Kerre Woodham Mornings Podcast

The National Party is due to meet later this month to vote on proposed changes to its internal rules after a string of problems with MPs and candidates, and a disastrous election result in 2020.National Party leader Judith Collins says changes to the National Party's selection rules will include much stronger vetting of potential candidates' social media histories and more comprehensive reference checks.But how do you go about rejuvenating a business, or in this case, a political party?Pead PR Chief Executive Deborah Pead joined Kerre McIvor to discuss why a shake-up for the party needs to start at the top, with the board.LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Ashburton District Council is facing a big repair bill to fix up gaping holes left in rutted roads and fix their bridge.Mayor Neil Brown says if Auckland can get a new $685 million bridge, his Canterbury town should get a new bridge at a fraction of the cost.The South Island mayor said Auckland has a need to bridge the Waitemata Harbour and "that's fine", but his town of 35,000 people has a need to bridge the Ashburton River.Ashburton Mayor Neil Brown told Kerre McIvor it's not as simple as asking the government for money."We're doing a business case at the moment. Part of that business case will be the design of the bridge, once we firm up the location and there'll come a figure that it will cost to build the bridge and then we'll know how much to ask the government for."LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

UK research has found that children on a vegan diet are more likely to be shorter and have weaker bones than their meat-eating peers.The study by the UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health in the UK and the Children's Memorial Health Institute in Poland compared infants on a vegan diet and those who were omnivores.It found that vegan kids might have slightly lower levels of cholesterol and body fat - but on average they were three centimetres shorter, had weaker bones and were three times more likely to be B12 deficient.To discuss this, Claire Insley media spokesperson for the Vegan Society New Zealand joined Kerre McIvor.LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Nurses Organisation members around the country are striking between 11am and 7pm tomorrow, after rejecting another pay offer.They say pay rates don't attract people into the profession or retain current staff, and staffing levels are stretching them to breaking point.Nurses Association Lead Advocate David Wait joined Kerre McIvor.LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A bill that would have required all primary and intermediate schools to offer second language tuition from among 10 priority languages has been torpedoed by Labour despite the party originally supporting the bill.The Labour-led parliamentary committee examining the bill, originally proposed by ex National MP Nikki Kaye, oppose making 10 languages a priority. It says that te reo Māori and sign language should be the priority languages because they are both official languages.And it said Cook Island Māori, Niuean and Tokelauan and other Pacific languages needed to be valued and taught.National education spokesperson Paul Goldsmith said Labour are too focused on Māori - Pākehā relations."Fundamentally, what's happened is Labour have decided that yes, it's a good idea to learn a second language, you can learn any language you like, but it must be te reo."LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Christabel Williams has been crowned the winner of Popstars 2021, taking out the $100,000 prize and proving she is well on her way to living out her music dream.The 20-year-old from Auckland was chosen by Popstars panellists Kimbra, Nathan King and Vince Harder as the deserving winner after careful consideration of her vocal ability, song-writing skills and stage presence.And Christabel's brand-new single 'If You Ain’t Looking', has already hit number one on the New Zealand iTunes charts.LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A lot of jobs require the wearing of body cams; parking wardens, SPCA inspectors, conservation rangers, a whole host of them.  And yet our police don't. Race Relations Commissioner Meng Foon has called for body cameras to be used by our police, not to protect them or keep them safe necessarily, but as a tool to prevent unconscious bias from entering into police decision making. Body cameras, says Foon, could offer context to any problematic interaction and, as he says, in this day of social media and cell phone footage, context is everything. Police Association president Chris Cahill, says bring it on.Police have trialled body cameras previously. A police research project into the use of the cameras started in March 2018, and was due to report back in December 2019, but was shelved with little hoopla by police bosses a few months earlier. At the time, police cited the cost of the project. Cameras are more than one thousand dollars each, but that's only the beginning.  Footage has to be stored, analysed, made available under OIAs and prepared for trial. The cost involved in that was better used in other areas, police said at the time. So do they work?  Depends who is asking. When it comes to reducing violent interactions, no. When it comes to protecting police officers from false complaints, yes. When it comes to helping police recognise that they targeting certain groups over others, when it comes to stopping on suspicion, yes. But then that's more a diagnostic tool, rather than a tool for the front line. If I was a police officer, I think I'd rather wear one than have highly selective social media snippets being the official record of what went on.  But if the money and resources spent on body cameras could be better allocated elsewhere, I'll trust in the police judgement.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Further to the cycling discussion on Monday, Kerre McIvor was reading a Listener piece by the Chair of the New Zealand Infrastructure Commission, Dr Alan Bollard.Within the article, Dr Bollard says the proposed Northern Pathway Auckland Harbour Bridge cycleway project has been forecast to cost many times its initial capital cost estimate of 67 million.  It will move less than 1% of the bridge traffic while subsidising some of the wealthiest suburbs in the country.  He says, it does not add up.Coincidentally, it's the second day of the Infrastructure 2021: Looking Ahead Symposium that looks at Infrastructure NZ's work on a 30-year strategy and discusses some of the most critical infrastructure issues we’re facing as a country.  New Zealand Infrastructure Commission Chief Executive Ross Copland spoke to Kerre McIvor.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Further to the cycling chat yesterday, just a follow up.  Reading the Listener and there's a piece in there by Alan Bollard - chair of the New Zealand Infrastructure Commission. It's a fabulous piece and I do recommend it - hopefully we will have Alan Bollard on the show tomorrow to talk infrastructure, but within the article is a piece that is relevant to the conversation we were having yesterday. He said the proposed Northern Pathway Auckland Harbour Bridge cycleway project has been forecast to cost many times its initial capital cost estimate of $67 million.  It will move less than 1% of the bridge traffic, while subsidising some of the wealthiest suburbs in the country. It does not, says Alan Bollard, add up. But in the meantime, I was interested in Jarrod Gilbert's piece in the Herald applauding Don Brash for choosing to work with a Mongrel Mob trust.  It's a gang education trust which might, said Gilbert, prove to be a game changer in changing the future of these kids with an extremely high risk of becoming the worst sorts of statistics. I know we've had these conversations before about gangs - and in fact I was rung by a very irate Louise Hutchinson, PR consultant for the Mongrel Mob Kingdom, saying the gang members were good people and trying to change and for heaven’s sake I was living in the past - they'd been ordered to cease and desist from pack rape ages ago. Jarrod Gilbert says it's worth a try, particularly in addressing the issues of family violence and meth addiction.  The flow on effects of those are hugely damaging particularly to the children, so if they can be given alternatives by working with the gangs he says that's worth doing. Muldoon famously tried to get alongside the gangs.  He tried to get the leadership to encourage their members into the make-work schemes that were being run at the time, thinking that getting the gangs into work would decrease their anti-social activities. That idea went out with all the other Muldoonisms - protectionism, Think Big, when the eighties swept in and since then, or until recently, gangs have been seen as a police issue. The arrival of Andrew Coster seems to be heralding in that back to the future, let’s work with them, not against them, approach and thus perhaps Don Brash joining a Mongrel Mob trust is just part of the zeitgeist.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I was heading over to the North Shore on Sunday morning - in the never ending search for the perfect inter-generational home - and thought how lovely to see so many families out cycling. There seemed to be far more than usual - mums, dads, little kids, babies strapped in the back - and although it was a little irritating, doing 5 ks down Herne Bay's side roads, it was Sunday morning these people were having lovely family time and what the hey. Then, as I got closer to the park, I saw hundreds of them.  Like a swarm of lycra clad rats, coming out of every side street and road. I had to wait while a policeman directed traffic - hordes of cyclists crossing on the road in front of me, and after four or five minutes, I was allowed to drive onto the Curran Road on ramp.  Well lucky I wasn't ten minutes later setting off. Had that been so, I would not have been able to make the appointment because the cyclists whipped up by perennial spinning wheeler Julie Ann Genter went from a lawful rally at Point Erin Park, to a law breaking ride across the Harbour Bridge, backing up traffic for hours on State Highway 1. I have no problem with cycling proponents wanting a way to get from the North Shore to Auckland City.  Hell, if we end up buying a house over there, I might have actually used it. But right now, I don't feel like ever being supportive about cyclists or cycling lanes ever again. There is absolutely no difference between these law breaking, entitled, demanding gits and the law breaking, entitled gits on motorbikes who take over the roads and the highways when they feel like it - other than the fact that the motorcyclists pay to be on the road and the cyclists don't. With all the immature reasoning and rationale of four year olds, the cyclists took over the bridge because they want something and right now, this minute, they can't have it. Bike Auckland chair Barb Cuthbert addressed the protesters after they returned from their bridge crossing. 'Ooooh, how did you like our lane?'  I bet they were ever so thrilled with their smug, lycra clad moment of derring-do and bravery in taking on the police. Later that night, sitting around Auckland's leafy suburbs with a median house price of around 3 million dollars, they would have sipped their chardonnay or pinot noir or for the younger ones, kombucha, and thrilled to the excitement of telling the story of the day they took over the Harbour Bridge - a story that will be told and retold in years to come as they push around the gourmet sausages on the BBQ at the beach pad in Omaha. That they won't have cycled to mind, because how would they get the toys and the Farro hampers up there if they were biking, but by crikey, the grandkids will know and their kids will know too of the day their courageous forebears took on the authorities and won.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.