Kerre Woodham Mornings Podcast

The Prime Minister's keen to raise the retirement age -- but it's not possible in coalition with New Zealand First. The Government is halving its KiwiSaver contribution rate -- and canning if people earning more than 180-thousand dollars. The default rate of worker and business contributions to KiwiSaver will rise over time. Chris Luxon told Kerre Woodham pushing out the retirement age to 67 makes sense. He says Labour doesn't think it’s a good idea, and New Zealand First does not want to move that forward. Luxon also spoke about the cuts the government made to make funding available elsewhere.  Budget 2025 includes 21 billion dollars of cost-savings - 13 billion of that from the controversial change to pay equity law - raising claim thresholds. Prime Minister Chris Luxon told Kerre Woodham these are difficult choices, but there's no way they could afford that. LISTEN ABOVE OR WATCH HERE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Isn't it cruelly, cruelly ironic that yesterday we were talking about just how tough it is in retail, and we have the news that after 145 years, Smith and Caughey's, the last of the great, grand department stores, famous for the high-end goods, the beautiful Christmas window displays, will close its doors for the final time by July 31st. Ninety-eight jobs will be lost, but it's more losing a bastion of retail, it goes beyond the closure of just the store. It survived two world wars and two severe depressions. It was battling online retail but then a “perfect storm” in 2024 and 2025 meant that it just couldn't carry on. Once it's gone, we won't be seeing the likes of that again.   So ironic that we were talking just yesterday about the man from JLL saying we need more retail space, a quarter of a million more square metres of retail space over the next five years, and we were like really? How about filling the retail space that exists? That led into the conversation about just how tough it is selling stuff in this day and age.  Mike Hosking was talking to Viv Beck of Heart of the City this morning, and they agreed that the changes made to the inner city had proved too difficult to navigate.   “We hoped they'd be able to get through to the opening of the CRL and we have absolutely laid it out, clear as day, to both Auckland Council and Auckland Transport what they needed to do to reduce the barriers to get into the central city. And I think the lack of action is inexcusable. There are fundamental flaws in the way this is being managed, and it has to stop.   “The reality is it's been an obsession with getting cars out. We've already lost 44% of them since 2015, and yet Auckland Transport seems to think fining people in our nighttime district in Queen Street is acceptable. But the reality is we've got so much good stuff and it is a positive future. The City Rail Link will make access easier, but we cannot tolerate this behaviour anymore. It has to stop.”   There's so much that went wrong all at once, that so many businesses have been trying so hard to navigate and it's not just an Auckland. We're talking about Auckland right now, but look at Wellington and Hamilton as well. The inner cities are really struggling because of the ideological brain farts of city planners, because of the ideological bent to get vehicles out of the inner city without actually replacing them with any kind of decent public transport, because of Covid, because inner city hotels and motels were turned into waste stations for transients and waifs and strays making it an unappealing place to visit, because of online retail – there are so many reasons why it has been incredibly difficult. They're trying to hang on trying to hang on until the promise from these urban planners, the promises from the transport departments, the promises from the ideologues, that this is going to be a new and bright and beautiful future. That the streets are going to be teeming with throngs of happy people who are desperate to buy whatever it is you've got to buy. And so these businesses are hanging on by their fingernails. “Better days are coming. Better days are coming.”   Well, some of them cannot hang on any longer, their fingernails are losing the grip in there, slowly scraping their way down the side of the wall. I was on Ponsonby Road yesterday and a fashion designer who's been on Ponsonby Road in the same store for 26 years, she's conceded defeat. She can't do it anymore, she said, she just can't. She's been waiting and waiting and waiting for things to come right and she's run out of money and run out of time. And again, it's the economy, it's Covid, it's the new employment relations rules, it's all of those things. And then just when things start to come right, along comes Trump. There's so much that's happening.   But she also made the same comment that a lovely young woman from the New Zealand fashion powerhouse Zambezi made – Zambezi's not renewing its lease on Ponsonby Road. Both women said that along with all the difficult times they've experienced over the last five years, they said that their customer base had aged out and they weren't being replaced. That they were trying to reinvigorate their customer base, but the younger generation are just not interested in buying the more expensive New Zealand designed, New Zealand made fashion. The younger woman don’t want to pay those prices.   So, the kids may well bunk off school to take part in climate emergency protests, and they may well harangue the older generation for bequeathing them a world on fire, but they're not willing to settle for one outfit a year from a New Zealand designer when they could have 50 dresses from Temu. Rather than actually putting their money where their mouths are and not contributing to the ecological environmental climate change disaster of fast fashion, and rather than support New Zealand designers in New Zealand, machinists in New Zealand, pattern makers in New Zealand, they'll go and do their climate protests at lunchtime and then be home in time to make some clicks on Temu and Shein to get their fast fashion. You can see the mountain of fast fashion waste from space. And the kids could do something about it, but they choose not to. And that means that we're going to see more of these closures and more skills and crafts lost as the younger generation just don't care. So I don't think I'll be harangued by a young one about the state of the world anytime soon and take that lightly. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I don't know where the Head of Research at JLL, the commercial property company, I does his shopping, but it cannot be anywhere that I go. If you've ever wondered what the definition of gaslighting is, you may well have heard it this morning. Chris Dibble —the Head of Research at JLL— was on the wireless claiming that we have a critical under-supply of retail space in this country, and that to keep pace with population and demand we need to come up with a quarter of a million square metres in the next five years. Shopping centres and large format retail are experiencing solid demand, he reckons, and he told Mike Hosking CBD’s strip vacancy rates are the lowest in Australasia.   “The way that we've attacked this research is looked at basically the ratio between how much retail space we currently have and the population at the moment as well. And so when you look at that ratio, which is around about 0.5 square metres per person across the country, then when you look at the population growth that New Zealand's going to go through over the next sort of five years, we can understand that to keep their ratio we just need more space.   “And so we are seeing a bit of development across the country, which is positive. It will help to start, I guess, eat away at some of this growth forecast that was required in retail floor space. But yeah, there will need to be a lot of that around in Auckland. They've got around about a third of all the retail supply across the country so from that perspective, it is a significant amount that will probably happen in Auckland.”  I was listening to this, and I was thinking why don't we use the retail space that's vacant right now before we build anymore? The way he was talking it was that demand is such that you've got queues of retailers hammering on the doors of existing retailers, begging to take over the space, and that is simply not what I am seeing. I would love to know what your main street looks like? I know JLL is a commercial property leasing company, you have to talk up your business, but there's talking up and then there's downright delusional. If you have ventured into your local mall, how many sites are boarded up or being used as displays for the stores that remain or have these poor people sitting there gazing at you as you walk past, willing you to come into their store? They'd be lucky if they have four or five customers in a day. I've never seen it so bad.   It's not just my anecdotal experience either. I thought it might have been, but according to OneRoof, New Zealand's commercial property market in 2024 has been one of the toughest in two decades. High interest rates, remote working online shopping leading to higher vacancy rates and soft rental growth. Bayley's commercial and capital figures show commercial property sales plummeted since 2021 in both volume and value, and we're sitting back where the market was in 2001 and 2002. Westpac said in early December the market had fallen around 10% since its peak in 2021. The value of sales dropped below $6 billion over the 12 months to June 2024, the lowest in more than a decade.   So who's right? How can we possibly need up to a quarter of a million square metres of retail space in the next five years when so many shops are sitting empty? What are you seeing, because I am not seeing what Mr. JLL is seeing. The one thing I would agree with in the report is that along with the fact that we need three or four new 277’s, is that Kiwis still value in-store experiences. And for those stores that remain, by crikey I do, I love a good in-store experience, and I get them. Where you've got people who've been in business for years who know their business, who know that there is online, so they upgrade their websites, they get with the programme. I was in Tauranga on Friday. There's a store called Wendy's there that's been there since 1984, and it's still doing a roaring trade. Great website, it was absolutely packed, knows its customers, and the staff were incredibly helpful. It's seen off recessions, it's seen off online shopping.   If you know your stuff and you will have stores like that up and down the country, you stick with your knitting, you adapt with the times, you know what you're good at, you take on board what you need to grow with your customers, you'll be fine. And you cannot beat a good in-store experience, but bloody hell, it's tough out there. So how on Earth can we fill four or five massive new shopping complexes, which is what Chris Dibble was saying? Would it not be best to start with filling the existing stores that have vacant right now and have been vacant for far too long? See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Public transport is brilliant when it works. You cannot beat it for convenience, for timeliness, for moving large numbers of people expeditiously and in an environmentally friendly-ish kind of a way, when it works. When it doesn't, it's a pain. Look at the poor Auckland rail commuters this morning – due to an infrastructure issue at Penrose, there were delays and cancellations. No services running through Newmarket on the Southern line, all Southern Line services were running via the Eastern Line, Onehunga line services cancelled until further notice. Just what you need, and not for the first time.   Auckland's rail network rebuild started in January 2023 and in its final stages, as announced, there would be 96 days of train closures from Christmas 2025 through to January 2026. KiwiRail chief infrastructure officer Andre Lovatt said the work was critical to convert the existing network, which was designed for freight trains, to one that has the capacity to carry faster and more frequent trains, about 16 an hour when the CRL opens. And when they're running, and when it's working, and when there aren't closures, it will be brilliant. It will be a really efficient way of moving people about the city at critical times. A lot of the really long-term problems will have been fixed, he reckons, so that means they'll be able to focus on preventative maintenance, and he's promised the long periods of closure won't be required in the future once the work is done.   The Government, too, appears to have faith in the rail network in our major cities as a means of transporting commuters. They also appear to have faith in its ability to shift freight, with the pre-Budget announcement of a $604 million investment in rail. Chris Bishop, the Minister for Transport, said investment in the Auckland and Wellington Metro network would enable vital and overdue work to be carried out. I thought vital and overdue work was already being carried out, but clearly there's more where that came from. A backlog of overdue renewals had made the services less reliable, with commuters experiencing ongoing disruption in recent years, and indeed this very morning that the announcement was made.   Winston Peters, the Minister for Rail, says rail currently moves 13% of national freight and a quarter of New Zealand's exports, complementing the truckies during the short hauls. He says the rail network investment programme for 2024 -2027 is now funded, meaning maintenance, network operations, asset renewals and modest improvements are funded. We have a legacy for rail freight, says Winston Peters, and this builds on it.   So there has been much investment in varying sorts of rail over the last two to three governments. Yes, we have a legacy of rail but clearly there is a commitment to a future for rail. Both in terms of Metro commuting and in terms of freight. I would love to see rail be a big part of our cities and of linking the provinces for commuters and of shifting freight – it's interoperable with the trucks. But we don't seem to have been terribly well served when it comes to getting value for money for our investment. I'm not even going to talk about light rail because I'll probably have a cardiac infarction and that will be the end of that, if you just think about the money that was wasted on that. We have a legacy of rail, is it a part of our future? I would really like to think so. I would really like to think that Andre Lovatt is right, that when it comes to Auckland in particular, all of the disruption and all of the inconvenience and all of the teeth grinding frustration of commuters will come to an end. The work will be done, they will get ahead of themselves in terms of renewals and remediation, and be able to be proactive in maintenance so that things don't come to a grinding halt. I would like to think that the rail tracks could be upgraded so that transport between our ports isn't just solely dependent on our trucks. That more of the load could be shifted onto rail making it easier for everybody – those using the road, the exporters, those working in the ports.   But we have been so poorly served by the money that we've invested as taxpayers. We've earned the money, we have asked our bureaucrats and our governments to invest it wisely on our behalf. Most of us, I think, support some form of rail but I would really like to see more accountability for how it is spent and for delivery. KiwiRail says yes, you'll get that. We're getting ahead of ourselves by 2026, we’ll be sweet. Do you believe that? Winston Peters says we have a legacy for rail freight. Do we have a future when it comes to rail freight? I'd really like to hear from those who do the heavy lifting for this country, metaphorically and literally. Can we have more than the 13% of national freight and a quarter of New Zealand's exports on rail? And when it comes to commuters do you have faith that this will be a brilliant, convenient, timely, fantastic way to travel in the near future?   See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

There are hopes investment in rail is just the boost Auckland needs.  The Government will tip more than $600 million of Government funding in Budget 2025 to fully fund the Rail Network Investment Programme until 2027.  The freight network will get $461 million, and $143 million will be spent on Auckland and Wellington's metropolitan trains.  Greater Auckland director Matt Lowrie told Kerre Woodham some maintenance hasn't been done for decades.  He says that now that funding is coming through, they’ll be able to get improvements done so they can actually maintain and continue to improve services. LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Northland might be the meth capital of New Zealand, but Hawkes Bay wouldn't be far behind. One tiny town – Waipukurau - recorded the biggest increase in meth consumption in the country in 2024. It was up more than 300 percent. What concerns the local coppers is that the community staying schtum about who's supplying the drug as Inspector Martin James told 1News last night.  “One of the key concerns for me here in Central Hawke's Bay is a lack of information that is coming through from the public to support us, there will be people within this community that know who are supplying this drug, this heinous drug, and we need them to come forward." Well, there might be people who know, but locals who have spoken to by 1News said they'd never seen any evidence that their town had such a huge meth problem. And I guess you wouldn't if you if you don't do meth, it you don't know people who do meth, then you're not going to see the problem. The police are depending on those who do know. And they might say there isn't a problem in their small town, but surely wastewater testing doesn't lie. The only reason I could think of that you'd see a spike like that would be perhaps a drug dealer has seen the light, had a road to Damascus moment and is going to turn over a new leaf and has flushed tens of thousands of dollars' worth of meth down the dunny over a period of weeks, but you know that is unlikely. This is just the latest call from police, iwi leaders and the Police Minister for the community to play its part in thwarting the gangs and the drug dealers and in saying no, you're not dealing here, not in our town, not to our people. They want the community to be proactive in terms of stopping meth, taking a hold in their communities, but how realistic is it to expect people to dob in their relatives or friends? It would be hard enough when you're an upstanding member of the community with no links to gangs to give police information that could lead to an arrest. You might be concerned about ramifications to your business or to your home or to your family. But imagine if the drug dealers and members of your very own family - you give information to the police that leads to a conviction for dealing, not possession, but dealing, you know that the person will be going inside for a very long time. You might hate the crime, but loved the crim. How do you reconcile helping the police with their inquiries with the knowledge that there could be an enormous impact on your own family member?See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Green Party is suggesting an overhaul of the tax system in their alternative Budget.  It includes taxing wealth, inheritance, gifts, and private jet journeys, and they say it would bring in $88 billion in revenue over four years.   New income tax rates of 39% on income over $120,000 and 45% on income over $180,000 would be introduced, and the corporate tax rate would be raised to 33%, 3% higher than Australia's current rates.  Malcolm Rands is the spokesperson for the ‘Open Letter on Tax’ released in May 2023, in which 97 people leading “financially comfortable lives” expressed their willingness to pay more tax.  He told Kerre Woodham he thinks people who can afford more aren’t contributing as much as they can.  He says taxes don’t just fund social welfare and education, but also things like climate change and the infrastructure bills being passed that will need funding.  LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Are the Greens bonkers? The Greens have come out and criticised Judith Collins for tinkering with the Public Service Commission census – that's a voluntary survey run over three weeks and it's a follow up to the initial 2021 survey of the same name. Now Judith Collins and her office had a look at the 2021 survey, and they suggested a few changes. They had thoughts about the census, and they said we don't really need the questions about disability, rainbow identities, religion, te reo Māori proficiency levels, on-the-job training, and agencies’ commitment to the Māori-Crown relationship. Instead, Judith Collins’ office said, we want to put in a new question about whether public servants give excellent value for my salary, there are instances when I consider my work wastes taxpayers money, or I would rate my manager as someone who cares about the effect of my work. They're focused on productivity rather than personal well-being, which seems to be what the 2021 survey was all about.   So the Greens and PSA Union have come out and said it's a form of political censorship, he says several ministers seemed more interested in fighting imported culture wars – there's all kinds of criticism for putting in questions on productivity. Judith Collins says she doesn't really care, to be honest. She says: “I think the Greens are frankly bonkers. I mean, how can they find it difficult that the public service should be delivering value for money? The Greens can go off on their fine little tangents. Frankly, that's their problem. I think it's very, very important.”   So bonkers. The Greens received the same criticism from some quarters when they released their Budget this week. They pledged, among other things, free GP visits, free childcare, funded through new taxes and increased borrowing. The policies include a wealth tax, a private jet tax, ending interest deductibility for landlords, restoring the 10 year bright-line test, doubling minerals royalties, and changes to ACC levies. It would see net debt climb from 45% of GDP to above 53% by the 2028/29 financial year. Criticism was immediate. Idealistic pie in the sky, policies that would mean the death knell for Kiwi businesses. Clown show, economics, Marxism. You probably heard it, you may even have uttered a few criticisms yourself of the Budget.   But is it bonkers? Yes, net debt would climb from 45% of GDP to above 53%, but 60% is considered a sustainable level of debt. It's considered a prudent level of debt by economists around the world. Sure, they're talking bigger economies and when you're a smaller economy, you don't have as much wiggle room, 60% would probably be way too much for a country as small as ours. But 53% – is that completely unsustainable? And do all Kiwi businesses think this is nonsense? I don't think so.   Remember the group of millionaires who wrote to the government a year or so ago? I think it was in the final stages of the last Labour government. It was a group of 96 wealthy New Zealanders who called on the government to tax them more. In the open letter, they said the current tax system contributed towards the gap between the poor and the wealthy. They said they didn't mind if the taxation is done through increased income tax or wealth tax, or a capital gains tax, but the increases should only apply to the wealthy.   Now, how do you define wealthy? According to the Greens, if you're on $120,000 a year, you should pay more tax, Under the Budget that they released —the proposed alternative Budget— If you're earning 120,000 a year, your tax will go up to 39 cents in the dollar. If you're on $180,000 your tax will go to 45 cents on the dollar. Does that then put you in the group of 96 wealthy New Zealanders wanting to be taxed more? When it comes to the differences between the parties, how helpful is it for the name calling, for the bonkers? Do we need to have a look at what policies might work? Are they aspirational policies? Are they policies that need more thinking through? I mean, when you look at the previous Labour government under Jacinda Ardern, initially there were some great ideas. I thought brilliant, fabulous, but they hadn't been worked through, and the unintended consequences was so damaging, and the fallout was so great, from nice ideas that hadn't been thought through.   So before you dismiss ideas completely, is it worth looking through how they might work? Is it worth discussing rather than dismissing ideas completely out of hand? Could there be a generational and ideological divide that blinds us, perhaps to some good ideas?  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Well, what a to-do. The image of Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters slumped in the House, head in his hands, summed it up really. Brooke van Velden dropped the C-bomb in the house, quoting a Stuff article whose author used the word in criticising the government's decision to amend the pay equity legislation. The coalition's female MPs are angry that Labour MPs, particularly the female MPs, have not condemned the journalist’s use of the word, which was used as a derogatory in the article.   Judith Collins, head of the Privileges Committee, was on with Mike Hosking this morning, ostensibly to talk about the suspension of three Te Pati Māori MPs for their haka in the House, but during the chat she deplored the decline of standards in the House.   “There's a lack of civility now and it's not acceptable, and I feel that the comments of the print journalist in the Sunday Star Times this last Sunday was one of the lowest points I think I've seen in 23 years. That and what happened on the 14th of November in Parliament. It's just the sort of behaviour towards each other that is despicable. So I'd say to Brooke, you know I wouldn't use the word myself, but I did feel that she at least stood up for herself and for all the rest of us, and I am waiting for someone of the left persuasion in our Parliament, one MP, just one, to come out and say it's not okay to attack people just because you don't agree with what they do.”  I think she'll be waiting a while. Karen Chhour has been consistently attacked by Labour MPs and Te Pati Māori MPs, really for just for being a Māori woman who has the temerity to be an ACT Party MP. And to be fair, when Jacinda Ardern and her preschool daughter were receiving violent threats —violent sexual threats, some of them very real and credible threats— there wasn't a universal condemnation of the abuse from National and ACT. Certainly Judith Collins, when she was the opposition leader, said she did not want to see Jacinda Ardern threatened when she visited Auckland in 2021 after the three-month lockdown. She said I don't want to see anything happen to the Prime Minister or have her threatened in any way. I think it's not good for our democracy and also it is not right for people to do that to each other, which is true, and good on her for saying that. But at the same time, it's hardly a universal, strident condemnation of the threats that the Prime Minister of the time was getting.   We were discussing this before the show, one of our colleagues said politicians need to be better otherwise people will just give up. They'll look at the carry on, they'll read the stories and think I'm not going to vote. I argued that there are House of Representatives – they are us, to borrow a phrase. Abuse of MPs on every level increased in 2022, 98% of them reported receiving some kind of harassment. Women were considerably more likely to face abuse on most counts than male politicians. Abuse increased across 11 of the 12 different mediums, with social media overtaking emails, faxes and letters as the most prominent. That came from us. That's men and women, normally erstwhile, law-abiding, God-fearing people who suddenly became more strident.   It was a result of societal factors, of lockdowns, of decisions made that had an enormous impact on people's lives and livelihoods and families. And there will be people who will never forget what happened. It can't be undone. But that all resulted in extremes, in the use of language and the vehemence of our opinions and our tribalism. I had a public Facebook page for years. I think in the in the seven or eight years I had it before Covid, I blocked two people. Once Covid started, I just got rid of it because it's why would you be a sitting duck? When I first heard about the death threats against Jacinda Ardern, I thought, well, who hasn't had them? You know that is not normal. That's not a normal response. The days of Socratic discourse are long gone.  So does that mean we have to give up, my colleague asked, that we have no expectations of our MPs? No. But I think before we ask anything of our MPs, we look at ourselves. I was thinking about that this morning. Can I call out the Principles Federation representative and say before you start looking at the government, how about you call out the poor parents who send their kids to school unable to hold a pen and not toilet trained? Whose fault is that? That is the parents. Can I say that? Absolutely I can. Should I mimic her voice while I'm saying that? No, I shouldn't. Talkback’s a robust forum. It's a bit like Parliament, people get heat up. We're allowed to have opinions. We should have differing opinions, but before I'm going to ask anything of our MPs, before I ask anything of my fellow journalists, I'll have a look in the mirror and check myself out. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this spirit of taking the good news where we find it, I was absolutely delighted to see the results of Inland Revenue going after student loan defaulters. At the end of April, there were 113,733 people with student loans believed to be based overseas. If you're based overseas, you don't get the student loan automatically taken out of your pay packet. Overseas, it's up to you to make repayments, and more than 70% of those are in default on their loans – so it’s up to them to make the repayments.  Despite the extraordinarily expensive tertiary education they receive, they don't seem to understand what a loan is. They owe $2.3 billion, of which more than $1 billion is penalties and interest. Even if you wiped the penalties that is still $1 billion, owing to the taxpayer. We paid for the lion's share of the education, around 70% of the true cost of the education, they took out a loan which was paid for by the taxpayer, and $1 billion is owing to us. For about 24,000 of these overseas based borrowers, the debt is more than 15 years old.   Inland Revenue has collected more than $207 million in repayments since July last year from student loan borrowers living overseas, and that's 43% up on the same period the previous year. And the reason for the sudden flurry of productivity and getting the money back? Inland Revenue was given the money, student loan compliance funding, to go after the little thieves, so they finally had the resource to be able to do it.   According to Inland Revenue, they've contacted more than 12,000 borrowers – 1,320 of them have entered repayment plans, 960 have fully repaid their overdue amounts. Inland Revenue has seen a collective repayment of $9 million once they took an interest. Thank God. The department is also looking at borrowers who own property in New Zealand – there are just over 300 of them. And ever since “hello, it's Inland Revenue on the phone. We understand you owe us money. We also understand you have property in New Zealand”, shockingly, these people are suddenly able to find the money to repay the New Zealand taxpayer. So they've paid up $1.7 million.   Any defaulters within the group who have refused to engage and resolve their defaults, says Inland Revenue, will see further legal enforcement taken, which may include New Zealand based bankruptcy or charging orders over their properties. They're doing the same for student loan defaulters who have investments or bank accounts receiving interest income in this country. Just watch these people suddenly come up with the money they owe once they realise Inland Revenue will be able to go sniffing around in their accounts. And as a last resort there'll be arrests at the border.   This is so overdue. In the past there seems to have been a reluctance to go after overseas based student loan defaulters. What about when they all flocked back to New Zealand during the Covid times? That was the perfect time to collect the money owed. It is a kindness to the borrowers to keep that student loan debt at the front of their minds. If you can forget about a big debt, if there are other people screaming at you for money who are up in your grills, you'll park it and put it to one side and think I'll do that when I get a bonus at work, or I'll do that one day, and then it gets so big that it becomes terrifying and you just don't think about it. You will remain in blissful and wilful ignorance of the monies owed, and then the penalties and interest that blow out that original loan. Keep it at the forefront of their minds.   There are all sorts of arguments that have been put up by student loan thieves over the years. We're the best and the brightest. If you come after us, we won't come home. We'll keep our enormous intellects overseas. Well, you can't be that bloody bright if you don't understand what a loan is, can you? It's not a gift. It was a loan. You have to pay it back. Another argument is, “it's all right for you, your generation got free university education we had to pay for it”. Well, it was really the generation before that received free education. But back then, they really did only take the best and the brightest, numpties need not apply. Total enrolments at all universities in New Zealand was 16,524 in 1960. Today there are 177,000 university students in New Zealand. I'm quite happy to have a discussion about making unit centres of academic excellence and restricting access once again to only the very best and the brightest and pay for that education, absolutely. If we reduce it down from 177,000 to 16,000, we can afford that. Happy to have a chat about means testing but not until you do what most of us manage to do, even the most lowly qualified of us ... pay your bills and pay what you owe.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.