Kerre McIvor Mornings Podcast

If Trump's envoys weren't talking to Iranian officials, who the hell were they talking to? When you get older, you expect that you can make more sense of the world, but I've got to be honest here, I am struggling to make sense of anything. I was reading the headlines at about 5 this morning. Trump talking about the good and productive talks having been conducted by special envoy Steve Witkoff, his son in law Jared Kushner. There'll be no nukes. No, the Iranians have said, yep, absolutely, we'll open the Straits of Hormuz and there's no nukes. So that's good. It's a great way to start the day, until you then read that Iran's Parliamentary Speaker says, um, no, no talks have happened. It's all fake news. Normally, you could understand perhaps that talks have taken place and that people might take different messages out of the discussions or things might be highlighted and others glossed over to show respective countries in good light. But in this case, they're saying it didn't happen at all. Got to admit, that was a head scratcher. Whether the talks happened or not, Trump's announcement that somebody had talked to somebody on Truth Social led to a US stock market rally and global oil prices to drop as fears were assuaged that Trump would now not go ahead with his threat to bomb Iranian nuclear power facilities. Who knows? Honestly, who knows what's true and what is not? There's very little we can do. We don't even, we can't even begin to speculate as to who might have been talking to whom. In the meantime, here at the bottom end of the world, as we deal with the fallout and wait for sanity to prevail, the Government's expected to announce a support package for families today with an emphasis on low to middle income households and working families with children. The emphasis is on low to middle income. It's also on temporary support, so that temporary, timely, targeted support. If you are in a low to middle income household, if you are working parents with children, do you welcome such support? Is it right and proper that the focus be on working families rather than all and sundry? I tend to think it is. Is it right and proper that any such support is offered at all? I know there are grave fears from some that this is just another Covid situation where money is being sprayed everywhere. That is not the case. There are no payments being made to everybody. Remember the payments that were made to dead people? The IRD said and Treasury said, I don't think this is a very good idea. No, no, let's just dole out the money. There were Covid payments made to businesses on a high trust model. Payments were made to everybody under a certain income at one point. Remember those? Even to dead people. We're not doing that. This is not what it's about. It's about targeted assistance for working families who are having to pay through the nose at the pump to get to work, to get the kids to school. And all of those who say, well, we weathered stock market crises and the global financial crisis. Yep, sure you did. High interest rates. Absolutely you did. But this is coming on five years of just knock after knock after knock after knock for people trying to do the right thing. So I'm okay with it. It's not normally something I would advocate, but in this instance, I think it is necessary for all those workers who are absolutely essential, who have to live out of the main centres because of the cost of housing, who don't have public transport to be able to get from point A to point B, who need to get their kids to school, who just want to be able to go to work and earn enough to look after themselves and their family. A little bit of targeted assistance out of the enormous extra tax money that's coming in from the government's fuel tax is fine by me. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In today's edition of Fuel Watch, the Green Party is offering its votes to the National Party to get on with passing what the Greens call a sensible and urgent fossil fuel crisis relief package. And you know what, it is quite sensible. They're not suggesting a horse and cart for every home - that's sensible. With the Greens and National's combined 63 votes, the Greens say you don't need any other political party to get this through. Their proposed package includes making public transport free for users, not forever, just while the Straits of Hormuz are compromised, a relief payment for low income people or people who live rurally to help meet additional transport costs, a windfall profits tax to prevent corporate price gouging, that's particularly Green, I think you'd be fair to say, reversing changes to school bus eligibility and routes, temporary expansion of eligibility for school buses, reversing the government's intended reduction in total mobility support for disabled people, and increasing the mileage rates to the 23,000 care and support workers to meet their actual travel costs, which we discussed the other day. Now, none of these are particularly silly, are they? Chlöe Swarbrick, the Green Party co leader, says New Zealanders expect politicians to do everything we can to support people through this immediate crisis and to minimise future vulnerability by reducing fossil fuel dependence. And she's not wrong. You know, normally we would probably be able to weather this particular storm. It won't last forever, there'll be a resolution one way or the other. And, normally families would be able to accommodate this, but it's been five years of scrimping and saving and compromising for many, many working families. You know, they've had to cope with inflation and increases in mortgage payments or rents, increased food costs, increased insurance, increased rates, things that you simply cannot compromise on. These are things you have to have, they're not nice-to-haves, they're must-haves, and it's been tough going. And for many families, this is like the straw that breaks the camel's back. It wouldn't be forever, the sort of relief they're talking about. It wouldn't be, I suppose they'd quite like to see, you know, public transport being free forever, but you know, I think that's not what they've said. They've said that there are people right now who are hurting, who cannot, cannot make any further compromises in their budgets, and they need assistance. I don't think there's a lot wrong with what they're suggesting. I know this coalition government, quite rightly, is wary of throwing money out to all and sundry, as we saw with the Covid spend up, but I'm absolutely certain they have the tools and the philosophy to target assistance where it should be targeted, as the Prime Minister bangs on, you know, timely, targeted, and temporary. So that's precisely what the Greens are suggesting. Nicola Willis, the Finance Minister, has ruled out across the board price cuts, fair enough, not everybody does need support. We grabbed the PM on his way out after chatting to Mike and said, well come on, what about the Greens? And he said, "yes, yes, yes, we're already working on some of these measures", but all very well and good. The people who need support needed it last week, not yes, yes, yes, we're working on it, you know, in the future. People need it now to get to work. And people are willing to use the buses. I don't know what's happening in your city, but in Auckland, it recorded its busiest day on public transport in seven years, and that was last Tuesday. 7,000 more trips than the previous busiest day, which was two weeks ago. So people are, are feeling it. And if they can make alternative transport arrangements, they will. And if they find, through trying out public transport, that it actually works for them, that's got to benefit everybody. The road users, public transport, people's pockets. Just because the Greens suggest something, I don't think it should be dismissed or snorted at, you take every suggestion on its merits, and in this particular case, I think the Greens have got a point. I note that their targeted assistance didn't cover the food producers, and I think they could probably do with a break. I think John talked about that when he was doing the show. You know, and they may well be able to get through this without having to hoick the prices up too much. I suppose it's a bit much to expect the Greens to offer targeted assistance to food producers. They seem to think we should all be breatharians, but does this cover off the Green's suggestion, the public transport free for users for a certain amount of time, a relief payment for low income people or people who live rurally, increasing the mileage rates for the care and support workers? I don't see that as being particularly egregiously extravagant or silly or nonsensical. These are the people who need help, who need it now, and who need that help while the oil prices are going through the roof and consequently the price at the pump is going through the roof. There's only so much people can take, and they've taken a lot, these working families, for the last five to six years. LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Green Party is offering its support to National to fast-track a fossil fuel relief package, bypasssing other parties with their combined 63 votes. The proposal includes three months of free public transport, a windfall tax on fuel companies, and targeted payments for rural and low-income earners. The Green Party co-leader Chloe Swarbrick told Kerre Woodham, "we have put a sensible and urgent fossil fuel crisis relief package on the table, and we're really willing and able to work with the National Party to make it happen." LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

To me, what is news is the fact that there are so many people who are working vital jobs, who are doing incredibly important work like our home support workers, and they are really struggling because of the petrol prices. That to me is news, and that to me is something we can do something about. That is going to impact us all as petrol prices surge past three bucks a litre. Sky appears to be the limit. It's going to impact all of us, even the EV drivers who'll end up paying more for anything that's delivered by road. But it's the people like the home support workers who rely on their own cars and fuel to visit their clients that you worry about. It's particularly tough. Their union, E tū, is urging the Minister of Health to step in and increase the mileage reimbursement rate for home support workers. There is a review scheduled of travel payments before the 20th of May, but for many that'll be too late. Home support workers are currently reimbursed at 63.5 cents per kilometre, averaged to 3.8kms per visit regardless of the actual distance, unless they reach a specific threshold. The rate was last increased in 2022 – things are vastly different now. Workers receive nothing towards vehicle registration, warrant, servicing, tyres, or insurance, all of which they must cover themselves. Freight companies have contracts that enable them to hedge their fuel costs, but of course home support workers don't. At what point is it actually costing you to go to work? There was a text a few days ago from, I think it was a St John trainer, but they were a person who taught CPR and they have to wander around with a dummy to do the CPR on and said they couldn't catch the bus, but I felt that if you put the dummy next to you on the bus then you wouldn't have to sit next to someone you didn't want to. Thought that would be a useful shield. But they were saying they have to go city to city, Auckland to Hamilton, Auckland to Tauranga. At what point does it cost you to go to work? At what point do you say I simply cannot afford to do this? And there are so many workers who need their cars to either do the job, as in our home support carers, or to get to work. You're living somewhere where the rent is cheaper or the cost of a home is cheaper, but you have to drive a long way to get to your actual place of work. In this week's edition of Fuel Watch, I'm asking at what point do you think ‘I simply cannot afford to do my job any longer or to get to work any longer'? Have you reached that point yet? I mean we're past $3, I think, at one of the cheapest fuel stations, this was for 95 though, it was $3.26. Hitting $4 is not beyond the realm of possibility. At what point are you going to go I can't do this anymore? E tū are saying the Government, the Minister of Health, needs to step in and help out the home support workers whose work is vital. Without them you would have people in wards, in hospitals, clogging them up. You need to have that continuum of care starting with GPs working your way through to the home support workers. They're a vital part of the chain. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Political appointments are being scrutinised after the resignation of KiwiRail director Scott O'Donnell due to conflicts of interest. Political analyst Bryce Edwards described the appointment as a “farce”, and the result of a broken system and “rotten governance.” O'Donnell is a major player in the trucking and transport sector, and some of the ten companies he's involved in supply services to KiwiRail – though a management plan was put in place to mitigate that. While he doesn't think there should be a rule against political appointments, Edwards told Kerre Woodham that there needs to be better processes and more scrutiny. He says at the moment, any government of the day can get away with whatever they want. LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What I found more outrageous on the internet yesterday was yet another example of this country's propensity for doling out jobs for the boys and indeed the girls. Every political party does it, every government does it, rewards the party faithful and their generous donors and backers with cushy sinecures. Grafter-in-chief would have to be Trevor Mallard's posting to Dublin – although would it? Because there are plenty of other opportunities to point the finger. Look at Simon Bridges, the ex-National Party leader was appointed as the new chair of the New Zealand Transport Agency, Waka Kotahi, in March 24. There are many, many examples of political cronyism. And in the latest one, a KiwiRail director has quit the board two years early after only a couple of months in the role. That's not the news. What is news is that he was appointed to the board at all given his conflict of interest. Scott O'Donnell is a big player in trucking and freight. And given some of the 10 companies he's involved with supply services to KiwiRail, what on earth was he doing being made a director of KiwiRail? The conflicts required Treasury to put a management plan in place. The conflict of interest mitigation plan contained seven measures to manage conflicts, including recusing himself from board meeting discussions where there was a conflict of interest. It was simply unsustainable. He was being paid to do a job that he simply could not do because of the conflicts of interest. He ended up leaving meetings early and missing agenda items and, you know, became apparent that this wasn't going to work. He'll be stepping down next week and thanked for his service. But he should never ever have been appointed in the first place. So not only are there existing conflicts of interest, he's one of four directors of HW Richardson's Transport Tapunui, which donated $20,000 to New Zealand First in July 2024. The company's also involved in a project that recently received a government regional infrastructure loan, Shane Jones slush fund of $8 million. And then he's appointed by Winston to the board of KiwiRail. It's just another example and it's so common that it barely registered. I mean, I have to give credit to Radio New Zealand who were following this all the way through and BusinessDesk pointing it out going, No, no, no, this isn't good, this isn't right, this doesn't work. Do we have so few people in this country of five million who can do governance jobs and chief executive jobs that we have to accept there'll only be one or two degrees of separation, if that? That there is always going to be a conflict? If you think of the five million of us, how many of us could do a chief executive job or be on a board, take a director's role on a board? Look at the yawning vacancies that we have for our major companies, with a new one with Fonterra now. I mean, Miles Hurrell could walk into about 20 jobs in this country right now, either in sports governance or in business. There are so few people able to do the job. Do we have to accept that there is going to be a conflict of interest in just about every single appointment made? Do more of us have to put up our hands and do the directors' courses so that you can find maybe somebody somewhere who doesn't, hasn't made a donation or hasn't worked or hasn't been a politician who can then do the job? Or are we just simply too small? How we haven't appeared on the dirt list of corruption is beyond me. It shows either a really, really principled closed doors approach to business in this country, being able to separate your different business interests and focus on them solely and leave everything at the door when you go in, or we just haven't uncovered it yet. I'd really love to see an end of the appointments of jobs for the girls and the boys, but then who would do the job when you look at the vacancies that exist right now. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Manatū Taonga Ministry for Culture and Heritage is removing the Ngā Tapuwae Heritage Trails website for Gallipoli and the Western Front in what Historian Chris Pugsley believes is a cost cutting measure and a result of firing historians. Pugsley spoke to Kerre Woodham, slamming the move. LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

How about that petrol, eh? I filled up on Thursday, as usual, that's my usual day. Just the car, no jerry cans, no oil drums, thanks very much, and I thought to myself, $2.95 - she's getting up there. Bargain now, looking at the pumps. Our colleague Kylie, who has to travel north most weekends, reckons she paid an extra $80 above what she would normally pay for her weekend tikitouring. The boss and Helen desperately need to fill up their cans so they can mow their lawns, but they're too scared to take their cans to the petrol station in case they go, "crippers, you're crazy, you're hoarding petrol." The CEO of one of New Zealand's largest independent fuel suppliers says there is no need for people to panic buy fuel as motorists fret about the rising prices. Petrol stations across the country are seeing a surge of drivers filling up, and the petrol prices will keep climbing. And you'd have to wonder how much of that is passing on the real cost, how much of that is opportunistic. 91's tipped over the $3 a litre mark in some areas because of the conflict in the Middle East. US President Donald Trump is calling for countries to send ships to secure the Strait of Hormuz, which is effectively closed as Iran launches attacks to halt maritime traffic. Around 20% of the world's oil consumption usually passes through the strait. Even the most ardent of Trump supporters, and I know there are a lot and, you know, you have your reasons, but even the most ardent of Trump supporters surely would have to concede he's no Sun Tzu, is he? For those who don't know, Sun Tzu was an ancient Chinese military general and strategist. He lived about 500 BC, and his book, The Art of War, described as a profound text about military strategy and philosophy, has endured from 500 years BC to now. The lessons are still being taught today. Don't think we're going to see the US President's thoughts on military strategy enduring for the ages. Even forgiving him using military excursion when I'm pretty sure he means military incursion. I was a bit perplexed about that excursion. That's normally, you know, a trip down to Hamilton for Homegrown, that's an excursion, but we all choose wrong words and malaprop from time to time and that's okay. But, not knowing the size of Iran's navy or musing aloud or kind of forgetting how big it was, I mean, that's a classic. Military strategist knows the importance of your enemy's strengths and weaknesses. And sending out an SOS to help keep the Strait of Hormuz open might have been a better idea to have a coalition of the willing and able sorted before attacking Iran, rather than doing it on the fly and saying, "hey, is there any frigates out there?" But whatever. I'm not attempting to effect regime change in the Middle East, he is, and presumably there is somebody advising him. As it is, the European nations have said, "thanks, but no thanks." France is not a country at war today, thanks very much. At this point, there's no question of sending any vessels to the Strait of Hormuz, says France. And Germany says that we'll only get security for the Strait of Hormuz if there's a negotiated solution. The UK's considering all options. I mean, they could decide, Keir Starmer could decide something one day and flip flop on it on the next. They don't seem to have a very coherent strategy there. So it's all a bit of a mess, really. You're better off being in Hamilton at Homegrown or Eden Park watching the footy ... but when it comes to the fuel, where it's actually affecting us, has the price of petrol changed your habits? Or are you just putting up with it and thinking, sighing heavily and thinking, oh well, it is what it is until such time as there is a resolution? Have you decided to forgo trips? Have you decided to forgo a tikitour of the South Island, perhaps, or a tikitour of the North? Is it impacting the decision making yet? I know that there are some people who are buying fuel and storing it, and do be careful with your insurance, as people have said time and time again. But there are also people buying fuel because this is the time of year when they do, as our farmers told us. This is normally what we're doing. It's harvest, you know, there's still haymaking going, there's harvesting, fertiliser's being put down. It's just that people haven't noticed before that they're filling up large amounts of diesel to take out onto the farm. But because there is a renewed interest and focus on people buying gas and diesel and fuel at the pumps, everybody's noticing and thinking it's stockpiling. Has it changed what you're doing right now? Are you looking at having to increase your prices, because the oil companies have not been, their profits are soaring, but they have not been slow in passing on the extra costs? LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Women are still underrepresented in the trades. Despite employing more than 300,000 people, women only make up around 16% of those working in the construction sector. Chair of construction firm Naylor Love, Jackie Lloyd is interested in seeing more women enter the industry and play a role in leading it as well. Auckland Plumbers Group's Hera Eruera is one of only fifteen certified female plumbers in New Zealand, and told Kerre Woodham that the sector's still a bit of an old boys' club. When she first came across Auckland Plumbers Group, Director Andrew Durrans was one of the few people looking to take on a female apprentice. “All the other companies that I had gone to, they were just not wanting to have a bar of it,” Eruera said . The stigma of plumbing being a “dirty job” may also be keeping women away from the trade, and while some elements can be, that's not all they deal with. “It's such a huge variety – you've got your hot water systems, you've got all your piping systems, guttering, spouting, roofing. We've also got gas fitting, draining.” “It's just a huge variety and it's not always a dirty job like what most people would think it is, and it's quite enjoyable as well." LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Today we thought it would be Fuel Friday because we haven't really touched on the oil crisis so far, have we? I filled up at my local on the way to work and it was certainly more expensive than it was last week, but nowhere near the heights we've reached previously. Back in the day I had to give up driving the Club Sport, which was a beast of a car —loved that car— when fuel topped $3 a litre. I loved her, but I couldn't afford to keep her. There's a lot of things like that really. With the war in Iran effectively closing the Strait of Hormuz, the only tankers going through are the most tenacious or those with a death wish as they attempt to negotiate the waters. I mean, there is oil getting through, but it seems to be a, ‘well, let's give it a bash' rather than with any kind of certainty. So, one of the main sources of oil and fertiliser has, in effect, been blocked and Iran's doubling down on that. They're just going to shut up shop and that will be that. The whole world is looking at their country's respective fuel gauges, wondering if they have enough in the tank to see them through the conflict. Ministers here have joined forces and are getting advice on how, well the relevant ministers are joining forces for a special advisory group and getting advice on how low fuel supplies have to go before the Government should introduce demand measures such as reducing the amount of petrol people can buy or only allowing fuel outlets to open on alternate days. So instead of car-less days, we'd have petrol-less days, appealing to people's better natures and saying please only travel if you absolutely have to. We have about 50 days supply including what we have in the country and what's on its way here, which hopefully will not be diverted to other countries. Shane Jones was on with Heather du Plessis Allan last night and when she said what about other countries? Can't they just divert it? Can't they tell the oil companies come on, we're a bigger customer and we should be able to have that oil that's heading down to that tiny little island nation at the bottom of the world? And he said they were hoping the strength of the contracts they had with the various oil companies would be sufficient to withstand that sort of pressure from other countries to in effect hijack our shipments. The Associate Energy Minister told her the Government had asked officials to come up with all sorts of contingency plans and yes, car-less days were included in the briefing, but they weren't a likely option. SJ: No, it's too early to identify any specific intervention. I mean, perhaps this thing's all over in a week, who knows? But the reality is. HDPA: But why are you taking advice on it if you're not seriously considering it? SJ: Well, no, Kiwis expect their government to be proactive. Kiwis expect us to deal with the fact that other countries are hoarding their fuel. They're introducing export restrictions. So what we need to do is ensure that we've exhaustively looked at every option so if things do deteriorate and we make decisions, they're made on the basis of quality information, not some grasshopper attitude. I thought he answered that pretty well and you know, of course car-less days makes great headlines and that seems to have been dominating the media over the last 24 hours, but I thought Shane Jones was quite right. They're looking at every single option that's on the table and they're weighing the relative merits of each option, which makes sense. So those of you with EVs, I don't know if you feel like you'd like to join the discussion, feel free. It probably doesn't have much to do with you as we all pile into the petrol station and try to get the petrol on the specials days, everybody refreshing their Gaspy, seeing which petrol station in your neighbourhood has the cheapest petrol. But it's so much more than that. It's more than just the petrol in the car to get us from point A to point B. It's the petrol within the supply chain and the diesel within the supply chain to get our goods around the country. It's the growers and their fertiliser and the farmers and their diesel stocks. How are you feeling? It's very easy to whip yourself up into a panic and a frenzy, but it is sensible to be prepared. You don't have to panic, but you can, I would have thought, certainly be prepared if you can. There was a petrol special on at my local service station so I filled up on the way to work and got the 95 for $2.88, which I was relatively happy about – who knows what it will be next week. And while I'm not in the habit of Sunday drives, I probably won't start them until this particular conflict is over. I think we can take sensible measures as your average commuter-consumer without panicking. If you're dependent on fuel for your work, like farmers, like growers, like Uber drivers, it might be a different story. There might be a higher level of fuel anxiety and if so, I'd love to hear from you. You know, have you been here before? Do you have reserves of your own? Probably not the Uber drivers, but perhaps the farmers might and the growers might. When it comes to the fertiliser, will you have enough? I suppose going into winter, I don't know enough about farming cycles, but would you be using fertiliser now anyway or would that be more a spring thing? The narrative is that it's not over yet despite what Donald Trump is saying. Iran is saying they're going to double down when it comes to closing off the Strait of Hormuz and basically hoping to strangle the enemy as they call them, whoever they perceive the enemy to be. We are a tiny country at the bottom of the world. We're going to have to get by and make do and we're just simply not used to doing that, not even during Covid I don't think. Where's your level of fuel anxiety, fertiliser anxiety, diesel anxiety at and what do you think the most sensible measure would be if we have to start looking at reducing the amount of fuel, diesel, fertiliser we consume in this country? See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

For nine months now, the Public Service Commission has been negotiating with the primary school teachers union over pay and conditions. Every other union in the education sector has settled, but not the NZEI Te Riu Roa. There have been strikes, there have been rejected pay offers, in some cases offers haven't even been presented to union members to vote on, and there have been accusations of bad faith from both sides. In interviews, the Public Service Commissioner Sir Brian Roche has sounded increasingly grumpy and frustrated, and when he spoke to Mike Hosking last week, he said that he was exploring options, looking for a way to offer non-union teachers, about a third of the primary teacher workforce, a pay increase so they didn't have to wait for the union to find an offer acceptable. And now he has, as he explained to Heather du Plessis Allan last night. BR: There are 10,000 non-unionised teachers who have been deprived of a settlement. In the normal course of events, we would have kept going with the NZEI, and we are still keeping going with them, but I got to the point where I could no longer justify withholding an offer. So they, the non-union members, have the option now of accepting or not accepting. I don't think it impacts at all on our good faith bargaining and our strong commitment to reach a settlement with NZEI. HDPA: Is it lawful? BR: Of course, but it is risky and that's playing out now. But this is a question of equity. Why would somebody who's not in the union be deprived of being able to benefit from something? They're under no obligation to accept it, I fully respect that, but 10,000 people where I can make their lives better and get greater stability is worth doing. So that was what Sir Brian Roche was doing, looking at the legality of it, whether they could do it. He's found a way that they can, and he says it's risky because he fears the unions will kick off. They'll go hardline, they'll take the strikes and go all sort of waterfront union on it. The union says it will cause a division, but as Education Minister Erica Stanford told Mike Hosking this morning, she thinks it's fair and reasonable that nearly a third of primary school teachers who are not part of the union should be offered a contract now so that they can receive the pay increases now that the government has already offered. ES: I know that the unions, of course they're not happy with it, and they're trying to say, look, it's causing division. But I would say there's already division. A third of their workforce are not in a union, you know, and if they seriously think it's about division, they should ask themselves why a third of the workforce don't want anything to do with them. Interesting. This will equate to approximately 50 to 76 bucks every week, which is not inconsiderable. And it's pay that teachers could be receiving already, were they not impacted by the ongoing holdout from the union. They would say that it's the Government's failure to meet their perfectly reasonable demands, so there'll be stories from both sides. But good on the Public Service Commission. I mean, if unions want to keep going because they believe they can get a better deal for their union members, that's what their members pay their dues for, that they want to get the best possible conditions for their members, fine, fill your boots, keep going. But if I was a non-union teacher, I'd be getting more and more brassed off. It's not just the parents and young people too who are fed up with the ongoing negotiations and ongoing industrial action. Plenty of teachers are too, if the text traffic is anything to go by. A number of teachers told me they were only in the union for the legal protection it afforded them. They certainly didn't agree with the hardline stance being taken by negotiators. Will it cause friction? More friction than there already is in the staffroom when you have some teachers earning more while others are having to wait for their union to settle? I mean, when we were talking about the waterfront workers' strike lockout depending on which side you're on, there were people who would cross the street to avoid scabs, you know, in Huntly or Otahuhu and different parts of the country. Those old resentments lingered and lingered and lingered. Surely we're beyond that now. You shouldn't have to join a union to be able to negotiate fair pay and conditions, and I wouldn't have thought teachers particularly would need one. They know their worth, they're articulate. Why would you need a union per se? I bet, as a number of them said, they're only there for the legal protection. If there was a way of insuring yourself privately for a reasonable fee against malicious lawsuits, then perhaps there'd be no need for the union at all. How many of you belong to unions and why? Do you see the benefit it brings you? How many of you would like to be in a union and how many of you are perfectly confident that you can negotiate the best pay and conditions for you? I'd be really interested to hear from those of you who benefit from union membership and whether you think in this particular case there is going to be friction. I don't think, like if the NZEI can negotiate better conditions for their members, I don't think the non-union staff should get that. Like if you get non-contact time, whatever it is you're holding out on, you know, the non-union members shouldn't necessarily get that. You didn't want to join the union, you wanted to accept the pay offer, that's what you were concerned about, fine, fill your boots, you go for it. But if the union members say no, it's about the conditions, not the pay, and they get better conditions, I don't necessarily think that the non-union members should get it. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

New Zealand's economic response to the Covid pandemic is under scrutiny. The second phase of the Covid Inquiry found New Zealand's overall pandemic response effective, but some restrictions went too far, and the Government moved too slowly in some areas. It highlights our Covid increase on health spending was one of the OECD's largest. ANZ Chief Economist Sharon Zollner told Kerre Woodham that debt is likely going to be permanently higher, and we have a lot of medium-term fiscal challenges as a result. She says in broad terms, we've used up two crises worth of buffer for a single crisis. LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Comparisons are being drawn between New Zealand's approach to Covid, and Sweden's. The findings of the second phase of the Covid Inquiry were released yesterday, and the response was found to be broadly effective, but slow to adapt and poorly communicated. It also found some mandates to be overly restrictive, and the Auckland lockdown went on too long. In Sweden, they had a less restrictive approach, focused on keeping life moving as normal as much as possible. Cato Institute Senior Fellow Johan Norberg told Kerre Woodham that the population voluntarily engaged in social distancing and reducing travel, and so they only felt the need to briefly enforce limitations when a new wave hit in 2020. He says the focus was on normalcy, as they didn't know what would happen next, but they knew it would be a bad idea to hurt themselves further by shutting down schools and the economy. LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We all seem to be suffering from Long Covid. It's lingering as the findings of the second phase of the Covid-19 response inquiry were released yesterday. And what its findings were pretty much depends on what media you read. According to RNZ, it found the Government's response was effective but late and not communicated well enough to people. From Newsroom: ‘Lockdown, vaccine decisions considered and appropriate, Royal Commission'. So looking at that headline, you'd think nothing to see here, no criticisms, excellent, well done. ‘Covid-19 inquiry commission criticises length of Auckland lockdown and government spending' – that's from the New Zealand Herald. Maybe read it yourself and see what you think. It's on publicly available on websites. There are video explainers, there are findings there. See for yourself. If you were anti-the infantilisation of the country, as I was, you will read it and wonder why the commission was so temperate in its findings. If you believed the Government was your saviour and without their instructions you would have died, you will read the excuses and the findings and nod along and say, “Yes, didn't we do well?" The second phase of the inquiry tested whether the Government took a balanced approach and found overall it largely did, but said the public was not brought on board —maybe they didn't want to be on board, maybe they could start to see through the nonsense— and the public must be brought on board in the next pandemic. One of the 24 recommendations made yesterday said that there should be more open decision making in future around the impacts on people's isolation, health, and incomes. And that's really, really important because surely, we must be allowed to question decisions, we must be able to debate them and argue against them without being considered treasonous or a conspiracy theorist or a granny killer. Look what happened when then leader of the National Party Simon Bridges grilled Ashley Bloomfield over the Ministry of Health's decision-making transparency and data at the Covid Response Select Committee hearing. In effect, just by daring to question the Director General of Health, just by asking him some tough questions, he lost his job. Cost him the job as leader of the National Party. We have to be able to question and debate, even if the decisions are ultimately the Government's based on the best possible advice. The report confirmed, as reported at the time, that the Auckland lockdown in late 2021 went on six days longer than recommended by Ashley Bloomfield. I think Aucklanders would argue it went on six weeks longer than it should have, but hey ho, there we go. That's what they found. It also found that advice from health experts that under 18s in work shouldn't be mandated to have two vaccine doses because of the risk of cardiac myocarditis wasn't followed. Another finding was that the Auckland Northland border stayed in place over the 2021/22 Christmas period when it was advised it could be reopened. There was also criticism of the then Labour Government's economic approach, saying policies around stimulus and inflation became unaligned from mid ‘21. For unaligned, I'd have put unhinged, but again, hey ho, it's their report. And that was despite the best advice from Treasury that spending must be temperate, timely, and targeted. The people of New Zealand are now vulnerable for at least the next 40 years to another shock, another pandemic, an earthquake. We're built on the shaky isles, you know, there's bound to be another, and we are now really vulnerable because too much money was not just spent but wasted by the previous Labour Government. And it's not just Treasury or the Inquiry that have pointed the finger at Labour for their financial sloppiness. Auditor General John Ryan, as he was then, heavily criticised the $15 billion infrastructure spend up during the pandemic. He said he decided to look at the funding because of the scale of the investment and the potential intergenerational impacts. His criticism and list of failings by officials and ministers are many. This is from a man who could ask the hard questions and get the answers that he needed to get, unlike journos who had to go through the OIA to get any kind of answers to any pertinent questions. They were far too busy saving lives to give answers to genuine questions around lockdowns, around vaccinations, around mandates and the like. But even with the hard data in front of them, Chris Hipkins and the like just recycle the “it's hard to be sorry when you've saved lives" trope. The inquiry finishes: “These lessons do not detract from the overall success of the pandemic response. Indeed, our findings, lessons, and recommendations are offered in the hope that they will assist decision makers to be as successful in fighting a pandemic in the future." Well, with what you know now, do you believe that the response was a success? Do you believe that when all is said and done and you look at other countries and they've done their reports, it was a success? I'll be talking to an economic policy analyst from Sweden, I spoke to him before the show and we'll be playing that next hour. They've conducted a rigorous review of their response and, you know, given the choice next time, I think that's the one we should be following. And certainly, Europe would be looking long and hard at it. Despite Sweden coming under so much criticism and heavy fire for having a light touch and open policy, they had the lowest death rate amongst all the European countries. So, there are alternatives, there are options. This is not the way, the truth, and the light. And I don't think it's treasonous or misogynist or conspiracy theoretical to say there is another way of doing things and, do you know what, it might actually be better.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Government is doing its bit to protect children from themselves by banning the use of smartphones during the school day and by moving to bring in legislation restricting social media use for children under 16. The schools are doing their bit, although it's more mopping up than prevention, by bringing in counsellors to help children, some as young as eight, who've been exposed to extreme online content. The question is what are parents doing to protect their own children? Teachers talk about hearing students discussing their gaming exploits late into the night and doom scrolling TikTok, Snapchat, and Instagram, repeating objectionable things they've heard online that they don't really understand. I'm not in the position of having to deal with young ones and smartphones, not in terms of setting the rules. The young ones in my house, the just-turned-nine year old and seven year old, love using my phone to look at videos or to add music to their playlists on Spotify, so I've put controls on the phone, but then we couldn't get some of Eminem's stuff, so we had to go for the radio edit version of Eminem. And that's fine, we work around that, but I have put controls on the phone just in case. It's not them looking for it, it's the accidental discovery of things that you cannot unsee. But I don't have to set the rules around how many hours they can have and when they can view it – that's for their parents to do. But surely, and that's the way it works in our house, you set limits on what the kids can access, how much time they have to access it, when they can access it, and if they break those rules, their rights are rescinded. That hasn't happened yet, but they're not old enough I suppose to go looking for trouble. But surely that's the way it works. It always has worked. You set the rules and if the children break the rules, then there are consequences for that. Or has parenting suddenly been turned on its head since the year 2020? Why on earth should schools have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on counsellors to mitigate the harm children have exposed themselves to outside of school hours when they're supposed to be under parental supervision? One parent talked about getting up to go to the loo in the middle of the night and seeing the light behind the closed bedroom door – their daughter was on the phone at 1am. That's not the school's problem if she has access to material she finds harmful or if she's been exposed to material that's disturbed her. When you're looking at the amount of money that schools say they're having to spend because the kids are so upset and beside themselves, surely that money could be better spent on activities or resources for the school that all children could enjoy, rather than have it spent on a small number of traumatised late night scrollers. I'd really love to know what the rules are, what rules you've set. According to the Greens, it's pointless putting any kind of restrictions on children and social media use. Pointless having legislation around it because the kids will just get around any restrictions placed on them by the government. But as a parent, can you say that you have put protections in place that work, that you have got rules in place for your house that work, or has the whole concept of parenting as I understood it completely and utterly changed, that there are no rules and there are no consequences? See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Shipping prices could soon be rising for cheap online stores like Shein and Temu. Changes from next month will add fees and levies to small parcels crossing the border, making them fairer and helping cover Customs costs. It should save taxpayers $70 million in parcel subsidies. Customs Minister Casey Costello told Kerre Woodham Mornings border control can't cope with the more than 24 million packages entering New Zealand each year. She says the relationship between retailer and couriers may need changing, and could increase the price of some goods. LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

It was a glorious weekend. Somewhat marred when I read this story from Anna Leask in yesterday's New Zealand Herald. I really had to I really had to reset myself after reading this. Anna writes, urgent calls for change are mounting after a third Christchurch woman was murdered by a violent repeat offender who was subject to monitoring and a raft of prison release conditions designed to keep the community safe. Which it didn't. Nicole Tuxford, Juliana Herrera, and Chantal McDonald, three Christchurch women murdered in the place they should have been safest, in their own homes. All killed by men with long, documented histories of violence against women, including rape, kidnap, and even previous murders. Men who were released under supervision and conditions designed to keep the public safe. Nathan Boulter murdered Chantal McDonald in front of her kids, 13 days after he was released from prison where he'd been sent after terrorising, abusing, and kidnapping other women. In 2022 Juliana Herrera was murdered by a convicted rapist, Joseph Brider. He'd been released on parole 72 days before he crept into her house while she was sleeping and subjected her to a prolonged sexual and physical assault before stabbing her to death. And Nicole Tuxford was murdered by Paul Pounamu Tainui, otherwise known as Paul Russell Wilson, who was on parole for the earlier rape and murder of his girlfriend. The girlfriend he'd previously killed had told her mother it was just a matter of time before she ended up dead. She knew he was going to kill her. She knew he was going to do it sooner or later, and he did, and then he was sent to prison, and then he did it again. After each woman's murder, Corrections mounted a review. Corrections confirmed it communicated and worked with police and others in a multi agency group to monitor the parolees' risk and compliance with their conditions. Clearly they haven't learned any lessons. Not after the first one, not after the second, not after the third. There'll be a fourth and a fifth. And primarily, primarily it's because these men have been given sentences where they have to come out eventually. And then it's on Corrections to try and monitor them, and they can't be monitored. They have shown through their actions that they cannot be rehabilitated, if they could be habilitated at all. If they were given preventive detention, we, the community and women in particular, wouldn't have to worry. Have a look at Australia. You know, they are not considered a particularly backward, primitive society. You wouldn't think of Australia and think, oh yeah, but they're nutters, you know, they chop people's hands off in the square. No, they don't do that. But what they do do, is keep the community safe. A man who raped and killed an international student was sentenced to 30 years minimum jail term. The Crown appealed that because they said despite the fact he was 20 at the time of the attack, that he pleaded guilty, he had no criminal record and had not premeditated the offence, the Crown said its sheer violence meant the safety of the community needed to be placed above the limited prospect of him being rehabilitated when he was released. They argued the minimum 30 year sentence was manifestly inadequate for a 20 year old who pleaded guilty, who'd never had a history of criminal offending. And what do our judges do? Nine years, 10 years, 12 years for people with long, documented histories of violence and abuse. Another one, Derek Barrett, 32 initially sentenced to at least 34 years in jail in 2017 in Sydney for killing his 26 year old niece who was boarding with him and his wife at the time. It's 46 years. That's what the judge handed out, 46 years, and he's eligible for parole in 34 He probably won't get it because they found out later he'd done all sorts of unspeakable things when they found a USB. That's what that's how much the courts in Australia value the lives of women. Innocent women who have their lives completely and utterly destroyed in prolonged assaults by men who are very, very sick. Now, in our case, over the ditch in New Zealand, we knew these men were sick. They'd shown they were sick. They'd shown they had absolutely no interest in rehabilitation, and they'd been recalled to jail a number of times for assaults against women before they murdered again. Had our judges applied the same consideration in sentencing these men with their proven history, the other two in Australia had never put a foot wrong that anybody had found out about. They might have been deviant creeps in their in their private life, hadn't commit you know, they hadn't shown to the judges that they'd done anything wrong. These ones have. Join the dots. Could we make it any clearer? All three of those women named in Anna's article and many, many other women would still be alive today if we applied the sort of sentencing that Australian judges think is perfectly reasonable to apply to monsters who are sick and depraved and see women as a means of satisfaction. What will it take for our judges to hand down sentences to offenders that truly reflect the horror of their crimes. LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Over the weekend, a third Christchurch woman was murdered by a violent repeat offender who was subject to monitoring and prison release conditions designed to keep the community safe. Nicole Tuxford, Juliana Herrera, and Shantelle McDonald, three Christchurch women murdered in the place they should have been safest, in their own homes. All killed by men with long, documented histories of violence against women, including rape, kidnap, and even previous murders. Professor Emeritus in Sociology at University of Canterbury and Criminologist Greg Newbold joins Kerre Woodham to discuss the importance of NZ courts cracking down on violent crime, including a call to issue 'life without parole' sentences. LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

An explosive poll shows National has reached its lowest result since forming a Government, as Labour climbs ahead. The Taxpayers' Union-Curia poll has Labour on 34.4% as National drops six points behind to 28.4%. The Greens are on 10.5%, with NZ First trailing slightly on 9.7%, ACT on 7.5%, and Te Pati Māori on 3.2%. Director of Sherson Willis, Trish Sherson told Kerre Woodham the poll is a warning light. She says 28% isn't a death certificate, but it does indicate that National has a connection problem as well as a numbers problem. LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The medicinal cannabis industry could be worth billions of dollars to the country in the not-so-distant future, if regulation's improved. ACT leader David Seymour says he's looking at further improvements to speed up processing for exports of the plant. He's open to improving regulation domestically as well. Co-founder of NUBU Pharmaceuticals Mark Dye told Kerre Woodham New Zealand was one of the first countries to start cultivating cannabis for medical use. He says the sooner we lean into it, and back it, the sooner New Zealand could become known one of the best cannabis growing regions in the world. LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

When I heard David Seymour talking up the potential of New Zealand's medicinal cannabis industry, I was immediately transported to a world where the Far North was once again a thriving powerhouse of the New Zealand economy, as it used to be. Where bright young people could get meaningful jobs without having to leave home, where once again New Zealand's brilliant scientists combined with primary producers, just as they do in agriculture, to innovate and disrupt. Now, I realise I was getting a little ahead of myself, but only a bit. The medicinal cannabis export business is growing. A Ministry of Health paper released under the Official Information Act showed we exported more than a tonne of cannabis flower in 2024. That document was obtained by Newstalk ZB and showed that was more than double the 485.6 kilograms exported in 2023 So, you know, there is potential for growth there. I had the pleasure of visiting ANTG's cannabis growing facility in Armidale in New South Wales towards the end of last year. I had no idea what I was expecting to see when I went to see a cannabis growing lab, but it was just like visiting a high-level medical research lab, which is what it is. It's not a couple of old stoners growing some weed in the back garden. The security is military level. The level of hygiene and sanitation is exactly as you'd expect to see in a medical laboratory. Before you go in to where the bud has been dried and then is taken off the plant and put into the sterilised capsules to be sent off to its buyers, you have to go into a hermetically sealed room and then you have to put on outerwear and outer shoes and masks and then you can only go through one at a time. You're not allowed to pick anything up or put anything in your pocket. When you come back, you have to take off your outerwear. Like, it's the full rig. It's a full operation, as it should be. There's an entire research branch where you've got young graduates and young doctorate young people going through their doctorates working on they're either working in medicine, alternative therapies, horticulture, so there's a wide range of skills where they've been given research grants to either come up with ways of alleviating common conditions, get more out of the plant itself, find new ways of growing that are more that need less electricity or, you know, less of the anyway, it was amazing. I can't even begin to explain what I saw. Unless you've seen it, you probably unless you have been to something like this, you probably wouldn't appreciate the level of sophistication, the level of technology, the level of security that goes into exporting cannabis. We're so used to seeing cannabis as a way of gangs making money and people being sent to jail and it being something dirty and underhand. It's a complete reset of your thinking when you see it in this particular setting and this particular environment. In an interview, Seymour noted that people have said the industry could be the new high value export similar to New Zealand's wine industry. He said medicinal cannabis is some people's drug of choice and they're prepared to pay a lot of money for it. New Zealand could become, just as we are with wine, a high value powerhouse. He said the Government was looking to give exporters more permanent licenses to reduce red tape and bureaucracy and saw the rise in exports as a positive for the New Zealand economy. We need to get money into the country. Not everybody likes this stuff, but there is definitely a market for it, Seymour said. I would venture to suggest that not everybody likes the idea of cannabis being sold as a recreational drug. Some people really don't like that. Some people don't like the stuff because it's gang currency. Some people don't like the stuff because there are turf wars over it. But that's illegal cannabis. What we're talking about is medicinal cannabis, which is a whole universe away from the underhand drug dealing that goes on and is undertaken by gangs. This is next level with doctors, with scientists, with horticulturalists, with exporters putting their back into it and turning it into a billion-dollar industry. I think Seymour's quite right. I think we need to get absolutely in behind it and the very areas that would grow it best, where the investment should be, are the areas that need the jobs and the economic boost the most. The place I visited in New South Wales is just one of many, but is in a small rural area. Their primary industry appears to be private schools where farmers' daughters can take themselves and their ponies and be educated. And apart from that, it's medicinal cannabis. And it keeps really bright young minds in the district. There's a university there and the really bright ones get the research grants to be able to stay and work on cures for epilepsy and irritable bowel syndrome. There's a whole range of things they're working on. So I'm all for it. I see a golden future or a green-gold future. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I'd be getting seriously brassed off if I was a primary school teacher, especially if I was a non-union primary school teacher. The NZEI has been in protracted negotiations with the Public Service Commissioner and the Government over pay and conditions. Every other teaching union has negotiated its own deal for its teachers, its principals, and its support staff, but not the NZEI. The Treaty of Waitangi was a big sticking point for them for a while, but according to Sir Brian Roche, who was on with Mike Hosking this morning, that's no longer the major roadblock it has been. At the moment, primary teachers are teaching the new curriculum, and it's amazing. I've seen the homework books. If you've got little ones in your house, primary school students in your house, you will have seen them too. It's your building block stuff. The kids are responding to it because the teachers are presenting it well. They're doing the job already. They're presenting the curriculum, and in my case, I can see that they're doing it well. The children are engaged, they're excited. The older siblings are like, “why didn't we get these books? Why didn't we have these?" They feel like they've missed out, and to a certain extent they have. A whole generation of kids has missed out. So they're doing a great job, but they're not getting paid for it because the NZEI is holding out. They're refusing to budge on the pay and conditions negotiations. They chose not to present the latest offer to its members, so the primary teachers couldn't even decide for themselves whether this was a deal they could accept or not. Sir Brian Roche, the Public Service Commissioner, sounds increasingly brassed off. He told Mike Hosking this morning that there is no question that the union works hard for its members, but he does wonder whether the union's acting in the best interests of teachers by failing to even inform its members of the conditions of the latest offer. “They work very hard for their union members. There's no question about that and provide a range of services. But on this particular issue, I find it deeply frustrating that our offers are not being put directly to their members.” Why would you not? Members of the union have now rejected three proposed settlements. An offer agreed in December was comparable to what secondary teachers accepted last year, but ultimately, when the union took it back to its members, they didn't ratify it. Teachers know there are no lump sums or back pay available in this bargaining round, according to Sir Brian, so every week without settlement is money the teachers aren't receiving – between $50 and $76 per week. What exactly is it? What is it that the unions find so repugnant that they cannot bring themselves to even bring it to their members? And if you are a union member, do you accept that your delegates are qualified to make the decisions on your behalf? Do you trust that they will do right by you? Surely, you'd want to see what was being offered, wouldn't you? Or is that what you pay your union dues for? Sir Brian says that he's looking at a way to present the pay and conditions offer to non-union teachers. We've been trying to find how many non-union teachers there are. Apparently that's secret squirrel stuff and it's buried deep – not even AI has the answer to how many non union members of NZEI there are. We're trying to find out. So if you're a non union member, you'd be getting even more frustrated. Apparently, he's bound by confidentiality agreements where he can't present to the non-union members what he's presenting to the union. But he says he's looking for workarounds on that to allow the non-union members to get on and get that extra money in their pockets right now for the work they're doing right now, and many of them are doing really well right now. Presumably primary teachers are in the classroom teaching, doing what they do best, so they can't respond. Maybe there's a few home with, you know, head colds or what have you for whatever reason. But I would love to hear your view on whether your union is doing right by you, whether you're like, “Absolutely, hold fast, stay firm, don't give in to the government overlords on this one." But if you are a union member, do you feel that your delegates do right by you? Are you getting value for money from the dues that are deducted from your pay every month or every two weeks? When you look at this, it just seems so old fashioned. And I totally get that unions are there for people who don't have a voice, who can't speak up for themselves, who haven't got the bargaining power. But surely articulate, intelligent, capable, self-possessed teachers would be able to bargain their own pay and conditions. Why would you need a union? Why would you need a union delegate to do it for you? And I guess the same goes for, I don't even know who's the big unions anymore. I think you've got the ones for the cleaners, home help. They do a great job because a lot of those people wouldn't be in the position to throw their weight around and demand better pay and conditions. So good if you're doing it on their behalf. But seriously, unions are going to negotiate themselves out of existence soon. They're halfway there already. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I just want to get your opinion. This follows a, shall we say, spirited discussion in the office around people who are trapped overseas and how they get home. I'd love to hear from people who might have been in this position before, trapped overseas because of acts of war or closed borders or forces of nature. What did you do and what was your expectation? Did you think it was the responsibility of the government taxpayer to get you home? And if you had chosen to live overseas and then the world turned mad, again, is it the responsibility of the government taxpayer to get you home? I find it really interesting and a little bit sad that people are complaining the government taxpayer should be doing more to help family members trapped in Dubai because of the enormous disruption to flights caused by the Iranian conflict. Sure, the Government sent a Defence Force plane to Iran last year during the Israel-Iran conflict, and during Covid we partnered with Australia to get stranded travellers out of Wuhan in 2020, but I really don't believe there should be an expectation that if you have chosen to travel or chosen to live in another country and then the mud hits the fan for whatever reason, that you will automatically and immediately be rescued. I had family living overseas in London for a while, and if they had suddenly found themselves in the middle of a war, I'd be doing all I could to get them out. And if there was a plane there, I would want them on it, whether it was a government plane, a commercial aircraft, whatever, I would be doing all I could to get them out of there, absolutely. But I wouldn't expect the government taxpayer to do it for me. I have been stranded overseas before when the Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajökull blew up. I was in Paris doing the Paris Marathon, airspace over Europe was closed, travel insurance didn't help, and you were on your own. And there are worse places to be than trapped in Paris in the springtime, I will grant you that. And it was ash blowing into the cities, not Iranian missiles, but statistically right now, although that could change at any minute, there would be more chance of me being run over on the Champs Élysées back then than killed by a missile in Dubai right now. But that's statistics and that emotion doesn't come into it, I get that. When your loved ones are stranded overseas, you want them home and you want them safe. But is it on the taxpayer to provide that? I don't think so, but am I being a heartless moll? I've been accused of that before. But I just, you know, I get the emotion, I totally do, because I've been there. You want your loved ones home, you want to get home, but I never assumed that my first port of call would be the Government. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I was listening to the podcast ‘The Rest is Politics' last night. The speakers were saying that Trump's inclination to invade countries at will, will almost certainly result in nuclear proliferation and will drive countries to find protection in the shadow of Russia and China. The thinking being, what will stop the big orange guy from invading me? Nuclear warheads. Or a mate as big as he is. And then what do you know, a couple of hours later President Macron announced that France is to boost its nuclear arsenal and extend the deterrent to cover other European countries. It's a major development of its nuclear defence policy. The next 50 years, he said, will be an era of nuclear weapons. He said eight other European countries, the UK, Germany, Poland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Greece, Sweden, and Denmark had agreed to participate in a new advanced deterrent strategy. The aim, he said, is to convince potential adversaries that if they have the audacity to attack France, there will be an unsustainable price to be paid. Anyway, back to the future we go. Remember MAD magazine, the American satirical magazine? It was huge in the 60s and 70s and took its name from mutually assured destruction. Sure, press the button, but if you press the button, I press the button and we both go. The catchphrase for MAD magazine was “What, me worry?" And yep, we're back there. You just watch those Golden Visas fly off the shelf as wealthy Americans and Europeans look for a safe haven. Our isolation can work to our advantage. At the moment, when it comes to nuclear weapons, nuclear warheads, there are nine countries that have them. Russia has around 5,500, the US just over 5,000, China 600 – they're rapidly expanding their stockpile. France has 290 stable and mostly sea based as of yesterday, but today it'll be a different story. The UK 225, India 180, they're increasing their stockpile, Pakistan 170, increasing their stockpile. Israel has kept shtum about how many it has, and North Korea, who would know? But experts say they're actively testing and expanding. You've also got countries that host nuclear weapons: Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Turkey host US and NATO weapons. Belarus has Russian tactical nuclear weapons. So, 50 years of nuclear weaponry Macron is predicting, where mutually assured destruction is the only thing stopping people from pressing the button. It happened before and we got through it. And it does, I mean, you would have to have a death wish for yourself and your people and your country. But are there any guarantees on human behaviour these days? Given our isolation, will that work to our advantage? Hopefully, to a certain extent. We don't have anything of major military strategic importance. No minerals that you can only find here that can be used to make a super bomb, and then we should be relatively safe. As of late February this year, the Active Investor Plus, the Golden Visa program, has seen 573 applications received, 196 applications approved, and you can imagine that that will increase. Coming back to The Rest is Politics' theory that as a result of America going into Venezuela and attacking Iran, that will see smaller countries looking to buy nuclear weapons to keep themselves safe or looking to cosy up to Russia and China. That theory is all well and good, but we should remember that having nuclear weapons didn't stop the US from attacking Iran. They just neutralised the nukes before they went in. And having Russia as your mate, “don't attack me, I've got Russia in my corner," is all very well and good, but as Syria's Bashar al Assad and Venezuela's Maduro and now the mullahs in Iran have found, Russia right now is all talk and no trousers. It can do a great line in rhetoric and they've given their friends a lot of verbal support, which will be pretty cold comfort, but when it comes to on the ground troops and military resources to go in and back up their mates, they're all tied up in Ukraine right now and Russia won't want to commit to wars on two fronts in two different zones. So, mutually assured destruction, the threat of one keeping someone pressing the button keeping you from pressing yours, worked before. Tensions eased and there was a relative period of peace. Can you see the same thing happening again? Tensions will rise, tensions will get high, people will get very nervous, and then we can all relax. Do you see New Zealand's isolation as its best defence?See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Golfer Daniel Hillier's won the New Zealand Open by two strokes at Millbrook, eight days after getting married. The 27-year-old finished at 22-under overall after a final round four-under par 67, marking the first time a Kiwi has won the tournament since 2017. Hillier told Kerre Woodham that the crowds were among the best he's played in front of. LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

When it comes to telling stories about what I did in my weekend, I thought I had a pretty good one, but Donald Trump takes the cake. Bombing the hell out of Iran and taking out the Ayatollah Khamenei and other key members of the ruling theocracy surely trumps what most of us did. As you will know by now, the United States and Israel launched strikes on Iran beginning Saturday. There were talks going on between Washington and Tehran over Iran's nuclear programme, or what remains of it. But the US and Israel decided the talk was going nowhere, and so on Saturday the strikes began. Iran responded to the attacks with missile and air strikes across the region, including in Israel, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Iraq, creating havoc across the Middle East. Hundreds have been killed, the majority in Iran. Despite that, that's nowhere near as many have been killed Iranians as have been killed by their own government's agents in the form of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard. Donald Trump says the operation is ahead of schedule. Commentators have said it's difficult to know what will happen next in Iran, what the outcome of taking out the top tier of Iran's rulers will bring about. But it's difficult to know what President Trump's endgame is too. We don't know what's going to happen next with him, as Middle East correspondent at The Economist and political author Gregg Carlstrom said this morning on the Mike Hosking Breakfast. We've heard wildly different stories from Donald Trump about what he's trying to achieve here. His video message announcing the the war on Saturday morning suggested that the aim was regime change, that he wanted Iranians to come out into the streets and overthrow the government and take control in Iran. But then in an interview with The Atlantic magazine that was published just about an hour ago, he said that the Iranians want to talk, and so he's going to talk to them. Maybe there's a diplomatic deal that he can make with this regime that just a day ago he was suggesting to overthrow. So I think it's hard to assess whether this is, you know, successful or not from the American perspective because it's not entirely clear what the Americans want. Indeed, or what will happen next. It's an ongoing situation. There is apparently a complex but clear process to select a successor to Iran's Supreme Leader, who was also the Commander in Chief. In line with Iran's constitution, a three member interim leadership council is now in charge. They will rule until the body tasked with selecting the top cleric, the Assembly of Experts, completes its work. They can choose an individual or they can choose a leadership council. Trump just a few hours ago told a reporter from The Atlantic that the country's new leadership, so it would be this interim leadership council, wants to talk with him. He plans to do that. He said they want to talk, I've agreed to talk, so I'll be talking to them. They should have done it sooner. They should have given what was very practical and easy to do sooner. They waited too long. There is no great love amongst the people of Iran for the current regime. There are reports of Iranian citizens rejoicing in the streets in the midst of the strikes, ecstatic that the Ayatollah is gone. And you can understand why, as I referenced, since the beginning of the 25 26 Iranian protests, there have been widespread massacres of civilians at the behest of the Iranian government. According to the Iranian government, oh, we've only killed 3,117 which is a hell of a lot more than the combined US Israeli air strikes. The people themselves say we think it's around 36 and a half thousand machine gunned down in the streets, making these among the largest massacres in the modern history of Iran. There's been a near total internet shutdown by Iranian authorities as part of their crackdown on the protests, restricting communication inside the country and limiting the flow of information about the killings to the outside world. They are bad people, which has put the which has put the lovies in a quandary. Hate Trump, but Iranian leader bad too. What do we do? Incredibly, the world is more complex than a black and white scenario. So what happens next? Nobody knows. Ideally, the Iranian people would decide for themselves in a peaceful transition from theocracy to democracy, but I would not put money on it. Iran holds the world's third or fourth largest proven oil reserves, representing about 12 to 13% of the global total as of early 2026. That makes it of interest to many, many countries. And you'd have to wonder whether this is the end of the United Nations and the re-emergence of the strongest country wins. Might makes right. There is absolutely no doubt that the UN is a rotting, corrupt, inept gravy train full of mediocre international officials who are I'm sure there are some who are there for very, very good reasons. The vast majority appear to be there to feather their own nests. It's failing and has been failing for a very, very, very long time. For a couple of decades it did good work. It kept the world peaceful. It hasn't been working for a long time, utterly ineffectual and costing countries a fortune to maintain for nothing. But is Trump invading countries on a whim the best option? The next best alternative? There's got to be something in between. He even went against his own constitution by going, you know what, Iran, I'm in. I'm going in. I don't know. The world is an uncertain and uneasy place right now, and I see no solution anytime soon. LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The 105th New Zealand Golf Open has teed off at Millbrook. It's a unique Pro-Am event, where 156 professionals compete alongside amateur partners, and is the only Open tournament in the world to be played in this format. Australian Ryan Peake won the title in 2025, and has returned to defend it in 2026. Chairman John Hart told Kerre Woodham the Pro-Am format is the reason the tournament is so successful, and that if it were solely professionals, they'd struggle to hold the funding. He says it's established itself as one of the leading Pro-Am tournaments in the world, and has gotten fantastic recognition from tours they work with and professional players. LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Another way of keeping older folks safer on the roads. Aucklander Boyd Steel has started a business producing ‘S' plates – a car sticker designed to let other drivers know there's an older driver behind the wheel. The blue sticker is similar to the yellow ‘L' plate for learner drivers, signalling that the driver may be slower or less confident and asking for patience. Steel told Kerre Woodham it was inspired by his nana, for who driving was an important part of her freedom, but had become slow driver towards the end of her life. “It wasn't until sort of after she passed, and I sort of started seeing other senior drivers on the road, I just started thinking, God, I hope no one ever gave her a hard time.” LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I can't even believe we're having to discuss this, but we are. It seems absolutely ludicrous that drunk drivers who say, kill their passengers, maim their passengers, smash their own selves up after crashing their vehicles —hopefully not into innocent victims, but sometimes it will be— are able to claim ACC, but the volunteer firefighters and the first responders who are volunteers who respond to the crash and have to deal with the horror of the aftermath, quite often they will know the people involved if it happens in a small community. If they're the ones that have to unwrap a kid from a drive shaft, they are not able to claim ACC for trauma counselling or PTSD. What they do is considered a leisure activity. Volunteers have been lobbying the Government to change the legislation for years. In 2025 a petition with 36,500 signatures was presented to Parliament but was ultimately unsuccessful. Now Land Search and Rescue are pushing the Government to reconsider, saying January's Mount Maunganui tragedy showed the level of trauma they're repeatedly exposed to with no long-term protection. So as it works at the moment, ACC can provide broad physical injury cover to volunteers, and that would be the same to you and me. Those of us who don't lift a finger to help others in our community, same sort of thing. The volunteers can access that. So if they got a physical injury and that resulted in a mental injury, that would be covered by ACC. But unlike employees, volunteers don't get any support for mental injury caused by what they see on the job. So somebody standing next to them, a paid police officer who was horrified by what they'd seen, would have access to ACC for counselling. They would not. Because what they're doing when they're saving lives and doing the most horrific clean up is a leisure activity as defined by law. ACC cannot under law right now help mentally unwell volunteer emergency responders. LandSAR Chief Executive Wendy Wright agrees the legislation falls far short when we look at the reliance we have as a country on volunteers across emergency services and search and rescue. 95% of the search and rescue workforce are volunteers. And look at the firefighters – as of 2024 there are approximately 11,800 to 12,000 volunteer firefighters in New Zealand. They make up around 80 to 85% of the country's total firefighting force. These volunteers who primarily serve the small towns, the rural areas, the outer suburbs, provide more than 820 million in annual value to the community if you want to put a dollar value on it. They basically keep communities together. They save lives within their communities. They deal with the trauma that accidents cause local communities. They are their local communities. Apparently, I've struggled to find any kind of rationale for denying them. Apparently it's going to open the floodgates for other volunteers in other in other fields. Apparently we can't afford it. Not every volunteer is going to need counselling. Not every volunteer wants to go to counselling. Not every paid employee wants it or needs it. There was a time when the UK tried to force their police officers to go to counselling. For some it was it was the last thing they needed. Their minds did not need to go over and over and over what they'd seen. They were able to compartmentalise and stay healthy. That was the way their minds worked. So they've scrapped that. You don't have to go now, but it should be an option, it should be a choice, it should be available for these incredible men and women who give up their time, give up their weekends, are willing to be roused in the middle of the night to go and try and save someone from themselves. The very least we can do when they finally get back to bed after working through the night is help them sleep soundly and not have to live with the recurring nightmares that come with PTSD that is left untreated. We owe it to them. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

There's been a second major medical platform hack, leaving live patients labelled as dead and people's names changed to Charlie Kirk, the American activist who was shot dead last year – assassinated really. MediMap is widely used across New Zealand. It's often used by the aged care, disability, hospice and community health sectors. It's the second major cyber-attack on medical files and records in recent weeks after Manage My Health was hit at the end of last year, start of this year. Manage My Health's portal systems were compromised over the New Year holiday, putting the data of more than 120,000 users at risk. But it seems the two breaches are vastly different. Manage My Health was a ransomware attack conducted by a professional hacker, Kazu, not their real name, said they were motivated by notoriety and by profit. And there are thousands like Kazu. Think Roddy Ho in Slow Horses – annoying little geniuses who are completely removed from the rest of the world, who think along a different code, who live a different life. They do it because they can, because they think they're so clever and they want to prove it to their peers. They love showing off their hacking abilities. In some cases, they demand a ransom, in some cases they're motivated by profit, in other cases not. And generally, when the ransom is paid, they're terribly professional, you never hear another word from them. They take the money, they go and hit somebody else. In the case of MediMap, it seems there was a different motivation as Geoffrey Sayer from MediMap told Mike Hosking this morning. “What people would imagine a cyber hack is, is you've come in and brute forced and you've gone through a vulnerability in the software or the platform. This has not been the case. They've used credentials to come in, for all intents and purposes they look like a regular user, but what they started to do was not what a regular user does, which is why we shut the system down and contained it and are now working with forensic experts and government agencies to understand what's happened and then how do we bring this back online for people. We can trace it to a profile, I suppose is the best way to describe it, but we've subsequently become aware that that profile quite possibly had been compromised with their credentials.” So it could have been a staff member's kid or partner or just somebody who had access to that code. And we actually were having a discussion before we came on air, I said to the boss because I'd been broadcasting from home for the first two weeks, I said if one of the grandkids was tinkering around on the computer, would they be able to get into the radio station basically and move things around? And he said no, there's about three or four different passwords, but I don't have access to the inner workings. I need to be guided through it anyway and given different passwords at different points. So there could be no accidental hacking of this radio station by anybody at my house. These are not the first hacks, and they won't be the last. We have to accept that if we want the convenience of living in an online world, we're vulnerable, especially when we are complete tits when it comes to our security. Guess what the most common password is and has been for years? Yep, ‘123456'. Second most common, this is worldwide, not just New Zealand, second most common is ‘password', third is ‘admin', fourth is ‘qwerty', and the fifth is ‘12345678' – that'll fool them, adding the seven and the eight at the end, hey? I mean you don't even have to be a particularly good hacker to get into most people's computers. But what if you're scrupulous about your privacy? Sure, there should be tougher penalties for the hackers, but what about those who store our information, who demand it? How many places do we go where even the retail assistants, their KPI is to harvest our email addresses, to get them from us and the more they get, the more they're rewarded. Those who store our information should understand that it's a privilege. They use it. They can make money from it, they can profit from it. So should companies be held accountable if their security is breached? Should they have to pay some really serious fines so they get really serious about their security? In the case of MediMap, they handled that vastly differently. Different circumstances, but they handled it so much better than Manage My Health. They realised that somebody had access who legitimately got into the computer, to all intents and purposes the computer thought, yep, that's fine, come on in, you're welcome. Then once they started fiddling around, the computer recognised that something was going on that shouldn't be occurring and shut itself down. So different circumstances. But how much onus should be on the companies to protect our data and our information? There are millions of Roddy Hos out there, all wanting to show they're the cleverest thing in the whole wide world. How much should be on us to change our password and put in basic security protocols? And how can we stay or limit our presence online? Is there any way of having our cake and eating it too, to have the convenience of an online world without basically being laid bare and naked before the whole wide world. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Credit to those 120 business people who went along to hear Chris Hipkins' State of the Nation address yesterday, hosted by the Auckland Business Chamber. Credit to those few people who watched it live, like my colleague Mike Hosking. My word, it was dull. And that is not me being a lickspittle mouthpiece for the Tory overlords. Have a listen to this: “I know we didn't get everything right when we were in government last time. Many of you have been very clear on what you think we did wrong. But one thing is clear, we were trying to do too much, too fast, and we weren't focused enough. We're going to be making further announcements later in the year as we get closer to the election. But I want to be very, very clear on this. I want to know that I can deliver on any promises that I make. That's the standard that I'll be holding myself to and our next Labour Government to. “Because frankly, Kiwis have had enough of promises that aren't kept. And I don't want to repeat that cycle. We won't try and do everything in our first term. We'll be focusing on what matters the most and delivering on those things. I'm not promising perfection. Where we make mistakes, I'll take responsibility for those. But I'm promising this: a government that puts the cost of living first, a government that partners with business to create jobs and raise wages, a government that invests in our people and backs our potential. Not just managing the country, building it.” Yes. So there was another 20 odd minutes of the same, 20 odd minutes. He banged on about affordability, that word was used a lot. Repeated the mantra I first heard when he came in for the quarterly catch up, and which we will no doubt hear throughout the campaign: jobs, health, homes. He went big on renewable energy, promised Labour would scrap the Government's proposed gas import terminal. Also went big on his future fund. As speeches go, he was no JFK. It is not one for the history books. But commentators say that was by design, like Tim Murphy from Newsroom. Tim says this was Labour trying to convey maturity, a little contrition, humility, and to claim it could be the adult in the room now and after the November 7 election. Luke Malpass from The Press says the speech was to present as a calm port in a cost of living storm, to be dependable, reliable, and boring even. That was the aim. Well, that's something Labour's achieved. Above all else, says Luke, at this stage of the game, to not change the strategy that has served Labour well so far, which is not say much, not do much, not announce much. And it has worked for them. When there is nothing that you can argue against, it's steady as she goes. They're just letting the Coalition Government make mistakes, or not work fast enough, or not be snazzy enough for the electorate, and they're just sitting there and collecting the votes of the centre, who are underwhelmed by the Coalition Government. Basically, they're saying vote for this Chris because he's not Christopher Luxon and we're not National. But that works both ways. You might not be wowed by the Coalition Government and the Prime Minister, but the message could be at least they're not Labour, Greens, and Te Pāti Māori, and at least Christopher Luxon isn't the Chris that was in charge last time. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I am torn on this one because I know somebody needs to do something. That classic old talkback quote, Somebody needs to do something." Well, somebody has. The government is giving police new powers to crack down on beggars, rough sleepers, and basically nasty oiks. Yesterday, Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith, Police Minister Mark Mitchell announced the new move on orders and details around when they'll be issued and who they will target. Goldsmith said we should not accept our city centres becoming places of intimidation and dysfunction. He said our main streets and town centres have been blighted by disruption and disturbance, and inner city businesses are suffering as a result. And he's right. We've had many Auckland central city business people ringing in at their wits' end about what to do with people who've been sleeping and soiling in their shop doorways and who threaten and intimidate their customers. But the police are right, yet again, they're being told to do the dirty work, the mopping up when other agencies fail, just as they had to do when mental health services were failing the mentally ill. President of the Police Association Steve Watt told the Mike Hosking Breakfast this morning, it's not the police's job to move on the homeless. It's about getting the right resource to tackle the problem. And I appreciate police are that 24 7 agency that always respond, that get things done. But the reality is, is we can't be the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff every time. What we have to do is look at the problem That's what the police are, Steve. What we have to do is look at the problem and determine what's the best resource to deal with it. And I'd suggest in this case, it's not police. You sound like a social worker. If somebody's lying across the footpath and abusing me because they're high on drugs and they're causing a disturbance to the peace and I can't open my business or I can't go into a shop, that's your job, isn't it? And when you talk about the Summary Offences Act, there's offences in there that we can deal with disorderly behaviour. We can arrest people for disorderly behaviour. We can arrest people for threatening behaviour, offensive behaviour. That's not an issue, and we do that on a daily basis. That's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about move on orders from someone who hasn't committed an offence. And that's the thing, isn't it? That was Steve Watt, and to be fair, there was a fairly negative reaction to his comments. Oh, get tough, get hard." But if you've met one homeless person, you've met one homeless person. They can't all be lumped together as one hopeless, God forsaken bunch. Some of them are gentle, kind, broken souls, and I say that because I've met them and I've talked to them. And I think the police have too. So the police know there's a huge number of reasons as to why people are on the street. So some of them are just broken. They're gentle, they're kind, they're good, they're doing their best in a hopeless situation. Others are crazy, angry, broken souls, like the completely methed out old crone that takes her clothes off, climbs a tree God, the poor tree, you know, nature doesn't judge and that's a beautiful thing, but passers by can and do and shrieks at people from the top of the tree. You know, like, no, not good. Some have been on the street since they were kids because no matter how bad the streets are, it's better than the place they call home. Others are victims of circumstance. Remember the man who rang us? He was living in his car despite being a homeowner and formerly having a six figure salary. The drink had got to him. So in a moment of absolute clarity, he'd put tenants in the house so he didn't lose it and couch surfed till all his friends gave up on him they'd had a gutsful and he was living in his car waiting to get into a treatment centre. And I hope he's there now. I think he should be, shouldn't he, Helen? He said he was I think due to go in. And I hope he's doing well. And I have met some really lovely, lovely humans who happen to be homeless, some by choice, some by circumstance. I've also endured foul mouthed, foul smelling, aggressive humans who I've had to cross the road to get away from. So you can't just lump the homeless into one lot. There's a thousand different reasons why they're there, and the police are quite right. The agencies, the social agencies are the ones who should be trying to help them. Some of them won't be helped. And if, you know, if they're committing crimes, move them on. None of us should have to put up with abuse and intimidation, nor deal with the filth created by other people, no matter how damaged they are. So I'm really torn. You know, as the police say, if we're moving on the rough sleepers, who's responding to your burglary? Well, Steve, actually at the moment nobody is. You know, very few, you don't get an instant police response at the moment anyway, so it's not like you're going to be suddenly dragged away from my burglary to move a rough sleeper on. Something had to be done. I quite agree. You just can't have the kind of fighting, nakedness, foulness anywhere. Nobody should have to put up with that, least of all people who are getting up early and trying to make a living, and the customers who are trying to support them shouldn't have to deal with that sort of nonsense either. But at the same time, we need agencies to help those who want help, who would like to be helped, who would like to live in a home. And if that's the agencies not doing their job, then get onto them rather than leave it to the police to do the mopping up yet again. LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Government is providing police with the power to issue move-on orders as a tool to deal with disorderly behaviour in public places. But, the Police Association says it can't always be the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff. President Steve Watt says these people on the streets have complex problems, include housing, mental health and financial issues - and Police aren't equipped to deal with these. Minister of Police Mark Mitchell told Kerre Woodham that the Police Association had the same response to the gang patch ban, yet were able to act once the law was in place. LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We thought we'd start with the housing densification or de-densification that was announced yesterday. We didn't really get a chance to talk about it despite the fact that yesterday when the Prime Minister was in for an hour, he gave us a bit of an announcement of an announcement. “Long story short is what Chris will announce is a significant reduction in the capacity, which means that then actually that pressure of intensifying our suburbs in Auckland goes away. And what we want to see is intensification happening in the right places. Over the CBD, the transport hubs, the town centres, we should be densifying and putting more intensification. So where would the density occur? Should occur in the CBD, in the town centres, in the transport hubs that we've got across the across Auckland City, but not in the suburbs.” Didn't have to wait very long for the actual announcement, because a few hours later, Housing Minister Chris Bishop announced sweeping changes to housing densification in Auckland, with dwelling capacity being slashed from 2 million homes to 1.6 million. The housing intensification will still go ahead near transport hubs, rail corridors, and the CBD. Chris Bishop said yesterday that the 2 million housing figure had become a red herring that transformed into a lightning rod. Basically, people felt that 2 million houses would be put up right next door to them. That was the kind of irrational thinking behind it. There were concerns about who would be there, what sort of housing developments would go there, where people would shop, how people would get to work, where people would go to school. They were legitimate concerns, but there was, I agree with Chris Bishop, that 2 million suddenly became 2 million people will be next door to me. And he said the changes made yesterday were a response to public feedback. Hamish Firth, who you will have heard on this show before, who is most excellent, who is an urban planner, who was stolen by the Mike Hosking Breakfast this morning, said the changes announced by the Minister yesterday made sense. “What we've got to be very careful when you suddenly throw 2 million out there is you create paper capacity, but you're going to create community backlash, you're going to create land value distortion, and you're probably not going to create any extra homes, especially against the backdrop of what was a very well written Auckland Unitary Plan. At the end of the day, targets don't build houses, infrastructure and feasibility do. And what you'll find right now is a lot of high rise buildings are very expensive to build, and they only get built, as you're starting to see, in very high end areas where the developer can achieve a very high end outcome. So just because you can build to 50 doesn't mean many of these sites will or may, and I think that some thought has to go into that.” Does this allay the fears you might have had about intensification of housing? Does the fact that the Government has listened show a government that is concerned and understands and appreciates the fears of well, many around the country, because what happens in Auckland quite often filters through to the rest of the country? That by being willing to listen, that shows, you know, a reasonable kind of a government. Labour was shouting about a u-turn and they've got it all wrong and they've had to backpedal. But a couple of texters yesterday, because I said to the Prime Minister yesterday, this just looks like you're looking after the voters in the leafy suburbs. And a couple of people from the leafy suburbs said it makes no sense to put people in areas where there is no transport hub, where there are no schools. And I think that's a perfectly valid point and I accept that. And when the PM said yesterday that you could pop up housing developments, you know, put 100 homes into an area without having to provide for transport, without having to provide for schools, there was no thought to it, you could just sell off the land and the council'd say, “Yeah, sure, you can turn that into a development," – that doesn't make sense either. There's got to be planning and forethought when you are putting in new homes. That's what will create a thriving community. Putting it around the transport hubs, great. Putting it in the CBD and the and the suburbs closest to the CBD, great. Watch new communities develop. Does that allay the fears that people had now? First home buyers, there have never been more of them right now, and that's pleasing. We never want to see the kind of rorting and speculation that we saw with housing prices, and an increase in supply will help mitigate that. And we don't want to see people stranded in the middle of nowhere in housing developments that have put a roof over their head but precious little else. So love to hear from you on this, especially if you had concerns at the time. Does this kind of tinkering with the plan, this kind of revisiting of the plan, is that a tick for the government to say, Okay, you took the feedback on, you listened," and does this make you perhaps less fearful of what housing intensification is going to look like, what providing homes for future New Zealanders looks like in the future. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

An unprecedented day continues for the UK, with Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor released under investigation after his arrest overnight. The former Prince has been pictured leaving a Norfolk police station following allegations he shared sensitive information with late sex-offender Jeffrey Epstein. Searches have taken place at addresses in Berkshire and Norfolk. His brother King Charles has stressed the law must take its course. UK Correspondent Gavin Grey told Kerre Woodham Mountbatten-Windsor is maintaining his complete innocence, despite this being only one of a number of police investigations around him. LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Official Cash Rate has been left unchanged, 2.25%, expected by all the commentators, but perhaps less expected was a dovish view of the future. It was the new Reserve Bank Governor's, well she's not that new I suppose, the newish Reserve Bank Governor's first OCR review, having come on board at the end of '25. She is pretty optimistic about the economy. She said it will continue to recover, but she understands that many households are not feeling it yet. Must be rather annoying being told, no, everything's fine, everything's turning around, everything's great, while you're looking down the back of the couch for coins to get the kids' school lunches. But there are great numbers coming out of our primary industry sector and thank God for you. Just take a moment on your tractor, in your shed, on the motorbike, in the fields, just take a little moment to have a big deep breath and consider yourself congratulated and thanked. Kiwifruit, dairy, sheep, beef, yet again that sector, our primary industry sector, is doing the heavy lifting to keep the engine of the economy running. How many times? And we should point out, you were doing it with one hand and one leg tied behind your back for much of the past decade. So thank you again for keeping us going, producing stuff that the rest of the world wants. However, we can't depend on you, we shouldn't be as reliant upon you as we all are. Trends change, markets change, you know, all of a sudden, the world will decide that, oh I don't know, refined sugar is the way to go, not protein, and all of a sudden, the world will change. Unlikely to go for refined sugar, but you know what I mean. You're also vulnerable to climate, you know, a good season needs good weather. You're vulnerable to external markets. To a certain extent you are not the author of your own fortune, you are very dependent on outside and external sources. And if you're dependent on that, so too are we. We need to find other strands, other sectors to build up. You know, technology would be ideal and we've made some great marks in that, bioscience, fantastic, but not houses. Let's not look at an unproductive sector of the economy to provide us with wealth again. House prices have come back a little in the North Island, Auckland's average asking price is once again over a million dollars, and you should see the tat you get for that. That's up 9% from December. Tale of two islands: Christchurch, Queenstown, Otago, Southland, all seen significant increases in prices. But the “drop in value” has seen a drop in confidence. Reserve Bank's Paul Conway says the reduced prominence of the wealth effect from higher house prices is a risk to the economic recovery. It's a big change, he says, for the New Zealand economy to not have that increase in house prices as a kicker to aggregate demand. He says there may well have been structural changes in the housing market that means an increase in demand for housing no longer equates with higher house prices. And it's true, for a couple of decades Kiwi property owners have been living off the wealth of their main asset. There were astronomical rises in the value of homes around the country and people felt wealthy and spent like they were wealthy. A chronic undersupply of homes, high migration, low interest rates saw huge rises in the value of homes around the country and so people spent like they were rich. All of a sudden, a home became far more than a place you lived in, it was an asset with equity which you could use to springboard yourself into wealth, as so many of the ads that we ran on this station told you. People spent like drunken sailors and the economy boomed. Fast track to the post Covid slump and people have seen their house prices drop – in some horrible cases they owe more on their house than they can sell it for. And as Paul Conway says, there may well have been structural changes to the housing market. High prices for the essentials means there's less disposable income in households and if one of you has been made redundant, it has been a tough few years. We've lost our groove. But as Reserve Bank Governor Dr. Anne Bremen told Mike Hosking this morning, there's enormous potential in the New Zealand economy and there are reasons to be optimistic. “I think it's a great economy. I think New Zealanders are underestimating actually the potential going forward in the New Zealand economy. We're already seeing some sectors doing really well, agriculture, manufacturing is starting going, and I do expect this to broaden in this year. So I'm very positive. We actually think there's quite a lot of what we call spare capacity in the economy, so we think that the economy can grow at a higher pace without causing so much inflationary pressure because there is still high unemployment, firms can increase, you know, manufacturing without having, they're starting to invest actually, which is also really good to see. So we do think there is spare capacity. And I know people, there is a lot of good potential in this economy. People should be a bit more optimistic.” There you go. So many people are telling us to be optimistic. We must be optimistic. We're all going to be optimistic, we're going to stay after class until we're all optimistic. Okay, I mean, a little bit hard when you've got the, you know, the infrastructure plan coming out yesterday which said that pretty much we need so much and we can't afford it. But there is room to grow in the economy as Dr. Bremen said, and as people know. But if you're not feeling it, you're not going to be spending. Back in the day when we were using our houses as ATMs, I mean I was one of them, we bought a house in Grey Lynn because it was the only place we could afford. I think it was about $250,000 —might have been closer to $300,000— which seemed a fortune at the time, but then the house price just went up and up and up so you could afford to do the renos. We could take it from an uninsulated place where the floorboards were open to the bare dirt floor underneath, as it had been since 1890. You could do the renos, you could do the landscaping of the garden, you were spending and New Zealand businesses were the ones who benefited from that. So if you're not doing that, where are the sustainable businesses going to get their work? If people don't feel confident enough about improving their homes or, you know, using the money that they've built up in their homes, how do you replace that quite significant chunk of money go round? Do you feel confident? Do you feel optimistic? Can you see light at the end of the tunnel? See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Government will today reveal its back down on controversial Auckland housing intensification plans amid fierce public criticism. New planning rules would currently allow another 2 million homes in Auckland. But last month the Government announced it'll water down the rules with an announcement expected this afternoon. Prime Minister Christopher Luxon told Kerre Woodham a balance needs to be struck. He says Auckland has to grow with affordable housing, but quite rightly some Aucklanders have said they don't want big buildings next to their homes. He's also allaying concerns about a proposal for a $9 toll on Auckland's Harbour Bridge. The Infrastructure Commission recommended tolling the existing bridge, and second new crossing, to reduce construction costs on the Crown. But Luxon told Woodham it's only an idea. He says the Government hasn't decided whether it'll be a new bridge or a tunnel yet, and decisions on how to fund it will come later. He says tolls are the only way to pull forward the development of new roads, faster. LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The National Infrastructure Plan was released yesterday, and it makes for grim reading. I don't think anyone expected good news, but nonetheless a cold hard dose of reality is always unwelcome, especially when you've been wilfully ignoring the obvious for years. The plan looks at 17 sectors covering central government, local authorities, and commercially regulated utilities, and lays out a 30 year outline looking at how New Zealand can improve the way it plans, funds, maintains, and delivers infrastructure. So far, so very grown up, but really this is something that should have been done 30 years ago because in a nutshell, we have a huge infrastructure deficit. We need hospitals, we need roads, we need bridges, we need alternatives, we need cycleways, we need sewage, we need water pipes, we need electricity, we need alternative electricity, huge infrastructure deficit across all of the sectors. But even if we had billions of dollars, which we don't, throwing money at the problem doesn't seem to be the only answer, because we are very, very poor at getting bang for our buck as was highlighted in the plan. Over the last 20 years, New Zealand has averaged spending about 5.8% of its GDP on infrastructure, which is one of the highest rates of spending in the OECD. Yet we rank near the bottom of the OECD in terms of efficiency of spend and we came fourth to last in terms of asset management. So we spend all this money, get very little for it, and then don't look after it when we have it. I mean look at Moa Point – it's a brilliant example of what happens when you do not spend money on the boring stuff like maintenance and upkeep. The whole country is basically a Moa Point waiting to happen. The plan recommended that 60 cents of every dollar of infrastructure spend should be allocated to renewals and maintenance. A key theme of the plan was that governments have tended to underfund maintenance. That funding's routinely deferred in favour of the “new and shiny”, to quote the authors of the plan. It's like looking at your house and thinking, God, that plumbing needs fixing, that pipe's looking a bit iffy, we really need to paint the house because those weatherboards are going to get rotten otherwise. Oh boring, let's take the kids to Fiji. That's pretty much what we've been doing as a country for far too long. And it's not just one government, it's successive governments, National and Labour, who have let us down. And they've let us down because we have let them let us down. We don't want to hear the news either. Voters are as much to blame as the governments because we don't want to hear the hard messages. The plan says we cannot afford to have everything we want and in fact need as a country and the infrastructure jobs that we do need to do will have to pay for beyond our general taxes. “The reality is asking people to pay for things is difficult and we've pushed the boat out quite a bit as a government on tolling and that's because ultimately roads have to be paid for. And we've tried to move the system towards more of a user pays model and we think that's fair. The original Harbour Bridge in Auckland was of course paid for with a toll and we've just signalled quite clearly that when you're dropping billions and billions of dollars, which is what the second harbour crossing will be, it will be the biggest infrastructure project ever built in New Zealand, that's a project where we do think it will end up being tolled because that's a fair way of paying for the project. “Here's the reality, roads and in fact all infrastructure has to be paid for. It has to be and you can use user charges for that through tolling or through petrol tax or a combination of both, which is essentially what we do. You can borrow for that, but of course that has to be paid for too. Money is not, despite what the Labour Party think, debt is not free. We already have a huge amount of debt that was built up during the Covid years that has to be repaid and we are desperately as a government getting the books back in order so that when the next shock comes along, the next Cyclone Gabrielle or whatever, we're in a position where we could actually deal with it. At the moment of course we're in a very vulnerable situation and the Treasury says we've got to keep the debt levels under control, otherwise our international borrowing costs will go up and then everybody's interest rates will go up and then you're in banana republic territory. Then you can't even meet the debt repayments on what you've already borrowed.” That was Minister for Infrastructure Chris Bishop talking to Mike Hosking this morning. So it's grim reading. As I say, successive governments are at fault and so are we voters. We want everything done for us and we want the government to pay for it. We don't want to pay more in tax though when we want the government to pay for it. We want all the benefits our great grandparents had in the 60s without being willing to pay the sort of tax they were paying in the 60s. We have to wake up and be willing to vote for governments that are going to make tough decisions. And to help us do that, National and Labour need to join forces, get together and agree on the tough stuff. That the age of universal Super needs to go up, allowing for people to collect less early, sure, when you've got the tough jobs, but you know, we can dither around this but ultimately that's what needs to happen. We need to agree on an infrastructure program that will involve maintenance and building and won't be subject to the whims of politics. We're going to need to see more governance, less politicking. We need that to start this election, otherwise the main parties will be fighting it out to govern a country that isn't worth living in. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

An ACT MP is looking to improve and extend the End of Life Choice Act. Todd Stephenson has proposed a member's bill that would incorporate all 25 of the recommendations made by the Ministry of Health in their review of the Act. He wants to restore the original intent of David Seymour's earlier bill, addressing the “overly restrictive” six-month prognosis requirement. Stephenson told Kerre Woodham some elements of the Act are working really well, but there are others, such as the six-month requirement, that aren't working and aren't taking into account some people's circumstances. LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Act MP Todd Stephenson has been looking to improve and extend the End of Life Bill since around August of last year. His new bill, for which he's seeking support across the House or has his fingers crossed it'll be drawn from the ballot, would incorporate every single recommendation made by the Ministry of Health's review into the End of Life Choice Act. He wants to restore the original intent of David Seymour's earlier member's bill by addressing what he calls the overly restrictive six-month prognosis requirement. So along with the recommendations, he wants to see the End of Life Bill extended. He says the narrow threshold has excluded people with terminal diagnoses who are suffering intolerably despite being in an irreversible decline. They are not going to get better. It's just going to take them a very long time to die. His new and improved bill would replace the arbitrary cutoff at six months with a test that reflects what he calls medical reality, recognising that death doesn't always follow a calendar. The review into the Act, which was released at the end of 2024 found that the Act was working pretty much as it was intended. More than 2,400 people had requested an assisted death at the time of the review. More than 970 had received an assisted death since the Act came into force on the 7th of November in 2021. There were some minor tweaks that could be made and those would be incorporated into Todd Stephenson's bill, but overall, the review found that the bill was achieving its primary purpose. However, a report out today from Alex Penk, who is the CEO of Ethos, a registered charity that offers advice, advocacy and education to promote the rights of conscience, religion and belief, says the law already goes too far and certainly does not need to be extended. The report, Penk's report, says assisted dying is already highly controversial. He says most doctors don't want to be involved. I can certainly believe that some doctors would not want to be involved, but I'd be interested to know if that is in fact correct. There would be a range of views across the medical profession when it comes to assisted dying, just as there is in the general population. I can understand some who would not want a bar of it and some who would be happy and see it as a as a generous service. Penk says the bill would introduce euthanasia for long term conditions and disabilities like chronic heart conditions, frailty, diabetes, renal failure, multiple sclerosis and motor neurone disease. He says this would force doctors and care facilities into more conscience conflicts. He says doctors have to use ethical judgment all the time, but the bill sends a message they're just supposed to do what the State tells them and there'll be a real risk it'll force ethically minded people out of medicine. I cannot see it as the State dictating. How is the State dictating? The State has put a framework in place to ensure that it's only the person who wants assisted dying who can make that request. They have to go through hoops before they can be granted that request. It's not automatic. There are really strict criteria and doctors don't have to administer end of life injections or however it is they do it – I'm assuming it's injections. They don't have to perform the act that would take a life. They can say, No, I don't believe in it. I would rather save a life than end it. Not for me. I'll give you the name of a doctor who does believe in it." So how is the State dictating? It's not telling doctors they must kill their patients. It's not telling people they must die if they have a long-term degenerative disease. As far as I'm aware, it's about a person's choice. And on the ethics side of thing, why is it ethical to keep a person alive when they don't want to be, but they don't fit that six-month criteria? Alex Penk is perfectly within his rights to choose not to take an early exit. Doctors are perfectly within their rights to say they'd rather save lives than end them. And I want to continue to have the right and have it improved to be able to call it quits when there is no longer any value for me to be here. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Five million dollars is being injected to revitalise one of Auckland's longest-standing shopping locations. The private capital will be used to overhaul the historic Queens Arcade, turning it into a boutique luxury retail precinct. Construction at the lower Queen Street site will begin in April and is due for completion in November. Queens Arcade Property Manager Ian Wright told Kerre Woodham the project has been over two years in the making, but they believe the timing is absolutely right. He says there's a lot of positive things happening in the CBD – foot traffic is returning, the new convention centre has opened, the CRL is opening soon, and cruise ships are still coming in. LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We thought we'd start with Eden Park given that the number of concerts allowed annually at the Auckland stadium will almost triple. Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown, and Nick Sautner, CEO of Eden Park, among others, confirmed the details of a State of Origin fixture at a press conference at Eden Park this morning, along with the news that Eden Park will host up to 12 large concerts, 20 medium sized concerts per year on any day without having to go through the hoops of resource consent. At the moment, they can host 12 concerts and they can't be from more than six different artists or acts. So Ed Sheeran does two nights or the Hot Wheels does two days, but it can only be six artists or acts. Nighttime sport will also be allowed on any day including Sundays as long as the games finish by 10 30 And the first State of Origin match outside Australia in 40 years. That must have taken some negotiating. It is a lot and it's very exciting for Auckland and indeed for New Zealand. It's expected the State of O will attract more than 10,000 international visitors from Australia and when they come, they spend. The changes to Eden Park's rules and settings follow an investigation into whether the current rules for the park as set down under the Auckland Unitary Plan are limiting economic growth. And Chris Bishop said the investigation had found that, well, yes indeed, the rules are overly restrictive, out of step with modern stadium use, and are directly constraining economic activity. Eden Park CEO Nick Sautner says Eden Park has shown it's more than capable of hosting big events and he's pleased the government's giving them the opportunity to make the most of the stadium. This weekend we've got the Edinburgh Tattoo. The Premier of Queensland came out yesterday and said $39 million of economic benefit. Jehovah's Witness delivered 3.5 million visitors to Auckland and New Zealand. So we are a strategic asset for New Zealand and a community asset for Auckland. I do want to acknowledge the community. We have over 97% support. This has been about engaging with the community, transparency, and also careful event management. Yes, so you can understand why he's excited. You can understand why a lot of promoters, festival goers, sports fans are excited. But I do feel for the residents who bought their homes in the area knowing what the rules were at the time they bought the houses. Now they have seen the rules change. But so many people around the country have seen their neighbourhoods change around them. They are not isolated in this. People who bought a home with a lovely house next door, one careful set of neighbours, all of a sudden it's a great big housing development and where there was one house there are now 12 That is a big change for a neighbourhood. Nothing stays the same. It makes absolutely no sense to have a stadium that is only used a few times a year. And I'd go further and say it's immoral to have that amount of land, prime land in the inner city, being underutilised. If you are not going to use it as a stadium, then have the trust give it over to the government and build a Kāinga Ora housing development, put more people into homes in a prime position next to work, near play. You can't have a stadium sitting there doing nothing. That makes no sense at all. And if you've got a motivated trust and a motivated CEO that wants to do as much as they possibly can, and they have contorted themselves trying to come up with different ways to make use of the stadium. Art in the Park, beautiful event, not a traditional use for a sports stadium, but a successful one. There are so many ways to use the stadium. I accept that there will be much more disruption for those who have bought there, and for those who bought when the rules were what they were, I can understand why you'd be a bit grumpy. Nick says 97% of the community's on board, which is a pretty good stat if that is so. You can't hold back that kind of economic growth, that kind of success, that kind of feel good atmosphere because 3% of the neighbourhood's grumpy and doesn't want to share. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. If your neighbourhood has changed and the rules have changed around you, can you understand the concerns that a few of the residents might have? For those who live in and around the area, is it going to be a win for you if you're a business? If you're a resident, can you put up with it for the sake of the wider good? LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.