Kerre Woodham Mornings Podcast

Wairoa's getting another funding boost of half-a-million-dollars for recovery from last week's major flooding.  More than 100 properties were badly damaged in a district still recovering from last year's Cyclone Gabrielle.  It brings Mayoral Relief Funding allocated so far to $600 thousand.  Emergency Management Minister Mark Mitchell says it'll go into pressing and immediate needs in the community.  He says it'll ensure ongoing support for clean-up costs such as drying houses and removing damaged materials from homes.  Wairoa Mayor Craig Little told Kerre Woodham that while $500k won’t go far, at the end of the day, the government didn’t create this mess.  He said that this was not a big rain event, and the regional council need to come out and apologise, otherwise they’re going nowhere.  LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

“A successful second quarter Action Plan shows the coalition Government has continued to build on the momentum of its first 100 days”, says the press release from the Prime Minister's office. Well, Christopher Luxon would say that wouldn’t he?   The Press release continues: “Actions the coalition government has taken this quarter include:   - Deliver tax relief to hardworking New Zealanders.   - Support young families with the cost of childcare through the Family Boost tax credit.    - Set ambitious Government Targets to improve the lives of New Zealanders   - Restore Three Strikes and establish a Young Serious Offender category to hold serious, persistent offenders to account.”  It goes on. Certainly, it appears the tougher stance on crime and giving police permission to police seems to be working. I’m not entirely sure there's wholesale relief after the tax relief, and the government really does need to sort out their boot camps and who's running them before they can claim to be sorting out the young, serious, persistent offenders. But nonetheless, whether you agree with what the coalition government is doing or not, at least you know what they're doing. They set out the plans. They then report back as to whether they've achieved them, and they let us know.   The Prime Minister told Mike Hosking this morning that his way of doing things is that they have a different way of running things from previous governments, but they're trying to be transparent.   “I publish these quarterly plans and people will say to me, you know, why do you do that? Well, I'm doing it because I'm trying to be transparent about what we're working on as a government in the next 13 weeks, and some of it is taking decisions and making sure we get alignment inside our government and our coalition to do those programmes. A lot of it's introducing legislation. This August, you're going to see all our gang laws get actually passed into law. That's a six month process, we kicked that off in that first 100 days. Now that's going to be law. That will be picked up by police in October and away we go. So it does take time, but it's really at the moment, it's the turn around. You've got to just be what's the problem I'm trying to solve? What's the common sense solution that deals with that? Right, is that moving forward in the next 13 weeks or not? And it's focusing tremendously a public service that hasn't had direction and it's also focusing my ministers and my conversations with them about what I'm expecting from each of them. And it's always done through the mantra of rebuild the economy, restore law and order, deliver better public services, particularly health and education.”  So that was the Prime Minister with Mike Hosking this morning. And sure, as some of the things might be a bit Betty Basic on the Q3 40 point plan that's just been released. Take cabinet decisions. Well, basically that means holding cabinet meetings, hold public consultations. Yeah, good on ya.  And probably, the action on gangs that featured in Q1. So that features in Q3, so a bit of a double up, but that's what I'd do with the big To Do List as well. Write down the really easy things that I was going to do anyway, so I can cross them off and it makes the list look less daunting. And if you can double up... sometimes I'll do bathrooms, and then I'll do polished glass, which includes the bathroom, and I can do 2 ticks off my list, which is a little bit, I think, what the Prime Minister is doing.   But who can blame them? It's a daunting list. And when it's a great big scary list, you need to have a few things you can tick off. Governments love to think that they're all about transparency. Remember the last lot? But this one does appear to be transparent. If you want to have a look at what the government intends to do, you can see it online. If you want to look at how well they have done, you can see it online and then you can make your own judgments as well. I feel they are being transparent. I feel they are giving us something against which we can measure them. Is that how you feel? Whether you like what they're doing or not, then at least we know what they're doing and then we can think, okay, they're doing a good job/they're not doing a good job.   So far, so good. They've listed what they intend to do, they're following through on their plans, we can see that with the gangs. They've said that Q3 is where they're going to be focusing on the gangs and clamping down on gang activity. The way gangs advertise themselves through the patches, through the gatherings, and we can judge whether they're having any effect or not. So yes, I think they are being transparent, might be a slightly more business-like way of doing things by setting out a list or a 40 point plan. The stats seemed to be coming through and that was always something I wanted the last lot to do. Show me. If your ideas are that great, show me they're working, give me some numbers, and that was something that the last lot failed to do. So, so far, so good. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Big day today. Paid parental leave increases in line with increases to the average weekly earnings, so if you're about to go off on maternity leave, you will have an increase in parental pay for up to 26 weeks. Regional fuel and diesel taxes gone, saving the drivers of Toyota Corollas - those fairies of the land, the wakas of the whenua – about $6 every time they fill up, but you will need that $6 because that's going to go somewhere else. Higher rates are kicking in. In Auckland, Watercare is raising water bills by 7.2 percent, so that's going to hit households and the $5 prescription charges are back for those who are eligible. And I saw a lot of woe is me, end the world stuff. Honestly, watch the Biden-Trump debate, that is the end of the world. The prescription charges at $5, not so much because there are exemptions for people 13 and under. There are exemptions for people holding a community services card or a dependent child of a community services card holder. If you're 65 and over, you get an exemption and if you hold a prescription subsidy card you don't have to pay. And once you hit twenty prescription items that you have to pay for in a year, you don't have to pay any more. So the end of the world as we know it and the decline of health of all New Zealanders - no, unlikely. And there are plenty of places where you don't have to pay, where the chemists will absorb the charges, so I don't think it's quite worth the hysterical column inches that have been written about it. What else changes today? We've got the reduced brightline test kicking in, meaning people who sell residential investment properties within two years of purchasing will have to pay tax on any gains receive. After two years, you're sweet. If you sell after three years, you won't be taxed on any profits. Try and make a profit in this particular climate, and you'll be doing well. Also new rules for property loans apply as of today. Under the new Reserve Bank, debt to income rules, the majority of property buyers can only borrow up to six times their annual income from banks. If you're an investor at 7 times. So what is that going to mean for you, if you are looking to buy a property? Yes, houses have come down in price, they're not at that those ridiculously overinflated prices they were immediately after Covid. And yes, the average wage has gone up. Is that going to be enough for you to be able to get into your own home? I really do think this is a good investment in families having the parental leave. They get precious little, you know, by the time you've paid off student loans and you're trying to save for your deposit on your house and what have you. We need new babies, otherwise we have to import them from overseas. So we either grow our own or import them, and we need more because the numbers of older people are growing and growing and growing and there aren't going to be the young workers, the tax base, to support all of these people who are now out of work. And who will need care and who will need health care. So I'm all for the parental payments. Brightline tests -does that seem reasonable? Let get you back into the market. The prescription charges, I mean that was such a nonsense, the hoohah over that really and truly. You would have to work quite hard to find a chemist where you had to pay. LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

More people are turning away from drinking alcohol than ever, according to new data. Premium Kiwi winemaker, Giesen, has invested over a million dollars into removing alcohol from their wine, to keep up with demand. Chief winemaker Duncan Shouler says consumers have always wanted an alternative, but the quality and product choice wasn't there previously. LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

BrainFit Coach Jude Walter is here to talk us through staying on top of your brain health.  Is it really a case of use it or lose it when it comes to our brains? Spoiler alert – it is!   Click here to order the Brainfit Book Worm Winter Bundle ( 2x best selling books) for just $65 (ex. postage) when you use the promo code: bookworm   Click here to enroll in the Memory Tune online course. Just $100 (ex. postage of supporting workbook) when you use the promo code: memory  LISTEN ABOVE. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A familiar voice is back with us...  Allyson Gofton!    Allyson Gofton has been cooking for New Zealanders for nearly 30 years. She is known for her recipes and columns in magazines.  We are constantly talking about the cost of living and grocery prices going up – Allyson will have some tips and tricks to make your dollars go further at the supermarket.    LISTEN ABOVE. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Mark Vette is an internationally renowned animal behaviourist, trainer, educator, author and TV personality.  He’s also the founder of Dog Zen, a dog training programme.   Mark joins Francesca Rudkin on Newstalk ZB to take your calls about your pet’s behaviour.  LISTEN ABOVE.   See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I thought we'd have a look at the plans to amend New Zealand sentencing laws.   National, ACT, and New Zealand First campaigned on the law-and-order ticket. Tougher sentences, consequences for serial youth offenders, safer communities. It is their thing, all of their parties, this is what they do. Let's get tough on crime whenever there's an election campaign. But given that there had been an increase in crime during the last six years, crime had been steadily going down and then it did not. There was a 70% increase in gang membership, violent crime was up by a third, 100% increase in retail crime, and I would venture to suggest even more than that, just people weren't reporting it.   A majority of people were feeling less safe on the streets, in their businesses, in their homes. It was a safe bet that voters would respond to a let's get tough on crime stance and now the coalition government is delivering on its campaign promises. They will cap sentence discounts that judges can apply to 40% of the maximum unless it results in manifestly unjust sentencing outcomes. Prevent repeat discounts for youth and remorse. That's good. Introduce a new aggravating factor to address offences against sole charge workers and those whose home and businesses are interconnected (that would be the dairy owners). Encouraging the use of cumulative sentencing for offences committed while on bail, in custody or on parole, so rather than it being three sentences of six years and they're all served concurrently, it would be 18 years, not three lots of six.    At the moment a lot of concurrent is done. A maximum sentence discount of 25% for early guilty pleas, reducing to 5% if a guilty plea is entered once the trials begun. And adding a requirement for judges to take information about the victim's interests into account. Convener of the Law Society's Criminal Committee, Chris Macklin, sounded a note of caution on the Mike Hosking Breakfast this morning.   “Oh well look, it's early days. You say these things are coming and of course they are, they do still need to go through Select Committee. The signal is clear that tougher sentences are coming, whether that achieves exactly what people want will be the acid test, and that will be reducing people's experience of crime. There's a worry that some areas of offending might be less accurately reported if tougher sentences appeared. I think there's a concern about undermining restorative and rehabilitative purposes of sentencing.  And the profession probably needs to highlight as well to the extent it can, it's by no means clear the tougher things to do to effectively some of the crimes we're talking about.”   I don't know about you. But I am not supportive of these raft of measures because I think it will bring down crime. That will have to happen in other areas. More support for at risk families, getting kids back into school and actually teaching them something to give them more options, that sort of thing. Alcohol and drug rehabilitation. Mr Macklin, I am not naïve. I know criminals won't suddenly stop and go, well best not beat up that pensioner because I'm going to spend longer in jail. I support the tougher sentences because I am sick and tired of the hurt perpetuated by people who do it time and time, and crime and crime again. I want to see them punished for that.   There's a million cases we can point to but remember the case of the teen Mongrel Mob member who broke into the home of a pregnant woman and indecently assaulted her and the bed she was sharing with her child? He was sentenced for breaking into a home and then sexually assaulting a pregnant woman. He was sentenced to 12 months home detention. And as Stevie Taunoa, 19, thanked the judge and walked from the dock and to the police cells, he yelled, “cracked it”. So, the discount he got for his youth and remorse doesn't seem to be very genuine, does it? I don't want to see gangsters gloating about how they've gamed the system. I don't want to see offenders be allowed to use their youth or their dreadful backgrounds to get lesser sentences time after time, crime after crime. When the person responsible for attacking an 85-year-old woman on a walker as she walked up the side of her house - when they are caught, I don't want to hear about how sorry they are. I want to see someone responsible for an 85-year-old woman who's now got a broken nose, facial bruising, a broken wrist and bruising to her fingers, who has been stalked as she has made her way home from withdrawing money from the ASB Bank, I want to see them punished. We can get to the rehabilitation and yes, I'm very sorry and gosh, I had a terrible background later. But as the police said, it was a gutless and cowardly attack. So let's see a sentence that reflects that. Not oh, that poor offender, look at where they've come from. Look at what has forced them to attack a frail old woman on a bloody walker, in her home.   So, Mr. Macklin, you might think that we're all a bit stupid and maybe there are some people who think all with these harsher sentences by crikey, we'll see those criminals quaking in their boots and not offending. They will continue to offend, of that, I am certain. It's not going to mean an end to crime. It's not going to mean an end to cowardly and gutless attacks. It's not going to mean an end to gang membership. And we certainly can't resolve societal issues by just locking up people for longer. There has to be early intervention. There has to be the opportunity for rehabilitation, but there also has to be consequences for crime. I do expect, and call me old fashioned, to see criminals punished for the crimes that they do. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

It's estimated New Zealand throws away $3.2 billion of food every year.  The Prime Minister's Chief Science Advisor, Dame Juliet Gerrard, has issued 27 recommendations to the Government.  It calls for a national plan and target, smarter monitoring, better strategies to tackle food loss at source, promoting food rescue and upcycling to ensure edible food isn’t thrown out.  KiwiHarvest is a food rescue business, taking food that is still perfectly usable so it doesn’t get thrown away and giving it to charities and institutions where it would be of use.  CEO Angela Calver told Kerre Woodham that the best way to stop wastage in your home is to meal plan and plan ahead.  She said that a lot of waste happens because of demand, supermarkets doing their best to ensure that if you buy a loaf of bread today, that loaf of bread will be on the shelf tomorrow as well.  Calver said that planning and not over-buying food will help further down the supply chain and reduce waste.  LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A second Covid inquiry has been announced. And while that may sound like two Covid inquiries too many, this one may well get the answer a lot of us are looking for. New Zealand First has invoked the Agree to Disagree clause that allows a party within a coalition government to disagree in relation to issues on which the parties wish to maintain a different position in public. Generally, in a coalition agreement you like to present a united front, but when there are real disagreements, the clause can be invoked and that is what Peters has done.   He wanted the first inquiry scrapped, saying it was nothing more than a political tool being used to craft a message through its limited scope and the lack of suitability of the Commissioners. The chair is epidemiologist Professor Tony Blakely, who advised during the pandemic, the economist John Whitehead, and former National MP Hekia Parata. He's not wrong, though. Unlike most other recent Royal Commissions, New Zealand's focus is explicitly on planning for the next pandemic, rather than assigning blame for any failings from the decision makers. It's like oh well, that happened, let's look ahead and see what we can do next time around. Its full name is “New Zealand Royal Commission Covid -19 Lessons Learned”, and the parliamentary order bringing it into being describes its intentions as examining the lessons learned from Aotearoa New Zealand's response to Covid-19 that should be applied in preparation for any future pandemic.   So there would be no blame, no finger pointing, no public floggings in the public square. Really, it would be more like a series of patsy questions in Parliament. Did you do well? [Previous Labour government]. Thank you. Just how well did you think you did? [Previous Labour government]. What learnings do you think you can take forward? How many lives were saved? [Labour government]. You know, that sort of thing.   Now Brooke van Velden, Internal Affairs Minister, says that when this inquiry finishes its work a second one will get under way and this one will ask the hard questions.    “Where I think people are looking for more focus and what Phase Two will focus on, are things like the government's response and how that was weighed up against education, health, business, inflation. What its response did to debt and business activity? The social division that was caused in our society, and importantly also touches on New Zealand First’s commitment where they wish to look into vaccine efficacy. So it's a bit broader in range and I think answers a lot of those questions that will be on the top of people's minds. Was the government too fixated on just one aspect of its response?”    And I think that's a reasonable question. That was Brooke van Velden talking to Mike Hosking this morning. I think those are really relevant questions. The vaccine efficacy and safety, the extended lockdowns in Auckland, in Northland. Now that we have the luxury of hindsight, you have to look and say, okay was that worth it? Was having borders at the Bombay Hills worth it?   I'd be really interested to know whether there's any explanation for ‘the computer says no’ letters that so many families were given when they couldn't be with loved ones who were very, very ill or dying. Despite the fact that they were vaccinated, the family they were going to were vaccinated, there was just a simple computer say no denial from MBIE, a nameless official at MBIE, saying they could not be with a dying family member, or somebody who was very, very ill. And the pain that that caused was immeasurable. The grief that that generated was immeasurable. So I'd really love to know how you made the decision and who these faceless, nameless people were at MBIE who just deny, deny, denied access across the border, which all sounds incredibly weird.   You know, I think you have to ask those questions before you can move forward. I don't know that it's going to resolve anything. I mean basically I'd be quite happy with stocks in the public square, quite frankly. But then there are others who will be not satisfied until anybody who dared to so much as criticise any of the decisions made, abases themselves before the likes of Ardern, and Hipkins, and Robertson, and all the public health officials and kisses the hem of their garment and repeats three times, I am so sorry. I am so grateful to be alive and it's only thanks to you. I am so sorry. I'm so grateful to be alive. And it's only thanks to you, which I think is tosh.   I do think the hard questions have to be asked this first patsy inquiry was precisely that. How well did you do Labour government? Ooh very well. Really. Just how well? Exceptionally well. Any learnings? Oh, a few. You have to be able to weigh the costs. You have to be able to weigh the different decisions that were made that had so many impacts on so many different people's lives. Some breezed through, loved it, thought it was amazing, thought every decision made was the right one, but not everybody did. And I think we're going to see the damage for a very long time to come. As I've always said, it'll be 100 years from now, there'll still be people debating whether that second year of decision making they were making the right decisions. But it would be good to start now, to ask a few tough questions now, rather than just sugar coating the response, which is all we'd have got from the first inquiry. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.