Kerre Woodham Mornings Podcast

According to Heritage New Zealand, there are more than 2500 shipwrecks in New Zealand's marine and fresh waters. Of those, only about 200 have been accurately located. Bill Day is a shipwreck expert. He's spent 36 years searching for the wreck of the General Grant in the Auckland Islands and he joined Kerre Woodham. LISTEN ABOVE  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

There's been quite a bit of chat around a report that's due to come out from the IRD that looks at 400 of the wealthiest families and individuals in New Zealand. This morning there was a speculative piece in The Spinoff suggesting that that IRD report could be paving the way for an introduction of a capital gains tax. A tax that Jacinda Ardern promised would be ruled out as long as she was Prime Minister. But she's not the PM anymore. Chris Hipkins is and he has made no such promises. He's also shown a readiness to tear up whatever legacy Jacinda Ardern was hoping to leave and creating his own form of leadership. At the same time as the IRD releases its report, Treasury is releasing a related piece of analysis into the effective tax rate of New Zealanders across income and wealth distributions. Now the Spinoff slant is that capital gains tax should be introduced. They say we're the only country in the OECD in which capital gains, a profit on the sale of investments, is not a significant part of the tax system.  So amongst the 38 wealthy member nations of the OECD, we are the only country without capital gains tax. And in this, we’re seen as an outlier in global tax cycle. So it's a speculative piece, it's well written. It's well worth reading. The commentators they use are knowledgeable. And I think they make a case for a capital gains tax fairly clearly.   I always found it very odd that Ardern backed away from something that she had held as a lifelong principle, that there should be a capital gains tax. And she gave it up very, very quickly and ruled it out as long as she was leader of the Labour Party.  Now is an opportunity for Chris Hipkins as Prime Minister, for David Parker, the revenue Minister who favours a CGT, to introduce one.  There is absolutely no reason to think that Chris Hipkins would honour a promise made by somebody else entirely. It was purely personal for Jacinda Ardern to say under her watch, there would be no capital gains tax. He can do what he likes. Should he introduce a CGT?   Is it, as the commentators say, simply an issue of fairness? See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A potential breath of relief for Kiwi consumers and mortgage holders has come with the release of new data. Inflation figures have come in much lower than expected, with the Consumer Price Index measuring 6.7 percent for the year to March. Although levels are still the highest since the 1990s, 6.7 is much lower than expected by bank economists, and the Reserve Bank. NZ Herald Business Editor at Large Liam Dann joined Kerre Woodham to discuss the surprise development. LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

It is an election year, ladies and gentlemen, and let the policy start rolling out! On Monday it was the rather underwhelming announcement from the Government around teacher-pupil ratios Today, it's the turn of National who are wooing farmers, courting the rural vote. National seems to have taken a leaf out of Labour's playbook in making an announcement about an announcement.   Still, at least they're rolling up the detail of their farming policy today rather than making us wait weeks or months.   There will be a package of 19 of farming focused policies released, but Christopher Luxon has already given the broad brush strokes of a few of them. The number of RSE workers (the Recognised Seasonal Employer workers) coming into the country will be doubled, and those workers will be given pathways to residency. National wants to ban foreign investment in farms to convert good farming country into forestry for carbon credits and they want to bring in a two for one deal for every piece of legislation introduced around farming.  In effect, Christopher Luxon told Tim Dower this morning they want to get Wellington out of farming. We all have concerns about really good farming land being turned into carbon sinks for overseas investors. But how many young people are able to afford farms these days? It's always been tough, but in this day and age I've thought it's nigh on impossible. And if you have been farming all your life and you and your wife or husband want to cash in, shouldn't you be able to sell to whomever you want? When you sell the farm, that's when you finally get the result of your hard work. When you get a return on those early mornings and late nights. So shouldn't you be able to sell to the highest bidder? How on Earth are they going to make it so that only New Zealanders will be able to buy?  Only foreign investors can buy if they keep it in dairy or beef or grow crops? Is there going to be a fund of money available for wannabe farmers to tap into to be able to buy these farms? How is that going to actually work?   When it comes to the Two for One legislation, I must admit I'm with Andrew Hoggard from Federated Farmers when it comes to that. Don't try and be too clever, too snazzy. If there's a dumb rule in regulation there, and by God there's a few, get rid of them. No need for catchy slogans, just sensible fixes to make it easier for farmers to do what they have always done, and that is save the economy.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Cast your mind back to 2016/2017. The National Government was getting hammered almost daily over the number of people who had been reduced to sleeping in cars because they had nowhere else to live. For the past two winters of 2016 and 2017 marae in Auckland had opened their doors to families in desperate need of food and showers, and a good night's sleep. Housing Minister Nick Smith said at the time that record population growth in Auckland was to blame for more pressure being put on the bottom end of the housing market. He said a concerted effort would be made to increase the housing supply and said the government was not failing. Well Labour were having none of that. They pointed to the state house sell off Andrew Little, then Jacinda Ardern thundered away in the media, pointing to overseas outlets highlighting the shocking problem of homeless Kiwi’s, in a country that prided itself on its generous social welfare legacy.  Six or seven months was considered shocking. Now we've got people in emergency accommodation for up to two years, substandard emergency accommodation where violence is a part of life. Intimidation is a part of life. Gang activity is a part of life. It is no place for children or families. Homelessness became a key platform when Labour was on the campaign trail in 2017. Now we have one of the highest levels of homelessness in the OECD.   And the reason for the shocking increase can be sheeted home to this well-meaning impotent Government.  Just about everything they have done to improve the lot of people, they say they care the most for, has blown up in their faces. I have absolutely no doubt they care. They just haven't got a clue how to fix it, despite spending years in opposition, despite railing against a Government that they said was failing, they had the answers, vote for us, we'll fix it.  They have made it immeasurably worse.  They can't build social housing fast enough. War was declared on landlords. And not enough assistance is being given to the people in motels to help them get out of the poverty trap that they're in.  Every single person in emergency accommodation, in these substandard, for the most part motels, should feel justifiably cheated by this Government.  They were promised so much more. They were promised a place to live. They were promised that they would be able to earn enough to look after their kids. And they've failed.  They have been failed by a Government that has failed on just about every metric on which they campaigned for election. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Three Waters 2.0. Three Waters Let's Try This Again. What did he call it? Affordable Water Reforms? Trying to come up with something so bland, so anodyne, so completely forgettable, that we forget what it's all about.  It's still the same concept, apart from the fact that there will be ten  council entities, not four.  Local Government Minister Kieran McNulty was on with Tim Dower this morning. He made no apology for the fact that there will still be iwi representation on the ten entities. He has no problem at all with that and says nobody else should either. And says basically it all comes down to making it affordable to have clean water right across the country.  So, you know, compelling and it's true that there is the ability to borrow at better rates when you're a bigger entity. But there's still a very long way to go for the Government to get this across the line. The new name and the added entities aren't going to make a blind bit of difference as far as I can see.   The most important thing for me is to leave a positive legacy for the next generation. God knows we're leaving them with enough to sort out, including debt. It would be great if we could leave behind an efficient water infrastructure, providing clean drinking water where you could turn on the tap and not run the risk of being poisoned, and clean waterways. If I had any confidence that Labour could do this with its Three Waters 2.0, I'd be in boots and all. If I thought they could deliver on the kind of infrastructure that they're promising, I would be absolutely all for it, co-governance and all. I wouldn't have a problem with that at all. It is just that Labour's record on delivery is so poor, I have absolutely no faith they can deliver on their promise. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The International Monetary Fund is warning New Zealand is likely to be hard-hit in a global economic down-turn. Its 2023 outlook forecasts New Zealand will have one of the lowest GDP growth rates and one of the highest inflation rates in the Asia Pacific region in the coming years. In their projections for GDP, NZ's current account balance is reported as -8.6 percent of GDP, worse than Greece's at -8.0 percent, in 2023. Robert MacCulloch, the Matthew S. Abel Professor of Macroeconomics at University of Auckland joined Kerre Woodham to discuss. LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Well, water, water everywhere and who knows what to think?  I think we all accept, we all understand, that we need to improve this country's water supply, this country's water cleanliness, it's how we do it that's the sticking point.   Be that as it may, the day before the Prime Minister's announcement, a report ‘Our fresh water 2023’, was released and it makes for damning reading. Produced by the Ministry for the Environment and Statistics New Zealand, it shows there have been some minor improvements. (There we go, that's the good news.)  The rest is grim on most measures. The country's freshwater sources are becoming increasingly polluted, further threatening native species on the verge of extinction, and causing more people to become sick. The report is part of a series that's produced every three years, so it hasn't come out of nowhere. Had found 45 percent of lake monitoring sites between 2011 and 2020, had become more polluted with nutrients and algae. 45 percent of the country's entire river length was deemed unswimmable, due to a risk of bacterial infection over the period 2016 to 2020.  That is a damning indictment on us all.  And everybody points the digit at farmers. Everybody says it's the farmer's fault, but that is simply not true. It's on all of us. You cannot point the finger at farmers when you see the state of the waterways in our cities and towns. When you've seen the huge urban sprawl which has had a massive effect on our waterways, our creeks, our streams, our rivers, our lakes, and our oceans.  When you see sewage and all the associated vileness spilling out into our oceans in all its raw and inglorious state. When you see waste water bubbling up in our streets. When you see people who can't turn on a tap and have a glass of water, which I would have thought was a fundamental right of living in this country. The thing is, it is all fixable. There just has to be a collective biting of the bullet and a commitment to restoring the rivers and lakes and oceans to liveable, swimmable levels and to provide clean drinking water for the citizens of the country. That is not such a big ask.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Three Waters is now a thing of the past, we now have the Affordable Water Reforms. The Government has made major changes to the controversial scheme, including ditching the four mega-organisations that would have delivered freshwater, wastewater and stormwater services. Prime Minister Chris Hipkins says they'll be instead establish 10 regionally led, local water entities. He says they believe this strikes the right balance between cost savings in the delivery of water infrastructure, while also ensuring the entities are strongly grounded in local communities. National Leader Chris Luxon told Kerre Woodham he sees three issues with what's been announced. "Just changing the name and the branding because he didn't like it isn't great, the second thing is we've just gone from four co-governed mega-entities to ten co-governed mega-entities and that doesn't make a lot of sense and the divisive co-governance structures are still in place." LISTEN ABOVE  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The debate surrounding freedom of speech versus hate speech has been exacerbated after controversial activist Posie Parker visited New Zealand. Nadine Strossen, a New York Law School Professor, a Former President of the American Civil Liberties Union is a leading expert in hate speech law. Stossen is also an author, her most recent book is titled 'HATE: Why We Should Resist It with Free Speech, Not Censorship'. Nadine Strossen is in New Zealand to speak with various agencies and joined Kerre Woodham. LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.