Kerre Woodham Mornings Podcast

Anger from transport operators who say something needs to change with the Interislander's Cook Strait ferry service.  The provider is only operating one ferry currently after the Aratere suffered damage hitting a linkspan when docking in Wellington yesterday.  The issue is under investigation by Interislander.  KAM Transport manager Bill Bamber told Kerre Woodham it's not good enough.  He says it's frustrating, and to describe it as a shambles would be an understatement.  LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

If it wasn't so vitally important, so serious, and so expensive, you would have to laugh, wouldn't you? Interislander’s Aratere ferry will be out of action today after it hit a linkspan coming into a berth in Wellington, damaging its hull.   This is not their first rodeo when it comes to making mistakes. A string of incidents, if you will. Aratere suffered a reported staring failure on June 21st and ran aground in Picton shortly afterwards. It had only returned to full service late last month. What do you know? 9th of August, out of action for a couple of days. The Harbour Master Grant Nalder told the New Zealand Herald the ferry had made contact with a linkspan, which is the dock ramp that allows vehicles to access the ferry. The hull was damaged, but well above the water line, there were no injuries and no oil leaks. So, let's be grateful for small blessings,   Transport Minister Simeon Brown spoke to Heather du Plessis-Allan last night and said at this stage they don't know what caused the ferry to bang into the Wharf and yes, there was a strong wind, but hey, you get those in Wellington.   SB: Ultimately, they'll be looking into that and have more to say about that shortly, but there are high wind conditions here in Wellington right now.   HDPA: Yeah, but that's normal Simeon, that's not really a surprise, is it?   SB: We've been making our point very clearly around the operations of that organisation that they need to be lifting the game, and that's why we're refreshing the board and we're setting very clear expectations.   HDPA: Stoked you’re doing it, but they, they keep on crashing the boat in the meantime, don’t they?    SB: I want to make it very clear to the public that we have been unimpressed with the way KiwiRail has been managing its assets and operations.   HDPA: But this is not an asset management problem, is it Simeon? I mean this is just somebody being dumb.   SB: Well, we don't know all the answers yet.    HDPA: Yes, well, possibly I should say, possibly being dumb. How long is this thing going to be out of commission for?    SB: I think a couple of days is what I’ve been advised.   HDPA: Man alive. Are you just pulling your hair out at these people?   SB: Ah, well, yes.   “Ah, well, yes.” Well, you would, wouldn't you?  We've had issue, after issue, after issue. I mean is this normal? Is this just part of the process of sailing a great big ferry? That seas are uncertain, and winds are unpredictable. I mean, you would expect the odd strong zephyr blowing up your jacksie if you were sailing in Wellington, but you know, are they unpredictable? Do they need to hang a tennis ball at the end of the Wharf the way older people do to make sure they don't go into the end of the garage? Would that be helpful? Perhaps a big orange buoy suspended from a crane, so they know how far they've got before they hit the dock perhaps? I don't know. Trying to be helpful, because it is part of State Highway 1, and we've said this before, if freight can't get across, that's a problem. If people can't get across, that's a problem. At this rate, because I know our athletes are forever looking for part-time gigs in between the Olympics, maybe we could harness up the women's gold winning K4 team to tow the bloody freight across the Cook Strait because they would get it there faster and they would be more reliable I’m picking, than KiwiRail and the Interislander.   Because how hard is it to run a ferry service? Clearly it is very, very difficult. I mean, we've even got dear old Bluebridge who had a few oopsies in ‘23. Thinking back when I was growing up, the only thing that stopped the ferries back in the day were the unions, who went on strike every school holidays. So, our bi-annual trips to the South Island were all very touch and go. We weren't quite sure if the ferries were going to sail, but that was because the unions went on strike, not because a ferry had run itself into a wharf, or run aground, or had automatic pilot put on, or there was no question that the ship was seaworthy. Perhaps that's why we had unions, they'd go on strike until they were certain that the ships were seaworthy.   But I mean, how hard can it be to go from point A to point B? To go across a channel that we've been going across for more than 100 years. Is it the quality of the ships we have, the quality of the workmanship from the people who work on these ferries? What's gone so horribly, horribly wrong? See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I'm not drinking at the moment, but that doesn't mean I think everybody should give it up. People can go to hell in their own way, and while there are a small number of people who cause disproportionate, dreadful harm because they don't know how to drink, the majority of New Zealanders can enjoy a tipple and go about their business without smashing up people, property, or themselves. So, if you like a drink, fill your boots, sláinte, cheers.   But at the same time, I have no problem at all with the Auckland Council introducing stricter trading hours and a two-year freeze on new liquor licences. Currently, alcohol can be sold until 11pm in offies, including bottle stores and supermarkets.  So, they're not saying you can't buy alcohol. They're saying you can, you just have to get to the offie before 9, be a bit organised. Applications for new bottle shops in the city centre and 23 other suburbs will also very likely be rejected for the next two years, unless an extraordinarily high threshold is met, which is jolly good news for those who've got existing licenses. There's an old saying that suburbs are on the decline when bottle stores open up, suburbs are on the rise when coffee shops open up, and that's probably true.   But we can booze every day if we wish. We can buy it from supermarkets, dairies in some places, bottle stores, restaurants, bars, and we can buy it online. So nobody's saying you can't buy booze, they're just restricting the hours when you can buy it. They're saying, you know what we think we've got enough bottle stores around the city, you can walk to your nearest one, you'll be fine. Josephine Bartley, the Council spokesperson, said it's not a ban on drinking, it's about working together to create a thriving, safe and healthy region for everybody. Is it going to stop those who can't handle their drink getting completely smashed and doing terrible damage? Sadly it won't, they'll still get their hands on the booze. Is it going to stop underage drinking? Sadly, it's not. If young kids want to get their hands on booze, they will find a way of doing so, either through mates, nicking it. Is it going to stop people who like to have a drink with their dinner being able to access a nice bottle of red or white depending on what's on the menu that night? No, it's not.   So not much has changed in terms of people's ability to access alcohol, other than reducing the hours. It would probably be a good thing to see a sinking lid right around the country, whereas if you leave a licensed establishment you can't go into another one. Because really, what good comes between the hours of 2am and 4am? Very little, even with the best of intentions. I guess the only question around this, given that really is anything going to change is, should they be stricter? Should it be 9am to 5pm and that's that? Should you only be able to access alcohol like car-less days, you've got one day to top up and that's the end of that, the rest of the time, no. No, that would just create another thriving form of income for gangs. Restrict the hours till further, have the sinking lid when it comes to licensed establishments, encourage people to drink at licensed restaurants and bars where there's an onus of responsibility on the managers to ensure that people don't get completely and utterly off their chops, and that might work.   Surely we've got enough bottle stores, surely we've got enough places to buy alcohol. And if you can't stagger up the hill to your nearest coffee, you can order online. If you just can't face that walk, order online. Sensible. Normal. We don't want to make it something glamorous and something prohibited because that would just make it more attractive. Just bring the number of places you can buy it down and the hours in which you can buy it, reduced. Encourage people to go to bars and restaurants. It's too expensive. Yes, therefore, you'll drink less. Don't have a problem with that at all.   See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We're talking energy today, or rather the lack of it. New Zealand seems to have sleepwalked into an energy crisis, according to the Chairman of Open Country Dairy, the second biggest player in New Zealand's dairy export industry. Laurie Margrain said in a story the crisis is not coming, it's here. He said an example of its arrival is that the factory has had to incorporate standby coal-fired boilers into its brand-new Southland alternative-powered cheese factory, because of the certain risk of insufficient electricity generation.   Another story out within the same 24 hours, the largest employer in the Ruapehu district has paused operations at its pulp mill and sawmill sites after a nearly 600% increase in energy costs since 2021. Wholesale prices have risen from $100 per megawatt hour (MWh) to an average of around $700 per MWh this week. The Chief Executive at Winstone Pulp International said the company has to think about its future now that energy costs have risen from 15% of total production to an excess of 40%. You cannot plan for that. They've done everything they can. They say they can't pass on the increases to customers because they sell into a commodity market where the price is the price.   So this is affecting New Zealand. The overseas buyers don't give a fat rat's bum that we're being held over a barrel by the electricity generators and the retailers, the Gentailers. They don't care, they just want to look at the price. And so if they can't compete because energy costs have risen through the roof, what is their future? As a business, Mike Ryan says we've invested tens of millions into CapEx to improve production and energy efficiency. So they've reduced their energy use by 20 to 30% for every ton produced, they have done everything they can do and yet their future is uncertain.   Minister for Regional Development and Associate Minister for Energy Shane Jones told Heather du Plessis-Allan last night that if prices of electricity are inordinately high, then there needs to be more electricity generated.   “The difficulty is if we have a continually rising cost of electricity, then the only way to deal with that problem is to rapidly expand supply. And that's why the fast track legislation, I've no doubt in my mind, will prove to be incredibly useful so we can accelerate the development of wind farms, solar farms, hopefully some more hydro. And you know we have an inordinately rich resource in New Zealand, which is the geothermal energy, and geothermal energy drilling in other countries goes down 5 or 6 kilometres into the earth and you tap into what's called hot rock, not quite at the magma and that is a profound geothermal resource, but it will probably require the crown and the science institute owned by the Crown to do the exploratory work.”  But for how long? I love the way he just casually says yes, hopefully another hydro dam. Hopefully another hydro dam?! How long would that take? How long would it take to get through even with the fast-track legislation? How long would it take to get through the red tape before there was a spade in the ground? We, along with just about every other nation, signed up to the Paris Accord to reduce emissions or face fines and sanctions, and that's fine. Let's look at alternative ways of doing things, better ways of doing things. But we can't just move away from traditional energy sources until we have another form of renewable, socially acceptable energy that is reliable.   So the power companies say they're investing in alternatives and renewables, every single cent they have is being put back into investing in alternative sources of power. And that's one of the reasons why power is so expensive. But in the meantime, what are manufacturers to do while they wait for Shane Jones hydro dam to be built? I wonder if I'd even be alive to see it? While we wait for offshore wind farms to arrive and start spinning, I mean this is pie in the sky. You can want something, you can wish for something, you can hope for something, you can even plan for something, but if it’s not here, how do the manufacturers switch on the lights and turn on the machines? The manufacturing sector has maintained a contribution to GDP of about 11% since 2013.   Do you know how New Zealand makes money? And no, it doesn't print it. No, no, we've seen that that doesn't work. It sells stuff and people buy it, and that gives us an income. So for those of us who work, we sell our services, we sell our goods, we get money, and we can pay the mortgage, and we can buy nice things if there's money left over. And that's how a country works. We sell stuff. The world buys it. We pay our bills and if we've got enough leftover, we can all pay police more and build new hospitals and do all those lovely things that civilized countries do.   So if the manufacturing sector isn't guaranteed a supply of energy, it's going to lose production, it's going to lose customers, and we're going to lose money. We're also going to lose jobs. $9.4 billion worth of exports and the sector employs nearly 1/4 of a million people. It's a big deal. And Shane Jones talked about sweetheart deals, and yes, the power companies could play nice and give the big manufacturers a deal as well. Why would they? They have people to answer to as well. All of these companies are responsible to their shareholders. They can't be doing sweetheart deals and investing in new power new sources of supply. It's a bloody mess. Shane Jones saying hydrothermal, how long is it going to take? The lovely people at the pulp mill need to turn the lights on now and they can't, it is simply unsustainable given the increase in price, so where do we go from here? See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

New Zealand seems to have “sleepwalked” its way into an energy crisis.  Both Winstone's Ohakune pulp and timber mills could shut, putting 300 jobs in the small central North Island town on the line.  This is due to their energy bills have increased significantly for the company in recent years.  John Harbord, Chair of the Major Electricity Users Group, told Kerre Woodham that if you go back six years, the price for a megawatt hour of electricity was about $75-80, and for the majority of the recent years, it’s been around $150 on average.   He said that for some businesses they’re not paying 40% more, but rather four times as much as they used to pay, and when one of your three biggest costs quadruples, it has a significant impact on your business.  LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

New unemployment figures make a change in the Official Cash Rate now less likely.  Stats NZ numbers out today show unemployment hit 4.6% in the June quarter, up from 4.3% in the March quarter.  It's what the Reserve Bank predicted, although economists were forecasting 4.7%.  Herald Business Editor at Large Liam Dann told Kerre Woodham any number above expectations would've made a cut more likely.  He says it could still happen, but the interest markets that predict OCR changes had a cut next week priced in.  LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Energy Minister Shane Jones believes the situation of two potential mill closures is 'hideous.'  Winstone's Ohakune pulp and timber mills could shut - putting 300 jobs in the small central North Island town on the line, as energy bills have increased significantly for the company in recent years.  Open Country Dairy, the second-biggest player in New Zealand’s $26 billion dairy export industry, says action is needed now on New Zealand's electricity supply.  Chair Laurie Margrain told Kerre Woodham that it can’t be solved overnight, but we’ve just sleepwalked into it for years and years.  He said that we need to get the settings correct because without the energy assets or availability of energy, we won’t be able to attract international investment into New Zealand.  LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Let me take you back to the halcyon days pre-Covid. The biggest story around was Shane Jones and New Zealand First promising to make Northport the port of the future that New Zealand not only needed, but deserved. The port in Auckland was no longer fit for purpose. Northport would be the biggest infrastructure spend in New Zealand's history. It would revolutionise and revitalise Northland. There would be jobs, loads and loads of glorious jobs. The streets of Kamo and Kawakawa and Whangarei would be paved with gold. We were so close to pressing go on the project and which is not to say there wasn't pushback, trucking industry leaders, infrastructure planners, port operators wanted an evidence-based debate on the Upper North Island’s port strategy, not Shane Jones's rhetoric. And they were concerned the official study focused on New Zealand First’s preferred option of moving the port of Auckland to Northland. They said, well, let's have a look at a new ‘Greenfields’ port at the Firth of Thames, that could handle things long term. Oh, the discussion raged on talkback with the fors and againsts. Then all of a sudden Covid arrived, and the biggest infrastructure spent in New Zealand's history was shelved while we spent billions and billions of dollars fighting a virus.   But now Northport is back, and let's face it, it was never going to go away. Having a port in the middle of congested Auckland City doesn't make sense for the future, and surely there is no more room for the Port of Tauranga to expand. They've been turned down permission to expand or extend at Sulphur Point Wharf. So, the people of Tauranga and in The Mount are like, come on, you're big enough. According to the Environment Court, there's no room for Northport to expand either. Northport had applied for consents from the Northland Regional and Whangarei District Councils for a 13 hectare eastern extension, which would have been used as a dedicated terminal to accommodate future freight growth. The Environment Court said no, because of the significant adverse effects on cultural values of tangata whenua and the law on the loss of recreational values and public access to and along the coastal marine area. So now Northport’s appealing that and I totally understand. They need to have a plan for growth and expansion, but we need a nationwide plan, not a local one. It needs to be across the board.   And I totally understand that the Far North used to be the centre for import and export for the North Island, Dunedin and the South. Far North was always a place things came to and went out of. The Far North needs to be revitalised, it needs a shot in the arm, it's been neglected for far too long. Totally get that. But my main concern around Northport, well, with all due respect to the tangata whenua and the loss of recreational values, is how the hell do you get freight to and from Northport when the road's closed all the time? What are you going to do then? The Brynderwyns can't cope with the traffic it has now, where are the hundreds and hundreds of heavy transport vehicles going to go when the road is inevitably closed? The Brynderwyns were closed for 58 days in 2023, 17 weeks and counting this year with no guarantee that it's going to stay open the next time there's a deluge.  And come at me with your narrow-gauge rail, because I vaguely remember the narrow-gauge rail arguments and our trains aren't big enough to take the containers. Yes, they are, said a few other train trainspotters and the trainspotters debate raged in 2019. But that's going to be a heap of infrastructure as well to upgrade the train tracks ready for the sort of freight that would be coming into and out of Northport.   So yes, I would love to see the Far North revitalised. I would love to see Northport extend. It makes sense, it's close to some of the biggest markets, but surely not until we have the infrastructure to be able to take the trucks. And yes, there's a four-lane highway planned but let's see if that can stay open, because that beautiful, beautiful stretch of road that we can travel on sometimes, yeah, that's great but it doesn't stay open is there any guarantee a four-lane highway will? So where do we put a bigger, better port? Tauranga is struggling to expand. You can't get to Northport for 17 weeks of this year. Auckland's in the middle of a congested city, I can't imagine how much it costs with all the time wasting. Napier, Timaru, come back Dunedin? The Firth of Thames? What's the answer?       CORRECTION: This piece incorrectly refers to the Environment Court declining the port expansion.  It was not the Environment Court, it was independent commissioners.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Yes, the maths. You know, I know we've been talking about this, that we have been failing our children for decades now. This is not a previous Government issue, this is not of their making. This has been a long time coming. Where New Zealanders used to assume a world class education as their birth right, where anybody who was educated in New Zealand could stand amongst the brightest minds in the world, now we've had successive generations of children falling behind in every metric. The numbers have been there. But instead of using the international results that have consistently put us at the bottom or near the bottom of the class, the educators, the boffins who make decisions about what our kids learn and how they learn and what our teachers teach, have refused to accept that their ideology is flawed, that their experimentation with our children has failed. Instead, they phaff around and say that testing is outmoded and an old patriarchal colonial construct, and not the best way to assess a child's abilities and the like. Utter, utter nonsense. In 2021, the Ministry of Education commissioned a report on our math syllabus, in the face of two decades of slipping maths results, and that's by both international and national measures. So it asked a panel of independent experts convened by the Royal Society to look at the New Zealand Curriculum, which outlines what kids need to know and when, to see if it was fit for purpose. The conclusion? Massey University distinguished Professor of Maths Gaven Martin, who was chair of the panel that wrote the report told the New Zealand Herald our maths education was a 'goddamn mess'. Pretty unequivocal. The system was widening the gap between rich and poor children and left Māori and Pasifika children falling behind at school and ultimately falling behind in life. And you know it, and I know it. You'll have heard the calls from so many parents and grandparents who are paying through the nose to send children to private tuition companies, to either get their kids the education in maths that they're not getting at school, or to give them the extra stimulus because they're good at maths and want to be better, that overworked and underprepared teachers simply cannot give them. So Labour knew there was something wrong under Helen Clark, and National knew under John Key, and Labour knew under Jacinda Ardern, and now this coalition Government knows that there is something terribly wrong with how we're teaching our kids. Christopher Luxon has moved to introduce structural maths for students 0-8 a year earlier than intended, after new data showed just 22 percent of Year 8 students in New Zealand reached the benchmark for maths. That's the bare minimum. And only 22 percent of them reached that benchmark. He said it amounts to a crisis - and Minister for Education Erica Stanford told Mike Hosking she agrees. "We've compared ourselves to other countries who are doing a much better job than us, who have been actually climbing the ranks in the OECD, whereas we've been dropping for many, many years and I don't believe for a second that there are some people who just can't do math. That is completely untrue." "Everybody can do maths. It's just the confidence and having wonderful teachers and great curriculum and great resources. And we've seen other countries like Singapore and Australia and the UK surge ahead because they have those things right and we don't and we are going to get them right under this Government." "And I tell you what, I have been around the country for the last couple of years talking with principals of high schools and primary schools, and they all agree that we have a massive problem in maths. Nobody agrees with the Union apart from the Union, and I don't think we should be listening to them. High school principals tell me when I walk in the door, Erica, the first thing we have to do with our year nines or our third formers is teach them their timetables because they don't know them. Without fail, every high school I go in to. So there is a problem and the unions can have their heads in the sand but I'm going to move on despite that and implement our plan because it has to happen." It really, really does. We've talked about it for far too long. The leader of the Academy report back in 2021 said the real issues went beyond the curriculum to the heart of how New Zealand educates its students, which ranged from insufficient teacher knowledge to a system that labels kids too early in life and doesn't give them the same chance to succeed. It said there needs to be a real shake-up, but there's doubts that there is the political will. Currently teachers and schools have to pick and choose from a myriad of options for both professional development and curriculum resources, and that is true across many, many lessons, many subjects. So if you want to learn history, you make up your own lesson plan, basically, based on the resource material that's there, it's a lucky dip, a pick and mix. And that's for all the lessons. The report calls for the Ministry of Education to show more leadership in many areas, including giving all schools access to the right resources, upskilling teachers and attracting maths specialists to the profession. All of that would be fantastic. And yet, the Education Ministry employed 1704 more staff in 2023 than it did in 2016. So the addition of 1704 more staff did exactly what for our kids? It is so, so hard. If you struggled at school yourself, you were one of the first generation to be failed by New Zealand's education system, you have children yourself. You see that they're struggling. How frustrating to feel powerless to be able to help them, to see them following in your footsteps and be denied opportunities that you were denied because the education system failed first them and now you. And that is just heartbreaking. And you can't afford it. Your cousin might be married to an incredibly successful chap or woman, who have their own incredibly successful company, and all three of their children go to a private tuition company which costs them thousands of dollars a year. And that's okay, they can shore up the gaps in their knowledge because they can afford it. But you can't. You simply can't. So your kids continue to fall behind while the kids who can afford the tuition get the gaps in their knowledge shored up, and that is damn wrong. So wrong. It goes against everything I believe about this country and everything I believe about education. LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A maths expert says a new Government action plan is a good step. It's bringing forward a new curriculum to Term One next year, with twice yearly assessments - and a $20 million boost for teachers' professional development. Massey University maths professor Gaven Martin chaired an expert panel asked in 2021 to improve student maths results. He says the devil will be in the detail. LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.