Who on Earth would want Chris Bishop's job? The Minister for Housing has launched a new scheme designed to make it easier for community housing providers to provide social housing. The previous administration was all about the government, we're from the government, we're here to help – people within the industry have told me of a rather bunkered attitude towards housing provision. The attitude was no, the private developers can't do anything about the shortage of housing, they can't do anything about social housing, we the government will do it better because we, the government, have the most pure of motives, so we'll do it. Community housing providers they had a place for, but ultimately it was Kainga Ora who was going to solve the problem of affordable housing, in the mind of the previous government. It didn't work out like that. Now Chris Bishop has said the government is looking to community housing providers to fill more of the gap, and they're going to help them by treating them on a level playing field with Kianga Ora when it comes to competing for funding to deliver social housing. They're not going to give them money, but they will allow them to compete on a level playing field when it comes to bidding to provide social housing. Chris Bishop says that unlike the last government, they’re agnostic as to whether it's the state or the community sector that delivers social housing. At the moment, Kainga Ora provides some 72,000 public homes, which is the vast majority of the more than 80,000 public housing places offered by the government. Community housing providers, the Salvation Army and the like, receive government funding to provide a similar service in privately owned homes —so they're not owned by the state, they're owned by trusts or organisations— but they are only providing around 8000 homes for people. We know that Kainga Ora is struggling. The Bill English report says it's basically not financially viable because under Labour, Kainga Ora became an urban development agency. It was a bold ambition, and if it had worked, it would have been amazing. If they'd been the money, if they'd been the governance, if they'd been, if if, if, if. It was a large-scale urban renewal project that mixed all kinds of housing, public and private, it was next to public transport, which was going to be built as well. It was going to be hoots wahay and amazing, incredible. But that didn't happen. To be fair, Kainga Ora is also struggling because successive governments, including the John Key/Bill English government, underinvested in state housing. The lack of social housing and affordable housing was one of the hot issues of the 2017 election campaign and that helped get Labour into office. Housing is still a political hot potato, with this government struggling to wrangle Kainga Ora into financial shape and provide more housing for people who are really struggling to find a place to live. So Chris Bishop is hoping that by changing contracts for new housing supply, it's going to make it more attractive for investors and financiers to invest in community housing. They are going to allow increased use of leasing to provide social houses where leasing delivers value for money – that could help deliver more social housing very quickly and would only be available for newly built homes that have not yet been occupied. And they would also capitalise part of the operating supplement currently paid to community housing providers for new housing developments, to be paid upfront when contracts for new social housing are agreed. So if your eyes are glazing over, it will mean that the money will be given to them up front rather than in various portions as the housing comes online. Labour's Kieran McAnulty says Chris Bishop's all talk. He said it was hoped that there would have been government support for desperately needed public housing. And by support, I guess he means money - upfront money. Instead, there was no commitment to build any more public homes and no further support for the community housing providers, no increases to income related rent subsidies. Everyone was hoping the government would at least announce it would guarantee loans for the newly established Community Housing Funding Agency to make them cheaper, but again, no commitment from the Minister. When it comes to providing state housing the government has always been the first port of call, traditionally and historically. Then there was underinvestment from successive governments in the Kainga Ora stock, and also the needs of people changed. You didn't need a three bedroom house with room for a veggie garden and a nice kitchen for mum to bake the afternoon tea for the kids when they came home from school. That's just not what the modern family looks like compared to 1933, so there have had to be changes to stock. People who go into social housing, many of them have jobs, they have families, they raise them, they move on. Others are their longer term and as tenants, they need to be as they need more management. The Community Housing providers tend to do that better because they have fewer tenants. When you've got a Kainga Ora tenant manager, they have far more people that they're trying to manage. Community Housing providers can prevent problems happening before they happen, Kainga Ora tends to be more reactive because there are just more people. There's also an expectation than once you get a State House, that's where you land, you don't move on, you've got it for life. Whereas in the past it was understood that it was a stepping stone. So when it comes to the provision of social housing, do we need to put more in the hands of the community housing providers? Will these changes, as far as you're concerned, make it easier for them to do so? I think the leasing will probably make it easier. Whether the changes to the contracts for new housing supply will make it more attractive for investors, that will be for them to decide. Do we want Kainga Ora to fulfil its vision of being a developer? Bold, visionary, large scale developer of urban renewal projects? I mean I get where they were coming from, but they couldn't deliver, they didn't have the money, they didn't have the governance, they were operating in it time when the housing market was going completely and utterly insane in the post pandemic years. It was a perfect storm. If you're looking for a home, do you care whether it comes from Kainga Ora? Do you care whether it comes from a community housing provider? If you're living in an area where social housing developments are being built, are they being done so thoughtfully? What is the role of the state to provide public housing? Should it be, as Keiran McAnulty said, just give them loans - give the Community Housing providers loans. Let them get on with it because they do it well.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

One of the questions we’ll be putting to Chris Hipkins, of course, is a question around the capital gains tax, because this is an issue that simply will not die. Labour Party members will vote on whether to formally endorse continuing work on a capital gains or wealth tax at their party conference in Christchurch this weekend. The party's been debating tax policy since losing the election last year, part of a broader truth and reconciliation soul searching. The people loved us so much and then they didn't. How did it all go so wrong? So that's there's been a lot of that.   Former Labour Party leader, David Cunliffe was on with Mike Hosking this morning and he says he has no insider knowledge, but thinks the conference members will be pushing hard for some sort of wealth tax.   “CGTs have actually polled really well, and one might, with a wry smile on your case, say that the CGT poll better than the Labour Party, so it's unlikely to be a net vote loser. Most middle ground National voters I know would also support CGT, no so a wealth tax. I mean a wealth tax has got a retrospective element sometimes, because it goes to accumulated wealth and high wealth individuals might vote with their feet, so I think that's a much riskier proposition. I think Labour should be moderate here and just do a sensible, relatively low-rate broad based CGT.”  Which is what David Parker and Grant Robertson last time wanted when they had a mandate. They had a mandate, they had the popular vote, they were governing alone – they could do pretty much what they wanted and what senior members of the party wanted, senior members of the government wanted was a capital gains tax. So I would argue with David Cunliffe that if there were votes in it, you can bet your bippy that Chris Hipkins would have been chucking it out there. He was desperate to stay in power. He was putting things on the bonfire and offering trinkets and displaying baubles, and you know if capital gains tax had had any votes in it, you can bet he would have put it out there.   Instead, he brassed off some really senior members of his government by saying it wouldn't happen. It'll be interesting to see where this goes. The text machine went wild after David Cunliffe's interview with Mike. And in news that will surprise no one, the Newstalk ZB audience appears to be overwhelmingly against the idea of a capital gains tax. I don't buy all the criticisms of a capital gains tax, but one of them rings true: I simply do not trust that the Labour government will spend my money wisely when they take it off me, if the last administration is anything to go by. There has to be some sort of understanding, some sort of relationship between the government and taxpayers, some level of trust.   If the government is coming to us to tax us, they have to say we're going to take money off you, and you might not like it but look at what we can deliver for the whole country for future generations with your contribution. Look at what you can do when we all contribute towards the country, this is what we can deliver. And you accept that. You say okay, I don't particularly like it, but I don't agree with everything you're doing but I can see results. I can see the country is improving, I can see that services are being delivered, that people who are working hard can get ahead, that kids can get an education, that my grandmother can get a hip replacement, I can see that it's moving in the right direction. But to take money off us and be left worse off as a country and as a people than when we started, yeah nah. She's a harder sell there. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Labour leader says New Zealand needs an honest conversation about paying for its future.   Our newsroom understands party delegates will vote on whether to support a capital gains or wealth tax at its annual conference this weekend.   Chris Hipkins says about 70% of government tax revenue comes from personal income taxes - while the OECD average is half as much.  He told Kerre Woodham that's because New Zealand doesn't have other forms of tax like capital gains, which is very common elsewhere.   Hipkins says it's treated as if it's a big radical idea, but we are one of the only countries in the world without some form of taxation in that area.  Labour leader Chris Hipkins has reflected on his ‘frenemy’ relationship with Nikki Kaye. Reacting to news of her death while speaking to Kerre Woodham, Hipkins said the pair both had a passion for education and tended to agree more than they disagreed.  He said he hadn’t been in touch with her for a number of years and said her death was “a bit of a shock”. “Really sad news. I just heard about Nikki Kaye as I was coming into the studio this morning. Nikki and I arrived at Parliament at the same time. We had a lot of common interests. I think you could say we were ‘frenemies’ for the time we were in Parliament. Opponents, but we actually got on well together.” Kaye was Minister of Education in 2017 under Sir Bill English. Hipkins would succeed her as the minister when Labour took power after the 2017 election. “I thought Nikki was a really passionate member of Parliament, very diligent, did her research, liked to know what she was talking about, didn’t rush to decisions until she had actually done the analysis of understanding the situation,” Hipkins said.  LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The health system, well, we're not really talking about the health system, but how not to get into the health system because every time we talk about the health system, we talk about the need to stop people getting into the health system in the first place, the need to focus on prevention rather than cure. And the Helen Clark Foundation has come up with a new report calling on politicians to take a new direction when it comes to problems with obesity and the health problems related to obesity. A third of New Zealand adults are obese and even if we want to split hairs and play fast and loose with the BMI - All Black front rowers are technically obese! Everybody knows you can be skinny fat! You know you can all protest as much as you like, but the fact is too many of us are unhealthy because we're fat and that leads to a long, miserable and expensive relationship with the country's health system. Obesity is now the leading risk factor for death and disability in this country. The Helen Clark Foundation Report, ‘Junk Food and Poor Policy’ says successive governments have primarily approached obesity as a matter of individual responsibility. And I would add to that, that society also sees obesity as a moral failing, which complicates matters. So if you're fat, you've got poor self-control, haven't you? Oh dear, you're not trying hard enough. Oh dear, you're clearly a person with lax morals, all that kind of judginess goes on as well. The foundation argues that successive governments have done far too little to address the underlying issues of what causes obesity. Only a fraction of school canteens meet the nutritional guidelines. The concentration of takeaways is highest in the most deprived suburbs in New Zealand, so the people who have the least amount of time to prepare nutritional meals, find themselves bombarded with takeaway stores just around the corner. The Helen Clark Foundation wants to see a healthier food environment, stricter rules for advertising junk food, giving local government the power to control new unhealthy food outlets (similar to bottle stores and how they're allowed to operate), and making the health star rating on food packaging mandatory. Regulation can work – soft drinks levy introduced in the UK in 2016, has led to a 35 percent reduction in the total sugar sold over four years and lowered hospital admissions for dental treatment. So that has got to be good news. The Foundation’s also calling for embedding healthier food across hospitals, schools, daycares and the like, and adopting and expanding new treatments like weight loss drugs. For a while, it was the bariatric surgery. I know so many people who've had it. And it's worked for the most part, for them, like overwhelmingly, it's worked for them. Now it’s Ozempic and the other related type injectables are said to be an absolute game changer when it comes to obesity. Basically, and putting into really fundamental terms, the makers of Ozempic have said people can not know when they're full – not all people, but there are a lot of people who don't know when they're full. Their bodies have no trigger switch that says, oh, that's enough, stop. With the injection, they take the injection and they have something to eat and their body says that's enough, we've got enough nutrition to get us through, and so you know when to stop. Which sounds amazingly easy. And if that is all it is, yay, it will make a huge difference. I mean, obviously following the the logic that David Seymour applied to Pharmac, if you can get people onto Ozempic or similar, a weight drug that regulates metabolism and regulates appetite that has got to be better in the long run than paying all of the health bills further down the track. I would love to hear from those of you who have thought about weight, struggled with weight, done something about weight. It occupies far too much of our time, but it is a very, very real problem. I mean, look at the figures. Obesity has overtaken smoking as the leading cause of death and disability in this country. We need to do something about it. What do we do?  LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Helen Clark Foundation wants widespread change to address New Zealand's high obesity rate. Its report recommends government policy interventions to improve the proportion of healthy food available. It also suggests restricting the marketing of unhealthy food to children and adopting new technologies for obesity treatment. Executive Director Murray Bruges joined Kerre Woodham. LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Remember yesterday when we were talking about the declining rates of hazardous drinking among young people? Good news. And then so many of you positing that it's because they're popping pills and taking other drugs. Bad news. It looks like you might be right.   The 2024 New Zealand Drugs Trend Survey has found that the price of drugs is dropping, the meth market saturated, and drug use has increased in just about all the regions. The availability of LSD and other psychedelics is growing, prices have been dropping for the past seven years, Kiwis’ cocaine use is up the wazoo —I suppose you could put it up the wazoo, it’s usually up the nose— but that's everywhere in all the regions. Cannabis is everywhere and the price has dropped marginally.   The fact that meth has reached record-low prices is because new players are entering the market. Just as with anything that you manufacture, doing it yourself in New Zealand is more expensive than importing it from overseas, and that is concerning. Professor Chris Wilkins from Massey University says new players have entered the market and our drugs are no longer just a bit of marijuana growing locally.   CW: It's a global market, so a lot of the methamphetamine we have traditionally used has come from Southeast Asia, but Australian police are saying that 70% of the meth they now see is actually from North America, South America, actually are Mexican cartels, and they're essentially just like in the other market, they're seeing a market opportunity and they're selling at a cut price.   MH: There seems to be a tremendous amount of cocaine about the place?    CW: That's right. So there was another really surprising finding was that the level of cocaine use, level of cocaine availability, obviously in Auckland, but also in Northland, the Bay of Plenty, but really all over in New Zealand and this may well be some overlap with that Mexican cartel and of course, they're in the cocaine trade, and if they're selling meth to New Zealand and to Australia, then cocaine is also another thing that obviously got access to.   So yeah, the Mexican cartels sending down their meth and saying, “look, hey gift with purchase, you might like to try a little bit of cokie wokie when you’re taking your meth supplies”. So the survey says drugs are becoming increasingly prevalent, but illicit drug users are still in the minority if you believe the New Zealand Drug Foundation. You might think from that report and from what Professor Wilkins was saying that at every party in every town across New Zealand, there are mountains of cocaine and rows of meth pipes lined up on every table like little party favours, but the Drug Foundation says drugs like meth, MDMA and opioids are used by a relatively small percentage of the population.   According to their figures —self-reporting— 3.6% of the population aged 15 and over used MDMA last year. That's around 152,000 people. 1.1%, around 47,000, used amphetamines, and 0.4%, around 18,000, used opioids. They rely on self-reporting, and the New Zealand Health Survey, which is self-reporting and wastewater testing data – which you think would be more accurate, but surely there must be more people using drugs than those who are appearing in the wastewater or those who are self-reporting? Otherwise, how are so many people able to make a living peddling drugs? Why would the cartels bother sending drugs into New Zealand if it wasn't worth their while? Are we seeing a disconnect between the numbers of people who are self-reporting and the actual trade itself?   Do we need to know exactly what the extent of drug use is in New Zealand before we can have a conversation about drug use in New Zealand? If there are many, many people, like if it's more than 1%, if we're talking about 10% of the population using illicit drugs, then you'd think it would be time to take the Portuguese approach and decriminalise drugs to control the source and supplies so that it wasn't in the hands of the gangsters and the mobsters. And we really don't want Mexican cartels here, do we?  But then you can't just take the Portuguese experiment, which has worked in Portugal and import it holus-bolus into your own country. In Canada, in British Columbia, they became the first and only province thus far to decriminalise the possession of a small amount of hard drugs to reduce the barriers and stigma “that bar those with severe drug addiction from life saving help or treatment”. It's running on a pilot basis until 2026, but already it's a disaster. It's come under increasing pressure from British Columbian residents and political opponents, who have called it a harmful experiment with all the drug users out in the streets and slumped over and unconscious, no safeguards for the public, and one that utterly failed to reduce drug overdose deaths.   Remember the synnies that were doing so much damage, especially among the homeless people? They seem to have self regulated and thought, no, we're not going to use those because we're going to end up dying a horrible death.   According to the latest Drugs Trend Survey, drug use is increasing across most drugs across all regions of New Zealand. The price is dropping, its hoots wahay, party time as we go into summer. But according to the Drug Foundation, 3.6% of the population using illicit drugs, it's not a huge amount of people, is it? So where are we at? What numbers do you believe? Is it worth having a moral crisis and raising the alarm about the amount of drug use and the cartels moving into here, or is it a relatively small number of people? How is it that 3.6% of the population can support all those gangs and all those cartels? See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Pros and cons in the latest NZ Health Survey.  Hazardous drinking rates have fallen from 20.4% in 2019 to 16.6% this year, and daily smoking rates have remained steady.  However, the number of daily vapers has increased from 33,000 to 480,000 over the past eight years.  Daily vaping has also increased more quickly in younger age groups, especially those aged 15-17 and 18-24 years.  Asthma and Respiratory Foundation Chief Executive Letitia Harding told Kerre Woodham that the data they’re seeing correlates to when regulations were introduced.  She says that the regulations rolled out quite slowly, and the Ministry of Health went about it wrong.  LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The hīkoi we were discussing last week has gone down the country through the weekend, rolls into Wellington City, and should arrive at Parliament around midday. Police say they don't expect any problems, certainly nothing like the descent into chaos we saw at the end of the last demonstration at Parliament. We'll see.   So far, it seems hīkoi participants have abided by the organisers’ requests. There's all sorts of rules and regulations before you can join the hīkoi, and participants are following them thus far, adhering to the principles of peaceful protest. The police have been working with the organisers, and they told Mike Hosking this morning: so far so good. It does mean, of course, that a lot of police will be tied up at the hīkoi, and if they're there they're not out investigating crime. And they need to be nabbing criminals and hauling them before court and engaging in crime prevention if police Minister Mark Mitchell is to keep his job.   Back in August of 2023, Mark Mitchell told us that if New Zealanders hadn't started to see a change in public safety within a year of his appointment as Police Minister he would resign – so how's he doing? Well, ram raids are down 61%. Foot patrols are up 30%, so that's got to be good news - a visible police presence does an awful lot to help prevent crime. Aggravated robbery is down 11%. Robbery, extortion and the like are down 6%. Serious assaults are down 3%. However, counting against him, common assaults didn't go down, and theft had increased 12%. So how does he think he's doing?   “I just thought it was coming up 12 months and it was important for me, I did that to hold myself to account because we were in such a bad place as a country that the expectation is that whoever took over as Police Minister, it's a huge responsibility, you've got to show that your things are changing. Otherwise, I wasn't the right guy for the job or the right person for the job. So we are starting to see change.   “Like I said, we've got a long way to go, but we're starting to see some trends moving in the right direction. And I want to say that's not attributable to me. I mean it's, it's the fact that, yes, I've got the, the privileged position of Minister so I can bring everyone together ... the Auckland CBD is a good example. We brought the Residence and Ratepayers groups together, the business associations, our social service providers, Māori Wardens, CPNZ, KO, MSD, police, St. John's, we've all come together, we've been aligned. I had my latest meeting on Friday and we're seeing real success. So I've been going around the country trying to pull that together and trying to get some real change and it's happening.”   So how do you think he's doing? You know, just based on your community, your neighbourhood, your retail area, how do you think the Police Minister is doing? I think the stats speak for themselves. Of course, as he also said in the interview with Mike, you're never going to get rid of crime altogether. There is never going to be a day where the police wake up and log no crime, ever. That's just not the way human beings are. But in terms of your community, your neighbourhood, your shopping precinct, do you feel safer?   I mean, certainly I no longer have a low-level sense of alert when I'm going into a mall and walking past a Michael Hill Jewellers store. You know, there had been so many and a number in our area had been hit, so when I was taking the kids to the mall – I wouldn't say I was fearful. I certainly didn't stop going. I wasn't fearful, but I was on alert. Anything that looked a little bit out of the ordinary and I was going to get out of there with those children before hell broke loose. So, I'm more relaxed I think. There isn't the posturing and the advertising and the visibility of gangs in my hood. A few red sneakers, but hey, they might just like the colour.   There aren't the same sort of video footage from doorbells and street cameras of families taking little ones out to go robbing in the early hours of the morning. I haven't seen that being posted for quite some time. So yeah, I feel as though things are getting better and the stats would seem to indicate they are.   Is that because a line has been drawn in the sand? Is that because the focus of the police has shifted slightly? I would certainly say the foot patrols would have helped. Is it an indication from police and indeed from the community? It was voters who said up with this we will not put. We could have gone one way, we went this way when it came to the polling booths. We don't want to see any more softly, softly. We would like to see a line in the sand when it comes to crime.   There's a lot more to do. There's a lot more work to do around addictions, there's a lot more work to do around mental health because a lot of those are precursors to crime. The crime is not actually the problem, it's the addictions that are. But so far, if you were to mark Mark Mitchell, what would you give him a B plus? A minus? A very good start? See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Foodstuffs North Island chief executive Chris Quin has confirmed that the company will appeal the decision by the Commerce Commission to block its proposed merger. Speaking on Newstalk ZB this morning, Quin said the company’s advisers had been working their way through ComCom’s reason for the decision for the last few weeks. “The biggest concern in the document seems to be about whether suppliers would be worse off as a result of the co-op merging between the North Island and South Island,” Quin said. “Our internal teams have the view that we passed that legal test and that the proposition we put up should have been cleared.” Foodstuffs will appeal the decision in the High Court and expects to have officially filed its appeal by November 21. Quin reiterated Foodstuffs' position that the two regional co-operatives in the North and South Islands don’t compete with each other in any way.  He said that if the co-operatives were merged it would make them “incredibly more efficient”.  On the suggested impacts on suppliers that ComCom posited, Quin said he briefed hundreds of suppliers after the decision last month.  “We get a lot of conversation with them almost every day on meeting with one or other and the advantages for suppliers would be dealing with one not two,” Quin said.  “The possibility would be you could do a deal to be nationally ranged, so we see a number of advantages for suppliers.”  He believed a merger would allow Foodstuffs to make prices much more competitive, ultimately benefiting consumers.  Mary Devine, chief executive of Foodstuffs South Island, also said the merger woujld bring long-term benefits to customers and communities, citing increased efficiency and faster innovation.  “Combining our operations allows us to streamline operations, reduce overheads and better invest in new technology and services that our customers want,” Devine said.  “This isn’t just a merger - it’s an evolution to ensure we remain competitive and sustainable for the future.”  The original decision  Now that Foodstuffs has confirmed its appeal, the process will likely be a lengthy one.  Foodstuffs North Island and Foodstuffs South Island operate some of New Zealand’s best-known supermarket banners – New World, Pak’nSave and Four Square – and while each retails only in its respective island, the companies already collaborate across various business areas, including marketing and home-brand purchasing. Their combined revenue was nearly $13 billion in the last fiscal year.  In their application to the commission for clearance to merge, the parties essentially argued that they do not compete at either the retail or wholesale level and they would be more efficient and better equipped to drive down grocery prices as a single streamlined entity.  However, the commission was not convinced the benefits of such an arrangement would flow to customers and moreover, its main concern was that a merger would reduce the number of buyers in the “upstream market” for grocery supply from three to two – this market is currently dominated by the two Foodstuffs entities and Woolworths NZ.  In its decision, the commission noted that this reduction would be a structural change and would likely lessen competition in multiple acquisition and retail markets. It also emphasised that competition in the country’s highly concentrated grocery market was already weak.  Tom Raynel is a multimedia business journalist for the Herald, covering small business and retail. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

If I asked you how many demerit points you have right now, reckon you’d be able to tell me?  If you could, then you’re better than most people. Because, unless you get enough demerits to have your licence suspended, then I think most people don’t care.  And a study out today is telling us that we do need to care if we want to make the roads safer.  The people behind the study are telling us that most of us won’t care until we have tougher penalties for speeding. And I’m with them. Because, if we keep on doing things the way we do, not much is going to change.  Here’s the gist of what this study connected with the University of Canterbury is telling us. It's found that drivers ticketed for speeding are nearly three times more likely to be involved in a crash.  And you know why that is, don’t you? It’s because the fines for speeding are so piddly that people just take their chances.  The speed cameras don’t help, either. Because, if you get ticketed by a speed camera,  you don't even get the demerit points. Because it can be difficult to prove who was driving.  So, while the speed cameras are useful, they're not going to do much in terms of slowing people down if, the only impact, is paying a piddly fine and still keeping your licence.  Which is why I like the idea that these researchers are floating today. That if you get a speeding ticket and keep on speeding, you get a higher fine each time.  I’d go a step further than that, though, and say that the fines themselves need to be way higher than what they are now.  As one of the people involved in this study is pointing out today, it’s crazy that you can actually pay more for a parking fine than for a speeding fine.  So rank up the fines each time someone is caught speeding - but sting people for a lot more than we do at the moment.  The other idea that these experts are putting out there today is, essentially, means testing people when they get fined for speeding.  Which might sound like a good idea. But it’s not.   Because someone who speeds is just as much of a menace on the road whether they’re driving some sort of Flash Harry 4-wheel-drive or whether they’re driving a Demio or a clapped-out old Toyota.  Besides which, when you drive too fast on the road you are breaking the law. So I think giving speeding fines to people on how rich they are, or otherwise, makes no sense.  Not to mention the fact that it would be an absolute nightmare to run.  Can you imagine getting pulled over by a cop? Getting some sort of ticket. Then having to go home and submit your income details and whatever else they’d need to determine what means you have to pay the fine.  It might sound like a great idea when you’re writing your research paper at university and trying to “push the envelope” a bit. But it would be a disaster.  Although, to be fair to Dr Darren Walton at the University of Canterbury, he hasn’t just plucked this idea out of thin air. He says, in Switzerland, speeding fines are scaled to wealth.  But I don't see how that would encourage someone with plenty of money to slow down. They’d just go “pfft” and pay the fine.  And I don’t buy this argument that speeding fines need to be “equitable”. That’s what the university guy is saying. You speed, you get caught, and you should pay exactly the same fine - whatever your financial situation. That’s what I think.  But, if this research is telling us that drivers ticketed for speeding are nearly three times more likely than other drivers to be involved in a crash, then something does need to change.  And I do like the idea of scaling-up the speeding fine system. So that, each time you get a ticket, you have to pay a higher fine.  What do you think?  LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.