The Labour Party wrapped up its conference yesterday, was a big deal because it was the first time the members had got together since losing the election last year. And if you listen to Andrew Little and Chris Hipkins with Mike this morning, you would hear from them that the conference went very well, the party is in good heart and Chris Hipkins is going to lead the Labour Party to victory in 2026. Will he be able to do that based on the promises he made at the conference? This was Chris Hipkins talking to Mike Hosking on the Mike Hosking Breakfast this morning: CH: I think AUKUS ultimately is a nuclear submarine pact, if you look at Pillar 2 of AUKUS it's not something that we think is going to be in New Zealand's best interest to be involved with and you know ultimately we've made the decision that New Zealand's best interests will be best be served through our existing international arrangement, including things like the five country partnership that we have (Five Eyes) and any access to things like new technology should come through that avenue not the AUKUS arrangement. MH: Dunedin Hospital – to what extent will you build it no matter what the bill? CH: We said that we'll build it to the specification that we agreed to at the last election or before the last. MH: No matter what the cost? CH: Well, I mean, bearing in mind that the current government before the election was saying we're going to build a hospital that was even bigger than the one that we were committing to. MH: Yeah, but forget that, this is your promise, at no matter what cost, you were, whatever it was going to be specification-wise, you will pay that bill. CH: We will build a hospital to the spec that we had agreed to before the last election, that’s right. So that's pretty much at whatever cost. So, what did you make of it? If you were one of those who are middle-of-the-road voters, you'll go where the policies are, you're not absolutely tribal, you're one of the 30 percenters – you'll go if you think that there is a vision that party has, be they Labour or National. If you like the cut of the leaders jib, if you find policies that resonate with you, you can swap your vote between blue and red. So among the promises: Labour will build the new Dunedin hospital as you heard. Pledge to keep New Zealand out of AUKUS, announced Kieran McAnulty as the party's 2026 campaign chairman. Good idea keeping him close. And promised a publicly owned InterIsland ferry connection, including some form of rail transport. Is that enough to turn dissatisfied Labour and centrist voters away from National and NZ First and towards Labour? I wouldn't have thought so, but I would say I wouldn't have thought so yet. We all know that parties seldom give away their big policies two years before an election, so it is very early days. But there's going to have to be a little bit more forward-thinking than what they came up with at the conference. Willie Jackson when he spoke, criticised the coalition leaders for their respective roles in the Treaty bill. But he did say that there needs to be, an appeal to middle New Zealand. He said that the Labour Party conferencegoers had to remind their friends and fellow members that Labour was not under the influence of the Māori Party. He said working-class Labour values are to work together, not just for one's own interests, but everybody's interests. He said a middle-class New Zealand would support some policies from the Greens and Te Pati Māori, but they'd never agree he said about a Māori Parliament. He said we need to have Māori and Pakeha and middle New Zealand together with us so we can be the next government. Which is remarkably conciliatory for Willie Jackson, I think you'll agree. So they understand they need to appeal to the middle, they need to appeal to that 30 percent, those people that will switch where they see the best policies for New Zealand or for themselves where they see the most sensible and capable members of Parliament will be.   And hopefully though, the issue of who is going to lead the Labour Party to the next election is done and dusted. Because we do not want to see a repeat of the David Shearer, David Cunliffe, Andrew Little, Jacinda Ardern shenanigans. Because it still blows me away that Chris Hipkins said, yeah, we weren't really ready for Parliament. After nine years in opposition you're not ready to be in Parliament? What were we paying for? Why were we funding your wages? If you're going to use all of your taxpayer-funded salaries to faff around and spend the time trying to find a leader that is not money well spent, that is not a good return on investment for the taxpayer. So if what they're going to be doing is looking at flaws in the Coalition Government's plan for New Zealand and coming up with a better alternative, if they're looking at bold, innovative ways to grow the economy, to protect vulnerable New Zealanders, to create a more robust health system, great. But if all you're doing is faffing around doing third-form schoolyard politics to choose your leader, that is not a good return on investment. So, so far so good. Chris Hipkins said well, yes, I might be tainted by the last regime, but hey, I'm here for the long haul, I'm basically the best guy for the job, prove otherwise. LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

As you will have heard in the news, Australia has passed landmark rules to ban under-16s from social media. In a world first, social media firms will have to take all reasonable steps to prevent young teens from gaining access to sites like Facebook, Instagram, X - formally Twitter - and the like. The firms who own these sites will face fines of up to $50 million AUD if they fail to comply. The tech giants themselves have described the laws as vague, problematic and rushed, and that's probably quite true. The current legislation offers almost no details on how the rules will be enforced. Seems they're leaving it up to the tech giants to ensure compliance. It will be at least 12 months before the details are worked out by regulators, and the ban comes into effect. Naysayers say it's going to be impossible to police; young people will always find a way around the rules if they want to find them.  And that is quite true. Just as I'm sure there are young New Zealanders who have managed to get around the cell phone bans in schools that the government introduced earlier this year. But it's drawing a line in the sand. It's saying being on social media sites is harmful for young people, that the bad outweighs the good and that we as a society and a community are going to recognise that. We're not going to accept that just because everybody's on it, that it's going to be really difficult to police, that kids will always find a way around it. We're not going to accept that. We're not going to accept that the genie is out of the bottle and that there is nothing that can be done except endless hand wringing about the harm that's being caused. People said it would be impossible to stop kids using cell phones at schools and that the children themselves, the young people, would never put up with it. Well, guess what? It's working for the vast majority of students. Even the principal’s who said look, this is just not going to work, the kids have them, they’ve had them for a while now, it's part of their lives, we're not going to be able to police it. We don't want to spend our time policing this rather than teaching - even they have been forced to admit that concentration has improved. That young people are more interactive with one another. They're not heads down on their devices, they're not using their devices to cause harm or to receive harm. Again, it's that drawing a line in the sand just as a line has been drawn in the sand over school attendance. There are all sorts of reasons why our school attendance is so appallingly low. And it's going to be incredibly difficult to achieve this government's target of 80% of kids attending school, 90% of the time. But baby steps, baby steps. An expectation was made that you will send your children to school, that will become the norm. And so in term 3 of this year, 51.3% of students attended school regularly. Which is bloody low, but it is still an increase of 5.3 percentage points from term 3 of 2023 - baby steps. I feel like if the wind's blowing in the right direction, then. You know, encourage the kids to go to school, the expectation is there. That your children, our children, will attend school regularly. People have responded to that expectation. They rise to meet it. There is an expectation that children will be free from cell phone distraction at school. It wasn't there before. You know that expectation was not there. It was just oh well, we kind of have to put up with it, they're part of everyday life. This government came in and said no, there is an expectation that children will be free from the tyranny of their devices and schools and young people have responded to that. Even more topically, there's an expectation that gang insignia won't be flaunted in public. And as the police minister Mark Mitchell reported this morning, even the gangs are responding to that. The expectations have been made clear to them at hui and in the meetings around the country. And in the main, they have responded to that. So set expectations, don't settle for being steamrollered by the lowest common denominator. Or for being manipulated by billionaires, tech companies, or for the facile argument that everyone's doing it, nothing can be done. You know, have a go, set expectations if something is wrong, say so. The harm that is being done to young people by being on many of these social media sites outweighs the good. Acknowledge that, set expectations that they will be safe from that while they are at their most vulnerable. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In a year, under 16's in Australia will no longer be allowed to access social media. The Australian Senate has passed laws banning them from accessing the platforms. The ban will come into force at the end of next year -- social media companies will face fines if they fail to take reasonable steps to keep children off. Senior researcher at Koi Tu Centre for Informed Futures Dr Felicia Low, told Kerre Woodham parents need to be able to have a say in what their children are doing. She says it can be easier if there's a top-down approach where a law is in place, so children can't argue against it. LISTEN ABOVE. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The first phase of the Royal Commission of inquiry into the COVID-19 response will be handed to the Government today. There’s one of finding I know is going to really resonate with a section of this listening audience and members of the wider community. The head of the inquiry, Professor Tony Blakely, says vaccine mandates caused huge pain to a “substantial minority” during the pandemic, and the government should consider whether their benefits, that is the vaccine mandates, outweighed their harms. The report found while the mandates during the later stages of the pandemic were supported by most New Zealanders, the damage to social cohesion needed to be considered when planning for future outbreaks as he told Mike Hosking on the Mike Hosking Breakfast this morning.   “I think a lot of us around the world are learning that those mandates might have gone a bit too far, for a bit too long and it's a very delicate balance. In a future pandemic, which is what we're really focused on now, you can't rule out the need for doing mandatory measures again because the virus might be two/four times as fatal, and two or four times as infectious, and you just need to do everything. However, if we had something like Covid again, I think all of us are saying that if we prepare better, have better contact tracing, then we'll need less of the mandatory measures like lockdowns and vaccine mandates.”  Absolutely. I heard Mike too say this morning that inquiries and reports aren't really worth the paper they're written on. That enormous amounts of energy are expended on them, and then they're delivered behind closed doors, and that's that. He said the response to a crisis will depend on whomever you have in government – if they're halfway capable, you get a halfway capable response. If they're not, you don't. But I disagree. I think you can learn from what you've done right and what you've done wrong, and I think the way the government handled the mandates, among other things, was poor.   I mean, first of all, not getting the vaccines when they did so we're behind the eight-ball. And I would have put anything, anywhere, up any orifice, to get the hell out of lockdown. The frustration and fury felt by many, mainly North Islanders, over following increasingly more ludicrous rules as we struggled to get to some arbitrary vaccination target is still ongoing. As is the fury felt by the significant minority of New Zealanders who lost their jobs and their livelihoods, because they refused to get vaccinated – and this is despite Jacinda Ardern saying in September of 2020 there would be no forced vaccinations and there weren't, and those who chose to opt out, more importantly, would not face sanctions. So that's what she said, and then it all changed again.   So people chose not to get vaccinated for many, many reasons. Do not lump them all into one basket. I mean, there were some basket cases in amongst them, the people who had the tin foil on top of their heads, but there were also people who were extremely genuine in their motivations and their reasons for not getting vaccinated. Think Novak Djokovic, sort of as the poster boy for that - very, very careful about what they put into their bodies and why they choose to put into their bodies what they do. I mean, these were not the lovies who jumped on the bandwagon who were pumped full of Botox and filler and the like. There are many, many reasons why people chose not to get vaccinated, and initially they were assured by the Prime Minister they wouldn't have to and there would be no sanctions if they chose not to.   So I think Professor Blakely is right, that you can learn from the past and you can learn how to manage it, because the fallout is ongoing. Every time we get something about the rising colorectal cancer - well, yes, that'll be the vax. So, you've got people who don't believe in science. You've got vaccine fatigue. Now we've got a rise in whooping cough because people are just sick to death of the of the word vaccination. They don't trust vaccinations. They don't trust governments telling you to get vaccinated because of what has happened, and this is the Western world over, not just in New Zealand. So the fallout from not managing the vaccination program is going to be felt for years to come. They did say in this first phase of the Royal Commission of Inquiry that some aspects were handled well. The first six weeks – great. After that, the wheels fell off. I think he said the wheels were wobbly, I'd go further and say the wheels fell completely and utterly off. I think we can learn, and I think we should learn, and I think there are lessons that can be learned, and the first phase of the inquiry has proven that. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Who on Earth would want Chris Bishop's job? The Minister for Housing has launched a new scheme designed to make it easier for community housing providers to provide social housing. The previous administration was all about the government, we're from the government, we're here to help – people within the industry have told me of a rather bunkered attitude towards housing provision. The attitude was no, the private developers can't do anything about the shortage of housing, they can't do anything about social housing, we the government will do it better because we, the government, have the most pure of motives, so we'll do it. Community housing providers they had a place for, but ultimately it was Kainga Ora who was going to solve the problem of affordable housing, in the mind of the previous government. It didn't work out like that. Now Chris Bishop has said the government is looking to community housing providers to fill more of the gap, and they're going to help them by treating them on a level playing field with Kianga Ora when it comes to competing for funding to deliver social housing. They're not going to give them money, but they will allow them to compete on a level playing field when it comes to bidding to provide social housing. Chris Bishop says that unlike the last government, they’re agnostic as to whether it's the state or the community sector that delivers social housing. At the moment, Kainga Ora provides some 72,000 public homes, which is the vast majority of the more than 80,000 public housing places offered by the government. Community housing providers, the Salvation Army and the like, receive government funding to provide a similar service in privately owned homes —so they're not owned by the state, they're owned by trusts or organisations— but they are only providing around 8000 homes for people. We know that Kainga Ora is struggling. The Bill English report says it's basically not financially viable because under Labour, Kainga Ora became an urban development agency. It was a bold ambition, and if it had worked, it would have been amazing. If they'd been the money, if they'd been the governance, if they'd been, if if, if, if. It was a large-scale urban renewal project that mixed all kinds of housing, public and private, it was next to public transport, which was going to be built as well. It was going to be hoots wahay and amazing, incredible. But that didn't happen. To be fair, Kainga Ora is also struggling because successive governments, including the John Key/Bill English government, underinvested in state housing. The lack of social housing and affordable housing was one of the hot issues of the 2017 election campaign and that helped get Labour into office. Housing is still a political hot potato, with this government struggling to wrangle Kainga Ora into financial shape and provide more housing for people who are really struggling to find a place to live. So Chris Bishop is hoping that by changing contracts for new housing supply, it's going to make it more attractive for investors and financiers to invest in community housing. They are going to allow increased use of leasing to provide social houses where leasing delivers value for money – that could help deliver more social housing very quickly and would only be available for newly built homes that have not yet been occupied. And they would also capitalise part of the operating supplement currently paid to community housing providers for new housing developments, to be paid upfront when contracts for new social housing are agreed. So if your eyes are glazing over, it will mean that the money will be given to them up front rather than in various portions as the housing comes online. Labour's Kieran McAnulty says Chris Bishop's all talk. He said it was hoped that there would have been government support for desperately needed public housing. And by support, I guess he means money - upfront money. Instead, there was no commitment to build any more public homes and no further support for the community housing providers, no increases to income related rent subsidies. Everyone was hoping the government would at least announce it would guarantee loans for the newly established Community Housing Funding Agency to make them cheaper, but again, no commitment from the Minister. When it comes to providing state housing the government has always been the first port of call, traditionally and historically. Then there was underinvestment from successive governments in the Kainga Ora stock, and also the needs of people changed. You didn't need a three bedroom house with room for a veggie garden and a nice kitchen for mum to bake the afternoon tea for the kids when they came home from school. That's just not what the modern family looks like compared to 1933, so there have had to be changes to stock. People who go into social housing, many of them have jobs, they have families, they raise them, they move on. Others are their longer term and as tenants, they need to be as they need more management. The Community Housing providers tend to do that better because they have fewer tenants. When you've got a Kainga Ora tenant manager, they have far more people that they're trying to manage. Community Housing providers can prevent problems happening before they happen, Kainga Ora tends to be more reactive because there are just more people. There's also an expectation than once you get a State House, that's where you land, you don't move on, you've got it for life. Whereas in the past it was understood that it was a stepping stone. So when it comes to the provision of social housing, do we need to put more in the hands of the community housing providers? Will these changes, as far as you're concerned, make it easier for them to do so? I think the leasing will probably make it easier. Whether the changes to the contracts for new housing supply will make it more attractive for investors, that will be for them to decide. Do we want Kainga Ora to fulfil its vision of being a developer? Bold, visionary, large scale developer of urban renewal projects? I mean I get where they were coming from, but they couldn't deliver, they didn't have the money, they didn't have the governance, they were operating in it time when the housing market was going completely and utterly insane in the post pandemic years. It was a perfect storm. If you're looking for a home, do you care whether it comes from Kainga Ora? Do you care whether it comes from a community housing provider? If you're living in an area where social housing developments are being built, are they being done so thoughtfully? What is the role of the state to provide public housing? Should it be, as Keiran McAnulty said, just give them loans - give the Community Housing providers loans. Let them get on with it because they do it well.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

One of the questions we’ll be putting to Chris Hipkins, of course, is a question around the capital gains tax, because this is an issue that simply will not die. Labour Party members will vote on whether to formally endorse continuing work on a capital gains or wealth tax at their party conference in Christchurch this weekend. The party's been debating tax policy since losing the election last year, part of a broader truth and reconciliation soul searching. The people loved us so much and then they didn't. How did it all go so wrong? So that's there's been a lot of that.   Former Labour Party leader, David Cunliffe was on with Mike Hosking this morning and he says he has no insider knowledge, but thinks the conference members will be pushing hard for some sort of wealth tax.   “CGTs have actually polled really well, and one might, with a wry smile on your case, say that the CGT poll better than the Labour Party, so it's unlikely to be a net vote loser. Most middle ground National voters I know would also support CGT, no so a wealth tax. I mean a wealth tax has got a retrospective element sometimes, because it goes to accumulated wealth and high wealth individuals might vote with their feet, so I think that's a much riskier proposition. I think Labour should be moderate here and just do a sensible, relatively low-rate broad based CGT.”  Which is what David Parker and Grant Robertson last time wanted when they had a mandate. They had a mandate, they had the popular vote, they were governing alone – they could do pretty much what they wanted and what senior members of the party wanted, senior members of the government wanted was a capital gains tax. So I would argue with David Cunliffe that if there were votes in it, you can bet your bippy that Chris Hipkins would have been chucking it out there. He was desperate to stay in power. He was putting things on the bonfire and offering trinkets and displaying baubles, and you know if capital gains tax had had any votes in it, you can bet he would have put it out there.   Instead, he brassed off some really senior members of his government by saying it wouldn't happen. It'll be interesting to see where this goes. The text machine went wild after David Cunliffe's interview with Mike. And in news that will surprise no one, the Newstalk ZB audience appears to be overwhelmingly against the idea of a capital gains tax. I don't buy all the criticisms of a capital gains tax, but one of them rings true: I simply do not trust that the Labour government will spend my money wisely when they take it off me, if the last administration is anything to go by. There has to be some sort of understanding, some sort of relationship between the government and taxpayers, some level of trust.   If the government is coming to us to tax us, they have to say we're going to take money off you, and you might not like it but look at what we can deliver for the whole country for future generations with your contribution. Look at what you can do when we all contribute towards the country, this is what we can deliver. And you accept that. You say okay, I don't particularly like it, but I don't agree with everything you're doing but I can see results. I can see the country is improving, I can see that services are being delivered, that people who are working hard can get ahead, that kids can get an education, that my grandmother can get a hip replacement, I can see that it's moving in the right direction. But to take money off us and be left worse off as a country and as a people than when we started, yeah nah. She's a harder sell there. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Labour leader says New Zealand needs an honest conversation about paying for its future.   Our newsroom understands party delegates will vote on whether to support a capital gains or wealth tax at its annual conference this weekend.   Chris Hipkins says about 70% of government tax revenue comes from personal income taxes - while the OECD average is half as much.  He told Kerre Woodham that's because New Zealand doesn't have other forms of tax like capital gains, which is very common elsewhere.   Hipkins says it's treated as if it's a big radical idea, but we are one of the only countries in the world without some form of taxation in that area.  Labour leader Chris Hipkins has reflected on his ‘frenemy’ relationship with Nikki Kaye. Reacting to news of her death while speaking to Kerre Woodham, Hipkins said the pair both had a passion for education and tended to agree more than they disagreed.  He said he hadn’t been in touch with her for a number of years and said her death was “a bit of a shock”. “Really sad news. I just heard about Nikki Kaye as I was coming into the studio this morning. Nikki and I arrived at Parliament at the same time. We had a lot of common interests. I think you could say we were ‘frenemies’ for the time we were in Parliament. Opponents, but we actually got on well together.” Kaye was Minister of Education in 2017 under Sir Bill English. Hipkins would succeed her as the minister when Labour took power after the 2017 election. “I thought Nikki was a really passionate member of Parliament, very diligent, did her research, liked to know what she was talking about, didn’t rush to decisions until she had actually done the analysis of understanding the situation,” Hipkins said.  LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The health system, well, we're not really talking about the health system, but how not to get into the health system because every time we talk about the health system, we talk about the need to stop people getting into the health system in the first place, the need to focus on prevention rather than cure. And the Helen Clark Foundation has come up with a new report calling on politicians to take a new direction when it comes to problems with obesity and the health problems related to obesity. A third of New Zealand adults are obese and even if we want to split hairs and play fast and loose with the BMI - All Black front rowers are technically obese! Everybody knows you can be skinny fat! You know you can all protest as much as you like, but the fact is too many of us are unhealthy because we're fat and that leads to a long, miserable and expensive relationship with the country's health system. Obesity is now the leading risk factor for death and disability in this country. The Helen Clark Foundation Report, ‘Junk Food and Poor Policy’ says successive governments have primarily approached obesity as a matter of individual responsibility. And I would add to that, that society also sees obesity as a moral failing, which complicates matters. So if you're fat, you've got poor self-control, haven't you? Oh dear, you're not trying hard enough. Oh dear, you're clearly a person with lax morals, all that kind of judginess goes on as well. The foundation argues that successive governments have done far too little to address the underlying issues of what causes obesity. Only a fraction of school canteens meet the nutritional guidelines. The concentration of takeaways is highest in the most deprived suburbs in New Zealand, so the people who have the least amount of time to prepare nutritional meals, find themselves bombarded with takeaway stores just around the corner. The Helen Clark Foundation wants to see a healthier food environment, stricter rules for advertising junk food, giving local government the power to control new unhealthy food outlets (similar to bottle stores and how they're allowed to operate), and making the health star rating on food packaging mandatory. Regulation can work – soft drinks levy introduced in the UK in 2016, has led to a 35 percent reduction in the total sugar sold over four years and lowered hospital admissions for dental treatment. So that has got to be good news. The Foundation’s also calling for embedding healthier food across hospitals, schools, daycares and the like, and adopting and expanding new treatments like weight loss drugs. For a while, it was the bariatric surgery. I know so many people who've had it. And it's worked for the most part, for them, like overwhelmingly, it's worked for them. Now it’s Ozempic and the other related type injectables are said to be an absolute game changer when it comes to obesity. Basically, and putting into really fundamental terms, the makers of Ozempic have said people can not know when they're full – not all people, but there are a lot of people who don't know when they're full. Their bodies have no trigger switch that says, oh, that's enough, stop. With the injection, they take the injection and they have something to eat and their body says that's enough, we've got enough nutrition to get us through, and so you know when to stop. Which sounds amazingly easy. And if that is all it is, yay, it will make a huge difference. I mean, obviously following the the logic that David Seymour applied to Pharmac, if you can get people onto Ozempic or similar, a weight drug that regulates metabolism and regulates appetite that has got to be better in the long run than paying all of the health bills further down the track. I would love to hear from those of you who have thought about weight, struggled with weight, done something about weight. It occupies far too much of our time, but it is a very, very real problem. I mean, look at the figures. Obesity has overtaken smoking as the leading cause of death and disability in this country. We need to do something about it. What do we do?  LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Helen Clark Foundation wants widespread change to address New Zealand's high obesity rate. Its report recommends government policy interventions to improve the proportion of healthy food available. It also suggests restricting the marketing of unhealthy food to children and adopting new technologies for obesity treatment. Executive Director Murray Bruges joined Kerre Woodham. LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Remember yesterday when we were talking about the declining rates of hazardous drinking among young people? Good news. And then so many of you positing that it's because they're popping pills and taking other drugs. Bad news. It looks like you might be right.   The 2024 New Zealand Drugs Trend Survey has found that the price of drugs is dropping, the meth market saturated, and drug use has increased in just about all the regions. The availability of LSD and other psychedelics is growing, prices have been dropping for the past seven years, Kiwis’ cocaine use is up the wazoo —I suppose you could put it up the wazoo, it’s usually up the nose— but that's everywhere in all the regions. Cannabis is everywhere and the price has dropped marginally.   The fact that meth has reached record-low prices is because new players are entering the market. Just as with anything that you manufacture, doing it yourself in New Zealand is more expensive than importing it from overseas, and that is concerning. Professor Chris Wilkins from Massey University says new players have entered the market and our drugs are no longer just a bit of marijuana growing locally.   CW: It's a global market, so a lot of the methamphetamine we have traditionally used has come from Southeast Asia, but Australian police are saying that 70% of the meth they now see is actually from North America, South America, actually are Mexican cartels, and they're essentially just like in the other market, they're seeing a market opportunity and they're selling at a cut price.   MH: There seems to be a tremendous amount of cocaine about the place?    CW: That's right. So there was another really surprising finding was that the level of cocaine use, level of cocaine availability, obviously in Auckland, but also in Northland, the Bay of Plenty, but really all over in New Zealand and this may well be some overlap with that Mexican cartel and of course, they're in the cocaine trade, and if they're selling meth to New Zealand and to Australia, then cocaine is also another thing that obviously got access to.   So yeah, the Mexican cartels sending down their meth and saying, “look, hey gift with purchase, you might like to try a little bit of cokie wokie when you’re taking your meth supplies”. So the survey says drugs are becoming increasingly prevalent, but illicit drug users are still in the minority if you believe the New Zealand Drug Foundation. You might think from that report and from what Professor Wilkins was saying that at every party in every town across New Zealand, there are mountains of cocaine and rows of meth pipes lined up on every table like little party favours, but the Drug Foundation says drugs like meth, MDMA and opioids are used by a relatively small percentage of the population.   According to their figures —self-reporting— 3.6% of the population aged 15 and over used MDMA last year. That's around 152,000 people. 1.1%, around 47,000, used amphetamines, and 0.4%, around 18,000, used opioids. They rely on self-reporting, and the New Zealand Health Survey, which is self-reporting and wastewater testing data – which you think would be more accurate, but surely there must be more people using drugs than those who are appearing in the wastewater or those who are self-reporting? Otherwise, how are so many people able to make a living peddling drugs? Why would the cartels bother sending drugs into New Zealand if it wasn't worth their while? Are we seeing a disconnect between the numbers of people who are self-reporting and the actual trade itself?   Do we need to know exactly what the extent of drug use is in New Zealand before we can have a conversation about drug use in New Zealand? If there are many, many people, like if it's more than 1%, if we're talking about 10% of the population using illicit drugs, then you'd think it would be time to take the Portuguese approach and decriminalise drugs to control the source and supplies so that it wasn't in the hands of the gangsters and the mobsters. And we really don't want Mexican cartels here, do we?  But then you can't just take the Portuguese experiment, which has worked in Portugal and import it holus-bolus into your own country. In Canada, in British Columbia, they became the first and only province thus far to decriminalise the possession of a small amount of hard drugs to reduce the barriers and stigma “that bar those with severe drug addiction from life saving help or treatment”. It's running on a pilot basis until 2026, but already it's a disaster. It's come under increasing pressure from British Columbian residents and political opponents, who have called it a harmful experiment with all the drug users out in the streets and slumped over and unconscious, no safeguards for the public, and one that utterly failed to reduce drug overdose deaths.   Remember the synnies that were doing so much damage, especially among the homeless people? They seem to have self regulated and thought, no, we're not going to use those because we're going to end up dying a horrible death.   According to the latest Drugs Trend Survey, drug use is increasing across most drugs across all regions of New Zealand. The price is dropping, its hoots wahay, party time as we go into summer. But according to the Drug Foundation, 3.6% of the population using illicit drugs, it's not a huge amount of people, is it? So where are we at? What numbers do you believe? Is it worth having a moral crisis and raising the alarm about the amount of drug use and the cartels moving into here, or is it a relatively small number of people? How is it that 3.6% of the population can support all those gangs and all those cartels? See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.