Kerre Woodham Mornings Podcast

Founder and CEO of chemicals company DGL, Simon Henry, has criticised My Food Bag for putting an image of brand ambassador Nadia Lim in its prospectus, referring to Lim as 'Eurasian fluff'.National Business Review ran an article featuring an interview in which the comments were made.Kiwi Wealth in the process of adding DGL to its exclusions list in response to the derogatory comments he made.Kiwi Wealth CEO Rhiannon McKinnon joined Kerre Woodham.LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

If a politics wonk was to ever put the time and effort into ranking the best and worst of New Zealand parliamentary speakers, I am willing to lay good money on Trevor Mallard being cited as the worst speaker of the house in the country's history.Now obviously I can't go back to the late 19th century and the early 20th century. But I'm still willing to be it. He would be the worst.He's an unlikely speaker. In a 2000 press release by Independent MP Peter Dunne,  Mallard was labelled parliament's worst behaved MP, based on the amount of times the MP had been expelled from the chamber or asked withdraw.  He often violated the rules of the House while he was an MP, and now he's keeping them. Talk about poacher turned gamekeeper.He has a professional reputation for being a bully, pugnacious petty, and utterly incapable of saying sorry.Now in another petulant hissy fit, the Speaker has delivered trespass notices to some of the people who were at protests in Parliament grounds.Some are deserved - no problem there. But to use the occasion to dish out a little bit of light revenge is an abuse of office.It's a grim day when we have to choose between Mallard and Winston Peters. But on this occasion and on this day, I am reluctantly forced to be Team Peters, much as I think he should just push off out of public life, join a bowls club and retire with dignity. I do not know how Mallard can hold that post any longer given his history, given his current behaviour, and given the fact that nobody has respect for this referee. Helen Clark was able to just keep him in line. I mean fighting with Tau Henare in Parliament, brought it all back to me when I was going back through Mallard’s history. It was ugly. And it's just got uglier, using his position to score petty personal political points with his opponents as an abuse of the position.Jacinda Ardern will not keep him in line, but somebody has to.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Is it any real surprise that the Property Investors Federation says rolling back changes that have been made to the rental industry by this government will fix soaring rents and a shortage of rental properties? Probably not. You would expect such a position from the federation, but the real point is, are they right? Yesterday, the Property Investors Federation launched a five-point plan, which it says will fix the rental property crisis. We've seen soaring rents. We've seen limited properties available for people to rent  So, they say, if you bring in this five-point action plan, we'll see more houses come on the market, and because of that there will be competition and the prices will come down. In effect, they want harsher penalties for bad tenants. They want to return the bright-line tests to two years. They want the right for landlords to issue no-fault 90-day notices making it easier to get rid of troublesome tenants and they want mortgage payments made tax-deductible. They've also proposed that there be a public list of bad tenants, those who own money who have damaged properties or who have had antagonized the neighbours. On the positive side, they came up with a suggestion that is used in Germany, where people have security of tenure that in effect the house is theirs in everything but ownership papers. So, in effect, the landlord supplies the walls, the floor, the ceiling, and the infrastructure for water and electricity. The bare shell, the bones of a house and the tenant makes it a home and supply everything from the oven to the fridge to light fittings, and then you have it. For life, if you so wish And if you are or were a landlord, does this action plan from the Property Investors Federation make your think all right then, I'll get back into it.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We all know that the first 1000 days are the most important days in a child's life. Forget saving up to send them to the best possible secondary school. Forget putting aside money to help them through university or an apprentice training scheme. Invest in a child in the first 1000 days say all the child development experts and you will reap the rewards.As the child psychologists and developmental experts say, it only takes one person to care about a child, to nurture a child, to take an interest in a child. One educator to believe in a child to transform lives. If you're looking to our early childhood sector to mitigate some of the damage you're looking in the wrong place. It's going downhill, and it's a sector heading backwards. It is child farming and early childhood education is a wreck. That is not the opinion of dissatisfied parents who want the very best for their Henry's and Henrietta's. Harsh and brutal criticisms of the sector are the opinions of the very people who work in it. These are the views of 1000 men and women working right across early childhood education and centres, kindergartens, home-based care and other areas and early childhood. There's a story in the New Zealand Herald that is well worth reading if you have young people in your lives.These 1000 men and women have little confidence that the Government will deliver on pay parity. They feel the quality of care for children has worsened in the past four years. Qualified teachers are hard to come by and centres are struggling to afford anything but the minimum staff numbers.According to the respondents, New Zealand was once a leader in early childhood education, now says one we should be ashamed of the care being offered to our children. It sounds absolutely dire and frightening if you have a child or a grandchild and early childhood education. But it's on par with the rest of our education system, which has been going downhill rapidly for a very long time now.I've got a grandchild in early childhood education. To me, the teachers seem incredible. They're proactive, they're positive. We get constant feedback.She's happy there. She's engaged. The teachers seemed absolutely onto it. I would not have believed this report until I read it in the Herald, and what is really concerning as one that the criticisms come from the people within the sector themselves.To quote an oft used talkback phrase that hasn't been used for some time, it's going to hell in a handbasket. And I suppose we shouldn't be surprised that early childhood education is suffering from the same malaise as the drop in standards in our primary schools and our secondary schools.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Tourism operators are welcoming the return of international accents again.New Zealand is opening up to visitors from around 60 visa-waiver countries from today.Like Australians, international tourists can arrive without isolation, if they're vaccinated and do a pre-departure and arrival test for Covid-19.Kerre Woodham caught up with tourism operators who had called her during the pandemic in 2020, namely Bevan Newlands of Skyscape.co.nz; Blair Huston, Managing Director of Fortis Travel and Justin Hutton, owner of River Rats Rotorua.LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

There has been much discussion in recent times about the diversity of our local councils, with Local Government New Zealand launching a campaign to ensure councils reflect the people they represent.Currently only 14% of councillors are under 40 years old, with the average age being 56 - 60. The majority are men, while 41% are women. There's also a lack of ethnic diversity with 14% of representatives Māori.Newstalk ZB Nights host Marcus Lush is also an Invercargill City councillor and he joined Kerre Woodham to discuss life in the job and the discourse around diversity.LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The path forward for Three Waters reform is now less murky.The Government's accepted nearly all recommendations for our country's water system, from an independent working group.A public shareholding structure will be put in place and shares will be held by councils on behalf of communities.There'll also be regional representative groups...with a council and mana whenua chair for each region.Local Government Minister Nanaia Mahuta says they've listened to concerns, and made changes.She says they've strengthened protections that ensure locals will always have a strong say, in the delivery and management of their water.Newstalk ZB political reporter Aaron Dahmen was at the announcement and joined Kerre Woodham.LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We've been talking about this for what seems like months now, young people involved in brazen daylight and midnight robberies and getting away scot free.According to the Herald's Jane Phare, young people have turned away from robbing dairies because dairy owners are now locking up vapes and cigarettes, so the only takings to be had are lollies, biscuits and drinks. That’s a lot of effort for very little reward.They realize they can target high end goods at shopping malls like clothing, electrical goods and stuff they can flog off easily at the back of a truck. I thought the appeal was getting brownie points with their gang of choice. Look at what I can do. Patch me up mate.According to Phare, there's a social media element to it as well, although they only leave the footage up for a very short time on platforms like Snapchat and Tiktok. They absolutely love the notoriety they get from the postings because they're kids and this is all they can do. Thus, ram raids have become a bit of a craze.So what do we do? According to a journalist, many of these young people who drift into crime often don't know that what they do is wrong. They're destitute of all the things that children should have as a right - food, clothing, shelter, security, and care. They have an ingrained conviction that it is you who are wrong, not them. That you are wrong in the first place and appropriating all the good things that the world affords, leaving none for them, but what they steal.So, the recurring theme, according to this journalist, is that crime and homelessness are indelibly linked. Time and time again, people are saying that if only destitute children could be rescued from the streets, a large part of the problem of juvenile crime would be solved.And when was that written? That was written by a journalist in 1869 reporting on the street kids in London. Has anything changed? Well, I was tempted to say nothing has changed, but it has.In 19th century Britain there wasn't a welfare system. There wasn't money given to people to look after their children. They were forced to live on the streets. The women were forced to put the children into some kind of ghastly Victorian orphanage because there were no other options in that day and age.The difference between Victorian England and modern-day New Zealand is that there is a welfare system that is supposed to help and support families who are doing it tough with children.The state isn't failing these children, their parents are. Go hunt out the parents of these children. Make them responsible, make them culpable, see if that works.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I have to say it was an absolute horror show on the roads again.In a way, I don't know why I'm why I was surprised because every holiday weekend you tend to see the road toll, people focus on the road toll over a specific time frame, so you become aware of how many deaths there have been.Maybe because there's been so much chat about the Road to Zero and we're going to make sure that nobody dies on the roads which could be considered a laudable aim but really seems absolutely absurd given human nature and given the state of our roads.Four young men dead in a dreadful crash in Invercargill.  Ten dead over the Anzac holiday period. Four over the Easter period. That's just the deaths. Then you've got the trauma both physical and mental for the survivors and all the families involved, and on the same day we have coroner Marcus Elliott recommending that councils and roading authorities improve the overall visibility of signs at intersections, particularly rural intersections.Instead of introducing the lower speed limits and saying there you go, that's the answer. Instead of putting more police on the roads to discipline drivers, we actually have to make the investment.In the case of this Government, reluctantly, they don't want to invest in roads.They really don't. They'd rather we're all on buses or hydrofoils or whatever it is. So instead of reluctantly investing in shoddy bits of metal that masquerade as roads, if we really want to see a Road to Zero it's the engineering and the roads themselves we need to look at, not the driversSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Kiwi motorsport legend and road safety advocate joined Kerre Woodham to discuss New Zealand's road safety and the Government's Road to Zero campaign following 11 deaths on our roads over the Anzac Day weekend.LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.