing, that businesses won't have to read through all practice for all business, only that which relates to their particular way of doing things, like an accounting firm wouldn't have to go through the same hoopla as a lumberyard, perhaps. 

There has been more money for workplace safety inspections, but as Sharmabel Jacob says, who prepared the annual State of the Thriving Nation report, you can't inspect your way to a safe workplace. There just simply aren't the inspectors to do that. You are dependent on the owners of the businesses doing that. 

Should small businesses carry lighter health and safety duties, or should the same rules apply to every workplace? I would have thought it would depend on the business. If you are a timberyard, it wouldn't matter if you employ three people or 300, you should have the same safety practices, whereas if you're an accountancy firm, surely you wouldn't have to go through the same standards and the same procedures, the same kind of box ticking exercise as somebody working in forestry? 

According to the report, there's quite enough law already designed to protect workers, it's just the way it's interpreted, it's the way it's followed, it's the willingness of employers to put procedures in place to keep their workers safe and to insist that they use the safety gear they've provided and follow the rules that they've laid out. Because I've heard from a number of employers that they do all they can to protect their workers, who continually refuse to wear the glasses because they fog up, or won't clip themselves to safety harnesses because they can't get to where they need to get to. 

I'd love to hear from you on this one if you're an employer, and indeed if you're a worker working in an unsafe environment. Are your concerns listened to? Do you feel protected? And in many cases, the workers who have been injured are uneasy about the business and the business practices, they think it's a bit shonky, that they're cutting corners, but they don't feel they can speak out otherwise they'll lose their job. 

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National's proposing to scrap the Fire and Emergency board, if re-elected.  

Under the policy, the agency would be directly accountable to the Minister for Emergency Management.  

A damning report released last week details delays in procuring new fire trucks and slams the organisation's leadership. 

Mitchell told Kerre Woodham they feel very strongly the plan will deal with a lot of the issues that have been highlighted through the select committee process. 

He says he's been through a similar process with the Police —making the back office more efficient, pushing services, investment, and resources to the front line— and it's been very successful. 

"We want to do the same thing with FENZ."  

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Brooke van Velden has officially called time on her political career, delivering her final speech yesterday. 

Van Velden was elected to Parliament in 2020 and this term served as Minister of Internal Affairs and Workplace Relations and Safety. 

She was the ACT Deputy until replaced by Nicole McKee when she announced she was leaving. 

Van Velden told Kerre Woodham it's been an absolute privilege, and she recommends it for anyone, of any age, who genuinely wants to leave the country a better place. 

She says it's not glamorous or about gaining power or any particular title, but instead about representation and putting other people before yourself. 

"You have to have an element of resilience and an element of knowing what your values are and being able to back yourself, but recognising that at the end of the day, everything that you're doing is on behalf of other people." 

Van Velden says she's proud of the work and the legacy she's leaving behind. 

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Calls continue for better coordination between Oranga Tamariki and Police as an inquest begins into the death of a 12-year-old girl. 

The New Plymouth girl, who cannot be named, died by suspected suicide in 2017. 

Two years later, Dana Bernadette Taylor was sent to prison for the physical and psychological abuse of the girl and two other children – their connection is not public. 

The coroner's heard from a social worker who believes Oranga Tamariki assessed her home as safe and was unaware of violence. 

Children's Commissioner Jane Searle told Kerre Woodham although each case is individual, the answer is for the organisations to work closer together. 

She says they need a system which can be relied on to then act on information, which requires better training. 

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SUICIDE AND DEPRESSION

Where to get help:
• Lifeline: 0800 543 354 (available 7am to midnight)
• Suicide Crisis Helpline: 0508 828 865 (0508 TAUTOKO (available 24/7)
• Youth services: (06) 3555 906
• Youthline: 0800 376 633
• What's Up: 0800 942 8787 (11am to11pm)
• Depression helpline: 0800 111 757 (available 24/7)
• Rainbow Youth: (09) 376 4155
• Helpline: 0800 000 053
• Samaritans crisis helpline: 0800 72 66 66 (available 24/7)
• Aoake te Rā- bereaved by suicide service: 0800 000 053

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There is a story in the media that has got me absolutely furious, and it's not Ashley Klein, the referee in the Warriors game. It's a story that's being played out in the Coroners Court of a 12-year-old girl who took her own life in 2017, and she took her own life because the very agency that should have been caring for her, Oranga Tamariki, failed her. And in the Coroners Court, hearing the evidence of the witnesses, I think we have an understanding now why so many children end up dead and tortured at the hands of their caregivers.  

This 12 year old should be alive today, she should be 21, she should be making music, maybe in a band, hanging out with her friends because by all accounts, despite the awful, awful state of her "home", she was a popular girl, musically talented. But she had the great misfortune, as did her two younger sisters, of being born into a dreadful situation. Her life sucked, as a family member gave evidence. There were some people who cared about her, not her caregivers, but before the girl took her own life, her teachers were concerned, the principal was concerned, they'd made several visits to her home because they were so concerned about her appearance, her behaviour, and disclosures she'd made about her home life. They were filthy, she and her sisters, the nits were crawling down the back of her neck, they were starving. And what the school witnessed, according to reports, caused them to seek assistance from organisations such as Oranga Tamariki, New Zealand Police, social support agencies, and others. There's a list a mile long of agencies where you can get help, allegedly, that exist, that are funded to help just these sorts of children. 

She was doing everything right. She couldn't do much about her appalling home life, but she knew that this was not the way she was meant to be living. So she disclosed to teachers what was going on, and it wasn't the first time the agencies had been involved with the girl and those in her home. The counsel, who's in the Coroners Court to assist the coroner, said the girl experienced an extremely difficult childhood characterised by ongoing and severe abuse, as well as a generally unstable living situation. The caregiver was a druggie. Due to the difficulties she encountered in her home life, she spent many nights away staying with friends. She was desperate. She would have known that it was an imposition asking to stay at other people's houses. She'd have known what a real home looked like, and it certainly wasn't what she was going back to.  

The school principal, a police constable, and the young girl turn up at Oranga Tamariki, and a woman from OT told the Coroners Court she was appointed the girl's key contact. A safety plan for the girl was put in place along with a plan to refer her to other services, and an agreement was drawn up that included her caregiver's commitment to engaging with support. But guess what, the caregiver failed to engage, in a shocking revelation, just as she'd failed to engage the many other times that agencies had been involved in her life. There were reports of her being continually under the influence of drugs, concerns from the school about the girl's behaviour and her continued absence from school. So her safety plan included exit plans like calling the Police and running to the neighbours to seek help. 

Counsel for the coroner asked the question that most of us would have asked: if a 12-year-old needed a safety plan to live in her own home, what were they doing there? There was no comment from the social worker. The counsel pointed to multiple previous reports of concerns made to Oranga Tamariki relating to the girl and her living conditions and her druggie caregiver. The social worker said she wasn't aware of the agency's previous involvement when she first took on the case, hadn't reviewed any earlier reports.  

Can these people not read? Would you not think to yourself when a 12 year old appears in an absolutely appalling condition begging for help, supported by police and the school principal, wonder if they've come to our attention before? Wonder if the druggie that's looking after her has popped up on our radar before? Do they not even ask the most basic questions? Clearly not. Didn't read any reports, and that was the same with the Phillips children. An older sister provided an affidavit detailing the severe controlling and abusive experience, nobody read it. Nobody bothered to have a look and see if perhaps there might have been reports about his behaviour before. 

Here's the absolute kicker for me though, and this goes to explain the number of dead and tortured babies and children. The social worker in court said the goal was to work alongside those involved in caring for the girl, honouring them by allowing them to care for her with support. Honouring the druggie caregiver who had failed to engage the last four, five years. Honouring the drug abuser. What about the vulnerable children who are stuck living with that slag? The poor girl did everything right. She knew she and her sisters deserved better. She deserved more. Her school supported her, they tried to do what they could do. And yet that poor child was basically told she was on her own by OT, ring the police or run to a neighbour, but you're stuck there love, because they wanted to honour the caregiver. 

I'm beyond furious. At the bottom of the story there are ten numbers people can ring if they feel they have nowhere to go and nowhere to turn, but no one could help this young girl. When you've got OT saying you stay there and run to a neighbour's if you really feel you're in safety, fear of your life or being abused. Honouring the bloody caregiver. That Commission of Inquiry into the Phillips children said the children should be front and centre.  

If that is the culture at Oranga Tamariki, and it certainly seems to be, you've got to shut it down, it is not working. If that is the ethos by which they operate, honouring the caregivers by giving them support, basically turning family homes into social experiments and into social laboratories, let's see how much the kids can put up with before mum comes right, shall we? You've got to change it.   

We had a story the other day about Pet Refuge where people could put their pets and escape a dangerous situation and the pets stayed at Pet Refuge and they were fixed. Vets worked on them, they were loved, they were nurtured, they were fed nutritious food, they were cleaned, they had their fleas got rid of. We need a kids' refuge where exactly the same thing happens, where these children can go and they can be fed and they can be nurtured and the nits and the fleas can be got out of their bodies and they can have their broken bones mended and their gynaecological conditions fixed when you're 11 or 12 years old because you've endured things nobody should have to endure. We need a kids' refuge. OT is failing them. I've no doubt some of them are doing very good work, but if the ethos is honouring the caregivers who are torturing and abusing so many kids, the children need another option, they cannot depend on Oranga Tamariki because Oranga Tamariki is responsible for so many deaths and so much pain, and if they are the children's last resort then God help the children of this country. 

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Eden Park's boss says last night's Warriors match was a night to remember - even if it ended in a loss for the Kiwi side.

It was our biggest turnout ever for a Rugby League game, with more than 48,000 fans piling into the national stadium. 

The new City Rail Link was put to good use, with more than 15,000 punters getting there by train, and 13,000 taking the return trip.

CEO Nick Sautner says the game was huge for Auckland's economy and international profile. 

"We made headlines across the ditch, in terms of the Warriors fans and what they did."

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Education. I simply do not understand, and I really do want to, how two sides can be so passionate about education and about the curriculum and what is truly important in a classroom and have two sides who want the very, very best for our children and yet be so diametrically opposed.

It's a conundrum.

Education Minister Erica Stanford announced over the weekend that there'll be a ban on screen time in early childhood education centres, limited use in primary schools, and given the concerns around how devices and social media are contributing to declining abilities for kids to engage with complex texts and analyse data, I mean, surely this has got to be a good thing.

"We need to move on quickly to what the rest of the world are doing to help set our kids up with the knowledge and skills they need to be successful in life, and we can't afford to sit down and have another cup of tea. That's what Labour always want to do. They'll do the same with the curriculum. Let's sit down and have a cup of tea and a break and create a group that they appoint members to to have another think about it for 10 years. I mean, 60,000 kids start school every year, we can't afford to wait. And the key thing is, Mike, in all of this, our reforms are working. Why would you want to put that all at risk so Labour can have a cup of tea?"

That was Education Minister Erica Stanford talking to Mike Hosking this morning. Yet when I was talking to Chris Hipkins in studio on Friday, he made it abundantly clear to me that National's initiatives would be rolled back should they form a government. He seemed to take absolute personal umbrage that I would suggest that from what I'd seen the reforms were working. Education seems to be as personal to him as it is to Erica Stanford.

CH: "The reality here is that any curriculum change does need to

KW: "For Ginny to put a halt on what's happening would be a disaster."

CH: "That's rubbish, absolute nonsense. Erica Stanford is trying to rewrite the school curriculum in her own image, basically trying to and making it much, much more political than it should be. We're saying that the curriculum should be decided based on evidence of what's going to work, based on what we want all kids to be learning."

KW:  "It wasn't working."

CH: "No, there's no question, there was curriculum, there was a need for the school curriculum to change, there's a need for the NCEA to change, but doing it in the way that the current government are doing it where they're alienating so many people, they're shutting parents out of the process, they're shutting teachers out of the process, they've got school principals up and down the country saying this is going to be bad for kids' education, that is a time to take a pause and say, okay, let's try and get this back on track because there is a need for change."

KW: "I couldn't disagree with you more."

Clearly I'm passionate about education too, so that was Chris Hipkins talking to me in studio. But you can hear in his voice that he genuinely believes that everything Erica Stanford is doing is wrong, and yet I'm looking at what she's doing and looking at the overseas evidence and looking under my own roof and I can see that it is working.

Who's right?

I mean, I think the education of our children and the options that a well educated child will have no matter where they start in life, the future of the country depending on a world class education is way too important for politics and shifting ideologies.

I would gladly support Labour's curriculum if they could show they'd got it right, but their last session in office did not convince me of that in any way, shape or form. And it's not just me. You've got the Royal Society of Mathematicians saying that it was an absolute disaster what was being proposed. It's not just my reckon.

There were academics and there were teachers and there were people with experience of educating children and knowledge of core curriculum subjects who said that Labour's curriculum that had been drawn up, and when you look at the money they spent on the reviews and the reforms and the contracting out, was a disaster.

For all of that money and all of that time, disaster. There were probably some bits that were good, so keep those, but when it came to teaching the core subjects, they had got it completely wrong. Then you've got Erica Stanford coming in and the poor teachers are lurched in another direction again with the handwriting and the back to basics and the minimum amount of time spent on English and maths, and it seems to be working.

I am so sick of reviews and reports and commissions that we have reports, reviews and commissions up the yin yang. If they propose another one on the education, it'll be a complete and utter waste of time and money, just as it will be with the bloody supermarkets. How many commissions have we had on that?

But what Erica Stanford is proposing seems to make sense and it seems to be working and some educators agree with it and some do not, and then you argue that it's because some of the educators are influenced by the teachers' union. I don't necessarily buy that, but what works?

It seems looking at overseas data and anecdotal evidence what Erica Stanford is proposing works. So why is Labour so vehemently opposed to what seems to be the best for our kids?

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Labour leader Chris Hipkins says smaller parties shouldn't be able to veto National and Labour working together, as he eyes greater bipartisanship. 

This term, the two major parties have sided together on issues like the Indian free trade deal, a social media ban for under-16s, and modern slavery legislation. 

Hipkins told Kerre Woodham there's more work to do on issues like infrastructure and climate change.  

He says it's a bottom line for him that minor parties can't veto any bipartisan work, which he says ACT and NZ First have threatened to do this term. 

Hipkins is also confident the party will be able to find enough GPs to cover its three free visits policy, should it win government.  

The party's promising three free visits a year, funded through its capital gains tax on residential and commercial property.  

The Labour Leader told Woodham the number of medical graduates will rise in the coming years, and the party needs to attract them into primary care. 

He says the party will offer low interest loans to help graduates buy a stake in local GP practices. 

He also says GPs will be recruited from overseas, and his Government will grow the number of nurses able to prescribe medications. 

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Now for some time, I'd say this would be over a number of years, I've been receiving texts from firefighters who are extremely unhappy with the way their organisation is being run. It hasn't just been over this latest pay dispute and the strikes. This has been ongoing for a couple of years now. 

There haven't been outright accusations per se, but a deep-seated uneasiness, and in some cases anger, about the way FENZ is running the organisation and the way they're treating firefighters. Now a scathing report has confirmed what they have been saying. The board is under fire and under threat of removal, and questions are being asked as to whether FENZ is capable of buying its own fire trucks, sourcing its own materials. Brooke van Velden, the Minister for Fire and Emergency, says she has absolutely no confidence in the chief executive Kerry Gregory, nor indeed of the board. 

National MP Tim Costley, who's the deputy chair of the Governance and Administration Committee, said the report into FENZ lays bare years of failings. For example, FENZ bought 30 new fire trucks in 2019. Well, that's good, isn't it? That's what the firefighters have been striking for. Well, yes, they're still not being used. They're almost obsolete before they've put a tyre on the road. Costley says the evidence shows FENZ has not been able to deliver. They've consistently had delays, they've consistently had issues with the trucks, and it looks like they have a culture of changing the design halfway through the process regularly, which would be a bit tricky for the manufacturers. 

Ladder trucks that FENZ bought have also suffered significant delays. Despite a final inspection in July 2025, they're still sitting with the original manufacturers, not yet delivered to FENZ and far from being put into operational use, which puts the firefighters at risk. They don't have the equipment they need to do the job. How the hell can you have 30 new trucks that were bought seven years ago that are still not being used? 

The pay disputes are ongoing. Every time I go past my Birkenhead fire station between just after midday when I finish work and there they are, standing on the side of the road, placards and horns tooting. Yesterday Brooke van Velden said she had no confidence in the CEO of FENZ or its board, specifically because of a serious breach of the no surprises clause as she told Mike Hosking this morning. 

BvV:There's always been issues with Fire and Emergency. We've always known that. Lots of historic issues, payroll, the fleet procurement, asset management. But at least when I've known about it, I've been able to actively hold them accountable to their plans and processes and we have actually seen some progress. This was active withholding of information and I think it reeks of people thinking they're above the law. 

MH: Indeed, what is it about FENZ because as you say it's been going on for years in various different guises. What is it about FENZ in and of itself that's so uniquely hopeless? 

BvV: Well, I've asked my officials specifically that question, which is is it because it is a Crown entity so at arm's length from government ministers that they are essentially a law unto themselves. And so I've asked for some immediate advice on whether or not there does need to be a better change to the law to allow for better accountability. Is it the fact that it is a Crown entity that is leading to these widespread cultural issues at play? 

Why are they not under the purview of the Crown? Make them like the Police, have a Fire Commissioner. Ensure that their funding is steady and reliable and within the budget, not dependent on people paying insurance levies. Because at the moment that's how a significant amount of their operational budget is raised: through levies. And when people cut back on their insurance when times are tough, hello, like right now, then that is felt by FENZ. If they were like the Police, then their budget would be assured. They'd always want more, of course, but at least surely to God they'd get trucks on the road and ladder trucks that could be used by the firefighters.  

And what is it about public servants that they don't understand their very titles? They serve the public. No, they appear to be serving themselves or they appear to be so hopeless they don't know how to do the job properly. We've seen that with immigration and an ongoing case in immigration. We've seen that now with the board and chair of FENZ. Is the job beyond them? Is it so big that they don't know what they're doing? Are they just not being, for want of a better word, are they not being ridden properly? When you're a minister you have to be on top of your department. Given that this isn't a government department per se, would it be better to have them under a good minister? But then the department is only as good as its minister. When you've got weak ministers, you've got lazy ministers, then the public servants know they can get away with anything. Well, I'm not going to call them public servants because a lot of them are not. Some of them are, a lot of them are not. I'll call them bureaucrats. They know they can run rings around their new minister and they do so. So you'd need to have a minister who is on top of their portfolio to get any kind of better outcome than we've seen so far. 

I imagine too that for those firefighters who've been sending in the texts, this will be vindication for you. I mean, there'll be no great joy in it because you still haven't got the equipment you need. It's still all that money has been invested with little to show for it. 

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A Morrinsville grocer is disheartened by National's plan to split up Foodstuffs. 

The party's campaigning on splitting Pak'nSave from New World and Four Square in a bid to increase competition. 

It would give the Commerce Commission six months after the election to make the final decision. 

New World Morrinsville Owner-operator Kym Samuels told Kerre Woodham this is heartbreaking, especially coming from National, who is a party that's meant to stand up for business. 

She says if the Government actually wants to bring down prices, they should look at reducing or removing GST on products like meat and seasonal produce that are impacted by inflation. 

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Well, I don't know. I've listened to all the commentary; I've listened to Nicola Willis. I'm absolutely perplexed. Stumped. I thought after all this time and having taken a lifelong interest in politics that I understood a wee bit about it. Turns out I know absolutely nothing, because if I was a National Party advisor, and let's face it, a lot of you think I am, but if I was a National Party advisor, I would not be saying to National, "look, you're languishing in the polls. You might have done some good work, you're not selling it well. We need a little something, something, something, something. I know! Let's take a big pet project of the last Labour Government and interfere with private property and manipulate the market and sell off supermarkets. And let's not sell off all supermarkets, not the Australian ones. Let's take the supermarkets owned by New Zealanders, good hard working young couples who go and live in small communities that Woolworths won't touch, and make them less profitable and make them charge less for the goods that they sell. How about that?"  

I am stumped that they thought this was a good idea and then even more stumped that whoever came up with the idea managed to sell it to the rest of them. Because I assume it's not a brain fart of Nicola Willis'. She's been on one ever since she came into government. She's been on the backs of the supermarkets. But for the love of all that's holy, this is an idea that goes against National's entire DNA. They're having the biggest identity crisis since Bruce Jenner became Caitlyn Jenner. It's an absolute head scratcher. However, Nicola Willis is adamant. This is what she told Mike Hosking this morning: 

"We believe in competitive enterprise and what the study after study has said about our supermarket sector is that it is a complete outlier internationally and that it is so consolidated it isn't operating like a normally competitive market. I want competitive, strong businesses innovating, offering variety, competing on price and the evidence I have received says that's not going to happen for so long as you have an effective duopoly. So this is not a normal market, there is evidence of market failure. Yes, this is an unusual step, but man oh man, we've got a problem here." 

Really? You know, it's a mixed up, jumbled up, shook up world in which we live. There are few things upon which you can rely. One of them is that National is the party of small government, minimal interference, a champion of small business owners. Now they're not. And the thing is it might all be for naught. They might be confusing and infuriating what voter base they have left for nothing. Dependent on the Commerce Commission, dependent on coalition partners, might be a Trojan horse. Okay, we'll leave the supermarkets, but we'll raise the age of Super to 68 – I don't know. As I say, I'm absolutely perplexed.  

We might be a percentage point higher in terms of grocery prices than other countries —to be fair, we have been a lot higher in recent times— but ask anyone in London or Sydney or Stockholm if they're paying too much for their groceries and they'll say, by crikey, yes we are. And although Australia and Canada and the UK among other countries have looked long and hard at their supermarket chains, none of them has taken the highly unusual step of breaking up privately owned supermarkets. It used to be that if you wanted the government to step in and try and fix things to make things a bit fairer, to protect and insulate you from the cruel vagaries of day to day life, you'd vote Labour or the Greens, you had a choice. If you wanted supermarkets broken up to create an artificial competition in the marketplace, you'd vote Labour or the Greens. And now look, you lucky, lucky things. What a choice. Labour, Greens or National. Who'd have thought. 

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New Zealand's economy is continuing to grow but the pace has slowed to a crawl. 

Latest Stats NZ data shows GDP rose 0.2% in the June quarter after rising 0.9% in the months to March. 

The growth is driven by construction, public services, healthcare, and wholesale trade. 

But the Herald's Liam Dann told Kerre Woodham some of it has to do with attitudes, which is affecting sectors like retail. 

He says tourism and other exporters are doing well, but many consumers are holding off on spending money because they're worried about losing their job. 

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ACT's Leader is furious at the idea of breaking-up Foodstuffs.  

If re-elected, and if the Commerce Commission agrees, National would separate Pak'nSave from New World and Four Square to compete with each other and Woolworths.  

David Seymour told Kerre Woodham it'll make the problem worse, but his party is standing alone.  

He says just because the focus group polling says people are upset, doesn't mean you do something simple and wrong.  

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Political parties are being urged to back a plan focusing on a better future for all children. 

Barnardos Aotearoa and its supporters is gathering at the steps of Parliament today asking for formal and long-term commitment to its Generational Plan. 

It aims to begin work next year, putting children at the heart of decision-making, so they can thrive as future adults. 

CEO Matt Reid told Kerre Woodham they've seen through social and community work that giving struggling parents the right support, especially early on, can absolutely make a difference. 

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It's hard to know really where to start when it comes to listing the failings of all those who damn near destroyed the lives of the Phillips children. In the first instance, they were failed by their father and by their immediate family. Then, when those relationships broke down, they were failed by the very agencies that are supposed to be there to protect them, Oranga Tamariki and the Police. How agencies that are supposed to be acting in the interests of the children could think it was a good idea for them to be kept in the custody of a man who had staged their deaths, was an abusive alcoholic, and was motivated to keep the children away from their mother to spite her is beyond me.  

Police were concerned enough about his mental stability to deny him a firearms license or revoke it, yet they never passed on their specific concerns to Oranga Tamariki, not in detail. Still, OT really didn't need to have the police reports, one would have thought, when you look at all the other information they had. The children's older sisters had real and genuine concerns about the children's wellbeing. One rang the local office dealing with the children frequently, another swore an affidavit detailing controlling and abusive experiences with Phillips, yet the social workers didn't read it, fobbed off the one who phoned, didn't listen, insisted the kids were absolutely fine. How could you draw that conclusion?  

The inquiry has found that OT should not have closed the report of concern in February 2022, having done so in the face of compelling concerns raised by the children's older sisters as to the risk and harm to the children of being isolated from family and society. The children's four years of living with an alcoholic father in squalid isolation only ended when Phillips shot at and nearly killed a police officer who's had life changing injuries as a result of Phillips shooting at him. Police returned fire and Phillips died on a country road in front of his daughter. He was responsible for the trauma that that young girl experienced. He's ultimately responsible for all of what has happened to his children. But the state agencies that are there to step in when parents fail, failed too. Jill Rogers, the Deputy Police Commissioner, talking to Mike Hosking this morning, said ultimately police achieved what they set out to do. 

JR:We achieved what we set out to do. Did it take us a long time? Did we miss opportunities? Yes and yes, but at the end of the day we recovered the kids. 

MH: So if we're looking for blame and apologies, OT carry more of it than you do, fair? 

JR: The report identifies lessons for all of us in there, so and clearly that information sharing one is one that does stand out and we'll continue to work hard to make sure that we get the right information to the right people. 

Do you know the last time we had something like this was after the death, the murder of Malachi Subecz, murdered by his caregiver. That was only four years ago and one of the major findings was that government agencies needed to work together and centre children's voices. Four years ago. I have listened to government ministers and heads of department and police officers speak and they acknowledge the findings of this report, they've acknowledged the findings of previous reports, blah blah blah. Everyone's sorry. Everyone's very sorry. OT are sorry, Police are sorry. I'm sure the people that lionised Tom Phillips are very sorry now they know the despicable nature of the man. But I have absolutely no doubt that for all the reports, all the regrets, all the sorrow, all the determination to ensure this will never happen again, it will. 

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Would it be better to have one body responsible for running political polls? 

Questions have been raised as to how trustworthy existing polls are, as recent results put both National and Labour below 30%.  

NZ Research Association's Polling Spokesperson Murray Campbell told Kerre Woodham if there were to be an independent body responsible for three-monthly polls, it would have to be really well funded. 

He says high-quality political polls are expensive to run, and any one agency can't typically afford to run them with the frequency that's needed. 

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Political polls with the headlines and column inches they command. A cynic would say it probably depends on whether you're going up or you're going down. There's a story in Newsroom today from Professor Ben Gray that looks at how the different companies poll the population to get their results. And it doesn't give you a great deal of confidence, does it? He cites the New Zealand Health Survey as a good example of a high-quality survey because the selection of households is random from census data, representing the total population by age, sex, region, ethnicity, whether Māori, Pacific, Asian, other, and deprivation. So, if the population is made up say of 20% Māori, then they'll make sure that they have 20% of the respondents will be Māori. If there is 51% of the population that's female, they'll make sure that 51% of the respondents are female. Interviews are in person with multiple callbacks, resulting in a 75% response rate. Interpreters are used for the 5% of the sample not fluent in English and represented in the population.  

The methodology is approved by an independent research ethics committee and complies with National Ethics Advisory Committee research ethics guidelines. Political pollsters on the other hand, all use panels, online or telephone, who may or may not be paid, from which they claim to select a random sample. None provide any information about how their panel is recruited. It could be people who are self-selecting and they say, well, we make sure that we get 20% who self-select as Māori. I don't think that's true and they don't show you so you can't test it. 

In the past, apparently, New Zealand had a good reputation for accuracy in political polls when compared to other countries. We couldn't lie to save ourselves. Wouldn't have even occurred to us. You ask us who we're voting for and we'll tell you, without a word of a lie, it will be our absolute intention to vote for this. But declining trust in institutions and the media, as well as the impact of social media, is starting to erode that. We just don't trust the media, we don't trust institutions, we don't trust politicians, we don't trust pollsters. And political scientists point to sensationalist media reporting, bam, kapow, freefall, as being "not very helpful from a scientific point of view", from Professor Grant Duncan.  

But then when a media organisation is paid top dollar for a survey, they'll want to milk the results for all they can for headlines and by crikey, they do. 1News a couple of years ago pointed out that an analysis of the final 1News poll, the final poll before each of the last eight elections, shows the last survey of the campaign had been with an average of 1.17 percentage points of the actual party vote, according to the accuracy data. They say we're actually pretty accurate. 2020 threw everybody. That was the one that knocked most of the polling companies out of the water because it overestimated how much of the vote National would get, underestimated the love affair the nation had with Labour. 

But for 1News, they say with their pollsters Verian, the figures covering every election from 2002 to 2023 translate to the poll just being up by one to two seats per party, which they say shows it's pretty accurate, and it is. But do you care about them? They must have an impact. They absolutely must. Because if you see a poll showing the Opportunity party at 3% and you're thinking, oh, quite like the new shiny thing, oh, but at 3% my vote will be wasted, I'll go with the Greens. But then you see a poll showing the Opportunity party at 6% or 7% and you think, oh, oh, that's good. I'll vote for them. I'll vote for the shiny new Greens. Surely, it must have some sort of influence on how you are going to vote, especially if you're not 100% sure and a lot aren't. Now, the latest one that came out, that sort of I suppose it was a fortunate accident that we had the Newsroom story at the same time as we had the Freshwater poll come out, showed that Labour had dropped seven percentage points, which seems ridiculous. 

I mean, I totally get that National and Labour are unappealing to the electorate. We've seen that over a number of different surveys. People aren't enthused about voting for either of the main parties. They're flirting with the minor parties and having a look at the Opportunity party. But seven percentage points, which either means the poll was overinflated the first time or people are just having a laugh. I have never been asked in a survey. I've never been randomly selected —people want my opinion, they can tune in between 9am 12pm Monday to Friday on Newstalk ZB— but those who have say the questions are so weighted that they are trying to get a response that they want. It's not a "random question, who will you vote for?" Which I imagine a survey would be. No, nothing like it.  

Do you look, especially if you're flirting with some of the minor parties, at the results of a poll and think, hmm, my vote might be wasted, I'll go somewhere else? Do you look at your favoured party perhaps dropping in the polls and think, right, I'm going to make sure it's two ticks now, not just one? I don't know. I mean, they certainly don't influence me. I get where the political scientists are coming from saying, look, we're just producing a random sample, it's the media who ramps them up and milks every last piece of sensational headline out of them. But do they matter to you? Is there any point in publishing the bloody things other than making it an easy day at work for journalists? 

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The ACT Party has unveiled their party list ahead of the election - and they've placed Paul Henry in the top five and kept Seymour, McKee, and Hoggard at the top.

Paul Henry also indicated that ACT would be looking to bump the retirement age up to 67, but allow people to access their KiwiSavers from age 65.

ACT Leader David Seymour says the party would stagger retirement out - meaning people may have to work an extra few months before they reach the threshold.

"It's been our official policy for a long time, we'll confirm it when we release an alternative budget. Everybody likes talking about bottom lines, but I'll just point to how much influence ACT has been able to have without setting bottom lines." 

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With the election under two months away, questions have been raised over the impact of Labour's proposed capital gains tax.

This campaign promise has copped some backlash, with National releasing several AI-generated ads condemning its impact.

Dentons tax partner Bruce Bernacchi says it could take some time to reveal the impacts of a capital gains tax, given the current 'flat' state of the property market. 

"I'm not privy to their modelling and maybe that's why it's been quite narrowly targeted at the free doctors' visits. But there surely must be a mismatch for the first few years."

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I hope you'll be phoning in to tell me all about the CRL - because it's trains, planes and automobiles today with the official launch of the long awaited CRL yesterday.

This morning it was the hard launch as commuters test the reliability, convenience and time saving potential of the railway line.

Tough day to be a bus. Nobody cares, you big stinky diesel thing, even though I know a few of you have turned electric.

There the buses are heroically supporting the commuter network, around 70 million passenger trips per year. Where's the gratitude? There is none.

It's all, ooh, shiny trains. But honestly, who doesn't love a train?

And there'll be some of you thinking, oh, how very Auckland. Come on, you know and I know that when you go to New York or London or Paris or Hong Kong or Singapore, even Australia, it's so exciting to be able to jump onto a commuter line that works, that takes you where you want to go cheaply, expeditiously. It's fantastic.

We have our Oyster cards and we've worked out the lines, and we think we're so sophisticated as we jump on and off the trains.

The subways, metros or tubes might be old and dirty or smelly, but you can spot a Kiwi, because they're so excited to be on there. There's none of this block yourself off and go into your own mind if you're a resident of the aforementioned cities.

You just block yourself out and think this will be over soon, this too will end. We're bouncing around and hanging off the straps, just thrilled to bits to be there. And now we've got one of our own.

I would definitely be using a train if the new harbour crossing is built with the capacity to run trains, although I will probably be dead by the time a new harbour crossing is built. My ancestors will rejoice.

And the rejoicing yesterday, the Sky Tower was lit up with the CRL map, people of all ages set their alarms to stupid o'clock to catch the first train. People from around the country came to Auckland to ride the first train.

I'd probably draw the line at saying, 'Tunnel, tunnel, tunnel' - a group chant as you go through the first tunnel, but then I'm not a rail fan or a trainspotter or a ferroequinologist or an anorak or a gunzel or a foamer or a densha otaku, which is all names from different cultures for those who love trains.

But the fact that there are so many names in so many different languages and so many different cultures for people who love trains shows what a fan base they have.

But beyond this special group of people getting their kicks, there's hope that there will be a significant return on investment with the building of the CRL. Aucklanders lose millions of hours each year stuck in traffic and removing even a small percentage of vehicles makes travel times faster, more reliable for everyone else and that improves productivity.

It is hoped that the flow on effects will go right down the country, it won't just be a fun thing to ride - or to go on the new ale trail, or the ale rail trail, whichever you want to call it. Some friends of mine said they were going to go on the new rail link over the weekend and stop off for a glass of wine at different stations, or water after the first two.

But there is an actual ale trail on the rail. Five breweries, independent breweries have signed up for it, so you can Google that and find it.

Businesses like our lovely lady with the flowers in Victoria Street will be praying that the disruption and the loss of business and the hanging on by a thread will all be worth it now that the CRL is finally up and running.

So I would love to hear from those of you who have ridden the train, who have jumped on board, test driven it yesterday or have taken the chance to come into work today on the train. Does it make much difference? Is it going to be part of your regular commute? 

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With just 57 days to go till election day, which is not long at all, most parties are starting to come out with policies. Even Labour. Capital gains tax and free GP visits seems like an age ago, but at least they came out with something. Te Pāti Māori, major constitutional reform by entrenching Te Tiriti into lawmaking, so they've sort of rustled up a couple of election promises. ACT and New Zealand First are giving their party faithful more of the same. ACT are dishing up getting rid of the Treaty, New Zealand First are doling out sanctions against migrants – so far, so appealing to those who are already there. With National, there's nothing to see here, more of the same, stick with us, we'll come right. Look, the economy's improving already, while firing shots across Labour's bow with misleading attack ads around tax. 

A feeling I'm picking up, and I'm sure you have too, is that people are getting sick and tired of politics and politicians, which is not great with 57 days to go until we make a really important decision about the direction of our country. There seems to be a pox on all their houses sentiment. As a texter put it, they're going to rule out the parties they simply cannot vote for and put a tick next to the party that remains. It's not really a positive vote, it's more a "the others are worse, so I suppose I'll just have to vote for you". So 57 days to go, less than two months. What issues matter most to you? Have you firmed up your vote? Have you danced around the minor parties and thought, oh well, maybe, maybe. The two main parties haven't really delivered much over the past few years, past few elections. Have a little flirt with the minor parties, no, and then you decide no, I'm not going to. No, they look new and shiny, but really, it's all insubstantial. I'll go back to the main parties. 

Are there issues that are important to you that you feel one party over another is going to deliver on? Are you going to be voting for yourself or for New Zealand? Do you have the luxury of being able to look at a vote for the wider community or are you just hanging in there by the skin of your teeth and voting for yourself? Are any of you so fed up that you simply won't vote? And I suppose more to the point, if you want to vote, have you made sure you're on the roll because you won't be able to do it on the day?  

There's a lot of you that will swing left to right and right to left – have you reached a level of dissatisfaction with both the major parties that you're ready to join forces with one of the smaller ones? There'll be a flurry, I imagine, of policies coming out, but 57 days to go is leaving it a bit late for Labour. Chris Hipkins said at a public meeting, the first one that he's done for the entire election campaign, and it was only a few days ago, he said, I'm just getting warmed up. Just starting. Has he left his run too late? Or are you still waiting to hear something that might energise you, that might make you think yes, I feel really positive about putting this tick next to this party, I feel certain that they have the answers, that their way of improving New Zealand is the right way. 

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An update from Tauranga's Mayor, who says Mount Maunganui won't reopen for a while yet. 

Six people died when the holiday park at the foot of Mauao in January was swamped by a landslide.

It's been closed to the public since.

Mahé Drysdale says it's tough on businesses, and they're trying to return to some normalcy.

He told Kerre Woodham two summit tracks are closer to ready, but the main slip keeps getting worse despite a lack of normal triggers, which makes health and safety hard to predict.  

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There are concerns the culture of school rugby is distorting the values it's meant to promote. 

Christchurch Boys' High School's principal is raising flags about the increasingly serious way First XV rugby is treated by schools, particularly regarding recruitment, escalating expenditure, and the culture that develops when winning becomes too important.  

He believes that winning and playing for their school should matter, but a win-at-all-costs mentality shouldn't be prioritised over the values that team sport teaches. 

Principal Nic Hill told Kerre Woodham winning matters, but so does disappointment, as you can't have the great elation without disappointment. 

He says kids get so much out of sport, and the most they get is from the great adults they have with them, but adults are the ones who keep ruining it.  

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New research by Women's Refuge has shown that more women are disclosing that they are victims of family violence at work, and they are making the most of the domestic violence leave that was introduced by the Labour Government eight years ago. Under the legislation, those affected by family violence are entitled to up to 10 days of paid leave per year on top of their other leave, and they can request flexible working arrangements. The report found that the numbers using paid family violence leave rose from 9% to almost 34% since the Victims' Protection Act came into force, and that more women reported that their workplace response made them safer, not just feel safer, but they were safer. This increased from 40% to 62%.  

The workplaces that were clued up in their responses were offering victims of family violence practical safety, such as secure car parks and not allowing the perpetrator access to the workplace or the building. I can't imagine what it must be like trying to escape from a partner that refuses to accept that the relationship is over, and not simply that, but who wants to punish you for daring to go against their wishes. And they want to punish you personally, and worse, your children, for daring to defy them. These people —and it's predominantly men who cause the most damage— are narcissistic, manipulative, sly. Some are using sophisticated technology to track down their victims who have left the relationships. They'll hide GPS trackers in kids' belongings, the vehicle, other personal items, and using everyday apps to monitor the family's whereabouts so they can track them down and punish them. They're violent and they're dangerous. 

About nine women a year are killed by men for daring to leave them. Not for these men, the "oh well, we tried, you know, it's a shame, we loved each other once, but let's go and live our best lives separately and do what we can for the children." Oh no. It's not even "if I can't have you, no one else can." It's the fact that the woman dared to defy him, dared to say no, and that's what puts her and her children at risk. The most dangerous time for a woman is when she leaves. That's when they're most at risk. It's great that women feel they can disclose to their employer that they're unsafe, that they're leaving. It's great that employers are responding and saying "this leave is here for you." But it's a huge responsibility for the employer, isn't it? I would feel an enormous responsibility to my employee and to my other employees if she came to me saying her life was at risk, she needed to pack up and get out and get out quickly, she wouldn't be at work for a couple of days while she tried to find a safe place. Could the employer please be aware that the perp might come looking for her? It's not a workplace health and safety issue, but all of a sudden, it actually is. 

Remember that case in Māngere Bridge? A man murdered the coworker of his ex-wife. He went round to the workplace because she'd dared to leave him with a knife, tried to stab her, and when her brave coworker intervened, he fatally stabbed her. When it comes to the workplace leave that is available to those who are suffering from domestic violence, how important has it been if you are the victim of that violence to be able to take that leave from work, to be able to use that time to pack up and try to find a safe place? Do you ever truly feel safe unless the perpetrator is behind bars? Do they suddenly have a come to Jesus moment and think, "you know what? maybe killing her isn't the best option. Maybe killing the children isn't the best option. Maybe I let them live their own lives and get on with mine, try to find some purpose and meaning in my own life." Because I can't imagine that would happen very often. At what point do you feel safe? 

And as an employer, if you have an employee come to you and say "Look, I feel really unsafe, I have to leave this relationship," it'd be more than just giving them leave, wouldn't it? Saying "Alright then, I'll sign you off for five days, good luck." I imagine it would be a whole lot more responsibility than that. So more power to those employers who have been able to do what they can to provide a safe workplace for their employee and the other employees, but it opens a whole can of worms, doesn't it? The fact that more women are using this domestic violence leave to be able to set themselves up in a safe place is fantastic. If it saves a life, it's well, well worth it. But what is the responsibility that the employers feel? I'd love to hear from you. 

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Some Kiwis are at risk of losing their sight as the backlog for public eye appointments grows.  

More than 36 thousand New Zealanders are waiting longer than recommended for their appointments, with more than 125 thousand ophthalmology follow-ups outstanding nationwide.  

Health NZ says its working to reduce the wait times caused by an ageing population, staff shortages, and overwhelmed services. 

Greenlane Clinical Centre's Clinical Director of Ophthalmology, Sarah Welch told Kerre Woodham they're doing everything they can to try improve things. 

She says they're potentially starting to turn a corner, but with the number of people waiting, it's not going to happen tomorrow or the next day – it'll take a year or so. 

And that, Welch says, probably shows we need more capacity within ophthalmology across the country.  

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Well, I don't know what we're going to do... Good news! How on earth do you make a talkback show out of good news? That's not what we're here for. Indeed, it is very good news, though. The post-Covid collapse in education has halted, and the equity gap is narrowing as disadvantaged students improve at higher rates than their richer peers. That's according to New Zealand's 2025 PISA, Programme for International Student Assessment, results, which is a benchmark for 15-year-olds in the OECD in science, maths, and reading. Oh yes, sure, there are legitimate qualifiers. Results in other countries fell, so it was easier for us to catch up and look good. And no, thank you media, we're not back to the 2009 levels, which is when our schools delivered truly world class results in the PISAs, but come on, this is fantastic news.  

The Minister for Education, Erica Stanford, believes, as indeed do I, as indeed do many of you, that your socioeconomic circumstances should not dictate your academic achievement. That a world class education should be available to every child in New Zealand, not just those who can afford private schools and tutoring. Education should be a way up, and it should be a way out for those who do not want to live the same lives as their parents. Understandably, Erica Stanford is very, very pleased with the results. 

ES:To see these kids who are in the bottom quartile who have gained in science a year, in maths three terms, and in reading two terms or six months, that is beyond what we could have expected. And the reason I came to politics and to education was to close the equity gap that has been stubborn for decades, and this is the first time we've seen a turnaround. One of the things I put this down to is actually kids turning up to school. 

MH: I was going to say, right. So just being at school helps. 

ES: Well, if you look back to 2022 when we last did PISA, in term two our attendance rate was about 39% 39.6 In 2026 in term two, 64.3 Still a very long way to go, but when kids are turning up to school and our message has been over the last three years every single day counts, this is what happens, and it matters the most for the kids at the bottom who need education to change their lives. 

You cannot doubt the Education Minister's passion for her portfolio. You also cannot doubt the results that she is getting. I don't know what the teachers' unions are going to do now. How can they complain because our kids are succeeding? And in large part, it is thanks to very, very good teachers who were always motivated, who were always professional, but who had a dog of a curriculum under Labour to deal with. I don't know what the principals who said, "Oh, you can't test children, you know, these give a false result," were talking about. No, they don't. They give an international benchmark. They let us know how we're doing compared to the rest of the world.  

For a very, very long time, we were world leaders. And for those of us who grew up with an education in the 70s and early 80s—I'm talking the 1970s and 1980s, not the 1870s and the 1880s, just for clarity—it was a world-class education. Erica Stanford's been trying to ensure that no matter if you're in Whangārei or you're at school in Bluff, the core subjects will be the same. There'll be localised differences, there'll be regional differences, but the basics, the standard stuff, will be the same, and that's as it was. We turned out world-class scientists from tiny country schools because we had a great curriculum and brilliant teachers.  

We've always had good teachers, but they've been dealing with absolute politically motivated, ideologically unsound curricula over the last couple of decades. All parents want is their children to achieve their potential, to have a chance to succeed. I went to school in Pukekohe, Tokoroa, Turangi, and Waihi, and I could foot it with anybody from around the world education-wise. You were allowed to explore what you wanted to explore. I wanted to learn French, for heaven's sake, when I was in Turangi. I found an old, old French dictionary, and French wasn't offered at Turangi Primary, but a teacher found another teacher within the school that was willing to sit with me, show me it wasn't just words, it was sounds that made another language.   

The number of parents I spoke to who could see their children going backwards under Labour's curriculum – the money that was spent on that, the people who were employed to come up with all sorts of add-ons instead of understanding that the basics have to be there, and then the children will find the add-ons. If they know the basics, they can go exploring all by themselves. And the number of you who rang me having to find money you simply did not have to pay for extra tuition because you could see your kids were failing, you could see your kids were falling behind, you didn't want them to be left behind, so you did it. You got them educated when it is the responsibility of state schools to do that. I've seen a difference with the grandkids. Huge difference. It's so important. This used to be the way out for migrant families since forever ago. It used to be the way out for children who'd had to leave school at 12 or 13, who slogged away, made a life, but then wanted more for their own kids, wanted more choices for their own children. Education was it. I would love to hear from you on this, especially if you are somebody who's seen the difference in your home, especially if you're somebody who was having to find that money for the extra tuition because you were not going to let your kids down. The Government might have been letting the kids down, but you weren't going to let your own children down. And employers, I want to know if you're starting to see the first signs of a truly educated workforce. 

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Reassurances that life is not over after using methamphetamine as wastewater testing revealed record high consumption. 

The Herald's obtained a justice briefing showing almost two million doses were detected in testing in a single week in April. 

That equates to about $40 million in social harm and is 21% above the average amount consumed over the 12 months prior. 

Whakaronga Whanau Recovery Hub CEO Rhonda Zielinski told Kerre Woodham people absolutely can get their lives back after using meth. 

She says people tend to dwell on the bad side and think there's no coming back, but there are people in her life that are living testaments of overcoming meth addiction.  

Zielinski says that from personal experience, there seems to be more success in getting people off meth, than off alcohol.  

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A group of hunters has turned pest control into a way to feed their communities. 

Hunt for Good is a not-for-profit that culls wild deer, donating the venison and wild game meat to community groups and food banks. 

The volunteer group currently provides meat for the Bay of Plenty, Hawkes Bay and Manawatu Regions, and have donated over 20 thousand kilograms of mince. 

Trust Chair, Bill Osborne told Kerre Woodham they're very careful about how they do it, and have strict processing protocols for farms and a strong hunting doctrine. 

He says sustainability is really important in this day and age, and they're trying to preserve what bush they can and maintain pastures for production, so it's quite important to get that balance right. 

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Who the hell is doing all this meth?  

Yesterday came the news that there were almost 2 million doses detected in wastewater sites over one week in April. One week. 2 million doses. Consumption in the first quarter of 2024 was 15% higher than it was over the previous four quarters.  

The numbers are big, but beyond the numbers, that is a lot of misery. Just looking at the ODT today, two headlines stood out: 'No way out, mum sucked into major meth trafficking operation,' and 'Fatal crash caused by distressed speeding mum high on meth'. You've seen the same sort of thing. And the scary thing is that those 2 million doses were discovered in wastewater sites – doesn't even begin to cover the septic tanks. The areas where meth is rife, like the Far North and the East Coast of the North Island, aren't even counted.  

Part of the reason for the massive upsurge might be cost. Apparently, the street price of meth in New Zealand is currently at its lowest level ever recorded thanks to a big intake from the internationals. Data from the Massey University New Zealand Drug Trends Survey says the average retail cost of meth is around about $334 per gram or $74 for a "point" (100 milligrams), so the price has come down by half over the last couple of years.  

I know people who do recreational drugs. They dabble in alcohol, they dabble in cannabis, they dabble in cocaine, and they do dabble. They appear to be able to pick it up and put it down without their drug of choice impacting their families and their businesses. You would have to wonder, given the amount of meth that's being consumed, can you dabble in meth as well? Is it something you can do on the weekend? I'm probably not the best person to be talking about this, but does it give you energy? Is it one that powers you up or calms you down? I have absolutely no idea. So if you need to be powered up or calmed down, whatever the drug can do, can you take it and then leave it? Because all the stories around meth are very 'Go Ask Alice' and 'Requiem for a Dream' type stories. Horror stories of what happens when you pick up a drug and you cannot put it down. Given I have an addictive personality, I know enough to stay well clear of the illegal drugs. But surely, given the kilos and kilos being consumed, not everybody is a tragic wreck.  

Why meth though? It's been around for a very, very long time and there have been I mean, easily the past 20 years we've been talking about how it can tear apart families, how it's funding gangs, how it's fuelling gang wars and turf wars. Why do you want to pay that money so that a gangster and his moll can fly first class to Europe? At least the gangsters who own liquor companies pay tax.  

Now Northland leaders are warning against the arrival of fentanyl in this country. Otangarei Trust CEO Martin Kaipo said it was only a matter of time before the zombie drug made its way into the country as crims looked for new opportunities. And you cannot be confident that people will steer clear of fentanyl despite the fact that there have been so many videos, so many social media stories, so many stories on the mainstream media about what that drug can do to people. The images of the walking zombies, the living dead, makes synnies look like a vitamin tonic by comparison. But if the drug dealers see a new opportunity, they will take it. The drugs can get here, clearly. Your South American route down through the islands is basically a free passage for the drug exporters and importers.  

Is it a drug you can dabble in? It's just when you look at the people who want to get off it and can't, that's the problem. You might think you might be able to dabble, but what happens when it starts to control you? There simply aren't the beds available if you want to detox. You'll be bloody lucky if you can find one. The damage it does to families, it's multi-generational in the Far North. People are trying desperately to, offer young people an alternative to drugs and drug dealing, but when there's not much up here up there, they see it as the only way they can make a crust. Who on earth is using the meth? 

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Back in the day, when I first got this job, I was desperate to buy a house.

All of a sudden I was earning enough to pay a mortgage, but after years of living on a waitress's wages and being a single mum, I didn't have the deposit.

I would now be able to start saving for one, there was a bit left over after expenses, which was a new and wonderful feeling.

But it seemed such a swizz to be paying more than a mortgage in rent every week when that could be going towards a house and security for my daughter and me.

I was very lucky then that my partner, later husband, now ex husband, had a rental unit in the South Island that could be used as security for us to move into a cottage in Grey Lynn.

He had the security, I had the wage, it was a beautiful thing until it wasn't.

Um, nobody wanted to live in Grey Lynn at the time, wasn't at all fashionable. And although I thought it was a palace, our home was described in a story I did with a magazine as shabby.

But we loved it, absolutely loved it, and it was our home for 20 years, which, to make a short story very long, is why I think it's a jolly good idea from National to increase first home buyers' access to low deposit mortgages if they become government.

Their stated intention is to get home ownership rates back to their historical peak of 74% and that was achieved by the country back in the early 90s. Since then, home ownership has fallen to about 66%.

Now there are all sorts of benefits for the community, for the country, not just for the young families who own their own homes, if you get home ownership rates up. It's a worthy aspiration.

Right now, first home buyers account for nearly 29% of all home purchases, representing the largest single cohort in the current housing market as they take advantage of the correction in the housing market.

So will lowering the deposit required make a difference? CoreLogic New Zealand chief property economist Kelvin Davidson was fairly neutral when he spoke to Early Edition this morning.

"I don't think it's going to transform things. I mean, it's going to be great obviously for those individuals who were previously shut out because their income was just a bit high, they'll now be able to potentially get in under this loan scheme, but it's not going to flood the market. We already know first home buyers are really strong anyway, um, and and values are still pretty flat despite that demand. So good for those individuals, but I don't think it sort of transforms the housing market for sure."

Really? But if you're renting right now, surely the lowering of the deposit would make a huge difference for you. 5% is a huge difference from 10% You genius mathematician, Kerre.

But you know what I mean, like trying to get a 10% or a 20% deposit as some people had to do was, you know, it was a Herculean task and it seemed so far, it's a bit like the opposite of what the the student loan absconders are doing.

Their debt seems so huge that they can't begin to tackle it.

When you've got a 20% deposit to find, it seems like such a huge sum you don't even attempt it. Whereas 10% becomes doable, 5% very much so.  

If you are renting right now, does the thought of buying appeal and does 5% make it doable? Like really doable.

When you look at how much you're paying in rent, have you done the sums to see what a mortgage would look like for your first home?

Is it even something you aspire to these days or did the huge jump in house prices knock the confidence out of you when it came to owning a home?

I've got friends, young friends, a couple, he's 40 and the other is 34 and they've said no, we'll just rent. They don't have children, they probably won't have children, they'll just rent and use the money to save a bit and travel a bit.

They've had a long hard look, big talks about it, and they've decided no. They'll save for their retirement through KiwiSaver and a separate savings account and use the rest of the money to travel.

They just don't want to, they've decided they don't want to buy into it.

I'd love to hear what you have to say on this. If you're renting right now, does the 5% threshold as promised by National make you think, you know what, I can do it?

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Labour has dropped to a new low in today's Taxpayers’ Union-Curia poll with just 25.9%.

The result has called into question Labour's election campaign strategy, and Chris Hipkins' leadership. 

NZ Herald political editor Thomas Coughlan told Kerre Woodham, "this has only happened in a couple of months, it's just fallen off a cliff. So, I think it will take some time, Labour will want to see other polls before it starts to talk about leadership."

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The KNAPP Sustainability Leadership Award recognises retailers who are advancing their sustainability efforts through a specific green initiative.

Last night at the Spark Retail NZ Awards The Warehouse Ltd - The Good Drop took the prize, which is The Warehouse's clothing recycling scheme.

Sustainability Partner at The Warehouse Group Caroline Dewstow joined Kerre Woodham to discuss the win.

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A cross-party committee of MPs has recommended the Government water down its move-on orders, concerned that the penalties and punishments would be disproportionate to the offences of rough sleeping and begging. Under the proposed legislation, police had the ability to move people engaging in specific behaviours, including rough sleeping and begging, away from the area for 24 hours. Breaching the rules risked a $2,000 fine or up to three months' imprisonment.  

But after more than 7,000 New Zealanders made submissions, with more than 98% of those submissions opposing the bill as it stood, changes have been made. Those opposed included the Police Association, city missions, faith groups, ordinary everyday New Zealanders who took the time to submit, and Retail NZ, which seems an odd one. Chairperson of the Justice Select Committee, Tom Rutherford, told the Mike Hosking Breakfast he's happy with where the move-on orders have landed. 

"I think we've made some really pragmatic changes, increasing the age from 14 to 18 years old, including things like freedom camping not being captured, stronger protections around providing personal details, requiring the police to report on it in a statutory review in three years' time, and reducing that fine from $2000 to $1000 – I think we've really hit the money here." 

Reducing the age at which the orders could apply from 14 to 18. There were real concerns that young people would be criminalised by these orders, young people who had nowhere else to go, the most vulnerable. It's interesting that Retail NZ was opposed to the bill as it stood. I totally get the Police Association and the city missions, but the move-on orders were in part designed to protect retailers from dealing with aggressive and offensive behaviour.  

But are the amendments fair in your mind? I had a few concerns about them, like aggressive, offensive behaviour, absolutely, get rid of it, but I would have thought that there were sufficient laws to do that anyway. The move-on orders just mean moving the problem from one place to another. If people have nowhere to go, if people have mental health issues, if people are there because they're young, home is not safe, they can't find anywhere to be, then how is the move-on order going to actually solve those issues? It'll just be a not-so-merry-go-round of people landing in one place, being moved on, and landing in another.  

I have absolutely no doubt that not just the police, but all of the social agencies who are set up to deal with the problem of people who live outside of the community for whatever reason, I have absolutely no doubt that the move-on orders were meant with the best possible intentions of trying to make the streets safer, of not having people abusing parents and children who are walking down the street minding their own business, your Tom and your Lindas coming off the cruise ship and just experiencing a nice bit of New Zealand to be met with near naked men brawling in a drunken stupor in the middle of Queen Street. It's not great. It's absolutely not ideal. You can't allow it to happen, and it was let go for a very, very long time. But coming down with the move-on orders doesn't seem to me to be a realistic way of solving the actual issue. People are homeless for many, many reasons, it's not simply because they don't have a home, and they're complex and it's tricky. Were the move-on orders ever designed to get to the root of those problems? I'm not entirely sure they were. 

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Retailers are staying opposed to move-on orders as they stand, saying they should target behaviour, not vulnerable people. 

The proposed Bill would let Police direct people out of a public space for rough sleeping, begging, or behaving disorderly. 

The Justice Committee's recommended changes, including lifting the age orders could apply to from 14 to 18. 

Retail NZ CEO Carolyn Young told Kerre Woodham disruptive behaviour is the main issue for retailers, not homelessness. 

She says it doesn't matter if the person's in a suit or what time it is, it should be down to behaviour, not whether someone has a home or not. 

They're also seeing less and less rough sleepers blocking doorways, Young says, as compliance officers now usher people away each morning. 

She says they're generally out of doorways by around 7 or 8am. 

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18 year old Jade Evans was killed last year when a truck driver ran a compulsory stop sign and crashed into her car, leaving her with catastrophic brain injuries. She and her unborn baby Lily died three days later after Jade's family donated her organs to save the lives of others. Now her family's calling for stronger accountability for preventable road deaths following yesterday's sentencing of the truck driver. The driver, who pleaded guilty to careless driving causing death, was sentenced to two months community detention, disqualified from driving for one year, and ordered to pay reparation to Jade's family. Doesn't seem much for lives lost, does it?  

But then when you think about Jake Hamlin, he got 12 months home detention for driving drunk and killing Samantha Williams. No accident about it. No carelessness about it. It was criminal negligence on his part, really. So yes, it would be nice to see people held accountable for the damage they do.  

Jade's mother Kathryn Stothers and stepfather Cameron have launched Jade's Law, a national petition calling for reform of New Zealand's road safety laws. Named in Jade's honour, the petition wants to increase penalties for careless driving causing death, and asks Parliament to amend the Land Transport Act so penalties reflect the seriousness of a life lost and recognise a wider range of aggravating circumstances for breaches of traffic rules, particularly involving heavy vehicles. Kathryn says the petition is not about seeking harsher punishment for one individual, it's about seeking a change of law to allow judges to impose sentences that reflect the seriousness of the crime.  

If you think back to a Dutch driver —I believe he was a tourist— Johannes Appleman, he T boned a car in Canterbury back in 2014 and that killed Dr Lucy Hone's 12 year old daughter, as well as her best friend and her best friend's mum. He failed to stop at a stop sign, one of those classic long Canterbury roads where you just don't see it. There was no intent, he wasn't drunk, he wasn't tired, yet he ploughed into them and three lives are lost. A Tauranga man was sentenced to 150 hours community work, disqualified from driving for 12 months, and ordered to pay emotional harm reparation for careless driving over the death of a motorcyclist.  

You have that awful, awful case of the young woman in Morrinsville —I think that was back in 2011— who came round a corner just on the outskirts of Morrinsville, failed to take a moderate bend, drifted over the road and ploughed into, she wasn't even going that fast, ploughed into a group of cyclists who were absolutely doing exactly as they should. They weren't all over the road, they were riding sensibly and it was just one of those horrible accidents. She wasn't drunk, she wasn't impaired with drugs, she wasn't tired, she was on her way to work and she killed three people.  

When it's an accident, a pure accident, no drugs are involved, no alcohol's involved, no tiredness, you're not turning around and laughing and chatting to other people, when it's just a dreadful accident, yet the outcome of that moment of carelessness or distraction or thinking about something else, that moment of distraction causes so many lives to be changed forever. Families have to live forever without their child, their husband or wife. How do you reflect that fairly? Harsher penalties, they're not going to stop the accidents happening because these are not people who need to be told not to drink and get behind the wheel of a vehicle. They weren't drunk. They don't need to be told don't take drugs, don't speed. They weren't doing any of that. It was an accident and yet the fallout from the accident is so great.  

Does there need to be a marker in law to say what you did was an accident, yes, but the damage you did through being at the wrong place at the wrong time in a moment's distraction has resulted in so much damage, so much pain, so much harm, we must mark it in law by punishing you. I mean, at the moment you've got a little light community service or a fine, disqualification for a year or so for people who have taken multiple lives. They didn't mean to, they weren't impaired, there weren't aggravating circumstances around what they did, but boy they did some damage. What's appropriate? 

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The mother of an 18-year-old killed when a truck driver drove through a stop sign near Palmerston North is calling for stronger accountability. 

The driver's pleaded guilty to careless driving causing Jade Evans' death. 

He's been sentenced to two months' community detention, loss of licence, and must pay the family reparations. 

Mother Kathryn Stothers has launched a petition asking to create Jade's Law, to reform road safety law. 

She told Kerre Woodham that they want to close the gap so that if a serious breach of road rules results in death, the charge and sentence properly reflect the loss of life. 

Stothers says it's not about making higher charges for everyone, but about giving the legislation, police, and courts a wider scope to charge appropriately when fundamental road rules, such as stop signs, are breached. 

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