Kerre Woodham Mornings Podcast

New Zealand has long had a problem with alcohol abuse.   A report last year from the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research found that the total estimated harm from alcohol use costs $9.1 billion in a single year.  Peter Dunne argues the costs are a result of a decades-long failure in policy – saying that we need to do away with broad stroke approaches and target those prone to binge drinking.  He told Kerre Woodham that we should be targeting the response to those who are most affected by alcohol harm, and therefore making interventions early as opposed to a broad sweep that hasn’t worked.   Dunne says our cost of alcohol abuse is as high as it ever was.  LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

ANZ's New Zealand boss says the bank has no major restructure plans on this side of the Tasman.  The Australian banking group has announced plans to axe about 3,500 in-house roles and 1000 contractors.  Its New Zealand arm says about 20-30 mostly head-office roles might be cut here.  But Chief Executive Antonia Watson told Kerre Woodham it's part of a normal review of efficiencies, which they do every year.  She says times of change always generate nervousness, but they've been clear that what's driving the change in Australia isn't a factor here.  She says staff will have a lot of empathy for their Australian colleagues who are going through a tough time at the moment.  LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I said yesterday when I left you at midday that I thought I'd brought you one of the nicest stories that we'd done all year, which you clearly loved, and one of the saddest. The nicest: the interview with the musical director of the Auckland Pasifika Secondary Schools Choir, the choir who sang the national anthems for New Zealand and South Africa at Eden Park. The saddest: the shooting of a police officer, the fatal shooting of Tom Phillips, and the recovery of three children who had spent four years being force marched through rugged bush by their father.   What made it sadder still was the bile and the sewage that filled the text machine and social media and is still doing so. You probably never see this sort of thing, and I'm glad for you. You don't know the inner workings of some of your fellow New Zealanders' minds. People that you might work with or play sport with, or heaven forfend live with, because you can choose to disengage. And you should, you absolutely should. It chips away at your soul when you read some of the stuff. Just how much some men loathe women. How much some men loathe authority. Who think shooting a police officer is justified. Who think the old “if I can't have her, nobody else can” trope that sees so many ex-partners end up dead, and in this case, “if I can't have them, nobody else can have the children, they can't see anybody else but me” - who think that's justified. Maybe in the fullness of time, when all the details come out, the angry men might think differently. I would hope so.    And you always get the superheroes after every tragedy. Pike River, the Rena, Whakaari-White Island. Every single time, you get the superheroes who would have put their underpants on over their trousers and would have solved the situation earlier, and quicker, and more expediently, and they knew what to do and they'd have saved more lives. This case is no different. There are so many people who think they would have found Phillips and the children with just their knowledge of the stars, a bit of beef jerky and a good dog. And possibly they could have. But there was so much more at play here, as the Police Commissioner told Mike Hosking this morning.   RC: We have always been very, very concerned, Mike. We knew that we were dealing with an armed, a dangerous, and a very motivated individual in Mr. Phillips. And we had to be very, very cautious about the approach that we have taken. You know, that played out yesterday morning in a way that we suspected it could, which is not something that any of us wanted, but our assessment of the situation over the last four years has been spot on. And, and that was shown yesterday morning when we confronted, Mr. Phillips, he shot one of my staff and, and we, we had to return fire. And, we have always been concerned that may be exactly what occurred, and of course that may also involve, the children.   MH: The thing that's bugged me the whole time is this community thing whereby somehow this guy's a hero, or he's allowed to do what he wants to do, or he's, I don't understand that. Do you deal with that? Is that common in rural New Zealand?   RC: You mean in respect of Mr. Phillips?   MH: Yeah.   RC: He's not a hero.   There will be inquiries. There'll be reviews of processes, of how things could have been done differently and possibly better, and that says it should be. But I don't know how you speak to, connect with the men who are so angry, so alienated, so self-pitying, that they think the shooting of a police officer is justified, and taking three children hostage in the bush for four years is the action of a loving father. I mean, already here it is. “How can you defend the cops? They shot a father dead in front of his child. That child will be screwed up for life”, says Ben. You don't think that perhaps four years on the run in the bush might have done something to them? God knows what he was telling them. You don't think the fact that he pulled out a gun and shot a cop might have been the reason he ended up dead in front of his child? See, this is what I mean? That isn't the action of a loving father. The loving dads, the hero dads, in my mind, are the ones who put their own anger and their sense of grievance behind them, and who turn up and show up for their kids, who accept the kids aren't their property, that children have a wider community of family and friends who love them and who the kids deserve to be around. They're the hero dads. So often on the radio, I only hear from the 2%. It's a well-known stat that of the 100% of people who listen to talkback radio, only 2% will ever ring. I think the stats are probably higher. I haven't seen those for those who text. It would be amazing today if the reasonable people, the rational people, the ones who appreciate our police, and the ones who know what it is to swallow your pride, to swallow your grievance, to swallow your hurt, who know what it is to be a good mum or a good dad, took the time to ring and text. It would be really lovely if you used your voices today.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Everyone has an opinion and as technology has progressed, it’s become easier and easier for people to make their opinions known.  And while this has allowed for greater communication and debate around various topics, it’s also allowed for people to share waves of vitriol, hatred, and unhelpful commentary.  Clinical Psychologist Dr Dougal Sutherland told Kerre Woodham that with social media, it’s very easy for us to be an “expert” in everything.  “We have a whole lot of information fed to us – we don’t necessarily digest it, but we can say very quickly what we think is right or wrong.”  In comparison to calling into something like talkback radio, social media and texting is instant, allowing people to fire off their five cents and move on.  “Then you’ve got this personal investment,” Sutherland told Woodham.  “Your adrenaline’s going, you’re part of the story ... then someone says something, and you’re already riled up.”  “I think we’re being shaped by social media to react strongly, because that’s the thing that gets likes, and that’s the thing that gets ratings, and that’s the things that get, y’know, the algorithm working.”  LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

One of the highlights from Saturday night's rugby test were the anthems sung by the Auckland Pasifika Secondary Schools Choir. Students from Auckland Girls Grammar, Avondale College, De La Salle, Kelston Boys, Kelston Girls, Glen Eden Intermediate, Marcellin College, Marist College, Mt Albert Grammar, Southern Cross, St Marys, St Paul’s College and St Peter's College.  Music director Nainz Tupa'i told Kerre Woodham that it was an amazing feeling to hear the whole stadium singing along. 'It's a real honor and a privilege to have been given that opportunity and for our kids to experience that in that moment' LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The New Zealand First convention took place at the Distinction Hotel in Palmerston North over the weekend. And all these silver fern, pin-wearing NZ First faithful gathered, along with a few wannabes, like Stuart Nash, he spoke. Just a few formalities to go through and it looks like Stuart Nash will be a signed-up member of NZ First and one of their high-profile names going forward at the next election. I don't know how the coalition government decided who would go first in the Deputy Prime Minister's role. If they said how they did it, it's escaped me, I'm sorry. They might have tossed a coin. They might have played paper scissors rock. They might have put their names in a hat and Christopher Luxon drew out one. Might have been done on seniority - oldest and most experience goes first. You just know that Winston Peters, leader of NZ First, would have totally gamed the system to ensure he served first as Deputy Prime Minister because after a good stint of being Foreign Affairs Minister, which he still is and which he still works hard at, and a good stint of standing in for the Prime Minister when he was out of the country and fulfilling his obligations admirably,   it free’s him up now, now that David Seymour's in the role, to really get the campaigning underway for NZ First well before 2026 rolls around. To be fair, ACT are not far behind. David Seymour's State of the Nation speech at the beginning of the year was a rallying cry to the party faithful. But at NZ First's convention over the weekend, you heard speeches that sounded more like promises. Promises that would normally be made on the hustings. It wasn't a convention per se, it was more of a, "Let's get going, brothers. Let's start promising," the kind of glorious kind of promises that NZ First voters are looking for when it comes to political parties. Things like making KiwiSaver compulsory, contributions being raised to 10%, offsetting that raise with tax cuts.  What's happened here is you've got thousands and thousands of people, hundreds of thousands have signed up, but they're not contributing. They're not saving. And so it's not as easy as some of the journalists thought, just to work out what's going on. But we're going to make it compulsory and we're going to ensure this is phased in at a level which you'll see comprehensively is followed overseas. We need to turn this into a super, super saving fund and a super investment fund at the same time, but not in the control of politicians.  And when you talked about yesterday tax cuts, that's literally a tax cut for a person who's contributing to KiwiSaver, or is it a rebate or how would it work?  That's a tax cut for the person contributing to Kiwi Saver and also for the employer. Right, so I would pay less tax if I'm contributing to Kiwi Saver. You still with us? Yes, I said exactly, yeah. I think there must have been a drop out on the line. That was Winston Peters talking to Mike Hosking this morning. There was more preaching to the converted. Winston Peters called for new migrants having to sign a Kiwi values document, incorporating respect for the flag, respect for democracy, one person, one vote, that sort of thing. I imagine it'd be much like the Australian values statement that migrants to Australia must sign. And Peters said the party was responsible for getting cabinet to agree to bring legislation to the House very shortly, making English an official language of New Zealand. As is generally the case with election campaign promises, there wasn't a great deal of specific detail. No costings from Peters on how much the Kiwi Saver policy would cost or how it would be implemented, other than to say the rise in contributions would be staggered, first 8% then 10%. But let him be perfectly clear, there is life in the old boy yet and he is determined to get himself and NZ First back into Parliament and back into government with even more sway than he had this time around. As far as Winston Peters is concerned, ‘25, as in 2025 is done and dusted. It is 2026, baby. NZ First is on the road, looking to win over voters who are unimpressed and underwhelmed by National and Labour. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Government is cracking down on serious immigration breaches. It's announced it will strengthen deportation settings on the same day that Immigration New Zealand revealed there are more than 20,000 people who have overstayed their visa. Immigration Minister Erica Stanford says there are gaps in the current system. For example, under the current rules, someone who commits a serious crime can't be liable for deportation if they've held a residence visa for more than 10 years. Stanford says they're fixing that. Where migrants don't follow the conditions of their visa, she says, I've made it clear to Immigration New Zealand compliance and enforcement actions are a priority.   Immigration New Zealand said on Thursday that as of July 1, there were around 20,980 people, call it 21,000 people, in New Zealand who have overstayed their visa. This is the first estimate to be carried out using a new methodology, which the agency believes has better accuracy than the previous one used in 2017. From what I understand, Immigration, New Zealand was going through a major overhaul of its computer systems, so there will be new methodology and more accurate numbers. So in terms of nationalities, there are 2,599 individuals from Tonga who are believed to be overstayers. Remember the Tongan under 21 rugby team who were on tour here in 2003? Almost half the team failed to show when the 30 strong squad checked in for their flight home. And I don't think many of them were found. So for 22 years, these young men have grown into middle-aged men and have been living and working in New Zealand. There were 2,577 from China, 2,213 from the US, which was a bit of a head scratcher for most of us.   The Greens have called for an amnesty for overstayers. They've long called for amnesties – they think there should be one every year just to sort of tidy things up, if you will. And better residency pathways for migrants, and they really want the Government to announce on this time. And do you know what, I think they should. Because if you look back to what a mess immigration New Zealand was, let me take you back to the bad old days. Iain Lees-Galloway was Minister for Immigration and was failing miserably in that job. It was a mess. Labour and New Zealand First had campaigned, saying we're going to restrict the number of migrants coming to New Zealand. It's going to be a New Zealand first, kind of a country, and we're going to cut the number of migrants. But when they came in, they realised just how important overseas labour is, globally and in New Zealand. If you turned off the flow of migrants coming into the country there'd be a big hit to Kiwi businesses, the profit margins of employers, to New Zealand's economic performance overall.   So once they formed their coalition government, they thought, oh bloody hell no, we can't really make good on that. What are we going to do? So they decided to pull the handbrake on the number of residency applications that could be approved, but they increased the number of people on temporary visas. People on temporary visas can apply to become residents, so there were more and more people joining the residency queue, and it got bigger and bigger and bigger. In 2020, there were 38,787 skilled migrant applications stuck in the residency queue. When Labour took office with New Zealand First, there was just 10,000.  So that you had people coming in who were on temporary visas and then got stuck because they couldn't apply for residency. You had skilled migrants and with people on the low wage all applying, none of them given priority. Then they created two queues, the priority and the non-priority, because they realised that doctors and skilled engineers were leaving the country because it was just taking too long. All politicians do this. You make a promise, you get in and you realise that it's unsustainable, so you just have to try and fudge it.   So when you have been waiting and waiting and waiting for years and years and years, I can kind of understand where there might be a few overstayers. You've made a life for yourself, you're confident that you'll be accepted if and when Immigration New Zealand gets around to processing your application, and in the meantime, life goes on. And all of a sudden you find that you're an overstayer. I can kind of see how it happens.   So I'd be for an amnesty and anybody who's kept their nose clean, who has been working, who has been living an exemplary life. Let them stay. Anyone who so much as shoplifted a packet of chewing gum – they can go back from whence they came, but anybody else of these overstayers, I'd say give them a chance. It was Immigration New Zealand from start to finish who was in chaos. Part of that was to do with an incompetent minister, or an incompetent series of ministers, part of that was to do with unsustainable election promises that they then had to fudge. And part of that is to do, I think, with the change over to a new computing system which caused unconscionable delays for people who are trying to get residency. You might know more about it than I if you were one of those who was desperately waiting for Immigration to process whatever application you might have had in force. So I would love to hear from you if you have had experience of dealing with Immigration New Zealand. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The battle over intensification of housing has reached cabinet level, with the Deputy Prime Minister and the Housing Minister at odds over Chris Bishop's plan to get hundreds of thousands of houses built in the super city.   “It's 2 million,” I hear you say. “They want to build two million houses.” Well, the Housing Minister addresses this in his column in this morning's Herald. There will be the ability for the council to consent two million homes. That doesn't mean they will all be built, as he says, the Auckland unitary plan enabled around a million homes. Ten years later, only around 10% of that enabled capacity has actually turned into new housing. The idea that a plan change that enables two million homes is suddenly going to result in two million homes being built in the short term is nuts, he says. Housing capacity does not immediately mean construction. It means the ability to do it, and it means infrastructure can be sequenced and coordinated to support it.   He said, "I expect that the housing capacity the Auckland Council is enabling through this new plan change will support Auckland's growth over the next 30 to 50 years."   Chris Bishop says in the past week or so we've seen an almost unprecedented level of misinformation spread about the new draft plan change. He says Auckland is not about to be overrun with sky-riser apartments. The tree-lined streets of the suburbs are not about to be destroyed. Raw sewage will not be bubbling up onto the footpaths or into the Waitematā.   The Deputy Prime Minister, who is also the MP for a suburb of tree-lined streets, says the new plan is flawed and he will lobby for changes. He told a public meeting last week that he and supporters must impress on Chris Bishop that this plan is not necessary and it will have negative unintended consequences, as he told Mike Hosking on the Mike Hosking Breakfast this morning.   “The plan that has been produced by Auckland Council, as Chris Bishop noted in his column this morning, that requires almost no greenfield development, all intensification. It requires half of Parnell to have 50-metre buildings. Now, I just make the point that, you know, it's only two years ago that we had a building fall into a sinkhole because a 120-year-old brick sewer underneath Parnell imploded and everything fell down into it and we had two years of fixing that up. So, the idea you're going to intensify at that rate there, doesn't make sense.   “So, we've got an improvement, but now we've got, an obligation, I think, to make sure that we really go through this from an Auckland perspective and make sure that the plan actually makes sense.”  I think, David Seymour, as the MP for Epsom, makes a very good point. There was a great big sinkhole in Parnell because the pipes imploded. Their necessary infrastructure wasn't there. And I wish every single time the government or the council or developers talked about houses, they added the words ‘and the supporting infrastructure’.   I can see where both ministers are coming from. We need more housing and supporting infrastructure in all of New Zealand cities. Chris Bishop is passionate about this. He wants to get housing affordability down, the best way to do that is to increase the supply of houses and the supporting infrastructure. But I'm wary of his comment in his column that cities aren't museums, that our streets should not be shrines to the past. Chris Bishop was only a baby when the wholesale destruction of Auckland's Victorian and Edwardian buildings took place. He didn't experience the horror of seeing beautiful old buildings torn down and replaced with priapic smoked glass monstrosities erected in the name of men's egos. Hideous. Not all old buildings are created equal. Not every single building born and erected before 1900 should be saved and preserved in aspic, but we need to keep some links with our past. To know where we're going, we need to know where we've been.   We need more housing. We need more affordable housing. We need a variety of housing. It can't all be created equal. Chris Bishop says too in his columns, that he's perplexed by the council's aversion to new greenfield housing, big new subdivisions on the city fringe. He says that he's in favour of greenfield housing where the infrastructure costs can be recovered from new residents. He says in his view, the council should be zoning more for this sort of housing. The new draft plan is a missed opportunity, he says, but it's a draft and the council has a chance to improve it. But I guess the council's looking at arable land. You can't just soak up the land where food is produced to plonk more people there.   So, what would you rather? Go up, the high-density apartment buildings? Go out? The greenfield housing on the outskirts of the city where you contribute towards the cost of the infrastructure needed to have long-term viable housing there? Can we have a little bit of everything? A little bit of the old buildings, a little bit of the heritage buildings, a few tree-lined streets, apartment living for those who, who want it and love it. I'm wary of more big subdivisions on the city fringe because I'm mindful that land is usually good land for growing food. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

ACT Party Leader David Seymour has set the cat among the pigeons, or the Huntaway among the cattle, by calling for New Zealand to withdraw from the Paris Agreement. The Paris Agreement is a pact that’s part of the UN's framework convention on climate change, which started in 1992 with the Rio Earth Summit. The main goal of the Paris Agreement is to keep long-term global temperatures from warming 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial times, and if not that, then well below 2 degrees Celsius by slashing planet-warming emissions from coal, oil, and gas. It's not working, the numbers are still too high, but who knows what they would have been had the Paris Agreement not been in place.   It works as a binding but voluntary programme for the member countries. Every five years, countries are required to submit a goal or a plan for what it will do about heat-trapping emissions of carbon dioxide, methane, and other gases. And these goals are supposed to get more ambitious every five years – you're supposed to improve on what you did last time. The countries themselves decide what's in those goals, and there is no punishment for countries who miss the goals.   Despite this, despite the fact that there are no teeth and no punitive measures if you don't meet the self-imposed targets, ACT says that the Paris Agreement needs to change, or New Zealand needs to leave. David Seymour says it demands targets that are disconnected from science and blind to New Zealand’s realities. Net zero targets have been set without regard for the real cost to firms, farms, and families, they say, so they want New Zealand out, like the US.   “At the moment, we face being punished for being a methane-heavy economy. I think it's about time that we, perhaps along with like-minded nations, I'm thinking South American nations like Uruguay that have a lot of livestock, also a lot of Southeast Asian nations which produce a lot of rice, which it turns out actually produces a lot of methane – we should be going to Paris saying, "hang on a minute’, instead of our government officials making representations to the public that pay them on behalf of these global institutions, maybe they should actually be going on our behalf overseas to say, ‘you guys need to give a fair deal to methane-heavy economies,’ because methane's a very different gas. It has a much different effect on climate because it breaks down over time, and therefore that scientific reality needs to be recognised.”  So that was David Seymour talking to Heather du Plessis-Allan last night. Prime Minister Christopher Luxon says it's not going to happen; we're not going to leave. It would only hurt and punish and damage our farmers. He says our competitor countries would like nothing more than to see New Zealand products off the shelves, and he added that, having worked in multinationals, the companies would just move to another supplier, a more public-friendly, a more agreeable, a more green-friendly supplier.   He does have a point. Well, both men have points, really. David Seymour is quite right in that methane is a different sort of a gas, that New Zealand does it the best in the world. New Zealand produces food better than anybody else in terms of accounting for climate change targets and goals. But Christopher Luxon has a point too, because green and social accounting is part of global financial reporting. We're seeing it right down to the smallest business in New Zealand. Your bank wants to see you committing to various environmental targets, goals, achievements. If you don't, the money comes at a higher rate. And it's the same for them. Their masters, their overlords, want to see that the banks themselves have required their clients to commit to environmental goals. It's absolutely entwined within the way the world does business. I don't know how you can separate one from the other.   It would be very easy for New Zealand to be made an example of, far harder for the US because it is a global powerhouse. Notwithstanding Modi, Xi, and Putin all getting together to try and form another cabal or block of power, but the US is too powerful to punish. Were we to say, "You know what, we're out," it would be very, very easy for us to be made an example of. We're small, quite loud, there would be some people around the world who would have heard of us, so if we're made an example of, it would only hurt us. Nobody else would care.   Furthermore, Christopher Luxon says that New Zealand has taken farming out of the ETS, the Emissions Trading Scheme, and promises there'll be an announcement on methane targets in the very, very near future. So where do you stand on this one?   As I'm aware, farming as an industry and farming as a science is constantly working to improve efficiencies in the way they do things. Our scientists and our ag researchers are working overtime to try and bring down any harmful gases caused in the manufacture of food. Farmers are implementing all sorts of measures, and if they don't, they're off the books. They are no longer clients of places like Fonterra. So you have to meet really high standards before you can consider yourself a farmer in the modern age. I would have thought farming as an industry understood the global realities, given that they are a major global player. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A former Climate Change Minister believes New Zealand should stay in the Paris Climate Agreement.  ACT leader David Seymour's announced a policy to leave the global pact unless rules are loosened for our farmers.  New Zealand First has also floated the idea of withdrawing, as some larger nations have ditched it.  Tim Groser told Kerre Woodham this goes against public sentiment.  He says polls indicate a large majority of Kiwis believe we should do our share on climate change.  LISTEN ABOVE  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.