Kerre Woodham Mornings Podcast

Election Day is like Christmas Day, with some of us not getting ourselves organised until the very last minute - even though we’ve known for ages that it’s happening.   Christmas day is never sprung on us. We know it happens every 12 months, but there’s a lot of last-minute panicking, isn’t there?   We get even more warning with Election Day. We know it happens every three years, but there's the same last-minute rush.   Especially for the 110,000 people who were in the last-minute camp at the last election, enrolling to vote on the same day they voted.   But the Government’s not having any more of that and, as part of its changes to the way elections are run, it’s doing away with same-day enrolment. Which I think is a mistake.   But ACT MP Todd Stephenson is loving it, saying: “It’s outrageous that someone completely disengaged and lazy can rock up to the voting booth, get registered there and then, and then vote to tax other people's money away.”   But he’s missing the point completely, because isn’t it brilliant that more than 100,000 people got to vote in the last election because they could enrol on the day?   Isn’t it the ones who didn’t vote at all who are the lazy ones?   The Government’s missing the point too. Because instead of penalising voters because it’s system can’t cope with last minute enrolments, it should be coming up with a system that can cope.   It should be building a system that enables same day enrolment instead of getting rid of it.   What it’s doing is effectively reversing something that was brought in for the 2020 election by the previous government. But it's going even further than just reversing what Labour did, and people are going to have to be enrolled and have their details up to date before the 12 days of advance voting begins.   The Government says it’s making the changes so the votes can be counted quicker. So that we get a result quicker, and so the politicians can get on with doing coalition deals.    But that’s just an excuse for not putting in the effort to come up with a better system to count the votes. And I’m not the only one saying that today either.   Electoral law expert Graeme Edgeler is pouring cold water on it as well, saying there’s nothing stopping the politicians who look like they've been elected from beginning coalition negotiations before the final special votes are counted.   He says the final results can change by one or two seats, but nothing dramatic, and he says, “the time delay just doesn't seem like a particularly good reason for this."   As for one of the other changes it’s making —delivering on its promise to bring-in a total ban on prisoners voting— that gets a thumbs down from me too.   Again, it’s getting rid of something brought in by the previous government: voting rights for prisoners serving sentences of less than three years. Which is a mistake because I see a prisoner being able to vote as a way of keeping them engaged with the outside world.   You might recall a few months back, Sir Ron Young was finishing up as head of the Parole Board and he was saying that the reoffending rate for prisoners who serve short prison terms of two to three years is higher than those inside for longer.    That’s because they have way less opportunities to get themselves rehabilitated and they end up spending a lot of their time behind bars hanging out with serious crims.   So he was advocating for keeping these prisoners more engaged with the outside world, and I see voting rights as a way of doing that.   What’s more, how does a prisoner serving two years being allowed to vote affect you? Answer: it doesn’t. It has no impact on you and no impact on me. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Homelessness has increased, but by how much is unclear, according to a government report.  This is the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development's latest Homelessness Insights Report drawn from data in Census 2023, and observations collected from government agencies, councils, and the general good sorts in the sector.  The report defines homelessness as living situations where people are forced to live; without shelter, in temporary accommodation, shared accommodation with a household, or living in uninhabitable housing.  The Opposition was hoping that the report would show the government's ditching of emergency housing was to blame. It doesn't say it's not to blame, but nor does it say it is.  What it found was that 60 days after leaving emergency housing 37% were housed in social housing, 29% went into transitional housing, 19% received the accommodation supplement.  That leaves 14% who may be living without shelter, but there's no way of confirming this.  Housing Minister Chris Bishop says it's an issue he takes very seriously.  He says it's a better outcome than the last government who spent $1.4 billion on sticking people in motels with all the consequent problems that entailed.  Homelessness is not a new problem, but there is no doubt the problem is getting worse – blame the economy, and the pandemic hangover, and any number of factors.  And there's no quick fix.   But good souls are trying their best. In Rotorua there's an initiative just starting up called Adopt a Streetie. It's designed to help rough sleepers off city centre street.  It would involve rough sleepers being matched with volunteer local hosts willing to offer free rent in exchange for their guests completing odd jobs.  There is no knowing whether there will be enough good folk prepared to Adopt a Streetie, because it's not an easy job. The homeless are not easy people. They've not had an easy life. They have big hard personal problems. It takes a very good Good Samaritan to run the gauntlet of adopting a streetie. I commend you if you're helping and I thank you but it's gotta be tough.  The idea is the brainchild of Love Soup, the organisation behind Rotorua’s Village of Hope. That village shelters homeless people in sleeping pods set up in secret locations, but it's struck problems with compliance issues.  And that's just one of the problems that affect solutions – a lot of our rules don't suit people who have chosen to live outside society and its rules.  Once upon a time I helped a friend help a bloke. She befriended him, I met him a few times. She organised some emergency housing for him in Papakura, a warm little brick and tile and one weekend she helped him move in. Bought some furniture from an op shop.  But two weeks later he was back living rough downtown, because in Papakura he was lonely. His people were fellow rough sleepers, and he valued their company more than a warm house.  Now this is not a tale to say that housing the homeless is useless because they want to live this way, but it does acknowledge that while they don't like living rough, it's what they know and safer than the solution.  So the Minister and everybody says it's not good enough, and it isn't, but finding a solution is very hard indeed.   But while the problem is hard, at least we should be able to understand it. Because that is the first step in learning how to solve it. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

It appears we're living in an age where it's okay for politicians to swear to the press. Donald Trump is leading the way, dropping the F bomb over Russia and using the word bullshit more often than anyone ever had.  It's a sign of the times, and you could argue it makes politicians more relatable because heaven knows we're all a lot more potty mouth in private. But you could also say that leaders of countries should be held to higher standards, and it's not hard to not swear – ask broadcasters.   So the PM almost dropped an F bomb yesterday because Chris Hipkins was calling the FamilyBoost programme a failure.   Are you okay with politicians having a swear in public, or is it something they should have the maturity to control?  Now what is the FamilyBoost programme that got Chris Luxon so fired up that he called the Leader of the Opposition “fricken” Chris Hipkins after he criticised it.  The FamilyBoost programme is a New Zealand government initiative designed to help families with the cost of early childhood education by giving you a refund on what you've paid.  Families can claim 25% of their weekly cost of childcare, up to a maximum of $75. There's a cap, if you earn over 180,000 dollars you can't claim it.  The government initially estimated that up to 100,000 families could benefit from FamilyBoost, with 21,000 potentially eligible for the full payment. Chris Hipkins claims that rather than 21,000, the number claiming the full benefit was 153.  60,000 families have received some form of payment – so it has kind of worked.  The low uptake is likely due to a combination of factors, including a lack of awareness of the scheme and complex eligibility requirements.  It's not the first time the policy has been criticised. Back in May it was revealed that nearly a quarter of the money spent on National's flagship FamilyBoost policy has gone towards running the scheme, instead of helping families – $14 million out of $62 million.  Are you sick of these virtue signalling schemes where if you have the ability to run the scheme, you have the ability to run a multi-national corporation, because applying is so complex, but all you’re doing is applying for a benefit?  The Government has since announced changes to the scheme to increase eligibility and encourage greater participation. These changes include expanding eligibility to more families and increasing the income threshold for the full rebate. It's also looking at ways to simplify the scheme and make it easier for families to access the benefits. Blah blah blah blah.    We’re living full lives running a family here. Is this worth the time to interpret all the rules and fill out all the paperwork, because when you look at this whole thing, it seems to be written in something other than English?  So the question is this: in an age of fast track this and too much bureaucracy that, is applying to get a benefit just too hard? Is the fear of being taken advantage of by a small minority of an already small minority too great?  Or is the bureaucratic minefield that is the benefit application process a good thing? Because it limits the number of people taking taxpayers money to make ends meet so we can spend that revenue on more doctors and transport options?  And can politicians fricken swear? See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We all know we need more doctors. A lot more. Considering how long it takes to train a doctor, this is something that someone should have probably thought about 20 or 30 years ago. New Zealand's population has doubled since the last med school was opened, so you can see how far behind we are.  But now we have a proposed new medical school in the Waikato.  This was dreamed up last electoral cycle by the University with the help of a report and analysis by Stephen Joyce with his consultation hat on. Shane Reti was heavily involved with the university. The University called the school a present for National's second term.  Low and behold, it became National’s policy at the last election, and it seemed a vote winner. After all, we know we need more doctors  But then it all got sticky with bureaucrats and coalition partners suggesting the idea might not fly.  Now it’s back with a miraculous cut in budgeted costs and a substantial expectation that generous benefactors would make up any underfunding from the government. And if they didn't, the University had the means to cover any shortfall.  The two universities that already have medical schools don’t support it. They say just give us more money and we’ll make more doctors. A PWC report last year said a school was duplicative and expensive.  And with the need for doctors so urgent there’s the time factor – to get a school up and running takes a while. You need all sorts of specialised spaces. The Waikato Graduate School of Medicine is scheduled to open in 2028 —three years from now— versus two schools who claim they could grow intake from next year.  The whole thing seems a bit rife of political necessity.  They promised it, so it has to happen whether it's a good idea or not. It reeks of wasteful government spending as a payback to loyal supporters. It preys on the largesse of the wealthy. Is it a good idea?  If it was a good idea why has not been part of our long-term planning for longer? Training to become a doctor in New Zealand typically takes 12 to 17 years, depending on the chosen specialty.  But a third school has suddenly landed in our lap. I'm not against Waikato having a medical school in the future – health experts have said rural-origin students who train in rural areas and are trained by rural health professionals are six times more likely to work in those rural areas post-graduation. Now Hamilton is quite rural, but frankly so is Otago so I'm not sure that's a reason to have a school there. But right now, it seems a bit rushed and political.   So do you support the establishment of a school in Hamilton?  And then there's all the other issues around medical staff.  The proposal to date aims to produce proportionately more rural and primary care doctors via a four-year graduate programme, largely based in the community and the wider region’s general practices, yet drawing also on the many excellent clinicians at Waikato and other regional hospitals, so that graduates (as at Otago and Auckland) are equipped to go into any area of medicine.  Many in the medical sphere say the real problem in banging out doctors is not in the number of places at a school, but where they go to get on-the-job training – placements  So to train more doctors we need more doctors to train more doctors.  And this school does nothing to solve that problem.  Once they're trained in theory, how do we train them practically? Once they are trained, how do we pay them properly, and then how do we keep them from disappearing overseas?  And then there's the question of where we find people with the ability and desire to go through the arduous process of training to be a doctor.  Because doctors don't grow on trees.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Inflation's cooling in many corners of the economy, but not headline inflation. Latest Stats NZ figures suggest core inflation and domestically-driven non-tradeable inflation are trending downwards. But annual inflation has risen to 2.7 percent, up from 2.5 three months ago. NZ Herald business editor at large Liam Dann says these figures will provide relief for the Reserve Bank, as they work on getting the OCR down. LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

So here we go again. A national conversation about whether NCEA is C.R.A.P A damning Government briefing presented in June has raised significant concerns about the credibility of New Zealand’s main secondary school qualification. It’s worried about the flexibility built into NCEA, including regarding what assessments students sit, means courses can be structured around those perceived to be “easier” to accumulate credits. The briefing says the system encourages students to stockpile credits across often disconnected subjects at the expense of engaging in a “coherent” course that supports a clear pathway for their future. The kids are also passing courses based on internal assessments. Many are avoiding external examinations. More than 250,000 kids students skipped exams last year. The briefing says that the qualification is hard to assess if you’re an employer and it’s hard to compare it with anything internationally. So Erica Stanford is working on proposals, and I’d like to know what you think she should do with the system. This morning Mike Hosking asked Auckland Grammar's Headmaster Tim O'Connor what he would do:  "I think you change it to an examination based system. We make it pretty simple. Here's a thought, we assess at against the national curriculum because currently in NCEA doesn't do that. So the primary mode of the system is examinations that would give benchmarking across the country. Every student whether you're in Invercargill through to Auckland. you'd know where you stood. And you can have some internal assessment in it because not all types of content, you know, are best under exam conditions, but these should be marked by NZQA. Teachers wouldn't mark their students own work, no, and they shouldn't receive their marks back before they get their externals back."  Now, both my boys did NCEA and they’re literate and numerically great. It did not fail them In fact my oldest had the choice of doing NCEA  or International Baccalaureate. So, why did we go NCEA? It’s because that boy was dyslexic and dyspraxia.  He cannot write well and his spelling is atrocious. So a system that had a large quotient of internal assessment catered for his learning difficulty. But the difference between his school and others is that the school made sure that the standards of IB were replicated in their teaching of NCEA The concentrated on the basics, which is not just reading writing and arithmetic. They also included science and social studies. Social science, including history and not just New Zealand history, but the history of the world over the past 200 years in particular. They didn’t include the so-called cheat courses like barista studies reasoning if you want to learn how to be a café worker you can enrol in extramural courses He got a great education and has gone on to have double degrees and a thriving professional life My point here is that one of the main problems of NCEA is not the system, but the way the schools teach it and the abdication of parental input into the student’s choices. You can’t just sit back and complain that you don’t understand how it works as a parent. You have to educate yourself if you want your children to be adequately educated for their future and the chance to do even better than you did. LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A late night safe zone has found success in Wellington, and is being brought to Auckland.  For the past eight years, Take 10, an initiative run by Vulnerable Support Charitable Trust (VSCT), has been offering a late-night safe zone on Wellington’s Courtenay Place.  Now, with the support of Auckland Council, the volunteer-run initiative is launching a 10 week pilot in Auckland’s city centre.  Operations Manager Leigh Keown told Kerre Woodham that they get a lot of students and young people on their night out, but it’s for anyone who wants to have a break, get a glass of water, or charge their phone.  She says everyone is welcome, and rather than walk around the streets, not knowing what to do, people can come to them for shelter.   LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

There’s no doubt the news that the number of people on a benefit in New Zealand is up to the 400,000 mark will have some people tut-tutting.    But before we start ripping into the so-called “benefit bludgers”, we need to be very careful.   Because at the same time that we’re finding out that benefit numbers are up —and the number of people on the dole in particular— 10% compared to last year, we’re also hearing about people over-50 being knocked back time-and-time again when all they’re doing is just trying to find work.   So the number of people on the Jobseeker benefit is up right around the country.    The biggest increase has been in Northland but overall, there are 216,000 people on the dole. Which is just over half the overall number of beneficiaries.   That’s with 81,000 people off a benefit and into work thanks to moves made by the Government, which had former WINZ boss Christine Rankin all excited when she was on Newstalk ZB this morning.    Social Development Minister Louise Upston also said this morning that thousands of jobs are on the way with the big infrastructure projects in the pipeline.    Which is all very well, but not everyone works in construction. And the prospect of these big projects coming online won’t provide any reassurance to the over-50s who are over the hill in the eyes of many employers.    Which is why we shouldn't make assumptions that everyone on the Jobseeker benefit is not in the least bit interested in working.   Because there are plenty of people —thousands of people we’re being told today— who desperately want to work but can’t because of their age.   Or, more to the point, they desperately want to work but can’t because some employers are only interested in hiring younger people.   The founder of a website for people over-50 seeking work has been saying this week that thousands of people have contacted them with stories of being sidelined just because of their age.   Ian Fraser is the founder of the Seniors at Work website, and he says employers need to change their thinking about these so-called older workers.   For example, he says not everyone over-50 struggles with technology. He says that excuse comes up all the time. Not that that’s what comes through in the rejection letter – if you do get a rejection letter.   Then there’s the old line about being over-qualified. But we’re not talking here about people all that long in the tooth, we’re talking about people my age.    I’m in quite a privileged position of having a job for the next two years. All going well, that is. Providing I don’t completely blow it.   I’ve got a contract that says, “we want you for the next two years”.   But I’m as aware as the next person that, when contracts expire, that can be it.   Which means in two years time I could very well be joining these thousands of people in their 50’s who are finding it impossible to get work because employers aren’t interested in them because of their age. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Around about 30 years from now the AI bot, who will be presenting the 9am to midday show, will announce breathlessly that single-cell classes are to be done away with and open plan classrooms are planned for future school builds to allow greater collaboration between students and teachers. A more relaxed style of learning, yadda yadda yadda – what do you think? 0800 80 10 80, the AI bot will say, because as sure as God made little apples, this is going to come around again.   Anybody who's been around since the 70s, perhaps earlier, will know that the great open plan versus single-cell classes debate has been going on, and on, and on for decades. Honestly, for people who preach collaboration and open minds, academics within education are awfully territorial and guard their own patch. Whole word learning versus phonics is another cracker, but we'll save that for the AI bot of the future.   While open plan designs were originally designed to foster collaboration, they have often created challenges for schools. So it was stop the presses yesterday when the Minister of Education announced that open plan classrooms aren't meeting the needs of students and teachers. Colour me pink and call me shocked! Whoever would have thunk it? We did. We all knew it.   They were originally intended to foster collaboration, and you can imagine a bunch of pointy heads sitting around a table saying: it'll be amazing – teachers will be able to draw support from one another, and those that perhaps aren't getting results from one student can look to another. Teachers will be able to foster the kind of energy and creativity that we need to see, and the children will be able to mingle. But no, it's been an abject disaster. It was an abject disaster in the 70s. It was an abject disaster in the 80s and it's been an epic disaster since John Key and Hekia Parata introduced them in 2011.   Erica Stanford says in many cases, open plan classrooms reduce flexibility rather than enhance it. She says we've listened to the sector; new classrooms will no longer be open plan. But this is the good thing: they're not going back to the future again. They’re going to create classes that prioritise flexibility over open plan layouts, so the use of glass sliding doors means spaces can be open when you want to have a wider collaboration, but then they can be closed for focused learning.    This idea doesn't mean we're going back to the prefab – the cold, uninsulated prefabs for every class that possibly you went to school in. If teachers want to open up space, they can, when they want to shut themselves off, they can. There is no one-size-fits-all for every class and that is the way it should be. The thing I really liked about Erica Stanford's announcement was the flexibility. This is a good thing. This is a very good thing. And I want to hear positive, joyous, fabulous response to this announcement from the Minister of Education, as one Minister who really understands her portfolio. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Education Minister's stressing schools can still be flexible as the Government pulls the plug on open plan classrooms.  It was introduced by John Key's Government in 2011.  Erica Stanford announced yesterday all new builds will now have more traditional layouts.  She told Kerre Woodham there are good examples in the best modern learning environments.  She’s also looking into helping fund schools to modify existing open-plan rooms.  Stanford told Woodham she's tasking the school property agency to look into ways to help schools revert their teaching spaces.  In the meantime, she says, schools have five year property budgets, with a category for classroom modifications they can use.  LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.