Kerre Woodham Mornings Podcast

Remember the Tau Henare-Trevor Mallard stauch back in 2007? 

Senior Cabinet Minister Trevor Mallard said the punch he threw at National MP Tau Henare is “one of the most stupid things I've ever done in my life” and in a life full of them, that's saying something. The scuffle broke out in the parliamentary lobbies. Allegedly, Henare had made some snide remarks about Trevor Mallard's personal life, which is pretty nasty, but Mallard lost the plot and then promptly lost his Sports Minister portfolio and was demoted by then PM Helen Clark. 

He was allowed to stay in cabinet, though, which some thought was very lenient on Helen Clarke's behalf, but she was always incredibly loyal to those who showed devotion to her, so I guess that's how he stayed and then went on to have a fabulous career and is now living on the pig's back in Ireland. Oh me, oh my. If only you'd been sacked then and there, it could have spared us a lot. But there we go. 

That was a particularly unsavoury moment in parliamentary history. More recently, Nationals Tim Van de Molen was judged to be in contempt of Parliament after he was found to have threatened and intimidated Labour MP Shanan Halbert in a Transport committee hearing. He accepts he stood over him, Van de Molan stood over Halbert and generally behaved like an oak. He was censured effectively, a public telling off in the House of Parliament, and stripped of his portfolios by Christopher Luxon. 

Now we have Green MP Julie Anne Genter committing a sin at least as egregious as Mallard’s, certainly, far more egregious than Van de Molen. By marching across the house and standing over National MP Matt Doocey, getting right up in his grills and behaving in a totally intimidating manner. She apologized and says she was trying to impart information. 

What, by shoving it down his throat? It was completely unacceptable and over the top and I cannot believe that there are texters who are defending the behaviour, why? How, how can you defend that? It doesn't matter if she's a Green or if she's a woman, God, imagine if it was a man had done that. We all, we all know how bad that would have looked, even if Matt Doocey had stood up. He was probably just gob smacked because she was behaving completely irrationally. And when you're confronted like that, it's really quite shocking and you turn into a flight and fight response and the adrenaline surges cause you're thinking, what is the mad tart going to do next. 

I cannot believe already there have been texts this morning saying, oh, come on, it’s fake news, you know. Bigger things to worry about. I don't think so. What is it about Transport Committee hearings that excites so much passion? Because that's what happened with Van de Molen and Halbert. And the last one, it was a transport committee. And here we had Simeon Brown answering questions from the floor. 

I don't know how much the Debbie Francis review into bullying in Parliament cost, but it doesn't seem to have improved matters much, does it? Julie Anne Genter deserves all the censure Parliament can throw at her, as would any MP of any hue who behaved in that fashion? 

And as an aside, she has taken the gloss of James Shaw's valedictory speech. He should be the ones getting the headlines. He should be the Green MP that everybody's talking about. He has shown dignity and professionalism throughout his career, and to have been upstaged by one of his own MPs, one of his own party members with her appalling lack of professionalism is extremely disappointing.   

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Happy International Workers Day to all the labourers and workers out there. All right, brother. All right, sister. Dedicated to recognizing the contributions and achievements of workers worldwide and taking the opportunity to promote workers rights and opportunities so. Go us, all of us paid grunts. 

MPs, would you consider them paid grunts? Not really public servants, sure, and reasonably well-paid public servants. Too much? Well, who decides that? The remuneration authority, that's who. A very good idea to leave the setting of certain public servants pay to an independent authority. And let's face it, it is never a right time for MPs to be accepting pay rises, they're on a hiding to nothing. Particularly tough, though, when the government has been calling for financial restraint when it's been calling for cost cutting in every government department. At a time when hundreds, if not thousands, of workers are being made redundant, you get the remuneration authority saying ‘look time for a pay rise for MPs.’ On a sliding scale, depending on what job you do. It doesn't matter that many of those who were sucking off the public tit shouldn't have been there anyway. That hiring spree in the last six months of ‘23 was an outrage. Redundancies are punishing and create uncertain times for those on the receiving end of a ‘don't come Monday’. 

The Remuneration Authority has announced pay rises backdated to October 2023 and coming in tranches through to 2026. It will be the first increase to MPs salaries since 2017 and the first major overview of the remuneration package since in about 20 years. The Prime Minister's salary will rise by almost $50,000 over six years, from $471k to $520k. Which you know, if you're the CEO of a big company, as he likes to see it, or if you're the Prime Minister, you probably wouldn't begrudge. 

I don't think people begrudge the big money for the big job. It's when you look at some of the backbenchers from numerous parties that you start to get a little sniffy and a little bit, what about me-ism starts to creep in. The Prime Minister has said he'll donate the extra to charity, as has become almost customary. 

So, what to do? What to do? 

Now we can all say they don't deserve it, but that's not true. Some of them do deserve the money they get, be they a backbencher from any party, be they a minister, be they a leader of an opposition party, some of them work hard for the money. They understand the concept of public servant. They are there to do their best for their constituents, for their party, for the country. Some of them are underpaid. Others would be overpaid if they were on the dole.  

So, what do you do? Would you do the job for the money? I heard the man from the Remunerations Authority saying, look, it's a matter of looking at what similar jobs pay in the private sector. It's a matter of attracting people to do the job and it's a matter of retention. Now, I know you've got to look for comparisons, but when it's attracting people to the job, you wouldn't do it for the money, would you? When you look at the hours they work, the scrutiny they're under, the pressure they're under, the meetings they have to sit through, the numpties they have to listen to. I wouldn't do it. I wouldn't be in a backbench MP. Not for the money. I might do it if I thought I could add something and help create a New Zealand that's fair and just in the way I want to see it, but I certainly wouldn't do it for the money. 

As for retention, quite frankly that's not up to a wage band, that's up to a voter. If you're doing a good job, you'll be retained. The voters will vote you back in. It's got nothing to do with the money. 

So, when it comes to the backbenches, some of them are overpaid, massively, given what they do, others are underpaid. If you look at the work of the ministers, I think it's too soon to tell from the current government as to whether they’re value for money. 

The last lot? Well. You know my views on that. Very few of them I think could have commanded a ministerial salary in the private sector, and I'd be really interested to find out from those who have left Parliament, got bundled out of Parliament, what they're doing now and whether they're earning anywhere near as much as they were earning as a minister. Somehow, I doubt it. Other than Grant Robertson, who managed to land himself, get his trotters inpossibly the biggest trough in the country, 600 odd thousand at the Otago University. 

They're on a hiding to nothing. Well, how else do we set their pay? An independent authority does it? They haven't had a pay rise since 2017. It's the wrong time to do it. Absolutely the wrong time to do it. When is the right time? We get value for money for some, not for the others. And still again, the question: would you do it for any money? 

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A former Labour Minister says a proposed pay rise for politicians gives them a real dilemma. 

The Remuneration Authority's set to increase most MP salaries 10.5% over three years. 

If implemented, it would be the first pay rise for MPs since 2017 and the first rise of 2.8% will be backdated to the election. 

Stuart Nash told Kerre Woodham that the public tends to hear about poorly performing MPs, which can shift perceptions of MPs in general. 

He says about 90% of MPs work incredibly hard and put the hours in, but it's often unseen. 

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Unemployment has risen again but economists don't think it's peaked yet. 

Stats NZ figures out today show the rate reached 4.3% for the March quarter, up 0.3 percentage points from the December quarter's 4%. 

It reflects the impacts of higher interest rates as the Reserve Bank keeps trying to rein in inflation. 

Herald Business Editor at Large Liam Dann told Kerre Woodham that it's a slow and steady rise. 

He says 134 thousand people are now unemployed, up from 122 thousand at the end of 2023, meaning 12 thousand jobs have gone. 

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Well, the 1News Verian poll released last night shows that support for the coalition government, after seeing an operation for a few months, has dropped since election night. Hardly surprising. Well, to my mind. Anyway, clearly there were others who were simply gob smacked and amazed, but on to them in a moment.   

National, ACT, and New Zealand First have collectively dropped 5 percentage points. According to the numbers from that poll, and based on that poll, the left block would be able to form a government and New Zealand First would be out of Parliament. How many times have New Zealand first voters heard that? So many times, you'll be out of government dead and buried.   

The poll had National at 36%, down two points from the last poll in February, Labour jumped to 30%, up two. And the Green Party also increased by two to 14%. Te Pati Māori was on 4%, the same as the last poll. This is pretty much par for the political course. Labour showed a dip after it formed a coalition government in 2017 after three years of heading their coalition government. The first Colmar Brunton poll of 2020 saw National scraping into power and again New Zealand First out of Parliament in their polls. 

These snapshots are an indication of how people are feeling, both in themselves and around politics. Christopher Luxon was questioned about it this morning when he was on with Mike Hosking. He said, he didn't say it in so many words, but this is me. He said, it was hardly surprising that people were feeling grumpy. These are his words, he told Mike Hosking, we've got high inflation and high interest rates. People are sick of it. We're making some pretty tough decisions. We need to do that in order to fix the mess. We've been left New Zealand, as he said, would make a call into and a half years' time. And he went on with the usual spiel. Everyone in the coalition government is very focused on fixing the mess that they inherited, which is quite true. They've got a big job. They knew that going in. But people are going to need to see some results and they're going to need to see them soon. 

The shocking daylight robbery of a jewellery store over the weekend, all very 2020. The price of everything is still rising, uncertainty in the job market, there's a lot going on and not a lot of it is good for most people. It is not the government's fault, but it is their responsibility. And they are going to need to see some wins within the next three months and they are also going to have to watch their messaging. The accommodation entitlement, the snide tweets from ACT on Twitter over job losses in the public service, the weeks of fumbling and obfuscation from Melissa Lee handling the broadcasting portfolio, none of that has been helpful at all. Sacking Melissa Lee? Very helpful. 

I noticed that, I thought that was a really good move. I was up in Hokianga trying to avoid the news and I saw this and thought, damn it, what a great talk back day that would have been because I think that is really decisive, really good. She's clearly not up for the job. She can't handle it. Get. Go. 

Brutal, but a good sign to Ministers, perform, or you're out. A good sign to backbenchers that if you perform, you're in. I thought I thought that was a really good move, so the poll was taken over a week and ended on the day of Melissa Lee's sacking, so I'd be interested to know whether that will have an impact the next time around. 

But it's polls. You know, as every they're great to have a bit of a yarn about, great to give different media outlets their lead for the day or the night. People can have a yarn about them. Take the pulse, see where everybody's at, they count for nothing until Election Day. You can take some learnings out of them. You can think. OK, well, yes. No, we need to be careful here. We need to be more positive here. 

It will give Labour a bit of heart because they have been in the doldrums, and they need to reinvigorate themselves to bring themselves up to a decent opposition. But it's a poll. There's two and a half years to go. A lot can happen in that time.   

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If you're a teenager addicted to your phone and the world that lies within and beyond your apps, it's the end of the world as you know it today.   

The Government's ban on phones in schools kicks in as kids return to school for Term two, meaning students won't be able to use their cell phones during the day - including at lunch time and during breaks. Some schools have gone early and introduced it in Term one. They saw the writing on the wall, thought they'd bedded in before they were required to by law. Others have gone even earlier. They decided it was the right thing for their school to ban cell phones, and they didn't need a government imperative to do so. 

In a shocking departure from the norm, there seemed to be wholesale support for the ban, despite it being an initiative of the wicked, evil National government. And it appears that the headlines are in the main, supportive that the media have found people who are supportive of the ban, like New Zealand Secondary Principals Council Chair Kate Gainsford. She says schools across the country already have measures in place, but the changes will make it easier to stop distractions. She says parents have appreciated the support because they're having the same sorts of conversations in their own homes about the harmful effects of too much time online, about limiting screen time. 

So, now you've got rules around cell phone use at home that are being replicated in the school grounds, so the adults are working together. It seems that parents, educators, even some of the kids agree that 24/7 access to cell phones is a bad idea, but for years nobody wanted to be the one with the stick - you wanted to be down with the kids on their level, you didn't want to impinge on their freedoms. And then along came Erica Stanford. When she entered government as part of the National team in the coalition government. She was big on banning cell phones and she says she has no problem waving a big stick if it means the kids will benefit. 

Erica Stanford - “I've had a lot of principals say to me, look, it was really hard, there was lots of pushback from kids, but now you've done it, you're the bad guy. I'm quite happy to be the bad guy, Mike. It means improved mental health and academic outcomes for our kids. I mean, there was a Norwegian study that's just come out saying that this has got incredibly good outcomes for especially low socioeconomic girls for their mental health, but also GPA grades and bullying is reduced as well, so look - I'm happy to be the bad guy.” 

That was bad guy, Erica Stanford, Education Minister, talking to Mike Hosking this morning. It's not just Norwegian studies. Studies by researchers at the University of Texas and Louisiana State University found that where students were banned from bringing their smartphones into the classroom, their grades quickly improved. Around an average of 6 percent. That's without the distractions. That's amazing. The results were most pronounced for high school students over 16. It's even better for at risk students, as Erica Stanford referred to. Students who live in poverty or attend special education classes benefited approximately twice as much as their peers, after ditching the technological distraction. 

By removing phones from the classroom, apparently it's the equivalent of adding an extra hour of class per week. Students lose almost a full week of school interacting with their phones rather than engaging in class time. The only counter study I can find, with arguments against is that children feel infantilised. Well, your children, it’s kind of a point. And if you can't stay off your phones then it shows that your childlike behaviour needs to be modified. 

I just cannot believe that teachers, principals feel so disempowered that they can't make the rules in their own schools. Some don't, some have, and some did - and good on them. But a lot of principals didn't want to have a battle with parents who said I need to get in touch with my child in case there's an emergency. Well, you know, there is still the school, P.A. Let's go analog and use your copper phone to dial up Mrs Grimes, the school secretary, and she will be able to pass on a message. She will also be able to vet whether it is indeed an emergency. I forgot to pack your lunch, darling, mummy will bring it in in two hours is not an emergency. And Mrs Grimes knows that so she won't pass that message on.  I just cannot see any downside to this. 

There's a lot of cyber bullying that goes on, and while the internet has been an extraordinary invention and cell phones have been amazing and we can't go back and nor would we want to, the dark side, the downside, is severe and cruel and the cyber bullying is vicious. Kids should be safe at school. They shouldn't have to be checking their phones under their desks, desperately making sure that nobody's started for no reason at all, a campaign against them that's going to ruin their lives for the next five years. 

School should be a safe place. Home should be a safe place. Surely there is nobody, nobody who would speak against a ban on cell phones in schools? It's a good move. 

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From today, new government regulations require students not to use or access a phone while they're attending school, including break times. 

The legislated phone ban won't change much for Opunake High School as they have had a "Phones Off, Brains On" policy in place for a few years. 

Principal Andrea Hooper Carr tells Kerre Woodham her school noticed a significant change in behaviours as the wave of cellphones in schools began around nine years ago, including less socialisation in classes and less interaction with teachers. 

Since banning phones at Opunake High School, Hooper Carr has seen grades improve. 

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There is one thing I’ve never heard one of the old soldiers you always see or hear on the news on Anzac Day saying. There are less of them now, of course, as time passes, but, over the years, I have never heard one of them say they had a great time and that going to war was the time of their life. I’ve never heard it. And I bet you haven’t, either. 

And that’s why you’re not going to hear me ripping into those involved in the anti-war protests around the country yesterday. On Anzac Day. 

For two reasons: I reckon in their heart of hearts, anyone who has been to war would agree that it’s a futile waste of time, energy, and lives. 

The other reason is that of all days of the year, ANZAC Day is the perfect day to point out the futility of war. And, while the protest action yesterday was largely about what’s going on right now in the Middle East, war is war - whenever it happens. 

Now I’m not saying that it’s a day to be disrespectful of those who served and those who are serving in our military today. I’m not saying that at all, because the first World War is part of our family’s history. 

My grandfather went to Gallipoli. And survived, obviously - because I wouldn’t be here otherwise. He was decorated for his efforts and our wider family; we are very proud of that. 

But, like pretty much every other returned soldier, he never spoke about it. Lord knows what personal trauma he was dealing with. But that’s how it was in those days, wasn’t it? No counselling or anything like that. 

But if he had spoken about it, I’m sure he would have told us kids that war is a dead-end street. And it would be pretty hard to think otherwise if you’d been through it, I reckon. 

Apparently, he put his age up to get himself into the army for the first World War and put it down to get back in for the second. But they might have seen through that, and he ended up in the Home Guard on the Otago Peninsula. 

By that time, he was well on his way to having 11 kids and we’ve always joked that he would have been perfectly happy being down at Taiaroa Heads, if it meant just getting out of the house. 

I’m telling you this, so you know that I’m not coming at this from a position of ignorance or disrespect. I have huge respect. Not just for my grandfather and other family members who served in other wars, but I’ve got huge respect for anyone who serves.  

But that doesn’t mean that I have to be a war-freak. It doesn’t mean that, just because war has been an important part of our family history, that I have to be a flag waiver for war, full stop. 

And I’m not. Which is why I’m not upset about what happened yesterday. Which largely involved red dye of some sort being poured into public water fountains around the country. 

The bucket fountain in Wellington was red. The fountain at Mission Bay, in Auckland, was red. Victoria Park, in Christchurch. Nelson and Hamilton were other places where protesters chucked whatever it was, they used into fountains. 

Protesters also turned-up at the National Anzac Service in Wellington. But you probably know that that was called-off because of high winds. Which is saying something for Wellington. But I gather it was about the safety of the veterans, as much as anything. 

Signs went up at the fountains, as well. A couple of examples: “Do not normalise Anzac violence”. “Honour the fallen by swearing ‘never again’”. “No glory in war”. 

The same sorts of things we hear veterans say every ANZAC Day. 

And I think one of the people involved said it perfectly when they said that ANZAC Day is “a time for reflecting on what is meant by ‘lest we forget;”. Which made me think.  

So too did Peter Fitzsimons in an article he wrote for the Sydney Morning Herald yesterday. He said that, on ANZAC Day, we get a lot of emotions: reverence, respect, and remembrance. But he said there’s one missing - which is rage. 

Rage that so many soldiers were needlessly slaughtered on what he described as “inane battle plans that never had any chance of succeeding”. 

Rage at the complete lack of remorse from those who sent them to their deaths. Rage at the refusal to learn from previous catastrophes to prevent the next one. 

He was talking on behalf of Australian soldiers there, of course. But the same can be said on behalf of the New Zealand soldiers who went through exactly the same thing. 

And I reckon any soldier - past and present - would agree with Peter Fitzsimons and those involved in yesterday’s protest action, that war is something to be avoided at all cost. 

And I reckon any soldier —past and present— would agree that ANZAC Day is the perfect day to get that message across. 

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Welcome to another war of words between the greenies and the government over changes to the Resource Management Act. 

With the poor old farmers stuck in the middle, just wanting the chance to be trusted to do the right thing when it comes to protecting the environment. And that’s what I think we should be doing. 

You know how people have this concept of Mother Nature and how it’s all peace and love and milk and honey and bees buzzing and gentle rivers and all of that? It’s amazing, isn’t it, how quickly all that goes out the window if the milk and honey brigade don’t like something?     

Here’s an example in relation to the Government making five changes to the RMA: “The Government is hellbent on pushing our natural environment to the brink, exploiting everything it can for any profit that can be squeezed out of it". 

Who’s saying that do you think? 

It’s not Federated Farmers, they’re saying pretty much the complete opposite. They’re saying that the changes announced yesterday are “an end to the war on farming”. 

It’s the Green Party which is talking about pushing the natural environment to the brink. In particular, its environment spokesperson Lan Pham. Who comes from the same part of the country I'm in: Canterbury. 

Which is a hotspot for dairy farming, especially. Where truckloads of farms have been converted to dairy over the last 20 or 30 years. 

One stat I saw today said that the number of cows in Canterbury went from 113,000 in 1990 to 1.2 million in 2019. I’d always thought that we have the most number of dairy cows than anywhere else in the country, But I’ve been looking around online and it might be Waikato. But Canterbury still has a lot. 

And the thing that people often talk about when it comes to dairy farming, is the impact that level of expansion and intensity of farming has had and will continue to have on the environment. Because when a cow takes a pee out in the paddock today, it takes 20 years for the nitrates in that urine to work through the soils. 

Which means that dairy farmers get a bad rap, but they’re not on their own, all farmers have been feeling the heat. 

And, according to Federated Farmers anyway, that’s about to ease with these changes to the RMA that the Government announced yesterday, which are about doing away with things like limits on how much land farmers can use for winter grazing and water quality considerations in consent applications. 

If you were to ask me which of the viewpoints I noted earlier align most closely with my view of the world when it comes to protecting and enhancing the natural environment, if I was honest and I had to choose one of them, I’d go with what the Greens are saying. 

But, unlike climate activists and politicians, I’m willing to accept that things aren’t black and white. Which is why I think it’s time we just trusted farmers to do the right thing and let them get on with it. 

And I say that for a couple of reasons. 

Firstly, I’ve got friends who are farmers and every time I go and see them, I can see that they just want to do the right thing. But, instead, they’ve had governments and government departments behaving like helicopter parents and watching their every move just in case they do something wrong. And that’s nuts. 

And secondly, show me a farmer who wants to poo in their own nest. 

They don’t. And this is where the greenies lose it. Because if they think farmers want to destroy the natural environment on their properties for short-term financial gain, then they know nothing about how it all works. 

Farms are businesses, yes. But they’re also assets. And why would anyone want to do anything to damage their asset? They wouldn’t. 

And that’s why I think that, instead of pulling farmers to bits, we should be trusting them to do the right thing. 

Yes, I know, there are muppet farmers - just like there are muppet townies. But we can’t do anything about that. And if you think the Resource Management Act is how you sort out muppets, then you might want to think again. So, we can’t do anything about the muppets. 

What we can do, though, is say to the farmers who aren’t muppets, that we trust them to do the right thing - and leave them to it. 

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Have you ever heard of a placebo policy? That’s what this Three Strikes law is, and I don’t think bringing it back is going to make one bit of difference. 

You’ll know what a placebo is when it comes to things like clinical trials where they give someone a sugar pill but tell them it’s medicine, and the person says ‘oh I feel much better, thanks’.  

The person thinks they’re using a real pill, or a real drug and their mind tells them that, because they're doing something, it’s working. It’s making a difference. But it’s actually not doing anything. 

And placebo policies are exactly the same. They’re policies that people think will work —will make a difference— just because they exist.  

Or more to the point, they are policies that politicians latch onto because they think it makes them look like they’re doing something. Even though, at the end of the day, it doesn’t change a thing.   

And that’s exactly what the Government is doing with its plan to bring back the Three Strikes legislation. You commit crimes with punishments longer than two years and, the third time, the judge has to give out the maximum sentence. None of this discount business. 

That two-year bit is key, because the new version of Three Strikes Version isn’t going to apply to low-level offending. 

The idea behind that is to make sure there isn't a repeat of situations that even Labour thought were nutbar. Example: a mentally ill man serving nearly five years in prison for kissing a woman in the street.  

Nevertheless, some people love the idea of it. But there is no clear proof that it reduced the amount of serious crime the last time we had it. But the Government is bringing it back anyway because it can and because it will look like it’s doing something. 

Criminal defence lawyer John Munro said on Newstalk ZB today that, even though we’ve had this law here before, the Government is pretty much flying blind on this one because there hasn't been any long-term research on its effectiveness the last time we had it. 

And some people are saying that it’s likely some criminals, once they’ve been done twice already for serious crimes, will think even less about consequences because they have nothing to lose. 

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not in the least bit sympathetic to criminals. Not in the least bit.  

All criminals, but especially the lowlifes who commit the likes of the 41 different violent and sexual crimes we’re talking about with this Three Strikes law. You can imagine what they are, I don’t need to go through a list. Although, this time around, there’ll be a new strangulation and suffocation offence included.       

But, in your heart of hearts, do you really think bringing this law back is going to make any difference? I don’t think it is. If the aim is to reduce violent crime, then the Government is barking up the wrong tree with this one. 

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Well, the Reserve Bank has got what it wanted. Maybe not what it wanted, it's possibly the hard landing that they were hoping to avoid, but it got what it engineered. 

Back in 2022 the Reserve Bank told a Select Committee that, yes, it was deliberately engineering a recession to rein back inflation after being slow to raise interest rates. Governor Adrian Orr said as a result of raising interest rates to slow spending, there would likely be a rise in unemployment, but it may be a job-rich slow down because of the severe lack of labour in the economy. 

Remember, this was two years ago. Back in 2022, before the influx of migrants in 2023. He predicted that unemployment would peak at 5.7% in 2025 before things started to come right in terms of inflation, in terms of giving mortgage holders a bit of a breathing space. 

Figures released yesterday show that those on Jobseeker at the end of March have surpassed 5.7% of the working population already, we’re at 5.9 % in the middle of 2024. Still less than 6.4% of the working population we saw in March 2021, but it will make National’s aim of getting 50,000 people off Jobseeker benefits by 2030 that little bit harder in the short term. However, Social Development Minister Louise Upston isn't letting up on the message that those who can work should work. 

“These sanctions will really show up those that are not doing their bit. That's why in the short term it's good to see that there's been an increase. People need to know if they can work, they should. And actually, any job is better than no job. And when times are tough and you need to put food on the table for your family, you get out there and do whatever is available. And that's the message I want to send really clearly, if you can work, you should, and the sanctions will mean you need to do your bit.” 

Yep, the number of beneficiaries sanctioned in the March quarter is already 20% higher than a year ago. This is Ministry of Social Development, taking its cue from the Government. Louise Upson said the ministry seems to be taking the initiative on its own. While we'd rather see beneficiaries with work obligations comply to avoid being sanctioned, it's good to see the ministry utilising all the tools at its disposal to incentivise people into work. Those sanctions would have been well used back in 21/22/23, when we were screaming out for labour, and nobody could get workers for love nor money. When unemployment was at its highest, that's when we needed the workers the most.  

Right now, though, the job market has tightened and everybody is battening down their economic hatches until mid 2025, when hopefully the storm will have passed. 

Louise Upston says people shouldn't be sniffy about the type of work they do. Again, a sentiment I totally agree with, but who's hiring? 

I remember a number of people pivoting during Covid; airline pilots went farm labouring and opened cafes, executives went truck driving, but that was again different times. Our borders were closed, everybody was screaming out for workers in any and every field. They'd take all comers. 

Times have changed. All well and good to say people should take the jobs available, that they shouldn't be choosy and picky about what sort of work they do, and I'm stunned at the number of people who are. I'm stunned at the number of people who won't go to work because they're worth more. You know, the market kind of dictates. 

So, a sentiment I agree with, take the jobs that are available. Ok, what jobs are available? Are the same people who phoned me, the same employers who phoned me, begging for workers saying they'd help with relocation expenses, they would pay anything to anybody, you didn't have to be the perfect employee. Are you still in that same position? Or now can you pick and choose? 

Are you in the position of being able to say ordinarily I'd have picked you up, but I've got three people better right now, better qualifications, better work history. What jobs are available? If you're looking for workers, who are you looking for? And if you are one who is looking for work, is it as easy as Louise Upston says? There are jobs out there. Get cracking if you want to put food on the table, off you go. 

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New Zealand police officers have overwhelmingly rejected the government's latest pay offer and have given the government one last chance to lift its game. The latest offer was put to the vote on April the 8th by the New Zealand Police Association. More than 75% voted against the offer. That is overwhelming. President Chris Cahill said the outcome sends a clear message to the government that the offer falls well short of addressing officers' concerns and very real needs. Police Minister Mark Mitchell was on with Mike Hosking this morning and says the rejection is an incredibly disappointing outcome. 

“In terms of where we are at the moment as a country, which is, we're basically broke in terms of the massive borrowing that was implemented by the previous government. The fact that we're paying $8.5 billion in interest. I mean I could increase our police service three times over with that money. And so, we've put together a package that is a quarter of a billion dollars better than the offer that went forward in August.” 

That was Mike Mitchell talking to Mike Hosking this morning. 

Look, I have every sympathy for the government inheriting the books they did, the debt they did. I have every sympathy for the government for inheriting pay negotiations that should have been settled under the previous administration, but the police should not have to bear the brunt of an economy that's been mishandled. With all due respect to Mark Mitchell, that is neither here nor there. 

The police shouldn't have to care about the economy. They're suffering the impact of a mishandled economy the same way we all are, but it's not their concern. They don't have to carry the can because the economy's down the toilet. The last pay rise police had was two years ago at 3.5%. Inflation that year was 7.2%. So, they've been sold a pup basically. They were let down by the previous administration, but there were many promises during the election campaign that they would be supported. Law and order was a huge issue in 2023 and was given even more prominence than it normally is during any old election campaign, and with good reason. 

Mark Mitchell and National, Christopher Luxon promised to crack down on crime, neuter the gangs and support the police. Along with the economy, that was one of their biggest platforms, law and order. The fact that the police had been let down and that they would restore faith for the police and restore the kind of mana the police once eroded under years of, I would say not ‘neglected’ so much, certainly more police were added to the ranks, but you had police ministers that didn't particularly want to be there other than Stuart Nash, and it seemed to be on a high rotate. It didn't seem to be. a portfolio that was given much prominence by the previous administration and national capitalised on that in the election campaign. When Christopher Luxon was in studio with me a couple of weeks ago, I put it to him that he owed the police a decent pay off offer after all the tub thumping. 

“We tried to put an enhanced offer in just after, you know, month or so ago, and then we put another new offer on the table just at the end of last week, which you know has been taken out there. I can't really go into the details of that because in fairness, the police are actually all going to digest that objectively themselves and make their own individual decisions as to whether that's something they do want to support or not. But I'm hopeful because the government has put in hundreds of millions of dollars more on the table in order to make sure that we can put our best foot forward in that negotiation. We back our police; we want them to do well.” 

Well, pay them more then. Give them the respect that they're due. When you are using the men and women in blue as a marketing tool, as a call to action for all New Zealanders, then I think police can quite rightly expect to see that support come about in a tangible way. With a decent employment offer. The latest one, the one that Christopher Luxon was talking about, hundreds of millions of dollars, well, $250 million, so yes, technically it was hundreds of millions, was rejected by 75% of the police who are members of the Police Association. So no, not even close to good enough. 

If it was Poto Williams in charge, sure you wouldn't have much in the way of expectations. But when you have a former cop in the form of Mike Mitchell, and you have a former cop and Police Association advocate, Casey Costello in charge of the portfolio, you would expect more than platitudes. I do not blame the police for being brassed off, and all. They were led to believe, they were told to believe, that under this government, things would be different. That hasn't happened. 

Mark Mitchell saying that the economy is in a parlous state, so what? Yes, it is. So, make the savings somewhere else. I'm assuming that MPs won't be accepting their pay rise, that they will introduce legislation, which they can do, to turn it down. To say look, I'm sorry under these conditions we simply cannot accept a pay rise. Take that money, give it to the police. 

Obviously, it's not as simple as that, but seriously, if I was a police officer, I would be brassed off. You've been led to expect much and this government hasn't delivered. Kind words and passionate rhetoric do not pay the mortgage or the grocery bill. 

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Back in the day when I lived in Ponsonby and it was only just starting to evolve as a shopping and cafe destination, we didn't have beggars per say. More, they were people who were living in community houses who would walk up and down the street, and they were simply absorbed into the community. 

They were given cigarettes from the smokers who were sitting at the outside tables of the cafes that had established themselves. There was always a meal for them at many of the cafes and the restaurants that were popping up. There was a brush and comb set set aside at Servilles for one of the ladies, who would come in every morning at 10am, and asked to be made beautiful. And they would comb her hair and brush it, and somebody would spritz her with hairspray and off she'd go. They weren't part of the mainstream; they were living in community houses because they had various forms of mental illness, but they were part of the community, you knew their names, you could greet them. You sometimes got a response, sometimes didn't. But everybody knew who they were, and they belonged there. It's just simply not like that now.  

And I don't know whether it's a chicken and the egg, whether we've got more uncaring, or they've got more volatile. The square pegs who live amongst us appear to have got a whole lot more aggressive. There's a woman in Ponsonby now, who screams foul-mouth invective all day, every day, while dragging a heavy suitcase behind her, and either cannot or will not engage if you say hello to her. It just means she'll turn and scream the cuss words at you. 

There's a bloke who's been there forever, who just about gives me a cardiac infarction when I'm sitting at the lights musing about the day ahead, and all of a sudden there's a bang, bang, bang on the back window, or the side window, or the front window demanding money with menaces. Even if I had actual money in the car, which I very seldom do, I wouldn't give it to him, because he terrifies the living bejesus out of me for a moment while I'm sitting there. 

Some of those begging outside supermarkets seem genuine souls. As I say, don't carry cash very often, but when I say that and offer to buy the man or woman lunch instead, the offer is gratefully accepted and the food is eaten immediately, after a thank you. Clearly, there are some who are hungry and have run out of means to feed themselves. What do we do with those amongst us, who feel they have to take to the streets to beg for money or food to get by?   

Rotorua is seriously considering a bylaw banning begging after ten Aussie tourists were physically accosted at a cafe last week, and in one suburb in Christchurch, also this week, aggressive begging is making people fear for their safety. Residents are having to change their routines and stop visiting public spaces to avoid confrontation and they're looking to make rules around begging there too.   

What happened to being able to absorb those members of the community who are different? Did they change or did we? Is that there are so many people on the streets now? Is it that so many of them are on drugs, and boozed to the eyeballs, and volatile? You don't know what they're going to do, even if you offer something in kindness, you don't know how it's going to be received. Are beggars seen as dangerous now rather than just odd? Are they unnecessarily parading their poverty? Going out of their way to make us feel uncomfortable? 

‘There’s a welfare system there man, for the love of all its holy use it, get yourself out of my sight. Stop hassling me. I've already given through my taxes. If that's not enough, get a job.’ Is that the attitude now? Because a lot of the people that I've seen, don't look to me, I'm no expert, but they do not appear to me to be people who could hold down full-time jobs. They appear unable, not unwilling, but unable to hold down a full-time job, in that case, living in a big city you're probably going to have to depend on the kindness of strangers to get by. 

In Christchurch, they’ve said don't give to people who ask. They're waiting outside shop entrances following people to their cars, trying to convince them to cough up cash. And the only reason they're doing that is because people are giving them money. So basically, the Christchurch councillor appears to be saying don't give them anything. Treat them like pigeons. If you feed them, they'll keep coming, so don't. He said, if you've got a kind heart, donate money to the city mission or a social agency that's working in these spaces rather than give money direct. Which may well be the best way. 

But I'd love to know in your area how big a problem is begging? It seems to be everywhere now, everywhere. And what changed? Is it the sheer weight of numbers of people wanting? Is it the attitude and the behaviour of those who are demanding money? Because there was a time, wasn't there, where they used to be part of the community. 

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Inflation is continuing to ease, particularly for essentials. 

Latest Stats NZ figures show the Consumer Price Index increased 4% in the year to March, down from 4.7% in the year to December. 

Housing's been the biggest contributor to inflation and rents rose at the fastest rate since records began in 1999. 

But the Herald's Liam Dann says the cost of most other day-to-day essentials are going up more slowly. 

He says grocery prices are stabilising, and fruit and vegetables have actually got a lot cheaper. 

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When I broke my arm just before the end of the year, I was very grateful to our health system for picking up the pieces, quite literally. They found a bit that was missing at the top of my arm that they weren't expecting, and put me back together again, and it's pretty much back to normal. 

I'm very, very grateful for the skill, the ability and the kindness of North Shore Hospital, and I was grateful too for the part funding of the first few physio and acupuncture appointments. Those appointments have made a huge difference in getting back mobility, even though the taxpayer-funded part is now over, I will keep up the appointments because I can see the difference they're making. I'm grateful, too, to the taxpayer for the partial funding of those first physio appointments. 

I never needed to use taxpayer funded taxes, though. While I couldn't drive, I found Uber’s far more convenient. I also had lots of friends in town who were lovely, and if I had to pay for Uber’s myself, well so be it - that is the price for convenience. Still, plenty of people are using taxis who are on ACC, or are they? Who would know? 

ACC spends $35 million a year on taxis for injured clients, but in a Herald story today, the ACC can see they haven't conducted any audit of the companies that provide the taxi services. Because of course, no one would be rorting the system, would they? Never in the history of ACC has anyone rorted the system? Remember back in 2009? I remember all the hoo-hah about that. 

The National government introduced a partial charge on physio visits that we're still paying today, because costs are blown out exponentially. The co-charging scheme was introduced in 2009 because Nick Smith, who was ACC minister at the time, said the free physiotherapy service introduced in 2004 had got out of control in just five years. Costs had gone from $58 million per year to $139 million in 2008. And since the service had become free, the number of clients in higher socioeconomic areas using physios had occurred disproportionately. Fix that golf swing, put it on ACC, go to the physio. Back giving you jip? Put it on ACC. Some of the physio costs were extraordinary, so Nick Smith said I smell a rort when I see one, visits will be limited, and you'll have to pay part charges after a certain time. 

In 2008/2009 physiotherapy cost ACC Levy payers $144 million. That was back then. So, we've seen that any system without checks and balances can and will be rorted. Uber has the ability, the boss was showing us, to let them know all the details of staff travel by the month - where they went, what time, how much it cost, what the company business was, all that sort of thing. Basically, an audit on the spot. 

I accept the taxi companies don't have that facility and not everyone needing transport through ACC has a smartphone or access to Uber, but surely the least we can expect is an audit of the taxi companies. You cannot tell me that all that money is spent, is being spent wisely and well and on people who need the service. I'd love to hear your experience of it. Numerous complaints have been made about the service. They don't turn up, they turn up late, if they turn up at all meaning some people are missing appointments because they're standing around waiting for their taxi. How many of you gave up on taxis as I did before I even started, and just used Ubers in the cities? It's easy enough. 

Can we just have a little bit of accountability and responsibility when it comes to taxpayers' money, please? That's all I ask.  

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Those suffering from Long Covid are afraid of what will happen to them under the Government’s benefit reset. 

Social Development Minister Louise Upston announced that sanctions for those on the benefit will begin to ramp up from June. 

Long Covid has left some suffering from symptoms such as fatigue, brain fog, cognitive impairment, and severe pain, forcing them to leave work where they subsequently go on the Jobseeker Benefit. 

Dr Jaimie Monk, Motu Research Fellow, suffers from Long Covid and told Kerre Woodham that when you have Long Covid you have a very limited budget of energy to spend on your life. 

She said that it’s a different type of fatigue to simply being tired, and returning to work can be incredibly challenging as you have to be careful with the energy you’re spending. 

Monk said that she knows people with Long Covid who are desperately trying to work part-time to support their families and never have space to recover, trapping them in a loop. 

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As police in NSW work to establish the motives behind the knife attack at Sydney's Westfield Mall, that left six people dead, 12 in hospital, spare a thought for the families of the victims who were receiving texts up to minutes before all of a sudden, randomly, without any warning or notice their lives were gone. And spare thought too for the family of Joel Cauchi - because they have been left reeling too. 

Cauchi was an itinerant with a history of mental illness. He wasn't always like that. His family released a statement over the weekend that spoke of their devastation. They said his actions were truly horrific. They are “devastated by the traumatic events that occurred”. Their thoughts and prayers are with the families and friends of the victims and those still undergoing treatment at the time. 

“Joel's actions were truly horrific and we're still trying to comprehend what has happened. He has battled with mental health issues since he was a teenager. We have no issues with the police officer who shot our son, as she was only doing her job to protect others and we hope she is coping all right.” 

A family in shock and in pain and their thoughts are with the victims and their families, the policewoman, but they too will be suffering. And I imagine there are many families in New Zealand who would have thought, but for the grace of God go our family. 

Despite the billions of dollars that has been chucked at mental health care in recent times, there are so many people and so many families who struggle on a daily, hourly, minute by minute basis to get the care that they need or that their loved ones need. It needs to be stressed and reiterated and repeated that the vast majority of people with mental illness are more of a danger to themselves than they are to other people. It is something that they can manage, that they control, that they live with. But when things go wrong, things go wrong in a spectacular fashion, and when you look at the way the care of those who are mentally unwell has devolved, we as a community only have ourselves to blame. The decision to shut down psychiatric hospitals was based on ideological and financial imperatives. It wasn't based on best treatment. There is no doubt horrors occurred at some of these mental institutions the world over. Absolutely no doubt. But the decision to close them down wasn't based on medical reasons.  It was done out of the prevailing ideology at the time, and because they are jolly expensive to run. And when they were sold off, the last of them in the 1990s, it wasn't a carefully managed withdrawal from the institutions, they were just shut down in a haphazard, piece by piece, hospital board by hospital board kind of a way. There was no overarching plan of how those who were unwell would be cared for in the community. It was complex (shock me). It was messy, because there was also health sector restructuring going on in the 80s and 90s. There were numerous agencies, public, private, voluntary, local, regional, national, then there were the culturally based ones as well, all needing money from all different sources, all funded under different contracts, all with different expectations, all with different promises about how they would deliver. All of them lacked coordination. There was no safety net to ensure that these organisations, (some were good, some were bad) did what it said on the tin. They just got the money, we'll deal with it. Some did and some did not. Patients, families of patients, carers were caught in the cracks and inevitably there were tragic tales of poor communication, missed opportunities, poor support, lack of continuity of care and unsuitable placements. The head of one of the psychiatric institutions said at the time if we do not put the same energy, the same resource, the same money into the care of these people in the community as we have done in the institutions, then we are to blame for whatever goes wrong. And that is quite, quite true. 

When you realise that your much loved child has grown into a teenager with difficulties, they're emotionally fragile, you're worried about their state of mind, where do you go? If that's exacerbated by drug or alcohol use again, where do you go? So much is dumped on the shoulders of families. They have nobody to help them. And these are just poor young people with anxiety. The list of callers who have phoned in and said that they have done everything through the private sector, through the public sector, trying to get help for their child, who is suicidal, is enormous. Six month waiting lists in some cases. The vast majority of those with mental illness are no danger to the community. The vast majority of those with mental illness can easily get by in the community with support. But boy, we have failed the families of those who have been left to care for the wide spectrum of mental illness that exists out in the community. 

Can you imagine what the Cauchi family had done before they, in effect, had to sever ties with their son? He wouldn't take help from them, the police had been called a number of times, he was estranged from them. And the next thing they see him on the television and the very worst, everything they feared has happened. Where do we go from here? 

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New Zealand’s unions are up in arms over the major cuts to the public sector. 

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon told reporters that if the PSA and Council of Trade Unions actually cared about low and middle income workers, they’d support the Government’s planned tax cuts. 

PSA National Secretary Dunane Leo said they’re standing firm in defending their jobs, claiming services are being sacrificed for tax cuts. 

E Tu Negotiator Michael Wood joined Kerre Woodham to dig into the situation and discuss the relevance unions have today. 

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You don't really need to watch or read the news at the moment, at least not for the first couple of stories, because all we're really getting at the moment is a union campaign from the PSA and the CTU dressed up as news, with stories about how cuts to the civil service are going to bring the country to ruin. 

#Newsalert, the country is already on the brink of ruin and the bloated civil service would have contributed towards some of the cost blowouts that this country has seen. Michael Woods has gone from Labour minister to Union representative. He's campaigning for TVNZ to stay exactly as it is, despite the fact that every single media organisation in this country and around the world has had to face facts and has to change the way it delivers news, it's had to change the way it operates, it's had to see that the way it delivers news is no longer relevant. But no, Michael Woods wants everything to stay exactly as it is. 

He says, and I quote, ‘TVNZ isn't just some business, it's a vital part of our society. Kiwis need a strong TVNZ to tell Aotearoa's stories and hold power to account. We invite everybody who wants to build and protect a strong media landscape to support the campaign’. There was a petition to keep TVNZ, exactly as it is. And while I feel for my colleagues, they too know that the format in which news is delivered has to change. 

And I could remind Michael Wood that his government, when he was a minister, wasn't so keen on power being held to account. And despite the promises of being an open and transparent regime, given how difficult it was to get information out of the government, given that journalists and news organisations had to resort to the Official Information Act every time they wanted a story, now that the poacher has turned gamekeeper, he's demanding that TVNZ stay exactly as it is, otherwise democracy will suffer. I simply do not buy that. 

The unions are against any cuts to the public service and any cuts to the media, any cuts at all, for whatever reason. Even if it means that maintaining the status quo is going to ensure the demise of a particular organisation TVNZ stays exactly the way it is, it won't be around in 10 years. Nonetheless, they're against any cuts at all, for whatever reason. Michael Woods again, you could say as a minister, even when the civil service gave good advice it was ignored. 

I mean the number of stories we have now that show bureaucrats whose job was to look at exactly the particular field that the government was making policy on advised against doing a course of action, that the government was intent on that say no, that's not a good idea, the cost overruns are horrendous, there isn't any kind of structure in place to deliver ... no, they just went ahead and ignored them. So even when the civil service was doing their job, the government ignored them. Why have them there? 

There were all kinds of jobs and all kinds of workers who do need a union, I absolutely grant you that. There is no doubt that unions can do a good job negotiating pay and conditions for people who can't negotiate for themselves. Workers who experience low pay, who experience poor conditions, poor health and safety practices, there's absolutely no doubt that unions do a good job for them. But ask not what you can do for your union, what has your union done for you, if you are one of those who has belonged to a union over the years? 

There's no doubt that those on low pay, who might be exploited through poor health and safety practices can probably get a union to do the negotiation for them. The union rep would be in a much stronger position than each individual worker trying to ensure they got fair pay and fair conditions. It would appear that not everybody, not every paid employee believes that unions work for them, because I assumed back in the day, 60s and 70s that you would have 90%, if I was asked, I would say probably 80 to 90% of New Zealand workers in paid employment were part of a union. 

Not at all. It's never reached 50%. So historically, even though we've been one of the most heavily unionized countries in the world, at no point, according to Te Ara, the Encyclopaedia of New Zealand, did we hit over 50% of union membership. So, what does that tell you about the unions? That they are there for those who cannot negotiate for themselves, perhaps, but the majority of us believe we're able to negotiate our own working conditions. 

If you have belonged to a union in the past, why did you leave? Did you believe you could do a better job yourself of negotiating paying conditions? Did you believe you were getting value for money from your union dues? If you're still a member of the union, what has the union done for you? Even in the 70s, when you had the freezing workers going on strike at the drop of a hat, it seemed that they weren't quite getting the message that they weren't up with the play, that they weren't quite on top of the way workplace relations are taking place. Generally, it's a working arrangement between an employer and employee. The employer cannot do business without the goodwill and the support of employees. They simply cannot. So, this whole idea of a them and us, and that it's an antagonistic relationship, I don't think exists in the real workplace. What is it about unions that makes them still relevant in the workplace today?   

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Yesterday saw the cancellation of New Zealand’s second longest running television shows: TVNZ’s Fair Go. 

The consumer affairs show has been airing since 1977, featuring a roster of well-known hosts including Newstalk ZB’s Kerre Woodham and Kevin Milne. 

Kevin Milne was the longest serving host on the show, appearing from 1983 until 2010. 

He told Kerre that what disappoints him about TVNZ is that they could’ve cut back on the number of episodes instead of cancelling it altogether. 

“It remains just as powerful if you’re putting out 16 programs a year or 16.” 

Kevin said that he’s concerned that TVNZ hasn’t thought about just keeping the Fair Go flag flying for All New Zealanders by simply retaining a presence, however diminished. 

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Love a target, love a list, and yesterday, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon released a new list of to-dos, this time in the form of targets. And while some on the left have roundly criticized him for having the temerity to set targets, what on Earth have they got against realistic goals? I didn't hear them shouting and jeering when Jacinda Ardern announced that her government was going to build 100,000 houses in 10 years. If that's not a target, and that's not a goal, I don't know what is. But if ever there was a time for jeering and shouting, that would have been it. Because even as somebody who can't hammer a nail in straight, even Bob the Builder, a cartoon character, knew that building 100,000 houses in 10 years was an impossible and unachievable target. But there was no jeering and shouting then was there? When the target was set? 

Anyway, Kiwibuild has come and gone, and a new government has announced its own targets. These ones infinitely more accessible, ambitious but accessible. Christopher Luxon was in full statesman mode yesterday, despite the hard work of frontline staff like police, nurses and teachers, he said New Zealand has gone backwards. Our government is bringing back public service targets to focus our public sector on driving better results for New Zealanders in health, education, law and order, work, housing and the environment. He reiterated the targets were not going to be easy to achieve, but he said we're not here to do what's easy, we're here to do what is needed to reduce crime, shorten healthcare wait times and improve educational achievement, no matter how difficult. 

Now the targets were on very nicely set out graphs. You know, if I was marking his homework, it would definitely be an A-, perhaps I would have put it up to an A if under the ‘How will we keep track?’, the only thing I would have done would have been to say, now let's just see exactly how it's going to be delivered. How are you going to get that change? We understand why it's needed. How will we keep track? Well, that's just measuring the numbers. I wanted to know how it's going to be delivered. There's a little bit in there, but not nearly enough to satisfy my curiosity. 

Nonetheless, the targets have been set 50,000 fewer people on Jobseeker. 80% of students present for more than 90% of the term. 75% reduction of households and emergency housing, and so on. Other targets include those around greenhouse gas emissions. As the PM says, it is not going to be easy. What will it take to get BBQ man or Nature boy into paid employment? They were very happy, thank you very much, on the benefit and thought we were all schmucks for getting out of bed and going to work. When the borders were closed it became apparent that not only were there Kiwis who could not work, there were Kiwis who would not work. However, when you have a public service that's been instructed to go easy on those, drawing a benefit. Where on Earth is the impetus to go into paid employment? 

Former WINZ boss Christine Rankin told Mike Hosking she absolutely sees value in setting targets. 

“What the reality of this is, is a government that understands leadership and the fact that you have to tell people what you want them to do, and then you have to measure the hell out of it. And that's what they're doing. This can be done way under the time frame that they've put on it. The problem is with six years of a government that wanted people on a benefit, for what reason, I cannot work out, there are a lot of people who've been very comfortable for a long time and the benefit isn’t much, but there's also ways to supplement it, and that's never been looked at either for a long time.” 

That was Christine Rankin talking to Mike Hosking, and that's quite true. I mean, I always think what a miserable existence it would be to be on a benefit, to have to try and scrape by. It would be soul destroying. That grinding poverty is soul-destroying. But many people not all, but for many people they supplement their income in other ways. The benefit is not the only income coming into a house. And I accept that targets aren't the be all and end all. There are ways and means to finesse targets, to massage figures, to make them work for you, so that when you report to your manager, to your chief executive, to your Minister, you can fudge the numbers a bit so that you look better. But what happens when you don't have them? The last six years happen, that's what. When all the important metrics by which we measure the national well-being fall. And I totally understand trying a different way. 

We've tried going softly, softly, being nice, appealing to people's better natures by treating them with kindness and respect and hoping that we get the same in return. Hasn't worked. So, we tried, it didn't work. An unfortunate experiment, if you will. 

So, let's try setting expectations, goals and targets, and let's see where we end up.  

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Two researchers are arguing that the decision to cut longitudinal studies will worsen inequities and increase costs in the long term. 

In the past two weeks, funding has ceased for two of New Zealand's foremost longitudinal studies. 

The Ministry of Social Development did not renew the contract for the ‘Growing Up in New Zealand’ project at the end of February, the study that has tracked more than 6000 children since 2009. 

Dr Polly Atatoa Carr, one of the researchers behind the Newsroom article, told Kerre Woodham that studies like ‘Growing Up in New Zealand’ provide rich data not only for academics, but for governments to make decisions around policy that impacts the population. 

She said that the attendance data the government is after is an example of the kind of information that can be gathered longitudinally. 

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First up, the changes to immigration. 

Guess what? High-trust models don't work when it comes to work visas. A stunning revelation to start the week. Credit where it's due, Radio New Zealand have been on to the story. They applied for information around the new immigration visas under the Official Information Act and found out that even after Immigration New Zealand was told of concerns over lax checks and migrants buying jobs for up to $50K on the open market, it took Immigration New Zealand three months to take any kind of action. Some workers were arriving into New Zealand expecting to find the streets paved with gold. Instead, they found they had no job. Meanwhile, dodgy agents and immigration consultancies were making a fortune, millions is estimated, from selling accredited employer work visas to people who didn't have the skills, didn't have any English, didn't have a clue, just knew that they wanted out of where they were at and into New Zealand - and in they came. Our net migrations soared. The annual net migration gain in 2023 was about the size of Taranaki. An entire province. It was made-up of a net gain of 173,000 non-New Zealand citizens, and a net loss of 47,000 New Zealand citizens in 2023. Now, some of these new New Zealanders will bring skills and a positive attitude that New Zealand sorely needs. They've always done so. You know from the very first settlers all the way through. People who make the shift to a new country bring with them an attitude and a determination to succeed. But many of these new migrants have arrived with no English, minimal skills, and they will struggle. Minister of Immigration Erica Stanford says the changes to immigration visas are necessary because the high trust model wasn't working. (Which any fool could have told you I'd imagine.) And it brings New Zealand into line with the immigration policies of other countries. She told Mike Hosking she doesn't believe the government is acting too soon in restricting immigration, and it's not acting for the wrong reasons. 

“We've taken a really close look at this and I think the reasonable responsible thing to do is to recalibrate our  immigration settings to meet what the market is doing. We saw last year an extra 20,000 people went on the job seeker benefit while we brought in 52,000 very low skilled migrants. Now those numbers just don't add up and if you look at the work Louise Upson's doing in making sure that there are benefit sanctions for people to ensure that they are looking for work. It's my responsibility as Immigration Minister to make sure that that work is available for Kiwis first and foremost.” 

Well, absolutely. That was Erica Stanford on with Mike Hosking on the Mike Hosking Breakfast this morning. He did make the point that Labour tried shutting the borders during Covid and relying on New Zealand labour to fill the gaps and that quickly became apparent that simply was not going to happen. Those who could work were working, and then there were those who simply could not or would not work. So, when it comes to the market at the moment - I mean remember the calls from desperate employers who were looking for somebody, anybody to take jobs around the country - can you now pick and choose when it comes to staff? Can you now pick and choose when it comes to people applying for jobs and filling the positions? I'm sure you'll remember the calls. There were people just screaming for anybody, anywhere to come to their particular town or city and do a job. They'd take anybody. Now, do employers have a bit more choice? They have a bit more wiggle room and a bit more leeway?  When you put out a situations-vacant, have you got people applying and now you have the luxury of choice? You're not as desperate as you once were. For those who are or have faced redundancy, has it been relatively easy to get into work with the skills you have, or are you finding you're competing with more than you imagined? We need skilled migrants. The whole Western world needs skilled migrants and I can't see that ending any time soon, but the last thing we want is to have people arrive in this country who have no idea where they are, they have no idea how to fit in, they have no prospect of enjoying any kind of life. Steve Braunias wrote a very, very moving insight into what it is like for migrants arriving here with no support, no English, no family. They can get jobs but it's an existence, it's not a life. ‘Life and Death in the Auckland Shadows’ was the title of the piece he wrote for the New Zealand Herald. It's bloody tragic. And we do not want people arriving who are condemned to lives as basically subsistent slaves. That's not what we're about.  So, two stories, really, when you arrive in this country, is it easy enough for you to get the job you were promised to, to be able to assimilate, to have the land of milk and honey you were promised? For employers, do you support the changes to the immigration visas? Do you have the luxury of choice now, but more leeway when it comes to employing staff? And for those looking for work, is it easy enough if you have skills to find jobs or are you struggling in the market at the moment? 

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Police stats supplied to the Dairy and Business owners group showed that in 2023, 148,599 crimes were reported at retail locations. 

Kotahi te Whakaaro brings together government, non-government, and iwi daily to review cases of young people involved with Police in the preceding 24 hours. 

The approach is designed to prevent escalation into or through the youth justice system. 

Senior Sergeant Craig Clark, New Zealand Police District Services Co-ordinator, told Kerre Woodham that they take a prevention first way of working, making sure they’re addressing the underlying issues to stop people from entering the system. 

He said that sometimes government agencies need to step back and support community agencies to do the part they’re amazing at: engaging with people. 

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The government is restoring the ability to hold referenda on Māori wards as part of its coalition agreement with ACT and NZ First. It's highly unlikely that National would have acted alone, but as part of the Coalition agreement, as part of the horse trading, they committed to holding referenda on the Māori wards. 

Local government Minister Simeon Brown announced the move yesterday, saying a bill will soon be introduced to allow communities to petition their counsel to hold binding polls on Māori ward decisions including those wards already established. 

“Most New Zealanders want to have their say and this is what this is all about. It's about saying, well, if a Council wishes to have a Māori ward, then ultimately the public get to decide whether that happens or not. That's the government's position. That's what we’re legislating. The last government took it away and we're restoring it.” 

So that was Simeon Brown talking to the Mike Hosking Breakfast this morning. Naturally, Labour and Te Pati Māori have condemned the decision. Local Government New Zealand says it represents a complete overreach by central government, (you could also say the same for Three Waters really, couldn't you?), and has warned the coalition government against inflaming misinformation. Others have called the decision racist, a systemic attack on Māori. 

But to my mind, there's a really, really easy way to get the result you want when it comes to retaining or ditching the Māori wards. Get out and vote. The 2022 local body elections it was reported that national voter turnout was a record low 36%. You know, there's a number of reasons for that. But 36% of people bothered to vote, and that's averaging it out over the country. Voter turnout in local body elections has declined in New Zealand over the past 25 years, so it was continuing a trend, this wasn't an anomaly. Fewer and fewer people are exercising their democratic right to vote. 

So, you can use that. You can galvanise yourselves, you can get organised, and you can get the result you want. And don't give me this because I've had it before ... ‘Ohh, I'm not going to vote man, because the systems against us and it's just supporting an artificial patriarchal construct that goes against the natural rights of humans’, and all of that sort of tosh. 

This is the system we have. And again, if you don't like it, the only way you're going to change it in a democratic society is by using the system to get what you want. Te Pati Māori has six seats in government, meaning they no longer need other parties to speak on their behalf in Parliament. They can stand up and speak for themselves because their supporters got out and voted, they threw out long standing Labour ministers from Māori seats.   

And when it comes to the Māori wards, it's not just Māori who want them, there are Pākehā who want to see Māori represented through Māori wards. Some Maori don't want them. It's really reductionist to say that all Māori think the same way or Pākehā think the same way or Europeans think the same way, all New Zealanders think the same way. They don't. There is a diversity and breadth of views. There's a diversity and breadth of level of engagement with the political system. 

So, if people, and that's all supporters, want to keep the Maori Wards, get out and vote. If you want them gone, get out and vote and you'll get the result you want. 

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Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said the government had put “hundreds of millions [of dollars] more” onto the table for a “much more enhanced offer” to police last week.

That offer was going out for voting by police in the next few days.

Luxon took questions for an hour on Kerre Woodham’s Newstalk ZB show today.

He said he disagreed that National had used law and order issues as a marketing tool during the election, only to stint on the police pay offer, saying it had now put a “very good” proposition on the table.

That enhanced offer for police included a move back to paid overtime, as well as a lump sum payment to help compensate for back pay.

It was the second time it had put more money into the police offer since taking over as government. He said National was serious about giving police what they needed to tackle crime, saying it was one of the main issues voters had raised with them.

On public service cuts, Luxon said there had been a “massive increase” in staff numbers and costs in the core public sector.

“We haven’t had the outcomes,” he said.

His message to the public sector bosses was: “Go back through your back office, stop the dumb programmes that aren’t working, make sure we get the efficiencies in the back office and get rid of the wasteful spending.”

On the hiring spree in the public sector in the last half of last year, he said that was “very disappointing” given both National and Labour had made it clear they wanted cuts.

He said the increase in staff at the Ministry of Education to reform the curriculum was a “classic example”.

He said the New Zealand curriculum was made up of “airy-fairy statements” and teachers were expected to try to interpret them – and that had led to different teaching across the country.

He said the speed with which the cellphone ban had been implemented had shown things could be done quickly if wanted.

He believed that had led to a drop in cyberbullying as well as removing distractions.

Luxon also said he disagreed that the return of referendums on Māori wards was a return to a “bad past”, saying National had not agreed with the shift away from them.

He said he believed it should be a matter of local democracy for local communities to be able to decide whether the wards were set up.

Luxon said the issue of allowing a referendum on the Treaty of Waitangi - as David Seymour wants - was a different matter to the Māori wards.

National has made it clear it will not support Seymour’s Treaty Principles Bill beyond the first reading, and Luxon said that was because of the important place the Treaty had in New Zealand.

He said National agreed with localism, and so had taken its stand on the Māori wards.

Luxon spoke to Kerre Woodham in the Newstalk ZB studio. Photo / Jason Oxenham 

On tax cuts and childcare rebates for households, Luxon said the so-called “squeezed middle” was still the government’s target for assistance. He pointed to the recent moves to introduce childcare rebates worth up to $75 a week for households and the plan to shift tax thresholds in the Budget.

He said despite “challenging economics” there was space to ensure workers could keep more of their wages.

”It’s a question of what can we afford to do. And what we can afford to do right now is help defray early childhood costs.”

He said tax cuts were also affordable.

”Rebuilding the economy is job number one, so we can reduce the cost of living.”

He said bringing down inflation would help ease interest rates, as well as “making life cheaper for people”.

One vaping, Luxon said it had been critical at getting smoking rates down among adults, but was a problem when it came to teenagers. He pointed to recent government moves to ban disposable vapes and boost penalties on those who sold vapes to under-18s, as well as introduce plain packaging rules.

He said the government was still committed to reducing smoking rates, and had simply reverted to the old smoke-free legislation that had worked well. It had scrapped Labour’s plans for a ban on smoking and restrictions on outlets, saying National was concerned they would result in a black market and more retail crime.

He didn’t believe such measures were needed, given the pre-existing rules had been effective.

”I think we could have communicated it a lot better, no doubt about it.”

He would not say whether the government was planning to tax charitable entities - but said it was being looked at.

“We’ve got a lot of appetite for it, Nicola [Willis] and I, and we’re getting advice.”

Luxon said his verdict on being PM was that he was “having fun” but it was hard work.

”I like getting into the work, and we are working hard ... We’ve got a lot to do, but that’s exciting.”

A farmer from central Hawke’s Bay asked about the end of funding for Taskforce Green, saying it had helped in the wake of Cyclone Gabrielle.

Luxon said the Budget was looming, so it would be a question for the government department charged with deciding whether programmes were delivering “bang for their buck”.

On speed bumps and roadworks, Luxon said Transport Minister Simeon Brown was “very hot on road management and cone management” and trying to get a clear signal of whether such measures were worth it.

“We’ve got some very good roads,” Luxon said, pointing to the new roads north of Auckland, saying they should be safe enough to be 110km/h.

On the balance between convenience for motorists and safety, he said: “I’m not saying we don’t look after people and follow good health and safety practices, but we think we’ve gone a bit far the other way.”

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon in the Newstalk ZB studio with Kerre Woodham. Photo / Jason Oxenham 

Wrapping up, Luxon said he was pleased with the way the coalition government was operating.

He said the government was “moving with incredible pace.”

“And we have to move fast, I know it’s tough at the moment.” However, he said there were plans to grow the economy and get things moving.

He’s signed off by choosing Beyonce’s Texas Hold ‘Em. “She’s provoking the country music industry. It’s fantastic.”

The Newstalk ZB interview follows a week that Luxon kicked off by releasing the Government’s plan up until June 30 – a period that will include the Budget.

Yesterday, the Government also announced a move to restore the possibility of calling a binding referendum on the creation of Māori wards on local councils – and it will require councils to hold a referendum on any recently created Māori wards in the next local body elections.

In 2020, Labour had removed the ability for a local referendum to be conducted on Māori wards.

The Government also announced steps to try to boost competition and tackle a shortage in building supplies after soaring costs.

National has also started to more aggressively promote its upcoming Budget tax cuts promise, including a social media campaign by Finance Minister Nicola Willis to try to assure voters that tax cuts are still affordable, despite the deterioration in the economy.

That comes as government departments firm up their plans for staff layoffs to try to cut their spending before the Budget, as the Government has ordered. The Government has promised savings will be re-invested in the front-line services, which Willis has flagged will be another priority for the Budget.

Luxon has defended those public sector cuts, saying he wanted more “medical doctors, not spin doctors” and pointing to the sharp increase in public sector staff numbers over recent years.

Ministry of Health staff were called in this week to hear the final details of its restructuring.

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Didn't Erica Stanford sound impressive talking to Mike on the Mike Hosking breakfast this morning? This is a woman who has clearly been working on her passion portfolio while in opposition, who has come into government ready to go. 

I remember Chris Hipkins when he was in a couple of weeks ago saying we weren't really ready to come into government. What the hell were you doing for the past nine years? Seriously, you're being paid, surely you should be looking at your passion portfolios, you can put up your hand when you're in a party that's been decimated and it's running around looking for a purpose and you can say look, this is why I came into politics, this is what I want to do, and you start work on it. That's what Erica Stanford has done when National was decimated. 

She clearly cares very, very much about education, and about the education of New Zealand children, and about the teaching profession.  And she wasn't out for petty point scoring. The only time she mentioned the last government, she gave them credit for putting secondary teachers on the two-year worked residency visas. But she does want to see New Zealand children be given the right to a world class education that previous generations enjoyed, and I would have to say took for granted. We assumed we could take our place in the world because we were well prepared to do so, and we assumed that would continue. It did not. And that's what happens when you let ideology get in the way of good practice. 

The Education Review Office has found that the new history curriculum that was introduced into schools is being taught on an ad hoc, localised basis, that too many schools and teachers are spending time developing their course studies rather than actually teaching them, and many of them have been overwhelmed by the scale of the changes required.  

ES: The important part here is, it’s really interesting in the history report, schools themselves were saying it’s incredibly time consuming to develop local curriculum. So, we have schools around the country with a very broad, high level curriculum that's done by the centre, they then have to create their own curriculum. So, inconsistent across the country, kids are being taught different things, there’s no consistency of what’s being taught.  

ES: And you said earlier, I was listening to you, about our place in the world and how we started to trade and the first refrigerated ship that went out of, the SS Dunedin, I think, in 1882. That changed the way we traded with the world and changed our economy. We don’t teach that anymore because it’s not specified in the curriculum. 

MH: Why not? 

ES: Because we have shifted in the early 2000’s away from this idea of a centralized curriculum that lays out what kids need to know and when, to a devolved system where schools themselves end up having to create the content and thus saying themselves, “This is too much. We want to get on with the deep, with the magic of teaching, and bringing the content to life.” Because that's what teachers do so well. The, the curriculum is supposed to support them with the details, but since the early 2000’s, we have had this very vague waffly curriculum. Hence our decline amongst, you know, the world. 

Erica Stanford explained it beautifully, and anybody involved in education knows that the changes that have occurred did not happen in the last five years, or even the last 10 years. It's been nearly 30 years of gradual decline. 

But to come back to the point that, you know, teachers should be teaching, that is what they do. That's what they love. That's what they're good at. That's what ignites a passion for curiosity and knowing more among our children. How is it that they are the ones developing the curriculum within their schools when the number of full-time equivalents employed at the Ministry of Education ballooned by 55%?  

The ministry employed 4,311 staff, 1,704 more than it did in June 2016. That was last year. So, 4,311 staff, 1,704 more than it did in June of 2016, and they used the explanation to say that the ministry had ballooned by 55%, as since 2017 it's taken on 550 extra education advisers and an additional 170 curriculum advisors and related staff. So that's a huge increase. 

Nearly 1000 people involved in in writing the curriculum in advising on the curriculum. But wait, there's more. They also rely extensively on consultants for policy development. They tend to contract out for all the major curriculum development services, about 10 small education consultancy firms relied largely, if not entirely, on Ministry of Education contracts for their income. 

So, you've got teachers saying, look, we would love to be teaching, but we're busy developing curriculum. You've got the Ministry of Education having staff ballooning by 55% with an extra 1,720 employed specifically on curriculum, plus ten small education consultancy firms hired to do the curriculum. The teachers should have been receiving guilt-edged curriculum papers by courier, able to add their own frills and flourishes to what was an established curriculum, given the number of people we were paying for to work on this. Utterly incredible. 

Anyway, that was then, this is now. I could understand if the Ministry of Education had stripped its staff right back to a tiny core of brilliant people who were involved in policy development and analysis, and then the teachers were left to their own devices. But to have employed so many more staff members purely for curriculum. To contract out to consultancy firms on the curriculum and then say to teachers, hey, good luck. Good luck developing your own curriculum and then try and teach it, have time leftover to teach it. Unbelievable. 

I loved learning about Aotearoa New Zealand. My history degree, I chose New Zealand history papers, but I was not in the majority and probably because by the time they get to uni most kids have chosen to learn about Tudor England. They have the option of learning about New Zealand history, or they did back then, but they chose to learn about Tudor England, which was like yeah great for fairy stories, but it doesn't tell you who you are or where you come from. 

We really do need to know who we are as a society, as a country, how we came to be and there is rich, rich material in our past to make learning about Aotearoa New Zealand fascinating. But we have to know our place in the world. As the legendary Chuck D of the band Public Enemy once said, knowledge without context is confusion. If all we know is New Zealand and have no understanding of where we fit in, why we came to be, it's just a whole bunch of factoids. It doesn't mean anything. 

So I'm all for learning. I'm all for learning about history. I'm all for learning about New Zealand's own rich, fabulous history. But tell me why the teacher should have to be writing the curriculum when nearly 1000 people and 10 consultancy firms were employed to do just that. Why should the teachers be doing it, taking them away from teaching, which is what they went into the profession to do, and I just wonder how many of them are going to be throwing up their hands, going “more change cool, that's just what we need right now.” 

Learning about who we are and where we come from is vital. But it should not be done on an ad hoc localised basis and the sooner we get back to a curriculum that is nationwide, with room for a little bit of flexibility, for a few options here and there, the sooner we get back to giving our kids the world class education we had, the sooner New Zealand will be back on its feet. 

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The Government is changing the Building Act to address a shortage of building supplies and long wait-times for new products to be approved. 

That includes signing-off on products with a reputable overseas certification and recognising approval schemes used in countries like Australia. 

Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk says it will ease building costs and make our building products better. 

Julien Leys, CEO of the New Zealand Building Industry Federation, told Kerre Woodham that it’s going to make a big change in the construction industry. 

He said that while it isn’t building 100,000 new homes, it is helping those homes get built faster and more cost effectively. 

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The Government is bulldozing barriers for bringing in new building products to New Zealand. 

Minister for Building and Construction, Chris Penk, has unveiled changes to the Building Act in a bid to increase the availability of products and cool down costs. 

That includes approving products with a reputable overseas certification and recognising product standards from trusted overseas jurisdictions. 

Penk told Kerre Woodham that it’s one of those things that has been talked about for years, so they decided to actually get on and do something about it. 

With Covid and recent natural disasters he said it’s clear we need to have as many different options as possible for the sake of resilience, as well as the costs and time frames involved. 

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The Education Review Office has found teachers are overwhelmed by the scale of change in teaching the new history curriculum. 

Teaching New Zealand’s histories became a requirement for students in years one to ten at the start of last year. 

The report found schools are finding it challenging and time consuming, often struggling to understand what's required. 

Kay is a former head of Social Science with a specialty in commerce teaching, and although she hasn’t taught social studies since 2000, was shocked at the vagueness of the previous curriculum. 

“When I came into being head of Social Science, it was a nine sentence curriculum,” she told Kerre Woodham. 

“What it resulted in was such a huge range of knowledge and skills being taught across New Zealand.” 

She said that she was glad when Labour said they were going to review it and add specifics for teaching New Zealand history, but what they did was “unbelievably a mess”. 

“The new curriculum is so much New Zealand History that it lacks space within any given year for a teacher to teach anything except New Zealand History.” 

“There’s so much missing it’s not funny.” 

Kay told Kerre that teachers were giving feedback over and over as Labour made their changes, and they weren’t listened to. 

“It’s just been an absolute shambles.” 

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A couple of weeks ago I took a call. I didn't recognise the number, but I took the call anyway and I very quickly regretted that I had done so. 

The caller was a very nicely spoken man who, after pleasantries were exchanged, wanted to know why I had stopped giving to a charity I had previously supported. I agreed that yes, I had supported the charity for a very long time, and yes, I understood the good work it was doing, and yes, I absolutely knew that times were tough - in fact, that was the reason my monthly debit had stopped. My circumstances had changed, and times were tough. 

That wasn't good enough for my caller. No. I would have picked up the cue, yes my circumstances have changed and yep, I'm sorry. No, they drilled down. Before I came to my senses and stopped responding to what were quite personal questions, I'd blurted out that the reason my home address was no longer the same was because I'd separated from my husband and we sold the house and I bought a house with the children and we had a big mortgage, blah de blah, and I suddenly found myself pouring out my life story because I was ashamed that I was no longer giving to the charity. And it was a kind of emotional blackmail that this charity worker was engaged in. I just about gave them an access code to my accounts so he could see. “There are still some charities you support, why those?” Honestly, I could have hung up, but all I had to give him was time, so I gave him that, and laying myself bare as a form of apology. 

I was listening to Sue Barker this morning talking about the struggles StarJam is facing, and I wonder just how many of you have had these difficult conversations with the charity workers who are putting the acid on those who used to give and who are no longer giving or just cold calling. I love StarJam and the work it does. I've been there along to a number of StarJam gala events, and they are professional, and they are fun, and they are incredibly important for the young people who are performing. 

One of the best interviews I've ever seen conducted was a young man who has Down Syndrome, who was impeccably dressed in black tie, who was well prepared, well researched and interviewed the entertainer, Michael Barrymore when it first come out to New Zealand. He was brilliant, asked really tough questions, the sort of questions no other interviewer would dare ask. He was brilliant. I've really enjoyed the nights I've spent at StarJam and the work they do is really, really important. But man, there are a lot of charities, all of whom are doing really worthwhile work but for many of us, circumstances have changed. 

And while Sue Barker told Mike Hosking that look, there are 600,000 companies and up to 500,000 trusts, so 28,000 is not a surplus of charities. I disagree. 28,000 charities is a lot of charities and a lot of them are niche charities. So, there's a lot of cancer charities because not all cancer charities cover a particular family's need or a particular individual's need. 

So, we have 28 thousand registered charities, up from 22,000 six years ago. Twice the number of Australia and three times the number of the United Kingdom per capita. And there are those within the charity sector who think that there should be a joining up of some of the smaller charities with a with a mutual interest, and that would cut costs and make them more efficient. Merging, or at least collaborating when you have a shared interest. 

The charity sector has an annual total income of more than $21 billion, and it's supported by more than 217,000 volunteers and more than 145,000 full-time staff. That is a lot of people. And who is sustaining that? You and me? We're doing that because New Zealanders are not mean. It doesn't matter how small your income; you could be on a pension or a benefit or a lowly paid critical worker and you will give. And that's right up to the to the wealthy philanthropists who give a lot, but most New Zealanders give. Individual giving in 2019 was $2.4 billion. 

But again, you know, these are unusual times. Families are cutting back on their own costs, their own families are going without. And charities have to accept that all the haranguing of people, forcing them to explain themselves, all the narration of sob stories, is not going to get blood out of a stone. If the money is not there, it is not there, and charities have to understand that too. 

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Well, you know, I'm an old-fashioned girl, let's face it, but I do love a list. They're especially helpful if you have much to do and you feel slightly overwhelmed. Writing things down, and I'm a Luddite and I use pen and paper (if your list is on an app, I'm not going to judge), it's the writing down that counts. 

Writing down what you need to do helps you understand that it's manageable. If you can fit everything you need to do done onto a piece of paper, even if you're using both sides, it shows it can be done. There is an end. You can see where your priorities lie when they're all laid out like that. You can see the easy things you can do. 

I have been known to put in things I've already done just so I've got the satisfaction of crossing them off. That gives you a positive boost. Some people see that as cheating. So, I'll do two easy things and then I'll do the hard one and then come back and do another easy one, do a hard one, and before you know it what you thought was overwhelming has been achieved. Done efficiently, done well and you can start the next day with nothing carrying over from the day before.   

Now this coalition government is fond of a list. 

We had the 100 Day Action Plan. To be fair, other governments are fond of lists too, and there's a good reason for that. It makes it very clear what the government's course of action is going to be, what they're prioritising in the first instance, you and I can see what their intentions are, and they can be held accountable if they don't achieve their targets. It's quite bold putting it out there. You know, there's no “Well within 100 days we'd like to see a return to well-being.” Well no, they're not airy-fairy, non-tangible kind of targets, they are specific things. Some of it is easy. Some of the easy stuff has been put on the first list. If you think back to the government's first 100 days, much of that was rolling back the previous government’s programme, like repealing Three Waters, stopping blanket speed limit reductions, repealing the Ute Tax, withdrawing central government from Let's Get Wellington Moving, putting an end to the bottomless pit that is the Auckland light rail. So, some of that was easy, just stopping stuff the other government had done. 

You had the banning of cell phones in schools. You had health workers having 200 additional security personnel to reduce violent incidents and hospital emergency departments, and by all accounts that worked. Now it's just a matter of keeping on ensuring that ED's are safe spaces for the staff and for the patients. 

So, you know, you could see, how did that go? Even the most overworked or laziest of journo’s, all they have to do after three months is pull up the action plan and go through, give them a pass mark or a fail mark because it's all written out there for you. 

So, the next list the government has drawn up is going to have tougher To Do’s. Establishing a $1.2 billion capital infrastructure fund for the regions. And that too will have a list of things that must check off. This is not just money going hither and dither to the regions, being strewn like so much corn before hungry geese with no way of quantifying or qualifying whether it's been a worthwhile investment. Growing housing stock alongside councils and of course, coming up with a budget that can pay for the shifting of the tax brackets, while not reducing front line services across government departments, that will be a tough test. 

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon says there will be some tough discussions around the cabinet table about how the government's targets can be achieved when there's little money to spare, but he says that's why it's important to have an action plan. 

And I think he's right. RMA is just so vast, so huge. It's like when we climbed Kilimanjaro. They said you don't think about climbing the mountain in the same way that you don't think about eating an elephant in one bite. You start with the tail, you know, and you take it chunk by chunk, and he's right about that, these big, meaty, grunty reforms need to be done bit by bit, but there has to be a clear plan about how you're going to do that, not just sitting around having meetings for the sake of them. 

When it comes to the list, when it comes to setting out a clear plan of action, does this give you confidence that this is a government that will be accountable not just for the money it spends, but for the time it spends? Because that is a valuable, valuable commodity and resource in this day and age, you and I know that, especially after a holiday weekend, to be able to spend time is so precious. And the time that has been wasted on hot air fests and meetings where people talk at each other and nothing happens at the end of them, despite the enormous expense, meetings where nothing happens. 

After six years where people have been paid by the public purse, still nothing has happened. Things have not improved. In fact, they've gone backwards. You need to be held accountable for that. So, if you're doing it bit by bit, if every hundred days there's another right, this is how far we've come, this is what we've achieved, this is where we need to work harder. That makes me in my little list obsessed fashion, I find it really comforting. And I also find it a hell of a lot easier to decide whether a government is doing a good job or a bad. 

I mean, ultimately when I was asking the different government departments over the last six years, well, is it working? They couldn't tell us. Nobody knew. And the only way we found out was that the crime stats and the social disruption stats were all going in the wrong direction. That was an indication that you know what? no, it hasn't worked. 

So you need to have a list that will let you know whether you're going in the right direction, and you need to have clear targets, you need to have accountability so that if a plan's not working, you can pull out a whole lot earlier and try something different. 

I find it comforting. I think it's an organised way to go about trying to improve all areas of this country. I know there are some intangibles, feeling positive, feeling good about feeling proud of your country and that's fine. But I think you're only going to get that intangible sense of well-being provided it's underpinned by some clear targets and achieving of those targets. 

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Well, it's news, but it's not really, is it? 

An OECD report has found that New Zealand's students are among the worst behaved kids in the world and that bad behaviour has worsened in the last two years. Shock me. A report released this morning by the Education Review Office has called for classroom behaviour to become a priority, and to nationalise the approach to dealing with bad behaviour. 

At the moment, each school must set its own policy, around discipline, about rules, about consequences and they're not getting anywhere near the sort of support and professional help that they need nationwide to deal with bad kids, sad kids, anxious kids, unwell kids, kids with special needs, kids with special neurological needs, as well as the physical. There's a whole plethora of children, and their needs and their learning abilities would be diverse enough if you didn't take into account the bad kids, sad kids, anxious kids, unwell kids. I cannot even imagine what it is like in a modern classroom.   

On the Mike Hosking Breakfast this morning, Ruth Shinoda, who's the Head of the Education Evaluation Center at the Education Review Office said she'd like to see three things happen. 

“The first is we're saying, look, let's have more of a national approach, which isn't still doing the same thing but is making sure that schools can access the same support and are really back to succeed. The second is we do need to support our kids, so let's have greater prevention. Let's make sure we're setting them up to succeed at school. And lastly, let's really help those teachers with the expert support and the skills they need. But yes, we do think things like taking cellphones out of classrooms will help.” 

Yeah, and it probably will. We're going to have a chat to a bit later in the day about the states in America that are banning kids from under 14, from having TikTok, Snapchat, and Instagram accounts. There is so much, so much, that can be said about the reasons for poor behaviour. 

Covid, of course, has been blamed, and countries around the world are seeing distressed kids, sad kids, anxious kids turning up at school. Children who don't know how to interact with one another. Who were terrified at the thought of ‘in real life’ because their teaching has been done online, their social interactions have been done online, and people in the flesh are quite a different thing. 

So, it's happening all over the world, but an OECD report has found our students behaviour is the worst. You only have to look at the news reports of the poor behaviour among society in general to understand that the poor behaviour of the children springs directly from the poor behaviour of the parents or caregivers. They haven't come from nowhere. They haven't been born bad or sad or mad. Their home life shapes them, society helped shape them. What on Earth are the teachers supposed to do? By the time a child is five, a lot of the habits have been ingrained anyway. 

There is nothing as any parent or caregiver knows like the joy of helping children learn and helping them develop their full potential. Each child is different and to be able to watch them grow is such a privilege. To be a part of that process, it is truly, truly wonderful. If teachers were actually able to teach, to do that, to work alongside parents to bring out the very best in each child, it would be the most wonderful job in the world. If parents were presenting to the school well rested, well fed, well-mannered kids, you would have queues of people lining up to be teachers. For those who have the privilege of being able to teach kids who can learn because they've had a good night's sleep and a warm, dry bed, because they've had dinner, it might not be flash, but it's enough to fill their stomachs, it's enough to allow their brains to calm down, settle down, and grow. To have children who have been supported from the time they are born to understand that learning is something precious. That learning will give them choices later in life. If you had kids like that, teachers who've had children like that in their classrooms know what a joy it is. 

When you're spending an hour of your working day trying to impose discipline, there is no fun in that. And the majority of teachers say they leave the profession because they are sick and tired of trying to establish rules, and guidelines, and protocols simply so that they can do the job they were trained to do. 

I think it's absolutely imperative that we have a nationwide code of conduct in our schools. At the moment, leaving it to schools to try and sort out an education policy ad hoc is not working. So, the schools need to have a national code and they need to be supported. It is not their job to take feral children and try and civilize them. That is where the health professionals come in. It's not their job to take a child who has incredibly diverse needs in terms of their brains, in terms of their physical needs, that is not their job. Leave that to the professionals and the experts. 

In a way, the teachers are sort of like our police have become. Oh, the police will fix it, the police can deal with that, the police can do that. And we say that about our schools. Every single time we talk about budgeting or about our inability to drive on the roads, or people's inability to be able to prepare a simple basic meal cheaply ... aah the schools. 

How about parents step up and do the job they're meant to do, so the teachers can do the job they want to do? 

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When it comes to second chances for people, do you put caveats on those second chances? 

So you're allowed a second chance, but you must refrain from being in the public eye. Or you're allowed a second chance, but you must always present a subdued demeanour and never look as though you're enjoying life ever again. 

When you have done something dreadful, absolutely appalling, when you have done something criminal and you have been convicted for that, at what point are you allowed to work again? To participate in the community or society again? 

And I ask this for two reasons, a) because the Wellington Repertory Theatre is in the news after casting a convicted rapist in the lead role for its run of the play ‘Murdered to Death’. Now, it's a lead role so Harrison Stuart 's face is on the posters. He's a big part of the social media advertising campaign and given that he was convicted of sexual violation by rape, some of his fellow actors say that they're distressed, and his victim survivor is particularly distressed. 

Harrison Stuart was studying drama at the time of his trial so he could perhaps argue that this is his job, this is what he's trained to do. He's come out of prison; he's trying to get work in the field in which he studied. He's done his time; he's entitled to do his job and the Repertory Theatre seems to be standing by that. They say that crew and cast were consulted on a comprehensive risk management plan surrounding the casting of Stuart, including banning him from being alone with anyone and forbidding him drinking alcohol before or during any interaction with the cast and crew. So, they say they have fulfilled their obligations. 

Jessica Te Wiata is the victim survivor, she had to endure two trials before a jury before Stuart was found guilty of indecent assault and sexual violation by rape in 2021. He was a former friend; her trust was horribly betrayed. He was sentenced to four years in prison but was out after two due to his good behaviour. She says Stuart has not accepted responsibility for his actions —he didn't then, and he hasn’t now— and she would have liked to have been consulted before he was cast, and his photo was put on the posters. 

So, should Stuart be allowed to work in his chosen field? Given that he studied to be an actor, he could argue you know that is what I do. Others might say goodness, out of prison and barely washed the prison grime off you and there you are front and centre on the stage, posters all around town, any thought that this perhaps might cause pain for the victim, the victim 's family? What are the caveats you would put on this young man finding work again? If he doesn't find work, he's going to be a drain on the taxpayer for the rest of his life. 

What about Kiri Allan, the former Justice Minister who has a trial upcoming after being taken into the cells by police after crashing a car. Drinking, the police dogs were called, I mean it was just a shambles. I can't think of a Justice Minister who fell from grace so spectacularly, but I interviewed her yesterday around the Civil Defence Report and the deficiencies in the Hawkes Bay Civil Defence response to Cyclone Gabriel, because she was, as well as a former Justice Minister, a former Civil Defence Minister. And she had absolute institutional knowledge of what the response was at the time, and she had a very good oversight and overview of Civil Defence in New Zealand. Should that knowledge be lost? I don't think so. 

I had a few texts from people saying this is an outrage, I'm never listening to talk back again and how dare you and how dare you have her on.  I didn't just have her on a whim because I fancied a chat and a catch up. I had her on because she knows her subject, she knows the topic. I felt she added value to the conversation. Is she supposed to go away and never be seen ever again? She has to earn a living and that's what she's doing, she set up a consultancy firm. The trial is still to come but you know no doubt that it'll be relitigated when it comes up, but I would still use her because of the knowledge she has in her specific fields. 

So, it's tricky. 

I guess it's trickier if you feel justice has not been done. To me, four years seems very light in the first instance for rape. Secondly, two years seems even lighter, so if you feel justice has not been done it's hard to move on and I can understand that. 

If you have served your time,  you've learnt your lesson,  you've made a terrible, terrible mistake or you've behaved in an appalling fashion and you have had a complete seismic shift in terms of how you view the world and how you see yourself in it which will prevent you from behaving like that again, how do you prove you're worthy of a second chance? And if second chances have continual caveats on them, are they really second chances? 

So, it's a tricky one. 

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The independent review of Hawke’s Bay’s Civil Defence response to Cyclone Gabriel has been completed and it is damning. Former Police Commissioner Mike Bush conducted the investigation and released the findings yesterday. 

MB: You know, there's a lot of experts out there, a lot of people who do know how this should be done, and I think all those people stand ready to provide advice and support. One of the things we said in the report was the current national model and the way it works in with regional/local does set good people up to fail. So, we've, we've got to look after those people, but the resources and the capability and experiences out there, what we've got to do is have a model that actually leverages all that, coordinates that, and gets it in as soon as possible. 

So, there are good people and they are set up to fail. Basically, the review found the region was not well prepared for a natural disaster of this scale. Would anyone have been prepared for that? Unlikely, but basically the review said you have to plan for the worst-case scenario. It was unlikely it would have been on that scale. It did occur on that scale, and thus the worst-case scenario should have been planned for. 

It found the severity, speed and scale of the disaster overwhelmed the officials involved in the response. They thought that they knew how to do Civil Defence because they'd been through Covid-19. This natural disaster was nothing like Covid-19. They had no idea what to do. 

It's not just Hawke’s Bay though. Mike Bush found the National Emergency Management system is not currently fit for purpose, so we should all be concerned. He said a complete overhaul of the system is needed. That's something that's been recommended for years. And Hawke’s Bay Civil Defence said they absolutely accepted the findings and were ready to do a complete overhaul of the system. Although having heard the train wreck of an interview on Heather's show last night with Hinewai Ormsby, who's the chair of Hawkes Bay Civil Defence Emergency Management’s joint committee, I do wonder how effective that overhaul is going to be. 

HO: So, the recommendations from today, we agreed, and we added them. That we’d get an independent implementation team and leadership team, to be able to take these recommendations. 

HDPA: I’m asking you this question because I’m slightly alarmed that you don’t know the details. 

HO: Well, no, we’re fully committed to the recommendations and implementing change. 

I mean Hinewai Ormsby may well be a very effective human, but when it comes to communicating, she had a bad attack of the Costers, and I had absolutely no idea what she was talking about in the bureaucratic speak. None. And surely in a crisis, clear communication is absolutely vital. If you've got a bad attack of bureaucratese, it's going to be very tricky to get information out and get information out quickly and expeditiously. 

Nonetheless, they have said that they will implement the findings, but when you're being let down by the national civil defence structure, which is not fit for purpose, how effective are you going to be? The National Emergency Management Agency has not yet released its review into the weather events of last year - that is due out in December, and that will probably make for more grim reading. 

The review of Hawke’s Bay’s response also pointed to a number of precautionary measures that may have mitigated some of the damage. The dredging to remove excess shingle, the managing of forestry slash, the flood protection maintenance, all of which a number of you callers and texters said needed to be done. Yet you'd said it before Cyclone Gabrielle, and you certainly said it afterwards. These were things that you had pointed to, and when you look at Auckland's floods, a number of people pointed to the fact the drains hadn't been maintained and cleared that they quickly became blocked, causing tiny rivulets to become rivers. 

So, there is much that can be done in terms of prevention, in terms of maintenance, and then in terms of the response to the emergency. But when it comes to civil defence emergencies, how prepared are you? Because I think it also shows that ultimately, we are on our own. And when I say ‘we’, I talk about as small communities, as neighbourhoods, helping each other out. It may be very, very difficult for other people to get to you, and we learnt that from Christchurch, and we've learnt that from a number of natural disasters. That the advice is always to be prepared for two to three days of managing on your own. And to be perfectly honest, having heard just how fundamentally unsound, the national system is. 

To hear the word soup from the chair of the civil defence response unit in Hawke’s Bay, are we better off coming up with a neighbourhood plan and relying on each other? Yes, Civil Defence is there. Yes, there are very good people there who are being let down by the management of the system. But ultimately, I think surely the lessons we've learned from numerous emergencies that the country has experienced is that for the first 24 hours to 48 hours, we are on our own. 

So how prepared do you think you are? Were you all Gung Ho after Christchurch, as I was, with the first aid kit, with the water, with the tin cans, with the disinfectants, with the water purification? And now that's all out of date and needs to be biffed out. Other people relying on other people in a natural disaster, other people are busy digging themselves out too, and their families. 

So how prepared are you? How much should be on a national emergency disaster response team? And how much should we be looking after ourselves? 

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The independent review into the response to Cyclone Gabrielle has found that Civil Defence was unprepared for the disaster, the system not fit for purpose. 

Former Minister for Emergency Management Kiri Allan thinks the report hits the nail on the head. 

She told Kerre Woodham that this is not a new recognition. 

Following the Christchurch Earthquake in 2011, Gerry Brownlee said that the system was absolutely unfit for purpose and instigated a series of actions seeking to address it. 

Despite this, Allan said, the system still doesn’t have the agility and the ability to be responsive when major events occur. 

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Interestingly, Marie has sent in a text immediately on the very thing I wanted to talk about. “Kerre what a third world, Banana Republic New Zealand has become. I was at the SailGP yesterday, the final thank God, not Saturday. It was simply amazing. New Zealand in the last six years has slipped into a pathetic nation of nothingness. Useless do-gooders stripping any opportunity to move forward in what could be one of the most incredible events on the water next to the Americas Cup. Yesterday was simply fantastic. Shame on us for being so short-sighted", says Marie. Now, normally, Marie, I would agree with you and I'd have some sympathy with Sir Russell Coates, who’s apoplectic in his monosyllabic kind of way, but he's still extremely cross about the fact that racing was brought to a halt on Saturday. And I do normally have sympathy with people who find themselves suddenly hog-tied by red tape. But when it comes to the SailGP, don't get me wrong, it's a brilliant concept. It is clever, it is fun to watch whether you watch it on the telly or in real life. It is brilliant for the sailors and the spectators alike, as Maria attests in her text. What's not to love when you've got a sailing Grand Prix, that's what it's been described at, and that's what it looks like. Fanging it round a beautiful course, the very best in their field from around the world. Ten international teams travelling the world to the most beautiful places in the world taking each other on in  high-speed yacht racing. It's really cool. Totally get that. But Sir Russell's now warning that the New Zealand League of SailGP is in doubt after proceedings were brought to a halt in Lyttleton Harbour on Saturday after a dolphin was sighted on the course. So dolphin ahoy, in line with SailGP protocol, racing is delayed to allow marine life to pass through safely. In this case, the dolphin hadn't read the protocol and didn't understand that they were supposed to move through expeditiously and get through to the other side to allow racing to proceed. The dolphin thought well this is cool, or whatever dolphins do without wishing to be anthropomorphic about it. The dolphin thought look at all these people, fantastic, I might hang around and see what's happening.  Not realising that while it hung around inside the racecourse arena it meant racing couldn't take place. So everyone's waiting for the dolphin to shove off. The dolphin hadn't read the protocol, so it's still in its little dolphin sanctuary doing what dolphins do. And now, Sir Russell is apoplectic in his quiet,  monosyllabic way.  Coutts says the league has never had an aquatic incident involving an aquatic animal in 35 events around the world. And in his chat with Jason Pine on weekend Sport on ZB over the weekend, he blamed environmentalists, academics, red tape, the Harbour Master and iwi for the hold up and racing. 

AUDIO 

So they're very clever. We've all seen the Dolphins surfing the wake and dolphin watching is fantastic and it's brilliant. But you signed the protocol. You know that that's what has to happen. That that's why you haven't had an event involving an aquatic mammal, because there is the protocol to allow them to proceed. If you're gonna blame anyone, blame the dolphin for not moving on. I understand that you want to find a place where there's great viewing for spectators on land. You know that's part of the thrill of seeing the crowds there. It's great for tourism. I'd hate to see it lost. But is there nowhere else in New Zealand where you could find a suitable venue? And I'm genuinely asking. I don't know a lot about yachting. I've only got back into the Americas Cup since they did the foiling, and since it became really exciting and just a brilliant spectacle to watch. But has been nowhere else in the whole of New Zealand, in this island nation that you could hold the SailGP? Why hold the race where the dolphins are? You know there's Auckland - you know they've had the Americas Cup there without there being any issues whatsoever. And I know they go faster in the SailGP. As I understand it, Russell Coots wanted it at a specific course in Auckland where bystanders and spectators could see the racing from a point on Wynyard Quarter but it hadn't been cleaned up enough to allow spectators to gather there safely or some such. What... you're telling me there's nowhere else in Auckland that you couldn't hold the race safely? There's nowhere else in New Zealand you couldn't hold it? I don't know. I'm genuinely asking because I would love to know. It sounds like he's incredibly frustrated with the process from when he began negotiations to try and get SailGP into Lyttelton Harbour. So it sounds like he's revisiting, relitigating the negotiations he had, because none of this is new. You've gone through it all. You've signed the protocols. And a dolphin didn't move out of the way. It's the dolphin who didn't understand. Blame the dolphin! 

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Having SailGP in Lyttleton Harbour is being likened to planning a motorcross event in Kiwi habitats. 

SailGP CEO Russell Coutts slammed the cancellation of Saturday’s racing after a dolphin was spotted on the course. He claims the species isn’t endangered and are smart enough to be aware of the boats around them. 

Chair of Māui and Hector’s Dolphin Defenders Christine Rose tells Kerre Woodham they were concerns for dolphin safety before the event went ahead. Rose says at this time of year, the Hectors dolphins are particularly vulnerable due to calves being slower swimmers and more shallow divers. 

There has been an increase in probable boat strike deaths of dolphins in the harbour and noise and other disturbances can also impact their ability to socialise and feed. 

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Back in 2022, Reserve Bank Governor Adrian Orr was appearing before a Parliamentary Select Committee trying to explain how and why the bank was too slow in moving the OCR and therefore increasing interest rates. He was asked by Parliamentary Select Committee member Chloe Swarbrick whether the Reserve Bank was deliberately engineering a recession to rein back inflation. 

“I think that is correct. I mean, we are deliberately trying to slow aggregate spending in the economy. The quicker inflation expectations come down, the less work we need to do and the less likely it is that we have a prolonged period of low or negative growth.” 

We talked about that at the time, that when you engineer a recession that's a nice, neat little phrase, and it needed to be done. Interest rates needed to go up to get the spending down. He said that while there might be a recession and a decline in the economy, the central bank was forecasting it could be job rich, and said the country was relatively well positioned internationally. 

That was 2022. 

Today in 2024, this is what a recession looks like. Big job losses across the private and public sector. Big ticket retailers struggling. Mum and Dad homeowners with mortgages making tough decisions about their spending. 

When bankers and politicians took percentage points in interest hikes, they took numbers. They debate theoretical concepts about the economy, and which levers they might need to pull to make the economy move in one direction or another. It sounds like a game, but ultimately, they're playing with people. 

When you're talking about numbers, you're talking about people, and the job losses across the economy are going to be painful and unsettling right now. Last week, it was the media, this week it's public service workers, and they have been in the gun and were an election talking point.   

The ACT party wanted to see public sector job cuts and they wanted to see a lot of them, 15,000 to bring the public service back to 2017 levels. David Seymour said last year, over the last six years we've seen a 30% increase in the size of the public. He said we have equally seen a 30% increase in public spending after inflation in population growth. Yet there is widespread dissatisfaction with the quality of public services, and I think there is a fair point there. 

When you look at my favourite from Waka Kotahi, the poor manager that sent the e-mail saying we have no idea why we're here or what our purpose is or what we're doing. He proposed that his own unit be disestablished because there was no clear direction from the government about what they should be doing or how they should be doing it. He couldn't see the point of his job. No. 

When you've got the Ministry of Education. Who are outsourcing the curriculum? What do they do? I can understand outsourcing. Perhaps the building of new schools. You know you can't expect the teachers to put the tool belt on and get to work hammering and sawing. But when it surely that is a core function of what the ministry should be doing, directing the writing of the curriculum. 

You know, I think for a lot of us, we've looked from the outside into the public service and thought. What are you doing? Why are you doing it? To what point? And what markers are there to say that you are doing it well? 

There has been a constant theme when it comes to changes of government that National trims down the public sector and then they hire out to consultants. And then when Labour comes and they bring back the public service jobs and don't hire as much when it comes to consultants, but this last administration did both. They hired more people within the public service on full time jobs and also spent a packet on consultants. I know how unsettling it is when you don't know if you're going to have a job tomorrow. You know, working in the media, you feel like you've got a target on your butt, and probably public service workers feel much the same.   

David Seymour also said last year that it thinks the fired public sector staffers could easily be absorbed into the rest of the workforce, and I've had anecdotal evidence that that is so already. A couple of weeks ago, I initially got a text from a principal saying the writings on the wall for the Ministry of Education. He's had a number of people —teachers— who went to the ministry, who can see which way you know the wind is blowing and have come back saying ‘can we get our jobs back?’  

If that means that we can get people back to the front line, out of the ministry jobs and back doing what they're good at I'm all for it. There are jobs that need to be done by competent, qualified Kiwis. A lot of them were lured into jobs in the Ministry. That looks good, it's easy, don't have to worry about conjunctivitis or getting nits by being around the little children I'm writing theories about, policies about. But if it means we get our teachers back into the classrooms, great. If we get people doing things, that's great. 

A lot of the way the modern workforce is constructed is just creating jobs to have them. How many people involved in private sector corporates and in the public service spend all day booking out a meeting room to talk at one another about workers. About people who are actually getting up and going to work to pay their wages. What do they do? 

I totally get we need to have policymakers; we need to have people who can help ministers to make decisions about where a particular portfolio needs to be spending or where they're heading. Did we need our 30% increase in the size of the public service, many of whom had no idea what they were doing or what they were there for? I don't think so. 

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New Zealand has entered a technical recession after drops in two consecutive quarters. 

Stats NZ GDP data shows the economy contracted 0.1 percentage points in last year's final quarter. 

It also fell 0.3 in the September quarter. 

Herald Business Editor at large Liam Dann told Kerre Woodham that GDP per capita decreased 0.7% in the quarter. 

He says it's a quite deep recessionary environment by that measure, and that's what people are feeling on an individual basis. 

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Labour leader Chris Hipkins admits his party’s Auckland light rail and KiwiBuild policies were “undeliverable” when proposed ahead of the 2017 election.

Hipkins, speaking to Newstalk ZB this morning, made the concession amid his reflections on the 2023 election campaign in which he believed Labour struggled to resonate with voters who had “decided it was time for a change”.

The Remutaka MP joined ZB host Kerre Woodham for an hour of discussion and talkback.

Woodham pressed Hipkins on Labour’s woeful result in the last election, receiving less than 27 per cent of the vote.

Hipkins accepted now was the time to rebuild and assess whether the policies Labour took to the election needed to be revised.

Woodham questioned whether Labour’s inability to implement some of its policies during its six years in government was a primary contributor to the party’s demise.

Hipkins then admitted not all of Labour policies as proposed ahead of the 2017 election were deliverable.

“You can’t always come in with delivery-ready policies in the way that I think we thought you could,” he said.

“Auckland light rail and KiwiBuild were massive commitments, and the reality is they were too ambitious to do from Opposition. We shouldn’t have gone into the campaign promising those two things.”

Labour leader Chris Hipkins told Newstalk ZB host Kerre Woodham his party needed to rebuild. Photo / Michael Craig

In 2017 under then-leader Jacinda Ardern, Labour promised to build light rail from the Auckland CBD to the airport within a decade. However, progress stalled and any recent work on developing light rail in Auckland had been scrapped by the current Coalition Government.

KiwiBuild promised 100,000 affordable homes across the country within 10 years, but that target had to be dropped as it was deemed overly ambitious.

“Light rail is not undeliverable, but the way it was proposed in 2017 was undeliverable and KiwiBuild, the 100,000 [homes] in the timeframes that they were talking about was also undeliverable.”

On the most recent election campaign, Hipkins argued it “didn’t really matter” what Labour campaigned on as people wanted change.

“That was a very difficult mood to shift.”

At the party’s recent caucus retreat, Hipkins said MPs would be discussing what tax policy platform Labour would run on in the 2026 election campaign after Hipkins’ proposal to strip GST off fresh fruit and vegetables failed to impress voters.

MPs David Parker and Grant Robertson, who last night gave his valedictory speech, had worked up a wealth tax proposal ahead of the election but this was shot down by Hipkins.

Just this week, Hipkins conceded the Labour Government should have done more to address public concerns about unruly state housing tenants as the current Government seeks to use the threat of eviction to improve behaviour.

He referenced the matter this morning, saying he thought Kāinga Ora was “too slow” to relocate people as an alternative option to eviction.

Adam Pearse is a political reporter in the NZ Herald Press Gallery team, based at Parliament. He has worked for NZME since 2018, covering sport and health for the Northern Advocate in Whangārei before moving to the NZ Herald in Auckland, covering Covid-19 and crime.

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The Commerce Commission says the banking sector lacks competition. 

Its study has found a two-tier system with the four major banks having an apparent focus on maintaining profits, resulting in stable market shares, high profits, and an underinvestment in their platforms.  

Herald Wellington Business Editor Jenee Tibshraeny told Kerre Woodham that the Commission says if we give a smaller bank, Kiwibank, more capital, it can grow. 

She says the problem is the Government's trying to tighten its purse strings, so any money it gives Kiwibank will be questioned. 

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We knew it was bad. 

You knew it. I knew it. Anyone with half a brain knew it was bad, but now we have the data to back up the calls, the stories, the headlines from last year. Police stats supplied to the Dairy and Business owners group show that in 2023, 148,599 crimes were reported at retail locations. Lot of figures in here, I'm sorry, 148,599 crimes. 

So, if you break that down, that is 12,383 retail offences reported every month. 2850 per week.  407 retail crimes per day. 17 offences per hour. 407 retail crimes per day. How did that policing by consent policy work out for you, huh? 

That is triple the crimes that were reported in 2020. Five times higher than the figures for 2015, and that is only reported crime. There is so much crime that you saw, that I saw, we all saw that probably, almost undoubtedly, went unreported. It's only when it got serious that it was reported. 

What a sad and sorry mess. The figures also showed that assaults on retail workers were up 20% on 2022. But 121% higher than in 2015. We all knew things were bad. Did you have any idea it was this bad? Possibly if you work in retail, you did. 

The previous administration tried a softly, softly approach to offending and it is clear it does not work. And it is expensive to try and turn around youths who are set on a bad path. Worth it, but really, really expensive. It is just so dispiriting, that's the thing that gets me. You could, I could see this all unfolding, but we weren't in the position to make decisions to turn it around until the election. And even then, so much has happened. So much money has been wasted. There's only so much that humans can do, that turning around the damage that's been done is going to be really difficult. 

But we could see it, could we not? I mean this is something we talked about ad nauseam and people said I'm getting sick of you bashing the government. Well, you know, they deserve to be bashed. What happens when you tell people that their bad behaviour won't see them evicted from government housing? Shocking, their bad behaviour continues. 

What happens when you tell people they won't be evicted for nonpayment of rent in their Kainga Ora state funded accommodation? Guess what? They don't pay the rent. The total amount owed in rent arrears has increased from $2.3 million in September 2019 to $17 million September 2022. Three years of saying to people, hey, if you don't pay your rent, we won't move you on. What happens? They don't pay it. We knew that. 

What happens when you tell people that they're victims and that they are not responsible for their own actions? They believe you. And they blame others for their behaviour and the outcomes that result from their behaviour. When you create a climate where everybody's a victim, where the government and only the government can help you, you are not the author of your own destiny, you are not self-determining individual. (That is what sets us apart from the primates for the love of all its holy, the fact that we are self-determining, that we are responsible for our actions). 

This is what happens. And we all saw it coming. Everybody, that is, except the people who were in the position to make the decisions to turn this around.   

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One of the keystone policies of the last government was its Sustaining Tenancies Framework. It was the best and the worst in a way of Labour, because in theory and on paper it makes a certain kind of sense. 

You give one of the most dispossessed and tragic of humans a home. They don't have one. They never had a show from the time they were born. If you look at some of the children taken in by Oranga Tamariki - 4-year-olds who are so emaciated they can't walk, who are so traumatised they can't speak. They grow into adults. They have very few prospects. They are homeless, you give them a home. Then, you do not give up on them, no matter how bad their behaviour might be. The theory goes that the person is cosseted and loved and supported and eventually they realise that although their childhood was absolutely dreadful, although they have been let down by every single person who was supposed to care for them throughout their lives, they will not be let down by the Labour government and Kainga Ora and lo! Magically and with tears all round, they become a good human who understands their contract with society. 

Except, except, except, how do you measure it? Who has to pay the price while this process is going on? It's the other tenants who have to put up with this unruly, disruptive, damaged, anti-social tenant while this process of transmogrification takes place. They are the ones who are terrorised. The neighbours are the ones who have to get the kids back to sleep when the all-night parties wake them. They are the ones whose lives are threatened when they finally complain. And to make matters worse, you have 25,000 people waiting in motels watching as a small number of anti-social tenants trash their new Kainga Ora homes. And then they watch as they're evicted, but not out onto the streets. 

The Sustaining Tenancies Framework saw the anti-social tenants evicted from one K.O. development and put straight into another in another community. It must have been galling for those desperate for a home to call their own. And it must have been galling, too, to be a grateful, happy tenant of Kainga Ora, looking after your home, grateful for the opportunity to have somewhere safe and reliable in which to live. So, you take the scones round to meet your new neighbour, only to find that they have been evicted for appalling behaviour at their last home and now they're living next door to you. Where is the sense in that? Even the kindest people in the world think that ending Sustaining Tenancies is a move in the right direction. Bernie Smith is the former CEO of the Monte Cecilia Trust:

“It’s certainly a move back to the real world. We've had softly, softly, which has created a lot of mayhem among many tenants and homeowners who have tried to live peacefully but found it impossible. You know, the previous government time and time again said that we are the good government, and that's why so many people were coming out of the woodwork identifying that they were homeless because the Labour Party loved the people. We know that the issue was generations and the making and what made it worse was that they decided to allow tenants to remain in their home and aided the illegal activity, no matter the issues that they were creating for their neighbours and it's unacceptable.” 

It was unacceptable and everybody knew that - those who had to live next door, right next door in the same complex, those who lived in properties next door. And it's a tiny number, for the most part Kainga Ora tenants/Housing New Zealand tenants are deeply grateful for the opportunity to have somewhere to call their own. Somewhere they can get back on their feet, where they have a home address, where they have a neighbourhood where the children can go to school. It's a tiny number that causes the problems. But their impact is vast and huge. 

Back in 2022 Kainga Ora moved 605 tenants because of antisocial activity. Now that's a lot. That's a lot of impact. Sixteen they moved twice. So you can see that according to Kainga Ora, for the most part being shifted from one environment to another assisted in modifying behaviour. But they didn't have any markers or none that they could explain to me. Whenever we did any interviews with the Minister or with Kainga Ora I said how do you measure that all of this love, and all of this care, and all of the Sustaining Tenancy is modifying behaviour, how do you know? Well, no. They didn't really have an answer for that. They just hoped that the social agencies engaged with them, that the worst of the behaviour would be minimised. 

It's just not common sense, it really isn't. Unless you can show that it's working, end it, and that's what the coalition government has done with the support of social housing providers, who see it as a ridiculous policy. As I said to the Nick Maling from Kainga Ora, if you didn't have 25,000 people in a motel desperate for a home to call their own, fine, spend as much time as you like with them. Brass off the other tenants, they’ll have somewhere else to go. But you've got 25,000 people waiting for a home of their own. Surely it should just be a simple swap. You cannot or will not live in a civilised society, you either don't have the skills you don't want to learn, the skills you are literally going to spit on the opportunity that's been offered to you, fine - back you go to room 203 at the Beres Court Motel and in comes the family in that motel unit, into to the beautiful townhouse or apartment that has been built by the taxpayer to give people a chance. And let the new family seize that chance and make the most of it. 

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I wanted to get into this on Friday when the IRD released it’s figures about the online gambling tax, and we were overrun by events. So, let's have a look at this today for the first hour at least because the Government books are open, the numbers have been crunched, and reality is starting to bite. 

The size of Grant Robertson's hole has been revealed, and the optimistic numbers National was throwing around before the election, are proving to be just that - optimistic. In August last year, during the election campaign, National announced it was going to fund $14.6 billion worth of tax relief, and it was going to pay for it by re-prioritising spending and introducing targeted revenue measures like a new foreign buyer tax on some houses. 

You will recall the ‘Back Pocket Boost’ package - it included changes to income tax brackets to compensate for inflation, introducing Family Boost childcare tax credit and increasing Working for Families tax credits. It's all coming in July 1st this year. 

According to National, that would mean an average household with children with an income of $120,000 would be better off by $250 a fortnight, Labour said that's absolute tosh, that 99% of Kiwi households would not get that $250, only 0.18% of them would. National said don't care, doesn't matter. An average household with no children will get up to $100 per fortnight, a full-time minimum wage earner will get $20 per fortnight. Whoop, open the champagne. And a super annuitant couple would get $26 more per fortnight. And when they were quizzed about how they were going to pay for that, when National was saying too that Labour had spent all the money, they talked to their targeted revenue measures like the foreign buyer tax on some houses, like the plan to raise revenue from online gambling. 

So, all very well and good, and obviously it was attractive for people doing it tough. Attractive enough for some people to tick blue, to put National in the driver's seat when it came to forming a government. Other people ticked blue because of the claw back on the landlords able to claim interest deductibility. However, IRD put up its own costings when it came to the online gambling revenue and that came in vastly lower than what National envisaged prior to the election. That means that over the four-year forecast period, the gap between National's pre-election costings and the IRD's works out at more than 500 million - which is the second blowout the government’s had with news last Monday that the government's reinstatement of aforementioned interest deductibility would come in at $800 million more than National had costed at the election, mainly because of the horse-trading with ACT during the coalition talks. 

So, all the numbers are coming in, it's worse than we thought. There's only so much you can do when it comes to public service cuts. You're not going to get as much money as you thought, but a lot of people knew that at the time. You know, everybody was saying there just aren't going to be enough foreign buyers paying that tax to help cover the cost. IRD said the online gambling revenue is vastly optimistic. It said it at the time - it's done the costings now. So why don't we just call it? We cannot afford the tax cuts. We could never afford the tax cuts. We knew we couldn't afford it. We didn't vote in National because we wanted an extra $100 a fortnight, did we? We voted for National, we voted for ACT, we voted for the Greens because they weren't Labour. 

The Greens got their largest share they've ever had of the vote and saw more MPs in Parliament than they've ever had. That hasn’t aged well, but nonetheless they got their biggest share of the vote in their party's history because they weren't Labour. Because the people who could not vote for any of the right-wing parties couldn't vote Labour. ACT went up, National went up. New Zealand First were returned to Parliament because people were not going to vote Labour. That's why we have the government we have. People were not a ‘hundy’ on National and ACT’s promises and policies. They were certain, though, that they didn't want the previous administration to continue. 

So, do we concede that there is no way we can afford the tax cuts? We've got to get the hospitals sorted, the police have to be paid properly, there's a million claims on that money. The promise of tax cuts was surely just a Trojan horse to get National back into power. But didn't we know this? 

You know you can't run a campaign saying hey, vote for us, we're not Labour. You have to come up with something. So did you vote for the current administration because you wanted, you expected, a tax cut? A tax cut was promised to you, you've voted accordingly and you want that bloody tax cut? You want them to keep their promise? Or do you accept that the price of an extra $100 a fortnight, the price of an extra $26 per fortnight is simply too high to pay with the country in the state it's in?  

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Green Party MP Darleen Tana has been suspended amid allegations she is linked to migrant exploitation at her husband’s company. A statement from the Greens’ co-leaders said Tana was suspended on Thursday afternoon because it was a conflict of interest with her small business portfolio. 

The claims first came to light on February 1 when Tana informed the party a complaint had been made to the Employment Relations Authority (ERA) by a worker at her husband’s business, E-Bikes NZ.  

“On February 9, the party was notified of a second complaint to the ERA,” the statement reads.  These complaints included allegations against Ms. Tana. Ms. Tana has not been a director or shareholder of E Cycles NZ since 2019.”  

She was suspended after it became apparent, she may have previously been aware of the allegations. As Green party co-leader, Chloe Swarbrick told Mike Hosking this morning, an independent lawyer is conducting the investigation. 

Now these are only allegations - as we know there is to be an independent investigation. If Darleen is lost to politics that would be a shame. She appears to be no dumb bunny - Darleen holds degrees in Chemical Technology and International Business Management with senior leadership experience in European telco (1997-2014), and SME manufacturing/retail in e-mobility here in Aotearoa (2014-2020). 

But the Greens don't have all their sorrows to seek in the one day what with Golriz Gharaman pleading guilty to shoplifting yesterday and James Shaw quitting the party. Before everyone gets too uppity about the Greens and their moral failings though, all parties' MPs are living in glass houses, and it would not behoove them to throw stones. 

We're only going back a few years - we simply don't have the time to go any further back - and there are some egregious sins that have been committed by MPs across the spectrum from 2017 onwards.   

Most of us can commit errors of judgment, even criminal activity of drink driving and continue in our jobs?   

Is it the party selection process or is it the fact that we are all flawed and imperfect?  And we have to accept that it's across the political spectrum now.  

No one party is blameless or faultless. 

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Every government minister will be going for the takeaways and cracking open a bottle of something tonight, won’t they? 

They might even put a movie on as well, but they’ll probably nod-off after a few minutes. 

Because that 100-day plan the boss dreamed-up, done and dusted. Delivered. KPIs met. It went to the wire with Shane leaving his big health announcement to the last minute. But we got there team! 

Christopher Luxon will be on the ministerial WhatsApp group telling them to enjoy the spring roll and chips, but reminding them that the next 100 days start on Monday. 

And, whatever you think of the Government, there’s probably one thing we can agree on: it’s not prone to sit around and over-think things. And, for you, that might be a good thing. It might not be, either. I’m probably somewhere in the middle. 

And while I can’t say it’s blown my socks off - I can say it’s exceeded my expectations on one thing. And because of that, I’m giving its first 100 days a pass mark. 

I’ll get to that shortly. And it’s probably how Christopher Luxon is feeling too. Because, as he has often said, he’s never really satisfied. Always thinks things can be done better. 

And with the first 100 days ticking over today, he’s already thinking about the next 100. So, it wasn’t bluster at the start - that’s how he’s going to keep on doing things. Quarterly targets. Every three months. 

As he himself admits, he’s running the country just like a chief executive runs a business or an organisation. 

And is he ever. Just look at the screws going on the public sector. Which I think is getting a bit out of control. Example being this nutbar situation where you’ve got one public department chief executive paying his own airfares to fly around the country and talk to staff about cost-cutting. 

But while the Prime Minister is on to the next 100 days, let’s have a think about how we rate the first 100. 

For starters, I’d describe them as: Stop and Start. 

The Stop bit is all the policies and initiatives of the last government that it’s pulled the plug on. Stop 3 Waters. Stop the Smoke-free stuff. Stop the blanket speed limit reductions. Stop the Auckland light rail project. Stop Fair Pay agreements. Stop the Lake Onslow hydro scheme. Stop the inter-island ferries project. And that’s just a few.  

The Start bit, is all the things that aren’t quite happening yet but, you know, ‘at least we’ve made a start’. 

And, let’s be honest, that’s probably acceptable in just the first 100 days. Especially when you compare it to the pace the last government seemed to work at. 

But I’ve felt —especially in the past couple of weeks— that the Government’s been more focused on ticking things off on the list so it can say it’s ticked things off... it’s felt more interested in that, than the substance of what it’s actually ticking off. 

And we know why that is. The clock’s been ticking. 100 days. Get it done.  

Which has meant that some of the stuff it’s announced feels pretty half-cocked to me. 

For example, its announcement the other day that the first of its boot camps for young criminal offenders would be up-and-running by the middle of the year. With Oranga Tamariki running it. 

Not run by Corrections or the military. But by Oranga Tamariki. How you have a child welfare organisation running what the Government describes as a “military-style academy” I’ll never know. 

But they had to announce something, so it’s been lumbered with Oranga Tamariki because the military obviously doesn’t want a bar of it. Nor Corrections. So social workers are now going to be running boot camps. 

The emergency housing changes announced on Wednesday and this daft idea or expectation that private landlords will take on tenants currently living in motels with a bit of a financial sweetener from the taxpayer and the option of kicking people out after 90 days. 

I don’t know about you, but every landlord I heard from about that said they wouldn’t be touching that with a bargepole. 

The gang patch ban. Fanciful, at best. 

The last thing on the list is healthcare targets, which Health Minister Shane Reti is announcing today. 

But, like I say, you can’t accuse the Government of sitting around and overthinking things. 

So, what is it, do you think, is this one thing I mentioned earlier where the Government has exceeded my expectations? And because of that, I’m giving its first 100 days a pass mark? 

It’s the fact that the coalition hasn’t fallen apart. When Christopher Luxon, David Seymour and Winston Peters signed the dotted line after all that to-ing and fro-ing after the election, I didn't expect it to last. 

It may still fall apart. Because, despite them being in coalition, I wouldn’t say Luxon, Seymour and Peters are singing from the same song sheet all the time. 

But it hasn’t fallen apart so far. Lord knows what it’s like behind the scenes. But we still have a government and, for me, that’s enough to give its first 100 days a pass mark. Not a merit. Not an excellence. But it’s better than I expected. 

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The pilot for military-style academies that are designed to turn around persistent young offenders will get underway by the middle of the year. Ten young people initially, and they'll spend up to four months —that is all the legislation allows— within their Academy. 

And therein lies the problem, because according to all the best experts and best practice, it takes at least 12 months to break old habits and establish new ones. But the legislation doesn't allow it, so the four-month pilot will go ahead in the middle of the year. 

It will be run along military lines, although under the auspices of Oranga Tamariki, and that bodes ill. They couldn't organise a piss up in a brewery. They don't seem to have been a terribly good manager of the young people in their care thus far. 

But there will also be a rehabilitation component and trauma informed care approach, whatever that means. I'm assuming counselling sessions, a psychological component to work on what is triggering these young people to behave the way they do. 

It will be for the most persistent and serious young offenders. And again, the key will be the length of the program. You can't unlearn bad habits that have taken years to become entrenched in just a matter of weeks. You and I know that. You know when you're trying to turn around our own bad habits, it's hard. So, imagine these young people who have only ever known the life they have known that has led them down this path being asked to completely transform their lives in a matter of weeks. 

The other key is the support for the young people when they emerge from what is basically a cocoon. They're insulated from reality, therein their own world. They don't have to make any decisions for themselves that's taken care of. For the first time in their lives, perhaps they'll be expected to be somewhere. They'll be given food regularly. They would have to forage to survive. So, you come out of that and back into real life and that's where in the past, the programs have tripped themselves up. 

Blue Light, which used to run discos in my day, is a registered charity that works in partnership with the police to deliver a range of youth programs and is the type of organisation that will be providing wrap around care once young offenders try to reintegrate back into the community, as Blue Light’s Chief operating Officer Brendan Crompton explained on the Mike Hosking breakfast this morning. 

"In the New Zealand context, you’ve got two choices. When kids offend, they can either do a community-based sentence, which is what Blue Light runs, or kids can go to youth jail. So those already exist. What they’re looking at is the most persistent youth offenders, and they’re not a big group. But there are a group of persistent youth offenders who will become persistent adult offenders, who need more intensive time and support. Away from, essentially, either negative parental involvement, because the parents’ involved in gangs or crime themselves, or more commonly, what I call parental non-involvement. The parents don’t know where their 10, 11, 12-year-olds are at three o’clock in the morning. 

“So they’re saying, how can we? How can we have a residential programme that’s more intensive? And then obviously the part that is where we’d be involved is when the kids are released from that period inside. What’s the wraparound support to make sure they aren’t back off and offending again?” 

It is hard. One of my most memorable callers was a man called Joe who left Hawkes Bay after coming out of prison. He’d been involved in gangs there. He had to leave and come to Auckland to get away from the gang influence, the gang lifestyle. He didn't want to go to prison again. He was done. But it is so, so hard trying to start a new life. He did incredibly well. He got a job; an employer and was very honest about his past. His employer was willing to give him a chance, but try and find rent, try and find a place to rent and pay the rent on your own in Auckland. He ended up living in his car while still working. His boss let him use the showers and the bathrooms in the morning to get ready for work. We lost touch, we lost contact. I hope he's well. I hope he managed to keep going in the new direction, he was trying to forge for himself. But boy, it's tough. And that's with a grown man who's made that decision. Imagine the young ones coming out.   

The wraparound support is going to be absolutely critical because boot camps, as you well know, have been tried before and they have failed. Only two of the 17 youth offenders sent to the camps across the first two years of the scheme in the late 2000s had not reoffended by 2011. In 2017, sociologist and crime expert Jared Gilbert said the effect of boot camps was quite minimal and would basically just make young crooks a bit stronger and a bit fitter. 

During the election campaign, Christopher Luxon and Mark Mitchell, the Police Spokesperson then, Police Minister now, were really strong on youth crime as well they might have been given the amount of ram raids that were taking place across the country. They said the boot camp policy is going to act as a circuit breaker for young offenders, taking them off the streets and after 12 months, sending them back into the world work ready. 

Well, I'm not entirely sure that we can expect them to be work ready. Just not ram-raiding Michael Hill would be a start. Not beating up each other would be a start. But proponents for the camp say the difference this time is the rehabilitative aspect, the counselling aspect. The recognition that these kids aren't necessarily bad. A lot of them are sad. So, working together on keeping them off the streets so they don't continue to victimize. Working on them so that they understand where the behaviours come from, trying to. Try to heal whatever mental trauma they have endured in the past. It's the length of time of the camp and the wrap around support back in the real world, which will be absolutely vital. 

So I'd love to get your thoughts on this one. There is a youth development program in the military that if you heard the interview with Brendan Crompton this morning, you have heard him talk about that. A youth development program in the military, which is phenomenally successful, he said. It's world renowned, but that's when you've got young people who are choosing to be there. It's military by consent, if you will. So, in this case you've got young people and probably it is the last thing they want. 

So, will it work this time? I hope so because there are significant differences. It is a small group of kids who will go on to offend as adults and they will end up having miserable lives for the most part. And making other people's lives misery. 

So, it's worth a try, isn't it? 

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Well, whoofty! Where do we start with transport after the huge policy drop yesterday? Fifteen roads of national significance have been given the go ahead, no ifs, no buts. Despite the eye-watering expense, the Prime Minister says they are essential to building a productive economy. How are we going to pay for it? Good question. Because basically it's just picking a number and multiplying it by the time the roads are finished. A number of different options have been proposed and some are more concrete than others, Transport Minister Simeon Brown outlined some of them with Mike Hosking this morning. 

“We're not increasing fuel taxes until 2027 and by that stage there will not have been an increase in fuel excise for six years. So, the reality is funding is needed to pay for the infrastructure that New Zealanders need to be able to get around quickly and safely. And so we're not increasing fuel taxes till 2027. The New Zealand Transport Agency, their role is to develop what's called the national and transport program that will outline when these roads will be built, how they'll be funded in terms of specifics for each particular project, but with our expectations very clear, they need to be looking at a range of funding and financing tools, whether it’s PPP’s, value capture,  build-own-operate transfers, and my expectation is they’ll be getting all that straightaway.“ 

Yes, so many different ways of doing it because there's a lot to pay for. 

Along with the building of the 15 roads of national significance, we've also got a half billion-dollar pothole prevention fund (that will be popular) and the establishment of a Road Efficiency Group, the scrapping of Road to Zero, replacing it with targets for drink and drug testing, $4.4 billion in public transport spending. 

So, Simeon Brown mentioned a few of the ways that the transport budget will be funded. We've got the fuel tax hikes in 2027. The rego’s going up, that's not a big deal in terms of extra expense, an extra $25 and then another $25. We've got an increase in fines being looked at as well, some fines could double if you're not wearing your safety belt, (hopefully we'll see that for the use of cell phones while driving as well). We've got the value capture taxes. 

If you're living in an area where public transport suddenly opens up land, then you will have to pay more for it because you're land in theory becomes more desirable. We've got reducing costs by fast tracking the roads through the consent process. We've got congestion charges. You know Uncle Tom Cobbley and all really when we look at it. 

We've got so much that we can, and perhaps should be doing. 

Now of course, the cycling coalition have said it's not fair and this is ridiculous and other countries around the world are creating more cycleways. We do need cycleways as part of a cohesive transport plan. But cycles aren't going to carry the bulk of goods that we need to get to our ports for export and distribute around the country as imports. So, we need roads. The cycle lobby has to accept, surely in their heart of hearts, late at night as they're lying there in bed, planning their wet weather gear as they cycle into work the next day, they have to know that for their cycles to get here, they have to be brought in from another country and then distributed around the country. You can't put 100 cycles on top of a cyclist. You need a truck to do it. So, we need the roads. 

I did think Simeon Brown didn't quite understand public transport when he said, well, public transport users have to pay their way too. At the moment we're trying to get people into public transport where they can ease up the congestion on the roads that we have now. The roads will take some time to build and as generally happens, when you build more roads, more cars fill it, so we need a public transport option as well. 

What's fair? 

What's not? 

I think congestion charges make sense. Value added I’m in two minds on. I know a couple of our younger colleagues at work who bought their first homes because there was good public transport access. A developer built a series of little townhouses in one of the outer suburbs of Auckland, and a couple of younger colleagues bought them, their first home with Kiwi Saver and they chose specifically because there was good public transport links into the city. So, it was attractive to them to have public transport. Is it fair enough, then, that those who sell the land that is going to be used for the housing, have to pay a bit extra? Tolls. Nobody minds paying tolls surely, do they? Because whenever you put in a toll road, there must be an alternative. Cutting the red tape for consenting, I think everybody would agree to that, wouldn't they? 

So, the roads have to be paid for, there is no Covid Fund to dip into. Without a productive economy, we can't afford anything. 

So, what comes first in your mind? Have the Government got their priorities right? 

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Infrastructure NZ's welcoming the renewal of National's Roads of National Significance programme. 

The Government's draft transport plan features a half-a-billion dollar pothole prevention fund and 15 new major roads. 

It'll be funded in part by a $25 dollar increase to vehicle registration fees in each of the next two years. 

CEO Nick Leggett told Kerre Woodham that the previous Government initiated just one new road in six years, so we were left with nothing in the pipeline. 

He says we need these roads; they've connected people for millennia and will continue to. 

Leggett says even as we de-carbonise, we are still going to need them, and they need to be of a higher quality. 

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Associate Education Minister David Seymour says free school lunches can’t continue at such a cost – arguing there’s no evidence it works. 

The previous Government committed more than $300 million to fund the school lunch programme to the end of this year. The programme will be reviewed by Seymour, looking for ways to make it more efficient. 

Charity KidsCan supports schools and early childhood centres across New Zealand with breakfasts and lunches. 

CEO & Founder Julie Chapman tells Kerre Woodham that school food is one of the main sources of nutrition for many children. 

Chapman agrees there needs to be more rigour across the level of waste or surplus food, and explains the use of a portal used by KidsCan that calculates quantities based on demand. 

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We thought we'd start this morning with the review into the efficacy, or lack thereof, of school lunches. Associate Education Minister David Seymour says free school lunches, as they stand, are a prime example of wasteful public spending. They'd like to do away with them altogether, but he told Mike Hosking this morning that his party is just one within the coalition government. Tthere are other parties who want to have some way of addressing kids turning up at school hungry, so as he told Mike Hosking this morning, David Seymour says they'll just have to find a more efficient way of delivering the meals to the children who need them.  

It would be more efficient if it fed more people. It would be more efficient if it didn't waste as much as 25% - which is the evidence that's come up in the past doesn't actually get eaten by. Kids. Or it could be more efficient if it was targeted at people with greater need. For example, you'd be people saying, well, it's got to be universal. I heard your guy on earlier saying the most efficient way is to give it to everyone. Well, it's illogical. It can't be more efficient if you're giving it to people that need it and don't need it at the same level. So, we're going through the process of taking papers to cabinet and getting cabinet to agree on it. One thing I can say is we will not be spending $350 million because we just can't afford it right now. We will do it in a way that will be more effective and efficient and is a good use of taxpayers money.  

And there are efficient ways to deliver food to hungry kids. The government isn't the only organisation doing it. Others have been doing it for years and years and years, and you would have to argue you have been doing it effectively. Kick Start Breakfast collaboration between Anchor Milk and Sanitarium Weet-Bix - they have been delivering breakfast to kids who need or want it. You might come from a family that can afford to stock the pantry, but you forget, or you've been to swimming and you're racing to get to school, there's a breakfast there available if you want it. It's not, as Boyd Swinburn says, you have to put up your hand and say hi, I'm a poor kid whose parents either can't or won't feed me. It's there if you need it or want it. I think they have provided 180,000 breakfasts every school week. So at least that's milk and Weet-Bix in your tummy. I know some vegan lovies might like to have the spirulina shots and the spinach is the way to start the day, but you know something in your tummy, milk and Weet-bix is perfectly good for generations of children and perfectly good for somebody who's starving. You've got KidsCan - they provide free food, clothing and health products for children in years 1 to 13. They deliver offerings that can last on the shelf for months at a time, once a term.  They deliver things like pasta, muesli bars, baked beans, and if you're hungry that's available. If you've left your lunch at home that's available. And nobody is criticising either KidsCan or Kick Start Breakfast for not making these offerings universal. Well to a certain extent they are universal in that everybody can have them if they want them. What they're not doing, is forcing every single child to sit down and devour what they put in front of them. The food and other items that are being delivered by charitable organisations are there for those who need it and there's no shame in accessing it. And there are ways that kids could access food paid for by the taxpayer without publicly shaming them. Boyd Swinburn, I think, was being provocative when he said, children shouldn't have to put up their hand and say I'm poor. That's ridiculous. There are other ways of doing it. Also, Seymour's right about wanting to see value for money because the previous government hadn't put school lunches in its long-term budget costings. They've dipped into the Covid-19 emergency money, which was all debt. The Covid response and recovery fund, that's where the funding came for school lunches. There was no long-term funding applied. As the excellent Kate McNamara writes, she wrote about it in the Herald some time ago. Grant Robertson was told by Treasury that the more than $527 million in operating funds he planned to charge to the Covid-19 emergency fund for the lunches, didn't really qualify as Covid resurgence costs. Funding through the ordinary budget process would be more suitable. That advice fell on deaf ears because he knew he couldn't find a place in his budget for it. So now it's been kicked down the road and National either has to become the New Zealand equivalent of Thatcher - Thatcher milk snatcher and take the lunches away - or find the money to pay for it that Labour didn't have. They just used the Covid fund, National doesn't have that to pay for those lunches.   

Also, I was one who supported it because I thought it would get more kids into school. It's a safe place to be. If you come from a precarious home, school is a safe place to be and you'll be fed. But again, there's no real evidence that that is why children are coming to school. So, 12.5% of children, according to the New Zealand Health Survey, live in households where food runs out sometimes or often. That's fewer than 100,000 of our 815,000 school kids. Probably considerably fewer, Kate points out, since the health survey includes preschoolers. So, you could feed lunch to every single one of those kids who are deprived twice over for the money that we're currently spraying in an untargeted way to kids who don't want it or need it. So the kids, according to a Ministry of Education evaluation in 2021, said the children ate more vegetables and fewer processed foods at lunch and they felt modestly more full after lunch when compared to kids not in the programme. They didn't ask about attendance. That was one of the reasons I supported. It didn't bother asking about that. A more recent evaluation, October 22, looked at secondary school students and found that the programme had no statistically meaningful effect on attendance. Neither evaluation made any attempt to measure the program against academic achievement, school enrolment or completions. So, I'd like to see a bit of that before I commit half a billion dollars to more funding. I want to feed kids who through no fault of their own, are missing out on food. I want them to see school as a safe place to be, a place where somebody does care about them and does want them to succeed in life. Where they can see other people succeeding, where they can see that people care about them. But this hasn't worked. Just doing it in an unregulated, hoots wahey, let's feed them all, let's not have stigma, doesn't work. Other organisations can feed children relatively cost effectively, and they can get to the children who need the food. There's no stigma around them. Farm it out. Farm out a third of the money to those organisations and they will deliver a better result. And let's just see if we do see an improvement in school attendance. If it does actually work, if it doesn't, then let's put the money into another program that gets better results. 

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This annoys me because I shouldn't have to be talking about it, and because in the scheme of things, given what the country is facing, there are far, far bigger fish to fry. 

However, it speaks to an attitude, and it speaks to leading by example, and it speaks to having an understanding of what people, ordinary people, people who might be losing their jobs, people who might be losing their homes, people who are struggling to keep hold of their business, it speaks to what they are going through. 

In a time of redundancies, at a time of belt-tightening, at a time where people are really struggling, people who never thought they would be in the position of struggling, why is the Prime Minister claiming a $52,000 accommodation allowance to live in his very own apartment? 

You'll recall he campaigned, and we enthusiastically cheered on his calls for a reduction in public expenditure. The public servants across Wellington are waiting for the axe to fall in numerous government departments, almost every government department, as their managers have been asked to make savings of 6.5% after the wanton overspends of the previous administration. That is quite true. 

Yet he's not leading by example. 

I know that $52,000, when you compare it to the sort of wastage that was going on when Grant Robertson thought $600 million found down the back of the couch was just chump change, you know $52,000 is neither here nor there in terms of government expenditure. 

And I know he's perfectly entitled to claim the allowance, he’s not fiddling anything. MP's outside of Wellington are able to claim just over $30,000 a year to cover their housing expenses. Prime Ministers, a bit more. And if you're required to be in Wellington for your job but you don't actually live there, a decent employer will give you an accommodation allowance, that is quite normal. 

But in the PM's case, he already has a house he can use that's supplied by the taxpayer, Premier House. He doesn't want to live there. It's fair to say Premier House needs a bit of a glow up. Like all old girls, perhaps it could do with zhoosh. But the two previous PM’s, Hipkins and Ardern, say well yes, there are a few leaks and certainly it could do with an upgrade, but it's perfectly liveable. Adern and her family lived there during her tenure, Hipkins didn't but that's because under the rules, he couldn't. Wellington based MPs can't live at Premier House. It's precisely for Prime Ministers who live outside of Wellington. Christopher Luxon is one of those. 

So, he has a house that's available to him courtesy of the taxpayer. Needs a bit of a do-up. Plenty of houses that people are living in need a bit of a zhoosh, can't afford it at the moment so you don't do it. 

He has an apartment amongst the homes he owns and there's no crime in that. But you know, he owns a few homes. One of them is an apartment in Wellington. He owns that, it's his free and freehold. Does he really need to claim the $52,000? 

I think the optics look bad. 

It will be the first time in 34 years, according to Newsroom, that a PM will claim the payment. You would think, given his salary, he'd be able to afford to pay whatever living expenses he has. 

At a time when all New Zealanders are really feeling the pain, forgoing a $52,000 taxpayer funded allowance when you can have a house you can live in, but you choose not to would be a really sensible idea. 

I know it's not much. But again, it's about leading by example, about showing that when you're calling for austerity, when you're calling for every single taxpayer dollar to be scrutinized, when you have a house that's available but it's not the flashiest and you might not want to live there, surely that is your choice. 

I don't know, I expected more, quite frankly.   

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Now, what on Earth is going on within immigration New Zealand? Ever since the days of the late, unlamented Iain Lees-Galloway, the department has been struggling.

A pause was placed on the processing of grandparents' visas, that was before Covid. Migrant workers are still being exploited by unscrupulous employers, despite a number of reviews under former Immigration Ministers.

Last year it was revealed that there were nearly 200 employers who had had their licenses to hire migrants revoked because they were not delivering on what the law requires and on what was promised. Immigration New Zealand are investigating 167 more businesses.

Immigration Minister Erica Stanford accepts that there were a number of pressures on Immigration New Zealand staff. The reopening of borders after Covid-19,  unprecedented demand for workers, and new staff in the department did result in visas and applications being processed one per week instead of one per day, which really slows things up.

But then if you're asking staff who are new to the department for extra checks and to be super scrupulous, there's going to be a lag. There was also the merging of six visas into one, and a new IT system that's not fully operational. We knew about that, still not fully operational. 

At the same time, we have unprecedented numbers of people flocking to New Zealand. But are they the people we need to make New Zealand a better, stronger, more resilient society and economy and in turn, are they getting what they're being promised? 

It's a huge commitment to leave your family, to leave your home country, to take your own family, to pick up everything you own and come to a brand new country, a brand new culture. And the expectation is that your skills will be recognised and you'll have a place here, that you will belong here. 

Are we in turn giving migrant workers what they're expecting? Look at the nurses. We have nurses coming here spending tens of thousands of dollars to do so, just on their applications. That's before you even take into account airfares, rent and the like. And yet they're being told that their skill sets are not what hospitals are looking for.

Canterbury Hospital in its ‘situations vacant’, they had a need for nurses in maternity, oncology, acute general surgery, that sort of thing. But in their ‘sits vac’ they said applications from nurses who had recently completed their competency assessment programs would not be accepted.

So basically saying, if you're new to New Zealand, you've just done your competency as assessment, don't bother applying. There has been a huge influx of internationally qualified nurses coming to New Zealand since our borders opened. 

Of the newly registered nurses in the October to December quarter, 63% were trained overseas. To be fair to Andrew Little, the former health minister, he did say there were a lot of nurses wanting to come to New Zealand, and finally they're here.

Despite being trained, despite completing their competency, the rejections just keep coming for them. At Gore Hospital 80, international nurses applied for a job, none of them had the necessary qualifications or experience.

So where do we need to fix things? 

I'm not going to say where does the blame lie, where do we need to fix things? Do the health authorities need to be clearer with immigration? 

That the sort of nurses they’re after are experienced nurses that won't require wrap-around care for the first couple of years to get them up to the speed of the positions that are available. Do the recruiters need to be much clearer?

What if you're a brand shiny new nurse, keen and eager and desperate to start your career in a new country, your language is fine, you've done the cultural competency, but you just don't have the experience and that you understand that? 

You can understand Gore Hospital if you've got a sole charge nurse, it's not fair on the hospital, the patients or the nurse herself or himself to put a nurse in charge of the entire hospital. So where do we need to make changes so nurses aren't disappointed and hospitals are getting the staff they need? 

How functional is Immigration New Zealand at the moment? If it's taking a week to do a job that it used to take a day to do, so we need more staff in there? Do we need to put a cap on the number of applications that can be taken in any given month? 

You've got international tourists wanting to come here waiting for visitors visas, a huge backlog of those. 36,000 last year were waiting for visitor visas to come here. When it comes to trying to get family over, if you've tried to do that yourself, you know the absolute administrative nightmare it is trying to get that to happen.  And then the hurry up and wait.

The new technology was supposed to speed things up, and that's not fully operational yet. Are you confident that once the IT is doing what it should the job will be made easier for those within the department, and life will be easier for those who have to use it? 

You know it's  great that people want to come here. Our forebears all wanted to come here. We all came from somewhere to come to New Zealand. And there's undoubtedly a shortage, across the board in so many, many areas, but are we falling back into the bad old habits of just taking all comers who are undercutting New Zealand workers because they can, because they're willing to live 16 to a three bedroom house?

Are we offering false hope to qualified people like the nurse, like teachers saying, you're very welcome and then ultimately pulling the welcome mat out from under them?

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Where to start from this morning's program?! 

The Mike Hosking Breakfast was the gift that kept on giving, what with Stuart Nash effectively cutting any ties that remained with an existing Labour Party you would have to say, to say ‘I was all for getting tough on the gangs, but nobody would support me.’ 

And then we had Jan Tinetti responding to National’s press conference yesterday saying so many projects have been promised, and yet we've looked, and they simply can't be delivered. There's not a snowballs chance in hell, we can afford them because the cost overruns are so extreme. 

And then further to the Ministry of Education and further around the education portfolio, there's a story from BusinessDesk this morning showing that the Ministry of Education's consulting bills surged by 450% since 2019. 450% in five years (really four years). They went to the top-tier consultancy firms, ones like Beca that picked up $15 million over 5 years, PwC, $13 million, KPMG $7.7 million. 

The surge in spending came after the Labour government directed the Ministry of Education to get cracking on a new school property capital program. Things like new classrooms, upgrading school buildings, school facilities, that sort of thing. But yesterday the coalition government announced that some of these projects are in doubt after Erica Stanford, the current Minister of Education, said that promises had been made to schools that simply could not be delivered. Work is paused on 20 projects, up to 350 projects in various stages ranging from design, basically just drawings on a board through to pre-construction could now be scrapped. 

The current government is blaming the former government. Erica Stanford says it's not unusual to have isolated examples of projects that experience delivery challenges, and there have been cost overruns —that's fine— but this is of an unprecedented scale. She says Labour have left a system of systemic and embedded challenges that cannot continue. She says there is evidence that Chris Hipkins, as previous Minister of Education, knew there was too little funding for what had been promised but let schools continue, basically designing their dream projects without telling them that there simply wasn't the money for it. They had to operate within a budget. Labour's education spokesperson and former education Minister Jan Tinetti says no, the money is there. 

“But we're not up to our ears in debt and I'm very proud of our fiscal record and I will push back on that. What I am saying is that National are manufacturing, a crisis here that doesn't exist.” 

So, are they? 

I think we agreed that there has been underfunding on school buildings and under the Key government. Labour said, right, we'll make this good. We'll build all the new classrooms that anyone could ever possibly hope for in new schools, and we'll do it right now. We'll give them all of the everything. 

But the money has to be there, doesn't it? Chris Hipkins says well yes, National’s giving tax cuts to the rich instead of putting that money into schools and school buildings, instead of delivering on the promises made by Labour, National says we simply cannot deliver on those. The cost overruns are extraordinary. 

So what, then, are we paying the consultants for? If you're spending $15 million with one consultancy company, wouldn't you want them to come up with accurate costings? So, you had an idea of where you were going? And what could be done with that money? I mean, I guess when it comes to building projects. You would understand, perhaps the Ministry of Education outsourcing, but a University of Auckland Professor Nicolas Lewis has researched government spending on consultants. And not only is the ministry looking for consultants when it comes to building projects, which I could give them a pass on, although you would have to wonder at the scale of the spending. But they also rely extensively on consultants for policy development. Effectively, there is no in-house capability. They tend to contract out for all the major curriculum development services.

According to Professor Lewis, about ten small education consultancy firms relied largely, if not entirely, on ministry contracts for their income. 

So they're consulting up for buildings, they're consulting out for what you would imagine a ministry exists for, which is creating and developing a curriculum for schools. And the other thing that really grinds my gears is when you look at that, so they're contracting out for curriculum, which is what you'd imagine the ministry would do, so there'd be fewer staff at the Ministry of Education wouldn't there? Because if they're not doing what you would imagine they exist to do, there wouldn't be many staff. The number of teachers employed by state schools rose by just over 5 per cent from 2017 to 2022. By the same period, the number of full-time staff employed at the Ministry of Education ballooned by 55 per cent. 

So not only are they contracting out everything, they're employing more staff. Like loads more stuff. 1700 more staff than was employed in 2016. What are they doing? Coming up with new ways to spend money, new inventive ways to spend money. How on earth can you justify farming out your curriculum? While taking on 55% more staff?   

So when you get a he said/she said, as we have with the previous government and this government, with Christopher Luxon and Erica Stanford saying they were out of control with the spending, it was complete and utter cavalier disregard for budgets and for costings and for writing up contracts that meant people had to deliver on the price that was offered. 

So they say that Labour was irresponsible with money. Jan Tinetti says no, we're not. No, I stand by our fiscal record. And then you see just one ministry has a consulting bill that is surged by 450%. And you have a ministry that farms out the very work it exists to do while at the same time taking on more than 50% more staff, who do you believe? 

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As promised, the coalition government has announced legislation designed to make life just a little bit tougher for gangs.

They are not the first government to try and control the range and the breadth and the strength of the various gangs in this country, they are unlikely to be the last.

As far back as 1972, Labour leader Norm Kirk promised in the run up to the election that he would take the bikes off the bikies. Very un-Labour, but that's what he promised at the time -a promise which actually proved legally impossible to implement.

The courts have stood in the way of many a government's good intentions. So he promised to take the bikes off the bikies, unable to do so, his government introduced legislation in 1973, that was aimed at the gangs trying to prohibit unlawful assembly.

Further legislation in 1976 enabled the confiscation of vehicles used to commit offences. But along with the stick came the carrot, and that's what I'm hoping to see as well.

That is something that Christopher Luxon said they would do,  that they would make it tough for gangs, but they would do everything they could to help gang members who wanted to leave, leave, and work with community groups to try and prevent gangs from recruiting young people.

In the 70s, government schemes tried to hinder gang recruitment by helping underachieving students get into jobs when they left school. They also provided fun and games in the form of recreational and sporting activities outside of school, sort of blue light light discos but for the big kids to try and see that there was an alternative way of life.

In the mid 70s, work cooperatives for adult gang members were set up. Now you'll probably remember these, but if you're of a certain age because that's when Muldoon came in and in the mid 80s, millions of dollars was given to gang collectives for work related activities. Millions. Most funds, to be fair, went to genuine projects in some cases, in a shocking revelation, they supported extravagant clubhouse renovations and opulent lifestyles. If only we'd had social media back in the day, nothing would have changed.

The abuse of the schemes resulted in their cancellation in 1987.

Interventionist approaches have always been tried along  with the 70s and 2006. Youth workers put on services for high risk young people and families, parenting information support programs aimed at reconnecting youths with their culture that spread throughout the country.

Then along came Michael laws and in 2009 at Wanganui District Council passed a bylaw banning gang patches in the city. Other cities said right, we're on to that too. But in 2011, a High Court judge found the bylaw to be unlawful on human rights grounds.

None the less gang regalia was banned from places like schools, swimming pools and government buildings in 2013. So it can be done, but there needs to be a willingness, I guess, to do it.

So since the 70s, we can see we've tried to a) prevent at-risk kids from joining gangs, b) tried to offer alternative pathways for gang members to leave if they wish and c) we've tried to make it tough for gang members to do their business, nothing unusual here.

So the last Labour administration adopted the Rob Muldoon approach to it -  to work with gangs, give them a seat at the table, treat them with respect ,treat them as equals. Did that work? Did they respond with respect and a desire to work with the community? Not really, no. All it did was give the gangs their cojones to do exactly as they wished.

It used to grind my gears (a lot used to grind my gears during lockdown so maybe I was overreacting), but it used to grind my gears when you'd see funerals and tangi rules under lockdown with everyone else but not gang members. No, no. They would have convoys and leaning out of their cars and gathering in far more than 50 people. Televised, didn't give a fat rat's arse.

Borders - they were for other people. Any criticism of gang activity was greeted with accusations of racism and claims that they had every right to have their views and wishes heard, which they thought they did because they were being treated by the previous administration as though they had a right to exist and conduct their business as they wished.

Unfortunately, a lot of their business is illegal. I would have no problem with gangs and patches whatsoever if they were engaged in legitimate business. Many associates of gang members are, but ultimately the business of gangs is to muscle each other for turf and then sell drugs. That's where you get your big bucks. You don't get it by selling organically grown apples and kumara by the roadside. You know that's where you get your big bucks.

Law abiding citizens were starting to get a little bit sick of the posturing and jockeying for position conducted by various gangs and full view of the public so National promised to crack down. And it’s started. Six gold plated Harleys, once owned by the Comancheros were crushed on the weekend. And new legislation will be introduced, going one further than the Wanganui District Council, banning gang patches in public and giving police extra powers to stop gang members congregating.

Again, this is posturing, this time on the part of the government. Will it immediately stop into gang warfare? No. Will it end the production and sale of meth? No.

But what it's saying is sending a very strong message that we are sick of seeing you wearing your advertising for your brand on your back. We're sick of you behaving exactly as you wish, stating your intentions loud and clear with your patches on your back saying this is who we are, this is what we do, tremble in fear.

If you want to wear your little blazers and your jackets in your little club rooms, you fill your steel cap boots. Yeah, that's what club rooms are for.

Dressing up and talking nonsense and  bigging yourself up. You do that. It's what lots of people do in club rooms. But I don't want to see, right up in my grills, your pride and your lawlessness.

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If the aim of the former Labour government was to get more students from lower income families into tertiary training, it doesn't work. 

There is, according to the Tertiary Education Commission who reported to Parliament this week, no discernible evidence that the fees-free —the first-year fees free scheme introduced by Labour— has improved participation from low socioeconomic groups at all. Nada. None. 

So that was the stated aim. We will pay the first year of your course fees, therefore lower socioeconomic families will feel more confident about sending their kids into training and education. Didn't happen. Doesn't work. 

Okay, so that's good. A scheme was trialled, it didn't work. It costs the taxpayers $340 million, but at least now we know it's not getting the stated desired outcome we won't go throwing good money after bad. This was all I ever wanted from the last administration. You know, they were trialling new things, and do they work? Well, in this case, we actually have a measurable outcome. No, it doesn't. The stated intention did not provide the desired outcome.  

National in its coalition horse trading agreed to replace first year's fees free with final year fees free to reward those students to stick at their studies. And I always thought that made much more sense. And of course it's not fees free at all. Taxpayers who already fund the lion's share of the cost of degrees will be paying the costs of that final year, but a more educated, better trained society is a good thing. So, let's see that as an investment. We're getting something in return for the investment. 

But if we are still trying to get students from low-income families into tertiary studies, simply replacing the first year with the final year isn't going to change things. What will work is investing in organisations that are already doing that work, and measuring outcomes, and getting good results. Organisations like First Foundation. 

They partner a decile one or two student with potential and promise with a corporate and the corporate helps fund their fees. Each of the scholars gets $4K a year for three years to go towards their university costs which minimises their student loan. Many of the kids who get First Foundation scholarships are the first in their families to attend university, so they are matched with a mentor who can help them overcome challenges and help them achieve their goals. They have a mentor that's been there, done that, and knows what it's like so they can support them through that. And then the corporates they're partnered with will arrange for at least four weeks of paid work experience every year, which means they can grow their skills and know how to do work relationships in a safe work environment. Many of them end up working more than that during the uni holidays and the like because they're good workers. 

So, here's an organisation that is achieving exactly what Labour said it wanted to do, and that was to take kids from lower-income families and give them the option of study. Christopher Luxon made a commitment during the election campaign to fund organisations and NGO's that are delivering what government departments cannot. He already said he'd do it with mental health. Imagine what First Foundation could do with $340 million, which is what we spent in a year on the fees free first year scheme? Imagine how many kids would be given the opportunity to see if university, a degree, being the first in their family to graduate from university, imagine what they could do. 

On the one hand, I would love to see NGOs that have got a proven track record in delivering get that money instead of it going to the final year of study. I’d also love to know whether you think a university degree is still worth it?   

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The application of the last Government's fees free policy may not have done enough to target the people it was aimed at. 

The Tertiary Education Commission has told a select committee there's no discernible evidence that the first-year free policy helped more low decile school students into university. 

First Foundation CEO Kirk Sargent told Kerre Woodham that while removing financial barriers to education makes a major difference in what young people are able to achieve, it is not the only hurdle. 

He said that community and knowledge are two things that need to be taken into consideration. 

Sargent said that their job is to connect with young people on a personal level, building a community and knowledge that gives them the confidence to travel outside of their home regions and remain there for study. 

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Benefits are on blast at the moment, but one professor thinks a universal basic income may be cheaper. 

Data from the Ministry of Social Development shows that 109,000 kiwis on the Jobseeker benefit have received it for at least a year. 

Tim Hazledine, Emeritus Professor of Economics at the University of Auckland, suggests we scrap the welfare system altogether, replacing it with a universal basic income. 

He told Kerre Woodham that currently, the amount the government spends on various social handouts and programmes is more than what a universal income of $300 a week would cost. 

He said that giving every adult $600 a fortnight regardless of their financial earnings is fiscally neutral, and would give them certainty and assurance. 

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We have in the news yet another report into Oranga Tamariki. Yet another damning indictment into an organisation that should never exist. The Chief Ombudsman has called for changes “on a scale rarely required” at Oranga Tamariki. He reviewed about 2000 complaints over four years for his report children in care, complaints to the Ombudsman, 2019 to 2023. He said he could not yet provide reassurance that Oranga Tamariki’s practices and processes were consistently operating as they should. 

You could have basically taken any report that's been written over the last 20 years, and it doesn't matter whether it's called CYFS or Child youth and Family or Oranga Tamariki, it is the same complaints time and time and time again about an organisation, I repeat, that should not exist. 

If parents and caregivers gave their children even the most basic and rudimentary of care, like just didn't kill them, we wouldn't be spending more than a billion dollars a year on a government department that is constantly criticised. And I really feel for the people who work there. You would go in there with the best of intentions, and they would be crushed out of you within months, I'd imagine. CYFS, child youth and family, whatever, are roundly attacked for taking babies off mothers. The next day, they're roundly attacked for NOT taking babies off mothers, for not acting soon enough. 

There have been criticisms of this organisation since I can remember. I mean, I'm going back in the far mists of time, but I remember them all. Since 2017, I'm just going back to 2017, and I've been talking about this since the 1990s, but since 2017, 65 New Zealanders 17 or under have been killed/murdered. Some of them youth fighting but since 2017, 65 New Zealanders 17 or under have been killed - 24 of those were aged under 12 months. Those weren’t youths fighting in the street. They were the most vulnerable children and homes killed by their carers since 2017. 

I am going right back now: Saliel Aplin and Olympia Jetson. They were murdered by their stepfather when they threatened to tell the authorities that he was sexually abusing them. So many adults knew that they were being abused. Teachers knew and warned the authorities. CYFS workers knew, police knew. They'd complained to the police. The police had investigated. They couldn't find any evidence. Their own mother. She was a hapless soul who tried to get away. She was in a terrible, violent, oppressive succession of relationships that resulted in numerous children, and she couldn't keep them safe.   

If I say those names and you were around at the time, you'll remember the school photo of those two girls. They were gorgeous, bright, brave intelligent. But they were only 11 and 12, there was only so much they could do. They knew the risks they were taking; they phoned the authorities themselves. They were trying to get help from the adults. Their mother knew. They told friends they would die. They'd been threatened with death by their stepfather if they told. And they told their friends they would die, and they did. He stabbed them. While a whole bunch of adults knew about this abuse. Their mother was very sad and regretful. She said she'd never be in a violent relationship again. She said she would like to see trained social workers employed in primary schools so abuse to children could be detected and dealt with quickly by professionals. She was calling for major changes at CYFS, with whom she remained angry, saying there are a lot of questions to answer over its management of her family's case. 

But is it CYFS fault or Child Youth and Family’s fault or Oranga Tamariki's fault? 

How can a government organisation prevent dysfunctional families from abusing the most vulnerable? Surely you need eyes and ears within those families. Oranga Tamariki has a more than $1 billion budget. Wouldn't that money be better spent on trying something different? Although when you do try something different, then all hell breaks loose. 

I remember when women on benefits were offered free long-term contraception by the then National government way back when, must have been about 2012. Paula Bennett was accused of Nazi type policies from an uncaring National government, it was offered. It was free. It was reversible. And then when National says it's going to can free contraception for women, then everybody criticises them again for not understanding women and their needs. 

So, if you try something, if you put your head above the parapet, it's very quickly knocked down. This is appalling. It's been appalling. It has stayed appalling. Children keep dying. The ones who survive, God only knows what happens to them when they have their families, because the very children I'm talking about their siblings are now in their 20s, 30s and 40s, having their own families, how the hell do they parent? Not all of them are going to turn out bad at all. Many people can take a dysfunctional childhood and turn it into a very successful adulthood by not repeating the mistakes, by not repeating the abuse that was dished out to them. 

But why the hell do we have a government organisation that has been rebranded, renamed, had its chief executives replaced over and over and over again, and all those children want is someone to save them. And you can't do it from a government organisation. Even if you throw a billion dollars at it. Wouldn't that money be better spent perhaps putting welfare workers with every at-risk child? There aren't that many of them. There aren't that many of them that are struggling. And yet they're the biggest, biggest problem. 

The deaths of so many New Zealand children, it’s just a damning indictment on this country. There's a stain on this beautiful country. Serenity Jay, Hail-Sage McClutchie,  Mikara, Baby Ru, James Whakaruru, Saliel and Olympia, you know, you can see their faces and you know that they're going to have to make room on the wall of shame because more babies are coming after them. 

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Hands up all those who felt personally attacked this morning when you heard the stories about New Zealanders and obesity? Not you? Just me then?!  

All morning we've been hearing stats like these: one in three New Zealand adults is carrying enough excess body weight to affect their health. That would be people with a BMI of 30 or above. There's an increase in obesity, with that, an increase in preventable diseases such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Half a billion dollars of the health budget is being spent on obesity-related diseases that are preventable, and so on and so forth. 

In Mike's interview this morning he made the point that we all know what we have to do to be fit and healthy, we're just not doing it. Some of you are, but some of us are not. I have absolutely no excuses. None. I finish my shift at midday and although I have to monitor news sites, I can do that with headphones while moving my butt. I can afford a gym membership. I joined way back in antediluvian times when pink and grey G-string leotards were still the go and leg warmers was a thing. And they keep your gym membership pegged to about then, so I think I'm paying about $0.33 a month, a ludicrously low amount of money. 

So even with the cost-of-living crisis, I can still afford a gym membership. The gym is literally across the road from my workplace. Short of Les Mills arranging for six of their finest, most muscular and gleaming trainers to carry me across the road to the gym in a sedan chair, it could not be easier for me to get to a place of focused exercise and training and yet do I do it? No, I don't. No. My excuses are many in legion. Summer is slipping away. The nights are getting darker and cooler, so while summer’s here I want to head to the beach and wallow like a manatee in the waves bobbing and diving and splashing for the pure joy of it. Not grimly swimming lengths in a chlorinated pool for 50 minutes or sweating alongside other desperate individuals in a 7th Circle of Hell that is the RPM room - dark and blacked out and full of sweat and enthusiastic woo hoos!  

And I could walk around the block, and enjoy the Tui, and the kids playing in the parks and all the other lovely sights of summer. But I have deadlines and calls to make and all that sort of thing. So many excuses. And I have all the time in the world, unlike those poor parents who are up at the crack of dawn, working all day, picking up the kids, and collapsing at home at 7pm to gird their loins to do it all again the next day. How on earth do you fit in exercise, even meal prep and healthy eating when that is your daily grind for at least seven or eight years?  

Richard Beddie, the CEO of Exercise New Zealand, was just one of the many voices commenting on the Health New Zealand report on the population’s health. Specifically in his case, was concern about our level of exercise.  

"The worst statistic we have is our physical activity levels, because while obesity and things like smoking and alcohol are relatively common within the Western world, and are generally not getting better with the perhaps exception of smoking, it is actually the physical activity and we are actually one of the worst in the Western world. New Zealand really has a problem with activity, and I think part of it lies from this idea that we think of ourselves as a sporting nation, but actually what sport is about is about watching rather than doing these days."

People say “oh you run though” and I'm like, “no, I ran nine years ago.” I did a marathon, that was a long time ago. And personally, I agree with you. I think I should run a marathon and never have to think about exercise again but that's just not the way it works. We all know what we should be doing. We probably started off like a hiss and a roar in January fired with good intentions, but where are we now? 

We were having a debate about this in the office and the boss was saying it's all about priorities, you know. Well, I don't know. I remember when I wrote a book about marathon running and I'd get these lovely, mainly women, writing to me saying I really need to get back into exercise. I loved it. And then I had the kids, and I've got three kids and I'm working, and I'd love to run a marathon. How did you do it? 

Well, I did it because I didn't have any children to look after. Kate was often away to university. I had absolutely nothing to do and yawning vistas of time. Don't put any pressure on yourself. Just survive was my advice to them. And then when you've got yawning vistas of time, then think about a marathon. I agree we need to move more. And those people who prioritise it make it a focus, even though they've got busy jobs, even though they've got the kids, you know, I admire you, and I'd love to know how you do it. But there is an enormous amount of pressure just existing. Especially right now. 

It shows the value of having somebody at home who can manage the household, who can get the healthy meals ready, who can have them in the freezer ready for those big nights. Having somebody there so that you're not crashing through the door at 7pm exhausted? How on earth do you find it in you to say right, now that we've had our healthy meal that I did on Sunday when I spent all Sunday in the kitchen prepping meals for the week, let's go for a walk around the block as a family. 

If you do more power to you. I'm so impressed. But for many people, it's just putting one foot in front of the other. Is it any wonder that right now it's tough for people to eat well and to fit in daily exercise. I would love to know how Richard Beddie the CEO of Exercise NZ does it. The boss said “well just get off a bus stop one stop earlier.” I know I'm making excuses. I know that. That's what endomorphs do, we find excuses while ectomorphs just forge ahead in their lean, muscular way. We little round endomorphs sit here muttering excuses. 

But it is a lot tougher for some people than others. That's all I'm saying. Not me, I have no excuse. But I do have sympathy for those who are just trying to get by. 

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The criticisms have come thick and fast in the wake of the coalition government's announcement that there would be sanctions applied to job seekers who choose not to actively look for work, despite help and support that is supposed to be coming from MSD officials. If after all that help and support you, choose not to take a job, then sanctions will apply. 

I'm starting to know what you mean when you say the media is biased. All of the images shown on all of the mainstream media show an aggressive looking Luxon laying down the law, and emotive headlines from the Greens and the like, talking about the cruelty of it all. 

Minister for Social Development Louise Upston says she has written to the Chief Executive of the Ministry of Social Development to make this government’s view clear that they want to see all obligations and sanctions applied. If job seekers fail to attend job interviews, to complete their pre-employment tasks, or to take work that is available, then there needs to be consequences and that will come in the form of sanctions. 

She also announced that from June, the ministry will begin work check-ins for job seekers who have been on benefits for six months, particularly young people. These check-ins, she said, will make sure job seeker beneficiaries are taking appropriate steps to find employment and are receiving the right help. They reckon the checks will capture about 2500 mainly younger people per month. 

Now the former social development minister Carmel Sepuloni, says people deserve to be supported into meaningful long-term employment, and sanctions will not do this. She says this government is quickly building a legacy of cruelty. Instead of supporting people to provide for themselves and their whanau, this government has actively sought to push people further and further into poverty. 

How? How are they doing that? By asking you to work if you can? To offer you help and assistance to get work? How is that cruel? I would argue allowing people to stay on benefits when they have the ability to work as far more cruel. And if the taxpayer is funding a benefit for a person and their family, that person is not providing for themselves in their whanau. They are state dependent. That's not being self-sufficient. That's not self-supporting. That's not having choices. 

And okay, if the sanctions that National are proposing don't encourage people to seek long term employment, which of Labour's policies did? How did Labour help these young people find meaningful work? The stats under the previous government are pretty damning. 

Stats New Zealand released numbers yesterday and showed the number of youth not in employment, not in education, and not in training rose by 3000 people over the December quarter. I mean one is bad enough, but 3000 in one quarter? The rate for young women also increased to 14%, up from 12.5%. 

Young people are disproportionately impacted by tightening economic conditions. It's worrying that 40,000 people under the age of 25 are currently on a job seeker benefit. That is an increase of 66 per cent compared to six years ago, at a time when employers have been screaming out for someone, anyone. 

40,000 people under the age of 25 on a job seeker benefit, an increase of 66% compared to six years ago! I would argue that's the cruelty. Not the suggestion that sanctions will apply, but only if you fail to do the most basic requirements of finding a job. Former WINZ CEO Christine Rankin agrees. She says it is absolutely no fun on a benefit.  

“Being on a benefit is just poverty, you know, that's your future. You rot on a benefit. This government is being responsible. This is a courageous policy and you know it's taxpayers money and for beneficiaries to be on this for 13 years is an absolute disgrace, and it is a long standing Labour view that they have a right to be on benefit and not work if it's a basic job, you've got to find something big and paying very well before they'll push it ... It's supposed to be a fill in where people survive while they take the steps to a better life. If they're on there for a very long period of time, there's no way they could survive. So, what else are some people doing to manage to be on there that long?” 

That is Christine Rankin talking to Mike Hosking this morning. 40,000 people under the age of 25 on a job seeker benefit, an increase of 66% compared to six years ago - that tells me that Labour's policies have not worked when it comes to getting young people into meaningful work. That tells them that it's okay to rely on the state for the rest of your life. Where you will have few choices, limited options. It will always be grinding poverty. 

How is that kind? And I would really love to know. I didn't hear that question being asked of Marama Davidson yesterday. I don't see that it's kind to keep people on benefits, and yet what do you do? I know of a business that's had to closed down in a very small town in the Far North. They were desperately trying to get young people in the district where unemployment is high because there are few opportunities. They would take the van. They would knock on the doors, they would give them the soap, the shampoo, the clothes they needed to turn up for work. The longest one of the kids lasted was three days and then they just could not get up in the morning. They'd stayed up all night. They tried, I think, about 11 or 12 young people, young men and women, and the kids had the best of intentions initially. 

But because they've come from three years where they haven't had to show up for anything. During Covid that wasn't even an option because the schools were closed. They don't know how to get out of bed in the morning and how is letting them keep doing that good for them. For any young person? You see, that to me is the cruelty. We're just running on different train tracks. The Greens and Carmel, who I think is fantastic and does great work with the people, but the stats don't lie. The number of kids under 25 on job seeker has increased by 66% since Labour became part of a government and then sole charge. 

What the hell is the future of those kids? 

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Criticism of the Government’s welfare reforms have been coming in thick and fast. 

Figures from Stats NZ have revealed that 40,000 people under the age of 25 are currently on the Jobseeker benefit, an increase of 66% compared to six years ago. 

The Government plans to increase the number of check ins for those on the benefit and reintroduce sanctions for those who don’t meet their obligations. 

Youthtown CEO Fay Amaral told Kerre Woodham that there are common factors among this demographic that keep them on the benefit, notably mental health and confidence. 

She said that young people aren’t being given the right support in schools, which results in the belief that if they don’t have university entrance or a degree, they won’t be able to get anything. 

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The Prime Minister, Christopher Luxon, in his State of the Nation speech over the weekend, spelled it out loud and clear for those who haven't yet got the message. 

New Zealand is in for a world of pain over the next couple of years.

He slammed the dumb and stupid policies of the previous government, and said while he believed New Zealand was the world's best country, and had the world's best people (a little bit of jingoism to sweeten the message), it was in a fragile state as we face a rough economic forecast and a massive infrastructure deficit. 

He also accused the Labour government of leaving National a $200 billion hole in the nation's transport plan. Finance Minister Nicola Willis said this morning on the Mike Hosking Breakfast that the coalition government has already started making the tough decisions.

Auckland Light Rail is the case in point. That was a project which continued to escalate in cost, which Labour continued to fantasise about and which was clearly unaffordable.

So we have canceled that, we've been decisive, we've stopped pouring cash down that particular hole. But look, the other examples are areas where we're just going to have to do things more efficiently. 

Not every road needs a cycle lane clipped onto it. We need to be much more open to using other forms of funding and finance to deliver roads, whether that's time of use charging, whether that's tolls to get some roads built, it's time for a bit of real talk about what it will take to get a country with the modern infrastructure we need.

And that was Finance Minister Nicola Willis talking to Mike Hosking this morning. Labour leader Chris Hipkins shot back, calling National's accusations absolute nonsense and called another allegation in the State of the Nation speech an out and out lie. But then he would wouldn’t he?

Thomas Coghlan from the New Zealand Herald has produced an excellent article unpacking the claims and counterclaims, specifically around the $200 billion transport hole.

He says the truth involves a heavy lathering of hypocrisy on both sides and an answer that doesn't offer a neat binary verdict on either of Chris's truthfulness or otherwise. He does say, though, that before Labour cries foul at this horrendous below- the-belt attack on their fiscal honour, quote unquote, we shouldn't forget that Labour made the exact same attack on National’s allegedly unfunded Roads of National Significance Programme back in 2018. 

They were slammed by then Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern as unfunded.  So they've been doing it all day ref.

There's obfuscation and finessing of stats and data and what have you , but there is absolutely no doubt, as anyone who has participated in this show knows, that the previous administration made some dumb, dumb decisions. And allowed dumb, dumb decisions to be made by government bodies. 

We've all known this for a very, very long time. We've been ranting about this and accused of being disloyal and Labour haters and women haters because it was Jacinda Ardern who was the Prime Minister. There was none of that. It was just that you and I could see. That there were some really stupid decisions being made.

Good money going after bad with no end in sight of when the money tap would be turned off. And it's you and me who are providing this money. So pardon me if I'm really scrupulous about where that money goes.

I want to know there's going to be a result and for the life of me I could not see one in so many of the projects approved by the previous administration.  I think I said that to Christopher Luxon when he became Prime Minister. We don't want to hear about what the previous government did. It's gone. It happened. It's appalling. We ranted about it at the time it's over but I think he made the point, we're starting a very long way behind the start line.

There's a lot to fix before we can even begin to get projects underway that we passionately believe in and that we passionately support.

So yeah, I think fair and square pointing the digit at the previous administration and saying look at this mess you've left us, it's a time honoured tradition

New administrations do it every single time they come in, and in this case it's a far bigger mess.  It's going to be a tough few years.

There is no doubt about that. We're all going to have to lift our game and tighten our belts. I mean, basically. You know when Christopher Luxon was talking about the nation, he's talking about my bank account.

He's looking at the macro and I'm looking at the micro and it's the same kind of thing. It's going to be a belt tightening couple of years and some of the nice to haves that I'd like to have I won't have. And it's the same for the nation.

But National will bear the brunt of public dissatisfaction if people forget or choose not to know that they are cleaning up a far bigger mess than the previous government has had to. 

Still, on a note of positivity, those of us with long memories know that we have been through tough times before, that other governments have had to come in and pick up an unholy mess and make the most of it, and with the help of the people of New Zealand get the country back on track and they've come out the other side.

We have done it before and we can do it again.

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Watercare Auckland is aiming to reduce wet-weather overflows into streams and beaches. 

The massive Central Interceptor tunnel will store, as well as transport stormwater and wastewater, taking it to the Māngere Wastewater Treatment Plant for processing. 

Due for completion in 2026, the project is 16.2 kilometres long and the largest wastewater infrastructure project in New Zealand history. 

Watercare Central Interceptor Executive Programme Director Shayne Cunnis joined Kerre Woodham to give an update on the project. 

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I can't help but enjoy the rich irony. 

NIWA, the Crown owned weather research institute, has had a big spend up on its vehicle fleet. Four big, grunty Chevy Silverados to be exact - 2024 models, apparently judging by the regos, retailing to you and to me for around $ 172K. 

Although I have no doubt that NIWA managed to squeeze that down a bit —I hope they did, I hope they negotiated— the utes were bought despite the fact that the government is currently trying to reduce the emissions from all the vehicles it owns. 

Agencies must purchase battery EV's, or if they're not suitable, a plug-in hybrid. If neither of those are suitable, the agency's chief executive has the ability to sign off on a different vehicle. Mainly an ICE vehicle. 

NIWA is a Crown-owned enterprise, so it isn't bound by these rules, but according to the protocol, it must have regard for the rules. NIWA’s chief executive John Morgan signed off on the purchases being necessary given the weight of the boats the cars will be towing. 

“We investigated all the options in the market,” he said. “There was no viable alternative to the Silverado's given the weight of the boats they'll be towing. We test drove a wide range of trucks, large and mid-sized Utes in a variety of real-world driving conditions to determine what was going to be the most suitable and safest for our staff. There are no Bev or PHV options available that can perform the role required.” 

No, and I think that's the point.  I would have no problem with this at all if it weren't for the virtue signalling. It's not just virtue signalling, but real-life implications for real-life businesses. 

Remember when we were talking about the greenhouse auditing that the banks are requiring of their customers? Several New Zealand banks have pledged to ensure their investment and lending portfolios are aligned to net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. Banks are ‘helping’ (which is a loaded word) business customers reach for net zero with lower interest rates for hitting sustainability targets and by helping firms with transition plans. So what that means, and what businesses told us was happening, was that when they apply for a loan or when every year they must reply to their bank.  

What are you doing to offset your emissions within your business? How are you reducing your impact on the environment? You have to show your commitment or risk financial penalties. You get threatened with higher interest rates on loans or no loans at all. Farmers know all about that.  If you're not performing, Fonterra won't pick up your milk. If you are not committed to reducing your greenhouse gas emissions as much as you possibly can, there are real world financial penalties.   

We had the owner of a transport firm ringing when we were discussing this. He wanted a loan to buy a new truck. Whoever was on the end of the phone is committed to changing the world, obviously, but probably hasn't driven a truck before, said, well, have you looked at an electric truck? And he said yes, I have. I'm not a Neanderthal. (Of course, he didn't say that I'm exaggerating). But he said, you know. Yes, I have looked at alternatives, but there is nothing on the market at the moment that is going to be able to do the job I need. 

Well, you better start looking further afield because there's going to be higher interest rates if you are committed to ICE engines in the future. You know, if you want a loan, hmmm, there may well be higher interest rates in the in the next couple of years. 

So there are real world implications for people who have no alternative.  Blind ideology and desire do not create vehicles fit for purpose. Just wanting them to work doesn't make them so. 

So, there's NIWA with its noble mission statement on its website: “The challenges of reducing our national greenhouse gas emissions and adapting to a changing climate are hugely important and affect all New Zealanders.”  What they mean is except us, because we need big grunty ships to tow our boats! And they do. And setting aside the emissions from a big grunty Chev, what about the cost when the public service is being squeezed so hard, the pips are squeaking? 

A Chevy Silverado goes for $172K, a Ford Ranger goes for $90K and I've seen plenty of Ford Rangers pulling big boats heading north over summer. Can a Ford Ranger not tow NIWA’s boats? It's just the disconnect between the real world and ideology. 

If NIWA have test driven all these different utes and said these are the vehicles we need to do the job, fine. But at the same time, they said these are the vehicles we need to do the job because there are no alternatives. But then private business should be able to say that too and not be quizzed by their banks, and not have to do a greenhouse audit when the alternative doesn't exist yet. 

DOC’s the same. Remember that lovely conservation worker who left. They were choppering in coal to the camper’s huts. You could not use the wood that had fallen over in a storm for the heaters and the cookers within the huts, you had to chopper in bloody coal.   

When ideology collides with the real world, it makes for a hell of a splat.  NIWA and DOC and the like, banging on about climate change, and rightly so, but they're not walking the talk because they can't. The technology they need doesn't exist yet, and they need to realise, and the government needs to realise, and the ideologs need to realise, and the Green Party needs to realise, that it's the same for the poor grunts who are trying to run their businesses, and pay their taxes that pay for these bloody utes. 

Sure, encourage people to transition into environmentally friendly alternatives when there are alternatives. But don't you dare punish people when they simply do not have a choice.   

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The Government is promising to tackle construction costs. 

Stats NZ data shows the cost of building a house has increased by 41% since 2019, making housing even more unaffordable for Kiwi families. 

Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk wants costs to go down. 

He's vowing to streamline the consenting process, saying the little guys have been shut out because of red tape. 

AUT'S Professor of Construction John Tookey told Kerre Woodham that the situation is more complicated than people think. 

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I did laugh when I saw the Retirement Commissioner’s report out yesterday, because I thought here we go again, round it comes the first of the twice-yearly discussions on whether we should lift the age of eligibility for the New Zealand Super- which we have been discussing for as long as I have been a journalist, I think, and that is a very, very long time.

You do get occasionally a political party with an attack of the braveries, an attack of the cajones, and it's usually National. They wanted to raise the age of eligibility to 67 in the past two elections, but in the horse trading required to form the coalition government this time round, they've agreed to leave the age at 65.

And in a report released yesterday, the Retirement Commissioner says cool your jets, calm the farm, young people don't need to worry - not only is national Super sustainable, raising the age of eligibility would be unfair for certain population groups. The manual workers, those who are in poor health, those who are just hanging on by their fingertips to the age of 65.

Retirement Commissioner Jane Wrightson says New Zealand Super is a taonga that protects New Zealanders from poverty in old age. Claims that New Zealand Super is unaffordable are not supported by independent, publicly accessible analysis, she says.

Now, leaving aside that by stunning coincidence, independent analysis always seems to support the views of the commissioning body, there is provision within New Zealand's economy for paying Super in future years.

Those in support of raising the age say well look at New Zealand's aging population. In 1996, there were 5.7 people aged 16 to 64, supporting every retiree. At the moment there are 4.4 working age people and the 2060s, we’ll be looking at 2.2 supporting every retiree.

So we're going to have a lot of older retirees who are getting Super for longer, and fewer young people, fewer working people who are able to support that. So I take that point.

But that is why we set up the Super Fund in 2003, the Cullen Fund, as it was known. In just over 20 years, we've amassed close to $70 billion. And we haven't really tapped into it yet. Withdrawals from the fund will begin in the 2030s. Substantial drawdowns will not begin until the 2050s. So we should have a bit more in the coffers then.

So paying for the Super isn't going to be the massive problem it appears if you're looking at it through the binoculars of 20 year old vision.

It's more a matter of what's fair and what's not. If you're earning more than $100,000 a year and there are about 50,000 retirees who are, if you're earning more than $100,000 a year through your job or through your investments, do you really need the Super? Wouldn't it be better spent on a young person who was born in less than ideal circumstances?

More investment in the first 1000 days of a child's life that's born behind the 8-ball. The Super is to keep people out of poverty, not to use as gin money.

You know, a lot of older people laugh about the fact they get the Super and just use it to buy a nicer bottle of gin or put it in a savings account for their grandchildren. Some donate it, which is jolly decent of them- but you know, there's a lot of clipping of the ticket that goes along the way.

However, those older New Zealanders who are earning good coin can say, well look, we contributed to the Super Fund while we were working, that money was put aside and not spent on things we could have enjoyed, so we can use that money later.

We've paid our taxes. We're just like everybody else. We except we earn more money. We deserve to get it. It's ours. It's an entitlement. It's not a benefit, and there's a big, big difference.

What do you say? What do you think is fair? Are there any people in their 20s and 30s who believe that the Super will be there for them? Well, you should, because the Super Fund is there to look after people just like you.

As the New Zealand Initiative pointed out as well, by the time you take into account taxes and GST, it's not 8 percent of GDP, which is what they factored New Zealand Super to be. It's around about 6 percent of GDP.

If we become more productive, then it'll be less of a cost. And the report I read from the New Zealand Initiative- it was written in 2018, they also talked about the fact that successive New Zealand governments were very aware about incurring debt and running up huge debt so that they didn't get into trouble, so that the Super was affordable.

That was before the Labour government. That was before the most recent administration came in and racked up enormous debt. Still, with a bit of pain and a bit of hard work and a bit of courage, we can get through that.

If you're in your 20s and 30s, do you believe the pension will be there for you? You should. Are you depending on it? You shouldn't. You should make provision as much as you can for yourself and see the Super as an extra.

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Today is Valentines Day, but not everyone is coupled up. 

Over 40’s are calling time on dating apps, finding it harder and harder to find a partner. 

They’re fatigued by the endless swiping, cautious of scams and catfish, and looking for a safer and more bespoke way of finding love. 

Theresa Gattung, former Telecom CEO and co-founder of My Food Bag, is the founder of Compatico, a premium matchmaking service designed to help people find their life partners. 

Gattung told Kerre Woodham that their service is an entree to possibility. 

She said that while it is a matchmaking service, what it also offers is the opportunity to be a part of a community. 

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Further to the story yesterday regarding the police’s planned withdrawal from social services call outs, there's been a damning indictment of our 111 system. 

According to papers released after an OIA put in by RNZ, the government was warned a year ago that the 111-emergency call system is so old, so slow, and so fragmented, that it is causing deaths and injuries. 

So, the emergency services put together a business case asking for money to upgrade it and integrate it. Labour, however, dropped the project last August when they were in government, to replace the system. It's shared between police and FENZ. In the papers, both police and FENZ made the plea that there was an urgent and pressing need to replace it. 

Now I don't know about you, but there are only a few agencies I'll believe when they say it's urgent and pressing. If police and FENZ say it's urgent and pressing, they're two of the few agencies I'll believe. You tell me you've got an urgent need, officer, I'll believe you. 

However, I guess the Labour government had bigger fish to fry, or more things to worry about last August, so they passed the buck on that one. According to the emergency services, a major flaw in the system is that it can only take phone calls. Why is that a problem? Well, these days you need text, and you need video. It's also unable to liaise with social media platforms and has poor integration between apps. And it's a problem because the papers cite an example of a woman who was stabbed to death by a partner who overheard her making the 111 call. 

It must have been harrowing for the call taker, harrowing for the woman's family. A modern solution, argue the emergency services, could have enabled the woman to notify police by a method other than a voice call, which the man would not have detected. So, there have got to be silent ways of making your danger known and I totally accept. 

Other examples offered in the business case to Parliament when the request for an upgraded system was made include a man drowned at a beach and the time it took an ambulance and a paramedic to get there after a 111 call to them, when police and surf rescue at the same beach were not alerted by the fragmented system, so there's not one that joins up the dots. That says, is there anybody in this area? Anybody on this beach? Yep, we are ...  cool, off you go. 

Firefighters were called out by 111 to help a woman tend a man who had collapsed when confronted by a shooter. But the system didn't let police who were hunting the shooter know that they were there. So, the frontline responders and the woman are unaware of the danger that they're in. 

They take a lot of calls. FENZ takes 350,000 calls a year and uses the old system, ‘Card’, to dispatch crews to 85,000 emergencies. Police handle 1.4 million 111 calls a year and 1.8 million 105 calls. A quarter of which are upgraded to an emergency. 

You'd have to wonder, given the discussion we had with Chris Cahill yesterday, how many of those 111 calls are necessary. I mean, we have to do our bit too. If you leave accident and emergency departments for accidents and emergencies, and if you leave 111 for genuine emergencies, that would help out a lot. 

But at the same time, there is just no excuse for not having a fully integrated system across all our first responders, surely. The idea that surf lifesavers and police didn't know that there was an emergency happening on the beach they were at, it's just ludicrous. 

Now there's a suggestion that the 111 system —this comes from Matt Doocey, who's the Minister for Mental Health— that the 111 system add a fourth option alongside fire, police, and ambulance, and that would be mental health crisis. That is a great idea in theory. Absolutely. You know, you don't want a police response when you're having a mental health crisis. You need mental health professionals. Dial, 111 in crisis, you get one. Or do you? 

First, we have to ensure we have sufficient mental health professionals who would be able to respond to the crisis. And then we have to ensure that a system that is less than optimal right now, could actually handle a fourth function. I'd love to hear of your experience of needing urgent help, 111. 

I do like the idea of mental health crisis being added to fire police ambulance. I think that's a great idea. But we have to have enough mental health professionals and we have to surely upgrade the system and upgrade it now.   

I really feel for this government. I mean just about every interview I've heard on the Mike Hosking Breakfast since Mike came back, maybe 6-7 interviews a morning are from people, organisations, groups, industry bodies asking for money. Because their systems are so poorly run, they're failing they're not functional, people are leaving because they're not getting paid enough or because resourcing is so bad. 

This poor government is having to find so much money for genuine things, not for made-up things. I don't know where they're going to get it from, but surely a 111 system that works that protects the community and that has mental health professionals added to it, makes sense, doesn't it?   

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Funny old thing, last Thursday, Matt rang in - a serving police officer. He was calling in response to comments that the police simply don't have the time to turn up to burglaries and assaults at supermarkets.

We were talking about Foodstuffs looking at introducing facial recognition cameras and other forms of security, because the thefts and the assaults on staff have got completely out of hand.

Matt said, oh well, the police will rock up and they will deal with that. You don't need to do citizens arrests or this sort of security. The police don't rock up.

That's the very point. They don't rock up unless it is really, really serious, and then you might see them He said the reason police couldn't respond to criminal matters was because they were dealing with so many social services call outs and that there needed to be a change.

I think you'll find once the police go down the path of reducing the call outs for mental health matters, as they have in one of the particular organizations over in the UK, you'll see that frontline police will have a lot more time on their hands.

So that's what you do. Then you move on to family violence, of which very few matters end up in court, or I would have to say lead to any meaningful outcomes.

And if you do that, we'll have a lot of police with a lot more time on their hands to attend things like this. I mean, we've got a progressive government now that's going to make a big change, but it will take time. But these are things you got to do in order to advance our society, I think.

Well I agreed with him. Police are dealing with so many family harm situations. They're dealing with mental health callouts. I've seen them with, you know, two officers dealing with one woman at North Shore Hospital. They were there for hours.

Multiply that by 1000 times across the country and they're kind and they're gentle and they're patient, but is that their job? Psychiatric patients and their families were too, back in the mists of time, that when all the institutions were closed, there would be help and there would be care, and there would be assistance for them within the community.

Many, many, many of these people can live in the community perfectly well. Provided they have the sort of care that was promised. Was it delivered? No, it wasn't. And who is left to pick up the pieces? It's our police.

So I said to Matt, well, it would be great if we did see that sort of shift, if we did see social problems becoming the issue of social agencies. They were the ones that dealt with them, but I would probably see that in my grandchildren's time. You know, they would see that, I wouldn't.

Then what do you know, a briefing to Police Minister Mark Mitchell, the police proposed a managed withdrawal from non-crime social problems.

So the family harm call outs, the mental health and the child protection calls, gradually, the police would say no, that's not for us. Here's the number you call.

Police attendance to family home call outs have increased 80 per cent in 10 years. Yet more than half of the family harm investigations don't involve an offence being recorded, so there's all these police dealing with sad people, not bad people.

They're dealing with a family under stress, under pressure. They, and usually other agencies, they call in deal with that. The time it takes is immense. So the police have suggested that over time they'll withdraw from these call outs, they'll allow their roles to be filled by other agencies and they'll get on with policing.

You know who reports a burglary these days- unless it's an aggravated robbery?

If you've just had stuff nicked, do you even bother? You only do it for the case number to give to the insurance company. They say they will go back to policing, to doing what they were trained to do.

However, organisations that advocate for victims, women's refuge and the like, are really concerned and really alarmed. Women's Refuge chief executive Ang Jury said she simply can't see any agency that can step in and take the role of police.

And family lawyer Vicki Currie says there's no other agency that has the necessary tools to deal with mental health crises and child protection. She believes it's the responsibility of the New Zealand police to be at the front line and dealing with those issues.

I guess it comes back to, what do you believe our police should be doing? Where there has been a crime committed or about to be committed, or where life is in danger, then police should be involved.

Sometimes that will be our family harm situation. But for a lot of the mental health call outs, these are sad people, not bad people. And while the police and the main do a fantastic job of looking after them (it's the same with family harm situations), that's not what they're trained for. That's not what they thought they would be doing.

And in the meantime, crime occurs, petty crime occurs, petty crime gets bigger because crims know they can get away with it. There simply aren't enough police to deal with the criminals.

So the crims keep crimmy, while the police are trying to do the job of about four or five different agencies. It's simply not fair on them, and it's not fair on the community.

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Police are looking to re-focus on what it calls core business, by pulling back from family harm and mental health call-outs.

A briefing to new Police Minister Mark Mitchell, the organisation says it's planning a "managed withdrawal" from certain Policing operations whilst also calling mental health a crisis.

Police said it had been forced to step in when it came to family harm, mental health, and child protection calls due to a lack of other social services.

It's a proposal that has caused concern amongst victim advocates such as Women's Refuge.

Chris Cahill Joined Kerry Woodham to discuss the new strategy 

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Now, last year, National promised that, should it become the government, it would among other things scrap the Auckland Regional Fuel Tax, and yesterday they did just that.   

Since the 1st of July 2018, Aucklanders have paid an additional 11.5 cents per litre tax on fuel, over and above what the rest of the country pays. Of course, the rest of the country may well feel the effects of that when it comes to the cost of petrol that will be passed on by freight carriers and the like. 

Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown didn't like it when National made the promise then, and he certainly doesn't like it now. Simeon Brown though says Labour said that Auckland needed the fuel tax to deliver light rail. That was back in 2017. They haven't delivered on their major infrastructure projects, while Aucklanders continue to pay more at the pump. That's according to Simon Simeon Brown, the Transport Minister.   

Mayor Brown says, well, hang on a minute. Yes light rail is a complete and utter fiasco (he didn't say that - I did), but the revenue from the Regional Fuel Tax, half of which is sitting in the bank, is committed to a $1.4 billion Auckland Infrastructure project, the Eastern Busway, which will carry 30,000 people a day between Auckland's South East and Panmure station. So that money is going to be used even though it's sitting in the bank. It is earmarked for a project. There are going to be buses and cycleways and without that money those projects look to be in doubt. 

Northern Infrastructure Forum coordinator Barney Irvine told the Mike Hosking Breakfast this morning, the Auckland regional fuel tax may be gone, but there are other ways to fund roading projects. 

IRVINE:“Transport projects often generate a whole lot of increase in property value and the and the surrounding areas.” 

HOSKING:“You want to go down that track, do you?  See I don't know about that. Because I live near a bus stop, you’re going to tax me?” 

IRVINE:“Oh, look, there's more to it than that, but the issue is that, yeah, there is a lot of value to be generated there, that gets generated there, whether it's the process of moving from farmland to suddenly land that that's designated for higher use, massive increase in property value and we’re just not tapping into it.” 

So, a novel way of introducing a tax. 

So all of those people who are now living around the Northern motorway extension —recently opened to great fanfare, and everybody enjoys driving on it; I love driving on it when I'm heading north— all of those people who live around there should suddenly pay more in rates because they've got a better roadway right next to them. 

All the people on the poor, benighted Meola Road project who are suffering now, all those people living in Point Chev who are suffering now, should pay more in rates because all of a sudden a busways opened up, and cycle ways have opened up, and it becomes a more attractive and desirable area to live, because there are many accessible ways to transport yourself from point A to point B. 

That was just one of the options mentioned by Barney, but interestingly, an Infrastructure Commission survey conducted recently looked at different ways of funding infrastructure and asked the respondents what they thought was fair. No means of paying for roads was considered fair by the majority of respondents. So, they thought it was fair enough that user pays when it comes to electricity, user pays when it comes to water, but the majority said there was no fair way to pay for roads. I always thought user pays was about the fairest way you could get. When you've got somebody who was living in a house who doesn't have a vehicle, who very seldom (and this is probably those who are retired), very seldom makes long trips, doesn't need it for business, doesn't have a car, why should they pay for roading infrastructure? 

Those who do use the roads often, those who do need the roads to conduct their business, shouldn't they pay? What is fair? 

I mean the road to fairy isn't going to provide them. We're not going to suddenly, magically have a big hairy chested muscular being in a high viz vest, and tight shorts, and work boots appear and deliver roads overnight, at no expense to anyone. And they all work perfectly, you don't have to rip them up again. 

That is not going to happen. That is pie in the sky. 

So I'd love to know what you think is a fair way of paying for infrastructure, in this case specifically, roads. And not just roads. Roads have now come to mean more than that. Roads mean bus lanes. Roads mean pedestrian crossings, roads mean cycleways, in the modern parlance. We're more talking about projects rather than roads. 

So, transport infrastructure, how do you want to see that paid? I would love to see too, greater scrutiny on how that money is spent. The Herald found that Auckland Transport is spending on average $470,000 to install a pedestrian crossing. And when you're looking at the latest fiasco in Auckland —the Meola Road Project— 29 raised crossings. 29. How long is that strip of road?   

I used to live in the area for 20 odd years. Used the Meola Dog Park every day, and incredibly, for someone as distracted as I can be, I managed to cross that road, and back again, four times a week for 20 years without getting hurt. Without getting hit. without even coming close. Maybe it's an old-fashioned skill to be able to cross a road safely. There have been, as far as I can see, no major incidents on Meola Road, but people fear there might be, hence 29 raised crossings at $470K a pop! Come on! 

As the Herald found, GJ Gardner can deliver a new home for $365 - doesn't include the land but come on. So yeah, raise money for roading infrastructure, and by that I don't just mean the roads, I do mean the buses, I do mean the cycleways but let's have a look at how you spend the money too. 

You know, we really don't mind paying for infrastructure and we've had this discussion before. It's the wastage that really rips our shorts. 

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As promised, the coalition government has followed through on its promise to scrap Labour's target of reducing the prison population by 30%, although it looks like Chris Hipkins got in before the government could in the lead up to last year's election. 

Then Prime Minister Chris Hipkins, in a desperate scramble for votes, said the prison population reduction target is already gone. Gone. It was part of the big dump pile that Chris Hipkins created when he became Prime Minister, anything he deemed to be unpopular with the public got scrapped in a bid for re-election. 

So, the prison population reduction target of 30%, he said, was gone. The coalition government has confirmed that. No prison reduction target. 

They've also scrapped government funding for cultural reports, or S27 reports. Now these reports have been around since 2002. Initially, they were funded by the Justice Ministry and there were roughly 250 odd reports written between 2002 and 2017. Again, initially they were seen as a way of members of an offender's whanau or family to stand up and address the court and give the judge insight into why this person was appearing before them. 

They weren't terribly successful because the judges weren't that jazzed on having somebody appear and address them when they might not be able to understand the intent of what was behind it or what the meaning was behind the address, and a lot of people didn't feel comfortable about standing up in court and addressing a judge. And another reason was that a lot of offenders appeared in court because they didn't have any whanau or family behind them. That was part of the reason why they'd gone rogue.   

Anyone can or could ask for a cultural report, but they are predominantly written for Māori who are appearing before a judge. Somebody cottoned on to the fact that this is a jolly good thing. 

Defence lawyers, especially those appearing under legal aid, simply don't have the time to do a thorough investigation into an offender's background. They say there aren't the billable hours to do that, so you farm that out to somebody who will. And figures show the number of invoices for written reports approved by the Ministry of Justice rose from 74 in 2018 to two 2333 in 2021. Costs have increased from around 865,000 in 2019 to more than $6 million in 2021, so everybody cottoned on that this was a great idea. 

And when you look at the number of businesses that have been set up to write these reports and you look at the testimonials from anonymous offenders and anonymous defence lawyers who say, oh, amazing, got home detention when I wasn't expecting it. Incredible, got 30% off what I was expecting to get. You can see why offenders and would think, ‘Well, bloody hell, I'm going to get that?’, especially when you don't have to pay for it. 

You can still get a cultural report if you choose to pay for it. What has happened is that this government has said the taxpayer is not going to fund it anymore. Corrections Minister Mark Mitchell says cultural reports have moved away from being a way for Whanau and family to support an infant, into a cottage industry costing the taxpayer millions. 

“It's important to remember that the cultural reports are important, and they can give very good information and put good information in front of the judge. However, the intent of it was always to be a family member or whanau member that actually knows the person and could get up and present either an oral submission or a written submission. It has turned into this to perverse sort of twisted cottage industry where people that didn't even know the person going in front of the court were writing cultural reports, in a way to try and, quite simply, reduce their sentence. And so of course we ended up with an over 200% increase in people out on it to electronic bail, and all it did was transfer the risk back into the community.” 

Absolutely. 

So again, there are a number of problems with continuing with the idea of saying, well, we're not going to pay for it, but if you've got a whanau member who can stand up and address the judge who fill your boots, go for it and let them have their say, for the very reasons I outlined earlier: they might be estranged, and you might have whanau members who are not comfortable at all at standing up in court and addressing a judge. 

There's no doubt, as Mark Mitchell said, the insight into a criminal's background can give a judge context with sentencing. And they can ask for a cultural report if they believe that's going to help them with a complex case or where they feel they need more insight into the offender before they can give a fair and just sentence.   

I noticed that ACT, in their press release, used the same example because that still sticks in my craw. Remember the teen mongrel Mob member who indecently assaulted a pregnant woman in her own bed. He was given 12 months home detention. 

19-year-old Stevie Taunoa thanked Judge Gordon Matenga after receiving his sentence, I think it was last year, wasn't it? He walked from the dock, into the police cells and yelled “cracked it!” 

Now one of the main reasons for a cultural report, according to the report writers, according to the businesses that write cultural reports, is that they will help with rehabilitation. That the cost to the taxpayer will be more than offset by keeping a person out of prison and in the community contributing. That by giving a judge insight, that by an offender receiving a home detention sentence or a much lighter sentence, it will give them a second chance. Make them think somebody's finally listened to me. Heard my truth. Yay, now I can go and be a contributing member of society. 

The trouble is that in not one of these eloquent pleas to keep the reports, that are the very reason for these businesses existing, has the author shown there has been a reduction in offending as a result. I mean, there might be, I just haven't read it. 

There are a number of editorials that have appeared in the media when it looked likely that these were to be axed and they're well written, but the cultural reports are as well written as the editorials. No wonder the offenders are getting off. They're well written. They're eloquent. They're all written by people who make coin out of taxpayer funded cultural reports, but not one of them has shown as a result of cultural reports and fair and just sentencing, this person has never offended again. Or recidivism has dropped by 22%. Not once. 

And if you can show me these figures, if you can show me the stats and show me the data that the cultural reports that give judges insight into offenders will result in these offenders not offending again, then it might be easier to agree that there is a place for cultural reports and the taxpayer funding them. 

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Foodstuff's introduction of facial recognition technology —with the hope of reducing repeat criminal offenders— has the Privacy Commissioner concerned. 

The grocery chain is trialling facial scanning in its North Island stores across the next six months. 

Commissioner Michael Webster told Kerre Woodham that facial recognition isn't a proven tool to reduce harmful behaviour in supermarkets. 

He says it could be even riskier, as the technology could provide people with a false sense of security. 

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Have there ever been school holidays that have gone on quite so long? 

I mean, I know that when I was a school kid back in the antediluvian times, school holidays did seem to go on forever and ever and ever. Did they ever go on this long? I hope that you had a fabulous time with your family and that you're looking forward to them being settled into some sort of routine. 

How glorious was Waitangi Day? Utterly, utterly. Splendid. Thank you to all of you who were working so those parents who were getting ready to finally start the school year could do the last-minute bits and pieces. And thank you too, to the lifesavers and the other first responders and all those who were out and about looking out for all of us who were flocking to the beaches, and the parks, and the festivals, and making the most of a day off in the sun.   

Such a perfect day. I went looking for a beach to lie on in a sea to swim in and I didn't have to go very far, which is another glory of this country. So many families of every ethnicity, so many young peoples out in big groups, so many kiwis having just a joyous time celebrating all that is good about living in this country. 

The tents were set up, and the barbecues were out, and the kids were in the playgrounds or in the water, and there were generations of families. It's just lovely, really. Absolutely lovely. 

Waitangi itself seemed to be a success according to those who were there from all sides. And the debate, and the pageantry, and the history that speaks to our future is another thing that is wonderful about this country as the Prime Minister said this morning on the Mike Hosking Breakfast:

“I mean, I came away last night reflecting on it going well actually. Which other country on Earth do you get everyone coming along with their strongly held views and differences of opinion, actually showing up in one place on one day, having an aeration of it all and because they're actually all committed to advancing New Zealand. We disagree strongly about actually how to go about delivering those outcomes, but man, that wouldn't happen in any other country. So, look, I think by and large it was pretty respectful and I think Ngāpuhi did a pretty good job managing it all.” 

Yeah, absolutely, and that's what everybody else has said as well. It's a shame that good news doesn't make the news. A piece of social media was picked up by news outlets, as is their want these days, and turned into real news. ‘PM repeats himself’. Well, he kind of needs to because it's obvious the message is not getting through. 

ACT, a coalition partner in the government, wants a debate on the principles of the Treaty. They don't want to rip up the Treaty. They don't want to change the Treaty’s wording, they don't want to deem the Treaty null and void. They want a debate on the principles on what that means going forward. 

National says the Treaty Principles Bill isn't terribly helpful. It’s divisive and unhelpful, precisely for these reasons, that people will seize on an argument and create one if they need to. They will be fearful. 

There are some within Māori who see it as a direct attack on the Treaty, despite the fact that National has said there is no intention or commitment to support the bill beyond the first reading. It was part of the coalition agreement that it would get a first reading. After that, National has said there is no intentional commitment to support the first reading. 

You need three readings. It's not going to pass if National are true to their word. Christopher Luxon has said, I don't know how we can be any clearer than that - no intention or commitment to support beyond the first reading.  Seymour's already said they're not going to throw out the Treaty anyway, and there are a lot at Waitangi who believed that was the intent. It is not. 

Again, how much clearer can you be? They've said it time and time again. 

So clearly, there has to be more clarity. You have to repeat yourself because there are still people who insist that this government wants to rewrite the Treaty or tear it up, and usually when people say this government, they mean Luxon, as in the pakeha guy. As in the pakeha guy who's Prime Minister.  He's not supporting it beyond the first reading. 

The Treaty has been put in the spotlight in its intent question by the two co leaders, who are Māori. So enough with this government, this pakeha guy, this Christopher Luxon. It’s Seymour and Peters, strongly supported by his best supporting actress Shane Jones, who are the ones who are bringing the Treaty into the spotlight. 

Seriously though, if people want to find offence, if they want to find outrage from both sides, from those who say, Oh my God, our whole future is under threat because it's called Waka Kotahi. No, it's not. You can call it whatever you like. Potato, potato. Transport agency. Waka Kotahi - fill your boots don't care. 

Those who say, oh, they're going to throw out the treaty and you know Māori are under attack, no they’re not. Nobody's going to throw the treaty. But if you want to take umbrage, fulminate, despair about the future of New Zealand/Aotearoa, depending on which flag you're waving, you do you. 

Whereas those of us who know how lucky we are will head for the beach or the lake, or the park or the forest, we'll enjoy a BBQ or a meal at home alongside our fellow New Zealanders of every hue and give thanks that all our ancestors, near or far, ended up in this beautiful country. 

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Stats NZ figures out today show unemployment has crept to its highest level since June 2021. 

The unemployment rate in the three months to December was 4%. 

Herald Business Editor at Large, Liam Dann, says it's still lower than many economists were picking. 

He says there will be winners and losers out of this. 

Dann says people hoping for an OCR cut may have to wait longer, but more people will have kept their jobs. 

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Showing up. Turning up when you're supposed to. That leads me neatly to the Prime Minister's comments yesterday when he visited Browns Bay School. 

He said parents need to wake up and be a part of solving the problem of low school attendance. He said wake up, talk to your kids and get them to school. And I'm not going to argue that parents need to take a whole lot more responsibility when it comes to doing the right thing by their children. 

Feed them for one, decent food. Read to them. Books are free from the library,buses are cheap to get to your local library. Love them. Give them boundaries. And ensure they understand that there are expectations upon them. And one of those is going to school, especially if you come from a family that's doing it tough.

There is all sorts of help, all sorts of assistance for those parents who are doing it tough. I understand it makes it even more difficult if you're not in one permanent home. If you are constantly moving, having to shift because you've got no place to call your own, that makes it even more difficult, but it also makes it even more imperative that you give your children the skills they need to get out of that. 

You don't want them to live like this. You don't want them to have itinerant lifestyles. You want them to have choices and one way of them having choices is getting them educated.

I'm absolutely passionate about that. Our low school attendance is a disgrace. Taxpayer funded lunches in schools haven't helped. So after Labour dipped into the Covid emergency fund, now National has committed to it and is going to have to find $330 million per year out of taxes as we don't have the slush fund anymore. All well and good.

 You know, they seem to help in some schools and others they don't. I'd like to see the problem of the wastage fixed up so that those who need the food are getting it, so that it's not going to happy pigs. That it's not being redistributed to all and sundry and that it's going to hungry kids. That's what it's there for.

Certainly hasn't helped with the school attendance, which I thought would happen and which was one of the reasons why free school lunches were promoted, that it would improve school attendance – it hasn't. Free sanitary products hasn't got the girls skipping through the gates either.

I agree with the Prime Minister that parents need to wake up, talk to their children and get them to school. But what do you do when your kids won't go?

 We had a caller last year who had a teenage son who was twice her height and he wouldn't go to school. He did the work at home and then he gamed and then he caught up with friends who also weren't going to school. And she remonstrated with him and said, you need to go to school. He said no, I don't. 

I've been told for the last two years that I don't need to go to school, that I can do my learning from home, and in fact it's more efficient for me to do it at home.

I can get the work done in a third of the time and then the rest of the time is my own. So he was still actually doing the work, but he wasn't going to school. And she couldn't make him. She couldn't drag him out of bed. She couldn't pick him up and carry him into school. So that was one clever kid who was doing the work but on his terms and as he saw it, perfectly entitled to work from home because they had been bashed into him for two years over Covid. 

It's exactly what so many educators and people who are passionate about learning feared when schools were closed for Covid and for rain and then more rain. The children couldn't help but see that going to school is not a priority, not a priority to the authorities.

I think it's only Auckland Grammar that sees it as a priority and they get absolutely excoriated in the social media. The MoE in its briefing paper to incoming Minister Erika Stanford, said post Covid there are high levels of disassociation from school and early learning, challenging behavior and a marked increase in anxiety, as well as more severe mental health trauma for young people.

So you've got also parents who are driving their kids to school, and these are young teenagers and their children have a major meltdown. They can't face going into school. They're so anxious after being away from groups of people. So all very well and good and I tend to agree with Christopher Luxon that parents need to take more responsibility. Absolutely. 

You can't outsource raising your children to teachers and to truant officers and to taxpayers who will feed them and caring teachers who will love them. You've got to take responsibility for your kids, but you have to understand that parents are dealing with our whole lot in the wake of Covid. And that the kids who were told going to an actual school is not a priority, have taken that message on and they're running with it.

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We're talking a whole lot of rubbish this morning.

I know some people who are passionate recyclers. They know their shinizzle. If Mastermind was still being broadcast, recycling - the what's the how's and the where’s - would be their specialty subject.

There are others who simply don't care. Can't be bothered. Load of nonsense. It's not going to save the planet anyway. it's too hard, a load of bollocks. Biff, everything goes in the rubbish bin. Banana skins, glass bottles and all.

I suppose I'm somewhere in the middle - veering towards virtuous. I rinse out the recyclables, take the lids off. I don't know how I knew I was supposed to do that, but I did. I use the food scraps bin, but I'm not at the stage of posting my soft plastics to be recycled, which you can do. Could do better.

What complicates recycling in this country is that most consuls operate different methods of recycling. Some places it all goes in one bin, others you have to sort out your tins from your paper. But as of now, the whole country will have new standardised recycling guidelines to follow.

It's interesting that in some areas like Auckland, we are losing the ability to recycle some products. In effect, the national guidelines have been made for the lowest common denominator. Shouldn't we have aimed for a gold standard? Brought other regions recycling efforts up to the most efficient?

Well, David Howie, Waste Management New Zealand Executive General Manager of Circular Services (quite the title), answered that this morning on the Mike Hosking Breakfast. He says it's all about reducing contamination.

The biggest challenge is not so much the type of plastic but contamination generally, and the broader the range of materials that are accepted the greater the risk that we get increased levels of contamination with materials that can't be recovered and often that means that they'll impact materials around them, or potentially even a whole bin of recycling, and that reduces the rate dramatically.

So I think that the move to make it clear and to help people understand the standard system, with support and education clearly to help that, is a great way to make sure we do get that maximum recovery rate.

So understood, I understand that. I also think it helps if you know where your recycling ends up. Just putting it in the bin and hoping for the best, you think you've done your bit but I think it really does help to know where it goes.

For example, the food compost bins. And eventually it's going to be user pays when it comes to your organic waste so it's a way of getting people used to removing the food scraps out of the general rubbish and putting them into a specific bin designed for being taken away and recycled.

Some people were scoffing about that -where is it going to go?

We had a caller to the show last year who's told us exactly where it's going. He said a lot of trucks come up to Auckland with rubbish. They go back empty, so you fill them up with your organic food scraps, you take them to a central processing plant where it's turned into methane, and there are big glass houses right next door to this recycling plant that use them to grow vegetables and fruit in the glass houses.

Now, he was a talkback caller. He certainly sounded like he knew what he was talking about and that sounded absolutely spot on to me. If it's not true, I don't want to know.

It's a bit like I was told the Plane trees in Franklin Road, those beautiful big trees. Each one was planted for a boy whose life was lost in the First World War. I don't want to know that's not true. So don't bother telling me.

And it's a bit like that with the recycling of my of my banana skins and my vegetable peelings and the scraps from the kids school lunches. I want to know that that is going back in a truck that would otherwise have been going back empty, that it's being turned into a productive gas that can help grow food. That suits my narrative. I like that. I want to know what's happening to my tins, to my paper, to the plastics.

I see on some of the cartons and containers ‘made from recycled plastic’, and that makes me feel better. I think that's where my plastic's gone. This is good. I mean, ultimately it's better to not use it at all.

I know the holy mantra for reducing rubbish. That you don't use plastic water bottles, you have your big refillable reusable ones. I know all that.

But a lot of people who try and get rid of clothing, for example, if you saw the mountains of clothing that end up in countries in Africa, they're left to deal with the rubbish. They're left to deal with fast fashion. You buy something goes out of fashion, and you buy something for $25 at one of the chain stores, it rips it tears, it goes out of fashion. You put it in the recyclables.

Ultimately, there are mountains and mountains of unwanted and unwearable clothes that the people in Africa are having to deal with. So I want to know that it's not somebody else's problem. That when I'm recycling, it doesn't just become out of sight, out of mind, and somebody else's problem. I want to know that it is indeed circular.

And I think if we know that that will get more people on board. And to the sort of numpties that put a dirty disposable nappy into a recycling bin- I know you're not listening to the show, but if you happen to be, if you are that sort of numpty that puts a dirty nappy in a recycling bin, there is no hope for you. You will have to do remedial classes to learn how to be a decent human being.

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Recycling will become more efficient across the country, as new rules come into place today.

Standardised recycling requires almost everyone to place paper, glass and plastic types 1, 2 and 5 in their bins.

Lids and aerosol cans are no longer accepted, while items like empty pizza boxes are.

Packaging Forum CEO Rob Langford says these changes have been in development for over a year now.

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I was reading Robert Mcculloch's most excellent “Down to Earth Kiwi” blog. 

His latest piece is an article on mass immigration and making the premise that high net immigration will ultimately dilute the influence of indigenous people on the future of a country. That the more people we have coming in with different cultures, different priorities, the less importance the views of indigenous people have on the future of the country, and we can get back to that, and the Treaty, and the debate over whether we should be having a debate on the Treaty closer to Waitangi Day.   

But what I was more interested in today, given the other stories that are in the news cycle, is a discussion on immigration. Net immigration is running between 2-3% of the population per annum. That's around about 120,000 people annually that we have to accommodate, literally and metaphorically. Immigration is back to higher levels than it was even during the John Key years. 

Now Labour tried and failed to deliver an economy and a skilled workforce that did not rely on imported labour. They said that we would be able to train enough Kiwis to fill the vacancies that were available and that became patently obvious almost immediately that that wasn't going to happen. We simply couldn't do it. Whether it was we couldn't do it quickly enough or we couldn't do it at all. My guess is we couldn't do it at all. 

It became very apparent that there simply weren't enough Kiwi’s able and willing to do the jobs we needed to keep New Zealand Inc. running, and they were jobs right across the board. Remember when we had pensioners who were packing up their cars in their caravans and heading off to Hawkes Bay in Central Otago to pick fruit? We had waiting lists blowing out with a completely stretched and overworked health force staff screaming for reinforcements. So, it was right across the board. 

In the news today, we hear that rents are high and they're rising. In Wellington, the water infrastructure is completely and utterly poked. In Auckland our beaches were closed for days over the Christmas break because of sewage overflows into the water, which is an absolute disgrace. 

Spending on improving our housing supply, our infrastructure, our health, our education, has not kept pace with the inflow of new New Zealanders. We wouldn't even be able to look after the needs of existing New Zealanders. 

We've allowed infrastructure, particularly that under the ground, to get run down to a point that it's going to be astronomically expensive to fix. We haven't freed up the space and the regulatory environment to allow more homes to be built, maybe because we're rightly concerned given past experience of the quality of the homes that will be built and we're concerned about where they're being built. Auckland Anniversary floods, anybody? House prices are predicted to rise again as demand outstrips supply. 

So, what to do, what to do? 

If we put a hold on immigration, as Labour did, and indeed, as most governments did during the Covid years, all the same problems we saw, above and beyond managing Covid, will happen again. The waiting lists will blow out, the people needed to build the necessary infrastructure can't be found here. We simply can't put 30 migrant workers into a three-bedroom home. No, we don't do that here, thank you. 

So, what to do? The myth that New Zealand can look after its own needs has been well and truly busted after two years with closed borders, but what do we do? We bring in the people we need to do the jobs and where do we put them? What do we do with what they produce that we need to get rid of?  How do we fix what's under the ground without bringing in more people to do it? 

It's a conundrum, and if you have the answer, I'll buy you a Lotto ticket. 

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New Zealand’s infrastructure is unable to keep up with our increasing population. 

Net migration figures are sitting at approximately 2-3% of the population per annum, a total of 120 thousand people entering the country every year. 

However, the spending allocated to improving housing supply, infrastructure, health, and education has not kept pace with the increasing number of migrants. 

Michelle McCormick, Infrastructure New Zealand’s Policy Director, told Kerre Woodham that there is an opportunity to combine these two factors. 

She said that the incoming workforce can be used to address our infrastructure deficit, which would in turn keep these skilled workers in New Zealand as opposed to leaving once a project is complete. 

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Wherever you were on holiday —if you were lucky enough to get away— did you see the ‘Staff Wanted’ signs in the windows of just about every business, North and South Islands? 

A number of business owners I spoke to were having to reduce the days they were open because they simply couldn't provide the service they wanted, because they didn't have the staff. 

Yes, they could stay open and run around like blue-arsed flies, but they wanted to give them the service, the experience, that people expect when they're paying a bit extra, and they simply did not have the staff to do that. 

And yet we have a huge pool of people who should be able to alleviate at least some of those shortages. 

According to a column written by Paula Bennett in the Herald on Sunday, former National minister and colloquially known as Paula Benefit, because she was in charge of benefits and slashed a few, she says there are 34,000 under 25s not in work, not in study, not in training. 

They're simply languishing on job seeker benefits. 

And I say languishing because if the benefit is all you're getting in the way of income and that is a big if (I well understand that there are other ways to supplement an income that are not entirely lawful, or indeed in any way lawful). But if all you've got is the benefit, it's a pretty miserable, meagre existence. 

To be eligible for the job seeker benefit, you have to be looking for work. It can go to someone who has a health condition or a disability that affects their ability to work temporarily, but predominantly it goes to people who are out of work and looking for it. 

Damningly, the number of young people (these are under 25s) on benefits has increased nearly 50% in the past five years. What are work and income staff doing? If you have got a young person who's turning up and they have to sign on, and they have to turn up to collect their benefit, what are work and income staff doing? 

Do they have the time to drill down into why a young person isn't getting work when they're supposed to be looking for it?  Is it a lack of drivers license? Is it that they don't have the people skills to be able to do an interview? Are they lacking confidence? After the years of isolation, young people in particular aren't great when it comes to meeting people, meeting new people, being able to hold conversations with strangers. 

So, what is it that work and income staff are doing to help these young people get into work? What are parents and caregivers doing? Back in the day, the antediluvian times, at 17 or 18 you're expected to make your own way in life. You went out, you trained for a job, you got a job straight out of school. You found a flat and you worked. You were responsible for paying your own bills. 

The thought of going to your parents and saying give me some cash, or let me stay at home and not work while I get my confidence up... you just wouldn't do it. It just simply was not done. There was no safe haven at home really unless you were in dire straits. Not simply because you couldn't face getting a job. 

So, what are parents and caregivers doing to give young people the confidence to get out there? 

What about business owners? Are you willing to give young people a chance? They turn up, they're a bit stuttery, a bit hang dog. The eyes are down, the chins down because they're not expecting to get a job because who would take them anyway? 

You know, it's hard. It's hard to put your best foot forward when it's your first time. It's hard to present as confident, and fabulous, and wonderful when your grades haven't been that great. School hasn't been brilliant because it's been shut for two years. You know, you're not sure what you can do. 

Are business owners willing to take a punt on young people? 

And for young people themselves, don't you want more for yourself? Don't you think you're worth more than the pittance you get from the government? Because you are. 

I've heard from a couple of young people who said they can't quite face going into the office because they suffer from anxiety. So they get jobs, they start them, and then all the chat around the water cooler sends them fleeing for the suburbs and home. They just can't quite hack the interpersonal office relationships. I get that. But what about, you know, working from home? It is a thing now. Employers understand and make allowances for young people who want to work at home. 

Why have we got 34,000 young people on a job seeker benefit? Life on a benefit is not a life, it's existing. No matter how good BBQ man made that life sound, IYKYK. 

What is holding you back from getting a job? Labour removed sanctions, and sanctions sound so old fashioned and like, even the word it sounds like iron manacles around your ankles. Sanctions. They're a blunt tool, but they jolly well seem to work. 

When Labour dropped sanctions, the number of beneficiaries, the number of young people drawing a benefit sharply increased. Coincidence? I think not. 

So what is it? If you are a young person under 25, if you have one of those young people in your life, if you're a business owner looking for workers, why have we got 34,000 young people wasting their talents and their energy?   

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James Shaw will stick around to back a last piece of legislation before quitting politics. 

The Greens Co-leader's announced he will stand down in March but remain an MP to back his Sustainable Environment Bill's first reading. 

Political Editor Jason Walls said that as far as resignations go, this was pretty lukewarm. 

He said that Shaw made it known after the election that he was going to be shepherding the party to the point where he would no longer need to be co-leader, and someone else could step up. 

Walls said that since he’s stepping down after the Sustainable Environment Bill leaves the house, it’s up to the other MPs in Parliament to determine when he’s stepping down. 

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Former Social Development and Employment Minister, Paula Bennett, has made a case for bringing back sanctions for those on the Jobseeker benefit. 

There are 34,000 under-25-year-olds on the Jobseeker benefit. 

Bennett is calling out the acceptance of this statistic, and questioning how we can rationalise the fact that more than 500 of them have been on welfare for longer than five years. 

She told Kerre Woodham that it’s all about the direction from the Government. 

Bennett said that currently the focus is on what their entitlements are as opposed to how to get them work ready. 

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Did you see those clowns driving on Muriwai Beach on the TV news last night, just hours after a teenager was tragically killed there yesterday afternoon? 

It was like rush hour and, I’m sure, they were probably hamming it up for the cameras.   

One muppet even hooned past the reporter who was doing the live report - in what looked like some sort of people mover - and then, within a few seconds, they were reversing at pretty much the same speed.  

I could say that I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. But I’d be lying. Because, the truth is, I could believe what I was seeing. Because all summer I’ve been seeing people treating beaches as if they were roads. 

And it’s not just four-wheel-drive trucks. Quad bikes are another menace on beaches. 

New Year's Eve, for example, we were hanging out at the beach and there was a quad bike screaming up and down all night. I think they were gathering driftwood and stuff to burn on the fire down where they were a bit further down. 

We were with family and we had some young kids with us, which meant you couldn't totally relax because you had to keep an eye out for the quad bike. Especially once it got dark. 

But, apparently, that’s all fine. Just like it’s all fine, apparently, for anyone to take any vehicle onto a beach and do what they want. 

And yesterday at Muriwai, we had what’s being reported as a young chap taking a ute onto the sand and, by the end of the day, the young woman who was with him was dead, and two others injured. 

According to the reports I’ve seen, he’d been doing burn-outs in the sand and it seems the young woman was thrown from the vehicle when it rolled. She was crushed and died from her injuries. 

As usual when this sort of thing happens, we’ve got locals in the news today that they had seen this type of thing coming and that something needs to be done. And I couldn’t agree with them more.  

The chair of the local community board is one of the Muriwai locals talking today. Brent Bailey is his name. And he’s told the NZ Herald that vehicles on beaches are in direct conflict with all the other things that go on there. 

People doing things like kitesurfing or just hanging out in the sun. Things you should be able to do without having to look right, left and right again - just in case there’s traffic coming. 

If there’s one place where you should be completely free from traffic, it’s the beach. 

Someone else who lives near Muriwai, Ed Donald, says he’s been pushing for change for ages. 

He’s saying- “We still want to go surfing, we still want to go fishing, but all of a sudden we just have this hoon mentality, and it’s just taking control of the beach.” 

And the irony is (if you can call it that), is that vehicles had been banned from Muriwai up until a week or so ago. It was only for a couple of weeks - taking effect on New Years Eve - during the peak holiday period.  

But the barriers are down now and, already, someone has lost their life. 

Now you might say ‘oh it’s not as if the guy hit an innocent bystander. He knew what he was doing and the young woman who died knew what she was doing’. 

Yeah, fair point. They did. And let’s not forget the impact what happened yesterday will have on the driver. 

But in an age where it seems councils all around the country are sticking planter boxes and speed bumps and all sorts of things on roads and streets to slow down traffic and make it safer for pedestrians, we seem to be turning a blind eye to what’s going on at beaches. Where there are pedestrians. Where there are young children. And where there seems to be no shortage of idiots who think it’s their god-given right to drive on the beach however they like, come hell or high water.    

Which is why I think the time has come for all vehicles to be banned from all beaches, full stop.

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Parliament's repealed the Clean Car Discount —dubbed a 'ute tax' by its opponents— under urgency, following a third reading. 

The policy subsidised the purchases of electric vehicles by charging a tax on purchases of polluting vehicles. 

It led to a massive uptake of EVs. 

However, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says the policy was fiscally irresponsible. 

He says it was taking money from people who have very little or no choice as to what vehicle they can use and giving it to people who can already afford to buy an electric vehicle. 

Greig Epps, CEO of the Imported Motor Vehicle Industry Association, joined Kerre Woodham to talk about the policy and what its removal will mean for the automobile industry. 

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So, the clean car discount, aka the Ute Tax, has been repealed as Parliament continues to sit in urgency in the lead-up to the Christmas break. Some of those politicians won't know what's hit them, working past the 15th of December!  

The clean car discount you'll remember was a Labour initiative, originally introduced in July 2021. Initially, it provided rebates for consumers that purchased electric and hybrid vehicles. You know, there were substantial rebates for an EV. If it was a new car, you got back just over a tad over $7000, a used car a tad over $3,500. If it was a hybrid and a new car, you got $4000 back. And if it was a used import, you got $2000 back.   

Electric and hybrid vehicles cost more than the old-fashioned internal combustion engine vehicles, so the initiative was designed to encourage Kiwis to opt for carbon friendly vehicles to make them more affordable. 

But we're only talking about a certain class of Kiwi here. Not everybody has the dosh to spend money on a new car, a new electric car or a new hybrid car so we're talking the top few percenters. The sales data suggested it was working and why wouldn't it? If you give somebody something for nothing, they're going to take advantage of that. 2022 was the biggest year on record for EV and hybrid sales overall. 

The most popular EV in the country, the Tesla Model Y, starts at $67,500. That's your basic bog standard, Tesla. Who has got $67.5K to spend on a new car? Again, we're talking about the top few percenters. The GWM aura, was introduced into New Zealand just recently. It's $42,990, and that's currently the cheapest new EV in the market. Newsflash, $43K is not cheap, but that is the least expensive. 

So, these rebates were going to people who could afford to buy cars anyway. If you can afford to spend $67.5K on a new car, you could afford the $7000 on the end. The discount was paid for by adding additional costs of up to $7000 on higher emission vehicles like the utes. Did that put off the punters? No, not a bit. 

With just one month left in the books for 2023, the Ford Ranger is all but confirmed to be New Zealand's most popular new vehicle for the 9th year in a row. And that's with both Ford and Mitsubishi dealerships confirming that they're telling customers, look, don't bother buying a new ute this year. Hold off. If the coalition government gets in, if National gets in, clean car discount will be gone, the ute tax will be gone, and then you won't have to pay the fee-bate levy. Despite that, commercial vehicle sales actually grew slightly in November. We went stuff your fee, stuff your levy, I'm buying it anyway. And then, of course, when 2024 rolls around with the fee-bate gone, the market expects ute sales to kick off with the bang. 

Now of course, Labour sold it as being fiscally neutral. You know, we're going to tax the utes and the heavy emitters and we're going to use that money as a rebate for EV's. So, was it fiscally neutral? Thank you for asking. Of course it wasn't. There's a new form of girl maths and it's called Robertson maths, which doesn't make any sense whatsoever. 

The ute tax was supposed to cover the rebates and admin costs. More has been paid out in rebates than has ever been received in charges. That's only set to get worse with, shock me, more taxpayer money needed to keep the scheme afloat. More than $579 million has been paid out in rebates, $13.5 million spent in admin costs. How much has been collected? $290 million. So even people who got 56% in School C maths (that would be me), understands that $290 million does not equal $579 million plus $13.5 million. That's left the taxpayer facing a $302.5 million deficit. So we have to make that up. 

Oh, it's fiscally neutral. No, it's not girl maths Grant. It's really not. You're not taking in enough to cover the running of the scheme. Who's going to pay for it? Taxpayer. All those people buying the bloody utes were getting up at 5am in the morning and going to work. They're the ones who are going to pay for it. So not only are they paying for the fee-bate so some lovely human has worked very hard and who has got the dosh, who's got $70 odd thousand to spend on a brand-new car can get a rebate on it. 

How does that even begin to make sense? Even with a rich prick capitalist government, how does it make sense? And yet, here you've got Labour champions of the poor, who are demanding the poor get in their utes that they've had to pay more for, get up at 5am in the morning, go to work to subsidise the scheme that allows rich pricks to buy new Teslas. 

Good riddance to the Clean Car discount.  Long may it be gone. Fiscally neutral my Aunt Fanny.    

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KiwiRail says the Government needs to better consider the future after pouring cold water on Cook Strait ferry upgrades. 

Contracts were already underway for new ferries and port infrastructure, but Finance Minister Nicola Willis says it's now too expensive, after blowing out to over $3 billion. 

Chief Executive, Peter Reidy, told Mike Hosking that the upgrades would've benefited the economy in the long run. 

He says it's about being a future focused economy, supporting our import and export sector. 

Infrastructure New Zealand Chief Executive Nick Leggett joined Kerre Woodham to discuss the situation. 

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Surprise at today's negative GDP figure.

It fell 0.3% in the three months to September, a switch from a revised 0.5% increase for the three months to June.

Stats NZ originally reported that quarter as a 0.9% growth.

Herald Business Editor at Large Liam Dann told Kerre Woodham that it's much gloomier than most expected.

He says most economists were predicting at least some growth.

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Te Kōti oTimatanga Hou. The Court of New Beginnings. 

The court writes off charges for recurring low-level crime and helps the homeless get off the streets and back into work. 

They meet once a month in Auckland, and have recently celebrated their 13thanniversary. 

Coordinator Carmel Claridge joined Kerre Woodham to chat about the court and the impact it has. 

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One of New Zealand’s oldest boarding schools is set to reopen. 

Te Kura o Tīpene/St Stephen’s School on Auckland's Bombay Hills is set to reopen in 2025, after being closed for 23 years. 

The school will be led by former pupil and principal, Nathan Durie, and his wife Yvette McCausland-Durie. 

Nathan Durie joined Kerre Woodham to chat about the reopening. 

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Otorohanga College is tomorrow joining the roll-call of schools shutting its boarding facilities.

The Waikato school's board is putting it down to a lack of Education Ministry financial support.

Losses over the past four years have totalled 600-thousand-dollars.

It's also well below break-even for enrolment, with only about 25 students signed up to board next year.

College Board Chair, Duncan Coull told Kerre Woodham numbers don't look likely to improve.

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Only last Friday I think it was, we were talking about infrastructure and how New Zealand is one of the most expensive countries in the world to build new infrastructure, and the importance of having a bipartisan approach with a long-term vision, a pipeline that's going to deliver what the country needs over the next 30 or even 50 years. 

We had a really good discussion about this. 

Interestingly, a week later, an article in the New Zealand Herald today reveals warnings from Treasury that Labour's transport plan was substantially underfunded and undeliverable. Treasury was so concerned that it recommended the ministers drop all the projects from its plan until they could be staged in a way that made them more deliverable, until officials could devise more up-to-date costings. 

The fact the previous government proceeded with its plans only backs up the call for a more long-term bipartisan infrastructure pipeline to be in place. But that's not the only surprise when it comes to infrastructure this week, with a more pressing issue being laid at the new government's door. And that is the escalating cost of portside infrastructure needed for Cook Strait’s mega ferries.   

Finance Minister Nicola Willis has revealed that the potential cost to the taxpayer is now many times what the Government initially signed up to. The financial situation of this project is extremely troubling, she said. Now Willis has been in a meeting with Kiwi Rail. They have completed a review as to where the project is at and at this stage, she's placing the blame firmly at the feet of the previous government.  

“I am concerned that this blowout reflects casual and competence by the outgoing Government and its approach to the scoping, management and delivery of major infrastructure projects” Willis said. All very good and well, but what's done is done right? And we've got to deal with what is in front of us and it's time to move on and find a way to get this vital service up and running. 

We need a reliable ferry service. We're a nation of islands, but the connection between the two main islands is pivotal to Kiwis needing to move vehicles between islands. For tourism, for the many businesses that freight their goods between islands, the cancellation, the delays, the breakdowns, quite frankly, they've all just been embarrassing. 

Yes, we have new ferries coming and this is excellent news, even if they are still two years away and the first one is running a little bit late, but there is no point in investing in new ferries if we can't get the landside infrastructure set up to support it. Kiwi Rail has reported work on the port side infrastructure on both sides of the Cook Strait is well underway. But there are concerns that there might be insufficient space for rail vehicles to get onto the new ferries, which potentially has implications for ship turn around times. 

Now look, I do not like the idea of a cost blowout. None of us do. But I also believe that the project needs to be completed to a standard that makes it future proof for at least the next 30 years. There is no point in getting new ferries that increase passenger capacity by 50%, can carry 40% more trucks, and increase rail capacity by almost 300% if we can't use it to its full potential. 

Our government will be much more careful stewards of taxpayers' money, Nicola Willis said. And the question of how to manage the project is an ongoing consideration for the incoming government, she added. And I totally appreciate that. They've got to get their heads around this. They've got the report, it's going to take a little bit of time to get up to speed, even though Nicola Willis has already had a couple of meetings around this. But let's get this issue sorted once and for all. 

I don't think I can cope with another summer of depressing stories of ruined holidays, lost productivity and potential disasters. It's going to cost us, but let's just get it done and get it done properly.   

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I'm quite impressed that Mark Mitchell has made his letter of expectations to the Police Commissioner, Andrew Coster, public. 

Of course, it's normal for an incoming Police Minister to outline expectations to the Police Commissioner, a Commissioner, who's often been employed by the previous government. But this is the first time it has been released. 

While campaigning, Mitchell was reluctant to back Coster and initially I thought he'd released this letter to poke the bear, to put Coster on notice. And in a way, he has. Even though Mitchell doesn't have the ability to hire or fire the Police Commissioner, that's a job for the Public Service Commissioner, with the final call made by the Prime Minister. So, the reality is that Mitchell is stuck with Coster until April 2025, which is when his term finishes, unless he resigns beforehand. 

Mitchell might have put the Commissioner on notice, but by being so open and transparent, which I actually really appreciate, he's also put himself on notice. Not only has he outlined the government's expectations, but he has also stated that he's fully committed to backing the police by providing the tools and resources to restore law and order in our communities. 

Mitchell also put his big boy pants on, accepted that he has to work with Coster and is going about it in a constructive and positive way. Mitchell’s determined to see this as a reset, an opportunity to put a line in the sand between the last government's policies, approach to policing, and give Coster the chance to fulfil National's expectations. 

He doesn't really have a choice at the moment, Mitchell knows that, but is dealing with it maturely. When questioned by Mike Hosking this morning, he said Coster deserves a chance: 

“I think that he deserves a chance. I think that he's had a long career in the police and some of those roles have meant that he's had leadership roles in South Auckland, he's been an AOS Commander. So you know I respect that service and, and he's been given a chance now under a National Government to get out to support his frontline, provide the leadership, and start to deliver on what we want.” 

So, is Coster the man for the job to put these ambitious expectations into play? Only time will tell. The public service is, in theory, politically neutral. Coster knows it is his job to fulfil the current government's policies, and these policies are hardly news to him. They were campaigned on long and hard so if he wants the job, and he's up for the job, it's up to him. 

We all want to feel safe in our homes, our communities and workplaces. We're hoping that this focus on public safety and victims and real consequences for crime and serious offending, we're really hoping it's going to bring better outcomes. But at the end of the day, it's going to be about resources, and this is something that Police Association President Chris Cahill is concerned about. 

“The challenge, of course, is who's going to do all this stuff if we're losing cops to Australia? We'd like to see the word extra rather than just new. We already get 450 new a year, so that needs to be clarified that it's actually extra and not just new. I'll tell you what I want to see.  I want to see the letter of expectations going to the CEO of Health, the CEO of Oranga Tamariki, that they’re going to step in and do their job, ‘cause it can’t just be Police. So, I want to see the same letters, they need to be published as well.” 

And look, it makes total sense to involve other departments and take a multi-agency approach to allow the police to get back to the core police work, that's what so many of us are keen to see happen, but only if everyone's on the same page. 

If the Ministry of Health or Oranga Tamariki don't have the capacity or resources to deal with these problems, they're just passing the buck with little improvement. And no improvement in outcomes. And we want to feel safe in our homes and our community and our workplace, just like Mark Mitchell has stated. 

So, expectations are all good and well, but without the resources to put them in place, the new government risks being all talk and no action. 

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I don't think any of us were hugely surprised to wake up this morning to the news that the latest PISA report shows that Kiwi kids aren't doing so well in maths, and to a lesser extent, science. 

PISA, or Programme for International Student Assessment, gives us a gauge on students’ maths, reading, and science literacy in every OECD country and in New Zealand. The report is based on assessing and surveying 4700 students aged 15, across 169 schools, and they did this test in term 3 of 2022.  

In the report released overnight there is a slice of positivity. I went looking for it folks! We still rank highly in the OECD for reading and science, but we're still in the middle for maths. So New Zealand's mean reading scores hasn't changed significantly over the 2012/2022 period, but it is lower than it was in 2009 and previous cycles. New Zealand's mean science score is similar to 2018, but lower than it was in 2015, and 2009, and 2006. Maths didn't fare so well, with New Zealand's main mathematics score significantly declining since 2018 and over the long term. Interestingly, there was a large learning loss globally in maths and reading. New Zealand has bucked the trend in reading. See, I'm just looking for all these little slices of positivity. 

So we haven't gone too far backwards over the last few years, but there is still plenty to worry about. Because our educational outcomes have been in decline over the last two decades and since we began being involved with this program, and basically it has got to stop. 

There are some obvious reasons for this. The PPTA is blaming Covid and our new Education Minister, Erica Stanford, is blaming the way we teach these subjects and at the end of the day, it's not one thing. As a parent you'll probably know this, Covid absolutely did not help. 

Interestingly, an Educational Review Office report found that only 19% of principals in 2023 believe their school has recovered from Covid-19 disruptions. Almost half of the 37% in 2021. There is also the approach to teaching, the way we teach, the classroom environment, that modern learning environment, resources and upskilling teachers – it all comes together to play a part, doesn't it? So yes, it is time to revert to the best approaches based on the best scientific evidence to teach our children. 

And this is where I do have some hope in what Erica Stanford is offering, saying that there be one hour of math reading and writing a day. I actually think that sort of statement is a bit pointless, because if you ask any teacher, they will tell you they're already doing that through various tasks and exercises. But teach these subjects better, with better approaches as Stanford is promising, and you never know, we could be away. 

So yes, let's get on with training teachers and structured literacy and introduce a new curriculum with clear expectations for what children are to be taught each year, that's good for both the child and the parent who's trying to work out where their kid is at and where they may need some help. When it comes to maths, we need to get back to basic mathematical knowledge and keep strategies simple, unless the child shows the need for a different approach. 

The only problem, of course, is that changes in the curriculum take time, and gosh, I understand the frustration that teachers will be feeling right now - we've only just finished changing the curriculum and now we're sort of back to square one, we're going to change it again. And even once these changes are made, it may take time to see the impact. So, we actually need to throw all the resources at we can to make these changes as quickly and nimbly as we can. 

PPTA Acting President Chris Abercrombie spoke to Early Edition this morning and he had some other solutions as to what was necessary to lift the academic performance of our children.  

“I think one of the key things to remember is there needs to be really good professional development to upskill teachers because the PISA’s testing them at 15 years old, so they've had a lot of education by that point. So, we need to make sure our professional development is there for our teachers to upskill them, particularly in the early stages of schooling.” 

“There needs to be more support for students with diverse needs. This is a really key example. You know, students who come from more advantaged backgrounds, we know do better than students from less advantaged backgrounds, so we need to put things in place to sort of limit that impact. We know education has become a political football. We've already got the new government talking about rewriting the curriculum that's just being rewritten.  And so those are big issues. To say that it creates disruption in the classroom, it creates disruption in the profession. Rewriting curriculum is a year's long process. It doesn't happen overnight. To then be told three years down the track you need to rewrite it again, it's just incredibly disruptive to the profession.” 

Totally understandable, right? 

But obviously if it is the best thing for our children, it has to be done. It actually doesn't matter which political party is delivering the change. We know the value of education, at the end of the day, the most important thing is that we do what is best for our children's education. 

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How was your morning commute in your region? 

I'm not surprised that Te Pati Māori have chosen the first day of Parliament for the new Government to protest their plans to repeal the many policies that affect Māori. Te Pati Māori has always advocated strongly for their constituents, that's their purpose that's their job, and they take on activism with vigour.   

And I understand the concerns Māori have. A lot of positive work has been done over the last 40 years to provide equity and equality for Māori and so you would expect the rollback on policies designed to improve Māori health outcomes, the use of Te Reo on public services, and Oranga Tamariki processes to be a huge concern to Māori. 

But have they gone too early? Should we have let democracy and debate take place first before taking to the streets? Every change of government is an awkward time as we go through a period of ideological change, but as we know, not every promise is realised throughout the term, and there are many compromises on the way. 

That said, we all have the right to lawful protest - it's part of our make-up. Over decades, we've seen protests by unions, women, LGBTQI+, farmers. We've protested apartheid, wars, nuclear weapons and vaccines, and it would be fair to say peaceful or not, they all created some kind of discomfort and disruption for the country. That's what protests do. And of course, depending on how they affect you, may depend on how much sympathy you have for the cause. 

Of course, the aim of this protest is to get the government to reflect on their policy announcements and encourage your positive conversation about how the country can enhance the relationship between Māori and non-Māori. Political commentator Dr. Grant Duncan on Early Edition this morning said the protests will test the Prime Minister's leadership:

“These protests, generally in the long run, could come to define his leadership, in fact, because he really has to carry through now with the policies that he's agreed to with New Zealand First and the ACT party. But the question really is, will he just continue fighting his corner or will he reach out and try and create some kind of rapprochement with the Māori party and others?” 

“Personally, I would like to see the Prime Minister be a little bit statesman like here, and at least do some listening, try to do some reconciliation because I think that these protests are not going to go away. I would guess this is just the beginning.” 

Luxon says he does not believe protests will continue throughout the term, as he believes his Government will earn the support of Māori. So, it feels like Te Pati Māori is beginning this new parliamentary term as they mean to continue, to be honest with you, the swiftness of this protest signals a determination to make themselves heard. 

We have the right to protest. It was inevitable they would protest. I'm not sure launching into it until the parliamentary year is actually underway and debate begins is really going to be effective. 

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Twenty-one days until Christmas and about now the pressure of the festive season and how you're going to pay for it might be on your mind. After a challenging year that has seen the price of almost everything rise, will Christmas be business as usual for you this year, or will it be Christmas on a budget? 

The cost of living crisis has been with us for a while now, but its impact continues to grow. It was announced yesterday that money withdrawn early from KiwiSaver funds due to financial hardship has doubled compared to a year ago, with more people taking money out before retirement. 

The latest figures show the number of KiwiSaver members taking withdrawals increased from 1570 people in October 2022  to 2800 people in October 2023. So, the amount of money withdrawn from KiwiSaver due to financial hardship doubled from $10.3 million in October last year to $21.5 million in October this year.

Also, last week, it was announced the number of Kiwis behind on their mortgages spiked back up again in October. There are now 19,200 mortgage accounts passed due in October. That's up 25% year on year. That's an increase of 1.25% of mortgages in arrears in September to 1.29% in October. With the Reserve Bank’s forecast effectively keeping the possibility of one more rate hike in this cycle, and the thoughts that there will be no rate cuts until 2025, there is little relief in sight for those struggling with their mortgages. 

Now these increases might feel small. It might feel like a small percentage of those who have them are suffering. But what we are seeing is a trend in the increase of the numbers of people who are suffering from hardship, and that brings us to the cost of insurance.

One retiree living in Wellington spoke out over the weekend, saying the nearly 40% increase in his contents insurance policy would mean that he's probably just going to have to risk losing his possessions if his house burns down. The increase is just too much for a pensioner. So he would retain third-party insurance on his car in case he hit a Rolls Royce, but that had gone up 24% too.

Now, according to the insurance companies, since Covid-19 hit, it is now more expensive to replace or repair customers' assets. So there's inflationary pressures at play here, an increase in weather related claims and increase in costs being charged to insurers, as reassurers were changing their view of how risky New Zealand is, is also adding to the cost which is being passed on to us, the consumer.

Now look,  even before the weather events of this year, many of us have seen some pretty impressive increases in our insurances over the last few years. There are, of course, steps that you can take to lower your premiums. You could increase your excess, for example. But is it getting to the point where you need to make some pretty significant changes to your insurances or get rid of some of them altogether? So we're always told, (this is what sensible people do, you know, financially savvy people do this) We're always told to reassess our insurances each year, aren't we? And to make sure that they're still appropriate for our age or our situation. But I wonder if heading into 2024, you might be taking a slightly more dramatic approach as to what you think is necessary and what isn't. 

What insurance policies do you think are important to have? What wouldn't you live with? If the price is getting a bit too high for those policies, how are you dealing with it? Have you thought about getting rid of one or two insurances, or are you looking at doing things like increasing your excess to try and drop the cost of your premium.

 Or are you planning on getting rid of some of your insurances in 2024 altogether? 

LISTEN ABOVE

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I do wish that I could go around each and everyone of you handing out the government's press release, still warm off the gestetner with that delicious smell of meths (hold it up to your nose and inhale), so we could all have it in front of us to refer to. 

It is a work of art when it comes to a press release. Oh my goodness, companies, government departments, communications staff, take note. Two pages and it outlines their 100- Day Plan, and how does it do it? It lists them. It lists the 49 points that it's going to cover off in its 100 Day Plan. 

There is no bureaucratese. The aims, the intentions, the hopes, the dreams, none of that. The language is simple to the point of being blunt, and if this is the way of the future, praise to all the little baby Jesus’ is in the whole wide world because you don't have to wade through it. It couldn't be clearer. 

For example, if you've got your hymnbooks in front of you, if we go to Page 1. Number three: Stop work on the Lake Onslow pumped hydro scheme. There is no we are going to appoint an independent review to have a look at whether the viability of blah, blah, blah. No. Stop work on the Lake Onslow scheme. 

Number four: Begin efforts to double renewable energy production. 

Number 17: Introduce legislation to restore 90-day trial periods for all businesses. 

If we could turn to page 2, Number 29: introduce legislation to extend eligibility to rehab programs for remand prisoners. 

Number 34: Improve security for health, workforce, and hospital emergency departments, and so on and so forth, down to the final agenda item. Number 49: Commission an independent review into Kainga Ora’s financial situation, procurement, and asset management, which is sorely, sorely needed. 

There is no faffing. And indeed, no faffing will be tolerated. The PM said this morning that he would be meeting every week for progress reports on each of the 49 measures that have been announced and prioritised. This coalition government has nowhere to hide. There's no obfuscation. There is nowhere for them to fudge it and fake it.  If they don't deliver on their 100 Day Plan, everyone will know about it. They've made that perfectly clear. So, there is much much, much, much, much, much, much to unpack here. In fact, all 49 points could be worthy of an hour’s talkback each.   

Stopping work on the Auckland light rail? I mean that makes sense. All we were doing was shovelling millions and millions and millions of taxpayer dollars into an ideological pit. And it was a bottomless pit of ideology. Where does that leave all those businesses though, that have limped their way through the project just clinging on to the hope that one day to be finished and hordes of people would be coming into their shops as they waited to catch the light rail to nowhere? 

I mean, there is a time where you have to decide, okay enough. Yes, we've put in enough money. You can't go on chasing 29 red on the roulette table. You just can't. You have to cut your losses and walk away. Where does that leave all the businesses that have limped their way through the project? 

And Let's Get Wellington Moving. Number five on page one. They've said right, Central Government will no longer be involved in Let’s Get Wellington Moving, so where does that leave those projects? The 90-day trial, does that mean you're going to take more of chance on potential employees? In the past it too difficult to get rid of them, with all the requirements for minimum pay and for annual leave, and for compassionate leave and all that sort of thing, hard for employers to justify taking on somebody brand new, inexperienced, somebody that might have had a checkered work history. With a 90 day trial, are you more likely to take a chance on people? 

I would very much like to hear from you, those of you who have had the opportunity to see this. It's very clear you can Google it up. It's two pages, doesn't take long to read and even the most reluctant of readers should be able to get through these two pages. The language could not be more clear and I hope this is a sign of things to come. 

Gone are the days of the waffle. That would be great. 

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