Kerre Woodham Mornings Podcast

My Tuesday morning started quite well. It's not raining. Sun’s out, nice drive into the city. And then I got to work and read the story from Wellington about the brakes being hit on the Wellington speed reduction plan, after a councillor spotted that the cost-benefit-analysis had been overstated by $250 million. So they've gone back to the drawing board.  The whopping error means that papers that were sent out for public consultation are worth little more than toilet paper, consultation will be halted and it's back to square one for a new speed management plan.   So the time and money wasted on this is indicative of so many, many stuff-ups, abandoned plans and utter incompetence at a public service level. I mean, this is relatively minor in terms of the cost, but there is still a cost involved, in terms of the time and the money spent on drawing up this plan and based on completely fabricated numbers. Here's another example, this one from Auckland. Auckland Transport spent months in West Lynn shopping village digging up Richmond Rd. Realigning the footpaths, car parks and pedestrian crossings, moving the bus stops, removing car parks, adding a dedicated cycle lane on both sides of the street and was it a bucolic cyclist paradise? No, it wasn't. In a shocking twist, some of the shops flooded every time it rained because they built them with slopes from the road down to the shop doors. I'm no civil engineer, but even I know that water runs downhill. So there were sandbags all along the shops. The cycle lanes are unsatisfactory and unsafe. The sighting of the new bus stops was highly controversial and it's questionable how much traffic has been calmed.   My lovely morning turned to custard really when I started a cursory search of money wasted. When most of us are having to tighten our belts as the cost of living bites. When it's harder to do business, it's harder to make money for people who actually do stuff, make stuff, sell stuff, people who generate an income. We then give it to the Council and the Government, and what do they do with it? They squander it irresponsibly and I want people to be accountable for that. I want people to own up, say where they got it wrong, say how they've fixed it, say that it won't happen again -  because it's been happening time and time and time again.   And in the same way, all that money that you and I are working hard to make, we’re trying to hold on to as much as possible so we can pay the mortgage and we can buy the groceries and we can fill the car, and we can pay our taxes and pay our rates. They have no respect for us or for the work that's required to generate that sort of money. They see it as some public purse that they can dip into, make myself a bit of a stuff up there, without any accountability - and it has to stop.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The headline in the Herald this morning says, “Auckland surgeons must now consider ethnicity and prioritising patients for operations”. But I think this has been going on for some time, certainly the texts I've received over the past year indicate that this has been going on for some time. ACT party leader David Seymour backed that up when he told Mike Hosking this morning that he's had surgeons, in his office, telling him that they were being told to take ethnicity into account when deciding who should get an operation first, and that they were uncomfortable about it. David Seymour said, well we need evidence that this is in fact a public health policy. And now the evidence is here. Te Whatu Ora have come out and said yes, absolutely, this is what we're doing. Ethnicity will be taken into account, given that Maori Pacific Island patients have historically had unequal access to health care, so this is Te Whatu Ora’s way of fixing that. Health officials stress that ethnicity is just one of five factors considered and deciding when a person gets surgery. David Seymour made the point that if the other equity adjusting factors are applied properly, then Maori and Pacifica, who need surgery, will get it. There's got to be equality of opportunity, but equality of outcome is another factor entirely. These other factors should come into play. If you are economically deprived, if you are living in a remote geographical location, all that sort of thing, that should help to level the playing field. I can understand why some doctors are really uncomfortable about this. Surely it should be based on need and need alone. As far back as Hippocrates, surely, that was how doctors decided who they would treat.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Surgeons are now being required to consider a patient’s ethnicity alongside other factors when deciding who should get an operation first. Several surgeons say they are upset by the policy, which was introduced in Auckland in February and gives priority to Māori and Pacific Island patients, on the grounds that they have historically had unequal access to healthcare. The other categories on the waitlist are clinical priority, time already spent on the waitlist, location and deprivation level. National Party Health Spokesperson Shane Reti joined Kerre Woodham to discuss the change. LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Upon the release of the GDP figures confirming New Zealand has entered two quarters of contraction and so is in a recession, Grant Robertson issued a press statement headed "Economy takes knock from Auckland floods and Cyclone". Robert MacCulloch, who writes the blog Down to Earth Kiwi and is the Matthew S. Able Professor of Macroeconomics at the University of Auckland begs to differ.  He joined Kerre Woodham Mornings. LISTEN ABOVE  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The economy in the first quarter entered a recession, falling 0.1 per cent, in line with market expectations. Data from Stats NZ this morning showed how the economy performed in the first three months of 2023. And revised data showed GDP contracted by 0.7 per cent in the final quarter of 2022, worse than the 0.6 per cent recorded earlier. In the minutes following the release, the New Zealand dollar fell to US61.96c from US62.13c. NZ Herald Business Editor at Large, Liam Dann, joined Kerre Woodham to discuss the development. LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

More than 100,000 people are due through the gates at Hamilton's Mystery Creek Fieldays for the biggest event on New Zealand's agricultural calendar. 25,000 went through yesterday, including the Prime Minister Chris Hipkins and Leader of the Opposition, Christopher Luxon. To gauge the mood of the rural community, The Country's Jamie MacKay joined Kerre Woodham. LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

If you are wondering where the $2 billion for mental health is going, you may be kept wondering. Wait times for children seeking mental health treatment have increased nationwide. In Wellington they have more than doubled to 68.7 days - while in Rotorua they have rocketed from 42 days to 76 days. The National Party say mental health should be dealt with separately to the Ministry of Health - and if elected they pledge to introduce New Zealand's first Minister of Mental Health and Suicide Prevention. National's Mental Health and Suicide Prevention spokesperson Matt Doocey joined Kerre Woodham Mornings. LISTEN ABOVE  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Now, if you've listened to the show for any amount of time, you will know that I have always banged on about education being a lifeline, especially to kids who come from disadvantaged backgrounds. If you come from a family where there are few choices, a good education, good qualifications, give you an opportunity to aspire to and attain more. This is no longer true. Where previous generations had the opportunity to get a world class education and education that could take them anywhere in the world, New Zealand children today are being badly let down. A 2020 UNICEF report among many, found over a third of our 15-year-olds did not have basic proficiency in literacy and maths. It's one of a series of international and national reports which have shown New Zealand students are falling behind in the core subjects of reading, writing, maths and science. We've known this. We've known this for some time, and nothing has been done. Many educators themselves have no faith in the qualifications being offered, with schools turning away from NCEA. It's not fit for purpose. And yet today, again, the teachers are on strike. They say they deserve more money; better pay to keep skilled and experienced teachers in the profession. They have been offered a lump sum payment of $4500 and three pay rises by December 24, ranging from 11 percent to 15.5 percent. It's not enough, and it doesn't address many of the other issues that teachers say are so vital. The PPTA Acting President said teachers would much rather be in the classroom, but the teacher shortage needs to be urgently addressed. He said we need pay and conditions that will keep our skilled and experienced teachers in the profession, attract people into teaching, and encourage those teachers who have left to return to the job they love.  Secondary teaching, he says, is an awesome career. It's a hugely demanding one. It needs to be valued more highly and the work needs to be more manageable.   Why does it need to be valued more highly when our kids are failing? When our kids are not getting the sort of education that other children are getting in other parts of the world from other teachers. How can you value a profession that is not delivering? Is it the fault of the curriculum? The fact that many parents don't value education and education does start in the home first and foremost. Or is it that our teachers aren't quite as fabulous as they think they are? Whatever it is, our children are the ones that are paying the price. The message that has been sent to our young people over the past few years is that they don't matter. Schools were locked up, kids turned away, to protect the vulnerable. They were told that learning from home over Zoom was just as good as being in the classroom. Well, if that's the case, why do teachers need more money? Schools have been shut for weather events. For gang events and now for teachers to use as a bargaining chip in their pay negotiations. An e-mail to Early Edition this morning from a concerned mum said that her daughter was in the top two percent of achievers but is now needing psychological counselling because she is so stressed about the teacher only days, about the strikes, about the fact that she's not going to be able to give the best she can give because she's being turned away from her classroom. We have lost so many school days. Of course we have a truancy problem when we have shown kids over the past three years that they're turning up to school doesn't matter. It can be sacrificed for just about everything. We've told our kids that learning isn't a priority. A world class education used to be the birth right of a New Zealand child and that is simply not true anymore.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

With miles and miles of open sea, 160 kilometres of coastline, 13 clean, fast flowing rivers and 11,200 hectares of native bush, the Ōpōtiki District is the perfect home for a community that appreciates and enjoys outdoor activities and the natural environment. It would also appear to be an ideal habitat for gangs and gang members right now. Ōpōtiki, population 9300, is in effect, closed for business. As the posturing and chest beating between two opposing gangs reaches a crescendo. Hundreds of members of the Mongrel Mob - sub branch Barbarian - have come to town for the tangi of their gang president, who was killed on Friday in an alleged altercation with rival gang members. Gunshots have been heard in the town. There have been three fires in the past three days, all suspected arsons. Apparently, some Black Power families are being evacuated from the town out of concern for retaliation. And the local high school and the local kura have closed of their own volition. The primary school is technically open, but parents are choosing to keep their kids home. Some businesses have closed their doors. The streets of Ōpōtiki are very quiet. And this is the way it will stay until the gang members decide that it's over. Not the townspeople. Not the police. The ball is very much in the court of the gang members and this is just a natural progression from seeing gang members flout lockdown rules for the two years that everyone else was gritting their teeth and doing the right thing. I cannot recall a time when a dispute between gang members shut down an entire town. Kids schooling is being disrupted. Mind you, the teachers are striking anyway so you could share that disruption between the gang members and the teachers union. Businesses are shuttered. Public facilities are closed and the people of Ōpōtiki just have to wait until the gangs work through whatever it is they feel they need to do. The death of a father, the death of a friend is always sad. There are families going through that right now all across New Zealand. But gangs seemed to grieve in a different way to the rest of us. I don't even begin to understand the culture and long may that continue, but the idea that your right to grieve trumps the kids right to go to school, or that your pain justifies the lighting of fires and the firing of shotguns, or that your suffering is such that you hand out your own justice, while the rest of us have to depend on the police and the rule of law sticks in my craw. The gangs have been left to do pretty much as they wish for the past five years. More than that, they have been treated as equals at the table without ever having to earn the right to be there. They make a few airy-fairy promises about, ‘Hey we're just here to get the guys off meth and trying to make them to be better men and this is the only family they've ever known and we're the only ones who can reach them so give us some government money’, and the Government has agreed. ‘Yeah, okay, these are complex cases, you’re complex people, have some money.’ They haven't earned anything and they don't seem to have delivered much either. They have been treated as though they have an equal say and an equal right, without doing anything to earn that and this is the sum result. I am so sick and tired of seeing the brazen macho posturing of all of these gangs who choose to live outside the normal bounds of society and who are really, really proud of it. You see the pride they take in motorbikes. You see how they love hanging together and, as a group, inspiring awe among some kids with very few choices in life and fear with those who think what the hell are those going guys going to do next? Because they know your ordinary citizen knows if whatever they decide to do, there is going to be precious little that the police can or will do about it. They have been sticking two fingers to the rest of us for years and years. This situation of Ōpōtiki is an inevitable result of gangs being allowed to do whatever the hell they want.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

New Zealand's state housing agency maintains it has a number of tools for dealing with unruly tenants. Newstalk ZB has revealed only three Kāinga Ora tenants have been evicted for bad behaviour since a crackdown announced February last year. There were 10 ,000 complaints over the same period. New measures included a termination option if three serious incidents were recorded within a 90-day period. Kāinga Ora national services manager Nick Maling told Kerre Woodham the first focus is helping people sustain a tenancy in the community. "Things do go wrong, so when they go wrong we sit together alongside both our tenants and the neighbours of those tenants to resolve situations where we can." He says the vast majority of tenants are living in the community with no problems. Almost 200,000  people live in Kāinga Ora homes and 90 percent of tenancies had no complaints in the past year. LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.