Kerre Woodham Mornings Podcast

Yesterday we had a number of listeners wondering if Napier is still open for business and tourism if they venture to the Sir Rod Stewart concert at The Mission Estate. Some were surprised it was going ahead given the state of the roads to get there and others were worried about accommodation. To clarify the situation CEO of Hawke's Bay Tourism, Hamish Saxton, joined Kerre Woodham. LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

As has been much discussed lately, doctors and nurses have raised concerns about the winter ahead given some Emergency Departments are already over capacity. There are concerns that many hospitals around the country are understaffed and the staff employed are overworked. However, in a good news story, Waikato University's nursing student intake has more than doubled. The school has a record 210 new students attending its two nursing programmes this year. Waiora School of Health's acting dean Dr Joe Lane joined Kerre Woodham. LISTEN ABOVE  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Everyone staying in New Zealand tonight, aside from those impacted by Cyclone Gabrielle.are legally required to complete their Census forms today.  As of this morning, more than 1.4 million people have returned an Individual Form. The Census collection period for the affected areas has been extended until June first. Stats NZ Deputy Chief Executive Simon Mason joined Kerre Woodham to discuss the process in detail. LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Christopher Luxon finally got to make his State of the Nation speech yesterday, in which he berated Labour for its many, many sins. Highest inflation in 32 years, only 46 per cent of kids attending school, regularly falling standards of education, the increase in violent crime.   Christopher Luxon then made promises that a National Government would turn things around with youth military academies for serious youth offenders, getting young people who can work off welfare and into work, lifting tax brackets to give the average earner more money in their pockets and restoring discipline to Government spending. And he also used the speech to announce the Family Boost child care tax rebate to make early childhood education more affordable. The plan will target lower and middle income families, about 130,000 of them, and parents will receive a 25% rebate on their early childhood education expenses, up to a maximum of $3,900 dollars a year. It will be a rebate, not a grant, and will be paid fortnightly by IRD into parents bank accounts. And how will the country afford that? Christopher Luxon says it will be fully funded with the money this current Government is currently wasting on contractors and consultants - $1.7 billion per year. Not over the government's lifetime, per year. And he said the good thing about the Family Boost policy is that it will give New Zealand families choices.  How much would getting 25% of your costs back, let's round about to $4000 a year, mean to you in terms of how you're trying to juggle the family finances? When it comes to getting 75 bucks a week extra back into your pocket, I would argue it make a huge difference to young families. It would certainly have made a huge difference to me at the time.    So absolutely I liked Christopher Luxon's speech. I like the fact that he believes in New Zealand, that he believes that we'll get our way out of the trouble that we're in because of who we are. You know, playing into that New Zealand daring do #8 wire innovation and hard work and enterprise. And I did like the particular comment, he said. ‘Whatever we want our standard of living has to be earned. Only a strong competitive economy can afford the services that New Zealanders expect. There is no entitlement, no automatic right to live as a first world country.’ Amen. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

It's been three weeks since Cyclone Gabrielle hit, and there are still some cut-off and without power in Hawke's Bay. Across the Hastings District, 10 communities are still are isolated and more than 13-hundred homes don't have power. Hastings Mayor Sandra Hazlehurst told Kerre Woodham that people and volunteers around the region are working to clear silt and clean up the damage. LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The process of rebuilding communities that have taken a hit during the weather events of this summer is going to be a long and arduous process. Tough decisions will have to be made. Personal decisions will have to be made. Do you want to go back and live in the place where your worst nightmare occurred? I’m thinking of the families whose homes came down in landslides, whose homes were flooded and had to flee in the middle of the night. And there are many Auckland families, and indeed Hawkes Bay families, who have been flooded not once, not twice, not three times, but more than that. I'm thinking of the lovely lady who rang us who had been washed away in the floods, her home had been destroyed that they'd worked so hard on. Her mum was living with them - she had to go into a rest home because while they were in the process of rebuilding because it was cold and it was damp there was Polyurethane covering some of the walls so she couldn't live there.  So all of a sudden life changed. Well, I just wonder what happened to her in these latest floods, if she's been hit again, will she want to go back there?   A group of West Auckland homeowners, and this will not be the first group, has set up agroup asking authorities to step in and buy their flood affected properties so they can leave.  Basically, execute the managed retreat that's being talked about, a process where people are relocated and their properties are turned into parks or reserves. The campaign is backed by Te Atatu MP Phil Twyford who's been working with families in about eight neighbourhoods since the floods of 2021. A report found the flooding was partly due to blockages in the Waimoko stream, partly due to geography and the overpowering force of the one-in-100-year flood, which then came along in 2022. These one in 100 year events seem to be occurring far more often!  Should the same thing happen in Esk Valley? Should clifftop homes be part of a managed retreat, something like the King's chain, whereby the shoreline belongs to the public and you have access to the beach, the cliff tops are the same. You get access to the spectacular views and walk along there and houses are moved back from cliff edges. When we talk about buying back houses? That's the taxpayer. That's us trying to pay our mortgages as well as other people's homes. It might be the way to do it. I mean we are going to have to take a long hard look, not just stick a Band-Aid on communities, spend billions of dollars and then do it all again in another couple of years.   When it comes to the managed retreats and the rebuilding of communities, do we rebuild them in the same places? Do we restore homes and put people back in there after they've been flooded once, twice, three times? That doesn't seem like sane advice, when we're being told that the weather's only going to get worse. We're spending billions anyway, about every couple of years on natural disasters, or do people just have to cut their losses and clear out? And it's on the individual and not the community. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Wellbeing support is available for cyclone-stricken Napier residents. Mental health advocate Mike King and winery owner Greg Miller are opening the "I Am Hope Wellness Centre" there today. It's situated on the flood-ravaged Valley d'Vine restaurant premises on Linden Estate. A team of four counsellors and one doctor are taking annual leave for a fortnight to offer health services at no cost. King told Kerre Woodham they want to be operating for a minimum of three months. He says he's contracting as many counsellors as he can to spend at least six hours at the centre a day, paid for by donations. LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Rob Campbell is a very big cheese. He was named Deloitte chairman of the Year in 2017 and awarded a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to business in 2019. Not bad for a poacher turned gamekeeper, a former Unionist turned businessman,  appointed as Chancellor of Auckland, University of Technology, and more recently charged with the onerous burden of transforming New Zealand's health system – Te Whatu Ora. However, for a very busy man, he may have some much needed spare time coming soon after his comments on LinkedIn criticising National's Three Waters policy, and more specifically National’s leader Christopher Luxon. As a result, the Prime Minister has refused to express confidence in Campbell, which is pretty much tantamount to ordering his Health Minister to fire Campbell. And Hipkins has said that Campbell's comments were inappropriate. And they are, for a senior public civil servant.   Public servants must be seen to be Caesar's wife, beyond reproach, beyond tribal politics. Anyone who's followed Rob Campbell's career can't be clutching their pearls at the thought that Campbell harbours some reservations about National’s policies and about National full stop. What is astonishing is that he's been so self-indulgent. He knows the requirements of working in the public sector. You can, of course, have an opinion. Everybody has an opinion. Some people can air them, like me. Some people, like public servants like Rob Campbell, can't. You can express them with your mates around the BBQ. You can't do it on social media if you want to keep your job.   This is one of the biggest jobs in the country right now and you've got a man who says, pretty much, that he doesn't think much of National. He hates the fact that they're not willing to look at co-governance, which is something Rob Campbell's been strong on all the way through his working life. Can you really have a man at the helm going into an election year, who has pretty much indicated he doesn't want to work with National? When you've got the Prime Minister saying inappropriate … there's a process to follow … don't think it's on. This is a man looking for some spare time and I think he's just found it.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I was listening to Justine Wilson this morning, the woman Mike interviewed who runs the KiwiEsk Luxury Lodge in Esk Valley. Mike was asking for her reaction to the announcement yesterday that businesses hit by cyclone damage can get grants of up to $40,000 to help with the immediate costs of the damage. Cyclone Recovery Minister Grant Robertson said more announcements on funding support will be made in the coming days and weeks. All well and good. It will be seen as a boon for some people, but you can hear the voice of Justine Wilson that 40K was neither here nor there.  Her home and business has been completely devastated. The level of silt and rubbish and muck is incomprehensible. She just needs a plan, a blueprint of what to do from here.  For many of us this is unchartered territory. A massive flood, a landslide, a damaged home or business written off.  Where do we start the clean-up? The clean-up and clearance that has to be done before we can even think about rebuilding. I wouldn't even know where to begin. If you're lucky, you'll have a Brown Buttabean in your community. Someone who steps up, takes charge, gets rid of rubbish, cleans out homes, restocks them with furniture and food. That's what Dave Letele did, and his team, in the immediate aftermath of Auckland's massive floods, and that work is ongoing both in Auckland and Hawkes Bay. The Wairoa community have taken upon themselves to begin the clean-up. Because in effect, they have to. They're cut off for most of the country except for air, so the only way they can see an improvement in their day-to-day lives is by rolling up their sleeves and making that improvement themselves. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The clean-up post Cyclone Gabrielle is uncharted territory for many kiwis. If you have a house at the bottom of your driveway, as Justine Wilson does, a house that wasn't there yesterday, doesn't belong to you and doesn't belong there, how do you get rid of it? How do you prioritise earthmoving equipment, house moving trucks, tow trucks, volunteers with shovels when there are limited resources and so much need? Former Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Agency (CERA) Head Roger Sutton joined Kerre Woodham to discuss what to do. LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.