Kerre Woodham Mornings Podcast

I know for many people affirmative action programmes are a real sticking point. A new report in the New Zealand Medical Journal, has found that affirmative action programs at the University of Otago have however, significantly lifted Māori, Pacific, and rural enrolments over the last 30 years. Where they have failed is increasing the student numbers from poorer backgrounds.   So people don't like them, but they do actually work. Māori made up 20% of enrolments at the university's medical school over the last four years, reaching parity with European and Asian enrolments for the first time. For a very long time, that wasn't the case. Ten years ago, 7.6% of new domestic medical students at Otago identified as Māori, 2.7% as Pasifika, so that shows up in the workforce in which only 3.4% are Māori, 1.8% Pasifika. However, after more robust affirmative action policies were implemented at our medical schools there was a big change. By 2016, Māori and Pasifika students entering Otago Medical School had increased by 179%. Māori were about 16% of domestic students, Pasifika about 5.6%, which is pretty much in line with how they're represented in the population.   However, health profession courses at Otago are still dominated by students from wealthy backgrounds and top schools, despite rare efforts to recruit more people from poorer communities. So, if you're wealthy you're going to be fine if you want to be a doctor, you're going to be particularly fine if you're wealthy, comfortably middle class and Māori/Pasifika. Barack Obama famously said his two daughters, who have grown up in a privileged background, should not benefit from affirmative action programs when they are competing with students from poor white families.   What's more important? Your ethnic identity or your background? It's easy to dismiss affirmative action as racist or lowering standards, but just remember that if you're a woman you have been able to benefit enormously from affirmative action in just about every sphere of society - law, engineering, medical school. There was a time when it was thought only men had the brains and the mettle to make it in medicine. Affirmative action opened the door to women and now it's no longer needed. Women can see it and know they can be it.   Women now make up nearly 2/3 of all enrolments in health professional programs, up slightly from 1994. In fact, universities are starting to be concerned by the relative underrepresentation of young men in tertiary education and may well have to have a program encouraging young men to enrol at university in a number of courses. Places may well have to be kept for men in law school so that their profession is not flooded with women.   When you look at people who have received scholarships, you cannot really go past Sir Peter Buck, and this was at a time when standards were phenomenally high for anybody entering the profession. He went to Te Aute College, the Māori secondary school, got a scholarship to Otago University, where he graduated in medicine. He was awarded so many degrees, from so many prestigious universities —Yale, Rochester, Hawaii— he received military medals for distinguished service in wars, he was an anthropologist, he worked in public health. This was a scholarship kid, he did okay.   As did Māui Pōmare, which are from the young Māori Party who were a phenomenally talented group of young people and went on to equit themselves at the very highest level, with the very highest honours. Not every scholarship kid's going to be like that. Not everybody who is a recipient of affirmative action is going to be like that. Once you're in, you have to pass. And I don't know about you, but there are some incredibly clever, clever people who become doctors who probably shouldn't. They're smart, no doubt about that, they ace the exams. But when it comes to people? Not so much. Maybe they should go into pathology where they can just cut up dead things rather than deal with people one-on-one.   In an ideal world, we'd all start the same, we’d all have the same opportunities, we'd all have the same choices. This is not an ideal world. So when it comes to affirmative action, I know ideally we'd all compete on the same level playing field, but as a woman, because I have seen so many of this gender benefit, to the point that we're now going to have to start thinking about offering affirmative action policies to young men, I can see its benefits.   See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Alarms are being raised over a shortfall in programmes aimed to lift medical school enrolment for under-served groups.  A study in today's New Zealand Medical Journal has found Otago University's initiatives have lifted Māori, Pacific, and rural enrolments over the last 30 years.  However, the number of students in health courses from poorer backgrounds hasn't actually increased.  Otago University's Public Health Professor Peter Crampton told Kerre Woodham they shouldn't be missing out.  He says efforts should be made to ensure everyone can make use of tertiary education opportunities.  LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Donald Trump is once again Commander in Chief, and now the 45th and 47th President of the United States.  He becomes the first former president to return to the White House in more than 130 years and, at 78, the oldest man elected to America's highest office.  Trump has beaten Kamala Harris in both the Electoral College and the popular vote.  Republican pollster Dr Whit Ayres told Kerre Woodham that Harris was always on a bit of a hiding to nothing coming in after Biden’s messy exit.   He says that she was effectively running for Biden’s second term, especially with her inability to articulate a clearly different direction for the administration.  LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Kiwis are being warned to prepare for a more challenging trade environment as Donald Trump returns to the White House.  Trump has proposed a tariff of up to 20% on all imported goods, with China potentially receiving special treatment and a tariff of up to 60%.   New Zealand exports about $8 billion worth of goods to the US every year, and tariffs could have a significant impact.  Damien O’Connor was a Trade Minister during the Biden Administration, and told Kerre Woodham that any tariffs implemented by Trump as President, we simply have to live with.   He says that if tariffs are slapped on in the US, then other exporters will simply shift their product to the other markets as well, so we may have to compete with them on price.  “These tariffs will not help anyone across the globe, including the very people in the US who they think it’s designed to help.”  LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaking to Newstalk ZB’s Kerre Woodham this morning, Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters said the Government was confident it was “ready to go” in engaging with the incoming Trump Administration. “We have got some serious connections with the incoming administration, that’s the key part here,” he said. He mentioned New Zealand’s “very experienced Ambassador” in Washington who he said was there “to ensure if there was a change in the election results in America against what the media forecast, we’d be ready to go and we are.” Peters is referencing NZ Ambassador to the US Rosemary Banks. She’s a senior New Zealand diplomat who served in the role between 2018 and 2022 (so during part of Donald Trump’s previous term), and was reappointed earlier this year after serving ambassador Bede Corry was announced as the new Secretary of Foreign Affairs and Trade. The Foreign Affairs Minister said the Government would take the next couple of months – prior to President Trump being sworn in again – to make reconnections. He said a lot of work has previously gone into getting a free trade agreement with the United States when Trump was last President, between 2017 and 2021. “We didn’t take the chance when it was all set to go. We cannot afford to make this mistake next time.” Prime Minister Christopher Luxon earlier this week admitted there was little political appetite in the US for such a deal and he didn’t see that changing. LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

There's been much political play made around outside organisations having the potential to use violence on at risk kids. And really, it's entirely the fault of inexperienced politicians in the Coalition Government that Labour and Te Pati Māori have got any traction on this at all. The PMs ‘I know nothing, I know nothing’, when he was questioned about this yesterday on the Mike Hosking Breakfast, the refusal to answer questions on a leaked document, it just makes a vacuum which the opposition can fill with accusations of ‘violence’.   In the leaked document, Children's Minister Karen Chhour warns the use of force and detention powers by Oranga Tamariki and third-party staff may be viewed as increasing the potential risk of abuse in custody, particularly in light of historic abuse experienced by children and young people in similar programs reported in the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care report. You bet your bippy it was viewed as increasing the potential risk of abuse. Labour and Te Pati Māori were in their boots and all.   However, this morning the Minister for Children clarified on the Mike Hosking Breakfast that restraints are standard operating procedure in any institution, and organisations needed to have those powers outside of the institutions, hence the need to amend the legislation.   “Force can be used but only under very strict conditions, and we have regulations to protect that. I would be saying we would use restraints if a child was going to abscond or was going to hurt themselves or hurt somebody else. That already currently happens within certain facilities. The fact of the matter is, if we are going to give these kids a shot, if we are going to give these young people a chance, we have to have the ability to actually put a little bit of trust in them and be able to do things outside of the residence, but we also have to keep ourselves safe while doing that.”  Right. So the explanation, as it was finally given, is that the legislation has to be amended because at the moment, and this happened under Labour as well, it happened under any administration, you are able to use restraints for the good of the individual to prevent harm happening to them, and for good of the staff and anybody else that might be in their way. So, if you're going to protect people from the young offender, protect the young offender from themselves, you can use restraint.   That has been abused in the past, absolutely, but these children, these at-risk youth would not be there if they didn't already know exactly what violence looked like from a very early age. They have come from horribly dysfunctional homes. They've learnt that violence is the answer, that if there's a question, violence is the answer.  Not all of them, but many of them. Even with the use of restraints by staff, I would venture to suggest they're still safer there than some of their homes. Where restraint is not a word, they could either spell or act on.   So if you are going to trust the young people to be able to go out into the community, to try and show them that there is another way of living and being, there has to be a safety net around them and around the people they encounter. To do that you need to amend legislation. I do not know what's so hard about that. What's so hard about explaining that?  The coalition government got themselves in a complete tangle allowing Labour and Te Pati Māori headlines, allowed them to make political capital because of their own fumbling communications. I think most of us, we understand that if you want to be able to bring at-risk kids out into the community to work or to participate in community activities, there needs to be some measure by which they can be kept safe in the community can too.  The use of restraints will be measured and monitored, and if it is abused then all hell breaks loose. Hopefully, the days that saw so many children's lives effectively destroyed under state care are gone because the light has been shone into the dark corners. It doesn't mean there will never ever need to be a use of restraint ever again, but it has to be monitored, it has to be seen. And I think that's what we've got here.  All that's going to happen is that the kids will be kept safe, the community will be kept safe within the institutions and outside of them. And if anybody oversteps the mark, by crikey, they will be barbecued, spit-roasted and that's the way it will be. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Tensions are high as America casts their votes, the nation deeply divided down partisan lines.  Polling booths will begin to close within an hour, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump still neck in neck in all major polls.  TVNZ and Newstalk ZB’s Jack Tame told Kerre Woodham that whoever wins, there will be tens of millions of Americans who are very happy, and tens of millions who are very unhappy with the result.  LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Unemployment has risen again.  Latest figures from Stats NZ show the unemployment rate has reached 4.8% in the September quarter.  That's up from 4.6% in the June quarter, and well up from 3.2% in the December 2021 quarter.  NZ Herald Business Editor Liam Dann told Kerre Woodham that there was no question they would see people lose their jobs, but the fact that it came in lower than many forecasts is a good thing.  He says that over the last 20 or 30 years, New Zealand has historically had an unemployment rate above 5%, so we are still below the historical average.  LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

There’s plenty of nerves, with polling booths beginning to close in the next hour across the US.  Candidates Donald Trump and Kamala Harris have been neck-and-neck in all major polls, with a focus on key battleground states like Pennsylvania.  CNN Correspondent Paula Newton told Kerre Woodham there's more uncertainty around the election this time.  She says since last time was a Covid election, all the voting information is unreliable.  LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A math professor believes the Education Minister deserves kudos for their new maths programme.  The Government's announced 2000 Year 7 and 8 students will take part in a programme aiming to boost math achievement over the first two terms of next year.  Erica Stanford says it's designed to give more Kiwi kids confidence in mathematics.  Massey University Distinguished Maths Professor Gaven Martin told Kerre Woodham that this plan can start to address many of the problems thy had.   He says that while there may have been a fair bit of resistance, at the end of the day, they turned around and delivered something that’s beneficial for the whole country.   LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.