Kerre Woodham Mornings Podcast

Labour leader Chris Hipkins says speeding up the justice system is a priority.  Recent announcements by the Justice Minister include bigger fines for trespassing and harsher penalties for coward punches and assaulting first responders.  Hipkins told Kerre Woodham unlike National, he wouldn't spend the first 18 months in power overturning the last Government's legislation.  He says there’s been too much flip-flopping around.  One of the things Hipkins wants to prioritise is the courts – saying that they have to deal with the inefficiencies in the system, and that justice delayed is justice denied.  Chris Hipkins says Jacinda Ardern will be weighing up safety before deciding whether to return to New Zealand for our Covid inquiry.  Ardern could be among key decision-makers expected to be asked to speak later this month.  Hipkins told Kerre Woodham there are risks to her security in New Zealand.  He says they aren't idle threats, and it's legitimate for her to consider the danger to herself and her family.  LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

To start the morning, I wondered about looking at the fairness  - or otherwise - of the corporate tax rate. The Finance Minister, according to a New Zealand Herald story, has quietly asked Inland Revenue to look at the appropriateness of the tax settings being applied to banks. Nicola Willis confirmed to the Herald a wide range of options is being considered to ensure the major banks are paying their fair share of tax. She wants advice back ahead of next year's Budget, which is expected to be delivered just months before the 2026 general election. She said, “our work to enhance banking competition is wide-ranging and as part of this of sought advice on whether the major banks are paying their fair share of tax,”. I've been interested, she went on, in how New Zealand's bank tax regime compares with Australia and elsewhere, particularly in light of the significant profits Australian banks make from Kiwi customers. No decisions have been made, recommendations have not yet been taken to Cabinet, so she's not going to comment on specific proposals at this stage. I would have thought if the company tax rate was a set amount and the banks are paying that, then they're paying their fair share of tax. I was listening to Heather talking to Claire Matthews, the banking expert from Massey, this morning. Claire Matthews said the way she thought it might work would be the corporate tax rate would be lowered for all corporates except the major trading banks. Everybody else will be lowered, but banks, so they wouldn't in effect be punished, they just wouldn't benefit from any changes to this tax regime. But as Claire Matthews pointed out, banks already contribute a significant amount to the New Zealand economy.  They pay a very large portion, something like 20% of total tax, total corporate tax in New Zealand. So they're paying a huge amount of tax, so if you drop the corporate tax rate but keep the bank’s tax at a higher level, you, the Government could manage to avoid the actual impact on their tax take.  I think there's a real danger here. Are they going to suddenly make supermarkets pay more because they, too are Government’s favourite whipping boys and girls? Why are they being singled out? Sure, I would love it if I didn't have to pay the house price twice over, but I understand that when you're lending money to individuals and to businesses, there is risk involved with that so you have to pay for that risk.  I don't imagine the banks would just close their doors, decamp and head back over the Tasman, there's still money to be made. But I just don't understand why banks would be asked to pay more while the rest of corporate New Zealand pays less. I don't want a bank to fail. It's not in the country's best interest for a financial institution to go under. We've seen the damage done when the BNZ had to be bailed out, and then the different finance companies were bailed out, why on Earth would we want to see banks fail if they're paying their fair share of tax?  I have no skin in the game other than a hefty mortgage, which I would love to see reduced, but I don't necessarily see it's the bank's fault that they are the ones who profit from lending money.   LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

There are a lot of things parents can teach children without schools needing to get involved. Basic hygiene, reading, physical education, even driving – parents should and could teach their children these skills. And I know schools already have a lot to be dealing with as regards to the needs of our children in their classroom, they've got a lot of changes to the curriculum happening. But one area where I would totally jump on my soapbox and say the schools need to be teaching is civics education.    It's come to the forefront because while the NSW Government understands the importance of young people having a working knowledge of democracy and the legal system, it announced last year that studying civics would be compulsory in primary schools from 2027. Critics are saying that the subject is too important to be included within a wider syllabus. At the moment, what the NSW Government is doing is putting civics in with human society and its wider environments syllabus, along with other things. Critics argue that civics is so important it should have its own standalone status, with its own standalone support material, and specialist teachers, and the like.   I couldn't really agree more, because when you look at everything we talk about on this show, when you look at the subject matters that are dear to our hearts, the genesis of all of the issues that come up comes down to decisions made by people voted by us or people choosing not to vote. So a small number of people get to choose individuals who will make decisions that impact us all, be it local bodies or government.   Or we're talking about issues because decisions are made by people who don't understand the social contract and what it means to be a citizen, and that's what civics is all about: understanding that when you are a citizen within a civilized society you have rights certainly, but you have duties and obligations. So if there was a greater understanding of civics, a greater understanding and appreciation of what it means to be involved in a democracy, a greater understanding of the way our governments work, both central and local government, the way our laws work, we would have a more civilised society.    See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A new tool can now estimate how fast a person is aging.  University of Otago scientists have found a way to use an MRI scan of the brain to quantify the rate of biological aging of middle-aged people to forecast risks of dementia, chronic disease, and death in older adulthood.  The technology was developed using data from the Dunedin Study, a decades long health project tracking more than 1,000 people born in the early 70’s.  Dunedin Study director Professor Moana Theodore joined Kerre Woodham to break down the findings of the study and how the tool works.  LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I don't know about you, but I want to know how big our Finance Ministers' holes are.   I think it's really important to know what political parties’ promises are going to cost us. A nine-year battle to get a publicly funded body to cost political parties election promises, starting with the 2026 election, ended at cabinet on Monday after ACT and NZ First put the kibosh on the plan.   Way back when —2016— the proposal came from the Greens, but over time it's been modified, and Nicola Willis’ plan would have amended the Public Service Act to allow the political parties access to public service resources up to 10 months before an election, so they had the information they needed to cost their policy promises. A unit in the Public Service Commission would have been created to coordinate those requests, funded with $1.2 million. Which is chicken feed in the scheme of things. But with ACT and NZ First nixing it, we remain with the status quo, which as Stephen Joyce explained this morning, means an awful lot of time wasting and running around for the opposition parties.  “You have to go chasing around OIA’s and parliamentary questions to try and get enough information to build a policy which stands scrutiny when it gets out to the public, and it's a lot of fun for the government of the day to try and withhold all that information and then go, “ah, it’s ridiculously costed policy.””  That really ground my gears this morning when I heard that. Oh, it's all a great lark, it's all such fun having opposition parties running around desperately trying to get the information they needed.   And the clue comes from the Public Services Resources. They're ours! Taxpayer money funds those services, it funds those resources. We have a right to know how much is being spent on what programmes, what funding is available, and we have a right to allow that information to be disseminated to opposition political parties so that they can craft their own policies with that knowledge, with that baseline knowledge that they need. Otherwise, they are going to be promising pie in the sky. This should be public information. It's taxpayer money funding services for taxpayers. It should be easy to access, easy to find, and then the opposition parties will be able to craft their policies accordingly. No more silly buggars. It's in the public interest not to have this time wasted.   How many staffers are employed by opposition parties chasing after OIAs and chasing after this information, when that work could be better put to spending time with programmes and organisations and departments, and coming to terms with what they need to do the best possible job to deliver for the taxpayer? There is nothing fun about this. There's nothing clever about this. It is expensive time wasting.   As for ACT’s no because “we already provide a fully costed budget before each election”, stop being so smarmy and teachers’ pets, you can't mark your own homework. Each party should have to pay out of their own party funds —not out of taxpayers dollars— for an economist, not to run the ruler over their own budgets because we've all seen that, they should each pay for an economist and the economist names should go in a ballot. Each party draws out a name, and that economist runs an eye over that party's budget. So ACT pays for an economist. The ACT economist goes into the hat, the Māori Party draw him out, that's who runs an eye over their budget.   I want to know without having to do the sums myself if what a party is promising is viable, and I don't want them to do their own costings, thanks very much. I do want an independent body to look at it. That information should be freely accessible to all opposition parties. Let's put an end to the fun and the silly buggars, and each party's promises before an election should be independently verified, so we can all cast our vote with the best possible knowledge available. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Weight loss drugs are becoming increasingly sought after, with Wegovy hitting New Zealand pharmacies this month.  It’s currently not funded, and people will need a prescription to get it.  However, people are warning that weight loss drugs aren’t a silver bullet, and lifestyle changes are needed for long term success.   ‘What The Fat?’, co-authored by Caryn Zinn, Craig Rodger, and Grant Schofield, highlights a low-carb, healthy-fat diet, and is held up as an effective weight loss tool.   Dr Zinn joined Kerre Woodham for a chat about her work as a dietician, What The Fat?, and healthy ways to lose weight.  LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In the wake of the Motueka valley flooding with warnings that Australia's bomb cyclone is set to bring severe weather conditions to New Zealand, we're on weather watch. Not just the media, although looking at the television screens in my studio —one on BBC talking about the heat waves in Europe and another on Sky News from Australia talking about severe wind, rain and surf in eastern New South Wales— globally we appear to be on weather alert.   There will be people living in flood prone areas, people living near streams and rivers, people living in coastal areas, they’ll be understandably wary as the heavy rains come down. What used to be a part or seemed to be a natural part of the weather cycle —summer brings sun, winter brings rain— now seems much more ominous than that. The gentle patter of rain on the roof is replaced by a kind of unease in certain areas. Deluges can be devastating, especially when you combine swollen streams with slash, the debris left over after forestry plantations have been felled.   For years, rural communities especially have warned of the extreme danger that slash can cause, and in the wake of Cyclone Gabrielle in 2023, the government revised the standard slash management rules. But interestingly, the Hawke’s Bay Regional Council found that the piles of woody debris that dammed bridges, blocked riverways and littered beaches in the wake of Gabrielle contained only a small portion of forestry slash. The Council report found the make-up of the debris deposited at more than a dozen sites consisted of a mixture of pine, willow, poplar, and other native timber and debris could not be identified. In all but one of the surveyed sites, there was little evidence of slash, indicating that the majority of pine came from erosion of hillsides and stream banks. It was a different story in Tairāwhiti next door, in Gisborne, where forestry slash was widely blamed for much of the damage caused by the cyclone. The government of the time ordered a ministerial inquiry into forestry practise and slash.   So slash can sometimes be blamed for everything, it's the culprit. But as other people have pointed out, it's the fact that it's damn near impossible to dredge rivers to get the silt and the natural debris out of rivers, that also caused problems. It's the fact that we're building near flood prone areas, that are known to be flood prone areas, time and time and time again. But why are we continuing to allow forestry plantations on erosion prone land? I understand why we thought it was a good idea after Cyclone Bola - forestry plantations went into the hills there because that provided employment to locals, and the trees were supposed to hold the hills together.   But now we know the dangers of slash and of erosion, where the pine trees aren't doing the job of holding the hills together, where you need different kinds of scrub and bush and grasses and trees to be able to do that. Why are we still allowing them? A) to be grown there and B) to be harvested? When we know that every winter, every time it rains, every time there's the heavy deluge, the local community is at major risk of flooding, again, and again, and again. How have we not learnt from the so many instances of slash and erosion bringing down the trees, smashing the fences, damaging the bridges, causing the incredible flooding events that we see just about every winter? We can't keep doing the same thing time and time again, can we? The farming community around areas that are so badly affected by the erosion, by the slash must get so frustrated knowing that they're having to go out and rebuild fences that will just come down again, if not next one to the winter after. So what do we do? We can't, surely keep doing the same thing again and again, because that in anybody's language is sheer stupidity.   See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Forestry is a major industry in New Zealand, but the practices involved contribute to the damage left in the wake of cyclones and major weather events.  After 2023’s Cyclone Gabrielle, the Government revised slash management rules, ruling that forestry owners will have to remove slash if it’s over a certain size.  They’re now consulting on a proposal to further amend the standards due to cost, uncertainty, and compliance issues.  Mark Bloomberg and Steve Urlich authored a piece for the Conversation titled “We are one bad rainstorm away from disaster – why proposed changes to forestry rules won’t solve the ‘slash’ problem”, and in it they say the proposed changes fail to adress the core reasons for slash and sediment discharges.  Dr Mark Bloomberg, an Adjunct Senior Fellow at the University of Canterbury’s School of Forestry, joined Kerre Woodham to break down their thoughts.  LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I don't know who these people or these organisations would be and what on Earth their motivation might be, but it would appear that Treasury has identified several private operators who have expressed an interest in establishing a commercial competitor to Bluebridge with government help. Which basically means the opportunity to privatise the KiwiRail Cook Strait ferries.   I don't know why you would do that, where in the world does any kind of public transport make money? I guess where there are profits to be made, Bluebridge has found them. But in a country this small, could two people, two organisations, two interested groups, make money out of the Cook Strait ferry crossing?   Earlier this year, Winston Peters took a paper to cabinet, along with Finance Minister Nicola Willis and Transport Minister Chris Bishop, which confirmed a direction to Ferry Holdings —that's the publicly owned companies set up to procure two new Inter Island ferries— to consider options for ferry ownership and operation that will improve efficiency and recycle government capital. What does this mean? Translated into real world speak, that means the Government’s looking at letting private operators into owning and running the ferries that the government currently owns and runs, in the hope that efficiency will be improved, and recycling government capital means using private investors money, not taxpayers' money.   All very well and good to open it up for expressions of interest, but what I found really staggering is that there are people who are interested in doing just that. As you may have heard on the Mike Hosking Breakfast, Deputy Prime Minister David Seymour is all for allowing private operators into running the ferries.   “I have long had the philosophical view that government is not a good operator of commercial enterprises, and there's no shortage of evidence for that. But the reality will be much more persuasive to whoever's in government, you’ve got to balance the books, and at the moment we own too many underperforming assets. We are really struggling. As a result, the New Zealand people who fund the government as taxpayers are struggling, and there's going to have to be a reckoning. The alternative is people young and talented, keep looking further afield for opportunity and I don't want that.”  No, none of us do. But is KiwiRail going to private operators going to be the Great Saviour? I wouldn't have thought so. It's been sold off before and it didn't work then. So he’s all for private operators coming in and running state owned assets more efficiently. Equally unsurprising is Winston Peters being against any form of privatisation. He makes the point that NZ First has consistently held the view that taxpayer funded assets should be owned by the taxpayer.   As somebody who uses the ferries once in a blue moon, I wouldn’t have thought it difficult to have ships that are seaworthy, take people, and cars, and freight over the Cook Strait, and bring them back again. And you need people who can steer the ship, and you need people who can maintain the ships so that they don't break down in the middle of Cook Strait, because that's very bad. If there isn't enough money to be made commercially from doing this as an exercise, as taxpayers we have to fund it because it is State Highway 1. We need to keep it going.   So why is it so hard to do that? Why is it so hard to have ships that are seaworthy, captains who can steer them, people who can maintain them? And either we know every year how much it's going to cost us to keep State Highway 1 open, which we have to do, or we allow private operators to run it and make small profit from it. Looking from the outside, I wouldn't have thought it was possible. Bluebridge has been able to do so, but is there room for another private operator? Clearly people think so, but why has it been so troubled? It's a bit like the lovely CEO from Kainga Ora who said really, in effect, the job is quite simple. We build houses for people, and we rent them out. He said it only got difficult when the previous administration wanted to make it a more social enterprise and bring in mixed model housing communities.   If you drill down to what the job is, it's actually quite simple. So why have we struggled for decades to run a Cook Strait ferry crossing? It really, from the outside, doesn't seem that difficult. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Government's harshest sentencing rules begin today. Rules like capping the maximum discount that a judge can apply at 40 percent, with some exceptions. There will be no repeat discounts for youth offenders, those aged 18 to 25. No discounts for remorse, if you're sorry again and again and again, you only get to be sorry once, because Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith said repeat discounts had allowed for lenient sentences. A new aggravating factor has been introduced for offences against sole charge workers and those whose homes and businesses are interconnected. So basically your corner dairy and that's part of the National-ACT coalition agreement. A sliding scale for early guilty pleas has been implemented. There's a maximum discount of 25 percent, reduced to a maximum of 5 percent if the guilty plea is entered once the trial has started. I think there should be a discount for early guilty pleas saving us all the cost of a trial, all for that - but once the trial started and you're playing silly buggars and then decide yeah, I did do it, minimal discount. The use of cumulative sentencing for offences committed while on bail and custody or on parole will be encouraged to denounce behaviour that indicates a disregard for the criminal justice system, and this was part of the National- NZ First Coalition agreement. Why have these tougher changes been made? Because that's what New Zealanders in the main wanted. We were fed up with seeing instances like this - a teen mongrel mob member who broke into the home of a pregnant woman, didn't know her, tried to friend her on Facebook, she wasn't having a bar of it - so he broke into her house and indecently assaulted her in the bed she was sharing with her child. This teen (was actually 19), but teen offender was sentenced to 12 months home detention for breaking into her house and for indecently assaulting her in her bed.  Judge Gordon Matena said he had to hold Stevie Taunoa accountable but also had to take into account his youth at the time of the offending. He noted that Taunoa had spent seven months in custody, had been on electronic monitoring bail since the charges were laid. He acknowledged that Taunoa had used drugs from a young age and that his offending had been motivated by drug addiction. He also noted his lack of cultural identity and his membership in the Mongrel Mob before sentencing him to 12 months of home detention.  Taunoa said “thank you, judge. I appreciate that”, then laughed like a drain as he entered the police cells and yelled out to all and sundry “cracked it”. All that remorse, eh? In the meantime, the poor woman said she didn't want to live on her own anymore. She was terrified of the dark, she was terrified to sleep and because of his youth, because he was a druggie, because he lacked cultural identity, because he was a member of the Mongrel Mob, all of that meant that he got his sentence discounted. I was fed up with seeing things stories like this.  This is only one example. There are hundreds and hundreds. And how can you be sorry 3, 4, 5 times? I'm really sorry. I violently assaulted this person. I'm really sorry I sexually offended. Not once, not twice, not three, four times I'm really sorry. No, no, no, enough. Again, if the Justice Department could show me that all of these discounts applied to violent offenders to sexual offenders to young offenders, if these discounts meant that they realised they'd had a lucky escape from prison, that this was an opportunity to look at another direction in their lives and take it, if you could show me that it worked I'd be interested in talking. Doubt that you can. The Government's also looking at longer prison sentences for people who assault prison officers or on duty first responders such as paramedics and firefighters. This is so overdue. The proposals will create a new, specific offence for assaults on first responders. For those who have family who work on the front line, I know a number of you were terrified about your loved ones going to work. You really hope that you got to see them again, fit and healthy when they came back through the door. Does this give you a greater degree of security? Probably not, because the offence has to happen before they're punished. But at least, I hope, it gives you the confidence to know that the first responders are valued, that you're recognised. That we know what you do is walk into danger while other people are running away from it.  LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.