Kerre Woodham Mornings Podcast

The Government was warned it's efforts to tackle New Zealand's housing affordability issues could be hampered by wood shortages.The issue has become so significant, Building and Construction Minister Poto Williams is considering limiting timber exports to ensure there is enough in the country.  This comes as the cost of building materials continues to rise, pushing up house prices.Phil Taylor, President of the Forest Owners Association joined Kerre McIvor to discuss.LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Kiwis are being urged to keep an eye on tightening mortgage rules.  The Reserve Bank wants to halve the number of people borrowing more than 80 percent of the property's value - cutting the number to ten percent.Rules restricting risky lending could be in place from October.To discuss the implications, One Roof commentator Ashley Church joined Kerre McIvor.LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

According to the latest Newshub Reid Research poll, if an election was held tomorrow Labour could no longer govern alone. They could get there with the Greens, but their absolute majority would be over.  The big winners are ACT, jumping 4.2 per cent to 11.1; National is stagnant, up just 1.7 per cent to 28.7 percent. That must be a worry for Judith Collins although she told NewsHub they were just being silly when they pushed her on Seymour popularity over hers. And to a certain extent she's right. It would still be a centre-left government, Jacinda Arden would still be the prime minister if an election was held tomorrow. If, would be, could be - we're a long way to an election but according to David Seymour, there are promising signs for centre right and right leaning parties in the poll. A glimmer of hope that voters are becoming dissatisfied with Labour's management on a number of issues.Labour strategists would be concerned by the drop in the polls but surely not unduly so. Yes, support for Labour is falling but support for a centre left government has not. Jacinda Ardern is still the preferred prime minister and in the absence of a viable alternative for the swinging centre voters, they'll still stick with the devil they know. But David Seymour is right to be upbeat and optimistic about his party's chances to capitalise on Labour's urgency to push through reforms while they can.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Watercare is about to press the “go button” for their giant tunnel boring machine, Hiwa-i-te-Rangi.Hiwa-i-te-Rangi is about to dig her way under Auckland city to create Watercare’s $1.2 billion Central Interceptor wastewater tunnel.It's an almost 15km underground tunnel that will stretch from Grey Lynn to the Mangere Wastewater Treatment Plant and will clean up 80% of Auckland’s waterways by preventing wet-weather sewage overflows.Watercare Central Interceptor Executive Programme Director Shayne Cunis joined Kerre McIvor.LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Commerce Commission's draft report on grocery store competition has found New Zealanders are getting a raw deal at the checkout.Chair Anna Rawlings says New Zealand groceries are the sixth most expensive in the OECD, but would be cheaper if supermarkets competed more.She says there needs to be an increase in the number of retailers who can compete effectively.Food & Grocery Council chief executive Katherine Rich told Kerre McIvor prices will come down if there is healthy competition in the market, but they also want to make sure suppliers are better protected"We do believe that prices for consumers should come down, if there was growing competition, but equally we've been focusing on better treatment for suppliers."LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

National's criticising the Government for buying more state houses than it builds.Figures released through parliamentary questions, reveal that of the nearly 8000 public homes added by the Government, only 3716 were new. The rest are mainly existing homes, bought or leased on the private market.Yesterday, a real estate agent called into the show to say that her company had been approached by Kāinga Ora to say they have been told that if an auction falls through Kāinga Ora is willing to pay “$200,000 over the asking price.” The real estate agent also said “their top offer is $1.5 million.”Kerre McIvor asked Minister of Housing Megan Woods if Kaiga Ora is subverting the market?LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

An interesting opinion piece has arisen on Newsroom by the Sustainability Council of New Zealand Executive Director, Simon Terry.In the piece, he points out that if our international oil imports were cut,  New Zealand would be at risk of a breakdown of essential services and it would cost us hundreds of millions dollars a day.Terry believes if we paid just one cent a litre, it would keep our own refineries open and thus not be reliant on overseas oil.Simon Terry told Kerre McIvor keeping our refineries open is critical in making sure our essential services remain operational.“We’ve actually got, they expect, between only ten and 20 days of fuel reserves at any one time.”LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The ACT party is set to release its economic policy later this morning but David Seymour has already revealed one of its platforms - allowing privately run MIQ facilities for vaccinated travellers - something he says would ease the squeeze on MIQ and that would also throw a bone to hotels struggling as border closures continue. The idea's been doing the rounds since we first started requiring returning New Zealanders to quarantine and gained impetus once we started charging - surely if you're being pinged  you should get to choose between backpacker, midrange or luxury quarantining. The government rejected the idea because of the health and security measures needed but eighteen months on, David Seymour says it’s time to revisit the idea.He says it would bring back international students and much needed skilled labour and it would be limited to vaccinated people, both staff and contractors, and saliva tests would be needed every couple of days. Hotels wishing to take part would have to be licenced and could lose their licence if they breached conditions. Unlike the government run model, it would be based on full cost recovery as well as a profit margin. So it wouldn't be cheap. But it would be an option. And surely that's what we need to start looking at - options. There was an interesting piece on Newshub over the weekend, with Professor Des Gorman calling for an expert group to take over the Covid-19 response from politicians. He said, and he's right, one of the problems with the politicisation of any health response is that it’s hard enough to manage the health risk and the economic risk, but when you have electoral risk as well, it becomes very difficult. He says that we need to start shifting the way we govern and manage the pandemic - he points to ACC and the Super Fund and says these are kept at arm’s length from politics - there's an expert governance group in control. And that he says is what needs to be done with Covid, the government should get out of the way of people who are actually experts. Amen. The government needs to stop using Covid as an excuse and as its get out of jail free card. It's got some ambitious schemes on the table - three waters, reformation of RMA, restructuring of the public health system and you would think, now that we have accepted there is a way of managing Covid and now that our imperfect vaccination roll out is underway, that they can hand over the Covid response to a panel of suitably cautious experts.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The ACT Party have revealed their ideas for private MIQ, which would allow mothballed hotels to privately offer their services for vaccinated travellers.Leader David Seymour says the facilities would be run under strict testing and vaccine protocols - and help re-open the gates for international students, workers, and split migrant families.ACT is also calling for more certainty in the immigration system.The party has proposed dumping Labour's immigration reset, unfreezing the expression of interest queue, and resuming pre-Covid immigration settings.LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Thousands of insurance customers could be in for refunds.A Financial Markets Authority and Reserve Bank review's found many insurers hadn't been doing enough to ensure products are suitable, and are overcharging some customers.In some cases, they double-charged customers, hadn't given multi-policy discounts, or significantly overcharged premiums, because of poor IT systems.Financial Markets Authority director of banking and insurance Clare Bolingford told Kerre McIvor those insurers could be issuing refunds.“They've reviewed their products and realised that some mistakes have been made and some errors have been made. They are going through all their systems and making sure their customers get recompensed where they've been overcharged or where discounts haven't been applied.”The Insurance Council says companies have been working proactively to address areas of concern.LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.