Kerre Woodham Mornings Podcast

This tricky virus seems to be playing very hard to get, doesn't it? I know that Covid 19 exists and that if you get it bad, it's a very nasty virus to get.But given that we've had a young man sweating it out in an enclosed space with other gym goers and a previously undisclosed dodgy lodger going door to door and STILL nobody has it - surely even the most hysterical Covid alarmist would have to concede that perhaps the threat to civilisation has been somewhat overstated.Surely the government is going to have to temper the safety first, abundantly cautious approach with a bit of common sense.  You might have heard Aysha Verrall - the deputy health minister - this morning with Mike.So surely that means region wide lockdowns in the future simply can't be justified.  If the chain of transmission is so confined, keep the lockdown confined. And when we come out of lockdowns, we need to come out of them immediately. If the government decides at 4pm we all come down to Level 1, then we should be in Level 1 at 4.01.  It is unconscionable to keep people constrained against their will for a second longer. And between now and the next outbreak, the Ministry of Health needs to lift its game. We went into a lockdown because there seemed to be no known contact for the young man who went to the gym - and that's because two of the families didn't disclose to contact tracers that there'd been contact between them. Once that contact was established, the young man became part of a tightly contained cluster.  There was no need for the lockdown.  One of the families also failed to disclose they had a lodger at home.  If you were contact tracing, how could you not know this?  Their methods need to improve, they need to have more people available to man the phones in the immediate aftermath of an announcement that there has been an outbreak, and those people manning the phones need to have the correct information. As has been typical from the start, messaging from the Ministry has been inconsistent, confusing and just plain wrong at times.  We have had countless examples of that over the week.  They simply have to do better.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

No new community cases - good.  The entire country in a form of lockdown - bad. I get that Auckland needs to take precautions given the level of faffing around done by people deemed to be infectious but why on earth is the South Island locked down?  Why in fact is anywhere south of Hamilton locked down? We might have an easier case to make for opening up the rest of the country if hordes of Aucklanders hadn't saddled up their late model sedans and fled for the hills or their holiday homes.The fact that they did that, that they were given a window of time to escape the city makes it more difficult to justify opening up south of the Bombay and north of the Brynderwyns, but surely the South Island should be free to go about its business unencumbered by restrictions on gatherings. Richard Prebble has written an excellent piece in the NZ Herald about the need for the government to hold an inquiry and god knows it loves an inquiry into the failings of the Covid response. And he's right.  We have the Ministry via the Prime Minister saying that they sent 15 messages, via phone text and email to a KFC worker and her family relaying the health advice to stay home. I hope the PM has seen each and every one of those messages because given the misinformation that came out of the ministry at the start of this pandemic, I no longer accept anything I hear from the Ministry of Health as the truth.LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Should the New Zealand government cancel student loan debt?That’s the argument being made in an opinion piece on Newsroom.London-based reporter Laura Walters writes: "As part of a generation that’s been hit by one economic challenge after the next, student loan debt is just one of myriad factors that is making me reconsider what my life will look like."Rather than offering interest-free borrowing, or expecting people to refinance their loans, the Government could try something more ambitious (such as debt cancellation) "Walters joined Kerre McIvor to further discuss her argument and how debt is holding people back from being productive members of society.LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Land Rover Horse of the Year organisers have cancelled the 2021 event after 48 hours of discussions left them realising they wouldn't be able to clear the hurdles put up by Covid uncertainty.A spokesperson for the Hastings event wrote on Facebook on Monday night that it was not a decision that had been made lightly.Horse of the Year, a fixture of the Showgrounds Hawke's Bay Tomoana, draws 1500 competitors and tens of thousands of spectators each year and sits alongside the Art Deco Festival and Royal A&P Show as one of the region's biggest yearly events.After squeezing the 2020 event in just before Covid Level 4 lockdown, New Zealand's biggest equestrian competition was set to run in 2021 on March 9-14.There is a possibility alert levels 2 for NZ and 3 for Auckland could have been lifted by the Government in time for the event's start date, but organisers had already indicated there was little chance of it going ahead if all, or almost all, of NZ was not in Level 1.The HOY spokesperson said:"We worked through all possible scenarios for Land Rover Horse of the Year 2021 during NZ's ever changing Covid19 situation."We know there is huge support for us to go ahead however there are many factors we have had to consider."These include financial implications for our show and its ongoing sustainability, the travel and time pressures for riders, the experience we can deliver for our riders and spectators, and most importantly of all, the health & wellbeing of everyone who attends the show."The spokesperson said it was a "heart-breaking" decision to have to make, "particularly when the majority of our expense has already been incurred"."We are truly devastated and send all our best wishes to our Land Rover Horse of the Year family from all corners of New Zealand."Rest assured we already have 2022 firmly in our sights and will come back bigger and better than ever."text by Hawkes Bay TodaySee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A review of the Government's drug buyer Pharmac will focus on the timeliness and transparency of its decisions.Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Health Minister Andrew Little announced the independent review's terms of reference at Parliament today.The Pharmac review will focus on two areas:how well Pharmac performs against its current objectives and whether this could be improvedwhether Pharmac's current objectives maximise its potential to improve health outcomes for all New Zealanders as part of the wider health system and whether these objectives should be changed.It will also consider factors including:the timeliness of Pharmac's decision makingthe transparency and accessibility of its decision makingequity - including access to medicines and devices for Māori and Pacific peoples.The independent review panel will be chaired by the former Consumer chief executive Sue Chetwin and will include corporate governance consultant Frank McLaughlin, experienced health and governance expert Heather Simpson, pharmacist prescriber Leanne Te Karu, preventative and social medicine professor Sue Crengle and disability advocate Dr Tristram Ingham.The review is intended to run until the end of the year with an interim report in August and a final report in December."I expect that the review committee will decide its own consultation process but that it will include at a minimum the appropriate input from consumers, Māori, Pacific peoples, clinicians and industry," Little said.The budget for the review is expected to be between $1.5 and $2 million.Ardern said the review would help New Zealanders have confidence in the system.Ardern said broadly the Pharmac model worked well but they'd heard concerns about the model and the Government believed there was scope to improve it."Pharmac is a model that's critically important to the health sector and viewed as world leading - but let's make it better if we can."Little said concerns raised about the drug-buying agency included access to new medicines, timeliness of decision making and its priorities."In addition there have been concerns about the safety of substituting medicines due to cost and availability, and access to products that are funded in other countries but not here in New Zealand."Nearly 4 million New Zealanders received medicines procured by the drug agency.The review was committed to by Ardern during an election debate with National leader Judith Collins who also promised to review the agency if elected.Ardern said when asked if Labour would commit to a review, she said: "If it gives people faith in our system, then yes."Newsroom reported this morning the review will investigate how the government drug-buying agency can better respond to specific government health priorities relating to emerging drugs and more.In 2019 the Health Select Committee voted against a politician-led inquiry into the agency. The National Party said it appeared Labour only committed to the independent review when it was "politically palatable".Little confirmed the Government was planning an independent inquiry into Pharmac and that Labour just didn't support it being led by politicians on the Health Select Committee.Little said they wanted it to be independent and considered it "inappropriate" for MPs to do it."It needs to be at arm's length from politicians. It's not right for politicians making political judgments about Pharmac and its decisions."There are high-level policy decisions but it is better that they are reviewed at arm's length and independently," he said last year.He said work is under way to establish terms of reference and an appropriate review body.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We've talked before about the shocking state of our kids' teeth.  More than 5000 children and teenagers have dental surgery under general anaesthetic every year for problems associated with neglect. Dental decay is the most common chronic health condition in New Zealand and it causes serious problems for the children who have rotting teeth. I have heard some parents say, what does it matter?  They lose the teeth anyway. But in the interim, their children suffer, with problems ranging from extreme pain and spread of infection to poor self-esteem and reduced quality of life.Now the government is looking to put a fence at the top of the cliff to prevent the ambulance being needed at the bottom. The Prime Minister has promised to pass a bill that's been on hold for nearly four years - a bill that would give water fluoridation powers to District Health Boards and probably extend water fluoridation from 50 per cent of the country to at least 85.Dental Association president Kate Ayers told Mike Hosking that would have an immediate impact, and can reduce decay rates by 40 percent.The government is also giving preschoolers free toothbrushes, which is all well and good but they have to be used and used properly. I know it can be a faff at the end of the day making sure the little ones are brushing their teeth properly, after you've had a full day of child minding, and you've just got through the bath, and there's still bedtime stories and questions to answer and streams of consciousness that are really just delaying tactics to get through but its part of the job. Perhaps if the government shook the money tree once again and provided a nanny at the end of the night to oversee correct brushing - that would have more of an impact.But to be fair, a similar programme in Scotland - giving toothbrushes and toothpaste to little ones - has been successful and its hoped that the combination of fluoride and supplying tools for teeth cleaning will end up saving the country more than 600 million dollars over 20 years - and thousands and thousands of children a life time of pain and embarrassment.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

According to research from Inland Revenue and Treasury, the wealthiest New Zealanders pay just 12 per cent of their total income in tax on average.The same research found 42 per cent of the wealthiest New Zealanders were paying lower tax rates than the lowest tax rate paid by people who earn their money from an ordinary job or a benefit.The reason for the disparity between New Zealand’s wealthiest people and regular salary and wage earners is that the wealthiest New Zealanders tend to earn a large part of their income in parts of the economy that are either taxed lightly or not taxed at all.So how do we better calculate the wealth of rich people?PwC partner Geof Nightingale was a member of the Government's Tax Working Group which was created to consider the future of tax.He joined Kerre McIvor to share his knowledge on the issue.LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson says lives will be 'incomparably better' in England's spring and summer as he sets out a plan to fully ease lockdown rules by June 21.A paper published yesterday shows the two vaccines approved and in use in Britain showed high efficacy rates in trials.The first doses of Pfizer-BioNTech and AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccines in Scotland led to a substantial fall in Covid-19 hospital admissions.Dr Chris Smith, medical consultant of virology at Cambridge University and founder of the Naked Scientist podcast, joined Kerre McIvor this morning to update us on the latest developments from Britain.LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A Christchurch man says the scene that confronted him ten years ago felt like it was straight out of a movie.Lawyer Andrew Riches was sitting in his office when the building started shaking and filing cabinets fell down.He ran outside and was one of the first rescuers at the PGC building, which had pancaked, claiming 18 lives.Riches told Kerre McIvor when he heard people calling out for help he sprang to action."When I stopped and looked at it, the whole building had collapsed down many floors on top of each other."You run through your head, how many people would be working on each floor - there must be a pile of desks in there."Riches, alongside fellow lawyers David Lang and Toby Giles, were honoured with awards from the Christchurch Mayor of that time,  Bob Parker, for heroism during the earthquake.LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Calls for a purpose built quarantine centre that is located miles away from our cities and our biggest population masses are growing. All the big names in immunology - Nick Wilson, Des Gorman and Michael Baker - have said its absolute madness to house returnees carrying the different Covid strains into hotels in our biggest cities. We have 18 hotels in Auckland, three in Hamilton, two in Wellington and six in Christchurch - our most populous cities and we bang quarantine facilities smack bang in the middle of them. People are people and, despite the very best of intentions, accidents happen, and people, on occasion, will behave badly.  Since the army have taken over the running of the hotels, there haven't been quite as many returnees going walkabout and popping into their local Countdown but nonetheless the possibility is always there - and once the Covid cooties are out and about, the ramifications of Covid in the community are devastating.Now National's Covid spokesman Chris Bishop has jumped on the bandwagon and called for a purpose built facility on the outskirts of Auckland. He says, and he's quite right and nobody would disagree, that NZ can't afford to keep yo-yoing in and out of lockdown and the Auckland economy can't afford to keep bleeding $30 million a day. While employees probably enjoyed their three days off this week in Auckland, it's caused major disruption in the city and indeed for the rest of the country. We're going to have to learn to live with Covid - vaccinations or no vaccinations - and if that means forking out for a purpose built quarantine facility, then that's the price of living with this virus.Listen above as Chris Bishop joins Kerre McIvor to discuss his proposalSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.