Kerre Woodham Mornings Podcast

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why shoplift something you can afford?  Not every shoplifter is doing it out of economic necessity, some thieves taking despite having a high income, status, and a steady career.   After ex-Green Party MP Golriz Ghahraman pleaded guilty to four shoplifting charges today, the question of why an affluent person would commit retail theft is again being raised.  Dr Dougal Sutherland, a clinical psychologist with Umbrella Wellbeing, told Kerre Woodham that psychological pressures and stress can be behind the decision to shoplift.   He said that when people come under pressure they can come up with what, in hindsight, are quite irrational ways of getting out of a situation via self-sabotage.  LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

They promised they would. They said it would happen. I have to say it happened far sooner than I expected. Yesterday's post-Cabinet press conference saw Christopher Luxon, Shane Reti et al. announcing up to 26 new cancer treatments, alongside 28 other medicines to be funded as part of the government's $604 million health budget to honour National’s pre-election promise. The promise was made good on with knobs on. Some of the drugs will be available from October/November of this year. Others will be phased in as of next year and it is fantastic news.   I don't want to be a Debbie Downer, but it will be too late for some families. And as medical oncologist Chris Jackson, cancer expert extraordinaire, said on the Mike Hosking Breakfast this morning, having the drugs available and funded is all very well and good but we need to ensure our infrastructure can deliver them.   “We've never had any investment of this extent in the entirety of Pharmac’s history. I mean $600 million is a very, very, very big number and we have never had this many cancer drugs funded at once at any time. So despite the way we got here, I'm absolutely and utterly thrilled. There are still quite a few fishhooks though. You know, when you dump 26 cancer medicines into the system at once, the largest ever, you do create a bit of a capacity demand issue, and the cancer services are already pretty tight and there's a number of services around the country which have already got waiting lists in place. And so if we don't fund the infrastructure for them, the chemo units, the nurses and the like, then you can end up with cancer waiting lists in six to 12 months time. So we've got to be careful about how we do this.”  Absolutely. I couldn't agree more. It is interesting how the coalition government resolved the issue of how they would get the cancer drugs to the New Zealanders they'd promised them to. They could either direct Pharmac to buy the drugs, and that's a whole can of worms. David Seymour, whose Pharmac’s Minister and National’s coalition partner was very reluctant to interfere with the decisions of Pharmac. He said as much on this show a couple of weeks ago. So he didn't want that kind of interference, ‘You must buy those drugs with this money’, and rightly so I think.   Or you could set up a separate cancer drug buying agency that would have taken time and bureaucracy and faff. So, in the end the government had to fork out a whole lot more than they originally promised because Pharmac has a list of priority drugs it wants to fund, it only has so much money, and it must buy the drugs that will bring the greatest good to the most amount of people. Ultimately, there are other ways of doing it, but there are other considerations, but primarily that's what it must do. Look for the best deal on the best drugs that will deliver to the most amount of people. So they have a priority list, and some of those cancer drugs were in that priority list, but they were behind other drugs that weren’t for cancer. So Pharmac said all right, fine, we'll buy the drugs, but you have to give us the money that will allow us to get to their place on the list, if you see what I mean. To get to all the cancer drugs they promised they had to buy a whole lot of other drugs. So that means about 28 medicines that were not for cancer will now also be funded because they were ahead of those cancer drugs on the priority list. I think even though it's expensive, that is the right thing to do. You cannot, cannot, cannot politicise the Pharmac buying priority list, you just can't. As Chris Jackson said to Mike Hosking this morning, Pharmac may not be perfect, but it is the best option.   “The last thing you want is pollies picking drugs. You certainly don't want Big Pharma getting large blank checks from the state, and you don't want those who tell the biggest story through the media to queue jump. What we've had here is by lifting up Pharmac’s budget, you've had, cancer hasn't queue jumped all the other medications. There’s been 26 drugs, 50 total so other areas have benefited too. It's cost them an awful lot of money because of the political problem they've created. It would have been cheaper to do it another way, but I'm really, really pleased how we've landed.  We need to make sure the implementation's done well now, because if it's not, we're going to create another problem, just down the line.”  Yeah, absolutely. And that's what he was saying. All very well and good to get the drugs but you need to have the infrastructure so they can get to the people who need them. So I would love to hear from you on this one. Is this the best solution? I think it is. It is expensive, of course it's expensive. But you can't prioritise drugs just because you've got somebody fashionable and trendy who it can promote their drug over others. They get more media attention than others. There are less sexy diseases, less sexy drugs that don't get the attention, but the people who have the disease need it. The people who have the affliction need that particular drug, and why should they be further down the list simply because they can't get the right noise behind lobbying? It's got to be independent. It's got to be free of government interference and if it means that more people will have their drugs funded, well so well and good. There are a lot of these people who need the drugs have not brought this upon themselves. You know, it's just a roll of the dice. It is fate. That means they end up with a life-changing or life-threatening disease or illness that a drug can alleviate. They can't afford that drug, they die. They can't afford that drug. They live a life of perpetual misery. Surely this has got to be good news. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

It was a joyous and emotional win for the Auckland Blues on Saturday night.  The Blues are Super Rugby champions for the first time since 2003 after routing the Chiefs 41-10 at Eden Park.  Back with us again is former All Black Coach and Auckland Blues Board member, John Hart.  Hart told Kerre Woodham “I was so happy for the team, the club, the city and our fans.”  He said “We’d had a semifinal the week before and the crowd was quiet as a mouse – and on Saturday we had a total sell-out – what an atmosphere.”  LISTEN ABOVE. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.