Kerre Woodham Mornings Podcast

Let's talk politics, specifically the latest Taxpayers Union Curia poll. It showed a firming up of support for the Coalition Government and the parties that make that up, but Labour leader Chris Hipkins has lost support as preferred Prime Minister and the party is languishing. The party vote changes were all within the margin of error in this latest poll, but the preferred prime minister stakes saw Chris Hipkins dropping 6.1 percentage points.   When you compare the previous Taxpayers Union Curia poll, which was in July, two months prior, so comparing apples with apples, National was up 1.4% to 39. Labour was 25.9%, that was up 0.8, but 25.9% is nothing to crow about. The Greens finally saw some downward movement after all their goings on, they seemed to be absolutely Teflon coated, but finally saw some movement down 1.5 on 11%. ACT, 8.8% around about what they got on election night, NZ First, 6.8%. Te Pati Māori 5%, up 1.5.   Now parties do have a hard time after a trouncing in a general election and they generally look to the to the leader as the sacrificial lamb. Get rid of the leader, sacrifice them to the political gods, we can start afresh and we haven't got the bad juju from the previous election. Look at National – they had five leaders in five years before settling on Christopher Luxon. Labour after the Helen Clark years saw Phil Goff, David Shearer, David Cunliffe, Andrew Little, then finally Jacinda Ardern. Andrew Little made the call to resign just seven weeks out from the 2017 election, and history will reflect that Little's call was one of New Zealand political leadership's gutsiest. Cunliffe, Shearer and Little all went when the polls fell too low for comfort, and that was around the 24 to 25% mark.   So here we've got Labour sitting on 26%, that is dangerously close to the knives being sharpened. Again, I think the only thing that's saving him is what saved previous political leaders from both parties: the fact that there is no obvious choice to replace him. When the party's been decimated and all the pretenders to the throne have been turfed out of office, your options are few. Chris Hipkins, when I spoke to him a couple of weeks ago was all Chipper Chippy.    “So you will be leader leading Labour into the next election against Christopher Luxon?” “Absolutely.”  Yep, absolutely. He was confident on-air. He was confident off-air. Looking forward to it. Had a big think, have I got in in me? Yes I have. Didn't really get a chance to do what I wanted to do when I took over from Jacinda Ardern.  She said I can't do it, I said, well, I will, and I'll take us up to the election. Not really me, he said. It wasn't really my party. There was a lot of Sergeant Schultz, I see nothing, wasn't me, didn't do it. But he was there all the way through the last Labour administrations regime, he was there front and centre. So, he might not have been Prime Minister, but he certainly was a key figure in that administration.   He may be the obvious choice at the moment, but is he ever going to be able to lead Labour back to victory? There is a strong core of electors who don't want a centre right Coalition Government. You know you've got a good block of Greens and Labour and Te Pati Māori, and then you've got the swinging voters, those in the middle, those who voted National last time but could be persuaded. Is Chris Hipkins the man to galvanise those voters or is he yesterday's man? Too much associated with the past, with the Covid years? There were some die hards who say they saved lives, who will think that by being there his reputations enhanced. I think the majority say no. When you look at him you see the Covid years, you see enormous waste of taxpayer money.   When he said, oh yes, we want to borrow more and tax more, I almost fell off my chair. You seriously expect the electorate to trust you with more money? You have got to be kidding. So, 24-25% is when the previous Labour leaders have been goneburger, have been asked to look at other options within the job market, perhaps their talents could be better served elsewhere. Labour's on 26%. Is Chris Hipkins the man to lead Labour into the next election or does he need to make room for new ideas, fresh ideas, a new Labour leader?   See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Chris Hipkins’ falling popularity could spell trouble for his party.  The Labour leader's slumped more than six points to 12.6% in the preferred prime minister stakes of the latest Taxpayers' Union-Curia poll.   National leader and Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has taken a hit of 1.8 points - but is still leaps and bounds ahead on 32.7%.   All up, the coalition parties have tightened their grip on power by gaining a seat, while the Opposition has lost two.   Newstalk ZB Political Editor Jason Walls told Kerre Woodham that while we aren’t a presidential system, much of a political party’s popularity is based on the leader.  He said that if you have a leader doing this badly in terms of net favourability, it doesn't bode well for the rest of the party.   LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

So the Government's 'Phones Away For The Day' regulations came into force in state schools and kura at the beginning of term two. Schools must ensure students do not use or access a phone while they're attending school, including during lunch time and breaks. Prime Minister Christopher Luxon announced the policy before the election last year and there were the typical naysayers saying that'll never work. How can you enforce it, the children need their phones to be able to contact their parents, it's going to put more pressure on teachers, and so on and so forth. The ban was part of National's plan to eliminate distractions and lift achievement within schools. And the press release cited studies that were themselves cited in the 23 Global Education Monitoring report which showed banning mobile phones improved academic performance, especially for low-performing students, and the results of the ban are starting to come in. We read about Mt Albert Grammar today saying that they're seeing really positive results within their school. Some Taranaki high schools were ahead of the game - they're already reaping the benefits from banning mobile phone use. I've mentioned them before, but from the beginning of last year, Waitara High School students in years 9 to 12 had to put their phones in a magnetic pouch when they arrived at school. And Waitara is an interesting case, because initially the ban was on phones for years 9 to 12. Year 13s, Darryl Warburton the principal said, could keep them - because after all, the year 13s can wear mufti, they can sign out without parent parental consent, they're transitioning to adulthood, it makes sense for them to keep their phones. He said he was reluctant to ban a device that's so central to modern life, it was better to teach them how to use it responsibly. That was last year However, not having phones had got rid of a significant distraction in class, and last year the academic results in years 9 to 12 were up 15 - 20 percent, and that is not insignificant. The only year that didn't go up was year 13. So Darryl Warburton, being a bright guy and seeing the results went - you know what? Year 13s, you've got them banned too. This year, with the total ban, senior academic performance has also increased and other schools are reporting much the same results. Education Minister Erica Stanford says the results so far are promising. "Yeah, we're seeing it all over the country. I mean, there was a little bit of grumbling from especially kids like my daughter straight away, but actually we're seeing really positive results from all of the principals I teach to. And actually, interestingly, the kids as well. And the biggest difference this has, we know from research, is our low socioeconomic girls and their mental health and that's a massive win." Massive win indeed. I found it quite amusing listening to the Secondary School Principals President Vaughan Couillault on the ban this morning. "I still believe that vaping is a bigger issue than cell phone devices. However, I am always happy to take it on the chin and say the cell phone ban probably has added value to the work that we're doing on campus rather than distracting from it." Talk about damn with faint praise. Spit it out Vaughan! It’s a good policy and let's introduce it for vaping now as well. To his credit he did say - yes it's probably making life a bit easier in the classroom, not out of the classroom, though and vaping is a bigger problem, but yes, okay, yes, it is working. You might not like the party or the policy but if it's good for the kids, if it's improving their mental well-being, if it's improving their academic performance, if it's making life easier for teachers to teach, where's the harm? So yes, as he says, when it comes to vaping, if you can introduce the ban on cell phones, if you can see positive results as a result of banning cell phone use during school hours, why not ban vaping? I just can't understand how it's not. It was a known thing that you did not smoke at school. I mean, everyone talks about having a few fags behind the bike sheds. I don't think at Sacred Heart Girls College, Hamilton, there were even fags behind the bike sheds. You just didn't smoke at school, so - how is how is vaping even a thing at school? These days when I'm emceeing, I have to go through the health and safety in the event of a fire, and I say there is no smoking or vaping on the grounds and no vaping or smoking anywhere near the venue. The only place you could probably find to vape or smoke are the Auckland Grammar girl’s toilets, that seems to be about the only place where you'll hear of people vaping. In the school loos? How is that even possible? How are they not banned? And for people who say banning doesn't work, - well, you'd have to say that the cell phones which are ubiquitous, which everyone said would be incredibly difficult to police. Well, no, not really. Vapes are smaller, they can be hidden on your person - and you can see the puffs coming out of the school loos. You know what's going on. If Vaughan can grudgingly, through clenched teeth, concede that yes, perhaps the ban on cell phones has been a good thing in schools, then I can agree with Vaughan that he's right, that banning vaping would also be a very, very good thing to do. Give the kids some boundaries, give them some rules and watch them actually enjoy having those boundaries, having those limits on what they can and cannot do and benefiting from them. LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

ACT's leader says Government departments will have to prove race-based policies have value. Cabinet is circulating a memo to agencies with the instruction to prioritise public services on the basis of need, rather than ethnic identity. David Seymour says a discussion needs to be had. LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

One of the emails that did come in for the Prime Minister caught my eye, and I thought, you know, this is not a silly idea. It might be. I think there's some merit and discussing it and I'd love to run it by you.   It was from the Elephant Beetle Think Tank and a quick Google found that no such thing exists, probably a couple of people enjoying a glass of wine and having chats, but none the less... it questions why we still have intermediate schools. There are 116 intermediate schools that remain within the education system, and according to the Elephant Beetle Intermediate School plan, there would be huge cost savings without the fixed costs of operating intermediates, which can be diverted into the remaining school system.   The operating budget for running the network of intermediates is big and there are massive savings to be had, potentially. The savings could be diverted into providing better outcomes in education, perhaps paying teachers more. Then take the land that the intermediate schools are on, which is generally in prime position in the middle of communities, in the middle of cities, in the middle of towns, and convert them into housing developments with 30% or so of the residences reserved for service workers like police, teachers, and nurses at subsidised prices and with better mortgage interest rates. As intermediate schools typically sit in the middle of established residential areas, there is little issue or a big strain on creating the infrastructure to do this. Create a mix of high and low rise housing, utilising the existing school halls etcetera as community centres and thereby creating a new utopia.   Now obviously it's going to be more difficult than that, more expensive than that, but it's not a bad idea because what purpose do intermediate schools have? My daughter went to Ponsonby Intermediate and it was a very, very good school, but if the same teachers had been either at extended primary schools or at extended colleges... it was the people who made the education, it wasn't the fact that it was an intermediate school.   You look back at the history of intermediate schools and they've been neither fish nor fowl. They were set up in 1922, initially to act as a kind of sorting gate to steer kids either into the trades or into academic courses. That's why you did the cooking and the metal work at intermediate. A study done on intermediates, ‘The New Zealand Intermediate School Experiment - Caught Between Two Schools’ was done by the Waikato Journal of Education and they said directors and Ministers of Education were unable to provide guidance for intermediate schools, thus, they found neither a clear nor consistent philosophy to justify their existence. Consequently, intermediate schools were left to develop in their own ways, in the hope that a role could somehow be found for them.   When there was a review of the development and progress of New Zealand Intermediate schools in 1938, the author of the report said the cause for surprise is not that the schools should have lagged along the road, but that they should have gone so far since no one has ever known quite what they were doing. And the authors of the Waikato Journal Report say nearly 60 years later, the intermediates are still no closer to discovering and developing a clear educational philosophy and identity.   And you would have to wonder, what is the point of them? You could easily, I would have thought, even with the pressure on school buildings, amalgamate them into either primary or secondary schools. And a lot of campuses are year 7 through to 13, and then you have all of that space freed up to do with as you wish, and all of that money freed up to do with as you wish. Now, presumably there are ideas against this, and I'd like to hear them because so far I've just heard the idea for and it doesn't sound like a bad one. But if the reason to keep them is just because they've always been there since 1922, I don't think that's a good enough reason.   See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Prime Minister says he will bring the Opposition leader on board to hammer out a plan for infrastructure.  The Government is promoting a message of bipartisanship as it sets its sights on designing a 30-year pipeline for delivering major projects.  Christopher Luxon and his Transport, Infrastructure, and Housing Ministers visited New South Wales last month to learn from Australia's productivity.   Newstalk ZB's Kerre Woodham pushed Luxon on why he didn't take Labour leader Chris Hipkins if he's trying to build consensus.   He says they have already reached out to other parties to make it clear the coalition wants to work in a bipartisan way.  When it comes to the coalition itself, Luxon insists he's leading a stable coalition, and works well with both partners.   That's despite the controversial Treaty Principles Bill coming up in this week's Cabinet meeting, and a paper unveiling Act's David Seymour's proposed principles.   Luxon's adamant he won't support the Bill past first reading and has admitted this was the issue that stalled coalition negotiations.   Luxon told Kerre the three parties are very different.  But he says he's very proud of the way he works with both Seymour and Winston Peters.  LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I could not have put it better than ACC Minister Matt Doocey did yesterday. He wants ACC to lift its own game before it starts raising levies.   The Accident Compensation Corporation has just begun a one-month consultation on suggested rises of more than 7% on levies for motorists, and more than 4% for employers and earners. I mean everybody else is raising their rates, aren't they? So here goes ACC. They have motorcyclists, professional sports people and ballerinas, specifically in their sights. Ballerinas?! Dainty, little, tiny, wee things like them, I imagine it's a strenuous job, and if something goes wrong, if you're a ballerina, it would go wrong badly, but I wouldn't have thought there would be that many to make a drain on the Accident Compensation Corporation’s finances. But none the less, be warned ballerinas – you are in the ACC’s sights.   To be fair, ACC has said it is just a consultation at this stage, and the proposal is part of a legislative requirement every three years, with cabinet making the final decision on whether levies are raised before December. Can you imagine any minister going ‘hmm, probably a bit unfair, let's see ACC improve its game before we lift the levies’. I cannot see any government organisation or minister going, ‘you know what? let's keep things the way they are’. Doocey says ACC has to make its own efforts to lift its poor financial performance, it has to increase its rehab rates, and it has to do a lot more around injury prevention before they can make a case for raising levies. And that is a fair call given ACC has just done a U-turn and reintroduced one-on-one case managers. They took them away as part of a $74 million restructure, despite the fact the agency had been warned that the new restructure was a dud. A complete dud that wouldn't work.   And in fact, we had a caller a couple of weeks ago who said that they had been trying to talk to ACC about their particular rehabilitation, they said they were passed from pillar to post, from one person to the next. They had to explain everything from beginning to end every single time they phoned, and it was just a waste of everybody's time and incredibly frustrating. So one-on-one case managers have been reinstated.   It's just another colossal waste of time and money. The rollout began in 2020 with some zingy person leading the restructure going ‘hey, we're going to increase productivity. Yes, we are. We're going to save costs and you case managers, you're going to see a direct lift in your performance. We're going to improve your workloads’.  By 2022, running costs had doubled, there were no discernible benefits to clients, and there was little improvement to case backlogs with exhausted and overworked case managers dropping at their desks. So the agency's gone back after $74 million down the gurgler to one-on-one case management.   Back to the proposed living increases, they are up for discussion, so let's discuss. Motorcyclists - the levy covers only around 28% of your costs to the ACC scheme. When things go wrong if you're a motorcyclist, things go wrong badly, so you're going to need a lot of rehab. So Matt Doocey asked do we lower the levy for lower powered bikes while increasing the cost for more powerful bikes? And I would really love to know what ballerinas are doing to stuff themselves up so much.   Professional sportspeople - I thought you would have been well and truly covered with the medical system that surrounds you as part of your job and the fact that you would go private.  I mean when have you ever heard of any All Black going on the waiting list for a knee operation? They don't. They're in surgery the next day, so I would have that would have been part of your contract that your medical costs are covered. Interesting though, at the Kerre Woodham Morning Show, two out of two of us have been on ACC in the past year. Helen with her never ending shoulder fracture and then me with the smashed arm. But again, the ACC ended after I think it was about 6 physio visits. I've been paying for them ever since. I paid for my own acupuncture, I didn't need any taxis. But we have used it.   It is a good system when it works. You know you take responsibility for your own recovery as well. You don't just lie there, lumpingly, and expect the taxpayer and the government to fix you. You do your own rehab and try and get yourself better. Everybody says, oh, it's the envy of the world, your ACC, it's just wonderful. Is it still? There's a $1 billion shortfall and you know a lot of that is the damaged babies that actually survive the brutal beatings, but they are left needing lifelong care, so a fund has been set aside for their lifelong needs, which sickens me.   You cannot get blood out of a stone. I don't know how much more they expect us to pay for everything, for all of the everything. For the rates, for the insurance, for the ACC, for the food, for the doctor's visits, for the everything. You know, there comes a point where you just cannot pay any more. But is ACC serving you well? I can put up my hand and I can do that now and say it has, it has worked well, provided you do your bit too. It's got to be a 50/50 partnership, I think. But can they really justify asking for more in levies when they have just wasted $74 million on a failed restructure? I’m with Matt Doocey: lift your own game before you take money out of our pockets. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The number of New Zealanders with dementia is expected to double in the next 20 years, with social disadvantages playing a big role.  Public Health Communication Centre's briefing reveals the risk of developing dementia is 60% higher for people living in the most deprived areas in New Zealand.  Director of the Centre for Brain Research, Sir Richard Faull told Kerre Woodham that there are about 14 factors which, when addressed, reduce the risk of developing dementia.  These factors, which include education quality, social isolation, smoking, excessive alcohol consumption, uncorrected vision loss, and air quality, are often associated with poverty and deprivation.  LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

It won't be a particularly good morning for the people of the central North Island. There was a sense of inevitability really, though, with the announcement that Winstone International will be closing its two mills near Ohakune. For months now, Winstone have been working on trying to find a way to keep the mills open in the face of declining commodity prices and astronomically high power prices. More than 200 workers are directly affected, but of course many, many more will feel the ripple effects of the mills closure. And this comes right on the heels of Ruapehu Alpine lifts troubles as well. It's a real double whammy for the region. The Tangiwai Sawmill and the Karioi Pulpmill have been a part of the central North Island community for more than 40 years. Generations have worked at the mills, but no more.   Resources Minister Shane Jones was with Mike Hosking this morning on the Mike Hosking Breakfast and says the reason for the closure can be laid squarely at the feet of the electricity authority, and we need to make changes to the energy sector.   “Look, it's up to you and I, as Kiwis and your listeners, do you want an economy where the price of power is internationally competitive to keep businesses functioning? Or do you want to disembowel your economy and turn it into an import model? I don't want that. Which is why Simeon Brown and I are signing off now the criteria and that criteria for the review of the power sector will involve structural separation, but look, mate, people have their had this nervousness, they've had this skittishness - don't touch the power system. We trusted the power system to deliver outcomes that boost international competitiveness and national security, they haven't so we have to change it, simple.”  Well, it's not going to be that simple, is it? Changing it is not going to be that simple at all.  I'd be really interested to hear from other manufacturers or those involved in manufacturing and in business. Is it the fluctuating power prices? Can you point to the electricity authority if your business is really struggling and saying you, you as an entity are the reason that I may well go to the wall? There have been so many stresses put on business, put on manufacturers in particular, over the past four or five years.    Is the fluctuating price of electricity the straw that's breaking many camel's backs, or is it just four or five years of really tough times? Is it international prices making you uncompetitive when compared with product from the rest of the world and the electricity authority is being used as the whipping boy? I love the way he says simple, he’s going to break up the electricity authority. Well no, it’s not going to be simple. And it's too late for Ohakune, far too late. When Shane Jones says it's the electricity market that's going to stuff our economy, I would have thought there was a bit more to it than that. For people having to pay high interest on business loans, the cost of living crisis, which means spending is reduced internationally competitive prices, other countries being able to outbid you, the high wages that you have to pay here compared to other countries, really the electricity component, I would have thought is just another big pressing, weighty issue coming into your office, not the only one.   See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

As much as I hate the gangs profiting from misery and tying up police time with their internecine feuds, the late amendment to the gangs bill, banning people from wearing their gang patches in their own homes, seems ludicrous for the reasons that have been given.   The Gangs Bill, as it was tabled in July at the Justice Select Committee, will give police the power to disperse gatherings and to ban patches in public. All good. But a clause added a few weeks ago allows the police to apply to the courts for a gang prohibition order for repeat offenders, meaning anyone convicted of wearing their patch in public three times in five years won't be allowed to wear the patch in their own home. Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith told Mike Hosking this morning on the Mike Hosking Breakfast that he makes no apologies for giving police extra tools to deal with gang members.  “What it's about is giving them, the police, that option to deal with what we think will be a small group of people who say, well, stuff you, I'm just gonna wear my patch and I'll pay my fine and I'll keep on doing it. And that would undermine the purpose of the bill and that's why we got that feedback during the Select Committee and so we're bringing in this extra tool to give the police extra powers to deal with that small number of repeat offenders.”  Well, all very well and good, but there's a couple of things here. This amendment really should have been discussed at Select Committee so that organisations, experts, and the public could have their say. You can't just discuss a bill at Select Committee, everybody knows what's in it, everybody has their say, and then after it's been tabled go - oh, hang on, hang on. I've got an idea. You can't have a thought bubble and pop it in (although it appears you can). But I think it sets a precedent that other substantial changes and amendments can be made to bills without the public getting to have their say.   An open letter from the Law Society to Goldsmith urged him to withdraw the amendment, calling it an unjustified limitation on the right to freedom of expression and not rationally connected to the stated purpose of the gang patch ban, which is to reduce public intimidation. And it is. I don't like seeing them on the streets, we share the streets, I'm very unlikely to visit a gang member's home and if they want to wear their patch at home and they're not doing anything unlawful, then I find it hard to see how that is going to impact anybody around us.   Then there's the policing of the ban. Making rules that are unenforceable weakens the impact of legislation and laws. Are the police really going to go around peering in the windows of gang members, hauling them into cells if they spot them wearing their patch while sitting on the couch watching The Chase? They're not. And I think this is where Paul Goldsmith should have just come clean. Surely the purpose of the law is to give the police licence to niggle. How could any recidivist patch wearer relax in the comfort of their own home, dealing their drugs or polishing their firearms or whatever it is that they do, if they know that at any time of the day or night the police can turn up? Oy, oy, oy, understand that you're a recidivist patch wearer, just checking you're not wearing your patch, Sir. Ostensibly, it would be to check that the patch is still in the wardrobe in its dry-cleaning bag, waiting for the no patch order to be served, but really, it's so that the police can just turn up and make the gang members life misery.   And that's fine, because if you're going to keep wearing your patch, then it's probably pretty likely that you're going to ignore other laws as well, but I don't know why they didn't just come clean on that. It's the Operation Raptor approach that the Australian police used, niggle, niggle, niggle. Every time one of the Aussie gang members went out in public what they were wearing, what they were driving, what they were riding, was just put through the ringer. And it was just constant niggle. And if that's what it's for, fine, I still think it should have been put through at the right time. You can't have a thought bubble and pop it into your Bill. If they forgot, then it should go through the process and do it properly.   But to say we're giving the police powers to stop recidivist gang members from wearing patches in their own home, to me sounds silly. If you say we're giving the police powers to niggle the living daylights out of recidivist gang members, fine with that. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.