Kerre Woodham Mornings Podcast

Well, the National Party delegates and the party faithful didn't have a weekend off. This was their party conference weekend, so it was all guns blazing as the faithful gathered together to hear how New Zealand would look under a National government,  and more specifically, how National was going to get them the votes that would enable them to form a government. They didn't really introduce anything new and experimental. The party stuck to its greatest hits, fixing the economy, pointing out Labour's out of control spending and the big one, law and order. The policies announced were largely around law and order, among them imposing a new 40% limit on the amount by which a judge can reduce a sentence. A victim's advocate is welcoming Nationals plan.  Ruth Money says while a judge's discretion is important, some discounts had got way out of control and did not give justice to victims. And I absolutely agree that victims need to feel that they have received justice, not just that they have sat there and witnessed the law being administered. But often the perpetrators background does make a difference. It's not an excuse, but it is an explanation. And that's why I support the fact Nationals basing its law and order policy on two pillars - punishment and rehabilitation. Ruth Money herself said the same and she's the victim's advocate. It's important that prisoners on remand can access rehabilitation, as currently nearly 1/4 of them spend their entire sentence on remand, during which time they're unable to access even the most basic of services. There's absolutely no doubt that Labour has reduced the numbers of people in prison. The prison population has fallen by 20%. And they're saying it's going to be really expensive to put more people back in prison. But the cost of crime on society is expensive. I mean, just look at the numbers of security guards having to be employed by just about every retail store. And criminals have to be punished, otherwise we lose faith in the justice system, and we lose faith in our authorities, and we lose faith in each other. If you do wrong, you have to be seen to be being punished. But at the same time, criminals must be rehabilitated as best they can be. Otherwise, it's just an expensive money-go-round and a complete and utter waste of human potential.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Basically, I'm going to let Nicola Willis do the opener for me this morning. After the discussion we had earlier this week about the absolutely callous disregard with which local and central government treat our money, how timely was this report from the Auditor General's office? They were charged with deciding whether the $640 million spent on projects during Covid, left over from the Provincial Growth fund, whether that was money well spent. Fair question. Money was allocated. Was it well spent? Auditor General's office can't tell us. “We have no position on whether the PGF does or does not represent good value for money. At the moment, we can't see how it's tracking.” Funding was approved for several projects, including in the rail ports, construction, renovation and workforce training sectors but there was little to no evidence of record keeping or note taking.   It’s just the way they cannot account for where any of it goes! If I was paying that wack of taxes, as I have been for most of my working life, and knew it was going to pay nurses more, improve resources for schools, that it was going to create an infrastructure that would see New Zealand into the future – fine! Even some of these half-asked Mickey Mouse policies that Labour has come up with, if they were working OK, fine. But there is no evidence there is there is. No evidence of where half of the money they've spent has gone. And that is not money from a money tree. That is money that you and I have gone out and earned. Some of you have to get up and the early hours of the morning and work through the day. Some have to get up in the middle of the night, some have to go out in weather like this. And the Government takes that money and doesn't give a damn about how you've earned it. About how hard you've had to work. Because we are, we’re just warm ATMs. I am so sick and tired of it and it just doesn't seem to stop.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Political journalists and commentators have been having an absolute field day over the past 18 hours dissecting the downfall of former Transport Minister and Minister for Auckland, Michael Wood. Wood had been on notice since it was revealed he had failed to sell his shares in Auckland Airport, a clear conflict of interest for a Transport Minister. But he resigned yesterday as a minister after it emerged he held thousands of dollars’ worth of additional shares in a trust, some of which raised potential conflicts of interest with decisions that went before him as a minister and cabinet as a whole. Prime Minister Chris Hipkins indicated he would have sacked Wood if Wood had not offered to resign. He looked clearly frustrated and exasperated at the press conference yesterday. The additional shareholders were held in a family trust, of which he is both a trustee and a beneficiary. The trust holds thousands of dollars of shares in particular a stake in Chorus, Spark and the National Australia Bank - and having those shares raised questions around potential conflicts.   You've got a Prime Minister who's lost three ministers in three months, which is incredibly careless to lose three ministers in three months. Will it even matter? Will people see it as a Prime Minister losing control of his cabinet or a Prime Minister getting rid of all the dead wood, so to speak, that his predecessor didn't have the nous or the inclination to manage? I mean, we've known for a while that there is not a great talent pool within that enormous Labour caucus. There aren't many shining stars and those who are shine brightly. So is this Hipkins paying attention to detail and getting his ministers to be accountable for their actions? Or is it a minister losing control of his cabinet? He looked frustrated and annoyed. He's heading off to China. He doesn't want any more surprises like Meka Whaitiri when he's offshore. And can anybody explain the inaction of Michael Wood? Sixteen times he was told to sell his shares. Sixteen times he failed to do so. I'm not a great details person and I've paid dearly because I'm a not a details person, but I tell you what, if my boss said to me, ‘Kerre sell your shares or lose your job’. I'd sell my shares.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

There's a perception that a generation of New Zealand homebuyers are greedy, acquisitive and are locking young Kiwis out of the property market. Why buy another house when you already have one? Some economists have urged New Zealanders to put any savings into the share market so that local businesses can grow, but if you look back at this country's economic history; you can perhaps understand why older New Zealanders want their money to be as safe as houses. We've had the Bank of New Zealand teeter on the precipice twice. The first episode occurred in the late 80s and early 90s, after a rural land boom based on credit in the 1870s. The second time the Bank of New Zealand needed bailing out occurred in the late 1980s as a result of another credit driven asset price boom and bust cycle, following financial deregulation. That was when the real damage was done in the 80s. Specifically, the ‘87 stock market crash that affected all share markets around the world, but none more so than New Zealand's. Most of the share markets around the world recovered quite quickly, but by the end of February ‘88, New Zealand's market had fallen almost 60 percent from its peak. And on a capital index basis, without factoring in dividends, the local Stock Exchange has never ever gone past the ‘87 peak. The economy went into recession in 1988 and a generation of investors, the baby boomers, turned away from capital markets and put their savings into property and property focused finance companies. Then the finance companies went belly up. And in recent years, interest rates have been minimal. Great news for mortgage holders, not so good for people with money on term deposit. So little wonder so many Kiwis put any spare cash they had into houses and perhaps a reason - this is a long way of getting to the point of the Commerce Commission’s investigation - perhaps a reason not to beat up on our banks. Yes, they make huge profits. No, we don't like our mortgages doubling and swallowing a good proportion of our income. But as New Zealand Banking Association CEO Roger Beaumont says, it's in everyone's best interests for banks to be successful. The Government announced a Commerce Commission market study into the banks yesterday and there's been no real reason why, other than we don't like high mortgage rates. And really, historically, they're not that high. It's just that they have been historically low in recent years and now they're not. Both Labour and National and the Greens, of course see some political capital in lining up to bash the banks, pointing to the profits, pointing to the high cost of living and saying it's not fair that so many New Zealanders are doing it tough. Seeing their mortgages double while the banks are making huge profits. So, no real reason given. There are 16 retail banks, there is competition. You can swap between them. We're in recession and the price of money is more expensive than it used to be, so you can see how it happens.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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.