Kerre Woodham Mornings Podcast

You might remember a month or so ago we had Justin Flitter, an AI expert, in the studio for an hour talking about the fact that AI is here, it's already being used by numerous early adopters, it's not going away, and you'll have to get on board or you'll be left behind. And as you can imagine, the calls were a mix of oh no, it's a disaster, stop it now and King Canute trying to turn back the tide, and others who were saying it's brilliant, already using it, been using it for over a year. A woman in her 70s who was working with disadvantaged kids found AI enormously helpful in terms of teaching tools.  So some people are ready, willing, and able to embrace change, technology, advancements. Others don't see it as an advancement, they see it as taking jobs, as concerning, as worrying and I get that. But it is here, and it would be pointless to bury your head in the sand and say I don't want it to come. It's already here. It's already being used. Job seekers are using AI to write their CVs and cover letters. AI’s being used by employers to screen job applications. It's being used in job training. It's being used in research and now, Education Minister Erica Stanford says the use of AI as a marking tool will be expanded over the next few years. It's already been used for the literacy and numeracy corequisite exams. Now, she says, it will be used as the education system moves away from NCEA Level 1. She says AI is as good if not better than human marking. It will undoubtedly be as good, if not better, at setting exams.   Remember 2016? Late changes in a top-level school exam math's paper led to a mistake so bad that students could not answer the question. It was unanswerable because of a mistake made by a human, leading to students walking out of the exam doubting themselves and beside themselves. That same year, it was revealed for other external NECA maths and stats exam papers were affected by mistakes, but they weren't considered as severe. Now if you can iron out those kind of glitches, all well and good. And if AI can free up teachers to teach, not doing the boring admin tasks, again, so much the better.   It's not perfect. It's only as good as the human input it receives, but like automation it is brilliant at doing the basic repetitive jobs. So for those of you who are on board, love to hear from you, those of you who have had bad experiences too love to hear from you on that as well. And is it suitable to be used for setting exams, marking papers? The sort of admin that takes up so much of a teacher's time in school. I would say absolutely get on board. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Economic recovery is taking longer than many hoped.  Unemployment's risen to a five-year high of 5.2%, up from 5.1% in the March quarter.  New Zealand officially moved out of recession last year.  The Herald's Liam Dann told Kerre Woodham the job market is taking longer to catch up, so many people may not be feeling better off.  He says economists can tell us numbers are improving, but it takes longer for life to improve.  Dann says anxiety about job security and AI is having ripple effects across the economy.  He says a lot of professional people are uncertain about the future, and that's putting them off spending money.  LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In the wake of the changes to NCEA, you would have to ask whether the Knowledge Economy is the biggest political bust of recent times?   Back in 2001, then Prime Minister Helen Clark launched the Knowledge Wave project. Like many ideas, it came from a good place. Helen Clark had a vision for a nation which was confident, progressive, more prosperous, tolerant and which cared for its people. She said New Zealanders would ride to the Knowledge Wave because they too sought a society capable of sustaining its first world status with well educated, innovative citizens who choose to stay in New Zealand because it's the best possible place to be.   Do you remember back to those times? They were hopeful, and she was a great Prime Minister, and it sounded fantastic. Educated, prosperous, tolerant, reasonable people. It hasn't worked out so well. In a nutshell, the government believed that New Zealand's economy and its society would be driven far more by knowledge, skill, technology, and innovation. They looked across government to see how all policies could contribute to that end. Obviously, she said at the time, education was critical. She said by addressing the worst features of the student loan scheme and stabilising tertiary fees, we aim to improve access to education for all. We will have to invest more as fast as we have the capacity to do so.   So, educate the people, they'll become more prosperous, they'll become more tolerant. We'll have a better place to be. We'll be living in Utopia. Twenty-four years on, how are we looking? Have we ridden that Knowledge Wave to the shores of prosperity and tolerance? Hardly. Young people were steered into degrees they weren't particularly interested in. They were saddled with student loans and some of them now feel they were sold a pup. Universities went from centres for critical thinking and academic excellence to factories that churned out degrees for people who were barely literate. And far from tolerance and critical thinking, they became bastions of intolerance and Orwellian thinkspeak.    I think the Government's decision to reform NCEA is a step in the right direction. Instead of steering people into degrees they're not particularly interested in and they don't really want to do, there will be more options, more choices about what sort of future they can have. Not everybody wants to sit in a classroom, regurgitating a lecturer's opinion. Some people actually like to get out there and do stuff. The MTA, the Motor Trades Association, James McDowell, was talking to Mike Hosking this morning, and he reckons the changes to NCEA will be an overdue step towards a more relevant practical and future focused education system for young Kiwis.   JM: What we would very much like to see now, and it's part of the consultation process, is saying look okay, we're going to do these big core subjects, let's say in our case, an automotive subject, and we all work with the polytechs and providers like MITO that do the on job training and start them early.   MH: So I want to be an engineer in F1. Is that how it's going to work for me? I'll do my maths, I'll do my English, and I'll do something that channels me towards that?   JM: Yes, it's a lot like the old days. It's a lot like the old system. Or perhaps more contemporarily, more like Cambridge at the moment, where you have your core subjects. There'll be much less choice for sure. I mean that's the problem with NCEA – there's just far too much flexibility. You've got something like over 11,000 unit standards you can choose from that make up these qualifications. That's just a complete mess. You know, you might get a few credits for learning how to put oil on a car – that does not make you an automotive engineer, unfortunately.   Absolutely. Skills Group, New Zealand's largest private vocational training provider, concurs, saying the major overhaul of NCEA will hopefully create more robust and coherent vocational pathway options, ensuring that young people can pursue valued industry related learning and develop the real-world skills demanded by industry.    I just wonder how many bright young things we have lost to the trades because they've been stared into doing a meaningless degree where they get a B- pass, which means absolutely nothing. There are some occupations, some professions, some vocations where you will need a degree and you will enjoy it. You'll love doing the research. You'll love doing the reading. You'll love the learning. It'll be great. But not everybody is meant for that, and I think we saw back in 2001 this utopian vision that Helen Clark had, that everybody would be able to sit around and having Socratic debates with one another and intellectual discourse about theories and ideologies, that's not for everybody.   Now I think we're seeing a recognition that not every young person is cut from the same cloth. We need all sorts of minds, all sorts of abilities, all sorts of passions and all sorts of interests. And I think by giving the trades a greater focus, the idea of vocational education a greater focus, we will have a more tolerant society. I'm all for it.   How many of you have degrees that you think is absolutely worth every cent you paid for it? How many of you think “if only I hadn't done that degree”? How many employers are thinking “yes, we're finally going to get the right people motivated, inspired, capable people coming into our trades and adding value”? See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Big players in the energy space are putting forward a new 10-year deal they say will secure supply at Huntly Power Station.   Genesis, Mercury, Meridian and Contact have agreed to co-invest in a strategic energy reserve – pending Commerce Commission approval.   It includes adding up to 600-thousand tonnes of coal to current stocks.  Meridian Energy CEO Mike Roan told Kerre Woodham that although some may find it surprising, it’s more cost effective to import coal than it is to mine it in New Zealand.  He says the Huntly deal will give them 10 years of confidence in thermal fuel that they can use to continue investing in renewable generation.  LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Government's proposing to entirely phase out NCEA within five years, saying New Zealand needs a schooling system that sets students up for success.  Within the overhauled system would be improved vocational pathways for students planning on entering the workforce as opposed to further education.  In 2001, then Prime Minister Helen Clark launched the Knowledge Wave Project – a vision of a society with well-educated, innovative citizens who lived and worked in New Zealand.  She told Kerre Woodham Knowledge Wave was about more than university education, it was about getting New Zealanders focused on the need to lift the level of value in the economy.  Clark says that you won’t get a higher value economy if you don’t have a highly educated and skilled workforce.  When it comes to scrapping NCEA, Clark is asking for more details, as she’s concerned with durable policies instead of ones that change with each government.  LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I was struck by a story from Radio New Zealand.   North Shore Hospital, it has revealed, has an entire ward of people who are stuck in hospital, but they have no medical reason to be there. The 20-bed ward was created in May for patients who were effectively medically discharged but didn't have anywhere to go, such as an aged care facility.   This shouldn't be happening. The chain of healthcare should include post hospital stay. But, as we know, there's been a hold up. There's been a clogging in the system when it comes to releasing people from hospital. Good on North Shore Hospital for setting up this ward where they’re not in the direct care of doctors but are looked after by nurses and allied health staff, such as physiotherapists and social workers and some of them are there for weeks.    And this is the chain of care that I remember Dr Shane Reti talking about when he was health minister. He said we needed to ensure that GPs are properly funded so people don't end up in emergency departments because they can't access a GP - or they can't afford a GP.   Then you need to receive operations in a timely manner, you need to receive the hospital care you need as expeditiously as possible, then you need to be discharged. If you no longer require hospital care, then out you go and the health workers along the chain will look after you there. The physiotherapists, the at home nurses, that sort of thing.   If any one of these stages along the health care journey becomes congested, then that impacts the whole healthcare system. All parts of the healthcare system become affected.   So I think, in the absence of anywhere for these people to go, this ward makes sense. Deborah Powell, who represents allied health care workers, says it's not ideal. But, it is a good, practical decision to have them in one place rather than dotted around the hospital.   She said it would be better to have them in the community, but we don't have that capacity right now. And the reason it's better to be out in the community was explained by the head of the senior doctors union, Sarah Dalton. She said you are much better off to be in the community where you can get dressed, you're out of the hospital gown, you're walking around, you're doing your daily things, you're doing exercise, you're getting fresh air. You're getting rehab.   All of these are good and all of these will help for a faster healing, which is quite true. So, what do you do if you have a parent who's in a retirement village and they've bought one of the villas or the apartments where they're independent living, they're perfectly fine when they buy it. Absolutely dandy. Love their new life, living their best life, and then all of a sudden, they get ill and they have to have hospital care. Where do they go when they come out?   It's exactly that kind of congestion that Shane Reti, and I'm sure other health ministers, have talked about before.  It's all interoperable, we need to take responsibility for our health. When things happen or if we're going through a bad patch or need health care we need to be able to see a GP. If we can't afford to or we can't get access to one in a timely fashion you went to the hospital system.   Everything needs to flow smoothly from there. You're in that hospital bed. You get the treatment you need. You're out of that hospital bed and into community care. You can see what happens at any point if that gets congested. The whole system is under strain. How do we fix it?   See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Government's intends to entirely phase out NCEA within five years. The proposal would require students take English and Maths in Year 11 and sit a test in numeracy and literacy. NCEA levels 2 and 3 would be replaced with two new qualifications in year 12 and 13 - a Certificate of Education and Advanced Certificate of Education respectively. It's the most significant update to secondary school assessments since NCEA was introduced more than two decades ago. LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Household budgets remain under pressure from rising costs, a credit expert says.  Centrix’s latest credit indicator shows consumer arrears fell by 7,000 in June to 478,000, representing 12.36% of the credit-active population.  But Centrix managing director Keith McLaughlin said there has been an increase in pressure on household budgets: “The slight year-on-year improvement in arrears we’ve observed so far this year has plateaued … and that just seems to be sticky."  “Consumers have cut back on discretionary spending … and were managing their non-discretionary [spending] quite nicely."  But he says there's a flow through of the increase in things like insurance and rates. 79% of mortgages due to be repriced over the next 12 months, many borrowers may benefit from lower rates.  Increases in rates, insurance, and power does make it very hard to get the benefit out of those reductions in interest rates.  Looking for the positive, the number of accounts reported in financial hardship in June was 14,450, down 550 from the prior month, Centrix said.  But year on year, financial hardships increased 7.1%.  We've plateaued in an uncomfortable place, so the question is what could we do to make things better?  Insurance is off the table and councils have had the hard word to decrease rates, but what else is there?  My family rarely buys takeaway coffees these days, but I fear all I'm doing is hurting small businesses. We've had an audit of streaming and subscription services, but that means we have less news sources in the house and less entertainment.  I bought an EV 18 months ago and that has radically lessened my petrol bill, even with the road user charges. There's any number of household hacks to stretch the household budget, but what can we do as a country?  Australia has just written off $16 billion in student loans. Albanese says getting an education shouldn't mean a lifetime of debt. Paying off student loans does curtail the young, which is why they're buying houses and starting families later and later.  Is that something we could do here? If not a full amnesty, then perhaps some partial easement that makes things easier.  My 29 year old son is just two pay packets away from wiping off his student debt from two degrees in environmental management, which is what he does for a job. He's counting down to liberation day and to finally have money to invest in his future rather than his past.  Now we're poor compared to Australia, and governments are dependent on the repaying of that debt to fund the country, and the liability is viewed as a positive on our balance sheet.  But it's mythical money – could this help the young trying to start the sort of lives that previous generations who had no debt enjoyed? See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Let's face it, civil defence coordinators are damned if they do, damned if they don't. Fail to give people sufficient warning of a natural disaster and they're accused of having blood on their hands. Too many warnings of something that doesn't happen, they're accused of alarmist scaremongering, and they become the boy who cries wolf.   The reason for all of this, a magnitude 8.8 earthquake struck off the eastern coast of Russia yesterday morning. Why would an earthquake in Russia yesterday trigger four, three or two, if you're lucky, emergency alerts for New Zealanders 18 hours later? It's the long delay between the earthquake and its ripple effect here. It will arrive here, but it's got a long way to come. Apparently, tsunamis travel at speeds equivalent to an Air New Zealand Boeing plane, but it that still gives you plenty of time when you're in New Zealand. Your Boeing still takes a fair while to get to the eastern coast of Russia. Different story if it was a magnitude 8.8 earthquake off the coast of New Zealand - then you'd need an emergency alert. But in this particular case, we have the benefit of being a very long way away, and a Victoria University geophysicist quoted in a Stuff story, John Townend says that distance gives our experts time to do the calculations, do the assessments and work out what's likely to come before it arrives.   So what are we being told? Well, the NEMA director John Price was on with Ryan Bridge on Herald Now this morning and despite the fact that nothing has happened in any of the countries that have been in the tsunami's path as it makes its way here, he repeated that it's still very much an alive threat, a hazard for New Zealanders and the last thing we want, he says, is anyone to be harmed, injured, or killed as a result of going near the coastline. He said the rationale behind the alert at 6:30am this morning was that the commuters going to work and people preparing for school and the like, it would give them time, it would give them knowledge, don't go to the coastline. If normally you would go for a morning walk or you'd go for a morning surf, you might be intending to set out to go and catch some fish and have them for breakfast - don't do that today. The activity, he said, is seen as surges in the water rather than a typical wave formation, so you might think you know the tides. You might think you know the waves, but you don't know the way a tsunami works. He said in the Chatham Islands there's been up to a 40cm wave. To people who say that a 40cm wave is nothing to be worried about, NEMA Director Price said that's just an indicator of what could come, it could be a lot worse. I hope it's only going to be that high, he said.   You've also heard internationally that there have been other sizable waves that have occurred in other parts of the world. The last thing we want is to be complacent. We know complacency, he says, puts people at risk and may kill people. But nothing happened. And I think that's what the geophysicist John Townend was saying, is that is vastly different to having an 8.8 earthquake off the coast of New Zealand. This happened in Russia, and it gives us time to assess what the possible threat might be. If Hawaii was wiped out. You'd think, crikey, this is serious, and you take all possible precautions. When nothing has happened in Japan or Hawaii? When the danger has passed, you would assume we don't need that same level of urgency when it comes to warnings. If there are too many warnings of things that don't happen, then that makes people complacent, too.   There are a heck of a lot of texts to ZB this morning, not from grateful consumers of NEMA's emergency texts, but this is sort of representative: "Mike, for the love of God, make the emergency alerts for a non-existent emergency stop. I've just received my 4th in 12 hours. It really is the boy who cried wolf and does nothing but stress out my young children. If anyone knows how to disable them, please let me know," said Matt.    Well, you know I got one at 4pm yesterday. As I looked over the mud flats, across the water to a narrow channel, I thought crikey, I don't think we need to put the life jackets on just yet or evacuate the house. But you know, good to know. But 6.30am this morning, by then, surely we would know if this was building in strength? That is the advantage of distance. I get it, you know, damned if they do, damned if they don't. Complacency is dangerous, I agree. But I would argue when you have too many emergency alerts of things that do not happen, that is going to inculcate complacency and that will be dangerous. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Civil Defence Minister is staunch on the need for mobile emergency alerts.  An alert sent at 6.30am warned people to stay away from water, beaches, harbours, marinas, and estuaries - with uncertain sea conditions triggered by yesterday's massive Russia quake.  It applies until further notice.  But many received multiple messages, and others got none.  Mark Mitchell told Kerre Woodham they'll be looking into it, but early warning is important.  He says in the past emergencies with fatalities, it's because of optimism bias, but New Zealand doesn't have that luxury anymore.  LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.