Kerre Woodham Mornings Podcast

The economy has contracted slightly more than predicted by economists and the banks. Latest GDP figures from Stats NZ show a 0.6 percent decline in the three months to December and compares to a two percent increase in the three months to September. Herald Business Editor Liam Dann told Francesca Rudkin if the next quarter is also negative, we could already be in a technical recession. He says economists often say the "on the street definition" of a recession is people losing jobs, but most people's jobs are still secure. LISTEN ABOVE  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Did you know the Bonfire of the Vanities was an actual thing?  Not just a very good book written in the 1980s that was later turned into a film. The bonfire of the vanities was a religious command to destroy objects that might tempt one to sin, including vanity items such as mirrors, cosmetics, fine dresses, playing cards, and musical instruments. Other targets included books manuscripts of secular songs, and artworks, including paintings and sculpture that were deemed immoral.  We saw our own bonfire of the vanities at Parliament last night.  Vanity projects that millions of taxpayers’ dollars had been spent on up in smoke because they have been deemed unpopular in the eyes of the voter - sinful, in fact - and this government will get rid of them however painful it may be to the champions of these vainglorious policies. They are doing it because they will get back into power and they're willing to sacrifice visionary policies, nuclear moments and transformational change to just become another political party desperate to stay in power for another three years.  So, clean car upgrade gone. Social car leasing gone. Deferred work on the container return scheme. Delayed advice on alcohol sponsorship in sport to April next year.  As well as policies being scrapped - for now - there was an absolute lolly scramble for many kiwis.  Nothing there for overweight, overpaid middle-aged talkback hosts, but hey. The day I depend on the government to get my jollies will be a very sad one indeed.  However, plenty there for students, beneficiaries, including families with children, sole parents, and superannuitants.  We've had a number of calls over the past few months asking what was to be done for those on the super - now you now.  A bit more than a hundy a fortnight for a couple, $66.86 for a person living alone.  There will probably be something announced on taxes in the Budget and you can bet your bippy it will hit the high earners - so with these announcements Chris Hipkins has announced that having arrived in the PM's office, he finds it very much to his liking and he jolly well intends to stay there.  And voters like him. The latest 1News Kantar poll shows Chris Hipkins is leading the way as preferred Prime Minister, while support for National leader Chris Luxon has tumbled. Hipkins rose four points to 27 per cent as the preferred, while Luxon dropped five to 17 per cent - his lowest since taking on the role at the end of 2021.   Based on the results, Labour could form a government with the support of the Greens and Te Pāti Māori.   The Green Party meanwhile was the big winner, rising four points and reversing a recent declining trend, while Te Pāti Māori also got a bump rising two points to three per cent.  The Greens now sit on 11 per cent, while Act was up one to also sit on 11 per cent.  The results would give Labour and the Greens 60 seats - and National and Act 57. It is game on this election year - let the lolly scramble begin.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Before I launch into the usual litany of woe, and really, the stories making the news headlines are indeed indicative of a woeful state of affairs, I do think we should acknowledge some of the good news around.  Zoe Hobbs was magnificent in Sydney over the weekend; the Tarankai raised, Auckland based sprinter has officially become the first New Zealand woman to run under 11 seconds for the 100 metres. Hobbs created history at the Sydney Track Classic by running 10.97 to scalp one-tenth of a second from her Oceania women’s 100m record with an exhilarating performance. Sticking with sport, in the third game of their second season in Super Rugby Pacific, the Fijian Drua have claimed one of the biggest upsets in the competition’s history beating the Crusaders 25-24 which has to be good news for rugby full stop. We also had three sold out concerts on Saturday night showcasing New Zealanders eclectic music tastes: BackStreet Boys, Snoop Dogg, and My Chemical Romance. So many beautiful emos in the central city on Sunday… and there's a great exhibition from the Tate Gallery on at the Auckland Art Gallery which is a must see.  There was sunshine and people flocking to beaches, and I could pretend for just a moment that we'd had a summer up north. So that's the good news. We return now to our regular scheduled programming. How on earth is the government and Andrew Coster going to spin this? Retail crime is up nearly 40 per cent —nearly 300 incidents every single day— and that's just the reported crime. 292 incidents every day in 2022, up from 140 per day in 2018. Why? Because the crims know they'll get away with it.  There's been a 400 per cent increase in ram raids in five years, 76 per cent of those caught under the age of 18. Why? Because the crims know they'll get away with it.  If you're on any neighbourhood FB page you'll see the footage of crims coming up driveways looking for homes to break into, cars to steal, opportunties to take stuff they're not willing to work for - why? Because they know they'll get away with it.  Violent gun crime is on the rise. Police data reveals that while the number of firearm offences has risen and fallen over the past 15 years, 2021 was the worst over that period with 1,308 firearms offences recorded. It surpassed 2019 when there were 1,142 incidents, including the mosque terror attacks. So 2021 worst year in 15 years - until 2022.  That was on track for being the worst year ever.   Data released by police under the Official Information Act shows 10 murder or manslaughter deaths in 2022, up until 31 July. There were 11 in total in 2021. Injuries are also running at a record rate, on track to exceed 300 firearm-related injuries for the first time. In 2021, there were 298 gun-related injuries recorded by police, the highest ever.  Why?  You know the chorus - repeat after me. Because they know they'll get away with it.  And all we get from the Police Commissioner and this government is gaslighting: New Zealand is a safer place because of the gun buyback. There is no increase in crime.  Ram raids have decreased since I became PM. There are more police on the streets. Fog cannons will make a difference. Utter, utter BS from a government that will not draw a line in the sand and say enough. No more. In a civilised society this is simply not acceptable and those who transgress, those who don't or won't observe the rules of civilised society need to be punished. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

To start with we're going to look at the latest announcement from teachers that they're taking strike action to force the Government's hand in their pay negotiations. It is the last thing that parents and kids need to hear. Primary school teachers have announced they too will be joining their secondary school teaching colleagues in strike action across the country. The press release from the NZEI said this is a combined work force of 50,000 people together, our voices will be loud. This is our opportunity to act collectively, to tell the Government that their offers are not good enough they must do better to show they value educators. We are strongest when we act collectively, make a plan with your colleagues about what you will do on strike day. Rallies and marches across the country have been planned for next Thursday. And sure, we are agreed that the conditions are far from ideal, that much more could be done to ensure that teachers are there and able to do the job that they love.  For many it is a job they love, but they're finding increasingly difficult to do. And I do have sympathy for them. Up to a point, but come on. Teacher only days school holidays, public holidays. The possibility of floods. Actual floods. The pandemic. Yes, preventing the spread of a virus is important. Yes, there's a chance that bad weather might turn into something more. Yes, teachers are valued. The work they do is important. All of these things are important. You know who's not important? The kids. That's the clear message I'm getting. Maybe I'm absolutely too one eyed to have any kind of perspective on this because one thing I am absolutely passionate about is that education gives children the chance to level the playing field.  There's justification for every single time schools have been closed. But in the order of priorities, the message that's been coming through loud and clear for the past five years is that young people simply do not rate and I despair. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Prime Minister Chris Hipkins says he doesn’t see his kids “anywhere near enough” and is grateful for their sacrifice so he can hold the country’s top job. Speaking on Newstalk ZB this morning, he said he made an effort to treasure what time he did have with them, leaving his phone in the next room, but he recognised the sacrifice of his two young children. “They ultimately make a big sacrifice for me to be able to do the job that I do.” It comes as Hipkins has weighed in on Te Whatu Ora’s publishing of incorrect emergency department wait-time data, saying it was “unacceptable”, while maintaining that mistakes do happen. Hipkins joined Newstalk ZB’s Kerre Woodham for a one-hour session, including taking listeners’ questions. “My feet have barely hit the ground,” Hipkins told Woodham about how it’s been going as Prime Minister since Jacinda Ardern resigned earlier this year. LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Let's talk tax. It is an election year, which means a number of key policies are coming under the spotlight. All the usual suspects - health, law and order, welfare and tax. A Newsroom article has proposed a fairer tax system that would, the author posits, bridge the gap between the haves and the have-nots. Inequality is the enemy of society. It's fine if we're all poor and fine if we're all rich. Where you run into problems is where you have a divide between those who don't have and those who do. At the moment, according to the Newsroom article, our tax system depends heavily on income and consumption. So GST grabs us with consumption, PAYE and business income tax gets the tax there. Wealth, as such, is not taxed apart from rates. The author argues that by leaving wealth and capital gains untaxed, the Government has less funding than it should have to spend on the common good. New Zealand spends about 30 percent of our GDP annually. A number of Scandinavian countries, who top the polls in just about every kind of happiness survey and well-being survey, spend more than 40 percent and that, the author says, provides their citizens with better public services and lower levels of health and social problems.  I have to say, over the recent years I've started to resent paying as much tax as I do. Before, I didn't mind it at all. Having been someone who was on a low wage, I was never on a benefit, but I had been on a low wage. I'd been a single mum. The fact that I could pay more in tax meant that I was doing better. And I didn't mind redistributing at all, because I could see where it was going. Now, not so much, when you see the waste of money - that really rips my nighty and it makes me resentful. And I don't like feeling like that. I'm proud of earning my keep in society. I'm proud of working extra jobs, earning extra money, paying extra taxes. Or at least I used to be. So what's fair? And what ensures we all have the best chance of success and the best chance of thriving and what really is a beautiful country. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The author of the Newsroom piece, 'How to make New Zealand's Tax System Fairer?' says our tax policies need to change. This is especially if we want to do something serious about intergenerational inequalities, poverty, and inadequacies in our health and other social services. Louise Delany is a senior lecturer in the Department of Public Health at Otago University and is also a member of Tax Justice Aotearoa New Zealand. Delany joined Kerre Woodham. LISTEN ABOVE  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Last Friday, I caught up with the neighbours. It was a long time between drinks and it was lovely to sit on the deck on one of the few glorious evenings in Auckland, learning a bit more about the people in my street. I already knew that one of the women was a nurse and it appeared she was a very good one at that. She had worked around the world in public hospitals and in private clinics for the stonkingly rich and clearly loved what she did. Or rather, she used to love what she does. The sheer grind of working in a public hospital in New Zealand was taking it out of her. The lack of staff, the weight of demand for hospital services was absolutely relentless. She said recently she had been asked to go back on duty on Tuesday evening, despite having worked that day to cover for a sick colleague. She didn't get home till Thursday morning and she was rung late that day, roused from her sleep, and asked to come in and cover for another vacancy. When she groggily explained, it really, really wouldn't be all that safe for her to come in the caller reluctantly rang off and went in pursuit of another exhausted nurse. Good luck finding one. Now this is an anecdotal story. I haven't seen her timesheet to verify that what she said was true, but what she said certainly struck me as believable. She also said nobody is allowed to talk publicly about how dreadful the conditions are, how poorly staffed they are, how exhausted they are, what kind of rabbits they're having to pull out of hats to look after patients. I think any patient who's been in hospital recently will tell you that the nurses are doing an incredible job, but even they can see just how frantic everything is, just how hard the nurses are working - that they're running, not walking. They're trying to be the professionals they are, in the most appalling conditions. You will lose your job if you put your name to any complaints publicly, she said. And that has been told to me before by texters on this show.   But this is the state the hospitals are in now, in what we laughingly call the end of summer. This is what our hospitals are like with nurses working around the clock, before the dangerous flus and viruses hit us over winter. One under pressure ED is at 195% capacity. Doctors and nurses have raised concerns about the winter ahead, given this is usually a quieter time for hospital numbers, a time where medical staff can take leave, can draw breath and gird their loins for the winter ahead. At Auckland City Hospital, the ambos had to step in and care for patients on Sunday and Monday because ED beds were not available. Therefore, there are no ambulances available to pick up the next people who need ED help. Patients are being diverted from Auckland hospitals to North Shore Hospital because there are some spare beds on the shore, apparently. Dunedin's the same. We all locked down, stayed home, got vaccinated so as not to overwhelm the hospitals. Well, bugger me, the hospitals are overwhelmed and it's not even winter. The New Zealand Nurses Organisation’s Anne Daniels said the pressure on EDs means we're in trouble right now. It's not just a few hot spots that need dampening down; the entire nation is on fire. What an absolute mess.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The nationwide Open Farms Day is back on again this Sunday, 12th of March. 25 farms around the country are opening up for urban Kiwis to reconnect with food and farming. Open Farms Founder Daniel Eb joined Kerre Woodham. For more information: https://www.openfarms.co.nz/ LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Peter Knight, from Auckland, took his wife to Auckland City Hospital on Monday because she had severe abdominal pains. Staff were coping admirably, he said, but the department was clearly understaffed and overworked. One nurse said the ED was at 195 per cent capacity. St John workers were looking after patients in the corridors, he said. “It was like a war zone and it was Monday afternoon in the off-season,” he said. Te Whatu Ora interim lead for Te Toka Tumai Auckland, Dr Mike Shepherd, said that the ED had been particularly busy on Sunday and this had a flow-on effect on Monday in terms of capacity. Numbers had since settled, he said. Peter Knight joined Kerre Woodham Mornings. LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.