Kerre Woodham Mornings Podcast

Helping Wairoa residents get back on their feet is the first big ticket spend of the Red Cross New Zealand Disaster Fund. Of the nearly $18 million raised, $1.9 million or just under 11 percent, has been spent since Cyclone Gabrielle hit early last month. It includes a $1.1 million contribution to the Wairoa District Council to help those living in yellow-stickered homes to restore them. Six weeks into the recovery effort and it seems the money raised by generous Kiwis is not getting spent as we thought it would. In a Newsroom piece, South Auckland community leader Dave Letele says he asked three different marae whether they had received support from the Red Cross fund. They hadn't. He is now questioning the transparency of the Red Cross. Dave Letele joined Kerre Woodham. LISTEN ABOVE  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

It was a busy day of announcements for the National Party, with news of a second Auckland harbour crossing being fast tracked and a $200 million nationwide plan to improve the safety of police officers. Oh, sorry no, I've got that wrong. It was the Labour government who announced this. But really, they're being more National than National.  Close your eyes, if you hadn't heard which party it was, a harbour crossing for all vehicles being fast tracked. A $200 million plan being rolled out to make our police safer. Who would have been responsible for that in the past? Surely it would have been National, but this is Labour trying to show, hey, we can be centrist too. Vote for us, we like being in power, do it again. We can be pragmatic; we can be useful as a Government instead of ideological pie in the sky dreamers who haven't got a clue! Look at us!  And while I am pleased that a second crossing is being planned sooner rather than later, I can’t help but rue all the missed opportunities. Why didn't we get cracking during Covid times? I mean, obviously not in the first three months, but you know then the year after, when it became obvious that Covid could be managed and people could be managed and work could continue. Why didn't we use that opportunity to build projects of national significance in the same way we, and so many other countries, did during the depression? To reignite the economy, to keep people in jobs rather than just printing money. And why, when it came to harbour crossings, was so much ideology attached to Labour's initial plans?   Honestly, when you think of a second crossing, we need to get cracking. I can rue all the missed opportunities I like. We can all scream at the amount of money that has been spent on nothing, on pie in the sky, airy fairy ideas, but it needs to happen. And it needs to happen sooner rather than later. So good on Labour for announcing that it’s going to fast-track it. And good on Labour for being more National than National is right now. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Well, it kind of feels like the inevitable has happened, hasn't it? After receiving his final final warning a few weeks back, it wasn't going to take much for Stuart Nash to lose his portfolios and job as a Minister. Especially, as many thought Prime Minister Chris Hipkins's actions over his previous cabinet manual discretions were not firm enough. So, this time around it has been revealed that Stuart Nash sent an e-mail to two of his donors, revealing confidential information from cabinet discussions that was of interest to them. Details about where several ministers stood on the issue of a commercial rent relief package for Covid hit businesses was passed on which once again contravenes the Cabinet manual, which states discussions at Cabinet and Cabinet Committee meetings as informal and confidential. As you’d expect it to be. Members of cabinet are bound by collective responsibility and must not detail who took what position on an issue. So clearly the Prime Minister had no choice but to fire Nash and it was good to see that there was only two hours between the e-mail being revealed and the Prime Minister announcing his sacking from Cabinet. Inexcusable is how the Prime Minister described Nash's actions. Nash crossed a line that is totally unacceptable to the Prime Minister. Well, now we know where the line is. Maybe you felt the line had been crossed before.   Look, I'm not hugely surprised, and I doubt you are either, about Nash's actions. I'm sure Nash is not the only Minister in any Government to have had a conversation with an interested party about policy. Maybe just giving them a bit of a heads up about which way the Government is swaying, although I don't think they're all silly enough to record it in writing, in an e-mail. But we know that Ministers and their departments are lobbied by various different groups all the time. Lobbyists, academics and researchers, business organisations, federations, charities, community and activism groups, depending on how closely aligned and values, I'm sure they have been given the occasional heads up in the past as well, but when we're presented with the evidence so bluntly, it does make you wonder whether the Prime Minister has his Ministers under control. Are they acting with due propriety? Like me, you might not be surprised by Nash’s actions, but should we be accepting it? And the answer is no, we shouldn't by any Minister.   LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We know that times are tough for GPs, just trying to get into one in parts of the country is almost impossible. I've been taken back talking to you over the last few months about some of the wait times that you're experiencing when it comes to getting into your GP or being able to sign up with the GP if you're looking for a doctor if you've moved to a new area. It is now even more disappointing to learn that some family doctors are cutting services such as childhood immunisations due to chronic staff shortages and underfunding. They call it a crisis. If you take a look at the number of people turning up at emergency departments and 24-hour care departments it’s hard to disagree.  The General Practice Owners’ Association undertook a survey, and the results show us that GP services are at a critical crossroads. So more than half, 53 percent, of essential family doctor clinics have reduced their services, and over a third, 36.5 percent, have completely withdrawn some services altogether. I'm wondering if this is something you have noticed at your family doctor's clinic?  185 responses from member GPs across the country show that practices are struggling to find and retain doctors and nurses. They’re showing increasing waiting times for appointments, as we know, feeling that they're compromising patient health and are putting a burden on after-hours and emergency departments.   Look, it was also good news to hear that the Government is prepared to train 300 GPs, up from 200. Only problem is where do those extra 100 people come from? General practice isn't exactly selling itself at the moment is it? These junior doctors aren't coming out of med school going yeah, that's for me! That looks fantastic, that looks like good lifestyle choice!  How do we encourage junior doctors to jump into the sector to be those hundred extra people that we can train? Look, we know that by 2030, half of the current GPs will no longer be working. We've known this for a really long time.  So we have to work hard to incentivise junior doctors to come into general practice. And we need to incentivise practices to take them on as well.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

People are unable to access some essential family doctor services as the services are being cut due to chronic workforce shortages and underfunding in general practice. A survey of general practices has found more than half of essential family doctor clinics have reduced the services they are offering. The General Practice Owners Association of New Zealand (GenPro) survey found a significant number of practices have completely withdrawn some services altogether. Questions have been asked as to how we take the pressure off our family GPs and also, how we recruit students to the profession. Northland GP and GenPro Board Director Dr Geoff Cunningham joined Francesca Rudkin to discuss. LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I don't mind telling you that I get a little tense talking about the sort of stuff that came out of the events that we witnessed in Albert Park on the weekend, because passions, as we saw, ran very high.  I've taken a bit of time over the past 24/48 hours to think about those events and also look at a bit of video coverage, and I think we should be deeply worried about the way we engage with each other and with other points of view with which we might not agree. It's almost become a distraction to talk about any of the substance of the opinions surrounding the personalities involved around Posie Parker, otherwise known as Ms Keen-Minshull, and the Pride movement. Because it seems now that when it comes to the big issues, we've reduced the level of our discourse or discussion to that of a pantomime, where we have to find the big bad villain or the wicked witch. Where everyone can boo and hiss when they come on stage. And I hate to say it, but it was a lot worse than that on the weekend. And, understandably, we have politicians commenting on it like Christopher Luxon, who understandably tiptoes gently through the tulips, pointing out that there were many peaceful, people there and making some sensible comments to defending the right to free speech. But closer to the action, I'm going to steal the words of Brendan O'Neill at The Spectator when he said that this what it must have been like when women were marched to the stake. He compared it to the ritualistic shaming of a witch and a violent purging of a heretic. Some would say simply for having a different opinion, but here's the thing. Regardless of the substance of the arguments, we have to be better than this. We have to be able to discuss things.  Shout and make a noise if you like, but we have to be able to debate the substance of the issues.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Yesterday we were wondering what Nationals announcement was going to be around education, today we know. From where I'm sitting, it's pretty good. The basics are primary and intermediate schools will teach students for at least one hour a day on each of the topics of reading, writing and maths, and children will be tested at least twice a year to make sure that they've got it, that they understand what they're being taught. It's a commitment to New Zealand's children that their education will ensure they will be literate and numerate when they leave school. It's a commitment that New Zealanders will once again see our education system ranked as one of the best in the world. A commitment that wherever you and your child are in the country, your education, or your child's education won't be left to chance or fate. And of course, the unions and Labour have come out and criticised it.   Jan Tinetti, the Education Minister, says that forcing children to do an hour each of reading, writing and maths every day isn't going to make them enjoy it or learn better. More intensive testing isn't going to make school a place they want to be. She says Labour has invested in our kids, upgraded nearly every school in the country, improved teachers’ pay and introduced programmes that help parents and make kids want to be at school. So why are the truancy rate the highest they've ever been, Jan? Why are your teachers on strike? Why are we the worst in just about every single category? So fine, grizzle and moan all you like about a standardised education system, but that's what we had before when we produced literate, numerate young people from our schools. I've banged on time and time again about how we're letting down our kids, this generation of kids, and we are. If you go back to the 90’s, young New Zealanders were better educated than they are now. We are going backwards. What we have right now in our schools is some sort of interpretive dance. We've far too many young people, and I'm not going to say they're failing, they are being let down. The teachers, too, are being let down by not having the resources and the structure they need to deliver the results they want. Good on Christopher Luxon for making education an election issue. I couldn't believe it when I read Matthew Hooton's column that education doesn't make the top issues concerning voters, according to their own pollsters, and it’s a lowly 11th in Ipsos’ New Zealand Issues Monitor. It shouldn't be. Education should be top of mind for every single New Zealander.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Finally, finally, a political party is grasping the nettle and telling it like it is. This education system is failing our children and it's been failing it for two decades. Parents and teachers have been saying this for years. The kids themselves are voting with their feet. They're simply not turning up for school. And why should they? I've been saying for years, as have others, that it is inconceivable that a child should turn up its secondary school functionally illiterate. They have had five to seven years at primary school and come out of it unable to read, to write, to do basic maths, far less anything else. How can this possibly happen? It's not the fault of the teachers. There are many, many fine teachers who are doing their level best with an incoherent curriculum with many, many kids with multiple and diverse needs in big classrooms. It's not the same as it used to be. They are doing the very best they can, but you've seen the level of their frustration. Now, National has announced its Teaching the Basics Brilliantly policy.   I am so sick of our young people being let down on so many counts. Nathan Wallis the educator and psychologist says the first three years are absolutely vital. If you have $100,000 to put it towards a child's education, he says, don't save it for university. You put that into the first three years, after that it's the next five years and after that it's basically toast. You're done and dusted. You either got a child with an inquiring mind, a child who believes that they can do whatever they want to do, that they can read, they can write, they can create their own worlds with their own imaginations. They can see the magic and numbers they can see the magic in learning. That's what teachers live to do, and so few of them are given the opportunity to do that. We have got to draw a line in the sand when it comes to our children's education. I cannot recall how long I've talked about this, ever since the figures first started coming out. That we were slipping and we were slipping further behind and the answers were all ‘tests aren't everything you know. You've got to let these children evolve at their own pace in their own time’. Sure, if it was one-on-one teaching, perhaps that would be so. But right now you've got overcrowded classes with children, with so many diverse needs that cannot possibly be met by one teacher. They are doing the best that they can. They need the support of the community, they need the support of a country that cares and understands that an investment in a child's education is an investment for the country as a whole.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Data from the Ministry of Social Development, comparing June 2020 to June 2022, shows almost 25-thousand fewer people are relying on the Jobseeker benefit. Minister for Social Development and Employment, Carmel Sepuloni, says two MSD reports show its investment in the Covid response helped drive record numbers of people off benefits and into work. Wairoa Deputy Mayor and Young Achievers Trust Youth Services Manager, Denise Eaglesome-Karekare, is someone who works alongside young people to get them work ready and place them into employment joined Kerre Woodham. LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In 2004, the New Zealand Labour Government introduced the Working for Families Package as part of the 2004 budget. The package, which basically began in 2005, had three primary aims to make work pay to ensure income adequacy and to support people into work. There was concern about the number of young women who were on benefits, they were a valuable resource, it was important they get into work. But getting into work is really expensive when it comes to childcare and when it comes to transport and when it comes to all sorts of things and getting the wardrobe for work you can't just have somebody work ready overnight. Working had to be worth it. And there was also a letter from, as I recall, the wife of a Waihi school teacher who said how is it that we are working, my husband's doing an important job, and yet we're materially worse off than people on benefits. Thus, Working for Families was born, and right now, there are about 350,000 families receiving the tax credit.   A review of the Working for Families system has found that while the system is largely fit for purpose, there are some ‘serious design issues’ with the way some of the tax credits are applied. One of the tax credits was so flawed that half of the families that received it were accidentally overpaid, creating a tax debt they needed to pay back. A really unexpected and unpleasant surprise to receive. Most of the other half of the families were underpaid during the year and only got paid the credit as a lump sum at some point. So the way in which it's being delivered, there are some design flaws as the review saw.   It also warned that despite the tax credit system in work, poverty is becoming an increasing issue for families. No surprises there for many families, I'd imagine. There is no doubt that Working for Families has been a lifesaver for many working families, but there are critics of the scheme who basically say it's tax payer subsidies of employers. That employers would have to pay more if taxpayers weren't topping up working New Zealanders incomes with the Working for Families tax credit.   So when it comes to the Working for Families package, the Government has promised to act upon the review that has been delivered. They're not committing to anything just yet. Carmel Sepuloni said no decisions have been taken, we can continue to consider the advice that we've been given. Any decisions would have to be part of a budget process if there were going to be any changes to Working for Families.   Carmel Sepuloni said she can't pre-empt whether or not it's going to be part of this budget. Doing away with Working for Families would be very difficult, as the New Zealand Initiative points out, many low income families have taken on mortgages on the understanding that these tax credits will continue. Therefore, to remove them would be incredibly unfair. And yet, at the same time, is it fair that taxpayers support employers to pay wages that New Zealanders can live on?  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.