Kerre Woodham Mornings Podcast

We're talking a whole lot of rubbish this morning. I know some people who are passionate recyclers. They know their shinizzle. If Mastermind was still being broadcast, recycling - the what's the how's and the where’s - would be their specialty subject. There are others who simply don't care. Can't be bothered. Load of nonsense. It's not going to save the planet anyway. it's too hard, a load of bollocks. Biff, everything goes in the rubbish bin. Banana skins, glass bottles and all. I suppose I'm somewhere in the middle - veering towards virtuous. I rinse out the recyclables, take the lids off. I don't know how I knew I was supposed to do that, but I did. I use the food scraps bin, but I'm not at the stage of posting my soft plastics to be recycled, which you can do. Could do better. What complicates recycling in this country is that most consuls operate different methods of recycling. Some places it all goes in one bin, others you have to sort out your tins from your paper. But as of now, the whole country will have new standardised recycling guidelines to follow. It's interesting that in some areas like Auckland, we are losing the ability to recycle some products. In effect, the national guidelines have been made for the lowest common denominator. Shouldn't we have aimed for a gold standard? Brought other regions recycling efforts up to the most efficient? Well, David Howie, Waste Management New Zealand Executive General Manager of Circular Services (quite the title), answered that this morning on the Mike Hosking Breakfast. He says it's all about reducing contamination. The biggest challenge is not so much the type of plastic but contamination generally, and the broader the range of materials that are accepted the greater the risk that we get increased levels of contamination with materials that can't be recovered and often that means that they'll impact materials around them, or potentially even a whole bin of recycling, and that reduces the rate dramatically. So I think that the move to make it clear and to help people understand the standard system, with support and education clearly to help that, is a great way to make sure we do get that maximum recovery rate. So understood, I understand that. I also think it helps if you know where your recycling ends up. Just putting it in the bin and hoping for the best, you think you've done your bit but I think it really does help to know where it goes. For example, the food compost bins. And eventually it's going to be user pays when it comes to your organic waste so it's a way of getting people used to removing the food scraps out of the general rubbish and putting them into a specific bin designed for being taken away and recycled. Some people were scoffing about that -where is it going to go? We had a caller to the show last year who's told us exactly where it's going. He said a lot of trucks come up to Auckland with rubbish. They go back empty, so you fill them up with your organic food scraps, you take them to a central processing plant where it's turned into methane, and there are big glass houses right next door to this recycling plant that use them to grow vegetables and fruit in the glass houses. Now, he was a talkback caller. He certainly sounded like he knew what he was talking about and that sounded absolutely spot on to me. If it's not true, I don't want to know. It's a bit like I was told the Plane trees in Franklin Road, those beautiful big trees. Each one was planted for a boy whose life was lost in the First World War. I don't want to know that's not true. So don't bother telling me. And it's a bit like that with the recycling of my of my banana skins and my vegetable peelings and the scraps from the kids school lunches. I want to know that that is going back in a truck that would otherwise have been going back empty, that it's being turned into a productive gas that can help grow food. That suits my narrative. I like that. I want to know what's happening to my tins, to my paper, to the plastics. I see on some of the cartons and containers ‘made from recycled plastic’, and that makes me feel better. I think that's where my plastic's gone. This is good. I mean, ultimately it's better to not use it at all. I know the holy mantra for reducing rubbish. That you don't use plastic water bottles, you have your big refillable reusable ones. I know all that. But a lot of people who try and get rid of clothing, for example, if you saw the mountains of clothing that end up in countries in Africa, they're left to deal with the rubbish. They're left to deal with fast fashion. You buy something goes out of fashion, and you buy something for $25 at one of the chain stores, it rips it tears, it goes out of fashion. You put it in the recyclables. Ultimately, there are mountains and mountains of unwanted and unwearable clothes that the people in Africa are having to deal with. So I want to know that it's not somebody else's problem. That when I'm recycling, it doesn't just become out of sight, out of mind, and somebody else's problem. I want to know that it is indeed circular. And I think if we know that that will get more people on board. And to the sort of numpties that put a dirty disposable nappy into a recycling bin- I know you're not listening to the show, but if you happen to be, if you are that sort of numpty that puts a dirty nappy in a recycling bin, there is no hope for you. You will have to do remedial classes to learn how to be a decent human being. LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Recycling will become more efficient across the country, as new rules come into place today. Standardised recycling requires almost everyone to place paper, glass and plastic types 1, 2 and 5 in their bins. Lids and aerosol cans are no longer accepted, while items like empty pizza boxes are. Packaging Forum CEO Rob Langford says these changes have been in development for over a year now. LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I was reading Robert Mcculloch's most excellent “Down to Earth Kiwi” blog.   His latest piece is an article on mass immigration and making the premise that high net immigration will ultimately dilute the influence of indigenous people on the future of a country. That the more people we have coming in with different cultures, different priorities, the less importance the views of indigenous people have on the future of the country, and we can get back to that, and the Treaty, and the debate over whether we should be having a debate on the Treaty closer to Waitangi Day.    But what I was more interested in today, given the other stories that are in the news cycle, is a discussion on immigration. Net immigration is running between 2-3% of the population per annum. That's around about 120,000 people annually that we have to accommodate, literally and metaphorically. Immigration is back to higher levels than it was even during the John Key years.   Now Labour tried and failed to deliver an economy and a skilled workforce that did not rely on imported labour. They said that we would be able to train enough Kiwis to fill the vacancies that were available and that became patently obvious almost immediately that that wasn't going to happen. We simply couldn't do it. Whether it was we couldn't do it quickly enough or we couldn't do it at all. My guess is we couldn't do it at all.   It became very apparent that there simply weren't enough Kiwi’s able and willing to do the jobs we needed to keep New Zealand Inc. running, and they were jobs right across the board. Remember when we had pensioners who were packing up their cars in their caravans and heading off to Hawkes Bay in Central Otago to pick fruit? We had waiting lists blowing out with a completely stretched and overworked health force staff screaming for reinforcements. So, it was right across the board.   In the news today, we hear that rents are high and they're rising. In Wellington, the water infrastructure is completely and utterly poked. In Auckland our beaches were closed for days over the Christmas break because of sewage overflows into the water, which is an absolute disgrace.   Spending on improving our housing supply, our infrastructure, our health, our education, has not kept pace with the inflow of new New Zealanders. We wouldn't even be able to look after the needs of existing New Zealanders.   We've allowed infrastructure, particularly that under the ground, to get run down to a point that it's going to be astronomically expensive to fix. We haven't freed up the space and the regulatory environment to allow more homes to be built, maybe because we're rightly concerned given past experience of the quality of the homes that will be built and we're concerned about where they're being built. Auckland Anniversary floods, anybody? House prices are predicted to rise again as demand outstrips supply.   So, what to do, what to do?   If we put a hold on immigration, as Labour did, and indeed, as most governments did during the Covid years, all the same problems we saw, above and beyond managing Covid, will happen again. The waiting lists will blow out, the people needed to build the necessary infrastructure can't be found here. We simply can't put 30 migrant workers into a three-bedroom home. No, we don't do that here, thank you.   So, what to do? The myth that New Zealand can look after its own needs has been well and truly busted after two years with closed borders, but what do we do? We bring in the people we need to do the jobs and where do we put them? What do we do with what they produce that we need to get rid of?  How do we fix what's under the ground without bringing in more people to do it?   It's a conundrum, and if you have the answer, I'll buy you a Lotto ticket. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

New Zealand’s infrastructure is unable to keep up with our increasing population.  Net migration figures are sitting at approximately 2-3% of the population per annum, a total of 120 thousand people entering the country every year.  However, the spending allocated to improving housing supply, infrastructure, health, and education has not kept pace with the increasing number of migrants.  Michelle McCormick, Infrastructure New Zealand’s Policy Director, told Kerre Woodham that there is an opportunity to combine these two factors.  She said that the incoming workforce can be used to address our infrastructure deficit, which would in turn keep these skilled workers in New Zealand as opposed to leaving once a project is complete.  LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Wherever you were on holiday —if you were lucky enough to get away— did you see the ‘Staff Wanted’ signs in the windows of just about every business, North and South Islands?  A number of business owners I spoke to were having to reduce the days they were open because they simply couldn't provide the service they wanted, because they didn't have the staff.   Yes, they could stay open and run around like blue-arsed flies, but they wanted to give them the service, the experience, that people expect when they're paying a bit extra, and they simply did not have the staff to do that.   And yet we have a huge pool of people who should be able to alleviate at least some of those shortages.   According to a column written by Paula Bennett in the Herald on Sunday, former National minister and colloquially known as Paula Benefit, because she was in charge of benefits and slashed a few, she says there are 34,000 under 25s not in work, not in study, not in training.   They're simply languishing on job seeker benefits.   And I say languishing because if the benefit is all you're getting in the way of income and that is a big if (I well understand that there are other ways to supplement an income that are not entirely lawful, or indeed in any way lawful). But if all you've got is the benefit, it's a pretty miserable, meagre existence.   To be eligible for the job seeker benefit, you have to be looking for work. It can go to someone who has a health condition or a disability that affects their ability to work temporarily, but predominantly it goes to people who are out of work and looking for it.   Damningly, the number of young people (these are under 25s) on benefits has increased nearly 50% in the past five years. What are work and income staff doing? If you have got a young person who's turning up and they have to sign on, and they have to turn up to collect their benefit, what are work and income staff doing?   Do they have the time to drill down into why a young person isn't getting work when they're supposed to be looking for it?  Is it a lack of drivers license? Is it that they don't have the people skills to be able to do an interview? Are they lacking confidence? After the years of isolation, young people in particular aren't great when it comes to meeting people, meeting new people, being able to hold conversations with strangers.   So, what is it that work and income staff are doing to help these young people get into work? What are parents and caregivers doing? Back in the day, the antediluvian times, at 17 or 18 you're expected to make your own way in life. You went out, you trained for a job, you got a job straight out of school. You found a flat and you worked. You were responsible for paying your own bills.   The thought of going to your parents and saying give me some cash, or let me stay at home and not work while I get my confidence up... you just wouldn't do it. It just simply was not done. There was no safe haven at home really unless you were in dire straits. Not simply because you couldn't face getting a job.   So, what are parents and caregivers doing to give young people the confidence to get out there?   What about business owners? Are you willing to give young people a chance? They turn up, they're a bit stuttery, a bit hang dog. The eyes are down, the chins down because they're not expecting to get a job because who would take them anyway?   You know, it's hard. It's hard to put your best foot forward when it's your first time. It's hard to present as confident, and fabulous, and wonderful when your grades haven't been that great. School hasn't been brilliant because it's been shut for two years. You know, you're not sure what you can do.   Are business owners willing to take a punt on young people?   And for young people themselves, don't you want more for yourself? Don't you think you're worth more than the pittance you get from the government? Because you are.   I've heard from a couple of young people who said they can't quite face going into the office because they suffer from anxiety. So they get jobs, they start them, and then all the chat around the water cooler sends them fleeing for the suburbs and home. They just can't quite hack the interpersonal office relationships. I get that. But what about, you know, working from home? It is a thing now. Employers understand and make allowances for young people who want to work at home.   Why have we got 34,000 young people on a job seeker benefit? Life on a benefit is not a life, it's existing. No matter how good BBQ man made that life sound, IYKYK.   What is holding you back from getting a job? Labour removed sanctions, and sanctions sound so old fashioned and like, even the word it sounds like iron manacles around your ankles. Sanctions. They're a blunt tool, but they jolly well seem to work.   When Labour dropped sanctions, the number of beneficiaries, the number of young people drawing a benefit sharply increased. Coincidence? I think not.   So what is it? If you are a young person under 25, if you have one of those young people in your life, if you're a business owner looking for workers, why have we got 34,000 young people wasting their talents and their energy?   See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

James Shaw will stick around to back a last piece of legislation before quitting politics.   The Greens Co-leader's announced he will stand down in March but remain an MP to back his Sustainable Environment Bill's first reading.   Political Editor Jason Walls said that as far as resignations go, this was pretty lukewarm.  He said that Shaw made it known after the election that he was going to be shepherding the party to the point where he would no longer need to be co-leader, and someone else could step up.  Walls said that since he’s stepping down after the Sustainable Environment Bill leaves the house, it’s up to the other MPs in Parliament to determine when he’s stepping down.  LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Former Social Development and Employment Minister, Paula Bennett, has made a case for bringing back sanctions for those on the Jobseeker benefit.  There are 34,000 under-25-year-olds on the Jobseeker benefit.  Bennett is calling out the acceptance of this statistic, and questioning how we can rationalise the fact that more than 500 of them have been on welfare for longer than five years.   She told Kerre Woodham that it’s all about the direction from the Government.   Bennett said that currently the focus is on what their entitlements are as opposed to how to get them work ready.  LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Did you see those clowns driving on Muriwai Beach on the TV news last night, just hours after a teenager was tragically killed there yesterday afternoon?  It was like rush hour and, I’m sure, they were probably hamming it up for the cameras.    One muppet even hooned past the reporter who was doing the live report - in what looked like some sort of people mover - and then, within a few seconds, they were reversing at pretty much the same speed.   I could say that I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. But I’d be lying. Because, the truth is, I could believe what I was seeing. Because all summer I’ve been seeing people treating beaches as if they were roads.  And it’s not just four-wheel-drive trucks. Quad bikes are another menace on beaches.  New Year's Eve, for example, we were hanging out at the beach and there was a quad bike screaming up and down all night. I think they were gathering driftwood and stuff to burn on the fire down where they were a bit further down.  We were with family and we had some young kids with us, which meant you couldn't totally relax because you had to keep an eye out for the quad bike. Especially once it got dark.  But, apparently, that’s all fine. Just like it’s all fine, apparently, for anyone to take any vehicle onto a beach and do what they want.  And yesterday at Muriwai, we had what’s being reported as a young chap taking a ute onto the sand and, by the end of the day, the young woman who was with him was dead, and two others injured.  According to the reports I’ve seen, he’d been doing burn-outs in the sand and it seems the young woman was thrown from the vehicle when it rolled. She was crushed and died from her injuries.  As usual when this sort of thing happens, we’ve got locals in the news today that they had seen this type of thing coming and that something needs to be done. And I couldn’t agree with them more.   The chair of the local community board is one of the Muriwai locals talking today. Brent Bailey is his name. And he’s told the NZ Herald that vehicles on beaches are in direct conflict with all the other things that go on there.  People doing things like kitesurfing or just hanging out in the sun. Things you should be able to do without having to look right, left and right again - just in case there’s traffic coming.  If there’s one place where you should be completely free from traffic, it’s the beach.  Someone else who lives near Muriwai, Ed Donald, says he’s been pushing for change for ages.  He’s saying- “We still want to go surfing, we still want to go fishing, but all of a sudden we just have this hoon mentality, and it’s just taking control of the beach.”  And the irony is (if you can call it that), is that vehicles had been banned from Muriwai up until a week or so ago. It was only for a couple of weeks - taking effect on New Years Eve - during the peak holiday period.   But the barriers are down now and, already, someone has lost their life.  Now you might say ‘oh it’s not as if the guy hit an innocent bystander. He knew what he was doing and the young woman who died knew what she was doing’.  Yeah, fair point. They did. And let’s not forget the impact what happened yesterday will have on the driver.  But in an age where it seems councils all around the country are sticking planter boxes and speed bumps and all sorts of things on roads and streets to slow down traffic and make it safer for pedestrians, we seem to be turning a blind eye to what’s going on at beaches. Where there are pedestrians. Where there are young children. And where there seems to be no shortage of idiots who think it’s their god-given right to drive on the beach however they like, come hell or high water.     Which is why I think the time has come for all vehicles to be banned from all beaches, full stop. LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Parliament's repealed the Clean Car Discount —dubbed a 'ute tax' by its opponents— under urgency, following a third reading.  The policy subsidised the purchases of electric vehicles by charging a tax on purchases of polluting vehicles.  It led to a massive uptake of EVs.  However, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says the policy was fiscally irresponsible.  He says it was taking money from people who have very little or no choice as to what vehicle they can use and giving it to people who can already afford to buy an electric vehicle.  Greig Epps, CEO of the Imported Motor Vehicle Industry Association, joined Kerre Woodham to talk about the policy and what its removal will mean for the automobile industry.  LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

So, the clean car discount, aka the Ute Tax, has been repealed as Parliament continues to sit in urgency in the lead-up to the Christmas break. Some of those politicians won't know what's hit them, working past the 15th of December!   The clean car discount you'll remember was a Labour initiative, originally introduced in July 2021. Initially, it provided rebates for consumers that purchased electric and hybrid vehicles. You know, there were substantial rebates for an EV. If it was a new car, you got back just over a tad over $7000, a used car a tad over $3,500. If it was a hybrid and a new car, you got $4000 back. And if it was a used import, you got $2000 back.    Electric and hybrid vehicles cost more than the old-fashioned internal combustion engine vehicles, so the initiative was designed to encourage Kiwis to opt for carbon friendly vehicles to make them more affordable.   But we're only talking about a certain class of Kiwi here. Not everybody has the dosh to spend money on a new car, a new electric car or a new hybrid car so we're talking the top few percenters. The sales data suggested it was working and why wouldn't it? If you give somebody something for nothing, they're going to take advantage of that. 2022 was the biggest year on record for EV and hybrid sales overall.   The most popular EV in the country, the Tesla Model Y, starts at $67,500. That's your basic bog standard, Tesla. Who has got $67.5K to spend on a new car? Again, we're talking about the top few percenters. The GWM aura, was introduced into New Zealand just recently. It's $42,990, and that's currently the cheapest new EV in the market. Newsflash, $43K is not cheap, but that is the least expensive.   So, these rebates were going to people who could afford to buy cars anyway. If you can afford to spend $67.5K on a new car, you could afford the $7000 on the end. The discount was paid for by adding additional costs of up to $7000 on higher emission vehicles like the utes. Did that put off the punters? No, not a bit.   With just one month left in the books for 2023, the Ford Ranger is all but confirmed to be New Zealand's most popular new vehicle for the 9th year in a row. And that's with both Ford and Mitsubishi dealerships confirming that they're telling customers, look, don't bother buying a new ute this year. Hold off. If the coalition government gets in, if National gets in, clean car discount will be gone, the ute tax will be gone, and then you won't have to pay the fee-bate levy. Despite that, commercial vehicle sales actually grew slightly in November. We went stuff your fee, stuff your levy, I'm buying it anyway. And then, of course, when 2024 rolls around with the fee-bate gone, the market expects ute sales to kick off with the bang.   Now of course, Labour sold it as being fiscally neutral. You know, we're going to tax the utes and the heavy emitters and we're going to use that money as a rebate for EV's. So, was it fiscally neutral? Thank you for asking. Of course it wasn't. There's a new form of girl maths and it's called Robertson maths, which doesn't make any sense whatsoever.   The ute tax was supposed to cover the rebates and admin costs. More has been paid out in rebates than has ever been received in charges. That's only set to get worse with, shock me, more taxpayer money needed to keep the scheme afloat. More than $579 million has been paid out in rebates, $13.5 million spent in admin costs. How much has been collected? $290 million. So even people who got 56% in School C maths (that would be me), understands that $290 million does not equal $579 million plus $13.5 million. That's left the taxpayer facing a $302.5 million deficit. So we have to make that up.   Oh, it's fiscally neutral. No, it's not girl maths Grant. It's really not. You're not taking in enough to cover the running of the scheme. Who's going to pay for it? Taxpayer. All those people buying the bloody utes were getting up at 5am in the morning and going to work. They're the ones who are going to pay for it. So not only are they paying for the fee-bate so some lovely human has worked very hard and who has got the dosh, who's got $70 odd thousand to spend on a brand-new car can get a rebate on it.   How does that even begin to make sense? Even with a rich prick capitalist government, how does it make sense? And yet, here you've got Labour champions of the poor, who are demanding the poor get in their utes that they've had to pay more for, get up at 5am in the morning, go to work to subsidise the scheme that allows rich pricks to buy new Teslas.   Good riddance to the Clean Car discount.  Long may it be gone. Fiscally neutral my Aunt Fanny.    See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.