Kerre Woodham Mornings Podcast

An important day not just for Auckland businesses, but businesses around the country. Auckland is now in Alert Level Three, meaning more businesses can begin operating in some capacity. Heart of the City Chief Executive Viv Beck joined Kerre McIvor.LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Just when it was looking promising for Auckland to move down a fraction of a level, giving us the welcome morale booster of click and collect shopping - why in heaven's name can't we buy books in Level 4 - along comes the news that Waikato has three positive cases of Covid, including two children one of whom was symptomatic while at school.  If the PM faffs around and holds everyone in suspense while taking ten minutes to praise a group of essential workers, to thank Auckland and to update the vaccination rates, I will probably have a cardiac infarction.  Just give us the news - good or bad and let us deal with it.  I cannot believe that people haven't been able to cross the Auckland Waikato border to attend funerals - and yet an Auckland prisoner is remanded out of the region.  Explain that one.  So now we've got all the experts piping up telling us this exposure complicates things and makes it a very difficult decision for the government and so on and so forth.  And I'm absolutely sure it does.  We have an under resourced public health system that will struggle to deal with a significant outbreak and given that not enough people have been vaccinated to let the virus rip, we are going to have to be cautious. But people who have been doing it tough, been doing the hard yards - I'm not too sure how long they can hang on.  We have a public health system that cannot deal with a pandemic and that's the fault of successive governments; we have a woefully inadequate MIQ system - unless you're a top tier sportsman; we have a failure of our immigration department where criminals are given residency and GPs return to their home countries because they can't get certainty about their future - businesses are doing their bit but they are being let down by an inefficient government.  How else can you explain our MIQ system and the fact that businesses and our DHBs are screaming for experienced staff and immigration won't let them in?  So many people are white knuckling it through  this lockdown while bureaucrats and government officials make knuckle headed decisions that render their sacrifice meaningless.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Despite Te Wiki o te Reo Māori drawing to a close, it doesn't have to be the end of your te reo journey. Te Reo Māori is one of the many languages listed as endangered by UNESCO, in the year 2000, there were just 70,000 speakers. More and more, te reo is becoming part of our daily lexicon, from news readers to musicians. Te Rau-o-te Rangi Winterbern is the Head of Kaupapa Māori at Education Perfect, New Zealand's largest edtech company, and he joined Kerre McIvor. LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Here at Newstalk ZB we’ve got a lot of messages concerned about the government controlling the media in the last week. These concerns have often accompanied by a video of Newshub’s Tova O’Brian talking about a document dump. Kerre McIvor spoke to Tova to confirm that the government did not pay TV3 to shelve the story.  She says it was a story from May last year, and that the Prime Minister’s office was not happy about the story being leaked to Newshub at the time.LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

National Party leader Judith Collins joined Kerre McIvor Mornings to discuss the nuclear agreement between Australia, United Kingdom and United States as well as the latest round of polls.LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Wānaka couple must have been listening to Deborah Pead on this show yesterday, given the apology and expressions of remorse delivered by them last night when their name suppression lapsed. Oh, they're very sorry, and they understand they've done wrong, but they weren't Covid positive and they hadn't been to places of interest. Not surprisingly, the Queenstown mayor Jim Boult is underwhelmed.  He says if he were William Willis and Hannah Rawnsley, he wouldn't be coming back any time soon. I think I would put some distance between now and the next visit to Wānaka would be my best advice to them. Wānaka is a tight community and quite understandably people right across the district were really unhappy about this, he said."It will take a while to get over this.”And I get that.  But can we just take a moment to ask why Auckland police didn't take action against a gang gathering - a group of fifty people broke level 4 rules to attend a tangi in Avondale yesterday. The funeral may have been online but that didn't stop people gathering together to share their grief and their sorrow and give their loved one a decent send off - all things we would love to be doing under Level 4, all a natural part of being human. The inability for people to come together and share their grief and pain and memories is one of the toughest parts of a lockdown - and yet time and again, people choose to break the rules - and they're not punished. Those who play by the rules are. Look at this poor woman who applied three times to travel to Waihi to attend her mother's funeral.  She was told the need to protect the wider NZ population from Covid 19, and especially from the new and more transmissible variants, has meant some restrictions have been put in place.And yet, these people who broke the rules to see of their loved one weren't charged, the names of these people haven't been released - because according to the police, the officers were aware that they were dealing with people going through the grieving process. It's not just bloody gangsters who grieve.  And yet they can get away with closing roads in Hawkes Bay and blocking off areas and getting police escorts and breaking Level 4 rules, while people who obey the rules are left absolutely distraught.And it's not just those directly affected.  The vast majority have chosen to give up certain freedoms and the vast majority have chosen to reluctantly comply for the good of the wider community. There are people who are losing their businesses and their homes - who are suffering death by a thousand cuts, and to see people like the Wānaka duo and the tangihanga attendees.Not to mention the ridiculous, random and incomprehensible decisions being made about which businesses can open and which cannot, erode the good will and the resolve we have towards obeying. Compliance is not a given.  What is the point of following rules when there are no consequences for breaking them? When in fact the consequences for following the rules are far worse than the punishment for breaking them?When you can't be by a loved one’s bedside - but others can have sex in the hospital, or have a cast of thousands disrupting a ward.  When you can't give your mother a proper send-off but others can.  When you are laying off employees and wondering whether you are going to lose your house - and others are swanning off to Wānaka to their other house. If we're all in this together - then there need to be consequences for all rule breakers.  Because even the most compliant and law abiding of us - we might not be rule breakers, but we do have a breaking point.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Auckland couple who escaped lockdown to Wanaka have been granted interim name suppression. Interim name suppression was granted via an urgent teleconference last night, to allow their lawyer to apply to the High Court for suppression of a longer duration today. The two people were dobbed in after using their ‘essential worker’ exemptions to leave Auckland, fly from Hamilton to Queenstown, and then travel to the holiday home in Wānaka. To discuss the issues around reputation management, Chief Executive of Pead PR, Deborah Pead, joined Kerre McIvor.LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Sir Ian Taylor is once again making a plea to the Government.As an experienced businessman, he says "the economy simply cannot afford to keep replaying the same level 4 restrictions that played out over the past couple of weeks, nor can businesses expect to operate successfully on the international playing fields with an MIQ system that simply has no rules they can play by."He'd like to see some experts on the team, coming off the bench, to get us re-engaged with the world.Sir Ian Taylor joined Kerre McIvor.LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Now for something lighter for Friday.How do you get through lockdown without going doolally?Some people have taken up needlepoint, others garden, read, run or you can meditate.Yoga and meditation teacher Claire Robbie joined Kerre McIvor.LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A two-year guaranteed income experiment in Stockton, California, shows what a difference monthly cash payments can make for people struggling to stay afloat. The programme gave 125 people living below the median household income $500 per month for two years, with no strings attached. A study released after the programme's first year found the payments measurably improved participants' job prospects, financial stability and overall well-being, In the US, roughly half of all single mothers make less than $30,000 per year, and nearly 30 percent of households led by single mothers live in poverty. Sukhi Samra is the Director of the Stockton Economic Empowerment Demonstration, the nation’s first mayor-led guaranteed income demonstration and she joined Kerre McIvor.LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.